clo_again

I am supposedly a tennis fan but it took a throwaway comment on a tennis blog for me to find out that Andy Murray had shingles back in February. Thanks, endless rounds of news coverage, professional tennis commentary, and tweets about tennis I've seen/heard since then. That kind of information is useful when one oh, is writing RPF about the personage in question.

It also makes me feel better about his generally appalling level of play this year, because the consensus seems to be that he made himself ill through overwork, overtraining, and stress, all of which is fixable (I've concluded that my six-week-long tussle with bronchitis that absolutely floored me for all of January 2016 was the cumulative effect of doing a full-time Masters for a year while working sixteen hours a week, then starting a new full-time job immediately after handing my dissertation in and working flat out until I inevitably keeled over three months later. I made it worse by pretending I wasn't ill and it briefly resurfaced two months later and the only thing that fixed it was taking some time to chill). Murray's played solid for the last three or four months of last year, trained solid for five weeks over Christmas, then made himself ill and tried to keep playing despite his body going WHAT ARE YOU DOING PUT DOWN THE RACQUET OR WE WILL CATCH SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOUR FINGERS FALL OFF.

Which is of course terribly frustrating and concerning for him, but works great for fic. Thanks for being an idiot, Muzz. Now maybe take a vacation.

-

Talking of writing, the thing I'm writing now (which is not the thing I am supposed to be writing, other than this blog post which I am extra not supposed to be writing instead of fic) is a bit strange, and sad, and I keep reading bits and wondering why I'm writing something that I find so disconcerting.

I was trying to write down a scene last night in bed and I kept falling asleep mid-sentence and waking myself up when my iPod hit me in the face, at which point I kept writing until I fell asleep again. In the end I had to summarise how the scene ended and give up. I don't even know if it's any good, or if I'm good enough to write it* but I want it written to get the disconcerting sadness out of my head and onto the paper- er, virtual paper.


* It's really hard on the internet to differentiate between honestly not feeling very good at something but believing the endless peppy tumblr posts about 'everyone feels like this! You're great!', and actually knowing something isn't very good. I wish I could win the lottery and go sit in a quiet empty house for six months to write without having to worry about going to work and being a functional human being and having to wear something that isn't pyjamas so I couldn't procrastinate out of just writing without it mattering, until I feel like I know what I'm doing.

Yesterday in work, the new interim manager told me that being smarter than ninety-five percent of the population was something I'd have to learn how to deal with and I immediately felt under incredible pressure to maintain my appearance of being smart at all times, because clearly I had somehow fooled him and apparently all the other managers into believing I was super capable. I do not understand how I give this impression when I spend some percentage of a work day playing Pokemon Go or, like today, wheat googling Serbian prison systems and Andy's Murray's medical conditions for fic. If that counts as super capable, what is everyone else doing?

I really should stop procrastinating by worrying about writing and just go write something.

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).

Yeah okay so I was kind of ambivalent towards the whole idea of Suits at first (despite /report insisting repeatedly that it was amazing and slashy and ridiculous and MUST BE WATCHED) but I caught the first episode on Dave the other night and, almost by accident, found myself on the right channel just in time for the second episode yesterday. And I've since spent two nights reading Suits fic and alright, I'm sitting here wondering how I'll wait six days for episode three. It really is kind of amazing and ridiculous and MUST BE WATCHED. Seriously, I bet Dave's repeating it a lot. Go catch up.

It's also super super slashy. I'm linking anything good I find on LJ under my 'Fic Recs: Suits' tag in my Memories but this one was on AO3 and I just had to:

Grande Soy Triple Dirty Chai by friskaz, Mike/Harvey AU along a believable-almost hypothesis of 'Mike became a barista instead of a fake!lawyer and he's the only one who makes Harvey's coffee exactly right', except there's baseball and pie and messages scribbled on coffee cups, and a whole lot of beautiful flirting over 38301 words. It's like sinking into your sofa under a fluffy blanket comfort-fic.

Plus it has 248 kudos which may actually be the most kudos I have ever seen a fic garner on AO3. If my word's not enough, trust the masses on this one.

~

I actually have to go to bed now (should've been there an hour ago but hey, fic called). Stupidly stressful day today and tomorrow looks set to be similar, but it's looking like I pretty much have a agreed job offer there for the next year. Different department but that could be a good thing. Honestly, right now? I will take a guarantee for fulltime work for twelve months over a lot of things; suddenly a trip to Venice for my birthday in October doesn't seem like such a ridiculous notion.

Anyway, bed. Tomorrow should bring my shiny new copy of the Stargate: Atlantis fic anthology that I put together. Expect more pictures.

So I've got as far as a very-hasty LJ layout fix (the colours will not last I suspect, but I came up with a really pretty idea for a header last week, didn't scribble it down and now haven't got a clue what it was, so this is it until it comes back to me) and this is not going to be a post of substance other than that but my work contract finished last Friday so I have no excuse not to catch y'all up soon. Other than, you know, my limitless procrastination.

I'm surprised by how much being an aimlessly unemployed bum isn't really fun anymore. Not getting up at 6am is nice, and being able to sleep for most of the last two days when I haven't exactly been feeling like a million bucks has been lovely but...I miss having the motivation to get up and do something. And I miss the money already, dear god do I miss the money. Weighing up my need for shoes and DVDs against the perils of my overdraft is about as fun as it was for my six months of being unemployed last year, which is to say not at all; I need to find something soon. But something not crap. At this point it'd be really nice to have a job that I need to actually engage my brain to do.

I'm going to go fall asleep watching the tennis now. It's 1:55am, I should really go to bed, but moving sounds like effort and it's very nice to have the tv all to myself. Even if I am chosing to enjoy that by falling asleep on the sofa. Mmmm.

So recently - maybe? - I've got into Ice Road Truckers. I half-heartedly watched for about two series in the last couple of years but then I caught the first episode of series four on Channel 5 a couple of months back and it sort of turned into a 'thing to do every Friday', tune into IRT. Then after the last episode I was wandering on Amazon and, somehow, a week later the DVDs of series three dropped through my door. *cough*

(I may have ordered series four last Tuesday. Even though I've just watched it all, what.)

And it's ridiculously overdramatised (oh the lies. This whole 'only three months to get all the loads along the ice road!" schtick? Apparently complete bullshit; it's an all-year-round road, except in the summer it's just dirt), and half the truckers make me alternate between facepalming and wanting to hit them with a stick for being such idiots, and the voice-over guy on series three is so irritating I actually want to punch him in the mouth but dear god I can't stop watching. I love massive American big rigs. Like love them. There's something about the way they look, with the massive grills and the million wheels and, I don't know, I can't even drive (another story: no money, not essential right now, will get around to it) but for years I've had this weird flaily fondness for massive eighteen wheelers. And snow is my favourite weather. So, the only surprising thing about my obsession with this show is that it took me so long.

Also I ship Lisa Kelly/Jack Jessee with all the gleeful flailing of a fangirl who knows they're being completely irrational and doesn't care. Because hello, fangirl thy middle name is (usually) irrationality. They're adorable together and minor things like married to other people and realism matters not in the face a delightful 'ship. They're good friends! And they convoy together! And she facepalms at him for getting fined because he lost the emergency handbook even after she lent him an extra copy! Seriously, they're all kinds of awesome even in the face of Almost-Certain Icy Death and I'd happily watch Ice Road Truckers: The Jack and Lisa Show. With a side note of Carey Hall because his prankwar with Jack in series three is brilliant.

Unfortunately, Jack isn't going to be in series five. I don't know why (there's rumours around the forums but the forums for this show are filled with grade A batshit and are frankly terrifying, so I don't believe a single word typed in them) but it's disappointing to the point where I may end up skipping it or maybe fastforwarding through just to watch Lisa being a badass. Think they may regret it if it was their decision because I've seen a lot of mournful comments crying "NO JACK??", or maybe he just got tired of being filmed all the time. I know if I was used to having my truck cab all to myself for a decade, having a guy sticking a camera in your face after fifteen hours of driving would get old real quick.



But anyway, that's what I've been up to lately. Er. Originally this was going to be a post of one line about Ice Road Truckers and then the rest of it was going to mention how my job has been extended to a probably-final end date of June 30th (not entirely helpful when I'm away/busy for most of June anyway) and also be the post-I-have-yet-to-make-about-Rome-complete-with-pictures. I even opened Photoshop ready for picture re-sizing.

Er. So maybe I'll do that tomorrow?


I need an Ice Road Trucker icon. Maybe I'll screencap tomorrow when I get home from my Lancaster meet-up with jesse_kips. :D

This is a slightly useless post to be making when I still have to talk about visiting Rome and bits and pieces of random ficlets I keep meaning to post and epic squee over Gaiman's Doctor Who that I should be flailing all over everyone before I get too distracted by other shiny things, but since I'm still only about halfway along my vast to-do list for today (and it's now 10pm and I have work tomorrow, oh dear), have this delightful Ben Mansfield interview instead (no spoilers for Primeval series five WHICH BY THE WAY STARTS ON TUESDAY OH MY GOD I AM TOO EXCITED TO FORM WORDS ABOUT THIS but minor spoilers if you haven't seen series four yet (...why on earth would you not have seen it yet? Watch repeat it all the time and the dvds are out! Go and watch this ridiculously delightful show, I command it!). But anyway:




( Few potentially spoilery thoughts on Becker in series five )

I need Captain Pretty icons. My only Primeval one is pretty drastically out of date.

~

In news of real life, it's very possible that this is my last full week in my current job. I'm trying not to think about it because this job has been both a. very well paid, b. easy and c. full of lovely co-workers. It's not the most intellectually challenging job in the world but it's comfortable and often interesting, and I really don't mind going into work in the morning. I'm very unlikely to ever have a job this easy and yet well-paid again. I'll miss everyone there terribly when it's over.

And I'm really not looking forward to being back on the job market again because I have no idea where to go from here. At all.

Slightly-less-hasty-than-intended bodge job of a new LJ layout, because it was really time to take the Christmas/New Year one down. Wish I had time for an icon overhaul but then I'd be going into work in PJs with unwashed hair and considering it's not my last week anymore (contract extension 'til March 31st ftw!), I should probably make an effort to appear at least vaguely presentable.

Also, hello LiveJournal. I am not ded. At some point I will finish memes and maybe post fic extracts and flail over the amazinghood of Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic apparently deciding they no longer want to hide their deep and touchy-feely love for each other. However, now I have to go and get ready for the amazing job that lets me go in half days twice a week and still pays me the same. Which I have until the end of March. Win.

(Of course, that's assuming I can get to work with the killer fog that's been outside all morning. If this was an episode of Doctor Who, I'd have been eaten by the fog monsters hours ago.*




* As much as I like to think I'd be the plucky local girl who works out how to defeat the fog monsters with a handheld fan and some de-mister, I rather suspect I'd be the foolish local girl who disappears and the Doctor gets indigantly rageful about, before forgetting about the instant he spots something shiny.


edit: I've just remembered that last night, I dreamed that I bought a Kindle. Er. Wishful thinking there subconscious?

(I also dreamed that I found a hidden library beneath a folding piece of floor in a house we were renting; it was like a whole secret apartment full of books I wanted to read and squishy seats and with the door bricked up. I think perhaps it was my subconscious crossing the line of wishful thinking, into full on delusions.

It was a really beautiful library.)

Oh dear. Thought "I am completely disorganised for Christmas this year; I shall fix this beginning with a Christmas-themed LJ layout!" Then I spent an hour doing the layout (which is not what I pictured; the wrapping paper I scanned for it has bright silver horses but would they scan silver, would they hell) and ended feeling pleased with myself. So pleased that I rewarded myself with an hour nap since I only had about three hours sleep last night (I've rediscovered that I only really write well between 11:30pm and 4am, which is not conducive to getting up for work at 6am) until 10:15pm. Woke up at 10:44pm, went "Excellent! I have only slightly overslept and shall now do useful things!"

And promptly went back to sleep until 1am. You may be sensing a reason here as to why I'm not Christmas-organised at all.

So yes. So far I have sent no UK Christmas cards. This is a terrible situation and I plan to try to fix it, at least a little bit, tomorrow morning since I'm back to working half-days Tuesdays and Thursdays (yet I get paid for the whole day. Have I mentioned before that this job is marvellous?) and should have time, unless I stay up until 4am again. I actually fell asleep on my desk in work tody for a few minutes, so I really probably shouldn't.

Thankfully my immediate boss is all kinds of lovely and woke me up with Christmas chocolate cake and gingerbread. No, really. I am going to miss this job. Especially the money, since I seem incapable of saving; I really must save every extra penny between now and when I finish on Jan 7th to do...I don't know. Something. Not stalk the cute post boy around the hospital anymore, I suppose. D-: It's all I've done for about four months now! What will I do!

Except you know, he lives in my village. So that may prove handy.

So yes, life and such continues to happen to me. We had beautiful snow last week, enough that I took a day off work (oops, moneywise) and they're predicting more for Thursday/Friday which is marvellous, except I really can't miss any more days and will be dragging myself through the blizzards regardless. Then Saturday I have to venture into the manic last-minute shopping crowds to do my manic last-minute shopping. It's entirely possible that I won't make it out alive but I'm inclined not to trust Amazon at this date, especially with all the knock-on effect problems they've had from last week's snow.

Sigh. Remember the days when Christmas wasn't stressful? Yeah. That was good.

That said, I just found the Top Gear Christmas Special teaser on Youtube and frankly, I think it will make up for every single instant of stress...IN THE WORLD. (There are two episodes. TWO. I THOUGHT THERE WAS ONLY ONE. :DDDDD) HERE:




And the Doctor Who special is looking great. And I still have all my Christmas movies to watch. And I'm about four days behind on my advent calendar, so I'm going to do something about that before I sleep.

Hello Christmas. Maybe you're not so bad after all (now please let that cold snowy weather hang around until the 25th again this year please. Let it snow!)

In a fit of crankiness and sleep deprivation, redesigned my journal again (the purple was only meant to be temporary anyway). Still can't get the stripes the right colour but I'm so used to them after staring at them for three hours that it looks terrible without them now. Plus some of the colours still aren't right but three hours of code-wrangling and Photoshopping has done nothing to improve my mood.

In fact, it's meant that I didn't get done any of the typing-up-of-various-owed-fic I fully intended to do tonight and I have my thegameison_sh entry still all over the place and to be finished by Sunday, only S wants me to sleep over Saturday night to catch up and I love catch-ups, I do, but I'm also surviving on a week of sleeping only five hours a night and was so looking forward to a weekend of my own bed. And then I have an insanely busy week and more work after that and parents are being parents and oh, the world just needs to chill the fuck out before I crack and start yelling at invisible people who aren't really there.

I'm fine. Really. I just need a holiday, because getting up at 5:45am every day when my job doesn't start until 8:30am (or 9am in my office) is really, really, really getting old, regardless of how much money it saves if I catch a lift instead of the train and especially when I don't have quite enough work to fill my time even if I got there at 9am. Money is money yes, but sleep is sleep and sleep deprivation is a form of torture you know. Self-inflicted and all.

Tomorrow I am planning some serious retail therapy because it's been a long week and god dammit, I'm losing sleep to earn the money so I'm going to damn well spend it. FatFace, you better have all the things I want or someone is going to get attacked with a clothes hanger.

And if one damn person (read:parents) comments on how much I spend, I will not be held responsible for my actions. Just because I'm attempting to replace my entire wardrobe with things I don't-completely-hate, it does not make me a shallow person. I can read Shakespeare and still enjoy looking pretty. And anyone else who implies otherwise to me is going to get my entire shoe collection thrown at them.

My shoe collection is now considerable. This is not an idle threat.

Just so this post isn't an entire rant of frustration at Life, the Universe and Everything, have something I overheard in work a few days ago to remind me and everyone that Life Can Always Be Worse:


Nurse 1: Awwww. Do you want to go get cleaned up?
Nurse 2: Yes, I wasn't expecting her to vomit just then.


Really. My life could be worse.

On which note, I'm going to go and sulk in front of the TV because I'm so sleep deprived now, a little more won't matter. Hopefully tomorrow I will manage a post of actual substance. Hah hah hah.

I've seen the ad for New 'Who The Waters of Mars three times now and it gets MORE BUGFUCK CREEPY EVERY TIME. I think it may actually be a cue for hiding-behind-the-sofa once again because, sheesh. Even the trailer gives me the heebie-jeebies. Thankfully there's brand new Top Gear on the same night to chill me out after. :D

Speaking of Top Gear, kindoftrouble bought me a wind-up version of Hamster's Dampervan as part of my birthday present. Last night I decided it was long past time for it to have a ceremonious launching and filled the bath with water. Only about six inches, so that the inevitable sinkage wouldn't involve me getting soaked to the shoulder fishing it out.

( And the results were... )


As you can see, my life is filled with business! I'm trying to write NaNo and mostly failing due to my laziness combined with overtime at work (first time ever I have to do overtime and it's the first week in November. NOT. AMUSED. UNIVERSE. Working tomorrow for the sixth day in a row and it's just... give me a break. Seriously). Don't expect posts to increase much over November though because as much of a pain in the ass as NaNo is, I'm still writing a bit a day and working my up to it takes hours of flaffing around uselessly. Procrastination takes time and hard work! It'd be easier just to write the damn NaNo but try telling that to my brain. Sigh.