Today we had a lecture about families, which was full of old paintings of large somber-looking families and also paintings of little boys in long dresses holding swords and rattles and pouting. Then later an hour-long seminar about potatoes. This is presumably to weed out the non-hackers who do not have what it takes to serve in our beloved corps. Next year, it’s strategy, Operational Art and the rise of modern war. This year, frocks and spuds. Spuds are actually surprisingly interesting! Adam Smith himself, he say spuds > bread.

In their attempts to be helpful, Learning Support have been rather messing me about. My EP report assessment is scheduled for the 26th. Then Vikki the nice learning support lady calls (except because my phone had a sudden hiccup it was an answerphone message) to say they have one on Friday morning (that’s today). I call them and say that would be great. They call me again, say the slot’s now at 1:00 and clashes with my focused study seminar on the Somme. Thursday 26th it is, then.

I am able to attend the first COGS LAN of the year, next weekend. Coach tickets are booked, lugging a computer around should be great fun. Hah. Hah.

I went to fetsoc. It was. Uh. Interesting.

A job that has caught my eye (typing – my typing speed being rather good and the rates of pay being quite nice) has replied to my CV saying “you’re what we’re looking for” However, it requires me to register myself as self-employed. Since I know absolutely nothing about self-employment and as a result am very leery of it, guidance would be much appreciated. Details of the job are at http://www.takenotetyping.com/faq.asp .

I watched NASA blow up the moon. It was kind of disappointing. Then I went to Stuart’s seminar and he gave me back my plagiarism quiz (all correct and full of heartening commentary along the lines of “I think we need to make our tests harder” and “not a comma out of place – you’re just showing off now aren’t you”). And he gave me a kit kat for getting the Treaty of Westphalia right in our first seminar. I’m such a teacher’s pet already. Then we talked about the First World War for forty-five minutes.

I’m really, really enjoying university so far.

First Monday lecture, at noon, I was prepared for. I had read my books. It saddened me that my lecturer did not appear to have put in the same care, arriving without any slides, and faffed around for a further five minutes trying to decide if she should go back and get them (even more disappointingly: no.) So I’ve had to download her powerpoint and basically relive my lecture. Oh, life is suffering and tragedy.

Second lecture, I went to two wrong rooms. Then, eventually, I worked out where my seminar was. It was at ten in the morning. On Friday.

Practising History leaps about the timetable without rhyme or reason. I’m not going to say that the timetable for that module is a confused and contradictory byzantine tangle (despite Rob’s rants about administration.) It’s not. I’m sure that there is a method to it. It just feels a lot like one from the perspective of someone using it. However, this gave me an hour. So I cycled home and made lunch.

Then we had Dr. Snape, who was dead-on professional and caused much debate about the exact nature of a war and whether Clausewitz was right (yes), and then I got to go home and hammer at mine and Rob’s shared D-Day presentation until it was good enough, and then cycled down to catch the last couple hours of Anime Society, which was fun even though Brummies do seem to watch some truly awful anime, and try to play HD files in VLC on a beat-up old laptop. (MPC Home Cinema is clearly called for.)

Met with Rob this morning and finished off the D-Day thing, which can be found here if you’re interested. I hadn’t done a presentation since about year ten so it was heavy on the wall of text and light on the actual verbal presentin’. But it went down well and sparked arguments which swerved drunkenly across space and time (variously using Haig, Stalin, Suez and the Balkans as examples to back up ideas about Normandy in ’44) and I’m really certain I’m doing the right subject.

Even if, as Tutor-Rob had warned us, the first ten minutes were basically variations of this:
ROB: “And now what’s the bloody problem?! Should be a technician here to set it up, nothing fucking works…”
STUDENT: “Is it turned on at the wall?”
ROB: “Well, it should be- ah! Excellent. Well done that man.”

Then I lent Student-Rob my copy of Generation Kill and got Tutor-Rob interested in a copy of the files of it, which was neat, and then went home and had lunch and fell asleep and had trippy, trippy dreams about living in a pyramid in Australia.

Fridge is almost empty. I’ll need a big shopping trip tomorrow.

I’ve been eating okay, I think. Most main meals have a meaty component (fish fingers, mince, sausages – Sainsburys do 8 fat sausages for 97p and they’re not bad), a carbohydrate component (sometimes toast and pasta but mostly spuds – I bought a 5 kilo bag of spuds in the first week and it’s just now about to run out after constant use) and a veg component (fresh tomato, cooked courgette, beans, in addition to the constant apple-eating.) And my food expenses are seemingly going down from week to week.

Stuff I’m waiting for in the mail:
New Corb Lund album (ordered direct to here, but from Canada and shipped cheaply – it’s been about two weeks, will be another before I start to get genuinely worried)
Second most expensive textbook from the first round (from some Abe Books seller who is way tardy and will shortly get annoyed messages)
Wallet for phone (from whoever Olly bought it off, via home… hopefully)
Shaver adapter (from some ebayer)
Second-round wodge of books (from more Abers, but it’s okay, I’ve not been waiting long.)