Changing rooms

Why the marmite? It has nothing to do with this evening's blog, but I bought some of the squeezy stuff the other day to have on toast, and it's pretty good. Same as the usual type apart from it's slightly runnier and you can squeeze it out like ketchup to target its application and stop you putting crumbs back in the jar. As you can probably see, I'm in the "love it" camp rather than the people who think it is evil stuff.

I've just got in from work and thankfully it was much quieter than last week, so I managed to get away on time. Working again tomorrow, then got 10 glorious days off. Have already managed to fill most of it, going up to see Marie for the first bit, and coming back possibly via a couple of places. Then during October I should be able to catch up with the more local friends as I'm working normal weekdays with no weekends. During the afternoons I'm planning the penultimate stage of the home improvements, that is, to redecorate my bedroom which is the only one left that I haven't done. It doesn't fit in with the rest of the house as it's got bright green walls, green carpet, and dark green gloss paint all over the skirting and woodwork which has to be stripped off. I'm going to get a neutral carpet that doesn't show all the fluff, do the walls a different colour (same as the spare room, a kind of pale caramel), and probably a new bed as my current one is quite high and as the room is small, it makes it look smaller. The old bed will probably go in my old bedroom at my parents house which is also being redecorated, I want to keep my headboard though as it is a nice chocolate leather one. So I'm resigned to a period of time living in the spare room while all this is being done, but hopefully will be worth it in the end. I've also got plans to fit my wardrobe out like a proper closet with an array of shelves, rails, and that sort of thing, but that will have to wait til I can make a trip to Ikea. The final bit of home improvements will eventually be new double glazing which is nowhere near as exciting so no need to go on about it here.

You'll be pleased to hear that my bike now has a permanent home, rather than sitting in my lounge. My parents came up today and we found that by removing the front wheel it easily fits into the cupboard by my front door, so we put a hook in it to allow it to be stored up on end, and some shelves too so I can put some of the stuff from under my stairs like outside extension leads out there. Looks a lot tidier, anyway.

Right, off to bed now, got to work tomorrow, and I'm sure there is some crap on the TV for me to watch in bed...

YouTube is evil!

An evil waste of time, that is. So far I'd found it useful for finding the odd news clip or music video, but since I was at work all last night and my brain is frazzled and sleep-deprived, I have today been browsing for all those "back in the day" memories. Marie started it by sending me links to PJ and Duncan doing "Let's get ready to Rhumble", so I replied with the Sultans of Ping FC "Where's me Jumper?". The picture here is from the Mysterious Cities of Gold, whose theme tune is also on there.

But on the other hand, it's also good for tracking down stuff that you see once on TV and can't find anywhere else, like my current favourite song, I caught the end of it on one of the MTV USA TRL shows and hadn't a clue who it was by, but a bit of research on the interweb found it was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fuc9NFN-hg and for some reason (despite it being bland teen-pop-Justin-Timberlake-cheap-rip-off), I rather like it.

Have noticed whilst listening to the radio that Scott Mills has caught on to the My Chemical Romance song that I mentioned a couple of entries ago (see Sept 5th), and has it as their single of the week. It's going to be huge! Reminiscent of Queen in some ways, ie totally OTT, guitar solos, tempo and key changes, and overall fabulous. You can see the VMA performance of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WDMOcmP0Lo

Not really much going on to blog about at the moment, I've been working weekends and so haven't really done anything interesting. Did an overnight call centre session last night which actually wasn't too bad, I didn't manage to nap yesterday afternoon to prepare for it so was flagging by about 6am this morning, but went back to bed for 4 hours after getting home and should hopefully be ok. There wasn't much to do, not many calls overnight, so I managed to finish off knitting a scarf that I started ages ago (admired by several of the ambulance people who asked about putting in orders for my futures shifts there), read a book, and tried not to freeze due to the air conditioning. Doing this coming weekend too then got 10 days off so going to try and catch up with a few people but it depends on who's around - if anyone wants to catch up, let me know!

Golly!

Hmm, been working this morning and back at work this evening, fancy doing a bit of knitting to pass the time. Last year I went through a phase of knitting scarves to occupy myself in front of the TV, and I managed several pretty good ones. So what to knit next? I think maybe golliwog jumpers for all my friends, as modelled by this delightful family here. Except of course I am not allowed to say "golliwog" any more as apparently it's racist. I seem to remember recently a shopkeeper of an old-fashioned toy shop being told by police to remove his window display of several golliwogs in case it offended people. Well, political correctness gone mad I say. When I was about four I was entered into a dancing competition, and I had to sing a song about a golliwog coming to tea (which I fear my parents may still have on tape somewhere), and I had a couple of knitted gollies, one in red dungarees, and a girl in a yellow dress. Might see if I've still got them at my parents house as they deserve to be proudly displayed.
What I find a lot more disturbing in the toy world than golliwogs, are those awful Bratz dolls. If anyone was entitled to be offended by being represented by a doll, then I think I should be, as a young(ish) woman - they appear to be modelled on slutty prostitute-types with permanently bored expressions. I wouldn't be happy encouraging young girls to model themselves on these pouty midriff-baring tarts, I call for a return to nice dolls with pretty dresses and stuff! I reckon my mum must have had an easy time with me, I wasn't into dolls at all, I had one Sindy who wasn't played with much, as I liked bears and played for hours dressing them in old baby clothes and special outfits (kept in the wardrobe my dad made for them).

Mmmmm Robbie

Had a fairly tiring day in all, working this morning then went to gym afterwards, have managed so far to stick to the first week of the Runner's World training programme, in fact surpassing it as I did an extra half a minute running on each repetition (it's a walk/run alternating regime). Not sure how long I'll be able to keep it up but the intention is there, at least. So I had a nice night in watching Robbie Williams night on sky 2. Might have mentioned it before, but although I think the man is a bit of a twat, he certainly knows how to put on a decent show and I had such a good time when I saw him at Knebworth a few years back - sounds crap I know but he has a way of making everyone feel special as if he's performing just for you... which would be nice! I don't know how he got hold of my pants for the photo here, but if you're reading it Robbie, I'd like 'em back please!

On a spookier note, when I logged onto my blog site in order to do this posting, I checked the click counter and it was showing 666. How come it was me who got that number? I still don't know who all the people visiting are, unless my friends are checking for updates several times daily (as if), so please, feel free to say hello. Talking of weird 666 things, did you see those photos of Tom Cruise's baby? Some of them are cute, she has a lot of hair, but there is one (link since been removed) where the baby is staring right at the camera with slitty eyes and looks like the spawn of something ungodly... or maybe an alien from the planet Theta or whatever those Scientologists believe? Anyway, more than one person has noticed the similarity to Damien off of the Omen, which I think is a little unfair to label the poor mite with, after all, having weird Tom Cruise for a dad is surely bad enough?

Pompous circumstances?

It's the last night of the Proms again, always seems to come around pretty quickly, and I can hear the strains of "Land of Hope and Glory" from the TV in the other room. Despite it being rather formulaic, it does give one a certain sense of pride at being British, although at the same time I do want to distance myself from some of the spods who frequent the front row. You know, the ones that wear the full union jack regalia and bob up and down in time to (in fact often out of time with) the music. They usually have beards and outdated glasses, and whilst I don't want to begrudge them a good time, they look really gay (in the sense of gay meaning crap, not homosexual). Look at them honking their big horns! In fact I went to a Proms concert once, but we had proper seats rather than being in the pit, it was in my band geek days when I was in the South-East Hampshire youth orchestra, we used to do an annual Proms-type concert with all the traditional music so they thought we ought to see the proper one first-hand. Often during the concerts they would arrange to have bangers and confetti going off at the end of Pomp and Circumstance, which would have been better had they warned us about it rather than making most of the orchestra jump out of their seats and stop playing. As I remember it actually sounded pretty good although we didn't take it very seriously, preferring to spend the periods in between rehearsing slagging off things to do with school ( we were at that awkward mid teenage stage) and having a laugh. Apart from the flautists that is, we never really got to know them as they insisted on sitting and practising at every spare minute. Probably because there was only space for 4 of them in the orchestra so they were at constant risk of being usurped by newcomers, us in the string section were pretty much safe!

2 things I've learnt today are that the swan is the only bird that has a penis, and that the average chocolate bar contains eight insect legs. I got these gems of knowledge from a quiz site on the BBC page which is very addictive, you can play against random people and get more points the more quickly you can answer.

Virtual Hannah

Thought it was about time I revisited something that was amusing a couple of years ago, there is a site www.myvirtualmodel.com where you can create a virtual image of yourself and then dress it in hideous clothes. It's also good to see what you'd look like if you were a stone or two heavier or lighter, the picture here is of me a couple of years ago - I bet you love my cardigan, right? Anyway, I wanted to update the profile and see what effect all the gym sessions are having, but on logging on, I discovered that the site has changed so that rather than using their rather limited selection of clothes, you can "try on" things from lots of high-street stores. In the upgrade process however, my stored image has changed somewhat - I look distinctly foreign, and have gained a few pounds too. Here is what they think I look like. So I went and updated it to the current stats and might get round to posting it sometime. Unfortunately now you don't seem to be able to edit the hair and face as much so it doesn't look as much like me, and the clothes are less interesting than the awful selection they used to have, but it's still kinda fun.

This evening I have also been mostly listening to a download of Zane Lowe's show from Radio 1 last night. After my weird obsession with teenage emo music, I have found an even weirder one, that is a drum and bass remix of the theme to "Cape Fear". I caught it on the radio last night and it is the best speeded-up pingy jangly bassline thing I've heard in ages. I remember going to a drum and bass club in Hoxton one time, and thought it was ridiculous, full of people gurning away and dancing manically to hardcore music whilst wiggling their hands around in front of their faces, remember we tried to get into it but couldn't stop laughing at our pathetic attempts. Not sure I'd cope with a whole night of it, but this one track is blinding and I've had to go and order a whole CD of it off of Amazon just so I can keep listening after next week when the radio repeat is deleted.

Don't understand...

Today I'm going to talk about a couple of things that have been bothering me lately, things that do not make sense to me. First of all, why on earth do rappers insist on wearing the gusset of an old pair of tights on their head? This is beautifully illustrated by 50 Cent (left), but it seems to be done by loads of them and also by all the slightly sad ghetto-pimp-wannabees like Britney's husband Kevin Federline. When I was in NYC for the day a few weeks ago, the streets were full of them, all in their Puff Daddy tracksuits, covered in "ice" (piss-poor cheap cubic zircona imitation jewellery) and "bling" (probably specially imported from Argos), but with these stupid things on their heads. If it was covering up their hair then it might serve a useful purpose but most of them are bald, and it was a really hot day so I can only conclude it must be a fashion thing. Anyway, I don't understand it.

Next on the list of things that has been puzzling me are the new tampons that they are advertising on TV with a nice hippy-style flower-power promotion. If you're eating you may want to finish before returning to today's gubbins because the next paragraph contains talk of bodily functions. Fair enough, whilst I accept that there is reasonable demand for feminine hygiene products, why the bloody hell have they made these new scented tampons? Scented for what purpose, exactly? To arrange in tasteful displays in the bathroom in place of an air freshener? Completely unnecessary in my opinion.

Also, I don't get how come I know so much about MTV-generation stuff. I was watching the Video Music Awards the other night and found myself quite liking a song by EMO band "My Chemical Romance", which I thought was more the territory of quasi-depressed teens. It's a slippery slope I fear, and if it goes on like this expect me to sign up to MySpace, buy a webcam, and start posting crap videos of me singing along to chart hits on YouTube.

There are probably many more things like this but I don't want to go on all day, I have to go and make some dinner now and am also going to make some muffins as I got a really nice recipe the other day and have some blueberries and raspberries that need using up.

Crikey...

We're all shocked today about the demise of crocodile hunter Steve Irwin who has been killed by a stingray whilst filming off the Barrier Reef in Australia. Whilst it's very sad, I suppose it wasn't entirely unexpected having watched many of his programmes and been horrified and amazed at what he got up to with all those dangerous beasts. But to end up stabbed in the chest by a stingray - only the third person in Australian history to have been killed this way - reminds us that nature can be cruel. Condolences to his wife and family, I'm sure there will be a lot of tinnies raised in Walkabouts around the UK this evening in his honour. Rest in peace, you galah!

Mother's ruin

Well, yesterday my house became a gin palace. After a hard couple of weeks at work I was all set for a relaxing weekend (apart from working this evening til 10pm), until I got a text from Russ inviting himself down. Worked out quite well actually, as one of his friends was coming to see someone else here so made sense to share lifts. Anyway, the lads pitched up yesterday evening and like the perfect hostess I dished up some yummy curry, made with veg out of my garden, before intending to head on out into town. Except we never made it out, not quite sure why, but seeing as we found some sloe gin and normal gin in my cupboard, it made sense to carry on with that and save some money. So had a nice evening catching up and having a laugh, watched Wayne's World for a bit of early 90s retro entertainment, and had a few gins. Managed a bit of a lie-in and then had a fry-up and watched the X-factor. Work wasn't too bad although I'm feeling rather tired now so am heading off to bed.

When work quietened down a bit, I managed to get around to booking tickets to go and see Russell Brand in November when he does a show in Salisbury. He's one of those people who I laugh at but know I probably shouldn't, but can't help finding it funny the way he goes on about dinkles and stuff. In fact this morning we all sat around the computer for a bit watching comedy clips on YouTube, it was great finding bits off of Brass Eye and Newman and Baddiel. Yay the internet!