Christmas; Joy and Sadness — Tuesday 13 December to Saturday 17 December

So, on Tuesday I found out that I had my history exam a month earlier than expected, and most of my day was consumed by revising (studying) for that off the back of the how-to-revise lecture (luckily, I had already procured and wrapped my secret santa present). It was a two-question essay exam, so I needed to look up some basics on three or four topics and the details on some primary sources (historical documents we've looked at in class) so that I would be prepared for anything the exam threw at me. For a study break, I made crepes in a wok that I bought against the possibility that all the good skillets would be gone. I felt pretty good about the wok: it only cost £2, doesn't burn the crepes, and only tilts a little bit when empty (unlike the other skillets that I got for £2, which tip over when empty because the pan is lighter than the handle). I accidentally stayed up late, but I managed to wake up on time to make the 10 AM exam time on Wednesday.

My professor, however, missed her metro and was 10 minutes late, which sent me into a pre-exam panic. I always have these panics, but this one was forestalled by the fact that I didn't know about it until the day before. The main topics that my brain freaks out about are:
1. Is it really today?
2. Am I in the right room?
3. Was it really scheduled for this time?
4. Oh, God, I should have checked my email before I came!
Usually, my freakouts are ended by the presence of the other students and/or the proctor of the exam being in the room at the time that I show up. This time, I was the only student in the room, and the proctor wasn't there.
PANIC!
Fortunately, she showed up and I sat the exam with no panicky blank stare moments.
After this, I prepared for Christmas night. I snuck my present downstairs, and waited around for Adam to come and take Josie and I shopping for food.
He took a while.
We finally got to Asda and had a great time navigating the awkward store set-up with crazed christmas shoppers filling the aisles.
When we got home with £70 of loot, Josie hurriedly put the 3 kg (~6 lb) pork roast with a thick layer of crackling fat into the oven, since it was going to take 3 hours to cook and it was almost 17:00. Bad Adam. Then we all kind of had to knock around for a few hours until the squash, yams/sweet potatoes, and potatoes were ready to go in, and I had to wait until 10 minutes before everything was done to heat up the quorn lamb things that I got for Felicity and myself.
Before Felicity came over, we had the gift exchange. Here's a picture of all the presents looking very nice around the £5 tree:

Josie got the redeem code for the X-Factor winner's single on iTunes from Conor, Conor got a Daft Punk CD from Flo, I got a book and a "Tea Deck" of cards with info about tea from Jessi, Adam got a bunch of CDs that Josie thought he would like as well the Coldplay album with his new favourite song on it, Jessi got a bright, fluffy scarf and irish coffee from me, and Flo got an "insult-a-day" calendar from Adam. I'd call the presents a success. I was impressed that Jessi and I managed to draw each other and then keep it a secret.
Here's the Christmas decorations that we put a ton of money into (nothing cost more than £5):

The rest of the tree. It has lights, but the batteries went out.

The tinsel garland looks cooler from this angle, trust me.

This was supposed to be another garland, but instead it's an awkward little tree that sits in the back of the kitchen.

Fairy lights around the board, and the tree.

Three things in this photo... Let it snow!, the Christmas moose that faces the window. and fairy lights held up with sticky tac. And the tail end of Merry Christmas on the other window.

One of the stars that Jessi's mom sent.

Jessi's advent calendar. The bags have dates on them and candies inside them.

The other star is in the window. We get some cool shadows from that.

That was the Joy part of the post.

Thursday, I slept in until 2 because my lectures were cancelled, then went and hung around Sunderland with Freya, who is slightly devastated by the fact that I'm leaving in a month. I'm impressed, since I'm a terrible conversationalist...
When I got back in, I knocked around the flat a little, then went to have another boring night of trying to update the blog and watching movies until the wee hours.
I got a text at 19:30 that Grandpa had passed on two hours before, and I spent the rest of the night trying to come to grips with the situation. It's really weird for me, being over here. I don't have the close connection with family that facilitates mourning, and I'm not really one to sob and scream when I'm upset. So I watched sad movies that would let me cry and wondered why I felt so disconnected. I didn't really tell anyone, unless they brought it up, since I don't know how to broach the subject. It's not much of a conversation-starter, and I'm not looking for people to tell me how sorry they are that a man they never knew isn't there anymore, even if I do appreciate the sentiment. I know that I'm sorry on behalf of others when people close to them that I never knew pass on, but I always feel awkward when that comes up. I think this is part of the disconnect.

I thought about canceling with Freya for Friday, since she wanted to hang out again and do "stuff" but decided against it. I needed to get out of the flat. I did have a good time; had some good pizza, saw some cute rabbits and a cute puppy, laughed... I felt a little like a traitor to Grandpa's memory, but I made up for it by looking up the stages of grief and analysing my feelings later that night. And don't worry, Mom and Dad, I'm not going to let this ruin the whole trip, I promise. I'm not going to just bury my feelings (NOT healthy, I know, I've tried it before), but I'm going to let myself have a good time when the opportunities present themselves and have some sad times when I need them.

Saturday, Josie moved to Leicester (pronounced "Lester"), which was like the end of freshman year at whitworth on a more permanent level. I sat around making little sad puppy noises, like the weird little alien from Star Trek (2009) makes when Scotty and Kirk beam onto the enterprise. Josie's kind of the fun one in the group, but I guess I'll be visiting her in Leicester (I cannot write that without pronouncing all the parts: Lie-sest-er) in January, maybe for new years, maybe later. But still... It's like the end of things. Also, the flat will be pretty empty during break. Conor is in Germany, Adam's going to be home for most of it, Josie's in Bedford (where James' home is), Micha's going home on Tuesday, Thomas is probably in Ireland, Florian's in Germany, and Jessi's going to be staying with her parents when they come to visit. Okay, that last part makes me happy, but everyone else being gone is kind of sad.

In other news, I didn't get dressed today. By the time I woke up, it was going to be dark in two hours anyway, and the library trip can wait for tomorrow. I did get up, eat breakfast, go outside, drink three or four cups of tea, and I'm going to eat proper dinner, but my purple plaid flannel pyjama pants and tank top are perfectly decent for knocking around the flat on a saturday.

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!

Macaroni and Rage — Tuesday 25 October to Thursday 27 October

Monday night/Tuesday morning was consumed by unexpected insomnia due to very unexpected sinus congestion (I couldn't breathe through my nose at all, and I hate falling asleep with my mouth open, so I lay there and tried to breathe through my nose for a few seconds before gasping and freaking Jessi out. This went on for at least half an hour before exhaustion finally set in.) Another potential cause of my insomnia was the fact that I had tea with sugar about an hour before trying to settle down for the night. This would not normally cause a big problem, but I usually have honey. Sugar seems to affect me quite differently from honey. Happily, I didn't have class until noon.
Class was fine. I got a dirty look from Josh the hairy, irritable southerner for working on my presentation more than three days before it was due, but I may have earned that. Worse things could have happened.
I made crepes in the evening, seeing as I had slept in so as to stay awake in class. It's a pretty good time to make crepes, since people are around and can help me dispose of them. Unfortunately, Jessi always tries to eat all of them. She suspects me of putting some kind of addictive substance in them.
We went to Asda, and while I found macaroni noodles sort of, we won't be doing American night for a while because people are busy or unable to make things in the time they have. And then we're all going to Edinburgh this weekend. With luck, next week. I bought coloured medium cheddar cheese just for this, so hopefully it lasts. I'll check the expiration date and freeze it before then if I have to.
Regarding macaroni:
Aldi and and Tesco don't have it. I suspect it's something of an american pasta. This is what I was looking for:

This is what I found (minus the "cheese").

So this is what I got.

Same basic principle (small tubular noodles with a bend or five). 

Before bed, we played a few rounds of hearts that ended up taking longer than I expected. However, I made a valiant attempt to do more of my biochemistry when I realised that I would have to do the whole report, with four graphs and several calculations, in one day.
It was all pointless. I couldn't figure out the equations we got. I eventually went to bed well after midnight.

Then there was a freaking fire drill that woke me an hour before I would have had to get up. They even timed us as we staggered out of the flat. Snarl. Cold and irate, we were allowed back in at 07:35. I turned on the heater to warm up the room a bit before I had to get up in about half an hour and learned a valuable lesson: the heater keeps Jessi up. She flops around, makes grumpy noises, and gets up to turn it down. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an "off" switch, so she tried to turn it down three times in the half hour before my alarm went off again. I was kind of too sleepy to move, but I did feel hideously guilty. I also felt that saying something would give her rage an outlet in me, so I stayed out of the way. I realised that night that she had experienced a sneaky hate spiral, and shared the hyperbole and a half post with her. Her laughter was very gratifying. The history seminar was fine; I took notes on the order of the presentation and suchlike. Then I retired to the library to try and puzzle out the calculations that were driving me insane last night. They didn't get much better.

I've almost attained A Beautiful Mind status scribbling capabilities.  Only a few steps left to full-blown schizophrenia.

There was this equation that I needed to get from the data collected to the manner of analysing it, and it had some random centimeter. I'm normally quite good at going from equation to equation, once I get warmed up and set on the right path, but this had me scribbling random exclamations and drawing arrows, crossing them out, and redrawing them. At one point, I crossed out my query of "enzyme?" before turning around and writing "enzyme yes" above that. I was going insane. I had reached that weird conjunction of rage and confusion that leads to madness.
The situation improved somewhat after I decided to just forget that the stupid random centimeter was there, since it goes away in its usual equation without affecting the answer. I hope it won't cause me to fail miserably...
Things got better after coffee, since my mood was vastly improved after an hour of drinking a white chocolate blended mocha from starbucks (it was worth the money) and thinking about something other than biochemistry (I outlined my presentation). They didn't get better after lunch, which was a fifteen minute break for a cold cheese and onion pasty and a juice box of ribena (long i and e, rye-been-a), because I switched to the uni computers to edit the graphs so I could print a nice, not-demented report. It proved easier than I was expecting, although trendlines remain the bane of my excel existence.
My calculations are ALL WRONG. Well, it's more like my data are ALL WRONG, which is true enough (*guilty cough*). I ended up attaching the full graph at the end while putting in an edited graph that makes any sense at all in the body of the report.
Finally, I finished it at 19:15, after 7 hours of work. I think it's actually my best report yet, thanks to my extensive explanations. My plans of going to Aldi for two flapjacks and an energy drink were scrapped because it was too dark to walk alone, and Aldi closes at 20:00 anyway.
I didn't get to do laundry, either, because I was too tired when I got back home ten hours after I left that morning. I need to to that Thursday evening or Friday morning, or I'll have to get new clothes in Edinburgh. While it's not an unappealing thought, I don't really have the money for that.

Thursday started off with a trip to aldi to get flapjacks and an energy drink. The weather today is nice walking weather: cool and cloudy, without noticeable rain while I've been outside.
The biochemistry lecture was much better, since the professor is an immunologist and also assumed we knew how to tie our shoes.
I printed my edinburgh ticket during the break and holed up in the library's very purple study room.

So much purple!

The second part of the lecture felt a bit long, but that might just be because I suddenly had a spurt of creative energy that could not be acted upon. Hence this blog as soon as I got out of class. I was going to eat my second flapjack, but I happened to look for the nutrition information. One of these delicious little bars has "457 kcal" (so 457 calories as reported by US companies. In fact, the calorie is such a tiny measure that kilocalories was quickly adopted as the standard for food, but the k in front turns people off of perfectly healthy food, so the FDA allows companies to report nutritional information in the form of "cal" instead of "kcal").

I decided to maybe save the flapjack for later and also look up less excessive recipes. 

Lab was irritating.

You recall that lab report that took me 7 hours and considerable frustration on wednesday?

It's due next week, and this week was spent in learning how to do the graphs for the report.

Yep. So I spent two and a half hours in lab rehashing the stuff that I'd already taught myself to do. I'm really, really good at Michaelis-Menten and Lineweaver-Burk plots now, though. Also, I was doing them right. Bam. No centimeter was ever mentioned by the lab instructor.

My frustration at rehashing was not helped by the fact that the lab instructor was the lady who talks to us like we're kindergarteners. Granted, she's better at explaining things than the impossible little frenchman, but she pauses in weird places. Her emphasis habits really grate on the nerves after about ten minutes of uninterrupted talking, and she lectured for forty minutes. She says Lineweaver (which I heard at least once as "linweaver" and therefore adopted that pronunciation) as "linear-weaver" and it drove me insane. My tic started acting up, which usually leads to RAGE. I powered through on the fact that I saved all my work to a USB stick and can refine my report based on the new instructions we got.

Things got better when I got home and had, like, five pieces of toast to try and use up my bread before we leave for the weekend. I did my laundry, and then got sucked into "a quick game of hearts." 

Five hours later, we finally finished the sixth or seventh game.

I shot the moon. Twice. This has never happened to me before, and I've only seen it done twice. It's a caveat of hearts — if one person gets all 26 points (13 hearts plus the queen of spades), then they get 0 points for the round while everyone else gets 26 points each. It's hard to do, because you need really bad cards that don't give you away right at the beginning. Both times I've done it were unintentional.

I felt like a champion... until everyone ganged up on me the next round and I ended up with 25 points while everyone else except one person got 0. Ouch.

I'll be in Edinburgh until monday afternoon, so I won't be responding to any texts, emails, or comments. I could take my computer, but I doubt that I'll have internet and it's not worth the risk of having my computer nicked from the hostel room, because I'm not carrying this thing all over edinburgh for three days. No. I will take my camera, extra batteries, and a notebook so that I can make good blog posts when I get back.

Birthdays and Thoughts on Growing Up — Friday 21 October to Monday 24 October

Friday was Conor's 20th birthday. We got him a card and cupcakes.
Saturday and Sunday were highly unproductive days for me. I looked for a card for Jessi's 21st birthday (which is/was Monday the 24th) on Saturday, but I started too late and everything was closed. I did burn my finger on the oven, but it's getting better.

Burnt.
If anyone has any theories on why my burns tend to hurt a little right when I touch the hot thing, not hurt for twenty minutes, and then start burning again, please comment.

Sunday, I found a card at The Bridges, and looked ineffectually for a cake. All the bakeries were closed. We were going to watch a football (soccer to you americans) game in a pub, but we didn't know that it started at 13:00, and so missed it by about seven hours. It was too bad, since it was Manchester City vs Manchester United, which is an ancient rivalry and involves one of the teams having been bought by some foreigner who brought in really good international players that aren't british. So they kick the other teams' butts, and not many british people like them. I think this is like the basketball players that tried to form something of a "dream team" to win whatever it is that NBA teams play for by pulling star players away from their usual teams and into a predetermined team. I opposed this in principle, although I hate basketball. Hate watching it, hate playing it, hate hearing about it. Aaaanyway.

Wall! Much better than basketball.

Walls make me ridiculously happy. I love how they're in varying states of repair, like old burnt bricks and new bricks in the same section.

Monday, I looked again for a cake and found that the bakeries don't really do cakes. I ended up getting one from Tesco. I also found  blackcurrant jam, but I did not find macaroni noodles. I'm afraid my macaroni and cheese for american night might be more of a penne and cheese or maybe fusilli and cheese. We're going to look for macaroni at Asda.
After I found the cake, I ended up wandering around the bridges for a while before sitting down to ribena, biochemistry, and what turned out to be a belgian waffle at Esquires Coffee in the bridges.

Mmmm, waffle.
Mmmmm... Mmmm.

This is how the second bite of waffle made me feel:

From Hyperbole and a Half.

The first bite was confusing, because I was expecting light, pancake-like kind of crunchy waffle, and I got heavy, sweet waffle. 

Speaking of breakfast foods, I've discovered flapjacks. We don't really have anything that similar except some softer granola bars. I was expecting pancakes, but they're fairly firm oat bars, with fairly uncooked oats, that are fairly soft. They are not fairly delicious, they are exceedingly delicious. I get Blackfriars ("wickedly good") flapjacks for 49p at Aldi and take them for lunch and snack on Thursdays. 

After the bridges, I took the long way to the bus stop (and just made it, by sheer luck)

The pictures in the bottom window things were the target of the photo.

Seriously cool old building atmosphere. I guess this is sort of like downtown kennewick without the sketchy parts.

Sunderland Minster from the gate.

 I'm thinking that "Minster" is sort of like "First (denomination)" because we visited the York Minster in York.

Minster from the side. I'll need to check sometime on when it was built, because it's got some of that fortressy thing going on.

Wall! This is attached to the Minster.

These are across from the Minster. They're old buildings with nightclubs in them.

While walking and taking cool pictures and looking at houses, I started noticing that I've been really wanting a house.
I noticed this about my school housing situation (having two "homes", neither particularly permanent, for four years). My room at home is going to be not mine, probably within three years. My rooms at school are only mine for nine months. Unfortunately, I've developed an intense desire to have my own little house with a little kitchen and a little garden. I find myself lusting over kitchen supplies (utensils, teapots, pots and pans, etc.), garden decor (big, permanent plants, fancy planters, little statue things), and house decor (pillows, rugs, chairs, couches, wall hangings of various sorts, paintings (at least, the kind of thing that goes in a frame with glass that can be hung on a nail that you're allowed to put in the wall because it's your own frigging wall), lamps, curtains, and the like). The problem is intensified by the fact that I'm not staying in Spokane, which is the most immediate location for more permanent lodging. It gets worse because I now want a little townhouse in Sunderland.
I know.
I'm not staying here, and I'm probably not coming back for any long period of time, ever. But I find myself thinking, as I walk down skinny streets with terrifying drivers lined by iffy sidewalks and tiny houses, that I really wish I could live here. I've started thinking that I have an accent, not the other way around, and I'm practically used to the "wrong side of the street" thing. I actually had a hard time picturing getting in on the right side of a coach on the way to Durham. Seeing houses that are separated from any other house seems a bit frivolous. Instead of wanting a big yard, I don't really want one at all.
I know.
It really doesn't make sense. But these little places are perfect student/busy person housing. No yard to speak of that needs attention, and small enough that it will be hard to fill it with so much junk that you can't keep if you have to move back in with your parents. They'll probably drive me crazy when I hit the bottom of my w-curve, but for the time being, I think they're the best thing ever.
The thing, I guess, is that I want it to be mine. I'm really not looking to settle down in the "have a family" sense, since I'm neither in nor likely to be in a long term relationship in the near future, but I am looking to put down serious roots of my own. Right now, to extend the plant metaphor, I'm like a cutting. I've been part of a healthy, solid family with some healthy, solid roots. They've nourished me and provided me with everything I need to be a healthy person, but it's time for me to put down my own roots. Okay, so I'm more like the slightly parasitic offspring on some succulents than a cutting, but the basic principle is the same. I've grown past being able to be healthy while still attached to my parents' house; it's about time that I got my own.
I think I'm going to have to settle for a few awkward years of not having my own place, though, since I think I'll be much happier if I keep up my transient status until I find wherever it is that I'm supposed to stay. I'm reasonably certain that it's not sunderland, and I'm almost sure that it's not spokane, either.
Sigh. First world problems, I guess.

I do love the garden areas.

One thing that's struck me about england is the odd atmosphere of beauty and decay. There are beautiful things, ornate pathways, gorgeous buildings, and they're almost all slightly run down. I find it oddly appealing and grotesque at the same time.

Such a pretty pattern, but it's so beaten up.

I think this one is unoccupied, so there's some excuse, but the juxtaposition of ornate mosaic and unkempt courtyard are striking. Lots of houses have this sort of thing going on.

Also, Josie got back from London tonight, which was pretty exciting. Jessi's cake, the one from Tesco that cost £3.87, turned out to be really delicious. Chocolate with chocolate frosting and chocolate curls on top. I was in shock. And she thought the cheap candle ("21" with "Twenty-One" written below) was incredibly awesome. I win.
Conor set the flat low score in hearts at 7, complementing his flat high score of 120 (most times, the loser gets 103-111). Adam worked his usual magic of not really being noticed.
My blogger page was being weird and refusing to update, so sorry if you looked for a post under my advice and couldn't find it.

Kinder Egg and Bowling — Saturday 24 September

The most exciting thing that happened to me this morning was sleeping.
The most exciting thing before 14:00 was opening up my Kinder Egg.
Photos!

The Egg itself. Actually just half the egg, because I was so excited that I had eaten half of the other half before I remembered that I wanted pictures.

See? Exciting! It glows!

Aww. Doesn't actually glow. But it still looks delicious.

That yellow thing was inside. That's where the toys go!

Er. Wadded up paper was not quite the toys I was expecting.

Instructions – I appear to have scored a balloon/ball thing.

After unfolding the larger wad of red paper, I inflated a...
Well...
Fish.
Thing.

I think the idea is to bat it around.

Now I have a weird little paper balloon that I can't do anything with. It would go up on my ceiling if it was less shoddy.
I also did laundry in the little laundry room all the way across Clanny, next to reception. There are three parking lots inside Clanny, which is like a gated community with no pool. Block 1 is in the farthest parking lot from reception, which is in block 11. Also, there is a code to get into the laundry room, which I suppose is useful for keeping out malicious laundry thieves like students who don't have the code. I now have the code, happily. I also have clean, if damp, laundry. It's still across Clanny in the dryer.
We're going "ten-pin bowling" this afternoon, and I kind of hope that it's pretty much the same as bowling in the Tri Cities. Apparently there are other kinds of bowling; who knew?
Unfortunately, I can't get the code to work. I'll have to try it out again sometime when there's no one around.
Bowling was fun. It was exactly like bowling in the Tri Cities. We played three games, and I only lost miserably on the last one. I blame my fingernail, which was busy being ripped off by the holes in the bowling balls.
Here's how it ended up:

The nail is gone! 

I have provided my other thumbnail as contrast:

That's how much nail I had before bowling.

 I would count today as a success. We had mexican night afterwards, and I need to get ahold of some better beans for next time. Pintos smashed up and heated with a bit of salt do not do the trick. Maybe black beans, with some salt and red spices...