Different kinds of high

I'm at home, having flown over on the 18th.

The journey home was interesting, to say the least. I met up with my friend Sarah at the airport. Sarah has an even bigger aversion to flying than I do, and as we sat next to each other on the plane, this made the journey that bit more fun (Sarah: "I have two bottles of champagne in the hold. The bottles might burst from the pressure drop as we ascend. The corks may then hit the hull, puncturing it, and causing us to plunge to the ground. We're all going to die". Me: "This is making me feel so much better."). But flying with friends is fun.

As an aside, one of my fellow students, whose name I didn't know, was at the airport with me. I lived in fear of meeting Sarah and having the introduce the other party. I tried sneaking a look at her passport on the pretext of having a gawk at the photo, but she was having none of it, saying she looked awful. I eventually resolved the problem by looking at her e-mail booking printout, pretending to be interested in how much her flight cost when I was really scanning the copy frantically looking for her name. I found it, and then one of her friends, also in my class appeared. Guess what? Someone else that I meet all the time, but again with an 'elusive' name.

In the end we got split up so it didn't matter, but I am really sick of my complete inability to remember other people's names. Even those whose company I've enjoyed more than once in the pub. Bizarrely, I'll find myself recalling a raft of associated information about them, but their first name? Forget it. Go figure. I think I'll have to resort to using a filofax.

Home is the usual. Crap internet connection, and I have reams of research to do for revision and a report that is due in the first week I go back. Holidays? Ha!

And now onto something else.

Let me formally declare I am not a fan of shopping. Gay and not a shopaholic? The two can go together, and they've always made comfortable bedfellows in me. I'm very precise in what I want from clothes, so if I can't capture that perfect pair of jeans, or a shirt that makes my chest look like it has a larger circumference than my stomach, I don't buy them. I never compromise on this, which makes every retail expedition a source of misery for me most of the time. And I hate changing room mirrors.

Until today.

Yesterday, I went to Cork to try on clothes. It wasn't a complete success (I didn't buy anything), but there were clothes there that said to me 'maybe', and having tried them on, I made a startling discovery:

Since I last bought a pair of pants, I have lost about 3 inches from around my waist. As if this wasn't enough to spur me on, I also discovered, while changing in the rooms with the merciless mirrors, that the shape of my upper body had headed some way in the direction in which I had been trying to bulldoze it for the best part of a year. In other words, I looked a small bit less like the bespectacled toothpick in the Mr. Muscle ads. This is seriously gratifying. I never seemed to see any progress when I was over in Brighton, and I'd all but convinced myself that my genetic predisposition would ensure that I would remain a rake for life (I believe the term in bodybuilding circles is 'ectomorph'). I was almost on the point of giving up on all this, when I started noticing the results properly for the first time this week. So, all the protein milkshakes and bored waiting for weights benches to become free when I would really rather be doing something else have paid off, and I resolve to keep going. But I'm reaching escape velocity from the point.

After the novelty wore off, I stopped examining myself and exited the cubicle, giving way to the irate queue that had formed outside. I eventually went home to think about what I was going to do (I tell you, snap decisions are my speciality) and decided I would go back today.
So I went back today, took a deep breath and dived into the fray. Luck was on my side, and before long I had a groovy pair of jeans, a white long sleeve top, and a white linen shirt (and damn if that last one doesn't look cool). Spurred on by this, I met my sister for lunch and then went back for seconds. Three further purchases were made, all of them unplanned, but all of them quite fetching. I really don't want to think about how much money I spent though, but hey, clothes are an investment, right? RIGHT?!

So that's it. Some new stuff to swan around in this weekend.

All I have to do is go back to Cork tomorrow to pick up that slate grey pair of combats that will complement my runners perfectly, and would really go well with that t-shirt I saw on hungout.com the other day, which in turn would necessitate the purchase of a new pair of black jeans. Although then I'd need to pick up some new runners to match that...

A Problem? Who, me?