Hoping for a white Christmas

They said in the radio just a while ago that there's about a 50% chance of a white Christmas in the whole country. If someone would've asked my opinion, I'd probably have said that the odds of that happening would be slim to none. It's pouring rain at the moment, has been for quite some time too. I would've put my money on wet Christmas instead of white. But if they say so, I'm looking forward to next week. It's supposed to be snowing then. I'll keep my fingers crossed (and my money safely on my account).

Despite the miserable weather, I've been in a pretty good mood lately. Lots of fun stuff going on (lots of Horatio Hornblower, Lord of the Rings, friends, glögi...) and there's still more to come. My infernally bad luck hasn't even been bothering me as much, knock on wood, though.

Yesterday I went to the seminar to hear the verdict on the introduction to my thesis. There wasn't a big attendance, but the discussion was nice. My works in general don't tend to raise that many questions, can't really figure out why, but oh well. In the seminar it's most likely in part due to the fact that the other people really can't be expected to know much about the subject. Which was aptly demonstrated to me by a few elementary questions about a few terms I had used. I need to provide a few explanations quite early on in my text. Otherwise the poor reader falls off the train before I even get it going properly. Don't want that, now do I?

What was really great about finally getting something done about the accursed thesis in the first place was that after the seminar gave me good feedback, I felt like I could get the project going now. I think I'm even slightly excited about the thing now. :) I still have to present a full chapter to the seminar, and I set myself a deadline for that. I'll have to turn it in in March. Before that I'll write the background chapter (I should get that done quite soon now) and hope that my primary materials will arrive from England, Malta and where ever before that. Hopefully the whole thing would be finished sometime in the late spring. Or at least one can hope. :)

Have you ever had the feeling that some odd event from your past is most likely going to come back and haunt you at some very awkward moment? Yep, me too. Ben had kindly done me a favor and copied an old c-tape to a cd. It was a tape of me, my brother and our eldest cousin Anniina (and our parents) singing Christmas songs. The tape was originally made some 20 years ago and we gave it to grandma & grandpa as a gift. They found the tape last Christmas and you can guess what we listened to on Christmas eve... Well, mom and dad then had the marvellous idea of getting the precious material preserved into a bit more reliable form, so I asked Ben if he could help and he promised. (Thank you!)

I took the cd to mom&dad yesterday and as we listened to it, mom got one of her...ermm... great ideas. We should re-record the thing now. Well, in one word - nowayinheck! I'm not singing Rudolp the Red-Nosed Reindeer anywhere near a recording device of any kind. I'm happy singing alone in the car, but that's about it. :) But the feeling of the haunting past? If I need to elaborate further, you haven't been using your imagination and I'd rather keep it that way. ;) So Ben, please destroy the file...

I'm learning nautical terms bit by bit. Oh yes, I'm referring to you-should-know-by-now-who and his adventures. I borrowed a few interesting books from dad yesterday and had a few good laughs with dad trying to understand the different terms. Luckily dad has some experience on boats and ships, thanks to the sea rescue service he's been volunteering in. So when I was desperately trying to understand which is way leeward and which windward, dad had a few good pointers. Mom must've thought us crazy, when we were waving our hands this way and that in the livingroom trying to demonstrate the direction of the wind and of the sails in relation to the wind. One of those lovely father-daughter moments there.

Oops, gotta go wash the dishes. Satu's coming to rehearse the choreographies for tomorrow's dance recital and I have a mess in the kitchen. That won't do, not at all.