How can anybody not love a country with a holiday called Pancake Day? Not that UK citizens get to take the day off work, but still, I love the fact that people are expected to make and eat pancakes today. I love England.

Which is good, as world news is so depressing on all fronts, from yesterday's big news on the Climate Change Predictions leaked from the US Defence Department (when even the Defence Department--not known to be a radical or left-wing organization--starts forecasting catastrophic conditions, millions of lives being lost, etc., etc., based on global warming, then things are really getting scary), to today's big news that the UK labor government is going to refuse benefits to Eastern Europeans working in the UK. It's the kind of news week that makes me want to curl up under the covers and bury my head for a long time. (And it still would be even if I weren't of Eastern European descent!)

So Pancake Day is a good thing. I also managed to get out my second funding application on time today--another attempt to convince an organization to pay me to go to Vienna (send good vibes along to the Royal Historical Society for me, everybody!)--which I considered to be a minor personal victory, since I spent yesterday semi-incapacitated by a migraine. I'm so sick of health issues--first Patrick was sick two weeks ago, then I was sick last week, he got sick again over the weekend, and my migraine struck late Sunday night and stayed.... but sadly, they probably aren't going away any time soon. This afternoon, Patrick's going in for his second (and last!) wisdom tooth extraction, so after mailing out my funding application this morning, I headed over to the library to find some DVDs for him to watch during Recovery Time. Can't wait till we're both entirely healthy, at the same time....

Time to go take Nika out on a walk, take some more pills for the head-ache, and think about pancakes and the Masquerade chapter of my thesis....