New hobby alert!!

I found the idea for my new hobby a while ago on a funny little website, and since then I've been bugging myself to make one. So I had a few hours to kill this afternoon and a shirt donated by my friend...

This is the result!

He is sad because someone stole all his organs and stuffed him with pillow stuffing and then sewed him up with bright yellow thread. Poor little cat-bear. He hasn't got a name yet, that's for my friend Towler to decide.

I made the scarf out of some shoe lace I found.

I showed my housemate Jason and have thus been provided with a grey t shirt to make more with! I really enjoyed making him actually.

Going to make a female version for myself now! Not sure how she'll turn out, but I'm excited. Will give her longer legs as his are a bit small!

Gloomy Saturday Afternoon

It was really sunny before. Where has the sun gone? I had the blinds drawn, the window open, Buena Vista Social Club blasting...

Now it's all gloomy and grr.

It was pretty awful weather in Cardiff too. The day James and I went to the Bay it completely soaked us as soon as we left his house, so we bought an umbrella and it didn't rain again all day! I shall probably put some Cardiff pictures up shortly. We went to the castle and had the walkie talkie doodahs that told us things about the castle. We also got shouted at because my flash kept going off. Oops.

Been doing animal behaviour reading all day. Quite proud of myself actually, though I don't want to lose my streak. Up to lecture 8 or so of 18, roughly. All fueled by dried mango, om nom nom.

I'm home alone. This is bizarre. Not used to being here solo.

On other notes, YAY RUGBY! Bit of a dull match at times, but at least we pulled it back.





I think we can all establish that this was a terribly pointless post.

I should not be trusted with computers: A vista messup.

Well. I learnt several things the last couple of days.
1. Installing things off a usb is generally not a good idea, especially if it requires your computer to restart.
2. The product key for vista is on the bottom of the laptop.
3. Microsoft are stingy bastards for not sending out recovery discs any more.
4. Making your own recovery discs is a time sucker upper.
5. I am no good at computers.

So yes, I pestered Philip to fix it, and he saved all my stuff off my C drive so I can reinstall vista to there eventually... just need a recovery disc to start with. The first two I made have both fallen at the first hurdle.

Being in Phil's office was fun, though. I was playing with the spray air and spinning chairs and some sherbert I found in his desk.

6. An office is a playground when empty.

Fencing was good too. Realised I am desperately out of practice but that's good as it's spurring me even more to go again and again and get better and better. Got some nice ideas of things to do for the rest of the year to go out with a bang.

At least I have dinner to look forward to: Baked sausages in apples and onions, honeyed roasted parsnips, roast new potatoes with garlic and rosemary, roasted tarragon carrots and probably some mint peas to round it off. Yum yum yum.

7. Clearly food I create has to have other flavours and cannot simply taste of 'potato' it must be potato, garlic and rosemary!

York

Okay, just a little bit belated. This weekend I visited my friend Tom in York, where he's studying History and Politics. I cannot believe how stunning that city is. Even the campus is pretty awesome - it's all built around a lake in an almost figure eight shape. Everything is on campus too, as opposed to the University of Liverpool having Greenbank and Carnatic well out of the way.

I could not believe how many ducks there were. And coots. And swans. And geese. I also cannot beleive how few pictures I took of the wildlife - I am a poor zoology student. At Tom's halls, Alcuin, which for some reason sits a lot higher than any other part of the university, has semi nocturnal rabbits everywhere. At 1am on the saturday I was wandering around, slightly wine infused, naming as many as I could. I ran out of names fairly quickly - partly due to the amount of rabbits and partly due to the amount of wine I had consumed.

We did all the exceptionally touristy things such as visiting the Minster and walking up the 267 steps in spiral staircases up to the top of the tower. I was a bit nervous about this due to the blaring signs warning people with millions of problems, including asthma to stay away. Luckily, we were at the back of the 50 people climbing the tower, so got quite a few little rests on the way up. The view from the top was magnificent, if a little flat - where are the mountains!? I believe only Welsh people will understand this sort of confusion. We noticed two people kissing in some grounds beneath us, so we boomed out in a voice of God stylee 'YOU TWO, STOP YOUR CANOODLING!' They looked up, very bemused. We waved. They waved back. We laughed. They hid behind a tree.


I also spent far too much money at Betty's. Oh Betty, do stop making such lovely things so that I won't spend all my money in your shop. I can't believe I spent £16 on afternoon tea. To be fair, the pot yielded at least 4 cups worth of tea... but still. That is a lot. Here is a nice picture of us all looking quite refined. I'm pretty sure that 'quite' is the operative word here, for Towler looks ever so sinister behind all those lovely cakes. image could really do with a crop but I'm lazy, so no.


Such a beautiful place. Perhaps somewhere I could live in the future? Who knows.

OH GOD I NEVER WANT TO EAT AGAIN :(

I'm sitting here lamenting that I'm missing a grand total of three lectures today - two of those taught by the excellent Brian Moss who speaks so fast and so constant and has no words on his slides so that you are constantly touch typing/scrawling for a good hour. By the end of it you are begging for mercy while your hands throb with the ache of gained wisdom.

Anyway, I hate feeling ill. Bad tummy, most likely caused by the Burger King I scoffed on the train home from York. Bad head because I'm rubbish like that.

Junebug are keeping me sane, however. Good old Junebug. They're a three piece band from where I live (ish), two of which are brothers Latham. Ralphie has his own solo (ish) stuff. So happy and power poppy and nice. Like a big cuddle in the sunshine. Plus they have two songs that remind everyone from Abergele about their home life - Abergele and Sweet Mellow Water. Good times.

Hehehe Wizard, one of my roborovskis, is in her ball and is stuck on a slipper. D'aww.

Spent Saturday and most of Sunday in York. It was lovely seeing Tom, who lives there. It's his birthday today actually, yay happy birthday Tom! We did all the typical touristy things like visit the Minster and climb to the top, Jorvick viking centre, the Dungeons - which I was terrified in because the actors kept picking on me as I squealed most out of the group - Clifford's Tower, and the one and only Betty's! Best tea room in the whole world and I still can't believe I spent £16 on afternoon tea!

Sleep time now.

Thursday Mornings, yeuch

Well Thursdays are pretty poo. I'm taking a module called Advanced Zoology, which my tutor runs, which basically consists of endless calibration curves. Today I get to play with crabs for a bit at least.... then take lots of haemolymph (blood, ish) samples from them. Hmm.

Feeling quite delicate today too. Last night we had a pot luck dinner party at my house. This is where you all bring a dish or two with you and then everyone shares out all the food. This time we had a 5 bean bake, ginger pork (mine), mozzarella and tomato starter, crusty bread, yakitori chicken (mine), balsamic and soy chicken (mine), vegetarian chilli with cheese and sour cream to top it, tonkatsu (mine), a fuckton of rice (mine), tiramasu and pecan pie. And mojitos. One of my friends, Lucy, is fairly inept at cooking according to herself so is in charge of cocktails. I'm not really sure why I feel iffy. Could be from eating that huge quantity of food.

Oh yeah, we had chocolate seashells too which my friend started trying to identify. You know you've hit a low point at a dinner party when the marine biologist shouts 'Yay I got a Mytilus edulis'.

On another note, the Lonely Island is the only thing keeping me alive in these early times... Well, 8am is kind of early. Being British, it's something I've not really come across, though I'm sure plenty of Americans are familiar. Natalie Portman's rap about her real life is my favourite. Clean version via.

Also, I'm now a ginge. I did it as a prank on my housemate who is obsessed with red heads. I came down and he was like "Oh god, CONFLICT".

Anyways, time to go stick some crabs :/