In my last post I believe I was lamenting my inability to work over the holiday. Since then…

We live in the middle of a village in Devon, and our (very old) house takes hours to clean because someone decided it would be a really good idea to build a house that is so long it takes about a minute to walk from one end to the other. This means you can’t just plug a vacuum into one plug and go round the whole of one floor – you have to change positions every so often, moving furniture gets very difficult and as a result of having to walk through all rooms to get around, every room gets dirty. When you have so many people staying (as we did over Christmas) you can’t imagine the state it gets into – add two very hairy, permanently moulting labradors, and it will in fact take about four hours to get through.

To recover from this epic sesh, I tried to do some work. I am in the middle of my design study (as I’m sure I’ve mentioned once or twice) and this requires connecting to the college VPN to look up papers for research. I broke my Windows laptop in March, when I dropped a jamjar on the keyboard, which messed up the screen meaning the laptop works, but you have to plug it into a monitor to see anything. As a result, it isn’t portable (though it does have the VPN on it). When I got back to Devon, my mum donated her beloved MacBook to me, as she recently got a new laptop. This was great…until I realised the VPN wasn’t on it, I had no idea about how to basically drive the system, and the Imperial College instructions left me almost pulling my hair out. After an hour trying to figure it out, I sent Facebook a plea, and John, my new personal hero, jumped in to help. He spent a while on Failbook chat trying to talk me through it, and managed.

My dummies guide to Mac is: phone a friend, and promise them beer (I’d like to add, to preserve John’s integrity, that I only offered the beer after he had helped me!).

Of course, by this time it was far too late to do any work. I packed up and went to the pub, to meet up with my old school friends.

Today, mum and I went shopping. When I got back (at about two) I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to use Word on the Mac (I’m technologically challenged). Then I decided to check the college Blackboard, and discovered the module I wanted won’t work on it. So instead of doing any design study, I wrote up one lecture of Biomaterials.

I anticipate tomorrow will be far more productive…until I pick up Tom (at 10 am) and we get ready to celebrate the New Year (AKA decide if we are going partying or to the beach). Then the weekend arrives a day early, time which is usually reserved for working in mum’s allotment. Then I only have a week till I go back to London, and I need to start getting ready to leave – say my goodbyes, make sure I’ve slept enough, eat enough food to build-up fat stores for the next term…

Does anyone want to research my design study for me? I will give you food.

My favourite lolcats. Particularly applicable today.

Note: I do not condone plagiarism in any shape or form, and if you attempt to persuade me you will get a sharp slap on the wrist.

So I thought I’d give everyone an idea of how it is to go home after a term of hell, and still have three pieces of coursework to do, and a terms worth of notes to revise/write-up/go over.

Since Christmas day I have woken up early (ie before 10 am) once, and spent a large amount of time talking to my family. I ventured out of the house on Boxing Day to go for an hour long dog walk with the family, and the next day went for an hour and a half long dog walk. I then went to Tom’s house in an epic race across Devon to get there half an hour after I said I would, in order to have dinner with a very large, very loud family who used to be their neighbours. I’ve also been to the opposite end of Devon to visit my gran in her new house.

Up to this moment in time:

Pieces of coursework written = 1/2 (that’s a half).
Number of lectures gone over = 0.
Nightmares and sleepless nights over the amount of work I still have to do = 3.
Christmas dinners eaten = 1.
Number of meals involving turkey = 4.
Meals involving Christmas gammon = 3.
Amount of chocolate eaten = immeasurable.

If I keep up this way, I will reach the end of the holiday fat, tired and stressed out. Who said relaxing is easy?

A few weeks ago I was going on about how I was going to have a load of Christmas blogs. Apparently I failed on that front.

The last few days of holiday have been both eventful and nothing at the same time. On Monday, Toby (of Coventry Fancy-Dress Fairy-Cake fame) came to visit for a few hours. We ate (his second meal of the night) and exchanged presents – then sat down to watch his, which was a complete Shrek collection. I got plasticine and a set of challenges, which I have to complete before next year to retain Toby’s friendship. I’m particularly looking forward to the bonfire one.

Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with Christmas shopping, visiting Tom for all of one hour, trying not to die on the ice, helping mum by trying to clean the house a bit, laundry etc. On Wednesday evening, Christmas officially started with the arrival of cousin Ross. Christmas Eve started with me having to collect Ashton from an all night party, then sorting out Ross’ and Bruce’s (the uncle) presents, which involved spending about three hours at my parents office trying to figure out how to print onto photographic paper. Kim and Alex (Ross’ wife and daughter) arrived, and the party started.

We had a curry for dinner, and Ross, Bruce and Dad spent a large proportion of time drinking a scary mixture of alcohol. A small trip to the kitchen at midnight to get water led to an enquiry of ‘what if you see Santa?’ from all three. I don’t think Santa could actually walk by that point.

Today we all woke up very early thanks to a phonecall from Ross’ other daughters in New Zealand at 7 am. We’ve opened presents, Bruce has disappeared off back home and all the women are sitting around waiting for dinner to be handed to us…

I’m feeling very cheerful and festive, and I hope everyone else has had as lovely a day as me!