girlofprey

My parents gave me £50 for my birthday. And apparently, the Playstation 3 is coming tomorrow. Which is very nice of them. Especially since I realised that even if I have the Playstation 3 and manage to hook it up to a decent screen, I don't have any games to play on it, and I can't afford the ones I like. But now I can. I'm a bit excited really. This is the first time I've ever had a games console, aside from the time my sister borrowed a Playstation off a friend of hers for a few days when I was in highschool. We played a bit of Tomb Raider for a few days, couldn't get out of a cave, and then gave it back. Good times.

We went out for lunch as well, to The Rustic Arms, which is a pub in Ackworth that I haven't been to since I was a teenager, and used to go to a bit as a kid. It had a big playground and a lake/pond, and we thought it might be better for my nephews than the slightly posher place we normally go to. The playground has either been changed or I remember it being a lot bigger, and the pond was fenced off for the local fishermen/people, but it was lovely, and really child-friendly, and the food was really nice, so it was quite a nice day out. We came back to my parents' house for some cake, and brought my grandma down, which she ended up complaining ferociously about (as always), but there were no real fallings-out and it stayed quite nice. And then I came back and watched the Dancing On Ice final, and Chris Dean and Jayne Torvill danced the Bolero, and Craig Mclachlan, with beautiful scruffy hair and a load of stubble, skated a little bit of his routine he did in the first week. Which was all lovely.

However, I am not so pleased about this habit of me having to lose an hour of my birthday, world. I dimly recall it happening before, I think. Less of that, please.

Anyway. In other news:

• Since reading all of Gastrophobia in the last week or so, I thought I couldn't love it more. But then I saw the latest strip, and it turned out I COULD love it more. New Who lovers may want to, um, not read that. ETA: UNLESS YOU LOVE PARODY. Maybe you should read it then.



• It's a Cracked.com article, so possibly on shaky ground scientifically or prone to exaggeration, but apparently crows are even more intelligent and slightly terrifying than we generally thought they were. Crows will TELL THEIR FRIENDS YOU ARE DANGEROUS AND TRIED TO HURT THEM. I love crows. And even after that article, am only slightly afraid of them.



• I also spent a lot of last night reading various Cracked.com articles about many comic book stories/characters you will probably wish did not exist. It's the combination of hysterical laughter and horror that is such a big draw for me.

A mere week after the show started, we are finally close to Craig Mclachan getting to skate on Dancing On Ice. He could be awful in real life. He could be a terrible skater. If he's fine in real life and a terrible skater, I might find it hard to not vote for him anyway. Last week he called himself Craig "Blades" McLachlan, and said in a taped interview bit that he was Australian, he's built for winning. I love him quite a lot even up to now.

I went to Wakefield and Leeds yesterday, as my actual shopping trip. Well, "looking at the sales" trip. Sadly the sales are now at the point where there's hardly anything left in the clothes shops except sizes 6 and 8, and things you didn't know had even gone into the sales are now sold out. I went looking for a scarf and pair of slippers in Accessorise only to find they'd gone. I went looking for this cardigan from New Look, which you may notice is sold out on the site, just in case they had a few left in the shops. I actually found two in the New Look in Wakefield, on hangers marked 12 and 14. I was about to get very excited and try on the 14, assuming it would probably be loose enough to fit, when I realised they were on the wrong hangers, and were actually sizes 6 and 8. Oh well. It wasn't as pretty in real life as it was on the website, anyway. And I think I like the style more than the actual thing itself. It's something to put on the list for next winter anyway: Oversized Cardigans.

Another thing I went looking for was a dress in Miss Selfridge. Last year, I saw a beautiful, much too expensive for me dress in Miss Selfridge that I kept going to have a look at. It was grey and floaty and covered in beads. I went to have a look if it was in the sale after Christmas, but by that point it had gone. I had a look to see if they had something similar this winter, but could only find a similar dress in "Nude" colour. Then after Christmas I was checking out a few clothing websites, and found them selling the dress or something basically the same, and it was in the sale, and it was already sold out in anything approaching my size. It's one of my other least favourite things shops do. Anyway. It wasn't there. Maybe next year, who knows.

I also realised a general flaw in my clothes shopping style, which isn't really a flaw so much as a long-standing problem: I only really like coats and jackets. I suppose it's not so much a suprise, since coats and jackets are outerwear, so they're designed to sort of look good on their own and be eye-catching, rather than you having to imagine them as part of a larger outfit. However, you still can't really justify a wardrobe that mostly made up of jackets. Do you remember that lovely purple-ish coat I was talking about a few months ago? Well, I bought that. Last week at Junction 32 I bought a jacket that's not really like anything I usually buy, but is quite beautiful, and was quite cheap. And still, I end up looking mostly at the coats and jackets on sale in most clothes shops I go into. I don't think it's entirely my fault though, when they make so many beautiful ones. Look at this one. And this one. And the current trend seems to be baseball jackets, which just seem to be beautiful at their default setting. And then there's this one, which is grey leather. GREY LEATHER. I'm probably overstating my case. I actually think I paid more attention to tops yesterday than I ever have before on any shopping trip. Which is ironic, because I don't so much need them with all the Threadless t-shirts I now have. Still can't just buy all the coats and jackets I like though. Or, really, afford them.

In other news, I still really need to tidy my bedroom. I might make that my job for this week. Also I need to go into town tomorrow and get my prescription of Mefanamic Acid refilled. Yes.

As I basically expected, I forgot about roughly a hundred things from my list of great things yesterday. Most of them involved Shaun the probation worker in Misfits and my rekindled love of Morrowind. OH MORROWIND. Anyway, another part of the end of year memes I keep seeing around the place involve what you're looking forward to in the year to come. At the moment, for me this is:

• ED FROM BUGS is doing DANCING ON ICE. VERY SOON. He might well be rubbish. He might go out in the first episode. But before that he will be ON TV, and probably be DRESSED IN SEQUINS, and do some ICE SKATING. Alskdfjskljfh.



• Misfits Series 3. Still. I do want to see what they come up with. I hope Shaun the probation worker comes back.



• Seeing Aziz Ansari in London with cakesy.



• Single-Handed is coming out on DVD, so I can watch that again.



• Apparently there is a new Elder Scrolls game coming out in November. Assuming my fancy new laptop, which my dad decided I should totally have for Christmas (thank you dad), has enough Basic Requirements and memory to support it, I am planning to be SO THERE.



• Cowboys and Aliens. Paul Dano, baby.

I have not heard about anything else great happening in 2011, but I'm at least somewhat open to any further ideas it may have.

We had my nephews, sister, sister's partner and my grandma down again for dinner, and then when they left, the Morcambe and Wise Show of 1976 and then Bryan Dick Eric and Ernie, OH BRYAN DICK I LOVE YOU. BE ON THE TV FOR ME ALL THE TIME. I LOVE YOUR EYES WHEN PEOPLE ABANDON YOU. My main plans now involve playing Morrowind. Those random bandits' caves aren't going to loot themselves.

Happy New Year, everyone!

1. I just watched Dancing On Ice. I cannot actually believe that. I can't believe it. In fairness I missed the first three contestants, so only watched Sharron Davies and the people after her skate. But Sinitta was good. She was actually good, a lot better than a lot of the others, and quite lovely, and sort of my favourite. And I thought Heather Mills might be in trouble mostly, because I know a lot of the public hate her, though I did hope she'd go through. And she did, and instead the only black contestant ended up in the skate off, against one of the actually bad skaters. And there was a difficult lift in Sinitta's routine, and she did it really well the first time, but she missed it in the skate off, and now she's gone. In a way I feel a bit annoyed with Torvill and Dean for giving her such a difficult lift in the first show. But mostly I feel annoyed with the viewers. I was never that convinced when people said it was a bit racist that Heather kept being put in the dance-off last year despite being better than some other contestants. But now I'm starting to rethink it.



2. Adverts. I hate them. Most of them. Mostly I hate that thing they were doing for a while, though I haven't seen it lately, of ending the advert with a slogan, and then putting an asterix at the end of the slogan, with no noticeable bit of text that the asterix led to. THAT IS RIDICULOUS. I'm assuming that it meant they could use slogans that were lies, because they put an asterix on it leading to a qualifying statement. Without making the qualifying statement, and I assume the facts, too noticeable. THAT REALLY ANNOYED ME. At the moment I hate the Magnet advert which is all about "tell us what you do in your kitchen". "Give us market research without making us do it ourselves", is I think the true meaning of that. Aside from it's weird CCTV Society connotations. Also I hate the adverts that encourage us to buy products to help FIGHT THE TERRIBLE WAR WE'RE HAVING WITH THE WORLD/NATURE. Like that weird eyedrops one for stuff they want you to use when "the world makes your eyes dry and painful". But also those horrible Tampax ones they've thankfully stopped showing about using tampons to defeat that PRUDISH BITCH MOTHER NATURE. I hate them. A lot.



3. I've decided I'm not going to respect any Age of Sail/boat-based fandoms anymore unless they have "Poseidon, look at me!" icons.



4. My previous post is now available with fixed html.

Growl.

Rubbish. I am it and my flat is covered in it. I thought when I left work on Monday that at least I would have a bit of time to tidy things up. That hasn't happened so far.

However, I have just called the Jobseeker's place to sign on. I was putting it off, because if I get a job before my first appointment as far as I know I don't get paid anything, and it's just a lot of messing about. But I have done it now. They managed to get me an initial checking in appointment thing at some unthinkable hour tomorrow morning. Bastards. Still, at least I actually got paid something last time, so there'll be some money coming in, hopefully. Which is always good.

And I have managed to finish Series 1 of Hana Yori Dango. OH HANA YORI DANGO. I love Makino. I love Tsukasa. I LOVE THE GOLD. I love the "Great I am". I love most of it. I'm planning to continue spending it wisely and watching Mohabbatein. Possibly after tidying up a bit.

On Sunday, Dancing on Ice was on. Roxanne went out, which was sad, but not unexpected at this point in the competition. She got her highest score and was brilliant with her prop which was a chair. She had to skate off against Zoe, who has sort of risen to be one of the favourites for the past few weeks, and whose skating routine got the highest or second highest marks from the judges, and when they asked Jason to say which one he wanted to save afterwards, he said this was a very close skate off, possibly the closest they'd had. He saved Zoe, of course, but I think it was about as close as he could come to saying he LOVED ROXANNE. Roxanne will be on the tour anyway. Which I'm going to see with my mum. Hurrah!

That's my fandom news. The other is that last night on Coronation Street, after Gary got off at the court case because Tina told the truth, Gary's mum said they should invite the Platts, including David, out for a drink to show they had no hard feelings. Gary insisted that he DID have hard feelings. I can't be imagining this.

A fact that I've just learned form the City Council magazine that gets delivered every month or so: St Anns in Nottingham has the oldest and largest allotment site in Britain. I might look into that. Another fact I learned from them: cockroaches can come into your flat or house by being carried in in the hard drive of your laptop. I will never entirely trust this laptop again.

And I've just gotten back from my parents' again. It was Jack's birthday. We went bowling yesterday, and had a big takeaway/cheeseburgery meal.

But what I mostly did over the wekend was lug books about. They're doing a production of His Dark Materials as a play at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in May, and I remembered buying the trilogy once, years ago, in a couple of 3 for 2 Waterstones deals, but I couldn't find them in my flat or on the bookshelf at my parents'. Or the first one, which I read. Mum said there were some in the drawers in the little bedroom, and indeed there were, but not those ones. I remembered that I used to have some in a drawer under my bed though, so I checked there. And there were. It was full. Full of books. Imagine a drawer in a chest of drawers, but bigger. Of books. Books I'd forgotten I had. Books I'd been thinking about recently and wondering where they were. So I went through them, and brought a load back. I just need to find a place to put them. I might need to wait for a furniture store to go bankrupt and get a new bookcase.

Dancing on Ice has the exact same rules as Strictly Come Dancing. I didn't know that. Jo from Emmerdale is going to skate, but not till next week.

Whenever I go to my parents' for the weekend I tend to watch NCIS when my dad has it on. After hating it for a good few months, I've decided that I love the computer expert junior agent and the female Mossad liaison agent. Which is annoying, because I still hate the two main men, and the way they write the woman who runs the agency. Hmm.