Dreaming like Bing Crosby (and Irving Berlin)

Well, at this juncture, it seems like a white Christmas in England is fully plausible. Who'd have thunk it? We rode back to Oxfordshire on Sunday afternoon, and just Monday got bombarded throughout the county with a lovely (if irritating) blanketing of snow. It was lovely to sit in the house and have warm soup and watch the fat flakes fall to the ground in a dance not unlike the Nutcracker sequence in Fantasia. Irritating, though? Driving for five hours to cover a distance that should only take the better part of one. No, not me: Sebastian coming back from work. He finally made it through the door after 10pm, absolutely knackered from the journey. I officially give my notice to QinetiQ that he will not be coming to work today - I expressly forbid it.

The break is going well enough in spite of not being home. I've been doing a bit of paper-writing, a bit of nap-taking, and all with a bit of reading for fun and music practise thrown in the mix. Lovely. That said, I think the cocktail of my holiday could use a bit more wedding planning. I haven't made a great deal of progress on it at all since I chose bridesmaids dresses. My poor wedding is suffering from lack of attention - it's like the hyperactive child who breaks things when you ignore them, just so someone pays them mind. That said, nothing's broken or fallen through (knock on wood) but I know there are enough plans to plan that I ought to be giving it a bit more thought. I've realised that we're under the 200-day mark on the countdown to The Big Day, which makes it sound almost frighteningly close considering all that must yet be done.

I got the chance to catch up and chat with my sister yesterday evening which was very very nice. I can only imagine how boring it must get sitting in our parents' house all day with no one to talk to! Of course, I've done that quite a bit myself in my own flat. Apparently, she and my mother are making the monster 8-hour round trip to St. George and back today to try on the bridesmaids dress I picked out. I'd feel bad about it, but they actually found it and showed it to me, so it's something of a self-induced hassle. But at least they'll get to spend the day together and get in some quality time. I'd kill for a car trip with the two of them right now. And if my step-dad and Sebastian were along as well then so much the better.

I think that soon after breakfast I'll have to get started on doing some more reading on William Hamilton's wives (not in the Brigham Young sense; he was a widower and then married Emma - his "gallery of statues" as Horace Walpole put it) and possibly on Napoleon's portrait in Italy. Not sure how I want to split up the time between the two papers. Just hoping I stay focussed and motivated enough to finish them both well.