Apologies for the unplanned radio silence!  I may be a bit hit and miss for a few more weeks too due to this little thesis situation.  Study + work + Stephen Fry time + podcast + website + new friends + silent disco + movie nights = little time for writing (on here at least!).

Hope you are all well.  In the meantime, I encourage you to get your writing hats on.  NaNoWriMo is only days away people!  I have yet to participate in this annual self-flagellation but I really want to one day.  Here is a link I found yesterday that has useful - well, not really that useful probably, some just made me laugh - ideas to get you started with plots. :D 

Don't Forget

These men will remind you if you do ;)

One Sunday, Two Breakfasts*

Apparently the best way out of a rut is bacon.  Lots of bacon.  

This week started perfectly and has maintained its momentum for three days running (I do believe that's a hat trick, Kristen :).**  Sunday consisted of two breakfasts (separated by a viewing of Coraline) with a lovely friend whom I've not seen in ages.  I laughed more in those few hours than I have in the last few weeks.  That dude gets up to some serious trouble and I love that I can laugh at him and mock his plight without ever actually having to live through it myself (mind you, his plight involves far too many stunningly beautiful women throwing themselves at him on a regular basis so, yes, he really suffers).  As we ate my Cointreau french toast with homemade marmelade and streaky bacon I could see the weight of his burdens dissolve, however.  Always here to help those in need.

Some Funnies

Can't link this video but check out Between Two Ferns with Steve Carell

Showers

I love a good hot shower.  Recently I have been changing it up and having a bracing cold shower for the last bit and boy does that wake a body up.  I'm normally a morning showerer, needing the refresher to be ready for the day.  But I do enjoy a nice long evening shower sometimes.  I put on my showeroke playlist, sing and (carefully) dance to my heart's content.

Three things I think about almost every time I shower:

Eddie Izzard - one nanomillimeter between fantastically hot and fucking freezing

The Bernoulli Effect - my high school physics professor didn't say much that stayed with me.  But one thing stuck like shower curtain to a wet leg.  

The Newlywed Game - ok not this clip but it made me laugh pretty hard.  One show asked the guys how they would describe their wife's shower habits.  Top to bottom/bottom to top, left to right/right to left, or front to back/back to front.  I think about it almost every morning wondering how a partner might describe mine.

Street Party on North Mews

So I set up this London Street party to have a fun theme for Saturday. Come resembling your favorite London street.  Hardly anyone is accepting because hardly anyone at school is fun or silly or into anything remotely witty or clever. They just want to go out to fancy, expensive clubs where women are wearing nothing and grind up on strangers. It is so fucking old. I purposefully gave an example of Baker street as someone wearing an apron with flour smudges on their face to describe the simple possibilities. Not exactly indicative of a requirement to purchase an entirely new wardrobe, right? Just to take two seconds to think of something fun or punny. I was considering Friend street (as suggested by E) and wearing a mirror so when people look in it I would say I'm Friend Street. But I will smash that mirror and take the seven years of bad luck because certainly it will be better than seven years of having the reflections be of people I can't actually be myself around. What kind of friend is that, really?  Those reading this are my real friends who would come dressed as Bond street (and not the 007 type).  And we all know what street E would be.  Perhaps I will throw in the towel and lame out like the rest.  Noel street: you know, like Christmas.

Less angsty addendum:  those who are coming, while small in numbers, are big in cool.  It will still be a good night.  And more booze for us to share, yeah?!?!

Good Job(s), Steve

As always, I receive warm and fuzzy support from those who know me best at the times I need it most.  Some of the most important people in my life are currently feeling like failures, overlooked by life, past their prime, willing to settle for things that stifle their incredible creativity and limit their ability to enjoy what matters most in their lives.  Watch this video and see how "missed opportunities" only hinder our future if we insist on constantly gazing backward, pining for what could have been (or possibly for the fjords).

Ask Jeeves

I am currently reading Right Ho, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse and it is absolutely killing me.  Hopefully no horrible litigious outcome arises from sharing an admittedly slightly long passage that made me chortle on the train home from work.

*she clears her throat -ahem- and begins to read*

'But don't forget this, because it is a point I wish, above all, to make: even if Gussie had got to that ball; even if those scarlet tights, taken in conjunction with his horn-rimmed spectacles, hadn't given the girl a fit of some kind; even if she had rallied from the shock and he had been able to dance and generally hobnob with her; even then our efforts would have been fruitles, because Mephistopheles costume or no Mephistopheles costume, Augustus Fink-Nottle would never have been able to summon up the courage to ask her to be his.  All that would have resulted would have been that she would have got that lecture on newts a few days earlier.  And why, Jeeves?  Shall I tell you why?'
"Yes, sir."
'Because he would have been attempting the hopeless task of trying to do the thing on orange juice.'

Fellowship

When writing a cover letter for a potentially life-altering fellowship, would it be ok to skip all the bits and bobs and just say:

Dear You,

I am who you have been looking for.  Really.

Sincerely,

Me

A Lovely Nerd

I adore Ben Goldacre

Stolen

Stolen from a friend who stole it from a book :)

When we were sixteen, the books stopped coming. Who can say why? I have thought of every scenario. What is certain is that by that time, the damage was done. We were addicts, hooked on books, on their reading and on their acquisition. And so we became who we are: gentle and bookish and ever so slightly confused. It is not a bad way to be, when all is said and done. Which, for the moment, it is.

-Bill Richardson, Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast

Off the Top of my Head

Things I learned the past week:

I miss good conversationalists.  I know some amazing ones.  They are far away either geographically, chronologically, or emotionally.  I need to find some here.  People you can just talk to about anything and everything and it's all just in good fun and both of you are curious and interested in everything.  That.

Alcohol sometimes helps.

I wish my dad could have stopped by.  He would have consumed said alcohol with me and then we would have had a phenomenal conversation for hours.  Yeah.  That sucked.

It's hard to say Tax Disc.

It's also hard to say Book Box Books.

Stratford-upon-Avon is everything you want it to be.

So is Oxford.  (BJET, you should have been there!  You could have worn your tweed jacket and pretended to be the professor you will actually become one day)

You Know You're Loved

when your friends think to share hot guys reading books with you!  Let me pass onto you the Male Librarian Calendar!  (see, men of book club!??!?!  You have been beaten to the punch).  Now, just give the calendar a little splash of this and we're all set.  Bring on the NERDS!