girlofprey

Things I have done yesterday and today:

• Went to Leeds, bought gold boots.



• Also bought back issues of the comics I've been reading lately, where I could.



• Bought Halloween chocolate from Hotel Chocolat.



• Reorganised my CD collection into my new handmade CD unit. I have a lot of CDs.



• Got up at 9.30am this morning, well before I usually do, to await for delivery of gold boots (Doc Martens) because they didn't have the size I needed in Leeds so I had to have them delivered, and I forgot mum was working a night shift last night and would want to sleep in this morning.



• Argued with mum about whether I should or shouldn't have gotten a size 7 in the gold boots - my feet are a 5 1/2 and a 6 respectively, and I normally get a 6, but yesterday when I tried on the size 6's they hurt me even when I was sitting down doing nothing. I'm pretty sure going a size bigger with Doc Martens is the done thing. Especially if your usual size hurt even when you're sitting down.



• Listened to my mum about the horrendous night shift she had last night. Dude.



• Met my service worker in town for a few hours. By coincidence, he also bought a pair of Doc Martens recently, for the same price as mine, and he had to go a size up too. Vindication.



• Got a call from the Employment Support Allowance people. I was worried, but then it turned out to be a courtesy call because I'd sent my sick note in a little late, and they were just letting me know my next payment was a bit delayed.



• Got a call from my local mental health organisation, replying to the message I left on Friday, for a brief assessment of my case, and I am now on the waiting list for a full assessment in a few weeks.

I was planning to go see Thor 2 tomorrow, before the spoilers start pouring in. But now I think I'm going to do nothing.

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.

So, my week has once again been incredibly busy-seeming, without me actually seeming to get anything done. Monday was basically recovering from Halloween/the weekend, Tuesday I was getting ready for the CBT group and Jobcentre appointment/interview I had pretty close to one another (read: I filled in some forms and washed my hair), and it was also the day I came on my period. Thursday I woke up with massive stomach cramps, and then my mum brought my youngest nephew over as usual, and then let me know that she was working a night shift that night, so she wouldn't be back after taking him home. Then yesterday I got up and remembered, as I'd only done occasionally throughout the week, that not only was it Bonfire Night, it was also my dad's birthday. So I rushed out to town to get him a card before the shops shut and just managed to meet up with my mother to get a lift home with her and my oldest nephew. When we got back my dad was there, so we gave him his cards and we agreed that he could take my nephew and me to my nephew's karate lesson while mum put some shopping away, then we came back, my nephew got changed, and we all went round to my sister's to go to a bonfire near her house. Eventually we got back and watched the soaps and The Event until pretty late into the night. Then today I basically slept in, got up, had lunch, checked the internet, ordered pizza with my mum because in all the rushing around yesterday she didn't really get a chance to buy any food for the weekend, watched Strictly, watched Casualty, watched most of the Armstrong and Miller show, and am now here. Tomorrow we're going out for Sunday lunch, and then having my sister and two nephews and my grandma over for cake and sparklers for dad's birthday. Yay.

The bonfire was good, aside from my taking my two nephews on the teacups ride at the little fair they had and managing to bash my youngest nephew's lip, twice, moving him around the ride. But in between those two time, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Um. Anyway. It's quite a big do, at a pub, so the fireworks display is usually good, and the fire - when we could get to it - was pretty big. However, the flying burning debris and embers from the fire told us we were probably a bit too close to it, so we went back a bit again. But the kids had a good time (I think), and we had a good time, so it was pretty good all round.

Anyway. In the mean time, these are the things that have happened to me:

• I went to the second week of my CBT therapy group, as I said. We had to/were asked to do a questionnaire thing in the first meeting, to bring to the second, to see if we really had OCD. When we got there, in the second meeting, the women leading it said that a score of over 40 on that questionnaire was generally taken as you having OCD. It turned out I'd added mine up wrong, but when I did it right, it turned out I had a score of 90. So I'd say I probably have it. Yeah.



• It turned out that the way to get me to buy almost anything lately is to sell it on the internet and claim it is the "Last Chance" to buy it. In the past two weeks I have bought a print you can no longer see on the website from Scary Go Round and this t-shirt based on that principle. Basically all Jon Burgerman needs to do is declare it is my last chance to buy everything on his website, and I am financially screwed.



• Although on the bright side, I ordered that t-shirt apparently from Canada, and I placed the order on 26th October and it arrived last Wednesday. Beating any order I ever made from Threadless by about three weeks. Score one for Canada, my friends.



• I want to buy a new winter coat. I'm thinking of this one from New Look. But there's quite a lot of things I've been thinking about buying or doing lately, and I have only a finite amount of money, so it's going under advisement.



• I found two new webcomics I like: No Rest For The Wicked, which is based on fairytales, and is GREAT, I LOVE IT. I love Red, and I love November, and I even kind of love Perrault. Oh God. And the other is Snowflakes, which I don't like as much as some of the others I read, and which is a bit weird once you find out that the orphanage is meant to be set in some mountains in the Andes and yet pretty much all of the characters are white, but which has kind of sucked me in nonetheless. I LOVE PRITI. OH MY GOD. I LOVE HER. I get the feeling from the comments and stuff that a lot of people love Wray (who is also quite great) the best. They are idiots. PRITI IS CLEARLY BEST.



• Also, Irregular Choice apparently hate me. Every year it seems to be the same. It's not enough that I've already fallen in love with a number of pairs of shoes that I couldn't afford and have now sold out. They have to now put out these. And these. And these. And these. And these. And these. Do they hate me? I'VE DONE NOTHING TO THEM!



• I continue to be floored by how pretty a lot of the women on Hollyoaks are nowadays, and how amazingly they dress. Oh my god.



• Nathan Wylde is leaving Emmerdale sometime in the next few weeks, and it sounds like it goes pretty badly for him before he leaves. Even worse, or at least as well as, being kidnapped for a few days and then tortured by his sister, which he recently was. And he is going to be kind of a dick, apparently, and is probably going to be tricked into something he doesn't want. It mostly all I am thinking about these days. That and porn. I am trying to decide what they won't do to him. ( Sort of spoiler )
  . But what else will they do to him? They can't utterly destroy him or how could he ever come back? I can't picture anything worse happening to him and him not having a complete emotional breakdown and going into catatonic shock, perhaps. Unless that is what they're doing, and should he ever return that will be when he sort of comes out of it, to WREAK HIS VENGEANCE UPON THE WORLD. Sometimes I wish Emmerdale was that sort of show. I have been comforting myself lately by imagining him being completely destroyed and losing everything before leaving Emmerdale, and then turning up again a few years later as a super-rich super-businessman, and being all "By the way everyone, I've bought up all the land in town and am going to turn it into a strip mine! Ciao, fuckers." OR, I wish it was the kind of show where eventually SOMETHING/SOMEONE MUCH WORSE would come along and threaten the town, and they would be all "God. They are the terrible. To beat them, we are going to need the worst human being, and best liar, we know" "..." All together: "Nathan!" And then they go and track him down, and maybe he's come good, or maybe he just still hates them, and they have to convince him to come back and help them somehow, and they kind of fall in love with how great he is. With Declan sort of leading the charge both times, obviously. Probably it won't be anything like that. Probably it will just be AWFUL. Oh God.

And now, having had both Halloween and Bonfire Night, we are basically into the Christmas season. Somehow. Great.

I need new shoes. Quite a lot. I really need to replace my work shoes, really. I think that if I'm going to do the Wolf Walk thing I may need some proper walking shoes. I'm not sure white and pink trainers are going to cut it. I would like some shoes that are suitable for dancing in. I also need these shoes.

In other news, I quite like coats.

And what I'm getting quite sick of is the weird layer of misogyny that seems to be running through most soaps nowadays. I don't know if it's a new thing, or it's gotten worse, or if I'm just noticing it, but really. They've got a main character on Emmerdale, Viv, in prison because of being stitched up by a male con artist, as well as the ongoing abused wife storyline, and I cannot believe what they're doing with it now, I cannot believe it, she has to SUFFER SOME MORE, SUFFER SOME MORE, for some reason. On Eastenders they've got the new older guy preying on teenage girls, and on Coronation Street we've got Rosie Webster missing and presumed held against her will. Plus all the storylines where girls inexplicably fall helplessly for a man's charms no matter how obnoxious he's being. And it's just completely - ugh. There was an Inside Soap a few weeks back that had a front cover headline of "WOMEN IN DANGER!", and the fact that it accurately described what was happening in most of the storylines only made it slightly worse. I just - ugh. WHY? is the question I would ask, if I wanted to ask questions, as opposed to just being mostly disgusted. Ugh.

Just been looking for shoes on schuhshop.com, but all the pretty ones I like seem to have disappeared :( (taps Schuh). But then again, a pair of shoes I liked in November that were in the Schuh magazine/catalogue were never on at all, so possibly shuhshop.com is simply stupid. Yes. That works.

Last night was strange, but not unpleasant. After declining to go to a curry house with my radio friends because urgh, curry, I somehow ended up in our local pub/cafe thing with all my housemates and Hannah (a boy housemate's girlfriend, who is blonde and lovely and sings in a choir, and will be living with us next year), a never-before-seen occurence. We discussed many topics, fuelled by alcohol and sugar, including Hannah possibly writing an essay on porn music for her Film Music module, and us all living in Sherwood Forest next year and riding horses to campus, which I did not disapprove of. The day I ride a wild stallion down the stairs of my lecture hall, then calmly dismount and sit down, is the day I can die a happy lady (provided I have been to Cuba and seen a wolf for proper by that point).

Jos (a boy, but not Hannah's boyfriend) also mentioned the uni creative writing magazine, which people will not let him join, though it is surely a uni magazine and not owned by no-one. They've only put out 2 issues in 2 years anyway, so clearly need all the help they can get. And are stupid. It reminded me that I keep meaning to submit things to them, which are even half-written, and less than a page long each, which clearly proves my crapness at not even being able to finish them. And now jos wants me to write my Apocalypse, Now parody (Graduation, Now), and words will drown me soon. Yes.

On a lighter, dancier note, there is a Swing Night a week on Monday in Ark. Yay. Swing music and dancing, of course. Not what you are thinking. Certainly not. No. But I've been interested in swing dancing for a bit (aka many years) and it is a mere £2, so possibly it will a marvellous evening. May even pop into the handknitting class too, and learn how to knit myself a scarf. Why Don't U scheme, I love you.