February fragments

Last week I was sick. This week I feel better, but I’m still blowing my nose a lot. We’re out of tissues and I’ve switched to napkins (which, oddly, I prefer). I’ve gone running just twice — barely enough to keep limber. With sickness comes sadness, and sadness weakens my resolve to trudge through snow.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

At IUSB I tutored a professor. (He was from China; he needed help writing in English.) He was submitting an article for publication. The draft had been typeset with LaTeX, which made me nostalgic for graduate school.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m conflicted about Libre Baskerville. On the one hand, well, it’s a Baskerville (or a Baskerville clone), and it has boldface and italics, and it’s free. I printed out a sample and it looked OK. I liked the tall x-height. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure the font was designed for webpages, not for print, and I don’t wish to be caught printing out the wrong kind of font.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

With Kenny I’ve been achieving domestic bliss: we’ve just finished watching Season 2 of Downton Abbey. But this weekend he’s in Nicaragua. With whom shall I watch TV? With Sabby, that’s whom. Five hours of Pride and Prejudice.

With David, two weeks ago, I watched Two English Girls. All we knew of it was its Hulu Plus synopsis: “A romantic triangle develops between two English girls and a Frenchman.” That seemed very promising to us. The movie fulfilled that promise.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On the bus, an old lady asked to listen to my music, and so I lent her an earbud. She listened to “Cups” from Beaucoup Fish. She said it was the bomb.