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