The secret life of me...

I have a lip balm from Lush called WhipStick...

It tastes/smells like a chocolate orange and far and away the most delicious thing I have *ever* smeared all over my face!

You must all go and purchase said item immediately...

Immediately, I tell you!

Hope everyone had nice weekend and are as excited as I am to be starting another glorious working week...

We had ok weekend - wedding on Saturday (not mine ) followed by extreme laziness on Sunday...

LBF was able to indulge his dad-type-wedding-dance enthusiasms, which he was very pleased about and I got to dress up in lovely green spotty dress (which I love - is easily most expensive item of clothing I've ever purchased, and is, sadly, not really worn often enough!) although was very slightly disappointed not to be spottiest person in attendance, as there were at least three other spotty dresses...

There was a girl sitting a few rows in front of us at the church (who we observed again more closely at the reception afterwards) who was wearing a heavy silk type white dress - am fairly sure it's bad form to turn up to watch someone getting married wearing a wedding dress, no?
And if I were going to do such a thing (which I would never do - I think...) you'd want to be pretty sure that yours was going to be nicer than one the bride was wearing, otherwise what's the point?
Some people are evidently just odd...

Was fun and nice occasion and all that, but it did make me think that, if I were to have a wedding, I would want it to be much less formal and maybe a bit more fun...
I think the ceremony part is nice (though I'm definitely going to teach all my friends the hymns first - I always seem to be the only person who sings at these things...) although I'm not sure that the big white dress thing is really necessary... I mean - it looks nice and all, but why spend all that money on a dress that you'll only ever get to wear once?
I'm completely sure I wouldn't want seating plans and toasts and speeches though and definitely no ridiculous first dance...
If I have a wedding, everyone can come back to the pub with us afterwards, we'll have champagne, put lots of money behind the bar and all have black pudding (or maybe haggis - I'm in favour of choice) suppers.
With sauce
Mmmmm.... Black pudding supper.... Mmmmm....

OK - wedding rant over now...

Hope everyone is having a nice day!

Am never having day off work again...

Everything is a complete mess!

The haggis pies that I made yesterday are totally tasty!

And my pastry turned out really well

Even LBF liked pies, and he's a connoisseur...

Secret project going ok too, though think might take break now to make tasty chocolate cookies.

Ooooh - AND I managed to replace/rewire switch for immersion thing for boiler/water heater!

In fact, only bad thing today has been stuuuupiiiid postlady, who left parcel-card without bothering to ring doorbell!
Will probably get over it given time - they promise to redeliver on Sat...

Must go - cookies are calling...

Hope everyone is having nice sunshiney day!

see more crazy cat pics

Have had lovely day off today...

Have made two delicious haggis pies, bought lots of lovely things and begun secret construction project present for LBF - would like to write about it, but he's v cunning and tends to read this stuff...

Is taking a long time though - the glue is quite slow drying - is fortunate that I'm off tomorrow as well

Maybe can build some more tonight while he's playing new Wiiiiiiii game without him looking too hard.

Have just eated ennnoooorrrmous venison sausages with tasty salsify and now having raspberries and mango... Is v good

Hope everyone else has had nice day!

I'z in yr snk - absorbin yr watuhs...

This is Bandita, my own LOLKitteh, who has taken to sleeping in the bathroom sink...

see more crazy cat pics

Am the happiest little girl in the whole World

1. Where was your last holiday?

Hmmm... Cant really remember
Went to Suffolk at end of summer last year for swimming, sailing and sunshine...
Think that was the last one.
It was totally great - my family goes there every holiday (and have done for generations) and I always have a really good time.

2: Where will your next holiday be?

Probably the same in the summer...
And I think we're going to France for a wedding in July if that counts?
LBF tells me we can't have any more holidays now as we can't trust anyone else to look after the kittehs.
Not sure whether we can realistically keep that up for the next 17 years... I guess that's what it would be like having children

3. What was your best break and why?

Hmmm....
Well - I went to stay with my now LBF after Christmas a few years ago when he was just my friend and now he's mine forevah!
I guess that probably counts!

4. And the worst and why?

We went to Sweden a couple of years ago (LBF had a conference/summer school thing and I went to meet him after) which was a really nice place, and would have been totally fun if not for the fact that I was busy getting diabetes at the time.
I was really ill on the last day and just about made it back in the plane and through Heathrow (v slowly and painfully) before being persuaded to go to A&E and swiftly whisked into Intensive Care...
Probably not strictly speaking Sweden's fault, but not the best holiday!

5. If money were no object, where would you go?

Greenland!!!
I'm totally desperate to go and sleep in one of those luxury igloo villages...
Although they haven't rebuilt the IceHotel there for a few years now, so possibly Lapland would be better.
Anyway, somewhere snowy with an IceHotel and some luxury igloos and stuff...
Think v expensive though, so probably need to get rich first.
And get an excuse... Maybe honeymoon or similar...

It turns out that I'm allowed to have Nandos today, even though it's not really Friday!!!

Things are good

I just broke my desk...

Not in a big way or anything, I just managed to knock off a (non-structural) metal thingy from underneath.

Not critical to wellbeing of desk (actually, now that I study it a little bit harder, I can't even really work out its function at all...) but fell off with fairly large and echoey type clatter.
Now everyone is looking at me funny

OK - have reattached desk bit with only minimal sitting under desk time required...
Can report that metal thingy seems to be cover of some kind, but, even when reattached, is not actually covering anything...
In fact (gleaned from under-desk-observations) not all the desks have them at all.
And also - it seems that the under-my-desk space is possibly unnecessarily full of shoes.
More strangely, they don't all appear to have pairs - one has to wonder what I've managed to do with the (presumably) missing ones...

In other news - I find myself unable to concentrate on work any more today (have been here since 7.30 - is not *just* that I'm crappy) and my mind has been wandering to what I plan to do with my lottery winnings...
Have formulated many such plans, but not actually bought a ticket...
Not sure whether is good idea or not.

Not much to say...

Ongoing throat/ear infection/cough...
Nothing v bad, am just a bit deaf and not sleeping v well (due to coughings).

V tired!

Hope will all be over soon...

In other news - v glad is short week
We're almost half way through already!
Am looking forward to our tasty Easter roast lamb (which we're illegally having on Friday, as is only time when everyone can come round...)
Will have to borrow chairs/tables/plates I think.
Or we can eat in shifts perhaps

O hai...

Me and ma kittehs has dlvrnce cheezbgr now...

Unlike this poor kitteh

see more crazy cat pics

kthxbai

What kind of stupid word is 'irregardless'????

It has NOOOOO meaning!

Or, at least, certainly not the meaning that people suddenly seem to be attributing to it...

I've heard it three times in the last couple of days...

What's wrong with everyone???

The iPhone goes on sale in Ireland today so with that in mind we have some gadgety questions for you.

1. What gadget could you not be without?

This is a bit 'serious' but I (quite literally) can't live without my insulin pens and blood testing gadget...
The blood tester is no great shakes, but the pens are really stylish and lovely and also work really well...
And I have a selection of colours to suit my moods etc

Actually, when I was diagnosed with diabetes a few years ago, I was utterly delighted at all the funky bits of gadgetry I would get to play with - just goes to show that it's sometimes good to be a geek!
(Now that I think about it, I remember being v bored in hospital too, and demanding magazines - my boyfriend bought me 'Stuff' as he thought I would like it better than any of the girly type things...)

2. What gadget do you not own but wish you did?

Oooh - so many things!
Although, now that I live in the World of Gainful Employment, I'm inclined simply to buy the things that I want... Bad, I know - am trying to give it up.

I thought that I wanted a lovely iPhone, but now I realise I would probably be better off with a new iPod Touch - all the same gadgetty goodness, but without having to actually communicate with anyone via the medium of speech (and no prohibitive contract costs either)

Probably, though, my biggest addiction is to kitchen-type gadgetry (am v easily seduced by shiny things). Does a lovely Smeg fridge with an icemaker count?
I think I'd like that more than anything else in the whole world...

3. What would be you ideal secret agent gadget?

Caaaaaaaar!
In the manner of James Bond...
Preferably one tat can also fly.

And swim...

And launches deadly rockets.

4. Which gadget would you like to have invented?

Cordless electric drill/screwdriver combi...
Utterly indispensible!

5. The next big thing will be...?

Hmmmm....

Blu-ray stuff?
Does that count or is it too old?

I think that everyone will have it pretty soon

Went out last night - was fun - had tasty Italian food and yummy wines.
On the way to the station from the restaurant, though, we managed to break one of my friends - she's only just made it back to the land of the independent and working from having ruptured patellar tendon in left leg (after 6/7 weeks off work) and on the way out last night, she slipped and has managed to do exactly the same to the other leg...
Is unbelievable!
V unlucky for it to have happened once, but TERRIBLE to have done it again... And with such a tiny incident as well - to just slip and fall in the street (not even in a big way...)
She has to have surgery today and then the long recovery period begins again!

So pretty tired today - after excursions of last night - and also feeling pretty bad re friend breakage...

On bright side, though, got my clinic results back (from appointment at end of Feb) and everything looks pretty good :-)
Though I may have slightly weird thyroid function, which would probably go some way towards explaining why I've been so tired and grumpy recently... Think is nothing v dramatic yet, but hopefully now doctors will check me out and treat if necessary...

Am glad is Thursday, as week almost over, though I'll have to knuckle down a bit now as have many many works to do before weekend...

Hope everyone is happy!

New computoy arrived yesterday...

Is everything I dreamed it would be

Am now torn between continuing to set it up the way I want it and going to bed (am v tired...)

Good news is that BCUK works on new toy - more than can be said for old one...

And it's very fast!

In the rest of my life (as far as there is one), my LBF is going away tomorrow (on a work/fun trip) to Edinburgh... I'll miss him loads and part of me wishes I was going with him, but on the other hand, will be nice to get some early nights and catch up on some sleeps...

I bought some beautiful (not to mention expensive) shampoo from Lush today - is made of salt, which sounds disgusting (and somewhat counterintuitive - when you come out of the sea, your hair is in no way lovely) but is in fact totally fabulous - my hair is all soft and silky now

Looking back at this, I realise it may not be either interesting or coherent...
Ho hum....

My lovely lovely shiny new laptop is supposed to come today...

I wish it was here already!!!!

Entirely unable to concentrate at work due to extremely high excitement levels

In other news - well... Not much really...

Is ok - my chicken (well, chicken livers actually) arrived and I ate them all up...

Now I look like this:

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

I'm having Nandos today...

A new boy in the office has been duped/coerced into going to fetch spicy chicken for everyone.
Hope he's clever enough to bring the right things back.
I think he is - he's quite tall, at least, which I am choosing to interpret as a good sign...

In other news - LBF was told today that he's managed to secure three years worth of research funding from EPSRC (research council type people), which is multo fantastico!
The proposal and interview preparation were quite painful (for him, not me...) and he's v v v clever, so he definitely deserves it!
He'll have to be effectively his own boss from when it starts, which might be a good thing... Think it probably won't make so much difference - he'll still need to muster a very large amount of self-motivation (there's no way I could do something like that - I require external motivation, such as the fact that I might be sacked if I don't do any work) but will still have support from his 'team' at university.
He's away tonight, so I guess I'll have to save the (expensively delicious) champagne for tomorrow when he's back ;-)

Where's my tasty chicken???

Am hungry

Today I am sleepy...

But I have my stripey top on, so things are mostly good.

Despite my post yesterday, noone (yes, that's right, not a single solitary person) has given me an easter egg...
What's with that??

So I was having one of those inane conversations with my manager (that we seem to have so often ) during which he mentioned that men determine the sex of their children...

Of course, he's right about this as men have the choice of X, Y chromosomes to be passed down, whilst women are all Xs...

Which made me think (it's been a very long few days at work - I'm allowed to have stupid thoughts...) that if you were to somehow breed two men, you could create a whole new gender...
You'd still get the XX, XY combinations that make females and males respectively, but you'd also open up the possibility of YY people...

I wonder what they'd be like...
Would they be extra-manlike, with that additional Y chromosome, or would they have more female characteristics because of having a matching pair?
Or I guess they might be something totally different...

Could someone please try this - I'd really like to know!

Oh - and also - if anyone would like to get me an Easter egg (I just know you're all planning this in advance ) I think I'd like one of the new Montezuma ones with dark chocolate and sea salt...
Doesn't that just sounds wackily delicious??