It's Summer, But That Doesn't Mean Holidays

*wink*

I don't have a summer job; nay, I have not been so fortunate. There is, however, an exam taking place in August that needs to be studied for, and a home essay for English Grammar 2. Furthermore...the tiny little detail that I only received a 2 on my BA thesis. The grade ought to be at least a 3 for me to feel anywhere near comfortable, and not only because I am so self-critical—it's also because in order to continue on to do an MA I need an average grade of 3 or higher in Intermediate Studies, and with such a low grade on my thesis, it's looking unlikely. Had I started at the university a couple of years later than I did, it would also have been a requirement to have at least a 3 for the thesis in addition to the aforementioned average. Fun, aye?

Honestly, when I received the e-mail containing my thesis supervisor's comments and the final grade, I was crushed. As in, started crying uncontrollably, that sort of thing. You don't need to hear about that, though. It took a few moments, but I calmed down and am now resolved to do what needs done.

Thus, some of my time before September shall be spent furiously revising the thesis. I mentioned in my previous entry that I might post the whole thing here, but until it has been significantly improved, that will not be happening. I'm sure you'll survive.

As usual, I'm in Helsinki for much of the summer, staying in my old room at my folks' place. There's a fairly long-winded project underway to clean it, and has been for a while now. My current task is to re-organise the bookshelf. After that, I think I'm going to attack the desk area.

It's not all work, though: I get to be with Laura, to attend Helsinki Pride and Ropecon, aaaaand to... GO TO PARIS WITH MY MUM! We're planning to travel pretty much right after Ropecon, in the junction of July and August, and we'll be there for about a week. I'll have to brush up on the little French I've managed to learn thus far, but that won't be too much trouble. Really looking forward to it.

There you have it, a general sort of summer update. I'll try to blog once or twice a week from now on, but no promises!

Insert Expletives Here

Squirrely terrace guest.

Oh dear. Deadline for my BA thesis is approaching at an extremely alarming rate. Am I going to get it ready on time? Fuck yes. I'll work myself down to the bone if need be. At this point, though, I'm not so sure of the quality. It is really, really, really important for the sake of my current plans for the future that I get at least a 3 out of it. (Our grading system being 1-5; 1 = passable, 5 = excellent.)

AAAAAAAGGHHH.

I shall possibly maybe post the whole thing here on this blog once I'm done with it. Perhaps. Anyway, that's what's going on with me at the moment. There is going to be a more interesting update in a week or two, okay? Okay.

Bye. ._.

Sudden Summer and Other Observations

Summer arrived last Friday after about a day or two of spring. I'm serious. Temperatures just suddenly went up; before that it had still been rather cool. Not that I'm complaining much. I like that it's warm now... but my body doesn't know what to make of this. It feels like I'm melting at 20°C, which previously has been close to an ideal temperature for me. Then again, I've been more sensitive to heat since that one case of heatstroke I had a couple of years ago. Wasn't much fun. Ah well. This weather also doesn't help the near-constant sensation of thirst I've been experiencing ever since I began taking Sertraline. But I guess that's a small price to pay for feeling more balanced. :)

Now, a brief musical interlude:

This song was played to us in DevLit (in the lectures last autumn, not when I took them before... I'll get round to talking about that mess somewhere below) and I immediately liked it, so it stayed in my head afterwards. Perhaps I ought to look for more mediaeval songs to listen to.

I don't listen to nearly as much music as I used to before Jussi and I moved in together. That's actually one of the bigger gripes I have about co-habiting. Otherwise, miscellaneous relationship snags notwithstanding, the situation suits me. I'm not even sure I would know how to live completely on my own. I've never had to. As much as I hated living with flatmates and would have preferred to have the entire space to myself, I don't know that I would have dealt with it very well. It's way too easy for me to slide into full hermit mode when alone.

Apparently, the medication I started a bit over a month ago should also help with the social stuff. I have yet to notice a marked improvement in that regard, but I do handle being stressed out a lot better, and when I start feeling glum I can pull myself back from the spiral that would lead me to suicidal thoughts. I lacked that ability before. I still get bad moments, but they are fewer, and the black is not quite so black anymore.

This, by the way, is where I keep my happy pills:

When I saw these tins at a store where they sell all kinds of cute little stuff for really cheap, I decided I want to store the meds in an adorable box instead of popping one out from the slip every night. I really like it better this way.


So. Literary and Linguistic Developments 500–1660, also known as DevLit. I originally attended the lectures back in the autumn of 2010, passed the exam the following January, and stupidly left the essay to dangle even after receiving an extension all the way into the end of June. Silly, silly girl. As a result, the course remained hanging for some time until I finally came to a decision to simply re-take the whole thing. Thus, I went in for the lectures again, and passed the exam (which by now had the essay component integrated into it)... in April. Because I just fail that much. This was the last chance, too; they're shutting down the course and separating it into at least two independent ones. Wonder how that'll go. It's not for me to worry about, though. I finally have those 8 study points in the bag, and with a grade 4 to boot! Something to be happy about, at least.

Other courses I had this year include (but are not limited to) some Art History as a new minor subject, a few English courses, obligatory Swedish (the written portion of which I passed on the second try, pah) and German. I'm reacquainting myself with the language. It's slow going, but I may be able to obtain some level of fluidity eventually. I did get a 4 from that course, which is encouraging.

I still have a crapload of essays to write, and next Monday I have a book exam on a Lit course I tried to write a lecture journal for but failed. It's lovely that us minor students can handle things by book exam.

I sat the Grammar 2 exam (yet again) and unless I get a pity pass I'm pretty certain I bombed it. I live in hope, though. Either way, when I finally deal with this course and the damned Phonetics one, I can let go of a little bit of the stress I carry around all the time. Of course it'll just be replaced with worries about something else, but hey, change is change.

Yeah, right.


Just got myself an appointment to see a shrink. Woohoo. I really hope it won't take too long to find a compatible one. As a matter of fact... no, wait. I was going to say I hope this one will be good, but she's downtown. That means bus fares. Well, now in the spring and for much of the autumn I suppose I can ride the bike but still. Meh.


This post was supposed to go up yesterday evening, but then we popped over for an impromptu visit to Matt and Anna-Laura's place. They have a bird's nest in a hanging flower pot outside their window! We've ascertained that it's some sort of thrush, but aren't sure of the exact species.

Matt and Jussi talked MtG while A-L and I discussed art nouveau (mostly Mucha) and tattoos. We also had some tea that Laura's fiancé Marc brought me from China. It's a green tea, smells heavenly and tastes pretty good, too. As you can see, Jussi appropriated the box it came in for storing some of his cards. I am fully intending to snatch it back if I ever get a deck or two of my very own. Will have to ask the brother about maybe lending me some of his, since he doesn't play any more.

Well, that's all for now. If you got this far, I commend you for an impressive attention span. Later today, I shall talk about Postcrossing. Ta! 

Hypothetical Possibilities

I love my boy. I really do. But when the possibility of us moving in together is brought up, doubts begin rearing their heads. And since his mother (as he told me) oh-so-subtly breached the topic and he mentioned this to me, the subject has now moved to a status where it has been acknowledged, prodded at, but temporarily left alone.

We're going to have to get back to it at some point. But I hope I won't have to decide any time soon. And, of course, it's not only up to me.

Nerr.

Still procrastinating, by the way. I'm supposed to be writing that article I mentioned earlier - which I ended up only starting this morning anyhow - but instead I'm sat here in the computer hall updating my blog. Sigh. I'll get to it soon enough, i.e. as soon as I've posted this.

Pello was nice. I met a few relatives and some friends of his, ate cake and tried a DSLR. It was quite lovely. The parentals might bring the camera with them this Friday if they decide to give it for Jussi to use full-time. Crossing my fingers here. Of course I'll be made to feel completely inferior on a regular basis because he's so much better at all this photography stuff than I am, from a technical point of view anyhow, but still. I might actually be able to learn something.



Right. Now to write something about the development of the English language.

Cold, Procrastination, and Did I Mention Cold?

It's currently -30 degrees Celsius in Oulu and various other parts of Finland. The nation is freezing its arse off, and I'm wheezing from a ten-minute walk to the uni. It's oh so very lovely. Well, at least the weather has been as clear as it has been cold these past few days, so I've had some splendid photography opportunities. Not that I'm quite insane enough to wield the camera while outside. Nay, I did some snapping through windows this morning. Turned out fairly well - although thanks in part to Jussi who fiddled with the settings. I still quite haven't got the handle of that. Anyhow, photos... are after the rest of this post! Ha!

I have yet to start that term paper for DevLit. I should do that sometime this week. The file exists on my USB stick but other than that... I seem to be stuck on Moll Flanders. I can't start working on whatever it is that I need to work on before I've finished that bloody thing, even though it's already been dealt with. What a time to develop strange neuroses.

Well, I do intend to begin writing this article that I need to write for the popularisation of science course I'm on, because the deadline for that is on Monday. There's no time of day set for it, so theoretically I could work on it all day then... but that never really works out. Better to at least get it started.

This continuing procrastination trend of course doesn't help with the mood rollercoaster I seem to have hopped on once again. My emotions have been all over the place this past week. It's almost enough to give me mental whiplash. Stress'll do that to you I suppose. I could gripe about the disappointment I had with an event I organised for Verba, but that would only serve to put me in a foul mood again and I'd rather not have that. Let's just say that it caused me great vexation and move on.

Half past midnight. Hmm. Perhaps I should really prepare for bed. Must update the Daily Poem on Elftown first, but then I can go off to La-La Land.

Ooh, yay! We'll have these same sort of temperatures for the rest of the week! Joy! I'm going off to a small town called Pello this coming weekend to visit Jussi's folks with him, but since it's two hours northward from Oulu, conditions won't improve much. And from what I've understood it gets boring rather quickly there. Ah, well. Books. Books are the answer to my life's problems. They also often are the problem but let's not be too picky on the details.

Frost is pretty.

Operation Cleaning Day

I have finally managed to get my room looking almost presentable!

Alright, I haven't. Not quite yet. But I'm getting there. Just need to figure out where to put some things and, more importantly, hoover. This place really needs it, too. There are tufts of hair and dust floating around. The floor is pretty much filthy; I haven't cleaned in months.

It'll be a relief to finally have the room straightened out again.

In other news, my left cheek is a balloon. They took out a wisdom tooth. I'm now two out and apparently don't need to worry about the remaining two for the time being - which is good because this is really uncomfortable. I even took a photo yesterday. Can't be arsed to upload it right now, though. I might edit it in later. I'd find my face comical if it, y'know, didn't hurt.

Thank science for antibiotics and painkillers. ♥

And this must've been my most pointless blog entry in a while. I confess that my reason (or part of it) for posting today was that I wanted to be able to add it to this media diary thingamabob I'm supposed to be doing for Multimodal Discourse. I should probably get that done before Sunday. Its deadline is then, but so is my boyfriend's birthday. I don't want to have to worry about uni work.

Hmm. Time for bed. Lecture at 10 in the morning and I feel like I'm going to pass out on the keyboard soon. Toodles.

Oh! Also, I got a 4 from American Literature. This makes me happy, because I was expecting a 3 at most. Maybe the next essay will be worth a 5. I know I'm capable of it; I just need to focus a bit more and use my time more efficiently. *snort* I wish. :P

Hwæt!

The DevLit (i.e. Literary and Linguistic Developments 500-1660) exam is now behind me for the second time, and I think I might actually have passed this one. I better have. That monster of a course is worth 8 credits which I really need if I am to keep up with requirements, and I probably wouldn't have enough room in my schedule for another re-examination. Now I just need to write a term paper, minimum of 2000 words. The original deadline was a week ago, but it seems most of us will be turning our papers in at the end of February. I'm planning to write mine on John Donne's portrayal of love. Should be interesting. I have a stack of books to scour for background material. Now to figure out when I could actually start on it...

Hair and Books

I've been thinking about cutting my hair again. I get so bored with it. I'll probably still keep it as long as possible, but in any case I need a trim at the very least. There are scores of split ends. Not very pretty. The chestnut colour has begun to fade back to my natural shade of middle brown which, frankly, I've not been too impressed with for a very long time now. So the next time I come by a hairdresser's - supposing I have the time - I'll walk in and see what happens. If and when this occurs, pictures shall be posted.

I'm procrastinating, by the way. I should be reading instead of blogging. There are actually a few texts I could choose from: lecture materials from the Literary and Linguistic Developments 500-1660 course for the exam on Friday; set texts for the Literary Developments 1660-1900 course; data entries for the Multimodal Discourse course... I'll probably just finish reading the last of the set texts from the American Literature course I took in the autumn, The Keepers of Truth. Only have a couple of chapters left. Then move on to Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, which is one of the set texts for the LitDev course. In fact, all of the authors in the current poll have penned one of the set texts for that. It is extremely likely that I will blog more about it later. Should try to read, or at least skim through, Congreve's The Way of the World before class tomorrow. Good thing it's only a play - as in, shorter than a novel. Nothing wrong with plays. Although I should really make an effort to actually see more stage adaptations.

Should should should. I figure that word is going to feature prominently in this blog. Joy.

Now the question is whether I want coffee with my prose.

Hmmm.

Yes. Café Humus it is.