It's a little quiet, crank your speakers for the full effect of how I felt.
Oh, I gave a presentation wednesday that wasn't too bad. I wasn't very pleased with the end result. I was having a hard time coherently connecting the primary source to the secondary sources while making the slides, but I thought I did rather well in the end. My professor asked me some questions that I knew the answers to, and no one had that glassy, "this doesn't make sense and I can't even understand her accent" look, which was encouraging.Over the course of the week, I worked on that lab report (grumble), made up the presentation, got serious about my english lit essay, and slept in too much. I also started NaNoWriMo, the "write a novel in november" thing that I keep hearing about. The idea is to write 1667 words per day to get 50000 words in 30 days. I'm slightly addicted to updating my word count. I take my computer everywhere in hopes of being able to work on the story in my free time, since I'm still in the euphoric phase that I get at the start of anything. I'm also trying to build a buffer for when I have to do, you know, schoolwork.
I also got my first lab report back, and, well, I passed. Sort of. "Passing" is above a 39% (holy cow) and I got a 41%, so by my standards, I failed miserably. By comparing my grade to those of the other people at my lab bench (I've described some of them before; Adam and Jedward were the only two from my "usual" group), I pwned that assignment. I was the only one who passed, but I think they may have been kind to me on account of my internationalness. They won't go so easy on my second report, which was better anyway. I think it was better, at least; I can't actually remember what it was.
Hmm. It's the past now; I never look back. (ha)
I can't remember what day it was that I walked the accidentally long way back from the university. I think it might have been wednesday, but I'm not sure. I wished I'd taken my camera, because I don't have the motivation to take another random walk, and the area was starting to look a little sketchy. Not the area that I headed into so much; it was pretty residential. The street I ended up on runs parallel to Chester Road, which I have documented photographically in the past. I know this now, but I wasn't sure where exactly I was at the time. While it was nice, I was approaching a hill and had been walking for long enough, so I turned down a street that should take me over to Chester. It did, but not before making me afraid that I might have to bludgeon someone with my laptop. Relax, Mom and Dad, I keed. First, I didn't actually see anyone that looked suspicious. Second, I haven't seen anyone that looks that suspicious in Sunderland to date. I think it's the narrow roads and slightly rundown nature of most houses here. I saw a million "To Let" and "For Sale" signs in cute little houses, but I refused to let them influence me. (sigh)
On the weekend, I went to the Sunderland city library down the street to see if they had any books I could use for my lit paper.
I was disappointed. They might have a very small section on 18th century literature, but they mostly have modern, pop culture stuff.
I also got a very sneaky bottle of water that turned out to be flavoured. I was incredibly disappointed, and I think Jessi thought I was being irrationally so. Greggs has normal water and flavoured water, and while the bottles have some differences (like the flavoured one is pink, as Jessi pointed out), there are pink bottles of normal water in other stores (as I didn't point out because it really was my fault for not checking the label). I suddenly understood how the guys in the junior english class to which Meagan Bradshaw brought peppermint ice cream (which was delicious) were so offended by the fact that it wasn't fruit-flavoured. Sure, Meagan told everyone beforehand that it was peppermint, but they assumed that it was fruit or bubblegum and were extremely vocal in their disapproval of the gross deception.
That was how I felt. Imagine, expecting nice cold water and getting overly sweet raspberry cranberry water. Blech.
Sunday was Guy Fawkes Day, named for the main conspirator in the Gunpowder Treason Plot that attempted to blow up Parliament way back when. They were executed horribly either on the fifth of november or were caught on the fifth of november (remember remember the fifth of november) and Fawkes was burned in effigy every fifth of november for quite a few years/decades/centuries afterwards. In practice, it's like the fourth of july. Lots of fireworks, time spent with family, some old history revived, and fireworks. They also do a lot of bonfires. We didn't do much for bonfire night, since the place that had a fire was reported to be boring, so we stayed in and played with the Clanny Cat.
Also this weekend, I was finally able to get onto WhitNet and pick out the classes I want to register for, which was ridiculously exciting. All the classes I need and want fit into the same schedule! Yes! That's never happened before!
Monday, I helped one of my lab-mates with her graphs. I was starting to feel a bit used (how did you get this far in school if you can't even make a graph?!) until I found out that she has a lot of responsibility and stress at home in addition to being in one of the more intense majors work-wise. I figure that I can add a small amount of pedantry to my life to be nice. She did assure me that flapjacks are easy to make; all I need to do is look into "golden syrup", which I suspect to be closely enough related to corn syrup that I'm not worried. The one that I had today kind of tasted like honey, so I think the recipe is pretty flexible.
Now I'm blogging instead of working on my thesis. I'd like to thank everyone who reads my blog for giving me a reason to avoid my homework.
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