Point the first: My phone is supposed to be coming today, i just let the postman into the building and NOTHING. It is coming recorded delivery so i have to be here to sign for it, and I am at college tomorrow. I want my phone grrr grrr grr.

Getting my phone was a bright spot in a day of study-induced misery and now I don't have anything to look forward to apart from going to the shop to get vegetables and cooking. Lori is not happy.

I am still looking forward to cooking, I am making my own jerk style seasoning and using it on quorn pieces and vegetables like i did last week and it was acccce.

Point the second: I hate studying with a violent passion.

my husband pulls such lovely faces in photos...

...that may just be what pear cider does to you though!

Today was my first proper day back at college and I had to do shorthand for the first time since June and I was surprisingly competant at it. This gives me some kind of hope for getting it up to a 100 words per minute at the end of the year, which is the thing that I will be most worried about, I know I can knock out some semi acceptable words and have a chance of remembering things for my law test but shorthand is the one that really keeps me awake at night.

Claire was off today which gave me the chance to voice even more opinions than normal but meant that I was short one small funny person to hang around with and keep me sane, but i am enjoying being back so far and I've made some plans of hard work for this year that I hope to stick to more rigourously than last. We get to run the college newspaper this year which should be quite fun and I am angling to get to edit the entertainment section even though not even I am sure that this is a particularly good idea since my organisational skills sometimes leave somewhat to be desired.

I can't even update this thing these days with any regularity even though I log in ever day and read everyone else's posts. I was in a wee bit of a dip the past couple of weeks worried about money and stressed out about how things were going to get done and so I've mostly filled my days with making lots of soup (tomato, red pepper and rice) having good chats with my brother about tv shows and comic books and drinking whiskey of a weekend which seems to get me a nice warm mellow kind of drunk that prefer to vodka. Gemma, Paul, Andy and I seem to end back here at least one night of the weekend while gemma stay up and put the world to rights and lose things the boys can go to sleep. Its a nice arrangement.

But today I have got the money I was waiting for so the bills can get paid and I can sort out our wee escape for a week in the sun and I can pay my dad back all the money I owe him because I hate owing my parents money more than anything because they are always so good at giving me the odd wee helping hand when I need it.

Connect was good last week and I had a fantastic time but I don't think it was a particularly well organsied festival, other than that charming photo at the top all I shall say is the 5 best bands I saw for now; in no particular order were: Jarvis, Bjork (which i was expecting but she was amazing), Patrick Wolf, Sons and Daughters and Bat for Lashes