Things I Know Today.

Sometimes a week off is what we all need. A few nights spent drinking too much and laughing with friends are the most perfect things. It doesn't matter if the film is bad, as long as the person you watch it with doesn't mind you providing sarcastic commentary. Pizza is all I need to cure any hangover. Really cold coke optional but preferred. Burning incense in my bedroom is filling it with thick sweet smoke but its worth it, even just to save money on my scented candle addiction.



Christmas is beginning to feel just around the corner, and bonfire night is even closer. My favourite time of the year has definitely begun. Towns full of students are fun towns to visit - especially if they look like a setting from Harry Potter; complete with castles, gothic cathedrals and shops full of beautiful old books. Six hour train journeys are bearable with an iPod full of music and a phone full of people to text and complain to about said journey. Vodka and coke is the one. Waking up to cider spilt over your bedroom floor and last nights outfit is not.

Halloween is incredible, so is face paint, so is going to church on the night of October 31st - as an atheist - I've never felt so spooky in my life. Dracula is good reading material for giving you nightmares and skies full of stars are suddenly quite scary. The music I'm listening to changes as the nights get longer and the evenings get darker earlier. All I want to do is curl up under my duvet and wait for it to start snowing; the disappointment when this doesn't happen until February is just as much of a yearly ritual.



In other words: autumn is well under way. The high street coffee chains have brought out their seasonal specials, everyone I know is bundled up in coats and hats every time we set foot outside, I've got some new snuggly warm boots to wear and a pile of books to read. I've switched back to my "wintry" perfume, and started longing to buy new jumpers, as if Topshop needed any more of my hard-earned cash. A very happy girl really.

Memories need to be made, photos need to be taken and life needs to happen while we still have time left living here. This is how I look today. Tired, yes. Piles of work to do before next week starts, yes. Regretting not spending more time studying, definitely not. I could get run over by a car tomorrow or fall under a bus and I wouldn't want to feel like I had missed out on anything.

SNOW

I'm sat in my house at the moment wearing my PJs, proper ones with long sleeves and snuggly socks. I'm under my duvet with a bunch of blankets and dressing gowns and stuff piled on top of me and I'm still freezing. The main problem is now that I really want a cup of tea but I also really don't want to crawl out from where its (slightly) warm. Basically, this is why its a bad bad BAD idea to go away for three days, in February, and leave the heating off. Not low or turned down - OFF. No-one should ever do this, because it has been about two degrees out and now our house when we got back feels like an ice cave. I swear to you its colder in here than outside, as if the house has been storing up all the frosty, coldy, iciness going on outside to make it extra welcoming for us to come home to.

The fact its about minus-something degrees in my room tonight is reminding me of all the snow we had a few weeks ago. I took a whole load of pictures, watched 500 Days of Summer wistfully in my (warm) bed and drank a lot of hot chocolate. I also went on a snowy walk with my best friend and then we ate a huge amount of toast and nutella in her kitchen to thaw out again. The perfect snow day/weekend. As Lorelai Gilmore once said: "I smell snow... flakes, flurries, swirls, crystals, whatever form it comes in, I'll take it. Best time of the year."

I defy anyone to stand in a fresh fall of snow and not feel transported back to childhood. It's magical.

So 2013 started...

Wow, I haven't done this in a while. I actually forgot where the *write new post* button was when I logged on to blogger but I found it and now I have to think of something to say.... just kidding. I always have lots to say but no time to put it on the blog. Which makes me really sad when I think about it because before you know it, the thing that felt really important and that you wanted to comment on or share with people has gone, and is a part of last week or last month, or, now, last year. Time feels like its going extremely fast lately or is it just me? I mean 2013! When did that happen?! It still feels new and exciting but maybe that's just because I am always childish about New Years. I know its a crazy cliche but it really means a fresh start, a clean slate. You can start over - stop doing whatever you always meant to give up, start running, eating healthier, quit smoking... "New Year, New You" and all that jazz.
Or, if you're like me and have very unrealistic expectations, you could do what I did this year and write 12 resolutions and put them in a jar. One for each month. I was going to do 13 for 2013, but then I changed my mind about one of them and anyway - I need something for next year right?!

Yeah I have an actual jar of resolutions.
 This makes me happy.

Anyway, I am literally not even kidding about this: I have genuinely forgotten what most of them are. I know. That's quite bad, given that we're only 17 days into January. But starting tomorrow (my last exam... ugh physics) I will start on one of them. I will pick a random one out and attempt to do that for the last... um, please don't make me work out how many days are left this month. I've done about five hours of physics revision today. My brain hurts and I officially hate numbers. On my planet, New Year's Resolutions aren't actually things I expect myself to achieve. At least not in the sense of being able to look back on December 31st 2013 and mentally tick them all off the list. They're ideas and things I want to try doing, hopefully things that over the year will lead me to having some amazing experiences. I don't want to jinx anything but there is a chance that by about October, I might have saved up enough to be getting on a plane to somewhere I've wanted to go for as long as I can remember.... (No prizes if you can work out where that is but leave me a comment below if you think you've figured it out!)

In other news THIS is definitely the best thing I have seen probably ever on the internet. I cried actual tears you guys.

Are you having a good start to January? And what are your resolutions this year? And the most important question is: WHO HAS HAD SNOW??? I love the snow and according to the power of the TV weather guys and girls, my town might be getting quite a lot of it tomorrow which is the best thing since Taylor Swift breaking up with Harry Styles.

Jessica

xoxo