Tribal envy

So today is officially my day off. Yayy.

And I wanted to go swimming and I was thinking of getting up early to do that so I could avoid the general public at all costs, but no joy. I woke at 11 and was totally sad.

Last week when I went there were too many people. I like to not see any member of the general public on my day off. Call me crazy, but I get an overdose of them every single day that I'm at work, so I'm happy to isolate myself. :)

I've been watching a TV show called 'Can Fat Teens Hunt?' and it's been amazing, it's about 10 fat teenagers from the UK that are sent to an ancient tribe in Borneo and they have to eat rice, frogs, and other such random things that you would find in the jungle.

and they have to make their own find, find their own food, catch their own food, and cleanse their own water.

It was unreal watching some of it. So so lazy.

It was actually crazy. But I was also slightly envious of the tribe. They have their house, they aren't cold, they have each other, their entire day is based upon preparing food and finding food. That's all they have to worry about. No bills, no taxes, no car insurance, no adverts about car insurance, no actual possessions.

It was actually amazing. I am so envious. I wish there was no stress, or pressure of having to live in the west. We are all required to achieve a certain level of success if we want to have a 'good' 'happy' life, but it's all prescribed nonsense. I have no idea when or who set those rules. But it sickens me.

There could be nothing more rewarding than raring and growing your own food and being entirely self sufficient. And not being completely overloaded with images of 'happy' people on TV making you feel depressed because their lives are complete because they use X-brand washing powder. It actually makes me sick.

And even if we do have enough money to buy our food the food is completely processed and flavour enhanced and completely toxic to our bodies.

The world is a mess, and sometimes I think this is it. We're all waiting for some further huge disaster, and life changing event, but this, how the world is right now, is so far from how things should be, that it is terrifying.

I don't look forward to farming, because i'm 100% lazy to it, but I do think that if there was no financial debt to satanic companies, and no constant bombardment of products and adverts and colours, our brains would be able to just relax.

This got really heavy really quickly.

All these thoughts are based off this image



those are all the world possessions of Ghandi.

It's completely cathartic to think about.

So yeah, It's my day off, and I want to be fit and healthy but I want to not see any of the public. It makes for a difficult situation.

Here's an awesome picture of the day to be happy about:



I also watched toddler in tiaras the other night and it was sublime. I loved it, but I felt like I had to hate it at the same time. It was all about little kids in beauty pageants, just like Little Miss Sunshine. Amazing.

Neurons

I've not lifted a book or magazine in a long time. My life seems to revolve around doing crafts for weddingness because if i'm not then I think I'm holding things up. There's an odd psychology in that.

Anyway. During my sister's wedding week thing, she gave me her copy of 'The short second life of Bree Tanner' to read. Yes, I know. It was an easy read though, and it entertaining although it was purely random and completely lacking in proper story. It was like Breaking Dawn all over again, but shorter and a little more focused (because it had to tie into eclipse).

That got me interesting in actually reading again and I picked up 'Buyology' by Martin Lindstrom. I had been in Barnes and Noble in 2008 a few weeks before meeting Jon himself, and seen this book sitting on a 'new arrivals' table and I wondered why i'd never heard of it while doing masters, the whole 'new arrival' thing was lost on me.

Anyway. I started reading it. That was around the time I was going NaNoWriMo and meeting the ol' true love. So needless to say the book was shunned and nothing past 10 pages was read. I tried again on other occasions to start reading it. I even brought it back and forth to the US with me while visiting Jon, but still nothing past 10 pages was achieved.

After reading Bree Tanner, I picked it up and i'm not half way through, which I think is definitely a feat. And boy is it interesting, it's all about subliminal advertising, and what imagery is actually successful in advertising. It kind of goes into ever facet of advertising. It's good.

That in turn, led me to pick up the last issue of Adbusters I'd had posted out to me. My subscription has expired and there's no point renewing it for 3 years when my address will 100% be changing before they can send me 2 issues.

So I will bide my time and hopefully not miss and issue. I think i've been subscribing since 2006/7. I find it an enjoyable, mind-freeing read.

There was a short article, which I have discovered is part of a long long article that said:

Failure to learn new things kills neurons. People who vegetate before the TV are killing their neurons. People who never do anything new or meet anyone new are killing their neurons. People who never read or learn a new game or build a model airplane or cook up a new recipe or learn a new language are killing their neurons. Mind you, many middle-aged professionals are killing their neurons. They’re doing what they are good at, what they already know, what they learned to do years ago. They’re pursuing careers, raising children, cooking dinner, returning phone calls, reading the newspaper. They are busy and accomplished, but they are not learning anything new. If you are not learning anything new, you are killing your neurons. To keep your neurons, learn something new every day. Begin now. Doing so requires no particular genius.

This actually terrified me.

I am killing my brain by just being stagnant and not progressing myself nor my brain.

I also found it interesting because I have very little desire to do the design work that I am 'supposed' to. The design work that is expected by a branded society, the website, the business card, etc. That's all someone else's idea of design and branding, and I find it so hard to be motivated to design within the confines of someone else's long-ago made decision.

The passage above gives me a bit more insight into why, my brain must be absolutely gagging for me to not rest on any laurels and push it to new levels. But I'm far too lazy for that these days. But I think that's why I've latched onto the extreme over load of crafting and wedding planning because it's something new and something i've never done before.

It's not that I think i'm the best designer ever and i've reached the pinnacle of design, far from it, but my brain has tired of doing it, and wants to try out new things.

Perhaps i'm shoe horning excuses into my own lack of interest. But it seems to make sense.

Everything that I need to do before moving to the US just seems bitterly dull, like selling things, and packing things. And it's because i've done it before. There's no learning in it. There's just remembering how to do it, and redoing it over and over again.

Even when it comes to crafting once i've learned how to do one specific thing I move on and do something else even although an abundance of the original thing is required, i'd rather make something new.

Maybe I have a short attention span, and in fact, this is a bad quality. I've found that with hobbies throughout my whole life, I tend to give up on things quickly because I know the basics and I have no desire to perfect it.

So there must be a balance, between continuing to do what you know until it's perfect, and desiring to learn new things. Hopefully i'll find that soon otherwise nothing will ever get done. :)

111

I have a playlist that makes and updates itself. It is based on the top 111 songs that I listen to. The least listened to song has been played over 40 times, so the playlist is pretty competitive to get on to if you are a new song.

I've been listening to said playlist recently and a couple of songs cropped up that gave me the warm fuzzies.



Going Nowhere by Cut Copy



Japan by CocoRosie (just the first 30 seconds of this)


This is their cute little faces actually singing it... Gosh I love them. I saw them once in concert, but the night was terrible because some random and her friends ruined it by talking really loudly the whole way through. It was so stupid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprRr_LxBFA

(embedding was disabled on this video)


So. Both of these songs were on the phone I had to buy while I was in Utah in 2007 because my own phone couldn't handle the sim card being switched over. It still can't, it gives me a lot of fuss, but I had to buy this to make my social life easier. :)

Seriously, those seven weeks are still, possibly the best ever. The pure freedom, the independence of living in Otto's attic and getting the trax to whole foods or the temple. It was actually sublime.

The cocorosie song was my ring tone (just the first 30 seconds), so everytime I hear it I think of one of the newly made friends at the time calling me.

And the Cut Copy track was my alarm clock. So I associate it, always, with waking up and having an adventure to go on. It never became a burden to be woken up.

Gosh it was actually so amazing.

It's not because of any particular thing or person, it was the whole experience, properly being on my own, somewhere so utterly far away, and having to sink or swim.

I hacked into the neighbour's wifi and was at least able to navigate my way around the city, and find swimming pools, and go to institute, and just have an all around whale of a time. Then Antoinette was there, and it was awesomer, and oh my it was just insane with awesomeness.

And we snuck up on Marcus and appeared on his doorstep, and had crazy hallowe'en shenanigans, and I drove on the wrong side of the road for ages, and it was always so warm, and autumny.

Huge sigh. It was actually amazing.

Slight overkill with the reminiscing. Every other trip after that wasn't the same because i'd done it before. There's just something completely exhilarating about doing something completely for the first time and not knowing if you can do it.

swimming swife in the fast lane.

Just like living life in the fast lane but not.

I went swimming today. Hoooooray.

The schools went back on monday and so it is now safe to leave the house on my day off and go swimming.

Here are the stats we've all been waiting for.

200m FC
200m BS
200m FC legs
100m Butterfly
100m BS legs
100m FC arms only
100m BS arms only

200m FC flippers and fins
200m FC
400m FC flippers and fins
200m FC

100m Swim down.

And all in an hour.


I ache though. I tell you. There's been complete and utter deterioration of the muscle strength over the summer holiday. Lame.

So it hurts, and I was kind of slowish, but I did it within the hour still, or just a little over. I'm pretty tired now though.

Other things of note.

Some guy asked me for shampoo in the shower and he took HUNDREDS... gypo.

I was swimming in the fast lane because it pushes me... fact, and there was a beastin' woman that was so fast it terrified me, she only swam in sets of 50m though, so I think that has to count for something.

And when I left the pool there was proper torrential that I got soaked in, and it was miserable.

And I ate eggs chopped up in a cup, with soldiers, while watching murder she wrote. Then I watched an episode of buffy. I was planning on going to the fabric shop and seeing Salt (I <3 Angelina), but that was a fail because time is my enemy and I technically had my niece to kind of look after for a short time frame. Lame.

Another Post?

Yeah... I'm just like the buses... wait for ages then three come at once.... 'I'll take jokes from the 90s for $10'.

So.

I just got my tetanus injection which cost me a grand total of £3, rather than the £25 they wanted to charge me in London.

I just hope that the £22 saving is worth the paperwork hassle, because now I have to show an incomplete immunisation record that was given to me by the London medical people with a piece of paper that looks completely forged that says I got my injection today.

Here's hoping it all works out for me. £22 is a lot of money. :)

Okay, so at the bottom of my immunisation record it says I'm patient number 62!

Really? Yeah really.

How can I be so low. I imagine there's hundreds more patients there now, given that it's hard to get an appointment.

I also imagine that the people who are 1 - 61 will be of different ages, and some, therefore, may have passed on, making me even more of a doctor celebrity.

Okay, so the reason for this post is that on the way to the doctors, which is literally a 3 minute drive, I turned into a side street and there were loads of police, my first thought was some kind of crime scene, but then the road I usually park in was closed with no crime scene around. I parked in a car park of a supermarket just up the hill a little and then started legging it (in the pouring rain no less) back down the hill to the surgery.

Then the sound of bagpipes. Seriously.

There was a 200 piece pipe band coming from this wee resource centre and piping down the side street and off onto the main street. It was crazy. Pretty impressive, but yet completely not surprising. Things like that happen all the time in my head. Kilts, hats, pipes. It was awesome.

Then when I left the surgery they were close to getting back to their starting point and I was sitting in a queue of traffic waiting on the side street, so then our road got cleared to make space, so I never got to see them again properly.

It was pretty amazing though, I wish I had had my camera with video recording on it.... or an iPhone. Lame.

One day, when I do have an iPhone I bet nothing exciting will ever happen to me.

:)

I have a new want...

... and its name is Aquabeat.

I was in a sports shop yesterday and happened upon the speedo aquabeat.

It's an MP3 player for the water. SERIOUSLY!





I think i will need to be better at going swimming, and in the US and working again before I can have the awesome, but at least I have a goal. :)

Bows

Photo and update time. Oh yeah.

This is stretching far back.

Sometimes you have the blogging fever, sometimes you don't. I haven't had it all year, but i've been trying to combat that, with nothing but major fails.

Anyway.

Using some photographic awesomeness I will attempt to do a quick fill in.

I'm still working... wooooooo.

Zero is still alive, although I have been tempted to 'dispose' of her because she had a couple of weeks of being really clingy and affectionate and it drove me crazy. She even fish juiced all over me while I slept one early morning. It was so gross. All over me, my phone, and anything else lying around my pillow. That was a bad morning. I felt robbed of sleep.

Jon and I are still not together on a permanent basis, but we're working on that (and I am slowly going mad).

It was Zero's birthday and instead of making her cake I bought myself a tiny domino's pizza. Best pizza ever, especially with the garlic and herb crust dipping sauce. I'm so in love with that. It had the best ever topping on it as well, chicken, sweetcorn and pineapple. Nom nom nom.

So yeah, best Zero birthday ever. She's now five and should be going to school, but I'm just going to home school her because she is still having toilet issues and that's just mortifying :)



On an update on my last blog about the trainers, I went for...... drum roll.......



The white ones. They are amazing. THEY HAVE A STRAP. My mum asked me what the purpose of the strap was and I promptly told her it's there to be awesome. Which it does a very good job of being.

Awesome is its speciality.

It was Amelia's birthday as well (who is my cousin's small child) and she was one one one. ONE. So young. Kate and I had birthday breakfast on her behalf, and then went small child swimming, which was fun. I hadn't been swimming in ages. I mostly bobbed and splashed, and walked around in my flippers for the fun, and realised how fun flippers are when you're not training with them. I did swim a few lengths as well but I can't remember the stats.

I really do need to swim for real again.

The past two months have been crazy because my back has totally starting hurting, and getting worse, and now it's onto this weird nerve pain. It's not good. The doctor won't do anything either. It's so lame. And I shouldn't even start on the NHS. I think the NHS is fabulous, it's just horrific that the people who pay for it are the last to actually get any of the benefits from it, all the money is spent on caring for those who have self-inflicted their ills through alcohol abuse, drug abuse, smoking, etc. That drives me crazy.

Anyway. Happier things.

Work has been crazy the past few weeks, just loads and loads of people and really really long shifts.

I've actually almost been a year at apple. It will be a year come September 19th. I find that crazy. Seriously crazy. It is officially the longest I've ever had a job. Every other job has ended within 10 months.

So biggest news of the past month would be my sister's wedding. It happened last Friday, and I was the official photographer. It's something I would never EVER rush to do again. In fact, if I ever have to take a photograph again it will be too soon. I shot around 1000 images, and barely half were good enough to even consider being edited. It's kind of crazy. My finger was aching by the end of the night, and it was weird to try and be a guest as well as be a photographer, especially when most of the guests knew me as Lola's sister and had very little respect for the photographer part of me that day.

To help things swimmingly the day was miserable. The sky was grey, not even over cast and sunny behind it, grey, completely grey. It was also raining for a lot of it, but we did get a few photos outside.

To try to get the best of the sister and her weddingness I hired a lens, which was entirely the idea of Chris Daines, my photographic hero, he also picked the lens, and tried to give me as much tutorial on using my camera as possible. I've had my camera for four years. I should really know how to use it, but really I just push buttons, and turn wheels and hope it looks good.





There was so much pressure, and so many people around, it was so hard to try to think and to be creative on the spot with so many eyes watching. HARD.com. Wedding photographers are a breed unto themselves. I think I would make an excellent second shooter though, I have the 'sneaking up on people' ability.

I can't actually show any photos of the Bride herself because she's not even seen them and I think that would be totally unfair to her, but there are some of me and my beasting awesome tan courtesy of St Tropez. With a tan I actually felt warmer. It was weird.













I'm also Ceilidh dancing with my Donna best friend's husband. I danced that once and also a Gay Gordons. And the rest of the time I was photographing or talking to the skillso millso quickly.

At the end of the night I threw on my converse and hoody and helped tidy, and I looked like this:




I even made that frog face the whole time.... kidding.

:)

I wish I could show you more pictures... sadly nooooo. Me will have to do.

How amazing is that beasting lens though. I think it's amazing, and one day I will buy one for real and it will be mine and I will call it beastin' lens.

:)

So yeah... update state fate late mate.

There's tonnes of my family still around until tomorrow, and then they all officially will have left by next week, but it's kind of cool having people around. I likes it.

And today I went to the craft shop. That's always a riot. Ohhhh the riot. :)

I've been getting my crafting on and it's awesome. I keep finding new ideas online of things I love and that I NEED to have as part of my wedding. I fear that eventually it will be the biggest random miss match. But that's fine by me. I'm super excited. Fingers crossed for a 2010 wedding :):):)

Oh, and the dress I was wearing in those pictures was an option for a bridesmaid dress, but no one wanted it, so I thought, Well I want a new dress.... so I bought it. Pleased. It has bows, and I love it. It also had amazing shoulder pads, but I cut them out. Cut it out.