Okay so I have just rcovered from a 24 hour hangover. Well, I say recovered - I'm still in pain (damn bruises!). Anyhoo, I should start at the beginning.
Saturday night. University. We (of course) go out. Amber, Jodie, Ruby and Clara have all gone home for the weekend, and Crystal is (as per usual) nowhere to be seen. So it's just me, Dana and Sarah. If you knew the others it would come as no suprise to you that the house is suddenly very relaxed. See, Amber and Jodie have been a little highly strung (understatement) recently, about...well...everything. Amber tends to be the ring leader with Jodie being swept up in the flurry of outrage aimed at the washing up, Clara's singing, people who miss lectures, the way I make my notes, my lack of organisation etc etc. This is not to say that Amber and myself do not get along, or even dislike eachother, just that we are very different sorts of people and I don't think she feels comfortable with people who are not 'her sort of people'. I am not the only one in the house who thinks this. In fact the moment they were out the door, the three of us remaining in the house sat down and compared notes, just to vent. Yeah, ok, so we had a major bitch about the whole thing, but it was kinda needed. So with Clara gone we did not have her many visiters constantly round, so the house seemed to have lost about five people by her going, rather than just the one. Ah! The sweet peace and quiet! Ruby is wonderful and I do miss having her around, even if she talks lots and with only one subject (he likes her, she likes him, but even knowing this she still won't make a move or actually tell him she likes him but complains that nothings happening. Her defense is that she can't possibley ask HIM out - she's a girl after all. Yes, I did tell her that was bullshit.)
Friday night was spent with casual drinks round at the guys place (next door to us but one). Me and Dana went round (Sarah had something else to go to) and Dana said she wasn't drinking tonight. I however cracked open a can of Tetly's, and was told to join the drinking game. It's called ring of fire - I'd never played or seen it before so after a brief explanation of the rules (a brief and INCOMPLETE explanation I should say!) we began. Basically, a pack of cards is placed in the middle of the table scattered in a heap, and you go round the circle taking it in turns to pick a card. The number of the card indicates an action that results in one or more people drinking. For example, 'Fours are for whores' so every woman at the table (ie, just me) would drink. If someone picks a seven, without showing the card to anyone they piut up both their hands. Everyone else must do this, and the last one must drink. It's a good game, and I just about kept up with the guys, earning me a certain amount of respect. :) We moved onto the union and came back in the early hours to find Sarah up and vey VERY drunk. She has decided that Tim (she likes him, he likes her , he's lovely, but never had a proper girlfriend before and wants to take it slow with Sarah, ie, wait a very long time before actually going out so they can get to know eachother, so she's been waiting around for him.) is (in her words) 'SO GAY!!!!!" I have no idea if she means literally or not but whichever, it caused her to get very very drunk and now she's decided not to wait around for him anymore, she's found a weight has lifted from her. So come saturday night she was up for a damn good time.
The local pub, The Pig and Rat was having a UV Jungle night. Fairly self explanitory. Jungle music. UV lights. Free UV body paint, glow sticks etc. We of course pre-drank, but not too muich as they were having a drinks offer - pound a pint and pound for various shots too. Including tequila. Pre-drinking had some interesting conversation. Much of it concerning Amber. She's not exatly been generous with the guys, and nor has Jodie. There's been a small and light-hearted warfare going on (which some of the others, I think including Amber, started by stealing some of the guys posters from thier kitchen and putting them up in ours). Amber took the retaliation way too seriously and is now not speaking to them. The girl can really not take a joke. We apologised to the guys for her and her high-strungness. The guys brushed it off, said not to worry and joked that if it got too much, they'd just TP (toilet paper) our house and throw eggs at her and Jodie's window. See that? Humour.
So Dana and me started the night off with a few beers with the guys, then on arrival at the pub, headed straight for the bar and had two shots of tequila each and a pint for the long term. There was a really big queue so ordering several drinks at once was a logical move. I remember being sequestered by a couple of drunks at that point who wanted to know if I was "the girl from the playstation adverts". Not having seen any such adverts recently I don't know if this is a good thing to be asked or not. I'm hopeful though. lol. I mingled, danced, chatted and at some point consumed another 47 or so shots of tequila. Plus a few more beers. I accidently stopped counting units somewhere through the night. At some point I talked to my friend, Steven, from maths. He's perhaps a tiny bit chavvy, but not in an unsociable kinda way. There is a slight chance we may have kissed. But I'm not quite sure. I THINK I remember someone pulling me in for a peck on the lips, and me being drunk enough to think "Meh! What the hell!". But I DO remember being the kissEE, not the kissER. Of course I may have just imagined the whole thing. And if it did happen I'm fairly sure I just went back to dancing with Sarah and Dana.
Well, that's it. I'm not telling you anymore. Not because I'm mean, or because I don't want to, but because I can't. The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed, covered in glow paint, with bruises on my hip my chest and neck (you have no idea how painful!) and my jaw. No idea how they got there. I must have fallen over at some point I guess. Anyhoo, I m now totally in debt to my flatmates who got me safely home, and only regret that I have no recolection of the rest of the night's action. There was apparently a big fight in the Pig and Rat which quickly got takn outside where they resolved it by bottling each other. It was a couple of townies from stoke-on-trent who get in on the student events sometimes (known on campus as 'Stokeys'). See you'd think I'd remember something like that, but no! I was apparently right there, but I have no memory whatsoever! Dana has filled me in on the rest. When we got back we stayed in the lads kitchen chatting for a while and talk turned to Amber and apparently the idea of TPing the house seemed really funny. So they did. We may have helped. They also fund they had a few eggs and threw one at each of Amber and Jodie's windows. Sarah also vented her frustration by throwing one at Ambers window, something we are keeping quiet, obviously, as we don't want a war in the house. It seems stupid now, but everyone was very drunk you have to remember. I am however assured (and constantly reminded) that I was the drunkest one of all. Really, I'm so proud.
So I woke up on sunday morning having no idea how I got home or anything after the Pig and Rat and spent most of the day trying to sleep off a hangover and reading about Plato when I couldn't sleep anymore. Not cause I wanted to do the reading or anything, just cause the guy is majorly boring and it suddenly inspired in me a new desire to sleep. In the evening I decided to risk solid food and ventured down to kitchen where I encountered Amber. I realised upon her launch into a rant about the toilet paper that although I had been feeling terrible all day, I had still been enjoying the relaxation of the weekend. After the initial shock of her stress, I realised what she was talking about and went outside to have a look. And by gumb she was right - we had been TPed. I burst out laughing, it was quite spectacular, and immediately wished I hadn't. I got a whole lecture on how not funny the whole thing was, and about how it was vandlism. I understand her being upset about the eggs on the window, but really, the rest is just paper! There was some threat of smashing the guys windows if they didn't come and clear it up which, let's face it, was a BIT excessive. But come and clear it up they did. Me and Dana tried to help, but I wasn't exactly feeling up to climbing on the roof, and we knew it would start an argument in the house if Amber saw us. Which is a bitch really, when you think about it. The guys were really good about though, Didn't say anything about any of us being involved. (No-one can remember if I passed out before or after this, so we're not sure if I was involved or not. But if I was concious, I probably would have been. Y'know, if I could still throw in a straight line.)
I very nearly put my foot in it when Amber was ranting. She was going on and just before pausing to take a breath she said "God! I'm in SUCH a bad mood now!". Luckily she carried right on talking quickly, or she would have heard my comment "When are you not???". I of course did not mean to say this out loud, but these things happen. She stopped and asked me what I said, and I just about managed to keep a straight face as I replyed "I said have you seen my bread. Ah, never mind, got it." Whacked some bread in the toaster, and picked up a book before she could start talking again. Later, Dana pointed out something interesting. If they'd thrown eggs at any other windows in the house it would've been fine - even though the rest of us have no quarrel with the guys so it would be totally unprovoked. She said it's like there two kinds of attitudes girls have towards guys. With the first, the girl can be 'one of the guys', and is okay with them taking the piss out of her, and joking with her. In fact it's a compliment. But the second wants to be admired and protected and doesn't like the idea that the guy might insult her - even in a light-hearted humourous way. It's obviously not as simple as that - I guess most girls would have a mixture of the two, depending on the situation, but I think it might just be the difference between being able to take a joke and not.
I've gotta say, I do my best to get on with Amber, and she can be really nice, but I'm not sure I wanna live with her next year. It's just such a tense atmosphere, and I just don't like having that stress around all the time. Sarah's a medic so she gt's on campus accomadation in her second year and Dana's only here for a year (she's studying abroad, from canada) which is a bitch, cause we get on really well. I'm thinking maybe look up my old flatmates from O Block (before I moved rooms) and see what they're doing next year. I'm fairly sure I piss Amber off as much as she pisses me off. She hates the way I do work (we take maths together, along with Jodie who, much more healthily I think, doesn't give a shit how I do my work). Amber herself is very organised. Takes notes in every lecture, rewrites them up in neat and files them consecuatively in a seperate folder for each module. She includes examples from tutorials and every homework when she gets it back. Everything isin plastic wallets and if something gets a bit creased, she irons it. If that works for her, fine, but I just can't work that hard unless I actually need to. Amber has not missed a single lecture yet and idolizes her older sister who has never missed a lecture except for when actually bedbound by illness and is in her third year at uni. Don't get me wrong, kudos to Amber, she's got a strong work ethic and I respect that, but she kind of expects me to be the same.
When I take notes, I just open my notepad and get writing. I know where the notes are when I need them, and so what if they have doodles up the sides and are mixed in with my japanese notes?? I may have blown off one or two lectures, but if I can still do all the homeworks as well as her and pass the exams at the end of term, then what's the diff? The marks from first year don't count towards my degree. As long as I pass it's all good. Every third year I speak to keeps saying that I should appreciate being able to slack off in my first year while I still can. Suits me. It doesn't mean I'm not working, it just means that I'm loving uni so far, and want to enjoy as much of it as I can and not stress myself into the ground. Me + Stress = Bunking off and less than sparkling grades, if I remember correctly. I'm not gonna do that again, so I'm going to do this my way. The only way I know how. The lazy way. Because at the end of the day, an employer won't be looking at my attendance or the neatness of my notes. They'll be looking at what I got out of uni as an experience, and most of all, whether I got a 2.2, a 2.1, or a 1st. (I refuse to even consider failing or getting a 3rd.)
I really hope I'm looking at this the right way.
Squirrels spotted: 2
Ok, so I haven't written in a million years or so, but nevermind - I don't think anyone reads this anyway. lol.
It's 1:30am on monay morning and I'm desperately trying to enlongate my weekend before I come crashing down to earth with the realisation that I have a maths examples class in about seven and a half hours time that I should probably be both present and awake for. Flatmates went to bed and I decided to finish off my beer outside with a cigarette. (I'm considering quitting - winter has rudely and resolutely begun here already and it means I wouldn't have to stand outside. Plus I could totally take the moral high ground with you filthy smokers, and sing that song again. :P) Anyhoo, there I am standing and puffing away when it suddenly occurs to me that I'm wearing a black leather jacket and, in fact, do so frequently. WHY THE HELL did no-one bring this to my attention?!? I'm not cool enough to wear a black leather jacket!!! And with the beer and the smoking?!? I mean, who do I think I am? Olivia Newton-John? Thank god I was wearing my spiderman T-shirt or someone might have mistaken me as having street cred. And the worst thing is I can't even get real and stop wearing the jacket seeing as how I live in the thing - it would only draw attention to te fact that I usually wear one. I'll just have to run the risk of someone noticing. It's either that or buy myself a motorbike helmet and a skull-and-daggar themed tattoo and try to fool people into thinking that I'm so hardcore, they really don't want to question my attire or they'll have the Hell's Angels to deal with. Maybe I'm just safest sticking with the comic book themed T-shirts and claim I'm wearing the jacket in an 'ironic way'. I can't believe none of you told me!!!!!
Has just hit me that I have to be up in less than six hours. I've got to do the washing up before I leave tomorrow - I think Amber's going to explode if she finds the kitchen THIS untidy again - safer to get my stuff out the way so I have nothing to do witht the lack of worktop space. I can sit quietly in a corner with an innocent look on my face, whilstling quietly to myself. Much better than my original plan to leave the washing up and cunningly disguise myself as a potted plant whenever she enters the room. Probably easier too. G'night.
Ok, so it's been a week. I know. But in my defence I've been really busy...y'know...being drunk. And hungover. And then drunk again.
Still, having been watching the squirrel population.
Thursday: 2 squirrels
Friday: 0 squirrels
Saturday: 2 squirrels, 1 ex-squirrel meal, 2 headgehogs (awesome!!)
Sunday: 0 squirrels. Not coz there were none around, I was just hung over and ended up not leaving the flat all day!
Monday: 7 squirrels (they were out in force!)
Tuesday: 3 squirrels
Wednesday: 2 squirrels. Awesome though, because they were running in perfect parallel at the same speed and everything!!!
Today's thursday, and final count is not in. But 3 so far.
I auditioned for the production (An extra - everyone else auditioning did A-level drama! "Not-many-people-have-any-experience-a
Sunday nighty is apparently decent music night in the union club, K2. Rock, Metal and Drum n base (an excellant mix) and finishes at 1:30ish. Not good when you have a 9am lecture, but so worth it.
Have discovered why Horwood hall is nicknamed 'The Ghetto'. Security is awful (anyone from the entire block can walk into your kitchen without a key) and as a result crime rates are way up. So far we've lost 2 frying pans, 2 knives 2 forks 2 spoons 1 plate 3 pint glasses 1 full big bag of oven chips, half a dozen sausages a carton of oj a pint of milk, and countless other food items we had to throw out when someone turned our fridge-freezer off. We ll had to throw out milk, meat (including anything meatish in the freezer that had thawed out). Someone from our flat made the idiotic mistake of throwing a water balloon at the guys upstairs ( apparently she was provoked). So guys came downstairs and threw eggs at her (and the others around) in our kitchen. One landed in the hall (which is carpetted) as they tried to hold us hostage by not letting us go ndown the stairs. Luckily as students they could only afford 3 eggs. Bastards. They are the only floor in the block which has not complained of having something stolen. We do not get on very well.
Have started Japanese. Is very cool. Am going to have trouble learning the script though! But I spose that's all part of the challenge.
Have pretty much been living off cuppasoup for the last week. Must have real food at some point. Maybe will buy chicken nuggets at some point - they're not too pricey. Yes, chicken nuggets, I also have a tin of sweet corn. Some mayo. And a slice of bread or two.
Dammit! Now I'm hungry. And late!!!! Damn!!!! More to follow!
Oh God. I’m so poor. NatWest won’t open my account. Some delay in the system. I’m going to die. The loans people won’t even start to process my loan until I give them account details. I registered for a NatWest student account online about 2 weeks ago, and it’s still “pending”. Bastards. Thing is, until the account is open, I don’t know the account details so I can’t tell the loans people. I have no money. It’ll take weeks for the loan to come through even when I tell them the account details but I get a free overdraft so as long as I can open the account then I can buy food. There is just one more thing though….(oh yes, it gets worse), the first instalment of accommodation charges (about £600) is due on Friday. This is a problem, because I don’t actually HAVE £600. So just in case the account doesn’t open in time, and I have to borrow money from people I want to borrow as little as possible. So I have no money. Oh God. Finding all this out: not the best start to a morning really.
Lunch time. Noodles cooked in cuppa soup (cheap, tesco’s own). Cost: 18p. This acceptable. On a side note, have discovered that my mother was right all along – it IS possible to get 3 cups of tea out of one teabag. The third cup takes a long time to make though, because you have to bash the teabag for about half an hour. I finished my milk this morning and I daren’t buy more. I’m drinking my beer slowly. I would sell what I have left, but no-one else likes bitter. (Pansies).
This afternoon I went back to the bank and asked what I could do to get my account off ‘pending’ (Bastards) and I can either give them a whole load of forms which I’ll have to wait 24 hours to get in the first place. Or I can call some helpline number. Unfortunately I can’t call them because it’s not a free number, and I have no money (see above). So forms it is. I then went down to the finance office and got an extention til the end of the month on my accommodation payments thankfully. I still have no money for food though! I have the emergency money my parents left me, but I don’t know how long that will have to last. I had a little bit left but I just had to spend it on a textbook. Damn Japanese! Actually, not damn Japanese – it looks really good. I hate that my life is so centred around money at the moment!
This afternoon I saw Jenny. We went to get food in the local town,
Stayed in tonight with the cheapest bottle of wine I could find and watched a few DVDs on my laptop (we don’t have to pay for the electricity in halls) and tried to console myself while my friends went out to see Coolio at the
Squirrels sightings: 1
Walked into a rubbish heap today. Managed to find the kettle amidst the chaos and had a cup of tea. Woke up. Went to have shower and returned to find that the rubbish heap had gone and been replaced by our kitchen. Mainly I think by Laura. Someone smashed a bottle last night so we can’t walk in there with no shoes on. We cleared it up as much as possible last night, but our efficiency might have been dramatically reduced by being blind drunk. Anyhoo, we put a message in the maintenance book for our block so someone should come to vacuum it for us at some point. To be honest none of us went bare foot in there anyway. We don’t think the floor was cleaned since the last people left – it smelled really musty in there when we arrived and it was covered in dirt and even a couple cigarette butts. The balcony off the kitchen was even worse. Old rotted dead leaves, the contents of about 40 ash trays, 2 empty cigarette packets, copious amounts of mud (seriously – we could open a spa) and this manky old towel. Tavi dropped the towel down the fire escape to the balcony below. We saw it on the floor under the balconies in the morning – it had travelled right down the block. I keep saying balconies, and I should perhaps explain what I mean. The word brings to mind sunny happy things – lemon yellow and white sparkling paint jobs, railings, plant troughs full of bright red geraniums. Well that’s not how they are at all. They are there to facilitate the fire escape ladders that connect them, and are made of grey concrete that aptly complements the nasty peeling off white paint that covers the building.
Attended introductory lectures today. Nothing interesting there unless you’re actually taking the courses. It was, however, interesting seeing how the different subjects put across the same information. The philosophy department, for example pointed out that it was perfectly logical that if you don’t attend the lectures you won’t pick up the information as well, and therefore will not be able to apply knowledge that you don’t have in an exam situation. There was some debate about whether the knowledge existed if you didn’t know it, but that was not the point, said the lecturer and objections were squished fairly quickly.
Maths on the other hand simply told us that the probability of a pass mark was directly proportional to attendance. We all nodded and left it at that.
Went to meet my tutor. Dr Naire. He's from the maths department. I have a few private meetings to make sure I'm coping okay with the work and I can contact him if I need help at any point which is good - the student support is excellant here, I'm pleased to report. In addition to that, about 8 of us meet up with him to do some small group work on maths every fortnight for the first semester. We get given a sheet of problems to work on and then we meet up to discuss how we did them. The idea is that if you haven't quite got a concept someone else will have and you learn it that way. I did the first sheet in preporation for next week, and GET THIS!!!! I could actually do the problems! I was really worried, what with that thing I had in sixth form where I...er...didn't go for the last 2 months.Haha! Sweet relief - I'm not as behind as I thought.
Forgot to call Dan. Oops. He forgot to call me too though so it’s ok. I didn’t even go out tonight. Everyone in the flat was tired so we all stayed in, and watched a few DVDs together. A couple of people have to get up for 9 o’clock lectures tomorrow. I’ve got to get to registration for Japanese at 10 so I can’t really laugh. Early night for all.
Only saw one squirrel today – I guess they don’t come out in the rain (most of today). Suddenly wondering what squirrels do in the rain. They can’t hide in the trees ‘cause the rain drips through after a while. I wonder if they have hollowed out trees or under ground burrows or something. Or maybe tiny squirrel sized umbrellas? If so they’ve been hiding it from David Attenborough very well. I shall have to find this out, will post results of my research when I have any. In the mean time, if anyone has any suggestions as to what squirrels might do on a rainy day, or indeed, what ANYONE likes to do on a rainy day (need ideas - much rain up here apparently) leave comments!!!
I just looked out my window and there's a lawn in between the blocks. There's a wooden spoon lying in the middle. Thought you'd like to know.
I'd like to say that this is going to be a witty and thoughtful blog about life as student, how people relate to each other, and some interesting philosophical topics. But to be honest, it'll probably just be me rambling about stuff, so I can't. I'm going to try to write a post at lest every few days, but APPARENTLY as a student I'm supposed to do some form of work this year (who knew?) so I don't know how much time I'll really have.
I suppose the first thing you'll want to know (especially if you know me) is why the hell this blog is called squirrelspotter. No, I haven't found a new and exciting hobby, I just keep seeing squirrels on campus and thought it was cool. So I'll be keeping you up to date with how many I see. How exciting!
I'll be writing each entry the day after it happened and then editing the dates afterwards, so hopefully this entry will be dated the 29th, but it's actually the 30th. Sneaky, eh? Anyhoo, Monday...
Squirrel sightings: 8
Not much happened this morning except that I discovered that having cereal for breakfast requires buying cereal the night before. Or getting up early enough to run down to the shop. Had toast instead. Must remember to get jam or honey or similar. Butter wouldn't go amiss either. Toast was a bit dry so tried dipping it in tea. Was an altogether unpleasant experience. Will not try this again.
Registered with main subjects – maybe it’s the geek in me, but maths guys are so hot. Was in the dept and all the fresher guys also signing up seemed to be really attractive. Excellent. Speaking of hot, in our flat we’ve discovered a fantastic (but sinful) evening past time. In the evening when it gets darker and people turn on their lights most shut the curtains but the kitchens in these flats don’t actually have any curtains – only the bedrooms. We have a balcony that overlooks another block. Now it’s all very fun looking into people’s kitchens of course, BUT we have a favourite window to watch. There a bunch of guys on the ground floor who have not only a kitchen, but some form of dining room next to it. They have moved the table out of this room and replaced it with – get this – gym equipment. So when they go to do their evening sets (TOPLESS by the way) we get high class entertainment. Only slight problem so far is that there’s a group of girls opposite us who stand in their kitchen and watch us watching the guys, so we have to stop at that point.
Anyhoo, back to Monday. In the afternoon I joined societies. I couldn’t find the cider and ale group, so that may have simply been a beautiful dream, but I shall keep an eye out for it nonetheless. I DID owever join KRAP (Keele Rock Appreciation Posse) KUPOS (Keele University Pagan and Occult Society) The Drama Society (First production in Nov) and the Gospel Rock choir called Revelation, or rev for short. (No auditions or bibleyness, just singing, games and haribo as I found out that evening)
Made REAL food (lemony-thyme chicken with rice) for tea then went to first Rev meeting. Was really fun.
On my way back at about 9:30 there was a rave going on at the
Poor shmuck, I almost feel sorry for him, but then I suppose it’s one of life’s lessons – afterall, this is what happens when you try to pick girls up in the dark.
I got back to the flat with a new shiny number in my phone, and discovered upon entering the kitchen that my flatmates had more than doubled in number, and some of them now had beards. Oh, no, wait, it’s just 486 (well, nearly, about 10) of Tiff’s friends. All guys of course (don’t know how she does it). Everyone’s round the table playing a drinking game of some sort, wussing out of shots of vodka because it’s too strong a taste. It wasn’t even cheap vodka! The wimps! One guy (Stuart, I think) decided to challenge me to down a shot without wincing which I did without blinking. I then took out a can of Tetley’s bitter out the fridge and put their bottles of stella to shame. Needless to say I have earned the title of Tough Man of the flat. It had to happen sooner or later.
We stayed up inviting people from the block til you could barely walk around, but a good time was had by all. Others from the block, by the way, arrive not by the stairs, but by the fire escape ladders that go from each balcony to the ones above and below it. We finally turned in at about 3.
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