Okay the end is within reach. Three more weeks to the end of term.

It's been pretty knackering so far, having most of my teaching loaded into one semester. It is not so much the hours themselves but the amount of psychic energy that goes into each teaching hour. I really need to psych myself up for each one of them. When faced with a class of expressionless, responseless, motionless and soundless students, it is very frustrating. I nearly lost it a few times and was on the verge of shouting at them. Thank the good Lord who gave me strength to hold my tongue.

I really cannot wait till the end of this month. I thought about calling in sick yesterday and cancel my classes. I didn't though! so I am giving myself some credit for that.

Went to a dinner thing on Friday, with a bunch of people who research in similar areas as me, and we talked about another workshop next year (this will be the third in the series). Got home around eleven and was surprised when B called at 12:30 to say that he's finished Trailwalker! Really good time and I am very pleased for him.

O has been pestering me about making meringues since mid week and I've been saying okay okay, we'll make them this weekend. So this morning, he "gently" tapped me on the shoulder a few times at the crack of dawn, whilst I was still drooling, asking if I can get out of bed and make those meringues like RIGHT NOW please mother. I shooed him off but he kept coming back at regular intervals. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and dragged my arse out of bed.

Now, why won't these damn egg whites peak like you want them to when you want them to? I literally beat the crap out of those egg whites (electrically and manually) but nothing happened. All I had in front of me was a bowl of lame ass looking white liquid with some bubbles on the top.

Oh what the heck. I spooned them onto the baking sheet and into the oven, anyway. Turned out okay, actually, very thin but still crunchy and sweet.

I used the egg yolks to make a chocolate cake. Only that I had forgotten to put any flour into the mixture and I didn't realise this until the damn thing is already half an hour into baking! I turned the temperature right down as a rescue measure, as I have read somewhere that flourless cakes need to bake at a much lower temperature and for much longer. The cake spent about two hours in the oven at 120C. Turned out very nice actually, dense and smooth on the outside but slightly crunchy on the outside. Would go very nicely with some vanilla ice-cream if only I had some.

After lunch we went to my friend's place and basically sat around for five hours eating maltesers, pringles, leftover halloween candies, drinking coke light and chewing the fat. The kids seemed to get along nicely enough and didn't bother us too much. Then we had dinner at around seven and got home by half ten. It's nice to note to myself how time passes easily and pleasantly when I don't have nothing to do. And what a horrifically stark contrast with all the times when I had to run a tutorial class where asking students "so, what do you think?" is met with mad stares and zipped lips. Every fucking time.