Good and Bad Feelings...

Good Feeling: taking all the keys off your keyboard with a knife, washing them, and then vacuming the 14 months of accumulated crumbs and other gross bits out of the back of the keyboard.

Bad Feeling: Hearing the thhhhuummp sound as a bit of your keyboard gets sucked up into the vacuum cleaner.

Bugger.

Way to a girl's heart.

I'm a relatively(see note A) simple girl to please. Giving me a bag of pork scratchings all to myself is definitely one of the BEST ways to do it though. (See Note B)

Not very vegetarian, nor very vegan. Then again, that's ok cause I'm neither.


Notes:
(a)relatively = easy if you know what I like, difficult if you don't.

(b) However, it does have to be nice pork scratchings. Not too greasy, or chewy, or too dry. It should also have a nice crunchiness about it, and without a big a layer of soggy fat that hasn't crispied up. Otherwise, don't bother, cause I'll just wonder why they wasted perfectly good piggy by not cooking it properly. Also, it should come from a proper pork shop, (found either in little towns or selling their wares at beer festivals), and not from one of the foil packs you get from your local pub or supermarket. They're not very nice. But, if the supermarket is Asian (and then not from a foil packet) I will happily accept that, cause they tend to be really crispy and not greasy in anyway shape or form.

Feeling Guilty Today About: Giving up smoking

So if you've read my post a few days ago about Lent, you'll know that I'm giving up smoking for the next 40 days. (just a quick aside: it's not that I'm fanatically religous, or that giving this up for Lent is something that I do every year (actually I don't think I've ever given anything up in my life... my mum's gonna be pissed when she finds out..), but I felt that it'd add a small tiny mite of interest in my otherwise incredibly dull persona). However, if you read that post you'll also know that I actually don't smoke to begin with, so it's a relatively easy thing to do. So though it's kinda fun to say "no, sorry, whilst the idea of being paid in cigars sounds lovely, I've unfortunately given up smoking for lent, so cash will have to do", I'm finding that I'm feeling suprisingly guilty about the fact that now people think I'm zealot quitter of all things nicotene related, they are being nice to me for giving up... which I haven't done... cause I never started.... hmmm.

Note, don't feel guilty enough to actually do something properly, though giving up watching Jessica Simpson on the tele is actually allot harder than I imagined. I have however started to watch 10 mins of "Peter and Jordon" on Wednesday nights, and whilst this is crap, I'm do not think this is going against my Lent promises... that's more a documentary of life for 2 people in the public eye, trying to make a life together, rather than Jessica Simpson screaming "honey, I've banged the car up real good again"..

Hitting that tiny French village, hoping to avoid riots, firebombs, coughing birds and death by cheese.

A bunch of us are packing our little overnight cases and going to France tomorrow. I'm pretty excited cause it's the first time I'll left this little island this year (and it's March already!), and also cause I'll be able to do my favourite thing: supermarket shopping.

Oh yes. I know this is sad, but I love nothing more than going supermarket shopping when I'm overseas, and buying random foreign food (merguez sausages, yum, compte cheese, delicious, that can of cut up octopus pieces? hmm.. well you have to take the good with the bad huh). The things I'm definitely going to be handing my hard earned cash over include:

1. Frois Gras - which I probably won't eat, and will just sit in my fridge for the next 3 months, like the last lot did
2. Little Prince Biscuits - again which I probably won't finish, because there are only so many biscuits a girl can eat..
3. Bottles of red & white wine - standard
4. Bottles of 70 eurocent champagne, which will smell like hair perming solution, but when we're sitting on the floor of our hotel room at 2 am, after a night of going in and out of different pubs that we'll get stared at by locals, will be damn tasty.
5. More little individual bottles of champagne, like the ones you see uber skinny supermodels drink at fashion shows, but which will not be Bollinger, but something more like the hair perming solution, to make trips on the tube more bearable.
6. Tiny bottles of beer.
7. Cheese. Lots of cheese.

So as you can see, it's mostly booze.... (little bottles of booze, cause then I can fend of the looks of disapproval from my friends when I go to get one from the fridge the very second I get through the front door by saying "What? It's only a small bottle"). I wish that I was sophisticated enough to buy cases and cases of Moet & Chandon, and really expensive wines and cultured and well thought out pieces of art, but that's just no me.

Me. The non-classy Aussie bird in France. Look out St Omer! We're hitting your town tomorrow.

Top 3 Things I'm giving up for Lent

So Lent has started today, and like a good catholic girl, I feel almost obligated to give something up for it. However, not actually being a good catholic girl, I can't quite get myself to give things up that I really like, for example, beer or wine (especially since we're all going away on a booze cruise to France on Saturday)..

So here is my top 3 things of things to give for lent:

1. Smoking. Yes, I'm going to cut out smoking entirely for the next 40 days. My body will be not have any nasty smoke subjected to it by me - other than second hand smoke from the pub I'll be in whilst I'm not giving up drinking. This will be dead easy, and I'll feel good about it.. I will nott complain or bitch or scream "I WANT A CIGARETTE" at any time over the next 40 days. (Note: It might be better if I actually smoked in the first place, but will give up the temptation to start, to then stop too.)
2. Eating endangered animals - no cod & chips, or panda burgers for me then. Done (I do eat cod & chips, so that actually will be something to give up).
3. Will not watch uber crap telly, but do intellectual things with my time, such as read books, do crosswords, shop on the internet. I will however state that shows like "Desperate Housewives", "The Apprentice", and "East Enders" are all highly intellectual shows, and I will continue to watch them. I will not watch things like, say, Newlyweds, anymore.
   

Feel very good. Almost saintly.