I'm cold!

 

This is blogworthy because I'm never cold - I'm one of those people who prefers an open window to a radiator, who expires in school/college buildings during most of the year (because they overheat them like saunas!), and who might put on a jumper when other people are onto five layers of clothing plus a coat.. but yes, the time has come. The changing of the clocks was the trigger up here, and the promised climate of icyness is settling in upon Durham faster than you can say 'Luis Fernandez'.. Time, methinks, to buy a thick, snuggly, FairTrade Durham University hoodie :)

 

 

I can't help feeling that I ought to be doing something else.. The college Hallowe'en party is about to kick off in the bar as I type this, but for a variety of reasons which I really can't be bothered to relate, our landing (plus/minus a couple of people) held our own Hallowe'en party on Sunday evening, and I think that that's probably a good thing - everyone's got a load of work again now, and quite a few of us have got 9 o'clocks to prepare for tomorrow. Plus, it was very entertaining to walk down to St John's for a Quaker link group meeting whilst dressed as a cat! I might get dressed up again later if I can be bothered.. but then I am still trying to catch up on my missed week's worth of lectures/tutorials so maybe not.

 

And yes, I do have one photo, even if my felinity isn't the defining feature thereof!

 

 

Life goes on..

 

(Incidentally, I heard the other evening that I missed the chance to go hear Clare Short speak!! I am so not happy about this!)

 

Lucy is still ill. :(

 

Lucy is better enough to have stayed out of bed all day. :)

 

Lucy has been told that it probably is a virus that just won't shift. :(

 

Lucy has been prescribed Amoxycillin anyway on the basis that it might help where other stuff hasn't so far. :)

 

Lucy is theoretically grown-up, so the said Amoxycillin is not pale yellow and banana flavoured. :(

 

But at least Lucy had a lift (free) to and from the surgery and also to a pharmacy. :)

 

Lucy has got waaay too many notes to copy up, and Rob's handwriting is illegible. :(

 

Lucy is very glad that Rob is on her landing. :)

 

Lucy has just had to make apologies for another tutorial tomorrow. :(

 

Lucy has the rest of the day off anyway, and it was a 9am tutorial... :)

 

 

Lucy is going to bed. :)

 

 

Lucy should possibly stop talking like she's on Facebook..

 

In the single hour yesterday when I could stand up without going dizzy, it occured to me that it might be a good idea to check my post. College post is delivered to pigeon-holes alphabetical by surname (- all well and good, except that Miss J L Verity and Mr I Taylor clearly haven't been into college for a bit and sorting requires one to dump all the post onto the floor and sift that way), so one has to be proactive to discover gems such as bank statements and train tickets. Anyhow, I did have mail - a letter from Dad including a rather folded letter from the Foundation informing me that I have got a Leaving Exhibition! :)

 

The question is, what is a Leaving Exhibition? The governors think that I made an exhibition of myself upon leaving? They want me to make an exhibition of myself? Who knows.. Either way it's a little bit of extra money in the bank, which in these student-debt-ridden times is not to be sneered at. Apparently Rachel has won the Wilkinson Shield, but no-one knows what that is either! 'The Bailey Prize for Physics' (Andy) and 'Best Scholar' (Beccy, believe it or not! :P) are somwhat more helpfully named, you can't help thinking!

 

 

Back off to the doctors' tomorrow. It may well be a virus, but it's not doing much about itself :(

 

It never quite occured to me before coming to university quite how open one lays oneself. People on my landing have now seen me digustingly icky, throwing up, and in no fit state to do anything about it. At home, I just wouldn't have come into school, preserving some shred of dignity that way. They, well OK, Rob, has been through the Favourites list on my computer whilst installing iTunes for me.. and yes I could have done it for myself, but I was lying on the floor at the time and Rob wanted me to have iTunes. In any case, the point is that Rob has been through my Favourites list - not deeply incriminating, though there is some stuff on there that maybe I wouldn't have brought up in conversation with new friends in another context. Similarly, due to the price of laundry being what it is, I can now tell you what size Rhiannon's tops are and where Adam buys his boxers from.

 

Prospective students, you have been warned!

 

 

On a totally unrelated topic, my sister has just emailed me with the comforting line, "sorry that ur feeling like a mouldy plumb [sic] with maggots in (actually, i think i just INFERED [sic] that...)". Thanks, Rach!

 

I hate my immune system I hate my immune system I hate my immune system. Or rather, apparent lack of - I'd just about got over the Freshers' Flu, lingering cough excepted, and I went down with something else (or so the doctor tells me. He thinks it's unlikely that it's a two-week nasty). I will spare you all the gory details 'cos I'm sure you'd really rather not know.. suffice to say that I was unable to get out of bed this morning, slept more-or-less solidly for a further ten hours and still feel pretty shit. :(

 

Sadly, it appears just to be a virus. You know what is it when you visit the doctor - you want him/her to look alarmed, prescribe you some potent medicine immediately and inform you in hushed tones that you have Green Monkey Disease. The symptons may be identical, but you feel so much more justified telling people that you have Green Monkey Disease rather than 'just got this virus thing', and you feel less bad about skipping lectures because of it. Ah well. Fluids, Vit C, bed rest.. at your service.

 

 

Seeing as I was at the surgery anyway, I got seen by the nurse to have my medical details registered. This was a reasonably quick and painless procedure - apparently I have healthy blood pressure and am also tall. They never fail to surprise me..

 

 

I occurs to me that despite the title of this blog, most of the entries have been rather downhearted lately. That's not because good things haven't been happening - it's just that as a general rule, the times I'm stuck in my room on my laptop are the times I haven't been out doing something more interesting. Will try to rectify the situation shortly (vis-à-vis cheerfulness of blog entries, not doing interesting things, rest assured!)

 

Escape! I spent yesterday seeing Kat and Cat, going to the cinema, going to Asda, on various trains... basically a day out. Durham to Leeds is ninety minutes (give or take) on the train - far enough, but just close enough to make it worth going there and back in a day, which is what I needed to do. I had a taste of both Leeds and Bradford - Cat needed to pick up some stuff, and in the end, that's where we saw 'The History Boys' as well, before going back to Kat's flat via the supermarket, and finally the train station. And Pizza Hut! *yawns*

 

'The History Boys' was every bit as good as I'd hoped for. Obviously they'd changed it a bit in the transition from stage to screen - a scene or two added, a scene or two taken away, and a few bits of dialogue altered ('"Twat! Twat! Twat!"' had been taken out!). Camera shots and locations and stuff generally added to one's understanding of the story, although it lost some of the immediacy that a theatre provides. I think on balance I preferred the stage version, although I'd still give the film 11/10.. just that I'd give the play 12 or 13, so it's still amazing and definitely worth going to see!

 

Apart from that though, it was just so nice to be with old friends again! Kat and I were going the wrong way on a bus (the time getting perilously close to the departure of my train back up, in fact), and Stephen Wagstaff and Emma Smyth from school got on. It's not that I particularly know/knew either Wagi or Emma, but just seeing familiar faces in such an unfamiliar setting was comforting. I think maybe that's what I miss up here, I dunno.. But it was just good to not have to explain myself, or narrate part of my life history to anyone - to joke about getting pregnant or, *ahem*, Sheffield or catch up on gossip from mutual friends.. What was needed! :)

 

So a *lil* tired now, but it was worth it!

 

Especially for the very attractive guy on the train back home! 0:-)

 

 

A few gems off the Durham MathsSoc website.. there are more..

 

 -- "The number you have dialed is imaginary.  Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again."

 

 -- Life is complex, it has real and imaginary components.

 

 -- TOP TEN EXCUSES FOR NOT DOING THE MATHS HOMEWORK
       1. I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
       2. Isaac Newton's birthday.
       3. I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't actually reach it.
       4. I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this margin.
       5. I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to prove that it converged.
       6. I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy.
       7. I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got in and ate it.
       8. I couldn't figure out whether i am the square of negative one or i is the square root of negative one.
       9. I took time out to snack on a doughnut and a cup of coffee.  I spent the rest of the night trying to figure which one to dunk.
       10. I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle, but this morning I couldn't find it.

 

 -- Theorem: All positive integers are interesting. 
    Proof:  Assume the contrary.
               Then there is a lowest non-interesting positive integer.
               But, hey, that's pretty interesting! A contradiction.

 

 -- A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.

 

 -- Did you hear about the Statistician that couldn't get laid?  He decided a simulation was good enough.

 

 -- A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems" (P. Erdos) Addendum: American coffee is good for lemmas

 

 -- A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant.

 

 -- "This is a one line proof...if we start sufficiently far to the left."

 

 

THIS IS WHAT FRIDAYS ARE STARTING TO DO TO ME!!! I ACTUALLY LAUGHED AT THEM!

 

So I did my best, trying to be extrovert for Freshers' Week. It was going fine 'til the flu came along, and then panic at loads of stuff and now homesickness, and.. well, yeah. One of the hardest things about university, at least to start with, is that you are constantly around other people, 24/7, with no break. You can have your bedroom door shut, but you feel like you should have it open or you'll miss out on loads of stuff. Similarly at meal times, if you don't chat nineteen to the dozen with the stranger next to you (other than the core questions: "What's your name? What course are you doing? Where do you come from?" - and at a push - "Which landing are you on?"), you feel really antisocial - never mind if you're tired, or PMS-ing, or depressed, you should come across as lively and fun because these are the people you are going to be living with for the next four years, and university's about having a good time.

 

I don't know if I'm signed up for the right courses - I'm particularly worried about the Computer Science one, but even the Maths isn't as enjoyable as I'd hoped. My room's in such a state that the cleaner refused to hoover it - fair enough, and tbh it doesn't particularly need hoovering at the minute, but it's just depressing and adds to the panic that I've probably forgotten something really important to be doing.

 

I got into Choral Society (*jumps up and down flapping hands in excitement*) but I know for a fact it was on the merit of my sight-reading - as the conductor pointed out, my throat was in such a state that they couldn't tell whether I had a nice voice or not. First rehearsal was yesterday for two hours - my throat still isn't completely better, which doesn't help - but I couldn't help feeling that it was way out of my league.. everyone was talking about their old cathedral choirs, or singing tutors, or choral scholarship auditions, and put bluntly, I'm not that good. I enjoy singing. I've sang in choirs before, albeit not particularly high-flying ones. I can hold an alto part, and yes, I can sight read reasonably difficult music. But my voice is not solo quality, my breathing technique is abysmal, I've never had lessons, and while it doesn't affect one's singing ability, I do not talk with a posh southerner's accent. I'd almost rather that they auditioned me again, when my voice is better - at least then I wouldn't feel like such a fraud, and that I had got in on my own merits, rather than winging on a chance. It sounds a pretty heavy commitment as well.. I was ready to pack it in, to tell the guy that I didn't want to be there and that I'd just join Trevs' Choir, and then I looked at the music they'd given us for the concert in March. One of the pieces was the five Negro spirituals from Tippett's 'Child of Our Time'; and I love those sooo much! To sing those, in the cathedral, in a damn good choir, 'cos it is.. that would just be so amazing! Damn my love of Tippett, getting in the way at all the wrong times..

 

 

I think it was tiredness, and stress, and combined worry about modules and Choral Society that did it for me yesterday evening. And homesickness. I can't tell you how much I want to hear a good Brummie accent!

 

A gypsy! I'll travel the road, raising my large family, making a little extra income on the side through all the trades known to womankind.. OK, so I won't and I don't want to, but for a costume thought of and executed in 15 minutes, I was quite impressed, even if I did have to borrow a headscarf and some jewellery!

 

I'm going to create a new photo album with pictures from the last week. Most of them are from last night, actually, but there's a few pirate ones in there as well. I am glad to say that no-one I saw used the cop-out of 'when I grow up I want to be: a pirate', although there were a few people who said they wanted to be themselves.. but the majority had some pretty good costumes! University is not the place, it would seem, to be a damp squib when it comes to fancy dress - but at least everyone looks equally stupid!

 

 

This morning I found the Meeting in Durham and went along. It's a relatively small Meeting - 'bout 25 people - and there were three other students there, all of whom I think were new. The university link guy got all our names and invited us to lunch next Sunday, which'll be good as I managed to speak to one of the lads, but not the other one or the other girl. I'd kinda hoped there'd be a few more people.. just with whom I have that in common. But never mind. Small and self-selected!

 

 

College Freshers' Fair this afternoon was basically a much smaller version of the DSU one. I still need to work out quite what I've signed up for, but I think it's along the lines of choir, orchestra, ecology, Amnesty, ultimate frisbee.. I'm not going to be able to do everything, obviously, but we'll see where the time takes us! I had a go at the frisbee-throwing, which I was distinctly mediocre at; but for me, that's pretty good going, as I can't currently think of any other sports that I can even claim to be mediocre at! I have, however, bought some trackie bottoms and a couple of sports shirts on the basis that I will feel like I've wasted the money if I don't use them, therefore it is a good and profitable idea to do exercise. And yes, I do have to convince myself with blatant psychology.

 

 

Photos? *finds folder*

 

Let's just make something clear.. I don't like Fridays anymore. One little bit.

 

The rest of my lecture timetable looks ok. Reasonably spaced out, Wednesdays off at the minute (although no doubt tutorials and computer lab will put paid to that); even Thursdays are fine with a bit of organisation. But Fridays are, not to put it too finely, a bitch. Six hours of Maths lectures, in a row, from 11am til 5.15pm, with no break for lunch bar 15 minutes (which has to be spent walking from one lecture site to another. And Durham is hilly). Rob's doing Stats as an optional module, so he has it even worse - not only does he have to do Stats, which is fairly bad in itself, he has in addition to my Friday lectures one at 9am. Given that these are core Maths modules we're talking about, they really should have been considerate enough to put them sometime other than all on Friday. The last time I did six hours Maths in a row was on the 30th June, and that was not an experience I was keen to repeat. Coincidentally that was also a Friday *eyes narrow at conspiracy*

 

 

I'm in a particularly rubbish state because I seem to have contracted the legendary Freshers' Flu. Fun. I visited Boots yesterday morning. My purchases consisted of tissues, Halls extra strength, TCP and earplugs. The earplugs are not unrelated as I personally reckon it was lack of sleep that left me vulnerable to germs..

 

 

So I've got no voice, and a choral audition in an hour. :(

 

 

I'll cheer up soon, I promise. Once the paracetemol and TCP start working and I stop feeling quite so shit..

 

INTERNET!! Works! *ahem*..

 

So I do still exist. Just, well, haven't had a working connection or indeed much time to sort it out - only this morning did I become an official student at the university, so only this afternoon did I get to the point of 'summoning a spod' to sort out all the different firewalls which were blocking each other. Mark Garner, the college worships you!

 

I've signed up for all my modules - the four compulsory Maths, plus one Music and one Computer Science. I figured that I might as well have a taste of some other depts while I can, plus the Maths is depressing me atm because I can't remember how to do any of it. But people ask what you're doing, latch on to the Computer Science thing, and get no further. I would like to point out that just because I have signed up for 'Introduction to Programming', I can not configure college network connections, so stop asking! (Actually, I don't know why I've put that, for as far as I know, no-one in college is aware of my little corner of the Internet.. but just in case other people think I can help with their computers, I can't, I'm crap, go ask somebody who knows what they're talking about)

 

College food is good, seriously good, and I have been allocated the best type of meal card: green V for vegetarian, no V for not, and no V means that you can't have the veggie option as they don't cook enough of it. I, however, have a red V ('vegetarian tendencies'), which basically means that I can have whatever I want, whenever I want! And it really is good food. The only omission is any Marmite at breakfast, but I foresaw difficulties and brought a jar of my own :)

 

Um.. mental tally of what to mention.. rooms. My room is a very odd shape, inevitably, and smaller and darker than Rhiannon's (my next door neighbour).. on the flip side I do have more shelving. I'm not sharing, sadly.. I don't know whether that was because too many people wanted to share in the first term or whether they've put me down as a 'medical'. If the latter, it's pretty useless because the mattress in the room is so awful that I spent the night before last on the floor and it was actually more comfortable. However the porters delivered me a sheet of wood yesterday to put underneath the said awful mattress, and it's better at least.. a stage better than the floor, anyway. But more importantly, I have five really nice people on my landing - Rhiannon, Paul, Rob, Adam and Andrew (two girls + four lads = more shower time!) - and am coming across lots more people throughout college.

 

Freshers Week, not yet over, has already been completely exhausting! All things considered, I thought I made a pretty good effort at pirate costume, although there are no photos to prove it.. well there are, but on other people's cameras. Landing formal was pretty bizarre, Rixies is almost as crap as Klute, and 'Adam and Dave's Excellent Adventure' was no less than excellent if you're being generous! Still to come is a ceilidh tonight :), academic parenting cocktail night tomorrow (when I meet my mummies).. and something at the weekend, but I actually can't remember.

 

At the university-wide Freshers' Fair, I signed up for about ten societies.. I think.. and it's the college fair on Sunday. I'm so tired, though, and therefore so grumpy, that I wasn't taking things in properly. I think I might have signed up for the techie side of Musical Theatre Society by mistake.. I said I was interested in musicals, and the girl said something which I didn't hear; she asked what course I was doing, and then entered my details into a laptop, before handing me a card which said 'technical help' on it.. to be fair to the girl, I had just declared myself a Maths student and was wearing both my glasses and my kagoule, so the assumption wasn't completely out of place. I'll just have to explain that I can't operate a lighting desk for toffee. :S I've got an audition for the Choral Society tomorrow, have entered myself into the Durham Music Society database as a clarinet player, and on Marek's (my chiropractor's) advice, have rather nervously signed up for Pilates. I was also told, when passing a stall, that I had the perfect build for rowing.. I explained that I have a back problem, so have got out of any early mornings, but I'm still trying really really hard not to be offended..!

 

 

 

Suppertime beckons, so I will tell more another time, methinks.