The last days of summer

I arrived safely back from Canada, but suffered from the worst case of jet-lag yet. You'd think by now, I'd have this down to an art but apparently not. In my semi-braindeadness I ended up having some problems downloading my pictures onto my computer and partly through user error and partly through Picasa crashing I lost half my vacation pictures. I'm pretty bummed about it but in the end, I guess they are just pictures.

I have one week left in St Andrews. It's a time of packing, frantically writing, buying tickets, sorting out administrative stuff, etc. before I leave the country. I have acquired a problematic number of books over my time here and even though I have taken about 40 kg of stuff back to my parents house on each trans-Atlantic flight, I still have to ship stuff. Ugh. At some point in my life I hope that my belongings and I will all be on the continent. Alas, at this point, it's just not meant to be.

These last few days will find me living in the office. I want to have a complete draft of my thesis done before I go, and I have to get started on these two papers I'm giving this fall. Plus there is always job applications. (Man, these blog postings are all starting to sound the same). Summer has not really come to Scotland. Some days are nice, but it's still chilly. This is especially noticeable in the office where it is on average at least 5 degrees cooler than it is outside. Today, I wandered around the town in just my t-shirt. At the moment, I am huddled in the office, with my jacket on, contemplating whether I should turn the space-heater on and looking forward, with some anxiety, to the next adventure.