Happy New Year!

Happy new year! I wrote a grand total of 4 blog posts in 2010. New year's resolution: to write more posts in 2011. This is part of a larger new year's resolution: to get a better work-life balance in 2011. I probably invested myself too much in my work life in 2010, and this year I will try to do more of what I want to do. Which firstly means getting a new job... as I don't want my work-life balance to shift too much in the opposite direction this year. However, I feel a cautious optimism for 2011, a year full of new beginnings, new possibilities, friends, family and cupcakes!

Peter and Princess

I happened to see Peter Andre & Princess from a distance promoting his new perfume when I was out shopping recently.

I'm not usually interested in celebrities, and didn't stay very long as it was strange to be surrounded by so many screaming girls, and VH wasn't very impressed. However, I enjoy watching Pete's ITV show - because whatever he's like as an artist, he's a good Dad and has beautiful kids. I find Princess really cute; she was jumping around, signing autographs and looked really happy. It's a strange childhood she and her siblings must have growing up in the public eye. It's a shame I couldn't see Junior and Harvey too.

Lake District

I haven't blogged since I was 'marooned in Montreal' and a lot has happened since then. I travelled around the country -Manchester, Reading, Newcastle, London, Nottingham (all for work) and my favourite by far - the lovely Lake District. We saw lots of sheep, water, mountains, museums and plays, and ate delicious cream teas.

The Lake District is so beautiful (we stayed in Keswick) and I really want to go back. There are so many fantastic places to visit in England, I love it here!

Marooned in Montreal

What kind of name is Eyjafjallajökull for a volcano? Here is how to prounounce it if you are curious. There is something quite surreal about volcanic ash from this impossibly named Icelandic volcano causing chaos throughout the world. Airlines are losing money, many people including Prime Minsiters and Presidents are unable to travel, or stranded, and it is affecting the economy.

On a much smaller scale, here I am, marooned in Montreal, whereas I should be at work in England... I was meant to travel back home Thursday 15th April, but instead I am (fingers crossed!) flying back on Wednesday, nearly a week later than planned. Perhaps I should have felt happy about the volcanic eruption- yippee an extra week of holidays! - but surprisingly being trapped somewhere out of your control isn't as fun as it may appear to be. I feel a little bit like Dorothy must have felt in the Land of Oz, except I don't possess any ruby slippers to help me return home. At least I have somewhere to stay, and for that, I am grateful.

The weather here is sunny at last so I can make the best of it and extra, unexpected holidays.

Proper blog post at last

I haven't blogged properly for a while. I didn't even blog about my Breton Christmas. Actually it wasn't very 'Breton', but it was celebrated in Brittany with family including Sky. We gave her a new toy reindeer which she loves. Sometimes she picks it up and throws it in the air if she wants to play. She is good at human manipulation, and has recently developed a little 'cry' she uses if she wants attention. As in the news today, dogs are actually very intelligent. I am not sure how many words Sky knows, but it is quite a lot. Recently however, she only seems to respond to them if you there is the possibility she may get some food in return. As I said - she is clever.

Now unfortunately it is back to reality, back to work, and back to the snowy weather. It was snowing before we left, and it has been snowing again since yesterday. Heavy snow too. Unlike VeggieHubby, I am no fan of the snow. Yes, it is very pretty but it just causes problems with travel to work. The roads were pretty treacherous last night as I was driving home from work. Even though there were gritters out my car span out of control onto the oncoming traffic and I was lucky that both me and my car were fine. The roads are much worse today as there is much more snow now, and it will get worse tomorrow as more snow arrives, and the snow starts turning into ice.... I think I'll be working at home again.

Little reflection on the "Naughties"

As the "Naughties" draws to a close, I am amazed how much my life has changed in these past ten years. I am no longer the single, teenage student as I was at the start of the decade, but a married and working 20-something. Ten years has made such a difference in my own life, and of course, in the world.

The highlight of the decade for me is of course meeting and marrying Veggie Hubby. Getting my degree would rank quite highly too, as would fantastic holidays in Canada, Greece (Olympics) and France, and seeing some amazing sights in the USA. Although doing 'Camp America' in 2000 was one of the lows of the decade for me, it was like a miserable couple of months in a prison camp.

I tried to make a list of my favourite things of the decade: favourite song, film, book etc., but I can't manage to do this. I think so many songs for instance have special meanings in their own year, it is difficult to pick favourites. Can you?

Wishing any readers of this blog a very Happy New Year and decade ahead. xx

SNOW BABY!!!

Hi everyone, i thought i would check in and let you all know that i had a little baby boy on friday 18th december at 3.48am, weighing 6lb 7oz! He is teeny and cute! Not to mention the fact he chose to come just as a snow blizzard was starting!! And lucky he came then, as 2 days later everyone was snowed in!!!!
x

Yeah or Nay?

Things currently on my 'yeah' and 'nay' list..

Yeah :-)

• Weird food combinations e.g. pineapple cottage cheese with filled pasta!!! (dinner tonight)
  
• I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here is keeping me entertained most evenings at the moment
  
• Pub lunches
• Graze boxes (when they don't contain nuts)
• It's nearly Christmas
  

Nay :-(

• The inept and slow Home Office
• Estate agents' extortionate 'administration' fees
  
• Working overtime
• Nuts
• Strictly Come Dancing (it's 'dull, dull, dull' this year in the words of judge Craig Revel Horwood)
  

The Graze Craze

There is a new craze going around my office, called grazing. Using the Graze website, you can order boxes of healthy dried or fresh treats to your desk or home to snack on.

On the website you can look through all their products and rate them as items you 'love' 'like' 'want to try' or 'bin'. They arrive in postbox-sized recyclable boxes. I have tried one box so far, it contained a dried pina colada mix (2 portions of fruit), delicious chili rice crackers, dairy free chocolate beans (like Smarties) and yoghurt coated apricots. These are based on things I like, other boxes I've seen have been healthier than mine, containing nuts, seeds and more dried fruits. I would have taken a photo of my box, but thought it would have looked a bit odd in the office if I did that! Here is a pic from the website.If you go on the website and enter the following code you can get a free Graze box.
Free graze code: 2TXJBKQ
It would also give me a pound off my next box, or a pound to donate to the Rainforest Alliance. Following the free box, the next box is half price (£1.49) and following boxes are priced at £2.99. I don't know for how long I'll get these boxes, I think £2.99 is quite expensive, but actually I've had a look and similar products can be quite expensive in shops too. P.S. I am not on commission for Graze - honestly!

Trapped!

I have come to a realisation that I am trapped in England. The Home Office has my passport and have had it for 1.5 months whilst processing VeggieHubby's visa. I don't know when I will get it back, it could be up to 6 months and we are not allowed to contact them. I want VH to get his visa more, but also I want my passport back! Even my dog Sky has a pet passport and can travel. Friends and colleagues seem to be making quick winter escapes, and I'd love to do that too. I just don't want to be trapped here for Christmas when I thought it would be the first Christmas I would spend with my family (who I haven't seen for nearly a year) since I got married.

Not only I am trapped in my country, I am also trapped because of the heavy wind and rain currently battering the south of England. It just makes me want to stay indoors. Having said that it is a good weekend for this severe weather; because it is the first in over a month where I had no real plans. There is also something quite nice and cosy about staying inside while it is raining outside - so I will make the best of my weekend in with my friends the X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing.

Putting a giraffe in the fridge

I heard this short quiz on the radio today. How well do you do? Disclaimer - the wording below is not my own!
1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

















The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, insert the giraffe, and close the door.

This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Did you say, "Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the door"?

Wrong answer.

Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions.

3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend?

Correct Answer: The elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory.

OK, even if you didn't answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.

4. There is a river you must cross but it is inhabited by crocodiles. How do you manage it?

Correct Answer: You swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the animal conference. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

According to Anderson Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong, but many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a four-year-old.

Christmas on Carnaby Street

I now have a new favourite street in London: Carnaby Street. I can't believe I've never been down this street before. It is a really funky, hip little street with quirky off-beat shops. The Christmas decorations are up already, usually I would find this irritating with it only being early November; but these decorations with their message of love, peace and joy are forgiven. The decorations may be inflatable but they are not tacky like inflatable Santas. Well perhaps the pink reindeer are just ever so slightly tacky, but I love them all the same. If you're ever in London I would recommend that you take a walk down this fun street, and hopefully you will love it too.

La di dah

I am feeling really happy today. I had a good day at work, which makes a change from the past few weeks which have been quite difficult. VeggieHubby also went to a kind of job interview today, and now has a new job. It's a small one, but close to home and will hopefully lead to something better in the future. I have a good few weekends planned too:

• This weekend I'm meeting up with some friends from work. I'm quite lucky to have some colleagues who started around a similar time to me last year who are a similar age, and we all get along well which makes my job fun. We have hour-long lunch breaks when we go out for a meal somewhere nice at least once a week. We also usually have half-hour tea breaks in the mornings, and sometimes 15-minute afternoon breaks too. So my job is pretty good like that. Another good thing is that I can work from home sometimes, which I'm going to do tomorrow, so it will feel like a three-day weekend too.
  
• Next week, I'm going to take some time off work & visit my long-lost sister (well, not exactly but we don't see each other often enough) for a long weekend. She lives in a nice area of the country, so exploring the historic cities near to where she lives will be fun too.
• Then it's my birthday weekend, and I'm going to enjoy still being in my 20's for another year. I don't know what I'm going to be doing exactly (apart from seeing my uni friends J and W), but I have a sneaky feeling a surprise is in store.

P.S. Picture above is of my niece's gorgeous cat.

Perfection

I have just spent the weekend building a PlayMobil castle, playing Pictionary Mania, and going on a woodland walk with my lovely niece. This is how weekends should be :)

One word meme

1. Where is your mobile? table

2. Your hair? messy

3. Your mother? frankofile

4. Your father? grumpy

5. Your favorite food? pasta

6. Your dream last night? forgotten

7.Your favorite drink? mocha

8. Your dream/goal? australia

9. What room are you in? living

10. Your hobby? internet

11. Your fear? numerous

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? somewhere

13. Where were you last night? home

14. Something that you aren't? outgoing

15. Muffins? breakfast

16. Wish list item? house

17. Where did you grow up? derbyshire

18. Last thing you did? strictly

19. What are you wearing? smart(ish)

20. Your TV? small

21. Your pets? sky

22. Friends? far

23. Your life? okay

24. Your mood? thoughtful

25. Missing someone? sky

26. Vehicle? corsa

27. Something you're not wearing? shoes

28. Your favorite store? waitrose

29. Your favorite color? pink

30. When was the last time you laughed? today

31. Last time you cried? yesterday

32. Your best friend? all

33. One place that I go to over and over? work

34. One person who emails me regularly? VeggieHubby

35. Favorite place to eat? sofa

36. Phobia? spiders

37. Time of day? evening

* Meme taken from French Fancy, I added the last one, you can add your own if you wish.

Autumn

Wow I last posted about my (late) summer holiday, and now the leaves are falling, the nights are drawing in and Christmas decorations are already in shops. I find this quite sad, how is 2009 going so quickly, am I really in my late 20's, and have I really been married for two years?

It's back to normality in the Veggie(ish) household. Not much is happening now, but we are expecting things to be more exciting in the near future.

The main things in our life right now:

• VH is looking for a job.
  
• I'm trying to not lose mine!
  
• We're waiting for VH to hopefully get his permanent visa so he is not sent back to cold Canada.
  
• We both have colds!
• I have major car problems, but at least it still moves.
• The good TV season has started: especially Strictly Come Dancing, the X Factor and Desperate Housewives.
  
• We're looking forward to visiting our niece in a couple of weeks, and have other exciting weekend plans.
• I'm enjoying reading other blogs, as I'm not contributing to my own very much, which is very lazy I know, letting other people do the work while I just have fun reading it.
  

Animals of Vancouver

Apologies for my blogging and commenting absence for the past few weeks, I have been (and still am) on holiday in Canada. I'm currently in Montréal, which feels a bit like home now, but I have just returned from a week away in Vancouver. I have previously blogged about the animals in Brittany, so I thought I'd blog about some of the animals we saw in Vancouver.

One of the main things I wanted to do in Vancouver was go whale-watching. We went with a company called Prince of Whales. However, although they did find us some killer whales (see pic below) I was quite disappointed as they spent a while trying to find the whales, and as soon as they did and we started getting good pictures, they decided to move the boat on. In fact, when we got really close, my camera battery died so I missed the opportunity. We saw three transient killer whales, but no large pod of resident orcas, and nothing else (such as bald eagles or porpoises like they said we would). Most of the boat trip was spent travelling through thick fog. However, at least we got to see a couple of wild whales. It was very exciting when they came out of the water.

We also saw beluga whales at the Vancouver Acquarium in Stanley Park. Not as exciting obviously as seeing whales in the wild, but fun nevertheless. The mother recently had a calf (2 months old) and her mother had also recently had a calf (14 months old) to the same father! So beluga society is quite strange. The beluga calfs are really cute; they are grey until they grow into beautiful white adult belugas.
Also, although we didn't see any bald eagles, we did see some at an eagle show, and there are also 170 painted eagles around the Vancouver area to celebrate the Vancouver Winter Olympics, which will be held in Feb 2010. The statues will be auctioned off after the Olympics for charity.

We also went up a mountain to the north of Vancouver called 'Grouse Mountain' in a cable car, where there were some orphan grizzly bears in a large enclosure. They were gentle giants, and we could get really close to them.
We also saw some wild deer on the mountain (mother and fawn).

Finally, yesterday we happened to see a seagull eating a large starfish! He swallowed it down whole.

Schadenfreude

It is nearly two years since I got married. I cannot believe how quickly time flies.

I had the most fantastic wedding day, yet the immediate time after I got married was very difficult. We didn't go on honeymoon (and still haven't actually). My parents moved away. Neither VH nor I had a job. VH didn't have a visa, so we had to go through the stress of the visa application. We were lodging with a couple, which wasn't fun. I had to temp for two months in order for VH to get his visa, and my colleguges there were really nasty.

Then, VH got a job! I left my temping job and the place we were temporarily lodging in :-) but we had to make a fast quick to the town VH's new company was based in. As we didn't have a home we had to live in B&B's. It was very expensive living in B&Bs and having to eat out every night, and we were draining money. They were not even nice B&B's, it was like living in someone else's house, paying, yet not feeling at home, as we couldn't use the washing machine/kitchen etc. We were, technically, homeless.

At last, we were able to move into our flat where we still live. We put loads of money into moving into the flat, and agreed to a six-month minimum contract. Six weeks later, just after Christmas 2008 VH lost his job, for no reason. The company seemed to hire employees and 'let them go' at will. So neither of us had a job, yet were trapped in this expensive contract. This was around the time I started blogging...

Anyway, the reason I have become so reflective about this is because I have been waiting for something bad to happen to this evil company. This week, the happy day came, most likely due to a lot of disgruntled ex-employees including third world country workers. An investigation by the BBC revealed the company's dirty secret. The company is making a loss, and employees are currenly being paid in shares now rather than cash. Hopefully it is not much longer before the company spins out of control, crashes, and burns.... schadenfreude.

It just takes one

It just takes one bad moment to spoil a day....
Missing the train
Getting caught in the rain
Spilling a drink on new clothes
Being tailgated
Somebody being rude.

Sometimes, just one thing can spoil something you used to enjoy.

At Waitrose yesterday, we were overcharged on a couple of food products, which had been misleadingly priced. We tried to return them tonight, but the checkout girl said that we couldn't return them as they were from the chiller cabinet and it's against the law. I can understand that, but she was giving us very dirty looks. She called the manager who let us exchange them (& requested the items we returned to be binned) but she was also quite rude. They made us feel like dirt. I used to love shopping in Waitrose, but not any more. It is frustrating too, as we recently signed a petition to save their jobs, as this Waitrose is going to close down in December to be replaced by another supermarket.

I used to enjoy my job (!). However, my boss, who I used to get along with, ruined it for me by accusing me of saying something that I didn't say. There is not much worse than being unjustly accused of something you didn't do. I'd often like to write a lot more about my job as it's a big part of my life, especially today as it would be therapeutic, but unfortunately as I've mentioned before, I don't feel I can. Hopefully this will be forgotten soon, and I'll start to enjoy it again, but I'm not convinced.

To help recover from my bad week at work last week, I forced myself into having a good weekend. On Saturday I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which I enjoyed (despite other people finding it a let-down). We then went out for some lovely Spanish tapas at La Tasca, which VH has already blogged about. Then, the icing on the cake was booking our trip to Vancouver yesterday. I'm looking forward to seeing the whales already.

The rabbit wears Prada

Following a request, please see my new glasses modelled beautifully by "Yellowy". I think that they look much cuter on him than on me! Yellowy is a gift from a friend at university, and became quite a celebrity during my university years.

Close-up of my new specs below:

As they have thicker plastic around the edges than I'm used to, I'm having to get used to losing my peripheral vision. A small sacrifice for wearing Prada. Actually I'm not designer label driven, but I liked these glasses and there wasn't much difference in price between these and non-label ones.