girlofprey

There will not be a Slashies tonight, as there are so few entries it wouldn't really be a competition. However, here's a recap of my year:

I went to RHS Harlow Carr in January, and I really enjoyed it. I liked the winter-scented garden, I liked the pine forest section, I liked the colourful winter willow plants. It was a trip to get there, but I really liked it, and genuinely considered/am considering becoming a member of the RHS.

I don't think I got into perfume this year - I'm pretty sure that was from displays for last Christmas - but I really continued my interest in it. I discovered Penhaligons early on in the year, and Much Ado About the Duke, which if I ever get the nerve up to buy it, I think will be one of my favourite perfumes ever. And I discovered a bunch of places in Leeds where you can go test the perfumes they often sell online without samples - like Maison de Dior - and that was really helpful. Things got harder after it became more difficult to go out to shops to smell perfume, but I'm looking forward to taking advantage of the resources in years to come. And just this week, I found that a perfume I'd been interested in was on sale, and I could get it at a price I was comfortable paying for something I'd never smelt, so I count this as a success.

I reorganised at least part of my bedroom. I bought my beautiful chair, which I love, and got rid of my desk and learned to do without that extra surface space. I'm extremely happy I did that as well.

And bought the cool music centre, and got given all my dad's old vinyl records. I'm annoyed by the clicking of the CD player, but given the state of things I think I'm going to learn to live with it. And it doesn't make CDs unbearable.

I finished going through my CDs, for which ones I wanted to get rid of! Calloo callay. That was a job that was 'to do' for a few years now. I kept probably too many, but at least no longer have any CDs I've never listened to and am not sure I'm that interested in. Now I have either listened to them, or I am definitely interested in them despite never having listened to them. And I'm glad to have the job done with.

I discovered that Chester Zoo do 'one-on-one experiences' with the spotted hyenas they have there. I'm also very excited to do that when I next get the chance.

And then! It turned out that there were spotted hyenas at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, which is about half an hour's drive from me! And they had babies! Which are very rare for hyenas in captivity. I assume my love made it happen.

I got to see Blu Cantrell in concert. And Salt'n'Pepa, and Shaggy, and Nelly. It was a pretty cool night.

I started going on more walks with the dog and mum. The dog in general is getting more walks than he's ever gotten. He's started to look for if I have socks on whenever I come down the stairs, and when I do have them on he starts twirling around. We also learned that we can let him off the lead, sometimes, if there are no distractions around, and he will come back and let us put it back on him when we're done. And sometimes he even listens to us while he's off the lead. Our bonding is up about 500% from where it was last year.

Mum and I saw rabbits very regularly in a particular field near us, to the point that I started calling them Fiver and Hazel. I saw a skylark flying over the field once, singing. I've seen goldfinches and great tits in the wild, near us, which I previously only did on random trips through the countryside, and at bird sanctuaries. Once we saw the tail of a fox, plain as day, down one of the paths we used to walk down. I've seen sparrowhawks fluttering over the fields we walk past, a heron in a stream after the council cleared the brambles away from it, I'm pretty sure I saw a merlin resting on a pylon briefly, and last week I'm fairly certain we saw the sparrowhawk resting in a tree along our usual path, and then a buzzard flying overhead hunting pigeons. Our dog found a frog in a field, far away from any water hole I know about. We found a baby mouse on a path, and shielded it from the blazing summer sunshine that seemed to be blinding it, until it could get to the grass at the side of the path.

Here are the plants I've started loving over this year: tufted vetch, forget-me-nots, pink and white -striped field bindweed, field scabious, aster, toadflax, hawthorn in the winter and autumn. I learned that the garden flower I love that drapes over people's walls is wisteria. Add to poppies, and wild roses, and bluebells, and foxgloves, which I already loved. I saw a field full of I think lupins in the summer, and it was like looking into another world.

I love jewellery. Got into the wonderful world of just gemstone jewellery on Etsy. Bought some. Maybe too much. Re-confirmed my love of amazonite and garnet, and padparadscha sapphires. Discovered grandidierite, tanzanite, bumblebee jasper, poppy jasper, Montana sapphire, and apatite. Among many others.

Ghost of Tsushima came out. It was a pretty good video game. I shipped people in it. Assassin's Creed: Valhalla came out. It is a pretty good video game. I shipped people in it.

Sony gave me the kind of superlative media experiences I only really experience from them, in the form of the Playstation 5 Reveal Event in June, and the Playstation 5 Showcase in September. Both made me feel like I wanted to jump out of my chair, particularly the June one. To anyone who is not a huge Playsation fan, the constant symbols may look a bit culty, and it is, but if you're in the cult it's overwhelming.

The Playstation 5 released, despite fears production would be compromised. And it is great, despite people's fears that it wouldn't be. And I got one, which not everyone can say. I love my local games shop, very very much.

I restarted and finished Project Zero 5: Maiden of Black Water, a game I bought and first started 5 years ago. The only Project Zero game I've managed to actually play. It was good. I'm glad I finished it. The ending was beautiful, in that bittersweet way that Project Zero games have. There were pretty people in it, and I shipped people in it.

This has gone past midnight. Whoops.

We had Women's Month, in August. I didn't do everything I intended to do personally that month, but I was pretty proud of what I did do.

One thing I did do, personally, was rewatch the 2016 Ghostbusters film. I love that film. It was a great film. I love Kirsten Wiig.

Recent Youtube recommendations also led me to SNL's The Californians. I love Kirsten Wiig, and apparently also that man who plays Stuart.

And the woman who plays the maid.

I discovered how marvellous Paul McCartney is.

Georgia turned blue. Never forget.

Chadwick Boseman died, and that was really sad, but I found myself incredibly touched by the story of his last few years. As someone with OCD and hypochondria, and a distinct fear of dying of cancer, I honestly couldn't imagine anything but despair, and the last few years of your life ruined if you got a cancer diagnosis. But Chadwick Boseman just kept on working, and didn't tell anyone, and did beautiful, light-hearted human work. I'm not a fan of the Marvel films, but Black Panther was one of the ones I did enjoy and would call a good film, and a lot of it's because of T'Challa and his story. The idea that you could just carry on, and do good work, and develop friendships and be good friends with people even while dying - never seemed that real to me before Chadwick Boseman died. And now it does.

I got into wrestling early into the year. I sort of fell out of it after they started putting on shows without crowds - maybe because there were no crowds, or maybe just naturally - but I really did enjoy it and intend to get back into it at some point. That was a nice new thing.

I think I also started watching Kritter Klub this year, a channel about animals and animal rescues in South Korea. Some of their videos are a hard watch - I don't think they have animal cruelty laws for strays in South Korea - but some of them are so lovely, and it's become a go-to channel for me throughout the year. I learned about wonderful, terrible cross-breeds of dogs, like maltese and husky, and retriever and whatever that small dog is (turn on CCs for the full stories). Nature is magical. I also started watching The Dodo regularly. Some of their videos are a bit twee, but some are also really lovely. I recommend Possum surprise in a cupboard.

I don't really believe in being like "fuck 2020, and good riddance!", because I feel like for the past few years everyone's been like "thank god that year's over, bring on the next one!". And now this. We really don't know what's coming in 2021. But here is hoping for more good things.

It's December already and I can't post in daylight, so here's my post now.

It's December already. That's fine, but I keep forgetting/trying not to think about the fact all Christmas shopping has to be done online this year, and all deliveries are delayed and messed up because of the pandemic, so I really need to get on with my online Christmas shopping and I haven't. To be fair, I also want to buy things for me to enjoy for Christmas, and things I need, and it adds up to an amount of money I'm nervous about spending when I don't have a job and um...jobs may not be forthcoming in the near future of the economy. But I did end up with about £2,500 after my last two paycheques and redundancy payments, as well as savings in an ISA, so I know that as long as I don't buy everyone Cartier diamonds for Christmas I will probably be fine. And should just buy things so that they arrive, and in good time to quarantine them. I have already ordered a winter coat, winter boots, presents for the cat and dog and part of my parents' presents. Just need to do the rest.

It is weird knowing we almost certainly won't see the kids this Christmas. Last year was weird, but my dad and I did drive down to see my MN (mum was working), and my YN and ON lived close enough to visit (along with my sister) on Boxing Day. This year, with the restrictions and mum and dad's vulnerable age group, none of that will be happening. In a way, given all the drama, that is quite freeing, but also a bit...empty. But we will call them at least. And I am going to get and send stuff over for them. It's just going to be weird.

( Assassin's Creed Valhalla, spoilers to the middle of the story I think )

I have also been enjoying the current series of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, which is mostly just a set of people who are nice really getting on and enjoying each other. But then the British public soured that by getting rid of almost all the women, and keeping almost all the men. I love Giovanna and hope she wins, but it's a bit sad that she's going to have to have a man in the room to pump the water for her whenever she takes a shower now. And then Shane Ritchie will probably win or something.

I give you the gift of animal bloopers from American news. Having pets is wild. My favourite is 1:22 because I'm a child. And then after everything, 13:30.

They have HYENA BABIES at Yorkshire Wildlife Park! I didn't even know they had hyenas. Colchester Zoo made a big deal about how they were the only zoo in England with spotted hyenas, but maybe they are new additions? Anyway. IT'S SO CLOSE TO ME. And extremely rare to have hyenas breeding in European zoos apparently, but here we are. I'm not really looking to go there anytime soon, but maybe next year when things are maybe a bit safer, and it's my birthday, and the babies are cute pre-adolescents.

I don't really want to go cleaning mold off my books, but it's largely the only job left to me in my bedroom. And I do want to rearrange the books up there. I also, while going through the drawers under my bed, found a huge amount of old notebooks and journals, and I'm not really sure what to do with them either. Some I'm definitely keeping, like my leaver's book from college, but with the others, I feel bad throwing them away when they're part of my history. But also I never look at them, don't have a huge amount of reason to check back on things I was doing and feeling 7 years ago, and also a lot of them have lists of slash pairings, fic ideas and kink lists - because that has been a huge part of my life for so long. And while I'm not ashamed of that and think it has value, it's not like I'll be looking to pass these notebooks onto my descendants, or wanting my parents to read them if something should happen to me. So they're just sitting in a drawer under my bed, taking up space. While I decide if I want to do anything with them at all. Really they should go in the loft I guess, but I'm not very good at the loft, and don't feel like giving my dad an extra job. So under the bed they'll stay, for now.

I've also been going through some CDs, hoping to get rid of some and make some room. It's annoying when you find one song on a CD that you really like, but not enough to really keep the whole CD, or be excited to put the whole album on for ever. But you still want to keep hold of the song. I'm relying on Youtube to keep me in touch with that music now. But also I've discovered some new songs I really love. Here is a selection of songs I've found groovy recently:

Obstacle 1 - Interpol

Don't Go Back to Dalston - Razorlight

Pet Semetary - The Ramones

Cish Cash - Basement Jaxx feat. Siouxie Sioux

I need more Basement Jaxx in my life. They're probably one of my favourite bands, but I never think about them that way.

Well. I went to pick up my prescription yesterday, and it was an adventure frankly. The storm that isn't quite happening is passing through, so we had wind blowing us around from the beginning, and blowing dust into our eyes - very unpleasant when you don't want to touch your face or wipe your eyes at the time. My mum came with me with our dog, so we had to deal with him sniffing every single inch of greenery along the way, like he does. We had a moment at the beginning where we passed some wisteria, and I really liked the smell, but mum couldn't smell anything, so I made a joke about whether she'd lost her sense of taste and smell, and she spent the rest of the walk trying to smell every flower we went past to make sure she hadn't. Sadly most of the flowers had no real scent, so we didn't have much luck for about twenty minutes, but finally she confirmed there was one she could smell.

We went by the train station to see what things look like now, since I might have to use it shortly, and it wasn't much different to be honest. There were a few Coronavirus posters up, and the car park was empty. A train pulled in, and we had a look, and there seemed to be some sort of notice on the doors, which I assume was telling people not to open them as the conductor could do that. So at least there are some new procedures in place. We walked off, and that was when I realised my foot was really hurting. I bought some new trainers a few months ago, and I really like them, but they've got higher tops than my old ones and the material's stiff, so it's been rubbing the back of my ankle for a few days. I put a plaster over it for yesterday's walk, and then my foot made very clear to me that the plaster had come off, so I had to go fix it, and then was hobbling the rest of the way. Wind blowing at all moments.

Finally we got to the pharmacy, and the last time I went it was empty. This time there was someone inside, someone else just outside the doors, and another woman walked us just as I got there. So I had to make use of the queue markers, but the woman in front of me didn't make full use of hers and was sort of stood between them, so I had to use the one slightly further back. It took a very long time, but finally the man in the pharmacy came out, and walked down the queue to get back out, instead of using the open exit to the barriers on the other side. Madness. A delivery man for APC turned up for the doctor's surgery, which is sort of attached to the pharmacy, and he didn't care about walking right up past the barriers we were all stood behind, and then he seemed really confused about the fact the doctor's surgery wasn't just open, and he had to press the buzzer to get someone's attention. The second man in the queue came back out of the surgery, and nearly walked down the line to get out, and I had to actually tell him the way out was behind him. He still had to try to argue, that he thought that was for people going to the doctor's surgery. But he left that way eventually. Finally it was my turn, and before I went in my mother called out to me I had to wait for them to signal me, but they weren't doing that, so I just hovered around the door for a bit while the mask-wearing pharmacist stared at me in confusion.

But I got my prescription! Painlessly. Then we could go home. I spent a little while sanitising my hands with the free 70% sanitiser I was sent the other month, and found it genuinely hard to cover all the areas I wanted to cover before the gel dried up. But I managed, using up a good chunk of my hand sanitiser in the process, and we walked home. On the way, one old woman coming the opposite direction down the pavement wouldn't even just stand to the side to let us pass with a bit of distance between us and her, and then we saw a jogger coming towards us down the narrow pavement who did the same. Why even jog on the pavements under the current circumstances? There was nothing even on the road at that moment, so he could have gone down the tarmac for a second. But he didn't.

And then we got home. It took us an hour and a half. It doesn't give me confidence for how well I'll cope if I have to leave the house every day for work. It's easy to be comfortable in your own house, when you know where everything has been, and if anyone near you has it you're probably going to get it anyway. Being outside the house for hours of the day will be a different matter.

I haven't called my manager yet. I was going to, but I want to plan exactly what I'm going to ask, and I want to ask it as tactfully as possible, and I don't know if he will give me a straight answer. Not that he'll keep information from me if he has it, but if he doesn't have it, he does tend to give me advice on worrying less and believing in people more, and about having anxiety, and basically just imply I shouldn't be asking the question. And shouldn't keep asking the question. Rather than admit he doesn't know something he probably should. And honestly, after my mental health call on Thursday and the trip out yesterday, I didn't have the energy. Mum is now trying to say I shouldn't call him on the weekend, because it's not working hours. I don't think it matters in the current situation. And I think the sooner I can get answers from him, and the sooner I can give him an answer, the better. And there's a lot to talk about. One of the other things the government are advising against - as well as public transport - is hotdesking. And literally all we do is swap people around the one reception desk to suit different shifts and breaks. That's a procedure that will need extra cleaning around it.

Other things I have done lately:

Watched a lot of cat rescue videos from a channel in Korea, and done a lot of crying.

Found out Moby Dick was based on a real whale. I knew it was based on a real incident, but not a real whale. His name was Mocha Dick.

I love Jaws.

Bought £118 worth of books I will probably now not be able to read, because I have to go back to work.

Mum cut tufts off the dog's face, in lieu of an actual dog groomer. It turns out our regular groomer has been open throughout lockdown, and shouldn't have been.

Enjoyed Animal Crossing, and also not enjoyed Animal Crossing.

I went on the internet on Thursday and suddenly discovered there was a Borderlands 3 expansion reveal and a livestream on the new Sims 4 expansion happening out of nowhere, blessed I was with video game news.

Found out my local games shop probably isn't open at the moment - I tried calling them a few times to ask what was up, and there was no answer, so I think the information on their facebook just hadn't been updated.

Manfully (womanfully) resisted by the new Shark RPG game that's out, until I can hopefully buy it from them.

Debated when I might actually be comfortable ordering things online from other countries again. Now? Next year?

Considered buying everything Marks and Spencer's was offering me for the garden, like a sunbed and fire pit, to try to jazz up our stay-at-home summer. Although if the weather's like it was on Wednesday, I think I'll be quite glad to stay at home.

My dad, who has replaced all our crockery with new grey ones, has now decided to replace our back lawn with articial grass. I don't know why he wants this to be a house with no life in it. I'm buying the most colourful pictures I can.

Watched all the livestreams and don't know if I enjoyed them or not.

I got home yesterday and realised the wind had pulled an entire poster down from my wall while I was out. I have left it there until I feel like dealing with it.

Tried to buy brownies from my usual place online, now I feel more calm about buying online cold food, only to discover they're either making them at a reduced pace or getting a lot more traffic than usual, because they keep telling me everything's sold out, and to try again on Sunday. This is also what they told me when I tried to buy some last Sunday.

Goats!

It's my birthday ::blows noisemaker::

Some nice things for my birthday:

Fox cubs on a webcam

A video from a nearby farm attraction about what they're doing after closing, all their pregnant animals, and at around 19:30 on the video, their new Shire horse foal that was just born on the farm.

And since there is some sad anti-Chinese sentiment around, I would like to share this poem from the Tang Dynasty that I read recently:

Dreaming of Li Bai (2), Du Fu (trans. Peter Harris)

Throughout the day the floating clouds go by
And even now the wanderer has not arrived.
I have dreamed of you three nights in a row;
How kind and caring this shows you to be!
When you take your leave you are always uneasy -
'It is hard coming,' you say bitterly,
'There are wind and waves on the rivers and lakes
And I am afraid the boat may sink.'
Going out the door you scratch your white head
As if you have failed to achieve your life's ambition.
Officials' caps and canopies fill the capital;
This man alone looks worn and out of sorts.
Who will say 'the net is spread wide', when as
things are
He is beset with difficulties as he grows old?
Having a reputation that lasts thousands of years
Is a lonely business if you acquire it after you are dead.

I mostly know Li Bai from Civilisation 6, so I can say that he certainly has a reputation that's lasted hundreds of years. Whether he only acquired if after he was dead though, I can't say.

Mostly what I am doing outside of staring frustratedly at my bedroom layout is playing RDR2 again, and riding all the horses. I had a lot of problems with RDR2 - it was not my game of the year - but it does have a beautiful world, and beautiful horses, so if you just want to ride around and ignore the story, it's very chill. Mostly I wish there was an option for Arthur to kidnap Kieran and go start their own stable somewhere, with ALL THE STABLE SLOTS SOMEONE COULD WANT. But there isn't. Alas.

Also I have been watching this talkative husky. A+

It's payday. What to do next. First off I have a trip to Harrogate planned, to see a Hokusai original. We'll see how I do with that.

Maybel please

( Temeraire Book 9 )

I've been trying to watch this goat give birth since Saturday, but she's still hanging on in there.

I have a conundrum: I've decided I'm not going to go see Avengers: Endgame pretty solidly. Only hearing about a really good character moment for a character I liked even might change my mind, and even then I don't think it would. But what should I do about spoilers? I'm going to hear them eventually, and just not understand them, so should I watch one of the many spoilereviews out on the internet at the moment, or just wait for facts to trickle to me, and not even know if they are facts, just an AU scene someone's put together out of gifs on Tumblr? Decisions, decisions.

I got Days Gone on Friday. The reviews came out on Thursday and some of them were a bit middling, so I was a little disheartened, but so far I'm really enjoying it. Possibly because my expectations were lowered a little because of the reviews, but we'll never know. I can see where some of the criticism is coming from, and I experienced a little jank today - and also the one in-depth talk I saw by someone who wasn't impressed by it involved them saying "about 20 hours in, I realised I wasn't enjoying it". So...maybe I will stop enjoying it 20 hours in? I don't know. I'm enjoying it for now. And the long weekend was an amazingly good decision. I enjoyed it.

Another good thing was that yesterday, I got a call at about 9am from the Game store in Leeds, about the Borderlands 3 Diamond Loot Box edition I'd registered my interest in. Apparently they'd been given one more, and my name was on top of the list, so they were offering it to me, but I had to go in THAT DAY to put a deposit down, or they'd give it to someone else. So I had to go into Leeds, which wasn't great, and the deposit was super expensive - because the box itself is super expensive - but I have pre-ordered one now and I'm getting one unless I change my mind, and I'm very happy.

A less pleasant thing is that while I was waiting for my train to work on Thursday, I had to listen to a guy on the platform opposite us call his girlfriend (I think?), a "fucking little bitch", and yell at her, and tell her she was crazy and should go to a psychiatrist to get her head sorted out, and yell fucking this and fucking that every five minutes, and kick the side of the platform's train shelter. I stared at him, because what the fuck, and as far as I could tell everyone else was pretending it wasn't happening. He saw me, and looked away, and stopped briefly, and then said something very quietly, and she said something very quietly back, and then he started yelling about how if she wanted to say something, have the "bollocks" to say it louder, and he'd called her a 'little bitch' 20 minutes ago and she should get over it, and he'd only 'broken it' because she'd told him sometimes she deliberately does things to wind him up, and how all the things he does are because of her. And it was horrific. And she just sat there very quietly and tightly, scrolling through her phone. And there was nothing much anyone could do about it. I hope she leaves him. Very soon.

But my dad saw a fox in our cul-de-sac the other night, apparently. And that was very nice.

LIVE FOX CUBS ON THE INTERNET. NO-ONE TOLD ME.

Also my train was cancelled last night. While I was on it. Because of a train that had failed further down the line. So I decided to just get the bus instead, and a woman didn't know where the bus station was but wanted to go too, and I said I'd show her. Then it turned out we were walking alongside a couple of other women who also had to go to the bus station because we were all on the same cancelled train, and we all complained bitterly and laughed raucously at how shit the trains are now. I'm not saying that Britain is likely to become a feral, tribal country worshipping pagan gods updated for modern times any time soon - for any reason - but if we do I can see myself becoming a devotee of the god of train timetables. Where will it's fury strike next? How can we appease it?

I'm playing Far Cry 5 again. I'm sure to the surprise of no-one. I love it.

Hyenas: so cute and better than tigers and pandas.

Here is a dog story that nearly made me cry (in a good way):

::releases breath::

This is a short film that's kind of a prequel to Far Cry 5, made by the same people who made the game, in case anyone was ever wondering what I was talking about and didn't want to play the game to find out. To be honest, I don't always think the characters in this quite match up to how they are in the game, and most of them are played by different actors between one and the other - Jacob in particular doesn't strike me the same, and John barely does anything. Faith's pretty close though, and Joseph Seed is played by the same guy, and he's pretty much spot on. Although he looks less old in the game because it's a game and the graphics smooth out all the lines on his face, and he's constantly shirtless. Also he's less furious. But other than that he's pretty much spot-on, and Greg Bryk is amazing. Warning for some fucked up stuff and cult themes, and some pretty graphic violence towards the end.

I love Joseph Seed, but he is very difficult.

The worst thing that I like at the moment is this. It's a Sportacus/Lil Jonn mash-up which is cut to look like a man is screaming sexual obscenities at a little girl, and I genuinely expect people to defriend me after finding out I like it, and yet I still find it so funny I could die. Excellent editing. The main thing it's done to me is that I can't imagine anyone using binoculars/opera glasses anymore without it being a 'damn, girl' sort of thing. It makes using binoculars in games or imagining anyone enjoying opera very hard.

I saw a frog on my way home from work yesterday. A frog. Just on a pavement near my house. I can't even imagine where it came from, except that we do have a few housing estates with ponds in them near is. It looked very nervous of me.

Also I'm pretty sure I saw a buzzard flying over our house the other day? It's very hard to identify birds after the fact, but it was definitely a bird of prey. All the nature.

I went to see Venom for the second time yesterday, with my mother. I'm not sure if that was the best idea. Not because of the film really, just because the original plan was for us all to go see it last week, me, my mum and dad, and then we couldn't because of the Social Services situation. And I kind of mentioned that it was crap and depressing that we couldn't even plan the occasional trip out together without my sister's situation suddenly getting in the way and ruining it, and then when I was planning to go see it again this weekend - and kind of looking forward to seeing it alone, and not worrying about whether the person I was with was enjoying it or not or would criticise it afterwards - my mum suddenly said she thought she might come with me. And I felt a bit bad about saying no. It was fine I guess. But it got weird and quiet afterwards. She only came to see it for Tom Hardy. And, in terms of the actual film, I only really went to see it again because I ship Eddie/Venom, and I wasn't really going to discuss that with her after we came out.

But for the film itself, I'm going to say that I will absolutely admit it's not a great film, but I think it's genuinely a good film, and for the people who enjoy that kind of thing they will probably love it, like I did. I would give it a 6/10, and a solid 6/10 - not 'underwhelming', like solidly entertaining, and with some stuff that makes it better than just a 5/10. Tom Hardy's great, as I pretty much assumed he would be. Plus there's the fact that I always found Eddie Brock more interesting as a character than Venom, really, and his relationship with the symbiote, and even though it deviates from the comics the film was chock-full of that. There were quite a lot of parts that were a little awkward, or just seemed like weird decisions for the writer/director/actors to make, like you would just think "why would they ever do that?". I want to say 'embarrassing', and I guess it kind of is, but it's more like things just fell a little flat. But not in a way that really ruins the film in my opinion, or that you couldn't handwave away. There is one massive plothole that I didn't notice until after I saw the film and some article pointed it out, but I think you can fix that with some solid headcanon cement. No problems. And a lot of the rest of the film was really good, like really properly great. And there were a lot of little things I liked, like the female characters being treated pretty well, and them not doing a couple of cliche things I expected them to do. And I wanted to go in and ship Eddie/Venom, which is always a slightly odd thing to do with any property, and it didn't go quite as hard on the whole 'possession' thing as I was hoping it would, but what do I know, and it was pretty good anyways, and I did ship Eddie/Venom. And just in general I think they can iron out the kinks, and hopefully come back with an even better sequel if they do well enough. And after years of just being kind of bored with Marvel films and their style of superhero/comic book films, that was really nice. After the Ghostbusters reboot and Spiderman: Homecoming being one of the few Marvel films I really enjoyed, I kind of only trust Sony to make films now. They make things that are fun.

I was very prepared for Venom to be one of those films that I really liked and almost everyone else hated, and was sort of generically panned on the internet, and then one of the people whose Let's Plays I watch tweeted that he couldn't believe he really liked Venom, and would go see it again and hoped it did well enough for a sequel, and would give it a 6/10. And then I didn't know how to feel. I had all those shields and nothing to do with them.

If a harpy has arms, it's not a harpy. It's just not. I'm sorry.

I forgot I hadn't put the hedgehog food out and changed the water in the bowl earlier tonight, and I cleaned the water bowl out recently and didn't want it to get crusty again, so I went out to quickly do it now. I couldn't really see anything except where the water bowl was, and when I reached for the food bowl I felt something large on it. I thought maybe it was a branch that had fallen off the tree. I tried again and still felt something, and it felt like maybe a pine cone, and I didn't like touching something when I didn't know what it was. So I left it a minute, and then just reached out with my foot and tried to scoot the bowl over to me so I could see it, and I felt something with my foot. Something sort of soft but solid. And then I finally, definitely thought maybe it was an animal, and I thought maybe it was a hedgehog, and I made a series of odd noises, and then called my dad out with a torch. And it was indeed a hedgehog. Hunkered down away from us against the wall.

So. Hopefully I haven't scared that hedgehog off from coming to our food bowl ever again. But it's nice to know something's using it at least, and the thing I intended to use it in the first place.

Stardew Valley is coming to PS Vita next Tuesday.

What a time to be alive.

I don't know that Shane sits well with most of my video game husbands. I don't know that he would get on with Joseph Seed. Although Joseph Seed would probably love him. But then I suppose there are a few other nice people in there for company. Ah well.

Other things I have done in the last week:

Found out that some tarantulas are actually really beautiful.

Wrote fanfiction for my own dream.

Had a different dream last night that David Platt in Coronation Street actually did try to kill himself over what happened with Josh, and that's how his family finally found out about it. I just love it when people love David and want to protect him, and I just want to see that happen. GAIL WILL BE SO HEARTBROKEN AND UPSET. And Gary will look at him with so much sympathy. I want to see that happen and it's not happening yet. Who knows when it will happen. My dream made it real.

Well, I got up this morning, in the cold. Went to work, in the snow. My manager told me I could go early again tonight, for the 6 o'clock train, and I said I'd need to leave a little earlier than I did before, but he said it was fine. Doing that meant I had to tell the postroom woman that she'd have to come out for the last courier of the day, if they didn't get here before I had to go. She came out about 5 minutes earlier than I'd said and told me I could just get off. I was literally going to bolt the revolving doors, when we saw a rough-looking guy on crutches coming straight across the car park towards us, and we realised it was a homeless guy that lives in the area, and has been in a couple of times in the last few weeks asking if he could use our phone to call people. I didn't want to just lock him out, so I went to tell him we were closing up, and he said Simon on the Streets (a Leeds organisation, I assume) were supposed to be picking up him and his friends, but they'd been waiting an hour, so he just wondered if he could come in and make a quick call. I felt like I really had to go at that time, to not be waiting another hour for the train, so I told him I really had to go and couldn't open reception back up. He only wanted to check in on his pick-up, it's not like he was asking me to help him get into a shelter or something, but it still made me feel awful, given the weather. Anyway, he turned around to go to the other building we share a car park with, and their lights were on and it looked like they were still open, so hopefully he got to make his call there, and got his pick-up and got in somewhere. But still. Didn't feel great.

Then I got home and found that the boiler indeed hadn't been fixed, as my dad had texted me earlier (can never be sure if he's joking), and he also told me the cat had weed on the shoelaces of my beloved trainers again, and I don't know what exactly happened with the dog, but he crawled into my lap after going out in the garden for a bit, and I ended up with a disgusting smelling wet patch on my trousers, and I had to change them. And then my internet wasn't working just now, so I just had to run up and down the stairs trying to re-link my ethernet connection. So not a great day so far.

But my dad did buy me a heater for my bedroom, which was lovely. And it is the weekend. And I did get my internet working again super quickly. So that's pretty good.

I'm back! Many many people took pity on me. My dad, on hearing I was going for the bus instead of the train, and my mum was going to come up with me because she had to go shopping, decided to dig his car out and give us a lift. So that was nice. But the bus journey was horrendous. It wasn't heated, so it was just sitting in the icy cold for an hour, trying to keep warm with my coat and scarf. Then getting off, it was a half hour walk from the bus station to where I work, in the snow, and I tried not to let myself slow down too much because I needed to know exactly how long it took to get from the bus station to my workplace, so I could work out when I'd need to leave for the bus home. I was not happy by the time I got there.

But it turns out they weren't having a great time either. I felt my phone ringing just as I walked up - early - to the building, and it turned out to be my manager, to ask me 'how I was fixed'. I don't even know what that means now, looking back - it was too late for me to just not come in - but he did immediately ask how I was getting home, and said he'd spoken to an exec upstairs about closing reception early so I could go. Which I was glad about, because the bus journey was bad enough at midday, I wasn't excited to find out how it was after it got dark. He said if I wanted to go for about 4 that would be good, and I had checked and found out there was a bus around then, but said I'd need to leave at 3.30pm to get it, and he said that was fine. Which was nice. Apparently that morning they'd had the water in the (insanely cold) bottom floor ladies bathroom just straight up freeze, and they'd had to organise a heater in there, with a wire powering it back into our office. The catering staff hadn't been able to come in for the canteen, so our Facilities team had had to open some stuff up so they could have toast and crumpets, and then go out and arrange about £300 worth of sandwiches for lunch. Which apparently everyone who was there was eating in droves, because it was free. From the sounds of it, if my manager hadn't been so busy, he'd have called me and said maybe I didn't need to come in - it would probably have been too late by that point anyway, but I appreciate the thought. I've told him that if it's the same tomorrow though, and the trains are cancelled, I don't think I'll be able to go in, as the trip's not worth it. Happily though, the trains were back running again between my stop and Leeds in the afternoon, so I managed to get a heated train back home even quicker than a bus. Hurrah.

Now I am home, and our boiler has frozen. My dad is trying to fix it, with the man who installed it on the phone, by cutting through a pipe. Idk. But it's very cold.

The problem is just not knowing how long this is going to go on for. My manager said it was supposed to be better tomorrow, but the weather is still saying there's a red alert into the weekend, and news places are saying things will be like this for another 48 hours. Even if it doesn't snow again, and is a bit warmer tomorrow, the snow there right now probably isn't going to thaw before tomorrow - although I suppose they might have had more chance to clear it. And I saw a weather forecast saying it would snow again today at 11pm, my mum saw one that said 6pm, and my ON saw one that said 4pm. So who knows. It doesn't seem like the weather people really do either. We're just going to have to play it by ear tomorrow. But at least it'll be Friday.

Some good things from today and yesterday:

Someone had built a snowman on the banking just across from our building.

I saw a rabbit in the snow.

I saw a pheasant in the snow.

This article about snowy conditions is probably one of the best I've ever read. I WISH MY BOSS WOULD HEED IT.

Polar bears having fun.

Detroit: Become Human out 25th May, instant great day, forget about the rest.

Sometimes I am unhappy, and then I think about what good mothers alligators are, and how very protected baby alligators are when their mum is around, and then I feel much better.

Dear suffragettes: Your daughter's daughters adore you.

So, it turns out that the general procedure with RSPCA and an animal is that they give you a reference number, you arrange to take it to a vet and give them that reference number, and that helps sort out any payment for treatment, and saves you having to wait in your house for an officer to come around 'at some point'. And, after some rigmarole this morning, that is what we did with the cat. My mum had to stay with it because I had to get to work, and she called me later to say it wasn't in fact a kitten, it was super old, and they knew that because half its teeth were missing. And that was why it didn't look great, because it was super old. But they told us just to take it back home, let it out where we found it, and give it some food. I'm a little concerned, because a neighbour of ours has a quite old cat of a similar colouring, and I'm a little worried I actually kidnapped a cat, rather than rescued a cat. But it wasn't chipped or collared, and it was super hungry when I tried to feed it, so maybe not. Hopefully not.

The game magazine have denied the rumours about the Superman game. I shall go back to lying in a dark room and connecting pictures of cake with red string.

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