Ah yes. Resolutions. That time of year again!

 

I've got various New Year's/new term's resolutions in the offing, actually. Most of them are only slight variations on the ones I make every year - lose weight, do more exercise, go out more, wark harder, take more care of my appearance on a day-to-day basis, etc, etc and so on. Actually some of those I might have a chance with this year - doing more exercise, for instance, is unavoidable when you spend a good proportion of each day walking up and down reasonably steep hills to lectures - but I know that others (losing weight!) probably won't happen, mostly due to a lack of self-discipline..

 

Still, my three main ones are as follows -

 

 - Keep my bedroom tidy (- by which I mean my college bedroom, really, though no doubt my home bedroom could benifit from the same treatment). As my friends will atest to, I spent a goodly amount of time last term having a panic 'cos I couldn't find my key, and while the tea-towel and plate may have been nicked (why?! why?!), I will never understand where that knife got to.. So yeah, a tidy room could make my life a lot simpler - having a lighter, shorter and fatter pentagon than I had last term will help.

 

 - Not get ill. Ha. Ha! This does of course rely on me being well at the start of term, which isn't looking too promising at the minute.. (I can do this great trick! I blow my nose and my ear squeaks loudly and I go all dizzy! Wooo!). But seriously, I've been either 'about to be ill' or 'ill to varying degrees' or 'recovering from being ill' since October now, which isn't that fun and is not exactly assisting my degree. Sleep, vitamins, hot drinks.. whatever I can do to keep things on an even keel next term, and if that fails.. well. I don't know. I met my most recent ex-clarinet teacher on the train the other day, and he suggested that I get tested for allergies, which is a thought, but it's really got past a joke. I want to enjoy university!

 

 - Get through the term without going home - 'cos basically I need to know that I can do it. I had absolutely no idea how hard homesickness would hit me last term. No idea.

 

 

I love Durham to bits - I love my college, love the departments, love the city, and have made some really great friends, who I hope to get to know a lot better in the coming weeks. Despite the negative vibes which I may have been giving off about it, I'm actually really happy there, and I mean that! So if I can not get ill, and conquer the homesickness (, and keep my room tidy, and keep on top of work..) - that's great! :)

 

I think I worry too much.. In any case, here's another one, arisen through sharing a room with my brother for the week while my grandfather, George, is staying - what if my prospective husband snores?

 

It's a serious consideration!

 

Ironically, my sister's getting a digital camera for Christmas. As a result, I spent much of yesterday evening combing the Curry's brochure that we'd picked up, trying to explain to my mum the difference between an SD card and a USB stick, and why optical zoom is better than digital.. to be fair, a lot of the information that I had picked up about a year ago when I was looking for a camera for myself. No particular reason to have chosen Curry's over anywhere else, either - we just needed a starting point, and nobody's got the time or willpower to trawl around every electronics store in south Birmingham.

 

Anyhows, we went along to the store this morning, with a reasonable idea of what we wanted to buy. Discussed it, eyed up the cameras in the flesh (they were, understandably, behind the counter), and asked an assistant if we could buy a particular model. Nice and simple, eh?

 

And to be fair to the guy, he was doing his bit for the business - but he was one of these over-zealous creatures who tried to persuade us to spend money on anything and everything. First he tried to sell us the camera itself, even though we'd made it reasonably clear that we were going to buy it anyway. Then it was a camera case - 'pparently they don't come with them nowadays - then a memory card, then insurance. We finally managed to persuade him that we weren't going to be jumping off cliffs or dropping it in a bowl of coke (I jest not, that was the scenario he foresaw!), but Mum gave in on the memory card. Yes, you need one, and yes, I guess that Rachel does have her Art mock GCSE in January, and Christmas post an' all that, but close on £40.. you can get them online for £5, postage included. He cocked his head at us as we finally walked away, all flashing blue eyes and Australian charm. My heart bled.

 

I've learnt my lesson. I'm not buying another camera off the internet, but I am going to look, very carefully, at what places are offering, and possibly use the 'net for any peripherals if needs be. Talk about big chain stores taking advantage. And the thing is, they can because they know that people can be sold anything - so long as the customer isn't 100% clued-up on what they're buying, and so long as they sell it hard enough.

 

 

On a somewhat more.. well.. seasonal note, I am glad to report that 88 votes in, 78% of Trevelyan College believes that Santa Claus is real :)

 

Too much to do, too much to sort out. Shopping, presents. Camera to return (though the camera itself is great. It's everything else - USB lead, charger etc - which has stopped working. Had enough, want to start again). People. Socks. Oh my god, socks. Even www.sockshop.co.uk, the font of all things sock-like is this time fairly useless. I don't want bright orange socks. I miss the days when I could walk into a shop and buy a pair of socks. It was simple, and nice. Essay, analysis (or rather analysis, essay), notes, email. Programming. Chiropractor. Dentist. Room floor. Christmas cheer, dammit...

 

 

It's soo nice to be home! I do actually mean that!

 

I'm home :)

 

Have been since Thursday evening, actually, but it's been completely crazy since then, and obviously going straight onto MSN hasn't been first priority. Since then I've typed a couple of 'first term resumé' blogs.. the first one made me sound like I've been on happy pills all term, which isn't true, so I deleted it. The second one made me sound really miserable, like I've been close to dropping out - that isn't true either, you'll be glad to hear, so that one went as well. I give up, with the addendum that if you want to know about what I've been doing recently then you're more than welcome to ask me in person! As a neat lil summary, I can give you my answer to the latest Trevs website vote, 'How do you feel about term coming to an end'; "Although I hate to leave the holiday will be a reprieve."

 

 

Will probably write something more once things settle down a bit (ha ha ha) in the run-up to Christmas. I hope to see most of you, though, in real life, at some party or gathering or another.. Facebook and MSN-ing just isn't the same..!

 

Home! *squeaks*

 

Lucy is happy with her room allocation for next term :)

 

I'm ill.

 

The stupid thing is that I know exactly why (or I think I do anyway..). I haven't had nearly enough sleep recently, have had a reasonably stressful week, and my body simply can't cope for some reason. From the sounds of it, the second cricket test (do I mean that?) started again last night. Having felt shit all day, skipping three out of five lectures, I'd gone to bed at half nine - great until I was woken up at around midnight then didn't sleep properly for the rest of the night. I called Noiseline at 2am - a temporary solution - but by then I really was feeling ill and the chances of falling asleep again were minimal. Needless to say, the noise levels had picked up again an hour later anyway.

 

I don't know why my immune system is really so crappy, but it just is. When I tell people to be quiet it's not because I'm trying to be killjoy, it's because I need my sleep, only they don't seem to get that. Earplugs work great for people chatting in rooms across the landing, but when a TV system is on beneath your head and there are about 20 drunk students watching it loudly, bits of rubber have minimal effect. It's not that I object to people enjoying the cricket, but for one thing it's bound to be shown on terrestial TV at a more civilised time, and for another there are ways and means of enjoying it. Their fun means that I probably won't be able to eat until Monday. That's not fair, in my book.

 

At least I'll be elsewhere next term. If the unlikely happens and we end up with the same landing again (our group's two-thirds of the way down the ballot and apparently E1's quite popular for some reason..), I'll beg somebody else to have this exact room. As for the shorter-term future, I plan to go and see Maggie Prestwich on Monday and ask if I can have use of an empty post-grad room in J-block. The whole thing's past a joke.

 

(Ah, I love the BBC website... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6159733.stm)

 

 

On a lighter note, do observe the note which I found posted on my door this morning..

 

It's not Rob ('cos you can read the handwriting) but I'm not sure that it's Rhiannon either.. and it's obviously someone who knows about complex numbers, meaning that they had to have done F Maths, which rules out Paul.. will have to interrogate when they get back from Edinburgh this evening!

 

Update: OK, it would seem to have been Ailish, Adam's girlfriend, who's staying over at the minute (but has stayed over before, so we sort of know her!) - Rhiannon says that she was trying to introduce complex numbers to Adam, which would explain the last response!