Such a bad girl

As usual, the blog posting has dried up! And as usual my desire to write a blog post has been rekindled by an assignment deadline looming. This one is pretty important though, well we've been told it's very important, only to have the lecturer's treat it like it's not important. It's the project proposal for my third year project. Exciting stuff. I'm terribly nervous about it, so far all I've managed is the title, which was actually quite hard to come up with and very wordy:

"A study on bacterial contamination density and type on keyboards in a multiuser environment and the effectiveness of hand hygiene products on keyboard to hand transfer levels when using a contaminated keyboard"

So now I have 4 days to write around that beast of a title. I'll do it, I have a habit of stressing myself silly until I crack and suddenly churn out a relatively good paper. It's been a shockingly good year for me this year, my grades have been no lower than an A-, which considering my academic background is pretty neat. I never really did well at school, just good enough to not be considered stupid, which is fine I guess, but at university I seem to have found what works for my brain, which really is quite a nice feeling. Although the exams are due in a month's time and I'm actually quite scared of them, I feel like I don't know anything, regardless of what my grades say! I'm pretty sure I'll pass, but never doing so well before, I feel a pressure to keep up to a certain level. Oh well, as long as I study...and don't write blog posts or play WoW, or get distracted by crazy things like re-organising my book shelf or alphabetising the DVDs...then I should be fine!

I bought another pair of pointe shoes the other day, some would say it's becoming an obsession since I didn't actually NEED a new pair of pointe shoes, the 6 I already have are still in good condition but the ones I bought seem to be the style that fit me best, so I think this new pair was actually needed as I can dance in them without wanting to cry. I am obsessed with pointe shoes though, I might as well admit that but I guess that comes with being obsessed with ballet! But I have established that the Grishko's fit me best and I will now stick with them! Probably. Maybe. We'll see.

Right 7 o'clock and it's still light, it surprises me every year how much I love it being light at night time when it starts happening again. It's just so pleasant. But 7 o'clock means it's officially evening, and as it's not the night before a deadline, this means I can stop work now and relax! Phew that title writing took it right out of me today!

Time to go enjoy the lovely spring evening :)

Taken from our bedroom window, alas it does not show the true pleasantness of the evening nor does the iPhone camera do it any justice.

Age

Well that was a busy week. Michael turned 40 last week, so of course happy birthday to him :) It was a fun week. Last weekend we had some fun at a...interesting B&B, I shall say no more on that topic. This week Michael disappeared off to Turo for work on Monday and Tuesday, then drove back on the Wednesday and spent the rest of the week off, which was lovely. We don't often get to spend much time together outside of weekends, so it was very nice to get the chance. Pinky kept me company during the lonely nights:
Age is a funny thing, as I've got older, I've generally felt I don't have an age, people put a lot of emphasis on age. It's something I've had to deal with a lot, Michael is 18 years older than me, and some people find that really difficult to come to terms with. Over the years I've dealt with a huge range of reactions, I would say a good portion of the positive reactions are either people who know and have seen us interact together as a couple, or people who themselves have experienced age gap relationships, either through their own relationships or their friends and family. As for the negative reactions, which have ranged from choosing to ignore us to outright abuse, these have been people who generally have only know me or have never even met either of us. I've found that Michael's friends, family and work colleagues have on the whole been very positive towards us, they know Michael is a lovely person and also a big kid, there's only one person on Michael's side of things that I can recall who has been a bit of a cunt, but he's a two faced bastard as it is, so it was to be expected. It's a strange thing, I look back to how I was during my teenage years, and I do believe I was a naive silly little girl sometimes, but there was always parts of me, a certain simple logic towards life that I had that during my interactions with people via the internet made them believe that I was much older than I was.

I realise that having a generally mature head on your shoulders at 17 is not everything you need to be an adult, at the time you think you that just because you can admit you don't know everything and you haven't experienced everything in life that you are therefore do know more than most other teenagers and want to be treated like a true adult. At 22, I can hardly judge teenagers for their way of thinking, because I think some people tend not to grow out of that style of thinking, where as others realise that it's ok that you never stop learning, it's ok that you haven't experienced every situation life can throw at you, most people seem to lose that particular hang up that teenagers have, they are at peace with the fact that life is ever flowing and ever changing and you have to adapt rather than sulk just because you've never dealt with this before and don't know what to do. I try not to have a problem with teenagers....and young men, I can't help but feel slightly superior sometime, I really try not to, but when teenagers and young men (who generally take a good while longer to catch up with women emotionally) come at me with their "problems" I can't help but being slightly dismissive of them, I try to give them practical and almost unemotional advice, I am not as sympathetic as I used to be. Perhaps because certain people seriously abused my "niceness" in the past, perhaps because I had to deal with the full force of people's hatred for loving someone they didn't approve of, or perhaps because I do live my life with someone in his 40s now, that I've been able to by-pass those awkward early 20s where you are thrust into life after the hormonal mess that is your teenage years and generally told to just get on with it. I admit, Michael has been a huge benefit to my life for many reasons, one of them is experience, I'm going through the weird years of understanding who you are and getting used to the idea of being an adult with someone who's already done all of that and is now completely at peace with who he is and just has such a passion for life. I understand how lucky I am and I appreciate him more than he realises sometimes. I think that's why I don't feel an age anymore, I feel young certainly, but I couldn't put an age on my frame of mind, and I believe Michael feels exactly the same. Often people seem to mistake this for Michael making me old, but they are wrong, Michael allows me to be who I am without having to worry about acting too old or too young, and I'm sure that's how Michael feels about me.

Living life outside of age barriers that have been set in society by the media and advertising has allowed me to enjoy whatever I want without feeling out of place, I can happily learn ballet with 11-18 year old and have a giggle with them when they talk about boys but then explain to them in a very serious manner why it's important to have the cervical cancer jab. We can go to the Reading festival and have an ace time dancing with random people and watching Stephen Lynch perform the naughtiest of songs but then listen to radio 4 on the way home and indulge in discussion whatever is being brought up in Any Questions. Anyway, my point is yes I may not be going out and partying every weekend, but the things that I do in life are much more enjoyable and suit the person that I am, no matter what age I am, and the same goes for Michael I'm sure, which is why we are so well suited.


Well that turned into more of a ramble than I set out to do, last post I did say I would put up some screenshots of my new mounts, well here is my Quel'dorei Steed:
And my newest mount the Argent Warhorse which makes me look like a paladin :)
I've been getting back into working towards the Loremaster achivement and I'm almost done in Kalimdor now, which is good. I've been enjoying it, it's nice getting away from the cities and high level areas which are generally full of idiots and going back to all the old original WoW content and enjoying the game for what it is.

I'm pretty happy today :)

Fail

I will keep this up I promise! I love the idea of blogging really, it's just finding the time or not being lazy and doing it! I think my last entry probably put me on a bit of a downer because I reminded myself how much I miss having friends around me, but since then I've just forgotten about this blog, then every time I read a friend's blog I remember. Oh well, this time I will honestly try to make an entry at least once a week. Often I worry that my life isn't interesting enough to blog about, but then interesting things happen to everyone, it's all relative.

I'm feeling a lot more positive than I was back in April, as a person I feel I'm constantly growing (as we should) and it's good to be able to feel that, to see the difference in myself and my actions. I'm back at uni now which is great, the summer months are usually quite hard for me because I just don't know what to do with myself, but now I'm back at uni I'm interacting with people and I'm keeping myself busy with studying. And boy, do we have a lot to study this year, we've only just started our second year and already they are banging on about our final year project. I'm looking forward to this year a lot though, the subjects are all interesting and not just a recap of high school stuff, there is much more of a medical focus on the subject this year which I'm really excited about.
That is my current pile of textbooks that I own, got a bit of a weird thing about books, I'm not very good with library books, I generally have to have my own textbooks to be able to comfortably use them! Anyway all those books are pretty darn interesting and I look forward to using them over the next year!

To jump to another topic that I'm rather happy with at the moment, ballet. Ballet is going wonderful this year, I can seriously see progression in myself, I'm much more flexible, I'm stronger at balancing and adages, my allegro has improved a lot especially since I can actually get my feet to stop flailing about and do something that at least resembles the step now :) And I'm much stronger on pointe....ah pointe, the trouble I have had with pointe shoes! In my last post I said I'd found the perfect pointe shoes, well I was wrong, they were far too big for me to dance in and I kept falling off pointe! Then when we went to New York, cue Times Square picture:
Anyway, when we went to New York, we went to the Gaynor Minden showroom, so I could get fitted properly, we bought a pair that felt great on pointe, and I was happy. Alas these shoes were not the ones! When wearing them in a class they caused me absolute agony, they were far too small length wise and the box was far too narrow for my toes to spread, so when standing on flat or demi they absolutely crippled me, so sadly I have two pairs of relatively useless Gaynor Mindens now, I'm not really sure what to do with them. I have, however, found a new pair of pointes, Capulet Juliet D3os with intelligent molecules! Which sounds quite fancy, and they are really, they are lined with the D3o compound (http://www.d3o.com/), and they feel just as comfortable as Gaynor Mindens, whilst looking more like a traditional pointe shoe than Gaynors. I'm rather happy with them so far, I will see how they fare when they are a bit more broken in.
Unfortunately that's the best picture I could get of them whilst taking a picture by myself on my iPhone....it's not easy to do that whilst standing on pointe!

A quick word on WoW before I finish and get on with some immunology studies, I've sadly not had as much fun on WoW lately, I feel that the easy to obtain awesome gear has brought the standard of play and the enjoyment of the game seriously down, everyone is an elitist jerk now. After a build up of events I've retired Kitri from the world of PuGs as being told I'm a "shit tank" by a healer that didn't have the skills to match his gear which was better than mine, is not my idea of fun. Instead Kitri will continue to work towards gainig the Loremaster title and pretty mounts away from the morons of the game. I have the unicorn mount now which is pretty cool, will post up a screenshot of it next time, going for the argent warhorse next. Also as much as I love the guys in my guild, myself and Michael are seriously feeling the strain of being the only non-Danish in the guild (except Whisperblade, but he's always busy PvPing anway!), we feel a mixture of exclusion and awkwardness. Exclusion because of their "brilliant" all Dane raids they have done recently where they get the chance to banter and chat with their friends, and awkwardness because we feel we are hampering their ability to banter with each other in guild chat because they can't speak in Danish. It's weird, and it's something I'm keeping an eye on with the possibility of leaving for an English guild...we shall see what happens.

Anyway time to get my study on! Need more of the best drink in the world first though!
Yummy!

Whoops

As usual I've started a blog and then been too busy to continue it...well I hope that doesn't happen, I quite liked having somewhere to waffle my daily thoughts. There's something about spending so much time alone, the more you do it, the more used to it you get. I talk to myself a lot, but that's ok, it's normal to talk to yourself, but the amount that I talk to myself I think has a linear relationship with difficulty in talking to other people. I always notice it most with my dance teacher, Katie, for some reason, I just can't quite be normal with her...I talk in a strange disjointed almost jittery manner with her, I've no idea why because she is so lovely and likes being able to talk to her students I think, but with me I seem to just mumble my way through class. I wish I didn't, I like her a lot, she seems like good fun and is very friendly, I've got the problem of asking her about private lessons for Michael and I for our wedding soon also...we are planning something special :)

There are certain people I meet that I would like to make good friends out of, Katie would be one, a lady in my adult ballet class called Nancy, who is like this crazy Welsh lady that enjoys her gin and larps (live action role play) with her family, is another. But I can't seem to make friends effectively, I find it difficult to find common ground to talk about and then if we do find common ground I just find it difficult to continue a conversation, and I think because I am so painfully aware of how useless I think I am...it hinders my progress with people. I'm hoping I can move the Nancy-friendship forward though, she's really sweet and the geekiness of larping makes for good conversations...no no, I've just realised what my main issue is, I can talk to people reasonably...but I can't get past the casual chat stage. I can't move it on to a friendship, it's so much more difficult to start a friendship as an adult, you can't just meet each other at school and then have a sleep over...I find it difficult to understand at what point should you move up from casual chat to inviting people over for dinner, or going to see a show together...or just something outside of your usually meeting place. After our first proper conversation together Nancy had already invited me along to larp with her and her husband, now at the time it didn't occur to me that she was doing exactly what I fail to do every time I meet a potential friend...so perhaps there are no rules as to when you can invite people to do stuff....you just do it and hope for the best. It's like having to learn how to be social again, and I think some people have it while others don't. But I have decided that both Michael and I need to be pro-active in making friends and both Michael and I will be going along to the next larp event in June with Nancy and her husband, we will meet loads of new people and hopefully be able to escape from ourselves long enough to be someone who can make friends easily.

Enough of that waffle, I have good news on the Alina Cojocaru front, yes I know I said I would post up some curtain call pictures of Leanne Benjamin (who is 45 and an amazing dancer!) and Johan from Giselle, but we forgot to take a camera and the iPhone's camera just doesn't cut it. But I have better than that:
Not my own picture I might add, taken from Ballet.co forums, but yes that's Alina and Johan, and I managed to get a ticket on the day to go see her first performance in a year! And she was just stunning, she was obviously being careful, but that didn't matter and it is not the point of ballet to be able to perform acrobatics, she danced and performed as Giselle beautifully, she danced as if she was thrilled to be on stage again during act one, such joy and happiness spilling out over her. By the end of Act 1 she was truly broken by Albrecht's betrayal, Johan holding her up just a little longer than required just before her death, as if he was overjoyed he could dance with his partner on stage again. Act 2 was the embodiment of ethereal, she was there but not there, her love for Albrecht shone through and her dancing so light and airy, almost as if she was a wisp of something passed on into the other world. A brilliant return for her, such a shame she isn't dancing anymore of the shows I'd booked to see her in this year, but very glad to have seen her. Johan was as always a stunning dancer, such a strong and solid partner and so happy to be dancing with Alina again. There was a huge flower throw at the end, and she got a massive hug and kiss from Johan on the many curtain calls. Can't wait to see her next season, where I hope she will be fully recovered and able to perform regularly again.

Not been up to a whole much in WoW lately, just some raiding of Naxx, got to help tank the other night, was great fun being the off tank, we took down the Four Horsemen for the first time also, so we are making pretty good progress. With my exams coming up next month I wont be able play much at all, in fact I'm planning on setting up parental controls until after my exams and giving Michael the password so that I don't get tempted away from revision.

On a good note I have finally got my Gaynor's sorted out so that they now fit comfortably and feel really good to go on pointe in, so pleased they fix perfectly now, so when I finally get back to going to my pointe lessons, pain should not be a issue any more :)

I think I'll end on a happy cat today:
Pinky sunbathing on the bed :)

Studying

So last week was all about playing WoW mostly, I was in a lot of pain and couldn't move around much, so it seemed like the only thing I could do, unless I wanted to have a epic week long Buffy marathon. That wasn't a option though, I'm trying to get through the series with Michael and after 4 years of being together we've got to series 3! I keep telling him about how awesome it is, but he's still not buying it, I think the older series have aged a little bit, which is a shame, they were so riveting to me as I was growing up. Anyways so last week I was exploring Storm Peaks mostly and doing a couple of old instances for enchanting materials. Storm Peaks was just so much fun for me to do, I enjoyed all the quests so much and the area is just stunning, it is a absolutely amazing area to fly around and explore. Got some screenshots to show off:
This one didn't turn out as sharp as it was on my screen, looks more misty on the screenshot, anyway this is outside Ulduar, brilliant ruined city of the titans, looks wonderful and there's just so much of it to see.
View from the other side of Ulduar :)
I spotted this when I was chasing after a herb node on my minimap and thought "ooh this looks interesting" and it was, it's a small area up near the Sons of Hodir ice fort thing, it just looks cool, a battle frozen mid flow.
My favourite screenshot from there, I love the thought and effort Blizzard have put into Wrath, there is just so much to see and explore, they've made it fun again basically, to me anyway.

As I'm off on my Easter holidays... I'm trying to get some serious studying done, I was planning on utilizing the full three weeks, but last week I wasn't in a great state of mind or body to get anything done, but so far this week I've not done too badly, in my mind I planned to be getting a lot more studying done than I was, but I'm studying properly rather than just writing up my lecture notes. Which is good, and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with getting 2 lectures done a day, although today that might not be completely possible now as I have procrastinated a little bit...

So far I've spent most of today watching ballet videos on youtube...definitely my biggest time sink on the interwebs, anyway, Michael and I are off to see Giselle at the Royal Opera House tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to it. I originally booked the tickets to see my favourite ballerina, Alina Cojocaru, dance the part, but sadly she is still injured, missed her when we went to see Swan Lake too.
Alina in Giselle.
But as I said I'm still really excited, the ballerina to replace her is Leanne Benjamin, who I haven't seen before, but have seen lots of on youtube and she is a stunning dancer, really has amazing technique and is one of the older principles of the Royal Ballet, so definately got the experience. Also Johan Kobborg is dancing, and he is pretty damn good himself, he has this amazing ability to do the biggest of jumps and turns and looks as if he is not even trying. Most male dancers when they do their big jumps and turns, they can obviously do them well, but they look like they exerting a lot of energy to do them, where as Johan, looks so light and airy when he dances. His lifts look effortless also, but completely solid.
Alina and Johan in the beautiful Manon (both pictures taken from Alina's website )

Giselle is a lovely ballet also, such a happy and bouncy first act....well apart from when she dies, and then the second act so beautiful and eerie. It should be a great night. And I will get to see Alina on my birthday hopefully in Les Sylphides, looking forward to see The Firebird at that performance also, looks like a really interesting ballet.

Right I think I've done enough waffling now, hopefully my next post should have some curtain call pictures of Johan and Leanne if I remember to take my camera. Should really get started on my Anatomy now!

Ding

So I hit 80, get me! I did in fact get 80 on the day of the last post, but have been pretty ill since, so the idea of writing in the blog didn't even occur. Anyway obligatory screenshot:
That night I got to go on a Naxx raid, bought some very quick craftable epics to boost the gear a bit, and well it was a 25 man Naxx and we managed to get one boss down, but that wasn't the annoying part really. The guild that we did it with were a bit...well not that great, I mean obviously they've got some good guys in there, but they didn't really seem to run a raid well. Our guild is a small guild reformed out of my old guild, my old guild was a casual raiding guild that lasted a year and did reasonably well, just some guys decided we were too casual, formed their old guild and advertised their new guild on our forum, promising epics galore and took most of my guild with them. So when the remains reformed, it was to be a small guild of close friends, which we are, which is nice, but it does mean we have to tag along with other guilds to raid. Anyway, this other guild, first of all had us waiting an hour after the start time before they got themselves ready...now we were used to being early to raids, so you can see we got a bit pissy, then they didn't actually have enough for a 25 man, only 22 of us all together, but we still went along, I know that's not their fault, but the raid shouldn't have really gone ahead as a 25 man without a full raid group. And finally, people started leaving after a couple of wipes, there was a lot of "oh we have to go now, sorry guys". Now I know my old guild was hardly the most hardcore of guilds, but we certainly had standards you were supposed to abide to for raids. Namely, attending if you sign up, being on time, and staying the full raid. I know all guilds are run differently but it's just rude to keep anyone waiting let alone 10/20/30 people waiting (ah back in the day of 40 man raids) an hour before you decide to log your ass on.

Anyway we ended up getting a 10 man Sanctum done with the people who were left over, it was nice to get in on a raid, just to see how well I could play my new class in a raid, although Kitri is a tank, she was dps for these raids and she did pretty well. Since then, I've done a couple of heroics, got myself some nice goodies and tanked quite a few heroics, so I'm learning and doing quite nicely I think. Yesterday I decided to pick up enchanting, so had some fun running the old early instances like Dead Mines, to get greens. It's super fun to run round a whole area, gather up as many mobs as you can and then lay down one AOE spell and kill them all in one go. Make looting much easier if they are all at your feet too. Manged to get my enchanting up to 90 anyway, which isn't bad to start with, since I'm housebound today, I'll carry on going through them, getting greens whilst getting achievements for the dungeons :)

In other news, I tried on my wedding dress on Friday, Michael and I are getting married September 4th next year, and I'm so excited about it, I'm not the girliest of girls but I've been getting pretty squee over all of this. My dress is pretty beautiful, and everyone I've showed it to so far thinks so too, which is really nice. I just can't wait for it all to happen.
Wedding check list so far:

• Cake - would really like to show a picture of the cake, because it's so awesomely yummy, but their website seems to be having issues.
• Venue:
• Registrar: booked for September 4th :)
• Dress: made by the very lovely Janice at Uptight Clothing

So, all rather exciting here at the moment, lots being planned and lots being done. But alas, I feel today will be another day in front of the computer playing WoW to keep me occupied. Had a small procedure on Monday and my body didn't take to it too well, yesterday I tried to unload and load the dishwasher, all the bending down gave me a lot of pain again, so Michael has banned me from doing anything today, so that I can let my body get better, I know he is right, but being ill all last week and now this means I've not really left the house in a week, so getting a bit restless. Hopefully tomorrow I will be well enough to do a ballet class, I've not done one in a week, and it's the school's Easter Holidays next week, so it will be 2 more weeks before I can dance again if I can't go. Oh well, here's to hoping!

So close...

Well I figured it was time to make a blog, and as usual I've done it at a time when I could easily be busy doing something else, for once it's not a report I'm procrastinating on, this time it's WoW. I know how weird, anyway I'm 60% of the way into level 79, I could easily get 80 today, plus I'm ill, so that gives me even more of a reason to get to 80. I'm that sort of ill where nothing but sitting in front of the computer and going "uuuuurrrggghh" is possible. But I will get to 80 today, I know it, it's only 11:30, I've got ages, especially since I'm too sick to go to dance tonight. I figured 4 hours of dance mixed in with this rather nasty cold would not mix well, which is a shame since there is only one more week of dance left before Easter and lab sessions at uni have kept me away from dance for a little while :(

I felt I was looking bad ass at the moment, so here is a picture of my current main:
Yes I know it's a Death Knight, since WoW first started I've played a druid, a balance druid, and I quite liked being a druid and then a load of stuff happened, mostly with the guild I ran, and I didn't like playing anymore, I took a break when Wrath of the Lich King came out, and by time I came back everyone was 80 already. I logged my druid and I just didn't want to play her, it's so silly but all the upset caused whilst I was that character, that name, was still there. So I thought I would give a Death Knight a go and it was love straight away, exactly the kind of class I've always wanted to play. I love the life leeching and I really enjoy being a tank. So this lovely little Death Knight is my main now, and I'm enjoying playing her a lot, though I am just waiting for the nerf...it's going to come soon I can tell.

I've been surprised at how much money you can make in WoW so quickly, I took up Herbalism and Skinning as my professions as something quick and easy to level, whilst still providing a reasonable amount of income, and yes although they have attributed to a large amount of my income, a great big chunk of it is still from questing and selling unwanted quest rewards, it's nuts. It took me forever to get my druid her fast flying ability, that 5k gold was a real killer to get. It took me a couple of levels on my Death Knight and I still had change left over to buy her 950g class mount, as you can see in the screen shot. It's weird, but I suppose it's good in one way as there is less reason for gold sellers now, since everyone already has lots of gold anyway, it doesn't seem to have effected the prices of things on the auction house too much either.

Anyways I think I've rambled enough for today, I'm going to get back to some serious questing now, might listen to the music from Swan Lake whilst I play, there is some lovely bits of music in that ballet.