the blog o moosh

Whatever you do, avoid Hangar Lane

2007-07-09T15:58:00.000Z

My blog ... moved!

You can now read the blog o moosh here.

Feed readers, adjust your sets to this.

It looks a bit rubbish right now, but pretty soon it will be greater than you or even I care to imagine. Really, it will.

No, really.

It's not really Birkenstock weather.

2007-06-26T20:43:00.001Z

It's official - my employers are morons. They've taken away for no good reason half the software I need to do my job and with it my will to go on. So I am not amused. My computer died again today for the umpteenth time, so once again, I have lost all my RSS feeds, favourites, log ins ... it's almost a 6 monthly occurence. So even tho I just got my blogging mojo back, I will most likely go quiet again as I work for dullards.

Over and out for now!

I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss school sooooo much.

2007-06-22T16:24:00.000Z

This is an appeal to you all. Please click here and sign a very important petition in support of a cause that is close to all of our hearts.

Yes, that's right - bring back the Crystal Maze! I LOVE this show. It's currently being rerun on Challenge at 6pm weekdays, so Lee and I have been racing home to watch it, shouting "get the crystal!" and "just leave him in there, he's a fanny!" at regular intervals.

For the uninitiated, here are some links to more info on the show:

About the show
Games on the show
Supposedly the only crystal maze in existence today! Let's go!

Richard O'Brien was by far the better presenter, in my opinion. Tune in to Challenge to have a look today!

Daniel's having a baby. I mean his wife is. He's not pregnant.

2007-06-22T12:13:00.001Z

Things are heating up to tomorrow's grand opening. It's exciting and nerve wracking at the same time.

Pop in and say hello if you're in the area! We'd love you to come and have some free cake and steady our nerves!

Ever since they introduced the wheeley bins we've got loads of mice.

2007-06-19T15:52:00.000Z

The economies of hatred

Pink Floyd

RSS feeds that tell you there is a new post when there isn't

Paedophiles

Lollipop people, especially the ones who let adults with no children accompanying them cross mere feet away from a pedestrian fucking crossing

the word trinket

nicholas lyndhurst

the term "touch base"

celery

That is all for now.

I think Woolies do duvet covers.

2007-06-19T15:43:00.000Z

Ok. I'm thinking of a number. Bzzzzzzz! I am telepathically transferring the number into your mind. Bzzzz!

2007-06-19T15:37:00.001Z

Where did the time go? I've been so busy I've not had a moment to blog. So much has been happening!

Firstly - the flat. There has been loads of interest and viewers pretty much every night. However, if you'd care to cast your eyes leftwards to the photo, you'll see a new addition to our living room - the hole.

Lee sadly had an accident (not that sort) in the loft and descended through the ceiling to the living room below. Thankfully, he was relatively unscathed - a few bruises, a nasty cut on the hand (I had to cut the skin off it, it was hid) and a liberal coating of fibre glass - which is the main thing. But it does rather set back our plans. Can't be helped tho.

We had also been busy crafting our collective asses off for the Miso Funky market in Edinburgh on Saturday - it was a great day out, as always, but the weather was ridiculous. It was like the middle of December, rather than June - wet, windy, cold ... and that was outside, not even in the Caves! As a result, customers were rather thin on the ground, but the ones that did make the journey got into the spirit of it and parted with their cold wet cash, so all was not lost!

There was also the now traditional trip to Monster Mash to dissect the day, get mildly drunk on margaritas and eat our own body weight in stodge - my favourite part of the day! I had steak pie and it was to die for.

The next thing we are working towards is the very exciting grand opening of the Miso Funky SHOP! Yes, a shop! We are going to be trialling a unit at the Barras this weekend, so please spread the word and come along - there will be free cake and everything!

More news as it happens, people - new photos are on flickr.

I'm not gonna talk about it anymore because you don't listen and it only makes things worse.

2007-06-08T09:39:00.000Z

We're officially for sale!

And less than hour later, we have 2 enquiries. So exciting!

It's got those pop-pop studs instead of proper buttons.

2007-06-06T15:21:00.000Z

A quick round up on some new sites I have been reading.

www.tokyojazzpanda.co.uk

Please buy me things from here!

Discovered this today quite by accident and spent the best part of an hour with mar-c on msn going WOW at most of the things for sale! It is a real treasure trove of kawaii things and it is probably just as well I am so skint or I would have happily bought one of just about everything!

Note to friends - don't buy anything from here, because all my birthday and christmas gifts to you will be coming from here from now on!

A crafting bridge too far ...

Personally, I am finding this just a step across the line. Each to their own and all that, but this gives me the dry boak.

Rantings of a mad woman?

I just find this blog hilarious. I like blogs that are written in the manner that someone speaks and this person is just clearly deranged.

Why do they have escalators if they never work?

2007-06-05T12:59:00.000Z

We are selling our flat! I think I mentioned it before, but it's time for a bigger place for us.

So, here is my shameless plug for our pad!

We have a one bedroomed flat in Maryhill. The flat is about 20 years old and is in a quiet cul-de-sac. In the surrounding area, the tenements are being demolished to make way for new private housing (so the story goes).

A new leisure centre is being built a short walk away at the site of Maryhill Burgh Halls so it's in a great location. There are also excellent transport links and only 20 minutes walk from Byres Road!

On to the flat itself:

The flat is the upstairs cottage flat of a block of 4. It has a hallway with stairs to a small hall and door to the living room.

The living room is fairly spacious and lots of natural light comes in from the picture window (double glazed of course!).

Off the living room is the kitchen area, which has an electric oven and hob and cooker hood, plenty of cupboard space and shelving and a funky round inset sink with mixer tap.

We have silver fridge and washing machine and a freezer which are negotiable in the price of the house!

On to the small hallway which leads to the bedroom

The bedroom is a double room with a large wardrobe with mirrored doors. There is a window overlooking the back garden and ample space for drawers, etc.

And that just leaves the bathroom, which I think is quite large for a small flat. It has an electric shower and funky silver tiles.

There is also a cupboard in the hallway with hotwater boiler in which is good for storage of hoovers, etc.

The flat has the added bonus of a loft which covers the entire flat - so almost like another room! Plenty of room for storage and ripe for conversion!

The garden is shared with the downstairs flat and is quite big - ideal for summer barbecues! There is also private parking for the flats.

So there we have it! Spread the word to your friends who may be looking for a first flat! Viewing available - just email me!

It's easy putting your vest on back to front.

2007-06-04T15:32:00.000Z

Inspired by mar-c, here is my very own list of procrastination techniques:

Opening my tins of buttons, taking some out and then putting them away again
Flicking thru Sky TV's kabillion channels to check that CSI isn't on somewhere
Looking at my Flickr contacts contacts to see if I've missed anyone interesting
Checking my RSS feeds every 13 seconds
Clicking the random article button on wikipedia and stocking up on random facts
Taking out fabric, looking at it and then putting it away again
Picking the fluff out of my hairbrush
Reorganising the things on my desk
Deleting old text messages
Checking my Yahoo mail every 3 minutes
Thinking of all the things I would do when I win the lottery
Mentally composing strongly worded letters to the council

There are many more but these are all I can think of right now.

You're not getting married are you? Really? Golly.

2007-06-04T13:46:00.001Z

Favour
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

I have so much to blog about, but I wanted to get my holiday posts out of the way first, so I have mostly forgotten what I wanted to say. My posting about holiday was sadly interrupted by the unusual step of breaking a finger. It doesn't sound all that bad, but man, was it annoying. How did I manage that, I hear you cry! Well, to cut a long story short, a box of books fell on my hands from the loft as I passed it up to Lee. The handles gave way and it fell on my outstretched fingertips, making a horrible crunching noise on the way. 4 hours in casualty later, I came home with painkillers and a strong desire never to be in a hospital again. When I got into the consulting bit, the nurses were all too busy to see anyone, being that they were crowded round a computer on Myspace. Grrrr.

Anyway, my right hand was all bandaged up as was my left one as it was quite bruised too, so I could literally do nothing for a week. I was off work as I am right handed and couldn't type, I couldn't craft and I could barely even make myself a slice of toast. It's fair to say that I was bored out of my mind. I was so bored I took an unhealthy obsession with Jeremy Kyle and Midsomer Murders - see my photo blog for evidence!

But, it's healing well and I am back to full mobility in both hands, interspersed with bouts of throbbing pain, bizarrely, usually in the middle of the night, down the side of my right hand. Not sure why that is, but I am actually almost glad to be back at work and out of the evil clutches of daytime television.

What else has happened? Well, there was the week of 2 weddings in a row (3 for poor Jo) - first Catherine and Lee's and then Jo's Dad. Catherine and Lee's big day was simply beautiful. They are one of my favourite couples, in that they are so clearly not only made for each other but so head over heels in love with each other despite being together for 10 years (a inspiration to us all!) Their wedding suited them down to the ground - relaxed, unhurried, romantic, touching, funny ... and that was just the speeches! Jo and I bawled our eyes out as Catherine made her way down the aisle to a Super Furry Animals song played by a 3 piece of flutes and (I think) cello and we were still bawling as the new Mr and Mrs Black (no more Nivlack!) made their way back up the aisle to The Beatles All You Need Is Love - I am welling up again just thinking about it. It was truly the perfect day for them and so much fun for us as guests! We met so many lovely people and had a great time in the evening when the rest of the crafting crew showed up. And I managed to just about eat my dinner one handed and was thus spared the embarrassment of having Lee cut up my chicken! Congratulations you guys!

Next day was Jo's Dad's wedding and it was another beautiful day! They got married in St Mary's Cathedral on GWR and the place is absolutely stunning inside. They had a religious ceremony with a full choir and then on to Cottiers for the reception - I'd never been to Cottiers but it is lovely there, the food is great and the staff very friendly. The evening passed in a bit of a haze I must admit, vodka induced this time, but I do recall a lot of dancing, chatting and merry making! Ann, the new Mrs Barltett's dress was stunning, I was most envious of her great figure in it! Jo was acting as wedding planner/organiser of everything and bridesmaid and also looked divine in her blue dress - see here for the photos!

After all that excitement, it was pretty inevitable that we should be made to pay for the fun we'd had - and Lee and I both caught stinking colds, which are still lingering. Lee's was so bad he was off work for 2 whole days - he's never off sick. We're both recovering now thankfully.

We are currently courting estate agents most evenings to see which of them are going to be the ones to sell our little flat! I have grown to love our home, but it's time for us to move on to pastures bigger and so we are looking at selling our place pretty soon and moving to somewhere with another bedroom which is generally bigger. Our place is ideal for a single person or someone looking to get on the property ladder, so if you know anyone who's looking, drop me a line!

I am sure lots more has happened, but I think that is the salient points for now. Back to normal now! Chin chin.

It's like that whiney band. Not Radiohead. The band with Gwyneth Paltrow's fella.

2007-06-04T12:43:00.001Z

Day 10

Up early (surprise!) to take advantage of the breakfast laid on - and very glad we did. You just don't get crispy bacon properly at home. We decided to just hit the road and get back to civilisation, I mean, Cincinnati, so we set off on the road home (and by now, it really was beginning to feel like home). We headed back down the I-75 and we stopped off properly at the outlet place to get some last minute shopping in. We'll definitely be needing that other suitcase!

Arrived back in Cincinnati late afternoon and thanks to another great map, arrived at Anne's offices without a hitch. We left the car there and headed back to chez McBride in Anne's enormomobile and had a few drinks on the patio before dinner. Mack was very confused to see us as he'd thought we'd gone home already, but was over the moon to have us back. He'd had his hair cut in our absence annd he was looking very dapper.

Up until now we'd managed to avoid Scottish Quest, the boardgame that they make Mum play every time she is there. It's very convoluted and unnecessarily complicated, and all the questions are based on Scottish history, culture and stuff. Tonite tho, we could not escape it and we played but sadly we were shown up and Jim won. Anne is VERY competitive so was not amused. It must run in the family.

As it was our last nite there, we went back to El Coyote for dinner, a tradition. Steaks this time which were just amazing and very cheap. More margaritas, more bemoaning the fact that it was almost time to leave. Back home to have a go at squeezing all our purchases into our bags - in vain. Anne and Jim have kindly lent us an enormo case and when they are over in the UK in November, will fill it up with things to take back with them. After packing, we headed back downstairs, but Mack would not sit with us - he knows we're going. Even the cats can tell and they are all sulking down in the basement. I don't think any of us are happy about it, but we must go!

Day 11

Up at a reasonable hour to fit in a last minute shopping dash. Anne insisted on doing all of our laundry (but I managed to hide some) so that we didn't have to do it when we got home - she really looked after us! Off to Target for a final stock up on chewing gum - why don't we get all the good flavours at home? Mint mojito and black raspberry - mmm! Anne has a Staples card! I could have spent hours in there, if only Jo had been with me to egg me on.

On to Skyline at the bottom of the road for lunch - Jim met us there from work. I had a nice burrito and we all tried not to think about our impending departure. Back to the house for last minute packing - I didn't think we were going to make it, but once we took the poodle out the case, it closed easily. And then, nothing else for it - off to the airport. Anne came in with us and managed to negotiate our excess baggage charge (only $25! They are really missing a trick). She accompanied us all the way to security by which point I think we were all in tears. We had such a great time with them we were so sad to leave, even to go to exciting NYC. In a way it was worse going on somewhere else as then it felt like we should have been going "home" to Cincinnati - maybe one day!

We arrived in Newark on time and headed for a taxi. The traffic was ridiculous despite us arriving after rush hour and it took over an hour to get anywhere near our hotel. The taxi driver tried to rip us off on his already inflated price, but I felt justified in ripping him right back off with his $1 tip. That'll learn him!

Our hotel was quite homely and felt like a flat I used to live in on Sauchiehall Street. Very comfortable bed, the only complaint being no curtain on the skylight window, so we were awake at daybreak every day. We got ourselves tidied up and hit the street to explore! We were perfectly situated for the East Village, so there were loads of restaurants to choose from for dinner. We chose a Thai restaurant with open patio doors as it was so warm and the food was fab. Very different ambience from Cincinnati - within 5 minutes of sitting down we'd spotted our first 2 loons of the weekend. After dinner, we wandered back to the hotel, taking in the sights and sounds on the way for a reasonably early nite in order to rest up for a day's hardcore sightseeing tomorrow ...

Day 12

Woke up pretty early thanks to the skylight. Got ready and planned our route to the Empire State Building on foot where we thought we could pick up the tour bus we'd booked. We had a leisurely stroll as far as Madison Square Park where we bough croissants and cranberry juice and had breakfast in the park. The park has a dog park where the city's kajillion dog owners are allowed to let them off the leash, so we had fun spotting all the different breeds and watching chiuauas mingling with roitweillers! I don't understand why so many New Yorkers have dogs in the city, but there we go.

Quickly discovered we had another 14 blocks to walk as we had to go to the tour office which was very inconveniently located. Picked up our tickets and then saw the queue to get on snaking out of sight and round the corner - why do so many people want to stand in a queue for hours on holiday! We sneakily decided to head back to the Empire State Building (yes, another 14 blocks) and pick up the tour there where we had to wait just 10 minutes before we were on board. Ha! It was a very hot, sunny day and we certainly weren't going to waste it standing a queue getting burnt when we could be sitting on a bus doing that!

We saw all the sights of the downtown area and decided to get off at the stop near the Brooklyn Bridge so we could walk across. We took our time as it was so hot and very busy. It's a great way to see the city from a different perspective, the skyline view is amazing. We had planned to pick up the tour bus on the other side, but by this time we'd missed the last one, so we had an unexpected trudge back across the bridge and caught the bus back to the vicinity of our hotel. After resting our very weary dogs, we went out for dinner and tried an Indian place in the East Village - the food was fantastic and our table was right next to a special room for making naan bread, so we had quite a floorshow. We worked out that we'd probably walked about 10 miles that day - we were very tired but happy!

Day 13

Decided to see the uptown area today so after breakfast at a Polish cafe (Christine's - the cleanest toilets I've ever encountered!) we headed to our tour bus stop. We caught it to Times Square and transferred to see Haarlem, etc. Another sunny day, but a bit cooler - my head was now purple. A great day for sightseeing tho and we saw a lot of really nice buildings and some areas a bit off the beaten track. We had a great day wandering round and then headed to Greenwich Village in the evening, only 15 minutes walk from our hotel. We'd had quite a big lunch (barbecued pork and margaritas) so we had another NYC classic - pizza to go - for dinner. Very good pizza from the Two Boots, should you ever be in the region. We came back via Broadway, earmarking shops to come back to during the day. We stopped off at Dean and Deluca and treated ourselves to some posh cheesecake for desert - $11 for a 4 inch cake! It was well worth it tho as it was to die for. Back to the hotel to rest up for tomorrow!

Day 14

Decided to make the most of our bus tickets by being out early, so back to Christine's again for breakfast - bagels with cream cheese and bacon - and then on to our bus. We were headed for Battery Park but the bus had to change over and our tickets were up, so we headed down to the subway. I'd definitely recommend using the Subway $7 day pass - such a bargain and you can literally go anywhere and everywhere in the city. We took the subway to Battery Park and had a wander round in the blazing sunshine and had hotdogs for lunch whilst waiting for the boat. We took a ferry ride round the bay, past the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Once we were back ashore, we took the subway back to Canal Street at Chinatown and had a wander round there and then back towards our hotel via Broadway. We got to have a wander round the shops we'd earmarked the nite before to go back to and then went back to the hotel to get changed for an evening out at Retox, a bar owned by one of Anthrax and a Beastie Boy.To cut a very long story short, we got the address wrong and ended up 30 blocks away in a dark street with no bars on it. Thanks to the wonders of technology, we got the address from the internet via my phone and got the subway to the right area, eventually, walked another 5 million blocks only to discover ... it was closed on Mondays. It was fair to say by this point we were both peeved, having spent the best part of 3 hours getting to this stage and having missed dinner time! However, we pressed on and took a taxi to the Empire State Building where we'd planned to go after dinner. It was now after 11pm, so we took in the chilly, windy view from the top and bought bagels and dejectedly headed home to watch Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on TV. It was a good evening, and we certainly saw some off the beaten track parts of the city, albeit unintentionally!

Day 15

Home today, booooo. Up early to finish our packing. The hotel kindly let us leave our bags all day so we could make the most of our final hours. We headed to Broadway to take something back to Old Navy and for a last minute trip to pick up some things that Lee had been coveting. Then back on to the subway to Time Square for lunch at Hard Rock Cafe - the steak was absolutely divine! Sadly we didn't have enough time to spend exploring it all, so we had to head back to the hotel to catch our shuttle to the airport.

So, that was it, our holiday! I bet you are all glad it's finished now. Normal blogging service will resume shortly.

Over and out.

Royals. They are the worst cigarettes ever.

2007-05-19T10:36:00.000Z

Day 7

More cake for breakfast - could get used to this. Then off to the zoo, with another very useful map to guide us there. Was very hot and sunny - over 30 degrees celsius. I should really have learned from before and worn a hat/sunscreen, but no, I got burnt again.

Lots to see at the zoo altho the giraffes weren't in, much to my disappointment. We did see a very cute baby gorilla tho, and some very sad looking penguins. The polar bear doing the back stroke was also quite a sight.

In the afternoon we went to Kenwood Towne, another shopping place. There is a fascination in this area with adding a superfluous e to the end of words, towne, shoppe, etc. I don't get it. Kenwood has some fancy shops, but also the only Sephora in the area, so we had made a special trip to stock up on make up. I had a long and varied list, but limited time so couldn't get everyone's goodies (sorry!), but did manage to get the bare essentials of my Bare Escentuals (arf arf). Lee bought lots of clothes from the PacSun there - they had a sale on their already discounted items, meaning some things were 70% off the sale prices and ended up costing £1.75 for a shirt which might usually cost about £40 - £50 at home. He was very pleased, needless to say.

In the evening, we cooked out again - steak, mushrooms, cous cous and the ubiquitous frozen margarita. We caught up with Anne, Jim and Mack and had another lovely evening outside. Could definitely get used to this!

Day 8

Up early again - there seems to be a pattern emerging. Off to Newport on the Levee today, which is a kind of entertainment centre - cinema, aquarium, some shops, cafes, etc. It's set on the river, and as it was a nice day, was a good morning for a stroll around. We walked halfway across the Purple People Bridge - only halfway as Lee got too scared by the height to go any futher ;) (ok, I was also glad!).

Back across the bridge in the car this time to drive down town to meet Jim for our appointment with the immigration lawyer. She had some good advice for us, about our goal of living in the US one day and it might not be as absolutely impossible as we once thought. Lots to think about!

After our meeting, we had a browse around Cappells, the shop that is our craft/stationery wet dream. I made quite a few purchases for Miso Funky but had to restrain myself from buying EVERYTHING! If you are ever in Cincinnati and planning a party, it's THE place to go, fo sho. After my splurge, we went across the street to a bar for some lunch - an enormous soft pretzel with steak and cheese (of course) - it was quite the best thing I'd tasted at that moment in time. Our plan after that was to go to the Titanic exhibit a the museum centre, but after a bit of a mishap with mistaken road names and ending up practically in Canada, we gave it a miss and headed home.

Once back, we got changed and managed to catch some football on TV, I can't remember what it was, but Liverpool won. Anne and Jim came home and declared it was wings and beer night - sounds good to me! We went to the local wings place which had the biggest selection of chicken wing sauces I've ever seen (and I've seen more than you might think). We had a great evening and discussed how sad it was that time was running out and there was still so much to do!

Day 9

Yes .. you've guessed it .. another early rise, but this time there was good cause, as we had a long journey ahead of us. First stop, IHOP for pancakes for breakfast - definitely recommended! Then off to Cleveland! It is about a 4 hour drive from Cincinnati to Cleveland, so armed with a map, an atlas and instructions on where the clean toilets were, we set off.

We had a sneaky stop at the outlet mall on the way there to collect snacks and fueloleum and then got all the way to Cleveland without so much as a single wrong turn. Anne had very kindly booked us into the Hilton Suites, which was posh, but a bit faded round the edges.

Our living room was roughly the size of Denmark and contained a sofa and a huge TV at one end of the barn-like hall and a table at the other - you could literally have parked a couple of cars in there comfortably. The bedroom tho, had an enormous bed in it with a kajillion pillows and was so comfortable, I could have stayed there forever. No time to waste, so we dumped our stuff and headed back downstairs, only to be greeted by a nice workman in the lifts who directed us to the free minibus to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! Now that's service.

A nice man drove us down to the RRHOF which is situated by the side of Lake Erie. Which means it was colder than a witches teat, as Groundskeeper Willie says. So we quickly got inside, unfortunately just behind a very annoying group of Canadian schoolkids. Thankfully we managed to lose them right after Tom Petty.

We had a great time wandering round, looking at all the stage outfits, instruments and other paraphanalia, including John Lennon's school report cards amongst other things. We also saw a few films and some special exhibits, including one very boring one about The Clash, who I hate, which was up a very scary staircase. There was also an enormous Pink Floyd wall thing, which had security not been so tight, I may have been tempted to try to knock over as everyone knows I hate Pink Floyd more than I hate paedophiles and lollipop ladies.

Anyway! After all that, we had a stroll round town and discovered that Cleveland is, would you believe, duller than ditchwater (but not quite as dull as Hull, which is very dull indeed). It is a city of road works and abandoned buildings it seemed, altho maybe we were just in the wrong part of town.

We wandered around for a while and eventually happened on a small street with some bars and restaurants on (after we stumbled thru downtown Hobosville), where we found the House of Blues. There was a baseball game on that nite, which we had thought of going to, but as we know zero about baseball, we thought we'd save that for when A & J could come with us and tell us what the hell was going on. Dinner was fabulous - have the meatloaf! I did of course have a margarita which almost knocked my socks off and after dinner we wandered leisurely back in the direction of the hotel hoping to find some entertainment on the way - but there was none. We spent the rest of our evening eating ice cream cookies and watching a TV show about a scary prison in Ohio.

The chances of you seeing a unicorn are fairly small.

2007-05-18T13:20:00.000Z

Day 5

Up early to go to Findlay Market, an open air/farmers markety type place. We had a cheese pocket for breakfast - hard to describe this, sort of like a cheesecakey filling in a pastry case with sugar on top. Very nice, but cake for breakfast will have to stop pon our return to the UK.

Off to collect Liz and then down to the market, which is in an area called Over The Rhine, a reference to the big German population in Cincinnati. Every kind of meat cut you could ever imagine is available here - apparently one of Cincinnati's nicknames is Porkopolis. There was also a giant sausage stall - the stall was giant, rather than the sausages, which were bigger than ours, but not giant per se.

After a wander round and purchasing some sausages, we had a tour of the area, as Liz had been involved in planning a lot of it. Then we went to the Clifton area of town where Liz lives for lunch at Dewey's pizza. They have white sauce as well as tomato which was great, as was the roasted garlic ... mmmm! We had a wander round the shops and then stopped off at another Cincinnati institution, Graeters, an ice cream parlour. I had the raspberry black chip which was delicious! Yes, we did do a lot of eating there.

Back to the ranch for a brief sit down and to get changed for our date at the theatre. The show started at 5pm, so we got ready and headed to the Playhouse in the Park. The show was called Murderers and was 3 monologues set in a retirement complex in Florida - it was very funny, catch it if you get the chance! We met Anne's business partner Gred and his wife Dana there and then drove to the Mount Adams area of town to a restaurant called Teak, which serves Thai food. The food was lovely, but very spicy and it did take an age to arrive. Greg and Dana were, as expected, lovely. We had a drink afterwards at the Pavilion, which had a cool deck outside overlooking the city. This is where Anne and Jim used to come on dates, so it was a nice touch. We took a detour on the way home to see the city from an old water tower - we could see for miles, and the lights were very pretty. But we had to press on home as we had an early start in the morning for Kings Island ....

NB - the Thai meal was the first meal I ate since arriving that did not contain cheese.

Day 6

Another early start so we could get to the theme park early. Anne had again drawn us a very comprehensive map which got us there without a hitch. Arrived at Kings Island early and managed to avoid the hideous queues as we had bought our tickets in advance, and discounted too! Anne is really the queen of the bargain!

We took in all the sights and some of the rides, but not the very scary ones, much to Anne's disgust - she is a bit of a rollercoaster fiend! We did go on an old rickety wooden rollercoaster twice tho, that was a lot of fun - Lee's knuckles were white on that one :) Anne said when we got back that I must be adopted as I didn't go on the scariest of them, the Beast - it was about 9,000 feet tall, so we gave it a miss. We got very sunned on - Lee was very tanned, however, my face was lobster like, despite the factor 20 sunblock. Will I ever learn?

We got home and Anne had very kindly done all our laundry - she really looked after us! The plan for dinner was the giant sausages on the barbeque, so we sat outside by the fire (which wasn't on, owing to it being about 30 degrees celsius) and had another barbecue. The sausages were very nice, but my mother's side of the family hatred for sausages was in evidence, so we had leftovers for Mack - who was delighted.

Ha ha ha! A pox upon you!

2007-05-17T13:35:00.000Z

Day 3

Anne and Jim both at work today, so we are off exploring by ourselves. Up earlyish for breakfast. Anne had left me a birthday present to open which was an Old Navy giftcard. Hurrah! So we set off for Springdale, which has lots of shops including of course a branch of ON. Even Lee bought some jeans there!

We spent a few hours in Springdale then headed back. Lee managed well with driving, I think easier than California for me as navigator as the 275 is a big circular road, so if we ever did get lost, we could stay on it and get back eventually. We had a quick lunch at Wendy's which was staffed entirely by dullards of all nations. We came back via Withamsville which is nothing to write home about, except that it is about 10 miles in the direction opposite to where we were headed . . .

Back home to avoid the rush hour traffic and the rain - it started lashing down when we got back. Lee found some football on TV whilst I read for a bit and then played with Mack outside once it had stopped raining. He's so friendly and very well behaved. Anne and Jim got home around 6ish just in time to see the tornado warnings on TV! It was a bit scary as the weather reports looked like we were in it's direct path, but all we saw was some very heavy rain, thankfully. There is a scary siren that goes off on TV - we were upstairs and thought a war had begun. A & J were very blase about it, as it must happen often in the tornado season, I guess.

In the midst of all this, we had to leave to drive to Liz's for dinner. Liz is such a nice person, one of Anne's friends from college who is also a planner. Her house is lovely, old style Victorian type. Pasta for dinner and an amazing array of little cakes for desert - sadly I forgot to photograph them for Cake Tourism. Back home and we watched some TV and got our directions for tomorrow - we are off horse riding in Kentucky!

Day 4

Managed to sleep past day break for a nice change, got up to check the weather online and then had breakfast (a&j at work). Managed to seperate Mack and one of the cats, Gherkins long enough to have some toast - the cats are very grumpy as they are on a diet and the dog likes to wind them up. Headed up to Kroger, the supermarket to buy tickets for the theme park on Sunday. Had a quick browse of the aisles - it's just enormous and so much choice in everything!

Back to the ranch to pick up a change of shoes and then off to the farm! Maggie is Anne's friend's daughter who is about the same age as me and her and her boyfriend have a farm in Kentucky where they keep their own horses and board others. We met them at the Waffle House about a 30 minute drive from their farm for lunch, which could have been awkward seeing as we'd never met! But we hit it off very well and headed up to their farm after lunch.

The horses were all out in the field, so we brought them in and got them ready to go out, after a tour of the barn they are doing up. It will be a lot of hard work for them, but it will look great once they are done. We had a ride out around their land for about an hour or so and then back to tidy up and put the horses back out. A lot of fun, although I am sure it is going to hurt later!

We headed back to Cincinnati with a quick stop at Walgreen's - for some reason, both Lee and I had been sneezing and having allergy symptoms since we arrived on and off - for Lee it got worse in shops, so we had been dosing up on antihistamines. The planned cook out was off due to the weather which was cold and wet, so Anne was busy making a leg of lamb instead.

Maggie and Matt were joining us for dinner, with Maggie's parents - they were all delightful people, of course - we didn't meet a single person who we didn't take to instantly. Everyone was so interested in what we were doing there, what we did at home, etc. It was a refreshing change to speak to so many nice people with no worries about work, etc.

More important matters - desert - it was turtle cheesecake ... I had my doubts, but there was no shell involved, only caramel, chocolatey cheesecake. Delicious. I managed to wash all the dishes much to Anne's disgust AND dry most of them.

Another fun packed day tomorrow, off to bed!

Hmmm... it's a bit Bruce Springsteen.

2007-05-16T19:55:00.000Z

Day 2

Woke up at 5am, wide awake. Managed to get back to sleep for a while and rose to the smell of those tiny sausages Americans are so fond of. Very tasty breakfast was waiting for us of sausages, cheesy scrambled eggs and coffee cake.

Out to have a drive around, Anne showed us the area and took us to Target which I think is my new favourite shop. Then onto downtown Cincinnati for a recce and a visit to Cappels which is just like Nash's was in Glasgow only better (if you don't know what Nash's was, it was like the stationery shop in heaven will be like).

Onto Rookwood, a shopping place (see, we got stuck in early) to DSW and Old Navy. DSW is a cheap shoe place - we all got shoes, even Lee - my Rocket Dogs cost approximately a quarter of the price they would have cost at home.

Had lunch at Skyline in Oakley, a very nice area of town and would be affordable for us. Liked the chili - we all had 4 ways, which is spaghetti, chili, onions and cheese (a lot of cheese). Lee had a cheese coney too, which is basically a hot dog with chili and cheese on top. It was good, but TOO MUCH CHEESE.

After all this, we went to Anne's office where we met everyone who seems very nice. Bonnie, Anne's secretary, had very kindly organised a rental car for us, so the man from the company met us there and we took delivery of our ride for the week, a PT Cruiser. It was a very nice car and we drove back to the ranch in convoy for a quick frozen margarita before dinner. We went to El Coyote for dinner, which is tradition with visitors, I hear. The food was fabulous - fajitas and more margaritas. Back home for a quick glance at the TV and some Mack-lovin time, before bed.

Man, I expected something more than salad.

2007-05-16T19:42:00.000Z

A bit of background before I start my trip diary!

My mum is Anne's cousin, so Anne is my second cousin. Mum has been going over there for Christmas the last couple of years and last time she was there, she started keeping a diary for me to describe all the places she went and things she did so that we could compare notes when we'd both been. So she started the diary at the start of a new notebook and then I carried it on when we were there. Once I am finished making my notes, I will pass it back to her and she'll carry it on when she goes back and so on.

So, without further ado....

Day 1

Up at 4 am! Who knew there was a 4 in the morning as well as the afternoon?! Flight to Manchester in model airplane. Surprisingly smooth. Arrive at Manchester to see Graeme Souness getting on a flight to Edinburgh. He had terrible hair and worse shoes. I didn't recognise him at first without the moustache.

Whisked off in a private bus to another terminal, interviewed by a nice but firm elderly security man. Arrive on plane to the dulcet tones of Hall and Oates (this is relevant - my mum loves them). Discover that there is no seatback TV. Wonder if the Daily Record crossword will last 7 hours...

Managed to sleep for approximately 15 seconds - don't fly Continental, seats are very cramped. Food was surprisingly alright tho - lasagne! Lee dribbled it down his jumper, that's usually my job. Arrived in Newark eventually after having to listen to 3 generations of Mancunian dullards all the way across the Atlantic and worrying about the Manchester Uni gun club being on board. Got thru scary customs and headed to the bar for a drink. Nice man sang to us and offered us the milk of human kindness which seemed to be on draught as well as nachos. We took both.

Got on bi-plane to Cincinnati - I would swear I saw someone doing somersaults on the wing. Flew past Statue of Liberty once we eventually took off but more about her later. Arrived in humungous Cincinnati airport, completely missed the monorail thing and eventually got to baggage claim on foot and almost walked straight past Anne and Jim who'd come to meet us.

Got our bags very quickly and got out to their ENORMOUS car (it's a Nissan Armada, car lovers - it's literally the size of a ferry). We drove back to their house which is quite something - so beautiful. Checked into our room, very comfortable bed. Met the animals - Mack (the poodle) has fallen in love with Lee. Back downstairs to deliver Walkers salt and vinegar crisps and Diet Coke with lemon which inexplicably is not available in the US. Then outside to the patio for steaks on the barbecue and champagne. Managed to stay up til around 1030pm US time then collapsed into bed.

There's going to be a lot of macrame.

2007-05-15T13:51:00.001Z

Another sign
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

An actual conversation overheard on Sunday in the car park behind the St Enoch Centre in Glasgow:

Ned Mother, 50's, orange skin, peroxide hair, fag hanging out of mouth at top of voice: "Ya wantin tae go tae McDonalds furst?"

Ned Daughter, 20's, orange skin, peroxide hair, fag hanging out of mouth, white jeans at top of voice "Naw, we're gaun tae the pound shop furst, wull get ye thair"

Oh, how we laughed.

It'll cost you many a shilling.

2007-05-15T13:46:00.001Z

Butter stick
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

I'm back! But no, I didn't bring the butter with me, much to mar-c's disappointment, I'm sure.

I'd love to say it's great to be back, but it's so far not. It feels like there is nothing to look forwards to anymore, despite the fact that there is actually a lot going on.

Our trip was fabulous, fantastic, great - I have a whole lot of stories to blog about, but for now I am just saying hello world, I am back!

The train is no good, isn't it?

2007-04-23T13:47:00.000Z

A letter to the council

I had the worst taxi journey of my life on Saturday.

Having gotten into this hackney cab with 2 female friends at the rank outside Central Station, we were subjected to a torrent of abuse throughout our journey by the driver.

Firstly we were told we were stupid for not standing in the correct place at the taxi rank, then he shouted at us for wanting to go to drop one of our group off at Sauchiehall Street.

Upon arrival at our first stop, he then inexplicably proceeded to swear and shout that we had told him the wrong destination and that he was trying to save us money. At this point, I asked him to stop so we could get out of the taxi as we were generally afraid of what he might do next. He would not let us out or pay for our journey so far so we could get out.

In the end, we alighted at St George's Cross after more abuse from the driver. Once we had paid the full fare and got out of the taxi, he then shouted further abuse at us as we walked away, calling us a number of choice names ... for simply wanting a lift up the road.

Had we been drunk or obnoxious, I could perhaps be more understanding, but we were 3 young sober women wanting to get home safely - and ended up being subjected to a terrifying ordeal at the hands of this man. In addition, the taxi looked in very poor repair and I have been unable to locate the name that was painted on the side of the cab to contact them directly.

I would appreciate it if you could investigate this taxi number and answer my complaint - I and my friends were genuinely in fear during our journey and I would like to ensure that no one else has to suffer this sort of treatment.

Would you believe less than an hour later, I had an email from the council asking for more details? They are going to be interviewing the driver and are "taking this matter very seriously", given the nature of my complaint.

EDIT: The council are in fact taking it very seriously - they are sending out a photo for us to ID him! How unexpected. In the mean time, I would encourage anyone who's had similar experiences to complain!

I was feeling very heavy and then suddenly I felt very light.

2007-04-20T14:11:00.001Z

Keys!
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

I had a strange experience this morning. I've often dreamed of being stuck in the house and not being able to go to work ... and today it almost happened!

This week has been a very busy one and I've been all over the place trying to do lots of things and please lots of people, so I was very tired last nite after a 6am start for a meeting in Edinburgh and then a craft thing in the evening. Thus, I did not think to get my front door key, as pictured, from Jo who had it to get the stuff for the market.

So, this morning, I made it all the way down the stairs to the front door, whereupon I remembered she had the key. No problem, I thought, I have my spare one. I located it and tried the door - nothing. It was too bent to work. Aha, I thought, I shall call Ryan and ask him to come get me - the key is in their house after all. Of course, I could have called him had I known his number and the battery on my new phone had not died...

Ah, but my old phone, it has some battery power left in it ... so I opened it up and went to put my SIM card back in it ... only to discover it was stuck fast ... I should really have given up then and called work, but I perservered and eventually prised it off with a biro. My chance was gone! Ryan came to rescue me and here I am posting on my mini lunch break about the whole fiasco. Bah.

Tomorrow I am going to a spa! For the day! A real novelty for me. Catherine has chosen a relaxing day for her hen celebrations and of course I am delighted to have been asked along - I just hope that she and everyone else can take it when I kick their asses at Singstar afterwards!

Acupuncture doesn't work like that... it's about dampness and reducing

2007-04-17T13:40:00.001Z

Necklace
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Here we are, this is one of my lovely purchases from Sunday. It's a vintagey necklace from Stella My Star. I like that it almost looks like one of those party ring biscuits off of the 80s. I would encourage anyone to buy things from Stella My Star for the following reasons:

The things are lovely, especially this necklace
The things DO NOT BREAK
Many things have owls or monkeys on
Jo is lovely
It will support the Geordies

I think that is more than enough reason to wear these things.

I also bought 2 pin cushions from Evil Twin but I think they are too good to be going sticking pins in. They are cacti! Or cactuses if you want to be pedantic. The girl from Evil Twin and her possible actual real life not evil twin who is The Black Button are 2 of my very favourite customers, as they seem to L-O-V-E the rejects. You can see them being happy with their purchases here.

Last nite I got busy making the invitations for Andrew and Aleks' wedding. I rashly promised to have them done before I go on holiday (did I mention I am off on holiday?), so I need to get them done this week. It is slow going though and I need the expert eye of Jo to help with the actual printing. It will have to be fitted in amongst all the other billion things I need to do this week, I am not sure I will have time for sleeping until Cincinnati - No! Sleep! Til Cincin! as some wise rappers once (almost) said.

This week is:

Community meeting to find out what is happening behind our house
Possible meeting re: project: zinc shoes
Meeting in Edinburgh all day Thursday
Fair on Thursday evening
Meeting up with Catherine to extol the virtues of Bare Minerals make up
Catherine's hen day at the Radisson hotel spa
Making some bags for my hair dryer, straighteners, etc to travel in
Tidying the hovel that is our flat

Now, I must be off and decide what massage to have on Saturday - wheeeee!

What constitutes deadly force?

2007-04-16T16:52:00.001Z

An MF Trip To Newcastle
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

How can it be that I've not updated this since before Easter? Well, I suppose it might be because I've been very busy doing other things. What a boring reason. I could make something up about giant robots, or a boating accident, but in reality, I've just been very busy getting on with life.

The Easter weekend was especially busy - Friday me and my mum who was up visiting went for a breenj in town, some shopping, some lunching, some chatting. It was very nice to do this as we don't often get the chance, what with her living 500 miles away and me being busy every weekend between January and December. In the morning before I met up with her I had a secret meeting with some colleagues which has turned into project: zinc shoes. Very mysterious, but for now you will have to wait to find out more about that.

Friday evening, Jo and I found ourselves trundling down to the wilds of Ayrshire to host a Miso Funky party for someone's birthday - it was a great evening for us and I hope for the ladies who were partying. It's a bit like Ann Summers but less filthy and more funky - you can find out more here and even book one if you're so inclined. There's no stand up comedy or anything, but we do try to entertain.

Saturday was ... what? Sorry, what's that? A free day? In that there is no fairs of craft to be attended? But it's a day with a y in it! How did that happen? Yes, due to a scheduling hiccup, we had somehow found ourselves with a day off. I think that is one of the very first ones since Christmas. So, I of course filled it up with hair appointments and the like. I had my hair trimmed a little and also dyed a new shade of blondey brown for spring. I like it a lot, altho I think it must be quite subtle, because no one really noticed much.

Sunday and Monday were spent, yes, you've guessed it, at a craft fair. This one was at Queens Park on the south side and we found ourselves in the strange but curiously enjoyable situation of being in a big greenhouse next to a petting zoo. The sheep in particular was hilarious, with it baaing at all the right moments as if it was part of our conversation. The fair itself was busy, but most people were intent on extricating their sticky children from the animal pens and trying to bring them back into orbit after guzzling their own bodyweight in easter eggs. Still, it was a very productive 2 days, some sales, some stock taking and some crafting managed.

Project: zinc shoes was taking up much of my and others' thoughts last week, as well as making things and generally working, as my real job will keep getting busy and getting in the way of my more fun job. Plans were made for some more markets coming up which will be launched here when they are all finalised. By some stroke of sheer genius, Saturday was another day off - how this came to pass, I have yet to understand, but I used it wisely with my first stop post lie in being the local church jumble sale where I got 2 big bags of bargains for 4 of your earth pounds, including a GREAT stand for our record bowls which will be ace once it's painted. The lady who mans (and "man" is quite the operative word) the jumble was most peeved that I planned on cutting up her stinky duvet covers, but she eventually let me have them for 25p each. She drives a hard bargain, even in the Lord's house.

Afterwards, Lee and I had a lovely walk down by the Kelvin, through the Botanics and on down to Partick to the Farmers Market, where we had a stroll round and bought some great morsels, including some fab treats from Eastern Twist. We then strolled over to the Rio Cafe and had some lunch and a read of our New York books to see what we wanted to include in our itinerary, followed by a stroll up Byres Road, a swatch at the Orchid Fair at the Kibble Palace and a leisurely ice cream in the park - it was so warm and sunny and I had a great time! Once we got back Lee made amazing samosas and I got busy crafting and packing for our Newcastle extravaganza.

I had to get up at 6am on Sunday morning - yes, that's probably the time most people I know were coming home, but there we are. We had great fun on the train, despite having to hoick our bags around and you can see a photolog of the day here. The market itself was unusually quiet, owing to the tropical temperatures that the toon was enjoying, but we still had great fun. I made one or 2 purchases, which I will be posting about seperately very soon.

This week is filling up fast - meetings, a market, making things - but only 8 sleeps til holidays!

I can't believe she's getting rid of my old subbuteo set.

2007-04-05T16:13:00.001Z

I am a big fan of jazz hands, but it would appear that I am nothing but a rank amateur when it comes to putting on the ritz. Last nite, Catherine very kindly slid her spare ticket to Chicago my way and I had a fabulous nite out with her and her parents.

I have only been to the theatre twice before - once about a kajillion years ago to see Saturday Night Fever in London with my mum and on honeymoon in Vegas to see the Blue Man Group (you MUST see it if you ever get the chance), so it was quite a novelty to be there at all. I probably looked like a loon up from the country, I hope Catherine wasn't too embarrassed!

The show itself was spectacular - the cast, none of whom I'd heard of, were excellent - with all the singing and dancing at the same time, they never missed a note and the seats we were in gave us a perfect view of the action. There was even a man translating the entire show into sign language - something I hadn't seen before. The guy doing it was great and really got into character with the facial expressions and dancing! I thought he was going to start high kicking at one point, but he managed to restrain himself.

I've been humming "All That Jazz" all morning and no doubt annoying my new neighbours at work. I have moved desks from the second coldest place in the building to the MOST coldest place - I didn't think it was possible for it to get worse, but as I am sitting here with GLOVES on, I have proven it could. I have been used to being able to mutter to myself and laugh wryly at stupid colleagues' emails, but I must remember not to do that so much as the people sitting behind me are probably ready to commit me to Carstairs.

Today, I can hardly believe it, is my last day at work for FOUR DAYS! I am quite pleased by this. However, only one of those days is actually not taken up with craft things, given that we have 2 craft fairs and a craft party. I will also need to do things like organise travel insurance, get money changed and find something to wear to the numerous weddings coming up. But I am looking forwards to spending some QT with Lee along the way too, as I've been so busy I've not seen much of him this week.

Back on Tuesday - Happy Easter, and as Jo's gran says - remember the reason for the season!

Why don't cyclists have a license?

2007-04-03T16:27:00.000Z

It's only 21 days until we go on holiday. I am very glad. Before then, I have another 4 craft events to deal with, a hen nite and a training course in Edinburgh to get through. I am doubtful my sanity will last that long.

I just realised that I have not really posted properly since my birthday fiesta and as such am very behind the times here. Since then we've had a 4 successful craft events, 2 of which were our own, behind us. Our first foray into organising a market in Edinburgh turned out very well in the end, but was not without it's problems, the main one being the venue which was an actual cave with authentic water running down the walls. I don't think anyone enjoyed the conditions, but we all certainly enjoyed a new wave of enthusiastic customers and of course, the sales.

Not so good news is having a battery of tests at the doctors for some issues that I will not bore anyone with, but is a bit stressful, so on top of proper work being busy, craft events, making things and of course ordinary life, it's been rather manic of late. Will be glad of that holiday.

To brighten up my day tho, lovely Catherine has offered me her spare ticket to see Chicago at the theatre tomorrow nite! It was a lovely surprise for a dreary Tuesday - thanks!

Off to craft mafia meeting now, yay, it's home time!

This is a fragile ecosysytem.

2007-04-02T15:01:00.000Z

I know - it's ridiculous that I am so out of date with this.

I am stupidly busy just now. In the mean time whilst I try and pull myself together look at this.

Remember that Shaman song? Love, sex intelligence? It was so shit.

2007-03-21T17:34:00.000Z

There is so much going on, I haven't time to blog proper.

Here's some things to look at with your eyes until I get round to it:

Adopt A Squid

These are quite the most exquisite things I've seen in a while. Benedict is 15 foot tall! The website is the one from my dreams.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/6470621.stm

What a bizarre looking man. I would not pay him for sex. Neither would you, I'm sure.

http://www.sttheresatextile.com/

Cincinnati fabric shop I hope to visit to pick up some of the mexican oilcloths.

http://www.supastarr.com

Members of the Cincinnati Craft Mafia and purveyors of fine garments - and very nice people to boot. They did not call me a psycho when I randomly emailed them to ask about crafty things to see in Cincy.

Things I don't understand

Fun Lovin Criminals and their continued popularity, despite only having had one semi-decent tune ever.
Lollipop ladies and how they get away with letting adults cross the road with no kids.
Rude people and why they can't just be nice.
Mortgages and how they work. Lee and I worked out that if we pay back what we borrowed, we should be clear in 12.5 years. So why do we have to pay for 25 years?
How ships stay afloat when they're so heavy? Why don't they sink?
Why i am wide awake the instant i switch off the light every night. It drives Lee mad.

Treat yourself! Get a colonic!

2007-03-13T20:49:00.000Z

Wooo, what a weekend! It's been very busy, very fun and very tiring, which is why I am only getting round to posting about it on Tuesday evening. I suppose that is what happens when you get to the grand old age of 21 (plus 7).

The fun began on Saturday evening when we congregated chez Brown for cava and plum wine cocktails. I was assisted into my first pair of proper earrings which only lasted a few hours, but I felt remarkably accomplished for having done it without crying. We headed off to Coopers on GWR and started the evening as it was meant to go on - with quadruple Martinis and shots of tequila. You will have to forgive me for my rather vague account of the evening - I was, as you can imagine, rather drunk.

I was sober enough though to recall the 2 awful bands that were on when we got to the Woodside Social Club (or The Woody, as the hip kids call it) - there were 2 boys on stage singing a rough approximation of Atmosphere by Russ Abbott when we arrived, cue much mirth on our part. The music picked up just before 1am though and we had a great time dancing to Beyonce and the B52s, amongst others.

At closing time, we all piled into taxis and headed back to the court where I opened my birthday present from Lee's mum - which turned out to be Singstar 80s! So of course we had to have a go of it immediately - and as a result got to bed sometime around 4am.

On Sunday morning, we arose late and began perparations for the party - cake making, egg mayonnaise production and the like. Lisa blew up all the balloons and wrapped for pass the parcel, while I organised party bags and Lee made the most delicious birthday cake possibly ever made (I've just had a leftover bit, it is still fab). Then soon enough, people started arriving, and the games began! The photos are here. I think everyone enjoyed themselves - the party kicked off at 3pm and we were still going at 10.30pm, having played pass the parcel, musical statues, the chocolate game and pin the needle on Pete Doherty, as well as bashing the life out of a pinata in the sodden back garden.

I got SO many fabulous presents, including over $200 in cash for our upcoming US trip - my friends are truly the most generous people. I also received, in no particular order, a bottle of wine with OWLS on it, some handknitted hand warmers, 4 bags, one purse, several books, some stationery, 2 momiji dolls, no less than 2 (yes, that's TWO) Paul Frank watches, make up, a whole host of crafting materials including some scissors shaped like a heron, bento supplies and today, a late gift of the cutest bento box in existence.

Lee really spoiled me with a replacement Paul Frank watch, a jewellery box from the Pier (that's Pier 1 Imports, my US friends) filled with lots of chocolatey treats and lotto tickets, make up, foundation, a momiji, my flickr upgrade renewal, a brownie AND a kazoo! If anyone can play the kazoo and would like to teach me, please let me know.

Yesterday should really have been spent recuperating from the weekend, but of course, I had to go to work, which would have been rather dull had it not been for the fantastic boost to Miso Funky that we received on Sunday/my birthday. We were featured in the Sunday Times Style Magazine, which for those not up with these things, is quite a feat! Jo and I were wildly excited all day on Sunday and went round with the magazine showing anyone who would listen to us yet again. We got so many orders that we almost immediately ran out of record bowls and sold quite a few other things. The orders are still coming in on the back of it, as well as other interest from publications, not to mention just generally a gazillion more visitors to the site. It all made Monday morning at work with a hangover so much more exciting than usual.

Yesterday was Rebecca's birthday, so a small group of us went to dinner at Number 16 Byres Road, the New York Times favourite restaurant, apparently. It's easy to see why - the food is quite something. It wasn't somewhere I would have thought of going, but I was pleasantly surprised by the level of service and the quality of food (and the wine was fab too). It was a very pleasant evening, very relaxed and lots of chatting, but I was very tired and so went to bed when we got home almost immediately.

Today saw a return to busy busy work. I am beginning to regret staying there when I had my chance to leave in January. Although I prefer having more to occupy me, I am not necessarily enjoying what it is I now have filling my days and I am still not all that clear what is really expected of me. I am hoping that this week will clear things up for me and that the things we (me and my new boss) discussed will come to fruition before I go on holiday. There's still time. In the mean time, there is always the lotto.

Speaking of holidays, it's not long now! It's really crept up on me. I have been wowing everyone with my Cincinnati facts - did you know that not only is Steven Speilberg from Cincy, but so is Doctor Heimlich, he of the manouvere fame? Fascinating, I'm sure you'll agree. I realised on Saturday that I now don't have a free weekend until after our holiday, so it's shaping up to be a busy period for me, mostly with crafty things. Long may it continue (touch wood).

I am off to scoff that last piece of birthday cake now - fat fighting can wait another day!

You've got to bear in mind that Germans are 75% water.

2007-03-08T17:19:00.001Z

Sock Monkey Bag
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Last nite I had a jaunt to OKO Express on Queen Street with Jo to meet mar-c and her mum, before they went on their own jaunt to Amsterdam this weekend - lucky them.

We had a lovely, chatty evening, I got fabulous early birthday presents and some nice Japanese food. The gyoza though, usually my favourite side dish, were hideously undercooked to the falling apart, cold in the middle stage. And they don't have plum wine! The horror!

The evening was made for me by this fabulous bag from mar-c - I must take a photo of the inside, it has BANANAS in it! It's so cute! It came all the way from Japan too where it was handmade by a lovely gal named Kazumi. I've emailed her to thank her and it turns out we are both obsessed with sock monkeys. You can visit her store here.

Anyway, not much is happening now. My manic business of the past week at work has suddenly stopped, meaning I can catch up with other things. Also, it's my birthday party this Sunday, so I need to get tidying. I want to make some bags for our bathroom, so will hopefully get started on that tonite - I will of course keep you posted on that particularly crafty development, dear readers. I've got my brother's wedding invites to make too this week, but as they are no nearer making a final decision on what they actually want, work has halted somewhat prematurely on those.

The houses are almost all gone round the corner - one lonely block remained this morning which I am sure will be gone by the time I get home this evening. The sky has gone very grey here and the air is cold and still - almost like we could have ... dare I say it ... snow! Fingers crossed!

In the absence of much more exciting news, here are some more blogs for your viewing delight:

I Like

Lots of things that someone else likes - and I mostly do too. Lots of my frequent reads have come from here.

Indie Quarter

Keep up to date with the latest in indie chic here.

Stuck In Customs

A totally stunning photo each day from around the world. Makes my feet itch every time I read it!

Is that how you get your jollies?

2007-03-06T18:05:00.000Z

I am not one to claim my ideas are original, so I am not even going to pretend I thought of this all by myself. But I thought I would share some of the blogs/sites I read/visit on a regular basis in order to spread the joy but that I just don't have room for in the links section.

This will be a no doubt infrequent series, but first up are:

Overheard in the Office

I read this every day waiting for my work to appear. It's a sister site to Overheard in New York, over there in the links. There's also a beach version, which yesterday contained possibly my most favourite quote ever:

Fat lady screaming: Taneesha! Homegirl, get yo' ass in here and see this! There be more sand up in my vah-jay-jay than the Saharia desert!

--Dressing room, Montego Bay, Jamaica

I Did Not Know That Yesterday

If, like me, you are the sort of person who could happily spend several hours engrossed in random articles on Wikipedia, this is a daily dose of random factoids that you might find interesting. I have only just discovered this one, but it has been brightening up my afternoon no end this week.

My Paper Crane

I just love Heidi Kenney's work. Her big-eyed donuts are really something else. Go see for yourself. I like to read her blog and imagine that I was a full time craftstress. Maybe one day!

If anyone has any new blogs/sites to suggest, please let me know!

I don't like the sound that ducks make when they are sad.

2007-03-06T17:46:00.001Z

Demolition Begins
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Look! The scummy flats are going! Yay! I managed to grab this snap on the way to work this morning. They really are going for it, not hanging about. It is wise - if they leave their equipment unattended for any length of time it will be stolen and/or set fire to.

Work is mega busy, necessitating some working late-age. My job is either annoying quiet so I have to try and find things to fill my days with or it's absolutely manic. It's the latter just now.

It has meant that crafting has fallen somewhat by the wayside of late, but I did have a bit of a craft frenzy on Sunday evening. I made:

* A bag for my sewing machine cable
* A sock monkey (which just needs to be sewn up)
* Inroads into making a pair of Lee's old jeans into a skirt

I also fixed up the bargain sewing box I found in Dunelm Mill bargain basket in Clydebank on Saturday with a vintage button and doesn't it look grand!

This weekend, Lee and I went to the cinema in Clydebank to see Hot Fuzz. It was not as funny as I expected, which seems to be a common consensus, although it did pick up in the second half. It was still very enjoyable though, I must say. I do find Simon Pegg very funny, but he's not yet surpassed Spaced, in my humble opinion.

The best part about going to the cinema is of course the snacks, as with most things in life. I am a big, big fan of slush in it's varied forms and at the Empire cinema in Clydebank, they stock Tango Ice Blast. I had the lemon and raspberry flavours combined in one cup and it really did rock my world. Given the choice between a liquid refreshment and a slush-based one, I will always take the slush one. Even in the dead of winter. Cold drinks should be cold, proper cold. It annoys me that in this country we still have to ask for ice more often than not.

Anyway! My birthday approaches this Sunday and we are going to having a proper old skool birthday party in the house, with jelly and icecream, sausages on sticks and pass the parcel. We are also going to have a pinata, so let's hope it doesn't rain. Or not too much, at least.

We have some markets coming up which I am not going to drone on about - if you are interested (and you undoubtedly will be!) you can click here for the where and whens.

This week I will mostly be:

* Dining out
* Working late
* Eating cake

for next week, the fat fighting begins in earnest!

The ones who drive 4 by 4's are laughing! They don't care how much they pay.

2007-02-27T15:12:00.000Z

My things you didn't know about me, as instructed by mar-c:

I wrote a fanzine when I was at college. Not just any fanzine - furry norman! It was all based around a kangaroo who lived in a wardrobe and lived on micro noodles. I still have the vivid imagination. We did 8 issues of it and it was a bestseller in Missing (record store in Glasgow). I have copies of each issue if anyone wants a swatch. I should really try and put it online.

I spent 2 years studying music industry management at college. I wanted to be a tour manager. But I didn't really want to move to London at that point and our lecturer was crap and didn't help us with work experience or anything. So I went to work in a call centre instead.

I used to be in a band! We were called Stilgoes Heroes after Richard Stilgoe. My friend Nicki played drums, and 2 boys we were friends with, Stoph and Floyd, played guitar. Stoph sang. I have lost touch with them all apart from Nicki. I'd like to hear from Stoph one day he was very funny and was a regular contributor to furry norman. I played bass. I literally cannot remember a single note now. We had a great song called "Schwally at Joe's Mad Pad" all about a party at a guy on Nicki's uni course had in his flat.

Possibly the best holiday I have ever had was to the holiday camp where hi-de-hi was filmed. It took place when I was about 12, I think. It was blissful - horse riding every day, swimming in the Olympic sized swimming pool and dancing to Star Trekkin in the Hawaiian ballroom every evening. I recall rating it above our 3 week Florida/Disneyworld extravaganza. It may also explain my love of hi-de-hi.

I was quite an accomplished horsewoman in my youth. I had a pony or access to one for most of my formative/teenage years. I have won over 100 rosettes in my time! I must photograph these. I was a dab hand at musical cones in my time. I was slightly sportier in my youth, having been in both the school hockey and netball teams at one time or another.

I have a real issue with being clean. I don't know when exactly it started, but it's a relatively recent thing, to the last 8 years or so. I have my set routine for showering and drying my hair, etc each day and I really don't like to deviate from it. If I don't wash my hair at least, then I get into an unbearable grump and it literally feels like my skin is crawling. By lunchtime I am a quivering wreck. I'd love to go back to not being all that bothered (but still clean), but I can't do it. So if I refuse an invite to camp/stay with you if you don't have washing facilities, it's nothing personal :)

I come from a long line of divorcees. Every single one of my mother's family has either been divorced or seperated at one point or another, including my mother (and obviously, father). I aim not to continue the trend! Also, most of my family, including my mum, brother and dad are all left handed - I am the only (normal) right handed one.

As kids, we were lucky enough to be brought up with lots of music in our household. Both parents were big fans of AOR, which has left me even in adulthood able to sing practically every word to any Hall and Oates song. My mum seemed to have quite cool taste as a teenager - she saw Stevie Wonder live. I went to see my first band when I was 8. It was Bananarama at the Edinburgh Playhouse. We went to Pizzaland beforehand but I couldn't eat anything because I was too excited (nowadays I wouldn't be able to eat anything because pizza makes me hurl). I also saw New Kids on The Block as a youth, but I was over them by the time the concert rolled around. I went to my first grown up gig when I was 13 - to see, the shame, Aerosmith, with Steve Vai supporting. I seem to recall I quite enjoyed it. The band I have seen play most often is probably the Bluetones. The band I enjoyed live most is Rocket From The Crypt (my favourite band). My first date with my rockstar boyfriend when I was 17 was to see Sebadoh at the Garage. The last band I saw was Anthrax with my husband. :)

My best friend growing up was called Joanne. My best friend in adulthood is also called Joanne, but a different one. The first one turned out to be a lesbian. The second one, so far, has not.

When I was little, my parents took in a sick puppy called Ben. It was a very cute labrador. On my second birthday, as I got tore into Hungry Hippos in my grandparents living room, it died in my mother's arms in the kitchen. I can't remember it, but it makes me feel guilty to this day.

Call me morbid, but I rather enjoy going to the cemetery to visit my grandparents grave. I really miss them, despite them both dying before I was 10. My gran died of motor neurone disease when I was about 7 or 8. My grandad was quite a character - he used to make us milky way sandwiches - which was 2 slices of bread with a fun size milky way in the middle. With the wrapper still on. He broke his tooth on a Bounty once, I recall. He also set fire to my wee cousin's Popeye socks by trying to dry them in the microwave, back when microwaves were a new thing. He had 2 cats, Mitzi and Rudi - Rudi was saved from a bonfire which someone had thrown a litter of kittens on one bonfire night. Although he lived on the second floor of a block of flats, he used to be able to call the cats in for the night by standing on the balcony and whistling for them. We used to pretend that the cupboard under his stairs was Fraggle Rock. I still believe that it was.

This'll knock you out. It's anti-hystamine.

2007-02-26T18:32:00.001Z

Sponge Cake 25/02/07
Originally uploaded by suprastar.

How could I have forgotten the most exciting thing to have happened this weekend?! Lovely Lee made me a cake to cheer me up, after I mentioned that I woud like to retire to bed and eat cake. And that is exactly what I did :)

It was a marvellous cake - and the best thing about it is that there is some left for tea tonite!

I bring you death.

2007-02-26T14:40:00.000Z

Update! The vouchers have arrived. They were a nice cheering up present to me on Thursday which was day one of my being off work sick time. I have contracted the lurgy and this time it hit me rather harder than previously. So Thursday was spent on the sofa watching day time television and half heartedly sewing rejects (as I find it very difficult to just watch TV these days without making something). Sadly I got all the way through Midsomer Murders before I realised it was part 1 of 2, which could have been rather infuriating had it not been that I was sufficiently ill to have another day off on Friday (for the record, John Nettles fans, the twist in the story was indeed the one I suspected within the first 10 minutes in episode 1, but it was well done all the same - the villain was foiled by a hotdog, I shit ye not).

Friday, I had not even the energy to put needle to felt, such was my lethargy. I stayed on the sofa, with my hello kitty pyjamas and the nice blanket that my evil cousin gave us for wedding present and sneezed a lot. I did make a brief sortie out to the shops at the end of the road for sustenance (for sustenance, read a bottle of Barrs pineappleade and a packet of giant chocolate buttons), during which time I made the following observations:

Maryhill is populated entirely by dullards
All the dogs of Glasgow have, at one point in the past week or other, defecated on Gairbraid Avenue
The price of pineappleade has sky-rocketed in the past 10 years

The walk along the road also afforded me a view of the flats marked for demolition in daylight. They are not really any less forboding when you see them out of darkness. Lots of them still have light fittings, things on the walls, etc. All the bathrooms seem to have wooden pulleys, which must have been fitted when the flats were built, such is their apparent age - that really is a thoughtful council. There is also a man living in the blue portakabin, which now boasts not only calor gas, but also a portaloo mere feet away from the door. That guy must feel like the king. I saw him with a pot of water in his hand, fiddling with the gas supply the other day. I felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough to offer to boil the water for him, of course.

Saturday, I awoke feeling nearer to death than the preceeding 2 days, but as I'd agreed to meet Aleks to see her wedding dress, I struggled out of bed and into town. The dress is beautiful, it really does suit her. This year is shaping up to be wedding tastic, with no fewer than 4 people I know getting hitched. I must start thinking of an outfit for me to wear to all these events.

Anyway, after the dress appointment, I realised that I had not got all the component parts for the wedding invitations I have agreed to make (or at least make some samples to see if they like them), so I had to trudge round town trying to find diamante heart shaped buckles. Needless to say, I didn't find any. I had stupidly left my mobile at home also, and of course got home to a text with news of a stockist. I gave up and bought some on ebay instead.

As I was feeling a little bit more chipper by the time I got home and had a crisp sandwich (has to be warburtons bread with margerine and walkers cheese and onion crisps), Lee and I took a run out to the Fort shopping place. I'd never been before, but as they have a giant Virgin (the shop that is - there are no actual virgins that far east of Glasgow, ho ho), I thought that would be the best place to spend my vouchers - all £260 of them, as they clearly didn't have any £10 vouchers left in the office when they sent them out.

Lee and I wandered the aisles of Virgin rather morosely for ages - I really did not envisage it being that difficult to find something to spend all that cash on. But it was pretty difficult. I chose the top of the range iPod, a couple of CDs, a t shirt, a DVD and 2 books, only to discover when I got to the counter that Virgin have apparently stopped selling iPods in Scotland! Why? No one knows. Not even Richard Branson, probably. I was told I could "try coming back in a month, maybe". Or I could try going to England and buying one. Or, even better, "try Argos next door". I was peeved. But I have emailed Virgin (sadly not Richard himself, but he has more important things to worry about just now) to ask them what is going on with their iPod madness.

Anyway, that was me wiped out for Saturday, and indeed so it seemed Sunday, as I didn't even make it out of bed yesterday. I stayed put and watched series 1 to 3 of Hi-de-Hi in their entirety. I LOVE Hi-de-Hi, but even I was getting a bit cheesed off with the theme tune towards tea time. I even had a go of Animal Crossing yesterday in the lull between DVDs - it's stopped snowing and I won the fishing tournament with a rather small sea bass. They were clearly just being nice to me as it had been a record 7 weeks since I'd stopped by. No one had really noticed much that I wasn't there - Bluebear resolutely refuses to move out whatever I throw at him (literally), and the new people who have moved in were completely non-plussed by my return. It all seemed so green and shiny and new and I caught 2 new fish, it was quite fun.

Must go and gulp down some more flu medicine.

Born Free... as free as the wind blow... forever... born free...free to follow la la la

2007-02-20T18:26:00.001Z

Four Sisters
Originally uploaded by Oldvidhead.

I found this photo randomly on flickr today.

It is making me ACHE for san francisco and pot stickers and cable cars and theo at the hotel and polite people. The smell of sea lions, the big hill up to fort mason, lori's, decent burgers and cheap clothes.

Don't touch my memory stick.

2007-02-19T18:44:00.000Z

A recipe!

Fish Surprise

You will need:

nb: the quantities are all dependent on how many people you are making it for. bento lovers will want to make more than they can eat in one sitting. this is ideal for bento!

rice
spring onions
mushrooms
sweetcorn
chickpeas
tinned chopped tomatoes
sesame seeds
soy sauce
chili (in either actual chili or paste form)
garlic
basil

Chickpeas, I hear you cry! Have I gone all vegelesbian on you? No, no I haven't. But chickpeas are my new favourite thing. Not vegetables, but pulses, apparently. Well, I never.

Put the rice on to boil. You can be doing the rest while it does it's thang. If, like me, you are completely incapable of making rice without it turning into a big gloopy mess and/or it sticking to your good Jamie Oliver pots, then get another responsible adult to do it for you.

Stick a little oil in your wok and heat it up. Stick in the garlic and the chili and give it a few seconds til it starts to smell lovely.

Slice up the spring onions and stick them in the wok. Likewise the mushrooms.

Open up the tin (and they will be tinned if you know what's good for you) chickpeas and wang those in the wok too.

Add a little chickpea juice and then the tin of sweetcorn without draining it, so you have some juices from that too.

Sprinkle in a few sesame seeds and some basil, either fresh or dried. Add a splash of soy sauce here too if you fancy it. I think I also added some red wine vinegar, just because it was sitting near the cooker.

Once it is all bubbling away, and your rice looks like it might be ready in a few minutes, add the tin of chopped tomatoes.

Stir it all up together and let it simmer for a few minutes. You still want it to be a bit runny here.

Once the rice is ready, scoop it all out into the wok and mix it all up together.

Voila! Fish surprise!

The surprise is, there is no fish in it.

I wanna see more of Mark Ramprakash.

2007-02-19T17:42:00.000Z

What a productive weekend! Friday evening I went home and got wired into the bunny knitting. It is safe to say that they are not my favourite thing to knit, but I think a good long break away from them has proved to be beneficial. Come 1 am I had completed one pair and was well into a second. I had to give up around 2 am as my eyes were starting to cross though.

Saturday I frankly crafted my ass off. More bunnies, some origami envelopes, tags ... I was really on fire! I had a break around 11pm to move the living room furniture around to a formation suggested by Jo - and it really has made the place look much bigger! For those of you who have not been in our house - it's very small. So inspired was I by this new outlook from the sofa, I stayed up til 4am knitting and watching random tv shows about bell ringing, Mary Seacole and people who fly model airplanes.

Sunday was the day designated to clean the house as me and my good husband are very much from the school of housework of leave it til it's bad and then do it all at once. I tackled the bathroom whilst Lee did both of our most hated of jobs - putting away the clean clothes. It took me so long in the bath scrubbing the grouting that he had also done all the dishes by the time I had finished - I was most pleased. This all to the soundtrack of my favourite album, Ill Communication by the Beastie Boys - I'm a big fan.

Whilst on the cleaning roll, we packed everything up from the kitchen that we don't use and have no hope of using until we move house (at some point) - we had 4 boxes worth of stuff to put away! A bit of rearranging and now the kitchen looks much better and there is more space and I don't feel like I want to cry every time I look at the crowded work surfaces. I actually had a bit of a rush of affection for our little flat yesterday when were tidying it all, bit it soon passed.

In the evening after dinner, Jo and I went down to a club night a fellow crafter had organised for a while. It was a little quiet and different than what I expected, but we got loads of knitting done, saw some women in corsets and pants and had a good chat with some friends. It's very hard to organise things like that - people can be so resistant to excitement sometimes - as we have found ourselves, but I am glad that someone else is taking the initiative and DOING rather than talking about it. That said, there is also the bid to become a craft mafia in Glasgow, which stella jo is organising, so it seems that the crafters are coming out of hibernation and are getting set to take over the world!

A meeting this evening about the next couple of markets and hopefully we will know dates, etc and we can get on with our lives a little. There seems so much to be done in the coming weeks and months, I almost feel like I don't know where to start. And it's my birthday soon! How did I get to be 28? And why is time passing so quickly? Is there going to be enough time to fit everything in I want to do with my life? Answers on a postcard ...

To be honest, I have a hard time believing you when you talk with that accent.

2007-02-16T13:49:00.000Z

It's my birthday soon! Woooo! Without wanting to sound like I am demanding presents, there is a very small list of things I can think of that I'd like. People always ask and I can never think, so here's my ideas:

a cute bento box
Bare Minerals Foundation
Skin Revver Upper Moisturiser

flickr pro account renewal - Thanks Lee - I can remove this from my wish list now :)

If all else fails, US dollars are always appreciated! Yes, there we have it, I've put it out there - if you're unimaginative, give cash!

I also issue a heartfelt plea for everyone else to be honest about what they'd like to receive at birthdays etc! That way you'll get something you want and the gift-er will be pleased to have given you something useful, instead of ANOTHER gift voucher!

There is also always, as mar-c pointed out, the amazon wishlist.

Do you want a bit of hot dog sandwich?

2007-02-16T13:46:00.000Z

Lee, god love him, has really embraced this blogging. Much as he will protest that it's his "friend Dave" that does all the posts, Lee - you've been rumbled - you're turning into a geek ;)

Hop on over to his latest venture, the Engineering Chef for some finger lickin' good reading!

There's that twat who looks like Lou Bega.

2007-02-16T13:43:00.000Z

As I lay in bed this morning at 3.32 am, wondering why once again I could not just have ONE night of uninterrupted sleep, a thought occurred to me.

What is the difference between a truck and a lorry? I could not quite make up my mind.

Wikipedia, of course, has the answer.

But I am still bemused as to why it would be a pick-up truck. Any ideas?

It's a collaboration. Between me and my hands.

2007-02-15T17:23:00.000Z

I know, you're still in shock - £250! Of Virgin vouchers! How did that happen?

Well, there I was last Tuesday, getting ready for work listening to Dominik "Gamesmaster" Diamond prattle on in between songs, when I heard him say they wanted people to text in with their suggestions for a really inappropriate song for a particular occasion, e.g. D.I.V.O.R.C.E. at a wedding. My mind went straight to the memory filed away for occasions such as these to the true story of my friend Nicki playing Cutting Crew's "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight" on Hopsital Radio and so I texted in.

A few songs and a blast of the hairdryer later, I realised that it was an actual competition in which a real life prize was up for grabs. No less than £250 of Virgin megastore vouchers. However, I didn't pay too much attention, knowing full well that I never win anything like that (apart from my appearance on Mark and Lard's Crap Town Factor back in 1998 in which I scored 5 out of 5 in the week before Christmas and won £50 of HMV vouchers, but that's another story entirely).

Anyway, cutting a long story shorter, the phone rang and it was the other guy that is not Dominik Diamond asking me to tell my story on air and telling me that I'D WON! I was shocked, amazed and indeed as I am writing this, I am reliving my adrenalin rush all over again. So I had to go on and repeat my tale, give them my details and lo and behold, I'm a lucky xfm winner! I was so excited all day that I could barely concentrate at work (nothing new I grant you).

Mind you, the vouchers haven't arrived yet. So I've not yet had to face the dilemma of what to spend them on. Suggestions gratefully received!

I have never seen a single second of High School Musical.

2007-02-15T16:50:00.000Z

No sooner than I break my drought, I am back with another post. I just flicked idly over to my RSS reader and was faced with the headline:

Man to hang for ant scam.

Click here for the full story.

A small lesson for you: The bigger and richer the company, the easier they will fuck you over.

2007-02-15T16:48:00.000Z

Yes, I know, it's been ages. Thank you to all my regular readers for shouting at me to post. I've been meaning to for ages but I've been very busy recently!

Things that have happened since I posted last (and that I may post more indepth about at a later date):

I won £250 of Virgin Megastore vouchers thanks to XFM.
I went to London and walked for a billion miles.
I was grilled by airport security and swabbed for explosives.
I, along with Jo, organised a rip-roaring success of a market.
I almost got another job, but stayed where I was.
I made a gazillion rejects.
I got very excited about the slew of orders on the Miso Funky website (it's not even Christmas!).
I visited Catherine's lovely house and loved it so much I am secretly plotting to bump her off and move in (it's a toss up between her and Tracey - I may kill them both and split my time between the 2).
I discovered that drying my jeans over the door makes them smell very strongly of curry.
I discovered that custard pancakes are the food of the gods.
I received a beautiful orchid from my husband.
I came to terms with the fact that the mean temperature of my office is -3c.
I fixed my mp3 player by randomly reinstalling software.

There are probably more notable things that happened in this time in the world, but these are the highlights for me. I've been keeping up to date with my year of moosh blog, in which I post a photo a day. HA! I say to all you doubters. I've not even cheated. Much.

So here is my solemn promise to try harder to keep up to date. Amen.

Austria has a very high standard of living. Lots of opera.

2007-02-02T16:11:00.000Z

Look! It's so exciting! And there's a reject on it! I am so pleased!

Find out more - here.

I do recycle. I just resent the fact that the bins are so big.

2007-01-22T19:08:00.000Z

Inspired by marveline, here is my first in an occasional series of recipes:

Chicken and Leek Pie

You will need:

2-3 chicken breasts
1 leek
A handful of mushrooms
Packet puff pastry
Some white wine
Garlic/Tarragon if you like it
Chicken stock cube

Equipment:

Big pot or wok
pie dish
rolling pin (if you don't have a rolling pin, use the wine bottle before you open it)
pastry brush (or your fingers)

This should be enough to serve 4 polite people or 2 troughers.

Directions:

Take the pastry out of the fridge now, or you'll regret it later. Leave it near where you are cooking so it softens up a bit.
Take the chicken and cut up into cubes. Some more accomplished chefs might call these "bite size morsels".
Take your leek and cut up into round slices.
Take a couple of mushrooms and slice those bad boys up into small chunks.
Heat a tiny splash of oil in your pot.
Chuck in the leeks and stir them up a bit til they start to go soft.
Add a bit of garlic if you like that sort of thing.
I also add tarragon at this point, but only if you like it (some people, inexplicably, don't).
Chuck in the chicken and make it go white.
Add the mushrooms.
Crumble in a chicken stock cube.
Once all this looks like it's browned, splash a bit of white wine in there, maybe a wine glass full.
It will look a bit runny, but stick with me here. Stir it all up and then leave it to simmer for about 20 minutes, or until most of the wine/stock has been absorbed.
Whilst this is happening, you could go and watch telly, have a dance round the living room to one of the many hits of Wham! or you could be sensible and get the pastry ready.
Put the oven on to about 180 degrees or so.
Get your dish you are going to put the pie in and roll out your pastry so it's the same rough shape but a bit bigger round the edges.
If you want to add cream to make your sauce creamy, add a few dribbles now.
Once the pie filling (that's the chicken and stuff, dullard) is ready, stick it all in your pie dish and then even it out.
Lay on the pastry and crimp the edges on to the edge of the pie dish. If you're a fancy pants, you could score a pattern in the top of the pastry, perhaps a trellis effect, a loved one's name, or an etching of a stoat in flight. Put 2 little vents in the middle with your sharpest knife for the steam to escape.
Stand back and cast a loving eye over your pie, as it were. Then grab a mug an egg and a fork. Your partner may look at you with a worried expression, but ignore this, it will pass. Crack the egg in the cup and beat it up a bit with the fork.
If you have a pastry brush (and if you're married, you will inevitably have 4 of the blighters), brush on the egg mixture on your pastry. If you have no pastry brush, just pour it on and kind of smear it all over the pastry with your fingers. It has the same effect and is one less thing to wash up. Make sure you get all the pastry covered so it goes that nice shiny way in the oven.
Put your pie on a baking tray before you put it in the oven. Now, I am not the sort of person to follow that sort of order in conventional recipes, but trust me, my friend - your pie WILL spill over the sides of the dish and you don't want to be cleaning charred pie remnants off your cooker from now til Christmas.
The pie will take about 15 minutes or so to cook - just look and when it looks nice and brown and your pastry has puffed up nicely, then it's ready. If you like your pastry soggy, then obviously take it out a bit earlier. If it's black and smells funky, you've left it in too long. If you do encounter this, place the entire dish in the bin and head to the chip shop.

I serve my pie (ooh la la) with potatoes of some sort, possibly croquettes, and sweetcorn.

Enjoy!

I know that I can walk into that exam and pass it easy.

2007-01-18T17:24:00.001Z

Snoooooooow!
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Snooow!

I love snow - and I have not been disappointed this week. On Tuesday, as I sat aghast at the events unfolding on celebrity big brother and knitting bits of blanket, the TV kept cutting out, until it got unwatchable. I screamed at the TV, I flicked it on then off - but to no avail. It was only when I glanced out the window that I realised why - it was SNOWING! There was a light dusting of snow all over the court and I was one happy bunny.

Imagine my dismay to awake yesterday to discover not one molecule left! It had all melted away and I was once again - sad.

And then this morning - I struggled out of bed, to the window - and it was like freakin Antartica out there! An inch or so of snow all over, and best of all, it was STILL snowing! All the way to work, we cast doubtful looks at the sky that it might start raining. But no, it continued all the way to past 11 am, snowing huge fat flakes. It looked like boiled eggs were raining down on us at one point and just when we thought it would never end - it started raining.

However, that lasted only a few moments - and then it went calm and a bit bright - but the important thing is, that at work at least, the snow is still lying on the ground and we're forecast for more. As you can see, the view from my desk has been very pretty today.

Sorry, but snow really does get me going! The highlight of the week, no less! Also this week, Jo has booked us flights to go to London for the day next month - for a bargain total of £2.04 for the 2 of us! I could barely believe it! A bunch of us crafters are going on a jaunt for the day and I am really looking forwards to it. I have my first job interview tomorrow for an age, so please keep your fingers crossed for me! I will post more about that, depending on the outcome of course!

Must go now to pray for more snow!

P.S Don't you love my new blog template?! It was designed by the very talented mar-c, inspired by a shower gel bottle! Thank you marveline!

I don't know what happened. It must have gone straight into my junk mail folder.

2007-01-13T18:05:00.000Z

You never seem to hear about the good that the internet can do. The papers are always full of stories like "Internet pervert ate my hamster" and "Conned by internet scamsters" and never about what joy it can bring to people's lives.

I am not sure that many people know just how big a part in my life the internet plays. To name but 3 important pieces of my life, I have obtained a job, a house and a husband no less, all online. Which is quite an achievement, even in today's modern age.

The 3 most important things in my life have come from my use of the world wide web. The job was procured on good old s1jobs and of course not only was the job found online, but I have become the hostmaster of one of Europe's biggest webhosting companies, meaning my working day is spent - online.

The house was found on rightmove.co.uk, after a chance glance to the right when helping Jo and Ryan move into their flat, over 2 years ago. A quick shufty online and we'd found the flat that we had seen for sale and hey presto, we have nice neighbours.

The husband was slightly more complex and let's face it, the more interesting of the 3 finds. Lee, as you know him, and I met on match.com. We were both over the hanging around bars making eye contact, so took the independently sensible steps of just giving it a go. We emailed a few times through the site, swapped phone numbers and after one (admittedly painfully awkward) phone call, we agreed to meet up in a bar in town. And, to cut a long story short - it was love at first sight and we've been inseperable ever since.

Now, in the paragraph above, you'll note that there is no mention of perversion, freakery or even a whiff of oddness of any sort. We are just 2 ordinary people and now, we are just 2 ordinary very happy people. No discovering a hidden wife and children, a recent sex change or a cleaned-out bank account and an empty house - no weirdness. Why do the papers never report on that?

Anyway, the point to this is - any singletons out there who are too scared or shy to give it a go - just try it. You never know, you might find exactly what you've been looking for.

There is milk in the house, we just don't know where it is.

2007-01-13T17:39:00.000Z

Would you believe it? I have only been and done it!

Finally, after over 10 years of being a big scardey cat, I've had my ears pierced. Not exactly achieving a cure for the common cold, I grant you, but for me it's been quite a big deal! And certainly the start of what I hope to be the year I make the most of things. And the end of people being stuck for what to buy me for birthdays.

Today was such a fun day, despite the truly atrocious weather we are experiencing at the moment. Jo and I had designated today charity shopping day, so we set off after a long lie in our respective pits, stopping off first at China Town. To say China Town sadly does not describe the true nature of it - it is essentially a shed and a restaurant, it's no San Francisco, that's for sure.

The stench of fish is almost unbearable when you walk in and if I'd had any breakfast I would have surely been in danger of losing it, but we battled on, stopping in the Omni gift shop for some money envelopes and moving on to the supermarket for a browse. I picked up some cooking sauces and Jo bought some stuff for some recipes she is trying out and before we knew it our parking time had elapsed, so we headed back out, stopping sneakily at the bakery on the way out. You can see the fruits of that particular labour over at Cake Tourism.

Once back to the car, we headed down Great Western Road and had a stroll along to the Republic Bier Halle for some lunch (the goulash is recommended). We had a jaunt across the road to Lupe Pintos where I bought some things for going to visit Lex and Tex next week (Tex aka Rebecca is, as my pet name for her suggests, from Texas). We were pretty soggy by this time, so we thought best to press on and get to Partick to our favourite cluster of charity shops, where we hoped to get some materials for our latest ideas. Once we got parked, we made our way to the Sense charity shop where we dropped off our donations and picked up a few great finds.

After a very damp (in fact, damp doesn't do it - sodden) walk along Dumbarton Road, we headed up Byres Road and into Burning Monkey, a piercing studio recently relocated from the city centre. The girl there, altho she was initally duller than a lead pipe, turned out to be very competent and once she'd finished her pot noodle and sterilised herself, pierced me in no time at all. I was most shocked that it didn't really hurt, more just sort of throbbed briefly and then settled down straight away. I am still slightly in awe of my pain-free ears. They just feel pleasantly warm.

We finished our day up with a drink and a read of the Skinny mag in Russells and a sneaky bit of chocolate cake to share. I feel like I've really crossed something off my list of things to do this year! Tomorrow I have planned a trip to the post office to shed my latest load of ebay sales and then ... nothing!

Vests are for old men.

2007-01-12T12:12:00.000Z

Whilst taking in a drink in a local hostelry the other nite, a drunken, pony-tailed man slurred at me "whairdjicumfae?". For the uninitiated, this is drunken Scot-speak for "Hello there, please excuse my stale alcohol breath, I was just wondering whereabouts you possibly could hail from?".

My reply, through gritted teeth, was "up the road, Maryhill", clearly not being one for blithely giving out personal facts to random drunken strangers in bars (those days are long gone). It took a while to extricate myself from the unfortunate
interrogation, given that the barman, who had all the personality of a stoat's ingrown toenail, took approximately 3 millenia to pour 2 drinks, but it did set me to thinking when exactly did I think of myself coming from Maryhill and not the wilds of Ayrshire?

For those of you who don't know, I've not always lived in Glasgow. In fact, I was born and raised in Ayrshire, which is a county on the South West coast of Scotland, famous for bacon, potatoes and cows. I hail from a small town called Kilwinning in this noble shire, which, it turns out, is famous in it's own right for a few things (other than being the hometown of me, of course). The story of the myriad other places I have lived is one for another day.

Firstly, Kilwinning has a big old abbey, which in a town of 15,000 people is quite unexpected. It was set up by some Benedictine monks or other a long, long time ago. Ashamed to say, the full extent of my knowledge of the abbey is from my
childhood brushes with the law in it's grounds. My grandad's flat was situated right next to the abbey, which was (and most likely still is) surrounded by an enormous, ancient stone wall, about 12 feet high.

Me, my brother and the other kids from the area would climb over the wall and generally carouse in the grounds which were fenced off, no doubt for our own safety. On the opposite side of the abbey ground's was the police station, so most of our forays ended with frantically running across to the point where we could climb the wall and running back up the stairs to grandad's house before they caught us. I remember on one occasion I had my brother's jumper on (it was blue) and I got stuck in the fence and we only narrowly avoided capture. It may or may not have been the same occasion where Andrew got stuck on the spike on the top of the wall by his trousers.

Secondly, and somewhat shamefully I think, Kilwinning is the site of the original Masonic Lodge. The Orange Lodge, as it's known, is up near the doctors surgery that we went to. I never paid all that much attention to it when I was living there. Being a Catholic, there was never much call to, but I have since discovered that Kilwinning has the somewhat dubious honour of
having Lodge number 0. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, see here.

Kilwinning also has, and hold on to your hats here, a castle! Eglinton Castle is set in a big park (imaginatively titled Eglinton Park) which bizarrely also had a food factory in it (I think it's closed now). It was built about a zillion years ago and all that remains is the ruins of part of it now. There is a tower still standing which is closed to the public, but I do recall being taken up to the top of it as a youngster, possibly allowed by my uncle who is a council employee of some sorts. It was a very exciting day to be allowed up there, but a bit scary as it was so high.

Eglinton Castle was inhabited by the De Morville and the Montgomery families and this is evident in many place names around town. In the 1800s, the Montgomery family took the ill fated decision to re-enact a medeival tournament - it was a bit gash, by all accounts and cost them a lot of money and eventually led to the castle being abandoned and falling into the state of repair it
is in today - i.e. there's nowt but a few ruined bits of it left.

In the park itself tho there are still some outbuildings to stumble
across. I remember finding the old ice house for the castle one day with my parents as a child, which was quite a thrill.

Eglinton Park was a favourite haunt of me during my horsey days, as I would sometimes trek from Stevenston to the park for a canter around, and attended a couple of shows there, memorably winning 4th place in the Mountain and Moorland class at a show, despite Misty, my pony, completely showing me up with her randy, on-heat antics. It was also family tradition to go to the park on Easter Sunday to roll our painted boiled eggs down the hill in front of the tower. Did anyone else do or still do that?

Other interesting Kilwinning facts include that Pringle knitwear was first manufactured there and also that Kilwinning had a proud history of wool-making - I had no idea of these crafty facts until I was checking a few facts for this post. Maybe there is something in the water that makes so many people knit down there (or maybe it's sheer lack of anything else to do).

I remember the Wool Sack being the in place to visit of a weekend. My mum was quite the knitter and indeed still is, so we were frequent visitors there. Every jumper we ever wore as kids was knitted by my mum. I recall a grey knitted jumper for school which I took a dislike to for some reason that was left on the back of the sofa next to the hamster's cage - whether on purpose
or not, I can't remember - which the hamster then chewed an enormous, irreprable hole in. I was positively gleeful, but I think I got a skelp on the legs for that.

There are loads of other things I could continue with - the (in)famous football team, the Buffs, the inexplicable intrigue with archery, McGavin park, our very own Byres Road, but I think that is quite enough to give you a brief idea of how decidedly non-Glaswegian I am. And surprisingly, given how keen I was to get out of there the second I was deemed old enough, I am still proud to be from there.

What has Rod Stewart ever done except smoke too much?

2007-01-11T13:45:00.000Z

As per Jo and Elaine ...

I need

Claire needs some TOUGH LOVE!

Claire Needs a Visit to the Bunny Planet

Claire Needs Nine Innings to Win Opening NCAA Game

Claire Needs Prayers From All of You She is Very Sick

Claire needs to be inspired and feel the model’s personality.

I want

Claire wants to remember again when it all mattered
Claire wants to win!
Claire wants more people to share the American Dream of homeownership by helping aspiring homeowners break into the housing market.
CLAIRE.........WANTS TO GET WILD WITH YOU TONIGHT.
Claire wants to sell their father's house

I like

Claire likes the bumpy ride.
Claire likes it too
Claire likes to discover

Claire likes to sleep on the bed
Claire likes that Sammi is pragmatic and down-to-business.

I hate

Claire hates Fat-free cream cheese
Claire hates him.
claire hates hannahs guts and thinks shes a TOTAL bitch lol!!!
Claire hates Hollywood and despises the Hollywood society for its weakness for sensations and gossips
Claire hates eating mushrooms and cannot understand other peoples obsessions, in her spare time she campaigns against fungus consumption.

To find yours, just go to Google and type yourname needs and see what comes up.

Three minutes is a long time in football.

2007-01-10T16:10:00.000Z

5 things I would rather be doing right now

Cleaning the mould off the bathroom wall
Crawling over broken glass
Slicing 1000 onions
Buffing a silver teapot with a sloth's nut sack
Ironing the contents of the Hilton's linen cupboard

I have no doubt that you know all the answers. You seem to know everything.

2007-01-09T16:35:00.001Z

Leonard Sock Monkey
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Well, 2007 is shaping up to be a year of highs and lows already and we're not even 2 weeks

in. The first high was concerning our longed for move to the States. My mum arrived back

from Cincin with news that Anne and Jim are over the moon about our plan to try and move

there and are indeed pulling out the stops to try and ensure our passage there permanently.

We will know more after we have been out there to visit in April/May, but that is very exciting news that we have allies in our battle against the immigration grinches!

Next was the low point of returning to work, only for my laptop to die and for me to lose all my favourites - bookmarked patterns, funny blogs, etc. I also lost all my RSS feeds as I didn't get a chance to back everything up before my laptop went bye byes. So any readers with blogs, please let me know your link so I can re-add it!

Then some other job news which may or may not come off, which I will write more about when I know more - changes are afoot, that's all I am saying for now.

My first attempt at a sock monkey went remarkably well and you can see the results over at the year o moosh. His name is Leonard and he's quite a catch, if you like wonky sock related items.

Off swimming tonite, trying to get back into our fitness regime! If I can still walk tomorrow, it will be a miracle.

Yeah, but how can they justify charging so much for soft drinks?

2007-01-03T12:51:00.000Z

I have a new project for the new year. I have decided to keep a record of my year in photographs, by taking (at least) one photo a day and adding it to a new blog I've started here. Normal service will continue here, but you will be able to see a photographic record of the year also!

Take me to The Year of Moosh now!

Meet Pedro, the racist raisin!

2007-01-03T12:30:00.001Z

Lucky Green Cat
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Whoever thought up working for a living is clearly a madman.

Anyway - new year was very uneventful chez moosh. Lee was working nite shift, so I decided to stay at home and not venture out into the apocolyptic weather that was raging outside. I wrapped myself up in my jim-jams and new slippers and did the miso funky accounts and watched tv, sipping on a fine vintage 2006 Irn Bru. Classy AND rock and roll, that's me.

The rest of the new year revolved around eating and seeing mum whilst she was here on her whistlestop tour of her children. We all got together on new year's day at Andrew's in Blantyre and ate steak pie and Polish cake before she flew off again back to Suffolk yesterday. She was here long enough to tell us some VERY exciting news from America which I will blog about seperately later and to buy me some waterproof footwear in the form of some lovely brown boots - all my shoes are so impractical for this weather!

Yesterday also heralded my return to the working world, a day before every other person in Scotland. January 2nd is a public holiday in Scotland only - the rest of the UK has to go to work. I think the idea behind it is that the Scots like to celebrate NYE a lot more than Christmas and therefore need 2 days to recover from their hangovers before attempting to re-enter the commercial world. However, the company I work for sadly does not adhere to the Scottish public holiday system, but the English one for some reason - meaning we get an extra day in May or something - which was little comfort yesterday morning I can assure you at 730 am.

I got to work yesterday only for my laptop to finally grind to a halt and refuse to have anything more to do with me. It spent most of the day with my boss, being nursed back to health and it's now back in action and quicker than ever before - new year, new installation of operating system, new happy me!

I leave you with my lucky green cat in the hope that it will bring you some good luck this year too - go on, rub the screen. It might just work!

She bought it in New Look for a fiver.

2006-12-28T19:00:00.000Z

Crimbo Chez Brown
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Crimbo over? Already?

But it was so quick! Huh! I have had a great rest though and am feeling pretty relaxed and happy just now. It's been great not to have to rush around, planning craft fairs, frantically sewing .. instead, I've been playing a lot of Guitar Hero, eating a lot of chocolate (yes, very naughty) and buying shoes!

Christmas day was a very jolly affair for the Browns. We rose late, opened a veritable Fuji-san of presents and played with our new toys for a while before we raced over to Blantyre with Lee's mum to have dinner with Andrew and Aleks. It was a lovely meal, topped off with Lee's chocolate and malteser cheesecake (really, it is to DIE for) and we exchanged gifts and headed back to the court. Upon our return, we went over to Jo and Ryan's to play with our 2 new games - Sing Star Rocks and Guitar Hero 2! I really am not a fan of singing in front of people, but I was soon up on the mic and belting out duets with everyone in turn! We stayed up til 4 am in the end, singing and dancing - it was so much fun!

For the rest of the festive period, we've pretty much just hung around the house not doing anything really. It's been just what I needed to recharge my batteries and no mistake. I got so many fabulous presents, so have been spending time just looking at them all and finding a home for them in our tiny flat. I finally got a new alarm clock which plays CDs, etc so last nite was spent hammering my old one to death with Lee's new mini hammer - it was very satisfactory!

Today Jo and I headed into town to get my ears pierced at long last - but as I type, my ears are sadly still hole-less. I was told today I have oil sacs in my ears from a previous piercing attempt - how odd! So we are going to make an appointment at Nirvana to get it done properly and then I will be able to wear my 2 new pairs of earrings I got for Christmas!

To console ourselves with the piercing disappointment, I bought 2 pairs of shoes! For, my friends ... and you may wish to sit down, if you are not already .. ten british pounds! Well, I never! I got some nice black t-bar flat ones in Primark and some nice orangey/pinky sandals with a small heel in some other shoe place for £5 each! I also finally got a nice cord a-line skirt which I had been eyeing up for some weeks at almost half the price it was pre-Christmas! I was most pleased!

My mum arrives tomorrow from her jaunt to Cincinnati - she is visiting us for a few days before she goes back to school in Suffolk next week (for those who don't know, my mum is a matron of a boarding school down there). I am going to take myself off on a wee jaunt to the airport tomorrow to meet her, which I am quite looking forwards to. Must go and try out my new £6 slippers now!

My friend is Hungarian... I don't know why he is so angry.

2006-12-22T12:52:00.001Z

io crimbo party
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Good lord!

Last nite's crimbo party was quite an event! I think I was the only person there that managed to stay sober-ish apart from mar-c who very sensibly left almost immediately after dinner.

The scandal, the intrigue - it would mean nothing to you, but the component parts are:

3 homosexuals, one of which looked like an owl.

2 giant animal costumes - one cat, one penguin.

1 shed load of FREE alcohol.

I ended up at 2 am this morning in a room with around 20 assorted members of the company, including 3 directors refusing shots of tequila from the financial controller. I staggered to bed then, but the party was still raging at 5 am I hear.

Today the office is full of very tired and bedraggled souls - some heavy with regret and some just heavy with vomit-stains, I shouldn't wonder.

This will more than likely be my last post for some days now - so MERRY CRIMBLE!

I'll have to speak to head office. How I hate speaking to head office.

2006-12-20T13:45:00.001Z

Miso Funky Market
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Well! The market-filled weekend was quite eventful! I managed not to pass out or slip into a coma as I expected but instead enjoyed a great Saturday of selling things, talking to friends and making merry. The secret santa Jo organised for the day went tremendously well and I got one of the best gifts ever (thanks Rachael!) - see above! Everyone got into the spirit of things and the goodie bags we stayed up til 2 am on Friday nite making up went down a storm. So we were pretty pleased with our last market of the year.

On Sunday we had the Botanics last market of the year which was ... totally dead. Despite the rain holding off and it remaining reasonably sunny all day, there was only a small trickle of visitors throughout the day and we had to rely on a friend of mine Elaine to make our first sale of the day! Things did pick up a bit, but we all called it a day early and were home by 4pm. In time to have a flash of inspiration and get the sewing machine out to whip up some impromptu Christmas gifts! I will obviously photograph these for after Crimble!

This week has been a whirlwind of boring work and frenzied making things in the evenings. We had a last minute sale on the website, so had to get that packaged up, along with a few other things and sent off, make some more Crimbo decs for Tracey's red and white themed tree and now I have just remembered I've still not got a gift for work secret santa which I am organising, so I will have to come up with something this evening.

Looking forwards to Christmas, but more so for the time off factor. There are a veritable STACK of presents under our tree, all for me and Lee, so obviously I am excited about tearing them open too, but I will be content with a sit down and a rest in the most part. It's been SUCH a busy year, especially for me who usually likes to sit on my ass being lazy. If I can only incorporate being busy with doing some more exercise and eating less rubbish next year, I'll be heading in the right direction.

Still got several gifts to make, some of which may be in the form of the thing I quickly taught myself to make last nite - can't say any more in case some of my dear readers see it - some of which may be the recipients of my intended gifts! I will need to have another bash at it tonite. Tomorrow nite is the work Christmas party, which could either go pretty well or pretty badly. It's been a tough time recently at work - redundancies were announced last week which has left the office with a terrible atmosphere and a lot of bad feeling, so I have no idea who is going, or what really is happening, apart from I am going and my job is not affected. Which I suppose is good, but a part of me thinks that being made redundant would have kicked me into gear about DOING SOMETHING. Still, I am glad that I can still afford to pay the mortgage (just) for now.

Right, I am off for a game of Animal Crossing whilst it's still lunchtime!

This country! All anyone cares about is money, money, money!

2006-12-15T17:23:00.000Z

Miso Funky Market tomorrow peoples!

Be there or be banished from the cool list forever!

I dont' know if he was gay, but he was immaculately dressed.

2006-12-14T16:45:00.000Z

Crimble Tree!
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

No reply from trade service direct as yet. I await with baited breath.

Actually, I await with flu-ridden, lurgy-laced breath. For I have found a new depth of flu-like pain to sink to and it's not nice. I have spent the last 2 days at home on the sofa alternately wanting to die and coughing a loud, long, low hacking cough much akin to the death rattle of a thousand Vietnamese sailors.

I am back at work today but for a reason I am yet to fathom. I might actually keel over at my desk, or so it feels.

Anyway - look on the bright side - only another 6 working days til I'm off for 10 WHOLE DAYS! Wheeeee!

Look, here's Archie, our Crimble tree! Isn't he bonny? Crimble is hurtling towards us at a rate of some knots, it's quite scary. I am all set, presents carefully researched, bought and wrapped as they have been for some weeks now - I am SO smug.

I do however have a couple of last minute secret santas at work that I need to get things made for, so I will have to do that tonite in between tidying up and trying not to slip into a Venos-induced coma.

A parcel of JOY arrived from America this afternoon from my cousin Anne in Cincinnati - 7 whole presents for me! I am so excited to open those.

Must go and cough up some more phlegm now :(

The whole of Swindon was flooded.

2006-12-07T13:12:00.000Z

Spam Fax
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

Dear trade service direct.

Thank you for your spam fax, the third one this morning! I am thrilled that you are in touch with your early-90's side sufficiently to provide this distraction in my otherwise dull day.

I am interested in the action trousers, however, I cannot fathom for the life of me why anyone would wish them NOT to have the excellent knee pads you have suggested as an add on.

I may wish to order 2 pairs, so if you could make some suggestions, I will consider my purchase carefully. I'd appreciate your early response what with Christmas coming up.

Many thanks

Claire Brown (Mrs)

How can they expect us to be awake at 10am? It's outrageous.

2006-12-06T22:42:00.000Z

JEEZO.

That is all I can say really to sum up last week. Worked mental long hours to get a project finished which should never have arisen in the first place. I can't even talk about, I'm so peeved.

Anyway! Had a great weekend in Newcastle with Lee, Jo and Ryan this weekend, but forgot to take my camera, so no photos. The fair at the Cluny on Sunday was a phenomenal success! Our best day ever!

Had a great evening with the crafters last nite at Mono, where we knitted, ate, drank and chatted - very relaxed and a great chance to learn more about our new friends!

I am scarily organised for Christmas. I have bought all the presents, wrapped them all up, made my cards, distributed most of them - and I am feeling very smug about that of course, mwuhahahaa.

A few swap parcels have arrived recently, one very disappointing, so I am going to overhaul my post about what I am looking for I think and going to have to be a lot more strict with myself over what I send I think! It's good to have a plan, as they say. No more for me til after Crimbo anyway, I am rooked til the new year!

I am having a nice evening by myself tonite, wrapping, making some more cards and watching Love Actually and having a mini-weep - it's so sad and so happy at the same time!

Off to bed for me now.

Mama Mia is shit. There's no plot.

2006-11-28T19:09:00.000Z

Oh, I got my hair cut too - about an inch or so hacked off. It's shoulder length now. A bit too short I think, but it grows so quickly, that it won't be long before it's swinging about again.

Did I mention I got a fabulous cardigan in Asda for £11.20? If not, you're the last person on earth I haven't yet told! I have it on in this photo - along with the fab and cosy monkey mittens from a swap (that look a bit more like stoats I think!).

You can buy a nativity scene in Woolworths. They throw in the kids.

2006-11-28T19:08:00.000Z

Swap from Thailand
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

I've received a few swap parcels lately - this one courtesy of Liz in Northern Thailand. What a great monkey!

I've sent out 3 parcels this week - Shalyn, Tracy and Krista, be on the look out! Looking forwards to some more parcels and then swapping rest over Crimbo!

Craft fairs were good this weekend, exceeded my loose target which is always a winner. I got so much accomplished this weekend - almost finished my Crimbo shopping, wrapped it all and made all my Crimbo cards AND wrote and addressed them. Sadly all this exertion did not agree with me - shortly after cleaning the bathroom, my lungs filled with phlegm and I could not breath for the next 36 hours. I spent Monday having my gammy eyes get worse and alternately not breathing and watching cash in the attic.

Back to work today to discover a mountain of things to be done with no time to be doing them in. Roll on Crimble and TEN DAYS OFF!

I didn't hear my phone. Therefore I could not answer it.

2006-11-24T19:01:00.000Z

How could I have forgotten to blog about this - it's satsuma season!

I am quite enamoured with the little citrus guys. But only satsumas. No clementines, mandarins, tangerines. Got to be satsumas. There are some philistines out there who will tell you there's no difference. But there so is. Satsumas are looser of skin, not so tart. A bit like me, arf arf.

Today, I discovered this - my dream fabric. I think I have died and gone to sock monkey heaven.

If you want to get a big bird, you need a big worm

2006-11-22T22:08:00.000Z

Swap from Thailand
Originally uploaded by mooosh.

What a fabulous parcel to receive on a dull, interminably boring day at work!

This parcel came all the way from Thailand and the monkey really did make my day, nay week. It was full of the sorts of things I expected to receive from a swap and more - thanks Liz!

In other news - I heard someone on TV the other day mentioning that they didn't realise the word chav was pronounced ch-av when they first saw it - they thought it was sh-av. A posh chav will henceforth be called a sh-av. And they invariably have mull-ays (rahter than mullets).

I have a new found respect for David Gest now having watched him on I'm A Celebrity ... He's actually almost human. Who'd have thunk it?

I don't want to cause a panic but I can smell burning

2006-11-22T21:32:00.000Z

Wheeeeeeeeeee!

That's the sound of time hurtling along. I can't believe it's almost the end of November already! Where is time going? It's not been spent blogging, clearly. I've been so busy recently, there's hardly a moment to draw breath.

So, what have I been doing? Well, a round up is as foll-ows:

Turns out I am not diabetic after all, but it's on it's way. Metabolic syndrome is what it is, which is like diabetes-lite. Basically I need to lose a lot of weight to curb the blood sugar levels and to stop my body rejecting the perfectly good insulin I am churning out. Nothing I didn't already know, but if you see me, don't let me have cake.

I do have conjunctivitis! Which is really lingering, despite the sticking stuff in my eyes at regular intervals (prescribed, not just for the hell of it). I've also had a snuffly cold for weeks now, it just won't go - me and everyone else in Scotland it seems.

I've converted to xfm of a morning, ever since I turned on the radio one morning last week to hear Dominik Diamond saying the word fud. It was so exciting that Jo texted me to make sure I'd heard.

I've invented a new range for Miso Funky - Rejects. I am immensely proud of them as I thought they might be a bit crap, but people have seemed to take to them rather well.

We've been crafting our lives away and are very busy with various craft fairs up til Christmas now. Our own market was on Saturday past and went very well, so fingers crossed we will hit our self-imposed target by the end of the year.

Lee is away on holiday tomorrow, without me! Him and his friend Euan are meeting in London and then heading to the nearest travel agent to book something - they don't know where or how long for, but I really hope they have a great time! I'll be living the singleton life in the meantime - or, more accurately, be staying in and crafting a lot!

I've been taking part in the cultural swap thing and had some great parcels so far from the US, Singapore and my favourite so far from Thailand. I have a few more lined up too, so fingers crossed for more good stuff from afar.

I've found myself glued to Torchwood on TV - I think it might be the accents! Lord knows I am a sucker for the Welsh accent - I did marry Lee after all! It's not like me to like what I consider to be a slightly geeky program, but I heartily recommend it!

We've booked our flights to Cincinnati next year! We're off to see Anne and Jim there next April/May and on the way back we have 4 days in Noo Yoik! We are both SOOOO excited about it.

I think that is the salient points! Oh, me, Jo and Mar-c had a great weekend in Newcastle, we had a great meal in a Teppen-yaki restaurant (where you sit round a metal hotplate and the chef cooks your dinner in front of you - GREAT fun) and had a fab day at the Cluny market. Photos on Flickr here.

This week has been busy - Monday was spent photographing babygros until the early hours for the MF shop, last nite we were interviewed by a girl who wants to write about us for a course she is doing and tout us round some magazines and tonite was spent mostly waiting for Tesco to deliver my shopping and packing Lee's bag for him as he's working nite shift (again :( ).

I ham off now to work on an idea I am developing for the rejects - fingers crossed it works out as planned!

All he does is wander around the flat in tracksuit bottoms.

2006-11-09T17:18:00.000Z

Lee told me such a heart-warming story last night.

He met his mum for lunch yesterday and Lee happened to mention that he'd opened the blinds that morning to see a robin sat in the tree outside our bedroom window. Not particularly unusual for this time of year, but nonetheless.

Lee's mum also has a robin - it comes to her garden every winter and stays there for the duration of the cold period.

It transpires that Lee's dad, who died when he was but an early teenager had said to Lee's mum many years ago that when he died he'd come back as a robin.

I like to think that it's the same robin, keeping an eye on them both.

I am going to take the scenic route.

2006-11-08T16:31:00.000Z

Miso Funky Rejects!
Originally uploaded by mooshimooshisan.

Well, it's been an interesting week or so, in which the following happened:

We pretty much sold out of baby things at the craft fair in Kilmacolm. It was a great day out, despite us getting hideously lost on the way and ending up almost back where we started. And I won 2 prizes in the raffle! On the way back we went to KFC which was most welcome and we ate chicken until our eyes bulged in general celebration of a good morning's work.

Saturday evening was spent watching terrible television and making the latest addition in the Miso Funky range - MF Rejects. The premise is that these critters will be the guys who didn't make the grade to be Hamish's sidekicks. They'll all be named and have a little bio attached to them, so I hope people will buy into that!

Sunday - I slept for 12 solid hours and awoke feeling hungover, but unsleepy. Jo and I went to Ikea for some craft supplies - a most unexpected source of great packaging, papers, etc. Then on Sunday evening, a quick change and we were off to St Andrews In The Square to see Rebecca sing with her band the City Sinners. The evening was an homage to Gram Parsons, an artist I know sod all about, but the tunes were interspersed with a chronological background to the man, so it was not only entertaining, but educational too! Sadly, we had to leave just into the second half as we'd parked ridiculously far away on a limited metre, but I hope to be able to see them again soon. Rebecca is such an amazing singer! It brought tears to my eyeballs, I was so proud to see her up there!

Sorry, I will stop being sentimental now! MF wise, we've been on a bit of a high, as we've managed to make a few sales through the website to random people. This has caused us great joy and as such we've taken slight leave of our senses and decided to give free UK shipping up til Christmas. Hopefully this will encourage people to buy! Go on, you know you want that disco tie!

This week at work has been a bit mental, so I am knackered. I had more tests at the doctors yesterday re the diabetes thing. They said that my blood sugar is too high and they are doing follow up tests to decide what it is. It's most likely not diabetes, but some other thing like it that I can't remember what it's called, apparently. So I've now had blood taken twice in a week and I really don't like it. I feel a bit shabby now but otherwise fine, apart from the eyeballs which are still itching!

Enough of this medical talk! MF is going on tour this weekend! We are heading to the Cluny market in sunny (we hope) Newcastle this Sunday and leaving early on Saturday for a bit of a road trip! Me, Mar-c and Jo are heading south to take in the delights of Tyneside, hopefully visit the enormo-craft store there and see the Angel of the North. We're staying in Tynemouth at the No 61 hotel, by the seaside! So we are all getting slightly overexcited about it now.

Better get making some more stock!

Who wants to win a stuffed bear or a goldfish?

2006-11-02T16:41:00.000Z

Christmas Crafts, Nov 2006
Originally uploaded by mooshimooshisan.

Last nite chez Brown was spent alternately eating supernoodles, watching Celtic get royally humped by Benfica and making these bad boys.

Tonite I will be:

Eating pie
Knitting something
Worrying about having to have another blood test next week to discover if I am diabetic or not

It's no good, someone's already done the Sudoku.

2006-11-01T17:32:00.000Z

Pumpkins!
Originally uploaded by mooshimooshisan.

I have been to Ikea twice in 2 days. Shoot me.

We had pumpkins on the doorstep last nite which seemed to scare off most of the local kids - anyone wanting a hundredweight of fruit salad bars, let me know.

My eyes are still red and itchy and angry and scaly and ugh.

My work has gone into meltdown.

On the upside, I have done most of my crimbo shopping and it's not even a whole day thru November yet.

I am away home again to lie in a darkened room and panic about making things.

How come your cups are so clean? Mine go brown after a while.

2006-10-30T17:28:00.000Z

Swap Parcel #2
Originally uploaded by mooshimooshisan.

If your name is on this list, you should expect a parcel very soon:

Lea Ann
Adeline
Diana
Liz

Not disclosing who is getting this parcel, but I wish it were me!

I have conjunctivitis. I am not happy. I am going home to coory in, it's inky black out there and not even 6pm!

Crack whore is an insult. Hooker is a compliment.

2006-10-27T10:47:00.000Z

Sock Monkeys!
Originally uploaded by mooshimooshisan.

Well, THAT was an experience! Our trip to the Polish club turned out to be somewhat how I would imagine a trip to the restaurant in purgatory would be.

I suppose it didn't help that we arrived later than anticipated due to horrendous traffic hampering Lee's dash home from work in the wilds of Bellshill. But when we did arrive, we stealthily negotiated the buzzer entry door (by tagging on to the back of another, clearly more seasoned party of visitors) and soon we were in the hallway of what seemed to be someone's gran's house.

A quick call to Mum's mobile confirmed we were in fact in the correct place and Andrew soon appeared from downstairs to escort us down to the basement where the bar and restaurant are.

The bar seemed very nice, quite cosy and with some authentic Poles scattered around drinking Polish drinks. We had time to order in the zubrowka and apple juices and then file through to the restaurant. The decor is reminiscent of a guesthouse in Torquay circa 1958, with little Hansel and Gretel style carved back chairs, but as the place only had one other table of diners (the ones we snuck in with), we thought we'd be fine for eating this side of midnight.

How wrong we were. Despite the other table only arriving 5 minutes before us, to cut a long, long story short, they had completely finished both starter and main course by the time we even had a sniff of our zupa. There was one very harrassed Polish lady in charge of cooking, waiting on tables, clearing plates, etc and she was clearly not expecting 12 hungry people to show up at 8pm.

In fact, it was just a shade off 2 HOURS from ordering to actually having some food in front of us, during which time my dad entertained us with his mildly drunken antics and his tales of how him and Aleks' dad Valdek are going to get on like a house on fire, despite the fact neither of them speak each other's language. It sounds like it would be a LONG 2 hours, but in actual fact, it wasn't too bad.

What was bad that after all that waiting, when the first round of soup arrived, it was cold. Not just a little bit less hot than you'd like, but actually cold. So Aleks had to take her and Lee's soup back to the kitchen and explain that it was stone cold - very handy that she could obviously say that in Polish.

That aside, the food was actually really nice. The soup I had was lovely, kind of chickeny broth with pasta and carrot. Lee's was some kind of broth with a sausage and half a hard boiled egg in it (which caused my father to almost fall off his chair when I asked Lee how his sausage was) and there was the ubiquitous beetroot soup (borscht) with croquette (which is a bit like a findus crispy pancake with mushrooms in it).

Our main courses arrived surprisingly quickly after that and were hot (or at least the bits that were supposed to be hot were), much to everyone's relief (bearing in mind it was after 10pm by this point). I think Aleks was pretty embarrassed for her fellow countrywoman's poor showing, but really I think the woman was just overwhelmed by it all, especially just being by herself. We were joking about seeing her with her coat on, walking out the door, but after last night, she may well decide to do that!

Main courses were plentiful - I had goulash with potato pancake and salad which was lovely. The potato pancake was a little like a giant potato rosti and omlette like - ie folded over half moon shape with goulash inside. Lee had pierogi, which is little half moon shaped dumplings with meat inside (very reminiscent of San Francisco's pot stickers - mmmmm!) and Dad had some pork cutlet-y thing, and it was pronounced a good choice by all (except Mum possibly who couldn't get round the fact that there was gravy and cold salad on the same plate).

Thankfully, we had been forewarned that the desserts were all sold out (at 90 pence for cheesecake, I'm not surprised!), so we paid up (only £35 for a 2 course meal for 6 people!) and got back out into the cold and headed home. The food was lovely but the service really was farcical. I think Aleks is going to go back at a weekend to see if it's any better, and if it's not possibly defect to being Ukranian or something! ;)

Sadly, I didn't get to take any photos of the evening, such was our bewildered state, but I did get some photos of our family, relaxing at home!

Beads! October 2006

2006-10-26T12:59:00.000Z

Beads! October 2006
Originally uploaded by mooshimooshisan.

These are said beads from my previous post - booo Blogger :(

I asked for an Americano. I think this is a latte.

2006-10-26T12:46:00.000Z

I had such a nice day yesterday. I went into town and met Mum and we had a wander around and generally I was very happy not to be at work.

We visited the new Matalan on Jamaica Street which was most unexpected - I had no idea it was there. We also took some jeans back to DP (taking things back is integral to any shopping trip for me - things just don't fit) which were inordinately long, despite saying regular length on the label and had a swatch round VV Roleaux or however you spell it.

I must admit to being slightly let down by this shop, as I had built it up in my head as being some kind of wonderful dreamworld where I would bankrupt myself buying lots of lovely things, but in actual fact I found it alarmingly easy to keep my purse in my bag, so uninspired was I by it all. It's no Nash's that's for sure. Nash's, or C. F. Nash to give it it's full name was without a doubt my absolute dream shop. It was the best, biggest and most reasonably priced traditional stationery shop I've ever encountered.

It stood on the site of VV Roleaux on Miller Street and sold everything you could ever want, stationery wise. It had things like 100 brown envelopes secured with an elastic band for 40p. And it started selling Christmas cards in March, but you could get lost over it's 2 floors for days in a whirl of marker pens and paperclips. The smell of old musty books and ink was so exciting as you went in the door, to the sound of the wee bell above it pinging and it was always mobbed. Unfortunately it closed down a few years aso, seemingly without any warning and I was gutted! There has not yet been another shop to surpass it for me in terms of excitement (although as Lee will testify, Old Navy comes close!).

Anyway, after that I took Mum to Ichiban on Queen Street for her first Japanese food encounter, which we both enjoyed. It's not quite as nice as the Partick branch in terms of decor, service or food (my noodles were a bit undercooked), but it was lovely nonetheless. We then took a stroll through Princes Square and up to John Lewis for a swatch in the wool aisles and a huge slab of strawberry cheesecake and by then we were pooped and it was time to go home.

I was ready to drop, but a restorative Coke Zero got me in the mood for knitting whilst watching back to back episodes of Two and a Half Men on Paramount and I managed to get an entire scarf finished in one evening for my Craftster swap! I am very pleased with the way the colours turned out, but I am not posing a picture until the recipient has received it!

However, for your viewing pleasure, please see a collection of beads which I am going to turn into some jewels this weekend hopefully. I've not yet decided if they are for Miso Funky stock or Crimbo presents, but either way, they can be reproduced if anyone likes them!

Tonight I am bowing out of the trip to see We are Scientists in favour of going to the Polish club for dinner with mum and dad, Andrew and Aleks and Lee. I am quite excited to try out some of the things on the menu, although I think I will be giving the chicken in jelly a miss . . .

**Blogger is being an arse with the photos for the billionth time this year, so will need to see them later!

10 things you didn't know you didn't know

2006-10-24T12:09:00.000Z

I'd rather have a toasted bagel than a slice of toasted bread.
I have never been on television, but I have been on radio twice.
My favourite colour used to be brown, but now it's green.
I love the smell of bleach.
I am scared of the dark.
I have trouble saying the word domino aloud.
I've had my big toenails surgically removed.
I read books faster than you.
I don't like marmite.
I got the mumps when I was 25.

I don't think you can class Greggs as a patisserie

2006-10-23T07:05:00.000Z

Well! What a real weekend of highs and lows it has been!

The Miso Funky Market continues on the road to global domination! It was another good day on Saturday, despite the quiet streets, the head count was healthy and our stall did pretty well. Our new stock is going down extremely well and we've managed to shift a few of the older items too. On the downside, the library seem incapable of following even the simplest of instructions, even when they are written down in red pen in capital letters, so we had to spend the first hour of the day humffing tables about and making last minute changes to the table plan. A few technical hitches with the music and the projection also meant that we were woefully tardy in our set-up, but we got there in the end and after a while we were struggling to keep up with customers.

We had some very exciting news on Saturday of a potential Miso Funky development that I am not going to jinx by talking about, but watch this space! Suffice to say it was exciting enough for Jo and I to be jumping around like loons out in the hallway of the library, that's all you're getting for now.

The next low was our unfortunate run-in with the police. Jo got done for parking on a wiggly line outside the library despite the fact there is nowhere else to load up and despite the fact that countless other people have done it in the same location. Not that that makes it right, but still, it was pretty galling to be unlucky enough to be caught. No amount of uncontrollable tears on Jo's part could persuade bad cop to not be a dick and just give her a telling off, but good cop was at least genuinely concerned for her well-being. I, meanwhile, sat in the passenger seat, paralysed with the fear that they were going to bust me for imaginary crime. By the end of it I was almost weeping myself!

Saturday evening I can barely even recall what happened. I had a snooze to try and shake off the headache that started pounding in my noggin at the precise second the police car's siren started wailing and then repacked all of our crafty stuff into a smaller, more manageable set-up for Sunday's craft expedition to the Botanic Gardens.

Sunday morning was spent collecting my mum (who's up from Suffolk for the week), having a flask of tea leak over my jeans in the most unfortunate area and trying to make a t shirt stick to a concrete wall with sellotape. It was a slow day on the sales front to start off with, but it really picked up in the afternoon and in the end exceeded my vague weekend target in the takings department.

Sunday evening we all piled into Lee's mum's car and headed off to sunny Blantyre for dinner chez Andrew. It was a very pleasant evening and I am most jealous of his huge big house. Imagine the craft possibilities where you could set up a work station and not have to trip over your stock every time you enter the living room! And you didn't have to wrestle with the sliding wardrobe doors each time you wanted to check where the glue is! And a whole corner of your teeny tiny living room wasn't overtaken with wool! Oh, the possibilities!

This week is shaping up to be a busy un. Tonight I am planning to go straight home from work and go to bed, fully clothed and I might not even bother taking my shoes off. I am totally knackered after an entire weekend of what is essentially still working, albeit not for my real job. My real job was unfortunately splashed over the tabloid news this weekend, and not in a good way, so it's not the best of atmospheres today, after it being so buoyant on Friday (when we got an acupressure massage free - it was great! I am so going back!). Mum's up, so it is looking like a family dinner on Tuesday evening, hopefully a day's holiday on Wednesday to do some mother/daughter bonding and going to see We Are Scientists with Jo on Thursday nite.

Lee is unfortunately working Friday and Saturday nites, so not only will I not see much of him, but I am on my own for the epic trek to the dentist on Saturday morning! For those of you who don't know, I have a real issue with my teeths. I have spent well in excess of £500 having them filled in, filled out, covered up, root canaled, scaled, polished, crowned, veneered ... you name it, my teeths have had it. In fact, the last dentist I was with I saw so much of, I got a Christmas card from him and was practically on first name terms with his wife and kids. My new dentist though (well, I say new, but he's been there about 2 years) has a permanent cold and had a sense of humour bypass somewhere along the line. So it's not as fun as it used to be.

My front teeths have been melting away gradually for some years now and although they now have veneers, I still always feel like he's going to say, oh no, they'll need to come out and then I would want to DIE. I live in constant fear of something happening to them. They're the first thing I check when I wake of a morning ... tongue round the top ... the bottom ... yes, they're still there. I wake up in the middle of the night and check them and even whilst I am typing this, I am checking .. yes, they're still there. So to say I am a little obsessed with it, is putting it lightly. Still, I have managed to go from having an appointment every 2 weeks like I was a few years back (when I was in almost constant agonising pain, relieved only by high doses of Nurofen and Panadol together, gargling with soluble asprin and baby teething gel) and am now back to 6 monthly check ups like most other normals. Fingers crossed that continues this time.

This weekend coming is also one of the few free weekends I have in the run up to Christmas. We are craft-fair-ing like demons, so other than this weekend, the only free one is at the end of November, when hopefully Jo, Mar-c and I are going on a roadtrip to Lossiemouth to see her hometown. So, I had better get going on the old Crimbo shopping! Only 9 weeks to go ... :

Who would abandon a lovely child like you?

2006-10-18T16:10:00.000Z

Today has been one long whirlwind of mystery mini-bar charges and barclaycard being arseholes. On top of my work woes, I am close to jacking it all in and going to live on a shingle beach with only a windbreak for shelter.

I am feeling like I have man-flu and I want to go and burrow into the duvet, but instead I have been forced into a life of domain name hell. And I have a billion things to do outside of work, and I just want to go and sleep.

Moan over. I think we've almost decided on a time to go to Cincinnati next year (April/May) and my brother and his lovely girlfriend are going to get married next September in Poland (she's Polish), so 2 trips to look forwards to, almost.

I am going to ride out the last half hour before freedom now.

Maybe. Another day. Not tomorrow.

2006-10-17T17:28:00.000Z

I am Jack's rage.

I have been running at an all time high (low?) this week on the work rage front. I am just too outraged to even talk about it.

Instead, I am going to knit a scarf for one of my 2 lovely swapees this evening.

Over and out.

If I had known he was German I wouldn't have bothered.

2006-10-16T11:29:00.000Z

Well, we didn't go to Coignashee as it is now closed. That's a bit of a shame, as it really was a lovely place. We didn't even go to Newcastle, oh no, we went to Leeds and then to York. It has been one of my vague ambitions in life to stay at Malmaison, and so we booked a swanky room for Saturday nite in Malmaison Leeds and off we went.

It was quite an enjoyable journey south until we reached junction 45 of the m1 and discovered that it was very closed. So we had quite a haul round Leeds trying to find Malmaison, a jaunt through a hideous shopping centre to avail ourselves of their map and then a journey round the ring road back to where we came in to find we had driven almost straight past it initially.

So slightly frazzled, we checked in and got to our room, only to find some woman on the phone there. Who said oh yes, I am just testing the phone - however, I heard her say as I entered the room oh i've got to go, I'll call you back. I was not amused. Anyway, the room was very nice, the bed palatial in it's proportions and we had just set about the important business of jumping on the bed like loons when yet another member of staff just breezed into the room unannounced. I was incensed and moved enough to call reception and ask if anyone else wanted to join us. Huh. You expect this from a Travelodge, but not a swanky place.

Mini bar explored, towels messed up, we took to the streets of Leeds for a wander around. We have been to Leeds before but only briefly to go to a wedding shop, back in the days before marriage. We took note of a nice looking Thai restaurant on the way, with a view to going back for dinner. We had a nice wander round, went to a few shops including my favourite Muji (yes, I spent a fortune, but some of it was Christmas presents, so I feel justified). We had meant to bring some of the free wine I got from Smile to quaff, but in our haste to leave home had forgotten it, so we set about trying to find somewhere to purchase some from. Not a single off licence to be had! We thought we had found an Asda just a few minutes from our hotel, but it turned out to be their head office. So we had to make do with the hotel stuff which was overpriced and not all that nice.

Back to the restaurant, we sauntered over at just after 7, famished as we were, expecting it to be quiet, such was it's location - however, it was absolutely packed and we were given a table only if we could be finished within an hour (of course we said yes, and then took our damn sweet time about it). Not even my sawasdee ka-ing could raise a smile from the maitre'd, but the staff were very pleasant and before long we were tucking into a very tasty meal indeed. I would recommend the Chao Phraya restaurant in Leeds to anyone! The food was delicious, very reasonably priced and you could even pay in bhat! I had some left over bhat, which I left as a tip and the waitress was delighted. The pancake with custard is to die for, although a little alarming in colour (bright green).

After a restful night's sleep in the enormous bed at the hotel, we were up earlyish and out to the car, having decided to go to York on the way back rather than spend the day in Leeds. I had tried to book into somewhere in York, as I went for a week at school and was keen to go back and see it again without being distracted by boys and being bullied by the cooler kids and indeed it was just as lovely as I remembered.

You could spend days exploring all the little alleys and all the old churchy places, but we contented ourselves with a stroll round the high spots and a hot pork sandwich and chips (it was FABULOUS). We took in the Shambles and a little market before heading up
to the Minster for the obligatory York photo opportunities. We also found the Japanese shop where I put my language skills to good use again with the staff, to squeals of
delight from the shopkeeper.

After all that excitement, we headed home and arrived in Glasgow just in time for some tea and then bed. The photos are here, for your viewing pleasure.

I couldn't live in a country with more than one time-zone.

2006-10-12T16:29:00.000Z

I am finding it quite tough to get back into this time zone. Each morning this week I have woken up at between 3 and 4 am wide awake and ready to go. Which means by the time tea time rolls around, I am only fit for crawling into bed, thus perpetuating the sleepy cycle. I am hopeful that by the end of this weekend I will have caught up, but that will involve staying up late one day and I just don't see it happening. I will need to get Lee to poke me with a stick to keep me awake.

Anyway, it's been a week of unremitting cheesed-off-ness for me this week. Work is a monumental cocksucker at the moment for reasons just to dull to go into. I think it's just me being tired. I hope so, anyway. I seem to have no time for anyone but yet too much time for stuff. I dunno.

Last nite was the MF market meet-up which a whole 4 people attended. I am glad we have made these non-compulsory now, as it is quite annoying to make these plans only for no one to show up, so it makes it more of a social occasion than a thinly-veiled guise to collect money from people. At last nite's event, in between the roar of the football crowd, I learned that apparently Judy Finnegan is an alcoholic and that one of our marketeers has a book full of photos of mullets she has collected.

Tonite sees the return of Japanese class, meaning I am busy every Thursday evening now until Easter. Unless of course I drop out of the class, which is entirely possible, as I have done zero studying and I don't really feel like I am going to be up to Level 2. Maybe I can transfer to Level 1. We'll see. I have been trying to cram some information in this lunchtime, but there was important acorn gathering to do in Animal Crossing, so I didn't get much further than remembering how to introduce myself and scrawling my date of birth down on a piece of paper.

This weekend, Lee and I have decided to DO something. What this something is, we have yet to decide. We had thought on a trip to Coig Na Shee, but as it's closing very soon (or maybe has already), we may have to think of an alternative. Liverpool and Newcastle are being bandied about as possible alternatives, but we may just stay in Glasgow ...

And I'm telling you that you're gonna need a raincoat.

2006-10-11T16:33:00.000Z

I just discovered this. Which is a coincidence, as I was just discussing cultural swaps with someone earlier. I am hoping to make a cultural swap soon.

Things I can offer to potential swapees:

Knitted things
Small, strange looking things made of felt
Scottish things
British candy/sweets
Monkey related items
Paper things - stationery, stickers
British magazines
Craft supplies - yarn, beads, fabric
Funky stuff
Words of (faux) wisdom

Things I'd like to receive

Yarn
Monkey things
Sock monkey related items
Beads
Fabric
Savoury snacks/candy
Green apple flavour Extra chewing gum
Things from Old Navy
stationery
Japanese cuteness
Japanese childrens reading books/school books

I am a crafter, so crafty things are always a winner for me. I am a big fan of all things Japanese and cute and am currently (trying to) learn to speak Japanese. Oh, and candy of course. Oh, and I don't have my ears pierced, so no earrings!

Although new to this swapping stuff, I do know what I don't want to do. I don't want to be going round shops with a shopping list for you. I want to "swap" things I already have with you or stuff I can make/easily obtain.

Holding down a full time job and running my own business means I don't have the time to go hunting round Top Shop - that's what Ebay's for people! If there is a thing you specifically want, then I will try and get it, but I'm afraid I can't accommodate specific but vague demands - e.g. one brass rubbing of a shire horse with a green frame. :)

Have you seen my envelopes? Could you check in your bag please?

2006-10-10T14:08:00.000Z

I fucking hate Pink Floyd. I hate them with a passion usually reserved for hating paedos.

That's all.

On the road again

2006-10-10T11:23:00.000Z

I'm back, not in a tracksuit (name that song) but in the sombre black of UK officewear. But what of the intervening few days, I hear you cry?

Well, Friday evening Ammie and I spent whirling round the Siam square area, which I had somehow managed to miss entirely before. It is a warren of little stores and stalls, a lot of clothes stores, Thai music stores and of course, jewellery stores. I bought some more great stuff for MF and for myself and we had a general wander round. There was a big area in the centre (that'll be the square, I guess) where there were some Thai bands playing - we arrived there just as a scary Thai metal band finished. It was such a great atmosphere, something that could never happen in Glasgow, not least because the weather wouldn't stand for it.

After this, I went home on the BTS and decided to tackle packing. This was not as easy as I thought it would be in the end, as I had managed to accumulate quite a lot of stuff during my stay! I went out with one lightly packed suitcase and came back with one stuffed suitcase that had to be sat on to close it and an overflowing holdall. So packing took a lot longer than anticipated and I went to bed safe in the knowledge that I didn't have to be up for work in the morning. I had planned on going to Chatuchak market, but after packing texted Mimi who had offered to take me to cancel, as there was just no way I could pack anything else (and it's a given that you can't go to Chatuchak without buying a mountain of stuff!).

So, Saturday morning I spent pottering around, watching TV and generally not doing much at all. The ironing board was still there - never did figure that one out. I had arranged to meet Jamie on Saturday afternoon at the office as he was working, so I headed down there in record time due to no traffic and we hit the street. Ake and his brother Arm came along and we ended up going to the cinema to see Cars which was just out there (it was pretty good, for the record) and to Subway/Auntie Anne's at Paragon for some lunch. Auntie Anne's pretzels is one of my favourite snack stops in the US, so I was pretty delighted to see one in Bangkok and promptly ate my own bodyweight in pretzels. Just as well, as the popcorn at the cinema seemed to be salmon flavoured.

After the cinema (we arrived just in time to stand for the national anthem at the start), Jamie and I went shopping around MBK and Patpong for DVDs and other general stuff. I managed to squeeze it in to my case, but only just. I bought a pair of Puma trainers for £6.50! What a bargain, even if they do fall apart after 5 minutes. They are way too comfy. Anyway, I managed to do some more shopping that was quite unintentional, bought a bundle of DVDs including series 3 of Las Vegas (all 5 discs) for about a fiver - it's not even finished showing on TV here. It's great quality too.

I took my last tuk tuk back to the hotel (it was quite a nerve-racking journey as we hit a pothole at one point and actually took off) and spent the rest of the evening trying to cram everything into my bags and worrying about excess luggage charges. My ride to the airport showed up this time and we set off around midnight through the relatively empty streets of Bangkok. We hit a traffic jam at some traffic lightsout past the night bazaar which was strange for that time of night - it turned out that a marathon was takin g place and the police were holding up the traffic to let the runner pass. A marathon. At nearly 1 am. That certainly rounded off my trip nicely!

We arrived at the airport eventually and it certainly is a lot less shabby than the old one. I checked in with ease (and didn't have to pay any extra for heavy bags, mwuhahahaha) and paid my airport tax (they charge you 500 bhat to leave the country) and then began the lengthy trek to the departure gates. On the way, I passed an enormous statue thing of some Buddha figures which was most unexpected and quite spectacular.

Sadly, my first flight out almost was the journey from hell. It was quite a busy flight, slightly delayed and I was sandwiched in between a Swedish man with a heavy cold (and apparently testicles so large that he needed all my leg room too) and 2 of the fattest Asian men I have ever encountered in my life. I only mention their ethnicity as once they had sat down practically on top of me, and proceeded to sweat directly on to me, they then started to converse with their friends in the row opposite in another language and throw things backwards and forwards with apparently the sole purpose of making me cry. No matter what the other language is, you can always tell when someone is talking about you, or slagging you off, and to say that I was feeling pretty uncomfortable is a mild understatement. In fact, so visible was my discomfort that a nice Japanese flight attendant took pity on me and found me 2 free seats at the front of the plane for me to move to. I was very glad and almost wept with relief that I didn't have to sit to what was surely Birmingham's family from hell for the entire duration of the flight.

Dubai airport was also easier to navigate this time, despite my flight departing from the furthest away gate possible from arrivals. I should have feigned a dodgy ankle or something to get a shot in one of those golf cart thingumies. This flight was possibly one of the best I've been on. It was so empty that I got my window seat and the other 2 seats next to it to myself, so not only did I get to spread out, I got to LIE DOWN for the whole flight! I was quite excited about that, as I often feel that if I could just lie down on a flight, I could put up with travelling just about anywhere. So it was great to be able to lounge around and watch movies and snooze in comfort.

Lovely, lovely Lee came to collect me from the airport and I was sooooo glad to see him after having been awake for approximately 36 hours on and off. He had cleaned the entire house from top to bottom, bought me lovely flowers and he made meatloaf for dinner, one of my favourites of his many recipes. I was so relieved to be home, I could have wept. Nothing too exciting seems to have happened while I've been away, although I do feel that I've been gone for about 4 months, not just over a week.

It's now Tuesday and I am having real trouble readjusting to GMT. I have been waking at around 3 am, wide awake and raring to go - but then of course by lunchtime, I am dead to the world. Yesterday I went home at lunch time to try and get some sleep, only to be kept awake by the sounds of bulldozers knocking down the last of the flats at the back of our house. I slept a bit but was awake around 4ish, so eventually got up around 6 am and tidied up, did some laundry, unpacked some more and generally pottered around until it was time to come to work.

Work clearly has not missed me while I've been away and nothing majorly exciting has taken place in Miso Funky world either. Jo is in Mexico, so I am doing the Miso Funky market meeting myself this Wednesday evening, ably assisted by Jo from Stella My Star - although the football's on, so we will probably just end up having a natter and then escaping the crowds. Japanese class starts again on Thursday evening, for which I have done the sum total of NO studying for, so I am hoping the first few weeks will be revision of last year (otherwise I am screwed).

I will bring this epic post to a close now and insist that you go and look at the photos instead here.

Oh the sights I have seen

2006-10-06T15:46:00.000Z

Well, because of the absolutely torrential rain last nite, our plans were scuppered and we did not get to go to Patpong/Silom as planned. But I did pop out to China at lunch time. Instead we headed for Central World Plaza (or World Trade Center as it also known) to the shop with the luxurious stationery department, Zen. Sadly, it was closed for renovations - sorry Mar-c (but I got you a different calendar today, more of that later!). Anyway, here's me getting way ahead of myself. I must set the scene first:

The rain was literally bouncing off the pavements again, worse than i have seen it before. I tried to take some photos out the office window (we are on the 24th floor, so the view is quite spectacular), but not sure how they will turn out (yes, I still have not remembered the data cable for the camera, so you'll have to wait til Monday now). The roads were flooded and the pavements nigh on empty, as everyone sheltered from the rain. So, Phop and Panny decided to come with me, Ammie and Mee to Central World and as Phop has a car, he decided to drive the short distance. It took us TWO HOURS to make it through the traffic! TWO HOURS! I didn't realise it at the time as we were having such a good time, but that is surely some sort of record. The 2 hours were taken up with them trying to teach me some Thai (krai kai kai gai!) and me teaching them some English tongue twisters (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers) and generally chatting.

When we got there, we headed to Fuji for some dinner and I managed to speak a little Thai and a little Japanese all in one meal, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. We then had a stroll round a different shop for Hello Kitty things (yes, I spent too much money on what is essentially rubbish) and then Panny introduced me to possibly my new favourite shop on earth, B2S. It is like a giant stationery and book store and I was in my element. Again, I spent way too much cash, but I enjoyed it which is surely the main thing!

I headed home after that and shared a taxi with Mee back to Oakwood, as it turns out she lives just 10 sois away from there (a soi is like a side street - so I am on soi 24 off Naradiwhas and she is soi 14). I got back to my room to discover an ironing board and iron in the middle of the lounge with no explanation provided - maybe they are trying to tell me something. They have still not taken the hint and taken my pool towel back to the gym for me, so the iron will remain where it is. I reckon some poor Japanese businessman is probably waiting patiently to iron his shirt for some important meeting or other in room 5055 or something. I had a chat with Lee and then went to bed.

This morning I was up early again and headed for some more pineapple and bacon. Yesterday, I braved the french toast, which turned out not to be the American, sweet, disgusting version and was actually proper french toast. I was quite looking forwards to it this morning - and lo and behold, they had none left. So I thought the pancakes would a good substitute. Only to discover they were made with possibly condensed milk - ugh.

Anyway, after breakfast, I took what was probably one of the longest journeys of my life to the office in yet another taxi. I surreptitiously took photos on my mobile of the highlights of the journey, so I hope to be able to post those when I get back. The taxi journey was rounded off by a nice security guard man opening the door to the taxi for me and stopping the traffic for me to cross the road when I got to the office - what a nice guy.

No sooner than I sat on my chair (which is broken - it keeps sliding down til I have practically got my chin on the desk) than I was asked if I fancied a trip to China Town at lunchtime. Does Hello Kitty love apples?! (clue: yes) It was suggested that we check out a huge jewellery store there that we got some stuff from before, so off we went in a taxi, me, Visit, Ammie and Mee and relatively sped across town.

China Town here is pretty much the real deal - much more authentic than Glasgow's that's for sure. I saw some pretty phenomenal sights - including an authentic Chinese man with the balancing-scale carrying thing on his shoulders with lots of raw fish in (photo to follow). And some strange things in the Chinese medicine shops - shark fins, jars of whole dried seahorses, dried fish stomachs ... I am glad we have the NHS.

Visit took us to a Chinese place for lunch which seemed to specialise in dim sum. I could understand very little on the menu apart from something called "fried goose foots" which was served with cabbage. We opted for noodles and a selection of about 8 different dim sum things, some custard buns and some banana fritters. Oh and some truly disgusting chrysanthemum juice. It tasted a bit like Night Nurse and was so sickly and cough medicine-y that I had to water it down before I could even pretend to enjoy it. This princely feast for 4 people, which would probably have been around £40+ at home cost under £6 in total.

After this feast, we set off for the enormo-jewellery store along the road. We walked the half mile or so down to the store and I must becoming acclimatised to the heat as I was not suffering too much (and my hair is still mostly straight - it's been wilting in the heat). It was great to walk through China Town and I am only sorry that there is no way to capture the smells and the sounds at the same time as taking the photos. A great experience.

Now we're back at the office, having picked up some more stuff for MF. It's my last day at work now, so we are finishing off the training things, sipping frozen raspberry tea from Starbucks (delicious) and eating a strange concoction which may or may not be what tapioca is made from - it tastes like coconut cream biscuits, has the consistency of boiled potatoes and grit and looks like a giant barbecued parsnip.

Tonight I think we will be once again attempting the Silom/Siam area if the rain holds off (touch wood, so far it has) and my last full evening of shopping before heading home tomorrow.

Looks like rain again

2006-10-05T18:14:00.000Z

There is a saying that when one is tired of London, one is tired of life. I like to think that it easily translates to shopping. And you'll be pleased to hear, I have not yet tired of life. Or shopping. Or, for that matter, Bangkok, or kokkers as I like to think of it.

Last night, Ammie took me to Suan Lum Night Bazaar, this time I managed not to get off to such a clumsy start. I managed to pick up some great stuff for Miso Funky and also somehow managed to buy 6 handbags - however as only 1 (ok, possibly 2) of these are for me, I feel that it is justifiable. I do have a problem with this sort of shopping - everything I see I think, "oh, Jo would LOVE that!" Or "hmm, mum would like that for Christmas", or as has happened so far - "Oh Marceline would look great in this t-shirt" and "sock monkeys for 180 bhat, I'll take 2". I always see things for other people and end up not buying things for myself really, although I suppose that might just make me generous. Or stupid.

Anyway, as we are doing more shopping this evening, and I still have a surplus of bhat, then I will endeavour to make more of it this time. I think we are heading for Patpong and Silom this evening - cheap DVDs all round. I have a list of scary movies to try to find for Lee, so I will be scouring the streets - or at least visiting the shop I went to last time to see if they are still there.

Last night I saw some real-life, every day ladyboys and I must say, they were absolutely stunning. It takes quite a few glances to even pick up the suggestion that all is not what it seems - very convincing. And very beautiful! I felt quite the heifer next to them! I also probably got a better deal on things than when I went myself earlier in the week, as Ammie was quite the haggler.

It is strange not really knowing what is going on when people are talking around you. I can pick up a few words here and there (strangely the words for full, lovely and 24 - they don't come up in one sentence very often though), but phone conversations are a mystery, for example. I can get the "hello" part and then a lot of "ka ... ka, ka ... ka ... ka.. ka" and then several bursts of something unintelligible and the phone goes down - I don't know what goodbye is, so it always seems very abrupt. Also, strangely, many people seem to answer their mobiles with "hellooooo" rather than the the thai "sawasdee ka" - maybe like we'd say bonjour or something.

Today, training went a bit better - in that when I got to work the system had mysteriously fixed itself over night and of course the company who look after said they had done nothing. They are notorious for not admitting their faults, so I have complained to their boss and hopefully they will get their collective asses kicked. The girls seem to have picked it up well, so time will tell if they have understood what I've been trying to get across.

For lunch today, we went to the Greyhound cafe, downstairs in the enormo-foyer of the office building. It was torrential rain outside, so it was totally heaving and we waited forever for our food, but it was very nice (Japanese noodles with chicken, mushrooms and celery - obviously I picked that out) and for afters Panny bought me an iced chocolate - basically a frozen milkshake. It proceeded to coat my hands and the floor in chocolatey goo, I don't think I was very popular with the cafe folks.

The office building needs to be seen to be quite believed. There must be several thousand people working here and in the basement is like a mini shopping mall, with lots of cafes and shops. There was also today a stall giving away Thai GQ magazine and strangely a stall by the entrance selling duvet covers and quilted blankets. The latter was a lot busier than the former for some reason. Today, I also saw a monk in his robes on the escalator. If only I had had my camera out in time! It was quite a bizarre sight.

Tonight, me and some of the girls and Jamie are going to Silom and Patpong, as aforementioned, so hopefully more larks to report of tomorrow. I have cunningly managed to book a flight home on Sunday morning, so I have all day Saturday here too and still make it home for Sunday lunchtime - because of the time difference, I am gaining 6 hours, so I will be back to reality on Monday - but I bet it's still raining.

Something fishy ...

2006-10-04T09:41:00.000Z

Well, I was as good as my early night word last night and was in bed for 9pm. Not before I had some noodles and a swim though (not together) and once again watched some football on tv as it was the only thing I could understand that wasn't DOOM AND GLOOM news.

Today, I was up early, and at work for 830! And I paid for breakfast this time, they clearly weren't going to fall for that one twice. Crispy bacon and pineapple may sound like an odd combination, but try it, it's lovely.

Time to reflect upon some of the sights I have seen so far. Yesterday, sadly whilst I was in a car (in a jam, yes) and so not able to take photos, I saw not one, but two men guddling with fish at the roadside, seperately. The first man was on a moped and he had a large plastic barrel tied on to the pillion seat and he was decanting what looked like small fish from a large plastic tank in the back of a pick up truck into said barrel. Not quite sure why, but it was very intriguing, especially as this was all happening outside a building site. Maybe it wasn't fish, but I am sure it was.

The second man had 2 large fish in a black plastic bucket and was pouring water away into the gutter. The fish looked to be dead, and whilst this is perhaps not so unusual, consider that he was doing this by the side of a 6 lane highway in rush hour. Today I saw many interesting things, including a market stall under a motorway bridge selling nothing but flourescent orange overalls, a man playing the flute with a bucket hung round his ears by the side of the same 6 lane highway and a man with an umbrella strapped to his head - all at lunch time.

For lunch we travelled quite a distance to a district called Khlong Toei to eat ribs and chicken wings. This seemed to be a big treat by the reaction of everyone else and I must admit it was very tasty. But it was miles away from the office and with that and the traffic, well, we were gone for quite a while. Not that it's had too much of an impact on training today - I've not been able to do any as our system to manage things is dead and the Canadian company that runs it seems to have disappeared, despite their claims of being open 24 hours a day. It's most frustrating.

The rest of the week is shaping up to be quite busy. Some of the girls are taking me back to Suan Lum tonight, Jamie is taking me to the cinema tomorrow and I still have trips to Chatuchak and Zen department store (ostensibly to get a Hello Kitty calendar for marveline, but really to ogle their enormous stationery department and buy nice pens) to fit in too.

But now I must go and try one more time to shout at Canadians before I combust with rage.

oh oh

2006-10-03T17:46:00.000Z

well, that was a mistake - the pizza. I have been chucking it up since about 8pm last night. Big style illness, not good, doubly not good in a foreign country when you don't have your loving husband to hold your hair out the way and mop your brow. I had a little weep this morning when I thought of missing him, but I have recomposed myself now.

Last night, I finished work and took the sky train to MBK. I had a half-hearted wander round, but by this time I was beginning to feel like I'd been thru a spin cycle in a washing machine, so I decided to hop it back on the train and then get a taxi back. Except there were no taxis to be had, so I had to get a tuk tuk.

There really is no other feeling I have yet experienced on earth like clinging on for dear life in the back of what is essentially a moped with a big seat on the back as you whizz round a corner doing an illegal u turn at night, your
hair going everywhere and the driver bellowing at you in a language you can't even begin to understand. It's a must do in Bangkok, most definitely.

The books I have read say oh you should get one once for the experience and stick to taxis, but if you can do it when the traffic is not completely chock a block (rare here!), then you won't inhale too much carbon monoxide and it's just as much if not cheaper than a taxi in most cases. Again - as long as you agree a price before setting off, then you're ok. It's best to offer a ridiculously low sum and then barter up. I ended up paying about 65p for my ride home and it was most exhilarating!

So, most of my evening was taken up by being too ill to move. I couldn't make it out of bed until 10am this morning, such was my plight, so I was late to work - no sooner than I got here, than we went for lunch (11.30am on the dot!) to a place in a nearby building. It was a beautiful place, a gorgeous pool outside the
restaurant which I'd have loved a soak in. But the menu was very bizarre. Apparently it changes every week. I had some lovely soup and then a roast beef sandwich - which was made with bread hard enough to sink a ship.
Jamie had quail stuffed with dates - which was most bizarre looking and tasting. He had apple in cage for desert - apple pie to you and me! Most strange!

This afternoon, I got going with the reason I am here - training staff. It's going pretty well so far I think and hopefully we will get it finished tomorrow. Not sure there are any plans for this evening - which suits me fine. All I am fit for is heading back to Oakwood, maybe having a swim if the rain stays off and collapsing into bed...

Oh yes ...

2006-10-02T17:35:00.000Z

look at photos of things here.

It's BOUNCING off the wonky pavements

2006-10-02T17:32:00.000Z

Well dear reader, I can tell you must be on the edge of your seats to discover what the outcome of my debate with mineself last nite was - to go or not to go to Suan Lum Night Bazaar?

Well, I decided why the hell not, and so off I trotted all by myself, wet hair and all (not that it was wet for much longer about 10 seconds after I walked out the door). I also encountered the first taxi driver who was happy to just take me to my destination without trying to find some long way round that would cost a few extra bhat, and I arrived relatively unscathed at my destination in record time for Bangkok traffic.

However, upon disembarking, I was not to remain unscathed for long. No sooner than I put dog to pavement, than I tripped on a loose paving stone (the pavements are paved with whatever old crockery they find lying around here it seems, and rarely glued to the ground) and was only saved from going arse over tit by embedding my poor left foot on the pointy edge. I somehow managed to take all the skin from my toes and they have now gone a very deep purple colour and I wouldn't be surprised if they were broken, given the fragility of my trotters.

But anyhow, I was not to let this injury deter me from my goal, which was of course, to shop. Suan Lum is all open air and is basically lane after lane of little units selling everything from wood carvings to crocheted monkeys (I bought 3). It's great for vintage clothes, so if you're a size tiny, then this is your wet dream. I purchased a few things for myself and some others, including some fake shoes for me and Jo and the aforementioned crocheted monkeys and generally wandered around for a few hours, browsing and sweating (mostly at the same time). I bought a top which I am not convinced about at a shop called Fat Story, which I thought very appropriate although slightly misleading as the girl there was tiny. I also managed to buy the same t-shirt twice for Lee, but in different colours.

Whilst on my wanderings, I spotted about 500 stalls selling yellow polo shirts which I found slightly odd, until I realised why. As it is the anniversary of the accession of the King to the throne, everyone is showing their appreciation by wearing one of these yellow (the royal colour) shirts each Monday and some on Friday too. It had certainly made it very interesting today, but more on that later.

After I had bought just about all I could carry, I managed to find a taxi to take me back to base and once again I had to get my map out and show the driver where we were going. It is essentially a straight road with one turn, but he unfortunately got that turn wrong and we ended up getting on some express way and going a long way round again. I think that this time it was genuinely a mistake, as the driver got quite distressed and kept looking at me in his mirror with an apologetic smile (rather than the greedy glint in the eye that some previous ones have had) and when we were waiting at some traffic lights almost at our destination he turned and said something that sounded very apologetic in Thai (of course, he could well have been saying "ha, suckered you again, bitch" for all I know, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

I was pretty ready to collapse when I got back, so I had some room service satay (total cost, approximately £4) and hit the sack.

This morning, I was awoken by the minus 10 air conditioning early and managed to stagger out of bed and get ready whilst watching some show jumping on ESPN. I also managed to blag free breakfast as the waitress for some reason just did not want to get me to sign for it and I didn't have all day to hang around.

I managed to get in a taxi and head for the office thinking I would make it in plenty of time, however the journey of about 1 mile took around 40 minutes, owing to the horrendous traffic here. Seriously, think of the busiest road you've been on in the UK and then quadruple it. No one seems to get too agitated and the horn is rarely used (I was in a colleague's car today and he tooted his horn at a motorbike taxi, but it was to tell him to move over slightly so he wouldn't brush up against him, rather than to tell him off).

I did see what looked like 95% of the population wearing yellow t shirts though, which was rather freaky, as it gave the impression that everyone works in the same place. It wasn't until I got to our office that I remembered about it being to do with the king, so I did spend most of the morning wondering where the huge place was that these people all must have worked in.

The office here is so much quieter than at home, mostly because everyone is so dedicated to their jobs and seem to actively enjoy working. Today at lunchtime we went to Visit's house (which is amazingly beautiful - everything I would ever want in a house) and saw the little baby KowPoon, who was asleep. She is very cute and Wan, Visit's wife is back to her slender self already, only 6 weeks later (although she told me she has 12 kilos to lose, she looks amazing). We had some pizza for lunch (yes, I know, I have been feeling very dodgy all afternoon) and then came back to the office and I've been tapping away at this and that ever since. I am not starting my training until tomorrow as some of the people who I need to train are off today.

Not yet decided what to do this evening, but as it's still CHUCKING it down (it's bouncing off the wonky pavements), whatever it is will be indoors...

Water, water everywhere ...

2006-10-01T17:40:00.000Z

Who even knew there was a 5 am! Although, in real time, it was actually only 11pm back home. But at any rate, it was a bit strange.

The whole day has been a bit strange really, in the grand scheme of things. It has been very heavily featured around water, which is fitting for a Pisces, I suppose.

I was up at 5am to go to Damnoen Saduak Floating Market near Samut Songkram, about 1.5 hours away from the city centre. I had to go across town to another hotel to meet Ammie and Jamie for the pick up of the tour. It was a bit disheartening to see a fairly rickety looking mini-van, but thankfully it was air-conditioned. The journey gave Jamie and I plenty of time to catch up on a year's worth of gossip and we were soon at the market. We got out the van and more or less straight onto a long tail motor boat for a jaunt round the khlongs (canals), where we saw some traditional thai houses by the canal.

Once we got back to the little jetty area, we got on a different oar-powered longtail boat for a slower, more detailed tour of the khlongs with the actual market on. Most of the "stalls" are not actually floating, but on the canal banks, however, there are plenty of boats still going up and down selling mostly fruit and vegetables. It is definitely catering for the tourist market, with most of the stalls being souvenirs and handicrafts, most of which are available at a fraction of the price in Bangkok itself. However, it's definitely worth a visit, it's so much fun to go whizzing down the canal with a nice breeze in your face!

Of course, it being so early, we had to have some sort of breakfast. Jamie bought some coconut pancakes from a woman who was actually cooking them in her boat! They were delicious, as was the pork and noodle soup that we had when we got back on dry land, also cooked by a little old lady in her boat. I had read that it was not wise to eat anything from the market due to the vendors using water from the canal in the cooking (which is the colour of mud), but you really do have to try these things as you never know if you'll be back! I am glad I did and so far my delicate stomach has not complained!

I also enjoyed some coconut milk fresh from the coconut whilst on our second boat ride. I don't actually like what I thought was coconut - but these are not the brown hairy ones that we know back home. These are young, green and non-hairy coconuts, basically with the top cut off with a machete and a straw stuck in - very sweet milky water and very refreshing in the 34 degree humid heat!

Ammie very kindly had organised the tour for us, and I had thought that once we were done with the market, we'd be heading back to the city, but in actual fact we ended up going to a few different places first. Next after the market, was the elephant trekking place. The elephants didn't look best pleased to be there and it was very expensive to ride them (well, for Thailand it was expensive) so we relaxed with a drink whilst some of our group went off through the woods on the elephants.

Next, we stopped off at the Cobra Show. We had seen loads of posters advertising what was supposed to be "the most exciting show on earth", so we coughed up our £2.80 and went on in. The main show was based around some crazy guys, some cobras in sacks and a mongoose. You have to wonder about the wisdom of putting 3 poisonous snakes in your mouth, but these guys seem to do it several times a day.

Jamie managed to semi-overcome his fear of snakes, but touching a cobra - it felt a bit like a garden hose - not scaly at all and very soft and warm. We also saw a crocodile, some big birds and some tortoises. The entire place looked and felt like it was due to be shut down by the RSPCA any second, but it was really something to see the snakes so close up. We were examining some water snakes, which were all hanging in the water, looking like they were dead, discussing whether they could jump out of the water when a leaf floated down and landed on my hand and we all leapt out of our skins!

Then it was time to head back to our van, and on to a wood-carving centre. Some of the works were really amazing, but we only had 10 minutes to spend there. I would have liked to have spent some more time watching the paper-making demonstration, but we had to get back to town.

Once back, we were all pretty knackered, so we decided to go to MBK to Fuji, a Japanese restaurant which I had been told about. We had to take our shoes off to sit at the table and ate like kings on several different dishes for less than £3 each. We all headed back to our respective homes and I came back to the hotel and decided to investigate the pool. It's a lovely bit pool with a bridge over the middles, surrounded by palm trees, so I really enjoyed having a good dunk in it! It's very shallow, but I'll definitely be dipping the old dogs back in there before I head home.

Now, I am sitting in my room, taking the photos off my camera ready for Flickr uploading tomorrow (the internet connection is way too expensive in the hotel!) and debating whether to go to the Suan Lum Night Bazaar by myself this evening. I am so knackered I might give it a miss, and head for bed though. I have been here over 24 hours and have not yet shopped! Crikey ...

Sawasdee ka!

2006-09-30T15:01:00.000Z

Well, I'm here, and I'm eating Meiji panda biscuits, so it can't be all bad.

I am so tired though that I have an expression of permanent cheesed-off-ness etched onto my features. And actually, if truth be told, it's not so far off the mark.

My flight from Glasgow to Dubai was ok, not too busy, so I got to spread out, watch some movies, eat some lovely curry thing and scowl at the man across the aisle who was reading out loud to himself, alternately from the bible and a medical text book. Then he started playing a DS and so I didn't feel I could get mine out as it were, in case he tried to strike up a conversation. Bah.

Dubai airport was not as scary this time either, I got to the gate with no hassle and when the time came, hopped on the plane - with 95% of eastern Asia. The plane was dropping us off (not literally) at Bangkok and then going on to Hong Kong, so it was packed to the gunnels. The woman sat next to me had the same idea as me - to sleep for most of the journey, however, she also was in possession of the pointiest elbows this side of Shanghai and therefore I did not sleep much.

Which led me to wandering around, dazed and confused, in the new enormo-airport at Bangkok, waiting for an entire ice age for my bag and then missing the person who was supposed to be picking me up. I followed their instructions to the letter, however, they probably got fed up waiting and thus I had to negotiate with many scary people to get a ride into town.

After beating them down from some astronomical prices, I was safely ensconsed in a hideously over-priced taxi and heading to Oakwood, which is as lovely as ever (after I had shown the driver where to go on my map). I unpacked a bit, had a shower and ate some Arabic crisps and then tried to snooze for a bit before my date with Ammie, however, I was somehow TOO tired to sleep.

At Oakwood they have an ingenious system of taxi procuring - you tell the nice man at the hotel where you want to go, he whistles and shouts at taxis until one stops and then he tells the driver where you want to go. They also seem to write down the taxi number you get into, I'd like to think, in case you get ripped off.

Well, my friends, I have been ripped off (or almost ripped off) no less than 3 times today. I told myself I would be tough and not let it happen, but frankly I was too tired to argue over what is essentially about 45p at the end of the day. My top taxi tip is always make them use the meter - and if they refuse, just get out. I didn't have the energy to get out and ended up paying 50% more than I should have to get home this evening (but it was still less than £1.50 to go the distance of say Glasgow City Centre to Milngavie or so and it was CHUCKING it down).

So, anyway, I met up with Ammie after some false starts over which set of fountains and which picture of the king we were supposed to meet by. We had a wander around the shopping centre Paragon which was being built the last time I was here and then had some food. The Thai way of food courts really floats my boat, I must say. Here's how tonight's dinner worked:

Approach nice smiling lady, who gives you a credit swipey card thing and takes you to a table
Puts reserved sign on your numbered table (your card and table have same numbers on)
You wander round and pick what you want from a choice of about a dozen different cuisines - Vietnamese, Italian, Japanese, Thai, etc
Once you've ordered your dish, your card is swiped and you toddle off and get a drink and then go back and sit down
The waiter brings your dish once it's ready to you
And then when you've finished, you take your card to the cashier, who tells you how much you owe and you settle up

What a bonzer idea! It means you can go and have a look and a smell and that you're not having to stick to one type of food, or if you're a trougher (I did not trough this time!), you can try a few different things. I am most enamoured. I know you're wondering - I had fried duck and rice, it was lovely.

I am bleedin knackered and looking forwards to bed. I have to be up at 5.30am tomorrow morning (BKK time) as Ammie is taking Jamie and I to the floating market. Our trip starts at 6.45am and I have to make my way across town (hopefully in a metered taxi!) to meet them beforehand.
So now, I am off to bed under a big duvet - the air conditioning is up full. It's raining! Thunder and lightning and the hotel staff have towels out the front so we don't fall over - bless em.

Don't act like you're doing me a favour.

2006-09-27T19:09:00.001Z

Why, WHY is it only Wednesday? It should be at least November by now. This week has been taken up with work (obviously) and also:

Making a pair of duck slippers for a beautiful little Thai baby
Not sewing on the beaks of said slippers as they looked a bit hard
Trying to sew one on but when it looked like it had beak rot, giving up and asking Jo for a second opinion
Eating Ichiban noodles until mine eyes bulged with Jo
Eating a sneaky mini trifle
Getting a case of FREE wine delivered to work
Not getting the stuff I ordered online yet
Reading about Bangkok and near swooning with the possibilities
Tending to Lee's work-induced wounds
Saying happy birthday to ryball
Buying chocolate digestives to take to Jamie
Watching films (yes, I know, so not me!)
Congratulating Rebecca on passing her citizenship test
Listening to Virgin Groove and bopping in my chair (and annoying mar-c with my random humming probably)
Sloshing around in the rain
Booking a last minute hair appointment to get shorn

and ...

not packing. I must do that TONIGHT.

There are various types of ocelots

2006-09-24T15:07:00.000Z

Jings, crivvens and indeed help ma boab!

What a weekend of monumental, frustrating boredom it has been! I had great plans for Saturday. Lee is working all weekend so I had great plans for a day to myself, pottering around, cleaning the flat, taking a jaunt into town to look at trousers and maybe even go have a wee sit down in a cafe or something and read a book.

Sadly, that was scuppered by the fact that the demon bunny slippers were still not finished. Due to some crossed wires over first sizes of slippers needed to fulfil the order and then over the number of stitches in the constituent parts of said slippers, I was still knitting them on Friday evening. And as I didn't finish on Friday evening, this activity carried on to Saturday.

Not to worry, I thought to mineself at 11.30, as I stumbled from my slumber into the shower. It'll take 2 hours max and I can still be in town for around 3-ish. After nibbling on a bagel, I settled down for a couple of hours hardcore knitting in front of a bumper run of The Brittas Empire on Bravo.

Fast forwards in a Scooby Doo stylee to 12 hours later - and I am still on the sofa, still knitting ears and, frankly, wanting to stick the knitting needles (or instruments of torture as I now know them) into my eyes, ears and any other handy orifices, mine or anyone else's. I had an hour off for dinner (good behaviour?) but it was almost midnight before they were done. I would like to go to sleep for a very long time.

Of course, you'd think that knitting the same thing for what felt like 4 weeks solid would have a soporific effect on the old noggin - but no, I was wide awak and so had to read an exciting book about Bangkok for a few hours before I could nod off.

Despite my late night, I decided to get up at 830 this morning to make the most of the day I missed out on yesterday. I had a good old sesh on Animal Crossing and paid off my mortgage so expecting another room tomorrow - very exciting. It was tipping it down in AC - and in real life, but I still headed off into town in the rain to get some bhat and to continue with yesterday's aborted trouser-viewing mission.

After collecting the bhat, I looked at many trousers, but sadly none of them liked the look of me. As I stalked down Buchanan Street, the rain bouncing off the pavement, I thought St Enoch might be a good bet.

As I waited to cross Argyle Street, it suddenly struck me why no one was standing on the edge of the pavement - just as the number 204 bus engulfed me in a tidal wave of epic proportions. I was literally soaked from toe to crotch, and let me tell you, it was not fun at all. It would have been bad enough in just ordinary trousers, but in jeans - well, it was like dragging around 2 obese badgers clinging to my ankles.

I still lurched onwards to St Enoch's, but by this time the staring and pointing at my unfortunate appearance proved too much and I gave up and came home instead, whereupon I came in and blew a fuse switching on the lights. It is REALLY not my day today. I did manage to see the trousers and a few other things online which they did have in the right size, so I have placed mine order - here's hoping that they will be ok and the day will not have been entirely wasted.

I am off now to tidy up a bit, deliver the demon bunnies to Jo for facial construction surgery and then come home and lie on the floor for the rest of the day so no other ill can befall me.

p.s does anyone else's satellite TV go funny in the rain?

I know a few women who could do with wearing a burkha.

2006-09-21T17:07:00.000Z

Now Lee's mum's card details have been stolen. That's just too freaky. There's no common link.

Where is Inspector Gadget when you need him?

What do slugs and snails actually eat?

2006-09-20T19:41:00.000Z

What a week of contrasts it has been! And it's only Wednesday!

Yesterday I finally had confirmed what I hoped was going to happen - I am off to Bangkok next week! I had not blogged about it for fear of tempting fate, but my lovely bosses are sending me off to train some staff at our office there. Regular readers will know that I went out there last year for a week for the same purpose and L-O-V-E-D it.

This time though, I am going it alone. I'll be left to my own devices and able to explore what I want to explore! Due to the relatively short notice and the timing, neither my potential travelling partners could make it - Lee can't get time off work and Jo will be on holiday in Mexico then (lucky swine). Applicants, apply here to be my Sherpa!

I have managed to get flights booked which will give me a couple of free days over the weekends to explore a bit more this time too, so I am really quite excited about it.

Of course, no sooner than the flights were booked, than I came back upstairs to my desk and discovered Sky news alerts flashing away to tell me that there was a coup and that tanks were taking up position around town. I am assured by my Thai colleagues on the ground, as it were, that it's perfectly safe to travel though, although my mother is taking some convincing. It will certainly be an adventure!

I am also told that I will be one of the very first people to fly into Bangkok's new international airport, the largest single terminal airport in the world. Something else to add to the adventure!

It's been a real day of highs and lows today. This morning I received a call from my credit card company to ask me if I ever played poker online. Sadly it was not just them taking an interest in my leisure pursuits - some dullard had stolen my card details and been merrily playing poker with them, unbeknownst to me.

This would have been slightly easier to believe had Lee not received a similar call from his bank yesterday, alerting him to the same problem with his bank account. In Lee's case though, they had made off with more than double the amount of money and bizarrely donated some of it to Christian Aid. Maybe they had a guilty conscience! Although we will get our money refunded, it does mean a whole heap of inconvenience for us, especially now I am heading off next week.

To counter such dull news and a crap day at work to boot, I received an email this afternoon from my bank - giving me a free case of wine! How lovely! I can't recommend smile enough - it's like banking with a friend. Switch now!

In other news, I scanned my entire life into flickr, go see. Nothing crafty to report as I am STILL knitting this order of rabbit slippers, but hopefully should finish that by tomorrow when I can then knit a hat for mar-c.

You should add some tabasco and just ignore the smell.

2006-09-19T11:51:00.000Z

Last nite, I finally got the scanner to work, albeit on Lee's computer.

Consequently, I began scanning my entire life and have uploaded it to Flickr.

Go forth and marvel at bad hair, bad outfits and bad photography.

And he says... "I wiped my hands on the curtains"!

2006-09-17T13:00:00.000Z

Here be the finished Mr Dangly Monkey. Sadly, at the party on Saturday evening I jokingly said that some guy could have him. Even more sadly, he took me at my jokey word and made off into the night with him. Distraught am I! This is the only picture I have of him in his finished state. I guess I will just have to start on a brother or sister for him this evening! I'm thinking a disco monkey might be good ...

If you see this monkey please call 0898 MONK-EEEY to report the sighting.

Friendly bacteria can fuck right off.

2006-09-17T11:56:00.000Z

Jo's annual fancy dress party was HOT! Here are the photos. I had a lovely time, drank a lot of cider, met a lot of lovely people, extolled the virtues of internet dating (for that is how I and Lee-san met, fact lovers) and generally had a blast. Lee sadly started chucking up his dinner shortly after arrival and went home to bed.

I started and finished a whole new scarf this weekend:

I think you'll agree the colours are fab. It's also 100% cotton which is good for all those weirdy beardy allergy sufferers out there and the anti-acrylic league.

As part of the party shenanigans, Jo and I had to go to every charity shop in the West end looking for costume pieces. We also found this:

All that wool for £3! What a bargain! The gods of the charity shops really were smiling upon us! We also found this job lot of vintage buttons, again only £2! What a day it was! The third picture is a lovely retro glass plate I found for just 25 British pence! I had to go home for a lie down after that. Also, for the cake buffet we bought a huge amount of cakes from the Pantry on Byres Road - they do a mean bridie. The lovely baker woman gave us 8 free scones! What a find! It more than made up for the surly bitch in Ichiban where we had lunch who had the personality of a used johnny.

What a great weekend! And now ... back to work :(

How can you confuse an acronym with an ecosystem?

2006-09-14T07:38:00.000Z

(Back in verdana)

The crafting continued again last nite:

The phone cosy looks wonky, but it's not. I love the way the wool has made it look like I spent ages getting those stripes right - I didn't, it just happened. I can't get blogger to behave itself with uploading photos, so they are all higgeldy.

Crafting was interrupted by me having to lie down from laughing so much, Muttley-style at Lee's costume for Saturday nite's party - all will be revealed!