SO EXCITED 
PICKING HIM UP AT THE AIRPORT IN LIKE 7 HOURS
AHHHH

(i’ve been anticipating this for a long time. a LONG time xD)

 on the fitspo front, i’ve kinda just been maintaining it seems since i got home. i’m currently floating between 131 and 132, which i’m not too annoyed about since i havent been counting calories or super strict about working out. I’m kinda glad that i’ve proven i can maintain my weight wihtout really putting a conscious effort in- and i’m still working out/exercising sometimes just for fun or out of boredom, which affirms that it’s not always weight-loss related.  Even so, i still want to get down to my goal of 125. With Luke here the next two weeks i’ll probably be out and about more than i have been, but also riding less which is a slight bummer. And he’ll also be holding me to my weightloss more cause he was always good about keeping me from being bingey or eating bad stuff :P so yay!

i went for a bike ride yesterday with my friend on this trail that goes through my town. it was really fun and relaxing! i think i’ll take Luke on it whilst he’s here :) tomorrow we’re going to go to endicott park for a lunch picnic and playing on the life course/playground :) hopefully he doesnt shrivel up and die in this heat…today the “feels like” temperature is like 100 degrees / 38 C xD he hasnt seen the sun for months cause england weather is sad and rainy booo

anywya gotta go grocery shopping for our vegan creations!

pictures to comeeeee :D

i am coming to you live from my lovely boyfriends house, which i will unfortunately be leaving soon :( anyway here’s the second set of photos from hatfield moors! it’s a nature reserve in his hometown and it’s a wonderful place!!! :D full of cool birds and snakes and all such things. They had these little watch houses you could go in that let you get way close to all the wildlife- or have sex in, as we found out by walking in on a couple who were going at it in one of the more remote houses :L awkward.
anyway, i hope you enjoy the pictures :) i cant wait to go back in the summer when everything is in bloom :D

i love himmm :)

Botanical Gardens :)

Anniversary in Sheffield :) Luke and Lacey one year and counting ^_^ look how cute he isssss
city is pretty great too ;) 

Field trip to the zoo! I went here last spring but i forgot my camera. Very happy to have a second chance to capture everything :) was a fun day!

Plane Photos. Dawn, clouds, and some amazing views of the Peaks :)

that’s right

back.

So it has been an enormously stressful first week-ish back in the land of the Mancunians, but i am finally out of the woods. After 4 sleepless nights, a shitton of biology, an anxiety attack/mental breakdown, a week of waiting nervously and some mitigating circumstances forms, i am officially a zoology student at the University of Manchester. thank fuck for that.

In between the anxiety and the mitigating circumstances i spent several days with my lovely english boyfriend. The reunite went wonderfully and all of tumblr can b’aww when i tell you that he took me out to dinner at an adorable little italian restaurant where we ate pizza and sipped cappuccinos and talked about learning french (among other things) :) My days spent with him were stress-free and left me floating on cloud 9 despite all of the scary things i was dealing with at the time.

Before i expand on the french thing, let me just add that i have been staying all by my lonesome in my new house because no one else has moved in yet :P Luckily Luke did keep me company for a majority of this time so it’s all good. People will be moving in Monday so just a few more days of loneliness! i’m sure i’ll be missing the peace and quiet very much once everyone else arrives, though. 

anyway, french! My boy and i decided we wanted to learn a language together. (because we’re adorable, etc) it was between french and italian, and after heavy deliberation, french became the victor. He’s already got quite a bit under his belt so i’m playing catch-up atm :P the goal is to go to paris in the spring and put the french to use. can’t wait! i’ve been really wanting to go to Paris since i started here, as it’s quite close and a relatively inexpensive venture. of course i’ll take a billion pictures and post like 5 on here.

my musical interest has also been reignited for the first time in ages, as i bought 4 CDs for myself this past week when typically i come home empty handed. My purchases include:

Sam Duckworth - The Mannequin (just came out, really enjoyed it! love me some sam)

The XX - xx (recommended by my best friend, chilled out, very sweet, and lovely)

The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar (Prefer the EP ‘a balloon called moaning’, but if you dont mind heavier sounding stuff it’s got some real catchy tracks and abstract but pretty lyrics)

 Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (i’ve listened to this for the past few years but never owned the CD. Good, upbeat, fun)

So all in all a successful week for music!

We also visited a shop called Forbidden Planet, which is a geek’s paradise. I loved every minute of it though! The downstairs area had a huge selection of manga and comic books and other sorts of graphic novels. The idea of kicking back with an old school spiderman comic or something really appeals to me, and i’m interested in possibly picking up some manga. The artwork has always interested me but i’ve typically shied away since at home it was always kinda “weird” if you were into that stuff. Even though i’ve been told it’s not real anime, i adored the Avatar the Last Airbender series and still rewatch episodes to this day :L it’s so good! I also watched Death Note over winter break last year, as well as a few other notable series. So i see a lot more of this Forbidden Planet store in my future, maybe get my hands on some comic books and be a proper geek in my spare time :P

Being back in england has been awesome, despite the stressful moments. Loving being in the culture and the accents and just like…everything. I’m a minority again! it certainly brings out another side of me, hard to pinpoint what exactly, but it’s a nice side. Plus the independence is nice.  Just sucks to have to pay for things again! I’m looking for a job, we will see how that goes. “Hi I dont have any UK references and i cant work weekends and only a few hours during the week. hire me?” worth a try eh :P

lastly i miss riding! i saw some signs with horses on them near my house, i might head down the road to see if there’s a farm or something. Would just be cool to pet the horses and stuff, i miss them. Riding for Uni doesnt start until october :(

well it’s late now so i am off to bed. tomorrow i will finally unpack all of my clothes and settle into my room, put up pictures and whatnot to make it less bland. i’ll take a picture when my room nears completion.

p.s. Get cape concert on september 30th yessssssssssssssss <3

That’s kinda what it’s starting to feel like. Unless the impending hurricane throws me off, (please please please no :( ) i’m flying back to manchester on saturday evening.

i’m so mentally unprepared o.o gonna do some studying today, organise my clothes, maybe wash them….i was terrible about washing clothes when i was at uni. i think i have a washer/dryer in my house this year so that will encourage me to actually do some washing. Last year it cost me like £10 each time i did it, and i wasnt a fan of spending the money xD

i dont really believe that i’m going back yet,in my head. which is making it difficult to feel the pressure to get everything done! On the exciting side of things i did some major shopping yesterday with my mum at Kittery outlets in Maine. Finally got my hands on some yoga pants (i was seriously missing out. SO COMFY. definitely wearing on the plane.) a few pairs of tights, some adorable pinstriped shorts from banana republic, and this poncho-type thing which i fell in love with at J.Jill. I’m not really one for brand names, but it was awesome to find some pretty high quality clothing for not an absurd amount of money. Maybe i’ll do a post after this and model some of my finds :L 

i saw these clip-in feather things for hair at pacsun, which i didnt buy cause i wasn’t 100% sure they were synthetic, but it gave me an idea of how to make my own. It’s not all that difficult to find feathers outside, i already have a few. Washed of course. If i succeed in making one i’ll post it with a little how-to :)

anyway, i am very excited to get back to manchester. to be in a city in general, really. I miss the buses and all the busy streets and riding on trains and all my friends…and the englishness of it all :L and i cant forget one of my most missed people, my boyfriend, who will be coming to see me the day i get back :D it has been a much anticipated reunion to say the least. I can’t wait to go to HMV again and start buying some more music! And to move into my new house! And to take my resit exams!

just kidding on the last one. i’m dreading it.

well, i will update as soon as i’ve got some free time back in Manchester. Or whilst i’m sitting in Newark airport crying over my flight and this stupid hurricane.

meanwhile, hang tight for my ‘Lacey models her new clothes’ post :P

Lykke Li hurt her back and postponed her concert.

until october 31st.

yeah.

So that was a major disappointment, but fear not, because i had a great week regardless!

Luke arrived tuesday afternoon, dripping with hay fever but excited nonethless for our voyage into the record stores of central Manchester; He was going to be like a child in a candy store, it was easy to see. It was a hot, sunny day and i was feeling the anticipation as well! We were kicking it old school, attempting to get a glimpse of life before itunes and ipods and irecordruiners. We werent just checking out compact discs today, oh no. We were talking larger than life vinyl rings of pure musica, things unplayable by the mere means of laptops (much to Luke’s frustration, after realizing he’d bought 4 records and wouldnt be able to listen to them at my ill equipped dormitory.)

i gotta say, it felt really cool to be sat on the floor of a shop sifting through the boxes of dusty record sleeves, trying to find a diamond in the rough. And it’s not everyday you see Songs for Beginners begging to be picked up and put to use:

“Ahh Graham Nash - Songs For Beginners. Just… just the album cover alone, look at that face, he knows he made a great record. “
    - Charlie Fineman, Reign Over Me (2007)

Luke performed a flawless impression, of course.

We visited some very interesting places, some that i would be happy to return to in the coming weeks. ‘Empire Exchange’ offered a massive collection of not only vinyls (at very reasonable, not to mention negotiable prices) but old comic books, magazines, novels, memorabilia,  CDs, plus amusing categorizing nomenclature. (the one we spotted was a large table of cds, which were labelled ‘cheesy crap’ or something along those lines)
Overall this shop seemed to have something for everyone. I even stumbled across a book called “A Christian Family’s Guide to the Internet”. I didnt check, but i’d imagine there was a whole chapter on the evils of 4chan.

 We visited 4 other shops- one (Eastern Bloc) specialized in deep house, dubstep, techno, drum n bass etc ( i had only been properly introduced to this music scene the previous night by my very musically knowledgeable other half, so i was out of my element. I could get into it though! ) This was another shop with entertaining labels on all of it’s records- whoever writes them puts a brief personal description of the album afterwards. I wish i could remember some of the funnier ones, but trust me, its worth going in just to read through them. that is, if youre as easily amused as i am.
The others had a bit of everything. I’d say all but one or two were focused mostly on vinyl with a few racks of CDs thrown in somewhere. I’ll put the names of them at the end of the post, all worth a visit if youre in the manchester area :)

Anyway! it was an adventure worth having in any case, and it felt good to get away from HMV for a change. Not to mention i got a glimpse of Manchester’s Northern Quarter, a place where i have not ventured into before. I spotted a cupcakery that is dying for me to visit it sometime. And i have no doubt the place is a cafe goldmine waiting to be exploited. 

On to the other great event of the week- Chester zoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i was so excited to go to this place o.o and my excitement was well founded, because it was amazing! Now, i havent been to many zoos in my life, so i cant offer up a good comparison, but a few key points about this place:
-it was clean
-there were lots of grassy areas to sit and relax
-it is absolutely massive
-there is a huge variety of animals and tons of interesting exhibits. The animals all looked well cared for and adorable.
-there were SO MANY DUCKLINGS just wandering around outside exhibits i could not handle the cuteness of them all. i wanted to steal one and take it back but i wasnt allowed. 

so basically, it was awesome. Like an idiot i lost the map of the place which led to the boy and i missing out on some cool animals - the red panda (so cute ;_;) cheetahs, lions, kangaroos. But we saw tons and tons of cool stuff that we could hardly complain. We were lucky enough to catch the two jaguars strolling around their little island place, we saw zebras, meerkats, rhinos (ryan O’neils), lots of adorable little monkeys, an orangutan, Okapi, pelicans, cranes, elephants, giraffes, tigers, lemurs, strange looking fish and turtles, fruit bats*, Butterflies**, buffalo, deer, antelope looking things, lizards, i could go on and on but i’ll stop there.
*fruit bats: you got to walk through a cave and they were just flying around overhead o.o it was amazing yet eery and a little unsettling, as they’d swoop quite close at times. but it was an awesome experience!
**Butterflies: they had a ‘butterfly journey’. i was reluctant to go through this place as i have an irrational fear of butterflies and moths. Despite my extreme jumpiness, i would recommend it to anyone. There was tons of beautiful little butterflies doing their thing and youre right there to see it all, and not through glass! i’m all for open exhibits like that where you can be close to the animals.

So, i would call it a very successful weekend! i will upload a picture or two or three from the zoo following this post. My apologies for the novel, hopefully someone got something out of this!

hope everyone has a wonderful easter. i’ve got a giant chocolate egg calling my name tomorrow :D

peace

record stores not linked earlier:
Vinyl Revival

Vinyl Exchange

Clampdown Records

Picadilly Records