howsojoe's Xanga

HowsoJoe has moved!

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:08:40 GMT

Change of address card!

How so Joe's blog has moved from Xanga. I now blog as AislinnOC. =D

Are you on Twitter...?

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:46:28 GMT

Vote for my friend @mcawilliams in the shortyawards!
Here's a handy link, so you don't even have to put that much effort into it!
Click Me!

Technology explosion!

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:59:22 GMT

I know I mentioned in an earlier post that I got a laptop for Christmas.
It's blimmin' awesome, and I love it to bits.

Anyways, I only managed to figure out how to steal my home internet on it the other day. And by figured out, I mean I got someone else to set it up for me, (I am so lazy. =])

I don't think I mentioned before what kind of laptop it is! It's a vaio VGN-NS10L
I don't know what that means, but it might mean something to someone!
The only things I care about are that it looks pretty (check), it has internets (check) and it has a keyboard which I can use without much trouble (check).
The worst thing about it is the lack of a number pad, but you don't really get number pads on laptops, so I suppose I'd have that problem with anything!

As well as a new laptop, I also had to get a new phone recently. (Sob!)
I've had my old phone, a Nokia 3120 (I think), since I was 15. It stood with me through thick and thin, but the poor thing was in tatters by the time it finally gave up the ghost. Numerous scratches, a (purple!) ink stain, a crack running from the top of the screen to the bottom and several other, smaller, cracks, dents, scrapes and bruises.
The aesthetic damage I could cope with, I think it gave the phone character. But once it started hanging up midway through a call and not receiving text messages for hours on end, I knew change was afoot.
Finally, it stopped picking up a network altogether for up to hours at a time. Now that was depressing, because I'm a fairly heavy phone user.
Eventually, I decided I had to change phone. I wandered into the Carphone Warehouse and bought a black Nokia 6300.
While I'll admit it's pretty awesome, and has a lot of things my old phone didn't (a camera, mp3 player, radio, bluetooth... These things are amazing, I can't cope with all this luxury), I still kind of miss my old phone.
Three years is a long time, and I'm a creature of habit. I'd gotten used to the occasional malfunction of the left arrow key, the three button presses it required to turn off and the general interface of my old phone.
It was a piece of crap, but God, I miss it.
Still, once I manage to actually work up the courage to get rid of it, I'll donate it to the Jack and Jill Foundation. At least then I'll know it's done some good!

So that's about it for now! New laptop, awesome. New phone, not so awesome, I miss the old one. =(

The worst thing about Christmas...

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:31:45 GMT

Is the Christmas exams which follow.

All through the holidays they were looming over me. I have rubbish study habits, because I'm lucky enough to be ridiculously smart, which is horrifically unfair, really.
Basically, I recall facts from lectures and classes without going over notes. It's an incredibly handy skill to have, and it was definitely the only reason I got such a good Leaving, as I did literally no study.

However, this year it's different! These exams actually matter, and without passing them I won't make it into second year!
And, honestly, how much would it suck to have been part of the first Law class of Maynooth and then to end up *not* graduating with the people I started with?
That's also a defining factor in my decision to do Irish rather than French next year. Doing French would add another year onto my degree and mean that I wouldn't graduate with any of my class (since I'm the only French and Law student). Bummer!

I've six exams, two in each of my three subjects, as well as an oral exam in French. So I suppose that's really seven exams, but only six of them are listed on my exam permit, and saying six makes me feel better about them, especially since most of my friends only have four or five... DAMN my doing two languages!
Why am I writing a blog post instead of studying? I don't know, but here I am, typing away, at 25 past 11 at night... Who'd be studying now anyways?

So! Christmas Exams are a pain, no?
What subjects do/did/will you study in college?
Are/Were/Will you be a major/minor, double honours or single honours degree student and in what subjects?
Did you/Do you like college? (I love it, by the way, it's bloomin' awesome, I never want it to end!)
What are you gonna do after college? / What do you do now?

Girly girl? Never!

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:23:32 GMT

A girly girl. That I most certainly am not.

Skirts and dresses? Nightmare. I live in jeans and a hoodie. My brother's getting married in six weeks, and I need to buy a dress for his wedding. Nightmare. I can't deal with dresses.
Part of that is body issues, because I don't like my legs, but for the most part it's just dislike of dresses and skirts.
As well as that, I don't like skinny jeans, revealing tops, frills, pretty much anything girly. I wear jeans, normal dark coloured jeans, occasionally with embroidery on the pockets, and a t-shirt, normally with a funny or cute picture or saying. Over that I'll wear a hoody, or possibly a zipped top, normally in a bright colour, although I do have a few navy or black. My absolute favourite at the moment is my band hoodie, which has my band's crest

embroidered on it. Amazing. =)

Shoes. I will admit, I love shoes. Although, not in the traditional girl sense. I can't wear heels. Especially not on a night out.
After all, I fell down the stairs in trainers last night. Although that might have been the tequila.
But I fell down the stairs last week when I was stone cold sober.
So, yeah, can't wear heels.
They'd be terribly helpful though, considering my height deficit!
I do love shoes though. Trainers, sneakers, runners, whatever you care to call them. I have a problem in that I buy too many. I currently own seven pairs. My favourites, and newest shoes, are these, which I bought when I was in New York. You have to admit, they're pretty amazing.

As well as those trainers, I also adore these

and these

God, I love buying trainers.
Still, no heels, sure as hell not a girly girl. I don't even wear flats, I just wear trainers. Except at work, because I'm not allowed wear trainers. This makes me very sad. =(

As for make-up? Nail polish?

Don't even get me started. It's a nightmare.
The last time I wore make-up was my debs (like prom, but a bigger deal), and that was a horror in itself.
Add that to the fact that I was wearing a dress and you have nightmare town for me.

I have short hair, which I never do anything with bar brush it. Even when I had long hair, I only tied it up in a pony tail. I was never into the whole sparkly clips, curls, accessories, scrunchies thing.

So I'm not a girly girl. I don't do girly things. I don't have very many girl friends either (about one in ten are girls).

Yet I still *am* a girl, and no-one ever forgets that. I have a boyfriend, and my guy friends never forget that I'm a girl.
They don't treat me any differently because of it, although they won't get into any sort of horseplay with me. Yet it's still very definite that I'm a girl. I'm not a tomboy, because I don't like playing sport, getting dirty or any of that sort of thing, I'm just a girl.

So I wonder!
What makes a girl a girl?
What's the difference between a girly girl and a tomboy, and what's the median (me??!)?
Is it possible to be a girly girl and a tomboy at the same time?
What makes a girly girly a girly girl?
Just how many times have I written the word girl in these questions??
Which do you prefer? What kind of girl are you more likely to befriend, or try to date?

Christmas!

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:15:41 GMT

Happy Boxing Day everyone!
Hope you had a good one!
I got a vaio laptop for Christmas, which is frigging awesome, but I can't figure out how to hook it up to the interwebnet, which is frustrating. I need to find a computer nerd, stat!

As I write this, it's to the accompaniment of Sonic sounds from my little sister, who's playing with the wii she got yesterday. My other sister got sat nav and a new phone, while my brother got a bunch of clothes.

Yesterday was possibly the best Christmas ever, but there's an explanation of that coming in a few days.
Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the family to arrive on Sunday, and making the most of my few days off!

Going to see Twilight tomorrow, can't wait! It's gonna be both brilliant and horrific at the same time! =D

From here.. All credit to Shinga, naturally.

Christmas Hours

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:18:39 GMT

It's Christmas in just under a week and a half.
Personally, I love Christmas, and I'm looking forward to Christmas now, because my dad'll be home on Christmas Eve.

However, something is putting a real dampener on my Christmas. And that's my job.
I work in a supermarket, and my roster for next week goes as follows:
Tuesday 18.00-00.00
Wednesday 18.00-00.00
Friday 18.00-00.00
Saturday 14.00-00.00
Sunday 14.00-00.00

Bear in mind that I actually have college next week, I'm in 'till six on Tuesday and Wednesday, and starting at nine on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

I'm not happy about this.
I do get time and a half on Sunday, but is the huge payslip worth the huge amount of hours I'm working? (38!!)

But it is the week before Christmas.

And I got my Christmas bonus! I got vouchers for the store I work in. Pretty cool. I gave half to my mother, and kept half myself. It's all good. =)

So!
-before Christmas, do your hours increase or decrease?
-Do you like or dislike this?
-Is the payslip worth it?
-Do you get a Christmas bonus?

Grammar Obsession.

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:05:30 GMT

I am a Grammar Nazi. I will freely admit that.
I have a habit of correcting misspelled words which borders on a compulsion.
Misuse of homonyms especially bugs the crap out of me.
If I see a misspelled word I feel compelled to point it out.

That's bad.

At this point, the end of the first semester of my first year in college, my friends are used to it. They tolerate it, sometimes mock it, and occasionally give out to me about it.
Unfortunately, I just can't seem to stop myself. I cannot help but correct spelling mistakes and occasionally grammar mistakes as well.

For example, on Wednesday of this week I was reading "The Spoke" (my college's magazine, FYI), and when I spotted several spelling errors ("to" instead of "too", utterly horrific), I had to get out a pen and correct them.

To steal Lynne Truss' example, I would be the person standing outside the cinema with an apostrophe on a stick.

-So do you know anyone with a grammar obsession?
-Does it annoy you if someone corrects your spelling/grammar?
-Are you that person? It can be helpful sometimes! I used to proof-read all my friends' essays before they handed them in when we were still in school!
-How can I cure myself of this desire to correct??

Time Flies...

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 07:57:01 GMT

.. when you're having fun.

I don't actually know how long it is since my last blog post, but I'm willing to bet it's somewhere around the region of a month. That's bold, I should post more often than that.

See, the thing is, I don't really have time to be posting blogs, and I don't really have ideas any more. I can barely keep up with my Twitter, and that's a lot lower-maintenance than this!

Not that Xanga is high-maintenance, really. I mean, how hard is it to write a few blog posts now and then?

Apparently, for me, quite hard.

I have two essays due, I really should start writing them, but I'm just completely un-motivated.
Well, maybe tonight, or over the weekend, I'll get them sorted.

Anyways, the main point of this blog entry was that I wanted to talk about New York!
I dunno if I mentioned before that I went (or was going to go) to New York at the end of November, but I did go, and it was awesome.

[Aside: the shift button on this keyboard is a piece of shit, it only seems to work every second or third time I press it!]

I was in New York for six days, visiting my dad, 'cuz he's working in the UN at the moment. I went with Aoife, and I have to say it was one of the best holidays I've ever been on.
We went shopping, visited the Empire State, went shopping, went to Liberty Island and Ellis Island, went shopping, toured the UN, went shopping, ate food, went shopping and actually got to spend some time with our dad. We spent that time shopping.
And eating, cuz he was paying.
Actually, we went to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular as well, that was pretty cool.

So, main points of the holiday!
1) Americans like to queue. Although over there it's called "forming a line".
In the course of the six days I spent in New York, I must have been standing waiting for something for at least one of them.
Worth it though!

Incidentally, here's a fun and interesting fact!
Queue is the only word in the English language that still sounds the same if you remove the last four letters!

2) Americans love their security.
To get onto the boat to go to Liberty Island, we had to go through "airport-style" security. They even made me take off my watch. That's a bit rich, considering my watch is made of plastic! It's not likely to set off a metal detector, and it's a slim Swatch, so I'm unlikely to be able to hide any explosives in it either!
Then to get into the museum ON Liberty Island, you have to go through airport-style security again.
What do they think, a seagull might have dropped in something horrifically dangerous for me?
They had some weird air poofy machine too, that checks for explosives.
I've been meaning to google it, but I keep forgetting. Maybe later.
The UN had airport style security too, but it was the twice at the Statue of Liberty thing made me smile.

3) They're mad over there.
I don't actually have time to finish this, cuz I have to go to a lecture, so I'll fix it after I'm done.
Now, to French Cinema! Thrilling stuff!!
French Cinema over, back to the blog.
This was some sort of catchphrase between myself, my sister and my dad. Among the things we saw which we declared "mad" were the fact that the pedestrian lights don't have buttons, pet chauffeurs, that they don't sell cigarettes in their bars...
But the biggest one is that they don't sell food in the bars! Like snack food! Peanuts, crisps, pork scratchings, bacon fries... Nada. It's quite distressing!!

I think that's all I have to say about New York for now! I bought loads of stuff...
Even new jeans, which I'm quite upset with, 'cuz they're size 0 and they're too big for me. It makes me cry inside.
I swear I'm not really that small!!

Severely Pissed Off.

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:50:02 GMT

Yup, this is a diary style entry.
I'm sitting in the Arts block again, waiting for an Irish lecture, in about ten minutes and, as the title says, I'm severely pissed off.

Yesterday I was in Andrew's house when I explained why I don't wear skirts. That's cuz my legs are covered in scars.
Then when I explained why my legs are covered in scars, he didn't believe me.
Nightmare.

Anyways, after a while, he realised I wasn't kidding, and was then horriffied.
So I told him to piss off, basically, because I don't like talking about it.

Anyways, there were several texts where he tried to find out more and I told him to go fuck himself, then he went out drinking.

And at about ten to 12 he texted me with something incomprehensible, I can't remember what it was, I need to check...
"Every1 doesn't care except me!"
I have no idea what he means by that... But if he told someone else, I swear to fucking God I'm going to kill him.

Anyways, I replied saying something like "You what?" and he asked me to ring him.

I did ring him, and he didn't bloody well pick up!

WHY ASK SOMEONE TO RING YOU IF YOU'RE NOT GONNA PICK UP??
What a waste of time.

Anyways, now I'm pissed off, and kinda worried, and I really don't wanna go to Irish because, well, it's boring. =(