So our mini-summer has been and gone. When we left school on that joyous Friday after a horrific Maths test, it was but merely autumn. We return to its doors having walked through winter winds. Only 6 weeks now 'til Christmas exams and then the whole holidays thing will start again.

Mid-term really did surpass many expectations. I went out a good bit, and didn't spend EVERY waking second with the exact same people. We spent sleeping seconds together too! Nah, it really was a good week, and Christ did I need the break. I had my plans to do my homework the first weekend and then a little bit of study each day, but we only make plans so we can go against them and then feel like we've actually done something worthwhile.

I've my written homework that's due tomorrow done, but haven't even begun learning those stoopid quotes from Hamlet. May as well learn the whole play the amount we're getting. I'm not going to freak out about school anymore; I'll survive.

I played alot of guitar over the past week, which was nice. It's been a while since I've learned new songs and it's a damn good feeling. Bought a new capo too which is easier to change, and is ten times better seeing as it raises the pitch evenly instead of having everything all over the place. I'm still using the first pick that I got with the guitar. It's a nice soft, pale grey Dunlop one with little bits of dents in it from being used so much. I have others, but they're alot harder, more for the ol' electric when I'm jamming on a Sunday with the band. =P

I wish I didn't have to go back to that place tomorrow. It has been SO good to just be able to forget about it for a week and not have to wear that uniform, or sit in those horrible hospital-coloured classrooms and count down the hours 'til I can leave. And now we return to results from those tests last Friday and "back into the swing of things" again.

I cannot wait for Saturday when I will go for coffee in Cork Coffee Roasters and get a free coffee with my full loyalty card. Or perhaps Friday afternoon.

It's going to be a long week.

It's not a holiday I exactly count the days down to each year, but I really did enjoy yesterday. I spent Friday night googling various forms of the phrase "easy halloween costume ideas" and did come up with a good few possibilities, but in the end I went with a cowgirl. How riveting. It was easy though. I just wore a denim skirt, tank top, check shirt, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. Done.

Town was kinda fun yesterday because everyone was in a, like, Halloween spirit if that makes sense. Queues outside mmmad costume shop ffs. Seriously, kids these days have no creativity. Got FREE lunch in town yesterday too with my full Wholy Grain loyalty card, so I got a cajun chicken sandwich with mixed peppers, red onion, grated cheddar cheese and jalapeno relish on white. Savage. My next coffee in Cork Coffee Roasters shalll also be free. I love my loyalty cards.

So we went to Aoife's Halloween party anyway. Good laugh in fairness. A load of people came in the end and it was just a fun night in general. No major shit went down, which is nice for a change, and it was a helluva lot better than Internet / X Factor (which I don't even watch but I'm throwing in here so it has some relevance to what everyone's talking about these days) / wandering around in the dark.

School tomorrow. Death. Midterm went waaaay too fast, and I haven't even started my homework yet, which I should reeeeally get around to one of these hours now. So much for my study plans for midterm anyway...

I'm sitting in the leather armchair in the bay window, wearing my pyjamas, dressing gown, and a hideous pair of luminous socks. When I look out the window, things look a bit blurry because of the little streams of rain running down the window. The effect is a bit like when you put on someone else's glasses. According to my usually inaccurate estimations the rain is driving down at a 45 (Oh My God I just realised there's no little circle thing that represents degrees on the keyboard!!) degree angle. (I suppose one could represent it like so : 45^o.) Everything is really, really wet, but I'm one of the very few people who don't mind the Irish weather. I have been known on occasions to go as far as actually liking it.

We have too many people staying in our house at the moment. Obviously there's the four people that normally reside here, but now we also have three of my mother's sisters. Two have been down from Kerry since Tuesday, and now we have another down from St. Luke's Cross (about 20 minutes away) because her 'partner' has focked off to India on some hike. Now, considering the fact that we rarely have guests, we only have one guest bedroom. Wait, what am I saying only for? It's one bedroom more than my parents, the people who paid for the gaff, need. So anyway, my aunt is now sleeping in the lounge on the most comfortable couch in the gaff (debatable) where I spend quality time with my laptop. So now I've had to move to the leather armchair next to it. How shall I ever live.

Today, anyway, I have the choice of going to town and sitting in Cork Coffee Roasters with my friends and talking for hours on end about things that don't really matter, and then searching high and low for a Halloween costume for a party tomorrow night. OR. I can go for lunch in the Sheraton which will be paid for for me. But it would be with my aunts, so obviously the conversation would matter even less. Hmm.

I'm also beginning to worry slightly about the fact that I have yet to start my mid-term homework. I had great plans for revision and everything else, but to be quite honest, I needed the break. I might start it today if I get a chance, and if not, Sunday evening is as good a time as any to do it.

Oh Jesus, the child is putting up a few Halloween decorations. Oh the joys of living on a household akin to a zoo.

Good day my loyal readers! Enjoy this day as it shall be like no other.

So we're already five days into midterm. Nearly over now like. Haven't opened a single book so far, apart from attempting the maths papers in bed last Friday night. That was thrown by the wayside (i.e. under the bed) pretty quickly though. My room is an utter bombsite too. I've been out so much and stayed over at a friend's the other night so everything is kinda just fecked on the chair/desk/floor when I come in, and the prospect of having to tidy the place before I can start my homework is all too much, so I abandon the homework. I think it's a good plan of action.

The aunts are up from Kerry (pronounced 'Kyerray') anyway so we headed down to Kinsale today, five of us packed into the tiny Corsa because my mother is incapable of driving my dad's automatic. 'Twas a feckin' horrendous journey down, having to sit next to that irritating child that I am unfortunately related to. But we got there, and he fecked off with one of the aunts while the rest of us went for coffee. I had a damn good cappucino. As I sat there sipping my frothy coffee I gazed at a poster for a Cara O'Sullivan concert being put on my Kinsale Arts Week. And oh did the memories come flooding back. My summer spent between Short Quay and Guardwell running 9 days of gigs. Making arty musician types get on and off stage on time. Heading up to the Folk House and through the back to rob ice and bottle-openers from Bacchus nightclub. Stopping for a chat in the box office. Talking Boo for walks around the town. Freaking out when people didn't arrive. Going buying refuse sacks to pick up all the alcohol-related rubbish. Talking to nice people, and not-so-nice people. Falling in love on a few occasions. Talking to my knacker-culchie friends and making them fill out surveys for me. Pushing through the crowds in Jim Edwards to use the bathroom, or get a cork-screw. Ringing Ed in a panic multiple times. Going from the square, to the office, to the box office. Sitting on the landing outside the office as the Bangladeshi people changed their clothes and the children ran around the building. Keeping dogs away from the area where the dance group was performing, and trying, but to no avail, to make them go away. Getting lunch from the food stalls. Sheltering from the rain to avoid frizzy hair. Feeling oh-so-important in my KAW Crew t-shirt. The fluorescent-freaking-vest at Paul Brady in Charles Fort. Cutting every single chair apart and fighting over who'd stacked theirs in the neatest bundle. Stopping people from leaving via the shortcut. Making the man in the Internet café leave his Internet on all night so we could broadcast the DJ sets. Switching a record for DJ Juice when he had to pee. Trying to avoid a certain person. Curry chips from Dino's. O'Conaill's hot chocolate from Jo's. Flyering in the pubs with the 18-year-old South African who had just gotten here by sailing across the Atlantic on a randomer's boat. Pissing myself at the sight of what I thought was Caroline dressed up in a Maisy Mouse costume talking to kids (it turned out to be the hot French exchange boy). And of course, discussing in awe the amount of out-of-date drink in the Folkhouse. Serious good times. How I miss Kinsale Arts Week and stage-managing Sounds on the Square. The title of this post is no longer very appropriate, but I'm not going to change it, because it just underlines how the last paragraph of memories really came from the heart. CHEESE, I know.

My mother ended up getting a parking ticket for parking in a loading bay then. I was too busy studying the gig posters in the window of Londis to even notice. Whatever.

So back to what I was talking about. Mid term. No study done. Oh yeah, Chemistry study party in Hannah's gaff tomorrow. Aisling, Hannah, Liam et moi. How bad. And we will, of course, get so much Chemistry done...

It's now "Nosebag time" according to my dad. Dinner to you and me.

Later folks, and thanks for reading this. :)

I think I'd go with the latter.

Midterm has finally come upon us, but not before the most stressful day of tests. Irish and Chemistry were fine, as expected, but Maths was feckin' horrible, also as expected. I'm really not feeling this whole honours maths thing. I mean, I'm able for it, but I'm not at an A1 standard, do is there really much point? I'll keep with it, but I'm thinking an extra subject may be needed. Or maths grinds.

Going to see the Coronas in Cyprus Avenue tomorrow, and then back to a friend's house for the night. Nice way to start the mid-term. I'm kinda getting a bit freaked out by the whole swine flu thing at the moment though. I mean 4 of the 9 deaths in the Republic have occurred in the past week. And classes are beginning to be that little bit quieter, and there's that extra one or two people going home sick every week. According to these 'health authorities' it's nowhere near it's peak transmission yet either. Which wouldn't be so bad if the vaccine was hunky-dory but from what I've been hearing it seems a bit dodge. Not that I'm trying to scare you in any way, but I've read about two semi-famous journalist/medical(?) people who have claimed it's actually an act of bioterrorism by the powerful world leaders to control the population. This thought is just a bit eerie. Meanwhile, some more reliable news sources have been reporting that it hasn't been tested properly, that it's toxic, and numerous other side-effects, along with the fact that a load up to a half of front-line health workers are refusing to be vaccinated.

Just something to ponder as you lie awake in bed tonight...

The average Facebook update these days contains some reference to the mid-term. I have therefore named this post in honour of everyone's new favourite topic of conversation. So yes, three mornings left to get up at the grey dawn, by which I mean half 7, and trudge through those gates and up those stairs for another day of fun and frolics. And three days really isn't alot, especially considering the fact that two of those days or half days, eh?! No major plans yet for mid-term, apart from catching up on some much-needed sleep and drinking some much-needed coffee in Cork Coffee Roasters. I need to find something to do for Halloween come to think of it...party anyone?

In the reporting-of-daily-events side of things, I was elected Editor of the school magazine for the second year running today. Yay! I like the stress of organising such things, and whiling away the days in school putting together a magazine on InDesign is really very appealing. And (assuming we get to the finals) a day in Dublin ain't half bad either! I'm pretty good at bossing people around too...

School is kind of sickening at the moment, and not just in the literal swine flu sense. I'm always like a different person in school in some ways, and not just me, but other people too. Everyone just seems to be the same (apart from some huge differences between cliques or stereotypes or whatever). There's no individuality about the place, and to be quite honest, being fecked into a building and forced to spend your days with people who would have no intention of going near otherwise isn't the best situation. I tend to get sick of people in school, but then if I see them that weekend outside school it's like it's different. Perhaps it's just the difference in my attitude towards life in general when I'm in school and when I'm not. Maybe I actually love/hate everyone, but I only think differently depending on what environment I'm in. Like I'm always in a good mood when I'm in town. Actually now that I say it, I think there might be something there. For me anyway, I think that when I'm in a good mood I think people are nicer, and I like them more. I don't notice their annoying traits because I'm happy. But if I'm in a crappy mood, everyone annoys me. Hmm. Maybe this is, and always has been, blatantly obvious to everyone else but I just realised it properly now.

How bad.