Goodbye 2009, hello 2010

Welcome to the 4th decade I've lived in :)

MT09 summed up in one huge blog post

Oh, hello there blog. I'd forgotten about you.

Term time is far too busy to have time to write posts about goings-on. So now it's the Christmas holidays and I need to catch up. Here goes.

-1st Week
I went back to Oxford at some point this week, to settle in to my new home and hurriedly do all the maths I was went meant to do over the summer. Not much happened, except for a housewarming party at the new oules house, The Hoot. Lovely to see drama folks again :)

0th Week
On Sunday, I had to go meet and greet my new fresher children. I'm a mum, scary stuff. Gave them the tour, then left them to making new friends and getting steadily drunk/scared at the Turf. Also, ran to the station to meet David :) We had our traditional very-start-of-term lunch at McDonalds. Went to the Foam party on Monday and got, umm, foamy. Eilise and I "helped out" with the pub crawl on Thursday. On Friday, I helped man the oules stand at the Fresher's Fair, and signed up to a bunch of stuff myself. On Saturday, it was the cowboys & indians bop, which was good until I had to cycle home the next day in the rain in my tiny denim skirt.

1st Week
Argh, lectures. 9 a week, which is a slight improvement on last year, but the two 9am's cancel out the goodness. I hate mornings. Tutorials and everything were go, back to the usual. Parts were cast for Snow White this term, and I was Sneezy, a-choo. Ooh, David and I went to the free session of ballroom dancing, very fun :)

2nd Week
Ooh, this was Frank Turner week! Went to see him at the o2 academy place near my house (previously the Zodiac?), and it was an awesome evening. The Beans on Toast guy before him was hilarious too. I really enjoyed it. On a related note, I want one of those coffee tables with arcade games inside. On Thursday, it was the "Official Ball Launch" for Mansfield ball, at the Bridge. Not entirely sure why a ball launch is a necessary thing, but anyways, we all went and a fun yet super squashed night was had by all. The next evening, I went for dinner at St Catz with Will, played pool, racing, backgammon and chatted. Over the weekend, David's family were up, so I tagged along to a meal at Zizzi (Or was it Ask? They're practically the same thing, anyways.) and to the cinema to see Up (in Disney Digital 3D, no less). Having already seen Up (in 2D), I still had to pretend I wasn't crying at the sad bits. I love that film. (Squirrel!)

3rd Week
Halloween :) Eilise and I carved a pumpkin for our house. I spent Saturday dashing around the shops desperately trying to find last minute decorations for the oules party. I resorted to buying coloured card and making my own. I bought a Primark bed sheet and turned it into a bat costume, and David had an inflatable spider (?). The party was fun :)

4th Week
Exciting event of the week was the Mansfield Ball - "Circus of the Macabre" - at long last. Everyone dressed up in their best black tie and I finally got to wear my dress after buying it about 6 months ago :) First of all was the four or five course meal, very yummy. Then feeling very full we headed to the chapel for sweeties and fudge and cocktails and magicians and dancers. Then dodgems and big tops and swing boats and dancing and fortune telling and gambling and just a really awesome night.

5th Week
On Friday night, after a slow Oxford Tube ride, we arrived in London, threw our bags (and booking reference, oops) at Jess, and rushed to the Union Chapel to see Jonathan Coulton live ❤ We made it in sans booking reference thanks to the magic of iPhones and found some seats. We caught the end of Paul and Storm (Yarrr!) and then it was time for JC. Awesomeness :D We sang along and it was amazing. Yay for Skullcrusher Mountain :) After a brilliant show, we headed to the bar to wait and see if the man himself would turn up. After confusion, we met him in the chapel and David basically wet himself in excitement because we got a photo and our t-shirts signed :) Jess took us back to her house (Thanks Jess!) and we had suspicious Dr Oetker pizza. The next day we slept in and went to Pizza Express and then it was time to go back to Oxford. Such a good weekend :)

6th Week
Looking back at my diary, this week seems to have involved going to our ballroom dancing class as usual and going to a careers/internship fair and collecting a huge stash of company pens, cakes, notepads, tshirts and leaflets. Also, went to see S1L3NC3 (or Magic Simon, as I like to call him) and was very scared to watch the stapler trick for the second time. Ouch. I'm still intrigued/puzzled as to how he does some of his tricks, and freaked out that the nail hammered into the nose thing is real (the internet says so). On Saturday, my mum came down for a short visit and we went to see West Side Story because it featured an old primary school friend. My mum got to catch up with her mum, and everything was nice but slightly awkward.

7th Week
This week the venue of our dance class was changed, and evidently that didn't suit many people since we were one of only about four couples that showed up. It made for a good class though, and we got lots of extra tips on how to quickstep. On Tuesday, there was a girly trip to see the Twilight film, New Moon, which made for hilarious viewing. Very funny stuff. On Friday, oules performed the panto for a local school and the kids loved it. Who doesn't love panto? :)

8th Week
The last week of term is always manic. We performed Snow White on Tues, Wed, Thurs. Lots of fun, I sneezed a lot. Jess came to see it on the Tuesday, I think? Thursday night was the cast party and I received a brilliant secret santa present - a t-shirt with "You're making me sneezy. You won't like me when I'm sneezy!" on it :) Friday was a super busy day and after my tutorial, David and I rushed to the bus stop to catch the X5 to Cambridge. After a 3 and a half hour long journey, we eventually arrived at Selwyn College. We went to the Selwyn Snow Ball with Harry and Jess, and had a very fun time :) It was A Christmas Carol themed, and included yummy food, cocktails, dancing, a silent disco, a vodka luge, an unconvincing magician and much more. The next day we made bacon sandwiches in Harry's gross kitchen (Sorry Harry, but have you looked in the cupboards?!) and went into town for a quick wander around. We then said goodbye to Jess and went to see the cules show, Jack and the Beanstalk. Lovely light entertainment, and then back on the bus home.

9th Week
Yes, 9th week! Even though term was officially finished, David and I stayed in my house for an extra week of Oxford minus the stress :) We lazed around, watched lots of films, cooked our own dinner (!), went ice-skating and generally had a relaxing time :)

Phew. The End.

Age 20.

Yikes!

Hello Holywood

On Monday, I got up at 3:45am no less and got the train to Manchester Airport. After a 3 and a half hour delay, I eventually got on my rickety plane to visit David in Northern Ireland :) First of all, we went to Tescos and had a good supermarket brunch in the cafe. We spent the rest of the day watching American Dad and Star Wars and napping and playing Mario Kart (*glares at David*) and having spag bol for dinner. David opened his birthday presents from me early, I hope he liked them :) On Tuesday, we had a lie-in and then went to W5, an awesome science museum place, in Belfast. In the evening we watched The Time Traveller's Wife in the cinema and went out for a Chinese, yum :) On Wednesday, we went to Castlewellan and ran around the maze and got lost (and had to crawl out under a hedge, don't tell anyone that). We had a pub lunch, then drove to Newcastle, a sea-side town. We threw stones in the sea and I found a shell and we played in the park and David pushed me too high on the swings :p We watched lots of 24 in the evening, I hadn't seen it before, but it's quite good. On Thursday, we had a pretty lazy day. We took Cosmo to the beach for a walk and I even held the lead for a while, until he pulled me through the sand and my shoes got all sandy on the inside. It was a lovely sunny day :) Then we went back and I fell asleep and David got nibbles from Tescos and we got ready for his birthday gathering in the evening. I had a quick practise at Rock Band and then everyone arrived. We played on Rock Band some more and I wasn't too bad, if I do say so myself, although the drums were pretty hard. It was really good fun anyways :) Then we got lots of pizza and watched the Mock the Week dvd and chatted etc. Everyone went home later on and I built a giant playing card house on top of sleeping David and then the evil cat cornered me upstairs and it was a right faff (but looking back, it is a little funny). On Friday, we walked into Holywood and ate lunch and had ice-cream. We lazed around, had dinner and then it was time for me to go home :( Flew back ok, with no delays, and even caught the earlier train.

I had such a lovely trip, thank you David :)

Page 6

Oops, I should have put this up ages ago. We went to Disneyland Paris, in case you can't tell :) I haven't done anything in my scrapbook for ages though. Really want to get it finished before I go back to uni.



Pages 4 & 5

Here are the next two pages. David's going to write on the fifth (in the cloud) about our day :)


Lately, I haven't been up to much. I went shopping to Chester and bought a long red coat for Autumn/Winter and some nice paper and stickers from Paperchase. I really wanted to get shoes to go with my ball dress, but I couldn't find any I liked. I've been going to the gym every week day and I feel so much better for it. Now if I miss a day, I feel lazy for not doing any exercise :O Yesterday, I did 619 calories at the gym, or so the machine tells me, and this makes me happy because 1. it's my best score yet and 2. it's an ambigram, as David pointed out :)
Also, I've started, well taken a tiny step in the direction of starting really, the maths work I have to do over the summer. Yay...

Nummer Drei

It's about the day we visited the Louvre :)


Today I drove to my dad's house because my grandparents were coming over for lunch. Driving success. I went to the gym in the evening, then settled in to watch a bunch of BSGs with David and pizza :)