Some random ramblings

DH and I walked about 8 miles on Saturday, mainly to the shops and back

I have curly hair today, and have had since Friday - it's a record!

My external hard drive has died, 120Gb and 2 years of creativity down the drain.

I went to the gym this morning and did lots of Olympic lifts. I feel like a strong-girl - GRRRRR!

urm...

Geek Chic

If I was feeling in any way flush - or even just normal, then I would be buying myself this:



As it is I will just have to lust over it for a little bit longer (and until I figure out if the length of it is right - I have humungous wrists).

My week so far...

Has mainly involved this:



A little bit of this:



And an awful lot of this:



That is actually me doing the kicking in the first photo, I do a lot of BJJ but this photo I took of my instructors is too good not to share, plus I have don't have any photos of me wrestling. I can also do the splits like this little guy but I am not as photogenic!

I'm doing more martial arts to forget about the house nightmare that is playing out. More on that once I start to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Poorly Penelope

My bike, Penelope is a bit poorly.

(this is my friend Bill at a NYE party.)

First of all, on Wednesday night, we were rudely awakened by the Police coming to tell us that poor old Nelly had been pushed over while she was parked in the street by some crazy madwoman! They took my statement and while there were only really a few scratches on my bike and the clutch lever had snapped off, it is going to come to about £600 to repair her! Sheesh! Because the woman is crazymad and known to the police, it is not likely that she is even going to go to court let alone be ordered to pay damages. Now I am left with the choice of paying my £250 excess and risk my insurance premiums going up if I get her fixed or putting up with a scratched-up bike.

I took her to the garage on Thursday morning to get her clutch lever fixed so that I could actually go to work, then they discovered that the cluctch cable was about to snap, so they replaced that for me. I got to work and took out my MOT certificate and saw that it was 2 days overdue. I booked her in for an MOT straight away. Unfortunately she failed her MOT and needs new brake discs which is going to set me back a few hundred quid. She also has a hole in the exhaust which is making her backfire - that's going to cost the same as the front discs to replace but, strangely enough, they didn't pick up on the hole in the exhaust on the MOT. The place I got her MOTed doesn't do bike repairs so I had to load her in the back of the transit van, take her to my kickboxing class, take her home last night and then to the garage this morning.

In the middle of the night I woke up thinking my right eyeball was on fire - I got up to take my contacts out and couldn't see, I now have a lovely lovely red eyeball! Fortunately I managed to get some drops this morning for it, but they taste foul once they've dripped down to the back of your throat. Ugh!

After I'd dropped Penelope off at the garage I had to find an HSBC to go into so that I could CHAPS the money for our house deposit to the solicitor. I paid for about 40 minutes parking thinking that I would only have to go to the counter. How wrong could I be? I queued up at the counter with my 2 forms of photo ID and marriage certificate and bills and cheque books and credit cards only to be told that I had to be seen by someone else. At 25 past 10 I was put on a list of people waiting, some people had already been waiting since 10am! At 11:10 I was finally seen by someone, after having to go and put more money in the parking machine! The whole transaction took less than 5 minutes and I'm sure the guy at the counter was more than capable of putting through a CHAPS transaction... Bleh.

On my way to the car I walked past a milkshake shop - they had over 150 flavours, which included Weetabix and Farleys Rusk! I chose a Fondant Fancy shake, because if there's anything better than a Fondant Fancy, it's a Fondant Fancy milkshake!

So after the bank trip things are looking up, since I got into work and have 2 etsy orders sitting in my inbox. I just have to figure out how to get to the bike garage on the tube and give my credit card a hammering.

(I've just been to my flickr account to find a picture for you, hence Bill up there with his clown tears, and I've got a message that my "I'd rather be napping" print has been featured on a blog. What a roller-coaster day today!)

I've been on a bit of a spree - it's DH's birthday in, like, November so I went and got him this from interobang on etsy. I love it... So if he doesn't like it, it's mine.



It's naughtyhippo's husband's birthday tomorrow, but I only remembered yesterday otherwise I would've bought him a glass eye! He will just have to settle for other, almost equally cool, presents.

I've spent the weekend being Eine Kleine Hausfrau tidying and sweeping and cleaning and washing and ironing. We have given notice on our current place, so we have a month to move out. They are showing prospective tenants around today so last night was also spent in a cleaning frenzy.

Here's a small sneak peak of what I drew in the travelling journal - I got the idea from Rebecca's blog.



In case you can't read that:

I can do the splits every which way!
I really DON'T LIKE PEAS.
I can twitch my nose like a rabbit
I wish I could sing better
I want to drive America in a 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville
I live in the city, but I really miss the country

Vote Vote, Like a Baby Stoat!

That will only ring bells if you surf cuteoverload.com.

But anyway, my internet inspiration Heidi Kenney has been nominated as a "Craftiest Bastard" for a big craft show over in the states.

I just wanted to let you all (3 of you) know that you should go here and vote for "my paper crane".

Go on! Now. Do it.

These are photos from the wedding I photographed at the weekend. Let me apologise for yesterday's post! I was uploading so many photos to photobox that Firefox decided to go a little mental on me! Let me tell you that e-mailing was no fun! The cursor kept jumping to the left, so I had to keep pressing the right arrow. After a few hours of that I simply gave up and posted in gobbledegook!