I won't be using this journal from now on. I've opened a second account, primarily to cross-post to facebook. The reason I'm starting up a new journal is that it really bugs me when people import their whole blog into their facebook, because it all turns up at once on your feed and it's a bit of a bombardment. Moreover, what with moving towns etc, I kinda feel as though I'm starting a new chapter in my life. So, if you want to friend me over at frances_hardy.livejournal.com, that'll be awesome. Otherwise, all my posts will be going on facebook. ;)

So, life continues.

I'm going to try get back into posting at least semi-regularly this year. I know, I know... I've been terrible. If I get a half decent phone some time, I might even start photo-blogging. Wow, that would be novel!

Plans for Sydney seem to be going well. I just need to figure out some stuff with Centrelink, but it seems to be all falling into place and with a bit of luck, they will pay for my study, my food and my accommodation. Woot yeah! So, college (inc tuition and food) will cost me $198 per week, and the government will be paying me $205. Ah, Australia, how I do love you! In fairness, I've paid a LOT of tax in the past six months. Not that I'll ever be an asset to the Australian economy.

--

Tonight I went home to Mum and Dad's for tea. Elizabeth had us do some writing experiments. She called them Ficles or something. Maybe Ficlets. Anyhoo, you get the gist!

The idea is that someone selects a random word (or maybe you get it off a website) and you have to write for fifteen minutes on that subject... and then post what you wrote, without editing at all.

The first word was...

Forest

Dark, green, full of spiders and webs... snakes and dangerous critters. Birds chirp, frogs croak and the trees grow in eternal silence ,making no sound except the occasional making no sound except the occasional rustle as the wind catches the utmost branches, or a bird flutters from limb to limb.

In the farthest reaches, rabbits scurry, fearless of anything -- not even the distant sound of a dog's playful marking as the brush is too closely woven for even the most persistent hunter to venture.

On the fringes, the trees are scattered and butterflies flit to and fro in the flickering sunlight. Creatures bask in the patches which burst forth through the clusters of greenery. A large lizard lies, partly camouflaged, atop a log, warming his blood in the great comforting glow.

All is quiet and peaceful. Even the faraway sound of the farm seem drowsy -- softened by the distance and general calm.

--

I thought it was a weird exercise, and I wasn't too pleased with what came out of it, but it was fun and it was cool seeing all the different things that we all came up with (Mum, Emily, Elizabeth, Pete and I did it).

My other one was "Influence" and I might post it sometime. I also might not.

At work, the music I play on my computer plays as the on hold music for the telephones, so I've been trying to pick music that most people could listen to without getting cranky. Anyway, I've put together a mix of Jack Johnson, Plagerise, Narnia (Soundtrack), Lord of the Rings (Soundtrack) and I can't remember right now what else.

Anyway, I was playing a particular track which I wanted to hear twice just before I left the office on Thursday, so I put iTunes on the repeat single track setting... but I forgot to turn that off before I left for the day.

I came in yesterday morning and put on Brushfire Fairytales. I was happily groovy along to Jack Johnson until the mid afternoon before I realised, get this, that the same track (Inaudible Melodies) had repeated... 64 TIMES! And I hadn't even picked it up! I can usually listen to a track no more than three times in one sitting before I have to hear a completely different artist! Admittedly, I was pretty busy yesterday running around the office, but still! I was amused!

So yeah, my life is kinda interesting at the moment.

For those who've missed it, my last two months have looked something like this:

> Dropping out of uni.

> Being jobless, finance-less and uni-less.

> Getting a 1-2 day a week job (taking photographs for a local engineering company to archive their records).

> Still having not much to do with all that time (5-6 days of free time per week!)... and not much money either!

> Praying about said situtation.

(> also insert in here lots of other rather exciting (= sarcasm) things that I have had over the past few months, most of which have involved dealing with lots of relationship stuff with friends. Not bad things... just a part of growing up etc. Small example: changing families and brothers who have changed into people that you don't necessarily click with personality-wise, but the relationship is still really important to you so you want to work on it but it takes energy. Yunno? That's not a complaint, btw... just a comment.)

> Getting a call within 24 hours of praying quite specifically about finding a full time job (previously I'd just been praying that God would find me stuff to do...) asking me if I wanted a full time job for a trial period of three months as the Diocesan Registry Secretary (so, secretary to the Bishop, Bishop's Assistant and Registrar). So yeah... wow.

> Deciding to move out of home.

Now, I feel TERRIBLE because those last two points are probably quite significant, and there are several people who are very dear to me who heard about especially the last one the wrong way (again, my fault!) and completely misunderstood the situation! Oops!

So, let me clarify the moving thing. I am NOT moving out of home because there is any particular problem at home. This is something I have been considering since the middle of last year, and quite seriously since the beginning of this year. It is 90% to do with the distance from town. This has been a serious frustration of mine since I started uni four and a half years ago, and the more night time commitments I have, the more frustrating it becomes. Some days late last year I was doing two trips into town, which is two hours all up. Mum was doing more than that... but yeah, I can only make decisions for myself. My ideal would be for the whole family either to move into town or near town, but since that isn't going to happen, and there is quite a good situation for me to move into I have decided to take the plunge and just do it! It's all very exciting, and having a full time job makes the decision more natural and easy, of course.

Someone asked me yesterday why I'm moving out, and my answer to them was something along these lines: I'm quite frustrated being the distance I am from town and have been for ages. I wouldn't say that there are no frustrations with living with my family, but there are only as many (possibly less?) as I could reasonably expect from anyone I could live with. Yunno? So, not living at home will be a loss in that sense, but I also am looking forward to the adventure of fending for myself. Another large factor is that in all probability I will be moving to College next year, and to have six months to get used to living out of home, while still being within half an hour (and a local phone call...) of the fam will be, I think, a really good way for me to get used to being alone. I think college life will still be a culture shock, but yeah ;)

The big bummer is going to be that I won't have a car and that I've managed to find a house on top of the biggest hill in Armidale! LOL! But, I will have a bicycle and Armidale isn't THAT big. As well as that, my house mate has said that I can use her car whenever I need it. I'm not going to take her up on that unless I absolutely have to, but the offer is still there. Yunno... if I really don't have ANYTHING to eat, it's pouring rain and dark and I'm hungry.* The house we're moving into is going on the market, so we'll have to find a new house soonish anyway (there are a few other girls from church looking for a place by the middle of September, so that works out well) and hopefully we can find one closer to the CBD.

But yeah, that's my news.

I'm incredibly bored today, because there is no one in the office but me and I've finished everything I had to do. UGH. The registrar told me last night that she had no jobs for me to do today, and that I should probably bring a book... so I have. I've also brought some paperwork I have to do and now I'm journalling ;) But yeah...

* I think I probably thought of that senario right now because it IS raining and I'm ravenous!

And the news is that I've withdrawn from university. This may seem a hasty decision to some, but believe you me, it has been some time in consideration (although no one apart from myself knew this!). I haven't been happy for probably a month and a half and a lot of the time it's been worse than that. While my friends and family have done their absolute best to hold me together, there comes a time where you have to say enough is enough.

I guess I felt that I was spending hundreds of hours on a year-long marathon which I had lost faith in. I realised that the time I could dedicate to my thesis was relatively small because of the sheer amount of coursework which ancient languages honours demands. I was spending a good 90% of my time in translating texts which I will never think about in my whole life. All up, what I really wanted to spend my time was the research, but over 100,000 words of Greek translation meant, in effect, that my research would be hasty and incomplete. It wasn't worth doing in a half-hearted fashion.

I have never in my whole life had such an overwhelming sense of my inability to complete a task set before me. Part of this was due to an unreasonable workload; probably 1.75 the size of the ancient history honours workload. If you were incredibly smart, spent upward of 60 hours per week on study and made sure you were in the best of health all year, you might be able to pull it off, but I knew that there was no way I could achieve a mark I would be happy with under the circumstances. I am used to working hard but I'm used to being judged under a fair system where an HD is an HD and is indicative of a particular standard of work.

Furthermore, through doing half my honours, I now know for sure that I don't want to be an academic. This removes one of the main incentives of the honours year. Sure, it would have given me the cut above everyone else as far as employability was concerned, but at this point I'm hoping to go to bible college next year or the year after and then train under Wycliffe. A graduate degree in classical Greek is going have no bearing whatsoever on my success in this field.

Was it a waste of half a year? No way. I know now what I don't want to do with my life. I've realised just why I never want to be in a situation where my work has to come above my spiritual and personal life.

Some days I'm afraid, because I really don't have any clear path for the rest of the year, but most of the time I just keep thinking of all the wonderful potential this year holds. I guess my general feeling is best summed up in a friend's response when I told them I'd pulled out of uni: "How exciting!"

I've been meaning to do this post for a while.

Behold, a few more pics from Em's wedding:


Emma gave me the cd of pics the other day, and so now I have 800 pics of their wedding, lol! There are heaps of really good ones, but too many to really ever look at in one go!

I just accidentally walked around a corner a little too fast into one of Elizabeth's lecturers. He's really funny, 'cause he's so NOT an academic type person (no glasses, long hair, relaxed style of clothing). Anyway, he's a bit too cool for school, if you know what I mean, although he's not actually cool. You know how some people are like that? Well, anyway, I have this bad habit of walking around corners into him. I just did so again... and said, "oh, I'm sorry!" He didn't turn around. He didn't even indicate he'd heard me. I just heard his voice say, "you're always sorry."

I don't know why, but that amused me. LOL.

Sometimes I think living with me must be like living with an emotional yo-yo. Certainly the past few weeks, anyway. Not that it's all bad... there have been as many high points as low points... it's just slightly dizzying!

And I swear I either have the words 'match me' on my forehead or am just getting to the age where people think I'm never getting married without their help. In the past four days I've been 'matched' with two different people. The first time didn't really surprise me, because I knew the matcher had already been teasing the person they wanted me matched with. So when said person told me he was going to do his best to make sure I ended up with said matchee, I just looked askew and told him to give up (which he kindly did).

The second time was this afternoon. The secretary of our department had come in to help me fix the heater (we failed) and of a sudden announced she'd found my future husband. I bemusedly asked her to whom she was referring, and when she told me I just laughed. Not because I dislike the person or anything... I just found it terribly amusing.

In fact, in retrospect I find both the above events amusing. BUT... at the time, I have to ask... why? Like, seriously... do I look incapable of finding myself a man? Or of a man finding me, might be more the point. LOL. Possibly.

In other news, I've been really stressed. Not just about uni. About everything. Until last night when I kind friend pointed out that I just need to stop worrying about what other people think, the events described in the first two paragraphs too. It all built up to a massive head last night and I sobbed myself to sleep... and then slept better than I have in a million years! And today was wonderful. I found some amazingly brilliant evidence for my essay which even my supervisor was impressed by (woot) and felt I actually got somewhere.

Now I'm going to eat some dinner ;-)

... trying out this 'blog it' thing... does it actually work?

Kate Miller-Heidke's album Little Eve almost makes me cry. She has an amazing voice, sings about things other people don't sing about and has beautiful melodies. I found out today she studied Opera Performance at uni, which would probably explain why she has such amazing control over her voice.

It makes me wish I was a duck, too.

I could add to the song the following verse:
Ducks don't need to write theses, duck's don't need to write theses... they probably don't know they exist...

Some friends of mine are missionaries in Namibia. Alisan posted this to her blog the other day:

"And I am, today, suffering emotional wear and tear after yesterday becoming a ‘statistic’ as a victim of a mugging in Oshakati. (Oshakatiis known as being unsafe; a melting pot of all sorts.) Two men came from behind and grabbed my bag from my shoulder, pulling me to the ground. Refusing vociferously to let go, I was dragged a distance until my phone fell from my pocket. Distracted, they let go of me and ran off with that (I kept my bag, though). I set off in hot pursuit but could not go far as Caris was crying, having witnessed the whole thing. Not for the first time, we thanked God to be living in Ongwediva, where one feels safe walking about. As so often happens the world over, no one intervened at the scene. When I found someone willing to let me send David an SMS to come and get us, I was shaking too much to even type it and the woman helped me compose a linguistically garbled message to him– it seemed no one in the suddenly-materialised had much English, so I had to try and use Oshiwambo, though I had never learned words for‘stolen’, ‘attack’ etc. When confronted with this sort of situation,one realize how much being understood by those around us is a great gift. The confusion at Babel must have been enormous. Pray for those missionaries who have gone out this year for the first time and feel,most of the time in these early months, much as those early Babalites felt."

Wow. There are a lot of things we take for granted in our nice little safe western countries. It just makes me realise how much I need to remember my friends in prayer. Quite humbling.

My UNE library card doesn't expire until the 20th of October, 2037 at... how's this for precise... 2:13AM. How random is that?

Current Mood: tired

1. Name someone who made you smile today?
Lizzie (lizzie_balans) sent me a message on facebook which make me laugh.

2. What were you doing at 8:00 this morning?
We haven't gotten that far through the day, yet!

3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?
Waking up for the second time (I was supposed) to wake at 6:00AM... Hem.

4. Name something that happened to you in 1992?
1992... my noisiest brother was born.

5. When is your birthday?
21st of May, 1986

6. Four words to explain why you last threw up?
I was crook chook.

7. What color is your hairbrush?
Black.

8. What was the last thing you bought?
Lunch yesterday.

9. Where do you keep your money?
The little I have, in the bank, and the rest goes in my wallet.

10. What was the weather like today?
Slightly overcast and damp, but some blue patches and an overall cheery feel.

11. Where did your last hug take place?
Prolly hugged my sister last night, but I don't remember! The last apart from her, Mel on Sunday. I'm not a the hugging type, really, except my sister, Mel and very special occasions (I would hug you on your wedding, for example).

12. What are you excited about?
One day finishing my thesis (sigh) and Sooty night on Friday (seriously).

13. Do you want to cut your hair?
I wish that when I had had it cut a few weeks ago the hair dresser had cut it as short as I asked her. Grrrr...

14. Are you over the age of 25?
Nay.

15. Do you talk a lot?
It depends. In the right (or wrong?) circumstances, too much but often (and especially if there are lots of people around), no.

16. Do you watch The O.C.?
Nope. Saw about 2 seconds once. That was enough.

17. Does your screen name have an "x" in it?
Heh, no.

18. Do you know anyone named Kelsey?
I feel like I know of someone named Kelsey, but can't think who.

19. Do you make up your own words?
Of course!

20. Are you ticklish?
Not saying.

21. Are you typically a jealous person?
Unfortunately, yes.

22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter "C":
Carla, Carly, Claire

23. Who's the last person to call you?
Rachelle Levingston.

24. Do you chew on your straws?
Probably, I don't know. I chew on everything else (pens etc :-D) so why not straws?

25. Do you have curly hair?
Alas, no.

26. What is the next concert you're going to?
Dunno.

27.Where did you go today?
I only just got up 40 minutes ago!

28. What is something you say a lot?
In messenger convos:
Hmmmm...
*sigh*
LOL
nevermind

29. Have you seen the movie 'Donnie Darko'?
Nup.

30. Do you have to work tomorrow?
Up at uni, yes *sigh*

31. Who was the last person you said "I love you" to?
I don't know. Did I?

32. What should you be doing right now?
Leaving and driving to uni.

33. Do you have a nickname?
Yes, but my family just are very nickname-y people. Franj, Frangipani, Chook, Bloss (when I was little), Franny, Frankenstein, Francesca... the list goes on.

34. Are you a heavy sleeper?
I don't think so.

35. What are you listening to?
My computer hum.

36. What is the best movie you've seen in the past two weeks?
I don't know!

37. Is there anyone you like right now?
Nope. Not in a 'like like' way.

38. When was the last time you did the dishes?
Last night with Elizabeth.

39. Did you cry today?
Not yet! It's only just begun...

Current Mood: happy

*sigh*

Does anyone else have smells that remind them of specific events/periods of time? I just started using a deodorant that I haven't used since about last October, and man oh man... it reminds me HEAPS of October last year. We went on holidays and a few things were happening which I can't be bothered explaining... but yeah, I feel like it's October last year.

I went to uni today despite being crook. Now I'm really tired. I hate going places when I'm sick, 'cause I'm always short and 'out' of it, which means people prolly get the impression I'm really weird. But anyway.

Hey, prayer re: uni would be appreciated atm. I'm feeling really behind and am finding it hard to make myself look at my thesis. It just makes me feel sick, because I know I'm going to have to admit how much I have to do... and soon! I'm staying home from a church brunch tomorrow so I can hopefully work out where I'm up to with it, but yeah... ;-)

Yesterday I watched several movies in bed (because of aforementioned flu): Hot Fuzz which was surprisingly enjoyable... although I should warn that there are some (fake but nevertheless slightly disturbing) gory bits, Narnia, which we all know and love (:-D), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which everyone has probably watched (I have several times) and last but not least, some good ol' Firefly. I actually wanted to watch Serenity but I don't own it, so I had to settle for Firefly.

Something else in favour of Hot Fuzz was that Romeo and Juliet was in the score. Yeeeees... hooray for Dire Straits!

Heh... I was just talking to a friend about having varied music taste, and how it's good to be open to different genres:

"but country music isnt a genre of music, rather its a type of wail..."

LOL... yeah. Kasey Chambers.

*shivers*

So, the most massively intense weekend in my history has come and gone. Ok, so maybe some hyperbole there... but seriously, it was intense!

I really need to get stuck into some translating and Latin class preparing, but before I do that, let the pictures do the talking (with Apologies to Telstra)...

In case people missed out on the excitement, I was a bridesmaid on Saturday at my friends' wedding -- now Mr and Mrs Richard and Emma Flavel ;-) I also graduated on Friday, and while I'm glad I did it, it kinda melted into the background with all the wedding happenings... the grad seemed more significant to my family than me, actually.

The pictures marked with a blue and green logo are taken by James Day. More of his pics can be seen at www.jamesday.com.au/journal.


Em posing for the camera -- so beautiful. I know everyone always says that about brides... but it's like this: usually I'm like, "Yeah, ok, they look like someone getting married" but this time it was my friend getting married... and I was just so... I don't know how to put it... exciting might be the word, I guess. I think seeing one's friends make this huge commitment before God, knowing that they're really entering it prayerfully as Christian people is such an exciting (in a really sober way) thing. That's really what made it beautiful... seeing how much Em and Richard love each other and God and their families. So when I say Em looked beautiful, I do mean that she looked beautiful, but I also something more than that. I can't put it into words, so you'll just have to imagine what on earth I'm trying to put into words!

Hannah told me I should update. So I am. Lemming = me :-D

For some reason it's 12:18 in the morning and I'm still up. Ok, so 'still up' isn't really the right way to put it, because I was in bed, but I couldn't sleep...so I rose again (not like Jesus, though).

I feel like so much has been happening, but I am not sure if I can really explain why I would feel like that. Uni is going along ok. There is a lot of it, and it certainly has its ups and downs, but overall I'm very much enjoying it. I am hoping to have the first chapter of my thesis written by this coming weekend, but we'll see about that ;-) Actually, it's not really the first chapter. It's the third chapter, but I'm writing it first... don't worry, it makes sense to me and my supervisor and at this point, that's all that matters!

Emma's wedding is this Saturday... wow! It's come up so quickly. Like, seriously, it seems like about last week when she told me she was engaged... and now she's actually almost married! I pulled out my dress tonight and tried it on again because for some reason I'd convinced myself it wasn't going to fit properly. Go figure. I actually feel like this wedding has effected me more than Joe and Carly's for some reason. I mean, Joe and Carly's was more significant as family yadda yadda and no one can take that away, but I guess with this one I've had more of an... emotional (?) input and so in that way it's made me think a lot more about things I'd never thought about before. It's such an exciting and wonderful thing. Ok, I shan't gush. I'm really dreading the dancing though. I have to dance with my groomsman... a groomsman I've never met before what's more, lol! I'm so unco!

In other news, it's well over 4 months since I've had any serious symptoms of depression. Longest stretch in a very long time... and that's without medication! woot! Just to put that in perspective, when I think about it I don't think I've had more than a few months without depression since I was about 16 and certainly the last few years I've been pretty much one constant blue blob. So praise God for that, say I! It couldn't have come at a more opportune time, either ;-) Not that I've only had good days this year... no ways! I've had a few corkers, but they've all been isolated days caused by lack of sleep and lots of uni work.

If Hilary Clinton became the next president of America, would Bill Clinton be called the First Lord (as opposed to the First Lady) or the First Man or the First Gentleman? Or just Bill Clinton?

Just a question.

I'm reading a book on NT Semantics at the moment (surprise surprise... who would have thunk it?) and the author gave the following example of why one cannot assign only one meaning to each word when translating:

The sentence 'the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak' was given to a translation machine to be rendered into Japanese word by word. Once this was done, the sentence was again given to the machine to be translated back into English. The result was: 'there is some good whisky but the roast beef is mediocre'. The machine was only programmed to translate words without considering their relations to each other.

Current Mood: amused

Hey everyone! I've not been very 'present' of late... it's been pretty crazy busy. Basically Uni stuff, which I'm trying to get under control... and term hasn't even officially started yet! I've almost finished my translation of Acts, though, so it's not all bad!

In other news...

• Elizabeth and I have been doing some gardening and the garden is even looking a bit better because of it! Shock, horror!


• I saved the life of my poor, freezing fish called Miles. See, he's a fighting fish and they're only supposed to have their water get down to 17°C and the hottest the office had been for about two days had been 12°C! He is supposed to be a vibrant red and he was more like a pale reddish-purple colour. What's more, he wouldn't move from the floor of his bowl! So I went out and bought him a new tank and a heater and thermometer and now he's as happy as Larry. I think I've decided to give him the sirname 'Gloriosus' too. If you don't get that, don't worry...


• My pot plant which got eaten by the cows back in December suddenly decided to come back to life (the plant's name is Linus, btw). I doubt he will keep at it long, because he got completely tipped out of his pot twice yesterday and I had to replant him.


• Elizabeth started uni this week, so she's been up there most days. We're going to have to work out a way of communicating when we're busy, though, and actually being disciplined 'cause otherwise both of us are going to be behind all year! She's just too fun to hang out with.


• E and I were going to go to the movies on Tuesday with two friends (Emma and Danika, FYI) but Danika couldn't come because she accidentally double booked (ooops) and then Armidale flooded and the cinema had to close! There was water up to the first step (the creek is behind the cinema) so we went to Emma's place and had a BBQ with her and Richard. I actually think I enjoyed my evening better with the BBQ and laid back hanging out than the movies.


• I co-led bible study for the first time on Wednesday. Slighty scary. It's more humiliating than I thought it would be!


• I rang some friends in Sydney on Thursday night, which was fun, and chatted for probably an hour or so. Then I made the mistake of watching the last half an hour of a movie I didn't really want to watch (like, it wasn't bad or anything, but I wanted to go to bed early and I was really tired) so was super grumpy the next mornign :-D


• I'm going to do the antisocial thing this arvo and stay home from a BBQ for people from our church so that I can get some uni work done. I'm just not in a socialising mood, and I've realised I really don't like large groups of people. I'd much rather small gatherings.

I just want to say, before I begin this, I'm sorry to all the people who've left me comments that I haven't replied to.

So, this week a variety of things have occurred. Everything from getting a pet fighting fish named Miles (yes, the logic being that, since he's a fighting fish, a 'soldier' would be a fitting occupation for him) to someone accidentally wiping from the hard drive every file I have ever created* apart from the last month (I mean, EVERYTHING including uni related research/assignments + 6 years work I've done on my language course... hours of work which will never be able to be retrieved... I'm still a bit numb) to being asked to bridesmaid at a friend's wedding and watching Gilmore Girls, which is scarily addictive.

Yeah, it has been a somewhat busy week. I'm tired.

Do you want to know the thing that sucks about the files being lost? When you lose a book or something in the real world, there is a chance you will get it back. My kind father tried very hard to retrieve the lost items for me (as my three-year-old sister said (when she was still three years old), Dad's are, after all, for fixing things...) but all the files which could be restored were corrupt. So yeah, there goes all my files. People, can I make a suggestion? Don't just run backups. I did that, and it didn't work. Run multiple backups, and make sure any person who might be likely to access your files knows where each of your backups is. Please. For my sake. Thanks.

Now, with Miles, what sparked this off is that for a while I've been talking about how I would like to get a fighting fish. So yesterday (the day before?) Mum, Bette and David came up to my ('my') office with one. woot. He's so pretty, but I think I'm going to have to bring him home. Either that, or get him a bigger bowl so I can heat it. See, they aren't supposed to live in temperatures below 17 degrees and it's already getting colder than that in the evenings here, but you can't get heaters for tanks smaller than 10 liters. Besides, I like the idea of him living in a larger tank... I just have to wait until I can afford for my little friend to have a proper home.

Ok, it's 4:40 in the morning and I'm tired. I shan't finish this post, I don't think. I will be out all day tomorrow. If there's anything I mentioned the first paragraph which I didn't talk about more, feel free to comment and I will try reply... :-S

* The person who did it shall here remain unnamed because a) it was done while trying to help me and b) I think they already feel bad enough and c) if I'd explained my file-storing methods it probably wouldn't have happened (although, being told that they were going to do my backup would have been nice, too...).

Memory Lane (by the Basics) is officially my favourite song.

I'M GOING TO SEE THE BASICS TOMORROW!

Woot!

Why? For one, I'm scared of failing. That's my biggest fear. I don't mean getting a mark below 50%...I'd seriously die if that happened... I more mean getting mark I'm not happy with. It would be such a waste. I'm scared of not using the opportunity. There so many things I've done in the past thinking I'm doing it to the best of my ability, and then I've realised later I could have done so much better.

I'm scared of writing my thesis. What if it's dumb?

I'm scared of exams which will be harder than any I've any done before. I'm not the world's best exam doer. Seriously.

I'm scared of delivering a paper in September which the whole department can rip me to shreds over if they won't. Ok, so they probably won't, but what if they do?

I'm just one big fat scared cat.

... I got a scholarship! It's $2162 paid to me in two installments: one in April (that seems so long away!) and the second in September. Still, it will pay for my books and the deposit on my fees so I'm happy! I was a little worried (um -- exaggeration... I was quite worried!) that I wouldn't be able to fund the coming year, but it looks like that has been taken care of!

There will also be enough left over for me to buy another fish... :-D

Praise God!

In other news, things were slightly better at uni today. Certain persons were more bearable which is good news.

Current Mood: content

...discovering that Agamemnon isn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be. Sure, I need to polish up my understanding of some grammatical constructions, but beyond the vocabulary it's not too bad!

Maybe I have actually learned something in all these years of Greek study.

:-D

I just went a looked at my bank details to check my account number and was stopped short in my tracks by how much I have in there. I think that's the first time I've been shocked in a good way by my bank in a very long time.

It turns out, by the looks of things, that Dad must have gone and chased up the money for a book I was erroneously charged for about a year and a half ago, but which I never followed up.

I had wondered why miraculously I wasn't rejected when I tried to get money out to buy Mum ventolin yesterday, but I didn't bother wondering further!

Actually, that's not true. They're making two. Uhuh, while Lord of the Rings only got 3 movies for the 3 books, the Hobbit will get 2 movies for the 1 book. Humph. What's with that?

And good news: Jackson won't be directing it (yeeees... sorry folks, he's just not my favourite director). The guy who directed SpiderMan (I, II & III) will be. I can handle that, I think. Because the Hobbit has such a different literary style to LOTR, I think it's important for it to have a different visual style.

In other news, I don't want to go to Greek school tomorrow. I'm a bit over it. I don't really know many people there. The Greek is jolly well easy. Several people in the class keep blabbering on about irrelevant heresies. I mean, who cares if some people think that the Holy Spirit isn't mentioned per se in the book of Acts (despite the fact that he clearly IS mentioned. Ugh.). Every time the words pneuma hagion comes up, they have to think of some clever reason why it doesn't mean that. Can't they just accept that that might be what it means?

Aaaaanyway, linguistically I'm picking up a few interesting things, and there are some lovely older Christian women in my course. And it's been great spending all this time getting to know the Scriptures.

I'm really tired.

The people I'm staying with have been very hospitable. I keep getting this gnawing feeling that they're sick of me, but considering the fact that a) I don't have anywhere they can chuck me out to and b) I like it here, I ain't going nowhere ;-)

I should go to bed, since I have to get up in eight hours. Less than that. Dang. *sigh*

Two more things:
-- One day I will grow up. Really.
-- One day, I'll know when to close my mouth. *sigh*

Current Mood: tired

you know that "thirty days hath September, April, June, and November." But why? How'd we wind up with a calendar that has four months of 30 days, seven months of 31 days, and one of 28 (not to mention a leap year every four)? It's a long story--of lunar months, solar years, a caesar, and a pope. Here's the tale.

Lunar Months, Solar Years
Time may be relative, but ancient farmers liked to know when to plant, when to reap, and when to celebrate all that planting and reaping. So they looked up. Back then, the night sky provided the most convenient calendar. Even the dimmest of observers could see that the moon took 29 to 30 days (actually, 29.53) to turn from a thin crescent to a bloated orb and back again. That cycle told one lunar month.
More astute timekeepers noticed that roughly twice every 12 lunar cycles, there was a day with equal hours of light and dark. These days, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, marked time for the seasons. The time between one vernal equinox and the next told one solar year (or 365.24 days).
The trick was to make a calendar that had lunar months and a solar year. Not so easy, as lunar months don't fit evenly into solar years. The best compromise was to fit 12 lunar cycles (a little more than 354 days) into one solar cycle. But that left 11 solar days outside time. After just three years on a lunar calendar, the months were off by 33 days. Gradually, June froze over and November got downright sultry. And no one knew when Mother's Day was.

The Merry Month of Mercedonius
The only way to fit the solar and lunar calendars together was to intercalate, or to add extra days or months. The Romans, who were the best at many things, were the worst at this. They just tacked on a "leap month" after February every other year, called Mercedonius.
Everyone liked Mercedonius. People got another paycheck and could wait to pay off their debts. But the officials who were supposed to regulate when Mercedonius started and stopped gleefully abused the extra month, often using it for personal and political ends. Need to keep a friend in office? Want to postpone a project? Just manipulate Mercedonius!
It was great fun, but lousy timekeeping. Even without the rampant calendrical abuse, the Roman calendar gained a day every year. A year with Mercedonius ran 377 or 378 days, while a normal Roman year lasted 355 days. Since that averaged out to 366.25 days, Roman time gradually pulled ahead of the solar year.

Reckon Unto Caesar
Julius Caesar put a stop to all the madness in 46 BC. With the help of a Greek astronomer, Caesar devised a strategy to standardize the Roman calendar. First, he added three months to the then-current Roman year, 707, to get things back into whack. Then, he made the Roman year 365 days long, with an extra day in February every fourth year.
He abolished Mercedonius. To make 12 lunar months fit into a solar year, Caesar simply added days to the non-February months until he had doled out 365 days across the year. That cratered the idea of having months that track the moon, but something had to give. For Caesar, it was time for the moon to bow to the sun.
It took a few decades to work out the kinks, but Caesar's calendar was actually pretty good--only 11 minutes off each year. To thank him, in 44 BC the Roman Senate named the seventh month of the new calendar July, after their exalted and time-sensitive leader. (His successor, Caesar Augustus, laid claim to August in 8 BC.)

The Pope's Command
But wait a second: what about those 11 minutes? By the 16th century, the Julian calendar had fallen behind the solar one by 10 days. The Catholic Church, which had used the Julian calendar for centuries despite its known faults, was getting anxious about how far the vernal equinox was creeping away from the "correct" date for Easter.
Early 4th-century Christians had decided that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. But every 130 years, the Julian calendar moved one whole day further off solar time. By the year 1500, the vernal equinox fell on the 10th or 11th of March (instead of nearer the 21st of that month).
So, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered everyone to go to bed on Thursday, October 4, and wake up on Friday, October 15. This 10-day adjustment worked well, so Gregory added another change. Century years such as 1700 or 1800 would no longer be counted as leap years unless they were divisible by 400 (like 1600 or 2000). The Gregorian calendar, which the western world still uses today, departs from the solar year by only 26 seconds. That's one day every 3,323 years.
Not all of Europe was quick to adopt the Gregorian calendar. Differences with Rome kept many countries from signing on. England and America held out until 1752, when an act of parliament required his majesty's subjects to skip 11 days in September, going straight from Wednesday, September 2, to Thursday, September 14. Mother Russia required a revolution to change its dated ways--the Gregorian calendar wasn't used there until 1918.