Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

... I'm at home. And it's great. I had a Lush bath last night (while reading Private Eye) followed by a 12-hour sleep. Today I've done pretty much nothing. I had a shower, preceded by twenty minutes sitting reading with a Lush hair moisturiser (Marilyn) on my hair (on the first in my series of Carolan Lush ratings, I'm going to award the Marilyn 8 out of 10). I'm going to bring my dogs for a walk as soon as it stops raining; as usual, they're wandering around wagging their tails and jumping on me. Although Goldie is whining very slightly at the moment: he has heard the shower run so presumes that means he's going to be walked right now. But it's raining! Dad just cooked me a delicious fry-up so I'm feeling sated and/or satiated.

It's slightly odd having nothing planned for the next couple of weeks. Where are my targets? Goals? Deadlines? Sarah has suggested setting myself nice acheivable, relaxing goals to ease the transition from working hard to relaxing, like:

1) make a cup of tea by four o'clock

2) finish a book by the end of the week

3) take dogs for a walk.

Nothing too taxing. My ickle bruvver's coming home today so no doubt I'll be spending time hanging around with him tomorrow, perhaps watching some Jeeves & Wooster, although that's a bit too like planning for my liking.

I haven't been home in this part of May for a while. The beech hedge in our back garden comes out in the second week of May, and it's now the third week so it's good and green. And my favourite tree in the world, the big beech tree in the graveyard, that gets its leaves in the first week of May, so it too is looking green. Although not in a Conservative kind of way. And the creeper thingy draping our pergola is in flower too: it's so pretty! I can't remember what it's called though.

This finished-my-degree thing is fun.

Today I went to the beach with Spencer and Tom in the morning. Spencer made a picnic, so we ate that, washed down with ginger beer. Lashings of it. It wasn't sunny or warm or anything, but it was a really pleasant walk. Very relaxing. I do like a bracing walk by the sea.

I went home and slept for several hours, then I cooked a lovely big roast for Sam and Spencer. And Robbie and Chris. And Simon ate some chicken too. Sam made a most delicious fruit salad, it was quite wonderful (and he left the leftovers for me!). The whole meal turned out very well: the chicken was spot on (it was a good-sized free range chicken: I rubbed butter over it, squeezed some lemon onto it, stuffed some garlic cloves into the breasts and put lemon and garlic inside) and the vichyed (I'm not sure I can turn that into a verb ..) carrots were scrumptious. Oh, and because it's asparagus season we had some lovely fresh asparagus with a lemony butter sauce. Mmmmmm. I do love sharing meals: today I had Spencer's picnic, Sam's fruit salad and shared my roast with them.

Yesterday was also rather exciting: I went to Chester to see the azoo. I saw the lions but not the kangaroo. There was he-males and she-males of every hue. Up in the zoological gardens. I also bought an awful lot of stuff in Lush. It's just so wonderful. My room smells marvellous. I got Mum the bath ballistics she wanted (isn't it nice to see my family leaving nice comments for me?), and I went to the cheese shop to get lots of Cheshire cheese for Dad.

Tomorrow it's off to Carmarthen (if that's how it's spelt) for an NUS Wales thingamy telling us about the new NUS Extra card. We nearly didn't make it because poor Rob (who was going to drive us) has had to have his appendix taken out (get well soon Rob). But Steve's going to take us instead. I do love days out.

Right, it's time to do more sleeping. Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to set off on our grand adventure, and as soon as we get back I'll have to get scrubbed up to go to the societies awards.

Sam very kindly blogged for me, so you probably know that I've spent the morning lazing in my back garden reading the Guardian and eating strawberries. Strawberries are so delightfully decadent. I also have croissants, freshly squeezed orange juice and cream to put on the rest of my strawberries (the first round was eaten with some nutritious oatty cereal).

I think this is quite possibly the hottest day of the year: it was t-shirt-warm before 9am. A good day to be finished everything. Chris and I broke our wonderfully retro deckchair though. He sat on the extendable leg-rest bit and now it's all bent and won't retract.

I'd better scrub up a bit before going to this DAP assessors meeting. Emma is kindly lending me a dress for the AU dinner tonight, so I won't have to turn up in jeans. Should be fun.

On Saturday I'm going to Chester to visit Lush, buy elbow-length gloves and go to the zoo. It's going to be wonderful. I was planning on going sailing on Sunday but apparently sailing isn't on so I might see if anyone wants to go to the beach instead. I'm cooking a meal for Spencer and Sam in the evening .. although if it's really sunny maybe I'll drag them to the beach too and we could have a delicious barbecue with yummy freshly-baked bread and salad. The salad's not freshly baked. Obviously.

I'm not going to write about the AGM. It was well-run but boring (such is the nature of AGMs) and anyway you can read about it elsewhere if you care.

What I'm mostly here to do is remind everyone that in less than 21 hours I'm going to finish my degree. In fact that's a fairly random target, because I'll probably finish all my work in about five hours, and despite the deadline for the essays being tomorrow, I have to hand in a folder of coursework on Friday. It's not any extra work, it's literally just handing in folders, but the people in the office will only accept the folders on Friday morning. Which is a pain because I'd quite like to get rid of them now.

It's a sunny day and I'm feeling somewhat relaxed. I'm nearly finished. Come tomorrow I won't have anything to be stressed about. My bad mood which lurked all weekend and continued into Monday has finally lifted. I had a nice cry on the phone to my mum which made me feel much better, and I got quite a lot of work done which also helped.

I've just been for a walk to the SU to buy my copy of Ink. I flicked through Sam's copy yesterday, but I needed to go buy my own. It is Absolutely Superb. Now I'm not one for superfluous capital letters, so when I capitalise adjectives like that you know it means something. I've been encouraging everyone to buy their own copies, not to just share other people's, because Ink don't yet receive any money from the SU so they need every copy to be bought.

It really is going to shake things up a bit media-wise. I really can't wait to get working on the media next year. It's going to be great. I think I'll start by running thinking sessions with each media group where we analyse strengths and weaknesses, figure out exactly what each group is supposed to be doing, and set targets for the year. Seren needs a constitution and a committee structure, so we'll need to work on that too. Y Ddraenen needs an editor apart from anything else. And Ink needs money.

I must admit that I'm quite pleased Ink is taking over the feature side of Bangor life. As Spencer says, it means Seren can focus on being a newspaper, not a feature magazine. It'll give them a bit of direction, having that competition.

Now, must go finish my work. What a concept.

This is just a quicky because I've got some Beatles books on short loan .. they're like gold dust so I should really use them, not blog. Nevertheless, here I am.

I'm feeling calmer about my essays: I have now written 2100 of the required 6000 words. Now I feel like 6000 words is something I can achieve, unlike on Friday and Saturday when the sheer sense of panic was making me very grumpy indeed. I was startlingly grumpy last night, too. So grumpy I was having difficulty speaking to anyone. It's very unlike me, and I do try to suppress my grumpiness so normally it's difficult to detect, but I think my flatmates probably guessed from my curt, one-word answers that I wasn't feeling full of joie de vivre.

Don't worry, I cheered myself up by watching Top Gear. I don't know what it is about that programme. It's full of things I'm not interested in, like cars and Jeremy Clarkson, but it's absolutely compelling. They did a wonderful thing on yesterday's show, making a convertable people carrier. It was SO cool. I thinnnk it might be the same kind of people carrier the SU has ... anyone for an open-topped people carrier?

Anyway, I'll be so full of happiness on Thursday you won't be able to shut me up. Imagine finishing your degree. What a concept. I think yesterday's grumpiness was fuelled by tiredness and hunger, having completed the Race For Life in the morning. Go me!

On Saturday morning I ran 3.9km in 31 minutes. Yesterday I ran 5km in 28 minutes. Hoorah! It was a gloriously sunny day, and the course ran along the Straits, so it was very pleasant. I've remembered how much I love middle and long distance running. It's just so satisfying feeling that you've done so much exercise. Quick! Find me another race to run!

Now, I must go back to writing about Sgt Pepper and Falla's keyboard music. Funderful.

Just been to see the very entertaining BEDS production of 'Allo 'Allo. Duncan (who lives with quite a lot of music students) particularly shone as Rene. I'm thinking in a bad French accent now.

Went for a meal with Spencer's family, Spencer and Sam in Parc Britannia before the show. It was rather delicious, and I managed to eat the entire giant Yorkshire pudding filled with sausages and mashed potato and onion and stuff. It was very delicious. AND I had a healthy and nutritious salad for starters with strawberries, mango, chicken and bacon. Mmmmm. Except the actual lettuce leaves didn't taste very nice.

Apparently the Storm Exec don't want the SU Exec to have our own lunchtime radio show. Actually I may not have told you about this idea before: I want the five SU sabbatical officers to have one lunchtime radio show each per week. Sam's bagsed Wednesdays, and I'm having Fridays. I think this'd be a great way for the student population to get to know us in an informal kind of way. We'll play whatever music we're into, and talk about whatever we've been doing in the SU this week: much more fun and interesting than reading minutes. It'd operate in much the same way as Storm in a Teacup has been running this year: I'll make sure there's someone there each day and occasionally get everyone to meet up to talk about the lunchtime slot as a whole, but in general people can put their own stamp on their own days.

But apparently the new Exec don't like it. I'm really upset about that: I can't believe they don't trust me to ensure somebody turns up to present the show each day. It's kind of hurtful having spent three years putting enormous amounts of time and effort into the station. I also think we're just as entitled to have a show as any other student. And I'll submit a show proposal next time I see Mike, since it's ultimately up to him to decide.

It's Chris's birthday today. We went to Roman Camp to sit in the sun yesterday: the plan was that he'd start celebrating at lunchtime and keep going til after midnight. That obviously didn't happen. By four o'clock he was too drunk to do anything except lie on the grass furled up in a blanket. He was in bed by half eight. The night before his twenty-first. What a rock and roll lifestyle.

I've been a bit grumpy the past few days, and will probably continue to be grumpy until Thursday. I have far too much work to do and people keep demanding I do other things. I just don't have the time: I have 5,400 words to write by midday on Thursday. It's almost more frustrating only having five days left: I know I should just keep my head down for the last five days but it's so sunny and there's so many SU meetings to attend.

The Race for Life is on tomorrow. I've been making it very difficult for myself by only starting exercising yesterday. Yesterday I ran 2km, today I ran 4km, so tomorrow I should be able to run 5km. That'll be fun. Anyway I must go to sleep now, toodles.

We had Council last night. Oh I do love a good Council. It was great, people got properly wound up about things. As you might have seen on Spencer's blog, there was an exciting moment when 13 people voted in favour of a motion, 7 voted against and 7 abstained. Initially the Chair rule that the motion had not passed, claiming that 13 is not a simple majority. However, a neat little procedural motion from Sam overturned his ruling, so when a re-vote gave us the same figures again, Mr Chairman ruled that the motion had passed.

I'm glad he let it pass the second time, otherwise we'd have had a serious miscarriage of justice. According to Wikipedia:

A simple majority simply means more than half of the votes cast. It does not include abstentions or absent members. It is more strict than a plurality vote, but less strict than an absolute majority vote. It is the most common requirement in voting for a measure to pass, especially in deliberative bodies and small organizations.

I think the problem was that Steering was defining a simple majority as a majority of voting members, and saying that 27 people were voting, but in fact people who abstain are not voting members. And 13 is clearly the majority of 20. However, big up to Mr (temporary) Chairperson for bringing pink wafers.

Anyway, it certainly got me fired up. I went to the pub afterwards with ROSTRA Tim, Seren Emma, Sam, Vicky, Spencer, Tom and Dizzy, and (happily) the debate continued there. Had a nice chat with Vicky on our way to the cash machine about JCRs and whether they should be formally linked to the SU or not. We both agreed that if there was to be a formal link it would have to be one shaped to suit JCRs, not throwing them in with the higgledy-piggledy jumble that is Standing Committees.

Stage Crew also became a Standing Committee last night. I think the Standing Committees need sorting out. It doesn't make sense to have lighting and sound technicians in the same category as Nightline or a radio station in with the Elections Committee. We shouldn't be afraid of putting additional structures in place to deal with the diverse committees currently lumped under this one category.

Oh and the great news is that the procedural motions have been updated, so we can now amend policy motions in Council instead of having to reject them outright. Hoorah!

Right, I have an hour and ten minutes before my lecture. Maybe I'll just sit here imagining I'm playing tunes while taking personality tests and reading news websites. Or I could go to Morrisons for some nice fresh croissants (I bought four stale croissants in Late Stop yesterday: don't do it!).

For the second day in a row I'm up ridiculously early with nothing to do. I dragged myself out of bed and chose a whole load of music for my radio show this morning (I've been itching to play music at people for weeks) only to find when I reached Main Arts that A Certain Someone (COUSpencerGH) hadn't returned the Storm keys to security, so I can't do my show.

I know, I know. He's so cruel. But don't you worry: I rang Spencer just so he could share that feeling of being awake early for no reason.

Well I've finally completely finished my dissertation. I'm sitting in a computer room on Normal Site waiting for it to be bound. Should be ready in about three-quarters of an hour: I'll take it to the Music Department and go home to bed. I probably shouldn't have stayed up til 1:00 last night since I had to get up at 6:30 to get to the bindery on time.

The finished beast is 79 pages long. Okay, so the main text of it is double-spaced and over twenty of those pages are appendices, but that's still a lot of work. The main text is about 14,500 words long (waaaayy over the word limit of 11,000 but never mind, eh?).

I really don't have anything to say, you know. I'm just entertaining myself by typing things. Somebody's left their car keys in the computer room .. I think I might give them to security in a bit. I'm talking to my friend Adam in Japan which is nice. He's eating bread filled with strawberry jam and whipped cream. I'm not sure I approve.

Okay so two more essays to do by Thursday week, then I'm completely finished everything. One's on Sgt Pepper which should be fairly easy since I studied it for my Leaving Cert. But the second one's on Manuel de Falla's keyboard music which I know absolutely nothing about. Challenging ..

No, look, there's no point writing about nothing. I'll go read the Sam Burnett report instead.

Just a quicky to tell you all that I met someone else who makes and eats nettle soup on Saturday. Ha! It really is delicious. If I wasn't working away like a busy busy bee I'd make a huge vat of it and force everyone to eat it. Full of nutritious iron, you know.