Where is my free time?

I am free!!! Or so I thought when I handed in my thesis at the end of September. I spent most of September, especially my precious weekends, polishing the thesis of (well writing it) and handed it in on the 30th. I took the day off work because the uni office opening hours didn't allow me to pop in before and after. So I spent my day picking up the thesis from the printer, together with another girl from my course. We ended up returning all our library books (yay) and then turning in the diss. Finally!!! It was actually pretty unspectacular. We didn't even get a receipt. Nothing. Ah well, it's gone, that's all that matters.

Then we went for a nice lunch with another friend who we met at the office. I guess we weren't the only once turning in our papers on the last possible day. We went to a nice Japanese place and had a lunch set. After we went for ice cream and some shopping.

I had to leave them for a bit then because I had an appointment at a real estate agent. We finally found a flat to rent we liked and went in to sign the contract! So that has been eating up my 'free' weekends. We have been moving stuff the last couple of weeks. This weekend we are taking a break (bf has to work). But next weekend we will properly move. We will have to bring over the rest of our stuff and properly set up. I took of a day to get the BT and Virgin Media guys into the flat to get connected to phone/broadband/TV.

I am VERY excited about this flat. It is new (the whole building is). So nobody has lived there before us. We have a proper sized bathroom with a bathtub (I don't really like to take baths, but am excited nonetheless). We have a balcony, a proper sized bedroom. We have double-glazed windows (score), we have a couch! The kitchen/living room is one big living space. But I love that. Makes the flat look much bigger than it is. Plus, it means bf cannot hide away in one room. We still get to spend time together.

We still have to buy some shelves for my massive book collection. Though I am getting rid of about half of them (breaks my heart, but what can you do). This also made the need for an ebook reader much more apparent. Though I still cannot decide which one I want. Well, don't have money at the moment anyway, so I guess I will figure it out later.

Anyway, just wanted to write this quick update. I am not dead, just massively busy. But hopefully in two weeks that will all stop and I will be settling into a brand new flat with free weekends (soooooooooooooo excited!).

Until then... Let's pack some more boxes!

The Rest of the Bank Holiday Weekend

Saturday I basically spend sleeping. God, I am really not used to staying up late anymore. I got to bed at 4am and only slept till about 8.30am. We went to Angel for lunch (burritos, nom nom nom) and looked around at some of the estate agent. With bf having his visa sorted it is now time to find a new place to live. Yay! Finally, we are going to move out of our studio apartment and will look for a 1 bedroom flat. Oh the luxury of having a bedroom AND a living room. Cannot wait!

Anyway, we noticed that it will be very expensive to get a nice flat in the areas we like. But screw it, I wanna live somewhere nice. So I think bf might start to look seriously at flats. I really don't have the time to help him yet. I am thinking October when I get this stupid dissertation done. Then I will have time to spend all my weekends flat hunting. Oh the possibility of not having to spend another winter in a flat with stupid windows that don't really shut! Honestly, I think windows are my top priority. I want double-glazed, please! There are other things, but that seems like such a basic thing to get right. And it will make such a big difference to whether we live in a wet, mouldy flat or a nice, dry and warm one.

I spent the afternoon napping and doing absolutely NOTHING. I was lovely! Sunday I had planned to work really hard on the dissertation. But because I tried doing it at home it was a major FAIL! I managed to type up two interviews, but that was about it.

So the next day I decided to join the boyfriend at his work (remember bank holiday, so we were basically the only people at his workplace). Oh man, it was brilliant. With absolutely no distraction I got so much done. Now I want him to take me there next weekend, but he flatly refused. He has his last day of work at the current place and won't be back for about 9 months because he's doing a secondment. Bad timing as I had just found my perfect workplace. I guess next weekend it will be back to the coffee houses and libraries of London. Urgh.

Well, the good part is that I can now see an end to this whole dissertation business. I will keep you updated ;-)

A Sunny Day

Felt like shit all day yesterday. I had a headache, the dissertation was not coming along as planned, the weather outside was bad, but really humid. All I wanted to do was just cry and sleep. Which I mainly did. I managed to leave the house for about an hour to get some groceries and bf got his passport pictures done for the visa.

I thought it would do me good to get out of the house and get some fresh air. Not really though. Headache got even worse. My whole head felt really tight and as if it was too tiny for my brain... So I just laid down and closed my eyes most of the afternoon.

Do you sometimes have those days where everything seems impossible and like it's too much and everything seems to go wrong or simply nowhere?

That was basically my day. No idea what brought it on. But it was a shitty, shitty day. I was really scared that today would be the same again and that stressed me out even more. Because I will need all the time I can get to finish my dissertation in time. Only six weekends left and I still haven't done all my interviews. Really need to ask people at work next week whether they'd be so nice and let me interview them.

To end on a lighter note. Today was completely different. I got up in the morning and felt a lot better. I got a bit done on the dissertation and read up on some methodology and listened to some lectures. Felt much better afterwards. Also, a friend of mine agreed to be interviewed because he work in the field I wanted to do my research in. So I met up with him this evening and had a 30 minute interview. And it was great! He told me so many useful things that I can analyse and contrast against another interview I did back in April during a placement. The sun came out and we were drinking frappucinos sitting in the sun and getting shit done for my dissertation. 

Now I'm back home and everything looks much better. This will mean that probably next weekend I can write up the interviews and really get into the nitty gritty bit. Yeah, things are coming together. Hurray! So weird how two days can be so utterly, utterly different. And to top it all off my loving bf has ordered us some sushi that is about to arrive. Here's to good friends and loving boyfriends!

Busy Post

I finally managed to get off my ass and start my dissertation. Which now means that I work full-time during the week and spend about 6-8 hours each day on the weekend working on my dissertation. I did this for three weeks now and it's making me tired. Staring at computer screens every day is so exhausting!

It's only till the end of September, so I shouldn't whine too much and just deal. But I think a little whiny post is not too much... I feel a bit guilty complaining about it since I'm getting paid and get a good education at the same time. Boy but sometimes I wish I could just slag off for a day or two (ah, whom am I kidding, for at least a week or two). I guess that's what you get from going straight from classes into employment. I am very glad I got this job, since I love and was super scared that I would not be able to get a job in publishing like the last time I graduated. But still, I need free time to hang around and do nothing.

Now enough with the whining. In good news: It's Friday, I only have a half day today. And the later half of the day I will use to do ... nothing. Huzza!

In other exciting news (this is exciting, since normally I don't do anything special on weekends): next Friday I will go to Globe Theatre and see the midnight performance of As You Like It. A friend of mine booked us tickets on the highest floor in the back. Not gonna be a brilliant view, but it's gonna be so lovely. I hope it's a cloudless night so we can see stars (who am I kidding, no stars in London anyway). That will also be the day we will find out whether bf will get a new visa for the UK. If not, they will kick his ass back to Canada. So fingers crossed that everything will be fine for him that day.

The weekend after we will go to the Royal Opera House and get a behind the scene look at it and get to see some performances for a special they have on. Bf won those tickets at work. Not bad I say. I am very excited about all the culture we are squeezing into our schedule (and perfect excuses NOT to do anything on my dissertation, double win).

Yeah, that's about all that is happening over here. Now that London got all boring again and stopped the riots (thank you very much). Ok, should get my lazy ass into the shower and off to work I run!