24 January update

Firstly, went to S. Stephen's again today, in the morning for Solemn High Mass and again in the evening for a concert of sacred Renaissance music given by the a cappella group Convivium Musicum. It was an absolutely stunning performance - most of the music was in Latin or French, but a couple of English pieces were thrown in for good measure; it was perfectly-rounded four-part harmony. It's a sad fact that that kind of music isn't often heard anymore, even in Protestant churches which value such polyphonic choral music as part of their tradition - being rapidly displaced by CWM, follow-the-bouncing-ball hymns and other such pop-spawned monstrosities. (Is it any wonder I'm - without leaving Protestantism entirely - pulling for the highest of High Churches, on the baritone line?) Anyway, Mass was awesome - this one was a first for S. Stephen's newest priest, Fr. Michael Tuck. A lot of the students were back, so I got to meet a lot more parishioners my own age, which was also cool.

A minor setback - my poor Lenovo laptop completely gave up the ghost after contracting the Google redirect virus and my ham-fisted attempts to try and cure it on my own. I have to get the HD reformatted and Windows XP Pro SP2 reinstalled; thankfully most of my data has been backed up. As they say, though, 'an ounce of prevention'... I'm getting the full version of Symantec and a third-party firewall on my next go-round, and I'm going to be a lot more careful about surfing the web.

Also - I was accepted at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University for the IR master's programme, one of my top choices! I'm so overjoyed about that piece of news it's getting ridiculous! We'll see what kind of options I have as I go, but at least I know I have one, and a truly decent one at that.

RIC classes start tomorrow: all three of them (Micro, Macro and Russian). Chances are I'm going to feel slightly overwhelmed by the sudden transition back to academic work, but again, we'll see.

Also, basic fact of life: Terry Pratchett is teh awesome.