June 13-17
*I went to Auckland
*I attended the first concert of Simon and Garfunkel's current world tour with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) deepbluemermaid and helped carry the music when their equipment failed
*I studied even while on holiday
*I spoke with a childhood friend
*I bought a tea cosy. About to use that, actually.
June 18-19
*I played a heck of a lot of Plants Vs. Zombies, despite many odd bugs in the game
*I attended an indie fashion show in which two of my friends were modelling. It was neat and a little pretentious and gorgeous and there were many dance routines
*I went to a games night at wih's house and learned to play Chrononauts and Settlers of Catan
June 20-24
*I went to Sydney with Joel
*We turned Saturday into two days
*We went to Taronga Zoo, getting into whisker range of the wallabies and enjoying a trained bird show which included owls, parrots, kites, and an eagle
*We saw Sydney Harbour by night and by day
*We ate on a boat. Actually, I was on boats a lot.
*We wandered through the Herb Garden at the Botanical Gardens and I can now tell you that the first oral contraceptive was developed by the aid of a plant called the 'air potato'
*I watched several episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena
*I went whale watching - twice
*I ran from the State Library to Darling Harbour in order to catch the whale watching boat, with the help of a tourist map
*I went to a museum with the combined themes of Opals and Dinosaurs and quizzed an opal expert for an hour
*I went to Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art
*I ate very good pizzas at reasonable prices (gasp) on the waterfront
*We went on a ferris wheel
*I found and bought a bead loom
*I hung around an aboriginal art store, chatting to the clerk who was writing a masters thesis in Japanese
*I admired leather masks imported from Italy
*I went to the Powerhouse Museum
*I had a bubble bath
*I discovered and bought a rare role-playing book, called Paranoia, for the use of starzend as a GM
*I bought Chrononauts for Joel
*I had lunch with Joel's Sydney colleagues
*I was the recipient of a Very Nice Surprise from Joel
*We had been engaged for one year on June 22nd
June 25-30
*I attended a genuine business conference, with representatives from things like Meridian Energy and the Department of Corrections, wearing a name tag for "Veridian Dynamics"
*I bumped into four friends by accident on my very first day back from Sydney
*I made up a costume out of clothes from Farmers, went to a medieval party called the Feast of Fools, drank mulled wine, learned four or five dances, and followed a live ass around a hall in a procession for the Vespers of the Ass
*I went to the vege market
*I wrote a really nice letter to Joel's grandmother
*I advanced two levels in Starcraft
And now I am back at work in the daytime and procrastinating on an Icelandic essay during the evenings.
Hmmm... I am finding this all a bit much to write about in detail!
SSar: I not only love you, but I am desperately in love with you.
Joel: You don't need to be too desperate. You have me.
SSar: Ah, but there is a poignancy to my desperation. I long to love you as much as I did the last moment, and as much as I will in the next moment.
Joel: Awww.
SSar: You mean that made sense?
Joel: Not necessarily, but it was very sweet.
The holiday in Auckland proceeds well. I went to the Simon & Garfunkel concert with the sparkling deepbluemermaid, and it lived up to expectations. A lot of the songs were very jazzed up, even 'I am a Rock', which I never expected to hear sung in any tone but sad/emotional. There was a highly corny moment in which the mikes cut out during 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', and the audience, most of whom were probably already singing along, picked up the tune and sang it strongly back to the confused-looking performers. Technological aids were soon repaired, and Garfunkel thanked us effusively for our generosity. I think it was staged. The songs I was really hoping for didn't come up - Cool Cool River and 50 Ways to Leave your Lover - but many did that I've enjoyed over the years. It was surely made more fun by having a companion along.
I've been getting a lot of sleep, unable to rouse myself before 11am. A habit I must break tomorrow, as I'm to put in a day of study at Auckland University's library. Actually, this will sound nerdy, but just looking at their catalogue intrigues and excites me. I may find some really good resources here, although the catalogue gives the the vague impression that Auckland Uni hasn't taught Icelandic studies since 2004. That is only a vague impression, note.
My accidental purchases include an orange and brown tea-cosy with silver beads (hey, I went out of my way to go to a craft show, and it was the only thing there that I could have wanted. When will people stop making those useless mosaic candle-holders that can't be re-used? I do disdain them so) - and - hey, OMG - Lindt is now making pear chocolate. With almonds. LOVE.
I had a lovely evening with Pip and Tim tonight. They have found a good one-bedroom flat in Grey Lynn, and they cooked me a fancy dinner, a sort of chicken-chorizo risotto, and custard baked in ramekins, and we had a nice, casual chat. Then they walked me most of the way home, through Kingsland to Eden Valley. The lights of the cranes around Eden Park are a startlingly vivid addition to the skyline.
Oh, and Mum found me fairy lights in an opshop! Hurrah! I do hope they work!
From Levelt 1989 (Speaking: From Intention to Articulation):
"It is also interesting that Motley (1980) was able to create a biasing conversational setting. In this experiment he used target pairs preceded by "standard" phonological interference (biasing) items. The target items were of two kinds. One kind is exemplified by shad-bock, which when preceded by appropriate interference items may lead to the slip bad-shock; this was the "electrical" kind of target. The other targets were "sexy" ones, such as lood-gegs and goxi-firl (the intended slips are obvious). The two target types were mixed in the list. Half the subjects were attached to fake electrodes and told that mild shocks could be given. The luckier half of subjects underwent no such threat, but had an attractive and provocatively dressed female experimenter. The resulting slips corresponded to the condition of treatment. In the electrical condition, "electrical" speech errors prevailed; in the sexy condition, "sexy" speech errors were dominant. Because all these speech errors were induced by phonological interference items, Motley concluded that the difference was an editing effect. When one expects things electrical, a phonological slip that produces such an item will not be filtered out by the editor, and similarly for sexy items. There is an attentional bias in the subject."
Linguists. Kinky.
I have an all-day exam on this stuff tomorrow. Gah to my lecturer for instituting this concept: get the exam at 9am, work from home, produce three essays of 1000 words each, submit by 5pm. On the other hand, I will spend the entire day buzzed on study tea. Beware.
It's been a very up and down weekend. I have a cold. I stayed at home and got study done while Joel went off to Tara's party, which was apparently awesome. This suited us both. I got a lot of work done on my project yesterday, thanks to four particularly helpful role-playing friends. Then I went to go up the hill, and missed my bus, because of seeing someone in the supermarket I hadn't bumped in to for three months.
Yesterday evening I turned on the stove's back right element, which is a temperamental bugger, and which promptly exploded, instantly burning a hole through the metal of my best saucepan, which I had placed on the element prior to turning it on. This shorted out the power for our whole house. (Luckily the flats above and below only experienced some flickering). An hour and a half later, an electrician was replacing a fuse dating from the 1960s in the fuse box behind the meter housing. (Joel and I had been keeping warm and amused by huddling together and playing Portal on our laptops).
It is still bloody cold. Snow in parts of Wellington yesterday, which is highly unusual. Today has a high of 11* and a low of 3*, which is considered Nasty. I am typing with fingerless gloves on (yay possumfurry gloves (although I was heavily dependent on the ones Erin made for me last week)).
OH and as I type this the light bulb in the spare room has begun dripping water again. You know this is a bad thing when you can hear the impact on a towel through a wall and several metres away. Sigh. To be discussed with landlord.
Okay now to be productive! Chaucer, Lehiste, Angantyr, Warren, here I come!
I just came back from Cardenio, a "reconstructed" "Shakespeare" play, which I thought I'd like. Sure, I would only understand 3/4 of the dialogue, but at least the whole audience would be in the same boat, since no one would have had a chance to read the play beforehand. Joel came with me.
I got so frustrated I left in the intermission.
Most of this was to do with a modern sensibility. The seducer, Don Ferdinando, tricks his first "love", Violante, into having sex with him, then tries to marry his best friend's beloved, Lucinda. While the first half of the play ended with no one wed and everyone unhappy, I just knew that we were going to have a perfect pairing of the two beloveds, Cardenio and Lucinda, as well as the less perfect pairing of the rapist and rapee. Plot confirmed by reading some reviews. I was bothered - not just by the plotline, which is a big problem - but by the laughter at the audience during the near-rape scene. I admit that a Shakespearean audience - or a Jacobean audience, given the play's history - would not find the tricking of Violante disturbing. But do we need to be a Shakespearean audience to appreciate a Shakespearean play? According to the doctrine, they're supposed to appeal to all ages. And I think I would have felt a bit more comfortable if everyone around me had also winced at a lady being borne off into the darkness screaming, "Wait! Wait!"
I fumed further when Cardenio, having seen that Lucinda is prepared to marry the evil Don Ferdinando WHEN EVERYONE WAS FORCING HER TO, went mad, talked foully of women, and started a round of self-harm. Go cry emo-kid. I also understand that this worked better with an audience 400 years ago, when the betrayal of women justified madness - at least in drama - but the plight of the women characters was so much worse than his, and their choices so far fewer, that it made me deeply unimpressed.
Admittedly, this ran true to a theme (the kind of thing that high-school students can write up with bullet-points and flow charts) about the flawed ideals of chivalry. The lord Don Ferdinando was the antithesis of noble behaviour and the exemplar of noble privilege. The supposed good underdog, Cardenio, was humming the right emotional key, but was utterly ineffective.
Then you had the comic relief, Don Quixote himself. Obviously, as the exemplar of chivalric ideals and as an illustration of gross distance between intent and achievement, he was the "other face" of the chivalric ideal of Cardenio and Ferdinando. And besides that, he was awesome. He and his servant were easily the best actors, and their scenes were genuinely funny. I admit, that part would have been neat, if it had genuinely been in a Shakespeare play. To have a "named", important character, who might be known by learned members of the audience, as part of the comic relief, would be very progressive and interesting. (His servant Sancho fit in perfectly to the Shakespearean model. There are mischievous, disrespectful Boys everywhere.)
Another reason for my discontent was that I found little art in the word-play. There weren't any good lines. Nor were there any that the characters gave real length and weight to that seemed to say anything important. Admittedly, not all of Shakespeare is quoteworthy. But doctrine also says that he is genius. I suppose you can't reconstruct genius. So a combination of prosaic dialogue, and the inability to understand 1/4 of the dialogue, rather bored me. Many lines and constructions I recognised from workmanlike snippets of Shakespeare, and that amused me - it was like seeing the "reconstruction" in action, all patchwork.
The motifs, too, were patchwork. People running mad isn't out of canon - there was a distinct call-back to King Lear, or maybe Troilus and Cressida - but never did it seem so unjustified. Women betrayed and given false reputations are canon - look at Much Ado About Nothing - but there still seems to be the possibility that they can be given redemptive justice, and that didn't seem to be the case with Lucinda - certainly not in a way that would satisfy a modern audience. Young people being forced into situations by their parents - look at Romeo and Juliet - this isn't new. It was as if they took several things Shakespeare had done and took away the humanism.
The review below
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0905/S00206.htm
mentions that the darker side of Cardenio touches on the "problem plays". Definitely. For me, Cardenio was a huge problem. If Shakespeare did write it, I'm glad it was lost to history. Or, I bet his version was more tempered by far. Either way, this one is a disappointment ranging to an abomination.
I don't think all that is why I left. I think it was more of a personal thing that I left half-way through. I take fiction far too personally. I can't watch awkward humour. I cried for an hour after the end of Memento. And so, instead of simply disappointing me, as it might have done a person with similar views but with more perspective, it made me furious.
I feel a bit better now after all this ranting. Now I'm going to hang out with Miriam and Steph and unwind by stomping through the dark and the freezing Wellington rain.
PS: Oh, I forgot to mention how pissed off I was by Sancho's jokes about Fiji and the South Island. Topical jokes are great, except not when you're reconstructing a 400-year-old play. I may be being a bit uptight about this, but you can't please everyone. So don't expect an audience that will appreciate a play that is not in their language and also pander to them with stereotypical North Island vs. South Island rivalry. We laughed at rape, clearly we're not in the 21st century.
| Date: | 2009-05-21 20:56 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  amused |
SSar: ...but I'm staying for Jerome's show. Do you know Jerome?
Joel: Sure, he's a good guy.
SSar: Wait, *how* do you know Jerome?
Joel: I kidnapped him.
SSar: *very slowly, dawning remembrance and realisation* Yes. Yes you did.
Things are good lately. I am getting excellent marks at Uni, I haven't handed anything in late yet, work is steady and I feel useful there, and I live from paycheck to paycheck but there's a little bit of a margin which is reassuring. I even called my parents on Friday for an amiable chat.
I just had a nice weekend in which I studied, baked, went out for the Merchant of Venice with Joel and Meredith and had a lovely dinner, watched Battlestar Galactica, studied, and handed an assignment in.
For some reason, I'm really really stressed lately. I'm appreciating the good stuff that's going on, but I am noticing really high anxiety levels. So, people, what do you do to level off? I'm honestly not over-working myself at my paying job, but while my study demands are high, I can't really reduce them right now (it's near the end of the semester and I still have two presentations and a research essay to do.) Should I take more long hot showers? Throw myself into Project Bauble? Get really drunk and rant to someone? (Joking). I have managed to avoid caffeine and sugary drinks today at least - a week without caffeine shall do me good.
Anyway, right now I can't be bothered studying for my 5% test tomorrow so I'll translate one of the Canterbury Tales or let Joel beat me up at StarCraft.
Clearly we have an excellent landlord: I left a message on his phone at about 1:15pm about our electrical woes, and within the hour I had messages on my own phone - one from Kos saying, "Fine, call me with details for our records, I have dispatched the electrician", and one from the electrician, saying, "So when can I come to your house?" By 4:30pm our fuse was replaced and so was the faulty light fixture that was overloading the circuit.
Excellent. Also, a wonderful example of the powers of Specialisation and Delegation. I was blown away because at our last flat, every maintenance issue was either ignored, fought over, or when faulty repairs were carried out, Full House Management claimed that this was because the owner of the property had done it, not them, and they would contact him... more delays... etc.
I will fight tooth and nail to keep this flat. *note to self: do the vacuuming tonight.
Since going to see Star Trek my main concern is the scheduling of the NEXT viewing of this movie. I did six hours of Old Norse instead of seeing it on Sunday with Layne and Alex C (that would have been awesome...) and will probably be reading a ream of material related to Chaucer on Tuesday. I still hold out hope for Thursday.
I also plan to see The Merchant of Venice, probably with Meredith on an upcoming weekend, and I really want to see the performance of Cardenio (May 17th-23rd). Who's with me? Of course, you may want to stand well back when I beg the director for the academic notes on how they managed to 'reconstruct' a Shakespeare play in the first place.
Lately my entries feel very vague, summations at best. Let's see if I can be a bit more specific. I am typing away at Firreth on the table in the lounge. Next to me is a glass of water, a cup of study-tea, the Riverside Chaucer, and my Icelandic notes. (So much for my notion of having a week without caffeine: it died before it could even become a resolution.) I am enjoying having lighting from two different angles, as before the fuse was fixed, only one light in the lounge was working. Alex is making dinner in the kitchen, where a bowl of hamburger patty mixture is sitting waiting. When Clinton gets here to discuss the Sci Fi quiz, I will - gasp - make hamburgers. Until then I am procrastinating on reading the Tale of Melibee. To be fair, the Tale of Melibee is pretty long-winded.
I still seem to be juggling work, study, and a social life reasonably successfully. Work isn't very demanding lately, and my team leader seems to be in a good mood. There are new data entry people, and I am trying to endear myself to them by letting them ask me questions instead of having to trot across the office to ask Siyamala. I think I need to make more social connections at work.
I did have to ask for an extension this week, but I haven't handed anything in late yet. I felt so uncomfortable about the extension that I keep catching myself saying "I'm trying, I'm trying" spontaneously to thin air. Like, when walking up Allenby Terrace, or doing the dishes. This is possibly not a good thing. I'll feel better when the Chaucer assignment is in.
As far as a social life goes, I keep thinking I'll cut down on social time in order to get study done, but it isn't happening. This possibly is a good thing, until it happens that it isn't. Last week I went to two parties, had one overnight guest, went to a midnight movie, and dragged someone over to my house for lunch in between lectures.
I have made... nearly zilch progress on this year's main art project. Also I need to write about the Leonard Cohen concert.
Anyone want to go to Star Trek again?
PS: Oh gods, I just threw a spoon at Clinton and drew blood. I'm so sorry. Back to how I'm so good at socialising. =/ He says he's okay though.
The new Star Trek movie was excellent, pretty, kickass, and has been awarded many other good adjectives and metaphors. The time flippety was all logical and sewn up. I'm not sure whose acting most pleased me, but all Vulcan lines were written and delivered spot-on. I newly <3 Vulcans. (As far as non-Vulcan races go, you will be pleased to note that Scotty got some very exuberant lines, some of which fitted the situation, some of which didn't, all of which fitted his character.)
It was also worth returning home at 2:30am, to finish an assignment. I think Joel and I will just turn 'bed' into a kind of relay baton. I hope that by the time he has to wake up, I get to sleep. Luckily, I was clever and left a note on my desk at work, stating that I would probably be back on Thursday afternoon. So the morning is, for once, all mine.
| Date: | 2009-04-13 18:38 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | content |
( I have had a great weekend! )
One thing I have discovered about hosting a pot-luck is that there are many odd leftovers. I successfully bounced the pineapple and the vanilla custard back at Bex, but I have large amounts of guacamole and also several uneaten chicken drumsticks. Soooo I made chicken stock with the drumsticks today, which is the first time I've made stock, and when that's cooled and de-fatted and possibly concentrated, I will try to make guacamole soup. However, most of the recipes I've found online assume that you are starting from scratch with avocados and so forth.
What is the best plan when starting off with a) chicken stock + some cooked chicken meat, and b) containers of store-made guacamole?
Now it's back to work, with the demands of study blissfully distant. Pip's appearing tomorrow, calloo callay, and I'm hoping Alex gets back from Napier at a reasonably hour tonight, and, coincidentally, is of a mood to watch History Boys with me.
Our rubbish bin is back on our porch, I emailed Salient next week's Sci Fi schedule and got an acknowledgment, and I got two emails from good friends today instead of the usual Amazon.com stuff or Universal Currency Converter update.
Also, I came home yesterday at 7:15pm, really tired, to find that some friends had come over and cooked dinner for my flatmates, with enough for me too. SO MUCH YAY. Thank you Sando and Tara, you are mildly divine and so very provident.
And, to transition between domestic bliss and successful study, tonight was the first Tuesday since term started that I have been able to watch Boston Legal without frantically reading Chaucer or doing an assignment between ad breaks.
In a perfect dovetailing, a cast of students and English professors is performing "Noah's Flood", a mediaeval morality play, to the English 111 class tomorrow (4pm, Easterfield 006, if you're interested), and the Chaucerian tales we're studying in tomorrow's class include the Miller's Tale, which includes a parody of Biblical characters as they were portrayed in such plays, and lines like,
Hast thou not herd hou saved was Noe...
...The sorwe of Noe with his felawshipe
Er that he myghte get his wyf to shipe?
Yes, yes, actually I have heard.
Further, our director, Alison (Which is another Chaucerian pun) was instructing us as to a particular trick in stage effects, along the lines of: "Start up the rain sounds... you don't have to keep them up all the way through. The trick is, if you repeat it a couple of times, the audience will think they're hearing them consistently." And just now, in commentary to the Reeve's Tale, regarding the Northern-dialect characterisation of Aleyn and John and the Northern words they use: "Chaucer tends to put dialect words and forms rather thickly in certain areas, rather than spreading them evenly throughout the student's (sic) speech. They are particularly frequent when they start speaking, so that we shall class them from the beginning as comic Northerners, and will perhaps think their dialect more consistently represented than it really is."
BINGO. I love it when I can immediately apply something I've learned to something else!
Also the idea that lethal injections should probably be supervised by trained medical personnel but of course can't be because of Hippocratic Oath problems is doing my head in a little.
Oh yeah. That 10% assignment? Approx 3500 words, and completed precisely 36 hours before due date. Also completed mainly without caffeine.
The course notes are based on a textbook which the lecturer is writing. This is sometimes handy: if it becomes necessary to ask for clarification, he can explain in depth and might even re-write any offending sections. It's less handy when a section in your course notes ends in a note in capitals:
(RELATE TO SOMETHING ELSE) ADD HERE
Well, psycholinguistics is partly about revealed thought processes, and he can't really blame me if I have nothing else to say about lexical stress errors.
O gods, another entry about the statistics and minutiae of my study. Am I like a first year or am I like a person who has no hobbies?
Argh, first assignment of the year, only 10% of assessment, we aren't even supposed to need to read beyond the coursebook, and we don't have so much as a word limit.
Why do I detect panic in myself?
It's not even due tomorrow, because I'm trying to complete it early! For frick's sake, SSar.
/pep talk
ALSO I HAD A PRODUCTIVE WEEKEND, SPENT ALL OF SATURDAY STUDYING, SAW WATCHMEN AGAIN, SAW THE COLOSSAL SQUID AT TE PAPA, EARNED BONUS POINTS DURING LAYNE'S CHANGELING GAME, ATE MY FAVOURITE TAKEOUT FOOD, AND SAW UNEXPECTED FRIENDS TODAY HURRAH STOP.
| Date: | 2009-03-20 19:52 |
| Subject: | I Get Older |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | mellow | | Music: | Lucid 3 |
I'm tentatively thinking that a potluck birthday party might be nice, to commemorate my achievement of the dubious and unstable age of 23.
Would Friday April 3rd or Saturday April 4th, the evening thereof, work better for those who might be inclined to participate?
Hey, since the New Zealand dollar is finally gaining against the greenback again, does anyone besides me want to buy perfumes from online retailers (specifically, Possets, www.possets.com, and Arcana, http://www.magicalomaha.com/arcanagothicsoap.htm)? We can save on shipping.
| Date: | 2009-03-16 22:31 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
Yesterday I was stressed about how ultra-planned my week is and how study and work are balanced so very finely. Then a friend tells me she can't come to the movie viewing I planned for her and suddenly I'm willing to turn around all of my week. I think I have my priorities in the right place. Friends, study, and work is the order in which I will value my memories of exactly what I did when I think about my life next year, no matter how they may make their demands in the opposite order.
I found a missing Leonard Cohen CD, currently happily rocking out to The Future, which is a gloriously dark song. Maybe if I were into heavy metal I wouldn't be impressed by its lyrical sense of vileness, but I am.
Give me back my broken night/ my mirrored room, my secret life/ it's lonely here/ there's no one left to torture/ Give me absolute control/ of every other living soul/ And lie beside me, baby/ that's an order
Give me crack and anal sex/ Take the only tree that's left/ and stuff it up the hole/ in your culture/ Give me back the Berlin wall/ give me Stalin and St Paul/ I've seen the future, brother/ it is murder
He sang it at the Vector concert. I was delighted. Currently listening to the Teddy Thompson version on 'I'm Your Man', which is excellent.
PS: Also, "Everybody Knows" just came on and it is possibly my favourite song of his EVER except maybe "If It Be Your Will" and I promise, I PROMISE, I will write about that concert because it means something to me. This is just a way of getting started.
(Everybody knows the dice are loaded/ Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows that the war is over/ Everybody knows that the good guys lost... Add to that the lyrics further on of Everybody's talking to their pockets/ Everybody wants a box of chocolates/ And a long-stemmed rose and I have no idea why the two Leonard Cohen songs in Watchmen were 'Hallelujah' and 'First We Take Manhattan'. Seriously.) (Can you tell how happy I am to have heard Cohen songs in a movie, even if they were the so-so album versions and I know the Manhattan version well enough to laugh in sync with him?)
| Date: | 2009-03-12 20:35 |
| Subject: | Gaudeo |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | happy |
I am really happy lately.
This house is lovely to live in, for many reasons, although the one that looms and is most novel is its location. I can run home in between back-to-back classes to get items or drop them off. I can almost leave muffins in the oven and go to class, because going to class takes me fewer than one hundred and eighty seconds. This is munificent. And I didn't think we were going to still be flatting with Alex, and we are (for now), and he is a good friend and flatmate.
Our flatwarming party was really really good. People kept turning up in deluges, and we watched Manos: The Hands of Fate (MST 3000 style) then, later, Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog. I did display my usual party behaviour: I hide in the kitchen, talk animatedly to anyone who's in there with me, produce large amounts of food, and don't leave. (On which subject, I think I need more muffin trays). I rely on Alex and Joel to keep people entertained and interacting. But for one thing, our kitchen is much, much larger in this flat, meaning it was always full of chatting people, and for another, I restrained myself to really easy food, and had the chance to wander out and talk to people. It was pleasantly stressless. Alcohol was abundant, but only two people got drunk. At 2am I was still wide awake, and it had distilled down to Sam and Fezz and I recounting our shared flatting history to Meredith and Michael. Then Michael left, and people from Eastbourne and Whitby and Strathmore crashed in the many places there were for them to crash, and I was left feeling pleased. "You have a lot of friends," commented Meredith. I do. It's neat.
As far as my offline social life goes (and I don't really have an online one, do I?) I may disappear a little under the radar as the demands of university mount up. Classes so far are interesting and appealing. I knew Norse was going to be fun, but it's also not as scary as I thought it would be. The Chaucer paper will be much harder work. (I joined the Chaucer paper last week. It was very self-indulgent. It's basically a $1300.50 present to myself, also requiring effort and concentration. Hm.)
I'm really looking forward to Linguistics this year. There's about ten Ling Honours students, and they seem like an awesome bunch (Miriam, you get more of an 'is' and less of a 'seem'), and at our first mandatory-serious-minimum-percentage-attendance weekly seminar, the lecturers laid out wine and corn chips and joked around at the front of the room. Maybe it won't be as bacchanalian as the Classics department, but it should be... warm and cheerful. English, on the other hand, has a departmental funk due to budget cuts, some of which impact on the students pretty bloody directly.
I say that my social life is about to decrease, but I'm not doing too badly at present. I seem to have made a particular friend, which relationship is going like rainbows and roses right now. Also squee. (Which is also doing a lot for self-image and general ego lifting.) I'm still playing a character in Layne's World of Darkness game, and I've really come to enjoy it, which is saying something, because when I started playing I was so stressed about "this role-playing thing I don't know how to do" that I got very antsy and nearly cried a couple of times. Now I'm letting my character do lots of silly things, like spend weeks procrastinating on facing a bad guy, and go fishing from the tops of buildings. I'm really looking forward to game sessions, and not just because I get to meet up with friends.
I am also determined to make it to knitting next Monday. I really hope someone can remind me how to cast on by then. o_O
My job is letting me be very flexible with hours. When I say very flexible, I mean that on Tuesday I worked 7:15am to 8:45am then went to class and didn't go back to work for the rest of the day. Yesterday I worked 11am to 3:30pm. Today I worked 8am to 11:30am then 1:30pm to 6:15pm. The only time I was required to be there by any sort of schedule was today between 4pm and 5pm. La-la-la-la. Of course, there is suddenly a lot more to do since I have cut down the hours in which I could do it, but putting in the full 8 hours today means I got on top of my database for the first time since university started. I even turned down Saturday work (time and a half pay, regardless of how much I've worked during the week) so that I could make myself study all day.
Sci Fi club started yesterday and went pretty smoothly. I am enjoying the actor who plays George in Being Human. There's something about his ears. I mucked up two items on the pizza orders, but people forgave me since it was the first week back. Next time I will have an assistant and an accounting sheet.
Life is good, really. I hope it is so with you.
This evening I made hamburgers for dinner, incidentally feeding Alex and also Daniel C who was over to play Magic. Now I'm going to face off against my superior monkey Joel in two-player Risk and maybe drink a cocktail.
I use the word 'really' a lot. Huh. ^!^
W00t, a meme I am actually enthusiastic about. Ganked from nishatalitha, thanks!
Bold what you have, italicise what you want and strike any you've never heard of. Leave a gap and add what you have that's not already on the list.
Ajwain (aka ajowan or ajowain, this goes in my Cumin Potatoes!)
Allspice berries
Aniseed (no but only because Wikipedia tells me star anise is a different plant)
Asafoetida
Baking Powder
Basil
Bay Leaves
Bicarbonate of Soda
Cardamom seeds - and pods
Cardamom powder
Caraway seed
Cayenne
Celery seed
Chilles
Chili Powder (blend - not ground chilles [that's Cayenne])
Chives - currently growing in the garden
Cinnamon
Cloves (ground)
Cloves (whole)
Coriander (ground)
Coriander (whole)
Cream of tartar
Cumin (ground)
Cumin seed
Curry
Curry Leaves
Dill
Fennel Seed
Fenugreek
Chinese Five spices
Garam masala
Ginger (ground)
Herbes de Provence (MUST contain lavender)
Lavender
Mace (ground)
Mango powder (Amchoor)
Mint - growing
Mustard (ground)
Mustard seeds - brown
Nutmeg (whole)
Nutmeg (ground)
Onion seeds (Kaloni)
Orange zest (not at present, but this is the only reason I buy oranges)
Oregano
Parsley
Paprika - preferably smoked I have both!
Peppercorns - black
Peppercorns - green
Peppercorns - white
Poppy seed
Rosemary
Saffron
Sage - dried
Sage - growing
Sambar powder
Savory
Sesame seeds
Tarragon
Tamarind Paste
Thyme
Turmeric
Vanilla
Cilantro aka fresh coriander
Cinnamon quills
Sumac
Star anise
Rose buds
(also, random spice packs from the Syrian food store in Newtown that have interesting labels like "Enba spices". AKA secret hamburger ingredients.)
| Date: | 2009-02-02 07:41 |
| Subject: | Moved! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  exhausted/hopeful |
I promised myself I wouldn't update until I'd written a Leonard Cohen entry, but I am circumventing this to say:
THANK YOU VERY MUCH, HOUSE MOVING PEOPLE!
A horde of our friends turned up to help pack, drive, carry all our stuff from the old flat up to street level (two three+ storeys), and carry all our stuff from street level to the new flat (four storeys). We worked you all so very hard. You are appreciated.
|
|
|
|
|
moody
puzzled
thoughtful
anxious