Marsailidh's Present

I am obviously an awesome friend.

How do I justify this statement you ask? Well the amazing personal-ness of the present which I've got Marsailidh for her birthday kind of gives it away!

I made her this scrapbook page:

Click here to see more.

Then I got it printed and framed, like so:

I think you'll agree. It's awesome!!

Going to give it to here when we're out for dinner tonight. AWESOME :D

Inverter Trouble

A while ago, the screen on Chris's laptop stopped working. He took it to a computer shop but they were unable to do anything with it, so he bought a shiney new one. I begged the old computer off him, hoping that there were better computer shops in Edinburgh where I could get it fixed for less than the £335 it would have cost to get Dell to do it for us. That was way back in like May. I used the laptop with a monitor for a while but then a bumped a connector one day and that stopped working too, so I decided I'd better get round to seeing if I could get it fixed.

I packed the thing up and took it with me to various computer shops in my local area. The first guy said he would replace the screen for £200 and be done. Seemed alright but I wasn't convinced I wouldn't get a better deal else where, and the guy barely even looked at the computer to see what might be wrong. The next place I took it didn't actually do laptop repairs, and the last place said they would run a diagnostic test for £40 and see what was wrong with it. So they seemed like the best bet.

I totally meant to ask my parents for some money for it, because I was totally skint at the time, but some how it just kept slipping my mind and as the summer came I got too busy to worry about the laptop in its box gathering dust in my room.

Then came the 16th of August and I moved out my flat, finding the laptop and feeling sorry for the poor thing.

Having lugged it back across town again when I moved to my new flat two weeks later, the feelings were less of pity and more of resentment. In my new, smaller (cheaper) room, I needed to use the laptop to make it worth the storage space, and at the end of the month my student loan eventually came through.

On Thursday I took it back to that computer shop again, to see what they could do. In about 10 minutes he had determined the problem - my inverter was broken. Whatever that was. How much will that cost? £35-£70, and a labour charge to fit it. Seemed pretty good to me, compared to Dell's offer of £335!! So he got out his screwdrivers and took off the panelling around the screen. He showed me the inverter and said it was unusually attached - he was worried it was integrated into the screen so that he wouldn't be able to replace it separately. The £ signs rolled across my eyes as I thought about how much that would cost. But he found some more screws and was able to get at the back of the LCD screen, from which angle he could see that the inverter was in fact separate, and I breathed a sigh of relief as he began to screw it all back together.

He said he would order the thing and phone me when it came in, probably Monday or Tuesday. The £109 bill had to be paid in advance unfortunately, so it was rather depressing to part with all that money and still have a broken computer. It was fair enough though. If they ordered the part and I never reappeared then they'd have lost out.

So that was Thursday. You can imagine my surprise when I got a call on Friday morning to say they'd had a really fast delivery and I could bring the laptop in that very day to have the part replaced. Intending to go back to my studying, and to take the laptop in after my lecture later on, I thanked him and hung up the phone. About five minutes later I was too excited to concentrate, so headed over to the shop. I watched the guy take out all the same screws and put them all back in again like he had the day before. A quick test showed everything was fine and I was so happy I could have skipped home!!

So now I have my very own laptop to use - I'll be online a lot more now, so as long as I'm not to busy I think you'll be hearing a lot more from me.

Hope you're all very well,

Love Katie

Psychology 3

Well as I suspected there is a LOT of reading involved in my course this year. Someone once told me that you should treat your university course like a full time job, so you should do 35-40 hours a week. So I divided the time between the modules and split it up across the week, and I've got more than enough to keep me occupied.

First there's Biological Psychology - I had a lecture for it today, which was quite interesting. In terms of lecture related reading this one's easy - one chapter in a textbook covers two 2-hour lectures. Nice and simple. However, in week 7 we have a "Brain quiz" worth 25% of our grade for the module which involves drawing, labeling and describing the various bits of the brain, and research methods into brain biology. Lots to study for that. We even get to borrow model brains from the department to figure out where things go. I'm looking forward to that but my turn isn't until the 10 days before the test! arg!

Then there's Differential Psychology - this one's about individual differences, specifically in personality traits at this stage, and there is a lot of reading for this. A couple chapters in a text book, 3 or 4 compulsory journal articles and a few extras, for each lecture. Some lectureres might give more or less than others so i'm hoping it eases of later in the term! Fortunately there's only the one final exam for this course, so nothing in particular to stress about until much later on.

Tuesdays is Social Psychology, which is actually pretty interesting. At the moment we're looking at social comparison, and how everyone tends to rate themselves at being better than the average person on any particular dimensions. In other words, most people think that they are nicer than the average person, but obviously this can't be true because we can't all be above the average, some people have to be below! Its called the better-than-average effect (no points for imagination) and the various bits of research and theory that have gone towards explaining it are very interesting although they can be confusing at times! Reading for this course is 4 or 5 articles per lecture, for all the lectures this year, although we do get a week off with this class, which is nice.

Methodology is certainly not the worst for reading, but two hour statistics lectures are rough. I need to re-learn how to use the statistics programme, SPSS, before next term when we have to do practical projects, because lets just say it wasn't my strong point last year! Although there isn't much reading for these lectures, you do have to spend some time going over things to understand the formulas and how to do it in SPSS and what it actually means and what its actually for and all that kind of thing. We get some demonstrations as well as just lectures so they should help clarify things.

By far the heaviest work and reading load is, however, the literature review, which is worth twice as many course credits as each of the other modules, and is almost completely private study. We get three one hour tutorials on it, and are expected to hand in a 5000 word review by the last week of term. Rough! Fortunately i managed to get the topic that I really wanted: "Can mental imagery help treat movement disorders and/or limb pain?" You may find that as term goes on and I start to try and make sense of all the articles and "synthesise" them together i start ranting on about it here - I'll try to make them as lay-person friendly as possible, they might make interesting reading, and you all can constructively criticise my writing. Obviously I can't put up sections from the report until after its marked, but you can give me pointers on things which aren't making any sense.

Anyway, enough about me and my degree, how are you all?

love Katie

Back-to-School Time

Hi y'all, long time no see!

Sorry I haven't posted, I've spent the last couple of months swinging wildly between periods of intense activity and periods of intense laziness.
I went on holiday for three weeks in the summer, and should really tell you about that, but at the moment I'm making a scrapbook of it. When I upload it to print, I will post a link, and maybe I'll post a couple of previews before then.

Since I got back I've moved into a new flat, with the same flatmates plus the addition of Megan. We haven't got internet sorted out in the flat yet, although it is now in the pipeline, which is my main excuse for not updating you all, although not a very good one.

Yesterday was the start of the university term this year. I only had a one hour introductory lecture in the afternoon, so it wasn't a very taxing day! We got handbooks and registration forms and literature review lists and forms, and the lecturer read through the handbook with us, which wasn't really necessary!

Each semester I do three specialist topic modules (which are set for everyone), and a methodology module. In semester 1 I also do a 5000-word literature review, and in the second semester we all have to do group projects and hand in a 3000-word report.

The choices for the literature review don't really relate well to clinical psychology, which is unfortunate. However, there is one on the treatment of movement and pain disorders which is relevant, and two on dementia, and one on "the talking cure" all of which are also relevant. We have to choose 6 options, so my other two were just random ones that seemed interesting. We won't get told which option we've got until Monday, but I've already started doing some reading on pain and movement therapies, because I'm really enthusiastic about working at the moment (don't know how long it'll last though!)

Aside from that I haven't been up to much interesting.
I fell over yesterday and bruised my sacrum, which is still really uncomfortable, and quite painful when moving between standing and sitting positions, and when I stay still for too long. I thought for a bit it might be broken but I don't want to go to the hospital in case they put me on bed rest for two weeks or something - I need to go to all my lectures and stuff this year if I have any chance of getting a First! Besides, the pain is easing off so it can't be too serious.

Hope you are all well, and hopefully now I'm back online more regularly and doing things at uni I'll have more time to post and more things to post about.

Hugs and kisses
Katie

My Birthday & Holidays

I know I'm a really irregular blogger anyway, I just thought I would let you all know that I'm going away on holiday for a while! However, you'll all be delight when I return because I will have lots of things to say and lots of pictures to show you.

The more exciting part of this post is below:

I made a scrapbook page of my birthday barbeque. My actual birthday was like 2 weeks ago, and we had the BBQ on Sunday afternoon. Fortunately the weather stayed good and dry, although there was patchy cloud sometimes.

The journalling is a little hard to read so here it is:

I had a barbeque for my birthday, in my parents garden. A whole bunch of people came - it was really good fun! Chris had come up for the weekend and some of my friends from school came - Martin and Kirsty and Marsailidh. Rosie was there too, and Rachel, Michael and Brenda from church.
A friend of Chris’s who was on a road trip came with his friends Scott and Dave and they were really cool. Dan himself is a singer - that’s how he knows Chris, so I had a very harmonious rendition of Happy Birthday this year! I was a little bit worried that things would be difficult because of my lack of concrete planning but everything went just fine.
We had burgers and sausages and kebabs on the barbeque, fruit salad, strawberry tarts and chocolate birthday cake with 20 pink and white candles.

Products used were made by the designers at digitalscrabookplace.com. See the page slightly bigger here: http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=325417&ppuser=123153

Have a look at some of my other stuff too :)

Have a nice time while I'm away!

Catch 22 Comedy Club at the Arc, Stockton

I was at Chris's this weekend and we had a really good time :)

Usually we go out to the pub on a Saturday but this weekend we went out to a Comedy show instead. It was in a theatre/club venue in Stockton on Tees, a slightly trashy town in Teeside, a short drive away from (the much nicer) Guisborough. We went with Nick and his new girlfriend Jazz (short for Jasmine), Andrew and Faye, Peter and Debbie (dad and stepmum). It was a really good night. There were three comedians on and an interval between acts for bar and loo trips (NEVER go to the toilet during a comedian's act - you will be laughed at!)

The first guy was really fat, which I have nothing against at all. It was just disappointing that his whole routine was based around fat jokes, and that got a bit old pretty quickly. It was funny, I laughed a lot, just a little stale.

Act number two was a policeman and he was really funny. He had all policeman jokes two but they weren't so stale. Faye's a police officer and she said they were all kindo of old but I hadn't heard him before and I loved it.

The last guy was definately the funniest, as is usually the way with these things. His set was all about his failed love life and although sometimes rather crude was really really good. Unfortunately towards the end of the set some members of the audience were getting a little the worse for wear but they didn't manage to spoil the set.

The compere was also really good. The guy who was supposed to do it had a family emergency so this guy got called in at short notice so he didn't know the area at all. He was asking where people were from, just as a warm up thing, and they all had to explain where things were next to and all that. In all the cuffuffle Chris's shouts that I was from Scotland were drowned out so I didn't have to suffer the teasing because of that.

I don't have any pictures or anything, I thought I'd just tell you a story.

That's all for now,

Hugs and kisses

We've got a Flat

Flat one was very nice. We found it in February, at a viewing one evening. The letting agent said that whoever was first to the office in the morning would get the flat, so we figured we'd go down at 7, because they opened at 8. Unfortunately, one group was waiting from 6.

Flat two was also very nice. The letting company seemed keen to have good references for us and stuff, so we filled in all the forms and got all the bits of paper and took them down, only to discover that yet again, another group had got there first.

Flat three we actually managed to put down a deposit for! It was in Rankeillor Street, and it was a private let. But about a week after we paid up, we spoke to the land lady, only to discover that she'd managed to sell it unexpectedly, so our deposit was returned.

This is flat number four!This first floor corner flat is perfect. It has a large kitchen, 5 bedrooms (2 smaller ones pay less rent), 2 bathrooms, a box room and a piano! We paid the deposit and signed the lease last night, and we are just SO excited about moving in.
The flat goes from the bay window to the far left, above the traffic lights, along and around the corner, above the JFK hairdresser to the window above the door to the stair with the blue To Let sign.
We absolutely love it!

Some Pretty Close Up Bugs

So yesterday I was revising in the garden and Dad was gardening and he spotted all these cute red bugs! Apparently its mating season, but I've saved the blushes of my mum by not putting up the ones where they are actually doing it! :p
My camera has a "super macro" mode which lets me take pictures this close up. Its my favourite thing in the world! I do it ALL the time!

Now back to the revision!

Check out the wedding photos in the previous post

check out the previous post for all the wedding pictures!

This is just to make you laugh when I should be revising...

Worlds tallest man and matching dog*

*this is not the worlds tallest man, its my friend Pidge. And its not his dog either... lol

An Easter Wedding

Apparently y'all are missing me! That's very sweet! So I thought I would update you all on what I've been doing.

I was at Chris's for Easter and we went to our friends Chris and Ruth's wedding! It was at the church on Easter Monday, and the reception afterwards was at Rushpool Hall, a beautiful old country house converted into a hotel, about 40 minutes drive from Guisborough.

Me, Chris and Nick

Nick, Peter and Debbie
Chris and Ruth


The cake, made by the mother of the groom
The back of the dress
Chris and Chris
Julia (the cheif bridesmaid) and Peter, her other half.
Chris and me

It was great day. Chris and I were singing in the choir for the service so we got a different view than one often does. The old rector Philip and the new rector Graham were both doing parts of the service. The choice of hymns was excellent - All Things Bright and Beautiful was nowhere to be seen! The signing of the registers took place in the main part of the church, before the prayers and the final hymn, so the choir got to sing an extra two short anthems. After the service the choir processed out in front of the bride and groom and formed a guard of honour for them outside the church. A photo was taken with the choir, then we hung around for ages while the photographers were working inside with the couple, then we hung around some more when the came out and took pictures in front of the door, at the gate to the Priory next door, and in front of the car.

Chris's dad Peter drove us all to the reception, where we hung around for even longer waiting for all the photographs to be done with.

The dinner was really good. Starter was vegetable soup or a filo pastry basket with cheese and mushroom sauce, then the main course was a three-meat carvery, with the biggest Yorkshire puddings I have seen in my life and loads of piggies in blankets. Dessert was treacle sponge or profiteroles.

After the meal were the speeches. The father of the bride, the groom and the best man all said their bit. Ste, who was the best man, was totally hilarious, definately the best best-man speech I've ever heard or read! He began with a short anecdote about how Chris, the groom, had been doing very well in Craft/Tech at school, until the day he'd put a power drill through the classroom wall!! Then he told us about a memorable choir hike where Chris had sat down on a rock, not far from the end, and proclaimed, dramatically "I'm not going any further, you all go on, leave me here!" and had promptly been given a piggy back by the assistant organist. He then explained how when the two of them were at high school together, neither of them had a girlfriend. He could understand it in his own case, he said, but he was confused how it happened to Chris, a 16-year-old lad with his own mode of transport and a penchant for drilling things...

Needless to say, we were in fits of laughter, Chris's poor mum couldn't even speak for five minutes!

After that we all got chucked out of the dining room for it to be tidied and reorganised for the evening reception. A lot of folks went home to get changed, but we had planned to stay, and sat in the comfy chairs around the bar chattering.

A lot of people from the choir were there in the evening, so there were plenty folk to talk to, and there was a DJ, who played old school swing dancing music, as well as some more modern stuff, and my own Chris (i.e. not the groom) was even prevailed upon to dance more than once! There was a buffet, and the cake was cut and shared around - it had been made by the groom's mum Christine and it was really really good! We dragged ourselves home between 11 and 12, full and happy but totally exhausted!