aauurgh! I've just realised that we're almost at 11pm. where did my day go? :(
bedtime.
news: - I've just caught up on a month's worth of QC and I loved it so much for being so relateable.. I kind of hope it ends one day, so that I'll have a reason to re-read it. Can't re-read it while it's ongoing, unless I could read all 2000+ issues in a weekend, but that would be a chore.
- I've migrated to Tumblr. Considering I engage with internet sources several times a day, I thought it would be a neat idea to accumulate them in one place, to remind myself in the future of things that had interested me. While on the face of it it would seem seem a jumble, it has potential to be organised (perhaps by tags). It seems to me that blogs are marketed and users are encouraged to use them as a tool for persons/people to communicate their opinions or preferences on particular topics, subject fields, interests etc to the wider world, but I feel it is also effective for the role I have given it. In addition to filing nuggets of interest, I could add notes of my thoughts on those things I present and so expand the role further. Unfortunately, I haven't implemented the last idea yet..

Just got home. I like to think that if I didn't have to work today, I'd've spent Christmas Day cycling around London.

Plan for today: watch Wonders of the Solar System on Eden +1 (ends at 3pm), cook roast beef dinner (roast beef, gravy, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, boiled veg), (finally) watch My Neighbour Totoro on FilmFour at 5.15 (or at 6.15 on +1).

Must remember to drink water and look for a job in the ad breaks.

After dinner, he wanted me to keep him company while he worked on his essay. Walking from mine to his, I wore the coat I'd worn all through the cold months of second year and, because of old habits, he says, he reached for my hand to hold in his, in his pocket. I called him silly.

I wish his girlfriend would announce whether she will visit him this summer.

why are there no concessions for emotional problems?
I can't help being in love with my best friend. I love him more now than the second year of us dating. Then, it felt that we were together out of habit, though he's said that he was in love with me then, in a craze of desire.

Now.. here's an extract of the email I sent him earlier this evening:

"You're more like a boyfriend to me now than when we were dating in second year.. we talk and have engaging conversations now, I'm not near as awkward or shy around you, and we can really goof around, share things and enjoy things together.
...

But I don't understand how you can love her when you put hardly any effort into sharing things with her, while we hang out, talk and laugh together every day. Does she know about your career/post-graduation-related worries, that you'd considered taking the law conversion course, followed it up and decided against it, that you almost had an interview for being a life model, how you desperately need money for food, how you enjoy Alain de Botton's talks, or how you see me as your best friend? Have you sent her a message on a whim the way you were sure I'd enjoy your story of seeing sheep charging in a field and so felt compelled, somewhat, to tell me?

I understand that you don't love me and I'm trying to come to terms with it.. haha, or perhaps I'm trying to persuade you to or "make you realise" that you love me. But I wish I don't love you as I do, yet, as your friend, I want to make sure that you understand why you love her."

[A note to my statement 'you put hardly any effort into sharing things with her': they communicate, at most, every 2 weeks. She'll send him text messages and he'll reply, every two weeks. No emails, perhaps a Skype date every 3 weeks, but not both text messages and Skype dates in a single month, no.]

Despite feeling almost desperate to go grocery shopping, I managed to make a carrot cake for a dinner party. It was a big hit too! Hurrah.

I went through his phone and read the messages between him and her recently, of course, she initiated the brief conversation. She sounds adorable, living in her world of fantasy. She spoke of wanting to cycle to the moon..
There was a wondrous night a few weeks back when the sky here was clear and the moon so bright I didn't need to walk the path from the road to my house or search for the keys in my bag by the light of my phone. I had wanted to go on a stroll with him that night but he was elsewhere. A stroll with anyone that night would have been delightful! By the light of the moon, I wanted to go on an adventurous bike ride. I don't want to cycle to the moon, there's nothing there and nothing along the way but the view of the world from up high and whatever stories you imagine. For me, the world is already exciting. I wanted to cycle to the beach and be frightened by crashing waves and whatever monsters were spying inland. But that would be at the end of the journey, before I surrender to sleep. Along the way I hoped to pass houses with curtains not yet drawn and glimpse into so many spectacular lives, ride through tree-lined roads and past bus stops and stations, stopping to talk to people along the way. I wanted to experience the enchantment of the mundane yet unfamiliar. Why run away from everyone before getting to know them all?

I have only two utterly reliable friends (and I do rely/depend in them): Stephen and Miriam.  They are also the only two people I can be absolutely honest with and am absolutely comfortable with. Interestingly, although I am on various "social networking" platforms to make keeping in touch with many people that I know from multiple places, I cannot use any of them to contact these two friends.

I am sure that if I didn't have a fever last week (absolutely depleting my energy and concentration levels for a couple days) and wasn't encumbered with IT difficulties over the weekend, this essay for anth and development would have been handed in by now. Learning fingerspelling while making the plan for this essay this morning is another matter entirely.

4th weekend in Canterbury? the second in which all my housemates will spend at their family homes.

A bad morning is being remedied by having pizza for breakfast.

Good night: Japan soc was a presentation of surprising facts about Japan; Jenga and Moods at Rutherford bar; Magic at Mungo's singing along to every song they played. Then walking home with Laura who lives two doors down from me.

Don't you just hate it when you've spent ages on the wrong thing for hwk? Plus I'd just realised today, the day before the class. But hooray for not reading just one article for this class! I have a back up already highlighted :) let's keep this up.

We finally got internet set up in the house last night and I managed to finally talk to Gwynnie today. I lost two hours of my day of catching up on work, preparing for seminars tomorrow, but I've gained buckets of energy.

I'm listening to Good News for People Who Love Bad News and my first reaction is 'oh, hello childhood'. But the familar feeling of enjoying this album doesn't come from my childhood in the ordinary sense. It was during those GCSE years when I was introduced to Modest Mouse. In this case, 'childhood' refers to the distant memory-feelings; here particularly they are of an unexepected strongly enveloping happiness. Not a flood of memories being realised or a specific feeling that is stimulated by the present circumstance, but feelings that are familiarly associated with this stimulus. I think.

I'm not used to being happy, so I describe it thus.

First day of school, final year

I've never sat on a bench by the duck pond before, but I can't think of a better place to be right now. To rest.

After being idle all summer, walking up to campus almost every day in the first week of moving to Canterbury is really pushing myself to be active and do that much exercise to build up my endurance. And by the end of the week I was fit enough to do the 20 minute uphill trek without panting, but doing the same route on the first day of school with 6 books and a litre bottle of water resets my fitness scale.

I didn't have anyone to share a pizza with at dinner last night, so of course there's no one to meet for breakfast at 8am on a Sunday morning.

Wand: silver lime with dragon core, 12 inches, slightly yielding

From Mr Garrick Ollivander's notes

Wood: "This unusual and highly attractive wand wood was greatly in vogue in the nineteenth century. Demand outstripped supply, and unscrupulous wandmakers dyed substandard woods in an effort to fool purchasers into believing that they had purchased silver lime. The reasons for these wands’ desirability lay not only in their unusually handsome appearance, but also because they had a reputation for performing best for Seers and those skilled in Legilimency, mysterious arts both, which consequently gave the possessor of a silver lime wand considerable status. When demand was at its height, wandmaker Arturo Cephalopos claimed that the association between silver lime and clairvoyance was ‘a falsehood circulated by merchants like Gerbold Ollivander (my own grandfather), who have overstocked their workshops with silver lime and hope to shift their surplus.’ But Cephalopos was a slipshod wandmaker and an ignoramus, and nobody, Seer or not, was surprised when he went out of business."

Core: "As a rule, dragon heartstrings produce wands with the most power, and which are capable of the most flamboyant spells. Dragon wands tend to learn more quickly than other types. While they can change allegiance if won from their original master, they always bond strongly with the current owner. The dragon wand tends to be easiest to turn to the Dark Arts, though it will not incline that way of its own accord. It is also the most prone of the three cores to accidents, being somewhat temperamental."

Lengths: "Many wandmakers simply match the wand length to the size of the witch or wizard who will use it, but this is a crude measure, and fails to take into account many other, important considerations. In my experience, longer wands might suit taller wizards, but they tend to be drawn to bigger personalities, and those of a more spacious and dramatic style of magic. Neater wands favour more elegant and refined spell-casting. However, no single aspect of wand composition should be considered in isolation of all the others, and the type of wood, the core and the flexibility may either counterbalance or enhance the attributes of the wand’s length."

good start to the day:
- up and breakfasted before 9, cos I had to help Yusuf find a shirt for school
- caught up on a couple weeks' worth of QC and GWS, so now I can start using the DailyComix app again
- the The National radio on we7 has been perfect while catching up on my comics
- watched (and cried over) this TED talk on a man that had worked as a forger of official documents to save hundreds, possibly thousands, of people from persecution since he was 17, since the second world war

Good morning!
I'm catching up on QC before doing any chores. Here, read this, read the author's note at the bottom. Yes! That's my favourite part of a live symphony performance: when they take their seats and tune their instruments. Heck, that part's so much fun, if it goes on too long, I'll get my fill of the show before it's begun.

Btw, what's 'music ethnography'? Sounds fascinating.