Details, People, DETAILS!

I. Will. Throttle that man!!!

Okay, look. I have to go track down email addresses for people who Ham-Fisted Editor wants to serve as referees, right? Simple concept; we either have 'em on file or we don't. If we don't, I go merrily fart-arsing about on PubMed and such until I find the individual and hope like hell that their contact email was included in the details at publication. Fine, except it would help to have some details when I make this attempt. How in the name of all that is holy does this man expect me to find the contact details for someone when all he gives me is a very common surname and the fact that the prospective referee wrote a paper for us lo these many years ago? We do regular clear-outs of our email and soft copy filing system so that we have room for all the new stuff, you see - computers are not bottomless pits of storage, after all. So I'm not going to be able to pull a copy of a paper by Somebody or Other et al out of my arse when I don't even have the year the damn paper was published, much less, I dunno, a first initial for the author! The name I pulled up gets over 7500 hits on PubMed, which of course covers every medical journal on the fucking planet! ARGH!

So anyway.

Yeah, there's a certain amount of utter and complete fucking nark-off at the moment. Further to my gripes about the Ahroun enforcer deserting her Alpha (and my character), today I found out why the character did this. Apparently, the character put her foot into it a couple of times with the local Arden (higher ranking Garou) and has destroyed pack unity to apologise and generally suck up. This couldn't have waited? Seriously? How petty can you get? It apparently had to be done before moot, gods know why, but now what you have is an Arden who, being a bit of a bitch at the moment (for partially halfway decent reasons), may well point out that, "That's nice, dear. But now you've gone and royally fucked yourself and your Alpha over by deserting your pack, you stupid cunt". If she doesn't, someone's going to have to.

And Chicago's a royal fucking pain in the arse as well. Apparently, either the stupid demon or the cunt of a demon-possessed Bastet has the ability to read minds and used it on my character, because the Bastet spouted off exactly what my character was apparently thinking in public, something about how at least she wasn't in it all to wrest people's secrets from them and spout them at Parliament. Lorrie wasn't even thinking about Parliament at that point, being a little too busy hating the hell out of the entity that flooded the city and wrecked her home, and being worried about what would happen if said entity started working on the mind of the godsdamned White Howler. So we're either talking about more than a surface scan here, or somebody's godmoding. I hate it when people do this. If you're going to have a mind-reader, it might be nice if said mind-reader asks in PM or similar exactly what the character is thinking so they can at least be accurate before fucking around. I'm trying to be big about this and having my Corax put it down to "bitch wants to break up the team", but it's annoying!

Still, at least I'm loving the hell out of Charleston. The elder Verbena who risked his stupid life for my character is now apparently rather determined to help cure my character of her MPD. This would be an interesting idea if it didn't violate the terms of what both aspects of Nina feel is a binding agreement between Rider and Horse. Most amusing of all is that he has asked specifically to speak to the psychotic cow alternate persona - "Just me and the lass", he says. Now, since most Nina / Roach conversations take place over iChat while I'm at work, and since Turing's away until Monday due to wife's birthday, this is going to have to wait awhile, and be a private conversation when it does happen, but man it's going to be amusing. Well, at least we're not locked in the horrible safe house anymore, having moved into Casa Cucaracha (Nina for the company and to protect Dhanni, Alecto to keep an eye on Roach in case his brain's been fucked with by Technos).

So I had a good night's sleep last night and am now awake enough to be properly pissed off. Goodie. Still, the death gnome is nearly to level 10 and I'm now wondering what I'm going to do with the suit of goblin armour I recently picked up. Google informs me that one should use a Lightning or Wind crystal to desynth goblin armour into its component bits but my clothesmaking skill is frankly shit. Not that I've been able to practice it much; the gil I might have spent on that kind of thing has been pretty much eaten by my purchase of a brand spanking new fishing rod (since my bamboo ones keep snapping on me). Then again, the solution there may well be to get off my arse and actually sell various of the bits I don't actually have the skill to use yet. That and killing goblins and Yagudo. Those Rara Avis wannabe freaks are at the very least a challenge, though it's rather frightening when they cast Dia on you when half your hit points are already gone. Still, I seem to have survived so far, and intend to continue surviving at least until I'm a good few hundred XP past level 10, so I don't delevel when something like that kills me dead.

I want to go home.

Addendum to the Stupid

Oh, and Michael needs to die. I got an email from an author who says he sent in a revised paper in early February - during my birthday week off, no less - after I told said author that he needed to get his paper under 3000 words in late January. Michael was covering my email during the period I was away, and told him that the paper had been received; nothing to worry about. However, the paper never came within ten yards of me, and isn't on the system at all. So he lost the fucking paper and now I have to apologise to the author for 'administration errors' (which is usually code for 'I screwed up').

In this sort of situation, on this sort of day, normally I would basically jump up and down screaming "I need comfort food; spirit me away to where there is tempura!". However, even if we went I probably wouldn't enjoy it very much because my appetite is still screwed and I'm still dealing with the nausea and cramps every time I eat anything. So frankly I'm better off sticking with leftovers and ravioli out of a tin. At least I won't feel miserable about not enjoying the whole eating thing very much. Besides, the dupiaza from the other night needs finishing. And there could possibly be salmon sashimi over the weekend; that might help...

*sigh* Roll on October. I've basically decided to take a trip out to the American midwest in a couple of months (I can say this now, having cleared it with dodgyhoodoo, who kind of figured I'd be doing something like this; isn't it nice how well he knows me?). Plane fare shouldn't be so bad, I get to meet darkdanc3r and ilyena_sylph, and possibly see some old Daria fans in Wisconsin and Detroit, and definitely stop by on my way home and see leopard_lady. I just hope they lift this stupid restriction on what you can take on an airplane before I go. Otherwise I'm going to be ready to bludgeon someone to death by the time I deplane in St Louis.