Wooohoo!

I've just managed to survive 6 minutes of hula hoop, 10 minutes of I-am-a-chicken-so-I-flap-my-arms, and 30 (!!!) minutes of free-style jogging with Wii Fit Plus!

Earnings: 7 WW active points. Yay!

Letters from a Publisher

From a long-dead publisher, that is. As you might know, the doctor-hat-wearing me is working on a postdoctoral project on Punch, the famous Victorian British magazine. I love researching 19th-century periodicals -- it's such an exciting field and so much wonderful research is getting done right now. (Case in point: Patrick Leary's The Punch Brotherhood, which is simply brilliant!) But since I have a lot of catching-up do, I spent yesterday afternoon looking at different digital projects and online archives of old periodicals and publishing houses. Thereby I stumbled across two very sweet letters written by John Murray to his wife Annie in 1808 while he was staying in Scotland.

On September 27 he was Edinburgh and wrote:

Upon my word thou art the most impudent baggage to write so little to thy husband for whom I conclude, out of sight out of mind, you think very little about. In your letter to your mother today you say that as you have written me so many letters, & pray Miss how many more letters have you received from me? This the Eighth I believe in return for which I have got only Three—and moreover as you never condescend to ask me to write again I am inclined to suppose that you find the postage too heavy a tax upon your private purse and so I have half a mind to trouble you no more in this & to give you no further account of your husband's (if you have not forgotten that you have one) operations—write me this instant you saucy rogue or expect to hear from me no more.

Hehe. :)

On October 5 he was back in Edinburgh after a visit to Sir Walter Scott. All that time, his wife Annie, it seems, was never far from his mind as he writes:

When Mr Ballantyne & I left Mr Scott & Mr Heber at Melrose & travelled to Kelso—my first attention was to secure the room where my dearest love and & I rested once before, & I did not sleep, she will believe me, without a thousand thoughts of her whom I now love a thousand times more dearly than when we were there together.

Awww! Isn't that sweet?

He ends this letter with

My most dear Girl

Your faithful husband

John Murray

More sweetness!

All in all, I found these two letters rather charming and just couldn't help sharing them with you. If you like to have a look at the full-length letters, head over to the correspondence archive of the Quarterly Review.

Knock, Knock (Round 2)

And who might it be this time?

It's Miss Very Pink Bunny!

I sewed her as a Christmas present for the daughter of our secretary. Miss VPB turned out somewhat pinker than I had planned, but apparently, that's a good thing since the little girl in question luuuuuuurves pink! :)

In other news: today would have been Weigh In Day, if it hadn't been for that dratted migraine that caught me unawares this morning. Duh. But I will go tomorrow morning -- not simply because our coach is fantastic and the meetings are extremely motivational, but also because there's a distinct possibility that I have reached the 10% goal this week. When I started with Weight Watchers last November, the 10% mark seemed so far away -- out of reach basically. But in the end, it's taken me only eight weeks to come to this point. Needless to say that I'm mighty happy!

Knock, knock ...

... anybody there?

KNOCK, KNOCK ...

Ah, there she is! :)

Hello everybody! I hope you all had a great start into the new year! Mine was certainly fantastic -- I had a sweet baby on my arm (though not my own, alas).

As you can see, I still haven't been abducted by slimy green aliens, haven't travelled back in time to snatch up Mr Thornton (oh wait, he wasn't a real person to begin with ... too bad! No wonder I didn't travel back in time!), haven't fallen into the duck pond. Instead, I have been hard at work at ... well, myself. After gaining 25 kilos in the past four years (that's 55.1 pounds for you), I'm now determined to get rid of all that weight until summer. Why summer, you ask? Well, because I'm going to RWA National this year (at this point feel free to imagine me jumping around the room and yelling WOOHOOOO!!!! at the top of my voice). I haven't been since 2007, and I really don't want people to say things like, "Have you seen Sandy? Wow, she's become fat, hasn't she?" No, I want people to say things like, "Have you seen Sandy? My, but she's looking good, isn't she?" :)

Incidentally, I also didn't want to buy bigger-sized trousers yet again. So, on 25 November I joined Weight Watchers, and I haven't looked back since: not only have I lost weight and am eating healthier food, but I am also enthusiastic about food again. I have discovered new dishes (how could I ever live without oven-roasted veggies???) and old favourites. Better still, I feel that I have finally taken back control over my own life. I'm looking forward to things again (RWA National!!!!), and I'm hopeful about the future (despite the Euro crisis and all that).

One thing I want to do over the next few weeks and months is to document my WW journey. So without further ado here's the first set of pics. They were taken on 13 January, when I had already lost 6.6 kilos (14.6 lbs):

By then, the worst of the wobbliness had been reduced, which was in part also due to umpteen hours spent on the Wii balance board. There's nothing like riding the bike around the Wii Fit island to improve the shape of your thighs! *g*