croissantkatie

Today I:

• went into town and picked up some food shopping
• cleared the surfaces in the kitchen of rubbish and things which should have been in cupboards
• wiped down all the surfacs
• cleaned the hob
• did 3 loads of washing up
• baked a double batch of chocolate cookies
• cleaned up and put away all the mess I made baking

So, I've signed up to pinch hit for brbb, which is simulataneously terrifying and incredibly exciting. So, everybody start hoping I can come up with something which is 5000 words of coherency? I've started, but it's currently disjointed sentences and has "What's going on here? SHORT ANSWER: I DON'T KNOW" written at the bottom. I think I'm going to try and figure out an outline or something first but continue to note down the odd sentence as it comes to me.

mrsronweasley is hosting a love meme, so go share some love with all the wonderful people there. My thread can be found here  if anyone would like to drop by it.

Today has been weird. I got loads done around the house but felt like I'd achieved nothing. My Mum suggested that it might be because I hadn't done anything for me. So I went and started to edit the recording I've made for my next podfic and pretty much immediately felt like I'd achieved way more which was good. I'm trying not to think about how much editing I've got left to do though. I had meant to split it up a bit more but the opportunity arose to get some more recording done which I took but now I have loads to do in one go. Ah well, I do enjoy it. I just have to keep reminding myself that.

My laptop gave up six days before Christmas. It was rather tragic but it had served me well. 4 years and 359 days of service. Hopefully I'll be able to get stuff off it but we'll have to see. This has put rather a dent in my plans to post some sort of fanwork soon at the beginning of the year. It looks like I might have to rerecord the podfic I was working on. I hope I don't have to as I was nearly done with the editing. There are snippets of fic I'd really like to get back too. On the positive side, I now have a laptop which doesn't clunk! I have named her Bootsy as she is purple (purple to imperial to emperors to caligula to bootsy).

I finally gave in this afternoon and brought the fan heater into my bedroom. My fingers are no longer numb. I also have Christmas tea which tastes wonderful and is keeping me warm.

This is a rather unexciting post as I can't particularly think of anything to say. 2011 is over and 2012 is here. I had a decent Christmas, far more relaxed and far less relatives than normal.

And that's it for now I think.

I went to see Tintin on Wednesday. It was wonderful and happy-making. I had an absolutely fantastic time and came out going "I want to own that on DVD."

I have many thoughts on Merlin, but am not sure I can express them significantly. It mainly consists of flailing. Lots of flailing. I went to a group watching of Merlin on Saturday with some friends of mine, which was amazing. Although I felt the need to check how old the host's younger brother was as our conversation wasn't entirely clean. Luckily, he was older than he looked so we could carry on making jokes about people jumping onto Gwaine's sword. Also, Agravaine. He is even more obvious than Morgana and her smirks of EVIL.

So yeah, my life isn't particularly exciting at the moment. I currently want to kill UCAS and am having doubts about even going to uni as a result. I want to, I want to study history so much, but I'm still very scared.

I got back from Portugal on Thursday and promptly slept a great deal. Portugal was good, if too hot for me. It was certainly interesting to go away with such a large group of people who I'm not related to. It took a while for us to learn to live with each other, mainly surrounding the issue of food. Somehow, a large number of my friends were unaware that I ate a large amount. This is partly to do with the fact that I often ate little in school due to feeling ill. One day my life will revolve fractionally less around food, but that's a fair way off. The beach was only about a two minute walk away from our apartments, so for that I have to take my hat off to Hattie who did all the research and organisation surrounding the holiday. We built a rather nice fort system, complete with reservoir, reserve reservoir (Max pointed out that the inhabitants couldn't drink it due to it being salt water, the rest of us insisted that the population knew how to desalinate the water), administrative centre (we gave them public libraries and a free education system) and a poor district which was outside the main city walls but inside the outer walls (complete with union head quarters and numerous brothels). We also built a hill fort and buried numerous people. My friends are kind of crazy. I enjoyed parts and didn't enjoy others. But then again, I tend to feel that way about most holidays. My friend Alex though gets a special award for knowing exactly when to offer anyone a cup of tea. His super power is knowing when to make tea. It is quite possibly the most awesome super power ever.

Also, note to self: next time I go on holiday, make sure that my friends are aware of my issues with heat, as well as my mental health issues. Everybody was really understanding when I told them that I didn't feel up to something emotionally, but less so when I said that I couldn't go out because it was too hot. I really dislike heat stroke.

When I got back from holiday, it was to be greeted by vast amounts of bunting. This was because, whilst I was away, my village was hosting a week long music event in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support called Fringe in the Fen. This confused me partly because just the other week, in a nearby village, there was a Fen Edge festival, which struck me as being rather "yay! we're not part of the fens! we're on the edge, get it right." And yet now we're part of the fens. Cue inbred sterotype jokes here. I went to the final performance of the week though and it was beautiful. A concert band, a chamber orchestra and a combination of local choirs performed. I had to come home at the interval as I was exhausted, but what I heard was amazing. And then I got to watch the firework finale from my bedroom window. I had been trying to sleep, but it was rather loud so I figured I might as well watch it. Rather nice.

Also, as a last little note. I saw Deathly Hallows yesterday. McGonagall is my absolute favourite.

There has been a major accident on the local A road. As result, it is shut in both directions for a fair stretch before my village, leading to there being no buses. At all. There are parts where there is no alternative route. Parts where there is are small roads through little villages. Gah gah gah. Normally I wouldn't mind a day off school, but I've missed two days due to being ill and was looking forward to seeing people again. I'm just thankful that I've finished all my exams. When I turned up for the bus (an hour later than normal due to free periods), there were still people there who had been attempting to get on the normal bus. Luckily, the psychology exam which is on today is the afternoon. Hopefully, by that time, there will be some way for them to get in.

At least there's been some variety though. This one was a lorry fire, whilst the previous two were a chemical spillage and a multi-vehicle incident respectively. Stupid dangerous road.

Long, rambly post today. My brain is a bit of a confuddly mess right now.

( School talk. Wow. )

Also this week we had a fundraiser for Breast Cancer! I was involved in helping, which resulted in me spending my entire lunchtime dressed as a pink fairy outside the main entrance to school with another fairy and a table loaded with sweets. We had sponge the teacher, balloons and a cake stall, as well as a "spot the pink fairy game." If you bought a breast cancer ribbon, you got a token which at lunch you could exchange for a packet of sweets if you found a fairy. It was really good fun. Although we did have someone come up to us and say "I have a token, but I haven't found a fairy." We just turned round and pointed out the wings. You'd have thought that and the giant sign which said "Pink Fairy Station" would have given it away. None of us dress like that just for the sake of it. Especially not the guys in wigs, tutus and ponchos (they raised loads of money).

Yesterday was a very surreal day. I went to work and there was a fundraiser at the church over the road which my boss and his wife went to part way through. First of all, my Mum cam over and give me some pieces of cake which Ron (my boss) had bought for me. Ron had tried to bring them himself, but being the person he is, got waylaid talking to the many many people in the village he knows. Then Chris (Ron's wife) came back, asked me if I'd like and Indian Head Massage and then sent me over the road with three pounds to go have one. So I had a head massage from my next door neighbour who's daughter used to babysit me and ended up missing a good twenty minutes of my shift. It was all rather surreal. Apparently (or at least, according to my mum who had a long chat with Ron and Chris at the fundraiser), they'd noticed that I'd been a bit off and hadn't seen me walk past to go catch my school bus a couple of days during the week (I normally wave at Ron as I go past). I love my work and them so very much. And I got to see an interview with Haile Gebrselassie as part of the BBC coverage of the Great North City Games (we won! Yay!). He is the most smiley amazing athlete and I'm sad he didn't break the course record for the Great North Run. Under an hour though!

And that I think is a good note to end on. A nice cheery athletics based one.

Things have been rather busy lately. My Grandad was in hospital up until yesterday as he had a kidney operation, was released and then had to be rushed back in because of a suspected heart attack. It's all been rather surreal for me as they live so far away, and I only see them a few times a year. He's out now though and we haven't had any more panicked calls from my Grandma, which is definitely a good sign.

In slightly more positive news, it was Village Sports Day last Saturday. I ran the hoopla stall (even a week afterwards, I am still incredibly relieved that I managed to talk them out of putting me on slippery pole) and did rather well in the produce show. My Duck Mobile (which I think of rather like the batmobile, but cheerier and a really poor form of transport) won third place in the handicraft category. There are clearly benefits to the normal judges not being able to make it as it was never going to be up their street. And I also won my running race! However, as various people pointed out, I also came last. I however don't care. I have a trophy. A trophy which now had my name on twice (the first time, I came second (also last given the huge field of two) but the winner couldn't keep the trophy due to living outside the village parish). I am very happy about this.

( Sunstroke, heatstroke, you name it... )

After getting lots of sleep last night, I feel much better now. So I can now attempt to do my history homework. It's actually quite interesting, I just can't quite seem to summon up the energy. And then there's the World Cup Final tonight. I am almost looking forward to it, which is slightly strange. I think it's to do with the fantasy football league I'm in. It's addictive and I really am far too competitive.

( My apologies, I felt the need to rant. )
Finally, on a slightly cheerier note, we were completely hammered in the last Test against South Africa. Blagh.

So, the past week hasn't been particularly great for me, but it's now half term so things are looking up. I never thought I'd be quite this happy for a school holiday to come. But ah well, I'm not going to talk about that because I'm focusing on the nice couple of things which have happened in the past 3 or so days and not the bad things of the days before! I've never been great at positive thinking but this time I'm trying harder than I have before, so I bring you random happy snippets of my past week!

First off, despite my early fears, I actually managed to see the whole episode of Merlin last night! I can't really remember much of what I thougt of the episode. I was eating dinner and fairly distracted throughout most of it. What I do remember though is that at various points my family compared it to Harry Potter ("it's like polyjuice potion but not!"), the Discworld books ("his ears look really fake and sewn on, he could be an Igor!") and Sandi Toksvig/Eastenders ("she sounds like Sandi Toksvig when she says that." "No she doesn't, she sounds like she's been in Eastenders her entire life!"). It was all rather silly, but kind of enjoyable.

Then, we went to the theatre and my brother didn't complain once! Thank you school. It's amazing what he'll do when a teacher he likes and respects suggests he do something. We all went to see 6 characters in search of an author which was rather confusing and a bit creepy, but I liked it. Although there was some strobe lighting which gave me a headache, which has never happened before. I always get headaches when I go to the theatre, unless I'm really really perky and awake when I go. Me and anything remotely loud don't get on.

Plus today I made chocolate crispies, which has the added bonus of there being a fairly large slab of chocolate being left over... Yum. And tommorow I'm either going to London or Cadbury World with my family as my Dad has the day off. It may end in disaster, but at least parts of it should be enjoyable! I certainly have my fingers crossed that there will be no major disputes.