3 steps to gaining acceptance from your cats

At the end of my first year at uni, my family got two adorable kittens whom we named Poppy and Rosie. Awwww.

The thing was, because I was at uni and therefore not home very often, whenever I did come home they didn't really understand who I was. So, since graduating and moving back home, I've had to ingratiate myself with our two-year-old cats. I know, it sounds like I've set myself an impossible task, but it turns out that there are steps one can take to gain a cat's - well, certainly not love (I'm not completely delusional), but perhaps haughty satisfaction. Here's what I did:

3 fun obsessions I've been having recently

If you've read many of my other posts, you'll probably have realised by now that I get obsessed with things REALLY easily. It is a natural trait that was exacerbated by being a student and having endless time to waste, making me more obsessive than ever. I'm going to share with you a few phases I've been going through, partly in the hope that you'll get obsessed with them too and we can geek out about them together. Deal? Cool.

Shhh Regina, I'm not talking about you.

23 gems from GraceBot

In a fit of extreme laziness, this post has been written by a machine. Everyone's been trying out the new What Would I Say? app on Facebook, which generates statuses by mashing up everything you've ever said on Facebook and churning it out to make it look like something you might say. Well, if it can generate statuses, why not a whole blog post, eh? Here are 23 things that I, apparently, might say:

Well basically in my dream I was ron weasley...

What would happen if dolphins were treated as people?

In an exciting turn of events, this post has been inspired by @UberFacts! I couldn't have predicted this happening a couple of hours ago, but here we are. This tweet popped up on my timeline earlier, and I think you'll agree that I couldn't have ignored it if I tried:

Some scientists believe dolphins should be treated as non-human "people" with their rights to life. Unlike many animals, they are self-aware
— UberFacts (@UberFacts) November 8, 2013

Dolphins could become part of our actual society, much like the Elves and Dwarves of Middle-Earth! Imagine a world where we walk/swim hand-in-fin with our streamlined peers, chatting and chirruping away with enormous grins stretched across our faces. We'll have such a jolly time! I am literally so excited by this that I wrote a list of how things would change if dolphins got given non-human rights.*

My 3 failed attempts at doing exercise

Exercise and I have never been pals. We've met on occasion, but in each instance I got the feeling that she's inwardly sneering at me. Competitive sports are a no-no - mainly because I can't do the 'competitive' bit (forgive me, but the idea of briefly being named the best at a game that will invariably involve running after a ball of some sort seems to lack any sort of benefit apart from a fleeting sensation of smugness, which you cannot express to anyone for fear of appearing smug).

Here is a rare image of me after an attempt at exercise:

To me, exercise only has any appeal if a) no one can see me, and b) it doesn't make me feel like death. The chances of this are often slim. However, I have made an effort to try and exercise a few times this year, with varying results:

4 surprisingly accurate predictions for the future from 1999

In 2001, when I was but 9 years old, I bought this rather handy volume by Peter Corey:

The book humorously details predictions for the rest of this century, and as soon as I started reading I decided that I would keep this book for the rest of my life and see if anything came true. Everything I read sounded absolutely ludicrous when I read it in 2001. Now I'm toying with the idea that Peter Corey is a time-traveller. Check this out:

What should I blog about?

Do you ever find that the old creativity spout dries up every once in a while? It may shock you to discover that even I sometimes struggle to think of things to write about (I know, you'd never guess, right?). But, I've devised a nifty solution to this little mental pickle (you may note that I I had to resort to using it last week). Dear readers, I am about to share my most valuable secret with you. May it serve you well.

4 shifty schemes that my cats might possibly be working on

Recently, I've noticed some particularly shifty behaviour going on on the part of the feline members of the household. I know that all cats are clever and manipulative, but Poppy and Rosie are behaving like secret cat agents. They only leave the house in shifts, never at the same time. When they're swapping shifts, they sniff each others noses, as if they're communicating in code. Poppy keeps voluntarily going outside in the rain, something cats NEVER do, and when I go and look for her, she's always in the rockery. As soon as she sees me, she miaows and runs back inside. Clearly, the cats are planning a covert operation, and our rockery is housing something instrumental to the task. I've been speculating about what they might be up to.

I leave this information in your charge, dear reader. If I suddenly go missing, you'll know why.

5 reasons why we make questionable shopping decisions

Do you ever just randomly spend a load of money without knowing why? I did that the other day. I was walking into town to catch the bus when suddenly I was in a shop buying clothes. I knew that I couldn't really afford what I was buying. I had even made a pact in my head to just go straight to the bus station. But for something had overridden this sensible notion, and even when I left the shop I wasn't entirely sure what had happened.

The Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending and Hoarding lists 8 possible causes of shopping addiction. Although I'm not addicted to shopping, I thought it would be useful to look at why I needlessly splurge out every so often. I've taken 5 of the causes and described them, suggested excuses you might make to justify your purchases and ways you could combat them. I've written this as much for myself as for you guys, obviously.

Fun ways to jazz up unemployment

It's an unfortunate fact that since graduating I have been unemployed; in fact nobody seems to want to pay me any money. Nobody, that is, except the government, who have been doling out my weekly benefit. The thing is, having a continuous stream of rejections filling your inbox and frequently having to hang around the Job Centre can give your self-esteem a bit of a knock.And there's no more student loan, so you can't even shop to make yourself feel better! [Clueless voice] As if!

So, it's time to lighten the mood. The grass is always greener, right? At least you're not one of the guys always complaining about their job, or moaning about their boss. You'll never be this free from monotonous drudgery until retirement! Let's make the most of this unemployment malarkey! Who's with me? Ride to ruin and the world's ending! What say you? What say you?!

HUZZAH

HUZZAH

HUZZAH

New Girl MBTI (Myers-Briggs) personality types

Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs personality test? There are lots of online versions of the test, but the best one I've seen is probably this one. I don't massively trust it since I've taken it maybe 5 or 6 times and I've come out with a different result every single time, but it's still quite fun to do (FYI, the latest result was ISFP). Seeing as New Girl season 3 has just started in the U.S., I thought it might be quite fun to work out what personality types the main characters fitted into. Here are the results (please excuse these terrible pictures, especially the John-Travolta-esque Schmidt, I won't tell you what an embarrassingly long time it took me):

Dawson's Creek reminds me of Harry Potter

Recently, I've been going through a bit of a phase (shock horror). I was a bit young to watch Dawson's Creek when it first came out, being precisely six years old, but a few months ago my good friend Rosie (who designed Alma Grove's logo and wrote this blog post) introduced me to the joys of living in Capeside. Now I'm ever-so-slightly obsessed.

Here's another fun fact about me (and I totally understand if you want to stop reading after this sentence) (but at the same time I really don't): I absolutely LOVE listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks, read by Stephen Fry. I've always preferred listening to people talking than listening to music, and Stephen's superior tones often soothe my ruffled mind when I'm getting ready in the morning. The thing is, because I'm watching a lot of Dawson's Creek and listening a lot to Harry Potter, I can't help noticing that they're actually surprisingly similar...

Wedding cringe-fest, courtesy of Pinterest

As I have mentioned previously, I spend a fair amount of my time at the moment trawling through wedding ideas on Pinterest, hoping to find cool stuff. Mostly it's the standard, rustic, boho weddings held in a barn that dominate the Weddings section, but every so often I spot a pin that registers highly on the queasy scale. Here's a brief glimpse of the kind of ideas that typify this genre (sick bags at the ready!):

7 ways in which I would improve Elysium [SPOILERS]

The other night, Alex and I went to see the newly-released Elysium. I thought it was ok, but I feel that I could have made it better:

A brief history of English spelling; or, 5 reasons why we should just chill

Call me ridiculous, but when I visit a company's website, I'm a lot less inclined to trust them if I spot a spelling mistake on their page. On Twitter or Facebook or in texts I really couldn't care less because I put it down to an honest mistake, and I get that for a lot of people spelling isn't a strong point, but when I see it in a corporate context it just makes me rage inside. Yesterday I visited the site of a catering company who insisted on spelling the word barbecue, 'barbeQue'. In my head I kept reading it as 'barbeck', which sounds like some kind of medieval dance.

But why does it annoy me so much? When I think about it, it's completely irrational. I mean, I know exactly what they meant to say, it's not a barrier to my understanding of the sentence. Where on earth did this concept of 'good spelling' and 'bad spelling' come from? After a bit of research, here's what I found:

"And most of all, I'd like to thank Pinterest..." - the dilemma of wedding inspiration

So, something exciting happened to me while I was on holiday...

Soz

Hello there. You might have noticed that it's been a bit quiet on the blog recently, for which I apologise. Since my last post, I've moved out of my house in York, gone to Venice with my old housemates and GRADUATED.

6 ways to make goodbyes less awkward

I've just about wrapped up my time at uni, and amidst packing and trying to remove mug rings from furniture before the landlord sees them, I've had to start saying goodbye to people. It's a situation that makes me feel a bit awkward, a) because it's a social occasion and b) because it's not like I'll see some of these people around - it kind of feels very final. But luckily, I've devised 6 different plans of action to deflate the awkwardness. They're basically foolproof.

"There's a hole in my soul" - the World's biggest conspiracy theory

Who's up for a game? I'm going to throw some song lyrics at you, and your challenge is to spot the theme. Ready? Let's go.

• Hey, show some love / You ain't so tough / Come fill my little world right up / Right up - Fill My Little World, The Feeling
• There's a hole in my soul / I can't fill it, I can't fill it / There's a hole in my soul / Can you fill it, can you fill it? - Flaws, Bastille
• Well that is it, guys, that is all, five minutes in and I'm bored again - Some Nights, Fun.
• I am lost, I am vain / I will never be the same / Without you - Without You, David Guetta
• The scars of your love remind me of us / They keep me thinking that we almost had it all - Rolling in the Deep, Adele
• I know that I've got issues / But you're pretty messed up too / Either way I found out I'm nothing without you - My Life Would Suck Without You, Kelly Clarkson

What's the verdict? You might have noticed a couple of strands emerging - dissatisfaction with life, and the idea that finding somebody to love will complete you. 

Why the British can't handle their cheese

I don't know many people who wouldn't agree that a slice of lightly-toasted white bread is improved enormously by an oozing layer of melted mature Cheddar. And yet, when it comes to cheese in its abstract form, most prevalent in American TV drama series, we wince and cringe. Why is it that we, as a nation, cannot produce or watch cheesiness without grimacing?

My investigation begins with a definition of the term 'cheesy'. I would describe a cheesy moment as one that is needlessly sentimental and completely unrealistic, which is blatantly motivated by a need to manipulate the whole audience's emotions, with the subtlety of Taylor Swift. Here is a classic cheesy moment demonstrated by Cameron Diaz in The Holiday:

4 myths about doing an Art History degree: true or false?

Yesterday I handed in my final piece of assessed work to the department office, thus ending my travails in the academic world. I'd been desperately yearning for that day to come all month. What motivated me through dissertation pain and revision strife was the feeling that I assumed I would experience on May 30th, my final deadline: triumph, over the vanquishing of the three-headed monster that was my degree.

But that feeling was a dream, nothing more. It turns out that no matter how much you celebrate, finishing your degree is actually a little bit of an anti-climax, until you know your results. In the meantime, you have to find distractions to stop yourself freaking out about results, jobs, the future, money, aaaaargh stop stop make it stop!!!!!

So here's my distraction for today. I thought I'd help clear up some rumours about the Art History degree that people used to spout at me when I first told them I was doing it.

The social network: a word of warning

For those of you that don't know, when I graduate in July I will (hopefully) have a degree in History of Art.*  To be completely honest, I prefer the 'history' bit; I love the thrill of piecing together evidence to form an understanding of the past, however meagre it may be.

I also find myself thinking a lot about how the future will judge our generation, the millennials. What evidence will they use to build a picture of us in their historical consciousness? What accessible resource do many of us pour fragments of ourselves into, like sand into an empty bucket? Yep. The good ol' social network.

Emmeline Pankhurst on our banknotes?

You may have heard a couple of weeks ago about the Bank of England's decision to replace Elizabeth Fry on the £5 note with Winston Churchill. As with every item of news, this caused an absolute furore on Twitter. Why was the only woman on our banknotes being replaced by a man? What was the Bank of England thinking, taking such a backwards step for women's rights? Don't get me wrong, I don't entirely disagree with the validity of these questions (although we'll get to my slight qualms about them later). I was, on the other hand, alarmed at the enormous amount of people blithely advocating Emmeline Pankhurst as a better substitute.

A day at Castle Howard

On Monday I escaped the miry bog of dissertation drear and hopped on a bus to Castle Howard with Alex. It's not actually a castle in the medieval sense; rather, it's a stately home built on the site of the original castle. If you're ever in the York area, I can't recommend this place enough, it's gorgeous!

Review: Revlon Colorstay Crème Gel Eyeliner

I don't tend to wear all that much make-up, but eyeliner is the one item in my weapon inventory that I can't go without. When I've woken up late and need to get ready in a hurry, I find a quick dash of black on the upper eyelid is the difference between zombie and acceptable-for-human-society. When I'm wearing glasses, it stops my eyes from disappearing behind the thick frames. On a regular day, it just makes it look like I've made more effort than I really have. It's the best.

The problem is, so many eyeliners I buy have a tendency to smudge, fade, or imprint underneath my eyebrow (attractive). I ran out of Bourjois Liner Feutre recently, but I hadn't been very impressed with it (the colour always looked kind of diluted), so I decided to try a gel eyeliner. I went with Revlon on a whim - I like their skin products and 'Colorstay' sounded nice and smudge-proof.

Is the news bad for you? And should it matter?

Earlier today, I stumbled across a rather intriguing article entitled 'News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier'. Honestly, I found it by accident because 'Rolf' was trending on Twitter (due to Rolf Harris' arrest) and the article's written by a guy called Rolf. On Twitter, everyone was singing its praises, so I decided to find out what was so insightful about this piece.

Dissertation procrastination and motivation

I think I have about a month til my dissertation's due in, and to be perfectly honest, I'm finding it really difficult to put the pressure on. I have a whole day set aside, but it's 12:35 and I still haven't done anything. In fact, I'm not even dressed. I've watched three episodes of Mad Men, done half of a YouTube pilates workout (couldn't get through the whole thing, don't judge me), and now I'm wondering whether to have a shower then lunch or vice versa. Oh, and I'm writing a blog post.

I know that I definitely procrastinate too much, but I also think that there is such thing as 'good' procrastination. If I'm taking a break from work, I shouldn't have to feel guilty about it if it ends up motivating me. Here's a list of things that I would label 'good' procrastination:

Why do we love @CrimerShow so much?

Some of you may be aware that one aspect of my personality is a certain tendency to get sucked up in and obsessed with things. This can sometimes be a bit unhelpful - like the time I got addicted to listening to every different version of 'On My Own' from Les Mis on Spotify (oh wait, that's now). But it can also be an Extremely Good Thing, and I have my obsessive nature to thank for getting me so emotionally involved in the Crimer Show.

A very Good Friday to you

I'm home and I'm off work for a week and a half - time to pardy with a d (is it still ok to say that?). We are having our Easter dinner today because my sister is going to France tomorrow, and so I took advantage of this amazing recipe on Facebook and made Cadbury Creme Egg brownies! They look delish, I can't wait to try them.
By the way, this is my first time using the Blogger app on my phone, I can't really decide if I like it - it's kind of limited in terms of editing options. Handy for on-the-go updates, though.
That's all for now, folks, but I hope you all have great Easters, and remember the real reason behind it :)

[30/03/13 EDIT: I actually hate the Blogger app, it ruined the layout. All sorted now, but sticking to laptop from now on. Oh, and the brownies are A-MAZ-ING with a capital A, M, A... yeah, you get the picture. Toodle-oo.]

Literary t-shirts, old sport

It's taken over a month, but finally my Great Gatsby t-shirt is here! Yay!

The starving children in Africa - who really cares?

Before you berate me for the title, just hear me out:

I was walking home from campus a few weeks ago and behind me there was a guy and a girl having a rather heated discussion about foreign aid. It started with an obviously provocative statement from the guy: "I don't care about the starving kids in Africa."

"The royal body exists to be looked at" - a response to Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel, award-winning author of historical fiction, elicited raised eyebrows and horrified gasps from the British press on the publication of a speech that she made at the London Review of Books Lecture earlier this month. The comments that sparked the greatest outrage concerned the Duchess of Cambridge. Amongst other observations, Mantel compared Kate to a robot or mannequin, who "appeared to have been designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished". As a self-confessed fan of the Duchess, I admit that there were points in the speech that I strongly disagreed with - I do not believe that the ideal of Kate is a construct to the extent that Mantel suggests. However, after I finished reading, I found this BBC news article in which David Cameron condemns the author's comments.

Why I Can't Wait to Graduate

Hello folks, Rosie here. Grace and I have been having a bit of a debate: Graduation, scary or exciting? Of course it's all about the mixed feelings for the majority of undergraduates but I for one am ever so excited.
University life is ending despite the fact that I'm only just coming to terms with the fact that young children will refer to me as a "lady", I don't feel like a lady! However, the many hurdles that lie before me prior to reaching the auspicious date do make me yearn for a freer life after graduation. With this in mind, I have compiled the following list detailing the 5 things I am most looking forward to after graduating.

Countdown to Graduation Day

We got our dates for graduation today, and it looks like on the 12th of July, I'll be stumbling onto a stage and shaking someone's hand whilst wearing the world's silliest hat.

Where did the time go? It feels like just yesterday that I wandered into that forbidding grey building with the sign 'N Block' plastered to it like a warning (actually, maybe that was yesterday - I do still get lost on campus sometimes...). But now my days are numbered, and to be honest, I don't want to graduate just yet! Here's why:

Welcome to Alma Grove!

Well, hello and a hearty welcome to Alma Grove! This blog, run by Rosie and myself, will be a delightful concoction of recipes, photos, thoughts, reviews and generally stuff that pops into our heads as we savour our final months as art history students in York. We'll probably also end up using it to settle our various debates about today's society, current affairs and which Jane Austen heroine is the best.