Seeing friends and listening to music

As the title of this blog update suggests, I've seen some friends over the last few days. On Wed eve Claire came round after she'd finished work and we went to the cinema together to see St Trinians 2. We both thought it was better than the first film - the plot was stronger, the soundtrack was great and David Tennant was in it too. We had a great time and the film was fun :) And Claire popped in for a drink after the cinema. On Thur afternoon an old friend popped round. Sarah lives just across the road and we used to be very good friends when we were younger. But as we grew up we grew apart. She's away at uni a lot now and we don't have much in common, but it's nice to catch up with her every so often. On Fri eve Claire came round again. She stayed for tea, we chatted a bit and we had great fun playing on New Super Mario Bros Wii together :D

And yesterday mum was feeling well enough for us to go to Lizzy's. Mum wanted to come back before it got dark, so because it's an hour and a half drive that meant we'd need to leave about 3pm. So to spend a decent amount of time with them I got up at 8am yesterday morning (which is very early for me) so we could set off not too late. I was ready to leave the house at 9am, but mum wasn't feeling great, so we left just after 9.30am. On the way we stopped for petrol, so we got to Lizzy's at about 11.20am. Lizzy's husband H soon had to go out to work, so for most of the time it was just me, mum, Lizzy and M. We chatted loads, gave M her Christmas presents, had some lunch there and were very well amused by M. She's 3 years and 8 months old now and soooo cute. She'd just recently learnt to play I Spy so we all played that with her. And she loves dancing and ballet so she enjoyed dancing for us. And she likes to rhyme everything and if she can't think of a rhyming word then she'll just make one up. I was exhausted yesterday and didn't have much energy at all, but Lizzy understood, so it was ok. I was disappointed that I couldn't play with M more though.

H is from Burma, so Lizzy and H are trying to teach M about the Flan (Burmese) culture as well as the English culture. H's first language is Chin and although M understands when he speaks it to her, she wont speak it herself, she'll only speak English. And her parents are trying to teach M both Flan eating good manners and English eating good manners, but the 2 ways of eating are very different - the Flan way of eating is with your hands - so M often gets confused about how she should eat. Yesterday for lunch we had baked potatoes with chilli which M ate with her hands. That made quite a mess! :P And then she tried to eat a slice of cake with a spoon. We headed home at 3.15pm and I fell asleep in the car for a bit because I was so tired. I was awake though when there was a muntjac deer standing at the side of the road - wow! We stopped for drinks (because mum was very tired) and then got stuck at the local level crossing for 5 trains, so didn't get home til about 5.15pm.

I love seeing friends, but like doing anything does, it results in me being exhausted and I have been most days this week :( I've also been stupidly nocturnal, getting to sleep about 2am most nights :P Usually I can remain positive even when I'm feeling exhausted and rubbish, but I am struggling with feeling a bit down today.

I've managed to do a few productive things since my last blog update - I started putting together a draft CV for Pathways to Work but need to do a bit more work on it over the next week, I went to the surgery to order some of the new Fortisip desserts I've tried and got on with ok, I went to the shop/post office to buy the latest Radio Times and post a letter, I've got my spreadsheet which I record all my income and spending on almost up to date (I just need to work out how to fix some broken formulae) and I sorted out my overflowing in-tray on my desk.

I'm still keeping my food and symptom diary, but will finish it this evening. My tummy pains have been worse since Thur (which may have been because I had a Fortisip drink) which is frustrating, but at least I can record something in the diary!

On Wed my watch broke. I got it from Chris for my 16th birthday and had worn it most of the time since then, so it had done well. But on Wed as I took it off the strap just snapped off from the watch face. Dad says it's not repairable. I bought a lovely watch at some point last year from a local craft shop which was made out of coconut shell. That worked well for a few months, but then when it came to the clocks going back we discovered that the knob to change the time wouldn't work. Dad tried and managed to change the time to something odd, but then couldn't change it again. So that watch was then useless. After my watch broke on Wed I felt really lost without one so have borrowed an old wind up one from Mum for the time being. At some point this week though I'm hoping to return to the craft shop where I bought my coconut shell watch from and see if they've got one with a knob that works, fingers crossed.

My Nan finally got home on Thursday after 5 and a half weeks in hospital. I've not been to see her at home yet, but dad visited her on Fri and is going again this afternoon. I've spoken to her on the phone though. She seems ok in herself, but on Fri morn she had a dizzy spell which is a bit of a concern as that's why she was admitted to hospital in the first place. Hopefully they'll get better with time or wont be as bad now, fingers crossed.

I spoke to M's mum on Facebook chat on Wed. M had just got back on to the ward from ICU and was a lot brighter in herself :) I've not heard any more about Imy recently so am going to text her mum and ask how she is.

I posted this blog update a couple of days ago which I've since been adding to since which has links to friends' blog posts in memory of Jess.

On Thursday I discovered that Lou has written a story for the BBC's My Story competition. It's definitely worth a read. You can find it here.

On Thur my monthly Official Nintendo Magazine arrived in the post, so I enjoyed reading that.

Since my last blog update I've just watched 2 films - Madagascar 2 and Be Kind Rewind, which were both funny and I enjoyed watching them, but they weren't anything special.

And on DVD I've watched the final 3 episodes of the second series of Gavin and Stacey plus the special features, one and a half episodes of The Vicar of Dibley and some S Club 7 music videos from a DVD I rented called S Club 7 Best.

On TV I've watched quite a bit of rubbish when I've been nocturnal and bored including Krypton Factor, Half Ton Man, World's Strongest Child and Women Who Kill. I also watched another episode of Tracy Beaker Returns, but according to iPlayer it was the 3rd episode which was televised before the 2nd! :P I tried watching a new ITV programme on Fri night called Popstar to Operstar, but I know nothing about opera so until the judges spoke I had no idea whether each contestant was any good or not, lol. And I watched Friday Night With Jonathan Ross which featured Catherine Tate and Pixie Lott performed too.

I've watched the music channels again because music videos are easy to watch when I'm tired. I also watched an old episode of Live From Abbey Road which featured Michael Buble (who mum likes) and Little Boots (who we both like) and 3 old Jools Holland programmes featuring Norah Jones and Corrine Bailey Ray (who mum likes) and Joss Stone (who we both like a bit). They also contained some stuff dad was interested in too.

I listened to an Ellie Goulding interview on Radio 2 on iPlayer, read this very good article about her in the Independent and listened to some of her music on Youtube. In the Independent article and in the Radio 2 interview she mentions Erik Hassle, who was another support artist for Little Boots when we saw her. None of us were keen on him or his music, so me and Claire think we might be missing something with Ellie Goulding singing his praises and Radio 1 playing his music! You can hear his next single here - what do you think? And this is a single that Ellie Goulding and Erik Hassle covered together.

On Youtube I also watched JLS' new music video for One Shot and a found a clip of Shingai from the Noisettes performing on Jools' Annual Hootenanny. I saw it on TV, but if you missed it you can watch it here. The Noisettes should be good live next month :) And I found this tiny teaser clip of Diana Vickers' (who came 3rd on X Factor 2008) debut single Once, which will be released in April.

I've been listening to Alexandra Burke's Overcome album more, which I still love. And I've listened to Rihanna's latest album Rated R and Cheryl Cole's album 3 Words on Spotify. Rated R isn't unpleasant, but isn't something I'd listen to again, despite liking Russian Roulette. But I thought that 3 Words was horrible and was a huge disappointment! I like Fight For This Love, but dont like the single 3 Words, so was hoping the album would be more in the style of Fight For This Love - but it isn't. Most of the songs are similar in style to 3 Words and Will.i.am features on a lot of them. Some are just about bearable, but some I hated, especially Boy Like You which samples a fantastic Fleetwood Mac song (Little Lies) then ruins it with Cheryl attempting to rap! There was one song on the album apart from Fight For This Love which I didn't mind and it's called Parachute. I might listen to those 2 tracks again but not the rest of the album. I'm glad Parachute will be her next single.

And Siiren is a Fairtrade website that Catherine's mum told me about when they came the other week, but I've only had chance to look at recently. Catherine's mum recommended it because we were commenting on her pretty necklace that she'd bought from there. They sell some lovely Fairtrade jewellery and other bits and pieces for good prices and delivery is free :) I think I might use them for presents in future.