Misty La Vrangue

I feel a little bit of a traitor to this site... I'm relocating. I've decided to amalgamate all my google-type profiles together... So I'm moving. New site: http://mistylavrangue.blogspot.com/

This place has treated me well... but the new one is just that bit more convenient!

Now I should get dressed - I have an Italian exam in less than an hour after all, I shouldn't be faffing around changing blogs!

Misty x

Do you know what the solution to pathetic lethargy is? Rich Tea biscuits. I marched down to Tesco in search of low calorie snacks... and there they were. And now I'm happy again!

Of course, that might have something to do with my sudden realisation. In exactly three weeks from now, TO THE MINUTE, I will be standing in front of the mainstage at Greenfield listening (and probably bouncing up and down in some kind of drunken state) to Social Distortion. In approximately an hour, Nightwish will be leaping around in front of me. Though you know, by then, I could be drunkenly collapsed against the barrier, weakly waving my devil horns. Oh, we all know I'll perk up when Emppu bounds onto the stage.

So. Yeah. Rich Tea biscuits and realisations of how close it is till Greenfield. Certain to cheer me up!

Misty x

Ugh, where has THIS come from? All I want to do is sleep. And eat, but I'm not letting myself do a great deal of that. Had an exam this morning, I guess it was ok. Got another one tomorrow. Ugh. Hopefully I'll be able to prise myself off my bed by then. For the first time in quite a while I couldn't get up this morning when my alarm went off and stayed in bed for another three hours. I think in the past couple of days I've seen nearly everything 4OD and BBC iplayer have to offer. 4OD is offering exactly the same adverts it has for the past few months and after my past couple of days I'm getting pretty sick of them. Especially the Halifax one. And the pokemon one.

I'm hungry. Once this episode of the Big Band Theory finishes I'll go and have my tea. Trying very hard not to give into the urge to go down to Tesco and buy a multipack of Dairy Milk. To eat in one night. NO. If anything, I'll go and get some FABS. Much less calories.

I also need a shower. That involves a lot of energy. Hoping I can last past the blow drying stage or else I'll have some kind of scary afro tomorrow.

Misty x

So I have an exam in an hour. Italian listening, shouldn't be too disastrous, I've done quite a lot of work...

But could I give a shit about it? Could I buggery. I just realise that today is Thursday. Exactly three weeks from today, me and Na will be in Interlaken! We might even have arrived at Greenfield!! We might even have started putting up the tent!

...of course, that particular thing will take us quite a while. Sure, it's a popup tent. You'd think we'd have a job fucking that one up... Ha. Not me and Na. We could fuck ANYTHING up. This is why we never finished our Duke of Edinburgh awards...

Aaah I'm excited. I'm quite scared too - I've been so upbeat these past few days that I'm semi-convinced I'm gonna go down the other side of the rollercoaster soon. But oh well, if it happens, it happens. At the moment I am balanced and happy (well, nearly balanced. A bit hyper. But otherwise balanced.

The official diet plan has been active for four days now, and I've lost three pounds. Liking this. Not entirely sure how it's happening considering I've still been eating somewhere over 1500 calories each day and not exactly doing a marathon every day, but oh well. I'm not going to complain! Maybe it's to do with my enforced sleep pattern - I've been going to bed at 10 and getting up between 6 and half past. Of course, to get to sleep at that time I practically have to knock myself out with a concoction of drugs, but still. It's working. I'm waking up every morning refreshed and ready to work. Yay!

...and so Brother Firetribe comes onto iTunes and I have to go off and do a dance to the cheesiness...

Misty x

Work work work...

Got up at quarter to seven this morning to do work - was in Caffe Nero by eight with my Italian grammar. Just went to the library and got out various books related to French politics and culture... Didn't watch where I was going so marched headfirst into a very tall guy who turned out to be Jack Sparrow Dude, doh. I'm now allegedly sitting on my bed reading about multi ethnic France. It's not as interesting as it sounds.

I want to hula hoop I'm not allowed unless nobody else is in the house or I get permission when nobody is revising. The reason: to weigh it down, the hula hoop is filled with beans that make a hell of a racket. Drives everyone mad. The reason I want to hula hoop is that I'm determined to keep up with my diet and exercise plan. I'm keeping to less than 1500 calories a day and doing something physical each day too. Lots of situps have been happening, and lots of hula hooping of course. Instead of chocolate, I've been wolfing down Special K bars, which seems to have really helped. I've already lost two pounds, yay! Absolutely determined to have a flat stomach by Greenfield - and be able to wear my size 10 jeans without overspill. It happened last term, it can happen this term!

In a bit of a sulk with J at the moment. For the past three days I think she's been sulking at me, so I'm sulking back. Every time I've talked to her, she's either snapped at me, ignored me, or shot me down with a sarcastic comment. She totally kicked off yesterday - while she was watching Home and Away, I made an offhand comment about how I'd rather have to worry about getting eaten by a shark than worry about doing exams. She started going on at me about how stupid I was to think that, how I'd rather people died than do a couple of measly exams... she's the one who's spent the past three weeks stressing so much she's probably given herself an aneurysm! Grr. I'd talk to her about it, find out what's wrong, but she'd probably eat my head or something. She's all sweetness and light with the others, especially JH. In fact, she was laughing so much the other night that she actually woke me up (a very difficult thing once I've hit REM sleep).

Speaking of sleep, really bizarre dream last night. Me, my aunty, and my two cousins got sent to some kind of modern concentration camp. It was like a big summer camp with prison gates - you were only allowed to buy four things from the supermarket each day for your whole family and you were beaten with a stick if you got anything fatty: eating crisps was punishable by death. There was a big building for everyone to sleep in with lots of little rooms with double beds, but there were only a certain number of rooms for a very large number of people. Me and my family were trying to find a room but even though we trawled through seven floors we couldn't find a single room that wasn't taken over by screeching teenage girls, and we were terrified because if we didn't have anywhere to sleep we'd have to sleep with the camp warden, a terrifying woman who looked a bit like Margaret from The Apprentice.

Very strange.

Ugh, I should probably get back to the French ethnicity book. It's only a three day loan so I can't put it off indefinitely like I usually do. Dammit. And I bet it gets requested before I've finished with it, just to annoy me.

Misty x

In chronological order:

22 days until I go down to London
23 days until we arrive in Interlaken
24 days until Nightwish
30 days until Troy and the Bad Shepherds
43 days until I start aupairing
96 days until I turn 20
121 days until I go to Helsinki
123 days until Nightwish again

Yeah, somehow I can't concentrate on revision today, not sure why. Next exam is Italian listening on Thursday afternoon, followed by French language on Friday morning, then Italian language on Saturday afternoon. I'm thinking I do Italian revision today, French tomorrow, Italian Thursday. Good plan, no? My week sorted.

I have of course been doing some Italian revision today - got up at 7:30 this morning to be motivated and good. Went to Caffe Nero and was motivated and good for a couple of hours, but now I'm back at home I really can't be bothered. Just accidentally chopped a hole in my arm when I dropped a pair of scissors and I'm hoping nobody notices because I don't want JH to start panicking I've been cutting again, when for once I actually haven't!!

In other news, after the depressing news that V weighs less than 9 stone and JH has the body fat of some kind of... um... skinny person (can't think of a comparison), I have decided to lose weight. Plus I want to be slimmer for Greenfield. I seem to have gotten fatter lately, even though I've been hula hooping away and going for long walks (the most exercise you'll catch me doing I'm afraid). So I'm restricting myself to less than 1500 calories a day... god knows how long that'll last. I give myself two days before I give into the Dairy Milks calling me from Tesco. Willpower, willpower, willpower...

Aargh, I should be revising. The future tense of the Italian language is calling me.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll go for a walk. Exercise. Listening to my iPod. Should be a good thing. After all, I'm far too unfit to go for a run. I power walked for a couple of kilometres yesterday and when I came back home I managed to concentrate on Italian vocabulary for a good couple of hours. I have NO IDEA how JH can revise for eight hours solid. I'd die! I really do have the attention span on a gnat... unless I'm writing stuff that interests me, like my books.

OOH, yesterday I sent off Bars of a Chateau! Its very first trip to a literary agent. Of course, it will get rejected - I have to pay my dues before I get accepted. Keeping my fingers crossed anyway! NB when one of my books eventually gets accepted by an agent, you will hear me screaming from wherever you are. I've already planned how I'm spending my first advance when I finally get published - first purchase, Christian Louboutin shoes. Yeah, by that point I WILL be 87, but I'm getting them anyway, even if I have to show them off complete with the wonderful accessory of a zimmer frame.

OOH, I have a reason to go for a walk! I need to post my form to be added to the electoral roll. I can go to the post office and then keep on walking from there, like a very sporty person. Maybe I'll even walk to the library and get some books out. Yes, me. The girl who in two years of university can count the number of trips to the library she's made on two hands. I'm academic, me.

Misty x

EDIT: just reached new levels of procrastination. I'm slowly but surely working out the rhythm needed to hula hoop while juggling. I'm an actual clown.

Well... ish.

You see I just had a slight epiphany... thanks to Scrubs. Yes, I know, not the most intellectual thing to get an epiphany from. But never mind.

I've just been tidying my room, having a big clear out of all the clothes I no longer wear. Most of them are so disgusting/worn that I can't even force them on a charity shop, but you know, not the issue. There hasn't been a lot to distract me most of the time, and I've been stuck with my own thoughts. And I've been worrying.

There's so much I have to worry about right now. There's the fact that I don't think I have any chance of passing my exams this year, thanks to missing most of my lessons this year. Then yesterday I went into a bit of a depressive state, which scared me a lot, because I thought my pills were stopping that from happening. I also have been spending far too much money, a lot of which isn't actually mine. My room is still a mess and I have no idea how it'll all cram into a single car and a few suitcases that'll go on the train to Liverpool. Then there's my friends: several people have been having problems lately and I have no idea how I can help, though I really really want to, including my cousin. And finally, I'm worried about my mum and how lonely she is at the moment.

Then I though about it. Why worry - about any of it? We all have to stop worrying and CALM DOWN. Live for the moment and think of the consequences later. Sure, there'll be some, but we need to have fun. We need to live every day like it's our last. I don't want to find out I have cancer or something like that one day and regret not doing things that I won't have time to do.

See now I'm picking apart that argument in my own head - telling myself that I need to STOP feeling like that already before I ruin my life.

Oh well.

I'm just confusing myself now. I need to get back in that wardrobe. I finally replaced the lightbulb, at least.

Misty x

It's finally out!!

Saw it at about 3 o'clock this afternoon (no, I'm not going to mention the German oral, this is much more interesting). Just innocently went onto YouTube...

And there it was.

Pain.

Monkey Business.

The video.

Finally.

And yes, I'm in it!! OK, so you can only just see the odd flash of 'HARDER' and a red thing near my elbow that may or may not be Na's devil horns...

BUT STILL.

I was there both nights it was filmed. And now everybody will see quite how awesome it was!

Also, quite how weird Peter is. That poor cake. But yay anyway!!

Misty x

PS: here it is. Forgot that first time round. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr2A5HrYt9s Rejoice.

There seem to be far too many people in the world right now who aren't happy for some reason or another, and for once I'm not one of them! For me right now, everything is ticking along nicely (I'm pretending my exams are just weird dreams I have every so often). Of course, not focussing on my own gloom means I'm focussing on everyone else's... if I'm in a good mood, everybody else has to be! And if I'm in a bad mood, I prefer everyone else to be in a good mood too. Basically - cheer up all of you, I hate to see my friends depressed!

So I'm going to compile a little list of things that make me happy when I'm down. Try it. You might be surprised at what works.

The Cheat's Guide to Instant Smiles

1) Talk to your friends
Yes, I know it's been done to death, 'a problem shared is a problem halved', blablablablabla. But you know something, it really does work. If none of your own friends are available, borrow L, he's a FANTASTIC agony aunt. If it wasn't for him, I'd truly be at the bottom of a river by now.

2) Eat ice cream
It's a matter of preference, of course, but I personally find that Ben and Jerry's Half Baked can cure most ills. Phish Food makes me bounce off the walls and I forget whatever's been bothering me due to the head trauma of hitting said walls. Green and Blacks Vanilla is simple, but effective - if combined with a good chick flick it can do the world of good (add wine to the mix and you've got yourself heaven). Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough is an old favourite, though best enjoyed in a group or else you could end up vomiting up your troubles. A quick and simple cure is a good old Fab ice lolly.

3) Sleep
Largely underrated. If you have the ability to do it (not everybody does), for god's sake do it. When you're in a warm cocoon with a hot water bottle and a teddy bear, everything bad seems to lose all magnitude.

4) Make Misty's Famous Chilli Stirfry
The night I found out my stepfather would not be returning home, I wandered into the kitchen and created this in such a daze that my housemates were convinced I was on some kind of drug-induced high. However, after I'd eaten it (the whole wok full, yes, I'm a pig) the despair and worry seemed to be muffled by clouds of chilli-flavoured steam. Here is the recipe:
Roughly chop up a fairly large quantity of new potatoes (unpeeled). Boil them until they're quite mushy. Then heat up some olive oil in a wok with a dash of chilli powder. When the olive oil is nice and bubbly, throw in the potatoes and bash them about a bit with a wooden spatula that has holes in it. Sprinkle over half a tablespoon of chilli powder and bash them about some more. Then gently add some chopped up chicken, as much as you desire. Mix it up with the potatoes. Take some here's-some-I-prepared-earlier chopped up vegetables (can be almost anything, I tend to go for red pepper, red onion, and occasionally baby corn) and chuck them in too. Throw in another half a spoonful of chilli powder and keep whacking it all about with the spatula. When the chicken looks like it's cooked, scoop up a bit onto the spatula with a fork and slice it a bit to check. Then fling it back in again and add some salt, and a touch more chilli powder. By now, the potatoes should be squished into a mushy mess intespersed with bits of chicken and vegetables, and most things in the wok should be orange. Take the wok off the hob and dump the whole sorry-looking mixture onto plates (it looks rather disgusting, but persevere - it'll taste gorgeous). Note: if the kitchen hasn't filled up with such strong chilli-steam that your housemates have opened every door and window in the house and refuse to come near the kitchen because they fear asphyxiation, then you're not doing it right!!

5) Watch some Nightwish videos
I know, I know, I'm obsessed at the moment so of COURSE Nightwish will make me feel better. But you know what, I wish I'd discovered their live videos on YouTube a lot sooner, because they cannot fail to put a smile on my face. Everybody should try it - you just have to laugh at Emppu Vuorinen's facial expressions. Actually, scrap that: ALL their facial expressions. Marco Hietala is just a joy to watch, he's so wonderfully weird. And Tuomas Holopainen spends most of the time either going into a mind-boggling spin cycle or looking like he's in the middle of a particularly taxing orgasm. Here's a couple of links to get you started...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8cf-zaSiJg&feature=channel_page
That one is pretty good, you can actually hear ME screaming in the first second (it's from one of the nights I was in Paris) but for the full experience watch THIS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8wbKXUr9ng&feature=PlayList&p=B28B437456609AA0&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=32
That's just the first song of the gig I think, but they're all on there on a playlist, I think. Anette's voice is not at its best (they'd just done a couple of other gigs I think, and they were all knackered) but the guys are still hilarious. For my own channel, go here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jess2308
Though there's not a great deal of good stuff there, it's basically just me bragging about how close I was in Paris.

6) Do some exercise
I know, *gasp*, ME, suggesting EXERCISE?! Am I ill?! Well, no. I have recently discovered the Joy of Hula-Hooping. You can do it standing in front of the TV, it burns calories, tones your stomach, and leaves you feeling remarkably relaxed and like you've actually achieved something. It takes a while to get into the swing of things and stop it from just falling to your feet every five minutes, but it's worth it in the end. Just close the curtains before you start... it doesn't look all that dignified and you may just get laughed at by passersby...

So yeah, that's my wonderful ways to keep your spirits up. Learning German vocabulary doesn't come into this at all, by the way. That's what I'm trying to do now, for an oral exam tomorrow. STRESS... though I have the Nightwish Lowlands 2008 playlist on the go, I did some serious hula-hooping before, and I'm going to bed early - everything's good.

Random exciting news of the day: I'm getting my hair done on Friday!! Very excited - and nervous. You see, I'm bored of normal hair. I'm getting it drastically altered... again... Only this time instead of going from short-side-of-long-and-natural to short-and-vaguely-more-reddish-than-it-was-previously I'm getting some kind of fringe put in, and having it dyed purple. Yes, purple. I'll let you know how it goes.

Of course, depending on what the hairdresser's opinion is, it might go bright crazy red. I'm about 70% purple-minded right now (because I have more clothes it'd match and my phone is also purple) but this could change before Friday. You never know.

Oh, and don't tell my housemates. V knows, but J and JH do not. I want to walk in on Friday with purple hair like nothing's different and see their faces. Hehehe.

I'm going to go learn some more German now. I've been spending most of my life in the office (aka Caffe Nero) working on revision, but it's still about half the amount of work of anybody else I know. I really should catch up... oh well. Whatever happens, happens. Life goes on. Live for the moment. Blablabla.

Hula-hooping could save the world, you know.

Misty x

Yay for Liberation Day yesterday!

OK, so I should have spent this entire weekend re-leaning how to speak Italian, creating a French presentation, all that kind of stuff... and instead I spent it getting drunk with a bunch of people from Guernsey, while my ex-boyfriend spent it inbetween the inflatable camping mat on the floor and, um, my bed.

NO I didn't sleep with Ben.

Well, I did. But sleeping was all that went on. Mostly. I suppose the Americans would call it 'making out', but it might as well have never happened, it's not like we're a couple or anything... we're just very good friends.

Anyway, Liberation Day itself was really good. A few of us went up to Jo's house in Newcastle, where we ate Guernsey food and drank a fair bit - including the rather strong Guernsey Rocquettes Cider, which is rather good... then we went to the Spybar and drank some more. Then at this point S decided she wanted to go back to Durham because she was feeling weird, with Jo and her Newcastle friends, so me, S, Ben and L got a taxi back and joined F, G, E and M at Revolver. Where I drank more. Double Midori and lemonade is an awesome drink.

Ben had never seen me drunk before - he was a bit shocked, and stayed firmly on the camping mat all night out of fear. I can't actually remember getting home, but I'm pretty sure we had chips. I also have vague memories of going online on my phone, god knows what I was doing... I left a rather strange message on Twitter, that's for sure.

So, Ben is now gone, and I'm supposed to be revising for Italian. I would so much rather not, but I do have an oral exam TOMORROW MORNING. I may be a little bit screwed for that. Thank god the examiner I have is lovely, she's taught me all year and I'm hoping she'll be nice when I inevitably screw up. The old Italian Wine presentation is being dug up and dusted down, though unfortunately I can't take actual samples to the exam... damn. I might be sampling some beforehand though, would probably make the whole experience that bit better!

Hmm, I also need to do about 4000 dishes and dry and straighten my hair. Maybe I'll do that now, then stick my nose to the grindstone all night for Italian. It's tempting to pull an all-nighter, but I'll just have to have a few hours sleep or else I'll end up napping tomorrow afternoon when I'm meant to be learning French. Gah. This is not going to be a fun week.

Altogether now:

"Sarnia Cherie, gem of the sea, home of my childhood my heart aches for thee..."

Misty x