A blog full of randomness; about anything and everything.

Thursday 24 June 2010

Me, in pictures



At the beginning of this month it was my 21st birthday and on Saturday my sister gave me my birthday present; a rather awesome canvas printed with pictures from my life. It really made me smile and got me thinking about pictures of me as a child so I turned to our stacks of photo albums.

Ok I'm not one of those people who gets embarrassed about their baby photos mostly because I was damn cute! (Shame that didn't last...). And so I've decided to give you the opportunity to laugh at me by showing you some of these pictures. So here is a guided tour of my life in pictures with your tour guide, me:

 Wasn't I adorable? Come on give me an aww...

However not everyone thought I was adorable:


Please note the terrified expression on my sisters face. (I'm the baby, my sister is the three year old). 

Speaking of my family. There is some things you should know. In our family it is perfectly normal to have a giraffe come to dinner:


Or to find yourself reading a story to a pink elephant: 


There is a good chance I could be under that pink elephant in that picture. It was very unlike me to miss out on story time. 

However this is not perfectly normal:


And I don't mean my sister getting starring role as Mary in the nativity scene! I mean the police officer that can be seen just in front of Mary and Joseph. Since when was there a police officer present at the birth of Jesus? And what is he doing? Looks like he could be arresting baby Jesus. For crimes of being plastic perhaps? 

Now to continue with the tour. Firstly I've always been stylish: 


Just look at that hat. Even as a baby I dressed impeccably!


And are those not the most amazing dungarees that you've ever seen?


Sporting the Yorkshire terrier hair do!
 However at certain age I lost my style and all pictures were better taken at this distance: 


It's ok, don't worry, I got my style back: 


Such up to date fashion!

Not only am I stylish, but I'm an awesome dancer:



I also did more classical styles:


(I'm on the right in the ballet kit)
Now I love to boogie: 


Just look at those moves... 
(I'm the one in the dark purple dress that looks like it has a leafy pattern on it)

I also had other hobbies. I've been in guiding all my life:


Wonder if anyone told Rainbow me that my trefoil is all squiffy...


You can even hire Brownies out for weddings (well Guiders need to make their money somehow!) I'm the one on the far left of the picture. 

I've always been rather adventurous and brave:

 

I'm the kid who's head has been lopped off by the plant pot. And if you look closely you will note that I am managing to walk around the very high, and narrow, almost Bridge of Khazad Dum like wall without holding my mums hand whereas the boy just behind my sister is having to hold his fathers hand. And I was a whole month younger! 

From Khazad Dum my adventurous exploits progressed to jungle rope bridges:

 

I even rode wild animals:


There seems to be a bit of a giraffe theme.
I also trained for the Winter Olympics:


I also did a fair bit of extreme boating:


No I do not have my eyes closed in fear, the sun was shining in them. Clearly. 


Look at my feet - I'm even peddling despite my legs being miles from the peddles! 

Anyone for a bit of gorge walking


Aren't wetsuits flattering! (I'm on the right!) 

There was only one thing I was scared of:


Well not SuperTed but people dressed up in animal/ bear suits like that. It's just not natural. You see I'm not in that picture because I'd run 20 miles. Ok I am in that picture. I'm the kid on the right in turquoise who looks like the only reason they haven't fled for their life is the fact that their older sister is holding their hand in a vice like grip. 

I also had a few career options. I could have been a baker:


Unfortunately it's not a brilliant picture but they were biscuits decorated to represent the four seasons using mainly dessicated coconut, food colouring and playmobil figures. And look I won first prize!! And there were clearly other entries because I can see a plate in front of it! 

Or perhaps I could have been a nurse:


Every nurse needs a pair of fluffy blue slippers! Admit it, you'd want to be treated by that cute little thing, wouldn't you?! 
But my main ambition was to be a pirate:




I still think I'd be an awesome pirate:


So for a bit of a summery: I was an absolute doll when I was small!


And just a little bit crazy: I liked boxes.




But at least I wasn't as crazy as my sister. 


Ok everyone lets just point and laugh. 

Now it's time for me, your ultra cute tour guide, to bid you farewell. Until next time! 


Monday 21 June 2010

WTF?

So I haven't blogged in a whole week and now I am blogging and still no epic dinosaur story. Unfortunately moving out of my house and applying for jobs has meant that I have had no time to blog or finish the dinosaur story. However you will be glad to hear it is nearly finished.

Anyway today's blog is a WTF post. And that has a double meaning. Clever, huh? I'm going to write about a couple of things I've seen that deserve a WTF award (and make me question the sanity of the human race) and also the WTF stands for the fact anyone reading this will be asking themselves this by the time I finish. I apologise if I make you're brain hurt!

Firstly this: (I am referring to the toys not the rather busty lady in front)


Despite the obvious horn what exactly have do Unicorns and Narwhals have in common? And since when have they been locked in some kind of legendary epic battle with each other for the last millennia? And they have magic battle horns. Why? They say that computer games and TV are encouraging violence, well what about this?

And they didn't really think this through, did they? Unicorns live on land and Narwhals in the sea. How do they have epic battles? And plus Narhwals live permanantly in the Artic where I don't think there has ever been a unicorn sighting. Then there is the obvious fact that UNICORNS DON'T EXIST or at least it's unlikely that they do exist anywhere other than my head.

My second WTF award of the day goes to a product from the Kings of WTF JML.

Now I get that it's to make bumps or something in your hair. But it might just be me but it seemed like a bad choice of name. When I first saw it I thought it was two different words and one of them wasn't 'bump'. Yes, I read 'bum pits' which sort of turns them into more of a painful torture implement. Owwww.

Ok it really was me, wasn't it?

Oh well moving swiftly on.

Something to distract you and make you forget I ever said anything.

CAKE!!

I got a cupcake stand for my birthday so I just had to make cupcakes. Mocha flavoured ones with coffee buttercream frosting to be precise.

Sunday 13 June 2010

An edible interlude

The promised Best Dinosaur in the World Story is nearly ready; the pictures have been drawn and scanned on to the computer and are being coloured as I type (well not literally as I type as I can't do two things at once, well I can just not everything). And will be posted, all being well, in the next couple of days. 

Anyway to keep my blog updated while its in preparation and because I have no other ideas since my time is mostly being devoted to watching the World Cup here is some edible treats for you to admire (or laugh at!) 

First off as my parents came to stay last weekend to celebrate my birthday I baked a cake:  


It's a plain sponge with cream cheese and white chocolate topping and filling. It's all filled with raspberry jam and decorated with fondant icing circles. It was very yummy and received a full seal of approval from the parents and the best friend. 

I also made a meal for them when they arrived which clearly needed a dessert. When I was growing up my favourite dessert that my mum used to make was Lemon Meringue Pie so I decided to try and recreate it. My mums recipe comes from somewhere bizarre and as I wanted to keep it a surprise I used Delia's recipe; can't go wrong with a bit of Delia! I think it's pretty good for my first attempt: 

Now I've made myself hungry so I'm going to feast upon some dessert myself.

Wednesday 9 June 2010

New Rules

Dear Risk Computer Game, New Rule: Stop frakking beating me. In fact stop making it so damn impossible for me to beat you. I swear you materialise extra troops out of nowhere. Oh and stop ganging up on me. Even when you have no one to gang up with you still gang up on me. I know it's a fix. Now stop it; I'm on to you. You don't get to do this any more.

Dear Twitter, New Rule: You have to get a grip. Seriously how can you be over capacity 80% of the time. How come facebook never does that? There are never too many people on facebook is there. You want people to think facebook is better than you? No? Then sort it out. The whale was cute the first time but for the 92nd time in one minute when all I want to do is make a tweet ranting about Risk I'm pretty damn pissed off. I'm beginning to think you have some kind of deal with that whale? Did you get involved in drugs? Is he some gangsta Mafia boss? Or a loan shark perhaps? Whatever I say you have to get a grip so go do it.

Dear Brain, New Rule: Lie ins. I know it's light but seriously brain we don't have to get up. There is no work to be done so what's the rush? Now I wouldn't complain so much if it was 7am we were talking about but no 5 or 6am seems to be your new get up time. Well guess what brain, since you don't let me sleep until gone 1am I don't want to get up at 6 I want to be a rebel and stay in bed and I'm in charge so that's the last I want to hear of it.

Dear Posters, New Rule: Stay on my bloody walls. So you can quite happily hang on my wall for months at a time and then all of sudden you just fall down with no explanation and then no matter how much new blu tak I put on you still keep falling down. Why do you do that? Do you want me room to look bare? Do you want me to come home and think my room has been raided because you are strewn across the floor with the stuff from the shelves littering the floor around you?

Dear Megavideo, New Rule: Go fuck yourself. That is all.

I always though Hurling is what you do at the end of a night out not the start...

I return! After a weekend (and a bit more..) off from blogging. And I return having made a discovery.

Basically I have been away (as in away from my trusted sidekick Daisy the laptop) celebrating my birthday. First the parentals came to stay and they have a car so there was much Gower exploring to be done. And then Monday was  my 21st birthday and I went to see the Cardiff Doctor Who (maybe I'll do a Dr Who post tomorrow) exhibition with the best friend and then the evening was filled with drunken antics and discoveries and yesterday I was too hung over to blog about anything other than a desperate need for chips.

Anyway the discovery. Hurling. And no not the chucking up kind of hurling. I mean as in the crazy Irish sport. We sat in Walkabout downing large amounts of alcohol whilst watching the muted TV which made the game seem even more bizarre.

It seemed to be a mix of every sport and activity going. First of all here is the goal:


As you can see it incorporates both Rugby and Football into one set of goal posts. They seemed to score different amount of points for scoring it into either the football goal or managing to lob it over the rugby goal. It all seemed to resemble football in the fact they could kick the ball. It mirrored rugby and  sumo wrestling in the violent tackles. Hockey, tennis and baking in the bats they used:


Next to the stick you will see a picture of a wooden spatula commonly used in cooking. Notice the similarities? 

I also have a feeling there are some quidditch similarities for instance the Golden Snitch. There must have been one and they must have caught it when we weren't looking because it appeared that the team with the least points won! The scores seemed to be displayed to two decimal places so the game finished with Waterford (or Watford as we didn't find out what WAT stood for until the game ended) with 0.16 points and Clare (Clapham) with 1.13 points. Now after some deduction we decided that the points on the left hand side meant goals scored into the net and the score in the right meant goals scored in a rugby style (or indeed vice versa). You needed five football goals (or another number; five just sounded good) to get one rugby goal so therefore the score on the right was worth more hence why Watford was able to win the game despite seeming all behind like the cows tale. 

The game also ended resembling A and E after on a busy Saturday night. 

Now as for rules. Apparently there are some. But I choose to believe that once you've got past the scary pictures of the pitches and stuff all it says is there are no rules. As far as I can tell it was one big free for all using any method from any sport possible. I bet you could even get snooker and basketball in there somewhere as well. Or maybe you just need to have drunk 6 pints of Guiness to be able to understand! 

Friday 4 June 2010

'This swimming costume cost me £20 and currently about £15 of it is up my ass' and The Raptor Look

So we went swimming yesterday. Well when I say swimming I don't actually mean we did any swimming as the pool a) isn't big enough and b) isn't deep enough. What we did do is slide down numerous slides, jump a multitude of waves and collect an impressive set of bruises. 

There were four slides or flumes as I believe they are better known. Number one was a little tame - open air and a little slow, number two was much better - fast and in the dark. And the best bit is neither drop out straight into the pool (as I mentioned it's pretty damn shallow so that would be rather painful!) You come out into an extra long bath full of water (I'm sure it has a more technical name) which you always end with most of the water in that bath up your nose or in your mouth. Both also cause severe bruising to your elbows and your back.

Finally there was the best slide, flume, thing, whatever. It's a rubber ring slide. You float along a winding course of tubes around the swimming building, occasionally being pushed up hill before crashing down a massive hill at the end and into the extra long bath of water at the end. Fun. Apart from the bruises. And the fact that £15 of your £20 swimming costume will end up your ass. Even worse if you're wearing a two piece costume. Somehow you end up at the end with them simultaneously having gone up and come down which means you have to attempt to do some adjusting before you get off the rubber ring at the bottom. And if you're like me this was definitely mean that you fall out of the rubber ring whilst doing so. At least I didn't come off my rubber ring half way round the course like one guy did. His rubber ring came floating down minus its rider which meant the water got stopped and the lifeguard from the top and to walk the course from the top to rescue him. It looked quite fun as the life guard got to slide down the last bit on his bum. 

I said four slides, didn't I? I think I got a bit excited and counted the kids tiny slide. That was fun; we played on it when they shut the main slides. 

Now the pool that isn't deep enough for swimming primarily functions as somewhere to catch some waves. When you hear the lively tones of the Beach Boys 'Surfin' USA' you rush to the pool and jump some waves. Or you're so busy laughing at your friend's face that you get knocked down by the wave and end up swallowing all the water in the pool. 

Seriously though her face was frakking hilarious. You should have seen it. It was somewhere between a 'I'm being mauled by a shark' look and a Raptor look because there were arms involved. I think the only way to illustrate how amazing it was is to draw it. And the only away to do it justice is to do it in the MS paint style of the amazing Hyperbole and a half


Please note the blatant raptor hands. 

Oh ok it was a lot funnier than that; my paint skills just leave a lot to be desired. 

Now I shall run away quickly before my drawing skills scare you off. Plus I need to do a lot of baking for the parentals are descending and its my birthday!

Wednesday 2 June 2010

Redecorating

You might have noticed the blog looks quite a bit different to how it was last time I blogged (unless you have never been here before and then you can't really judge on how much different it looks but trust me it's different; yesterday it was pink). I've been wanting to make my blog look more exciting for a while and finally I have had the time, so ta da here is the shiny new blog. Hope you like! Although I will warn you I have the attention span of a gnat and get bored easily so don't be too shocked if somewhere down the line it suddenly changes again with no warning! 

The process was a lot more simpler than I thought it was, perhaps that's because I have discovered I am actually a computer genius. Well I say the process was simpler, I mean the bit that involved actually putting the layout on to my blog, choosing the damn layout was the hard thing. 

I decided I was going to go through the website I had found and favourite all the layouts I liked. Two hundred and forty two pages later I gave up and went to review my 'shortlist'. My shortlist of over forty different layouts. This led to several more hours of flicking between them and being ruthless. Until my final shortlist numbered eight. This is why the blog could change at any minute. 

The choosing was hard. I had to keep several things in mind; I couldn't just pick one I liked, I had to make sure it would suit the content of my blog which is pretty damn random which made that part particularly hard. Then I had to consider whether it was user friendly and make sure that it didn't provide too many distractions so that people would actually read my blog rather than stare at the giant cow that takes up half the screen. There was even a pirate map layout: 


How cool is that?? But I decided people (by people I mean me) would probably want to play with the map instead of reading (updating) the blog and plus it might give the idea that I only ever blog about pirates or something. Maybe I'll crack it out for International Speak like a Pirate Day. It can be seasonal like the host of Christmas layouts. 

Talking of distractions I was quite excited by the prospect of a Ninja background: 


But again I decided people (me, again) would spend way too much time trying to work out if the this skilled assassin was in fact a Ninjew. Surely he must be surely only a Ninjew would be skilled enough to perform such a daring leap across the night time sky? Also people might think I was some kind of ninja or something and would be a little disappointed to hear that I possess no ninja like abilities at all. Apart from the ability to wear a lot of black. 

Sadly there were (in the 242 pages I looked through) no dinosaur layouts so this blog remains distinctly dinosaur free. But I promise to crack on with the dinosaur story very soon. To make up for the lack of dinosaurs I could have had layouts that looked like facebook or twitter, layouts with giant cows, flowers and scantily clad women (what kind of blog do they think this is?), ones that looked like books, notebooks and houses. There was no limit to the imagination and creativity. But for now I like the one I have even though it was classes as a 'kids' layout!

Do you remember earlier I said I was a computer genius? Well I am. This assessment is based solely on the fact that I managed to change bits of my HTML code all on my own with no help!

My choosing process was further complicated by my best friend sending me links to this website. Read it. It's hilarious. And it's about cake. Especially this one. Although that link isn't for the faint hearted! 

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Being done and stuff

So there we go, my degree is done. Finished. Fineto. Fertig. Gorffen. (The Welsh just had to ruin the pattern!) Now what?

I think this not having to work thing might take a bit of getting used to. Just now I thought that I should be getting on with some work. And I know tomorrow I'll get up and go to start working. But fear not! I have plans (and yes blogging is one of them!)

1. Craft! I got a some fabric for 50p which is just screaming out to be made into a wallet or purse. I also have a zillion and one other things I want to do with my large bag suitcase full of crafty bits.

2. Bake. The parentals are coming to stay this weekend so I'm making lots of yummy treats to eat.

3. Drink. Drink alcohol I mean (obviously I will continue to drink non alcoholic liquids as well. Just less frequently). The end of my degree must be celebrated (this will probably after playing on the water slides on Thursday). Sunday is the society awards which leads nicely into Monday which just so happens to be my 21st Birthday which means there will be a pub crawl.

4. Doctor Who. Yup. That's what I'm doing on my birthday. I'm going to the Doctor Who exhibition in Cardiff.

5. My PS2. It's been sat sad and lonely in my drawer most of the year and deserves to be played. Besides I have to check that my Kingdom Hearts disc isn't actually broken...

6. DVDS. I have so many I want to watch. My main priority right now is watching Battlestar Galactica. I've just finished season 3 and am going to embark on season 4 this afternoon.

7. Writing. Yup I might actually produce something that isn't an essay.

8. Reading. I've been reading the same book for 2 months. I used to get through books in 2 weeks.

9. Job hunting. This should probably be top of the list! But I can't start until the end of July when I move back to Bristol and have finished being in London and graduating and stuff.

This is supposed to be a picture blog isn't it? Ok as I didn't give you one last time. Here is a meerkat. It in no way relates to my blog but it's kind of cute (if you ignore the fact him and his gang later stole my lens cap).