Nervous Twitches and Justified Paranoia

So, it's that time of year again. That time of year when the weather has gotten slightly colder. That time of year when I start to live in a constant state of paranoia.

That time of year when bloody massive spiders start turning up inside the house. 

So yes, it may not surprise you to know that I am an arachnophobe. If a spider turns up in a room with me and I see it, people will know it is there. This is because if one turns up, I will make a small noise of alarm, freeze and stare fixedly at it. Unless it moves. If it moves then I become an incoherent tangle of limbs and choked noises of alarm moving very swiftly in the opposite direction.

I don't think this should be a surprise to anyone. I mean, have you seen those things? Look at them. They are fundamentally wrong. They have too many legs and they move too damn fast and they just turn up. Seriously, where do they come from? You're just sitting there, minding your own business and they just appear from nowhere. And then they disappear again. The damn things are ninjas on too many legs.

And of course, once one of them shows up, I can no longer relax. I go into permanent battle mode. Well, permanent ready-to-run-away-at-the-first-sign-of-even-the-tiniest-movement-mode. This is why I haven't got around to tidying my room. What if I moved something and there was one of those really effing big ones sitting there? And then what if it ran away and disappeared? I'd never be able to sleep in that room again. And this is my room is a complete mess. 

This would also be why I avoid being in the flat on my own as much as possible right now. Some people may call this cowardly and tell me I'm a wimp, but I beg to differ. To paraphrase Allie Brosh: I might be bigger than them, but I am also bigger than a grenade, and hell if I'm not gonna run away from one of those if a live one turns up in the same room as me.

Also, come on, spiders are freaking scary, okay?

You see?

Tuesdays are starting to feel a lot like Mondays...

So, it looks as though our D&D games are on hiatus for the time being, since we've got a 4th year tearing her hair out over her dissertation, as happens, me with a small pile of work I really should have done by now, and various other hang-ups and obstacles and to be quite honest we can just get back to it later anyway.

Anyway, this is yet another post where I don't actually have anything non-nebulous to say. I might have an idea for a post in the near future, but I'm warning you; it may contain Warcraft. Or possibly webcomics.

But while I'm here and babbling on anyway, I thought I'd mention that I started a new blog for reasons pertaining to the fact that I am unemployed and skint, and since my writing is the only thing resembling talent that I've got, I'm desperate enough to whore it out for money. Yeah, I do commissions now and if you commissioned me for something I would love you forever I really would. For evidence that I can actually write, you can look me up on fanfiction, fictionpress or deviantart.

Yes, I am basically shameless. And desperate. And also slightly pathetic.

So yeah, have a great day you guys!

Mint Gets Her Life Back

I'm not dead! I've also got so much caffeine currently running through my system that the world is slightly wibbly around the edges, so post coherance is probably at a minimum. The inevitable caffeine crash later on will no doubt be hilarious for my flatmates and any other witnesses.

Anyway, my incredibly, ridiculously long Christmas holiday came to an end today. Having three month long holidays seems amazing at first, but since I had no holiday work to tide me over, I lost my job and all my friends who go to other unis went back in early January, it all lost its shine very, very quickly. It didn't help that, despite all my attempts to chase my muse back to work with the customary big rubber brick, I had no writing inspiration whatsover. So I played Final Fantasy XIII and World of Warcraft, seasoned with a touch of Persona 3 and Shadow of Memories (which is awful, and you shouldn't play it. Or if you must, borrow it from someone, don't buy it).

So today, I was up at 8am, which is the earliest I've been out of bed in over a month and straight into three solid hours of lectures from 10 until 1. This needed two cups of coffee in rapid succession, one overloaded with far too much vanilla syrup, and thus the mad caffeine trip I'm on right now. That's also the reason why this post doesn't actually have a real topic; writing a blog post just seemed like a really good idea and I should go home and do it right now. So yeah, here we are. I apologise.

The closest thing you're getting as a point is that I am just super excited to be doing scholarly things again. This will have stopped by next week, when I will return to being a miserable bitch about the whole thing, and will return to writing irritatingly long posts about video games or something.

But until then, I'm gonna go bounce around the room and generally annoy the hell out of my flatmate :D

A Month for Mint

Okay, so I was short one post last week, and I have an idea for a post that will make up for failtastic one I made last time, but that awesome post is not this one, because I don't have the time to write the epic post right now. So instead, I'm going to write a simplified rundown of my life over the past month in order to show you why I don't have time for epic posting.

Events may be slightly out of order, since this is going to be written in the way that my brain is currently functioning, which is not very chronologically. In any case, this has been my December.

WARNING: This post contains multiple and flagrant cases of CAPSLOCK ABUSE.

STIRLING: *ker-snowed!*
PUBLIC TRANSPORT: AW HELL NO

ESSAY DEADLINES: *appear on horizon*
MINT: *procrastinates*
DEADLINES: *loom*
MINT: *plays video games*
DEADLINES: *LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*
MINT: OMGWTF *spazflail*

AWESOME AMERICAN FRIEND: Hey, so I have to go back to America in a couple of weeks.
MINT:  ):
AWESOME CANADIAN FRIEND: Hey, so I have to go back to Canada in a few weeks
MINT:  D:

EXAM DATE: *appears on horizon*
MINT: *studyflail*

11TH OF DECEMBER: Hey, it's your birthday today!
MINT: *procrastinates, with SUSHI and FLATMATES*
EXAM DATE: *taps MINT on shoulder*
MINT: Well, shit *more studyflail*

EXAM PAPER: So all that studying you did? Yeah, so not gonna help.
MINT: WTF IS THIS I DON'T EVEN-! *examflail*

FLATMATES: We have exams tomorrow! *studyflail*
MINT: I HAVE NO MORE EXAMS I AM FREE
FLATMATES: *glaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaare*
MINT: I'll be good...

COWORKER: We are having a leaving party for AAF where we work tomorrow. You'll work it right?
MINT: Yeah, okay.
COWORKER: And you'll work the day after that even though it'll be a late night? And Sunday? And Saturday too? Great!
MINT: Wait, what?!

AAF: Thanks for doing this, this party's pretty awesome.
MINT: That's okay, we're-
COWORKER: *DRUNKEN RAAAAAAAAAGE*
MINT: O_O OH MY GOD WHAT

ACF: I'm really drunk. Can I have hugs?
MINT: Of course ACF
ACF: I'm going to miss you when I go back to Canada.
MINT: T_T
ACF: DRINKS ON MONDAY!
MINT: Okay!

BOSS' NOTE: THIS PLACE IS A MESS WHAT WERE YOU DOING LAST NIGHT?!
MINT: *whimper*

WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK

MINT:  I can fold up flat packed giftboxes in my sleep. Speaking of sleep, I'm going to do that.

BOYFRIEND: I have to go home now.

MINT: D: BUT NOW MY BED WILL BE COLD.

SECRET SANTA DEADLINE: Sooo...

MINT: ARGH *plotscramble*

SCOTLAND: *ker-snowed!*

GODFATHER: Come have lunch with us in Glasgow!

MINT: Awesome!

TRAINS: Fiiiiiiiiine, but you are standing on that platform in the cold for an hour before we take you anywhere.

MINT: D:

GLASGOW: *ker-freeze!*

MINT: OH COME ON NOW

GODFATHER: Happy late birthday!

MINT: Yay! *ker-lunched*

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING TIME!

MINT: I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO GET ANYONE AND CHRISTMAS IS THIS WEEK AAAAAAH!

RED5: Hey, we have some pretty cool stuff!

MINT: Neat!

SHOP SHOP SHOP SHOP

SSD: *ahem*

MINT: OH CRAP! TO STIRLING!

TRAINS: NOT SO FAST! *delayed!*

MINT: T_T

MINT: I MADE IT!

SSD: *AHEM*

MINT: IN A MINUTE *failure to giftwrap*

ACF: TO THE PUB!

SSD: *facepalm*

So yeah, that's why I'm lame and wrote a lame post last time and it was lame again this time and I'm going to go finish writing that secret santa now...

The Rocky Horror Show: A Night Out in Snapshots of Silly

It was my boyfriend's 19th today, and his parents bought tickets for him and a bunch of us other hangers on to go see The Rocky Horror Show. So that was pretty cool.

Okay, it was actually frigging epic. And so was the rest of the day, and since my last post was full of teh srs, I figured I'd share something a little lighter.

The epic began when my friend Alex broke into our house. Well, I say she broke in. What actually happened was that when my flatmate Claire's new boyfriend skulked out of our flat this morning, he didn't manage to close our stubborn front door properly, and so we ended up with much rattling, banging and then Alex appearing in the living room with a suitcase. We were a little surprised.

The next major occurence was at the Stirling train station as we met up with our other friends to travel to Glasgow. As well as being the boyfriend's birthday, it was also my friend Lamia's, and she was coming to the show with us. Since she was waiting at the train station, me and Claire rushed over to give her hugs. Claire succeeded, I did not. What I did was slip on the wet tiles and end up doing a graceful full-body slide to the floor, to the hilarity of every random bystander who had the fortune of being there at the time. I then proceeded to get up and loudly proclaim that I was the champion of the world, and of grand entrances. I'm pretty sure I bruised my hip as well. Not my finest moment, especially considering the short shorts, tights and stripy socks making me look like some kind of schizophrenic goth playboy bunny (yeah, I know, weird image, but it's Rocky Horror, come on).

My outstanding feats of grace and elegance aside, the rest of the trip to the theatre was largely uneventful. That is, of course, until we got there and were met with a huge crowd of the usual crazily dressed up people you get at The Rocky Horror Show. It's par for the course really, unless you are my boyfriend, who hadn't even seen the Picture Show and had no idea what he was in for. Still, he seemed less than traumatised; I guess that's what comes of being a thespian and having already cross-dressed and been a sexual deviant on stage (although not at the same time). But nevermind that.

The show itself was awesome, even if no one is ever going to replace Tim Curry as the Frank. N. Furter in my eyes. The guy they had did a pretty damn good job though, as did the rest of the cast. I didn't know any of the shout-outs, and no, I did not do the Time Warp because I am lame and shy in crowds, but it was all still great fun. There was, however, a worrying moment at the end of the halftime interval where the lights went out as I was trying to finish my melting ice cream. Eating melting ice cream with a tiny plastic spoon/spatula thing in the dark is not easy, and there's that terrifying moment when you feel something cold and wet hit your shorts and have to hope that it was just condensation off the tub and you don't actually have an embarrasing white stain near your crotch area that will be very hard to explain. Thankfully, it was just condensation. It was the theatre equivalent of the 'popcorn down the top' situation that can arise at the cinema when you take too big a handful of popcorn and it bounces off your face when you try to eat it and ends up lodged in your bra.

Umm... I really hope I'm not the only person that's happened to... Erm... Yeah, moving on...

Anyway, after we successfully navigated our way out of the huge crowd of scarily drunk middle-aged women dressed very innapropriately for their age, we hit a noodle bar for food. And there commenced the ritual taking of Very Silly Pictures. The VSP part of a night out is one of the most important parts. When you are drunk, it tells you the dumb things you did, when you are sober, it tells you how crazy you actually are.

For me, it informed me that I apparently have a hell of a rape-face sometimes, and it reinforced the whole 'schizophrenic goth playboy bunny thing'. Yeah, not so proud of that part...

In any case, we made it home in one piece, and commenced with the evening ritual of tea-making. We were, however, confronted with the two boyfriend figures of the house realising the need for a hierarchy. Mine was here first, but we are now presented with Claire's. The actual confrontation bolied down to this:

Boyfriend #1: We must assert dominance here. Only I may mate with the females!
Boyfriend #2: *cowers*

The funny part here is that Claire's boyfriend is actually 7 years older than mine (and Claire, come to that). I did throw in a comment about male lions humping each other to assert dominance, but they ultimately went with the stag beetle approach and grappled for a while. This, I feel, was not quite as much fun to watch, but then again, our boyfriends already flirt with each other so much that I suppose they don't need any more encouragement.

Did I mention that our household is rather weird? No? Well it is. I'm not sure how my other flatemate copes really.

Welp, I think that's the outing rather neatly summerised. I hope you enjoyed the tale.

Mint, out.