girlofprey

Adventures today included:

• I checked my electricity meter, and saw where it was. We don't actually have access to the meters in our set of flats, they're in a privately-owned garage below, although it's privately owned by a quite nice and rather accomodating man. My landlords took some readings and sent them to me in November, and my electricity company sent me a letter in December saying they had never actually got in to see my meter and were basing my bills on estimates so I could I take some readings and get back to them please, and I finally called on Tuesday-ish to give them the landlords' readings. Apparently they showed my billing was wrong even then, and the guy asked me to take some more up-to-date readings if I could. I popped a note through the garage door on Thursday, but as I was passing the garage today I noticed it was open and asked the guy if he'd got my note, and he offered to let me take some readings then. Sometime between realising how big the garage was inside and him taking me down some stairs to the underground bit, kicking over car parts all the way, I realised it might not have been the best plan in the world. But I saw the set-up and took the readings, and gave them to the electric company tonight, so it's all good. I hope their billing is wrong in that it's too high, rather than the other way around. I'm generally pretty careful with the electricity I use, although I have had the heating up pretty high recently. Anyway. They're sending me a new bill, so I guess I'll find out.



• I went into the shop I'd been looking at on the way down into Nottingham that sells garden stuff, finally. I don't actually have a garden, but there's never a bad time or place for tealight holders, is there? It was lovely, anyway. They had rather a multitude of wasp catchers, and pots of seeds, and little books on beekeeping and fruit-growing. And they had a sale on. Although probably not for long at this point.



• I totally got the hand-towel I was looking for. Hah.



• I went into one of the antique stores on Derby Road as well, as it was closing down. I found rather a lovely bowl carved with dragons and flowers, and when I thought it was £15 they almost had a sale. It turned out it was £115. Oh well.

In other news, this week Disturbia arrived, as did the Eagle Vs Shark soundtrack I've wanted since I saw the film at the cinema and was only available on random websites in New Zealand until a seller on Amazon starting listing it, and the new Constantine novel (in the right order). So I have films and music and reading, I just can't spend anything for the next few months. I think that's fair enough.

Choices for tomorrow include: going to do the washing; taking all my recycling to the big recycling site in Nottingham to finally get rid of it; going food shopping for the week; trying to get that underwear I wanted earlier on. Or possibly ALL FOUR.

Other things:

1. I have become mildly obsessed with that ( Spoilers for songs from Sweeney Todd and plot details )



2. Pairings I have from Sweeney Todd include:
   
   ( Read more... )



3. Searching Youtube seems to suggest that no-one has done a 'Blame Canada' vid with characters from Due South and Stargate Atlantis and Wolverine from the X-Men. Maybe I'm just not looking right.

Time was just impossible this weekend. Especially after K called and asked if I wanted to go do something on Saturday. I can't even remember if I mentioned it, but K and J moved away from Nottingham at the beginning of November, back down South, when J finished his MA. But K has an arts project going on here, so she's back up for a month, and wanted to do something when she got back this weekend. It was nice though. We went for (cheap) dinner at Wetherspoons, and used the table surrounded by sofas, although a random couple wanted to sit opposite us because there was no other space. Thankfully they eventually found another table. Then we went to see The Darjeeling Limited at the cinema, which I highly recommend. I don't really understand people who don't love Adrien Brody.

But I didn't do half the stuff I wanted to do. I'm having a flat inspection on Thursday, and wanted to spend the weekend cleaning. That didn't quite happen. Hmm. But I do still have three evenings. And I did clean the toilet, which has been on the to-do list for some time, and sweep the kitchen floor. I think it might need to be mopped. I've never mopped it. I'm not sure I have anything to mop with. You know. Mop potion. The stuff you put in the water. Probably it's just soap. Hmmm.

Actually, I took the bin out as well. I'm doing quite well.

And I got a bus pass. Which was a bit more expensive than I was expecting it to be, but should still save me money, and means I don't have to keep getting tenners out and buying things to get change. And obviously it came with it's own hideous bus pass photo. The words "I'm a monster!" spring to mind. It's an unlimited card though, which means I can travel anywhere inside a nice little circle around Nottingham for free. Which mostly means all I want to do is jump onto any random bus I see. Or tram. I can get the tram for free as well. I won't do that. Especially not on a weekday. But it's still a nice idea.

Anyway. Tonight I have to:

• Wash up.



• Sort out all the stuff I tidied out of the window bottom last night.



• Move my random empty boxes somewhere.



• Hoover. (But not the roof).



• Look up recycling for all that extra stuff I haven't yet recycled.



• Possibly go through my drawer of useful junk. It can't all still be that useful.

I imagine this will all go to plan.

Apologies if I haven't replied to any comments. It's all gone a bit hectic.

Oh! Also, today I had some snickerdoodles. The American guy at work baked them. They're lovely, basically sugar and cinammon in the form of a biscuit, and not a funny shape as I was half-expecting. Have any of you eaten anything with such a lovely name? No, I bet you haven't.

I was totally going to do a proper post last night, as well as vague minor rambling on Heroes, but then chores and minor panic set in. Oh well.

This weekend was a bit of a disaster. ( General rambling )

On Monday morning, I managed to be late despite doing pretty much what I usually do on a morning, except having no corned beef so having to magic up a sandwich from other ingredients I had. Then I went the wrong way into the building and had to go back to the kitchen to put my lunch in the fridge. Then the water machine had no plastic cups, so I had to go back to the kitchen to get a mug. Then I had to go back to the kitchen to re-rinse it because I couldn't actually drink out of something with that many tea stains. Then my bag fell down my arm as I was getting water, and splashed it all over me. It was rubbish. Yesterday morning, my agency rang at five to ten in the morning to say they hadn't got my timesheet for last week (which I sent), and they needed it by ten, so could I do another one quick sharpish? People were missing and the fax was engaged, so I did not get it in by ten. Which means my wage this week will probably be delayed, and I really did need that money in my account to cover the bills. And. Yes.

But it wasn't all bad. K and I went out on Monday night, since she and J moved out of their flat last week and were leaving Nottingham this week. Except it turned out J had already gone. But it was nice. We had dinner at a pub nearby (a touch overpriced), and she taught me a great catchphrase from Dali, and then we went to see a film. Which, through a lack of other things, turned out to be The Dark Is Rising. You know what's funny? How bad that film is. Omg. ( Vague spoilers ) We sort of enjoyed it anyway. They clearly missed a trick by not putting Ace of Base on that soundtrack. Oh.

Oh, and I finished Carnivale at the weekend. Oh, Carnivale. I do love it. I don't feel entirely like I can rec it, since it's so very much my sort of thing, and I'm probably MASSIVELY BIASED. But other people seem to think it's good too. There's sadly not much fic for my OTP. In a SHOCKING TURN OF EVENTS. But I get to love it onscreen, anyway. Mostly I think everyone on my flist should watch it. I'd squee, but that would only be spoilers, and it's so much better without them. If anyone I've met would ever like to come to my flat and watch Carnivale with me, THEY ARE PERFECTLY FREE TO. Dude.

And today I am tired, tired, tired. After a week or so of not really having much to do at work, all of a sudden everyone's coming to me and saying can you do this, this is urgent. Or reminding me about things they mentioned previously but said weren't important, and saying that they are now more urgent. Given that most of those things are printing stuff off and putting them in neat piles you'd think it would be easy, but it's actually quite time consuming. The job isn't going on until Christmas, either, the girl I was filling in for is coming back next week, so how I'm expected to do everything I don't know. But will have to figure it out I guess. But tonight is Halloween! I have a large bag of sweets and stuff my mum brought for me when she came up the other week, and nothing particularly to do. Possibly the perfect night in, you might say. TV is rubbish at Halloween. But I imagine I can root out some DVDs.

Work has got slightly worst since last I spoke of it. I've somehow gotten to the stage where people feel okay to tell me which other people in the office they hate, and it turns out it's a bit of a seething hotbed of tension. Also, people are just rubbish. The guy who was meant to be on call for any urgent calls we couldn't send anywhere else today went out three times, and never told us who was covering for him. Even after I asked the first time he came back in, and the person who was covering for him told him to let reception know.

I get chewed out every now and then for forgetting to put a message for the on-call person through straight away, or forgetting to take all the details, when half the time people just say their name for a message, like they'll just expect the people to know who they are. I know I should take all the details anyway, just in case, but you know. Yesterday someone apparently said it was "shit" I hadn't taken a phone number down for the person who was calling them. WHEN SHE NEVER ANSWERS HER PHONE ANYWAY. I'm starting to develop my own slightly seething hotbed of tension.

And I also get to watch racism in action. There's another girl who works with me, as a temp, and she is a) black, b) lovely, and c) French. And about ten times more capable and professional than me. The other week someone came to the front desk and had a long conversation with her, then at the end said something about finding it difficult to understand her accent, asked if it was French, then did that raising-your-eyebrows thing when she said yes. And then today, she was on the phone with a woman whose name I won't give out, but is second only to Speedy Gonzalez in Spanish/Hispanicness, who asked for a doctor who didn't work there and an appointment we knew nothing about. After asking what's the girl's name was and asking if it was Polish, she finally needed to speak to a person who had just left, and when told she couldn't suddenly said the girl wasn't doing her job properly, and demanded to be passed to an English person. The irony, it was not lost on us. Nor was the rubbishness.

It's still nice enough weather for ice-creams though.

So far I have failed three people today, and only one of them was myself.

The shop next door are having some sort of trouble with their rollerblind, so can't get in in the morning except through the back door, which is in the courtyard of our flats. They don't have a key for this, so asked me - me being the only one picking up the buzzer - if they could copy mine, as they'd been calling our estate agents and not getting through. I offered to copy it for them, but decided to go into the estate agents and check first, and they said no. They couldn't understand what I meant, sort of, and didn't know why the people next door wouldn't have a courtyard key, since they'd have to be renting it from them, and they'd have given them one. They wanted the shop people to come in if they couldn't get through. I went and told the shop people this, and they were sort of dismayed. They are renting it from our estate agents, and didn't know why they weren't given a key either, and would have gone to the office if they'd only had time, and I just felt awful. Probably I'll have to get up and let them in tomorrow. If it's either not too early, or not too late.

I was also meant to print off my CV and some other things at the print shop down the whole, but after hanging around my flat till lunchtime, the bastard thing was closed at 3. That's seems a bit early, so it might be closed permanently, but it's annoying either way. I found another one on the other side of the hill, but they were busy for the rest of the day with a big job, so it'll have to be tomorrow, and really, maybe I should just go for that telephone debt collecting job. I'm not going to do that. But still.

And my other job for today was to open an ISA for the savings dad wants to transfer over to me, but apparently I FAILED AT THAT months ago, when I didn't update the Electoral Roll about my new address, so I need two or three forms of ID to prove I exist. So all of these have now become jobs for tomorrow. Except for the key thing, which I really can't help.

I also checked my bank balance today. I had £130 last night, £3.77 this morning. Thank you, energy bill. There's nothing I particularly need to buy though. And my wages from last week and pay for the holiday I never took will go in tomorrow or Saturday. It's just when I start thinking about how much I'm earning towards next month's rent that things start to look a bit dire. I'm not panicking about work, not really, other than my apparent inability to go looking for it. It's just that the only two jobs I've had so far were with the same place, while it was a having a bit of a crisis over a shoddy computer system. And having let me go twice, the second time when I was the only person really working on a particular job, it seems like they won't be taking me back in a hurry. But it's only been a few days, and I did that job for long enough, and if I need to, I can always use the savings from dad to tide me over, though it's a last resort.

But yes, at the moment my activities will mainly consist of internet (not difficult), TV, reading, going to the cinema with my free pass, and walking. Though not to anywhere I'll need to buy anything. It's a good thing the internet is for porn, my friends.

Last night - well yesterday I was looking at auctions on eBay at lunchtime and noticed a couple of good ones would be ending about half an hour after I got home, so I was already 'motivated' to get back. But I wanted to get a cherry coke - habit for me on a Friday night - and a TV guide now I can read spoilers for next week, so I trundled down to the local shop, but they did not have a cherry coke. I had to walk all the way into town, where most newsagents were shut, except for one, thankfully. Then I had to walk back up the hill, buy a TV guide, and get back to the flat, and the bus stop I get off at is very close to the flat, you understand.

When I checked the mailbox I found a card from the postman saying he could not deliver my parcel, which is either my very reasonably priced X Files Season 1 DVD or my very reasonably priced Farscape Season 1 DVD, but either way very annoying, so I shouldered my way through all the doors into the flat and switched on the computer, but it was about half past six at this point so I had to start with the dinner. That done, I went on the redelivery site, and found they wouldn't redeliver for today because it was too soon, and all other days I would be at work and he wouldn't be able to buzz up, except for Saturday, when I will be in London. So I had it moved to a local post office, which will cost me 50p, and I still won't be able to pick it up, unless I go in late to work one morning, or go on Friday before getting the train. But by that point it was 7 o'clock and Emmerdale was on. Carl wandered around a graveyard with his shirt half-untucked. OH GOD HE BRINGS JOY INTO MY LIFE.

Anyway. At half past seven I went back to confirm the post office move, but clearly half an hour is too long to leave it and it could not process my request. I had to go through about ten different webpages, and put all my details in again before it finally got sorted. I decided to go onto eBay, finally, only to find that I couldn't remember my username or password, and didn't have the notebook I'd written them down in, and then that I hadn't updated my address, or the address on Paypal, and I couldn't remember my Paypal password either, except when I finally did. Then it was time for Have I Got News For You. And Peep Show.

But I'm feeling calmer this morning.

This is a bit long, so meme in the next post.

calapine sent me Babylon 5 videos. She is win. I am quite looking forward to watching them at...some point. But maybe not anytime soon. I dance her anyway, though. John Barrowman is on Never Mind the Buzzcocks tonight, by the way, in case you didn't know.

I need to get a move on with writing/editing my CV, and y'know, sending it to places, but mostly haven't been doing that. I will though. Editing short, pithy statements about my "skills" may not be much motivation for getting through a day of filing, but moving out and going back to Nottingham DEFINITELY IS. I hope I will have the internet in the place I'll presumably be moving into. It's a slight constant worry to me that I sort of won't.

Also a TV. Life on Mars series 2 will be starting around January, I think.

I have quite a lot to do, really. Christmas shopping. Writing my Yuletide fic. Looking at jobs/flats. K is coming with me to the Green Wing convention, so at least that's sorted. Apparently I need to send off a form now telling the SLC how I'll be paying my Student Loan back. Which is slightly worrying. I thought they just sort of took it when you were earning enough. I now need to say whether I'll be employed or unemployed over the next 12 months. I don't think 'um' is going to cover it.

Mostly I'm in love with Guy of Gisbourne at the moment. As far as I can tell, it was caused by a dream I had about him in which I basically just wanted to rescue and hug him. It's quite pleasant, but often distracting. We'll pretend I totally didn't just buy the first DVD for the sake of being able to watch him on a regular basis. Other than on TV. Yes. Apparently this week the outlaws will regret crossing him after uncovering 'a terrible secret'. All that sex with the Sheriff? Who's to say what that might be?

• Ebay is amazing. You can like - buy a fire opal. Why did no-one tell me about this before? ::searches randomly::



• I need to stop spending money, but it hasn't stopped me being tempted by damn Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. It's slightly shameful how much of a whore I am for interesting/pretty names when it comes to cosmetics.
  
  But they're so shiny...



• I have a Gandalf the White pen. It is not quite as swish as it looked on play.com. But I imagine hours of geeky (hidden) fun are still just waiting to be had with it. The pen is mightier than the sword, after all. So the Magic Staff pen ought to lay a smackdown on everything.

As my first weekend post-Veronica Mars haze, I was thinking about spending it completely away from the computer. Doing all those non-pixel-related things I should have been doing in the last two weeks, like finally using that make-a-necklace kit or reading some of my books. But you're all just very interesting and it's not fair. And it turns out that even when Veronica Mars is finished, I still have a bunch of films Veronica Mars has convinced me to finally get round to watching (like the Big Lebowski and the Virgin Suicides). And I sort of want to make some new filters and do amusing and insightful commentary for all my icons. So. Apparently not.

I went to the cinema last night. After going to Pizza Hut on my own, which was a First. I was rewarded, I think, when the waitress finally brought my (huge) pizza and told me she'd ordered a medium instead of an individual, and I'd be charged just the same but could eat whatever I wanted. In a word, score (even if I couldn't take the leftovers away due to cinema). Or it seemed like a reward until the fifteen minutes it took to get the bill. But I made it to the film, which was Nacho Libre, which was quite funny if not outstanding. It is about a Mexican friar who lives a double life as a Lucha Libre wrestler, with his best friend/a skinny guy he found on the street. There are lots of jokes about stretchy pants, and a pretty nun, and Peter Stormare turned up randomly as a roving gypsy, which was a nice suprise. It was quite good, even if he totally did it for the pretty nun not the orphans and there was no 'Barton Fink feeling'. It is vaguely recommended.

There was a trailer for Talladega Nights on too, which was quite nice of the world. It looks like it might be one of those films that expects you to be interested in the main character. But it has Gary Cole, aka Lucas Buck, aka the Midnight Caller, in it, and Sacha Baron Cohen still looks unbelievably hot in his green racing jacket, so I'm still looking forward to it, hurrah.

I'm sure I had better points to make when I started this post. But mostly I'm just planning to spam you with music then go back to all those jobs I'm meant to be doing. Hahaha!

Liquorice festival today. For all of an hour. Once again, the highlight was pretty much buying an ice-cream from the ice-cream van, but it was still a nice change, and sunny. Perhaps too sunny. I am decidedly pink in the arms. Still. I learned that rum truffle tastes like rum, and should probably be left alone if you don't like such, and am currently in possession of TINY CELTIC WARRIORS, and a Green Man carved from British Coal. Mostly he looks like a scary cobweb face man, but I wanted a coal dragon last year and didn't get one, so at least I have closure on that. Oh, and mum randomly suggested she and I might go to Venice for a weekend at some point this summer. Which is yay :)

There were less people than last year, but also less semi-animated street drama about cafes and the death of a beloved mouse. But then a local brass band started up, and made most of the day worthwhile. Why will no-one teach me to swing dance? Oh why?

And now I'm home, and Katie and Mick are downstairs, and lalala. The weekend of semi-fun is over, and must rely on Emmerdale and gay sex, for entertainment. THANKS SO MUCH, UNIVERSE.

(Except that - thank you.)

It's quite sad how every time Emmerdale do/try to do Epic Disaster I just end up giggling helplessly. Ah well. It was mostly pre-Explosion stuff - too much talking, not enough angst. Carl and Matthew were mostly mean to each other, though basically about who the other was sleeping with, which I choose to read biasedly. Also Matthew grabbed his arm and gave him a menacing look, which was nice. Chas and Sadie had a rather nice close-standing bitchfight. Chas has a degree, yay! And then the explosion and oh, oh, Carl was the beautiful voice of reason, standing highest on the pile of rubble and making everyone stop and listen. I love how he can both be in on the Kings' ruthless business stuff and yet also mucking in with the other villagers. He's a bit like a whore. But I love him.

And then ( Spoiler, I suppose )

In the past two days, I have received in the post/bought:

• The Philadelphia Story


• King Kong (2005)


• Strangers on a Train


• Third Rock from the Sun Season 1


• The hardcover English translation of Night Watch.


• UB40: The Best Of (it was £2.57, and let me get free Amazon Delivery, and I FEEL NO SHAME, shut up)


• That 70s Show Season 2


• Eerie Indiana: The Complete Series (yay!)


• Supernatural: Part One. Because I like the supernatural, and cars and weapons and pretty boys, and apparently incest, so I should give it a go.

Ask not how much it all cost. I feel the urge to spend my newfound wages before I get accustomed to them and start budgeting. But I am THE HAPPIEST I HAVE BEEN IN WEEKS. And you MAY NOT SEE ME FOR MORE WEEKS. Hurrah.