Hell's testicles.

That's how warm it is.

Do you know Chas & Dave? They did that Rabbit song.



I lit them (well... minus Dave these days...) last week. Twenty songs that all sounded like the rabbit song - it was just about kinda sorta awesome. Buuuut of course it's music festival season here so I haven't been doing a hell of a lot workwise.

Well, except from ze day job, where my hours have been so massively cut that I spent most of last week in bed. But, I got a bonus, which is nice but it's the direct result of having premium wages cut. Balls.

But, what to spend with this money? I could be a massive big girl and not buy the blue Nintendo 3DS that I have been covetting since the dawn of time, or I could splurge and buy everything on my Amazon wishlist.

Decisions, decisions.

In the meantime, I have therapy advice and it is thus..

Angry tweeting is SO theraputic.

There's a drumming noise inside my head, it starts when you're around...

Sorry, had to quote a bit o' Florence there. That song's been following me around for weeks like the plague's nicer, more bookish cousin. You know the one.

Alas, I hath returned. And I have an alibi.

Remember my shitty laptop? It caught a virus which caught another virus which then caught a virus that downloaded viruses which made it download a virus that left my internet security swinging wiiiiiide (Nice lock. Pity the door's open.) open and so on and so on so that I got all frustrated and eventually associated everything to do with the laptop as evil, upsetting and expensive. And so the blog got put to the side whilst I used my shitty 14-year-old computer for three months. And then I bought a new laptop after Matt totalled mine by 'fixing' it and here we are.

Thrilling. I know.

So what's new? I totally missed this instragram thing. And LiLu has a name (The pwettiest name I ever heard) and Ask The Bloggess disappeared and CRAP. So much missed.

Me? I hit eighteen and got some tattoos. I'm a frickin' adult now. Rawk.

Tattoos: Boobage (Ow-fuckety-ow) and shoulder blade (Mmmm...)

                                  Click to enlarge, I guess.

Oh. And I got into college. Woopah! And debt, but that's another story. But not a long one so here: I got a storecard from work out of the goodness of my heart and now I owe too much money (I hate owing money) and the deadline is like 4 days before payday with 30% interest on the total amount. Oooshit.

But that is a basic summary of events, anyway. I'll blog again soon when I'm not caught between two-to-four jobs. Ciao!

18th June.

I'm baa-aaack...

Flash Bang.

Seething, dear people! Seething!!

I was about to light an aged rocker the other night at work (the one where I'm a lighting technician with full creative license, not the one where I'm a slave to the customers' every want and need) and was told by one of their crew that I wasn't allowed to do this, or that, or even this, and not even a tiny bit of that. God no.

I love lighting, I love the set up, the co-ordination, the complete, unwavering, exhausting concentration and the technical stuff right down to the tiny details, but I cannot stand not being able to go wild with the lights (within reason, I wouldn't use lasers and strobe lights during a ballad or anything). My middle name is practically Flash-Bang, for God's sake.

[From LightingDesignOnline.com]

I had to stand there for four hours, flushing out the back of the stage with three colours in a cycle. No flashing drum-rise, no flooding out the venue with pink, purple and blue light, no filling the stage with a different colour from each side, pulsing to the music, just fading red, green and blue in the background whilst the front of the stage stayed white and boring. Hell, I didn't even get to use the smoke machine! The horror!

Muchos Grr.

Just wait until I get my pyrotechnics license and THEN they'll be sorry.

BOOM.

Bloooooood. Say it with me. Bloooooooooooooooooooooooood.

Saturday is the new Thursday apparently. I've spent the last three days trying to get my files off the bobbing turd that is my laptop. And so, Saturday. Hi.

I went to the blood place and they weren't even there!!

It was in a church-esque place, which is enough to turn me to stone anyway, but I asked a woman the the desk if there was a blood donar thing going on today and her reaction looked eerily like this.

"Maybe at the Merchant Hall but certainly not here, young lady."

To which I thought, "Jehovah's Witness? Oops."

And so I took my blood home and fed it lots of chocolate.

My college interview is booked! Mum was sneaking around my house and found the letter. And opened it. And then told me all about it after work before I'd even had chance to close the car door. Muchos excitement. I'd be pissy about my mum opening my mail but I opened hers, annotated it, and told Facebook all about it.

Get with the times, Mum.

The Charity Post.

*cough*

A few weeks ago I got this scary letter from my beloved National Health Service:

Truly. It's love.

So I signed up. It's not like I'm using my blood right now or anything. And I'm giving blood for the first time this Thursday. But a friend told me that she had tried and they told her her blood wasn't heavy enough, whatever that means. So I'm full of questions:

What if I don't have enough blood? (I'm very pale and last time the doctors took blood from me, my arm started slurping.)

What if my blood is too heavy?

Shitballs, what if I have fat blood?

Fatty-fat fat blood. This is the best weightloss scheme I've had in a loooong time.

What if my blood turns out to be like.. black or something. How do I explain that I'm inherently evil?

Will I get a lollypop for being a big brave girl?

And so on. More on Thursday when I've braved syringe-wielding nurses and an hour of intense questioning about my medical history. Joy unbound.

Another thing I'm doing: Race For Life 2011 for Cancer Research UK. It's not the running around the racecourse all day or the vast amount of fundraising I mean to do before it that is the real chore for me. It's the pink. I have to wear pink! Blar.

I'll survive. I've seen a fantastic "Fuck Cancer" t-shirt on Amazon that I'm gonna wear like the less-than-discreet idiot I am.

And finally! Comic Relief: Red Nose Day. Something that creeps up on the Beeb (apparently that's Street for "the BBC") every year and it's usually awesome. I donated the last of my dwindling funds to them after David Tennant made me cry. Because he cried.  Meanie. It's awesome. Peter Kay's done a comedy single with Susan Boyle for it. Definitely worth a peek for shits and giggles. And all for a good cause. *wink*

Wargh.

All my little programs at the bottom of the screen are in the wrong order. I AM SO CONFUSED.

Wargh! Ten days?! How did that happen?

.. I have been thinking of you. Little blog baby's readers. Whilst I sit here in my freezing little (council) house somewhere in Northern England, freezing my lady-balls off, I've been trying to come up with something vaguely interesting to blog about.

The result? Nil. Nix. Nada.

I just finished a three-day stint at one of the local venues. In the last three days I've lit twelve bands and have the scars to prove it. One hand has seized up because of an unfortunate incident with a can of baked beans and a faulty can opener and the other is cramping because of the lighting controls.

The first night? My hands were so cold I couldn't keep the buttons pressed down at the right times.

The second night? I found the solution:

Multicoloured woolly wrist warmers. Bliss.

The third night? The music was awesome, the coke was less watered down than usual, and my hands were toasty warm.

Cheers.


College.

..I know. I rock the titles.

In the last two months I’ve gone from holding two jobs to barely having one. Sod’s law, my hours were cut at Job #1 just after I quit Job #2. So I’ve gone from having two days off in as many months to working six hours a week.

..Leaves a helluva lot of time to do a lot of nothing. I’ve spent the last month in and around my bed, waking up at 3pm, eating shit, watching crap TV, forgetting to get my hair cut, bored but not motivated to do anything to change that. Basically, about three levels away from the circle of hell I was in this time last year. But there’s no point flogging a dead horse.

So, what do we propose, reader(s)?

Let’s go... To College!

I’ve been toying with the idea of going to college and doing a production arts course (think lighting/sound technician meets stage design) at some point and here whilst I have the time, I went to an open evening at college to check it out.

Looks. Frickin’. Awesome!

There’s a tiny problem involving applications, references, interviews, deadlines, only-three-remaining-places and, aw hell, a big wad of problems, but I’m being optimistic.

I’ve been stepping in as a lighting technician at some local venues for extra money and it’s all good experience. It’s something I enjoy doing, and getting paid definitely helps.

I've been staying awake until 4 or 5am every night/morning so when Mum woke me up at 9am I wasn't all that happy about it. First thing I said this morning? "I can't see."
 
..I function so well on four-and-a-half hours of sleep.
 
But this morning I phoned up my old school and asked for a reference, coke in hand, expecting to have to talk my way into it. Aaaand I didn't. The conversation was over in less than three minutes. That's the least time I have ever spent arguing with a teacher. (Much appreciated)
 
So it's all out of my hands now. Just have to sit around and wait to hear back from the college.
 
*Gulp*

I know. I'm shocked too.

Horrified that I left a post about pool lanes fester at the top of my blog for a full month. What a crappy subject, I mean, really, Nicole? Nothing better to write about? Nothing? Nothing at all?

[Courtesy of the niiiice kitties at icanhazcheezburger.com]

Well. Bugger me.

We're in March now. J. H. Christ, how did that happen? I've been in bed for the last week. Not enough trade to justify my presence at work. Nice to see I have a life outside of work.

There's just one tiny thing I need to get off my chest:

First of all, aren't we all just SO excited about the royal wedding? I mean, OMG, it's SO EXCITING. So happy I could just bleed to death, right here at my desk. Grr. It's all I hear about. MSN actually has a page dedicated to every. little. sordid. detail. And if I see one more TV advert for a Royal Wedding Decorative Plate, I may just die. Twice.

...Though the condoms they made were pretty damn funny.

On the plus side, the prince is going bald. I swear he's not even thirty yet.

/End Transmission/

Seattle is back on the agenda! Looks set to be some time in 2013 (And I'll be twenty years old. Shit.). Norway-Sweden-Finland next summer - The Great Roadtrip me and Hubs have been planning for ages.

Slovenia (woot woot!) this summer. I can't remember if I've talked about Slovenia, but I do miss it. I miss the warmth and the torrential downpours and thunderstorms and huge vegetables and delicious fruit in my great-aunt's garden. I miss the dogs, Sena and Ika, I miss speaking Slovene. I miss my auntie Katra and her excellent cooking and her casual swearing.

And also I've applied to college. Though that gives me fuel for tomorrow, so I'll go into that then.

Ta-ta for now.

Pool Politics

I spend a helluva lot of time at the pool these days. It's free with the gym membership so I've got no excuse not to really. Forty lengths yesterday (the pool closed early, but I got time in before the toddlers came and yellowed up the water) and 160 today to make up for it, leaving me aching in strange places; the back of my neck, the sole of my left foot, my wrists.

Also absolutely starving. Not in a normal way, but in a way where I can feel some part of my digestive system tugging on my poor stomach shouting (in a Scottish accent) "We need more power!" but as usual, I've only had time to throw down a bowl of cereal or possibly something once resembling sushi (I loooove my sushi).

So I was swimming away today, counting down the lengths until I was finished for the day (not all that reassuring when you're stuck in the nineties, let me tell you) when three assholes drop into my lane.

You know the type, you've seen them in the street. The type of family that has a nice-looking, indulgent mum, and ignorant husband and a teenage son who's going the same way as his dad. The fast-and-furious lane is free to the highest bidder and yet they choose my lane (who I'm sharing with a nice lady in her forties) to start splashing about and zooming from one end to the other, blinding and dismembering all who dare to get in their way.

Assholes.

Mum is letting Dad and Son do whatever the hell they want, including crashing into Nice Lady. I stop swimming and give them The Evils, which isn't so effective when the receiving party is wearing goggles - you gotta have that eye contact or it's just one-sided and sad.

In any case, me and Nice Lady shuffle along to the fast-and-furious lane (what a larf) and eventually it's just me and the dad of the family battling it out.

I cannot swim in the lanes without starting a little fight with someone. It's totally possible that I'm the real asshole. Probable, even. Yesterday it was a superfit granny who hadn't taken her tights off before getting into the pool. Today it was Father Hole. 130 lengths in and I was still faster than the guy. He left the pool for the flumes a few minutes later, disgraced by an overweight 17-year-old with orange hair.

I came to one conclusion in the next seventy lengths.

Nicole Smith, Fat, Fast and Furious.

The belated London post.

Two weeks ago I mooched down to London to meet one of my friends and it was faaaab.

Yes. Faaaab is a word you all should recognise.

I was very, very tired because evil Work #2 wouldn't let me swap my hours so I was at work at 6am til noon before I could pack my bags and get on the train.

Leaving out details, I got some good pictures.

Big Ben

Cleopatra's Needle

Inexplicable Sphinx

Trafalgar Square

Bonus Shot: York shares my madness

My scarily streetwise dad took me around more or less all of the main places in London on the Sunday, leaving me exhausted and craving a bed that didn't shake when the people in the room next door started boinking. Where is the justice?

So that was all two weeks ago. Since then, True Blood Season 3 aired on FXUK and my life has once again been complete (which pisses my boyfriend off no end because Eric Northman is 'serious competition' and uh.. Swedish. Silly boy.) Also, the first of the 18th's has arrived. Denny on the 17th, then Mo-Balls, then MEEEE, then Hooker, then Lemon. And then we can all go drinking in town without having to steal Hooker's brother's ID. Hell yeah.

Finally, gym update: I've been, oh... twice..? in six weeks. So I need to work on that. At this point, any way is up. Here goes.

'Sup?

Work work work work money money money money spend spend spend spend angry mother angry mother angry mother angry mother.

It's half an hour until midnight and I am *this* close to dying on my arse.

Well, my dears, I tried working two jobs. The term is "Fuck that shit".
This last month has been nice and (barely) rewarding, I'm going to London next week to spend my hard-earned cash and such'n'such. I love my first job more than ever these days, but Job #2? Not so much. It's stuck up, it's bitchy and the customers are all vulgar.

For the record I'm not overly bothered about been Dooced.

Last week I was told I was wrong for calling out a customer for hitting her four-year-old. I'd say people talk about me behind me back but usually I'm next to them, in front of them, or being the one they're talking to. About me. And my orange hair (long story). And about how apparently I cannot do anything right. And any damn thing they can pick on to distract from their own sad, sordid little lives.

GAHHHH.

On a lighter note, I bought a curling iron (a good one) for £9.99 in the sales. I KNOW RIGHT! That's an abstract way of saying I. Cannot. Stop. Spending. You'd think I'd spend enough time in shops at work but noooo.. It's an affliction.

I said I joined the gym.. I've been once since. £40 a month is enough incentive to start going there so I need a better New Year's Resolution. Perhaps "Stop eating fuckloads of crap". Apt enough because I'm currently torn between making a pasta salad and running to the takeaway whilst the streets are dead (T minus ten minutes until midnight).

So, I guess I should some goodbyes to 2010:

*ahem*

2010,

Interesting year you threw at me, what with the crippling depression, the dropping-out-of-school-ness, the crappy job, the stupid parents, the most recent Charlaine Harris book (that's a good thing by the way), the change of staff at Work #1 that makes me giggle, the many gallons of coke I have consumed, GREGGS FESTIVE PASTIES! (=D), my awesome not-boyfriend. I want to say that you fucking sucked. That you made swine flu look good, AND THAT'S ANOTHER THING, swine flu. What the hell? Buuuut, it wasn't so bad. It was.. interesting.

Thanks for an interesting year, dummy.

Midnight!