After three years of this boring, rather prosaic journal, it's time to move on. I've long outstayed my welcome.
Some of you reading this have always been my friends, some have become friends in person, some are online friends, and many are people I've always wanted to know better. In any case, I've appreciated each and every one of you, so thanks for reading.
I got twelve hours sleep last night. Granted, it was with the aid of a copious amount of left over antihistamine tablets, but I haven't felt this alert or refreshed for months.
Also, I've got a new, unattainable crush. Unattainable because nobody fancies girls who wear the same grey sweatshirt for three days straight, drink more tea than alcohol, haven't had a hair cut for six months, and say things like, "could you keep the noise down! I'm trying to study," at 11pm on a Saturday night. I'm beginning to see how difficult it is to maintain any relationships at uni, long-term or otherwise, but the only 'temptation' so far has been from rather masculine lesbians with beer breath.
My new hobby is looking at the snarky graffitid desks on Level 11 of the Edward Boyle library. Today's best? Someone had written "Fuck this." And then next to this, someone had written, "To interact in any way, sexual or otherwise, with a piece of wood would not only be fruitless, but may well result in social exclusion or arrest." Nice to know there's someone at the uni with a sense of humour...
Now I'm off to construct a last-minute Halloween costume -- I'm going as a zombie hooker.
Today's dinner is chicken in coriander and lemongrass, although probably not literally; I'm always quite disappointed that toss salad is some bitter, watery lettuce on a plate, and not a chance for my hall to break out into food fights.
This week has flown by. How, I'm not sure. John Peel's passing on Tuesday made me a bit melancholy -- it's so strange turning on the radio at 11pm on a Tuesday and hearing the late John Peel. Completely irreplaceable; I doubt many of today's DJs will be playing groundbreaking music from every genre imaginable into their sixties, and I hope his memory inspires people to keep on loving music.
Studying is stressful; the course booklet should have mentioned that it involves statistics above GCSE Level. I'm a little disheartened it took me five hours to complete a two-hour worksheet. And I got shouted at by the lecturer for laughing at a video we were shown in our geopolitics lecture on the Bosnian conflict. Part of the video was about media propaganda, and featured a blonde, Donatella-Versace-esque Serb bimbo wearing a black and gold tracksuit riding on a tank, and an off-key baritone singing cheesy lyrics in the background to a song sounding suspiciously like Auld Land Syne. ("Serbia shall rise again! Rise above the lower class!") I was cracking up with laughter. The conflict is deadly serious, but this video was 10 years old and looked like a feature from Eurotrash.
Last night, my corridor woke me up at 2am, put five squares of rice krispie cake on the floor in spite of me insisting I didn't want any (and now don't want any because the bottoms are covered with carpet fluff) and forced me to listen to Dolly Parton and Aqua. It was like a miniature gay nightclub! I didn't mind, as have no lectures today, but still want to know who was desperate enough to steal my Edam, though; I'd taken large bite marks out of it due to lack of possessing a knife.
Also, I washed my sheets, and tumbled-dried them. And now have a shrunken duvet cover that barely covers my feet. Oops.
A girl on my corridor had a goldfish for a while. It died last night. Instead of giving it a decent burial, someone left it in the fridge on a piece of tinfoil. So, when I went to get some milk to put in the tea, what should fall out but a cold, dead fish! I can't think of a nicer way to start the day. The current corridor conversation, which is audible due to paper-thin walls, is about 'taxidermistry'.
Would it really be that wrong to slip a bit of washing-up liquid in the kettle?
Liz came up for the weekend, and being lazy students (okay, I'm a damn good cook but the one saucepan our kitchen has spent the past week festering in the washing-up bowl awaiting a bio-hazard sign) we decided to get take-away. Unfortunately, the only menu we could find was for 'Lucky's Pizza', the type of place who sell 18" pizzas for £7.50. It was so large that we had to take it through the door sideways.
The same pizza chain also do specialty pizzas, such as the 'English Breakfast Pizza', the 'Avocado & Caviar Pizza', 'Celery and Blue Cheese Pizza' and 'Death by Pepperoni'.
Pleasant discoveries for the day include the Netto in Meanwood (8p noodles, lemon meringue pie flavour Aftershock, 'dynamo white' cider and assorted Scandinavian food products) and some really disturbing Futurama fanfic. We're now off to watch Spaced, and make fake sex noises to scare the corridor.
The laptop had to go all the way to the ISS Support Desk and be prodded, which for someone doing several computing modules was quite embarrassing, so I'm glad there was an actual problem: the little copper prongs in the RJ-45 port had become loose and shifted out of place, so the cable wouldn't connect. Luckily, I'm adept at manipulating hairpins (my girly phase of 1998 had some benefits) so straightened the pins out and voila. Net connection!
Now, it's off to dinner. Hopefully it's not reformed pork seasoned to taste like gammon again.
Just my luck that my laptop has to die on the day the residence network goes online, taking with it all of my files and MP3s and leaving me with mild disgruntlement.
Does anyone have any tips for enduring blood tests? I'm wondering if my symptoms (persistent sore throat, brittle hair, weight loss, shaking hands, insomnia, chest pain, numb hands and feet, inability to concentrate on anything) signify more than freshers flu as my family has a history of thyroid problems. In all probability, it's stress from having to live here, but at least if I know for certain it'll stop my paranoia.
Secretly, I'm hoping it is more than freshers flu. At least it'll give me a leigimate excuse for being shit at my subject.
ETA: Or maybe it's the fact that all I've eaten today is gammon with barbecue sauce, a banana I stole from the dining hall over a week ago that's more black than yellow, eight cups of tea, and twelve Kinder bueno bars. Hm.
I'm bored, and should be working, so stole this idea from blackgarden.
Tell me a secret. Make a confession. Rant about something.
Post anonymously; IP logging is, as always, off. Get something off your chest. Go on and yell at me for spamming your journal with pointless comments, or bitch about someone you can't stand, or talk about your sexual fantasy that involves sock puppets (or falafel), or tell me how you once actually said "talk to the hand" in an argument... whatever. Post multiple times if you'd like.
Basically: if you want to insult me, mock me, spout random crap, crush on me, or laugh because you know me in real life and I don't know you're reading this, please go ahead. :)
For some reason, the world seems to consist of flattering my ego lately.
We went to The Fenton (random pub) and were engaged in a conversation about the wonder of Jack Fulton's 3 for 99p jammie dodgers, and a random girl tapped me on the shoulder and said, "I'm sorry, did you hear us talking about you?" I didn't, and asked her what she'd been saying, and she replied, "oh, we were just discussing how unfair it is that some women can look so beautiful without make-up."
After this, some random bloke came up to me and told me I had a flawless complexion, and my friends Fran and Charlotte were discussing make-up and said, "but of course, you don't need any." Since the age of 11 or so, I've had the image of myself as this stocky, flabby, wannabe-Goth masculine thing, so it's weird to start developing the barest hint of self-esteem.
This is a good thing. I'm one step closer to feeling confident enough to don a stretchy black catsuit and rob a bank. It beats that job in Baja Beach club that's going, even if working in Baja does provide you with a free coconut bikini and grass skirt.
Operation Clark County is basically the Guardian's way of giving non-American citizens a chance to influence the American election. You enter your email address, and are given a name and address of a random resident of Clark County, Ohio, an incredibly marginal area with regards to voting. (One name and address per person, so nobody gets deluged with post.)
Writing to a Clark County voter is a chance to explain how US policies effect you personally, and the rest of the world more generally, and who you hope they will send to the White House. It may even persuade someone to use their vote at all.
Or, it may make them feel deeply suspicious, stalked or offended as you've got no guarantee over whose address you receive. If someone wrote to me with a 10-page letter on how I should vote Tory, they'd probably get a mail bomb back, but I can see why some people would be enthused by this.
sick