And a miscellanious hairy to you all!

Well, it's Tuesday, and that means that it's blog day! (I may have to change blog day depending on my timetable next semester- really hope I get another ALH style class so that I can draft in the mornings.)
Anyways, as it's blog day, here is a blog entry.

I have upgraded to 10.10.. Now I am suffering from serious lag, although this might be because I am currently attempting to load pictures to FB by their hundreds. However, 10.10 does mean that I am finally experiencing all the nifty features which Blogger offers- picture warning!

Christmas was ... eventful this year. I managed to get on possibly the only flight allowed into Heathrow, mostly through a stubborn pig-headed refusal to admit that there might be a problem, but my Dad's flight was cancelled, meaning that he and Lynn ended up arriving on Christmas Eve. Which meant that my Mom and I ended up driving to Heathrow and back last Friday. With my boyfriend down as well we ended up with 7 people in the house, which is about 4 more than its maximum capacity. And the 6 kilo turkey only barely fitted into the oven, and once it was in there was only room for one or two additional dishes. But Jed, my Mom, and Lynn performed miracles, and it was all on the table by 7 or so...



AND I got a sonic screwdriver, and lightsabre chopsticks, and sparkly converse, and some other stuff as well which was probably very important and exciting, but just couldn't compete with the amazingness that is a real live working screwdriver that lights up and buzzes and has two settings and lights up and buzzes! Which is probably why I spent most of Christmas looking like this:









And what else? Well, today was Jeffmas day, otherwise known as my Dad's birthday, and in honour of the occasion we headed up to Dartmoor so that Dad could have his annual heart-attack inducing cream tea at Badger's Holt.

Cream teas are amazing, even in the winter. Badger's Holt serves wedges of its own, secret-recipe scone, and proper Devonshire clotted cream. So really, it looks nothing like this picture. Cream teas are also ridiculously high in fat, which is why Dad only has them once a year- and why I'm trying desperately to cut back on my clotted cream consumption. But it's hard- clotted cream is hard enough to come by outside of the Westcountry, let alone in America, and so I will admit that I have been having teaspoons on my pumpkin pie at night. I did miss it so...

Also on Dartmoor, Joshua and I threw snow at each other, and built a fair-sized snowman (with a huge nose), and generally had a good time, while our mother attempted to wrestle the car through the ice and slush and snow. We took 'yellow roads' all the way there, which at one point did mean crossing an ice bordered ford. I hadn't believed the rumours of snow until I landed, but I definitely do now. Someone spray painted Britain, and no one knows what to do with it.

More to come...

JJ

Canadian Elves.

I will admit that for the past two weeks I was tempted to post identical versions of: "You want a blog post? Here's a blogpost. School is hard." But I didn't, mostly because I had a strictly enforced no internet policy. Fortunately, though, the fall semester is now finally over, which means that I can internet away to my heart's content. Can't promise it will help on the blogging front, but it should certainly reduce the 'argh' content significantly.
So, as a hash-mash of what I've been doing in my ever-so-exciting life:
Both essays are finally in. One was 30 pages, the other 17 (both double spaced). Both had bizarre conclusions, and yes, the last one was handed in today, at about 11am. From the airport.
The one-semester exchanges are leaving, left, right, and center, and it's been an emotional week on that front- saying goodbye to people who live on the other side of the world is hard.
My flight, which caused such problems with my exams, raised its ugly head again this morning. 8 am (after 2 hours of sleep) I was busy printing out my exam notes when I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and print out my boarding pass as well. Apparently they decided to change my flight to 13:00. My exam was supposed to finish at 12. Long story short, I am now taking the exam as a take-home on Wednesday, Annemieke and Els are AMAZING (seriously- I wouldn't have coped without their help), Dr. Brown of UConn Law deserves a huge bunch of flowers, and I'm currently sat in Toronto airport. Somehow I managed to book my flights to coincide with the massive shutdown of Europe- at the moment it looks like my flight is still going, but it's a minority, as is proven by the fact that my Dad and Lynn won't be arriving until the 25th. Which is not going to work at all- the 25th is Doctor Who Special Mass!
What else? Well, flying over frozen Canada was amazingly beautiful. Although I must say that it was also a fantastic way to confuse a sleep-deprived Jess- with everything frozen over and dusted with the same white powder, my view from the window on the flight was incredibly hypnotic. When the wheels came down, my first thought was that we were traveling in a giant transformer. This brain death followed me into the airport- Pearson is a medly of glass, chrome, and 'interactive' sculptures, and it's incredibly confusing for a person who stood staring at a desk agent for a good 60 seconds before actually handing over her passport.

Hopefully, hopefully, see you on the other side.

JJ out.