Am just back from my third conference/workshop in four weeks. Two of the conferences were somewhere faintly exotic (Tübingen in Germany, and Riva del Garda in Italy), but one of them was just up the road (Newcastle). My recollection of the past 4 weeks is of a blur of talks, posters, food, beer, coffee, trains, planes, taxis, anonymous hotel rooms, and ideas aplenty. It doesn't get much better than that.
I'm still suffering the itchy consequences of a wasp that climbed up my trouser leg (that's "pant leg" for native speakers of the US vernacular... but if I were to say that the wasp got into my pants, my UK acquaintances would wince...). Somehow, it managed to get up there, crawl to my knee, and sting me (at which point, a deft slap from me caused it to promptly meet its maker). More impressive was the way, when I subsequently shook my leg, the wasp fell out (engendering looks of amazement and sympathy from the onlookers in my immediate vicinity). I hate to think how much further up my leg it might have travelled. Over the course of the day, my knee swelled up horribly, to the size of... a fairly normal looking knee. It really wasn't that impressive given the pain. I guess this was the wasp-sting equivalent of 'man-flu'.
My iPhone 5 continues to delight me. But not as much as this iPhone. And for a while I did have two iPhones, till I disappointed my kids (they had high hopes they'd be the beneficiary of my old one) and put one of them in an envelope and sent it in for recycling (and a cash payment). £145 from www.recycleyourkids.com.
