23,

Yesterday was my birthday, and I turned 23 years old. 

I have a thing about odd numbers that means I could not be happier to be 23; I know it's weird. This has been pointed out to me many times in the last few weeks, but I don't care. Everyone has their little quirks. 

The sucky thing is I spent the whole day in my bed due to being ill, rather than being there just to chill out and rest. The honest truth is that I would be likely to have stayed in bed anyway, but reading a book instead of sleeping through the entire day. 

I hate it when my weekends go like this. I had a list of a million and one things I wanted to get done, and I feel like I've got none of them done. I didn't touch the novel at all.

The actual celebrating of my birthday is going to be next weekend. I'm getting the train up to Edinburgh, seeing my parents and finally getting to meet a pair of pandas. I can't remember how long it is since they came to Scotland, but I'm excited to finally go and see them. Less excited about the 7 hour journey there and another coming back, but I guess that just can't be helped. And it gives me a lot of uninterrupted work time to be either writing or editing. Thinking about it is making me wonder how I feel about being sans laptop still. 

Urgh, I don't know.

Does It Feel Like a Tuesday?,

My very simple answer to that one is no, it does not feel like a Tuesday. 

My university timetable this year means I have a three day weekend (Saturday to Monday) and so the start of my week (Tuesday) is where I get 'that Monday feeling' aka the first day of the new week where pajamas are banned as a wardrobe option and you have abandon your duvet and hope it will take you back later. Normally, it doesn't really bother me so much, but today, it's driving me nutty. 

Part of that is due to the fact that my Tuesdays are normally a reasonably easy day. Come in, sit through two hours of lecture and then go home, but today I have a meeting at lunch and am working this evening. And I spent the weekend in Budapest. Yeah, that makes 'that Monday feeling' even more sucky than a hangover.

For those of you who didn't already know this, I turned 21 just under a week ago, and after puzzling for a long time as to what I did actually want for my birthday, my parents and I agreed that a little weekend city break was the perfect option, and Budapest held some kind of appeal even though I had less than no idea what was there other than the River Danube. Even so, the trip was booked, we were packed and ready to f*off to another country for a few days - the only obstacles being getting up at 3am and driving to Stansted. Ugh. 

What I found amazing - other than the pilot not knowing that in order to land, we must first take off... - was that when we landed, the sun was bright and the temperature was creeping it's way up to 22◦ and then it stayed there for most of the day. I was as pink as one of the Care Bears that evening. 

It was a weekend of a lot of walking - a lot of the interesting architecture and the shopping district is all down by the river, which we were staying about 2miles from - but the chimney cake and the views definitely made up for it, and even the Terror Museum was well worth a look, even though there wasn't much of it actually translated into English (and where it was, the mistakes were kind of distracting!) 

Something that was more interesting (as in, well, that's odd) than interesting (as in, ooooh, that's catching my interest) was the set up of our room. I haven't quite figured out why the bathroom had a window that looked out into the bedroom, but perhaps I don't want to know the reason. Don't get me wrong it's frosted up to normal human shoulder height (so up to the level of my nose) and there is a blind over it, but the design flaw to that is that the pully for the blind is on the OUTSIDE! It's rather peculiar, but as long as you are sharing with someone you trust or don't mind seeing you in the shower, it's not too odd I guess.

I can't decide if the best part was that I got to spend so much time with Ben (sorry, I know that's cheesy :P) or the fact that he ordered breakfast in bed for us on our last morning there. Drinking Hungarian fizzy wine and having dippy eggs and pancakes was a pretty special way to start our last day out there, and shopping was obviously the best way to end it. 

Something to keep in mind is, if you go to the same shops we have over here, the pricing is going to be the same, but it doesn't require going off of the beaten track in order to find something local and a lot cheaper. I was really surprised by the relatively low cost of food, and even cheaper cost of alcohol, though I wouldn't have been quite so surprised if there were the same amount of stag parties on the plane out there as the plane coming home. The fact that you can get a shot of Jaeger, or Unicum for as little as 290Ft (about 80p) in bars on the main street makes it pretty attractive for such events. 

If you want to take a look at some of the photos, you'll have to check out my Instagram or Facebook. :) 

And For My 100th blog I Will,

Be moaning about something else...

I have way too much spare time on my hands, and one of my things to do with said time is watch TV series and knit whatever project I'm working on at the time - whether it's tree stockings, blanket patches or baby jumpers. Before anyone even thinks I'm having a mini me a) several of my friends already have young babies b) one of my friends is currently pregnant and I'm making a present or two for her and c) I don't have the patience for a full sized project. 

The problems come in many forms, such as Netflix only having the first four seasons of something, and then me having to switch until the fifth season comes on, or finding that I have seen most of the films on Netflix which I am actually interested in, and of course, the fact that our internet can't even load the definition of the word shoddy before crapping out. 

Aside from that though, this weekend has been pretty amazing. 

After running so late that we missed an event we were planning to go to, my lovely Ben and I decided to go to Camden. On a Saturday. If you're from London, you'll realise how kind of stupid that was, but ah well, it was still really good fun.

One of the things I love about the markets is that you can find really good incense and it's not overly priced like it can be on the internet, and the burners aren't too bad either. I picked up some 'Black Love' sticks and 'Dragons Blood' cones - they smell amazing. You would think they would mess with my asthma, but they actually feel like they help...

After that loveliness, we decided to have a walk along the canal with a hot apple juice and cinnamon (yuck!) and mulled wine (mmmmmhmmm) up to ZSL London, Regent's Park, then get home via Baker Street. It was nice to be out whilst the sun was putting in a bit of an appearance, even though it was still cold enough to make your hands numb. 

It's got to the point now where I'm counting down the days until my birthday (17) and I'm kind of crapping myself about turning 21. Okay, so in this country, the only thing it really affords you is the pleasure of getting into certain clubs that would have turned you away before, but past that, I can't see that it really means much. Maybe 21 is the final farewell to the teenage years, because by then, the majority of your friends have hit twenty, so rather than a group of teenagers, you become a group of twenty somethings. That ambiguity makes it feel so much older!

But alas, my little old self feels the need to retreat to the safety of my bed, with my knitting or Pride and Prejudice (the book)