Tell me where it all went wrong and I'll pick up the pieces

It just sounded like a good title! So the crazy student house now has its own website http://www.auberginecentral.com/index.html This was set up by house mate sam and really does show some of the horrors we've had to cope with! I'll post pics too after this. But things are seeming to settle down in the aubergine now. We made it through the first talk about bill last night! No one put up a fight or moaned over it and everyone is now paying someone for all the bills in october, november, december and though this is a sudden loss of of money to me and Abi, it has to be done. But how we're going to eat for the next month is a mystery to me! But I'm sure we'll find something! So I'm currently in my room, listening to pardise lost, who are a cool band! (But I've read the play/book also) waiting for a parent to turn up and take me home! Not been there in two weeks and no doubt a lot has happened. So I'm looking forward to that.

Other news;

I've a lot of uni work a head of me. lots of things due in the last two weeks before we break for xmas. the 1st december is just over 4 weeks away and so I've 5/6 weeks to do a 10 minutes presention on a 1700 play with the theory of feminism, 1,500 word annotated biblography about the realism in robinson cruose, 1,000 word reading as a writer essay which is on the poet cliff yates, 15 minute stage script with 1,000 word self-assessment and annotated biblography, lastly 4 poems about a theme to be present in a creative style and with the above added things! And then, after xmas 6 poems from class as above also! so I'm busy...very busy...

Too busy to be going out, also moneyless. :( but still you need to let your hair down and last monday night I went to a quiz night and they have prizes for the best team name and my team won. I won't write on here what the name was because to win you had to have a very un-innocent name. but let's just say that jelly babies rule! So I better post up pics of the prizes too!

This is me with the prizes!

So we had new fire alarms fitted and not only was this a pain they kept beeping for 24 hours every minute whilst they installed themselves!

we also had to have door slammers fitted on every door. these are a pain as they bang so loudly they make you jump and we now have to waste time slowly shutting our doors to stop this from happening!

The broken cupboard door, still not been fixed!

Sam's notices is funny tho!

I had a good title but I forgot it.....

I've been busy! In fact very busy, no stop busy really. Things have been happing so fast I can't believe its nearly thrusday already. Where does the week go? So an update is needed I think! So I'm typing from the uni house (The Aubergine still!) my room in my bean bag chair, my laptop balanced on my chair and right now Pretty women from Sweeney Todd is playing on my media player. Also the beeping of my new fire alarm, the one in the hallway and next door keep going off every few seconds. The battaries are changing, but I don't get why they have to beep because of this but they have been doing it since 10am! I've kinda got use to it now. Anyway, tomrrow a poet is coming to poem writting class and I'm reading his poems. I'm also talking on msn and playing my new addiction- cafe world! on facebook. :) Also new with the house is the door slammers, which are a pain, but a must. Still it feels like our lives are being stopped by them, no more can you leave your door open for a friend to wonder in....I've read a novel in four days-Robinson Crusoe-I liked it and really its all about one man's search for God. I read Dr Fastus too and that was good. I wrote an essay about the treament and plot of a radio script I'd pretained to write-that's what you had to do- and I've just remember my other one that I need to print out for tomrrow because its due in friday but I'm not in uni then. So I was going to hand it in tomorrow. Next update: I've wrote no more on R3, I'm rewriting the sad story my friend told me and I've written some more poems. At the minute uni is all work and play! I'm so looking forward to the weekend-I'll take a break from work and chill out with my best friend!

cold in October

Okay, so it's kind of a silly pun really, of course its cold in October! You say that word to people and they think of the cold and damp, of the leaves turning to bright colours of red, gold and brown and then falling off the trees. October is also the height of Autumn really, because you can really feel the cold now as the last of summer's heat is drained out of the earth. You can smell it in the air too, you know things are changing around you! Beside from that then and the pun, I've a bad cold or what the doctor has called..... *Sneezes*.... ah, sorry......I'll just wipe the snot off the keyboard.......It's been nine days now since I fell ill and really its been more like having a mild flu then a cold! I've spent most of my time moaning, whilst slummed on the sofa watching day time TV and wondering who in their right mind really watches this stuff 24/7? I was so bored I turned to watching recordings of things I'd missed whilst being at uni-yeah, my TV is still broke-and being on the PC; random stuff on the Internet and conversations with friends. I played on the WII yesterday-blom blox until my arm was sore I'd become bored of hitting things. Lately though I've become addicted to watching my dad playing Bioshock on the Xbox 360. Okay, so I'm not really sure what is happening or the story, but so far I've come to understand that two men have gone off and created this world were taking this medicine called 'Adam' makes you superhuman and there's another called 'Eve' which helps to control it. So all this people have taken this medicine and it's changed their DNA so they're no longer human and the two guys who built this world have had a falling out. So 'you' as this weird, crazy, gun wielding guy has to go on these missions to solve things-whilst killing a lot of these 'splicers' which are the people now changed by the 'Adam'-to help, I guess, close down the world. There are also things called Elite bouncers and Little sisters, which is were this whole game gets a little bit too creepy for me, because these bouncers look like men wearing very old fashioned diving suits and they have huge guns! They are used to protect the little sisters who are little girls possessed, who go around collecting the blood of dead people. Part of the missions is to save so many of these little girls. My brother says there's more to it then that, but dad's not got there yet. So I guess I'll just have to keep watching him play!
Before I finish this, I must announce the birth of my 5Th second cousin! A baby girl called Summer Louise and she was born Thursday 15Th at 5.38am and she weighted just over 8 pounds. She was three weeks early, but she and mum are doing really well. I can't wait to meet her! Speaking of which I must be off to make a baby basket for her now and also get some more rest.

First weekend home after 2 weeks at uni.

Okay, so I've been living in the house or the Aubergine as it was nicknamed and has still stuck, in the middle of ormskirk town, 20 minutes walk from Edge Hill Uni, for under two weeks now. I guess I've been meaning to write, but I've not had the wanting or the inspiration. I've taken a huge break from really writing after I finished R2 as well, this has not helped, but was something I so needed to do. So now I'm finished in uni for the weekend and I know I'm going to have to do some creative writing work- 6 poems and a 15 minute script are needed for me to pass this first term. I also face a ton of reading, which I knew, but since more books have been added to the lists and I've still not finished MD5 though I promised myself I would, I'm kinda dreading it. But still that's life as a student!
Generally things with the house have been good, though one of the guys is stuck to his girlfriend and there really isn't a time when I don't see him with out her. Not something I'd normally be bothered about and I'm only just a bit jealous of their love, but they are noisy just talking to each other and they are prone to starting an argument over the smallest, simplest of things and then saying it was nothing! She's always around now and she just bugs me with her childish ways-she's like 22/22. Plus she really wants a baby and that annoys me because she's just so child like in her ways- like a 6 year old really! always demanding things and doing nothing of any help, just creating more mess-so how does she expect to rise a child herself? I guess she's just looking at the cute, loving and bonding side of things, not the time, money, energy, creativity, passion and strength it takes to rise a new life in this harsh world. I bet though she'll have a baby and some where in the world there's a great couple who would make the perfect parents and they'll never have a baby. God is strange like that, maybe he's testing us all in his own way....
Moving on to the next house problem! The 2ND girl I'm meant to be living with is currently not here and living with someone else in ormskirk. She's hardly talking to us about anything and its frustrating us all because we really don't know what she's up too. To make matters worse, we can't do anything about it because its all down to her and the landlord! At the minute we strongly believe that she plans to tell us that she doesn't want to move in with us and then we might end up with someone else- who's worse, living with us.....or we might end up with a really great and cute guy! I can dream right????? Still we're waiting with held breath for her word and it feels like we are puppets in a box waiting to jumped into her hands whenever she comes close. I'm rebelling! I'm not being her toy and I'm so not covering up for her when the landlord shows up in a few minutes. I'm gonna tell him that she's not been living with us and she's cut all the commutations off with all of us. Which is the truth.
Anything else to add? Not really, beside from a good weekend at home. I've been busy shopping! and I've had my hair cut too now. I've had fun with my family and I'm not really looking foreward to going back to the house tonight now!

Enrolment day!

So I enrolled at uni today for my second year! Happy, glad it was sorted out fast too, just the queuing was bad. Just lots of people in the wrong lines and the lines going on forever. Would be easier if just one person could enrol you, but it takes at lest 4 if not more! Or why can't we enrol online? just confirm everything and click go and then just pick up cards and stuff when we get there? People just waste their lives in queues, just wanting to get to places and things, live would be better if there were no queues!
I had to go and see the house too and its much better then last time now. My room is my own at last! and it may be the 3rd biggest in the house but I don't care, just the views outside my window and my white floorboards....its twice the size of my room at home. I just have to get all my stuff into it now! That's on Saturday, my moving in day. Till then I've to clean my room, pack my stuff and pack the car. Then there's a huge list of things to do at uni and the house. But I'll just take these things as they come.
I can't wait now to start my uni live once more, looking forward to it now. Helps that I finished my novel now and most of my Eng lit reading. Feeling tried, so I'm off to bed early.

The loss of another password yet again!

Why is it we just forget the passwords we put on things? They are there to protect our stuff in this crazy world of online hacking, but when you come to log in to something after not using it for a while, don't you get that dreadful feeling of 'what if I've forgotten my password and I'm locked out forever'? Luckily, half the time you remember the password, or you have it wrote down somewhere; on your phone, notebook or on a scrap of paper stuck under the table with a piece of chew gum. But in that rare case when your password is lost to that land of never ending lost things, you can just hit the 'send me my password now!' button or the 'reset our password' and once its done and you have your new password, you can just sit back, breath out that deep breath you've been holding that's been making you turned blue and began to do whatever it was on said website that you thought you'd have lost your account on. Thanks for that! Anyway moving on. It's only a week and two days now till I got back to uni! Kinda scared but excited too. Soon my crazy blog can be about uni again and not my boring summer. Things are not going so good with the house though. I came back from my wet, windy and wild week camping in a field in Anglesey, to discover that the house was not really how it should have been. Once again its left me wondering what cruel twist of fate decided to dish out this much stress over a house to me and poor house-mates. Would rolling the dice of Fate again make it better? I don't know, but one thing is for sure; its not over yet! It's going to take a while for peace to come to that house, but I'm as positive as ever! I won't let the house bet me...even if it does turn out to be some mad killer house and everyone who lives there ends up dying. Hopefully things will look up soon. I've finished Sense and Sensibility now and I'm sorry to say it was a bad book and needs to be burnt. I've also read the three Jacobean witchcraft plays and they weren't so bad. Should read my Shakespeare now, but I've had enough of reading stuff I must read, so I'm taking a break and doing some of my own novel writing. Though that has its down side at the minute! I must make all these stories connect some how....gonna take a huge plan and a lot of Iron Maiden to get me through this!

Has become addicted to knitting!

When people think about the word knitting, they imagine a bunch of old grannies sitting in a room together with tea and cakes, busy knitting scarfs and jumpers. These, they then send off to relatives as Christmas presents, which are then shoved at the back of a cupboard and forgotten till the next cleaning day. When discovered the knitted item is tossed to a Charity shop, perhaps never or only wore once, because it is too big/small/bright/childish or just out of fashion. For a long time now I've known that knitting is a dying skill. This is mostly because people don't want to learn it or think its just too hard for them to understand. Also because in the world of today when we can just pop down to a shop or order straight from the Internet, all the clothes one could ever want are easy to buy, (and often so cheap it makes you wonder how shops can really afford to sell items for less then the cost of the material it was made from!) so there's no need to make your own clothes like there has been in the past.

I remember going to primary school in jumpers and a pinny that my mum had knitted and feeling so different to the other children who were wearing new factory made things. She'd knit other jumpers for me as well and I guess because I was young, I had no taste for her home-made clothes and this lead her to stop knitting for awhile

My mum has recently picked up knitting again and over the past few years she has made a lot of things for me, herself and my youngest brother and she's even subscribed to a knitting magazine! Mostly these are things like jackets for the summer and winter, which look really nice and get lots of compliments from people. Baby clothes for my cousin's children or her friends and she's currently keeping some for mine and my brothers' children in the near future. Fingerless gloves, cuffs and socks have been her hardest to make creations and she has had a lot of fun knitting toys from Alan Dart's patterns; two cats, a witch, Jack O'lantern, a pirate, a frog prince and Yuletide Gnomes.

She taught me to knit awhile ago and I can purl (Basically knitting backwards) too, but because it took me a long time to do these skills correctly she has never taught me how to cast on and cast off (putting the wool on the needles and taking it off). So last week we choice the pattern to make the Christmas presents for my uni friends (because the Yuletide Gnomes we knitted last year went down a treat.) and because it was so simple to do she taught me how to cast on and off. Now I'm busy making lots of knitting and practising with different wools with my new learnt skills! At the minute I'm also learning to decrease (were you put to stitches together and make the knitting smaller) which can some times be tricky, but I'm getting the hand of it now.

So Knitting has become a passion for me now and it really does run in my family! I've many memories of my Nana knitting blankets and hats whilst I was curled in front of her gas fire watching TV on cold winter nights. My dad's mum also use to knit and so did my mum's great aunt (who taught my mum because she knits left handed) I feel happy to carry on what I see as a tradition for my family and hopefully my friends will just love their presents this year!

This is Willamina witch and Jack O' lantern, The Yuletide Gnomes!
sitting on my bookcase at uni and
both were made by my mum.

Ally and her Gnome