It's the final countdown...

As of today I have exactly 3 months left until I leave for England. I'd add a ticker to my blog but I think it's pretty crowded already(heck, I'm bored so I might redesign it...again!).Today I will book the hotel(I'm going for the cheapest one...any money that I can save will be spent on booze during Fresher's Fortnight) and plane ticket.Also, I'm finally allowing myself to be excited(ok, so I won't lie, I did the happy dance after I got in in my first uni and then at Leicester but since then I've been trying to keep my excitement down because if something can go wrong it will and we have to stop that because, darn it, I want to go to England). Do I get to do the happy dance or do I have to wait 'till I board the plane?

While I'm on this, I started downloading the pictures from my vacation. Boy, 1000 pics take a looooong time to copy, did you know that?Seriously, it's
been running for an hour and some minutes and it only now got to 700 pictures(which according to the all-knowledgeable computer or phone--I don't know which one is to blame-- is 62%. My dog knows more math then that).

My blue hair is now blond and I coughlikeitcough. I'll make it blue again today(gosh, I have a ton of things planned for today...if I get half done I'll be happy) but for now I have some blond hair(cue in jokes about my true self coming out.I've always claimed I am blond on the inside...the fact that I can remember at least 3 times when I went to high-school or uni with my shirt the wrong way or turned with the inside out. One time I also forgot my name...but in my defense it was early and I hadn't had any coffee...making me think was just cruel).

This weekend was also the Snooker World Series. I missed the second day(stupid, stupid me...I was watching the Spain-Italy football game) but I do know that Selby and Higgins won Saturday. I'll go digging for results after the pictures are done and I've done the "I wanna go back!!!" cry.

And before I go and get things done, I wanna wish a Happy Birthday to a very special person. So, Happy Birthday, Adelina, I hope you had a great birthday ;)!

When I grow up...

...I wanna be able to decide. You hear that, fairy godmother? I know it's a bit late but how 'bout you swing by, wave that magic wand of yours and give me ability to take decisions? Deal? Because otherwise I just might have to drag myself to wherever you live and kick your butt all the way to China. So, I got my university accommodation papers and trying to fill them up has been a nightmare. What kind of room do I want, do I really need a bathroom, should I put my mother as my next of kin, which halls do I want to live in, even what religion I am. Oh, yeah, it's that bad. For Pete's sake, I even thought for about one minute if I wanted to use my black pen or my blue pen. Sheesh...I'm driving myself crazy here. And before that I looked at hotels(because for some reason which made sense 2 months ago I'm going 3 and a half days ahead---I can't remember that reason but I seemed good enough and do I even need to go that early and why can't I just go one day before, because I think I can solve everything in one day and so on...). That was fun. This one's closer and prettier, but that one has elevators and was recently renovated and the other one is right in the middle of the distance from the uni to the halls but the other one has free wireless internet connection and so bloody on. And of course, at the end I came up with nothing because heck, I still have time(forget the fact that one hotel was almost out of rooms and that I really need to buy my plane ticket NOW because the price has gone up 2 times in the last month). I'm not really comfortable right now with booking anything from my computer because of that bloody virus I got(paranoid...who, me? Never...why, what have you heard?) so I need to start taking care of things soon. The yesterday kind of soon. I will probably just flip a coin and then, if something doesn't work out or sucks, I can just blame it on karma ;)

I just needed to vent. I swear I'm sane, even though I don't always sound that way.

*Ta-da-da-da* I'm back!

Howdy, my friends. How are you? Your weary traveler/blogger has returned. To be a bit more accurate I actually came back from Croatia a week ago but after spending 18 hours sleeping, a bit of time online and 8 hours shopping(argh!) I couldn’t type one more word. And then my monitor blew up. Nice, right? So I just sent it all to hell and went to my cousin’s wedding. And I actually escaped unharmed from a family reunion. Of course, it was all because nobody recognized me but I’m not complaining. Now time for a bit of a recap(pictures after I get my bloody computer to work again):

Croatia was awesome(I have almost 1000 pictures to prove it). We spent one night in Zagreb, 3 in Porec and 3 in Zadar and visited Pula(*giggle*), Rovinje(I think I spelled this right), Venice(am I the only one who goes on vacation in one country and end up in another?), Plitvice National Park(gorgeous), Split, Trogir, and 3 other small villages that I can’t remember.

I bought another little black dress. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t wear black at weddings but the first outfit was brown/gold/purple(Romanian weddings last forever and a day) and I couldn’t find any other dress I liked. I did find one that attracted the “Pink attack bonbon” nickname. Not good. Not good at all.

I went to my first bachelorette party. It wasn’t bad, just not my taste. I’m not one for clubs. The wedding was nice. The bride was pretty and her dress was stunning(seriously…even I noticed it.)

I will never, ever again get in the same car as my mother. Since she wasn’t driving(she doesn’t like to drive in towns or out of towns….maybe she can find a driving range on the moon?) she decided to annoy the family friend/recruited driver. No driving over the speed limit. No passing anything(seriously, she got annoyed because another car went past a bicycle). Watch out, be careful, don’t you dare do anything! I swear if I were driving I would have pushed her out of the car.

I lost my nerd sign. Let me explain. Almost every girl I know complains that every time they go into a computer store they get ignored because they’re, well, girls. Up until yesterday I never experienced this problem. Apparently I have the invisible nerd sign that only other nerds can see. But yesterday it was missing because the guy at the computer store where I bought my awesome 22” monitor(heck, yeah!) decided he needed to explain to me that if I can’t figure how to change the resolution I can just install the CD and it will do it for me. I blame the purple-ish nail polish. It sucks(being treated like a moron, not the nail polish. That’s just not me).

Romania got kicked out of the European Football Championship. Like I didn’t see it coming. Maybe if we played against us all the time we could win.

So, this is it. After I get some more sleep and enough energy to deal with this bullshit that is my computer I’ll post pictures and be back to my normal posting rhythm. ‘Till then, take care.

***Pula is a bad word in Romanian. Just so you know why I’m giggling every time I talk about my holiday

What is your favourite smell in the world and why?

Blog roll post

I have a tie here again. There is no way I can pick just one so here are a few:

I love the smell of freshly baked bread. It reminds me of grandma. Now don’t go imagining a gray-haired lady baking bread for her family. No, grandma was way to cool for that. But when I was a kid and I lived with her she’d send me to the bread factory a couple of blocks down and there was this shop at the gates and it always smelled like bread there. Of course, she knew of my love for hot bread and she’d always give me more money so that I could buy 2 and eat one on the way home.

Coffee. This is again grandma’s fault. Every morning I’d wake up and the house smelled like coffee so there is always something so comforting and beautiful about waking up to a house that smells like coffee. Of course, it helps that I am addicted to coffee.

Lilac. No, this one doesn’t remind me of grandma(but chamomile does, even though she didn’t have any growing in her garden…go figure). Lilac reminds me of a very special and happy place. I miss going there.

A few others, in no particular order:

Roses. But not any type of roses, but those used for making rose petal jam(now I’m craving it like crazy).

Cherry tobacco. No reason, it just smells great.

Leather. Actually new leather things.

Cinnamon. I’m not crazy for the taste but the smell…mmmmm

Christmas trees. Given my love for Christmas I don’t need to explain that.

That's it, darlings, I'm off on vacation is less then 5 hours. Have fun 'til I get back.

Early morning boredom

I absolutely love watching the morning news. There is no program on TV that can entertain me more. I still can’t sleep so I’m watching the news. And thank god I was, otherwise do you think I would have guessed that it’s going to be hot in the summer? Blasted, and here I was thinking that it’s going to snow. It’s gonna be really hot. As opposed to every other summer for as long as I can remember when it was cold or what? That’s kind of what happens in the summer. It gets hot. Really hot. We know. It does that every summer. Next they announce us that traffic in Bucharest is bad. Nah…really? But traffic in Bucharest is always wonderful(for does who don’t live in Romania let me explain something: it’s almost as bad as India. I wish I was kidding). At least tell me where exactly the traffic is bad. Not that the traffic is bad. I already know that.

I also said I am going to post the story of the post office. Here goes:

I was at the post office, trying to send my papers in England. I sent them using SkyPak, which means that I couldn’t send them to a P.O. box. No problem, right? Oy, vey! Here’s the conversation:

I give the lady the papers. She looks at them then points to the box where it said “postal code” where I had written(shock!) the postal code.
“What’s this?”
“Uh…the postal code.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t look like a postal code.”
“That’s because it’s in England. Their post codes are different then ours.”(our are only numbers, theirs letters and numbers)
“Are you sure it isn’t a P.O. box?”
“Yes.”
“It looks like a P.O. box.”
“It’s the postal code.”
“Are you sure?”
*Insert hair pulling.*
“Yes!”
“Ok…but if it’s a P.O. box it’s not going to work.”
Head, meet desk.
Lady looks at the paper some more.
“Why doesn’t it have a number?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you wrote the street down, but no number.”
“It’s a huge campus. There’s no number.” *Points to the official letter with the address written in the corner.* “See?”
“It doesn’t look right to me.”
“That’s what it says. I’m sure they’ll find it.”
“If you say so…but why didn’t you write the name of the person you’re sending this to?”
“Because I am not sending this to a person. I’m sending them to a university.”(should I even mention that I had written “University of Leicester” in big letters just a wee-bit higher?) God, I was this -> <- close to strangling her.
Insert some chitchat here about “why am I sending them these” and “did I get a scholarship” and “what am I going to study” here, while the lady typed things into her stone-age computer(almost. She had Windows95).
I pay, lady gives me receipt, I start putting receipt in my wallet.
“And are you sure it’s not a P.O. box?”

Argh!!!
Oh, yeah, I love my country.

Boring post

It’s late. My computer is driving me mad. The hard-drive needs to be formatted and I’m too lazy to back up everything from one partition to the other so I can’t format it now and it’s just infuriating. It will be done, soon, and of course as son as it’s done(after much blood, sweat and cursing) I will announce that I will never ever ever again save anything on the same partition as Windows. And forget that 5 minutes later. Oh, well…

I’ve decided today that I’m not applying for a loan to cover my tuition which means that my very generous budget for next year is starting to look way less generous. I’ve done research, lurked on forums and it will work out. And the bonus of not coming out of uni with 10.000 pounds of debt is appealing. Now I must convince my mother that I am responsible adult and I will not starve to death. I’m not worried but she’ll go ballistic. Oh, well, my life, my money, my choice.

I finally have a passport. I’ve been postponing getting one for the past couple of years mostly because it seemed useless, seeing as I can travel thru most of Europe with just my ID card. Things went surprisingly easy and way less complicated then I anticipated. I know my country, we’re masters at bureaucracy. Not this time. Two hours and it was done. And it’s not even a horrible picture(it’s not a good pic either but seeing as I’m not photogenic not horrible is the most I can aspire to).

Oh, yeah, I also found out today that bro’s plan for Croatia is “we’ll wing it”. I am slightly worried right now because my brother is not a master at improvising. As long as we don’t end up sleeping in the car it’ll be ok. Either way, should make for a fun trip.

I still don’t feel like writing(this includes blogging). My stomach bug is not completely gone and I’m feeling rotten. Blasted bug. I hate being sick.

Rest in peace

Sydney Pollack, the director of The way we were, Out of Africa, Tootsie and many others died of cancer Monday afternoon.

Rest in peace.