Library

The new library policy has made me very angry. Instead of allowing students to take books out for the duration of the holiday, the books need to be renewed according to their loan length throughout the holiday. I am particularly annoyed because I took out a book before I left Durham (after term had ended) and was given a renew date of three days, however, what I wasn't told was that the book had already been put on hold for someone else. So, now I cannot renew the book and will be fined £1 per day from tomorrow until I return it. I have been slightly lucky though, as the library is closed from Christmas eve until the 5th of January (when I will be returning to Durham) and they cannot charge me the fine between these dates. Still, it is a very silly rule.

RPG - Ridiculously Poor Glogging

Hello everyone.

I hope everyone has enjoyed the summer so far. I have also said very little on here recently, so I thought I'd add a little summary before term begins. Most of my time this summer was spent working on a summer project in the Maths department, I have finished this now and the outcome was an offer of a PhD to start in Durham next October. Apart from that I have done very little to be honest. A few of our housemates have been taken over by the world of online gaming, and I reluctantly (at first) followed suit. It really is quite addictive.

I have just been driven home by Eden. He was surprisingly confident driving on the M1, although when he accidentally ended up in the far right lane of a 5 lane stretch of motorway there was a slight panic! This weekend I am going to London with my Grandma and Auntie to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and to do a bit of sightseeing. This will be followed by a week of catching up with friends and family in Leeds, and then I will be returning to Durham on Monday (29th September). I'm really looking forward to seeing you all again; but for those who won't be returning, I hope you are enjoying life wherever you are and I look forward to seeing you very soon.

Chuck xx

P.s. Glogging is the act of writing a blog in the first person...

"Working from home"

I will be returning to Durham next weekend, on Saturday afternoon to be more precise. For this week though, I am working from home... which basically means I have to read a few papers and look at a couple of websites from the comfort of my own bedroom... and get paid! Hurray! I like this job. 

In the week that has passed since I left Durham I haven't really done anything particularly exciting. I took my tortoise to the pet shop to check it's sex; went to a barbeque; bought Eden's graduation present (which I am rather pleased with) and unpacked. Unpacking did seem slightly unnecessary seeing as it was only for two weeks, but unfortunately most of my clothes needed washing. 

Well, this would have been a more interesting blog if my tortoise had in fact been male and I had to face the dilemma that his name was Tallullah. Unfortunately "it's tail hangs in the middle" as the man in the pet shop said, so I'll have to work harder next week to make my life more interesting...

Decision Making!

Yesterday I received an email from the Maths department saying that I had been removed from my second choice of project to my first, meaning that I am currently signed up to doing the same project as Armstrong and Brutal Snake. The problem that arises from this is that I now have the power to actually choose which of the two projects I would like to do. This is difficult. It was easy to just walk into the project allocation meeting and see my name printed next to a project title and just accept it there and then, and I was very happy with the outcome. But, even after doing a module in decision making this year, I do not feel able to make this decision easily and it will require a lot of thought.

The House

The gossip of the moment seems to be the recent room ballot, and so it should be; the process was suitably mathematical involving coin tossing and the mention of dice. The downstairs rooms were simple and did not require a diagram; Sparky took the largest room downstairs and Eden the back extension room as his study. So, the upstairs rooms were left to fight over. The diagram to the left shows the final solution, and at this stage I should note that this diagram is not to scale.

The summer is ahead of us, and for all of us that means an excessive amount of money will be leaving our bank accounts every month. We will all return in October for the next academic year to begin, filled with hardcore library sessions, project supervisions and naked Thursdays, but I'm sure there'll be more about that later!

Signing out...