Wednesday...

Wednesday afternoon. So we are officially half way to the weekend. WOooooooOOOO!

This morning I went to the fruit & veg market at Gloucester Green and bought loads of veg. Like this:


I also went to Sainsbury's and bought lots of food. I am feeling like a good hunter-gatherer provider for the nest.

Having X get up at half seven each day for work has been good for my discipline. However, not having X around to make me work has meant that today I have become a bit distracted. I really should be writing my stratification essay (on occupational sex segregation, so something I care about and figure I can actually write about) but I am planning a nap first.

We're going to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tonight, which seems like it could be very interesting. Am pleased as we have bought a cheapy Orange PAYG sim so that we can get the Orange Wednesdays vouchers, a total bargain, two tickets for the price of one means twice as much cinema for us.

Yesterday I managed to get all my reading done, was very efficient, so I got to hang out with X in the evening. We played Scrabble. I won, it was close towards the end, but not close enough.

In our qualitative methods class this morning we were given our course assignments. Our project is to do with cultural consumption and whether it is stratified by class. We have to go to different music venues and interview someone from the audience about their music consumption. It's really cool, as well as the interview (using a schedule designed by us and digital sound recorders), we do an ethnographic style write up of the observations we make, and also make a transcription of our interview. Then we get to see everyone else's interviews and make a codebook for them (a way to kinda generalise the findings into a table with variables and evidence). Finally we use what we've learned to write our own qualitative research proposal, which will be cool as I'm well into all this interviewing and ethnography stuff.

Last thing. X and I were discussing baby names, and we added Winston to the list. It's funny though because when I was talking about this name with some people from my group today, the Americans said it sounded really posh and aristocratic, while the Brits said it sounded more Jamaican/Afro-Caribbean - real opposites! I like the name anyway, and everyone said that they thought it would be a good name for an entertainer, and that he would certainly be a character with a name like that, so I'm keeping it on the list!

Ok I'm off for a nap, just a quick recording of some stuff from today!

Cold and Itchy

I choose this picture because I am currently cold. And itchy. This basket of knitted stuff doesn't look too itchy, but I have memories of itchy woollen things. I understand the cold - something is wrong with the heating I think (luckily my room is warm, yay!) but I don't understand the itchy. It's pretty bad actually, I have all those weird marks on my face that appear when I scratch. I look like I've been in battle with a mad cat. A battle I lost. If I am still itching after my afternoon of work, I will start to research this disease I read about in The Metro, the font of all knowledge.

What else? Well I have been wishing that apple jam and pear jam existed in the UK. And more banana yogurts, yum yum. I also wish that people who make yogurt pots would get rid of all the unnecessary corners and edges that just serve to trap yogurt. I think the best pot design so far is the Muller one, minimum space to waste yogurt in, plus what a generous helping!

In other news, I had lots of crazy nightmares last night, some loosely connected to a programme about the really really awful and scary genocide in Congo and Rwanda, some do to with "all my crops failing" (hmmm, what crops?!) and the last one to do with a Disney trip to a theme park where we all went on a rollercoaster (a real one, not a psycho-babble one) and drank a bottle of some mystery clear alcohol as we went round. When we got off everyone said they hated it, but I loved it, and actually thought it was a bit tame and we could do better, but everyone else wanted to go home.

We have a party to go to tonight, how exciting, but first I must finish my "editing and improving". If you are still looking for things to read, check out SB's blog, some good stuff on there.

PS I have changed my posting identity, mainly to do with paranoia that I will be identified on here. Explanations on my new identity at some point.

The Weekend in Food

I have spent the weekend with people who are not my friends. It has been awesome!

Let me qualify that...by "not my friends" I mean people who haven't quite gotten deep down into my strange little world. As such, banter prevails, and thus I am free to invent myself as I wish. I love talking about inconsequential things like war strategies, Scrubs season 6, and the pros and cons of rose wine. I guess when you get close to people these discussions take a new turn.

Since I have been injured with THE KNEE that stops me running and doing other fun exercises, I have got myself a new hobby. Eating.

So the weekend in food:

BBQ on Sat at G's birthday gathering, including chicken kebabs, grilled haloumi, and chocolate creme fraiche with summer berries. Then, laaaater on Sat, pizza and salad. And in the early hours, chips and chicken and pigeon kebab that my brother had got out of the local chippy after chattering in arabic with the owners. Classy.

Lunch on Sun with the lovely A and co. Moroccan chicken with spicy couscous and green leaf salad, followed by apple crumble and cream and custard. Lots of wine too. Laaaater on Sun, BBQ AGAIN at a family friend's birthday thing. Yum yum including banoffee pie, brie stuffed potato skins, spicy jerk chicken, and home made apple chutney.

I am stuffed, and also a bit hammered. Oh dear, it's not a good time for bikini-wearing!

PS Before you get excited, no, I'm not typing this in a bikini...I'm in my pyjamas!

Friday night ramblings

Have just eaten a plain roti with potato curry so can't sleep yet so will ramble instead...

Went to a lovely Lebanese in Queensway with some TFers. Excellent shisha. Despite looking forward to the whole smoking ban, will be sad to see these institutions go. Chances are they will find their way around it though...fingers crossed anyway.


New '07 TFers have their London week next week. Bless them, can't believe it's been a year since we did our London week already! First taste of school life for the new kids on the block. Excellent, fresh meat for our little angels to torment. Fingers crossed they'll be nice; have every faith in them.

Last day at Mulberry. Very nice stuff. Finally saw some naughty kids, and also some very low-ability ones, but even the bottom set Y7 were working on isometric drawings with some managing to churn out level 6 stuff, so not all bad there. Taught them a maths game - call out a number, if it's in the two times table clap your hands, if it's in the three times table hum etc. They seemed to enjoy it, funny funny stuff indeed.

And lastly, apparently the football girls were awfully behaved this week and so have been pulled out of the London Youth games by the other coach and the PE department. This does sadden me - why couldn't they hold it together? It's a shame, the Youth games is amazing, they've missed a good opportunity there. On the plus side, this means I can go to Tania's 18th tomorrow night, and also have Sunday free to PORTFOLIO, fun times! Need to get through the skills masterclass ("defining my leadership journey"...*mini-cringe*) at Freshfields tomorrow morning first.

Oh Canada!

I am in Canada, woo hoo! I haven't met this person yet, but I hope to.


Flight was delayed and so spent 10 hours on the plane and a further hour in Customs & Immigration. However, lots of lovely Canadian people on the flight made up for this.

Crucially, since I have been here, I have eaten enough for food a week. Of special note are the four puddings we each polished off at the wedding yesterday (by we, I mean my cousins and I - and yes, it was a lovely wedding) and also the two buckets of KFC we ate last night after an epic game of charades. The charades was especially fun since the youngest player was 5 and thinks that whatever you are acting, the answer MUST be the Lion King. Added dynamic of boys vs. girls brought out a bitter rivalry but we made our peace after chicken.

Also met my littlest cousin who is almost 2; the last time I saw her she was just two weeks old, bless! She waddles around and squawks a lot - there is definitely a duck connection on there somewhere. Alarmingly, I am 22 years older than her. This means that when she is finally old enough to enjoy a beverage with me, I will be 40. Eeek!

First Day Back...

...was alright. Pretty good in fact. The kids said they'd missed me and that the cover teachers "were rubbish" :) Felt guilty for not marking most of their cover work, but there's aaaaacres of it. With Y11 some things that made me laugh:

Me: Pick a number between 1 and 5.
N: 10.
Rest of class: Derrrrrr, between 1 and 5 you thicko, etc....
Me: Everyone makes mistakes.

Later in the same lesson:
Me: So then we multiply 0 by 5, which gives us 5.
Class: No it doesn't, derrrrrrr, it's 0. It's always 0.
Me: Aaah yes, that was a deliberate trick question.
Class: Teachers always say that when they mess up.

Despite minimum planning, lessons went really rather well. Have been inspired to make my lessons more creative, hence tonight have done lots of planning. Looking forward to Friday with Y7 where I'm teaching "multiplication from around the world" (with crazy techniques from China, Russia, Egypt and the Western world). Also made pretty ActivStudio flipcharts. Am slowly becoming addicted to ActivStudio, very baaaad. There's always more you can do to your flipcharts (kinda like powerpoint presentations, but on software that works with Prometheon whiteboards), but I have decided to cut myself off for the night. Besides, there's only so many pretty animations and sounds you can throw in to keep the kids on task; it's like anything else in economics - every additional unit has marginally less impact.

What else? Contemplated setting up an Ultimate Frisbee club at school in the summer term. Made dinner (an exceptional circumstance for me since my folks tend to coooooooook away meaning I don't have to!) - a random concoction of bacon and leeks in a cheesy roux with spaghetti. Yummy. Feel like hair is unbearably greasy, although am sure it's really not. Still love my "new" room, and dancing around to Nathan. Spoke to Berts about Venice, sounds very promising, am looking forward to it mightily.

Just figured out why my wrists hurt when I played the piano earlier - think I've given myself RSI. Time to stop. Mmmm bed.