Monday, March 6th, 2006
We went back to look at the house we’ll be moving into this summer but the people were out and we couldn’t get inside. We took a camera so I can get photos to show everyone and give us a better idea of what it looks like and what we can do with it. I’m quite excited about moving in and I’m definitely gonna be more organised next year money-wise. Believe me, trying to budget and live alone and buy everything yourself is harder than it initially seems.
I did just see that Leeds University Library, which looks amazing, is hiring evening workers. I’d be completely down for that, and at just over £6 an hour for an 18 hour week would be over £100 a week, which would be so so so so good. The main issue is that they want people to work over summer too and I’ll be back in Nottingham for July, I’d guess, maybe longer. I don’t know.
Speaking of going back there, it’s both my friend/bandmate Rich’s birthday (20) and my Dad’s (52) in the week of March 23rd. I want to be there for both, but if I got this job I don’t know how it’d work. Also, I want to surprise my Dad and show up like I did for my sister, but Rich’s birthday stuff is three days before Dads’, so what do I do in between? Also, my family are gonna be in Leeds on March 22nd because Katie (my sister) has an open day for the University, she’s applied here too and got an offer. I could get a lift back to Nottingham with them, but if my Dad’s gonna be there, which he probably will, it’ll ruin the whole surprise idea. I’d rather get a lift than get the stupid train, which I have to make changes on since there isn’t a direct line (for a 70 mile trip, blah).
In happier news, I got my overall grades for last semester’s modules. To pass you needed a 40, and they averaged out the results from our essays and our exam work. I got:
Reading Prose: 62
Language, Text and Context: 63
Both of these are 2.1s, which was the score I’ve gotten for every piece of English work I’ve done. I’m pretty damn pleased with them, without sounding too smug about it, I beat all of my friends, and I think I’ve done quite a well. A First would have ruled but I know I didn’t put that much effort in, and to be honest, the first year of my degree doesn’t go towards the final grade, so it wouldn’t have meant all that much anyway. I also got 14/17 for my third Computer programming coursework, I’m a total geek.
It’s been crazy this week with uni work. I had my programming stuff due on Wednesday, then an essay on poetry due Friday, and I have another essay on Medieval Literature due Tuesday. Everyone else has till Friday for that one, I feel so cheated. There’s also a guy in my Poetry seminar who irritates me hugely. He’s one of those big, handsome, muscle-bound athletic southerners, probably from a private school, who constantly wears this smug look. He showed up this week with a teasingly-opened shirt showing off his chest hair, and every point he made was a really basic observation dressed up to sound like some genius statement about the poetry. Last week, he completely repeated a point I’d literally just made, but in different words, proving the moron doesn’t even consider me worth listening to. He also pronounced the word ‘hyperbole’ “hyper-bowl”, which made me snigger into my poetry anthology.
Recently I went out with some people I met before starting here on newstudent.org. We spoke about music and realised we had similar taste, and we arranged to go to a gig together, which never really happened. Since then, I ended up meeting Nat(alie) in my creative writing class, who was one of the kids on the site. I talk to the other two guys on IM, and one of them, Evan, expressed interest about forming a band up here, since he plays guitar. I told him about Natalie, who plays drums, and we all met up tonight at a pub or two, along with David, the other person, who doesn’t play anything. I’ve been hanging out with Natalie a lot anyway in the writing class, and I like her a lot, she’s quirky and funny and we get on well. David was cool, we also got on well and I think we’ll see a bit more of each other. Evan was quiet, probably because he was the only one who didn’t know anyone else before the meeting (Natalie knew David too beforehand), but he started to speak a bit more towards the end. We’re on the lookout for a bassist then we’re gonna try to organise some kind of practice/jam session somehow. Based on our influences it looks like we’ll be playing something with post-rock/post-hardcore/rock influence, maybe a little prog, since our favourite bands include Sigur Rós, The Mars Volta, Muse, At The Drive-In and stuff like that. I’m excited!
I went to see THE UNSEEN play with SICK OF IT ALL on Tuesday. I went alone so the show was a bit lonely; having to listen in to other people’s conversations between bands just for something to do, but I had fun. I enjoyed The Unseen a lot, they were fun to watch and Sick Of It All were just intense. I don’t know much, if any, of their stuff, but I know they’re a good band and well-respected, hence me going along, and they didn’t disappoint. They played pretty loud though, and I was right by the speaker, so my ears rang for a few days afterwards, which was worrying.
In other news, I was gonna make a short film of a tour of my flat up here, only to find my video camera is broken! The LCD panel displays weird blurry marks, I dunno what’s wrong, you can’t see anything discernible. Add to that my normal camera, which broke last year for no reason that I can see, and I have zero photography equipment. I’m planning on bringing my enlarger up to Leeds when we move into the house so I can get back into photo developing, which is good, but not without a camera! Also worrying is that we’re planning to film JOESUS III over Easter, so we have no camera! The third one is going to be amazing, it’s gonna be set in the future, I can’t wait.