helen-louise's journal

Somewhat to my surprise, having to start work at 9.30am three days in a row has not yet killed me. Several things have made the past few days bearable:
* On Tuesday, the student I was supposed to be teaching from 2-4pm decided she only wanted to do 2-3pm. So I got to go home early and HAVE A BATH and wash my hair before my 5pm student turned up. This was utter luxury, as I'd only got 3.5 hours sleep that night, and I was at the stage of tiredness where I felt insanely grubby.

* Yesterday, I had two longish breaks between classes - 3.30-4pm and 6-7pm. The first one let me have chocolate cake and a bit of work on a problem I was going to be doing with a student later on, and the second one let me go to Boots and buy a load of stuff I needed. I walked out of the door at work and got straight on a bus. Unfortunately, this serendipitous event used up all my bus karma for the day, and coming back I waited 20 minutes while 4 buses went past in the opposite direction, but never mind.

* I've been getting a lift into work with my dad every morning. This necessitates dealing with my dad first thing in the morning, which is stressful, but still more pleasant than having to deal with buses first thing in the morning. This also means I can get up at 8.30 and leave the house at 9, rather than having to get up at 8 and leave the house at 8.30. An extra half hour of sleep is more civilised for all concerned.

* The pleasant student who wants to learn to obnoxious little brat ratio has been something like 10:1, and even the obnoxious brat isn't that bad when given challenging-enough work. It seems that all my current students are there because they want to be, either because they know they're having trouble with the subject or because they genuinely enjoy it and want to learn more than they do at school. This is a good thing. The hardest kids to deal with are always the ones who are there solely because their parents want them to be.

And today, I have the afternoon off, with absolutely nothing to do. So I'm going to type in all my ideas for the Work In Progress until it drives me nuts, and then do something relaxing like READ A BOOK (one that comes on paper, I mean). It's been far too long (at least a couple of weeks!) since I had enough free time to read a complete book in one go, and I got a lot of books for Christmas. So. Literature. The way forward :)

Someone on irc used a mIRC macro and slapped me around with a large trout. While I don't eat meat, my Otterylexa is a keen pescevore, being an otter an' all. Thus, all I could think of just then was "What a waste! There's good eating on a trout!". Then because Merriam-Webster didn't contain the word "pescevore", I had to go through Google to Wikipedia, where the only entry containing "pescavore" (their spelling - which makes no sense to me, as my memory tells me that Latin for fish is pesces, no a in it) seems to equate it with being "vegetarian except for fish", and that's not right at all for an Alexa.

Then I clicked on a link from the pescatarian page to "complete protein", and realised I already knew everything on that page. I didn't think I knew anything about protein, but apparently I know everything! That's actually strangely depressing... :/