And so it Begins

Well I’m back to university and back to blogging again. Hooray! Got back Sunday afternoon, spent Monday doing all sorts of food shopping and other necessities such as a replacement baking tray, a bowl, a can-opener that opens cans...(very useful that one).

It’s only been a few days, but already time has sped up once more to an unreasonable rate. It feels like I arrived back today, yet 4 days have passed. On top of that, the pressure from all sides has begun to manifest itself in multiple ways. Firstly I have been given my first mini-essay assignment for English Language and Communication to be handed in and submitted by week 7. Yes, it may sound like a long way away, but refer to my earlier comment on time and you’ll see why that’s a problem.

Also causing stress (and utter confusion) is finding a house to rent in the second year. It makes me despise adult life. Remember a time when you didn’t have to worry about anything like that? Happier times indeed. Now we have to deal with estate agents who spout crap about things until you have no idea what they’re babbling on about. Saying that, however, I spoke to a friend on my Creative Writing course today who mentioned that we should steer clear of estate agents and scour the papers for private landlords instead. Makes sense to me…

Next on the list is what you could call “self-made stress” in the form of various new year’s resolutions. Maintaining a sensible sleeping pattern, eating things which actually have some form of nutritional value, going to the bleedin’ gym and making big changes to my time management (more work, less play). I’m just about juggling these things at the moment, although I did drop the ball last night when I stayed up until half midnight. Nobody’s perfect right?

The final form of stress is literally…a form! One which we must fill  in to decide on our modules for next year. There are limited places allocated on a first come first served basis which should make life much more fun. Needless to say, I’ve filled in the form already only 5 minutes after receiving it and plan to drop it in at the student office first thing tomorrow. Better to be safe rather than sorry.

Work Excitement

Yes, yes, I realise I’ve been a little bit slow at updating my blog lately, but when all you’ve been doing is working what’s essentially full time and will be until the end of the month, there really isn’t much to write about in a blog, however, I have in this post endeavoured to highlight some of the more exiting/interesting to read events that have taken place at work lately:

1.) Today I got stuck in the main goods lift at work! The bloody thing is so temperamental that it was bound to happen sooner or later. Well, I say “stuck”, but I was more sort of stuck. Basically I was taking some grit and shovels in a trolley up from the warehouse so I could go and grit the BLOODY car park for the 350 millionth time and once I’d gotten into the lift, I pressed the button to go to the shop floor above. I waited and once the lift had stopped, I opened the inner sliding door, but the outer sliding door wouldn’t open! Also I noticed the lift hadn’t quite made it with a couple of inches between the floor of the lift and the shop floor. So, rolling my eyes, I shut the inner door again and pressed the button once more, however, the lift started shaking and began to progress downwards again…incredibly slowly. After about 2 minutes of waiting and still able to see the outer door of the shop floor, I finally gave in and pressed the alarm button. After talking to the people in the main office over the intercom and waiting 10 minutes, the lift eventually reached the bottom floor again. Well, not quite, but enough for me to get out.

2.) Considerably less “exciting”, but as I was sat on one of the small tills on an incredibly long and boring shift recently with very little to do, I noticed a very familiar looking green and white zip-up jumper which is often worn by a certain friend of mine poking around the corner in the bread section. I eagerly peered craning my neck to see if it actually was him, but once I saw the balding head with streaks of grey, the beard and the glasses, I realised it wasn’t Lewis after all. Oh well…

So there you go! Yet another exciting working day!

Happy 2010

So, it’s the end of the “Noughties”. To be absolutely honest, I had no idea at all that the decade just passed was called that until 2 days ago. I’m obviously good at keeping up with the times! This year I decided to have a quiet New Year’s Eve spent with Nichola at her house (love you Nichola!) while most of my other friends went and partied.

We had a thing…erm…I can’t actually remember what it’s called. It’s a bit like a fondue, but with a miniature grill where you cook little bits of chicken, sausages, bacon, vegetables and cheese. It was lovely! While eating we watched the second Pirate of the Caribbean film on Sky HD and then watched the Graham Norton show before the countdown. It was very close and I thought I wasn’t going to make it originally, but I did manage to stay awake this year!

I’m planning to meet some more of my friends tonight, but it may be tricky as I’m having up to 7 people round and my parents want us down in my room. Oh dear…

Anyway, I’ll leave it a short one this time. Happy new year everyone!

Birmingham Shenanigans

Thank goodness for a day off work. It’s not just the work that’s tiring, but also the pain in my left ankle. Yes, it may be my own fault for leaving my black shoes at university, but wearing shoes that are a size too small is causing me no end of discomfort especially considering it takes me 40 minutes to walk to or from work every day and my job means I have to walk for hours on end. Naturally, my left ankle has gone stiff and has given me a limp. Bad times. Also I might be working for more time after the 9th of January. Anyway, moaning and whining over!

Today on my day off I went into Birmingham to meet up with my old friends Andy, Colin (and Sam, his girlfriend) and James. Mum very kindly paid for my train and cinema ticket since I’m short on cash until I get paid for my work. While I was on the train, I got a call from Marie who organises the rota for my section at work asking if I could do a couple of hours today. As lovely as Marie is…no. No way, I need my break!

Once I’d arrived and met up with everyone, we went to the Odeon to see Sherlock Holmes. There was a queue to buy tickets right out the door, but for some bizarre reason, no one was using the automated ticket machines, so we bought our tickets and went straight in while everyone else stood around like lemons. People are very strange indeed. The film was absolutely amazing especially considering I was expecting to find it very dull. I highly recommend it (and the actor who plays Sherlock himself isn’t too bad looking)!

Since I’d loaded up on sugar from a Tango Ice Blast in the cinema and was in the right frame of mind, I became very silly and giggly which was great (for me at least). We went into HMV and I found it hilarious that in the “Children’s Section” were films such as “Friday the 13th”. What a wonderful family film! I dared Andy to take a gay porn DVD called “The Lair” with the tagline “They’ll suck you dry” (made me laugh, that did!) and put it in the Children’s section and he did it!

To finish our time in Birmingham, we went to the gadget shop and giggled like immature children at all the rude gadgets, one of which Andy had given me as a belated Christmas present. I shan’t say what it is, but my university friend, Lewis, will LOVE it/find it hilarious!

Christmas Time!

Hello again! Yes, I am still alive and well, I merely became lazy which caused a lapse in my posting of blogs. It’s the end of what’s been an awesome day and I’m sat on the settee, sniffing a lot and rubbing my eyes thanks to the cats. Why oh why must I be allergic to my number one favourite animal in the whole world?!

Over the past week, I’ve been working 8 hours each day at Waitrose in the car park. It’s been…really fun. Yeah, ok maybe not. It was made much worse of course by snow. Everyone was walking around saying things like, “Oh, isn’t it beautiful?” about the snow. However, when you have to grit the entire car park and all of a sudden it becomes 10 times harder to push trolleys, snow quickly becomes something you despise. The one good thing about working in the car park though is the lack of customer interaction and the little giggle you can have to yourself when a customer arrives 5 minutes after the doors have been locked and walk up to the door with a confused face when it doesn’t open. I felt like shouting, “For goodness sake, it’s Christmas eve! Go home! Do you really not have anything better to do?! It’s your own stupid fault for not arriving early enough.”.

Christmas day was good indeed. I thought I’d be tired, but I woke up at 7 nevertheless and dragged myself upstairs. I got plenty of very nice FCUK wash and shave stuff, plus plenty of chocolate of course! The main gift was an electronic shaver so I don’t have to do wet shaves anymore! Rachel will NOT be pleased!! ;D

Christmas dinner courtesy of my mum was amazing and definitely the highlight of the day. Everything was cooked to perfection and, most importantly, I got my hands on 3 pigs in blankets! Yum! We all ate too much, so we’re saving the Christmas pudding for boxing day. Later in the evening, everyone except myself and my brother, Chris, went for a walk on the hills. Chris was asleep and I’d managed to wreck my left ankle through wearing shoes at work that are a size too small (I left my own black shoes at university). Once they’d returned, we decided to release the fire lanterns we’d bought. Basically, they’re big paper lanterns that you light, allow to fill with hot air and then release and watch as they float up into the sky like a hot air balloon. They were brilliant and worked really well! Except, of course, for one which floated, but not high enough, almost hit the roof (which is made entirely from cedar wood) and became snagged in a tree on the other side of the house. Luckily it quickly burnt out and the tree didn’t catch fire.

I don’t go back to work until Sunday since Waitrose is closed on boxing day, but I’ve got a couple of 9 hour shifts in the coming week. NOT looking forward to those at all. As long as it doesn’t snow and I can avoid any customer interaction, I’m happy though.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

A Mixed Day

Today’s been mixed in terms of how good it’s been. I’ve had ups and downs and some VERY dangerous and downright stupid close calls. More on that later…

Typically, I woke up fairly late in the morning (it is a Sunday after all; what do you expect?), turned on my phone and immediately received a text from Ellie asking me if I was coming out to Asda with them. Of course, the text was sent hours ago and they’d already been. Good start. Once the massive downpour and sheets of rain had passed over and the sun had started to shine again, I headed out on my own to Asda to do a little weekly shop. I walked all the way there, approached the cash machine on the outside of the building and, like some kind of deranged goldfish I realised…

I’d left my wallet back at the flat. Well done me.

Obviously this soured my mood somewhat and I ended up going back to my flat to sulk about how rubbish this day was being to me so far. I grabbed my wallet and since I’m far too lazy to make the same journey twice in one day, decided to go round the corner to the little newsagents and buy some overpriced milk and bread to live off until I could next be bothered to go to Asda. Oh well; there’s always next week.

Apart from that, my day’s been pretty uneventful. Needless to say it sure is quiet with Lewis being in Amsterdam. Laura’s parents are round to wish her a happy birthday which obviously means the PS3 and such are out of bounds until later on. So that leaves…oh, what’s that word…? Waffles? No…work! That’s it! It’s, erm, that thing students are supposed to do whenever they have a minute or two right?

Now about that close call: I realised today just how fragile and weak-minded I can be with all this freedom and independence. I came very VERY close today to giving in to this overwhelming urge to purchase a limited edition black Wii bundled with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I came so close, in fact, that I actually placed the order, then realised what a ridiculous thing that was to do and immediately cancelled it again. I’m quite shaken up at how close I came to blowing all that money. We do learn from our mistakes though and I shan’t ever come that close to doing something like that ever again. And no, readers, I don’t need any sage words of advice or any chastising! I can take care of myself you know.

Right now I’m waiting for my clothes to be washed over in the laundrette and waiting patiently (while cooking waffles…erm, I mean working) for Laura to return so we can sample some of the TEN PS3 games her parents have brought her from home. Let the good times roll!

Time to Catch Up!

Whoops! Looks like it’s been at least a week now since the previous blog post of mine. Time does go so quickly these days; it feels like only yesterday my parents dropped me off here at the start of fresher’s week. So, where to begin?

Well going back to last weekend, I visited my old home back in Malvern for 2 nights. While I was there, I got to see two of my friends still in Malvern, Austin and Natasha. I really enjoyed having them round since it had been so long since I last saw them! We chatted about many different things and, naturally, the conversation drifted onto sex as it always seems to do with ANY of my friends. It’s just so weird! The morning before getting the 4 hour train back, we went to the new sports centre at the Malvern College private school my mum works at and went for a swim. Didn’t stay for long though, as the pool heater was broken and we were gradually turning into blocks of ice. Somehow (and I’m really not sure how), I managed to drag my PS3 and my TV plus many other things back on the train with me including on a very packed underground train and still live to tell the tale. It was definitely worth it though; we all love the PS3 and it works online too!

Nothing much except the usual stresses of uni work happened during the week so I’ll skip straight to Thursday/Friday. It was Laura’s 19th birthday on Friday and since Lewis was heading off to Amsterdam for a long weekend, we gave out presents and cards on Thursday evening. After that, we all went to partake in a pub quiz which I think we did well in…ok we came last. After that, I met up with another friend, Rachael Corner and we headed out to the Odeon in Kingston to watch the 1 minute past midnight showing of New Moon! The cinema was literally packed to the brim. You could barely move and buying popcorn or tickets was out of the question. Luckily, we’d been smart and bought ours much earlier. It was being shown simultaneously on 3 different screens and all of them were packed full. Crazy! I’d like to point out though, that I wasn’t the only male there by any means!! The film was absolutely amazing and Robert Pattinson sans shirt…well you’ll have to watch it yourself! ;)

As for Friday, I woke up fairly late, attended seminars for the day and then went straight to Laura’s flat. Her boyfriend, Alex, had come to visit and had brought Modern Warfare 2 for the PS3 round with him. All of us being avid gamers, we played it on multiplayer for a few hours. Later in the day, Ellie and I decided that Laura absolutely had to be taken out somewhere, so we decided on going to the cinema and paying for her ticket. Before that, however, we snuck out together to Asda to buy Laura a birthday cake. We had to light the candles in the kitchen away from the heat sensor for obvious reasons. We hope Laura had a nice birthday indeed!