Masterpiece

Tut! It's been a week again. Bad blogger!

It's been a heavy week, because I've been working my butt off to get my last assignment done in between shifts at work.

But behold! 'Tis complete!! (Although technically I also have to finish off the 750 word rationale that is supposed to accompany it, but shhhh.)



It took ages to get it to look right and stupid Publisher was annoying me because it refused to print without white borders (why? WHY?? Probably now someone will comment telling me exactly how I could have overcome that particular difficulty).



But actually, Publisher was nothing - N.O.T.H.I.N.G - compared to the problems I had at the copy shop! For one thing I was charged an unbeliveable amount of money which, despite me having shown them my student card, I don't believe for one second they actually gave me the discount, but just tried to get as much money out of me as possible.



Not only that, but because the Publisher issue meant I had trimmed the edges and therefore the double pages were slightly less than A3, the kid who served me copied them so that the pages didn't actually align on each side. When I went back he reckoned he was going to charge me again, but I nearly broke down in hysterical tears and the new copies came free of charge after all. Of course, this was after I showed him how, if you line the fold in the centre of the page up to the halfway mark both times, then both sides will be aligned. How clever! What genius! How ironic that I apparently know more about photocopying than someone who actually works in a photocopying shop, who told me that the only way to line it up was to scan it into a computer and print it out at £10 A SIDE! and that if he didn't push the paper right into the corner of the photocopier it wouldn't copy. SURPRISE! It did. Clearly I am a photocopying genius and should give up my teaching career to join the lofty heights of copying. Judging by what they charged me, I probably would actually make more money!

Stick Stuff On Your Head Day 2007

Well, according to Mr Cactus over there, it's Stick Stuff On Your Head Day 2007. And who am I to argue with the logic of a prickly pear? It's true, we all need to take a step back and not take life so seriously from time to time. So, without further ado:







PS: My photos from the weekend are now up at Flickr!

And so it begins...

Yes, the packing has begun. I have spent most of the day doing it and what do I have to show for that? Six boxes. Which doesn't seem like very much in the grand scheme of things. Particularly as I look round my flat and realise just HOW MUCH STUFF I HAVE! WHAT IS WITH ALL THE STUFF? SURELY I CAN'T POSSIBLY NEED IT ALL? AND HOW WILL I EVER PACK IT?

Okay, enough with The Crazy and on with the grind. Overall, I am pleased that I have had a productive day as we all know what I'm like with the procrastination and the staying in bed til noon on my days off. Well, I'll have you know I was up before nine today. Before! Nine! On my day off! Well, I was impressed with myself.

I went into town, got some stuff done and bought some more bin bags because I just know I will need plenty this week as I am bound to find loads of stuff that can and should be thrown out. And I packed six boxes. Of course they are six boxes I can barely lift myself, but that's why you should always employ the talents of some fairly strong boys come moving day. I will be liberally inviting all and sundry from the church student and 20s contact list to come and help at my "moving party".

(See what I did there? Clever huh? Call it a party and they'll come running!)

Delurk or Nunzilla will get you!!!

Today is the start of De-Lurking Week. For those of you who don't know, lurking is when you read someone's blog but don't comment....yeah, I'm looking at you!


I figured since I'm asking you all to comment, I should try and produce something comment-worthy, and so I present you with a random collection of pictures, videos and anecdotes that, at the very least, will make you think (in the style of Chandler Bing), "Could this BE any more random?"

Here is a video of the Christmas present I bought for Ali. Presenting.....NUNZILLA!



And here is a little sample of what Ali bought me for Christmas. As you can see I have already put them to good use!



Yes, she bought me bath crayons! They are cool! And I am SO not artistic hehe.

Last night I played Articulate with Ali and some other friends. If you've never played it before it is VERY funny. It involves describing a word on a card to your team. Some classic lines were uttered such as:
"You rob a....?"
"Thames!"

"Swiss people wear them on their feet."
"Clogs!"
"YES!" (NB, Dutch people wear clogs.)

and
"Women have it."
"B.O.!"



Ali and I also spent part of the evening playing with our friend Colette's neice, Deanna, who decided that she was Pegasus, I was Hercules and Ali was Meg. That was, erm, fun. Also she found 10p in her tights. Yes, I am the queen of the completely surreal evening.

Tonight I went out with Ali again and we saw It's a Boy/Girl Thing which really is as dire as it looks. The highlight, however, was Ali singing along to I Think We're Alone Now (how could Girls Aloud cover such a classic song?) and absolutely belting it out at the moment the volume of the music on the film dropped to allow for dialogue. Fortunately for Ali there were only about 7 other people in the cinema. But they all heard. And laughed. We were the oldest people in there by about 8 years too! The shame!

Also, look:

I finished my Education Studies assignment. One. Day. Early! Woohoo!

The obvious incident of the student procrastinating

Well, as you may be able to tell from my slightly altered banner or my Flickr account, I haven't exactly been doing a lot of writing on autism today. I haven't exactly done a lot of reading on autism today either. But I have had lots of fun with Photoshop Elements and made some pwetty, pwetty pictures:





But I did reread The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time just before Christmas. Which surely counts as research as it is written from the point of view of a boy with Asperger's, which is on the autistic spectrum, for those of you who might not know. And I just finished A Spot of Bother, by the same author, which isn't about autism at all but is a very good book nonetheless and I would recommend you all read it.

So, yeah, the books from the library sit in their neat pile just by my living room door and the computer calls to me with its inticingly glowy screen and promises of blogs to read and photos to edit and even MySpace messages to respond to. See, there is just so much to do that I couldn't possibly think of sitting down and trudging through those wordy books to pull out enough information to then condense into an interesting yet succinct leaflet.

Oh well, I suppose there's always tomorrow...

Mullet: revealed!

I finally managed to get a picture of the kid with the mullet today! Yay! I will post more later about the last day but for now I leave you with "Conrad".

Random update

I figured I should do a bit of a random update, especially as I just discovered a couple of pictures on my phone that I totally forgot I took (see previous post - brain definitely on hiatus) and I had to share them with you.

On Saturday I went out for a meal with my family for my Grandad's 80th birthday. It was a pretty posh restaurant and the food was REALLY good. But my brother's bread and butter pudding came with a load of orange rind - I guess as decoration, although who knows, maybe you were supposed to eat it. Anyway, my brother piled all of his peel on top of the peel on my cousin's plate, creating a small mountain of the stuff. After some discussion of the message this would send the chef when the plates were removed, my brother decided to remove all ambiguity from said message:

Needless to say, the wine had been somewhat flowing. Just another shining example of the weird and random exploits of my family.

Anyway, there are a couple of other pictures from the weekend that can be viewed on my Flickr

I also had a funny evening Monday night, when I went to see The Holiday with Ali. The film was pretty good, although it was quite long and man, I didn't get home til after midnight! But we had a fun evening as always. Much hilarity.

We went into a bar before the film started and moaned like the old people we clearly are about the volume of the music television in there. But who can blame us in the face of such musical genius as Jibbs' Chain Hang Low. I mean someone has written a song to the tune of "Do your ears hang low?" (let's keep it clean here people), only incorporated the amazing lyrics:

Do your chain hang low

Do it wobble to da flo

Do it shine in the light

Is it platinum is it gold

Could you throw it over ya shoulder

If ya hot it make ya cold

Simply inspiring!

Unfortunately the sound quality on this video sucks, but the skinny white boys made me laugh!

Tagged

Beka tagged me for this. You have to take a photo of yourself as you are right this second, no chance to straighten your hair or do your makeup....this will teach me to read blogs the second I get out of the bath. Haha. Voila!

Me looking rough!

I now tag Fiona, Nat and Kristen.

I don't know where my brain is either, Emmett

This morning Johnny came in late. He sat down during the register and the teacher said, "Don't you have something to say to me, Johnny?"

"Packed lunch, please Miss L," Johnny replied.

The teacher looked at him with raised eyebrows.

"Sorry I'm late," I hiss at him.

"Oh. Sorry I'm late, Miss L," said Johnny.

"Don't think your brain's quite in gear yet this morning, is it Johnny?" Asked the teacher.

Johnny looked sheepish.

Emmett piped up. "My brain's gone somewhere."

It's not been a bad day. While the kids rehearsed their Christmas play, I finished off my display on 'What's in the news'.

I was very proud. The gaps at the top are annoying me, so I'm going to put in photos of the kids doing the treasure hunt I'm planning for them on Wednesday.

The kids had a literacy assessment to do today, which involved writing a letter to Jamie Oliver about how great his healthy school dinners are. Some kids really threw themselves into it and got the rough draft and the final copy done quite quickly. Others....not so much.

Emmett only had about two lines written while most kids were finishing off their rough drafts. I went over to try and encourage him to write more. He wasn't having it. He told me he had a headache. I told him to get a drink of water and then try again. Then he told me he couldn't write any more because the pencil was making his thumb thinner!!

In the end we sent him over to the round table to sit with the classroom assistant while he worked. He had still hardly written anything by the end of the day and Miss L shouted at him. About 5 minutes later I wandered back over and he'd written quite a bit. However, this is what it said:

"I don't like healthy food. I hate it. It's not nice. It's stupid. I don't want vegetables. I hate fruit. It stinks. I don't want healthy food."

The classroom assistant said, "Emmett, were you actually listening during the talk on the carpet?"

He scowled. "He knows exactly what he's supposed to write," I said. "He's just written this because he's having a strop."

He's not booked in on the cinema trip tomorrow to see Flushed Away so he'll have to do it then. Poor kid - double whammy!

I'm off out tonight to see my friend Ali. Yay! Maybe I will come back with another photo of a bowl of rejected olives.....who knows!

Something fishy going on....

So, today I met up with a friend of mine and we went for lunch at Bluewater. It was lovely, and my friend got a staff discount in La Tasca because she works in the one up at Canary Wharf. Woo!

We wandered around the shops afterwards and as we were walking around the upper level I looked over the balcony and saw a stand advertising Seven Seas Cod Liver Oil. They had a gigantic inflatable fish!

I had to go for a closer look. There was a bloke in a fish suit! My friend didn't want to be associated with a person taking photos of a guy in a fish suit - I'm not sure why, I thought it was hilarious! - so stood a little distance away while I snapped a couple of shots.

Man in a fish suit

Huge inflatable fish

We had fun. We went and tried on some dresses as I'm her bridesmaid and she wanted to get some ideas for her dress and mine. Found some gorgeous dresses. I saw one I so want for a black tie dinner I have coming up soon. But it's £145 and I really can't justify it, but it's sooooooooooo nice. *sigh*

Oh well, I better get to bed. Just wanted to share with you the crazy things you can see in an English shopping centre. Haha.

Productivity down 50%, Amusement up 200%

Well, it has been a long couple of days. I haven't stopped and yet I really haven't got very much of anything done (story of my life!).

I met up with my friend J in London yesterday and we had breakfast in Cafe Rouge before heading across the river to the Tate Modern. It is often said that as a nation, we Brits like to queue. OMG, the queues! The slides on the lower floors had massively long queues to get on them (mostly children, flippin' half term holidays grrrrrrrrr) and the slides on the upper floors required a ticket, which was free, but there were none left. Wah! So we didn't get to go sliding after all. Which was so annoying because the slides looked so cool!


We went to the bookshop there because I wanted to see if I could find useful stuff for school, which I didn't. Again, totally unproductive. But there were these totally cute lego-type figures of artists with their artwork. They were available to buy for the bargain price of £325! But they were cute. Here is Dali with his lobster phone:

So we then decided to go to the Saatchi gallery. We considered getting a boat down the river, but ultimately decided a stroll down the South Bank would be quite pleasant, so we walked down to County Hall. Before we got there we decided we were quite hungry, so crossed the Hungerford bridge and ended up walking right up to Covent Garden and had lunch in Walkabout.

After this we walked back across the river and up to County Hall. Only the Saatchi isn't there any more! I can't believe we didn't know this. Again, totally unproductive. So we walked BACK across the river and headed up to Leicester Square. I did however manage to take some pretty cool pictures from the many bridges that we crossed.

These are the best I think, but I may well upload the rest to Flickr at some point in the near future.

Anyway, we went to Leicester Square and possibly the best place in the whole of London - the Haagen Dazs Cafe!

And we saw the pancakes and everything was good. Then we ate the pancakes. Oh, man was that good?! Then we walked back up to Covent Garden to meet another friend of ours.

I'd hoped to have had my car back and to go to the cinema with Ali last night, but my car was still at the garage, not being worked on but just sitting there whilst my mum and step dad tried to contact another mechanic they know of. So I was carless and figured I may as well stay in London.

The three of us went back to Walkabout and had some wine. Then we went to Victoria to meet some other friends - friends I hadn't seen in about 2 years. So it was proper reunion-styley! The wine did flow and J came back to stay at mine, being slightly the worse for wear.

This morning I had to go and pick up my car and book it back in for next Thursday. I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do for transport whilst it's in the garage. Ugh, so much to think about!

So then I dropped J at the station and then drove to another friend's house so we could go shopping. I spent the day with her and got home at like half ten this evening! Madness I tell you! But fun madness.

I leave you with a picture of me on Waterloo bridge. The wind is blowing my hair and has crafted it into a suspiciously mullet-like shape. I nearly wet myself laughing when I saw this picture. But as you can see from the picture below, I in no way shape or form have a mullet. Okay!

Portrait of the artist as Dorothy

Today has been a looooooong day. And I have been badly organised with my time and have just come home about half an hour ago and had to pack a bag because I'm going down to my mum's new house tomorrow straight from uni.

So I won't be around for a couple of days. I'll miss you guys!

Today was good, we had art and music. Both were fun. We had to take a photo of ourselves to art and as soon as our tutor started talking about self portraits I died a little inside, because, as you all witnessed yesterday, I am rubbish at drawing.

BUT, we weren't drawing, we were painting. And we had Van Gogh for inspiration and then had a variety of different paints to create different textures, eg. mixing with sand or sawdust or wallpaper paste and only the primary colours. It was brilliant and I was really pleased with the result, check it out!



So, I'm gonna be off for a couple of days now, but I'll see you all soon, hopefully with something interesting to say. Haha.

Maybe crusts do make your hair go curly

You know, when I was a baby, my hair had a subtle wave to it. It was never curly, but it might have been described as wavy. By the time I was three it was more or less straight. From 5 onwards it was dead straight. Poker straight. See exhibits 1 - 3:

Exhibit 1: Top infants school photo

Exhibit 2: Me playing twister aged 8

Exhibit 3: Me at New Year's aged 22

I was always a fussy child and refused to eat the crusts off my sandwiches, despite my mum telling me "They're the best bit!" No kid believes an adult when they tell them that. My friend used to tell me they make your hair go curly. I think that was supposed to encourage me to eat them, but it put me off even more. I didn't really believe it, but I thought well if it was true it gave me even more reason not to eat them, because I liked my straight hair thankyouverymuch!

The weird thing is that about a year or so ago, I noticed that my hair, which I usually tended to let air dry, wasn't exactly dead straight any more. Okay, so I'd usually tie it back when it was wet, but not always. I bought a hair dryer, but I just couldn't get it to really dry straight straight. In the end I bought hair straighteners, which I love and couldn't live without and for the most part I wash my hair, blow dry it and straighten it all at the same time (not literally at the same time, obviously, but one after the other when I wake up in the morning).

But from time to time I've let it just air dry after washing it and OMG. It is really quite curly now. How did that happen?

Exhibit 4: Me half an hour ago