girlofprey

What up, friends! It's ya girl.

I'm still sick, but marginally less gross and awful-feeling than I was during the week. Last night I actually had hours of unbroken sleep after taking buttercup syrup before bed, and not having to get up/go to work is a huge help.

I've been thinking of taking a day off next Monday because it's Paris Games Week and Playstation have teased a big broadcast and some new announcements, and it's always nice to see that in person rather than being spoiled when you go to look for the stream later. Because I love the console wars, I find it kind of amazing, because Playstation didn't really announce anything new at E3, when Microsoft were announcing the new Xbox One X (or X.B.O.X.), for which Microsoft announced pretty much no new games - and now they're having a big announcement a week before the XBOX actually goes on sale. Like, go Sony. You keep trying to undercut the competition. But then I realised the day after that is Halloween, and then the Sunday after that is Bonfire night (and my dad's birthday). And then it's basically what I consider the Christmas season. I have 6 holiday days left if I take next Monday off, and I was planning to take a week off in December, so I could enjoy the Christmas season and do some shopping and stuff. But I really need to get that planned out and booked in now, so my manager can find cover, and it's just seems to be coming up pretty fast. October didn't really feel like October for a long time, because it was so ridiculously warm and then I was sick. And to be fair, I've been in a Div fugue for some time. But it also just feels like the end of the year and Christmas and everything is coming up really fast. It'll be 2018 before we know it. I guess maybe this is just how it feels when you're working all the time - first year I've really done that in a long time.

( Div )

ETA: I have to say though, being sick is awful, but it has given me a new appreciation of my body. My coughing is amazing. When I actually have something in my throat and I cough, I can feel how far down it goes and how powerful it is. I have like a pneumatic cannon in my chest. Well done, evolution, the diaphragm is some top-notch work. I am amazing.

Playstation Experience tonight! They're giving a presentation at 9, they often announce new games, I am excite.

I finally joined Imzy! I am girlofprey on Imzy.

I feel like the two gifs that could sum up my job-hunting process are one of Zohan, from You Don't Mess With The Zohan, saying "I have the skills - I have the desire". And the other would be that one from Brooklyn Nine Nine of Jake playing a guitar for a criminal, and then screaming.

But anyway. Trial shift tomorrow. Wish me luck! I have to get up at about 6.30, but I'm going to give it my best. And right now, the video for the Playstation Meeting that happened earlier tonight has finally gotten to the Meeting part, so I'm going to watch that and learn All The News.

I'm so glad I stayed up to watch the Sony E3 press conference I'm so glad I'm so glad.

I think my heart's going to explode.

It was like, people were saying "well, Sony could do this, or they could do this...". And Sony were just like "What if we do all of it?"

Boom.

Asdsjfkjsdkfjsdk.

New PS4 hard drive: installed. And working fine, so far. The actual hardware stuff turned out to be way less stressful than I imagined - the hardest part was getting the cover off, because it certainly didn't just 'slide' off and I didn't want to crack it. The most nerve-wracking part was screwing screws into the actual hard drive itself, to keep it in the drive caddy, but those screws had little rubber shock-absorber pads, so it was pretty much impossible to overtighten them. They basically got to a certain tightness and stopped. The last screw was just to hold the drive caddy in place, and I had a little trouble with that, but it wasn't near any electronics and I figured it out. I spent most of the day reinstalling games, and downloading EVERY update file since they were released. But now it's all on there, and I reuploaded my save files, and it's all working fine. I had a few things crash, but that's happened before, and probably had more to do with me constantly downloading and updating things and opening them multiple times to make sure they worked than anything. Played some Borderlands and that worked great. And now I have 4 times as much hard drive space as I used to. Hurrah.

I also have a spare 500GB hard drive, with all my old PS4 stuff on it (? maybe?). Interestingly, you can use that to replace the hard drive in your PS3 if you want to, which would give me an upgrade of 180GB. But it would mean doing everything I did today again, and there are WAY more games on my PS3 than my PS4, and I'm not sure backing up your save files would be quite so simple, if it's possible at all. So. Idk.

Went to the Liquorice Festival yesterday. Problems with my ON continued, with him getting furious, not letting me speak and sometimes just walking off without a word when the subject of the boy from Saturday night came up. Apparently I 'made it worse', although we certainly didn't see anything get worse and he didn't talk about any specific thing that happened that was worse. Eventually he wanted my help with a Minecraft thing on my dad's computer, and I managed to arrange an actual conversation with him about it. I basically told him I either wanted him to explain how I'd made it worse or to apologise for his behaviour. He 'couldn't remember' how it had gotten worse after I talked to the kid, but refused to apologise. Until he really wanted my help with downloading a Minecraft file, at which point he did. I like to think I made the nature of co-operation and respectful relationships clear to him. Sadly I couldn't actually download the thing he wanted - my dad's computer didn't do the things we saw in Youtube videos. He seemed happy enough though anyway.

Meanwhile at the actual festival, I discovered Black Forest brownies and bought pictures of ponies and a gannet (beautiful birds). Grand.

I've also bought a replacement hard-drive for my PS4. Apparently it's really easy to install a new one, but it'll be the first piece of hardware I've messed with and I'm still a little nervous about it. I feel sure I'll find some way to tighten a screw too much and crack something. But the disk space on my current PS4 is just not cutting it and if I want big games like Fallout 4 it's going to be easier just to expand now. So. Fingers crossed.

Also I now have a smartphone. I don't want one, really - I got it the same way I got a mobile phone, my parents both upgraded and had a spare model about and donated it to me. So far I don't love touchscreens, it doesn't always get reception, I can't get my gmail to load, I don't recognise the ringtone, and the battery seems to be going down at an alarming rate - it was my mum's old one, so there's every chance it's already knackered. But my dad seems to be already deciding what he's going to do with my old stupidphone and wants the memory card out of it for something. So. We'll see.

I have a PS Vita.

After about a week of my nephew assuring me his mum had found it and nothing getting said, my mum asked about it - and my sister said she didn't know where it was. I actually went online and to my local computer game shop asking about replacement chargers (they're pretty hard to get hold of, apparently) - and then the next day my mum turned up with it from my nephew's house. I got some money out today and handed it over to mum, to 'keep hold of it' for my nephew - she's our intermediary in this matter, as I'm sure you can tell. My nephew doesn't seem that excited about selling it anymore, for some reason, but I'm pretty excited to have it. It doesn't seem to hold onto an internet connection well, which means it might be a little difficult to download games - but probably still doable. Now all I must do is buy an extra memory card and put even more money on my Playstation account, and at least a couple of the exclusive games will be mine, hahaha.

I also volunteered today - nearly missed the bus, after dad and I held each other up in the bathroom as we've never done any other Saturday. But I got there in the end. In the handover book this week, the note about calling down for new visitors was scribbled out with what looked like 'knope' written over it - which I can only assume means 'nope'. So I'm going to assume we're not doing that anymore. Unfortunately I had no new visitors to try it out on, and next week the paid receptionist should be starting so I can take new visitors down to the ward personally if they come. Damn.

I went to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park today, with my parents. It was nice. There's not a huge amount of animals there, but we saw some lions, and some giraffes, and some polar bears, and some leaping lemurs. And some painted dogs, which are super pretty, and I've never seen in person before. It's pretty good considering it's only half an hour from my house and only costs £16 to get in.

The news out of Germany has been a real shock to me, as I'm sure it has been to lots of people. We still don't know what happened, but it's looking pretty grim from a mental health standpoint. A part of me's worried there's going to be a backlash against people with mental illnesses because of it, and Piers Morgan seems to be already leading that charge. Ugh.

On the other hand, I'm incredibly happy Jeremy Clarkson has finally been fired from Top Gear. OH HAPPY DAY. Quite apart from how I feel about him, though, his behaviour has just been getting worse as the years have gone by because everyone let him get away with it, and if they didn't punish him for hitting someone, he'd have ended up killing someone at some point. And been like "oh, but was I PROVOKED though? Their very existence provoked me'. So I'm glad consequences have come to pass, finally.

I got the PS4 remaster for Borderlands yesterday, for my birthday, and I sort of wasn't going to before I learned it was coming out on my birthday, and that seemed a little too perfect to ignore. But I'm glad I did, because it has made the whole game 10x more beautiful. Some games you really can't tell the difference, but Borderlands, the style must really suit a remaster or something, because every time I move in-game there's just so much more depth and everything looks great. Super happy with my purchase now. And I might be able to exchange about 3 game cases for just the one.

Things of the day:

• The volunteering dude I was talking about emailed me today to say he'd been off sick last week, and would let me know when he'd be getting back to work. This is still a little vague, but at least he's not MIA anymore and I don't have to do some sort of volunteering scavenger hunt, hurray!



• Coronation Street could literally be renamed 'Men Being Dicks' right now.



• I actually emailed ITV about the no helplines thing with Anna's storyline. They replied for the first time. It was not a good or convincing reply.



• I got my PS4 connected to the internet yesterday! This sounds like a small thing, but we have been having problems with our modem for a few months and I kind of thought it would never happen. But I did it all by myself, and then updated the software like a boss. It turns out it wanted me to manually input the name of the wifi network rather than just pick it out of a list of networks it had scanned for. This is a little odd, but actually is a problem I sometimes have with my PS3, so eh, it's just a Playstation thing I guess. And it worked at any rate.

I'm not enjoying this week. Which is a shame, because it's barely started.

It's my birthday week too, although I suspect that may be part of the problem. I also have a Jobcentre appointment on Wednesday, a few hours before I normally wake up, and I have an appointment with a service worker dude two hours later, so it's like - if the Jobcentre appointment is weirdly long, which would be dreadful, it might clash, and if not I have to kill time doing nothing before I kill time doing nothing with my service worker dude. But it's the only time he was free, so. Maybe he'd be happy to come to Leeds with me. That's mostly what I want to do on Wednesday.

And then last week I suddenly started CBT therapy, getting a letter a few days before my first appointment. And the man I'm seeing seems super nice, but he's given me this homework which I seem to get every time I have CBT, which is an 'anxiety diary' to fill in, of situations that make me anxious, how I felt about them, what happened to me physically, a different response I could have to it (??), what I did, and how I felt about it later. And I never know how to deal with them, because if I fill it in for every ritual I have, I will literally just be doing rituals and filling in the diary, and probably coming up with rituals for how to fill in the diary. Which this week especially is not really a possibility. It was right at the end of the appointment when he mentioned it and we didn't have time to discuss it, so I don't know if I am meant to fill it in every day, or just one day, or just for every major situation that makes me upset. I haven't been doing it, essentially. I probably will fill in a few entries over the next couple of days. But ???? I'm sure it's really useful, and useful for examining your responses to things, hence why I'm apprehensive about doing it, but uuh. I just never know what to do with them.

And then in between that there is my birthday, and I'll be 29, which is lovely, but nearly 30. But it'll still be my birthday, and I'll feel like I should be enjoying it, but I probably won't, purely because I'll feel like I should. Also we'll be having my YN down. Because we're not going to go upsetting the regular routine for it or anything. We went out to a special different restaurant for Sunday lunch yesterday essentially for my birthday, we would have gone this weekend but it's Mother's Day so who needs that. But mostly my parents seemed to be making some subtle comments about how they didn't really want to, like my dad saying it seemed like a really long way to drive, which is funny because he used to drive all over the country, and my mum saying they have the same chefs as over the road, so we may as well have just gone there like usual. That was a whinge, but I wish they hadn't. It was really nice though. They had parsnips.

Also I have to remember to buy a Mother's Day card.

And the present I have asked for is a PS4 which I'm going halves with them on. Which I've wanted for a while, and will become necessary soon if I want to keep playing console games, but I'm still not finished with my PS3 or its games, and having them both hooked up to the same TV is probably going to be a hassle. I can't have them both hooked up, essentially, because the little TV in the other bedroom only has enough connections for one, and there aren't enough plug sockets in the wall either. Nor enough room to have a bunch of plugs lying loose all over the place because of all the kids toys they don't play with.

Also I have started my period. That might be a lot to do with things. My head feels high and tight.

I was meant to go observe a kickboxing class tonight, in the hopes of going to it soon, but I didn't, I'll leave it till next week. Also I keep waking up at 9am for some reason, when my alarm's not set till 12, and I can't get back to sleep, which isn't helping me not feel tired.

I need to start getting into more fandoms where the bad guys are just jerks, and not actual monsters, because I keep thinking up plotbunnies and then thinking 'Wait. That wouldn't be fun for anyone.' You would think the Legion from Fallout: New Vegas would be a great example, because they're idiots who are trying to be actual ancient Romans and wear feathers on their heads, but unfortunately they're also [trigger warning for rape] [spoilers].

And Kevin's back in Coronation Street, so I have to keep avoiding looking at his face, especially when he talks about how great it is to be back and other people welcome him home with big smiles on their faces. Also they have him living with Jack in a house with Tyrone, who spent the first 6 months or so of the baby's life raising him IN THE SAME HOUSE as his own, what the fuck?

But I love:

• Maria talking to Kirk.


• Maria on a counter.


• David being nice to Roy about sandwiches.


• Maria, Carla and Julie as witches, CAN YOU IMAGINE JULIE AS A WITCH? She would just make flowers grow and mend holes in people's clothes, and give them outfits so they COULD go to the ball. Also she would get to live with Carla and Maria and their babies, and help them raise their babies, and she would be so happy, oh my god.

I wish Ross Barton from Emmerdale would throw himself in front of a car to save a child again, or have another conversation with his dad where he sounds uncharacteristically upset or anxious. Moira is going to do some matchmaking between Chas and James this week, and for a minute I thought the episode description said Ross and James. That was probably tired wishful thinking on my part. But. Someone should do some matchmaking between them. Loving family matchmaking.

Not enough people write fic about Dane Vogel, or even remember he existed, it's the bane of my life.

Blah.