Once again I have been remiss. I haven’t posted in over a week. Here comes the quick-fire update…

I spent New Year’s Eve careering round a small coastal town dressed head-to-toe in surgical scrubs, complete with silly green hat and face mask. My companions included a sixties girl with terrifying beehive hair, a sinister man in fetching goggles/skull-cap/lab coat combo, and Tatiana, Queen of the Fairies. Much alcohol was consumed, and other strangely attired folk were encountered. Amongst those spotted on the streets of Dartmouth that night were a conga-line of Dominoes, fifteen French men dressed as Arabs, and one bloke wearing nothing but suspenders and stilettos. (And a little underwear, thankfully.)

After celebrating the New Year with the grace and sobriety befitting a gentleman of my social standing, I was at home for a few days before returning to Cambridge. I got back here on Wednesday morning (cleverly forgetting several hundred vital items in the process), and have since been immersed in a computing project. I’m meant to be investigating percolation using cellular automata and the Monte Carlo method. My time thus far has been divided equally between learning Fortran-95 (which for some reason they insist on we use), installing Red Hat Linux (then counseling it through its inexplicable hatred of my graphics card) and trying to work out what the hell the preceding sentence means. So far I have managed everything but the last of these obstacles, but I’m getting there.

I’ve got two weeks till the project deadline, but things are complicated by the resumption of rehearsals on the 15th, which will take up a huge proportion of my remaining time. Speaking of which, I’ve just received the full schedule right up until the technical rehearsal on Monday 14th of February. It details a staggering 122 hours of rehearsals in the next five weeks. When I think about fitting in academic work and rowing on top of all these rehearsals, it scares the living daylights out of me. So I try not to think.

Talking of rowing, I’ve signed up for the ‘pre-term training camp’, which sounds a lot more serious than it is. (At least, I hope it isn’t that serious. I’ve got programming to do!) It should just involve a couple of outings, and maybe a session or two on the rowing machines. I could do with the exercise, cos I’m sure the festive season has robbed me of any fitness I’d built up last term.

It’s howling a gale outside, and my window keeps whipping from ‘slim crack providing fresh air’ to ‘gaping hole spewing swirling vortex’. I fear that if I don’t close my windows properly tonight, I’ll wake up somewhere over the rainbow. (The Land of Oz. You know, that big tornado thing? ‘Off to see the Wizard’ and all that? Ahh, forget it…)