Heh. Hehehehehehehehe. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA.........

*Gigglesnort*

Suffice to say, Valentines Day is going to be a touchy subject in this household for a few days. Looking forward to Shrove Tuesday though!

i) Recently awoken grizzly bear
ii) Cockroach
iii) Nope
iv) Because I have not succumbed to the usual guff about my totem, spirit animal or familiar that so many New Agers get into. If I am gonna be an animal, it's an animal that's gonna survive!!

When Lady Pixie Moondrip and Lord Oberon Stagsbottoms gets round to choosing a totem, they always go for glamorous animals like wolves, stags, dolphins, eagles etc. Even more egregious in my mind is that very few of the animals chosen are indigenous to the UK, so how they can observe their chosen guide in the wild is beyond me. But other animals have so much more! Marian Green often wondered why more people didn't pick robins, as they are feisty and faithful. What about cuttlefish, with their beautiful and everchanging colours? Or spiders, spinning away, munching their way through potential suitors, and so on.

I will state here that there are some people who so closely resemble an animal there is no choice. My ex was built and walked just like a bear, and his nickname sometimes was Bill the Bear. But he never said it was his 'guide'! Although he did sleep like one. :)

Have a good one, everyone.

I really don't understand UK Pagan sometimes. Apparently it is judgemental to tell someone who is morbidly obese and who admits they have no medical reasons to be, just too much food and not enough exercise, that they need to lose weight. Yet none of the following are judgmental:

All chavs are criminals.
All kids are tearaways.
All old people are grumpy.
All Muslims are scary.
All Christians are credulous.
(Yes, all of these opinions have been posted on UKP since I joined).

Obviously it is only judgemental if you don't agree with me.

In other, much more interesting news, today I made about 8lbs of marmalade using the recipe I found on Cottage Smallholder. It tastes pretty good, although it is yet to set. Ian has been here since Thursday night so I have been experimenting on him with spiced fruit compote, chicken paretal, and salmon steaks. I do love cooking so much! It's bloody hard losing weight when all I want to do it bake cakes!

Also, thanks to face_furniture I visited Vom Fass, a shop recently opened in York that specialises in flavoured oils, vinegars and liqueurs. I now have a bottle of sweet woodruff vodka and a bottle of blood orange vodka. It is not a shop that is destined to do well in a recession, but I'll make the most of it while I can. :)

Looks like edlane up there was defriended and still hasn't got over it!

In response, yes, no, and yes. If someone doesn't want to read my increasingly sporadic burblings I am not going to make them. People change. I have been on f-lists belonging to people who actively despised me (I didn't know at the time), despised other races, religions, or sexual orientations, or were just miserable bastards. I shouldn't have to read something that depresses me.

Of course, if ianb1964 defriends me, I may need to get in touch. A quick text maybe. :)

LJ - not real life!

Happy Birthday to elrohana. I hope you have a very, very good day.

So says Thomas Carlyle, and it seems that I am trying to do the same.

I wasn't going to go to London this weekend. I got tickets for a diet and fitness show at Olympia for this weekend ages ago, but forgot to look at train tickets until after Christmas, by which time they were a tad pricy for me. But I remembered Megabus and found out I could do it for £18 so checked that my sister was OK with me staying over and booked!

First of all, Megabus is pretty good all things considered. Yes, I had to catch it at 7.00 am to get there at a reasonable time, but for £9 I wasn't expecting a limo. The bus was clean and fast and we got to East Midlands Parkway with time to spare. The train connection was the worst bit - it was half an hour late and was running slow, so I was 40 mins late into London. The journey back today went without a hitch, so I recommend them for skint people.

The show was good fun. I didn't need to buy any food as there were so many samples. As for the exhibits, anyone who thinks that Mind, Body, Spirit fairs have deluded people has never seen people selling diet aids! Every snake oil salesman and charlatan was there, selling charms and cures for people trying to lose weight. Very Low Calorie Diets (VCLD) desperate to erase memories of the people who have died while doing their diets, men selling bottles of linseed oil for £10, matcha tea for £20 for a small box. As I said, the only other place I have seen ordinary items sold for inflated prices was a Spiritual Fair. Black salt for £10? There really is one born every minute.

Having said that, I did enjoy it. I did a Pilates session that was tough enough to make my thighs ache even now, and I picked up a shiny new cooking utensil. I didn't get a Pilates mat though, so I need to ebay after payday. I still have half a bag of sample protein bars and Omega 3 sprinkles to get through, so I came out in credit. :)

I met my sisters at London bridge and went home with my younger sister to Sydenham. We watched The Half Blood Prince (very good) and ate chicken curry, and caught up all round. It made a nice change and now I know I can get there for not much cash I may do it again.

Sea slug!

I was in Kuching in northern Borneo pre-Ellie, when me and Bill were backpacking round SE Asia. We had huge trouble with the locals getting them to understand we were vegetarian (understandably. It is only wealthy westerners who can choose to not eat perfectly good protein). One gentleman in particular was having problems so the only thing we could think of was to say 'no meat, no fish' several times. We were served a large plate of salad and noodles with some unusual and strangely rubbery morsels dotted around it. On asking he stated proudly 'Sea slug! No meat, no fish!' Bless.

To be honest I would probably eat it today. I'll try anything once. The best meal I had in Rhodes last time we went was grilled octopus tentacle. I thought it would come artfully sliced but no. They just dropped a grilled tentacle on my plate and voila! Ellie was not impressed.

I rarely get sick when eating. I have a stomach like a bessemer converter. :D

[I will do a proper entry soon. I am just very busy at the mo. London tomorrow for a brief visit!]

I have never walked out on a film. The price you have to pay these days would keep me watching that sucker til the end.

Seeing as my flist (and possibly everyone else) is posting about films everyone finds dreadful, I'll post about the film I found the worst ever. I watched Jacob's Ladder once - never again. Having invested time and emotion in the film to find out at the end it wasn't just a dream, but a hallucination caused by him dying (highlight for text - spoiler if you haven't seen it) made me so cross I have never watched it again. What a cop out!

Oh, and Catch 22 was so boring I fell asleep. I am not a born film critic. This is evident as I quite like silly films like Independence Day and Day After Tomorrow. Sorry.

I am currently trying to use the worlds smallest keyboard. Mine needed replacing as the PS2 connection had gone funny, so I needed a USB one. I did not realise that getting a cheap one from Curry's meant getting the tiniest keyboard ever. Seriously, it would fit in a dolls house. I will see if I can get used to it but I can't see Ellie being pleased!

I am also happy because today I booked our holiday. Me and Ellie will be spending a week in the Costa Del Sol in July, which I am looking forward to very much. I ended up going to a travel agents as I could not find anything within my price range at a halfway decent place. Not even on Expedia. So I went to Thomson and she got me a hotel + flight deal for less than £650!

The last thing I am happy about is the fact I have a reasonably authentic lamb tagine cooking at the moment. It smells lovely!

All of my f-list who said they would prefer snow to ice? I hate you.

York is very pretty in an 'aaargh it's cold' kind of way. We have officially been sent home from work but, as I would prefer to waste the MoD's heating bill instead of my own, I am staying put. I have a kettle, several PCs, a box of choccy biccies if I really need them, and a phone. All I need!

Talking of choccy biccies, I am back on the diet. I had only dropped 2 stone out of four before Christmas and I put half a stone back on over the festive period (totally planned - if you can't relax over Christmas then when can you?) so it was back to the gym yesterday and today and back on the salads. I will admit that as long as I can make everything taste as nice as the smoked salmon and avocado salad I just ate then I should be OK.

I spent the end of December at Ian's. It was really nice just lazing round, cooking, watching TV and DVDs, and other stuff. I bought some new shoes (just in time it seems), lots of DVDs, and a few other bits and pieces. I also found out that sloe gin mixed with rosé cava is a very nice drink! *hic* A most pleasant way to spend New Years Day.

Unfortunately, as I was in Liverpool for 5 days I am now missing Ian terribly, so I guess having the diet to concentrate on is a bonus. Oh, and my sister being ill in hospital is a bit distracting too. She picked up an infection in Cyprus and so has to have antibiotics shoved into her all week. I have been told she isn't at death's door so fingers crossed there.

Next task is to find a reasonably priced holiday in Malaga for me and Ellie. I hate looking for hols on the internet, but it is the cheapest way to do it. *sigh* And thanks to giving up smoking I have quite a lot of money to play with. :D

So, what did you all get for Yule/Christmas/Present-giving winter festival of your choice?

I packed up mine and Ellie's stuff and pottered over to my Mum's on Christmas eve. My sister turned up not long after then Ellie came over after work. We chatted, had a nice tea, and I got squiffy finishing off Mum's vodka. That was nice. :)

Because we are apparently a posh family, we opened gifts after breakfast. I got perfume from Ellie (Something about Sofia by Benefit), Lakeland gift vouchers from Lucy (I have been asking for these for years!), Robocop and Star Trek DVDs from Alison (she found my Amazon wishlist), a tagine from Ian (squee!), a Baphomet box, foot massager thingy and reusable bag from Beth, a lovely incense burner from Julie, and cash from Mum. Not a bad scoop there. :)

We ate a lovely lunch, then watched TV and chatted until Ellie was picked up by her dad for their Christmas. I went home Boxing Day because I knew the cats would want feeding. Good job I did as the heating had decided to not turn itself off. My bill is going to be horrendous for this winter. It seems the motor on the timer is about to conk and, although th heating comes on OK, it doesn't turn off. Oh well, it is over 40 years old. I am starting to conk too.

I met Lucy and Mum in town yesterday to have a look at the sales stuff. I got some sports bras and some cookery stuff from the Next sale (I had vouchers). Lucy went home today but I am planning on nipping down to London in January as I got some tickets for a show. I am also planning a shopping trip to Leeds with Ellie and a couple of visits to/from Ian. So 2010 looks like it has started as busy as 2009 finished.

I am off to Liverpool on Wednesday to spend New Years Eve with my boyfriend, which I am looking forward to very much. Hope you all have a good one too.

Apparently a record number of pagans celebrated winter solstice in UK. (Opens a video on the BBC news website).

According to the Beeb, over 100,000 people are practicing pagans in the UK now, a figure I know many people would like the provenance of, seeing as at last count it was about 40,000. However, the report was interesting and sympathetic.

Unfortunately the report does not take into account how sour-faced a lot of internet pagans are. I don't know if forum paganism is less fun to practice than IRL paganism but the amount of humbuggery I have seen on various forums lately has made me back away at speed. Cheer up you cynical bastards!

What a week! Where to start? I won’t be tempted to sing this entry like Julie Andrews, but it has been a busy time.

Last weekend was for the family. The sisters came up from London together with 2 out of 3 nieces, one of which I have never met! She is eight years old, and I always thought she had been kept away due to the fact I was a devil-worshipping pagan type (her father is a Muslim). However it turns out it was because I was a devil-worshipping smoker. Now I have stopped smoking, I am allowed to meet her at last. She is very pleasant. Hyper and prone to tantrums, but which 8 year old isn’t? We had an extremely shambolic Christmas meal on Saturday, then me and Alison took the kids skating on Sunday and Mum laid on a beautiful buffet, which was much more like it?

It was good to see them, but my sisters have an unerring ability to wind me up. Add to that my mother being, well, mother-like and it was a tiring weekend.

Last Wednesday I met my old boss for drinkies, which was nice. And after the heroic amounts of booze ingested the previous week at the branch Christmas do I was moderation itself. It was good to catch up with him. Then Thursday was the Brigade Christmas do. We were at Churchill’s Hotel, which is quite nice and posh, but the food was not up to much really. My starter was delicious but I had picked the fish for my main and it was cold. As for the cracker gifts…. What a swizz! But me and my assistant got reasonably sloshed on house wine, and we did get a couple of drinks bought us. Ian came up Thursday night so he was confronted at the station with a woman all tarted up with make-up on, swaying and hiccupping slightly. Apparently it was very amusing. We went back for one last drink but I was cold and tiring by then. Also, I wanted to get home before the snow really settled.

Friday was the York Pagan Picnic Group Yule bash. I had been planning for this for ages. I had ordered rabbits, collected spices, printed off recipes etc etc. I got up at 9.30 and proceeded to screw up everything I cooked. The pfefferneuse got burned, and they were like rock cakes anyway. The rabbit madras tasted of nothing (that’s the second recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall I have done which has been a big disappointment), and the pumpkin cornbread was undercooked (that one was my fault – I used the wrong baking tin). Luckily Sarah and Beth were much more accomplished so there was plenty to eat. Emma and Steve had been snowed in at Ampleforth so we had no pudding, but Sarah had come through with her amazing black forest muffins. Yum!! The conversation was hilarious as usual. It was very pleasant.

Saturday was spent getting some last minute gifts on behalf of Ellie and getting depressed at how much money I had spent. Ian finally got to see Star Trek as I got it from my LoveFilm list. It is an excellent film really, despite what some people say. We also watched Wall-E which was much better than I thought it would be. I titivated the rabbit leftovers which some stock and seasonings and it was much much better. I wish I had done my own recipe for the Yule Bash.

Sunday was spent lazing and generally pottering. I baked some banana bread too as I had some bananas going bad. Such a useful recipe. I also finally cracked open the chilli vodka Beth brought back from her trip to Moscow. It was very good. After a huge row with Ellie about fucking up plans for Christmas we made up and all was well.

I dropped Ian off at the station this morning. Missing him already. Then I am meeting Mum and nieces after work for pizza. I can’t wait to get to Liverpool over New Year – it’s going to be so relaxing!!

For those of you who haven't got me anything yet.

Christmas at Warwick Castle.

I won't insist on it being wrapped. :)

I love this time of year. My f-list seems to become so......grumpy!

I have actually finished my Christmas shopping, thanks to Amazon and a small bonus in my wage packet (and why not? Fucking 1% payrise next year? 1% of nothin' is, wait a minute, let me do the math, nothin'!) Today I will be rushing around like a blue-arsed fly because the bits of the family I still talk to are coming up from London for a pre-Christmas feast. This should be interesting as there have been some family revelations lately. No, I'm not telling you lot. No, not even for a chocolate orange! Bugger off.

Porcupine Tree was most enjoyable, apart from the lack of seats. Ooooh, me feet! I broke a personal rule and we ate in MacDonalds before the gig and nearly left Ian's wallet in there! Driving back to Liverpool we missed the turning for the Mersey Tunnel so there was some low grade bickering until we found it again. Driving around a city I don't know in thick fog is now my least favourite occupation. Spending a night with Ian more than made up for it though.

I had a good drive back from Liverpool yesterday, came home and made spiced syrup for the citrus compote for today, and then dozed attractively in front of the TV. I have to cook the festive red cabbage and finish off the fruit thingy now. I also made a batch of chocolate orange choc chip cookies last night, so I shall take the rest of them over. Time to get moving.

I have decided to keep the corset. After a long chat with Ian I just cannot go through all the hassle that returning it for a refund would entail. Especially as I suspect she would a) make me pay for the postage and b) make me wait for the refund or replacement. I have had a pretty tiring month so far and just have not got the strength to argue with her any more.

I suppose I could always get a modesty panel fitted if I need one, and it would still work out cheaper than most of the corsets I have seen online. But yes, sometimes paying less means that you get screwed in other ways, and I got screwed by bad customer service. So if you want a decent corset, by all means go to Gothic Glamour. Just be aware that you may not get what you wanted, in the time you expected it to be delivered in.

Off to Manchester tonight to see Porcupine Tree with mah boyfriend. I need a hug, then I need loud music. Luckily, this time I will get what I wanted. :)

I feel like crying.

You'll remember my poll regarding buying the corset with my free cash from nPower. Well I did on 17th November. I only just received it today because of faults with emails, phones and posting dates (all on her end by the way) and it hasn't got a modesty panel! I have lost quite a bit of weight and my midriff isn't as flabby as it used to be thanks to many sit ups, but I don't want my back on show when I wear it. Also, the website clearly states that the one I ordered has one.

She put a couple of freebies in because of the delay and stuff but I haven't got what I wanted. I have waited so long for this. I wanted to wear it over Christmas. I am so upset!

:(

Apologies to those of you who have seen this on my UKP blog.

As of today it's been six months since I last smoked a cigarette. In your face John Player! In your face!