Life is good

The last couple of days I have been in an insanely good mood.

The first reason is that despite accidentally eating three chocolate chip scones on one evening last week and finishing off a rather tasty tuna pasta bake (both made by my own fair hand), when I weighed myself yesterday I found I had lost another five pounds. So now I have lost a total of 12 pounds in six weeks, which is pretty bitchin' news as far as I'm concerned. I've still got a long way to go (think in the region of another two and a half stone) until I'm where I ought to be, but it's going really well.

One disconcerting side effect - my jeans have gone baggy in some seriously weird places. For example, there are these big saggy areas where my pockets are. Makes me a little concerned that I obviously must have had unsightly bulges there, but hey. 12 pounds! That's nearly a stone!

Reason number two - me and my other half have booked a little jaunt (accidentally typed haunt there to begin with, now that would make a completely different story) to Barcelona. Not only have I never visited the city before, I've never even been to Spain! Wow, I must be excited because I'm really overusing the exclamation marks (as far as I'm concerned, one is too many in almost every situation). Have bought a little guide book and have been salivating over pictures of Barcelona Cathedral, the Sagrada Familia and other cool stuff. Plus I keep daydreaming about tapas. Mmmmm. Anyway, we're going for four days at the end of the month and our hotel has a website and everything so it shouldn't be too much of a shithole.

Reason number three - I went to my local leisure centre on Friday to check out the new gym equipment for the paper I work for and it's ace. You can plug yourself in and watch neighbours at the same time as the person next to you is sweating over Celebrity Fat Club. I love new stuff, I'm a bit keen on gadgets generally.

Reason number four - about two years ago my brother sent me the most frustrating present in the world - a £10 note trapped inside a strange container controlled by magnets. Despite numerous attempts by me, OH and several others, no-one has had any success in getting it open. We were on the verge of getting out a chainsaw and destroying the bloody thing when we discovered it had a web address on the back. We looked it up and low and behold, it had instructions! I actually wanted to kill my brother when I found out how bloody easy it was to get into (he refused pointblank to tell me, just uttering some mumbo jumbo about magnets). So I have taken out the £10, spent it, and replaced it with a picture of me at a wedding when I accidentally popped out of my dress due to slightly enthusiastic dance manoeuvres. Ha. And no, I'm not posting that picture.

Reason number five - my best uni friend has returned from a month schlepping around Thailand (don't really know what schlepping means, but I like the sound of it. Is it to do with Schwepps?) and has decided there's more to life than writing up golden weddings and captions for cheque presentations (she too is on the local paper bandwagon) and has taken redundancy. So there is going to be a big party in Cornwall at the end of the month.Yay!

Reason number six - saw a couple of episodes of Lost from the second series - both of which include an awful lot of Sawyer being mean and not wearing very much. Mmmm. It probably is wrong to lust so much after someone who is clearly so bad, but fear not, in real life I go for nice men. Generally speaking.

Anyway, I think that's reason enough to be in a good mood. Oh I also managed to go out and have quite a lot of drinks last night and still get up for gym this morning with no hangover. I rock.

I was looking up something randomly on a French website the other day (I think it was a recipe) and I came across the phrase Putain de Geek. Which literally means Whore of Geek. Oh yes. On a French recipe site, I only wish I knew what the rest of it was about. I'm thinking of changing my name.

I am still seeking a better nickname for my other half, as Surly Girl has already patented Other Half. Some useful facts which may help you come up with something - he is an archaeologist (I can hear your envy, Patroclus, almost always says exactly the opposite of what he means and comes from the flat plains of Lincolnshire. He is also at least a foot taller than me.

More on that story later.