I was a bit bored last night, and I’d been in all day working on my search for my dissertation. So Newt decided that I needed to get out of the house. I didn’t fancy going for a meal, and there was nothing on at the cinema that we wanted to see, so we decided to go to the out-of-town Borders! Also because I’d been moaning that I didn’t know what to read, and I didn’t fancy any of the books I’d got.

It’s actually pretty nice there. There’s a Starbucks upstairs (but I’m not sure whether that was open), and there’s more space than the one in town, and it wasn’t too busy.

Unfortunately, the down side is, we spent an obscene amount of money. I succcumbed to their “3 for 2″ offers – two of them actually, so I suppose that’s “6 for 4″! I also got a couple of ‘pop-science’ books that are on my wish list, and a couple of magazines. Newt got a Daoist magazine, and a couple of books.

Here’s a complete list of our haul:
Simply Knitting magazine (I fancy learning how to knit)
Cross Stitch Collection magazine
Deception Point by Dan Brown
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
Light on Snow by Anita Shreve
The Other Woman by Jane Green
Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman by Richard P Feynman
Adam’s Curse by Brian Sykes
The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCulloch
Archangel by Robert Harris
The Empty Vessel (Daoist magazine)
A bookmark

Monday
I handed in my completed essay!!! Always a good feeling. In the evening, I just chilled, drank wine and watched TV. Guilt free. Haven’t done that in a while. (I have done a lot of watching TV, just felt guilty about it).

Tuesday
I went to see the woman who’s in charge of our section of the library to ask for some help with my literature search for my dissertation. I’ve been at the same stage since before Christmas, and should really have moved on. I wrote my search pretty much as soon as I had a topic decided, but I didn’t want to do anything more before someone had told me that my search was reasonably comprehensive. My reasoning being that if I pressed ahead and then at a later date someone told me my search was rubbish, then I’d have to start all over again. Why I didn’t go to see the library lady before now is a mystery to me! Anyway, she said my search was more or less OK, and gave me a couple of other ideas of places to search. So I’m good to go, pretty much.

Then I met a friend for coffee, and some shopping, and managed to buy an outfit for a Christening in July where I’m Godmother. I’m really pleased with the outfit, just need some jewellery to go with it, but I can get that any time.

Finally in the evening, after a lot of messing about, Newt and I decided to go to Ikea to buy bookcases. We were going to go on Wednesday – but decided that going on Tuesday night was a better option. Ikea was reasonably quiet, with very few children there – so a far nicer trip than any of my previous excursions that have always been on a weekend or half-term holidays. We bought the book cases, but OMG are they heavy (or I’m really weak and weedy, which is an equally likely explanation!). I only have a Rover Metro, which isn’t really designed for transporting furniture, but I refuse to pay £30 for delivery, so I was determined to make them fit. Which the did – with the front and back seats down. Unfortunately, Newt doesn’t drive, and I’m too weedy to lift the bookcases on my own, so Newt had to squeeze into a teeny gap left in the boot on the way home. Not particularly legal – but we made it home in one piece.

Wednesday
Newt went to get his hair cut at 10am, and when he got back we were supposed to put the bookcases together. However, he didn’t get back until 2:30pm, by which time I’d finished the smaller DVD unit, and was halfway there with the larger unit. Not sure how I managed to manhandle the bigger unit out from behind the settee into the living room…. There was one iffy moment where I thought I’d got it jammed in the front door frame, and trapped myself in the house, and I thought I’d have to yell until the next door neighbour came to rescue me, but somehow I managed to unjam it.

The new bookcases are great. I was worried that they’d make the room look more cluttered, not less – but my fears were unfounded. We have more space, and I can actually get at stuff now. Of course, the cats are convinced that all this is simply for their benefit, and so BBC spent this morning asleep on the second shelf.

I’ve just finished my final essay!!!!

I still have a dissertation and a portfolio to do – but the end is in sight. I’m going to have a rest for a couple of days. Do nothing – Newt and I are going to go out for a meal tomorrow, and on Wednesday I’m going to the theatre. I’m not pretending that it’s all plain sailing from here, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. In just over 3 months, it’ll be finished, and I’ll be fully qualified.

I was tagged by Karen a few days ago, so here we go:

1. Total number of books I’ve owned.
No idea. Lots and lots. I tend to keep non-fiction books, but most fiction will go straight to the charity shop, unless it’s something that I know I’ll read time and time again – like Bridget Jones’s Diary. So I’ve no real way of keeping track. Although recently I’ve started recording on a spreadsheet all the books I’ve read. I’m sure there’s loads I’ve missed off, but it’s a start.

2. Last book I bought.
Do Not Pass Go: From the Old Kent Road to Mayfair by Tim Moore
When I was giving blood a while back the guy next to me was reading this, and we got chatting, and it sounded interesting, so I thought I’d give it a go.

3. The last book I read.
The Seven Daughters of Eve by Brian Sykes
It’s about tracing maternal lines of descent through mitochondial DNA. I really liked it, although I would have liked a little bit more of the science, and a little bit less speculation in parts. Overall though, an interesting and easy read.

4. 5 books that mean a lot to me.
Hmmmmm – not easy. Let’s see…
1. Bridget Jones’s Diary – I can read and reread this as often as I like, and I still love it. There’s a bit of Bridget in all of us, and a bit of Bridget’s mum in all of our mothers!
‘Don’t say “what?” say “pardon” dear’

2. The Visitor Within by David Bainbridge
The subtitle of the book is ‘the Science of Pregnancy’, and I read this during my first year as a midwifery student. I absolutely love it. Bainbridge is a vet by trade, and so looks at things from a slightly different angle than most books about pregnancy that I’ve read (and that’s a LOT). He describes the hormonal and physiological adaptations that occur, and compares some human strategies towards pregnancy with ones in other animals. It’s also the only book that has explained in language simple enough for someone like me to understand, the mechanisms that kick-start labour (well, as far as we know, because it’s not all that clear). Fabulous book.

3. Katherine by Anya Seton
Not really a favourite book of all time, but my mum loves it, and pestered me to read it for ages. By reading something that my mum loves so much, it kind of makes me feel closer to her. Silly, but there you go.

4. Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking
Can’t believe I didn’t think of this one first. I bought this for my dad who’s smoked 30 a day for more than 40 years. He’s had vague attempts at giving up before, but never been successful. To be honest, I didn’t think this would work either, but at less than £6, I thought it was worth a try. I gave the book to my dad on Saturday, by Monday he’d read it, and hasn’t smoked since. That was over 2 months ago. I’m amazed. So this book definitely deserves to be on my list because hopefully it means that I’ll have a dad for a bit longer than I would have done if he’d carried on smoking.

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mr D’Arcy – do I need to say any more?

Not sure who to tag at the moment, I may have to come back to that part….

The noise around my house is driving me absolutely stark raving bonkers. I tend not to notice it if I’m working – even on my days of, but right now, when I’m at home every day, and trying to write essays (OK, so you know I don’t spend a huge amount of time doing that!) it’s really getting to me.

I live in a pretty built up area – rows and rows of terraced houses, but normally it’s a lot quieter than you’d imagine. I can’t usually hear any noise from my neighbours, and our street is usually pretty quiet as well.

But recently – aaarrgghhhhh!!!!!
There’s a school, an adult education centre just across the road – literally 50 yards away from my house, and they’re rebuilding it. In the photo, the building on the right is the old school, and the one of the left is the new one – horrible isn’t it? But whatever they’re doing at the moment is very noisy. There are generators and cement mixers going all day long, and then long periods of the noise of someone hammering something really big and heavy into the ground – approximately every 3 seconds for hours on end.

Then, when the workers pack up to go home, other noises appear – there’s a waste-of-space guy that lives across the road with his mum, and whenever she’s not in, he plays very dodgy music, very loudly. This clearly annoys the guy who lives next door to him, because we then get into a competition of “who has the loudest speakers”. A few years ago he used to listen to mainly rock music, which I could cope with, but he seems to have moved on to rap and Eminem type stuff – not a positive move in my opinion.

Then there’s his friends. He’s too lazy to walk downstairs if they call round, so all conversations occur at full volume through his bedroom window. They have to shout, to be heard over the noise of their cr@ppy little motorbikes – my dad calls them “sewing machines” because the motor in my mum’s sewing maching is better than the piece of sh|t that they’re riding. Repeat this for the next door neighbours, until parents return home.

Then parents obviously decide that they’re fed up of their offspring, so they kick them out of the house. But they aren’t very imaginative, so the only make it to the garden wall – 5 yards further away from their parents’ house, and 5 yards closer to mine. The same loud conversations continue, except this time I can hear them much more clearly, and have come to the conclusion that their vocabulary contains relatively few words of more than 4 letters. As evening turns into night, more friends arrive – this time in cars (using the word in its loosest possible sense), and rather than turn the engine off while talking, it’s clearly far ‘cooler’ to just yell over the sound of the poor, knackered engine – and that way they also get to belch blue noxious gases all over the road as well. Bargain.

Weekend arrives. The obnoxious teenagers obviously haven’t got out of bed yet – peace and quiet reigns? No. %^*(£^%£* ice cream vans!

Saw this on Karen’s blog. She’s tagged me about anothe book meme, which I’ll do later, but for now – The Alphabet Meme. Press each letter of the alphabet in your brower’s address bar in turn and list which address the auto-complete function jumps to first:

A – Amazon
B – BBC
C – Cottage Guide
D – Department for Education and Skills – Teenage Pregnancy Unit
E – Estee Lauder
F – Flickr
G – Google
H – Hazy’s Blog
I – Ingenta Connect
J – Journal of Endocrinology
K – Karen’s blog!
L – First was my Movable Type Application, but as you won’t be able to see that, next was Leeds University Library
M – Multimap
N – National Electronic Library for Health
O – Open University
P – Just Plain Chat
Q – Four-year follow-up of insertion of quinacrine hydrochloride
pellets as a means of nonsurgical female sterilization (from the journal ‘Fertility and Sterility’)
R – Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
S – Neil’s blog
T – Thimble Cottage
U – Nothing
V – Nothing
W – Various pages to connect to online journals that are password protected
X – Pinn Cross Stitch
Y – Hazy’s crafty blog
Z – Nothing

Went shopping after having a coffee with a friend today, and it was a ‘Debenhams spectacular’ and was also ‘gift time’ at Clinique. Well, the two together proved irresistable! I’ve been looking for a daytime perfume for a long time – but I don’t really like the very fruity fragrances that are so popular at the moment. They’re nice – but not very ‘me’. Well, I tried a load of Clinique frangrances, and then found one called ‘Provocative Woman’ – which is lovely. It’s perhaps a little bit heavier than I’d normally buy for daytime, but it’s really nice. You had to buy two items to qualify for the gift, so I also got the matching body shimmer gel (I’m a sucker for anything sparkly) and it’s just divine! Really non-greasy, and a subtle shimmer, with loads of frangrance. So, because I’d bought two items I got the free bag (see right) with the following goodies:
10ml handbag size Provocative Woman perfume
30ml Provocative Woman body lotion
Full size ‘8 hour’ lipstick in a tawny shade (I forget exactly what)
Overnight Success skin renewal serum
Good night’s sleep restoring cream
Double density mascara
Plump perfect lip moisture cream

Yay!!! I love gift time. But I really must stop spending money like it’s going out of fashion – especially as we’re planning an Ikea trip next week.

Yesterday Mr Newt and I were discussing how nice it would be to go on holiday in September – I’ll have finished my course, but won’t have started work (but will hopefully have a job to go to) – so a truly stress free time. Only downside is, we won’t have any money, because I won’t be working – so we thought a good option might be a long weekend in a cottage somewhere, seeing as we really enjoyed our cottage-based honeymoon last year.

So today I’ve been procrastinating by looking at holiday cottages. I’m thinking that I don’t really want to drive too far – because I get bored very quickly – so I was thinking maybe the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales or the Peak District. All less than 2 hours drive, beautiful scenery, and not too far south (I feel out of place much further south than Nottingham!).

So far, I really like the look of Thimble Cottage. This was a contender for our honeymoon, and I still think it looks lovely, and in a great location for “doing stuff” – one of Mr Newt’s requirements. And walking distance to three pubs – one of my requirements, so I don’t have to drive a drunk Newt around while I’m stone cold sober.

But then I started thinking – maybe we should go for a week. One of the original reasons for going for a long weekend was because I was hoping to go “otter spotting” on an Earthwatch conservation holiday – but that runs twice a year, in May and September, so now I’m thinking that it might be nice to go for a longer holiday together in September, and then go otter spotting in May…..

Hmmm, will have to discuss with Mr Newt and see what he thinks.

As I’m sure you’re all well aware (and utterly sick of hearing about by now) I still have one essay to be finished by next Monday (Contraception and the Perimenopause, in case anyone’s still paying attention). But I’ve got a migraine. I’ve been blissfully free from them for a few weeks – a fact for which I am extraoirdinarily grateful, or else I would never have finished the other essays. But now they’re back, and I’ve run out of the good pills (aka Migard / frovatriptan). Painkillers don’t work – even the really strong ones, but they do make me feel spaced out for a couple of hours, which is always good.

So now, I really, really need to do some work, but my head is pounding, my right eye is all blurry, and my right arm doesn’t work in quite the same time frame as the rest of my body. Oh, and I feel sick. Feel sick if I eat, feel sick if I don’t eat. Even if I do sit down and try to work, I can’t concentrate for more than 3 seconds, and what I write is rubbish anyway (actually, that may be more me than the migraine, but I’m going to blame it on that for now anyway).

Aaarrgghhhhh – just need head to be normal for a couple of hours while I get some work done, then I don’t mind if it torments me some more.

It’s that time of year where Holly and Tiswas are due their annual check-ups and boosters. I had an appointment at 3:50pm yesterday. Holly’s a friendly cat, so I managed to grab her with ease – getting her into the kitty container was less easy, but we managed. Tiswas – much less friendly. In fact, she doesn’t really like me at all. She was in the garden, and I made a grab for her, and she ran under a bush. I spent ages calling her, rustling bags, shouting ‘ham’ up the street – but she’s not a stupid cat, and there was no way she was going to put in an appearance.

So yesterday, just me and Holly went to the vet. The vet scared me by saying that Holly’s an ‘old girl’ now – she’ll be 11 in October. She’s a bit chubby, and her teeth aren’t great – but otherwise, she’s grand. And very well behaved.

So today, I have another appointment for Tiswas. But this time, I decide to use human brain power to outwit the dense moggy. I make the appointment for the morning, when she’s at her most sleepy. I give Newt strict instructions to NOT let her out of the house. So when I come downstairs, I just have to grab the sleeping cat and shove it in a box. Easy. Not so easy when said cat grows extra legs. The vet showed me a trick with the kitty container, but that obviously only works on cats with 4 legs – not 17. But at least by this time we’re locked in the kitchen, and I’m significantly bigger than the cat – so I must win. 10 minutes later – the cat has lost a lot of hair, I’ve lost a significant amount of blood, but she’s in!

So, off to the vet. Gorgeous German Shepherd in the waiting room. It was very friendly, but as I’ve said, Tiswas isn’t – so she hissed at him. A lot. Then into the consultation room. “Just pop her on the table” the vet says. But again, the extra legs come into play here. Tiswas is spread-eagled inside the container, so even when I completely invert it – she stays wedged. A bit of jiggling, and she falls out – rather unceremoniously. Then “pop her on the scales” he says. So I pick her up, and she realises that although she doesn’t like me, I’m her only chance of escape, so she attaches herself to me, with all five claws from all 17 legs. I lose more blood. And I’m wearing a white T-shirt, so it shows. Eventually I prise her off me, and onto the scales – for a nanosecond. Then she launches herself at the window in a vain bid for freedom.

This time, I’m prepared, I grab her at arms length, she yells at me, I’m trying to be nice to her because I don’t want the vet to think I’m a horrible kitty-mummy. So, we’re back on the table, and he’s trying to listen to her heart and check her over – but poor Weasel is petrified, so her heart is pounding away. We dispense with any further checks (”I’m sure she’s fine”) and move onto injections. The vet is much nicer than me – I’m of the “suck it up and don’t be a baby” camp (especially for humans, but also for cats), whereas he’s more willing to pander to them. So Tiswas gets wrapped in a nice snuggly towel, with two people clucking and purring at her, while she gets her jabs. Then, we shove her back in the container (having weighed it whilst empty) and stick her on the scales again. She only weighs 3.35kg (7lb 6oz). Which I think is teeny – most of the babies I’ve delivered weigh more than that! And it’s half the weight of BBC. So I’m going to worm her (won’t that be fun) and watch what she eats, and maybe there’ll be some special treats for her as well.

But thank goodness that’s all done for another year!