Hey strangers.

Wow, so it has been FOREVER since I last posted an entry in this blog of mine. I'm not entirely sure what happened; I was always so eager to update and then one day I just ... wasn't. It felt like a chore and that's definitely not what I wanted blogging to be. So I stopped. I'm not sure if I'm back for good, or if this is just a temporary stop over, but I'm here for now!

It feels as if quite a lot has happened in my life since I last posted, but really not all that much has changed.
I was planning on leaving my job as a food & beverage assistant at a Holiday Inn at the end of June (when my tenancy on the flat that I shared with Dan came to an end) to move back to Cardiff to live with my parents until I move to Florida. I had a leaving do (complete with some extremely drunken colleagues!) and everything. But as the time for me to leave got nearer I realised I just wasn't ready to leave. When I mentioned this to my boss and some co-workers, my lovely friend Holly said,
"You can live at my house! We have a spare room!"
So, I stayed. I'm now living in the guest room at Holly's house and I'll be leaving my job (actually leaving this time!) at the end of September. It's all a bit strange how things turn out.

Another of my co-workers, Tom, read my blog (hi Tom, if you're reading again!) and told me it was boring because "there's no posts about Spiderman." Now, I probably won't start posting about Spiderman, but I read back some entries and he's right; my blog is pretty dull. I think I was trying to hard to make it like so many blogs that I have massive blog envy over. Maybe I just need to try and be ME for a bit. Because, actually, I think I'm pretty decent.

P.S. You should follow me on Twitter and Instagram (Missishx) if you don't already =]

Not Halloween.

I'm aware that this is an unpopular opinion in the blogosphere, but ... I'm really excited that Halloween is over. Don't hate me guys! I know Halloween isn't anywhere near as big a deal over here as it is in the US, so maybe I just don't 'get' it properly. But there's only so many blog posts about a day I'm not invested in that I can read without feeling like my head is going to explode!

I didn't do anything specifically for Halloween, but it was our staff quiz + night out on Sunday instead. Such a fun night. Even if this isn't a job I plan on being in for all that long (I've been there 2 months today! Time has flown by), I'm definitely lucky to have such a fun bunch of work colleagues.

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Part of me has been considering doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I haven't got a plot or a plan at all, so it's probably not going to happen. Oh well, there's always next year!

Not being orientated.

Today I got up at 6am and caught the train to Portsmouth, because I was told that my Holiday Inn orientation was today. But when I got there, I discovered that, as it turns out, it wasn't today. It had been rescheduled to last week but no one had told my manager or, you know, me. So I was in Portsmouth for no reason. Awesome.

I decided to make the trip worthwhile and grabbed myself a hot chocolate (since it was SUPER COLD) then did a bit of shopping in Gunwharf Quays. And then I came back to Eastleigh on the train and did a bit more shopping there. Which made me feel a lot better about getting up ridiculously early for nothing.

I picked up a notebook in Paperchase, Cath Kidston sticky notes (in case it wasn't a little bit obvious from my blog background, I love Cath Kidston designs) and a pack of 10 retractable Sharpie pens:

I also managed to get a pretty black and white star dress from the teen section (for age 13, if you can believe that. The age 14 was too big for me, wtf mate?) of New Look - for only £6 in a sale, bargain!

While I was in Eastleigh I noticed a sign in the McDonald's window advertising that the Big Tasty is back. Dan LOVES that burger and was super upset when they stopped doing it at the end of summer, so obviously that meant we had to have dinner at McDonald's this evening. I tried the Big Tasty as well, because for all Dan's rave reviews I'd never tried it. To be fair, it was a v. tasty burger. I just find McDonald's burgers a bit too sloppy and messy. Chicken McNuggets are a much safer option for a messy eater like me!

Recently ... [1]

+ I had Sunday and Monday off, yay! On Sunday Dan and I did some shopping in Sainsbury's and M&S, caught up on Don't Tell the Bride (is anyone else as obsessed with that show as I am?!), and visited Dan's mum and sister who recently got back from a trip to Morocco.

+ Dan had the wonderful idea of going out for a carvery last night, because one near us is only £3.69 on a weekday. And because we were hungry and didn't want to wait for food to cook (haha, we're so lazy). £3.69 for all that meat and veg and potatoes and gravy! Happy days.

+ I was at work until 2.30am on Saturday night, cleaning up after a wedding reception and private party. The people having the private party would not leave until 1.30am. And yes, okay, I get that they paid to rent the room etc, but there were only 5 of them left and we clearly were all itching to get that room cleaned so we could get out of there (we weren't exactly being subtle by the end!). A little consideration might have been nice. It's not as if we get paid any more on top of our normal wages for working that late.

+ My manager is currently pretty high on my list of favourite people, because he gave me this coming Saturday and Sunday off, and didn't take away my day off on Thursday either! Which means that, money permitting, I can go to London on Saturday and see (some of) my lovely girlfriends!

+ I'm planning a pretty major blog redesign, involving the newly re-found blog I mentioned in my last post. At the moment I can't decide if I'm going to export all the posts from this blog to the other blog (and risk losing all my followers), or if I'm going to swap the blog URLs (which seems a leetle bit tricky for someone not gifted with much technical computery knowledge), and then change the branding of this blog afterwards. At the moment I'm leaning towards the latter, despite its trickiness, because I don't want to lose and confuse my lovely followers!

Not a forever settling down job.

I miss updating my blog almost every other day. Even though I've only been at this job two weeks, I feel as if it's dictating my life. I was supposed to have today and tomorrow as my days off, but I've got to go into work on both days - tonight because one of my colleagues has broken her finger so they're short staffed, and tomorrow morning because we have a team meeting. I'm supposed to have Friday and Sunday off, too, so now I'm worried I'm going to be asked to work on one or both of those days too. And I'm useless at lying (I never really thought about it, but Dan commented on it the other day and I realised I really am awful at it. I just can't pull it off at all) or coming up with excuses on the spot, so I know that if I'm asked I'll end up saying yes, no matter how much I don't want to.

I know this isn't a forever job. I know this is just a way to make money for the time being. I know I've only been working there for two weeks and once I settle in a bit more it might get better. But frankly, I'm a snob. I am. I'm a university graduate and working as a waitress isn't what I saw myself doing two months after I graduated with a 2:1 from a Top 10 UK University (so says the Times Higher Education Guide). My main problem there, though, is that I don't know what I saw myself doing.

If I knew what I wanted to do, I'd be doing it. Or at least, I'd like to think I'd be making steps towards doing it. The only thing that I know, that I feel, that I want to do is live in the States again. My 10 months in Colorado has tainted me forevermore. I'm 22 and I don't feel as if I'm in that 'settling down' place yet. I see people I know getting engaged, getting married, having babies and I realise how much I don't want that. Well, I do at some point. I just don't want it at the moment. And now that I'm in a full time job (in a weird sort of way. I did a little over 40 hours last week, so it qualifies. It just doesn't feel like a proper 'full time job' because it's not the standard 9 to 5 weekday job that I think of when I hear the phrase), living with a boyfriend who is also in a full time job, it makes me scared that I may never get the opportunity to go on the kind of adventures I dream about.

It's a kind of vicious circle, really. I need to work to get money to do what I want. But by working, I end up in a place that I'm not ready to be in. I guess a lot of saving is required.

Cardiff Castle.

Last week on our brief trip to Cardiff Dan and I visited Cardiff Castle. Since I'm a Cardiff resident (well, sort of. My driver's licence says that I am!) I was able to get a card that gets me in for free - and we managed to get one for Dan too, so score!

The interior of the castle is stunning. If I had an awesome DSLR camera I could have captured it better, but these couple of pictures should give you an idea of how over the top yet awesome it is:

I can't believe that it's been 5 days since I last posted! Work has zapped my days away so fast. I'm only contracted to work for 12 hours a week, but already I've worked for 34! When I said I wanted to do overtime, I didn't realise that I'd be scheduled to do overtime! It's great because it means come pay day I'm going to have lotsa moneys, but the hours I'm working just aren't conducive to a 'normal' life. Dan gets home from work (he's done 2 days as a real proper secondary school Science teacher! I can't believe my boyfriend's a teacher!), and then an hour later I have to leave for work, to not get home until 11.30pm-ish. Not to mention the sometimes 7am starts, straight after a late shift. I've had today and yesterday off, which I really needed because I needed time to rest my aching muscles! I hope my body can get used to that feeling.

Things.

1. Dan and I went to Cardiff (my hometown) for a couple of days on Tuesday. We were planning on staying until today (Friday), but on Tuesday I got an email from the Holiday Inn asking if I could start on Wednesday. Typical! Luckily I managed to get hold of James (my new manager!), who said it was okay for me to start on Thursday instead. So I didn't get quite as long in Cardiff as I'd have liked, but at least my mother had the day off on our one full day so I could spend some time with her.

2. I started my job yesterday! I went in at 4pm to sign paperwork and be given 'the tour', and then started work at 6pm. It was so busy and chaotic, but the time went by so quickly and I really enjoyed it! Everyone seems really nice, too, which definitely helps. I didn't get home until midnight (although that was partially because a road on my way home was closed, so I had to take a massive detour) and was completely shattered!

3. Unfortunately I've been scheduled to work on Sunday. And because I'm brand sparkling new at my job, I don't think it's acceptable to ask to change dates so soon, which means I don't get to go to London to meet up with my girl friends. I'm really gutted, because it's been months since I've seen any of them, and could be months before I get another opportunity to get us all together in one place.
This is the problem with growing up; everyone has their own schedule, and it's tricky to get everyone's lined up. Le sigh.

4. I don't like the new Blogger.