Brownietastic

Today, I made my first brownies ever. Triple chocolate, using 80% dark chocolate. You can find the recipe here. My plan is to make a batch of Nigella's walnut brownies, substituting half walnuts for some cherries, so as keeping with my becoming a domestic goddess. However, I couldn't forget my sister's batch of these wonderful, gooey brownies that I tasted a year or so ago. She pointed me in the direction of this recipe and now me, Rob and Arlo are in brownie heaven. A small square is literally enough at a time - it's so rich and flavoursome with chunks of the milk and white chocolate mingling with the dark chocolate and cocoa.

 

I also really liked the way the butter and sugar are creamed in this recipe. Using a mixer - or in my case a hand blender - adds air into it, meaning the whole mixture (provided you don't fold all the other ingredients in too hard) is fluffy and light. The mixture of this tasted wonderful in the bowl and the smell in my kitchen was so good. The smell intermingled a little with the chilli con carne I made only half an hour before that - which, for the record, is very good using quorn mince (what I had left in the cupboard) and a splosh of lea & perrins.

Ah, whoops

Okay yes, I've let this slip a bit. Personally I think that tweeting has slightly taken over the blogging. Slightly.

Regardless I have made good headway on expanding my cooking skills, again slightly. Made my first hot pot, clafoutis, soups. Lots of new things. Which I promise there'll be pictures of. Probably.

Me and my flatmate, Rob, decided that rather than going for the healthy eating drive we'd been more talking about than actually undertaking, that I should try and work my way through Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess. This book, which I found in my previous student house on the kitchen window sill might I add, has roughly 250 recipes. I think I'm currently up to 15 fully completed, but I'm going to do a count off every time I do one.

Plus, I keep finding pictures of the things I've done so every time I find one, I'll post it up here.

Birthday Blueberry Treats

I'm about to blaspheme, but this blueberry pancake recipe is actually ... better than Nigella's. I have been using Nigella's American Pancake recipe for several years and always found the mix not quite right, though they tasted good. Perhaps just a bit too heavy. These little pancakes are excellent and light and fluffy. The best bit is the fact that the blueberries burst a little while cooking, and as you eat them, providing a wonderful juicy taste. I served them with maple syrup - didn't need that much which was nice - and the rest of the fresh blueberries. I bought far too many blueberries so I'm going to be eating them for days now, not that I'm complaining. They went down well with the birthday boy, and Rob joined us for a few too. Next time I'm going to try some raspberry ones or maybe even strawberry :D

Happy birthday to you

May I present Arlo's birthday cake! A wonderful strawberries and cream concoction, which would be the perfect addition to a Wimbledon time tea party. Rob, my flatmate, and I shared the whisking task for the cream topping and filling, and was rewarded with the task of eating the remaining cream left in the bowl. 

The cake is, yes yet another, BBC Good Food recipe from Olive magazine. I couldn't find any of the pink sugar that it suggested you use, so I just adorned it with strawberries. Also, as someone else suggested, I have placed strawberries inside the cake. I'm hoping this turns out well! I had a little cream and jam explosion at one point due to being a bit to generous near the edges. I must recommend that if you try this recipe use a good fruity jam, especially if you are not adding the extra strawberries. Bonne Maman Strawberry is a personal favourite of mine and I have slathered the cake in it. Because I only had the one tin, I had to the make the halves one at a time. I simply used half the amounts it suggested for the full cake each time, rather than having to split the cake mix in half later on.

 

I can be - reasonably - safe in the knowledge that Arlo will not check anything online before he leaves thus ruining his cake based surprise. He is driving up to Liverpool as we speak. Tomorrow is a day of weddings and cake and new people to be friends with and looking attractive. I'm fairly sure cake and keeping trim do not go together well...

Veggie Fritters

Who said healthy food had to be boring or hard to make? Well, I don't know if anyone ever said that. But these are healthy and cheap and yummy.

Best veg to use are either fresh courgettes - have to be fresh or they start getting too watery - or a squash like this. If you use squash, be sure to remove all the pithy bit in the middle where all the seeds are. 

Ingredients 

2 courgettes/half a squash

2-3 tbsp self raising flour

1 egg

25g of parmesan

Grate the vegetables up and then mix with the flour and parmesan. Leave this to stand for a few minutes until some of the liquid from the veg has been absorbed. Then add the egg and mix thoroughly. Put a wok/frying pan - preferably non stick - on maximum heat with a little oil. Once it is really hot, drop tablespoon fulls, or small shaped patties, of the mix into the frying pan. Fry on each side for 30seconds to a minute, until lightly browned, then reduce the heat and let them cook further for about another minute on top. Serve with hummous and fresh veg!

The second carrot cake this week

This is probably the point where I should stop making carrot cakes. But I had already peeled a carrot when I made one the other day and I had 4 eggs to use up... so yeah. Another one. This one is slightly different, in that I followed a different recipe - this one - but missed out the pineapple, lemon, orange and walnuts as I didn't have any (turns out I did have a few walnuts, grr), so added a tonnes of sultanas like in the original recipe I used. I used the icing style from that one too, as it was much more fun. Though just vanilla icing as I have no orange juice either. I hope this cake is nice. It looks good and has risen well. It only has taken an hour, and a tester comes out clean so I'm happy with that. This is the cake:

Update: This cake is so good. I don't think I want to share it, but I will.

Carrot Cake

This week I delved into the world of carrot cake. I had planned to make one earlier in the week as my flatmate, Rob, had mentioned something about leftover carrots. But long story short, work got in the way and I never got round to it. Until about 10.30pm last night. I was baking my usual Chocolate Coca Cola cake, thanks to Nigella naturally, for my friend's little sister who got 4 A's in her AS levels and was coming to stay that evening. While I was doing it I thought, right I have all the ingredients, let's get cracking.

The recipe I used was this one. I only used 100ml of olive oil, as that was all I had left, so I improvised with a little melted butter to help moisten it up. Also I didn't have any orange peel so I used a splash of orange juice, which has worked out quite nicely. I was going to ice the carrot cake, but once Arlo and I unwrapped it at his house and decided to "have a little nibble" that idea was thrown out the window. It works very nicely without the icing, which would have also had a splash of orange juice in it.

Here is the result:

I'm thinking of making ratatouille tonight for Arlo and myself - mostly because every time we come here we resort to easy food, like chips and tinned spaghetti and I eat too much and barf because of all the fats I'm not used to any more. The only thing that I am not susceptible to is McDonalds and that's because I've built up immunity to it from working there! Seems quite easy and all we need to find is an Aubergine and two little courgettes in Prestatyn. I'm hoping this is quite easy.

On another note, I'm doing more things to prevent revision from my maths exam, like trying to learn "But for Now" on the piano. Got all through the melody at the start and into the chorus, and my chords were keeping up. Once I got to the chorus however, my poor memory of reading music kicked in and it all went pear shaped.

Ooh ideas

I have finally decided what this blog is going to be. It's going to be a recipe blog. I'm going to put up all the nice yummy things I make onto here, and it'll be more of an incentive for me to cook more things. I know its been done before, but hey, now its my turn.

First up is the yummy scrummy meal I made the other night. Mushroom, courgette and mozzarella tart. I decided to make this after buying a pot of mushrooms for a whopping 47p at Tesco and having a variety of odd vegetables in my fridge. So I typed in mushroom and courgette, as those seemed like closest to the ends of their happy lives, and voila I found this little gem. Very very easy to make and very nice. It turns out like a little posh pizza. Also, for those people who like day old pizza, you'll love this. I keep picking at it, because its so lovely! Simple and reasonably cheap. It can be quite easily manipulated for other left overs I feel. Good for students like myself.

I figured I should probably do something cooking wise. I love cooking and entertaining. Cooking for other people is one of my favourite things - seeing their faces when I've made them something scrummy. I'm still quite a novice and as I'm a student I'm always having to look for cheap ideas. But it's always nice when you cook lots of food and can tuck into a meal like this:

After making my little Japanese style banquet Arlo, my boyfriend, remarked that I was a wonderful little women. D'aww.
This consists of Tonkatsu, Ginger Pork, Courgette Tempura (not the most successful of tempura so far), Garlic fried Beansprouts and Rice seasoned with Star Anise.

UPDATE

Update: he now has a face and paws. He is also now a meerkat, not a monkey. Ross suggested him to be a dinosaur, but meerkat it is.

Is this a monkey or a meerkat? I cannot decide. I'm pretty sure that it's neither. It's the latest of my sympathy dolls. His tail and arms were supposed to be massive. I'll take a photo of the outline I used as a demonstration of how wrong it's gone. He's pretty interestingly shaped though.

Hertford, cats and music

This weekend I went and stayed with my sister and brother in law in Hertford. It was just what I needed; a few days away from the bustling busy life in the city, the ever mounting kipple in my room and the closing in exams at the end of August. It was so peaceful, and very good to see my fam. I hate that they're so far down South and that I don't get to see them more often. I suppose it makes me appreciate it much more though. I spent a lot of the time playing with their cat, Toshi. Toshi was adopted when she was a tiny ball of fluff of unknown sex, so they named her Toshi after Toshiro Mifune. Not the most suitable name when it turned out she was a little girl! She's absolutely gorgeous and I always like to snap photos of her.

I'd love to live somewhere beautiful like Hertford. Near a city, but in the country and full of boutiques and quiet enough to remind you to relax. With lots of greenery, naturally. There were many barge boats there, including one that was a hotel wonderfully enough. I could happily live on a canal boat sailing around the country at whim. Perhaps one day I will.


Now I'm back in Liverpool, complete with a ridiculous amount of music from Julie and James and Japanese Conversation. I have managed to hoover up, learn how to work the heating system, do a load of washing and handwashing, and do some studying. I feel I have been rather productive since I got back.

I've been working my way through 'M' it seems today, having listened to Morphine's "The Night", the best of Marc Bolan and T Rex, Manu Chao's "Proxima Estacion" and Maps "We Can Create". All excellent music, I suggest all of it.

Oh Fiddlesticks

Well. Fuck.

Dear body,
I know that it's hard to always be functional. I mean, coordinating all those organs and processes must be a real chore. But not that I'm saying you don't put in a large amount of effort as it is, could you please put in a tiny bit more effort? Perhaps concentrate on healing one of the areas that constantly goes wrong, such as my head? That way, when your run of the mill sickies comes along it won't be such a big deal.
Yours truly,
Lizzie.

The latest is a wonderment of stomach cramps, back ache and nausea. Oh I am so lucky.

I'm thinking of relinquishing my spot on the volunteering for Dr Fenton. If he can find someone well enough to do it all the time it'd be better for him. Also, I need to be realistic with myself. Maybe I need to slow down. What is really important right now is passing those exams at the end of the summer. I need to be well enough to sit them and study for them. If my body's going to keep throwing up problems at this current regularity, I won't have the spare time to study as I'll be helping out more. I don't know, I really want to help and I've really enjoyed helping. But those exams are so important. Going to speak to my sister about it this week. See what she says.

New Dawson's Creek notings:
1. Fuck they have a black principal. How forward thinking of them. Dawson's Creek non white population has now gone up to 4 males.
2. Wow Joey really doesn't wear a bra that much. She and Bessie were folding up a sheet in the first episode of season 3 and both of them were rocking the swinging free style.
3. I think Jen is starting to waddle more. I have just spent some time on the internet to try and find an illustration of this. This is the best I've found so far: example 1. Imagine that picture continued with her feet spread frog like.
4. Remembrance from Season 1 - no wonder she didn't win the talent show. Joey Potter slowly destroyed 'On My Own' from Les Miserables one miserable baby voiced word at a time.

Thankyouplease.

Hurrah

Despite BT's ever brilliantly frustrating attempts to thwart the ease of moving into my new flat, we finally have a working phone line and, more importantly to the Web 2.0s of the world such as myself, we now have the internet. Up and running and working and connecting. Excellent. BT's last attempt was to send me an email saying the phone number had changed, which it hadn't. Ignoring all the several conversations with the incomprehensible uttering woman, it would have been moderately difficult.

I have been watching more Dawson's Creek. The latest things I have noticed are:
1. How slightly racially lacking this show is. Continuing on from my last mention of this, Dawson came in drunk to his 16th birthday party, spotted a slightly racial guy and went 'wassup dude'. Well done The Creek.
2. Grams' hair was dyed for an episode where it looked like she'd get a date. Then suddenly her gray roots were back.
3. The best line ever appeared in this program. It is so dated that Pacey remarked "Have you seen this guy's house? He's so rich they have a satellite dish". Other dated remarks include Joey's "I'm not going to get kissed again until the millenium".
4. I used to wear my hair like some of Abby's awful hair dos. I was 11. She was supposed to be a sex starved 16 year old. No wonder they killed her off.
5. Jen is still waddling.
6. The 90s really loved see through material in dresses. I know this because I have a cranberry coloured dress with a see through material shrug. At Abby's funeral both Jen and Andie were wearing dresses with see through bits. That's 1/3 of the main cast and 2/3 of the females. Excellent.

And I'm not going for 10 today. We'll see how many other thoughts pop up.

Also also I saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince the other day. Sadly I cannot remember as much of this book as I wanted. Just got Arlo all the audiobooks so I can remind myself of how much they missed out. However, from what I do remember, I think I can conclude that this is a good one. I felt that the last one had just about gotten it right. But this one, it hit the nail on the head. I didn't bawl my eyes out when Dumbledore died like in the book - for the record if you did't know that and are all now 'aww spoilers' you have no excuse to not know that - but I was pretty sad. They didn't really go into the 'Half Blood Prince' bit that much, but I expect as they have 2 films to spread the last book out over they can go into that as much as they want. Kind of defeating the point of the film I guess, but meh. My one teeny tiny little big request is this. Please please please dear god can they perhaps teach Bonnie Wright aka Ginny Weasley how to use vocal intonations. She seems to be quite flat. I don't want to be mean and bitchy. But please, a little more urgency/fear/happiness/romance/emotion in your voice might boost the character seeing as she is the love of Harry P's life and thus is terribly important. That is all.

I think that's all. I'm getting quite tired now. Have been doing field work all day at Manor Wood, otherwise known as "Man I Cannot See Anything But Fucking Ferns and Bogs and Nettles" Wood. Ho ho ho I am hilarious. But yeah, several dead voles today. Apparently non waterproof traps, cold rain and mud do not do well for poor little rodents. We rescued one from the brink of death and put him in Becci's pocket to heat him up then Jen made a crisp packet nest for him complete with bedding and grain. I hope Voley lived. But yeah, I forgot my lunch. Error. I was so hungry this evening as a result. Not only did field work in general make me hungry but the fact that all I'd eaten was a slice of wholemeal bread and jam in the morning made it all the more worse. Tomorrow, I shall take sandwiches and nibbles. Good plan.

Night night.
Nos da.
Sleep tight.

Breakthrough

And not as in the Queen song.

There has been something in my life that has haunted me for a long time. I don't want to fully disclose what it was, just for personal sake. But whenever something would happen that reminded me of that event I would get flashbacks to that awful time and I would freak out. Kick, scream, punch, cry. Whatever the reaction, it wasn't pleasant. That had happened for the last 6 years as vicious and raw an emotion as it had ever been.

For the first time, this week, the trigger occurred, but nothing happened. It's gone. Someone in particular helped me get over it. The horrible memories are replaced with good ones. I couldn't believe it.

But that's also scary. The fact that he could banish something that plagued me for so long, in so little time. Perhaps it was just natural getting over it, but I don't know. All I know is that its gone and he's the new thing I think about. The vulnerable scared shitless side of me is going crazy right now. But at the same time I'm happy.

I don't think this post made any sense.

The last few days

... have been good.

My mum just whipped BT into shape. Some £150 debt had somehow appeared on their address and thus I was being forced to pay it. But mum shouted and now its gone and hopefully my phone line is sorted so I won't have to keep coming into the library to blog about pointless things.

I've been watching far too much Dawson's Creek for someone a) no longer in the 1990s and b) someone over 17 this last week. I am half way through season 2. I have noticed several things:
1. Jen (Michelle Williams?) waddles. Not a little bit, like a lot. She has no grace whatsoever in this program.
2. Fuck me is Joey (the one that married Tom Cruise) a whiny little annoying cow.
3. I want to hold a 90s party.
4. where the hell has Bessie's black boyfriend gone? He was overemphasised to the point that I don't remember his name - Jody, Body, Brody? - but now he seems to have disappeared. Now the only black guy in the whole show is an extra that has popped up in a camera pan at the school dance and in a camera pan across Capeside. They like black people in their shots apparently.
5. Dawson is weird looking. I'm sorry James van der Beek, but there is something unnerving about you.
6. I have a horrid feeling I have, at some point, talked like these precocious scripted weirdos.
7. Why did everyone have bad shoes in the 90s? Like, what are these sandally things? The ones with big wedges that were usually black and plasticy with elastic straps across them.I remember having some. Was there a bulk order for every girl around then? Either way, they were FIT.
8. I could cut the teen angst filling up my room with a knife. I swear I need to make my life more dramatic. "I just started doing art" "Oh yeah, that's a nice hobby" "It's my life dream you bastard you asshole what do you mean hobby oh fuck you I'm going to cut myself".
9. On the back cover of the Dvds it doesn't mention Andie McPhee but it mentions her brother. Oh told.
10. I felt I should get to ten. But there really isn't anything here. Oh actually, how about... Dawson's dad. DILF.

Clearly, Pacey is the only lead character that I don't have some large problem with, despite the frosting.

That is my thought for the day.

Have you ever had that feeling; fear? The irrepressible, all controlling, sucking you into a black hole feeling. I've had it once, truly, at Christmas when I was in hospital struggling to breathe and barely holding my exhausted body back from giving into the voice in my head that was telling me just to give up, for a little bit at least. That was pretty scary.

Today I am scared. Luckily it isn't the consuming fear I mentioned, but I am pretty scared. I had a seizure last night, a little impromtu one, while James, Towler, Tom, Shona, Arlo and myself chatted in my garage after the rain ruined our little barbeque. While I was talking to James I could feel my torso shaking uncontrollably so I told Arlo to get me to bed. I got as far as the kitchen before I collapsed to my knees after tripping over my feet. Which was fair enough. I mean, I'd been fighting it all day and I didn't call off the little evening itself, so it wasn't so surprising that one would happen.

It's today that's the scary bit. In my parents house on my own feeling spacky. I can feel myself being a moody pissy little bitch too which doesn't help. Every time I stand up I get the worst head rush you can imagine. My left foot keeps dragging and I know it's just a matter of time before I trip up.

I had hoped this afternoon to go to Liverpool with the boys. One wanted to see some New York chiptune bands, upon listening it sounded a little like Nintendo music combined with a beat. I had a feeling I wouldn't be up for the gig itself, but then we could kip at mine and the boys could go off to the gig and it'd all be roses. But having walked around my house for a little bit this morning I realised it wasn't going to happen. I told the one who wanted to see the band I didn't feel I was up to it and, understandably he got annoyed. I kinda don't know how to fix this though. Erm, I'm sorry that my migraine induced seizures almost barely got in the way of your life? I hate having people mad at me, so this is driving me crazy.

So yeah, self pitying galore today. I'm just nervous I'm going to hurt myself and send myself steps back again. Just feels like this self perpetuating cycle. And reading that back makes me sound like a self harmer! Oh dear, that was not the intention. Ah well, I think perhaps I should just publish this thing and forget about everything.

Another thing that is pretty scary at the minute is my new relationship. I mean, I'm still kind of scared of all this, the vulnerability and openness. I can't seem to shut it off with him though. I have this insatiable urge to be with him, which is scary. The most scary bit is I'm scared he'll find all this too much reality. I just feel terribly insecure about the whole thing and I keep looking at him and wondering if one day he's going to realise that I'm young and immature and a pest. Time will tell. I'm going to stop being self pitying and go read or something. All this is helping no one.

Bits and bobs

Today I am a drugs mule. Towler is feeling under the weather, and what cures dislike of being home in Wales more than Lucky Strikes and triple Malt Whiskey? Nothing better, surely? Thus I am armed with both, about to trek off to see him. Though first I have to finish my tortillas and sour cream, yum. Granted, it's no hummous. But there is no hummous in my parents house. Mother is quite anti chickpea it appears, so I'm currently going cold turkey.

I moved into my new flat on Tuesday. That was somewhat of an effort, but luckily I had helpful friends and parents to carry all my belongings up several flights. Everything fits in quite nicely in my room and it looks quite nice. Rob is moving in as we speak so hopefully we can finalise everything this week. Internet is being ordered, phone line is being connected. Excellent times.

I saw Transformers 2 this week. That was quite a bit of a mistake and only the fact that I was in my beloved FACT and could relax back in my seat distracted me mildly from the direness that was Michael Bay's concoction. Why the hell was RC now three robots? I liked that they shoved a constructicon in there, though initially I didn;t recognise what was going on with it. I thought the parents were quite amusing. Was there any real need for Shia the Beef's college room mate to be following them around all the time? He was about as useful as a sea cucumber on a hot day. Could they have stolen much more from the Matrix? The Decepticon's planet looked awfully familiar to the real world from the Matrix and the whole putting the bug into Shia the Shit was terribly similar. Not sure if it was supposed to be a homage or something, but it annoyed me. The end battle sequence was too long, though playing spot the sky as suggested by Glyn provided a suitable distraction - one minute it was sunset, then morning then mid afternoon blue. Not good Bay, not good. Where can I get a pair of white pants like Megan Fox? They only got slightly dusty right at the very end when she fell over, despite all the previous explosions and falling and dust and general dirt. Also Megan Fox running in slow mo sounds like it should be pretty fucking hot. It would have been, had she not been pulling a face like this. Out of all the millions of transformers there are, hey let's make some stereotypical black robots that are of no significance and have gold teeth and rings and ridiculous accents and faces I just want to punch. Also, I miss the garishness. When half the robots are steely grey it takes me 2 minutes to work out which is which. At least they got 1/3 of RC the right colour, though god knows why they bothered to put her in when she had no contribution to the plot whatsoever and for some reason had tripled. The only bit I genuinely laughed at was the old robot saying "My dad was one of the first robots! He was the wheel! You know what he transformed into? NOTHING!" I found this funny, though later realised it was innaccurate as he mus thave transformed into the wheel, but still. Let's not go crazy now.

Arlo foolishly fell for the few "appease the fanboy" moments such as oh hai a constructicon. Yeah I'm a fanboy, I'll admit it. He was arguing he liked it because of that. My argument is that is what they were there for. So that people would be like 'meh at least they did such and such'. I was ranting about it in the street and a random guy agreed with me. It was a big pile of steaming poo poo.

But there is something else I noticed that I had not previously considered. Steven Spielberg. He is slowly but surely ruining most of my childhood favourites. Granted, Shia Le Bastard is doing a good job too, but Spielberg is actually helping to make these films. Some of his recents are Tranformers 2 as producer, Indiana Jones 4 as director and 2 assistant director on Star Wars III. I love Spielberg. He's done some bloody good films. How can I dislike the man who wrote Animaniacs. But please Spielberg, please. Maybe we should stop now? If Tin Tin is a pile of poop I might have to come hunt you down and glove slap you. I mean, I would be too scared to, but darn it I'm going to rant like I am going to!

Oh dear, this has turned into a Transformers 2 review. Well UNSUPRISINGLY Transformers 3 is being made. I am not paying to see that. But I may waste a few hours of my life so I can rant about it and call people that enjoy it ridiculous cretins.

Kisses

I wonder how kissing started.

When you want to kiss someone, you get that burning feeling deep in your stomach which flips and twists with all the butterflies. You feel a wave of trembling that builds in your toes and tickles up your legs until you just feel like you might explode if you don't kiss them. Your eyes keep flitting to their lips. You feel an insatiable urge to just grab them.

How did that start? Is it part of our biologically imprinted mind? Is it in the roots of our deepest thoughts? Is it a cultural thing that took off? If so, how did it get going? The idea of touching lips together just sounds a bit weird when you look at it mechanically. But then, if you're going to look at things that way, then sex must be a joke. It has been argued that kissing allows you to taste and smell another person, to sense whether they are compatible for you. That makes sense. The way someone smells to me is very important. At the minute the smell of a nice aftershave is like catnip for me. I just go crazy for it.

All this mystery behind kissing is probably why your first kiss with someone is so strange and wonderful. The feeling of a new person upon your lips and their breath entwined with yours. First kisses come in a multitude of places; under the stars, at a restaurant, while stumbling around drunk in a bar, when you least expect it.

My recent first kiss was just bliss. Under the war memorial in the gardens by St George's hall, in the dead of night if that even exists in Liverpool. It was a quiet and cold night. It was possibly the most passionate kiss I've ever had. He kissed like the world was ending, and I was the last kiss he was ever going to get. Someone said to me that regardless of where this relationship actually goes, that the kiss sounds like its going to be a memorable one. I definitely think so.

Musical Musings

While my last.fm happily shows off my omnivorous music taste with its recently listened to list, I fear that it is terribly one sided. My top 8 artists are Sia and Norah Jones, who I listen to less at the minute as they were what I was most in to last year when I joined the site, Regina Spektor, Amos Lee, Laura Marling, Elliot Smith - who I don't even listen to that much, I just have all his albums and once ran through them all in a big go hence the high number, Ane Brun and Ben Kweller. All this is very chilled out and relaxed music or music I can sing along to.

When I'm in I usually have shuffle on so that I can listen to all sorts. At the minute my last 6 listened to tracks are:
The Temptations - Papa Was A Rolling Stone
Chris Cornells - Billie Jean (cover)
Jackson Browne - Running on Empty
Mr Mister - Broken Wings
Franz Ferdinand - Matinee
Ocean Colour Scene - The Circle

Despite this, the music I listen to on my mp3 player is very different. Happy fast music keeps me walking quickly and puts me in a good mood. I was on the bus listening to Queen's I Want It All followed by some Kimya Dawson. I like music like this.

It means that when I'm sitting on the bus and I start thinking and my internal thought voice starts chatting away, it's more like I'm summing up the end of a tv show, sort of like Zach Braff does at the end of Scrubs. It's silly, but I quite enjoy it.

Oh, the Eels song My Beloved Monster just came on. Tune and a half.

Today is going quite strangely. I didn't wake up till about 12, which is very unusual for me. I guess my body needed to crash out finally. I've had a pretty hectic week. Then Ryan turned out to be in Liverpool with nothing to do, and seeing as I haven't seen him for a year or so we met up and I introduced him to Wagamamas. I had a massive ramen, which contributes nicely to the good feeling I've got going on. We bummed around for a little while in town then I had to go as Batters and Jack are driving up and coming to stay for a night out and some fun times.

Can't believe the news at the minute. 5 of the Labour cabinet have left today. They seriously do not want Brown as the leader.

Double Post

I know, I know. The internet faux pas that is double posting. I'm pretty sure it doesn't apply to blogs, only forums, but still. Was just thinking about the future. My future. Doesn't belong to anyone else. Just me.

I was thinking about if I ever got into a new relationship, and the first thing that sprung to mind was the Quiz by Hello saferide. I always loved this song, but it has never really been as significant as now. Well, not now, but in my future. The song is basically a questionnaire of things asked to a boy by Hello saferide herself, her name escapes me, but it boils down to her wanting someone to just be there for her when she needs them.

I think its going to be a long time before I'm willing to make myself vulnerable enough for a new relationship. The idea is positively frightening, to allow someone else to really see me and know me and understand all my foibles and ways and funny little things. Such as the way I refuse to eat sandwiches not cut into triangles and the fact that I act quite confident but am really just shy and insecure underneath it all. To trust them with my life is a scary idea. With my body's general loathing for being functional, thus providing me with 3 trips to A&E and a residential in the Walton within the last 7 months, I have to know that I can trust someone to look after me. And with the events of recent, featuring two seizures experienced on my own on my bedroom floor, I am worried I may become less trusting of people. More particular perhaps.

Anyway, here are the lyrics:
"You look nice alright
and I like the way you nod after everything I say
like it actually means something to you.

And I like your record collection
Townes and Jens with a hint of Rickie Lee
And you've cleaned up the bathroom, made a really nice soup
but a bit too much sci-fi in your shelf with DVDs.

But there's some things you need to know about me:
I'm weak right now, real weak right now
I need proof before I dare to open this heart
so I prepared a quiz for you:

Would you freak out if I said I liked you?
Do you walk the line?
Is your IQ higher than your neighbour's?
And is it very much higher than mine?

Can you sleep when I grind my teeth?
Do you look away if I slob when I eat?
Will you let me be myself?
Can you at all times wear socks?
because I'm still scared of feet

Do you talk in the middle of Seinfeld?
Do you read more than two books a month?
Do you get racist or sexist when you've had a few?
Is it fine if I make more money than you?

Have you slept with any people I work with?
Is there anyone you'd rather wish I'd be?
Do you still keep pictures of old girlfriends?
Are they prettier than me?

And if I'd fall, would you pick me up?
If I fall, will you pick me up? "

The questions about the old girlfriends is such a loaded girl question. The feet thing doesn't apply. Feet don't bother me really. Mine are always cold though which is pretty awful really. I think something about whether they'd forgive me for taking up most the bed when I'm half the size of the average person would be more apt.

These are just things passing through my head on this late evening. My finger tips are still hurting from playing so much Ukulele. I think 30 Rock is going to be the best step forward.