A wedding in Dumfries, Scotland, and some walks in the Lakes

What we've been up to this summer, or some reasons (besides PhD) I haven't blogged much lately

Hiking in Wales and a day at a Cardiff beach with John, Yu-Chiao, and Beatrice




Church picnic, Balsham Manor, home of Sir Fred and Lady Elizabeth Catherwood



And click through to some Cambridge decadence back in June...

Ladybug's new calendar

A few days ago, I came home from another day slogging away ineffectually at an article to find roses, a card, and a small package awaiting me -- a surprise from Pancho! My confidence had been flagging to levels of near collapse, but Pancho zoomed to the rescue with encouragement and presents.

In the package was a Moleskine notebook, a posh planner that I've been eyeing for some time now but couldn't reconcile myself to the price (£10 for something I normally pay £3 for) or to the risk of the self-conscious pretension involved in buying myself a 'serious' 'professional' calendar. It bears noting that Moleskine vaunts itself as "the legendary notebook of Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Céline" and the website even carries images of itself carrying the work of such luminaries.* I was amazed at how all those qualms disappeared when Pancho gave me one - if it's a present, it can't be pretentious to have it, right? Now I am only in danger of pretension in the use of it, I suppose.

So I'm a few days into my new Moleskine-directed life, and while I am still entranced by it, I have to admit I feel somehow obligated to live up to it. Though it is essentially a week-at-a-glance calendar, it pairs the week with a blank ruled page, presumably for all the elegant thoughts I would be having if I were Satre, Gertrude Stein, or George Bataille. That the blank lines can stand as a rebuke to me reminds me that pride takes the most mundane opportunities to make you an ass. I'm not really that keen on the thought-life of Satre et al., but neither am I always content with the thought-life of Ladybug, and PhD-ing in particular often makes me feel inadequate and foolish. Still, I think my moleskine is a good thing, an opportunity to take every moleskine captive for Christ, and I've decided to use the extra space to record brief, gloriously inelegant jottings about what I read in the Word day-by-day and go back to the long-lost habit of sermon notes on the blank lines every week, thus substituting a temptation to want to be greater than I am with days read in light of God's transforming work in my life.

Grand plans, and hopefully not wholly prompted by a spiritualized desire to be 'serious'. I take it as a good sign that I almost missed a rehearsal yesterday because I failed to check my new calendar.


* Can we perhaps cite JKR as a possible user, given the importance of Hagrid's 'moleskin' in keeping things safe for Harry in Deathly Hallows?