I'm off to search for my lost sheep, and gather them all into ma-ia-law's fold. Back on Tuesday.

Have a lovely Christmas Day.

*So tired*


5809* minutes so far spend translating and editing this document, since the 7th December. Most of it in the last week.

I think my eyes are just about ready to fall out, but I estimate another 20 or so hours till I finish.


* Nearly 97 hours, my desktop widget tells me**.

**Have I mentioned recently how much I love Mildred McApple? Thanks to her, I have managed to spend most of the last week in bed.

I made an interesting discovery last night, whilst trying to cut corners with this translation. Quite a few of the words I am translating are the names of international conventions. A fair few words recur in many places.

So I did what I should have done sooner, and did a Find ’n Replace on various high frequency expressions, and carried on translating.

And I quickly realised that by so doing, I had inadvertently translated the document into Canadian French. (example: “Les rights des workers au sein de la Social Rights Charter”)

Oops.


PS: this in only slightly tongue in cheek. I have never, in the 18 years since I left France, lost my French at the rate that I did while we were in Montreal. Having said that, I did feel more at home there than almost anywhere else in the world. Go figure, as they say down South, eh?

By god, but my diet is poor when I'm having an essay crisis waiting until I can see the whites of the eyes on my deadline so that it can scare me into action working hard.

Started OK;
5am: Banana, cup of Wake-Cup (barley + guarana) with teaspoon blackstrap molasses
7:30am: Bowl of fairly naughty cereal with flavoured soya milk (I normally eat cereal, if ever, with juice on it rather than milk), second Wake Cup
8am: Cup of No-caff (as above, without Guarana)
...
Small hiatus to take Dill to School. It goes downhill from here
...
9:30am: Sodit double cappucino, equally sodit tostada andaluza (white bread slices, 2, in oven at 100C for the time it takes the stove-top cappu machine to do its thing, should eat with olive oil, but instead eat with butter and marmite), pour large glass of compensatory orange juice
11am: Warmed up leftover potato, leek and bacon hotpot made by The Boff last night, five small oranges
...
Parcel comes from Spanish boys we looked after in summer. Parcel contains naughty edible Spanish choclately, nutty, christimassy things. It is fate.
...
12 noon: handful of Spanish sugar-coated pine nuts, almond-chocolate log thing, dozen (or so) pine again, bite of something I decide don't like- leave for someone else, take replacement handful of sugar-coated pine nuts; begin to get sugar rush, drink large glass of water and rest of orange juice
3pm: friend returns Dill- I make friend's coffee, eye the last inch of milky frothy deliciousness and have sodit small coffee.
3:45pm: Large pear
4:30pm: more water
5pm: rest of Boff's hotpot as detailed above

Rest of the day- who knows?


It's lucky I don't have to work at this rate all the time- I'd be the size of a house.

Oh, and The Boff emailed me earlier to say that he and his two colleagues were awarded the prize I mentioned last week. Now all we need to do is bump off those two colleagues undetectably before the prize money is handed over.

So let me get this straight: a Blogger makes a fun discovery, and shares her discovery with the world, via her site, for nothing. Another (can't link the post, but 21/11/2006 post by Mr KW) takes up the mantle.

Hackette in search of ideas finds blog. Sets her mind racing. She basically, for want of a better word, pinches the blog post and writes it into her weekly column, for which she then gets paid a three-figure (more?) sum. The first the original bloggers know of the lift is when their names are cited in a major national newspaper.

Sweet. I wish I had a job that easy.

You disappoint me, Kate Muir. These truly are the Dark Ages of journalism.

It's fairly safe to say that I am crapping myself starting to become extremely nervous about this deadline. Which is not to say that it's not still doable, but 30000 words still to go, and a 22nd of December deadline.


Yikes.


Very Late Nights start today.

We've spent the weekend in the usual way, shuffling children to and fro about the countryside (current number on premises: 6), and massacring an medium-sized oak tree.

Well, pruning about 6 metres off the top of it, to be precise. Growing where it was, it threatened most of our belongings, should it decide to uproot itself in a gale- the garage to the south, the house to the north, the cars to the east, and the telephone and power lines to the west.

It is now nearly at that stage one is in for two days after cutting one's finger nails: stubby, awkward and ugly.

In the spring however, we expect the remaining limbs to be covered with leaves the size of dinner plates, which seems to happen as a decrowned tree attempts to pump up enough nutrients for its former glory, and instead turns its few leaves into grotesquely obese and pampered umbrellas.

There is just one branch still to go, which the Boff has been tackling for over an hour without success. It will fall disastrously if not adequately restrained. I went outside a short while ago, to be greeted by this Heath Robinson sight; one of the few occasions when my husband lets slip the veneer covering his inner mad scientist.

I realised earlier, as I set a match to the grate, that I have completely forgotten to share with you my DIY eco-friendly firelighter trick. I can't find any drawbacks to it whatsoever, unless you are allergic to oranges. It even scents your room.

All you need to do is to place the peel from your citrus fruits near the stove for a day or so. If you have some of those wrought iron pot stands, you can stand those on the stove and put the peel atop the stove. Don't put it straight onto the stove though, as it dries fairly quickly and begins to smoulder.

As it dries, it makes your room smell of orange, grapefruit or lemon- sort of marmaladey.

From the next day or so, you can use the dry and crispy citrus peel as firelighters. The volatile oils in the peel make it extremely flammable (hence avoiding leaving it directly on the stove), and it catches very quickly.

Furthermore, citrus peel is tricky to dispose of, as it is too acidic for wormeries, and tends to alter the Ph of the compost heap.

Use my system, and you will never need to worry about those little wormy bodies ever again, and your rooms will be warm and smell of oranges. See? The perfect eco-solution.

This evening, we have mostly been decorating Hen's arm. She got a nice red cast, in a break (haha, weak pun, to go with the weak arm. Oh stop, you're killing me!!) from her previous blue tradition, so we gave it a seasonal theme with some home-made stencils and a couple of cans of spray paint. Delinquents, us.

Quick question:

Someone's asked me to do some proofreading of a document translated from French to English by a non-native. I've seen a sample, and it looks as though it is written in very good English, with little work needed. How much do you think I should charge? I'm thinking an hourly rate of around 15 pounds an hour, on the basis of five pages an hour, which works out at 3 pounds per page. Does that sound about right?

Not feeling too fresh today, having got up at 3 to fish a beastly little loudbeak out of a tree in the full moon*, in order to shut him in the shed.

Also have unbelievably large document to translate for just before Christmas, so time online is to be strictly limited to relevant websites for a bit, unless I'm on a break. Talk amongst yourselves for a bit.


*Surprised the little sod didn't have fangs dripping with blood, given the amount of noise he was making. You would never believe from hearing him that he only a bit bigger than a budgie.

Am slightly perturbed to discover that my archives September 2003-January 2004 seem to be inaccessible or missing. Would some of you good souls have a go and tell me if you can see anything when you click on any of those links? Ta ever so.

My husband is so funny. I just can't decide whether it's the "odd" or "haha!" variety.

I got this email from him today:

Dearest,
I thought I should probably let you know that I (plus [Tall Scot] and [Cornish Bloke])
have been nominated, and made it down to the last 4, for the [Scientific Establishment for the Slightly Socially Challenged]
Awards for Excellence in the Outstanding Scientific or Technical
Achievement Award!!! Unfortunately this means standing in the [atrium]
and going through an envelope opening ceremony to which family and
friends are also invited. So, d'ya want a come? It's at [time & place] and they want to know numbers by Wednesday.
All love,
The Boff

Hehe. Don't want to jinx it, but big job, sensible deadline, out of the way by Christmas, (relatively) loadsa cash. Hopefully mine.