clo_again

Hahahaha 'post more often'. Yep. So, moving on!

Hello, I am not yet dead or giving up on LJ or- actually no, everything else is pretty much what you'd expect; work is boring yada yada, life continues much unchanged yada yada...well I suppose that's not technically true. There's been recent work dramallamas in the continuing saga of Why Must Everyone I Work With Be So Relentlessly Stupid and it all kicked off with an official complaint by another admin girl last Monday, but I've had phone conversations since (I was off Wednesday - Friday) that implies it's all sorted and we are in fact in good nick with the management who think we're doing a great job. I guess I'll see tomorrow. The whole stupidity has really crystalised the fact to me that I don't want to work for that place long-term even though I don't mind the job itself, because stupid dramallama stuff that should've been avoided with a little common sense happens all the time. It's reminded me that I need to actually focus on saving money towards an eventual Masters, preferably in Cardiff, so I can flee the place.

This resolution to save started most excellently well as I almost immediately went off on a three-day shopping trip to Cardiff. In justification it's been planned since April, I did actually desperately need new shoes/jeans, and it's like getting it all out of my system before I go cold turkey on spending, right?

(It made more sense when I was using it as an excuse to buy things, really.)


This building never fails to make me happy. <3

The trip was so lovely - I think I definitely needed just to get out of dodge for a few days because I'd been getting more and more stressed with everything at work and actually just leaving the county (and the country, given that I went back to Wales!) was good timing, and I felt better about life, the universe and everything just by the time I got to London Euston.

Yes, I went to Cardiff via London. Yes, there was an excellent reason for this; I arranged the entire trip around going to the Hampstead Theatre to see Propeller (I may have mentioned them before. At length. In the previous post. I really like Propeller) perform their Twelfth Night again. I love the play so much, I couldn't bear the thought of not seeing it again and despite fretting the entire way down that I'd miss it (due to engineering works I had to catch a train to Manchester, wait an hour for my next train to London, then catch a couple of Tubes and find the theatre by 2:00pm) I got there in plenty of time. I did a post about it over in the Propeller comm, so I won't repeat myself but it was wonderful. In the interval I tweeted "My idea of heaven is sitting in a dark theatre and watching Propeller perform this play over and over", and I meant it. If it hadn't finished touring yesterday I'd say to go see it; as it is they're touring Midsummer Night's Dream/Comedy of Errors starting in November and everyone should go see at least one of them. I am. Multiple times. (No, I really am.)

Then, after catch-up sushi and mocking the Tie Rack workers at Paddington station with kindoftrouble and A, it was a packed train and then Cardiff. I love Cardiff. I may have mentioned this before. And this time it was mid-week so the shops weren't too busy (apart from flocks of graduates in robes that bizarrely kept congregating everywhere), everywhere had great sales, the weather was hot but not humid at all, and everywhere I went people had Welsh accents (a girl standing behind me in Schuh exclaimed over a pair of Converse "Oh those are lush!"). It was lovely. I shopped all day Thursday, ate down at a packed Cardiff Bay full of people enjoying the sunshine and workmen turning Roald Dahl Plass into a beach, complete with helter-skelter.



It's going to be a beach for all of August, complete with sand, a water play area, and traditional seaside amusements. I wish I could go back to see it because I think it'll be amazing.

I also saw Pacific Rim on Thursday night which was so delightfully, uncompromisingly ridiculous that I loved every second of it. I think it demands a suspension of disbelief from the very first line and how much you enjoy it depends totally on how far you're willing to simply shrug and roll with it, but if you do it rewards you by being a lot of fun. Even if every time someone said 'jaegar', I couldn't stop myself mentally adding 'meister' onto the end.

Friday was more shopping, and gbk and then an endless six hour trip home which definitely increased my stress levels again but an entire weekend of dedication lounging has fixed that. I'm sad that I have to go back to work tomorrow and that I don't have any more time off until October, but Cardiff remains fabulous. I wish I could win the lottery so I could just buy my penthouse flat on the Bay and stay there.

~

Other Things:

- jesse_kips is a rockstar and got us tickets to see Tom Hiddleston in Coriolanus after Christmas. I want to say how awesome this is but I don't think words that awesome have been invented yet. It's entirely possible one or both of us will end up with restraining orders against us but given the general insanity of Hiddleston's fans we'll probably just blend right in.

Incidentally, that'll make it five times that I've been to the theatre this year. That's pretty good. Next year I'm thinking that I'll aim to make it six.

- Andy Murray won Wimbledon! This made me utterly delighted, (especially since they can now stop repeating that awful interview from 2012 when he was crying too much to speak oh my god BBC seriously, STOP SHOWING IT). I wrote 5000 words of post-final Murray/Djokovic in a fit of inspiration that was killed by work stress and shopping. It's so close to being finished, I should actually just suck it up and do it. Argh.

- In general, writing is going- well, I don't want to say 'not well' but 'distinctly average'. Must try harder.

- The sun came out in Britain about two weeks ago and hasn't gone back in yet. Everyone enjoyed it for about a day and then old people started dropping like flies, doctors started screaming about skin cancer and all the salt marshes on my train ride to work have dried up. Dear Britain, the next person to complain about the rain will be taken out and shot, understood?

- Still haven't won the lottery, despite multiple attempts. Sigh.

- I promised to post about Peter and Alice, didn't I. That's not a question. I know I've failed, even though I have it all written down. It was fantastic and made me cry like a baby, and I think that may be as far as I get in forming coherent thoughts. Sorry. :(

- I had another point, and then I thought of Ben Whishaw and promptly forgot it. Er. It probably wasn't important.

- This is probably it for another two months but I do check LJ every day so if you do want to check I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, leave a comment & I will get it & reply. Keep posting. For all its failings, it makes me sad that LJ is slowly dying. I'll miss it if - when - it finally gives up the ghost (plus I've forgotten my Dreamwidth password again. Typical).

Things I've just discovered that make me happy; I'm planning to go see Up when I head to Lancaster for my birthday next week and on checking the film times just now, apparently they're showing it in 3D as well as 2D. Hurrah! The tickets are more expensive than for 2D but they're Super Saver Tickets because it's on a weekday before 5pm so it actually works out the same price as a normal ticket.

Birthday happys. Awesome. :D jesse_kips you're welcome to come with if you want. If not I shall be cheesecaking and coffeeing and shopping for some time before! ^_^ I could see you in Starbucks say... half one?

~

So yeah, I haven't posted for a bit. S'up with that? Nothing really, except my general apathy toward life in general right now. I'm not doing anything which is really ridiculous when you consider that I only worked two hours today and only four yesterday and four Monday. It's just that working across the middle of the day seems to eat time to do anything and I come home only to bum around because I'm tired from work. I'm actually annoying myself immensely but don't know what to do about it.

Signed up for NaNo again and I'm officially in training, by writing a hundred more words a day to hopefully get myself in the habit. On Monday my word target was 200 words and I hit 350+. Yesterday target 300 and I hit 330. Today is 400 and I've been sitting around for seven hours now without so much as typing a word. I even opened the damn fic I'm working on earlier only to close it and have a nap instead. I can't be doing this when my word count needs to be 1600+ a day instead of 400. I'm going to have to start as soon as I get home from work, not right before I go to sleep. Argh. But, I guess, I knew I'd be like this which is why I'm trying to get in the habit. I'm off to watch In Treatment with my laptop now and hopefully I'll hit 400 words before I have to drag myself off to bed because I have two days of getting up early and three hours to work Saturday. I couldn't say no to working Saturday because I'd already asked for my birthday off. Meh. -_- Working six days in a row sucks, even when when it's just for a few hours some days. I really don't think this ridiculous job is helping the apathy at all, but I suspect it'll be great for NaNo (if I actually use the spare time) to be only working a few hours a day Monday-Wednesday.

Plus with all the extra hours I'm thinking I may as well stick it until Christmas because it's enough money to pay back my 'rents and considering basically everything tripwise is paid for now (London, hotel for Cardiff, train tickets except the ones from London-Cardiff because it worked out much cheaper to have an extra night in London around the Cardiff weekend. Dear British Rail, you are stupid) I might even have money left over for Christmas presents. :D Which is good!

Less good is my inability to accomplish even the simplest thing, like fill in application forms. I really need to take NaNo seriously this year. Some sort of daily goal would be awesome right now.

~

I never talked about how much fun I had in Edinburgh, partly because I started a post and got too lazy to finish halfway through so in my mind I did talk about it, only I never posted, and partly because I had such an awful cold that week and I came home and sleep-walked through the next few days because walking all over Edinburgh is exhausting when you're only breathing at half-capacity.

But I did have fun! Once I got there that is; I got to the train station early on the Saturday morning only to discover my train to Lancaster where I'd connect up to Edinburgh was cancelled, possibly ( due to the appalling amount of fog )

although I still can't see why fog would affect the trains enough to be cancelled. The parental drove me the forty minutes to Lancaster though and, thanks to having a half-hour wait between connections, I even had time to go get a Starbucks before my train. Did occur to me that that was the second thing to go wrong (first was my hotel being overbooked) and I spent the rest of the weekend in fear of the Third Thing (because these things happen in threes right?) but it was all fine. My hotel fears were baseless; the hotel I'd been moved to was very nice and I had an exec room which was decorated much nicer than the eye-scouring blue the website showed the basic rooms in. It was the wrong end of Prince's Street for everything I wanted (and Prince's Street is an epically long goddamn street) but I found the venue just fine and I found Grassmarket which was as full of cool shops as I remember it (the really cool sci-fi/fantasy bookshop had a plushy Cthulhu. I did not buy it but I really really wanted to).

I'd forgotten how staggeringly pretty Edinburgh is. All I could think walking around is that if they chose to film a fantasy film there and claim it was any sort of fantasy city? No CGI required. It's all turrets and arched windows and elaborate carvings, especially around the Royal Mile. I wish I'd had a day to just chill and wander a bit slower but it was still fun. I do like Edinburgh. Don't know if I've spent enough time there to officially love it but it's certainly right up there with Cardiff and Sydney on the 'cities I like to spend time bumming around just for the sake of being there' short-list.

I also managed one other thing I wanted to do while I was there, which was to go check out the ( Scott Monument )

in Prince's Street Gardens just because DAAS* did one of their Big Gig shows from there and I wanted to get a picture of it today. It was only later that I realised they might've done their show from the other side but from what I can remember (I haven't got around to checking on the DVD) it was definitely the side away from the road. It was a bit odd seeing something DAAS-related in such a decidedly UK setting. It kind of made me miss Australia more.

And then I got a bit more of Australia-in-the-UK with, of course, the entire reason I went; Tim Minchin who was brilliant. I had ( a spectacular view )

if you can tell from my appalling phone camera pictures, slightly to the side but almost as close as the front row and no one in front of me because I was in the front row of the balcony. The amazing seat totally made up for the ridiculous sore throat I had from walking around all day with a cold, because I didn't have to cheer too loud to make up for being right at the back. ^_^ He really is fantastic live. Canvas Bags got such an epic cheer so clearly the whole place was mostly full of previous Minchin-ers and although he didn't encore with Not Perfect, he did White Wine in the Sun which is enough to make me think I'll be buying the whole show off iTunes when I've got a bit more money. I'm jealous of mayakitten for getting to see him now, because I'd love to go again. *wistful* If I'd been in London this weekend I would've gone to the ones he's doing at Hammersmith (though I'm not totally missing those because uh, I was regretting not buying a signed DVD so kindoftrouble offered to try to get me one from Hammersmith, even though she isn't going to the show. So I'm kind of there in spirit! :D And also owe my soul to kindoftrouble. Again. I could do with several hundred souls by now).

But on his next tour, I am so there. And so dragging along everyone else in sight because as fun as he was when I was by myself, it'd be even better with a bunch of people.

So kinda sad that's over but still to come this year: Roger Federer, Andy Roddick (as confirmed this week, yay!) and John Barrowman² so I haven't exactly got a boring lead-up to Xmas. :DDDD

~

It's actually gone 11pm now and I still haven't written anything or moved off my bed. Right. Yes. In Treatment (which is already losing my interest on the third week but I like the girl on Wednesdays so I'm quite happy for tonight) and writing and I really need to start DVDing some of the Top Gear off the Sky box. After all, we should be getting a new series soon. I need the space. :D

You've been reading This Is Clo's Life. Hopefully I won't leave it over a week between posts next time so the next post won't need to be so epically long and rambling.


~

*Speaking of DAAS, I know why I'm not getting GNW uploads to Mininova; the person was using Demonoid to get them and it's down. I'm hoping when Demonoid goes back up, I'll be able to catch up. Really really hoping. I'm missing my weekly dose of McDermott something terrible. :( Damn you Demonoid.

Today I have (finally) fixed the Keyboard of Awesome. This would be more pleasing if the internet worked on the desktop so I could be typing this on said Keyboard of Awesome. Still! It finally works, almost a year after it 'broke' at the most inopportune moment. We are pleased. :D (Less pleased when I think that maybe I could've fixed it at that inopportune moment and saved myself much stress but pah. Fixed! That's all that matters.)

I also bought Eeyore PJs to match my Eeyore dressing gown (yes I am twenty-two and no, I do not care that I have an unnatural obsession with Eeyore, because Eeyore is far too awesome to bother with such things) and henna and a new toothbrush. BUT. Horror or horrors! I would've also bought a chocolate brownie from Millie's Cookies, who officially made the Best Brownies Ever but they've stopped making them.. I am outraged. This is a crime against junk food. I must now spend the next few months baking brownies in an attempt to replicate the recipe.

And now, being Welsh, I an obliged to say: WE JUST WON THE GRAND SLAM. AGAIN. PWNED Y'ALL. PWNED! :D YAAAAAY!

I bought a rugby fleece last time we did this. I think I'd like a t-shirt this time. Mmmm. I wonder if I can do a day trip to Cardiff after London?

Home. Graduated. Wore the silly hat and everything (it's okay; all the Very Important Academic People sitting on the stage were wearing sillier ones. One had what I still maintain was a pirate hat. It had pointy corners. Felt sadly unsilly by comparison.) You may get subjected to a picture of me in the outfit soon, with my New Hair being squashed by the Silly Hat. Though, there's not much of it left to get squashed since apparently hair-dressers take "Leave it as long as possible" to mean "thin the top like crazy until there's a little bit of longer hair under the short." That said, it's nice. I actually have a semi-fringe for the first time in years.

Also, have DVD racks. Stopped in IKEA on the way home and I soothed my no-longer-a-bumstudent-pain by buying New and Shiny Things. So, DVD racks and a new cabinet-y thing for stationery and cushions and a rug and blue fairy lights shaped like sparrows (I kid you not. Most hilarious thing ever.) Daim cake went some way towards consoling me too. Cake made from Dimes. I love the Swedish.

Bought new books. Finally.

Have to poke dukedee and hill2k for what's happening tomorrow night. Suddenly I find myself booked twice for midnight on the same day. The odds.

In short: have been Awash With Sulky Bitterness for a few weeks but am finally getting over myself and quitting all the Wallowing In Silent Rage At The World. Promise to be back to normal and go answer comments and generally commune with the world from now on.

...S'amazing what a couple of DVD racks can do.

edit: Okay, so maybe I won't be rejoining the land of the Internets fully just yet because I remain miraculously unspoiled for HP and want it to remain that way in the final countdown. I will of course spend all of Saturday reading, so don't expect much other than the odd outburst of !!!! when I simply have to explode over LJ without spending too much time typing.

My DVD racks are made of awesome. Oh yes.

The mother has been here less than a day. Has already cleaned the house and is now in the process of mowing the back lawn, because grass over an inch long Mortally Offends her.

Losing the will to live. Send ninjas.

edit: WHY DOES SHE FEEL THE NEED TO STRIM THE EDGES, OH GOD WHY IT ISN'T HER HOUSE AND IT WASN'T EVEN THAT LONG AND WHY, JUST- WHY?!

Watching two sets of Scrubs outtakes and then four of the Red Dwarf Smeg Ups one after the other messes with your head. Seriously. I flicked onto Top Gear after and spent ten minutes waiting for Clarkson to start laughing over screwing up. Even when I was telling myself it wasn't outtakes, my brain was still waiting for the catch.

Yeah, my life is totally busy right now. Um. Yes. Which is why I haven't caught up on 'net stuff yet. Really. *laze*

Catching the boat to Penarth tomorrow. If I wake up in time. Hm. Also, I went into Blue Banana today and was so intimidated by the sales people (they looked & dressed like I would look and dress if (a) I looked that good and (b) had enough money to buy the stylish gothy-type clothes and make-up) that I had to buy something, so I bought chrome nail varnish (the only thing I could afford in the damn shop. Though the shoes, oh the shoes. *heartbreak*) It makes me look like I've had my nails coated in silver. Think that scary claw-woman from X-men 2. Yeah. Only more silver.

Interestingly, it doesn't go with any of my remaining clean clothes and I don't have nail polish remover. Then again, the woman in front of me in the Thorntons queue today had bright blue fake nails that were a good two inches long. She couldn't pick up her change with them. So maybe I'll survive.

To round off, have ( some random Cardiff pictures )

And now I'm totally going to bed. -_-

edit: Except, I stopped to watch the video of me and John Barrowman just posted by dukedee (scroll down to the last one).

I'm torn between being amused and mortified that my first thought after meeting John Barrowman was "LIVEJOURNAL. MUST HAVE PROOF FOR LIVEJOURNAL." ^_^

The freaking bird jumped out of the freaking box. I went down the Bay for an hour (it was insanely busy; way to go me for forgetting tourist attraction + weekend = crazy), came back fully expecting to find a dead bird but nope. Then just now while I was very determinedly ignoring the tennis by reading, heard mad fluttering and the damn thing was on the kitchen floor, looking around. Didn't have a bigger box - my brother who keeps everything, boxes included, fails at life for somehow not having anything to put a bird in - so ushered it very slowly into the big paper Fat Face bag. Which it promptly tried to tip over with more mad fluttering. (Have I mentioned that birds are very irritating?) So because it seemed averagely recovered and because keeping it in an unstable paper bag in a house with three cats pawing at the door was probably not the best way to help it, I took it to the canal (there's a really nice canal twenty seconds walk from my brother's house. Sometimes I don't believe him when he says he has no money) and left it in the bushes and long grass in one of the gardens that line the path.

Which was probably the wrong thing to do when there are a bazillion cats around here but what the hell else I was supposed to do with it... Nothing seemed broken, it was flapping like crazy in the bag and if it's going to die of shock, it'd probably rather do it out in the sunshine and bushes than on the floor of my brother's kitchen. It's doing better than most of the birds we've attempted to rescue over the years.

I'm fully aware that I'm letting myself freak out over the bird in order to distract myself from freaking out about the Wimbledon final. Stupid Bay being insanely busy so I couldn't sit in Starbucks. Bah.

( Proof! Proof I am the luckiest fangirl on the planet! )

Andy, what the hell are you doing? I went for a nap secure in the knowledge that you were playing brilliantly and then you do this? Do not ruin my glow of fuzzy-Barrowman-happiness Andy. I mean it.

I still have so many comments to leave. Oh dear. Being in Cardiff is awesome but it's killing any of my usefulness that still remains after three years of uni. Soon. Though I am spending tomorrow shopping, so maybe not until after that. Because Cardiff. Shopping. Yeah.

This icon is the most relevant thing I can find for John Barrowman. ;) (Conversation with my mother on the phone last night - Me: "He smelled so nice!" Her: "Oh yes, he's the one who bats for the other side isn't he?" Me: "...I fail to see your leap of logic but yes.") I really should fix my lack of Captain Jack when I get home.

Teehee, evil!SG-1. I love that they were wearing black. Never one to go for the misdirection eh Stargate? So cute.

Brother called too; after the usual "Why are you calling me?" "I need a reason to call my little sister?" "Well you never do without one, so yeah" exchange and after I'd bragged up my getting Stargate series nine and atlantis series 2 on DVD for free - he called me a bitch. Asshole - he was asking when our term finishes and when could I go down for a week to cat-sit and generally take over their house. I said pretty much any time in early July before July 18th when we graduate but I just thought of Wimbledon and when it finishes and went o.O, because I don't want to be on a train to Cardiff when there're Wimbledon matches on.

That said, my brother has the biggest TV ever. Literally, it's like sixty inches or something (okay, that's a wild guess but it's *big*). Which means there's a good chance I'll get to watch the Wimbledon final on it, omgsquee. Watched a bit of Wimbledon on there last year and it looks fantastic. Though, their neighbours are kind of close so no yelling too loud.

Still, giant TV + Wimbledon + empty house = awesome. Besides, he said that going to cat-sit gets me brownie points and if I want to go down in the summer and stay there while I get a job, I'm more than welcome. Which is excellent, because it gives me an out from my parents. Also, *Cardiff*. Much love.

Now if I can just pass this year with a vaguely respectable degree... which means I should probably go do some reading now. Bribe myself with the promise of Cardiff and Wimbledon and Farscape-

- and yeah, I just had the lions and tigers and bears, oh my chant going to that. Grow up? What?

The guest room I'm sleeping in (in my brother's house) has the super!computer in it. Score! However it also has three Hamsters (oh god, I'm so used to capitalising 'Hamster' that I did it there without thinking >_<) and a hedgehog. After profuse apologising to the hamsters, I managed to remove or jam their wheels for the night and actually got some good sleep. Expecting an attack of Hamster Vengence tonight but it was worth it.

Already dragged everyone down to the Bay. *hearts on it* Most of Roald Dahls Plas was fenced off for some reason but I did walk around the Hub the big silver tower counting paving stones. Ahem. Stop laughing. No really. :p

Bought a millenium centre t-shirt too, because I am a complete souvenir whore. I love that gift shop with fiery passion, though the Doctor Who t-shirts were all kids sizes. Ggrr.

Shopping now. Forbidden Planet. Shoes. DVDs. Yay Cardiff!