Cavan Crystal Competition and Google Calendar

I've been trying to keep track of upcoming competitions etcetera for my writing, and this week I have managed to send out a piece or two.
I decided to use Google calendar to keep tack of all the deadlines as I don't have a calendar in my room any more. Only today I found out that it emails you on the day of the deadline (which I have in the calendar as events). Quite cool and useful. I like it a lot so far as it is easy to scroll through the months as opposed to a physical calendar that you would have to flip through. It is also much less hassle when seeing a competition online to just click over to Google calendar as opposed to running into the other room, finding a pen...
It will soon be time for the Cavan Crystal/Windows Publications 19th National Student Poetry Competition. What a mouthful. Last year I was short-listed or long-listed or something; it was all very confusing. (Edit: June 20 2011) This year I was highly commended (again, I suppose). There were over 1400 entries and I came in the top 80, which means about the top six percent.
The link is there is you are living in Ireland and under eighteen. Last year there was an adult competition but I guess that isn't on this year. The deadline is March 31st (put in 32nd there for a minute).

English, Mid-Term, and Kate Bush

I started a post more than a week ago but never got around to finishing it. Last week I was doing mock exams which were stupidly stressful considering they are mocks for an exam that is comparatively unimportant in itself. English was our first exam and we had two and a half hours for paper one (which took me two hours twenty-five minutes) and two hours for paper two.
It was long but not particularly difficult. Despite the fact that I am good at English, I don't really like it. It's mostly the structure of the classes and the material we are forced to ingest that is unfavourable but luckily (to the best of my knowledge) the teacher feels similarly. Irish secondary school teachers have to teach us for the exams, not for the sake of education.

Last time I was at the library the librarian (who is extremely nice) offered me this biography of Kate Bush, which I ended up getting. Seeing the futility of reading it if I had never heard her music, I have been listening to her songs this weekend. MM likes her and has one of her CDs which is cool for me. I like 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Army Dreamers' but she has sung lots of songs. I get the impression I'm still only skimming the surface.



Although I'm only in the first chapter of the book so far her life sounds really interesting and her childhood home - a 350 year old farmhouse in London - the stuff of dreams. Another interesting thing was that her childhood friends were surprised that she grew into such a phenomenon as they really didn't see it coming at all, which seems almost unbelievable but I do often wonder what my friends will become and with most I am uncertain.



The sound of her songs does sort of remind me of the film Sweeney Todd though.