10 interesting facts about my birthday

1. Although the WWII hostilities officially ended on 9th May, the ceasefire began on 7th May1945, in the interest of saving lives.
2. On 7th May 1429, Joan of Arc ended the Seige of Orleans by pulling an arrow from her shoulder and returning wounded to lead a final charge.
3. 7th May 1718, New Orleans was founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville - This particularly tickled me in light of number 2.
4. It is the feast day of Saint Flavia Domitilla, who was related to two Roman Emperors and another Saint, although I can't find the official reason for her Sainthood.
5. 7th May 973, Otto I the founder of the Holy Roman Empire died.
6. On 7th May 2007 archaeologists discovered the tomb of Herod the Great in Jerusalem, he was the man who persecuted a generation of Infant boys in an elusive search for Jesus.
7. Eva Peron was born 7th May 1919, she was the first woman of Argentina who died in 1952, after bringing a period of relative peace to Argentina, her death plunged Argentina into mass mourning. She is also the central character in the musical Evita which has featured in the Westend and Broadway, as well as being turned into a film starring Madonna.
8. 7th May 1992, The Endeavour Space Shuttle was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
9. Orson Welles, the author of Citizen Kane was born 7th May 1915
10. Not strictly a fact about the date this last one, but they were becoming difficult to find. It's 2 days before the Annular Eclipse of the Sun also known as the Ring of Fire Eclipse.

Valentines Day

This pair of parcels was sent through the post for me by my lovely boyfriend. Every year he is determined to celebrate, even though I'd rather skip it and make a big deal of his birthday which is only four days later!

I get to see him tomorrow and we'll be celebrating on Saturday, for both events no less. On days like today I miss him more than I do on normal days, it's strange how seeing sappiness everywhere can make you want to be close to your own special someone. 

I miss him everyday. I miss being able to lean into the comfort that is him. I miss his smell, perhaps odd but a surprising amount of comfort comes from a smell. Most of all though I just miss having his arms around me in a big bear of a hug.

Then I think of my Nan, and how she must feel on a day like today, and everyday. Having been without my Grandad for 20 years now. I know she misses him all of the time, I can see it in everything she does, hear it in her voice. 

So today I've been thinking about all those who, like my Nan, are without the one they love this Valentines day.

Rowen

Pancake Day 2013

So yesterday was Pancake day. I had a couple of friends come over to celebrate and we started out our evening by eating a healthy serving of Jambalaya which my friend described as being fit to feed 400.

We next made pancakes, we first made a trial and error batch to test out our mixture. It resulted in a few dodgy ones before we got it just right at which point my other friend said. Y'know I've always wanted to add food colouring to my pancakes... so we did!

We had a rainbow pancake stack, some turned out better and it was described as a mouldy cheese and ham sandwich, but it tasted pretty good.

We rounded off our evening by playing the Big Bang Theory Party Game, which resulted in a tie for 2nd/3rd place and a much better first place.

In other news, I have a big backlog of reviews to write up which I am working on, but as always things like Coursework deadlines come first, and they're snowballing a little at the moment.

Rowen

Absentee

I've been a little of an absentee blogger over the past few weeks and for this i apologise. It's been a pretty hectic time in my life. 

At the start of that period I had some pretty major coursework deadlines. Then it was the Christmas holidays where I ended up with two weeks of unexpected work which meant that I had to do things like Christmas shopping and even making some Christmas presents in the evenings where I'd planned on having four extra days to do it in, I only work four days a week Tuesday-Friday, during the holidays, and the other week was post New Years.

The interim week was actually pretty productive, although in the field of revision for January exams rather than in the field of blogging, degree comes before blog, much though I may prefer it to be the other way round. I then ended up ill for New Years, which was a bit of a drag on a night out, being unable to stay awake let alone drink.

The last week of work also saw some crammed revision and hasty packing, ending with my dad driving me back to Uni on the Sunday morning. The final week of Semester A was pretty intense for some obvious reasons, although I was rather lucky last week and only had one exam. I kind of ambled into the beginning of Semester B in a semi-exhausted state, not helped by the fact that my friend had gone into hospital the week before with some major stuff going on.

I was home for last weekend and came back to Uni on the Sunday, my choice of timing was a bad move as it saw me arrive at Cambridge just when it was identified that there was a need for some emergency engineering work in Baldock, which saw me stuck in Royston station for around 2 hours as we waited for buses to turn up, only 2 did, in the snow without shelter. When they eventually got trains going again I and around 200 others had to wait in the snow for the train to turn up 15 minutes late during which time 3 further buses arrived which we weren't allowed to get on, and once the train did arrive we still had to wait 20 minutes on the train before it started moving. Because of the emergency this train only stopped at the larger stations which saw me delayed a further 20 minutes at Stevenage, all while it was still snowing. I arrived back to my University town to be greeted by the dark, the cold and 10cm of fresh snow,  to say that was a journey I will never forget is an understatement.

That 10cm of snow has since compacted into an inch of ice on all pavements across our Uni town, with the only clear patches being on campus, this has made my daily walk to Uni both fraught and an excellent work out. I was not a happy bunny making this trip at 8.30 Monday morning.

Then yesterday I made the trip back to Cambridge to visit my friend in hospital, fortunately she's doing much better and it's estimated she'll be out towards the end of next week. But she has been very ill so it was scary times for us all. And added to this I was more than a little nervous about making the journey to Cambridge again.

Ironically in light of this post one of my New Years Resolutions was to work out and stick to some kind of posting schedule, hopefully from now on I'll be more successful.

See you all soon.

Rowen

Book Beginnings: Forever in Blue - Ann Brashares

'Once upon a time there were four girls. Young women, you might even say. And though their lives travelled in different directions, they loved each other very much.'

This beginning is in some ways kind of ironic at the beginning of the fourth book where the girls are shown to, in some sense, have lost touch with one another. It's told by Bridget though and it's classic Bridget phrasing in my opinion.

This beginning is actually different than the others, in that the other's all introduce the pants before the girls, the pants in the previous books had been more of a deal. This time around however the focus really is on the girls, and it shows in this beginning. They're able to live their lives more without thinking at every turn, 'ooh it's the magic of the pants.'

I'm linking up to Book Beginnings @ Rose City Reader.

Rowen

For related Posts:

• Book Beginnings: The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares
• The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: The Second Summer - Ann Brashares
• The Second Summer - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares
• Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares
• Forever in Blue - Ann Brashares
• Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares

Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares

Girls in pants wasn't really what I'd come to expect from the sisterhood books. It comes I think from the girls all preparing to leave for the year. There was some kind of sense of expectation which wasn't really present in the precious two. It was a big book of love, the more romantic love.

Carmen becomes a big sister! and actually falls in love!!!! It has to be my favourite Carmen story this far into the series. She seemed more like a real person with actual areas to her character in this book, while in the other stories she'd just been angst in human form. 

Tibby got her act together and saw something in Brian, I think it's something she'd unconsciously seen in him since she first knew him, but in this book she put it out there. And y'know what he's nuts about her too! This actually made me really happy as I'd been rooting for them for a while.

Bridget is on her first summer back as happy-times Bridget after the journey of self discovery she went on in book 2. She's back at Soccer Camp too, but this time as an instructor rather than a camper. Guess who she sees? Eric! The guy she slept with in the first book leading to her downward spiral, problem is he has a girlfriend now. Having said that he actually does love Bridget and ends up leaving his girlfriend to be with her! Happy Times!

In fact the only one of the four girls who doesn't get a happily ever after in this book is Lena. This kind of disappointed me as she's my favourite character, the one I can best relate to, but she isn't over Kostos, and she did get the only happy ending of the first book. Fair's fair right? I actually do like her story for this book though, she learns a lot about herself, and her relationships with her nearest and dearest by trying to look in rather than out. 

So all in all a good book, with some much anticipated storylines resurfacing. I would say read it!

Rowen

For related Posts:

• Book Beginnings: The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares
• The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: The Second Summer - Ann Brashares
• The Second Summer - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: Forever in Blue - Ann Brashares
• Forever in Blue - Ann Brashares
• Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares

Coursework

I suppose that coursework isn't an unexpected post title when it comes to the blog of a student, but coursework is running my life these days. A month or so ago I got set three pieces of coursework each with a deadline a week apart.

The first of these was a presentation. I hate presentations with a vengeance. I'm not good at talking in front of people, less so a lecture room full of 100+ people. I get nervous, my palms sweat, my cheeks go bright red and my words trip over one another on their way out of my mouth. I actually have volume issues, friends of mine have been known to have trouble hearing me while sitting inches away from me, and in most of my regular social groups people have either learnt to lip read or there's a designated interpreter. I'm actually incapable of ordering my own drinks on a night out, I do tend to pay for them though, and my boyfriend is overfond of the phrase "You're indoors dear, you need to use your outdoor voice."

So although this one required the least work I spent an understandable week and a half fretting my socks off over it. To say I breathed a sigh of relief when it was finished is a very big understatement! 

I spent the next week working on a piece of coursework for my Portfolio Risk Management module. As a brief overview this is a module where we set up a fictional portfolio of around 10 assets and monitor them and perform some basic analysis on them. It's actually kind of fun, but very time consuming and more so when the checker you're supposed to fill in highlights an error in your most basic of calculations when there isn't any causing you to waste 4 hours trying to figure out what went wrong only to take it to a tutor and be told no your working's fine, it just means we'll look.

That was submitted by the deadline of 23:30 on sunday, it always makes me laugh that we get deadlines for this module on sundays. The joys and wonders of online submission, which is really the only way to do things when you need to use excel.

That brings me onto the deadline for this week. It's for a compulsory module called Mathematical Techniques 2, and involves 5 compulsory questions and a 6th optional one which has the great benefit of being able to add to your overall mark without the possibility of costing you any marks because we only got taught the content for it today giving us around 67 hours to complete it before submission. This is by far the hardest piece of coursework I've ever been given and I find myself wondering why on earth I didn't try to do a little more a little earlier. 

So far I've spent hours on it and managed to complete only 1.a, 2.a, and 4.a, Although I have made a little headway with other areas. My friends and I have organised a massive coursework busting session for tomorrow where we hope to make headway! It's been getting me up early and to bed late, so you can see that coursework is running my life.

Wish me luck!

Rowen