With friends like these...

Yes, it's me, I'm still alive!

How long has it been since I last posted properly.... erm. Wow. Nearly a month.

Jeez...

Guess I should let y'all know what I've been up to! To be honest... roleplaying, mostly. I've joined a couple of games on DW and they've been keeping me pretty busy, but I've settled now and should definitely get back into writing. I noticed it's been a month since my last fic update I am so sorry about that I haven't even noticed the time passing so quickly. It's even half done and everything. I'll have that up soon as I can remember where I was actually going with it.

I still don't have a job and I'm still not much closer to getting one, but I'm still trying. I suppose it won't be much longer before the Jobcentre starts pushing even harder at me but I can't do more than I'm already doing and I'm not going to spend a load of my own money to go trolling around Wigan/Manchester/Warrington looking for jobs. I'm unemployed. I can't afford £4.50 on public transport however many times a week. It's the undeniable flaw in their logic, I think.

Though speaking of work I'm still volunteering at the British Heart Foundation. I've managed to garner myself a couple of admirers and while the attention is flattering it isn't exactly wanted. One of them has backed off, but the other is being a little more persistent. Not pushily or creepily so, but I think he's got it into his head that if he can just persuade me that I'd like to try to have something with him then it would all work out fine. I don't get into relationships anymore for a variety of reasons, and the fact that he's on the rebound after coming after an eight year long relationship with someone who just left him about three weeks ago would mean that even if I did like him that way I wouldn't be getting into anything with him now.

He's a nice enough guy and I think he's trying to be understanding about why I don't want to be with anyone, but I don't think he can quite get his head around the idea of someone who has no sexual desire.

Still, until he starts getting annoying, I'll allow it. He's not doing any harm and it's not like he's cornering me and demanding anything. I'd just be reluctant about doing anything with him 'as friends' in case he takes it as a sign that I'm starting to come around to the idea.

Hmm.

Last Saturday, I met up with the amazingly awesome nasty_show again and we went to see The Avengers. I hadn't been terribly bothered about seeing it since superhero films aren't one of the things I lose my shit over, but I was curious, and Holly once again swept me up in her enthusiasm as she has a tendency to do.

Luckily, that morning, the birthday present that I had bought for her had also arrived! It was late, but it was the first I'd seen her after her birthday so what can you do.

This is what I got her.



It's a pendant, and I bought it from a seller on Etsy. It's about a centimetre high and hand made, and the cutest thing. We had some lunch at my house and then went off to the cinema.

I HAVE NEVER HAD LESS REGRETS ABOUT SEEING A FILM I DIDN'T INITIALLY CARE ABOUT.

Seriously. If you have not seen The Avengers yet then you need to. Even if you don't care about superhero films.

I would see it again. Easily.

Nothing much happened through the week. The manager was off work so we actually got stuff done. Honestly, the manager is lovely but she tends to flit about and get under your feet, while the assistant manager actually organises herself and everyone else. The only major problem we've had is one of the new staff seems to be dating all the new stock incorrectly. We've found stock dated 9/12 (9th of December), and if anyone from head office came in and saw that we would be in so much trouble.

I did, however, have the shock of my life on Friday afternoon. The phone rang, and Sue had her hands full downstairs so she called up to me to answer it. Kurtis, one of the other volunteers, is a nice guy but a bit socially backwards. He was closer to the phone, so he said he would answer it. I said okay.

However, had I known he would give off the 'hello British Heart Foundation' etc spiel in the most bored tone imaginable and then top it off by saying 'what do you want', I wouldn't have let him within ten feet of the phone. It is a place of work. You do not answer the phone like that.

I ended up having to take the phone off him anyway and apologise to the woman he was speaking to before I took down her address and number because he was just mumbling into the phone and couldn't seem to fathom how to hold the phone between his ear and shoulder while he wrote her address down. He's lucky it was just someone ringing for a pickup, not the manager, or the area manager, or someone from head office, or anyone. I smacked him over the head with a clipboard when I put the phone down and told him to never answer the phone again.

For the love of GOD.

Anyone who has made it this far, I congratulate you. There's still more.

Last night, my dad took my sister and I to see Avenue Q. We've seen it before, but dad hasn't. Our dad is one of those cool dads who is an utter nerd and lets you cuss (within reason) and goes to see things like Avenue Q with you. He loved it, and I had actually forgotten how rude it is.

Before that, though, we went to my nanna's with my aunt and two cousins. My cousin Sam is eight (I think?) and one of those kids who tends to just ignore you. I brought a Simon's Cat book along with me, which I'd picked up at the shop for £2.50 (£12.99 new, bloody bargain), to show to my nanna because I know she likes Simon's cat, and my cousin took a liking to it and spent an hour going through it with us. He then went through it again when we were done because he liked it so much.

Sometimes, he can be cute.

Now to the latest thing - my sister has expressed an interest to go to MCM London next year - a pan-fandom convention. She's not into anime, and has never really shown any interest in this kind of thing before, but now she wants to go.

And she wants to cosplay.

She gained so many cool points from me for that. More than she got from being able to quote the Magic Cupcakes video despite never having read Homestuck. Which my dad can now also do since I showed it to him. Amy wants to cosplay Rapunzel, á la Tangled, and I'm going to be her Mother Gothel. I have a friend who makes the most beautiful cosplays and she's going to see how much it would cost to make them for us, rather than having to settle for whatever we can find on ebay (because Gothel costumes are non-existent and Amy doesn't really like the look of the Rapunzel ones).

She's going to have a Pascal and take a frying pan with her. xD

*DEEP BREATH*

So. How are all of you?

First of all, the Hetaween event was fantastic. My interest in and love of this fandom is totally through the roof now and I'm so glad I got involved. For anyone who didn't or who wasn't really following the event (though from the flailing on Twitter I know that several of you were) I saved all the comics and extras and put them up on mediafire here, translated of course (not by me), so if you want that then go for it.

I was going to go on this huge fansquee but I think that this entry by kasumicc pretty much sums it up! So much love, so much of fans just being bros, so much of Himayura being amazing and everything was just fantastic and I AM NEVER LEAVING THIS FANDOM EVER.

I've been getting more into RPing, and as the America of a friend of mine was being badgered I made an England account. If any of y'all are into the FB RPing scene I now have three accounts pfffh.

1. Norway
2. England
3. Wales

Ah! I also made a couple of icons while the event was going on. I may go through all of the strips and make more, but I made these two.



Feel free to take either and use as you wish.

Now that the event is over I can finally get back to writing.

I've decided that today is going to be a writing day. At least I'll feel like I've done something constructive (even if it doesn't look that way to certain people who think I'm just lazy.. looking at you mother). I have all of those things to do from the Alphabet Meme and I'm rather determined to do all of them, as well as replying to all my roleplays bar one and I want to get some ideas down for the Jack the Ripper fic I've had in mind for ages as well as this Hetalia/Fallout one that's been bugging me for a few days.

Speaking of Fallout, I'm still plowing my way through Fallout: New Vegas. I've done the Honest Hearts DLC, and I had a go at Lonesome Road for a while before I got annoyed by the stupidly overpowered deathclaws (linked for reference) that kept killing me in four hits despite my HP being almost 500. After my repeated failure at that, I caved and downloaded Dead Money and Old World Blues, the latter of which I'm playing and it is eating all of my stimpaks because of the goddamn nightstalkers, which are like horrible hybrids of coyotes and rattlesnakes, which annoyingly high perception. They attack in packs and when I'm backed into a corner my aim isn't terribly good, so I tend to panic 8| Not cool.

Still can't wait for Skyrim. 8)

Considering that LJ decided to delete my post the one time I actually wanted it to ask me to restore from a saved draft, I'll start this again. Though I had been picking at that post for four days so I suppose it's just as well that it got nuked.

I have a new television. I've been after one for a while, although the one that I had worked just fine - I've been hankering for a HD TV since they first started becoming reasonably affordable and now I have one >o<; I decided on this one, because the price was excellent for what I was getting. Having an Xbox 360 I wouldn't have ordinarily bothered with a DVD player but when I try marathoning DVDs on my Xbox it tends to start disliking it and starts vibrating and making a buzzing sound. It doesn't seem to affect the DVD but the noise is alarming, and at least this way I'm not fiddling around with buttons to swap the connections over to my Xbox when I want to put a DVD on.

I've started playing Minecraft. Why? I'm not entirely sure. Call it curiosity combined with boredom. It's proving to be quite fun so far, though I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with it so it's more of a way to pass the time. I managed to fall in lava three times today before I realised that I didn't even know why I was mining obsidian, I was just doing it. I haven't been brave enough to turn the monsters on, but one odd thing has happened. I spawned in the Taiga biome, and got pretty lucky with where I decided to dig in. My rather large underground fortress (which I fondly nicknamed the Mines of Moria) is attached to a wellspring on one side and a very, very large carvern on the other which still has some bits that need exploring. I had to signpost it so I wouldn't forget the way out. Since it's cold enough outside that the water freezes, I have a sugar cane farm in my cave, and the oddest thing that has happened in there was my coming to harvest and seeing a strange black shape moving around in the water. I had no idea what it might be, and just about freaked out when I saw this flopping about.



A squid. A squid. Indoors. In one of my sugar cane pools.

What else what else... My sleeping pattern is buggered to all hell again, I got up at gone 6pm today to some dirty looks off my mother and a demand to know what was wrong with me. Nothing is wrong with me I just happen to enjoy staying up all night. It's not as if I'm missing anything during the day anyway.

I'll be using my alertness tonight to finally catch up on all the writing I have to do, because the deadline for the aph_fluffathon fics I need to do is closer than I thought it was. I also have four RPs to reply to. Erk.

Because I'm running out of inventive titles, damnit.

Okay, so today I wanted to go and get some hermit crabs. The site for the shop in town said they stock them, but guess what, they don't. I would guess that, like most pet shops, they got some in, and didn't take care of them properly, and the hermies died (quickly) and they didn't get any more. I was a bit disappointed, and somewhat annoyed since I'd only had an hour of sleep before my mum came in waking me up by tickling the sole of my foot. Argh. It wasn't a pleasant wake-up call.

I'm sure all of you know the frustration of working yourself up to wanting something, and then being unable to get it. I think I'll end up just getting the tank from there, something nice with room for two, three, maybe four hermies, and then I can set it up and have it all nice and ready before I go on another hermie hunt.

On the upside, mum bought me a coat, and I bought myself a game which will be much better once it stops freezing every ten minutes. I'll take a look at the disk in the daylight later on and see if I can see any bad smudges on it. Hopefully it'll start to work, because I've wanted to finish it properly since my laptop decided that it wasn't going to run fast enough for me to play it for any length of time.

In other news, I've joined saigocage 's roleplaying site with a rather nifty Norway. Yes, I roleplay. Do ask if you're interested.

Also working on a random fluffy USxUK fic which will likely see the comm before the week is out.