I'm at my dad's until Sunday, and we went out today to see two films, because we felt like it. Both of them seem to have been quite poorly received by the critics, at least where I live, but I don't really trust critics anyway. So, here's what we went to see.



( Spoilers abound! And pictures. )

My dad came today with his presents for us, and my new laptop which actually works, thank heavens, and has a three year warranty which is awesome. It's been behaving the whole time dad had it, and it's behaving now. I called it Gilbert.

Now, on to daddygifts!

• Family Guy season 7, 8 & 9
• With the Light volumes 6 & 7
• Leather bound A5 notebook
• Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea
• Korean Gayageum Music by Byungki Hwang (CD)

=w= And that's my Christmas done. We got my dad a blue Star Trek dressing gown between us, which he seemed very pleased with, and I got him an Isaac Asimov book while Amy went the silly route and got him a 'grow your own festive sprouts' kit. xD

We went to my auntie Jo's where we had our usual Boxing Day buffet, I listened to my grandad rattle on about the proposed guided bus route for the millionth time and my nanna and I had a conversation about babies, and the having of them, and she was wonderfully supportive of my lack of a wish to have any, which was really nice. I did hold my cousin Lara for a while, because she is admittedly very cute and such a good baby, but to be honest I was more interested in tormenting my sixteen year old cousin Alex who I've always got along very well with (and playing with the cat). He's looking more and more like my uncle Ian all the time and he's finally taller than I am. Took him long enough :B

The fact that my 'leave a comment' link is now cut in half is bugging me. Does anyone with any HTML knowledge want to check through my layout code and see if there's any way to fix it? :T I've looked myself but my HTML know-how is very limited and I have absolutely no clue what I'm looking at.

The faulty laptop that I've spent the past week trying to return has now gone. The courier came for it yesterday, and I would have posted about it then but for some reason that I don't understand I was up all night and too tired to put together my thoughts to type up an entry. I have a receipt, but hopefully that's the end of it and I can get my refund then give dad the money I owe HIM for getting me a laptop that actually works. I'd love to know what happened to that one that it managed to break like that. I have the feeling it might have been roughed up a bit in the van when it was being delivered.

On Monday, I went to Bolton with mum and Amy to see a play, and managed to fall over within two minutes of getting out of the car. The most awful part wasn't the hitting the ground, or the entire right side of my jeans being soaked with ice-cold water, or my sore hip, it was feeling my foot go out from under me and knowing I was going to fall. I hate that feeling. I suppose I was lucky, I could have smacked my head off the floor or broken a bone, but as it was I was just wet and cold and embarrassed. I'm thinking though that I might have fallen a bit harder than I first thought, since my shoulder has been aching since yesterday and the side of my hand keeps twinging. I can still bend my fingers so it's probably not serious, but still. Muh.

I hate falling over.

Mum, John and Amy went to see the new Sherlock film last night. I didn't, because I'm not really that interested, and they didn't seem very taken with it. Amy was getting bored before it finished. I've not really been that impressed with any modern adaptations of Sherlock Holmes though, so I'm not really surprised.

I got a nice surprise in the mail yesterday, too! A letter from ishilde, which I have duly written a reply to and I will be sending that off as soon as I can find a stamp. Hopefully the Xmas post won't slow it up too much :T I love getting letters. I also have my Xmas present from iiluov, which is a long-since retired TY Beanie Baby that I had as a kid and managed to lose somehow, probably in one of my mum's clear-outs. It might be silly for a 23 year old to miss a toy but I don't care :T

I'm staying in my room today. My stomach hasn't been quite right since last night and I still feel a bit icky. Bluh.

Okay, so. It's not tomorrow. It's Wednesday. I got tired. On Saturday I was supposed to be going out with my dad today but I didn't, because he had teh sick, so he couldn't really make the three hour drive up here. I'm not going to complain about it, because it's not really something that he could help. When I woke up at 11.30 and there wasn't someone yelling in my ear to get up because dad was here and waiting for me I was very confused.

I finally took a photo of my new shoes. I've got some mixed reactions towards them and some that I didn't really expect (I thought that my mother would hate them but she surprised me). Generally it's all been good, though. I'm not usually one for wearing shoes with heels but I couldn't resist those ones, they were just too comfortable. I wasn't going to buy them, because psh, I'm not the kind of person who will spend £18 on a pair of shoes unless my other pair are beginning to fall apart, but Amy told me that I ought to and then I whined that she should get them for me, and she agreed to, on the condition that I wear them. I haven't managed to yet, but I will do 8|

I've been trying to take a more positive outlook on my life lately. I've always been the kind of person who is resistant to change, mostly because I find it uncomfortable. I dislike uncertainty, but I figure that the only thing that's ever going to be certain in my life is uncertainty, and as soon as I get over that everything will be fine. It's just kind of hard, 'cause god knows I don't know where I'm going with my life right now but I don't want to look back in five years and kick myself because I didn't try hard enough at a time that it would have mattered the most. I'm comfortable where I am, sure, but that doesn't mean I still want to be here when I'm nearing thirty. This, of course, means applying for jobs, which is an effort for me in itself. Job application forms have always intimidated me because I'm usually staring at them with no idea of what to put in half the sections, but god knows I can't keep getting money off my dad forever.

Bluh.

Anyway. I also bought a new phone. I've been on contract since I was eighteen, but I no longer use my phone enough to justify actually having a contract, so I moved onto PAYG, and for £10 a month I'm getting 300 UK texts, 500MB UK internet and the £10 credit. Works out fine for me, I doubt I'll even reach the limit on the texts. The internet, maybe, since I have a widget running in the background that's tracking my facebook and twitter feeds, but I'm keeping an eye on it. I got the Samsung Wave 525, and I'm putting a picture of it.. because I can. :D I'm using this picture as my background, because it's PrUK, and it's gorgeous, and it fits well on my screen around all my widgets.

I'll be going to the dentist on Friday, and it's been a long time coming, really. I haven't been in over two years and I really thought they would have struck me off by now, but if they try to tell me I need my wisdom teeth removing I'm going to have a few words to say =| My wisdom teeth are fine, even if one of them gives me a painful ulcer every few months. It's set at a funny angle but I just drown the bastard in Bonjela until it goes away.

My hair was cut today, a bit shorter than it's been before. I have this kind of Motoko Kusanagi thing going on, the episode where that guy is fantasising about her and her hair is straight.

I was linked to something interesting today by chiisana00. Apparently someone has been posting fanfics on tumblr without crediting the authors (not claiming them as theirs, just posting them with no credit). One of them is mine - you can see the post here and at the moment I'm not sure whether or not to be outraged. On the one hand, it's my fic and I probably should be getting credit, but on the other, they're not claiming it as their so I'm not really sure I care enough to kick up a huge fuss. Maybe I'm just a little jaded as far as things like that are concerned.

Though speaking of fics now that my brain has recovered I'll start working on my alphabet prompts shortly. I probably won't do them all in order, and some will take longer because they're pairings I haven't done before.

I don't tend to miss people, unless there's no chance that I can get in touch with them. Sometimes I miss my dad. Right now, my mum and sister are away in Majorca and while I don't particularly miss my sister (sorry Amy =P) I have realised today that I do miss my mum. I didn't get to say a proper goodbye to her since I was stuck in the bathroom with a stomach ache and I'm currently wearing her dressing gown because it smells like her. As nice as it has been to have the option to just.. sleep when I want to.. because John doesn't bug me about when I'm asleep.. I still miss my mum.

I've started shipping Mexico/Canada. What is this.

Oh, and a meme. Stolen, naturally.

Alphabet Prompt Meme.

Basically just give me a prompt starting with any letter of the alphabet and I'll write you a drabble about it. You can pick a pairing if you like, but I will reserve my right to refuse it. Please no nyotalia.

Fandoms: Axis Powers: Hetalia, Pandora Hearts, Ghost in the Shell, Fushigi Yuugi, Homestuck, Assassin's Creed (1, 2 & Brotherhood), Fable (1 - 3), The Lord of the Rings, The Vampire Chronicles.

A - Art [Mexico/Canada] (mamamia12347)
B - Bewitch [Spain/US/UK] (anisaex)
C - College [US/UK] (mamamia12347)
D - Dance [France/Canada] (medev)
E - Extortion [Spain/UK] (anisaex)
F - Fluff [Sweden/Norway] (chiisana00)
G - Gardening [France/Spain] (berwaldox)
H - "Hello" - Martin Solveig [France/Canada] (mamamia12347)
I - 'I want to tell you something' [Sweden/Norway] (chiisana00)
J -
K - Kiss [Sweden/Norway] (chiisana00)
L - Lights [Denmark/Norway] (mamamia12347)
M - Music [US/UK] (mamamia12347)
N -
O -
P - Poison [Spain/UK] (anisaex)
Q -
R - Ring [Denmark/Norway] (anisaex)
S - Staring [Sweden/Norway] (chiisana00)
T - Tears [US/UK] (medev)
U - 'Us against the world' [US/UK] (anisaex)
V - Voice [US/UK] (medev)
W - Waterpark [Prussia/UK] (berwaldox)
X -
Y -
Z - Zookeepers [US/UK] (nasty_show)

Pick as many letters/words/prompts as you want. There are no limits (within reason, please). I know I have a bad history of not actually finishing these things but I am really going to try this time xD

We went into London yesterday, though I didn't sleep terribly well because of Amy's blasted coughing. We've managed to make a joke out of it though and that somehow makes it easier to deal with. I'm not feeling half as twitchy today as I was yesterday, but Amy isn't coughing as badly either so maybe that has something to do with it.

Anyway. We went into London to see Les Misérables, and the underground was hot as always. Bleugh. I don't think that I could live in London. Taking that kind of journey every day would just wear me down. There's something so depressing about the underground - everyone is in their own little personal bubble and no one talks to anyone. Me, I like to talk. I'll talk to anyone. It's probably not that much of a good thing but it hasn't got me into any trouble so far. Coming out of the underground I saw someone playing bagpipes, and then Amy and I watched a man put himself through a tennis raquet.

We had McDonald's for lunch because pfh, convenience, but there was nowhere to sit inside because LONDON so we ended up eating our lunch in a churchyard. Along with about forty people who'd had the same idea. Amy managed to drop pretty much her entire Chicken Supreme (I think) off her lap and onto the floor, and then insisted that she wasn't hungry and I was pretty sure we were gonna have a grumpy sulk on our hands after that but nope, colour me surprised. We went down to the theatre after and waited a little until it opened, then went in and sat down. I've only ever been in a couple of theatres in London but I've been consistently surprised by how small they are. Once sat down I was immediately struck by a feeling of dread as not one but THREE young children were seated around me. One in front and two behind. I may not have expressed my dislike for children on this journal before but I really dislike children, especially when said children are in a place where they will be required to be quiet and also somewhere where something will be happening that they likely won't understand.

For anyone who's seen Les Misérables, would you honestly take a five year old to see it? She had barely any hope of understanding the romantic plot let alone the historical context and why everyone kept violently dying. Not to mention the sexual innuendo and dirty jokes. I managed not to get too wound up about it though 'cause to the kid's credit she was very well behaved, she didn't talk during the quiet parts but would every now and then pipe up asking 'who's that?' or 'what's s/he doing?' usually after a time skip or abrupt scene change. Had it been a pantomime I would have been more annoyed at the talking - not that she did much of it, it was more that the pitch of her voice was high enough that when she talked you could hear her, and five year olds have no concept of whispering.

As for the show itself, I loved it. I have to say Javert was my favourite character, and I nearly cried several times during the performance. I'm not big on crying so to get me to the point of welling up says something about how well it was performed. The last time a musical nearly got me going was when I went to see Blood Brothers, which I will highly recommend if you haven't seen it.

Today, we went out to meet one of dad's friends from work for lunch. I've met her before but Amy hasn't, and I dare not say exactly why it was so important that Amy meet her for fear of inciting my father's wrath becausehelikesher (teehee). It didn't exactly go according to plan since the place we were supposed to go was packed and then the backup place had no parking so we ended up going back near to where we picked her up and just having a sandwich, which I can't say I really minded even though dad kept apologising. It's not as if I'm a fussy kind of person. After that we went into town because Amy wanted to shop, though I ended up buying more than her. I found the 15th trade edition of Fables, a comic that I read in Waterstones, and also, in HMV, dad found the first season of Hetalia for £10 and got it for me. I hadn't expected to find Hetalia DVDs anywhere but online so that was a very pleasant surprise.

I also bought a new game. After spending 162 hours completing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion I needed a new game to play, and I'm not really in the mood to get back into Assassin's Creed or Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas just yet, so when we were in Game I noticed an interesting looking cover in the pre-owned section, which was this.

Madness Returns takes place directly after the events of its predecessor. Alice was released from Rutledge Asylum for the Wayward and Lost Souls at the end of the original game, and now lives in Victorian London under the care of a psychiatrist, where the traumatic memories of her parents' deaths in a fire continue to haunt her. Although she seemed stable for a decade, she now begins to experience previously repressed memories that indicate that the fire which claimed her parents' lives (which in the original game was seen to have been caused by a cat knocking over an oil lamp near the fireplace) may not have been as accidental as she remembered; these memories will take the form of retcons to the existing backstory. However, the stress caused by regaining these lost memories has caused her hallucinations and internal struggle to increase in severity, and she returns to Wonderland in hopes of security and comfort. Unfortunately, it has once again become warped by her growing insanity, and she must save its residents—and herself—from the evil that is taking over Wonderland and also embarks on finding the true cause of her family's mysterious deaths if she wishes to retain her precious sanity.

I have admittedly not played the first one, and the only thing I know about it is that it's a PC game and it's available for 800 MS points on Xbox LIVE. I'll probably just read the plot and see what I can make of it 'cause I don't really want to spend 800 MS points on a game that I don't need. I'm sure that if it's good I'll be keeping everyone updated on what I think as I'm playing it. When I bought it the girl behind the till told me that she hadn't played it but she'd heard good things. I then told her I'd just spent forever playing Oblivion and she told me that Skyrim was coming out soon. Apparently it costs nothing to reserve a copy, so maybe I'll do that when I get home.

Speaking of home, we'll be going back there on Saturday, so we have tonight and tomorrow night left here. Tomorrow, we're going to go to a pie shop for dinner. It's next to a barber's. The name of the shop is 'Sweeney & Todd'.

>=D

This entry has no tags because I'm now in the process of re-working all the tags in my journal. Apologies for any trouble this gives people until I'm done, but going through over two years of entries is going to take me a while.

I would say that seeing the Red Arrows was totally worth this sunburn, but it isn't.

It's been three days and my forehead feels like it's on fire constantly. The rest the burnt spots are fine, if a tiny bit itchy, but my forehead.. it's like someone took a red-hot poker to it and it doesn't even look that bad. I have some aloe, but it's really only temporary relief (temporary, read: two seconds) and really it's just making me want to sleep all the time so I don't have to deal with it. I slept for ten hours last night and fourteen the night before, and for someone who normally sleeps eight hours a night that's a hell of a lot.

I don't care what my mum says, sunburn (no matter how 'healthy' looking it is - I don't think she realises what actually causes sunburn and tanning) is never a good look on anyone and unlike a lot of people my age I hate having a tan. Something about my skin being darker than my hair is incredibly unappealing to me. berwaldox put me on to her game, though. She's trying to make me go outside more often by saying I don't look that bad. I'm on to her now. 8|

What's annoying me more about it is that it's caused me to miss two usxuk  prompts that I was really looking forward to doing. I'll probably end up writing them anyway and posting them outside of the event, because I had ideas for both that I want to use. Yet more things to add to the list of fics that I have yet to finish.

The fish are still alive. Barney is back to his usual self though his tail is still a bit red-streaked. He's curious as ever and coming to the front of the tank when people are in the room. It was sad to see him get so shy and quiet when he was sick - he kept hiding and wouldn't come out at all. Robin is still very much tail-less, but I didn't expect that to change any time soon. Still not moving around that much, but that's not really surprising, it must be quite exhausting.

It's my mum's birthday today and she wants to go out for dinner. Me, I'm feeling utterly miserable and in constant pain/discomfort across my forehead. Mum says take a painkiller, which don't work on me. Amy says put make-up on, which is just a ridiculous suggestion. Who puts make-up on a burn? Silly girl.

Bluh.

Because that's how I'm getting right at this moment. I just had to leave my Fallout 3 game and escape downstairs because even with the window open my room is still managing to reach a stifling 30.5 degrees Celsius. I suppose it's just as well I've started waking up earlier because if I hadn't I'd be waking up to that. I wish we had AC. A fan just doesn't do the trick in this kind of weather.

My sister had a bunch of friends over last night, and they got rather drunk. As for myself I went to sleep around midnight with a stomach ache and didn't really hear any of what went on. It's just as well I suppose since I'm told that my sister managed to get herself quite upset while she was drunk (over the ex-bf, again) and no doubt if I'd been awake someone would have come to get me.

The fish are still being quiet but they ate this morning, they're just sitting at the bottom of the tank right now and moving occasionally. Barney isn't chasing Robin around anymore but they seem to be sticking pretty close together so hopefully they've made up. I don't think either of them are schooling fish and I would probably be a little more concerned about their lack of activity if their dorsal fins weren't sticking up. They don't seem to be having any trouble with breathing either. I know I seem like I'm fretting but I've grown very attached to the little guys.

It's pretty quiet here right now. Ben is.. somewhere, Amy is zonked out on the sofa, and I'm sat in the dining room with the patio door open and trying not to fall asleep. If there's one thing that heat does it makes you tired.

Bluh. I can't wait for winter.

EDIT: Also, this is my new fish.

So it's been a little while since I posted a personal update, and I'm going to do one now. I'm starting this at 10:30 in the morning and I have no idea how long it's going to take me, because these entries always seem to take me forever.

I just checked, and it's been exactly two weeks since my last personal entry, so I can take it from there. I was stuck with the crippling pain for the rest of that day and the day after, (oh look, it's half past twelve. I got distracted) and as usual it affected my eating and sleeping habits, though far worse than it normally does. I've decided that if it's as bad next time I'm going to take it to the doctors because I can't keep being totally out of action for two or three days out of every month. I'll probably end up being put on some contraceptive pill or something, but I don't even care anymore.

As usual, I half killed myself getting all my assignments done on time. I don't know why I just don't keep to the resolution that I make every year (it's now 3:30, I got distracted again) and actually do my work in good time. I suppose I just manage better under pressure. Not that I'm terribly sure about the quality of this semester's assignments, but whatever, I got them in and that's all that matters. =_=

I've still been playing on Gaia, though not quite as much, probably because I've been doing all that work so maybe I'll get back into it now. I met a couple of nice people on there, and one very cool gal who shares so many of the same interests as me as well as being the same age and having just completed the same MA as I'm now doing. Small world, huh? 

Very little exciting has happened, though I'm beginning to get rather concerned about the state of my sister's mental health. I think she's hiding a lot more from us about how she's feeling, but at least she's getting a bit of help for it now. I'm worried, but at the same time I want to shake her and snap her out of it. Six weeks is far too long to still be crying over a boy. I don't know, maybe I seem a little cold, but she's making herself unwell and I looked at her today and realised how much weight she's lost.

Speaking of that, I've lost some weight myself. I'm currently standing at 5'7" and weighing in at 120lbs. Starting to become a slight problem now I think (it's now 4.30, I got distracted watching funny vids with sister). It's a lot harder to put weight on than it is to lose it, especially with my sleeping and eating habits... which I don't intend to change. I'm quite happy with how I am at the moment. Though speaking of my sleeping habits I haven't had a proper night of sleep in about a week. Part of that is my fault, though for the past two days I'm not sure what's wrong with me, I just can't seem to be able to sleep more than four hours at a time. It's not impacting upon me terribly since I don't have anything to do but it's still a pain.

In more interesting news, on Thursday night I went to see Rush. Who were absolutely fantastic. It was really good to see that they obviously still have so much fun with what they do, because really, at their age (57/58) they don't need to still be doing tours and they especially don't need to still be doing Europe tours, but they do. I never thought I'd get to see them but my dad, who is awesome, got us tickets about two weeks after we were discussing how we'd probably never get to see them.

It was a little bit strange, though. Rush have been going since 1968 and as a result most of the people there were 50+ year old men, so I felt a teeny bit out of place. I wasn't complaining, though, because it meant that there was no crazy shoving and pushing and people actually SAT DOWN, which was great because there's no way you'd get me standing up for three hours. My hands were so sore by the end from clapping and I had a really loud ringing in my ears when I finally got home and went to bed.

Dad wanted to know why so many of my friends knew who Rush were when none of his do. I just think I have awesome friends =3=

Yesterday, since dad was up here anyway, we went out with him (something we normally do on a Saturday) and we went to see the new Pirates film, which was.. alright, I guess. It wasn't amazing, but if you liked the others I'd say give it a watch, even if the mermaid subplot is really shoehorned in there (if you've seen it you'll know what I mean). After that I had a bit of stress when I realised I'd left my bag hanging over the arm of the seat in the cinema. Lucky I realised at all, I don't remember now exactly what prompted me to remember it, but I did, and thankfully it hadn't been busy at all so it was still hanging exactly where I'd left it with nothing missing. Phew.

I have some stuff that I want to get on with now that I have all that work out of the way. I need to update my newest fic and get my two fanworkathon fics done for the usxuk  comm, I have three RPs to reply to (PrUK, UKJap, AmeLiet) and ooooh what else do I need to do... I need to read through 14 sci-fi short stories and pick my favourites before the end of the month for my internship, and I also want to get back into gaming. I want to finish Okami again and try to make some more progress on Kingdom Hearts, and I have a load of games to replay after my Xbox decided it didn't want to transfer my old saves. Ho hum.

Well look at that. It's now half past five and it only took me seven hours to finally get this entry finished. That must be a new record.

Well, yesterday and today, actually, but I just wanted to have some kind of intelligent title.

Yesterday, you might have noticed, I wasn't feeling that great. A large amount of FML was dumped on my head from the moment I woke up and realised that yet again I'd missed uni due to oversleeping. I might have got up and got out of the house for the visit to the Holocaust Museum that I had planned if it hadn't been for my mother coming into my room and giving me a lecture.

( All that and more, below the cut. )