(no subject)

2014 continues to crap all over my carefully laid plans. Sigh.

This weekend was all carefully planned out. On Friday Richie and I were both going to Claire's hen do. The journey was really difficult, with terrible traffic and weird roads, and generally stressful. It meant we turned up late, and the blistering heat and lack of time to eat lunch wasn't helping my mood.

Luckily, everyone else had been stuck in the traffic so I didn't look too horrendously rude. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the hen do activities, as we were at an 'activity centre' and ohgod I did my time in Guides as it was. Plus I didn't know anyone! I ended up enjoying the first activity, which was a sort of team bonding thing, but I couldn't find it in myself to enjoy the rifle shooting. Not really my idea of a good time, to be honest, but Claire enjoyed it which is very important!

We should have had enough time to get to the hotel and get ready and go out, but the traffic in Kidderminster was appalling and we got to the Travelodge at about the time we were meant to be in the evening activity. Argh. We got ourselves ready - including shower! - in record time and hurled ourselves into a taxi. The evening activity was much more fun, though. We made cocktails, which I am always in favour of!

Woke up the next morning miraculously unhungover. As we were in Birmingham, and the timing was right, we were spending Saturday with Phil, Kirty, Andrew and Ali and going to a beer festival in the evening. YES WE'RE COOL. It was a nice low-key way of spending an impossibly hot day. We went to the library because we are cool, yo. That said, I was mostly glad my parents moved away from the West Midlands because ugh. The beer festival was in Digbeth, which was truly scary. The beer festival, though, was lovely. It's what I want east London to be, i.e. full of delicious and interesting food and alcohol, sat in the shade, next to a canal. We talked as friends and met new people and generally it was just a lovely evening. Except for on the way back when some random blokes shouting out of a car at me that I was a slag and that my skirt was too short. Oiy.

The next day we had breakfast as a group and went to an off licence for more interesting beer and cider before heading off. That's about the point it all went tits up as my car broke down. BAD TIMES. Smoking with a burning smell and general chaos and horror. Fortunately I was passing a car park at the time so at least we had somewhere to wait. They told me that the problem looked like my head gasket, which is a bad problem indeed. It took hours and hours to get home as we needed two tow cars.

At one point it looked like I would need to scrap the car. Fortunately the actual problem is not the head gasket and it's an affordably fixable problem. I found this out about twenty minutes before mum sent me a text to tell me that Nan is in hospital. No, they don't know what's wrong either. She is improving, which is good, but ugh.

So, it's just... a good thing keeps turning bad at the moment. Ugh.

(no subject)

2014 continues to crap all over my carefully laid plans. Sigh.

This weekend was all carefully planned out. On Friday Richie and I were both going to Claire's hen do. The journey was really difficult, with terrible traffic and weird roads, and generally stressful. It meant we turned up late, and the blistering heat and lack of time to eat lunch wasn't helping my mood.

Luckily, everyone else had been stuck in the traffic so I didn't look too horrendously rude. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the hen do activities, as we were at an 'activity centre' and ohgod I did my time in Guides as it was. Plus I didn't know anyone! I ended up enjoying the first activity, which was a sort of team bonding thing, but I couldn't find it in myself to enjoy the rifle shooting. Not really my idea of a good time, to be honest, but Claire enjoyed it which is very important!

We should have had enough time to get to the hotel and get ready and go out, but the traffic in Kidderminster was appalling and we got to the Travelodge at about the time we were meant to be in the evening activity. Argh. We got ourselves ready - including shower! - in record time and hurled ourselves into a taxi. The evening activity was much more fun, though. We made cocktails, which I am always in favour of!

Woke up the next morning miraculously unhungover. As we were in Birmingham, and the timing was right, we were spending Saturday with Phil, Kirty, Andrew and Ali and going to a beer festival in the evening. YES WE'RE COOL. It was a nice low-key way of spending an impossibly hot day. We went to the library because we are cool, yo. That said, I was mostly glad my parents moved away from the West Midlands because ugh. The beer festival was in Digbeth, which was truly scary. The beer festival, though, was lovely. It's what I want east London to be, i.e. full of delicious and interesting food and alcohol, sat in the shade, next to a canal. We talked as friends and met new people and generally it was just a lovely evening. Except for on the way back when some random blokes shouting out of a car at me that I was a slag and that my skirt was too short. Oiy.

The next day we had breakfast as a group and went to an off licence for more interesting beer and cider before heading off. That's about the point it all went tits up as my car broke down. BAD TIMES. Smoking with a burning smell and general chaos and horror. Fortunately I was passing a car park at the time so at least we had somewhere to wait. They told me that the problem looked like my head gasket, which is a bad problem indeed. It took hours and hours to get home as we needed two tow cars.

At one point it looked like I would need to scrap the car. Fortunately the actual problem is not the head gasket and it's an affordably fixable problem. I found this out about twenty minutes before mum sent me a text to tell me that Nan is in hospital. No, they don't know what's wrong either. She is improving, which is good, but ugh.

So, it's just... a good thing keeps turning bad at the moment. Ugh.