Personal

We’re meeting Mel today. I totally forgot about it this morning, but when Oliver finally got up, he reminded me. Anywayz, we were supposed to meet up at four, but it’s been pushed back to five. I wonder how it’ll go… I mean, she and Oliver had a thing. Not really a relationship, but still a thing. That’s as accurately as I can describe it. We’d been planning on meeting up for ages but never actually did anything about it. So last week we finally decided that now we really will meet up.

I’ve just started reading Memnoch the Devil. I’d finished The Historian a few days ago (loved it!) but I’ve been busy knitting and solving Hanjie puzzles. XD I did start reading Memnoch near Christmas, but then I had that huge pile of books to read for my courses and it kinda got left on the back burner. I remember thinking it was a really good start to the book, but now that I’m reading it… not so convinced. Could be that I’m just itching to read the other books I’ve got waiting for me on Oliver’s shelf.

Anywayz, I’d better get going. We’re going soon, so I need to get ready.

Went to see The Da Vinci Code on Friday with Oliver, Ryan and Shaun. Shaun drove since he finally passed his driving exam. He’s pretty good considering he hasn’t been driving for that long. Sorta makes me want to get my license at some point. Just not over here, since I can’t handle driving a car that’s got the wheel on the right. :-S Anywayz, the movie. To me it seemed kinda slow paced. The book just flew when I read it (before I heard the hype about it, Ellu just sent it to us and said that we should read it). But the movie… not so much. Maybe it’s because I prefer reading to watching movies. I get to go at my own pace and things actually look like how I want them to. Yes, I like having control of things. Another reason why I love playing games like Sims2 and Civ4. XD

The four of us went out yesterday as well. Ate at Nando’s and then went out for a walk. In the park we found a lot of frogs/toads. Jumping things anyway. I remember three of them quite clearly. The first one is the little cute baby frog hopping across the path. The second is an adult sitting in a puddle. That confused us at first: Why is it just sitting in a puddle?? Then it dawned on us as the puddle was getting bigger. It was peeing. XD And the last one was another adult toad, just sitting in the middle of the road. Oliver tried poking it to move away so it wouldn’t get run over by a car, but it wouldn’t budge. Ryan nudged it with his shoe, nothing. Shaun tried to make it move it, it just leapt forward once and made Shaun jump. In the end, we just left it there because it would not move! Silly toad.

I’ve been watching the National Geographic and History channels alot. I just looooove learning about hurricanes and tornadoes. I wonder if someone’ll want to take a road trip with me to Tornado Alley next year. All they get in Montana are blizzards. If those. I know the forces of nature aren’t to be messed with, but I want to experience a tornado passing over us. Well, I’ll just have to make do with NG. I did see this really cool thing about locusts on NG the other day. I now know the stages of life they go through, why they swarm, how they eat.. and most interestingly of all: why the Rocky Mountain locusts just suddenly disappeared after the huge swarm of 1875 (that I first heard about in the Little House on the Prairie books). And I want to complete the set that I have already. I’m missing the last three books: Little Town on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years and The First Four Years. Which is why I’ve been looking in all the bookstores over here, but they don’t have them. So I guess I’ll just have to wait until I get to the States to buy them. I can’t wait to get to the huge bookstores they’ve got over there. My favorite store out of all of them. I just get this high whenever I go to a place with a lot of books, like a library. I want to read them all! XD

I’ve been knitting a lot. Almost finished a potholder for Oliver’s mom. The back of it is white in this kind of pattern:

-—-|||||—–|||||—– |||||—–|||||—–|||||

And then on the front, it’s a white background with four turquoise hearts and a “J” in the middle. :) It’s so nice to be knitting again. Very comforting. Next, I want to try to make a quilt. But that’ll have to wait until I get back home where I’ve got a sewing machine. Plus, I need to find a pattern that I like. And then of course some cloth to make it out of. XP

Spent the day driving around with Oliver’s dad. He drove, I read the map and found the houses he needed to get the interviews. Not that he actually got any interviews, but still. It was fun. Saw this really pretty place where you can just go wander around. There was this rock that looks like a toad’s mouth. XD Anyway, I’m gonna suggest it to Ryan that we go walk around there while Oliver is at work. Since Oliver doesn’t want to go camping (something Ryan and I are very interested in) so just something similar to it that we could do during the day instead. In theory, Oliver has nothing against just me and Ryan going camping just the two of us, but I am going home soon so he doesn’t want to lose any time that we’ve got left.

Gave blood yesterday. One of the questions they asked before I donated was: “Are you pregnant? Have you had a child in the past 9 months?” Me: o_O;; “….. I hope not!” Wouldn’t be good if I’d had a child in the past 9 months and somehow not notice and therefore have lost it. o_o Then when the nurse tried to find the perfect vein in my arm, she chose a side vein which apparently squirted out a lot of blood down my arm. I didn’t notice this. She saw some of it and wiped it away but didn’t get all of it. So when I had donated and was getting some refreshments to get some sugar into my body the nurse over at that side of the donation clinic gasped and asked: “What happened?!” It wasn’t until then that the rest of the blood was cleaned up. XD

It’s so warm over here. Usually I wouldn’t complain about it since I like summer and all. But for some reason, the temperature in Oliver’s bedroom is unbearable. We did go shopping yesterday and he bought this unit thingy that has lowered the temperature a bit, but not by much. So I’ve been outside reading a lot. Tanned quite a bit, much to Oliver’s dismay. He doesn’t like me being brown. And now I’ve developed this weird coloring on my chest of brown, pink and white. XD

I’ve got my visa for the States. Only had to wait for them to process the application for three and a half hours. They didn’t have any air conditioning in there either. And I forgot to take something to read with me, so it was kinda boring just sitting there listening to the announcements of: “Now serving customer number ### and number ##”. Anyway, I’ve got the visa. o/ I’ve decided that the sauce they use at Nando’s is really good. So I’m gonna buy some before I go and take it home with me. ^-^

The strike is over, so I should get my results on time in July. I know that I got 64% for my second portfolio (improvement ^_^) which means that my grade for that module would most likely be 62.5%. Don’t know will they round it up to 63%. So now I might have to e-mail my other tutors and ask if they could e-mail me back the front pages of my essays so I’d know what I got from them.

While we were in London we stopped by Foyles (naturally). I bought three books: Necroscope IV &V and The Historian. Right now I’m over half way through The Historian. It’s interesting stuff, more like a thriller than a horror book (it was in the horror section). It’s about Dracula and how he’s haunting these historians by leaving these blanks books that only have a picture of a dragon in the middle of them. It’s text upon text upon text. Sorta like The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. XD

Went shopping on Saturday. I wasn’t actually thinking of buying anything, but I came across “Wide Open Spaces” and “Fly” by the Dixie Chicks and I knew I just had to have them. Just listening to them confirms it, money well spent. And they were only £16. ^_^

So now Oliver’s parents have met mine. They did make an effort to talk to each other. Mainly just my dad talking to his. It was actually a bit entertaining. They think they’re talking about the same thing but they’re not. Then when they don’t understand what the other is saying, they just nod and then keep going on about what they were saying before. *shakes head* That’s what you get for having a bf from a different country. Especially one who’s from Yorkshire.

My exams are finally over. I dunno how they went. Okay I guess. One of my answers in my second exam was a bit out there. I began comparing the novel “The Beach” to the events of 9/11 and afterwards. It just suddenly popped into my head that there are some similarities, since I was making the point that the community is a modern western society in miniature. We’ll see… XD Then after my exam, I met up with Gabe again. He showed me the National Library of Wales and then we went to Somerfield’s to buy American style cookies for my parents to take back home with them. In the grocery store, we ran into this one lecturer from Germany. He is so cute! Max 30 yrs old. Anyway, I recognized him and gave him a smile. He recognized me and smiled back! :-D I’ve talked to him before. I went up to him after one lecture and told him that he’s got a great accent. For some reason he thought I was from Luxembourg. o.O Anyway.. cute! In a way I’m hoping that I get him as a tutor in my third year, but I know that if I do, I’ll have major problems concentrating in his class. All I’ll do is just listen to his voice and not actually hear what he’s saying. XD Ah well, maybe by the time I get back from Montana I’ll have gotten over him. It’s fun having crushes. :D

My embassy appointment is next week. And I still haven’t heard from Carol about the payment slip. I need to pay the visa application fee before my appointment and they send this slip you take to Barclay’s. But because Carol’s been sick, I haven’t gotten the slip from her (it was sent to her office). So I don’t know what to do. o_o;;

Hmm, I probably should go to bed now. But I figured that I should update to let people know that I haven’t disappeared off of the face of the earth. Oliver just didn’t have a working computer while I was over there.

89 spam comments. Ridiculous, I tell you. *shakes head*

Well, I got back to Aber today. I was supposed to take the 8:53 train from Sheffield, but I missed it because of a truck or something had turned over on the parkway and there was loads of traffic on the alternative route we chose and yada yada yada. So basically I spent an hour and a half at Birmingham and didn’t get in until 3:20. Two hours later than planned.

And I’m still sick. :( Oliver gave me a cold and I spent the whole of last week going through tissues. By Saturday I thought I’d gotten over it, but on Monday I got the sore throat back. Still have it and I’m not done with the tissues yet. So I’m going to the doctor’s tomorrow. Just in case. I want to be healthy when I take my exams. If I get to take them that is. This strike action is annoying. I want to know what I got for my essays and portfolio! Grades are important to me.

And I got a letter from my bank saying that they have to send papers and stuff to my permanent address instead of sending it here when online banking is concerned. Which means they want to send it to Finland. I don’t live in Finland! Another thing to clear up tomorrow… urgh.

But, on a brighter note, I’ve made plans to see movies with Gabe. Yay. Get to see “Wilde”, something Oliver didn’t want to see with me. A nice change from Stargate. And now that I’m back in Aber, I can watch Desperate Housewives and Friends again too. ^_^

I just remembered the dream I had last night. It was so freaky. Okay, so I don’t remember all of it, just one scene.

I was a nanny for this one family. I was taking care of a toddler. A girl, I think. Anyway, I felt like I should take the baby. I don’t know why, just that it was the best thing for the kid. Then the next day, I took her. I got to the front gate, hearing the mother screaming for me, and I just couldn’t make myself take the baby away. I couldn’t. It was so.. scary. I went back to the mother as quickly as I could, handed over the girl and I remember clearly saying: “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.” And then running away from her with this dark red old slim book in my hands.

I felt so guilty and freaked when I woke up. To the fire alarm. >_<

dreams

I feel so satisfied. I’ve finished off my essay and just finished writing my portfolio. Now all I need to do is print them out! o/ Plus, I had a lot of fun writing my portfolio. The only thing that’s not so nice about writing for portfolios is the word limit. I really don’t like the word limit they’ve set. It’s not enough!

And all of this means that I can go over to Oliver’s tomorrow. ^_^

The visa application process to go to Montana next year is a real pain in the neck. I’ve booked my appointment at the embassy, reviewed all the application forms but haven’t filled them all in because that has to be done online and print out papers which means I have to go to the library to do it.

Had a fire drill this morning. A lovely way to wake up. >_< At least it’s the last one this year. Now I gotta hope that no one sets it off during the exams…

I got a comment by John Sam Jones!!! *giddy* He’s the guy who wrote Fishboys of Vernazza and he signed my copy when he came to give a lecture about it. This is so cool! o/

So far, I still have 1400 words or so to go on my essay, but it’s getting easier to write it now that I’ve gotten into the swing of things. On the downside, I’ve been talking to a load of people and we’ve all chosen the same question. I want to make my essay different from theirs. I like being original. At least for my portfolio I was told that it was really interesting to read and if I had more time to work on my pieces, they’d be really good. Last semester my grade was 68, now I got a 61… it’s a different teacher, so it’s possible that my way of writing just appealed to my American teacher more than it does to this Welsh one. *shrugs* Not too worried about it though. :)

John Sam Jones, Fishboys of Vernazza, essays, creative writing

I’ve just spent an hour on Oliver’s DancingStage mat. Because the program I used is on the computer, the cable that hooks up the mat to the computer makes it so that it doesn’t recognize pressing two directions at once. So it looks like I’m doing really horribly. Which I probably am. I don’t care though, it’s a load of fun! I like the Japanese songs it’s got, but so far, my fave is Shaft’s “Sway” or whatever it’s called. *…when the rhythm starts to play, dance with me, make me sway…*

I’ve also started working out to that TaeBo tape. Done it now three days in a row. Getting easier all the time and it’s fun too. I still have to stop a lot during the exercises to drink some water, but hopefully by the end of June I’ll be able to do the whole tape without stopping. I’m starting to remember everything the guy Billy Banks is saying. Good thing I’ve got two more tapes with me. XD

I like the color of my skin it is now. Nice and tan. But I’ve started getting these white spots on my skin, just like my dad does whenever he’s been out in the sun a lot. Apparently my body isn’t used to producing big amounts of melanin or whatever it is that gives one a tan. Back when we lived in Florida, I got an even tan practically all year round. Now that I’ve been living in countries where it rains pretty much every day, I guess my body thought it’d never seen sunlight again. >_< Next year in Montana won’t help much either. Snow… grr… Well, I don’t mind snow that much now that I think about it. I just prefer warmth and sunshine as opposed to freezing temperatures and darkness for half a year. :P

DancingStage, DDR, TaeBo, Billy Banks, tans