I take it all back, Netgear! I love you!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Soooo... hi Xanga. :/ It turns out the Van Centre has packed up and moved and a new small car shop has popped up in its place. Important differences:

• Van Centre has big vans, Car Place has small cars
• Van Centre is run by our landlord and therefore when things break we can appeal for help. I don't think the Car Place Dudes want to fix our boiler quite so much.
• Van Centre has a free, unsecured wireless internet connection. Small Car Place has a secured BT connection that is unhackable by teenagers with cheap laptops.

So.

I'm in the library. I think I will be spending a lot of time in the library. I may start paying half my rent to them. This is not ideal, but I only have the best part of a semester left then it's a very long summer, then I will be moving to Bognor. if they can't fix it before then I'll be fine for a few months of this. I think. Having a laptop and my music library gives me a bit more peace of mind than I had back when I destroyed poor Or'wenn in the Noodle Incident. I just don't have MSN, and internet any moment I want it.

Okay, where did I leave you guys? Stuck in Hastings watching the snow fall and thinking, "This is fun!" Me and Simon made a Snow Spike. I had hot chocolate and stuff, and went to bed. 5am I get out of bed, and we go down to the train station in the pitch dark on slippery, snow-covered roads. At the station they say, "Sorry, no trains until 7! Go to Eastbourne!" So we decide to go all the way to Brighton so I don't have to rely on trains until the last leg of the jounrey. Cue interesting drive in the dark, watching the sun rise on the downs, etc. At Brighton we stood around in the cold watching the noticeboards and I began to doubt the sanity of the people of the south coast of England, if this much snow can throw everything so far off whack. Sure it's more than we've seen in most of my lifetime (18 years, so that means I was like 1 or 2 when it last snowed like this, and I wasn't even living in Hastings presumably.) Finally we saw a train to Chichester and I hopped on it, thinking, "Don't get stuck in Barnham! Don't get stuck in Barnham!" (If you remember that is where I spent two hours trapped that weekend I had the Epic Journey Home, when it wasn't snowing, at least...) So we get to Barnham, and we're making good time, and I think I can get to my lecture on time, and then there's this heart-stopping moment as the train engine cuts out in the station, and the scrolling message board goes black, and they're like, "Please listen for train announcements" for a minute. Then finally they announce the train is changing its route... But after Chichester, the next stop. So only 5 minutes delayed and a little shaken I arrive in this pathetic city, and run up to the university, to find it's running half an hour behind schedule. Bleh.

Got through the seminar and went home on the verge of a panic attack, I was so exhausted and fed up and cold and I couldn't feel my feet any more cause i was wearing soaking wet canvas shoes... Once in the house I found it was icily cold, and we had no internet. I had that panic attack while eating a big bowl of pasta (which was pretty interesting), and then dressed up a bit, put on my awesome big stompy boots, and hopped on a train back to Brighton, where I hung out in Waterstones until BlackJack and Rebekah turned up, who are some of my favourite people in the world. Many hours of happy wandering around the lanes feeling so pleased they are now friends passed, with fudge, music shops, and mass goth-spotting. Also our feet all hurt and we were moving like old ladies by the end. I have a new kazoo now. it's bright orange.

We went back to the uni campus, ate sausages and mash, and I went to Write Club with BJ, which was pretty interesting. Everyone wrote really well, and it was fun to workshop writing out loud. I think Tuesdays are my best day for going to Brighton, so I think I will probably go again, and that means I can crash more meetings, and I'll try to bring my notebook next time. Then we watched Black Books for the rest of the evening, and then I went back to BJ's and we passed out until 7. Then there was the whole "argh get an early train with minutes to spare before my lecture" thing again, except we missed the Falmer train, and had to wait around for the next one, and I was convinced I wouldn't make it to my Heritage lecture, but then when I got into Brighton station there was a train to Chi, and I got the fun experience of running in these boots (I swear it was easier than in my trainers, but then for once I wasn't heavily laden down like I usually am at Brighton Station). Once on the train we rumbled off to Chi, and I found I had 15 minutes to spare, so I caught a taxi because at that point I was just Not Bothered again, what with being back in the Doomy City of Cold and Bleh. Made it to my lecture, and it felt pretty good, even if it was mostly what she went over in the sample lecture in Rethinking History last semester.

Anyway, then I got back to the house, found we still had no internet, and Ash was resigned to this fact, if rather annoyed about it, so I sighed, spent a while unwinding typing up some Embers and Elves, snapped when I kept clicking on the Firefox button without thinking, put the Awesome Boots back on, and stomped up to the library to use the internet.

And here I am. Yay. Let's see how long I can keep this up.