Personal

I get to compete on Saturday!!!!

Okay, off to find clothes to dance in. *grin*

I have a bruise and a scratch the shape of a high heeled shoe’s heel on top of my right foot. Hurts. :( But those are the dangers of dancing. Need to get used to it. I bought some shoes on Friday to dance in. Pretty strappy black things with sparkly bits. Got them from Peacocks. They’re actually the exact same shoes as Sophie’s got. I wanted the gold heels they had, but those didn’t have a strap around the ankle and thus, they’d fly off my feet when I tried dancing. At today’s session, the first Sunday session I’ve ever been to, I practiced with Oliver. Apparently my timing is way way off. XD Can follow okay, but timing is just not something I can do. Only four of us showed up, none are competing next weekend. Well, Oliver is, but not with me. :P

I’m not too big of a fan of the whole buzzer/intercom thing we’ve got in our building. Let’s take last night/this morning for instance. It’s somewhere around 4:30-5:45 am and a really loud noise wakes us all up. It’s as if someone’s playing a very bad song with our buzzer. I did not appreciate waking up that way. Not at all.

It’s been ridiculously windy out here. Making my window whistle annoyingly. The sea has not stopped churning for the past three-four days. That’s being loud too. I mean, it’s nice watching it while drinking a nice cup of hot tea. It is not, however, nice to walk in it. Sort of felt like a wall of wind hitting me every so often as I was walking back from the train station after Oliver left.

I knit a few rows of my Isabella tonight. It’s going really really slowly. As is the Scrap Diamond Shawl I’m making. And I still need to make some Twinkletoes for Jade before I go home. I’d rather make socks, but she really wants some ballet slipper things. So that’s what she shall get.

I wish my room wouldn’t get so cold. I don’t like to have to be layered up all the time. Of course, it does give me a reason to wear the stuff I make, especially the socks, but it’s still not very pleasant.

It’s pretty likely that I won’t be competing at Manchester. I’m still going, but no competitive dancing for me. If I get my first portfolio done by Friday, which I’m pretty sure I will since I only need another 640 words to reach the minimum, I’ll be going up to Sheffield before Saturday and going there with Oliver. Not really into travelling on a cold minibus in the middle of the night for over four hours when I can take two comfy trains up north and then travel in a nice warm coach with Oliver for an hour on the day of the competition instead. Then there’s another portfolio due on the 14th. That’s almost half done. Unfortunately, the half that’s missing is the commentary. Always a pain to write. Plus I need to rework the creative piece a bit. Lengthen it, clear up confusing passages, slow down the action in part that went by too quickly.

Happy December to all! I finally get to wear my festive jewelry. ^_^ And with that, I’m off to bed. Hopefully knit a row or two before actually going to sleep.

Decided not to go to the earlier dance class. Felt really icky. But I am going to the next one this afternoon. Yay, more dancing! ^_^

And, since I felt bad about staying behind, I worked on my portfolio a bit more. Over 1200 words now! Just need to write two more pieces, about 300 words each, and their commentaries and then I am done. Then I get to knit to my heart’s content. No wait, I can’t. I have that other portfolio and an assignment to do. Will do the assignment now, since I won’t have the time to do it during the weekend. Oliver’s coming tomorrow! Squee!

I guess I am going to the morning session of dancing as well, seeing as I am up before nine. Guess what I woke up to? Really loud, high-pitched laughter, sort of like cackling. When I went to get breakfast, I found the source: Tom’s room. Why on earth would he have someone over this early??

Anyway, it is kind of a relief that I did wake up. Had really really weird dreams. In the first one, I tackled my mother because she was attacking one of my sisters. Then in the second one, a weird tent collapsed on me, then I was holding a baby girl, she sneezed on me (got me straight in the eye too!) and there was some lady nosing around about how I’m funding my dancing. All very odd. And kinda disturbing. o_O;;

Since I was so busy yesterday, when I finally did get back to my room and had dinner at 9pm, I went to bed early. By 10:30. Of course, I was listening to Harry Potter and waiting for Oliver to call, so I didn’t actually go to sleep then. It was nice to just lie in bed, not having to think about anything. And I didn’t feel guilty for not working on my portfolio when I got back, since I had a lot of spare time up at the uni before I could come back down, I worked on it there. I should have another 350 words done now. Next I need to write the commentary for it before starting on the next piece.

*yawns* Right. Need tea. I have a feeling that I’m getting a cold (got soaked yesterday during lunch, so that might be why). Honey tea should help at least a little bit…

You know what? I really enjoy dancing. I do. And going to competitions even if they tend to be really long days and some have the tendency to drag in the middle quite a bit. So I’ve decided that I am going to try to find myself a partner for the Manchester Winter Competition which is in two weeks time. I actually already have a certain person in mind that I’ll try to convince tomorrow if he shows up. Wish me luck!

Another thing that’s happening in two weeks time? Portfolios are due. Yep, two portfolios, each 2,500-3,000 words long. At first, when I realized this, I kinda got panicky. Then, I sat down at my trusty laptop, picked out one of my all time favorite poems (The Flea, by John Donne if anyone’s interested) and wrote a piece of dialogic stemming from that poem. Then I wrote a big chunk of the commentary related to that piece of writing and would you look at that, I’ve already got 600 words. If I keep this up, I should be fine. ^_^ I especially enjoy the feeling of accomplishment I get afterwards. Now I just need to figure out what else I’m going to put into this portfolio. The other portfolio, which is for the Cute Teacher, is pretty much already decided. I mean, how cool is it that I get to write about being a ghost? That’s the assignment he gave us for next week and I’m pretty sure I’ll find a way to incorporate that into one of the piece of my next portfolio.

A miracle has happened. The guys cleaned the flat! We have an inspection tomorrow and guess what, nagging works. And pointedly mentioning that I did not enjoy having to clean the whole place by myself last time. And since they’re inspecting the bedrooms as well, I had to tidy up in here. Not that I had much to do really. Just vacuum and fold and put away clothes. Not too sure about what to do with all of my yarn and knitting related stuff though. Right now they’re in various bags in different corners of the room. They’re not going to whine about me having yarn all over the place, right? It is, after all, fire retardant mostly. A lot of it is wool, with just a few skeins of acrylic left over from my Wal-Mart shopping days. The acrylic I do have is really soft though, and non-squeaky, so I will use it up eventually. I actually have projects in mind for them, but I just haven’t had the time to cast them on since I want to finish the ones I’ve already got in the works…

My sister’s birthday present came in the mail today! ^_^ I think she’ll really like it. I hope she will!

And now back to regularly scheduled programming. For me, that would be listening to Harry Potter read by Stephen Fry and knitting my Isabella. Yes, I’m still working on it. I only just today joined up the other green yarn for the lace panel. Oh crap. I just remembered that I still have to make some Twinkletoes from knitty.com before I go home! Eep. Will be very busy these next few weeks. Not that’ll stop me from watching a lot of my DVDs though. :P

The things I do for him… I woke up 45 minutes ago because I need to be in front of the train station by 4 am. Leaving in 15 minutes. Dani, the Team Captain, called me last night at nine. Said that there’s been a change of plans. We’re leaving thirty minutes earlier. Fun stuff. I’m cold. I think it’s because of the lack of sleep. Only had like three-four hours. And all this because I want to see Oliver today. I just ran into Tom. He hasn’t been to bed yet. He did have some weird stripes on his cheek though, so I assume there was a theme party somewhere out on the town. I’d better be able to sleep on the minibus. I’m bringing a pillow.

I just noticed that I write really short sentences. Maybe it’s all my poor little sleep-deprived brain can handle right now.

It’s actually working. The past two mornings I’ve had to get up by 8:15 in order to make it to class on time. Then today when I have absolutely nothing to do that is scheduled, no alarm set up or anything, and I wake up at 8 all by myself. It was an odd feeling. Then again, tomorrow I will definitely need the help of an alarm clock since I have to get up at 3:45 am. I’m going to the Nottingham Competition. Just as a spectator though. Don’t have a partner and I haven’t really danced in three weeks either. Yesterday I did go to both dance classes they had, making it a grand total of four hours of dancing in one day. ^_^

I also had a meeting with the Cute Teacher. I had given him a story to read and he really liked it. Told me that I should try to get my stuff published since writing seems to be another thing that I just do in my spare time. And he gave me good ideas on how to improve that particular piece. It’s a bit scary though, sending stuff to others. I mean, just the idea of it. I don’t think I will do that just yet. Want to build up a stack of various things I’ve written that I can then send to different magazines/publishers. This is going to eat away at my knitting time, isn’t it? Why do I have to choose? ;_; Ooh, and I’ve handed in the referee forms to two of my teachers so that they can tell the admissions people in Manchester how wonderfully talented I am. XP

I’ve also slowly begun giving/throwing stuff away. I’ve tried on some of the shirts that hang in my closet and realized that they are too big on me, so I’ll be giving them to my sister. I sorted through my pens and threw away the ones that didn’t work. I’ve given away some of my unused make-up (it was what Oliver’s mom got from her sister-in-law last Christmas). It’s actually quite fun purging my stuff. Less to drag around with me when I move again.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve recently dyed my hair. On the box it says that it should last up to 15 washes. Nope, pretty much after the third wash, it’s gone. Well, there’s a little red tinge at my roots, but otherwise it’s all gone. Maybe once I’m back in Belgium I’ll try to look for the Color Pulse stuff. It seemed to stick around longer than the box said it would. They only have three colors over here, none of which I want to try especially. But I think that Jaz said that they had more choices over there.

I should be in bed (trying out this newfangled idea of going early to bed, early to rise). Besides, I’ve got an “early” seminar tomorrow. So I need to get up early for that anyway. Especially if I want to try to make it to the train station before going up to class.

Anyway, onto the meme!

The Book Meme 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the next four to seven sentences on your LJ along with these instructions. 5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest [unless it’s too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1]. 6. Tag five people.

I mean, I’d love it if someone gave me a Tiffany necklace! I wouldn’t be ‘overwhelmed’ or whatever he said. But he was really insistent, so I said I’d keep it for later. Should I maybe– “The present is fine,” says Luke, just as I open my mouth. “You don’t need to add any more.” How did he know what I was going to say?

-- Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic & Sister, 2004

I had a hard time deciding which one was closer, this one on my top shelf or the one in my bag that wasn’t within reaching distance. Then I looked at the one in my bag and realized that as great as Jane Austen is (I’m reading Persuasion right now) she writes really long sentences. So I went with the “lighter” reading material. XD Not going to tag people, since I don’t see the point in it. I mean, someone will do it if they want to and tagging them won’t make them do it if they don’t. So there. I am still really interested to see what’s the closest book you all have though…

Yes, it seems like I travel a lot. Which I kinda do, now that I think about it. Anyway, I have just bought my train tickets to go home in four weeks time. ^_^ I wonder if Mocca still remembers me. I’m pretty sure she does. The last time I called home and Jaz called out to Mocca saying that I’m on the phone, Mocca apparently ran to the front door and then my room door looking for me. How big has she gotten? I’ve been told that she’s been put on a diet. Tsk tsk for them feeding her table scraps. *sigh* Now I want my own dog. Well, I guess I’ll get one soon enough. I mean, Oliver and I are planning on getting one at some point. But I want us to have a house first so the dog’ll have lots of space to move around. Especially since I prefer the bigger breeds, like a German Shepherd, while Oliver would rather have a teeny tiny Italian Greyhound. For now, we’ve compromised on a Norwegian Elkhound.

What else… Oh yes, I’ve gotten some presents blocked, now I just need to wrap them up. Don’t have any wrapping paper though. Guess I’ll just wait until I get home and see what they’ve got there. Again, I can’t say what I’ve got done, just in case the recipient happens to read my blog. I’ve finished up all of the L&V yarn, now I’m onto the Violet’s Pink Ribbon on the shawl. So far, it looks … interesting.

Have I mentioned how much I love fish? Well, I love fish. There. It’s been mentioned.

Oh and it is so nice to be back in my room with all of my things. Especially my knitting stuff. ^-^