second year is off to a good start - in no small part because of the house warming / birthday bash T and i threw yesterday. we only started class proper yesterday too, but my timetable is looking goood :) back to the toon on sunday night (paid the price for being super-organised by arriving 4 days earlier than i really needed to!) but took my time settling down. moved out of halls (miss my en suite SO BAD!) and into a huge two bedder with T. what i lost in washroom convenience, i gained in proximity to medsch (literally 3min between locking our pernickity front door) and sitting down on the cushioned lecture seat. we are also 20m from the pub. maybe 19.5m, which may or may not be a good thing. so what did i do for four whole days before starting class? why, did what i could to make the flat more homely (photos later!) and baked up a storm. we missed two birthdays over summer, and D's wedding. kinda nice that out of our little grad group of 6ish (we've some drifters haha) three of the four girls are married, and the youngest is well on her way to having a ring put on it. ! i guess mrs > dr :)
so happy to finally have a place to call home in toon, and to enjoy the simple luxury of having friends over at whim. much as i liked my single en suite in halls, it wasn't conducive to having guests. but now, oh now, it's party central! friends have been coming over for lunch since term started (it's easier for me to come home than to go to the medsch cafeteria, believe it or not!) and we're more than happy to pass the tea / coffee pot round. planning the party was a great distraction from the impending beginning of second year and we went a little overboard with all the cakes. my sneaky friends also gifted me with an electric mixer for my birthday and i was more than happy make it work for its keep. good good fun! 5 cakes from scratch in a cranky gas oven - not for the faint hearted :)
on the menu was rendang with mashed potato (me), fried rice and fried plantains (T), the juiciest, tender-est roast chicken (G) and not one but three types of cake! we did a victoria sponge, banana loaf and sticky lemon loaf. can't get enough of my poundland loaf tins heh. the men brought bottles and bottles of wine and last minute i threw together a pitcher of iced berry tea that tasted almost like ribena if you ask me.
we'd a funny present opening moment when i told D part two of her present was on her way to her, without realising that amazon had over-performed and gotten it to her so fast the 'mysterious parcel' had actually freaked her out. D's really careful and didn't recognise the parcel sent from edinburgh at all so she cautiously brought it to costa, where her dashing mister opened in. we joked that if it had contained anthrax as feared, then all the people at costa would've died with them. as you might've guessed, starting the infectious diseases module later this year is going to be a ball...
and as if all that food and cake was not enough, we chased everything with pints at our local. the cost/benefit of living next to the pub :) may it be the first of many happy but not drunken nights. we're too old to be plastered. and there was 9am class.
so happy to finally have a place to call home in toon, and to enjoy the simple luxury of having friends over at whim. much as i liked my single en suite in halls, it wasn't conducive to having guests. but now, oh now, it's party central! friends have been coming over for lunch since term started (it's easier for me to come home than to go to the medsch cafeteria, believe it or not!) and we're more than happy to pass the tea / coffee pot round. planning the party was a great distraction from the impending beginning of second year and we went a little overboard with all the cakes. my sneaky friends also gifted me with an electric mixer for my birthday and i was more than happy make it work for its keep. good good fun! 5 cakes from scratch in a cranky gas oven - not for the faint hearted :)
on the menu was rendang with mashed potato (me), fried rice and fried plantains (T), the juiciest, tender-est roast chicken (G) and not one but three types of cake! we did a victoria sponge, banana loaf and sticky lemon loaf. can't get enough of my poundland loaf tins heh. the men brought bottles and bottles of wine and last minute i threw together a pitcher of iced berry tea that tasted almost like ribena if you ask me.
we'd a funny present opening moment when i told D part two of her present was on her way to her, without realising that amazon had over-performed and gotten it to her so fast the 'mysterious parcel' had actually freaked her out. D's really careful and didn't recognise the parcel sent from edinburgh at all so she cautiously brought it to costa, where her dashing mister opened in. we joked that if it had contained anthrax as feared, then all the people at costa would've died with them. as you might've guessed, starting the infectious diseases module later this year is going to be a ball...
and as if all that food and cake was not enough, we chased everything with pints at our local. the cost/benefit of living next to the pub :) may it be the first of many happy but not drunken nights. we're too old to be plastered. and there was 9am class.
