The good and the sucky

I have been giggling at this video all afternoon. They're just. So. Cute! Not that I'd want a couple of my own, but still. Highly amusing.

The way Charlie laughs at his brother's pain... That is pure beauty that is.

In other news, at Frida's suggestion I have taken to naming my ear problem - from now on, it shall be called Vera.

Did I mention I hate Vera? Fucking bitch.

Those are strings, Pinocchio

My grandmother is one hopeless case, bless her. You can't go see her and my grandpa without there being strings attached.

Frida and I are going there tomorrow, and gran called just now to let me know that we'll be having lunch there. Not 'asked me if we would like to have lunch', mind you, but let me know that we will. There's no arguing with her when it comes to lunch. And I was so sure eleven in the morning would be early enough that we could get away with just having coffee or something... Apparently not. "Well, you have to eat anyway," she said when I tried to say that coffee and biscuits or something would be just fine. "You can't go all day without food, and we have to eat dinner, so you two might as well eat with us." She didn't finish with 'And that's that', but I could still hear it.

Sorry, Frida. I tried my best, really. I thought we were in the clear.

Holy crap.

So, I kinda did not want to have seen this... But I did, and now you will, too. Floey gave us the address to this really cool morphing website, and I was dumb enough to be curious about what I'd look like as a guy.

I found out.

Holy crap. The worst bit? That is probably what I'd look like if I were a guy. It's a guy, but it's still me.




(And this was the picture I morphed. Yes, I look haggard. I'm tired.)

The memory, it betrays

I think I want a new layout. Not sure how I'd want it to look, though. I kind of like the Rounders template, but it's still not quite right - I don't want the subheading right underneath the blog title, like most of the templates have. That's pretty much the only thing I still like about this one.

Meh. I wish I was good enough with html and CSS to actually create something myself instead of having to rely on existing templates.

Why can't I remember what 'perfunctory' means? Bloody word won't stick in my mind (or, won't cross from my short-term memory bank to my long-term one, as my lecturer would put it). Same with 'incensed', 'effervescent' and several others, and I need to know them for tomorrow. And stupid 'loom' doesn't have a decent translation for what it means in my mind. It drives me mental.

I'm way more stressed about this exam than I expected to or should be.

Tea, umbrellas and wellies

I'm not sure why I've let my blog slide. I guess maybe because nothing much is happening, while at the same time somehow I've been incredibly busy. I shall make an effort to write at least once a week from now on.

English is fun. A lot of fun even, though just as much work. Up until now, the grammar course has been pretty much all repetition for me, seeing as how I've done both Swedish and linguistics at the university, but now that we're entering the lovely world of clauses and subclauses, I think I'm going to have to start paying some proper attention, as well.

Literature begins on Thursday, with a vocab exam on Big Mouth & Ugly Girl. Written Proficiency began yesterday, and if there's one course I'm not going to enjoy, it'll be that one. And yes, it's probably because it's the one I'm the least good at. I'm one of those people, apparently. *facepalm* But seriously... Academic writing. I'm having a hard enough time writing my thesis in Swedish - I don't even want to think about doing it in English as well!

You know what the worst part is? The brainstorming. When we get to the exam, where we're meant to write an essay on a given topic (and my worrying about that bit is a whole other post), they want to see our brainstorming. They want to see our so-called 'clustering'. And I suck at that, I always did. It just doesn't work that way for me. I've never been able to get my unsorted, incoherent thoughts down on paper. And tell me something - how on Earth do you write an essay with an introduction, a body and a conclusion, using less than 300 words?

No, not looking forward to this one at all. I might even dislike it more than I've been prepared to dislike Culture & History, the course I've expected to be my Achilles heel.

It's strange being in a course with a hundred students. I'm used to being no more than twenty-five. It's all so... anonymous, and it's hard to make contact with people. I miss my friendly linguistics group - I'm still in the same building where I used to be, but without my buddies. It feels odd.