Happy New Year!

Happy New Year friends. Hope 2008 is one of personal growth and happiness for you all.

Resolutions? Mine include: write at least one masterpiece dissertation; drink more tea and less alcohol; get a good job; and work towards being in a position to buy a house in 2009.

We went sale shopping today. It's worth doing. You think it's a cliché, but there really are tons of bargains out there. You have to see the bigger picture, be mother like and think about the whole year - I got two pairs of shorts for £6. These are not just any shorts, they're outrageous shorts - they need not be shy when sitting next to my bright orange board shorts. I also got a yellow hoody, which I fell in love with straight away - it's so comfy. Raine says it makes me look really little (by virtue of it being available only in a large, I think), and a banana...but I don't care, I'm a young, comfortable banana.

It's market day on Saturday in Lancaster. We got lots of veggies. We're making roasted vegetable pasta tonight. Then, possibly tomorrow, soup. I had a good soup today: spicy parsnip, from one of the nicest eateries in Lancaster: Soup-a-nova.

For all of you with a university email address: Microsoft have a student website, where you can buy discounted Office (Word, Powerpoint etc). The website is theultimatesteal.co.uk. It's available for £38.95 here in the UK, and $60 in the US (use com instead of co.uk). Cheeky really - $60=£30, but it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than anywhere else! One simple, but effective, improvement in the latest version of Word (I use it at work): anything you paste into a document is automatically in the format you're writing in.

Our electricity company is ripping us off - charging us over 100% more than one of their competitors. We're going to move companies, of course. The fact that they can get away with it is shocking, though. It's so cold at the moment, and we're trying to save electricity by keeping the heating down. I walked home from work yesterday in pouring, icy rain - I was soaked to the bone when I got home. Raine was waiting at the door with my pyjamas and dressing gown, I would have loved to sit in front of the fire, instead I huddled under a duvet.