So much to do, so little money!

Well, here we are, November the 17th, 5 weeks and 3 days until christmas and I have bought a total of 2 christmas presents! I just don't know what to get anyone this year, and I spent most of my money on a school trip last week, trains to London are soooo expensive, and that's with a 16-25 railcard discount!
And it's not just christmas, there's so many books i'd like for my history coursework and my EPQ, but I can't get them from any libraries and it's just so expensive to buy them all, plus, I'm still hoping to go to Australia with BOLD EARTH this summer before going to university, that's certainly going to set me back a bit!
I have used Swagbucks for a while now and bought my dad's christmas presents using an amazon giftcard I earned last year, unfortunately I forgot about the site until recently and am now aiming to get another 800SB in time to get some presents! It'd be great if you guys would sign up using my referral link: swagbucks.com/refer/Jodz
Swagbucks is a site where you conduct searches (like google - it uses goggle results), complete surveys, polls, watch videos, play games etc. to gain points "Swagbucks", these points can then be redeemed for items, only giftcards in the UK but there's a wide selection, and I think other items as well as giftcards can be redeemed in the USA. It's a great way of getting Xmas presents and no doubt i'll be using it to partially fund my university life!

Now, before anyone starts saying "get a job", I spent the whole of year 12 looking for a job, and when it looked like I had one, the job was given to an incompetent girl in the year below me, obviously because they were cheaper to employ, but I was a bit miffed.
Anyway, I've been working hard with my business this year and I can't really do that and have a job as I use my weekends for it.
Also, I struggled a lot with school last year, and this year I'm barely keeping above the water in biology, I don't want to compromise my university place for a bit of extra cash, especially now that I've heard back from all 5 choices in the space of 4 weeks (record time!).

Anyway, moving away from money, I've been considering going geocaching with a friend sometime soon, we had a brilliant adventure once just going into town, and I think geocaching would be even more fun! I've only done it once with explorers, and we never found anything (Well, it was pitch black at 10pm) so I'd love to have another go!
I think i'll see what my homework's like next week and maybe go next saturday, it looks so much fun!

A typical geocache full of swaps

Anyway, I've been homework-ing all day and now i'm finally done, I'm going to have some quality Primeval time, and then Doctor who at 7:30!

Alons-y!

Decisions, decisions....

Well, today was a day full of decisions: "Do I take up the EPQ or not?", "Do I buy chips tomorrow, or save my money?", "Which bus stop should I go to?", "Should I do a revision post or save it for tomorrow?".

In case you are wondering, I haven't yet made a decision on EPQ, I'm saving my money, I went to the second bus stop and i'm saving the revision post for tomorrow.

I really like the idea of the EPQ, but i'm having diffiulty choosing a topic, my intesets include psychology, dinosaurs and scouts....is there any way I could combine those? "Do scouts have a similar cognitive ability to that of dinosaurs?" I think that'd be pretty difficult to research somehow....

I've also been improving greatly at my time management recently (hence why I have time to write this blog), I read my textbooks on the bus and do as much homework as I can in the mornings before school - I work best between 7 and 10am for some reason, that generally leaves me with quite a few frees, which I use to do revision in the library, and sometimes I do some more work for 20 minutes after school as my bus doesn't arrive till around 4pm. This means that while I do still do work at home, my load is lighter and I can relax a little more, it's taken me 6 months to get into this routine!

Obviously, this time will decrease once I start being a young leader, and i'm planning a lot of charity events at school, but I think i'll cope, just about.

We had a speaker come into school today about independent living, it got me thinking about having my own bedroom again if and when I go to Uni - I live in a one-bedroom house and after 3 years of having the bedroom and my parents having a pull down bed in the living room, I got kicked into the attic, but we discovered that it's impossible to sleep up there in winter so i now sleep on a tiny mesanine floor, which is too small for me to do my work effectivey as it's impossible to keep tidy, but downstairs is too noisy.

Hopefully, my room at uni will look less like this:



My old room - messy

And more like this:

Note the big window - lots of light!

Not that i'm excited to have more independence or anything....
Just as a heads up, I won't be posting friday or saturday as i'm away, I may post on sunday though.
I shall probably do homework friday evening till around 10pm, then watch a film/play on xbox.
Then saturday I'll get up at 8/9 depending on whether I have any homework left, I'll work till around 11, either on homework or revision, or both (I'm such a model student...) and then I'll probably run into town to buy a couple of birthday presents, get back and settle down to make some bracelets for the afternoon, perhaps meet up with a friend, and watch a DVD in the evening while pigging out on mini poppadoms, sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, chocolate and scotch eggs.
Much the same will follow on sunday, minus the DVD and pigging out, and if the weather is ok, i'll nip down the tennis courts to burn off all those calories from the night before, and get picked up around 4, arriving home by 4:30pm.
This is generally how a weekend spent at my nans is spent, I quite enjoy them, but I'll probably be staying less often now as work mounts up and I need the internet over the weekend.

Off now to get ready for explorers - 3 course meal to be cooked on a makeshift wood-burning stove! I'l ttry and get some pictures. :)

Alons-y. x