The worst kind of witch; the kind that cleans

This quote stolen from the film Howl’s moving castle has become increasingly applicable to myself over the past few weeks. We went from “I’ll just tidy it up a little” after exams to the “I’m just going to sterilise it” blitz two weeks ago to “We can’t have possibly run out of bleach again!” moments this morning.

The running total so far comes to the kitchen being scrubbed within an inch of its existence approximately four times. This went as far as to scrub the stickers off the fridge along with the grubby marks, and get ever so slightly high from oven cleaner. The first round of kitchen madness apparently caused Lydia to vanish for an entire weekend. Although as anyone who has ever visited our house will tell you, the task of maintaining our kitchen in a clean state is a thanklessly impossible task. Even if you write patronising things on the whiteboard.

This lead to sterilising the bathrooms, in which I changed the colour of one set of lino. Apparently the black wasn’t part of the pattern, whoops! I cleaned things which we’re sure had never been cleaned before including the blinds in someone else’s room and shampooing all the carpets. We even got a pretty little plant and I weeded the front garden.

I turned into the cleaning witch and still haven’t stopped. Here’s hoping my own little blog of intervention will stop me cleaning the house until it vanishes or forever smells of bleach.

The great balloon plot of 2014

99 Luftballoon- Plus a few more…

So Post exams is a time to relax get drunk and have fun, well for the girls of Straithnairn our celebrations are rather different. Seeing as Sam serially leaves his room unlocked, although I rather suspect that to no longer be the case, Lydia and I express ordered 600 balloons from amazon. 

 

This weekend I have proved I have mutant lungs with my ability to blow up just under 600 balloons in an effort to fill Sam’s room in the time it took me to watch 3 films. All of this was done without a pump. We filled every nook and cranny we could find, from the wardrobe to under the desk and then I filled the rest of his floor…… until it was waist high at the door and much deeper at the other end of the room. There were so many balloons in fact that they have been popping under their own weight since Friday night.

To give some forewarning to Sam we added a little sign to his door. All it really served to do is increase the dread when Sam came to actually coming home. He opened his door and shouted “BALLOOOOOONS”, surprisingly Sam isn’t currently about to kill me and has taken this as a challenge to see how long he can live with around 550 balloons in his room. It took him 10 minutes to find his shoes, so life may be interesting in the near future.

 

There were some balloons left over as the long thin ones were so hard to blow up I nearly fainted. I left those out after a while. Leaving them on the side in the kitchen lead to Jacob creating four water balloons. I managed to intercept this plan before they ended up in Sam’s room with all the rest. 2 ended up in the freezer, 1 ended up in Stu’s bike and the last one got very gratified to be one of the most scary and phallic things I’ve ever seen. It died by being thrown at Muaaz after it failed to explode when it fell out the fridge onto his feet. The huge block of ice from one balloon ended up being very fun and glided about on its own melt water. Muaaz and Heidi smashing it lead to the neighbors thinking we’re insane as they were shouting about rainbows and how unicorns were made.

 

That thing you call ‘SUN’?…

So, on Stu’s food day there were left over scotch bonnet / death chillies in the fridge. So naturally he was persuaded by Jacob to add pure fire to his chilli. A few of us were forced to back down from the challenge whereas Jacob just used it to ‘refuel his fiery pits of hell’. People are full on revision mode now since the exams are well under way and people are revision-turtle-ing in the house.

This weeks G.O.T day had a few of us sitting down to watch it and I have to say, what an episode!( Although I don’t think anybody else appreciated the torrent of ‘that wasn’t in the books’ that was coming from Sam (me) but I don’t care).

The first exam was around a week ago and Jacob blocked league of legends from the house (and steam) before that, probably for Sam’s benefit. He briefly lifted the block for 48 hours so Sam had a respite from that tyrannybut the wi-fi is in shackles again until the exams are over.

Also on an unrelated but equally unbelievable topic, Wales is sunny?! Well that was unexpected, I mean that never happens here. We seem to be taking it in turns to lounge in the rays of brightness that hurts the eyes and it is fairly nice to revise in the fresh air. Although that being said, Jenny ‘may be secretly ginger’ due to the fact that she can burn in the time it takes to go to boots at the end of the road and get sun-cream. I am fairly sure that there is some kind of irony there. Due to the great weather, the house had a small BBQ for tea yesterday, trying to multi-purpose it into a furnace for steel and being fairly successful.

Overall, the end of exams will be an extremely fun period for everyone and we are all looking forward to it. There probably won’t be any more posts from me for a while, but we will see when the mood to procrastinate strikes me next.

Addition…

Jenny is now procrastibaking. That is all.

Procrastination for the Strathnairn nation.

So, with exams  coming up the pressure is on. The house has been decidedly split in their goals between doing the revision that they blatantly need to do and… well… not doing it. Procrastination has infected the house, with cycle rides becoming frequent for Stu and Jacob to long stints at playing guitar from Muaaz. 

Sam (ME!) got so bored that he cleaned his room to the point that it sparkled and between that, the eating random bits of food and one of those addictive timer games where you have to wait to do anything ever that he now plays, he has managed to kill a lot of useful revision time.

There was a game of thrones watching session that killed a few hours for most of the house although Jacob is still feeling the hole left in his heart from where Joffrey was brutally murdered right before his eyes. We have also taken up watching the usual horrors again, with ‘Paranormal Entity’ making its way into Jacobs possession. Also after finishing the ‘black mirror’ series, we have taken up the series named as ‘Inside number 9’ which is really really good. I made the fatal mistake of admitting that I have never seen ‘Terminator’ so obviously I will be press ganged into watching that at some point.

Lydia has brought back her usual insomnia habits, although I think she may have gotten a lot of revision done as I haven’t heard much procrastiflute playing. (Really hope it is a flute that she plays, I know nothing about music things) procrasticlarinet. Her and Jenny though have been trying out clothes, which is unheard of from them and done. Jenny is going out to dance a lot (as in every single one) as her revisory stammer but judging by the state of her room (:P) you would imagine that she has done quite well on the ‘resisting doing anything but revision’ front. Wrong, she has got the room tidying to go as she has managed to go a step further than me and iron every single piece of clothing she owns. probably her sheets too. (:P).

I mentioned earlier that Muaaz procrastinates by playing guitar. He is great at it and the best thing is he has ended up playing the game of thrones theme song over and over again. As a fan I love it, so +1 for Muaaz. Stu has kept his head down as well, working hard or at least procrastinating quietly so there isn’t much for this post to talk about.

Overall the house as a whole is well prepared to deal with the exams that are staring us down regardless, due to the fact that however much we procrastinate we put even more effort at revision… although… ah… yeah…

 

Doing this post is kinda procrastination in its self… I’ll be off now…

Success and not so much.

So, after a week on tinder, the novelty has worn off on some of us. All three of us have had varying degrees of success with a fair few more than hilarious incidents happening along the way. We are yet to convince Stu to join the fold, although the chances of that happening are about the same as the chances of hitting a bulls-eye whilst blind-folded, spun around a few times and a concrete dart to throw (So small).

Ironically the two of us who decided to go on tinder as a joke have had great success and have been inundated with people to keep them company. Jenny so much that she got bored of meeting new people and decided that revision was a better idea with the exams coming up. She had loads of matches almost instantly and went quiet for a few days whilst chatting to her various matches.

Jacob originally had a troll account and asked a few poor girls if they wanted to take part in various odd activities with him. He currently holds the record for being blocked the quickest. After getting bored with alienating the community, he decided to create a serious account and started swiping. The matches started coming in fast. He has had a number of girls who are very keen on talking to him and has been asked out by an apparently lovely girl who is clever enough to completely stump him on the conversation front. Which takes a lot. 

Sam has had very little success with tinder and after five matches of girls that either did not want to reply or ones that seem determined on liking everything that he did not is a little fed up with the app. Not to say he has stopped trying with it.

Straithnairn finds Tinder

After Muaaz’s resounding success on Tinder in finding the ever lovely Heidi, the house went on a campaign to get Sam on there (partially for comic value and partially good intention). This started with a few apprehensive guilty feeling on Sam’s part and escalated to Tinder being installed on every compatible device in the house and some very pitiless judging, including an hour of watch Jacob say “no, no, erm… no, no OH GOD NO” much to our amusement.

Our foray into tinder taught us a few things: we are all incredibly shallow; I’m every so slightly cruel; saying you’re after “rough anal sex” gets you lots of hits; and Jacob really knows Sam’s taste.

Sam started in all innocence with nicely writing his bio and carefully choosing photo, repeatedly turning down offers for Charlote, Jacob and I to write it for him. Then after a while he became increasingly shallow and escalated to
“urgh she looks like shes put her make up on with a shovel…”
“…….and been hit with it”.
Then again Charlotte and I (particularly me) were no less cruel. I started with categorising every guy as: no; hell no; chav; posh boy; or meh. A few did pass muster and chatting to my matches was fun as it lead to the conundrum: what do you say to guys you have no intention of dating? We did also discover the naked guy who was slightly under endowed and the shirtless guy who looks like he’s wanking, many giggle ensued there, particularly after the realisation that these photos come off peoples facebook!

We also developed a few deductions about the photos:
1. Black and White photos are for posers
2. Men in swimwear no, women in swimwear a big yes.
3. Babies didn’t go well
4. nearly naked is not classy
5. no one just wants to see your tattoos rather than your face
6. why so many horses and sky divers
7. This is what people chose as the first thing to show the world!
8. Your description goes a long way, so write one!

We also discovered that you can find it rather hard to deter these people. Jacob added anal sex to his bio in an attempt to put women off yet still got a lot of matches. Although he did say he’d take an age range of up to 50+ for comedy value and found a 90 year old!!

In short if you want to have a laugh, meet soldiers, half dressed women, some hilarious photos and randy teenagers who’re never 18. Join Tinder with your mates.

e ^nickname

Thanks to a bet at the start of the year, Sam has gained a steadily worsening series of nicknames that have irreversibly stuck. This culminated in him being called “Spanky” in the middle of the forum (the engineering common room).

Shortly before we moved in Sam bet we couldn’t think of a nickname for him that he hadn’t heard before. How wrong could he be? As a group we deviated from the usual Samantha’s and Shorties to get a tiny bit more creative. (Poor Sam) this lead to spam, mostly as it rhymed. Then to be a full name we had Spam Hamkins for an even porkier feel. And due to a masterfully misheard comment on my part at the start on the year, Spam was transformed into Spanky. This has stuck for almost entire year. There’s still an occasional Amsay from pig Latin but Spanky became a truly rooted name for Sam, until that is Lydia had a brainwave; Spanky became Spankual (pronounced Spank you all) much to his horror.
I foresee this particular name going far!

Sam however is not the only one to have picked up a nickname or two. None of the rest of us are quite as embarrassingly named but here’s a little list.
Jacob: our overlord and master, or dictator Jacob. But we all have enough sense to just call him Jacob
Me: Mummy Jenny or Ennyjay
Muaaz: Caramel Cupid and Mrs Muaaz (due to an error on his post)
Lydia: Yldialay, Dia and Lyd
Stu: to be honest Stu is totally nickname free apart from his name pronounced as quickly as possible.

And we can definitely gain more nicknames next year as we’re going to have two Matts living with us. Hello confusion Central!

Welcome to the Straithnairneverse

We’re a house of Engineers, a Physicist and a Poetry student (a.k.a a civil engineer). Six students who’ve lived together for one very entertaining year. This blog has been set up at the request of our favourite nursing student. This last year has been very entertaining and practically a sitcom. We’re totally mad and I thought I’d share our special crazy with the world.

Thus far we’ve had: lots of graffiti, mostly on food items;  lots of baking of increasingly good pies and cannibal quiche (courtesy of Lydia); two failed cleaning rotas; a swear jar that made £100 in under a month; lots of dirty and racist jokes; a very loud smoke alarm caused by burning German coursework; a kettle friend now dead; a ridiculous list of rules; Girl guiding stickers everywhere and so much more.

evil bananas out for vengeance

Let me introduce to the house. Firstly there’s me. I’m Jenny and I’m one of the two girls present within the house. I study mechanical engineering (with German as I’m a glutton for punishment). I’ve got a reputation for being a bit of a cleaning freak and mothering everyone. I’m our master pie baker and occasionally go bleach crazy. I’m a scout leader and I was treasurer of SSAGS at the start of the year, so I leave lots of tents in the kitchen. Most importantly I’m an angry little Northern tea drinking girl.

food dyed milk (tasted BAD)

Next lets have Jacob: our very own twisted dictator. He’s flamboyantly evil but we all love him really. He’s an ardent cyclist and loves saw films. Master of the money and with more life experience than the rest of us put together, he’s definitely our father figure. He does our group shopping for us and is cheaper than cheap allowing all of us to live off £10 a week each when it comes to food. He is of course another mechanical engineer.

Organised and colour coded, shame it failed with one of the infamous girlguiding stickers

Next lets talk about Stu, Jacob’s shadow and secret lover. They’re training for the iron man together and always up for a good horror film. Especially if it means mentioning the human centipede while someone is eating. He’s actually very quiet and trying to get an opinion out of him can be like trying to get blood out of a stone.  He’s from a RAF family and he’s definitely going in that direction. Hes also Muaaz’s bit on the side, they’re the hot thing of the house hold.

It made £100 in a month before we stopped it but it paid for Christmas dinner.

Seeing as I’ve mentioned him, let’s talk about Muaaz. Our resident metal head and “caramel cupid”. Hes always on hand with a filthy or racist joke and is ever so fond of his deathsticks (cigarettes). Hes got a brand new girlfriend who we think is very cute and hes ever so proud of. Most importantly he is a poetry student, I mean a civil engineer.

Aren’t we subtle? And why am I winning on real point?!?

Next comes Sam, our resident Mechanical engineering refresher. Sam has more time than the rest of us due to his refresher status so is very keen on his Gaming and Game of Thrones. Hes always after a girl and ever so unsuccessful. Hes the chilli fiend and one half of team insomniac.

Kettle friend after major sugery

Last but not least comes our one and only Physicist, Lydia. Shes crazy as a box of frogs and the other half of team insomniac. She’s an ardent reader and the designer of Cannibal quiche, so called after an unfortunate wording on the whiteboard for her cooking day. Lydia is a rainbows leader so the source of all the Girl Guiding stickers placed everywhere in the house. She was mad enough to move in with us having met only me and she agreed to it after having only met me three times. We’ll miss her next year when she moves to Toaster to play with lasers. Most importantly she hugs kettle friend at every opportunity, to death it seems.

Eggselent grafitti