girlofprey

I finished Dead Space. Dead Space is great. Except for the part where it had a twist at the end that...wasn't so much a twist. It also had a rather lovely spoiler (pretty much) in the trophies section. If you are playing Dead Space and wish to be unspoiled for it, DO NOT look in the trophies section. But yeah, the other twist. I don't know, it's weird because I knew the spoiler from having seen a clip from the beginning of Dead Space 2. I still think it was not that much of a twist, I just don't know if it wouldn't have been so MASSIVELY NOT A TWIST if I hadn't seen that clip. Hmm.

But yeah. My first proper survival horror game. It was terrifying! And often really difficult and frustrating, like when I kept complaining. But if I kept at it I did tend to make progress, so it was not really that torturous, overall. I have Dead Space 2 and am planning to start it shortly. I am promised Isaac will have a voice and personality in this game. I am excite.

I also started playing LA Noire. Where I basically get to be socially inadequate and bad at driving, but now while trying to solve crimes! I've mostly got the hang of not randomly accusing people of lying though, just because - I think - in things like Poirot and stuff EVERYONE tends to be lying about something, and it's good to get everything out in the open. It doesn't seem to work like that in LA Noire. The driving, though, is terrible. The cars are slow and I do not understand the traffic system. It probably wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't also still playing Saints Row 2, where you can speed around, wreck up public property and kill dozens of bystanders pretty regularly with no consequences. They take a much dimmer view of that when you're an 1940s policeman. I'm learning though. But man. You can't even powerslide.

It's my grandma's funeral on Thursday. My dad arranged it on Friday, and I suddenly realised I didn't have anything to wear. My mum suggested my grey interview suit, since at least it's sort of sombre, but I decided I'd feel a bit odd if I ended up being the only person not wearing black. So I was planning to get an affordable sort of black suit from Marks and Spencer's or somewhere. However, the Marks and Spencer's in Wakefield apparently don't have a Tailoring department, and I can't see anywhere else having one other than Leeds. And between my counselling tomorrow and another course in Wakefield on Wednesday, I can't see myself having the time/energy to go there before the funeral. So I've decided to just get a black top or shirt and wear it with my interview suit, rather than my white interview shirt. I think that should be dark enough really. So I have to go and get that tomorrow or Wednesday. Between the 3 hours of sleep I had last night and my other appointments (if my counsellor isn't ill again, of course), including another 8am start on Wednesday, and then the funeral on Thursday, I'm not expecting great things from my effort levels this week though.

Springwatch was a bit sad tonight. They had massive flooding in that part of Wales over the weekend, and their production site got flooded and they had to evacuate it. But they were back tonight, and amazingly most of the nests they were watching survived the storm. Also Michaela Strachan seems to have calmed down a bit - she started off the presenting gig being a bit cheesy and over-enthusiastic, and it was a little bit annoying. But someone seems to have told her she just needs to be calm and care about wildlife. Or she discovered love for it by being on the show. Either way, I'm enjoying her much more now. I still miss Kate Humble though. I quite like all the presenters on Springwatch, though. They stare at each other while they reel off facts.

Hello dudes. I am posting to you now from my fancy new laptop. Dun Da Da Dah! After getting most of the way through my bookmarks during the week, I made a decision to get my new laptop all set up and running before the end of the weekend. And then last night I decided not to let the fact it was 3am stop me from doing that. It was mostly set up with Windows, Internet security and Windows Office anyway, so I moved my old one out of the way, set it up with it power cord and everything on a newly dusted desk, switched it on and started transferring all my backed up files over. Most of which went without a hitch, except for the slightly terrifying moments when I couldn't get both the USB sticks into the USB ports properly and yet my external hard drive seemed to be hooked up to my laptop just the same anyway. Hmm. But I Safely Removed it and put it back in properly and it worked just fine as well, without having horribly damaged the external hard drive horribly in any way. So everything's basically in it's place on the computer, all my Favourites are in my Favourites tab thing, and all my files seem to be in order except for Windows Media Player wanting to download Licenses every time I want to play a music file I ripped from a CD. But anyway. LAPTOP. It is red and wide and strange. But lovely. And shiny. And has plenty of space on the Hard Drive.

My dad's reaction to my having successfully set up my computer now: "So you can get back on with your bedroom now then". My dad. No gratitude, never satisfied.

Anyway. Apart from that it's been quite a day. It's my oldest nephew's birthday (he's 6), and I didn't have a card or a present for him, and we were meant to be going out in the evening and I hadn't had a bath and my only pair of jeans were falling to pieces. So I sort of assumed it would be hectic. I'd asked my mum to wake me up before she went into town so I could come with her and get my nephew a present, and she woke me up at about half past 12, and said she'd been on the phone for some of the morning, because her sister had been taken into hospital after having had a stroke. She's getting on, my aunt, she's 69 but she doesn't really act it. On Christmas Eve me, my mum and my oldest nephew went to her house to take her a Christmas card (or rather talk to her, since we couldn't find the Christmas card), but we couldn't see her because she'd already gone out to go clubbing in Leeds. So it was a bit of a shock. She's alright-ish apparently, she's not in any danger, but she's lost all movement down one side of her body. My mum had explained that she couldn't go see her because it was my nephew's birthday, and we were planning on spending the day with him, but she's planning to go see her tomorrow. But it was still a shock, really.

So I got up, got ready and went with her to my sister's to get her and my nephew to go into town, except they weren't ready so we had to go into her house and wait for her. Then we went into town and to Morrisons for lunch, where, I think, my dad called my mum and said he'd been talking to his sister a bit that day, because my cousin went to my grandmother's to take her shopping as she usually does on Mondays, and when she went in she found her on the floor in the bathroom. She was alright apparently, my aunt had gone down and made sure she was okay, and then left her, but she wanted to try to get someone to go see her later on in the day, just to check on her. My mum explained again that she was spending the day with my sister, my nephew and me and we were going out for a meal later, so she couldn't really go now, but would try to go later. So we finished our lunch, went to pick up my youngest nephew from his playgroup, came back into town, and went round the shops letting my nephew pick out presents (mostly arts and crafts kits and paint), and buying his birthday cards. And I ran over to New Look to get a new pair of jeans, which don't have massive holes in and weren't on sale, but are actually quite lovely. Then we met back up, went back to the car via a supermarket to get my nephew a birthday cake, and drove back to my sister's house. When we got there, and were just trying to decide what to do about going out for a meal, since it was quite late and we weren't sure there was much point in driving home and then driving back for them - my dad called my mum again, to tell her that my grandmother's carers had gone to her house at their usual time, about 4:30, and found her on the kitchen floor, so they'd called an ambulance and she was being taken to Casualty. Again, she was apparently alright, but she had some pretty bad bruises, and since she'd fallen already that day, they decided they had to take her in.

So we decided what to do again, we didn't really want to let my nephew down and my grandma was apparently pretty much okay. So we decided to go out for the meal straight away, and then take my sister, her partner and their kids back home and go see my grandma in hospital afterwards, if we hadn't missed the visiting hours. So we ran around getting ready, I had to change into my lovely new jeans in my sister's kitchen, then my dad turned up and me and my nephew went with him, letting my mum come after us with my sister, her partner and my youngest nephew. We'd decided on Pizza Hut, since the kids probably wanted pizza and it was a bit more pizza and kid-oriented than our first thought, which was the nearby Frankie and Benny's. Or, as my mum calls it, Ben and Jerry's. Or, as my sister dubbed it today, Alfie and Fernando's. Anyway, so we went, then my mum and the others got there, it was actually all quite civilised for one of our family meals, the food was nice, my youngest nephew mostly wouldn't eat any, but what are you going to do. Our waitress brought out a birthday cake for my nephew with his name written on it, which I don't think he was expecting, so it was quite nice.

We managed to get out by about quarter past eight-ish, my dad and I went home, my mum went and dropped off my sister, her partner and the kids, met us back at the house, and we went to hospital to see my grandma. She actually seemed quite cheerful to be in the A&E, she said it was lovely there and there were a lot of nice girls around. She said she couldn't remember falling, and then later talked about falling, but couldn't believe that the bruise on her eye (which was slightly horrendous) had come from a fall. She thought someone must have hit her, but she couldn't think who would have done it or why, or why she wouldn't have hit them back for doing it. My grandmother has got dementia, so she spent a little while talking about the men living in her house who are always about in the night using the toilet and messing around, and how she has to move all her ornaments and things into her bedroom while she sleeps. But she generally seemed to be in quite good spirits. Then she got moved up to the ward, and got a little bit more ratty, but it was about quarter past nine by then, and she was settled and I think visiting hours were over anyway, so we had to go. Mum seemed to think she might be out of the hospital tomorrow, because someone had said she didn't have any broken bones or anything (although they did an X-ray while we were there, so how they could have decided that I don't know), but given that she's fallen twice today, they might also decide to keep her in, or do an evalution of how okay it is that she's living at home on her own. We'll have to see. Also, she's going to see my aunt tomorrow. Who hopefully is also okay, or as okay as she can be.

In between all of this, I picked up a jumper in New Look because it had no tag on it and I hoped it would be in the sale, then found out it wasn't in the sale but bought it anyway, without remembering it was an 18 and I'd only decided to try it on/possibly buy it because if it was in the sale it might be the only one left; my mum and I found out just how slightly rude and awful my two nephews could be when we were in the car with them and they decided to scream at the top of their voices while my mum was on the phone to my dad's sister about my ill grandmother, to the point where she had to get out of the car; and while we were in town my sister found a bottle of someone's prescription medicine on the ground, so I ended up going back from the supermarket to the pharmacy in the town centre to hand it in. So yes. A pretty full day, all in all.