Diary of a Suburban Squeen

Ah, the dulcet tones of The Antiques Roadshow, so reminiscent of my youthful Sunday television watching... Not, of course, that I was particularly enamoured of antiques as a teenager, but it was very parental viewing. Personally, I love the old dears who are all "Yes... yes... yes... really... yes... yes..."

Anyway, I come to you exhausted from a day spent largely tidying my room. I have decluttered quite a lot, so I am rather proud of myself. Sadly, however, it has meant that I could not take advantage of the National Trust's (rather poorly advertised) free weekend, which is rather a shame, given how beautiful the weather's been today. Tant pis. Tidy room is more important, because (a) it was a shit tip, and (b) now the weather's nicer, I like to be all fresh and clean.

Yesterday, with a collection of chums, I went to Hampton Court, which was lovely. Katie and I went with the Kings four years ago, but it's different with a small child because you can't focus as well on what you're looking at. Looked at the C17th apartments, and the Tudor bits, and generally wandered around and had a nice time. It closes bizarrely early, though, and I was horrified to discover the "Henry Shop" giftshop had closed! Shock horror! As you may or may not know, my chosen memorabilia is always God's honest tea towel (functional and stylish), and I had, after considerable reflection, chosen the Hampton Court tea towel I wanted to buy. However, Hampton Court has several gift shops scattered about the place, and I didn't want to run the risk of missing a potential tea towel choice owing to an ill-advisedly early purchase. But the gift shops were closing! The horror! What was I to do? Actually, Kathryn and I just ran away to the main shop by the ticket place, which, praise the sweet baby Jee, was still open, so I bought my hilarious King Henry tea towel and all was well. After that, we returned Chez King and had mexican lasagna (yum yum yum) and cake.

However, the most exciting part of yesterday was our bus travel. At lunch time we caught the R68 from Richmond, which was jolly nice, out over the bridge, through Twickenham and Teddington and finally Hampton. And then, oh then, we found we could get the bus home from Kathye's! How exciting is that?! We went to the bus stop just at the end of Kathye's road, caught the bus to Twickenham, and picked up the 33 back to our house! We were home just less than hour after we caught the bus, which, door to door, is about the time it takes on the train! Yay buses! We talked about how exciting this was all the way home. It was hilarious.

Given that I have only so far posted once this month, I thought I might make the effort and double it. Wowzers. So, words, eh?

♥ Oh em gee, Being Human. Awesome show. Love it so much.

♥ Dancing On Ice continues to dominate our Sundays. Danniella in the skate-off, though - wtf, people? I am now resolved to stop my habit of pity-voting, it is clearly IMMORAL. Also, ITV should hire me and Katie as commentators because we rock. Also, STFU people when Jason gives people perfectly valid criticism.

♥ I had soup for lunch and soup for dinner today. Huh. Also, two slices of M&S giant hot cross bun in a loaf.

♥ Day off tomorrow - GP then off to Staines to buy ridiculous cheap scarves in the market bit (actually, assuming there is a market bit on weekdays) and t-shirts and cardigans from Matalan. I will also, natch, be visiting the old BFF.

♥ Apparently Wil Wheaton is in The Big Bang Theory again. I am very excited by this. WHEEEAAAAAAAATON!!!!!

♥ Work is still awesome in itself, though we are now having a few staffing difficulties which makes things uncomfortable. Also, mental copy-and-paste girl at the last job seems to have gone off on one again. LOL apparently it's all very haircutgate over in St John's Wood at the moment.

♥ Speaking of, it was Cath's last day last week, so I went out with them all to see Sister Act (slightly hilarious "And I don't even think it's real fake tigerskin!" with a really good set - loved it) and have dinner etc. Nice to catch up, and see everyone (especially Emma and Ben, natch). Still need to organise my leaving do. Will not be inviting Rachael.

♥ Have been reading lots of trashy romances recently and not much else. Boo.

♥ I bought a necklace on Etsy and am quite excited. It looks beautiful.

♥ In glorious news, ITV3 have started showing Heartbeat from the beginning. Oh, Nick Rowan, I'd forgotten how much I loved you!! What with that, and the X-Files and Voyager, my early evenings bear an eerie resemblance to my teenage years.

♥ ^^^ CLAUDE JEREMIAH GREENGRASS LOL

♥ Are we having a general election soon or what? I'm fed up with all the campaign post we're getting at the moment.

♥ In other televisual news, we have rediscovered the joy of Roswell. Well, I say the joy of Roswell. It's not really that, let's be honest. It's the joy of Michael and Maria. I have been reading fic. (Also White Collar fic, when I can find stuff with Neal being a woobie and Peter having to be the FRIEND WHOM NEAL TRUSTS MOST IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD etc.)

♥ Katie introduced me to Katzenjammer. They totally rock. I have listened to their album approximately fifty thousand times. I feel like everyone else should do the same.

♥ Amanda and I keep bursting into song in the office camper van. It's hilarious, but tragically we are the only ones who think so. Nobody understands our genius. WE KNEW ALL THE WORDS TO AMERICAN PIE, PEOPLE!

♥ I don't know how to bowl.

♥ I ordered vol 13 of Fables and am really quite excited about reading it. Also, I got the first issue of the spin-off thing about Cinderella, which I reckon must be finished by now, so surely that'll be out in a trade soon, right? I love her character.

♥ I keep meaning to do a post of women in TV that I love at the moment. One day, people. One day.

♥ I have a diary full of meetings now. It's slightly comical.

♥ Apparently, according to my grandmother, people are related to monkeys. Who knew?

♥ ITV had an ad for a new show with Piers Morgan. Is it wrong that I want to punch his annoying face in?

Once again, I have masses to say, but am too sleepy to actually share any of it. I still haven't told you about my presents from my last job (other than the coconut-coated cock cake, now finished), or anything much about my new job, but just imagine loltastic anecdotes with me being witty and hilarious, and that'll about cover it.

In other news, we had a tiny party on Saturday, which was grand. We tidied (Katie tidied; I did little bits) and put up the tree (Christmas tree! Christmas tree! Covered in lights and fifty million ridiculous baubles, and FAR TOO SMALL FOR ALL OUR CHRISTMAS CRAP) and I watched Muppet Christmas Carol, and then people arrived and we ate nachos and drank wine and then ate cake, and it were lovely. And then on Sunday we all went over to Staines for Darren's birthday. Megan was excessively hyper and Hannah was just ridiculously adorable. She came up to me on more than one occasion to poke my cheeks, which I deeply and suspiciously suspect she has copied from Katie (her favourite and her best).

Anyhow, that's about it. We have done epic amounts of Christmas shopping (as Katie so eloquently put it, CHRISTMAS SHOPPING IS OUR BITCH), and now poor like church mice.

Ho hum. (Also, lololol, Katie and I spent much of last night copying a bit of Eddie Izzard and being all jokey jokey and then laughy laughy. Oh the hilarity.)

Woo! I just checked the Radio Times site because on-my.tv was telling me Merlin was on tomorrow, which I thought was a tricksy lie, AND IT WASN'T!!! I am vee excited, because I am full of the Merlin love atm, mostly because of my burning passion for Prince Arthur.

I also love Glee. It's a slightly odd show in some ways, and doesn't seem to know if it's fish or fowl or good red herring, but it's just so sweet, and I'm sort of emotionally invested in all the characters, even the ones I don't like so much, and SUE SYLVESTER IS A BEAUTIFUL ELEGANT GODDESS OF AWESOME.

So, what other news do I have? Not very much. For dinner tonight I made roasted squash and red onion risotto, which was nice. Last night was aubergine and mozz penne, made with passata from Katie's parents, which is especially nice. In the very near future I am also spying roasted veg soup, a nice bit of leek and bacon quiche, a spot of sausage and mash, and that old stand by, spin ris. Mmm. Good times.

Anyway, other than that, I've been tidying up my room, and it's actually going quite well this time. Woo. Last night I counted about 12 dresses in my possession, which is very many indeed considering a couple of years ago I didn't have any. And today I was stressed and frustrated at work, and now I have 13 dresses and no money. :( Still, I'm wearing a nice, new dress, so I totes don't care.

The rest of tonight has been spent: watching The Big Bang Theory (oh, Sheldon... ♥), Glee and last week's NCIS, making and eating dinner, obsessively checking my email, and sitting in the dark talking to Katie about Stella Gibbons' Nightingale Wood (a truly awesome book which everyone should read) and resolving that we would not become Witherish.

1. I am currently unashamedly listening to Billy Ray Cyrus.

2. I have now dried my hair. It's interesting. I've never had dark hair. It's basically gone from ginger to strawberry blonde to dyed red to dyed blonde to dyed red again and back to a sort of dark strawberry blonde (otherwise known humorously albeit a little hyberbolically as a fiery sunrise of titian splendour). And then bright red. And now dark. Weird. I'll have to pencil in darker eyebrows so as not to appear freakish! Still, the colour's gone on nicely, and it looks OK.

3. I bought an iPod the other day. Yes, I am a sheep. No, I don't care. It's black and shiny and pretty and I like it very much.

4. I NEED TO GO TO BED.

5. Note to self: Rand. Write it.

Heh.

Check out what I just bought...

(Also, how much is my icon made of TOTAL WIN?!)

Boo. It's me. And my hair. (Quite smooth today; I blow dried it.) Once again, I have come on to LJ and then felt completely disinclined to write anything, but here goes. So, um. Yes. New phone. It's shiny and ace and takes photos and everything. I love it quite a lot already.

Jade is going back to Australia after Christmas. I am vee sad about this. *sad face*

Went into Sheen this morning and bought milk and bread and mourned (again) the loss of Woolworths. Why did they close it? Why? (OK. Recent events make that question fairly redundant, but whatever.) Particularly vexing because (a) I broke our whisk and planned to replace it there and (b) our most excellent Woolworths-bought chopping knife has disappeared and I need to replace that too.

Weather was lovely today. Afternoon, I met Jess at Brentford and we tooled along to Staines for Kathye's Christmas gather, which was extremely and also very lovely. Leek and potato soup. Yum. Plan on making that tomorrow, what with plentitude of both leeks and potatoes in FT at the moment. Also maybe celeriac soup. There will be much soup in our future. We could do with a larger freezer. Tant pis.

At Kathye's, Hannah was unfeasibly adorable. I am well on the way to making her think I am AN ACTUAL STAR. Heh. Megan is still not convinced that I am not going to be a Russian queen. I am a little bit naughty. *cheery smile* In more distressing news, some bright sparks thought it would be HIGH-LAR-IOUS to stick about three million knitting needles IN MY HEAD and then see how many could be removed before my hair fell down. Katie filmed it for the mind of the posterity (or for the mind of the film project for my grandparents' Christmas present, whatevs).

Off to Xanthe's for her birthday party tomorrow. Or off to Xanthe's church hall, at any rate.

Sainsbury's last night. I saw a trashy magazine with the following cover:



"Daddy sent me from HEAVEN" What. The. Fuck?! If I may extrapolate from this headline, I assume this woman's partner died and then she had his baby. Vee sad. But I reiterate: what. The. Fuck? Could that be any more arse-cringingly sentimentally twaddlish? Daddy and Mummy loved each other in a special way had sex and then Daddy went to play with the angels died and you were brought home by the stork were born. Daddy did not, in fact, send you from heaven.

Mmm. Just made and ate some rather tasty tomato and rosemary soup, which has led to a cunning plan for tomato, rosemary and sausage risotto, which I am keen to experiment with at some point. Yum. I love food.

I have not yet done anything else practical today, except take a bag of rubbish out. Which, actually, I suppose is quite good for me.

Well, I went into Sheen, and spent the little money I had left this month after yesterday's M&S splurge. In Oxfam, rather excitingly, I *finally* acquired Poems on the Underground, as well as Batman Year One and Why Do People Hate America?. Then went to Waitrose. Filled with old bids. I got very impatient with them (in my head; it's not like I went round knocking them over or anything), then felt guilty, then felt, philosophically, that I would get my comeuppance when I reach old biddom and have people be impatient with me.

Ah, the traditional Monday morning post. It’s a glorious thing. Almost as glorious as the morning itself, which perked me right up the very second I stepped out of the building on my way to work. Clear blue skies, fresh air, a lovely chilly snap: what more can you ask for in an October morning? I walked briskly to the station, The Hush Sound playing very loudly in my ears, albeit not muffling the clunkety-clop of my new boots with their noisy heels, and read various passably intelligent things on my way to work. An excellent start to the day. Of course, now I’m at work in the unwindowed box that is my shared office, and things have taken a more gloomy aspect (am in receipt of cheery email from Alex asking for a dazzling variety of survival curves… thanks for that…) but still, all in all, life is merry and life is sweet, even though I don’t believe in God and must therefore be tragically unhappy with my pointless existence.

Anyway, le weekend. Saturday, Katie and I bopped into Staines (fucking South West Trains. That’s all I have to say…), to meet Kathye and Megan for the thrilling, nay, scintillating, cinematic treat that was to be High School Musical 3. Sadly Kathye couldn’t come, but we were delivered of Megan, and took her off to get lunch, embark upon a sweet-buying mission in Woolworths, and pobble around a few shops before hurling ourselves upon the Staines Vue.

Oh. Em. Gee. Don’t ever let me do that again. Do you have any idea how much high-pitched noise young girls can make? My ears are still ringing. So much enthusiasm. So much screaming. It hurt. Still, it was sort of sweet, and Megan was frankly adorable, bopping away in her little seat. Katie, likewise, quite excited. I mostly laughed, but I did enjoy the ridiculousness, and there was one song that was actually good. I also, I must honestly admit, found myself, in my tiny head, going, ‘So. Zac Efron. Hmm.’ Heh. So, then we dropped Megan off, went home via pizza and chocolate pudding purchasing, and watched SPN and Chuck (oh, Chuck! Chuck who, I cannot lie, PALES INTO INSIGNIFICANCE NEXT TO THE AWESOMENESS OF JENSEN ACKLES).

Sunday began with an indignant phone call to my mother, demanding to know whether she had stopped loving me. I will explain the background to this. My mother has, for some unknown reason, long since decided that my brother and I are CONSTITUTIONALLY INCAPABLE of remembering when the clocks change. Thus we have always received at least one, and usually two or three, reminders at each change. But some horrible mutation has occurred to this scheme. Reader, I shudder to mention this tragic truth, but this time I received not a single, solitary reminder. I know. It pains me merely to type the words. Surely the only conclusion which can be drawn from this sad state of affairs is that the milk of motherly affection has dried up. The grape of maternal devotion has withered upon the vine. All is devastation and dismay. O! O! And so I lament, etc etc. Anyway, turns out she’s decided we’re old enough to cope with the clocks ourselves, which makes a nice change, so there you go. Milk of m.a. and grape of m.d. turn out to be safe and sound. *thumbs up*

So, once that family brouhaha was resolved, we pottered around for quite some time, before making the heroic leap into outdoor!clothes and bopping into town, where Katie tried on boots and we bought comics, before agonising for about SIX WHOLE ENTIRE HOURS about where to have lunch. Eventually lunched, I bought a jumper, we went home. Pottered some more. Had cheesy mash and tuna mayo for dinner (gastronomic fucking genius, me). Watched Hairspray.

And then, after that, I settled into my bed, and succumbed to the compelling world of the US election. I freely admit that I am actually addicted to it. I have basically spent all my free time in the last few days reading political blogs and newspapers and polls and analysis and campaign videos and TV interviews and I think my brain is in danger of exploding. And now that Sarah Palin has gone ‘rogue’, I think it’s just going to get more exciting! Also, I ♥ the Oval Office as a ‘bummer free zone’. Which does actually seem to be the same zone John McCain is living in.

The last couple of days have been characterised by my complete and utter stupidity. Due to going on holiday on Monday (yoicks!) I had to do my transport sums, as I didn’t want to pay for a month’s travelcard. Did my sums, came up with a plan, which involved saving about £35. Excellent, say we all. Not so excellent, say I, because I am stupid. I won’t go into details, because they make me furious with myself; suffice it to say that I have made today’s zone 1-3 travelcard cost £20 instead of £8. Rahhhh.

In other news, also rah. Now, I don’t want anyone to take this the wrong way. I am pro-freckles. I like freckles. However, when I go out in the sun in the summer and get freckly, mine aren’t cute little things. No, I get ugly brown splodges all over my face which, in combination with the predominantly vermilion shade of my complexion, make me look like A FUCKING LEPER. Or at least extremely dirty. So, boo, skin.

Went to see Mamma Mia with Katie and Kathye. It was FANTASTIC – the most enjoyable thing I’ve seen at the cinema for ages, even though it was completely ridiculous. The only downside was that we didn’t get into the cinema itself until the trailers, and we couldn’t sit together, which was tragic because it is the last film during which you want to be separated from your friends. Also, Katie and I are maybe going to see X-Files in Richmond on Sunday if we have time.

Have become slightly obsessed with Russian history since the tragic revelations about Anastasia. Currently reading the Royal Diary of Anastasia (yay children’s books, is all I have to say) and eagerly anticipating the arrival of The Curse of the Romanovs, which is, natch, about Alexei going forward to 2010 to try and save his family, where he meets a Romanov descendent who is trying to cure haemophilia. How awesome is that going to be?!

Anyway, have bought a load of books recently (very self-indulgently), mainly because the time is coming for Book Decisions for the holiday. I am definitely taking The Curse of the Romanovs, also Eclipse (the third Twilight book), which I have been saving as a special treat. Also, Katie got Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? out of the library for me, and I have vol 2 of Sandman, and got Eva Ibbotson’s A Song for Summer off Amazon.