girlofprey

Hello. I went away for the weekend, to see jekesta and alicamel. We watched BUGS, which is even better than I remembered it being, OH GOD I LOVE ED, and we watched Hana Yori Dango, which is also brilliant, and Jen and Alice showed me some Leverage, and OH GOD I LOVE THE THIEVES. And we had chinese takeaway and played Escape From Atlantis, which I lost by a pretty big amount, and we hummed at each other, and we watched Eurovision, which I'd never properly watched before. I don't know what I was thinking. It was great. Apart from Graham Norton and our song. I didn't make notes, a lesson I will most likely learn from in the future, but I liked Portugal's song and Armenia's song and Norway's song. Jen and Alice showed me joyous songs from previous years. Also, Jennifer is going to get £250 million and we're going to start our own navy. And it was all quite great. Hurrah.

I have a Jobseeker's appointment tomorrow, and I need to apply for another job really. So I'm going to do that now. Yay.

Rubbish. I am it and my flat is covered in it. I thought when I left work on Monday that at least I would have a bit of time to tidy things up. That hasn't happened so far.

However, I have just called the Jobseeker's place to sign on. I was putting it off, because if I get a job before my first appointment as far as I know I don't get paid anything, and it's just a lot of messing about. But I have done it now. They managed to get me an initial checking in appointment thing at some unthinkable hour tomorrow morning. Bastards. Still, at least I actually got paid something last time, so there'll be some money coming in, hopefully. Which is always good.

And I have managed to finish Series 1 of Hana Yori Dango. OH HANA YORI DANGO. I love Makino. I love Tsukasa. I LOVE THE GOLD. I love the "Great I am". I love most of it. I'm planning to continue spending it wisely and watching Mohabbatein. Possibly after tidying up a bit.

On Sunday, Dancing on Ice was on. Roxanne went out, which was sad, but not unexpected at this point in the competition. She got her highest score and was brilliant with her prop which was a chair. She had to skate off against Zoe, who has sort of risen to be one of the favourites for the past few weeks, and whose skating routine got the highest or second highest marks from the judges, and when they asked Jason to say which one he wanted to save afterwards, he said this was a very close skate off, possibly the closest they'd had. He saved Zoe, of course, but I think it was about as close as he could come to saying he LOVED ROXANNE. Roxanne will be on the tour anyway. Which I'm going to see with my mum. Hurrah!

That's my fandom news. The other is that last night on Coronation Street, after Gary got off at the court case because Tina told the truth, Gary's mum said they should invite the Platts, including David, out for a drink to show they had no hard feelings. Gary insisted that he DID have hard feelings. I can't be imagining this.

A fact that I've just learned form the City Council magazine that gets delivered every month or so: St Anns in Nottingham has the oldest and largest allotment site in Britain. I might look into that. Another fact I learned from them: cockroaches can come into your flat or house by being carried in in the hard drive of your laptop. I will never entirely trust this laptop again.

On Casualty - I wonder if anyone mentioned to Mr Jordan that at his new ED, there would be two junior doctors SWIMMING IN ISSUES, who would probably fall WILDLY IN LOVE WITH HIM. I wonder if they put that in the job description.

I just worked 6 hours overtime, for double pay, and now I'm home and it's Sunday night, and I don't need to wash my hair because I did it this morning, and I don't really know what to do. Emmerdale isn't going to be on. Or Coronation Street. I couldn't have gone Christmas shopping. I can't stay up late because I have to work in the morning.

I'll probably watch some DVDs. I'm watching Hana Yori Dango at the moment, which is a Japanese drama I saw mistful talking about once. It's about an ordinary Japanese girl who manages to get into a really top private school where all the rich kids of the area go. It's essentially run by four male students whose parents are particularly rich, ( Plot spoilers for the first episode )

A THING I LOVE: People being introduced through their feet. It happens a lot in Hana Yori Dango, and it happened in a film I saw recently. I don't know if that counts as a sort of spoiler, so I won't say which. I love it a lot.

I just found a gaping underground chasm near my flat! It was walled-off and had stairs that went down further than I had possibly imagined. I think it might be underground parking. Personally though, I'm going with GAPING UNDERGROUND CHASM. Also there were policemen surrounding a badly parked car on the street. I couldn't see if a small black puppet was at the wheel. Probably so. I should really look around my area more. Apparently I'm quite near the really rich part of town where they have tennis courts and private gardens. Private gardens I WON'T BE ABLE TO TOUCH, because I'm not a resident. But still.

The last few days have mostly involved failure, generally failure to get up at a decent time. And then taking too long getting ready, and so generally failing to get all the stuff done I wanted to do. However, I totally did find the place in Nottingham where I've been sending my council tax, so that should save a few stamps in future. And I have quite a bit of stuff. I have Alias Series 2. Sark might be in the VERY FIRST EPISODE of it. And he's not, Will probably will be. Or Jack. It's a bit much. Also, I'm getting Interstellar, which seems like the best thing you could possibly find for a band you like.

I got a new daily planner for 2008 as well. It is nowhere near as beautiful as the one I had for last year, but then I wasn't really expecting ANYTHING TO BE. And at least I can plan things ahead now. And I got a cheap Grindhouse calendar. For the win. My plan for tomorrow is essentially to stay in, no matter what I have to do. Unless there's no food in the house or something. But I did just go shopping today, so there should be. Hurrah.

1. Gosh.


2. Suburban Shootout vid, yay!

( Heroes 2x05 )

Mostly I have been watching Carnivale, and pointedly staying away from anything on the internet that might give away the ending. I love it quite a bit, even if it has some dodgy gender issues. The female characters are quite beautiful though.

Also I started my new job at the University on Monday, which is fine. It's quite dull. Mostly I am sitting at a computer at the moment and typing up feedback sheets from students about their seminars. Some of which are admittedly hilarious. I like it when they use capital letters. But it still gets a bit wearing when you have to do it for 4 hours. However - as you can imagine, this involves me being on the computer a lot. As it turns out there's not much physical filing to do. But no computer in the admin room where I'm working has been without some problem since I've been working there, and my main one is that even though I've been given a password and a login, when I try to use them the computer asks me for a workstation password, which I don't have. And my Uni password and login don't work. And the temporary password and login an IT guy set up for me doesn't work. When anyone else logs in for me, which they pretty much have to, it does not ask them for a password. When I tried a different computer this morning, it asked me for the other password. Bastard. So I mostly have to wait for about half an hour in the morning for someone to come in and log me on, doing nothing. Earning a "how are you getting on, Rachael?" from the woman in charge.

But apart from that, it's alright. The people are nice, it's not too far from the flat, there's a lake outside, complete with swans and crows that terrorise each other. Apparently it's meant to be for three weeks, but they're looking for someone long term until Christmas too, though they want to wait and see how I get on before they say anything definite. Hopefully I'll get it, because the money's pretty good. And, yeah, Christmas is coming up and I'm probably going to need it. And if the students continue to list as a failing point of a seminar the fact they were bored, hey, it's all good!

The Peter Serafinowicz Show is on tonight. I keep forgetting about that.

I finished Arrested Development. The DVDs came on Wednesday - the day the strike ended, and well done to CD-Wow for that - and I apparently decided to watch it instead of telling anybody about it. But yes. It's finished.

( Spoilers up to end of Season 3 )

Right. I was going to do a picspam over the weekend, but sort of forgot how long screencaping takes. Especially when you decide to just screencap the WHOLE THING. And then yesterday I learned that you're not even safe from Bank Holiday family outings after you've moved out. But it was fine, mum and dad brought my nephew down and we went to a kids theme park thing. I learned his favourite number and colour (4, and pink). And we played in a maze. And saw a monitor lizard. Oh, and they had fallow deer! That was quite good. Generally speaking, a good time was had by all, except when my nephew tried to spit on me.

Anyway. In all that I mostly forgot to post, and probably as a result didn't mention that my job for next week was pulled forward to this week. I had my first day today. It all seems alright. After some kerfuffle with the buses and the internet not telling me where they are it turns out they go from the town centre every ten minutes and only take ten minutes to get there, and because I'm only working 27 hours, I get a day off every week and get to go 45 minutes earlier than my other jobs. I'm working in basically the NHS complaints department, which means we get to order investigations into how wards and clinics are being run. We also look into inquests and homicide reviews, which should be, y'know, fun. And due to the sensitive nature of the information, I'm not allowed to speak to anybody about what I'm dealing with. Not even other NHS staff, who may or may not be being investigated. IT'S A BIT STRANGE. But quite interesting, if sometimes horrible. That's meant to be going on until the end of September, unless they can get someone permanent to start before that. And apparently I'm perfectly welcome to try for the permanent position. Hmm.

The other two days working round the corner were quite good as well. There was an IT crisis, which meant my computer wasn't connected to the network and an IT guy kept asking me to get off it so he could try to fix it, and there was an event they kept asking me to create registration forms for, but mostly it was quiet. It was quite strange really. I've never really been down that road before, even though it's just round the corner - it leads to a bad area - but there's tons of stuff down there. A big supermarket selling fresh fruit and Polish cake mix. Which is nice to know. And it turns out the cleaner from the NHS clinic I was working at before goes to the place I was working at last week quite regularly, where they try to set people up with employment. Apparently he's an expert in renewable energy, and has had dozens of papers published. But according to his contact there he doesn't present himself very well in interviews and they have trouble converting his degree (from Sudan I think) into an English equivalent. Which is apparently an English degree. All of which was suprising, and really quite a shame.

Anyway. A fascinating fact I learned in my last week at the NHS clinic - Mary Mary, Quite Contrary is actually about executions. Mary is Bloody Mary, who was executing quite a few people at the time for religious reasons. "Gardens" is apparently a reference to graveyards, the "silver bells" are thumbscrews (they looked like that it seems), "cockleshells" is supposedly a torture device they attached to your genitals, and the pretty maids were a reference to guillotines. Bet you'll never look at that nursery rhyme in the same way again. And I have the second series of Arrested Development. Hurrah!

( Emmerdale )

I went down to the shop to get some toilet paper and saw a man on the corner looking out into the road and talking to himself, and it looked like foaming at the mouth. So I told the police. Hopefully that wasn't the wrong thing to do. They took my address and telephone number so they'll probably be around to tell me how bad it is making up stories to the police later.

Tonight I have a plan to finally set up the portable DVD player dad bought me last year. Or watch Drop the Dead Donkey. Both are good.

Hello. I have not been posting for awhile. Or, to be more accurate, for 5/7 days. I still haunted your comments boxes though, hah! I've been sort of re-evaluating the way I use and think of Livejournal, which I think was previously 'too much'. This SAYS NOTHING about what I think of other people using Livejournal, but I do occasionally get a bit wound up about it all. So I might be attempting to be around less in future, though I don't at all want to give it up. Or any of you.

( Possible TMI, blah )

I have wanted to make posts though. The problem with LJ is that it doesn't pick up on the fleeting, half-formed thoughts in your head and create posts from them immediately. That's a definite design flaw.

I have been watching:

• Garth Merenghi's Darkplace. I love Lucien Sanchez. He did a song. I think it takes a certain kind of mood to really enjoy the show, but I thought it was pretty good. And Sanch danced to his headphones! Love.



• Robin Hood. I love Guy of Gisbourne. Except sometimes when he's stabbing things. Though he did look pretty fine with a broadsword. Yeah, baby. I love that Will has an axe. And the Pillow Talk bit KILLED ME DEAD. Omg. Sheriff/Robin might become my new 'I don't really like either of them' OTP. Is there a New Robin Hood comm anywhere about?



• My Rex the Runt boxset from eBay. Yay.



• An episode of Boston Legal. I love Alan Shore. He wins all the cases and smiles sometimes. I'm not really that taken with Legal Drama as a whole, and Denny annoyed me a bit, at least in this episode. But I would like to see more of that Alan Shore fellow. Yes.

Also, my friend in this town emailed me, inviting me to a Halloween film session on Saturday, and I arranged going down to see that play with my Nottingham housemates, so I have a few more social outings to look forward to in the weeks to come, which is nice.

And: the Old Gregg/Nathan Barley over at little_bit_raw. Omg.