Most of today was spent in a haze of tiredness brought on by late nights in work -- four days in a row. Said lack of sleep has been known to cause excessive grumpiness and irritability; however, a Firday spent dozing on the train out of Dublin, building a large roaring fire and then sitting in front of it while watching Flushed Away, eating my first home-cooked meal in weeks, and finally tapping away quietly at the keyboard, while the smell of chocolate cake baking in the oven fills the house.
Baking means to things: first, Regina has returned for the weekend and the oven is seeing its first use since Christmas; and second, it's my birthday tomorrow.
Chocolate birthday cake ... how could I even entertain grumpiness with the promise of that?
Regina's arrival heralds another promising event: she has a small collection of mini-discs with her, and on those discs are her recordings of the first two stories. All I have to do now is to try and find my old mini-disc player -- which has not seen use in about three years; my iPod sent it into early retirement -- and then edit it all together.
With some luck and final approval from the artist on her work (she is her own worst critic), we'll see a podcast released in the very near future.
And if you do not have chocolate birthday cake to avert an unforuntate bout of the grumpy blues, then settle for watching Flushed Away. It is exceedingly British, extraordinarily funny, and it features singing slugs.
