Words From Pola_bear

Today involved getting up and packing, which took a loooong time and setting up the car(Mew's car which we have in order to get to Vermont, con and then Dad's lot take it to Detroit) to go to brunch at a friend's, then on to Vermont. I also managed to set my iPod up with this computer and talk to some people online for a bit, as well as ringing Mum for Mother's Day. There is so much snow, but it was all totally frozen this morning, it was bizarre. Everytually everything and the bag was packed.

We went to 'The Big Blue House', the house of Persis, Spencer and wee Talis. It was good, there was much food but we were rather late so we had to set out quite quickly. We are staying with Mew and Ed, and their children Rowan (7) and Corwin (5). Rowan is rather loud and totally idolises Gavin.

It was girl's in one car and boys in the other for the first part of the journey. We gossiped and talked and laughed and it was good. We stopped briefly at a supermarket, then continued on.

It was a long journey, but by about 6 we got to Lebanon, where we after much dilemma and me spilling orange juice all over myself ate at a pizza place called Lui Lui's which was good, but took a while. For the final leg of the journey Dad, Ed (he had to get away from the kids for a bit) Anna and I were in one car with the rest in the other.

I listened to the most recent Now show podcast; very funny; and attempted to sleep. I also talked C# and Visual Express and Dot net and I felt smart for the last 5 minutes before we got to another supermarket for breakfast stuff for tomorrow, that was fun as tere were scary products. I picked up a couple of gifts. Not long after that we finally got here. It's a very nice place with wireless :P. We (Dad, Gwen, Gavin, Anna and I) are all in the boys room - I got the top bunk with the dinonaur sheets!

Getting Rowan tobed was slightly traumatic "Stop distracting Gavin from me. I'm sure everyone wants to talk to Gavin, but I want to talk to him now. I want to sleep in the same room and Gavin!' etc, but they're both in bed now, as am I.

I took a few pictures today, pretty much all of scenery through the window and icicles and things. It is an incredibly pretty place, driving through was nice in that respect. I will hopefully have time to sort these pictures out tomorrow. Today, I'm tired. 

Snow in Boston

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Hello! Today was my only day in Boston, so I wanted to make he most of it. However, I woke up at 8 am and did the whole computer thing on Anna's laptop. Then I was bored! Luckily, Gwen got up and messaged me and directed me to the correct room (I had no ideawhere anythingwas). Then people slowly but slowly got up. We managed to get out at about midday. I understand the reasons for this, they'd all been up late waiting for me, but I was antsy to go!

We briefly looked at computers in Costco (I've been to a Costco!) before heading off to Micro Centre. I got aToshiba Satellite, which is very nice and should do everything I want and yay! Many thanks to my wonderful Father for this. I also got a headset with microphone, a webcam and a security thing. Yay for tech! Having done this, the main task set out for the day we headed into Trader Joe's for some provisions. After this we went to a nice little Mexican place, where I had some good nacho's and everyone seemed pleased.

Jacob, our gracius guide and one of our hosts kindly gave a lift to Harvard Square before he went home. We wondered around shops and things, picking up a camera case and a few other little things. there was much St. Patrick's day regalia about, but no discounts for Irish people :p

We then went to very nice dessert place, 'Finale'. Anna, Dad and I got a cheesecake to share (getting that size being far cheaper than three individual verions) and Gavin got some Boston Cream cake. Very, very nice. We wondered around a (second comic book) and then went to find the T so we could get back. It's a good system and very easy to understand, especialy when one is well aquainted with the London Underground system. The bus was also fine, and luckily Anna recognised the stop where we needed to get off.

I haven't mentioned the snow! There's loads of snow here! It's beautiful, but leads to a whole lot of sludge, which we had to walk through on the way back. There were, of course, snowballs! We got back in good tme to a ouse full of people here for Gwen's house Concert. I met many new people, and was reacquainted with Persis and Talis :)

I then gave in and came to have some time away and set up my computer. I now have Skype (raft_tree), which is very cool, and I am happy muchly with this computer!

There have been many small children around while I write this which is both fun and noisy. And everything is good. Tomorrow, brunch in the Big Blue House and gong to Vermont!

Technical Specs for Laptop

Ow. My back hurts. My legs hurt in a variety of different ways. My side hurts. I keep getting horrible headaches. My arm has a random pain at odd intervals. Ow. And meh. And screaming. I'm tired, and stressed, and there's too damned much to do.

If you need me, I'll be under this rock.

eta: And my arm itches. And my back itches. Painfully. Ow.

Have you ever Googled your own name? How did you feel about the results?
Submitted by elen.

I have googled my name. There is usually no/1 other people/person with my name who pops up, other then me. Which is funny, because I'm certainly related to a few. Most of the lnks and me and are convention related, which isn't surprising really.

Ha! Just looked again and there is a limerick, and really I'm sure people could think it was me but, wasn't while written by someone with my name. Everything else on the first page of results is me and all but one is concom/guest related (which is that I was nominated for a Sam for 'When Winter's Past' at Dixseption, which makes me all warm and fuzzy thinking about.

Looking at the second page the is one other person with my name, and one with my name contained in theirs that aren't me and lots of separated things, along with me a bit. This really appears to be it.

Yet I keep getting told a relation with my name is published under it. Ho hum.

So, in the first week of term I wrote the first draft of my personal statement for university. This is early/mid-september. I gave this to my tutor to look over. I waited, begining of term is busy, I didn't want to rush him. Then, I did ask a few times and he said he would. Then about 3 weeks after I'd given it to him I asked and he said he didn't remember it and had lost it.

They don't want people asking for lecturer references until their personal statement is nearly done. So I asked for one that was special circumstances, but waited for others. Despite this, I did get confirmation from Lecturer's that they had been done two weeks ago. Before even that I had discussed with my tutor what would go into his reference for me.

Today I look at the thing and discover he hasn't sent off my application yet. and with what things looks like this will mean I am hugely less likely to get in most of the places I have applied. I am really not exagerating.

Grr.

I just got Firefox 2. Mainly due to boredom, but it seems quite nice. Let me rephrase that, after I reinstalled it seemed quite nice. The first time all my bookmarks were gone ("I thought it was supposed to keep them? Maybe I was wrong. I'm such an idiot!" goes my brain). And there were no search engines options ("Odd maybe I need to add them again myself.") And then I couldn't add them. Or any new bookmarks. Or do a few other things.

Then I reinstalled it and all was well! I like my disorganised collection of bookmarks and am rather glad I don't need to recreate them. I do also think it's quite pretty, although I know certain people would disagree with me on that. I honestly doubt I'll notice many of the differences, beyond the look and the changes in tabbing, but I sounds like aren't really all that many changes anyway.

But I am now all up to date, which is fun and hopefully I will continue to enjoy my firefox experience.

I haven't really stopped being busy since September. College brings work and friends and troubles and Big Decisions(tm) and a severe lack of sleep and so I have been doing so very much. It doesn't help much arriving as late as I do even if I do leaver straight away. Of course, I also need to keep family stuff, even if I really would rather make it just stop for a while and so that just means doing more things, getting more headaches and not shouting at Simon to just stop talking nonsense and actually listen to me for once!

I've also recently realised that, for all I've been spending a lot of time with people recently, so much of what what we discuss is just pointless. Which is a not always a bad thing, but I certainly need more conversations on Descartes vs. Satre and what the attraction is for straight men to lesbians and straight women to slash and what Cameron really wants in the contexts of conservative and, indeed, liberal ideology. And more of course. I have been finding myself really annoying, but I think it's mainly just not enough intellignet discourse.

Lessons have some of this, but I'm stuck with quite a lot of people who would rather just throw stuff about and mean no one else keeps a chance to actually engage in their lessons, leaving me bored out my mind. I occasionally with I didn't pick somethings up to easily. On Monday Dan (one of my Philosophy teachers) wrote 'property dualism' and, figured out what it was, because to me it was enitrely obvious. Meanwhile the entire 90 minute lesson was spent explaining the basics to the class because even the people who are normally on the ball didn't get it. It's not really about me being smarter, I just work in a different way and vtend to be quite good at breaking down vdown language in my head, despite verbally defining words being the bane of my existance.

So I should try to get more of that in. and more sleep. And do my work. And be in all my lessons. And finish by bloody personal statement. And keep up with family and friends. And all the other stuff. Hopefully, I'll be fine and at least I theoretically have a long summer as a reward for doing this once I have.

At least I have half term to help my brain reform.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

From Epistemology: the theory of knowledge by Cardinal, Hayward and Jones (Cardinal being my slightly Lockheartesque Philosophy lecturer, who keeps making us buy his books):

Accordingly, epistemology often begins with the question of what precisely knowledge it. However, going against this trend, we have left the analysis of what 'knowledge' actually means until last. By first exploring the problems of epistemology, we hope to have sharpened our understanding of what knowledge is in advance of attempting to home in on a definition. The term 'knowledge', however, doesn't have just one meaning, and philosophers have traditionally divided knowledge into three main types.

What song or lyrics are stuck in your head at the moment?  What album is it from?
Submitted by Lox Ly. 

Well, as I have just completed watching season 2 of "Veronica Mars" I have currently got the song "Veronica" by Elvis Costello according to wp co-written with Paul McCartney. This song is played twice over the series, that I noticed, in kareoke and at a party. It's obvious why they put it in, and it's a fun song.

Randomly searching for it I found the/a video for it:

Veronica (Acoustic) - Elvis Costello

What was (or is) your favorite subject in school?

When I was in primary school I loved Maths, and English. For different reasons, but they were both brilliant. Secondary school I pretty much liked the same - although I really enjoyed Drama too, despite some bad drama experience and chemistry rocked, for the most part. DT was good for the brief while we did it. I made a clock!

I stopped being able to enjoy maths about halfway through secondary though, but English was still good.

Now I'm doing only English, Philosophy and Politics, and I genuinely enjoy all three subjects, and stragely now English is probably my least favourite. The problem now is that I really to decide on what I want to study and uni. For a good while I've been thinking about doing an English and Politics joint honours degree, but I don't know whether I could go to a good place and if that would be the right thing for me at all.

I've been looking at universities and degrees but I'm still lost. however much I enjoy English, I'm just not that great at the work. And I really ewnjoy Politics, but an entire degree in it would probably be too much. I don't really have any clue what else I could do that would really be interesting to me - and that's important, I have to be interested, otherwise I just won't do anything, and what's the point in that?

I've probably also become stuck on things I've done before, but I don't have much of a basis for many other things.

Hopefully, I will figure something out Real Soon Now, and until then, I guess I'll go back to the prospectuses (prospecti?).

:)