Debauchery in Durban

Considering how much traveling I have done in my lifetime (Zimbabwe, US, UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, South Korea, Thailand, etc), it is surprising how little traveling I have done around my own country. Sure, I went on holiday to Plettenburg Bay every year, but that was as far as my South African travels went until I came to Rhodes for University. Suddenly my horizons opened to include Grahamstown, and from there one or two trips to Johannesburg. So, when given a reason to make a trip to Durban, there was little hesitation on my part. Grant needed a little convincing, but before long the plans were set in stone and there was no turning back.

When deciding how to get to Durban, we took the cost of travel into consideration. Flying would cost us around R1500 each both ways, while driving would cost about that overall. Once it had been decided that both of us would definitely be going, it also made financial sense to drive rather than fly. Since our original plan also included spending a week diving in Aliwal Shoal, this also made the most sense in terms of the time that we had. Once those plans crashed and burned (I still have to complete my diving course), the travel arrangements stuck and we were still going to be driving rather than flying down. A mistake, I can confidently say in hindsight, considering how long it took to drive there. I have driven from Grahamstown to Cape Town and back numerous times, a trip which usually takes me 10 hours including a quick stop for lunch. That is 899km in distance, while Durban is 799km away. So, in my mind, the trip should be at least an hour shorter. But apparently not. Roadworks, traffic and general stupidity on the part of other drivers on the road meant that instead of the 9 hours that we had been expecting, it took us 12 hours to get to Durban and just as long to return. Needless to say, I think I will be flying on my next trip.

Of course, once we actually arrived in Durban (well after the sun had set), it all seemed worth it as we found our way to Robyn's house and were greeted by the wonderful Robyn herself. Robyn makes everything worth it. If I had just taken the trip to visit Robyn, it would have been worth it. But, as it was, we had little time with Robyn and decided to make the most of it by taking her out for a nice dinner and catch-up. We went to a Mexican restaurant on Florida Rd, and continued to eat the most enormous pizza I have ever seen in my entire life. Yes... we ate pizza... at a Mexican restaurant. Grant was perplexed too, especially since we don't get Mexican in Grahamstown and he had been expecting to get something, well, Mexican. But we were all well-fed and thrilled nonetheless and the company was awesome. We then made our way down Florida Rd to an amazing frozen yoghurt place (I cannot for the life of me remember the name of it) where we treated ourselves to some condensed milk yoghurt with the works on top. It was.... divine. And makes me hungry as I am writing this. Damn Grahamstown and its lack of frozen yoghurt!! We decided to walk and eat and made our way back to Robyn's place for an early night.

Speaking of which... Robyn has the most amazing place that I could imagine. I wish that I'd had the forethought to take photos, but instead you will have to bear with me as I describe a gorgeous two bedroomed, two bathroomed house. Ridiculously high steps lead up to a veranda with a small pool on one side and sliding glass as the entrance to the house. You step inside and are escorted into a modern dream of dark wood floors, white walls and black furnishings. Leather couches decorate the lounge along with a massive TV, and further on is a small open dining area before you get to the uber-modern, uber-jealousy-inducing kitchen of amazingness. I swear that if that oven would have fit in Grant's car, Robyn would never have seen it again. And then there are the rooms - Robyn's pristine white haven with the open-plan bathroom, and her housemate's room which (I shouldn't know this, but Robyn snuck me in when he wasn't looking) includes a walk-in closet and three deep steps that lead into a sunken bath/shower combo that I would kill for.

Anyway, enough of that. Back to the weekend. After a few more hours of catch up, during which Grant was half passing out from exhaustion, we decided to call it a night and head to bed. Grant and I had an early morning after all. We woke up around 9 and I started getting ready immediately. We needed to be at the Blue Waters Hotel at 11:00, in time for Andrew and Nikita's wedding. This was the main purpose for our trip, and I was excited as anything. I had met Andrew before many, many years ago, but had never met Nikita despite our almost daily chats. We got along like a house on fire, and when Grant and I were invited to the wedding, it was hard to say no. So we didn't. And there we were on Saturday morning, arriving at the hotel and going up to a reception venue where we knew hardly anyone. Actually, I knew one person and Grant knew me. But, no matter, we sat ourselves down at our table and slowly started becoming acquainted with the others. And it turned out that Grant did in fact know more people than me after all! He quickly recognised the photographer as someone he knew in University days and, after telling Andrew how funny it was that the only person he knew was someone from Rhodes, he was approached from a woman who had been sitting at our table all along and informed that he did in fact know her too, from way back in the day at Rhodes! So, our lack of acquaintances was soon made up for as we chatted and danced and had a good time.

The wedding itself was a wonderful one. Not knowing the couple particularly well, Grant was worried that the service might have been religious (think of it as his worst nightmare), despite my assurances that it was unlikely to be. As it turned out, I was right. The ceremony was far from religious, and was actually rather amusing at parts (you wouldn't think that made for a good ceremony, but it certainly made for an entertaining one). The reception venue was beautiful with a view of the Durban coastline from 18 floors up, and the food was delicious. The guests were incredibly friendly and welcoming, as were the couple, and overall we had a fantastic day that made the Durban trip feel like it was completely worth it. A dinner at Bangkok Wok finished off the day, and was the perfect end to it. We made our way back to Robyn's and had another early night, which wasn't surprising considering that we were both feeling exhausted after the long day.

Sunday saw another early start as we woke up and started arranging breakfast at Robyn's boyfriend's place. Having only met James briefly on Friday evening, I was looking forward to spending some time with him and making sure that he was the right man for my little Robyn. Deciding to do something that we couldn't do in Grahamstown, the four of us made our way to Gateway to play some bowling. Little did we know that Gateway would also be Grant's dream come true, as he discovered the Ferrari simulator in the food court. R150.00 and ten minutes later, he had taken the car around the track and was satisfied, though still uber-excited, and it was time for us to play some bowling. Being the terrible bowler that I am, Robyn and I decided to challenge each other with the sides up, while Grant and James took each other on with the sides down. With an amazing finale, I swept the floor with Robyn (winning by a whole like 5 points), and completely lost track of how the others were doing while I was performing my victory lap around the bowling arena. Not really. But I would have been. Instead, Robyn performed a very interesting celebratory dance in her bowling shoes that slid along the carpets. For my entertainment, of course. It was lovely. Once the bowling was over, it was time for some air hockey, some lunch, some shopping, a piercing (not for me) and then it was back to the house so that Robyn could get ready for church (which I skipped). Once she returned, there was more preparation as we prepared for the night that I had been waiting for (without knowing that I was waiting for it) for weeks. That's right folks! I was in Durban! And what else was in Durban?? THE HUNGER GAMES! You should have seen my excitement when I realised it. Robyn was less excited, but totally willing, James was happy to be dragged along, and Grant... well Grant stayed behind and fell asleep early. LAME! Instead, I got to see THE HUNGER GAMES! Which I loved and will tell you more about in another blog.

And then... two and a half hours after the movie started... it ended, and it was time to make our way back. It was well after 11pm, and I had a 4:45am wake up ahead of me, which I was not looking forward to in the slightest. So I hugged Robyn as tightly as physically possible and promised that I would be back again soon, and made my way inside for a night of relatively restless sleep. And woke up ridiculously early. And we were on our way.

And so concluded the whirlwind that was Durban. It was brief, but it was amazing, fun, exciting, Robyn-filled, wedding-filled and supremely awesome. And hopefully we will be going back soon. Pictures of the trip can be found here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/102893679262962677151/DebaucheryInDurban

Bridesmaids Review

When Bridesmaids first came out, I heard really good things about it. I heard that it was like the female version of The Hangover, and having loved that movie, the idea of a female version thoroughly appealed to me. I finally got hold of a copy this week and decided to watch it on Wednesday night.

For those of you who may not have heard about Bridesmaids, I will offer a quick explanation of what the movie is about. A single woman, reeling from a recent breakup and the collapse of her business, is invited to be the maid of honour for her best friend's wedding. The two have been friends since they were little, and so she naturally is thrilled at the honour. She then finds out that the friend is marrying into quite a wealthy family and a wealthy society and that all of the bridesmaids are part of this society. She therefore needs to help plan a wedding that involves a lot of expenses to herself including bachelorette parties, bridesmaid dresses and general wedding-like expenses, all while being surrounded by women who are far wealthier and are all in supposedly healthy, happy relationships.

It sounds like a typical rom com, right? It sounds like it has potential. However, the movie ended up being a rollercoaster ride of emotions from awkward to hilarious to disgusting and heart-touching with many stops in between. There were moments that I loved about the movie, but there were also moments that I hated. There tend to be parts in movies where I cringe because I am so embarassed for the protagonist, usually because I can put myself in their shoes and just know that this is not going to work out the way that they have imagined it in their heads. I have what I like to think of as foresight. In any case, during this movie, there were moments where I cringed in that way, but there were also moments where I was just plain tempted to turn the movie off and stop right there.

I will explain in slightly further detail one of these moments, and I apologise for any spoilers that this may provide. However, I take it that if this specific scene puts you off, you probably wouldn't have enjoyed watching it anyway. There is a moment in the movie where the protagonist in an attempt to impress the other bridesmaids without spending a vast fortune decides to take the girls to a genuine Brazilian restaurant that she has found before they go for dress fittings. The place looks like a dump, but the food is supposed to be amazing. So they go to the restaurant and have a lovely lunch which they all enjoy and then they make their way to the dress fitting. While trying on ridiculously expensive dresses, each and every one of them suddenly comes down with a bad case of food poisoning and there is rushing for the toilets in every direction. By the time this hits the bride, there are no bathrooms left, and she is in a ridiculously expensive wedding dress. She therefore makes a run for the place across the road that does have a bathroom and can't make it, therefore falling down in the middle of the road in a wedding dress and... well... you can guess from there I am sure.

As I said before, there were horrendous moments, but there were also sweet ones, and it's one of those situations where your sense of humour will decide for you whether you go to watch the movie or not. All I can say is that it certainly was no female version of The Hangover, and the humour in it was not up to the same standard in my opinion.

Life

I feel like I have aged over the last two weeks. There has been so much going on, not necessarily in my life, but in proximity to my life that is making me feel older than I actually am. Of course, there are factors that influence this - instead of being surprised to hear that I am as old as 23, as people used to be, they are now surprised to hear that I am as young as 23. That more than anything makes me feel like I am getting older, at least in the looks department. My style has certainly changed (at least during the week) in that I no longer wear a t-shirt and jeans to work, or if I do it is at least a sharp looking shirt or a t-shirt with smarter pants or a skirt. I have also taken to wearing dresses a lot more often, possibly because they are fitting me better than my t-shirts at the moment. A story for another day.

No, the reason why I feel like I have aged is that life is moving forward for those around me in both good and bad ways. There are some things that I am going to discuss that may feel very personal, and I apologise to my friends about that and will not use their real names to ensure their anonymity, but feel like I need to talk about the things that are on my mind.

It feels like there has been a lot of death recently. Some of the deaths are people that I have no connection to but affect me because of the pure sadness of the situation. One example of this is the death of Jamey Rodemeyer. I don't know how I came across his story, but it stuck out and is something that I have been thinking of a lot recently. A few months before his suicide, Jamey had taken part in the "It Gets Better" campaign, a campaign in support of LGBT teenagers that was formed due to the large numbers of suicides in America over the last few years. He spoke about how he truly believed that it gets better, that the support of family and friends overcomes the bullying that is experienced, that being proud of who you are will give you the strength to overcome the obstacles. I watched his video knowing the outcome, and it just absolutely broke my heart. The video can be seen here, and a tribute that was performed for Jamey by his idol, Lady Gaga, can be found here.

Then there are the deaths that have been slightly closer to home, like finding out on Tuesday that a friend's boyfriend had been murdered, brutally, in what was seen to be a hate crime. He was found naked, bound and gagged in his home, and even though my friend had only been dating him for a short amount of time, it really hit home just how horrifying the situation is. There is no doubt that, had I read about the incident without knowing someone involved, I would have been disgusted,  appalled and horrified, but it made it so much worse that my friend was suffering through the situation on his own, and most of all that I couldn't be with him in his time of need.

Still reeling from this knowledge, I found out later in the week that a friend's mother had passed away. I was utterly shocked to hear about it, to hear that it had been from a disease (an e-coli infection) that I recently had and that it had affected her so badly. And what struck me even more is that life goes on. It seems amazingly obvious, and yet, if I was in the same situation, I don't know how I would react. I don't know what I would be feeling, or experiencing, or thinking. But life goes on. You do keep feeling and thinking and experiencing and you have to get out and do the same things as you always did. You go on with your life, trying to remember that person who passed away as best as you can and in the best light that you can and you move on. Whether that takes weeks or months or years, I don't know. But it happens.

And in the midst of all the bad comes the good. There are weddings and celebrations of love. There are new years to bring in and good wishes to be sent to every family member and friend. New life is being brought into this world by those same beloved family members. And you have to remember that, while there is so much sadness in this world, there is also so much joy, and while you should remember those people that have passed, while you should feel sorrow and pain and sympathy, you should also celebrate every joyful opportunity that comes your way. And I intend to do just that.

So, while my deepest sympathies go out to the families and friends who are going through tough times, my heartfelt joy is going out to those with celebrations on the horizon and lives that are just beginning in all senses of the word.

Why weddings stress me out

I am not talking about my own wedding here, though I am sure that when the day comes, I am going to be stressed as all hell. But attending someone else's wedding shouldn't be stressful! Should it?

For someone who (up until recently) was unemployed, a wedding can certainly be stressful. Especially when that wedding involves expenses like flying to Johannesburg. For that same person, being given the honour of bridesmaid (not maid of honour mind you) is even worse. I am sure that being a bridesmaid is an amazing thing, I am sure that when the day comes to stand in front of the crowds beside a close friend, all the stress will be forgotten as you realise that all the hassle was worth it. I am sure that it is going to happen. But it doesn't stop the stresses from seeping in – the stress of having a dress made (particularly when you are the only bridesmaid from out of town and happen to live in a small town where dressmakers are either hard to come by or not very good), the stress of finding the right pair of shoes and the extra expenses including the buying of that dress and those shoes as well as the hair and makeup on the day. Just the idea of these things stresses me out, nevermind actually having to live through them.

Now picture this – you are such a bridesmaid. You manage to find a dressmaker in your small town to make you a bridesmaids dress that will suit the bride's exacting standards. You have been given material and a picture of the dress that is supposed to be made, along with instructions of how the dressmaker should go about making it. You give these instructions to said dressmaker along with the material well in advance – a month and a half before the wedding, just to be sure that it will be made on time. You don't want to stress unnecessarily of course, and planning ahead means that things are less likely to go wrong. Doesn't it?

A month later, you have not heard from the dressmaker. It is now two weeks before the wedding, and you really are starting to stress. Surely you should have been called in for a fitting by now. You decide to visit the dressmaker and find that she hasn't even started because she got the date of the wedding wrong. She wrote down that you need to get the dress on the wedding day, rather than two weeks before as you had requested. Cue the rushing dressmaker trying to get the dress done in time and making fatal errors to the dress as she goes – cutting a slit down the side of the dress, making it too short, not using boning, making the jacket entirely wrong so that there is a gap between the dress and the jacket which would be unacceptable in a synagogue. Oh, did I mention that this is a religious affair that you are attending? And that the dress needs to be worn in a shul and therefore really needs to be right so that there can be no cleavage and no inappropriate showing of skin? I didn't. Well now I have!

The day before you are supposed to leave, you are summoned to the dressmaker and told that your bridesmaid gown is complete. You breathe a sigh of relief and fork over the R550 (cheap for a dressmaker, but is the discount really worth the stress?) and run off without trying the dress on there and then because you need to get back to work. When you try on the dress in the evening, you find that none of the mistakes have been remedied and the dress is a disaster. You phone the bride, practically in tears, and are assured that the dress can be fixed when you arrive in Johannesburg. Your fears are qualmed, but only slightly.

On the day that you are supposed to leave for the airport, you get lost trying to find the friend's house where you are supposed to leave your car. You are left driving around a city that you don't know, shortly before you are supposed to be boarding your plane, and your Google Maps is not working the way it should (stupid Google Maps!) Okay, so you end up making it to your flight on time, but that doesn't mean that the experience wasn't stressful.

On arrival in Johannesburg, you inform the person who is supposed to pick you up that you have arrived. You give them fair warning (considering that they already know that you are coming and when) by sending them a message the minute that the plane lands. You are supposed to catch the Gautrain and diligently do (having paid R115 for the experience). You then find out that the person who was supposed to pick you up completely forgot that you were coming and made other plans. Sure, he changes his plans to pick you up at Sandton, drives you back to the place where you will be staying, gives you a brief tour, but then he is out of there, leaving you without transport in a city that you have only been in twice before and an area that you have never been in at all.

Suddenly you find yourself rather hungry and you start scouring the apartment for food, only to find a fridge filled with random vegetables, a bar of expensive chocolate and just about nothing else. Okay, you say to yourself, so I will walk to find something to eat. When you tell a friend that you plan to do this, she gasps in horror. Walk? Around Johannesburg? Are you crazy?!?!?!?! So apparently I get no food.

A night out on the town with the girls certainly relieves some of the stress as you dance and party the night away, and so does a day shopping with a good friend (who certainly relieves some of the stress of trying to find a pair of the perfect shoes.) But then, after such a day of shopping, you arrive at the apartment you are staying in to find that there is no electricity. Not only that, but your cellphone is dead and so are both of the laptops in the house, meaning that there is no way to charge it! Not to worry, I can always read. There should be, oh, an hour or so of daylight left. Oh, wait! Forget that. Light is gone and it's pitch dark. No way to read now. No way to eat either. Good thing I had a big lunch. And where is that person you are supposed to be staying with? At his girlfriend's place, and most likely not going to be coming home. Queue panic attack as you start hearing noises that prevent you from doing the one thing that you figure you can do in this situation – sleep. After a few hours of panicking, you somehow calm yourself down enough to fall asleep, and wake up hours later to find that you are still in one piece and the electricity has come back on, leading everyone to believe that you were crazy for believing that you would be robbed and murdered in your sleep, even though they all warned you about the dangerous place that Johannesburg really is and how you can never be too careful.

You awake the next morning, glad to be able to charge your cellphone, and lounge around the house for a few hours while waiting to be taken to another dressmaker to fix the disaster that is your dress. You then get informed, a short while before you are supposed to leave, that this other dressmaker does not have time to fix anything, and that nothing can be done about your dress. You will just need to go as is, disaster and all. Thoughts cross your mind, thoughts planted by your mother, of finding another guest and relinquishing the honour of bridesmaid. You voice these thoughts to the bride, but they are quickly shot down with reassurances that she would have you as a bridesmaid even if you went naked, This leads to discussions about how guests and Rabbis would react to seeing a naked bridesmaid, and slowly but surely, your fears are qualmed once again by the healing power of the bride's common sense.

It is now the day of the wedding, and you wake up from a fairly restless nights sleep (you were tossing and turning thinking about the wedding, about your hair (which was done yesterday, but is unlikely to look the same in the morning) and about ten million other things that have no bearing on this event at all. You awake to find that there is no electricity, once again, and that the GHD that you borrowed from the neighbour will be completely useless in this instance. And, horror of horrors, your phone is practically dead, once again, and it will be difficult to find another way to straighten your hair which, as you guessed, is not looking all that lovely. Cue your apartment person coming to the rescue, taking you to his office and allowing you to spend an hour straightening your hair at his desk while he attends a meeting, before dropping you back at home. You put on your makeup, you tidy your hair, you slide into that awful dress and suddenly, you are ready to go. It is time.

You arrive at the venue in what you feel is your awful attire, and are immediately assured by everyone that you look beautiful. Sure, the dress isn't perfect, isn't what it's supposed to be, but it's not quite as bad as you made it out to be, and it certainly wasn't worth forfeiting the honour of bridesmaid. You wander through gardens, you pose, you mingle and gush about how gorgeous the bride is, how proud you are, how happy you are and how much you are looking forward to the wedding, even though you are still not quite convinced that it is going to go off without a hitch. And then you are whisked away to the synagogue, and it is all happening so fast – one minute you are being blessed by the bride, the next you are walking down the aisle ahead of her, standing beside her as she circles her husband-to-be, watching as she grows up before your eyes – those eyes that are welling with tears of joy that can barely be suppressed. And then it is over. With the breaking of a glass and a hearty mazeltov, they are married. Or has it just begun?

This is when the celebrations truly begin. You are swept into a room filled with people and filled with more food and drinks than you could possibly imagine. You don't know where to start, so you follow the other bridesmaids, do what they do, eat what they eat and sit where they sit. The speeches start, first the bride's brother, then the groom's, then the groom himself, stumbling over his words because he is so happy, so completely stunned that this day has come, that the bride is actually his and his alone. More ridiculous amounts of food arrive at the table in phases, and there is dancing, celebrating, chittering and chattering until, around midnight, you find yourself on the dancefloor with the bride, the groom and few others, most of the crowd having dispersed. And it is truly over. The last guests kiss the bride (or groom) on the cheek, share hurried hugs, give their best wishes for the millionth time tonight and disappear into the night to their homes, to the clubs, to wherever it is that they want to go after midnight on a Wednesday night.

Suddenly, all the stress that you felt for the last two months is gone, is lifted off your shoulders. The wedding went off without a hitch. The dress, which was pretty damn bad and kept falling off throughout the night, was not quite as bad as you had imagined or as it could have been. The ordeal is over, and it was worth every second of stressing to see your darling friend getting married.

Gina and Joel – here's hoping that the rest of your life together is as wonderful and exciting as your wedding day was.

Electricity

As some of you may know and others may not yet have realised, I am in Johannesburg at the moment. I am here because one of my closest high school friends is getting married, today in fact, and as this is the first of my high school friends' weddings that I can actually attend (one friend got married in Israel last year and another is getting married in Israel next month) I was not going to miss the opportunity.

And so I arrived in Johannesburg on Saturday evening, was picked up from the Sandton Gautrain by my cousin and was taken to his flat. I didn't spend much time in the flat on Saturday night, as I went out with Gina and the girls for a second miniature bachelorette, but when I arrived back at the flat in the early hours of Sunday morning, it was to discover that the power had gone out. Now, this wasn't too much of a problem at the time, since it was 1am and about time for me to get to bed. It didn't affect me too much on Sunday morning or afternoon either, as I went out for the day with one of the University friends whom I haven't seen in about two years. It did affect me on Sunday evening, however, when I arrived back at the flat at about 5pm to find that the electricity was still off, my cousin was visiting his girlfriend, there was no food in the fridge and every piece of electrical equipment that I owned was on it's way to being dead (if it wasn't dead already.) Cue Lara's silly freaking out about being left alone with no transport in a strange city before falling asleep. I woke up again at 10pm to find that the electricity was back on, and by Monday morning, Dan was telling me that it was fixed for good and that there shouldn't be any more problems.

Then, yesterday morning while Dan was at work and I was playing around on my computer, it went out again. So much for the problem being fixed!! Once again, it wasn't too much of an issue during the day - I had a hair appointment to get to and ten million things to buy for the wedding, and so by the time I got back to the flat, I wasn't so concerned that the electricity was out. I carried on with what needed to get done for the wedding, I read my Kindle a little (something that cannot be done after 5pm in Joburg, as there just isn't enough light) and when Dan got home, he introduced me to one of his neighbours and let me borrow his car (after dropping him off at his girlfriend's place) so that the two of us could go out for dinner. When we arrived back at the flat, the electricity was still off, but it wasn't too disastrous since my laptop had a bit of power and Phumla (Dan's neighbour) and I chilled in the flat and used up the rest of its battery watching How I Met Your Mother. By the time the laptop died, we were both tired and decided to hit the hay anyway.

When I woke up this morning and the electricity was still out, it was a serious issue. There were things that needed to be done - things that needed electricity. Most importantly, my hair needed to be straightened for the wedding. I had gone through so much effort to find a GHD, and after finally managing to find one, I couldn't use it! Dan had said that if this happened, I could come along to his office, but Dan wasn't here, having spent the night at the girlfriend's place. My phone also needed charging, but that was a sideline issue. Thankfully, Dan pitched up right on time and managed to give me a lift to his office where I was able to straighten my hair and write this very blog while I waited for him to get back from his meeting and return me to the place of no-electricity so that I can do my makeup and get dressed in time for the wedding itself.

So, because the lack of electricity has caused me so many issues over the last couple of days, I thought that I would write a post about what to do when there is no electricity. So, here it is:

• If your cellphone is charged, use it to surf the Internet, play games and chat to people over Whatsapp
• If you cellphone is dead, but your laptop is charged, watch an episode, watch a movie, write a blog, and charge your cellphone.
• If your laptop is dead, read your Kindle (or a book if you do not have a kindle).
• If your kindle is dead, write random notes about blogs that you could write, take a walk to the shops and do some window shopping so that you do not actually spend money unnecessarily. Or just shop. Either way is fun.
• If it is night, curl up in your bed/sleeping bag and fall asleep as soon as you can.

Here's hoping that I won't be going through a lack of electricity anytime soon! *Holds thumbs*