6/17/2005 07:51:00 PM|||James O'Malley|||It's been a lovely couple of days, yesterday and today. Unfortunately, this upwards trend doesn't look set to continue, with a high likelyhood of work occuring tommorrow and Sunday.
Yesterday afternoon, I had the exam I'd been hyping up a bit. The Pure 3 Maths exam was... interesting. Having done minimal revision, it was a bit of a nightmare. "Section B" of the paper, something which I'd never even looked at the revision notes for, was interesting- it was about our "understanding" of maths. We were given some text about communicating with aliens using pi and other universal constants (or rather, ratios)- dead interesting stuff, just a shame I couldn't do any of the associated maths.
Yesterday evening, I went to see the new Batman film with my family. Long story short, but it's one of the best superhero films ever. It was full of action, plot, and it justified all of the techie stuff with pseudo-science, which was nice. Word of warning: women will probably hate this. My mother and sister thought it was boring and went on too long. Presumably they wanted to get back to do some ironing, or talk about curtains, or something.
Most importantly, I had a massive cinema sized, over priced, Pepsi. It still only counted as one on the graphs, though. Heather wasn't too pleased, of course.
It was perhaps unfortunate in this respect then, that this morning I went to visit Heather, and meet her cats for the first time. In every other respect though, I had a lovely time.
The first major hurdle was catching a bus- something I havn't done in around ten years. It was very different to what I expected. The terminal building was sparse with very few facilities, and the bus itself was completely different to my mental image. It wasn't a large red double decker, with an open ledge on the back of the bus, with a pole supporing the upper deck. Nor did it have a friendly conductor with a small cash register type contraption around his neck, who would allow me to hop on whilst the bus is in motion. There was just a surly bus driver who grunted as he handed me change, after I'd hesitated in taking myself a ticket.
Safety seems to be up to Soviet standards. There was no seat belts, and no bus hostess expelling safety instructions- I wasn't even told how to inflate my life jacket, or the locations of the emergency exits. The bus hostess, who was in fact non-existent, also didn't offer a variety of beverages or bus-related souvenirs, which I could buy at multiple times their market value. The again, this was all trivial when compared with catching the correct bus.
Bearing in mind I had only previously seem the village she lives in during darkness (I'm not going to name it, so internet nutters can go and attack her), and also considering that I was told to get off at the second bus stop, I got quite worried. Whilst passing through what I assume was Heatherland, and after passing a handful of bus stops, I started to wonder if I was on the right bus. In perhaps the biggest anti-climax ever, it turns out it was the right bus, and Heather was there waiting for me. Or it could have been another one of the bus folk who she was dying to meet, I don't know.
We got to Heather's house, with a plan to slack.
It turns out, Honey and Treacle had dressed up for the occasion. I can imagine that meeting me is a grand occasion for anyone, cat or not. Despite previous allegations that I am a so-called "animal Hitler" (I coined that phrase myself), they reacted somewhat nonplussed by my presence. I was delighted- Heather had painted a mental picture of them being terrified of my sellotaping, buckaroo playing antics. They couldn't care less. Well, Honey couldn't. Treacle stayed hidden under the bed for the entirety of my stay- that is to say, around six hours, whereas Honey just laid on top, slackin' it up as cats do best. I wish I were a cat.
It was a bit like through the keyhole- Heather showed me around her home, and I made critical or offensive remarks about its furnishings.
Backstory: I'm a vegetarian who can labour a point. Heather eats dead animals yet expresses vague regret after I act disapprovingly. After seeing a ceramic chicken containing potpourri on her windowsil, I suggested I should do that with a box of microchips. She wasn't impressed. I was. I said how I'll blog that hilarious comment this evening, and well, I am! Erm... she also had me try on a beret she got from France, of all places. Looking at the photo, I think I worryingly look a bit too much like a cheese-eating-surrender-monkey. It's my psuedo-moustache that does it, and the jaunty-angle the beret is set at. I can't believe the photo exists.
Perhaps the weirdest thing was that because I talk to Heather quite a bit on MSN messenger, visiting her actual house was like constant deja-vu. I recognised many things from her descriptions, and I have a feeling I may have repeated all of the hilarious comments I made at the time, again, without noticing.
Either way, I had a lovely day, free of revision, and full of cats, buses and perhaps most exciting of all, a tree house! Thanks for letting me invite myself round, Heather!|||111903500809612185|||Exam; Batman; Heather