Not well.

It wasn’t just a smokey pub. I blame all the students and their viruses. Throat continued hurting throughout the day, and by sunday evening I felt distinctly not well. Because I now own a thermometer I felt compelled to check my temperature every three minutes, and in an hour it went from an innocuous 36.6C to a nasty 38.1C. I felt shivery and horrible, so forced Mr Newt to come to bed early so that he could keep my feet warm for me. Dosed up on paracetamol I did fall asleep but woke up about every half hour, alternately freezing cold, and boiling hot.

Surprisingly felt all better by this morning. Only 2 hours in Uni, then the dreaded Morrison’s shop. Where the h£ll all those people come from on a Monday lunchtime is beyond me – does no one have to work? I also tried to speak to someone at the bank for the fifth time – but again there were about 53 people in the queue and only myself and the gentleman behind the counter had a reasonable grasp of the English language. The remainder appeared to be international students wishing to transfer several gazillion yen into a bank account that they didn’t know the account number for, or trying to withdraw cash using their Tesco’s Clubcard. Gave up after 20 minutes.

Spent the rest of the afternoon trying to phone the Student Grant people and the Inland Revenue. No one wants to speak to me though. Apparently my call is very important to them, and will be answered as soon as an operator becomes available, but because of the unusually high demand, there may be a significant delay. Right. Fine.

Productive weekend

I’ve had a reasonably productive weekend (by my standards anyway). On Friday I had a study day – and for once I actually used it to study!! I managed to finish my poster for my presentation on the 14th January on the subject of perimenopausal contraception. It’s not brilliantly imaginative – but then I’m not a brilliantly imaginative person, and I can’t draw to save my life, so I’m kind of limited to whatever ClipArt has to offer me! The presentation is worth 40% of the marks for this module, but I’m hoping that whatever I lose on having a not-so-great poster, I can grab back by doing a semi-decent seminar.

Spent Saturday organising some magazines, throwing out some stuff, washing etc etc. Then got a phone call and went out for a couple of drinks with Matt and Doug in the evening. I even drove there so I couldn’t drink, and had diet Coke all night so as not to mess up my diet.

Today I managed to get out of bed in time to watch the final of the Australian Open (Yay for Safin!!), and then Newt and I went to Halifax to get Through a Mother’s Eyes framed at Rander’s Gallery. I’ve had stuff framed there before and I’m really happy with their work. They use only conservation grade materials, give me honest advice when I choose horrible mount colours, and despite what I previously thought, they aren’t all that expensive. £64 for TaME – with double mount, and it’s a reasonably large piece. We also managed to get a new wallet for Newt after he lost his a couple of weeks ago.

The only minor down side to the weekend is that my throat hurts like mad! I’m hoping that it’s just because it was so smokey in the pub yesterday, rather than because I’m coming down with a cold or something.

What breed of dog are you?

Found this from a post on The Wagon BB.

Apparently I’m a Yorkshire Terrier.
Origins:
UK. Appeared for the first time around 1850. Developed in Northern England primarily as a ratter in the cotton mills and coal pits there. Believed to have developed from terriers crossed with the Maltese as evidenced by its silky, flowing coat. It has become one of the most popular toy breeds in the world.

Personality:
Yorksies are spunky and their handy pick-me-up size makes them ideal travel companions. Despite their diminutive stature, they possess the typical terrier temperament. Spirited and self-assured, they don’t hesitate to sound the alarm if danger lurks. A bit yappy for some tastes.

Not happy about this. (Although I do accept the ‘yappy’ comment). I *hate* small dogs. I think they’re completely pointless. If you want a pet that small – get a rabbit or a guinea pig or a rat or something. If you want a do – get a proper dog like a German Shepherd or a labrador. Mind you, I knew I wasn’t going to end up as a Great Dane when the first question was “How tall are you?” and I had to tick the “Less than 5 feet” box.

Thursday Bookworm

1. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Have you ever picked up a book based solely on the title or the picture on the cover?
Absolutely. In fact I do it all the time, and I’m sure most people do, even if they won’t admit to it! I buy a lot of books from charity shops, which means that I’m not usually looking for something specific, I just see if they have anything that looks particularly interesting. The quickest way for me to do this is to look at the covers first. I then read the back to see if I actually think that I will like it, but I discard some without looking at the blurb just based on the cover.

2. Along the same lines, do you ever look at whichever book someone else is reading in public or whatnot, and based on that make a snap judgment about their character or literary taste? (I realize this might not seem all that clear, so let me give an example- for instance, whenever I see someone reading War and Peace, the first word that pops into my mind is “pretentious.” Most of the people I’ve known who carry that book around just do it to get attention and demonstrate how “smart” they are, when they actually never get past page 10).
Yup. Again, I do this all the time. And if I see someone reading the same book as I am, I actually get quite excited about it, as though we have this connection, even though we’ve never met.

3. Do you buy books online? If so, where is your favorite place to find them?
Amazon. I love it. I love being able to have a wishlist, I love the free delivery (if you spend over a certain amount), I love how reliable they are. Just love them.

4. From someone who’s had more than her fair share of library fines… what is the largest late fee you’ve ever incurred at a library for returning a book past the due date? Have you ever borrowed a book from a library and never returned it?
HUGE library fines are one of the main reasons I stopped using the library. It was just cheaper for me to buy the books! Our library has very limited opening hours that just don’t fit in with working life. I think the largest fine would probably be about £20 (~$40) at the University library – on more than one occasion.

I’ve never borrowed a book and not returned it – just ended up with massive fines when I find the book 6 months after it’s supposed to be back.

5. What is the first book that you can remember reading by yourself as a child?
It was one of the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton – but I can’t remember exactly which one. Knowing my neurotic tendencies, it would have to be the first one, as I wouldn’t be able to start partway through a series!

My Europe

Saw this on Karen’s blog, and just had to do it.

create your personalized map of europe
or check out our Barcelona travel guide

It actually makes me look rather more travelled than I am (I’ve only been into Germany for a few hours, so I’m not entirely sure that counts!).

Pinging

Aha!!!! The pinging thing still wasn’t working properly for me when I checked on other people’s Blogrolls where I’m listed. I think this is because a lot of people have my old blog address listed, but they get automatically forwarded here, so they’ve never changed it.

So, to try to solve that, please could I ask anyone interested in Blogrolling me to change their links. The correct address is:

http://www.littlerach.co.uk/newblog/

Or I’ve added a new ‘Blogroll Me’ button at the top of the left hand column if that’s easier. I’m also going to remove the redirection from the old address to try to encourage people to do this.

Apologies for the hassle.

Bookworm

I found this meme on Shannon’s blog, and thought I’d include it here. OK, so it’s the wrong day, but you can’t have everything.

1. How many books do you own (and if you’re not a nerd like me and don’t know the exact number, guess-timate)?
Probably about 200 if you include course books. If we’re only counting novels, then probably about 75.

2. Do you keep books to add to your personal library, or do you trade them/give them away?
I haven’t got much space so I tend to give most books away after I’ve read them.

3. If you keep books, what makes you keep them? What kind of books do you keep?
I do keep some books – novels that I know I’ll read time and time again like Bridget Jones’ diary, books that I think DH might like to read, most non-fiction books, or anything that might be hard to find again in the library or second hand shops.

4. Do you have a guilty pleasure book- something you would never want to admit to reading?
Most trashy fiction. You know, where the plot is generally two girls, three guys, one of whom is gay, and everyone fancies the wrong person until the last three pages when it all works out in the end.

5. Have you ever gone without something you needed to buy a book instead?
No. That’s what libraries are for.

Blog stuff

A bit of a pointless post really (yes, alright, don’t say it – I know most of them are!). I’ve just installed yet another plugin to help reduce spam comments. Again, I don’t really understand it – it’s based on the ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ tag, and it adds this tag to any links posted in comments. I think this means that although you’ll still be able to click on the link as normal, the search engine bots will ignore it. This somehow affects page ranks – but whether it’s ranks for my blog, or ranks for the links posted in comments or both – I’m not sure. I don’t know how this will reduce spam, but there you go. Some people are unhappy about this because they feel that it’s overkill, and that it will damage reputable people’s page ranks as well as the spammers. As I’m really not bothered about page ranking, I thought I’d install it anyway, and see what happens. But there were no installation instructions (apparently it’s too simple to need them), so I just shoved everything into my plugins directory and hoped for the best.

There’s also been various conversations on BBs and blogs about pinging and updates (or rather the lack of it). I’ve just realised that although I do ping various blog sites when I update – Blogrolling isn’t one of them. As loads of people whose blogs I read (and myself) use Blogrolling, I thought this was rather remiss of me – so I’ve added Bloggrolling to my ping list. Hopefully it will work, because at the moment, it’s saying my blog hasn’t been updated since June.

Darth Tater

I saw this on Erin’s blog and I just had to add it here for all you Star Wars fans, and especially for Mr Newt.

Darth Tater

Exam is over!

Well, it could have been better, could have been worse. The paper was qualitative research (which wasn’t really what I wanted) but it was at least pretty easy to understand (unlike some of the previous papers that seemed to have been translated from Swedish, and lost quite a bit of sense in the process!). It took me half an hour to read the paper (in retrospect, I shouldn’t have bothered reading the results in so much detail), leaving me with an hour and a half to write my answer. Not really long enough.

I didn’t manage my time particularly well – I wrote about a page and a half on the bibiographic details, yet only a small paragraph on the results. Ooops. And I forgot to include something that I kept reminding myself about, so I’m particularly irritated by that.

Still, it’s over now. It’s my last exam of this course, and I now have 5 whole days before lectures start. I should use this time to think about my dissertation and portfolio, or to tidy the house, or declutter my desk. But I’m not going to! I’m going to sit on the sofa, watch TV, read trashy novels, have long lie-ins and basically do nothing productive. Yay!!!