Crazy Weather Day.

I called my Mum on Sunday. She's flying back to PA this week to help J with the boys on their return trip to Idaho. Mum's nervous. She's never flown alone before. I think her flight is pretty much direct, though. So hopefully she won't end up in Mexico.
Anyway, Mum mentioned they still have three feet of snow in Idaho.
Edinburgh doesn't. Edinburgh is green. Edinburgh has crocuses and daffodils already coming up. Soon, the Meadows will look like this:

So excited! Plus, the sun is setting about 5pm now. Oh, that makes a very happy Stacey. Scotland in winter can be fairly depressing. Until today, a day which has seen hail, rain, sun, rain, wind, sun.. repeated. It's crazy!
February was a really hard month for me. The panic attacks went away, but the New Year Blues decided to hit a month late. February is my least favorite month of the year. Not just because of Valentine's Day, just a sense of wretchedness that always seems to hit in the F month. I can see why the Celts called it the Time of Death. It's just blah.
Valentine's Day was actually pretty fun. I decided that no longer will the day hold pain and suffering for me as a singleton. I spoiled myself. That weekend I went and bought some pjs and impulse bought this t-shirt. Come on! Seemingly anti-V day sentiment AND Pepe le Pew! I could not resist. I freaking adore this shirt now.
I also bought this as my Valentine Day stuffed animal:

This is Mack. He's an otter. He's part of the Blue-Nose Friends collection, some of which, like Mack, are adorable. Look at that face! Awwww. Others get you thinking, "What the heck!" A cuddly spider? (really, that's one of the stuffed toys).
So on Valentine's Day, I set out with a mission: Have fun and do a bit of shopping.
I went and bought a bedside lamp.
I had a bedside lamp, a gorgeous touch lamp my bro bought me. When I moved in to this flat, back in November, I plugged it in and about twenty minutes later, heard this huge bang. The bulb went out, there was a smell of burning and the lamp won't work anymore. Grrr.
It now sits in my closet.
So, needing to solve the no-bedside-lamp problem, I found this in the closet:

They left this, a box of hangers and an ancient weight scale.

You can see the high quality. I have no idea why the previous tenant left it behind. Except that it had a few problems. Mainly, if you bump it, this happens:

I suspect it's broken.

Additionally, the plug only fit the one socket IN THE ENTIRE FLAT! So, when I tried to use an extension cord, the "lamp" and I had some issues...
So I replaced it.
I went to this amazing store called Homebase and found this:

All together now: "Awww."

It's the cutest little lamp. I like it.
After making this purchase, I headed up Nicolson Street to the Pound Store. They have this fabulous perfume and, being the Pound Store, I planned on stocking up before it ran out. This is when the problem started.
I used to live on Ratcliffe Terrace, which is parallel to Nicolson, kind of. See, Edinburgh has this annoying habit of changing street names every block on the same road! Example: the street parallel to Ratcliffe is Minto which (going North) changes to Newington, then Clerk Street, then Nicolson, and then South Bridge, and then North Bridge until it hits Princes Street and stops, because there's the Register Office and a statue of Wellington in the way. I have no idea why they keep changing names. Even Ratcliffe changed names every intersection.
Anyway, on the way up Clerk Street, I went into a Bernardo's Used Book Store on the pretense of looking for a book as a birthday present for a friend. Oh, and maybe they would have a couple of Robin McKinley's works. They didn't, but...
I bought TH White's The Once and Future King and discovered a new series by Pseudonymous Bosch (awesome name!). I bought the fourth book, This Isn't What It Looks Like. I blame the title, the author and the blurb, which stated Bosch was in the same vein as Lemony Snicket, whose books I adore.
The buying binge continued when I entered Tills Bookshop, which I used to walk by every day and is an amazing store. They have also received a lot of my money. I am now several pounds poorer.
I then went to Marks and Spencer and bought my dinner and lots of chocolate. Later, my friend Irena came over and we watched Van Helsing. It was a good day.


Yesterday, I went back to Barnardo's and bought Kidnapped by RL Stevenson and a book of Gothic tales by Elizabeth Gaskell. SO excited! I have tons of new books to read. Now I just have to pick one.
Well, that's about it. I'll write more about my turn as a pirate last week.
Now it's out to brave the icy wind for dancing. Oh fun!