AshesFromStars

How is it that I got paid a week ago but I have no money left? I think that after I pay my bus ticket I’ll only have about £40 to last me three weeks! Plus £15 my mum owes me and £30 in my PayPal account.

Grr.. I cannot wait until I’ve paid off all of my debts. It’s really starting to get me down that I have never got any spare cash. I’m going to set up an eBay account and start selling off all this random stuff I found when I was tidying my room. Limited Edition Doctor Who Plate, anyone? Seriously. Where did that come from?

I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m not in my best friend’s situation. He’s got so much stuff to buy for the baby, and baby clothes and things aren’t exactly cheap. His family are helping them out a lot but even still - they’ve both got so much to buy for the little one, I can’t believe how expensive kids are!

Apparently I’m in for a wage rise next month, although going by my bosses it works out at around £35 per pay. Which really isn’t that much, and there’s a good chance that I’ll get less than that because I’m a supervisor and he’s a manager. Hmm, be interesting to find out how much the increase is. I doubt that it will make much difference since it’ll come off in tax and national insurance anyway. I knew I should have bargained for a wage increase when I was moving shops, but I guess I’d have been told to get lost.

Countdown to leaving my shop is 2 and a half weeks and I’m still not looking forward to it. I know that it’s a great opportunity for my career, but I still don’t want to leave my wee shop and all the awesome staff! I suppose I should stop being a spoilt brat about it all and just take this chance and go for it 200%.

I’ve just found a PR website for people writing articles and stories that feature up-and-coming clothing in shops such as Primark, asos.com, Monsoon etc. It’s called PRshots.com, and hopefully it means that I can find what I want to buy before it hits the shops and I’ll never have to browse eBay again to find tops and bags that sell out way too fast in my local Primark.

And yes, I’m a Primark slut. I don’t care if it’s cheap and nasty - that’s exactly why I like it.

What version do you prefer? Wiley or Hot Chip?

Wiley:

Hot Chip:

It’s to solve an argument that I’m having about which version is better

I’m getting more than slightly caught up in the buzz surrounding the Olympics, even though I’m not sporty in the slightest (I’m the biggest couch potatoe on the planet actually). I can’t help it, I don’t sleep much anyway so I’m sitting watching the different events through the night instead of those rubbish made for tv movies and infomercials, watching all these brilliant athletes Going For Gold for themselves and their country, it’s so inspiring and addictive. I especially like seeing my fellow Brit’s winning medals.

What’s also brilliant is Bet365 Casino’s current promotion which is tied in with the Olympics absolutely perfectly - The Going For Gold £50,000 promotion. The casino over at Bet365 is probably the best on the internet - trust me, I’ve tried them all - and this promotion is great idea and so much fun to take part it - it’s like really taking part in the Olympic Games without being atheletic, or having to fly out to Beijing.

You can win varying amounts depending on how well you do, from £25 - £1500 if you’re within the top 100 players for each day. How cool is that? I’d be more than happy to win myself a couple of gold medals, heck even a bronze medal would be awesome!

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If you’re a fan of furniture, and lets face it most people are to some extent, and fancy your chances of winning an amazing prize of $10,000 worth of dream furniture you really need to check out the discount furniture retailer, Boyles.com.

Random Draw Sweepstakes: No purchase necessary to enter or win. Dream Room Give Away Sponsored by Hendricks Furniture Group, LLC.
To enter, please complete the registration form from June 1st, 2008 at 12:00 AM (ET) through August 31st, 2008 at 12:00 PM (ET). If you have already registered, click on the icon to login and enter the sweepstakes again to increase your chances of winning. Registered users may enter drawing once per day. Valid opt-in email address and mailing address required. Odds of winning will depend upon the total number of eligible entries received.

Must be a legal resident of the 50 United States.Void where prohibited by law.

I’ve checked out Bolyes.com and there is some amazing furniture on that site that I so desperately want, I just wish I lived in the United States so I could enter the sweepstakes. I’m browsing the site just now, thinking how easily I could fit some of the gorgeous wood furniture into my bedroom. Some of the beds on there are stunning, and would guarantee a comfy night’s sleep.

If you’re in the United States I’d definitely enter this sweepstake, you’ve got nothing to loose and nothing but stunning, dream furniture to win.

Yesteday morning I woke up at 3am absolutely soaked in sweat. Not because it was warm outside, like it has been for the past couple of days, but from feeling very much like I have flu. My whole body was aching and my throat felt like it had undergone surgery to be replaced by sandpaper. Not to mention the fact that my glands are swollen and tender.

So I got myself out of bed and downstairs to make a huge cup of hot chocolate (Galaxy chocolate powder and milk, it’s amazing) and tried to fall asleep again. No such luck. So I figured I’d just sit and watch TV until 5.30am when I need to start getting ready for work. Eh, yes. I’d forgotten that last night about 8pm the internet, television and phoneline had conked out. I had phoned them with my mobile (which has probably cost me about £5.00) and they informed me that there are no problems on the account, it was a service issue in my area and everything would be ok by morning.
Well, evidently not. I checked the phone - no service. Internet via my iPod Touch - no WAN connection.

So I sat on the couch with my two cups of hot beverages. You see I decided that I needed coffee to wake me up a little so I made a huge Central Perk-esque cup of double spooned coffee for a caffeine boost to drink after my hot chocolate. I read yesterday’s Evening Times. I read a 3 month old copy of Look magazine and realised that magazines are still publishing the same crap as they were 3 months ago - Amy Winehouse’s fears over Blake, Blake out of prison soon, Lohan might have a girlfriend and is settling down, Paris and Nicole hate each other - and an unbelievably old copy of Channel 4’s Grand Design magazine. After all that reading it was only 5am and I was tired again. No point going to sleep for a half hour, I’d only sleep through my alarm. So I did what any sane person does at 5am, threw a jacket over my jammies and a pair of Ugg boots on my feet and took the dog out for a long walk.

By the time we got back I’d to end up rushing my shower and didn’t have a chance to lather on my amazing raspberry and melon body scrub and only washed my hair once. Usually I put shampoo through it twice to make it really shiny but I didn’t think I had enough time so I felt somewhat dirty all morning. Ran like a mad woman to get ready and nearly burned my hand ironing my work top, only to realise the clock in the bathroom was 15 minutes fast and I still had 20 minutes to get ready!

I ended up leaving the house earlier than usual to walk to the next bus stop up and catch the earlier bus, theoretically getting me to work 10 minutes earlier. Of course, that’s the theory. I got the earlier bus down the hill to where I get my second bus but that didn’t show up. So I ended up waiting an extra 10 minutes outside feeling awful and shivering and actually being late for work - ironic or what? Luckily for me the other supervisor was also opening up today so the shop wasn’t late opening or anything.

Work itself was ok aside from the blinding headache causing my eyes to water and randomly shivering even though it’s a lovely day outside. I ended up taking a half day because of the sheer amount of work I did last week, nearly double my standard hours. Which I don’t get paid for, I get it back in time-owed. I’m sure that’s why I’m sick.

So I’m back home, lying in bed. And guess what? The phone, tv and internet are still not working. I called the company again and it’s going to be as late as 11pm that the issue is solved. Over 20 hours after the outage began. I feel disconnected from my world with no way to check emails or Twitter. Thankfully I have WordPress installed locally on my laptop though so I continue working on themes and graphics for my new project.

Doing a 15 hour shift after just two hours sleep is not fun in the slighest, but that’s exactly what I did on Monday as the back shift supervisor called in sick. I was supposed to finish at 4pm but got talked into staying til 10pm - my boss was there til 10pm also and the amount of work we got done in that 15 hour period was amazing. Seriously, the shop looks amazing and sparkly clean. We rock.

The downside to working so hard? Pretty much yesterday there was nothing to do. At all. We’d done all the orders that were required to be done and worked all the backstock so all we had to do was put out daily deliveries which take about 10 minutes top and daily paperwork - about an hour or so? And the rest was just milling about doing this-and-that. It was amazingly boring all day.

Today was good though - more tidying up and merchandising which I love doing with a passion, it’s the area of retail that I want to get into so I do most of it in our shop. I get really OCD-ish about it, fixing products on the shelf until they are millimetre perfect and all the labels line up…yes, I’m sad!

I’m working all day tomorrow again..and Friday…and Saturday. Half day Sunday and Monday. That means I’ll have done 57 hours in one week - result! Shame I only get paid for 39 and get the rest back in time-owed, which will come in handy on the 12th August.

Why the 12th of August? I’ve booked my theory test for my driving licence. I’m ever so slighty nervous as I keep forgetting really silly and important things - like stopping distances and the like. Eeek. Think I’ll have to read the highway code about 10 times between now and then. And remember not to forget the paper part of my licence, eh Rhys?

I am officially addicted to The Sims 2, and I’ve not even installed any expansion packs that I’ve got yet. Plus, I have the most awesome house, ever.

Finally I’ve settled on a theme for the site, which is exactly what I was aiming for but couldn’t get it right myself. All hail Tarski.

I really am a lazy designer. I’ve realised that I not longer try to code anything, I just search for the appropriate WordPress plugin and away I go.

I’ve also shunned everything that I believe in for this theme - clean lines, web 2.0 feel. I’ve gone back to my routes of funky, grungy layouts and I rather like it. Just the left hand side bar is annoying the life out of me. I’ll get around to fixing that later on though since I’m on my way out at the moment.

To tidy the boyfriend’s bedroom. Oh lucky me. He called me earlier to say that he’d bought a new chest of drawers from Argos for his room and that he was going home to start tidying it up to fit the drawers in and finally get rid of all the stuff in his room he doesn’t need any more… holey jeans, videos, random books that have never been opened. I’m leaving it as long as possible before heading down to his house because I hate tidying up, especially when it’s not my stuff to tidy.

Oh wait, he’s called me again. A lot of it is mine, oops. I generally leave clothes at his house all the time. Maybe I’ll be able to find my work shoes that I lost about 6 weeks ago? Or the new tshirts that I’ve yet to wear, I think they are in a bag in his room somewhere. And I wonder why I’m always broke?

I got my free ring from the Silver Jewerly Club in the post. And it’s gorgeous, it’s very Celtic looking without being the typical Claddagh style, with a cobalt blue stone. Stunning, and it matches my necklace that the boyfriend bought me in Dublin perfectly. Such a shame my battery is dead in my camera or I’d post a picture of it.

How cute is Abbi? I was going to the bathroom last night and walked past my mum’s bedroom only to see that the dog was sleeping in her bed, under the covers and using a pillow. I just had to run back to my bedroom and grab my camera and take a picture. Seriously, she’s so cute. Why waste money on pet beds when she looks so cute in my mums bed?

For some reason I want a new camera. I’ve been using a Samsung D75 point-and-shoot since the boyfriend bought me it for Christmas but I want something bigger and better, which is always the way with me.

Since every single person I know online pretty much uses a DSLR I want to jump on the pretty picture bandwagon and get myself one. I’ve always been one for keeping up with the Jones’ and my 7.2MP camera just isn’t cutting it, either that or I’m just incredibly rubbish at taking pictures. Example of a picture taken earlier today when out walking the dog (yes, seriously. I need better things to take pictures of rather than the dog or flowers).
Yuck, the settings were a bit screwed up but goddamn I want clear and lovely pictures!

I’ve been scouring eBay and I think I’ve found a camera I really want, but I want to know what you guys think first. It’s a Canon Digital EOS 400D and it’s £150 on Canon’s Refurb store. Is this a good camera at a good price? I’m mainly using my PayPal savings to purchase this camera which has accumulated over the past few months due to blogging about the best diet pills on the internet and such, so I have a budget of around £150 for my purchase.

If you have any recommendation at all for good cameras or great sites to buy one from please let me know so I don’t waste my money on a rubbish camera again.

So I survived T In The Park, just. It was once again an epic journey from East Kilbride to Balado. Not that I expected anything less after last year’s fiasco.

Started off with the boy’s mum picking up our friends from their houses and dropping them off at the bus station and then coming back to get us plus all their stuff that they’d left the night before, which nearly resulted in us forgetting their tent. That’d have served them right!

I took a few photos when we were getting ready to set off, but ended up not taking my camera with me because I’d managed to fill my one and only micro sd card and didn’t have time to backup the photos on it to the computer before we left. It ended up I bought a £1 disposable camera when we got there anyway…chances of the photos actually developing? Probably nil.

Anyway, we got to the bus station and I’d to run like hell to buy underwear (forgot to pack some) and a pair of sunglasses since I was optimistic about the weather situation. Turned out that was a good move on my part as the sun was blaring for most of the weekend. Got on the 50 year old double decker bus and sat downstairs with our bags for a change, heard too many stories of bags being stolen at the other end. In fact one of our friends went up to Balado on the Thursday night and had £200 stolen from his jeans while he slept. Idiot.

We didn’t hit any traffic what so ever on the way to Balado, which was amazing. By the time we got there it was about 11.45am (we left East Kilbride just after 10am) and didn’t get into the campsite until about 2.30pm. We had to queue, with backpacks on and in the heat, for probably about a mile and a half. Moving forward 4 foot every couple of minutes, with one of the boys constantly moaning about being in pain. Yes, so were we. I had a lot of stuff with me, including a double airbed in my backpack and carrying two camping chairs which were awkward as hell. Highlights of the queue included the boyfriend making a guranja (sp?) gyu scream Guranja pretty damn loudly that the whole queue seemed to turn around to look at him for 20p. Yes, 20p. We got a book out of it too which I ended up throwing over the fence as the boyfriend was a bit drunk on Saturday afternoon and was going to try and sell it to somebody. Probably would have ended up with him getting his head kicked in.

I found us a great place to camp, Yellow 2, and within 20 minutes of getting our tent up it started to rain. We sat and talked and the boys got drunk and then headed into the arena. I made us walk slow to listen to Scouting For Girls on the walk of death (really, really long walk into the arena up the side of the NME stage) and we went to get Mojitos from the Bacardi B-Bar. Which I stole. Well, the guy had two chances to ask me for the money and he didn’t so we just ran away with our drinks. £16 saved there. I got a lanyard with a whistle on it from the barman too, so that was me happy. Went and seen the Chemical Brothers with the boyfriend and danced like a tit for about 5 minutes with glowsticks because ONE drink gets me drunk, haha.

We headed back to the tent and promptly fell asleep for a few hours. Next day we didn’t head into the arena until about 7pm where I seen The Kaiser Cheifs and heard Ian Brown and Rage Against The Machine. Left the boyfriend to go see RATM on his own since I hate crowds and waited for an hour til he came back to our tent worried as hell, turns out that somebody was stabbed near out tent when he was walking back. Glad I didn’t know that when I was waiting for him.

On Sunday the boyfriend was terribly hungover, but he was in a state the day before so it’s his own fault. I seen The Prodigy, The Zutons…erh, I think that’s it. Heard the Racontours though walking into the arena. Seriously, didn’t get my moneys worth at all!

That’s the last time I’m going to T. It’s lost it’s charm, and it was a bloody nightmare.

Pictures once I get them developed and scanned!

Seven long months after paying for my ticket, one year after I swore I’d never go back, T In The Park is tomorrow. And actually? I don’t really want to go anymore. It’s absolutely chucking it down with rain, it’s overcast and cold. And that’s down here - in Kinross it’s more than likely worse as that’s in the north of Scotland and I’m central-belt. I know that once I get there it’ll be fine, I’ll be adopting a typically Scottish ‘Ach, it’s only a wee bit rain’ attitude and just ignore the mud, rain and typically crap feeling.

Last night I packed all my stuff. Or at least, I think I have packed everything. I have a box of Malteasers and 2 packets of Haribo. I’m sorted. Decided that I’m going to wear my hot pink camouflage welly / Ugg boots as they take up loads of room in my back pack, a pair of Primark jeans, tshirt and hoodie travelling and just pack an other pair of jeans, combats and shorts plus a few tshirts and an other hoodie in by bag. Seriously, still seems like I have too much though. The weather forecast is rain, rain, rain, rain. Oh joy.

Have a good weekend guys, and I’ll have pictures up on Tuesday or Wednesday of the mudbath, eh T In The Park

Ok so I’ve fallen behind a bit on my Doctor Who episode reviews, I think the last one I did was when Martha was still with the Doctor. But hey, it’s the finale, I need to vent my ‘omg-no-Doctor-til-Christmas” feelings.

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