Whew! That was a close one.

When I came to the UK last fall I had all these lists in my head of places I wanted to go and things I wanted to see. I had a whole year in front of me, so none of it seemed very urgent. But then stuff happened. Assignments started coming due. I got into the student mode. I dated another poor student for seven months and wanted to spend the weekends with him rather than roaming foreign cities by myself. Now that I'm single and footloose, I'm working full-time on a dissertation and staving off The Panic.

BUT. I just booked my tickets for Prague. Now . . . I am at peace with myself.

That was the big one. There are so many other places that I thought I would get to and now I realize it's just not going to happen. Like Paris. Paris seems to be down the drain this time. And Scotland. And Greece. I won't lose any sleep over it (well, except for maybe a tiny bit over Paris because I really do love that beautiful palce)--there's always next time, right? But Prague, now, that would have been a sleep-loser, because it has been at the top of my to-see list now for years and years. I don't care that it will be in August and that it will be crammed full of tourists. It's going to be wonderful and I will be there. I'm going August 21-24, and I'm already looking at this three-day itinerary for ideas. The hotel is 5 minutes away from the Old Square. I'm going with a delightful red-haired friend, only I still need to think of a good code name for her.

I'm too sleepy at the moment to be properly ecstatic or to think of code names, because I've been conducting and transcribing dissertation interviews all day, including the interview with the famous Open Access guru yesterday who told me that my questions sucked and that my dissertation focuses on absolutely the wrong things (because I'm not focused on the things that he cares about). That was special. I found out later that he says that to everyone, so now I don't feel so much like a slapped puppy.

When I booked the tickets the website pulled up a form for me to enter in my name with a prefix. I'm used to the prefix options being things like Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, and maybe Dr.

Here, though, I got these:

• Mr
• Mrs
• Ms
• Miss
• Master
• Dr
• Prof
• Sir
• Lord
• Lady
• Reverend
• Sister
• Honourable

What's that about? I was really tempted to put "Lady" in front of my name just to see if it actually makes any difference, but I don't know if that's some kind of offense over here.

Posted in: England