Contact has just been made with the extra-terrestrial, celestial-bound vessel containing the lifeform Alexander Kriventsov.

Be thankful none of you will know the hardship of trying to have a good shave around a cleft chin. I just shaved and am now cut to buggery (21 times!!), but I was rushing, so it beats the few cuts I can't avoid from the cleft. Still, on the plus side, this weeks beard was almost black. I sometimes wished I'd grow slower but more black, but I think quicker and blond/ginger is better because having that wispy black fuzz is a sign of the lower classes, and I'm desperately close to being tarred by the same brush as them as it is. I think I'm currently tarred with the Polish brush though.

Today was an average day. My boss, who is a legend but a total ditz, wasn't in until 12, yet had scheduled four simultaneous meetings at 9am, all with people who had travelled really far, and, had forgotten to arrange cover for one of her other members of staff (she's head of five including me) who was off today. So, not only was I doing my new job (of finance jockey) and covering for the absent girl (who is receptionist/post/admin/telephonist, but I then had to deal with four irate Londoners who'd travelled to Manchester for a meeting that was destined not to happen. Still, ~£200 for four days work is nothing to sneeze at. I just pray they give me more days/weeks/months - it's not my fault they can't shut up about how great I am.

The sky is grey and making an elongated voiceless postalveolar fricative as the rain falls onto the clouds floating through the woods at the bottom of the hill.

I've spent the evening reading Herodotus' account of the Battle of Thermopylae, The 300 Spartans, Leonidas and Xerxes. Tomorrow I'll be reading some of the easier parts of the Anabasis of Xenophon: 'The sea, the sea!'.
Here are all the things I want to do before the end of the 09/10 academic year. I realise that the chances of doing all the ones abroad are next-to-none, so foreign wishes are pic-n-mix:

( Everything I want to do :) )

I spent today being working in the finance dept. of the pharmaceutical company my mum works at, crunching numbers, compiling invoices and creating a stock list of all chemicals held by the company. I was flabbergasted at the VAT alone of one chemical in particular was well over £150,000!! (This was 1kg of L-mannose monophosphate) if anyone is interested). After getting burned in the car on the way here, there was torrential rain today, and now, as I sit here with some earth-shatteringly amazing Prodigy on, in which the bassline leaps out of the speakers and soars above the grindingly aggressive rhythm that fills the house with the sonorous reverberations that make the hairs on my neck tingle, and with the sky clearing up above me, I'm looking forward to lots of things, but I miss my friends so much. It'd be nice to have a circle of friends here in Manchester, but nonetheless, Nikki&James and Nicola&Jasmine will be visited by me very soon :) [The description may have been a bit full on but I liked it!]
I'm thinking of renting a caravan with Nikki and James, and maybe staying in a Village Hotel with Nic&Jazz, just for old-times sake...

Liian monilla kielillä, ei ole tarpeeksi aikaa. Luennoitsijani on kerjäämisen mua jatkamaan tutkimaan klassikoita ensi vuonna. Tää oo liian paljonko?

ME AND THESE GUYS HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TOGETHER SOON!

Gökyüzü gri renge bürünmüştü. Tarlafaresi Tonton bir gökkuşağı resmi yaptı. Annesi ona, "Gerçek bir gökkuşağı yapmak için 6 renk gerekir," dedi. Tonton neşeyle, "Önce mor renk," dedi.
Sonra kağıdın üstüne bir yarım daire çizdi. "Mavi, yeşil, sarı, turuncu, kirmizi. İşte oldu anneciğim, resmi bitirdim. şimdi, onu asacağım." Tonton odadan dışarı çıktı, sonra geri geldi. "Onu asacam," dedi. "Peki ama resmim nerede?" Annesi muzip bir ifadeyle, "Galiba gökyüzüne gitti," dedi. Tonton hemen pencereye baktı ve gökyüzünü hayranlıkla seyretti: "Oh! Benim gökkuşağım!" diye bağırdı. Annesi ona, "Yağmurdan hemen sonra güneş görebilirsin," diye açıkladı. Sonra Tonton'un yaptığı resmi gizlediği yerden çıkardı. "Al," dedi. "Seninki de onun kadar güzel!"
Tonton, "Hava yağmurlu ve gri renkli olduğunda onu pencereme asacağım," dedi.

I'm going partly friends-only. No comments in Russian please.

I'm a bit worried that I might be a little too lackadaisical about my exam this afternoon. I'm just glad I can leave early if possible. I'm getting very excited about Matt's degree show too. I looked back at his past projects on his Flickr this morning and got all sentimental :) and also remembered the painstaking attention to detail that went into each one.* His degree show is going to be amazing. Yeeeeeeeee!!!!

* I remember consoling him after coming back from a tutorial, because his tutor had told him the angle the model was looking into the camera from gave the picture the opposite meaning to what he was intending, Now he's third year, it's second nature to him, and it's so obvious when you think about it. I've had so many discussions about sex and active/passiveness this year. I'm quite bored of the subject lol.

Hallo kinder. My bed is in the direct plane of the gloriously shining sun. I've come back from my boyfriend's after watching The Politics Show in bed and then the first half of the Monaco grand prix (and also agreeing to go next year, eeeep!). I'm now back at mine. All my housemates are out so I have the choons blaring, and im tanning myself on my bed with an ice-cold glass of coke. I just watched a drop of condensation run the length of the glass.
⊗ I have my golf shorties on
⊗ I have a cold drink
⊗ I feel very happy
⊗ I miss Matthew already (stupid boy having to work :[ )
⊗ My friends are all at home. Buggah!

( I was bored )
I'm also totally incapable of stopping listening to >this< - good song :D

I really don't appreciate being woken up just as a scantily clad Jonny Wilkinson is about to tell me he wants to keep me company in bed!!!

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Joskus, toivotan että ryömisin jäähän ja mä siellä jäisin. Aurinko ei paistanut jään alle, mutta joka päivä Matt kanssani paistaa.

I wanted to post about it yesterday, but it still hadn't quite sunk in. I've passed my labs module. The undergraduate labs manager (who I used to think was a total bitch until I met her) was lovely and e-mailed me to say that I had passed, and that I just had some incomplete paperwork. Oh happy days. I must be better than I thought.... I'm actually decent in labs. This is a great spurring on for next year, which, without wanting to sound like an after school special, might just be my year.

What's even better is having my mum say she's proud of me for the first time in ages. That felt really nice.

I came home from Matt's this morning to discover this (with a little letter) waiting for me. I think we all know what that means.

:D

After English, German is the most used language in the scientific world, with 40% of the World's scientific journals being written in German, Angewandte Chemie being the best example, and you remember the trouble I was having getting onto the German course a few months back? I find out tomorrow if I may start the September enrollment of the intensive German course. Yes, my friends, it might just actually happen. I'm not even bothered about how geeky it makes me that such a thing is a big deal to me. And I doubt I'm going to get to go and study abroad - my degree just isn't designed for that. But at least it will give me an impressive boost to my CV - Jaaaaaaaa.

It's so wonderful to be home. On Friday my mum picked me up from the train station and we spent the whole evening gorging on yummies and cider while catching up on detail. Yesterday I woke up and we had a leisurely breakfast before seeing my grandma and auntie (who live at the bottom of the valley (you wouldn't think it was Manchester!) and my bons-viveurs grandad and his wife took me out for a gorgeous meal. Today, my mum and her boyfriend took me with them to Ikea for a showercurtain and we came back with more Kanelbullar!!! The two best parts are that:
---  A) my boyfriend is coming to stay over
---  B) I saw the first summertime view out of my bedroom window :)