How NOT to apply a stencil...

My girlfriend sent me a wee quote shortly after:

"There is hope in honest error.
None in the icy perfection of the mere stylist."
- Rennie Mackintosh -

She's an optimist if ever I've seen one. Wonder if she'd let me stencil her walls??

Trials & Tribulations outside the Time Warp

I'm moderately relieved that the week is almost over. It's been a bit of an odd one.

After having had Jo over for a nine-day visit (total indulgence) around Easter, it was time to see her off again last Monday. While Eindhoven Airport is only a half-an-hour away from my work, we decided to set off plenty early, to allow us some extra time for breakfast at the airport. A wee stolen moment to say goodbye without having to rush.

Unfortunately, it seemed like the world had collectively decided to return to work at 6am that particularly Monday, and traffic was tantalisingly slow. I was starting to get a wee bit frustrated at seeing my extra time with Jo being eaten away at by something as trivial as a traffic jam, when a police car overtook me. I made the rookie mistake of engaging eye contact with the police officer in the passenger seat, because, sure enough, he started signalling for me to pull over.

Despite a squeaky-clear conscience, I suddenly felt incredibly nervous. I have an incorrigible urge to mess with people in uniform and while I know I shouldn't, I never quite trust myself not to. It's like fear of heights. Popular belief claims "fear-of-height" is when you actually feel an urge to jump off and have trouble trusting yourself not to do so. I think my fear-of-uniforms is somewhat similar. I don't trust myself not to land me into trouble by sheer cheek.

As it turned out, they'd merely pulled me over because of a failing back light. I promised I'd get it fixed in due course, but he insisted on checking my board documents and then kindly informed me that my MOT (Dutch: keuringsbewijs), had expired over 14 months ago and that legally, I was now no longer allowed to drive my car.

*Sod's Law*

Thankfully though, the testosterone variety of uniform can generally be swayed by a sweet oestrogenous smile, and he said he'd give me a caution but would turn a blind-eye while I dropped Jo off at the airport. So off we popped.

While Eindhoven airport had been carefully chosen for it's low-budget services, Jo ended up paying some ridiculous surcharge for extra luggage, thus rendering the whole low-budget strategy rather pointless. The queues at the check-in were so monstrous, we had to skip a proper breakfast and spent our last half-hour together standing in a queue.

I had serious lovesick pangs in my tum when I saw her off, but I have to admit my body felt slightly relieved at the wee break it was getting. Jo's visit had been one of sheer indulgence, verging on the debaucherous. Now, Jo's a bit of a choc-o-holic, and we both love food, so Easter was probably not the most wisely chosen time for visits. There's something delightful about the initial loved-up flutterstage of a relationship. You seem to forget just about anything but the object of your affection, and life enwraps you into some special warped time-frame in which the outside world, the standard rules of physics and the restraints you normally place upon yourself, no longer matter. You float instead of walking, savour life instead of consuming it.

The only object in the universe, however, that forever seems to live by the normal rules of physics, is the bathroom-scales. And the vicious thing informed me I'd gained 2.5 kilos over 9 days. So, on Thursday, I hauled ass to the gym. Due to the RTW trip, being ill and having a new job, I'd not actually set foot in a gym since about July. And I think the gym came back at me with a vengeance, because when I tried to skip the cool-down period after my run, all buttons on the machine stopped working. The "EMERGENCY STOP" button was flashing away at me trying to tempt me to push it, but I never quite trust emergency buttons NOT to set off some ridiculously loud alarm, and the last thing I needed was to lose face in front of fellow sporters on my first day back. So... diddums here decides to try and jump off it, misses by about an inch and catches the treadmill's speeding conveyor belt with the tip of her right foot, which launches me into a full-on-flat-on-yer-face type fall. I guess I should come away with this with the notion that gyms are vindictive lovers when neglected for too long.

To top it all off, the cockrel I mentioned earlier seems to have taken permanent residence in our very own backyard and now appears to have lost ALL sense of time, as it's started crowing at 2 a.m.

Oh, and did I mention I got attacked by two pigeons on the way to my car on Friday?!? Still think I'm paranoid?!?

Tropical Confusion

It's never a good sign when you wake up with your head at the wrong end of the bed. That, incidentally, happens rather a lot of late. I dread to think just exactly what goes on in my dreams for my body to want to make a complete 180 degree turn overnight, but waking up upside down is generally a pretty solid foreboding about the rest of my day.

As you might have gathered from my second-last post, I'm ill again. I'm sure it's just a bout of that cold epidemic that's been going around, but I've been laying low nonetheless. The irony of it all is that tonight, I'm due to pick up Dr.Jim's mischievous other half at the airport in Brussels, as she's coming for a girlie visit for a few days. Last time Dr.Jim & Lou were over in Ghent with me, I was a pretty appalling host what with snot-rags spread around me left, right and centre, and I had promised them a healthier reception on a next attempt.

Anyway, I woke up this morning thinking my feeble body could do with a bit of sunshine and some extra vites so as to make a good appearance for my guest, but then, as usually happens in Belgeland, the view from the window promised little more than rain. So, I hauled myself over to the solarium. *Hangs head in shame* I know I know. Not THE brightest of ideas, but like I said, it was just bound to be one of those days.

After getting myself all undressed and goosebumpey, I went to lie down on what looked like a very modern sunbed. Too modern apparently. Once the lights came on, an exotic female voice announced that she'd be guiding me through the tanning process. Slightly panicked, I thought: "wot?! surely it's nothing more than pressing a button and getting baked golden?! I mean, once the lights are on, what more does a person need?!"

Not so.

Apparently, there's facial tanners, ab-tanners, bum tanners, facial fans, whole body fans, mp3 sound options, time delay mechanisms, head-tilt options AND an option to switch off the lady's exotic voice. So here's me thinking: "I just need to focus on finding the lady's off switch, so I can quietly revel in the idea of being on a sunny beach somewhere random." But of course, in all my blondness, I pressed the wrong button, inadvertently turning all fans on max speed, making it feel rather more like I was trying to survive a hurricane, rather than having a quiet one on the beach. It took me exactly 1.5 minutes to disable the fans. I'm sure that'll have helped my head-cold tremendously.

A disastrous couple of attempts later, I finally managed to disable the Lady's voice, only to see the lights turned off a few seconds later. Clearly, my time was up. Now... can I just say that all this confusion is extremely dangerous for a blonde like myself. I was so distracted by the interface, that I didn't even notice I had started to sunburn.

I would kindly request people not to hug, handshake, brush past or touch me for the next few days. Fank ewe.

Mental Note

Mental Note to Self:

If you're running a little short on getting stuff dried in time to go to a party... unless you've shrunk a few inches yourself, DONT think it's a bright idea to put your favorite jeans and sweater in the dryer on MAX heat.