10. The A52 between Nottingham and Derby. Also known as Brian Clough Way, but I prefer A52, it sounds more macho.
9. Hazelnut flavour coffee syrup. Coffee syrup seems to be a marmite type thing, but the ones I like even more so.
8. Pretty ringbinders.
7. MAC lipsticks.
6. Maps. Especially of big intricate cities like London.
5. Old hospitals.
4. Crime novels by Swedish or Icelandic writers. If you want to sell a book to me, a good starting point is having a name that either ends son/dottir or contains any of åæðøýþijœšž you will have a good chance of me at least picking the book up.
3. Mint/mint-chocolate ice cream.
2. A Casualty episode from the early nineties titled ‘Cascade’.
1. Cherry scented conditioner.

10 Random things I like considerably less
10. Ivy on buildings. Cannot say too frequently how much I loathe this, eurgh!
9. Patterns that are too close together. I can’t say what too close is. I just know it when I see it. And then I feel sick.
8. Ford KAs. People just buy a coffin now it’ll save the effort later.
7. Hello Kitty the cartoon. I’m a sucker for Hello Kitty kawaii junk, but the cartoon is on a whole other level of awfulness. If you don’t believe me I have a 4 volume DVD set so I can share the joy with four of you…
6. That manufacturers keep sticking honey in stuff. a) because somehow they think it makes food more natural than when using sugar, erm last I checked both beets and canes were pretty bloody natural and b) most importantly they don’t label properly to indicate that disgusting bee leak is in there. Blergh.
5. Yodeling.
4. Pepsi and Diet Coke. Mostly the only really acceptable coke in my house is Cherry Coke.
3. Decorating. House decorating that is. I evidently didn’t get that particular mostly female gene. If there’s room for my books/CDs/records/DVDs/clothes, a bed, coffee making facilities/ice cream storing facilities, a TV, a computer and t’internet I’m happy. Everything else just seems like pointless reasons to give money to Homebase/B&Q/Ikea.
2. The sub/subs at the local freebie paper. Can you at least reduce it to one fecking awful pun per edition?
1. Printers. The machines not people who print. They (the machines) hate me, all of them.

10 Random things I’m good-ish at
10. Making risotto.
9. Making cakes that taste nice, but don’t look especially attractive.
8. Remembering telephone numbers.
7. Hula-hooping for a long time. No tricks, just longevity.
6. Subtle ogling. This is an important skill I tell you.
5. Talking.
4. Book shopping. Practically olympic level.
3. Filing. I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I do file fabulously. we’re talking putting stuff in order, not filing down kind of filing.
2. Pronouncing uncommon names. One of the key advantages of having worked with a bunch of Sri Lankan doctors is that I am rarely phased by a name these days.
1. Over thinking.

10 Random things I’m pretty blooming awful at
10. Telling the time on an analogue clock.
9. Lying for my own benefit. For others I can do it, for me, not happening.
8. Doing buttons up the right way first time. There’s a very good reason I don’t wear many blouses, I’d never get out of the house on time.
7. Negotiating busy crowds.
6. Cutting my own fringe. though I am improving, which is necessary since I refuse to stump up £8 every couple of weeks.
5. Being patient.
4. Not getting my dinner down me. Though oddly I’m less attractive to foodstuffs when in restaurants.
3. Gift wrapping.
2. Tidying up.
1. washing up. I actually make stuff dirtier.

I am in equal parts petrified, that I have done done as much as I would really like to, and relieved that the fecking thing is not dangling over me any longer. I do get tremendously attached to assignments. I am hugely competitive, not against other people in my class if someone gets a higher mark than me it is because they are better than me, but against myself. And sometimes with the person teaching me, sometimes because I like them, sometimes because I don’t. Sometimes both at once.

But it’s weird having done something that I’m this attached to instead of something that is merely interesting. Or not, as in the case of the last two assignments of last semester. I’m going to be utterly fucked three years hence with a dissertation. I can genuinely say giving birth was bloody easy compared. Even worse though, in one of those spanking hurts but is rather good paradox things, I really enjoyed it too. Much as it hurt I fancy doing it again.
The assignment that is.
Not the giving birth. I really didn’t like that. Never doing that again.

As Facebook buddies will realise I have now met an extraordinary number of employees of a certain power company (whose predecessor I once had a mind numbingly dull job with) in an effort to have water and heat. In the 14 days since it first ceased working I have:
*Met 5 different engineers, 2 of those twice.
*Had a shower so cold that it made me cry. Properly. I was scared for my boobs, in the end it was my toes and head that caused the weeping like a baby and shaking.
*Stayed in a cheap chain hotel whose name rhymes with Pavel Kodge. Which was actually okay, although why do they have their beds so close to the floor? You wouldn’t think being low down would make you dizzy, but apparently it does.
* For the first time ever walked to college. A mere 2.8miles though. From hotel to college. At 7am it was really rather nice.

In other news (mildly stats related look away now my piscean friend) that I’ve had a couple of search engine visits on the tag jnbt. And have discovered that it stands for Java Non Binary Tag. So to save potential further irritation of Java-heads I have reinitialled him MCOT. Also I am in the mood for reinitialling anyway.

I just searched my local library catalogue for books on parasites and this is one of the suggested [on the very short list of] titles:
“Goblygiadau adroddiad ymchwiliad Phillips (BSE) i Gymru adroddiad ar gyfer Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru gan y Pwyllgor Iechyd a Gwasanaethau Cymdeithasol ar y cyd a’r Pwyllgor Amaethyddiaeth a Materion Gwledig”
And just incase your Cymraeg is a bit rusty it is a report on BSE for the assembly. Which isn’t even a blinkin’ parasite disease, it’s a prion disease (protein) so it can’t even be that the library service is being all boolean and smart. Just frustrating.

If you’re watching my 2010 photos there’s going to be a pause for a few days, because my pro account has run out so I can’t upload any pictures until either the 31st or when I’m less skint.

After a small and deeply unscientific poll I have concluded I am the most paranoid essay planner on the planet. Well my bit of it anyway. I am utterley baffled though as to how the rest of the world manages without planning every paragraph on a reference by reference basis. I could not cope without my pages of planning, my essays would never happen.*

————————————————————————————————————————–

*When I say detail I mean like this….
Overall plan
1. Intro
2. Why I am so anal about planning
a) planning theory and CFs b) psych theories of meticulousness and CFs
3. Why other people aren’t
a) non planning theory, b) social implications and CFs
4. What might happen
a) future predictions and CFs
5. Conclusion
Paragraph plan
2. Why I am so anal about planning
i. Smith—information about planning
ii. Jones—planning quote “that you see…”
iii CF Green—on against planning
iv. Pink et al—psych—>meticulousness
etc
for every paragraph, line by line.

Question here for my random occasional visitors. What’s going on at Sutton Scarsdale Hall that has meant my site and my Flickr pictures of the hall have had lots of vistors lately?

I’ve googled (and even yahoooooood) and I can’t find anything that suggests something exciting is going on, so can someone enlighten me? I’ve had visitors from Nottingham, Derbyshire, Manchester, University of Huddersfield, University of Leeds, random Virgin customers that all come up in Southampton (but I think that’s just because of the weird way Virgin set up IP addresses, either that or most of Southampton and Portsmouth visit me every week anyway) and more. All looking for Sutton Scarsdale Hall. So, er, why?

Thank you for the hugs and emails after my last post. All those who think that the internet is a cold place clearly haven’t come across you lot, their loss.

Anyways two things initially. First my piggy bank has gone a bit ana/mia.
Second thing I’d like to thank one of Z’s internet buddies Mr Juan for leading me to realise that I’d forgot to reset my header links. Gaud I’m dense sometimes.

I’m still a bit meh to be frank. Other than the whole being broke thing, stuff that leads me into the territory of considering getting myself and the lovely Max matching T-shirts relating to the pain in the assness of other humans.
Partly some of that old I’m not very good at making friends thing. By which I mean people I feel wholly and absolutely comfortable with knowing anything about me and can say anything to. Rather than the being chirpy chatty and “friendly” with random people, which I have strangely got quite good at as I’ve gotten older.
And partly it is summed up by the bit of chat at the top…

Back soon chickens.

xxx

First off I don’t find that it’s a particularly immediate response for me. Not that I wasn’t taught my Ps and Qs when I was small, not at all. I was taught properly and all that, but I was also taught that it’s much more important to not need so say it. To be self reliant enough that you don’t need to thank people. Except of course my mother and grandmother clearly had higher hopes than my self-reliant abilities match, so I am quite often in need of help.

Second it frequently results in a response of the same, which for reasons I can’t quite fathom, I find unbelievably embarrassing. It’s a bit like intellectual and personality based compliments. So for instance say a random person says “oh that’s a pretty dress” I can say “why thank you” easily and mean it, and not feel weird. However, if you compliment something that I have done I am in squirm central. An old boss of mine once launched into an horrendously flattering assessment of my abilities and I burst into tears. People saying thank you to me has a similar response, though rarely as extreme I should add.

I am getting better at saying thank you to people, and realising when I have been remiss, but I am still very uncomfortable with people saying thank you to me. So for instance on Tuesday JNBT very kindly paid my trainfare when the buses were being wussie and had closed up shop. On the train I managed a mumbled thank you, but once I got toward home I had a bit of a panic that he’d think I was rude so I bought him some cakes (McVities Irish Cream for the interested, I think they’re rather nice, whether anyone else does is another matter). I gave them to him this afternoon, and he said thank you (because clearly manners come more easily to him than to I), and I couldn’t look at him when he said it. Thus he said thank you twice more, I think possibly because he thought I didn’t hear him, and I just could not look at the man.

I’m currently nursing a huge wadge of guilt that I haven’t properly thanked someone else at college this week, so I’m currently trying to decide what foodstuff to use to say thank you in lieu of my chronic inability to say thank you in a timely and meaningful manner.

I have to do a presentation on science on television on Friday morning. Last night I timed it and it came to 54mins, today I’m using a timer and have got at the most to half way through by the time the timer goes off. I am losing slides at an alarming rate. Really bloody alarming given how long it has taken me to do the naffing things. I’m going to have to skip big chunks, and I hate doing so. It feels crappy not being able to properly explain why something is a problem, or just skim over things. Or skip things altogether.

AND I only have 2500 words for the written version. I genuinely can’t get my head around people making squealing noises at having to write *that* much because frankly it is fuck all. I could as of this minute, in my distinctly incomplete state of notes write ten times that. Easily.

I might actually lamp the next person who says “15 minutes, that’s so long”. Not fucking long enough.

Other issues. I have comprehensively concluded that I really don’t understand other human beings. Y’know that Katy Perry song (no, not the one that’s guaranteed to annoy Max), Hot n’ Cold. I’m guessing, on account of the fact that all my regular readers have what might be regarded as better musical taste than me, that you won’t all be totally familiar with the lyrics. But take a guess and I’ll bet you’re pretty near (if you really can’t imagine then the lyrics are here). I think some people are confused, which is fair enough, but some people should maybe deal with that in their time rather than confusing other human beings too. Who would maybe like to know what the devil is going on, and that if it involves them, perhaps their permission/opinion might be sought first. Oh and the bus thing happened again. Weirdo .

I am unilaterally crap at quadratic equations, and am having to redo something that’s GCSE level. And not for the thing I thought I’d got wrong. Which is both disheartening and reassuring all at once!

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