Thursday, March 22, 2007
The colonies await…
Well, it is just five more days until I board a series of planes bound for the United States. I’m really excited, as I have a long list of things that I have planned, some of which include seeing my best friend Nicole and meeting her new baby, visiting my sister in her new digs in Wisconsin (shudder…although I’ll be happy to see her again, I really have serious hate issues with Wisconsin, and am not looking forward to setting foot in that dreadful state!), visiting and catching up with my old friend Roxie (my brother’s girlfriend), whom I haven’t seen in over 5 years (and subsequently meeting my nephew for basically the first time…I saw him just once when he was a week old…he’s now about 6), visiting my friend Julie, who I haven’t seen in nearly a year, driving all across the great state of Minnesota, and shopping, shopping, shopping (the exchange rate will FINALLY be in my favor…whoo hoo for the weak dollar and the strong(ish) pound sterling!). All in all it should be a pretty busy three weeks and I’m really looking forward to it.
Before I leave though, I’ve been trying to get things in order over here. I had to write a last minute essay two weekends ago. Here’s the short-hand version of the story: if you’ve been reading this blog, then you’ll remember that a few weeks ago I had a really bad cold, and did nothing but veg out on the couch slowly dying for a week. Well, I completely blanked on the fact that I had a Scotland essay to write, and on Friday afternoon I experienced an epiphany during one of my brief periods of lucidity…wasn’t there something that I had due on Monday? I checked my calendar, and after a stream of expletives escaped my mouth, I got changed and headed to the library, huffing and puffing and dying all the way there. Of course, being just three days before the essay was due, there were no good books left on my subject (‘Why did James VI have problems with the Kirk?’). I headed home distraught and tried to figure out how I could possibly write this essay with no good sources when a thought occurred to me…aha…the internet! Thank heavens for Jstor and Ebrary. I took some sparse notes on Friday and Saturday, but didn’t have the motivation or strength to do much more. I spent most of Sunday afternoon lying on the couch, and then at around 9pm I decided that I should probably do some work. I wrote my entire essay in about three hours and went to bed at around midnight. When I woke up on Monday, I experienced another epiphany…didn’t I have something else that was due soon? Why yes, there were several. I had my previously mentioned essay due that Monday, a presentation to research and prepare for on Tuesday for my Scotland tutorial, and a presentation that I had to research, write and prepare for in my Russia tutorial on Wednesday! Oi. In the end, after several close shaves with nervous breakdowns, I did manage to complete everything. Phew. So basically, since then I’ve been trying to take it easy and continue recuperating from my cold. I still haven’t gotten my sense of smell or taste back yet, and I’m getting the feeling that this is going to be one of my colds that linger on in some way for many, many weeks. Yippee.
So anyhoo, in addition to getting my schoolwork in order before I go, I also wanted to try and schedule a get-together with several of my friends before I head back. Well, it’s actually quite difficult to get 5-6 people in the same place and time when everyone has such diverse schedules. I think I have managed to get everything organized for this Saturday night. Now I’m just trying to talk everyone into seeing the movie 300 with me before we head to the pub. I have been waiting for this movie to come out for forever! Anyone who knows me well enough is fully aware of my obsession with the yummy Scottish actor Gerard Butler, who happens to star in this new movie. Surprisingly, I have yet to see one of his movies in the cinema and am so looking forward to ogling him for two hours on such a large screen! I doubt any of my friends will feel the same way (what with all but one of them being men!), hence the reason that I need to talk them into seeing it. I sincerely hope they all agree to go, though whether I go on Saturday night or by myself some other day doesn’t matter, as I will see this movie before I leave for the states, oh yes, I most certainly will!
Speaking of movies, I have recently seen two of them. Unfortunately, I didn’t find either one of them particularly stellar. I saw Music and Lyrics about a month ago and had high hopes, as Hugh Grant has never disappointed me on the romantic comedy front. Boy, did he ever drop the ball on this movie. I think I laughed maybe twice throughout the entire movie. One time that I did laugh, nobody else in the theater laughed with me. There was this little joke where Hugh Grant played the Jeopardy theme tune on the piano while waiting for Drew Barrymore to think of new lyrics, which I found kind of funny, but as I’m not sure that many of the people over here knows what Jeopardy is, they didn’t get the joke and there was silence (except for my giggles, that is) throughout the cinema. Yep, so overall, it was a pretty sterile movie which I would not recommend to anybody. The other movie that I saw was Hot Fuzz, which had the same people from Shaun of the Dead in it. Again, I had high expectations of this movie, as all the reviews claimed that it was the funniest movie in a long time, and seeing as how I loved Shaun of the Dead, I assumed that I would like this one just as much. Hot Fuzz is shot very similarly to Shaun of the Dead, what with the camera flashing around in different angles, and I did laugh throughout the movie (especially during the shootout in Somerfield’s…now that was a brilliant scene), but it just didn’t tickle me like I thought it would. I found my attention drifting from time to time, which is not something that I like to happen when I’m watching a movie. So all in all, I’ve had a quite disappointing cinema experience over the last few months, and I’m hoping for something great to come out (will that be 300 I wonder?).
Oh, before I go, I just want to comment on my last Saturday night. Ross came over in the evening, and we were watching the ‘auditions’ for the UK’s entry to Eurovision. To explain briefly for the Americans who have never heard of this before (such as myself until just recently), Eurovision is this hugely popular song contest (some call it ‘an Institution’) where a bunch of European countries compete against one another (sort of like American Idol on a hugely blown up scale). The difference is that the contestants can be professional acts/singers (in fact, from what I’ve found out, Abba got their start by winning Eurovision with their song ‘Waterloo’, and Celine Dion sang, and won, a few times for a couple of different countries), oh yes, and the singers don’t actually have to come from the country that their representing. It’s all kind of confusing to me, but whatever, so be it. Anyhoo, the UK was having a competition to choose their entry, with the public phoning in and voting for their favorites. There were two really good acts, and I was thinking that one of them would definitely be chosen. Yep, I was wrong. Instead, the UK voted for this stupid kitschy pop act called Scootch, who performed some ridiculous act posing as airline stewards/stewardesses. Ross informed me that he suspected that they’d win, because it had a ‘Eurovision flavor’. Apparently, in order to win Eurovision, your act has to have a stupid, campy quality to it. This thought actually intrigues me quite a bit, so now I actually can’t wait to watch the Eurovision final in May and see some of the strange acts involved. Even the voting is weird, in that you cannot vote for your own singer (which I guess makes sense when you think about it…the bigger your country, the more people that you would have to vote for you, and that’s not fair to the smaller countries). Yep, so I must witness this strange phenomenon that they call Eurovision and see what it’s all about. I’m sure I’ll have a detailed write-up after I see in it May, so stay tuned.
Alright, well I think that about
does it for today. I’m going to continue my very demanding day of lying around
the flat. Perhaps if I get really motivated, I might even take some notes for
my third essay that’s due after I come back from Easter break. I hear a general
laughter issuing forth from my readers…yes, you are right to be skeptical that
I would acquire enough motivation to do essay work, but you never know,
stranger things have happened…but I doubt it!