Meeting people on the net & online dating

Online dating seems to be the in thing - lots of my friends have met people through online dating sites and done really well at it.

To be honest I have never really taken it seriously - I mean it's always been up there with people who send in the ads to lonely hearts columns in the paper for me (do they still do that?) however I have actually met people off the net from forums, facebook and other sites and have pretty much always done well with it.

Years ago, back when the internet was slow and whiny (hello dial up!) and chat rooms were basically mIRC, aol or yahoo and I was a fat and ugly (but not spotty go me and my perfect skin) teen I actually made loads of friends through chat rooms - I also made loads of enemies - sorry aol for crashing your chat rooms and servers with smiley bombs! (I'm using a LOT of brackets in this post - for those that dont know - back in the day you could crash a chat room by using smileys - it worked like this - smileys are graphics, graphics are large, the internet was dial up and could only cope with so much data being uploaded at a time - to create a smiley bomb you would  copy and paste in notepad :) :) :) a few thousand times (it was important to do it in notepad as notepad would leave it as text rather than convert it into smileys - afterall you didnt want to crash your own machine) then copy and paste the whole lot into a chat bx for a chatroom. You would hit enter and as soon as it was sent x out of the room. The deluge of yellow smiley faces would kill the chat room and crash it out and it would usually take a few mins for it to reset) anyways, the whole crashing chat rooms aside, I made lots of friends online.

In fact I pretty much spent all my time online late at night and into the early hours chatting to people in the USA and Oz who shared  my love of pagansim, horror movies, emo music and buffy the vampire slayer! It got to the point that I remember my mum dragging me to the GP when I was 15 and demanding he do something as there was clearly something very wrong with me as I would stay up all night on the internet and then skip school - she was convinced I had some sort of autism (to be fair she still thinks I have Aspergers or autism but I like to think that I am just a socially awkward fuck up!) he told her I was just a typical teen and she left it at that.

Things were okay until I announced at 17 I was flying to Nashville in Tennessee to stay with some people off the internet I had met for a few weeks - went down like a lead balloon, my nanna was  convinced I was going to get abducted or killed, but I had a job (thank you ASDA) and a passport and I booked it all myself and I went off and survived - in fact I had a pretty bloody amazing time - Nashville is fantastic, I went to Memphis too and Graceland, Dollywood (hilarious!), the Smokey Mountains in fact I went all other Tennessee and it was just a load of fun. The people I stayed with were really nice, I went to their church where I was like the second coming - a strange alien being from Wales - they LOVED my accent, other people form the chatrooms came to join us we had parties it was just the best time ever! I was kinda gutted when I had to come home again to people who didn't recognise who awesome I was.

Anyways since then I have met loads of people online and in real life too - through Uni I met up with fellow Neopet players who lived in Scotland, I went to a handfasting on the Orkney Isles of friends from a pagan forum, I spent many wonderful weekends in London with a random guy who loved Placebo, I met up with  french guy who I met on a Disney forum in London and spent the day oozing our love for Disney (we remained friends and both actually worked at Disneyworld in Orlando together - he's nw back working at DLP and we remain in touch) as well as lots of other people with shared interests.

I personally love chatting to people online because I dont have to fake anything I can be as obnoxious or weird as I like and so can they then if we actually met up 9 times outta 10 we get on super well because we already KNOW each other from our crazy online chats and yes I have even ended up dating a few of them too!

So as we go into the new year I find myself thinking why havent I really considered online dating? I think it's because there used to be such a stigma about it - and you get all those stories about people lying or using old picture of themselves and so on and so on - but the stigma does seem to be lifting - people will happily proclaim they met on tindr or match etc so I have decided to take the plunge and put together an actual coherent profile and see what comes of it.

I have to be honest I am a bit nervous - I am not exactly Angelina Jolie and therefore I decided that Tinder is not for me! I am also cheap so have decided to try out a free site.  My profile is written - its not particularly witty or bright but then neither am I so thats fine! So fingers crossed I get some messages and see where this goes :)

Happy New Year - Welcome 2017!

Happy New Year :)

So today is a brand new year - goodbye 2016 hello 2017!

I have big plans for this year:

1. Lose weight / get healthier - okay I say this every year and last year I wasn't very successful I didn't lose weight but  did drop  a single dress size :/ but I did get healthier in that my diabetic control was the best it has ever been since I was first diagnosed back in 2002! This year to kick start the whole thing I am taking part in veganuary (or rather veggieanuary as going vegan is too much of a system shock for me!) I'm not good at eating veggies so this will be interesting but hopefully it will help put me on the right track for the rest of the year. I think if I eat more veggies then I will eat less other stuff so hopefully s well as being better for me it's going to help with weight loss! Also going to be back to weight training - I really enjoyed it but it fell by the way side a bit through Nov/Dec. I have my own small weights at home now so I can keep on top of it and hopefully will be back to the gym from Feb onwards. Fit not Thin #GOALS

2. Save money - again another yearly goal which I never really achieve - this year I will finally be debt free - I started off at the end of 2013 owing over £13k in loans, credit cards, overdrafts, store cards etc I set up a DMP and have been paying it off and this year is the year when I finally pay it all off - okay my credit is like poop but I've paid off over £11k in 3 years and started off with around 8 companies I owed and now there is just 1 left to pay! It should be completely cleared by July - go me! I plan to put the money I would have used for the bills into my savings account. I want to move into my own place at the end of 2017 so I will need money for a bond, for the first couple of months rent, for furniture and so on although I will prob get the furniture second hand for cheap or free from freecycle and then just replace it as I can when I am able to save the money for it.

3. Sort the blog out - last year I got really lazy with the blog - 2015 I blogged a lot as I was doing a 365 day challenge - with the exception of the new layout and name I haven't done a huge amount this year. There are a few things I want to introduce and do:

- more info on comping and reviews and update the info I already have - this is going to be ongoing and my goal is going to be to do at least 1 post or page (update an old or new) a month - it's not a lot but it is achievable which is something I need to be realistic about - working full time plus family commitments doesn't give me a huge amount of free time.

- #Project52 - A photo project for me - 1 photo a week for a year to sum up my week :) Will run this on my instagram account / twitter / facebook and with a mini-blogpost

- #PostPost- A new weekly post to replace the freebies/reviews/wins pages - I plan on putting up a post once a week with all the items I receive in the mail - except bills - no-one wants to see my bills :D

- Random posts - I am going to hopefully update the blog with 2 posts a week with the #Project52 and #PostPost which will be regular posts but that doesn't mean I can't post my usual random crap - in fact I think my random posts are prob more fun for me anyways as I get to have verbal or rather typed verbal diarrhea all over the blog page (nice mental image isn't it!)

4. Dating - yes I am totally going to get myself a new partner this year - or at the very least try not to be such a complete douchbag that I remain single! I've signed up to an online dating site so will be sure to share my 'wonderful' haha experiences with it and who knows next year I might actually celebrate the new year as a couple rather than singleton? (although prob not)

So that's my goals for 2017 - I think they are achievable :)

An Update

Long time no entry :) so the last few weeks have been stupidly busy - I'll try to keep it brief :)

LeoCat - cat got sick - developed a large lump - paid out £200 or so on various vet bills and tests - lump went away by itself - cat back to normal - thanks cat for that - no seriously I am delighted he is well again I just wish he would not do this to me every time it's Christmas or I have a holiday to pay for!

Tattoos - one's fully healed the other is tking a lot longer - may or may not have had a slight reaction to the red ink - which is odd as it was fine on my ass! Next appointment booked for 2nd Feb - was going to get a Cheshire Cat - now I am not sure in case I am allergic to the red ink and the cat is rather pink - thinking of an Alice one instead

Holidays - booked for Orlando again - booked via Disney with my Disney tix and a good neighbour hotel as well - cost of around £600 per person without the flights(ouch) but it is for 3 weeks - flights out to be booked next month and return flights in Feb

Christmas - been and gone stupidly spoiled as always - thanks to family and friends for that :)

Comping - I haven't been doing any for a few weeks - time to recharge and rethink and so on - okay I admit I have done a few advent ones but have skipped lots of days

Works Xmas do - went well got drunk didnt completely embarrass myself although may have outted myself to the entire staff - oh well its not like I was hiding it!

Reviews - having some issues with amazon only allowing me to do like 5 reviews a day even though they are verified purchases - gah!!!

hmm let's see anything else?

Well had a couple of dates - they didnt go well - they were dumb and boring and I was probably creepy and weird haha - gonna try online dating but it's such a damn effort

Well thats it - all up to date with my rather boring life now :D

I have decided in the new year to -revamp the blog again and it's purpose :D Starting with a whats in my post blog of the week - I have let the recording of comp wins, freebies and reviews slide a bit so in order to stay on top I am going to do my mail/post of the week an I might even o it as a vlog - it depends on how much I can bear be on screen - also plan on doing more info on comping for newbies and updating my scam and spam info pages

New tattoos

Got 2 new tattoo's on Friday done at Kat Demon Ink

I'm really pleased with them - they are still healing hence the slightly blurry look to them - they wont be properly healed and looking good for a couple of weeks but I think they are fab so far. The red marks on the left to the side and underneath the paws are from the bloodlines (the tattooist runs the needle across the skin without any ink in it so they can see how you react and also to let you know what it feels like - she did it twice on me as the wrist feels different to further up the arm - the marks will go once they heal - she only did it  on the one arm as I was getting both tattoos in the same place just on different arms).

My mum's really not keen on the tattoos lol she said she thought I was getting a tiny cat - I did point out it is tiny its like an inch and half long if that! But I think they will grow on her - well they will have to as they arent going anywhere :)

I have another appointment booked in January to go get a Cheshire Cat on my arm. Once it's done I am getting it over tattoo'd on the eyes and smile with UV ink and I can't wait.

Bath Christmas Market

Last Saturday I went with the girls from my old job to Bath Christmas Market.

We caught the train at 8.25 (eep) from Cardiff Central with an aim to be in Bath by 9.30 am so we could hit the market nice and early.

We started off our journey with croissants and jam and buck's fizz and yes  despite it being so early it went down rather well.

Things were going well as we pulled into Bristol a mere 15 or so minutes outside of Bath :)

But then things kinda came to a halt as their was signal failure between Bristol and Bath - no-one really knew anything so we were sat waiting on the train for ages. Eventually they told us that the train was returning to Cardiff so to get off!

The service from the train company was pretty shocking - no information - nothing said about replacement bus service or anything.

We eventually decided to get the bus between Bristol and Bath as time was getting on and we didn't want to waste the day.

We found out there the bus went from and joined a HUGE queue as the first bus left fully packed out. Whilst we were waiting for the next bus a replacement train service came around the corner (also packed) as we were at the back of the queue waiting for the bus we decided tried to get on the next replacement rail bus which had just pulled up. We all (all 13 of us) managed to squeeze onto the bus and finally make the last leg of the trip to Bath.

We got to Bath about 11.15 at which point it was manic crazy busy - like you couldnt walk around it was that crazy.

We split up into smaller groups and wandered off to look through the stalls - we agreed to meet at Turtle Bay where we had reservations for lunch at 1.45.

The market was lovely but so difficult to navigate through because it was so crazy busy. There were lots of lovely home made  products, some delicious food and drinks, plenty of entertainment and Bath itself was beautifully decorated.

The Abbey was doing carol services every hour or so and we popped into one of the services - I'm not very religious so to be honest I was going along for the comfy inside seats to finish off my ht mulled cider lol.

The service was nice  - some carols a brief christmas message and very chilled. Unlucky or us they were filming for Songs of Praise on that day and at one point the camera was focused straight on me - I am truly hoping and praying that I am not going to be shown on Songs of Praise today following this - it would do nothing for my street cred lol.

After the carol service we did some more shopping - being the freebie hunter that I am I was delighted to see pedigree and dreamies were giving out free sample sachets - I quickly got a bunch for my kitties and Jac the dog (and I got my friends to get some for me too as they didnt all have animals).

Free kitty treats and dentastix plus money off coupons yay

 We got to Turtle Bay and joy of joy they had 2 for 1 on cocktails :D The drinks were good, the food was great if a little hot!


Around 4pm a couple of us decided we were gonna leave and try to get home - the trains were still down so we weren't 100% sure how that was going to happen.

We got to the station (via  a very cool toy shop) but again noone knew anything. We spoke to staff and they said there would be no replacement bus service as all the bus drivers had reached their driving limit. We eventually decided to get the train to Bristol Temple Meads and get home from there.

The train to Bristol Temple Meads was running late and we were lucky to get it as the next few after were cancelled! We got to Bristol Temple Meads and there was just 1 train running to Cardiff - now if I was the train company knowing that the had cancelled 4/5 trains to Cardiff I would look at getting an extra train put on or add in more carriages but thy didnt - they had 2 carriages for everyone - it was crazy we were all standing and people couldnt get on.

We eventually got to Cardiff at like 7pm - phew

Overall Bath market was really nice and I really enjoyed my brief visit and will deffo go back next year but will book a hotel and spend a night so I can really explore and enjoy it all.

It's beginning to feel like Christmas

Despite being a bit of a bah humbug when it comes to ridiculously early Christmas trees and decs going up, adverts and songs I actually really like Christmas - it's a great excuse to gorge myself on crap, watch rubbish sentimental mush on the TV and get pressies!

Normally I dont partake in any Christmas activities before December (other than buying gifts which I do mega early to avoid the craziness). However this year for the last 2 weekends I have done Christmassy stuff and it's actually been quite fun:)

A week ago Saturday I paid for a friend, myself and her 2 children to visit a local garden centre where they had a Santa experience set up.

You start off by checking in at a podium and then you write your letter to santa which can be posted  at a small post box.

Then you get called in by some elves to the boarding gate to board your sleigh ride to lapland!

The sleigh ride is cute - it's a bunch of benches covered in furs with a large screen showing a film of how you fly into lapland - bubbles get blown through from the ceiling and the kids enjoyed it.

The sleigh unfortunately lands at the back of Santa's workshop and the elf village and the boiler isnt working so all the kids had to throw snow balls (white pompom balls) into the generator pipes to make steam to open the door. After a valiant effort the doors are finally opened and you head into the elves house.

The elves house is nicely decorated with a tree and lots of lights, there are little beds to sit/lay on, cuddly toys and 2 elves waiting for you. The elves teach you the rules of being an elf and then you learn their song (jingle bells). After they have finished training you in the way of the elves you head through another door into the enchanted woods where you have to spot magical and christmas creatures in the woods around you. Once you have found all the creatures the elf in the wood gives you your very own set of jingle bells and then you have made it in to see the big man himself!

Santas room is dark with lots of sparkly lights and a "log" fire. The kids all sit on cushions on the floor in front of him and he asks them some questions about what they have learnt before calling them up one by one by their name. The kids get time with Santa to tell him their Christmas wish list and time for their accompanying adults to take some pictures. Mrs Claus is also on hand with her camera to take pics too (which you can choose to buy if you want). Santa gives the kids a magical voucher that allows them to pick one toy from his toy shop and then you collect your qualified elf certificate and make your way back to reality via a rather dark tunnel lit with sparkly lights.

Once back in the real world you then get to head to the toy shop and pick out a gift and check out the pics taken by Mrs Claus before head out.

For November dates the experience cost £10 per child and £3 per adult and the whole experience lasted around 35 minutes. Numbers on each booking are limited and they were sold out. December dates cost slightly more at £12 per child.

The rage of toys available in the toy shop was really good and they had things there from baby up to 12/13 years old and included things like rattles/teethers, playdough, colouring set, magic set, toy cars/motorbikes, hair braiding, dolls, ponys, action figures and tills. Photos if you wanted them started at £5.99 for a basic one and then they had deals on for buying multiples or getting them in different formats e.g. in a bauble or a snow globe.

My friends 2 children (aged 8 and 4) both really enjoyed the experience and after we had finished we spent some time looking at all the lovely Christmas ornaments and then walking to the aquatic centre on site and looking at all the fish - they had a tank where you could go underneath and then put your head into a box in the tank, a nemo/dory set up plus lots of unusual and tropical fish which the kids loved. They also have a reptile centre on site so we did a quick wander in there to see the snakes, lizards and spiders before having a look around the pet shop - as it's so cold they only had guinea pigs in their little petting area and the guineas were hiding out in their house.

After spending Saturday at the experience I went back and did it all again with H and my sister :) H again loved the whole thing although I'm not sure Santa was too impressed. When he asked her what she would like for Christmas she said a dog, so he said would you like anything else? and she thought for a minute before saying yes a dog bed lol

H was very pleased to post her letter to Santa - we may have exaggerated her good behaviour slightly hehe

I think the Santa village and experience at Pugh's was brilliant and we will deffo be booking and going back next year...although I might not book out to go twice on the same weekend next time!

Being Me

Someone asked me today about being me - because I am in their words "odd"

The thing is I could be like everyone else, I could pretend that I'm someone I'm not and do it well - I did for a long time - I fitted in, I was quiet, I watched what I said and pretended and it sucked.

I'm generally happy now although grumpy but the grumpiness isn't misery its just general grumps and certainly I'm not sad I am exasperated, bugged, irked and annoyed but not sad, crying, upset or miserable.

But fitting in did make me miserable, pretending to be someone I wasn't made me wonder what was so bad about being me and question myself and at one point I hated myself and it wasn't fun or a good place to be so I had to make the choice - did I want to be someone who was unhappy but fitted in with everyone's ideas of who I should be, have lots of 'friends' who liked the fake me and do things I didnt like or I could just be me, have a couple of mates who didn't care that I might spend 2 hours talking in detail about a Disney movie (and not pick up on their signals that they really would like to talk about something else, anything else than disney!) or spend hours planning my escape from a cannibal and do things I like to do like colouring or wander in a field singing eminem badly.

I made the choice to be me, no pretending, no lying and that's that.

Yes I am odd, yes I am missing some social filters, yes I dress however I like and yes this is me and if people dont like it then that's fine because I like me now and I choose to be myself