Tuesday 26 October 2010

4 letters: "Big cat".... *Nonplussed silence*

Yes. Doing crosswords across a distance of about 200 miles is incredibly sad, and yet fun! As demonstrated by my now-ruined refill pad, which is what happens when the other person has the actual crossword in front of them:

So yeah! In other news, life is going... well, it's just going. Literally, seeping away. We're in week 4 already: WHAT THE HELL.
I have been alternating between full on end-of-life depression and I-can't-do-this-I'm-in-the-wrong-degree, full on end-of-life stress and oh-my-god-my-brain-just-set-on-fire, and (very rarely- well, just once actually) full on manic happiness and hello-world-I'm-Tyrannosaurus-Alan-and-I'm-going-to-eat-you-for-breakfast. It was a sunny day. It had weird effects on me.

Yeah. It's been a wreck month due to work overload and life deprivation, and I've realised for definite I can't do longer than fortnights because I start unconsciously rocking and talking to myself towards the end of the second week and I don't want to see what would happen to me if I tried to stay a bit longer.

I have been trying to do better, though. Naturally, being a wreck in the beginning of year 2 doesn't bode well for year 3, 4, 5 and life. So I attempted to take measures to de-stress: I have officially started morning walks! Well.. on days when the weather isn't wet, because that'd be even more depressing. But still! It's nice to be alone and mentally write stories and..you know..be weird. I had another de-stress measure but have forgotten it, DAMMIT. Though I was also thinking of trying a new skill- Jamie gave me the instructions for a crochet penguin, so I'm going to teach myself crocheting :D And learning sign language would be awesome too... But that's probably unrealistic what with the lack of time to even eat these days.

Did I mention I'd developed a tea addiction? I don't even like tea :| I swore I never would, but it's because I've stopped having Pepsi, and so I think my brain just susbtituted it with another addiction. :/ Fail.
I shall make a list of things that have cheered me up recently in order to make this more upbeat!

  • Seeing the family and the Wolves crew this weekend- Catching up with the brothers and dad, my mum falling asleep on my bed (and me almost falling off) on Friday night, chatting with Aunty Em until 4am, having very strange conversations with Hasan; the birthday party and Hasan's Toy Story cake (!!!), and just appreciating how adorable and bear-like Baby Bear is.
  • Making notes with my coloured pens which are AWESOME, and make notemaking so much more bearable! :D
  • 200 mile crosswords and other sad things
  • ....That's about it! I feel saddened by this knowledge. Still, they were damn good in themselves.
I have nothing more of interest left to say. I wish I did, because you know, I like to ramble, but there's nothing. Unless I've forgotten it... That's pretty likely. My brain is frazzled.

A good endpoint, I believe. My brain is frazzled. I will blog more comprehensively when I can think in a more linear fashion.

OVER AND OUT before I bore even myself to death! :)
*waaaaves*

Friday 8 October 2010

The Spider Crusades

SO, I have officially been here for a week and...2 days! And am going home today, hence delirious happiness, so let me sum up the past week and a bit whilst the mood is all good.

  • The house is quite awesome, and cosy, and little. My room has been made all homely with my own cushions and duvet, and black and white New York skyline posters, and is close to the kitchen and bathroom so I don't have to really move much at all :) Which is the best way.
  • My housemates are lovely, and this means I actually feel comfortable, which is amazing. Seriously, I'm so happy that I can leave my room, as opposed to last year when I used to have panic attacks about going into the kitchen (See previous blog posts for evidence of this). I didn't realise how much pressure that was putting on me last year, but the contrast now is huge.
  • We had a slight...spider incident. It transpired as follows (because I'm a bit addicted now to these step by step scenes)
9:30am. H wakes up facing the ceiling, and sees what appears to be a massive black hand with too many fingers, crouching on aforementioned ceiling. Right above H

H has a silent heart attack. 

Somehow, H slides out of bed and moves, camouflage style, out of room to go and get J (Housemate). 
H: I really, really need your help with something.
J: ... :| ?
H: There is a. Huge. Spider. On my ceiling.
J: Oh God... I'll get the broom.
(It is important to note that at this point neither of us knew where the vacuum cleaner was, because we'd just moved in and couldn't find it anywhere. Hence the broom.)

J enters H's room, brandishing broom. Sees spider.
J: Holy F***

Several moments of hysterical nervous chatter and in J's case, semi screaming, about how to do this. It is decided that H will leave the room, since her legs are actually shaking and the adrenaline dump has turned her to jelly, whilst J will attack the spider. The two girls say their last goodbyes.

J: You will owe me your life for this.
H: I will. You will be my hero.

H steps out into hallway. Distant sound of J psyching herself up and muttering swear words.

J: *SCREAMS AND CRASHING SOUNDS*  OH F***, NO! ARGH! NO! S***! ARGH!

(In J's defence, she's the mildest person on the planet and I've never heard her swear before in the year that I've known her. These were very individual circumstances)
H runs back into room: What! What the hell happened?!
J, still hysterical and screaming: OH MY GOD I DID IT ITS DEAD BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS.

Moment of pure horror. 
H: You mean it's here somewhere and it's Not. Dead.?!
J: I...I think it's dead... It fell...? :|
H looks around at empty floor. Something huge and black shifts slowly behind the bookcase.
H: Oh Shit
J screams for a short while: OKAY, OKAY I'm going to do it. You shift the bookcase and I'll kill it
H's legs are giving out, so she leans against bed, and braces self, and shifts bookcase. The huge black thing runs out into the open.
Spider runs out into hallway like a huge black..spidery thing. J chases after it (it is so huge that it's actually faster than her) with the broom, the crashing sounds alternating with screams to the effect of: OH F*** NO ARGH NO ARGH KILL IT KILL IT OH NO-
Then.. J:  It's done. Oh, god, oh, god it's done *Voice actually cracks into tears*

Both girls reunite, totally shellshocked and shaking like leaves. 
H: You are my hero. I owe you my life.
J: You do. 

There were actually two further spider incidents the very same day- one was BIGGER than the one in my room, and was in the housemate's room, and since I owed her my life, I had to do the honours. Suffice it to say I lost another life. The next spider was found half an hour later, but was only a quarter of the size, so by then we were no longer spider amateurs. We could handle it. Seriously though, absolute terror. The house hadn't been disturbed in several months, so clearly they all came out into the open when we started shifting stuff around. No further incidents as of yet :|

Continuing with my bullet points then!

  • I didn't have Pepsi in a whole week, because I thought a great way to curb the addiction was to just not buy myself any. Which worked fine until I was tempted on Wednesday @_@ With a buy 1 get 1 free offer. Still, I don't actually want any more so it might just work!
  • Making my own food is weeeeeeeeeeeeeird. But awesome. I haven't really *cooked* anything as of yet, I've just been making sandwiches and grilling them (in my AMAZING George Foreman mini grill), or stirring sauces into pasta. But next week I shall! Yay! And Aunty Em, I shall be using those recipes *thumbs up*.
  • We started uni on Monday, and this semester looks like actual murder. Every module just looks horrendously hard, with waaay too much to learn and some seriously difficult stuff. My spare time for the next year has gone down the drain, but at leats I had a nice holiday where I did enough nothingness to make up for this year :) 
  • I'm going to be 20 in less than a month! :O WHAT THE HELL, MAN.
 Oh yeah: I had to go to the hospital to get assigned a patient, and whilst sat in the hospital cafe, I was thinking about stereotypes, because we had a lecture on how we stereotype people the day before. And so I was trying not to judge people because, you know, that's kind of what you do when you start people watching. However, this is more difficult than one thinks, especially when people conform to their stereotype so well. There were actually tables of the different groups in the cafe:

On the furthest table from me sat the Junior Doctors: All with stethoscopes round their necks, wafer-thin, rubbing their eyes, eating like they hadn't in days, and nervously chattering whilst throwing venomous glances over at the other tables. 
On the opposite side of the cafe sat the trainee surgeons: all in scrubs, with a faintly cut throat look in their eyes when they looked at each other. None of them were smiling, their hair was messed up from their caps, and clearly, none of them had slept. Probably ever.
There was a tableof the doctors who were out of their Foundation years, and clearly training towards being consultants: all had lost their hair, or had lost most of it and then shaved their heads, despite being relatively young. All wore stripy half sleeved shirts and glasses. I mean, what was going on?!
Then there was the consultants table: all in ill-fitting suits (ill fitting because they were seriously overweight), and eating with complete disregard of each other, or of the longing glances they were getting from the younger doctors.

I was very amused. Clearly, the heirarchy still exists, and clearly people sometimes just grow into stereotypes, no matter how much they don't want to be pigeonholed.

So that is the end of me rambling, despite feeling like there were other major things I had to write. Still. I shall include them next time when I remember them.

Also, this is an AWESOMELY feel good song. :D :D And he has a great voice.

*WAVES*
:)