My half awesome, half fail week & The Avengers Assemble.

Dom sent his old mac to a repair store to have a new logic board put in it, and we were going halves on the cost of repair, for him to then give it to me as a gift. It’s a 2007 model, and it’s awesome. We were charged £460 in new parts, £80 in labour, £80 for new RAM, plus VAT and various other things. It totalled about £700 in for it to be fixed. We got it home, and two days later, it’s broken. The logic board is dead. The thing we were charged £460 to be replaced. And the professional Apple repair team had managed to totally wreck the insides of the mac, including the very basic way new RAM is inserted, when we opened it up to check why it was that it suddenly wasn’t turning on after 2 days. Genius. I smell a refund. And a lost customer.

Another exciting part of the week is that I narrowly avoided going to hospital to be treated to degree burns, when the very safe and not at all outdated cooker decided to go haywire and burn the shit out of my hand and legs in a fit of sausage frying rage. I’ve got two very unpleasant blisters on my fingers, one of which could have compromised my nail, as it is directly on the tip, and several just as unpleasant burns on my leg. Luckily, I knew exactly what to do as soon as I was burnt, and saved myself from worse happening. Plus Dom is trained in first aid so he was able to assist me and get the worse of the damage seen to instantly without having to go to hospital.

However, there have been some definite highlights to this week. We are back at Uni so I’ve handed in a load of work, only to be given new assignments to complete. I’ve been given some good feedback on my work though, which is encouraging. Also, Steph and I went on a slight shopping spree, and I’ve wound up with new shoes, new tops, new leggings, and a really obnoxious new nail colour. (:
Dom also impulse bought me a new iPod Touch… which I was absolutely shocked by, and over the moon with. It’s awesome, I’ve hardly put it down since I opened it.

Another thing, was we went to see The Avengers Assemble yesterday. If you haven’t seen it… go and see it. Now. Stop reading this, and go book a ticket. It was fricking AWESOME. It has everything cool that could ever happen in a movie, and put it all together in a two hour long epic triumph. It has explosions, aliens, spaceships, super heroes, nuclear weapons, it was funny, it has the Hulk beating people up, Scarlett Johanson in a tight black outfit, it is a Marvel film, Robert Downey Jr, Samuel L Jackson has an eyepatch in it…. I mean come on…. the shit was awesome. In every way.
Highly recommended film. Full of epic win. From start to finish. GO WATCH IT NOW.

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Love.

Warning: I get soppy. It’s not what I’m normally inclined to do. But sometimes, it’s just needed. (:

I’ve been reflecting lately, on my past relationships compared to my current one. And it’s made me feel exceptionally lucky to have Dom.

Before, in every relationship I’ve been in, without exception, I’ve had trust issues, derived from my childhood, and my issue with getting attached to people- I tend to keep people at arm’s length. My experiences told me that if I let someone get too close, then I would be let down. So I didn’t let anyone get close enough to. The ones I did, it ended badly.

However, then I fell in love with my best friend. It wasn’t planned, I didn’t necessarily want it to happen, or ever thought it would. I didn’t realise I was feeling so strongly for him until we revealed our feelings for one another- and it suddenly hit me. It scared the shit out of me. I wanted to run. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship, and I didn’t want to lose him, and I didn’t want to get hurt again.

When I decided to go ahead with the relationship, I was taking a huge leap of faith, and a massive risk. But I am so glad I did it. We’ve been together now for almost three months, and it’s the happiest I’ve ever been. It just keeps getting better and better, and we have such a natural, easy relationship. We just click. We work. We understand each other perfectly, so we don’t ever feel the need to question anything about our relationship. It’s amazing.

The other night, he said something to me that I think will stay with me forever. I was recalling the way I used to feel when I was with my ex, who treated me appallingly, and completely used me. I said I was really glad I was out of that relationship, and that I was now with someone who was amazing. He said “I would lay down my life for you.”
That really, really touched me. And I can honestly say, I would for him.

Loving someone, is giving them the power to destroy you… but trusting them not to.
I think I’ve placed my trust in the right person for once.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

❤

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Origami Unicorn.

Yesterday, after a day in Manchester doing some shopping with Dom, we stopped by Starbucks before going home with our haul.
We sat down with our drinks, discussing a friend of mine who called me asking my opinion on a decision he has made, to start up a ‘casual sex’ relationship with an ex of his. I warned him this wasn’t a good idea and that one of them would quickly start to feel something more again. I told him that if he didn’t want to restart a relationship with her, he should get out now before the feelings would be allowed to develop. He chose to ignore the advice I gave him, so Dom put a bet on with him that I would end up right, and that things would turn the way I predicted.
*EDIT* And, 4 hours after I originally posted this, I got a phone call from my friend. I was right. And Dom’s won £30 quid in the bet. I told him I was always right about this stuff.

We sat discussing this, while on the sofa next to our seats, was a man sitting on his own reading from his Kindle, and listening to his iPod. I pointed out to Dom that every time my friend made a decision like this, I always, without fail, predicted the correct outcome, and that I was positive this would be no different.
All of a sudden, the man who was sitting near us, who we assumed had been listening to his music, rather than to us, leant over and offered his own insight to the situation.
Surprised, we listened to what he had to say, and agreed with his opinion on the subject. Once he had finished talking, he went back to reading his book.
Bemused, we continued our discussion, moving on to my friend’s previous relationships, and how I had correctly predicted how each of them would turn out. I also noted that most of his girlfriends had always been jealous of my friendship with their boyfriend. I don’t know if this makes me a weird ‘girl’, but I honestly for the life of me, cannot understand other female’s logic when it comes to matters like this. I am not the jealous type, and any boyfriend I have been with, have always had female friends who I have never had any kind of worry about, or any kind of jealously; I am only jealous when I know for a fact that there is something to be worried about- e.g. they actually try it on with my boyfriend. Until I am given a reason to be jealous, I refuse to be that girl. Other females tend to be different from me in this way; they seem to see ANY other female in their partner’s life as a threat, unless they are family. This isn’t something I’m saying applies to ALL females, don’t get me wrong, but certainly in the cases of each of my friend’s exes and other females I have observed, this seems to be the case.
As I was relaying this to Dom, our friendly stranger leant over once more to offer his insight.
He started talking about how we, as humans, have evolved to think this way- we feel jealously because, in our evolutionary history, we want to protect our ‘mates’ as they are what will produce us offspring. Though we have evolved out of that primitive way of looking at things, our instincts still tell us to feel jealous of anyone we could view as a threat to the survival of our relationships, and therefore our chance for offspring.

This is all stuff I knew already, but I was fascinated by this man who so quietly sat in Starbucks, and so easily engaged two people he had never met before in conversation. I’m quite a shy person when I first meet someone, and I’m not at all the sort to talk to or start a conversation with strangers. This guy was ballsy and interesting and intelligent. He didn’t attempt to hide the fact that he was listening to our discussion, and was even confident enough to offer his own opinion to what we were talking about.

When he left, he put on his coat and a hat. He walked past us and tipped his hat to us, and went on his way. He left behind on the table, a yellow cardboard origami unicorn of his own creation.

I picked up the unicorn and took it home with me, to remind me that out there in the world, there still are people who are friendly, and wise. And sometimes, they’re just the guy sitting next to you, alone in Starbucks.

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My Life in Letters: G.

Three people immediately spring to mind when I think of the letter ‘G’.

For one, my older sister Gwen. Out of my many siblings, she is the only one who is blood related to me. She’s been the most consistent and reliant person in my life to date. She’s 16 years older than me, so she was always been like a second mother to me. She’s the best sister I could ever have asked for, and she’s been an amazing support over the years. 

Another, is my friend Grant. He’s been one of my closest friends for about 4 years now. We knew each other through school, but we lost touch for a year or two once we left. Once we got back in contact, we quickly became really close. We’ve been through a lot together, and we have the funniest relationship. He’s like my straight-gay best friend. Likes women, but is camp as anything. He’s also entrusted me to make his life decisions for him several times over the course of our friendship- he says I’m always right about my immediate impression of any relationship, job, any other important elements of his life that he embarks on. 

And last but certainly not least, is Ginny. We’ve been close friends for about 6 years now. We met in school and hung out every single day for years, before she changed schools for sixth form, and we didn’t get to see each other as often. Now we’re at different ends of the country for Uni, but we still see each other whenever we can, and we stay in regular contact. She’s an awesome friend and I love her to bits.
Will stand by each other till the end. 😉 

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My Life in Letters: F.

I thought long and hard about what to choose for the letter ‘F’ to define an aspect of my life with.

Turns out I don’t have a huge amount of things beginning with F to associate too closely with myself.

The word I ended up landing on, was “Friends.” I decided that this was probably the best one I was going to come up with for this letter.
So, what can I say on the subject of Friends?
Not only is it the name of one of my favourite TV show, but it is a word that defines a very big aspect of my life, and one I tend to rely on quite a bit for my own happiness and peace of mind.
I can honestly say that I would not be who I am right now, if not for my friends and the support they give me.
As I tend to be tributing most of them in individual blogs for the letters their names begin with, I won’t sing all my closest friends praises in this particular blog, but here is a brief list of some of the people who mean the most to me, in no particular order:

Tom
Preeti
Lucy
Eva
Jack
Jason
Dom
Steph
Grant
Martin
Michael
Alice

There are, of course, far more people than just that who I would love to list, but I’ll leave it at that or I will be here all day. I wouldn’t be anywhere without these people, and I love them to death, each and every one of them.

Oh, also, I like Fruit. Fruit’s good. (:

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The Easter Weekend Down South

On Thursday I got the train back to Oxford from Manchester at half twelve in the afternoon. Since then, I’ve had a BUSY time, considering it’s only been a day and a half.

Once I reached Oxford, narrowly escaping death at the hands of my clearly psychopathic, very talkative but not legible seat-mate on the train, I was met by my friend Lucy. We went back to her house briefly to select some films for our night in with chocolate, and headed to a pub for some drinks. 
Then to my best friend Tav’s house for the three of us to have a meal. Tired from my journey and early morning / late night, I wanted to go home and relax. They had other ideas. A club in Oxford was doing an  Easter free entry night, and they decided we had to go along. After much persuading I agreed, and we headed to another pub for a drink with my parents, before back to my house, then back to Lucy’s to get ready for our night out.
In all honesty, I’m glad I went now. The club was kind of quiet, but it was a good night; I got to see my friend Grant who I’d not seen for ages, and also my friend Kat, which was good. Plus I got a new dress out of it, as Lucy didn’t want it any more. (:

Today, my sister, her boyfriend and his son came over for a family Easter meal. Tav stayed too as she was over the night before. We had an Easter Egg Hunt, which is always violent when myself and my sister Gwen are involved as we are both very competitive, and made worse by adding her boyfriend Mark, Tav and Mark’s son Shamen into the mix. Tav ended up slamming a door on me as we rushed to find the next clue, and shoved me to the floor when I found it before her. I love my best friend. 😛
Tav and I also found time to squeeze in a photo shoot for Uni before she left.
The rest of my evening has been spent cuddling my cat, eating M+M’s and being on Skype to Dom. 

Still got a lot to fit in before I go back to Manchester on Tuesday, and I’m already knackered! Still, it’s been fun so far. Happy Easter everyone!

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