clo_again

Today I redesigned my IJ and walked to the post office to post a letter for the 'rentals. This is all I have done. Apart from have odd dreams all last night, which didn't really require much effort on my part.

I would feel lazy, except it's the first time in a couple of months that I've really had a few days off together in which I can do nothing. Tomorrow I'm meeting all the Waterstone's people for a 'goodbye temps' meal (and a chance to catch up on the gossip from this week, which I've been missing), so it's not like a totally wasted week. And I'm working next week! This is well-deserved downtime. (Sh. It works as an excuse.)

In the meantime, I've decided that watching Farscape is the order of the week and I'm four episodes into the first series. Long way to go yet but I'd forgotten how much I love it. It's so awesome. *hearts* How does everyone in the world not see the awesome of this show?

Speaking of awesome shows, something may be of interest to people with more money than me right now (but not much! Go amazon and their prices lately); Amazon have the complete DVD collection of Buffy for £71. It's kind of shockingly excellent and I wish I could afford even that... but my Rough Guides to Australia and New Zealand came today, which reminded me that I have to be good. No more buying of DVDs unless absolutely necessary for my sanity.

Apparently you can also get refunds for any price changes for things you bought in December. My Dark Materials books have actually gone up in price, so it's no use to me but it's a nifty feature for people kicking themselves for not waiting for the sales (so many of the things I got for Christmas are insanely cheaper now. My Squall figure's gone from £18.99 to £9.99 and I'm kicking myself). Worth looking in to.

And now it's Cheeseburger Thursday, so I'm off to make myself my cheeseburger. I'm considering making it Cheeseburger Wednesday for a couple of months to coincide with the new series of Torchwood. Mmmm. It might be hard to change a tradition that's gone on this long.

So, so tired. Have tomorrow off, then working again for two days 9-5:30. Only it's not 9-5:30 at all, because we've been told that we're expected to get there at 8:45am to check around the shop so we know where everything is before the day starts, then we have to hang aimlessly around until 5:45pm at the end of every day while the permanent staff cash up the tills. That's half an hour a day, which would mean two hours of unpaid work every four days. Considering they haven't even paid us for the hours they're actually paying us for yet, I'm silently outraged. I'm more than happy to work my ass off during the hours they're paying me, but I'm not doing this job because I have any enduring love for it, or for Waterstones. I am, quite frankly, doing it solely because they're paying me. Expecting me to give them my free, unpaid time when they can't even stick to the promises they made in the interview about our working days over Christmas? Dream on. Also, the company's ideas about how to sell more books - as 'taught' to us in our so-called training this morning - were distinctly creepy. A member of staff stroking a book I was buying would creep me out to the point of not going back to that bookshop. And probably disinfecting the book when I got home.

Honestly, I really believe that people in bookshops want, for the most part, to be left alone. The ones who want help will ask for it; going up to everyone who seems to be looking for something and asking if you can help gets you nothing but a lot of negatives. There's a shop I avoid going in to at all, even though they sell beautiful chess sets and gifts, because I know the guy in there follows you round asking if he can help and making suggestions unprompted. Oh and smiling at everyone today got me about 60% smiles in return, 25% looking straight through me and 15% paranoid stares. That 15% probably won't be coming back to Waterstones with their creepy smiling staff. I don't blame them; in making eye contact with everyone you pass, you do give the impression that you're watching them to make sure they don't steal anything.

I really don't like big companies, at least when I'm working for them. They have all these crazy bullshit plans and ideas when simple common sense would work better 90% of the time. That said, I sold my first copy of Lolita today and knew more than Rob about why we weren't stocking any Tamora Pierce books. The little things make up for the insanity that is trying to sell extra, unwanted books to already harassed customers.

The price of Farscape has gone up again, putting paid to my idea of cancelling and reordering when I get paid by Waterstones. Though so far, everything that I've earned has either been spent on Farscape or is already owed to my parents. I'm not sure I've actually earned any *extra* money yet.

God I have to go sleep. I don't want to, because I won't be able to stay up late tomorrow night when I'm working Monday but I'm too tired to even watch BSG. This is ridiculous. No one could work this hard and often all the time. One day off at a time is just enough to catch up on a bit of sleep and then you're back in work. Again. I'm starting to think I live there.

Robin Hood was fun tonight. It's been pretty fun in general lately. Don't think I'm going to have the energy to do any more recaps this series though, or recaps on anything until January 5th.

Bed. I'm falling asleep sitting up with the laptop on my knee here.

My weekly idle check on Farscape prices just brought up the Complete Collection for £128. Which, even at Amazon's cheap per-season prices, works out cheaper than buying the three series I don't have individually. Not to mention Peacekeeper Wars on top of that.

I'm thinking that I'll have earned more than that by the end of this week and last time I waited on Farscape, I missed the chance. I'm passing the bank tomorrow morning when I go get a Subway for lunch anyway and there's more than enough in my savings to cover it... I can just replace it when I get paid.

So, so tempted. And I'd get at least a tenner or so reselling the season I already have to my brother. Teeeeeemmmppttttteeeeeedddd.

I'll transfer the money tomorrow and if it's still that price when I get home, I'll get it. And then not buy another DVD until after Christmas, because £128 pretty much takes care of my DVD budget for more than a few months.

~

So for all my dire predictions of A Day In Hell yesterday, it was actually a good day. Felt better on getting there and working the extra two hours meant I got an hour break for lunch instead of twenty minutes, which both me and my feet appreciated. I think spending most of lunch involved in a serious discussion with my boss and co-workers about what we'd do in a mass zombie invasion helped a a lot. The people I work with are awesome. My boss' flatmate (I assumed partner then felt bad for assuming) said they'll be driving along somewhere and my boss will turn to her and say, in all seriousness, "So what would you do if the undead were around the next bend?"

(Her answer was "...Cry." Did I mention the awesome?)

My official 'buddy' (lovely, total geek) told me I was doing really well at learning the computer system and everything too, which is reassuring. Especially when, after managing to do three gift cards (involving complicated touch-screen complications and the chance I could give someone an empty gift card if I get it wrong) fine in the morning, I abruptly forgot the button combination in the afternoon and had to go to Rob begging for help. Though it was only my second day, so maybe I should let myself off the hook. Still. Was immensely irritating.

Also, discovered the worrying fact that sometimes someone will ask for a book, I'll search for it and it won't come up on the system, only for me to discover said book an hour or a day later and feel terrible. Even though it didn't come up on the system and honestly, people should just check the damn shelves before asking us to do all the work (if it comes up in stock *we* have to go fetch it off the shelf and it's like argh! If I'm looking for a book in a bookshop, I check all possible sections before bugging the staff. Not to mention the guy on my first day who stood and made sarcastic comments while I tried to work out why nothing was coming up on the system, only to ask him how to spell the author's name and find that when he said 'Houston' he meant 'Hewson'. Then, ten minutes after we showed him the fairly obvious shelf of books, he was back saying "Where were those books? I've forgotten." This job is going to ruin any remaining illusions I have about the average IQ of humanity.)

~

Hotmail is still not working for me. At all. Am unimpressed. The brother said to try it when I installed a new wireless adapter on my desktop today before calling Virgin; installed it, tried internet, internet worked fine, tried a hotmail site, computer crashed, restarted computer, internet refused to work again. Not entirely sure what I did, but something broke it. So I'm back on the sofa with the laptop, emailless and pissed off.

Modern technology would be really cool if it didn't actually make life more difficult.

Going to make dinner and watch the end of Battlestar Galactica's mini-series before washing my hair for work tomorrow. Next day off is Sunday. *gloom* I definitely need Farscape to get me through this next month and a half.

Ohmygod that's Kaylee in Atlantis. It was just background noise, then I glanced over and was like "She looks familiar, hm, KAYLEEWTF." I need to start catching up on Atlantis. Dammit.

Everytime I try to back up my journal, I get a "the server is not responding" message. Bummer. So I just bought the first series of Farscape to cheer myself up.

Seriously. Amazon has it for £30 while other places range from £80 to the full £99.99. *£30*. I know I was going to wait and get the complete collection next time it's cheap(er) but don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Also, I hate these two months with passion moneywise. I've had three birthdays in the last three weeks, two of them twenty-firsts which demand more than book tokens or chocolates. I have two more twenty-firsts in the next month, a wedding present and Father's Day. I'm buying presents for everyone else on the planet. I need to buy myself something before I go crazy. Because I deserve it dammit.

I will update properly sometime today. And answer comments and facebook stuff and emails and deal with life but I'm doing that thing I do whenever I come home after a long time at uni, where all motivation switches off and it's effort enough to get dressed every day. I've yet to be home forty-eight hours and I've watched the entire first series of Spaced, most of the second plus outtakes (a couple of times; Simon electrocuting himself on the toaster never stops being hilarious) and all the episodes of Farscape Sci-fi's shown so far (around the series three clone-John storyline and god, I'd forgotten how much I love it.) Plus smeg knows what else that ever happened to be on. I should *not be given* a sofa with a TV in front of it. It's bad for everyone involved.

Think I owe dukedee a pint next time we're all in the pub because I dragged him all over town yesterday and got him to carry my shopping. And he has an exam on Thursday. *shame* Sorry Dee. Reminded me that I miss college people though. We have to all meet up soon as we can.

Finally got 'round to renting Brokeback Mountain. Haven't watched it yet; was too sleepy last night. It's a little terrifying, because I've not seen it for so long that it's built up and up into this great mythic thing and I don't want to be disappointed. Which also means I don't want to just watch it idly. It's- complicated. Thinking I'll watch it tomorrow, because Cheeseburger Thursdays are the days for watching things.

I wish I could get this band's cds easily. They're stupidly good and it's insane that we can't get their albums over here.

Wireless keeps disconnecting and it's pissing me off. Cannot cope with this all summer. Seriously, there will be computercide. Plus a guy called yesterday and -- after playing phone tag with my brother, since said guy refused to speak to anyone but the person whose name was on the account -- was told that, apparently, we didn't pay the 'net bill last month. Expecting to be cut off any second here.

Oh... smegging hell. Smeggitysmeggingsmeg. The first series of Farscape is only £30 on Amazon. That can't be right. Really. That's...irresistible. But. If I get that, I'll be kicking myself if the complete collection gets cheaper again. But. *Farscape*.

I don't know. Tempted. Seriously tempted. Mmmm.

This turned into an update after all. Huh.

edit: STOP DISCONNECTING ME. Jesusfuckingchrist. If the 'rents don't update this crappy internet, I'm taking a sledgehammer to it so they bloody well have to.

edit: So that's why my uncle's bike sounded so damn loud when he dropped by Monday -- he's just got a Harley Davidson. I could hear it all the way down the street.

Huh. I leave for five months and I miss everything.

I was telling L and R about Farscape last night (again. I keep trying to convince them it's the best thing ever made for TV but don't think they believe me. Possibly because I told them it's like Buffy on crack) and it's made me really want to watch it again. Really, really want.

*yearns* I've promised myself after my last exam/deadline, I will get on the nearest computer and order the complete collection but that's a good three and a half months or so away yet (that is, if I make all my deadlines and actually feel like there's a chance of me passing this year). I want it in all it's crazy insane brightly-coloured angsty awesomeness.

And at the same time, I don't because it's my uni-is-over consolation prize and I don't want uni to be over. Of course if I don't pass this year it won't be but I kinda don't want that either (really, from the amount of work I'm doing now, you couldn't tell).

Stupid bittersweet moments. Getting Farscape vs having to become a productive member of society. Life is hard.

Speaking of Farscape, make_a_move I found my dvd with the Peacekeeper Wars on if you still want to borrow it. :)

They're pretty much assuring us snow tomorrow. I'm hardly daring to think about it in case they're wrong, again. Also, Wales is going to be getting a ton of the stuff while we're only getting 'light snow'. Not that I'm bitter about getting really heavy snow at home for the first time in ages and me *not being there* or anything.

I moved up *north* to university. It's bloody well meant to be colder!

... Maybe a little bitter.

Still got my eye on that Farscape deal y'know, even though looking at the special features makes me think it doesn't have all the nifty cast commentaries on. But then, I'm wondering whether they're worth an extra £80 for the set. So. Hhhmm. Because, to be honest, there are vast unharted areas of extras on my LotR extended editions that I've never watched and probably never will.

Aahhhh, there are the all-important words "uncut episodes" in the list of special features for the individual sets. Interesting. But then, the number of discs are the same so...

Play.com, you confuse me. Quit it.