Monday 29 December 2008

Twilight

I decided that after the craaaaazeeee amounts of money I spent on gigs last year, I would change my free time from gigs to movies! So much cheaper. And there's popcorn. And icecream. And other very bad sugary snacks that will surely make my teeth fall out...maybe I should go back to gigs? Chuckle.

So the first fillum in the all new Dizz goes to the Movies movie was Twilight. I'd heard lots of things about it, mainly that it had a massive opening weekend in the States. And that it had that guy out of the Harry Potter films. And that it was about vampires. All so far so good. Unfortunately the same can't be said of the movie itself. I was a bit bored to tell the truth. Don't get me wrong. I can totally see that if you are 14 and you're a bit of an emo kid then you'll probably absolutely love it. There's sexual tension and chemistry between the two leads, there's lots of action and flying up to the tops of trees for wondrous mountain views, there's cool clothes and big trucks. But you know what? It just wasn't The Lost Boys. And that's the film I saw when I was 14. But D tells me that the books are flying off the shelves in the bookshop where she works so it's obviously working for the 14 year olds of this generation. Nyeh. Good for them. Glad they enjoy it. But me, not so much. Hey-ho.

Any recommendations of what I go and see next then? I'm thinking Yes Man looks pretty funny. Anything but Australia. My only rule for the Dizz goes to the Movies year is that Nicole Kidman cannot be in it. Amen to that xx

In trying to be organised...

...I managed to make all of my photos disappear! I went to my photobucket account and arranged all my photos into albums but this must have changed the links so they weren't showing up as they had been before. Anyhoo, have been back in and changed them around again so hopefully you should be able to see the visuals again. Doh!

Sunday 28 December 2008

Seasons greetings!

I know it's a wee bit delayed but Happy Christmas 2008 blog readers! Hope you've all had a fabby time. It's been absolutely lovely for me so far. And the heavenly news is that I still have another week off work. Yep 7 whole days before I have to go back, yip yip!

After last year I now believe that Christmas should be a visual thing for you guys so I'm posting a few choice piccies from the day itself.

First up, as usual, is the din itself, yum:
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I'd taken up a cd that I knew my dad was going to love. He loved it so much he decided it would be a good idea to fling me round the room and dance to it:
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Look at those moves!
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What can I say? I'm a total daddy's girl:
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This is the port in the decanter that my great Aunty M left my parentals. It weighs a chuffing tonne! But it's dead posh like:
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Happy days. It's hard to pick a best moment cos I had such a lovely day, but I can say with absolute certainty that my best present is the drum lessons!!! Stand back Meg White cos here comes Dizz....

Happy holidays! xx




Friday 12 December 2008

Happenings

It's a good job you blog readers don't expect daily updates on this here blog cos we would fail miserably were that the case. Luckily you just seem to be rather content little peeps whenever one of us decides to do a post. Phew. As is usual there has been lots of happenings in Dizz-land so I'm going to break it up into nice tidy sections.

Thai
My thai cookery class finished on 1st December so Monday was the first night without the class. But this doesn't mean that thai has to stop! Oh no. Quite the opposite in fact. Now that I know what I'm doing I'm becoming a wee bit experimental. I get to my kitchen, open the fridge, and start to think, hmm if I threw that together, added a bit of soy sauce, a bit of dry stock, a tablespoon of sugar and wok-ed it all up that would be right tasty. And it usually is! The thing that I have loved most about the class, beyond the obvious of getting to eat lots of yummy food, is that it's made me even braver in the kitchen. Not that I've been much of a wuss in the past I hasten to add. Ask anyone, I love my kitchen. It's one of my most favourite places to be. But I am really into the thai. Truly. The aromatic-ness of it is just so blummin' yummy that I find it irresistable. So if you're due round my house anytime soon for a meal don't be surprised if the dish served up is of the thai variety.

Happy Wednesday
On Wednesday night Wavey and I popped along to Fizz's in order to help her celebrate Wednesday. There was absolutely no reason for this, nope, none at all, and should anyone suggest that Wednesday was in fact Fizz's birthday then they might be shot...However, we were not celebrating birthdays, we were celebrating Wednesday. So in order to do this we had chilli. It was very yummy chilli, but not my kinda chilli. I'm a spicy girl. I love my food hot and when I make a chilli I'm generally taking off clothes in order to eat it. But, it was still very tasty! Then we had cake. As we all know you absolutely do not need a reason to have cake, so this carrot cake was enjoyed muchly too. We followed the meal with a particularly energetic game of Frustration which is possibly one of the best board games ever (Fizz, just to check, would this be hyperbole or exaggeration...?) somehow Wavey won the first game. Quite how this happened is beyond any of us as Wavey knows the rules, he cannot win, ever. It applies when him and Fizz play Squish and it definitely applies when we play board games. The world was returned to its rightful order when I won the second. We rounded off this happy Wednesday by watching The Dark Knight which was, erm, dark. And long. But good. And I did like Batman's motorbike, funkay!

Late night shopping
Thursday night is traditionally late night shopping in our fair town in the lead up to the Christmas festivities. I was supposed to be joining Cat in the search for a slutty dress (the reason for this will appear in a future post...got to tease you readers so that you keep coming back for more) but she had to go get her hair cut so instead Jillybean and I headed in to brave the masses. And masses it was. Ugh. It was horrible. All the shops were packed. People were jostling and bumping and generally looking super stressed. I was doing pretty well with the whole shopping thing, I even managed to complete the items on my list! Yay! By about 6.30pm I was losing the will to live. I texted Wavey who was also in town and we were going to meet up and have coffee and cake but by the time we actually found each other we decided it would be best to just get in the car and get the hell out of dodge and go and have tea instead. So that's just what we did.

Sneaking it in there
Wavey=boyfriend. Dizz=very happy. Nuff said really.

Mincemeat
This year I got a recipe from T at work for making my own mincemeat, you know for making Christmas mince pies. I've had this recipe for a couple of months now and it's always been yep, I'm making the mincemeat today/this weekend. And it's never happened. Until tonight! Oh yes. I've finally got around to it. And it smells SO GOOD! I had to cover it in foil in the end cos I kept going in to sniff it! So I have to leave it overnight "for the flavours to mingle" and then I bake it tomorrow. I'm hoping that it's going to taste as good as it looks/smells. I took some piccies of it but my camera batteries are recharging and every other pair that I try in there are obviously near death cos it's just not playing. I'll do a before and after once it's cooked up. Yum!

Operation clean-up
On Sunday 21st I'm hosting a pre-Xmas open house shindig type thingie and as there's family coming as well, my lovely ma has insisted that she come round and clean my windows and hoover my curtains and scrub the yard and feather duster the walls cos as we all know housework is not really up there on my list of priorities and therefore these things do not occur to me. i'm not sure what time proceedings will begin but I'm sure you can feel my sense of excitement at this task...but at least the rellies will be able to say how sparkly my windows are.

Leg warmers/knee high socks
I'm loving them. I've rocked them several times with my ugg-u-likes and belts. Oh and I bought a pair of over the knees that have ribbons round the top. Woohoo! Fizz is currently knitting me some legwarmers with penguins on them. In red. I'm very excited about them!

Christmas cards
Will I ever write them? Let's hope so cos I've got a biiiiiiig list!

And that my dears is it. It's been a lengthy post. I hope you've all stuck around til the end. Watch out for the mincemeat bake-a-thon piccies xx

Sunday 7 December 2008

Christmas crackers

Greetings! Blimey it's December already. That whizzy time thing that I keep talking about...still going on. And it's causing mayhem. Let me tell you about a few of the things that have been happening in Dizz-land.

First up, I reckon it all started when my watch battery died at quarter to one in the a.m one night. From that point on I started being disorganized Dizz. Who'd have thought that such a simple thing as a watch could be the cause of all the madness, but I'm blaming that, so there. Of course the ever ailing flexi meant that I didn't want to take an hour for lunch to get it fixed and all the battery shops close before I finish work at 5. So for 2 whole weeks I was watch free. I was relying on my mobile phone for the time and it didn't do a very good job. And thus it began.

My toaster broke. This is because I'm addicted to Warburtons crumpets. And I was trying to make them fit in my toaster cos my cooker/grill is on its last legs (so another story) and they got stuck. And smoke started smoking out of it. Mucho flapping later I opened the window and had got most of the poor burned crumpets out.

Then yesterday I couldn't get into my living room. I will have to explain now. Dizz-dad is super conscious of security so had a lock fitted that would prevent any burglars or bad'uns from getting further than the downstairs should they dare to break into my humble abode. So I come downstairs for breakfast on Saturday morning. Turn the key. Nothing. I shake the handle a few times. Still nothing. I try turning the key again and shaking the handle and still no joy. Luckily I had my mobile phone, called the Dizz-dad and explained and he came down and sorted it. But it did mean a new lock. And mucho hassle for my poor dad who had to make the brand new lock fit into the built in 1901 house door. Hmmm. But he has done a valiant job. My dad rocks!

Oh and last week when I was selling icecreams up at theatre I had a particularly horrible evening where many people were grumpy at me. I missed my bus and had to call my dad for a lift. He'd just got out of the bath. More grumpy. Oh and when I got there I sold 4 icecreams so it was totally worth all the hassle...poor Dizz ended up a bit teary at the end of that night, but felt much better after a Green and Blacks hot choc and a hug from the bloke-friend.

There are many positive things happening though now. I had my watch battery fixed yesterday. And since then I've finished buying most of my Christmas presents. I've cleaned up the spare room that actually did look like a bomb had hit it. The play has finished so I get my life back to get organised for writing Christmas cards. And sorting out the party that I'm throwing in exactly 2 weeks, yikes!

Oh and the bestest thing was seeing Kings of Leon on Thursday. OH WOW! Did they rock. Oh yes. It was utterly fabulous and me and D had a marvellous time. We're hoping for Aerosmith next. Enough of this indie girlie nonsense, time to be a serious rock chick I reckon!

Over and out xxx

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Lurve

Yes, it's true. I'm in love. I'm afraid it's the unrequited kind though. Let me explain...

I happened to watch a program called 'What time is it?' last night. It was about relativity, the big bang, alternative universes and so on. I know, most of you are thinking 'yawn' - bit that's the sort of thing that rocks my boat. Even so, I didn't expect it to be quite so interesting - part of it was shot at Chichen Itza in Mexico - my old stomping ground. But the BIG surprise was the presenter, one Professor Brian Cox. This guy does NOT look like a professor. He looks like an indie-boy rock star. And he has this goofy smile and quirky sense of humour, talks with his hands and gets really enthusiastic about sciency stuff. I was close to licking the screen right off my telly.

But then, this morning, I googled him and it turns out he IS a rock star! (Well, a pop star). He was in D:Ream. Is this man for real? THEN I read he was science consultant on the film Sunshine - so he knows Cillian Murphy!

Unfortunately he's married. Oh, and seriously famous and out of my league. Sigh. Pine.

Here's a photo. Lick, lick.

Saturday 22 November 2008

....... blogger

I've deliberately left that first bit blank so you can fill in your own name. I was thinking of missing? AWOL? Forgotten? Neglectful? Anyway, I know I have been all those things so I apologise blogland peeps. Time is a-flying by. At an astonishing rate. I don't even want to think that next week it's only 4 weeks until Christmas. Particularly as I haven't even started my shopping. And I'm hosting a shindig on 21st December that I haven't even thought about getting organised for. Ooops. As usual, perhaps the best moniker for me would be: Disorganised Dizz.

How to explain my absence? Hmmm well I've been poorly. Again. Yep the evil libraryland is spreading its germs wide and there are a lot of us being struck down. First up was the cold that must have come from the devil himself cos it was EVIL. Seriously. I lost my voice and everything. Then I was left with a cough that would not go away, cough cough cough. Just when I was still fighting that one, I started feeling all queasy and achey and ended up being struck down with some head-achey, ear-achey, general-achey virus. Nasty. So not impressed with the libraryland. I blame the overheating. Normally at this time of year we're freezing our asses off but this year, someone decided it was a good idea to heat the building properly. But instead of properly they've gone for overkill...and may kill off their staff in the process. It's freezing outside so you have to layer up big. But inside you're walking round in a vest top. Crazeeee place.

I've been trying to think of how I would get back into blogland and as usual I came up with a type of list. And here it is.

Things I've gained:
1. Bigger hair
2. Purple streaks in bigger hair
3. My shopping mojo. It finally returned after a loooong absence. I kind of wish it hadn't had to return in H&M where I ended up buying 6 tops and a dress but hey, I'm just glad it's back. That was very worrying for a while there.
4. Another pair of fake Uggs. I know. I fall over in the wet. But they're sooo cosy. And they keep your feet warm. And are kind of like wearing big slippers. Who can argue with that?
5. A "bloke-friend" (I thought if I just sneak that in there then no-one will ask questions...)
6. A kitchen floor. Finally. No more concrete. Wow!
7. A new university family baby. Welcome to the world Baby C. He's utterly gorgeous and I can't wait to meet him in January.

Things I've lost:
1. Sense of time. Seriously. Where did it go? It's like the super speedy Daphne in Heroes, whooosh, s'gone!
2. I was going to talk about my lost shopping mojo but that ended up being gained, yay!
3. I'm on the way to losing my handbag. It's got a hole in the seam and stuff is going to start falling through. Let's hope the new found mojo includes shopping.
3. Seemingly the ability to count...methinks this one should be number 4...

Odd things:
The travelling on the number 36 bus has, as ever, thrown up some extremely odd things, highlights have certainly been:
1. A silver spoon. Just laid on the floor under the seat. All on its own. Not in a pack. How? Why? What?
2. A girl getting on the bus in, let's face it, increasingly chilly temperatures, wearing a tee-shirt, 3/4 jeans, and a pair of gladiator sandals. Erm hello? What is the confusion here? The season is now WINTER. This means boots, coats, hats, gloves, scarf. Get a grip girlie.
3. A fight. Yep. Some horrible man called my bus driver the c-word the other day. The bus driver was not going to take this lying down. He turned off the engine. Got out. And faced up to said horrible man. Mucho arguing later horrible man backed down. Perhaps it was the sardine-like packed bus with all those witnesses that put him off taking his stupid argument any further.

However, other odd sightings have included a man cycling past me. Now I know this doesn't seem all that odd. But when he's on a uni-cycle that is as high as a bus. That's kind of odd. Yes? Oh and the GIANT man at work. He's huge! Must be at least 7 foot tall. Seriously. GIANT! Bet he has bother finding trousers that fit.

Which brings me right up to date. I'll try to be better, I promise. I will be a GOOD blogger.

For now though, the kettle beckons me saying "make tea Dizz, make tea"
Later my blogland alligators xx

Monday 17 November 2008

Shuuuuuuuz!

I've found the perfect shoes for me! Look!



I'm joking, they would cripple me. And they're 75 quid.

Sunday 2 November 2008

Halloween

The shroud was a big success! Dizz looked gorgeous as the Bride of Frankenstein...



Tizz was super-scary as a homicidal doll...



Here's Dizz stabbing Tizz, with Wavey lurking in the background...



Er, I didn't seem to get any photos of myself though. Shame.

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Halloween

scary halloween outfitI'm notoriously camera-shy, so rather than actual photos of my halloween outfit, I've drawn a preview:

Is the hair as scary as you imagined Wavey?

Friday 17 October 2008

Squish

Dizz is on baby-visiting duty in the big smoke, so I'm trying to amuse you in her absence. Luckily I've been quite busy recently so there's plenty to blog about.

I've played squish with Wavey a few times recently. Squish is very similar to squash - played in the same court with the same type of bat and ball - but the rules are subtly different. First of all, there are no winners and no losers, except if you're playing Wavey, and then he's always the loser. Secondly, the 'out' rule only applies if the ball hits the air-conditioner or light fitting, or goes over the top of the back wall and into the hallway outside. Other rules include (but are not limited to):
  • The ball is allowed to bounce as many times as it takes you to get there.
  • Players should aim to serve an equal number of times. Unless one of you is a bit pants and needs extra practise.
  • At the mutual discretion of the players, you may both play with your weak hands (to get the other half of your brain working).
  • You may challenge your opponent to play 'in the style of' a famous person - Mick Jagger and Amy Winehouse are good examples.
  • The main aim of the game is to keep the ball in play as long as possible; long rallies are the goal.
  • The secondary aim of squish is to make your opponent laugh - laughing uses energy and will help you both get a good work-out. Any annoyance caused to the uber-competetive, mega-serious boys in the court next door is a bonus.
  • If the ball is on your side of the court you can shout 'mine' and hit it again, even if it's not your turn.
  • Any shot deemed to be 'sneaky' gives your opponent the right to be a bit huffy for a while (unless you are Dizz, who can't huff for toffee).
But the most important rule of all is the 'over there' rule. It's a bit like the offside rule in football (soccer to our American friends), in that its definition fluctuates. The exact parameters depend on factors such as who's playing, how knackered they are and what current injuries they have (but hang-overs are not taken into account, Wavey). The basic idea of the 'over there' rule is: if the ball is too far away for you to be able to get to it comfortably, you don't have to return it. In fact, in squish etiquette, your partner should really shout 'mine' and hit it again, to a more reasonable place this time.

If you'd like to read the full set of squish rules, you can't. They exist only in my head and are subject to change at the drop of a hat.

Balanced

Continuing with the theme of classes, last night I went to a really fantastic one. The universe is back in balance, my yin and yang are in harmony.

I have had some problems with my back recently, so my physio has given me "exercise on prescription" which means I get to go to exercise classes for a fraction of the usual cost. I've tried a few different kinds; last night was Salsa Aerobics. It's great - not real Salsa, but still sexy and fun. And the music's great - Gloria Esteban, Marc Anthony, Elvis Crespo, La Ley... ah, takes me back...

I've been a few times now and I'm starting to learn the moves. They have names like mambo, cha-cha-cha, sashay, charleston and shimmy. I know it's really no different from a normal aerobics class with moves called v-step, box-step and side-step but somehow it's soooo much cooler.

And the instructor is brilliant. She manages to pitch the difficulty level just right, so you're concentrating so hard on getting your feet in the right place that you forget how knackered and sweaty you are. But the cleverest bit is she manages to time the routines so well that we quite often end on the very last beat of a song, normally doing jazz-hands. It's so cool!

Tuesday 14 October 2008

Rant. Sorry.

I've recently started going to a creative writing class - I've always enjoyed writing but I was never sure if my stuff was any good. So I signed up for the class. I've been twice now, and I'm going to have to stop going because the teacher is so inept it actually makes me grind my teeth in frustration.

Last night, for example, she recommended that we read a book, but couldn't remember the title. When she did eventually remember the title she couldn't remember the author. But apparently the book is 'very very good, really very very good.' The she recommended a website but wasn't sure of the exact address.

Later she handed out a photo-copied document that explained the 5 important elements in a short story - characterisation, plot etc. - which recommended 5 different short stories to illustrate particularly good examples of these elements. Then she told us she hadn't actually read any of these short stories. But somehow still knew that they are 'very very good.'

Later still she was explaining an exercise which involved stating the plot of a book or play in 12 words. She hadn't prepared an example beforehand and the only one she could come up with on the spur of the moment was Romeo and Juliet; bad choice as it turns out because she didn't know the plot! And in case you were wondering, the play is apparently 'very very good.'

Grrrr....

Monday 13 October 2008

Dress/shroud



Not sure it'll look as good as the design... We'll see.

Sunday 12 October 2008

I Do (not)

It's soon to be Halloween. And I've not really done much about that, other than buy sweeties for the kiddies in the street, since I was at university. However, this year is going to be very different. Fizz and I have been invited to a fancy dress party at D's house. This is very exciting! This is my second fancy dress of the year and I'm loving it! Seriously, I think all parties should be fancy dress, it's so much fun. Mucho thinking about what I was going to go as later, I decided on the Bride of Frankenstein:

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Big hair, not a problem. White streaks, get thee to Danglers and invest in more nasty synthetic hair. False eyelashes, never been worn before but hey I'll give anything a go. Smokey eyes and red lipstick, grrrooowwwwwlll. Scars on the neck, get me some black eyeliner. Wedding dress, arrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!

I've only ever experienced the wedding dress nightmare one other time. At theatre they were selling this hideous 80s one and needed a model. I was the only person who would vaguely fit it. And it was horrible. Hated it. Most uncomfortable. It would be fair to comment that I don't have that bride gene thing. I've never wanted to be a princess for a day. The thought of a big white dress and being the centre of attention all day is enough to bring me out in a cold sweat. Dizz does not want to be a bride. Are we clear on that?

So, Fizz decided we would make the dress out of a bed sheet. And she was off. Designer mode. Within minutes there was a drawing. And work began yesterday. It's going to be so cool. It's tighty-tight across the boobs and will be laced up at the back, with a fishtail and huge sleeves and a ruffle round the bottom. Photos will of course follow. Oh and it's probably going to be see through, chuckle. Now that's my kind of dress!

xx

Thursday 9 October 2008

Job, new

How typical is that? Weeks of inactivity on the blog then a sudden flurry of posts! You can tell that we suddenly have time on our hands. Quick update for today, the cough has eased slightly to be replaced by a pouring nose, yep, all the cold that has been stored up waiting to come out has finally moved from my throat and is coming out of my nose. This is seriously the cold of the devil. I hope you've all managed to avoid it and those of you who've visited me, I can only apologise if you do get it but it was at your own risk that you entered the house of germs!

But that is not the point of today's post. Those of you dear readers who chat to me on a regular basis know how incredibly disillusioned I am by libraryland at the moment. And it's got nothing to do with the fact that I have a broom up my arse I'm doing so many jobs in there at the moment. No it's more a realisation that perhaps libraryland is not where my future lies. Which of course begs the question, where the hell does it lie?

Well if I were being totally honest my ideal job of dreams would be a sort of personal shopper/stylist type combination where I would basically take people shopping and make them spend loads of money. But the sensible part of me knows this will never happen and I kinda have a mortgage and bills to pay so moving swiftly on. I went to see a careers adviser at work and he gave me all these great websites to look at and tasks to do to help me get ideas of where I should go next. Due to the sheer boredom of suffering from the devil's cold I've finally got round to doing just that. And the results were very pleasing and surprising.

It was one of those things where you find your ideal job by answering certain questions about your skills and interests and so on. The resulting list could have been penned by my own fair mind. The first one was a broadcast assistant. Funny as my first degree was in Media Studies and I specialised in radio...then there was a museum curator, an exhibition display manager, there was also academic librarian in there and a couple of other libraryland jobs so I'm not ruling them out completely. In total there were about 8 jobs that I was interested in. So now I just have to find one of these ideal jobs. And get an interview. And then wow them with my super-ness. If any of you readers have any suggestions as to how I go about this, please don't hesitate to let me know in the comments box. And I'll keep you posted should I ever manage to escape from libraryland! Wish me luck...xx

What a bod!

I'm in love with Mohinder from Heroes. All I can say is OH! Suits you sir.


Who knew he had such a good body? So what if it's peeling off, he is yummy!

Wednesday 8 October 2008

Fizz De Milo

You've heard of the Venus de Milo, well here's a new take on that theme. Not nearly as valuable or beautiful, but much funnier. At least Dizz seemed to think so when we were making it.

It all started when I read one of the many craft books that I lust after but can't afford to buy. The book in question contained instructions on how to make your own dress-maker's dummy. I've wanted one of those for ages but they are way out of my price range, so the idea in the book was perfect for me. Basically what you have to do is put on a large old t-shirt and then get a very good friend to wrap you in duct tape. It has to be a very good friend because there is boob-touching involved.


I had already started before Dizz arrived, and was getting a bit anxious because 1) I couldn't sit down and 2) I was having a little trouble breathing. This is what greeted Dizz when she got here.

After Dizz finnished wrapping me I felt a bit like C3P0 from Star Wars - I couldn't move my arms.


As soon as Dizz cut me out of the Fizz-suit, the first thing she wanted to do was try on my boobs...


And here's the finished product. Fizz de Milo. A masterpiece. Thanks Dizz!

Boo!

Where did we all go? It's like I was doing stuff in my yard, I was blogging about it and then boom! Disappearing bloggers! Weeeelll, not sure about Fizz and Tizz but I know I've just been so fecking busy that the time is not just flying by, it's whooshing by like that new Heroes character: super speedy girl or whatever she might be called.

The only reason I'm able to find the time to blog today is because I'm off work poorly sick. Yep, the students returned to libraryland and straightaway we was all struck down. This is a seriously nasty cold. It started out with a sore throat that lasted for 2 weeks, then the throat thing turned into a coughing thing, then the coughing thing turned into a losing my voice thing, and now all I do is cough, splutter, sneeze, and moan a lot. Bah! I coughed so much this morning when I first woke up I thought I was going to barf. I couldn't catch my breath. Awful. Hideous. Oh so attractive. Seriously I haven't worn makeup or done anything with my hair for the past two days. I've crawled out of bed, put on some crappy laying around clothes and been clamped to my sofa. I had to venture out to the shops just now as needed milk, bread, etc etc, and went out with crap hair and sans makeup, and didn't care, that is the important point here people. There is one positive side though. I haven't lost my appetite. And my voice is returning to its normal pitch rather than sounding like a 13 year old boy going through "the change".

I don't really feel up for blogging about everything that I've done in the past few weeks but it's been good times indeedy. I will say thai cooking, The Ting Tings, the night I did Burlesque and basically learned how to perform a lapdance, more thai cookery, lots of laughs, lots of good things, lots of bed. That's all you're getting.

Hope you are all okay out there. And hopefully I'll be back at work soon and will be able to stop coughing so much. Bub-bye xx

Tuesday 16 September 2008

Rain stops play

We began work at 9am this morning. I know I registered for a holiday somewhere, I'm just not sure where it's got to...nah in actual fact, I am being super chilled about my holiday being taken over by yard jobs. As I'm not at work. And I love not being at work. Even if I am still working, as it were. Confused? Yep, me too!

Anyhoo, we were working away steadily. I was painting more wall, Dizz dad was doing more pointing, I stopped painting to wire brush and managed to scrape my finger right along brick, lots of blood! Who would have thought so much could come from such a small scrape? I ignored it though and went back to painting, but then got paint in the cut so had to come in and wash it. And all the while, the paint is textured and it's basically taking skin off the palms of my hands. Niiiice. So now you know my ailments...

The day progresses along. As does the rain. This doesn't stop Dizz dad. We're waterproof dontcha know. So we carried on. In the rain. By this time I'd ceased painting and was scraping bricks to ensure a smooth painting surface. And Dizz dad was up a big ladder working on the shed roof. Once he'd thrown a few tiles on the floor and snapped off the rotten wood, we declared a trip to Wickes was needed. Get in car. Speed along to Wickes. Buy wood. Speed home. All the while, it's still raining. Dizz dad, ever the trooper, gets up on the ladder again and makes lots of hammering noises as he attaches some wood and tiles. I was by this time just holding the ladder. Did I mention it was raining? Eventually even the Dizz dad admits defeat and we were rained off. Blimmin' weather!

I do have good news. The bathroom is finished! Yep. I built my wee unit for all my stuff today and that is one room that is totally and utterly complete. So here's a couple of pictures:

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And I've got a new microwave now so here's a corner of the kitchen that looks normal:

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However, you just have to step back a few paces to get the rest of the picture of the kitchen:

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Now I know you're all really jelly and want your own ladder in your kitchen. Just give me a shout and I'll pop it round for you to borrow. However, the knee pad will require more negotiation.

Hope you're all having a fun week xx

Monday 15 September 2008

Weight lifting

First official day of my holiday from work today. And I've painted one wall of the house the lovely shade of Sand. It's already looking cracking. Comment of the day from the Dizz dad as I climbed the biiiiig ladders to reach the top: if you're going to fall make sure you don't drop the paint...

Have also been shopping today as well. And the shopping included lifting:
1 x 10.5kg unit to self assembly for the bathroom
1 x 11.5kg microwave
3 x 12.5kg bags of mortar
1 x 15 litre of masonry paint up a very tall ladder

So now I'm going to go and lie down,
Later alligator x

Sunday 14 September 2008

Posh pudding to dog rough in 2 days

As I post this tonight, I will officially be caught up, yay! This has been a very busy week, it has to be said.

Friday night saw me heading off to Fizz's for our much loved viewing of Ugly Betty, and the new treat of it being accompanied by food. The previous week it was home made burgers in a "soft bap" which were very yummy indeedy. Wavey had come along to join in the fun, but declared the lads of his footy team more important this week, which is fair enough really as let's face it, UB is more of a girlie thing, and one thing Wavey ain't and never will be is girlie. Anyhoo this week saw a yummy vegetable pizza, lots of green stuff, nice juice. And then a surprise for pudding. Oooh thinks I, what has Fizz cooked up? Turns out it was actually Asda who cooked it up and not Fizz, but hey I'm not fussy. And pudding was Creme Brulee. Yum-my! Fizz informed me that this is a very posh pudding. And that it isn't actually just custard as I had always thought with a crunchy sugar topping, but is actually pronounced coustarrrrrd (phonetic version there). Personally anything that requires a blow torch when you see chefs making it is pretty damned cool. I can report that it was very tasty. And UB was funny. And Friday night was over.

Which leads me very nicely to Saturday night. For that evening the plans were to celebrate D's birthday in style. First up we were heading to our local much loved cinema to watch the Sex and the City movie again. And to enjoy the cocktails that were being served up. And to dress up as total girlies and revel in the utter girlieness. Our friend from way back who we recently found again via the joy of facebook, KB was to join us. Afterwards we were to continue the drinking and end up dancing. Best laid plans and all that...

The movie went well. The cocktails were extra yummy. Mainly because we could take them in with us to watch the movie. How utterly mahhhhhvellous dahhhhlings. We came out of the movie and teetered our way towards the club. It was pretty dead so we decided that more drink was in order before we ventured in. So we headed off into the town towards the Tommy Sheraton. As we approached the traffic lights to cross over a woman appeared behind us who was 50 if she was a day. She was wearing a bright yellow dress. Which clashed lovely with her glowing orange skin and bleached blonde hair. She called us darlings and asked us if we were heading to the Wobbly Goblin. I need to know the way there, says she. As I did know the way I kindly volunteered to take her that way. I warned her that it wasn't that nice a place, cos the only knowledge I have of it is that someone we knew met someone in there and they ended up shagging in a graveyard...do I have to say more? As we began the walk she informed us that she'd just "smashed some fucking girl's head in" (direct quote) to which my reply was, well maybe you'll be okay then...eeeek! I led her a bit further along to the road she needed to go down, all the while conscious of D and KB being very nervous of this well dodgy character with us. Thankfully she'd obviously got her physical violence out of the way for the evening as she teetered off towards the Goblin.

Dodgy woman out of the way we headed into our destination. And encountered the most screechiest woman I have ever heard. Everytime she laughed we were clutching our glasses as we feared that they were going to shatter. It was hideous. As you can well imagine we didn't stay there that long.

The next destination was the club. To tell the truth we're a bit sick of nights out in M'bro so we thought we'd give it a try in this club in Stockton. We paid our fiver. Had our hand stamped with PAID and entered a teeny tiny dive. The first bad point was that they didn't sell wine. Say what? Second bad point was that the guy at the bar looked about 12. The third bad point was when the band, The Clashed came on. They were ear splittingly loud. Conversation was out of the question. They had their very own Bez who kept going around and gesturing at everyone whilst dancing around the whole wee dancefloor totally crazily. One guy took his shirt off to show us his fine physique (nice beer belly) and his array of tattoos. Many songs I'd never heard later, they launched into Should I Stay or Should I Go. KB decided it would be a good time to hit the dancefloor. And there was one man who was very happy about this. He tried to grope her. She shoved him away. He pulled her back on the dancefloor. She took control of the situation and carried on dancing and shoving him away at each attempt. At the end of this mad dance, he came over to us, roughly grabbed each of our faces and kissed us! Funnily enough it was at that point we decided it was time to head out of there.

We stood outside for a while pondering our moves and decided to get pizza and head back to mine. Once again we trotted off down to Gino's for the best pizza and garlic bread. Along the way we happened to see a girl who was wearing a neon orange skirt that barely covered her backside, a neon orange bikini top, and what can only be described as a gold fishing net strung across her body in a manner that she probably thought was the bees knees...it was bad. Very bad. Did I mention she was orange as well? A vision in orange. The pizza shop wasn't any better. There was a very drunk woman swaying on her wedges holding onto her parmo for dear life. She flung her arm out to make a point and threw her mobile phone across the pizza shop and it scattered into bits. I picked up her battery and handed it to her and she slurred "thanks darling". The final point of the evening was our incredibly grumpy taxi driver who grunted his way home. Oh happy days.

And there you have it. What a week! I'm off on my holidays from work this week so will keep you posted about what I get up to.

Later alligator x

Saturday 13 September 2008

The word at the bus station

And so the catch up continues.

This month sees a celebration of my town: Discover Middlesbrough is the name they've given to this festival. There's all manner of events going on and I happened to be flicking through the booklet and came across something called Word on the Street. I knew straight away that it would be something that would appeal to me, I also had Cat down as a supporter and we asked Lara Croft and the Wicked Witch of the East/West but they were both busy, so Cat and me it was. Anything that describes itself as "live music and spoken word in an exciting cabaret format" has to be good...right?

Evening started out well enough. There were hot cheese scones. And decaf latte. And a little bit later deeeeelicious icecream. First up has to be describing the attendees. There was Cat and I obviously, as stylish as ever. I was rocking red fishnets and leopard print flatties that day, Cat was rocking her boho chic maxi dress and cardie. There was checky shirt guy who was alone. And there was white shirt guy who was also alone. There was a table of indie boys who turned out to be the band, Shoebox. There were a few more tables of other groups, and then there was the couple who looked like they were on a first date (but more about them later).

And so the evening began. The writing was hard going. The young people responsible were from a Barnado's project and are what is politely termed vulnerable and exploited. It was a lot about their point of view of the street, about people and places in their lives, there was one about an owl that was spotted round Middlesbrough...some of them were read by the organisers, but a lot of them were read by the writers themselves. It was often hard to hear them as they spoke really fast and far away from the microphone but for me, it was more interesting and I felt, awe inspiring, considering the subject matter.

But it wasn't all like that. The band played a few songs and they were pretty good. One of them reminded me of Tony from Skins in that he was obviously very much in love with himself and in charge of his group. And then there was a didgeridoo player. I've never actually heard anyone play a didgeridoo before and it was AMAZING! Who knew that so many different sounds could come out of one? And then the organisers threw the floor open. Thus enters the odd couple for the rest of this tale.

Turns out they were both poets. They took to the stage. And it was like they were different people. Like watching a butterfly emerge out of a cocoon. His was about dwelling and so he started off kneeling down and then stood up to slowly match the words. And she was swaying and almost dancing to match her storyof lipgloss and wardrobes. It was really quite wonderful.

Suddenly it was 8pm and the evening was over. Cat and I began the walk to our respective places to be. And the odd couple were in front of us the whole way. I left Cat to head to the bus station, with them still in front of me. As I hit the concourse they were still there and I could see it happening. They turned. They spotted me. They realised I'd been part of the crowd. They were going to speak to me...."oh hello" said very shyly. I had no choice. I had to do it. I had to be polite. And so the conversation began.

It would have gone okay if they hadn't been so incredibly shy that I did my usual of not being able to keep my mouth shut in the face of such nervousness. So I rattled on about all manner of things - cake, coffee shops, answering questions of where I work, was I a student. But I rush ahead of myself. Before all this, just after the first shy hello the guy had handed me a flyer for a national poetry day event at Borders. Oh says I, it's at evil Borders. Why evil? asks he. I launch into my explanation of how it's so hot in there that they warp the books and it bothers me, plus I buy all my books from charity shops cos I like the giving...you know how it goes. Fast forward again to us having the above conversations. So how do you two know each other then? Oh I know P from Borders as he works there...cue the tumbling weed as Dizz realises that she has, yet again, inadvertantly put her foot in it with a total stranger. And a very shy one at that. How? How do I manage this? If it was a special skill at the Olympics, I'd be the country champion. I couldn't really think of a way to get out of it so I gave him my best smile in the hope that he'd be so dazzled it wouldn't occur to him to be offended. And then "oh is that my bus" and promptly scarpered.

And there you go. That was Thursday. Stay tuned for Friday night treats xx

Friday 12 September 2008

Heroes, villains, and a doll that was meant to be Cat

If I wasn't so blimmin' busy out there, living the life, I would have blogged about this already, but as it stands I'm in a kind of time delay blog situation. So bear with me whilst I catch up.

Last Saturday saw us heading out to the coast to Superman's 30th birthday bash. When we got the invite and we found out it was fancy dress and the theme was Heroes and Villains we were so very excited! Costume ideas were thrown around and it was declared over a Chinese meal that I should go as Poison Ivy from the Batman film. Fast forward to last Saturday and you see me frantically trying to sort out said outfit in time to get a lift to my other lift that was taking me there. As there were so many stand out moments from the party, a lot of this is going to be visual, with the odd comment thrown in for good measure.

First up though, an explanation must take place of the doll. Cat who is generally one of our party peeps couldn't attend this party as she was in London busily attending the "Gay wedding of the century". In her place she purchased a doll of the superhero variety and we were to take this with us and pretend it was Cat. And we did. Very merrily. We made her drink wine. We made her snog Penfold. We made her dance. We took her dress off and stuck it on my horns. We booted her across the room and watched her slide on her arse...no no, wait a minute, we obviously wouldn't do that to Cat but we somehow couldn't resist being naughty to the poor doll.

First things first though. Here come the visuals:

Here you find Catwoman, Poison Ivy, The Wicked Witch of the East/West, and the Cat doll:

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And here's Lara Croft, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman:

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How evil does the Cat doll look?

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Check out the sign. We made that!

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Oooh Penfold, suits you sir!

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Cat doll and booty:

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The most exciting yet nerve wracking part of the night for me was knowing that I had 30 minutes to fill as a DJ. I was super excited when Superman asked me and felt very privileged that someone should think I have such good music taste they want me to be a DJ! As you can imagine I spent much time and effort and planning selecting my tracks, finding out how far in I needed them to be, which song should go where...loads of fun! When it came to it, my hands were shaking! So this is me getting my reminder session on how to use the kit:

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And this is me when I looked up 4 songs into my set and the dancefloor was full:

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I was so excited! And I loved how excited Superman was as everytime I played a song he liked he would fly over to the desk (d'ya see what I did there? Superman...fly...yeah yeah) and shout CHOOOOOOOOOOON! and then go off and dance. It was wicked! Safe to say we had an excellent night.

As the end approached, Superman took over the desk once again and played this crazy ska-like version of Nellie the Elephant. Don't ask me why but it felt like the best song I'd ever heard and me and Catwoman jumped up and down until it was all over. What a night. Can't wait for the next one!

Stay tuned for more events, including an open mic night and a didgeridoo! xx

Sunday 31 August 2008

Yardies

I've blogged before about work that I've done inside my house, last time it was the kitchen and the bathroom. It's fair to say the Dizz house is in a state of unfinished-ness as the kitchen still needs a floor and a blind, and the bathroom still needs a blind, a unit for all the 'stuff' that I have and another bath mat as the duckboard that I did buy has proved very hazardous; I bump my ankle on it everyday and I usually slip and slide around all over the place when I get out of the bath on it.

But the outside of the house also needs lots of work. The house is old (built 1901) and I think it would be safe to say that some of the pointing hasn't been touched since that date! My dad would do lots of worrying frowns whenever he was around and decided last week that it was time to "dedicate some serious time" to the Dizz house. As there is no Mr Dizz, my dad is by far the next best thing and so he's my handy guy.

At 10.30 in the a.m work began in the yard. By 11.30 I was in Wickes wandering around helplessly looking for mortar, wearing my wisely chosen shorts, vest top and cheeky bunchers. As you can imagine, within minutes I had a very kindly man helping me choose the correct mortar for pointing and also placing the 3 x 12.5kg bags of the stuff on my trolley. I'm sure he'd have even brought it out to the car if I'd have asked him but I ceased being helpless once I had the goods (a girl's gotta draw the line somewhere dontcha know)

I thought now would be a good time to show you some visuals. It's a work in progress shall we say. And once it reaches some kind of finished state I'll post some pics of it looking lovely. For the moment, it's downright ugly:

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This was chipped out to create the new groove for more effective draining

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Dizz Dad hard at work laying the new groove

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We cleverly used this to make a smooth circular groove...get us!

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What a beautiful view...the yard, not Dizz Dad's bum!

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This is the falling down shed

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And this is the falling down wall

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The other falling down wall

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And finally the original toilet roll holder for the old outhouse

Gorgeous or what? The plans are that the walls will all be painted a sandstone colour, thus brightening up the place massively. The horrible brown doors will be replaced with a much nicer shade, possibly blue. And the concrete ground will also be painted but the area where I sit out and enjoy the sunshine will be some kind of paved niceness and a much more pleasant place to enjoy the many many days of sunshine we enjoy so much...

We eventually got rained off at about half 3 so whilst I've been waiting for my water to heat up I thought I'd blog my Sunday. I'm covered in brick dust. And I think I might actually smell cos it's bloody hard work doing all that scraping and wire brushing! Charming or what?

See you all soon!
xx

Wednesday 27 August 2008

New....

There are so many deeeelicious new things happening that I just had to share. So here goes.

New Season
I have lust. For all the lovely new season clothes that are in the shops. On a weekend shopping trip with Cat I managed to purchase one spotty dress with pockets (pockets!) from the scary goth shop (dress not scary I hasten to add, short yes, but scary? no), a pair of very dark jeans that are lovely and fitted at the top and then have big flares and one blue tweedy bomber style jacket from Peacocks, and 3 tops from the beloved H&M. How I managed to restrain myself is unbelievable. Cos I wanted to buy EVERYTHING. Ooooh much as I love wearing summer clothes, I do love going into that new season excitement.

New Gig Schedule
Seriously, there are so many that it has become a schedule. Last night we saw We are Scientists. 3rd time out for me and by far the best time yet. They rocked the place. And oh. so. cute. The lead singer has the best indie hair and it's even going a bit grey so it's all like salt n pepper...perhaps it would be fair to say that I have lust for him also. He came out into the crowd and people were touching his hair. Now much as I like his hair, if I was going to touch anything, it would have been his cutie bum. There was much amusement with the people watching also as the crowd were mainly 14. And us. No that's not fair, it was a mixed bag but there were a lot of 14 year olds. One of them actually threw up on the bus that I was on in order to get to the gig. Classy. There was an actual Wino-wannabee there too. She was probably about 15. And she was really going for it. Same beehive but bleached blonde and dirty raggy hair, a teeny tiny body, a teeny tiny dress and probably a teeny tiny bra in order to hoist her not so teeny tiny boobs up and out. You gotta love the people watching. Anyhoo, that was the beginning of the late summer/autumn/winter gigs. Cos in 4 weeks we have The Ting Tings. Then 4 weeks after that we have One Night Only and Vampire Weekend in a couple of days of each other, and have just found out that Martha Wainwright is playing 2 days before them and I simply must see her cos she is oh so fabby, and then it's Kings of Leon! Oh how much I love the gigs.

New television
Not an actual television set, but just as good, I bought my weekly copy of heat magazine and found out that Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives both return to the screen next week. Yippeee!

New books=education
After a recent discussion with Cat concerning the art of burlesque and whether it is feminist or not (more about this in future posts, watch this space!) I decided that I need to expand my knowledge on feminism. I know I'm not alone in following the stereotype that true hardcore feminists are man hating, hairy legged, dungaree wearing scary peeps
...possibly explaining why one needs such an education. I'm slightly scared I have to say. The texts I have taken out of my library are very large. And they have little writing. And no pictures. Considering my current reading matter is Forever by Judy Blume I'm thinking it's going to be very different. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

New fitness
After the night out with D when we talked about being 5 years older, we also declared a need to get us to the gym. Cos much as we like to think that it's okay not to exercise, we all know that ain't the case so gym it is. My induction is tomorrow at 8pm. I'm really not a big fan of the gym. But I'm also not such a big fan of the wobbly-ness. I'm almost certain this will go the way of all other fitness declarations and I'll soon be the cake eating, non-exercise wobbly that you all know and love.

New is over and out. Later alligator x

Monday 25 August 2008

Bank Holiday bedlam

The tradition here in jolly old Blighty is that when it's a Bank Holiday weekend we simply must go out on the Sunday evening and drink ourselves into oblivion so that we can spend most of the precious extra free holiday day in bed with a terrible hangover. This isn't the case for today, I am hangover free. But I did venture out into the town and it was the usual madness so here I am blogging about it.

The evening began a bit clashy. The first day of sunshine we'd had in what seems like forever was yesterday. And it was deeeeeelicious. So of course I had to stay out in it for as long as I could. Thus I found myself at Wavey's asking ever so innocently what the time was. The reply of 7pm prompted me to do lots of squeaking and fuuuuuuuuu...I'm never going to make it into town for 8 cos I have to wash my hair type exclamations. I scarpered back to mine and got ready pronto.

Thus I found myself in the meeting pub. I always thank my lucky stars that I am: a) tall and b) have very distinctive hair as I can easily find the people that I'm going to meet or they can find me. Despite the throngs of people I managed to find D and we squeezed our way to the front of the bar, bearing in mind at this time of 8.30 the queue was 6-deep. Thoughts of being laydee-like and just ordering a half went out of the window due to the excessive queue, so a pint it was. We hadn't even gone 2 steps with our drinks before someone knocked D and I had half a pint dripping down my arm. Welcome to Bank Holiday Bedlam.

The pub was jumping. Literally. The inside was packed. The outside was even more packed. It was standing room only. In the small group of girls that we were there was some kerfuffle with a group of boys and in what seemed like a matter of minutes one of the girls was crying. This did not bode well for the rest of the evening. I'm not entirely sure of the sorry tale as I only heard it chinese whisper style 4th hand but apparently one of the boys had called this girl fat. Now most girlies in my town would have simply either told this sorry loser to eff-off or would have punched him. Clearly this was an emotional day as she sobbed. It was awful. I had never met her before, really had no clue what was going on, the table of boys were mortified, what a mess. We didn't stay too long...

The next plan was to go to the awful pub that used to be a cracking old man's pub but is now a nasty townie wine bar. And there were people queueing up. Outside. In order to get in. I have one rule about pubs: I will never queue to get into one! A club yes, but a pub, no way! D and I did the most sensible thing and opted for a different pub. Much more our taste. Music was good. There were seats. And there was much hilarity. Which evolved from the following incidents:
*D telling me all about this guy who we shall call Wrecker (name changed for safety reasons) That's the name he's known by. Back in our art college days D and S had gone back to Wrecker's house after a night out at the local sweaty ceiling club. They were expecting to be raped and pillaged. He had severed dolls heads in his living room. They were thinking oh-oh what's he doing in the kitchen, mixing up some deadly cocktail with which to poison them so that he could have his wicked way...turns out he was cooking up some baked potatoes cos he was a bit peckish.
*We were sat very near the pool table last night. One guy had those low slung jeans where basically they sit down and you see their undercrackers. This was all the usual thing but this one guy started doing all those weird leg actions as he was taking each shot. The only way to describe this is that he looked like a dog cocking his leg ready to pee. Men are very strange beings.
*D has decided that the next 5 years are crucial in our development. We had one of those discussions that can only take place when you have alcohol in your hand about where we might be. We didn't actually come up with a firm answer which says a lot for both of us I think. All I could think was that in 5 years I will be 38. EEEEEEKKKKK!

We trotted off to the next pub and it was horrible. Why is the last pub always the most awful? I know it's when they switch the lights on and everyone who looked okay becomes suddenly real and usually quite minging, but this was bad. D and I were looking around in horror. And there's people do this every single Friday and Saturday night. Ugh. Nasty. And that was it. Or so we thought. Because the town was so busy trying to get a taxi was a nightmare. I walked further down and left D as we go in different directions. It's fair to say that I never have any problems getting a taxi usually. But it took me 15 minutes to flag one down. And he was a whinger. All the way home moaning about this, moaning about that. I felt like saying to him, shut up already! You're getting a tenner out of me to drive 5 minutes down the road, how hard can your life be!! Tchah!

And that was it. I survived. I was out for a total of 3 hours. But that was more than enough for me. There will be people laying in bed today with some bad sunburn and a very bad hangover. Bless them all.

Later alligator x

Monday 18 August 2008

They don't deserve her

I know our wonderful Dizz doesn't need a t-shirt to express herself, but if I was to recommend one it would be this...

It applies not only to libraries but to most organisations, I suspect. One size fits all.

Trully Dizz, they don't deserve you. Can't they see how wonderful you are? Are they devoid of all sensory preception?

Thursday 14 August 2008

Job, didn't get

I decided it would be easier to blog about not getting the job than it would be to try to text everyone that I know. I haven't heard officially from the HR bods but I have heard via a text message leading to an email that another colleague got it over me. Nyeh.

There was once a time when I applied for a job in there that I was actually doing and they gave that to someone else as well. I was younger then and kind of incensed. I went shopping and bought this brilliant teeshirt that had a logo on saying "KISS MY..." and then it had a picture of a monkey baring his arse, thus 'kiss my arse' and I wore it to work the following day. It was brilliant. I didn't need to say anything or be outraged as the teeshirt did it all for me. The big boss took one look at it and scarpered, clearly fearing I was going to cry or cause some kind of fuss.

This time around I'm much more philosophical. I've had the attitude all along that if it was meant to be, then I would get picked. Clearly this is not my job. Who knows where my perfect libraryland job does lie? But it's clearly not in the area of digitisation.

I briefly considered what kind of teeshirt I should buy. Before I decided that I don't need to do that anymore. On Monday I will go in, congratulate my colleague, sit back at my desk in my usual rockin-it outfit and rise above it all.

xx

Saturday 9 August 2008

Dizz returns!

Well hello! Long time no blog. It's been fabby to sit back and let Tizz and Fizz take over for a few weeks. But there's so much I have to tell you I'm going to have to break it up into categories. Seriously. Dizz has been a busy bee. So no point messing around. Let's get to it.

Work
One of the reasons I haven't blogged in so long was that work was dragging me down. I won't go into it too much cos you really don't need to hear it all but the basic story is I was covering a post in the finance department. I probably might have mentioned to, oh pretty much everyone, how much I hated it. Truly I did. For the 4 weeks I was cover I was close to tears every evening that I returned home. I almost, to my shame, cried in a car park when I bumped into Wavey I was so upset. So it made me grumpy. And I didn't want to blog grumpy. So I just didn't blog. There is light at the end of this dreary tale. The cover is over. I may have done a celebratory jig around a few desks I was that chuffed to be rid of it. And now I'm back in my beloved electronic journal homeland. I am smiley once again at work. Yay!

Play
In true Dizz style, I didn't let the grumpy work affect my playtime. In fact I probably made sure I did even more than usual in order to counteract the grumpy that was work, play Dizz was fun fun fun. I was out and about doing everything. I said no to very few things and yes to oooh everything! I was knackered. But good knackered. To sum up quickly I've seen loads of films, the highlight being Mamma Mia. Yup, Dizz who hates musicals absolutely LOVED it! I came out of that cinema with a huge grin on my face, came home and pranced and danced to Abba. What a great film. I even want to see it again. And think I will buy it on dvd. This is like a miracle. Maybe the musical love happens as you get older? Who knows. Who cares. Embrace. Enjoy. Lurve the musical. I also had a soooper weekend with my girlies in Stratford where we watched the oh so lovely David Ten-Inch in Hamlet. This was an awesome experience in more ways than one. Not only was it an utterly fantastic performance, with a gorgeous set, beautiful lighting that intrigued me so much I almost bumped heads with the person in front as I bent down and forward in order to see them come out of the ceiling, the deeelightful glimpse of David's pants (oooh!), and general all round greatness that ended in 3 curtain calls and me coming out in goosebumps and pittery-pattery heart beats at the end. Oh! Wow! That was all I could say. Seriously. Wavey texted me whilst we were in the pub and I think the majority of the text was made up of 'wow'. The loveliness of the weekend continued with drinking in a lovely beer garden, a fabulous day of shopping and lots of yummy food, Fizz buying her house and us all high fiving her round the breakfast table, a wonderfully funny road trip home where we sang loud and bad and laughed and laughed. I didn't want it to end it was so utterly fabulous. But such good memories. Since then there's been lots of spending time with my favourite peeps, eating, drinking, gossiping, laughing, what more do you need my lovelies?

Unwanted emails
Just before Christmas, for about 15 minutes I was seeing this guy. We were all very happy, it was all very lovely, but then it all went a bit wrong when his ex decided that she wanted him back, he picked her, Dizz was sad, Dizz got over it. A couple of weeks ago who should I get an email from but said guy. Wanting to know if we could start up again. My first reaction was a pounding heart. Followed by a teeny bit of outrage. The very cheek! I discussed it with the usual nearest and dearest and reached the conclusion that there was no way this was going to happen again. So I had to send an email back. It was horrible. How do you say to someone, basically, tough luck. But I did it. And I told him never to contact me again. He said he would post back the book that he basically stole from me first time round. So far no book. I'm thinking that I have to give up on the book. Again. And! Today I went into the coffee shop where we spent a lot of our dates getting to know each other. It's now considered a safe zone once again. As R very kindly pointed out, that kind of grief is what you expect after 8 years of marriage and 2 kids, not a handful of dates and a few weeks of fun. Pah!

Pedicure
Today I treated myself to a pedicure. I've been working lots of overtime at work and I love having painted toenails and a foot rub! So off I went to my lady in my beauty salon. Oh it was heaven. I was in there for a whole hour. And I didn't once jump even though I have the most tickliest feet! I chose a really dark purple:

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Nice or what! Suits you sir!

Butt ugly
Whilst enjoying the lovely weekend with my girlies in Stratford we came upon a little craft fair. Fizz seriously can't walk past anything that says craft without us going in. And it was so cute. It was one of those odd little craft fairs that has pretty odd stuff in. I saw the following and just thought, I have to have me one of those:

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How funny is that! It's horrible. It's ugly. But it grows grass out of its head! So wrong in the halls of interior design but yet so funny. Makes me laugh every morning when I see it.

Interview
On Thursday at 9.30am I have an interview for the post of Information Officer: Digitisation. How utterly posh does that sound. I really want me this job as I very firmly believe that this is the future of libraries so I want to get a head start. I have bought a very lovely black skirt to wear today that is high waisted and ties with a bow. Smart. Funkay. Just got to decide what to wear on the top then I'm ready. I'll keep you posted!

And I think that's it. You've had a very brief catch up. I'll be back more frequently now, honest injun. Hope you're all having a very lovely weekend xx

Tuesday 5 August 2008

Imaginary Dog Names

When I eventually move into my new pad I'm hoping to get two little dogs (I want two so they can keep each other company). They will probably be miniature Yorkshire terriers because my brother is hoping to breed from his. I've already decided that one of them would be called Basil. This is so that, if it runs away, I can shout "Basiiiiil" a la Fawlty Towers. The question is what to call the other dog.

Now this is all hypothetical. The dogs do not exist and I've no idea what sex they will be if they ever do come into existence. But just for fun, what should the other dog be called? I've already discarded Sybil and Manuel as too obvious. Any suggestions?

Saturday 26 July 2008

Hamlet

Quick blog from Stratford upon Avon to say we have had an awsome time watching Hamlet! D T was amazing and I think I speak for all of us when I say we all left with goosebumps. Fantastic night! Loved every minute. T x

Thursday 24 July 2008

House

HUGE news on the Fizz front... I have put an offer in on a house! Eek! This is not the first time I will have owned my own property, I used to have a flat in London, but I hated it and it made me miserable. So it has taken me a looooong time to decide to take the plunge again. But I've made the decision, I've found a house I really like, and I'm going for it!

Dizz and Wavey went round with me last night and they both liked it - of course there are things that need doing - but I don't expect perfection. The yard is possibly the best bit, so here's a photo. It doesn't really do it justice - that big door on the left is to the metal shed which the sellers are taking with them.

I've put in an offer, and the sellers are apparently considering it. So please, keep all your fingers crossed!

Wednesday 23 July 2008

Oh baby!

I am, at this very moment, so freakin' excited I may explode. I have just bashed my credit card many many times over but this is the exciting agenda of gigs I have up and coming in the next few months:
*We Are Scientists
*The Ting Tings
*One Night Only
*Vampire Weekend (oh! my! word! I LOVE LOVE LOVE them!)
*Kings of Leon (oh baby!)

How hugely exciting!!! I'm going to be busting around each gig, I truly am. Especially the Vampires. Cos I love them so much I would kiss their feet if they would let me. Their album is possibly one of the finest I have ever had the pleasure to caress my ears with.

And then. The excitement doesn't end there. In my whole, must try new things vibe that I try to keep going at all times, I've just enrolled myself onto a Thai cookery course. Oh yes, can you imagine the banquets we will have? It's beyond exciting. Words cannot describe the excitement. Imagine me. Sat on the floor, laptop in lap. With the biggest widest grin you've ever seen me give and then you'll be close.

Oh baby! xx

Monday 21 July 2008

New Phone

I've been bad. I've bought a new phone, and it's fab! I have no excuse for not blogging now as I'll have constant access to the Internet. More to follow. T x

Wednesday 16 July 2008

Cow Girl

OK, this should settle the cow-print debate once and for all. Here are a couple of photos of my friend's 3-year-old daughter wearing a fetching outfit I made for her. It's a mac and sou'wester made out of cow-print and edged in hot pink.
Can you really deny that this is cute? And if it's OK for a 3-year-old then why not on a car?

Friday 11 July 2008

Can I have one?

Here's what I want when I have to replace Borat (my car). I'd like one of these...

with a bit of this...

so it would look something like this...

How cool is that?

Can I have one? Can I? Can I?

Monday 7 July 2008

Did we miss the check box?

It's July. And all it's done for the past 2 days is rain. Solidly. I think someone, (I'm not sure who to assign blame to), but whoever it is forgot to register for the summer. What is the confusion?

I had planned on buying this:
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But am thinking that this will be more appropriate:
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Although I hasten to add it would not be pink. Cos me and that shade of pink are not good friends.

I think the weather had something to do with me falling out my front door yesterday. Well, that and the fact that I have hardly any sole left on my trainers, as one minute I was upright and the next I was on the deck. As you well know from previous blog posts I'm not exactly a stranger to falling down but this was just stupid! I felt like such a big eejit. As I live in a street house, anyone looking out of their window would have seen the stupid fall. And me hobbling away looking all pitiful. I thought that all was well but as today has advanced, my right ankle has got larger and it now has a large egg on it. Oh-oh. I'm not in pain right now so I'm assuming that's a good sign...but it may be a visit to the docs if it doesn't go down tomorrow as I may have caused inside damage. Join me in saying, what a silly fool Dizz.

What a crackin' weekend though. Oh it was heavenly to have nothing booked. Not a sausage. This is so rare these busy days. The highlight was definitely the very last ep of this series of Dr Who. OH! It was beyond good. I won't give too much away in case anyone hasn't seen it yet but I did well at the end (yes I'm a wuss, we know that) and it was extra fun cos Fizz and Wavey came round to watch it and we ate pizza and garlic bread and salad whilst we watched. I was so engrossed I forgot to put my fork down on my plate when I was done.

And yesterday I beasted through my ironing in under an hour. Maybe it was just base camp of Mount Everest this time rather than the actual mountain itself? I watched World Trade Center in the evening and oh that was sad too, mucho lip wobbling going on.

And that my friends is it. Today I've been 4 people all at once cos I had so much to do. And I'm working overtime til 7pm! Can't wait to get home, am very tired.

Ta-ta x