Halloween and Week 4

On Saturday (Oct 30), I didn't do much until the evening when I called my brother on Skype to wish him a Happy Birthday. I had a fairly good conversation with him and my dad, and then I started getting my costume ready to go out. I went with my American friends and one girl from my school, and we all headed to Sugarhouse. The queue was pretty long because everyone was at Sugar that night, but we stuck it out, and we got our tickets for free entry on Sunday as well.

My costume went over really well that night. I was dressed up as Katy Perry and tons of people were recognizing me and commenting on my outfit. I got lots of "KATY PERRY!? You look just like her!!" and I even got asked for a couple photos and autographs.

My costume. The same one I wore last year, but with a better wig this time.

On Sunday evening, Stef and I were wanting to go out again (we had tickets for free entry!), but the girls we had gone out with didn't want to come, so we headed out with one of our housemates (Alex) to his friends' flat because he had told us that they were having a pre-drinking party there. We got there and the only people there were the two guys who lived there (Jonny and Andy). Once they had their costumes sorted out, we all headed to Sugarhouse. The 3Stef, Alex and I all had free entry tickets, so we got to cut the queue and go in the back door, leaving behind the two guys that didn't have tickets (we found them again later). Stef and I stuck together for the night, sometimes sticking with the guys and sometimes going off on our own.

My costume went over really well again, and I got another photo taken (but I think that both the girl and the guy who were in the photo with me had come up to me separately the night before to comment on my outfit). It seemed like that night there were a lot of very excited girls coming up to me squealing "OMG ARE YOU KATY PERRY?!?!?! OMG I LOVE KATY PERRY!!!!!" It was a pretty fun night.

Stef had forgotten her camera at J&A's flat, so we went back there and got there just in time to see Stef's camera being used to make a video of a pumpkin getting smashed. We stuck around for a while because the boys were feeding us (homemade flapjacks [like granola bars], Jaffa cakes, wagon wheels, and some type of crisp-like things)/my feet were really sore, and then we went home.

I spent Monday (Nov 1) not doing much other than recovering from lots of weekend partying and going to the LUPS meeting. It was a presentation about how to edit your images using the program GIMP, and it was pretty helpful (although very fast-paced) even though I knew most of it already.

Tuesday I almost didn't go to my morning class because I had not slept well the night before due to the cough that I still had. I managed to make it to class, but then I spent most of the rest of the day napping, only coming back to consciousness for my afternoon lecture.

I had Wednesday completely free, and Stef and I ended up taking the free bus into town again. We headed off to PC World, and I finally bought myself a printer, and then we bought a bunch of groceries. We ended up just missing one of the buses back, so we had to wait around for a good 45 minutes before the next one came. It meant that I got to read a little of one of the novels Stef has to read for class. It was very strange.

After we got home, I thought I would finally be productive that evening by printing out some of the things I needed for my courses. I went out and bought paper at one of the shops on campus, and tried to start setting up my printer. Then I realized I didn't have a printer cable.

I got going a little earlier than normal on Thursday in order to buy a printer cable before my first class. I tried to get something set up and had a hard time due to the fact that my tiny laptop doesn't have a disc drive, so I had to find the software on the Internet to download and install. I couldn't get it done before class, but I got it figured out in the break afterwards, so my things were printed for my class that afternoon.

Stef's friend flew in from New York on Thursday as well. Nothing too interesting happened on Thursday. On Friday, I had my usual classes, and spent a fair bit of time playing around editing photos. That night I went out with Stef and her friends to the Sugarhouse again. We ended up running into one of our flatmates (Mitch) with Jonny and Andy, and since none of us were incredibly enjoying ourselves, we all left fairly early. We made sure to stop for some chips and cheese before we got back home though.

The crew (minus Lucy who was taking the photo).

On Saturday (Nov 6), I stuck around the house for most of the day after I woke up quite late in the day. In the evening, I went to town with LUPS to watch and take photos of the fireworks that were being put on (a day late for "Remember, remember, the fifth of November"). We all went up to the Ashton memorial to view them, and it was hard to get good photos because there were so many people there that it would have been too hard to set up a tripod even if I had had one. Most of the other students didn't have great luck taking photos either.

The Ashton Memorial.

After the fireworks, we all headed to a pub fairly close by. There were a lot of guys there that I knew because they're all good friends with a couple of my housemates, so they come to our house a lot. A few people played pool, and then I let Jonny try out my camera. It pretty much made his life, he was so excited. He put his lens on it (and with the amazing depth of field), took a 9 minute long video of basically nothing. It got edited down a couple different times, and my favourite cut can be viewed right here on Youtube.

I got a ride back to campus with Andy and Jonny and one of their friends, and then we all proceeded to spend a few hours watching videos on Youtube at Andy and Jonny's flat. Stef and her friend went out, but I was too tired to put in any effort into going back into town, so watching stupid Internet videos seemed like as good a way to spend the evening as any.

I had to get up after I went to bed because Stef had lost her key, so she had no way to get in. Since Stef and I are pretty much the only ones that can ever hear the doorbell ring (just because of where our bedrooms are), I had to be the one to let her and her friend in.

Sunday was a pretty uneventful day, and I didn't do much on Monday until the evening when I went to the LUPS meeting. It wasn't very good that night The talk was about themes you could use to help you branch out and take different kinds of photos, but it was particularly interesting and the speaker was a little awkward.

After that, Stef, her friend and I went to our college's bar to hang out with all the guys, and listen to the people that were playing for open mic night. The guys played pool while we listened to the music, and then we all played some pub quiz game for a while before coming home and watching some more Youtube videos (including the wonderful video that was made with my camera).

At Grizedale bar.