Miscellany — Last week of November, first week of December

Before I get into the week, I'd like to share this link to help explain my ochem veteran views on the natural food craze: Organic Water
It kind of revives my faith in humanity, or at least in people that aren't chemists by trade who still take the time to look up some definitions. It also reminded me of the chemical free salt from ochem last year.

My days are pretty boring. Since I don't have class before noon until wednesday, I stay up late and sleep in a lot. I have 8 AM water aerobics MWF in a couple of months, so I'll need to change that habit, but it's really hard to get up when there's nothing to do. There's no weekly homework, hardly any reading to do (and only for one class, to be honest; my lit prof doesn't really expect us to read beforehand, which is just as well because I don't like any of the assigned works and we read them out loud in class anyway), and no regularity to my schedule. Last spring was very structured. MWF, I ate in saga with my fellow ochem students, went to ochem, sat in the same seat next to the same every day, ate a piece of gum, spat it into the same garbage can on the same route to german, sat in the same seat every day next to the same people, went up the stairs to writing, sat in as close to the same seat as possible, next to pretty much the same people, had another piece of gum to keep myself awake, then went and got a cheese and tomato six-inch sub on italian herbed bread with olives and mayo in the cafe-thing, then kind of knocked around and did homework and stuff for the rest of the day, sometimes eating dinner in saga, with karate in the evening. TTh, I had a raspberry scone and a small white chocolate mocha for breakfast before arthurian lit, then went either to work or to lab, ate lunch (usually the sandwich described above), did homework, and probably ate dinner in saga. Weekends I went to church and winco and/or walmart. It's a testament to how regular my life was that I can remember exact details seven months later.
Now, I have to write down details of my day to remember what I did. I wake up as late as possible, and haven't gone to bed before 1 AM since time immemorial. When people ask what I did over the weekend, I have to think about it for a really long time.
I'm looking forward to getting a new routine, because eternal vacation isn't all it's cracked up to be.

On monday and tuesday, I didn't do anything of note. On wednesday, however, TWO things happened. First, the university and possibly public transportation had a strike, so I didn't have my history seminar. I'm a little bitter that they went and picked 30 november for the strike. 1 December is just as good of a day to strike. Plus, it would have got me out of my 9-5 class day... Actually, general consensus in the flat was that striking for pensions is kind of a stupid move right now, give the economic state of... everywhere. Would you rather have a pension or a job? This surprised me, frankly, since my flatmates all seem to be more liberal than me. Perhaps as a break from politics, we had english night. Josie made shepherd's pie, which I didn't eat because its base is "mince" (ground beef), and Adam masterminded 'bangers and mash' which is british for sausages and mashed potatoes. We also had peas. Felicity and I had vegetarian, um, 'bangers'. I keep forgetting that I'm not the only vegetarian at our communal dinners now, but I'll get used to it just in time to go live in a house of carnivores. Yay!

Thursday turned out better than I expected, other than accidentally sleeping very late because I couldn't fall asleep until very early. This may be due to my erratic sleep cycle. Sleeping in until after noon the day before was not my best idea. After miraculously finishing the practical lab work very quickly because I was unusually on top of things (I'm never on top of things in lab), we ended up analysing the GC data from last week, which took forever, but the software was incredibly similar to the software that whitworth uses for NMR spectra, which I used almost once a week last year, yay ochem. I think I may have restored some good will between the impossible little frenchman and myself by totally pwning everyone else in that area. Much to my surprise, I'm becoming rather good at the computer aspect of chemistry. Too bad they kept making us do hand graphs for everything else, and this practical isn't even assessed. Grumble.

Friday I made three trips to the post office to mail a package. I ended up mailing two, because one kept being too heavy and potentially costing three times as much as a package weighing 100 grams less. I also went to see Dream House with Freya (my pakistani-british friend from biochem), which I spoiled for myself before going because I really am not that big a fan of movies that bill themselves as "suspense/thriller". It was very good, though, and I didn't really need to spoil it.

Saturday was paintball! Jessi's friend who is now also my friend Keri organised a trip to newcastle's Delta Force paintball course. It was really great, and I had a really good time other than the bit at the end where my team decided that moving forward was not the best option and ended up lurking behind bunkers for the whole ten minutes while the other team stormed our castle in about five minutes and I was a sore loser. I recovered and still recall the whole experience very fondly; just don't put me on a team with a group of people including someone who looks like kim jong il. Yeah, blame the eastern asians. It's funny how much the non-oriental aisans dislike the ones further east, and I've had to amend my definition of "asian" from "formerly called oriental, before that wasn't politically correct" to "everyone who's from the continent of asia" and this causes some paradigm problems. Say "asian" and I think china, and not much west of that. I've got a pakistani friend who describes herself as asian, and I'm sitting there thinking of oriental instead of vaguely arabic. Anyway. I made friends with more internationals: Ramin (Azerbaijan), Hazma (Turkey/Germany), Vincent (France), Jenna (Germany, possibly Turkey), and Ricky (India). Again, my knowledge of everywhere except the western hemisphere plus a small amount of european history and eastern asian cuisine types (I can generally identify the american versions of generic chinese (I don't do regions), japanese, korean, thai, indian, and possibly vietnamese foods) was highlighted. What's the official language of azerbaijan, anyway? At least I've heard of the country, and kind of almost know where it is, so I guess it could have been worse.
I've got some annoying little bruises on my left hand and wrist, my merrills will take some tlc and a lot of water to recover from the mud, and I slept for almost five hours after getting back. In the grand scheme of things, I consider this a success.

Oh, and on monday 5 december I successfully made white sauce without any measuring spoons or cups and had a fairly delicious dinner of spaghetti, garlicky white sauce, and broccoli. For the win!

Thanksgiving — Thursday 24 November

Thanksgiving, or Thursday the 24th of November as far as england is concerned, was awaited by the whole flat with great anticipation. We'd been planning american night/thanksgiving for about a month, and finally bought everything for it on... thursday afternoon. I was in class. We found a turkey on wednesday, but no one really wanted it, given that two out of the three americans involved in planning were vegetarians. So Jessi pushed for a chicken, which Conor took responsibility for while asking Josie about every step of the process.
I made my mom's macaroni and cheese, with some confusion as to how much anything I should use. We had to go to aldi to get a baking tin (casserole dish) to put it in because we only have one big one, and the chicken went in that. It ended up being a blue silicon dish, which was distressingly floppy.
What I remember of the preparation went like this:
"Is this enough vegetable broth?" "No, make a little more."
"Where's the can opener?"
"I need the mixed herbs." (That happened a lot. We in flat one believe in mixed herbs.)
"Hey, I'm out of milk. Can I use anyone's?" "Not mine, it's little! Use his, he's got loads."
"I put the stuffing where in the chicken?!"
"There are granules in the gravy!"
"This looks suspicious." "Taste it, it's good." "Hey, it IS! Hey, try this!"
"What- what are you doing! Don't eat it yet, we're not ready!" "Hey, snitching is a thanksgiving tradition. And no forks, either." "Yeah, our hands are clean." "Says you." "It doesn't matter! It's a tradition!"

Yup. No one used a recipe, and, in spite of the slapdash planning, everything turned out really well. All the food had its flaws, but it didn't matter. It was basically american thanksgiving preparation without the politics. So... Wow, better.
In all honesty, though, it was everything thanksgiving should have been. It was being with the people that I love and eating food. Lots of food. And even if the potatoes were lumpy (saga-style) and the gravy had a few granules left in it, and the stuffing had a few dry spots, and the green bean casserole was made with smashed up funions instead of crispy onions, and the macaroni was a little undercooked... It didn't matter. We were all together, eating, being friends, and having a good time even if the rest of the day was less than stellar.
I didn't take any pictures, and the ones that did get taken are mostly of people being excited about food. For most of them, you kind of had to be there.

We took a picture that is apparently classic, but I can't remember having seen it before. I think it's a rockwell.
Clockwise from the top: Adam (sort of behind Josie), Josie, Lauren, me (that beer isn't mine, in case you wondered), Conor took the picture, Jessi, Felicity.

I believe this is the original.

The food:

From left: chicken (held), green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese.

Jessi Insulting People (at a football match and the Durham Lumiere Festival) — Saturday 19 November

The title was inspired by this video:

I started off my day by printing the e-ticket for the football match, which I got in october. After something of a debacle with the people handing out the real tickets, due to our large and unwieldy group of nine (it took about three counts for them to get all of us), we got our real tickets and split up into normally sized groups. I stuck with Jessi, since I know her, and she stuck with Felicity, who tends to act like she knows what she's doing. It was her idea to storm the castle, by the way. I made a new friend in Lauren from australia, who stuck with us for the rest of the day.
We took the bus to the Stadium of Light, the brand new pretty football stadium that sunderland just built. We all got excited and Jessi took a lot of pictures. I took one, too.

Outside the stadium.

 When we couldn't find the turnstiles listed on our tickets, Jessi performed her first insult of the day by accident. She has this habit, which is starting to get on my nerves (1. w-curve. I should be getting fed up with everything pretty soon, not just the university itself. 2. We are not the most compatible of people. It could be way worse, but it could definitely be better. I refer you to the end of the edinburgh post. This is not a repeat of the rant.) of saying "for God's sakes!" in this really angry tone when she's confused, frustrated, or just angry, and even when she's in a good mood. In any case, the numbering system for the turnstiles is pretty weird. She vocalised this by asking if they couldn't count here, "for God's sakes!" when we were standing right behind a stadium worker.
Oops. He laughed it off, but it wasn't the best foot to start off on.
Getting in was exciting, followed by being disappointing. We were over an hour early, due to intelligence that the stadium would be bedlam, but no one was there. Our search for food led us to "food kiosks" that sold no chips (in the french fry sense of the word) at all. We reflected that perhaps we ought to have gotten food beforehand. I would just like to say that gesa stadium's concessions are way better than the stadium of light's. I suspect that it's becuase of the fact that SoL is still recovering from being hideously expensive, but I feel that chips would be a good start.
We waited forever for the match to start, and I forget how we amused ourselves. Our seats were up in nowhere, but we still had a pretty good view of the field.
As a group, which included Flo and Lisa and a few other germans as well as some people that some people know, you know, we lost interest pretty quickly. Flo and Jürgen, who sat on opposite ends of the "lauren felicity jessi me" group, kept yelling over us in german. Jessi later explained that they'd been commenting on how much better they were at football than the teams. Unsurprising, somehow. Felicity instituted a pretend drinking game to keep herself busy: drink every time people clap when we don't know why, every time someone falls, and twice when random people come onto the field. She lost count pretty quickly.

Way up in nowhere seats.

Mascots. I think they're the black cats or something.

Players coming out onto the field

The asian (not sure whether japanese or korean) who kept being in the way.

Getting ready to kick off...

And kicked off.

 As halftime approached, we made plans to outside to the food vendors we saw, eat, and come back in. We made extra sure we had our tickets, and asked a stadium worker if we could go outside and come back in.
No.
Okay... we tried another guy.
No.
Hmm. We tried the guy at the door.
No.
Jessi tried another tactic: reasoning. She's not very good at accepting defeat. Unfortunately, she started off on a very, very bad foot. It was more of an elbow as far as feet go. She asked if we couldn't go outside, say to get food or something, and then come back in? I mean, what if someone forgot something in their car?
If I learned one thing from concessions work, it's that herds of children with change are the worst. But I also learned that most of a stadium's income is concessions. Gesa stadium doesn't allow outside food for this reason. I'm actually not sure if you're allowed to go out and come back in, now that I think about it.
We knew, as soon as she mentioned food, that the answer would be no, even if it could have been yes. Which it couldn't have been; they use a turnstile that scans ticket barcodes, so they can't really just flip a switch, I'm thinking.
We returned to the game rather peevishly. Something exciting happened while we were in the entryway to our seating area, but the score was still 0-0 when we got in. When the game went into overtime, we all decided to head out, even if there was no way we'd beat any crowds at all.

Crowds.

More crowds.

We actually ended up walking all the way back to clanny, hungry and cold, but happily planning dinner and Durham, which would involve being all bundled up in winter clothes and real gloves and scarves and hats and warm socks. Oh, yeah. It was going to be friggin' sweet. And warm.

Durham's Lumiere festival (click here for much better pictures) was awesome. The group ended up being Lauren, Felicity, Adam, Jessi, and me. We took a cab, deciding against a return booking because we weren't sure when we'd want to head back (depending on how awesome or terrible it was), but we were pretty confident about our ability to not spend too much money on fare.
When we got there, we decided that maybe we should have, you know, looked more closely at the website before getting there. We had no idea where to go or what there was to see; we'd kind of expected to just follow people around until we saw all the cool stuff.

Following people. Lots of them.

Giant blue glowing thing!

That statue is there all the time. It was there when Jessi and I went to Durham, at least.

Snowglobe!

We had acquired a pamphlet with a map of all the cool stuff, and were headed for the rainbow bridge and lit-up cathedral when we were informed repeatedly that we couldn't go the way we were heading; we would need to turn around and go over the bridge from hell, which we had already crossed and deemed not fun. I say repeatedly because we stopped where we were standing when he first said that we couldn't go, which was just past where he was standing, and tried to deliberate. Taking our complete and total lack of motion for insurrection, he told us that we couldn't go that way for our safety five or six times in about a minute. And he wasn't just talking to the people behind us, he was looking straight at us. As a rule, I felt bad for the event security/police (not sure if one, other, or both), who had to stand there all night and repeat themselves to over-excited and occasionally belligerent crowds over and over and over, but this guy was less than informative. Okay, first in our minds was the huge, mob-like crowd on that bridge. That was not fun, and I, at least, got a lot of elbows to the shoulder. So, we looped around. Upon reaching the entrance of the rainbow bridge, which had acquired something of a mythical status in our minds (this thing was turning into the friggin' bifröst), we were informed by a portly security/police man that the whole thing was one-way.
Oh. That would have been good to know. Jessi performed her third insult of the day by saying "Are you f***ing kidding me?" loudly and angrily as soon as he said that we couldn't go across (in her defence, we had been walking for a while). He replied that he was not "f***ing kidding" (which made me feel kind of bad for him; poor guy had probably been dealing with this sort of thing for two days already), which did not bode well for our trip across. Way to endear yourself to the security guard so that he doesn't think that we're going to sneak around him.
The entrance to the bifröst was guarded by two security/police men; one of them was the portly one that Jessi insulted. The skinny one kept vanishing. It is perhaps for this reason that we decided that we could sneak past him, no problem; we also saw several people doing the same thing. We stood in a little huddle for a few minutes, waiting for the right time. Finally, Jessi made her move. He saw her, and made a little "Oi!" noise, but she was actually running by this point, and he probably decided that one person was better than leaving the entrance and having all of us get across. We all got across anyway, as soon as his back was turned all the way. My camera didn't really capture all the awesome, but it was awesome.

This was the brochure picture. It didn't quite look like this, but it was still awesome. 

So pretty...

So close...

Even closer!

On the bridge! We win!

The awesome was increased by Felicity's immense sense of self-satisfaction at our successful rebellion; this was increased every time she noticed that we were going against the crowd.
We saw a bunch of human figures (made out of some kind of white stuff) suspended above the street, and took pictures of them in between being kept out of various attractions, like the "ring of FIRE! thing that we glimpsed (jessi made it past one guard but was repulsed by a second while the rest of us were stopped by the first), and the lit-up cathedral.

First

This guy was sitting down.

I think this one was floating down on his back.

Lady.

Sitting on top of a building

Flying

Zooming down the street, if he'd been moving.

We also saw this lovely addition to the festival.

This one was my favourite.

The cathedral was really, really cool. Unfortunately, my camera didn't take any good pictures (the earlier link for much better pictures has some really nice ones).

I cranked the light fill all the way up. The cathedral is not usually red.

Jessi got in her fourth insult by saying that the guy in the white hat was ruining her picture, but he heard and turned around. It's kind of true; the white really stands out in the picture.
After the show, we decided not to go through the cathedral because of the really impressive queue. We ended up going back around through the cathedral yard to stand in line because the rings of fire were that way.
There was a cool display, which Jessi declared to be "just like Harry Potter!" and it was pretty magical. They had suspended candles that were in white shirts all through the nave, and there was a guy making eerie, monk-y music all by himself with a lot of microphones and a guitar.

The pictures make them look even more mysterious and floaty.

It was really cool sitting in the middle of this. Even with hundreds of people crowding around, it was oddly peaceful and quiet.

From below

I don't know why they used shirts.

One man monk choir

After taking a while to sit, rest our feet, take pictures, and admire the lights, we set out for the rings of fire.
We found them.

We hadn't seen this before. It was in the courtyard of the cathedral.

A fire fountain?

Fire! It was everywhere.

We decided to look for what appeared to be a lit-up dance floor, but ended up going to a completely different display. On the way, we saw this:

We felt that this should stay up all the time.

The display where we ended was cool too, and there's a picture on someone else's camera of me looking incorporeal. Mine was out of memory.
After this, we were hungry, so we looked for a pub with little luck. We saw this on the way, and figured that we should have seen this one before the everything will be alright one.

"the future will be confusing"
This was accompanied by a mixed-up alphabet. We don't know why.

We also saw this pretty waterfall thing on the way to food:

I've heard it described as the waterfall fountain. It's off a bridge, I think.

The one we did find with seats available only had toasties (like grilled sandwiches, I think), and they didn't have those, either. We moved on to a takeaway pizza place, where we all got the same pizza (margarita, or cheese) by accident. After this, we decided to look for a van cab (since they're the only ones that will seat five). Jessi wanted to call the one we took to get to Durham, but we figured we could find one that was only a few pounds more expensive. We ended up paying a lot more than we should haveThis was a cause of bitterness that I will gloss over, because the night was really awesome and we really did have a lot of fun.
After all, we crossed the bifröst! Without permission! And we stormed a castle yesterday. We're unstoppable.

A long week of skipping class and getting stuff done, and Northumberland — Weekend to Friday 18 November

First off, I would like to apologise for the parenthetical abuses on Thursday. I'd also like to apologise for the soul-killing that happened Thursday. I just kind of need to get this off my chest, because I'm terrible at telling stories out loud and I don't want to foist this on my flatmates. There are pictures of Northumberland at the end! Hang on until Friday!

This weekend all I did was sleep. I did take a walk in the fog, but that was fairly uneventful except for the part where I didn’t know where I was. Not to worry, I figured out where I was and only ambled down one dead end before I finally got back to the road with the cemetery. 

Anyway. Monday, I skipped english literature in favour of writing my assignment, and I got to 1200 words that night because of it. Apparently nothing happened at all in lecture, so all I regret is the possibility that my prof might ask why I skipped. Not because I feel guilty about skipping, but because she'll try to make me feel guilty about not having started my paper until approximately three days before it was due. She is of the opinion that she gives us a lot of useful information in an awesome way that we can really use on our assignments (not that useful, not that awesome, and there was nothing AT ALL on the topic that I picked), and she would sound so offended if she thought that I thought that the two months she gave us wasn't enough time. Okay, we read for my topic about two weeks before it was due, but okay, sure. That was more than enough time. And I would end up agreeing that her module is, like, the best thing ever when in fact it's the most horribly structured literature class I've ever taken. I feel like there were better authors during the seventeen hundreds. I'm sure of it. There had to have been. 

Tuesday I skipped history to work on the lit assignment. I got a late start because I stayed up late the night before trying to write, but I had a hard time getting many more words in, anyway. I was also on an apple cider craving, and I haven’t really seen it here. I need to check again, but I think I’m down to my last few packets, and I’m saving them for the next assignment and my history assignment. 

Wednesday, I agreed to meet Freya, the girl with whom I did extensive work on our last lab report. Before that, I read for my history seminar, went to my history seminar, and finished my essay. Win! I think the main problem was that there simply wasn’t enough to say about the criminals portrayed in the play that was related to a thesis that I could write down. When we finally started working on the lab report, it went slow. Neither of us really cares that much about electrophoresis (I usually like it, but nothing much is interesting in this class), and the results were bad, and I, at least, didn’t actually attend the lecture in which we may have learned how to interpret them. I'm not sure if that lecture even existed; the only slides up on Sunspace were ones from the seminar part. Again, there wasn't that much to say.

Quickly, before I get into Thursday, I need to draw attention to the fact that I really, really do like biochemistry. It freaks me out sometimes, like when I get oddly claustrophobic thinking about how tiny biological molecules are, and the fact that they are in an aqueous environment, so how small are water molecules, which have air dissolved amongst them... How big are the spaces between molecules, and what is in that space? How many tiny voids are in a glass of water... Are in me?

At that point, I usually have to take a massive deep breath because I realise I haven't been breathing. 

An xkcd comic that just came out really sums me up. I'm just posting the part relevant to me, but you can click the link at the beginning of the sentence to see the whole thing. It's about the type of map that people like based on what they're like, and the Peirce Quincuncial is really my thing.

No, seriously, I really love looking at hands. They are incredibly cool. To wrap this up, I really do love biochemistry. Please, please, do not take Thursday as me hating biochemistry. And there are pictures after, I promise. You can even skip Thursday, as I wish I had been able to do, and I won't care.

Thursday I finished up the lab report in the nick of time after skipping both lecture and seminar. Again. I'm really, really going to go to both next week. Really. At least this week, there was a greater purpose than sleeping in... After finishing, I went to lab, which was billed as a revision session (revision equals studying and/or reviewing here, something that I just got recently). I had high hopes of being able to leave early after being left pretty much to my own devices for a while and showing that I knew what I was doing, as happened last time we had a workshop instead of lab. Distressingly, this was not the case. Instead of Monica, the condescending lecturer who says "lineweaver" as if there's an extra R (linearweaver), we had the impossible little frenchman. I almost hope he reads this, because I think it would really clear the air between us. Unfortunately, he still has to grade two more lab reports and my final, so hopefully he never sees this. To put this in a small amount of perspective, I'm writing this after having an awesome day Friday. The post gets better, and I'm not really bitter and hateful.

Fact: I was never awfully fond of him. Initially, his inability to really express himself in english put a damper on the possibility of me liking him as a lecturer, and his subsequent displays of incompetence in understanding what anyone else is saying clinched a vague sense of dislike towards him. Normally, I can overlook this and we got along pretty well. My lack of experience with this university's procedures and previous classes seemed to put him off a little, but he was generally reasonable. Today, though, he was in a rotten mood. He snapped at everyone who came in late, which he doesn't do when it's a proper lab and time actually matters, and was generally irate and condescending. When he collected our lab reports, he grumbled over my lack of staple. A whole one lab report of mine has been stapled, and that was done by the library staff when we did that weird remote turn-in thing. I put my name on every page, and it's never been a problem before. I'm also kind of trying this thing where I don't spend money, so I haven't bought a stapler that I will just have to leave here because I already have one in my desk in Pasco. I was in a pretty good mood, and commented that I didn't have a stapler. 

"Buy one." Instantly, I was on the offensive. I went from a little nervous about how short my report was to stiff and speechless with rage in about a heartbeat. It was like that time in high school when I was literally shaking with fury when some smug little middle schooler punk insulted a friend who was doing something right. I don't usually get the urge to "slap that smug little look off your (demi-or-straight up-swearword) face". In fact, I think this has happened about twice in my whole life now (in real life; that scene in King Arthur where the bishop tells Arthur to bring his men home if he wants them to get their freedom doesn't really count because it was designed to do that to people; I looked for a video clip on youtube but couldn't find it). Twenty one years is kind of a long period of time to have something happen only twice. I don't really know why the impossible little frenchman brought this out in me today over something as stupid as a stapler. I know I respond poorly to insult and the "wrong" tone of voice, and, on occasion, an irate eyebrow twitch in my direction, but I can't help myself when it sneaks up on me. I'm not proud.

I quickly determined that I was unlikely to get out early because the impossible frenchman explains in great detail every single aspect of some questions (he actually went into the properties of light when explaining spectroscopy, using terrible metaphors and analogies. It was worse than Dr. Gårdestig the swedish physics professor; he started off with a random green beach to talk about waves. I still don't know where the beach came into it. His accent made it slightly hilarious (because the long e sound gets kind of turned into a short i sound, haha, he said a dirty word), but not funny enough to excuse the fact that this isn't helping anyone.) while skipping over others completely. One of the questions involved an equation that we'd never seen before, which was... messed up. Unless they're handing out an equations sheet, I don't want to see this nonsense on an exam. We haven't used this ever before, so don't put it on the exam. kthnxbai. 

He'd been slipping in composure throughout the slightly too long time that we were given to work on select questions, but he lost it about two questions in. Two guys didn't seem to be paying attention (was anyone?) to his oddly detailed and unhelpful explanation, so he "asked" if they wanted to leave. Of course they wanted to leave. Everyone did. We'd all been plotting it every time he walked out of the room, which he did quite a lot. In any case, the atmosphere in the room was awkward and chilly as Adam (not from my flat) and Jedward walked out rather triumphantly (although they still looked a little embarrassed; getting kicked out of class gets kind of old after grade school). This didn't stop Freya, who was giving me a ride home, from trying to talk to the girls at the end of the bench. Things got more and more awkward as the class dragged on. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone. War was being declared on the impossible frenchman, who should have followed his country's historical precedent and surrendered. I did get a hint on how enzymes work, although I need to look that up sometime, but that was all that I gained from the class. That, and a growing sense of a firm dislike for the impossible frenchman, since the incredible rage and desire to actually inflict harm on someone else subsided pretty quickly. No more vague irritation (he really is the worst at explaining anything at all, and never seems to get when someone has decided that the topic would be best pursued with someone —anyone— else. All he does then is ask repeatedly "Do you understand" (left the question mark off on purpose; he doesn't really use it) until you give up on noncommittal grunting because you hate to lie and finally say "YES! I understand, and I really have to go now, I'm late for something, anything, please let me leave now." Sorry about the long parenthetical; I'll just end the "No more vague irritation" sentence now.). 

Another thing. Freya is the type of person who will interrupt boldly as a self-preservation and diversionary tactic. If she's bored, she just starts talking, whether over the person who's talking to her or to a person who's talking to someone else. She tried to save me from the frenchman last week when I was trying to figure out why I couldn't take an exam early, but nothing stops him when he's on a roll. In light of this, it's not surprising that she gave up listening to the frenchman in favour of talking to the girls at the end of the bench, although I was, at the time, a little surprised because the frenchman had just cracked down on Adam and Jedward talking. This is when I really started avoiding eye contact with everyone. I'm pretty passive aggressive; I'd have stayed to the end of the class no matter how irritating his voice was. Besides, he had already been short with me regarding the staples (and it still makes me angry a day later, wow), and I didn't want to make things worse, especially after I had almost inadvertently insulted his teaching style in a lab report and gotten a 0 on that particular section. It wasn't that bad, and the instructions really were scattered. How else was I supposed to explain the fact that our enzyme was probably cold because he just explained here and there that you were supposed to warm it up for a bit, and my lab partner for the day didn't hear it because she was already at the front getting the enzyme off the ice? It's not my fault that he's the worst at explaining. However, I was beginning to think that the animosity was not one sided, and that, like my former podmate hating me over the hair in the shower, he hated me for the lack of staples. I didn't want to make things worse, but it might have been too late. Frankly, I get the sneaky suspicion that he doesn't like any of us. Fact: no one in the class likes him, so it's unsurprising that he'd pick up on the low-level animosity at some point. We've tested this in karate, and multiple people directing emotion at someone does tend to affect the target. I was, in any case, on damage control, trying to make as few enemies as possible.

Freya, however, was going nuts. She hadn't eaten much all day, preferring to sleep over eating breakfast, and, as mood and gastrointestinal happiness levels are related, she was in a pretty foul mood. When the frenchman insisted on a break over the class's protestations that we'd rather power through the very last question and then be done, we made an attempt to sneak out. I do say we, because I wanted my ride and I'd already put my bag with my computer in her car. Impossible frenchman kept coming back into the room, though, and he asked Freya if she was going somewhere. 

I sensed danger, and kept my head down. Freya was all the way gone, though. She was hungry, she was cranky, she was tired, and she was leaving. And my bag was in her car, so I was leaving when she left. 

She replied that she was leaving, yes. She said something about her head and started around the frenchman, who had accosted her on his way in and her way out. I didn't see what he did, but I hope he didn't turn around when I hurried out the door behind Freya. I'm still a little nervous about how this will affect my grades. We signed the register, though, and he marked us down on some sort of personal register, so I don't think I can be counted as absent from lab. I'll be needing to keep my head down, though. No more skipping lectures, and I really need to study up on biochemistry stuff that will be on the exam in spite of never being in a lecture. Yes, I'm bitter about that. I'm trying not to be bitter at people, because I know myself, but I can be bitter about poorly constructed exams.

Friday! Friday! No more Thursday! If you skipped Thursday (and especially if you didn't), PICTURES!

Adam (from my flat, not the one who got kicked out of lab) had promised a week ago to take a few of us (limited by car space) to Northumberland. In the end, it was just Jessi, Felicity (whitworth senior art major from Clarkston, WA who lives next door who I had never even seen before coming to Sunderland), and me. 

We went through a tunnel under a river. Jessi saw a van coming straight at us on a skinny road and reacted by yelling "CAR! big!" This became something of a meme for us; why did she try to describe it? "Car! Big! Green!" "Car! Big! ...Uh, it has a white top!" (this was followed by "I was panicking even more because I couldn't tell if it was blue or white!"). Jessi was a pretty good sport about it. 

We picked up Adam's dog Lilligan (it always sounds like he's saying "Lillian") on the way to a castle with a beach. She's a jack russell terrier, which Adam had mentioned in his attempts to describe how hyper she gets, but she's also long-haired, which Adam didn't mention. I was expecting a dog that looked like wishbone, but she looks nothing like that unless she's wet. 

She does get very hyper. Adam's descriptions were a little bit over-the-top, but I think that he's trying to get himself out of the centre of discussion. Two of our favourite topics as a flat are Adam's dog and Adam's mum, one of whom he is very fond and one of whom he is rather embarrassed. I think he's out of danger from demands that we meet his mum thanks to introducing us to his dog. I think that it's because he's the only one of us whose dog and family are in driving range. Most of us feel that his mum would be pretty cool to meet, but Adam steadfastly refuses to accept this. This conversation regarding Adam's imitation of Lilligan happened, however, that really highlighted his feelings on his mum: 

Jessi: "It was hilarious!"

Adam: "I don't remember this at all."

Me: "You were trying to demonstrate how terrifying she is." 

Adam: "Are we talking about my mum now?"

Felicity: "I am so glad that that segue just happened." 

After getting Lilligan, we headed for the coast and castle Bamburgh, which took a surprisingly long time. When we finally got there, though, it was well worth it.

This is the Bamburgh castle.

There were a whole bunch of island-y things out in the North Sea. We never really figured out what was on them, except probably lots of birds.

The sky was really pretty, but my camera doesn't like doing cool sky pictures.

I had some striking memories of sand traps at golf courses as we tried to find the beach.

It was quite imposing.

Lilligan. She was moving pretty fast.

Pretty sky, pretty landscape.

Gorgeous sky, nice silhouette 

Beach! Finally... 

Lilligan had this thing where she would set her stick down, decide that it was buried, and start digging. The problem with this was that she kind of went backwards with the force of her digging.

It was a very clean beach. 

Imposing castle silhouette! And Adam's head in the front left corner there.

We all wrote our names in the sand and made fun of Adam's handwriting.

Jessi had fun with the dog.

Jessi was probably more fun to watch than the dog, actually.

That backwards digging thing again.

And the stick was in a tide puddle.

More castle silhouette!

We decided to storm the castle, but felt that this wasn't the best way to go.

Adam, Jessi, Felicity in front of Bamburgh village

Not storming on this side, either.

We saw a secret staircase and decided to climb it.

See that dark slit-like thing on the wall? That's where the stairs ended. There's a gate and a lot of pigeon poo in there.

I'm not sure why it has a fence around it, but it's a cool rock...

I think we tried to hop this part of the fence. We failed.

Behind the gates? Rubbish bins. Such a fancy enclosure...

In spite of our valiant attempts to scale fences and sneakily climb likely-looking walls, all the gates were locked and all the walls were either impossible for us to climb or were guarded by sneaky piles of grass clippings. After we finally gave up due to not wanting to get any more nature all over us, Jessi drove Adam's car for a while. We were doing pretty well until Adam yelled that she was turning into the wrong lane while she was turning (she wasn't), but she recovered pretty well. Felicity and I didn't get to drive because we don't know how to drive manuals. After dropping Lilligan back with Adam's sister, we went and had dinner at the pub in his hometown. The food was kind of weird, but we experienced some cultural things, like "pie" means "food with puff pastry set on top" and custard is something you pour over your food. Felicity also gave Adam some tips on how to pick up girls with his accent while he's in Maryland.

When we got home, this greeted us.

"Oh, and there's a huge spider there, if you haven't seen it."

I thought Adam was being mean to Jessi, who was up on top of the chairs on the other side of the room by the time he finished saying "spider", but it really was there.

Hence. Jessi hates spiders.

Don't worry, I killed it. Tomorrow we're going to a football match, so I'll have a new post for that.