Squirrel

And this is a squirrel I drew in Art using oil pastels. Fun fun. Got a B for it, perfectly respectable grade. But in the real Leaving Cert I'm hoping for and 'A', so work to be done there... Took 2 and half hours, I think. Could've used a little more time, actually. The leaves aren't fab.

Have I ever mentioned that I this year decided I adore oil pastels? I never liked using colour, it always turned out looking like something a five-year-old would draw. I always just used pencils to good affect (see the lion that's my sig. Pencil, and then used a computer to get the negative). But oil pastels are just like crayons!! Like the ones I used as a child. Just like crayons except with much better, more vibrant colours, and possible to smooth them out using turpentine or white spirit (haven't tried it yet, but should). Also, they sound much more respectable as an artistic medium.
"What medium did you use?"
"Oh, crayons!"
"... well that's nice."

Yes, I'm ridiculous. But the oil pastels are working pretty well for me, what with my crazy pictures of trees and conkers (horse chestnuts) and birds and, now, squirrels. This was a my third attempt, but I wasn't allowed bring a picture for reference into the exam, so it was purely from memory. Not bad, right?

On the other hand, must improve my standard for the real thing. I get the exam paper for that on the 8th of April and have just three weeks to prepare my piece. Eeek!

In other school news, I have an English essay due tomorrow that I should really be writing now on  cultural context of my comparative texts (Casablanca, The Kite Runner and Emma). Oh well. Not that interesting when you've done it so many times all ready in the last two years... Then again, love the texts *shrugs* And didn't do that well in that section in my exam (while my Hamlet essay, which I don't particularly love, did really well :P) and need to work on it, apparently, before June.

Oh god, June!! So close... It felt like I still had so much time after Christmas... but once the Mocks are over it's like a ticking bomb! *dissolves into hysterical sobs*

Also: Art Design thing that I need to work on before tomorrow. To show that I've been pondering away at it. Need to find a few pics of tigers for it (poster advertising the "Madagascar Show". I've decided that this is an African-animal-themed circus type dealy and am doing a tiger leaping through a flaming ring :D).

ALSO: History project, due in April, meant to start months ago. Need to get cracking. It's on the death of Che Guevara. Cheery, no?

"It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer" ~ Terence McSwiney, previous Lord Mayor of Cork before his arrest. Died during hunger strike in 1920.

Completely irrelevant, but he's in my history book, and yesterday my dad informed me that he's was a relative to my family. Crazy. Then again, Ireland's a very small place...

Spelling

I told myself that I was going to post today, but my subject matter has changed. While there are plenty of things I plan to rant and moan about, for now I leave it to a singular thing: spelling.

I have never been a particularly inspired speller. I generally rely on the fact that I've read enough books that most spellings have become ingrained in my mind, and I'll therefore (all going well) know if they're wrong.

But, occasionally, I completely miss these things. For example, I only learned recently that I did not know how to spell 'glamorous'. My problem with that word (and others like it) was that 'glamour' has a 'u' in it (well, the English spelling, anyway. Possibly a bit less confusing for Americans...) but in 'glamorous' one does not just add 'ous' to the end. No, you must remove the original 'u'. I was informed that I had been spelling it wrong for many years... See, the problem is that, a lot of the time, I don't think about spelling that much. It just happens... But then someone asks you to spell something specifically, and you're at a loss. Suddenly very unsure of the world and your place in it, never mind the place of letters!

Alright, perhaps I'm being a little dramatic. But my friend Kim kept asking me to spell things today, as a result of what I affectionately call a 'mid-Leaving Cert. crisis'. Such a condition does not make you wonder if you're getting old, or your life isn't going anywhere... it's where you start to wonder if there is actually any of the information you need for the most important exams of your life knocking about in your suddenly-empty-feeling head. Your breathing gets erratic, the insomnia starts. You realise that, while you can conjugate verbs and use the dreaded Modh Coinniolach (conditional tense: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=modh+des+bishop&aq=f ) in Irish, as well as knowing how to say 'pathetic fallacy' as Gaeilge (fallas na truamhéala) but do not know a simple phrase such as 'good luck'. I know how to say 'good luck' in French, but not Irish.

Anyway, a similar crisis strikes in English. Yes, I know how to analyse Hamlet, as well as compare and contrast The Kite Runner, Emma and Casablanca, yes I can wax poetic about various poems by William Wordsworth, Eavan Boland and Robert Frost.

What? You want me to spell likelihood? Um... well... It's either an 'i' or a 'y' in the middle, I'm sure of it...
Soliloquy? Does it have an 'a', or doesn't it???
As I'm on the internet I'm perfectly capable of checking these spellings, and am aware that they are correct, however these are examples of words that confused me earlier today...

Speaking of which, my friend also claims that 'medieval' is spelt 'mediaeval', which baffled me accordingly, until I looked it up. Turns out my way is far more common, even in Britain. So, ha! It's a more old-fashioned way, which admittedly does look quite cool... But it's supposed to be that strange old attached 'ae' symbol that was used in His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman for 'daemons' (sorry, first time I encountered the symbol).

Of course, when I was 10 I thought it was spelt like medi-evil, so yeah...

It strikes me that, for someone who wishes to do English at university level lack of spelling could be a bit of a barrier, but I'll worry about that later *shrugs*

QUOTE: "Whoa, an asymptote. I am an asymptote! Brrr!"
My friends are strange... and to think, that quote was exclaimed after an English lecture on 'Faith Healer' by Brian Friel just 'cause the lecturer compared the readers and interpreters of the work to concentric circles...