With friends like these...

So it's been a little while since I posted a personal update, and I'm going to do one now. I'm starting this at 10:30 in the morning and I have no idea how long it's going to take me, because these entries always seem to take me forever.

I just checked, and it's been exactly two weeks since my last personal entry, so I can take it from there. I was stuck with the crippling pain for the rest of that day and the day after, (oh look, it's half past twelve. I got distracted) and as usual it affected my eating and sleeping habits, though far worse than it normally does. I've decided that if it's as bad next time I'm going to take it to the doctors because I can't keep being totally out of action for two or three days out of every month. I'll probably end up being put on some contraceptive pill or something, but I don't even care anymore.

As usual, I half killed myself getting all my assignments done on time. I don't know why I just don't keep to the resolution that I make every year (it's now 3:30, I got distracted again) and actually do my work in good time. I suppose I just manage better under pressure. Not that I'm terribly sure about the quality of this semester's assignments, but whatever, I got them in and that's all that matters. =_=

I've still been playing on Gaia, though not quite as much, probably because I've been doing all that work so maybe I'll get back into it now. I met a couple of nice people on there, and one very cool gal who shares so many of the same interests as me as well as being the same age and having just completed the same MA as I'm now doing. Small world, huh? 

Very little exciting has happened, though I'm beginning to get rather concerned about the state of my sister's mental health. I think she's hiding a lot more from us about how she's feeling, but at least she's getting a bit of help for it now. I'm worried, but at the same time I want to shake her and snap her out of it. Six weeks is far too long to still be crying over a boy. I don't know, maybe I seem a little cold, but she's making herself unwell and I looked at her today and realised how much weight she's lost.

Speaking of that, I've lost some weight myself. I'm currently standing at 5'7" and weighing in at 120lbs. Starting to become a slight problem now I think (it's now 4.30, I got distracted watching funny vids with sister). It's a lot harder to put weight on than it is to lose it, especially with my sleeping and eating habits... which I don't intend to change. I'm quite happy with how I am at the moment. Though speaking of my sleeping habits I haven't had a proper night of sleep in about a week. Part of that is my fault, though for the past two days I'm not sure what's wrong with me, I just can't seem to be able to sleep more than four hours at a time. It's not impacting upon me terribly since I don't have anything to do but it's still a pain.

In more interesting news, on Thursday night I went to see Rush. Who were absolutely fantastic. It was really good to see that they obviously still have so much fun with what they do, because really, at their age (57/58) they don't need to still be doing tours and they especially don't need to still be doing Europe tours, but they do. I never thought I'd get to see them but my dad, who is awesome, got us tickets about two weeks after we were discussing how we'd probably never get to see them.

It was a little bit strange, though. Rush have been going since 1968 and as a result most of the people there were 50+ year old men, so I felt a teeny bit out of place. I wasn't complaining, though, because it meant that there was no crazy shoving and pushing and people actually SAT DOWN, which was great because there's no way you'd get me standing up for three hours. My hands were so sore by the end from clapping and I had a really loud ringing in my ears when I finally got home and went to bed.

Dad wanted to know why so many of my friends knew who Rush were when none of his do. I just think I have awesome friends =3=

Yesterday, since dad was up here anyway, we went out with him (something we normally do on a Saturday) and we went to see the new Pirates film, which was.. alright, I guess. It wasn't amazing, but if you liked the others I'd say give it a watch, even if the mermaid subplot is really shoehorned in there (if you've seen it you'll know what I mean). After that I had a bit of stress when I realised I'd left my bag hanging over the arm of the seat in the cinema. Lucky I realised at all, I don't remember now exactly what prompted me to remember it, but I did, and thankfully it hadn't been busy at all so it was still hanging exactly where I'd left it with nothing missing. Phew.

I have some stuff that I want to get on with now that I have all that work out of the way. I need to update my newest fic and get my two fanworkathon fics done for the usxuk  comm, I have three RPs to reply to (PrUK, UKJap, AmeLiet) and ooooh what else do I need to do... I need to read through 14 sci-fi short stories and pick my favourites before the end of the month for my internship, and I also want to get back into gaming. I want to finish Okami again and try to make some more progress on Kingdom Hearts, and I have a load of games to replay after my Xbox decided it didn't want to transfer my old saves. Ho hum.

Well look at that. It's now half past five and it only took me seven hours to finally get this entry finished. That must be a new record.

When I first started university I had big plans about what I wanted to do, the things I wanted to achieve. I wanted to get a first class degree, and take a Masters, and maybe one day do a PhD. I wanted to go into teaching.

On Thursday night, I just resigned myself to handing an assignment in late because I put it off for too long, and was left with a choice. Rush it and get it in on time, but probably crap, or hand it in late and lose ten marks. Ten marks that could be the difference between my getting that first class degree or not. I've never handed something in late before. Strangely, I find that I don't care about this.

I'm twenty-one years old, but in my head I never moved past sixteen. I don't feel old enough or prepared enough for this kind of thing, for the idea of needing 'experience' to get a PGCE and for the idea of actually behaving like an adult. I have no doubt that I'm smart enough, and I could do it, if I put my mind to it, but not doing it is a much more comfortable place.

I just don't know what to do. I can't quit now, it would be a waste of three years of my life and a £10,000 debt. Everything I've done in the past five years has geared me towards becoming a teacher. It is what I want to do, I just no longer see myself as able to do it...

On another note, for those who care, I'm working on chapter fourteen and should hopefully have it done tonight. =)

I know, I fail so hard. I'm now... uh... seven prompts behind. I fail T^T I'll do them, though! I was up all night last night. Hahahahaha. That'll teach me to leave my university work to the last minute. Well, it won't, but you get the picture. I'm a terrible procrastinator... but I think this has to be a new record. Shockingly, I'm not tired. Not so tired as I could get to sleep in any case. More a sort of hyper tired, if you get my meaning. If this keeps up I might be able to rattle off all seven prompts and take a good crack at chapter fourteen (I'm sure that a certain someone would be very pleased to hear that. You know who you are).

Well, in ten minutes I shall be heading off out into the cold, into Salford, to hand in two assignments. After that, the next thing due is in January, and I have an exam then, but I'm not going to worry about that until after Christmas.

So I've not been around much on LJ recently, and there are several reasons for this.

The first of these is that I had university work to do, which I just about got done no thanks to being ill for two damn weeks. I don't hold high hopes for a good mark, though I at least hope to pass it so I can put it out of the way. It's hard to enjoy a module when you don't like the professor.

The second reason is the new games that I've got. These are Fallout 3, Borderlands, Ninety-Nine Nights, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and The Last Remnant.

Fallout 3 I had already played, but the copy that I had wasn't mine, and my sister bought it for me. I. Love. Fallout. It's the first game like that that I've played where I've actually managed to stick with it. I also have and have completed all five of the DLCs for the game, with varying success (I got bored with Mothership Zeta and changed the difficulty to 'very easy' just so I could get the hell off that stupid ship).

Okay, so, to the games.

Borderlands is a first person roleplaying shooter (ie, an FPS with RPG elements) and is actually quite fun. It reminds me a lot of Fallout 3, though the difficulty curve seems to be a little sharper. I had some trouble navigating around at first, and it took me about half an hour to figure out how to access my inventory, but that may have just been me being dense. Probably just me being dense. The visuals are... different, to say the least. It's very much like walking through a graphic novel, if you can imagine that. I discovered very early on that I hate Skags. Skags are very annoying. They have this tendency to sneak up on me and nom on my ankles, and I'm stood there turning 'round, because I struggle with FPS games as it is, not able to find these little fuckers. I'm playing as the only female character (Lilith), who has this awesome 'palm strike' thing that I now have to the point that I can take out Skag Pups with one hit. Needs levelling up more... Haha. I might try playing as Mordecai soon, just to see how that goes. He looks pretty cool.

On to Ninety-Nine Nights, AKA N3. N3 is a fantasy based hack and slash game that is both very entertaining and very frustrating. I quickly learned that you need to be at least one level above the mission that you're trying to complete (ie level 6 for mission 5, and so on) but levelling up isn't as quick as I'd like, so re-doing of previous missions is needed quite often. I spent over an hour stuck on Inphyy's mission 5 before I finally managed to complete it. Oh yes, about 'Inphyy'. At the beginning you can only have one character, out of about six or seven that eventually become available. Inphyy is the first one that you can play as. I find her a little irritating, but I have the feeling that I'm supposed to. I'm far in favour of her brother Aspharr, who, while his attacks are slower, seems to build up his Orb Attack (a powerful unleashing of Light Energy) far quicker and uses a staff, so has a much longer reach. Though I'm getting needlessly esoteric for those who haven't played it.
It's rather satisfying, when you get into it, to cut through hoardes of enemies (sometimes numbering in the thousands) per mission. It's a nice stress-reliever, until the constant failing of missions starts to become annoying.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a third person shooter that takes place on an alien planet in the grip of an ice age. Lots and lots of snow. The planet is populated by a hostile alien species called the Akrid, hostile human Snow Pirates, and you - Wayne. Aside from the friendly voices of your allies that occasionally contact you during missions, and the cut-scenes that show communication between you and said allies, you're on your own in the snowy tundra. At least, that's how it is so far - I've only completed one mission. I suppose I can't say that much about this game just yet.

Lastly, The Last Remnant is a turn-based roleplaying game. Once again I haven't played too much of this yet and so far the storyline seems to be mostly Rush (the protagonist) being dense and annoyingly single minded about rescuing his younger sister, much to the exasperation of everyone around him who is trying to help. One thing that I've found pleasing is that the characters who have English accents (albeit very stereotyped ones) are the good guys. I'm not sure what it is about an English accent that makes a character immediately sinister but it's nice to see the change.
The combat system is fairly simple, though it's not for the kind of person who likes to charge in and cut down everything in their path. Think Final Fantasy.

So yes, that's what I've been up to. I haven't been writing at all, even for university, mostly because when I finally get to it I'm too tired to concentrate properly. I have written a little of chapter thirteen of my current Hetalia fic, so here's a teaser.


There we go. Hopefully I'll have a finished chapter soon. Not sure if I'd count on that, though... I've had Dragon Age: Origins bought for me, and if it's as epic as amazon.co.uk makes it sound, then it's going to be very distracting.