dissonance

Reminiscing but not really

Remember when it snowed for one day in Guildford?

Remember when I went with a bunch of people to eat some Korean food?

Remember when I moved into a new place that had chandeliers?

And I was totally thrilled it had this old storage unit that I had Craig help me drag it in from the garage so I can store yarn and books in it?

Remember how I am totally in love and yet creeped out by my curtains?

Ooh pretty!

Ooh creepy!

And then remember how it finally got warm enough that I can see myself totally blogging from here (as soon as I get internet)?

Yup, that's some knitting you spy at the bottom of the picture. Which reminds me! Remember when I finally finished some socks?

If none of this sounds familiar to you, it's not because you're senile or because you haven't read my blog in a while.

It's because I am a lazy fart and I never got around to telling you about it the first time around, but hey, if you come back in like two days you can reminisce for reals!

Knee bruise + skirt = klassy workwear

Back from France just two days and I'm already daydreaming about the next flight out of here.  The trip was totally awesome (dude) and I think my snowboarding has much improved with the advantage of going more than two days in a row.  I came away with a colorful bruise the size of a grapefruit on my left knee.  Craig wasn't as lucky and we suspect he might have a hairline crack in his rib but apparently it's really hard to detect such a thing even with an x-ray and even if he did have some sort of crack there's nothing to do about it except wait it out and wince everytime I try and hug him.

Per modus operandi (ie How I Roll), pictures are currently a speck in the distance but don't hold your breath for spectacular views. My stupid camera is a wimp and everytime I tried to take a pic of the gorgeous scenery the battery died out.  As soon as I tried to focus on a mountain range covered in powdery snow and draped in blue skies dotted with silver clouds you could almost hear it going, "Fack!  Biotch, it's cold! I'm outta here!" before going limp in my numb hands.  So pictures are probably going to be limited to overlit posed smiles and out of focus hills from a moving car.

In the meantime, my sights are set on another global adventure in the form of... Italy!  Probably a long-weekend over a holiday, preferably in June/July.  What I'd like help in is deciding where in Italy to go.  It'll just be me and Craig, I don't really care about tourist attractions, just fantastic views and equally impressive (but not necessarily fancy) food.  My current considerations are:

Tuscany - My positive view of Under the Tuscan Sun aside, I've heard nothing but great things about this region.
Naples - Home of the pizza, hello!
Cinque Terre - Ans' own review of the area has me convinced it's a must see.

SESL and other lessons in differences

Welcome, class to an installment of SESL (Scottish English as a Second Language).  Today we will look at wildlife.

This is a moose

Pronouced "moose" as in "That's a moose, eh?"

And this is a mouse

Pronounced "moose" as in "Eek, there's a moose in the hoose!"

===

Another thing I have learned was discovered while addressing certain grooming necessities since moving to the UK.

Previously, I had been very familiar with the following terms:

- Bikini
- Brazilian
- Playboy

Some dear readers may also be familiar with these terms and understand that I have listed them in order of, shall we say, severity.

However!  I have since learned that these grades of severity can and are further broken down to the following here (with the briefest of descriptions):

- Bikini: "just a little bit off the top please"
- Californian: "landing strip"
- Brazilian: "the merest suggestion of what once was"
- Hollywood: "yeeoww!"

What I don't get is why Californian and Hollywood are two different things when you know, Hollywood is in California.  But I guess you could argue that Hollywood is in a world of its own.

Am I a Romy or Michele?

There's a lot of text in this post so if your eyes glaze over, why don't you just go look at the most awesomest anti-piracy poster ever so that your trip here is worthwhile?

I just got an invitation to my 10 year high school reunion (when did I tell them about my gmail address??) and given the fact that there's a 99% chance I'll be in San Francisco at that time (Dec 22) I'm trying to gauge my likelihood of actually attending, which currently ranges from "eh maybe" to "fuck no".

If my experience with high school reunion movies are in anyway indicative of real life, I can definitely forgo the ego-bursting, name forgetting, quarter-life crisis inducing, paper streamer nightmare we call the high school reunion.  Last Christmas I got to see a lot of my high school friends and it was damn cool.  My "where are they now?" curiosity was satiated. 

And we can all say that the reunion is just to reminisce and renew friendships, but let's not be naive and ignore this all too obvious chance at One Upmanship.  The popular girl is not going to come to the reunion to show off how shenow  has 7 kids and  works at Wal-Mart.  It's going to be the people who have something to prove.  And I don't need to know that the outcast geek became a millionaire.  Although, given the nature of my high school* we were all geeks, and I certainly don't want to find out that I'm the only one that didn't become a millionaire.  (*animated gifs??  Come on Lowell, you disappoint me.) 

I'd definitely attend if I suddenly became a blog-star, designer wearing, celebrity hob-nobbing, crafting sensation.  ("crafting sensation"?)

But I'm not.

I'm wandering, confused, still in debt, suffering from the weight of having only-a-job-not-a-career, appalled that people my age are getting married (and at the same time wondering if something is wrong with me), feeling fat, frumpy, and old.  I don't need ex-cheerleaders who are doing Fabulous to rub it in (says the ex-cheerleader).

Maybe I'm being cynical. Maybe everyone will be like me and has gone through good times and bad, still figuring things out, finding themselves not at all where they imagined they'd end up, but otherwise pretty normal with normal sized trimphs and failures… and the reunion will only reassure each other that although we started out together it's not a race and if it looks like your lab partner turned out all right it's more than likely that you did too.