So. Yes this is a real post. A REAL post with writing and stuff. Wow!

Its hard to say why I havent posted for ages. I guess the chrimbo holidays and my complete lack of any interesting activity didnt really lend itself to interesting discussion. Plus, I havent really felt the need to vent my spleen at all recently. Things are rather damn good actually :D

The past couple of weeks have been very eventful as uni life always is. Keith seems to be practically living at my pad haha. I have seen him about 4 times since being back which is of course fab. Why else would we call him "Mad Keith" if he didnt do riciulous things?

So yeah. I went around DOncaster for the first time and found out that it actually is really good. It is stupidly cheap, perhaps even moreso than the Union (£1 drinks and free entry to the Che Bar!). I was also introduced to "Central Park" on this glorius outing which boasted a cocktail bar complete with slightly overconfident waiters that lobbed around bottles before making the drinks. Groovy.

We all took a look at the menu. I say we, there were a few of us this time around - Me, Keith, his girlfriend Sarah, Mike, Weezy, Her boyfriend who I really should have learnt the name of by now and from Uni Megan and Lizzie. The others opted for various things - strawberry martinis and odd concoctions with ginger in them amongst other things. Me and Megan however (being both female and chocolate lovers) were drawn to something called a "chocolate monkey". Made from milk, tia maria, vodka, baileys, cream, chocolate, more cream, cream, cream and sprinkles it had to be good. We got a pitcher as it was only £2 more than a £4 glass. The guy said that you probably got about 1 or 2 more glasses out of it. Ah well that would be fine then.

Chocolate Monkey aquired. The cream on top was immense! It took us a good 5 minutes to eat our way through the squirty cream before we even got to the drink and it was gooooooood. The drink itslef tasted like a creamy chocolate milkshake with a hint of coffee and whiskey. Just a hint mind which made it rather easy to drink. As for the pitcher, we actually got about 3 glasses each from it. I didnt really feel anything but very hyper, presumably from the sugar but Megan did appear a smidge wobbly.

We have since aquired the ingrediants to make our own monkies and do so when the occasion calls. Mmmmm.

Keith and Mike are back on Thursady which will be fun. Luckily my lectures start at 12 on Friday....

Speaking of academic stuff, I volunteered myself to participate in a study of "inquiry based learning". No I am still not 100% sure what that is either. Basically I go along to an interview, two group, one individual, which are taped or videoed. I get asked to talk about my learning experiences at uni and then get some cash for doing it. Yay!

I went to my first one on Thursday and it was really quite enjoyable. I arrived early and was given a cuppa by the nice receptionist lady and talked to the guy doing the study - a really nice bloke called Bob. Bob just moved here last year from Tenessee so we talked about the correct way to make tea and how Doncaster Sheffield Robin Hood International Airport is a very misleading name and such.

I talked with Bob and 6 others for a few hours about how we like lectures to be structured, our favourite learning experiences and other such things. We were told that as long as we agree, the organisation doing the study - CILASS wants to follow us all the way through uni. Coooooool. This is the first study of its kind and is apparently going to be fairly influential and if successful could have fairly far reaching implications. Sounds rather exciting no? It is actually very exciting for me in a geeky way as I spent the last 2 years in sociology learning about how sociological experiments are carried out and the ways in which they can go wrong. I was sat there thinking "Hmmm I bet this study is going to really suffer from sample attrition" and "good thing they are mixing group with individual unstructured interviews, don't want to compromise the validity with peer expectations...." To be part of one of these studies is really facinating to see what it is like for a subject.

So yeah. £10 an interview and £50 bonus for sticking with it for a year. Yay!

Lectures are going rather well at the moment. I actually loved one of the ones we had the other day. Loved. I know! It wasnt even like it was light or anything. It was in a new module - Current Debates in Broadcasting. This basically concerns the theory and study of the broadcast media and the economical and sociological implications it has on society. For some reason I really love Media Theory. In fact last year in Media Study I was the only one that went "Yay!" every time we were told by Miss Hollywood (our name for Mrs Gail)that we would be studying news values that day.

I reckon if this Journalism thing didn't work out, I could be happy being a Media Theorist. Well, providing I could ever get a job of course.

The lecturer in this module is a total dude also. She is called Jackie Harrison and looks just like Sian Lloyd. She has an amazing line in stripey jumpers too. She kept asking us the whole way through the lecture if we liked the way she was doing things and if there was any other way we would like her to do things. Heck she even said that if any of us had any questions or would like to discuss things further we could do it over a coffee! We all love her and I have made a facebook group in her honour.

One of the required reading books for this module is one of her books and I actually can't wait for it to arrive so I can read it. Crikey.

The other new modules are pretty cool too. I also do Ethics and Journalism (contrary to popular belief there actually are some :p ),Public Administration (as boring as it sounds but at least I get a NCTJ qualification from it) and Researching and Reporting :D

We are still covering the basics of R & R like the structure of local government and such but in 3 weeks we are out there on our patches. Yay! Ooh that reminds me, I must e-mail my lecturer to request the Walkley patch....

We sepnt the last R & R session (3 hours!) looking at a Sheffield council financial audit. It was sooooo tedious! They werent lying when we were told that Journalists provide a service to the public by making the things in official papers public knowledge. If I didnt have to learn how, or if I wasnt getting paid, there is not much that would make me look through another one of those bad boys! I cannot see any member of the public going to the trouble of requesting one of these monsters and then reading it for fun. After two hours I was actually finding it hard to stay awake so I went for a 5 minute walk. I did manage to get a good story from it about how the Council was in £40 million of debt when it had £38 million uncollected tax from the poll tax (This was an audit from 1993 may I point out!). Gotcha!

There has been a ton of snow for the past few days. It has just about melted now which is rather disapointing but I had a good mess about last night with Megan, Rachel and her boyfriend Jo(e). Rachel is a snowboarder so she took her board with her and had a go down the hill opposite us. I had a go sitting on it which was fun, but riding on the tray we found was even more fun! We then went on to Roselyn road (very steep for those that dont know it, it is almost impossible to walk down in high heels) for some good falling over action :D

After eating an alarming amount of snow when out and about, Megan suggested we should try some with some blackcurrant. Um. Ok then. So we got a container from inside and took the top off the freshly fallen snow on a wall. After voicing my concerns over eating more than a bit of water that had fallen out of the sky, Megan reasurred me that rainwater is practically pure and that it is only bad for you if there is loads of pollution in the air. Hoping that there was less pollution in the air than your average city I watched Megan forget all about blackcurrant and pour two caps of tia maria in to the snow to make a satisfying slush.



Never eat yellow snow? Actually it was rather nice, particularly when baileys was added. So we sat eating snow out and alcohol out of a box with a spoon whilst watching Xena Warrior princess on the internet. We are that cool.

Speaking of the internet, I must urge you all to go to www.alluc.org right now! There are hundereds of tv shows on there that you can watch. Wow! So far I have watched all of sugar rush, a large portion of the X Men cartoon series (yeah I know but it was my favourite as a kid), a couple of films, Bill Bailey shows, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, QI and others. Woo! Many of the series' are complete too which is fab. Its not illegal to watch them either, simply illegal for the brave fools that post the vids on the net. The site is even legal too as it only has links to the videos on other sites. Could it be better? Well no actually, I saw 12 episodes of the Family Ness back to back!

I have just realised that I have neglected to mention what is probably the most important thing that has happened recently which is that I HAVE A HOUSE FOR NEXT YEAR!!!! Wooooo! Not only that but it is amazing!

It is the second house that we looked at and it is simpy immense. It is clean and in excellent condition, there is everything you need - a new fitted kitchen, a fridge freezer, a hoover, internet in every room, a patio, an AMAZING view of the south hills aaaaaaaand it is only £45 a week! OMG! That is amazing!!!! The ones in Crookes are £55 for a crapy house that when we viewed it looked like it had been ransaked it was that messy and it had a big bong and some hash on the table. Tasteful.

But this is a dream house in a lovely area with a lovely local pub down the road (with the all important pool tables and quiz nights) and the landlord is really nice. Megan knows one of the people that lives there at the moment so we can easily interrogate her at some point.

We signed the contract the day after we saw that house hehe. It is quite possible we would have lost the will to live if somebody else got in there. We did look at another house that day just to reassure ourselves that our house (for that is how we were referring to it at that point!) was actually the best student house in Sheffield. It so was. We had assigned bedrooms before we had even requested the contract!

So there you go. About 1 months worth in a post. There is more to come however about a rather comical abuse of the postal service that I may post tonight. It will be a biggie though as it has about a ton of photos to illustrate the story. So yeah. Toodle pip for now!