I'm back in Cambridge and I'm 29. Limmud was absolutely wonderful and involved far too much Talmud and not enough sleep, so I'm going to post this and then make a start on some heavy-duty sleeping.

I've missed all you guys. There's no way I can catch up on a week's worth of friends page, but I'll see lots of you on Saturday evening. Hope everyone relevant had a good Christmas. I'm still not really around online until I get back to Sweden on 3^rd Jan, since I'm going to try to cram half a year's worth of socializing into the next few days.

I finally succumbed to Facebook. I am going to be bullish about only "networking" with people who actually know me IRL, I'm afraid; I already have LJ for having fascinating discussions with strangers. But anyway, if you do know my real name, and you're on Facebook, you're welcome to connect to me over there.

It looks as if I can't do anything much until I get my stupid Oxford alumni email address working, which at this rate isn't going to happen until after the summer. I'm annoyed, because that step should have been easy.

Other than that, it's been a long week. I'm getting into this microblogging thing though.

Just had a phonecall from ploni_bat_ploni, she's in hospital with heart trouble. Probably minor but they need to do loads of tests to make sure. She mainly complains of boredom rather than anything worse.

She asked me to post here; our friends don't entirely overlap but it's better than nothing. She'd been feeling poorly for a while but cleverly managed to get herself admitted while she was in her Home Country, so at least her fiancé and friends can visit her and she speaks the language. (Apparently she has internet access, but the system is too old to cope with LJ or her email account, so effectively she's out of touch.)

Update 10 May: ploni_bat_ploni is now out of hospital. See her journal for more details if you know her.

(Me, I'm ok but uncommunicative for various reasons. I will update once I manage to follow through on the intention.)

Just in case anyone is wondering: I'm not participating in any Valentines stuff. I haven't signed up to that Valentines postbox meme, and I am not checking any of the LJ Valentine communities. I'm not actively boycotting this kind of thing either, much less criticizing anyone who is having fun with all this business.

My opinion is that if anyone has something to tell me, they can just tell me. And if you really passionately want to send me an anonymous message, you'll just have to use a bit of imagination. Get a disposable email address, or simply notice that this journal allows anon comments.

Which sounds like I'm fishing, but I'm really not. I don't intend to send any Valentines, and I don't expect to receive any either. For those of you doing the coupley thing, I hope you have a great time, and for those of you pursuing relationships I hope things work out for you. And special love to all the bitter singles of my acquaintance, cos there are other kinds of love than the romantic kind. Here, have an anti-valentine.

I have internet! It was totally straightforward to set up, too; I put the start CD in the drive and it asked me if I would like English instructions, and then it gave me clear and comprehensive instructions, which worked. I know there are lots of people around here who get kicks out of doing everything manually and would probably find the CD unbearably patronizing, but fast and easy suits me very well.

This particular evening I have a lot better things to do than fiddling around configuring my internet access, because fluffymark is on his way here and I'm about to leave to meet him. But after more than two months internet-less there is too much squee not to post straight away.

I'm home. Absolutely nothing went wrong with the journey, it just took ages. And I've been fed and had tea and a nice bath (the Aussies are quite right in principle that water is scarce and should be used carefully, but it's still very pleasant to have a proper bath after three weeks of 4-minute showers). The parents are more interested in telling me about their trip to China and how exciting it was, than in interrogating me about why I didn't get the job, which is a good thing.

Aaaand now I'm going to bed. Back online properly tomorrow, though it'll likely take me a while to catch up with my backlog.

I have gone to the Antipodes in search of the elusive snark post-doc. Back on 29 November. I'll have limited net access in that time, so assume minimal email and probably no LJ.

Have fun while I'm away. And do lots of things that I wouldn't do and then post about them so I can enjoy them vicariously.

I grabbed a newspaper when I was travelling home yesterday, because I was in danger of running out of the novel I'd brought with me (Nobody's Son by Sean Stewart, which is shorter than it looks). This meant I happened to see the obituary of R John Rayner. He was a great man, one of the generation who transmitted the intellectual tradition of the former German Reform world to British Progressive Judaism after the war. He also married my parents. Blessed is the Judge of truth.

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I have discovered that I didn't win the New Scientist essay competition I entered a while back. I am mildly disappointed but I didn't have any grand expectations. The good thing about this is that I can now make the essay public, since I'm no longer trying to publish it in the real media. So if anyone wants a basic summary of what I did for my PhD, I refer you to Death of a cellsman. Thanks to everyone who helped me write this, by the way; obviously those who were in the filter I originally used for discussing my competition entry have already read something not very different from this final version.

My old university email address is now officially dead. I will no longer be checking this account. Please do not send any more email to this address; I have no guarantee it will bounce properly.

( boring details )

Conclusion: I suck at organizing my correspondence. I've moved account twice since 2001 and it's been unnecessarily complicated and lossy both times, and both mainly through my fault. But also partly because Dundee's mail system was very badly run, to be fair.

For the moment, I'm using Google's mail service where my username is rachelgb. I'm hoping this will be a permanent email address (because I trust Google not to let me down). And I'll get a work email address when I get work...

I'm away until the last part of August. I may be vaguely online some of the time but I probably won't be keeping up. And if I happen to post that doesn't mean I'm reading or reading closely.

I owe comments and emails and communications on other random systems; I've not forgotten, just postponing.

If you want a postcard, email me ([username] [at] livejournal [dot] [com]) with enough information to get a postcard to you. Have fun in my absence.

Oh, and just for random amusement: my sister has a chocolate cookbook which has rather gushing blurbs attached to the recipes. The Valentine's day offering has the following message:

A slice of this voluptuous Valentine treat could be the start of a sweet romance...
(Serves 12-14)

Just to let people know, I'm away to my parents' tomorrow for a few days, and I'll probably have limited net access. Not none, but not enough to continue all the lovely discussions I'm in the middle of. Amazing how it gets more and more difficult to leave LJ for a few days! Anyway, I'm back Sunday.

So, if I don't have a chance to post between now and then, happy Christmas to those who care. And happy birthday to loreid (one of a very small handful of people whose birthdays I remember!)

Many cheers, doseybat has finally been dragged onto LJ! Finding her new shiny journal has really made my day. Everybody else who knows her, join me in a celebratory dance. And if you don't know her, let me introduce you: everybody, meet doseybat, one of my favourite people in the world. And Bat, meet lots of cool people (and a cool angel and various assorted cool animals for that matter).

*bouncebouncebouncebounce*

This journal would like to take the opportunity to wish those of its readers who care about such things a happy and peaceful New Year.

I've spent the last couple of weeks having a very fun holiday, centered around J's wedding.

I am probably not going to spend the whole of the next few days doing LJ-related stuff, though I easily could. But at some point I intend to post an account of the wedding, and several stories about my impressions of New York and the rest of my travels, and half a dozen more book reviews, and some general witter. And of course go back to all the fun discussions I was in the middle of before I went away, and catch up with everybody's LJ life...

Anyway, hello everybody, it's good to be back online. *wave*

So, I'm leaving this evening to go to my parents' for the weekend, culminating in the first half of J's wedding on Sunday in Oxford. Then J and I are going to New York for a week's extended hen party. And at the end of that, J's going to finish getting married. darcydodo is hopefully going to join us at some point, and we might well see something of sampiano. The idea is that we're going to stay in a flat belonging to BG from shul, but the arrangements for this seem to be a bit haphazard.

I'm very excited about this trip, seeing my family, seeing lots of my Oxford friends, and introducing Michael to the ones he hasn't yet met, including my brother Screwy. And J getting married is obviously the most exciting thing in the world ever! Then a week in New York, where I've never been, should be absolutely the trip of a lifetime. I'm also considerably nervous, because the logistics for all this are just not as organized as I'd like them to be.

Anyway, I know I'm in the middle of interesting discussions with several people, including rysmiel, midnightmelody and pw201. I am not really intending to spend a lot of time or money in internet cafés during this trip, but this will depend on just how much my burgeoning LJ addiction gets the better of me. So don't be offended if you don't hear from me for a while. Back 9^th September or thereabouts.

Meanwhile, I just got an email from my other brother, the Thuggish Poet, from Laos (!) There's an example of someone who doesn't get stressed about not having his trips arranged in advance. He's just wandering round the Far East more or less as the whim takes him, and will come back when he either gets bored or runs out of money.

The purpose of this livejournal is primarily to facilitate my livejournal habit by making it easier for me to read and comment on my friends' journals.

Of course, that's what they all say, so I've set up the journal with a secondary purpose as well: I'm planning to use it mainly as a booklog. This is partly a matter of self-discipline; I'm only going to finish books so often, so hopefully it will keep me from posting obsessively. Apart from that I've been intending for a while to get back into booklogging and possibly doing a more general livre d'or. Putting it online will, I think, motivate me to keep up with it better than I would a paper version.

Before you object that you want to hear all about my life, not just what books I've been reading, don't worry, you will get plenty of background. Last time I kept a booklog (GCSE English, in fact) it turned into quite a personal diary. But much more interesting than my real diary, because the focus on books kept me from delving too far into adolescent navel-gazing. I'm hoping this will be the case again, with this electronic version.