April 2006 Archives

In other news, I've been invited to a fancy shmancy (you can see what an old hand I am at these sorts of do's) party on May 3rd - this leaves me with tonight's late night shopping on Oxford Street and the weekend in-between the flat move to find a gorgous drop-dead dress (with future wearing potential) for a reasonable price.

Hmmm.

Being somewhat aware of the types of women's clothing stores in the UK, I have realised that my staple H&M will not cut it this time. Unfortch I don't know where to look! Designer is out (did I mention my broke-ass?) and online is out too (I will need to try this dress on before buying).

So, a sum-up of the brief: look Mischa Barton stylish for practically no cost. Any suggestions for stores?

UPDATE: no thanks to you, non-commenting readers, I have found a dress. After trying on 4 dresses at lunch, I went back and bought the very first I tried on. Yeah, it's a standard LBD, but I'm a frugal woman, who intends to wear this puppy more than once.

I've written here before about my need for an incentive to get out of bed in the morning. This morning it was: 'new white t-shirt and payday'. Turns out payday is tomorrow. That was a fun little realisational moment this morning.
So that goes on tomorrow's list, along with 'softball' - the season for my company softball team starts tomorrow. This time, Ian's helping us out (probably not legal, but we have to scrape together a fair split team from a company that's 80% female, okay!) so he's joining us at Regent's Park tomorrow afternoon.

We're not the most competitive bunch (hence them accepting knobbly knees over here to play) and a lot of the time, most of us are silently praying that the other team doesn't pitch up so we can just sit and drink beer and eat chips in the sun. But get into the game, eventually start making contact between bat and ball, and man... it's freaking cool!

As you may know, Ian and I are moving. We're leaving a flatshare of 5 (at times 8) to live by ourselves, so as to avoid the impending nuclear meltdown the next time something is missing from my cupboard. It's not that I can't share, it's, well, it's that I can't share, fine, there, I frikkin said it.

So we've been quite lucky to find a sweet little one-bedroom place right around the corner from where we live. This is good because we know the amenities in the area, we've actually been quite fortunate in terms of having lived on a council estate for 6 months without any major crimes being committed, except for the pink sweatpants and ponytail combos that walk past us every day (*ba-dish!* See what I did there? I am FIERCE!) Of course, having said that now, our last week on the lovely and temperate Pepys Estate will probably be filled with all manner of muggings, hopefully not, knock on wood laminate linoleum floor strips.

What a lovely sunny day today has been!

So in the run up to the move, Ian and I sat down this morning and calculated exactly how much this is going to cost us. With Ian being owed a nice little packet of money by a friend who will clearly be excommunicated (you are dead to me!) once having repaid said cash, and with our landlady deciding to hold on to our deposit for 10 days after having moved out, we are having to fork over a tidy wad of poooonds to our new landlord, money we honestly don't have. Well we have it. It's just that it's a case of having a new flat, and not having a social life.

As such, we're staring down the barrel of a home-life-month shaped gun. We do plan on a housewarming sometime in the future, just probably in a month's time, when the snacks we can provide stretch further than homemade popcorn and cordial.

It's quite fun actually, or at least it has been today. Perhaps as the weeks progress the lack of small luxuries will seem less amusing, but so far it's been pretty hilarious. We're not skint now, but have already taken to the 'what can we make with what's in the cupboard' game. It's probably a good thing too, considering we're going to have to pack up all our crap to move into the damn place.

Sigh. Our damn place.

Link here.

More funny things at xkcd.

Over the last week I've been flitting between two thoughts, constantly. My mind switches from one to the other between different days.
I'm supposed to be here.
I'm not supposed to be here.

I'm supposed to be here because I'm with the man I love, in a job I enjoy despite all my whinging, seeing new things and meeting new people, expanding my horizons very very slowly.

I'm not supposed to be here because all my family is sitting in Knysna today, eating chocolate and enjoying each other's company.

I'm supposed to be here because I'm such a brat at family occassions that I insulate myself and don't appreciate the time spent with my loved ones as I should.

I guess that settles it then.

This weekend it feels like I'm the only person on the internet.

Except for Tony Pierce - he reports on a blogger who killed a little girl.

Do you ever feel like the writing style on the last blog you looked at before starting your own blog post filters into your own writing? I've often toyed with the idea of writing posts themed along the writing styles of the various blogs I read, have never actually gone through with it though because it could turn out offensive, and although popular opinion states that all art is theft of other art I couldn't do justice to most of the bloggers I read.

Ian and I have spent the last two weeks on a bit of a flat-hunt. We've got this eventual plan of buying a place someday, sometime... this little foray into the world of estate agents has been remarkably harrowing for such a small project (looking for a one-bedroom flat within 3 different areas in South East London with plenty of time to spare and a slightly flexible budget).

We've finally decided on a sweet little flat, very close to where we currently live, but without the vauguely life-threatening location. A scary thing is that while researching areas on Up My Street, we entered our current council-estate postcode, and came upon some seriously insane crime figures from the year past. Let's just say that I will now definitely be replacing the pepper spray confiscated by Air Namibia this February for the last two weeks of our stay on this estate.

In other news, Ian and I went out and had a fun night with Dan, Gillifer and NickCageGareth on Thursday (without any cameras present, strangely, for a group including four people with flickr accounts). Fantastic night, accompanied by a run-in with a John Lennon lookylikey who didn't fit the personality of the late Beatle at ALL. The catchline of the evening was Aidan(Dan's lovely flatmate)'s response to his lame attempt at a pick-up line: "Sing a few bars of Imagine or fuck off."
Muchos apologos to Dan and flatmates for my stomach's decision to empty itself a few times at his place, albeit neatly into an awaiting giant white telephone. My only consolation is that the worst of it came later the next morning, once we'd reached home; officially the most violent upchuck on record, and after four years at Rhodes Uni that's quite an accomplishment.

Upcoming: the move to the new flat, a trip to Germ-o-knee to see the sister, brother-in-law and nephew (who is cuter by the day it seems), and perhaps T4 on the Beach?

In the meantime, I present to you the sweetest picture so far this year - become humble in the presence of those eyelashes.

Awesome South Park rip off of Family Guy - commenting on the constant referencing and THEN referencing all the Scientology hoo-ha too. Nice!

All of the memes that have been floating around have served to illustrate to me just how decidedly mainstream my taste is. I am not hip. I didn’t listen to Sigur Ros before ITV started using Hoppipoller for bed tracks. I like me some Beyonce. My reading habits are the only exception to this.
It’s an interesting question – what gives a text meaning, worth, what makes it critically valuable? The populist view is that all texts have as much worth as is ascribed to them by the masses, no more, no less; while Theodor Adorno and friends told us that it was the very influence of the ‘mass’ and their consumption of ‘mass culture’ that resulted in the ‘lowering’ of the quality of texts being produced.

I could say I read some of the canon because I find it relaxing; I don’t. I find it challenging. But then, when given the choice of movie to watch, I’ll generally take the lazy route, forgoing Tsotsi for Inside Man, leaving The French Connection out of the DVD player in favour of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, clicking the ipod wheel up from the In Our Time podcast in favour of The Killers.
Perhaps it’s the influence of 2 years of English Lit at uni, perhaps it’s just because I love the feeling of a heavy book in my hand. But look from my book shelf to my tiny collection of DVDs and the contrast appears; Finding Nemo, Shrek, Shrek II (of course), Bring It On, and soon Firefly season one – not the heaviest of viewing by a long, long shot.

Maybe I should face it - I am Pixar's wet dream.

There’s no excuse really, other than work. I’ve been wanting to blog about work so badly ever since I started… well… working. In a strange way I still think of myself very much as a recent graduate, even though I’ve been working since graduating waaaaay back in November 2004, look at me, such an achiever.

Perhaps it’s because I live with people I studied with; well, that’s about to change with Ian and I moving into a small one-bedroom place in May. We’ve yet to find the spot; the idea is that we’d like to move out of council housing and into a nicer area, somewhere with a park and fewer knife-wielding chavs. Although last night we went and looked at a place, a gorgeous Granary conversion flat, off a little cobbled street… and just at the other end of the cobbled street was the hub of Gangland London. Hey, I’m all for spending my evenings watching turf wars, it’s the walking home alone from the station at night I’m not keen on. That and having to dispose of any bodies thoughtfully discarded on our doorstep. Somehow nifty kitchen counters and a boiler system the estate agent described as ‘innovative’ (as only estate agents can describe such mundane household equipment) don't quite make up for such inconveniences.

The reasons for moving include the unlikely event of my parents ever visiting us (it’s doubtful they’d appreciate some of the aspects of our current abode) as well as the fact that I have officially become one of those people who say they “cannot live in a flatshare”. Sure, Ian and I will still be living together, but frankly, I’ve developed a penchant for having my household disagreements solved with smooches, and I don’t mind some annoying things nearly as much when he does them.

Here is a quick, top-of-my-head rundown of why I am difficult to live with (doesn’t play well with others):

1. Borrow my shoes and I will feel that you owe me for the depreciation incurred 2. Borrow my scarf and I won’t mind; be stroppy with me while wearing said scarf, all bets are off 3. When I buy a box of eggs, use 4 and expect to have 2 left for breakfast, the appearance of only 1 egg in the box the next day is bound to drive me around the twist 4. I want to shower now. Right now. Get out. I’ll be about an hour. 5. When I leave stuff lying around, it’s completely okay. Randomly, when your messiness bothers me, I will self-righteously present myself as Cleany McCleankins.