Why I wouldn't be a great journalist:

A conversation with a friend about someone I quite like:

"...and he smells really nice, I noticed that today. I almost told him, but then I stopped myself."

"You should have told him!"

"But then he'd think I was sniffing him."

"You WERE sniffing him."

"You really don't get it do you?"

It would have been weird to say, right? I can't be sure because I always manage to get things like this wrong.

The other day during a conversation with someone I had met for the first time that day, I exclaimed "Wow! You're 44? I never would have thought that!" She looked a bit surprised, then asked me how old I had thought she was, to which I replied "um... like, 41?". She frowned, everyone else we were with laughed. I don't get it, I thought people liked to be told they look younger than they are?

Generally, I find the way other people think of things quite abnormal. Particularly things regarding the news and other current affairs.

Earlier today my father came rushing into my bedroom "Stephanie, there's 5 police cars in the road! Let's look out of your window" and my reaction was "meh, if you want". There's always people getting arrested or murdered somewhere outside, I don't see why I should look. If, however, there had been a man with an interesting hat or an dog with a handsome face, I would have looked. They're nice things to see, things that you can't read about in a newspaper everyday, yet most people don't think this is worth looking at.

I liked the Royal Wedding being in the papers because it was so beautiful and happy and exciting! I didn't believe it would ever be over - it just seemed like a constant, then it happened and we were all "WOW!" and now it's gone and we're like "hmm... ooh look, someone just got stabbed and we're all going to be killed by terrorists - AWESOME!"

I am aware of these things, but I can't help thinking it's best not to get too excited about them, just ask yourself if there's anything you can do to help, if not, move on. Bad things are always going to happen, but people making lots of money from it and obsessing over other people's misery doesn't seem right to me.

Or maybe I'm the one with the abnormal view of the world?

My Day.

Hey, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to choose a town with pretty bad transport links.

I'm going to choose a very tall and inaccessible hill in this town.

This hill must - 1) go up and down a lot. 2) be at least a mile from the nearest train station. 3) have pretty reckless drivers living nearby.

I'm going to go to the top of this hill - where there is a wood - *obviously* (complete with dog shit and flashers)  and i'm going to build something there...

But what shall I build? A prison? (i mean, it would be pretty hard to escape!) a mental asylum? (ditto) maybe some offices?

NO!

I've got it! A school!

Should we open this school for the local children, i hear you ask?

NO!

Let's make it so that girls from various places across the borough and even central London can commute here!

Hooray! What i good idea! I can see no flaws in this plan at all.

Snow? Ice? What on earth do you mean? I have never heard of these before in my life...

-_-

That is all.

Oh Look! It's ME!

I haven't written a blog in ages and ages. This is because blogger was pissing me off, every time i attempted to write something, i ended up wanting to smash things up and cry. BUT you may have noticed - new blog layout! I like it a lot more like this and i love the new header. I had tried to draw a header, i drew a bunch of teddies and a little rag doll, it was cute, but trying to transfer it from paper to computer was a bit too much for me and it made even worse by the fact i have NO programmes on my computer (i'll come to that later). Anyway, as i was trying to edit the layout, i stumbled across the brand new blogger posting thingy, which is quite brilliant, so i'll write more often now. Although, I can't help thinking that blogger was trying to hide it from me. Hmmm...

Does anyone have an opinion of the new layout? Please comment, i love getting comments on here, it's very exciting, i actually squeak out loud when i see the thing that says "1 new comment".

My computer died, it was horrible but Barry fixed it. Actually he said that he *enjoyed* fixing it "it's like a giant puzzle", weirdo. Anyway, it's fixed now, just. But the only things on it are iTunes, Spotify, Google chrome (which is fantastic, much better than firefox) and skype. I can't put anything else on, like Microsoft office, because the disk drive is also broken. AHH!

I now have 2 hard drives. This is confuzzling. Anyway, as i was going through files that i didn't know i had on the old one, i discovered hundreds of things that i'd forgotten about, yesterday evening i deleted : 4 hotmail accounts, 2 wordpress accounts, a piczo account, a myspace account, a formspring account, a youtube account, a facebook account that i didn't know i had and my bebo account. Why would one person ever need that many internet accounts?! All i have left now is my Blogger account, a virgin email account, skype, spotify and a twitter one, so don't even TRY to stalk me.

Anyway, i'm in a good mood, it's half term and i only have 2 exams left before i can give up and let my brain turn to mashed potatoes until September.

Here are some other things that are causing my good mood:

Sunny weather
Tomatoes
The ridiculous amount of flowers in vases around my house
Slightly shorter hair - looks prettier, needs less brushing
New running shoes
Sewing machines
Morrisons raisin loaf cake
This song - The Wombats – Let's Dance To Joy Division
Being slightly in love with somebody who would never even look at me
This video - http://www.youtube.com/user/amazingphil?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/0/dhQItMIzzYg
My new purse - it has blue flowers on.
This coffee cup -

Words With Friends app. If you have it - i'm StephanieEllen and i WILL beat you (possibly). If you don't have it - download it, it's free and it will take over your life.
Monsters of The Deep exhibition at the Natural History Museum - EXCITED!!
You.

A Short Conversation With My Father

Me (pointing to the front of this week's Radio Times): "Is that a sheep?"

Barry: "No. It's a lamb."

Me: "it doesn't look like a sheep"

Barry: "that's because it's a lamb"

Me (pointing again): "is that a woman?"

Barry: "No. It's Kate Humble."

Me: "It looks like a sheep."

Barry: "Yes. Yes it does... i can see how this is confusing stuff for someone like you."

Quite often, usually after I've done something like turned the grill on then put food in the oven and come back in an hour not understanding what happened, or walked directly into a lamppost, Barry will look at me for a long time, sigh, then say "If YOU are in the top 5% of the country, then i have serious concerns about the future of the UK"

A Really Long Blog For A Really Long Year.

Happy New Year!!! Today, in 1801, The dwarf planet Ceres was discovered by Italian astronomer, Giuseppe Piazzi.

So, now it's 2010, i've started thinking about 2009. A lot of people i have spoken to have said that 2009 was definitely a bad year... i'm not sure, 12 months, 365 days, 8760 hours or 525600 minutes (unfortunately, i didn't have to look those numbers up or use a calculator, they're just a few of the many useless facts i have stored in my brain). Anyway, that's a long long time, especially if you're young like me, those 12 months are quite a high percentage of my life and i don't think that all of those 8760 hours can be bunched together and classed as good or bad.

Instead, i will tell you exactly what i thought of 2009 -

January and February and March.

i actually don't remember these. at all, luckily, back then i still kept a diary...
ok. i can't really read my writing but it seems that these months were boring, i went to a terrible PGL camp thing with school. I got two hamsters, Noel and Liam, who both died later in the year.
Oh, and i broke my toes.
And i can now pinpoint the exact point that i realised Twitter was great - Sunday 15th February, about 6 o'clock.
The last entry in my diary is about a suicide pact i had with my best friend.

April and May and June.

Errr... i don't remember these too well either, in fact, i'm just going to say that NOTHING of interest happened in these months.

July and August and September.

I dislocated my shoulder.
And i had exams.
And i got swine flu.
And i went to my Grandparents' house.
And i met lots of nice people from twitter.
And i made chocolate and Guinness cake.
And i had the most wonderful time with my family at the seaside.

October and November and December.

I met more lovely people from twitter.
I went on holiday and passed a SCUBA diving exam.
I was more depressed than i can ever remember being before.

Now, I think that sums up 2009 pretty well, but what about 2010?

I don't make new years resolutions, because i don't stick to them. Nobody does, really. Even the people who say they do are lying.

Instead, here is a list of some of things i would like to do in 2010:

1) Learn to play the piano well. So that when i say "i can play the piano" i won't feel like a complete liar.

2) Learn to like vegetables. and potatoes. so that i can go round to people's house for dinner without them wanting to murder me.

3) Make my handwriting readable.

4) Cry less.

5) Make at least 5 new friends.

6) Meet someone famous.

7) Follow 116 new people on twitter.

8) Meet some more of the people i talk to on twitter.

9) Spend less time on/thinking about twitter.

10) Brush my hair more often... like, at least once a week :-S

11) Smile at at least one random person each day.

12) Raise some money for charity.

13) Get a new hamster.

14) Spend less money on music.

15) Buy a new phone.

16) Read all of the books i got for Christmas.

17) Do my Latin homework. always... (although this one might have to start next week 'coz i *forgot* to take my Latin books home for Christmas)

18) Stop letting certain people be horrible to me.

19) Stop being so concerned about my ugly face.

20) Write at least 1 blog a week.

I'd really really appreciate your help with these... well, those that you can help with. Just, remind me about them, ok? Because i'm going to be really pissed off when it gets to 2011 and i've not done ANYTHING...

Guardian Angel

Next week is going to be good.

How do I know?

Because Carol has been praying for me.

Carol is a man. A man who my dad occasionally works for.
He lives in a massive house in Greenwich, in fact, he hasn't left that house for 20 years.
He is 70ish and walks about in just his pants.
He sets fire to things.
He writes messages about the Apocalypse on the walls of his house.
He once locked my uncle in a burnt out bathroom. My uncle had to climb out of the window.
There is a dead fox in his back garden, he likes to watch it decaying.
For some unknown reason, he likes me.

So he's been praying for me... I don't know why and to be honest, I'm a little freaked out.

But I'm pretty sure that having a poor mental old man praying for you can only be a good thing... right?

The Buddhapadipa Temple

This is about buddhism.

Sort of.

Recently, i've been writing about buddhist monks for an RS project. But, before this, we went on a school trip to the Buddhapadipa Temple in Wimbledon.

As a general rule, i like school trips. Whatever they are, they have to be better than actual school.

This trip was... interesting.

To be honest, it was ages ago... i can't remember that much about it, except that i fell over and a buddhist monk saw my knickers, then laughed.

But as i was looking for pictures to stick in my project, i found these. I thought you might like to see them.

This is the temple. It's pretty.



This is a pond. It's also pretty.




Like very small children, we were fascinated by the fact we could see our reflections in the pond.



This is a parrot.

This is Jesus. I'm not sure what he was doing there.



These are my friends, racing up some steps



Here they are again, once they reached the top of the steps.

So there you go. Another pointless blog.

Can You Beat My Day?

So. I haven't written a blog for ages. This is because everything has been rubbish. But now it's getting less rubbish, my day today was one of those good days, not an amazing one. Not a day that i will just remember forever just quite an enjoyable one. Except for the bad bits, they weren't enjoyable. They were bad.

Here is what happened to me today, not everything that happened to me today, that would be a very boring blog, just some of the stuff:

1. I discovered that i know a shocking (and slightly worrying) amount about The tropic of cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. I don't remember learning any of this stuff, i think it was just pre-programmed into my brain. I think it might be a sign.
2. I drew a diagram showing the tropic of cancer and the tropic of Capricorn with the sun and the moon and some other stuff. My friends decided that it was so good, our teacher should pin it on the wall, they then nagged him until he did.
3. I argued with my IT teacher about my grade on a piece of coursework, she then put it DOWN a grade because i was "arrogant and argumentative".
4. I wrote an essay that was "genuinely impressive". if you don't know my English teacher then you won't appreciate how big that compliment is.
5. I got my hand stuck in a grand piano and had to be rescued by Dr Parsons. He laughed at me. It was VERY FUNNY but it hurt quite a lot.
6. I fell over in assembly. Not just IN assembly but standing at the front, collecting some trophy thing. Again, people laughed.
7. I was Macbeth. Not the whole play, just the character.
8. I cut my hand in chemistry. Mr Mathews put not 1, not two but THREE plasters on it!
9. A really old lady swore at me.
10. My piano teacher did an impression of what an elephant would look like if it sneezed.
11. I ate a slice of pizza upside down.
12. I discovered a new insult - called my father it and he was so impressed by it that he forgot to be cross with me.

School and Other Horrors.

"Fear is like a darkroom where little doubts get developed"

(my calendar said that today, i thought it was appropriate)

I feel horrible. Sort of empty, like there's a big hole inside me. Have you read New Moon? When Edward leaves and Bella feels like there's "an empty hole in her chest"? Well that's how i feel. Sort of. Only, i haven't been left by the love of my life, i haven't been left by anyone. It's just a nasty feeling of nothingness. I think it might be fear, fear that the next five years will be as utterly shit as today was, or maybe it's dread... dreading telling my parents that I'm already in quite a bit of trouble at school even though it's only the first day back, or it might be sadness and anger about someone stealing my coloured pens. I really love those coloured pens.

So...

There are 2 new girls in my class. I only found this out a few days ago. However, it didn't take me long to formulate my evil plan:

I was going to be very very nice to them. I was going to talk to them and make sure they don't get lost and try really really hard to remember their names, then, next week, i was going to ask them if they would please please be my friends. I thought that was a good plan. I felt sure it would work.

But, this morning, i went to say hello, and to put my evil plan into action.

I said "Hello" and they both ignored me. So i said "Hello" again. And they still didn't reply. I spent our most of the art lesson this morning, staring at them, trying to work out why they'd taken against me straight away. Believe it or not, i am quite nice, so at lunch i decided to give them a second chance and go and talk to them again. I said "Hello". They still ignored me.

I was genuinely upset, i went to Emma, who is always nice to me (if a little patronising) and asked why they were talking to everyone else but me.

She found out for me.

And the answer makes a lot of sense.

Here it is...

I was ill the last week of last year.

That's when the rest of the class met the the new people.

The rest of the class had decided that it was down to them to tell the two new girls about how weird i am. In fact, some people (although they seem to have the sense not to admit to it) thought they should tell them not to talk to me because I'm a complete freak.

That's what made me cry.

And now I'm a bit scared, because i always knew that i didn't completely fit in, but now i know what these people actually think of me, and i don't want to have to spend the next five years with them.

I mentioned we had art this morning. We were making little clay people, a bit like Antony Gormley's Field, only ours had to reflect something to do with ourselves. Mine was good. I hardly ever think anything i do is good, but i promise you, this was the best bit of art i have ever done. My little person was sitting on the floor, hiding behind their hands, wearing a hoodie and jeans. Everyone said it was good. Everyone except the art teacher, who looked at it and said

"Oh, it's a bit depressing isn't it!" So, i said,

"Yes, it is." Then she replied,

"Couldn't you make it a bit happier." I said "No." Then i squished it all up. I didn't want to ruin it. But i did. Because i am very very stupid.

So that's the end of this blog. I'm going to sit over there and be a bit sad. Thanks for reading it. Sorry it wasn't happy.

(Oh, i have some advice for you - don't call your form tutor a "fucking homophobic idiot" on the first day of school.)