AshesFromStars

So it turns out that this year the boyfriend & I aren’t going to Blackpool. We aren’t going to Benidorm, we’re going to Los Cristianos in Tenerife sometime in October. The only downside to this is that he’s also invited our friends. *shrug* I suppose it would be fun with them but obviously I want to go away together alone. We’ve only done it the once and that was to Dublin about 3 or 4 years ago.

I’ve had a look on various websites for pictures and reviews of Los Cristianos, and my gosh it’s a beautiful place! There’s a water park and places to go out on boats to see dolphins and whales nearby and I think it sounds wonderful, even if I’m afraid of boats!

Hopefully, we’ll be staying in self-catering apartments rather than a hotel. They’re a lot more fun I think, and at least you know what you’re eating - the last time I was in Spain I thought I was eating onion rings when in fact it was squid rings. Yuech! The apartments I fancy are something like the Reveron Apartments, it’s £238.00 for both the boy & I for a week in a studio apartment which is not bad, really!

If anyone has been to Los Cristianos, or Tenerife in general, recently…what did you think? I’ve not been since I was about 4 and he’s not been for at least 5 years! But Tenerife means something to him, so that’s where we’re going!

In other stuff that I’ve been up to..wow what a busy weekend I’ve had! On Friday night the boy & I went to our friends to play poker. I ended up making dinner, a gorgeous chicken and vegetable stirfry with lots of soy sauce and peppers. It was amazing! And I didn’t poison anyone. I think I might post the recipe for it, because it really was out of this world nice. I can’t believe I actually cooked something without killing anyone. After dinner the boys got drunk and we played Xbox and had a sort of mini-pub quiz. It was great fun, but as it turns out my night was about to get so, so much better! The boy & I left the guys to play poker and went into one of the spare bedrooms for a little fun ourselves…won’t go into too many details but it was a great night. We also talked and talked and talked like we haven’t done in ages and decided (half-heartidly on his part I guess since he had been drinking) to start saving money for holidays, a car..whatever.

2 hours later we actually went and played poker. I was the dealer and my god those guys totally loose the knowledge of how to play poker when they’re drunk! Heaven help us if we ever go to a real casino, they’ll be thrown out for acting the idiot!

On Saturday we went shopping and played some pool, which I actually won a game of, very impressed with myself on that one. I was getting fed up of the boy constantly winning so I started playing properly (like putting some power into hitting the cue) and won! I wish we’d put money on the game now. The rest of the night was spent watching nearly all the episodes of Still Game that have been put out on DVD and eating kids sweets that we picked up in PoundLand - you know, strawberry laces and dolly beads and sherbet. Teeth-rotting stuff.

Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix
If I’m honest, I was just a little disappointed with this movie. It seemed to me that the entire story was rushed, with not enough emphasis on characters and relationships with the director, David Yates, was trying to cram the entire book into the shortest time possible. Granted the movie lasts for 138 minutes and it is, I suppose, a children’s movie but I wouldn’t have minded an extra twenty minutes in an uncomfortable Odeon chair just to have the story told properly.

The entire story is choppy and I feel that those who haven’t read the book would get lost very easily. The character Tonks isn’t even introduced to the viewer at all, I’m sure that the only mention of her name is when she tells Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody not to call her Nymphadora. It’s such a shame, as I thought that Natalia Tena fitted the image of Tonks in my head perfectly.

I loved the Dementors at the start of the movie, again these fitted just perfectly with the image I had of them in my head. In fact , a lot of the effects used throughout the movie fitted with the perfect descriptions JKR writes in the books. My favourite scene I think was the scene where Harry and co arrives at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place and the people living in the houses next door don’t realise that their houses are being squished up so that number twelve can ‘appear’.

The kiss between Cho and Harry was rather fanfic-y. I don’t know, I think I expected it to be a bit more..over quicker? Or something…But hey, each to their own.

Overall I think that too much of the book was missed out, with too much time focused on un-important things, like the kiss. The effects were amazing, the camera work was a tad too Hollyoaks-like (funny angles, ‘quirky’ shots) and the character relationships weren’t given enough time to fuse together to make the viewers believe them. I think that I’d probably rate this movie with 3 stars out of 5…unless you’re a major, major fan don’t bother going to see it and wait and rent it when it hits the DVD shelves.
The review of the book is coming soon, I’m still trying to gather my thoughts on it.

After spending over £100 on a ticket for T In The Park I didn’t think that I’d spend most of the weekend inside the fun casino that was there instead of watching bands that I love. I started off with £20 and quickly racked it up to over £750 playing poker, roulette and blackjack. I’d gotten the bug, man! Such a shame that the money wasn’t real.

As soon as I came home I decided that I was going to play for some real money but since I don’t fancy trekking into town every time I fancy a quick game I scoured the internet for a good, British online casino. Finally, after some searching, I came across Bet365 which combines all the games that I love playing.

The offer lots of different types of betting opportunities, on sports such as baseball, boxing, tennis, rugby - even lotto draws. But the best of the site is the casino area. The offer up to £100 free chips when you first sign up (which, by the way, takes mere minutes) which was incentive enough for me. I chose to download the software, but you can play from your browser if you prefer.

My favourite part of the site is the live dealer games - instead of playing with a computerized dealer there’s an actual person dealing the cards. For me, it makes me feel like I’m really in a casino without having to shell out membership fees.

My weekend at T In The Park was certainly an interesting one. After starting to queue for the bus at Buchanan Bus Station at just after noon, we finally got onto a rickety old double decker bus at about 3.45pm. In that time I managed to smoke around 10 cigarettes, mainly out of pure boredom. One of my friends got booked for smoking a joint and having some weed on him, the idiot. It made me laugh though!

It turns out that we were on the bus to Balado for..7 hours. It’s only 44miles from Glasgow to Balado and 50% of that is either a motorway or an A/B road. We completly missed the Friday night’s bands, which was shit. I really wanted to see Lily Allen and The Artic Monkeys. Still I could see the NME/Radio 1 stage and the big wheel from the window of the bus for about 2 hours. I should have just gotten off and walked. On the bus I managed to smoke a further 20 cigarettes and eat 3 bags of sweets and a packet of cookies. It’s a good job that I did because my gosh I needed the energy. The bus dropped us off at the opposite end of the arena from the campsite entrance, at least 2 miles away. We had to walk the rest, through inches and inches of mud with huge backpacks and camping chairs. Amusingly, our friend fell head first into the mud which was one of the funniest things that I’ve ever seen.

Once we actually got to the entrance to the campsite we very nearly turned back and got my mum to come & pick us up - the campsite was in even more mud and there was absolutely no where to pitch a tent! And the fact that Scott have wandered off with the 6 man tent didn’t really help much, it meant that Craig had to sleep in mine & the boy’s 2 man tent that night. Eh, just what I wanted. Obviously couldn’t let him sleep out in the cold though. I found the smallest space to put the tent up and sat smoking and really needing to pee while the boys put it up. I wasn’t even going to attempt to go to the Portaloos at 1 in the morning so left it til morning…

Even although I didn’t get to bed until about 2am I was up at the crack of dawn due to the sun blaring through my side of the tent and turning it into an oven. The boys went to find Scott at the welfare tent and to find somewhere to pitch their tent. While they were away I made breakfast (noodles and stockcubes) and attempted to go to the toilet. As soon as I stepped into the portaloo I suddenly didn’t need to go any more. It was the most disgusting thing that I have ever smelt and seen. Usually I’m ok with the toilet situation at TITP but my god it was nasty.

On the Saturday the only band I saw really was The Killers, who were bloody fantastic. I think I may love Brandon Flowers, he’s so energetic on stage. On the Sunday I managed to see The Fratellis, Scissor Sisters, Just Jack and Queens Of The Stoneage.

Oh..my writing mood has run out. I’ll write more about my weekend soon.
TBC

For as far back as I can remember I have been rather unlucky when it comes to hardware. My first laptop burned and died with no notice, my second the same. I still haven’t bought a new one due to serious, serious lack of funds. And now my trusty little phone, an 02 Ice, has given up the ghost when it comes to transferring images to a computer. The camera on my phone is pretty good for a basic-level phone, with a 1.3MP camera. Considering the phone cost me £39.99 I think that’s rather bloody good. But now I can’t get the PCSYNC software to install and cannot find it online to download. So I’m going to have to bluetooth the pictures to my mum’s phone and then use her Nokia PC Suite software to transfer my images to her computer and then upload them here. It’s worth it though, for pretty pictures of stuff.

I’ve tried emailling 02 with no luck. I’d try calling them but it’s 25p per minute from an 02 phone and even more than that from a non-02 phone. Not chuffed. I just want to be able to get the software from somewhere.

In good news, however, I’ve just booked the B&B in Blackpool for the 27th and 28th of July. It cost me £250 for 5 people for two nights. Which, y’know, is pretty damn good. Granted the boys will be paying the £50 for the accomodation themselves but I’m sending a cheque on Friday to cover the £80 deposit which covers mine & the boy’s fare. Then it’s just the bus tickets and Pleasure Beach tickets to get.

It’s going to be a rather great weekend. At the moment there’s 5 of us going, with the chance of two more tagging along. We’re going down on the Friday morning and coming back on Sunday night/Monday morning. I plan to go to the Pleasure Beach on the Saturday during the day and then go to The Manchester for dinner before hitting the pubs & clubs later that night. Sunday will be taken up with the Doctor Who Museum, the Conspiracy Theory Museum, shopping, pub lunch, a ride on the trams (sorry I’m such a big kid, I love Blackpool trams) and perchance a trip up Blackpool Tower if I’m feeling brave…

(I apologise.. my writing skills today are rubbish!)

Last night was the staff dance at Motherwell Civic Centre. It was a great night. I didn’t do any dancing, but I’m not a dancer. Not by a long shot. Anyway, I wasn’t wearing the right shoes to dance! I wore the prettiest dress (black, purple, grey and white bold patterned empire line) over skinny jeans with kickass black and wood wedges. I can walk fine in them but dancing? Just not going to happen.

I met up with Andy in EK bus station and went to Shenanigans with him and the boyfriend while waiting for our manageress to come pick us up. After a quick drink the boyfriend went to his mates and Andy & I headed to Linda’s house. Sitting in your bosses living room drinking Jacques cider is a strange one - it’s a bloody good job that we get on so bloody well!

After that we went to the dance and the three of us looked all lonely sitting at a big table by ourselves. We were soon joined by three people from an other shop and two from the shop along the road from us. I knew the supervisor, Colin, from there so it was all cool. Also bumped into my friend Malcolm, which was cool. I forgot that he worked in SPAR too!

After much drinking (not on my part.. I had about 5/6 vodkas and coke and half a bottle of Asti Martini and wasn’t even drunk. I know I wasn’t because a)I didn’t throw up. b) I could still walk. c)I didn’t end up sitting on somebody’s knee. d)I didn’t dance. e)I didn’t flirt outrageously with people I shouldn’t flirt with!) Andy and I tried to work out how to get home. Hah, fun times! Everybody had booked minibuses to take them wherever they were going. We nearly ended up going to the Hamilton Palace, I remember Alasdair trying to get us to go on the bus but I didn’t fancy it too much. We ended up leaving Linda outside the hall with one of the warehouse guys and getting a taxi. I think she was getting a taxi with him. I bloody hope that she did because she wouldn’t get in our taxi! The taxi driver took £30 for Motherwell to EK to Govanhill which was pretty damn good!

Anyways, I need to go shower. I’m still wearing what I had on last night because I came in, spoke to the boyfriend on the phone and fell asleep on the sofa watching Property Ladder.

Well, that’s me. No longer able to use the line ‘but I’m only a girl, I can’t lift 3 cases of beer at a time’. I am now, officially, a woman (well according to my lovely grandmother anyway). Saturday was my 21st birthday and yet I don’t feel any different. Older? No. Wiser? No. More of a woman? No thanks, I’d rather be a ‘girl’ thanks.

I had a wonderful day, woke up in the boyfriend’s house to kisses and a lovely cup of coffee and a few episodes of Stargate SG1 - oh how I’ve gone on and on about not liking the program but to be fair, it’s actually quite good and has great one liners - followed by dinner in my mum’s house and then back to the boyfriends to try and track down as many friends as we could. Grand total? None. Ziltch. Nada. Scott 1 didn’t know it was my birthday. Scott 2 decided that taking his new girlfriend to the cinema was more important. Chewy didn’t even get a call because he is a boring sod and the young one…well he was working but I didn’t wanna go out with him because he looks about the same age as Scott 2s girlfriend (16..or was it 17?). So the boyfriend and I went to the pub and left after one drink because the music was crap. Our usual haunt, if only because it’s the only place that’s not too bad was busy as apparantly it was the last night before it shut for refurbishment and we didn’t fancing paying £6.00 to go in just for a drink or two. So we got a chippy and got a taxi home to drink white wine (me) and tonic wine (him) and watch Cradle Of Fear. Funniest ‘horrorific’ movie, ever. Spent the entire time laughing at the cheesiness and likening to cheap porn movies. Saying that, Dani Filth it a hottie, for a hobit. Wish we’d went to go see Cradle Of Filth the other night though!

I was supposed to get a laptop, but Dell were wanting far too much money for it so I’m going to just buy one off of eBay with all the lovely money I got for my birthday. Oh and the reason for lack of online activity on my part? My laptop is dead. I’m sure I mentioned that before, but yeah. Way to go Dell.

The best birthday present though? Daleks in Doctor Who. Oh my, the human Dalek? WHAT THE HELL! That thing was ugly and it even had me hiding behind the sofa boyfriend’s pillow.

Oh, and I passed the Scottish Licensing Exam thing. Yay!

Now, I’m not a fashionista by any means. But I like keeping up to date with fashion, styles etc and waiting about 2 weeks before buying the cheaper, ripoff version from Primark or New Look. One thing I won’t be buying though is this TopShop bag. It’s horrendous, and doesn’t seem to serve any purpose other than a bag for shopping or to carry your grandparent’s bowls in. It reminds me so much of the jelly shoes I had when I was 8. I thought I was so cool. I had silver sparkley ones, pink ones and flowery ones. The more I think back the more I remember they were damn uncomfortable and left you with the funniest tan lines on your feet.

What do you think? Is this your sort of bag? What would you use it for? Surely everything would fall out of it, or would be rather easy to pinch. Oh, and if you’re interested, it costs a fiver.

Why are the photographs that I take with my phone outside always such a better quality than those that I take inside? It’s probably because of the light but inside pics always look really shitty and grainy. Grr. I took that picture of the bus because it was so old. It was like walking onto a time warp. But old things are good, they make me smile.

I can’t believe I actually took a good shot of it once I got off the bus and it was driving away. Not bad for a phone camera.

In other news I am getting all my hair chopped off on Saturday. I can’t wait, my hair is just about shoulder length at the moment and it’s far, far too long. I re-dyed my hair black tonight and its just so sexy. Hah, my mother hates it when I dye my hair black because she says that it makes me look really pale but I love it. It’s the sexiest colour in my book.

Oh, and I’m going to do a ‘Day In The Life’ thing tomorrow, because they’re too fun. Photopost a -coming!

I had a whole week off work, which was spent de-cluttering my wardrobe. I actually really enjoyed doing it, I found lots of things that I had lost and found stuff I thought I’d already chucked out! I ended up with 6 full black bags of things for Oxfam, clothes and books mainly. I felt so good about myself for being generous (and not selling stuff on eBay like I was planning) and finally tidying it all out (after a year!).

The de-cluttering extended to my laptop. Initially I cleared about 5GB of junk from my internal drive which I was proud of. But then I decided to install Linux as a duel-boot OS which was all fine and dandy until it refused to boot at all about 4 days later. I gave up trying to fix it and just re-installed WindowsXP. So here I am, starting again. This is exactly why I keep all my music and must-have files on my external drives.

When I went back to work on Friday though everything came down with a crash, literally. At around 7:05am I heard an almighty crash and immediately ran out to the shop floor. It turns out that a delivery van had reversed into one of our shop windows (our windows run full height of the shop) and had smashed it. Although the window didn’t come crashing into the shop it was still smashed. It was - and still is - being held together by the full sized fascia stickers on the inside of the window.

I felt so bad for the guy that did it as well. Accidents happen and although it was a stupid one it looks like he’s lost his job out of it as it was a different driver that showed up yesterday morning. Oh well…

The weekend was fun, the boy and I went shopping for a new bed and he ended up getting a big divan bed. We went with his mum (hey, we needed her driving skills!) and spent about 4 hours trawling across the south side of Glasgow for a bed! Apparently he’s never going shopping with both of us again. Ah well, at least we have a comfy bed now.

Nothing beats internet radio stations. Over the past few Sunday’s I’ve been listening to Hot Wild Music Orgies With Elyse on K-IRB. And I think that you should too. You also have to come into the chat room because all the cool kids go there.

Elyse is on air between 7pm-10pm EST (GMT -5). She plays a wild selection of songs from Blink-182 - Fuck A Dog to a lot of Sufjan Stevens and the sing/type-along at the end of the show is priceless fun.

Does anyone want a VIRB invite?.

I know that they are giving out free accounts but there’s only so many per day. Comment below and I shall email you an invite.

Also, to answer Melanie’s question - VIRB is a social networking site, bring together: bloggers, designers, musicians, music fans, photographers, fashionistas… anyone with creative flair of some sort
It’s fun too, mmmm for CSS freedom to create a profile. Ish.

So, I’ve been a bit busy between work and designing. God I forgot how much I adore coding. I’ve added a few things here and there. most noticeably the Get Reviewed section since I have such an obsession with reviewing websites.

I also realised that IE hates my themes. Uh, dude how did that happen? I’m gonna sort it all out over the course of the next few hours,as well as reply to all the comments made here.

Oh, and am I the only one diggin’ Britney’s shaved head?? I think it looks sort of cool. Okay it was a cry for help (apparently) but she has proved time and time again that she doesn’t care what people say or think about her and to be honest it looks better than that scraggly trailer trash extension thing she had going on!

Wow, what a few days I’ve had. I had this weekend off so it was spent with the boyfriend in his bed for most of the weekend watching Shameless, Skins and CSI. It was really strange because I didn’t kiss him the entire weekend due to him having a cold sore and me being too vain to risk kissing him and getting one myself!

On Friday I left work early because I felt rough as anything. My head was pounding and I kept getting rather dizzy so I called my assistant manager and got him to come in a cover the four hours until the manageress came in for her shift that night. I was surprised that he came in, he usually says no but I’m so glad that he did because I passed out in my boyfriends later on that afternoon from sheer exhaustion.

I ended up spending quite a lot of money over the course of the weekend even though we didn’t go out at night! I bought a gorgeous gray and black striped hooded jumper, a cute little fitted top, underwear with stars all over it and 3 pairs of girl boxer shorts out of Primark as well as a tshirt for the boy to cheer him up with ‘Sci-Fi High - Roswell’ on the front of it. It’s a lovely tshirt and only cost me £6! Also bought 4 XBox games and £15 of magazines to make him smile. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty much his Valentines’ day present early just because he was feeling so blah over the weekend. Aren’t I a good girlfriend?

Last night was spent listening to Elyse’ radio broadcast on K-IRB and chatting the night away in the chatroom which was awesome fun. She was trying to find bands I hadn’t heard of before and could only manage to come up with a handful including the Wild Colonials who I really liked the sound of
Oh, and I dyed my hair midnight blue - you can see it in the photographs page. What do you think?