Hopefully, once I've gotten all my notes on here, I can get organized and write the actual paper... in the mean time, I have hummus. Mmmm.

( human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reason )

( On the Regress Argument for Infinitism )

( SEP article )

To do list:
-Change into something comfy
-Make huge mug of coffee
-Read Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons
-Read On the Regress Argument for Infinitism
-Read SEP article on infinitism
-outline epistemology essay
-drink some tea
-Read the Republic Book III
-Read The Republic Book X
-shower
-Read some relevant bits of The Cambridge Companion to Plato
-Find a copy of that other plato companion and read it
-Outline Aesthetics essay
-eat something
-yarrr some tudor knitting patterns
-read Agent Causation
-read Towards a Credible Agent Account of Free Will
-clean all the dirty dishes in room
-read Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism
-read Responsibility, Luck, and Chance
-clean room
-outline free will essay
-watch some west wing
-send off schillysocks' scarf
-apply for internships

Ask professors:
-What's an example of a way we can gain beliefs through something other than reasons? experience?

Some deadlines:
Free Will Formative Essay: 23 october
Aesthetics Midterm Essay: 30 October
Epistemology Midterm Essay: 30 October
Free Will Midterm Essay: 6 November
Applied Ethics Formative Essay: Novermber 21

Other dates:
Trip to Pendle HIll: October 24
Visiting Jon: 2nd week of November?
Thanksgiving with Mom: 27th November (weekend)
Hogsmanay: 1-3 January
Player Event: 7 January

don'tthinkaboutjondon'tthinkaboutjondon'tthinkaboutjondon'tthinkaboutjon

Oh god the freshers

Kill me now

Larping this weekend. I'm excited, although it means I have to pack today...leaving tomorrow morning, although time-in is on Friday afternoon. Blah. Oh well. It will be awesome! Trying to bring lots of food to avoid spending money on it there. Speaking of which, will go make muffins in a few minutes.

Money has been a bit tight, but I'm doing okay. Had a bit of a debacle with the rent this month when money that was supposed to have gone in by then hadn't. I got the rent worked out, but I still haven't gotten the money and it appears that no one knows where it is. I hate international transfers. Give it a few days...

I've been finding ways of saving money though. The internet is awesome. Placing a food order from here before I leave so it'll be here when I get back or soon after. A box of instant quaker oats, two boxes of cereal, ten milky way bars, five fig bars, a box of tea, two boxes of jaffa cakes, 500g of rice pasta, eighteen packets of pudding mix, 8 packets of instant mushroom soup, twelve pot noodles, three instant tomato pastas, three instant cheese and broccoli pastas, four instant cheese and ham pastas, and sixteen croissants for a few pennies less than £20, including shipping. Excellent. Obviously not gourmet or very nutritious, but I've been getting my veggies and such from farmfoods lately which is also very cheap... shouldn't have any trouble making it through the summer I hope...

Getting a job has been pretty much impossible. I must have tried eighty or ninety things by now - online applications, gumtree things, CV in at shops, etc.... no luck. Oh well. Keep trying.

I'm working on getting a driver's license, too, which should be fun. Learn to drive with a gearshift on the left side of the road... oi vey...

Feeling a bit meh today, I guess. But everything's awesome really. I am knitting socks. :)

So, i recently got my Honours course assignments, which I'm really happy with. I emailed all the profs asking if I could get some idea of the reading lists ahead of time, and now that they've all gotten back to me, it's time to get to work. Yay! So, for the next couple days, it's time to prepare for Free Will and Moral Responsibility...

( Argh livejournal formatting fail )

Hm. I just opened this up and it had Electronics notes saved. Yeah, deleting that. Screw you electronics!

I passed. I really thought I wouldn't, but I did - I even managed to get a C. I have all my grades back now. For the year overall, two Cs and three Bs. Not nearly as good as I'd like, but pretty decent, and I'd have done a lot better if I'd only taken subjects I knew I'd be good at - the two Cs are from Programming and Electronics. So that's nice. I also got my schedule for next year, and I got all my first choices! It's amazing. I'll be taking Ancient Aesthetics, Ancient Ethics, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Applied Ethics, Themes in Epistemology, and The Nature of Value. I'm also going to take at least one 20 credit religion class, probably two. I'm thinking of maybe Religion 1A, which covers Christianity, Judaism and Islam. (I took Religion 1B last semester, it was a good course.) Or maybe Christian Ethics: Sources, although that will probably take a lot of Bible-reading. I kind of wish I had taken Christian Ethics: Topics when they offered it last year, although I'm sure I probably would have killed my blood pressure with it. I could do God in Philosophy, but I'm already sort of concentrating on that stuff myself. Dunno. We'll see! I'll probably take an extra course each semester, even though I only need to take 20 extra credits, just because they're interesting and I can. Also it means I'm getting better value for my money, since they don't charge me more for extra courses.

I've got options. It's awesome.

Right now I'm sitting in the lounge, listening to Elvis Costello. Someone is having a barbecue, and the smell is wafting in through the window. I'm wearing some really nice socks I knit recently. I was at Jon's last night and had some excellent sex. Life just doesn't get much better. Wait no...

..okay, I'm back, and I have a bottle of Irn Bru. Now life just doesn't get any better.

We only live in this instant - Japanese got Jesus robots!, says Elvis.

I haven't been able to find a job this summer, but I've stopped caring really. I have more than enough saved to pay my rent, and I've been able to pay bills and buy food and such with babysitting money. I even bought myself a sewing machine as a reward for passing Electronics. It's excellent. I'm mending all my clothes, and my tokidoki backpack, and making a waistcoat. Sandy gave me all his old jeans, which fit me really well other than the fact that they're guy-jeans and don't do good things for my butt. So I'll be wearing lots of denim skirts this autumn.

Okay, I'm going to go do something else now.

I am in one of the numerous little computer labs in the main library. Sitting across from me, there's a woman who is creeping me out. From her face, I would say she's maybe 18. I mean, I would say she were younger, even, but she's here, so. Maybe 17. Her hands, though, are the hands of a 40 year old woman. You know - kind of wrinkled, skin looks a bit thinner somehow, the veins stand out more, the knuckles are ever so slightly swollen. It's really, really weird.

Aaaanyway.

The weather is pretty bleak right now. It was snowing a ton yesterday and the day before, and actually sticking, which is highly unusual for Edinburgh AFAIK. Right now I'm looking out the window and it's gone back to good Scottish gray - gray sky, bit of wind, bit of mist, makes everything look gray. Probably still kind of wet out. I like this weather, as long as it doesn't start actually raining or get any colder. Isn't it supposed to be spring soon?

Going down to do this birthday thing in Lincolnshire for the weekend. I'm going to be missing my tutorial on Friday, and I tried to email the tutor but it bounced back. Grr. Well, I'll just show up in two weeks with all the extra work, I guess. At least I'm not presenting. I'm not entirely sure what the plan is - I know we're down there all weekend, and we seem to be going to a really nice restaurant on Friday evening. Which is nice. I always feel kind of awkward when other people are paying for me to be there, though. And the presents! I'm being absorbed.

Before then, I have two essays to write - they're both due Monday. I think I could get away with just having a draft of each of them and then polishing them up on the drive down or whatever, but yes, still stressful. I have one of them mostly done, on McTaggart's paradox. Running into serious issues with the word limit. The other one I've not even done the reading for yet, which makes me nervous. Electronics I'm really behind in, having screwed up a lot in the first two lab sessions (not entirely my fault) and missed this week's because I was working on the essay. And there's a flat inspection on Friday, so I need to falsify our smoke detector testing records (we know it works anyway - twopointoh set it off when he was cooking) and clean my room. which is going to be a monumental task. I've been so busy I haven't been paying any attention to it, can hardly even walk in there.

Class in 15 minutes, I should get going. I forget what the topic is, which is bad. Something ancient. Um. Oh, Aristotle's physics. Crap, I have a tutorial on it tomorrow as well. *sigh*

Note to self: don't forget -
-thank you cards to grandparents and aunt dorothy
-call opera and laserquest
-catch up on lab work
-stop by advice place and careers center

Fnar.

shitshitshitshit d'you ever feel like perhaps there are too many coincidences and maybe you should be a bit more superstitious? like if a friend pokes you and says "I've decided you're pregnant" the condom's going to break next time you get laid?

Anyway.

Got me exam results back, not ecstatic but not too unhappy. I got a 55 in Programming, which is a C. (And I was learning C! Lookit, another coincidence.) I think I could have done better but seeing as the night before the exam I was sure I was going to fail, it's not too terrible. Got Bs in both of my philosophy exams - 62 in 2A, 67 in 2B. I'm pretty happy with that, as the highest grade anyone got was 75 and 76, respectively. I placed pretty well. So yay.

Classes this semester are killer though. I'm taking four - continuing the two philosophy classes, and then also taking Electronics 1 and Religion 1B. This ends up being about 9 hours a day of necessary work for classes, plus an hour or so traveling on top of my normal travel time because Religion is in New College, Philosophy is in George Square, and Electronics is in KB. ARGH. Didn't realize that when I signed up. So, trying to get all my work done and run a society and keep participating in other societies and give the boy some attention and still manage to get some sleep... I've actually managed to work it pretty well so far through extreme use of caffeine and having Wednesdays off since Alan's still in NZ. Main bad effect I've noticed so far: huge increase in typos.

But essay season is coming up so we'll see how that goes. I need to go find birthday presents for Jon's sister and dad (meep) this weekend but I also have two essays to write - hm...

I should be typing up my tutorial sheet right now. Okay. Bai.

Also someone poke me if I haven't posted a ton of notes up here in a couple days.

*nudge*....*nudge*....*nudge*....alright alright

So. Um. Went on vacation with Mom over the holidays. We went to Rome for about a week and were there for christmas, and then Greece for a few days, including new years. Saw all sorts of stuff - the colosseum, the roman forum, the spanish steps, the vatican, lots of museums, the sistine chapel, pompeii, the acropolis, the athenian agora, this really cool ancient theater which is acoustically perfect and no one can figure out why, the oracle of delphi... I was mildly worried about being in Athens because of the riots (thanks jj_maccrimmon for making me paranoid :P) but it was fine. We walked around for pretty much a whole day shopping and looking at the agora, and had no problems. We saw a couple of small demonstrations and lots of really well done, angry street art, but that was about it. And it was great shopping! (I'll post pictures of the art once I get it uploaded.) The rest of the time we spent in Greece was on a bus tour, which we'd never done before. It was pretty good though. Our tour guide was a trip. I spent a decent amount of time arguing philosophy and politics with him. ("Plato was not subversive! I mean hello? Republic?...morality/justice is only acheivable through absolute loyalty to the state..." "Ah, but have you read it in the original Greek?")

I think my favorite part was Pompeii. It's pretty amazing. Really well preserved, you could imagine people living there. (I even recognized Alexander the Great in a mosaic on the floor of one of the houses, which made me feel smart. Or maybe I've just been hanging out with Caitlin too much.) The acoustically perfect theater was also rather cool. I was glad to get home by the end of it though, ten days in close quarters and tight schedules with my mother gets to be a little bit much. Only other bad part was that I had my period while I was there and it made me really ill, like it hasn't since high school... but I guess you're not really a traveler until you've puked on the public transportation in a country where you don't speak the language, right?...right. (It worries me how many life experiences I define by throwing up in odd circumstances.)

Now I'm hanging out in Edinburgh, waiting for classes to start. I'm taking four classes this semester - normal is three - so I'm probably going to be rather stressed out... it'll be okay though. Also Jon is back in town, so, y'know. Win. What else... I made two new year's resolutions: cook more, and don't skip lectures even if they're at 9 AM and I was partying the night before and I know the lecturer sucks. I've already started cooking more. (Last night I made pasta with vegetables, tonight I'm using the leftovers to make ziti.) We'll see how the not skipping lectures thing goes. I'm still waiting for exam results from last semester, although that's not really surprising, at least for my philosophy classes. I really wish they'd get to it and put up programming though, as I'm kind of worried about how that one turned out.

Oh! Also! I am currently using my new computer, which I finally built! It runs really well and makes me oh so happy. I have already filled up more space on it than I had on my old laptop, heh. (Akago = 750 gb, Aiko = 80 gb.) When I first built it I was using an old CTX monitor that was in the flat when we got here and a really grungy keyboard Oscar lent me, but now Jon's hooked me up with a nice keyboard and his old monitor (which is pretty decent.) Now I just need to get some speakers. And paint the case! I got a beige one since I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go steampunky or more traditional gamery. I'm pretty fond of this design, though. so that's probably what I'm going to do.

And now I am off to meet some friends for tea! Wonderful!

So, today I got up early and kicked butt on my Philosophy 2A exam. I ought to be studying for my Philosophy 2B one now - it's on Thursday - but I'm taking it easy for the evening. I was going to just take a couple hours break and then get back to studying, but I dunno, I'm feeling kind of down. I got mildly annoyed at someone for a reason which was not entirely crazy, and was promptly called a bitch, which just kind of made me realize how sick I am of people generally. It seems like everyone is having stupid middle school drama and then whining to me about it. I usually don't have a problem with people whining to me, except for when they are ALL doing it, the people on all sides of the issue. That just leads to more drama, which I do not need during exams. Ugh. And people seem to have very little respect for me lately. Sandy doesn't seem to understand that just because I am rather open about sex and am not completely adverse to him as a person doesn't mean it's okay to grope me. 2.0 is tending to take the few things I say are not okay to joke about and get the entire society laughing about them right in front of me. Squishy is a particular bastard lately and has been treating me rather like an idiot. And then there's the usual "I am an American philosophy student who believes in some concept of the divine and hangs out with british scientists who worship the technological singularity" thing.

I also find Vix insulting my character somewhat difficult to swallow. But there you go.

It's probably just that I miss Jon. I sometimes think he's the only sane person I know. Sane in the good ways, I mean. Or maybe it's just that I started up the pill again a little bit ago and my hormones are out of whack.

And in a few weeks I am sure I will read this and say to myself "and I was complaining about them acting like middle schoolers? Grow up, Gwen."

I am not a bitch. *sighs*