I get shit done. Look at this hat.

Good innit? :)

Apart from finishing that hat off, which was supposed to be done by Spring, I've got a lot of other shit done in the last ten days, too. That's why I haven't drawn anything for this post. But hey the stuff was exciting. Here's what I did:

- Felt inferior and stupid just because I was in a bank
- Made a lot of scary phonecalls in Finnish
- Annoyed a lot of people a lot of the time about a meeting
- Drank a lot of coffee
- Ate a bun (an apple turnover sort of thing, to be precise) - v. important
- Chaired aforementioned meeting
- Corrected and hopefully sorted out two chapters of my master's thesis
- Had a fight with both printers in the first floor of the learning centre Aleksandria (and won)
- Registered a business
- Signed a contract
- Was mathematically dyslexic in a variety of places
- Made a hat!

So now in theory, technically, I am now kind of sort of my own boss! Sort of. In reality I think both the tax office and the bank pwns me. Anyway, at least in December I'll be starting up business as a freelance translator and that's why I took the trouble to go to a lot of different places to be gormless instead of just doing it in a few places out of people's way.

While I am in the grip of this maniac responsibility I'm aiming to get everything business out of the way and then I'll get on to drawing some new posts. I can totally arrange my time like that. I'm my boss. I'm allowed.

Stacy vs. Nature: An illustrated saga

This post deals with a creature that looks like a spider but isn't. Some people call them harvestmen, some people daddy-long-legs..es. I'm not sure what it is in English, but in Finnish it's called a lukki, and that's easier to write than daddy-long-legses, so I will use the Finnish word. If you want, you can think of it as Dave.

So one day in 2008 I was perched innocently on the toilet taking care of some business. Leonard, whose name is Ari, was not home.

I was staring off into space quite contendly until I thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I focused my vision.
Oh my giddy aunt, I thought, because I'm British. A fucking spider. I must stress at this point that I'm not particularly scared of spiders, but these things are unnecessarily huge. My bowel movement paused while I inspected what was crawling up my wall. It was a lukki. Upon receiving this information, I jumped.
I kid you not, it was staring at me.
This carried on for a while.


I kept my eyes on it while I hurriedly finished what I was doing, and then tried to figure out what to do with it. Even though I wasn't scared of it, it was disgusting. I'm not sure why, but it repulsed me. However, I didn't want to kill it unnecessarily, which made my first idea null and void.
So I decided to find a glass and some paper, and put it out on the balcony. I dug through our cupboards and found the biggest glass I could. It was pretty big, a massive pint.. stein from Ikea. Trying not to turn inside out, I approached the bathroom with the glass. The lukki, or Dave, didn't move. Good. I carefully placed the glass over Dave the lukki, but failed, and one of his legs got stuck underneath the rim of the glass because, as I mentioned, they are unnecessarily large. Dave started to spaz out.

This was a new level of repulsion for me. It was freaking out because of its leg, which is understandable, but I couldn't bring myself to sort its leg out. Eventually I slid paper underneath the glass and saved the leg. After a ridiculously long time trying to gather myself, and still trying not to turn inside out, I got the lukki about 2 metres to the table in our living room.
There it sat, while I shook my hands and did that brr thing you do when someone tells you about headlice or that they had a spider on them once. I pondered leaving the lukki where it was until it died, but that would have been cruel, and I'd already got it two metres nearer the balcony.It was also taking me a stupid amount of time to deal with this issue. Time had elapsed, you guys. I sucked it up and opened the balcony door, placed the glass on the floor and wondered if the lukki would suddenly run up my arm when I tip the glass over. I went and changed my shirt to a sleeveless one.

There it sat. For a really long time. I periodically looked through my (locked) balcony door to see if it had fucked off, but it was still sitting there. I opened the door and looked to see if it was dead.
No.

It was fucking waving its legs at me in a freaky lukki wardance. I later told this to Ari, who said it was probably trying to scare me. I informed Ari that the lukki had been successful. I'm not sure why it disgusted me so much but I have never seen anything so gross before (I am serious. Blood, guts, snot, whatever, but this was another level). Just waving tiny harvestman threats at me. I was traumatised.

So two days ago, when I came home from the shop and decided to make some coffee, and a massive lukki came sauntering out from behind the coffee maker, I knew what to do.

Nature 1- 1 Stacy.

Were there nuns?

Whilst wandering about on the internet (and in real life) I've often regretted letting it slip that I went to a girls-only school. I will happily answer genuine questions about what it was like (although I expect it was similar to any other school in Britain) but if the fact that I went to a girls' school excites you in some way, here's an FAQ.

So you went to an all-girls school?

Yes, yes I did.

So are you/your parents rich, then? It's kind of snobby.

No, the school accepts pupils based on academic merit. There's an exam called the Kent test we had to take. Other girls/boys only schools don't necessarily have the test, and I don't know about them.

Were there lesbians?

Probably not as many as you're hoping. Out of over 1,000 girls I think I personally knew one who was genuinely bisexual. At one point it was fashionable to pretend, you see.

Were you naked all the time?

Of course. We especially enjoyed e.g geography and maths lessons completely naked. We had to wear goggles in science and technology, and an apron in home technology though. You know, for safety. Naturally, since there are no boys around, there is absolutely no reason to wear clothes at all. Even if we are not usually bisexual or lesbian, we save up all our secret lesbian naked adventures for when you aren't around.

Okay, but when you weren't naked, did you have a kinky uniform?

No. We had an itchy, heavy, woollen kilt. We also had a uniform for sports, which consisted of huge, unflattering granny pants and, at times, a unitard. But I don't want to talk about it. It was traumatic.

Did you look like those girls from Japanese manga?

No. I went to school in England and therefore most of us looked British.

Were there nuns?

No..?

I bet you were really horny all the time, because there were no boys.

It was terrible. What's worse is that the boys' school was a whole 3 streets away so it was like total isolation.

So what did you DO all day without any boys?

I know, right? It wasn't like I was in school to learn or anything.

I bet you have problems with men and with male authority figures now, though.

:D I actually got asked this once in all seriousness. No. The eight hours I spent in school all day and 6ish hours I spent asleep at night only account for 14 hours of my day. The other 10 hours, which was my free time, was spent with people of both sexes, some even from the boys' school. Besides, in sixth form (the last two -voluntary- years of secondary school) there were somewhat mixed classes because of an agreement between the girls' and the boys' schools to ensure a wide variety of courses available. So no, sorry if you were trying to hate on grammar schools and rage against the system, but it didn't screw me up.

Do you have any pictures *wink wink*?

Here you go.

Life goals - less than in football

When I was in school, we had to have goals set for every lesson. We had to cover a chapter in a book or understand a particular reaction in chemistry. I don’t know who invented it, but it was more than enough overkill and since then I’ve ignored goals as being trivial and easy to attain – therefore not really goals.

Some people, however, apparently could not get enough of the rabid goalsetting of the school system and actually apply goals to their own lives. Others even stick to them and achieve them.

Goals may be, for example:

Climbing Everest

Swimming the channel:

Becoming famous and/or a millionaire (and owning a small, loud handbag accessory):


Generally as a rule, I don’t make such commitments anymore. My first and only life goal was decided upon at the tender age of 11 after hearing a midi on mIRC of ”All the small things” by Blink-182 and declaring them to be my favourite band. I decided immediately that if I ever do anything in life, it will be to see Blink-182 live.

When they split up in 2005 I not only gave up hope of seeing my favourite band evar but I also rejected life goals as being shitty and unrealistic. I decided never to strive for anything in such a manner ever again. After all, had they not split up, I would have had a far better chance of reaching that goal. It’s not even like my goal was shat upon due to my own laziness or neglect.
Luckily, Blink-182 have got back together which has instilled a kind of fan-girl excitement which seems to have ignored the 5 year hiatus and just carried on from what it was like when I was 16. It is AWFUL, you guys. I dug out all my blink stuff and admired it lovingly. I listened to ALL the albums and watched the Urethra chronicles. I watched interviews, read blogs, and spent yesterday on google maps looking at Poway where Blink-182 was formed. I even bought a pair of
vegan Macbeth shoes. Macbeth was formed by two of the guys from Blink-182. But whatever, they went on a hiatus and left me without an outlet to do all this shit and act like a teenager right when I’m trying to graduate and start a business. I blame them.

Here's a picture I drew before their hiatus.

So, as I said. I don’t make LIFE goals anymore. I do, however, keep a small list of things I wouldn’t mind doing:

1) The blink-182 concert is still my priority.

2) Touch a bald person’s head. Perhaps get permission first.

3) Run 5km (may or may not be attained on Thursday).

4) Achieve moderate internet fame (I’m still on elementary internet
fame).

5) Live in the same municipality as my boyfriend.

6) Order a whole cake and take it home and eat it for no good reason other than that I’m an adult and I CAN.

A series of updates:

- I can (and did!) vote in the general elections, despite the forms getting messed up in yet another epic bout of bureaucracy fail.

- The bottle of carbonated orange drink has GONE, you guys. I don’t know where it is, but I doubt it fulfilled its destiny as a refreshing beverage :( The eggs are also gone, but made it a record FOUR months on the table. Christmas calendar disappeared around the same time.

- I got all my stuff from Oulu. The universe is still okay. You can go back to what you were doing now.

- Jukka’s computers DO all have fans.

- Not technically an update, but look at this cactus. It sprouted this new growth after a year or so of being inert. It’s done that in about 4 months.
I think it may have hit puberty. *snortgiggle*.