Wednesday 21 October 2009

Boy, there is sure a lot of moving going on. I am 5/7th the way all moved in the Surbiton flat, and now, I am mooooove blogs.

That's right, time to re-set your readers folks because I have had it with blogger. I'm not sure if it's me or if I'm just plain retarded, but I can't make blogger work as well for me as wordpress. Oh sure, blogger has more layouts and you can customize your themes or whatever easily and add a butt load of widgets, but it still doesn't change the fact that if I want to add a photo it appears at the top of the page and I need to drag it down to where I actually want it. So I'm sacrificing widgets and gizmos and artistic visual licence in favour of ease.

Therefore, if you read this blog and would like to continue reading this blog, head on over to

godwhenhesdrunk.wordpress.com

and let the party continue!



Tuesday 20 October 2009

No, I haven't been neglecting this wee bloggy, but not very much is happening just the noo. Acutally, some might call that a total lie. I've been busy recently with entertaining house guests, moving MORE of my (precious) crap down to the London flat, and job hunting. But none of that is particularily noteworthy stuff.

For anyone intersted, here are what the new digs are like (note, I actually wrote this about two weeks ago. Whoops.)

(Greater) London Calling

I had the great pleasure of sleeping in until 7 on Saturday morning so that I could be dressed, ready, and set to catch a train from Waverly to Birmingham. I played it lazy and caught a bus down to Prince's (or as close as you can get with all the damn tram works gutting up the city) and made sure I had plenty of time to get my favourite roast beef sandwich from M&S for munching on the train.

The train down to Birmingham was 5 hours and some change with nothing eventful in the least to mention. I did manage to do quite a bit of knitting and even had one whole finished mitten to show for it.

Then from Birmingham I had another hour and a half train journey to London. However, I was anxiously awaiting my arrival into the Big Smoke because My Honey was meeting me at the station and taking me to our new home.

Our new home, although marketed as London, is actually about 20 mins (by fastest train) from the Waterloo city centre station in the suburb of Surbiton. And I have to say, it's quite nice! The neighbourhood reminds me of the nice, old areas of Santa Rosa- Like the houses in and around MacDonald Drive, just without the mansions and with the larger homes actually being made up of 3 or 4 flats. Even though we live on a main street, it's so much quieter than our flat in Edinburgh, and that' not just because the pubs close at 10 or 11 instead of 1 or 3 AM. We don't get the constant sirens, the singing drunks, the knock-out brawls, or the sweet lullaby of crashing glass bottles any more. Instead, we are across the street from several Italian restaurants, a French restaurant, a Chinese takeaway, and some smaller shops. We have a nice 10 minute walk through a small residential and forested area, and arrive at Surbiton high street which houses a GIANT Waitrose, a GIANT Sainsbury, and a smallish M&S (no clothes). There's also quite a smattering of cafes, a few pubs, and some good charity shops. I can't wait to explore the bigger supermarkets and the larger cache of ingredients they're sure to wield.

BUT, we are also only a 10 minute bus ride from Kingston, which has some great shopping. A giant John Lewis, some other department store I had never heard of, a Primark, a clothing store that starts with Uni which I really like (Uniqui? UniGlo? UniQuoi?), an Odeon, Argos, basically everything you would need. (EDIT: I just realised that Kingston is only a freaking 1.3 miles away. Totally walkable, especially by the river!)

I've not been into London proper yet, but know that it's only a (relatively) fast train away. Apparently the National Archives are somewhere close around here, so I would ideally like to look for a job there first before looking at places farther away.(EDIT: FUCKING National Archives! Won't hire me due to an antiquated law that FORBIDS anyone NON British/Commonwealth/EU from doing research for hire. Dude, it's not 1776 anymore and we Yanks are NOT trying to sneak into your country and rewrite your precious history!)

Now for the flat: awesome. It's about 2.5x bigger than what we had back in the Burgh. You enter through a communal door and then it's straight up some rather narrow stairs. Then you unlock the door to our flat and there's about a 3x3 space to hang some coats before going straight up some more stairs. At the top is all ours. To the left is a kitchen and bathroom, to the right a hallway which leads to a bedroom and a living room. It's SO NICE to have actual rooms. The old place in Edinburgh was like two rooms. Because our bath room was so small and didn't count. But here, you actually have a separate and isolated kitchen, a separate and isolated bathroom WITH A BATHTUB! And a wonderful living room that totally just makes the flat feel like an actual home. My Honey did a great job pillaging IKEA and we made off with some great things. I love that we now have an ACTUAL couch that can comfortably fit more half a body, room for chairs, and space for bookcases. Plus a bedroom bit enough to actually accommodate a bed AND not one, but two wardrobes! It still doesn't feel like 100% mine yet since I still have quite a lot of things still in Edinburgh, but I can't wait to get this place outfitted with home-like things. I can't wait to actually start using the kitchen, to get baking, to fill the cupboard with spices and pastas and tins. to reorganise the bookshelf alphabetically (nerd, I know), to fill up the air with my incense, and to deck the place out with candles and flowers.

The stairs leading up from our front door to the main door of our flat

Some living room action






Wednesday 7 October 2009

I am, for the most part, very happy with my body. Yeah, I know I need to lose the stone I put on thanks to dissertation stress/never leaving the computer for 3 months, and yeah, I could also do with losing another stone which I gained after returning to America after my year long study abroad in the UK the first time around. BUT, that aside, for the most part I am not that fussed.

That is until last week. And it's not so much a desire to be thin but because I'm a cheap ass bastard who had a revelation: Skinny chicks spend less money. And spending less money means having more in the bank.

How did this come about? Friction. You see, as I was sitting down on the couch one day, I realised that my thigh friction had caused my jeans to weaken to the point that they started to disintegrate and form holes. This meant I needed to buy another pair of jeans. But hold up, these jeans I was in were not that old. I mean, I purchased them in December of last year- they were only 10 months old. And they were Levis. LEVI JEANS SHOULD LAST LONGER THAN LESS THAN A YEAR!!!!!

Then it hit me- those girls, the ones who fall over when someone sneezes, have 'the gap'- that space between the legs where their thighs don't touch and their crotch is free to feel the breezes, unhindered by any wobbly bits. I have never had this in my life, even when I wore a size 3 in the Juniors section when I was 13. My thighs have always touched. But girls with 'the gap' don't get thigh friction and can probably make a pair of Levis last for years. Heck, they probably don't even need to buy new jeans EVER because nothing on their bodies would ever generate enough friction to cause jeans to disintegrate- except for maybe their spindly kneeds poking through, and even that nowadays in considered trendy.

But it goes beyond frictionless clothes. As a knitter, I am having to always spend just a little bit more to buy those one or two extra skeins of wool to make the medium patterns. Chicks in the XS-S range get to spend less on yarn- and those extra yards can add up to an extra hat or set of mittens!

They take up less space in bed which means they can get by fine in a single bed, and can even share that with a partner because heck- they're so skinny that if they lie sidways, it's like they're not even there. And single beds and all their bed linen accoutrements is significantly cheaper than buying for a double or larger.

Since they're smaller, it also means their clothes are smaller, which in turn means they can pack more clothes into a suitcase. This means it's cheaper for them to fly on those budget airlines which charge for cases/weight.

Overall, this means that skinny chicks should be saving bank, and that just pisses me off because I am Skinty McSkink face over here who had to sacrifice getting a hair cut (it's been 4 months now, the hair is looking bad!) in order to replace the 10 month old jeans thanks to my thunder thighs. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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