Okay, I haven't been the best at updating my journal. When was my last post? Early November, it must have been, when I had a chance of actually finishing NaNoWriMo on time!

Things are as usual here, only I'm not going to be finishing NaNoWriMo (the novels, however, I'll keep in mind), I'm taking as many days off as possible in order to save journeys (and therefore money) on my travel card until Christmas because QUB have charged everyone £85 for the semester's tuition fees and I hadn't known about it in advance, and - well, that's it, really. Oh - I'm playing Minecraft again. Probably not a good thing, seeing as I have essays and stuff to do, but oh well. I'll be alright!

I woke up at the record-breaking time of 2:50pm, today. This is partly because I was up until stupid o'clock watching the truly horrific 'The Legend of the Titanic', which NostalgiaCritic does a glorious review of here and then here. Then, I couldn't get to sleep - presumably because the animated film was so nightmarishly fucked up that it kept me awake for fear of the terrors it may have spawned in the Land of Nod. And then, my phone died during the night. It was a long, drawn out and probably very painful process in which I basically forgot to charge my phone for about a week and you know the rest. So no alarm, either.

Since 'end result' is a redundant expression, I shall say the result was my sleeping in until nearly 3pm. I can't imagine how many brain cells have been killed off by my new, weird sleeping pattern. Since my head hurts a little I can guess that I'm about 30% more stupid now that when I went to sleep.

ANYWAY. It's 18 days until I go back to England and Jason, and news from home isn't good. My Auntie Sue, who went into hospital in about June/July to have a brain tumour removed, hasn't been responding to cancer treatment. Last week she went into a coma and doctors haven't given her long to live. When I checked up with Dad yesterday, she was drifting in and out of consciousness and she knew that she was surrounded by the people she cared about - all Dad's siblings bar Graham and Clive have been to see her already. Graham's stuck in Europe because of the bad weather cancelling the ferries and Clive hasn't been able to get up from Devon yet. Even though she's been awake, I don't think the prognosis for Sue is any better - Dad says it's only a matter of time.

To make up for my horrendous lack of activity, I'll be posting a couple of picspams - one of my room here in Ireland, and another of my Minecraft antics.

Let me see... bylines this week on pages 12, 26, 28, 35, 36 and 53! Not bad; I believe that's two up on last week!

It's good to look back on my journal and see it looking a bit more complete. All the typed-and-emailed-to-myself entries have been posted now and I'm just working on the handwritten ones now. To be honest, I still have a vast amount of post-Ireland handwritten entries to get up, from what I recall was that immense Internet downtime that ended some time in October. I do remember getting my Internet back shortly before NaNoWriMo.

There's yet another crazy idea rattling around in my head. I've been considering creating a Minecraft blog - that is, a blog through the eyes of the little dude you play as. You can imagine, due to the nature of the game, it would be quite zany, and obviously screenshot-heavy. The thing is, the 'print screen' button on our keyboard has died. Well, it occasionally works - one time in every twenty I press the button, anyway.

Happily, Ashley has informed me that there's an in-game screen capture function so if I can figure that out, all will be well and I'll be able to start my Minecraft blog whenever I want! I'll just have to buy an original copy of the game when I go to Ireland.

Jason's back tomorrow, and he'll be back for a week! Yay! I'll be meeting him on the platform and I can't wait - we've been in contact by text and phone all week so it's not like we've been completely cut off but nothing beats having someone you love there in person, does it?

So he'll be in St Helens for a week before heading back down to Exeter to start his course properly. I think he'll be there for three weeks, which means he won't be up here when I finally go to Ireland. Had it been just two he might even have been able to see me off but it's looking unlikely. It's a shame, but there's nothing I can do. We can't exactly negotiate term times with a college, can we? These things are usually set in stone unless said otherwise.

There goes the last shreds of my productivity! I discovered Minecraft last night, and I'm positively addicted to it.

I started a new world called 'The People's Republic of Swedonia', and the seed from which it was generated? 'Seeds are pretty damn sexy!'. This landed me on what appeared to be a land full of just sand with a rather bizarre topping of snow - what a combination!

( Minecraft shenanigans, a busy day ahead and counting others' blessings... )