Busy Week

Yup, it's been a wee while since I posted.  This was due to two reasons, nope, three reasons.  First. I was enjoying life with no exams, no stresses and nothing to pour effort into.  I wondered round aimlessly, did lots of knitting, making stuff for a friend I just found out was pregnant.  And my first ever commissioned piece - a blanket in red, yellow and orange.  I was just enjoying me time, and not having stresses and just being.

Secondly, I did some shifts at work.  I've more or less gone through my insurance money.  It was good in that it gave me a chance to not work whilst I was getting ready for finals, and this was important.  It just meant that I had halved the income coming in, so it's now more or less gone.  So need some money for stuff over the summer, like paying a couple of bills, paying for storage, paying for yarn to play with (yay, planning on doing some more dyeing!  and spinning and well... all that stuff), paying for some new work clothes, and yup, basically need some money coming in so I can survive until that first pay cheque. 

And third reason was I had visitors!  Emma, Chris and Connor trekked down to Bristol on the train.  And I had a wonderful excuse to show off Bristol.  My camera was unfortunately out of battery and I can't for the life of me think of where the charger was!  So limited photos because like the dope I am, I forgot that I actually have a camera on my phone!  So there are only a couple of pics:

Connor was fascinated by the washing machine, and spent ages chatting to it was it whired and spun and did it's thing.  It's scary how big this gorgeous little boy has got.  My flat probably wasn't quite as baby-proof as needed for this very mobile fella! 

We went to see the suspension bridge and wondered round Clifton, wondered round the shops on Gloucester Road (how I'm going to miss this road!), and even got round to trekking to Weston on the bus to go to the beach, which was wonderful.  Connor found it an exciting place to be and apparently sand is quite tasty!  We had lots of meals outside, and trips to the parks.  It was lovely.  And we were truely blessed with fantastic weather, right up until we went to catch the bus to get them to their train home, when the skys opened and poured.  This, along with diversions through the city, meant that the traffic was crazy and we ended up not quite making it, despite having given ourselves extra time.  What was more frustrating was that it was by seconds, Chris literally was able to touch the train, and push the door open button, but we were too late.  But they did manage to get another one half an hour later, and got home safely.  Thanks for a lovely few days guys!

And now, it's back to work for a few more days, and then the Clarks visit and then packing.  It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks, but at least I'll be busy!

Big day ahead!

As the weekend draws to an end, I find myself becoming impatient, yet at the same time, wanting to freeze time.  I have my last exam tomorrow, and it's one that I'm not particularly worried about.  In a strange way, it's actually a fun kind of exam that I've always secretly liked (at the risk of being lynched by my coursemates!).  It's practical, requires you to think on your feet, snappy, flies by, varied, basically an interesting way to do exams.  There's a couple of things that I want to go over before it, but otherwise, it's kind of hard to revise for, as it's not purely knowledge based.

But my anticipation and anxiety actually stems from the fact that I'll partially find out my fate tomorrow evening.  At some point after 4pm tomorrow, the med school is going to email the people who are required to sit a second long case.  So if I get an email, it's time to absolutely panic, and try to think of things to do by Friday to improve before the repeat.  No email, then, I'm... well, safe.  And pretty much home and dry, assuming that I haven't cocked up the exams that I passed last year.  I just don't know what to think.  I'm scared, so scared.  I know that checking my email tomorrow afternoon will be a strange compulsion, that I really don't want to do, but I can't help but do every five minutes until I know.  And then every five minutes afterwards until whatever news awaits me sinks in.  In all honesty, I don't know how I'm going to cope...

But on a happier note.  My weekend.  I've actually had a really nice one.  On Friday, I discovered that a new green grocer has opened about a three minute walk from my front door.  I had a nice chat with him, and he's sourced the vast majority of his produce in the UK, mainly locally.  And not only has he got fruit and veg, he's also stocking a range of preserves and chutneys and a small selection of olives (one of the few non-UK items!) and cheeses.   Mmmmm, couldn't help but stock up on some tasties for lunch and the weekend.

Lovely!  I love the way my road supports all things local and independent.

I finally finished my shawl/stole/wide scarf that I've been working on since Easter, on and off, in amongst other projects.  It's currently blocking on my floor and looking glorious.  I can wait to take photos of it once it's been unpinned!  But for now:

On Friday, I finished my latest spinning project.  I decided to experiment with making some low twist singles.  And I used one of my new(ish) spindles that I hadn't really used before, other than a quick trial.  I have no idea how much it weighs, but it's quite heavy, and has a super long handle, so I was able to squeeze all 100g on in one long long (344m) piece.  I took it off, skeined it (my clothes horse makes a very good skeiner!) and then, in an act of utter faith, having never done any felting, I felted the skein to give strength to the singles.  I set the twist overnight in the shower then in the sunshine.  I seemed to have felted in just right.  The strands were defnitely felted and required teasing apart which made winding a ball take forever!  But they came apart very easily and without any knots, headaches, breakages or other heartaches.  It's quite textured, and so I've decided to make a very simple shawl pattern with it, to really show off the gorgeous colours (was really unconvienced with the fibres, but I adore it now, so pretty!) and texture.

Pre-felting and setting the twist.  Quite good representation of the colours.

The finished, dried hank, slightly out of focus, but still pretty cool.

Close up of the singles, before I wound it.  Really good idea of the texture and thickness, but less so with the colours.

The start of the shawl.  I love how triangular shawls grow.  I'm loving how gentle the colour changes are.  It's not the bold stripes of the 198yards of heaven shawl I made with my last handspun.

My craft corner was looking a mess, so I decided I had to tidy it up, and this was it, mid-sort out.

On Saturday night, I had Mary and Paddy round for a BBQ.  It was lovely, and really mellow.  And we had such a great catch up.  I'm so lucky to have such amazing friends, I do really miss them though, I hardly get round to see them, especially lately with being in Weston and revision, and clashing with Mary's schedule.

And now.... I wait.  I wait for sleep, and peace, and those silly emails tomorrow.  I can barely think of my exam, in comparison to that email.  Last year, I didn't think about it, didn't really expect the email.  But it was the email that caused my life to collapse in on itself.  How can I now be expected to think of anything else?

Well, what is there to say?

Sometimes I really ponder the point of this blog, I really just seem to fill it with needless waffle for want of something better to say.  But is that really a problem?  I sometimes wish I was one of those people who always had deep, thought-provoking, philosophising (if that's a word) things to say... so this blog would be interesting to those who read it and somehow touch their lives.  But I'm not.  And I treat this blog very much as a form of a diary, that I suppose I really don't mind if someone else happens upon.  Not very interesting, but who says it has to be?

But then again, there are some days which just aren't really worth commenting on.  The blog definitely helps me reflect on my day, and see if there's anything special or worthwhile that has happened, and I like that.  It has helped me be more grateful, and has helped me find joy and fulfilment in the little things that make up everyday life.  I suppose a lot of this waffle is a reflection of my not really enjoying Cheltenham.  I'm finding it tedious and a little depressing.  Life is on the cusp of changing pace and focus, with the inevitable shift towards preparing for finals and all that implies.  But I don't really feel ready for that change.  And I know that part of this is pure avoidance of reality - it will become harder and harder for me to ignore why I'm here.  Why I'm having to do this all over again.  I failed.  I let myself and all my nearest and dearest down with my actions.  Starting finals prep will be a horrible and constant reminder of that fact, in a far more intense way than repeating the year and going through the motions of being on placement.  It is after all what I've done for so long now, that it just seems to be more of the same.  But exams are different.  Exams will remind me of all that has passed over the last year, and I know I will struggle with this.

It's all really well sitting here moaning about it, but I really do need to act.  I need to find the strength and the focus to do it all over again.  I need to find a way of coping with all the negative emotions that I have managed to suppress.  But I'm just not ready for that at all.

But anyways, on to the day to day...

I had one very boring tedious lecture.  Then nipped to the post office on the way home to send Sarah some more supplies.  Oh dear, I've really enabled her growing addiction!  But she isn't complaining too much.  And then I came "home" and on the whole had a very restless morning.  I sat chatting with my flatmates for quite a while, the the while beavering away at Ru's wristwarmers.  I really am not making the sort of progress I'd like, and I can't quite tell why.  At this rate I'll be working on them for at least another couple of weeks, unless I can really blitz them over the weekend.

I love the pattern and the effect.  It's a little fiddly, but I've now figured it out, so I don't need to look at the pattern or pay too much attention.  I've got about another inch to go before I start shaping for the thumb hole.

Then this afternoon I went to the cinema (oh temptation!) and saw Brothers.  It was really good, and very moving.  Definitely not one to see if you want something light hearted, but was definitely one of the best films I've seen for a while.

And then this evening?  More knitting, chatting and watching dvds, in amongst random wool surfing, wishing I had endless money and endless time to make stuff out of all the gorgeous gorgeous wools out there!  But I'm being good and most certainly have more than enough wool to keep me going.

And that's it.  Another one of those days of nothing in particular.  Back to Bristol tomorrow, and I can't wait.  Back to a reasonable temperature room, back to a comfy sofa, in front of my week's worth of sky plus stuff.  Back to my Bristol friends, who I really want to try and see this weekend.  And most excitingly, hopefully, back to a package of yarn sent from someone who's never meet me, but was inspired to share her wonderful stash!  So very excited!

Snowmen and skullcaps

This was the picture that greated me as I looked out of my window this morning, having listened to the radio about how the city had ground to a halt and buses weren't running.  My first instinct?  Curl back up in bed.  But decided that this would be too lazy.  Gave it lots of thought whether or not to try and trek into uni today, but decided that it wasn't worth the possible 2hour, potentially dangerous, slipping walk in, just to find out that it had been cancelled and then have to come all the way back, cold, wet and uncomfortable.  I think that if I didn't live so far away, I would have attempted it. 

So I curled up in front of the telly instead, with my knitting.  I've now completed my new hat which looks a little like this as a work in progress (trying to gauge the length, hence the needles sticking out of my head):

And it looks a little like this when finished:

It's a beautiful varigated pure wool yarn, which was lovely to work with (not too harsh on my hands, some of the pure wools I've used before have left me with dreadfully dried out hands) and I'm very happy with the outcome.  Thanks very much Sarah and the Clarks for your wonderful Christmas pressie.

I also ventured out briefly to get some food (all lovely warm, wintery things - rice pudding, hot choc, pies, breakfast oats) and was amazed by the winter wonderland that greated me.  And the fantastic spirit of the community, such as cheeky little kids throwing sneaky snowballs at me, and everyone all bundled up and in their wellies (would have been useful things!)  And there was beauty everywhere and wonderful art creations.

Just out my front door, reasurring me I did the right thing not attempting to walk in on those pavements!

Snow sticking, somehow, to one side of the trees.  Very pretty effect.

A true masterpiece watching the world walk by down Gloucester Road

And this one was huge.  I bumped into his creator too, who was busy trying to figure out the hair do (pet bedding straw, held in place by long pieces of metal bent into u-shapes).

I've just checked the current weather conditions, and apparently it's about -5 out there, so very grateful to be snug inside with good heating and cosy blankets.  I really need to make the effort to go into uni tomorrow, but I just don't think the weather will be much better than today, although they aren't predicting any more snow over night, they don't think it'll be warmer than -1, so the pavements and transport links are just going to be hideous, but hey, wouldn't life be dull without these little challenges interferring with our attempts to just get on with things?

The kindness of strangers

Sometimes I'm just peeved at all the rubbish that life throws at me, and have to fight very hard to not do the whole "why me?" thing.  Other times, I'm just continuously touched by the kindness and good will of others.  Maybe life really does just balance out... eventually!  Or maybe there is such a thing as karma.  Or maybe it's just really dependent on my mood how I end up seeing things, some days concentrating more on the positive, and other days, more on the negative.  Or maybe, just maybe, it's just human nature to see patterns and trends when they don't really exist.

Last night, I duely caught the bus and left the car safely parked, and avoiding ice skating it down Gloucester Road.  And if I'm making confessions, I think that I've thought of a New Year's resolution - SEEK HELP FOR KNITTING ADDICTION!  Joys of public transport and waiting for it to arrive, meant that I had a few minutes waiting around, so I unashamedly got the needles out, stood at the bus stop and did some rows, even getting on the bus in the middle of a row and without dropping a stitch.  I did some knitting on the bus, but it was bordering on sensory overload and it made me feel a little queasy, so I didn't push it too much! 

I left later than planned, but it ended being spot on, I was there on time, even after changing into my uniform out of my layers and layers.  I was working on one of my favourite wards, and it was a night like last night that reminded me why I like that ward, and dare I say it, sometimes even enjoy work.  I had good company, the patients were all really nice and friendly, and I managed to have time to have some lovely chats with some of them.  And all in all, nice, smooth shift.  Whilst we were waiting for handover last night, we got to talking about the horrendous weather conditions, and I mentioned that I had played it safe and bused it in.  And one of the nurses immediately offered me a lift home for the morning.  She lives in vaguely the same area as me, although I probably doubled her journey time.  I was so amazed.  Hot off the heels of the lovely shopkeeper and his advice and offers of tea, another kind deed was offered me.  I don't think I've ever been offered a lift home, and I was very grateful, as it meant I was home nice and early after the shift, and now, I'm tucked up in bed, eyes beginning to feel heavy, and able to have a nice early bedtime.  I'm hoping this will mean I'm more up for driving back to Derby later after a nice long snooze.  Although I still have to pack properly, I'm hoping, weather permitting to hit the road by mid-afternoon...

Snowed in at work! Arggggggggggggggggh!

I have broke tradition.  Well, the "longstanding" tradition that was blogging every day.  But there is a fairly valid reason for this, I had to prioritise sleep, after a very hectic "day".

I should have known that it was gonna be "one of those days" from the start.  Having being messed around with my shift on Saturday night, I decided my first action of Sunday would be to confirm my shifts.  So I did, and my shifts for the rest of the weekend were the same.  So, with relief, I got myself ready for work, and headed out to work in my car (this will be relevant later, in case you were wondering why I'm giving such a blow by blow account!).

I got to the ward and introduced myself, to which the nurse pulled a face, and then carried on doing whatever she was doing.  Because of all the hassles I get, being moved, I always introduce myself and confirm they're expecting me.  After a couple of minutes (during which time, I'm thinking to myself, "oh no, I'm missing handover, maybe I should go find it") she finally gets to me, saying that she doesn't think I should be there.  I got rather annoyed by this statement, so I point out to her that I confirmed it just a few hours before hand.  Then she gets distracted again, and ignores me for another couple of minutes.  I mean come on, if I'm not supposed to be working there, then I should be finding out where I was supposed to be, to minimise the lateness to that ward, or horror of annoying horrors, heading home if they couldn't find anywhere for me.  Then perhaps sensing my growing annoyance and frustration, she grabs me and takes me to their handover room.  Noone there is any the wiser, but all there seem to think that they aren't expecting another HCA.  So now bordering on anger and getting ready to fight with someone over this mess, I phone the bank office (people who allocate shifts and work as a liason between the wards and the temporary staff like me).  I confirm with them that I'm where I'm supposed to be, and they ask to speak to someone from the ward, to which they all refuse to do so.  So the bank office say that they'll phone the ward directly (I was phoning them on my mobile).  So after a few more minutes, I get the confirmation that I'm supposed to be there, and I can stay, even though this effectively makes the ward overstaffed - how I do wish people would communicate with each other, as it's always us bank staff that get the recieving end of the fallout.

So, I settle down, after the nurse giving me a piece of her mind with some crappy curt comment about how it's not all about me, that we're there to look after the patients, and it's all about patient safety and if this means I'm inconvienenced, well tough.  Hello!  She totally missed the point of why I was so annoyed, and in my defence, if I'm not meant to be there, somewhere else, there are other patients who are not getting my care and their safety is being compromised!  Annnoying **** of a woman!  So I had handover.

Then on the last few patients in the handover, one of the other nurses comes in and says "Is there an Ashleigh here?  You have been moved to ward (let's anonomise it) X.  Sorry".  I hate ward X, and usually avoid it like the ruddy plague.  Just perfect!

Ward X is a cohort ward (people who know the BRI now know where I was!  So much for keeping it anonomous!) which means they grab everyone with infective diarrhea and put them together.  Ok, so it is more civilised than I just described, but it does automatically make one think they have a night of buttom cleaning and bed making ahead of them.  And when I arrived I found out that I was there to one-on-one babysit a patient who was very confused, aggitated and unsteady.  Poor chap looked like he was on the loosing end of a heavyweight boxing match, so covered in bruises and cuts and scraps from his many falls.  In the end it wasn't too bad.  He slept most of the night, becoming a bit restless every now and then, and there was only one occasion when I thought we were about to come acropper (we didn't, phew!).  So I sat on an uncomfortable chair at the open door of his cubicle most of the night, knitting away whilst he serenaded me with this snores!

The other downside to this ward is the fact fact that I was working with two very loud nurses.  Nothing against them, they were nice and friendly, but shouted their way through drool topic after drool topic for most of the night.  I really wanted to tell them to shhhhhh! as it was a night shift, people are trying to sleep, and my poor chap didn't need a series of excited exclamations continously rousing him from his peaceful and much needed slumber.  But who am I to tell off nurses, when I'm just a temp HCA?  So I kept this to myself, until one of them went to the loo, then came back shouting extra loud into the momentary silence that accompanied the two of them being split up that it had started snowing.  To which I went "ssshhhhhhhhhhhh!  You'll wake everyone up!"  Response?  Nonchalant shrug!

Mmmm, snow.... it was around midnight, and it was night a snug inside, so I added snowfalling watching to my routine of "glance at knitting, glance at patient, listen out to patient's snores, glance at knitting and pick up stitch droped whilst looking at patient".  For two hours!  I couldn't really see much of outstide, but on the roofs and carpark area that I could see, the snow had settled a little, but over the course of the morning the snow piles seemed to shrink, so I assumed that this meant it was melting, and that the drive home would be ok.  How wrong could I get!  This is what I found when I eventually got to Ernie (my car), all frosty, hungry and tired:

There's my Ernie, the blue car, looking extra blue under his snow blanket and a very icy road. 

And after several minutes hard, cold work, with no gloves, I got to this:

Wipers still frozen solid to the windscreen, far side doors iced shut and all my deicer used up.

At this point, I have to talk about how the kindness of strangers has affected my life.  When I first got to the car, I was horrified by the extent of iced snow on it.  And I remembered seeing my ice scraper when I was packing at the end of last year, so I didn't think it was in the car, so I nipped into the newsagent next to where I had parked, just on the off chance that they sold them, but he didn't.  He spent ages looking around for his, incase he had one in the shop, then he kept an eye on me as I attempted to use an empty 2L plastic bottle (fairly effective in a push!) and then I eventually got fed up and search my car, turned out, Ernie was hiding my scraper under one of the chairs.  Then once I got it all cleared, I took one look at the road and the few cars attempting it.  I wasn't feeling too confident about driving, but oh, so hungry and tired and cold.  The chap came out of his shop and started to give me advice about driving in such icy conditions.  Then I told him that I was toying with the idea of leaving the car and getting a bus.  I then asked if he knew what the rest of the day was forcasted to be like.  He didn't know, but he took me back inside the shop and we looked through teletext (surprisingly unhelpful!).  Still torn, but with my need for food and sleep getting greater, I was resigned to leave it.  Then the sweetest thing - he offered to make me a cup of tea or coffee.  He was so sweet and gentle about it.  I was so touched and by that point in the day, I almost felt like crying.  Thank you kind kind man.  But I felt bad from distracting him from his shop, so I declined. 

I eventually decided to trapse back to work, and get some breakfast and wait a little while to see if conditions improved, and toyed with the idea of nicking a blanket and crashing on one of the sofas in the common room.  I didn't in the end, I wanted my bed!  So I climbed the crazy Cardiac Hill for the second time, back to the car, in the hope that it would be better to drive.  It was, slightly.  So very carefully, taking heed of what my new friend had told me about driving in snow, I eased Ernie out and started on my way home. 

Wow, I've never driven in such conditions, and even though I was on roads I've driven down a thousand times before, the feel of it and the strange commeradery of the other drivers made it feel like an exciting (if not very much on edge!) adventure.  Listening to the radio, I found out that the street I live on, one of the busiest in Bristol, hadn't been gritted (! ooops Bristol City Council!) for a large section, so I carefully planned a new route home to miss this, and thinking about which roads were considered "main enough" to have been gritted and driven a lot.  And off I went.  Much of the journey in first gear, and never more than second, and never going faster than 15mph, I crawled home, via the petrol station (something I had always planned to do, and was getting paranoid, although the light hadn't come on, I was running low, and had been idling the car for ages) and got more deicer.  Then hit awful traffic.  So a journey which yesterday took less than five minutes, today took nearly an hour!  And no, buses wouldn't have been faster, as they would have got stuck in traffic. 

In the end, I got to bed just after 11, having been awake since 3:30 yesterday afternoon.  I'm normally in bed by 9 after a night shift. 

And here I am, sleep deprived but safe and sound.  And I'm definitely getting the bus tonight!  Even though it's less than ideal, it will be best.  I'm just starting to get worried now about getting back to Derby.  Was aiming for tomorrow, and was thinking it would be tiredness dependent.  Now it's going to be weather dependent. I've just heard they've issued a severe weather warning for Bristol for tonight with more heavy snow expected. But I'll worry about it when I need to.  I just need to stick with being safe for now.

Finally, despite the dramas that was this day, there was calm and beauty everywhere, especially at 7:30 in the morning.  Only had my phone, but still some lovely snaps.

 

The last one was the local Christmas tree sale lot.  This close to Christmas, it's somewhat depleted, but the snow on the trees made it seem wonderfully seasonal!

P.S. this has been an epic post, sorry, and well done if you managed it all.  And I normally proof read before I post, but couldn't be bothered tonight.  So forgive typos, non-sense and bad grammer!

Buttons

It's finally done. Went to my local friendly wool shop today and brought some buttons. Was in the store for ages, with this old dear of a shopkeeper who went through all her buttons. We found some random buttons that looked really good, little wooden ones, but there were only four, and I needed five. She went round the store and in the back, looking in jam jars and vases trying to find a fifth button. But alas, no luck. But we did find these instead. And I think they look pretty good.



This is what I really love about living where I do, the independent retailer is still going strong, well, relatively. The personal touch can't be beaten. She doesn't really have the best range of some stuff, like the more luxurious types of yarns, but she's good for advice and is so happy to chat through things. And she's really good value for money too.

I'm also making good progress on my next little cardigan. I have finished the back, fronts and one sleeve. I know what you must be thinking, that's fast. But this pattern has a big yoke, so the afore mentioned items are shorter. Also, they are in plain stocking stitch, rather than a fancy aran pattern, so knit up very quickly indeed. Here are the pieces layed out for "blocking" - something I've only recently started doing, it's supposed to give a better finish to the items. So I though, nice wool, nice pattern, lots of effort - may as well go the whole way and put in all the effort.



Off to the cat show tomorrow, so won't get much knitting done, but hopefully will return with photos of something besides knitting!

Just another Tuesday

So, basically, this is my life. I just about made it in on time to my 10:30am teaching. Was on ECG interpretation. Had this topic to death, I know the basics, don't need people to come along and bore me with their "fail-proof" methods which are different from everyone else who has ever tried to teach me about ECGs. I know what I need to know, and I passed the ECG portion of the exams last year. Yes, repeating is boring.

Then I was good, I was proactive about life instead of leaving it all for the last moment. Those who know me, will realise this is very unusual. I could go on a rant about how this is a new start and I will be a better person from here on... but it wasn't anything nearly as fundamental as that. I just did some stuff that I had already being putting off for a while, and had some spare time. Simple as that. Still remains to see if being organised provides more benefit.

Then in another shocking turn of events I went to the library in the remaining spare time I had today. I flicked through books and looked some stuff up. I hardly ever step foot in libraries, and never this far away from exams. Is this the life other medical students experience?!? Have to be honest and say that I'm not that likely to return, was a bit disappointed in their range of books, and was mainly wanting to look at a book that I've been thinking about buying. They didn't have it, so I looked at some similar ones as alternatives and they didn't impress. I suppose that I could always just nip to the uni's med school library. I'm practically next door to the uni when I'm at the BRI. Would require me to have more time, but not much more. But it would be a nicer atmosphere. And it's always nice to look at the younger years and realise that I actually have come a long way, even if it doesn't always feel that way.

After my proactive hour, I had another tutorial. I rocked it. I rocked it in a very annoying manner, both for myself and for the other students. You see, I aced the theory/knowledge part of finals. I really worked hard for it. Going to tutorials where they're expecting you to have only the most basic of knowledge is very frustrating. There's only so many times you can blurt out the (almost all right) answers before it becomes awkward and everyone starts throwing looks of disguist in your direction. So I try to avoid this. But on the whole, we're a competitive bunch, us medics. It's hard not to show off that you know the answers! So I decided not to answer anymore questions. And the lecturer starts to do the whole "No, no one knows the answer. Well the answer is xyz, obviously" thing when met with a wall of silent and mostly blank faces to his questions. I'm thinking, well, I knew the answers, but people are getting bored and fed up of me answering. Don't tar me with the same brush as them. I know, I know. It's silly and childish. But this is how some of the tutorials make me feel.

Then I was naughty. Really should have gone to clerk. It wasn't late and I hadn't clerked so far today. But I couldn't be bothered. Not really the attitude I should be adopting. Avoiding the one thing I really need to be doing this year. But screw it... there's no valid excuse. It wasn't even a full blown case of "couldn't be bothered"sies. Just decided that I was actually looking forward to my walk home. It was a nice day. Simple as that.

Shouldn't really have decided that. Should have clerked, then taken the bus home. It's just toooo dangerous for me to walk home. Walk past far too many shops that I love browsing through. Was nearly two and a half hours. It should take max 45mins. Oh well. I've decided that I want to experiment with making some Christmas decorations for my tree this year. So I stopped at the bead store and spent ages trying to decide which beads looked vaguely Christmasy. The had to ask for advice regarding what sort of thread to use. Ended up with some silver-coat copper wire, various red, green, gold and wood beads. Have no idea what to do with them. Don't know when I'll know. Don't know when I'll get round to thinking about what to do! This is why it's dangerous for me to walk home!