Naughty Sketching

I have had such a fun day today. I met up with Max and some of the Brits Abroad in Angel and we went to Dr Sketchy London, which is sort of an anti-art school life drawing class, but you also get a bit of a burlesque show first too. At this one there were two women, and they did a little performance each before settling into poses for us to sketch, anything from a minute to ten minutes. (I got rather more up close and personal with one of them than I would have liked, when I wandered into the toilet while she was undressing. She had an amazing arse. But you’d think they’d put signs up or something telling people to use the other loo.)

I should say before I go any further, I am not an artist. I haven’t drawn anything since school probably. I used to be good at copying cartoony things, like Winnie the Pooh and stuff like that, but people I’ve never been good at. My brother got all those art genes from my dad. The one bloody good thing I could inherit and nada. Anyway, luckily that’s not what this event is about, it’s just about having fun. And it was mega fun. They did different themes for the drawings, and gave out little prizes throughout and had an overall winner. Some of the people there were proper artists, and they did amazing drawings, but mostly it was people like us, who were just having a go, and a laugh.

Warning: Below there are boobs. But they are mostly drawn by me and so not so boob-like.

This is one of mine, and the one I am most proud of, as it actually looks like a woman, and isn’t totally dreadful.

Max’s (closest) and Maria’s.

The theme of this one was to draw the lady as if in the forest of Lothlorien, and then we had to swap halfway through with someone next to us. So the woman is mine, and the rest is Max.

And this was Max’s plus my Legolas and Gimli. It was easier to not take it seriously when finishing Max’s.

The theme of this one was the ‘surprise monkey’ round. Halfway through drawing they’d shout out an animal/being and you had to draw it too. And it might not be real. So the bloke shouts out ‘Gelfling!’ And everyone goes ‘What the fuck is a Gelfling?’ And no one in the room, which was about 40 people, knew. (It’s from the Dark Crystal if you’re one of the many who don’t know.) So I won a lollipop. Mostly for knowing, and not for my picture, which looks nothing like a Gelfling. Maria won for another pic, she got some saucy stockings. Max and Martin also won lollipops. So our table didn’t do too badly to say we were quite rubbish.

I’d definitely recommend it as a fun day out.

For Me

So, I could talk about the election, and I should, but it’s all a bit depressing isn’t it? I voted, that’s all you need to know.

Instead, let me be all gross and annoying and wax lyrical about my Max and how he makes me laugh. Which is a good job really. This morning as we were watching the election results the news said the name of one of the MPs. I said ‘The first boy I ever kissed was called ‘Same Name as That MP’. Max looks at me and says ‘And the last boy you’ll ever kiss is called Max Lastname’. Just, just, as I was about to go ‘Aww, that’s lovely’ he adds, in an eerie voice, ‘Because I’m going to kill you.’ Pause. ‘You have to go and ruin it, don’t you?’ ‘Yes.’

But I laughed.

I was also amused by this exchange via email yesterday. I was being a proper grumpus all day I admit, and so he sent me this:

Max: Would you like a TIGER HUG!!!

Me: Did I tell you about that weird documentary I watched called ‘Cat Dancers’, about a couple who were dancers in their youth but as they got older their act lost its audience, and so they started using big cats, tigers, leopards, pumas etc, and brought in this other young dude to help train, and they all became lovers and would have lived happily ever after if they had not decided to bring in a white tiger with anger issues and had the young dude not tripped up in front of said tiger, causing the tiger to bite him on the neck and kill him. And then the woman committed suicide by tiger by going into its cage and having her throat ripped out.

The short answer to this then, is no, thank you.

Although that is very cute.

(Hmm, I suppose I can spoil nice things too, can’t I?)

Max: You’ve never, ever, told me that. I just want to say that so that the photo doesn’t have a menacing undertone to it.

Me: Oh, I only watched it the other week. It was bizarre. As it sounds. And quite sad, as the remaining third of the act was all alone, and the white tiger was shot and he later had to put down all his other animals too. When he is 80 he is going to leave the States and go to live in Thailand to live with those tiger monks, and I thought ‘Max has been there!’

Max: You do watch an awful lot of depressing docs when I’m not around don’t you?

Me: Apparently. But when you see a doc called ‘Cat Dancers’ that involves a menage a trois, you’ve got to, haven’t you?

Max: That should be the quote on the front of the DVD. A rhetorical question to lure in punters. It’s a fair point.

Me: Hopefully it doesn’t imply a manage a trois with cats…

This has probably not been interesting for anybody but me, but that’s fine. Oh look and it’s Friday! My mum is coming to visit this weekend and we are going out for afternoon tea. Have I said this somewhere already? Never mind. I love afternoon tea, we should have it all the time. Mmmm scones…

Look! Snippets of My Life and Not Books

I had horrible dreams on Saturday night. It is rare that I have properly bad dreams where I wake up covered in sweat and afraid. I was dreaming about ghosts, lots of them in my flat, possessing people and not letting me brush my teeth! That seems funnier now than it did then, when I was carrying around salt and drawing circles around myself to keep them away. (I haven’t even been watching Supernatural.) The worst thing was that I would wake up, and calm myself down, and then fall asleep and back into the dream again. That’s not very fair is it? Sunday night I was being all scared of the dark and finding the bathroom ominous, which is very silly. How am I almost thirty and still having moments where I am afraid of things that go bump in the night?

After listening to me ramble about the ghosts in my bathroom Max sent me this:

I love how sad the ghost looks. Also I am probably snoring, because I do that, allegedly. I blame hay fever.

Sunday I went to see Kick Ass, which was so-so. Not sure why it’s been getting such rave reviews. I found the beginning to be rather boring and Aaron Johnson not really all that good at carrying a film. Plus Nicholas Cage doing a weird Adam West-in-Batman voice didn’t help. What on Earth has happened to Cage? I am sure at one point he was a good actor. The film had a very odd tone, like it wasn’t sure if it was going for the full on comic book angle, or wanted to be taken seriously, or was trying to be funny, so it failed on all counts. I quite liked Hit Girl, but because of the tone issues am not sure if I should. Anyway, the ending was all right.

On Wednesday I am going to Glasgow, where I shall spend three days sitting in a room at the university attempting to sell books. Although we have been segregated to another, smaller room, without refreshments, as punishment for not paying for a swanky but useless stand. I am taking lots of books. For me to read, because of course I am taking lots of books if I am selling books.

And I do believe this has you fully caught up. Boo yah.

Pictures

I have nothing much to say, but I thought these photos were really sweet, and such a nice idea. Much better than my own 365 project, which is going on with varying degrees of success, and commitment. I run out of things to take photos of, or my camera batteries die, or I just get lazy. I am very good at starting projects and not finishing them, as shown by many of my knitting attempts. I need some sort of inspiration, and also to feel less embarrassed when I want to take pictures of things when other people are around.

Last week was Easter, beloved because we get a four day weekend and to eat as much chocolate as we like. Mmm mini Lindt eggs. To die for. I mean, that’s the story behind Easter, right? That Jesus ate so much chocolate he fell into a sugar coma but came around a few days later and everyone was happy? Although they probably all ate his left overs while he was sleeping. I dunno if I would turn the other cheek about that.

Anyway, Easter meant I had two four day weeks at work, which is always appreciated. If only we could have more. Still, almost the weekend.

Inhale and Exhale Heavily

If I could figure out a way to do the sound effects by spelling them out I totally would, but even I have my geek limits.

So, this guy:

Lives outside Max’s room and basically scares the crap out of me every time I step into the hallway. I know he’s there. I know he’s not actually a psycho murderer waiting in the shadows to stab me to death while Max is reading the football results, but he still makes me jump, every damn time.

This hasn’t really got anything to do with anything, except I was thinking about nerds and geeks and this seemed geeky and worth a mention. So, nerds vs geeks…how do you define them? This came up at work yesterday and I couldn’t be very specific. I consider myself a geek, but I would never call myself a nerd. I know there can be overlap, but where is it, what is it? I guess for me nerds are smart, whereas I am not especially. But you know, good at maths and science, not great in social situations…but then that could be geeks too. I should look up the actual definitions of the words.

Two minutes later. So.

Nerd: an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit. A computer nerd.

Geek: a computer expert or enthusiast (a term of pride as self-reference, but often considered offensive when used by outsiders.)

Well, thank you dictionary.com, that was very helpful.

Huh. I am not much the wiser. I think this calls for more Googling, though it seems there is no great difference. Maybe it’s just what people would prefer to think of themselves as? I’m sticking with geek.

This is what happens when I am forced to wait for Lost to er..ahem, come on the telly.

Fruity

Last week at work, a colleague got sent a box from graze.com. It basically works like lovefilm, in that boxes of fruit and nibbles come to you through the post. There were vouchers for other people to try it for free (excellent marketing ploy) so I took one and had a go. I don’t eat nearly enough fruit and good stuff, and though I could easily go out and buy some, it’s not nearly as exciting as a box rocking up at your desk.

My box came yesterday. You can choose from the fruit box or nibbles, I went with fruit because a lot of the others have nuts in (they don’t cater to people who can’t eat nuts as yet, but I wanted a go anyway). I got one tray of fresh cut orange, and two smaller ones of nibbles. They are ‘blueberry fruit cake’ (white chocolate covered blueberries, jumbo raisins and green raisins – I don’t do raisins, but have found the green ones to be acceptable), and ‘yin & yang’ (almonds, dark chocolate buttons, more bloody jumbo raisins and cherries – I’ll mainly be interested in the chocolate in that one I’m afraid).

You can set up preferences online and say whether you love things, like them, are happy to try or want to bin them (so they are never sent). Alas, with my tastes I was binning a lot, and a box popped up and told me off, so I rethought it and said I would try stuff. That seems sensible. I am very much enjoying the blueberries, but that is probably because you can only taste the white chocolate.

Anyway, the next box is half price so I will get another one on Thursday (you can choose when you want them) and then I’ll decide whether I’ll keep up with it. It’s £2.99 per box and that includes postage. If anyone reading (in the UK) would like a free go you can go to the website and on the right where it says ‘Promotion or Gift code?’ click and put in D1ZLLK2 and voila! Free snacks. A head’s up though, you do have to put in card details when you sign up, even for the free one, but you can then cancel at any time.

And I’m done plugging random internet things now.

Love and Books and Birthdays

After all my whining about the evilness of Valentine’s Day, it turned out to be not so bad. I got flowers, delivered to my work, in person no less. Awww…yeah yeah. Lovely surprise, except I spoiled it by not actually being at work when he got there. I was out buying lunch. Oops. I got back to the office to find flowers on my desk and colleagues going ‘who is he who is he who is he?’ Busted. On the actual day we watched Whip It (which was so-so), and ate pizza, and I also got a cookie. Actually it wasn’t much different to every other day, which is how I like it.

Last Saturday was the annual London Bookswap, where friends and friends of friends get together to eat lovely food and swap books. Obviously. Every year I say I am not going to take many, I am going to dump my stack and just take a couple, a few at the most…and I always end up taking away bags full. This year was no different, and I got some excellent books, lots of ones that look cheesy and easy on the brain, which is exactly what I was looking for. There seems to be a running theme of magic and demons and murder, so some may be a little darker than I was expecting, but never mind. I am currently reading one about magic and knitting and it is awesome.

Tomorrow I am going to a birthday party for a one year old. I hope she likes the gift I got her, and that it doesn’t drive her parents too mad. If there are lots of other babies there for me to cuddle I will be very happy.

This Post Goes Nowhere

• Last week I went to see Wicked, the musical, and although I enjoyed it and liked it much more than the book (story-wise I mean), it didn’t rock my world. Which is a shame. Still, very entertaining. Both leads were very good, although more so individually, since when they sang together I found their voices didn’t really mesh well. And when the chorus was singing it was very hard to tell what they were saying, it was just noise. The set was really good though, and everyone in the cast was excellent. My ice cream however was a bit of a disappointing rip-off.

• Lost has started up again. I think it may take me a while to get back into it, as I wasn’t feeling very invested. Also, Sawyer is getting fat. Not that this has anything to do with me being invested, since he was never a favourite of mine really, it is just something I noticed.

• I’ve been watching BSG again and had a proper marathon over the weekend. I had forgotten how awesome the second season is, really, it’s fantastic. When Pegasus shows up? Those episodes rock. As does the finale.

• I’m sure I had something else of slight interest to say…and yet I have no idea what it was. That’s annoying.

• Oh yeah! It was more boring weather talk about how we have had snow again. Pathetic little flurries of snow and yet I get all giddy about it. Or fed up, in case it shuts down our whole transport system again. It has stopped now.

• Yeesh this was exciting, wasn’t it?

The Good Pillow

On my bed I have four pillows. Two I don’t really use, since they were bought more because I liked the look of them than for their comfort. I love IKEA. Two are proper pillows, one which has been perfectly shaped over time to fit my head just the way I like it. It’s flat if I’m on my stomach yet still puffy enough if I want to sleep on my side. The other one…well, is evil. For some inexplicable reason it is getting bigger. I don’t understand it, but I’m sure every time I go to put a new pillowcase on it has swelled again.

This would be fine if it were just me, but when Max is here we fight over the good pillow. I keep an eye on it when we go to bed to make sure he hasn’t sneakily switched it in the hopes I won’t notice. But I notice, I always notice. You cannot have my pillow! I’ll give you a kidney if you need one, but back off this man! Last night as Max threw the other pillows off the bed in exasperation, he said ‘I don’t understand. You’ve got nothing in this room, no pictures up, your TV is ancient, and yet you’ve got sodding display pillows! And this, THIS!’ shaking the evil one, ‘Stupid, FAT, useless pillow!’

I couldn’t say anything then, for one thing he was right, and also because I was curled up laughing my head off unable to stop. Perhaps you had to be there, but even now his cry of ‘FAT PILLOW’ can make me giggle. Some might say that love means giving up the good pillow, but they’ve probably never seen me in a morning after having a crap night’s sleep. I think love is not subjecting him to that. Or it might be going out and buying a new one. But where’s the fun in that?

Enter the Dragon

Last Sunday I spent some of the day in bed with another man and his girlfriend.

Well, if that didn’t get your attention nothing will.

The reason for this menage a trois was artistic. No really. Max was remaking Enter the Dragon for Empire magazine’s Done in 60 Seconds competition. And since he was lacking in female leading ladies, I had to take the bullet. There is a reason I’m not an actress. Anyway, the film is done and I am being kind enough to share it with you. I’m sure you’re thrilled.

I am firstly a prostitute, then I’m one of the baddies (wearing a black and red checked hoodie and mainly laughing and trying to get out of the shot) and then a ‘mirror’, with my feet showing.