Filming conflicts are preventing Callum from attending the London BSG con. Helo's going in his place. And I sigh with relief as the world makes sense again. I'm incredibly sorry for everyone who booked to see him, but in all honesty, if it hadn't been this, I would have expected CKR to break his own leg.

I managed to get four stars playing Turning Japanese on hard in GH:RT80s about five hours ago. I may have displayed PG arms and called myself a god. I didn't post this immediately because both my hands had seized into claws and I would have had better luck typing with my elbows. It was so worth it, though. \o/

I had intended to set up my other journals tonight. Instead, I read. And I had intended to go to bed early so I didn't sleep away my GLORIOUS SATURDAY OF FREEDOM, but note the timestamp. I fail at good intentions. And at staying awake. More tomorrow.

Lovely people, would one of you be so kind as to link me to a tutorial on how to use LJ-Sec to crosspost one's LJ to GJ and the like? I HAD it bookmarked, but I of course lost it.

Thanks!

I vacuumed! Oh, glorious day! Now, do I clean the kitchen and dust while I'm on a roll or not?

Also: do I want a JF account?

I wrote up this huge post about the last very distressing 28 hours, but I read it over and it was all run-on sentences that made no sense. So, bullet points are go:

• Met up with veronamay last night for coffee and receipt of shiny, which was excellent. Getting home, however, was not, due to a 'police operation' in the underground that delayed my train 'indefinitely'. I'm giving a rather surprised kudos to CityRail for being informative and getting their shit together (!), but it still took two hours to get home.


• Got home to find my computer having what can best be termed as a manic episode. It froze, then Windows wouldn't load. I didn't panic (much), I simply chose not to deal with it at that time, and instead went off to watch Top Gear...


• ...and fell asleep on the couch, waking seven hours later to the mother of all neckaches.


• By this point, Windows had deigned to load, but Explorer was consuming the entire CPU and I could hear R2D2-like screams in my head. With a sinking feeling, I set to backing up what I could, but I could only fill two discs before it started giving me warning messages and randomly banning me from things. This took three hours.


• Discord and I marched down to Officeworks to buy me an external hard drive. In the cruelest of all ironies, I'd actually been planning to buy one for the last week, and had Nehkbet held off on her meltdown a mere twelve hours I wouldn't have been quite so stressed about the upcoming reformat.


• I reformatted. This is my very least favourite thing to do. I would rather be dipped in acid. Nehkbet is running fine now, but I lost 700+ bookmarks, thousands of saved emails and all my gorgeous collection of wallpapers. I could cry.


• My mother told me all about a fight she had with my brother. I don't want to know. I'm no good at fighting, even other peoples' fighting, and am quite happy going on with my life not knowing about the melodrama my family creates. I am expecting a call from my brother (from his new home, since he ended said fight by packing his stuff and moving out) any day now, and I will have to make sympathetic noises all over again. Please stop telling me things!


• I finally cracked open Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s tonight. I beat it on medium in an hour. My wrists are furious.


• My apartment is in such an incredible mess that I don't know where to begin with the cleaning. Which means I spend half an hour at a time staring at the mess and wondering where to start. This task has been delegated to tomorrow.


• As has my call to my ISP, since all this harrowing reformatting has done nothing to fix my connection. I knew it wasn't me. HATE.


• And I'm finally back online, only to discover LJ being a dick again. I cannot cope with this right now, I'm too tired.

Oh god, I've run out of icon space. How is 114 supposed to be enough?

Things I feel the urge to tell you about:

• Being linked on metafandom has made me SPARKLY and POPULAR, according to my comment count, but I'm as of this very moment depopularising myself because I've completely run out of steam for replying. I fail at conversations. By the time I get back to everyone no one will care. That said, it was good fun. I apparently said something relevant. \o/


• Last weekend, I purchased a new alarm clock, as the old one had lost its aerial and waking up to static was making me angry. So I've bought this shiny giant thing what plays CDs and has a sleep timer as well as two alarms and a dimmer for the giant glowing numbers and it's fucking snazzy. Trouble is, I fall asleep to a CD playing soothingly in the background, and it turns itself off, but when the alarm goes off in the morning, it does so soothingly. In the background. Entirely defeating the purpose of an alarm clock.


• My ISP, my ETERNAL NEMESIS, continues to thwart my quest for speedy internet. I was (apparently) upgraded to ADSL2 on the 18th, but I've not noticed a change at all. Many hours of being on hold and emailing test results to tech support and more on hold and one poor, patient bastard listening to me rant at 2:30am has resulted in this [paraphrased] response: it's not us. Maybe it's you. You could try another computer? I've been doing a lot of yoga breathing.


• Tonight I bought Life on Mars season 1 and Jeremy's latest DVD. Neither of which I could afford, mostly because I bought Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s yesterday and am planning to buy an external hard drive on Saturday. Lucky for me, I like ramen and soup.


• I'm on a huge Silverchair kick. I don't know why. Neon Ballroom is a great album. It needs to be twice as long.


• I've had about 18 hours of sleep since Sunday! Woo!

Observation of the day: Younger!Lou Reed looks a bit like older!Jason Newsted in profile. It might be the mullet.

I've had rather a big day. Met up with veronamay for an inpromptu tour of the tattoo parlours of Surry Hills this morning (and may I just say: unimpressed. My experience with all seven of my tattoos was to simply walk in with the design, get a quote, sit down and wait. The precious bunch of snotty fuckers I met today did nothing to restore my faith in a universe without my previous artist. Who refuses a Celtic knotwork piece because it's 'boring'? It pays the rent! Shut up!), and we then met up with lydia_petze for lunch and lots more walking. My knees are so unhappy with me, but I walked more today than I would in a week of taking the long way home, so that's okay. We went to Kinokuniya and I bought (for $6, no less) The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide, which is rather fantastic, combining the actual rules of standard Rock Paper Scissors with an overblown 'history' of the game and a glowing discussion of its decision-making properties. Incidentally, Rock Paper Scissors is shortened to RPS in the book, which adds another layer of hilarity.

And speaking of RPS: I said I'd explain my thing, didn't I?

( Real Person Slash/Fic: the Mexican Standoff between me and my squick - in which I go on and on for ages. )

Well, that took forever. I had more to say, but I'd better stop here. Tomorrow: The Epic Tale of Me v My ISP!

Things that are of the bad:

• Walking into your beloved apartment after a very long day and being confronted by A Smell. A really revolting smell. Which turned out to be your garbage bag. Which had leaked. The bin bucket is now in the laundry, soaking in volumes of Pine-O-Cleen. There is also a lot of incense burning. My god.


• Having to choke down completely hideous mint ginger tea in order to repress the nausea, low-level for days thanks to the virus you have, which has flared up quite dramatically in the face of The Smell.


• Said virus, which was improving yesterday, unimproving today. You have discovered new meaning to the words 'run-down' and 'achy'.


• Having a weird dream this morning, wherein air conditioning ducts, piping, wiring, roof insulation and someone's foot come crashing through your bedroom ceiling. Your bone deep exhaustion is aptly illustrated by your reaction to it, being that you attempt to roll over and go back to sleep in your dream because having the roof cave in is just way too much to deal with right now.


• Making a bloody great typo on a rather popular mailing list. I am not sending out another email to correct it, because I am not That Annoying Person. Everyone on the PG-L, that was meant to say 'conviction', not 'connection'. Dumbass.

• Having the foresight to have both Pine-O-Cleen and hideous mint ginger tea on hand for precisely these sorts of unforeseeable dramas.


• The Simpsons Movie! I caught the 7:30 showing tonight and it's well worth the ticket. It was brilliant.


• Succeeding at a torrent for the first time ever last night. \o/


• Having a new fandom! (gwyddfid, stop reading here plz. *g*) What happens when you watch a whole season of Top Gear whilst killing the hours until Deathly Hallows? Why, your prior appreciation for Top Gear rapidly escalates into a fannish fixation, despite the fact that you're desperately uncomfortable with RPS, that's what! veronamay thinks this is hilarious, the horrible woman, but it's not funny. I can't seem to stop. I'm not at walking out in front of a car levels of distraction (Due South nearly killed me!), but it's bloody difficult to concentrate. I have a PWP bunny seared onto my mind's eye that I couldn't possibly ever ever write, but it's damn hot and won't go away. I am AT WAR WITH MYSELF. Help! Dear Top Gear boys, please stop being suggestive and looking at each other significantly. You're driving me certifiable. Much love hate love, Mel.


I will explain my RPS thing, I think. Tomorrow. Meanwhile, I have a new TG to watch. ::headdesk::

I can't sleep. :-( This is because I can't breathe properly, what with my sinuses having been cemented in. This will teach me to brag about not having caught the collective Sydney cold. I'd say something deep and sentimental about how even in big impersonal cities some things are communal (seriously, everyone has had this cold), but it's hard to sentence properly when you're oxygen-deprived.

Which is why this isn't my proper Deathly Hallows post. I'm sure I have some important things to say, but I can't think what they are.

Anyway, Discord and I saw Transformers yesterday. I insisted we drag our sickly selves out to see it before it stops showing (you can't watch stuff like Transformers on TV; it loses some of its big ridiculous impact), because that movie has been one of Discord's top ten topics of conversation for the last 18 months and I would be damned if he missed his fanboy moment. He didn't like it, for the record. Which is fair enough - it was a big departure from the original material (they tossed out pretty much everything except the transforming noise, the cheesy we've-all-learned-a-valuable-lesson dialogue, and Optimus Prime being a truck) and he felt the story concentrated far too much on the humans. I feel bad for him, but at least he can empathise with my frequent rants about movies fucking with established canon. As for me, I was there to watch giant robots fight, so I got my money's worth.

God, I feel like crap. I'm going to try sleeping again. If anyone feels like cheering me up (and filling my day tomorrow - there's no way I'll make it to work, I'd have to get up in 4 hours), they can tell me where all the good Top Gear slash is hidden...? Oh, don't look at me like that, Jeremy/Richard is win.

I'm done. Started at 9:37am, finished at 3:48pm (it's tradition to note this, shut up). I'll do a proper reaction post later - I'm a bit overwhelmed and haven't slept besides. I will say this, though: ( spoilers ).

I'm just here to tell you that I'm not here - am on internet hiatus until after I'm done reading on Saturday, which I estimate will be about 4:00pm-ish my time, including time taken to get home, set up snacks, get in a comfortable position and open the book. I've still got non-friends comments disabled and I'm still not reading my flist. I am, in fact, sitting here with my hands over my ears, going LA LA LA LA LA. I'll reply to all comments when I get back, provided I haven't had a meltdown.

I am also, thus far, still unspoiled. I'm not counting the thing I very accidentally read last night, as it was unconfirmed and lacked detail. So there.

Before I go, a quick update:

- have done something weird to my hand, makes typing very interesting, HR not taking pain remotely seriously, will have a meeting with her tomorrow, plan to brandish my braced wrist at her. Wish me luck.

- bought a satchel, huzzah. Have wanted one for ages. Is sadly not a brown leather buckled I'm-a-boarding-school-swot satchel like I was after, but is instead olive green, has eight trillion pockets, and looks like it can survive the beating I'll give it, which is the main thing.

- pre-ordered Guitar Hero Encore, did small dance in EB.

- have discovered over the last week that you never quite leave your old fandoms, as evidenced by the Pottermania in my brain these last few days. I'm not coming back, but I do remember why I love it. That said, I'm not posting a tearful farewell to canon, as I have faith the Potterdammerung will bring weird fic, ship wars and intense disagreements for many years to come. Hang in there guys, there are yet many fics unwritten! Really! ::hugs::

I will say this, though: I sincerely hope that every single one of us who cares will completely adore Deathly Hallows. I hope it's the best book of them all. I hope we all put that book down ultimately satisfied. I'd say I hope our favourite characters live, but... well. *g* Anyway, I did say I wouldn't become maudlin, so: see you on the other side. :-)

EEeeeeee!!!!

I have Fire by Fire by somniesperus open in a tab, sitting unread, and have done so for the past four hours, so I wouldn't ignore Discord while he was here.

I AM THE BEST GIRLFRIEND IN THE WORLD.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to read instead of sleep.

Guys, my general wariness of spoilers is rapidly becoming a phobia. I'm already reading a filtered flist, and I'm considering paring it down even further because I don't want to be anywhere near spoilers, in case my hand develops a mind of its own and forces me to click on spoiler cuts. I'm off all newspapers, all radio, and I'm going to take Harry Potter off my interests list in a second. Just in case. I'm also going offline sooner than planned - Thursday at the latest. Am I going too far? ::wrings hands::

Anyway. Decided on the spur of the moment to go see OOTP again tonight. By myself this time, so I had no one to hiss 'sadist!' at except the screen, and that's too unhinged even for me. Here's some thoughts, and a couple things I haven't seen mentioned yet:

( Spoilers for movie!OOTP )

All else has been said by now, I think. I hope. Man, I need to see it again. I hope the DVD comes out soon, else I'll be sent broke. :-)

ETA: OH! THANK YOU, random anonymouse, for my userinfo cupcake! I don't know what I did to deserve an e-cupcake, but it made my day. xo

I am so fucking cold. I'm having trouble moving my fingers to post this, I'm that cold. I hate winter, hate it hate it, and I'm SO READY for it to be over so I'm in the mood to socialise on a grander scale than an hour here and there. Come the springtime, I'm going to be at all ur houses, raiding ur DVD collections. Have I mentioned that the grand plan is to spend my annual leave in bed, moving only to reheat the hot water bottle and fetch chocolate? My lips are chapped, my skin is dry, my piercings are cranky and I've got a rash in my eyebrows. I honestly believe I was meant to hibernate.

Anyway, inexplicable eyebrow rashes aside, I'm having a good weekend. Movie!OotP put me in a Harry Potter mood, the first in over a year, and I've started re-reading HBP in prep for next Saturday (next Saturday, you guys!). I was worried I wouldn't be able to finish the book in time, given my depressing lack of reading time generally, but I should be fine - I started it Thursday and I'm already almost halfway through. Of course, next Saturday is dedicated to reading. Does anyone know the DH pagecount yet? It can't be longer than OotP, and that took me just over seven hours. Maybe this year I'll try to read slowly, and then I won't be stuck mindlessly refreshing LJ and waiting for someone else to flail at. *g*

I'm also filtering down my internets as of tonight. No unmoderated communities, no communities to do with HP (if I even have any left), no rss feeds, no untrustworthy blogs, no newspapers. I'm not opening any emails or reading any comments from people I don't know. If you think you'll be posting about spoilers in the next week, and don't trust the accuracy of your cut tag coding, please let me know. :-) Otherwise, I should be fine - my general withdrawal from HP fandom in the last 18 months might serve me in good stead. I'm even going to a suburban K-Mart for my book, instead of taking part in bookstore-based city festivities - which will be boring and a bit depressing, but I wouldn't put it past someone to try to be funny, and then I'd have to stab them, and I bet they wouldn't let me read DH in gaol.

I sound nuts, I know. *g* But I haven't been spoiled for a HP book yet, despite being active online for four releases, and I'm not breaking this awesome streak now. ::determined face::

I'm going to spend the next week in a holding pattern. Argh!

Just got home! OotP was awesome. More when brain not hugely overloaded with SHINY and KABOOM. I need a Luna icon STAT.

Things that are also awesome:

- Seeing movies with gwyddfid
- Randomly finding a metal bracelet with maple leaves on for $4 in a weeny Asian jewellery shop on George St
- Still managing to get very good seats in the movie theatre, even though we were about 3/4s of the way back in an incredibly long line
- Not re-reading the book beforehand, and therefore managing to be happily surprised at some of the plot
- Excuses to wear my Slytherin crest t-shirt
- Exchanging sisterly nods with a fellow purple-haired Potter fan in a Slytherin scarf
- Those new Skittles what taste like everything, including jam donut and bubblegum

Things not quite as awesome:

- Having a drunken god bothering sort on the train think you want to be anywhere near them
- Always, always attracting train-based weirdos
- Getting home at 11:45 on a work night, omg

/runs to bed

ETA: Ha, almost every post on my flist is OOTP related. I totally love that we've all scattered to the fannish four winds, but hardly anyone could resist seeing OOTP on opening day. I love you guys. :D Now, seriously, bed.

OMG it's cold. All my windows are frosted up. I'm going to bed very shortly.

I've had a surprisingly big weekend. I was heading out the door from work on Friday night when I realised that for the first time in ages I had nowhere to be and no one to meet. So on the spur of the moment I decided to head over to PolyMorph and get Rob to check on my microdermal (damn, I have got to take new pics. Tomorrow!). Long story short, the microdermal wasn't sitting properly and there was no way to reposition it, so out it came. I'm kinda sad about it, but more because it was a nifty piercing than because I was really thrilled with it - I kept bumping it and it made sleeping on my right side a bit awkward. I'm now none from two on the next-to-the-ear piercing stakes. I miss my sideburn. :-(

Anyway, I'm apparently not capable of going to PolyMorph without obtaining a new shiny, so I got my right eyebrow pierced. I had the left one done twice, years ago, and it grew out at a rate of knots both times, leaving a pretty good scar behind, so I went for the other side this time. The jewellery I've got in is kind of adorable, actually, though not very me - I had to get something subtle for work and you can't leave retainers in long term so I have two eensy weensy aquamarine gems framing my eyebrow. They're honestly so small they're barely noticeable - I've not had anyone notice it was even there without me pointing it out yet, so the plan is to go to work and just not mention it; see how observant people are. Not very, I'll bet you now. :-)

On the way back to the station I dropped in at Doppelganger Hair (an extremely funky hairdresser, and the go-to place for multicoloured hair and geometric shapes and dreadlocks and other interesting stuff). I only went in for a quote, but they had time before closing so I got it done then and there. Same haircut as always (chin length, with lots of flicky-out layers and a straight-across fringe), but he kind of amazed me with the knowing exactly what I wanted and doing it perfectly. I always go to cheapy mall places and it always comes out wrong, and the difference a good haircut makes is amazing. He also styled it with a ceramic straightener, which shaped all the pointy anime bits effortlessly, so now I'm going to have to buy one. ::rolls eyes:: I ruined all his good work when I got home by dyeing my hair, but I couldn't be too sad about that, because now my hair is purple. Of course, I shall tell work it's plum (or aubergine, or eggplant), because dark purple's not a legitimate corporate hair colour, but I'll bet plum is. It's all in how you sell it.

Saturday, I went with madslasher and gwyddfid to Glebe Markets, which was brilliant. I haven't been in months, and it's reassuring to know that the hippie markets never change. :-) I bought an orange t-shirt with a rainbow on it (for ironic purposes, I assure you), a beaded cotton bracelet to replace the ones I ripped off in my sleep, a bunch of Nag Champa incense (an economy pack, even!) and a painting by local artist Elspeth McLean, which looks like this:

( I has an art! )

I'm very picky about the sort of art I like - I have fanart and music posters on my walls at home - but I was so taken with her stuff that I had to buy one. Isn't it just beautiful? You mightn't be able to see it, but the painting is mostly comprised of multicoloured dots, and the dots that make up the sunset and the highlights in the waves are actually bumpy. I might save up some more money and go buy another one, because I was torn between that one and one with some really dazzling butterflies. Also, Elspeth is completely out of her tree, and exactly the sort of overly-bubbly person you would expect to paint something like that, which made me LOL, so I have to go say hi again.

Today I bought a Tamagotchi (shut up, I like them), ate Discord's experimental fried battered potato and bacon things (they were delicious) and kept napping till my headache went away, which it finally did an hour ago. I don't want to go to work tomorrow. Six weeks till my leave!

PS: Oh! I also finally finished Life on Mars. Oh my god. Proper analysis when I've dragged my brain back together. Tragically, the end did nothing to step on the fic bunny that won't go away, which pains me as I don't have time for it and my leave is already entirely dedicated to getting past 10,000 words on my DS fic. This is UNFAIR. Also, I have concluded that John Simm is only averagely attractive normally, and his attractiveness is enhanced by the awesome characters he plays, but he's got the best smile ever. Stop being so alluring, John Simm, I don't have time for you.

Stayed home today. I woke up late with a splitting headache, thought about getting up for a minute, and decided today could go hang. I had plans to sit around watching Life on Mars and eating chocolate, but I couldn't stay awake. Finally got out of bed at 4pm. I think I might've needed the sleep.

Tonight's plans include watching Life on Mars and eating chocolate. *g*

Speaking of which, if someone would kindly talk me out of purchasing all the LoM related products over at Amazon UK, I my credit card would be most grateful.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, gmth!!!

If anyone wants to get me anything for the next gift-giving event, all of these would probably make my decade. I want them like burning. Just FYI. *G*

I got back from the dentist an hour and a half ago and I still can't feel my damn lips. I'm HUNGRY. :( On the upside though, my teeth look amazing. I chipped a front tooth back in high school - just a teeny one, but over the years it got bigger and became a cavity and over the last six months or so I've got really self-conscious about it (me!), and seriously, you cannot tell it was ever there. It's all white and nice and I can't stop looking at it. I also got a pretty big hole in a bottom tooth filled, and again, it's like it was never a problem. I'm kind of amazed. Well worth the $380.00 (which, yikes).

Only five more to go. Heh. Seriously, Mel, lay off the lollies.

Hopefully, this means I can sleep now. Discord's theory regarding my insomnia is that I was way more nervous about this appointment than my conscious mind was letting me know, and he may have a point there - most of my piercings have freaked out and my skin's gone horrible, two sure signs of stress. But I didn't have anything to worry about. That was much easier (if somewhat noisier) than my extractions. I may overcome my teeth squick yet.

At any rate, now I am home early from work on a Friday afternoon, which is probably the best part of all. \o/