Jeffers, my Boy, and Technical Difficulties

The sky broadband at our student house, unreliable at the best of times, finally broke completely last week. We're trying to get it sorted; unfortunately, this makes no difference to me since my laptop's finally given up for good. It's been hopelessly crash-tastic for a long time, and my techy did the decent thing and put it out of its misery. ;)

Thank God for university computers.

So it's been a wonderful few days! My boy came down for the weekend, we went to see Pendulum, we explored Plymouth looking for a cinema (trickier than you'd think when the maps don't have a You Are Here), watched TV with my housemates, made (burned) lasagne, ate jelly and ice cream (two colours of jelly, OGM!) and went to Mutley Baptist which earned a thumbs-up from Gavin.

I'll be seeing him again this weekend... my gosh, I'm terrified. It's a beatboxing jam in Bristol. WARGH. This is the first time I'll be meeting these guys in a situation where I might be reasonably expected to actually make some sounds with my actual mouth. :S STILL, what's the worst that could happen! ...

I evicted Jeffers on Friday. I didn't want to. Michelle came upstairs and said "ANNA I think Jeffers is in the recycling, I was wondering if you could..." So I obliged, went downstairs and moved cardboard boxes around until I found him tucked inside a Fab box (remember those? David's been buying loads of them lately). I then, VERY reluctantly, took the box outside, had one last look at his tiny whiskery adorableness, and sent him running off up the road.

Which I then proceeded to feel very very guilty about for two days, until Gav told me that he'd seen a mouse in the kitchen. I saw him yesterday too, Jeffers is officially still with us. (Ok, maybe it's another mouse, but this way I don't have to picture Jeffers dying of hypothermia in a coke can.)

Anyway! Hope everyone's ok, there should be more to come soon, although how soon I don't know. Don't suppose any of you have got a computer you don't need...?

2500 words

Doesn't sound like a lot, does it. But I'm sure you're all familiar with that soul-crushing sense of dismay you feel when you hit the word count button after entirely reworking and fleshing out your essay, only to find that it's gone up by a paltry 300 words. I know I am. And after that, I go over it again, desperately adding adjectives anywhere I can, changing "it's" to "it is", and other such desperate measures. Even in this blog post, I keep going back to add words every time I think of one.

I'll write a better post when I can. In the meantime, there's 760 words waiting for me that aren't going to write themselves.

Jeffers

I'm updating my blog for two reasons; firstly, it was requested; secondly, I was mere moments away from doing it anyway; and thirdly I have something vaguely interesting to write about. I know I said two, it doesn't matter, pay attention.

There is a mouse in our house. Somebody arbitrarily called him Geoffrey, but we all call him Jeffers now. He's been living here almost as long as we have, so it's got to the point where it would be awkward to ask him to move out, you know? He keeps himself to himself, is very rarely seen, mostly stays out of everyone's way; but occasionally someone will point excitedly towards the kitchen and leap out of their seat, attention suddenly diverted from Jeremy Kyle's pearls of wisdom, and say "I just saw Jeffers!"

I've only seen him once, a brief glimpse of his furry hindquarters disappearing behind the freezer.

He's truly a remarkable rodent. Lives on air, apparently, since there's absolutely no food kept at ground level and we're generally very tidy. (Unusual for a student house, but Ben is Very Neat, fortunately for us.)

The plan was originally to have him killed. Which is, of course, the rational thing to do with vermin. But this isn't vermin, it's Jeffers, and I readily confess that I'd quite like the little chap to stay around. Thankfully he went missing presumed dead for a few weeks after that idea was suggested. Oh yes; Jeffers is smart.
That's been downgraded to the idea of a humane trap now, which I'm much more keen on.

Tonight was the most he's ever been sighted; Michelle saw him vanish behind the fridge, and Ben and David were kind of gently poking things with spatulas to see if he was behind them. There was a rather fantastic moment when he showed himself and Ben yelped. I'm jealous, I want to meet him. I want to hold him the way I used to hold the voles and fieldmice and shrews we used to see back in the days of science camp (it wasn't as geeky as it sounds, mostly we lay around in hammocks or watching sunsets from the cliff-edge). Holding rodents is amazing because their little hearts beat so fast that they actually vibrate.

I don't know whether it's wise to tell my boy that we have a mouse this way. He's been round ours for the weekend before but I'd honestly forgotten about Jeffers, his appearances are that rare. But I took Dave texting me saying I should update my blog as a green light, so here it is. Honey, I'm really looking forward to seeing you this weekend, I hope you don't mind the mouse.

I'm not busy, but I should be

I was in Cardiff over the weekend, which I believe takes it to 29 days that we've spent together. <3 yay. Getting on with life, albeit with that strange nagging feeling that I should be doing something else, somewhere else. I have no idea what. Maybe it's homesickness. But in the meanwhile I'm ticking along quite nicely; eating unhealthily, not sleeping enough, or doing enough work, or praying enough or reading my Bible at all. So, yeah, I'm not miserable, but I could be doing a lot better at life in general. Series 3 of the Mighty Boosh starts tonight, woo! My laptop continues to infuriate me by blue-screening at random intervals, I fully intend to do something about it, after I've tidied my room and picked up those Pendulum tickets and bought a book with that book voucher and spent that HMV voucher and gone shopping and typed up my notes and read those course books and booked train tickets and updated the calendar... Amazing how full life can get when you're not good with time management. Oh crud, and it's Christmas soon, I have to buy presents and make cards and sort dates... Interesting thing of the day: this actually fooled me first time, I thought it was a joke. Optical illusions are neat.

Ending world hunger

... a word at a time! Guys, do this for me, it's fun-ducational ;) thanks to my boy for sending it (how well does he know me, hunh).

Found this draft saved on my profile!

From my very limited experience, I get the impression that the kind of person who is anarchistic enough to write on walls, doesn't like being watched while they do it.


They are the rebels, the people willing and able to speak out against this 'Big Brother is watching you' society. I think they have a point.

But every time I get a run-up at feeling revolutionary, someone steps in and gently reminds me to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's." I've clearly missed the point somewhere. Yes, I'm meant to be alive enough to kick against society. I should have the strength to use every last shred of liberty that I have. But at the same time... if someone forces me to walk with them for one mile, I should walk two.

I still can't entirely work it out, but the Bible's point of view seems to be that I should fight for the freedoms of others while being willing to surrender my own.

What makes you free?

If you were snatched up from wherever you are and dropped in an infinite featureless plain, would you technically be imprisoned?

Think about that for a second.

What if there was stuff on this plain, trees and such. Is it still a prison? If so, what makes it so?

Maybe it's prison when you can't get home... but then you can be imprisoned in your home. Maybe it's a prison when you can't get where you want to be. I'd feel trapped if I couldn't travel to my home or to Cardiff. Or to beatboxing events. You know what, the sooner my NUS student card comes through, the better - I'll get rail discounts, which apparently in my head equates to more freedom.

What makes you free? Would would count as a prison to you?

ITOTD: I could spend hours doing this.

All the small things

Walking home tonight, the sky was pale blue and covered in bright pink clouds. Now I was strictly anti-pink until quite recently, but I've now conceded that it has it's place, especially my hair and the sky.

It was breathtakingly beautiful, and I'm very sorry I didn't have my camera with me to show you guys, but what surprised me most was the fact that nobody else was looking. It was fairly easy to tell because it could only be seen when you cross the road, otherwise the view to the east was blocked, and absolutely nobody I passed so much as looked above eye-level.

This is something that used to amaze me when I sat on the kitchen roof back home. My bedroom had a huge window that led out onto it, so I'd go and sit there when I needed some alone time, and I knew I'd pass completely unseen as not a soul would think to look up, however many hours I stayed there.

I'm sure it happens to all of you too. Sometimes there are days when you seem to see things so much clearer than anybody else, but the next day you become one of the myopic masses again.

Still, it's put me in a fabulous mood, so I thought I'd share it with you lucky souls!

Johnny the rugby-tackling alzheimer's patient

Right, I've decided to be a bit more frequent with my blog updates. I don't feel that I've got that much to say, but as we all know it's the quantity and not the quality that counts.

I have spent most of my life with tragically low self-esteem. I was, socially, a wasteland throughout my childhood - hopeless with other kids, introverted, intelligent, and convinced that I was ugly. I am by no means unique in this respect. A lot of people start out that way.

The past few years have consisted of me discovering that I'm more than that. I learned how to win people over with the bare minimum of effort (hint: be interested in them!), I put the books down and started talking to people, and I found out that I'm not Quasimodo's ugly step-sister.

I'm missing my gap year like crazy. The combination of responsibility and freedom was perfect for me; the feeling of doing something practically to help, talking to people about their problems, leading discussion groups, it was just right to push me to the next stage. I grew in confidence over that year, no doubt about it.

And now, to cap it all off, I'm loved in a way I never expected and sure as hell never deserved.

I am having quite a wobbly start at university. I'm being shy and introverted, and because of the nature of my course I'm doing a lot of reading, and I'm scared to get into the church side of things and not really sure how to go about it. But I'm not going to lose sight of who I am now; change in character is a one-way process from my experience and I'm glad of that because I really, genuinely liked who I was in my gap year. I hope and pray to have the guts to be that person here in Plymouth.

Interesting thing of the day: Plug your webcam in!

Greek mythology and bicycle sex

This uni work is making me feel a lot like Sisyphus. Every time I feel like I'm getting somewhere, that rock just rolls right the way back down again... blargh.

Interesting thing of the day: bicycle sex is against the law, apparently. Strange world we live in.