Happy New Year

In my glass: a G+T
From my iPod: nothing - the DJ is playing at the pub
From my bookshelf: don't bother asking - I have exams in two weeks
Outside: dark, clear skies, cold
My mood: cheery :)

So it's the end of 2012 tonight. Not sure how long it'll take for this to get online from my phone, so it may well be past midnight by then.
Anyways, tonight I say goodbye to the highs and lows of this year and hopefully welcome a happy new one, with hopefully new people to welcome as friends, more happy memories and a better time of it than this year passing.
A happy new year to everyone!

The Connecticut Shootings

(NOTE: this is not a post debating guns, religion, or any of the other subjects that have exploded over the internet in the wake of the shootings - feel free to share your feelings on the tragedy, but comments debating these subjects will be deleted - that is not the purpose of this post)

I cannot describe the feelings I felt when I heard about this last night. From across the pond, I find myself horrified at this incident. I have not heard much - I find it hard to read about such a henious crime even so far away in the USA - but the headlines I have heard are horrific.
Yesterday in Newtown, Connecticut, a 20-year old man shot and killed 26 people, 20 of which were elementary school children. The shooter was the son of one of the teachers at the school, and had no previous criminal record. He was found dead in a classroom with two firearms, and a third was found in his car.
Newton was not the only place to face the horror that day however. Yesterday morning, a 36-year old  man walked into an elementary school in china, a country with strict laws in gun control, and attacked 22 children with a knife. Though none of the children have died, many are currently in critical condition.
Many people I know here are reminded of the Dunblane primary school shooting in 1996 in Scotland. Many of my current friends were in primary school at the time, my sister had just gone into high school. Dumblane was a little town close to Stirling in Scotland. People throughout the country grieved as people in America and across the world grieved today.
The Dumblane shooting sparked the Snowdrop campain, banning the ownership of handguns by the public across the UK. But though gun ownership is now banned in Scotland, there was still at least 5 people in Scotland killed this year by them, which is still horrific. Any shooting is horrific, regardless of the number.


My facebook feed is full of debate about the removal of guns, and it annoys me to no end. It is time to let people grieve, not stir the shit-pot by sparking debates about guns, medications, religion (all of which I have so far seen in relation to the shootings in connecticut). People are so enraged about the mere fact a gun was involved that they have forgotten that people are grieving, and also seemingly ignored the horror that occurred in China that same day. Getting rid of guns/changing medications/believing or not believing in a certain spiritual aspect is not going to solve the problem, and you're kidding yourself if you think it will, because there are still nutters in this world who will go into a school and let loose on a bunch of kids for little to no reason. That is not to say that guns shouldn't be banned - I firmly believe they should - but it is to say that killing will not stop entirely by the removal of guns. It will likely reduce massively, as statistics show it should, but if someone is that insane to go into a school and kill a bunch of people, not to mention children, then they would likely just find another way to do so, just as that man did in China. Changes in law have to be made by the American people, for the American people. We just have to support the people who have lost so much.
It's time to let the world grieve. Many families have lost everything they hold dear to them - sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends. Flags fly at half-mast both in the town and at the White house. And for those children who have not been lost, like the others in the school, or all those children in the China incident, their childhood innocence has been stolen from them. Perhaps it's time to show a little sensitivity, for the media to give the town space to breathe, give a little support for the parents and children of America, and leave the debate to those of the state and country involved.

Last Day of Term, and my shitty love life

In my Glass: Freshly juiced apple
On my iPod: Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO
From my bookshelf: Soulcatcher by A. K. Stevenson
Outside: Dark, cold
My mood: Far to wide awake for 11PM at night


Finally! Tomorrow is the last day! And.... I don't have to run around like a maniac like I do most thursdays :) I shifted my tuesday lab to tomorrow morning, because I couldn't be bothered with the stampeding crowd of people trying to get in the tuesday lab so they could get the cheaper flights home before christmas. Then my usual 2PM class is finished for term, which means I have more than three hours to do what I like between the lab and anatomy revision up at foresterhill.
Then we have the TGIO party for the Aberdeen NaNo-ers. We have a buffet and things at one of the bars in town, so it should be good fun.

Makes a change to think I might be able to relax at a party for a change. As good fun as I've been having at the parties I've been to this last while, I haven't always been comfortable. I think some people are slower to catch onto the change in me since the start of the year.
Mind you, it probably doesn't help that I came this close to slapping one overly-friendly and slightly creepy guy that was with us the last time I was out. With my life having been what it has, I can't ignore the creeps any more. Alcohol used to drown them out and let me enjoy the night, just like everyone else, but now I'm so wary, I can barely even relax anymore. When everyone else is getting drunk, but I can't relax enough to join the fun, or go onto the dancefloor without thinking about all the eyes oggling, it soon wears thin.
Apparently there's a certain rumour about me around a couple of the OTC-ers, which pisses me off since I've not actually done anything worth rumour this term. I'm really, really hoping it stays quiet enough to stay out of the Tae the Lassies poem at Burns, for fear I may burst into tears at the table. I've had enough of this crap.
How are people meant to see me as I actually, when people are making assumptions off my previous reputation? That girl wasn't me, can't they see that? I was acting in the way I did as a way to live through grief. And I regret every minute that I took advantage of someone else to temporarily seal the gaping hole that was my heart, but I can't take it back.
Plus, I can't get my head around the fact that at the time I wanted to pick someone up in the club, it was so easy, but now, when I don't want to be that girl any more, and I just want a normal guy to care a little, it's so, so hard. Why am I rejected so often? I either seem to get kicked to the curb, or immediately friend-zoned by every guy I like.
It's hard for me to get back into dating, after so much time grieving, but it is time for me to carry on with my life - to stop living in the past and start loving again. And I'm trying so hard, I really am, but I don't know how anymore.

Sorry for the sadness of this post - it was meant to be a happy one about the end of term, but I guess I need to offload a few things. I'm being overwhelmed by life. I don't know if anyone even reads this anyway.

New computer is broke - again..

So two weeks ago, I had to send my brand new (just over a month old) laptop to get the screen repaired. It was giving me odd colours and lines and all sorts of dodgy stuff across it. The repair guys at PC World decided it was a crack from damage and charged me to send it off to get fixed. Upon recieving it back (three days ago), there's a new screen, and they refund me the money they charged because it was down to something inside. All well and good.
It runs fine as I start it up the next day, and for hours it's all going fine. Until I move it. Suddenly there's red/pink overlaying everything. I put it back, but it stays flickering red. Like you can still see everything, but there's this annoying flickering overlay over everything. I open up google, and the white screen has no red on it, but it still flickers on the bars at the top and bottom, and other, non-white sites (e.g. the videos on youtube, and just about every other site I regularly visit) are flickering.
So I sigh, and go to close it and get ready to bring it back in to PC world in the morning, and as soon as I move the screen forward, the red goes away. I let go and it starts again, but then, with a little manipulating of the screen position, it goes away totally. So I shrug, shut it down, and go to the bed for the night.
I wake up in the morning and start it up, and...it's totally fine. Right. So, having woken up late, I quickly do my online test for uni as I eat my breakfast, and it's all fine. Until I'm about to shut it down and head out the door. And the red flickering starts. By this time, I don't have time to head to PC World, so I shut it down, shut off the charger, leave it on the desk, top open, and grab my old laptop and charger that I'd been using while my laptop was getting repaired. By the time I get in after the day is over, PC World is shut.
So I wake up today, and turn on my laptop. The red flickering was still there, covering my welcome screen and turning the blue into flickers of purples and pinks. I sigh, grab my purse, find my reciepts from the earlier fix, close the lid of my laptop, put it in my rucksack and wander down to PC World.
And wouldn't it be just my luck, that as soon as I arrive at PC World, and open my laptop to show the tech-guy, the red flickering is gone. Just like that - GONE! So the tech-guy thinks it's a pinched wire in the hinges, or a loose connection (if that's true, I can't help thinking it's related to the screen replacement, since it didn't have this problem before), but is confused, seeing nothing when he moves the screen back and forth. So we go through the whole procedure of checking the details of the laptop, and the guy is also surprised that it's needed two repairs when it's still less than two months old. He turns it over, screen still open, to check the serial number on the back, and *Hello, Red Flickering!* He turns it over again, and it stops. Needless to say, he never saw it the first time, and we can't get it to do it again, so I'm starting to feel like a loonatic.
So, the poor guy spends a good half-hour on the phone getting passed from person to person, until he eventually ends up at Samsung, who are now apparently going to fix it, since it's still in warranty. So I probably have another 10 day wait before I get it back. Seriously? By the time I get it back, my laptop'll basically have been away for repairs for almost half the amount of time I've owned it. I don't even know if I'll still be in Aberdeen if it comes back late to the store, so I'll have to reorganise for it to be sent to the store at home, and that'll just be awkward. If I knew this would happen so soon after buying, I would have gone for a different brand - the reason the guy at tech-support believed me was because he had just seen another similarly new Samsung that did dhow the red flickering. I can't help but wonder how long this laptop is actually going to hold up if it's having problems at this stage.
Meanwhile, my poor 5-year old Dell is plugging away nicely under the strain of my uni work. Sure, the battery barely lasts 2 hours, it's a bit sloooowwwww at times, and the memory isn't great, but at least it's reliable and won't start giving me strange screens in the middle of a lecture. Being honest, if I defragmented, got rid of all the odds and ends and programmes on the hard drive that I don't need anymore (or just plain got it restored to factory settings), cleaned out the fan (which is probably FULL of dust and soot from the coal fire at my parents house - my mums laptop was completely choked up with it), cleared out under the keyboard, and got it a new battery, it would probably last a good while yet.
As a matter of fact, that's why my mum was meant to be getting my Dell once I got everything moved over to my Samsung, but that never happened. My dad was going to pick it up, take it to the computer guys in Dundee that fix all his computer stuff for him to get it wiped, then clean it up and give it to mum so she can let her dying 7-8 year old Acer finally bite the dust. Although, judging by the multiple crashes, and the Black Screen of Death she got recently, that might have already happened. Even the computer guys can't fix it. In any case, by God was that thing sloooowwwwww.....

Anyway, off topic now. I do hope this is the last issue my laptop has. I do want to get around to buying scrivener one of these days with the NaNo winner codes.
Wishing you better luck than I've had this last while :)
Tigereye

Ramblings: Mobiles, communication and social situations

On one of the first weekends of the academic year away with the OTC, the rules of the mess were explained to the first years. There are two major rules to help the sociability of the place. These involve, respectively, no PDAs, and no mobile phones in the mess. I remember during my first year having a few free glasses of port going around courtesy of those caught, which well serves to get the rules into your head, especially as a broke student.
However, recently, outside of OTC, I've found myself quite stunned by the sheer number of people who go around on their phones, with headphones in and such. It's worst when someone does it in the pub, because it almost seems to form a wall between the people on either side of him (unless of course, those two people don't care about talking over people. Personally, I find it quite uncomfortable."
In any case, I found myself faced with the question the other day as to whether people spend too much time on their phones, and not enough speaking face to face with people, and I have to say, I agree to a point. I myself find myself guilty of it. I often listen to speakers through podcasts as I walk to uni in the morning, and I've occasionally found myself not realising people in the real world are waving to me or saying hello until they've already passed me.
I do think that texting, or using social sites such as facebook or twitter does become antisocial in certain situations. It is as if the online personas of people sometimes seem to become more important than those they speak to, although in reality it is likely not true. Some people even text or facebook people in the same room. Sure, it might seem funny between the people involved, but it can make the other people in the room feel put out and unimportant.
That said, even though texting in social situations is a sure-fire way to kill the atmosphere, phones have very much become a great way to communicate with people who are not nearby. Of course technology now allows face-to-face interaction over long distances, via wi-fi using applications such as Skype or Face-time. These prove to be a great alternative for long conversations, and are often preferred over regular phone-calls to familiar people. However, these applications are not always practical. Most people would prefer to either phone a person or see them in person. Skype and Face-time are almost some grey area in the middle, and something I would probably only use for friends and family, but then that's just me. Certainly a normal phone call has definitely not out-grown its value as of yet.
Texts on the other hand have some entirely different advantages. They give you the opportunity to contact people if you are not sure whether or not they are available to speak on the other end of the phone. They do not require someone to answer immediately, and so people can take the chance to think about what they are actually saying. They are also a great chance to get an answer to a question if you don't have time to phone, or are involved in a social situation, and a phone call would be inappropriate or antisocial.


Anyway, this is just a little post on my views on the issue. Can you tell I'm stuck somewhere in the middle on this one? As always, let me know your thoughts if you happen to pass by.

Finished!

In my Glass: Orange juice, but soon to be a G+T
On my iPod: Yeah! (feat. Lil Jon and Ludacris) by Usher
From my bookshelf: It should be Anatomy, but for today only, it's going to be absolutely nothing (Phew..)
Outside: Dark, cold (I see a theme coming on here) Oh, and frosty - its icy outside.
My mood: Happy, and proud of myself :)

50,000 words down. NaNoWriMo goal met. Thank the dear Goddess for that! Time to de-stress a little this weekend, I think.
Tonight, I'm off out to a friends birthday bash, then tomorrow, it's OTC training, then our christmas dinner. I planned to make tablet today for Yule gifts this year, but I didn't have the ingredients, and amongst getting the last few words down for NaNo and heading off to lectures at uni, didn't get around to heading to the supermarket in time to make anything. Nevertheless. Maybe that'll be a job for Sunday to work off the possible imminent hangover from Saturday.
We've been having a problem with water on one of the outside walls of the flat. Judging by where the patches are, I think it's down to clogged gutters, so I'm going to try to see to that on Sunday too. Otherwise, we'll just have to keep the windows open in the daytime to air the place out and let out the excess moisture. There's a hygrometer in my violin case that I've been keeping an eye on the humidity with. It's still above normal, but only just after airing the place out well today. It went down quite a bit.
I need to get something christmassy for the flat too. I know I'll have the stuff to look forward to at home, but I want to put up something here. Maybe I can find some lights and baubles to hang around the place. I wonder if I can find a pine-scented candle...
Oh, and I get paid tomorrow! After the last couple of stressful weeks, things are starting to look up again, I think.
Have yourselves a good weekend everyone! :)

2824 words to go!

In my glass: Just ice. And the water its melting into
On my iPod: Drops of Jupiter, by Train; Seasons of Love, from the Musical RENT
From my bookshelf: Anatomy again (Cunningham's Manual of Practical Anatomy Volume 2)
Outside: Dark, wet, cold
My mood: Cheery

28th November, 23.30 hrs, 47176 words written for NaNoWriMo. 2 days, 2824 words, 1 write in, 2 bones, and 1 purple bar to go. (You keeping an eye on my widget in the corner there? When it hits 50,000, I'm officially a winner. Not long to go now :) EEEK!!
Oh, and I'm having a much better week this week. Seems whoever was up there throwing thunderbolts at my life is satisfied now. Everything is fixed, found etc. except for my computer, which is still off at the computer doctor. Hoping to get it back before christmas (Which is Yule for me. Just Christmas for the rest of the family).
I admit, I did procrastinate a bit today. I cooked two different soups, and made a roast ham with mash, veggies and gravy for dinner. SEE! I may be poor, but you can't say I don't live well for what I have.
I have the write-in at the Belmont tomorrow, so hoping to technically finish then, but I need to keep writing something on the 30th so that I can get all my skellington finished in the marathon, and not get any *Stern ML Looks* or get put on the *Wall of Shame* To tell you the truth, I mainly want to win so I can get monies off the Scrivener software. Otherwise, as much as I love writing, the last few days are horribly slowwwwwww..... I want Scrivener for my uni notes next term.
Anyway. Up early tomorrow, so thats me off to bed. Hopefully I'll have passed 50,000 next time you hear from me :) See you all again soon!

Half-way point

In my glass: Freshly squeezed apple juice courtesy of my new juicer
On my iPod: Zeto the Bubbleman (Played by Gizzen Briggs on their CD Out of the Blue)
From my bookshelf: Anatomy (Cunningham's Manual of Practical Anatomy Volume 2, if you must know)
Outside: Dark, cold, slightly drizzly
My mood: Slightly mood-swing-y, but mostly happy

Ok, so maybe half-way was technically yesterday, but between lectures and labs, and NaNo meet-up, and writing out anatomy, I just didn't have the time to update on NaNo.
So hows NaNoWriMo going? Rather well actually. I thought I would be waaaaayyyyy behind by now, but though I slowed down during the "week two wall" which had me just about having a break-down at the weekend (Ok, so maybe I did just have an out and out breakdown. However, it was partially alcohol induced), the extra I wrote during week one, the skeleton marathon, and getting back into the swing of the story now, means I'm back on track.
The quota for the end of day 16 is 26667 (or thereabouts - various sources give you different numbers. I'm going from the fact that the half-way point is 25000, and the quota for today should be 1667 words over that). My current word count, (though I still have a bit of writing left to do) is 27891. YAY!
So how has the month been so far? The answer: HELLISH! To give you an idea, a lot of us in my course are moaning to each other about messed up sleep-patterns and eating junk and having mood swings, and feeling crap, and all the other lovely things that comes with being completely and utterly stressed out. I ask you: WHY did I decide to take on a 50,000 novel in 30 days when I have all this other stuff on??? *Um...I don't know. But I got this far, so I'm bloody well going to finish it*

Well, this week, so far, I've had my usual 19 hours, plus an anatomy assessment (30 mins, an hour before our normal class), plus an hour long mid-term exam for physiology, plus my writing for NaNo in between. Next week is the same, but with an extra 2 hours of lectures, an hour-long tutorial instead of the anatomy assessment, and I've to somehow get to the doctors, a good hours walk away, before class on Thursday morning (which I have to get to - its taken me months to get this slot to see someone, because my GP referred me, but I'm not an extreme case - by which time the problem has likely healed wrong which is why I'm not in pain anymore, but still having troubles with it).
Oh, and my mobile company keeps calling me at stupid times in the afternoon (i.e. when I'm in lectures), in the evening (when I panic at the phone going because I'm waiting on a call from someone important), or at night (when I'm either writing in a different room, sleeping, or in a nightclub and wont hear it). Its always on silent anyway, so its won't go off at inopportune moments. Regardless though, its still a pain in the ass, especially when I feel the vibration going in my pocket (generally where my phone always is). I sent a message to Ofcom, but I doubt anything will be done about it, as per usual. And no. I'm not calling the phone company, because I've tried it before, and nothing happened apart, and it takes way more time than I have spare right now.

For the moment, I'm sitting getting kit cleaned, pressed and ready to go for tomorrow. For the first time in WEEKS, I'm having a lie in. For me, a lie-in constitutes actually getting to stay in bed past 7AM in the morning, and for once, tomorrow, I can do just that. I know, I know, I should be working on my novel instead of sleeping in, but don't worry becaaaaause...
The NaNoWriMo Regional Group are having their half-way party! Which starts at 3pm, so I can get up late, take a lazy shower (rather than a speedy, must-get-dressed-and-out-the door-quick kind of shower), fix the last bits of my kit for the evening, and write a bit on my novel before I go. I'm even planning to take them flapjacks, but we'll see if I remember in the morning. I don't know if I have enough oats left to make them with. Anyhow, I'll be there for a couple of hours before dropping my laptop back at my flat (hopefully with a good days worth of writing in it, even with the 1-hour writing ban for the start of the party), and pick up my (hopefully spotless) kit and take it up to OTC (At which point, I'll probably have scuffed by brogues again and have to work it out when I get there. Then its a case of getting changed, transport to wherever it is we're going, do our stuff, come home, get changed again, dump kit (hung up in a nice suit-carrier of course) and possibly go to town. Meh. The "go to town" part is debatable. Depends on whether I'm over my break-down stage. I'm guessing so, because I'm over the hurdle. We've passed the halfway of NaNo, and my novel, and of the uni term, and therefore my courses, and it's almost christmas holidays. Only four more weeks of lectures and stress to go. *heaves big sigh of relief*

Oh, yeah. About my breakdown. It wasn't really a breakdown. Rather it was stress compounded by  being drunk for the first time in literally two months resulting in a teariness I couldn't explain to my worrying compadres. So, now that it's week over, and I have a morning to myself, I'm feeling much more optimistic about things. For the first time in ages, I don't even have to worry.

Have a great weekend everyone :)

Day 2

Its day 2 of NaNo, and I have 6000 words in the bag! Hopefully the extra will help me through the week two wall. Just a quick update on how I'm doing, Y'all. Now, I gotta get back to studies, and writing.

Nice and Chipper after a run

In my glass: Jasmine Tea
On my iPod: Tchaikosky's Nutcracker Suite
From my bookshelf: Again, Anatomy
Outside: Dark, chilly, great running weather as long as you stay to the lit roads
My mood: Optimistic

So its two days till Samhain (or Hallowe'en for the rest of you), and its a full moon tonight. I went out for my first run in ages under the moon (and the streetlights, too), and its made such a difference in how I feel. I forgot just how good running made you feel.
I got a new game called "Run, Zombies!" which you play just by running to pick up items for your base, and speeding up at times when there are "Zombies" after you. If you're caught, you lose the mission and have to restart. I'm not one for Zombies, but I'm quite enjoying it actually. I enjoy running anyway, but the game aspect makes it rather interesting.
I stopped by at Asda on the way home and picked up what seemed to be the only tin of black parade gloss shoe polish, and the only tube of Kiwi whitener in the whole city, as well as a nail brush for my spats (my old one went walkabout) and a couple of pumpkins.
Currently, the seeds are drying, ready to be roasted, One pumpkin has been chopped up and part has gone into the slow cooker for soup, and the rest in the fridge, perhaps for a pie. The other has been hollowed out and carved, ready for a candle in it.
Interestingly, the whole tradition of carving on pumpkins on Samhain comes from the time of the old Celtic religions, when they used to carve turnips (the idea of which begins in old Irish folklore). The Americans were the ones who started the carving of pumpkins, and in a way, I'm glad. Have any of you ever tried carving a turnip before? Yeah, unless you have a really, really sharp knife and lots of control, its a recipe for sliced fingers. I tried it once, but even with a razor sharp knife, it was difficult at best.
Oh, and I'm actually looking forward to band at OTC for the first time in months. No rhyme or reason as to why. I may very well be there all of three seconds before I change my mind again, but for now, I'm looking forward to things. Don't know why they decided to have mega tuesday on the last Tuesday of the month though, especially when we don't get paid until a mere two days after. But then again, like someone else pointed out, there was a time when people stayed out every Tuesday, so why the need for such a bigged-up event to get people out and about with each other for the night. Meh, what ever happened to doing it just for the sake of enjoying yourself?
I do need to get back to cleaning my spats on Wednesday (I say Wednesday  because tomorrow is going to be busy, and NaNo starts on Thursday. Yeesh, where did September go? Oh, yeah, I remember, it passed me by while I was either panicking about uni, or passing time on the sofa. No more. I plan to go to the OTC running club tomorrow, whether I want to or not (that is as long as it is on). Running seems to make a massive difference to my life.
On a different front, here I am, panicking about this anatomy assessment again tomorrow. *argh*. Which means I gotta get to bed so I'm up nice and early to walk to Foresterhill in the morning (and maybe do some last-minute revision on the brachal plexus nerves on the way..)

See you soon!