Steven W.

I'm back to this series. I actually thought I'd talk about Lydia or Kim or someone else from work next, but nope, Steve it is.

I should start by saying, I know a freaking lot of Steve's. I even had a kid with a Steve. But not Steve W. Don't worry about that.

Steve W is one of the few Steve's I know from outside work. I infact met him at uni.

I saw him a couple of times in my first year. Mest hat, GC hoodie. You know when you see someone and just think 'but you're meant to be my mate!' Steve. At the time, I was so into GC and mest, I could've chewed his ear off all day, lol.

We didn't work together until near the end of first year. They did a taster day for second year TV, and we were two of the people who went, if I remember rightly (I think I do. My friend Jenny was there too, and she's the girl who I never stopped talking to once I got started/played viscious chess games with, so it's hard to actually remember.)

We were in the same TV group second year. So we got talking (because I had loads of mest and NFG and green day stuff too), with the rest of the people in the group (10 girls, 5 boys total, 4 of the guys were from Sheffield, half the girls were from Essex. It's like they rigged it or something. Most of the guys on our overall course went for radio or digital media instead of TV, which was why they were out-numbered) ... a hell of a lot of our group were into mcfly, I remember, so if we didn't have any ideas for our projects, we'd just talk about the latest CD/gig.

In third year, we both ended up majoring in radio. They were talking about projects we had to do in pairs or threes and at one point in the lecture he turned around and was like *mouthing, since the lecturer was still talking* 'you, me, punk'. So for 12 weeks we got to do work we actually liked, and pretty much avoided all our personal seminars for the topic, in true punk style, lol (or the direction from the lecturer was always the same and gave us nothing to work with and we figured, hey, we can do it on our own, we both spent the last 2 summers doing make-up work anyway. We did our practical work together too, it made the most sense. He was having the same issues I was having with my dissertation, in that I hadn't been given a lecturer to refer to and every time I emailed the guy in charge of assigning us, I was had a go at for not taking action sooner, rather than given any help. It was nice to have someone in the same boat.

He didn't really respect the system. Not in a 'bad boy' way. You had to seriously kiss ass to get anywhere at our uni. It was so competitive. And I'm competitive, but my kiss-ass is all piss-take. I wouldn't get anywhere straight-up brown-nosing. I didn't go to uni to steal our lecturers contacts, you know? But that, it seems, is how you got a first on our course. I'm glad he didn't buy into the whole system, it helped not to feel swallowed up by those that do.

He's one of the few people I've stayed in touch with since leaving uni. I've got my third year housemates and Jenny on facebook, but apart from seeing each others status' and whatnot, we don't really keep in touch. But I do still talk to Steve. He's into a lot of the same bands as me and my BFFs, still. He's watching all the films I wanna go see if I had the chance (I will be making it to Prince of Persia though, dammit!) ... so even if I haven't actually been face to face with the guy for 4 years, it's nice to think that something came out of three years at university. Good to think that someone's at my level, in the same boat, and still a friend.

Ramble, ramble

Yeah, this is a quick blog, going on about my life.

There's not much to say really. I'm just exhausted. How do you explain to a 2 year old that bedtimes don't change just because it gets light outside longer? Was reading until 8.45 to get him to sleep tonight. Been like that a lot lately. He's exhausting me.

And so's work. My legs ache by the time we get home from nursery :/

Anyway. My friend from work who's training to be a hairdresser is doing my hair tomorrow night. If I can find my way around the college, since I've never been there before. Will probably message her before I come offline pleading for some sort of direction, lol. I've said she can do whatever she wants to my head, but she said it'll just be a cut. I just hope she doesn't go too short, since my hair is so big, and last time it was really short, I looked like an owl.

And it's work's "FUN DAY" on Saturday, where we dress up ... this time it's not themed. Which means I'll probably be in my Gryffindor Quidditch player outfit again.

Otherwise ... I've had my head stuck in The Tree Of Seasons. I'll talk about that tomorrow night, probably. Well, been reading that and daydreaming. I need to do stuff, get my head out of the clouds. Mcfans meet soon, please? It's been over 3 months! And we didn't even have Katie, because of her nan ...

Things to be perky about

My last few entries, save for the SATC prequel review, have been, I noticed, dour.

So I'm going to make a few points here to try and pep myself up:

-Scarlett Thomas has a new book coming out this Thursday, "Our Tragic Universe" where the secrets to our universe are possibly held in a knitting pattern?

-Kate Brian's 11th Private novel, scandal, is out on the 27th. Billings is gone, but Reed and Noelle will probably make their new home the next Billings. This actually means something to me, but is waffle to you.

-I finally updated my 'flavour of the month' playlist on my iPhone/iPod. Now I don't have to choose between mcfly, the Glee soundtrack, and anything else that takes my fancy.

-the sun's coming out, and boy and I have agreed to play outside more with his slide/football after nursery.

-my hairdressing friend is going to banish my numerous split ends thursday night.

-I have an early morning driving lesson this friday too.

-Sex and the City 2 is in cinema's soon and looks even better than the first (which I'm watching now)

-The two cars I like are both being sold locally for around £3000. That's got to be good, since one of them's a mercedes benz, right? (It's an A140. That, or a Kia Picanto)

-There's just over 10 weeks until I'm in Florida, at Harry Potter land, soaking up the sun and enjoying two weeks with my boy.

-my tax credits info came through today, so I can work out money, and stop worrying about that.

-refusing point blank to have fatty foods for the past week has meant I've lost 6 pounds. If I keep it up, and refuse wheat too, for the intolerance, I should be back down to a normal weight. If I lose track, it'll shoot straight back up.

-me, boy and his Godparents are going to London zoo sometime in June.

-my best friends are debating whether to go to Cyprus sometime towards the end of the year.

-boy and I are 1&1/2 chapters from the end of Goblet of fire. And he fell asleep at a certain point, so I could pretend I'd read him the bone of the father junk that was way too scary for a 2 year old.

-I'm getting better at my wii.

-I got Sherlock Holmes on DVD. Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law are a tasty team.

-There's only 2/3 more chapters for me to review of my writing before I give a copy to L (I didn't forget!) ... just remember, it's a draft and I'm still ironing out bits that don't make sense! I've left some in while I think how to rephrase ...

-I had a good day out with my sister and boy, playing in a park after buying lunch in tesco's. And found love with toffee butter popcorn!

Jodie

Continuing my 'why I love my friends' posts (they'll be intermittent, but I'll try and get through everyone) since I'm once again between books ... Jodie.

I've known Jodie for about 7/8 years now, roughly? Again from the internet. We met properly 6 years ago, at Thorpe Park - about 20 of us all went. It was the first thing I'd ever organised and I fell in love with organising trips after that ...

I thought we gelled right away. We'd always been able to talk online, but sometimes the internet is a completely different ballpark to real life. I've met friends online before and not known what to say to them, really (Starr, Stefanie, Jessica ...) but with Jodie, it was different. We kept squaring up to each other, pretend fighting, so everyone thought we hated each other, so we kept doing it to wind other people up. We went on 'X: no way out' and when we came off, there were steam jets over the path ... so we pretended we were blinded by it. We got a few odd looks off people who weren't in our group, but that's just what we're like together.

We've gone through so many things together, even though we don't live near each other (strangely, though we're probably geographically closer, I can get to our friend Cat's house in half the time it would take me to reach Jodie) - A week in Southend, various gigs, trips to London, stalking Dougie from mcfly on a train (accidentally. He happened to be going to Nottingham when we were going to Luton. We actually tried not to get on the train after him, found we were in first class, doubled back to the first cheapo seats, sat down and there he was across the aisle. Best half hour EVER), my trips from my uni to hers (especially when I started going out with her housemate. Which I blatantly only did to see her every other week), train hair, train surfing, TITWANK, mcfans, team pokage, Thunderbirds, Mcfly gigs, Back-To-Front comma's (I talk in my sleep. Jodie tells me what I say in the morning), Margarita's spilt in Chiquito's, Frankie and Benny's, Barbeque Chicken, endless talks on whether Chinese or Italian food should come second to Mexican, dud fireworks, drunken Rock Band, chocolate and New Look and the latest Me2You/My Blue Nose friend paraphenalia.

I can't imagine life without Jodie now. I don't know how I survived High School without her, or Cat, Charli and Kelly for that matter. If I have news, she's the first person I try and tell. Of all my best friends, I'm probably closest to Jodie (and here's where I find out, actually, Jodie's fond of me but wouldn't go that far, lol), not to be offensive to Kelly, Cat or Charli ... I just find I have a little more in common with Jodie. Maybe it's the age thing, since there's 7 months between me and Jodie, rather than almost 3&1/2 years like there is between me and Cat.

I just hope in ten years time, I get to say that all four girls are still my best friends.

Typy, typy!

So, you know I was bleating on about my writing in a few posts, I had a block, I didn't know how I was going to get another one full, two half chapters, out of my story? I've written 16 pages in word so far of chapter 16, and don't think I'm really halfway through it. Whoops. It's going to be the longest chapter of the thing ... but ha, shove it writer's block, shove it! To be fair, I was all set to go on to one scene and before I know it the characters are taking themselves off somewhere else, but I was thinking the other day I needed a character in it more. And he's part of this scene that just barrelled its way in there ... so kudos Foster, kudos.

This is a weird way to write, isn't it? I mean, some scenes I think over for ages before I write, let them develop, some scenes I role-play through and write down, not exactly word for word, but definitely gist for gist. And then there's buggers like this one that are just like 'excuse me, I'm meant to come in here, did you not know that?' Um, no. Oh, and I think I had this block more because I have no idea how I'm going to manage the next one. I mean, I will, but I have to organise my thoughts more. I've written loads, but it might as well be notes on napkins in a box right now. I tried sticking it all together in word, but that just made it worse for me. I do have a list of scenes that should happen, but they're a line or two per chapter, not a chapter's worth of information.

Anyway, deeply disturbed this morning when I woke up. I'll confess right now, though nowhere else, that I think a few Jonas Brothers songs are okay. One of them in particular I relate to this story. So I was listening to one the other day ... and thinking up this scene that I'm about to write. And I guess it was on my way to work I was doing it, because the Jonas Brothers were in my dream, as certain characters, acting out the scenes I was thinking up in the middle of my work. I think about way too much all at once, it's so not on.

It's okay, I'll overplay Jack's Mannequin. I've been balancing Jonas Brothers out a lot lately like this. Although, got into the Kooks ... and Mcfly's Bubblewrap ... and I bought 101 Power Ballads ... most of my current music is pretty mellow. I'm obviously doing too much lol, I need mellow music to chill me out. I miss NFG and screamo ...