Crazy Pet Lady

I like to go onto the RSPCA website and look at the animals. When I am done there I go visit the Dogs Trust and Battersea Dogs Home websites. Then whilst I look I start getting incredibly sad because for every adorable dog or cat or guinea pig that I see I get acutely aware of the type of websites that I am on and why there are so many animals on there.

If you ever want to read something truly sad don't pick up a book of fiction, instead read the news feed on the RSPCA website. Today's offerings include an eldery collie stolen from his owners, put in a plastic bag and dumped in a canal; two teenage girls kicking a kitten unconscious and puppies being thrown from a moving car.

Yes there are people that exist in this world that think the above is a) ok and more disturbingly b) fun

For me the equation works like this:
Gerry + Guinea Pig + Chocolate drop + Refusal to do Ccrcle trick= Happiness

For some other people in this world the above equation for happiness clearly calls for pellet guns and animal torture. Those people are more than sick. I don't think a word has been invented for how I really feel about them, but give me an hour with them and a plastic bag or moving vehicle and I'm sure I can make my feelings known.

I go into Pets At Home to stare in the guinea pig enclosures like some weird sort of cute rodent stalker but if I were to ever get another pair of piggies they would most definitely be rescue ones because I have my doubts about anything that comes out of a chain pet store (mainly because I doubt how they source their 'stock') and also because animals that have been treated as something less than living during their shorter- than- people lifespans deserve to be truly loved.

This week's blog was going to be me writing about how busy the last month has been which is why I haven't updated in a while yada yada but my mum called me this evening to say that my one remaining guinea pig Wilbur died this morning. Thankfully she died of old age and peacefully, found on her side with her nose touching her food bowl. She had owners ridiculously dedicated to her every cavie diva need, a good life and peaceful death which is a lot more than some.

If you are thinking of getting a pet make sure that you're dedicated to it, you are getting a living creature and not a household accessory. Whether your choice be feline, canine, rodent or reptile you should treat it with the love and respect that anything with a beating heart is rightfully entitled to.

My squee moment of the week is this picture:-

This is Wilbur and Dougie when I first got them (about 4 weeks old in this picture). They have earnt a squee because it's due to their adorable and crazy personalities that I now have a crazy love for guinea pigs and will probably give a good few more pairings from rescue shelters a loving home.

 

 

 

First Week 2013

Hello all (or my one reader or whoever)! I hope your first week of 2013 has been gloriously productive or wonderfully relaxed whichever you were aiming for.

I want to brag a bit about my New Year's Eve because I very much enjoyed myself. I realised some time ago that I absolutely hated the type of New Years Eve where you spend 50 minutes in the cold waiting to get into some bar or club where, once in, you can't get a drink or hear what your friend's are saying to you.

I used to think I must have been quite boring not loving this way of seeing in the New Year until various Facebook statuses from people made me realise not a lot of other people like doing that either.

So, as something which is fast becoming a tradition, Huw and I have spent the past two New Year's Eves in a hotel. Last year we stayed at Beaumont Hotel, Winsor and this year we stayed at Macdonald Frimley Hall, Camberley.

I much preferred the Macdonald Frimley Hall. The hotel was only half an hour to get to from our house, was beautifully old with modern conveniences and the service was wonderful. When the staff said they would do something they would actually do it. So I saw in 2013 eating steak and brownie ice-cream following it up with champagne and truffles. I just really wanted to rub that in your faces.

I read something the other day, that instead of having New Year's resolutions every time something good happens you make a note of it and place it in a jar. Then, at the beginning of the next year you take all your notes and read what wonderful things you have done. I'm not going to keep a jar but I will be writing my happy things here so:-

Squee Moment of the Week: Has to be the aforementioned seeing in the New Year with my partner whilst consuming steak & champagne.



This week I also signed up to do an online NLP Practioner (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) course. Thank you Groupon for the discounted prices! Yes I may have discovered the joy of Groupon- please check it out it is rather wonderous (http://www.groupon.co.uk/).

I'm very much wanting to focus on my development this year and to try to keep my brain from rotting away so I've started what is a rather interesting course, I don't know if it will get me anywhere in particular but just for personal interest. If I come across any shareable nuggets of info I will include them here.

Next week is going to be quite full on for me so I feel like sharing the plans. Doing my usual montly induction but will be travelling up to Tipton in the West Midlands to provide another induction for an acquisition and then will be travelling to Wales to celebrate Huw's mums 60th. Hopefully I will remember where it is I need to be and when!

Have a good week all!

Happy New Year

I don’t know what I was doing this time last year so I am struggling to write a post that reflects on my year and how what I am doing today is different from what I was doing on 30^th December 2011. I am also struggling to write, two days before the start of 2013, about whether I achieved any of those new year’s resolutions people keep banging on about from 2012. If I am honest I don’t think I made any.

Because I can’t remember anything of any importance I would like to suggest you partake in a quick quiz. If you get all the answers right you get a prize. So here goes:-

Home

In February my partner and I moved in together, but who was I living with in 2011?

a)      Angry lesbian

      b)      Drunken slutty nurse

c)      Patronising housemate with a severe weight problem

d)     All of the above

Work

Whilst working on a massive project at work , I felt so stressed that I felt I could have vomited where?

a)      In the waste bin

      b)      On the printer
      c)      On my colleagues

d)     All of the above

Holiday

In September my partner and I went on holiday to Hawaii. What happened?

a)      We had a fantastic time

b)      I got sun burnt in stupid places

c)      No romantic proposal

d)     All of the above

Children

During 2012 I got asked:-

a)      Why I didn’t have children yet

b)      When was I going to have children

c)      Do I not have children because I don’t like them

d)     All of the above

Finances

I got nowhere saving money for what?

a)      Masters degree

b)      House deposit

c)      Eye surgery

d)     All of the above

Friendships

This year was made more wonderful because of whom?

a)      Some of my wonderful work colleagues

b)      All of my fantastic friends

c)      My long suffering partner

d)     All of the above

I have actually had quite a good (albeit busy) year; I have learnt a lot and gained a lot more. I personally feel that even if you haven’t ticked everything off your to-do lists or even if life has thrown curve balls your way than it is still a good year if you believe it to be.

I have a mental list of what I would like to achieve for 2013 (learn to drive, go on holiday, write more fiction, start my masters, get eye surgery etc) but I am aware that I may not be able to achieve them all (or any depending on how things go!) but I like to have a project list on the go just to make myself feel that I am working towards something.

Time will only tell if I achieve these things by the end of 2013 but if I don’t as long as I feel like I have had a good year than that is all that matters.

This is my last post of 2012, I hope you all have a fantastic start to 2013 and enjoy whatever it is you are doing for New Year’s Eve.

There is a saying that one picture is worth 1000 words. I struggled to find one picture that summed up my year so I chose a few pictures from a massive selection and have included them below as a collage.

Wishing you all happiness and health!

P.S. If you answered all of the above to the quiz then you are right. Well done. I bet that was so difficult.

Merry Christmas!!

This post does what it says on the tin...wishes you a Merry Christmas!

I've had a week off from work and am prepping myself for next week which I also have off so it's not been much of a bad life for me. I may need to add some elastic to my jeans mind as 6 lunches this week have definitley taken their toll on my waistline but I've refrained from eaten all the chocolates which is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

I won't be writing much more but would like to impart on you to have a Merry Christmas with all your loved ones; that you drink, eat, laugh and be happy and healthy.

Please also enjoy the Christmas Guinea Pig, nature's most adorable rodent looking festive. Not my own piggie unfortunately as Wilbur would never sit still enough for you to place baubles around her in a decorative way. If I could it would be considered the biggest Christmas miracle.

If music be the food of love, play on

In and around December a man called Daniel Kim (not to be confused with Daniel Dae Kim who played razor-cheekboned Jin in Lost) spends on average 500 hours pouring over all the songs that were released during the year and merges them into a 50+ song mash-up.

This year's effort 'Pop Danthology 2012' has gone online and I just cannot stop listening to it.

The premise is I suppose that all pop and R&B songs sound so similar that with the effort and time you can easily merge them all into one. Well that's what the cynical & multitudes of Youtube commenters say. The cynical may well be right due to the '4 chord' belief but I've been rocking my jollies on this pop fiesta anyways.

I enjoy music. I don't pretend to be an expert because my foray into the world of keyboard playing when I was ten didn't exactly go fantastically well but then when was music played only for the experts?

Personally speaking (though I think many would agree) I like the way music makes me feel. I genuinely don't care whether my favourite song sounds anything like my second favourite song or my third favourite song. They could all be mini-song clones for all I notice, but maybe one has a different beat or a certain lyric and that's what resonates.

Other people listen to music that I hate, in fact the mash up above contains at least 5 songs that I just cannot stand. In return I listen to music that other people hate. When I play certain Regina Spektor songs, especially the ones where she makes strange noises with her lips, I come over all goosepimply while my boyfriend would probably choose death by falling speaker to kill both himself and the music. Doesn't mean she's not good, just that she's not good for him. Doesn't mean (oh this pains me to say) One Direction aren't good. They just aren't good for me.

Problem is that I've come across this 'art snobbery' before. I love Sci-fi and Fantasy. Reading it, writing it, fantasising that I'm a world famous author of some of it. I sat next to an English professor from Santa Barbara on a flight to the States and she said that The Hunger Games was one of the best pieces of fiction she had ever read but because it's not considered 'literature' it will never get taught in any English classes which she considers an awful injustice.

It even happens quite close to home. I'm not involved in the theatre industry but many people I now know are and one person in particular that I have met believes that theatre is only truly theatre if people are gasping, weeping and dying on stage. Anything less is cheap. She speaks passionately about plays where people are dressed in black and say nothing for 40 minutes whereas I quite enjoy the idea of The Lion King.

The average punter (of which I am) with their busy and stressful lives tend to want to take their hard earned money and go do something which makes them happy. So whether that means I want to watch Shakespeare, read Game of Thrones or listen to Flo Rida then so be it. Those things might not necessarily be good for everyone but they sure are good for me.

Except Whistle.

So enjoy (or don't) the Pop Danthology video I have chosen to share this week because I am going to enjoy having it on loud, drinking my Baileys and jumping around singing about having a good time.

Sudden Happy Realisation

So I was standing in my kitchen commiting the rather exciting act of boiling water for my pasta when suddenly a spark of a memory whizzed through my brain and I went 'dear god I have a blog'.

As you can probably tell from the date of my last post it has been a very long time since I have written on this site, two years and four months long in fact, and the reasons I can give for this shocking delay are:-

1) I forgot I had a blog
2) I got absolutely shockingly shite at updating this blog
3) I was unbelievably epically busy with such exciting stuff that I had no time to update this blog I wasn't doing anything of any remote interest that anyone other than myself would be bothered to read about

Ah but I may have lied on that last one. I think I have been epically busy with thrilling life events because in two years and four months I can't still be standing in the same place as I was in August 2010 and if I were I would be entering a state of panic.

In fact it's quite nice to re-discover this again and to refresh myself on what I was doing once upon a time and to re-cap on what I have been up to in the interim. So poor dear reader I am going to re-cap to you two years worth of life but try to do it in the most painless way possible.

Here it goes...

Work. Same company. Different role. Two different roles. Human resources. Challenges. People hate HR. Go figure. At risk of redundancy. Project work. So stressed I think I'm going to be sick in the bin. Change management delivery. Live in Poland. Come back from Poland. Interview. Got new role. Say goodbye to friends & colleagues. Cry. Alphabet Challenge. Being Robin Hood. Miss Polly Rae's bottom. Pretty good with a shotgun. Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. Won't ever forget it. Floatation tank really not for me. Gone Ape. Trotting along on Shane. Watching face cheeks flap around in Indoor skydiving. The Mayfair to Plymouth. Human hamster rolling down a hill. Over half way. Several births. Laugh. A few deaths. Cry. Lose friends. Gain friends. Comprehend the true meaning of friendship. Travel to Machynlleth. Bath. Bristol. Poznan. Torun. Pila. Glasgow. Barcelona. Hawaii. Start something that will last. Move house. Once. Twice. Discover Mary Berry. Comes to terms with the fact I will never be a domesticated woman. Never attempt chilli con carne again. Felt sad. Felt confused. Felt lost. Felt lonely. Felt angry. Felt bitter. Felt hopeful. Felt relaxed. Felt content. Felt happy. Remembered a blog. Wrote it all down.

Obviously life stuff is going to happen in two years but summing it up in less than 200 hundred words is pretty comprehensive and painless no?

This is my New Year's Resolution come early...I will be updating this regularly. I have a filofax now (I'm still holding on to the 80's, ipads pfsssh) and so any thing that gets added into my 'projects' list gets completed and I assure you this will be going on my list.

On that note I best take the pasta off the shove before it boils ov...oh never mind. Did I mention I came to terms with the fact I'll never be a domesticated woman??

Oh How Crap Am I

What the title says. Except it should say 'Oh How Crap I Am.' It's been a while since I've written but thats because I have genuinely 100% absolutely been 120% completely busy. I promise.

What's nice is that I've been too busy living life that I haven't had much time to write about it. However what's the point of doing 'stuff' and having a blog if you're not going to brag over the internet about it. Though I suppose thats what Facebook is for.

This isn't going to be long because I have to gather full steam to write what I want to write but I've been too busy (of course) skivving off the work sports day to write and the guilt is making me tired.

I won't forget you, I'll try and do less stuff and think less and sit still and do nothing and then I can write crap all day long rather than write crap for 30 seconds before posting it.

So here I go posting it, I will be better next time. That's another promise.



P.S. I do want to say hullo, not hello, but hullo to my one and only follower 'The Fuzzy Duck.' I am smiling at you daily even if you do not see me.