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.

I am trying to sort through my jewellery and reduce the amount. I am v dragon. Ridiculous when I barely ever wear any of it, but it doesn't feel ridiculous when I'm looking at it. Essentially, now that I've gotten rid of my dressing table and don't have room for multiple jewellery boxes anymore, I'm trying to reduce the amount I own but never wear so it's easier to put into storage, i.e. the cupboard above my wardrobe. Sadly the only way I can really motivate myself to do it is by thinking of all the jewellery I can buy when I have more space. That's not going to help me get more space in the long run.

Anyway. It turns out that the wrestling thing I wanted to watch does not require a subscription, I just have to pay for it. I now fully understand the term 'pay per view'. And it was pretty great. I've gotten into AEW, which is All Elite Wrestling, which seems to be a new company which was started up largely by wrestlers last year, to sort of compete with WWE, and attracted all sorts of top talent. Which is nice, because it means you get a lot of famous wrestlers with a storied history, but the stories going on right now only go back about a year, so there's not too much to catch up on, and it's not super-complicated. And my friends. It's super gay. Sadly, because it seems to be an upstart young company, there doesn't seem to be a lot of fic being written for it (though there is some!), I'm assuming because all the people interested in writing wrestling fic are watching and writing for WWE. But there is some and that is nice, and I'll stick with it.

Also I went to the concert. The concert was not cancelled. It was KISSTORY, which I think is a music channel, focusing on hip-hop and R&B. It was a bit of a shame, because I mostly went to see Blu Cantrell, of being hella fame, and I ended up missing most of her set. The doors for the concert opened at 5.30pm, which was before I finished work, but I knew that's not when the concert would start, despite all the artists that were playing. And then after work I had to go to the hotel room I'd booked for the night (so I didn't have to try to use trains at 10 or 11 at night) and get changed, and then go and try to grab something to eat. It was at about twenty to seven, when I was trying to quickly eat a Burger King, that I realised that 7pm was an hour and a half after the doors opened, and that that was probably more than enough time for them to start putting acts on. And when I also realised that Blu Cantrell was possibly not considered as much of a headline act to the concert as she was to me, and they might put her on quite early. Which they did - I got into the venue (after a security guard confiscated my chocolate) just in time to hear her sing her last song. But I felt like I'd gotten there as quickly as I could, and to be honest she wasn't looking great, so I don't know how good a set it was. She looked a bit glassy-eyed and uncomfortable, and like maybe she was forgetting her lines, or not sure which parts to sing? To be fair, she was singing a song that is usually a duet, so possibly the lines were a bit off. But I felt like either her voice wasn't what it used to be, or she wasn't using it to it's full range. It turns out she's had some mental health problems a few years ago, so I don't know. I hope she is fine, and I was a bit disappointed I missed her, but I also felt like maybe I hadn't missed that much.

But I stayed for the rest of the concert, and that was fun. I saw Eve and Mya and Salt'N'Pepa, who it turns out I barely knew as a group but I knew all their songs. They were lovely. And then I saw Shaggy and Nelly, which is very odd having grown up watching them on MTV. To be honest all the male artists were a bit seedy, and there were a lot of female dancers gyrating, but it was also a lot of fun, and the music was good, and they all seemed genuinely quite touched that the audience could sing along to songs they wrote thousands of miles away ten years ago. So that was lovely. And it was a lot of fun. A woman next to me kept trying to dance with me even when I told her no, which was uncomfortable, and I probably have the coronavirus - so many drinks slightly spilled on me, which people had probably already gotten their saliva into - but overall I had a lot of fun.

And now I'm going for a meal out tomorrow. I've been wanting to go eat out in Leeds more, given all the nice, interesting-looking restaurants there, but money and no-one to go with have been a slight hindrance. But now I have a bit of money. It honestly feels a bit like overkill when I've just been to a concert, but mum is working tomorrow and not doing a dinner, so it's ideal. And I've been wanting to go to that restaurant for literal years. So off I go, probably.

No jewellery box is ever big enough. And it turns out, they really aren't big enough to hold other decorative items too, like hairclips or sunglasses. Seems like a terrible waste of everyone's time.

The two phrases I hate the most when playing Saints Row 2? "Skater kids" and "satchel charges".

( I'm going to explain that even though none of you probably play Saints Row 2, just because I hate cryptic LJ posts )

I also explained it because it was pissing me off, and it's quite nice to be able to vent.

Also, the fact is that that's NOT the most annoying thing, because the most annoying thing is when you actually COMPLETE THE LEVEL, but the game SAYS YOU HAVEN'T. aoklsjflksdfnlksdnf. I heard the 'you completed the level!' music TWICE, and the second time the camera guy said his finishing off thing of 'we just have to get this to the editor', and it said I failed both times. But I am not good enough to reliably succeed more often, so I can't tell if the game is broken, or was a bit buggy that one time, or if I somehow did actually run out of time. Growl.

Anyway. My adventures with incredibly violent games aside, I'm sort of enjoying Saints Row 2 a bit less now. There was a type of side activity that I found quite simple to do, and other types I found less simple to do, and I've finished all of the first kind by now. And the main missions are getting a bit harder, it seems. And my style ranking keeps going down, I think, because I'm not buying and changing clothes enough. Changing your clothes regularly is for REAL LIFE, Saints Row 2. It shouldn't be a requirement on a computer game. Anyway, it's also annoying me a bit by having things like the above in it as well, so I might be cutting down on it a bit in the future. I'm sort of just feeling a bit tired in general as well. Although that might actually be hormones this week.

Adventures I have had this week included: my shoes literally pretty much falling apart on my feet yesterday in Leeds, after months of looking at them and thinking "it'll be fine", and having to go into a shoe shop and buy a new pair. Although I found a pair I quite like in my size for £8, so it wasn't all bad. And being unable to properly handle the Leeds and Wakefield bus switches in a new and exciting way, and having to walk unnecessarily back to a DIFFERENT bus station. On the other hand, the Leeds Craft and Design Centre has a bunch of new stock in, leading to me finding a new jewellery maker I like. As well as finally looking up an old jewellery maker I like.

The other thing I wanted to say was that it seems like a load of my stuff is running out this year. My bank card runs out in a few months, on a date that at one point seemed forever away. Now it is not forever away. And my young person's railcard runs out at the beginning of March. So I'll basically be giving up the saving I've had since I really started travelling very far on the trains. Part of me feels like I should be doing quite a lot of travelling before it runs out. Like, going to Scarborough for the day, or going to Nottingham to see Alys Power or something. ALL THE TRAVELLING. I do have a bit of money at the moment, but probably not enough to TRAVEL EVERYWHERE in the space of a month. Still. Hmm.

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.

Hello. I went to the Riverside Festival. It was wicked, as it is most years. I spent too much, but I did buy CDs for the first time ever, and I saw katemonkey in the crowd, which was lovely.

BUT. Mostly what happened was that the soaps were mostly amazing on Friday, and I was nowhere near a computer. However, I did take helpful notes. Here they are, lovingly recreated for you:

( Spoilers for Friday's Emmerdale and Coronation Street episodes )

In other news, that's pretty much it. The Riverside Festival was lovely and sunny and rainy, but hardly ever rainy for very long. For some reason this year they didn't put descriptions of each band in the programme, so it was hard to tell what you were going to see, but I did manage to find quite a lot of really good bands anyway. At one point I was at a gig, and it started raining a bit, but a lot of us stuck it out, and eventually we ended up dancing in front of a massive, really vibrant double rainbow. Which looked to me to be turning into a triple rainbow slightly at some points. But anyway. It was really good. Also I found a stall selling really nice necklaces and I spent too much on jewellery in a new and unexpected way. But I don't regret it, and it was really really nice. Also, I didn't stay for the fireworks on Saturday night, because I didn't want to get back too late, given that I was in town on my own. But I got the bus back, got back to my hotel, settled down in my room, and then started hearing some bangs. I looked behind the curtains, and I could see some of the fireworks from my hotel room. Irritatingly, the Hotel Britannia was directly between me and them, but the Travellodge (I think) was across the road from it, and I could see the reflections from a lot of them in its windows. And some of them came over the top of the Hotel Britannia anyway. Which was quite lovely :)

Soaps are amazing. And so are festivals.

A few further things about Prague:

( A few further things about Prague )

So. I've had a busy week. Sort of. ( On Tuesday I went to Nottingham )

( And on Thursday I went to Wakefield and Leeds )

Anyway. Then today my mum came back from her holiday with my sister and my two nephews. I was invited on this holiday, but I said no in the end, because I remembered what happened last time we went on holiday to Filey with my sister and my two nephews in April, and I didn't feel like I'd be up to doing it at the moment. She got back tonight at about half past seven, and she looked shell-shocked, and I asked her how it had been, and she said "Put it this way, this morning I bit a hole in a football." Which I think says it all. She's glad to be home, I think.

So. On the advice of my flist, I have now downloaded AVG free antivirus protection for my virus protection needs. Although Norton will probably still make me pay to renew it somehow in May, but I shall have to deal with that when I get to it. And actually, I was going to get Avast, on the reasoning that one of my friends (as far as I knew at the time) was actually using it and having no problems with it so it was probably fine, but I told my dad about it and he found some review that said that AVG was the best free one, and I think it upsets/irritates him that I take the advice of my internet friends probably more than I take his, so I ended up getting AVG. But anyway. I have downloaded it and been on the internet with it and nothing has exploded so far. And I'm even getting those nice little page status reports that Norton used to give me to tell me if a page was safe or was probably FILLED WITH VIRUSES, so that's nice. And essentially, I'm back on the internet in my room again. Hurrah!

In other news, ( Family drama )

So yes. A fun day. I've got a Jobcentre appointment tomorrow, and an appointment with my Back To Work service thing again in Wakefield in the afternoon. When I may or may not be going to Pinderfields with my mum to see my grandma and staying on afterwards to go to my appointment, but she doesn't know for sure yet if she's going, and she doesn't really want to drive and park so we might be going on the bus, and blah blah blah. We'll see.

In other news:

• I have pretty much totally finished Black And White 2. I used a cunning mix of expanding, building impressive buildings, and throwing a hurricane at the Aztecs. I had a feeling it would make their city less impressive and mine more impressive in comparison. It totally did. So yes, I've finished that. All I have to do left now is to charge up my volcano miracle and set it off and set off my hurricane miracle one more time, because I really never got to see the effects of that enough.



• Given how often I fall in love with jewellery and how much time I spend whining that I can't afford anymore, it's probably a bad idea for me to look at designer jewellery websites. But that hasn't stopped me doing it anyway. Mostly I love the Turandot pendants on that first page, and the XIV collection on the second. Which are pretty much equally as expensive (as far as I can tell).



• Other things I have finished recently: Season 3 of the US Office, although it was an episode I'd seen before. ( Vague spoilers for the finale of Season 3 of the US Office )
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  And I both started and finished No Heroics, which I was mostly interested in because of a) Nicholas Burns, and b) rubbish superheroes. ( My thoughts for the whole series )



• Last Thursday my mum had the radio on on Sky while she was tidying, and while it was on I heard Nick Lowe's Cruel To Be Kind for the first time. Which is, for me, one of those songs that when you hear it you can't believe you didn't hear it years before. I kind of love it.