Ultimate Jacket Lust!

Aaah! I'm in love. Absolute love. Head-over-heels, timeless, go-down-with-the-bloody-Titanic love....

And it's with this jacket:

River Island

The best thing?  It's High Street!

Ok, it's hardly student wallet friendly at £140- but it's leather and it's bloody gorgeous!

If I ever acquire something resembling money (or, joy of all joys, this goes into the sale in my size) then I will be rocking the hell out of this jacket this summer  <3

Sure as pandas are pandas   :D

Now I'll level with you - I can't find the jacket on the River Island website; but I'd originally found out about it on the Company March fashion edit - so hopefully it'll turn up soon!

What S/S12 jackets have got you guys hot under the collar of late?   :)

*Cough*

I'm ill again  :(

That's right, less than a month after fighting the last big cold, I'm fighting a new one that has forged a love affair with my throat and lungs. Ow. I think I might have had a fever last night as well - I can't be sure, all I know is I woke up freezing at 6am to find that at some point in the last 4 hours I'd taken all off my PJs o.0 (not something I tend to do in February (especially as we don't have the heating on overnight)). At any rate, I must be ill because my Gran (who once ordered me to go to work with a migraine) sent me back to bed and called work to tell them I'm too sick.

Not gonna lie, I really don't have time to be ill  :( I have to...

• Lose an extra 0.15" off my tummy by mid-week
• Research for a presentation (even if the members of my group have vanished :/)
• Research for a long essay that's due very very soon
• Research for a PhD proposal that's due even sooner (eek!)
• Begin preliminary research for my dissertation
• Write the 2 articles that I've thought of for this blog (one of which has been in the pipeline since January - eek!)
• As well as general chores around the house.

Ill times = bad times  :(

I'm trying not to get too stressed out over it, however, and am instead going to drink lots of water, eat lots of healthy noms and watch an obscene amount of The West Wing - and hopefully I'll be back on track sooner rather than later :)

How do you guys make yourselves feel better when you're sick?

Disinfected hugs,

One More Reason I Miss London: SNOG

I'm not talking about snog as in kissing (well, it is V-day, I suppose!) - after all the fact that I was never single & looking during my 4 years in the capital means that this experience has eluded me anyway ;)  No, rather I'm talking about Snog the frozen yoghurt company.

Snog has a fair few branches across London, which they list on their website, and I spent an awful lot of the 2010/11 academic year at the branch in Westfields White City. The frozen yoghurt (or, for all you Simpsons fans, Frogurt ;)) comes in 3 flavours, it's delicious and the fact it's made with Agave nectar means that it's very low calorie.

They also have an obscene number of options when it comes to toppings - they run the gauntlet from fresh fruit to indulgent chocolate brownies - and don't even get me started on the cookies! Of course you could always opt for a mix of healthy and naughty; this what I went for 90% of the time:

Raspberries, white chocolate cookie, and chocolate brownie chunks.
Almost certainly not as low-cal as the Snog itself but damn tasty! ;)

And, what's more, if you happen to be in London today for Valentine's day, then you can have these chocolate love hearts sprinkled on your Snog free of charge! 

So now really is the perfect time to try the place out and, as they say, you never forget your first Snog  ;)

Happy Snogging! ....and Frogurt-eating!  ;)
*Mwah!*

The 5 Stages of Seeing Your Ex in Public

This is a blast from the past: a post from our sister site from almost a year ago. Enjoy!  ;)

I thought I saw my ex on the tube tonight on my way home; it almost certainly wasn't him as he's out of the country on a conference (I know this by way of on-going negotiations regarding when I get my stuff back :p) but it still scared the hell out of me.
It was then that I realised that we go through the famous 5 Stages when we see an ex, just like when we did after the break up. Albeit in a (hopefully!) quicker and less painful manner...

• Denial         "It can't have been him! He's away on business! Besides, plenty of men are 6'2" with waist-length curly hair and distinctive clothes..."

• Anger           "What the fucking fuck is he doing in my fucking city?! Get your own fucking city!!"

• Bargaining   "I feel like shit now... I'd have given anything not to have seen him again..." 

• Fear              "Ohmigod... what if he saw that I've put on weight?! My new lad isn't with me - what if he thinks that I can't get anyone new?!  Aarg!"

• Acceptance   "Yes I saw him. Whoopti-freakin-doo."

Conundrum

I have a lot going on in my life right now, choices I don't want to have to make, puzzles that I need to solve, and straight-up dilemmas. But they are too depressing to go into detail about here. Instead, I'll present you with my current fashion conundrum...

New Look: Espadrille Wedge Heel Mary Janes
£24.99

For the life of me I cannot work out whether I want to run to the caves and hide out until these pastel abominations go the hell away... or run all the way to the nearest New Look and kick off my Spring wardrobe with a pair of these!

Well I'm stuck!

How about you guys? Are these your cup of tea? Or do they make you want to run for the hills? Or, like me, are you completely at a loss?!

A Not-So-Grand Return

Hey gorgeous people!

Can you believe that it's been (count 'em) three whole months since my last post? I can't, and I'm the one who keeps writing "update LP" on my to-do list every week >.<

There's a whole bunch of reasons for my absence of late, but the least depressing one (which, happily, is the one that consumes most of my time) is that I've been busy with uni and with work. The work? I'm a barmaid at my local pub - ok it's not exactly glamorous (especially considering that my continued lack of prowess in changing barrels means that I get sprayed with beer/cider at least once a week >.<) but I really like it: the customers are nice enough, the staff are cool, my bosses are awesome... and we sometimes get free cake! :O :D

And the uni? Well since my last post I've started my Masters degree in Health Care Ethics at Leeds University (I'll usually refer to it as "Medical Ethics" or "Bioethics", this is for two reasons: 1) those titles better sum up what we study than the actual course title does, and 2) they sound way cooler ;p). It's fascinating, exciting, thought-provoking stuff... but it's an awful lot of graft. So much so, in fact, that recent deadlines have driven me into the ground: for two weeks, I was so furiously involved with my work that I barely ate or slept, and drank bucket loads of  Lucozade just to keep going. Not the most healthy way to go, and I'm sure as hell paying for it now: I'm having my ass handed to me by the cold to end all colds. Though every cloud: I'm too ill to study, which means that for the first time in a long time, I am able to update Lady Pandoala... even if I am too ill to do it well. :p

So if you were wondering where I'd vanished to, then wonder no more! While I'm not here, just imagine me either: pulling pints in a village pub, hunched over my laptop writing an essay, reading ethics articles, pestering Damo on the sofa at his place, or (one day a week, at least) being a bit of a misery on the long-ass commute to uni (3 hours! Why?!)  - any one of these won't be far wrong ;)

I will try to update more often - after all, that last minute panic with my deadlines is making me re-evaluate my time-keeping methods ;) - but until then, hope you're all enjoying the new year my lovelies!

Mwah!

Wacky about Weddings

(I'm bad at titles)
Let me tell you a secret: at the tender age of 22, I have been unofficially* engaged twice. In addition to this implying that I date men who are hopeless romantics (especially when you keep in mind that this is only my second real relationship!) this has meant that I've spent a bit too much time thinking about weddings for a woman above the age of 8 who doesn't have that special bling on her finger (even if she has the promise of one). But this doesn't have to be a bad thing - even though the second engagement was short lived (I'm too young to get married, dammit!) I've come out of this with a whole new respect for weddings.