10 Things

For the past three hours the alarm in my office has been going off. Very, very loudly. So as a result everyone has a headache and we have learnt the teamwork of calling to get it fixed and to use storage bags and sellotape to muffle the sounds. I woke up this morning in a pretty good mood and in an effort to regain it here is a list of things that are currently making me smile!

1. The fact that my best friend, Violet, is driving here tonight to celebrate her birthday with me for the weekend, and with a big group of us tomorrow night in town.
2. The sun is shining, even if the sky isn't exactly blue and we are closer now to summer than we were yesterday.
3. The two volcano-spot monsters that have been parked on my chin for the past fortnight have cleared up.
4. I have with, one lunchtime of exception, been vegan for 2 weeks and 3 days. I am trying it for Lent and so far am enjoying it. (On reflection, I wonder if this may have been a contributing cause of number three happpening)
5. Alice In Wonderland is released today! I'm not going until next week with friends so will be dodging spoilers and too much discussion until then.
6. The prospect of getting actual mail. I just found out about and joined Postcrossing and I am looking forward sending and receiving postcards all around the world!
7. Matthew Gray Gubler's episode of Criminal Minds. It was perfect, it fit with the story-telling method that we are used to with the show but at the same time he put his aesthetic and emotional imprint on the episode. Plus it had Beth Grant, Amy Cusack and Bud Cort in it, there were lots of little homages to horror movies and Harold and Maude and there was an element of Carnivale in there too. There was even a cast member, Felix 'Stumpy' Dreyfuss himself (otherwise know as Toby Huss)! The Gube, what a guy x
8. Since we are on the subject, Carnivale makes me happy...in a melancholy, tragic involving way.
9. Strawberries, especially free ones! (They were offered round at work) Makes me long for summer when I can go to the farm near my parents house and do the whole pick-your-own thing. Fresh, juicy and warmed by the sun strawberries, mmmmmmmnn,
10. Did I mention I am getting to see the most awesome woman in the world this weekend?
Hope you all (by which I mean anyone who happens to come by this, my little fraction of the internet) have fantastic weekends whatever your plans may be! I'd love to hear about them :-)

A Little List

So here are some things I love:-

• Biffy Clyro
  

• Starting to learn to make my own clothes so I can attempt rather than pointlessly admire so much of the clothes I see on the Internet.

1 & 2 Modcloth - www.modcloth.com

• Lilacs. They're blooms signify the arrival of spring to me, and everything from their colour to their smell make me smile. When I was a child we lived in a house with a big lilac tree which I could climb and I spent days up in it's branches reading, dreaming and watching the neighbourhood. My one request when we moved house? A lilac tree. Which I didn't get.
  

3 http://www.countryliving.com/outdoor/expert-gardening-tips-and-advice/lilac-bushes-pruning
4 berrimbillah - http://www.flickr.com/photos/8252200@N03/2914521324/
5 Peezy of Jael - http://www.flickr.com/photos/peezybeezy/3608791544/
6 Linda Groendal - http://www.samfur.us/spring_flower_art_prints/lilac_flower_rustic_art/

• Anais Nin's journals, I'm reading vol. 5 at the moment and they are the most beautiful inspiring books. I have scraps of paper and sections of notebooks from bits which I've copied down and have drawn from. She was a glorious woman, constantly searching and honest, serene and giving. Nin writes not about the mundane goings on in her life (which I am terrible about doing in my own journal) but the intricacies of her interactions and attachments to the people in her life, the nature of her own needs and demands and the development of the new style of writing she developed.

7 bakroots - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakroots/1479263817/

• Libraries and book stores. They are the first things I look for when I move to new place (I sometimes think I moved here because Manchester has a wonderful, large domed library in it's city centre). I have been to New York Library, the Bodleian in Oxford and the John Rylands in Manchester before the limited access to name my favourites. Bookstores are a more dangerous love, I have so many books that are on my to-read list I could shut up shop and read for the rest of my life and still not be done. I long to go to City Lights in San Francisco and Shakespeare and Co. in Paris and my answer to what would you do if you won the lottery is to move to America, buy a car and road trip using book stores as my guide and then set up shop by a beach in the Virginia/ North Carolina area and live out my days there. Grand plans I know.
  

• Lying on my bed with my legs up against the wall while listening to music

8 http://www.jackielee.freeserve.co.uk/discog5.htm

• The Fall, directed by Tarsem. This film is visually stunning and has a wonderful way of playing with the nature of story-telling, the relationship between Lee Pace and Catina Untaru is touching and wonderful and the costumes are insane. To talk about it too much would take aways it's magic but for me it was the best film of 2008.

9 http://www.projo.com/movie_reviews//lb_thefall_07-04-08_20AMAF5_v12.1ec6be9.html

• Blogs and bloglovin! Obviously I'm new at this but I have been reading blogs for years. I started with a list of bookmarks that I visited but the list became unmanageable and so I turned to bloglovin, which is so wonderful and easy especially since my internet usage moves around a lot more than it used to. Increasingly I have the confidence to comment too!

• My new membership to Cinema Paradiso! Bought as a gift by my lovely brother it seems very much like lovefilm, there are loads of films on offer including loads and loads of old movies I have always wanted to see! Speeding to me at this moment though is A Haunting in Conneticut, a modern horror starring Kyle Gallner which I haven't yet seen and An American in Paris which I watch for Gene Kelly.

10 http://marianna68.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/an-american-in-paris/