Author: Lou

Right then. Barring miracle lottery wins, I’ve decided against going to the SFX con. I can live without seeing James Marsters if it means I’m also missing a 4000-attendee Ameri-con jobbie. So I have my ticket for Sector 14 Eclipse – George Herzberg, Robin Sachs, yay! – (or at least, I sent off for it), and I’m just sending off for Nocturnal Inferno – Andy Hallett, yay! – which is handily in Manchester. Why do there have to be so many BtVS / Angel related cons all of a sudden (6 within 8 months at the last count). Evil.

Of course, this is all assuming I’ll be able to afford these things when the time comes. The vet rang last night, and there are now talks of neurological exams, x-rays, and biopsies. All sounds extremely ouch-y on the old pocket. Alex, meanwhile, continues to be large and orange, increasingly more confident and playful, and quite oblivious to everything that’s going to be happening to him. I just hope they don’t shave too many more bits of him. Hum.

Anji had this Anne Rice test on her blog, to see which Ricean vamp you’re most like. So I had a go too:
# 1 Louis de Pointe du Lac (100 %)
# 2 Nicolas de Lenfent (95 %)
# 3 Santino (90 %)
# 4 Akasha (85 %)
# 5 Claudia (85 %)
# 6 Santiago (85 %)
# 7 Maharet/Mekare (80 %)
# 8 Daniel Molloy (75 %)
# 9 Gabrielle de Lioncourt (75 %)
# 10 Khayman (70 %)
# 11 Armand [Amadeo, Andrei] (65 %)
# 12 Merrick Mayfair (65 %)
# 13 Marius de Romanus (55 %)
# 14 Lestat de Lioncourt (45 %)
# 15 David Talbot (0 %)
Hmmm…. OK then. *pouts* And I wanted to be Gabrielle or Khayman. Damnit.

And then I did this one
# 1 Punk (100 %)
# 2 Goth (77 %)
# 3 Elite Gearhead (33 %)
# 4 Fence Sitter (rivethead or goth today…. or maybe punk…hmmm) (11 %)
# 5 Rivet-Head in Training… (0 %)
Heh.

My head hurts. Need chocolate. Argh.

Trying to write fic. Maybe I’ll actually finish this one. I hope so…. I have at least six half-written fics hanging around, and I don’t really want to abandon any of them…. perhaps if I get one finished, I’ll be able to have another crack at the others. Hmm.

Three days off, plus two days sick with streaming cold (Mmmm, lovely… not) with almost total ‘serious’ TV avoidance was pretty good, apart from the illness bit. Alexander discovered what that cat flap is for, and had a little adventure as far as the bottom of the garden before I caught up with him. I wish the vet (or technically the lab) would hurry up with those test results, and tell me that I can let him out. He really really wants to go now… he’s been in for five weeks now, plus the time he spent in the cat shelter, and he’s bored. On the plus side, that means he’s getting more and more confident. :-) He doesn’t flinch when you go to stroke him now, he doesn’t run away from every little thing, and he’s even kind of standing up to Willow. Oh, and he’s playing with the cat toys, which he was afraid of before. Bless him.

Before I forget, little advertisement – as part of Noxy’s new design for Borderland we are proud to present (*fanfare*) Shanshu & Co.: a choose your own adventure game based on the Angel characters but in an alternate universe film noir setting. I co-wrote it with Noxy, and we had loads of fun doing it, so go along and have a play…

On the way to the station this morning, I saw a man smoking a pipe. Which you don’t see much these days. Well, except for the elderly man I saw the day before yesterday, going to the corner shop. They have one of those freestanding double-sided blackboard thingies outside, and he lovingly rested his pipe on top of it before going into the shop. But the man I saw this morning was younger, probably in his 30’s. Unusual. B and his mates will smoke cigars on special occasions (even though 8/10 of them don’t smoke normally), but pipes take a bit more work, so maybe that’s why you don’t see them so often.

My Dad actually used to smoke a pipe, and the occasional cigar. To my knowledge, he didn’t smoke cigarettes, but he might have done when he was younger. My Mum enlisted me and Martin in a sneaky campaign to make him stop when we were little, by getting us to loudly declare “Pooooo!!!” and all leave the room whenever he lit up. I’m not sure if that’s why, but he did stop. I never really minded cigar and pipe smoke that much, though. It’s way more fragrant than cigarette smoke. And there’s a whole process to packing a pipe. Pipecleaners are also brimming with bendy fun. But of course, when Dad smoked his pipes and cigars when we were little, he was in his late-40’s / early-50’s. I wonder when he picked the habit up, though. Maybe it was when he lived with his cousin Will (really his Mum’s cousin, I think… he had a good 30 or 40 years on Dad). Will loved smoking and drinking and gambling, though he gave it all up for health reasons when he was 96. I have this mental image of them now, both with pipes in mouth, and a glass of brandy at their elbows, gambling the night away – using Italian Lira because it cracked Will up that he could bet thousands without spending any real money. Heheheh.

Oh, and I tried to give blood on Thursday. But they wouldn’t let me – I’m allergic to the frickin’ antiseptic wipes. *sigh* I wouldn’t have said anything, but I thought they had an alternative… they used to, I’m sure. Gah.

OK. So. I’ve seen a lot of emails about this whole thing that have said that this is the thing that our kids and grandkids will ask us about. “Where were you when, Mum?”. But…. why? Why the hell would they? Why would they care? It won’t mean anything to them. It happened long before they were born (talking about my theoretical kids, here), it has no direct relevance to them. They might, might be interested in “Did you see it on TV? Was it scary?” But other than that? I seriously doubt it. For those who lost relatives, or even had relatives who survived, then yes, I’d think they would want to know details, because they’d have a connection. But come on – are you really interested in where your parents were when the first moon landing happened, or when Kennedy got shot, and all that? I’m not. I’m interested in the events themselves, because I’m interested in history. But that’s it. I’m aware of the importance, or tragedy of the events, but I don’t really feel it, because I wasn’t there. That’s just the way it is.

Postscript – I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing… if you felt the full weight of every tragedy that ever happened, things would be pretty depressing. Yet it’s terrible to think that those who haven’t gone through the last few days won’t view it in the way that those who have, do. If that makes sense. Um.

Hum. I know his brother. Very glad he got out OK.

Stuff is more than a little weird and scary. Working where I do, we found out about the attacks in America, and the subsequent disasters, pretty much as they happened. Cue an extremely surreal afternoon of crowding into the monitoring room to watch all the news channels at once. I don’t think I need to say how horrible it is. But possibly the strangest thing was leaving work…. and everyone is, to all intents and purposes, going on as per normal. I don’t know what I thought I was expecting, but it just feels like there should be some kind of acknowledgement, at least.

Megs and I were booked in for our weights induction at the gym last night. I still went – if I’d gone home I’d have only been sitting around watching the telly on my own. Megs had gone to stay with a friend for the night, but because I’d forgotton my mobile again, I didn’t find out where she was til I got home. But anyway, it was good to get away from it all for an hour. I’m glad I went.

And now today isn’t much better. The boss went out and bought all the papers for us to read, and we’ve got the TVs on the news channels again. My head hurts. And I can’t believe the most stressful thing for me yesterday morning was trying to figure out which con(s) I can go to (because now it seems there’s yet another one next June). Hello perspective.

I’m not quite sure why, but seeing footage of WWII planes makes me want to run around the room with my arms out, going “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm”. Huh.

So, went to the gym last night with Megs, for a general fitness class thing. Knackering, but good. Going back on Tuesday for weights / machines induction. And from today on, I’m on a healthy diet. No more chocolate and coke for breakfast. Or lunch, either, come to that. And no more snacking all day at the computer instead of meals. I *will* get back to size 10…. and be toned with it, this time! LOL. Oh, and in the aftermath of yesterday, I did some breathing exercises this morning, and it seems I do still have good diaphragm…. I’d thought I’d lost it, but it seems it’s really just hiding under a layer of… ah…. padding. That explains why I don’t have any ache there (although I’m much less achy in general than I expected I would be… more feeling stretched than actual ache), and why I found the sit-ups the easiest thing. Huh.

Hmmm, still lots to do. S&S still has a ton of stuff to come, but there are also my other sites. Whoops. Plus the thing that I’m doing with Noxy. Heheh.

God, I’m tired. Roll on Sunday….. I’ll be sleeping allllll day if I can.

Verrrrry very tired. And mid-money crisis. So I’ll be staying in til next payday (end of the month) then. Pants. Means I won’t be able to make the meet in Sheffield with Lucy and Sonja Marie (of BtVS Links fame… can’t remember the URL off the top of my head) and everyone. Waaah!! In fact, I won’t actually be able to do *anything* til payday… Alexander needs his jabs, and that’s going to be a problem :-( And more blood tests. Eeep!

So this evening, Megs and I are going to the gym for an intro class thingy. I’m determined to do this, and get fit. All I have to do now is start eating healthily… I spose at least with having no money for a month, I won’t be able to eat very much. See, there is a bright side. But anyway, I’m looking forward to this – we’re going to do a general fitness class, and boxercise when it starts next week. And use the actual gym bits as and when (hopefully a couple of times a week). This place is on my way home from the station, so hopefully I can start dropping in straight after work and so on. Go me, I can ddjjjjoooo iiiiit!

I have a new design for this thing. One that involves *gasp* a graphic. Just the one, though, for the title bar. Shall bung it up this evening. Feels…. um, somehow smoother than this one. If that makes any sense.

Bit of a scare Monday night. Was taking a break from finishing S&S, watching Andromeda, when we suddenly heard a drumming noise from upstairs. Ran up to find out what the hell it was, and discovered Alexander, on the floor of the spare room, fitting. Poor baby cat. B stayed with him, while I dashed back downstairs to call the emergency vet. He stopped after probably no more than 30 seconds, but he was really distressed. The vet said there was nothing more we could do at that point, and he did get up a few minutes later, though he was all wobbly. He seemed to recover quite well, really, but it wasn’t a fun experience. So I took him to the vet yesterday, and ended up taking the whole day off (well, sort of, I’m going in on my day off instead) to keep an eye on him. He’s outwardly healthy, so they’ve done blood tests, but the vet seemed to think it’s likely to be epilepsy. As far as we know, this is his first fit in 7 weeks (I called the cat shelter we got him from), so if it is epilepsy, but with only occasional fits, they won’t put him on medication.

I can’t help wondering, though, if he hasn’t been kicked in the head. When we first got him, he always flinched at first when you went to stroke him, and he was definitely frightened of people walking past him. He’s much better now, but it makes you think. Oddly, though, he seems much happier since he had the fit – maybe it was building up, or something. But I guess it’s just a matter of waiting for the test results now. And making sure he doesn’t sleep on the stairs….

In other news (or something), I finally re-opened Spiked & Skewered. It’s not finished, not by a long shot, but it’s got plenty of content to run with. I’ll keep working on it, and hopefully I should have everything I had planned up within the next couple of weeks. Except, of course, that I’ve had another (large) idea, and that I’ve had that design hanging around so long that I’m utterly sick of it. Guess this is one of those sites that’ll always be a work in progress. Ah well. Oh, and I just thought of what should be a slight improvement to the current design…. will stop there being an expanse of grey at the bottom on larger screen res’ anyway. I’ll do that tonight. Wish I’d thought of it before I’d coded up 60-odd pages. Damn.

Yet *more* kiddies in Xperience today buying chains and studded collars with their pocket money (yes, really, one of them was with his Mum, and she said he could use his pocket money). Going “Wow, look Mum, a Korn shirt”, and generally milling around. Some teenagers, too (looked 14-ish), mostly dressed in pastel-y stuff. Very odd. But I think they might’ve been going to the piercing place upstairs. Anyway, tried on bondage trews, bondage trews didn’t fit. Bah. Saw self in full length mirror for the first time in about 9 months. Going on diet. Then I’ll be back for them, even if they are about 4 inches too long. Heheh. I did get some trousers, though – nice loose pocketed ones. V comfy. Should be better than jeans in the ‘indian summer’ that we’re apparantly due. Laaaaa.

Oh, and found out that JM is doing signings and ‘An Evening With…’ in Manchester / Leeds.

I discovered that trying to finish off a large website when (a) you’re too tired to actually see straight, and (b) you’ve been at work all day (week) and have to be up at 6am for work the next day, is just a bad idea. And in fact, doesn’t work. So I went to bed at midnight (instead of the 2am it’s been every other night this week) and slept like the dead til Willow landed all four feet on my stomach at about 5am. She’s a remarkably sproingy kitty, really. Anyway, I feel a little better today for having had almost 6 hours sleep… but since we’re sposed to be going for dinner tonight with B’s Dad before he goes back to France, I very much doubt that S&S is going to get opened on time. Maybe I’ll postpone the opening date to the 3rd, since I have 2 days off now – I’ll be able to take my time finishing it off. Shall decide this evening.

I love being able to touch type. I really really do. I mean, before I could, I thought I was fairly quick at typing with 2 fingers of each hand, but now…. well, I don’t see how I could cope online if I couldn’t touch type – everything would take so long! It’s just sooooo much better to be able to watch the screen, and not worry too much about what my fingers are doing. As I’m typing this, I’m feeling slightly amazed by how fast the clicking of the keys sounds, *and* the words I want are magically appearing on screen! Taking that course has to be one of the best things I did – I never would’ve got a job after uni/college if I hadn’t. And I wouldn’t be in this job, because I would never have landed the temping job at the ISP which lead to full time job, blah blah blah. But I spose there have to be a load of people online who don’t touch type at 55wpm or whatever. Anyone reading this? What’s it like?