girlofprey

( Cut for stress, benefits, sick notes )

So yes. I had a GREAT day.

I went to see my doctor's surgery yesterday about a sick note. I explained everything to the woman on the desk, and she didn't seem to think there'd be a problem with getting a continuance, over the desk, six months after my last one, backdated to 12th October. And today I got a text saying it was ready to pick up. Hurrah!

Also, the DWP wrote to me again telling me they still hadn't gotten my sick note. Which is nice, because with those letters they also send a prepaid envelope, and a cover letter with the right address on. The only problem is that I really think I should inform them about my grandmother dying, and the fact I don't get money from her anymore, because they're still taking what she used to give me off my benefit payments as 'income'. Obviously I'm entitled to the money, and I'm not even really expecting them to backpay me anymore. I just hope telling them 5 months after she died doesn't cause any problems through not being 'prompt' enough. It was sort of stupid though. I had to wait a month for a bank statement to prove I wasn't receiving it anymore, then write a letter about the fact she'd died, how much money she'd been giving me, why, what it was for, how regularly she'd been giving it to me. I had to wait for the bank statement, and then I put it off, and then I kept forgetting about it. But I should probably tell them now. I can get a copy of my latest bank statement tomorrow when I go to town, to prove I'm still not receiving it, and pick up my sick note, and then send it off tomorrow or Thursday.

I'm still loving Borderlands. My annoyances about the only female character you can play have sort of gone away (mostly) while playing the single-player storyline, because I am just killing everyone, single-handed. I mean, I keep dying and having to be revived by New-U Stations. But apparently that's just a feature of technology in this world, so I think it still counts. And they've started putting in female secondary characters, who are actually physical people you can speak to. Hurrah. The infinite gun generation machine is sort of giving me a headache though. I mean, do I pick a sniper rifle with high damage that has a slight chance of making my enemies explode, or a sniper rifle with lower damage that has a very good chance of making my enemies explode? MY PAIN IS ENDLESS.

Also, I have decided to try to finish Silent Hill: Downpour again. I stopped playing a while back because - essentially, there's a fantastic system games sometimes use nowadays where your weapons degrade. This is sort of realistic, and can work pretty well in some games, and heighten tension. It can also be fucking annoying. Silent Hill: Downpour has this system. If you pick up a melee weapon and use it a couple of times, it starts doing less damage. Eventually, a fire axe can do less damage than a wooden stick, because it has degraded so badly. But, you know, I was okay with it. There were always plenty of melee weapons around, and it was realistic, and I figured I'd only need to put up with it till I got the guns. Then I got the shotgun. Then I ran out of shotgun ammo. Then I started using the shotgun as a melee weapon until I found some more ammo, since the only other option was dropping it. And then the shotgun broke. And then I ragequit. But I do sort of want to finish it, and see the end of the story. So I figured I'd give it another try. We'll see if I remember ANY OF THE BUTTONS, or fail horribly.

In film news:

• A heist movie, starring Cameron Diaz, and Alan Rickman, and Colin Firth? Out tomorrow? That'd be a yes.



• I've been wanting to see Wreck-It Ralph for a few months, since I first heard about it on Tumblr. So it seems kind of annoying that I now have to avoid posts about it on Tumblr so I don't get spoiled, because it's out in America 3 months before it's released here. I THOUGHT THESE DAYS WERE OVER.

ETA: Also, if anyone is interested or morbidly curious, Christopher Maloney's eyes of death are here. You might have to wait a minute, though. I just. It really brings 'bright eyes' to life, that's all I can say.

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.

I won my appeal.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

It was not as bad as I was expecting it to be, the doctor and the judge were both really nice. They did focus on the questions in the DWP assessment, but also asked general questions to see if they could make my general problems "fit into the law". Which they did. I sort of only just got through - you need 15 points to qualify, and I got 15 points. And there is a bit on the documents they gave me saying that the Tribunal doesn't really have any legal power, and that the DWP can appeal the decision and suspend my payments if they want to. Which my mum and I are both quietly worrying about. But I'm assuming that's just something that's possible, that they have to put on there, and which isn't usually the case.

And I got my ESA. All my crying this weekend has not been in vain!