Wednesday 29 October 2008

Busy Week!

Hello dear friends, oh how I have missed thee! Lol



I was at Chris's this weekend - it was great. I went down on Thursday evening after all my classes had finished. We had a pretty good time just doing all the normal things. Choir on Friday and Sunday, pub on Saturday and Sunday nights etc etc. Chris has a class on Friday afternoon, just the one, so while he was at that I went shopping! I bought a birthday present for Andrew and a new dress for myself to wear out on Saturday (my wardrobe was in serious need of some new additions - I've worn all my other dresses about a hundred times each!!)



On Saturday afternoon we drove over to Kirby Knowle to see Chris's mum, Helen, and her partner Barry. There house is pretty cold so we had bacon rolls and cups of tea and we made a fire to keep warm :) We went for a walk with the dogs and we chattered a lot, and Helen made a roast dinner, which was lovely :) For pudding we had a delicious dessert called Chocolate Mud, which is very similar to Brownies but has no flour in it. Gorgeous sticky gooey fun! Very good with ice cream :)



Sunday was church as usual, then Chris's dad Peter made a roast dinner for lunch as well! We had lamb, which was just delicious, and for pudding we had a plum and apple crumble with custard. I must say that now I'm back at the flat I'm really missing proper home cooking - warm bagels with butter are nice, as are cheese toasties, and tomato and cheese pasta. But it's not quite the same :(



As for this week, my schedule's pretty tight! I got the train back on Monday morning in time for classes, then in the afternoon I had a shift at work and didn't get to bed until late.
Tuesday brought my only full day of classes, starting at 10, and finishing supposedly at 5, but this week we didn't get out until 6 because something went wrong with the statistics program in my Psychology practical class. Then in the evening I started revision for the Classical Art Slide Test (they show us a slide show of pictures and we have to write about them for just a few minutes each!) which counts for 25% of my grade for the course this semester!
This morning (Wednesday) I started at 10 o'clock again. I have this one hour off between my two classes, then at half 1 I'm meeting someone for lunch before heading to the library to do reading for a tutorial tomorrow and some more revision. This evening I'm looking after a girl I know with special needs - her mum and I are taking her to a trampoline centre, so that in the future I can take her myself. After that I may be going to see High School Musical 3 with my flatmates and friends, if I get back in time that is!
Tomorrow I have two lectures and a rather taxing tutorial (it's taxing because our tutor is Italian and her English is not always clear, and also because she asks questions which are totally different from the ones in the preparation, and expects really developed complex answers) In the afternoon I'm working again, then in the evening it'll be even more studying!
On Friday I'll be studying some more in the morning, then I'm going to Glasgow late afternoon to stay here until Saturday. On Saturday is the Scottish Scouting AGM, at which I'm doing a presentation of the major events of the last year. It's in the form of a news program, and I'm one of the presenters!
On Saturday evening, once I've got back from Glasgow, I'm heading up to the Scout Centre at Bonaly for a training course and staying over there on Saturday night, to do two more courses on Sunday morning. I finish at one o'clock then I'm getting picked up (by my dear darling parents) and whisked away to Gang Show rehearsals on the other side of the city! After Gang Show I may do some shopping, go to the house to see my dear family for the evening, then probably head back to the flat before bed time.


See you in a few days or so! If I can keep up! :)

Saturday 18 October 2008

Getting Better

I caught the flu last weekend! It's been pretty miserable. Felt terrible all day Saturday and went to bed early. Didn't go to church on Sunday morning because I just felt like death and I didn't want to spread my germs around anyway. I had to go to Gang Show on Sunday afternoon because I'd missed the week before and we were setting new items, so I spent most of the afternoon feeling terrible and wanting to go back to bed. My wonderful Dad came and gave me a lift home afterwards and made my tea for me, and that all made me feel much better. On Monday morning I was still all bunged up and I ached everywhere, but I dutifully got all my things together and headed back into town to the flat to drop off my bags before i went to class. However, I felt so ill while I was on the bus that I decided it would be better just to stay in bed. I didn't waste my time though - I did some reading, and I prepared a programme for Cubs in the evening. I couldn't go myself but it was my turn, so I had to go into uni to email the stuff to Jackie, the other leader. Then I made myself some scrummy cauliflower and bacon soup (see the recipe on the BBC Food website here) and went to bed early. Despite my good intentions however, I didn't get to sleep until about 4 am! :(


On Tuesday I got up fine, and I didn't feel tired all day! I still felt flu-ey though but I coped. I had a couple of lectures then I had lunch with two friends before my Psychology practical class. It was supposed to run from 2pm to 5pm, which is pretty long, but we did something strange to the data set we were working with and we were there until half 6 trying to sort it out! But we had to get it done that afternoon because we have to write a report on it for Monday (I've nearly finished mine!). You may think we shouldn't have left it to the last minute, but the data was from a questionnaire experiment that the year group did themselves, and we'd only just got all the data collated so that we could use it in our statistics package (it's the Psychology Teaching Fellow who does that, not the students). It's pretty tough then, because we only had essentially 5 and a half days to write the whole report! Like I said though, mine is pretty much finished. I just have a couple paragraphs of the discussions left to do.


Speaking of which, I suppose I'd better get back to work. Sorry this is a rubbish post, but my brain is mangled! I felt I should write something though as you must all be missing me terribly!

Monday 6 October 2008

Published Again!

I got published again! Aren't you proud of me! In the same little magazine as last time. Here is the layout for this time:




My mum is the taller girl, with her mum and her sister :) Also, the date is a typo! It was meant to be around 1968, not 58!!





I've been really busy so I haven't updated here in a while. I now have a much better photo of my ring to show you (Thanks Dad!!)




Uni has been really busy. I start all my tutorial classes this week so I'm now doing 13 hours of classes each week, and the rest of my time seems to be spent studying too! Second year is a lot more hard work than first year was.





I went to Chris's this weekend, and only came back today (had to get up at 4.45 am to get to the station to get a train home in time for my 10 o'clock tutorial!!)
I had a really good weekend. On Saturday I joined with members of Chris's church's choir and loads of other church choirs from the Yorkshire Diocese to sing in York Minster (the Cathedral) in an Festival Evensong for the Yorkshire area of the Royal School of Church Music. We got the bus from Guisborough to York, and had an hour to find lunch (I had a gorgeous chicken pasty) before signing in and getting changed into our robes for the rehearsal in the Minster. We sang through all the music with the Minster's musical director, Robert Sharpe, (quite a hottie ;) then we had a processional rehearsal (yes - we had to practise walking into the nave in lines and going to our seats!) We only had a half hour break between then and the actual evensong service - just time to put our surplices on and have a drink and a snack.




I really enjoyed singing the service, although Chris and his friend Ste were in the congregation rather than singing, and they said that it wasn't great because the conductor's style wasn't clear enough for a 200-strong choir. At this point I should mention that Chris never enjoys these services, and so he is a biased critic, and I didn't believe it was as bad as he said!





Anyway, I'd better get back to my uni work - I have a practise Slide Test for Classical Art tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock!



Bye for now