Not sunrises this time, although I've seen a few pretty ones recently. Just a few pictures taken in the past three weeks, some of which I have pondered blogging about... yet somehow the days fly by, and the blog stays neglected.
The deadline for Tim's MA thesis was the end of September. He was pleased to learn that he would not have to fly back to submit it, and that it could be printed and bound here rather than at his university, then sent by courier. Better still, Richard has a comb-binding machine, so on Thursday a couple of weeks ago I did some final proof-reading, then Tim printed his magnum opus, plus bibliography and title page, and Richard used his impressive gadget:
We then had to get it to DHL, who tried to charge us more than the online quote.. however, it arrived safely, and we heard of another student in a similar situation who used a different courier service which cost more and did not deliver. At least, not until several days late. Thankfully the universities take the posting date into account, but it was still immensely frustrating for them. So we'll probably use DHL again.
After the thesis was out of the way, Tim decided to re-organise his room, which included sorting his books. Some of them had been tipped onto the floor by Tessie, who likes to sleep on bookshelves and will think nothing of pulling books out if they are in her way.
Apparently, though, one of the books refused to co-operate, so Tessie had to teach it rather a violent lesson in submission:
It's not often that we throw a book away. It went very much against the grain with us all, but we had to acknowledge that it was past repair. Besides, Tim commented that it was quite a heavy three-volumes-in-one book, and he would really prefer the three books individually. So he quickly put them on his wishlist and we laid this sad-looking has-been book to rest in the paper recycling.
Part of Tim's re-organising was to get at an extra closet, which meant losing a small bookcase. I knew I could assimilate it easily, but it would involve re-organising my study. I drew a scale plan, and moved little blocks around until I found an arrangement that I thought would work... and, indeed, it did. I like it much better than my previous layout:
For the past week, we've had some very good friends from the UK staying in our guest flat. This is the first time they've come to Cyprus, and they spent a lot of their time exploring, paddling in the sea, eating ice creams, and enjoying some of the local shops and sights. They went on the official Larnaka walk one morning. In the afternoons and evenings we mostly hung out, played games, and talked... but on Thursday Richard took the whole day off so we could take them out for the day, to Lefkara:
And Kurium:
On their final day here they indulged us with some delicious chocolate desserts from a local bakery:
...as well as some less photogenic Greek pastries for Richard and Tim (who are dairy-free).
Then in the evening we stopped at our favourite ice cream shop on our way to the airport, for yogurt ice creams and/or sorbets:
The end of Summer has given way to the beginning of Autumn in the past couple of weeks, with two or three quite heavy rain sessions which have reduced the temperature. I don't recall when we stopped using air conditioning altogether, but in the past few days we have even stopped using fans. I'm wearing a light jacket on top of my tee shirt today; at the weekend I washed our thin duvet and we installed it in a cover on Sunday. We have to use the water heater sometimes to get hot water first thing in the morning, and there's a decided chill in the air, even if the official temperature is still around 24C in the shade.
