It is Friday night, and I am lying in bed doing reports!  How sad is this!  J is playing with his new iMac, we’re ditching the bro-in-law’s get-together because it’s too far and J has other commitments… and, of course, I am Miss “It’s 3 weeks until it’s due I must start working on it now otherwise I won’t sleep!”  I have improved somewhat since uni (maybe some would disagree about it being an improvement…), but I do still get a bit frantic about this sort of thing.  I fret if it’s hanging over my head for a long time.  I might ignore it, but I am not one of those people who can enjoy ignoring it.

J checked the TV guide tonight, and was a bit excited – but more dreaded because of my expected reaction – to see that The Great Escape was on TV tonight.  However.  Turns out that it’s not THE The Great Escape. No, instead it is the two miners who got trapped and ABOUT WHOM I JUST DON’T CARE ANY MORE.

Stooged.  So, so stooged.

Church conference this weekend.  Topic was Grace – in fact, “Treasures of Grace”, organised partly by a guy whose last name is, no joke, Treasure, with a mascot called Pirate Pete (he was purple). 

Overall, it was good.  The speaker was great, althuogh I missed the last session because I volunteered for creche.  Grace is such an amazing concept; it was good to be reminded of it, and of how it impacts on my life.

It was spoiled by a few minor things – J had some issues with stuff he had loaned to the whole deal, and I had some minor existential crises – but overall I am glad that I went.

I’m reading this, again.  I decided I wanted an easy book to read this weekend, because we were at a church conference and I decided that I needed that something easy and completely off topic would be good.  So I am enjoying it, again, of course.  I really like the character of David Bowman; he’s cool.  For some reason I had really mis-remembered Frank Poole’s character; I thought that he was a bit of a nasty type, from memory, or just plain annoying.  But he isn’t; in fact, he is quite inoffensive.  There is nothing to choose from between David and Frank in terms of who you want to have survive or aything like that.  So that was good.

Of course, I will have to read the next three books too, now.  Which is just fine by me.

It is Toto week!  At least, according to Jay and the Doctor on JJJ.  That’s because Toto are touring Australia this week!  I can’t believe that they are a) touring and b) together.  Bizarre.

I have never been entirely sure about where the Hanoverians came in.  Then I read this today, and suddenly it is clear!  Not entirely sure I think that William of Orange and Mary being first cousins a good idea, but I guess I can’t really comment. 

William, Mary, Anne and the Germans are finally clear!  This is a very momentous day for me.

I read this yesterday and today.  It’s by John Bailey, and is the other book that VATE sent me to review. It’s a mix of talking about what Louisiana was like before the Civil War, and the true story of a trial to try and prove that one Sally Miller, a slave, was actually Salome Muller, a German immigrant.  It’s very scary, in terms of the racism it shows as being completely endemic and accepted as natural.  They had a list of terms for people depending on the degree of ‘blackness’ in their blood.  Lots of people – up to and including legislators and judges – accepted that slavery was the ‘natural’ lot of Africans, and that black people could only be happy and productive as slaves; a free black man or woman was still not nearly the equal of the lowest white person.  I just don’t understand how people could think like that – I guess that’s because I too am a product of my society.  It’s a good book; I’ll be able to use it in Human Rights, which will be good.

At last, I have finished this book, by David Carpenter!  I have been reading it for what seems like months… I think it might actually have been months. 

It is good.  At last I have something of an overview of the first few generations of British kings, which is a good thing.  And the overview of the Irish/Welsh/Scots relationships was very useful.

Basically, it was good. Hopefully it will have some influence on my teaching of the period, but I’m not really sure how, except for in talking about castles.

We went to see Mission Impossible 3 the other day.  In Director’s Lounge, no less, which was incredibly (ridiculously) fun.

It was OK.  Personally I thought there was too much blah-blah romance, but there was a goodly amount of explosions and adventure too.  Cruise is pretty good; Ving Rhames isn’t in it nearly enough.  Neither is Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  I think that, just like in no.2, the movie doesn’t actually spend enough time establishing the villain.  The goody is obviously the goody, and always is, but the villain needs some sort of reason to be a baddy, I think.

Anyway, it was fun.