"every single night's a fight with my brain..."

This week has been a bit up and down, I'm in that weird sort of place where I'm ready to just go and get on with what's next, but I'm still not quite ready to leave things behind here. I've only got two weeks left of my work placement, it's hard to believe just how quickly this year has gone! After that I'll be moving back to Plymouth for the final year of my degree - part of me is quite excited to get stuck into the academic side of my course again, part of me is definitely not looking forward to the stress of it all.

I've loved this year in Southampton, the city is great and I've been very lucky to have worked with such lovely people while on placement, I have learnt such an incredible amount in all respects. So as much as I'm keen to get on with things, I'm not quite ready to leave just yet.

The things getting me through this week include white chocolate chip cookies, whipped up due to feeling particularly lacklustre by the end of Thursday.



Safe to say I felt much better after having a couple of these squidgy, syrupy cookies with a cup of tea, while listening to Fiona Apple's latest after seven years.

Her album has been available for streaming over on npr.org before it's release this week  - if you're a fan of her previous stuff I recommend a listen. It's similar to what she's done before but there are some pretty great songs, my faves at the minute being 'Hot Knife', "Werewolf" and the first single "Every Single Night". The beautifully bizarre video for it can be found here.

A film night was also in order so we went to see Promethesus last night. Now, I only recently watched Alien (yeah, I admit a bit behind!) so I didn't really have any expectations for this film or anything. I thought it was brilliant, even though I didn't really have any idea what was going off, though I get the feeling there isn't actually a reason for all the stuff that goes off (but please enlighten me if there is!). The suspense of the film was very good and Noomi Rapace is brilliant in the lead role. I was looking forward to seeing her performance as I loved her in the Swedish "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".

We saw it in 3D which I was initially sceptical about as the last time I saw a 3D version it was rubbish. Promethesus has actually been filmed for 3D though, rather than just edited later, meaning the effect actually adds something, rather than being annoying. And I can totally rock the glasses, haha.

To round off the weekend I made a big pot of chilli. I try and improve this every time I make it - tonight I added a big splodge (technical term) of barbecue sauce and a heaped teaspoon of cocoa powder which seems to make the sauce that bit richer and flavourful.

I served it with rice, spinach and a generous topping of mature cheddar - yum!