Nick At Uwe

nickatuwe @ 2007-07-09T08:24:00

2007-07-09T07:58:22Z

THENICKLIFE

thenicklife

My new journal. xD Yes I know it's my third but I really needed a clean slate.

If you're friends only please add me C: I miss your entries already. I may never post on LJ on this account but I do read and occasionally post your entries.

Back to uni

2007-01-04T00:37:09Z

Should be interesting seeing how many bags all the stuff I'm going back to uni with take up. I've got books and DVDs and a huge folder of notes and all sorts of random gifts, either to me or for me to give to others still.

I'm gonna miss home, cooked meals, the cat and, ya know, the parents. Sort of. But I love being at uni, being independent, and uni = Huggsy visiting soon. It also = coursework but I work much harder and better at uni, so I should get it all done before Monday.

Torchwood is love.

Review of 2006

2006-12-31T02:31:16Z

Lots of Graham, lots of edumaction, lots of socialising, lots of growth. :-3

Recently? CHRISTMAS. Got lotsa awesome stuff. Graham gave me a Nintendo DS. x-3 Got James Bond DVDs, Planet Earth and Doctor Who DVDs... lotsa DVDs basically. :-3 Books too, a couple games (Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, for Gamecube, which I'm looking forwards to getting to play when I get back to uni). So much chocolate, most of which is already gone. x-d

Before that? Coursework at uni, got a 75% which was a 2:1, pretty good. :-3 Only 5% off the top grade, and very good for my first piece. I have exams on the 8th and the 12th, which I'm preparing answers for- we get the questions before we go in, five, but only tested on one. If we prepare for all five then we just have to copy out during the exam (we're allowed to take notes in, barely an exam at all compared to A-Levels!)

I'm gonna start plotting out my 2 million word project soon. :-3 Really my only problem is figuring out how to do it... it involves finding one piece of paper big enough for one hundred post its, probably not even in an orderly fashion. But squee, colour coding post its. <3 Had some really good ideas for the storylines, too, so that's good.

Graham's visiting on the 8th. It'll be like... run into town, pick him up, take him home, quick cuddle then flail to my first exam. Since my second, final exam is on the 12th, I'll be going with him back to Glasgow for a while. Plus we might meet up with a friend of mine whilst he's down here, to go shopping and stuff. :-3

I've enjoyed being home but... I prefer independence. My room here is small, my stuff, my freedom is at uni.

I still have Christmas gifts to give/send off. x-D;; To Graham and a few others. Me and him are exchanging small fun gifts next Monday. :-3

I wanna get back into photography more... maybe when the weather improves. :-3

Sleeeep

2006-12-15T05:17:49Z

My sleep system is out of whack.

It's 5:15am and I've not slept tonight, and I'm tired but I have to be up so soon going to sleep would only make work near impossible.

o__o Bugger.

CHRISTMAS SOON - THIS MAKES IT OK

Miss my Cub

2006-11-26T00:11:04Z

D-: I want Graham back plz Santa. SOON. Damnit. We had an awesome time, with James Bonding, and snuggling, and Super Smash Bros Meleeing, and burgering and sausage rolling.

Umm. Nano is going alright, I'm going to have to do about 2.2k words a day to finish but that's pretty easy.

I have a weird cold that makes me sound like a butch lesbian, as I keep telling people because I think it's really funny :-3

I beat Riku on Kingdom Hearts again. Beat him HARD. That'll teach him. Bastard.

I have to finish my piece of coursework tomorrow but that should be pretty fine, only 500 words and then a read through and a bibliography to do.

Getting paid on Tuesday, which is good since I sorta went overboard on spending when Huggs/Graham visited ^__^;; But it's k! I'm getting lotsa money and so is he :-3

University has like, sped by... it's nearly the end of the first term already. Where's all the time gone? I want it back for Christmas, as well as a Graham. And a DINOSAUR. Rawwwwwr!!!!

I'm gonna go watch some American TV I think now, and tidy my room a bit before Sunday, the day of busy in a week of love and fun and scampi <3

p.s. D-: Raoul, my latest Tamagotchi died. And by died I mean "I purposefully killed him by leaving him in a pile of his own poop because I got bored of caring for him". It'll be ok, the emotional damage is only limited.

Nano my arse, I'm going for 2 million

2006-11-11T23:32:35Z

I've been home again this weekend, but this time I had a valid excuse rather than "I wanted to download new Losts and Heroes". I was housesitting whilst my parents flailed off to London and saw the new Sound of Music musical. I looked after the cat and, yesterday, got a surprising amount done: typing up of law lecture notes, finishing the coursework (going to check it tomorrow), mailing off Perplex City trades and doing Nanowrimo. Today has been significantly less productive, I've just mailed off some packages to Huggsy and to Tracy and played PS2 (I forgot my controller from uni so had to buy one yesterday).

I arrived at the post office and realised it was the two minute silence... I'd never been in town or anything when it was the two minute silence before. It was fascinating to see people just freeze in their lives for the memories.

I got two DVDs from Mum and Dad as gifts for looking after the place :D Goldfinger and Tomorrow Never Dies. I have the whole James Bond collection on video but this'll let me start watching them at uni and stuff.

---

In more important news, I'm going to share a dream I have with you people. No, not the dream where I was Ando from Heroes and Hiro was buying little metal toys for our car. It's a dream about writing a series of "volumes" of books, ten in total probably, each with a theme and each containing ten short stories. These short stories might be part of a much longer storyline, or just one offs that build up the Earth I'm making. It's Earth gone wrong. One hundred stories. I usually do about 20k per short story, which is borderline making it a noveletta, I believe the term is. That's 2 million words. 50k in a month doesn't seem like that big a help. In fact, it's one twentieth.

At first I thought "Puh, I should be focusing on quality for this project, since it's so important to me." I was going to quit Nano. But then I thought...

"No, you're going to finish Nano, and then you're going to carry on writing. You're going to write a thousand words a day, until you reach a million. And Nano, this one and ones to come, will help boost that, but in the end it's going to take some years to do. And then you're going to do it all over again, until you have 100 short stories. And THEN you're going to edit the whole pile of crap. 2 million words of writing should be enough experience for you to go back and actually make something half-presentable from the first messes."

There are so many stories I want to tell. I think I'm getting a bit overdramatic with this all so I'll sum it up now.

I'm going to write 2,000,000 words of fiction in the next few years, and then I'm going to edit it all together. And I'll be keeping track of how I'm doing here.

STORY - 001
WORDS SO FAR (In Microsoft Word) - 18,469

TOTAL WORDS OVERALL - 18,469
TOTAL WORDS LEFT - 1,981,534

Anyone know where I can find an online customised stat maker to keep better track or anything?

Anyways. It looks a bit impossible from this end of things. Writing ten novels at 200,000 words each, and that's assuming I don't go over (and I know I won't go under). But you never know. I think I'm already drawing close to 1%. And it's barely been two weeks of writing.

Any views or comments would be GREATLY appreciated.

---

GRAHAM/HUGGSY WILL BE COMING TO VISIT AGAIN SOON HOPEFULLY. :-D He'll be taking time off from college to flail his way down. We'll play PS2 together, watch Desperate Housewives (by the way the latest episode of that from season 3 was AMAZING) and Heroes together, snuggle and kiss... I miss him. It'll be so good to have him around again.

Lumlumlum

2006-11-03T09:27:09Z

So Huggsy/Graham is back home, after yet another brilliant time with him. Seriously, it was one of the best times of my life. During the course of it all we:

- Went to the arcade several times, dancing, shooting, playing the crane games (we won a pair of Tiggers!) and even beating Noel Edmunds on Deal or no Deal. Sort of.
- Watched huge amounts of DVDs, including Desperate Housewives, Saw, Pokemon, and (on the laptop, not DVD) Heroes.
- Went shopping, buying huge amounts of Pokemon Metal Tags, DVDs, comics and even a PlayStation 2 and a TV for my room, and lots of games.
- Ate the best burgers in Britain, from a burger van in the centre of Bristol, him throwing chips to the pigeons, me hoping it didn't turn into The Birds
- Snuggled, kissed, lounged, lazed, hugged, lumed (Lum- verb- to lick someone, usually on the face, in the hopes of getting them all slobbery).
- Bit (he bit me mainly >__> I have bruises to prove it. And they weren't even kinky sexing bites or anything), insulted ("Hobag!" "Vaginafeet!") and harmed (he slammed my head into a door TWICE ;__; Although to be fair I put up no resistance and it was more a thud than a slam) each other.
- Collected mail for me that was actually for Huggsy
- Gorged on chocolate and junk food
- Skipped lectures and seminars (well, I did)
- Bought Tamagotchis, our UGLY BABIES!!! :D They played together, and by play I mean mailed poop to one another. It was freakish.

I love you Cub :-3

(by the way, anyone wondering about the last visit from him should check out his LJ on it, at http://huggsythebear.livejournal.com/2494.html)

In other news, I'm doing Nano.

Today I have just under 1000 words to write, which isn't bad, although I'd prefer to reach 6000 words overall to get a bit of a backup stash. I have lots of lecture notes to type up though, and want to go up town, and I'm procrastinating, so maybe not 6k.

I'm back home for the weekend, downloading lots of American TV and gorging on Giant Chocolate Buttons with the cat. My Mum might have a fractured kneecap and is having difficulty moving :-( But they can't fit her in for an X-Ray until Monday, the swine.

Graham visit #04

2006-10-10T17:29:25Z

:D Huggsy/Graham is visiting this Saturday, staying until Wednesday night. We're gonna stay in and snuggle and stuff most of the time but I just booked us a night out, a proper date, to the theatre- and of course nothing better for the Disney fanatics than a Disney musical, so we're seeing Beauty and the Beast on tour.

It's gonna be aaaawesome. ^__^ I seriously can't wait!

Goat The Tamagotchi, RIP

2006-10-09T17:48:01Z

Goat the tamagotchi is dead D-:

Long live Missy Goat, his lovechild with the toaster! :-3

Nick: But... umm... Goat is dead. D-:
Huggsy: ...
Huggsy: is that Nick language for "I killed Goat"?
Huggsy: xDDD
Nick: ... I left him in my bag and forgot he needed feeding o__o;;
Huggsy: xDD
Huggsy: *Gives him a funeral* X3;;
Nick: I heard this sad, slow beeping... and I opened my bag, and he wouldn't respond... ;____; And then... and then... HE LAID AN EGG AND FLEW BACK TO HIS HOME PLANET
Nick: Which is tamagotchi talk for dying
Nick: But the egg hatched! :D BABY GOAT
Huggsy: YAAAAY X3
NickehIsHere88: I named it "Missy Goat" because it's black and female I think
Huggsy: Is it a Gaot or a Goatee?
Huggsy: xDD
Nick: She "bloop"s just like her old man x-3;;
Huggsy: Aww.... X3

In other news uni is going super, I went home for the weekend and downloaded lots of TV (LOSTLOSTLOST) and Graham visits on Saturday. <3

Catch up

2006-10-05T15:05:52Z

OK, so, not updated this in a while. What's happened in my first few weeks?

Met my flatmates. All friendly and cool and stuff, but they're the partying drinking sort of students, I didn't get one nerd to hang out with when I don't party (I HAVE MAH RUM THOUGH). We all get on pretty well. :D

I'm settling into uni life ok, being independent like this is really cool. I get to eat whatever I want, and in fact I'm eating more fruit and less junk than I used to at home, even with all my relatives piling bagsful of chocolate into my arms as I left. There's a Sainsbury's nearby so I've applied for a Nectar reward card thingy. Hehehe, thingy.

As far as learning goes, only this week have I started proper lectures and seminars. The first two week were induction, in which we learnt all about why seminars are important, funfunfun. Then this week things got good, we actually now know some useful legal information, and I only have 10 hours of lessons a week (and Fridays completely off). What's more the people on my course are cool, especially a dude I usually sit by called Simon who I'm pretty good friends with now. We had to do a presentation together, which went a bit badly (I forgot to actually explain what a solicitor is) but ah well.

Yesterday I bought about £200 of textbooks though. Not so much fun. But in other purchasing news, I've bought Spooks Season 4 dirt cheap in town, I've got Perplex City cards, I've got more DVDs and stuff coming from tha net... and I have Huggsy/Graham coming to visit!

He's already visited once, and it was pure awesome- we went to Bristol Zoo, we got Brother Bear 2 and speakers for my laptop (many a lazy night in), we shopped together... I love him so bad. <3

And the weekend after his visit I went back home to sponge off them a bit, pick up some more games and DVDs and stuff, and see the cat. And, uhh, the parents.

And that's pretty much brought you guys up to date. Squee.

Well that went fast

2006-09-26T09:04:20Z

Hmm.

I think it's safe to say I'm never going to get around to writing full summaries of the first few days. Time's really flown by.

I'll give y'all that read this a summary when I get a chance, but for those that weren't aware, Graham came to visit for the weekend

<3 <3 <3 <3

Friday

2006-09-17T18:11:12Z

Friday I woke up at 7am as usual for work- two hours logging what’s said on Radio Cleveland. It went surprisingly well, and I was done at 9am on the dot, at which point I took a bath, the last until I get back home again. I never realised it was such hot water that early in the morning, and managed to make myself so overheated I nearly passed out.

Then it was a case of stuffing all the DVDs I wanted into the new CD case I’d bought. I brought the Ring DVDs, of course, Lion King, M Night Shyamalan stuff, and a bunch of my latest CDs. That morning I also ordered my first free CD from CD WOW! as part of the promotion HSBC were doing, Scissor Sisters “Tah-Dah”, but that’ll be heading to my home, not uni.

So then at 1pm Mum came up, having finished work, and we started packing everything. We put all my clothes into one huge suitcase, put my books and crap in a second one, and put a couple of unneeded suitcases inside each other to go away. Lugged down the book suitcase, then the light clothes one, and started loading everything into the car, either in those suitcases or plastic bags. Soon the poor little thing was overflowing, but we strapped the suitcases to the roof so it wasn’t too bad.

After an emotional goodbye to the cat and, as an afterthought, my grandmother, we clambered into the car and sailed off. It’s not very far to UWE from my place, about 50 minutes, and upon arrival we found Quantock campus fairly easily. One of four brand-new student accommodations, it was still surprising when we walked in and everything was so shiny and clean. Huge hallways, lined by six doors- I quickly found mine, room six, with the help of a student ambassador who’d given me my key and other information.

The room is HUGE. Bigger than my room at home. Everything’s clean, no scratches or bumps, with an en-suite bathroom, with shower and all. After seeing this impressive site I was shown the kitchen, where the SA started looking through the cupboards- no food, so it was assumed nobody else was in, I was the first here. She took me back down, and me and the parents started shuttling things up.

To cut a long, embarrassing story short, it turned out I’d brought the wrong suitcase- no clothes, but a suitcase that simply contained another, empty piece of luggage. After unpacking everything else the parents headed back home, to pick up my clothes, and I started putting stuff into place. I set up the laptop, but not the TV connection that it has (I have that instead of an actual TV, so no games console, but freeview). I put my food away, and when the parents arrived it wasn’t long before the clothes were put away too.

We clambered into the car together and zoomed off to a local cinema at this point, to see The Queen, a film that’s just come out about... the Queen. I popped with dad to get a cable for the TV-Laptop thingy, whilst Mum got the tickets. I really enjoyed the film, it was an interesting look into what could have happened with the royal family at the time Princess Diana was killed- of course complete fiction, but as we were on holiday at that time I don’t remember anything of it.

Next we headed for KFC and had a last meal, so to speak, of chips and chicken. We finally drove back to campus, and said our goodbyes, Mum crying, before I went on upstairs. After calling them to tell them I was ok I went to put the new milk we’d bought away, and discovered an empty bowl sitting on the sink, and a cupboard full of food I’d not seen before, but I couldn’t hear any noise and just went to my bedroom, to chat with Graham and some other people online before an early night, in my new purple-themed bed.

Saturday to come. :D Anyone who read all that wins a giant cookie.

Welcome

2006-09-17T12:11:27Z

Hey guys,

This is my new journal, and it's going to be kept for the three years I attend uni.

I'll get up the Friday news soon, and then Saturday, and Sunday... but I'm being kept pretty busy, and when I'm not busy I'm tired.

- Nick