I'll admit that working is tough, and that working a really crappy job is worse. I have my off days but I'd like to think that for the most part, I give my best at work. I'm not paid much, but it's an income, and I owe my job to work for what they pay me and do the best I can.

*goody two shoes intro over*

There are a couple of people I work with that really do my nut, and I have trouble not yelling at them for just about everything. Here are some choice quotes from conversations I had this evening with people who in my opinion, really should get the sack so that someone else who needs a job can actually do it. TD stands for Tweedle-Dee, which is my pet name for the person in question.

TD: I've finally got black shoes for work.
Me: (Has had the correct black shoes since I started) They're not closed at the front.
TD: I know.
Me: You need closed shoes so that you don't injure yourself when you drop hot stuff on your feet.
TD: Yeah, it's just my fault if that happens. We're allowed to wear leggings, and they're not standard.
Me: Only if you like being perved at. (Referring to something a higher up said last week which was "they can wear leggings, it gives people something to look at.")

Me: You're not supposed to have your phone on shift.
TD: I know.
Me: Why have you got it with you then?
TD: I can't live without it.
Me: I just leave mine in my bag when I'm at work.
TD: I don't use it when we're busy, just when we're not, so that I can text people. (Untrue, I could shoot her for using it when she's supposed to be doing other stuff.)

Me: Please can you empty the bins?
TD: I never empty bins, I just leave them for someone else.
Me: Why not? They need doing.
TD: I hate being covered in shit.

I am cleaning cutlery by submerging it in boiling water to soak the crap off.
TD: I just spray it, it's quicker.
Me: Would you use dirty cutlery at home?
TD: It is clean when I do it. And no.
Me: Why would you let customers use dirty cutlery when they're paying for it?
TD: I won't use the cutlery here, it's never clean.
Me: *facepalm*

This is the best one:

Me: We don't have any ice, so you'll need to add ice cream to the milkshakes to thicken them up.
TD: Oh, I can't do that, it's not standard.

Black pot, meet kettle.

The worst thing about these kind of people is they make so much work for everyone else, and yet they couldn't care less. Argh.

It has been a long time since I posted here but NaNo is here again and I'm so chuffed with where my story is going that I just had to share some with you:

( Possibly cliched, possibly stolen, but fun nonetheless )

So I watched the first part of the X Factor tonight/last night. Out of curiosity, I told myself. I haven't watched any of it for years, but I wanted to see the kind of people that come up in the initial auditions. I thought back to my Pop Idol audition (oh yeah, I did a Pop Idol audition) and I wondered if I'd try again now. My problem back then was I was trying to fit in when I should have been trying to stand out. Not a problem I have now.

I'm blogging this now because I've been lying awake for the last two hours thinking. Wondering what I'd sing, what I'd wear, what I'd say when they ask me "what my dream is." And I wish I had a dream right now. All I know for certain is I want more than being an engineer. Being an engineer does not excite me all that much. Truth be told, I've kind of lost my mojo about this getting a job thing - I don't feel qualified to do anything, least of all engineering.

I love singing. I was playing Rock Band 2 at number 29 on Friday, and a guy told me that "I had talent," as if I'd never sung before and he'd suddenly stumbled upon the fact that I'm good at it. Dave said when I mentioned it "we all know you can sing, I guess it would come as a surprise because he's never heard you before." Singing makes me feel actually, properly alive. I love it so much. But because I'm only "good at it" I feel that it's unlikely I'm going to make a career out of it. That makes me sad.

What am I good at though? I've got a degree in engineering, but that doesn't make me good at it. I've written most of a novel, but that doesn't make me good at it. I might get better if I did more of either of these things, but sitting on my arse at 5am wondering why I'm not any better isn't exactly the most positive step in this direction.

In case you were wondering, I think I'd sing something by Katy Perry or Gwen Stefani. Because both of them are really unique artists and they sing pretty challenging songs within my range that I'd be able to show off with.

I don't even remember the last time I posted here - I only seem to do so when I'm out of the country and I'm going stir crazy on my own....

Life isn't very interesting to write about at the moment, although for the most part I'm fairly content. Having graduated I've been flung into the big wide world of work, where I can't find a job. So I've been sitting at home doing not a great deal when not applying for stuff. Peter hasn't recently got me back into Guild Wars, which is brilliant for eating time - I spent 8 hours on it yesterday and barely noticed.

Perhaps I shall find you a picture of Dreya Krekken, and then you'll all finally know where I pinched my LJ name from. :p

I've just watched Disturbing Behavior for the umteenth time (it being one of my favourite films) and I spotted at least three of the actors from the TV series Roswell in it. Things like this are rarely coincidence, so I looked up the film and it was directed by David Nutter - who directed the first three episodes of Roswell. (The time gap between the two being less than a year, and Roswell was the next thing David Nutter did after Disturbing Behavior.)

Roswell was created and produced by a guy called Jason Katims, who has nothing to do with Disturbing Behavior. I'm wondering now - would a director, who only directed three episodes, have been involved with the original casting of the show, hence the overlap in actors? Or is that just a coincidence?

My heavily modified PC is just over the minimum spec required for the Sims 3, not under it as I had previously assumed.

Will I ever get any work done, ever again?

I think not.

I've heard it said that wedding planning is one of the most stressful things you can do. I laughed at this, because friends of mine have got married with seemingly no stress at all. I decided I wanted to be a chilled out bride, and not stress. Fat chance of that, I think now. Wedding planning is quite hard - the main problem is that you can't keep everyone happy. Something, somewhere is going to tick someone off, and that's before you even get as far as the day itself.

The current issue is the wedding reception. Having worked out how much work it would be to do everything ourselves (finding catering, setting up tables, staffing the kitchen, cleaning up afterwards, to name a few things), we decided "no thanks" and have been looking into all-inclusive receptions where everything gets done for you and you just turn up and make the tables look nice. We found somewhere we liked, we discovered it wasn't free and tried to shift the date by a day. My dad went ballistic.

However, he then went pro-active and decided to go looking for things himself. At first I thought I would just humour him, but we're now looking at hiring the Assembly Rooms.

The fricking ASSEMBLY ROOMS.

I'm bowled over by this turn of events - we looked briefly at the Guild Hall before deciding that any of Bath's Heritage Buildings would cost a fortune and likely not be free and gave up on the idea, but it looks like it might actually be within our reach. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, because it's more expensive than what we've been looking at, but the Assembly Rooms have been in Jane Austen adaptations; they have chandeliers and high ceilings and are to an extent a definition of Bath as a city. It would be wonderful to have our reception there. Like a fairy tale. I personally don't have a definition of a fairy tale wedding, but that ticks all the boxes of a magazine one...

Wow.

The other thing I've been thinking is that as Jimmy and I met through Sci Fi & Fantasy Society, it'd be really nice to have some kind of ties to Sci Fi in the proceedings somewhere. I don't want to go all out - have the bridesmaids dresses as stormtroopers and the like (thanks for that idea, Bethany) - but a few subtle details would be nice. So I've been looking at sci fi vehicles. A DeLorean was my initial idea, but this has been replaced by something far more awesome.

Whaddya reckon?

Today I am having one of my annual battles against the kipple in my room. I have thrown out 15 years worth of badges and keyring collection, shredded letters that I was sent in my second year at university by the hospital, and pruned the collection of CD Drivers that have sat in a box since I got my computer 5 years ago and have never been required since.

It won't work, because kipple is inevitable, and rather than feeling pleased that my room is looking much tidier, I am feeling more frustrated as I have realised just how much random crap I own. I can't see how to take it all with me when I move out next month, and therefore it needs to go, in my opinion. It is really useful stuff, a lot of it, but just how many ethernet cables should you hang onto before you've got three too many? And surely it'd be easier to just buy one if I need one, rather than hang onto three that I will inevitably forget about?

Argh.

On a related subject, does anyone have a spare room? In a month and a half I'll be homeless and I have no idea where I'm going to live.

So I've been pretty busy of late. After my hand in I was straight back to my parents for the Great Manchester Run, which I just about managed in 1 hour and 10 something or other. Jimmy and I hung around my parents house for the week, planning wedding stuff, helping out in my mum's cafe and spending far too much money in Manchester. My parents joined us in Bath for the weekend where we did... more wedding stuff, and ate out every night. (Bad for my waistline. :S)

This weekend I've been up looking at dresses with my bridesmaids, and had a fantastic time. :) Tried on some veeeery pretty dresses! I went to see Lynyrd Skynyrd last night (of Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird fame) and they were awesome!! Guitars are so cool, particularly when loud and very well played. Yesterday was pretty exhausting but great fun, all the same.

I've just watched Terminator 3 followed by the Fast and the Furious. This is a bit of a shame, as both have sequels out this summer. I've been to the cinema four times since I came home, and seen Star Trek, Hannah Montana, Night at the Museum 2 and Angels & Demons. I have to say I was really impressed with all of them. (Hannah Montana was cheesy but cool!) Seeing Transformers 2 seems a bit likely, given Jimmy's mecha obsession, and my engineer/girl racer/love of action and big explosions now compels me to want to see Terminator 4 and Fast and Furious. I've applied for a job at the Odeon cinema for the summer. I think I need it, if I am to afford all the films that I really want to see over the coming weeks....

So, having handed everything in, I'm vegging out at my parents house. And by vegging out I mean wedding planning, yay! Since we got here, Jimmy and I have written out our guest list and we've just fired off a number of emails to possible reception venues. It's beginning to come together. :)

I'm also playing a lot of Plants V Zombies, which is horrifyingly addictive. :D

Lastly, Eurovision. Is it me, or was it actually good this year? Not entirely the usual cheese fest and the political voting seems pretty well under control for a change. I'm still a bit baffled that Norway walked away with it quite so convincingly - the song was good but I didn't think it was quite so electrifying! I was impressed with our entry though, I think we were particularly strong this year. :)

On Friday I handed my report in electronically. Yesterday morning I printed it out and handed in the paper copy. Yesterday afternoon I designed my poster. Today I have to give a presentation (Which I've nearly finished writing).

Then it will be over.

My brain doens't quite compute that soon I will be a student no longer. I am absolutely overjoyed, but at the same time I don't remember what it's like, not to be a student. (I didn't study much on my gap year.) I think it will take so getting used to.

The report is not finished but I'm still working my way there. It'll all be over on Friday anyhow.

Reverse culture shock is proving interesting - I don't remember if I felt it much when I came back from Munich last year but I'm noticing everything at the moment - that the buildings in Bath have all appeared out of nowhere, that complete strangers don't speak foreign but understand what I say, and that I don't have to say "entschuldigung" when someone bumps into me. Even pounds and pence seem a bit odd, like I can't remember what they are.

Of course, having a hangover from drinking large quanitities of homemade sangria last night is definitely having some effect. I still feel like I could sleep for a week from all the travelling on Monday!

Being back is wonderful though. :) It's so nice seeing all my friends, having people to bring me tea, being able to pick from a wider variety of trousers when I get up in the morning... I'm so pleased the German adventure is more or less over!

(Oh, and after Jimmy arrived, everything was wonderful - I'd booked us into a pension - hotel type thing - which turned out to be our own somewhat luxurious apartment with a kitchen and a sofa and a TV and it was within minutes of the bus station. We got to walk everywhere and chill out in the evening and it was worth paying a whole months rent for four days because it was such a fantastic four days. :) )

Yay for ibuprofen and pro plus - I can almost forget that I went to bed at 1am and still got into uni for 8:20am and then did nearly 12 hours straight work. Today has gone significantly better, I think. I've managed to write lots of stuff. At this point in time I don't really care too much how good it is, as long as it's clear-ish. The university here don't mark the report and the university in England won't understand it, so it seems to me a fairly futile task. It is pretty though, and this makes me happy.

My supervisor completely failed to mention that he wasn't going to be in today. This is annoying, because other people knew about it. Today was the last day I had to ask him questions - tomorrow I'm not going into uni because I have to move house and on Friday he won't be in because its a Bank Holiday. I can't quite believe that he didn't tell me he wasn't going to be there - my degree hangs on this report and he's the one who wants it perfect! Grr. I'm pretty pissed.

I'm now waiting for Jimmy to arrive. He managed to get on a train going in the wrong direction at Amsterdam airport (doesn't sound like it was his fault, to be fair to him) and by the time he'd got back the right way there were no more trains coming to Aachen. He's currently in a taxi with a driver who I think speaks no English - he spoke to me in German on the phone. Jimmy's phone of course doesn't work on the continent (sods law) so he's been calling me from other peoples.

I think that people who live next to the border of foreign countries should get a discounted rate for calling said countries on their phone - calling Holland absolutely eats my credit, and it's only fifteen minutes away. :S

I've given up on word count. My supervisor says trying to write to a word count just adds unnecessary stress and I should just keep writing until the report is finished. It's probably just as well I'm going to stop counting because I have to delete a large chunk that my supervisor deemed irrelevant. Why he told me this on the third re-write of the damn section I don't know.

Today has been mostly spent in floods of tears trying to work through all the red comments written on the first section of my report. Apparently I can't hand it in the way it is. Unfortunately the fact that the rest of the report is unwritten is not a good excuse to not re-write the first section as well.

I am tired. I couldn't sleep last night and I slept through my alarm this morning, go figure. I took a pro plus so I could work a few more hours and now I think I won't sleep again. I'm getting to that lovely "nicely stressed" phase in which I forget to look which bus I am getting onto as it pulls up to the stop because I can't think straight. At least I'm not ill.

On the plus side, to pick myself up after todays diabolical meeting (in which I finally just lost it and dissolved into tears in front of my supervisor) I bought a pair of shoes. They are not particularly practical, they are nice. They are feel good shoes. With a 3 and a half inch heel. When I've broken them in so they stop rubbing my toes they're going to be awesome.

In other news, I think I may be 5"9, and not 5"8. I want to measure my height now. I like the idea of being 5"9. That's really quite tall for a girl. :)

And Jimmy is coming to save me tomorrow. Woot.

At the end of Day 1 of the week of not panicking, my dissertation word count is up to 5,370. I wrote a wopping 1,370 odd words today, about which I'm really proud. Having decided that 10,000 is probably a bit too much to aim for, I'm going for 9,000. This means I'm over halfway through. So I've stopped panicking for now. As long as things continue to go the way they've started, I should have a report finished before I go home.

The one thing that worries me a bit is what my supervisor is going to say about the report. I don't have an immense amount of time for re-writing if it's not exactly what he wants, and I find his criticism always a bit difficult to swallow - he doesn't exactly sugarcoat it. But I get the impression that what I've written so far isn't diabolical.

Long may it continue.

Well, hopefully not too long. :p

Trying not to panic about my final year project is now becoming a full time job. The number of words that I can write in German appears to be about 250 in four hours. Given that I have got 6000 words of report left to write, it seems an insurmountable task. All I can see in my head when I go to bed are words, words, words, and yet when I sit in front of the computer and try and type them up my brain goes blank and I can't remember even the simplest words. Basically, I don't know how I'm going to get through this last bit.

My word count limit for my dissertation is 10,000 - 12,000 words. The guys over in England have to write 15,000 in English. I already feel like I've got a much bigger task set to me because I have to write in German. The bigger issue however is the structure of the German language - they simply don't use as many words as the Brits. I love that in German you can string words together. As an example, I translated some stuff from my English report the other day about the high temperature strength of the material being improved for use in high temperature applications. High temperature strength translates quite simply to Warmfestigkeit. High temperature applications is even better, that one comes to Hochtemperaturanwendungen. So you see my problem? For 3 words in English I get one in German. I looked at a paragraph I had translated more or less word for word - 73 words in English become just 51 in German. If this happens a lot then I will have written a 15,000 word report if I ever get as far as 10,000 words.

Which seems pretty bloody unfair.

I can't see how I'm going to manage it. Church this morning was full of talk about how God makes the impossible possible and in theory I completely agree but in practise having the faith to believe it is really hard work.

Halp?

Psalm 91

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust.”

Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler
And from the perilous pestilence.
He shall cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you shall take refuge;
His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.
Only with your eyes shall you look,
And see the reward of the wicked.

Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,
The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

“Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him,
And show him My salvation.”

I had a really wonderful Easter. :) I finally got to go home and I stayed for a few days with Jimmy and his parents before he came with me down to my parents for two days. It was bliss to be out of Aachen, to be away from project, to actually chill out with people and remember that I'm not going completely mad... I was gutted I had to come back again. My supervisor asked me this morning if I had a nice Easter and I said "yeah, it was really nice" and burst into tears. I frequently burst into tears when my supervisor talks to me, but not normally in front of him - I can normally hold off until I'm somewhere private! It was quite strange how tears just overcame me this morning - I'm really homesick, which is terrible because I've only been back two days!

Why is the last bit always the hardest? I've got exactly two weeks until I'll be picking Jimmy up at the train station so he can help me get my stuff home and yet every minute feels like an hour.

I'm having quite an internal struggle at the moment because whilst I can't wait for this project to be over so I can go home, I don't feel I have nearly enough time to finish analysing my results and write up my report.

Project is most definitely keeping me busy - neither my supervisor nor I fully understand exactly what's going on with my results and I can't find much information which would explain it. Hmm. I'm hoping one of my lecturers at Bath will have an idea what's going on - there must be a solution somewhere!

Also, I lost my door pass somewhere on the bus this morning, which is an arse because there are normally three locked doors between me and where in my department I need to be and without a pass I have to either knock or wait for someone to come along who is going through the same door as me. It's slowing me down. :S I have no idea if I'll get the damn thing back again either. Grr

In a recent survey, the Student Opinion Panel (of which I am a member) found that in an average week, 45% of students visit facebook every day.

I am one of those students.

Is that sad?








I'm going home for easter this evening. Squee!

I've spent a fair amount of money on things which have been necessary for my degree but never before have I found myself handing out money to buy a font. The university I'm studying at has a really strict format which you have to adhere to which includes a font that my computer won't display properly, because I don't have it. So in order to be able to work at home, I'm dishing out £14 for a font.

Is that odd, or is it just me?