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11/13/2009 Turbulant TimesThe flight from Heathrow to Belfast tonight was seriously chocca with turbulance from take-off to landing. Fantastic! I think the bloke next to me needed some new pants! Remember when I was terrified of flying? My how things change! 10/30/2009 Insomnia MonsterThe insomnia monster has me. I'm tired but my brain just won't turn off! Time to resort to hot milk. Which, incidentally, never works because by the time you've overheated the milk in the microwave and had to clean it all up you're more awake than you were before you even started. 10/18/2009 Best of three old man, best of three! I couldn't even last 48 hours - I've registered on the next OU course already. I haven't even finished my 'got-through-my-3rd-year-and-MST209' celebratory bottle of wine yet and I've gone and signed up to a short science course to do until the my next maths one starts in January. Some people are addicted to alcohol but me...? I'm addicted to the Open University. Until January (which will be pure maths or statistics, I can't decide) I'm going to do a short course about forensic science. How cool is that?! So, anyway, you might be wondering how the exam went on Friday. Then again you might not. I didn't have another 'polo-rolling-down-the-desk' incident this year. Instead I had the 'fruit-pastilles-on-the-floor' incident. Followed by a 'how do I fill out the front pages?' conflab with one of the ancient invigilators. Me: "Do I write down ALL the numbers of the questions I've answered here?" Him: "Yes" Me: "Are you sure?" Him: "Yes" Me: "It's just that there are only enough boxes here to write ten down. But there are, like, 30 to answer in the exam" Him: "Oh. Er. Erm" A super helpful man. He was the same chap I had an argument with last year over the location of my paperclip. We didn't have the same ding-dong this year though. Oh no. This year he got a bit huffy because I'd attached my question paper (which you have to write answers in) to the rest of the answerbooks with a split pin instead of a paperclip. "Why have you done that? You have to attach the question paper with a paperclip" says he. "Er because we had to write answers in it so techincally it's an answerbook also....". "Oh". And he walked away. I totally won this year's argument. Oh yeah! Rock on! OU Invigilator 1, Addicted Studier 1. Best of three old man, best of three. So this weekend was strange with no assignments to do, no books to read and no revision to cram into my brain. It was very odd. I will confess I spent the majority of it wearing PJs and getting up to date with Grey's Anatomy. Oh and watching episodes of 'Medium' whilst drinking copious amounts of tea. It was excessively lazy, maginally enjoyable but, more than anything else, dull. So monumentally dull that I am almost glad to be going back to work tomorrow. Almost. Because I spent the week shoving differential equations, vector calculus and the suchlike into my short-term memory - getting up for 9am everyday and studying until the evening - I don't much feel like I had any time off. I am ready for some holiday now! Somewhere hot and sunny. With sandy beaches. If only! 10/16/2009 ExamGood luck to anyone taking the OU MST209 exam this morning! I've woken up a bundle of nerves. A week of solid revision finally at an end. Today is scary, a whole year's work boiling down to just three hours of frantic writing. I keep saying to myself it doesn't matter because I almost quit halfway through the year so haven't lost anything by trying. But the truth is that now I've finally gotten to the end of this year's course I don't want all that blood, sweat and tears to amount to nothing. So, here goes. 10/12/2009 Am going slowly mad.... Revision time has arrived again. MST209 exam on Friday. The problem is that I can't remember half the course - I seemed to have studied it to complete the assignments and then promptly forgotten it all! Very helpful indeed. Hm. Well I have the week off work in order to cram the maths in.... The thing is, it's only day two of six. Of six days of solitude. And it's DRIVING ME MAD. I am craving outside world. Contact with... real people! It's all well and good having a chat on the phone but you can't beat a cup of tea with a real life person... And who can one ring at 1am on a Monday morning anyway? Um. I don't think the Samaritan's would be too interested in a conversation about whether I should have bought those custard creams because perhaps bourbons are better. I should have bought the bourbons. 8/12/2009 BananaI learnt today that you can freeze bananas and they turn out ok! I told that newly-learnt fact to a chum and he said 'well, yeah...'. Am I the only person not to find this out before now?! Really though, does it defrost ok? I must try it out, see what happens. At some point. When I actually have a working freezer. So actually that banana-based fact was a bit pointless since I can't actually freeze one. Hm. 7/23/2009 Peculiar PeopleI was reading ‘Take a Break’ (14th May 2009, Issue 19) and came across something slightly peculiar. This lady had written in to say that she had burnt one side of some oven gloves but really liked them and wanted to keep them. So she cut them in half, put a silk rose inside each mitt and, er, stuck them on her garden fence. Erm. WHY??? 7/18/2009 Seagulls and Weeing – a Typical Saturday in TorbayI was in Paignton today, by the pier (which, incidentally, has little bearing on the event), and I had a lovely fresh warm ring donut in my hand. I turned round to exclaim to my companions with shock “they’re charging 20p to use the toilets now?!?!” and then some cheeky sodding seagull pinched the donut from my hand! Fecking thing! The foreign students standing close by learned some new helpful English phrases:
Needless to say, I was quite upset to lose my ridiculously over-priced donut. And do you know why they attack members of the public? Because holiday makers think it’s super brilliant to feed the seagulls. Despite signs asking them not to. I’m not about to rant on about holiday makers because, well, they’re an important part of our local economy blah blah blah. But, please, DON’T FEED THE FRIGGIN SEAGULLS! So, anyway, let’s discuss this 20p toilet charge. I’m flabbergasted. Paignton is full of crinkly visitors – though I suppose maybe some of those will have purchased RADAR keys. Doris: “Oh Beryl I’m busting to spend a penny but I don’t have 20 on me! What’ll I do?”. Beryl: “Cross those legs and go back at the hotel dear.” Doris: “Oooooo.” <At this point Doris would hop if only she didn’t rely on a walking stick>. Beryl: <Secretly sniggering because she secretly has a RADAR key but isn’t telling Doris that since she has been flirting with Daniel, the dashing fellow who is also on their coach trip despite Beryl declaring that she’d seen him first hands off> We’ll have ladies in their crochet cardies desperate to pee all over the place! Or what about the children?: Thomas (5 years old): “Mum I wanna wee” Thomas’ Mum: “I’m not spending 20p on a piddle! Here drop your shorts and do it on the side of the road behind this ‘ere car wheel.” I guess one could protest “why should I have to pay for the piddles and poos of holiday makers through my council tax?” and, in fact, they have a point. BUT we pay for the toilets - can’t they give local residents tokens or something? A yearly pee allowance, for example. When they were talking about charging for using loos on Ryanair aircraft I panicked that the cost of a flight would increase somewhat for me! We’re talking about, what, £1 an event? So for me that’d be at least £2 on the outward journey alone – and that’s only on an hour-long trip! Imagine if it was a three-hour jobbie! I’d need a loan! I reckon I should apply to work for those people who do '”The Loo of the Year” awards thing. I know a thing or two about toilets me! HA! AND ANOTHER THING. Apparently the big-wigs want to stop calling Torbay ‘Torbay’. They want to just call it ‘The English Riviera’. Sure it’s already referred to as that anyway but, well, it’s TORBAY! What an utterly ridiculous suggestion. Although looking at Torquay alone they might as well rename it "’Town With No Shops”.
7/10/2009 Stupid Moment of the WeekStupid moment of the week has to be during take off from Birmingham Airport. Just as the plane was hurtling down the runway I smelt some kind of ‘burnt’ smell and started to frantically look around me to see if anyone else could smell it too, using my “sniff-sniff-what’s-that-smell-can-you-smell-that-smell-can-you-can-you?” face. The climb was very bumpy and I thought “oh no, this time it’s really it isn’t it???”. Then it dawned on me. Someone was eating a packet of BBQ crisps. Ehem.
5/20/2009 It just seemed like a nice friendly name for a scary black-legged-big-bodied BEASTThis apartment is Spider Hell. Well, more like hell for me and heaven for them. That is, of course, until I spy them and either unceremoniously chuck them outside with much flapping (more on that later) or spray them with this rather stinking insect killer and, well, to be blunt, kill them. I hate killing them though, it seems so mean. It’s not their fault they chose the wrong place to live is it? The other day I came home to a giant one on the floor. By my feet. I did manage to put a glass over it (in this instance, had I of sprayed it, it would have run VERY FAST with its GIANT LEGS). So anyway, I had it trapped under the glass for a while before realising that I would actually have to do something with it. The day before I had actually dragged a chum home from work to deposit two spiders, trapped under glasses, out of the window. And the day before that a different friend saved the day. But this time I didn’t think I could be rescued. In order to make things more, um, bearable, I named the spider Maurice. Why Maurice? I have no idea. It just seemed like a nice friendly name for a scary black-legged-big-bodied BEAST. So as I tried to get a piece of paper under the glass I chatted to ‘Maurice’. "I’m sorry Maurice, you’re just going to have to go. I hope you understand. You can’t live here It’s nothing personal, I just, well, if I’m brutally honest, I just don’t like you. I know I don’t actually know you and have judged you on appearances but, well, I just don’t like you. It’s just how it goes…. sorry”. And so on and so forth, one can imagine I’m sure. It was all going swimmingly. I managed to get the paper under the glass. And the cardboard under the paper under the glass. And another piece of cardboard under the piece of cardboard under the piece of paper under the glass. And it was good and I declared “Phew! Now that wasn’t so bad was it Maurice?”. But then I made the mistake of realising that putting a giant black spider on a piece of bright white paper wasn’t exactly the clever thing to do. Although, in fact, looking at it was quite possibly the most stupid thing to have done. But I thought I was such a brave hero I could handle having a quick peek. BUT NO. So the short walk out of the flat and to the furthest flowerbed involved chanting “I can do this, it’s ok, I can do this, I can, I can, don’t look, oh God, I can, oh God, don’t look don’t look” whilst deep breathing ala giving-birth stylie. Had anyone of looked out of their window at that point and seen me I think they’d have thought me in labour. Still, it’s gone. Somewhere. And I’ve seen heaps of smaller spiders since which doesn’t bode well because they’re the sort that grow BIG and SCARY. I wish my woodlice would drive them away. Now that would solve the whole problem.
4/25/2009 SniffWith the alarming news of Mexican flu, today was not the day to suddenly develop a face-filling cold. And it was sudden too – I got in the van to drive dad to Plymouth with only a mild sniffle. By the time we’d got there (which was a feat in itself – I only nearly hit one wall which is an improvement on the last attempt at driving where I went into reverse at a roundabout…) and eaten a breakfast I couldn’t keep my eyes open for soreness, wanted to stuff tissues up my nostrils and generally longed lie down under a duvet. Now we all know that I’m the dramatic sort and so it won’t surprise you to find that I spent five minutes indulging the idea that someone from Mexico had gotten on my flight on Friday and had infected us all… An interesting discussion answering “Why is snot green”: http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,,-8250,00.html
4/12/2009 You can’t beat a bit of hardhat sureHappy Easter! It wasn’t so happy for my neighbour downstairs though. I was up about about 5.20am and out of the flat an hour later. Only I forgot that other people would have still been asleep. (I mean, I was up the entire night on Friday doing my assignment last minute – was due to be posted by midday Saturday…oops! - and was quite surprised who was up in the building at gone 5am) I got downstairs this morning only to come face-to-face with the neighbour that lives under my kitchen. Well, not literally under my kitchen (she’d have to be very flat to be living there) but her tiny studio flat is directly below my kitchen. (Cast your mind back to the entry several years back when I had the water leak that came through her light fittings. THAT neighbour). Anyways, her flat has a door directly onto the car park and there she was, standing, glaring at my dad and step-mum who were sitting in a silent car. She had a right grumble to me and I left. Only I felt terrible all day that I woke her up and the fact I sort of shrugged in a “I’m not too bothered, I’m hardly here anyway, gotta go” way probably peed her off even more than actually being woken up. Well that would have miffed me more anyways. So I just put a card through her door tonight apologising and promising to be more mindful of my neighbours if I ever see that ridiculous time of the morning ever again. We went down to Porthcurno today to the telegraph museum. Don’t laugh ok? I really wanted to go there. And it was jolly fascinating. There were 14 underwater telegraph cables starting/terminating there in the end. Ok so you’re probably yawning now so I’ll not rave any further. But I will say that one of the highlights of the day was discovering that in their education area they had a dressing-up corner… and, since there were no other visitors at opening time I simply HAD to try on an outfit…. Hahaha!!! And then, of course, a hardhat was soon to follow…. You can’t beat a bit of hardhat sure. Very fetching indeed. We went a bit further round the coast and ended up at Lands End. I’ve never been there before and the landscape is utterly stunning. Had to have a photo outside the First and Last Refreshment House In England of course…. But now my phone is doing very strange things. It suddenly decided that it’s in GMT+2. So it’s an hour fast – and if I go to change it the phone doesn’t like it because it turns off the automatic network updates. Er, I’d say that the network is pretty wrong if it thinks I’m in France. I wonder if anyone else is having trouble with Orange. I’m getting text messages hours/days late. NOT happy. Right. It’s Sunday evening and the fantastic “ooo don’t have to get up for work tomorrow!” feeling has arrived so I’m off to celebrate with a nice glass of red and some Wensleydale and Cranberry cheese. Yum. Happy Easter!
4/6/2009 SpookedOk I’m spooked. I’m just sat in bed watching something on five.tv and suddenly my shower starts to run. Not just a drip, or a trickle, but a full on flow… for quite a time. It’s been turned off for a good 12 hours so wouldn’t any excess water already have flowed out by now? Or perhaps it’s a ghost…… woooooooooooo <in ghostie wooing stylie>. Although I’m easily scared. I swear there was someone down the side of the flat on Thursday night. Again, I was in bed, when the security light came on. That’s unusual as the side of the building is a pain to get to so someone would have to have been up to no good. (All it is is a pathway down the side of the building, blocked by a gate, nothing else to see…. just windows to peer through). So I ended up stalking around the flat with a torch in one hand and my phone in the other wondering what to do, hearing the crunch of the gravel path. I was too much of a wimp to open the blinds in case there had of been someone there peering right back at me. In the end I just paced around declaring “oooo what do I do?” to the darkness until the crunching noises went away. What a total wuss. What should I have done though? Gone out and confronted them in my stripy PJs, dressing gown and slippers armed with the nearest weapon-like item (a pair of hair straighteners)? Hardly. There’s not a lot you can do with cold straighteners to be honest.
3/31/2009 Permanent RestI had a pet woodlouse for a short while. Well he wasn’t really a pet. And, in fact, was he a he? How does one identify the sex of a woodlouse? Anyhow, I kept seeing this woodlouse mooching around my living room. He seemed happy enough sure. Then one day I saw him having a rest. The next day he was still resting… on further investigation it was clear the poor blighter was dead. The question this brings to my mind, however, is why did he die? I mean, he was walking along nicely, nearly at the patio door… and then, what, did he think “oh I’ll just have a wee rest here…” and then that was it? He just never woke up? It wasn’t like he was in the standard on-back-legs-pointed-up dead pose as adopted by so many creatures. Ah well. RIP Woodlouse.
3/14/2009 Why did the old lady cross the road?I never really thought that people helped old ladies across the road in the real world. But they do. I can now wear the badge “I helped an old lady across the road”. Well there were three of us there really so I can’t take all the credit. It it was nice to be asked to help someone. The thing is, though, that after something like that you’re supposed to feel great and say “that was my good deed for the day”. But I actually feel really really guilty. After we crossed the road we left her to it. Obviously I didn’t just unhook her arm and do Note to self: see old lady home if happens again. p.s. have written entry in blue to salute all those of the blue-rinse brigade (old lady crossing the road had had her hair done) 12/13/2008 Things I Forgot to Tell YouI've forgotten to share some things! First things first - I passed my driving test! I thought I'd failed before I'd even left the test centre... I think that helped because the rest of the test I thought "ah well, I've stuffed up there but I've already failed so never mind". And I passed! With six minors. VERY pleased - even now, a month later!!! Second important thing - I passed that hideous math exam. Scored a 79% which stunned the hell out of me seeing as I thought I'd done terribly. I was 6 marks off a distinction! So overall I got a Grade 2 Pass on the course. Hoorah! Obviously a distinction would have been WAY better but considering I thought I'd done seriously badly I can't be too disappointed. I'll just revise harder on my next course is all... I think that's it on the important-things-I-forgot-to-tell you front. 12/2/2008 Lamb and Spinach Second (or third?) Time RoundI've just had the most hideous food poisoning. I am never EVER reheating left-over curry again. In fact, I'm not going to even touch curry ever again. I was up all of Sunday night and, I'm telling you, having curried lamb and spinach coming out of your nostrils just isn't pleasant at all. Nope, that's curry off my list of foodstuffs. In fact, I've kind of gone off meat full stop. Though to be fair it was probably the rice that did it. But, nope, I think it's a vege diet for me for a while. Even the idea of meat makes my stomach turn. I was still really ill yesterday but flew back to Belfast regardless. Have you ever sat on a plane and someone farted? And there's no where for that smell to go? It's just the fart and the people all contained in this metal tube? Well yesterday afternoon on Flybe flight BE494 there could have been a serious methane explosion. Luckily I'd stopped being sick by the time boarding started but if it had been silent on the plane you'd have heard all sorts of gurglings and rumblings going on in my intestines. It was like there was a party going on or something. I sat for the entire flight trying not to drop one. Because it would have been a killer. The door to the flight deck had a gap at the top and it would have seeped through and put the pilots out cold. I'm not kidding you. And it'd have put out all the other people on the plane too and with someone being immune to their own stinkers, landing the plane would have been down to me! It'd have been like something from a movie. Only I'd have been arrested on landing for performing a biological attack. So, to that end, I am never EVER eating meat, or reheated rice, ever EVER again. 11/3/2008 Who Cares?Is anyone else fed up with the election coverage from the USA? Well I certainly am. Honestly, we're told more about the candidates from afar than we are those we're asked to decide on when it comes to our local elections. It's mad really. I don't know about you but whenever it comes to local election time it's almost impossible to pick who to vote for. Who are any of the people? I often think "that person has a nice name, they'll do". Not quite how it's supposed to be done.... sometimes it comes down to who bothered to post any leaflets promoting themselves. And if two people bothered, it's a decision as to which literature is less attacking of the other (because attack as a form of defence is dreadfully transparent). And if if they display the same level of scorn, then I look at the candidate's photo and decide who looks nicer. 10/18/2008 "What's that there stepladder doing under the plane?"Noon today the plane from Exeter landed at Belfast City only marginally late. I watched from the lounge as they loaded our luggage, refuelled, restocked the teabag department etc etc. Then our flight time came and went. A man came on the tannoy "....your plane has just landed and we are awaiting the ground staff to authorise boarding...". Erm well that was a lie, it'd landed half hour earlier. So then someone wandered under the plane, put up a step ladder and disappeared into the tail. Erm.. Well that isn't normal. So when the lounge lady came to p 10/15/2008 Well there you go....Today, it arrived. With the first phone call from a lovely BT person waking me up with a cheerful "this is your alarm call....". I finally ended the revision at about 2am last night....needless to say I was paranoid I wouldn't wake up today in time. So I got to the exam centre. I walked up the drive and thought "Gosh how grand! What a beautiful building". It looked so fabulous I took a photo. I walked around for a bit - I was dreadfully early. And the 'College Hall'....well that grand building there... that's not the College Hall. No no no. What do they put behind that gorgeous lovely building? They put a hut.
I wandered around. Sighed quite a lot. Looked at the sky for inspiration. That sort of thing. We all got called in.... I went to my allocated desk and very quickly realised it was too small to house my handbook, exam paper, the answer paper, two calculators, a ruler, three pens, one highligher, one pencil, a Tippex mouse, three packets of sweets, a fudge bar, a banana and a bottle of Tropical Juice (that I chose because it provides excellent help during times of hangover and therefore must increase brainpower tenfold). So I put the Tippex mouse on the floor. Followed by the drink. I did, however, pat myself on the back for not bringing a flask - the desk was an old-style school one with a slanty-top. The cup would just have slid down the desk resulting in disaster. The paper was terrible. I did an awful lot of "I'll come back to that question" only to find, at the end, that I didn't have time. This was all hindered by the fact that, halfway through the exam, my packet of polos (which I'd opened completely in preparation) tipped and I had multiple Polos rolling down the desk in a haphazard manner. I picked one up and put it back, so another one came tumbling down and so forth. This went on for about five minutes. It was a mini crisis in itself (luckily I'd eaten all the fruit pastilles and wine gums by that point or it'd been a proper confectionary carnage). At the end of the exam the invigilator came up to me, took one look at my desk (empty wrappers and stray polos scattered) and simply exclaimed "Oh dear". Well a girl needs sweets in times of stress. I was so frazzled I couldn't work out where a paperclip had magically appeared from and why it was there. "Erm, that's to clip the paper to the back of your answer booklets" stated the invigilator (after making some snotty comment about how-did-I-expect-my-paper-to-stay-attached-to-the-booklets). "Oh!" I said "I wondered where that came from". Well I'm sorry, I was too busy SITTING THE EXAM to realise the paperclip fairy had visited. Grrr. Well, actually, my first thought was "I have big paperclips like that, they're great". Like I said, I was frazzled. |
But, to be fair, it wasn’t. It was shut!!! We traipsed all the way there for a nice cup of tea and it was shut – it wasn’t even occupied! Grr to shut First and Last Refreshment Houses in England. But one must ‘Hurrah’ for today
was the first day of the year that my flipflops came out of the cupboard. It was lovely mooching around in the sun. The only downside was that I did see lots of couples smooching on benches and it make me feel utterly single. I did catch myself pouting and muttering to myself “I want to snog on a bench with the love of my life grumble grumble” but I found the craft hut and busied myself in there fast before I considered what a tragic spinster I am becoming! Haha!
a dash for it, I asked if she was alright first etc. But she was only going up the road - really we should have seen her to her door. I feel terribly guilty. To be fair we did turn round further along the road to look to make sure she’d turned the corner into her road and that she wasn’t in a heap on the floor in the ‘old-lady-broken-hip’ pose that so many OAPs adopt past a certain age. But, really, we should have walked her home. |
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