I know it’s been a while, but that’s because I haven’t really done much recently, apart from the usual stuff. However, in a few hours I shall be boarding a plane to Texas, so I’ll (hopefully) be able to update everyone with pictures and stories of the Deep South.
Until then…
Well it’s almost the end of May now, which means I’ve had a few weeks of no school, and do you know what? I bet you do… I’ve enjoyed every minute of it! To be honest though, I haven’t actually done all that much. Last night I took Markie out for dinner at The Melting Pot (the same place we went to on Valentine’s Day) and it was pretty awesome, we were there for just about 3 hours eating 4 courses of fondue!
Just look at their hair!! Looks like something out of "Saved By the Bell"
Other than that, we really haven’t been out anywhere or done anything, except play some extremely 90s and American board games, which was awesome!! Although I wouldn’t normally admit this, we played a game called Dream Phone, which as you can see from the picture below, is so 90s it hurts!And the size of the phone… wow. I mean, the newer version (apparently there is one!) has a smaller phone, but we had the original. The game itself was epic, you would have to ring up “boys” to get clues regarding who “had a crush” on you. The pictures of the boys were like something out of a 90s line-up.
I mean, look at Bob the Rapist... He looks at least 20!
Again, look at that hair... and the cream-coloured plastic!
We also played another board game that night, by the name of Mall Madness; another 90s American game. This had a little more longevity to it, because we had to go around the Mall into certain “stores” and buy stuff with our fake money, the first one to the parking lot after filling their game card with purchases won the game. I’m going to be honest, these games were a lot of fun, mostly because of the cheesiness of them both. They made Markie reminisce about the past, playing them with her sister (and brother too!) which was nice.
Another night we played a short game of Life, which I’d never played before (I don’t think it’s common back home, but I could be wrong…) To be exact, it was the Simpsons Edition of the game.
The Game of Life - I always wanted to be a Simpson!
First of all you choose whether to get a job straight away or an education (which opens up more job opportunities) and then you go around the board, getting married, buying a house, having kids… all that jazz, and then end up at either Burns’ Mansion or the Retirement Centre. It’s a pretty good game and can be longer if more people play and less 10s are rolled!! It’s been a bit rainy recently, so chances are we’ll play a few other different games over the next few days…
I’ll probably update once more before we leave for Texas, maybe twice, depending on whether or not I do much!! So until next time…
Well I got all of my results today, which means I’m finally officially done with school for another year. Got a 3.126 GPA this semester which, with my 2.466 from last semester, gives me a 2.806 total, which is pretty good. I was hoping for a 3.0 or above but what the hell, I did my best and I got a good grade out of it.
I got my Art project back last week (picture yet to be uploaded!) and was happy to find an A written on the essay! With the final exam and the extra credit, that gave me an A overall, which was unexpected, considering I know NOTHING about Art or Art History!
My final exam for the Methods class must have been good, with a C in the class seeing as I got a D in the mid-term and my homeworks were about average! The biggest surprise was probably Quantum Physics II, in which I got a B-, last semester I got a C in part I of the course, so it was nice to go up by 2 grades! I was expecting an A in Quantum Mechanics because of how easy and laid back the course is… we only had 5 homeworks for the class, and they were all pretty easy, plus the mid-term and final were both open book exams with easy problems. That leaves us with Materials Science II, probably my favourite course of the year (as well as part I) and I was very happy to get a B, which was the same as I got in Fall.
Overall, a successful year for exam grades… for me anyway!
Now to enjoy the summer, with nothing to do, it should be awesome
Well I made it, finally got to the end of the second semester, which I thought would be the one to finish me off! To be fair though the exams themselves were actually pretty easy, except the take home one, but I’m sure I did fine in it!
To finish off the week there was a party that one of the Biology lot had because it was his birthday and they’re all leaving America on Monday, it was pretty good fun with Beer Pong and shotgunning and the usual party antics. And then today was Free Comic Book Day, which is by far one of my favourite days of the year, not because I get to read some free comics from Marvel or DC, but because I like to see some new, more independent publishers and their artworks. The only problem was that where we went it was only 5 free comics per person, which is a bit lame considering they had about 25 free ones. I managed to get 10 though because my girlfriend came with me!! I needed to go anyway, just because I hadn’t been for a while and needed to update my collections.
Now it’s officially summertime I’ll probably have more time to update this thing with more TALES OF INTEREST! But really, I have no idea what I’m going to be doing for the next few months. I’ve got a little over 16 weeks left here, which isn’t long really, but I’m going to make the most of the time I have left here with my girlfriend and the nice weather. I know we’re traveling to the South for June because Markie’s sister is having a baby so I’ll update with stories of the trip, especially as we’re most probably going to be driving there, stopping off at notable locations on the way!
Until then though, I think I’m going to have a week off, from everything strenuous. Probably clean my apartment a bit… those exams really made apartment messy!!
Well it’s Easter here, as I’m sure it is in most places! I’ve noticed though, Easter here is miles different than it is in England in many ways… for example, there are no large chocolate eggs in humongous boxes, instead, families go “egg hunting”. I asked my girlfriend what a normal family does to celebrate Easter:
“We spend the night before dying hard-boiled eggs so overnight the ‘Easter Bunny’ can hide them in our house. We (children!) then spend the whole morning looking for them” – Markie Miller
Markie's nephew, Atticus, hunting eggs in Texas painted as cars!
This morning we did just that, and I was surprised to see myself so involved, as well as everyone else! Bearing in mind that the youngest person looking for the eggs was 21, it was even more fun! Along with the dyed eggs, we also had a bunch of plastic eggs to find, each containing money, and 77 puzzle pieces to collect. The finder of the special piece was given a bunch of extra prizes, which included $10 and a Pez dispenser. We were all given a basket with extra gifts in, including a gift card and a bunch of chocolates, and overall I found myself $19 and a bunch of real eggs. Pretty badass!
I’m still working on my Totem Pole, taking pictures as I go, hopefully once it’s done I’ll post all of them on here, with the finished product. Until then though…
I know I haven’t posted anything for a while now, but I’ve been relatively busy with stuff… Last weekend I went more into Michigan to go to a Native American Pow-Wow, which was a pretty strange experience, there was dancing for about 4 hours! After we decided to leave, we went to the University of Michigan to have a look around and have lunch, which was nice… reminded me of Manchester University, especially with regards to the size of the campus!
A nice picture I found of Chicago - none of the ones we took have been uploaded yet!
This weekend, well we decided to go to Chicago. Markie drove the entire time, which was about 4 ½ hours each way (what a trooper!). We left on the Friday afternoon, as soon as I was finished with classes, so we could get there relatively early and not have to drive at night, which seemed like a sensible idea. When we got there the city was awesome, it was just getting dark and everything was lit up beautifully. We stayed in a hotel in the city for two nights, which was nice. Not too expensive but good enough for a short stay. Had dinner in the “English Pub” downstairs, which was surprisingly nice, even the English imported beers were good (well the ones I had anyway!)
UT Anthropology Club in The Field Museum
On the Saturday we went to the Field Museum for the day with Markie’s Anthropology Club, which was great fun. The museum itself is absolutely huge and full of great and interesting artifacts from all over the place. We started off in the Americas, onto the Arctic, then through Egypt and finally we went through the Polynesian Islands. For those of you who don’t know, I’m taking an Art History class at the moment (mainly for the fact that I can get a decent grade for minimal work) and a lot of the pieces we’ve looked at in class were on display there, which was pretty awesome to see. After the museum most of us then went onto an authentic Chicago pizzeria and had a real Deep pan pizza, which was huge, at least an inch of cheese, pepperoni and Canadian bacon!
It was a pretty fun weekend and we hope to go again throughout the summer to see everything we didn’t get chance to this time… Time (and money!!) permitting of course, especially as we’re driving down to the South during the summer months. That will be badass! Anyway, I’d better get back to doing this mid-term exam while I have the free time.
Til next time…
Well it was, I would have posted earlier than this but my laptop decided to break on the second day of spring break and I still haven’t got it fixed yet!
Spring break... WOOOOOOOOO!!!
Spring break was a bit of a failure, I was hoping to get my Art project done and out of the way, but instead I played Pokemon White for 50 hours, watched a bunch of movies and slept my way through the week. Oh, and I went to a gay bar and drank a bunch of $1 drinks, including Scotch! What a waste!! Back to school now and everything’s starting to come to a close, there’s two mid-terms on Thursday that I’m not looking forward to (and should be studying for!!) and then there’s still homework to be done. Fortunately after this week there’s only two more mid-terms and then not long until exam week.
Oh I forgot, it was my birthday. Ha! Well, nothing out of the ordinary happened, I went out to Jed’s at the weekend and then spent the next two day’s relaxing and opening some presents. It was nice, I got the rest of the presents the weekend later, seeing as Pokemon White was out then! Overall I got approximately 10 huge leather bound hardcover books, from authors Edgar Allen Poe, Dante, Homer, Douglas Adams and even the complete works of Shakespeare! It’s a fantastic collection and I can’t wait to read all of them! I’m currently about 300 pages through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy collection and it’s bloody brilliant!
Well, I think that’s all for now… I’d better get back to doing revision for my exams on Thursday. Do not want. Until next time…
Yes. It is. But it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it! At the moment I’m sat in the student union just enjoying the high speed internet and lack of work to do (for a change!) while the sun is out outside and it’s just above freezing. I’m thinking to myself, “time to get out the shorts!” but then again, I know, deep down, that we’re going to have at LEAST one more snowstorm before spring arrives, and it’s gonna suck.
The guy who was lying down in the sofa has just woken up and left. I hope it was my loud typing that drove him away. Seriously though, who the hell sleeps in a random building around a bunch of people you don’t know in the middle of the day? Ridiculous!
The cupcakes made and delivered to me on Valentine's Day morning by my wonderful girlfriend.
Well yesterday was St. Valentine’s Day, which means that Facebook was filled with 30% “I hate being single blah blah blah” posts, 30% “I hate Valentines day because blah blah blah” posts and 40% “I love my boyfriend/girlfriend/dog forever and ever blah blah blah” posts. Normally I wouldn’t want to read these, but instead I was looking both yesterday and today to see what people were saying and what kind of a relationship they were in. It turns out that all single people hate Valentine’s Day, and I don’t blame them, because it is a lot of money. I mean, of course I (happily) bought Markie a couple of gifts AND paid for dinner, but that’s just me. I noticed some other guys make a real effort this year to either see their girlfriends or get them something nice. And that was good to see too. But then I heard of someone’s boyfriend not doing anything at all, he didn’t even buy or make her a card! Now I’m not one for buying cards, and I expressed this feeling before the day itself (which she was fine with, because I wasn’t getting one either!!) but at least I went to the effort to buy her a few small, but wanted and appreciated gifts.
The Melting Pot - A perfectly romantic evening.
All in all… Valentine’s Day was a great day. For me anyway. I got to spend 3 and a half hours in the Melting Pot with my girlfriend eating like it was going out of fashion and I also got given the most wonderful cupcakes! A glorious day. And to everyone who was badmouthing it all day, all I have to say to you is: Bah, Humbug!
Until next time, which will probably be at some point before my birthday,
Näkemiin x
Well… the Super Bowl is over and the Green Bay Packers won, which was the team we were supporting (due to Markie’s dad being a fan!!) But yes, it was a good game and surprisingly the time went by quickly!
I much prefer this to REAL football.
Over and out.
Well we had a snow day last week, which was awesome!! A whole Wednesday off school. More fascinating was that the snow wasn’t even that bad, especially compared to yesterday which was just amazing, probably twice as high as it was last week!!
Anyway, the Super Bowl is on this afternoon… which should be an experience! My first ever full “football” game. I’ll let you know how it goes. However, for now, breakfast is calling to me. Mmm… bacon.
Steve Holt!
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