Wednesday 15th August 2007

Started the work-day badly at 7.50 opening an e-mail from a scientist representing the "US Consortium of the Arctic", inviting me to contribute to a conference in San Francisco. I don't mind the invitation, but was annoyed by the fact that the sender used that most annoying of salutations: "Greetings Colleagues". What's wrong with "Dear..."? Starting letters with "Greetings..." seems to be a growing trend and I find it really annoying! It makes me assume the sender is pretentious or ignorant, or both. I shall not be taking up their offer, and I restrain my self with difficulty from writing back and embarking on a discussion about the etiquette of formal correspondence! Grrmp. It's gonna be one of those days!

Today: plan to help a postgraduate student rehearse his presentation for a forthcoming conference, and rewrite the Geography open day presentation: a nasty job that I've been putting off for ages but have to deal with now as there is another open day coming up this weekend and the presentation is out of date. It carries the inherited flaws of several generations of previous rewrites over the last decade, and is well overdue for a start-from-scratch rewrite.