Rachel's Place

Have I told you lately

2009-11-08T01:40:00.000-08:00

So, it's been a little while. It wasn't supposed to be, I had this great blog post all planned, had taken all the pictures and uploaded them. I was going to show you my beautiful house.

Then I opened a letter from my landlord telling me that he would be moving back into it, and therefore I couldn't renew my lease in February, but if I wanted to move out sooner than that, I could (I sensed an undercurrent of, we'd love it if you moved out sooner, then we could move back in sooner).

Then there didn't seem a lot of point in showing off my beautiful house to you, since it had suddenly been impressed upon me how very much it wasn't mine!

Good news is, I think I have found somewhere else, not nearly as beautiful, but a lot more sensible, and dare I say it, slightly bigger. So expect a blog post in a few weeks along the same lines. For now, I will post the pictures, since it does show you what can be accomplished with a relatively small space.

This is my main living area. Why yes, everything is from Ikea, why do you ask?

My seating area, right by the conservatory, which makes it a little cold, but great on a warmer or even just sunshiny day, because the sun streams in through the conservatory roof.

My uber-small kitchen. One thing about my new flat is that it has a much bigger kitchen, and I can't wait!

The fridge magnets were largely all collected on various trips to Boston, Cape Cod, Charlottesville and D.C.

I'll definitely miss this room :( At least my tool box and fan can find a better home in my bigger flat.

Hopefully soon I'll be able to show off my new flat, which is nowhere near as nice, but is bigger (separate kitchen, something I've never had in my own place, and two bedrooms). Although I'll be giving up my garden, I will be near to town, and have a library and grocery shops on my doorstep. I am slightly worried however about the fact that I will be living inordinately close to a yarn shop. good thing I'm banned from starting any new projects until the Christmas knitting is done...

uh-oh, I've been shopping

2009-09-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

I have had a lovely day so far today. I went into town quite early to get some errands done, and then do a little light shopping. I was good and did my errands first, then it was off to look for christmas project yarn. It didn't start off well, I went to John Lewis first, and was singularly unimpressed by everything I could see. If I saw the kind of yarn I liked, I was totally unimpressed by the colour range. If I liked the colours, it was the wrong weight (too thick, so no knitting two strands together), or the yarn felt nasty. In the end I ended up coming out with these:

The latter looks black, but is actually a really nice dark green, the yarn is an odd construction though, it almost looks braided. It's made from alpaca, merino and a tiny bit of nylon. Not sure what I'm making from it yet though ;-).

After that I went looking for hair adornments, and found an ace little shop with lots; bought these for under £5 altogether - bit better than the high street shops!

since I dyed my hair blonde, I didn't really have hair things that suited it, they were all black or dark brown. So that is now rectified!

I also restocked on coffee, if you are ever in Norwich, visit the tea and coffee place on the top floor of Castle Mall, and in particular, get the Rich Hazelnut blend, it's amazing. Even more so with cinnamon sugar.

My final purchase of the day (or so I thought) was these adorable little buttons, 5p each. How could I not?!

Pic's a little blurry, sorry. The plain green is the underside. Don't have a project to use them for yet, but am definitely getting on the way to starting my own button jar since the heirloom one of my mum's seems to have disappeared (she thinks she threw it away. I tried hard not to be mad in case she finds it). These are from the new haberdashery in Jarrolds; definitely don't make the trip for yarn, it's cheap acrylic, but the buttons bit is very well stocked ;-)

After all that, I went via the deli near St Andrews church and bought a slice of pizza (it was pizza or cake. Very close call. I reminded myself I needed protein), then had great fun rifling through a vintage clothing sale. I so nearly bought a green dress which was from C&A (remember them?!) back in the 70s by the look of it! It was £15 though, very cheap for what it was, but I decided I should quit whilst I was ahead as I wasn't actually drooling over it or anything.

Then I drove via Norfolk Yarn on the way home to see if I could find what I was looking for there. Turns out I couldn't, but whilst looking I accidently bought:

I was really pleased to find the Noro Cash Iroha, I haven't been able to find it online here, plus it was on sale, half price! One skein is a different die lot, you can probably tell, so if I'm using all 4 balls for one project I will alternate that in row by row. The other two are destined to become shawl type things I think.

I still need to get yarn to do some fair isle projects, but silly me forgot to take the book with me...

Planning to spend the remainder of the day drinking tea and surfing the net / knitting whilst watching Ally McBeal to clear out my sky plus box!

Birthday tomorrow

2009-08-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday tomorrow, and for the second year in a row, not only have I made no plans whatsoever, I am working on my birthday for the second year in a row also. Why would I do this to myself? I who never had to go to school on my birthday and swore never to work on my birthday?

Birthdays have ceased to have any meaning for me, but I realised that this is due to the fact that I am not doing anything special for them! Treat them like any other day and they will become that way. Sadly my working on my birthday is for the same reason as last year; I just started a temp job and haven't accrued enough holiday to take a holiday day - the holiday I have accrued is allocated to the bank holiday monday which I have no choice but to not work. Sigh, I miss permanent work and paid holidays!

I am however going to a good friend's wedding on Saturday which I'm very much looking forward to, so will pretend it's my birthday party ha ha.

In other news, my new job, which I have not posted about as I'm not allowed to say too much about it (unless I want to get fired anyway), is very wierd. It feels like an unnecessary made up job, and I spend most of my time trying to scrabble enough made up work together to make it to the end of the day without actively sitting there reading a book or knitting. I'm used to working flat out, 9 til 5 (or the equivalent), with very little down time, not flat out down time with very little work. It's just leading me to wish I was able to work full time from home, and somehow I have to try to make this happen. Plus then I can get a dog or some cats ;-)

The Trikke - how cool is this?

2009-07-22T04:50:00.000-07:00

So I'm bored and feeling not well on the internet today - but how cool is this?!

The Trikke

I want one!

I'm guessing it wouldn't be good for riding on the roads round here though. And obviously I have no money, so wouldn't be getting one anytime soon. Definitely looks fun though, I wonder if there's anywhere I can have a go on one!

Frugality

2009-07-22T02:14:00.001-07:00

In this time of enforced unemployment, I find myself reading online posts about money, saving it, and frugality, and how the key to paying debts and saving money is spending less than you earn.

Well, durr. But of course this common sense advice is somewhat problematic when you aren't actually earning any money and have ever dwindling savings. However, ever optimistic that I will find a job very soon, I am trying to live by this more than ever. I have a ton of food in the house which should last me at least another week. I haven't left the house since Monday and won't need to, so the car can stay almost empty of petrol until i get a call to go to an interview, and have had three no-spend days in a row. This may actually be a record for me, and I'm wondering how many days I can go. Admittedly I have only one egg left and no milk / only a tiny bit of soya milk, but that's all I've nearly run out of. I've been scouring my recipe books for soup recipes before my veggies walk out of the fridge on their own, and I'm hoping murphys law will dictate that me cooking nice hot soups will end the rainy days we've been having and bring summer back!

job hunt

2009-07-20T02:01:00.000-07:00

Job hunting sucks. Really really sucks. Unless you are already in a job it's about the most soul-destroying thing there is.

My last job ended due to someone returning from maternity leave early which sucked; I didn't particularly like the job (it was in an area of law that I hadn't worked in previously, and would be glad never to work in again, without going into too many details.) but it was guaranteed money every week, my boss, although difficult to work for, was at the same time, nice to work for. He was a nice guy, which is something of a novelty for me, boss-wise, without going into details, but difficult as he was perpetually behind and very disorganised. From what I could tell, on the days he was in the office he spent the entire day on the internet. So anyway, I had been applying for other things, but nothing doing.

I'm getting a few interviews and getting put forward for things with the agencies I have signed up with but most of these are temp jobs, albeit long term, which is not ideal in many ways, but my own applications? Not even getting a response at the moment. And I know it's not the quality of my applications, that's the kind of thing I tend to be good at, but the problem is the sheer volume of people with my skillset looking for work. And I'm guessing some of them, have vocational qualifications that I don't (a degree in my line of work isn't necessary. and there are no jobs in my line of work requiring a degree currently being advertised in this area, good ole credit crunch). It puts me between a rock and a hard place. I need to get vocational qualifications to do the things I can already do to prove I can do them, or I need to do postgrad study to get better graduate level jobs. Neither of which I can afford to do. So all I can do is...keep applying, and keep hassling the agencies!

It's not that I regret moving down here, I really don't, and if I had stayed put where I was, I would be out of a job now anyway because the firm I was working for lost their contract. But yeah, all in all sucky.

In an ideal world I would be making money from music, but I've not managed that yet (admittedly I've not tried very hard), and I'm pretty sure I don't have the stamina to gig constantly, unless I can train myself out of not being a night person somehow.

Wow, what a rambly post. Sorry!

Date weekend

2009-07-14T01:50:00.000-07:00

So this weekend, I was bored, needed cheering up, so decided to take myself out on a date. I would have found someone else to take me on a date, but frankly, I don't know anyone dateworthy nearby me yet. I'm sure they are there, I just have to find them. But in the meantime, I've never been particularly bothered by taking myself out alone. When I had more money than I do now, I took myself on holiday a lot because I didn't see why I should have to forego seeing places just because I would have to walk into a bar or restaurant alone.

That said, man was I a bad date to myself. I researched where I would go (it was to be a lunch date), picking a place which I knew had nice food, and had acoustic music on o a Saturday afternoon. Plus I also wanted to check it out to as I wanted to play at this place in the future. So I drove down there, walked in, realised I saw no signs of any music set up. Asked at the bar. They said 'no music today, the guy cancelled on us'. Bad thing number one. I discussed it with myself, decided to have a quick (non-alcoholic) drink, then to find somewhere else to go. I decided to try another cafe I had heard about, so I headed up there, stopping to window shop along the way. Got to cafe number two, not that busy considering it was lunchtime. Should have been an indicator considering the fact that other places were very busy. Walked in, got table. Read menu, wasn't overly impressed. Was hungry. Ordered falafel. It wasn't great. Music was ok, but not great. I didn't have any reading material with me (I forgot to pick up my book before I left the house, and I wanted to pick up Anna Karenina in town cheap, but couldn't find one. So I ended up eating very untasty falafel (it was the worst falafel I've ever had - and tasted really fatty. How can that be? It's basically crushed chickpeas for goodness sake! Apparently they forgot to add any kind of flavouring to it) and ok but dull salad, whilst reading the paper.

I don't want to post the name of this place, because it's possible I caught them on a bad day, and I have genuinely heard good things about this place. But yeah, not a good date. I should have stayed home, had beans on toast and watched a dvd.

On the plus side, I did manage to find Anna Karenina for £2 in Borders a couple of days later, thank you Borders!

PS Today is the errrr...17th anniversary of the first time I saw my favourite band live. I think this means I am getting old. It also means I've been graduated for a year. Must start actually putting that degree to some use.

itchy itchy

2009-07-03T04:30:00.000-07:00

This beautiful weather we are having has one downside (at least living where I do) - bugs. In particular, the thunder fly. I went for a walk down to the Broad this morning, and within five minutes I felt my scalp itching, then looked at my arms and I was covered in those little blighters! I continued on with my walk anyway (in this current period of unemployment, I am trying to keep myself occupied and have some semblance of a routine. Plus it's pretty), but I'm still finding the things on me!

Unfortunately this beautiful weather struck me down with a migraine the last couple of days, so I was none too happy, and have been staying in doors for much of the day as a result (sunlight not good for the ouchness).

I did have a job interview on Wednesday for a sales position, and I was somewhat sold on it, but given a few days time to think I'm thinking my initial skeptical viewpoint was probably the right one. Something about the whole thing just didn't sit right with me. Mainly I wouldn't have wanted to work for a company playing the kind of music they were playing at too loud a volume to assist any form of working (I'm also thinking this was contributing to my migraine). Let's hope something else will come up soon! I should definitely start on the novel otherwise...

Off the starting blog

2009-06-30T22:35:00.001-07:00

Hello and welcome to my humble abode. Pull up a virtual chair/cushion/beanbag, grab a coffee or other such beverage and make yourself comfortable. Sorry about the mess, I'm intending to get to it today, I've been a little procrastinatory lately.

This week I have been mainly job hunting (oh how that is beginning to be a major user up of my time, with very little fruitful result so far), watching Wimbledon, re-reading the Time Travellers Wife (which it turns out I completely forgot the ending of, and absolutely cried buckets. How could I forget that?!) and knitting. Except it is too hot to knit. I have a summer sweater (Hey Teach!) that I need to finish off before our oh so short summer ends, and I have to put it away til next summer, but it is physically too hot to have it on my lap for much of the day, so that's when the socks come out. Three different socks (which patterns I hear you ask? Jaywalker, using Regia, I forget which colourway (you will need a Ravelry account to view that last one, but if you don't have one, get one (if you are a knitter or crocheter anyway), it's the most awesome site ever), Uptown boot socks from Favorite Socks - seriously, this is my favourite sock knitting book ever - well, until I can afford to get Cookie A's new book, which I suspect will become my go-to book), and a plain sock knitted in Opal's Lupin colourway from the Harry Potter range (I so should have bought more of that whilst it was available and I was gainfully employed).

Whilst knitting, I have also been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7. I actually don't like the final season of Buffy at all (I actually don't like much of the latter seasons of Buffy, mainly because I can't stand Dawn, there's no David Boreanaz to look at, and it's even sillier than earlier seasons. That said, my favourite episode ever is the musical episode Once More With Feeling), but there is part of me that must watch things in progression.

What else. Well, I feel I can't post without writing about Michael Jackson. Other than the ownership of Thriller and liking a few of his 80s offerings, and the Jackson Five, I have never been a fan. In fact I have never really understood the fandom that surrounds him, and couldn't comprehend people paying insane prices to see him at the O2 concerts. When I found out that he had passed away, I was shocked certainly, because it's always a shock when someone goes before their time, but I wasn't sad. But as time has gone on, and more of his videos are shown on tv, and as he's filling up the charts with his back catalogue and videos (I believe his videos are curently filling up the top 20 positions in itunes video chart), I have been increasingly sad and teary. In the media commentaries it has been likened to the Princess Diana effect, and I definitely see a part of that. I feel sad that he wasn't happy with himself or in control of his life, despite all he tried to surround himself with to make him happy. I guess it's proof that money cannot buy happiness. It can however buy extreme amounts of painkillers to dumb any awareness of discontentment.

Aside from all that I recognise that he was responsible for leaving us with an insanely good body of music, he did transcend racial boundaries, and these are things that I never appreciated during his lifetime. These are things I hope he was proud of, and that he is now at peace with himself.