hathycol | (no subject)

I am sitting in my pajamas, drinking a cup of tea and being incredibly indulgent regarding my time because - and this is the blissful part - I am, in fact, On Holiday. The joy of having weird semesterised exams is that I get Christmas, come back and stress for a few weeks, and then get two weeks where I don't even have to feel bad that I'm not working.

I have also had the most tremendously awesome three days, so I will write about it in the happy knowledge that I don't have to scribble down a post in about ten minutes before I go and stare blankly at some revision for three hours.

Friday was, naturally, the end of exams. After a happy day persuing the sights in Dundee and more importantly three plates of Pizza Hut buffet later, Katie and I headed home and digsted for a few hours, occasionally shouting "FREEEEDOM!" in a completely un-William Wallace way before heading out to the wonder that is the Bop.

I think I was mostly drunk on the joy of my exams being over. That, and the vodka. This weekend has also been one of vodka.

grahamecase was taking publicity photos for his plan to ~~take over the world~~ run for a Sabb position so in between dancing like a crazy fool with

stupidore and

susie22 I was poking this very spiked Mohawk with curiousity. The music was great, the mood was happy, and all was well with the world.

Unfortunately, I had to leave early. I thoroughly wish I could have stayed longer, but I'd spent too much money on train and bus tickets to not enjoy my weekend away, so I left at about midnight.

I woke up with a fairly impressive headache, but in the well-trained manner that I have, I dressed, checked all my packing and headed off happily to Oxford.

I had prepared a lovely post about how awesome Virgin trains were. How they were nice, punctual, served good food and in short were everything that crappy GNER aren't. Of course, the train then spent the lost hour being spectacularly delayed, meaning I was late getting to

loneraven's house. I was, however, met by Simon, which was awesome as we haven't seen each other for three weeks. The evening, in short, was shaping up well.

For some context -

loneraven has become OLD and slipped out of being a teenager. She was having a party to celebrate this, but for her own sadistic amusement, insisted we all dressed up as fictional characters. I, as such, was Mrs Rosie Palm, complete with daughters, from the Discworld series. Luckily, the nature of Iona means that many of her friends fortunately got the joke rather than thinking I was just a freak. Lots of people jammed into one kitchen, either awkwardly talking while throwing down some alcohol to relieve the social tension or just talking and trying to work out who everyone's costume was. More odd was the LJ connections - people ended up introducing themselves with real names and LJ names, which then led to cries of "Oh, YOU'RE

hathy_col!" or recognising people from photos on friendsfriends lists and general funness.

Plus, of course, everyone was dressed up as supremely awesome costumes. Simon was Arthur Dent, towel and all ("It's not red, though, so I'm the radio version"),

loneraven was a beautiful Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland and I can't list who everyone was, but it was awesome. There was a Scully, Simon Tamm (

pinkishmew), two people who were the Flaming Lips album Yoshima Fights The Pink Robots, Harry Potter, Thursday Next and hordes of other good things that I can't label. I just had a lovely time, talking to awesome people and drinking too much. Ahem. Also I saw

lilka for the first time in years, so that was a definite bonus of the evening.

(I also had a malicious joy in telling people that I had two weeks off uni starting from Saturday. Mwahaha.)

Unfortunately, I missed the wind-down of the party because I needed to crawl into bed for a few hours before getting up at silly o'clock to get to the bus station. One of Iona's flatmates had given me the key to her room, so I actually slept in a bed for about, er, two hours.

The morning is a bit of a blur. My booked-and-paid-for bus didn't turn up at all so I had to pay for a brand new one to London, which had the most lovely bus driver who took a faintly avuncular care over me, telling me where to get the connecting bus and to have a good day and whatnot. I was puzzled by this until I staggered into a greasy spoon cafe in the bus station to clean my teeth to make the feeling of hell go away and realised my hair was sticking up everywhere, my eyes were quite genuinely glazed over and I dread to think what I smelt like.

The trip to Edinburgh was not the most fun experience of my life. The bus was small and cramped, and the loo blocked up very early on. Nine hours, no stopping. Oh, god. I can't describe the horror of that part of the trip, mainly because it's quite gross.

Getting into Edinburgh was a bit of a relief, as I got the right train to Leuchars and eventually walked through my front door at about 8.30pm. One long shower later, I felt a bit human, and one plate of 'throw any fresh ingreidant into a pan and see what happens' later I felt coherant. (Actually, seriously, chicken, garlic, a bit of onion, a bit of courgettes, mushrooms and a lot of creme fraiche with some pasta was really nice.)

More importantly, I have been asleep for twelve hours. I probably won't sleep tonight, which will make work tomorrow problematic, but there we are.

So, today! What do I do? I'm just in the happy world of 'oh my god, I'm free!' I need to go shopping, as I'm out of, er, everything. I need to do my laundry DESPERATELY. I need to tidy my room. But I have AS LONG AS I WANT to do this.

Ah, blis