Bloggers block

Actually, I don't quite have bloggers block but near enough. I could, you see, blog about how pissed off I was that I missed my bus on Tuesday morning making me 2 hours late for work because the bus was stupidly early (more than 10 minutes, that I know because I was out there 10 minutes early...) and it was really bad because I loath being late with a passion. Absolutely detest it and got quite emotional about it (although that may have been for other, female, reasons but it didn't help!). I could go on, and on and quite possibly on about how petty the office politics at work can be and how little support you get from the supervising staff on occasion (which generally co-incides with it being really busy - odd that). I could write complete essays (and for me, that's an achievement) on how badly I'm missing Graham. About how just phone calls aren't enough sometimes and all I want is to be enfolded in his arms protecting me from the horrible (COLD!) world and making everything alright again, just by being there. But I really do want to keep what readers I do have and I don't think that many of you would put up with that for long. Besides, if I think about it too much I tend to just sit here and cry and that's not really very productive so I don't. And, on top of everything else, the oven is beeping at me so I have to go and finish making tea. So, no interesting posts. Sorry.

Grrr

All I want to do is curl up on the sofa with a nice glass of wine and watch the Doctor Who episode that I missed last night. Admittedly there's nothing stopping me watching Dr Who but it's the missing glass of wine that's irritating me. Bloody sinuses. Bloody antibiotics. Bugger being ill!

Another meme, but this one's ok

Right, here's how this one goes - bold all those books that you have read and italicise the ones that you want to read. Those you don't want to know about, leave them right alone. 1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) 2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) 3. To kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) 4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) 5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) 6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) 7. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Tolkien) 8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) 9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) 10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) 11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) 12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) 13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) 14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) 15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) 16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling) 17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald) 18. The Stand (Stephen King) 19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling) 20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) 21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) 22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) 23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) 24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold) 25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) 26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) 27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) 28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) 29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) 30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) 31. Dune (Frank Herbert) 32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) 33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) 34. 1984 (Orwell) 35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) 36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) 37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay) 38. I know this much is true (Wally Lamb) 39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) 40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) 41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) 42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) 43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella) 44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) 45. Bible 46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) 47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) 48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) 49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) 50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb) 51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver) 52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) 53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) 54. Great Expectations (Dickens) 55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) 56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence) 57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) 58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) 59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) 60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) 61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) 63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) 64. Interview with a Vampire (Anne Rice) 65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis) 66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares) 68. Catch 22 (Joseph Heller) 69. Les Miserables (Hugo) 70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) 71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) 72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez) 73. Shogun (James Clavell) 74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje) 75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) 76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay) 77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith) 78. The World According to Garp (John Irving) 79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence) 80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White) 81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley) 82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) 83. Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier) 84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind) 85. Emma (Jane Austen) 86. Watership Down (Richard Adams) 87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) 88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) 89. Blindness (Jose Saramago) 90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer) 91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje) 92. Lord of Flies (Golding) 93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck) 94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd) 95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) 96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) 97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch) 98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford) 99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) 100. Ulysses (James Joyce) There we go, that wasn't so bad was it? I would like to point out that I have created a special catagory for those books that over the years I have TRIED to read but to no avail. Maybe I was in the wrong mood or something but for whatever reason have not been able to finish them, much as I would want to. This new catagory - rather cunningly I thought - is bold italics as I have got at least part of the way through them :) I would also like to have a special mention for numbers 24, 32, 60, 73 and 86 for those books which made me cry every single bloody time I read them - apart from 32, because I've only read it the once, so I don't know. I don't know what this list is but I'm quite, quite shocked that 'Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe' isn't on it, because that's a great book too. As are most of Terry Pratchetts.

I've been to a marvelous party

And I have. This weekend just gone was the wedding of my best friend up in Leeds and I was her chief bridesmaid. I don’t know when the happy couple will get a chance to read this but when they do I just want to say - I had a fantastic time and I’m so happy for the pair of you I can’t even begin to describe it. After a bit of a mishap at the start (the car with the mother of the bride and the bridesmaids actually got to the church AFTER the bride and her father because the chauffeur went the wrong way and had to do a u-turn to avoid going miles in the wrong direction…) and the fact that I was told to wait for the bride but at the wrong door (thankfully that got sorted out before she arrived properly so I was in the right place) things went off rather smoothly. The vicar was rather interested in the details of the old London Routemaster double-decker bus (in Halifax colours) that had been hired to take the guests to the reception and that seemed a little strange at the time. All was however explained when in the middle of the address he announced that he was terribly privileged to be doing this wedding because of the bus! He then went on to talk quite a bit about said bus much to everyone’s bemusement. Mind you, once I saw the bus I could tell why. It was fantastic. One of the old sort with a conductor on it and everything and the reaction through Leeds was amazing, people were waving and taking photos, it was really special. Once the ceremony was over (cue bridesmaid desperately trying not to cry) and the photos were in full swing I had the complete honour to be the one to catch the bouquet* and I am utterly dreading the photos of said catch – I’m said to look rather determined… The reception was in a fantastic old gentlemans club in the centre of Leeds, it even had listed male toilets! The procession of various females (with male escorts of course) to view these was quite a sight to see :) Apart from that I danced too much, I probably drank too much (although I blame quite a bit of that on a) the bar staff who got measures confused and gave me a HUGE full glass, eek and b) the bride who got another of said huge glasses and, as I found out later, was not above pouring it into mine when I wasn’t looking and c) and rather nice man called Ben who insisted on getting me another, thankfully smaller but still rather large glass and I hate not finishing drinks people have bought me) and I hope that the groom’s father forgives me for dragging him out onto the dance floor for quite a long dance when his feet were hurting (sorry). All in all, quite a marvelous party. The birthday (wet unfortunately - bloody weather!) barbeque I went to the next day was also completely lovely and it was really, really strange to see so many people again. Just sitting in the living room with people talking and drinking was so familiar that it almost felt like the last 2 ½ years away from Leeds were just a dream and I hadn’t really gone anywhere. Luckily for me, it wasn’t. I had been somewhere and I have met this wonderful man who wants to marry me and all is right with the world. Even my cold can’t get me down right at this moment  *and I take this opportunity to apologise wholly and completely for any black eyes etc that may have been caused in the scuffle…

Anniversary

Today is our 6 month anniversary. I hate the fact that we are not only in different counties but different countries, different continents, different hemispheres! This I could probably cope with on it's own but the fact that we don't know when we're going to see each other again means we have no date to look forward to, no time to count down, just a distant unspecified time in the future and I won't deny that it's difficult - because it's absolutely bloody appallingly hard not being with him* But we'll get there, and, to remind me how much he loves me (not that I need reminding!) and for our anniversary, he sent me these**. Yup, I'm definitely in love *not difficult in a 'can we keep this relationship going' sort of way but difficult in a 'it's so hard to not wake up next to him or know that I'm going to see him that day/week/month, to hear his voice but be unable to give him the hug that I so desperately want to' sort of way. **the florist had apparently run out of red ones according to the little note I got with it but these are gorgeous don't you think?