Highly Strung

Due to the fact that I’m not getting any younger, I recently purchased two new and relatively spenny products.  They are Boots protect and perfect and Clinique Anti-Age spf 25 Moisturiser.  At a combined cost of £50, they aint cheap, however the good news is – they work.

I’ve not been religious about applying the Protect and Perfect, you’re supposed to do it morning and night, but I reckon that’s just a marketing ploy to get you to use it faster anyway.  I do use the Clinique stuff everyday though and I’m happy to report one or both of these products is actually working.  My skin is looking better than it has in years.  I do think the lines around my eyes are less prominent now.  And last night a friend who is known for being brutally honest was surprised when I reminded him that I’m 36, he actually thought I was a good few years younger – hooray!

The effects of these products has been somewhat negated today by a yucky hangover, lets just call it an off day though.

For some reason a lot of people switch the letters in my name round. So for example when I called the hairdressers to change the time of my appointment, the lady who answered said, your name? When I answered Kirses*, she said, Krises?? No, I replied, Kirses. She repeated, Krises?? At which point I nearly caved and agreed my name was Krises. However it’s not my name and what if a Krises was also having an appointment there that day? Chaos!

* it’s actually Kirstin, it’s definitely not Kristin and I’m a little fed up of people correcting my pronounciation of my own name.

Nothing induces a bad dose of work day inertia like a hot sunny day just visible through the window.  If only I had won the lottery last Saturday, I’d be lying by a pool by now with a stack of novels on one side of my lounger and fruity cocktail on the other.  Occasionally a subtle minion would glide past and mist me with invisible sunscreen while a second minion alights to press a frozen grape into the palm of my hand.

Instead I’m stuck in here after a bad night sleep responding to the question of why exactly one particular PDF document from the website will not display on the centuries old laptop a colleague uses at home.

The answer my friends is this; it works on everyone elses as does every other PDF doc I have tried on the damn thing.  I can find no reason why it doesn’t on this piece of shit.

My colleague persists – but why?, she asks.  Inside I answer; I don’t know and I don’t care, outside I am at a loss for words.   I eventually mutter something about the magic inside having died a little, specifically the magic that controls PDF displays on that particular document.

The Boyf and I went to a wedding party on Saturday and encountered the sister of the bride (age 25), later on int he evening.  I’m not sure why but during the course of conversation it came up that she had met a man called Simon Le Bon at party and the reason she knew of him was because he was married to Yasmin Le Bon.

‘Um’, said I, ‘not because he was the lead singer of Duran Duran then?’  Turns out she had never heard of Duran Duran – I mean really though?  Really?

This is surely as a result of her ignorance of music in general than because she is soooo much younger than me, isn’t it?

This weekend I require some sunshine- which I want to sit in! Next weekend I am wearing this particularly short and saucy dress – so I need colour.  I will wear sunscreen.

It’s way, way early because I’m not available until November, but I’ve just applied for a job which would be perfect for me. It’s within the field of web in the Higher education sector. The application form was so comprehensive that I wasn’t required to send a CV with it. It was like writing an essay about my present skills and past experience. It was quite a useful exercise really – I’ll definitely be using it as a crib sheet for the next time I attend an interview. Although I have a savings plan for 3 months worth of living expenses to carry me over a job hunting period, I would dearly love to have a job sorted before I take off to New Zealand for a month in October. As for whether they’ll invite me to interview I guess that depends on whether or not they would be prepared to wait 4 months for me…

..and one of mine is buying clothes.

Last Sunday I popped into a local shop to try on a beautiful bright green maxi dress I had seen a few weeks ago.  It had been on my mind for some time, but i’d hesitated to try it on due to what I regarded as an extreme cost.  So I tried it on, and it was very pretty, particularly with the wee tan I have (peeling as we speak).  The shop assistants were terribly keen to sell it to me, telling me it was beautiful on me etc etc.  They tried such a hard sell that I was forced to tell them that I thought it was too expensive for what it was.  However I then spent an overly long time on Sunday evening googling the dress without actually finding one in the same amazing colour or indeed any at a cheaper price.  Long story short I ended up cycling home from work really fast on Monday evening and popping back into the shop to buy it…  and yes, they did remember me, goddamnit!

Same dress here but in a pattern instead of the lovely green.  In order to justify my purchase i’m ebaying another maxi dress I’ve never worn which cost about the same, you can see it here.

Now all I need is some decent weather so I can wear the damn thing.

This weekend the Boyf and I will be attending the Smithfield Nocturne.  It will be our third year and unfortunately the weather is looking none too good, but we’re hoping it won’t be as bad as the first one we attended in which we were caught in a downpour of epic proportions;

Thankfully we’ll at least be under cover this time, especially since I’ve just seen this:

Yesterday I rode up Hornsey Rise (quite a hill at the end of a long day), behind a guy cycling very slowly.  Normally I like to ride as fast as I can up this hill, my theory being that the pain wont last as long if I do so.  This time though I stayed behind this slow fella and slowly ploughed my way up the hill and guess what?  I could breathe when I got to the top, a marked contrast to the breathlessness I usually feel.

So I had a think about this and the fact is that my natural impatience makes me want things to be done and dusted as soon as possible.  I dislike unknowns and therefore the sooner I can make them knowns, the better I feel.  Applying it to this case – I hate not knowing what I will feel like when I reach the top, but slowing down and delaying that knowledge actually leads to a better outcome.

So then I had a longer think and applied the same theory to a dramatic turn of events I experienced over the weekend (Boyf related), and figured out that if I had been more patient and taken things more slowly instead of wanting things to immediately be resolved one way or another there is a strong possibility there would have been a better result.  That’s not to say I’m entirely to blame, but it is to say that I could definitely do with adjusting my approach.

It’s lovely – but I am sooo sunburnt – I am an idiot