Well then, people of the Blogosphere! I am writing to you all from my very own laptop! Isn't that exciting?

It's a £369.99 HP Pavilion g6 in purple, and IT'S MINE. At last, my very own laptop! No more fixing the mess that other users have created; I can download what I want, and have my ENTIRE music collection on the hard drive, because nobody else has a say. I can take it to university and avoid the cut-throat competition for library computers during exam times. I'll never again have to ask 'when can I go on?'.

I have my own laptop, and it's just as glorious as I'd always envisioned.

Mum and I went to town together for the first time since my arrival today, getting the bus from Killycomain to Banbridge. When we first ventured out, it was dull and looking to rain. In town, we'd visited just one charity shop - Oxfam - and we came out to a monsoon.

Needless to say, we weren't in town long. We ran about like headless chickens in the pissing rain, screaming as we got soaked; the umbrella was thoroughly useless because I'm crap at using them and there's a Laurel and Hardy contrast to our physiques - basically, I'm ridiculously tall so if Mum held the brolly I had to crouch to get under it.

Despite the weather, we got an alright shop done. I bought a million books (no surprises there), a pack of highlighters (essential to any English student), an umbrella which I then proceeded to misplace in Argos and a patterny t-shirt from one of the local Cancer Research shops. Mum bought some curtains for Sophie's room and got some food shopping in Dunne's.

So, I bought my laptop, brought it home safe in spite of the pouring rain, and set about immediately downloading the essentials - OpenOffice, Semagic, Celtx, all my backed up files... but could I get Minecraft to work? No. I shan't give up, though - you all know how addicted I am to that game. I can think of nothing cooler than sitting in the Students' Union punching trees while everyone else studies or gossips or goes studenting about the place. I would be the very essence of awesome. Not.

Speaking of university, yesterday was a thoroughly embarrassing day. The Peer Mentoring session went well enough but the Philosophy lecture I had timetabled after it... I walked into a Business Management lecture first, then a talk on Socialism in the Year of Revolution (one guy laughed when I stood up and said 'this isn't room 026, is it?'), and then - finally! - made it to the right room: 02/026 in the PFC. Jeez.

But as soon as I walked into the lecture room, I knew something wasn't quite right. In this massive hall which could easily host 400 - 500 students, there was about 40 people in there, dotted about, twiddling their thumbs and murmuring. I sat down behind one guy, asked if his was the Approaches to Philosophy lecture and he said yes - but the lecturer hadn't turned up yet.

I decided to wait a quarter of an hour and just broke into the most appropriate reading material I had - the latest issue of 'Philosophy Now' - but that didn't last as a girl in the middle block, a few rows down, received correspondence that the lecturer wouldn't be coming - we had nothing timetabled for this period.

It wasn't really a wasted day. I went to the Student Shop afterwards and bought a few things (including my very own Queen's University hoodie in green, extra large even though I'm a size medium because XL = comfy), then took the train home for a change. Nothing could have brought me down that day - the embarrassment, the wasted lecture - because I was a) just relieved to have been paid and b) satisfied that even though the lecture had flopped, I'd attended, thus making up for missing my first one.

From the train station, I took a taxi home. Because I could. The taxi driver was a lovely lady; we talked books and writing!

After I'd been home a few hours, we went to Nanny Sophie's - it was a full house, just as I remember from being a kid! Cousins Gareth and Daniel were there, as was Gareth's wife Tracy and Daniel's girlfriend (or wife? I can't remember if they're married) Julie. Gareth and Tracy's daughters Darcey and Josie were there too and they were adorable!

Tell a lie, Daniel showed up a wee bit later, carrying two stone of beef worth fifty quid. Which Gareth then proceeded to shove in my face, going 'MOOOO!'. It was hilarious. They're both nuts, which is fitting as they're brothers!

As for today, it's been my day off university and you already know about it. I'm probably going to do my sisters (Shannon in particular as we share a room) a favour and get to bed soon. They have hockey early tomorrow and need to sleep without me clacking keys and having the bedroom light on all night!

Having a laptop is fantastic. It'll probably mean more frequent updates from all kinds of places, NaNoWriMo will be a breeze, and as my next goal is a digital SLR (in January, when I next get paid), you should be seeing plenty of pictures up here soon. For now, though, the next item on today's agenda is SLEEP.