girlofprey

There's some personal stuff that's come up in the last few days that I'd really like to talk to my counsellor about. However, I called up this morning to see if it'd be possible to see her any earlier than next Monday, and it turns out she's a volunteer who's only in the building on Monday's, so they can't even get a message to her. Which is a bit of a shame. They do have a drop-in session tomorrow though, it's kind of early compared to when I usually get up and I have no idea if I'd actually get to see anyone or how long for. But I might go check it out. If not, it's not that long now until I'd get to see her, and I have talked this stuff through with a friend already. It's just thrown me a little bit, I sort of always assumed if I needed to see my counsellor early or talk to her, I could. But apparently it's just pretty much Mondays when she's available. Hmm.

In other news, some marketing type things that happened to me recently are a) a cold caller hanging up on me, which if anything is normally the opposite of what happens. A woman called me, asked to speak with me about my contract mobile phone, I told her I wasn't on a contract and she said "You're not on a contract? Sorry" and then just hung up. Lovely. And b) yesterday I was in McDonalds, and the card swiping machine they had was advertising McDonald's coffee and donuts to me in it's idle time. Is this what the world is turning towards? Everything will have a screen, and every screen will be advertising something? Because that will be a terrible world. That is my prediction right now.

On the plus side, I did manage to pick up my Netbook. Unfortunately I don't really have anywhere to set it up - my bedroom is kind of a mess. And short on space. So I've decided to buy a case to keep it in before I actually get it out. And I still hate the colour. Oh well.

ETA: Oh and also, I changed my Livejournal email to my new gmail account, experimentally, and now I'm suddenly getting comment notifications in my inbox again. Rather than just 'your subscription is running out/pay us money' messages. So I guess it must just have been an odd Hotmail thing. Which is weird. But I'm not going to argue with getting them again now.

I'm going away tomorrow. I'm sure you will all miss my MAD POSTING SKILLS, but yes, if I'm not around, that's why. We have to get up at about 5am tomorrow to fly from Manchester at 9.30, so I probably won't have a chance to post again before I go. Also I haven't packed. Also I need to have a bath and wash my hair. So yes.

I had only a mild panic over the past couple of weeks, when I tried on one of my dresses and it was really tight, and I became convinced nothing would fit me and I didn't have time to get more with everything else going on, and I would have NOTHING TO WEAR NOTHING, I WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO LEAVE THE HOTEL. But it was shortly before my period that I tried on that dress, and all my other stuff that's the same size still fits me, and I tried all my old stuff on last night - including the dress - and it all pretty much still fit, or was doable. The holiday we're going on is All Inclusive though, so I get the feeling it might be an idea to wear the tighter stuff early on in the holiday, before we all balloon up slightly.

So yes. I'm going away. The hardest thing to contemplate, which I only properly realised a few days ago, was that I wouldn't be able to play my computer games for a week, and keep up my steady progression through the story. I plan to distract myself with Crete. And when I get back, maybe those two people on the Fallout kinkmeme who promised and sort-of-promised to write me fills will have written them. MAYBE THAT.

Also I managed to make calls to both my counselling service, who wrote to me last week implying I'd missed an appointment even though I hadn't heard about one, and offering me further appointments on Mondays, to tell them I won't be able to make that for the next three weeks, due to packing, holiday, and my dad's birthday; and to the Jobcentre to ask for an appeal form. The Jobcentre call went about as smoothly as expected, they asked for a pin I remember making up a few months ago, and not using since. But I managed to make it through the rest of the security questions. The woman sounded suprised that the form I needed wasn't in the letters I got saying I'd failed the assessment, but I remember having to go for some kind of form at some point last year, so I honestly can't remember if that's how it always was or if it's a new stumbling block they've put in the way of people trying to claim benefits. In any case, the woman who's actually offering me counselling is supposed to be calling back tonight, and the woman at the Jobcentre is supposed to be sending me out an appeal form, so that should be here when I get back from holiday. Hurrah.

The day I get back will be the day before Halloween. I will have one or one-half a day to prepare for one of my favourite holidays. And then it will be November. Eek.

Hello. It's me again. It has occured to me that this is probably the first time since I've had a Livejournal or been in fandom that I've had a new Elder Scrolls game, so you probably wouldn't have known what it's like (if indeed you care). This is what it's like, basically. I play them and don't do much else, except truly necessary stuff (maybe).

Things I haven't been watching, especially, since I started playing Oblivion:

• Emmerdale or Coronation Street, except when they were on when I was downstairs eating my tea. Although this is also partly because I've not been terribly interested in much that they're doing lately.


• Spy, despite waiting for it to start since about three or four months ago.


• Misfits.

I have been watching some things though. And they are:

• Death Valley. ( Huge spoilers up to 1.10, some for 1.11 too )



• Once Upon A Time. ( Spoilers up to 1.03 )



• Grimm. ( Spoilers up to 1.02 )



• I have caught up on all of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic that has been aired so far. I quite like it. I like Rainbow Dash the best. Twilight Sparkle kind of freaks me out with her slave-having, mind-controlling ways sometimes. But mostly I like it. But I don't really have anything to say about it. But it is lovely.

I also haven't been to see many films lately, and now a bunch of the ones I did sort of want to see have gone out of the cinema. But the ones I have seen in the past few weeks are:

• The Adventures Of Tin-Tin. ( Spoilers )



• Tower Heist. ( Some spoilers )

In real life, some other things have happened. There was Halloween, and then my dad's birthday and Bonfire Night. We went out for a meal at a restaurant/pub and then went out to the bonfire they were having. I had to spend time with my sister, but I mostly ignored her and it was pretty okay. I filled in an application for a job with the help of my employment coach, and sent it off. I haven't heard back from them, but apparently it had a really late ending date, so I might still hear back from them, who knows. I started counselling, and it went fine, but it got cancelled this week, so I've only had one session so far. And this weekend I'm planning on going to an art market to pick up a necklace that's been made for me.

And Halloween and Bonfire Night are over, and it is currently the period I count as "Christmas". And my mum dropped the bombshell about a week ago that my sister, who's due to give birth in a few weeks, will probably have to stay with the baby in the hospital for five days after it's born, and with Christmas coming her partner can't afford to take time off work, so we will probably be having both my nephews living with us for those five days. Which I'm not exactly looking forward to. But I'm sure it will all be fine. Probably. And that is basically everything that's happened in my life lately.

So. Late night posts about Casualty and Pairing Picspam aside. Obviously I'm pretty horrified about what's happening in Japan at the moment. I can't really say I hope everyone's okay when they haven't got the official death toll yet, and there's all this danger of nuclear accidents, but you. I'm sending good thoughts. As a lot of people have said, Japan is more prepared than most countries for earthquakes, so hopefully they'll get back on their feet again. I hope anyone on my flist who lives there or has friends or relatives near there is okay at the moment.

Is it just me, or are me seeing a lot of natural disasters lately, in the past few years? More than we used to? Or is it just that the news stations and papers are reporting more often on them? Then again, it's only in the last few years I've been properly paying much attention to the news, so maybe it's just me.

Anyway. On a personal note, the big news I have from my life this week is that I've come off Jobseeker's Allowance. I've been thinking about it for awhile, and sort of assuming I would be coming off, and I guess I was already thinking that I wasn't going to do it anymore, because I had an appointment on Wednesday and I really wasn't prepared for it, I didn't fill in my job seeking diary, or go to bed, and then I got up late. I was probably going to be late for my appointment anyway, so I took a bit more time and when I got in the car with my mum I told her to just go to Weightwatchers, and I'd walk over to the Jobcentre, because I was signing off. I told them I wanted to go onto incapacity instead and they gave me the number for them. I tried to call them that day, but my mobile's battery was nearly dead and I had to stay out and go to Wakefield for an appointment. So I ended up calling them on Thursday. My paperwork came through for me to check this morning, and I need to get an appointment with my doctor to try to get a sicknote or whatever. Which I might not get, so this might all go nowhere. But I'm going to try to do that this week, and I'll see what happens. I need to send my P45 as well, whenever the Jobcentre send that through. According to the paperwork I got today my claim with them hasn't ended yet, so I have no idea what's happening with that, or when that will be. So I'll just have to wait for that. But yes. Apart from that, I'm getting on with it.

Part of it was going to this new service in Wakefield, for people with mental health problems trying to get back into work. I came to realise while talking to them that actually I'm a little bit afraid of the idea of suddenly going back into a full-time job at the moment. Sometimes I feel like I'm actually doing about as much as I can at the moment, especially after looking after one of my nephews for a day or something. And I've had a few weird episodes where I went a bit weird mentally, and it was usually after something like doing a lot of things at once, day after day for a little while. So I really do feel like I'd like to try to ease myself back into work, maybe with a volunteer placement or a part-time job just to start with. I know you can look for part-time work with the Jobcentre, especially if you talk to the DEA and stuff, but I do find it a bit of an extra workload anyway, and quite stressful, so I'd like to just try using this service in Wakefield and trying to get on incapacity, if I can, for now. If it doesn't work, I will be straight back onto Jobseeker's I guess. Or not doing that, and having no money for a while.

Anyway. So that's what I'm doing at the moment. Actually, I've been doing a few useful things lately. I cashed a cheque I finally got on behalf of my dad for an insurance claim we made after getting stuck in Barcelona last year, and wrote him out a cheque for it this week. I changed my phone to a Pay As You Go tariff, in an effort to reduce some of my bills. And I called a woman who I'd forgotten called me one morning when I was at cakesy's the other week, who is apparently sorting out or doing my new counselling sessions, and said she'd either be calling me in a few days or a few weeks. She hasn't called me, so I called her on Thursday, and she hasn't called back. I will be calling her again next week probably, if she doesn't get in touch.

In other news, I watched Thursday's second Emmerdale episode, and based on things I'd read in the soap mags beforehand, it was about as violent and awful as I was expecting it to be. But at least they seem to be making the point that Cain's behaviour is NOT OKAY, and treating your partner or ex-partner like that is NOT OKAY, and making fun of someone for having become a prostitute at 14 is NOT OKAY. And just that Cain and Charity's relationship is at least partly a pretty unhealthy one. I don't know if they weren't retconning Charity's prostitute past a bit, because I've never heard her talk about being awful like that before. But then, I didn't watch it when she first came into it, when she was a prostitute, and I don't think I've heard her talk about it before either. I didn't realise she became one so young, either. But it's still a pretty good point to make, even if it's a change from how they've treated it/talked about it before. And Charity was amazing, at any rate. And Nicola, in the same episode, was also amazing, oh God I love Nicola. And then I watched Coronation Street, and Rita was amazing. And David was running around trying to emotionally protect his girlfriend from his mother and grandmother, and trying to protect them from her comments. He wanted his girlfriend to go away and make some mood boards. Oh. I actually quite like the relationship David's got with Kylie, although I haven't seen all of it since she came back into it. But I think it works, and they do seem to really like/fancy each other. I don't know if they'll actually get down the aisle though. Mostly I'm picturing something going wrong on the day, and one of them leaving, and there being no wedding, and when David leaves the church Gary is outside waiting for him, all "Right. You ready to go?" But maybe they will go for it. Who knows.

Later on, David tried to reassure his girlfriend that his grandmother used to be a 'slapper from the wrong side of the tracks' as well, and that then she married a shopkeeper, and ended up being lady mayoress, so his mum and grandma would probably come around to her (Kylie) as well. Kylie was not that impressed with that bit of 'reassurance'. Oh David. I wish he would make friends with Becky soon. They could bond over their hatred of Tracy. But given the fact that he loves Kylie and Kylie and Becky hate each other a bit at the moment, that doesn't seem that likely. I didn't watch last night's soaps, though. My oldest nephew was here, so we played Monkeyball on the Wii instead.

My main news from today is that my dad has apparently been drilling up into the base of my set-into-the-wall wardrobe, thinking he was drilling into the floor of the room next door to mine, from a room underneath mine and the bedroom next door to me. No drillbits came up through the carpet, not even through the wardrobe really, but he's pretty sure the floor underneath it is where it came up. He's decided to stop his drilling project now, based on that. I think.