(no subject)

It didn't quite reach -3 last night. This temperature made me get up at 6 am and do some of the work I didn't do last night. It made me even more happy when my down-filled dressing gown arrived in the mail an hour ago. I can now work when it gets cold! Also, it *does* help with asthma - I've tested it. I can't wear it when things get even vaguely comfortably warm, but there's enough down around the chest area so that it immediately eases the breathing.

None of this explains why I'm working on last minute novel things or, at 6 am, why I chose to do bibliography rather than any of the deadlineish stuff and then why I was finishing that review book. I was doing happy-making work rather than crossing things off lists.

I shall therefore (do I need trumpets to announce a big decision?) finish what I'm doing, then work on that list. Four items into the list I shall wend up the street for my four messages*, and after that I shall do lots of crossing off. That means I only have to do seven things after 3 pm. it can be done! It will be done! Especially as my nice warm bed is out of bounds until that list is finished.

No other news, not really. I didn't count it as news that I made a poor, suffering student put on a cardboard helmet last night and I still don't. I just count it as evidence of the evilness of the Gillian.

* four is the number of the day

(no subject)

yasminke sent me a link to a new article about Philip IV of France. The more I learn about him, the less I like him. He was the centre of his own universe and if anyone disputed that, he grabbed more power until he could deal with the irritant satisfactorily. He bowed his head politely to some irritants for a while, just until he could sort himself out. That's my current reading, anyhow. It fits the politics I know and hate. I've taken to looking to see if people I meet today have peers or subordinates in social groups and if they have subordinates, then I don't want to play in that group.

Philip was an amazingly capable ruler in many respects. He was also a greedy sod. And he cared about damnation, for he did quite a few things and then took action to ameliorate the effect of those things on his afterlife. He was complex and interesting. This doesn't mean I would invite him to dinner. He was complex and interesting and exactly the sort of person I want to be well clear of.