First of December

Pinch, punch, first of the month!

Howdy fellow bloggers,

I am astounded by how quickly it has become December already. It was only yesterday when October was round the corner and I was back on my way to University for my third year. And now, my first semester is almost over. It's crazy! The bitterly, ice cold wind serves to remind me that winter has definitely made an appearance.

To celebrate the fact it is now officially December  I opened the very first door of my advent calendar to the picture of Santa, and I knew that the countdown to Christmas has begun. I don't care what anyone says about the age limit for an advent calendar, I am still young enough to warrant being involved with the countdown and gorging on a yummy chocolate piece every morning. It just gives me a bigger excuse, now! Although December is officially the month of decorating for Christmas, I took it upon myself to start the festivities early.

In fact, I had started my decorating (my mini Christmas tree that sits on my desk) on the 20th November purely because I could. The thing is, if I left my decorating til 1st December, like the normal people do, I would only get 2 weeks of Christmas'ness in my Uni room and I didn't like that fact. This made me realise that if I put it up early, I'll get almost a month of it making me happy and so I thought, sod it- we're going all Christmassy and we're putting this badboy up. In true style being a Welsh girl, my Mum had bought my a sheep tree decoration and he is now proudly nestled in the middle of my tree.

This was my home-made creation- isn't he the cutest!

Yesterday, 30th November, Charlotte and I took a trip into town to get some decorations for our house, and when we got home, we decorated the living room with tinsel, lights, our home-made Snowman and Rudolph as well as a wreath saying Merry Christmas. Some would call us losers and eager, but you can't deny that the sight of Christmas decorations just makes your whole outlook of the day much brighter.

Hope you're all getting into the Christmas spirit and enjoying the weather that allows you to stay inside warm and snuggly. I'm going to Cardiff Winter Wonderland and having a house Christmas dinner next weekend, so make sure you don't miss my blog on both! LOVESSSS!

Without further ado, I present to you our homemade, hand-stitched Christmas mascots- Jim, Mr. Snowman and Wilfred...

Guide to Assignment Hell

Back with another segment of Nicole moaning about Uni *theme tune music*

Hello again, I am trying to juggle two assignments that rely heavily on literature and research simultaneously for the same due date. At the moment, I am not too stressed and I thank the Lord for that. Some part of my head had managed to get itself in order and made me sit down a month before the deadline to work on one and have it finished a massive two and a half weeks early. This left me to be able to focus on the final assignment and hopefully have time to spare before it had to be in. I am thankful to my smart brain for this geniusness.

Anyway, this blog isn't going to be a moan, it is in fact going to be an informative, and helpful guide to how to overcome the stress that comes with assignments especially this close to Christmas.

1. Don't stress. Ha! I literally just laughed at myself for starting on this one. But, I guess the truth is that the more you stress, the less you're going to get done. If you stress about how little you've already done, then you're going to spend all the time freaking out without having actually done the work. Time wasted is not something we want or need when we are trying to finish an assignment.

2. Tea and chocolate are your best friends. I don't care what you say about chocolate making you happy being an excuse for girls to eat more chocolate. It is a known fact (from me, Nicole, 2012; yes I just referenced that) that when you take a break from working, the best way to not feel guilty is to take your time having a warm beverage and something yummy to refuel you and your brain, and put some more fire in your belly to begin with more work. It works for me.

3. Make sure you have fun. The worst thing that you can do when you are doing an assignment is do nothing but your assignment locked away in whatever room you complete your work in (mine is my bedroom). Whilst it may seem like a great idea to focus solely on finishing it, nobody in the history of the world has loved staying in their room all day swamped by their work and slowly drowning in their stress and sadness. It's not healthy to not have fun with other people. And you shouldn't see it as being bad for taking some time away from your laptop and books to make sure you keep taking care of yourself and making yourself happy. I'm not saying have fun for hours on end, every single day, but a few hours here and there are therapeutic to you when completing work; it takes your mind away for a little and sometimes that's just what we need when we're feeling the strain.

4. Don't put it off. The longer you are in denial about the fact you have work to do and leave starting it until the next day, the less time you will have to complete it. Just because you don't think about it or look at it doesn't mean it still won't be there tomorrow, it'll just be one less day that you have until the deadline. It's simple, start it and be able to do a little a day and still do things that make you happy, or feel the guilt at the very end, perhaps even the night before and hand in something that you knew you could do better on.

5. Just remember, that everywhere people are doing assignments and you aren't alone in the stressed world. You can do it, we can do it! :)

I hope that my list has given you some pointers on how to survive assignments and that you aren't letting your assignments bog you down too much. After all, it's almost Christmas and the festive feeling should be inside of you making you happy and excited for the holiday. The sooner the assignments are done, the sooner Chistmas happens. But the sooner Christmas happens, the sooner exams start.... :S

We won't start with that yet.

BYEEEEEEEEEEE! :D

Weekend home

I had a magical time at home, being able to see and spend time with my family again topped off with a great 21st birthday party spent with some of the best friends a girl could ever ask for. I don't normally enjoy hall parties simply because I end up either standing alone for half the night or being too conscious of myself to loosen up and have fun, but neither happened, and after a couple of Sambuca shots, I was more than ready, embarrassingly enough, to show off my *amazing* dance moves in front of everyone. I had an amazing night and will always treasure the rare group photos we managed to get through the night. Now that everyone is scattered across the country, it's hard to find plentiful opportunities in order to all get together and have a picture taken, so I like it lots when we can.

Although it was a fleeting trip; I thoroughly enjoy every second I get to be around the people I miss the most. Despite the fact I always have a tinge of sorrow when boarding the coach to bring me back to Uni, I know that I won't be sad for long knowing that I'm going back to my uni friends.

Once again, I prayed and hoped that I wouldn't get anyone sitting next to me on the coach, like I always do. I like the chance to spread out and fall asleep without being too conscious of whether or not my mouth is wide open or my head will lull and end up against a stranger's shoulder. So, you could imagine my slight, unnecessary annoyance when a lovely, kind old man sat next to me with his wife sitting next to another young girl opposite so they could still talk. I instantly felt bad about my selfish thoughts and annoyance when he offered to put my coat into the overhead space on the coach. Although  it has to be said; I dislike having to sit next to males more than females just because of the sheer space they take up and end up encroaching on my paid for seat. But that's neither here nor there in my story. He then proceeded to offer me things during the journey, including a KitKat and an mint imperial, which I gracefully declined both.

Unexpectedly, the kind offer of an mint imperial made me experience the stabbing feeling of impending tears in my eyes. It's one of those small memories that hits you right in the guy when you're least expecting it. My nan, who I miss terribly, had ALWAYS, without fail, carried around a small plastic bag containing the small, round mint imperials and offered them to use periodically throughout the time we spent with her. It's suffice to say that I will always associate this with my nan and I think I'll find it hard, if not impossible, to have another mint imperial knowing that she's not around to give me them any more  As I said, a small and fairly insignificant thing to most people but yet another constant reminder of what I have lost.

I apologise for ending this blog on a low note, but I hope you all have a wonderful week :D xxx

Hospital antics

So, I had my first scare of chest pains today. I went to the doctors because it kept hurting for more than 2 days and nights and it had happened before and had been hurting for a week before it stopped the second I decided to go to the doctors.

Although, now as I sit here and write this blog, I feel like a complete idiot for even going to the doctors in the first place when I knew that the chest pains were probably just related to my recent illness and my stressful workload; but me being me didn't want to trust my own diagnosis on something that is always said to be checked out whenever it happens; I'm a linguist not a doctor after all. Chest pains aren't taken lightly by doctors and I assumed that they shouldn't by me.

I went there and the doctor sent me away with a prescription for a change of pill, but after 10 minutes, he rang me up again and told me he wanted me to get a blood test that tested for blood clots due to the previous blood clot my mother had a couple of years back. Unfortunately for me, the closest hospital was already full and so he sent me to the hospital that was on the other side of Cardiff (1hr and a half walking or 45 minutes with public transport.) I decided if I was gonna have to spend money travelling, I might as well spend the little bit extra and get a taxi.

I was up the hospital for about 3 hours where they gave me a blood test and did an ECG on me which was weird. But after the 3 hours, they told me that the test came back negative and I didn't have a blood clot.

As I left the hospital, I kinda wished something had been wrong just so I didn't feel like I had wasted their time or mine as well as my money. But then I realised that in the long run, I would've hated to have something wrong. Although I felt stupid for appearing to make something out of nothing; it wasn't my choice to go to the hospital and instead my doctor's orders and so I feel a little less retarded.

Anyway, I'm thankful that I am healthy and that I am going to be fine.

Chest pain drama over!

Oral presentation = done!

I hate public speaking.

It is a fact that I have known for many of years and have slowly but surely come to the conclusion that me and public speaking will never be best friends; in fact we will never just be friends either. They are two components of my life that I wish to keep separate.

Thankfully, keeping them separate has been easier than I though considering I have only had to do one oral presentation in my entire 3 years at uni, and you can't ever imagine the immense feeling of relief when this one was finally over. My heart was beating faster than I ever thought was humanly possible, and my palms were sweaty; not the mention the small, slow flush of redness that I could feel gradually encompassing my whole face until I resembled that of a big, huge, talking tomato.

But despite that fact, I had to do it. And today was the day. I woke up feeling sick with nerves and then went to my lectures where my nerves subsided a bit as I was thinking about everything BUT the presentation I would have to do. And then the dreaded break between the lectures and the allotted time for our presentation; namely a whole long hour. It was like listening to the march of the dead when we walked through the abandoned corridors earlier than our time to reach the room we would be presenting it.

And then, I started. I tried to be slow and I tried to be interesting and I think that the main achievement to take from this experience was that I got through it. I didn't mess up my lines that badly, I didn't have to constantly read from my notes (in fact I didn't look at them at all) and so I think I did well.

My friend had said after that if he hadn't had seen and heard how nervous we were beforehand, he would never have known that we were and that right there, is the biggest compliment that anyone could've given me after one of the scariest experiences in my life.

The fact is, even though I hate public speaking and don't consider myself to be a very good one at that, I made it through and I'm hoping our mark isn't going to be too bad.

That's another thing to tick off of my work load check-list and I am mighty glad that it's gone!
As a celebration of me conquering my fear to a standard that is worthy of a uni student; I am now going to indulge my inner child and watch Jungle Book by Disney.

BYEEEE! xxx

Twilight- Breaking Dawn Part II Review (No spoilers)

Twilight, Twilight, Twilight... Well, it has been a long four years in the making and the final curtains have just been drawn on the Saga. As I think back over the 5 films, I can't help but applaud the gradual improvement of both the acting and the visual effects that brought the story alive. When I first saw Jacob transform into a werewolf and the indifferent acting of Kristen Stewart in one of the very first films; I wished that it wasn't an omen on how the rest of the films would go. Slowly but surely, I grew to love the characters (yes, I admit it; I do like, and potentially love, the Saga) and I was excited for the finale that I saw tonight. It had been a long time coming.

It's always a bittersweet moment to watch the ending of a series, or finish the last book in the series, and that was none truer than this. Although many of you will hate on me for the fact I am going to tell, I didn't get into Harry Potter when the books were released and so my love for Harry Potter wasn't as far reaching as it should've been so I hadn't experienced the devastation of it ending (although, I have seen all the films, have the box set and yes, did shed a tear multiple times during the series) but for Twilight, it wasn't as much a devastation than a disappointment.

I wanted to love the film so much, purely because I didn't like the last book at all, and so loving the film would equal out the disappointment I felt with the book. Beside the complete love of Renesmee and the little family Edward and Bella created, I didn't feel as I thought I would walking out of the cinema. Unfortunately, annoyance and ultimate writer hell prevailed over my emotions and completely caught me by surprise. I physically groaned and shook my head as I watched the events unfold. Don't get me wrong, I loved the film and the roller-coaster emotions that soared me into happiness and then plummeted me into despair, but at the very last minute it felt as if Stephanie Meyer and the producers of the film chickened out with fear cowering in the corner of what could've been greatness. The jaw-dropping leap of faith moment for any director took me by complete and utter surprise that I was deeply saddened by the turn it chose to take but then they ripped away possibly one of the best scenes there was in the film. Sure, I would've been mad if they had continued with the leap of faith but I don't know whether I would've chosen disappointment over madness.

I am happy that I saw the finale, and by no means am I saying it was rubbish because I am a closet fan of Twilight- I just feel like a kid on Christmas morning being handed something that blew my mind only to have to taken away and told that it wasn't my present to have.

Despite all this, it is definitely a to see film, especially if you've seen the other films. Perhaps it was just my thoughts of the film, and others completely loved every second of it and I hope that is true. I'm pretty sure I'll watch it again, because if I'm honest, I can't help but love a happy ending.

So all that there is left to say is, goodbye, Edward, Bella and Jacob- it's been fun :) xxx

Passive aggressiveness is awesome!

I don't know why it appears this way, but to me recently, it always feels like I'm wrong regardless what it is that I am saying and if it's right or not. I know that I am not the smartest kid around, and I realise I've had this rant to everyone before, but I need to get it off my chest again before I implode. I don't think I have great understanding of many subjects and so I appreciate someone telling me that I'm wrong but when I know that I'm right or at least a little right in what I say- it gets annoying when I'm bluntly told that I'm wrong and it is implicitly implied that what I'm saying is stupid. I guess part of the annoyance does come from the fact that I have a personality trait to be a sore loser which makes it worse, but I can't be imagining things to this extent unless I'm paranoid that everyone is out to be mean to me, which is very possible. But probable? I'm not sure.

Getting off track a little, I guess I just want people to appreciate what I say a little more and trust in the knowledge that what I say isn't always complete and utter bullshit (although a lot of the time, I admit that I do talk a lot of crap). I might not be Albert Einstein, but it has been known for me to have some smartness knocking round this brain of mine.

As the song goes "all I'm asking for is a little respect when I come home..." The words are a little off but you get the message I'm trying to send.

Oh and you gotta love a bit of passive aggressiveness every now and then- because I frickin' love it!
Almost as much as I love you guys, over and out ;)
xxx

Teaser taster number three!

Considering that I first thought nobody would want to read any of the fictional stories that I write in my spare time, the blogs where I have shared parts of the current story I'm writing have some of the most views I've had. Interesting. Having noticed this, I have decided to take a break from my usual drivel of revelation, moaning or telling you things that I love and post another part of the story in case any of you really did enjoy what you read. Obviously, if this gets more views than my usual blog post, I might think about maybe making it a more permenant fixture. I might actually share my story with everyone for the first time ever, which is a very scary thought, indeed.

Anyway, to not put off any longer, here is the next part of the second chapter from the story I am writing. I hope you all enjoy it and if not, you can always count on me to produce a below average type blog in a couple of days.

Cheerio ;)


"Eva placed her bag on the counter of the coffee shop waiting impatiently for the barista to come serve her. Eva had had a bad start to her Monday morning and was already running late for one of her meetings with the group of journalists and her boss. This meant that she would get a rubbish article to write about due to her lack of punctuality. She would probably get handed the article that dealt with the typical relationship in modern society, which did very little to challenge her brain. She groaned out loud and huffed her way through her annoyance trying to expel the negativity before she walked into the meeting late. The last thing she needed was to be reprimanded for her attitude as well as her tardiness. In respect to herself, it wasn’t her fault that she was late; she had set her alarms, got her bag ready for the morning and had gone to sleep at a reasonable time. The thing she didn’t know in her careful planning was that the power would go off during the night and leave her well set alarm turned off and reset. Resulting in the alarm not going off and not waking her up in the time space she had allowed for getting ready. Being organised with a hatred for being late, she had even set her alarm half an hour earlier than the time she need to get up to make sure she wasn’t late; to avoid these types of mornings. Little that did for her today.
She had rung her office up the second she had realised she was late and explained the situation. Apparently, her boss had noticed her absence and she was put straight through to him must to her dislike. The tone of his voice told her that he wasn’t happy at all and she wouldn’t get a good reception from him when she got to the office and went to see him to pick up her assignments for the week. Trying to rationalise her anger, she realised that there was absolutely nothing she could do about it now and tried to etch away at her annoyance. Although there was still no sight of the barista and this only contributed to her already sour mood, making her more and more impatient as the time went by.
Craning her neck, she looked around at the little room for staff away from the main coffee shop. She spied the barista, complete with his green apron tied around his waist, talking to a well-dressed suited man. She couldn’t tell whether their conversation was business or pleasure but the fact that they were talking during the time when he should’ve been serving only made her more annoyed regardless what it was about. Trying not to let her emotions get the better of her, she tapped her fingers against the counter in order to stop her anger from flaring up and her interrupting them to get her a coffee. She’d wait a couple more minutes out of politeness and if she still hadn’t been seen to, she’d say something. She told herself to count to ten hoping that once she hit 10, she’d be calmer or she’d be served
Another couple of minutes had gone by, followed by another and then another. Surprisingly nobody else had joined the queue and it was just her waiting. Unfortunately for Eva, she had always been the shy child that would only speak up if she absolutely had to and even then it wasn’t forceful or anything remotely confident; more like a shy squeak to get attention. Over the years, her job in journalism meant that for the most part she had to fake being confident to get the information she needed but when she did, she hated it. Both of the guys were insanely attractive and it only added to Eva’s self-conscious nature and so she waited a little longer choosing that over embarrassing herself in front of them.
After having waited a good twenty minutes, Eva finally plucked up the courage to raise her voice and say something to the guys who clearly had moved from any business talk they had to a more personal chat. She thought it was the height of rudeness that they hadn’t noticed her standing here and stamped her way round the counter and stood in the doorway of the little room. Her temper had slowly begun to rise with the time she had waited and she didn’t care how crazy she looked in telling them exactly what she thought. She flung her bag across her shoulder and stood with her hands on her hips.
“Excuse me, is this how you treat all of your customers? Leave them standing, waiting for you to serve them for a good twenty minutes whilst you have a good old chit-chat with your friend. Well, I’ll have you know that I’m a journalist and I’m going to write an article about this place and its appalling customer service, if I can call it that at all. I hope you’re happy with the fact that you’ve lost a valued customer today through your lack of attention. Have a good day and enjoy your chat!”
Feeling properly rifled and flustered from her little outburst, Eva turned on her heel and stomped her way back round the counter trying to lower her anger level that had burst straight through the meter measuring it. She hadn’t realised until she had started talking how annoyed she had been. It was the last straw to break the camel’s back; she was having a bad day and she just wanted to try and make it better but apparently life was too against her to let her do so. Just before she got the door, both the barista and the man in the suit had ran to her side and created a wall of solid chest to stop her from leaving. More exact, the man in the suit had stopped her from leaving with his muscular form whilst the barista looked like he’d only just sprouted chest hair. This only added fuel to the fire burning inside of her and she glared at both of them.
“Move.”
“I can’t do that, Miss, if you write that article about this place; I’ll get fired. I need my job, please.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that earlier or at least paid attention to your job in the first place. You only have yourself to blame if you lose your job. Now move, before I add harassment onto my list of things wrong with this coffee shop.”
Neither of the guys moved and she wished that she was a good number of pounds heavier than she was. At least if she was heavier, she might’ve had a chance of pushing past them both but it looked like a solid mass of muscle and any attempts would be futile.
“It was my fault, Miss…”
“Spence,” she bit out with vengeance.
“Miss Spence, I had called earlier to talk about putting on more fitness centred drinks, smoothies and whatnot, and once we got talking about it; it was hard to stop. You see, I get enthusiastic about my work and it was my fault that we got off track leaving you to stand waiting. I apologise.”
She couldn’t believe her ears when he had said sorry to her. Guys that looked like him, and clearly worked in a high pressured job, didn’t apologise to people; they made people apologise to them instead. Eva was sure that she was standing in front of him with her mouth wide open but she couldn’t tell her brain to stop gawping.
“Is there anything I can do? Buy you a coffee, at the very least. What was it that you wanted?”
She looked from the face of the man in the suit, to the face of the barista and she saw the worry written all over his face. He kept rubbing his sweaty palms together and she realised how nervous she had made him. She probably wouldn’t have gotten the go-ahead to write such an article especially being late this morning, she didn’t have the power but he thought she had and that was what made the threat so menacing. The moment she saw how vulnerable he looked, she felt guilty for getting irate at him. He only looked fresh out of college and was probably working to pay off his education. Her frown softened into a smile as she regained control of her emotions and she looked back at the man in the suit.
“You can buy my coffee for the rest of this week. We can meet in here at 8 o’clock, and you can pay for whatever I wish to order for compensation of wasting my time with waiting.”
“That sounds fair, Miss Spence.”"

Where is the time going?

As I am sat here getting ready, it occurred to me that not just the other day I was shocked at how it was already the 1st November; but today I am struck by a bigger revelation. We are already half way through November and I know- as the hours tick by, so do the days but I literally can't remember what I have been doing to warrant the days to have sped by this quickly.

Even as I sit here, I know it's already Tuesday of this week and in no time, I'll be looking upon the weekend again with the same sense of freedom as I always do. It's true what they say about time flying the older you get because I can't believe that we're just peering at 2013 from across the water- in no time, we'll be celebrating the New Year and that is definitely scary.

When I think about my time at uni, and this year being my last- no matter how long I may make it out to be; it has whizzed by faster than a firework exploding in the sky. Blink one second and you'd have missed it. Already on my way to being 1/3 of the way through my final year; and yes it's scary as hell. I know that these are the moments I need to remember whenever I want something to hurry up because I should be treasuring every second and not wishing my life away. I need to remember that otherwise I'll be 50 before I know and have no idea what I did with my life (exaggeration is a must in life.)

Revelation Tuesday is blowing my mind. Although, this does mean that Christmas isn't just around the corner, it's knocking right on our doorsteps and I can't wait!

Over and out,
p.s. I got sick when I went home and now I'm suffering, poor Nicole!! xxx

Remembrance Day

These types of blogs are always the hardest to write about. What words could ever be sufficient enough to explain and talk about the brave, courageous and marvellous people that in the past, and to this day, chose to make the biggest decision of their lives for their country. The English Language isn't equipped to possess such strong, and fitting adjectives that describe these people and their actions. The only way I can think of describing them is by using a normally misguided, and wrongly placed word- they are heroes in every single sense of the word. Batman, Spiderman and Superman are all referred to as heroes but are fictional and irrelevant  The purest type of hero is that of our armies- our soldiers; both fallen and fighting.

My remembrance day always begins with the sorrow remembering the fallen- the sheer number of heroes that we have lost over the years who fought endlessly for our freedom and our country. But as the day goes on, I realise that as much as the day should be mournful and filled with sorrow, a deep sense of pride should settle in our hearts. Each and every soldier that fought and is still fighting for us all are normal people doing extraordinary things on a daily basis; risking their lives for the majority. How can we compare these to fictional heroes when they go above and beyond that of any story told to children at night. As much as sadness is an element of today, we must be proud and eternally thankful. I wish to take my thoughts of the soldiers and pray that their family and friends can share the sense of pride that I do, missing their loved ones but knowing that they are the greatest example and show/have shown the greatest act of heroism , and that they died fighting for all of us to live happily and content.

The brave, selfless and amazing soldiers deserve the day where we all remember their courage and strength.

Let us all take a leaf out of their books, and lest we forget the sacrifice our soldiers gave to provide a brighter, and safer future for not just us but for our children. They shine down on us all from heaven, so make them proud just as they have made us proud.

With the greatest love and appreciation,
Nicole xx