Loser

Today I suffered the humiliation of getting thrashed at uno by my nine year old sister!!! :o( Not happy!! To begin I let her win a few games cos I felt mean beating her and how does she repay me?!! In one game every single card she put down was a +2 or a +4, and she was dealing...a bit suspicious if you ask me!
I think my problem is I take this game way too seriously, I should really learn to be less competitive, or a better loser!

Merry Christmas!!

Joyeux Noel!!
God Jul!!
Frohe Weihnachten!!
Buon Natale!!
Feliz Natal!!
Prettige Kerstdagen!!
Iloista Joulua!!

I have no idea what half of those languages are but I think it looks quite impressive to be able to say Merry Christmas in 8 languages!!

Mince pies

Just realised I haven't posted anything for quite a while so thought I'd better give people something to read!! Today I helped make over 40 dozen mince pies!! (thats...erm...a lot of mince pies!! over 480...I think, I'm so bad at maths despite having an A level in it!) I don't like mince pies anyway but I now never want to see another one in my life!! I also got to decorate chocolate yule logs which was fun!! Especially sticking little plastic robins in them! (Just realised how sad I sound!)
Anyway here's some random things I found when I searched "mince pie" in google, they're probably not very interesting to anyone but have a look anyway!!

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/24/usb_mince_pies_for_c.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1402645,00.html
http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/3371.php

YAY!!!

Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Today I had 2 exams (which went ok I think!) and have handed in all my coursework so I've finished everything I had to before christmas, I'm so happy! I can get excited about christmas without worrying about work now!! We also had our hall christmas dinner tonight which was a really nice festive occasion, with great entertainment from the jokes in the crackers such as:
Why did the baker get an electric shock?
Because he stood on a bun and a currant ran up his leg!!!
You've no idea how hard it was trying to explain that to a non native speaker of English!!

Winner!!

Yay, Matt the champion is finally defeated!! Last night me and Derek beat him at the cities game (variation of the animal game with cities instead of animals), woohoo!!! I'm so happy I've found something I can win!

My favourite french word

The best word in the french language:
sac de couchage - the word for sleeping bag which literally translates as bag of sleepage!!

Happy!

I'm very happy today cos 1. its the weekend, 2. it's nearly christmas (22 days to go!!) and 3. I got the most amazing letter today, thank you so much Em!! I think its the only letter I've ever recieved that was started 6 months before it was sent! and comes in 5 parts! I think all letters should be like that! Although maybe not the being started 6 months earlier thing cos that wouldn't be very useful if you wanted to know recent news!
So thanks again Em! Expect a reply in June sometime...

American language....

Here's some advice for anyone travelling to America:

Never go into a shop and ask for any of these items:
swede
mangetout
courgette
hair grip
strimmer
surgical spirits
waistcoat
diary
curtains

Cos you won't be understood!!

Instead you should ask for:
rutabaga
snowpeas
zucchini
bobby pin
weedeater
rubbing alchohol
vest
calendar
drapes

So remember this if you ever need to buy such random items whilst in the states!!

Bee dancing continued

For all those interested in how to do the "bee dance" check out this site!!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bees/dances.html

Bee dancing

Interesting topic of the day-bee dancing!!! When a hunter bee returns to the hive it tells the other bees the location of the nectar, by dancing! There are three kinds of dance-the round dance showing that nectar is 5m away from the hive, the sickle dance showing it is 5-20m away and the tailwagging dance when it's more than 20m away. And if this wasn't amazing enough they can convey even more information!! The faster the dance the more nectar there is, and the direction they face when dancing indicates which direction to fly in when leaving the hive!!
So clever!

Why red and green?

Today I have been trying to discover why red yellow and green are used for traffic lights, what is the significance of these colours? Why are they used and not blue, pink and purple? I guess red could mean danger, ie if you don't stop you or someone else could be in danger, but what's the link between red and danger anyway?

But yeah, whilst researching traffic lights on the web I came across this site which is quite amusing...

http://iusedtobelieve.com/

Fun with words

http://www.fun-with-words.com/index.html

Wow what a great website!! (Thanks Charlotte!)

Here's a few of my favourites from it:

Palindromes:
Doc Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod
Go hang a salami; I'm a lasagna hog!
Rats live on no evil star

Anagrams:
The earthquakes - That queer shake
The Morse code - Here come dots
The public art galleries - Large picture halls, I bet

Malapropisms:
Good punctuation means not to be late.
He had to use a fire distinguisher.
"Don't" is a contraption.

Ambigious newspaper headlines:
SAFETY EXPERTS SAY SCHOOL BUS PASSENGERS SHOULD BE BELTED
INCLUDE YOUR CHILDREN WHEN BAKING COOKIES
DRUNK GETS NINE MONTHS IN VIOLIN CASE

Funny signs: (and these are all proper signs, you can see pictures on the site!!)
Don't let worries kill you; let the church help
Slow children at play
Danger Ahead: Fasten Safety Belts and Remove Dentures

Study Skills

Learnt a lot in my study skills lecture today...mostly how bad I am at English!! There are so many grammar rules I don't know, for example

• "I was stood" is incorrect English, seems perfectly normal to me! But maybe I'm just thick!
• You shouldn't split infinitives, because you can't in latin or something like that (?!?) Meaning phrases such as "To boldly go" are incorrect!!
• Criteria is the plural of criterion, so you can't use it in singular terms. Glad to know it's not just me that didn't know this, the Black Eyed Peas obviously didn't either: "Negative images is the main criteria"!! Shocking!!

We also learnt something about serial commas (you should avoid using them in academic writing apparently) quite a scary image really, evil serial killing commas...!!!

Don't know why I'm bothering to learn a foreign language when I can't even speak my own properly!!

Riddle...

The answer to the riddle (if anyone's interested which they're probably not but hey I'll tell you anyway cos I have nothing better to do!)

When it's a notion

I know, so funny!

Test

Found out today I got 90% in a linguistics test I had a couple of weeks ago!! Woohoo!! (ok so it was 9/10 in a multiple choice test but it sounds better to say 90%!!) And I'm not showing off or anything, I'm just very happy cos I thought I'd done really badly! And it is 5% of my mark...which isn't very much I know but I'm still happy!!

UNO

Help I'm losing my UNO playing ability!! I was very badly defeated by Thanh Mai tonight, only won 4 out of 18 games!!! This has never happened to me before!! I'm really going to have to work on my skills before we have a re-match!!
It's such a great game though!! I'm so glad I missed my plane and got stranded in France for 2 days with nothing to do but play UNO...every cloud has a silver lining!!

Frufoos!

Wow just been reminiscing about the wonders of primary school, those were the days! Does anyone else remember frufoo yogurts? They came in round pots with a little toy thing in the middle (not actually in the yogurt...there was a separate compartment in the middle of the pot!!) but yeah there was a craze for them at our school, everyone used to have them in their packed lunches and collect the toys, which were fruits with faces, arms, legs etc quite scary when you think about it!! The evil army of pears, strawberries, bananas, oranges and grapes coming to take over the world...

Using language...

Today I have been reading a fascinating linguistics book (called Using Language if anyone's interested...) I learnt lots of amazing facts, such as "Individual actions are performed by individual people" and "joint actions are performed by ensembles of people"!!! Wow I never would've guessed that!! How thick do they think we are?!?
I also learnt the answer to this riddle (such a great book!):
When is a thought like the sea?
I'll leave you to ponder that for a while, then might post the answer...!!

Sexy bonfire?

Just been talking to my brother (who is six by the way) on the phone about bonfire night; he was telling me about the bonfire he's going to, I said "that'll be good" and he said "yeah, sexy"!!!
How can a bonfire be sexy...?!?!?

Jokes!!

My sister has just told me some amazing jokes (the kind 8 year olds find hilarious) Quite liked this one though:
Why did the frog say miaow?
He was learning a foreign language!!!

Decisions, decisions

I decided to write about how bad I am at making decisions but I'm so bad at making decisions I can't decide what to write about being so bad at making decisions!!
Argh!! If anyone's willing to give me lessons in decision making let me know...!!

Woohoo!

Yay, I have a blog!!