Oof. This is High Stress Red Alert Week for me, so apologies to anybody who's still waiting for replies to their emails.... I'm desperately fumbling to catch up on my thesis work, which is due VERY shortly, our one computer-connected-to-a-printer has decided to stop opening MS Word files, so I can't print out anything (and, since it's the end of the month, I can't even afford to print stuff out at the university labs), and, and, and, and--!

Yuck. Nika seems infected with my nerves, too--she's spent the morning glaring at the window, waiting for unsuspecting horses to pass by to be barked at! She was very disappointed when I ended the game by closing the curtains. (I was disappointed too--I like having sunlight enter the room while I work!)

Last night we watched the Ur-British comedy, Purely Belter. Domestic violence, grinding poverty, sexual abuse, mother-in-the-hospital, housebreaking--geez, it had it all. By the end we were laughing in disbelief each time a new trauma entered the movie, because, y'know, they couldn't leave a single one out! It reminded me of my first modern British comedy film experience, "East is East", which I saw in Vienna. My American friend Christa and I sat in the English cinema in Vienna watching in disbelief as life got more and more and more depressing and scary and awful, with no let-up in sight...funny stuff, huh? I can't quite decide whether I prefer the stereotypical Hollywood fluff films where everybody's rich and shallow and all their problems are completely inconsequential. At least those aren't so completely depressing....

In good news, I finished Chapter Fourteen of my Eszterhaza novel this morning in the coffee shop. Woohoo!