Poetry, discounts and cloudy parks

Yay. Oh how I love student discount days in Borders and Books Etc. 20% off! Yay! Bought some Dylan Thomas, which is good and happifying too. For your information, the student discount days started yesterday and run until tomorrow in nearly all Borders and Books Etc. stores in the UK, which is great.

Went to the park again today, despite the cloud and ate Pesach food there. Funfunfun. :) The ducks were intriguing if not slightly scary when biting each other. I wondered if ducks would find it amusing if humans were biting each other and fighting. Simon thinks not.

Concert last night went well, especially Haydn's Nelson Mass, which sounded so cool. I'm hoping it was recorded, 'cause I want to listen! (Yes, I know one can buy professional recordings, but I want to hear the one I played in!)

Trying to kill time in a double free in the afternoon before our final rehearsal before the concert tonight. Funfunfun. Hence resorting to blogging.

Weather has been changing between horrible thunder and lightning and beautiful sunshine (yay I love sunshine) just within this hour and ten minutes, which is rather odd in itself. Anyway, it's sunny now. The weather must know Naomi and Simon are seeing each other today. :)

Had a deathly boring chemistry lesson this morning, which was much fun. Yes, of course it was. *twiddles fingers*

Anyway, off to orchestra now. Yay! Time killed!

I like the park.

Especially when it's sunny. Yes, that's about it.

Update

Talking to Simon last night, I realised I hadn't blogged for a while. A week now, to be precise. I haven't found any more overly amusing articles in the newspaper (and am annoyed that I didn't get one yesterday *grumble* although I did catch a lift to school, which was the upside to it), but there is a good one about Douglas Adams in today's Indie. (For those who don't understand, I am referring to the newspaper, The Independent. ;))

What's happened in the last week? Hmm. I bought a really pretty pink floor length summer skirt, which made me happy as I've been searching for a long long skirt for a while now. I also went to half a study day on 'The Merchant's Tale' by Chaucer, where the first lecture I heard was half decent and the second one was the randomest thing in the world, and it seemed like she hadn't really prepared it.. or maybe she had, but only the night before. (And still managed to change her mind since preparing it.) I went babysitting last night and Eli actually woke up, and then fell asleep again by the time I returned upstairs with some warm milk. I've seen Simon twice and spoken to him and texted him lots. :D *waves to Simon* My book still hasn't come in at WHSmith (and before you have a go at me, the only reason I ordered it in there is because I was given vouchers and wanted the book and needed to spend the vouchers. I have been wanting the book since at least December) and I don't think much (if anything) of this week's free single on iTunes. They have appointed a new Pope, who is only slightly younger than the deceased Pope if I am correct and so I thought it a bit odd. Election gubbins is well underway everywhere, although I am still not aware of a local Lib Dem candidate leaflet in my house. Whether it was shunted out before I saw it (like nearly happened with the Tory one- oh, sorry Conservative: mustn't call them Tories any more- not that anyone explicitly says who they vote for in our house, oh no) or they just simply haven't got round to putting one through the letter box, I don't know. I have received my polling card, and I've also submitted my student finance forms for next year. I've replied to UCAS to say Manchester firm, Leeds insurance, although I still can't see any possibility of missing Manchester's grades and getting the ones for Leeds, but there you go. We finally finished reading the text of 'The Merchant's Tale' in English and are now having an extra triple lesson every week, and so I am not worrying as much, although I do still worry. I'm currently avoiding maths revision for an M1 mock tomorrow morning and any other revision for general revision-y purposes and summer exams. Awaiting a phonecall and also avoiding the chunks of extra English reading I have planned, but I may go and do very soon.

Well, that's an update, not sure if I've missed stuff out, I no doubt have. If you think of anything, feel free to comment or just respond to my random and rather normal activities.

Deborah Ross

She does write rather wonderfully. :)

Today: "Honesty is the best policy, by all accounts, but dishonesty is said to be considerably less damaging to the ozone layer." The rest of the same article is great too, that was just a rather wonderful quotation.

New look Indie

And it has Su Doku! Naomi is now happy and has even more things to amuse her on the tube, bus and in boring lessons... (no, mum and dad, of course I never do the crossword or the like in a lesson. I pay attention all the time, honest. :))

Shakespearean tragedies are...

"like muesli, they are boring, fruity and full of indigestible roughage." Fintan O'Toole, 'Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life'.

Been re-reading O'Toole this weekend, thinking it probably worthwhile, considering one of my exams is on 'Othello'. Read that right at the beginning and laughed lots. :) I don't agree fully, but it is a great quotation. :)

I'm rather disappointed with how all the school computers don't show the 'Make Poverty History' white band in the corner of the screen. On any sites with it on. It's really bad. I first thought it may have been on IE, but then I came home and checked and it wasn't, which just indicates that we have really really rubbish computers at school if they don't recognise that or can't show it or... oh I don't know why it wouldn't show, but it wouldn't. It disappointed me rather.

Having just blogged, I realised I hadn't blogged for quite a while before then. Apologies for that, I guess I just never had the impetus to blog. Strange, that. I'm normally happy to babble away, even if it is only at a keyboard and my fingers are doing the babbling.

And now I've got carried away chatting to Malka, so it's actually 22:04 as opposed to 21:29, as the post will claim. How time flies. *whoosh*

The last two weeks have been the Easter break, over which I was supposed to do lots of work and start my revision. Thing is, one never fits in as much as one hopes. Plus, it is difficult to begin revision when one hasn't finished any syllabuses. Mrrrh. I've done lots of work, and finished all due in written at school, I believe. And we had an English note-pooling day, which was rather productive. Similarly to last year, we made lots more notes on 'Othello' than on 'The Merchant's Tale'. (Similar to last year in that last year we made many more notes on 'Hamlet' than 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. The similarity merely lies in making more notes on Shakespeare.) Discussed lots too that I can remember, but didn't write down at the time. (I have a strange incredibly poor short term memory to the extent that I can't remember something someone said 10 seconds ago that I wanted to write down, but I'll remember it when I get home. Nevertheless, I always make notes in lessons. I'm just scared I miss other stuff when writing the notes down. But I would look silly not taking any notes.) Re-reading all my English texts at the moment (have managed two and a half, which isn't too bad, I thought. Still going strong with one and a half more to read. Woo). Done several maths and chemistry past papers, realising how much I hate chemistry essay questions (yes, I know chemistry essay sounds rather oxymoronic. Or at least it does to me). Especially the ones that give you three pages to write an answer on, with extra marks for "quality of written communication" and yet all they ask you for are equations and calculations and the determination of various compounds. How does one make an essay out of that? Grargh.

The two weeks have whizzed by, similarly to time this evening. Much spent watching TV late into the night (Alice is in the final three!) and talking late into the night (5 hours isn't a long time to talk to someone pretty much non-stop...). I've also been to the cinema once, shopping a few times (I don't like to count that one) and done some work (did I mention that one before?).

There was Purim too, and we had the murder mystery (which was fun and we ate yummy shwarma). We found enough drivers and people to act. :)

The Pope also died today. Not that it affects me so much, being a religious Jew, but you know, he was a good man I'm sure. But old and ill and I think it was good that he was left to die at home and not taken to hospital again.

In the two weeks we've also had lots and lots of sun (particularly on Saturdays for some reason beyond my comprehension) and lots of rain (which I don't like so much. I like snow and I like sun, but not rain). Back to school on Monday. Funfunfun. :)

(Oh, and I'm finally finishing the post at 22:59. I am distracted pretty easily.)

Was I cruel?

Walking home from spending the afternoon playing with Eli (the 16-month-old I babysit), a kid (well, probably a 13 year-old, but he looked like a kid and I like referring to him as one. Quite cute looking, blonde, not unattractive, but cute in the young and baby-faced sense) approached me, clutching a whole load of small change and asked if I could go and get him some cigarettes, as the shop wouldn't serve him (by the way, he didn't already smell of smoke, indicating it was the first packet for an hour or two at least I reckon). Anyway, I said no. A few grounds, some to do with religion: a) they were only young (he had a couple of mates hanging around too, who clearly had chipped in with the few pounds clutched in the kid's hand); 2) one isn't supposed to use money on Shabbat (buy or sell things); d) one isn't supposed to carry on Shabbat. I only thought of that third one afterwards, but the first two struck me straight away. The third reason is still valid though. Anyway, I refused. And the kid just walked away, no shouts, explosions, questions, re-asking, mates asking instead or anything. I suppose there are some kids in the area who are reasonable apart from the fact that they smoke. They weren't like the scary ones who hang around on the rape bridge, anyway. (The "rape bridge" is the footbridge at the end of my road leading to the nearest tube station. Not overly safe for a woman to walk over on her own in the dark. Especially when the light isn't working or one can smell fumes. Or see and hear people.)