As a public service, because I care about the welfare of the world, I am going to answer that one little question that has been foiling the world’s most intelligent people since the creation of the cocktail shaker in 7000 BC.

How many fairies does it take to shake a cocktail shaker?

Well firstly you have to deal with the issue of keeping the shaker closed, and hence the liquid inside. One fairy would not have enough muscle power to keep the two part lid closed as it is shook; however two fairies would be able to handle this task.

The second issue that needs to be addressed is how to shake the liquid inside the cocktail shaker. Two fairies will be needed at the bottom of the shaker so as to stop it from falling over, and will also be able to share the weight of the shaker.

These fairies, who are at either side of the bottom of the shaker, will fly upwards and drop the shaker. Another fairy will be waiting to catch the shaker as it falls, and will soon be joined by the other two fairies so that the first fairy is not squished.

This will shake the liquid into cocktailed perfection; and so there is never any need to shake your own cocktails again; as long as you have 5 fairies handy that is.

If you are still confused as to where the fairies are, then I have included a handy diagram to help you. Aren’t my stick fairies fabulous?

Yes, you are reading what you think you’re reading…another blog post by yours truly. Please don’t die of shock, I am indeed updating it (finally).

I apologise for not posting sooner but I am reaching the end of my final year at Uni, (only a week and a half left to go) and so have been focusing on that. However once that is all done and dusted I will have all the time in the world to bore you all with my brilliant thoughts and theories.

Now the topic of this blog post may seem a bit odd. No, I didn’t get into a bar fight, but if I did I would totally win (not). Someone posed the question to me, whilst in the pub in my pyjamas, that if I could choose five people to fight with me in a bar fight then who would they be? They could be anybody, dead or alive, including fictional characters.

After some careful consideration, and a couple of pints, I came to the conclusion that I would have:

1) Jayne Cobb from Firefly – Complete with Vera (his beloved gun of choice).

2) Spike from Buffy – From the Season Two ‘School Hard’ era where Spike was bad ass and not wimping around after Buffy.

3) John Casey from Chuck – Yes, I know that I have already had one of Adam Baldwin’s characters, but there weren’t any rules against this!

4) Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly – He’s experienced at bar fights, and knows how to make a hasty getaway.

5) Dean Winchester from Supernatural – Mmmmm…*shakes head* What was I saying?

So there you have it, the five people who I would have with me in a bar fight. This list has been edited since that night in the pub; Gandhi and Chuck Norris were considered for the list…but were struck off due to their inability to be good to go for a drink with.

But what I’m curious about is who you guys would pick? Think you’ve got a better list than mine? Then I’d love to hear it. Just click on the title of this post and type me a message in the comment box. It’s that simple.

Also comments have been made on my ’10 Reason for Lack of Sleep’ post. However since I get a lot of spam, and hence are unsure whether you are real people or just computers, you should drop me a comment on here so that I know you’re real!

I got an epic urge to bake in the past couple of days, and gladly that came when my friend Dani’s birthday came up; I made her a yellow cake (her favourite colour).

However when I was in the supermarket, merely browsing the baking aisle, I began to feel the need to indulge. Yes the shopping monster, that is inside most girls, came out. However this was not in the form of shoes and clothing, but it was in the form of food colourings and flavourings; I’m not ashamed to admit that I went….ahem…slightly mad over it.

– So mad that my boyfriend decided that looking at cereal was better than being seen with me…*sigh* –

Anywho, so I bought the cake fancifying ingredients and made my way home. I made my friend’s cake and decided that this was not enough baking for the day! Oh no, I needed at least something blue and green to make me happy…hence I continued baking…

So after a fair few hours, and almost running out of vanilla icing, I came up with my strawberry and vanilla flavoured, blue and green cake with vanilla buttercream and chocolate fudge/vanilla icing *breathes heavily* I also decided I needed a better name for it before I passed out from explaining it to people.

So thinking of my love for superheroes (and hence their villains), I came up with ‘two face’. And so we, the fanciful people of my house, have a cake named after an awesome Batman villain…if you don’t know who he is then google is your friend.

I’ve reignited my love for baking yet again. There will be definite pictures of my fabulous cake making abilities…and remember, if anybody wants/needs a cake making out there then just get in contact with me…I’m awesome for birthdays.

Okay so it’s been a busy few weeks since I last posted. The Saints won the Superbowl, Alexander McQueen died and my best friend Charlotte, a naturally platinum blonde, became a brunette.

I however have been busy preparing for a Drama presentation on a movement called ‘Dada’. Now if you’re asking yourself ‘what is Dada?’ then I may have to shout back to you in a faux German accent…

“YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT DADA IS!”

And if you still feel that you want to learn what Dada was (yes the movement is over now) then Wikipedia is your friend.

Anywho, I’ve been incredibly busy with that and work for my Creative Writing classes; hence I’m apologising profusely for not blogging more often.

However I’m here now, and can tell you all about my re-birthday (day) out. I forced my housemates to wear fancy dress (Robin and a pirate), whilst I was dressed as a fairy. We headed off into town for a day of drinking and debauchery. Thinking back on how much alcohol I consumed that day makes my liver ache slightly…vodka shots for the win!

Also on a previous note, the cheesecake that I made was disgusting! Eck! *shudders* However the base was the perfect consistency…just need to work on making the filling a bit less…well, cheesy…
However I did make my awesome sausage casserole a few days later, which made my tongue forget the taste of sweetened cheese.

Since I’ve been so busy, and I don’t get much time to myself anymore, I’ve been struggling to settle down and destress; and hence my boyfriend bought me a Wii. *bounces* The perfect part is that it’s all mine…it doesn’t belong to any of the boys in my house.

So that’s pretty much a catch up of all of the things I’ve been up to since my last post. Lots of time has passed since then, so much so that my brain couldn’t even remember all the things that I’d done…so I had to resort to refreshing it with my Twitter feed…

The presentation is being performed tomorrow at 11am…then I may just end up dying from all the illnesses that I’ve been surrounded with in the past few weeks, but have been fighting off.

So today I got a massive craving for cheesecake, but I didn’t want to have to walk half an hour to the supermarket to go buy it. Not being swayed by my laziness, I looked online for a simple cheesecake recipe; I mean how hard could it be?

The answer to that is not very, all it entails is cream cheese, double cream, sugar, digestive biscuits and butter. Realising that I had most of these ingredients in my cupboards, I decided to make my own.

I got the base down really easily, it was simple because of my fantabulous blender, and it was all ready for the cheesy creamy filling. But no matter how much I mixed (I even called in the troops to come mix when my wrist started to hurt) it still wasn’t becoming the nice smooth substance that I needed.

Despite this I still poured the goop over the base and put it in the fridge to set. I will admit I am absolutely dreading tasting it, however it will probably satisfy my cheesecake craving if it is especially disgusting. But you never know, it could turn out to be awesome…yeah, I’m not buying that either.

Pictures will be up tomorrow of my first ever attempt at cheesecake.

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.