I regret to inform you that in the early hours of Day Five, the siege ended and the girls bought toilet paper. We failed to hold out in the face of enemy action, but morale remains high. (I know you all were waiting with bated breath.)

I'm sitting here eating chips with curry sauce, tipsy from the beer I drank at tonight's pantomime (loads of fun if you like audience participation in theatre, which I do if I've had enough to drink), and pondering the schedule for the rest of my time in London. I hate having to schedule fun events when I'm traveling, but I have so many places to go that I think I have to set a schedule and stick to it if I want to get everything done. At least I'll have lots of photo fodder, and lately I've been trying to photograph London's Christmas decorations to get myself in the holiday spirit in the absence of snow. Due to the new pictures, I've reorganized the photo page yet again, so now the pictures in the Our Neighbourhood gallery are strictly those from West Hampstead, while other general London photos (including the new Christmas ones) have their own gallery now. I apologize for the blurriness of a lot of them... I'd like to say it's intentionally artistic, but the truth is that I haven't got a tripod. Long exposures for night photography are the worst for camera shake, but I'll make myself a stringpod when I get home.

(For the photographers in the audience, a stringpod is a do-it-yourself tripod. Find a screw that fits into the tripod screw-hole of your camera, preferably a screw with a loop or D-ring already attached. Tie about six feet of strong cord or string onto the D-ring or loop, and when you get ready to take a picture, drop the other end of the string to the ground and pull it taut with your foot. It really minimizes camera shake, and you can take it places you can't take regular tripods.)

I am almost finished with my undergraduate degree... all that stands in my way is one music paper, which I will finish when the guy I'm interviewing via e-mail gets back to me. I love studying and learning, but I am so ready to be done with school for a while.