The Thessaliad Redux

Oh, it occurs to me. I never actually spun out the Cookie Saga, did I?

So ... you remember awhile back there was that whole deal where I posted my geektastic recipe for "Sten Approves" cookies? I first posted this on Tumblr, and the recipe ... it got around. The first person who actually made those cookies apart from me, as part as I'm aware, was Reg, otherwise known as skiesovergideon, who started following me because of some alternadialogue I posted to a reblog of her Reg Liveblogs Dragon Age routine. Anyway, she baked the cookies and she loved them. Lots and lots.

Enter Reg's Mom. Who had, by this point, already seen her daughter playing Dragon Age and asked at least once "Why isn't Sten your boyfriend?" (Reg's Mom has a very interesting view of the IC/OOC divide.) So Reg's Mom asks what Reg is baking and Reg tells her. Reg's Mom likes them.

This is where it starts to get complicated.

I think Reg's Mom had at some point watched Reg play Warcrack and got the general idea about crafting food items, and it all got a little mixed up because of the name I gave the cookies, and to sum it up, Reg's Mom thought (maybe still thinks, for all I know) that this particular cookie is something that your Warden can craft in-game and give to Sten to make him like you better. And that a dev gave the fans an actual recipe so that they could make these crafting items IRL. Also, apparently, that I am a dev. (At least she gets the hang of the fact that I'm female now...)

It ... doesn't stop there. For varying reasons, my cookies being the icing on the proverbial cake, Reg's Mom decides to play Dragon Age. In part to be looking for that crafting recipe. Which doesn't exist. Which did not stop her looking. From this was born Dragon Age According to Reg's Mom. Which has kind of exploded to the point where it's damn near a Tumblr-fan-community meme. Gaider has actually been made aware of this and replied to tweets about it at least once. (This involved a potential Chris Evans look-alike as a party member, as Reg's Mom suggested - with the addition of the comment, "We're sending him cookies; he'd better". Yes, apparently Reg's Mom wanted to send the Bioware crew what were responsible for Dragon Age some Sten Approves cookies as a thank-you, or something. She has since started playing the city elf origin and has rescinded this bit of nice out of protest on the subject of Vaughan.)

...All I did was suggest that this was an awesome alternative to the bog-standard choc-chip cookie recipe... I mean, I clearly can't take a whole terrible lot in the way of credit, since it's Reg and her mother who have all the funny here, but I feel like I may have catalysed this. Just a tiny bit. Iiiiittybittybit.

I am all alone in the office this afternoon. Everyone has gone home early, or had the day off, or worked from home or something. I don't know what the girls downstairs are doing, but it's peaceful, just me. And at least someone gave me the key code for the office door up here, so if I have to leave the office, I don't have to worry about leaving the door open. Apparently, we don't do that when the office is empty. Which makes a certain amount of good sense. (It still doesn't justify the fact that the other float still forgets to lock down her computer before she leaves her desk despite my having shown her how, mind you. I'm going to have to remind her. I think I'll maintain a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy there; I've told her, and she gets two reminders before I report her.)

I wonder if anyone would mind if I borrowed someone else's desk for the next couple of hours. See, there's one minor problem with my current office space; it faces a window. A west-facing window. And the blinds are missing a few slats so it does not block out the sun. Everyone knows I'm pretty prone to migraines, right? Well, imagine how it feels to spend from about 2pm 'til sundown getting comprehensively blinded by the sun shining right in my face with no hope of blocking it out. Right now I'm managing by adjusting how I sit so that the slats that are actually in the blinds are blocking the sun from my direct line of sight (mostly) but that's just doing in my left shoulder. I'd shift my computer but there's no actual room to do so, because 'my' desk is actually storage space for I don't know what-all rubbish from the IT department. Gods almighty, I hate this place sometimes.

In other news, I participated in the Secret Swooper deal for the swooping_is_bad LJ community; basically it's Secret Santa for DA fanworks, or Yuletide with a specific fandom. I wrote a piece of Anders-centric fic that I'm actually fairly proud of (I may post it later, but I want to wait until the person I'm Secret Swooping for sees it; it's their present) and I got the loveliest bit of fanart. But of course, my working on this kind of thing shows how much of a dork I can sometimes actually be, because as per usual with this kind of thing, I planned so many bits and pieces of fanwork (a fanmix, a couple of pieces of fic that are half-written already, stuff like that) and then just hit on this idea and bashed it out in an hour and a half and posted that rather than agonise over it anymore. So this whole thing actually just generated way more fan-stuff than just the one gift-piece. Is that what these things are supposed to do? I've never done anything like this before, so the fact that I accomplished it at all is pretty stunning. Maybe I'll actually try Yuletide next year.

Or maybe someone should hit me in the face with a shovel before I fic again.

Aaaaaaaanyway. Yes, I'm goofing off. I'm alone in the office, I've worked my arse off all week and the weekend's coming up in not very long at all. I think I'm entitled to a little bit of goofing. I still do more work than the girls downstairs. This weekend is going to be more or less chores, too - grocery shopping, laundry, stuff like that. I may buy a tiny artificial Christmas tree if I can clean off enough shelf space to put the sodding thing, and there are at least a couple of Christmas gifts I should likely pick up, though I imagine most will be purchased online. (Not that there are that many to begin with.) So ... busy busy. You know how it goes.

Right. Now to Google gingerbread recipes. Also, type letters.

So I may have been awake earlier than intended. This has something to do with the arsehole ringing my doorbell at 8am. I did get in some further napping time, but I somehow did not find that all that refreshing. Ah well. I did at least get out and get stuff done today. More than I bargained for, in point of fact.

It is a sad and sorry thing when I have to truck my buns all the way up to Angel to get the treats of my childhood. But then again, it's probably better than not having the treats of my childhood at all. So I am currently drinking cream soda ... which, I'll be honest, I'm starting to regret. I really don't remember it being this sweet. But there's root beer and Mountain Dew Code Red (not exactly 'of my childhood', but I liked it ten years ago) and other stuff, which is nice.

EA seems to think I live in the US. That's the only excuse I have for the fact that they got me all excited sending me an email telling me that the new Sims 3 EP was coming out today when actually, it comes out Friday here. But to be honest, I don't mind so much. See, if I'd not gone out looking for it and been disappointed, I wouldn't have drowned my sorrows with a trip to the bookstore. The second book in the Mira Grant series that started with "Feed" is out, and it happened to be there. Just one copy. Sitting there as if waiting for me. One of the many books in a three-for-two offer. And it doesn't seem to matter how old I get, I will still hug books that please me and squeak with joy. In public. I think it was Brian who said something about how I'm immune to embarrassment. Which I suppose is true with people I've never met, will never meet and likely will never even see again. *shrug*

Which probably explains my reaction when the girl at the till made a face at my new Mira Grant novel. I mean, hey, I know the whole deal about being a liiiiiiiittle fed up with the bog-standard zombie apocalypse deal in modern fiction. I get how it's stupid to assume that no one's seen a horror movie. But I don't get someone making a face at someone else's book just because the back blurb talks about zombies. Cue me spending five minutes explaining to a chastened and increasingly interested-looking sales clerk about how it's not your standard zombie story, it's not the Apocalypse per se; that it's about society and how it evolves to deal with anything ... and finds a way to turn the damnest things and tragedies into a political manoeuvre. I explained the premise without giving away the plot, and explained that it's not your standard small-group-of-survivors zombie story. By the time I was done, I think she was planning on picking up the first one. So ... ha. Take that, judgemental sales clerk.

Oh gods, so tired. Not fair. It's my week off. I should have been allowed to sleep in. Why can't we greet salespeople at the door with bludgeons?

Happy New Year, y'all! May the worst day of 2011 be no worse than the best day of 2010, yeah?

The evening did not go exactly as I planned. It never does. For one thing, while I knew there were going to be leftovers from the Chinese, I did rather expect to at least finish the starters. But my appetite went on strike and now I've got prawn toast leftover along with all the main course dishes. I'm going to be eating leftover Chinese until Wednesday, I'm telling you. I'm not actually complaining about this, mind; leftover Chinese is food of the gods as far as I'm concerned. Still, I do find myself peckish again so I'm going to go finish the starters and then see how I feel.

Sims 3 Late Night is ... actually kind of cool. It's nice to have a reason to go out and ... y'know, socialise, as the last few expansions, beyond a few missions in various holiday spots, really didn't focus much on that. Of course, my luck being as it is, I was just finally getting the hang of stuff when the whole thing crashed on me. And of course, I hadn't saved. Oh well. We'll call that a trial run. Like my first elven mage in Dragon Age. I'll probably give it a bit more of a prod before I go to bed tonight.

So less food than I thought, crashed game ... but there is liiiiiittle bit of alcohol and leftovers and now there'll be a bit more Sims 3-ing and then there'll be bed, hopefully to get some decent sleep. That'd be nice.

And for those of you still lingering in 2010 ... welcome to the future. We'll keep it tidy for you. *g*

To elaborate from the Twitter aggregate comment on what I got up to last night: birthday get-together, much belated, and I finally went to Belgo after years of hearing about how awesome their mussels are.

(Side note: their mussels are awesome.)

mitchy and I started at the Lamb and Flag, another place that I've been hearing about for years (my Daria fandom friend Padre, aka Father Martin, and I met up in London for drinks many years ago and we pondered the Lamb and Flag because of its fantastic ale and good sausages but it was too crowded so we ended up somewhere else). I did not have the ale, because I don't actually like beer, with a few very random exceptions (Labatts, Newky Brown, that Mexican stuff where you jam a wedge of lime into the bottle neck... but only very rarely in the case of all three). Instead, I had a half-pint of cider and two packets of crisps because I honestly anticipated a longer night and did not want to dump more alcohol on an empty stomach than necessary.

We honestly didn't expect to see anyone at the L&F, on the grounds of very last minute decision of which pub to go to. However, thalinovel turned up along with random and unexpected but very nice to see him again tyrell. Albeit briefly for tyrell, which was a shame, but at least there was a few minutes of conversation and "Yes, we do know each other from more than online, even if I've only been at Brighton Below three times before my character died" with added "no, let's not talk about the job hunt because frothing at the mouth often offends".

And then it was off to Belgo, with me serving as navigator because someone who is actually very familiar with the area and wandered said area frequently not so long ago trumps the bother of looking at a map. :) And I did get us there, though admittedly I took us the long way around. Mostly I did this on the grounds of my firm belief that there is no point in going to Covent Garden if you're not going to blow past the Covent Garden Market and up from there past the station because missing the buskers is criminal. Actually, there was more entertainment in the two girls in the brightly coloured coats doing a little hoppy-dance and singing "Reach for the stars" out of absolutely nowhere, but the point stands. In any case, we met adelpha and kelemvor in the reception foyer and minmorton turned up a bit later and we were, on the whole, quite the group.

And so there was food and fruit beer. I was dubious about the fruit beer thing (see above about not liking beer) but I was assured that it didn't taste like beer. So mango beer was, in fact, a revelation, though of course it turned out that I liked everyone else's drink better than I did my own. But seriously. Mango beer. Anyone who knows my fondness for the humble mango knows I had to try it, and it was really nice. It was just, ironically, the most beery-tasting of the three I tried. In any case, there were also the mussels and these really nice salmon cakes and there might have been dessert if not for the fact that 95% of the dessert menu involved chocolate in some way and I was already developing what promised to be a monumental migraine. Belgo is a lovely place with great food and good service but it is also sardine-tin crowded, rather close and excessively loud. This is never good for me anyway, but I wasn't about to dump chocolate on top of it - I still had hopes of actually beign able to enjoy the rest of the evening.

...Of course, that entirely relies on 'the rest of the evening' not involving London pubs on a Saturday night. Crowded and loud is my bane, and ... well, y'know, West End. In the end, I had to bail early, with the rest of the merry crew happily ensconced in a hard-won table at the Captain's Cabin, after a protracted game of musical chairs that managed to span both floors of the establishment. I was really sorry to have to leave but it was for the best - there were painkillers and a relatively early night (for a Saturday) and unfortunately rather broken sleep and now it's afternoon and while the head still hurts, I don't feel specifically like I'm going to pass out any time soon. Bonus. Added bonus: haven't had one that bad in quite awhile.

Further bonus: it's a pretty nice day. I will finish my coffee and possibly find food and go for a stroll, and then sit down and figure out what to do with the rest of the afternoon. It may or may not involve DAO (about which I kept conversation to a minimum last night, go me!) but will definitely involve roasting turkey bits later on.

So to those at the birthday dinner celebration thingie, thanks for the company and lovely conversation, and I hope to see you all again at some point.

I'm pleased to note that once again, however many treats and things I received during my lunch outing with my mother, I did actually give as good as I got ... in a sense, anyway. For someone who has technically lived and worked in London a bit longer than I have, I seem to know London a lot better than she does, and whenever we go out, it's like she finds a bit of London she didn't even know existed. This usually works out very well for us both.

I bought lunch, though Mum paid for the wine - it was a standard trip to Ikkyusan for sushi and gyoza, but it wasn't even crowded, which was a nice surprise. I picked up my birth certificate (next step: apply for passport) and we had a good long chat. In the course of that, we discussed the computer thing, and Mum's going to get onto my stepdad about how, while she knows he wants to be thorough, I need a new computer and I need it now because my current one is dead and I can't manage without a computer. So hopefully things will be sorted so that the PC will either be delivered ASAP or be available for collection at the nearest shop. Please please please SOON I miss my music collection and my vids and my games... I paid for my FFXI time and can't use it agh!

*ahem* Sorry.

Afterwards, we were going to get me some shoes, as my Doc Marten flats are really wearing out, but they only had them in two or three sizes too small for me, so we more or less gave up on the shoes and, after stopping for a drink at the Montagu Pyke, I showed Mum Forbidden Planet, which she hadn't even heard of. A sci-fi/fantasy fan who doesn't know where Forbidden Planet is ... can't be allowed. Mum happily gravitated to the anthologies and picked out a couple (though she now suspects that she already owns one of the ones she got, which she apparently does a lot), and then allowed me convince her that yes, she really wanted to buy Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box because no, even though he's Stephen King's son, he is not a Stephen King copycat. Then she did the usual thing of getting me to pick out a book. One book. Does anyone know how hard it is for me to pick one book out of the however many I wish to own? Show of hands? Exquisite torture. Anyway, in the end I decided on A Fistful of Charms, as I'm working on getting the whole set of Kim Harrison novels. Not doing too badly, either - only missing Where Demons Dare and White Witch, Black Curse, which I haven't even read yet and refuse to until I own the others. Yes, even though I've read library copies of everything up to Where Demons Dare.

There were other bits and pieces too. We happened to breeze by a Sanrio equivalent and I came away with a dice bag shaped like a panda bear face, a 1-Up mushroom cushion, a new notebook and a paper fan with cats printed on it. (I bought my mother a box of unicorn-print plasters. It's an in-joke.) And apparently I could not leave Forbidden Planet without the pin badge reading "My imaginary friend doesn't like you". Afterwards, we decided to stop for one last drink before heading for King's Cross to renew my monthly travelcard (I hadn't expected her to, but am glad she did) and then heading our separate ways. Since we were in the area, I suggested the little bar where we had the NaNoWriMo launch party a few years ago - the one dodgyhoodoo went to and gave me the idea for Voudon Udon.

Mum was going to stick with wine, but changed her mind when she saw what I'd found on the cocktail menu. It was called an espresso martini, and consisted of espresso, sugar, kahlua and vanilla vodka. There are no words to describe the awesome of that cocktail. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Mum has now decided that we have to end every London meet-up we have there for one of these. I'm not arguing because I can't justify the prices at that place very often. But surely I will be able to make it myself at some point.

So ... it's been a pretty good day, and with luck I'll have a working PC by the end of the week. *crosses fingers*

Not all of the stories are done yet. However, I have just about decided that I'm going to post one of the ones I finished, mostly because ... well, I've been writing all month and would like to reassure myself it isn't all crap. I'm thinking of the HIPPIE Case Files one, because it's the one I'm least likely to try and publish and I did like that one. It would be a shame if no one read it. Of course, I'm still all nervy about it. I can see that I've improved over the years but I still know I could be better. It's just never perfect, and that aggravates me. But I suppose that's a good thing - the more I strive for perfection, the closer I'll come to getting it someday and the better the imperfect work will be in the meantime.

Still ... a winner is me for another year. At least something's going right. Between the GI illness, not hearing from the agencies and a current issue with one of my wisdom teeth (the left lower side of my jaw is swollen and I look ridiculous; good thing I'm not really going out anywhere these days), I'm sort of counting the blessings I have - writing, RPing, my friends, dodgyhoodoo and my infinite capacity to amuse myself.

Note to self: must get out to the West End tomorrow to get gummies. Though I might try Atari-Ya first; they're closer and they may have some. Then the post office. Yay for the post office!

...I want it to be November now. Now now now.

Chatting with darkdanc3r about plans for the NaNo. You know, bandying around advice and novel ideas and so on and so forth. And I know it's only a week, but ... it's a long week in which I'm home in front of a computer and can't start yet. I keep having ideas for the short stories I want to include, and because I don't work from notes, I can't even really start yet. I suppose I can jot down potential ideas of what I want to include, but planning how the stories are going to go ... just never works. And just writing down premises and potential titles doesn't kill the absolute jones for writing.

IT NEEDS. TO BE. NOVEMBER. NOW!

In other news, I've been off the computer for most of today by dint of being asleep. 13 hours and I'm still knackered. And I'm going to take dodgyhoodoo out for dinner tonight just 'cos I can, and because I don't want to cook. This is one of my crappier-feeling days, y'see. So we're going for Japanese at Hi Sushi later. I know I'm going to be having Japanese with my mother at Ikkyusan tomorrow but it's no great hardship to eat Japanese food two days running. The real hardship is going to be getting out of bed in time to make a 1:45 meet-up, the way things have been going lately. I may have to get to bed at a decent hour. Hello, Nytol.

I could almost understand if they wanted to turn the Intrepid Fox into just another trendy bar. Almost. Note how I say almost. But no. They want to turn it into a block of flats. Who the almighty fuck wants to live that close to Soho? I mean, there is a block of council flats overlooking Berwick Street Market, but everything else in the area is ... well, hookers, mainly. It's the red light district, for crying out loud; what kind of investment is it to put a bunch of newly-developed overpriced flats in an area mainly full of council housing and prostitution? Are these people insane? Or, more worryingly, are they riding the crest of a trend towards ... well, trendy? I do not believe this. And while I desperately want to go over to the Expensive for one last drink before the place closes down for good (because while it would be nice if we could make a difference, I don't think Ken Livingstone is going to listen to a small but die-hard bunch of rock fans over the siren call of increased tax revenues), I know full well that the place is going to be packed to the fucking gills and I'll probably be squished. But of course, I'm gonna go anyway because hell, I have to have one last drink in there. Probably two, actually - one for me and one for leopard_lady, who loved that place half to death when she was here.

In other news, we have a nice day yesterday. Well, evening for the most part - as dodgyhoodoo puts it, I kicked him out of the flat for a few hours. Well, it did give me some more time for deathgnoming, and it does mean that I don't have to listen to him whinge about yet another wasted weekend, but for the most part I find that he's happiest when he's actually accomplished something and I like my hoodoo happy. So he went out and I deathgnomed and then we met up and had dinner, which was nice and everything but I wish the bloody waitresses had left us alone instead of randomly dumping things into our soup pot at random. Well, I know they were trying to help, but it was irritating. I also decided, on one of my usual whims, to pick up some random J-pop while we were in Chinatown. It turned out to be K-pop in the end (BoA) and it's ... something I'd have to be in the mood for but definitely fits in with my occasional cravings for cheesy electronica. Also went for more oriental sweeties - Pocky, gummies in various flavours, those cherry-flavoured chewy things I like and tiramisu-flavoured wafer biscuits, which are proving popular at home.

And things are moving along apace at the two online RPs I actually give a crap about. We've actually started interacting with NPCs at moot over in Hollow City, and my pack's Philodox is getting rude and uppity at a Shadow Lord after taking exception to said Shadow Lord's tone. There's no damn patience anymore. So I had my Galliard step in, step between and make nice. What else can I do? As for Charleston, we're on our way to the Hill, and things between Nina and the Verditian seem reasonably friendly, as he made comment on Nina's outfit. Given that I expect the most trouble from the totally up herself Flambeau child (sorry, courtcat), I'll be glad when the whole damn thing is over, but I can breathe a little easier at the minute, as can the character, who I think still expects to be pilloried.

At work and I don't wanna be here. Oh well. At least there was a long weekend, no?

I just went down a clothing size, minimum. The skirt Mum got me in a size too small is just comfortably loose now. And I'm not really all that happy about it.

Yeah. Okay. I realise, ladies of my journal, that I should not be complaining. I do understand that my current situation is something that every woman who wants to diet hopes for - an extended period over which you are simply not very hungry, instead of experiencing the constant low-level hunger and cravings of most dieters. Okay, possibly without the nausea after meals, but this is a price that most body-conscious women would be willing to pay. My health does not seem to be deteriorating, because I make sure to eat healthily when I eat at all, and I don't seem to need more than one full meal per day. And given that I'm fat anyway, this is probably a good thing.

Except, of course, for the passingly curious fact that I can't afford to go clothes shopping. So most of my wardrobe now no longer fits. Okay, it's one size, but if this keeps up, my favourite denim skirt is just going to fall off one of these days. Maybe it's a good thing that I never got around to taking some of that 'hasn't fit for ages' stuff to the charity shop, but ... that stuff is all old and ratty. And the skirt Mum got me itches, which will hopefully stop being an issue after I've washed it a couple of times, but...

Argh, this is irritating. I should be pleased or something. After all, now I can fit into stuff I couldn't before. But instead I just consider how inconvenient it is to have to get a new wardrobe, basically. And then I feel bad about complaining because I know this is not as bad a thing as I make it out to be.

Well, I'm going to go play silly computer games until I feel more like dealing with the 'being awake' thing.