Oh Joy,

The stats page of this blog is always pretty interesting to me for more reasons than just viewing numbers. For those who've never used it, there's this wonderful map showing where your audience is across the world. It's pretty interesting actually... Oh, and there is that wonderful graph which shows that the most people view this during November (NaNoWriMo) and the early days of December, which I think is pretty cool. 

Of course though, there is more to me than just the blogger, the novelist and the WriMo, which almost sounds like the start of a bad joke. 

I'm a student in university that gets annoyed with a lot of the same things other students in London do. I get annoyed with how people make assumptions that because I'm a student, I sleep all day, party all night and use Wikipedia to write my essays. I get annoyed when I can't get books from my university library to finish an assignment. I get annoyed with assignments that are either too many words, not enough or when I feel like I'm metaphorically polishing a turd. I get annoyed by the price of housing, I get annoyed that landlords don't want to fix problems, and take forever about doing it. I get annoyed when I forget my pens or I drop my notes all over the floor. I get annoyed when I can't get my head around something or my neighbours are making too much noise for me to concentrate.

I'm also becoming a naturalised Londoner. I get annoyed with tube delays, and buses, and people. I get annoyed with Oxford Circus. I get annoyed with people who walk slowly. I get annoyed with four week suitcases that take up the space of an extra person on the pavement or on escalators. I get bored on the tube, but I've found my way of dealing with it - I practice French on my iPhone.

I'm a woman. I get annoyed for no reason. I get annoyed because of what I've read between the lines of the statement you haven't even fully formed in your head yet. I get annoyed because it's cold and I forgot my scarf, but even when little things annoy me, little things make me happy, too. Little things like you texting back, even when life is hectic.

Most of all, I'm human. I get annoyed when I can't figure out the answers. I get annoyed when I feel like I'm at the doctors every other week. I get annoyed at being upset or annoyed for no valid reason. I get annoyed with myself more than anyone else, and sometimes, the best way to get things which annoy me out of my system is just writing them down. 

I know what it's like to have a bad day - I have them a lot. I know what it's like to get angry at yourself for being upset or pissed off with everything. I know what it's like to feel like Atlas, carrying everything on your shoulders. And I'm glad I know what it's like to be able to put some of  it down.

As it gets to exam time, it's more important to be able to do that, so you have to find someone that you can share your troubles with - even if you need that to be a diary, or a councilor, rather than a family member or friend. You need to find a way to let go of some of the things which upset you, or annoy you, or hurt you, because the sum total of all your faults is not you - you are the person who learns to push back and deal with them. And you can. 

More Like What Am I Doing With My Life,

After a lovely relaxng reading week, it's back to the joys of lectures and essays - oh the joys! - but I really have to point out that rather than take a few simple steps to make life a little easier for students, it seems universities - or mine at least - are hellbent on making it almost impossible to get through an assignment.

In the last three years, I can't actually remember the amount of times I've had to do an emergency Amazon order just to finish a peice of coursework, because the library has all of about three copies of a key text and they've all be taken out weeks prior to the assignment.

That is, of course, if you can even find the bokks of the reading list.

This term, I've found that half of the things given to me on the reading lists by the lecturers aren't even in the library. Some have been ordered, and are 'on their way' or it's taken me forever to find the relevant peice in the online journal archive we're allowed to access, but surely it would be much easier if - when writing or ammending these reading lists - the lecturers put the classmark for the book in the library, or provided the link for the online database! It would make things much simpler!

Also, it would help if they alerted the library that 30 students were going to need access to that one book, so they could put it onto reference only, or even, God forbid, order a couple more copies!

And lastly, this one will never happen because it would make life far too easy, but it was awesome at my sixth form. Have a system that allows you to search through the chapters of the book using the library catalogue. I took out six books for my last essay - most were off the readign list - and three had no real relevance to the essay I was writing. I mean, what is the point of my lugging them home and spending a couple of hours trying to find something relevant when it's just not there.

There are so many ways to improve search facilities, like just havign key word tags, or even just module tagging the books (putting a list of module codes that said text would be relevant for on it's information page) but let's face it, it's not going to change - any - time - soon.

The Meaning of Life,

In all honesty, I was going to write a bit of an I-Hate-Valentine's-But-Love-My-Amazing-Boyfriend blog, but I think the time has passed, and I think that single people do enough hating on Valentine's, so why join in? 

Besides, it will probably be more fun to read this...

Waiting in the wings of every night out is a douche bag from someone's past, and I met one of them on Saturday night. My lovely boyfriend got the chance to introduce me to his schoolfriends, and let me tell you, they had night out jerks written all over them. 

I know I bitch and moan about my degree every so all the time, but it's like the thing of you can insult your family, because you love them, but anyone else does it and they are in deeper doo-doo than a stable hand. 

Despite needing to teach someone that giving me any reason to verbally tear them a new one is a bad idea, Saturday was an awesome night out in Croydon that involved possibly a little bit too much not enough gin. Granted, I woke up with a bit of a hangover the next morning. 


Since then it's been all essays, knitting and The Vampire Diaries, and preparing to celebrate my birthday. 

Pisa & Lucca

I'm going to write a couple of these to catch up with everything that's been going on... 


I know that I'm a bit of a lucky girl sometimes, but the last week has been something else. This time last week, I could barely sleep because I was getting ready to fly to Pisa the next day. 

Now, I'm not normally an overly nervous flyer, but this was the first time I was flying anywhere without my parents - yeah, I know that's pretty sad. Everything was going fine though, until the airline decided that the plane was too full of other people's hand luggage to let my roller bag in the cabin, so it had to be checked into the hold. 

My biggest issue is that when something deviates from the plan, I get a little bit freaked out, and don't know how to cope. Thankfully the flight was only an hour and forty five minutes, and nothing got damaged. 

Our hotel was less than a minutes walk to the Piazza del Duomo, and the Leaning Tower itself - we could even see part of the Tower from the hotel room!

We had been told before we even went out there - by a multitude of people - that Pisa itself doesn't really have that much to offer, but a little ways down the train tracks is a lovely place called Lucca, and it's only a couple of euros to get there and back. 

Between Lucca and Pisa is this beautiful stretch of Italian countryside with a beautiful aqueduct and a lot of other pretty buildings, but Lucca itself is definitely the main event. It's a little town that is surrounded by a large medieval wall, and the entrances are all cobbled steps through tunnels in the wall. Although they're beautiful, trying to get up them in heeled boots isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world. 

One of my favourite things about Italy is the food. The pizza was amazing, the gnochi was beautiful and the gelato was mind blowing - and not in a brain freeze kind of a way. 

On the day we were flying home we also got to climb the tower - which was a very strange experience - and explore the rest of the Piazza del Duomo. The whole place is beautiful. There may not be that much there, but Pisa is definitely worth a bit of a look. 

I Can't Even Believe That I Said That,

Have you ever stopped in the middle of a conversation and been like, oh my gerkins, did that sentence really just come out of my mouth?

There are so many things that are okay, until you say them, and something about saying them, and the possibility of them being overheard withotu the context that makes them completely innocent and suddenly, whilst being so funny that you need to change your panties, they're also the kind of embarrassing that means you won't need to wear blusher for a month because your cheeks are so red.

I had a conversation like this in the library early, and I was nearly dying with laughter. There are a lot of things which I find funny about books about sex - not Fifty Shades of Grey kind, the academic kind where you dissect...there is no way to get myself out of this linguistic hole...I'm just obviously not a cunning (STOP!!) - being in the library of a Catholic university, but when it's someone else who's supposed to be doe eyed and innocent who turns around and says 'I can't believe there is a B.J. section,' Oh, I just can't.

The thing is, the way he said it made it still sound innocent, but I have a dirty mind. :) There was too much of a pause between the letters -

Saying that, my favourite one recently was with a lady I share my name with. We were discussing the way to teach students, and she was describing how first year undergrads and MA students, they just need a thing. They have to have a thing, in their hands, or they don't know what to do. When you think about some people's views of university, well, let's just say that sentence becomes much funnier.


I just don't know what it is that means that sometimes, the brain-mouth filter does not engage and either say reword that, or send a big net that looks like it's made of the word NO out to catch somethnig before you say it, and then go pink and stutter how that really wasn't quite what you meant by saying something in quite that way.

One Bad Hit,

I wasn't planning on writing another one of these before I went away, but sometimes needs must. 

Have you ever been addicted to something? I'm not meaning anything overly serious at the moment like cigarettes or prescription drugs, but I guess that the same theory could apply. What I'm referring to at the moment is, quite simply, TV series and books. 

I've always had a massive thing about crime solving novels and television series - the more the better. I have read a couple of Lee Child's books and other authors as well, but the one which really had me hooked was Kathy Reiches. I loved the way that Temperance Brennan and Andrew Ryan were with each other, I loved the action, the drama and the forensics, just not so much of the Quebecois French and how Tempe nearly dies at the end of almost every book, but then Devil Bones came out, and I wondered who on Earth Reiches was writing about, because it certainly wasn't my much beloved Tempe. Her personality was too different and I seriously suspected - and still do - that it was a ghost writer, and from then, I haven't picked up a book by Kathy Reiches. 

In much the same way, I took to the TV series 'Bones' like a fish to water - it was everything I had wanted to see from that series, because Emily Deschanel and David Borenaz are - in my books - both amazing actors as well as winners in the genetic lottery. Even though they never really had much luck with their serial killers due to National Holidays interrupting the scheduling and other stupid things like that, I loved the whole damn thing, and the Christopher Poulant serial was really gearing up for something amazing. I watched every episode chanting (well, in my head) BRING BACK THE ZAC! 

(Spoiler Alert if you haven't seen series 9 yet!)

Then the episode happened...and guess what? Most traumatically - no Zac! Absolutely no Zac. Not even a hint of Zac, or a quick defer decision to Zac, whom I assume is still locked away in a looney bin for saying he stabbed a guy to stay out of big boy time out. 

What was worse was that after all this genius has done, the ending is he gets shot. By Booth. 

If it had been Brennan to pull the trigger, then it might have been a little more interesting, but it wasn't. It was just your run of the mill Agent Booth take down. I mean, why? 

Zac has already been brought back in on a case before, and aside from his naivety, he was always, arguably, on his way to being Dr Brennan's equal. He and Vincent Nigel Murray have got to be my favourite of the squinterns, and with VNM dead, the obvious consultation point would have been Zac. 

I know I don't know much about the American legal system, but it seems they make deals to reduce sentences for help in more dangerous cases, so why couldn't that happen for the lovely Zac, he help to outsmart the evil dictator genius, overthrow him, beat him at his own game and then Brennan shoot him. That would have been an amazing episode, and then Zac could have gone back to working on the double Doctorate...

That episode has left me with little interest in the series now. It's just a shame.  

93,

It might become a common recurrence that blogs I can't think of a title for are just numbered. 

So, the tube strikes are over and London appears to have survived them reasonably well. I'm kind of wondering if they just let them happen occasionally to check that the bus system is working as well as it should do. I know that here in London, we complain about the buses quite a lot - especially when we have to use the buses to get to the tube or the train - but the fact is that we're doing a lot better than most places. With most buses running at least once every five to fifteen minutes, it's not overly long to wait, considering in some cities, the buses can be as infrequent as once an hour.

Now, what joys are there to look forward to? 

Well, for me, I'm going to Pisa on Tuesday, which is obviously exciting, then I have a birthday party on Saturday, then essays due on the Monday, Friday and following Monday. I could say that I'm excited about that, but I honestly wouldn't mean it. 

For the rest of London, there is another tube strike planned for Tuesday, and oh, my parents are coming down this weekend! I know that doesn't really impact other Londoners - guests, families, tourists and the like roll through this city so often that crowds have become a permanent fixture - but trust me, I'm excited. 

In the more distant, but still not overly far away future, I'm turning 21 on the 19th of March, and a little before that there is the anniversary of the blog - it's turning three years old. I can't decide if I think that is an achievement or not. 

And in the more hopeful but don't hold your breath section, Yours, is still somewhere in a stage of editing. With literally everything else already done to it, I really need to pull my finger out and just get a move on with it!!, but the essays apparently have to come first. (I think that the pressure of needing to do essays is the best way of getting me to do editing, which is kind of worrying...)

The overall conclusion is, I may not be posting anything for a little while, because I have no idea if there will be Wifi in our hotel, but there will be photos and a blog or two when we get back. For those of you on reading week - make the most of it!

Sorry, You Did What?

Currently on a bit of brain break from an essay, and really need to get something out of my system, because it's been making me angry since this morning. 

After saying he would be back on Saturday, the man who came to fix the windows in our house arrived today, which was made inconvenient by three things:

1. I was the only one in the house,
2. I have an essay deadline at 11pm tonight, and
3. Two of the windows he needed to fix are in my room. 

Since it needed doing though, I simply sighed, moved my things and tried to get on with my reading, which proved difficult since the guy wanted to essentially rearrange my room in order to get the job done.

With all of that, I was a little crabby, but the icing on the cake was he kicked, and I mean with force in order to move it, my oldest typewriter. I know he looks heavy, and trust me, he is heavy, but still, this guy seemed to think he had the divine right to KICK my typewriter and this is after he left both of the electric ones upside down and on their keyboards. 

I know that not everyone accepts the value or maybe isn't aware that they might have been expensive for me to buy, they can be expensive to maintain and repair and some of them are actually worth a reasonable amount of money, but still, you don't kick someone's things. You don't decide that you having something out of your way is more important than the physical health of the item. 

To me, they are important, which gives them a value to me. 

Seriously annoyed right now.