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| 11:52am 16/10/2008 |
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The placement guy (Ian?) came from across the road to cover for my lunch at midday yesterday, so I had 30 mins to kill before my weigh-in, so I walked up crown street and round to have a look in Bravissimo. All the stuff in there is rather…frilly. Except the swimming costumes. I think I agree with what Mum said when I told when about it when I got home – perhaps best to wait until I hit my weight goal and see how cursed I am then. Hopefully not very – I remember being 34B/C when we last went to Greece when I was last actually thin. So, hmm… I do think it would be a good idea to get measured for a new bra sometime though – support is good!
Anyway, I got to the meeting by 1225 and found I had lost 1.5 lb! Not as good as it could be, but better than I had feared! I’m now 4 lb behind my goal, but at least I have never gone up and always lost something every week. But right now I want to loose 2.5lb for the next 4 weeks to catch up on my goal. That will be tough, considering the stuff going on right now.
I stopped off at the Co-op on my way home to get a small bottle of juice. I wanted to get a pack of Weight Watchers carrot cake slices too, but they were sold out because they’d been on special offer...dammit!
I got home and retrieved the wheelie bin from the bottom of the drive, then got my tea in the microwave. I wasn’t too happy with this serving of Singapore noodles – it tasted like it had a load of vinegar in it. Odd, because it wasn’t out of date and the other one tasted fine.
Despite having downloaded as much of the patch I could the night before, it took a little while to get all the updates done for WoW. I also wanted to get as many of my addons back as possible. They were still all buggered when I got logged in to WoW, so I just turned them all off. I think I’ll have to copy my addons folder, delete what’s in there right now and only install the addons I know will work with the 3.02 patch. I using my mounts and pets so they became spells and left my bags was wonderful! It didn’t take my long to pick up the extra few I needed to get that 50-pet achievement and get my little skunk ^_^ I also got Eidolone some a decent hair-do and colour while I was at it, but I don’t think I’ll change the others – I’m quite happy with their hair. The world server for Azeroth went down while I was trying to re-jig my little mage’s talents, so I could only log on to my shaman, who was in Shattrath. But then we got a server-alert that it would also shut down in 15 mins *sigh* It didn’t come back up that evening, so I was stuck reading fanfics and so on. I’ll have a lot of work to do, resorting my keyboard shortcuts and getting used to having no addons like Cryolysis *sigh* Still this patch seems to be pretty good so far. Then again, I haven’t tried to kill anything yet so…
And now we have Thursday. It’s getting dark enough in the morning now that I occasionally put my full-beam lights on in the car. The sun isn’t up before the bus leaves the park & ride either, and it’s definitely gloves weather! Today looks to be a quiet day, with hardly any rooms in use. I’ll probably end up doing room booking letter and fiddling about with the new external bookings form most of today…unless something unexpected crops up, as it entirely likely!
My iPod died while I was on the bus, because it didn’t charge during the night for some reason *sigh* I managed to bring the USB cable for it, but forgot to put the actual plug in my bag – bugger! So no iPod for the rest of today. At least I can use the DS during my lunch (argh, just one more level to get through in the 2nd dungeon…damn puzzles), as well as the book I have to read and I’m meeting Mum after I get out of here, so I won’t need it on the way home. Small mercies, eh? |
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| 11:57am 15/10/2008 |
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Much fun was to be had on Monday evening, with my WoW guild’s 3rd birthday party on – go Crescent Moon! We all had to dress in red to match the new guild tabard and meet in front of the auction house in Stormwind and make some noise XD Then we raced to Darkshire to take a crack at Emeriss, the dragon that guards the portal to the Emerald Dream in the middle of the area. Good grief, even with level 70’s that dragon is tough! We wiped quite a few times and never got close then about 23%! Still, it was pretty fun and nice to see so many guild-mates in one place.
Tuesday was a reasonably busy day for my, in the morning anyway – to start the day off I had to leave the house early so I could pick up a package that had arrived for Mum on Friday but needed signing for. Lots of room booking things to take care of once I got in, some typing to do for someone, stationery coming in…
The afternoon was a lot quieter though, and I got nearly a full hour for my lunch. I read some of the book I brought with me – a sort of analysis of various aspects of the Discworld books. It came for me in the post on Monday, but I didn’t find out about that until Tuesday morning because Mum had just put the package in the bag with all the entertainment stuff I’d brought with me on Sunday. Oh well, that’s all my books arrived now from that order =D
Once back at home I heated myself a can of soup to eat with bread and checked my PC – I had left it running all night and day to get the new patch for WoW downloaded. I don’t have the launcher loading when I start the game, so the patch hadn’t been downloading in bits – I had to get all 1.5Gb of it at once, and I didn’t want to waste time downloading it today, when the patch comes out.
The guild activities continued that evening, with a guild effort to get at least part of the Onyxia quest chain done so we could do the escort through Stormwind with Marshal Windsor – that event, already rare now that few people bother with the chain, is being removed from the game so we wanted to do it once last time. It was ace XD And I noticed that the little King of Stormwind now says cute things like ‘Have you heard any news of my father?’, haha. Poor little kid – I wonder what Blizz will do with him when Varian is back in place. Probably they’ll finally give him a model other than that ugly generic boy one he has right now…then they’ll stick him somewhere people hardly go -_-
So now it’s Wednesday – middle of the week, w00t! Er..well maybe ‘w00t’, if my weigh-in today goes not too bad. I have a feeling it won’t be a good one though *sigh* I’m going to have to try to do more exercise again. Maybe I’ll see how my swimsuits fit me now and go swimming at the pool in Ellon at the weekends or something. I like swimming, as long as my boobs aren’t causing massive drag by scooping water into my swim-suit T_T Maybe Bravissimo do swim-suits to counter that kind of thing…
I need to stop at Tesco on my way home this evening – I need squash to drink, but I’ll try to not get any more sweetie things, no matter how few points they have in them. I’ll try to keep those for weekend treats rather than daily ones. I will lose more weight, dammit! I’m supposed to be 12st 7lb today, and there’s no way I’m going to hit that – 12st 11lb, maybe. So changes must be made if I’m going to make it to 11 st by Christmas! I want to be able to at least fit into a size 16 by then, if not better. One dress size, that’s all I ask! T_T
Mum wants to go into Aberdeen shopping tomorrow to get Christmas gifts for the relatives down south – PJs and dressing gowns and so on. I pouted of course – after spending all day out, I just want to go home, not trawl around town for another 3 hours of boredom and hunger. |
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| 11:35am 13/10/2008 |
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Well, I had fun towards the end of my time in Sunday Reception Hell.
1700 came round and the people in the dance studio showed no signs of finishing up. Mum kept calling, asking me when I’d be meeting her, and all I could say was ‘soon…I hope ¬_¬’. In the end I walked past the door to the dance studio a few time with my keys jangling – not exactly subtle, but better than taking Mum’s advice and shouting ‘Oi! You should be leaving now!’ into the room -_- I ended up speaking to the guy who runs the classes, and told him that our booking sheet said he has the room from 1200-1700, but his posters say 1800. He also raised the point about there being equipment and stuff in the room that he had to move out and back in when they were finished, and sure he had a point there, but otherwise…hmm.
So the Hip Hop folks were gone by 1730 and I managed to get the door locked and rushed across to the car park where Mum was waiting for me.
We got home and I found that she hadn’t been reading the ingredients for stuff she got for me…again! I don’t know, it must be because it isn’t her diet, so she doesn’t really care enough or something. She got me soup, but it had tomato in it, which she knows I don’t like. She got puddings, but they weren’t light, fat-free or whatever versions, so it would have been 5.5 points for an Eve’s pudding (some nasty sponge thing with apple – which she knows I hate in puddings! – on top), then there’s about 3 points of non-light custard. Good job, Mum! I know I should be grateful that she tried and did buy these things, but at the end of the day I can’t eat them. It’s getting to the point where I have to point-budget specially to have a pudding-and-custard that are the light versions, let along full-fat ones.
Didn’t get much done in WoW – just the fishing quest, because it was the SW one, and the Auchindoun towers. No-one was in the LFG for Sunken Temple, so I just left Eido in a city to get rest XP.
I did watch the rest of the Kikaider OAVs though. Hmm. I can’t say I’m as keen on them as the first series. The emphasis was very much on action over the introspection I liked. The only bits that felt like they really linked with the first series and its theme were the parts that mentioned the Pinocchio book and right at the end when Jiro found what it really meant to be human, rather than an intelligent, sentient machine with programming. I found that many fans seemed to misinterpret that part, perhaps on purpose, to mean that Jiro actually became flesh-and-blood human. But seriously, how could that happen? I find it as plausible as the ‘two bodies’ thing in Yu-Gi-Oh, and it’s probably for the same, sappy, lazy purpose. ‘Human’ in this instance meant human feelings, being mentally human, rather than reacting as a programmed machine, or those robots without a Gemini circuit, perhaps would. Again, the ending was sad, but not tear-worthy. Well, now I’ve watched the serious through dubbed I’ll watched it in Japanese – Tomokazu Seki does the voice for Jiro, so I look forward to hearing him as Jiro, so soon after hearing him as maze. Though I thought the guy who did the dub did a very good job. The whole cast did, actually – I noticed they tried to pronounce the Japanese named correctly, with a Japanese-style ‘r’ sound rather than a western one, and no emphasis on the second syllable, as so often happens in poorer dubs. What amused me was that I spotted Kaoru Wada’s music in the OAVs – he has such a distinctive sound that it’s easy to spot it, whether it be in 3x3 Eyes, Inuyasha or the Kingdom Hearts orchestral tracks. The Kikaider OAV music wasn’t especially outstanding though – there were none of the plaintive tunes he likes to use in his own music, just generic action-bombast. Pity.
I tried to get to bed early, as usual, since it was a Sunday. I managed a bit, but not as early as I would have liked. Things worked out OK in the morning though, and I managed to get my bus-fare money from the ATM at Tesco and parked in good time to get to the front of the queue for the next bus to town, and get my coveted window seat.
So far it has been a quiet day, apart from reporting the problems with the booking yesterday. Luckily for me, it has been agreed that 6 hours is too long to have someone at the reception on a Sunday, and that the booking is definitely from 12-5, not 12-6, so the guy is going to be charged accordingly. Heh. That’ll teach him to be sneaky and take a lend, though we probably should have paid more attention to the posters he’s had up advertising the classes. |
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| Cheesy Retro Anime Ahoy! |
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| 01:49pm 12/10/2008 |
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music: Kikaider - Theme of Gemini
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Friday ended pretty well. Great, in fact.
I had another Weight Watchers meal for tea when I came in, and cleaned up the kitchen as bit while it was in the microwave.
Then, the main order of the day: Kikaider! Woohooo! The whole series had downloaded by the time I got home, so I was ready to plough my way through the series in one go.
Well, almost. I took some time to play WoW for a bit – did some fishing and for the PvP towers in Terokkar, then quested for a bit with my druid. I finally decided I level her up next. Eidolone was my first alt after I changed my first from a druid to a mage. She was meant to be my potion factory so I stopped levelling her at 35, once I could get to 300 alchemy. Now, of course, you have to be level 50 to get over 300 alchemy, so I finally got around to doing that. But I rather like the idea of having an alt who can tank, melee dps, caster dps or heal, depending on spec and gear…as opposed to a mage or priest who can only dps or heal, and are squishy as hell.
But once I got sick on doing stuff in Un’Goro, I exited WoW and went back to watching Kikaider.
I have to say…I’m impressed. The series was everything I hoped it would be and met my expectations perfectly. The opening theme is most unusual in that it isn’t a song, just a haunting tune, with the main part played on an acoustic guitar with some nice base that sound very 70’s. I remember I managed to download the OP theme years ago, when I first heard about the series. No, not heard…I think I saw some clips from it in an AMV I watched. I got the theme on Kazaa, but never managed to get so much as a clip from the series. I got my hands on a torrent file for the OST and had that download overnight. I was up until about 4:30am watching the rest of the series and the first of the 2nd series (a set of 4 OAVs). The end was rather sad, though not enough to make me cry. Episode 12 had a scene that seriously made me boggle. It seemed to suggest that…something…went on between Jiro and Mitsuko. Kind of. If you watch it with a dirty mind (*cough* like mine – been online too long I guess) than you jump to the intended conclusion…then you get another scene and you realise you’re a filthy-minded pervert who jumped to a conclusion -_- Of course, it took me a while to get to that scene because I stopped the file playing and shuddered and boggled for a couple of minutes…brrrr…
I wasn’t as impressed with the music in the OAV I watched though – gone was the haunting acoustic guitar, and instead just some generic dramatic-sounding music. Bleh. And Mitsuko and Masaru aren’t in it or even mentioned, which is rather disappointing too. But besides these niggled, the series has really captured my heart. I just hope the other 4 OAVs (and the final one, if it’s subbed!) continue to do so!
I didn’t get up until 1030 on Saturday morning, and I must admit I didn’t get much cleaning done that day. I spent more time doing quests for my druid, her level 50 druid-quest in particular. I grouped with another druid to do it. Gawd, he was a bit of a pain – insisted on getting his level 70 rogue main whenever he got ganked. Not that he didn’t deserve ganking sometimes, not when he attacked first. Twit. So that took a lot longer than it would have otherwise. Thank goodness for stealth though!
I finally managed to get a hold of both Paul and Tim to arrange a time for the restaurant. I then booked a table for 4 at Manzil at 1800. Then I had to get washed and ready, since it was 1500 by that time, and I had to pick up Rich from his house at 1700, and get to the guys’ flat by 1725. I met all my time goals flawlessly, and any delay was caused by male dithering -_- And they say women take a long time to get ready, but at least I don’t tend to make the guys late! They insisted on me driving, and I managed to get us to the Morrison’s car park in perfect time to reach Manzil by 1800.
WoW started out as the topic of conversation, then when Rich started to whine about that (because he no longer really plays, and only seems to play games the rest of us don’t) it switched to the current financial crisis. A depressing topic that was extremely pessimistic – Paul in convinced that if things continue as they are, he will be out of a job by March. Seems like things are just generally going straight down the pan, that’s for sure. And there’s not a thing most normal people can do about it but watch it unfold on the news and shudder.
As for the meal itself, the options available on the buffet were a little limited, but very nice – I especially liked the vegetable and mushroom pakoras and all of the things I got from the main course section. I only had one plate of each, starter, main and pudding, because I was trying to be good. And the pudding was a blob of chocolate mousse, which is probably better than a scoop of ice-cream in terms of points anyway. We were done by about 1930 and back at the flat by 2000. I refined my choice of Tim’s DS games to pilfer, then Tim, Rich and I played some Super Smash Brothers. I managed to unlock Sonic for us, using Princess peach, after Rich failed to with that nasty Knight character. Haha! I then proceeded to totally whip them with Sonic, Samus, the ice-climbers and Kirby in a 4-match run XD
When I got home I handed in a couple of quests and got Eidolone to level 52, got her new spells/abilities and logged off. The latest episode of Casshern Sins released by Shinsen was out, downloaded and promptly devoured. No new information in this episode, but I guess the appearance of Friender will make fans of the super-cheesy 70’s cartoon and live-action tokutatsu series happy. I can’t say I’m head-over-heels for the series, but I love the style and have enjoyed what passes for the story and setting so far.
I also cleaned the kitchen and my room, sorted my cleaned washing and just generally tried to tidy things up a bit. I refuse to go to the lengths I used to, because I’m not at home all day like before, and I don’t see why I should bother when Mum only finds something wrong anyway. Meh.
I tried to get to bed earlier than before, since I had to be up at 0830, to be ready by 1015 to leave the house to catch a bus into town. Mum called at about 1950 to say she’s be leaving Nana’s in about 20 minutes, and she’d call me to give me an update on where she was.
I had all my stuff together, electronics fully charged and all my entertainment in an M&S bag along with my lunch in good time to leave the house and catch the bus. I got into town with plenty of time to have a quick look in Marks & Spencer, Next, Game and so on. Markies had a few nice thing I liked – purple/maroon stuff! Yay! Game didn’t have much in the way of accessories for the DS, so I got the turquoise case set from GameStation, and asked again if they had any news on the WotLK collector’s edition – still no.
And now I’m here, stuck at this damn desk for another 3.5 hours after this. I’m glad I have entertainment with me, but you always want what you don’t have, of course, so I keep thinking about WoW *sigh* Time to read the instructions for Phantom Hourglass… |
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| 04:01pm 10/10/2008 |
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The weather has been pretty manky these past two days. Sure it’s relatively warmer today, but the cloud and rain kind of countered that plus. Oh, and the Monthly Misery started on Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening I read a review of the new anime series starting this season in Japan. It sounds a lot better than last season, when Slayers was the only thing that sounded worth downloading. Well, this season we have quite a few things that sound worth a peek, even it it’s only on Veoh.
First on my wish-list was Casshern Sins. I’ve heard about this series before…well, the title anyway. I saw the Casshern movie on DVD in Fopp in Aberdeen and thought about getting it, because the description on the back sounded rather cool. In the end I didn’t get it, but now I sure will! I’m a sucker for that kind of series. Or a proto-sucker anyway. Years ago I found out about a series called Kikaider – never did manage to download it, and it’s never been shown on TV over here. Damned if I’m going to buy a completely untested series on DVD, import it from the US and get slapped with customs fees on top of the shipping & handling. Blow that for a game of soldiers!
So yeah, I’d rather like to watch this kind of show. I downloaded it and the first episode of a somewhat generic-sounding shounen-romance-comedy called Toradora that got good reviews on Tuesday evening – both downloaded at the same time in about 30 mins! Of course I couldn’t actually watch them until I got back on Wednesday.
That took a while because I had to get some shopping and take books back to the library first. I wanted to get some soup as well as Weight Watchers meals after a very disappointing 0.5lb loss at my weigh-in that day *sigh* At the library I got all my books re-stamped, and also bought one of the books they had on a stand beside the desk to me sold – a book about Chinese and Japanese mythology. I used to love reading about Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology when I was little – I was a mythology-geek way before I was heavily into sci-fi or anime.
So I finally watched the new episodes. Casshern was…hmm. The visual were great, and I adore the character design. There’s just something about modern-animated, retro-look stuff that I love, like Kikaider and Brigadoon. Actually, Melan looks a lot like Casshern. Hmm. Toradora was pretty much what I expected, but that’s par for the course. With these series you mostly know what the destination is, but it’s seeing if the creators make the journey interesting is the point. But that could be said to be the same for many series.
Thursday was not a good day for me. My first problem came when I looked out the window: it was frosty. I had been lazy the night before and not put the car in the garage. The net result? I had to start the car a few mins early so the windows would defrost *sigh* My next came when I left the car and did not take my umbrella with me because it looked like a fine day. I leave the head office after eating my lunch and it’s raining cats and dogs, and it continues. All. Day.
So 1645 comes round and I had to take the post up to the service centre. With no brolly, and no hood. This made me a very wet and unhappy person. Then the weather put the final boot in my stopping the rain just in time for me to get home *sigh*
At least the Weight Watchers microwave meal I had was very nice – beef with peppercorn sauce, mashed potato and veggies. I finally found a torrent for the Kikaider series and OAVs, so I have more stuff to gush over when I get home – I left them downloading overnight. I also got the first episode of Tales from the Abyss. Hmm, so far it feels kind of like Scrapped Princess, though that may be the ‘fated royalty’ angle, and the fact it’s a ‘modern’ fantasy anime, as opposed to the comedic ones like Slayers, Sorcerer Hunters and so on from the 90s.
It was raining again this morning as I left the house, but by the time the bus reached the station, it had stopped. Typical. Today hasn’t been too busy, thank goodness. I even got a whole hour for my lunch, which is extremely unusual right now. I walked up to Gamestation to ask if they were accepting pre-orders for the collector’s edition of Wrath of the Lich King. The guy at the counter went away to the back room to find out if they were even offering it yet – he said they haven’t been told if it will be available in the UK! Gah! I’m sure it will be, and you can bet I will be right onto whichever website still has it to order myself a copy for release day!
And now we have a quiet afternoon, with no major flaps in sight. My current plan is to get home and clean the kitchen, empty the dishwasher and so on, then have tea, followed by phoning Paul and Tim to see if they would like to go to Manzil tomorrow around 6pm for the buffet. I’ll call Rich, but I’m not sure if it’s right for him to go out, what with Jaq ready to pop. Next I will play some Warcraft and watch some anime, and then try to get my hard-drive to work in Mum’s PC. I’m not sure when she’s coming back – probably Sunday. That gives me time to get my stuff off if it works, and also to whip my drive back out and claim innocence if it doesn’t!
On Saturday I’ll probably have to hoover and clean the rest of the house before I go out for my dinner.
On Sunday *sigh* I have to go into Aberdeen because I’m covering the reception at the Foyer from 1200-1700. And Mum will probably still be away with the laptop *sob* So I’ll have to make sure the DS is charged, see if I can borrow something to play other than Brain Training from Tim on Saturday, and also bring my beading kit and a few things to make. Sure, I’ll have internet access here, but there’s no way to can browse on these machines like I can on the laptop – videos and fanfics and such.
But at least it’s the weekend, right? |
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| 04:13pm 07/10/2008 |
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‘s been over a week since my last entry – whoops.
Not that it’s been a particularly spectacular week, really.
Wednesday was a good day though – I was told I was 12 stone 13 pounds when I went to my weight-in, which is a loss of 3.5 pounds in a week – helped me catch up a little with my target, though I’m still way behind. I’m glad to be away from 13 stone though – it did indeed seem unlucky!
At home I continued to grind away with the Brewfest dailys, though I didn’t see them kodo mount drop again. The Brewfest stuff all vanished at midnight on Friday *sigh* At least I got a bunch of stuff for my alts I suppose. Not much of a consolation for not being able to buy a mount for tickets/tokens, but eh…now to wait for Halloween and the headless Horseman!
On Saturday the guys and I had planned to go out for a meal for my birthday. Rich even called (several times) to ask if I wanted to do something that evening. Of course, his idea of doing something was going to Jimmy Chung’s and then to play pool at Ambassadors. I later found he wasn’t thinking of my birthday for this – Jaq is due to sprog this coming weekend, so it was Richard’s last gasp of freedom before the new sprogling takes over his life. But Paul didn’t fancy going out, having been working until 2200 the previous night – quite understandably he just wanted to vegetate. I can’t say I was too bothered to be honest though. So this weekend we will be going to an Indian restaurant called Manzil on King Street – it does a buffet on Friday and Saturday evenings, so hopefully we can all find something nice to eat there, especially Tim and Rich. We’ve eaten at a few places that do Chinese and also that Mexican place, so I thought we should try something else.
Mum and Auntie Ann-Ann left on Sunday morning, having wished me happy birthday and given me cards. Chris’s card was a very cheeky one, but very ‘Christopher’ – Mum had told me it was very appropriate, haha. Auntie Ann-Ann got me a little box with stuff from Lush – a Sakura bash ballistic and a smelly soap. Mmmm.
I had a nice bath that afternoon to enjoy that, and very nice it was too – the bathroom still smells strongly of it 2 days later. I also had a shower to wash out the oil I’d put in my hair on Saturday night. I even wrapped clingfilm around my head to help it stay warm and sink in better.
Fandom wise I’m going a bit mad on fanfics right now. One of my persuals through TV Tropes unearth a fanfic recommendation page, so I gathered a load of them to devour, so I’ve been sort of fandom-hopping a bit. Plus I managed to get my hands on the first 13 episodes of FUNimation’s dub of One Piece – oh god, having seen the awful 4Kids version, this was heaven! They even got Zoro’s name right, thought I hear they still keep it as ‘Zolo’ for the TV version of the episodes – they’re into the Skypiea arc from what I’ve read. But One Piece fanfiction is almost universally disappointing and shitty, so trawling through that section of The Pit it a giant waste of time. I wish there was an OP community I could go to and ask for recommendations that wasn’t full of yaoi…or any romance in fact. I’ve heard an awful rumour that something has happened in recent chapters of the manga that could be taken as hinting at Luffy/Nami. Almost any romance in OP turns my stomach, but particularly anything involving Luffy – ick. Seriously.
Well, my weigh-in is tomorrow, and it doesn’t look like I’ve lost anything this week, despite behaving – how does that work? Last week I ate out and had a Yorkshire pudding meal with 14 points, and this week I’ve been good and I’m still the same weight! It’s not fair! |
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| 02:16pm 29/09/2008 |
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My, it’s been an interesting week!
It was…weird being able to stay up late on Monday night. Ah, the joy of doing Brewfest dailys – I’m so sick of the ram-racing one!
On Tuesday morning, when we were all up, Angelica decided she wanted to be in Aberdeen and at the university for 1pm, so we left at about midday and took the Bridge of Don Park & Ride. Perhaps not the best decision, as I would find out later, but first…
It didn’t take us too long to get to the campus – we even managed to get to the field where the tent with all the society stands was without too much difficulty, despite the campus being a maze – makes me miss UEA, that’s for sure! The society (why don’t they just call them clubs? *sigh*) tent was packed. Angelica and I had to sort of…shuffle down the lines of tables, looking for the dance society and a Greek society, if they had one. I pointed Angelica in the direction of FirstBus’s stand, because a student pass would be a very good idea, I think. The next aisle contained the anime society – the guy there had an Irresponsible Captain Tylor box set on the table, which impressed me. There was also an atheist and agnostic society, Japanese society, musicals society (they had an odd name, can’t remember it…) a couple of concert/jazz band societies. Angelica found the dance society eventually, and a European society, though no Greek one.
Then we had to make our way to the library for a tour. I ended up going on it too – nearly fell asleep during the talk at the beginning. What is it about rooms like that? The library smelt just like UEA’s – I guess large collections of paper often smell the same anyway.
Next we had a couple of hours to kill before an introductory talk or something for the business students at 1700. Angelica and I ended up at the Hub and got something to eat from the Subway there – I was rather impressed, more so than I expected to be, since they had low-fat options and even showed the calorie/fat content of the sandwiches on the drinks cups and napkins. As long as you don’t get your bun filled full of mayonnaise and mustard or something, you’re fine. I got lettuce and onions in my teriyaki chicken bun – the filling with the most calories of the low-fat options, but still nice and only about 5 points.
We had to talk for ages there to kill enough time, and we still ended up sitting outside Elphinstone (I love that name!) Hall for about 20 minutes before we were let into the building – gawd, it was cold out there. I was glad to get inside and find a table to sit at near a radiator while Angelica went in to be talked at and hopefully see a few of the people who’d be on her course. It was actually a pretty short meeting – finished by about 17:30, and then we were off to find a bus stop.
We passed a group including the guy from the anime society table – he and a bunch of other guys were talking about WoW. It was so tempting to earwig a little, but we had a bus-stop to find and I just wanted to go home.
But that would be a long time coming. We had to walk quite a way to find a bus stop that had the number 40 on it, which supposedly meant the Park & Ride service would stop there. Two of them passed us before we even got to the bus stop. Then a 3rd one went past. And then a 4th one, with no signs of stopping even though I waved at them. Grrr. In the end we walk all the way up to Union Street, to the usual bus stop Mum and I wait at when we take the P&R. I was so glad to finally get on that bus and eventually get home!
It was odd going back in on a Wednesday, knowing I only had another three days to wade through before I was free again. For a given value of ‘free’, of course, since I had to go in on Sunday. Mum and Auntie Ann-Ann took Angelica and her stuff to her room on Thursday. Apparently they found her room-mate still in bed at 3pm. This may have been due to student hi-jinks the previous night/early morning, or the cold Angelica later found out she had.
I was not a happy bunny on Thursday and Friday. The big gallery mail run had come in on Monday and I had thought it would be all dealt with by the time I came back. Oh-ho-ho, not so! On Wednesday the woman who deals with the gallery stuff called to ask if the envelopes had been posted. Um…no, they were still waiting here to be picked up. The guy who dropped them off to be franked said he would tell the women they’d been dropped off. Well, it looks like he didn’t tell her they’d be ready on Tuesday.
But there was more fun yet! The envelopes that had been franked were only two out of three boxes I had put away in the new stationary cupboard. Not only that, but the ones that had already been franked had to be re-franked – that is, franking labels with the right date but no extra cost on them. So I had to frank about 300 franking labels and attach them to the envelopes. I got one box of them done, as well as the unfranked envelopes before the end of Thursday afternoon and had to lug them plus the mail bags up to the Post Office service centre because the gallery-woman’s mother did not call to say she’d be picking them up. And then I had to do all that again on Friday with the last box ¬_¬
So Saturday couldn’t come fast enough. Had a reasonably good day with the Brewfest stuff on WoW. Still no kodo for either of my level 70s, but I had all the normal trinkets and both have the dark brewmaiden one and a ram. I also managed to get my baby mage a boost through SFK and got all the gear I wanted in two quick runs =D
Then the afternoon came and I had to get ready to go out for a meal with the guys. I thought for a while that Angelica might be coming because Auntie Ann-Ann asked me for the numbers of the buses that would get her to Ellon. Apparently she had nothing else to do over the weekend. In the end, though, she wasn’t going to get to Ellon soon enough. Oh well.
I had to get to the flat by 1700, so I left the house at 1635 and got there in perfect time. A little dithering later (Tim had only just got back in when I drove up and was still getting himself sorted) we were off in Paul’s car. We parked at the Denburn and it was just a short walk from there to George Street were Dim Sung was. It turned out to be a nice, quiet little restaurant. We found some vegetarian things on the menu for Tim to try, and Paul and I went for separate dishes rather than the set menus. I got a double-seafood dish with a side-order of egg-fried rice, with dumplings Beijing for a starter. Rather naughty, but we won’t be doing this sort of thing every week. The food was very nice, and I even ate all of the broccoli that came with the seafood. The food was served on large plates you served yourself off that were set on little food warmers ‘powered’ by candles. Rather neat I thought, though you can to be careful to grab the plates by an edge that hadn’t been near the candle flame. We even had pudding too – I was bad and had some ice-cream.
When we got back to the flat at about 2030 and did a little holiday planning – firming up our timetable of when we are going where, so the next step will be seeing about accommodation. It as about 2230 when I actually got home in time to do…more ram-racing T_T And installing WoW on Mum’s laptop, along with the patch and my character settings/addons. That took until about 4am *snore*
I couldn’t even get a sleep in the next day of course. 0900 was the best I could manage before scraping myself out of my nice, warm bed. Rather than taking the bus in, as I had initially planned, Mum was going into Aberdeen and said she could pick me up from Ellon after taking the bus home. She wanted to get me something for my birthday then, since she may be down in Teeside on my actually birthday.
So in we went with Angelica and Auntie Ann-Ann – I was loaded down with the big laptop bag containing the laptop and my own mouse, plus my iPod in my shoulder bag and my beading wallet, iPod full of anime and stuff to read. So there was pretty much no chance of me getting bored.
We started off in John Lewis and had a look for the DS – they had it, but only in black, white and pink – urgh. So the next stop was Game for Mum and I, and New Look for Auntie Ann-Ann and Angelica. I zeroed right in on the DSs, and didn’t take much time to pick the turquoise bundle with the Brain Training game. Mum wanted to get me a case too, but I didn’t see any I liked – the options seemed to be blue, pink or a Nintendogs themed one. Ick.
With a DS obtained, Mum let me take it away with me to use that day – hah, I’d have to charge it first, so that was unlikely, but that at least meant I got to see the instructions. After we left game we waited near New Look for Auntie Ann-Ann and Angelica to come out. And we waited. And waited some more. Eventually Mum went in to find them an Angelica came out, but Auntie Ann-Ann was in a rather long queue. I had to give up and leave, because it was about 1135 and I needed to get to the Foyer before midday.
This was easily achieved, but I had to wait outside until Steve from Music came in so he could deactivate the alarms – I’m glad I didn’t try the door with my key myself!
I got myself all set up and got on WoW – I can to turn all the graphics settings down so it wouldn’t lag, but it was better than no WoW at all! Got all the brewfest stuff done on my 70s, and all but the ram-racing done on the others. I meant to charge up my new DS, but I wasn’t keen on it being seen by the people going in and out of the reception. Plus I forgot it would need charging for so long, and it only got about an hour before it was time to unplug it and pack everything up. Getting away was a problem though. It was 1720 and a few of the hip-hop school people were still here ¬_¬ And as I was getting the guy who runs it, MC, out of the door, one of the girls came back in to use the toilet *siiiigh* I was told they were actually finishing up early – they were normally in until 1800. This was news to me. I had been told that last time they were here, they’d been in until 1900 and making a mess of the reception area – this is why I now have to cover the reception when they’re in, so they don’t have free-reign. But as far as the booking they have is concerned, they should be out of here at 1700, and there’s no way I’m sticking around here for an extra, unpaid hour or two. Sod that. Add that to the trouble Dave had with MC over moving his car, and I think he will be getting a pointed e-mail from Dora very soon. He’s been friendly enough when he’s been in to pay the room rental, but this business with staying past their booked time and so on should not be allowed.
Mum called my mobile while I was waiting to say that they were still in Aberdeen and that I should meet them at the Marks & Spencer pick-up area. OK, fine – means I get less out of my bus ticket, but I’d rather get home in the car to be honest. Good thing I did though – it was 1830 when we got home, and I would have been waiting in Ellon after getting off the bus at about 1800 ¬_¬
So, time to have some tea – a salad and prawns thing from Marks & Spencer – and finish my WoW stuff, read fanfics, have a shower and finally have a go on my new gadget <3 Ahh, I love doing Sudoku on that. I didn’t have time to do the full brain age test thing though, so I’ll do that when I get home today.
So, now I’m up to day…at last.
Well, it’s getting darker and darker in the mornings now – it was still almost pitch-black outside my window when I got up at 0630. Managed to get a window seat on the bus and snooze my way to Aberdeen – DS or not, I’m not going to miss out on my morning snooze-time.
It’s freezing in here right now – the doors are propped open because the maintenance guys are taking in furniture and stuff from Cornerstone. I have the radiator on, but it makes no difference, of course. Wish I’d put a cardigan on today. Though I did get a comment from Marj that I’ve lost weight – glad someone can notice, because I can’t quite yet. I’m getting close to having lost 2 stone, but I’m still in my size 18 thing – though my purple fleece is getting loose on me, which is nice. Well, as long as the weight continues to go down, I guess… |
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| 10:30am 22/09/2008 |
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Had a pretty busy weekend. But first I had to actually get home.
Oh boy. First a car and then a bus were blocking the exit from the bus station - didn't those morons hear that you should never stop in front of a junction?? - which meant a 5 minute delay in even getting away from the station. Traffic seemed to be unusually bad going through Aberdeen too, because it was 1735 before my bus got to the B&S roundabout. But the fun really started when we hit Balmedie, where the dual-carriageway merges into a single carriageway. The traffic ground to a near-total halt there, and remained and a snail's pace crawl for a good few miles. At 1810 we finally found out what was causing this hassle: a car transporter had broken down and was blocking our lane - traffic was having to get around him one by one. The only reason I wasn't fuming after all that waiting, was the sight of the driver (I presume) bent over, trying to fix something, with all manner of vehicles rushing past about a mater from his backside. Brrr.
I was up really rather late on Friday and into Saturday morning, watching Le Chevalier d’Eon. I downloaded the rest of the series because I couldn’t wait for the DVDs to come to see what was going on. I finished watching the last four episodes on Saturday morning. It’s an…interesting series. I enjoyed it, though the ending left me feeling kind of hollow – another series where the protagonist got a seriously bum deal at the end. Not that I could really have expected a happy ending, but still. Yeah.
The plan to go out for a meal was kind of up in the air. Paul phoned to say that Rich had thrown a spanner in the works, since he has Doug up at the moment and he wanted to go to Buckie Farm for their carvery instead of the Dim Sun place Paul had been planning on. In the end we couldn’t go there anyway because there were no tables available when Paul phoned up.
So in the afternoon I went with Mum, Auntie Ann-Ann and Angelica to Aberdeen University, where she needed to pick up her key for her temporary accommodation and have a look around. I really wish I hadn’t gone, I was bored stiff.
As soon as we got back, at about 5pm, Rich was on the phone, saying I should go straight round to the flat in Dyce, because we’d be going to some other carvery or something. I asked Angelica if she fancied going, though I did warn her she’d be amongst geeks, eheh ^_^; So we hopped right back outside and into my car and made our way to Dyce.
When we got there, it seemed that things were still somewhat up in the air about our plans for the evening. After much dithering, it was decided we’d go to Chicito’s at the beach, then head back to the flat. Angelica and I went with Paul in his car and I made sure she was in the front – I was hoping Paul would have some information for her about uni in Aberdeen and so on, plus it would mean she wouldn’t just be sitting quiet in the back while Paul and I chattered on or something.
We got to the beach, only to find Jaq, Ben and Doug’s girlfriend there, waiting for a table in Frankie & Benny’s – I really wished we were going there rather than the Mexican place, but no such luck. Rich, Tim and Doug went off to ASDA to get booze, and Paul, Angelica and I went into Sunset Boulevard, mostly to get Angelica inside out of what was to her very cold air. We had a wander around and even went on the 3D motion ride. We got a choice between the haunted mine or the space coaster – yay for the latter! Of course, it wasn’t as good as the Robocop ride, but that was special.
Time successfully killed, we went to Chicito’s and waited a little longer to get our table before ordering. I went for a meatballs with rice dish, since it featured no cheese. I’m getting a little more tolerant of things with tomato sauces now anyway. Hopefully Angelica was entertained by the tales of Rich’s misadventures on rivers.
We got back to the flat and played SSBB and MarioKart for a couple of hours before I decided it was time for the taxi to depart *sigh* I ended up taking Tim, Rich and Doug back, so as revenge, I made them all sit in the back of the car and subjected them to my taste in music, heh heh. Auntie Ann-Ann had gone to bed by the time we got back in at about 11pm. Ooops! I honestly had tried to phone home at 10pm when we were leaving the flat, but it went right through to the answering machine.
Sunday was a slightly less busy day – it was 4pm before we left the house. I had to nip out as soon as my hair was dry after my shower. I was up rather late again, so I was woken up at 1045 by Mum coming into my room with the phone. It was Tim, asking if I could pretty please drop his Wii off at his parents’ house, because he forgot to take it out of the boot when I took him home. So that was done at 1515, and I got back with about 25 mins to spare to finish getting myself sorted, before we were all off to the Buckie Farm carvery for dinner. A second day without lunch. Well, I guess it can’t exactly harm me, and I’d have gone over my points otherwise too.
Thankfully it wasn’t too busy – I’d called in the morning to see if I could book a table, but no, they don’t do that apparently. The queue was much shorter then the first time I was there. This time I asked for all turkey, no beef or port, and it was very nice. It’s a while since I’ve had anything like a Sunday dinner. After we finished and talked for a while, we set off again for the uni – there was some kind of meeting on at 1900 that Angelica needed to attend. We had to wander around and wait for quite a while, because it was only 1830 when we got there, having already spent quite a bit of time driving around, trying to park as close to the accommodation as possible. We ended up in pretty much the same car park as before in the end. The actually meeting wasn’t very long, once it started, and Angelica came out with a could of girls, getting their mobile numbers off them before we left – I guess we won’t need to worry too much about her on that front.
We got back at about 2010, and I jumped on my PC to do some of the Brewfest activities on WoW – I hadn’t realised that had started, and I wanted to start earning tokens. The problem is, I have so many active alts, who do I concentrate on? I don’t just want stuff for my main after all. God, I got sick of doing the Barking daily in just one evening. Well, I’ll start working on getting groups for the Brewfest boss this evening. Urgh, I hate BRD so much…
As for today, it seems to be dawning bright and sunny. A bit like yesterday, but not as warm – but it could be raining, so count those blessings, eh? The bus was not only almost empty because of the local holiday, but they had dug out another bender bus for the service I take. I’m glad I managed to get a seat in the front section *shudder* The traffic was also light, so it was only 0815 when the bus got into the station. All is pretty quiet here too, with only internal bookings in the rooms and not many people in. I don’t think I’ll be getting a decent lunch today of course – Kat won’t be in today, and the staff room across the road will be inaccessible anyway because I think the health centre is closed. Damn.
On the other hand, if I do get out I’d be off walking anyway. I want to get to Claire’s and see if I can get something for Angelica there. It’s her 19th birthday today, and it sucks if the only thing you get it a card.
Although I missed my weigh-in last week, the bathroom scales seemed to have some good news for me – 13st 2lb! I think…it looked like it anyway, or a little less, when I stepped on the scales this morning. I had hoped to be 12st 13lb by this Wednesday, so if I can make up 0.5lb from what I’m behind by (2.5lb right now) I’ll be reasonably happy, and will have hit my 10% too. I really, really was to have lost 2st by my birthday, and that’s only 2 weeks (argh!) away now. The disappointing thing is that even though I’ve lost 1.5 stone now, my size 18 things still fit. Bah! Oh well, I still have 5 stone to go I guess… |
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| 02:35pm 19/09/2008 |
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I had intended to do quite a bit of tidying on Wednesday when I got home, but I ended up going on a trip to Zul’Aman when I logged on my priest to do her rep dailys. Err…ooops? Didn’t get anything out of it, bar some gold. And I really need gold now – before I got a summon to ZA, I finally bought Rah the next level of riding skill and an epic flier mount. zooooooooooooooooom!! I decided I didn’t want to wait until she got the rep for a Sha’tari ray, and I was sick of moving at a snail’s pace in the air. Expensive but worth it!
So I was up rather later than I had planned after the raid finished, cleaning up the kitchen and my room a bit. It was about 0100 before I actually got to bed -_-
Thankfully, I had a better morning on Thursday than the previous day. Got in to find that no-one was in the office again. Dora called not long after I got in to say she would be off sick – I sure hope whatever she has doesn’t go around!
Kat, my new reception slave, came in at 1000 and I had to shift over to the other reception computer *sigh* Can’t say I had a very good afternoon though. I was late to the Weight Watchers thing, so no weigh-in this week =/
At least the buses were nice to me that afternoon. I even managed to get home before 6pm and get some more things tidied up. I had called Mum a couple of times during the afternoon to find out where she was. When I called on the bus, she was in Dundee, which gave me about 1 ½ hours. That estimate was reasonably accurate, and eventually Mum came up the drive in her new car. I nervously dithered about the house before going into the kitchen as they were all coming through the door. Auntie Ann-Ann had a sort of shawl on, probably because they just had something of a heat wave in Zakynthos in the past couple of weeks, so Scotland must be freezing to her. Agelica…oh god, she’s so tall! Why is it that all the girls younger than me I’ve known are huge beanpoles? Life can be so unfair -_-
I made them cups of tea and stood by the radiator while we talked. I eventually had to bow out to make myself something for my dinner. Eventually I decided I couldn’t be bothered waiting for something to take extra time in the oven to defrost and had pasta and tuna. Though I had to help unload the car first – gawd, the bag they had was HUGE! I mean, I expected she’d have a lot of stuff with her, but wow. Poor Auntie Ann-Ann doesn’t even have PJs with her so there would be more weight allowance for Agelica to bring her stuff.
This morning I tried to be extra quiet while getting myself sorted to go out. I removed one of the FMA books from my bag because I finished the first on the bus yesterday. I actually managed to get to the Park & Ride earlier than usual, and because it’s some sort of holiday today, there were a lot fewer people on the bus than usual – window seat FTW! Window seats mean I can snooze better, rather than staying aware enough to move for the person beside me to get off the bus on Union Street or sooner.
It’s been a pretty busy day, even before Dora came back from Fraserburgh. I was doing the folders for the counselling, then Dora came back and I now have stuff to do for the vehicle administration. At least I got away for my lunch, but still not for the full hour. It was nice to be able to eat my sandwich in peace and not be interrupted by a phone ringing.
Though I actually found out my phone had been ringing recently – Mum was trying to call my mobile, which was inexplicably out of battery. I had to send her a quick text message to say to ring the Foyer number if she wanted to speak to me. A couple of minutes later, Kat passed a call to me, as expected. Mum wanted to ask if I could take a day or so off next week to accompany Agelica around the Freshers’ week and around Aberdeen a bit. I’ve just seen about getting Tuesday off next week, so at least that is sorted.
And hey, it’s Friday, so no worries, right? |
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| 03:53pm 17/09/2008 |
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Well, I didn’t end up having to do stuff at the Foyer over the weekend, but I get the feeling it was a close thing.
Saturday was rather busy. I had to clean Mum’s car because she was setting off on Sunday for Nana’s. I had been up until 6am, reading an excellent FMA fanfiction (got the bug baaaad) and was woken up at 10:15 by Mum saying someone was on the phone for me. It was Tim, asking if I wanted to do something today? I hate that question, especially when Rich is involved. Tim had just got his hands on a copy of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and wondered if I wanted to go round and play it for a bit, and do other stuff. After talking for a while, it was decided that Rich and I would go round to Tim’s parent’s house – Tim is going to be house/cat-sitting for two weeks while his parents are away. Since Tim needed to go there anyway, I thought it might be a good idea if we all zeroed in there.
Of course, I had to actually motivate myself into getting dressed and so on. It was about 1230 before I did so and 1300 before I got anywhere close to getting outside to wash the car. Or rather cars, since mine was pretty filthy too. It was 3pm by the time I finished, and that was when I was supposed to be at Tim’s – oops!
I made myself a sandwich to take along with me after getting changed and sorting out my hair so it didn’t look like I’d been through a hurricane, so it was 1545 when I got there – I actually went right past the drive entrance and had to reverse down the road a bit. I was miffed because of all the mud on the road after I’d just cleaned the car *sigh*
Richard was already there when I got in the drive – damn! He’d had chance to find a few annoying characters to use in SSBB of course *sigh* At least I did OK, and I had great fun using Lucas and Ness from Earthbound and Samus, as opposed to my usual favourites, Peach and Zelda. It was very odd, using the control wand for the Wii sideways though. I’d much rather play it with controllers from the Cube to be honest.
After we got a little bored of SSBB, we tried a bit of Super Mario Galaxy, and I managed to beat a boss, despite Richard mucking about with the 2nd player control, making Mario jump everywhere. I know I did it a fair bit when he was 1st player, but it wasn’t on purpose! We also watched an episode of a very odd comedy series Tim had on DVD, something about two guys from New Zealand trying to make it as musicians in the US. Frankly, I thought it was stupid and sucked.
I was home by 8pm, and Mum had news for me that Auntie Ann Ann and Agelica would be coming back with her on Thursday. Agelica has decided to go to Aberdeen University, rather than York – I’m frankly surprised. But hey, I guess it may be interesting. Term started a couple of weeks ago, but it’s not unusual for new students to start around about now. I hope she adjusts to Scottish weather OK, after living in Greece!
Mum left at about 10am on Sunday…then came shooting back up the drive a few minutes later because she had forgotten her coat, ha ha! I proceeded to have a rather lazy day, though I did have a bit of a flap in the evening when I remembered I needed to do some washing and get it all dried before the morning.
Monday was back to business, alas. It’s a lot darker in the mornings now – I noticed that the automatic lights for my car came on before I even went under the trees on the way. Poor Pat had a list of complaints about the conduct of the people who had been in on Saturday. I don’t think they’ll be coming back again…
There was some good news though – I loaded up the WoW Insider website to find it blaring the news that the release date for Wrath of the Lich King had been announced – I will definitely be off on the 13th of November! And the 14th…hmmm…
Shock of shocks, I actually got out for 30 mins after I had my lunch. It isn’t a full hour, but…well, I doubt I’ll be getting that again unless there’s someone here volunteering or on placement ¬_¬ I managed to get to Boots for a new toothbrush though, and also to WH Smith for the latest SFX magazine and special. I thought about getting Nation, the new non-Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, but Waterstones only have it £5 off, compared to Amazon who have it half price. So I ordered it from Amazon last night, along with some FMA novels and a couple of other Discworld things. Yay for free p&p!
I had a huge rush before I got home. The bus took a long time to get out of Aberdeen, so it was 1755 by the time I even got to my car. Then I had to get some milk before I got home, so I stopped at the Co-op to buy a little pinter before rushing back to get my computer on to make sure I got my place in the Kara raid on WoW. My priest still needs some gear. I had some soup while waiting for the raid to start, plus a couple of snack-a-jacks and a meringue, and that was me for the evening – I guess being busy means I can keep my mind off food better.
The raid wasn’t as fast as could have been hoped, but it was fun and I managed to get the T4 glove token off Curator! I could have rolled on the head token off Prince too, but that would have been unfair. Illhoof didn’t drop the belt I wanted, but Aran finally dropped the shoulders. Pity I wasn’t there with Taly *sigh* I got them for Rah though for her soloing gear when Wrath lands. No way am I levelling as holy spec – shadow or discipline all the way! Well, that could depend on how the talents and everything pan out – I just read that Blizz are scrapping the priest racials, which ticks me off a bit – I liked being ‘yay Draenei priest!’ because of my Symbol of Hope. Bleh.
The raid was still going at 2300, so I had to bow out to get something other than WoW done and get to bed. I hope they managed to get a replacement and down Netherspite and Nightbane though.
Monday morning dawned dark and dreary and dreich. Glad I don’t work outside! At least I remembered to take the DVD out of my PC this morning to post back to LoveFilm.
I’m really after the FMA DVDs, but I hope the first one doesn’t arrive until after Mum returns from taking Auntie Ann Ann back down south. I finally broached the subject of her watching it with me. I’ve long thought that if I ever tried to get her to watch any anime, it would be FMA. I just feel it has a lot of what can make anime good to watch – action, comedy, a good plot with interesting thoughts behind it… I’m hoping at least a few episodes will show Mum that being animated doesn’t make it childish. I mean, she happily watches Disney movies, the fairytale ones anyway, and they’re often a lot more childish than stuff like FMA. And she watched the Harry Potter movies of her own violition, and I find the plots comparable in maturity to be honest. Well, we shall see anyway. For now I have two DVDs of Farscape to watch – the first with the Kiss the Princess trilogy of episodes on (I’ve never seen the first part, actually) and the other has My Three Crichtons, one of my favourites from the 2nd season.
I managed to get away for 30 minutes of walking at 1300, with Dora covering for me. I walked up to FPI to take a look around – it’s months since I last went in there – and to see if they had any of the FMA novels. I was in total luck! They had the two volumes that Amazon don’t seem to stock (or at least have easily to find) in, so now I have the first three volumes winging their way to me in the next week, and two to be getting on with while I wait – excellent!
So it was a pity that, in the rush to get out the door to take the post bags to the service centre at 1645, that I managed to forget the little bag the books were in. Buggeration!
I had ‘pasta quickie’ when I got home, having bought some bread on the way. This involves 100g of uncooked pasta, 40g peas, 60g sweet corn and half a tin of tuna. 8 points of yum!
On WoW I did Rah’s dailys for Sha’tari rep, and made cloth with Taly, then went off to read fanfics and stuff. No call from Mum – not impressed after all the whinging she did about me calling every night when I was at uni.
This morning was not a good one. It started out OK, but after 7am it went downhill. I only just remembered my iPod and mobile, and then realised that I still needed to take the wheelie-bin down the drive to be emptied. So I was 4 minutes late getting out of the drive, and then I met fog so thick it needed to be called porridge rather than pea soup! Then I got stuck behind a lorry and a bus. And when I got to the Park & Ride, I realised I had forgotten my Weight Watchers log card, despite all the effort I had made that morning to dress lightly. Damn. I just wanted to be able to go back to bed and hit the restart button for that day. I'm frankly rather suprised I managed to get out of the house with trousers on, the way I was going.
At least it’s been a pretty stress-free day here. I even have a new slave at the reception. Though she wasn’t actually here for long – she had some kind of meeting to attend after 12:30. I did get across to the staff room over the road for 30 mins reading though.
I have lots to do when I get home. I need to hi-jack Mum’s PC to try to get some stuff off my hard-drive. I need to clean up the general mess I’ve made. Only two tasks, but they’re doozies! The hard drive, in particular, may take a lot of fiddling. But I will prevail! Then I have to have a shower, watch some Farscape/Le Chevalier d’Eon…
Mum got the new car on Monday. So far her only complaint has been that the seat doesn’t move when she take the key out of the ignition because there is no key for the ignition!
By now Chris will be in Afghanistan somewhere. He was supposed to leave on the 13th. I have an address for him, and I hope he’ll be able to send us e-mails from where he is, but I don’t know how likely that will be.
Paul is still planning for us all to go out to have a meal somewhere at the weekend – he wants to make it a regular thing, to eat somewhere nice, rather than the usual geekish things we do. I’m voting for the place that also does some Japanese stuff, so we can have a try of certain things so we can be a little more tactful in our reactions if we already know we don’t like something. I guess it’ll make a nice treat at the end of a week, and well worth saving points for. |
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| 04:28pm 12/09/2008 |
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I got home on Thursday to find that Mum had decided she was too full after her lunch with Margaret to have the livery and bacon she had planned, so instead she boiled a few eggs and did some potatoes to go with a choice of fishy things or cooked chicken with salad for my tea. Mmmmm, fishhhhh.
And speaking of fish, that’s what I did on WoW when I got my computer on – I’m determined to get a Mr Pinchy! I got a few whispers asking if I wanted to join the joint-guild attempt on SSC, but I hate the place and didn’t feel like going that time.
This was followed by watching the rest of Le Chavalier D’Eon and the extras – the commentaries were pretty interesting, and it was nice to see so much enthusiasm from those involved with the adaptation/dub. It was a vast improvement on the last commentary I watched, the one with Slayers Premium – god, I wanted to throttle the woman who did Lina’s voice in that. What an idiot.
That DVD went back this morning. Mum is off to Graeme’s wedding today, so I had to wake her up before I left. She wants me to get some kind of eye make-up remover for her from Debenhams, but I can only do that if I actually get away from this damn desk. Dora has asked me to put a 1-2-1 meeting in my calendar for Tuesday and to bring my job description. I have dug it up from the personnel folder, and as far as I can see I have been doing everything it asks, so no problem there. I only hope I can work up the spine to mention my disgruntlement with my lack-of-lunches recently. Or the pay review I thought was in the pipeline. I mean, sure, my pay went up from £12,000 to £12,240 recently, backdated to April, but…well, that’s the bottom rung of the pay ladder for a full-time job here at the Foyer, as far as I can tell. And they wonder why I say this isn’t so much as receptionist job as ‘general dogsbody’…
Mum won’t be home until later in the evening, so I’m going to get petrol at Tesco, drop my books off at the library. I’m planning an omelette with the rest of the prawns from last night plus some peas and sweet corn for my tea, with a walk beforehand.
I think I’ll probably be washing the cars on Saturday – on Sunday Mum goes down to Nana’s, and she’ll be picking up the new car. I can’t say I’m too enthused. I haven’t been impressed with the amount of whinging she’s been doing over the current Jag. The only part of it that sounds neat is the integrated iPod system – I’d love that for my little car!
Hmm, Dora is back from her lunch but appears to have forgotten mine. Nice. And she just tried to get me to cover an evening booking that is going on from 6pm to 10:30pm (which means closing up at 11pm once everyone is out and things are sorted) on Tuesday. This would meaning driving into Aberdeen (£5 return in petrol), parking all day (£6+), staying here for an extra hour (for gratis!) and then a further 5 hours. And then I’d get home at midnight. Great! Nice thinking, Batman! |
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| 02:43pm 11/09/2008 |
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Tuesday was dull as usual. Didn’t spend much time on WoW that evening – just wasn’t in the mood for it. Most of the time was spent reading fanfics and the like.
Wednesday was…difficult.
There was a lot of stuff on in the rented rooms, and I managed to forget to take over the flasks of coffee and tea and the biscuits the kitchen staff had left upstairs for me to take over. My weigh-in was not a success. I only got down to 13st 5.5lb, despite all my efforts. So I’m now 2.5 pounds behind target, and just 0.7 pounds off my 10% goal – so close I could spit on it! Add to that Dora having a peer at my screen while I was away doing something. She decided to have a word with me about my internet usage because she saw an LC comm with its icons on the screen.
I know the policy here – 20 minutes a day of personal usage. Obviously I tend to use more than that, but it’s not like I’m slacking here. It’s when there is nothing else for me to do.
Like right now. The phone is not ringing. No-one is waiting at the reception. I am not due to take or make coffee and tea for anyone. The folders I was asked to make for the health team are done…as many of them as I could make, anyway. The person who asked me to do them doesn’t seem to be in today. The other stuff for that team has been done and I’m just waiting for me info to come in that I can add to the Excel files I’m keeping updated for them. The stationary stuff has to wait until Dora is here again – I could easily just order a bunch of letter trays, but I would prefer to get the go-ahead, since Dora seems to want to keep a finger on such things. My portfolio is completed, so I can’t do that. There’s no room booking stuff to look into right now.
So I’m stumped. What else am I supposed to do? It’s not like I’m shopping online or something, or even chatting – the occasional forum post doesn’t constitute ‘chatting’, does it? I don’t visit offensive or banned sites – I checked the list of such things while I was doing my NVQ. Unless, of course, someone finds being child-free or an atheist offensive. In which case…tough luck, eh?
Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure I could ask someone for something to do, but the thought of doing someone else’s work for them stick in my craw. I’ll gladly help, but I don’t like having the feeling I’m doing something the other person should be doing or have planned for themselves. Plus the fact I’m doing stuff I’m not being paid for here. I get paid to work 37.5 hours a week – that’s 7 hrs 30 mins per day. Starting at 0830 to 1700, with an hour off for lunch (or two 30 minute break or something like that). Right now I usually do 8 hours or 8 hours 30 mins per day because I’m not getting a proper lunch break. So that turns out to be 2.5-5 hours extra per week that I’m not paid for. And I’m paid about £266 a week (for 46 weeks, removing 30 days holiday) right now, which is £7.10 per hour. So that’s me out of pocket by up to £35.47 per week. I know this has only been going on for coming up to three weeks now, since Lee stopped covering my lunches, but they still haven’t done anything about it. I’m stick of having to pester someone who is already doing their own stuff to come over here to sit at the reception while I go away for an hour.
True, it could, of course, be argued that since I don’t spent every moment on the desk here doing something Foyer-related, that counter-balances this time, but still, as Mum keeps telling me, you are supposed to get a break and I’m not getting one regularly right now. The best I get is Dora sitting here, and I don’t like staying away for the full hour in that case.
So when I got back home on Wednesday I had some nice Marks & Spencer’s Count on Us bangers & mash for tea. Well, the mashed potato tasted a little odd, but the sausages were nice anyway. Instead of doing dailys on WoW, I fished instead, with the FMA soundtracks running on iTunes. Then I watched a little more of the Chevalier D’Eon DVD I got from Love Film last week. Odd series so far.
When I washed my hair, I could still smell that stuff I put on it last week. Or maybe the solid shampoo I’m using has some of the same smells in it, I’m not sure. I left it to dry without combing to see if that helped.
It was still a little damp in the morning, but when I wash it at that time of night it usually is anyway. And it wasn’t really any harder to brush than usual, but I left it as loose as possible throughout the morning to let it dry more before putting it up. I seemed to get a lot of comments about the length, even though you can see how long it is when I have it half up. Weird.
So now it’s 1430, and I still haven’t had a break. Got a headache developing to top it off. Lovely.
Mum is going out tonight to get something done – a face thing maybe, I’m not sure. She’s going out to Peterculter for it anyway, so she wants me to get back home ASAP because she’s doing liver and bacon for tea. No taking those crafting books back to the library then.
Oh god, why can’t it be Friday already? I’d actually settle for just 1630 today right now though. That would be nice… |
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| 04:05pm 08/09/2008 |
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I am so glad this past weekend was pretty pleasant. I really needed it after the previous week.
On Saturday it was raining. Lovely. Mind you, I saw some lovely thunder clouds the day before, as I was driving back home - I saw a fantastic display of lightning arcing across the sky ahead of me. Those are the times I wish I had a camera behind my eyes or something and could go back and see that moment again.
Paul came on MSN around noon and asked if I was doing anything that evening. I said right off that I wouldn't be playing pool for a start. Turned out he wanted to see a movie, so..eh, well, why not? I went off ay 1620, with the corpse of my PC in tow so Paul could poke and prod it.
I got there at about 1645 and hauled my PC up the stairs. Paul had left the door open so I just had to back into the door to push my way through. We killed a bit of time on a console, displayed on Paul and Tim's nice, new silver 32" CRT TV. Paul made himself something for tea and offered me a can of soup, since I hadn't had anything before coming out - it had bee far too early for that at the time.
Paul asked if I would please drive, since he had his new contacts in for the second time, having just picked them up the day before. He was over the moon about them, saying he practically danced and sang his way down the street. It was odd to see him without glasses, but that's natural, since he's been wearing them for about 18 years now, and I've known him for 10 of those, and knew of him in vague passing for 4 years before that because he was in my year at the academy.
The movie was everything I expected it to be - with a name like 'Disaster Movie', you can't really do much else. When we got back to the flat, Tim had returned from work, so I spoke with him while Paul rigged me PC up to a monitor and keyboard, then announced it thoroughly buggered and took my components out. He said he intends to make it into a media PC to hook up to the TV eventually.
On Sunday, Mum was going to go get something done to her face - I can't remember if it was eyelashes or eyebrows or whatever. She had no sooner gone down the drive in the car, when the phone rang - it was Jan, who she was going to see, saying she needed to get ahold of Mum because for some reason she didn't have the stuff to do what Mum was going for *sigh* I gave her Mum's mobile number and Mum came home about 4 mins later, all dressed up and with no-where to go.
In the end she decided to go grocery shopping in Inverurie, to the new Marks & Spencer food hall there, and asked if I wanted to go. The truth would have been 'er, not really', mainly because my hair was due for a wash, but I didn't want to do it until the evening. I ended up putting it up as best I could and going with her. The food court place is pretty small, a sort of 'greatest hits' version of the one in Aberdeen, but we got some nice salad-y stuff for tea and some other things to stick in the freezer. I was especially keen on the salad stuff because an encounter with my arch-nemesis, the bathroom scales, that morning had told me that I was almost certainly at my 10% weight goal - 13 stone 4 pounds! w00t! | hope it remains that way for gets lower by Wednesday!
Rather than playing WoW this past weekend, I spent most of my time reading the Full Metal Alchemist manga. Reading spoilers on TV Tropes re-fired my interest, so I downloaded it all and ploughed through it between Friday night and Sunday evening. It's so different from the anime, but while I hate the anime movie, I wouldn't really say I prefer one over the other. I'll be getting the DVDs from Love Film again though!
And today hasn't been too bad. Very quiet on most fronts, and time seems to have flown by. I got out for 30 mins of walking in Aberdeen - not a full lunch-hour, but better than most of last week. I also got some more Nivia lipbalm from Boots, because the cold I suffered mildly from last week did a number on them, and my only lipbalm was pink...and putting pink around your lips does not look good!
So I'll go for a walk when I get home and hopefully do some pilates in the evening. And on Wednesday I'll bring stuff so I can use one of the exercise machines in the dance studio, which should be better than walking a quick route up to Union Street and back.
So this week is looking up! Now if only my Monthly Misery wasn't starting today... |
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| 11:37am 05/09/2008 |
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Well, the end of this week is turning out to be pretty sucky, as far as I'm concerned.
Since the room booking stuff got passed from Lee to myself, the stress level has gone up a notch. And right now, a member of staff who deals with a driving school business this place helps to run is away doing some kind of course or something in Edinburgh. So his calls are being forwarded to me on one reception phone, and all the normal calls plus room booking enquiries on the other. This is complicated by the fact that most of the enquiries seem to be about evening or weekend bookings, which the Foyer does do, but we need to make sure there is cover for. And that system is being changed - those who do cover will be paid, rather than getting extra time off when they want it. But what are they going to be paid? £6.37. For evenings and weekends. FFS! I, of course, will be expected to do some of this cover - or most of it, I'll wager - so that's immediately £5 off and more because I need to get here and then park. To do 2 hours cover, that means I earn I grand total of a fiver, for 3 hours out of my own fucking evening. Wow, great! The only way it's worth it is if it's a chunk of a day at a weekend I do, but even then, that's my own weekend down the crapper.
So there's this annoyance, and the way one of the bloody phones always manages to ring when I'm trying to do something. Oh, and there's no-one to cover my lunch right now. I got away for 20 mins with mandy covering the reception for me on Thursday so I could get to a WeightWatchers weigh-in (only 1 lb lost - but that's better than I expected) at midday. I need time away from this desk so I don't go bugfuck nuts, and for most of this week, I just haven't been getting it.
Stationary I needed to make up some booklets for someone had been moved from where I left them, but no-one knew where they had gone. Splendid. I'll probably find them next week, now I have replacements from GF, who forgot to put one of the boxes of envelopes I ordered in the van *sigh*
To top off my day, just as I was putting my coat on at 16:50 so I could leave to get my bus, someone rang the doorbell. The one that has a notice beside it that essentially says 'only ring this if you need assistance with the door'. The dumbarse didn't even try to open the door, just stood there like a flaming moron. So he came in and said he was looking for a member of staff (who isn't normally around here and so doesn't have a permanant desk - plus most of the folks in the office across the road go home at around 1600-1630, lucky sods) I'd seen wandering around this building. But where as she now? Goodness only knew. I ran hither and yon, trying to find her with no success. Just as I was about to lose all patience, she walked out of a corridor and I had to call her to tell her this guy was here to see her. Gahhhhh.
The only good thing about Thursday was the raid in the evening - I got Rah her shoulders!
And now we have Friday, and TFI Friday indeed!
Second verse, the same as the first today, the only difference being I actually got away for lunch - genuine quiet time with just me, my sandwich, and my kanji workbook. And, more importantly, no ringing phones.
But the phonecalls don't stop the rest of the time, and there's hassle with room bookings, oh, and then there was the problem with the laptop this morning. Really, do I look like tech support? Am I paid to be tech support? Let's have a resounding "NO!" on both counts.
So I really can't wait to get home and have a nice quiet weekend. I'll probably have to wash the car(s) on Saturday. I put more water (with a special tablet dissolved in it) into my wishy-washy tank yesterday after I got home, and the underside of the bonnet was rather mucky. And Mum has bought some new polish stuff, so I'll be using that too, as well as the rain/fog-away on the windscreen and probably a hoover of the mats too, and a new air-freshener. A sort of autumn-clean for the car. On Sunday, Mum wants to go into Aberdeen for some reason. She wanted to go in on Thursday evening, but I scowled at the mention of that, so she changed her mind. Even if I didn't have a raid on, I would have grumbled anyway - I hate being out for son long, then finally getting home and only having about an hour and a half before I need to think about getting washed, dried and off to bed.
I think all the annoyances this week have been capped off by the fact I'm experiencing a rather nasty breakout of pizzaface right now. They're sore, ugly and I really wish they'd go away - I'm just reaching the end of my tether with this. Nothing I have put on my face seems to work. I think I'll just have to book an appointment at the health centre, see if that dermatologist still goes round now and then, and see what I can take/put on that can stop this. I'm nearly 26, for goodness sake! I should not still be suffering from acne! |
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| Hi ho, ho hum |
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| 10:02am 02/09/2008 |
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Back to the usual dose of tedium.
After installing so many addons on Thursday evening, I was still finding ones I was missing or needed to find alternatives for on Friday and Saturday. Still, playing WoW with a decent machine was brilliant.
On Saturday I ended up joining a sort of PUG/guild alliance raid to Karazhan in the evening. It was unexpectedly great - and by than I mean 'zooooooooom!'. We cleared the whole place with only a couple of wipes in 3 hours and 40 minutes. I even got a new off-hand from Moroes and the healing mace from Prince out of it - no tier tokens though, worse luck.
Paul and Alex got the flights for Japan booked on Sunday. They're with Virgin, cost £500-odd, and are direct from London Heathrow to Narita, departing at 1300 on the 21st of March, returning on the 13th. This means we can get a flight with BMI from Aberdeen to London the morning of the main flight, rather than the night before. I'll just have to stay at the guy's flat, then we make our way to the airport from there.
Well, that'll be something to sort out later. At least the flights from ABZ to LHR are easy to sort out. Harder will be the accommodation when we're actually over there. For now I'm concentrating on the commiunications side of things. I started reading the kanji workbook I got from Amazon yesterday so that should go OK.
And speaking of yesterday, it was my first day back. A lot had changed in the reception area - things moved out like the filing cabinet and the paper, new plants, stuff taken off the walls...
It sounds like they missed me a bit, and they're finally looking into some kind of proper cover for lunch-times and also for when I am not here. Heh. Right now there's a guy here who was supposed to be on a work placement at the Wood group with TfW, but it fell through, so he's been covering the reception since last week and this week until tomorrow I think.
My inbox had about 70-odd e-mails in it, mostly reports about the server and stuff about GAGS - the fitness thing that Foyer Health is running all September. I'm in the Wildcats team, apparently. I'm planning to walk for 30 mins during my lunch times, another 30 mins when I get home and then another 30 mins of pilates in the evening. On Monday I managed the first two, though not the last one -_- I don't think I'm going to have a very good week at my weigh-in again, though I haven't been especially bad. It's a bit disappointing, but all I can do it work harder with the exercise I guess.
The buses were a pain yesterday. Apparently it was really bad last week, since the universities started up again. Full buses were going right past the Park & Ride and wasps were a problem too. On Monday, Stagecoach had just put new ticket machines into their buses, supposedly with the new fares from two months ago in their system. They didn't have the Ellon P&R fares at all! I ended up getting an emergency ticket for the week *sigh* Idiots.
Today looks to be a pretty quiet day. it's sunny outside but it was only 5 degrees when I was waiting for the bus. I'm going to be doing karate for this GAGS this at 1pm. Beginners are welcome, apparently. Good thing too, I don't imagine many people going would have done karate before. I have, but it was years ago and the most I remember is how to make a fist -_- |
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| 11:52pm 27/08/2008 |
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music: Maze Megaburst Space - Junk Boy [ED Theme]
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Had an interesting few days.
My new PC did not arrive on Saturday - I hoped it would but never really expected it to. On Monday, however, we got a call in the morning from an international caller, according to the ID. It turned out to be the delivery company, Welsh Western, calling - or their automated service anyway - asking me to select a delivery time. I grabbed the phone as I heard that bit and made sure I picked a morning delivery. It said I could expect it between 8am and 1pm on Thursday. Woohooo! A quick look at the website confirmed it.
I had to go out on Monday afternoon to get Mum a card and a small box of chocolates for her birthday - she got the figurine months ago, so I had to pony up something, if only so I wouldn't look bad when CJ's flowers arrived. He called before I left for Ellon, asking what the number was for the flower shop near Somerfield.
Mum's birthday was on Tuesday. In the end she decided we'd go to Jimmy Chung's at the Beach for lunch - I was reasonably good and didn't get any of the fried and pastry-covered starters, took more veggies than I usually do and only got a little squirt of ice-cream. It was lovely, but I sure paid for it at today's weigh-in!
After we finished our lunch, we went to park in the Bon Accord centre, then headed straight for Next so Mum could return one of the dresses that had arrived on Monday. She got two of the same dress in different sizes, just in case, to wear at Graham's wedding. In the end she had to go for the larger size, ooops. Once that was back, we went to Marks & Spencers for a look around - they had a sale on so there was a lot of crappy stuff out. After she had a much-needed cup of coffee upstairs, I convinced her to venture out across the road to have a look in Lush. I wanted some stuff for my hair, which Mum declared when one of the sales girls asked if she could help up. Way to make me look retarded, Mum. She got a couple of tubs of fresh face mask stuff, and I ended up getting a couple of 'bars' of solid soap that came with a free tin to keep one in, as well as a tub of pre-wash hair moisturiser that will hopefully make my hair less frizzy, and a smelly thing to put in the bottom of the shower so my good would come up to £20 and make me eligible for a free item - a small tub of a light moisturiser called vanishing cream. We didn't get much else in town, though Mum got a nice glass bowl and a couple of candles, plus a new cardigan from Markies.
Besides that it was a weird visit to Aberdeen - we kept running into people we knew. Eileen and her daughter on the way out of John Lewis, Bernard and Carol Martin on the way to the cafe in Markies and Zoe Patterson when we got in there and got a table.
We got home at about 5pm and I had to get changed and go out for a walk as soon as possible, so it wouldn't be too dim when I was on the last bit of my walk - I didn't have time to look for my fluorescent bands. My iPod decided it hadn't had enough time to charge and kept cutting out and having to be reset, so it took me a little longer than I had hoped, but hey, it's still the same distance and exercise done, right?
I was up until about 5am, watching episodes of Maze on YouTube. I made it from episode 7 in the evening to episode 23...then I realised it was about 5am -_- It's an...interesting series, of the same vintage as Slayers. I wasn't surprised to find out that it came from the same creator as the Saber Marionette series', and also Sorcerer Hunters - ahh, those classics of the mid-to-late 90s! Other than the sneak-peek on that Slayers DVD, I don't think I've heard of Maze anywhere else...though I can certainly understand why. The central romance is, um...unconventional, shall we say. Normally I wouldn't touch such a thing with a 10-foot barge pole (Angel Sanctuary, stay away!) but Maze's particular situation made it intriguing enough to hook me. Nothing to do with the voice artists in the series at all, nuh uh (Sousuke and Kurz FTW!!). And I adore the first ED theme, Junk Boy, to bits!
I had to wait until lunch-time to watch the remaining two episodes - first a walk and then off to the weigh-in. I decided to stick around for the talk as well, but...meh, it's a long time to wait. I'd glad it's just a quick thing in Aberdeen. I only lost 2lb, thanks for Jimmy Chung's yesterday. I have a lot of catching up to do now, but since I'll spend basically most of September exercising, I don't think that will be too much of a problem.
Walsh Western left another message this afternoon, confirming again that I'd receive my PC tomorrow morning. I can't wait, but I'm nervous about trying to turn my old PC on to get some info off it. Paul fed me a horror-story about how Dell can tell if you've opened up the side of your machine because of some sort of BIOS switch...what, you can't even open the sides to make sure it isn't dusty in there? Pah! I don't care, I'm going in there anyway. I swear I'll get that hard drive in by hook or by crook! |
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| 11:50pm 25/08/2008 |
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Oh god. My brain is breaking here.
I was watching my Slayers DVDs today, and while I was doing some cleaning and I couldn't bne arsed to change the DVD yet, I put on the sneak peaks option after the episodes finished. It was for some old anime I've read about before called Maze, where there's this girl that changes into a lecherous guy. OK, I'll bite...
So I'm watching some episodes on YouTube (all praise be to teh Tooooob!) and...lecherous!Male!Maze is voiced by Tomokazu Seki...who also voices Sagara Sousuke in Full Metal Panic, another anime I'm going though a resurge of interest in after reading the novels this past week. So we have a lecherous male with Sousuke's voice and...oh god, my brain just can't process it +_+ |
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| 10:04am 22/08/2008 |
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Had a good walk yesterday morning. Another 55-minute thing. I'm still rather chuffed with that time - amazing the difference a stone can make! I wonder how fast I will be able to do that route when a lose some more weight...
Mum and I discussed my little problem with my hanger rail in my wardrobe bending again. I mentioned that I seemed to have a lot of stuff on my shelves and she suggested I clear off some of the shelves in Christopher's cupboard, since he isn't using it at all, and put some stuff in there. A sterling idea! I started immediately and eventually got all my media (DVDs, CDs, computer stuff) shifted onto one shelf, and my manga and paperbacks onto the other. My hardbacks books got shifted onto a smaller shelf in my wardrobe and now I have my PJs, dressing-gowns and clothes-I-need-to-fit-into on the top shelf. Sure, it looks a little messy, or maybe I'm just not used to having anything but random stuff up there.
Mum left to go see Margaret at 1200 - I took the opportunity to watch the rest of the Farscape DVD I had bee watching before Mum demanded I return the TV to the big bedroom ¬_¬ I also used that nasty face thing from Lush again - gawd, it's like someone ate a lot of garlic and pukes on my face. Truly nasty, but as long as it works...I just wish it didn't stink. I can still smell it in the bathroom and I had to spray perfume on my face so I wouldn't smell it as I moved.
I basically tidied my room for the rest of the day, killing time before going round to the guys' flat in Dyce - Tim had managed to get his internet working again, so he invited me round so I could use Paul's PC to go to the Gruul/Mags raid in the evening. I went off early, at about 1640, because the rain had gone from spitting when I was out walking that morning to a torrential downpour. Gawd, I think I hydroplaned all the way to Dyce!
The raid started an hour later than I expected, but that gave me time to go around my alts and make sure nothing would be lost from their mailboxes in the time I won't be able to log on. I ended up raiding with my priest, Rah, as a healer. I had to download and install a couple of addons to make the set-up bearable, as well as Ventrilo, but I got something working in the end and I think I did OK healing - didn't die early in the encounters this time either. I missed out on getting the shoulders off Maulgar because a druid had bidded the same dkp, and I lost the roll to settle it. Damn! I got the Eye of Gruul item though, which made me happier...a little. Then we moved on to Mags and got him down third time lucky. And even more lucky, the chest token for priests dropped - again it came down to myself and the same druid bidding the same dkp, but she withdrew because she had won the shoulders before. So I now have the T4 robe! Woohooo!!! I never ever thought I would get that for my priest - T2 and T4 are my favourite-looking priest tiers in the same right now, and I'm more than thrilled to get that robe. I just really want the shoulders now, though of course I'd like to get the gloves, head and matching belt from Kara.
The raid finished at 2200 and I keft for home at 2230, and made myself some scrambled eggs on a slice of toast for dinner when I got in. At ,least it wasn't raining when I drove home, a definite relief.
This morning I woke up with a nasty headache, so I haven't gone out for a walk yet - my walking things are in the wash anyway, so I'll probably go out in the afternoon. I can't afford to skip exercise now. I had some joy in the mail though - last Friday the books I had ordered from Amazon arrived at the same time - the two Full Metal Panic novels (2 & 3) and the Japanese textbooks. The first FMP novel arrived from the Amazon auction seller on...hmmm...Wednesday I believe, and the Kino's Journey novel arrived this morning. Shame it's the only one that TokyoPop are going to translate. I dunno, maybe one day I'll know enough Japanese to read the others.
I also got the confirmation of my order from Dell today. According to the website, my PC is in the pre-construction phase, and I might have to wait until the 1st of September for my PC to arrive, which sucks - that's the Monday I go back to work! T_T |
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| End of the Line |
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| 07:15am 21/08/2008 |
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Thursday was not a happy day. I had the extra stuff to do at the Foyer, plus no time away for my lunch. On the way home the bus was late even turning up at the bus station and I had a parade of idiots to deal with on the road, and of course before I even got to that point, Mum wanted me to get some shopping and I just wanted to get home in time to go to the Gruul/Mags raid on Wow.
I had given up on attending that and was having tea in the dining room with everyone when the phone rang and I just knew it would be Tim, asking if I was still going to that raid. It turned out they really wanted Rah to attend and were still waiting on other people, so I rushed the rest of my tea (greek chicken and salad) and then upstairs to get my computer switched on. Turned out they didn't want Rah as a shadow priest-mana battery, but as a healer, so I had to go and respec before we could get going. At least it actually all turned out OK in the end. I kep dying during the first boss encounter in Gruul's Lair, but we beat Maulgar and then Gruul - Rah got her T4 trousers! Well, I just wish they were visible, but it's better than no T4 at all. Here#s hoping for the shoulders next. We also got Mags down after a couple of attempts - I didn't do well at clicking the cubes, but did much better on the heal meters when I was free to run around slapping renews and flash heals on everything in sight. Tim actually got a T4 chest token for his warlock - he now has all 5 pieces, so I guess that made for a good day-late birthday present for him.
Friday was a busy day for me - I had some room booking stuff to deal with, plus the last stuff to do for my portfolio - I had spent some time after the raid the previous night to work on a little logo to put on the cover. It's a sort of celtic knot made to look like my initials twisted round each other. I was reasonably pleased with it, though I wish I could have made it in a higher resolution. But I got some nice covers made up using it an went through the rest of the portfolio, getting signatures and going over pencil in pen and so on. It took a while and I almost didn't mind not getting away for lunch because then I could work on it longer. I had to call Rhoda to get her to come and pick it up though. But it's out of my hands now. I hope to goodness it passes!
But Friday is now over and I am free!
I have been trying to get out walking as much as possible, but I didn't go on Saturday morning. I had to get up early-ish to catch the Park & Ride to get into Aberdeen for my passport interview at 1015. I got into Aberdeen far too early so I had to wander around a bit. I saw a nice top in Next before I decided it was time to start wandering towards Reagent Road to find the passport office. It took a little while and I got a bit confused when I went down Commercial Quay and didn't see the raod on the right...then I saw a building with 'Reagent Centre' on it to the left, so that had to be it. I was glad to get inside out of the nasty fish stink.
I was 30 mins early, but I got to go in early because someone who was due at that time hadn't turned up yet and there were two interviewers anyway. The interview itself seemed to mostly consist of verifying information about my application form. Easy enough, really. I was told that I should have my passport within 5-7 days. w00t!
Next I decided to do a little shopping. Fist I popped into Lush to peer at the henna stuff and ended up talking to the sales guy in there about it. He actually gave me a free cube of the stuff to test on a bit of hair. I also got a face thing that should help with my breakouts a bit...I hope! I'm so sick of them now.
I then went on into the Bon Accord centre to look in Monsoon and Accessorize, then get some thing to make my Monthly Misery, which hit on Friday, a little less miserable, and some batteries for my mouse. Then I got some nice beads in John Lewis before rushing off to Next to get that nice top before catching the bus. I had planned to go down to the bus station, but as I was waiting at the crossroads, I saw a 260 bus coming up Market Street and turning to corner, so I ran to catch that instead - I had intended to get that one before changing my mind about going to John Lewis for beads. All's well that ends well!
Mum called me while I was on the bus, asking if I was still in Aberdeen - she and Chris intended to go in. I'm glad I had an excuse not to wait around there, as there was nothing else I wanted to do in Aberdeen to kill that much time. They left about 30 mins after I got home, in fact, so I would have been waiting for them for ages.
It wasn't until Monday that I actually tried out the henna marron cube on some of my hair - I took a chunk from the younger hand of hair I had cut off and kept in a box. Mum and Chris were out showing off the Sproglet to Margaret, so I got it done quickly. I don't know if it was all the other stuff Lush put in that henna stuff, but it smelt really nice. I got the hair all clarted in the greenish mud that resulted, wrapped it in clingfilm and the bag the cube came in and put it in the airing cupboard. I washed it out a few hours later and it had indeed gone a lovely shade of red, albeit a lighter shade than I had been hoping for. It did not eet with parental approval - Mum seems to have a very unreasonable thing against red hair, and Chris mocked it outright. Rich words from him, considering the colour of his poor excuse for a beard!
Tuesday was not a good day. I was trying to help out a guildmate in WoW, swapping from my mage to my priest to heal in heroic Magister's Terrace, when my computer beeped and froze. When I reset it, it said that the boot disk had failed. Shit! Of course, no sympathy was in the offing downstairs when I clattered down to use a laptop to look this ominous warning up. Seems that the drive was on its way to silicon heaven, and I would need a new hard drive *sigh* Thankfully, I managed to get it to work again once and got my stuff transferred tp my data hard drive before turning my computer off. Good thing too, because when I tried to turn it on again, it didn't work. and when I tried it on Wednesday morning, it flashed another error at me about the CPU failing or having been changed. Awwhell. In the end I decided I was sick of replacing the worn parts of that machine, bit my bit, and started looking on PC World for a new PC. I had planned to go out into Aberdeen to Halfords to get new tubes and tyres for my bike and then to PC World to see about a new PC once I had gone to Weight Watchers in Ellon. That wasn't a good visit either, one 1/2 a pound lost, which sucks.
After some more research when I got home, Mum asked if I had looked at the dell website. What I found there was a much better choice than what I had been looking at on the PC World website. Most of the specs were the same, but it had a graphics card that frankly blew the one in the PC World system far, far away. Plus, since it was Dell, I could add other things to it. Sure it turned out more expensive, but I think Dells are good machine and provide a good service. I got the RAM upgraded from 3 to 4Gb, got a Logitech MX Revolution mouse (rechargable like Mum's) and a Belkin wireless card added to it. I called up the sales number to ask about how long it would be likely to take to be put together and delivered, and ended up buying it over the phone. I would rather have ordered it online, but whatever. It's ordered now, and I was told it should be done within 7 working days. *sigh* That's a long time to be without a PC of my own. Sure I had use Mum's laptop, as I'm doing now, but it doesn't have any of my own stuff on it, and I like having my own thing around. Plus working on laptops is a pain in the rear - always takes me a while to get used to the keyboard and I hate touch-pads.
I spent the afternoon tidying my room (yes, I do that a lot, I know) and playing on the PS2 - I'm so glad I got that now! Tim called at about...1645, to asking about going to the cinema. I turned the laptop on and found there was a screening of Hellboy 2 at 1800, so we decided to aim for that, with Wall-E at 1810 as a backup. I ended up going passed the remains of a car crash on the way to Aberdeen, just before the entrance for the landfill site. Yikes.
The film was excellent - I liked the first one, because it had a sense of humour and the sequel was no different in that respect. I got petrol for the car on the way home and managed to reset the fuel average meter so I had get a better idea of how I'm doing now I have the climate control turned off. Pasta with salmon for tea, then a toffee yogurt I had bought at the Co-Op on the way home after the weigh-in. I wasn't impressed with it - I guess I should have remembered what toffee yogurt tends to taste like - gross! I played some more Final Fantasy X, but got sleepy after wading through the Blitzball tutorial and got the laptop turned on to do a bit of reading and watch some King of Bandit Jing, but I kept falling asleep while watching that too. Definitely time for bed!
So now we have Thursday morning, I'm just killing some time, waiting for my iPod to charge a bit before heading out for my walk. Mum also wants waking up - I guess she's going to see Margaret again today or something. Time for breakfast!| |
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