The Special People Club

First one to send me some Necco Sweetheart Conversation Hearts wins my eternal love. Seriously. I wouldn't joke about something like this.

I feel better, but I'm sleepy, my washing machine is leaking so I need to call a plumber sometime soon, and I am having difficulty concentrating on my stupid revising. Instead I'm watching The Producers. I need to stop immediately and find my intellectual curiosity. It's around here somewhere.

It's been a slow few days here. This cold I have, well, it's getting better but I still make a rattly /wheezy noise if I exhale deeply, which is, I think, not good. I spent the weekend in bed hoping to kick this thing out of my system. Which meant very little internet time and not nearly enough studying. Curse you, long naps! It is a busy week at work. Made busier by the nagging of internal "customers" with urgent needs that have nothing to do with the deadlines I have to meet this week. One deadline is an internal deadline, so I guess I'll cut them some slack. But the rest of them are just plain pesky ratsos . (Why is fatso in the spell check but ratso isn't?) They're painting our offices, as well, so each day I sit in the cold caused by the open windows. It smells like paint anyway, so perhaps we'd be better off just shutting them and staying warm. Today I had to answer all the phones for my team because everyone was out for the day except me and M

1. Touch Me With Your Love - Beth Orton 2. Drug Soup - Space Monkeys 3. 69 El Camino - Southern Culture On the Skids 4. London's Brilliant Parade - Elvis Costello 5. We've Only Just Begun - Grant Lee Buffalo 6. Red Clay Halo - Gillian Welch 7. New Round - Beck 8. The Jessica Numbers - The New Pornographers 9. Calling it Quits - Aimee Mann 10. Working on a Building - Bad Livers

I love it when Charlotte starts dating Harry. Harrys are EXACTLY what we Charlottes need.

If you ask me, evil has a look about it.

Lucky me. Too many late nights and a weekend in the cold, damp air have felled me with an evil sinus infection. This is the color of things coming out of my nose and lungs . Call me a hypochondriac, but that just ain't right. My head is fuzzy, I feel barfy, and the sides of my nose are painful to the touch. And the damn swans are back on the pond. Talk about a harbinger of doom.

These week-long sessions are an endurance test, I tell you. It's positively painful to sit still by noon on Friday, and there are still a full six sessions to go. By Saturday morning, you lose the will to live. Regardless of the engaging banter of the lecturer or the scintillating nuances of the topic. All in all it was a good week. Really pleased with my electives, reconnected with my friends, had dinner at a perfectly acceptable chinese restaurant last night (who knew we had one in MK) AND rode a giant ferris wheel in the middle in the freezing night air with a brisk wind rocking our gondola, as well. Must sleep now.

until I am home watching television without a pressing case study nagging me for attention. I've gone from a leisurely break of novel-reading and Eastenders -watching straight into hyperdrive on the MBA. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled with my classes. I'm intellectually challenged. I'm excited about the entrepreneurship project, and have forged some solid working teams for the term. But what's wrong with easing a poor sap into this torture? Must we be unceremoniously dropped into the thick of things? I'm exhausted. I've given up on makeup. I've made it to the gym a few times this week but have gone to bed with wet hair because I'm too tired to dry it. Which means I wake up with a strangely tangled helmet of curls that cannot be repaired, and end up with my hair pulled back all day. I'm pulling ill-fitting crap out of my closet and calling it an outfit because I don't have time to do laundry. To think that, only a week ago, I looked w

I have returned relative unscathed from my weekend in The Great Outdoors. Things I've learned this weekend: Survival Skill #1: When your packing list demands waterproof trousers, thick wool socks, torches with spare batteries and other seldom-used items, it is best to pack the night before. Trying to throw your case together at 430pm when you're due to meet someone at the train station at 5 is unwise. Survival Skill #2: If you're speaking to someone with a thick accent, don't respond to their sentences until you've verified you actually understood them. Survival Skill #3: Sat nav is a necessity in the UK. But turn the volume down or the voice will freak you out when you've been on the motorway for awhile in silence, and you'll come perilously close to swerving into the guardrail when you flinch in surprise. Survival Skill #4: If the hotel is located at the top of a steep hill with a large flight of stairs at the end, don't pack a duffel bag. And when yo

The nice lady on BBC Breakfast in the ill-fitting, much-too-trendy outfit tells me that we're going to be plagued with "a rash of Squally Downpours." I've found my new "Alberta Clipper," baby. I'll be repeating that phrase with every 80mph wind gust. It kicks " Windstorm 95 's" ass. But then again, what doesn't. And Soni, didn't you go to high school with his cousin, Gusty Crosswinds?

Are you always looking for ways to unsettle your friends and neighbours? Do others find you annoying, but not quite annoying enough? Or do you just have some extra money burning a hole in your pocket after the holiday season? Then maybe this is for you. It's a new year. Make some resolutions.

When I come home, I bring all sorts of things for folks hankerin' for a bit of the UK...PG Tips, Marmite, meat flavour potato chips, Cadbury Roses and Crunchie bars....and then I use the spare space in my luggage to bring back things I miss and can't get here. Things such as: Ziploc Bags. Real ones that actually seal. Quart size, gallon size. Regular and freezer. Zipper seal bags suck here. (I've also started bringing Glad Press and Seal, as well. If the Brits saw that stuff, their heads would implode.) Peanut Butter. The only one I've found that has no sugar or oil is the consistancy of grout (and tastes about like it, too.) There are lots of flavourless ones that have salt and palm oil available here, or you can buy a jar of Skippy that's about the size for a camping trip or a week at the cabin and spend about $6. All in all, best to bring some back. Pickles. We've been over the fact that even kosher dills seem to be in a sweetish brine here. Pleh. Penzey

CP and Katie Schwartz are obsessing about the Born Again Kristian who played Blair on Facts of Life. She always got the attention. Her or her tomboy nemesis/friend, Jo. I say give Natalie (aka Mindy Cohn) some airtime. click here . or buy this . Or join this . Or go here , but don't click on the fan site link because it doesn't work. By the way, why don't I have Mindyheads? I'm chubby. I'm loveable and a bit offbeat. Sure, I wasn't a child star, but I could have been if I'd just found my big break. I had a lisp, for pete's sake.

1. With Arms Outstretched - Rilo Kiley 2. Mongoloid - Devo 3. Deathly - Aimee Mann 4. Devil's Haircut - Odelay 5. Bandstand Boogie - Barry Manilow (yeah!) 6. Pacific Street - Hem 7. The Word - Prince 8. One September Day - Nina Simone 9. Is That Love - Squeeze 10. Morning After - The Meat Purveyors

That nice ginger, Bradley, has been corrupted by the posh girls of the City and dumped his trashy-rough-around-the-edges-but-heart-of-gold girlfriend, Stacey Slater. Stacey, in her upset, was easily seduced by his slick ginger daddy, Max. Who has a lovely wife who will kick his sorry ass out of the house if he doesn't watch himself. Stacey is, of course back to her old carelessly spiteful ways. Sonja gave the evil Pauline a slap on Christmas, and now Pauline has dropped dead. (Literally. On a walk through the square to make up with Martin and Sonja.) Little Rebecca saw Sonja do it, and she told Dot. Dot called the police during the funeral, and now Martin thinks Sonja killed his mother and has taken Rebecca away from her. Sonja was arrested, but Phil offered her a flash lawyer to help her and she is now out uncharged. Martin is very angry and won't speak to her. A policeman just showed up with bad news, but not sure what. Somehow, Honey is now hugging Petal/Janet and she and

I hadn't gotten my casepacks before I went home for the holidays, so I stopped by on Friday afternoon so I could look at them over the weekend. Unfortunately, they weren't in my pigeonhole and I had to wait until yesterday. Took a look at them last night, and OH MY I have a lot to do. Case studies and about 500 pages of reading for Entrepreneurship. Spreadsheets and reading for Finance. Reading and more reading for Globalisation. I've gone from holiday to intensely swamped in about three seconds. I have a test in a month. I have a paper due on March 16th. I have more projects on my plate than I can shake a stick at. And I thought the Outward Bound retreat was bad.

We start Term 2 on Friday. It begins with an Outward Bound - style retreat in Derbyshire, which means I'll be stomping around in the Peak District in the rain. Or maybe snow, as it's supposed to be about -10C next weekend. It is the kickoff of part two of OBPPD , so I wonder what it will tell me about myself? I'm suspecting it will tell me that I'm a whinger who hates cold weather. CP has a friend who once sent her boyfriend on a Outward Bound retreat because she wanted him to propose and thought he needed to get serious about his life and get in touch with what he really wanted. When she picked him up at the airport after his time in the wilderness, he told her they needed to talk. He wanted something else out of life and broke up with her. She asked OB for a refund. That sounds about right.

Clowns, you still suck. You're unnecessary , you bastards. You don't even eat mosquitoes , which is what people tell me to justify bats. Eating mosquitoes means bats might be scary, but at least they have a reason to exist. If you're a bat with a clown face, I'll cut you some slack...you're terrifying, but you net to positive. Otherwise, knock it off.

When I got my hair cut, my stylist Amy encouraged me to stop at Heavenly Soles and buy some cute little skull barrettes to place in my stylish new hair. This would be cool, but I didn't have time to go get them. I might head to the Chelsea market this weekend because there will surely be some good skull barrettes there. But tonight when I was at the Tesco buying juice and bacon (in anticipation of more jetlag eating,) I happened into the hair accessories aisle and decided that, until I get to Chelsea, pink little Barbie barrettes will suffice.

Why do I take night flights? I hate them. They seem to bring out the rudeness in passengers. I can never, ever sleep . And I seem to be physically incapable of adjusting to my new timezone when I get back. I have very little problem when I go west or take day flights. It's the damn Europe overnight return that causes me the trouble. Plus it is all compounded by the emotional exhaustion of worrying about my dad as he's going through chemo. And then there are the raging hormones/emotions/bloating/cramps caused by horrifically timed PMS. It sucks being me. While I've been up in the middle of the night, I've watched Memento , undecorated my Christmas tree, done many dishes, strewn the contents of my suitcase all over my guest bedroom (but haven't actually put them away,) learned basic Spanish on an educational cable show, picked up and reshelved my CD collection after running into the rack and knocking them all on the floor, read three back issues of the Economist,

Funny how, approximately one year ago I was posting about the same damn thing . It's those stupid night flights. If it weren't for those missionaries I could have slept, I tell you. Instead I'm on the couch listening to the birds chirp (they usually start about 3 and go hog wild for a few hours,) and watching an old episode of Monarch of the Glen .

Listen up, clowns. You're creepy and you smell funny. No one likes you. Seriously. NO ONE, not even jugglers and mimes. Go away. Jerks.

As we gear up towards another season of American Idol, We Judge the Idols is back! It's only two weeks away, kids!

Happy New Year! I hope that you all had glorious holidays. After my last entry, I decided to dedicate myself to having a good time with my family. I travelled to Minneapolis a few days ahead of my parents with the intent to move my things from storage at my friend Timmy's to a POD, but that was thwarted by my European bank account...seems they prefer to rent to people with a US account, or at least I couldn't find anyone willing to help me figure out a way around this. So, plan aborted, I had a nice dinner with my friend Tim at Punch ( Meryl Streep's favourite pizza place!), I got to have a lazy day with KB&D, do a little shopping, and got my hair cut (I now look EXACTLY like my avatar, except real). Extra bonus...I got to chat with Soni at Maude because she had scheduled an appointment for the same time. It has become our tradition that she (and my friend Anne if she's around) come to Maude and we have our own little version of Barbershop. Soni even bro