An update!

1) I organised a superduper trip to a professional phto place so that my siblings and I could have our pictures taken as the grumpy, old people we are so that I could give it to my Dad for Christmas (don't worry, he doesn't go online... ever). It was really, really fun and we had some quality bonding time in the process, which is rare with a hermit, a uni student and a socialite. Ah, I love professional photographers because they make us look genuinely repsectable! Very impressive! ;)

2) My boyfriend and I have a brand new bed:D It's beautiful and brown and leathery, and I am seriously in love with this bed. I want to sleep in it now but I have to wait till tomorrow:( I mean, I could break into his house and sneak into his room while he's out and clamber into our bed and sleep blissfully until I'm found out in the morning... But it's easier and potentially safer to just stay in my own bed, I think.
Also, major kudos to Matt for building our new Haven because there's absolutely no way I could've done it, ahah. It's so good, I'm so lucky:D

3) I meant to do a drawing today and I forgot so now I'm feeling pretty silly about it all :(

4) WE COMPLETED SPYRO!!!!!! (100% and everything.)

:D

I've become obsessed.

Truly, genuinely, 100% obsessed.
And if that wasn't bad enough, it's bit even an original obsession - it's a repeat of a previous childhood one!
Basically, there's this silly little purple dragon and his trusty golden dragonfly...

(If you don't kow what that is, you need a punch in the face)
He's called Spyro (the dragonfly is Sparx), and I've fallen madly in love with his tiny, pixelated wings.
He collects beautiful treasures from lots of different worlds because the baddie, Gnasty Gnorc, has turned lots of the gems into stupid bad guys called Gnorcs, and he turned all the dragons into crystal :o!

The mission is simple;
Retrieve all 12000 gems.
Save all 80 dragons.
(Try to save the dragon eggs from the theives along the way).

It's literally the best game ever.

Now, before you go judging me, you bunch of bullies, you have to admit that everyone has loved him at some stage... it's just a bit bad that I'm re-living my feelings for him now at the embarrassing age of 19.
It's completely justified anyway because exams are over (woo!) and I never actually completed it 100% as a kid so it feels like unfinished business, y'see.
It all started when I found the original game for playstation 1 a few days ago...
I've been playing it ever since.
I'm now 95% complete, with only 2 levels to go.

I'm feeling fairly crazy.

C'mon guys.
There's no better way to spend the day than in the control of a pre-pubescent dragon with an attitude problem and a terribly small wingspan.

I aim to have it completed by Christmas.
Speaking of Christmas;
How strange is it that it's now only 5 days away!?
Christmas seems to have come round so quickly this year! (Not that I'm complaining- I'm pretty sure Christmas this year is going to be the best day ever). I'm so glad I've already done all my Christmas shopping, because with the snow and the general speed of the advancing holiday, I'm fairly certain I'd be very stressed by it all if I still had some to buy.
Ah, I'm so excited!

Within the next week I will have:
*completed Spyro
*given everyone their gifts
*become the official luckiest girl alive
*gained an entire stone from Christmas lunch

Excited. :)

Wisdom!

THE TOOTH
It all started when I was eating a pizza on Thursday... It was a pepperoni pizza, and it was alright for a £1, but nothing particularly special. I'd chosen to get 'thin and crispy' because it was cheaper, but the error here was to choose something 'crispy' when I knew that I had a bit of toothache.
Being the gigantic fatty that I am, I naturally wolfed the whole thing down, even though it was burning hot and I'd promised myself that I'd save at least half of it for lunch the next day... And that's when it happened. The silly crispy pizza base decided to have a little fight with the sensitive part of my gum where my wisdom tooth is trying to cut through, and my poor gum because stuck between a tooth and a hard base;D GEDDIT?
Ahem.
Anyway, this caused MASSIVE tooth-related uproar and I was in a lot of pain :(
As you can see, not only is it painful, it's also causing great upset in the tooth world because the other teeth feel like they're squashed enough without me introducing another member of the gang, so they're paying me back by randomly hurting throughout the day as well.
Basically, my experience of wisdom teeth so far has been that rather than bestow great wisdom upon me, they make my mouth hurt and bleed. That is all they've done so far. Ohh, and they've also given me something to complain about;D
HOWEVER! I'm quite looking forward to having OPTIMAL chewing capabilities once they've all come through properly! Screw wisdom, I'm going to be able to eat more efficiently, and there's nothing much better than that.

Providing my dentist doens't want to spoil my fun by taking them out...

I wish that I was magic.

I'd be super brave and super strong and I'd fly around fixing everything and making everyone better. I'd also know everything I needed to know, and I'd be more than happy to share my magic with anyone who needed it.

I hate that life's so unfair sometimes. It makes me feel silly and useless.
But! It does have the ability to make me realise how genuinely lucky I am to be blessed with such wonderful people in my life (one person in particular ♥).

I'd like to dedicate this blog post to lots of people!

To my Dad, who's currently proving how brilliantly strong he is.

And to everyone else, for helping me to be the best that I can.

Love.

30/11/10

I'm feeling much better about the snow today:)
It hasn't actually snowed all day, but it's still crunchy and deep so it's been fun.
I did have to ski to the Co-Op though, because apparently pavements don't need to be gritted in any way... But it was an exciting trip nonetheless!
I also managed to rip my finger wound open and I bled on a little bit of the snow in the garden (oops). But it could've been worse....


ANYWAY, I went out and took a few photos when the sun was in a nice place:)










Hope everyone's keeping warm!

I'm so glad the weather decided to bring an early winter.

#sarcasm

Seriously unimpressed by the sudden onset of incredible amounts of snow in York.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not as bad as Scotland, but the snow in our garden is easily knee deep, which is RIDICULOUS.


I will take some more superduper photographs tomorrow and dedicate an entire blogpost to my inadequacy with a camera... But you'll get the jist.

Anyway, it is my firm belief that snow ruins everything.
If I was still young enough to appreciate a snow day, then woop, but sadly, I am now a year or so too old, and I've become a big, fat grump about the whole ordeal (as you would). I agree that snow looks pretty, and it's nice that we get the odd snow shower now and then in the winter time, but I don't like it to snow enough to delay/cancel trains! It makes getting places even more effort than usual and it's so cold that I'm dangerously close to developing some kind of permanent goose-pimple-type disease.
Also, my new favourite phrase revolves around the word "heating", and I miss the warm, summer sun (I may write him a love letter to seduce him back to us).

I've checked the weather forecast and apparently it'll be snowing 'till at least Thursday, which is rubbish, but I may just have to give up fighting this silly snowy era by braving the frigid conditions outside to build a positively EPIC snowman.

I will consider snowman requests.

OLD MAN

Today it's the 15th November... And you know what that means, don't you?

...
It's officially 40 days 'till the wonder that is Christmas, and therefore 39 days until most of you start your Christmas shopping... But not me!
Why?
Because today marks the day that I officially finished my present-buying escapade. I'm feeling very, very productive right now. I can also confidently claim that everyone will love what I've bought them.
:)

However, that's not the point of this blog post! This blog post is about an old man.
More specifically, a WW2 Veteran who can be found on this lovely blog;

http://driftingcamera.blogspot.com/2010/11/they-that-are-left-2010.html

Because these beautiful photographs inspired me to do a drawing of him! (yaay)
Now sadly, I am without a scanner, so you'll have to make do with a crappy webcam photo 'till I can get back to my gravity printer and scan it properly, but rest assured! It is truly beautiful, even if the wecam pic doesn't do it justice:)

Cute old man!:D
Wrinkles are so much fun to draw. Anyone out there with a ridiculously smooth face: don't expect me to draw you:P

Also, quote of the day comes from my Dad, who when I showed him the drawing without any explanation other than "oh, I did a drawing", he literally said;

"He looks like a WW2 veteran or something"

(win for mi padre)
Haha:D

I'll do some real work at some point, promise.

Enjoying the little things

I woke up at half past 9 this morning after getting to sleep at about half past 4.
Why? I don't know.

But that's not the point of the story! The point is that despite waking up at half past 9, I stayed in bed until 1 like a big lazy bum simply because I knew that I had devoted the rest of my Sunday to writing an essay.
No one wants to write an essay.
What can I say, I'm an avid procrastinator, and I'm proud of my ability to do it so well, hha.

ANYWAY, after managing to procrastinate so well throughout the morning and spending the afternoon continuing to do no work at all, I accidentally stumbled across an article about colour blindness. I read a bit about it and was OUTRAGED at the claims it made regarding how humans are devolving because we don't really need colour to survive anymore, (I mean what the fliiip?)... And I inadvertently tricked myself into writing my essay about colour vision.

It was both mad and brilliant at the same time. I even print screened it.


But I blurred out the words so that you can't steal it, beeches;) 1546 words of pure genius.

Anyway, what this blog post is actually about it something that is even greater than finishing my essay.
"What could be greater than writing a brilliant essay, Sam?", I hear you ask.
Well, let me show you.

(prepare to be amazed.)


LOOK! It's got a little tick next to it:D
It's so cute.
This has made my actual day.

11/11/10

Today my body decided to be a dalek.

I know that by now anyone who reads my blog will have a bizarre impression of me surrounding the ridiculous notion that I have a tendancy to overexaggerate, but let me reiterate how wrong you are with this latest blog post, lovelies.

I woke up this morning and I was a frickin' DALEK.
I shit you not. An actual dalek.
(N.b. anyone who does not know what a dalek is, please leave my blog right now.)
Apparently my body takes to being ill in a rather unusual way.
Now, obviously I don't mean I'd literally turned into some kind of seriously evil cyborg creation from Skaro with a "Davros ©" on my arse. What I actually mean is that I had woken up feeling quite poorly and unable to form speech sounds without sounding like I was using a vocoder.

Welcome to my vividly nasally world.

I mean I've heard that husky voices are sexy, right? So this could've been my one chance to seriously impress my boyfriend with my seductive ways, but I looked like this;

There was a definite flaw in my 'sexy' plan.

Okay, so what did I do when I found out that I'd been transformed into a hideous beast who had no olfactory abilities? I did what anyone would do and slept through my 9.15 lecture. C'mon, it's justified. Sadly it's the first one I've missed all year and I almost feel bad about it. But then I bravely managed to drag myself out of my warm haven in my duvet and got my pitiful arse to my tutorial (which is not optional) wherein which I contributed absolutely nothing. I may as well have not been there (what I'm not telling you is though that I never contribute in tutorials anyway if I can help it).

Then! I even more bravely ventured into town. However, this level of 'brave' began to coincide with 'stupid' as my chest began to hurt and I felt dizzy with the effort of walking 10 minutes to the bus stop. Nevermind though because I was a woman... on a mission (whoa-oa-oa).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEm74FWJVp0

I'm far too happy nowadays, little bloggers:) Even when I'm bedridden and cold and poorly, I'm still smiling!

But that's for another day..

Back to my terribly effortful trip into town- I got the bus back and got glared at by an elderly lady when I coughed. I was all "Soz man, I can't help coffin' yeh?" but I actually just frowned guiltily and looked away. Silly elderly lady making me feel bad because she's healthier than me.

Then I finally made it home and got very well looked after by two of my housemates!
Emma left me a chocolate bar, box of tissues and a bottle of pepsi on my bed and Lois brought me a hot wheat bag and a cup of honey tea. Literally feeling very well cared for.
I hope that when I'm old and need looking after, I have people like Lois and Emma around who will love me even when I'm disgusting:D

x

INTERNET-WIN.

FINALLY.
I actually hate the amount of faff we've had trying to sort out our flippin' connectivity. It's been about 5 weeks snice we placed our order. HOW is it possible for it to take that long to allow us access to the internet?!

Anyway, I'll have to think about what's happened since I last posted now....

1) I joined a gym, and I love it, despite how much it exaggerates my tiny stature with their clever use of GIANT machines. Also, I have noticed that everyone at the gym is either thin or buff. This doesn't make any sense to me. Surely at least new members would be a bit chub? It makes me feel like I'm a digusting, wobbly monster.

I don't even have legs at this gym. It's a mind-trip, man.
Also, note the clever use of fake-tan on the 'hot girl' to denote a feeling of stereotypicality.

2) I got one of my drawings published in the Uni newspaper! How, you ask? Well!..
I've no idea. I emailed them saying I'd happily have a go, and within the next few days I was given a 2 hour deadline to do them a drawing. Insane or what?The more I look at the poor little piggy bank's face, the more I feel guilty for being the one responsible for making him look so scared. CHECK OUT MY SIGNATURE THOUGH! I'm practically famous.

3) I baked a steak and ale pie (with the help of my lovely Matthew), and it was literally incredible. We baked a pie big enough for 4 people and shared it between us for one meal. #fat.
I'd draw a picture of it, but I'll just dribble all over the keyboard. IT'S SAFER THIS WAY!

4) ......................:)

Okay, so our broadband is actually rubbish.

And it's been delayed till at least the 3rd.
That's a whole new month!! !

How ridiculous.

Now my next update is going to have to be even more 'epic' than it was going to be before.

Seriously though, uni work time now.

In (hopefully) 1 hour and 32 minutes...

...I should have the internet again so that I don't have to trek 50 miles to a desolate computer lab in order to check my lack of emails.

Expect a mind-blowingly EPIC update tomorrow guys.
xxx

No, it's not man-flu, actually

It amazes me that I do still have to clarify that, even though it's fairly obvious that I'm a girl and am therefore logically immune to Man-Flu.
Also, I'm not a pansy.
(..Just sayin')

Now, I'm never one to dramatise a situation, but when I woke up this morning, I was fairly sure that I would later in the day recreate a fairly famous scene from a 1979 sci-fi film...


If we're honest, I shouldn't watch any kind of media when I have a fever. It's just not clever.
But I really was very ill. My tummy was really rumbly and painful so moving was a challenge... Unless I was doubled up in a sneaky, spy way, but in reality, I couldn't have crept up on anyone because my tummy would have alerted my prey to my prescence (worst spy ever). I also found that digesting was apparently something I wasn't allowed to get round to doing, and nothing I could think of doing was helping to make me feel better.


So instead, I curled up in my bed and cried.
BECAUSE I'M A REAL MAN.

By the way, that anti alien cord is a direct link to the PM's office. It sends out a code red emergency! True story.


Anyway, once my fever came down low enough for me to return to the real world, I remembered that I had been given some kind of super-pill by my lovely friend.


Seriously, it was almost as big as my head.
I took it (somehow), and within half an hour or so, all the sickness had gone away! And I was just starting to feel better when my sister very kindly waltzed into my room (without knocking, by the way) and greeted me with "wow, you look attractive."
Hey, thanks Decaf. That's exactly what I want to hear when I'm busy dying.
I retorted with a very quick, overly defensive remark about how I was poorly and was therefore allowed to look a mess. Which clearly demonstrated to anyone with an interest in Psychology that I was already very aware of how ugly I was and that her remark had been a little too honest for my liking.
Though, irrespective of my sister's kind words, I was feeling much, much better. I even felt well enough to now start complaining to people that I was poorly.
I love medicine.

Honestly, to anyone studying or practicing pharmacology/magic - you guys are cool.

First; Find the microphone

Second step; Say "start listening"

Hello?
Oh! Wow!It really is that easy.
Right, I suppose I'll have to explain myself.


I'm currently trying to utilise my windows speech recognition program. All it took to get to the stage where I can talk out loud and have the words appear on wordpad was an 80 hour tutorial, but I made it! It's working okay... I'm just having few issues because it doesn't really understand my accent. Like, I can supposedly delete anything it writes wrong by simply saying "delete that", but it can't understand me, so I have to repeat myself and put extra emphasis on the vowels.

Though I suppose we can't expect miracles... And I have to admit it is incredibly cool to dictate what I want to write and have it written for me.
It's also really fun, despite being incredibly time consuming. I'm literally having the time of my life by talking to myself. If anyone in my house is awake they must think I'm absolutely mental... Especially now that I've said that.

Ah, I should also probably explain that I'm going to paste this over to blogger after speaking it to wordpad... Using my voice!

Eeeee.
This is actually really exciting!
Providing you ignore how incredibly frustrating it is to have to use this program, because it likes to literally puts words into my mouth. For example, when I tried to say " mega fat tomorrow" it tried to say "mega false teeth blaster".
I think this is a revolutionary idea from windows.

But it's not what I actually intended to say, so I had to go through the whole "delleeett" thing again.

Also, I'm a little bit worried about how dangerous this kind of technology is. If I can simply talk to my email in order to reply to a message, how am I supposed to develop R.S.I. and get compensation for it in later life?!
How?!
I'll have to turn to forging doctor's notes and become a criminal, and then the police'll find out and then I'll have to go on the run and eventually be arrested.


Thank you Windows.

Though I do look good in handcuffs;)

Passwords

This is one of my all time pet peeves.
When typing in a password on the internet, it very cleverly disguises my typing as big black circles so that spyware and real spies can't steal my information. Clever indeed.
EXCEPT that I can't see what I'm bloody typing. I have to delete my password about 5 times in a paranoid fashion to try to make sure I've spelt it right.

"A-..wait. Did I actually press the 'a' button then? Lemme check... oh wait. *DELETE*"


Also, I'm incredibly skilled at making typos, and as I am unable to check my typing by reading my input, I have to make the backspace button my new favourite friend.


However, the backspace will one day find out that I'm using him for my own selfish needs and then he'll probably release crumbs into my harddrive or something.

Anyway, I'm like the typo QUEEN.
For example, I'm really good at getting two letters the wrong way round, like "typnig". If my password was in fact, "typnig", then cool beans, but if it's actually "typing", then I'm screwed. You only usually get about 3 attempts at guessing your password before the system blocks you out because it believes you're a regular little 'baddie', so it's imperative that you get it right, really.
IT'S STUPID.

And then you have to slow your typing right down in order to ensure you have pressed the right letter on your keyboard. But then, this slow movement allows other people near you to spell out your password, so it's a risky move.
Also, even if you could type super fast and super accurately, very cleverly defeating the little black circle system, what if someone installed some kind of camera onto your keyboard?!


Grar.
Also, it's supposed to be a "code", right? It's coded so no one who's unauthorised can access it. It's undoubtedly the worst code ever made. It looks like "make-your-own-secret-code" homework written by someone who left it a little bit too close to the deadline.


Brilliant work there, 'Alan'.


I'm grateful that no one can access my information, but for GOD'S SAKE, can someone please at least create a more entertaining code?




Make it so.

I'm clever really.

Okay, we all have these "genius" days, where problem solving is the easiest thing in the world, and you feel like every notion to enter your noggin is some kind of revolutionary concept that people will be talking about in years to come as a changing point in history. However, these 'brilliant' ideas usually turn out to be pretty terrible ideas in disguise. I, personally, am actually really good at dreaming up these corkers of ideas, and they usually leave me with an overwhelming feeling of wonder. "With ideas like this, how on Earth am I still alive?".

It can be any kind of idea, like a way of stopping the bad connectivity with the on-the-wall plug socket by using sellotape;


Which is something you won't do twice...

Or thinking that because your cat's been out in a rainstorm, that a hairdryer is the sensible option.

Which is probably something you would do twice, purely as revenge.

OR, putting a new lightbulb in with the switch 'on' so that you can tell if the bulb's actually working at the time.

Ultimately you realise that yes, the bulb is in full working order, but now you have visions of coloured blobs and you lack any kind of finger-print identity. Not really worth it.
.... unless you're a super-criminal.

Or opting to carry 25 glasses all stacked up in an incredible tower when glass-collecting at the bar you work at in order to save doing two trips.


Consequence: lots of sweeping.

My most, most stupid idea this week was to test whether blue cheese is mouldy or not. Now, a fun-fact is that I am reasonably allergic to Penicillin. Apparently all kinds of crazy things can happen if I ingest some, but luckily I have never been allowed to, as I had a breaction to Amoxycillin which is like mild Penicillin. Doctors aren't really 'risk-takers' with that kind of thing.
But anyway, it is common knowledge that penicillin is made from Penicillium fungi, which is basically mould... Can you see where my clever idea stemmed from?

As it turned out, despite only biting a pea-sized amount of cheese off the block, I felt sick for about an hour, and developed a rather attractive rash that lasted well until the next morning.
Well done Sam.
Though I did in fact prove that it is simply mouldy cheese.

These are all seemingly good ideas in face value (with the exception of the genuinely stupid cheese incident), but obviously not in terms of actuality.
You'd think though, that after 19 years of doing incredibly stupid things, I'd have learnt that some things should be thought through slightly more thoroughly before being acted upon. But no. I clearly just enjoy living dangerously.

I like to think of it as being "ridiculously optimistic".

Because Wading Through Mess Isn't Cool

I went to bed last night with the motivaton to tidy my room, so I made a mental note to spend today doing a major blitz of everything that wasn't in it's correct place.
However, when I woke up this morning, my mindset was quite different so it took me a good few hours of procrastination to actually get going. I half-heartedly began sorting, piling, tidying, and organising until I found something I'd completely forgotten about-

My tiara.

First worn at a Midsumer Night's Dream party at least 2 years ago, this beauty had been forgotten about under my bed straight after.
I then decided to make tidying immensely more enjoyable by wearing the tiara the whole time. I was like Cinderella! A princess at heart, but just had a few chores to do to reach the ultimate happy ending.
It wasn't long before the tidying was all done, but I had possibly forgotten that I was still wearing the tiara by the end of it...
The rest of the day resembled a crazy person's day out.


I enjoyed my accidental Princess day.

THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID

When this "joke" first originated in my friendship group, I thought it was the most ridiculously irritating catchphrase I'd ever encountered, made even worse by the few individuals who use it for things that it doesn't even remotely apply to.

You WANKERS.

But obviously, as I'm a complete hypocrite, I find myself doing it on a regular basis, and even worse, I find myself enjoying the childish fun.
My all time favourite was "have you not got it in yet?". (super win.)
It's nearly as bad as "your face" which I also am ashamed to admit I take part in. It's like a cult! You don't necessarily want to join, but if you do join you get the support of 20 million others who are just like you:D
Crazy times.

Anyway, back to the point at hand.
Today was the morning after the night before - not so much for myself and my comrade Amy as we'd drunk a sensibly tiny amount, but for my other housemates, it was hell on a stick.
And they were desperately looking for a hangover cure, but as we seemed to be lacking in food and/or medical drugs, we logically decided to go out for breakfast at about 1pm.

Amy drove wildly around York, following amazingly terribly directions from myself and the drunken troops in the back of the car, but we eventually found the pub we wanted. We then were required to take out a mortgage to pay the small fortune required to park in town, before being allowed to abandon it in a car park and venture off to feed our rumbly tummys.

We went in, sat down, took ages deliberating over what we'd order, then decided we'd get what we always get. I kindly offered to go to the bar to pay so that I could embarrass myself by having my card be rejected a fair few times before getting anywhere with it... (it's the thought that counts). Anyway, due to this card-related failure, I'd managed to order mine and Amy's food before Jen and Hannah could, so naturally, ours arrived much quicker.

This is how the chaos ensued.

Amy doesn't like mushrooms, so she gave hers to me. Jen asked for one of them to keep her satisfied till her food arrived, so I courteously offered Hannah the other one.
(This whole story is Hannah's fault btw.)
Then Hannah replied with-

"No thanks, I'm getting a much bigger one in a minute"

Now, can you see why I HAD to retort?! It goes without saying that that is an innuendo if I ever heard one, but in my desperation to demonstrate my incredible wit, I'd forgotten the huge mushroom I had in my mouth at the time.... Dribbly mess.


Basically, I'm a child and I will definitely embarrass you in public.