The return of Scrabulous

It's Friday! This time last week I was recovering from my knee surgery. Now I'm sitting at my desk with my right knee bent across my left foot, cool :) Hopefully it'll keep on healing smoothly. I can get the dressings taken off tomorrow, and the stitches should be dissolving soon too!

I finished my stats paper, yeah! It wasn't so hard, I'm pretty confident about the paper, it should be cool. Also just got my reading list for qualitative methods, and that looks really interesting, particularly the stuff on ethnographies. Ever since I read that ethnographic study of American gangs, I'm well up for a bit of ethnography myself.

I'm still reading Twilight, it's got loads more interesting, and now I really want to see the film. It could mostly do without all the description of the looks and glances and lots of the feelings stuff too, just cos it's very repetitive, but I like the drama now, so let's hope it stays interesting.

Am also very pleased about the return of Scrabulous to Facebook - now called Lexulous! I do love my online scrabble, and since I have to take my old laptop back up to college, I don't think I'll be able to be distracted too much, just cos I'm not sure my laptop can keep up!

I'm back in Oxford on Sunday, which is cool, I want to get back into the swing of things there, although being at home has been brilliant, such comfort! X and I have a house-viewing on Sunday afternoon, which is exciting, my first ever one! It's all getting a bit serious now, what with the nesting and all, but I'm happy about it, although I guess sooner or later I'm going to have to come clean to the family. Hmm, I'm sure the right time will come round eventually i.e. when I stop being a wimp.

So happy weekends to everyone and hope January has been treating you well so far!

Quick Round-Up + Rambles

I have just marked two sets of class books. Phew. So hard-core has my marking been that I actually have those finger dents, which I don't remember having since finals. Phew again.

I still have my Y12 essays to mark, plus that long-forgotten risk assessment for the Cambridge trip to complete. Boo. I don't want to work any more tonight, I'm tired. I've already had a 20 minute disco nap, and that was actually super-useful since my marking was twice as fast afterwards, but I fear that if I put my head down now, that'll be it.

So what's been going on? Busy weekend, went to a housewarming, a 21st and spent 7 hours in the pub yesterday. Did my lesson planning on Saturday morning, a real impact session, I felt I owed it to the work. Plus I had a smile on my face. The housewarming was lovely, loads of booze, but managed to keep it reasonable. The house was in Kennington, but it was on a square and really nicely laid out, so I was jealous. The 21st was a family thing, and miles away, and I was totally falling asleep by 11pm. Crashed out in bed by half one, but somehow woke up at half eight on Sunday morning so hit the gym, yay! Made it ok to feast in the pub later. No comment regarding the Spurs defeat. Or the rubbish regarding buying Woodgate - what an error, they might as well just as buy me, except I would be better.

What else is new? Today taught some good lessons, I love my Y12s, they make me laugh so much. Y10 were good lesson 1, and so were my lower-ability 7s. Am worried about my top set Y8, I think I'm being too casual with them, and as a result we're not doing as much work as we need to. We had an assembly on the Holocaust - kids in my tutor group were talking and laughing through it so I shouted at them and kept them back afterwards. I can't remember being so disrespectful over something so important, particularly since if you consider the kids, well, if the Nazis had had their way around the world, only about three of my tutor group would still be around. And I wouldn't be. I guess they just need to mature.

After school we had a meeting with "K" and "S" and their English teacher and the 2nd in charge of English. The girls have been kicked out of English after some really dramatic conflict between the teacher and the kids. It's a nightmare, but today we seem to have made some progress on the reconciliation front. The girls were mature and gave some good ideas, and I think the English teacher is trying to give them a second chance too. I hope it works out - these are bright girls, they have a lot of potential, but I'm worried they're getting in too much trouble. They already have over 50 incident reports between them.

That said, crazy H had already picked up 50 plus two temporary exclusions before Christmas. He is going to be permanently excluded, he just can't behave. Today he lost the plot - 3 incident reports out of 5 lessons, plus he lost his red report, plus he was messing about in assembly. Sometimes he's just like that. It's such a shame, what's he going to do?

In other news, my horoscope:

You’re probably still reeling from the amazing offers of January’s last half, which were so good that you’re carefully evaluating them before committing. While they’re undoubtedly just that good, with your ruler, Mercury, retrograde from Monday until February 19, problems are bound to surface. Actually, the minor errors this cycle triggers should be helpful — you’ll want to slow the pace and will have numerous questions you want answered. These aren’t urgent, however, while situations involving those closest are. Make lending them support your priority and your kindness will be returned many times over.

I don't like the way it has "errors" in it. Also I lost a Scrabble game to X this weekend. Devastating. I genuinely thought I'd never lose. Humph. On the plus side, I've learned a new word - panpharmacon - a medicine for all ills. In seven letters, panacea.

Weekend update

Friday night - reunion with the girls from school at Puja's place. Fruli, yum yum, Curacao, yum yum, cherry brandy, yum yum, Black label, oh dear. A night of fun and poker, won the first round (whoop whoop) then battled HW till almost 5 in the morning, ultimately losing. Four hours of sleep wasn't good, but the night was worth it.

Sat night - having slept through the day once I got home, went to a wedding reception. Nice and fancy schmancy. Crucially, the news broke that my cousin Dhushi has got engaged to her Muslim boyfriend. Only slightly controversial in the traditional sense - more alarming that now there is only one female cousin before it is officially my turn to tie the knot. Crumbs.

Sunday - went to the gym. Got screwed over by new parking restrictions and so landed myself a ticket. My "unnecessary costs of driving" now exceed £1000 i.e. a whole grand, a whole month's salary essentially wasted due to my poor driving. Don't even get me started on car insurance aka tax on the honest driver.

Aaaaanyway....had a nice piano lesson, then went to play Scrabble with Mouche, CK and Gid. Mouche is alive and well, and we bonded, very nice. Gid won the Scrabble, but that was ok as he had no sleep last night and is busy seeing two different boys on the trot. CK was all good, but then he got a phone call with some bad news about his grandfather. Am still a little shocked on his behalf, but hope he's ok. Had four pints of Guinness and haven't planned any lessons...the cumulative hangover is growing.

Busy day tomorrow, but, crucially, am seeing the doctor to think of ways to fix my head. Sure you'll love to hear the suggestions, so stay tuned.

Shout out to Yeen, by the way, looong blog no see. Nice to have you back.

Scrabble + Trash Palace

The sun was absent this afternoon so CK and I relocated to The Court near UCL for our scrabbling. Mouche joined us for a bit of a threesome and entertained us all with her fake word of the evening laming - supposedly the present participle of the verb to lame. In theory it sounds like a word, and MT has said that it is, as has dictionary.com, but I can't think of any occassion on which it could be used. Controversial. Also got thoroughly confused when trying to spell that word that means the coloured bit around nipples (areola - but I spelt it aeriole), which, along with CK's imam (turns out this IS a word for Muslim priests, rather than iman as I thought it was) ultimately cost me the game. Sigh. A very colourful board nonetheless including such beauties as: foodie, coy, fart, virile, bricked, mews, vertex, quo, fez and keystone.

After the game and a guzzled 3 pints (my beer baby is growing) we trotted along to Trash Palace (another gay bar I can add to my list courtesy of CK & co.) to see Gid and Josh. Josh told us the sad news that Noor has broken her arm snowboarding, oh dear. Gid is still amazing, even after partying hard for two weeks in New York. I decided that he is very personable, in an Ish kinda way, and that it could be cool if they met, I'm sure they'd get on. Although I'm not sure what she'd say about his gay jokes:

What did the lesbian do on her second date? Hire a U-Haul truck.
What did the gay man do on his second date? Second date, what second date?

I now feel vaguely hungover, which is a bad sign for the work I "intend" to do tomorrow. But a good evening indeed.