01. I have a bruise on the back of my hand that is a) very painful and b) completely mysterious in its origins, LAME.

02. I'm hating public transport even more than usual right now. There is tram work on Flinders Street in the city which means that the buses that go to and from La Trobe are being diveted. They are supposed to be running on Lonsdale Street which is actually more convienient for me as my bus runs along Lonsdale, too bad that in reality they are running to no predefined route whatsoever and it is pretty much up to random chance as to whether the bus will show or not. I've pretty much given up on the bus service for the time being and have started catching the tram instead which is a total pain in the ass as the tram takes about 70 minutes on a good run and up to 90 minutes in peak hour (the bus takes 40 minutes if it is an express service and 50-60 minutes if it is a Clifton Hill service.) The fact that everyone else who travels to La Trobe from the city also seems to be catching the tram isn't helping, I had to stand for the whole trip on Monday which for me is a total nightmare, my disabilitiy makes it difficult to balance at the best of time and makes standing on a moving object that repeatedly stops and starts a near impossibility. I was so exhausted by the time I got to university, I felt like I had run a marathon from the effort it took to remain upright and not fall. I've also had to stand on the bus on the way home a fair bit though I don't find it as difficult as the tram it is still pretty tiring.

03. Never Again is such an awesome episode of The X-files with all the discontent, rebellious, tattoo-getting, sextastic Scully and Mulder at Graceland, so much win there.

04. NEW EPISODE OF 30 ROCK TODAY! YAYS!!! I can barely wait.

05. I am finished all of my mid-semester assessment, I have written 33 pages of text in just under three weeks and for a change I'm actually feeing pretty confident with my work which probably means it sucks. Now all I have to do is complete two major research projects, one a qualitative study of Sports Night fandom and one a media discourse analysis of AFL coverage in Sydney and Melbourne, write papers with the data gathered from those research projects, complete two presentations, wirte an essay and complete an exam. God that seems like A LOT OF WORK.

06. This House/Wilson vid by cryptictac is all kinds of brilliant, go watch!

I have had a combined total of 9.5 hours sleep since Sunday and I had a headache all last night which means I didn't get a word of assessment done which means I'm now trying to play catch up when all I want to do is curl up in a ball in the corner of the study carrel I'm using and sleep until my next class starts at 3pm.

Even fake end of daylight savings screws with my bodyclock.

A fairly good sign that you spend too much time on the internets:

When you want to italicize in a word document instead of hitting ctrl+I or selecting the italics button from the top menu you type < I > < / I > into the document around the text you want to italicize. I have done it three times in the last 5 minutes. *rolleyes*

Secondly my parents just don't get it sometimes (I could go into a huge long rant about this but I won't because I'm working, somewhat diligently now and because I don't want to say anything I'll regret once everyone has calmed the fuck down.)

I just used the university wireless network to download season three of Once and Again in its entirety.

Good thing it got something done because I haven't written so much as a single word of either of the annotated bibliographies I'm supposed to be writing.

Or come up with titles/theses for the two term papers I'm doing the annotated bibliographies for. At least I know what I'm writing about; the one for Press and Society is on sports journalism in Australia and wether current sports journalism practices are still relevant in Australia and the other for New Media and Society is on the way women participate in fandom with a case study on Sports Night fandom.

I do have three hours to annotate the two books (which I have read) I have to return though so time is still on my side.

Also, totally unrelated but in need of pointing out: XF2 TRAILER!!!

I'll be babbling about it as soon as I'm done here, so probably sometime early tomorrow morning by the time I get home.

I'm finally really settling into my new version of "regular" life after moving and having worked odd hours for several weeks, having worked at all was rather odd actually. The last time I had a paid job was 2003, the year I turnned 21, the magic age at which students in Australia who do not complete their highschooling can apply to university, which is pretty much where I have been ever since.

My job has finished for the year (I don't know if I actually mentioned what I was doing, I was working for the university I attend first helping out with enrolling first year students and reenrolling 2nd and 3rd year students and then staffing O Week, it is a very varied role involving everything from data entry to hospitality work and employers love to see it on resumes) but I got offered another job at the universty working for CONTACT (Student Services Centre) doing data entry, office admin, reception work and customer service. It is only four hours/week but has a lot of perks, the least of which is that I don't have to report it to Centrelink.

This is great because a) the people I'll be working with are good company and the workplace is almost entirely drama free and b) I desperately need the work experience, my jobs to date have been in childcare and I have had one job as a lab tech. Not exactly the most relavent work history for someone planning on eventually (Pretty much three years from today without honours or four years from today with honours and guess who wants to do honours?) graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Sociology (Policy Studies) and Media Studies now is it?

University has started again for the year and I only have classes two days/week this year. The university decided to make my life as difficult as possible by cancelling one of my subjects 48 hours before classes were due to begin meaning that I had to restructure my timetable, which ended up being way less difficult than it could have been and do a formal Variation of Enrollment first thing on the first Monday of semester which took three damn hours and relsuted in me missing my first lecture of the year.

However I'm actually kinda glad that that happened because I think I'm going to like Press and Society even more than I would have liked Radio Theory and History and Press and Society is a unit more geared torwards getting a job at the end of my degree as opposed to Radio Theory and History which was a subject I chose purely to indulge my personal interest in the area.

So after all is said and done my timetable looks like this: -

Monday
11am-12pm: Press and Society lecture
1pm-3pm: Introduction to Sociology: Self and Community lecture
3pm-4pm: Introduction to Sociology: Self and Community tutorial

Tuesday
9am-12pm: New Media and Society seminar
3pm-5pm: Press and Society tutorial

Which looks like not much class time and it isn't but the amount of reading and out of class work I have to do is insane, my sociology professor expects us to read four chapters of a textbook by next Monday, my Press and Society lecturer gave us seven different readings including two book chapters and my New Media and Society professor gave us a reasonable amount of reading but about 400 assessment tasks. So I am going to be busy.

Well that basically outlines why I haven't been around:-)

I have way more to say but it is going to have to wait because it is 11:30pm, I have to finish my readings before be and be up at 6am.

How can it be March already?

And how can it be so long since I last updated?

There will be an update explaining where I have been later tonight, as soon as my creative kick wears off and I do at least some of my reading for uni.

oddz_and_enz will also be recieving it's first update in forever and it's first update actually featuring creative content since I started it last September. W00T!

Meme like thing:
I feel like I'm never going to catch up on my flist (I haven't had the time to really check in for the last 14 days) so flist I ask of you to tell me:

~ The one thing that has made you the happiest in the last two weeks.
~ One thing that has made you feel negative emotion (anger, sadness, anxeity etc.) in the last two weeks.
~ One thing positive or negative that has happened in one of you fandoms in the last two weeks.

01. I went to see The National at the The Corner Hotel (a Melbourne institution people!) tonight and they were totally freaking sweet, they had a violinist/fiddler who was just amazing to watch, I loved every second of it and Janurary will continue to be a good month for muic as I am seeing The Arcade Fire (!!! I've been waiting four years for them to tour Australia) on the 30th and Spoon on the 31st (which also happens to be my sister's birthday, she and my parents are coming with me.)

02. This week is going to be so freaking exhausting, I'm working from 8:30am (or as soon as I can get to uni, the uni admin staff are very sympathetic to the fact that trying to get from the eastern/southeastern suburbs to the northeastern suburbs before 10am somewhere between nightmarish and downright impossible depending on the day of the week, if only they could explain that to the lecturers) to 5:00pm Mon-Thurs, my dad and my sister are flying down from Sydney on Wednesday morning and mum will arrive Wednesday night (she is driving.) I have pack as much as I can tomorrow because I'm going to be too busy the rest of the week and it just seems like a ridiculously huge job, especially to do single handedly.

Well just thinking about it is exhausting me, well that and the fact that it is 4:50am and I have my alarm set for 9:30am so I'm off to bed.

a) Welcome to the insanity that is my journal ducks_in_a_row, lissie_pissie, daynawashere, emotikka, gleam, marciavandecamp, naughtyeskimo, shutterbug12/shutterbug_12, typingwithmit10, wanderlonely, amy_119 and zero_cool24 and a huge thankyou to cryptictac for organizing/hosting the House/Cuddy//Lisa Edelstein friending meme!

b) As I said in my last, very brief update Jetstar suck. When I flew up to Sydney in December they cancelled my flight at the last possible second, which actually ended up working to my advantage because I got to catch a QANTAS flight that left 20 minutes earlier than my scheduled flight with all the free food and drink I could handle (Jetstar is bargain basement air, you have to pay for all food and drink) out of Tullamarine which is only 20 minutes from Spencer St Station (which is where I was when the flight was cancelled, waiting for the Avalon shuttle bus) as opposed to 50 minutes to Avalon. It was a lot of unnecessary stress but whatever, I need the practice in dealing with the stressful and unexpected without totally flipping out. My long list of former psychologists, psychitrists (my brain is telling me there should be an 'a' in there but I have no idea where/if I'm even right about that) and therapists would be proud of the way I handled the situation, I was a little anxious but didn't have anything close to the level four meltdown that I would have had a couple of years ago. The flight back to Melbourne on Monday though was a much bigger pain in the arse. it was an international flight Sydney to Bangkok via Melbourne Tullamarine which under normal circumstances is advantageous, firstly flying into Tullamarine takes 40-60 minutes off the trip from the airport to my house and secondly because domestic customers are dealt the inconvenience of having to go through customs the flights are way cheaper. However I think any advantages were more than wiped out by the fact that the flight which was due to leave Sydney at 10:40am didn't actually take off until about 11:30am thanks what was explained on the ground as opperational difficulties and then explained by the capatin as a lack of ground staff, WTF? and then upon landing (which was in itself horrific, I came this close to needing the air sickness bag) everyone was stuck on the plane for 35 minutes because they had attached the wrong connecting piece to the areobridge meaning the plane couldn't dock and they didn't have any stairs available for the model of aircraft we were flying in (an Airbus A330 for the record and the plane on the way to Sydney, was an Boeing 767 *is an airplane nerd*) In short, Jetstar are made of fail (so are Virgin Blue, there is nothing like been stuck at Adelaide airport for three hours) and I would fly QANTAS all the time if I could afford it.

c) I move into new apartment in one week from today (after some dramas with current tennant which I'd rather not go into right now because I am in a good mood,) which reminds me I was supposed to go to centrelink today to start the whole rent assistance process but I forgot so I'll have to do it on Friday. I'm so excited about new apartment which for those of you who are newbies to my flist looks like this from the outside (I don't have any interior shots, but trust me that will change come next week:)
......
And is located in Caulfield North but is also really close to Malvern and Armadale which both have awesome shopping and only a short tram ride away from Chapel Street, the coolest fucking place on earth and St Kilda the second coolest place</a>. In addition it is only a 3km walk to Elwood Beach, dude, in a week I'll be livking within walking distance from a beach, awesome. I think that is enough boring details about the apartment for this post but trust me there is pleanty more where that came from, next up, I will ramble about/pic!spam all the awesome things I have brought for the apartment which is been decorated in black, white and silver (yes, that idea was inspired by Apple computers whose three major colours ATM are black, white and silver *is nerd*)

d) My schedule at university this year is such that I can get a parttime job which is awesome because I need the extra cash, most of my centrelink benefits go to paying the rent so having a little extra money coming in will make a huge difference (I can earn up to $132/fortnight before Centrelink start hacking into my benefits but more like $250-300 before I'd be worse off working.) Unfortunately my schedule best suits working retail, an area in which I have little experience (I worked in my school's canteen for 6 months when I was 14, which was, rather distressingly 12 years ago) other than that all my job experience is is childcare, I was a childcare worker in a variety of settings for about six years but I scored really high on Coles Group aptitude test thingy so there is hope. I've also applied to Woolworths, Target etc, etc and I'll start asking around at the ridiculous number of cafes etc near where I live in the next couple of weeks. Speaking of work, I have to go to a training day tomorrow at university for the next round of work I am doing for them, which is enrollments, which is actually interesting as you get to help people as opposed to just pointing them places like on open day. After enrollments is O week which is also great, doing tours of the university for thr n00bs is fun and unlike the person who did my tour last year I will show the students everywhere they need to go. Last year the person who guided my tour decided that the WLT complex was too far too walk and didn't show us where it was, guess who's first class at La Trobe ever was in the WLT and guess who was late to class:-)

e) I've decided to get serious about swimming and I will be going four times/week after I move. I'm going to join the world's ironically named swimming centre (Harold Holt, I'm pretty Australia is the only country in the world where a swimming centre would be named after a person who is missing, presumed drowned) because it is open all year and has all the services I'm looking for, that is an outdoor pool an indoor pool and hydrotherapy, I went there today and it was great, I swam for two hours both today and yesterday (yesterday was at Hawthorn which kind of sucks by comparison, they only have an outdoor pool and I like swimming in the evening, once the sun started going down it was freezing), I brought myself a new kickboard and flippers today as my legs are weak and I need to strengthen them, a lot. The flippers let me swim a lot further than I could otherwise. In addition to the swimming at Harold Holt I'm considering taking a swimming class at the university gym that focuses on stroke correction and technique, I'm the least elegant swimmer ever and I'd like to improve that but I'd be too embarrassed at Harold Holt where the classes are open at uni they are staff and students only I won't feel like a total dork.

I think that is all for the RL side of things, next up fandom!

( I which I complain bitterly about my results from this semester. )

Also making life interesting is the fact that I have a choice to make regarding my second, non Media studies major. I was pretty firmly convinced that I would do my second major in International Relations but now the sociology department has introduced a sub-major within their department in Policy Studies that interests me greatly, at least as much and maybe even more so than International Relations, so now I'm going through the whole what should I do thing again.

My subjects in the International Relations major would roughly be:

The European Union
Introduction to American Politics
Nations and States
Ethics and International Relations
International Law and International Organisation
Theories of World Politics

My subjects in the Policy Studies major would be (also rough):

Critical Social Policy
Deviance, Criminality and Social Control
Families and Change
Sociology of Health and Medicine
Social Policy, Welfare and the State
Social Theories of Deviance

GUH! What I'm going to do (I think ETA: I just looked at my timetable an I can get away with only been at uni for two days/week in first semester, Tuesdays and Thursdays and possibly only two days second semester as well, one of my media classes is yet to be scheduled) is do my core first year sociology requirements next year, then decide.

Damnit the sun is coming up so I should probably go to bed, huh?

ETA the second: if anyone is actually interested in what the courses contain, not that I find that likely, the Policy Studies info can be found on this page and the International Relations stuff can be found here.

I'm done with exams! WOOT!

I'm not done with semester though, but I getting there and I get to spend the afternoon writing an essay about Julianne Moore, I do love cinema studies for that.

ETA: sportsnightnut, I got someone at uni to proof my essay for me and I just handed it in, thanks for the offer though!:-)

University continues to kick my ass but I'm finally getting the upper hand and feeling like I'm in control. I have finished my radio history essay (and feel really confident about it), am working on my essay about Pakistan (which would be going a lot better if I could find a workable definition of Islamic Republic from a non-Wikipedia source and knew how to use the Harvard referencing system, Chicago I can do in my sleep now but I'm still really weak with Harvard and suck at using MLA and APA) and will complete my other four (one of which is half-done so 3.5 and one which is actually an annotated bibliography not an essay so 2.5) essays when I'm in Sydney from the 26 October-6th November.

My mum, Julie and Gab are coming down on Tuesday and will be staying until Friday, then I'm going to Sydney because I AM GOING TO SEE CROWDED HOUSE (as much as I hate the circumstances in which Nick and Neil were brought together again and as much as it just won't be the same without Paul I still can't believe that I actually get to see Crowded House)!!! TWICE!!! AND AGAIN IN MELBOURNE!!! I can't believe it is only 14 days! It has been 11 months since I have seen a Finn perform live (That was Tim at the Forum in January) and almost 18 months since I have seen Neil in any incarnation. 11 months is the longest I have gone without seeing a Finn brother since July 2005 (which is the first time I saw either one of them live due to a variety of reasons including but not limited to student poverty, the Crowdies habit of playing in over 18's venues back in the day and my parents being total assholes and not letting me go to Farewell to the World, for which they will never be fully forgiven.)

I hope my Neil staking efforts pay off again, I have been lucky in the past:

( Adventures in stalking )

Still on a fannish note, I like the two most recent episodes of House but will need to watch them again, as I was so wiped out the first time I watched them I barely remember them and 30 Rock is my new girlfriend, until such time as I get a new one and since it has been three years I'm not exactly optimistic on that front.

On a not cool and not fannish note I fell over on Thursday night running to catch a bus and have done some semi-serious damage to my already damaged left knee. I was running, which I almost never do because I have mild foot drop (which is worse in my left foot thanks to some drunken asshole on a tram who stepped on my awkwardly positioned ankle last year tore a bunch of ligaments) and running makes it much worse, combine that with the fact that I was trying to get the bus drivers attention instead of looking where I was going (I almost always look down at my feet when I walk to make sure I'm aware of what is ahead of me so I can step higher if I need too which looks odd but is better than falling) and the next thing I know I've tripped over a speed hump/divider type thing in the road and fallen left knee first into the next one along. Thankfully the damage only soft tissue bruising but the knee couldn't really take anymore damage that it already had and has started to get all clicky and locky again from me trying to position it so it doesn't hurt, blerg.

I have more to say but I need to get back to my essay so more later.

Dear student population of La Trobe University, Bundoora campus,

I really do not need to know the intimate details of of your sex lives, I especially do not need to hear a graphic description of "the worst shag" you have ever had. You are in the library, it is quiet and everyone in a 200ft radius can hear you.

Please stop, it is very distracting and I am trying to finish an essay that is due in 4h12min.

Yours sincerely,
Your fellow student

01. ( House 4.01 - Alone )

02. Is anyone else bothered by the fact that following House's temporarily successful ketamine treatment in 3.01 that in addition to no longer feeling pain he also regains full use of his leg? The fact that he no longer feels pain does not negate the fact that he is missing (what would appear to be, judging by his commentary at the end of Three Stories) a rather substantial portion of of his right quadriceps. I buy that he may have been able to walk short distances without a cane, but skateboarding and running, not so much.

03. I am in love with 30 Rock, I've downloaded and watched the first four episodes thus far and it now owns my soul.

04. ( Cut for a casting spoiler regarding the US version of Kath & Kim, which isn't really a spoiler since it was printed in today's Herald Sun... )

05. University is kicking my ass right now. I have three 1,500+ word essays due in it the next two weeks, an annotated bibliography to write and a 2,000 word essay due on the 5th of November (which I'm going to have to hand in on by the 23rd of October because my mum, Julie and Gab are coming down which means I'll get absolutely no work done and them I'm going back to Sydney with them on the 27th until the 8th November.) Somehow between all these assessment I'm supposed to do all my readings and go to class too.

06. This month is one of those rare months in which I get paid three times before my rent is due again which means I have an extra $400 to play with. Last time I spent the lot on DVD's and I was highly tempted to do the same again, until I remembered that my parents were no longer going to buy me the Nintendo DS I wanted for Christmas because they are buying me things for the apartment instead so I brought a Nintendo DS, got a free game with it Pixar's Cars which is a much better game than I expected it to be and brought two more games in the form of the first Brain Training game (because I am a total nerd and love games like that) and Animal Crossing: Wild World which I have promptly become obsessed with, it is like the console version of The Sims except Japanese and on CRACK! I also brought an AFL themed protector that came with inserts for all 16 teams, I had the Geelong inserts in for about three hours until I was overcome with guilt and switched them out for my Saints. Yay, no more being bored whilst traveling 4-6 hours a day to and from uni.

07. Speaking of travel, every time I pass the stop where I'll get off the tram once I move, knowing that I have another 20-40 minutes (depending on traffic) to go before I get here I get a little bit more pissed off.

08. There is no 08:-)

If so could you please tell me how to format an in-text citation for a website without an author?

I know how to format it for my works cited list, just not in-text.

Also why can't La Trobe have a standard citation style or at least a stand citation style for the various faculties? UWS did so in two years I only ever used the Vancouver system, which is standard for biological sciences. At La Trobe I have thus far used Chicago (standard in media studies, politics will accept Harvard or Chicago and Chicago to me is the far superior system so I use it for politics too), APA (lingustics), Harvard (Asian studies) and MLA (cinema studies) and the various departments of the arts faculity are honestly wondering why so many students (30% according to the media studies department in their beginning of semester rant) hand in assessments that are referenced in the wrong style?