The Thessaliad Redux

Booked my hostel bed for Brighton Below today. Only had to put down a 10% deposit, too, so provided I'm not completely jobless and screwed to the wall in July, all systems are pretty much go. Whoopee! I know it's over two months away, but I may as well start getting excited for it now...

In other news, there really isn't any. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my weekend, when it gets here. dodgyhoodoo was talking about going to see Iron Man on Sunday, which might be a good thing - the headaches, while not entirely gone, have got a sight better since I got the new glasses. Though to be fair, given how varifocals work, I'm not sure whether going to the cinema is going to be better or worse for me. I suppose a decent film (and it does seem to be decent, all told) isn't the worst way in the world to find out.

Oh. Right. Daz said something about Astrid and Portia getting to chat to ChibiCultistTim on Saturday. 8ish, if I recall it right. Well, that's another chunk of weekend taken care of, really. And depending on circumstances, I might get to go through another Changeling application with a view to approval - it seems that ilyena_sylph has finally succumbed to the puppyeyes and is working on an Eshu for the site. Whee! I do hope she gets everything finished in time for the Dreaming wilderness survival thing on Wednesday. I'm going to have so much fun with that one. I'd say that's something else to keep me busy over the weekend, planning for that one, but if I did that, I couldn't keep myself occupied statting things during working hours and on public transport. Nothing says "portable discreet distraction from work" like statting skitter critters.

And finally, I am in the market for a new cellphone now, I think. I like my brick, don't get me wrong, but I could do better. The damn thing's five years old. And I'd like something a little more ... well, just a little more, really. In a way, it seems a bit pointless since I only really use it for texting anyway, but ... mneh. I'll see what I can find. I've always wanted one of those little clamshell click-open dealies, though I know how sad that is. And something that can play a decent ringtone would be nice.

In short, I am bored out of my skull and want out of here right now. And considering myself very very sad for actually wanting the next Sims 2 Stuff Pack (Ikea furniture, of all things - but at least it stands not as ugly as the H&M clothes...). Actually, the next expansion ought to be pretty good too - it lets Sims actually live in proper apartment blocks. I assume it's a lot like the dorms in Sims 2 Uni, only with the full-flat thing. Finally I get to design Silent Hill 4's Apartment World properly!

This is going to be one of those days, isn't it?

Last night wasn't particularly fun. We had pizza, which is nice except for where pizza always makes me feel rather ill, but I seem to be managing without too many problems at the moment, so what the hell. The building managers never got back to us, and we spent most of the evening boiling the kettle and nuking a big ceramic bowl full of water so that dodgyhoodoo could have a bath. I didn't bother. Yay for doing one's best with what one has, I suppose.

This morning, I was made a touch late for work because the builders working next door - the ones who have inconveniently blocked our access to our gas meter - buzzed for a chat about the fact that we were without heating and hot water all night. Now, I was fully aware of the fact that people have been working on our gas lines for the last little while, and thought that might have been the source of the problem from the beginning. Turns out that I was right, in a sense - yesterday the gas workers switched our gas off to do some work and forgot to switch it back on again. Of course, they had access at the time because the builders were working, which didn't help the gas man who came to have a look at things last night when the builders were done for the day and had locked the whole thing up. Of course, the gas man who came last night had no damn idea that this might have been an issue, and neither did the person that dodgyhoodoo spoke to on the phone last night. Fuckwits. Anyway, the builders switched things back on and, late or not, I left secure in the knowledge that I could at least have a shower when I got home.

Which is good because it's pissing it down with rain at the moment, and I am kind of drenched. More so than I should be, actually, because it turns out that the sole of my right shoe is pretty well destroyed. I didn't notice this until I had to go out to find a cashpoint (because of course every ATM in a four-block radius of the hospital was nonfunctional today; cue getting drenched and regularly smacked with other people's umbrellas) and came back with my right shoe not only sodden, but quite literally filled with water. So now my right shoe's on the space heater to dry out, my right foot is freezing cold and I'm generally Not Happy. Must go buy a new pair of shoes at some stage in the not-too-distant. Ducky.

Between the above and the patient who keeps ringing every. Single. Day and spends ten minutes by the clock giving me the rundown on things, not to mention a consultant who seems to think that talking at the speed of the average auctioneer is helpful in the ongoing struggle to balance speed with accuracy in audio typing, this is not being a good day. I just want to go home, have a shower, and sleep for a week. Is that too much to ask?

(Yes, I know it is. But I can dream.)

And so I spoke to trishiekaty about what happened with the gift voucher whojamaflip. And she fixed it - more than, as a matter of fact. So instead of paying for half of it (which I'd have been more than happy to do), I paid just under three quid towards postage, and now must think of something awesome to send her for her birthday / Christmas / whatever. (Do you reckon they do War-Dancing Weasels on eBay?)

Additionally, I had a much-needed vent that's been building for weeks now, so I can only really thank ilyena_sylph (via AIM) and dodgyhoodoo (via RL) for listening. I think I have a lot clearer an idea of what to do as far as that situation goes now, whereas prior to the venting I really was just foaming at the mouth.

And of course, there's courtcat79, who kindly showed me how to set up Sims 2 so it shows up in a window rather than just taking up the whole screen, so now I can play Sims 2 and do other things at the same time. Vaguely distracting, but makes the detail work when I want to build, say, hotels and what have you so much less infuriating because I can take breaks more easily.

Sometimes, there's an awful lot of suck. Job suck, financial suck, occasional family suck, hobby-related suck, transport and travel suck, and so it goes. But between the friends (and fiance, obviously) mentioned above and the ones I have given so many kudos to previously (particularly yshala and her help with getting me to Brighton Below), there's really no excuse for forgetting that life isn't so bad after all.

I hate eBay.

Okay, in theory, awesome. In practice ... dear fucking gods it's annoying. I've never really liked auctions anyway, but the whole thing combines the annoyance factor of an auction with the arsehole contingent of the internet and still means you don't get what you want.

So I was bidding on a Gladstone bag for my Brighton Below LARP costume (I still need to get in touch with Simon about a few last tweaks, but I still want to know how the hell a resurrected old god is 'a little bit mudane'. Fuckit; if he wants 'jazzed up', maybe I should just go voodoo. Anyone got a top hat?) and the first one I bid on got sniped. And so I was happily bidding on the second. That one, too, has just got sniped. I actually upped my bid on this second one but every time I turned around, it just got to 50p more. Which means I don't know what someone bid on it, and I can't really afford to break the bank to find out.

Screw this. I'm not going to browse eBay any more. I am going, thank you, to stick with buying things at normal stores where you pay a price for something and then are guaranteed to get it without having to go through this shit.

Oh well. At least that £20 in my bank account is now no longer earmarked for eBay...

I am now in possession of the following:

* A little container of Season-All Seasoned Salt (a brand of which you can't get here)
* St Hubert BBQ Sauce mix
* Sloppy Joe seasoning
* Multi-pack of oatmeal (apple & cinnamon, cinnamon and spice, and my personal favourite, maple and brown sugar)
* New shampoo, conditioner and shower gel from a nifty new herbal cosmetics, toiletries & sundries shop
* A very pretty white gold bracelet / earrings set
* The complete series of Angel on DVD box set
* An Oyster card that reads me as having unlimited travel between zones 1-4 for the next three months
* A receipt for two pairs of varifocal spectacles, one of which are prescription sunglasses, to be picked up in 7-10 days
* Much shorter hair

Happy belated birthday *squee*! My mother's awesome sometimes. She also wants me to take her shopping more often, because she's finally realised that I have a kind of radar for good places to shop and eat and wants to take full advantage of it as well as spend time with me.

In other news, a "You will be sadly missed" to doccy, whose RL has eaten him to the point that he has now had to retire from the Werewolf ST-ship over on Jus Noctis. Hope you're okay, man, and thanks for all the Doom.

At some point, I'll have to go into detail about the recent developments in Changeling and Mage, but that's rants for another time. For the time being, I'll just enjoy the lack of utter batshit crazy, and look forward to taking dodgyhoodoo's RDM through various bits and pieces of Vana'diel so he can get some more of his stone monument impressions, his Mea crystal and a first-hand look at Windurst. And then go play a sociopathic vampire who tortures people for 'fun' and talks to the dead in her spare time.

I have now pointed my mother in the approximate direction of what dodgyhoodoo might like for Christmas. My festive season gift-related bollocks is pretty much done. Now all I have to do is send out the Christmas cards, which are inevitably going to be late because I'm not getting paid 'til Friday and I can't post them until then, but it's the thought that counts. Also help shop for and then cook Christmas dinner. We're doing the duck again - I get my one shot a year at tweaking my glaze recipe and I'm going to make the most of it. I really ought to write what I do down this year.

Funny thing, though - I had thought that I hadn't got dodgyhoodoo anything on his wish list this year (by the way, love - the link to your wish list on your LJ doesn't work, FYI). However, having weeded through it to point Mum and Stepdad in the right direction, I happened to notice that I'd actually unwittingly picked not one but two items that were on his wish list. One of them was an impulse buy I had no idea he'd ever even considered. I like this because it means that I know him very well. Most of the other items, of course, are things that aren't on his wish list but probably ought to be.

...I wonder if the stuff I sent to Kyr, darkdanc3r and ilyena_sylph have arrived yet...

[Edit: Oh gods, not another fucking update on FFXI. Didn't we do this yesterday?]

how to play

step 1: post a list of 10 things you truly, really want for the holidays. can be anything, from LJ icons to charity to a new car. you never know what a random person might be able to give you. remember to include a way for potential gifter to reach you, if you don't want to provide your address in your post.

step 2: peruse other people's wishlists and see if you can make anyone's wish come true! you don't need to spend money if you don't want to: your trash might be someone else's treasure. make someone happy, improve your karma. gifts may be anonymous if you wish.

( All I want for Christmas... )

If you need to get in touch with me, LJ comments are a good preliminary. Or there's IM for those of you who know my AIM name. If you have a list, please link to it.

Barium meals are, quite simply, no fun at all. I nearly sicked up the barium itself, but somehow managed to get the lot down. Then I had to drink citric acid, which was a whole different kind of unpleasant. But after a lot of rolling over and stuff, it was all over and I could go. I should be able to find out results from my GP in a week or so. So I'll probably call a week Wednesday - I need to get a doctor's note signing me off for the last couple of months of my employment at Mac Keith anyway, just to make things easier with the whole 'getting paid' thing.

Anyway, when it was all over, and since I was so close to Camden, I thought I'd go finish up the rest of my Christmas shopping. Well, most of. Off the top of my head, I can think of two more people I want to get something for, and I'm surprisingly not as completely uninspired on what to get Jon and Maria this year as I was last year. This may have something to do with my having trawled the Stables Market for a solid hour, looking for something appropriate for ilyena_sylph and for dodgyhoodoo's mother.

Yeah, that's a bit of a thing - this is the first year I've actually got my proto-mum-in-law anything. dodgyhoodoo told me that she wants a printer and that the family's chipping in for one the way they did for her laptop, but ... well, it's not that I don't want to contribute to a family thing, exactly. It's just that this is the first present I've actually given her and I wanted it to be something personal, something that showed I was specifically thinking of her and made an effort to find her something she'd like. Maybe it's silly, I don't know, but it seems a big deal to me. But of course, I've only met her the once and that didn't give me all that many clues as to what she might actually like. This makes finding something that fits into the category of 'what she might actually like' a little difficult.

Still, I persevered and, after a thoroughly disheartening wander, I finally found this really nice Chinese shop way towards the back of the Stables and got her a pretty wooden vase and matching tea light candle holders. You can't go wrong with something pretty. Besides, it means that when her birthday comes around, I can send flowers and not have to worry about whether or not she has a vase. So ... go, me. (I did also finally find something for ilyena_sylph too, but I can't say what it is here because ... well, she's on my friends list and it wouldn't be much of a surprise if I wrote down what I bought her here, would it?)

The nice thing about shopping in Camden early on a weekday is that it's not terribly busy, and the people running the stalls and so forth have the time to be friendly and have a bit of a chat with you. There was a stall selling teas set up at the top of the stairs at the Lock building, and I got into a conversation with the lady in charge of it about teas and medical herbalism and things. Turns out her sister's into RPGs so I told her about Leisure Games and Dragonmeet and she said she'd pass that along to her sister, so I may have got angusabranson a new customer. It made the whole chore a little less torturous - if I'd had to deal with bad customer service as well as sore feet, exhaustion and generally feeling ill, it would have been an absolute nightmare. Of course, it didn't help that I forgot my cane. Remind me not to do that again.

I haven't totally neglected myself while doing all this shopping. Yesterday, I happened to notice that the Angel RPG core book was on clearance at Forbidden Planet and, since I love the game and hope to run it on at least a short-term basis someday soon (probably after the Restart crew either save the world or end it, which should be in a month or two), I picked it up. I also found a shop that sells just the kind of notebook I've been looking for in fluffy-pagan shops and places like that for months - a good sturdy recycled paper notebook bound in purple embossed leather, pretty but still functional enough to use when working with the herbs and oils. Given that it was exactly what I needed and on sale, I don't feel remotely bad about it. I'm stocked back up on marshmallow root and I also picked up a few of the teas the nice lady with the RPG-fan sister was selling, mostly for dodgyhoodoo and for inspiration. So I think, besides any last-minute Christmas gifts or what have you, I'm well done with the whole shopping thing for awhile. Thank gods.

Now I'm home with the cat curled up at my side, a miserable case of dry mouth (side effect of the damn barium) and that Friday feeling - the one where you're going, "Too much week - so glad it's over". And I'm not even at work.

( My new shoes )

Are they not nifty? Of course, I am currently having that "I am breaking in my new shoes" foot pain issue, but it's not overly bad. Certainly not much worse than my feet would normally be feeling after tromping through Camden crowds for several hours. Damn, I'd forgotten how bad that can get. Right now I'm wearing the damn things around the house because the really big issue with these things is learning how to sit down and stand up with something approaching grace. It's all relative length of legs - I'm 4.5 inches taller in these things. It's a bit weird. Still, tons of fun.

Camden ... not so fun. Most of the Market looks like a fucking shopping mall now. I am not kidding. They've actually given a lot of it wooden floors and ... yeek. It's like Sanrio for the counterculture as well - they've made most of it so abominably ... fluffy. Some of my favourite goth-clothes holes in the wall are just ... gone. The selection at the Black Rose has suddenly turned to absolute shit and that hippie shop across from Cyberdog, with the nifty tea room upstairs and books with titles like "Better Sex Through Chemistry", where I went with ninja_arzt when he visited? Gone. Poof. Vanished. Half the stores aren't what they used to be, and ... it just makes me so very sad. At least Resurrection Records is still there, and Cyberdog's still as populated as ever - there was a guy dancing on a platform next to the DJ booth in the foyer, and it made me smile.

Don't know what to think about the guy I passed on my way to Mornington Crescent station who started yelling, "Now you are fit! You are FIT!" at me. Yeeeeeeeah. Anyway.

The cat went on an utter crack-run when I got home, but seems to be settled now. So I'm going to potter off (in my huge stompy Mary Janes) and get myself some caffeine and some painkillers (there were screaming kids everywhere today - they haunted me, I tell you) and then go beat on Crawlers and Goblins and Bees (oh my) in FFXI for a bit. Whee for the weekend!

My mother sent me photos of her new kitchen this morning. I haven't had a chance to look at them yet because I'm not particularly in the mood to download them at work. Eh, I'm sure they'll still be there when I get home. Still, looking at other people's kitchens is not exactly my idea of a good time, and I will admit to some jealousy because the Sourcebook Central 2.0 kitchen, while by no means the worst kitchen I have ever cooked in, isn't exactly all that. Still, Mum's happy with her new kitchen and that's the important thing. Plus she just replaced her Cuisinart thing so we get the old one. Hee!

I'm very glad it's Friday. For some reason, this four-day week has seemed longer than is reasonable. Possibly because most of my duties at work this week have been, in the vernacular, "teh suxxors". For instance, I just got a phone call from somebody who apparently wanted to talk to Ham-Fisted Editor, had been given our phone number despite the fact that HFE is almost never here, and had no clue what people wanted to talk to him about because no one had told him. Poor guy. I eventually just took his email address, realised that the name was familiar, figured out a bit too late that this was a guy that HFE wanted to serve as referee for a review we want to publish, told HFE via email what happened and left him to sort it out. (Watch it never happen. Then watch me get blamed. Just watch.) I suppose we all have bad weeks, and maybe the universe decided that, if I was going to have a bad week, at least it should be a short one.

As for the weekend, I really ought to go buy shoes. You know, proper shoes. It's not going to be warm enough to shlep around in dodgyhoodoo's sandals for much longer. I keep looking at HugeStompyBoots or equally stompy platform Mary Janes but at the end of the day, I can look at online pictures all I want but that doesn't tell me how the things are going to look on me. I am therefore going on a jaunt to Camden tomorrow to find me some shoes. At least it'll get me out of the house for a bit; I've become such a shut-in lately. Besides, it's not just new shoes I need. I really should pick up something else to wear. Well, depending on how much I wind up spending on the shoes... That's the problem - good shoes tend to be expensive. It's a pain.

Though I suppose I'm not doing that badly clothes-wise. Sure, my favourite denim skirt is way too loose on me now, but I do have two new T-shirts. Yep, two: my Coffee of Doom T-shirt finally arrived! So did my Devil's Panties TPB, complete with hand-done sketch and artist's signature. Jennie Breeden utterly rocks! Of course, the CoD shirt is mainly nightwear, and neither shirt is exactly suitable for work, and it's mainly new skirts and what have you that I actually need, but never mind. I'll see what strikes me. Plus I still need to find a "If You Think I'm A Bitch, You Should Meet My Mother" T-shirt for a certain third party.