End of 2011

So it’s the end of the year, and I have to say, where the hell did it go?!? Seriously, I can remember back to summer and that doesn’t seem like it was long ago at all, even though I’ve had a whole semester of university since then. Although I don’t remember the first half of the year all that well.

Quick review of the year!

January:  Year of Indulgence begins! Many 101 theme challenges. First 7/8 Character in LARP. Tonsilitis.

February: More 101 theme challenges. Hot Water Bottles. 24 Hour! I vow to never do the food order again. Early morning ramblings

March: 100th Post! Anime. Mafia popularity explodes. In the Hive. Graphics 1 Coursework. Seriously – Mumps? I had my jabs! Up to 47.

April: Still ill. From Wales to Strom in short succession. 2 updates on 101 Theme Challenge, I was slipping.

May: Exam time! Filled with revision, apathy and the drive to do everything but revise. World of warcraft.

June: More Strom! Scotland! Boredom results in Cleaning! Tuna BBQ!

July: 54. Stars. Tabletops. World of Warcraft. First level 8 character in LARP, all the 7/8’s in the world. Away from Norwich, back home. Strom again.

August: Moved into a new house, lovely new house. Boyfriend in hospital. Birthday and Underwear!

September: Laziness to the extreme! Also Geology in Greece, stupid hot weather. Start of the new term, lectures, pub crawls and all the rest.

October: Illness, unproductive due to world of warcraft. Mondays are not their own fault. Unhealthy food is the best. Careers fair – eek! I’m actually growing up.

November: Anime, NaNoWriMo, writing, lots of coursework and projects, go-go-go-go!

December: Unplanned date, finished coursework, yipee! DnD on monday nights. Back home for christmas, roasts, presents and family all followed. Should have posted more this year. Will try for bi-weekly updates at the very least next year!

 

So here’s to a good year gone, a better one to come, and many happy returns all round!

Christmas Roast

Christmas themed post! How to make a roast:

It’s all about the timing. You need to know what you are going to do and when and suddenly the whole thing gets a lot less hectic. First, the meat, work out how long it’s got to go in the oven for, usually a minimum of two, but it’ll tell you on the packaging. Oh, and one thing to note on christmas is that everyone else in the whole area around you is cooking dinner at roughly the same time, so you’re oven isn’t going to be as hot as it usually is, so watch out for that.

After the turkey goes in you have to remember to take it out every so often and bast it, that is scoop up those lovely juices and oils that you put it in and dribble them all over the meat. Helps to keep it moist and tasty. But don’t worry, you put things in and out of the oven all the time, so this shouldn’t be hard to remember.

Next thing – potatoes! Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. Peel them, and then boil them until they are soft enough to push a knife through. Once you drain them you should be able to make them fluffy by putting them back in the pan,making sure the lid is on tight and then giving them a good shake. This helps with the crispy outside. Then put them in with the roast, in the same pan if you can, then you can use all those lovely meat juices to cook them in. Smoother those in oil as well to help them crisp up. Timings wise these need to boil for twenty odd minutes and then roast for an hour or so.

Parsnip go into roast as well, quarter of an hour after the spuds. Peel, slice and then just shove them in, simple.

Stuffing will depend on what you’ve got. Most of the packet ones need about a half hour in the oven after you’ve made them up, but fresh stuff takes longer.

Vegetables need boiling for quarter of an hour of so, so peel, chop, then throw them in some boiling water.

Yorkshires! If you’re lazy like me then you brought pre-made and packages ones, these take four minutes in the oven and can be done whilst you are carving the meat up.

Once the meat is done, take it out and lest it rest of the side for a bit, then carve it up, take everything else out of the oven, drain vegetables, serve and enjoy.

Oops, almost forgot the gravy! You can use store-bought stuff, but making it from the meat juices is so much tastier. So save those meat juices, add a couple of appropriate oxo cubes and a little bit of cornflour (or a lot depending on how thick you like it) and stir til smooth(ish) and you have some awesome real gravy!

The key to a roast is timing. Work out when you want to serve up, and then work backwards from that time. Draw up a schedule, it helps.

And remember – don’t forget the cranberries!

Merry Christmas!

Days

One of the weird things I have noticed about myself is my timekeeping. Not in the usual sense, I can tell what hour it is and roughly how much time has passed like normal people, but how I refer to the time of day is unusual.

Whatever time I wake up is morning. Doesn’t matter if this is three in the afternoon, it is morning and I shall greet you with a Good Morning for three to four hours after I have woken up as this is my morning. The other thing is I always refer to tomorrow as the part that is going to come after I have slept. Days don’t tend to go from midnight to midnight with me, they go from when I wake up to when I fall asleep. This has caused some confusing conversations at 3am in the morning when I say ‘See you tomorrow?’ And the person replies, ‘Don’t you mean today?’ No I mean tomorrow, because in my head it isn’t Tuesday, it’s still my Monday, an my Monday keeps to weird timings.

Home for Christmas

Waking up far too early, packing my bags, half an hour on the bus, and then four hours total on trains, one short car ride and I’m back in Reading for the christmas period. Also it is cold and rainy.

Christmas tree in the living room is all shiny and sparkly. No presents under it yet, but there we go. I prefer presents in the form of numbers in bank balance anyway. Although unwrapping things is nice, and I shall never get bored with having a stocking filled with little presents.

Need to do some shopping still, haven’t yet got presents for my family/friends, but I think me and my friends are doing an impromptu secret santa, and then tasty dinner, so that’s okay.

Although it’s not all fun and games, I have to do final year project stuff and start looking for/applying for graduate jobs. I just hope that I can find something, I don’t really want to end up with nothing come graduation, although I have to pass first, which I should hopefully do, getting a 2:1 is my goal, which should be more than achievable.

But I do get to have tonight to myself, so I’ve been making cards and will probably do something else craft tonight, or go watch lots of TV. Perhaps both!

Saturday

So, last night was the gamessoc christmas party, which was awesome to hang around at (even if I did spend a lot of the evening politicking with people about requiem) but I left early which makes me sad, since a) I left early, and b) there are several Facebook status’ indicating that the waterfront was awesome as it was a silent disco and there was entertainment to be had. Oh well. Next time.

Today I am getting fed roast, my second this week. I cooked one on monday, and now it is time for presents and roast at my boyfriend’s house. I can’t wait for him to open his present, I hope he’ll like it. But yay, tasty tasty lamb, because I’m going to have so much turkey over the next few weeks I’m getting all of the red meat now. Also lamb is the tastiest meat ever.

This evening a bunch of us, and I mean a bunch of us, the number seems to be ever-growing, are going to see Sherlock Holmes 2 at the cinema – squeeee! Robert Downey Jr is awesome in Victorian London. I went and saw Sherlock Holmes 1 like three times, so I am really looking forward to this. And our friend who works at the cinema and has already seen it says that it’s awesome as well. So fun times.

My christmas shopping isn’t going as well as could have been hoped. I know what I want to get people, but I seem to be having some trouble in actually getting my hands on items. Luckily I now have the whole holiday’s, so the people still in Norwich to receive gifts will get them in the new year, and my family I have another whole week to shop for, which is good.

LARP tomorrow, and people are actually going to be turning up, huzzah! Decent turnout before we all scatter for the holidays will make me very happy, even if it will be cold as all sin. We’re starting to see snow/sleet/it’s just bloody cold and I need to wrap up warmer. To find my hoody!

Freedom!

Coursework has been demonstration and the report has been handed in! Programming is done with for the term! Whoop whoop! I think I did alright. I have everything working apart from the camera bits, and I’m fine with having one things that doesn’t work, although my graphics weren’t as good as other people’s. Oh well, as long as a get a good (defining good as over 50%, its programming, I’m being slightly pessimistic/realistic) mark then I’m happy. And it’s only 40% of the module, the other 60% is the exam in the summer.

Also finally got a decent working title for my project, so I get to work on that over the christmas period, go me.

But before I pop home for christmas on monday, I get to have a couple of days of fun! This evening is the anime christmas party, with secret santa. Tomorrow I don’t have anything to do during the day, so I get to go christmas shopping or play on the Wii, or go onto campus and do the final bits of work before I go home for the holidays. Hopefully all three will occur, before the gamessoc christmas party in the evening. And then saturday can be a lazy day as I have the Coach House christmas meal and secret santa (yes, three days of parties and roasts, tis the season after all) or maybe do some more shopping, I’m not exactly sure on timings. The LARP on sunday, probably the last LARP of the year since everyone is going home early next week.

It’ll be weird at home, since both my mum and my brother are working, it’ll be all empty and weird. I still find it weird that my brother has a job and I don’t. Although that is another task for the holidays, finding myself a job and starting to apply for things! I should have started a while ago, but coursework happened, as it always does.

I need to get some tinsel I think. I feel christmasy when I get my hands on some tinsel.

Programming

Sine I’ve been working on it all afternoon, my post today is going to be about programming. The current language I am using is C++ with OpenGL for the graphics. I like C++, it’s a really nice language now that I’ve gotten used to it. Much better than Java. Although having said that, I haven’t used Java in forever, so it might just be that I’ve forgotten everything about Java.

Anyway’s, my current coursework is to create a graphical environment why you control a plane and land it on an aircraft carrier, and it’s going well apart from two problems. One is probably my fault in doing something I shouldn’t have, and the other is just weird and I have no idea why it’s acting like it is.

Programming is fun, despite how much I complain about it. Seeing your code working is very satisfying, even if I have just spent three hours screaming at my screen and contemplating throwing it out of a window, I calm right back down when the things actually works. And the code I have for my coursework right now is going to get me a pass, I’m just not sure how well of a pass, but there we go.

Favourite programming statement is a for loop. For loops are lovely, as are if statement. They are all over my code, all over it. If apple pie = lacking, add apple pie!

Monday Night DnD

My housemate has started up a DnD 4th edition Eberron game, and we’ve just finished our third session, which was combat light as apparently the paladin is very good at talking our way out of situations. We have six players now, up from four in the first game as follows:

• Me: Elven Ranger
• Toaster: Eladrin Paladin
• Adam: Warforged Runepriest
• Emma: Half-Elf Cleric
• Suzan: Changeling Rogue
• Mark: Deava Artficer

Which is a pretty good spread of classes, if not races. All of us apart from the warforged speak Elven, so we get to have conversations behind his back. We cleared out a burrow, and found a dragon hoard, so we got some cool items, which I immediately passed over the to paladin since it worked off Charisma, and I have none whatsoever.

Went shopping for some new magical items, and then we got onto the electric train, and are now travelling to our next quest in luxury. Yay.

Also I made roast, and it was tasty.

Late Sunday

It is indeed late on sunday, and for this first time in a while, evening LARP was run, huzzah! This makes me happy. It was a 5/6, and I got to do my ritual, although I maybe did something a little silly in the process, but I got what I wanted. Then we had an adventure of mages! Parties of mages are the best parties.

Tomorrow I get to cook a roast, om nom nom nom roast. This makes my stomach very happy indeed. Also I need to stop eating takeout so much, it’s getting expensive, although tasty.

DnD tomorrow, get to run around like the crazy ranger I am.

There was an interesting question put to me, and other people, today whilst we were hanging around the bar talking. If you had to live as one of your live game characters, which one would you live as? After thinking about it, my initial choices would either be Ryanne (Requiem), Tem (Sabbat) or Zephyr (IoD Changeling) but I’d really have to give that one some thought actually. It was an interesting question.

Night Night!

Friday

I got taken out for a date tonight ^^ totally unplanned and done on a whim, but my boyfriend took me out to Nandos for tasty chicken and then we hopped over the road to Pizza Hut for cookie dough desert. All this was preluded by us running around the bowling alley playing arcade games and air hockey. He beat me, by one point. So I am very very happy tonight.

Before that the day was a little bland, I need to write out a new to do list to work out a priority list of what I actually need to do in the next week. It involves my graphics work, project work, shopping for christmas, cooking a roast and some other things probably. I need to write it out so I actually know what I’m doing, otherwise I might keep lying in until midday, which although is nice, isn’t all that helpful.

Also I have been sucked back into the time sink that is known as facebook games. There’s a new (ish) one called castleville, which is all about building your castle and battling the forces fo evil, which is right up my street and actually looks like it has some sort of plot, o.m.g. So yeah, sucked right back into that. I am also enjoying the new WoW patch content still, need one more dungeon to valour cap for this week, and then next week I get to buy my helm. Yay. Two more weeks after that is my chest piece, and then I stop looking like a mismatched banana. Hopefully the shoulders I need should drop by then as well.

Christmas is coming, I’ve done a little bit of shopping, but I have to write a list and see who there still is to shop for, and then find a cheap solutions to presents, as I am a student and do not have much money. Already know my new year’s resolution: budget properly!