Listening: Linkin Park Meteora
Reading: Raphael Samuel Island Stories - Theatres of Memory, Volume II

The observant reader will have noticed a new layout. I loved my old layout, but the constant changes on other people's websites made me eager to make some changes myself, and my blog is really the only place that I could think of that needed a revamp. I've kept much of the old style, just changing some colours. The main change is the image used. I wanted to keep an archaeological theme here, just to remind you all that I'm a geek ;) So here is a fantastic image I've scanned from a postcard entitled 'Arise, Oh Sun! The twentieth century greets midsummer day at Stonehenge in white-roped anticipation.' Druids at Stonehenge - woohoo! Obviously, this is a very touchy issue in the archaeological community, but I personally don't have a problem with modern reuse of ancient monuments. Plus the image makes me laugh almost every time I see it *g* Gotta love those Druids!

You have no idea how tempted I am to rename the blog White-Robed Anticipation *L*

Listening:
Reading:

Sorry about the irregular blogging of late. I'm hoping to get into a more regular internet schedule soon and maybe I won't just update my blog, I'll update my sites and answer my e-mails too! Something to look forward to, right? *L*

Anyway, the move into the new house went well. My family came down from Sligo with a van to help us, and thank god they borrowed a van rather than taking our car. Between two people we filled an entire transit van - I am no kidding. We have so much crap. Admittedly, most of mine is technology related (computer, scanner, printer, tv, playstation, video, dvd player, cd player), but still... Luckily for us, no one was in the house when we got there so we were spared the embarassment of having them see us move shit loads of stuff in. It was a really warm day though, and everything had to go up two flights of steps, which overall was not the best plan we've ever had. Tired, sweaty and aching, we waved goodbye to my family and headed to the pub =)

We went out to Salthill, which is the area of Galway on the coast, with two guys from my class and proceeded to get rip-roaringly drunk. Once we got kicked out of the pub (which was pretty early seeing as it was a Sunday) we went back to the guys flat and continued drinking. Things got a bit interesting around 4am, when Emma and Conor decided they'd randomly get off with each other in the middle of the kitchen. By 6am, they'd decided to go out together properly. While this wasn't totally unexpected, it was still a bit surprising. I, in my drunken state, managed to answer a question that I've always wondered about. Could I ever have meaningless sex? The answer it seems, is yes. In a way, I'm quite pleased with this. I know that sex is better when you're in a committed relationship, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having sex with someone you're not in love with. I always half-thought that I'd need to have romantic feelings with someone in order to sleep with them, so it was interesting to discover that that wasn't strictly true... Eoghan and I are friends, but I don't fancy him and I certainly don't want to go out with him. What about you guys - could you or have you had emotion-free sex? Hope you all didn't mind me getting that off my chest ^^

Monday was spent recovering from Sunday, and the recovery period managed to spill over into yesterday too. Today, finally unpacked and settled into the new house (I got a new computer desk - yay!), I stumbled into University. Three cheers for me! I'm supposed to have done a shit load of stuff, but haven't quite managed it. I did hand in an essay, help one of my lecturers buy a book from Amazon.de, speak to my dissertation supervisor and go through all the blogs on my list - so I have achieved. Sadly, the essay was almost two weeks late, and my supervisor is not impressed as I haven't been to see her in almost two months. I have to write out a review of a pile of books I was supposed to read, but didn't quite get around to reading. I have to say though, I do intend to start working from next week on. I've had too much stuff on to get down to serious work on my dissertation - moving, course work, essays etc. But that's all over now, so I'm gonna work, damnit! I SWEAR! Maybe... ;)

By the way, my GIS exam went fairly well. I left after two hours, feeling that I'd worked to the best of my ability and immediately went on the piss. What a surprise.

Listening: Vanessa Carlton Be Not Nobody
Reading: Zhang GIS lecture notes

Thank you to everyone who wished me good luck in my househunting efforts. Lee, as much as I'd love to live all the way over there the commute would definitely kill me ;) Your good wishes obviously did some good as I FOUND SOMEWHERE TO LIVE! WOOHOO!!! Emma (my current housemate) and I found ourselves some rooms in a lovely four bedroom house about a fifteen minute walk from the University. The house is in this little, quiet complex and is much nicer than anything we expected. It has a huge living room (with cable tv!) and an equally large kitchen/dining room which comes equipped with not only a washing machine, but a tumble drier - oooooh! - and leads on to a nice balcony. Our rooms are about the same size as the ones we have now, so about middling. One downside is that they only have a bed and a wardrobe in them. No chest of drawers or desk *sniff* But none of the places we looked at had anything like that, so it's not so bad. There are two guys living there already, but we didn't get to meet them. They both have full-time jobs, which was a bit worrying as some people who have jobs don't really like sharing with students. The landlord assured us that they wouldn't care about that, and it's probably true seeing as there was a lot of alcohol in the kitchen and the living room was full of toys! Hopefully we'll get on with them - keep your fingers crossed for us anway. The rent is 70 Euro a week, which isn't too bad (we were aiming to pay between 50 and 70, so it fits in quite nicely), and a real bonus is that two of my classmates live in the same complex! We're going to move in on Sunday, so I'm all excited. Apart from the whole packing thing... I'm so bored of packing...

Did anyone else watch the Eurovision last night? I love the Eurovision! It shows us just how tacky Europe can be which is great in my book! This year, there were some fantastic acts, including the smarmy, belly-top wearing Greek act (apparantly a big star back at home) and the ska punk act from Turkey. I'm just going to repeat that. The ska punk act. Ska punk in the Eurovision! FABULOUS! I was not a fan of the winning song from the Ukraine, but well done for them seeing as how they had to come through a semi-final and all. And as for Ireland. Erm. Ooops. The rest of Europe thought we sucked. We only got 7 points, and they were all from the UK. That's officially our worst result ever. The worst thing about it is that the song wasn't actually bad. I never thought it would do well, and it's not really tacky/happy enough of the Eurovision, but it deserved to do better. Russia came higher than Ireland and their singer couldn't even sing. How sad that I'm going to have to wait another year for my next dose of Euro-tat!

I have an exam tomorrow 0_0 Three hours on GIS. How frightening. I haven't sat a three hour long exam since I was at secondary school, so that's a bit unnerving. Plus, GIS is incredibly tedious when it comes down to the theory behind it. I'm currently burhsing up on my quadtree encoding, and believe me when I say it's a barrel of laughs. Still, big piss-up has been planned for the instant after the exam ends.

Listening:
Reading: Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Lack of activity here lately has been due to a frantic round of attempting (but not succeeding) to get work done, watching Family Guy (only three episodes left *sniff*) and house hunting. Of these house hunting has been the most exasperating. We've looked at flats and houses. The flats have either been over-priced or we could only live there till mid-September, which is useless as our courses don't end until after that. The houses have contained middle-aged, god-fearing types, which is no good at all. No offense meant to middle-ages, god-fearing types. I'm getting really annoyed with the whole thing now, especially as the woman who owned the place we went to see today was such an absolute cow. We can only stay where we are until the 27th, which is frighteningly close now, so we really need to find somewhere *scowls* Stupid house-hunting. Everything was so much easier in Cardiff...

In entertainment news (well questions, really) - why the fuck is Stephen Dorff in Britney Spear's new video?

Listening: The Cooper Temple Clause Kick up the fire, and let the flames break loose
Reading: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer House of Secrets

I found out who's running the Chalet School fanlisting - It's Amy (austriaamy)! Not sure if she has it up and running yet, but hurrah =) I'm in the middle of scanning House of Secrets for The Chalet School Journal, so you can expect that soon. It's... strange...

Do you know who's surprisingly attractive? Eric Bana. He was on Jonathan Ross last night (Jonathan Ross is one of the most annoying people in the world) and I was shocked by his cuteness! Frivolities aside, they showed a clip of Troy and it looks amazing. I can't wait to see it! They also showed a clip of The Incredible Hulk (is that actually what the movie was called??) and it didn't make me want to rush out and see it.

The Cooper Temple Clause are recording their third album at the moment *throws confetti* And I think that's it for random news. No actually, that's not true - there's a new Rogue limited series coming out in the summer. It had better be good this time, unlike the last one which was pretty crappy. Rogue has so much potential and they should actually wake up to it! Wish I actually had something important to say, but, as usual, nothing comes to mind!

LJ - I'm saying that I'll update pages, but actually doing it is a different thing =) I must admit I managed to go through my fanlisting applications and put the stuff up that I mentioned, but it's not much really. Updating properly can wait until I actually get some work done! And, woohoo! Partay in Texas *L*

Lee - thank you for administering such a beautiful beating to computer services

Listening: Melissa auf der Maur Auf Der Maur
Reading: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer Peggy of the Chalet School

*scowls* I am very unhappy. I've only been back in Galway for a few days and already I'm having some huge issues with Computer Services. They are in for it on Monday, let me tell you (closed on Friday, obviously). I still can't access my Project-Kenaz e-mail, even though I've already spoken to them about this. I just bought me a beautiful memory stick and I can't use that either... I can't really express how mad this makes me. Especially as I have a crap load of updates for various sites on the beautiful memory stick and now I can't actually upload them due to general computer-crapness.

On less-frustrating topics, my birthday has been and gone, and it was certainly a night to remember! Most of my family and friends managed to make it and we had a great time. I look fabulous (of course) and got to see lots of people I haven't seen in ages. I got lots of nice presents too =) Unfortunately, I got pumped full of different types of shots, was hideously ill and had to go to bed at 2am while the party continued until 7am! I can't wait to get the pictures back, and I might even put some up here for your viewing pleasure.

With the spoils of turning 21 I bought lots of stuff for my computer (not my University one, because that sucks and I hate it), but the one in my house =) I got a fancy-ass printer and scanner, as well as the memory stick, so I'm all excited. I can now scan from the privacy of my own room which is a thrill, let me tell you *L* Although now I'm a bit worried that I might get carried away and go a bit mad. Though if I can't get computer services to let me use my memory stick, none of the scanning results will ever make it to the internet *scowls again*

I have a bundle of birthday cards and I don't know what to do with them. I want to keep most of them, to remind me of the day I became a proper grown-up (the urge to go to America just so I can be like 'hell yeah, I'm 21!' is overwhelming), so I might make some kind of scrapbook or something. Any suggestions?

Thanks for all your comments on my last post - you guys are starting to make me thing that I've bitten off more than I can chew with the whole Ulysses thing, so stop freaking me out, please! *L* I haven't been near the internet since a day or two before my birthday, so I haven't been at anyone's blog. I should be making my rounds today or tomorrow though, so look out for my usual thought-provoking comments *g*

Oh, by the way, does anyone know who got the Forbidden Game (LJS) or Chalet School (EBD) fanlistings? I applied for the Forbidden Game one but got turned down *sniff* Still, it'll be good to have an actual updated fanlisting for it for a change!

On the web-project front, I'm still trying to get the energy to put up the rest of the content at Spirited Away, as well as my character analysis of Paige Guthrie at Perpetual Metamorph. My head is also teeming with ideas for the Dark Visions shrine I'm doing for Project-Kenaz and for a clique I'm going to start for Night World vampires versus Vampire Diaries vampires. Does anyone remember the thread about this in one of the old incarnations of The Devil's Playground? The idea came from that, really. I want to make it humourous, but I might need some help for the point of view of the Vampire Diaries vampires, so if anyone's interested, let me know. Also, I definitely want to pursue my idea of an LJS Top Trumps. This might work well with EBD too *ponders*

Let's all ignore the fact that I have a dissertation to research and write, shall we? 0_0