Owen and I have owned our house for a year today.

Working from home

I now have dresses for both my bridesmaids. I also have the start of a dress for me.

*grins*

Dutchess is lovely and nipped at me, which is great, because it shows that she's confident enough to nip (it never hurts).

Hotel Chocolat have released a special members-only* Music & Chocolate collection. I received mine in the post at the end of last week.

Owen's out at his games night.

What better way is there to spend an evening to yourself but listening to classical music, drinking a rich oak aged Tempranillo and eating chocolate?

I think I might have to run myself a bath just to make sure I enjoy this to the full.

An allotment has become free at Scours Lane and it's all mine! Or, to be precise, I'm going to be sent a key and a map so that I can go and have a look around at the plot and decide if I want it. Although I'm sure I will want it. If things go according to plan I'll be sharing it with Owen, Sam and Rob - which should be fun :-)

Also, you can find me at http://www.facebook.com/hmvjackson, because usernames win.

This scares me. I mean, sure, if you're completely against all other forms of contraception, or can't get any other forms of contraception then go for it... but the idea that withdrawal is being put forward as a viable alternative to other forms of contraception scares me.

And on that bomb shell, I really should go to bed.

All was well.

Children are fun.

Cousins have grown up.

I have sunburn.

Should be asleep now - night.

I got into the office at twenty to eight today. It's just not right.

Basically, I stayed at Owen's Mum's last night after it took me three hours to get to work yesterday morning from Reading - huzzah for tube strikes! - so I got in very early.

But since I don't intend to start work until 8, I'm quickly using the external PC to tell the world what a silly time I got into the office today.

Could be worse though, there were at least 10 people that got here before me! And no, they're not night-shifters.

There's a lovely smell of baking brioche coming out of the kitchen. Owen and I made the dough last night and now we're cooking it for breakfast! When my alarm goes off I'll take it out of the over, drool a little, then start making hot chocolate to go with it.

Om nom nom!

Ooo, alarm.....

Okay, gonna let it cool while I finish this off. It's looking good - a little too brown for my tastes, but still looking nummy.

And Owen's making the hot chocolate - yay!

Owen and I have joined Rivermead gym. The plan is to exercise at least three times a week. And this week we've managed it. I did aqua-tone on Wednesday while Owen went to the gym, we both went to the gym on Friday and we played squash yesterday. Go team us.

Today Owen and I are going to Debenhams to scan our wedding list. It's quite exciting, but we've got to be careful too - we've got to make sure that we have plenty of low-cost options for people that don't have very much money. That won't be as easy as it sounds, we've already got a household set up, so the really simple things, like cups, we already have and the stuff we want is the things we can't really afford or justify buying at the moment, like a bread maker, and beautiful cook ware so we'll just have to see what we see when we get there.

There's still lots of stuff that needs to be done for the wedding. I had my first stress dream about it a week ago :( But we've set up an Excel sheet with a list of guests and made space to put in addresses and telephone numbers. We've got 125 people down for getting invites to the whole ceremony and reception, which is 25 more than we had planned for, which could cause a space problem if everyone makes it. We haven't started the evening reception guest list yet, but that's not really a problem - we're not feeding or watering the evening-only guests, so the only way having too many of them will be a problem is if we exceed the number of people allowed in the Jazz Club for fire regulations; which is highly unlikely... where I'm expecting maybe 25 percent of the people invited to the whole thing to say they can't make it, I'm expecting 75 percent of the evening guests to not be able to make it.

Okay, breakfast is here, so I'll leave it at that.

Om nom nom nom!

Left work early today because I was feeling unwell. Specifically I felt like I was going to be sick. I'm hardly ever sick, and I wasn't sick today, but it was horrible. I took an antihistamine because I suspected it was an allergic reaction thingy, or that even if it wasn't that I had a separate allergic reaction anyway*, so should take one.

Feeling a bit better now.

Going to see how my dinner settles and hopefully get an early night. And pudding if my dinner settles really well.

Leaving work early meant I got to meet Owen just after he left work, we walked home together.


*Giant angry bug bite and sticky eyes this morning, possibly from drinking a new tea (green tea plus echineacia - very yummy, but my tongue is still tingling and I didn't have any more after tweleve ish).

I did Aquatone today. It was fun. Go team me.

Because I've got masses to do:

- Work is sucking all of my week-day time away, no changes there. Yesterday I did nearly two hours of unpaid overtime and today I did two hours of hopefully paid overtime. But it's really pissing me off. There's more to do than I have time to do it in and I'm fed up with spending 12-13 hours out of the house every weekday and only getting two days at home to do anything with (unless I do social things like see people)... It means the house isn't anything like what I want it to be and I'm stressed. There's only so much I can ask Owen to do, he already makes me my lunch to take to work, cleans the guinea pigs, looks after the garden, makes me dinner for when I get home, listens to me whining about how shit work is and does more housework than I do.

- Went to see Wolverine with Rob yesterday. It was a fun movie, but to be honest I had more fun from being sat in between two hot men while watching hot men on the screen than I did from the plot. Rob looked a bit sad when he was leaving, I didn't like to see him go, but it was late and I had work. I shall have to endeavour to see him next weekend and give him many hugs.

- I discovered a smile I never had before I was going out with Owen. It's a dirtier version of his grin. It's a little odd to know that I have a whole smile that's developed just from him - I like it, but it's odd to know that I've spent so much time with him that I have this smile, and probably other facial expressions, that I've learnt from being with him.

- I've worked out how to play an Infernals game effectively. You need at least two GMs, preferably more but no more than five, who are all willing to do round-robin GMing. Each GM plans adventures based around the will of one of the five patron Yozi's and the other GMs, plus any players that are lazy have a character for each game. The idea is that each player has just one Infernal and several akuma (only playing one at a time of course), so their Infernal gets to take centre stage in one GMs game, but they have to play the back up akuma in all the others. You wouldn't even need the GMs to confer on plot, each plot could be stand-alone happening in different parts of the world with different NPCs etc... Actions in Malfeas could be done in down time and Infernal Things at Calibration or whenever could be done as LARP(ish) tavern nights where everyone plays their Infernal.

- I'm going up to Manchester this weekend to have a wedding dress fitting.

- I have not yet packed for going up to Manchester, so I'm going to go do that.

Great weekend. It's so good to have masses of time off work - I really needed it.

Today was going to be my real day off (as opposed to a day off where I do things), then I realised that I brought some work home to do, and if I don't do it my life's going to be poo at work tomorrow.

Suckage.

Just so you know, volunteering at the Beer Festival, is most definitely the way to go. You get lots and lots, it's masses of fun to do and you access to the staff toilets - which still have water!

Next year Owen, Sam and I will be volunteering. Closer to the time I'll make some sort of post and you and let me know if you're interested too!

More beer tomorrow - I still have 14 beer tokens left! (worth a half each!)





Also - I found Adam! Magic.

The good is that I got accepted as a volunteer at the Reading Beer Festival - go team me! I will learn to pull pints with the pros, I will smile, I will advise on beer (or wine or whatever I get put on, but I hope it's beer) and it will be fun.... I hope.

I'll be on shift Thursday until 7pm and Friday until 3pm - anyone going to the Festival on those days should come see me :-)

This is funny. I'm not sure there's much funnier than unionised devil girls; except possibly train attack koalas. This is also funny.

Which leads me to the wedding. The wedding is secretly pirate themed. This will not affect the ceremony, and it won't be on the invites, but I'm not sure I can think of much better than a pirate reception - blame the male Tina. Owen and I are planning baskets of eye patches and bandanna's for those that are up for it. "But wait Hannah", I hear you say, "How is this a secret is we all know?" Well, there are a lot more people coming to the wedding than read this - we'll be a little secret club, or something.

Work is the downside to life, no change there then, so not much point writing any more about it.

Bed Time!

P.S.

The weekend was great - we went to see Owen's Mum and caught up with Owen's Ben in London too.

P.P.S editted to add...

Vin Diesel is one of the people I'd like to roleplay with, him and Orlando Bloom (but that's for other reasons - nothing wrong with a bit of geeky eye candy at the table). I mean VD is geeky cool, not my type... but who'd say no to geeky cool?!? (Although obviously I would, because I'm going to be a married lady soon!)

Also, I had trouble sleeping last night, which was a pain. I hate when you're in bed, absolutely shattered and trying, but failing, to sleep. Then, to top it all off, I had a dream that I was at my Mum's house and having trouble sleeping! Although the dream was a lot cooler, as when I couldn't sleep in my dream I went on a bit of an adventure where there was this guy who was destined to be my other half and he was turned evil by the forces of darkness, so he was the black to my white. His orders were to keep moving until he found me (it was turn based strategy) then he would strike after I took my action... except that I found out what his orders were and kept holding my actions and moving away back to my Mum's house (because move actions got move action responses from him) and then I shut the door and hid while the forces of darkness swarmed around the house. Sometimes I have the coolest dreams - even if they are a bit wierd.

I'm back home in Reading home.

The weekend was good. It was really nice to see my family and eat masses of chocolate (I'm going to regret that when I weigh myself tonight) and relax. I slept a lot, which was much needed. I also talked to a lady about a dress, so that's one more thing off the wedding preparation list.

Shortly I will be going to sleep.

Best bits about the weekend were seeing everyone, getting a decent amount of time with them, and going out getting really pissed with Simon, Linda, Krissy and Darren and taking masses of pictures while drunk! I can't wait for those to be on facebook!

edit - They were already on Facebook! I'm just tagging myself now so that everyone can see what a drunken fool I was being! They're so funny! Alas, as they are someone else's pics I can't link to them here.

I got back on the bike today! And I did it in style.

I cycled all the way to Sonning, which is quite a long way for someone that's had a bike-break of over two months. On top of that I cycled on the road! The road! It was Oxford Road and everything.

I was a little scared at first, and to my shame I did some cycling on the pavement. But still, baby steps.

\o/

Anne (Owen's Mum) came to visit yesterday. We went to Moss to look at suits and ended up hiring five suits for the day. Dad wasn't too happy when I told him that we'd hired him a suit - he doesn't want to dress up :( But if we hired four suits the groom (Owen, of course) got his hire free - so it didn't make sense to hire four suits when we could hire five for exactly the same price!

We also looked at the wedding collection at BHS - which are all very reasonably priced. So all I need to do now is go back two months before the wedding, when hopefully I'll have the rest of my dress and buy the bits I want.

We had a huge lunch, I went for a contact lens fitting and I decided to get my hair cut as well! Yay! I have new hair!

In the evening we went to the Jazz Club to try the food, to see if we're happy to have them do the catering - and it was yummy! The lamb shank I had was amazing, the meat just fell of the bone and was amazingly tender. On top of that, they do funky cocktails - and because we're having the reception there (oh yes, we finally put down the deposit) my hen party gets free entry into the club for the hen night. So I'll let Hannah know and we can start planning the second hen party.

I need to book the Friday off for my first hen party, which should be a camping trip in Cornwall over the end of Summer bank holiday.

Han is super organised - she puts me to shame. She's all with the getting books out from the library and collecting brochures and buying wedding magazines. She rocks!

Now Owen is outside watching the guinea pigs enjoy the grass in our garden. I'm in the living room, because we've hooked my PC up to the telly.

We'll be going over to my Dad's today and I need to ring my Mum.

- that the reason I did science instead of something interesting is that I'm much better at explaining myself using diagrams than I am at explaining myself verbally.
- I potentially have an American twin that goes to geek auctions (she's covering her face on the left of the picture, with same hair and glasses)
- I'm not ashamed of looking at pictures of geek auctions :-D
- Andy at work likes me just the way I am (but I'm pretty certain not in that way!)
- Andy at work is highly amusing when he swears, particularly when he does it really loudly and with lots of meaning at his ringing telephone - he's usually such a sweet guy! It must all be a lie that he spreads around to keep up that professionalism thing that people expect in the work place
- Owen's computer doesn't have a spell check in Firefox! [and I'm too lazy to run this through Word]
- book is more important than EVE Online
- I wish we had geek auctions in England

- Potatoes are less Weight Watchers points than they used to be.
- LiveJournal has an amusing error page
- Giant in the Playground Games still takes ages to load
- Piro is having yet another dead Piro day
- Alys rocks at her job

Things I have learnt from real life today:

- This diet thing might not be as bad as it seems
- Green Tea is my coffee shop winner
- I can manage to have a Monday where I have enough time to do my admin at work
- sending analysts to Mark with reports that need proofing is a cunning way of distracting him from the fact that my admin work isn't quite finished and buys me more time to finish it before our meeting to discuss it
- delaying meetings in this manner means that I get out of work an hour late
- Ellen, who I met at Uni, is still great and we can still sit and talk for a good few hours