( dentistry )

( phone arrgh )

( the other bit )

This made me laugh.

Two of the Cork residents on my friends list (ie sammywol and mizkit) have posted this, and I think it's a damn good idea.

An LJ-wide group hug: If you've got friends who are having a really shitty week, post this and a great big huge hug to everyone who needs or wants one. If everyone does this, we can maybe cancel out the bad karma with the overwhelming good karma of everyone who wants to help out a friend.


Here's mine:

Berlin was basically OK, except that something I ate last night was dodgy and I was awake for more of last night than I would have wanted.

Then, driving to work from Brussels airport after I had landed, as I zoomed through the Montgomery tunnel I felt a sudden KCHUNK and the car coasted to a halt on the uphill stretch. Phone calls to Touring, long wait while traffic pooled around me in one of the prime choke-points of Brussels suburbia, finally the Touring guy arrived and towed me to a nearby layby, more long wait while he fiddled with the distributor cap before shaking his head in bafflement and calling a pickup truck, more long wait for the pickup truck, which then couldn't find the garage, probably because its driver was too busy talking to his girlfriend on his mobile phone to look for it properly, and eventually walked from the garage to my office with all my luggage from Berlin, still feeling fragile from stomach upset, and reaching my desk roughly two hours after I had expected.

And then I find that an invitation to an event I am doing next week has already been sent to the very senior invitees with my name mis-spelt. Given the day that I've had, it's annoyed me more than I think it normally would.

Have promised my friend in Berlin 1600 words on EU enlargement fatigue, and coalescent the same or more on Zoran Živković, by end of week. Problem is, I am in Greece on Friday, leaving late Thursday and returning very early Saturday; and there is a Georgian Embassy reception tomorrow as their prime minister is in town. So that leaves this evening, or the weekend.

You know what? It's awfully warm, Brazil are playing Croatia, I'm pretty tired, so I think it's going to be the weekend. coalescent's deadline is the 19th anyway. Berlin will just have to wait. (In fact, the entire city appears to be watching the match.)

Slept really badly last night - I thought at the time due to having had too heavy a lunch yesterday. Still, made it into town in time for Very Important Meeting at 9. Then went to the office, but rapidly realised that I just wasn't up to it and baled out before midday. Have spent most of the time since then in bed, and so will miss a work dinner this evening I had been rather looking forward to.

Thinking about it I have been feeling a bit under the weather for the last week, and slept very badly last Thursday night as well, so perhaps it's some minor bug that has chosen today to come to a head and not just the grilled bacon and sausage at the Irish pub near work. I do hope so - I have a busy day scheduled for tomorrow. (And I like the food at the Irish pub as well so would hate to think it was the problem.)

On the plus side, I did a good deed on Monday - driving to lunch at the European Commission, I saw a cyclist drop her handbag right in front of me. She zoomed blithely on; I stopped the car, picked it up, tried to catch up with her (but was stymied by one-way streets), found her Commission ID card and handed it in to the guards at the front desk. On my way out of the building to my lunchdate I bumped into her again at the next corner. She was very relieved, and very nicely sent me a bottle of Spanish wine and Belgian chocolates as a thank you, which arrived at the office this morning.

Though in my current state it will be a day or two before I enjoy them.

Failed to save the day's work in the right folder. All lost.

From one of my mailing lists:

1. Take out a sheet of paper and draw a vertical line down the center.

2. On the left side, write down the names of all the negative people that suck the life out of you and whom you dread seeing.

3. On the right side, write the names of all the people who give you energy and motivate you.

4. Make a 30-day commitment to minimize the time you spend with the energy drainers and maximize your time with the energy suppliers (and then continue this strategy for life.)

If only it was really that easy...

I'm just over half way through this trip and finding it very tiring. I had two days non-stop driving coming back from Ireland, followed by four intensive days at work, followed by the last four days being pretty intensive in Macedonia. Just arrived in Kosovo about an hour ago, here today and tomorrow, then back to Macedonia on Thursday to fly home. Taking Friday off.

...but our water has been cut off since mid-afternoon, and of course since I've been horizontal most of the day I never got washed.

Oh well, I'll be fit for work tomorrow, I expect, and our office block is rumoured to have a shower on the ground floor. If it doesn't I'll just have to be smelly all day.

Some kind of tummy bug has hit me - went to bed instead of eating dinner last night, slept for twelve hours, still not feeling great.

Sitting at home watching the rain pour down outside and listening to the thunder roll. Unlikely to make it to work today.

Slept badly last night; made it into the office for two work meetings, and then came straight home after lunch and went to bed. Have emerged now, though not sure for how much longer. B has been quietly flitting around the house for the last few days, looking ill, wrapped in various duvets, not doing much or eating anything; my appetite has pretty much vanished as well, so I think I've got whatever she has had. I forecast a few days of quiet at home, catching up with work by email if and when I can.

The original plan was to spend all day today in our Belgrade office working on a draft report. But I have some kind of immobilising tummy bug and have spent the day so far in my Hotel Moskva bed reading science fiction books. (More of that anon.) Meanwhile an old friend is going to buy me a cup of tea at around 4 o'clock to help the healing process. As I said, could be worse.

I got lots of little bits done yesterday but no progress on the current Big Task. Had one diplomatic meeting this morning but am feeling well out of it. Going home to bed.

Crumbs, I'm feeling lousy. But the pan-Albanian paper is lurching towards publication today so I feel a need to stick around the office for the inevitable last-minute hitches...

Well, Bridget woke us up at 4.30 last night. Not a particularly unusual event, we expect it to happen several times a month, and usually it's containable. However Ursula had a stomach upset as well, and alternated between gurgling with typical eleven-month-old delight at the state of the world and puking onto our bed. So I have been fit for nothing all day. The senior political adviser to one of the more progressive Balkan prime ministers is coming here to meet me in an hour and a half; I hope I make sense to him; whether or not I do, I'm going home and to bed as soon as he leaves our office.

A somewhat grim night of upset stomach - I think caused by some dodgy food rather than excessive alcohol consumption. Bratislava is not the most exciting of capital cities but it does bring my personal tally of countries I have visited to 39.

So I decided to have a quiet morning in my hotel room and finish work on the Georgia report, the Macedonia report being finally published at last yesterday.

All was going well and then my laptop informed me that its battery was about to run out. Thinking quickly, I copied the report to a floppy, hung around the free conference internet facility in futile hope that a terminal would be free, and then tried the hotel business centre where I am now.

Of course the floppy disk was corrupt and unreadable. Bah.

My explorers account was stuffed for days with the Sobig virus.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith is very good.

Even thinking about work makes me feel very tired.

I had 950 unread emails in my inbox when I got back.

Yesterday was a pretty grim day, due almost entirely to lack of sleep the night before with Bridget keeping us awake from before 1 o'clock till after 4. Today is her sixth birthday, and she basically has the abilities of a two-year-old.

Last night was much better though. And yesterday picked up during the day - looks like I will get three papers on the EU and the Balkans published tomorrow, just before the Thessaloniki summit, and I got an opinion piece finished for IWPR.

Awful night's sleep last night.

But yesterday I made my first ever joke in Russian. We were having a coffee break at the Ethnobarometer brainstorming session, and one of the other participants emerged wearing a massive Moscow-style hat. "У вас есть шапка", I commented, and people laughed.

That minor triumph was then overshadowed by bashing into an elderly couple's car while I was shopping. Their left hand side was badly dented, but the Renault Espace was barely scraped. It will be expensive though.

Alastair Cooke had a sensible reflection on how far the space programme has come since John Glenn was feared lost on his first re-entry. Not on-line yet.