The "Property Ladder" explained... you're welcome

So tomorrow I embark on the wonderful world of NaNoWriMo.

For those who don't know, it is a writing challenge type thing where your mission is to write a novel in the space of one month.

I have my idea safe in my mind and I am ready and raring to go. This may mean that I am going to disappear once again from this blog. I do apologise in advance if this happens, I will try to write the occasional tid bit every now and then throughout the month. Especially as it happens to also be my birthday month and the month where there is a large possibility I will be moving once again... either that or I will be homeless.

You see, Housemate-Anna has decided to embark into a wonderful world that has a ladder called 'Property.' Apparently, this involves standing on the bottom step of this ladder and living there. Eventually, by doing this for a while, you will find yourself owning this particular part of the ladder. Once you have done this you can then make the decision to stay on that part of the ladder and not pay any more money or sell it to someone else and use the money to pay for the next step.

All of this, as exciting as it sounds, seems a little bizarre to me. Apparently people are paying a lot of money to live on a plank of wood (or metal, depending on the ladder of your choosing and how fancy you want it to be). And although you get to own this plank after a while, I fail to see how it can be especially comfortable to live on or how you stop from getting rained on and feeling cold in the winter... unless the ladder is located indoors with central heating and there is a blanket and hot water bottle available for this. However, if you're going to go so far as to place the ladder indoors, you might as well just buy the building you've put the ladder in as it should be able to provide a little more room and I would imagine it would be a lot more comfortable to sleep in. But who am I to judge?

I'm obviously missing something about it all anyway because it seems to be quite the fad in this country. A lot of people seem to like doing it and, even more bizarrely, like to move up the ladder when the time comes. Now, unless this is for the challenge, I once again find myself completely baffled by this notion... If you are on the bottom plank of wood then you have more accessibility to the floor around the ladder. It would ensure that you can have more stuff that you can balance against said ladder and, although you run the risk of having things from the higher steps falling on you, at least there is less chance of you falling from a great height to your death.

The higher up you go however, the farther it is to fall and the harder it is to balance all your stuff on the planks you now own. Also, you will have to attempt to climb the ladder around all the people below you and I don't like climbing ladders when they're empty! No thanks, I'll just keep to my buildings and the beds I'm able to keep in them instead.

There are a few conclusions I have come to after I thinking about this a little more.

1. Judging from the amount of people who like to join this ladder over the course of history, this world consists of a lot more dare devil type people than I imagined. Although recently I think we have been birthing a generation less so, as more and more people seem to be renting houses instead.

2. I think I now know why there are so many large houses and buildings now, they're not there for the fancy look of them, they are a necessity in order to house these "Property ladders."

3. I have not investigated this country well enough because I have yet to see one of these ladders for myself. Note to self: Ask to visit Housemate-Anna once she has found an available bottom plank of wood so that I can see this marvel with my own eyes.

4. People seem to be spending far too much money on these special ladders. Especially when they could just go to Homebase and get a whole ladder that they can own completely, top steps and all, for about £20.

5. It is possible that the ladders I have seen (for getting into lofts and getting cats out of trees etc) might not be to scale to these amazing ladders that Housemate-Anna has been talking to me about.

6. I should probably have this discussion with Housemate-Anna when I haven't been drinking copious amounts of wine as I might not have got an accurate understanding of how this works.

Anywho, as I'm not quite ready to live on a ladder, whether I own it or not, I am hoping to find myself another person to live in my lovely abode with, or find a person with a real home that I can live in. All of this needs to be organised for December 2nd (moving day) and as it stands at the moment, I have absolutely no plans whatsoever... none at all... not even a sausage.

All I do know is that I cannot afford to live in the flat I'm currently living in on my own, nor any other one bedroom flat in London, last year's flat taught me that well.

Surprisingly though, I have found myself completely de-stressed about it. I am at peace and not worried at all. This could be for two reasons:

1. I'm in denial and will end up homeless before I realise that I probably should have put more effort into the whole 'searching for someone to live with' thing.

or

2. Everything will just sort itself out as it always does, so what's the point in stressing about it?

I like the idea of reason 2 so I'm going to go with that one. And if worse comes to worst, I'm sure I can buy a ladder from Homebase as a back up plan.

Anywho, my point was that I will have stuff to talk to you guys about during the month of November, and now that I have found my way back to the internet, I really don't want to disappear again.

Also, after 6 months of procrastinating in what I have labelled "The World's Biggest Procrastination Of All Time" I have finally bought a new screen for my iphone so I shall be at least at a place of being able to tweet my frustrations over not being able to reach my word count goal each day for all of you lovely people to read. (You're welcome once again).

After mentioning the above procrastination, there is also a very real chance that, instead of writing this novel, I could just end up writing on this blog five times a day about random crap that doesn't mean anything... you know... for a change.

Peace out my lovelies.

The song that will save the world... one professional dancer at a time.

Well, I had an awesome wake up this morning. My alarm is my radio and just as it came on, the song Gangnam Style came on. I have discovered that if there is ever a song that will get me up and out of bed, it is definitely that song.

I started by singing along (in my best attempt at the Korean language, which is amazing by the way). By the time it came to the chorus, I found myself wiggling around in bed doing the dance moves in a laying down motion. When I realised that this wasn't fulfilling my need of fully enjoying the song, I simply had to jump out of bed and dance around my room, singing at the top of my voice "Ooooh Sexy lady! Woopah Gangnam Style!" Leaving Housemate-Anna with a little wake up alarm of her own. Soon, I found that the moves that come along with the song weren't enough either so I developed my own beautiful and highly professional moves to go along with it. This included flourishes and kicks and wiggles and jumps and splits and backward somersaults and scissor kicks in the air whilst cartwheeling over my bed to the mirror so that I could check my hair and general 'just woken up' face, but mainly to observe my own moves first hand and marvel at my amazing choreographing skills.

I would like to say at this point that I was able to look in the mirror and say, wow, I quite obviously missed my calling as the lead in the Royal Ballet Company... however, it was more me realising that my splits were not actually as impressive as I thought, apparently leaving five feet worth of gap between myself and the floor does not a split make (this being pretty impressive in itself, given that I am actually only 5 foot 1). My backward somersaults turned out to be me just jumping backwards, closing my eyes and imagining that I just jumped 360 degrees into the air when I had actually just taken a step back and landed on my bed again. My scissor kicks were a little more impressive, although the mirror was next to the wall so I found I was just causing myself damage by re-enacting these as I was just smacking the right side of my body against the wall.

So, yes. I did just end up bruising myself massively but the words I didn't understand from the song were soaring through my body and interweaved into the most excited parts of my soul and so I didn't care that I had probably caused myself internal bleeding that would have needed hospitalisation if it wasn't for the fact that I was incredibly infectious with my Ebola virus... wait... I'm pretty sure that people with Ebola aren't able to dance with such flourish... does this mean that I may in fact be healed?

IT IS A MIRACLE!!! I'M CURED!!

Wow, that song really does fix everything...

All of this left me in such a good mood that I almost didn't mind I had made myself a beautiful coffee in my "Warning: Biohazard" flask and then left it in the kitchen instead of taking it out of the house with me. I didn't even realise until I was practically at the train station... this might have something to do with the fact that I was still singing "Gangnam style" in my head whilst doing a slightly more dumbed down version of my dance moves as I walked down the street... I think I just figured out why that group of builders were staring at me in a perplexed fashion as I passed them this morning.

I might have a word with my local radio station and ask them to play that song at the same time every morning... I am not a morning person so this was a pretty out-of-this-world, unique morning. If the song manages to cure ebola and my 26 year long inability to wake up in a good mood then I'm nominating it for a Nobel Prize... I can do that right? Do they have a people's choice category in that? If not, then they should have. I'll speak to them shortly after I've phoned my radio station...

And if I still have time after all that, I might give the Royal Ballet Company a call and ask them if they have any vacancies. If not as a dancer then I at least should get a choreographer spot.

Say it with me people:

"Ooooh sexy lady!! Ooh, ooh ooh ah, WOOPAH GANGNAM STYLE!!"

Peace out my lovelies.

Take that Dr Gregory House

To all of you sceptics who assumed that I was hot yesterday due to the heat from house, duvet and computer... turns out you were wrong! I'm properly ill! Huzzah! I was correct! Downside is that this means I might be looking at imminent death but still, I win the deep satisfaction of knowing that I was correct.

The way I'm feeling at the moment, does make me feel, had I a little more testosterone in me, I might indeed be suffering from the dreaded man flu... however, as I am a woman as far as I know, I cannot say that this is what I have. As such, there is no other option but to come to the conclusion that I have the ebola virus (thanks to Dr Gregory AIRIGOAGAIN for diagnosing me with this one).

This is unfortunate but, rest assured, I am living my life to the full with the time I have left. I have spent the afternoon of today watching half an episode of House and sleeping. I plan on spending the rest of my evening updating my "Simpsons Tapped Out" game (I'm rebuilding Springfield single handedly, yes I am that awesome) having a shower and... I don't know... sleeping some more?

I'm going to go now however as my lap top is sitting on my duvet as I write and I can hear Heinakroon's disapproval at this from here... you really have a very loud condescending tone Heinakroon, I am impressed to such a degree that I have found myself shamed into removing my duvet from my lap... Also this now solves my sweating-to-the-point-of-smelling problem. Well done.

Peace out my lovelies.

Okay, so I may be one of those people who confuse TV and real life...

So it's freezing outside and I'm sweating. I've decided that the reason for this is one of two options.

1. The heating has been on too high in my flat, I'm tucked under my duvet on my sofa and my lap top in on my lap (I'm nothing if not a true believer of making sure all objects live up to their names) and is radiating heat up and down my legs.

2. I'm dying of some form of tropical disease.

I think we all know the right option... it's quite obviously option 2.

Now there may be some sceptics amongst you who would have gone down the more obvious track of option 1 but let me say this... after spending the past month or so rewatching five series of 'House' the answer is never the obvious one... I mean, I don't know about you but when I hear hoofs galloping on the ground and a four legged mammal riding towards me on the horizon, I almost always find it is a zebra and not a horse. My reasons? Well, if it's a horse in England, the land of all period dramas ever known to man, then that's just boring. But if it's a zebra in England? What an awesome story to tell! So awesome that it might even warrant not being true in order to get the laughs and general merriment needed to simply get through the day.

This is why I will always choose the way of the ridiculous over the way of the mundane, because let's face it, which one's more interesting?

Case and point, if I had chosen option 1 as the reason why I am suddenly sweating buckets (and by 'sweating buckets' I mean providing enough sweat to fill multiple buckets, not that I am single handedly giving birth to wooden buckets from my pores ... (or am I?)) then this blog would have simply been 'I'm hot... the end.' But by choosing option 2 I am quite clearly creating an interesting blog that can easily lead to a mysterious illness which would result in multiple amounts of tests, none of which I would have to pay for because I live in a country that doesn't charge me for being run over by a bus and then given the gift of actually living again... (sorry, I work for the NHS, I get a little protective of it sometimes), tests which will come up as clear so that they have to ship Dr House over here to find out how I managed to catch a tropical disease from some remote island off the pacific ocean when I haven't left the country in just over two years... my money's on some fruit that I ate this morning... those parasites get everywhere.

And for those of you who might think that Dr House wouldn't come over here, I have already looked into it and the man is actually secretly British and just puts on an American accent... and when I say 'secretly' I mean, not secretly at all because really the whole country have taken great pride in saying "that man's one of us and people in America love him! We succeed again! Huzzah! Let us all do a jig!" ... ah, I seem to have fallen into a stereo type... hold on a tick... will be back to you in a jiffy... oh bloody hell, what a tiz waz I have found myself in, and now I appear to be slightly stuck in a bore of a character... woopsy daisy... *coughs loudly and smacks her head against one of her zebras* and I'm back.

It would appear that this has turned into one of those blogs where I have gone off on a long line of stupid and pointless tangents to the point where I have lost interest in my initial point... as such, I probably won't bother with any of the testing bit and just cross my fingers that I don't die... also, I might open a window and put my duvet to one side... you know, on the off chance I was wrong in my diagnosis.

Oh and in other news, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this November... check out my profile for a sneak peak and if you are doing it to then please let me know and be my friend! It's my first year of doing it this year and I'm all excited but feel a little bit like a virgin at some form of professional orgy so as much help, love and general chattiness as possible would be grand.

I know it doesn't mean much as I have generally been the suckiest person in the history of all the world recently when it comes to updating this blog, but I might not be able to write much in November as I would imagine NaNoWriMo taking up most of my time... I do have one massive thing that I blame my lack of internetual chat on (iphone screen completely broken thanks to Lord Voldemort and a mishap with my phone being mistook for a wand
(One-And-Only-Daniela recently uploaded a picture of the crime scene recently seconds after the incident took place, I thought I'd show it to you, in case you didn't believe me...

))

I think that's enough for now... I have Dr House's smoldering blue eyes and fake American accent waiting patiently for me...

Love you all a lot and stuff.

Peace out my lovelies.

Funniest thing to come out of TV for a long time...

I am still here, I promise.

Just wanted to share something with you for a second because every time I have thought about this moment on TV for the past two days I have just started crying with laughter once again... This is the reaction of one of the guys who got through in X Factor UK this week...

Without further ado, I give you Rylan Clarke



I don't know what I love more, Rylan's reaction or Nicole's.

Funniest.thing.ever.

I love it.

Peace out my lovelies.