The site is going through some superficial changes at the moment, to make links prettier etc. So I’m sorry if you get caught up in my trial and error html-ing (my web designer should be tucked up in bed right now, and she’d be able to do this 10x faster and with much less ‘oh crap how did that get there’).
Although it will be worth it in the long run!
When it comes round to Christmas/birthday time, people are always asking you what you would like to receive. It’s like being on a gameshow where they give you 1 minute to decide what you would really like to receive. If you can’t decide within that time then you get the booby prize…a £10 gift card to WHSmith.
But in the run up to Christmas there are millions of adverts, on TV and in the shops, showing the perfect gift for you. Yet it completely leaves your brain when you are asked what you would like. This is why lists are a very good thing.
With a list you can just whip it out when the situation calls for it, and confuse your loved one by making them choose what to buy you. Hence you are the creator of an evil game where they have to either a) ring up other relatives and organise who buys what, or b) they have to just randomly buy from the list, and hope nobody else gets you the same gift as them. It makes present unwrapping even more tense for those who go for option b *evil cackles*
But every year I make these lists, whether internal or external, of all the items that I could possibly want for Christmas (whilst still keeping them within a certain budget). These are usually things like the complete series of Angel on DVD or a New England Patriots’ Jersey, i.e. items which I am not likely to buy for myself throughout the year.
However I get these little fleeting thoughts all year round of items which would be useful to me, but since they are fleeting thoughts then I always forget to buy them (and hence are not items I would buy myself). But since my birthday and Christmas are so close together, I’ve got no chance of getting them anytime soon; plus if I asked for these items then my loved ones would laugh as if it was some big joke, and I’d end up with that gift voucher all the same.
You see all I want for Christmas (no, not my two front teeth this time!) are a back scratcher and a nail file. Not too much to ask is it?
I want a back scratcher that even though it leaves your back feeling like it should be bleeding, it’s still been satisfyingly scratched. If it could come with a holster too, so that I could satisfy my scratching urges whilst on the move, then that would be perfect.
And a simple cheap nail file…if you can’t get a single one then I’ll take a pack of three…I’m not fussy. I just need to stop my nails from becoming so squiffy that I fear putting on tights in case my nail gets ripped off in the process.
So anytime anyone wants to buy me a gift in the next few years then please think of back scratchers and nail files. Even though I say I want a Nintendo Wii with Motion Plus and Wii Fit…I really do just want Superdrug’s finest nail file.
There is the one thing that I am really craving at the moment; a proper night of sleep. I’ve listed all the things that could be/are probably causing me to resist the sandman’s charms…and although some are fairly decent presumptions, others are…well…you’ll see.
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1. Time Zone – Since getting back from the US I managed to sort out my sleeping pattern, right before it decided to go all caflooey on me and leave me sat up at 5am wondering where all the night time went.
2. Stress – This could be from any random part of my life, since I never really register that I am taking on too much at once. Yet all I have at the moment is my work for Uni…and my lack of sleep is fuelling my writing right now…so not necessarily worrying.
3. Lack of Exercise – I’ll be the first to admit that I am lazy as hell…yet this week I haven’t had the energy to even feel human let alone go for a nice relaxing jog. Still waiting for my Wii to come back in stock…still waiting…
4. Illness – It’s always suggested to me that I could be coming down with something…which in itself is a distinct possibility. HOWEVER I am normally carrying some sort of illness, and am usually coming down with something (hey, I managed to get 3 viruses one on top of the other alright!)…and it doesn’t usually affect my sleeping.
5. Heat – The boys in my house have a tendency to turn on the heating but not turn it off. This does not suit me at all, mostly because I like my sheets to be cool when I get into them (kinda hard when you sleep in the same bed as someone else, and they’ve been going to bed before you all week long). Which leads me onto…
6. Waffle’s Darn Computer – This thing gives off heat like you would not believe, and has a huge fan that sounds like an airplane taking off in the bedroom. I just wish that the cruel people who suggested that fan to him had thought of me in the process…
7. Alcohol – Could this be stopping me from sleeping? Most of the time alcohol makes me drowsy, give me a few beers when I’m already ready for bed and my head will hit the pillow within seconds. Yet despite enjoying a beverage or two with my meal, it seems to now not be having the desired effect. (And yes I do know that alcohol isn’t recommended for insomniacs…but hey, no one is keeping me away from my raspberry cider!)
8. Fireplace – In my bedroom there is a sealed up fireplace that seems to still be connected to the chimney. So on a particularly windy night, the innocent gushes of wind get enticed into our chimney, with no means of escape. It howls and wails as it tries to get free…not ideal sleeping conditions believe me.
9. Paranoia – Okay so this is a new one for me. Never have I ever started panicking about whether my bladder is too full for sleep…until now…what…the…hell… It seems that in my head I’ve been so preoccupied with getting to sleep and nothing interrupting it once it has happened, that I’m paranoid about what level my bladder is at. Geez! Isn’t that like the best thing in the world to be thinking about right when you’re going to bed? Eh hem…doubtful.
10. The Point of Sleep is… – So this one only shows up once time creeps its way past 4.30am. “There’s no point in going to sleep now is there? It’s almost time to get up…no point in wasting your time on useless sleep.” = My sleep deprived brain craving attention.
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So that’s a nice 10 reasons why I may not be able to sleep. It’s been good to waste 20 minutes doing this, instead of twiddling my toes and thinking up dance routines involving singing frogs for ‘Kiss the Girl’…(note to self: need to find better songs on my iTunes). Tomorrow night if I can’t sleep, I’m doing my uni work, and will clean my house…might as well become properly integrated into my waking hours…and put them to proper use.
Okay since I’m bored and all hyped up I was going to upload the rest of the New York photos, and include what we did before getting on the plane home…however technology doesn’t seem to be on my side.
My phone USB cable has decided to go for a walk, and didn’t leave me a note telling me where it was going. I have a feeling that it could have told Waffle where it was meandering off to, yet Waffle is dead to the world (what with it being almost 3am), so it shall have to wait until tomorrow.
Yet for the moment I can tell you what I’ve been up to in the last few days. To be honest, it’s been mostly sleeping, suffering from jet lag and avoiding the ice in the outside world.
I got a surprise on returning to my house…don’t worry it was a good surprise…my housemate Adam was back from Nottingham! After jump hugging him…he informed me that my food shopping had arrived early. And Adam being the amazing guy that he is, didn’t question why ASDA were giving him food, he just put it away for me. Not many housemates would do that for you!
Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing holiday, and I am very grateful to Edmund for taking me on this once in a lifetime trip for my 21st birthday…it’s just so damn good to be home with my friends.
We’ve had many laughs in the past few days about ‘froufrou’ chocolates (i.e. any chocolates that have a key to go with them are just too posh for Adam or Joe to comprehend)…smuggling pain killers that shouldn’t be taken by alcoholics into the country…and we’re also planning an English outing for my birthday, Christmas and New Year sometime this week…I’m sure much fun will be had by all.
Okay so just to let people know that we arrived back safe and sound at 10am today into London. And due to certain problems we ended up getting back to Lancaster, 28 hours after we’d first woken up in New York…yawn!
I’ll post up the last couple of days bloggage when I’m no longer jet lagged and can focus more on what I’m writing. Thanks.
So today started out okay, we had a plan to go shopping and just spend a day doing general last day stuff. However I had not managed to sleep much and so was extremely cranky.
Yet we spoke to my mum on the phone for a few minutes, back in England, before heading down to Times Square for lunch in BB Kings club (or more specifically Lucilles Grill inside the club).
There were incredibly amazing spicy chicken wings, that had celery and carrots as a side…it was the sexiest veg we’ve eaten in the US…since we’ve been suffering to find any that’s as good as home. Also purple potato salad was featured in our meal…it was yummy. However I think the starring role goes to the honey for Waffle’s tea…no need for sugar here!
After lunch we waltzed down to 34th street and wandered around all the floors of Macys…not really finding anything we wandered outside to check out what was on the streets. However I had officially had enough of being shoved around in the streets of New York and so couldn’t be bothered, and hence we went back to the apartment and I had a couple of hours of catch up sleep.
On awakening, I helped clean the apartment up for our departure tomorrow and then managed to stub my toe. Which led to Edmund offering to sing a song for it…what he wasn’t thinking was that I would demand it be a Jamaican rap. This led to lots of giggling and the almost death of Edmund, Waffle and I, by choking, cold sore splitting and laughter respectively.
It was then decided that we should think about getting food for tea. Yet we all couldn’t decide on what to have. So we wandered the streets of Harlem looking for places to get food. Eventually we settled on pizza for Edmund and I, and a burrito for Waffle. However the burrito place was the fail, and the pizzas were already getting cold, so the boys headed home to rethink their plan.
Now Waffle has ordered a pizza that was meant to be delivered within 20 minutes, however 30 minutes later they got a phone call off the pizza man with a rather bad grasp of English saying something like your pizza is ready, come and get it. However just as they were leaving the house the pizza arrived…finally we’ve all eaten. Yet I couldn’t eat all of mine as the sauce was too acidic.
So all in all it’s been a rather up and down day and so I think it would be good to be home on Wednesday. One of the plus sides of today was that we all managed to get window seats on the plane home! Which means I should be able to sleep on the 7 hour flight…yay!
Tomorrow we’re having lobster for lunch and will be going on a New York tour before flying home in the evening.
Okay so we decided on steaks for tea however there were only expensive places…and Applebees; so we went there. The drinks were good as were the steaks but they had messed up the order and hadn’t cooked the potatoes properly. Yet the food sustained us for our journey to New Jersey.
We headed over to the stadium and got free towels (since we were one of the first however many people in there). It was very cold inside but our spirits (and temperatures) were kept up with hot chocolate and vigorous crowd participation.
However the weather got worse and the shivers couldn’t be stopped by dancing and cheering. So once we made it into the last quarter we made an executive decision that our limbs were too important to us, and hence we scarpered (wasn’t like we missed anything as the Jets were leading 30 to 0).
My feet were numb all the way back to the train, and were rather odd to walk on; since I had to keep looking down to check they were still there.
But we made it home after an awesome night and are now sitting with a blanket over us, flicking through TV channels; trying to fight away the inevitable colds that are forming in our sinuses.
Since we’ve got a whole day to do whatever we want to…and we haven’t made plans until later…Edmund and I are watching TV whilst Waffle naps.
We found on the Discovery Health channel a show called ‘Dr G: Medical Examiner’ which is basically like ‘Bones’ but with real people. It follows Dr G as she figures out what has killed each person who is rolled through the morgue. It’s strangely addictive…
But as you may guess, this has brought up many conversations about death and what happens after. Edmund is going to make my bones glow by shoving them into a nuclear reactor. Then I will give away my bones for raving purposes (who needs glow sticks when you have my fibula to dance with?) So…who wants what? Edmund has bagsied my humerous.
If you haven’t guessed already, beer has been consumed.
I apologise for the late blogging but it was an incredibly late night, good but tiring.
Our luxury sedan town car arrived a little bit early for us and so we didn’t manage to get any photos before we went out (however we did get some afterwards).
We were driven to our restaurant next to the Gershwin Theatre and were soon seated at our table (that was reserved under the name of Lord Jason Donnelly). We then decided to act all posh and British at them…which was incredibly fun. They didn’t seem sure whether we were actually rich and high class, so we were treated extremely well. I even had my wine poured for me when my glass got dangerously close to being empty.
The food was amazing. Starters of Bruschette for the boys and Mozarella e Zuccini for me. Then the best Lasagna that Edmund had ever had, a delicious salmon dish for our Lord and a Sausage, Spinach and Portobello Mushroom Risotto (that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out had been made by the gods themselves), for me. Then finishing off the meal with desserts, Orange Sorbet, Vanilla Ice Cream and Tiramisu.
We then leisurely made our way through to the theatre and had a glass of wine (or coke) whilst waiting for the performance to start.
The play was amazing, however it really didn’t follow the book (as it’s not really child friendly) but I wasn’t expecting it to; as this would have been hard to do on stage.
Once the performance had finished we were going to go buy a t-shirt for me however the crowd was too big for us to bother and so we went into an Irish pub for a drink.
Waffle then hailed his first ever taxi, and we survived a New York cab ride home!
After taking the photos, we sat down to watch the new Doctor Who and I drank beer out of my Wicked cup whilst munching beef jerky.
Today we are going to the Jets vs. Bengals NFL game…however the start time has been changed to 8.30pm tonight so we now have a free day. It is an extremely cold day and will be an even colder night so we will be wrapping up warm.
When on our way back from the Natural History Museum we found a door at 72nd street. Now this door wasn’t a normal door…it seemed out of place and distinctly mysterious.
Maybe there was a dragon behind it, watching and waiting for an innocent 1 train to come scuttling by. It would munch and crunch its way through the metal, and discard the bones of the terrified public onto the tracks; and hence would cause havoc and backlog in journeys.
Or maybe it’s a troll on a mission to chew it’s way through the power lines. He likes the shocks on his teeth as he breaks through the cables. Cackling he scuttles through the mysterious door, avoiding detection from the general public and leaving devastation in his wake.
However there is no evidence to suggest any of these things and these are merely the ramblings of me. However if anyone else has any other suggestions as to what could reside beneath then please do let me know.
But doesn’t it look like it should open with a key?
