Recently [7]

+ I'm back in Cardiff for a couple of days before I jet off to Colorado for a midwest road trip with my parents. SO looking forward to it. I get to FINALLY see Mount Rushmore, which has been on my 'must see' list for so long, and I get to go back to Boulder for a couple of days and hopefully meet up with of my wonderful friends there. Plus, I get to wear summer clothes. Always a good thing.

+ I had my hair cut today, and decided to do something a bit different. So, at my mother's suggestion, I had a full fringe cut in.

I really like it! I'm not sure how good I'll be at the general fringey upkeep, but I love how it looks so I'll deffos make the effort.

+ Yesterday was my first day off in 11 days. I am a crazy person who finds herself agreeing to work all kinds of hours. It's a good thing I like my job, isn't it?!

+ I've FINALLY got around to booking my one way flight to Orlando! It's now less than 100 days until I move to Florida (it was 3 months yesterday!), and I still hadn't actually booked my flight. I'm not sure why. I was slightly putting it off, I think. Anyway, one girl in my arrival group booked her flight, and since I wanted to make sure I
a) got a reasonable price for the flight and
b) was on a flight with at least one person I know
I went for it! So, come October 16th I shall be on a plane on my way to spending a year in Walt Disney World!

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 =]

Recently ... [6]

First thing's first: I've now reached over 100 followers, which I'm more than a little bit excited about and proud of! Thank you to everyone who follows me; it really means a lot. And thank you for all your happy birthday wishes too!

So, with a week until Christmas, December is absolutely flying by. Here's what I've been up to recently:

+ I've finally caught up with mobile phone technology by getting myself a new touchscreen phone! Hooray! I've had my old phone for 3 years, and since it's been working fine I saw no reason to buy a new one. But the other day it just decided to stop receiving texts. Lovely. So I used my birthday money and bought myself a Huawei Blaze.

It was only £60, bargain or what? It's going to take me a while to get the hang of the whole touchscreen business, I think - texting has suddenly become a lot slower process!

+ Since I work in a hotel, we've been hosting various Christmas parties on Friday and Saturday nights for the past 3 weekends, and last night was our last one. They've been good fun, if slightly chaotic. Definitely looking forward to our own Christmas party now, though (but we have to wait until the new year for that!).

+ I finally got around to uploading some photos from when a few of my friends came to visit me for my birthday night out.

We spent a while sitting by a fish tank, and this fish barely moved the whole time - it just stayed there, staring at me! I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or creeped out!

Hope you're all getting into the Christmas spirit! I feel as if I should start coming up with New Year Resolutions, but that sounds like a lot of hard work ...

Recently ... [5]

+ When I got home from work the other night, Dan had put up a bunch of Christmas decorations that he'd bought from Asda, including an adorable tree that was only £3.75! It's actually black, but you can hardly notice that with the tinsel and baubles on it, so it doesn't matter!

+ While I was doing the washing up earlier I decided to put the Wicked soundtrack on. I was obsessed with Wicked when it first opened in the West End back when I was 17 or 18 (I went to see it when Idina Menzel was in it right at the beginning, and it was amazing. She signed my programme and everything), but I hadn't listened to the soundtrack in AGES.
For some reason I found myself humming 'Dancing Through Life' this morning, so on the soundtrack went! I know decidedly too many of the words to all of the songs so I was belting them all out, wonderfully tunelessly I'm sure! Doing the washing up is made infinitely more fun by singing "THERE'S A STRANGE EXHILARATION, IN SUCH TOTAL DETESTATION, IT'S SO PURE SO STRONNNNNG" obnoxiously loudly.

+ I've been eating a lot of these biscuit cake things from Lidl:

They are GOOD.

+ It's my 23rd birthday in exactly one week! Eek, 23. That sounds properly old. When I was younger and my mother told me that you never feel any older, no matter how old you get, I found that hard to believe. I was convinced that your personality moulded to the age you are. And, yes, I suppose it does in some ways, but that's more about the life experiences you have rather than the actual age you are. I feel just the same now as I did at 17. A little more world-wise, maybe, and a little more confident, definitely, but for all intents and purposes, very much the same girl.
I'm going back to Cardiff for my birthday, which I'm really excited about. I get to go and dance and get drunk with my girl friends on the weekend, then it's homeward bound on Sunday for some family times. I'm definitely going to make the most of my (just under) week off work.

Recently ... [4]

Hmm, it would seem I've not updated this blog of mine in almost a week! Scandalous! I don't even have a good excuse. So, instead, here's some things I've been up to recently:

+ Last night I Skyped with Mariah, my Colorado BFF, for four hours. I didn't get to bed until 3.30am. Good job I have today off work! I'm planning on asking my parents for flights to visit her in April next year (she's turning 21, yay!) for my birthday and/or Christmas. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

+ I went out for my boss's leaving night out, and we all got rather drunk. It was such a fun night. I really am lucky to have a great bunch of colleagues. Though it isn't quite the same without James now :(

+ Have you all seen the John Lewis Christmas advert? It brings tears to my eyes.

I love that an advert for a store can be about a meaning, rather than any products at all. So much better than the awful X Factor one that M&S have gone with. As a former M&S employee, I am embarrassed for them.

+ This Michael McIntyre video basically sums up my life at the moment:

Recently ... [3]

+ So, because I apparently have THE shortest attention span like, ever ... I've changed my blog's design again. Not too much, but I just decided to make the colouring of it a bit more autumn/wintery. I'm pretty proud of it, yo. Especially the menu mouseover effects. I am such a nerd. I really need to get out more.

+ I've now got over 80 followers! Eek. I feel pretty proud of that, too. Thanks guys, for thinking me interesting enough to follow. And especially you guys who comment so much - I feel really lucky when I see some blogs that have a similar amount of followers but don't get anywhere near as many lovely comments as I do ♥

+ I've been drinking tea lately. Which is weird, because for years I was convinced I didn't like it (again, weird considering how my mother loves the stuff. She seriously drinks about 5 or 6 cups a day). But one morning in work I needed something warming to wake me up, and since I HATE coffee, I thought I'd give tea another try. And you know what? I actually liked it. Once I'd added some sugar and milk, at least. So now when someone in work offers, "Anyone want coffee? Tea?" I can actually reply with, "Tea please!" It makes me feel all grown up. Yeah.

+ I was going to do a post a couple of days ago about Kim Kardashian's marriage. Or lack of it. But it turned a bit ranty so I didn't post it. The gist of it was, though, that I'm fed up of celebrities treating marriage so casually. Marriage is supposed to be something that is forever. And yes, of course I understand that some marriages break down. But so many celebrities just don't even seem to try to make it work. Marriage absolutely isn't the next step of a relationship. If you can't even be bothered to try to make a 72 day old marriage work, then there should be some law to stop you remarrying. I don't understand how some people can get away with claiming that allowing gays to marry will ruin the sanctity of marriage, when 'celebrities' like Kim & Kris are out there, spending millions on a wedding, then waltzing out just when something slightly doesn't seem as fun as it once did. It makes me angry, to be honest.

+ And with that, Dan and I are off to the pub for some dinner and drinks. Yes please.

Recently ... [2]

+ There was a day of great rejoicing in our household (okay, it was just me) when I discovered that Asda have their iced mince pies back!

Now, I know it's only October and I completely don't agree with Christmas things being out until at least after Bonfire Night, but these mince pies are SO FREAKING GOOD that I don't care. The longer they're on the shelves, the more I can eat. This can only be a good thing.
Anyone else LOVE iced mince pies? I don't think they get as much love as they deserve.

+ Rainbow!

I know it's not obvious, but it's there, I promise! It was the first one I'd seen in ages.

+ I was supposed to work five 7am shifts in a row, which I was dreading (I really really hate getting up early. Getting up early to smile and serve tea + coffee to people who've stayed in bed longer than you is even worse), but I wasn't needed for one of the mornings and a colleague wanted to swap today's shift with me, so I'm only having to do 3, thank goodness!

+ My parents have been in Majorca for the past week or so, the lucky things, and my mother sent me a lovely bracelet when they got back.

They're coming down to see me on Wednesday, yay. I'd been planning to go home a lot more now that I'm closer to home and not overwhelmed with university work, but without the funds to do so, it hasn't happened as yet. I should get a proper paycheque this month (ie. actually get paid for the overtime I've worked, rather than just for the 12 hours a week I'm contracted for), so fingers crossed I can resist blowing all of my spare money on clothes, and spend it on visiting home instead.

+ I have an idea for a Halloween costume. It's not particularly 'Halloween-y' (by British standards), but I'm hoping I can pull it off anyway. It's slightly frustrating that in Britain you have to dress up as something creepy and/or stereotypically Halloween-y. I wish we could just dress up as whatever we want. There's only so many times you can dress up as a witch before it just gets boring. What are your Halloween costume plans? I like hearing ideas!

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!

Super fun list.

Many things have happened since my last post, so here's an update in a super fun list:

+ Dan and I – after several trips between Brighton and Southampton from his nan – moved from our house in Brighton. I stayed with his family in Southampton for a couple of days after we moved out, and I'm now back in Cardiff for a few days.

+ We've found ourselves a flat to move into! Provided nothing goes wrong between now and then, we're moving in on Saturday. It's just a small standard flat, but it's exactly what we were looking for, and it's in a nice village-y feeling suburb, so I think we'll be happy there, at least for a year or so.

+ I found out my degree results. I'll be graduating with a 2:1 (I keep accidentally typing that as 2:!) in American Studies. Which isn't too surprising, considering I've been pretty much smack-bang in the middle of a 2:1 with all of my marks. I was a little disappointed I only got 66% in my 8000 word dissertation, though; I put a LOT of time and effort into that, and only came out with 4% than I got in my Foreign Policy dissertation, which got considerably less of my time and effort. I don't know what I did wrong.

+ I met up with an old friend of mine (well, he's actually my ex-boyfriend, but we split up almost 4 years ago) and things went … strangely. I had a fun evening, but I was left feeling quite worn down by his 'joking' negativity. It brought back memories of the months before we broke up, and left me feeling rather unsettled. I don't know. He's a really good friend, though, so I hope things are better the next time we see each other. I'm sure they will be.

+ I've applied for numerous jobs and have so far heard back from only one. I will continue to wait patiently. I'm just not a very patient person. It would be so much easier if I had some sort of idea of what I want to do with my life. But I don't.

The internet has been playing up a LOT since I've been here – it cuts out for twenty minutes to half an hour at a time, which is incredibly frustrating. I was hoping to make the most of the internet while I'm here since I don't know when we'll get it at our new flat, but it doesn't seem to want to cooperate with me!