Some kind of a thing

So I'm looking into applying to PhDs in the States, should himself and myself ever move over there. But it looks like you have to be proficient in at least one, if not two, foreign languages in order to unbdertake a PhD. What the fucking fuck is that about? I don't think charcoal will give much of a flying fuck if I can converse in Spanish with it while I'm looking at it under a microscope. Also, the funding system is weird and strange to me. Someone explain things to me in small words please?

Le Bloke needed help with some gardening yesterday, so I decided to walk up to his place. Note the use of the word 'up' there. Sheffield is a very hilly town, and he's decided to live at the top of the tallest of them. I live right down between two smaller ones. It was very warm, and I was very sweaty. I'm sure it's good for me or something though.

My friend Ellie came to rescue me from the lab on Wednesday, and we went for a few pints. Upon asking her whether she had holiday plans, she finally got around to telling me that she'd JUST WON A ROUND THE WORLD TRIP WORTH £20,OOO. People would not have to ask me about holidays if I had won that. I'd have had t-shirts made up the day I found out. The thing of it is, I'd have just deleted the e-mail. It was from soemone she didn't know and said 'congratulations'. It's like they didn't want her to open it. Hmm...

She's also having a Time Team weekend for us all at her parents new house in the country. We're going to go down and camp out in the grounds for a weekend and dig and get pissed. Ah, archaeology.

Tomorrow I have a geekfest thing to go to - a comic and SF sale thing in the town. Then we're going to go see the Beastie Boys movie. I love weekends. Hooray weekends! More of that, I say!

I started work on my dissertation on Monday, finally, so I've been doing the nine-to-five thing again. I actually started pollen identification yesterday, so I was staring into a microscope for six hours or so, and I felt so sick. I always do for the first couple of days, but my eyes'll get used to it soon enough. Today I decided I deserved a lie in, but of course I didn't shut my curtains properly, and dawn's at about four in the morning these days. Hooray for me! So I lay in bed just as a matter of principle until nearly nine, though my room was smelling more and more like tar as time went on. Oh the joy of having a building site next door. I've learned to just block out the noise, but the smells can still surprise me. The sooner I move, the better. C'mon, July 1st! Get here already!

This afternoon a friend of le bloke is doing a pub crawl as she's leaving forever and ever prety soon. As I have no work to do anymore except my dissertation, I don't mind going at all, but le bloke has many and lots of work still due, and he may be stressing a wee bit.

And now - to the lab!

I was up at eight this morning for a class I was fairly sure I didn't have, as that's what the person who runs it told us last week. However, at some point the rest of my class convinced themselves that we did have class this morning, and so I went. To a class that was not on. Rargh.

I've been pretty busy lately looking for a flat to move into in July. The whole 'I only want it for three months' thing may be holding me back slightly, I fear. I have looked at a few nice places though. And once that's sorted, I have to find a part-time job to keep me going over the summer. A part-time job that doesn't mind me doing weird hours and days because I occasionally need to do field work or check on experiments every hour

In less boring-to-everyone-but-me news, I finally saw The Squid and the Whale last night. Bloody brilliant. That kid is my hero. Suck my dick, ass-man.

And now I'm sitting here trying to use the Force to make my Veronica Mars finale torrent run quicker. It's not so much with the working.

squints

Yeah, still not working.

Was up at seven to finish reading for a nine a.m. seminar. Why didn't I do it yesterday, why?! I ask myself this question every week. I so smrt.

And now I'm in a computer lab waiting for my lecturer to show up. We're covering SPSS today. Mmm, statistics.

Ooh, he's finaly here.

Let the crying and gnashing of teeth begin.

Edinburgh was just flipping fantastic.

Saturday we arrived around lunchtime and headed to the hotel, which at that point was still a 'surprise' because le Bloke likes to play mysterious buggers. Turns out we stayed in the Balmoral, which is the most gorgeous hotel I think I've ever seen. lil_nibbler - it was the hotel where we went to see the Serenity press conference. It was so very much too fancy for the likes of me. We had a king-size bed and, best of all, a king-size bath. I think it would probably be vulgar to talk about how many baths I took. Mmm, bath. The massive fuck-off wide-screen tv was nice too, but my heart truly belongs to the bath. Oh, and thingy, whatsisname, him, whatever. Yeah. Mmm, bath.

We headed out to Rose St. to find a place to watch the ruggerby, which was, if anyone watched it, an incredibly frustrating match. Yes, we won, hooray, but my lord it was tough going. That night we found a little Thai place for dinner. Mmm, Thai.

Sunday morning we (and by 'we' I mean 'he' because I was still dead to the world in the Bed-that-All-Other-Beds-Fear-and-Worship at that point) opened the curtains to find that a blizzard had hit Edinburgh. Now to fully understand the joy that this brings, you would have had to be listening to our endless conversations for a fortnight before we left Sheffield about how great it would be if it snowed while we were in Edinburgh. There may have been bouncing. And squeeing. I was quite pleased too.

So out we struck into the storm. Which - yay snow! Our first stop was the castle, but alas it was shutting because of the snow as we got there. The best thing about this is that we now have a fine excuse to go back. A FINE EXCUSE. Next stop was Greyfriar's Kirkyard, on siriaeve's recommendation. I imagine it's a gorgeous place at the best of times, but in the snow it was unbelievable. Plus, I found Voldemort's family! I'll get some pictures up when I get them off the camera. As we were right next door, we had lunch in Greyfriar Bobby's pub, over which I fought a long-drawn battle of Connect Four, which I'm afraid to say ended in a draw. Though at least that prevented either one of us sulking for the rest of the day. Refuelled on fishcakes, haggis and beer, we popped across the road to the Scottish National Museum to while away a few hours. After quite a bit of whiling, we though we'd better drag ousrselves away or waste the entire day looking at flint flakes, so off we headed to Mary King's Close. Unlucky (some might call us 'unprepared', but I would call them 'shut up yer face') bastards that we are, all the tours for the day had already sold out by the time we got there. Lucky for us, neither of us particularly minded heading back to the hotel room of wonderment and joy very much at all.

After a little more rugby, and yet another bath, we navigated our way to a Mexican place where, as well as a rather unpleasant amount of food, we put away a possibly illegal amount of Margaritas. But they were really, really good Margaritas. We stumbled our way back to the hotel where we felt that, though we had probably had an elegant sufficiency of Margaritas, we're not very elegant people, so we made our way into the hotel bar for, wait for it, more Margaritas. And after all those Margaritas I really felt I needed a bath, because, well, because... shut up. I wanted another massive bath. Screw water shortages, I was on holiday.

Stupid today of course, I had to come home. Today sucks. Except for the room service breakfast. That bit was okay I guess. But the rest sucks.

In conclusion, yay Edinburgh!

I didn't have any classes today so I thought I'd do something productive and sort out my bank stuff. I have two (count em'! Two!) bank accounts. For reasons of interest and such that I just about understand. I have to wait two weeks to get my cards though, and only once I've gotten those am I allowed to apply for a credit card. Maybe that's a good thing...

I also went shopping and treated myself. I got some yummy goat's cheese, and spent about an hour in a second hand book and record shop. I only bought two books though, so I think I did pretty well. I got Hyperion's Fall by Dan Simmons, which is a sequel that I've been looking for forbloodyever as I loved the first one. I also got the gay cowboy book by Annie Proulx! Yay! Gay cowboys! And yes, I know there are other stories in there too, but seriously, gay cowboys.

Somehow I got guilted into running my class's palynology seminar nest week, so I have a crapload of work to do. Which I should be doing now. Or later. Gay cowboys or pollen? Gay cowboys or pollen...

And

When you see this on your flist, quote Firefly.

RIVER
You're afraid we're going to run out of air.
That we'll die gasping.
But we won't. That's not going to happen.

We'll freeze to death first.

I'm here! And I have a place to live! Huzzah! I'll email the particulars to those who'll be wanting them.

I was up at five yesterday morning to get the boat, which would have been fine but for my mum who can't look at water without puking everywhere. The rest of the journey, in the car, only served to remind me why I was leaving the country in the first place.

Mum: Snipe
Dad: *mutters under breath*
Mum: Snipe
Dad: *mutters under breath*
Mum: Snipe
Dad: *Screams so loudly people in the cars next to us turn to look*
Mum: Snipes and *continues to make scene*
Jars: Can you two act like grown-ups for five fucking minutes please?
Dad, Mum: Shut up Karen.

For most of the day. And navigating for my Dad is never the mostest fun in the world ever, because it inevitably ends up being my fault when roads aren't signposted, and stopping for directions is like cancer, apparently.

But. We got here in the end. My room is bigger than I thought it would be, so that's good. Also, right in the centre of the city, and only five minutes from the department.

I've three flatmates; one from Leeds, who's also doing an Arch science course, but not the one I'm doing; one from Greece; and one from the Netherlands.

Our tv has Sky, but the channels are in a completely random order, and I'm not sure what the other channels are. I might go through them and write it down.

Anything else people want to know? I think I've spent all my loan money already, so people who come to visit will be buying ME dinner. Just so you know.

Today I mostly cooked and played computer games. I made up a recipe for apple chutney, which turned out pretty nice, but it needs to sit for a good few weeks before it hits delicious, I think. Also I made a Baileys cheesecake, because there was Baileys, and what else am I going to do? I'm only human after all. jaaam, lil_nibbler and the_deb all came over and partook of the cake, thought it hadn't really set by that point. Meh, we ate it anyway.

In other news, you know you have a classy job when you come in in the morning to find tire tracks and a used condom in your work area. What were they thinking? It's not exactly a romantic spot. There's a golf club two minutes up the road! At least that has nice views.

And speaking of work, I've discovered that the best spectator sport EVER is clock catching. You wait until there's a breeze, and the clocks fly up into the air, then try and catch them in your mouth. Make people do it so you can watch. You won't regret it.

I'm updating my livejournal on company time. So freakin' sweet. Oh yeah.

I don't actually have anything to say, except MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!

Sly liketh the fox.