Having Brunch and Talking Seriously About Work

On Monday I came back to the City where the Castle is also Prison after spending the weekend with my friends in the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss. On Saturday, I had lunch with Aspiring Author, and later I had a lovely evening at Amy's birthday ceilidh, where I danced (a lot) and giggled more than I have giggled in a very long time.

After such a wonderful - but late! - night, September Blue (with whom I was staying) and I had a very lazy Sunday morning. I got up after a lie in, which is something of a luxury for me because my Little Dog doesn't usually sleep that long, and spent an hour or so sitting in my pyjamas finishing a novel (the one for job 4, but reading a novel doesn't feel like work).

When we were both up and dressed, and after a little time spent checking emails and playing scrabble on Facebook, we decided to go out for breakfast. I looked at my watch and said, 'I suppose we could call it brunch now, really'. 'Yes,' said September Blue jokingly, 'we should Have Brunch and Talk Seriously About Work'.

We walked down to the diner that makes cooked veggie breakfasts (including vegetarian haggis!), ordered the food and talked for a while about the prevous night's ceilidh, how much fun we'd had, and how different our social lives are since our cohort finished our PhDs, and I moved away from the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss. And we talked about how we're doing juggling jobs (she has had more practice at this than I have; she's been doing it longer), and how very exciting it is that she is hearing positive things from a Big Named Journal about an article she has submitted to them in hope of publication. We talked about our future publication plans, our research plans, the job market and the poor conditions of TAs in all institutions.

I pointed out that we were actually Having Brunch and Talking Seriously About Work.

The waitress offered us dessert / coffee, and looking out of the window and seeing it was raining heavily, and not being inclined to move anywhere, we ordered more coffee.

And talked about deadlines, and friends, and thesis submission (ours and theirs)...

[pause to order vanilla cheesecake with two spoons, and 2 decaff coffees]

...bad boyfriends, former boyfriends, potential boyfriends, and our mutual friend who is Young and Fashionable, and the advantages and disadvantages of internet dating.

The diner was starting to get busy, and we were nearly finished with our coffees; it was no longer raining so heavily, and we'd probably been there around 2 hours, so we decided to pay the bill and leave. We were back in plenty of time for me to pack my bag and catch a train to Road Grid City to spend some time with The PhDLitChick.

It was a very luxuriously lazy and lovely way to spend a Sunday (and a whole weekend).

And I realised how very much I miss spending time and being silly with my friends in the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss, and Having Brunch and Talking Seriously About Work.