Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo

I do believe it; I do believe it's true...

Ahem. I'll stop...

I seriously suck at this blogging thing, don't I? Third update in four months... I suppose it could be worse, but I've definitely failed at keeping up with it this semester.

Anyway, so I finished at BU last week and came to Oshawa to stay with cousins for a couple of weeks. Didn't do much for the first week and a half but now my friend has come over from the UK for the week. We spent six hours walking around Toronto Zoo and managed to take about 200 photos...

I also got sunburn, which I kind of saw coming. It was glorious sunshine and we were going to be outside for hours on end. At least it doesn't hurt, right? I have a weirdly shaped neckline now though, which will be mildly annoying, I think.

Not sure what else we're doing when, but we're planning to go to Toronto itself and out to Niagara as well. It should be fun and keep us busy for the week, and then he's flying home and I'm flying out to Victoria, BC for about a month to stay with a friend and explore out there before I finally get home in time for my birthday.

It was hard leaving BU, which I was kind of expecting. I guess I just hadn't thought about the fact that I actually had to say goodbye to everyone. I know there are some people I'm going to see again (some already had plans to be in the UK within the next couple of years) and there are others that I'm probably never going to see again.

This semester was pretty awesome. Some of it nearly killed me, but other parts were amazing. I got published in the Mitre (oldest university literary journal in the country) and managed an 82% average or something. Best semester of uni so far.

What else was there about this semester? So many things have happened and it's been a stupidly long time since I updated this thing. I got three new piercings, which I don't think I said in my last update, even though I'd already got them by that point. There was QUEUC (Quebec Universities English Undergraduate Conference) where we basically spent two days listening to interesting papers and meeting new people, plus a wine and cheese and a second poetry slam. I actually read some of my own stuff this time, since I knew I was definitely going. It was a lot of fun again, and I'm glad I got to do both of them.

I know there were other things, but I really can't think of anything... Six hours of walking in the sun and a mild case of sunburn has melted my brain. Now I'm sitting in the 'basement' watching Wanted and contemplating getting coffee. It was much easier when I had Dewies, but ah well. It's probably a good thing not having easy access to that much junk food...

I could totally crash right now. It's been a long day. Brain has disintegrated into mush and I'm fading fast. Maybe I'll try to update this damned thing a little bit more often, but it has been seen that I kind of suck at sticking with it. We'll see.

I think I'm done.

March has been broken

Right now we're in the middle of March Break. A random week off, during which we can sit around and pretend to work. I've spent most of it not working in Dewies.

I have done some work, but mainly we all turn up at Dewies throughout the day with our laptops with the intent of being productive, and then spend hours messing around, talking and listening to music. The bonus of sitting in Dewies for such stupidly long periods of time means that people to talk to will eventually turn up, and there's a pretty endless supply of food and coffee. Right now I have soup.

We've also taken over the sofas in the corner and every one of us has a laptop with us (except Bob, but he has an iPad; which is almost the same thing, only smaller and with a touchscreen). I don't think any actual work is going on...

We're going to the Lion for wings night later, and hopefully we'll actually get served this time. Last time I went I'd been in class for about 5 hours and really needed to eat, then we didn't get served for an hour. Then we left and went to Jerry's, but a couple of people didn't want to eat there, so we ended up walking all the way back to campus two hours after we left, having still not eaten.

Hopefully we actually get to eat there tonight though...

I think my ears are getting towards being healed, finally. I thought I'd recapped the past two months, and completely forgot that I'd had my ears pierced again. I think I'm stopping at the seven I have now.

Apparently I'm Bob's 'If he were straight' fake girlfriend... We had a girls night (plus Bob) on Monday, and it was decided. I think it works.

This blog is failing. I have very little to write about today, and my brain is semi-mush. Maybe I'll call it quits for the week and get coffee or something...

Bring on the Midterms

So I'm definitely sucking at updating this thing in 2011... I've kept meaning to actually update it, but there were many distractions and other methods of procrastination.

Second semester is most definitely underway (currently slap bang in the middle of week six) and it's taken me nearly two months to get round to writing another post on here. But I'm finally doing it! I think I actually got part way through writing one about a month ago, and then I ran out of things to say and stopped. Then I had to restart the comp for some reason and lost what I'd written. I don't think it was anything particularly exciting anyway.

Semester is going well so far. I haven't had any midterms yet, but they're coming up in the next couple of weeks. I should probably actually check when exactly they are... I know one is on the 23rd. I'm not worried about any of them, anyway. Classes are pretty good. I don't particularly enjoy the four and a half hour blocks twice a week, but it's three interesting modules, so it's bearable (even if I am pretty much done by the time it gets to Shakespeare).

I'm currently in the process of doing laundry, so I think I have about ten minutes before I have to dash off and shove stuff into the dryer. I got distracted with sweeping my floor and didn't set the timer until an unknown period of time later. Hopefully it will have finished when I get down there, anyway. I also have a cold vanilla coffee thing, which has been keeping chilled on the windowsill. It's brilliant. I think the window has a bit of a draught, and it's around -18 at the moment, so it keeps things nice and cold. My bed is safely on the other side of the room, so I don't actually feel the freezing temperatures.

Not quite sure how much snow there is at the moment. We got hit by a storm a couple of weeks ago that dumped an insane amount of snow on us overnight, and we've had the odd random inch throughout the week. The footpaths are pretty easy to navigate, although it was about +4 yesterday, so some of it started melting and then promptly refroze. There are odd patches of ice all over the place.

I've managed to fall a total of three times so far this winter. The first time was the incident involving the puddle, and the second happened the night I got back onto campus after the hols. I made the stupid decision that I would be fine in my (gripless) trainers going for food, and didn't notice the great big patch of ice outside my rez. There were no witnesses.

The most recent time was because the path through the foot-deep snow was narrow and I lost my balance, managing to plunge myself into a snowdrift. Fun times. Only my friend laughed at me though, so it's ok. Better than the puddle by a long shot.

What else has happened in the past two months? I got to Montreal with no problems, although the Mother and sister had a pretty nightmarish time getting out here. Cancelled/delayed flights etc. They got there eventually. I spent a fair amount of my time waiting for them, sitting in the trainstation stealing the free wifi, seeing as the hotel was mean and charged. Strangely enough if you joined the Premier group or something, which didn't cost anything, then you got a code and could access the internet for free. This was pretty useful once we got to Quebec, because both hotels were in the same company, and there was no way we were going to pay for the internet.

I haven't mentioned the fact that - laundry - anyway... The hotel in Quebec was a frikken CASTLE. Seriously. It was epic. I rather loved Quebec, to be honest. Didn't think much of Montreal, but it's a bit too 'cityish' for my tastes, and apparently there are other parts of the city that are nicer than where we were.

Quebec was amazing, anyway. I tried some caribou and some wild boar, and had some genuinely awesome meals. I think the boar and the surf-and-turf were my favourites. I could have gone back there a couple of weeks ago (the weekend of the storm) for Carnivale, but I decided I didn't really want to deal with all the crowds. I'd have missed the Poetry Slam, anyway - more on that later.

I changed one of my modules at the beginning of the semester. I was set to do the second half of the Intro to Lit class, but we got the schedule and the only thing I liked on there was Blake, and we only covered about two of his poems. The majority of the stuff on the course are texts I've studied before or just down-right hated. I switched into a 300-level class on Medieval Dreams and stuff instead. Significantly more interesting. The first Long Poem class was pretty awkward. I had my doubts about the class, but it's definitely improved. I think it was probably just first class nerves for most of them. It's pretty good now, although I still don't really like that it's a night class on Thursdays, even if we did reschedule it for an hour earlier than it was timetabled for. My week still doesn't finish until 9pm on Thursdays.

What else is there...?

I got one of my poems into the Mitre, which I'm pretty pleased about. Apparently it's the first page and everything. Never had anything of mine published before. I've also submitted some of my work to New Writing Dundee, so maybe I'll get something in there, too. I think I'm going to have to look into getting something published in England, next. I've already got Canada and maybe Scotland. I'll keep working at that. Right now I have two poems to write for Thursday, and a bunch of things to comment on as well. I'll get it all done. I also need to make a start on my essay. It's due on the 23rd, unless I decide to turn it into a research paper instead, in which case I have until April 6th. It will get done.

I read at the Poetry Slam the other week. I had half planned on reading some of my own work, but I was also dying of the plague at the time, and therefore unsure as to whether I was even going to go until we were walking out the door, at which point it was too late to think of getting any of my own work printed off. I ended up stealing a copy of Donne's 'The Good Morrow' instead, which is one of my favourite poems. People seemed to like me, but I think that might have been because I'm English. The accent does funny things to people on this side of the Pond... I don't think anyone noticed that I was shaking up there, but I did pick up the fact that my accent was stronger over the mic. I could hear my own voice, as well as the sound through the speakers, and I definitely sounded more 'Yorkshire' on the speakers.

Ah well. Maybe I should have read some Shakespeare...

I have recently been dying of the plague, as has previously been mentioned. I think I'm going on two weeks at the moment, although there were a couple of days towards the end of last week when I thought I was getting better. Then the weekend happened. At least I don't look like I'm about to keel over, anyway. Apparently some people were rather worried I was going to suddenly pass out or something. I hadn't realised I looked that bad until people commented that I was looking better...

I hope I'm actually going to recover soon. I'm rather sick of being ill. Apparently other people are sick of me being ill, too; I get more moany than usual.

Exam schedules went up during the last couple of days; I only have two finals. This pleases me. I finish my year at Bishop's on the 20th April. According to my study permit, I don't have to actually leave the country until August 31st, so I have time to maybe do some travelling out here before I head back home. I still don't know what exactly I'm doing this summer, but I have about five and a half months or something to kill. I'm sure I'll come up with something to do, I have friends from various places around the country, so I might be able to find sofas to crash on or something if I do a bit of travelling. I think I'd quite like to see BC, and I have at least a couple of people who live out there.

Plans will be made.

Definitely been writing this for about an hour... I think I might have covered most of the past two months of my update-failing. Laundry should be done in about 20 minutes, and I've been neglecting my coffee. Probably a good thing it was already cold.

Maybe I'll try and get some of this poetry written. Or sit and mess around on the internet... Which is more likely to happen?