Yay! Easter break!
What you don't know what that means? Well, here in the UK they separate terms into trimesters, which sounds like what CNM does, but not really. Salford has a Fall, Spring, and Summer term. Technically I just finished the Spring term, so naturally once school is out, Manchester celebrates with a bit of snow for three days straight. Oh goody.
The snow would have been enough to keep me from going out and partying like crazy (because that is so high on my list of things to do anyway) BUT a more important reason is that I have a temp job for over the Easter break. I'm working at the University of Salford's library. My responsibilities including finding books, pulling books, moving books, reshelving books, and data entry. Picture it.
The alarm is set for 7:15. I look at the clock. It's 6:50. Close enough, I get out of bed get dressed. It's 7:10. Hmmm, I play Sudoku until it is time to leave for the bus...7:45. I walk outside.
I go back inside. It's really, really cold. I grab my scarf and hat, take a deep breath and go outside again. I walk quickly but that doesn't make the busses arrive faster. The first one arrives quickly. When I hop off to catch the 50, that one takes a while. I worry a bit about being late but I left myself time to get lost or take the wrong bus. I've been to the library before, I pass the school once a week, but you don't want to be late on your first day.
I arrive at the library twenty minutes early. Cool. I take a seat and spend that time regaining feeling in my fingers...and play Sudoku. I wonder if I'm addicted. I play another puzzle.
It's 9:00 AM! I find my bosses, tucked away in the staff room. We say hi, they introduce me to a fellow temp. We say hi. My boss gives us the grand tour of the library. Today we are going to be going through a list, finding journals on the list and moving them downstairs to storage shelves for a company they've hired to then move to another building across the street. Sounds simple enough. Before we are set loose we are given a safety lesson in how to safely pick things up. There was a term for it, but I've forgotten it.
Basics : Don't reach, grab a stool.
Hold things close to your center of gravity (your waist).
Don't twist your back when moving objects.
Lift with your KNEES, not with your back.
Now you too can safely help your library send books and journals to storage! ;) Provided they want you to....
Training is done at about 10. We take a long break then dive in.
Pulling.
Carting.
Reshelving.
Pulling.
Carting.
Reshelving.
Pulling, hey they have journals on that?
Carting.
Reshelving.
And so the day went.
I enjoyed my first official lunch break in a very long time. I bought a sandwich at the café and a coke. I watched youtube videos of the piano guys...and yes, I played another Sudoku puzzle. I don't have a problem.
End of the day, I was tired but happy. I had cool bosses, nice coworkers, and I spent the whole day surrounded by books! This job is perfect. I will be working two days a week through Easter break. If they like me maybe they will let me know next time they need some temp help, or they'd give me a good reference so I could do part time work at a public library. I really do love books. This was my first day :D
This is all I have to say this week. Now you know I'm still alive. Talk to you next week, but I may update it late since it's Easter and all....ttyl!
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
St Patrick's day!
So this week I have been working hard, again, but found time to have fun as well. I went to two ceilidhs. They had several this week because of the St. Patrick's Day Festival. My friends also had a house party on Saturday after which we went to a club. This is the second club I have ever been to and I am still not impressed. On the plus side, the music in this one was better. I didn't stay long as their is no point in sitting and watching a crowd of people dancing in a loud smoky room as you try to breathe as little of the smoke as possible and avoid looking at the seizure inducing lights...Clubs are not from me. I can now say I have tried multiple clubs so the first one for sure wasn't a fluke and I am not motivated to try another.
The ceilidhs, on the other hand, are amazing. They are a lot of fun and I am looking forward to finding more to go to!
On St. Patrick's day I went with my housemates and we went to see the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Mmm, I've seen better and I've seen worse. The cars and floats were okay but the crowd (at least where we were standing) was fairly unenthusiastic. No cheering and the people on the floats weren't smiling anymore by the time they got to us so it was not a very cheery parade. Seemed odd to me. The bagpipe players were good though, probably my favorite parts of the parade.
Here's some pics!
The ceilidhs, on the other hand, are amazing. They are a lot of fun and I am looking forward to finding more to go to!
On St. Patrick's day I went with my housemates and we went to see the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Mmm, I've seen better and I've seen worse. The cars and floats were okay but the crowd (at least where we were standing) was fairly unenthusiastic. No cheering and the people on the floats weren't smiling anymore by the time they got to us so it was not a very cheery parade. Seemed odd to me. The bagpipe players were good though, probably my favorite parts of the parade.
Here's some pics!
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Zombies in Your Kitchen Sink
Whew. I worked a lot this week. Working consisted of sitting in front of my laptop drawing a blank most of the time. I managed to achieve my goal of finishing my homework by Saturday, sorta. I finished before I went to bed Saturday but technically it was 12:30 am Sunday. I'm still counting it as a win though!
For fun this week I went to a special pre-screening of the new tv show called In the Flesh that is coming out on BBC 3. When the British people I met have heard this, their reaction is "Oh. BBC 3." Further inquiries reveal that BBC 3 is known to be the cheap channel, low budget. I didn't have this prejudice going into the show so that didn't bother me :)
I enjoyed the show. It is about a rehabilitated zombie who returns to his home having to deal with the fact that he killed people as well as living in a town of zombie haters and family drama. It is not your typical zombie movie, not a lot of blood and guts (though there is a bit). In the Q&A session the writer and director both liked to describe the show as a kitchen sink drama. This means its kinda slow paced and the tension hovers just under the surface. A lot of the time kitchen sink dramas move too slowly for me, but the zombie level of complication gives me something to stay interested in while the family and societal dramas play out. It comes out March 17th (I think) and I plan on watching more. We got to see the pilot episode. It is an hour long episode, and only three episodes.
I meant to go out and see an Irish music gig this weekend. The Manchester Irish Festival started on Friday and they are doing a whole lot of Irish activities to celebrate St. Patrick's day, for a whole week. I didn't make it to the one I original looked at but there are a lot to choose from so this week hopefully I will make it to at least one!
I have been bad about taking pictures. Here is just a few so that I leave you with something.
For fun this week I went to a special pre-screening of the new tv show called In the Flesh that is coming out on BBC 3. When the British people I met have heard this, their reaction is "Oh. BBC 3." Further inquiries reveal that BBC 3 is known to be the cheap channel, low budget. I didn't have this prejudice going into the show so that didn't bother me :)
I enjoyed the show. It is about a rehabilitated zombie who returns to his home having to deal with the fact that he killed people as well as living in a town of zombie haters and family drama. It is not your typical zombie movie, not a lot of blood and guts (though there is a bit). In the Q&A session the writer and director both liked to describe the show as a kitchen sink drama. This means its kinda slow paced and the tension hovers just under the surface. A lot of the time kitchen sink dramas move too slowly for me, but the zombie level of complication gives me something to stay interested in while the family and societal dramas play out. It comes out March 17th (I think) and I plan on watching more. We got to see the pilot episode. It is an hour long episode, and only three episodes.
I meant to go out and see an Irish music gig this weekend. The Manchester Irish Festival started on Friday and they are doing a whole lot of Irish activities to celebrate St. Patrick's day, for a whole week. I didn't make it to the one I original looked at but there are a lot to choose from so this week hopefully I will make it to at least one!
I have been bad about taking pictures. Here is just a few so that I leave you with something.
I visited a friend's house to write and saw this magpie in their backyard. I had to take some pictures because one of my dragon characters in my current script is named Magpie. Her scales are a black and white pattern like a magpie's. So imagine this cute little bird as a dragon but still as captivated by shiny things :)
When I'm not writing at home or at a friends house we like to go to cafes to write. This is one we often go to, Fuel. This is the upstairs which is very cold. Could be sitting outside, except we have wall plugs for our laptops :) We sit downstairs when it's not full but that doesn't always work out.
Mmm, peanut butter cookies I made. Brain food for writing!
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Work and Play
Yo,
Today was a productive week. I wrote out my pitch on Wednesday so I had time to do fun things guilt free this week. Thursday I dragged one of my friends out to play tennis at Salford which was an adventure. It's a 45 min - an hour bus ride to get there (it's free to play there, which is why we were going, and we had already paid for week long bus passes). So we arrive and ask the receptionist where to go to play tennis (it was an organized sport from a flyer I was emailed). She gives us a blank look like she had never heard of tennis before. She looks at her fellow worker and that one realizes that we are wanting to go to the free multi-sport event. They point us to a big empty gym and we are told to wait there. Ok. We wait. My friend is all dressed up in work out clothes and she gets out tennis shoes she packed just to play in and we wait. And wait.
We go back to the desk to make sure they haven't forgotten us. Turns out the employee who is suppose to be running it just hasn't shown up for work that day and they hadn't worried about it until now because no one has been showing up for these free events. On the flyer it had said to just show up and make friends. I was really glad I had brought a friend because I would have looked really pathetic showing up to play tennis by myself >.< So we pack up our stuff and head outside, giving up on playing tennis. We are about to turn the corner of the building when one of the staff members run outside and flag us down. This one has access to the equipment and can supervise us (aw, we need supervision just like when we were little!) so we head back in to attempt to play tennis. She takes about 10 minutes to get it set up but we do eventually get to play tennis and we had a pretty good time. Neither of us were very good, but being at the same level made the game fun. I had been picturing a couple of tennis courts and people showing up who had some training, but it was just us in a big empty gym so it didn't matter how far we over shot.
After tennis I went home, took a nap, woke up, ate dinner, then headed out to meet my friends for ballet lessons. Now I have been told before that I look like I would be a good dancer, or that I have posture like a ballerina or other compliments implying that I'd be a good dancer. I've not done any dancing that requires this level of instruction before but I thought this would be my chance to see if I was secretly an undiscovered ballerina talent. Fear not, I have proven conclusively that I am not particularly gifted at ballet. I managed not to fall on my face at any point so I count that as good enough. The ballet was fun and good exercise but I don't think it's going to become an every week thing. Every now and again is probably fine.
Over the weekend I sat down and made myself work out some of the problems with my current dragon script. I feel like I have mentally gotten over the problems that were blocking me before so now I just have to sit down and write out the new scenes. I've made a start, but since the newest draft won't be due utnil the next Tuesday (the 12th) I've got some time to procrastinate yet. I also spent a lot of time baking this weekend. I made more peanut butter cookies, to take to the pastor of the church I'm attending who were nice enough to invite me lunch, and I made blondies for my roomates who are kind enough not to complain when I give all my baked goods away.
A writing update,
I forgot to give credit last time to my wonderful sister who was the inspiration for my new script pitch. It is thanks to her leaving FB that I was thinking about big brother and what it would take to go off grid and led me to deciding on planning my new little conspiracy theory story. In a few months this may go from to thanks to WHHhhhhhyyyyyyy, but in the end it will be worth it and hopefully I'll even enjoy it :D I'm loving it for now at least!
While working on the basic structure for this conspiracy theory movie, I'm still writing my dragon animation script. I am halfway through it. I'm rewriting the first half again, but will be finishing the latest rewrite soon and in the upcoming week I'm writing another thirty pages of it which will put me at about 3/4 through the script. I'm almost there.
As if school wasn't enough, I found out that BBC is accepting script submissions in a talent search. I can send them a script and the ones they like the BBC people will talk to the writers and start building a relationship with the ones they think have talent. The trick is they only open submission at certain times of the year (like now) and you have to be a UK resident to enter so this is something I have to take advantage of while I'm here. I'm really excited about this and I'm thinking I will dust off my Shikrah script (many of you will have read my pilot episode) and with all this new found knowledge I have gained from school I will tear up my pilot episode and rewrite the thing for BBC. They said it is possible if they love it they will send it on to the appropriate department to look over but it is highly unlikely they would buy whatever I send in. This is mostly just a talent search, but this is more opportunity than I have by not sending anything. So while working on my two movie scripts for school I'm also going to be revisiting this old tv show idea of mine. I'm going to be busy these next two weeks.
I didn't take any pictures this week, but this post is pretty full without any photos so I will wrap it up now. I've been talking to more British people and as I'm spell-checking my post I find myself reading it with a British accent which is pretty entertaing. Try it out and I'll talk to y'all again later!
Today was a productive week. I wrote out my pitch on Wednesday so I had time to do fun things guilt free this week. Thursday I dragged one of my friends out to play tennis at Salford which was an adventure. It's a 45 min - an hour bus ride to get there (it's free to play there, which is why we were going, and we had already paid for week long bus passes). So we arrive and ask the receptionist where to go to play tennis (it was an organized sport from a flyer I was emailed). She gives us a blank look like she had never heard of tennis before. She looks at her fellow worker and that one realizes that we are wanting to go to the free multi-sport event. They point us to a big empty gym and we are told to wait there. Ok. We wait. My friend is all dressed up in work out clothes and she gets out tennis shoes she packed just to play in and we wait. And wait.
We go back to the desk to make sure they haven't forgotten us. Turns out the employee who is suppose to be running it just hasn't shown up for work that day and they hadn't worried about it until now because no one has been showing up for these free events. On the flyer it had said to just show up and make friends. I was really glad I had brought a friend because I would have looked really pathetic showing up to play tennis by myself >.< So we pack up our stuff and head outside, giving up on playing tennis. We are about to turn the corner of the building when one of the staff members run outside and flag us down. This one has access to the equipment and can supervise us (aw, we need supervision just like when we were little!) so we head back in to attempt to play tennis. She takes about 10 minutes to get it set up but we do eventually get to play tennis and we had a pretty good time. Neither of us were very good, but being at the same level made the game fun. I had been picturing a couple of tennis courts and people showing up who had some training, but it was just us in a big empty gym so it didn't matter how far we over shot.
After tennis I went home, took a nap, woke up, ate dinner, then headed out to meet my friends for ballet lessons. Now I have been told before that I look like I would be a good dancer, or that I have posture like a ballerina or other compliments implying that I'd be a good dancer. I've not done any dancing that requires this level of instruction before but I thought this would be my chance to see if I was secretly an undiscovered ballerina talent. Fear not, I have proven conclusively that I am not particularly gifted at ballet. I managed not to fall on my face at any point so I count that as good enough. The ballet was fun and good exercise but I don't think it's going to become an every week thing. Every now and again is probably fine.
Over the weekend I sat down and made myself work out some of the problems with my current dragon script. I feel like I have mentally gotten over the problems that were blocking me before so now I just have to sit down and write out the new scenes. I've made a start, but since the newest draft won't be due utnil the next Tuesday (the 12th) I've got some time to procrastinate yet. I also spent a lot of time baking this weekend. I made more peanut butter cookies, to take to the pastor of the church I'm attending who were nice enough to invite me lunch, and I made blondies for my roomates who are kind enough not to complain when I give all my baked goods away.
A writing update,
I forgot to give credit last time to my wonderful sister who was the inspiration for my new script pitch. It is thanks to her leaving FB that I was thinking about big brother and what it would take to go off grid and led me to deciding on planning my new little conspiracy theory story. In a few months this may go from to thanks to WHHhhhhhyyyyyyy, but in the end it will be worth it and hopefully I'll even enjoy it :D I'm loving it for now at least!
While working on the basic structure for this conspiracy theory movie, I'm still writing my dragon animation script. I am halfway through it. I'm rewriting the first half again, but will be finishing the latest rewrite soon and in the upcoming week I'm writing another thirty pages of it which will put me at about 3/4 through the script. I'm almost there.
As if school wasn't enough, I found out that BBC is accepting script submissions in a talent search. I can send them a script and the ones they like the BBC people will talk to the writers and start building a relationship with the ones they think have talent. The trick is they only open submission at certain times of the year (like now) and you have to be a UK resident to enter so this is something I have to take advantage of while I'm here. I'm really excited about this and I'm thinking I will dust off my Shikrah script (many of you will have read my pilot episode) and with all this new found knowledge I have gained from school I will tear up my pilot episode and rewrite the thing for BBC. They said it is possible if they love it they will send it on to the appropriate department to look over but it is highly unlikely they would buy whatever I send in. This is mostly just a talent search, but this is more opportunity than I have by not sending anything. So while working on my two movie scripts for school I'm also going to be revisiting this old tv show idea of mine. I'm going to be busy these next two weeks.
I didn't take any pictures this week, but this post is pretty full without any photos so I will wrap it up now. I've been talking to more British people and as I'm spell-checking my post I find myself reading it with a British accent which is pretty entertaing. Try it out and I'll talk to y'all again later!
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