Miscellany

Happy Diwali to everyone. Because I was at home over the weekend and celebrated it with my family, I've sort of let it pass me by today, which is a shame. I guess I could have gone to one of the various society things, but I forgot for a fairly stupid reason - I fell asleep. I'm beginning to wonder if there is any disease for which the predominant symptom is sleeping excessively. I shouldn't have been tired; I had plenty of sleep last night, but I couldn't make myself get up even after a couple of hours asleep this afternoon.

Besides sleeping, I had my last Economics tutorial of term this afternoon and it was not of the good. My continued feeling that I shouldn't be here came to something of a head; my four tute partners were happily getting it, where it is simple micro concepts that I should understand but don't, but I'm not, and I know I'm not, and with a tute group of five, no-one notices if I don't talk throughout. No-one would really notice if I weren't there, which I'm more grateful for than not; it's much easier if no-one pays me any attention, because I don't then have to reveal my total ignorance of things economic. Nathaniel thinks my problems will be resolved with my maths, but I don't understand why Sagar, who has also done no maths, gets everything first try and pontificates impressively and manages on occasion to give me the intution for something I don't have the mathematical tools to understand.

I am aware I wasn't admitted on the strength of my Economics - I was interviewed by Politics and Philosophy tutors and my essays were examples of the same - but I feel really, really stupid. And perhaps it would make more sense to go back and read the entire textbook again, but I don't have time. I've got to do my Mill reading for this week, which is impressively vast, though no tutors have yet got in touch, and my maths tutor is back from the IMF, so there's that, too.

(On a related note, I was curled up on a bench outside hall, reading Mill, when Bob came by and asked, "How's life changed now you've dropped Logic?"

"Suddenly, the sun shines brighter," I told him.

"I'd noticed that," he said, perfectly seriously. "I knew there must be some meaning behind it."

So he said and vanished; I think he's grown on me, scary man.)

Sagar actually worries me all the time now - according to him he's doing hours of maths a night, has done all the Mill reading and is enthusiastically planning his first essay on the subject. I consider it an achievement if I get out of bed more than five minutes before lectures and do some reading in a day. I think perhaps either I'm not clever enough to be here, or I don't work hard enough to be here, or more likely, some macabre combination of the two. I'm trying, tonight; my logic is that I have slept more than I need and therefore should be perfectly capable of staying up and reading Mill.

In theory; I'm feeling sleepy again, despite judicious coffee. I guess Mill has that effect on me. He does in the original, belonging to the Sir Thomas More school of going five lines without a comma, but the commentaries are fairly interesting and I had a nice time going around every library in Oxford collecting them. OLIS hurts my brain, but gives me an obscure sense of achievement when I do get it to tell me what I need.

One other thing that deserves a mention - I cooked! Tonight there was a charity dinner rather than hall food, and Claire, Pat and Liya (acutally, they need a collective name; for all my former groups of friends, I've had resident lunatics, mini-Scoobies and chemgeeks, so I need something new - answers on a postcard please!) decided that the best option was to cook. And I can cook. I know I can. Not spectacularly, but I can make pasta or chicken or anything fairly easy, and so can Pat, so it should have gone all right. And it would have done, had we had decent facilities. The kitchen - sorry, kitchenette - is about five feet by five feet, with hobs on top of an oven on top of the counter (you have to be at least this tall to cook, apparently) and we had about a kilogram of pasta and no pan big enough to cook it in.

Yes, well - an hour of throwing boiling water about, borrowing sieves, fighting over peppers and finding new and unusual uses for cereal bowls later, the food was quite good. Not an experiment I am anxious to repeat, however.

And, something special: fannish content! To take my mind off my stunning inadequacies, I'm attempting to compile a list of comfort food, only comfort fic. And I'm sharing, because I'm nice like that.

Firstly, Sleep While I Drive by mireille719. Mir is writing this bit by bit, as an indulgence fic, and I'm reading it bit by bit also as indulgence fic. Four chapters of Mill/Logic/Varian, and one of fic. Which is why I wish the chapters were longer. But no, read this, it is wonderful, but don't tell me what happens because I haven't finished it yet. It's this delightfully meandering road-trip round the USA with Giles and Xander, and it's slashy and funny and it reminds me of why I liked Buffy fandom so much. Nice.

shoebox_project is perennial, and so is Dr. Jackson's Diary by minkboylove. I've read the former three times and the latter innumerable times, but always with a cup of coffee and a feeling of definite self-indulgence.

Dreaming of England by Kitty Fisher. I'm not the only one who has this as comfort fic, but it doesn't fit the standard definition. It's long, plotty Five/Turlough with some horrific non-con, angst and really spectacular whumping. I love it. :)

An Interesting Little Legal Problem by After the Rain. This story is just cheerful, good-natured fun, with silly hats and Muggle OCs and people eating plaster (really).

What Rough Beast by quercus. This story coloured my perceptions of Cairo before I even went there, and the writing of it, the sheer beauty of it, have stayed with me ever after. One for a long afternoon, not snippets in between Mill/Varian/Logic.

And lastly, I like the girl_doctor stories that weren't written by me, because they're the very definition of indulgence; only it's other people indulging me, which is very much of the good. Hee.

Tell me any more, and I'll add them. And the meme, gacked from taraljc, for good measure:

Pick any of my finished stories (that doesn't already have a sequel), and ask me what happens next. I'll tell you, if I can, and make it up if I can't. Some of them I really do know what happened next, but others I don't and it would be fun to find out. Go on, you know you want to.

Back to Mill, sigh.