The First BBQ Of 2008.

What can I say... I'm not actually sure anymore. A comment recently left on my blog has disjointed me a little - despite the fact that I have a fair idea who posted it. There really was no need, but never mind, I've more important things to care about. And I can type properly.

With reference to yesterdays BBQ: it was great! The weather was perfect, the food was good (I hope) and I'm not making any complaints against the guests because they really rock. Seriously you do guys, it was an amazing day so thank you!

Also, guess what?

I MET THE PENIKIS FAMILY!!

Oh yes readers, we got James out of his house and to a social event! Comment if you want to know how we managed it, the story is rather hilarious. I also got to shake Mrs Penikis's hand which was beyond awesome really- I'm sure Stephen can back me up on this.

We proved something yesterday too: Human Pyramids CAN be done by Amateurs. The above photograph on this blog proves such a fact. This next one however, is one of the more spectacularly failed attempts.


Perhaps the failed ones were funnier than the actually successful ones, but the making of them was extremely hilarious. However, neither of these photographs portray the pain the Human Pyramid-ees are feeling today. Our backs, shoulders, arms, wrists, knees, ankles, and goodness knows what else's are sore - but we're not really complaining. It was all great fun.

Oddly enough, the worse case scenario is the same as the best. When a Pyramid fails due to too much spacing or a misjudged jump, you don't want to be at the bottom. Oh no. When you're on the bottom tier and everyone topples on top of you - no one can get up for laughing so your stuck under a giant heap of sprawled limbs, usually in a funny and uncomfortable position.

I'm speaking from experience here, can you tell?

Never mind my thunder..

Whose stolen my sun?! The past few weeks have been gloriously bright and warm but as soon as I even thought of the word Barbecue the skies darkened and the heavens opened. Oh yes, its raining and has been since this afternoon. Sigh. Things better brighten up for Saturday. I'm just hoping that the marquee Dad and I put up in the garden holds. Seriously, you have not encountered problems until you try and build a marquee without instructions. The suggested number of constructors is 4, the actual number needed should be 16 and even then there would be more poles than hands.

There's a BBQ going on on Saturday you see. The exams are just about all over now for us and I don't know about everyone else, but I'm tired and in need of a change, so Saturday is looking to be a rather nice break. Provided the weather improves, I don't set myself on fire whilst lighting the BBQ and everyone gets here, of course.

In other news, my new 6th Year timetable (of three days) is already annoying me. The school is currently upside down due to builders taking over half of the Street so they can build the new blocks, so classrooms and their teachers have been shifted all over the place. As if this wasn't as confusing enough (trust me, there is nothing worse than turning up at a classroom to find no one there) the school has decided to rename all the rooms so even if I knew where I should be, I've no idea where it is. I hate that feeling, I'm a wee bit OCD on the matter.

Added to that my registration class is on the other side of the school grounds, furthest away from everywhere so I'm late for just about every class first thing. My art teacher has no faith in me. Someones lost the entire subject of RME. My Admin teacher appears to think the whole class is a bit simple - yesterday we learned how to type. With a touch-typing speed of 63 words a minute, it's driving me batty. Fair excited about tomorrow though, guess what we get to learn? How to put a table into a word document! Oh yes, the excitement is almost too much to bear...

Well ne'er heid. Roll on Saturday, and roll on summer.

Pre Maths Exam Terror.

Ah yes. Right now I'm panicking. I hate maths - with an undying passion. I've never been good at it, ever, and right now I'm running out of revision time. The thing is, the more I stress out about it the more I'll forget so I'm just trying to chill. She says, desperately... However, there is something reassuring about your friends having a group argument over MSN about whether Logarithms are called "logs" or "lins". My friends rock. Speaking of which, Stephen's started a blog! His link is on the sidebar so feel free to go check it out.

I'm off to do past papers now until my eyes fall out or I fall asleep; will report back tomorrow - when I will be 100% Maths free. I have waited 5 years for that. Excellent.

"The word is on the Street that the English paper was brutal."

Well. I meant to post this yesterday but there was a certain football game going on so I got sidetracked. The part I wrote yesterday is in blue, the rest is from today.

Okay. So here I am. Sat in front of my computer screen talking to a very dear friend who in fact managed to calm my nerves a little just by talking to me, waiting on the game to start with my English revision glaring at me from my bed. Okay, so what idiot put the final on the same eve of the Higher English exam?! Sigh. Could be worse; I could be in Manchester.

Anyway, here's the game plan: I'm going in tomorrow with The Darkness Out There, Infelice and A Streetcar Named Desire as a back up. I'd love it if TDOT came up, questions have been I've been assured its a fairish safe bet. Infelice is alright, I know it well enough to twist it to fit any question. ASCND will do as a back up, even though it wont be great. As for the Close Reading, I cant wait to get that out of the way and see how much I'm relying on the essays. I quite like Close Reading, just hoping its not a daft couple of passages...

I'd best be off., I'm 90 minutes away from making sure I'm all set. Sigh, not feeling good about this exam at all.

Hmmm. You know how when you've worked hard in an exam and then when you come out of it, you immediately forget everything that you wrote? Well I've got that going on. I cant tell whether I've done good or not.. The Close Reading went fine -despite there being a 5 marker stuck in right at the end- and the passages were actually quite good. As for the essay questions... Nightmare!

There were NO questions at all on The Darkness Out There! Thankfully, flicking frantically to the Poetry section, I found a vague question I could mould to Infelice. So without looking at the other questions I barreled into it and 7 pages later I looked at the Drama section. Only one question sounded remotely like something that would fit so I quickly started on that one.

A further Blanche DuBois style mental crisis and 7 pages later, time was up and we left the Dance studio. Funnily enough that was when I started panicking most but I soon calmed down when other said they found it as equally hard and that a few had done the same questions as me.

What I hate most about English exams? I often find that when I'm writing timed essays in class, I usually gauge on how much I have to write by a certain point of a page, ie bottom of the second page for the second factor to start. I can't do this in the exam because they give us booklets that have huge margins and equally huge lines. Its unnerving, if you get me and halfway through I've no idea where I'm supposed to be or how much I've written. Do the booklets need to be like the jotters you got in Primary One? No. It's no help.

And as for the game last night... Well done to St Petersburg.

This Week in Pictures.

Acrylics and Other Unhinged Things.

Its currently 22:47. I've just finished my Still Life final piece. I've still got an English essay to write, an art summary to write (or else I die), a physics past paper to do and I'm pretty sure there's something else but I cant think what, so please excuse the incoherency of this post but I felt like blogging. Mainly because of the lovely picture, partly because I want to rant and mostly because I'm pretty sure I'm going insane.

The past few days have been frenzied - well, frenzied for me anyway. In a fever of composition, I've spent my time staying til 5pm after school then working at home until 2am in the morning in a desperate bid to finish my art coursework. Oh yeah, Higher Art ain't all that fun folks. To top that off we got our reports out -two weeks late might I add- which I did promise I'd blog about and I will when I actually find the time to read the thing properly. I seriously want some bottled time off E-Bay. Methinks the general message of the report was that I should be okay with lots of revision and that I'm pleasant to teach. Pfft. Just don't get me started on PE...

On this feeling insane business. I've suddenly developed this thing where when I'm sitting in a class and I'm off in a wee world of my own, I suddenly stop what I'm thinking and panic because I sense that someone is reading my thoughts. It's a horrible feeling of fear. I then force myself to think of something else to throw the imaginary person off whatever I was thinking about in the first place, so I don't look suspicious. Can people read my thoughts? Is this what sleep deprivation results in? Or is this what Higher Art does to you? Who knows. If you do, forward your thoughts to the Inbox in my mind and I'll get back to you.

Possibly the Cutest Photo On This Blog.

Filler post here guys, just so you don't think I've gone and run off. Just a photograph today, I'm too tired/busy/snowed-under-with-revision to finish a cartoon I'm doing. Will post it when I can. Toodle pip for naoo.