Summer!

It's summer! At least, in my head it is. I am packing up and slowly disentangling myself from academic and work commitments in preparation for freedom! Of course I will be back and forth to Oxford, not least because the house needs to be prepared for Michaelmas (my first building project!) and that alone will mean a month here. But, crucially, it will be for a reason aside from my thesis, yippee! I have redrafted my transfer documents again, and they are with my supervisor, so hopefully only minimal work will need to be done after his comments, and then I can submit them and forget about work for the summer :) Come September, I will get back on the case, but I think it's time now to stop.

It's been a good year.

Summer!

Oh YEAAAAAAH! You know what time it is.....summer holidays!

My gosh, who'd have ever thought we'd make it eh?

This is what it feels like. But maybe even better!

Am off to Canterbury now for the Final Summer Institute, hopefully returning with my QTS on Weds. Wish me luck. And happy lashing!

I'm really happy right now :)

Thursday

I think today was a bit of turning point. I do have some ranting to do, but I guess it's not strictly ranting since I'm not complaining, more simply stating the facts.

Can't remember if I already said, but my brand new birthday present car turned three years old a coupla weeks ago, and so had to be MOT-ed. And, predictably, it failed. The most annoying reason is that there is no alloy wheel locking kit in the car since the sodding thieves nicked that as well. This means that all the wheel nuts have to replaced, pricey. I think this pushes the grand cost of putting my car in the care of another maths teacher to over £600. Needless to say I won't be doing that again. Apparently the front right tyre also had a deep cut in it, there was some kinda leaky gasket, and something else wrong with it too. Excellent.

I had a double observation (two people in observing) with my Y8s before lunch today. We went to the computer room, and it was mostly going fine, except little D was being a bit of psycho. I knew he was in a hyper mood even as he stepped into the room, but I think the excitement of computers + a room change + having visitors was just too much for him to cope with, and so his behaviour went right out the window. I finally had to kick him out the lesson when he started jumping from the chair onto the desk. Made the mistake of letting him back into the room, where he proceeded to wind up the pupils next to him, then run around the room, then sit at my desk and start writing over the flipchart that I had prepared and was currently being projected to the class. I took him to the LSU straight after the lesson to get them to talk to him and try and figure out what went wrong. A turning point for me really, since whereas before this type of thing would have made me pretty stressed and wired, today I didn't really care. Sure it wasn't a good observation, but what can I do really? Either I am feeling apathy, or I am actually so stressed I don't notice stress any more (this could be true - last night I woke up in a panic at 4am convinced it was time to go to school and so desperately thinking of excuses to get out of it - good stuff).

Anyway, on a good note, my interview at MyBnk went really well. The lady in charge there was really inspiring and we got on really well. The project seems to have a lot of independence for the intern, and it's something that I believe in and think I could actually make a valuable contribution to, so fingers crossed on that front. Also, went and had a drink with the Mulberry TFTs after my interview - they'd had their final assessment today and it all went super for them, so am very pleased. I'm doing my Second School placement at Mulberry in two weeks time, which should be really interesting (all girls, predominantly Muslim, state school with a VIth form - very different to us!)

On a final note, am very much looking forward to the weekend, and as such, I will leave you with this delightful rant from Puja:

Hi girls,

i thought i would email you both and have a rant because the computer system at work has been f**king up since Monday and i have not been able to do any work and it is tres tres annoying. and outlook keeps messing up so i have clients calling up wondering why all of their emails are bouncing back and not coming through. i may scream. but i wont.

also the person i sit next to is somewhat annoying. he constantly (and i mean alllllll the f**king time) slurps/chews/bites away at his nails and hands and its pretty disgusting to be honest. and extremely distracting. but i dont know how nicely to tell him to shut the f**k up.

anyhoo rant over (and i mite add that the slurping is continuing while i write this email) and excitement about Fri!! its going to be lots of fun me thinks. dinner wise - do u want to eat at mine? i though that we could just order a pizza in which would save us having to move and go out and get food. what do u think?

Hwc is stressing about work a lot so we will have to try and cheer her up! she is def coming but will not be at mine till later - prob about 9ish. but she did say that she will prob stay over so we have the whole nite to play 304 and drink! whoohoo!

righty ho - im going to go and have a wander around the office to get away from the disgustingness that is the person sat next to me.

See u 2mrw dudettes!

Love Puja xx

PS - slurp slurp (one of the ppl i work with described it as 're-juicing'. isnt that the most grossest word ever? i think it mite even be worse than 'moist').

Coffee Bags, Micragolia, Scrubs Quote

Yay, I'm back from a glorious week in Venice! I bet you missed me :) So what's been happening? Well, I have made myself promise not to write about Venice until I finish my WA3, so you'll have to wait a bit on that front. However, I have to procrastinate somehow so here's a post for you anyway.

Firstly, I thought I'd invented fresh coffee bags (kinda like individual tea bags except with fresh coffee in them instead) and was whooping around celebrating my discovery before I googled them and found that they already semi-exist. Boo. But Potter helpfully told me about "second but better" theory so there's potential. Obviously what will ulitmately happen is that I'll just throw coffee bags onto my ever-expanding list of ideas and then forget all about it.

Secondly, my friend Netty is doing some crazy Mongol Race or something this summer, which essentially involves driving from Hyde Park to Ulaan Bator in a very small car. How exciting! And how faaaaar! She is very cool and made this lovely map, so thought I'd put that up.


If you wanna find out more or sponsor her, check out their justgiving pages:

Mercy Corps - www.justgiving.com/micragolia
Hope and Homes for Children - www.justgiving.com/micragolia2

Thirdly, CK sent me this Scrubs quote and said it reminded him of me. I assumed I was Dr Cox in it, but thinking about it now, I'm probably Elliot....

Elliot to Dr. Cox "Oh, you think you're funny?"

Dr. Cox "I do. I always have ever since I was little. It's one of the reasons that I'm a winner!"