clo_again

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?

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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.

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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

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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.


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*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.

Last night, around this time, I made twelve coffee cupcakes.

There are now no cupcakes remaining (there are three of us in the house; I ate five) but my mother has left me money to go forth tomorrow and buy more cupcake ingredients to make strawberry ones for the weekend. In theory, because we're going back to Wales to see my grandparents and my granny likes cupcakes (my grandad is gluten intolerent; I'm already hitting Google to look for gluten-free recipes because we need more cupcakes, really).

On which note, no I refuse to use ground almonds as a substitute for flour on the basis that whoever decided combining nuts with cake should've been shot, immediately. I cannot find a good coffee cake around here with having to pick the walnuts out. I mean, WALNUTS. Small concentrations of non-taste that break with that rubbery, bitty texture just when you're enjoying a good sugar rush. It should be against the laws of cake. When I rule the world it will be.

But. The point of this was to say that yes, cupcakes have been consumed for much of the last twenty-four hours and cupcake consumption is imminent tomorrow, after I've called the woman about working next week (please, please let me get some money) and called my employment agency to yell at them for not sending me any sort of P45 even after I called over a week ago to yell already. So I'll pretty much have spent two days making and eating cupcakes.

Yet all I want to do right now is... make more cupcakes. Argh. I SHOULD'VE HIDDEN ONE IN CASE OF CRAVINGS. DAMMIT.

Instead (there's no butter and the new Tesco closes at 11pm dammit), going to go watch Tim Minchin and glower at my last two packs of TimTams which I've banned myself from opening until I do something TimTam worthy, like actually get a job or write more than a few paragraphs at a time. I want to try and make TimTam cupcakes but a. can't work out how (there will be a way) and b. don't want to lose the TimTams I would inevitably waste in the attempt. Damn you Australia for giving me these ridiculous food obssessions (I'm craving a sausage-on-a-stick-dipped-in-batter like you wouldn't believe, although I'm inclined to blame that on New Zealand. And kangaroo steak. And the venison burgers in Queenstown. Lamington fingers, oh god. I meant to buy a pack to bring home and ran out of time. Which is good, because I suspect they'd have lasted less time than the TimTams.)

Have to stop thinking about Food That Is Bad For Me. Backpacking was so utterly wonderful; the bad food was cheap so you didn't care. I miss eating TimTams for breakfast. *wistful* And knowing that most days, in New Zealand anyway, I'd have walked them off by lunchtime. That was nice.

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Before I go, I've been meaning to check if mayakitten is around? She's gone AWOL as far as I can tell and I didn't realise until a few days ago when the commentary on the DAAS DVD mentioned there being a plaque in Petrie Plaza reading the Doug Anthony Allstars Lived and Died Here and I wanted to flail. So you know, if you're around mayakitten, say hi or post or send me Paul McDermott tied up with purple ribbon as a sign (I will totally send you cupcakes in return for that last one ;) )?


Okay, I'm done rambling. Except, has Mirka had the damn baby yet? Anyone? Bueller?

Uh, okay I'm getting a few bad vibes off my flisters about "mood spoilers" for Torchwood. If I spoiled anyone, I'm sorry. It was completely unintentional (looking back, the most spoilery thing I thought that I posted out of cut is how emotionally heart-rending this week's been but I was actually thinking of the whole storyline and tone of the week rather than specifics so I handwaved it off. Um. Possibly I'll cut that sort of stuff in future? I know I prefer to know before going in if something is going to be "happy bunnies!" or "kick you in the teeth" but I'm getting a lot of NOs off people who disagree.)

Also, from what people've said I've realised that my Twitter was a lot worse spoilerwise, even though I thought I was being good there too. Suspect it's because that was my first knee-jerk reactions, which is what I generally use Twitter for. So um, if this scenario ever arises again I'll try to be good there too but I make no promises for Twitter because there are no spoiler cuts and it does tend to be the "OMGWTFBBQ!" reactions. LJ, I will spoiler cut everything! Even if it's "OMG the Doug Anthony Allstars broke up!"

...If you didn't know that, sorry. It did happen over ten years ago now. ;-) So I probably won't go that far.

But yes; sorry if my OMG WTF was spoilery. Must do better. The Americans are very good with the stuff they get before us and we shouldn't let our side down.

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This icon has no (okay, very little) relevance to this post but I can't stop looking at it so you get it anyway. LOOK AT THE PRETTY AND ALL WILL BE FINE. :D

So glad I decided to look through the photo gallery on the second DVD. They were ridiculously cute. You know, alongside the crotchfacing, spitting, slapping and general audience abuse. Oh DAAS. <3

edit My favourite part of the commentary - aside from Paul observing how attractive Tim is on four separate occasions(so far) is when baby!DAAS make a particularly rude joke about someone and there's a chorus of shocked groans from old!DAAS on commentary, with "Oh no! That's horrible!"

Because it's like, BWAHAHAH. NOW YOU KNOW HOW WE FEEL! ;)

(Seriously, they've totally mellowed in their old age. I wish someone would hurry up and release DAAS Kapital on DVD with commentary because it'd be hilarious. Even though I'd have to bribe my kind Aussie flisters to get me a copy. Unless I get back to Australia first, which seems rather more likely than them releasing DAAS Kapital anytime soon. *wistful*)

I love ( this picture ) It makes me want to write that Tim/Paul I've been mentally kicking around for a month.

I just had kangaroo steak as my last meal in Sydney. It was extremely excellent and I have to find somewhere in the UK that sells it, because wow. It probably wasn't even the nicest it could be because the restaurant was only average. Mmmmmm. Next: emu/crocodile. Although I'm doubtful that they'll measure up.

Found the ABC shop easily in the Queen Victoria building. Actually wish I'd gone in there before now, because it was so beautiful inside. I couldn't see the DAAS dvd on the shelf so I had to ask and, while he searched through the drawer behind the counter, I noticed a flyer taped to the desk with a very familiar name and picture:

"DYLAN MORAN: TALK AND SIGNING HERE MAY 4TH"

I go halfway around the world only to be stalked by Dylan Moran (not complaining. Except about the fact that I'm not here on May 4th). No wonder I'm not homesick yet.

...A little bitter that I've missed him by only two weeks though. Sigh. It's the only thing that could've made Sydney more awesome.

But then he handed me my DAAS dvd and all was shiny with the world. I just barely restrained myself from hugging it in the shop. mayakitten, you are so very evil. ;)

Okay, it's now almost 5pm and I swore to myself I would leave on the hour so off I go. Hopefully I'll make it to the bus without collapsing under the weight of my bag; I really have to sort through it in Brisbane and maybe post some stuff home. New Zealand souvenirs on top? Will make it actually too heavy to carry as it is.

Right. Off.