First of all, good news! The computer is fixed. I took it to the Apple Store this morning, and despite arriving twenty minutes after the store opened, I had to wait about an hour to be seen. Still, not bad for free service! The guy did something arcane and mysterious to it and now it works, so I can finish my semester's assignments with no trouble.

I went to our local chipper the other night for dinner, and as I was waiting for my falafel, I found myself thinking that if kebab and chip shops had been around in the late nineteenth century, a kebab shop owner would undoubtedly have been the first suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. Anyone who has ever been in a kebab shop knows what I mean... there's the gleeful sharpening of the two-foot-long knife, and the swift precise carving of thin strips off a lump of meat that bears resemblance to nothing so much as a human thigh. It's all a little scary.

Since today is December 1, I now have exactly 23 days left in which to hit all the touristy sites I haven't gotten around to visiting yet. My list is about 15-16 places long at this point, so I should be able to do everything with a few days to spare for homework (don't worry, I only have one paper left to do). Hopefully most of them are free, though!