Too much time

Me and my flatmate just spent ten minutes looking up remixes of the Skype ringtone, then we found a piece of music which someone has created entirely out of sounds made by MSN Messenger. It was nice to see that there's someone out there with even more time to waste than we have.

  All this lack of things to do has also given me a lot of time to think. Over the last few days I've been thinking about my friends. I've often heard the theory that when people choose friends they tend to go for people who look like themselves. Thinking through my oldest and closest friends, I blatantly disprove this theory because they are every last one of them blonde with blue or green eyes, aside from one who is ginger. None of those adjectives can be applied to me, not even a little bit.  

  So I wonder why I chose them as my friends. We're all different body shapes so that's not it. We have different hobbies (although there is some overlap with a couple of them), we want to do different things with our lives and have different careers, we have different stances on things like marriage and having kids, and (as far as I know) I'm the only Christian. I can't think of a single thing that all my friends have in common, with each other or with me. 

  I guess this one will be filling my time for a while yet, because after days of thinking about it my answer is still 'I don't know'. Oh well, I suppose it's good for my brain to keep it working on something.

xXx

Apologies for my minor breakdown yesterday.

Let's just pretend it never happened and move on. 

I seem to be in love with the idea of strawberries. 

I called into Waitrose on the way home from church today and saw that some of the strawberry punnets were reduced. 'Ooh strawberries.' I thought, 'Just what we need!' so I bought some. When I got home I unloaded them proudly onto the table by the fruit bowl, and smiled when my flatmate said she was really glad that we had some. 

Then it came to dinner time. I had the main bit (Waitrose reduced pork - nummy!) and then decided that I would have some of my strawberries for dessert. So I washed a few, picked the green bits off, put one in my mouth...and had to fight the urge to spit it back out again. It was only then that I remembered my love is for strawberry-flavoured things, not the fruits themselves.

I really, really wish I liked strawberries. But I don't.

xXx

What am I doing wrong?

On Thursday I had an interview. I was last in (thanks to public transport ¬_¬) which meant that I was called for interview last, so I had loads of time to prepare my answers.  I went in, I smiled, I chatted with the interviewer, I gave my answers like I hadn't been practising them for the last 45 minutes, and I came out feeling really good about it. I was actually confident (for once in my life) that I'd got the job.

But today I got that email again. The ever-so-polite 'thanks but no thanks' email, which I now have enough of to wallpaper a room with if I printed them all off. I don't know what else to do. What can I do when a perfect interview still ends up with yet another addition to the NO pile?

I was going to start another job search today, but I've kind of lost the will.

xXx

Genius

Once again the Complete Muppet Award goes to me. I was walking my friend's dog with her, when he spotted a muffin lying on the floor. Of course he went for it and somehow managed to get the whole thing into his mouth. Now, after years of walking Mickey I have extensive experience of taking foreign objects from a reluctant dog's mouth. So I just went into auto-pilot and went to grab as much of the muffin as I could out of this doggy's mouth. 

 It didn't occur to me until I was putting the soggy remains of the muffin into the bin that 1) He was a Staffordshire bull terrier, 2) For years he was used for dog fighting, and 3) He might not like a stranger putting her hand right in his mouth. 

I'm so glad I still have all my fingers right now.

xXx

Time for a bit of waffle

I lost all illusions (delusions?) of healthy eating the other day when I nommed my way through a sausage butty. And the Tunnock's teacake I just ate. Although to be fair to myself, the only reason I had a GINORMOUS craving for the teacake was because I nearly killed myself at boxfit this morning. It got to the stage where I was telling my muscles to work harder and nothing was happening, they had absolutely no more to give me, and I kept going anyway. I actually thought I was going to fall over when the class finally finished. I suspect I'll have trouble even getting out of bed tomorrow, but the sense of well-being I have right now pre-emptively makes it worth it.

Today I realised that my final assignment is due in four weeks and three days. Then I realised that for one of those weeks I'm going to be at camp and will have absolutely no chance to work on it. Cack! I've got the minimum word count so technically I could just leave it as is and spend that time editing it, but I don't want to. The range is 15,000 to 25,000 words (which is ridiculously wide if you ask me) and it worries me that I might have 10,000 words less than some other people. At the same time it's highly unlikely that I can write a good quality 10,000 words in the three weeks available to me. So I'm aiming for around 18,000 to 20,000 for my final word count. Hopefully a nice balance between quality and quantity.

In other news, I found out the likely date of my graduation today - it's about 19 weeks away. I also found out that THERE WILL BE KILTS!! 

Oh it's going to be a good day.

xXx

Domestic goddess

I'm feeling ridiculously proud of myself right now because I just cooked pork chops for the first time in my life, and they were gooooood. It also feels good because that's the healthiest meal I've eaten for quite some time; just meat and half a mixing bowl of salad with mayo and balsamic vinergar dressing. I'm not entirely sure if mayo is meant to go with vinegar, but they were the two things that I fancied so I just stuck them in the bowl and mixed. It was very tasty. I feel like moving in with salsa friend is making me a healthier person. I mean, I've just started eating an orange and I didn't think I even liked oranges!

xXx

Sun is shinin'

So, I've managed a week of my Scottish man being in another country. It's quite hard to believe that it's been a whole week, but it seems everyone was right and the time he's away will go really quickly.

  Today I've spent a lot of time sitting in the sun, just enjoying the unusual sensation of being warm in Scotland. We've actually had quite a few good days over the last week, and I've been making the most of it. I still find it fascinating to watch my skin change colour when it gets some sunlight, probably just because it doesn't happen all that often. I can only really watch the process on my arms though; I am now absolutely convinced that my legs no longer have the ability to tan. I've worn dresses and skirts and cropped trousers, my legs probably haven't seen this much daylight since primary school, and still I look like the bottom half of my body belongs to someone else. Oh well, spray tan it is! 

  This week I've started going to the gym again, and I wonder why I ever stopped. I was in there for an hour and because of that I've felt good about myself all day. That's a pretty good input:outcome ratio. I'm also going to Boteco for salsa tonight so we'll see how well I cope with two lots of exercise in one day. I think I'll be fine, just because salsa is much more fun than the gym.

  Still no news on the job front, so I'd better go and get on with this application that I've been staring at for two days. 

xXx

Salsa people are good people

I've moved in with my friend from salsa. Right now I'm sitting in the kitchen with her and the guy who helped me move all my luggage over here, we're eating strawberries and Haagen Dazs ice cream and listening to random old songs on youtube. It's my second day here and I already feel ten times more at home than I ever did in my old place. I'm so gutted I can only stay til salsa friend's flatmate comes back, I would love so much to stay here forever. 

  So, it's American Independence day today and I spent the earlier part of the afternoon eating burgers with some of the Americans from the creative writing course. It was fun, but the jabs at me being English made me miss my Scottish man quite badly. He's been away for three days now and I seem to be coping okay, but then he has called me at least twice every one of those days. I don't want to think how much that must be costing him, but I seriously doubt he can keep it up for the whole month. It seems very likely that I will not cope so well when the day comes that he can't call me at all. 

  Today I read the worst written book I have ever seen. It was so bad it was almost painful, but at the same time it's kind of encouraging because if that rubbish can get published then I've got absolutely nothing to worry about! I mean there were huge chunks of it with just random words italicised, and the number of missing fullstops was phenomenal. It was a good lesson in how never EVER to write. It's going to the charity shop tomorrow, although I feel a bit guilty about inflicting it on someone else.

xXx