Finished!

I just thought I'd post a quick note to express my relief at finishing my assignment. In good ol' Dawny fashion it was a night before challenge, even though I'd had a week long extension - bad Dawny! Anyway, at 3.00am this morning I threw in the towel - my head was pounding and I couldn't even see my laptop anymore - it was just a black square in front of me.
So I got up early this morning and did a mad scrabble to finish it by 11.00 - the sense of relief is indescribable - as now I can start to unwind a bit in time for Christmas :)

I need to finish my Christmas shopping this week and wrap it all up, ready to come down on Sunday - yes I am on my Chrimbo countdown, only 6 days to go and I'll be in the M6 - M5 - M4 etc and so forth - back to the land of dodgy accents and green mountains - which really describes Yorkshire to a T!

OK I'd best get back to it - trying to blag some funding to go to a conference in New York next August - not holding out much hope but you never know!

Ciao for now x

X Factor rocks!

For those of you with lives - you may not be aware that for the last couple of months, X Factor has gripped those couch potatoes who have forgotten what it is to go out on a Saturday night. Anyway, it was the semi-final tonight and my favourite Ray has made it through to the final next week. The anouncement of this achievement caused a major flurry of excitement both in Hudds and Rhydyfelin, as my sister (a fellow Saturday saddo) has also been supporting the Scouser. Several text messages and phone calls were exchanged and it was only after mass hysteria screaming ensued - that we realised the level of saddness that we had reached. Lord knows how we will cope with the final next week!!!

My Saturday night of sadness has continued as I have found " The Best 100 Children's TV Programmes" on E4 - ah memories! Mary, Mungo and Midge and The Clangers have brought back happy memories - but Mr Benn still scares me :(

The only major news is that I have finally met "Elephant Man" from the upstairs flat -who has actually turned out to be a 6ft bean-pole, so I can only conclude that he is Dutch and favours wearing clogs - cos the noise he makes bouncing aronnd on the floor boards is not funny!

OK that's it for now - final week in work next week :) and then it's time to let what's left of my hair down and party!

I've lost that festive feeling!

OK so it's December 5th - normally at this time of year I am so excited about Christmas I just pee my pants at the mention of anything related to Christmas (TMI?) Well I don't know what's going on this year, but try as I might I just can't get into the Christmas mood.

In order to speed things up a bit - I went to the Cancer Research shop and bought my Christmas cards today - and a sparkly snowman snow-globe caught my attention. As my decorations in the flat are spread around too thinly to share with my office - I thought having a bauble of this kind on my desk would help. Unfortunately, it didn't - it just distracted me from my work and now I am even further behind with my research, so stressing a bit more about a deadline and now I am even less festive than I was before! darn it!

Anyway I did have a very kind invitation from Amerie to attend the pantomime in Cardiff with her and her cousin in 2 weeks - it's Jack and the Beanstalk and I am so excited! I tried to recall when I last went to see one and I believe it was in 1975 in the Bedwas Workman's Hall - a very poor rendition of Cinderella - but at aged 6 it was magical! The best thing about it was we were all given a bar of chocolate on the bus on the way home which for a sweet toothed childlike me - was the best bit - Ah memories!

I haven't included a quote for a while - so here's one for Christmas:

"Christmas is a three day festival dedicated to the birth of Bing Crosby" - Willis Hall

Crikey it's nearly Christmas!

Well hello blog junkies! I am presently in my little biddy office and I thought
I would attempt to catch up on my blog from here as I don't seem to get around to it
at home - I just hope it works!
Anyway last Friday I held a data session here for some visiting PhD students who are at
York Uni. It was a fab day - we got loads of work done, but I won't bore you with that bit. The three gals were Monika from Germany, Liina from Finland and Riina from Estonia. They were all lovely and chatty so we all got on well. After the "worky" bit we all went to the pub which was great as Dawny was starting to have withdrawal symptoms from "God's Juice"! Anyway, we are all meeting up again in January for another session, except for Riina who has to go home for good - boo hoo! She was very interesting to talk to as I hadn't met anybody before from the former Soviet Union - all I can say is - we have got it SO easy here, we mustn't grumble!

The weekend came and went - Lordy the weather was bad! I nearly got blown over on Sunday, which taking into account the size of my arse right now, was quite a feat!

I had an assignment to do over the weekend which should have been handed in today - but something happened to me that hasn't happened before - no I'm not talking about a dream date with a "normal" guy - no - I had complete writer's block :( I couldn't even string a sentence together - this was very scary! Those of you who have studied with me in the past are aware of my "night before" assignments which sort of turn out okish - well last weekend I couldn't even muster a paragraph - not good!

So I put together a scrappy essay plan and headed to see my supervisor today. Luckily she was very supportive and commented that my brain was in pre-Christmas shut down - which is quite true! We re-jigged it and she's given me a few days to put something together - phew! I must say that this PhD thing is all pretty tough - and I've only done 9 weeks! This is a scary thought as I have another 3 years to go!

Anyway I'd best get back to it! Ciao for now x