"We apologize for the inconvenience."

I returned to my flat from lunch and noticed outside the back door that there was an unmanned forklift that had been left on. Thus far, one of my pictures of it will probably make my photoblog today, but in any event it made me think of Hitchhiker's Guide. (I also thought about the fact that maybe forklifts are the new Daihatsus. And on looking at a picture I took, I think that "forklift" isn't actually the correct name for this things. Please remind me what this is actually called.)

Shortly after that, I finally started dealing with some extra-special tax forms that I now have to fill out because my consulting arrangements required me to register as self-employed. A Somerville accountant was kindly helping me with these forms, and we were going through the various line items. Here is a snippet of what transpired:

Accountant: "Charitable contributions? [pauses... looks at me for a minute] Probably irrelevant."

Right.

No more splinters!

I just got back from giving a talk at Southampton today (it was my first talk on quantum chaos in about 5.5 years). As promised by the maintenance people at Somerville, the wooden planks in the "hallway" (more like a very small corridor) within my apartment were covered with another surface today (the type of surface I have in my kitchen and bathroom). I had been getting tons of splinters from walking barefoot at home (wearing socks never actually helped because they would catch on the wood). Occasionally, enough of these would occur in a sufficiently short period of time that I would have some trouble walking, so I am quite pleased that this has now been rectified. (This could have been done earlier, but I was my typical stubborn self when it came to actually bringing this problem to the attention of others.) I think this will also have the benefit of reducing the number of bugs that make their way in here, but the main thing was to get rid of the splinter problem. Excellent!