Meaningless, meaningless

The Passing Bear, I mean -- not Clare Bear.  I've totally lost track.

Da man is...

 RODGER!

 who actually phoned last night.  And very nice it was to hear from him too.  Even if he did interrupt Celebrity Big Brother.

See,  Phones are cool.  They make me happy.

Going out tonight.  Cinema with Darshie.  Which means I should probably phone her so we can decide what we're going to see.

Ciao. 

OK, so last night's little tirade against my lonely existence may have been partly down to PMS.  But it would still be good to hear from you lot. :-)

My advert in the kitchen at work resulted in an almost immediate response... from someone who doesn't want to move until March.  But it's a good start.

I'm currently playing with Roger's recent discovery .  Mildly disappointed with the first band it is claiming sounds akin to the Killers -- the vocals just aren't up to the glorious strains of whatever-his-name-is-nice-Mormon-boy from the Killers.

Just about to go and wash the vinegar off my hair (my friend Alice kindly gave me nits at the weekend, and she swears this is a remedy) and watch Big Brother and eat curry.

Sunshine was still forecast for tomorrow last time I looked.  :-) 

Well, since everyone else has provided a synopsis of the day...

Saturday was the first ever Ellesmere Port Circus Convention. Took place in a Catholic school and was full of young lads who seemed far too zestful and polite to be teenagers. I can only presume it was in the "nice" part of town.

I'd spent the previous night in the pub, drinking in moderation (< 3 pints, honestly) and I'd left the others after we'd been for a curry in the fine establishment know as Le Raj. Got up at 7 feeling way too fragile for the amount I'd drunk, took a shower, started to make my sarnies for the trip and then had to run upstairs to puke. That is my first and last time in Le Raj, no matter how much Dean sings its praises. It's a severely dodgy place - they don't appear to have a roaring trade and almost drag you in off the street, are far too overfriendly.

Managed not to puke on the journey there but felt very sickly. Arrived to see Clare Bear zooming around with a carrier pigeon sign attached to her uni and Roger (not Compact) getting stuff out of his car.

Roger made me balls! I'd asked him to make me a set when we were going out and he made the first one for my birthday, then we split up and I thought I wouldn't get them. But he's a Nice Bloke, so he made them anyway, and exchanged them for my hostage, the book I'd borrowed off him a few months ago.

So we all hung out together and played Suggestive Words Scrabble, and unicycled around on Roger's and Pete's new toys, and I went to Morrison's with Alan and Uncle D and bought samosas and bhajis, and attempted to master the two-wheeler (again to no avail), and all the others went to Compact's uni workshop, which somehow passed me by, and Uncle D had a go on a uni and it was all good fun. I was knackered, though. Could have done with Clare's new "Today I feel" T-shirt, with the "sleepy" option attached.

Pete has mentioned that Roger and I were quite touchy-feely. Yes. Much flirtation, but so much more fun when there's no pressure to be with each other all the time and I don't have to care whether I like him enough. I think it's going to be like that, for a while at least - I only met him twice before we started going out and this is the first time we've seen each other since we stopped, so my brain is still programmed to think Roger=touching. It was really good to see him and really good to get on so well, but that makes it tougher not to. Hopefully it'll wear off.

We didn't stay for the show - it sounded shit. I gave my raffle tickets to Roger but I don't think he was going to stay either, so I told him to pass them on to a random. I have no way of knowing whether they were the winning tickets, and since I have no evidence to the contrary I have decided that they were, and that my giving them away was an act of selfless philanthropy.

Idyllic weekend. Felt like a holiday. I went up to Wrexham on Friday night to stay with Elly. Tref was working all weekend so it was just like old times, hanging out together and not bothering with anyone else.

On Saturday we went on Elly's church's outing. Proper old biddy trip, we were the only people under 60 (excluding the coach driver). Bloody good fun! Old women are great in big groups - just as silly and giggly as young women, just about different subjects. We stopped in Skipton and saw clog dancing and had lunch in a pub by the riverside, then went on to Harrogate and ambled about the town looking in the shops. I got a Dukes of Hazzard T-shirt from Age Concern for £1.99 - bargainous! We did the prize Sudoku in the Indy (a hex one, no less - 16x16) and then the really hard one from Friday's Daily Sudoku that Dean couldn't manage. In about half an hour. We rock!

I told Elly I didn't want to go to church so on Sunday we had a lie in then went swimming.  She showed me how to hang upside down from the side and watch everyone under water.  And we did handstands and roly-polys and swam a whole length with no arms then with no legs, and went on the flume and the rapids.  Wikkid.

In the afternoon we had our very own beer festival in Elly's back garden.  She'd invited some friends from church but they were on holiday so once more it was just the two of us sitting in the sunshine with a barbecue and real ale.  We put on all our old Metro songs and Rumpus songs and did stupid dancing and confused Sian from next door with our strangeness.  Which is always nice.  Then it was time to go home so I got in the taxi half-cut and spent a sickly train journey sobering up.

 Should do stuff like that more often.

It's not actually all that interesting at all. Clurby and I just agreed that if I continue to be pathetic and obsessive about Dean without saying anything to him then she will pass on the message, as my carrier pigeon. And then she expressed a desire to actually dress up as a carrier pigeon ("a gruff one", in her words) with a note attached to her ankle, walk into Dean's office and hoist her leg unceremoniously onto his desk. Now I can't get that image out of my head, so I thought I'd share it with you, dear reader.

Dean actually came round last night. Yohann invited him for wine and saucisson, it was really good fun. When it got late my housemates sloped off to bed one by one leaving me alone with him. And then I couldn't bring myself to say anything and my mind was occupied with his wonderfulness and couldn't think of anything else to say and it felt a bit awkward and then he said, "I'd better let you get to bed," and went home. Yohann told me off this morning in a Pete stylee for not making a move.

Anyway! Big G8 lobby tomorrow. I'm going up on a coach that leaves Leicester at 4.30am and gets back at 1am with an extremely talkative, precocious and political 18 year old lad from my church. I've borrowed Dean's discman so that I don't have to spend the whole journey listening to him...

Today I finally snapped. I'm fed up with living in a pigsty, with not a surface in sight, all of them cluttered with dirty dishes, some of which date back so far that they've begun to attract archaeological interest.

Also, some very kind housemate had moved the burned-on-fat-dripped plate that I'd discovered under the grill (and put on the side to drop polite hints that it might be time to wash up) on to the draining board. In two pieces.

So today I very calmly cleared the surfaces (which included man-handling an almost-unrecognisable mouldy tomato out from behind Huawei's rice cooker), washed them, washed up the dishes, cups, bowls and cutlery that had been deposited, dried them up and put them back in their original boxes. They will stay there until I move out, especially since in doing this I discovered that 6 out of 12 plates, 4 out of 6 wine glasses, 2 out of 6 mugs and 1 out of 6 tumblers are missing, presumed broken.

Oh, and the ironic part: this morning Yohann asked me not to put jam jars that he'd washed up in the recycling. Well of course! I suppose washing up 1 item all week is an achievement he wants to take pride in.

I'm looking for an apartment next year.

Ooh, look - a comment from an outsider. Thank you, potnoodleboy! (I would leave a comment on your blog in return, only I find mutual-backslapping between strangers rather unappealing.)

My blog is in Spanish now, because I feel like it. Ole! It now strikes me that it may also be me subconsciously pining for Roger, who's gone to Spain for a week. *sigh*

But I am happy, because I have A Plan™ for getting my thesis written, and so far it's working. An hour first thing every morning. The time pressure sends me into a mild mania - I write rubbish, but lots of it, and that's what counts! Editing can happen later...

Birthday happened on Sunday. Family + Alwyn + Jess came round on Saturday afternoon - I'd invited them for tea and cakes - mum drove me nuts by wanting substantial food. Took herself off to the Co-op and bought pizza and quiche and garlic bread, then took over the kitchen. It rather detracted from the otherwise chilled-ness of the mood. Went to the pub later with Ru, Ben, Alwyn and the physics boys - on the way home Oz presented me with a tulip from the public flower beds. Had conversation with Dean (who I'm getting serious grass is greener syndrome about, he's so cute) about the apocrypha, Mormons, growing up in churchy family, etc. (oh, and he giggles like a girl at everything I say)... otherwise an unremarkable evening. Oz did buy me a B54 cocktail, mmmmm.... boys are good, they buy me drinks.

Now I'm sitting waiting for Graham, who I was supposed to meet with yesterday, then this morning, then was going to come and find me about an hour ago... I feel so rejected! *sob*

Magda had some of her lab mates round yesterday evening. I like Magda's friends - they bring beer and food and make us laugh. And one of them reminds me of Timmy Mallett, but skinnier. And the others are all from different countries and make me feel all cultured and cosmopolitan. I was getting them to tell me jokes that don't make sense when translated into English.

A Portuguese joke:
There was a dog called Bread and it was hard after a day.

A French joke:
What do you pick a papaya with?
A pitch-pitchfork.

And best of all, a German joke:
Young Fritz is taking a class in theology.
The teacher asks him, "Fritz, what is God?"
Fritz has a think and replies, "God is... a spoon!"
The teacher is puzzled and says, "No Fritz, God isn't a spoon, try again."
Fritz has another think. "God is... a fork!"
The teacher says, "No Fritz, God isn't a spoon. God is the Creator."
To which Fritz replies, "I knew it was something in the kitchen!"

I want more foreign jokes! I'm going to make every foreigner I meet tell me one.