Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Why is finding a blank CD so hard?

I wanted to burn a CD so I could play it in my car – all my CD-Rs at home have disappeared though. So I got up and raced down to Sainsbury’s before my shift to grab one. It was closed (it was supposed to be open 11-5, I got there at 4:30). Ben suggested it was because of Easter Sunday though all the Tesco’s were doing regular Sunday hours so I presumed Sainbury’s would be, the info isn’t on their website. Ben said Tesco was closed as well though (Tesco specifically said they would be open so I don’t know what was going on there).

So on my break I raced over to the petrol station at Sainbury’s but they didn’t sell any. So I headed over to Texaco who didn’t sell any either. Then this evening I decided to head over to uni to get one. I found the 24 hour BP on the way and checked there, they didn’t sell any either. So I eventually ended up back at uni where I found one. One! Where have all my CD-R’s gone?

Wow, how can it only be day two?

I started the day by eventually getting up and deciding to head down to Crossgates to buy some stuff I needed. However as I was about to walk out of the door I realised I had totally blanked on my alarm code. It took me 30 minutes to eventually work it out. That is so not normal. I’m worried about what’s happening to my mind.

Turned up to work to find we were a closer down and given I had no kitchen staff it was like 10pm when we filtered and we didn’t get out until going on 2:30. Still not a bad time given our staffing levels. It was really dead for the last hour or two though. After that we headed back to Camelot for the usual general chat and slut jokes at Kayleigh’s expense.

Only 7 more days to go. This time next week I will be free, mu ha ha ha ha ha.

Well, day one of my nine day work marathon is over. This is before my hell week of running Rationalist Week and then just when I should get a chance to sleep I have Wendy (which is of course unmissable) and will no doubt be at work the day after. Then I have another hell week with all the coursework deadlines. Finish that with another weekend at work and I can finally sleep as it will be the revision period so no lectures, no commitments for a week. I’m counting down the days. I plan to sleep right through April 30th. Only 24 days to go!

Working on more short term goals however, only 7 more closes to go. Tonight’s close went quite well, we had kitchen done for 12:50 due to some serious (and literal I should add) running around and the whole thing was sorted about 15 minutes later. We were clocked out before 1:30. Still disappointing though, I was hoping to have everything complete for 1. Still, it was a bank holiday so time and a half until midnight suited me quite well. It’s actually a decent page rate when you do that with the numbers. Bit of a con though in that they calculate our time and a half before adding on our post-midnight bonus rather than adding the bonus on and making it all time and a half. That’s corporations for you though. Anyway, sleep time.

After feeling ill on Wednesday night I went to bed at 10 and got a decent night’s sleep in though I did have to get up at 6:30 for work. Work itself was alright, I saw the “day shift” for the first time since Chrismukka which will likely be the only time between now and summer that I will see them unless their is a company social or whatever.

Then in the evening I headed back to town to meet Michelle and Rosie before we headed down to Bourbon to meet Phil and eventually Sarann (who turned up about an hour and a half late). It was cool to actually talk to Rosie given she has been up for a week and the only time I’ve seen her is for like an hour in Walkabout on Saturday. You can tell she is Michelle’s sister (or at least from Jersey) in the fact that she thought my job was really cool because I get to wear a hat.

Now I’m back home once again and due at work. I’m quite liking home at the moment though, my parents went on holiday yesterday and my sister doesn’t get back until today so for the night I had the house to myself which I enjoy, it seems somewhat removed from the pressures of uni. While coursework and Rationalist Week are still playing on my mind hear, I do at least have cable TV to attempt to drown it out with.

Am I stressed?

I’ve been taking a battering from insomnia recently. When I’m at uni I normally get to sleep fast enough but it’s taking me hours. When I’m at home on the close at work I’m usually so tired by the time I get home that I just fall straight to sleep as soon as a lie down. But even then I’m struggling to drift off.

I’m even struggling to fall back to sleep when my alarm goes off on a morning and I reset it for an hour later which I can normally do for an entire day.

It’s not normal for me. Sure I have those nights when I just can’t sleep but most of the time I don’t have a problem, I certainly don’t go through prolonged periods of insomnia yet I seem to have been unable to sleep for about two weeks now. It’s going to kill me if it keeps up, I have coursework to do, not to mention work and A-Soc and all the things I never got time to do during term time.

The Llama have a new crazy ass menu. They are not actually enforcing the new pricing structure so it costs £6 for the 2 for 1 meals which there are now a limited selection of – chicken melt has been moved to the steaks section so it costs £6 on it’s own and burgers now only seem to be on the beer and burger for £5 deal though they may still be on the 2 for 1, we didn’t ask for clarification. All in all though, not a good change.

I found out why my Dell didn’t update the time properly – it was running quite out already. A month out in fact, it thought it was April.

Thursday consisted of heading to The Pack Horse for the Computing 50th Jubilee celebrations as they were holding a quiz about the history of computing. All the other teams had a big advantage over us given that they lived through most of it though :p. The celebrations continued on Friday with a giant buffet and free bar consisting of the specially brewed ales for the celebration. The night ended with a short but relaxed drink in The Library.

Saturday marked the arrival of Michelle’s sister Rosie so myself, Michelle, Rosie and Norm headed to Walkabout for lunch. It was (unsuprisingly if we had put any thought into it) a lot noiser than on a weekday and so probably a bad choice of venue but never the less the food was quite good. I had to run off to work the Saturday close soon enough though.

After work we headed off to find a petrol station deciding that Texaco was too expensive so we went to the BP in Crossgates. They were night pay window only though so we headed to the one on Otley Road so that we could go in store. They had closed both sliproads off the inner ring road however so we ended up on the Armley Gyratory! The roadworks are just stupid, closing both sliproads is an absolute joke, it doubles the length of your journey. Anyway, we managed to get a sandwhich in the end and headed back to my halls to eat given we were so close, then headed home.

Sunday I was on the close again, and we were actually fully staffed at least on the closing team which seems to make a refreshing change these days. Monday was yet another close, we were staffed for a normal weekday but because it’s Easter we were fairly busy which was flustrating when I was trying to get the close done. We still got out before 2 though.

Then yesterday I headed back to campus in time to catch a lunch at The Llama as it’s been far too long.

Despite getting to bed as late as usual last night I managed to drag my ass out of bed and make it down to The D for breakfast. Didn’t quite wake me up as much as I had hoped though, I think my spirit was all beaten down by the miserable weather. I did manage to get some productive work done though, I posted my student loan application form off, did a bit of shopping then made it to DEC-10 to finish off the A-Soc posters and do a very small amount of SY23 and SE24.

Speaking of the posters, curtesy of Izzy we now have two of them printed and they are looking pretty cool! Let’s just hope that everything on them is typo and error free as I only had time to proof them on screen so nobody else has proofed them and it wasn’t even a printed out copy, though to my credit I did read through everything as it was copied over from Writer to PowerPoint which I normally wouldn’t bother to do. Still though, I’m going to have to use a few of the stockpile of faith points that I haven’t really invested anywhere else ;).

Got out of work Saturday night and got to sleep at gone 6am due to having problems sleeping. I then got woken up at about 10:30 by the sound of drilling. Awesome. So working on about 4 hours sleep I spent my time going round Argos and Tesco picking up garden furniture for Rationalist Week – I now have 12 plastic stacking chairs and 3 flat pack round tables in my bedroom and there is more to come.

I then went to work at 2pm for unit classes before my normal 5-close. Evil. Unit classes ended up running for 5 hours so I got to do nothing for the first 2 hours of my close plus as soon as I walked into the kitchen at 7 I got sent on my break. To be fair though I was on a really long shift and little sleep so I don’t feel too bad about spending 5 hours sitting around. Plus I past all the test so I should have three stars on their way.

Liz (the shift runner) turned up and was promptly sent home sick so Jay ran the shift who was supposed to be part of the closing team, hence we were down a closer and resulted in me being by myself in the kitchen from 9pm onwards. Again evil. We got out at about 2:30 though due to the fact the kitchen was left in a somewhat shocking state (by my standards anyway, that would be a normal close for some people and by some people I mean Rich lol).

I ended up going back to Amanda for a bit and we ended up watching the first half of Hot Shots. I then headed home and got to bed at like 5 or something. I intended to get up at 2 but kept going back to sleep and ended up getting up at 5:40. Had some dinner at home and then headed back to uni to join everyone in The Terrace.

End result, day one of my coursework blitz so no coursework get done. But to be fair, I was expecting most of today to be a write-off. Let’s home tomorrow is a bit more successful.

I never blogged about Friday night. I can’t remember most of it now. It involved The Terrace though.

The day started with a trip down to Weatherspoon’s for breakfast (I had suggested we go to try and sort out our sleeping patterns and Phil took me up on the idea) so at the early time of 10am for students who normally sleep until dinner time we grabbed some along with Michelle and Cara who had just arrived in Leeds.

The afternoon consisted of me getting a bit of productive work done before hitting The Terrace at 8. As it was Friday they had the DJ in, much to most people’s disappointment though I wasn’t too bothered. Kat turned up on the one night they had loud music :D. I don’t know how she does it, it’s like when she turns up to the Llama and that is the day when they take ages to bring us our food. I think Allah is on a mission to make her jaded. John also turned up which was cool as I haven’t seen him in a while and I feel he’s become a bit disconnected from the circle.

I was up for heading into Fruity afterwards due to Easter being one of the few opportunities it wouldn’t be packed but there was only myself and Michelle left by the end of the evening and she wasn’t particularly feeling up for it so we headed for food and back to mine.