hello. i love you.

As usual, this is mostly for me so I can remember who gave me what (because, y'know, memory, pretty terrible).

( Presents! )

I think that's all. I was really happy with everything I got, and I hope everyone was happy with the things I got them. I spent way too much money on presents as usual, but I love giving gifts and I was really happy with the things I gave everyone, so I hope they were as well. My family was very happy with the presents they got, apart from my mum. Hörður and I gave her THE MOST DIFFICULT JIGSAW PUZZLE IN THE WORLD. It's got a picture of a bunch of Smarties. The same picture on both sides. Not only that, but you know how usually you can tell which is the up side on puzzles because the edges are rounder? Well, on this one.. YOU CAN'T.
I think she things we hate her and just want to see her suffer. Which is not true at all. Really.
I gave Hörður a beautiful sketch book, one of those leather ones you see everywhere in Camden. It's plain black and very awesome. For Arnaldur I bought a pair of sock poi so he can practice - I'm afraid he'll probably get a lot better than me in a very short time, because it tends to be the case with everything he does. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to practice harder. For my dad I got a beautiful big book of Renoir landscapes.
The cats were incredibly excited about the whole thing. They kept poking and nibbling at the presents (wrapping paper and ribbons make such fun sounds when scratched!) and Akkiles was in one of his constant attention-seeking moods. We got them both some toys and they were very happy with them. I think the living room was just kitty heaven, with cat toys littered on the floor as well as all the wrapping paper and ribbons from the presents, the Christmas tree to nibble on and the whole family gathered to give them lots of attention. And earlier, of course, they had a little lobster and other yummies. Can you blame them for being excited? :)

Of course there was incredible food as well and fun. We played a round of Heilaspuni after the opening of presents was over, and it was awesome. I can't wait to play it with the joyclub! Mum won while most of the rest of us were only halfway through the board.
Tomorrow we're going to my grandparents in Hveragerði and we'll probably take Heilaspuni with us. I'm worried about playing it with my mum's brothers though, they'll probably know most of the words and things. They're scarily knowledgeable about everything Icelandic.

Anyway, I think it's time to read a little and then sleep. Hope you all had and have a fantastic Yule celebration.

( Rant about self confidence and things. )


Anyway, just some random thoughts I had to get down. Last night, Michelle, Dan and I had a little Christmas dinner together. Michelle made sausages, gravy and vegetables, I made a nut roast and stuffed peppers and uh, Dan mixed stuffing to eat on the side. It was all amazingly good, and we had some wine with it and listened to Elvis sing Christmas songs.
After dinner, Michelle had planned on going out with some of her friends as she left for Norway today and Dan and I were considering coming with her. While she was getting ready though, Kyrill asked if I wanted to come up to London as he was going to Spoons with a few of his friends and well, I just thought it sounded more interesting than waiting in line for an hour to dance to cheesy 90s music. Turns out though, Dan wasn't too excited about going either, so he didn't want to go with Michelle if I wasn't going and when Michelle got downstairs, all dressed up, and we told her we weren't going, she told us she didn't want to go into town and wait in queue all by herself, so she ended up going back to bed.
I felt a bit bad about that since it seemed it was only because I wasn't going that Michelle's last night out in Kingston before Christmas didn't happen, but then.. well. She didn't seem to mind it that much anyway since she got to spend the night talking to her boyfriend online.
Went all the way up to Finchley on my own, met Kyrill, his crazy friend Jim and two girls they were with. We were also joined by Rosie, who I've mentioned before. We managed a couple of drinks before Spoons closed for the night, the two girls went home and Kyrill, Jim, Rosie and I walked all the way to Camden, trying to find somewhere that was open after midnight on a Monday night.
No luck.
So we went to Kyrill's place, spun a little poi, had a couple more drinks and then all plopped down on his bed to watch a film. This proved quite complicated, and I'm not sure if that was just because we were all quite drunk or because we were all quite sleepy (except Jim, who I'm starting to suspect is actually the Energizer rabbit in disguise) or a combination. We started watching Shortbus, and while Kyrill and Rosie had seen it and I had heard about it so we knew what to expect, Jim had never heard about it and was a little freaked out by the weird sex scenes. So when I came back to the bathroom, they'd changed to The Spirit. Or maybe it was the other way round. Anyway, I can't remember why we turned that one off in favour of 300, but as I dozed off and woke up, it had certainly changed to 300. I dozed off a little more so I'm not sure how much Jim actually watched of that, but when I woke up again, it had turned into Stardust. Again, not sure how much he watched, but he kept poking me asking me when the pirates were going to get there. I think he was a bit disappointed by lack of pirates in the first half.
Because of Jim being completely incapable of shutting up and going to sleep, he kept the rest of us mostly awake (apart from my dozing off for I'm really not sure how long) till about half six in the morning at least, when he finally got out of bed and started playing on the computer. As he then stopped talking and poking and pinching me and Rosie, and as the bed was a little less crowded, the three of us finally got a few hours of sleep and when we woke up he had left, leaving a note on the computer saying we all snored.
Yeah.
Got home just in time for the last seminar of the semester (we got cupcakes!), had leftovers afterward and have been lying around, trying to work out this year's mix disc and watching Glee. I'm going to have to get up early tomorrow and spend the day in the darkroom since it's the last day it's open before Christmas and I have a hell of a lot of stuff to print. Why do I always have to leave these things till last minute?

Yesterday was pretty awesome. It started with me going to Kew Gardens to meet a guy I'd been talking to online. We spent a couple of hours walking around the huge area, went to the Treetop Walk and most of the greenhouses. It was very beautiful, even in winter with hardly any of the flowers blooming, but I do think £13 is too much for admission. (Thankfully I didn't have to pay it myself!) We also had mulled wine, which I've never had before. Delicious!
Afterward we went to a café, had yummy pies and mince pies for desert (another thing I had not tried before and was delicious as well). I had a cup of hot chocolate, and got a little too excited about the cream and flake on it.

Since I had not spent a penny all day except for the train ticket, I bought about five bottles of strong alcohol last night at Sainsbury's - and didn't get asked for ID. I then stopped at the tobacconist and bought a lighter, and got ID'd for that. I still find this hilarious.

Had been craving a White Russian for a week, so I finally just mixed it myself last night after going to Spoons on Friday night, asking for one and getting a confused look and a 'What's that?' from the barmaid. Tsk, tsk. The Russian came out waaaayy too strong, even though I mixed it according to a recipe I found online - 1 measure cream, 1 measure coffee liquor (Tia Maria) and 1 1/2 measure vodka. I added quite a bit more cream to it, till it was pretty much completely white, but it still tasted way too strong. Next time I'm putting less vodka in it, unless someone has other suggestions?
Also if you know of any delicious cocktails, tell me. I tried mixing random shit together and it was pretty good. I also bought Baileys to mix with chocolate milk, but then found out our milk had gone sour. Bummer.

I finally realised that what I need to do to get drunk is to just drink continuously. I had three glasses of pretty damn strong cocktails and I'm pretty sure that was as drunk as I've ever been (I'm wondering if the Codeine I'm taking for my cough might have helped with that though), but the moment we got outside to go to the gay bar, I sobered up way too quickly and I felt pretty clear headed when we got to Escape.
Escape, which is our local gay bar, is a risky night out. We mostly go there when we can't be bothered going anywhere further because it's real close to our house and it's very reasonably priced. But they do always play the same songs over and over again, and although we've come to know quite a lot of the regulars there now, some Saturday nights it's just half empty and not that much fun.
Last night though, it had a really good crowd. Not too big, but big enough that there were always at least twenty or so people on the dancefloor, and there were a lot of really really wonderful people we knew, either from lgbt or just from Escape.
About five minutes after we entered, we met a straight girl outside the bathroom. She immediately decided I was the coolest person ever and her new best friend, and she would hardly let go of me all night. It was completely adorable. If ever there was a girl I would describe as 'as cute as a button', she would be it.
Her two gay friends both fancied Dan though, and they were both creepily aggressive in different ways. Poor Dan.

We were going to have Christmas dinner in the house tonight, but we all got up really late, were missing some ingredients which would've made it a lot better (and all the supermarkets close silly early on Sundays) and were all feeling tired and lazy. So we're doing it tomorrow night instead.
I didn't get up till about half three and I've not done much all day. Still wearing my pyjamas. I feel like I really should do something, because I always get restless when I don't do anything, but I can't really think of anything. I would take a walk, but it is Fucking Freezing out, and I'm not in the mood. So bah. I'll probably just drug myself to sleep instead, since I have to be at uni early tomorrow morning. I would do an all-nighter, but I'm too tired.

Also, I have decided I'm going to try to do at least one thing each day I've never done before. I'm not going to be overly strict on this, but I am going to use my twitter to record it. Not sure if I'll manage anything today though since I'm staying inside, but I did three things yesterday so that ought to make up for it.

A little game stolen from pip. Reply anonymously to this post with:

1. One secret.
2. One compliment. (optional)
3. One non-compliment. (optional)
4. Lyrics to a song.
5. How old you are.
6. How long we've been friends.
7. A hint to who you are.

Then, you know, repost if you want to or whatever. I am terrible at guessing but maybe will be fun. At least for you guys. (Oh I am so noble and self-sacrificing.)
Remember to log out before you reply, and to track the entry or your reply so you'll be notified of my response! :)

Was going to spend yesterday in the darkroom, printing things on A3s for the portfolio we have to hand in after New Years, but woke up with a fever so I stayed in all day. Started picking out some songs and themes for the traditional Christmas mix tape, so at least I did something.
I'm still coughing like a hobo. Called the uni doctors today but they had no free slots so I'm going to have to call early tomorrow morning. So instead I went to Camden and managed to buy most of this years Christmas presents! Go me! (And I only bought like, two things for myself.. >.> )

Okay best just keep this entry game-only.

Okay, so last night, while getting ready to go out dancing, my body seems to have suddenly gone 'Hey! Know what you haven't had in ages? Your period! You suddenly need to pee and here's a bit of blood to warn you! Yaaaay!' at which point I cursed as early period + sweaty dancing = not the best mix.

Five minutes later it went 'Oh never mind, we forgot you don't do that sort of thing. Our bad! Just forget it ever happened!'

Uhh... okay?

Dancing was good though. So sleepy now.

I got an interesting question the other day in an online quiz thing. Which do I regret more, the mistakes I've made, or the chances I haven't taken. For me, it was a very easy choice. The chances I haven't taken.

As a kid, I was always quite careful in many ways, to the point where I would often overthink things. I did not take a lot of chances in general, either because I was shy or because I was afraid I would regret them later. If there was one thing about me that I knew for certain, even from a very early age, was that I changed my mind about things faster than anything, and I still do. I'm afraid this is one of the extremely few things about me I can be fairly certain will stay with me, if not forever, then at least for a very long time. It's not a bad thing, I think, but it can get in the way sometimes.
For example, it can be very difficult for me making choices. All choices have consequences, but some consequences last longer than others, or have the potential to anyway. Which is why I've usually opted for the more "safe" choice in life, even though it wasn't the most exciting choice. At least I wouldn't regret it later, right?

I've reached a point now where I've realised that I can't remember anything I've done that I actually regret. All I regret are the possibilities and chances I could've taken, but didn't.

Which is why I've decided to consciously change my ways. I think I started doing this, slowly, a little while ago, but I've just recently sort of realised it. Moving to London probably helped in this, as I'm hanging out with such a different crowd from back home, and I'm being offered more interesting opportunities in many ways.
A small part of me is thinking it might have been awesome if I had realised this earlier in my life, but most of me retorts with a 'but if I had, I would not be the person I am today'. This is very good reasoning when it comes to regrets of all kinds, because I really like the person I am today. I might not have had the wildest, most interesting life to date, and I might be starting to live a life that most people seem to have started living much younger than me, but I'm still proud of who I am.

I'm still shit with making decisions, but I just keep reminding myself that I should rather take chances than throw them away, or I'll regret not taking them later. Right now, I'm encouraging myself to become the kind of person that will try (almost) anything at least once (as long as it's not potentially seriously harmful).


( Right, some stuff I've been doing since the last update because I love sharing my life with you guys. )

This weekend has been absolutely fantastic. On Friday, Dan, Sophie (who is over for a visit for a few days) and I went to a party with a group called Planet Angel. They host the wickedest parties in London, or so we'd heard before we went. Turns out it's not an exaggeration. It was, without a doubt, the best party I have ever been to, and definitely one of the best nights of my life. They had three rooms with different electro musics to dance to, everything was covered in amazing decorations, neon colours, glowsticks everywhere, people spinning shiny poi, blacklights, awesome 'regular' light shows, insane DJs everywhere and, most importantly, incredibly friendly and awesome people.
The group doesn't advertise anywhere, so the only way to find out about them is through word-of-mouth, which helps to ensure a great crowd.
Their next party is at New Years', and right now I am wishing so hard I could be in London for New Years'. After that, I think the next one is in February, and I am going to that one for sure.

The party went on till six in the morning, we danced for more than five hours straight, with one break lasting not more than half an hour. It was ahhhhhhh. No words. :D
Stumbled home at around seven and slept till three or four in the afternoon. At which point we got up, had breakfast, got dressed up and went out again!

Starting with some pre-drinks in the kitchen, including the weirdest (*cough*lamest*cough*) drinking game I have heard of. It's something Sophie and Dan invented last year, while very drunk already. You get a bunch of used train tickets, divide them between the people playing, then one person looks at one of their cards and the others have to guess what kind of ticket it is (single, return, travel card, receipt). If you get it wrong, you have a drink, if you get it right, the person with the ticket has a drink. Felt stupid, but I can't say it wasn't effective. Dan has a lot of tickets and well, with the three of us playing, there were always two people taking a drink each round.
I did manage to get ever so slightly tipsy, but nothing more, despite trying. It seems I am not destined for drunken stupor.

We then headed for Leicester Square, and to a gay bar called KU Bar, where we had a few more drinks before heading out to G-A-Y, which is I think the biggest gay club in London? It was massive anyway. On the way there from KU Bar, we met a friendly group of people who were going to G-A-Y as well. They had umbrellas, it was raining, we squeezed under the brollies with them. I shared with a fab Canadian guy called Brent, we sang Lady Gaga and he was very awesome. Unfortunately, once we got inside, we realised that Brent apparently hadn't gotten in for some reason. It was all very confusing and we ended up losing them, which was sad. But we were in G-A-Y, and it was awesome. Some X-Factor dudes came on, I think they're twins? doing their first ever gig since leaving X-Factor and apparently it was a huge deal. Dan and Sophie were most excited about that, I personally didn't see the big deal. Then there was some chick who is apparently destined for stardom next year whose name I can't remember but who was alright, and then there was just beautiful, thumping electro mixes till five in the morning.

I don't really mind not getting drunk when there's awesome music like that. It's a divine state I get into when there's a heavy beat playing and I can feel the bass line vibrating from the floor through my whole body. The beat just takes over and I completely forget about myself and everything else. It's difficult to describe, but I know now that I was made for electro, and electro was made for me. Next, I'm thinking of finding a rave.

What surprised me possibly the most was the fact I lasted this long. Needless to say, my feet were killing me on the way home and as we again stumbled in at seven in the morning, I was about to fall over. Not sleepy though, I was so pumped up I didn't manage to fall asleep till just before nine. Woke up at just before five this afternoon, and haven't been able to get out of bed apart from one bathroom trip. So tired!
I smell food though, so I think I will have a shower, and breakfast. And then I have to do a lot of photoshopping for a presentation tomorrow. Why do I always leave these things till last minute?

It's been ten days since my last update. Oh my. How much has happened since then? ( This might get quite long.. )

Now that that's finally over, I'm going to stuff Kyrill's old poi he gave me with something and practice. Hopefully, I'll manage to not smash my paper lantern into pieces...

Bonfire night was.. alright. We (Dan, Michelle, Michelle's boyfriend and I) went to a bonfire/fireworks show in Wimbledon Park. You had to pay £7 to get in and although there were a couple of other shows elsewhere that were free, this was the only one that definitely had a bonfire.
Turned out it was not worth the £7 as you couldn't get anywhere close to the bonfires, they were small and not impressive at all, and the fireworks show was completely random and very unprofessionally done. Seriously, never again will I complain about fireworks shows back home.
I had a toffee apple and Michelle had candy floss, and then we stood around a bit watching the fair before getting tired of standing around and went back home. Dan and I proceeded to have a few drinks and lengthy talks about love and relationships in the kitchen - Michelle and Micki were going to join us but I guess they got distracted, because they stayed in Michelle's room for the rest of the night. Dan managed to get really drunk from just a couple of ciders so he went to bed early, and that was that.

I had planned on going swimming earlier that day, but chickened out. I then planned to go swimming yesterday, but Dan didn't feel like coming with me and I wasn't feeling brave enough to go on my own. So instead I went to town and spent some money, buying a reading lamp, some underwear and a new belt, a couple of sewing things, make-up and booze.
In the evening, Dan and I went to the gay bar. I seriously love it there, more and more every time we go. As it's only a five minutes walk, if that, I decided not to wear a jacket and only wore a tank top and a small scarf (because it was freezing out and my throat has been bothering me for way too long already). Of course, the minute we stepped outside, it started raining. And by raining, I mean pouring. We were drenched to the bone when we got to Escape - but at least the lovely guy that (I think) runs the place felt sorry for us enough to let us go in for free, as we arrived at ten o'clock exactly, and that's when they start charging.
There were a lot of people from the LGBT society there, as well as people we'd talked to before in the bar, so at least half of the people there were familiar faces - one of the reasons I love it there so much. As usual, Dan got more attention than he even realised.. I think he made out with at least three guys that night. We've been there about four times together and he always ends up getting intimate with someone, which is a little funny, and a little frustrating for me. I'd said before we went out that if I didn't get a snog there, I would cry. But I did, so no crying. Yay!
We were there till closing time, dancing almost the whole time - five hours! We took short breaks for drinks and bathroom, but they were always very short breaks. I can't believe I lasted that long - needless to say, my feet were dying afterward, but it was so very worth it. Maybe dancing sobers me up? In any case, I spent almost £30 on shots and drinks at the bar, as well as having a few drinks at home beforehand, and all I felt was a tiny bit dizzy by the end of the night. As soon as we got outside though, my head was strangely clear, and walking was not a problem. Strange.
I woke up this morning just before ten, after only five hours of sleep. I dozed for about an hour, but then I woke up and could not get to sleep again, no matter how I tried. I don't know what that's all about, but hopefully it means I'll be able to fall asleep fairly early tonight? Tomorrow sounds like it's going to be busy at uni.

Ehh, I feel weird that I have nothing more news worthy than my nights out. I really do need to get some work done, especially as I have a tutorial coming up with my tutor, and I've not really done anything. I showed some pictures from the geek project in last week's seminar though, and I got some valuable feedback. Sadly, I don't think I'll be using the pictures I took at home this summer in the final project as I'm not happy with the quality of them - this is completely my fault and I'm very sad, because everyone who showed up delivered awesome pictures. :( But I'm going to experiment with this a little bit more and see if I can come to a conclusion I like.

Am possibly going to Brighton next weekend and see Lauren (who I haven't seen in almost a whole year!) and on Sunday Dan and I are going to see Patrick Wolf in London! So excited! :D

Today, I stuffed a towel in my bag, bought a cheap swimsuit in town and walked through Bushy Park toward a swimming pool. I took the decision to do this yesterday, but I didn't tell anyone about it because it happens too often that when I talk about my plans for anything with anyone, I end up not going through with them.
So even if I really would have liked to have someone with me, I kept silent and walked there on my own.

Walking, in retrospect, was possibly not the best idea. It was at least half an hour's walk, which gave me plenty of time to get really nervous. On the way there I also remembered I had forgotten to look for swimming goggles with prescription, so that I could actually see anything.

I'm still not sure whether being able to see anything clearly would make it better or worse for me. This time, I couldn't see anything and for the first lap, that was okay because when my face went underwater, I closed my eyes, so I wasn't actually looking at what was underwater. And that helped in distracting me enough.
I was almost halfway through my second lap when I did open my eyes underwater, saw some shadows on the bottom of the pool and freaked out completely. Hurried out of the pool and spent a couple of minutes in the private changing stalls crying and shaking.
Somehow, I actually managed to not panic on my way home. I had to walk a fair bit to the bus stop, wait for the bus for almost 20 minutes, then change buses in Kingston... it took me a good while. And though I was close to tears the whole way, I somehow managed to hold back until I got to my room.

So yeah. Did not go very well. But I don't think I should've been expecting it to go well, really. Dan says he'll come with me next time, so hopefully that will help. Worst case scenario, at least I'll have someone to calm me down afterward.

Ahh Sundays, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways..

..well, mostly because they are always extremely boring. But usually necessarily so, as they are days of rest. So I'm staying in bed today, as usual for Sundays.

Last night was a weird mix of things. Dan, Michelle and I had planned to go to this huge Halloween party at a theater at Elephant & Castle along with some of Michelle's friends. The three of us got dressed up around seven or so and had some drinks in the kitchen, played music and splattered fake blood made from syrup and food colouring everywhere (mostly on ourselves). We also took some pictures of ourselves in our costumes. It then became a boring sort of wait for Michelle's friends to get ready because we wanted to meet them on the train so we could go to town together. In the end, we didn't get to the theater until it was almost midnight. Needless to say, the tickets were sold out and even people with VIP tickets were having to wait at least an hour in queue before getting in.
Michelle's friends (who were, all but one, too chavy to dress up) then proceeded to stand around because they couldn't decide what to do. Dan and I decided we wanted to go to the gay bar in Kingston because we knew there was a Halloween party going on there, and that they let people in after midnight, but the two other guys didn't want to go to a gay bar, and for some reason that became a problem.
I don't see why, because Dan and I were fine with leaving them and going to the gay bar on our own, but I think Michelle couldn't decide which group she wanted to leave with. Dan and I sat on our own on the train back because we couldn't be bothered with the others if they weren't coming with us anyway (we met a guy on the tube wearing an awesome Ghostbusters costume who had also not gotten into the theater and was going home, poor bloke) and we felt a bit stupid for having paid the train tickets only to spend a couple of hours going back and forth and sobering up. When we got to our house, Michelle unexpectedly caught up with us and was really mad at us for some reason. We didn't really get why, seeing how we told them we were going to the gay bar and it's not like it was our fault we didn't get into the theater. Bah.
We went to the gay bar anyway, and it was awesome. We felt like fools for not having gone there in the first place! The place was decorated amazingly, everyone was wearing great costumes and the DJ was even better than usual! Since everywhere closes at three in this country, we only got a couple of hours of dancing, but it was totally worth the entry fee.

I didn't get to sleep till about five in the morning and even though I slept for ten hours, I feel like I only slept for about three. So I think a day in bed is deserved.

A Weekend Of Staying Inside And Getting Over A Cold And A Cough did not go too well. I woke up on Sunday, thinking 'I have got to get out of here!' and so I went to Camden on my own. I was hoping to find some inspiration for Halloween, but not much luck. I did find a really cool Sex Pistols vest that later turned out to be quite a close fit (I went back but they didn't have it in a larger number, though they have just made an order for more, so I might go change it for a larger one in a couple of weeks) and a David Bowie calendar for next year with pictures by Mick Rock (for those of you who have seen the screensaver on my phone, those are by Mick Rock - there is one outtake from that shoot on the calendar!) and some authentic Camden cuisine (a box of Chinese).
As I had forgotten my glasses at Kyrill's on Thursday, I offered him a muffin in exchange for them. Turns out he was in Camden already with his mates, so I went and met them in the bar. Kyrill, his friend Jim and me left soon to go to a pub close to Kyrill's and after one drink there, we left for another pub quite close. There we had ciders and wasabi peas and competed for Man Points (this included making manly grunting sounds, downing a lot of wasabi peas at once without making a face - I got a couple of points for not finding them hot at all - and me going to the men's room.. while Kyrill was in there. No, I didn't use the urinal, though we told Jim I tried). I managed to win all their man points from both of them at one point. Score. We also came to the conclusion that I don't really have a cough. I just have a couple of lions down my throat.
Since I had no plans for today, I decided to go back to Camden when Kyrill kicked me out (with the excuse of 'having to do boring things on his day off', probably means playing computer games) and met Dan there. I bought a David Bowie vest and an absolutely gorgeous Scottish WWII uniform jacket.
It is.. I'm speechless, I love it so much. I will try to get pictures tomorrow. I paid £85 for it, and it was so very worth it. It's insanely comfortable, warmer than my sailor's jacket and once I put it on, I don't want to take it off again.

So yes, that has been my weekend. I think I'll go with a demon on Halloween, it gives me a lot of freedom to experiment. I was considering either zombie or vampire tied in with either an Indian (as in Native American) or Viking theme, but.. I dunno, I've never been a big fan of zombies and EVERYONE is going to be a vampire this year, amirite?
Speaking of vampires, I watched the pilot for The Vampire Diaries the other night, and suffice it to say I do not recommend it. Unless you like American high school dramafests with actors that look way too old to be in high school (and painfully bad at acting), which I don't.

We did not go out dancing last Saturday because Dan hurt his leg somehow. I was a bit upset but it was probably good we didn't as most of Sunday I spent in agony, thrashing about in bed with a very high fever.
Not fun.
Thankfully, it was only the one day. Monday was painful, but at least bearable and Tuesday I was just a little tired and weak, but otherwise pretty fine.
Except for my throat, which was only getting worse. I only got over a couple of weeks of sore throat last week, so I was not happy. My throat doesn't usually get sore much at all, so it's weird all of a sudden sounding like Tom Waits for three weeks (almost) straight.
So since I was feeling perfectly fine yesterday, Dan and I joined the LGBT club for a night out in London! We went to KU Bar by Leicester Square, which was.. alright. I wasn't really feeling the music on the DJ floor, which was a mix of 70s and 80s pop music but it was all we got to dance to so I made do. I was scared I'd get pissed off my face since I'd hardly eaten anything during the day (I forced myself to eat some chili before we left, but my appetite was somewhere else entirely) but surprisingly, I didn't even feel dizzy at all. Which was a bit disappointing, to be honest, as I had been hoping to get at least a bit tipsy, and I did drink a pretty generous amount. :/
Anyway, I left the bar about midnight. Dan had already gotten to the stage of telling me how much he loves me and how he never tells me enough and kissing and hugging me over and over by then and he and the others were making plans to move to another gay bar nearby which apparently had better music and was open longer. I, however, had gotten a call from Kyrill, who had been drinking with his friends, saying he had gone home and so I went over to his place to stay the night.
We watched Zero Punctuation and talked about action movies and he showed me some of the (very shiny) games he plays. Among other things, of course. Today I stole some of his Dance music before he had to Do Things He Needed Doing Before Work. I still only have a small part of my old library on my computer since my computer crash last winter (a lot of it is still on the old hard drive, mind, I just need to copy it, which is tedious work to say the very least) so in the meanwhile, I'm getting a lot of new music to make up for it. At the moment, I'm very much into electronic music (so I'm very sad I don't have any of my GusGus tracks on my computer except the new album.. I should check if any of those files are unbroken and salvage them from the wreck that is my old hard drive..), so if you know anything good with a heavy beat, let me know.

Anyway, my voice is still mostly Not Where It's Supposed To Be and I've got the sexiest cough ever (everyone agrees). I blame the cough for not getting hit on by any cute lesbians last night. That and the fact there were mostly guys in the bar.
I guess the smart thing to do here would be to take it easy this weekend and get over this stupid cough and hope my voice comes back to me. But oh my god I really can't take this whole staying inside thing much longer it is driving me insane. So we'll see how that goes.

Oh, yes, this. Hello!

I've not been up to anything amazingly interesting but I thought an update would be in order anyway, even if only to rest my fingertips from pressing down guitar strings. I wonder if my constant guitar playing these days isn't fuelled more by procrastination than a need to play/sing music. I'm procrastinating so heavily I'm not even editing old pictures. I guess I don't want to think too much about photography because it will only remind me I have no idea where I'm headed next and I don't have any amazing ideas for shoots. Which is bad, but getting all anxious about it isn't going to help me get ideas and will only mess up my sleep. So I try not to think about it too much.

Still waiting for callous, which is refusing to build up properly. Resulting in very sore finger tips most of the time.

Life is a bit strange these days. The fact we don't have a lot of responsibilities at uni usually results in us sitting around being bored and/or drinking. Which makes us sound like sad alcoholics, which isn't really the case. (Because drinking is fun ok!)
So far though, I've managed to show up to every single thing at uni, which is a huge improvement from last year. I know it's only been two weeks and we don't exactly have a full week of classes, but still. We have most Mondays off, all Wednesdays and most Fridays. Tuesdays have lecture one lecture at noon and a seminar in the afternoon and Thursday we have a two hour Art History lecture. Dan, Michelle and I are all doing a course called Text and Image, where we explore art throughout history (or I suppose we will, we've only been looking at prehistoric art so far, but we seem to be moving forward in time slowly) and look at symbols and how it all connects with our collective unconscious (and conscious), myths and rituals. I think it's very interesting so far, so I'm happy with my choice. We could've done Contextualizing Photography, which would be more relevant to our course, but eh. I thought, I'm doing photography already, I have a choice of branching out a bit into more general art stuff, I might as well.
Dan and I did get a place in beginners' Japanese but it looks as though we're going to have to cancel that. Not only does the Tuesday class start right after our seminar (and our seminar is usually not over till a bit after six, so we would pretty much always be late for that), the Thursday class cuts into the weekly LGBT meetings and the Tuesday class also cuts into weekly cinema showings with a Movies, Art and Design (M.A.D.) History society I signed up for. And since we've paid already for our societies and the Japanese course would not be for credit anyway, we thought it would be too much bother, really.
Sad, though. I really wanted to get back into Japanese. I suppose I might do it on my own.

I can't really believe we've been living in this house for only a month now. It feels like we've been here for so long, it already feels like home. And living with Dan is still awesome. I was a little afraid I would tire of him, but if I haven't now, I don't suppose I will. Isn't the first month supposed to be the most difficult? Also, we finally got the radiators working - Michelle was dying from the cold the other night so she went next door and asked our neighbour to have a look at the boiler. He flicked some switch and all of a sudden, we could feel the warmth from our radiators. It was wonderful. The house has been cozily warm ever since.

Dan has been dragging me to shoe shop after shoe shop. He's more difficult than me when it comes to shopping, I swear. I don't mind it much though, usually I can find things to look at (and more often than not, I end up walking out with a something-in-a-bag while he's yet again empty handed). For revenge though, I dragged him with me to John Lewis to shop for a bra. He ended up enjoying it way too much, I think. He was absolutely amazed when I told him how you could get measured for a bra and he thought the whole 'taking your top off in front of the assistant' sounded too good to be true. Then he realised the assistants are usually older ladies (and never male, so he can't apply).
I found two bras though that I absolutely love and adore. I can't wait to show them off. *smirks*

Tomorrow we're going to London to look at some exhibitions. No idea which ones yet, but we'll find something, I hope. If all else fails, we'll just spend the day at Tate Modern. Then we're planning on going out dancing on Saturday. We haven't yet decided where, but I do want to find somewhere I can get proper Dance music - most of the clubs in Kingston just play the popular hits or (oh goodness) popular 90s hits. Crossing my fingers we'll find somewhere good!

'As far as Mondays go, this one has been surprisingly good. Terrible films, amazing sex..'
'Yeah, what more do you need?'

I think Transformers was the most painful movie I've ever seen. I had hoped giant robot fights would make up for the melodramatic human parts, but the robots had some of the most painful lines of the film, so that didn't make it any better. Ouuuuch.
Also, how much testosterone can you fit into one film? The answer here is '300'. I think there should be a limit to how much slow motion can be used in films, it got very boring very soon. Was shiny though!

I haven't actually been updating with exciting news about my life back in London, have I? I'm usually feeling too lazy for entries like that, even though I personally always enjoy having them to look at later on and reminisce.

Well, it's been pretty good mostly. There's nothing super duper interesting that's happened, to be honest. Dan and I have mostly been fawning over the new house and enjoying being back together and all that. (I promise I will post photos of the house soon, I want to finish cleaning the bathrooms properly first though..)
The house is very conveniently placed - we have a bus stop right outside the house with two buses that both go to Kingston (one of them is a night bus!), we're about two minutes walk from the nearest train station where you can get trains straight to Waterloo, we're about ten minutes walk from the nearest cheap supermarket (ASDA) and about half an hour walk from uni. There is a bus by the station that stops outside Penrhyn Road, the other uni campus, from which there is two minutes' walk to our campus, but it's not much quicker than walking. It's good to know it's there though, for especially cold mornings and such.
We haven't seen the neighbours much, apart from the elderly man next to us who is occasionally seen in his small back garden where he has flowers and grows vegetables and tomatoes. He's kind of adorable, and I hope we're not bothering him with loud noises. Though I have to say, we hardly ever hear anything from our neighbours, so we just assume they can't hear us either. On our other side, there are some students, so we're not worried about bothering them too much. :P

The people that lived here before us seem to have left most of their things behind, mostly in the kitchen but Dan also found some clothes under his bed and there were some random things around in the garage and storage spaces. And traffic cones in the garden. Yeah.
But we're slowly making it ours. As I said, we haven't actually gotten around to cleaning the bathrooms properly but the upstairs one was pretty decent anyway. The downstairs one is pretty icky, mostly due to the dust-webs in the ceiling, but we hardly use it anyway. The kitchen took a lot of work to clean, the house doesn't seem to have been cleaned properly before we moved in and it seems like the previous inhabitants didn't bother much about cleaning either high surfaces or their cutlery/plates/etc. So it was all a bit.. icky. We ended up cleaning every single plate, fork, glass, mug and pot as well as scrubbing the surfaces. We gave up on the top of one of the cupboards because it was just sticky with.. we don't even know what and after ten minutes of intense scrubbing, it was still sticky.
We're not going to be using the top of it anyway since it's too high up.

I've signed up for that genius website, freecycle (or freegle as it is now called in the uk) and we managed to get a barbecue from there. Dan and I carried it back on the bus, which was an interesting experience. It's quite old and the simplest kind - round, you just put coals in it, light up and put the food on top. But it works, and that's enough for us!
Tomorrow I'm picking up a lava lamp from freegle, I'll probably need a better reading lamp as well to keep by my bed, but I think a lava lamp will be awesome as well.

We haven't heard from our landlords since I moved in. Stephanie was going to come by the week after (that is, last week), but she hasn't even called so we have no idea. But we figure if they wanted to talk to us, they'd call since they have at least my number and I think Michelle's as well, as well as our e-mail addresses and home address (obviously). And I reckon they have the number on the home phone here as well, but we never hear it ringing (and have no idea how to change the ring tone.. or listen to our voicemail..).

On more personal notes, I've been working on my social skills. For the last few days, I've been feeling more outgoing than usual and so when we went to meet the first years yesterday and to the LGBT society introductory meeting today, I was much more social than usual. I mean, I'm not saying I was blabbering on to everyone, but Dan and I managed to make a new friend in one of the new second years (a Danish/Irish girl named Inge) and I chatted a bit to a few first years as well. Their work looked amazing, I'm a little intimidated.
Oh, and the LGBT society apparently won an award last year as the best LGBT society in the country! Which is pretty damn awesome. There's another meeting tomorrow evening and then there's a talk next week about sex. Apparently it is a very awesome talk. :P
I also joined the Scandinavian society and was going to go to the introductory meet-up earlier this evening, but I was too exhausted to go - had met up with an internet guy earlier today and we walked all across Hampstead Heath for hours. It was fun, but I was way too tired when I came back to do anything more than take a shower and then just get into my pyjamas and cuddle up in bed.
Anyway, apparently there's an Icelandic girl here now, first year! She signed up for the Scandinavian society as well, the girls at the booth at Fresher's Fayre told me about her. I was excited to see her tonight, but I guess it'll have to wait. It'll be awesome to have someone around I can talk Icelandic to though.
I also signed up for a film and art society, they watch a lot of classic cinema and go to art shows and such, it looked very interesting. While Dan signed up for the LGBT and Michelle for the Scandinavian as well as me, neither of them signed up for this one (it was £3 instead of £1 like the others), so this one I'll have to go to on my own. A little scary, but I think it'll be good for me.

We have a new tutor for photography, his name is Henry Bond and I'm not sure what I think of him yet. He was a guest lecturer last year and he seemed very dry and boring and I thought he came off as a bit.. arrogant when we were showing our work at our first meeting on Monday, but then he did a short studio workshop for the group and he was quite good at explaining things, even if he did repeat himself a lot and didn't seem very well prepared. But at least then people who don't get something won't miss out and won't have to ask questions. (And I guess I might have found it more boring than the others because it seems like I was about the only one who had any actual experience in the studio.)
Anyway, I'm feeling very optimistic and excited about the new school year. : )


Oh, and.. I've realised that Primark is wonderful. I bought a pair of beauuuutiful brown, soft leather boots there yesterday and they are the comfiest shoes I have ever had. And they look amazing! I also bought a beautiful, warm purple sweater, a very stylish dress and a simple, black tank top. And a couple of pants - was going to buy more of them, but decided to try the two to see which size fitted me better and then come back for more.
I also paid about £45 for the whole lot, which isn't much, especially with the boots! :D

Michelle did some Norwegian drinking voodoo on me and seriously, is this what people get drunk for? Feeling a bit sick and dizzy? Because I don't feel any happier than usual. I don't feel like I'm letting all my barriers down, I can still remember all my problems (not any more than usual though), I don't feel like I'd talk to strangers any more than usual, I don't feel like dancing.. I just feel like sleeping and getting rid of this sick feeling. People actually think this is fun? People are stranger than I thought.

Should finish this bottle of water though before sleeping, I sure as hell hope I don't get a hangover. I have a very important day tomorrow. A day of scouring interesting bookshops and spending lots of money (and having hot sex).

Great. Thank you very much body, for ruining my weekend. >:/

Do you know what's awesome (and slightly dangerous)?

TIGERS.

Well, and charity shops. Only slightly less so than tigers, I guess.
Dan and I went to three of them today to browse and I managed to find a white shirt, black jeans, awesome earrings, a wicked leather bracelet, a beautiful brown leather handbag with lots of leather strings hanging down from it I can not remember what they're called, and two books - The War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells in a beautifully battered old orange Penguin version, and Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.
All together it was about £20. Awesome!

I've finished moving into my room and cleaning it and things. I've yet to get a desk chair (and I have no idea how I'm going to get a desk chair to the house without a car..) and move a couple of chests of drawers from the wardrobe. And put things on my desk. But other than that it's looking pretty neat! I will show pictures of the whole house as soon as we're done cleaning everything and stuff. Which, seeing how we were going to do it today but Dan is not back yet from buying drinks, we will definitely not finish today. Hopefully sometime this weekend though. :P

We're still having a little kitchen party tonight, to celebrate the house. We've got Pear Cider, something mango-y and some Icelandic stuff - purple Tópas, that Rauður thing and then I bought two tiny bottles of Brennivín to let Dan taste. I'm not sure I will, though it's a bit weird not having tasted it since it's the drink everyone always makes foreigners drink etc.

Okay, so I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but there are ideas about making smoking much more difficult than it already is in Iceland. Apparently there's something called Tóbaksvarnarþing, which recently came up with these suggestions.
Now, I don't smoke, never have and probably never will (unless they ever make cigarettes that are not addictive or particularly dangerous), but these suggestions make me mad nonetheless. I know tobacco is dangerous, but so does everyone else, including smokers. I was in favour of the law banning smoking in cafés and restaurants because well, that's not only unhealthy for the smokers, but for everyone else in there as well and just.. smoking over somebody's food is really very rude.
But apparently they think they can take this even further by not selling tobacco.. pretty much anywhere, it seems (for the non-Icelandics, they want Iceland to be the first country in the world to not have tobacco for sale, not even vending machines (do we actually have any of those here?)), banning anything advertising tobacco and even just advertising things from companies that also sell tobacco, blurring out all tobacco adverts in broadcasts or even pictures from abroad (sport events etc.), they would rather not have Icelandic actors smoke on stage or in films/tv, and, what scares me the most, ban smoking in public.

Please tell me it's not just me that thinks this sounds disturbingly totalitarian?
I have never been fond of banning things. If anything, it mostly makes them even more exciting. I'm not saying we should just go ahead and allow everything, because people would go bonkers and start using it all, just because they can. But I do think that's because they are used to it being illegal.
Yes, people are stupid, but treating them like children isn't helping. I guess I just wish people had more common sense and thought for themselves every now and then. But of course, the media doesn't want that so it keeps us brain-fried in front of the telly, telling us what we should and shouldn't be doing.


And completely unrelated, today is my last day here and it doesn't feel like it at all. I feel like I haven't said goodbye to anyone properly, but I guess I would always feel that anyway. Errands are to be run today as well as packing, and hanging out with María Helga because I feel like I have hardly seen her at all.
If anyone wants to borrow things before I leave (or return things? I can't find my copy of The Golden Compass (dvd) anywhere..), give me a bell. Or if you just want a last frílaknús. :3