The Thessaliad Redux

Another long weekend approaches, and despite it only having been a three-day week this week, I could use it. At least partly because I have a desperate need for new shoes - I've worn down the heels on my clogs and am currently reduced to wearing my Chucks to work because I refuse to climb three flights of stairs (one of which is longer than the average) in anything resembling heels, which accounts for most of my comfortable non-clog footwear. I love my Red or Dead ankle boots but ... not on stairs, I don't. My platform Mary Janes? I'd break my neck, particularly when trying to go down the stairs unable to see properly around a pile of notes and the blur that my cheap varifocals gives my peripheral vision. Basically, I need new glasses too, but new shoes are cheaper. Marginally. Actually, I have my eye on Doc Marten loafers ... if I can find a pair in black. Purple DM loafers are kind of awesome, but they don't go with a lot of my clothes. So ... yeah, that's going to be at least part of the weekend.

At least in part because I am never going to Westfield on a weekday again. EVER. Hell, I may not ever go again, full stop, if it looks anything like it did last night. For reference, Westfield is what the USians on my flist would call a 'shopping mall' but that the UK folkses would call a 'shopping centre'. (Malls are different things in the UK; something to do with being outdoors, I think?) Anyway, Westfield is one of the bigger ones in the greater London area, and one of my work colleagues keeps talking about it so I thought I'd check it out yesterday as a preliminary to my shoe-quest. ...It was like Oxford Street, but worse. I now know what a battery hen feels like. I like my personal space and there was simply none in that gods-awful place. I miss Montreal shopping malls.

Anyway ... yeah, this weekend is going to involve shopping. Not just shoes, but headphones too. My current set are ... um ... well, they kind of snapped at the headband a couple of weeks ago and I employed the Mighty Power of Sellotape so that was okay but now they're doing that thing where the wire has to be positioned just so to get any sound out of them because the wiring inside is starting to fray. I don't mind them not looking particularly nice; I just need them to work, and since they're not working, I guess they'll have to be replaced too. 'Tis the season to replace shit, evidently.

I'm also going to do some writing. Fine, it's all fic, but I am sick and tired of those bloody works in progress mocking me. I imagine stuff will turn up on AO3 at some point this weekend. That and Tumblr. Y'know, stuff.

There is no one in the office but me. Well, there's the guy who sits by the window, but he's been in and out, mostly out, all morning. My work colleague is generally in around 10am, but she hasn't quite arrived yet. So it's very quiet. I like quiet. Though at this point, I'd much prefer quiet in my own flat, in my own bed, sleeping for another couple of hours. But since that's not going to happen, I'll settle for faff with occasional bursts of work.

So I went to MCM Comic Con, and have made an executive decision: I am so not cut out for the convention thing.

I mean, Dragonmeet is one thing: you pay your admission, you go in, and while you can shop, there are other things to do. Going alone is not such a big deal because all you have to do is sign up for a game or two and you're hanging out with cool people for a few solid hours, doing a bit of one-off RP and having an awesome time. And I don't recall having to pay for John Kovalic's autograph while I was there the last time ... though I suppose he's not in quite the same league as some of the people at MCM this year.

But, see, therein lies the problem. There are things I just don't do. I'd happily run around in costume potentially making an idiot of myself, if it didn't mean that half the planet would be pointing a camera at me. I don't hug random strangers, however they're dressed. I barely know how to use a decent camera and my phone's camera is kind of crap, so pictures are kind of out. And I have a serious objection to spending a sum that would buy me a week's worth of groceries on a single autograph - a name scribbled on a piece of paper elevated to that level of financial worth just because the name is a famous one - particularly after the amount I spent on the entry fee. I know they have to pay the appearance fees for the famous folks, but seriously, some of that struck me as just a liiiiittle excessive. I didn't have the kind of money to shop, I certainly couldn't have afforded the three autographs I most wanted and on the whole, I felt unutterably out of place and alone.

Meeting the awesome folks off the DA fan communities I'm in ... didn't entirely help, I have to admit. They all knew each other, I didn't even know where to start having a conversation with any of them (beyond the one lovely lady whose name I have since forgotten who left at around the same time I finally got around to visiting the convention hall proper on Saturday) and, beyond taking a few pictures, a few random additions to conversation and a hug from the utter sweetie dressed as Merrill amongst the group, I mainly sat on the fringes and watched everything. Actually, that's how I spent a lot of the weekend - sitting on the fringes and watching things. This is where I prove that however I come across, I really am way too shy for this kind of shit. I can manage to have conversations with people I've never met in person, but that's only after I've talked to them online for months. And while the DA crew seemed like really nice people who I'd love to get to know, I didn't even know if I knew any of them. So on the whole, MCM comic con was a slightly depressing and socially awkward experience...

And I find out via Twitter that I have just entirely missed meeting Adam Howden with the rest of the crew I met up with yesterday, because I couldn't find them this afternoon and went home. FML completely.

Yeah ... I suck at this con thing and am now just really depressed. Fantastic.

Hope y'all're having a better weekend than I am.

I've been quiet out here in journal-land, I know. Mostly I've been cat-sitting and having a much-needed holiday. The biggest bonus to staying at mitchy's place to look after Rob T Furball is that I have had no stress at all over "I should be at work". I suppose it helps that I'm in an entirely different city ... and never mind the fact that the fast train into King's Cross from here is actually faster than the train I get to St Pancras every morning, and they're basically the same station. I'm farther away and thus there is no guilt over "I should be working!" Somehow I have managed to avoid thinking about how much work will have piled up in my absence. Gods, I hope they got a float secretary in...

Anyway, maybe the other part of the non-stress over work absence has been the needy furball. It's not 24/7, the neediness, but he'll alternate between curling up in his cat bed / on the armchair dead to the world, and then all of a sudden he'll decide that if he isn't fussed and petted and scritched RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND he will die of heartbreak. Cue the yowling and the feeling that someone has replaced his fur with velcro. This is not a bad thing, but it can be tricky when one is trying to chat to someone over IM and just stopping the petting gets the big-sad-eyes look and a plaintive yowl. I'm such a sucker. Anyway, the point is that I might feel guilty about taking time off if it was just me at home on my own not doing much of anything, but since I am elsewhere, maybe not seeming to do much of anything but really ensuring that a lovely furball is fed and watered and petted and fussed, at least I am being useful to somebody. Apparently this assuages my work-guilt somewhat. So ... yay!

I'll be glad to be home, though. There are definitely things that my place lacks (bathtub, gas stove, decent-sized fridge with freezer that doesn't frost over every three days, space) but it's mine and I miss it. I miss my bed and my computer 'desk' ... hell, I miss my computer, full stop. Not to mention Warcrack - I decided that it was too much addict behaviour to travel all the way home just to check on my little Azeroth denizens mid-week, so I didn't. I'm not overly jonesing, thankfully, but then again, I had DA2 as a placebo. Not to mention a particularly stellar DVD collection - my tastes and mitchy's don't always coincide, but I have to admit that she's introduced me to more TV shows than any other single person I know. Most people, it's a show here or there; it's been at least a half-dozen with mitchy - more than anyone else, fewer than it could be (I just can't get into NCIS: LA, but I love the original and Criminal Minds is growing on me).

On the subject of video games and various bits of entertainment ... Sebastian Vael. I swear, the only reason I'm not sorry I got the DLC is that the extra quests give XP. You get him way too late in the game to build him up properly, and you end up with this relatively useless rogue who can't pick half the locks or disarm about a third of the traps and, despite his mail-and-plate armour, goes down like a twenty-quid hooker the minute anyone carrying a sword looks at him cross-eyed. Mostly I just leave him tucked away in the Chantry and don't deal with him until he demands that we go do quest types of things. I haven't got through a full playthrough with him yet so maybe his hissy-fit over the events in Act 3 will make having him as a full-on party member a little more worth it. As it stands, Varric is still my all-time archer in-game BFF, kthnx.

(Also, Sebastian, character-wise, is a cross between Leliana and Hamlet.)

Warcrack-wise ... still hacking my way through Northrend. I do not like Coldarra. It's creepy-death. Or ... well, it would be creepy-death if I weren't playing a Paladin. I would say I don't think Paladins can die but I have seen proof otherwise. (I still want to know how a massive 75-Elite patrolbot managed to sneak up on me in Hellfire Peninsula when I was doing my purgatory time in Outland.) Anyway, a lot of that is Nexus dungeon and since I don't really have the sort of party backing required to hack my way through one, I feel justified in abandoning the zone entirely beyond a couple of little quests and a flyover or the 'Explored Borean Tundra' achievement. I could probably move on to Dragonblight now, but I think I'll move to Howling Fjord and grind a couple of levels there first. I like level-grinding in lowish-level areas. Particularly when I've been logged out in an inn for a week and a half. The 'Well-Rested' XP bonus is going to last forever...

I haven't been on as my belf pally as much as I could be because I don't really like Northrend all that much, though I do hack through a level or two, time to time. I have, however, been working a little on my other characters - I've made a few as alts that I might actually stick with for awhile. Dwarf Pally, Gnome Warlock and Goblin Shaman, mainly - that last a holdover from my first spate of character creation early on. At least there's kind of variety, and a good Alliance/Horde spread. Though given that the Dwarf and Gnome starting levels are more or less the same after level ... oh, six or so? I kind of have to alternate with the other two so I don't get bored out of my skull.

There have been other things - potential writing projects, finally having solidified what I want to do for this WoD site that I still need to talk to lithiumdoll about as re: Jove when she's less busy and had some relaxy time, stuff like that there - but a lot of it's too vague to yammer about here and I'm thinking moar coffee. Then haul my lazy arse (and a mid-sized wheely suitcase full of books OMG heavy) back home, likely via somewhere I can get some lunch. Then probably right back out again to pick up something for dinner because I made sure that my fridge was empty before I came out here. I didn't want to find something gaining independent life in my fridge when I got home.

I refuse to let this day break me. I refuse. Sure, it's pretty much atrocious and I have begun to hate Fridays as much as I love them (love-hate relationship with Fridays; what a concept) but I am not. Going. To let this day bring me down.

It's been full of stupid. Really. Already. And I've only been here about two and a half hours. This is the first time today that people would just LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE TO DO MY JOB. Somehow one of the consultants managed to hand me a clinic tape that turned out to be blank, one of the clinical assistants has some serious issues with spatial awareness (and her I just want to throttle because her grip of the English language is weak at best and while I can generally get a handle on what it is she's trying to say, I am so not in the mood today) and the phone. Will not. Stop. Ringing. And it's always with the patients who speak slowly and softly and insist on giving some poor secretary way more detail about a problem than that secretary technically needs. I think I'm more or less on top of it now (hence being here, writing this) but dear sweet merciful GODS this was not a good morning. I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm fed up and I just want to chuck something across the room.

I think there may have to be up-and-killing-things on Warcrack at some point today. Not that there generally isn't anyway; I hit level 48 a couple of days ago (more or less comedy quest chain that basically parodied paid homage to Starship Troopers) and have since been doing absolutely nothing but fart-arseing about doing one particularly stupid cookery quest and mining the hell out of things so I can hopefully level jewelcraft some. Also exploring for some of the exploration achievements. Which ended up with me killing a level 40-ish elite mob just because I tripped over it by mistake. No quest involved at all. Just ... me, elite mob, killed it dead, moved on. Well, he was standing between me and a good vein of mithril. I'm looking rather forward to levelling to a point where I am actually in the same region as anything resembling thorium. Or at least truesilver. Bah. At least cookery's going well, though a lot of that had to do with travelling all over Azeroth to pick up the recipes I needed not only to level up but to get all the meat out of my inventory. (If this were anything like real life, I hate to think what my backpacks and bank vault would have looked like by the time I got to use all that bear meat.)

Oh yeah, Tanaris looks like Valkurm fucking Dunes. I really should avoid that place more.

Anyway, so at least I have my stress relief planned for the evening - and, given the joys of windowed play, I can chat to friends and/or RP at the same time. Yes, I live on my computer. I do not have a problem with this. Though I really ought to actually have an outing at some point. Dinner, maybe. Or a drink at the pub. Or something that might constitute 'treat'. Because I seriously think I need one. This week has just been of the suck for no specific reason.

...Why am I so damn tempted to say 'screw the budget; I'm going to Benihana'?

There are days when the things I hear from my peers made me cringe. I just heard one of my colleagues saying, "He did not did that." More than once. Now, I sometimes write grammatically challenged characters, but that's one I never considered. Ye gods.

It's not a great day at work today. I'm in one of the departments where you can't get anything done because morons ring up every five minutes, apparently under the impression that doctors don't actually ... you know, attend clinics or do ward rounds or see patients or anything. Which means I get an earful of grief from patients who want to talk to the consultant, and will not accept that the consultant is busy. And actually not in the room. And for all I know, might actually be in an entirely different part of the hospital. Or even in their private practice. Seriously, I wish that patients could get it through their skulls that they are not a doctor's only patient. This seems to be a tricky one for people to grasp. Doctors have many patients. No one patient is any doctor's priority. And they do not sit around the admin offices, waiting for patients to call.

(It is also not my fault that one of the nurses is an unpleasant mare-beast who refuses to answer the phone and passes off dealing with patients as often as possible because she 'doesn't want to be bothered with the aggravation'. Man, I wanted to hit her when she said that.)

I'm so glad it's another bank holiday coming up Friday. My sinuses are killing me. I know it's not a popular view, but I do not like the spring and summer. Give me autumn every damn time. Less pollen, less killing sunshine, more pretty leaves. Though I admit that the reason for the bank holiday still galls me. I can't go to the staff canteen without William and Kate grinning at me from this big Union Jack wedding celebration banner thing on the wall. It's decidedly creepy. Also, one of the Facebook games I play has got in on it, with royal-wedding-themed quests and things. I get that I live in the city where it's all going down and thus I cannot expect to escape from it, but ... seriously? Stupid Facebook flash games?

This griping, grousing blog post brought to you by a fed-up secretary who just wants to go home and RP/play some Dragon Age and not have to deal with patients who cannot even answer a simple question the likes of "And what's the message?" but still manages to answer the phone all cheerful-polite-businesslike ever single godsdamned time.

(Also, consultants who add a PS to every letter at the very end of a tape after all the letters have been typed, forcing a secretary to go back to every single letter and make alterations ... they must die, they must die, they must die. Thank you.)

Dear London-based friends (or anyone who might be in London before April):

There's a free exhibit on the evolution of the English language on at the British Library 'til about April. Anyone game to come with me to see it? Looks pretty interesting. But then, I would say that. *g*

So I finally slept reasonably well. This is a good thing, as I have Things To Do today. I have to go out and get some groceries, and a screwdriver. Then I have to ... erm, well, dissect Hardison. Want my hard drive, damnit! Anyway, after that comes the usual deal of reinstalling everything. So far I've got the essentials - Firefox, Trillian, iTunes, Avast, stuff like that. And I'm working on getting the Dragon Age 2 demo on here so I can see how pretty it looks with the new graphics card (and not have it grind to a slow crawl during some bits of combat - so annoying when it did that on Hardison) so there's that 'essential' dealt with. But I've got to put my Sims game and expansions on, and Dragon Age... As much as I'm hoping to be able to rescue the hard drive out of Hardison for my music and writing and stuff, I'm just as much hoping that I'm not going to have to go digging through the Sims 3 fan sites and Bioware forums for all my custom content. I will if I have to, but I'd rather not if I had my druthers.

Getting a new computer is really kind of weird sometimes, y'know? I bitch-bitch-bitch about how I don't really want to reinstall everything, but there's a kind of quiet joy and pride that comes out of getting it set up just as I like it. I'm not really sure what's up with that, but part of it at least was the setting up of my Windows 7 desktop theme. I really like this theme thing. I've got the whole thing set up to reflect my current Dragon Age obsession, and I'll be happy when I find another few good wallpapers to add to the shuffle. Sometimes good desktop wallpaper is hard to find! And the downloading is kind of sucky, but hey; when it's all set up, it just feels more or less awesome. Can't say fairer than that.

So now Dragon Age 2 has downloaded and so I shall install it. And then we'll see what we see. I have to finish my coffee and then I have to go dismember Hardison. (Poor Hardison; we've had to move to Plan M.) A busy-ish Saturday, then.

Last night, I stayed up way too late RPing and ended up heading out to the post office before I went to bed. It was nice and quiet and I found the delivery office with no problem ... but those post office guys scare me with the lacksadaisical attitude sometimes. Look, the little card you get in the post says to bring ID to make sure that they're giving the parcel to the right person. I get that. I'm not horribly paranoid or anything, but I do know that in a building like mine, the post all gets dumped into a central foyer. This is not the safest thing in the whole wide world, admittedly, as it makes identity theft a distinct possibility, but that's how it works. So anyone in your building could get hold of your delivery notice card. Which means that anyone in your building that wanted to could get your stuff and use and/or sell it. I don't believe in being constantly obliged to carry ID for any Authority Figure who wants to see it (I mean, seriously, fascism much?) but there are things that I believe should require ID to do. Registering at a doctor's surgery, for example. Getting a library card. Banking. Picking up anything that's meant for a specific someone.

So when I turn up at the delivery office with my passport and the water bill just in case they want proof of address? It might be nice if the slothlike creature behind the counter actually looked at the ID that his office actually requires him to look at!

...Let's just say that I lack faith in the postal system.

Anyway, I headed home, I crawled into bed ... and then, somewhere around two, the fire alarm went off. Again. Apparently the downstairs neighbours got hold of someone who looked at it, prodded it for awhile (on and off ear-splitting wail, hoo-freakin-rah) and from what I overheard from downstairs, could do nothing with it. Also, the downstairs neighbours lied about how it happened in what I assume is a bid to avoid being charged the fee to get the damn thing reset. So we're without a fire alarm for the moment. Which ... y'know, I think we'll survive. We've all got smoke detectors, and they're loud enough to be heard throughout the building. Yeesh.

So now I'm underslept, with a burgeoning headache (though at least part of that is a lack of caffeine; I haven't had my coffee yet). Great way to end the year. Heh. But I have my new Sims 3 expansion to go poke around with and I should really switch the kettle on. I've got a liiiiittle bit of booze and I've ordered enough Chinese food to be leftovers for days, so that's pretty awesome. I mean, this kind of thing isn't exactly what someone normally thinks of as a New Year's celebration, but I'm not paying above the odds to cram myself into a room full of total strangers to celebrate something that, given I more or less ascribe to the idea that the year ended ten days ago, really doesn't mean a whole lot to me anyway.

*ahem* Not that I'm judgemental. Whenever you want to celebrate year's end is cool by me, and I wish you all the best in the coming year. And now I'm going to go torture little pixellated people for awhile.

There hasn't been a lot to say beyond 'new flat!', really. I'm all settled in now, with my books in the rescued bookshelf with the slight drunken list and my Montreal Canadiens flag propped up on the windowsill and all my clothes hung up in the wardrobe and most of the boxes out with the rubbish and everything. My online time is limited but my general cosiness factor is pretty high. I'm home. It's nice. There are a few things that still need sorting out, I'm aware, but that's going to have to wait until my bank account isn't entirely burned from deposits on the phone/broadband that they still won't connect until January and bedding and tableware and all that stuff. Still, all I really need is a phone/answering machine, and there's no point in having one of those until next month anyway. All the rest - mainly shelves and stuff still, as I'd like to be able to have a shelf unit in the bathroom so I'm not having to leave my body wash and stuff on the shower floor, and DVD racks would be nice, and I'm probably going to need another bookshelf at some point - isn't particularly vital. It can hold off for awhile.

I've been making an effort to reconnect with my music collection. At least part of it is trying to weed through my hard drive to find some space, as I am sadly lacking in such right now and there are at least a few cases where things in my music subdirectory have got duplicated or I don't even know why I have them. Yesterday I reminded myself just how much I like REM. Today - or at least for right now - I'm on Nine Inch Nails. It's all pretty random, but I'm having fun with it. Sometimes you get so locked into a playlist that you forget what else there is. Which is sad, but every so often one busts out of the rut and that's what I'm doing RightThisSecondNow. Going to end up doing the same with my DVD collection; last night was Cheesy 80s Movie Night. I think today is going to be Obscure Asian Horror. Though, since it's nearly impossible to multi-task with writing and the like while watching anything with subtitles, I think I'll leave that until later on this evening. It's more atmospheric in the dark anyway. Hee.

So I didn't manage to win NaNoWriMo this year. I probably could have if I'd actually applied myself, but I did have other things to which I had to apply myself. With the flat and everything, it's probably a miracle I broke 35k. Still, I'm a little disappointed; I'd only ever really fallen flat my first year, and that was 2004. *grumble* Oh well. I still have a good start on the story and it's not like the abortive 2004 NaNo, which I actually ditched because it was unmitigated crap. I just did not have the time or energy. But I'm going to rectify that, damnit. Maybe I won't have won NaNoWriMo this year, but that doesn't mean that the actual novel doesn't get finished.

This means that today is going to be music, writing, maybe some Sims when I need a break, and then Obscure Asian Horror. It'll be a good day. But I'd better get to it; I'm sort of rationing my online time right now, given the pay as you go thing. Soon, things'll be sorted and normal and I'll be able to do things like ... oh, I dunno, watch YouTube vids and stuff again and my connection won't be hella hinky. But still, it's better than being beholden to cybercaffs. Never want to do that again.

Everything is packed and shoved into the corridor, waiting for the Man with Van, who I hired for 3:30.

...The Man with Van cannot be here until 5pm.

This is going to throw my timing off badly, thank you very much, you utter eedjits who cannot plan for London traffic on a Saturday. See, the plan was to get everything into the van by quarter to four, be in the new flat with all my boxes around five, and then head out to the Sainsbury's superstore a short bus ride away - one of those massive mega-mart things that sells everything - so I could pick up the necessaries I could have bought here but didn't want to pack and move, as well as groceries. The place is open until 10pm but at the rate this is going, an hour and a half late here is going to translate to a half-six, seven kind of time, and while that still gives me three hours, it's way later than I wanted it to be.

I understand that traffic is an issue, and at least they let me know a half-hour early, but damnit, they said three-thirty! I suppose it's better than being cancelled. And if they do that, I'm going to rip their heads off. With my teeth.

I have my book. And enough time to maybe nip to the corner shop for a bottle of cola or something. Still, my life is sitting in the corridor in boxes and not only might I be internet-less for six freakin' weeks, but my bloody movers are telling me they're going to be an hour and a half late. After I moved all the boxes into nice convenient "You don't have to drag it out of a room or anything" spot for them, too. Fuckers.

It'll all be worth it when NEW FLAT. But all the same, what a pain in the arse.

[Edit: Now we are looking at half-five because apparently someone decided to drive like an idiot on icy road and the Man with Van hasn't moved an inch in fifteen minutes. Yeesh. At least they're still planning to turn up, and this part isn't exactly their fault. Also, there was a very nervous secretary who was very relieved and rather heartened-sounding when I told her that I wasn't going to yell at her because I know it's not her fault. I have been a secretary for a very long time and know what she's going through. I am annoyed, but not at her.]

Big day today. Lots of headless-chicken running-about-knees-bent advancing behaviour, or whatever. But it's all been productive, which is pretty awesome. So, the running:

1) Funds have cleared for flat, so I have to go out this afternoon and sign the lease properly. Man, the world thrives on paperwork. How many trees died so that I might have my flat?

2) Man with van has been called. I am a little concerned that he didn't particularly seem to get where I was calling from, despite repeating it three times and then spelling it out for him, but I get the impression this man hasn't been outside the M25 for the entirety of his life. Still, he's been called and will be 'round at about half past three to pack my worldly goods into a transit van and haul them off to my shiny new home.

3) I need to sort out the utilities but that's going to have to wait until I have signed the lease owing to the fact that I don't know the full post code or the utility companies with which the property already concerns itself. I'll have to ask the letting agent. I may be offline a bit as of tomorrow afternoon (not like there'll be that much of a difference to my LJ/Dreamwidth usage, but hey).

4) Tomorrow afternoon, post-mover, I'll have to go do a bit of shopping. The little things; cutlery, kettle, duvet that actually fits the bed, telephone ... y'know, the usual. Thankfully, I can get most if not all of the essentials on the cheap, and of course charity shops are a godsend.

Right. Lots to do, not a lot of time to do it in. Best get moving. *squee*