Awwww

Four years, four months and thirteen days ago I lived in a lovely little flat in downtown Princeton, sharing it with my lovely flatmate Sally, and just generally having a brilliant time. That night specifically, we went to the Spring Formal, a sort of semi-formal dance / party event organised by Princeton Uni. We got picked up by my gentleman friend and I wrote about the event in my blog post (*klick*) at the time.

What I didn't write then though was that on arrival at the pre-games there were only couples! And when Sally pointed that out to me I looked around and identified the only single guy in the room. "That guy's single" I think I said to her and pointed at him. She went for it and took him home with her.

Well, they are getting married next year, and I'm taking full credit for it!

Talking

Do you ever have this nightmare where you are asked to give a talk together with your boss and your boss agrees to do the main part and you're doing only a little bit at the end, and then on the day he doesn't show up and it's just you and you haven't prepared his bit and all you have is his cryptic slides without any notes or idea what he meant to say?

This is how I was introduced today at a seminar talk my boss and I were supposed to give.

We care, honest!

My boss and I are moving divisions next week. We are currently working in the centre of the Scottish Government, the Office of the Chief Statistician. This will change as we are getting moved away from the centre to a policy area, Communities Analytical Services, the poverty statisticians. This makes sense, since what my boss and I do is identify areas in Scotland that have concentrations of deprivation. It will be good to work near the people who know all about the different facets of poverty. This also means that we have to leave our nice office in the city centre and commute to Leith instead, 3 miles north.

Germany

I'm on holiday in Germany to recover from my stressful life in Edinburgh and to warm up. What I'm doing to spend my time:

• sleeping
• napping
• reading
• complaining about the heat
• eating wurst