Larisa Joy Reilly

So, I’ve spent a whole week in Liverpool. It feels a hell of a lot longer, though I’m not sure why. This lack of any real schedule this week, and the lack of ‘reference’ points that you get when your life is timetabled, means I’ve completely lost all sense of when I did or said what. Did I mention I’ve spent the week pretty much sober?

Sober. Plenty of sleep. Good diet. Lots of fruit. I still have an utter bitch of a cold. Everything from the shoulders up hurts, I keep getting coughing and sneezing fits, and I just want to flop onto a sofa…but hey! No sofa! Seriously, Mac may have had to share a room with Parker, but at least they got a couch…

This all meant I skipped out on the toga party last night. It wouldn’t have been fun, seeing as togas don’t easily house tissues, and I probably would’ve spent 2 hours getting ready only to stick it out for 5 minutes as I felt so rotten. I don’t feel too bad, seeing as the only thing I feel I missed is the Mystery Jets, and it’s not like they’re the Manics or anything.

Instead, I stayed in and watched Strictly, Merlin and Hole In The Wall - the latter two on iPlayer. I was very impressed with Rachel Stevens (Vincent’s landed on his undersized feet, this year) and the mens’ group dance made up for what it lacked in ability and sexiness with downright enthusiasm, especially from John. I’m still not completely won over by Merlin, probably because Will Mellor was downright wooden, but I <3 Colin Morgan already. Hole In The Wall…weird, but oddly entertaining. I’m still surprised Vic Reeves was on it, but possibly more so that Darren Gough’s taking part as a regular. In that suit.

I may stay in today, perhaps venturing out for laundry duty, because nothing’s really open. I may even have a leaf through my huge calculus textbook of doom. Or just sit back and watch my last two episodes of Numb3rs. Hey, it’s still Maths, right?

My laptop was just not playing ball, for reasons I still cannot fathom, and it took the best part of 5 hours to sort it out, complete with ensuing chest pains and whatnot. That, and the reality of uni is hitting me in an ‘oh shit I will be in a noisy, hot and dark room with lots of people moving around and I might faint again’ sort of way.

Yesterday, other than that, was awesome. Mum took me to the huge new shopping and eating development. It’s rather shiny and ace, although the scary robot Julia saw wasn’t there anymore. I bought lots of uni stuff (backpack, laptop bag, new hoodie, new jumper, new t-shirt) and was treated to a white chocolate milkshake at ‘All Things Chocolate’ and a wonderful PERi-PERi chicken burger at Nandos. I’d never been to Nando’s before, and it’s safe to say I was very impressed. Anyway - if you’re in the vicinity, totally the place to go.

We followed that up with a visit to see my little cousin, Eleanor. Now that’s making me tearful - the thought I won’t be able to give her a hug and pretend to be the scary duvet monster for the next three months, and by the time I’m back I’ll have another little family member to hold in my arms. Mind you, by the time you see the selection boxes and soft toys adorned with Santa hats in the supermarket you realise it can’t be too far away.

Today I nipped into work to pick up another pressie - this time a posh notebook and pen from my boss - before starting with a bit more organisation and packing, and writing up my maths assignment. Good to know I don’t need to worry about it in Freshers’ week, I guess. Mum and I have also treated ourselves to 3 eps of Veronica Mars season 3, before I get parted from unlimited region changes, seeing as the replacement copy came through. They didn’t want the faulty copy back, it seems, so I still have a second set with double the Dohring and minus the Mac (basically you get all the eps, with some twice over, but not the extras disc) which I’m not sure what I’m going to do with.

Sarah also ‘nipped round’ and proceeded to talk at me for an hour and a half. ‘How are you feeling about uni?’ ‘…terrified?’ ‘Oh, I’m feeling SO excited! I can’t wait to get back! I’ve just been and spent well over £100 at Boots today on stuff to take…’ Etcetera. For the next HOUR. Rach will know what I mean. Bless her, she’s lovely - she brought along a Boots Advantage card form because she knows I want one - but she’s not particularly sensitive to other people’s needs.

I didn’t get anything wrong in my summer assignment, when we went through it, which is SO good. I’m glad, because I spent bloody ages on it, as well. I also solved one of the problems in an unusual way…so this meant a trip to write it up and explain it on the chalkboard in front of 16 other people. I froze twice in the middle of writing - I get crippling self-doubt, even if I’ve done the thing before and it’s been marked right - but got through to the end, and my new mathsy buddy Stef said she preferred my method. Yay. I’ll get used to this going up in front of people thing soon, I’m sure.

Lectures were fine. I’ve decided to conjecture that level of geeky attire is directly proportional to awesomeness of lecturer. Two of them are particularly awesome, but the other one’s just a bit…dull. However, he’s teaching probability theory, so it can’t be too bad. Greek letters ahoy! I’ll learn more than what I’ve gathered from American teen college flicks/shows, soon enough.

I made a fantastic pasta thing with white wine and herby soft cheese tonight. Delish. Small portions though, because it’s my flatmate’s 20th and there is an awesome cake in the fridge for the munching.

I wandered along to the Sports Fair today. I signed up for a few things, and have actually paid money to join the archery club (£15, and I get a 9 hours beginners course, use of equipment and regular on campus shoots for the rest of the year - bargain!) although I’m still undecided about trampolining and ballroom. There’s a taster session tomorrow I’m going to go to, so I’ll make up my mind more after that, especially seeing how it’s a LOT more costly. £15 joining fee, then £2+ per lesson. Cheap, but still not a one-off payment!

So today, at approximately 1.45am, I was no longer a teenager. I am 20 years old. Just seeing that 2 at the front makes me feel old, but then I come on Livejournal, where most of my friendslist are already in their twenties, and then it isn’t quite so bad. It feels normal. I love you guys.

I’ve also had a little bit to drink (I had a significant portion of a pitcher of Woo Woo), and I only need a little bit (along with the hefty load of sugar I’ve also had) to go a bit beserk. Not that beserk can really be expressed on the keyboard, but y’know…

The birthday hasn’t exactly been a bad one, all in all. I’ve had some wonderful gifts - manymany dvds of US TV shows several CDs, books and £30 in vouchers. I also got a blender (I really do NOT have room for a blender), a wok, a new turbie towel (anybody else got one of these genius things?) and a few edible bits and bobs. It’s been a good haul. It has, however, been upset by the fact the VM boxset appears to have two of Disc 4, and no disc 6. Now, normally I’d actively encourage having two things with Jason Dohring on if the opportunity arose, but I really want that extras disc! Chances are I’m not going to get it tll after I go away, and I’m not sure whether my laptop can deal with Region 1 dvds.

As a family, we went out bowling, which was mostly fun, although a tad stressful in parts. I think I have bizarre shaped hands - the ’small’ size is fine for my fingers but my thumb gets semi-stuck and as it’s prone to sort of pop out of its socket, this is painful and not good. The ‘medium’ is a little too big for my reach. I can’t grip the ball properly, therefore my bowling is terrible, and I get worse scores than when I was younger. It is REALLY odd.

We then went across to Benny’s and oh my goodness - I was so dissapointed! When I’ve been in the past with Sarah, we’ve always had a really good meal, but this time I wasn’t impressed. It was mainly down to my veg, and I really do like my veg normally, but these were so undercooked they were practically raw. The carrots looked dry and flaky, and the florets of broccoli were brown on the places they’d been cut off the big…whatever it is…of broccoli. It was inedible, and it really put me off. The waiter didn’t even come and ask if everything was okay with our meals, so we didn’t even get to complain. Sucks.

People saying ‘nerd’ as if it’s a dirty word annoy me. Perhaps I should say ’surfer dude’ in the same derogatory manner when he’s overhearing my phone call…

Anyway, the last few days I have been disaster central. I have:

- had two nose bleeds
- spliced my finger open on a can of beans
- walked into a tree (branch)

This isn’t evening mentioning the fact I scraped my leg on the first day and it hasn’t got anywhere near being healed yet.

The last couple of days have been spent doing Maths stuff, meeting Maths people, being around geeky non-hard-partying people (YES!!!) and generally pottering around my room. I have all my freebies from the commercial fair to pick through, TV to catch up on (internet went down last night!) and a shower to have. It’s ‘Flirt’ tonight from 10pm-2am, which doesn’t exactly sound like my bag…dunno whether I’ll go. I might nip in and have a look, especially seeing as I don’t have to be anywhere too early on Friday.

My timetable is good and bad in that I have three 8.15am starts (which means leaving my room at 8am) and two at 9.15am. Early lectures = good night’s sleep necessary = excellent excuse not to go out late in the week and not look too awkward. It’ll be interesting to see how my other flatmates actually live when studying’s involved, and whether there’ll actually be that many late nights to turn down!

My half of the tutorial group seem nice. We have a Jenny, Sam and Sarah, who are all great. I haven’t spoken much to Sophie. As for guys, there’s Ted, who seems quiet but nice, Ewan, who apparently was yelling outside Sarah’s house at 2am in his boxers, and Dorian, who is a total English eccentric, who is permanently in a hat, scarf, long coat and glasses, and has hair far longer than my own. He’s very polite though, and he really reminds me of someone, in personality terms, but I can’t put my finger on who.

I’ve just had an email saying I have a package waiting for me. I can’t even begin to think what it is, because barely anybody I know personally has my full uni address, and very few places have my term time address. If anyone has sent me anything, please identify yourselves!

This morning, I nipped down to work to give back my key and remind them I’m available at Christmas, if they require any help. I was still too much of a wuss to ask about the whole pay packet issue, but hey. Pauline gave me a present - another student cookbook! It’s a rather good one, actually, with a lot more on adequate nutrition (there’s a chart listing what consitutes fruit and veg ‘portions’) and an entire chapter devoted to cocktail recipes. Awesome.

I’m currently feeling groggy and in pain, for the, um, usual reasons. I feel lousy, but this is great news - it’s not going to mess up Freshers’ Week for me! It messed up my summer school in Cambridge, my Oxford interview period, but for some reason it’s decided to miss my first week in Bath completely even though it should’ve been a direct hit. I’m taking this as a good sign.

They were handing out free jellybeans on the parade, as part of some company’s search for graduate employees. They’re Jelly Belly sours too, so the real deal! This makes me insanely chuffed.

I’m also feeling a lot more chipper today. The cold appears to be being fought off, so I’m full of beans (and soon to be full of jellybeans, as well). We’re also studying limits, so my brain is awash with Mean Girls quotage. The limit is negative one! The limit does not exist! Needless to say if either of those exact quotes crop up in lectures, I may suddenly and embarassingly erupt with the giggles.

Speaking of Mean Girls, I’m thinking that the ‘person’ that one of the guys I live with looks like (that I previously couldn’t put my finger on) is Aaron Samuels. I cannot yet verify if his hair looks sexy pushed back. His name is Alex though, so I have to fight off the urge to call him Aaron. Same as I keep wanting to call David, ‘Daniel’, but with that one I have NO idea why.

I only watched the first Heroes last night. I don’t know why, but sometimes the dialogue just seemed a little forced and naff. Yay for Weevil though. Cutting for spoilers…

If he really is Peter Petrelli, I’ll be interested to see if he can really act that out, y’know? Mohinder and Maya can go bugger off. Not interested. Linderman WTF? To be honest, my favourite thing about the entire episode was Mr Muggles looking cute, and that ace special effect they used for whatever her name is. Bitchy tinkerbell speedster.

Thank you god-that-doesn’t-exist for Maths geeks. They rule. I had my first academic induction events today - some talks and a free lunch, oh yes. I met some cool people from my course, anyways. I initially went with Jenna (my flatmate, who I get a slightly standoffish vibe from) and her best friend Laura (who actually looks like Sam and Amanda from BB) who both do Maths, but then met loads of other cool-yet-geeky people. I’m pleased there.

I also bought my main hulking great coursebook. £43 and it’s the biggest book I own. And it’s hardback. So yes - HEAVY.

Daily health update:
Sore throat and nosebleed - I win at life. It’s like I’m playing ailment bingo or something.

There’s a beach party tonight, which I’ll attend until the point JK and Joel piss me off so much I feel the need to go home.

I’ve ben accosted by various people from student societies, including Latin and Ballroom. To dance, or not to dance? I’m waiting to see how stuff fits in around Archery, because that’s my main priority. They had folks on a huge trampoline, too, and I would love to trampoline, even if the thought of doing a mid-air somersault terrifies me. What societies did other folks on here do?