Don’t scoff a bag of Haribos 5 minutes before going for a run.
Really, really not a good idea. 
How I even managed to persuade my selves to go running at the end of a 10.5 hour day of work that involved smiling for the little ones, going blind over Excel sheets and replying to a million emails, I do not know. 
Zombied. 
Current Mood: 
No iPhone is complete without this essential app.
So now I have a reason to go out and buy an iPhone. 
Actually, I think this is more an app for the men to download. So they can covertly borrow their girlfriend’s ring, measure it, then order the appropriate size online. All without moving their arses off the sofa where they’re parked in front of the World Cup semi-finals. Everybody’s a winner, right?! 
Really, imagine my delight when I discovered this whilst on the Tiffanys website just now. 
Not that I am spending my working day on the Tiffanys website. 
Nor the Caroline Castigliano wedding gown website for that matter. Obviously. Why would I do that?! 
Oh, so I’m having a delusional, dreamy, head-in-the-clouds, carried-away-with-myself girly day. 
I can’t help it. It’s the boyfriend’s fault. He makes me go gooey. What can I do eh?! 
Current Mood: 
It’s better to spend money on running than on take-aways.
So the Leeds 10k was yesterday. Turns out, Leeds has hills. 
I am blaming those hills for what I consider to be a distinctly average time of 52 minutes and 22 seconds. Although I should perhaps also blame the curry we had on Friday night. And the cheese/olives/bread, etc. we tried at a food festival we went to in Leeds on Saturday. Ooops. 
But there had to be some fun elements to my weekend in Leeds with Mark didn’t there?! It was all fun actually. Minus the 52 minutes and 22 seconds of pain. Although, even that wasn’t too bad as it was so nice to take part in something like that with my boyfriend. 
Mark especially enjoyed the free Wagamamas we discovered in Leeds city centre on Saturday morning. His time on the 10k wasn’t affected by his chicken-whatdyamacallit-curry binge though. Clearly, the boy is fitter than I am. I did try to overtake him at the start of the race. Managed it for all of 10 seconds. And then was so knackered I had to slow up for the next, oh, 6.19 miles. 
Note to selfves: Girls are slower than boys. No use trying to beat ‘em. 
But I was proud of my boyfriend for givin’ it some. And wasn’t too disheartened by my slow-arse time when I saw that I actually came 87th out of the 2026 women in my category. That should spur me on to beat the time in the York 10k that we’ve signed up for anyway. 
Yeas. Within a few hours of finishing the race, me and my nutty 7 selves (and Mark) had signed up for another one. And then another one besides that again this morning. Ambitious. Or deluded. One or the other. But I just can’t seem to stop. It seems that I’m perhaps a little competitive after all. 
And it’s an expensive business too. I’ve worked out that, what with travel, entry fees, new running vests and all the rest of it, I’ll have spent a good £200 (and probably a bit more besides) on this running lark before the year is out. 
But I figure, if I substitute Chinese take-aways for race entry fees, that has to be a good thing right?! 
I don’t think the whole curry-cheese-chocolate marathon diet was quite going to work anyway…
Current Mood: 
Just because you can run a marathon, doesn’t mean you can run 10k.
There’s optimism for you. 
But, really, all I could muster after work this evening was a measly 3.2 miles. And not a particular speedy 3.2 miles, at that. How I ever ran a marathon is beyond me. And yet my next ‘race’ is on Sunday. That’s this Sunday. When Mark and I go to do this 10k in Leeds. I’m not holding my breath. (I’m losing it. Badly). Aside from my imminent defeat and failure of all 7 of my selves, it should be a nice weekend in Leeds anyway. Another getaway with the boyfriend is always a good thing. 
And I feel like I need a break (although hopefully not of the bone variety), after a day of data collection today that involved a nearly-full-scale tantrum over a yellow pencil crayon and a battle between myself and a box of pringles for one boy’s attention. Needless to say, the pringles won. This comes after several days of arguing with Excel (makes a change from arguing with SPSS I suppose) and pretending to be intelligent enough to review a manuscript for publication. Yeas. Me. All 7 of us. Don’t laugh. 
As I said, a break right about now would be nice. 
It’s just a pain that it has to feature breaking the pain barrier at the same time eh?! 
Current Mood: 
If you visit The South, you will come back germ-ridden.
My trip Down South with Mark this weekend was really, really great. 
Anything I do with that boy turns out to be really great, quite honestly. 
He got ma & pa’s seals of approval in, oh, I would say 5 minutes flat. And they got his, what with daddy’s cooking and mummy chauffering us around all over the place. Love my family. 
London was fun. Lion King was wicked. And it was more than wonderful to see Alexandra. 
I introduced her to Mark. He passed. And she introduced us to possibly the best cake in the country. It was a good exchange. 
We also discovered a Greek beach in the middle of London, set up along embankment by the Greek tourist board. In association with Olympic Air, no less. Complete with Greek music and souvlaki. Hilarious. 
Sunday we started the day by almost killing ourselves on a too-hot run in Cambridge. Then we had a trip out to Anglesea Abbey, where Mark told me he would buy me the stately home. To be honest love, I’d rather have a Tiffany ring. 
Of course, we had to watch the football England get hammered. I was a very good girl and didn’t play The Question Game. Too much. 
Our little trip finished on Monday with us showing Mark the delights of Cambridge. Took about an hour. 30 minutes of which involved an olde English sweet shop, where the boy didn’t quite know where to look. Bless him. 
The sun shone for us the whole time and it really was lovely to be back in my home, with my boyfriend. Smiles all round. But now, the price of Heading South must be paid as I’m poorly sick. It’s that bloody London place. Germs. Gross. And here’s me with a 10k to run in Leeds this weekend. Mark had said we might cross the finish line holding hands. But it’ll be more like him carrying me over it at this rate. Awww, that’ll be romantic won’t it?! 
Current Mood: 
Do not spend 5 evenings in a row at home.
Tonight, even if it means going to the bloody pub to watch the bloody football, I am going to get out of the house. Before I go crazy.
This week has been as dull as hell. My work has been dull. Running has been unexciting. Routines have been, well, routine. 
Somewhere in all of this dullness is at least the ray of sunshine that is Mark, who makes evenings that little bit less uneventful and mornings that bit less painful. 
But the inbetween bits? Dull. I’m sure if I was training to be a cardiothoracic surgeon, I wouldn’t be bored at all (yes, my selves are back onto that one). But as it is, rut and stuck spring to mind. 
But this weekend will at least see a change of scene as we head down South to introduce Mark to ma & pa, with a visit to London thrown in for good measure. 
Thankfully this London visit will not feature 90 minutes in some skanky pub watching England play lose to Germany, swiftly proceeded by being glassed over the head by a herd (I use the term ‘herd’ intentionally) of angry football fans. But will rather focus on 1)Going to see The Lion King at the theatre; 2)Mark’s interrogation over dinner by Alexandra and 3)A visit to Tiffany’s. Right dear boyfriend of mine?! 
I imagine that a big juicy diamond would be sufficient to get me out of this rut I’m in. It’s worth a try, right?! 
Current Mood: 
When visiting Tesco to buy alcohol, ensure that all people accompanying you have i.d.
Otherwise, you may find yourself in the scenario that me, my sis and James found ourselves in this weekend when we went to buy cider. Let’s not forget that I am 30 in October. Wonky will turn 27 tomorrow. And James is 29. I would like to think that we do not look like a group of under-age chavs who want to take their cider round the back of Lidl for a night out with a bag of chips. But perhaps we do. 
Because the woman on the check-out informed us that we each needed to show her some i.d. And when Wonky (sharp as a button that one) politely asked her “So, does that mean that if a parent comes in wanting to buy alcohol and they have their child with them, you need to see the child’s i.d?” the woman just mumbled something about ‘it not working like that’. James then asked (we weren’t gonna let this go-We wanted our cider, damn it) if I could be sold the alcohol (I was the only one with i.d) if they both left the store, to which she replied “No because you’ll be outside.” Riiiight then. 
We bought our cider from Morrisons. And had a most lovely evening out by the back of Lidl.
Apart from that small altercation, this weekend was really lovely. All thanks to my sis, The Husband and The Boyfriend (that’s her husband and my boyfriend. I have not got married and she does not have a bit on the side. ) We hadn’t actually had a being-daft-together weekend for quite a while so we had some making up to do. Daftness prevailed. Obviously. I’m not sure Mark knew what he was letting himself in for. 
Especially as, when he arrived, Wonky made him play ‘the herb game’ where she forced him to eat various leaves from around her garden and he had to guess what they were. And I then spent a large portion of the evening talking to him about ‘our wedding’. Encouraged by Wonky, of course. 
And yet he was still there in the morning. I think he must have really wanted breakfast. Well, it was quite an extravaganza of a breakfast. 
The BBQ we had that evening was mint. (Actually, the salad did feature mint. Mark can now identify mint by simply looking at the leaves. ). And our little walk in the woods to go monkey spotting (we didn’t see any) on Sunday morning was also great. 
The only thing missing was our usual baking session but we don’t want to scare Mark off now do we?! 
And Wonky did get a glittery fairy cake, complete with sparkler, as an early birthday treat anyway. 
It was just a wonderful weekend, and soooooo nice to be a ’4′ now instead of a 3. Lucky really arent’ I?!
Current Mood: 
The truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction.
I was a bit shocked to see today that an execution in the U.S has been carried out by firing squad. 
Somewhat archaic, no?! 
But I was even more stumped by the fact that “Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff used the Twitter micro-blogging site to say he had given the go-ahead for execution. ‘May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims,’ Mr Shurtleff tweeted.” Seriously?! Only in America. I hope… 
Current Mood: 
SPSS is only useful for analysing data if you know how to use it.
And I, well, don’t. I have a feeling that at least one of my selves should know how to use it. I’m fairly certain that we have, in the course of our studies, attended many a class on it. But I’m buggered if I can get it to do what I need it to do. 
I might just try a new approach to my thesis: Submit the raw data and make it into a sort of ‘game’ for the examiner to figure out the answers themselves. That could work, right?! 
So this is pretty much all I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks. Boring office stuff. Marking. A bit of reading. Trying to get back into the running. Started data collection. Only have permission for 4 kids so far so that didn’t take long, although the fruit faces went down a treat. 
And I’ve been arguing with SPSS ever since. 
My other challenge of late has been trying to avoid watching the football. With little success. So now I’ve adopted the new strategy of suggesting we go out to watch the football so that I can at least 1)Drink vodka and 2)Ummm, drink vodka. 
We shall be going out to watch the football tomorrow night (for those of you living under a rock, England are playing, for the penultimate time this competition. A girl can hope. 
) so that I can 1)Drink vodka and 2)Eat popcorn/pick ‘n’ mix. Yeas. They are screening the England game at the cinema. Well, at least nobody will notice if I go to sleep in the dark. 
Other methods to make the football more bearable have included a little game I’ve devised where I ask the stupidest, most girly questions I can think of the whole way through. 
Some examples have so far included: ‘Who washes the players kits?’ ‘Why do they have to change ends?’ And ‘Has a player ever projectile vomited on the pitch?’ I’m sure I can think of more. Although I imagine I will be murdered if I utter a sound during the game tomorrow. I might just take to throwing popcorn at the screen instead. Football aside (I wish), the weekend should be a good one, with a BBQ at Wonky’s on Saturday (where football is thankfully banned) and a visit to Maria on Sunday. Where, oh yeah, we’ll be watching Brazil play because her boyfriend is Brazilian. And my boyfriend just wants to watch every single game. 
And when all of these World Cup (don’t forget the capitalisation now) games are over, we’re pretty much ready for the English football season to start. Oh joy of joys. 
And yet still I’m smiling, with my tongue in cheek. I think I must love someone really…
Current Mood:
If you don’t much care for football, now is the time to buy
aseveral good books/leave thecountryearth.
Tomorrow, it begins. Like it hasn’t already begun with ‘footage’ of the England players on safari making headline news and ‘crucial’ debates about knee injuries and Wayne Rooney’s inability to behave like a civilised person dominating every bloody TV channel. Who gives a damn?! Unfortunately, it seems 99.9% of England do. Me not being one of them. 
It’s not like I am averse to football. I can see why people enjoy watching it. There will, no doubt, be some world class games played over the next month. And even I would rather watch those than Big Brother. 
And I suppose it’s quite nice to get into the whole ‘festival’ spirit and all that. 
But it’s the whole ‘The-world-is-going-to-stand-still-because-I-need-to-be-at-home-with-my-beer-on-the-sofa-watching-the-England-game-come-hell-or-high-water’ attitude that kinda gets my goat. I mean, when I was at school, they never moved an exam so I could be home early for a feature-length episode of Hollyoaks did they?! But for a game of football, oh, that’s so very important. Then there’s the big debate: What are employers going to do to prevent their staff from skivving off work for England games? Should they provide huge TVs? Should they allow flexi-time? Here’s an idea: Sack them. You would any other bloody time of year. Madness. 
Of course, all of this is not to mention the ‘I-support-England-and-I’ll-be-euphoric-if-they-win-but-will-go-and-trash-a-public-space-in-a-drunken-state-of-fury-ifwhen-they-lose’ mentality. 
I am aware that not all football fans are like this. But those that are actually make me want to vomit. 
So. Will I be watching the World Cup (You have to capitalise it-It’s that important)? Unfortunately, yes. On account of the fact that pretty much all of my housemates actually like football and that’s the only thing that will be on TV anyway. Joy. Will I be supporting England? Hell no. As far as I am capable of ‘supporting’ any team when I don’t really get the offside rule, I’ll be rooting for Greece. For all 3 of their games anyway. 
After that, I think I’ll make my decision based on the team with the sexiest legs. As good as any isn’t it?!
Current Mood: 