Dream of Californication

I tried to do some retail therapy today to cheer myself up a bit, it didn't work, but they were playing "Californication" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in one of the shops I went in, so that's where todays title comes from. I know, I'm getting bad at this, it's been ages since I last wrote. But I got some bad news today. Since San Francisco, I've been really tired, feeling a little under the weather. So I went for a blood test last week. Over the past 2 days I've become really ill, headaches, blocked nose, sore throat, sore eyes, bad sinuses, the works, and I got the results back from the blood test today. Someone has given me glandular fever!! I know that it's known to spread by kissing, but it's generally a really contagious virus that can be picked up from sharing a glass with someone etc. so my boyfriend gets to keep my trust, I know he wouldn't kiss anyone else anyway. Unfortunately, the only means of getting rid of it is to have loads of bedrest and what-not. So basically, I'm not allowed to go out clubbing or drinking for like the next MONTH! Which is really horrible after some of the amazing nights out I've had recently. On the plus side, I now have a doctors note to ask if I can have extended deadlines and things! This helps on so many different levels, not that I'm that far behind, but with the 3rd years playing their "we have priority over 1st years in the studio" card all the time, I've not much chance of catching up quick. Luke has been really nice about it. We had a laugh when the result came back and we went into town and bought some strawberries from the farmers market. He's invited me to stay at his house for the next few nights so I don't get lonely and he's agreed to be my model for one of my projects, and convinced his housemate to model for my other one.

I know it's a bad post this week, but it's the best I'm doing. Sorry peoples, I will write again in my health-deprived state, but for now, adieu xx

And I'll lay down on the cold ground...

Gah! This is the song used for an advert for a new film, and I know the song, I've heard it a thousand times but I'll be damned if I remember what it's called or who it's by. It's one of those things where it grates against your very being for weeks, maybe even months, and suddenly, poof! There it will be at 3am, when you're laying in a nice, warm, toasty bed, feeling all relaxed and snuggley and you'll think "Fantastic! but no WAY am I writing it down now, I'll do it tomorrow" and when you wake up, it'll be gone.

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5 minutes and a trip through Google later:
Set Fire to the Third Bar by Snow Patrol. That'll be why I know it so well because if you haven't already guessed, I love Snow Patrol at the moment. Oh the joys of refusing to go to bed at half past midnight. Usually I would go straight to bed and read until I got really tired... about 1am usually. But I don't have a book to read that I haven't already read, I'm alone in my flat for the night and I have messed up medication that is causing me to be really tired but doesnt let me sleep. I'm going home for the first week of Easter that starts officially tomorrow and am going to get a blood test done so they can say that yes, I do have thyroid problems and give me some bigger pills!

It's been quite a boring and unproductive day today unfortunately. I have no (horrible) looming deadline, no-one is in Lincoln, I'm kind of stuck with not much that I need to do thats pressing and nothing particularly fun to do, so I finished watching the DVD box set Luke bought me for Christmas. The last episode made me cry, they kill off my favourite character! But of course I already knew this having already read the books. I'm considering buying the Gavin and Stacey box set now, but don't know if it'll have been ruined slightly being that I've watched the second-to-last and last episodes already. Ah well, we'll see.

OH! Almost forgetting! I finally followed the advice my parents and people have been giving me, printed off a stack of copies of my CV on good paper and took them round EVERYWHERE in Lincoln yesterday looking for a job. I found 2 that seemed very promising indeed. Cloud Bar has some other CLM students (my course) working there so they know what we're like and Dogma seemed likely to take me too, so I could end up being a bar girl in the summer. Me and Luke have agreed that if we both get good jobs and work at them over the next year we're going to take our first holiday together to Ireland, just me and him. I'm really excited and so obviously desperate to get a job of some kind! Also I think I'm going to buy myself a money box or something and put maybe £10 in a week or something like that so I should have a decent kitty by next year. Hopefully if we don't use all that money, we might be able to pay for a deposit on a house as well. Exciting times ahead for sure.

Last weekend I went to my parents home because my Great Aunt and Uncle were having their (Silver?) wedding anniversary, there was jokes about it being my mum and dad's turn to have big anniversaries next, but I was stood there thinking "well, me and Luke aren't exactly planning on NOT getting married!" I mean, we'll have been together for 5 years next year. My cousin Joanne was talking about how her and her husband were together for 10 years before they got married, but every time me and Luke talk about the future, he keeps saying "but I don't want to be near 30 years old before we have children!" So hopefully, won't have too many years to wait before we're having an engagement party. I know it's a bit mental to be thinking about these things and people keep saying "don't wish your life away!" but I'm not wishing it away, I'm just thinking about the exciting things that are to come because that's all you can really do on those days when you haven't really spoken to anyone in person, only over the internet etc.

Mmmm, maybe it is time to go to bed. 1am is a respectable time to go to bed for a student isn't it? haha! goodnight world.

Mellitus, my video project

I appologise for the state of that upload, here's the link if you would like to see the full screen of the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnleXBAXHqU

if it's in blue, just click on the link, if not, copy and paste it into the internet web-address and it'll take you through to youtube where you should be able to see a full-screen version of the film. Once again, I appologise.

Good day x

I can see clearly now the rain has gone

It's that song they use on the advert for.... some form of yoghurt I think. But I was reading the blog called "The Daily Nail" and one of her posts had this title which seemed very appropriate for the weather we're having in Lincoln at the moment. The coat is off and I think summer is surely just around the corner. I can't wait!

I can't believe how long ago it is since I wrote one of these last. Time just seems to be slipping through my fingers since I got back from San Francisco, but hopefully with a week of no lectures being in my flat I should be able to sort my life out. I've finally done the clever thing and got myself a copy of the student finance application form, so will hopefully have that done and sent off by the end of easter. I'm going to be working on my history stuff over easter and it shouldn't take too long, I only have 2 of the 4 essays I can work on anyway because we're half way through the television section of work and I've already done the 19th century essay. Me and Lauren are heading into town to find the elusive "collection" art gallery to see if we can find any work we like and just so we can stick 2 fingers up at our lecturer and say we have been. Unfortunately, my last unit of work for photography - portrait of a worker - didn't go according to plan due to a faulty flash gun and my forgetful memory so I'll be adding yet another photoshoot to the already done 2 lots, not that I can see my dad complaining about that, I think he's rather been enjoying cooking eggs and bacon for me every day before he starts working and I start taking the pictures. Speaking of past projects, here is my video project:


I really don't like it, but well, I'm only just starting out as a video maker and I probably won't carry on after this year. I'm much more excited about my next unit of work! It's called "single take" and I think it's going to be really hard to shoot but if it ends up anything like what I have in my head it'll definitely be something to be proud of. I'm considering making a brand new blog all together for my photography work, or maybe a website but I don't really want to pay the horrific prices for an actual website while I'm not making any money.

Speaking of... I got a few photography jobs on my way! My friend Amy wants some pictures of her with her band for CD covers and posters and things and has asked me to do the work, also my mum's friend has asked if I'll do the same for her stain glass work and they're both paying me, so I'm quite excited. especially as it'll all be work worthy of my portfolio, or so I hope.

I promise I'll try and write more often, but at the moment my medication isn't doing everything I need it to, so I've been pretty worn out recently. I'm going into hospital for a blood test over easter so they can sort out what medication I need to be on and how much I need, so until then, I'm going to be very worn out, so I'm sure you can forgive me for making this so brief and not writing much. I will write again soon. Ciao for now.

I hope you had the time of your life

Yes I most certainly did Billy Joe Armstrong (Lead singer of Greenday, this is a line from their accoustic song "Good riddence" which is one of my favourites), yes I did! I got back from San Francisco last friday and am absolutely wiped out! I have to say, I know California is known as a really beautiful state in America, but I had no idea just how beautiful until our plane landed and we were heading to the hotel on the 17th Feburary 2010. It's so BRIGHT over there, the sun is apparently at least 2 shades brighter than over in England. (Our lecturer told us the actual scientific term for it, but he told us on the last day, so how was I expected to remember this? I know it was 2 units of whatever though, I remember that much) I've made a little scrap book to remember my time over there and will soon be printing my pictures and putting them into a photo album... When I remember to copy my pictures back from my laptop to my memory cards that is anyway. Well just to give you a sneeky preview, here's one of my favourite pictures of me stood in front of the Golden Gate Bridge:

Most of the time the temperature was about 18 degrees celcius (I don't care if that's the wrong spelling, I'm used to putting that with the little circle thing and then a big C, but I dont know how to do the little circle thing so you'll have to make so with my bad spelling) so there was no fog but really bright sunny days. It was actually warm enough to wander around in teeshirts and maybe a light cardigan... in Feburary, let me stress that point, FEBURARY! It was beautiful.
We visited Alcatraz on one of the days and again had crystal clear bright sunshine so from the outside the little island looks like one of the most beautiful places on earth, but on the inside the light poured in on the cracked floors and chipped paint, giving all my pictures a really creepy, spooky feeling, like happiness was desperately trying to get in but couldn't quite make the place look beautiful. Wandering round taking pictures when you have the sounds of the worst of the wosrt prisoners screaming in your ears? Wow, it's a bit surreal. My parents were impressed when the memento I bought myself from Alcatraz was a baseball, I felt slightly wrong going all the way to America and not coming back with one! I got my dad a fantastic little book called "Al Capone does my shirts" about a man that was raised on Alcatraz because his dad was a prison guard. Some of the stories they told on that island were really freaky and I wish I could tell them, well I might in my next blog, because I don't want this one going on too long.
We also went to Castro, gay central. I bought a comic book for Luke from there which he has already finished reading because he liked it so much and again, there are many stories I could tell about Castro, but I'll leave them for another day.
We spent an hour or so in Berkley but never actually made it to the university. The people I went with decided they didn't really want to look round so we just bought a chinese (best chinese ever, second only to the meals WenWen and BaoBao used to cook me back in my old flat) and we used the tram system every day. Union Square is possibly the most expensive place I have ever been! One of the girls I met, Nikki, bought a tiny replica of the trams made from silver with a little moving man inside for $40, but I didn't want to spend that much on one item. There was a perfect little charm bracelet shop on the Pier selling charms of the trams, but I dont have a charm bracelet and already wear 2 necklaces so I wasn't going to waste $25 on one of them, although sometimes I wish I had because they were so pretty!
I must say, one thing I found really hard was finding suitable food. In our hotel room we didn't have the option of cooking for ourselves so we had to eat out for every single meal. Seriously, the only food I could find when eating out was steak, burgers and salads. You were lucky to find a place that sold vegetarian option burgers and some places didn't even do vegetarian salad! Of course this meant that by the end of the first week, I was really ill due to the build up of gluten from the non-gluten-free food I kept being served. The other people in the groups were saying they'd never eaten so much fried and junk food, I was saying I'd never eaten so much salad because that's the only gluten-free option I could find ANYWHERE. I was so relieved to get home, go to Wetherspoons and have my first jacket potato of the past 10 days. On the plane the people who could eat normal food had the choice of eating Pasta and I'm surprised but I haven't actually had any pasta yet. Probably because I only have enough for one serving and want my usual years supply in my cupboard before I eat any more!
Anyway, I would love to carry on babbling at you all but I have a video lecture at 1:30pm today and have a few "errends" to run before I meet up with Lauren in Starbucks (our usual meeting place) and head off. So I shall write again soon. hope you enjoyed this weeks edition of "random babblings of the Ella kind, this week in American".

I don't see what anyone can see in anyone else but you

Yesterday was of course valentines day, supposedly the most romantic day of the year and of course I had someone to spend it with again this year. This is the third valentines day me and Luke have been together for, but this time we managed to sort out the entire day by ourselves, with no-one giving us lifts, we booked the resteraunt ourselves and got home when we wanted to. He took me to "Zucchini's" Resteraunt which is near my lecture hall, where they serve GLUTEN-FREE PASTA!! Even more romantic than usual because the meal I had was the first pasta meal I have had in a Resteraunt for over 2 years. It was wonderful, and probably would have been even better had I not ordered the pasta dish with chillis as the main ingredients for the sauce. It really was rather hot, but not too bad so I survived without setting fire to my hair or steaming up the glasses on the lady sat next door to me. However, half way through the meal I was becoming very hot in the face so I ordered a Bailies on the rocks as it contains milk (even in small quantities) and everything was fine. After the meal we walked down to the Odeon cinema together to watch "Percy Jackson and the lightening thief". Luke had said I could choose the film that we went to see and I think he was expecting to be forced to sit and watch "Valentines day", but when we got there I think we were both relieved I'd gone with the more masculine choice, the cinema was packed! There was at least a half hours queue to get into Valentines day which promised chick-flicky, gooey style romance over the mythical fantastical-ness of the Lightening Thief. The graphics were breath-taking as per usual, the story line was just fantastical enough to be weird, but understandable enough to be realistic, it was fantastic! I highly reccommend it. After the film we came back to my flat and sat up listening to the entertaining sound of my flatmates on either side of my room shouting obscenities between each other in voices that could almost pass for juvenile-come-puberty age. Good times.

Anyway, before my valentines day treat, my parents came to visit me. We watched "Shellshock" together, (Starring me, in case you don't read any of my other blogs) and they were really quite impressed. They said that my acting wasn't as plastic as I thought (But I still don't believe

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6 HOURS LATER

2:03am
Sorry about that, I got a phone call from a friend called Jenny saying she wanted to go to kareoke at the Mezz Bar (the one right by where I live) and I've not seen her in ages so thought I would meet up. I ended up singing "Big black horse and a cherry tree" by KT Turnstall and "Fields of Gold" by Eva Cassidy. I gotta say, KT Turnstall was cringingly bad, but Eva Cassidy was pretty good and I got a massive cheer at the end. It was really quite a good night.

I'm sorry, I was going to make this a really long heartfelt blog, but thanks to the night I just had I need to finish packing for San Fransisco and get some sleep before tomorrow, it's going to be a big day full of lecture and all sorts, so I gotta sign out. I'll write again the SECOND I get near a computer with internet access, needless to say my laptop will not be joining me on the other side of the pond xxx

San Fransisco babe passed me 39

I was really surprised when I was listening to Stereophonics the other day and realised that this is actually where I'll be staying next week for the san fran trip with my university. That's right, the trip is only a week away now, can't believe it! Before then, of course, is valentines day and for the Third year running (Luke asked me out in March so we missed the first one) I am not spending it alone. Luke has booked us into a resteraunt in Lincoln called Zucchinis, which seems oddly appropriate to be going to an American named resteraunt 3 days before we're due to set off. I've got myself a dress to wear and I got Luke a good present that's taken a while to put together and is simple, very sweet and I think he'll like it more than the typical valentine stereotypical junk they bring out this time of year. It didn't cost me much to put together either and I can reuse the idea every year because... Well, I don't want to publish on here in case he decides to read this before then.

Just had another look around my room and had another depressing sence of "I need to tidy this before I go". You ever want to be really depressed and unmotivated? Just don't tidy your room for a few days. But I have to tidy it because without doing so I have no space to put the printer I bought in town today next to my laptop. It's an Epson and they're awesome. The printer itself was £49.99, the lead to plug it in (cheeky buggers) was £9.99 and the guy tried to sell me insurance for it as well. Does anyone else ever get really worried that the guys in the shop somehow rig your merchandise to break down immediately if you don't buy the insurance or is it just me that gets that feeling? Yes? No? Maybe I'm just weird.

I got the result back for my photography project, the one I put my blood, sweat and tears into, the one I slaved over all christmas, the one I worked so hard on. I got another third. I hate our lecturer. And yes I am valid in saying this because the evil beast didn't give me any feedback other than "Half the class got a third". Oh, wonderful, so my mark is based on how everyone else did then? Also when I handed in my work she said it was wonderful and she understood the story perfectly, then did a complete U-turn and said she DIDN'T understand the story and that it didn't portray the history of the event. I'm sorry, but if anyone else in the world has managed to capture the history of an event, the story of the event, the emotions of the event and the event itself then please let me know how on earth you did this because I'm stumped. i'm meeting with her on Friday to find out what the deal is.

Just to make you laugh, here's my recent photoshop work for photography too.



That's of course a cross between me and Luke but it worked so well I just had to show you all! I also tried combining myself with some of the actresses from Charmed, a television series I became obsessed with a while back. In some cases, like the cross of me and Rose McGowen, the effect was quite good and apart from a general lack of freckles we weren't that obviously crossed. However, in the case of Alyssa Millano, well, she's very tanned... and when her face is warped to be the same shape as mine she looks really weird! It was good fun. I don't expect a good mark though as I didn't hand in any research and the research I DID do that I could hand in is really bad because artists don't bother doing this kind of work. I looked at Wanda Wulz who has a total of one paragraph written about her on each website, saying mostly the same things over and over and Daniel Lee who again only had one decent paragraph.

I got the Shellshocked DVD today. Sophy, the manager, had posted me £10 HMV vouchers! I can add that to my £15 Accessorise vouchers and £10(?) Waterstones vouchers and go shopping tomorrow. Mum says she's hopefully going to come visiting on Saturday and I hope she does because I'd like to watch the film with her. If not then never mind, I'll go to her so dad and Brendan can watch at the same time.

Speaking of mum coming down, we had a hailstorm this morning!! I went out with some of the people on my course yesterday and we did a fund raising night for the earthquake victims of Haiti. We met at a place called Essence which is a cross between a pub and a club and were each given a task sheet. the tasks were things like drink 3 shots, down half a pint of guiness and that kind of thing, so as you can imagine... The world was very loud to my poor hung over ears this morning. Then the hail started and I was not a happy girl. Why did I drag my poor hungover body out of bed at 8am you ask? Me and my friend Lauren went to the studio to take pictures of lighting set ups and what-not and ended up having a mighty good time, even if the technicians were laughing at me eating paracetamol and chugging orange juice. As my daddy often says, water is not "wet" enough for hangover mouth. It's gotta be tropicana orange juice and it was very nice.

I just went into the kitchen to attempt to turn on our tempremental dish washer (I think it has moods), and have found an iron. I didn't know we had an iron. I wonder if we have an ironing board too? If we do it means I can iron out the dodgy pleats in my valentines day dress. Yay! Right, on with tidying my room. You watch, I'll set out to tidy my room and in an hour or so the place will still be a tip, but my video work will be done. Oh the weird weird phenomenon that is procrastination.