Juny

The first few days of June passed by in a blur of trying to make sure my partner Alex's 30th birthday on the 5th filled him with exactly the kind of radiant joy and happiness that one should feel upon turning 30.
I think (hope?) I succeeded. As a result, those first few days visual diary were pretty rubbish one way or another, and it was only on the 6th that I actually got my act together and took my visual diary into work to work on at lunchtime, to try and briefly document what had occured the previous day on Alex's birthday. Basically:

Well... basically lots of fairly terrible drawings happened, because his day was TOO ACTION PACKED for me to document it at the time. But all good. It was actually more fun for me than my own birthday was, so I can only imagine how good it was for Alex.

Once I'd finished drawing Alex's birthday I sat on the balcony at work and drew myself reflected in the glass panelling. I'm still not sure my legs are right, but it got so ridiculously got out there I had to go indoors. SUMMER!

As if Alex hadn’t already had enough birthday action, on the 7th he had a big party downstairs at the Globe at which he got very drunk, put on lots of his favourite records and had a dance. I think it was a good one.

Kier also came to Alex’s party. He arrived already drunk from some kind of GIN TOUR and then proceeded to get even more drunk. Here he is the next day, asleep on our sofa at 4 in the afternoon.

Aren't feet weird.

Bought some shoes in order to solve my feet problems. They're GREAT.

During this week we didn't have internet in the house. Hence yesterday's ridiculously over-detailed shoe painting, and this day's ridiculously over-detailed room painting. Well, I say ridiculously over-detailed — ridiculously over detailed for someone new to water colours. Also I messed up my eyes because eyes are HARD okay.

Outer glow > drop shadow > comic sans > papyrus

Had a great after-work beach picnic with LJ, Amy and Dani. We bought lots of tasty food and played frizbee. I ran around and ENJOYED IT, what madness is this?

Ah Brighton, I love you.

Had a pleasing day at work, drawing a contour map of Bournemouth in Illustrator. Decided to do one for Brighton when I got home. I love a good map!

I can't eat chickpeas unless I'm willing to be miserable for about 24 hours afterwards. BUT SOMETIMES FOR A SWEET FALAFELLY MOMENT THAT SEEMS LIKE A SACRIFICE WORTH MAKING

So this really nice top just appeared in my house and I'm not sure who it belongs to or how it got there, but I kind of want to keep it. Alex thinks it might be Lou's. I should probably ask her about it really...

This drawing of our garden is technically very accurate in terms of perspective but appears very flat and I can't quite work out how to make it better. Ho hum.

Cycled to Goring. NEW RECORD! (Got the train home cos that's how I roll)

I'm a terrible daughter. Dad turned 60 and I didn't get him anything. In my defence, his birthday is really close to Father's Day, and I did manage to get him something for Father's Day. Also, every year since I can remember he's gone off on a fishing holiday with his BFFs to the deepest darkest depths of Scotland, so he's never around to receive a present anyway. I've got him something now and I'll give it to him when I see him next week. In the meantime, I drew this picture of him. It's not very, but it does actually look like him, which is a fairly spectacular achievement for me.

I bought a new moleskine and it's really YELLOW. I'm a bit grumpy about this. Sorry everything is so yellow from now on.
Anyway. I thought my window had been painted shut but it turned out it just needed Alex's SHEER BRUTE FORCE to open it. Now I have fresh air again!

We have made peace with them now though. Thankfully. Things got a bit sinister there for a while.

I've got a bit fat. Not a lot fat. Just a bit. But enough that some of my favourite clothes don't fit any more. I'm still trying to decide whether I care enough to do anything about it though. I had a ruthless evening where I got rid of two big binbags full of clothing, but in the end I actually decided to hold on to all the dresses I drew here. Even if I never fit into them again, they mean too much to me to get rid of just yet. [the formation of the beginning of a massive hoarding habit]

Look guys. Sorry (not sorry) if this is TMI, but this is just too important to not share. Well, with you ladies out there anyway. Menfolk might want to look away, but I'll think less of you if you do.

This journal is all about my love for MOONCUP. (Or Diva Cup, or MeLuna — my preferred option — or any other menstrual cup you care to try.) Periods suck, and this is fairly well acknowledged by all women out there, but you have NO IDEA how much less they can suck until you've tried a mooncup. First couple of months you'll be a bit like 'Aaargh oh this is weird, oh no is it stuck inside me? Why won't it go in? AGH ACTUAL BLOOD', and then suddenly, or possibly gradually, you'll have the dawning realisation that everything is better. I've been using one for a couple of years now and it's a total period game-changer. It would seem crazy now not to use one. The only reason, I think, that they're not the no.1 choice for most women is that no mainstream supermarket heavily promotes them, because obviously once a woman has bought one, they'll never buy tampons/pads ever again, and that's bad news for money making! Boots sell them though, and in Brighton you can also pick one up from Infinity foods, or order from their website.

Honestly, I know ~£20 seems like a big initial investment, and for the first couple of months you might be unsure, but stick with it and hopefully it'll be the best £20 you spend that year.

On Monday I took the day off work to go to my housemate Justin's initial PhD presentation. His PhD is called 'Urban Infrastructure Uncertainty and Situated Practice: A Technography of Water Supply In Ahmedabad'. His presentation was very good, although contained lots of long words, and I became very strongly aware that I was in a room with a lot of people who were a LOT cleverer than me.
I consoled myself when I realised that despite all being very clever, I could almost certainly design a better 'do not use marker pens on the interactive whiteboard' sign than they had done.

Now. ONWARDS! JULY!