Miss Guised

Well, I finally got around to creating that other blog! The one for my costumes/dressing up. You can find it via my profile under the name of Miss Guised. At the time of writing it didn't have any posts, but only because it's pretty late so I'll continue working on it tomorrow.

Adios.

Get crazy, get wild...

Why do I even have a blog? Yet again it has been two months since I wrote anything. In one sense, that's fine as I suppose the blog is for me as much as anything, in another sense though should I have any readers (and I'm not certain I do) then why would they want to bother following me when I never post?


Well, at least one person does read this as Louise has nominated me for a blog award! Entirely undeserved I assure you (just look at how infrequently I post) but thank you anyway. I believe I have to answer some questionaire, so here it goes.

Your favourite colour- Grey. I was actually talking about this with K yesterday. I'm not sure I really have a 'favourite' colour as such, but I seem to own a lot of grey clothes...
Favourite song at the moment- Laura Marling - Sophia. The beginning makes me a bit sad, but when it kicks in I absolutely love it. Jealous of her.
Your favourite dessert- Anything really, I have a very sweet tooth. I love me some baked cheesecake (New York), but I also love chocolate stuff too like brownies and caramel shortcake.
What is pissing you off- Work I suppose. It's hardly challenging, plus I've been left holding the fort on my own this week!
When you're upset you- I phone K and moan at him!
Your favourite pet- Cats obviously - ours are Katie and Morag.
Black or White- Black. Definitely.
Biggest fear- I sincerely dislike discussing this as I give myself proper panic/anxiety attacks over it just by thinking about it.
Best feature- My sparkling wit.
Everyday attitude- To quote The Cribs "I'm a realist, I'm a romantic, I'm an indecisive piece of shit".
What is perfection- Does anyone know? It can't be achieved anyway.
Guilty pleasure- Jersey Shore. OHHH YEAAAAH!



I will write a proper post at some point soon, honest. I also believe I'm meant to single out three blogs to award the, erm, award to. Honestly every blog that I follow is well worth a peek!


Back to work.

Pastures new...

Oh dear oh dear, it has been almost 2 months since I blogged. Oopsadaisy!

What is new? Well, I moved flat this weekend for a start. The lease on my old flat was up and the landlords were wanting to take it off the market so that they could renovate it. Plus, my sister J has now graduated and was moving home so I needed to find somewhere new to live. I did find a girl through Gumtree who seemed nice and we were all set to find a place together but she got a promotion in Glasgow and was going to have to move there. Leaving me back at square 1. Luckily, however, I found a room in a flat not long afterwards and have now moved in. I'm living with 2 girls my own age who also work full-time and so far they seem very nice. One of them is graduating tomorrow and her parents have come through for it, they took us out for a meal tonight which was good. It was commented by her mother that I'm very quiet, although as she also said I was probably overwhelmed by everyone else. It is difficult when everyone else in the group knows each other and you're the new addition. Still, I had a nice time and it filled my social quota.

I'm pleased to report, also, that I have been told to book my driving test at long last. I changed instructor again as my previous one was leaving the company and something's just clicked. I can drive. Roundabouts don't faze me anymore. I am amazing. Now I just need to actually book the test... I really do want a car though but can't afford one (or rather, I can afford to buy one but not to run it) so I'll pass and then nothing for a while yet.

I had booked great train tickets down to London for the end of July, planning to go to the Horrible Histories prom with my friend B. Got a great deal from the East Coast line - £25 one way first class tickets, yes please! I've yet to book accomodation, which is probably a good thing cos I've just found out I'm meant to be appearing in court on the 29th July (the day I'm going down to London) as a witness in a mugging case. The mugging happened in March. I'm pleased it's actually going to court, but couldn't it have happened at a more convenient time?! Still, I've not actually been served with the summons yet - just a 'sorry, you were out' type card from the police. Fingers crossed I can sort something out...

Oh and on Friday my mum and I are going to Taste of Edinburgh. Katie Lewis won tickets and kindly gave them to me. I'm really looking forward to this, plus my mum is staying over and I don't think she's ever done that in all the time I've lived through here (coming up for 6 years) so that'll be good.

It is now, however, very nearly midnight and I want to watch The Apprentice before I go to sleep. Night!

Ring o' ring o' roses

Oops. I said I would blog more often and I've clearly failed at this. Soz.

I am still at the Scottish Government on my assignment, I ought to be here until September unless I find something better! It's going fine. We moved upstairs at the weekend so all have new desks, although to be honest I'm not keen on the arrangement as it is much less sociable than before. Despite being on a floor with more people I feel more isolated. Which does very little to help my already non-existant social quota.

As for jogging, I haven't been in a few weeks as I'd been ill and wanted to wait til I was better. Now I am, I need to re-find my motivation. Which is hard. I do know that I feel better when I jog, and it's wholly satisfying, so I just need to muster up the enthusiasm again.

Remember too that today is election day! In Scotland we have our national elections for the Scottish Parliament (who will be the next government, ie. my bosses?), and of course the whole of the UK has the Alternative Vote referendum. Personally I'm voting Yes to AV as it's a much fairer and more democratic system that the current First Past The Post (FPTP). It's not a perfect voting system, but it's better than what we've got so we may as well go for it while we've got the chance. Regardless of who you support you should go and vote and make your voices heard! I'll be going to vote after work.

Anyway, back to work...

Here Comes The Sun...

EDIT: BLOGGER IS BEING A DICK AND REMOVING MY LINE SPACES - SORRY! Or not because today it has been pissing it down with rain. Fingers crossed for it clearing up this evening because I want to go for a jog. That's right, you heard me, a jog! Pick yourselves up, have a cup of sweet tea and recover from the shock. I have started doing EXERCISE. Now anyone who knows me will know that is the funniest thing they have ever heard. I don't exercise. I positively hated PE at school (and boy did I let them know about that). In fact, whilst I got great marks in every other subject at school (yeah, I'm one of those annoying people who was good at everything), PE was my one weak point. Not that I minded, and my teachers grew to learn this - in fact I think they found my apathy towards the subject funny and would let me get away with not trying more than they ought to have. But recently I've been thinking that I need to do some form of exercise. I tend to go through very short phases of going swimming a couple of times, but never actually doing it regularly enough to count for much. So I am going to continue jogging, especially as the weather is (slowly) improving. I am still lazy, for example I was going to go after work yesterday but thought it looked like rain so decided not to after all and go today instead (something I will regret if it doesn't stop actually raining!). But I will keep it up. Honest. I'm naturally petite and slim, but I'm not fit or toned and I want to be. I have no ambitions of running great lengths, I just want to feel and look a bit better. Wish me luck. In other news I am now in my 3rd week of a 6 month post at the Scottish Government, hurrah! I got the assignment through my agency and I'm very glad they came up good eventually. I had hoped for policy, and this is more project work, but my line manager is happy for us to get a rounded experience and organise policy shadowing. Specifically I'm working in the Education directorate, helping to manage the School 2 School database, which tracks pupils in Scotland, and chasing up those pupils who are missing from education. The actual job itself is perhaps a little boring, a lot of Excel, but the subject matter is interesting which in turn makes the job fairly enjoyable. Rather annoyingly I was phoned yesterday by Citizens Advice offering me a fundraising role for a couple of weeks but had to turn it down due to my job - it's exactly the sort of thing I wanted to be doing when I was unemployed and would have been fantastic experience, but alas it came too late. Still, they said they'd be in contact about an advisory post soon so fingers crossed. Re genealogy and archiving, I visited the Scottish Genealogy Society's library and am thinking about volunteering with them. I'm reluctant to do this every week given I'm working full-time so I hope they're okay with me doing it once a fortnight or month perhaps. I had contacted the City Archives, who have a long waiting list of volunteers, but I need to get in touch with the other archives who advertise volunteering posts too. Not to mention the paid scheme in Glasgow in May. Oh, and I have an interview for a permanent post in Glasgow next week! It's for a public policy adminstrator with NSPCC. Yes it's an admin post, so not really what I aim to be doing, but it's in the right department and I have admin experience so I'm hoping it can be considered a foot in the door. I don't really know what to do about it, given I have this job at the Government at the moment, but I may as well go to the interview, right? It would mean moving back to Glasgow though. And lastly, because I am actually at work just now so probably should be 'working', the lovely Emma Louise of Fallen Angel To Yummy Mummy (link in my profile I believe, under the blogs that I follow) has given me a Versatile Blogger award under the condition that I blog more. So here I am! I believe I am supposed to write 5 facts about me and then give the award to other bloggers. I will write the 5 facts, but instead of giving out the award I instead suggest that you check out the blogs that I follow. I don't follow a huge amount and they're all worth reading and range from fashion to veganism (I'm not a vegan myself but my good friend writes it and it is interesting, she's currently obsessed with vegan Easter chocolates). 5 Facts About Me. 1. I am the eldest of 4 children (two younger sisters aged 21 and 19, and a younger brother aged 17). I am, however, the shortest and smallest of the lot and am frequently mistaken for being younger than my sisters. This is alright when you can 'shock' someone by going "Actually, I'm her BIG sister" but annoying when, to use an example from Sunday, in a restaurant and the waitress pours them a full glass of wine and me and my brother a half glass... I am 23 ffs. 2. I don't enjoy being drunk. I am not teetotal in the slightest, although I don't drink as much as I did in 1st and 2nd year of uni, but I don't especially enjoy the sensation - being dizzy, not being in complete control, feeling sick etc. I still get rat arsed from time to time (much to K's amusement), but I drunkenly moan about it. I'd much rather just have a couple of glasses of wine and that's it, but at the same time I enjoy actually drinking and the social situations it often occurs in, and thus drink more than I intended to and suffer for it the next day. 3. I am very messy. I hasten to add that I am not dirty, I am simply messy and untidy. I find it extremely difficult to keep my room tidy - it inevitably descends into a tip within a few days of being tidied - and I don't know why. I actually quite enjoy cleaning, just not tidying... 4. I consider myself to be a democratic socialist. At university I was a member of the Labour Club and took part in youth conferences and campaigning. I even accidentally joined the party (there's an opt-out on the form for joining the youth wing) - I was happy to support the party at the time but didn't want to be a member so that was a bit annoying. I stopped going to meeting in my penultimate year of uni because the club itself was going downhill due to lack of interest and being solely comprised of career politicians. I believe it's much better now but alas I am no longer a student. I am very liberal and much more left wing than the party, but I'm not quite sure I could bring myself to be a Scottish Socialist. 5. I don't have a list of baby names. I have a list of cat names instead. Is this weird? I do want children someday (not for a while yet), but I really want a cat (or two). We have two cats at my parents' and had one while I was growing up. Really I'm not an animal person at all, but cats are the exception (that proves the rule perhaps?). My cat names come as singles and in pairs, depending on how many cats I have at one time. Examples include Byron and Shelley for a pair of boy cats, Clodagh and Bronagh for a pair of girl cats, Hero for a girl cat... and more. Anyway, this is now a very long post indeed so I shall go. And get back to work. Goodbye!

London Bridge is falling down

Why am I not smiling? Probably because the weather was pissing me off.

Last weekend K and I went to London! I'm signed up to the East Coast train line's e-newsletter and in December got an email telling me that they had some special £8 fares for travel in January and February. So we booked our tickets to go down for Valentine's weekend. We managed to get our accomodation pretty cheaply too with Travelodge, if you book far enough in advance (6 weeks or so) you can get a really good deal. Basically we got travel and accomodation for 3 nights for 2 people for about £200 - pretty good I think!

Our train down was at 8.35am on the Saturday. This wasn't so much of a big deal for me because I'd been getting to work for 8.10am all week, but K hates getting up early if he can possibly avoid it. For some reason the train on a Saturday takes a full hour longer than it does the rest of the week, around 5 and a half hours instead of 4 and a half. This meant we'd be getting in just before 2pm, and given we couldn't check in at the hotel til 3pm this wasn't an issue. But while on the train a number of line faults meant that the train arrived at Kings Cross 50 minutes late. Now, whilst this solved the issue of what do we do for an hour til check in, it did mean we had been on the train for 6 and a half hours - we could have flown to New York in that time! Not fun. Naturally we were feeling a bit sweaty and grim by the time, so the first thing we did at the hotel was shower/change before heading out again.

We took a stroll round Covent Garden (we're tourists, give us a break), Leicester Square, Picadilly Circus etc. Got a Bubble Tea in China Town, which I liked but K said the tapioca pearls tasted like snot :S They didn't, but they are a weird texture. The juice bit's nice though. K really wanted to go to Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum, and luckily I'd researched this in advance and discovered that if you have a train ticket going into London you can print out 2 for 1 vouchers for various London attractions. As Ripley's is open until midnight we went there after a Nando's at about 10pm. With our 2 for 1 voucher we got in for £25 - which is fine for both of us but no way would I have paid that for just one ticket! We would not have gone if we hadn't had the voucher. Ripley's was good fun, full of lots of cool and weird artefacts, but not worth £25 each. We enjoyed it though, and if you can get in cheaper and are stuck for something to do at night it's worth a trip.

On the Sunday I decided we'd go to the Natural History museum and the Cabinet War Rooms. This did not go to plan. The NH museum was hoaching, what with it being a weekend, and the queues were massive so instead we popped next door to the much quieter Science Museum. It was K who had wanted to go to the Science museum but I think I enjoyed it more than he did. Dim Sum was our lunch, in Chinatown of course, and then we headed to Westminster to go to the Cabinet War Rooms. Unfortunately this takes about an hour and a half to go round and shuts at 6, and we didn't get there til 4.30pm. Yes we could have gone then, but K wanted to go into St James Park first and promised we'd go to the War Rooms 'tomorrow' instead. I relented. I spent most of the time in the park in a bad mood due to the awful weather. It was raining and blowing a gale - ideal weather for a walk. My umbrella was being blown in all directions and gradually breaking, and my lovely leopard print coat was getting soaked :( A Caffe Nero next to Trafalgar Square cheered me up. We went back to the hotel, changed and headed out to Leicester Square for food, ending up in TGI Fridays eating steak and drinking Ultimate cocktails.

Monday of course was Valentine's day, but conveniently I had an interview for an internship at 2.30pm - slap bang in the middle of the afternoon. The morning we spent at the Natural History museum (eventually) and then I had to head off for my interview. I was told this would be a 'short chat' but it ended up lasting almost an hour! Which was great in a sense, I think the interview went well, but it did mean that by the time I got back to the hotel and changed we had no time for the War Rooms. Fate was conspiring against me! In the evening we went for food and then met my friend R who lives in London. And proceeded to get really quite drunk. Cider, Jack'n'Cokes, a bottle of Prosecco (it's R's birthday today, it was my treat) and Barcardi Breezers back at the hotel. It was a lot of fun though and I'm really glad that R and K got on.

K was pretty hungover on Tuesday, but I felt not too bad. Our train back was at 6pm so we had most of the day to kill. We FINALLY went to the Cabinet War Rooms! Again I had a 2 for 1 voucher for this, and it was much more reasonably priced at about £15 a ticket. The tour's interesting, but it's an audio guide and sometimes there really isn't enough in a room to sustain your interest for the length of the audio. It's pretty amazing seeing the rooms though, especially when you consider that they practically lived in there due to the constant work load and threat of air raids above. It does last a bit long though, what with the Churchill museum in the middle. I now know more than I ever wanted nor needed to know about Winston Churchill. K wanted to go to the aquarium so we headed over Westminster Bridge to the Southbank. Lunch was Japanese, yum. I also had a voucher for the aquarium, costing about £18 a ticket. It was alright. The fish are pretty and it's really cool seeing rays, sharks, turtles etc. but it's so busy and very annoying when large groups of tourists take up all the space at the viewing windows for a long time and don't move. I don't get why people are so inconsiderate! And the tunnel was really short :S It did have a lot of fish though and I took loads of photos (most of which aren't very good). Got the tube back to Kings Cross and on the train back to Edinburgh!

All in all we had a good weekend. The weather was largely awful and I can't say that any one attraction was necessarily worth its entrance fee, but we had fun. We could have shopped, we could have clubbed, we could have gone to loads of 'cool' places, but to be honest playing the tourist was what I wanted to do. Maybe if I'd been to London more often I'd be more up for doing something different, but I haven't so I'll do what I want.

I realise this is really quite a long post, oops. And now it is very late at night, so I shall bid you all adieu.

Monotony

So, how is my job search going? Not amazingly, but I suppose not as badly as it could have been going!

On Monday I started an assignment with a body I shall decline to name, for fear of someone reading this (who?!). I was informed by my agency that this would be a purely administrative role, processing forms and applications etc. I did not anticipate that I would be sat at a desk doing the same menial task day in and day out. Essentially I open envelopes, take the forms out, check to see if they've been signed - if they have, date stamp it - if they haven't I give them to someone who sends them back (I can't do this myself as no-one has set up a computer account for me yet), if someone has sent original documents (eg payslips) or written in blue ink (two things the forms expressly say NOT to do, yet a lot of people do do) I have to photocopy the document/form, and when I have 10 stamped forms I put them together in a batch to be scanned. That is it. Over and over again. It is not hard. It is not even interesting. It's quite possibly the most boring thing I have ever done in my entire life. It does seem like all the jobs in our team are pretty boring, but at least other people get to switch it up a bit - do a bit of batching, a bit of scanning etc. I just get to do the same type of batching all day long. I want to hurt someone. Specifically the superviser as she is a very strange and nosey woman. Oh, and did I mention I don't get a security pass? Yep. I am supposed to be working there for a month but I don't get a pass, so I have to knock on the door each morning to be let in. I can't even go to the toilet as you need a pass to get through the door to that, I would have to get the receptionist to let me in, and then let me back into the office. It is ridiculous and I hate it. I am considering writing to my agency and telling them so. Probably not that I hate it, but that I find it unsuitable (I did not do 5 years at university for this) and want a job that uses my skills and challenges me. I really don't know how I can cope with a month of it.

Today though I had an interview for a part-time bar/waiting staff, which could be good. Strangely the interviewer just asked questions about my availability, rather than my experience or anything, which didn't really give me the opportunity to shine. She seemed to like me, however she did mention they'd received over 150 CVs and that she'd been interviewing all day, so I'm not holding out much hope really. I would rather like the job though.

Oh, and this weekend K and I are off to London! We booked the tickets in December through a special deal in the East Coast line's e-newsletter. £8 each, each way. Not bad at all! And through DaysOutGuide.co.uk you can get vouchers for 2 for 1 entry to loads of attractions, providing you have a train ticket to London. Yes it is Valentine's weekend, so I suppose that's what we're doing for it. I'm really looking forward to it though, a chance to escape for a bit. And while I'm down there I have an interview for an internship with a public affairs firm. I'm not certain I'd have got an interview had I applied the usual way, a colleague of my dad's knows the director and recommended me, but I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity. So fingers crossed for that too!

Anyway, I have a mountain of dirty washing to do and really ought to get round to it if I want to be able to wear anything nice at the weekend. Tata for now!