i am blind. it says SANS SUCRE large as anything on the tin but did i see it? all i saw was that these danish cookies have suddenly appeared in green tins instead of the usual blue and that some of the cookies appeared to be chocolate flavoured. have you any idea how disgusting sugar-free cookies are? *shudder*

are telemarketeers getting ruder or what? it used to be that i would politely listen to them and then say sorry but no very nicely and they'll press a little and i'll say even more apologetically really really no and they'll say thank you for your time we're sorry you didn't want xyz and go away. these days if i just begin to say "actually i'm not -- " they cut in with, okay thanks and hang up. which is v annoying. granted it saves us both time but it makes all the politeness that i was mentally preparing while the sales pitch is going on go to waste. incidentally, as i realised when i called bob this past week, americans say "this is he/she" when the person answering the phone is the person sought. whereas britishers or british-educated people, including ourselves, (and this i notice when alison milbank answers the phone, or when i called urvashi this week) we say "yes speaking". why is this?

and it snows again. in my first year, joyful in my first snow, i trudged ankle-deep to school delighting in the snow flung in my face pretending to be suffering like in doctor zhivago, and then two snowless years where i bounced down the street in sandals and short sleeved shirts in the middle of february. and now snow again. not quite the kind of dylan thomas snow that "came out of the ground in buckets" and "white as lapland (although there were no reindeer)", but huge flakes that come down with an astonishing speed and got in your face and eyes and nose and made you wince. i want more snow in this my final year but i am also getting annoyed by it. they say friday is going to be another huge snowstorm which is very untimely, just when we want to go off for break. if there's a storm tomorrow it would be great because then i might get out of my midterms, though that is of course wishful thinking. thinking of pooh's song again, and how cold *my* toes are growing.

song of the day: listening to morten harket's rytteren and wondering what rytteren means. the strange thing is that every single time i listen to this song an image from a stanza in wallace stevens' sunday morning would come immediately to my mind, the one about the ring of supple and turbulent men worshipping or chanting, although none of this is in the song.

need to do work.