Thursday 30 August 2012

Bonnes vacances!

It seems like a hundred years ago since we booked it, and I'm sure at least a thousand years have passed while I've been counting down the days, but it's finally here. Tomorrow we go on holiday! Wooooooop doesn't even really begin to cover how excited I am! 

This year has been crazy in so many ways, lots of good but also lots of bad and rubbish and horrible things that have thrown me for a loop and left me feeling really quite drained. Work has been rubbish, we've been stuck in small rooms that have gradually become more and more oppressive - often I have found myself with shoulders hunched trying to make my head shrink into my body so that I wouldn't have to listen to any more of the incessant noise and that doesn't even include the noise the workmen have been making. In all, I can truly say, that I have never felt like I need a holiday more than this one. And I speak for Wavey when I say the same. He's been travelling much more than we anticipated, his work has been stressful, longer hours, hotel rooms...all in all, we need us a holiday! 

Normally I'd be planning here there and everywhere and this is what I want to see and this is where I want to go. Instead this year I have plans to get out of bed, head to the outside terrace and plonk my arse there until I feel like I might be able to move. If my arse isn't plonked on the terrace it'll be plonked by the pool. Or by the river. Or somewhere eating and drinking tasty food and wine. Summing up? Total relaxation is on the cards. 

Tomorrow - London.

Saturday - France. 

For 2 weeks - arse plonked.

Can't say better than that. Au revoir my friends. 

Sunday 26 August 2012

Get lost!

How is it possible to get lost in your own town? Yesterday I found out that there are some parts of my town that I know absolutely nothing of, and I can take wrong turnings and drive up and down random streets and I'll never find them. Mainly because I don't have a map book in the car, or a satnav, helpful. I was doing ok on the first part of the journey and if I'd have gone with my instincts I would have been even more okay. Instead I carried straight on and ended up in places that neither me nor Zippy were particularly happy about and how fast can I turn the car around and get the hell out of here before someone tries to steal my tyres whilst I'm driving type places. Eep and double eep for good measure. Almost reaching my destination I pulled off into some swanky residential only parking area, hoped that no-one called the po-pos on me and rang the place to find that I was literally within a stone's throw of the front door - doh! Quick turn around, quick park up, quick trot across the big road and not get run over and I was there. 

Where was I going you ask? Oh I was only going to get pampered. Yep, pampered pooches can get lost too, big style lost it would seem. But it was worth it for the hour and a half of lovely relaxing back massage followed by lush facial and possible falling asleep on the massage bed. Heehee. 

I suspect more getting lost in order to get pampered will take place. This is what happens when Groupon have many tempting offers of pampering-ness for bargain prices that it would seem I just cannot resist. It could be worse, I could be addicted to crack cocaine and that would probably mean getting lost in a whole other manner...although possibly in the area where I did get lost so I'd just have to find it again...or maybe not. Stick to the pampering, pooch. Much safer. 

Sunday 19 August 2012

(dis)organised

For two very organised people at work, when it comes to hometime forget it! Totally useless. We manage to lose stuff even though we know it's never been taken out of the house and must be here somewhere. Throw a few boxes around, try another room then another one and it'll be found eventually. It's not a brilliant way to live and being much more organised would be so much better but I'm not holding out much hope. 

Take today for example. I got up early as had planned to go for a bike ride with a friend this morning. An organised person would have thought to check the bike yesterday to make sure everything was ok with it but oh no. I got up this morning with half an hour to spare to discover that my bike had flat tyres. Of course I don't have my own bike pump and I can't get hold of my pops to borrow his and ended up missing my bike ride. Full on childlike sulking followed as I had been so looking forward to it :( 

To try and counteract this we did think about getting the bags out to take on holiday in a couple of weeks and we found the map book. And after searching through 3 piles of books we eventually found the guidebook even though the two that we have seem to fall right out of the area we're going to be in. It will be the first time in a long time that I've not gone on holiday with a trusty Rough Guide and all the special and secret things they know about. We'll just have to discover stuff the old fashioned way - by stumbling across it! 

By that time we were on a total roll and decided to sort out lots of stuff to take to the charity shop. I finally decided to get rid of a lot of my high heel shoes - I never wear them anymore and they're just there in a box, literally gathering dust. By the time I'd had a good sort out I had a full box of shoes and 2 bin liners of clothes to take. Go go go progress! 

I also found a box that had some Benefit goodies that I'd ordered a couple of weeks ago and hadn't been able to find. I found "To Kill a Mockingbird" that I want to take on holiday, and I even found the floor in the study which is progress indeed considering it's covered in boxes full of books, spare pillows that we may never have use for, a single duvet even though we don't have a single bed, and a whole heap of other stuff...see what I mean? I'd like to be reassured by other people that they live just the same way but everyone else I know seems to be really organised. Ho hum.

 

Saturday 18 August 2012

Mr Blue Sky





Get the impression I've spent a lot of time outside this week...? Hello Mr Blue Sky, please be here to stay!

Wednesday 15 August 2012

1500!

I've been trying to work on my assignment for my summer school course. It was actually due in last Friday so I'm already working a week behind on a short extension, not exactly my style. But blimey I'm struggling! It's been a while since I've had to sit down and make myself do reading, then planning, then writing and I've been the champion of procrastinating. I finally made a start on it last week and I've been going really well with it until I realised that it's only supposed to be 1500 words. I'm currently at 1900 and haven't finished yet. The 1900 is edited down from the 2000+ that I did have earlier. Buggeration. To be fair to myself, my last big assignment was my dissertation for my Masters that I think was 15000 words so to go back to doing 1500 is tricky. 

I have no idea how I'm going to reduce it. I've bullet pointed everything I possibly can, anymore bullet points and it will resemble some kind of shooting target. Eep! To be honest by this stage I just want it done and there's a really big part of me tempted to just finish it where it is, deleting the bullet point in waiting...but it's just not done. It would be all unfinished and then I'd feel bad for not doing it up to my usual standard. Then again it would give me my evenings back and I wouldn't have to sit in front of a laptop screen...tempting. 

Will the little red devil on one shoulder be the champion? Or will the angel on the other? Only tomorrow night will all be revealed when I have to finish it as it's due in on Friday...

Speaking of word counts by the way. Anna Karenina is 854 pages long. 854 pages of teeny tiny writing. I got as far as page 400 before sheer boredom set in and I knew I just couldn't carry on any further. I'm sorry Tolstoy but you just don't do it for me, baby. Oh and by the way, having something major happen by summing it up in one line before changing to a whole new chapter talking about farming is just rubbish! You need to work on your build up and anticipation...

Sunday 12 August 2012

The other one

While most of the country and practically everyone on my facebook page was supporting the good looking teenager with his shiny white teeth and tiny diving trunks to the bronze medal, this guy was bringing home a gold in the bantam weight boxing:
Go Luke Campbell! 

His gold medal was worthy of a one second snippet on the news headlines while the bronze medal winner got a whole feature. There's something not quite fair about that so I'm putting the balance right. 

Team GB - you've done us proud!
 

Friday 3 August 2012

New life aims

I haven't fully decided yet but I'm either going to be a lean mean athlete machine with zero percent body fat:
Or I'm going to be Catwoman so that I can ride the cool Bat-bike:
It really is a tough decision...