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!

Cardigan Bonanza.*

*At 6am, this was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.**

**And by 'heard', I mean 'thought'.***

***And by 'thought', I mean 'excess words farted out of my brain'

Welcome to December, belatedly. Life goes on. There have been Mostly Autumn gigs, snow TO THE MAX, bad days at work, better days, worse days, pay days, days off (naw, that's a lie), shocks to the system, bleached and dyed hair AND I joined the gym.

*car brake sound*

WHAT?!

Yes. Yes. Yes yes yes. This blob of lard hauled her arse down to the gym after work and got a membership. Free for the rest of the month and then £40 each month afterwards. Incentive or what..?

I'm not going to go on and on about it like I did with my piercings (which recently caused my ear to explode a little.. ouch.. nevermind) but the gym membership is ace. There are loads of classes, free access to Waterworld (next door), a sauna, steam room, jacuzzi, loads of equipment, a really zen atmosphere, AND!! there's an offer on at the moment where you get the rest of the month's membership free if you sign up. So, Yorkie people, Nuffield Health on Monks Cross (Used to be Courtneys Gym, between the rugby stadium and Waterworld), go go go.

I'm determined to get into a shape that doesn't remind me of something from Monsters, Inc. ("...and work off that flab that's HANGING OVER THE BED!")

Also. I've done all the Christmas shopping. Just randomly. And wrapped it. And put up the tree, and decorated it and put all the presents under it and blahhhhh.

And finally, I hit new heights of awesome by announcing to the store manager and assistant manager at Work #1 that "I love you crazy bitches".

Now, I'm going to bed, because tomorrow I'm hitting the gym hard. Oof.

The 22-Hour Day by Nicole Smith.

Yesterday was tough tits.

It started like this. I woke up at 4am (ON A SATURDAY!! ON A SATURDAY!!!!) I was at Work #2 at 5.30am, doing deliveries in the freezing dark and setting up the store for the day with an army of other people I tiredly question the sanity of. Who has the energy to smile at that time of day?

I finished my shift at 11am and rushed to Work #1 to start work at 11.30am.. until 6pm.. At which time Matt drove us back to his house where we unpacked aaaaaalllll his DJ-ing gear and went to Denny's house and then to Lemon's house and then to Leeds, where we got lost looking for the German Christmas market, which turned out to be 'just behind us'.

The Christmas Market. It was more or less closed by the time we got there but I still got to eat a cockdog (see picture below) and a pretzel the size of my face before going home.

Midnight. But determined to enjoy not having to get up early the next day so I'm on the internet until 2am at which point I feel old and am sent off to bed.

Never has a reasonable 22 hours sounded so boring.

It's eating my face.

I'm going to tell you about me aged seventeen.

At seventeen, I:

- Have more piercings than ribs.
- Have epic red hair.
- Have two jobs, one as awesome as the other isn't. (But I didn't say that)
- Still have braces.
- Swear like a trucker.
- Have given up caring about my weight.
- Have totally eschewed following trends. I have flair, yo.
- Have an unnatural love for webcams.
- Still watch The Simpsons at least twice a day.
- Don't go to school.
- Still haven't seen Avatar.

And. Totally crappy at blogging.

But, I have a million photos on my phone that I took with the intention of showing you all. So.. I'll do that tomorrow when I'm nearer my phone.

Yeah. At seventeen years old I'm still a lazy shit once I get home from work.

Where have you beeeen?

Alas, I hath returneth.

I neglected to mention the epic November challenge I set myself.

Introducing.. Nicole's fantasticalmagicalbakingpalooza. It started with Baking For Dummies arriving in the post (I so recommend it..) and ended with my doing my first batch of cookies on the same day.

Fig. 1 - Stage: I will not be defeated.

Fig 2. - Stage: Holy crap I love that liquidiser.



Fig. 3 - Stage: I have a system worked out at this point.

Fig. 4 - Stage: Voila!

Epic delicious choc chunk cookies For Dummies.

My next creation? Nut-free carrot cake with vanilla/coffee icing (frosting). But more on that as and when it happens.

---

Also, excellent news!! I think I mentioned last week that I was applying for a second job and today? I gets it! I gets it!!

I dreamed a dream and it was dreadfully awesome.

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS!

I thought I'd blogged, I honestly thought I had. I had one of those very convincing dreams in which I blogged and it was epic and you were there, and you were there, and you were there, too.

I've been a-working my feet off. On my one single, lonely day off, I went into work to buy stuff I didn't need (dish rack, though the washing up might never happen) and then spent the rest of the day with crappy Argos Radio songs in my head (#suckfest).

Also, I quite literally nearly worked my feet off because the motherplebbing cleaner who is actually scarily unstable threw my shoes away, put them in a delivery cage and then sent them trucking across the country. My only pair of shoes that don't have gaping holes in the bottom. I was so pissed off I was almost pissed on. But that's what I get for slipping into anger comas in urinals. *cough*

Today was my awesome manager's last day at work so it mostly contained choosing Halloween costumes (try imagining a bloke in a suit dressed as a full-blown pumpkin with an orange shower cap on trying to squeeze through the door at work.. Try it..) and dancing to Wham in the manager's office.

I work hard.