Fire at The Cranky Cows

Just now the cranky cow had a visit from some firemen. Shes been seen by both my flatmates and I throwing flaming paper out of the window numerous times this week. Well i'm guessing this time she missed the window and so had to call the fire brigade.

From what we saw she was having a pleasant conversation with the firemen. She didn't scream at them once. When they were leaving she didn't even do her usual, 'Get inside now, Get INSIDE!!!! No! Don't walk away from me! Get in here now!!!!' In fact she seemed to be chatting them up (well thats what my flatmates and some friends from the flat downstairs have decided). I'm surprised she didn't lock the firemen in the house when they went in to put out whatever fire there was.

Work, how I have not missed you!

I'm sitting here trying to do a write up for a practical experiment we did at the end of last week and finding my mind all to easily wandering. I feel so out of practice at doing work (academic work that is, thanks to Starbucks i'm fine with manual work, well as long as it involves cleaning and coffee making). It seems like so long ago now that I actually got essays and write ups to do. So to ease me back into it my uni has given me 4 essays to write, a presentation to prepare and a leaflet to make. Thats in addition to the usual self directed work they give us every evening and the blog entries I have to write for my PPD sessions (basically our ethics sessions where we sometimes get visits from doctors or patients and ask them questions/discuss things with them).

I know they say medical school is tough but you don't really think about it until you are actually there, inundated with work. And this is only one month in, I expect it to get much harder. But at the same time i'm really loving it here and couldn't imagine doing any other course. So i'll tolerate the boring write ups, i'll make the most amazing HIV leaflet ever and maybe i'll find myself enjoying those essays. Who knows, I might even get this current write up finished!

Wild Week

Well the wild part of the title is meant to reflect the fact that I went to a safari themed cocktail party this week (yet another medics event though non-medics were allowed to come) and some of the costumes were pretty wild. There were giraffes, tigers, lions, zebras, tribesmen, cheetahs, hunters..................bushes..............the bush was actually really annoying as, at some point during the evening, I ended up stood by him and his twigs/leaves kept stabbing me in the face. I went as a tourist which was a bit of a cop out, but I did make binoculars! The binoculars were made out of loo rolls and other random bits of cardboard I had collected. I then drew a picture of a lion which I put in one of the lenses so that when you looked through them you could, well, see a lion. Unfortunately my binoculars got pretty squashed. They're still intact, just a bit mishapen. Anyway it was a really fun night.

The workloads gotten quite intense this week, mainly because they've set us something like 5 essays to do (in addition to the self-directed learning) and a presentation to prepare. I haven't gotten round to properly starting the essays yet. I keep telling myself thats what the weekends for. I guess i'll see.

However the last couple of days i've been uncharacteristically organised. In the last 2 days i've done my food shopping for the week, washed my clothes, hoovered and mopped the floor in my flat and cooked a surprisingly nice stir fry, fried eggs with tomatoes and onions and pasta sauce (with the pasta to go with it of course). By the way I made those dishes on different days. I know I eat a lot but not that much. I also did the washing up thats piled up over the week (belonging to two of my flatmates, not me) since I got fed up of seeing it every time I went into the kitchen. Oh and I cleaned the kitchen table and table tops. I don't know why i've gotten into a strange cleaning mood. I think it has something to do with avoiding my essays.

My french flatmate also decided to make some crepes tonight (I made the dinner, ie. the stir fry and she made the dessert). Mmmmmmmm how I love crepes! Especially with nutella.

Cold Hearted Boiler

The boiler has stopped working in my flat for the 4th time this week (its broken down many a time the last couple of weeks as well). I therefore had to have yet another freezing cold shower. We've complained again about it (having done so every time its happened) and we're hoping our boiler might actually get replaced with a new one that works. But we're not laying out hope since the warden people who have come to fix it have said all you can do is keep complaining and maybe eventually the university will take notice and replace it. Great.

Yesterday apparently the boiler actually made some loud angry noise. I was in my room and didn't actually notice it but one of my flatmates, who was in the kitchen at the time, being quite startled by the noise, sprinted downstairs to get someone to have a look at it. For all we know it will probably one day just explode as it obviously hates the new occupiers of its flat and seems intent on getting rid of us. Since subjecting us to freezing showers and scare tactics haven't worked I don't see why suicide wouldn't be an option.

Catch Up

Its been another very busy week (effectively a second freshers week for medics) and definately a very enjoyable one. I've gone to various clubs and pubs with friends, seen a movie (a good one at that) and then there was the MEDSOC (medical society) freshers party and the freshers ball (where the Sugababes played), both of which were really enjoyable and at times quite crazy. I also joined the archery society which so far seems pretty fun.

The Cranky Cow spent an hour or two shouting at a cat the other day. It was standing on the path leading to her house, minding its own business, contemplating what to do with the day (well I presume it was) when madame Cranky came out screaming. From what I could make out she was shouting, 'Get inside now, Get INSIDE!!!! No! Don't walk away from me! Get in here now!!!!' The cat is either very brave or just plain stupid since it proceeded to ignore her crazy screams and walked out of the gate. The Cranky Cow went crazy (well even more crazy), shouting, 'Don't you dare! DON'T YOU DARE!!!! Come back here right now!!!!! Get in the house RIGHT NOW!!!!' The cat ran away.

I'm starting to think The Cranky Cow has some sort of obsession with forcing things to enter her house. On a positive note she hasn't been screaming in the early hours of the morning the last few days (though I haven't been getting back till the early hours so I may have just missed the screaming).