It's been cold today, but very sunny, the sort of sun that keeps making you think it would nice to sit and sunbathe. Except not with such a chilly breeze!

• Already mentioned the camp-following.
• I seem to have survived another week - it's week six by now, I think? It's amazing, so fast yet so much material at once.
• Completely missed St. Patrick's Day, of course. It happens much more easily when one doesn't live in Ireland anymore... and the local "Celtic" pub had handled its business badly enough that the business packed it in over 6 months ago. I sort of missed the silly wear-green thing. Oh well, that's one more milestone passed, getting less at home with a former home, more at home with the locale we're now in.
• N. arrived after aikido, having been away for nearly 2 months - recovering from something that had required a stay of 5 days in the hospital. She's on the mend, now. Thank goodness. She promised to try and start training again in 2 weeks' time - of course, that's pending her recovering some of her former condition, and even then, as she's close to my age, the training will probably not be up to her accustomed speed for awhile yet - even just a day or two in bed due to a cold and I feel it, now; heaven knows what N. will be going through as she returns to the mat. (Luckily, as I've noticed with my current home dojo, they are very sympathetic and understanding when it comes to individual circumstances and health issues. This was the dojo where I first learned about "learning by looking" or mitori geiko, literally learning that one pulls in with the eyes....
• M and F gave us some leek they'd bought from a local farmer. When I say "some", think about 2 arms-full of leek, and you'll know how much Mr Sweetie, Hero of the Republic, cleaned, chopped, packed into bags and froze. All except for the bit that he combined with hamburger meat, sautéd mushrooms and fennel - a very nice taste with the leek, by the way!
• The calligraphy teacher is getting some of her students to help out other students; yeah, one of those helpers would be me. I actually like it, and given the amount of time I expect to be having to work on this degree, I consider that I could do much worse than be a meter, or "godmother", to future students in this same class.
• Mr Sweetie's indulged in a few brainwaves - he's put in the shop window a display mannequin (which we seem to be collecting, by now - dollies for grown-ups!) and put on it a mask we bought over 25 years ago; a fabulous bug-eyed thing, we'd found for sale during our first Konninginnedag in the Amsterdam neighborhood (de) Jordaan. It's fun to see the mask in a kind of public display, in celebration of some local activities.