I AM FREE. Well, sort of, I still have a crappy report to write half-arsedly (now a word) for Friday, but exams are finished! I can return to doing fuck all! Glorious. It is unreal how much stress exams that don't even count towards my degree have caused me; this morning I kept waking up and drifting back off to sleep, and each time I woke up I was all SHOULD I BE IN AN EXAM RIGHT NOW and then realising that I'm done. I may indeed have failed one of them by repeatedly writing the wrong question number all over the margin and not realising until several hours afterwards, but I did manage to get my homeboys Saussure and Cicero into a single essay, so whatever, I'm happy.

I'm getting the train home on Friday and then coming back and then probably repeating this process several times between now and the 4th of July (when we actually get kicked out of the flat), so hello Bristol Parkway, I will be seeing much more of you this month. If, that is, it's possible to top last month.

I feel obliged to record that I had my first STEPHEN! experience (woefully uninformed: see here) during the livestream Monfils-Golubev match at Queens yesterday, and lo, I was cheered. I even said 'just coming!' to my computer, because that really is how cool I am.

Then Monfils pulled out and I sadfaced all over the place. The Murraypocalypse is coming.

Oh hey, I appear to be back in Exeter. Five glorious weeks, where did you go? Today was the first time I've seen 7.30am in quite a little while, but I didn't resent my 9 o'clock lecture nearly as much as I usually do because the guy taking it (who looked at least in his late forties) managed to somehow link Go Tell It On The Mountain to Gossip Girl. He was greeted by a lecture theatre full of 250 faces like O_o and looked slightly embarrassed, so that was mildly entertaining.

I have a fuckload of work this week and words cannot even begin to describe how little I care! The Catullus poem I'm meant to be writing about isn't even remotely smutty. POOR SHOW, MODULE.

I hauled my arse up the hill this morning for a 9am film screening only to find that our lecturer totally fails to operate any kind of technology, so she sent us all home. AWESOME. Apart from the fact that, you know, I could have actually had a lie-in. So, anyway, I decided to be ~organised~ and get my Suetonius course pack while I was up on campus, but I got to Claire's office and she was having some kind of blazing row with this lady, so I shuffled off and now I'm back, drinking much needed coffee and doing bugger all. In short: nothing productive has been done thus far today.

In slightly more exciting news, Pretty Bespectacled Boy turned up in my English lecture yesterday. Using my super powers of deduction, I have concluded that we do exactly the same course, which is weird because hardly anyone seems to do this combination. TWO THUMBS UP, LIFE.


Right, I'm off to kick back with those crazy Roman emperors and perhaps a few Romantic poets until 9pm, at which point I will make popcorn, turn on the footie and refuse to move for 90 consecutive minutes.

I joined my new English seminar group today.

There is this SUPER POSH guy in it called ACHILLES! He has a brother named SPARTACUS!

I can't see that this will ever stop being awesome. We were doing Pope and he started talking about epic and Iliadic heroes and then he was like, 'Achilles was a bit of a bastard' and the whole class lol'd and and and it was weeeeird.

So yeah, that's all I got.

I love listening to my dad playing the piano but

I AM TRYING TO WRITE MY ESSAY ON GREEKS N SHIT AND HE IS PLAYING THE SAME FOUR BARS OVER AND OVER AND OVER WITH THE LOUD PEDAL ON  AND I CAN FEEL IT REVERBERATING INSIDE MY SKULL ARGH WTF

I think I'm possibly the only person who can oversleep so spectacularly for an 11am lecture. I had no problem waking up, sans hangover, at 8.30am on Tuesday morning, after getting in at 4am, when I don't even HAVE a lecture. Bodyclock, thou art messed up.

I had high expectations for today, because Friday is generally pretty easy on the brain, until I started feeling like little guys were trying to hack their way out of my skull with blunt spoons. All my flatmates (I say all, I really mean both) have gone home for the weekend, and I suspect that they may have given me some sort of headachey flu as a parting gift.

Anyway, that was all fine and dandy, I went to my lecture and tried to put up with Madame Misery (who is, unfortunately, the only person I've spoken to more than twice in that module and so I'm pretty much bound to sitting with her for now, until I can befriend Pretty Bespectacled Boy, because hello! I'm shallow) and then went to get my beloved boots repaired, because I've done so much bloody walking around in the rain that the heels have just disintegrated. I got royally ripped off by the guy in the shop, but the chaps in my head were hammering away and I couldn't be bothered to argue so I went to Sainsbury's. BAD PLAN. Is it just people in Devon that like to walk incredibly slowly and stand in the very middle of aisles, completely oblivious to those of us with tennis matches to watch? To top it off, I got home and Andy Murray got to the the Masters Cup semis anyway, so I had to see his irritating face sullying the front page of the BBC website in all its pasty glory.

So! In order to counter Friday of Fail, this weekend I plan to kick back with the following people and things:

- Homer
- Adam & Joe
- Vogue
- Adrian Chiles
- A big box of Lemsip

ALSO. I found out the other day that the little sidestreet I sometimes use as a shortcut coming back from town is the street that JK Rowling based Diagon Alley on. Easily impressed, me.

So guess what time I actually woke up for my 9am seminar yesterday?

8.30. Taking into account that it takes at least 25 minutes to walk up the (practically vertical) hill to get to the campus, this was really pretty shit. I'm so glad I'm going home today, although there were train delays yesterday and I spent all the time I should have been reading The Communist Manifesto spying on the disgruntled commuters from the kitchen window.

( talking of the kitchen window ) 

It took me three weeks of being here to find out that Craig from downstairs went to the same college as me. We know practically all the same people, yet I've never seen Craig before in my life. BIZARRE.

We're having a Halloween party up here later :D
I wish the cleaning guy would hurry up and finish, I want to ice grotesque faces onto my cupcakes.

ESTOY EN LA UNIVERSIDAD.

So I've been here, what, two and a half weeks? And finally I have an internet connection. HAPPY DAYS, my friends. I was about as unimpressed at the IT department as David Villa is by just about everything, so I harrassed them daily until lo! Yesterday some guy appeared and poked stuff, and now I am free to catch up on tennis and Project Runway and resume my glorious life as a recluse!

Expect me to write something proper tomorrow, I think my washing is done. Rah, domesticity! *wavy hands*

In the meantime, f-list, does anyone have groundbreaking news that I should be aware of? Hell, even non- groundbreaking news. I may be a student now, but still - anything is more exciting than daytime tv.

It has just dawned on me that I'm leaving on Sunday. SUNDAY.

Alice and Laura and a bunch of others have already gone off and it sounds like they're all fine and dandy and having a whale of a time. People who are still knocking around back here are...excited. Like, really.

Um. I'm terrified. Am I meant to be excited? I have no desire to go whatsoever. I like my cosy little routine here, thank you very much. I'm also slightly worried by the fact that I a) have no saucepans, and b) seem to be arriving a day later than everyone else because on Saturday I'm Oxfording for Ben's graduation. On the upside, I've successfully redirected my tuition fees from Bristol so I might actually be able to, you know, do some learning, AND I've finished sewing my bunting, so my room is going to be like my very own budget homage to Cath Kidston and everyone will avoid me like the floral-print plague. So I can't cook, but I'm all set to accessorize my soft furnishings! Hell yes, I have my priorities right.

Tonight I'm pubbing to say goodbye to my favourite Ukrainian. But right now, I'm going to make some risotto and watch Project Runway because my life is just that wild.

I don't often dream (or at least remember my dreams), but when I do, they are full of what-the-fuckery.

Last night I dreamed that myself and Iker Casillas were in a pub doing battle with a man with a china plate for a face because he was holding tiny plasticine models of my cousins hostage.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THIS CAME FROM.

Yesterday the weather was gorgeous for once, so Ash, Jake, Sara and I went on a mini adventure. Much fun was had.
We stopped off at Asda on the way to buy various foodstuffs and drove a very scenic route to Lechlade, where we had a picnic on the riverbank, Famous Five stylee. Then we had the bright idea of hiring a rowing boat (because really, I'd been watching the Olympic rowing and thought 'how hard can it be?') and utterly failed at making any watery progress. Ash managed to row us into a weeping willow, Jake made unhelpful comments and Sara looked worried. At this point we made a point of saying loudly "OH YES CHAPS, LET'S DOCK HERE AS INTENDED" so that all the accomplished canoeists wouldn't snigger at us bumping along the side of the bank and looking generally pathetic.

Cricklade show is tomorrow, but Orange Pony has been misbehaving something awful for the last few weeks so I don't think I'll bother taking him. Am toying with the idea of taking Charlie so that Sophie's little sister can ride around on him, which means I really do have to go and sort out whatever the hell is going on with his mane.

I'm gutted that the Olympics are over. I need something pointless to fill my days with!
...oh, what's that? The US Open starts tomorrow?
WHY YES, I am excited! \0/

I got into Exeter! With AAAB in English, Art, Spanish and Classical Civ respectively :)
I totally screwed up the Aeneid paper and got a D for that module; evidently Aeneid: The Musical messed with my brain a little.

Last night we went out and painted the town red in celebration :) My feet may never recover! I got in at 4am, which doesn't really bode well for getting up early as SOME FOOL didn't think about timezones when planning the Olympic tennis final.

I am the epitome of domesticity today. I baked! I cleaned! I even started dressmaking. All this is only because it rained buckets today and there was nothing else to do. I couldn't work out whether I wanted most to curl up into a tiny ball or stretch out and sprawl on the floor; an interesting conundrum for a wet Tuesday afternoon.

On the horse front, I've been schooling like a mad thing because the boys have now started what I'm calling The Regime. Even Remus hasn't escaped, despite the fact that he's forgotten that he has four legs and that he can use them to actually move about with.
We took Orange Pony to Brinkworth on Sunday to pose. I went with the mentality that if he's not going to actually jump, he's damn well going to look pretty. However, our facade of ~*class and sophistication*~ was shattered when... he got the hiccups. No kidding, I swear he was hiccupping! So from there on it went downhill, and all-out silliness ensued. Anyway, I did manage to pop him over the practise jump a few times, so all was not lost.

Also: I'm looking forward to the Olympics far too much. I can see it now - I'll lounge infront of the television watching Olympic tiddlywinks or some other equally ridiculous event and get nothing done. I'm finding my sudden interest in sport incredibly disconcerting.

In short -

Hours worked: 24
Strangers befriended: 5
Anglo-Chinese dub fusion acts seen: 1 (Jah Wobble! He is srs bsns, folks)

We spent our three shifts giving out wristbands to people in flower-covered hippy vans, chatting to security and, bizarrely, warbling along to strains of Fairytale of New York as sung by Shane McGowan himself with a couple of really nice guys that called themselves and everyone else 'geezer'. Then we discoed into the night with said 'geezers', beer was exchanged for doughnuts and that was that.

And in real, boring life, I've managed to locate me some Ainsley Harriot risotto! Hell yes, it was worth a trip to Asda.

Oh, Roger.
You are suave, you are debonair, you wear a gold-trimmed cardie and look vaguely like Jimmy Carr in some lights.

Oh, Rafa.
You are hamster-like, you fiddle with your shorts, and you are obsessive about the placement of your water bottles.

I love me a Roger-Rafa final, but ohoho. It was even more epic than last year. This I did not expect.

Whenever Wimbledon comes around I'm seized by an inexplicable urge to bake. I bought some goji berries on a whim yesterday - apparently they're meant to make you live longer - but they taste fairly foul by themselves, so I stuck them atop my cupcakes in pretty patterns instead.

( behold...cupcakes of immortality! )
I'm psyching myself up for a good deal of flailing come 2pm. Oh my.

There's only so long I can twiddle my thumbs whilst waiting for the awesome-fest that is Wimbledon day 9 to recommence.

I was rather enjoying watching (read: swooning over Ancic) the first match earlier on, and then the rain has to go and ruin the fun. I kind of hope that short hair means Fed has lost all his power like Samson, and that Ancic will storm towards a seemingly impossible victory, thus providing some semi-final eyecandy, but it's looking unlikely. I have little faith in the Pretty.
In other news: I really dislike Andy Murray. How unpatriotic. Sure, he's a good player and all that, but he really is the most miserable and generally irritating bloke around. I'm quite happy for him to get his arse royally kicked by Rafa later on.

Unrelatedly! I applied to be a volunteer steward at Womad this month (I almost wrote 'next month', and then said 'crikey', which made me laugh because I don't think I've ever said that in my life). I am succeeding fantastically in my quest to almost-but-not-quite-do-real-work.

This is what happens when Wimbledon starts. I lie on the sofa all day and eat. Can't pretend I don't love it ;)
I should get something done. I haven't quite got used to the fact that I don't have to do anything, which is odd. A bunch of us went out last week for celebratory partying (amazingly, Swindon town centre on a Friday night = not as horrific as you'd think!), but other than that, I've done bugger all.

Tonight there's some sort of shindig at Tom's, which should be fun, aside from the fact that I have to drive there and I'm perpetually worried that I'll somehow end up at the magic roundabout. I hate roundabouts at the best of times, but this one just haunts my dreams.

The BBC don't normally suck, but they do today for taking Nadal's match off in favour of showing Andy Murray. Muy mal.

One more exam to go - English, on Thursday. I have no idea how I can revise for it. English revision in general stumps me.

However! I'm now free from the most inane subject of them all: General Studies! In order to counter the fact that, this morning, I wasted three valuable hours of potential snoozing, I walked down to town at lunchtime and it was all sunny and lovely. I bought a bunch of baking ingredients and twiddly cake bits, and then had a total brain failure when a little old lady asked me where the Brewery Arts Centre was. In the end I couldn't explain, so I pretty much walked her there and we had a nice chat about Cirencester and the abbey grounds and I entirely forgot to mention the tallest hedge in Europe.

Did I really just post photos of cupcakes, rainbows, and baby birds?

I think I did.

Oooh. Start building the ark.

I was looking out of the bus window this morning and couln't tell where the fields ended and the lakes began. Fun times. Perhaps they'll close college, considering most people live around Gloucester. Is it too much to hope? Probably. Besides, I have a General Studies exam on Friday and they all seem to want us to waste three hours of our life writing a load of bollocks about parking restrictions.
Most of my General Studies resentment is spawned from the fact that it's scheduled on my lunch hour on Thursday and our teacher has the teaching ability of a spoon ¬_¬

However! Kirstie & Phil tonight :D
Or, as I just excitedly yelled to mum, Phirstie and Kil!