girlofprey

I got things done today! I called my bank to arrange a transfer of money from my ISA to cover my bills for Redemption. I normally dread this, because due to a mix-up and the takeover of my bank by another bank, I only seemed to have my old details for my ISA, which weren't in the right format for my bank to now do anything with. Which basically meant whenever I called there was a lot of umming and ahhing, then security questions I obviously couldn't answer well enough, and then they'd say no and I'd have to go in and do it over the counter. I upgraded my account and got all new details last year, but I haven't used it since then. Today however all my details seemed to be good enough and in good order, and I managed to get it all done. The only problem was the phoneline - it was so quiet I could barely hear anything they were saying, which when people are asking you security questions isn't always great. Also the people I spoke to were either Scottish or Irish - I can't always tell those accents apart for some reason - so they had accents, and I could barely hear them, and occasionally they just spouted boilerplate at me very quickly. Which wasn't brilliant. But I'm pretty sure overall the money came from where it should and is going where it should. Which, according to the terms and conditions I got sent with my new details, means it should be in my current account by Thursday at the latest. Which is win.

Also I emailed my Employment Coach, which I've been meaning to do for a week or two now. Which means that barring packing and washing my hair, I have done everything I need to do before going to Redemption this weekend. Hurrah! I still can't quite get my head around the fact that I have tomorrow to pack, and then I have to be off, on a train, on Thursday. For some reason I'm pretty convinced that should be Friday, but it isn't. But like I say, I've done everything I need to do, pretty much.

Also, I ordered some things from overseas a few weeks ago, and the last of them came in the post today. So I can stop waiting for them and worrying they're lost in the post or something.

Also, I finished all the sidequests I am planning to do in Mass Effect, so I can get back on with the main storyline. Benezia here I come.

Also, I watched episode 5 of The Following. ( Spoilers )

Hello. I've not been on Livejournal for a while. Essentially, I fell into Mass Effect (finally), and I have been playing that until it's basically too late to make posts. Also I got kind of fannish about Les Miserables, and started watching The Following. And whatever scraps of attention I had left basically went on Wreck-It Ralph and The Cave. The Cave is a little computer game I've been playing, which is kind of amazing. It was an online exclusive - possibly a Playstation Network exclusive - but it was only £10 and it's this great little puzzle game with beautiful graphics. You get a choice of 7 characters, and they've made exactly half of them female (3 women, 3 men, and a twin sister and brother). And two of those characters are POC, which is two more than some games manage. And all of the characters are dicks. And the game is about how dickish they all are. It's wicked. I am on my third playthrough now with the last of the characters.

Then there's Mass Effect obviously. I am enjoying Mass Effect. Well, except that ( Spoilers )

And then there's The Following. Oh, The Following. ( Big spoilers up to episode 4 )

Wreck-It Ralph is also very good. I was a little underwhelmed by it, but that might well be because I'd been looking forward to it for 4 months, since it came out in the US and had to start avoiding spoilers on Tumblr. And possibly because I was expecting a little more wrecking. But it was lovely all the same, and well worth seeing if you like animated films.

I meant to go to Wakefield today and book train tickets for Redemption. But then there was snow so I couldn't. I'll have to go tomorrow. REDEMPTION IS SO SOON. I kept thinking it was at the end of February, and then remembering it was actually a week before the end of February. And that February is very short. It will probably be my last convention for a year or so though, now that Connotations has finished ::sob::

Also, are we sure the Pope is quitting being Pope? Maybe he's just giving it up for Lent. Haha.

I love Fallout: New Vegas. But it's so buggy, I almost can't believe it.

I mean, Fallout 3 had it's problems - when I first started playing it, I had to crash my Playstation pretty much every single day for a week, because if I had the game on for too long and then tried to use a shop WOE BETIDE. And then it started just sort of freezing up when I had fights, or sometimes just when I went into new areas, and I had to crash the Playstation. Which was annoying. And yes, the people in Megaton kept disappearing, because they apparently walked through holes in the meshes and out into the void. But by and large, the game itself still mostly made sense.

But Fallout: New Vegas - I mean, I have problems every now and then because I just can't understand which dialogue options lead to or continue quests, or I don't know where to go to start or continue quests, but that's fine because I don't think it's great when games hold your hand all the way through, and I can usually figure it out. But the bugs I am running into at the moment are kind of ridiculous. AND TERRIFYING. I just did a quest yesterday where I had to talk a lot to a guy, and then at one point I went to speak to him and HIS WHOLE HEAD TURNED RIGHT THE WAY AROUND WHILE I WAS SPEAKING TO HIM. And I don't mean like in The Exorcist. Not even that. I mean that while his head was facing me, it did a 360 circle, down across his chest and back up again. And I went to check something about the quest later on the internet, after I'd finished it, and it turned out that was a common problem that lots of people saw. A COMMON PROBLEM. But I also read that in the same quest, part of it I didn't complete involved finding the body of a dead prostitute (Fallout: New Vegas isn't always very pleasant), and a common bug occured where often she would be up and walking around, instead of lying down dead. And I thought 'haha, at least THAT didn't happen to me'. But today I decided to investigate that stuff I didn't find out, to see what it actually was, and lo and behold. She was up. And she was walking around. Into the hallway. But whenever I clicked on her to talk, the game told me she was dead, would I like to examine the body? She also spoke to me. She said "Wait, don't go!". I had to be all "I have to. You're an abomination".

Other than that, there are the quests that you fail without ever having been given them, but I'm willing to overlook that because of role-playing and branching path reasons. But I really feel like you should be given some warning about that type of thing. Then there are the quests you fail or items you can never get because you did things in a quest IN THE WRONG ORDER, without the game ever telling you that will happen. Then there are the bugs where the game developers obviously didn't put in quite as much effort for female Player Characters as for male Player Characters - quite a lot of games do this sadly, but in Fallout: New Vegas you get an alternative inventory screen thing, and at the moment I'm having to read mine at a jaunty angle. I thought this was style choice to do with the inventory itself, but no, it turns out it's because they only fixed the alternate mesh for male player characters, and didn't quite manage for female characters. So I get a weird angle. I kind of like it. But still. Well done, Bethesda/Obsidian.

And then today I was doing a quest where I had to go kill a bandit leader, and if possible rescue a soldier from their base. I went to the base, killed the bandit leader, searched all of the base and didn't find the soldier. But I figured it was okay, because I thought I'd seen a character with a similar name stuck somewhere before, so I would get back to the quest giver and they'd be all 'hey, he wasn't there but it turns out he's here, can you go get him?'. But in fact I got back to the quest giver and they were all 'hey, that soldier just got back, he told me he wouldn't have gotten out of there without you, we're all totally grateful'. EVEN THOUGH I NEVER SAW HIM. Apparently he is putting his rescue down to me and praising my good name though. And then, I was looking up the quest on the internet to find out WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED, and it said that if you kill the bandit leader before looking for the soldier, you often find him dead anyway. What the hell is that, game?

And it's like, I have the Ultimate Edition of the game. The Game Of The Year edition, with all of the add-on quests and packs released for the main game, which they don't usually bring out until at least a year after the original game's been on sale. So it seems like they had a chance to hear about and fix some of these bugs if they wanted to. Or include some patches? But they didn't. Instead, there are dead bodies walking around.

I love Fallout: New Vegas. But it is SO buggy.

Also, there is a petition here against them taking Mary Seacole out of the National Curriculum. I didn't know she was in the National Curriculum - it sort of explains Horrible Histories doing a sketch about her when I'd never heard of her - but it seems like she shouldn't be taken out of it. Petitions nowadays seem to be replacing their "share this petition with your friends" pages with "would you like to donate some money to us?" pages, so I cannot share it anywhere else. But it is here, at any rate.

Trying again. Shorter version. Highlights of the day included:

• Watching the back end of Gone With The Wind this morning while opening presents.



• My mum's story about how she got me Far Cry 3 because she saw the cover, thought it wasn't very Christmassy, went off to look at the two other games I'd suggested, looked at Borderlands 2, looked at Dead Island, then went back and got me Far Cry 3.



• Hearing the story of how my MN, who will be 5 in a month, was apparently crying his heart out in bed last night, and when my sister went to see him and asked him what was wrong, he said it was because he thought he might be on Santa's naughty list, and wouldn't get any presents this morning.



• Things not kicking off with my sister, despite all my fears. Possibly because I was relieved about this, we ended up all having kind of laugh together, and it was a pretty good Christmas actually.



• Catching the tail end of Shrek Forever After and it almost making me cry again.



• Watching bits of the Strictly Come Dancing special, and my YN (who's now 1) doing his version of 'dancing' (turning his torso from side to side) whenever the music was on.



• Also my YN's now super awesome walking skills.



• And a lowlight would probably be catching any of the Doctor Who special. Seriously? Did the power of a single emo tear SERIOUSLY save the world/London this time? SERIOUSLY?

Is this all good? No eating this time? Hurray.

I have a Playstation 3. I do not have Playstation Network.

Playstation Network is Playstation's online service type thing, for anyone who doesn't know. I don't have it, and generally I'm pretty fine with that. I'm not interested in playing Multiplayer games, I'm not interested in playing Multiplayer mode on any of my current games. I kind of go and play video games to be on my own with an activity, and so I can kick, shoot and run into things with abandon when I'm in a bad mood or just don't care. The last thing I want when I'm playing games is to suddenly be flung into a new one with a bunch of strangers, and have to co-operate with them. Largely. I'm sure the multiplayer experience is lovely for lots of people, and maybe I'd really enjoy it if I actually tried it. But at the moment it holds no appeal for me.

The other main thing you can get through online services is DLC, downloadable content, which is like extra bits tacked onto popular games, or extra items, or sometimes extra - vital - bits of the story that the developers felt like making you pay a bit more for. Again, I'm not really that bothered. I come to most games late enough that by the time I want to buy them, a Game Of The Year edition is out if they've been REALLY popular, which collects the game and all its DLCs onto one physical disc. Awesome.

However, it's starting to look like I might have to get Playstation Network. Because they've started/have continued making things that you actually cannot get anywhere else.

There's a webcomic artist I like and follow on Tumblr, and she was doing some work I think on a game called Skullgirls, or she talked about it a lot anyway. Skullgirls looked really interesting, so I figured great, I'll buy that when it comes out. No. It's a Playstation and XBox exclusive, and you can only get it online! Due to intense popularity, we will be selling it for PCs now! Eventually! 'Eventually', however, means nothing, like it probably sounds. They keep putting the date for eventually back. I literally cannot tell when it will be. Then there's Infamous. I have many issues with the Infamous franchise, but I love the games, and I was really happy that I'd played all of them so at least I couldn't be spoiled for any. But no! They made a new little adventure with vampires! You can only get it online though! No Game Of The Year editions for you! And they might make more adventures in the future! Who knows!!

And then there is Okami. Okami was a game I noticed years ago, before the Playstation 3 was out, before I had a games console. It's about a Japanese goddess fighting demons, who takes the form of a white wolf. I really wanted to play it, but I didn't have a console, le sigh. I still haven't actually used the second hand Playstation 2 I bought a while back, but I did toy with the idea of getting a copy of Okami, so I could play it on that when I did get it out. But then it was okay! I heard they were bringing out a HD version of Okami that you could play on the Playstation 3. So I figured "great, I'll get that!". I trawled the internet looking for release dates, looking for UK release dates. I couldn't find anything. Eventually I got bored of not finding anything and temporarily forgot about it. It was supposed to be in the autumn or winter of this year, and I figured I'd hear about it when it did come out. Then a few weeks ago I saw somebody talking about Okami, and I decided to look and see if it had come out yet, or if the release had been delayed, or if they had some news about when the release date was, or what. It turned out it HAD been released, at the end of October. On the Playstation Network.

So yes. The amount of things I want to get from Playstation Network are sort of piling up, so it looks like I'm going to probably end up getting on it. Even though I've heard many tales of Playstation Network's service being shit and shutting down for weeks at a time. Even though people on Cracked.com keep telling me horror stories about the future of gaming and online security measures (no 5 on that list). To be honest, if those security measures end up happening I'm probably going to need an internet connection anyway, so I may as well get used to it now.

The thing is, apart from anything I thought that getting an internet connection for my Playstation would just be annoying and inconvenient. Having to get wires, having to find a spare phone socket thing, probably have to get dad help me sort it out. It literally only just occured to me this week that we have wifi. And I looked up the Playstation 3 capabilities, and you can totally use wifi on it. So it looks likes it going to be easier than I thought. Assuming the connection works, that is. And assuming it's not too big a drain on our Broadband.

In other news, I totally intended to watch the Text Santa thing last night. But then I didn't. Happily someone had uploaded the only thing I really wanted to watch it for: Snow Whitechapel. A parody and combination of PRETTY MUCH ALL THE CURRENT ITV DETECTIVE DRAMAS I LOVE THE BEST. It is beautiful.

It's been 8 days since I last posted, and I'm sure I had a bunch of things to say, but I can't remember them now.

I've received a beautiful card of CHRISTMAS RESCUE from the whatho, thank you whatho. Also my sister came down to our house - that was fun. It's my nephew's first birthday today, but my mum went off on an overnight trip yesterday, so we wouldn't have had time to do anything as family today. So I knew it was going to be a weekend we'd be celebrating it, but I really assumed it would be this weekend. But no, last Saturday, as we were getting ready to go to a Christmas do at a local park with my MN and ON, my mum suddenly told me we were having them all down the next day. I hadn't even got my YN a present, they had to drop me off as we got back from the park at about 5 o'clock at a Poundstretcher so I could get him something. THEN, on Sunday morning, my mum suddenly broke the news that my sister HAD been angry, extremely angry, about the fact I didn't lend her any DVDs last week, and mum just hadn't mentioned it. I'd asked that night if my sister had said anything when they dropped my ON back off at home, and mum just said my dad had taken him, and hadn't said anything about it. But no, apparently the next day she had a massive go at mum about it, and had said she'd been 'livid' when she realised I hadn't sent her any DVDs. But not to worry, mum said. She been talking about coats I might like the day afterward, and probably wouldn't say anything in our house to me. Which was, y'know, lovely.

But in the end it was fine, as soon as my sister came in she looked right at me and smiled. Not in a creepy way. And then we were mostly just focused on my YN and his birthday, which was good for me as I hardly get to see him. He can walk a few steps now, if someone's there to lure him towards them and catch him when he falls on them. And my sister didn't say anything at all, just tried to joke with me randomly as usual. I guess, also as usual, she's okay to just rant at mum about things and not say anything actually to me.

Also, I caught a bit of Coronation Street on Friday. It was only a bit of the last episode, but I learned that surrogacy is a nearly unheard of practice that is one of the worst things you can do. I don't know, did everyone in the Rovers know Owen was paying Tina to do it? Because otherwise attitudes to things in Manchester must just be very different to attitudes everywhere else. Also, a policewoman turned up and Steve's first comment was either an assumption or a joke that she was a stripper. Nice. However, I did learn - as I suspected - that I would really love David and Tina to be friends again, although they probably shouldn't date again. And that David looks beautiful when he cries just slightly.

I went to see Skyfall again with my dad yesterday, while my mum was away. ( Skyfall spoilers )

And I have continued to play Skyrim and Hearthfire, which is buggy as hell. Like - ridiculously buggy for a game that was made professionally and released by a successful game studio, for money. Crash-to-desktop buggy. RIDICULOUSLY buggy. But I still love my houses and my kids. Then I loaded a save from a couple of days ago and gave up on a bunch of progress, all because of my continuing love of hot Orc women. Ahhh.

Also, I have been rewatching old Arrested Development episodes. And it turns out Jane Lynch was in it! As a redwood of a whore! I love Arrested Development.

Also, it is cold as hell. Also, I still don't know what I want for Christmas, aside from one thing I have asked my mum to get me. So it'll probably be money, this year.

What I'm really hoping happens on Coronation Street is that Tina gets to a certain stage in her pregnancy, and realises that she really really doesn't want to give the baby up. But between Owen holding the money over her head and her not wanting to let Gary and Izzy down, she finds it really hard to actually say so. And then David finds out about it, and starts trying to help her keep it. Because David is a bit psycho about how children should be with their PARENTS, even if those parents aren't entirely the biological parents, and because however much he loves Kylie, I will never believe he isn't just a little bit still in love with Tina. And then we could have a proper feud on the street again, with Owen, Gary and Izzy on one side, and Tina and David on the other, and everyone else taking positions wherever they feel like it. And there could be Gary being desperate and furious to get his baby, and fighting with David over it; Izzy swinging between being devastated and not wanting to take a child away from another woman, and the fact she never entirely wanted to go for surrogacy in the first place; the terrible fight between Gary definitely being the baby's dad, but Tina wanting to be its mother instead of Izzy; Owen just being mental and no-one really being on his side, except in his worst moments Gary; Tommy being useless and just not supporting Tina because he never wanted her to be a surrogate in the first place; Kylie being all furious and insecure because she thinks David still loves Tina, and hates her for not wanting to have another baby; David being absolutely resolute that this is the thing to do, and he's going to make sure it happens; and Tina just not knowing what to do, just that she's not sure she can give the baby up. And everyone else picking sides, or no side at all, or changing sides halfway through the argument.

And it could end with Tina giving the baby up, or keeping it, or having a long, drawn-out legal battle over it, or anything really. But it would be a storyline that would be interesting, and difficult, and not black-and-white, and dreadful, but could just potentially get so much out of so many characters. And I would genuinely be interested and want to watch it. Which is more than I feel for any other storyline at the moment. Except maybe scenes of David talking care of small children. And obviously, they could just write it really badly if they did do that, and put Tracy all over it. But for now, that is what I sort of hope. DAVID AND TINA AND BABY AGAINST THE WORLD. Maybe it will happen.

I miss Becky.

Anyway. In other news, I still haven't heard back from the DWP about my payments. They might not be going to write to me, they just be going to pay me, but I assume they'll write because I asked them to recalculate my money now my grandma's not giving me £40 a month. And they usually write to you every time they change your money, even if they're changing it to the exact thing it was before. I'm hoping if there's a delay it's because they're recalculating the benefits, or processing it or something, rather than because they're gathering the courts to throw me in jail for not informing them about my income changing sooner. Fingers crossed.

Also...I still love Borderlands. And The Binding Of Isaac turned out to be a lot more frustrating than I was expecting. And I still need to buy an advent calendar. Hmph.

I finished Portal 2 last night. Given how much everyone talks about the first game being short, I was expecting it to last longer. But it was good. GLaDOS <3. Chell <3. My main suprise was finding out - through accidentally nearly spoilering myself - that Vern Schillinger from Oz was in it. That was an odd moment. But largely, now I know where a bunch of quotes come from. And from early on I was slashing Chell and GLaDOS. I FEEL LIKE I WAS RIGHT TO DO SO.

Also I am playing Borderlands. I was put off at first because I thought it was just a multiplayer game, and then when I found out it had singleplayer mode, I was put off because the only female "character"/class you could play was called a 'Siren'. But it did still look fun, and everyone talks about it, so I decided to give it a go anyway. And as it turns out, the only female class you can play is indeed called a Siren - whose default name is Lilith - and her special skills involve magical teleportation and elemental attacks. And her combat style, according the game, is "trickery and deception". Also, she's waif-thin. The other - male - characters all have skills like long-range weapons or hand-to-hand combat, and as far as I can tell, none of them have magical powers. And it's annoying, because the magical stuff and the elemental attacks are all really fun to play, actually, and I'm even getting used to her high-pitched laugh whenever she makes a critical hit. But yeah. I'd probably be happier if they'd decided to make the sexy magial liar a male character. Or given ANY of those traits to one of the male characters. Or given you a female choice other than the Siren. But they didn't. But like I say, it is still pretty fun, and the graphics are amazing. I like guns, as it turns out. You should just trust me when I say I have saved you from MANY POSTS on my love of guns in videogames before. But suffice it to say, Borderlands massively caters to this love. Time will tell if that wears thin in the end.

A game I am genuinely suprised by though, which I am also playing, is Mercenaries 2. On the face of it, it's all about blowing things up, and it's also sort of designed to be a multiplayer game. But I looked it up and found out that of the three characters you can play, one is a woman, and you get the same storyline no matter who you choose. And not only is she female, I'm pretty sure she's Asian - she's obviously British, but her name's Jennifer Mui - so she's a female character of colour, and they seem to have made an effort to give her a proper personality. And a bunch of the supporting characters are female - her support operative she starts with is female, and over the course of the game you get three extra members of the team, and one's a female mechanic. And both of the Factions I'm in contact with so far, an oil company and a guerrilla army, are both run by women. And all three of the villain characters are male (so far). There is the fairly problematic fact that it's set in war-torn Venezuela and you get to blow pretty much everything up - because hey, Venezuela's always war-torn, and blowing up other countries' buildings is fun - but largely, I'm pretty impressed with how they're handling a lot of stuff so far. For a multiplayer game that's essentially about blowing things up.

I just wrote out my appeal form. They give you the tiniest space to write your reasons why you don't agree with their decision. Which is largely how I felt about the assessment form - although apparently I was some good at filling that in this time. Maybe I just feel like I have A LOT OF REASONS to give them. But I think I got at least some relevant points through, and it's completed now at least. Now I just need to send it out so it will get to Barnsley before Monday. Sigh.

I also caught up with Dallas yesterday, and then watched the final episode. ( Dallas )

The new series apparently begins in America in January. So obviously I either need to get downloading, or really enjoy these few months of being all caught up before I lose them again.

We also had the American election this week. I am happy and genuinely a little bit amazed that Obama won. As well as all the 'shenanigans' I'd been hearing about, things sort of came to a head on Tuesday night when I started seeing posts on Tumblr about how people were taking pictures of their pro-Obama ballots and posting them online because they were so excited, but that they shouldn't do that, because they could be arrested and have their votes annulled. I was ready to give up, get ready for Romney to win, and be all "2012, End Of Days". But then Obama won. And apparently it wasn't even close. So hurrah.

I also finished Portal, and bought Portal 2. I liked the song at the end. A LOT. And while I was looking for Portal 2 (in vain) in my home town, I found out that the little games shop I used to see when I was a teenager was still open, and both stocking and selling Bioshock action figures! It was a good day all around.

And we had my YN over at my house today. He is sweet, and can pull himself up on furniture, and make lots of noises now. And point. At one point he looked up at one of our houseplants, pointed at it and went "Aaah!", and then went back to playing with his cars. He plays with cars by pushing them along and going "aaaaaaah" or "grrrrrrrrr". He is lovely. I also learned that my mum thinks he's "weird". Which, in fairness, is something I would expect a sitcom granny to say about their baby grandchild, so at least we're living up to the stereotype, thanks mum.

And I saw a bit of Emmerdale today with Declan in it, and it gave me Declan/Nathan feelings. Sigh.

And I had a dentist appointment today, which went quite well, with quite a lovely new lady dentist. It was her first day apparently. She didn't make any mistakes which could only be covered up by saying "It's my first day!". Yay. And we had Bonfire Night, which means we're now in the period of time I officially recognise as Pre-Christmas. Argh. And...something. I'm on my period, and I'm really tired. Oh, and I attempted to buy trousers from H&M, and I found out that of all the weird sizing issues there are from shop to shop, H&M might just take the cake for 'obviously a lot smaller than the number would imply'. And yet I also tried a jumper from there, and the Large was too big for me so I had to get a Medium. Weird.

And then I finished Bioshock 2. Which was also good, but...sort of unsatisfactory too. I don't know. I don't think I like karma systems in games. I mean, it's interesting, and it means you have more choice and it adds to replay value, obviously. But I just think at the moment the way games are set up it just messes with the writing - because in almost every one I've played with a karma system, the karma things you do - which WOULD be a big deal, and worth mentioning between well-written characters with well-written relationships - just don't get mentioned until the end, or mentioned in a barely passing way at the end of each quest. In Dishonoured you regularly just got a note from someone, even someone you shared housing with, if you did something nice, and a bit of extra gold. And in both Dishonoured and Bioshock 2, you got sidequests and extra characters who showed up and seemed important for karma choices, and then just never showed up again - because the writers couldn't include them in the later plot in case you'd killed them or let them die. Bioshock 2 probably did the karma thing better than most games, because from the things that got said I'm guessing a lot of the ending was different depending on which choices you'd made. But the main place I saw it done well really was in Fallout 3. Which is a role-playing game, where the point is that you get to choose who your character is, and you don't tend to have lots of involved converstations with the same characters. I don't know, I just feel like a lot of games are swinging towards that role-playing element so players feel more like they're playing the kind of character they want to play, rather than having specific, well-defined characters the players have to play, which is also a pretty good way to write (and play) videogames.

Also, in Bioshock 2 and Dishonoured, I have just played two games where the main character was male, and the main NPC female character was either a child or very much in a child position, whose personalities were massively influenced or completely defined by the choices their fathers/father figures made. Which was nice.

Anyway. I am kind of in a video game limbo state at the moment. I don't really know what to do with myself. My head says buy more video games. Or finish some of the ones I've already started. I started playing the first Portal game today. And, as far as I can tell, have nearly finished it. It is wicked. I can probably pick the second one up sometime this week if I finish it. Which will probably help with the limbo state thing. Also I kind of really want to play this game. Even though it looks disturbing as fuck. Maybe BECAUSE it looks disturbing as fuck.

Of course, a different part of my brain says maybe I should use this time to do some of the other things I kind of need to do. While I was on holiday the disability advisor woman from the Jobcentre called and asked me to call her back as soon as possible, which meant calling from Crete to basically say I couldn't talk to her. I tried calling back last week, and they said she was away, but had scheduled a telephone interview with me tomorrow at 11:10am. So that's happening tomorrow. I have no idea what she's going to say - it might be very short if I just have to tell her I've been kicked off ESA and am appealing, and she can't offer me any services in the meantime. I don't remember them calling me in or giving me a disability advisor the last time I appealed. So we'll see, I guess.

Also I need to fill in my appeal form. I need to fill it in and possibly have it back to them by next Monday. But I don't really know what to say. EVERYTHING'S WRONG, EXCEPT I'M A LITTLE BETTER THAN LAST YEAR, EXCEPT I DON'T THINK I'M READY TO WORK YET. Really. For some reason I've gotten stuck on the idea that they might not pay me if my form isn't good enough or convincing enough, which is probably not true, but still. And I can't really remember what I put on my last appeal form. Hmm.

Also it's my dad's birthday tomorrow. Also I need to organise that volunteering I've been meaning to do, and had to not go to in October. Also I need to catch up on Dallas. Since I'm pretty sure it's the last episode this week. And I have an appointment with my employment coach and with the dentist this week. It's a pretty full week really, all told.