Avernus

So, this week I have mostly been lurking around the house. Particularly for the last couple of days, being as my parents have gone to Barcelona until Sunday so I have the house to myself, and as people who have visited it will know, it's quite a large house. This does lend itself to quite creditable Miss Havisham impersonations (a plus), but on the other hand means that when your parents have gone away taking with them occult knowledge such as how to make the central heating work, and it's suddenly gone *really sodding cold*, you have to fall back on your childhood memories of how we coped in this big drafty old house before we got the central heating or double glazing installed (a distinct minus). Such knowledge has been progressively drained from my brain by too many years of Soft Centrally Heated Living, I have concluded, and so it's probably a good idea I remember how it's done. This is largely accomplished by a) wearing more layers than any rational person should feel the need to, b) shutting all doors and curtains/shutters in any room one happens to be in, and c) spending most of one's time in the kitchen with the lovely, lovely aga. mmmm, toasty warm. Drinking endless cups of tea also helps.

This regime of cold and isolation has, however, given me considerable incentive to read, so yesterday I read around 400 pages of Quicksilver, thereby finishing it and giving myself brain melt in one fell swoop. Though it was still awesome ^_^ My love for Daniel Waterhouse flourisheth like a green bay tree, as does my love for Isaac Newton (particularly since glancing ahead to the middle of the next book and delighting in his messy breakups and mental breakdowns. Yes, I am an angst hound, I *know*.) Daniel is, however, catching up on him fast just for being so bloody-mindedly yet haplessly Puritan at all the least convenient moments, such as when being a courtier to James II. I will love him forever for buying a pint when James was getting beaten up in a pub brawl.

And I will draw whatever conclusions I like from significant (or, as some short-sighted people may argue, insignificant) silences and Daniel scratching Isaac's old geometrical theorums on the walls of his cell in the Tower. And no one can tell me otherwise, for lo does the book itself encourage me to do so shamelessly.

I also keep intending to finish DMC3, but stupid vamp-bint is mean and frustrating. Heigh ho, I am not cut out for video games where you have to show even the *slightest* hint of skill in the fighting. Give me a good button-masher like Kingdom Hearts any day. Yes, I am aware that this makes me a sad case even in gaming terms.

Think that's about it for the moment. Should be going up to Oxford on Sunday, providing parents get back from Barcelona in time and the college / university doesn't find any other annoying forms that I should have filled in months ago. Here's hoping everything goes okay - I shall probably not be able to get online for a while until I get the damn computer vetted by the damn computing department, so don't expect to see me.