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The worst so far

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

I got my mark back for the Strategies for Research presentation today, and I can honestly say that this is the first time I've actually thought I might not be able to get the 2:1 I need to teach.

Identification of Sources: C
Analysis: C/B
Structure: B
Impact: C/B
Skills and Techniques: C

Comments: Some interesting ideas were posed, but there was an underlying lack of clarity about whether schizophrenia, as a modern psychological term, can be applied to some areas of theatrical presentation, especially older texts. As the presentation progressed the term tended to slip into more generalised ideas of mental disorder rather then that precise one. A clearer idea of what particular films or plays might be used would have helped, as well as a clearer sense of potential sources. The sub-questions showed more precision, but again might be better dealt with without a precise clinical condition.

Suggestions for further improvement: When dealing with areas outside your specialist area it is important to make very clear how you are using specific terms and how they apply. If developing this, consider carefully the degree to which you would have to draw on psychiatric material, and whether this is a distraction to what you really want to investigate.

Overall mark: 58

That's a 2:2. A 2:2 for a presentation where all you had to explain was the topic you wanted to research and show, in a preliminary sense, how you might go about researching it. I actually can't believe it. This is going to be the easiest assessment all year, and I managed to make a complete mess of it. Ah... but did I?
You see, I've got a few points of contention here, since it seems she can't actually remember the content of our presentation.

1) "Some interesting ideas were posed, but there was an underlying lack of clarity about whether schizophrenia, as a modern psychological term, can be applied to some areas of theatrical presentation, especially older texts."
Actually, we were clear about whether it could be applied to older texts, as we stated that we were going to be looking at C20th texts as they would be more tangible than a time where the disorder had not been categorised. A short answer, but I could go into this for ages.

2) As the presentation progressed the term tended to slip into more generalised ideas of mental disorder rather then that precise one.
I can't actually ever remember slipping up about "mental illness" and "schizophrenia", although I do remember Sarah doing so. I wasn't aware that we would receive the same marks, and if I HAD known this, I would have actively tried to work on my own.

3) A clearer idea of what particular films or plays might be used would have helped, as well as a clearer sense of potential sources.
We detailed two example plays that we would look into, even though it wasn't specified that we NEEDED to show the tutor exactly which texts, books, films etc that we would be using. If I had known this, I had a list of plays and films I was going to look into, but, yet again, lack of communication on HER part meant that I didn't fully understand what was expected of us. (In fact, I actually asked what she wanted and what she'd be marking us on, and she just said to look in the assessment criteria - WHICH ISN'T SPECIFIC TO THE MODULE).

4) The sub-questions showed more precision, but again might be better dealt with without a precise clinical condition.
This is what riles me more than anything. WE WERE TOLD that the topic of mental illness was too broad, and we actually had a section of the presentation where we discussed WHY we had narrowed down the question to one particular disorder. It is my belief, from my initial research, that a conclusion to the question, or in fact, a tangible way to approach the question, could not be achieved if we had to focus on the thousands of disorders out there. She clearly didn't listen to the first 3 minutes of the presentation.

A general summary of my mood at the moment: absolutely livid.

Oh, and the wonderfulness of my day doesn't stop there. After leaving off a little earlier than Isa (she had decided it would be a good idea to come to the 9am lecture in full Halloween garb, and as well as being a tad.. well, embarrassing, this proved to be time consuming and we didn't want to be late), we entered into a rather interesting-looking lecture. We were given multi-coloured pieces of card with numbers on and HANDOUTS. Yep, they were actually trying to help us. However, the content of the lecture left a lot to be desired.
The handouts we were given? These were a complete copy of the Powerpoint presentation for the lecture, which happened to be a word-for-word script for the lecturer. In other words, I could have read the paper at home and NOT at 9am and got exactly the same amount of knowledge from the session. Also, I felt that we should have been given the session either last year, or at the beginning of the module. We were given really important information about how to track down articles, info I desperately needed last year and some of this year when journal articles were set as reading and I didn't know how to find them. The rest? A lecture on the internet, how unreliable wikipedia is, and how "great" blogs and the wonderful "world of web 2.0" are. I could have died.

Further to the uselessness of this whole module, here's a good indicator of the interesting and/or useful content of each weeks' session:

This is the back of my pad of paper. When I'm bored, and have nothing I can write down, I doodle on the pad (not the paper of course, that would be wasteful :D). As you can see, there was a slump in drawing in weeks 3 (the week before the presentation) and 4 (the week of the presentation), but all other weeks, I've found time to draw pretty patterns. I use this notepad for all my classes, and all drawing seems to take place in Strategies. May I also emphasise at this point that this is the Okea lecture's module.
I rest my case.
This module is

Now, hopefully we can lighten this day up a little with some "Theatre/Archaeology" (a charming book I have to read parts of for Friday) and a refined visit to the cinema to see Brief Encounter.
With Minstrels.

The chocolate's got to do it.

Tor's visit and general cahoots

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Ok, so I've been a bit busy over the last week, what with Tor visiting and work and not feeling well again, but I think I've got just enough time to squeeze in an update and some photos for you...

Tor's visit
Tor arrived safe and well, even after sitting opposite a drunk dood for half the way, on Wednesday afternoon, and as soon as she arrived, we hopped straight to the more interesting and funky part of the student lifestyle.. with a trip to Morrisons. We discovered that they were selling Ben and Jerry's for under £2 (actually beating ASDA - the wonders will never cease), and that handwash can be rather expensive. After trekking to several different shops (Morrisons, Netto and Iceland, we like to shop about), we settled on pizza and corn for tea.

Yes, those were big bits of corn, but we battled valiantly to devour them.

Ahh, our tasty modified pizza. No, we didn't manage to eat the whole thing in one sitting (that would be greedy), but, we can tell you, Iceland are clearly onto something with their £1.50 pizzas.

After the pizza, we went to see a play that was on at the union, "Narcissus!". A very interesting, very strange, and very captivating performance. We both really enjoyed it, and its innovative use of blood beads. We almost missed the bus home, because, yet again, I managed to look at an old version of the bus timetable (that's the last time I use the Metro site for anything), which said the bus went to the bus station, when it didn't. Luckily, practically round the corner from one of the stops for the bus home, the bus driver stopped and asked us where we were going, and explained that we would never be able to reach our destination. So, a close shave, but we got home ok in the end :)

The next day, we decided to do a spot of shopping and exploring Leeds. We tried on many nice clothes...

As you can see, they made Tor look beautiful.
I managed to find, FINALLY, after many years of searching, some heels to wear!!! Ok, they ARE kids ones, but they're copies of the adult ones, and they're not velcro!! wooooo!!! I also managed to find a rather nice top for £2 :D

In the evening, we went to see Stardust at the local cinema. We decided, since we hadn't got round to eating it, to bring the Ben and Jerry's with us, since it was going to be difficult for Tor to take it back on the train. Looking around in the cinema, I could see people eating popcorn, pick 'n' mix, chocolate, nachos, even Pombears.. but we were the only ones digging into a tub of icecream with metal spoons. Go us :) The film was brilliant, and, for once, better than the book.

We weren't able to get up to much on the final day, since I had a class until 12, but we watched some stuff (Tor is now hooked on Yakitate, tee hee), ate some tasty food, and by 5ish we were ready to set off to the station, equipped with Pombears and Ribena. We took some final nice piccies:

And off she... chuff-chuffed, into the sunset...

And the rest...
I haven't been feeling 100% over the weekend, as it seems the lack of sleep caused by sharing a bed with my twitchy sister resulted in me waking up on Saturday morning with half of the top of my lips swollen with coldsores. I looked like I was mutating, so I stayed in the house over the weekend to hide my mutant shame. Luckily for me, my TiE group had decided not to meet on the Sunday since the host had the flu and one other member wouldn't have been able to attend anyway. So, I basically spent the weekend camping out in the house, dozing in bed (I've been REALLY, stupidly tired recently), reading for assignments and classes and generally moaning to Phil about feeling yucky. Hopefully this will have all passed by the weekend when he gets here!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the mark for the presentation I did a couple of weeks ago, so fingers crossed for a good mark (even though it's only 20%!)...

Fishy Update
The fish are fine, and the levels in the tank are finally reading as normal every week - woop! Pearl seems to have fully settled in, and they're both healthy and love foraging for food. So they're living the good life :D I haven't got any photos at the moment, but I'll try and put one on here soon!

Several other things have happened, but they'll have to wait for another time, this post is already epic enough!

Yay List

Monday, October 22, 2007

A series of good things has happened over the past few days:

1) I found out I'm not a criminal. That's right, University of Leeds, my non-criminal status is no longer unofficial and I can legally do all the working elsewhere you want me to do. So yay for me and my law-abidingness.

2) We regained heating and hot water. For Saturday evening and all of Sunday (and, granted some of this morning - yes of course it was the part when I got showered) we didn't have any heating or hot water working in the house. Despite trying to reset BOTH heaty things when we realised nothing was working, our landlord came this morning and was somehow able to reset them and get them working. We're happy we've got the basic facilities of our house back again, but at the same time are confused as to why the boiler refuses to do the same for us...

3) I had some very nice special fried rice. On Sunday my TiE company met up at Elena's house and she treated us to some yummy home-cooking. Unfortunately, we didn't get to watch any films since they became irrelevant to our work, but the rice made the day :D

4) I found out my fish aren't weird. Elena has fishies and when she saw mine she says that it's normal behaviour, and that sometimes they like to take water in through their mouths as well as their gills. So my fish are officially sane.

5) I started counting down the days till Tori gets here. The countdown is currently at 1 day, 15 hours and 57 minutes. Woop woop!

I'm off to get ready for a party :)

Tiredness and Happiness

Saturday, October 20, 2007

This weekend is my weekend to clean the house, and since my TiE company have decided to meet tomorrow round someone's house for food and films, I decided it was best to get it out of the way today. I hereby dub today "Housework Day", as it feels like that's all I've been doing ALL day.
I decided to try and get all my washing up to date first of all, since I needed to change one set of sheets ready for Tor, and then had to wash the towels (a separate wash). This constituted two rounds of washing going into the machine and individually being pegged outside. Then I had to catch up on my ironing, since I had a pile left from washing done last weekend and during the week. All in all I must have ironed about 30 odd pieces of clothing... taking me a couple of hours. Then I set to cleaning the dirty filthy house. It took me a good long while to do the kitchen (which was a bit of a state) a little while to do the lounge, a struggle to hoover two flights of curvy stairs, and not too long to do the bathroom (well practiced at this one from last year). Doing my room is always easy, and then I had to clean out the fish etc as well. All in all, the whole lot from start to finish took me about 6 hours. I am knackered.

Job Update:
After reading the message my mum left me about Monsoon in Norwich recruiting for Christmas last night, I decided to give them a ring this morning to plead my case. To my surprise, this wasn't necessary. When I phoned, the line went straight through to the manager Michelle, and when I introduced myself she easily remembered me and then explained that she was in the middle of ringing people to find out whether they'd be available for Christmas work. I explained that it was the reason why I was ringing, and she then asked me when I'd be available to start! It was brilliant - I was so worried about what I was going to say and how I was going to ask about work, but I never had to, and all I had to to was explain when I was coming home and confirm my mobile number :) Just shows that I wasn't supposed to have the job at La Senza anyway - this way, I can come home and generate Christmas spending money!

Fishy Update:
Pearl seems to have settled well into her new home, and Pips isn't chasing her any more. In fact, at times they almost copy each other exactly, and others they swim completely separately from each other, almost ignoring the other fish! Strange fishies. The worrying thing is that, although she wasn't doing it when I first had her, and for about the first day, Pearl seems to be displaying the same strange behaviour as Pips now. She does seem to only do it when he does, and she's always up very close to him when she does it, so she could actually be copying him.. although of course it worries me. I've checked all of the levels in the tank and everything is perfect, so I'm going to monitor the behaviour a little more and if they're still doing it after the weekend (when I can get the bus out to Colton), I'll take a water sample to Pets at Home to see if they can find anything wrong with the water that I can't. One theory I have is that they're looking for food. Pips only started doing this after I reduced his feeding amounts, and since they've both got used to finding the food floating on the surface, maybe they're trying to tell me they're hungry.. of course I'm not going to feed them extra, but it's a possibility.
Cute fishy pic of the day:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Introducing...

Thursday, October 18, 2007

... Pearl!

Her doing her poutiest face there..
She's so cute and tiny! Pips almost dwarfs her.. and there was me thinking that she'd be about the same size as him! Slight underestimation there...

Thought I ought to put a picture of Pips in in case he thought he was being left out...

Hopefully I can get a picture of them together somehow.. Pips did begin by chasing her a bit when she first came into the tank, but they seemed to have settled down a bit and now Pearl follows Pips about... so sweet!

Good news and more flargh

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Ok, so our presentation went quite well.
We both remembered what we had to say, and, unlike about half the class, we were actually there on time. The general thing that got to me today though was the fact that we were told that we were only allowed notes, and that reading from a script would not be accepted. So, we spent the last few days learning all of the details for our piece, all of the information, everything. Then, this morning, round about 3/4 of the class read their entire presentation from scripts.
Some were clever, and wrote the whole lot on note cards. The thing that gave them away was the fact that they wouldn't take their eyes off them and they delivered the whole of their presentation to the table. However, some weren't subtle at all. Some couples had sheafs of papers that looked like an essay, with alternate sections highlighted. They then proceeded to deliver the whole presentation in an incredibly wordy (but well thought-out manner) from these pieces of paper. This wouldn't have annoyed me too much if the teacher had mentioned anything to these people about the fact that scripts weren't allowed. However, she didn't, and I doubt she thought to write down who was reading and who was delivering from memory. So, you can see why we were annoyed after the session. Oh, and people were talking all the way through our presentation next to our tutor, and she didn't even tell them to shut up. That's how clued in she was. So, flargh on that account.

However, there is some good news for today...
I did another partial water change this morning and tested the water when I got back from the frustrating assessment, and the results are in:

We are reading zero Nitrite, zero Nitrate, the correct pH and zero ammonia!!
Woop woop! This means Pips gets a new friend tomorrow!

Pips' behaviour has got slightly better today, although I'm not sure whether that's just because he's cottoned on to the fact that he's trying to race his reflection. However, he does still occasionally blow bubbles at the top of the tank, although he doesn't seem to be doing it on such a regular basis nowadays, so I think we just have to assume that it's a funny habit he's picked up and it doesn't reflect a problem with the water. However, if the other fish starts doing it, I'll be back down to Pets at Home quick as a flash to get the water tested by them.

Cute fishy pic for the day:

Guess what?

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Guess what theme we've been given by the primary school for our TiE piece?!

I'll give you a few clues...

Woop woop!

Wish us luck for our presentation tomorrow :)

Flargh and more flargh

Monday, October 15, 2007

Job Update:
I rang Monsoon today to find out whether any positions had become available (since I knew there was supposed to be one, theoretically). Unfortunately, it turns out the only vacancy they had in store was in admin, and I was told that you needed an interest in the field to fulfil the requirements of the job... having no interest whatsoever in admin, I kindly thanked them for their help and ended the call. So, that seems to be it for Monsoon up here, anyway. I'm still going to try ringing the home branch in about November to see whether they're recruiting extras for the Christmas period, but I get the feeling this is going to be another academic year of unemployment.

Uni work Update:
Today I went to the most pointless lecture I have encountered in my course so far. Ok, so the lecture conducted entirely in a faux-Swiss accent by a man dressed in "Okea" overalls was strange, but at least it had a kind of focus, and it fitted in with the lecture schedule for the module. Today's lecture for POP3 was completely useless. It was useless to the point where I don't actually know what it had to to with anything anyone was doing, let alone Theatre in Education students. We were presented with...

...pictures like the one above, from a recent production of Philip Glass' Satyagraha, and snippets from a video of the same opera but a different production. The lecturer then went on to compare and contrast the two productions, talking over the problems with performances drawing on foreign cultures. All very interesting, but all material covered in a series of lectures in our first year. So yes, I think I have real reason to resent a 4 hour session this afternoon instead of a 3 hour one.
In Theatre in Education news, we now have an additional member to our group. Today, we put together a "mission statement", which all sounds rather posh:

"We intend to immerse young students in a stimulating and above all entertaining learning environment in which they are subtly presented with the opportunity to learn in a variety of styles. We aim to both acknowledge their age and respect the fact that they have their own ideas, opinions and experience, whilst seeking to further these using challenging material."

We also came up with ideas for a company policy which encompassed many a discussion about types of biscuit to bring to rehearsals and Sunday dinners round people's houses (all good stuff, although I'm not sure there are those kinds of things in PROPER ones, but meh). We also decided to ban swearing in rehearsals, and decided anyone caught swearing would have to pay 20p per word. We already have £2.80 in the jar.

Although we don't need to have fixed on a particular topic as of yet, our new member brought to the group an idea she wanted to use with her original Key Stage 2 group. We've decided to use the basics of it for a minute of material we were required to produce for our session tomorrow, but I don't think we actually agreed to use it for the final project. However, I'm not sure that the girl knows this, and seems to have presumed that we're taking the idea and running with it. :s
In a selfish sense, I really don't want to carry on with the idea, since the notion of producing a whole TiE piece on the workings of the human body as someone who hates biology isn't the friendliest one. There's also the matter of it not being on the curriculum for our target age group, but maybe that's something we can tackle later. I'm currently waiting to hear back from a contact at the school to find out what the focus of the second term will be so that maybe we can draw on that to find a topic.. so there's hope for this scienceophobe yet..

Oh, did I mention half our group was comprised of guys? Guess what our group is going to be called...

Theatre In Education... TiE... Tie...
See what they've done there?
*groans*

No Excuse Really...

Sunday, October 14, 2007

I haven't really got as much to show for my absence this time as I did when I last came and updated :( But, in my defence, I have had a lot going on recently that has, understandably, taken up the time and effort it takes to write a new post. Anyway, an explanation...

Last time I wrote, I mentioned that I had a nasty cold. By the time it got to Thursday, whatever I had managed to catch was tiring me out so much that by the time Phil and I had walked the relatively short walk to Morrisons, I was absolutely exhausted and needed to sit down (and no, I'm not just unfit, because I can manage the treck to uni UPHILL with no problems). Powered by the fuel of a scotch egg and a few bites of a cherry scone, I managed to make my way home after we had hastily completed the shopping trip. Anyway, by the time Friday morning came along, I was exhausted again, even after a good 8 hours sleep. Phil insisted I stay behind instead of walking to uni and sitting through a 3 hour class (which, in hindsight, I can see there was no way I would have survived), and although I tried to get up, washed, dressed and breakfasted, by the time it came to leave I could see his point. Back I went to bed, and about three hours later, I woke up, feeling slightly better, albeit sniffly and achey. And now? I'm still sniffly, but I think I'm finally getting over the worst of this. Unfortunately, Sri is now ill too - I hope it's not the same thing I had! Anyway, get well wishes to her!

Saturday finally rolled round for Pips yesterday and I was able to change his water and give him back his scenery. He seems to be pleased with his "new" habitat:

That's him being bonkers on the left there.
On the topic of the water, the ammonia is now reading at a zero, so there were celebrations all round. However, after completing other tests, it's become clear that the nitrite levels are still a bit of a problem, so I'm doing small water changes every day up until Wednesday in an attempt to lower them. I'll test again on Wednesday to see whether my efforts have had any impact, and if not, I'm taking a water sample to Pets at Home for them to test, to see whether there are any other problems with the water. The thing is, it's normal for the levels to be a bit dodgy for the first 6 weeks with a new tank, so generally speaking it's not something to be too worried about, but Pips occasionally comes to the surface of the water (even though he's actually blowing bubbles and not gasping for air), which is concerning... so if he continues and the levels come down, I'll know he's just picked up a weird habit (in which case, we're renaming him Bubbles, heh), but until then, I'm watching closely. Apart from that, his health seems to be good and he's eating well :)
If the nitrate levels go down, I also might consider getting him a friend (if all's well with the water). I'll keep you updated on that one.

This weekend, Sarah has been coming here to go over things for the oral presentation on Wednesday. It's easy to be enthusiastic about it because I've chosen a topic I'm really interested in, but if that wasn't the case, I doubt I'd be that bothered. This assessment is only 20% of the grade for Strategies of Research, so it's probably not enough to even affect the overall grade for the module. Still, I find it hard to NOT be bothered about these things, as does Sarah, so we've come up with a detailed plan for the presentation which outlines our research proposal. In short, we've created a very good essay plan (kind of). The question has changed slightly, but this is what we're working on now:

"How is the portrayal of schizophrenia in theatre and performance affected by social climate?"

We've put together all of the material for the presentation and have even done the background research. Three days before the actual assessment. Get us. We're now going over the parts that we're going to be talking about, but apart from getting the speech eloquent, we're pretty much there. It's so nice to feel organised for once!
In between our hard work sessions, we've been discussing fish. Sarah has a goldfish too and is looking to buy a new tank for her, since the one she's in at the moment has got a bit small, so I'm helping her find all the things she needs. The thing is, Flaps (the fish) seems to be immortal. There's me worrying about my nitrate levels... and there's Sarah, whose fish can survive in tap water. I feel that I have been cheated somehow with the hardiness levels of my fish. But anyway, some time next week we're off to research for Sarah's tank and to maybe find Pips a playmate!

Cute fishy picture of the day:

A mixed bag of stuffs

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

I don't come and blog for one day and suddenly lots happens at once!

Job Update:
Yesterday, I got a call back from La Senza after the interview I attended on Friday. I've been really worrying about this since I came out of the interview, because it seemed to go really well and the manager I met seemed to be really enthusiastic about the answers I gave to all her questions, etc. The only problem with the whole thing, since I really wanted to work for the company, was that it was a Christmas temping job, and that taking it if I was offered it would mean that I wouldn't be able to come home for the full 4 weeks. I knew this before I came into the interview, but when I was told that I might not be able to come home for Christmas full stop, I really started wondering whether the whole thing was worth it. I was really hoping that, in the end, they wouldn't ring me, because then I wouldn't have to make a decision, but, of course, on the way to my class in the morning I got a phone call from the manager offering me the job and asking when I could start. I asked whether it would be ok if I considered the offer over the day and rang her back in the afternoon, which she said was fine. After much umming and arghing, talking to several people, I decided I probably wouldn't be able to last 4 weeks up on my own, since the others are going home at the beginning of the holidays. and Phil, my friends and family would find it difficult to visit. What really made the decision for me was the prospect of Christmas on my own here.. so I rang them back later and asked whether they would be willing to keep my details on file. She went one better and offered to contact me and keep me in mind if any permanent positions came up after Christmas, which I'm very happy about.
In terms of finding a job before I go home, I remembered recently that when I went into the Monsoon in Leeds, they suggested coming back in a couple of weeks, since they weren't sure whether people who had arranged to come back after the holidays were still doing so. Well, I met one of these people on my course, and she told me that actually, she wasn't planning on returning. So, this weekend, I'm going back to Monsoon to enquire again. Wish me luck.

Uni Work Update:
Yesterday we were allocated our groups for our Theatre in Education companies and our age groups that we're working with. I have to say, I am SO excited about this whole project! To start with, the Key Stage we're working with is KS1, which means we're working with the littlest people in the school! And then there's the company I'm in now - one of the first things that one of the guy said to us was "You know, I'm so glad I'm with all of you because we all like to work". After he said that, I knew we were going to be ok. It seems we have all been burnt by people who couldn't be bothered already this year, so now all the worky people have got together so that we can all rely on each other. This is such a comforting thought :)
The performance, by the way, went really well, and no-one had a bad thing to say about anything :D
This morning's Strategies for Research lecture was.. interesting. When we walked into the room, we wee greeted by the sight of the lecturer dressed in blue dungarees and a yellow shirt, accessorized with a blue baseball cap with the motif "Okea" on the front. He was walking around measuring people, and eventually came up to us and asked to measure Isa's nose. The mortification was clear. The whole lecture was delivered in a pseudo-Swedish accent, with ABBA playing in intervals (with volunteer dancers) so he could change "costumes". We think the whole thing was about different research methods.. but we're not entirely sure.

General Update:
I am ill. I'm not sure how or why, but I have a nasty cold and it keeps making me feel sick :( And this morning when I woke up, I realised I had managed to strain/sprain one of my ankles as well. So, as you can imagine, the walk to uni (half up hill) was interesting this morning. So, poor Phil has been looking after me, even though he only came to see me - although, he's been an absolute saint and I'm so glad I've got someone to look after me!
Despite feeling a bit meh, we decided to go bowling today (since this morning's lecture was... interesting, in a dire and unnecessary fashion).

This is the motley crew (taken by a rather friendly dude who was out with his wife and kids!)

This is evidence that bowling whilst ill greatly boosts your ability to bowl (or maybe it was the velcro shoes..)

General excitedness

Monday, October 08, 2007

Ok, it is officially 58 minutes until Phil arrives in Leeds.
I am SOOOO excited!!! *jumps*

A quick note aside - woop for Isa, our chief cleaner-of-house yesterday, who did an awesome job in restoring our house to its natural shininess, and who unblocked the nasty plughole in the bathroom (which was clearly blocked from the previous tenants - apparently there were weird pieces of pink plastic in it as well... :/). She will hereby be given a rest for two weeks :D

Now that's out of the way, I can tell you what I've been up to today.
My self directed for POP3 was actually brilliant. Today, we were set the task to look at different levels of audience participation, and to pick a text and play around with it to see how we could work with some of the levels. We chose "Our Country's Good", mainly because most of us know it well because we studied it for A Level, but also, it's a really good text to work with, and we all had lots of ideas about what we could do. So, basically, what we're doing is marking out a tight box on the floor of the studio, and the audience is going to be made to sit in it, attached with "chains" (ie. string) to another person. This will represent the boat, and the conditions the convicts were kept in, and since the actors will be sitting in with the audience, we're making them part of the action and part of the performance - participation mode number 1. We're going to have them sitting in the dark (since it would have been on the boat) with the sound effects of the sea around them and the boat creaking.
When the characters talk, they're going to have lights (torches) shone on them, so that the audience's attention is drawn towards the speech. This way, there's a distinction between audience and actors (even though they're all sitting together), since the actors are lit.. - participation mode number 2. I'm going to be one of these people, and I'm going to do the whole piece chained to another actor.
One of the characters is going to be chained to an audience member, and when they speak, they're going to address their speech to the people around them, as if they were having a conversation with them - participation mode number 3.
I'm not entirely sure why we're so excited about this, but I think we know it's going to work really well, and we went through lots of really good ideas to get to this point. Anyway, I can't wait for the lesson tomorrow, because the performance is going to knock everyone's socks off :D

I've been trying desperately to find things to do to waste time so that Phil gets here faster. So far, I've ironed all of my clothes (and some of Isa's and some of Sri's), I've washed up (was going to do that anyway) and cleaned the kitchen (wasn't going to do that, but it was gross) and.. well, I'm doing this. Time sure does go slowly, doesn't it?

*jumps*

Ridiculousness

Saturday, October 06, 2007

As the true picture of ridiculousness, here's a photo of our lounge:

It looks like Widow Twankey's laundry in here at the moment... and the fun doesn't stop there, oh no. Just step out of the front door and you see..

Yup, yet more washing. Just tickled me slightly.

Fishy update:
I did Pips' second treatment for the white spot today, which makes it the last one in the course. In a week, I'll be able to introduce his ornaments back into the tank and do a partial water change to try and lower the ammonia some more. The nitrite levels in the tank are a little high as well at the moment, but that's due to the previous problems, so once the water's been changed a couple of times that'll soon be ironed out. Interestingly, the nitrate levels are just right...
Pips seems to have adopted the adorable hobby of playing with his reflection. The majority of the time I see him looking at himself in the two most reflectable sides of the tank (when he's not looking hungrily at me - "please feed me more!"), and a couple of times, he's tried to swim at himself :( I think he misses another fishy to play with, so the sooner I can get this tank regulated and the treatment over, the better.
A fishy-photo update:

As you can see, his fins are really nice and clear (no white spots anywhere), and, although the camera hasn't picked it up, he's a lot shinier than he was as well, which probably means that his slime coating is now up to scratch as well.

And, to finish, a little photo-summary of what we got up to last night:

Oh dear.

Brooding

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Note: brooding not broody.

Been thinking a lot about yesterday and why what happened to Kai happened. At the moment I can't stop watching Pips because I'm terrified that something unexpected is going to happen to him as well. I think the worst thing was that the woman I spoke to at Pets at Home said he was going to be ok, which reassured me that as long as I saw the treatment through, he was going to recover. So, ok, it's her fault that I got my hopes up, but ultimately (and what's the worst thing), it's my fault that he became ill in the first place. Pips is clearly a stronger fish, so I'm sure he'll pull through, but I'm still incredibly nervy where he's concerned. At the moment, he isn't noticing when I feed him because he's used to much more, but I guess that's something he'll adjust to. He definitely hasn't lost his appetite since he's constantly foraging for food (he looks so cute when he picks up the gravel and spits it out :D), but, nevertheless, I'm still worried for him, and can't wait until the treatment is over when I can switch the light on and have a proper look at him again. I am thinking about getting another fish to keep Pips company once the tank is sorted and I'm sure Pips is healthy - if it was up to me, I probably wouldn't get another so soon, but goldfish are very sociable, and I can tell that Pips is lonely, especially since he doesn't have much to play round any more either.

Still feeling very low after having to deal with what I found when I came back in the afternoon, so I haven't really got very much done today. Done lots of research and printed several things for further reading, but I'm not sure anything's gone in much. Still feeling kind of numb. I guess it sounds really stupid to anyone who hasn't had a pet, or even anyone who hasn't had fish, but I really got attached to Kai, and losing him felt horrid.

I've got the joy of Staging Histories tomorrow morning, this time with Tony Gardner, who, if this is humanly possible, is worse than Fiona. I had him for my interview for the uni, and he had us in an audition for MUCH longer than all the other groups.. and plus, he kind of creeps me out. Not really sure why, but I'm not particularly hopeful about this 3 hour lesson.
I've also got my interview with La Senza tomorrow afternoon - still not sure whether I should tell them I'm going home at Christmas since it's a Christmas temping job, but I'll play it by ear and see how it goes. Wish me luck for both...

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Kai died this morning while I was in a lecture.

A Dark Day

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

My Dad came to visit me on the way to York today and offered to help me take Kai to Pets at Home, since I'm still suffering from my efforts yesterday. It's not brilliant news.
Basically, the ammonia levels in the tank are dangerously high, and the stress that this has brought on Kai has made him vulnerable, and has consequentially given him white spot. Luckily, as the woman I spoke to said, I spotted the disease very early on, and he's got a very good chance of recovery. She mentioned that Pips probably has it as well, but the fact that he wasn't as affected by the general stress (as well as the heightened levels of ammonia) probably means that he is a bit stronger than Kai. The good news here is that he's not going to die. The bad news (especially for Pips) is that they both need to be treated, which meant that, when I got home, I had to change over half of the water in the tank (not usually recommended, but I was told to do it because it was absolutely necessary), remove all of the scenery that the fish like to hide in, retreat the new water with a different kind of dechlorinator that has added aloe vera in it (to help restore Pips' and Kai's coats to their former glory), add extra Easy Balance to add lots of good bacteria to the water, add a new plant to use up some of the ammonia, and THEN treat the water with the medicine (which is nasty stuff, btw). So, all in all, everything's been hard work today, but if it means that my fish will get better, I know it's worth it.
When the treatment has run it's course, both fish should be a lot happier and a lot healthier, so in about a week and a half, everything should be back to normal with them. Except with less food this time :/ Strangely enough, and what worried me more than anything, is the dark mark on Kai's face. Apparently this is an absolutely normal change in colour... very strange.

In slightly better news, I've decided what I'm going to do my research project on: the representation of mental illness in playtexts throughout history. What I'll basically be looking at is how the representation changes due to social and political change as well as the relation to advances in the history of medicine. This excites me SO much because I'm getting my interests in history and psychology in at the same time as my drama, so, call me a geek, but I can't wait to get started on this one :D

A Day of Arghs

Monday, October 01, 2007

Today has been the worst day by far for a long, long time.

I guess it started with my rent coming out of my account this morning, and even though I was expecting that, it's not the best way to start your day. To make things obviously bad, I'd had a really bad night's sleep because there seems to be a problem with the filter in my fish tank and now it rattles constantly, which woke me up several times during the night. So, when I got up (after being woken up for what I had decided to be the last time) I decided to try and remedy the problem. An hour, several soggy pieces of kitchen roll and a soggy section of nightie later, I was close to collapse with frustration as nothing seemed to work to help at all. I have come to the conclusion that there's something wrong with the internal pump, since the whole unit rattles noisily even outside of it's casing. So yeah, even before breakfast, I knew today wasn't going to go well.

I had several application forms that I had completed over the weekend to hand back into shops, so, instead of walking to uni, the plan was to take the bus into the city centre, take the free bus up to the back of uni and walk across campus for my self-directed session in the afternoon. All well and good if you actually believe in the public transport system. The bus I had to catch to get into the city nearly left me behind, despite obvious flailing and running towards the driver (on second thought, maybe that's why he went to pull away), and the free bus, as always, was leaving just as I got to the stop after I'd finished in the city. I wasn't too worried to begin with, since they're supposed to arrive "every few minutes", but 15 minutes later, and no sign of a free bus anywhere, I'm seriously considering buying a street map and walking it. Eventually a bus turns up and I think I'm going to make it. No such luck. We get to the train station and the driver slams on the hand break, slams the cabin door open, and storms off the bus. We can only assume he finished late. Fivish minutes and a whole buses worth of confused conversations earlier, and another driver steps on board and continues the journey. It's now 1pm and I'm supposed to be in my session. Eventually (about 10 minutes late) I arrive on campus to find that my room has been changed - but luckily it's close and I don't have to treck much.

Oh, the fun doesn't stop there. Today in POP3 we were supposed to put together 2 minutes of the opening of a good piece of Theatre in Education. To complete this task, we have 3 hours. You think that a group of drama students (who, I might add, are all aware that this year counts towards their degree) might be able to manage this, wouldn't you? Well, think again. 3 hours later, I'm already back home. Our group managed to spend an hour discussing what we thought might be a good idea, a further half hour buying and eating food, and then roughly three quarters of an hour talking about work again, and then running through the ideas in a rather vague fashion. The remaining quarter of an hour? Spent gossiping and organising a last-minute rehearsal round someones house tomorrow morning. Some things never change. And the catch? I have no idea where the house is. I've got the postcode (I think, I'm not actually sure any more), but it's rather vague... and even so, it still looks like a good 45 minute walk. :/

It's not over yet. When I get back, I ring Pets at Home to try and find out what's wrong with Kai. He's got several white lines over his body, and his face looks all mucky. I described these symptoms to a nice lady over the phone, but she couldn't make a diagnosis, and wanted to see him. She was concerned that it could possibly be something serious (or not), so I decided to try and take him on the bus to Colton. It took me a while to suss out which bus to catch, etc, and how to transport Kai (we ended up with him in his transporter tank within a big shoebox), but eventually I set off to the bus stop (for a reference, look at the map from my walk to uni, and the bus stop is just after Cardigan Road on Burley Road). I seriously underestimated my strength and overestimated the gradual increase in the weight of the water. By the time I got half way, I was having to stop every couple of minutes because my arms were shaking so much and poor Kai was getting sloshed about all over the place. By the time I got to approaching the bus stop, I saw the bus coming, but, unable to run with a big shoe box, I missed it. I waited about for around 20 minutes and another bus came along. The guy told me that his bus didn't go all the way to Colton, but that one would be along soon that did. About 25 minutes later, the next bus comes, and this guy kindly tells me that his bus doesn't go to Colton either, but that there is another one in 20 minutes. By this time, it's just before 7, getting darker and colder. I decide, since I don't know whether I'll have to wait hours to get the bus back even if the next bus DOES go to Colton, I pick up Kai and carry him all the way home again. Kai, by this point, has given up on being scared and has decided to lay very still on the bottom of the transporter tank. Eventually I arrive home, and my hands are shaking so much I can hardly pick up the net to put Kai back in the tank (he is, coincidentally, absolutely fine now, ie. he's zooming about like a trooper with Pips).

To add to the aching back, arms, hands and neck, I have blisters on half of my toes because of the weird way I was having to walk to steady the tank, and also.. I have two wisdom teeth coming through on the same side of my mouth. It's like the left hand side of my mouth has decided to rebel, leaving all fooding work to the right side. It's not pleasant, and it's making my ear hurt.

So yeah, today has been rather suckish. However, surely things can't get much worse, so hopefully it'll all be a lot better tomorrow... hopefully :/

Cute fish pic to make this slightly cheerier: