tiptoe through the tulips

Yesterday I finally went to the Columbia Road Flower Market. Actually I went to a few markets in the Bethnal Green area with Willie and co. but the flower market was the one I've wanted to go to for ages. If I lived in the area, I'd be buying fresh flowers every fortnight or so. I love them. Instead, I satisfied myself with getting 3 bunches of tulips for £5 which is a bargain. I settled for yellow, pink and purple and spent most of my tuube ride home staring at the beautiful bright colours with a silly smile on my face. Someone looking at my would be forgiven for thinking that they were a present from someone special but no, I was just delighted by the colour. And the tulips, I just loveloveLOVE them, they're a favourite flower. It's a shame they don't tend to last too long. Geberas are also a big fav of mine. There's something all bright and brassy about them. And they do tend to last a while.


And in contrast, I'm finally putting up one of my pics from when it snowed. My but it's been a while since I've put pics on here.

back on the diamond rant

One of those personality spam emails is circulating around my group of friends at the moment. You know the ones with questions like:
What time did you get up this morning?
What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
What is your favourite TV show?
What did you have for breakfast?
yada yada yada

Well for most of us, the answer to latest movie seen is Blood Diamond and it is with a slight feeling of horror that I have now seen two of my friends answer the question Diamonds or Pearls? with 'diamonds'. I'm trying to calm down a bit before I write an email so that I come out with something a little more polite than:

Dear valued but obviously slightly mentally deficient friend,
Maybe I'm the deficient one here but weren't we at the same movie? Which bit didn't you get? How the diamond trade is effecting the regions? How diamonds are stored away to keep the price high? How you can't really tell if it's a 'conflict diamond' or not because of how they get processed?
WTF?!?!!
A xox

One of my friend's comments after coming out of that movie was along the lines of, "I'm glad that it was mentioned in there that part of the horror is these people doing it to themselves because everywhere you go you always here white people get blamed." She's from South Africa so I understand that they are touchy about people assuming they're all racist and yes, the people of diamond regions are killing off their own people but now I'm worried that that is all they (but they I mean all my SA buddies) saw. Are there people out there thinking, "I'm white, I'm not to blame because of what they (by which I mean the native people of the area) do to each other? It's their war/reign of terror and if I buy a 'non-conflict diamond' I've done my part of my conscience is clean." Is that what they're thinking? Sure, even if there was nothing of value in that area, children might still be made into soldiers and all those atrocities might still be committed but surely taking a demand for diamonds out of the market might help? Some might argue the two things, the war in the region and the diamond trade, are unrelated, that your £1000 necklace has nothing to do with babies running around killing people. But are you totally sure?

I've been so busy of late that I've been mega-remiss in reading my usual blogs. One that has suffered is HongKong Ham, the blog of my former boss from Critic. Reading it again today I was struck by the winsome and endearing nature of most of Hamish's entries. It's a genuinely pleasurable read (don't let it go to your head Hamham...) and it was something I didn't even realise I was missing. I was also glad to see that Hamish was also effected by Blood Diamond. Because after the reaction of my friends, I was starting to think it was just a me and Dad thing. It's not. Phew. Every now and then I tend to see things in stark black and white (a trait I know I get from my Dad) and I'm usually more of a shades-of-grey girl so when I come across these B&W issues, I can get a bit surprised at how adamant and blinkered I can be. Something is suddenly RIGHT or WRONG and people that can't understand that are STUPID or BLIND or INCOMPETENT. Which, surprisingly enough, is not my usual attitude to life.

builders
I wonder if there is some international workmen's pledge that you have to take before you're allowed to put on your high-vis vest and wonder around with your pants sitting too low and wielding a power tool. It probably goes along the lines of, "Please repeat after me: I do solemnly swear to show my butt crack to the world and stare and female passers by. I understand that it is my right yell out lewd comments or to make similar comments in a normal tone of voice. As soon as I see someone coming, I pledge to stop doing all work and take a tea break."

This morning I was walking to the train and passed two workmen just standing on a corner. I had my iPod in and was listening to a very random mix that my sister complied for me. Just as I was coming up to them, Goldfrapp's White Horse started playing and as I walked past I KNOW I heard one of them say something dodgey. This is where Little Aynia Brain branched into a Calvin and Hobbes styled reality with three options. 1- I walk back and in a movie-styled-way, the music from my iPod swells to fill the air around us and I just dance my ass off in front of them. 2- I walk back, calmly take out one of my headphones and say, "I'm sorry, did you say something?" (Delivered, for those in the know, in icy-cold Aynia Tone complete with pursed lips and raised eyebrow.) 3- I ignore them and carry off down the street but I'm kinda half dance-walking. I was pretty close to option 3 anyway. I'm pretty sure that some songs on my iPod start me walking with a bit of a skip or a strut, it seems I can't help myself. I do manage to stop short of sashaying down the high street complete with jazz hands and spirit fingers though. Thank heavens for small mercies...

when I grow up...

Well I should have known but of course, me being me, I didn't. Ms. Dressaday and Ms. Smartypants are famous. Of course they are. They write brilliantly, are semi-famous and have even published books. Mimi Smartypants' book is a collection of blog entries (or so it seems from reviews/summaries) and Erin, aka Ms. Dressaday, has written loads. (Sure, part of it is her job but still...)

Jealous? Moi? Well sure. I want to be fantastically literate and be able to voice all my comments on the world in a pithy, witty and winsome manner. (I also want to be able to do handstands without having a wall for safety, be able to play the guitar properly instead of massacring folk songs like Scarborough Fair and to look gloriously waif-like* for my diving holiday in 2 weeks but I don't always get what I want.) At any rate, in between bouts of work (it makes it sound like an affliction), I have been googling my idols and pandering to my stalker-esque tendencies.

.......I just got back from doing a circuit class at the gym with some of my fellow work colleagues. The circuit class involves going around various 'stations' where you do different exercises- sit ups, press-ups, lunges, tricep dips, skipping rope etc- and in my case, just to make it more fun, you also try to go a brighter shade of red and sweat more than anyone else in the class. I so totally kicked their asses. It was good to get the heart pumping though, especially as it's been hard to get out of bed this week as I'm fighting a cold. It's one of those really annoying ones where you don't really feel sick but when you get up in the morning and sit up, you can feel all the snot in your head shifting position. Just lovely. And then I get to climb tonight as well. Ha! I doubt I'll be pulling myself up anything in a hurry. That said, something at the gym must be working because the other week I was definitely aware of the climbing no-no which is using my arm muscles to just haul myself up as opposed to using my legs and technique. Graeme, my regular Thurs night climbing buddy, does it all the time. It was only the other week that I became aware of it though. Since we started at the same time one might think (at least I did) that we'd be at the same level but he consistently climbs a grade or two higher than me and it's really starting to glaze my doughnuts. I know he's naturally a bit stronger and goes to the gym more and is a bit taller (this helps) but last week we were climbing and I watched him climb something I couldn't finish and when he got down I was like, "You're a great big dirty man-cheater! I saw you just muscling through that. You are such a cheater!" We know each other well enough by now that he just smirked and shrugged and said he'd use whatever he could to get up that wall. Fair enough, it's my attitude as well. I'll try to remember that tonight when I'm peeling off the wall because my muscles are too tired...

*I will never look waif-like. I'm more of a solid load-bearing kind of girl but I also would not WANT to look waif-like, in all honesty. I like knowing that I will not snap. I also like the feeling of being able to sense my muscles working and how my body fits together which is something I most usually experience when climbing because you use your frame quite a lot when you twist and turn to reach stuff or crank up for holds and that's when you get to feel your muscles working. [Editor's note: bugger me but that was an awful sentence. *shudder*]

much better now

A benefit to having lots of friends over for dinner who get so full they almost fall asleep is that they leave behind lots of wine. And bless them, they drink red. So I've been able to indulge in a 'free' glass every night since Saturday. Cheers guys! I also have had lunch and dinner for the past two days although I might finish it all off tonight. That is thanks to Irish genetics- I totally blame my Mum. I worked out how much everyone might need, made a bit more and then one person couldn't come so I had, well, a lot. The laugh is that when I finally got a chance to sit down, about 20mins before the first person arrived, I was looking at all the food and suddenly has this panic of, "Shit! It's not gonna be enough! Maybe I should whip up another wee something..." But thank Christ I didn't because what with food for me for 3 days, I sent some of it home with the girls and Sean scoffed a lot when he got in and had a HUGE lot of the risotto on Sunday. So God bless the Irish and God bless my Mum. xox

I also got from Amazon, a copy of Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes and Fables: Wolves. Then I came across this which fit in with the whole Fables thing quite nicely I thought. I have been absolutely, thoroughly enjoying reading Revolting Rhymes. I remember being read this as a child and thinking it was the funniest, bestest thing out. I still think this- the rhymes and language are brilliant. It's the kind of book I like to read out loud because the words are just positively delicious to say and hearing it and giving a cadence and rhythm to it all is almost as much fun as the story itself. I need to go out and find a small child who will sit and listen, enthralled, as I go through the whole thing. Or I'll corner my flatmates tonight. Hee hee hee.

Oh- and traumatically, my girly movies will probably not arrive in time for me to hole myself up tomorrow and indulge in singleton-ness. I'm hoping Sarah and Sean bugger off for a romantic meal somewhere and leave me to wallow on my lonesome. Last year the girls and I went out for a meal but this year people are busy. Me, I'm just gonna try not to hook up with Ben and Jerry.

on a lighter note...

This couple did a full-on reenactment of the final dance from Dirty Dancing at their wedding. So cheesey. So glorious. Good on them I say.

slightly doom and gloom

Once again, so much to write, so little time. I'll just have to type fast...

Last night I went to see Blood Diamond and I came out of it in what I would call not exactly depressed or pensive but maybe more... introspective. Having no time to write about the movie itself, apart from to say that it was somewhat bludgeon-esque with the politic messages and quite heavy going (in an emotionally harrowing way) but otherwise I really liked it, I will instead direct you to by Dad's blog entries about it: 1 and 2. (Because in broad brush strokes, I basically agree with what he said.)And the old fav Rotten Tomato plot summary.

But walking home I really started to think. I mean in my existential way, I'm already in a what's-the-point frame of mind but this movie, or rather issues brought up by this film, really made me put my life in perspective. I always come away from this kind of thing slightly shell-shocked and immediately want to go out and help save the world. But of course I don't want to put myself into physical danger, and well, it's a lot of effort really, isn't it? But what am I doing about anything? My job involves putting images and text on paper and I can have a whole day taken up with deciding what font to choose and how big it should be. A bad week for me involves struggling with design or office politics. That is NOT a bad week. In a bad week you get chucked out of your home, most of your village is shot, you see your mother raped in front of you, your father and brother get shot, get raped yourself and possibly have a hand chopped off. That's a bad week. Me, I'm pushing images around a page- little to the left? Little to the right? Oooh, I don't know, that's a tough choice.

What the fuck does it really matter?!

What is almost worse than this is to know that in a couple of days, this feeling will probably have worn off and I'll go back to being the kind of person who feels good about themselves because they put £1 in someones's plastic bucket and got a sticker as proof that they "care" about blind people, deaf people, cancer victims and homeless abused children. And after that I'll pay someone to shape my eyebrows and put hot wax on my armpits to rip the hair off.

WTF.

So of course I called up Dad when I got home which is what a girl does when what-is-the-point-of-it-all crisis hits. And I took this away from our talk: you can't live every day in this heightened sense of this-world-is-super-fucked-and-I-need-to-run-out-and-save-it because it would drive you insane. I had already decided that. But you can allow yourself to keep that awareness at a certain level and use it to make your decisions about things, like what food/jewelery/[products you buy. And when you start to get pissed off because you can't get a page to look "pretty", well then just get some perspective.

This also made me think about my job/career though. I used to always think that I'd be doing design forever. I like it. Making things look pretty makes me happy and it can be like solving a puzzle when you get it right. But maybe there's something else I can be doing with my life that can fulfill me but be more generally 'useful' in the grand scheme of things... I was a bit surprised to find myself thinking this because as I said, I always assumed I'd be designing forever.

Also, and this I decided on my lonesome, you get to choose to be one of three people. 1- you complain about what's wrong with this world but do nothing about it
2- you are bothered so you get off your fat ass and do something about it, no matter how small
3- you stop caring

Now I really don't want to be person 1 or 3 so maybe, just maybe, I'll have to get off my fat ass...

This morning I woke up still relatively sombre about the whole thing. I thought about trying to snap myself out of it but I've decided to wallow in it for a while. I played Radiohead's Amnesiac on my iPod on the way to work which actually made me smile, if only because I was laughing at myself because it is rather Bathtub Brigade music and I was being quite self-indulgent... Then I got to work and saw Play.com was having a 3 for 2 sale (I went in only to buy Amelie but came out with Miss Congeniality and While You Were Sleeping as well. Mainly because when I came home last night, I wanted to watch something to girly and warm-fuzzy to snap me out of it only to find that I only own action movies...

angry raging white female (on the inside)

Currently I'm meant to be in a state of ketosis. My book says I'm meant to be enjoying a heightened state of alertness and clear headedness with lots of energy. What I am is quitequite pissed off. You try to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when all you can think about it whyGodwhy are you not allowed to eat carbs (well I am but I'm meant to be keeping it under 20g a day which is sweet f*ck all so basically no bread, crackers, spuds, pasta, rice, cereal, beans etc) and what is the deal with even quite a few vegies being quite high in carbs so that when you put an amount on your plate it looks like nothing and salad is about all you can load up on. Of course I'm allowed to eat all the protein I want but I'm a vegetarian* so I'm kinda f*cked. Or, as the case seems to be, f*cked off. And lets not even START on how much I want chocolate right now...

Now before people think that I'm some psycho-obessed diet freak let me set you straight. To me, the word 'diet' defines more a way of structuring what you eat than the more traditional 'eat cabbage soup for a week' or 'eat this protein shake at every meal** For health reasons I will not go in to, I need to be looking in to a low GI diet and one vege low GI cookbook I got recommends kicking this off by at least a week where you eat 20g or less of carbs which should put you in to ketosis which helps to kick things off. So I thought trying it for a week couldn't hurt but I'm only on day 3 and I feel like I have a raging beast trapped within me. I'm sure this isn't just due to carb-cutting but I'll go in to that later...

This whole ketosis thing is quite interesting but doing some quick googling just now I'm not so sure how I feel about it. The first place I checked was wikipedia and I wasn't too keen on the term Most medical resources regard ketosis as a pathological state associated with chronic starvation. I was a bit happier with www.answers.com (Scroll down the page a bit for the definition part.) Basically I'll try to stick it out till Saturday when I'm having friends round for dinner- I'm sure I can last till then. The question is whether I've ripped off the heads of every one I come in to contact with before then...

Other reasons for me being in a foul mood (in no particular order):
1- Work stuff. But of course I'm not going to go in to that.
2- I slept like shit, woke up at 5am and went back to sleep and didn't end up going to the gym
3- Probably low on my daily endorphin jolt because of missing the gym. So I have to hang out until climbing tonight to get my fix.
4- ear piercings are probably to blame (partially) for poor sleep. And now both are a bit swollen.
5- I'm having 9 people over on Saturday and although I can feed them, I have no idea where the f*ck they're meant to sit. Or even fit. We have a rather small open-plan kitchen/living room. And it's the first time they've ever come over. What was I thinking?!!!!

I think that sums it up. I will now stop ranting and get back to work. Peace out.

*who eats seafood
**and you won't crap for a month. This happened to one of my sister's flatmates long ago- she was on this protein shake diet and the whole time she ate it she did not poop once. That is not natural.

attention to detail

I wanted to try to embed this here but as it's a separate url, I can't seem to. You all simple mustmustMUST check it out. It's absolutely amazing. Lots of pixel lunar art on this massive page. So much attention to detail. To find out more about it or add to it, go to www.x-panded.com/pixeldam/indexpixelmoon.html. I'm just gutted that you can't click on things and have stuff happen. That would be truly truly awesome.

Postscript: As a side note, look at me go! Nothing for weeks and now 4 entries in 2 days. So typical...

all types of crazy...

This morning there was an article on the Metro entitled 'Astronaut in a nappy attacks her love rival'. Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I want to be reading on my morning train ride. The only reference I've been able to find to it online is here and it reads a bit dry but to sum up, this woman drove about 1500km wearing a special nappy so that she didn't have to stop to use the loo, to meet a woman who she heard was interested in a man she was interested in. My fav bit was where the Metro said The 43-year-old was arrested and found to have a mallet, a 10cm knife, rubber tubing and rubbish bags......Nowak told officers she just wanted to scare Shipman into talking about her relationship with Mr. Oefelein and did not intend to hurt her. I'm sorry WHAT? In the world as I know it, you don't turn up to "chat" to someone carrying a knife, rubber tubing and rubbish bags. To me that reeks of body parts and a whole lot of not-talking. At least not nicely. Maybe Miss Astronaut Lady had some weird otherly experience in space which fried some synapses...

not knowing the meaning of small-scale

Ever since I moved in to my new flat, I've been meaning to have people around for dinner/afternoon tea/brunch/something similar and I have finally done it. Well at least the inviting part. And as a result, have encountered the problem with having a large circle of friends- there are a lot of them. I've just realised that I'm making dinner for 9 people on Saturday night- 11 if I count Sarah and Sean, which I feel I should. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. When I realised how many people it was, my first thought was, "I really must buy another shelf for our oven." Currently we only have one and I think we can all agree that there's no way you can cook for 11 people with one shelf!

new shiny goodness in my ears

Oh you faithful few who have kept checking this blog in the vain hope that I'll actually post something. Thank you. Who would have thought I could be so busy? All I can say is that doing a 40 hour a week job that only usually takes up 40 hours has made me soft. Back at Critic, I'd usually have done my 40 hours by the time I left on Thursday. Since getting back, it's been hella-crazy flat-tack all-out madness at work as I helped to put out not one but two magazines. Dude. But my dad has been asking, ever so nicely, when I'm going to blog again so here I am. Blogging again. Hoping not to let it slip again this badly although I do seem to periodically drop off the face of the cyber world.

Currently my latest news is that I got my ears pierced in the weekend. That's right folks, at the ripe old age of 27 I finally did it. In typical me fashion it is of course slightly in reverse as I've had my tracha pierced for years. I remember when I got that done, I went through this stage where it all felt a bit surreal and I really wasn't sure I wanted it there. I mean I'd had a piece of metal stabbed through my body. When you think about it, it seems a bit weird. And now, about 8 years later, I've done it again. This hurt nowhere near as much, in fact not at all- at least until yesterday. It seems that when I get changed, I pull my top off and brush my right ear. ALL THE TIME. And right about now, my right ear is more swollen than my left and a bit hot and burning whereas the left if totally fine. All because I happened to nastily jerk it a couple of times. When I get home I intend to hold ice to it until I can't feel it any more. On the bright side, it's not seeping or anything so I'm sure it'll be fine. But at the moment I'm a bit of a grumblebum about it. As you may have noticed...

The other thing I've been aware of at the moment, apart from the throbbing pain in my right ear, is that I'm going through another 'phase' as I like to put it. Not a personal one but rather a social one. This at least is how I've chosen to term it. You know how you can look back over your life and track fads or phases of your life? Mine tend to get defined by my social circle at the time and I can get quite nostalgic about it. Life is constantly changing but every now and then you get to settle in a pocket of time for a while where everything is basically good and it's just nice. At the moment I'm fairly settled here in London, I go to work, I climb twice a week and most weekends I usually have coffee with my friend Sue on a Sat morn and the bunch of us will do something on the Sat night. The other week I was having dinner with my friends and I was laughing so hard I was crying and I looked around at a group of 8 women, all of whom I really like and I enjoy being with. And happy as I was, I was also a bit sad because I realised that this will not last. We'll leave London, move apart, life will go on. It's just a bit sad really. The nice, or at least interesting thing about being in London is that we are all at pretty much the same stage in life but it's almost a kind of stasis in a way and back home, be it NZ for me or SA for them, friends are moving on with lives and buying houses and getting married and having babies. Which we are definitely NOT doing. Is it something about being in London, the different pace of it all, the reasons we came here? I don't know. I just consider myself lucky enough to have good enough friends back home that they can go down a different path to me and we can still have a close enough bond that we don't become strangers to each other. We still hold similar values and opinions on things- at least at the moment. Part of me wonders how long it'd take with us living our different lives before we grew so different that we no longer felt that we understood the other person. I know it's happened with some of my friends when they've gone back to SA for a holiday- they just have nothing in common with people they used to consider their best friends. And I know that's just part of life but it doesn't stop it from being a bit sad too.

no time no time no time

IT SNOWED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Too busy, too much to do. Tomorrow will have more. Plus pics of snow. ooer.

brrr...........

Abandonment Issues
Kitty has left me. Don't be fooled by the fact that she may occasionally post on here. She's left me. She now mainly bogs on the greener shores of her personal blog kittyonsafari.blogspot.com. I don't feel stabbed in the back as much as pitched out of a moving car onto the side of the road in the middle of the desert. (Just joking K, you go forth a blog where you may...)

What will I not do for a photo?
Lotte came over for tea and cake yesterday afternoon and as we were looking at her photos from Prague, we came across this one which was taken when we stayed a friend's place in Devon ages ago. There was this digger on the side of the road which we walked past every day and Lotte and me being Lotte and me, of course we had to hop in to the scoop bit to have our photo taken. Look at me being all (unintentionally) calender-girl in the digger. I'm looking a smidge hoochy-mamma-esque, well as much as you can in jeans, t-shirt and a wooly hat with a bobble on it...


so this is what winter feels like
It came out of nowhere- overnight (it felt like) an almost 6 degree drop in hit us. One week we're basking in an 11˚ winter and suddenly it's 4˚. Jesus. It is C O L D. Brilliant timing on behalf of my wonderful Mummy though- I left some clothes behind in NZ (actually it was all undies and some may laugh at me getting them sent over because yes, you can buy underwear in Britain but my Mummy knows how attached I am to my sensible cotton underwear in totally non-sensible colours so she was a honey and shipped them over) and the package arrived today and even though I said I didn't need thermals, she sent me a thermal singlet anyway which was a Godsend because when I headed for the gym this morning I forgot a jersey and was freezing my bits off in my polyprop and t shirt so THANK YOU MUM YOU ARE A GODDESS. I am wearing the thermal now.

I have stuff I feel I could/should/will write in response (somewhat belated in some cases) to stuff my Dad has written in his blog but I don't have time right now so instead write this in the hope that he at least will remind me that I have to do it. Fantasy writing/ good and evil/probably something else but can't remember what....

I did a bad thing

I've updated our blog to the new blogger thingy, I'm sorry if this actually becomes a pain for you Aynia, but they kept asking so sweetly.

SO I'm in America! In Pt Reyes which is just out of San Francisco, to be specific.
So far I have:
Eaten: Big burger curly fries, cherry cola, mexian food including tamales and tacos. Lot's of goats cheese (for some reason), granola, goldfish crackers and I just had a big piece of pizza.
Been to: Some of San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge, Oakland, the pacific coast, a swing dance restaurant, an american-as-heck bar, a burger joint, a fancy japanese restaurant, and a house with heated floors and a double door fridge.
I plan to in the near future:
Go to a shooting range (awesome!), horse riding, go to a roller derby (where girls on skates fight -ha!), go to live music, Vegas, and the Grand Canyon.

I've been hanging out with my brother Peter and his new wife, Bonnie, and her 3yo daughter, Sophia. I'm going to be doing some work for Pete - web and graphic design stuff, and hopefull will earn mega greenbacks so that I can treat Aynia when I come visit after April sometime.

check out my other kitty specific blog yo.

so happy that I'm jumping

I HAVE MY iPOD BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whoppee! No more broken-record-Aynia-brain. No more enduring shit gym music. Oh the rapturous joy. Oh the happiness. Oh the dance of I've-got-my-iPod-back. Oh the funny looks from people on the office...

WARNING FOR DEADWOOD FANS- POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD
I'm writing this in small print so that it's easier for Deadwood fans to skip over this bit. Like Julie. I was thinking of her last night when the episode from Season3 featured a fight between Dan and The Captain, Hurst's muscle guy. Now Dan isn't a nice guy but I was soooooooooooooooo rooting for him and had absolutely no idea who was going to win the fight. It really could have gone either way and would have had quite different plot consequences. It was tense. I was tense. I was also thinking of my sister because I was doing what she hates most and talking at the TV. There were lots of cries of "Oooh" and "NO!" and "Get him" as well as an almost constant chant of "Go for the eyes, go for the eyes, gofortheeyes, GOFORTHEEYES." Dan did. He won. But I had anticipated eye-gouging, (which is bad enough) but in true Deadwood style, it was an eye popping-out. Which was quite graphic- it was swinging around and everything. And of course it's game-over at that point. Kinda gross but so well done, as the whole show is. Ka Pai makers so Deadwood.

Ok, it's fine to read again now.
Just to bring you up to speed if you skipped the fine print, I was talking about a fight between two characters in Deadwood. This morning when I walked to the train, I was thinking about it and it made me think of how my martial arts has influenced my opinion of fights I see on TV/in the movies. So often, people are fighting nicely- I always want to yell, "Bite him!" or "rip that finger off!" or "go for the eyes". They don't, and I just sit there shaking my head in disgust. I learned a lot a fancy moves doing martial arts but there is a HUGE different between busting a move when the person is working in the same style as you and it's a training environment and busting a move in the real world. Real world people don't move or react the same way and although I consider myself competent, when faced with a big chap wanting to whale on me in some dark alley way, I would not use my training methods to deal with him as I might in sparring. I'd stay as far away as I could and if I got in close, I'd be biting anything I could and gouging eyes and pulling hair. And I feel no shame in that. Down and dirty is the way this girl would play it. Straight arm? I'll break it if I fear for my safety. Shove your head near mine as you try to strangle me? If you're stupid enough to leave my arms free I'll poke your eyes out. Oh I'm a charmer. :-)

Military Alphabet
I live with two travel agents and it has become a matter or pride to me to learn the military alphabet which they have to know because they have so many codes with letters in them. So I thought I'd drop it in here for the sake of posterity. Also I've been watching too much of The Unit...
A: Alpha
B: Bravo
C: Charlie
D: Delta
E: Echo
F: Foxtrot
G: Golf
H: Hotel
I: India
J: Juliet
K: Kilo
L: Lima
M: Mike
N: November
O: Oscar
P: Papa
Q: Quebec
R: Romeo
S: Sierra
T: Tango
U: Uniform
V: Victor
W: Whiskey
X: X-Ray
Y: Yankee
Z: Zulu
See? Don't you feel so much better for knowing that? And so much cooler?

And now work calls. I have a weekend looming and stuff to do. Ciao. xx

'fessing up

So it turns out that the real reason that I need my iPod back is that is saves me from myself. Left to my own devices, my brain will amuse itself (in a totally sadistic way) but doing endless broken-record-styled repeats of snippets of some of The Most Crap Songs Ever which I swear by everything holy to me* do not exist anywhere on my iPod or, for that matter, anywhere is my music collection. Yesterday I almost stopped walking when I realised with horror that the song snippet on endless repeat was , "It's getting hot in here so hot so take off all your clothes I am getting so hot, I wanna take my clothes off." This may have been partially due to the fact that I was getting bloody hot walking along as I was layered up and tend to walk quite fast so tend to get a bit hot and sweaty. But still, I don't think that makes it forgivable... The other day I had a snippet of a Pink song (not as bad as Nelly but still less than ideal) and for days and days I had the song from The Lion King that Julie and I sing as a duet. Now a duet can be defined as "A piece for two performers" in which case yes, this is a duet. But in reality it's Julie singing and my piping up at the end. It's from near the end of The Lion King where Timon and Pumba are creating a distraction so they sing this song (Julie sings Timon, i pipe up for Pumba, in a faux bass tone):

Timon: If you're hungry for a hunk of fat and Jjuicy meat, eat my buddy Pumbaa here because he is a treat! Come on down and dine on this tasty swine, all ya gotta do is get in line! Are ya achin'...
Pumbaa: Yep Yep Yep!
Timon: ...for some bacon?
Pumbaa: Yep Yep Yep!
Timon: he's a big pig!
Pumbaa: Yep Yep.
Timon: you could be a big pig too! Oy!
Timon and Pumbaa: AAAAAAAAAAH!

Too much info on the quirks of my relationship with my sister? Maybe. But that tune's been in my head ever since we sung it when I was home. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. If only I could record us doing it and put it on here as an MP3. That would make it all so much more understandable. (? Really?! Oh the illogic of the Aynia Brain....)

Speaking of songs, my flatmate Sean has a ringtone at the moment that isn't entirely public-friendly. It's a sound bite from Southpark and I can't find it on the web (although if you want to see some quotes from the show, check this out. (Scroll down past the show listings.) So inappropriate but so hilarious. As is the Uncle Fucka song.) Anyway- Sean's ringtone has a bit where Cartman is going, "Who are you calling fat you fucking Jew?" Then Mr. Garrison tells them off for swearing and Kyle goes, "What? Fuck? Fuck fuckity fuckfuckfuck." It's the kind of ringtone where you want to answer your phone reallyREALLY quickly. It's embarrassed him a couple of times but I have no sympathy for him, I've told him he needs to change it. Hilarious? Yes. Suitable for an everyday ringtone? No.

*choccie, family, the beach at low tide when the sun is rising and I have it all to myself, the laugh of a small child**, the moment just as the plane takes off and leaves the ground

**so some of this is a bit cheesy. So sue me.

I'M LEARNING TO DIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well it finally happened. My boss came in to office one day and announced that we were learning to dive. (We being me and three other girls from work.) We are being shipped off to the Red Sea for a week from March 1-8 for sand, sun, lots and water and hopefully some Nemo sightings. AWESOME! I've wanted to learn to dive for absolutely ages and having this trip in March will break up the British gloom quite nicely. So now I have 43 days (yes, I set up a new countdown widget) to stop eating and exercise lots and miraculously be able to wear a bikini. NOT. This body is a bikini-free zone. If God had intended for anyone to see my stomach he would given them a second eyelid or something similar to help reduce glare and help numb the pain.

I am also going to be going to the Outdoors Show which is cool but mainly because they're having the European Bouldering Championships there which I reallyREALLY want to see. I'm sure I'll be able to sneak away for the finals and to have a play on the wall. Hee hee.

So it looks like I have quite a few holidays and things to look forward to which is what it's all about really. At least it's part of what my being over here is meant to be all about.

I've been really good with the gym since being back but if I thought last week went slowly I was sadly mistaken. This week has crawled. Yesterday morning my alarm woke me up at 6.20am and as my hand scrabbled for it automatically, my brain was going, "Oh God no, just make it stop. It CAN'T be time to get up." Brain 2 chipped up with, "It's not that bad, you've only got one more day of this to go then you can sleep in."
brain1: Oh thank God.
pause for mental gears to actually start working
brain1: no wait a minute, this is only Tuesday. FUCK!
brain2: OH GOD! Only Tuesday?!!! Shit! [Editor's note: my language aint' at it's best first thing in the morn] How can we only have done this dragging ourself out of bed at an ungodly hour to shuffle to the train station like a zombie to then shuffle further to the gym to sweat and do exercise (at 6.30am that is rather like a dirty word) only once this week. ONCE. Jesus. I just can't do this. HELP! Argh!!!
brain1: Dude! Pull yourself together. Just get out of bed, it'll be fine.
brain2: oh fuck off *grumble* *grumble*

Thank God for auto pilot I say. Now that I've started doing this 25 min walk to Putney overland, I usually prefer it to my combo of walk, tube & walk or just taking for the bus (once it deigns to turn up) because it's good time to think and the walk is actually quite a nice one- plus it's far more reliable time-wise than the other options. But the past couple of mornings the love has been gone. I'm sure things will be better once I get my iPod back. The thought of doing cardio at the gym without my own music for motivation is a bit daunting. I get bored easily on the machines and the music at the gym is absolutely bollocks. But my baby should be returned to me by Monday, oh the joyful anticipation.

boo

It seems that since getting back from NZ I've been swamped. That and week one was pretty tough- motivationally wise. But I've made it through one whole week of work now and have even been to the gym in the mornings so, having proven to myself that I won't die doing it, I'm up for round two.

Once again though I seem slightly lacking on the whole time thing so today's entry consists of two links. This website I liked for two reasons, well maybe three. In no particular order:
1) The blue background
2) The supercutie robot animation. I was gutted that I couldn't make him move more
3) The way the pages link together. It's like you're moving around on a huge palette and I think it's quite a nice idea.

This site is totally awesome when it comes to choosing colours for web pages. If you click on the link it will take you through to a homepage. There will be a purple link near the beginning of the text which says 'spin the colour wheel'. It brings up a pop-up window (hence no direct link) and you spin the wheel and it randomly generates three colours for you and previews them in relation to each other. Hard to explain (at least for me) but very very cool. For someone who find the task of choosing colour schemes for websites quite daunting (as I do), this site is an absolute Godsend.

Oooh ooh ooh AND I have booked my flights to go to Portugal at Easter to stay with Cathy and co. This means I will get to witness Sean and Daisy doing their Easter Egg Hunt which will have to be übersupercutiepie, especially as this will be Daisy's first Easter being completely mobile so she'll be doing all the hunting herself.

what a Monday needs

I know that I need to do a decent entry. I really really do. I even have stuff to write about. Just slightly lacking on time and motivation... So instead I will leave you with this gem that was passed on to me by my buddy Dave:
a music video using treadmills
God only knows how they came out of it alive. I would have broken something.

I will however share just 2 pics from NZ. In the first I am cleaning my hiking boots in prep for waterproofing them. I really kinda let myself go in my two weeks at home. Who on earth would think that I am a designer and have any sense of what good taste might be? Red t-shirt, stripy polyprop, purple butterfly flannel pajamas, not to mention topping it all off with leopard-wannabe fluffy slippers. Dear God. I am a cacophony of colour.



This one is a big-small that Dad and I had fun setting up at Lover's Leap. A holiday, (not matter how rainy) is not complete without silly big-smalls.

what a jolly entry.

Before I left for NZ, I had a countdown widget. Basically you name an event and put in the date and everytime you looks at your widgets, there's a little message that tells you how many days it is till the big event. Mine was "HOMETIME!!!!!" so my message would read "2 days till HOMETIME!!!!!" which was all well and good but coming in to work today, I went to feed my tigergotchi widget and to my great horror, my countdown widget now reads "17 days since HOMETIME!!!!!!". All those exclamation marks leap out from the page and mock me. I must find something to replace it with as right now it's pretty bloody depressing.

Apart from widget horror, I have nothing to report apart from jetlag which seems to be manifesting itself as overwhelming apathy. I can't be bothered, not with anything. And I'm not really tired, at least not in the jet-lagged-I'm-about-to-drop-dead-RIGHT-NOW-I-need-to-sleep-so-bad was I'm used to, I just don't care.