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Had a good morning of shooting. Shot 222 with 2 golds and 29 hits for a Bray, my new pb on that round and did a total of four dozen for the whole session with a score of 358. I’m pretty pleased, especially as it’s one of our last sessions indoors.
Also got some more work on the dissertation done, mainly sorting through the Angle Bay data Annika gave me. It’s got good stuff and will make for a better comparison than Manorbier. Still trying to muddle my way through the best way to analyze. Will do more tomorrow.
Now I’m off to the geography pub quiz.
Finally got those pictures taken. There’s really nice light at the moment even for taking pictures inside which is what I’m sort of forced to do at the moment. It’s nice to finally have pictures on my Ravelry project page rather than just the balls of yarn, pretty as they are. In other knitting news, my swallowtail is coming along though I messed up half a row in the budding lace repeat because I misread the pattern and did the wrong set up stitches, at least I know what I did and it hopefully shouldn’t show too much. Fingers crossed on that.
Annika has commissioned me do a hat for her, lucky for she has supplied the yarn and it’s The Icing Swirl Hat from Whimsical Little Knits so I have the pattern too. I ordered needles the other day and they came today so I will start on that soon. From what I hear it’s a pretty quick knit so maybe a week or so, knitting at half speed that I usually do.
Other news, went running this morning. I’m on week 4 of c25k which is 3 minutes, walk for 90 sec then run for 5 minutes. I’m on the second day repeating the week because I was having trouble getting up to the full five minutes. I almost did it today, I only took one walking break and only 10-20 seconds at that in each five minute interval. I think I can push myself next time and do the whole five minutes. It’s nice to see myself make this sort of progress and know that if I keep at it I’ll be able to run longer and longer times. And then I can start trying for things like distance and pace. I’ve joined dailymile.com and have been keeping track not just of my running but also my daily walking and other exercise. It’s a really nice way to look at your fitness in general. Also it’s amazing that I walk about 2-5 miles just in an average day between walking back and forth between town.
I should probably go now and go into town and do some work on the dissertation. I’m not working as hard as I could, especially as I’m not of in a muddle at the moment about what to do about my Manorbier data. It’s all the totals for the stations when what I really need is the actually quadrat data. It just means that my sample size is really small and if I try to expand it by splitting up the totals it is just homogenizing a very heterogeneous environment and it won’t give me results that represent reality. I might go and ask Will on Monday, I hear tears work well.
Also need to do some revision of the personal statement and take it in for Monday, and email about references. Gosh, so much to do. I can do it, never fear.
I’ve had a rough few weeks, emotionwise and workwise, both of which are linked. But I’ve got some assignments in, gotten down to work on the old dissertation, the sun is shinning (or at least it was before it set) and I started knitting again after about a two week hiatus. Like I always say, you can tell my mental state by whether I’m knitting, when I’m happy I knit, when I’m depressed I don’t. So I would say things are looking up. Hope to get pictures taken soon of the latest knits.
After two weeks, mainly to give my legs a break as it was feeling like shin splints coming on, but also some bad weather, being away and general stress I finally went for a run. It was a bit of a struggle to just convince myself to go. I decided that the only reason I didn’t want to was because I believed that I couldn’t do it and I can so I needed to just go do it and then even if I couldn’t do I would actually know and it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. Anyhow, long story short, I went and did my third week 3 run and it was great. It was challenging but in a good way and I was able to run the interval with a minimum of discomfort. I’m going to just go for it and start week 4 which I think will be a bit of a stretch as the time moves up to 5 minutes but I’m willing to give it a shot. I really want this thing to work and be able to run for longer distances and times. I’m already eyeing up 5K races for late summer when I’m at home. Ever the competitor it will give me a goal and a reason, other than fitness for why I’m doing this, plus the fact that you usually get t-shirts with these things and it looks impressive to have them, or at least I think so.
In terms of pushing myself to do things, I’m struggling to get myself to start my personal statement at the moment (not to mention the dissertation). I know I am not comfortable writing, especially about myself but I need to just start and get stuff down and then I can go back and polish it. But the sooner I start, the sooner I can take it in to the Careers Service and they can look at it, and the sooner I can get these applications out. So I need to forget that I’m not comfortable writing about me and just do it.
I’m still in my mode of up days and down days though probably since the last time I wrote it has been more up than down.
I had a really good trip to Bangor. The journey down went very smoothly, no train issues and I managed to find the B&B with no problems though I did get a little worried when I kept walking and hadn’t gotten to it yet. I knitted the majority of the first of my Vancouver mittens on the journey down so that was a nice feeling. Bangor isn’t as studenty a town as St Andrews is so I was a little lost for things to do before the open day started, I did a bit of wandering and so forth. Luckily I met a girl from York who was also there for marine biology so we spent quite a bit of time together, it was nice to talk to someone else who is studying the same sorts of things and interested in the same subjects. The visit to the school of ocean sciences was very informative and cast a completely different outlook on my part than the first time I visited. I also discovered they have a program which is Marine Environmental Protection which is much more in line with my interests and academic background. It changes how I look at other programs as well, like the Exeter fisheries program which was sort of a just in case is now much higher on my list. I think the fact that the majority of my essays end up being about fisheries must point towards me actually being very interested in fisheries, not to mention the rather impassioned speech I gave to Ank over dinner on saturday. The only thing now is to get all my applications in and down. Ultimately I’d like to get that done in the next few weeks. I am attempting to write a CV and am hoping to go to the Careers Service tomorrow to have them give me some pointers on that and my personal statement. While the journey down went quite smoothly, the return trio was much more exciting. The train out of Crewe was late meaning I missed my train in Lancaster. There was a train in half an hour to Carlise and then the last train that day to Edinburgh seeing as they were doing work on the tracks. There were quite a few people in this situation and I met a girl who’s studying at Liverpool so we talked most of the to Edinburgh. Strangely enough one of the people from that Crewe train, a man and his little boy actually ended up getting off at Leuchars as well, it’s so weird how small and interconnected the world really is, the way peoples’ lives converge and diverge in unexpected and amazing ways. Anyhow, the train out of Lancaster was late but they held the Edinburgh train in Carlise for us but there was still the mad dash through the station.
I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by work lately, or really the idea that the world is spinning a little too fast into the future and I don’t feel like I’ve found my feet in order to catch up. I have set up talking to Alan on skype and had our first catch today. I seem to be having the problem of looking to far into the future and getting caught up in things that at this point I have no control over and I need to remember to take one step at a time and work in the present. So we’re to catch up again on Friday and hopefully I’ll have gotten some work done which starting is the hardest part and I’m going to do that.
On to the more interesting things, I’ve put up a few knitting posts of things I knit for Ravelympics, the majority of it I haven’t had a chance to photograph even though I’ve been wearing the new Gretel for almost two weeks now. The ribbing on it has really stretched out and I need to find out if I can block it back together. Hopefully I’ll get some more pictures and posts up soon.
But now, I’m just focusing on what I can actually manage now, if I take care of the present the future should take care of itself.
The week started out pretty well and then went from the high that was the weekend to an absolute low the last few days. I just felt like everything I tried to do didn’t turn out well and a complete sense of confusion about life. Had a few very long days of walking out to the estuary to watch birds that either didn’t deem to show up or flew away a half hour into our sample and we had to give up. This is also mind you after a five mile walk in the cold with blisters. We did manage to hitch a lift from Outhead with some very nice old ladies who I think enjoyed the novelty of talking to some new people. Crap data, but that’s science for you. I will not be doing focal samples of birds for my final project, not unless I can work with someone who has a car.
In terms of crappiness of the week, archery really hit a low, I think it’s a combination of being tired and having tons of stress and archery which is supposed to be my stress relief just added to the stress this week and just makes me hate having to do it. I’m going to Dundee to shoot tomorrow and I’m going to make it as best I can but I am going to take a little break form it next week and not go to sessions. One because I need to do some much needed work on my dissertation now that I have all the data but also because I just need a break, mainly from the responsibility. I also managed to turn up almost an hour late to a lecture yesterday because for some reason I thought it was at noon and it was only half way there (of a 2 mile walk) that I realized the class was at 11. I almost never do things like that and it makes me feel very out of control of life. I’m probably going to do some therapy sessions over skype as it really helped last time and I really do need to make some changes with how I deal with and go about periods like this.
On an up side, I do feel better today. I had a relatively good day. It was sunny this morning when I went to class and then it snowed this afternoon. Good proper snow as well. It’s been quite cold over the last few days so the ground was cold enough for it to stick. It’s quite pretty right now though a lot of it has frozen into ice. Snow just makes me smile and I had fun trying to catch snowflakes with my tongue. I also went dancing tonight for the first time since before the break. It was really great to get back into it. I really enjoy the classes and also the people. I will definitely make an effort to make it to the advanced class on Sunday.
Well that’s it for me tonight, I need to get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow.
I’ve had an interesting time since my last post. It started out with my meeting last friday morning. My supervisor never turned up and despite my waiting around for an hour I didn’t get to see him. This really hit me because I had been so just ready to get it done and over with and I just felt adrift again. Then finally I got the final names for the entries for saturday spent a fairly long time sorting out the target lists and coding the excel file so it would do all the scores. Then when I go and check my email I receive a bunch of emails from earlier in the week including the ones with names from the unis that I had been pestering. But the one that really threw me was the one from Strathclyde that they won’t be able to make the morning session so I had to resort out the target lists and such. It was just one of those this day can’t get worse moments. One melt down later and i go to bed ready for the next day and I wake up at 4 and can’t fall back asleep. At about 5:30 I finally desperately call my mother because I just don’t know what else to do. She suggests reading for a bit and actually it only took about 10 pages and I was out.
The competition on Saturday ran as smoothly as I could have hoped, all my planning worked, the score sheet was great and despite spending eight and a half hours in the sports hall and being absolutely mentally and physically drained by the end it turned out to be a very good novice champs. I watched a bit of the England-Wales rugby game and saw Ank for dinner.
On Sunday I went down to Edinburgh for the Scotland-France rugby game. We had a lot of fun and I might not be as avid a rugby fan as the two friends I was with I do enjoy it and actually find it highly amusing to watch. I hope I get to go to another game some time. Scotland lost but overall the atmosphere is really great and such.
I did finally get to see my supervisor on Monday and he was very sorry as he’d been called away for an unplanned meeting and hadn’t contacted me. I was suitably nervous about talking to him but I mentioned that I was the archery captain and it turns out that he used to do archery when he was at Oxford so we had a little chat about archery which I guess made me feel a bit more comfortable. So long story short I am allowed to use the data, I also get confirmation of this from the head of biology but I need to make a really good effort to make my work as good as possible. I’m meeting with Ev tomorrow to go through the data and pick what I need as she went on the trip this year and has it all. So that is all good, I can move forward with it all, now it’s just forcing myself to really get down to it. April is much closer than it feels.
My courses this semester look good despite austin being such a dull lecturer. I have a lot of work to do and I really want to do well so I’m giving it my all for once. I did some work for my oceans class today, just a little maths problem but I was having trouble converting km³ to m³ and betting the powers right. I also have already picked an essay topic for my bio-oceanography course and need to start doing the reading or it next week. The methods course doesn’t start till next week either so I have a little free time this week.I will be going back to Bangor in about two weeks as they’re now doing a Postgraduate Fair which would mean that I would actually get to go to the school of ocean sciences, talk to professor and students. I feel sort of silly that I’ll be going again but I could not have known, if I had I would have held off the trip. And as my mother pointed out the first trip wasn’t useless, I did learn things.
I’m off to Nottingham this weekend for BUTC. I feel okay about it, I have been shooting alright in practice but they are little targets and one never knows. Anyhow it should be fun to go to a big competition, I’d never been to one other than BUCS before. We had a very full training session today and even some new people so it makes me feel good about the club after the weeks of only 4 people showing up.
Now for the most important thing, knitting. I finished the Juliet scarf on Sunday night which has been renamed Verona Skies because of its beautiful colour and the fact that it sort of reminds me of clouds. I blocked it last night and it’s quite lovely. I’ll post about it once I’ve managed to take pictures. I started the Swallowtail on Monday and it’s coming along, I’ve completed three repeats of the budding lace pattern, 11 more to go. Once you get the hang of it the pattern comes quite easily. It will get put on hold for the Ravelympics which start this weekend. The yarn for the BlueCap and for Jane’s hat have arrived today so I have everything ready for the weeks coming up. I had originally decided to do BlueCap, Thorpe, Gretel and then Square but I’m not sure about that now, especially as I’ll be traveling for part of it. My mom has also asked me knit something for our cleaner who is going back home to Colombia next month so I need to find a pattern and some yarn.
I finally managed to take FO pictures today, it’s sad considering that I finished the lace over a month ago now and only got the chance to photograph it today. I also managed to take some yarn shots which I’m fairly proud of. 
some louet
and some silky summer type yarn
Since finishing my socks I’ve been working on the Juliet Scarf which is a lace scarf using Adriafil Carezza an angora blend. Despite my hating scarves the lace which is a 12 row repeat works pretty fast so it grows considerably, I’m about a third of the way in and hope that I finish before the start of the Ravelympic next week. The only issue being that after any time knitting with the yarn it looks like a aqua toned rabbit has been sitting on my lap. I’m excited about the Ravelympics (and the real Olympics too!), I just missed taking part last time around as I’d only just started knitting at that point. I am a member of Team GB and have four projects lined up. I’m going to finish the BlueCap which was some Christmas knitting, knit Thorpe for Jane, knit Gretel for Michelle and knit another Turn a Square as stashbusting. After that it’s on to even more lace with the Swallowtail and Ishbel waiting to be knit.
I’ve been doing my running pretty seriously, I’m already on to week 2 and should be finishing it on Sunday morning. It is still hard but I suppose it’s the good sort of hard that makes you feel really good about yourself when you finish. The problem I’ve been running (hah) into lately is that it’s pretty cold out when I go to run and my ears and hands get cold. I don’t really want to wear a full hat as I think it would make me overheat so I’m thinking about knitting Calorimetry to keep my earsies warm. Someone also mentioned getting fingerless or convertible mittens to keep your hands warm. And though I can knit myself a pair (and am planning to) I found a pair at Accessorize on sale so now I have a pair of very stylish gloves for running in. The weather has been holding out during the last week and it’s really nice now that the sun is starting to rise earlier. I think it was a great idea to start the running again. It always upset me a little that I didn’t make it very far when I tried before but I will do it now.
In other news archery has started up again which is great but also frustrating. We are hosting the novice championships this weekend which at least gives me something to do. I’ve spent a good portion of the evening coming up with an excel file which should rank all the archers and calculate the team scores with us only having to put in the scores once. The only problem being that I am still waiting on two teams to tell me their numbers so I can’t be totally ready yet. I have hope for our novices the two that have been at training have been doing well unfortunately we won’t have a team to rely on if someone doesn’t do well as teams like Edinburgh or Napier can do. I’ve been practising on the 40 cm targets to get ready for BUTC which is not only a bit over a week away. It definitely gets you to focus in on something which is so much smaller but it’s frustrating when as I did today I just kept missing. I always have to remind myself that practise is for getting your muscles ready and that I always shoot better in competition, it’s just that extra bit of focus and concentration brought on by the pressure of performing that is missing during practise.
Also after days of wracking myself over this I finally emailed my supervisor. I started to write the email and realized I really need to speak with him in person otherwise I just won’t be able to explain myself in an email so I asked to meet with him either this or next week. Hopefully I can explain the situation clearly and not get too nervous. I have to remember that he is actually there to help me.
So I had a good trip. York was great as it always is. The pantomime was really good, it’s the last week so the cast were really entertaining and up for making jokes. If you figure that you burn such and such number of calories for every fifteen minutes of laughing, then just seeing that show can be considered one of your weekly workouts. I really hope that I’m in a position to go see it again next year. I finally remembered this year to write a request for Ank. My first year I didn’t know how you did them until I saw the little box in the lobby of the theatre and then last year I completely forgot. I may have written it on the train down but she didn’t expect a thing and I think it was a nice surprise to get it read out at the end.
I was really nervous heading out to Bangor the next day mainly for all the reasons I’ve already written about. I managed to get a birthday card and some chocolate in York so at least I didn’t feel too bad about it. She came and met me at the train station and then introduced me to some friends and we had some dinner. Turns out she had down the huge 21st thing the night before as they’re actually already started the semester there. I went to her rehearsal which was nice but dragged on for ever and ended going back to her flat early and going to bed. She was very nice and even offered her bed as she was going to be late. I spent the next day wandering around. It seems nice enough, the town is definitely bigger in a sense than St Andrews but also quite distinct. It’s also not as beautiful as St Andrews but then very few places are. The train ride there from Chester however is gorgeous as you come around the coast past the mountains. I’ll probably have to go back at some point, see the School of Ocean Sciences, interview that sort of thing. I had a little break down on the way back as I’d been meaning to run into York to buy one of the little wooden mice that I like to buy as souvenirs and I had it planned out that the train out get in with enough time for me to run into town and be back again, however I messed up and didn’t double check my trains and ended up getting into York an hour later than I was hoping. The whole idea of going to Bangor has been sort of ups and downs for me and the fact that I’d messed up really hit me hard. But I got home in the end and that was almost worth it. I’m still trying to source a wooden mouse from somewhere. I’m almost considering asking on Ravelry.
getting up today was nice, my own bed and for once the sun was trying to peek out. I decided way back that I had to give my aborted attempts as running another try and I finally got around to restarting c25k this morning. The first interval I ran almost felt easy and I was surprised to feel like I hadn’t been running very long at all. By the end of the work out I was tired but that’s to be expected. I feel good about it and it felt great to be running again, especially as my last run was almost two months ago. I’m going to try to give it all it’s worth this time around.
Well that’s it for me, tomorrow I’ll talk about some archery and knitting news. Hopefully with pictures.
I’ve been in a sort of hibernation mood all week I think due to the release of stress after having taken my exam. Speaking of my exam I believe that it went quite well, I felt comfortable with the questions and I knew what I was writing about. I wrote an essay about thunderstorms which luckily had been on the other past paper so I really looked at that question depth. I also wrote an essay on the Hadley circulation which I don’t feel as confident about but I wrote what I knew which I hope will be enough. So exams done I can relax (a little) before classes start in two weeks. Though I still have dissertation stuff to deal with.
The archery team had a match against Aberdeen and Heriot Watt yesterday which wasn’t the best for us seeing as we haven’t shot since the middle of December. We came third but we all shot fairly respectably. I got 473 with 14 golds and 8 9’s. I’m quite proud of the number of golds I got, in one dozen half my arrows where 10’s. But during the last two dozen I started to get really tired and my shooting declined but still shooting fairly close to 500 with quite good accuracy after not shooting in quite some time is nice. I have three more chances, the H2H, BUCS and SUS indoors to try to beat my pb. The next big competition is BUTC in a few weeks but the qualifier is a Bray so that should be something new. In general archery hasn’t really one as well as I’d hoped this year. I think it’s been a combination of me being in charge, u having early and awkward match dates and most importantly not having a coach anymore. I had originally hoped to hit 540 this year but that’s not longer at this point going to happen, I would be happy at this point to hit 520 or beat my pb if not the former. I still have a chance I suppose it’s just frustrating at times.
I’m leaving tomorrow to spend a few days travelling, I’m going down to York to see the pantomime there with An and then going off to Bangor to check out the uni. I’m looking forward to York but sort of dreading Bangor, I’m going to stay with a girl I went to Indo with which is sort of awkward seeing as I don’t know her that well but I asked and she said I could sleep on her sofa. I’m probably not going to be able to tour the uni or anything but at least I can poke around and see if I can see myself spending a year there. From when I did the college search I do remember that there were some places that I just couldn’t see myself studying there.
On the knitting front I’m still plugging away with the jaywalkers. I finished the first sock on thursday. I was worried that I would run out of yarn which made me a bit reluctant to finish it. I hate knitting all the way to find out I don’t have enough and ripping back days worth of work, I’m such a product knitter that way. Anyhow I didn’t run out of yarn though I probably one had maybe two yards left. I’m very pleased with the look and feel of the pattern. I initially had some reservations about the yarn after what I’d seen on Ravelry but I really like it now and it’s fun to see new colours enter your knitting. As for taking pictures the weather has been so grey and horrible every since I got back so I haven’t had a chance to take any pictures. As soon as there’s a sunny day I’m going to go snap happy. Jane okayed the yarn and pattern for her commission so I’m going to have to order that all, I’m dithering over whether one ball will be enough or I should just buy two in case, I can always offer it for a trade over Ravelry if I don’t use the second ball. I’m gearing up for the Ravelympics as well getting what I’m going to knit and in what order all set. It should be fun I think.
allons-i 