Double, double, toil and trouble...

In honor of Harry Potter's opening day, I thought I'd point out that I live across the street from Hogwarts. It's true! As long as you ignore the facts that a) it's not a boarding school in Scotland, b) it's for boys only, and c) they don't teach magic (that I'm aware of). It is, however, a public school (which is equivalent to a private school in the US, go figure) in the old tradition. It's in a castle-like building (with a dragon on a shield over the gate!) and the students all have to wear uniforms, so it does have a distinct Rowling-esque atmosphere about it. It's real name is the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (which confused me at first, until I figured out that they meant 'hospital' in the feudal sense), and apparently it was commissioned by the original Queen Elizabeth. I also should add that they're about the best neighbors you could hope for: no late-night carousing at all, and they keep the grounds spotlessly clean.
The bulk of our end-of-term assignments were due today, taking a huge monkey off of each of our backs (the metaphorical museum-essay lemur, polar-forest-essay loris, and website galago are still there, but will be gone shortly). To celebrate, several of us went for pizza this evening, which we got at Pizza Hut. Going there was an odd experience, as apparently it's a sit-down, full service restaurant here, though the pizza is just as small and greasy as ever (perhaps even more so). Afterwards, there was an impromptu jazz jam session with the (potential) MSc band in Ben's flat! Still no trombone, so I got to play drums, which I think I managed to pull off relatively well, considering I'm a horn player by training. We covered "Sweet Home Alabama" and some Lenny Kravitz song no one could remember the name of, plus a couple of 12-bar blues numbers. Also, I think I might have hit upon a couple of good paleo-geek names for a band: Artifacts of the Fossil Record and Lazarus Taxa. No, they don't make sense to any of you (except you, Hans), but that's paleontological comic gold right there. You can trust me on these things; I'm a scientist.