what I did on my holiday

A list. Because I am tired.

1. Got rained on.
2. Did not get a tan.
3. Woke up one morning with a transfer tattoo on my left breast. Remembered vaguely, through the hangover, weird barman putting it there.
4. Did not remember - still a touch unsure - how we got back to the boat the same night of the transfer tattoo debacle.
(Sister assures me it had something to do with a bloke named Bill.)
5. Reacquainted myself with the unattractive lumpy rash I get on my hands and joints every time I go sailing.
6. Got several mosquito bites, despite it being cold.
7. Listened to Black and Gold by Sam Sparro many many many times.
8. Did not do the dissertation work I took with me.
9. Only dropped the warp when throwing it once. Still embarrassing.
10. Read This Book Will Save Your Life, by AM Homes. And it was the best novel I have read in years.

More, maybe, at some point. Maybe even with proper sentence structures.

getting the message

Dear ex-boyfriend who found me on Facebook,

Given that I did not reply to your Myspace message, did you really think I'd react favourably to a Facebook friend request? If I wanted you in my life, I'd have kept you in it. Leave me alone.

Sincerely,
me.

PS: Facebook need to make their blocking process simpler. Your name, ex-boyfriend, is so common that it took me ten minutes of clicking through search results to find your photo and remove your electronic presence. Ugh.

...

In better and unrelated news, I am going away tomorrow; ten days of sailing in the BVIs. I am taking my notebook. All I have been able to think about for the past month is Leaving. I will be writing. Hopefully I'll blog about travel when I get back. It was the primary purpose of this, I know.

Until then.

not fair

My knee still hurts and I want to cry.

The fall could have been so much worse but I just want to scream in frustration.

Ugh.

challenges, #1

When I was at school we used to be made to run the 1500m every year or so. I cannot remember why. I do remember that it used to take me in excess of twelve minutes. I am spectacularly unathletic by nature. I was also very overweight.

The year I turned sixteen something snapped, and I lost over three stone very fast, chiefly by eating very little and exercising obsessively. There are few photographs of me at my biggest, but at 5'3" and around thirteen stone I was rather round.

I am fitter now than I was then, though I still have half a stone to shift to match my lowest school weight. I believe I am fitter because I have learned to love running. I run for three miles in the mornings when the cold university gym seems a dull prospect. The route is full of hills. I like hills. I run for twenty minutes on my gym mornings.

I now run the 1500, albeit on a treadmill at a very slight incline, in just less than ten minutes, barely breaking a sweat. My next goal is a nine minute mile.

This may be hindered by a knee injury (that fall, again) that seems to have reappeared this week. I'm hoping it improves fast.

I don't believe fat fifteen year old me would ever have entertained the idea of running for pleasure. I'm not great with change, but this one I like.

diet coke days

My sister came home at Christmas looking like a Fresher. As in, looking like all of us do when we first go to university and spend every night Not Sleeping and instead drinking things with curious names. As an officially boring finalist, I can't cope with the colourful cocktails and late nights anymore. However, I never learn and so am today nursing a mild hangover, aided by the cure for all known diseases, Diet Coke.

I suppose it was a celebration of sorts, because Good Things have happened this week. Here. Have a list. Lucky you.
1. I wrote a bit of my dissertation. 12000 words is still a lot but at least I have a few of them in an order that vaguely makes sense.
2. I got into Law School. That should maybe be first. Whatever.
3. I booked flights to Buenos Aires for July. I say "I", I actually had very little to do with it and merely nodded when appropriate. Friends are brilliant.

Millions of other little happy things have occurred recently as well.
Oh my! Life is good. Even with a hangover.

addict

I think I am addicted to cornflakes.

I think this is because I do not do enough with my time, and so end up in the kitchen, idly eating breakfast cereal out of the packet. At least it is low fat.

Also, when the alternative is translating a site report, cornflakes are your friends.
(Average translation time: two pages of French an hour.)

Most people do drugs. Me? Cornflakes.

I think I need a drink.

well

...that was overdue.

An hour, a few buckets of tears and a confession of fragility later I'm still at home when I should be in the city.

I am tired, unwell, back to the bottom step.

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