swashing with a buckler

The fridge is a fireworks display of words. Of fridge magnet poetry, to be precise.

I really havn't much to say, though. With one day to go i found inspiration for my swashbuckler (this month's genrechallenge). so i'm kinda stressing to get it written before tonight. i think it's going to be a slightly long one. i've reached the middle and i'm wishy-washing with the plot. i think i've added in too much unnecessary scenery, but we'll see how it goes. i'm over the word count already, though, so i'm happy.

The only other big thing is pokemon. I'm still obsessed. I play it at breakfast (it makes breakfast last about an hour) and at lunch (if i get a chance) and all evening after lordkilljoy comes home. but that's ok. he's playing too, and he's way better at it than me.

yea, so i'll go get back to writing now.

More Japanese

My other Japanese book arrived yesterday. "First 1000 Words in Japanese." i got to page 13 last night. It takes a considerable amount of concentration to read. But i like it. It's amusing; the illustrations are fun to look at. I'm such a child! Ah well.

lordkilljoy got me playing pokèmon diamond version. And while battles seemed a bit tedious the first few times, it's actually incredibly addictive. Was playing some more Rival Swords too. There are actually some changes from Two Thrones, which is fun. It means that every so often i actually have to think about what i'm doing.

Yea. Not much else to say. I must get food. My stomach is making rumbly noises, even though no one can hear it over the sounds of diggnation.

Rival Swords

I got up this morning at ten to eight, had a quick shower and got dressed and had breakfast. But as i was pouring my cereal into my bowl, i remembered that i had watched the intro cut-scene of Prince of Persia: Rival Swords on lordkilljoy's PSP last night. So i wandered into the sitting room, picked it up and played it as i ate breakfast. I continued playing after i'd finished breakfast. It's almost identical to Two Thrones, except that the sound-effects aren't nearly as good (they are quite bad, actually - no flow to them - like footsteps and weapon noises are just one sound repeated over and over) and it took me a while to get used to the controls.
But i seriously love this game, in any form. It's got to be my favourite game. I got to the first major cut-scene and i was like: yea, this game has such a great story. And then i stopped playing, because the day was moving on, and has moved on. i can't believe it's almost 11. hmmm.

lordkilljoy, lainey316, goblin_insane, claudia and i went to see pineapple express last night. It was so funny. lordkilljoy had described it as a stoner action movie and that's kind of exactly what it was. I've not laughed so much in ages...

mmm, i can't think of anything else to say. I really like this song. I heard it first back when i was working in CIT over the summmer. I heard it twice and had it stuck in my head for weeks.

(what a funny list of tags i have for this post... it's so... something)

the days of unemployment

it's foggy this morning. i opened the curtains and was like: woah, everything is white. and then i realized it was fog and felt a little tingle of happiness run from my stomach out to my skin. i love fog. it's so mysterious and mystical.

awh, gosh. i started this entry this morning and then forgot about it (it's 12:02 now). i'm tailoring my cv at the moment. most dull of dull jobs. but i need to get a job, so there's nothing else for it. i want to say i hate my life, but i totally don't. i love my life, it just gets trying at times when i can't figure out why things arn't just working out. things have always just worked out for me. i have this innate luck or something, but i think my innate luck abandoned me just before i went travelling and hasn't deigned to return yet. please luck, come back. i miss you.

anyway. since no one at all in the whole world wants to hire me, i think i'm going to have to resort to shop work. i really didn't want to have to do this, because it's like the most soul destroying work on the planet.

i had thought of doing a tefl (teach english as a foreign language) course, but i'm so full of doubt. what if that dosn't work out for me either and i spend all this money on a course and still can't get work. it's a horrible feeling, actually. i never take risks.

today is probably not a good day for me to start ranting about stuff - i feel a decidedly misanthropic. and i'm hungry. i need to get something for lunch.

ugh, i'm such an idiot. i just closed down firefox. thank god livejournal saves drafts of entries.

ok, i could leave this post open all day (it's almost 1 now) and just keep adding to it, but i don't think i'm going to get to a resolution either way. so i'll just go now.

oh - i have some good news. i got my hair cut yesterday (or actually was it the day before). i think it's quite nice - nothing fancy, but it's all the same length now except for my fringe. :)

plants and pots

lordkilljoy and i went shopping for plants today :) that was fun. i'd kinda said having a fern could be fun - i sorta meant it, much the way i sorta mean a lot of things... anyway (lordkilljoy tells me i should use capitals - i tell him i'm lazy). he took me up on it and we went out to a large garden centre in celbridge, where we bought a middle-sized bamboo, an indoor bonzai, some herbs and some pots to put them in. i'm happy. we have plants to look after. i hope they survive. i have never managed to keep plants alive before - my room was always too dark. the apartment faces north, so gets no direct sunlight, but i hope it gets enough for the plants' needs.

not much else. we watched deathnote 9the live action). i really enjoyed it. but it just ended. i want to see how everything gets resolved between light and L. it's interesting. it had a really good character dynamic going on. the only thing that annoyed me were the dodgy graphics for ryuk. but i got used to it after a bit.

i must go for a walk around the village tomorrow. see what there is to see, hopefully find someplace that does hair cuts that arn't depressingly expensive. yea...

dewa mata!! (ooh, japanese books havn't arrived yet. i can't wait 'til they do)

packing and moving

i put my packing list to use this evening when i packed my rucksack. it weighs 3 stone (20kgs) and i can just about lift it. heh, good luck to me on monday when i have to carry it. i'd love to head up tomorrow evening (after d+d - get the bus at 7) but that would mean not getting into dublin until around 11, and i doubt lordkilljoy will still be awake at that stage. nah - i'll wait and get the bus monday morning instead. if i get the bus at 9, i can be there for lunchtime and we'll still have a bit of the day to hang out.
i had considered leaving it 'til friday, so that i wouldn't spend my first few days just being alone in his house for most of the day. but i just know that if i leave it that long, all the stories from his trip will be old news and it won't be nearly as much fun going through everything he bought. and i have japanese books being delivered that i want to get up there for. so yea. i'll go on monday :)

i went into town with penelope_stone today. she bought loads, i just got a present for davidnarby (it was his birthday a while back). but we had fun tramping all over the city looking at outdoor gear.

so that's about it. i feel like i've forgotten to pack a million things. i had to put quite a few clothes back, because they wouldn't all fit in my bag. i have so many tops that i love and i wanted to bring them all. i have a good reason for this too: when we went to new zealand, i missed all my clothes - because i'd only been able to bring a small handful of them. so this time, i'm just bringing everything i like, and just leaving behind anything i never really wore anyway, which isn't much - i don't tend to buy clothes if i don't think i'm going to wear them.

right so, i'm off to bed then :)

today revolved around translating japanese

lots more japanese today. i got three comments all in hiragana and i spent 3 hours figuring out what they said. but it's all good. i learned that にっか (nikka) means daily diary / an entry on lang-8. and that there is a very complicated way to thank someone for helping you: くれてありがとうございました. and i remembered that だいがく (daigaku) is university. woo! but as i get into the basics, i begin to see how hard this is going to get. there are so many tenses and so many phrases that mean a specific thing. ah well.

i was going to say something else... oh - yea. xkcd...
it seems to be the season for industrial instruments for sticking things together. i got a riveter this week and xkcd posted about a staple gun. i thought that was a funny coincidence.

i made a packing list this morning. i'm really excited about going, but at the same time i'm going to miss my room so much. i have a feeling that no where in my future will my bedroom have navy walls. i love my navy walls. and for all the lack of space, i love the close cosiness of my room and the way i can pretty much reach anything from my computer, and the way i'm right beside the window and all the little things that fill up and open space, like bits of paper and material and stones and figures and pens and pencils and art stuffs and metal bits.
the only thing i won't miss is my wardrobe. i can't wait to never have to try wrestle clothes out of it again.

yea - i just got distracted with another japanese comment and totally lost my thoughts for updating. ah well.

Recipes

I have a few recipes that i scribbled onto post-its and stuck on the fridge. For the longest time i've been meaning to write them down properly somewhere. And since i won't be at home that much anymore, i figured now was a good time to do it.



Liquid to put on Sushi Rice
3-4 tablespoons rice vinegar
2-3 teaspoons sugar
2 (spare) teaspoons salt (the salt will take over if you put in too much)

Water : Rice
sushi rice: 1:1
basmati rice: 1.5:1
long grain rice: 2:1

To Make Yummy Pancakes
(you need a graduated cylinder - one from a science lab will do if you don't have any normal cooking implements)
put in flour to 200 (mls)
then 2 eggs (probably medium - it's not an exact science)
then milk to 500
mix and cook - don't burn.
To cook in a small frying pan, put in a bit (small) of oil. Heat at 3 (on halogen a hob). When oil is moveable pour in mix - it should not cook immediately. Leave 'til all mix has dried up and flip over.

Tuna Sweetcorn
one can of tuna with sunflower oil
one (smallish) can of sweetcorn
mix the two
cook some pasta
when pasta is cooked throw in the tuna and sweetcorn and mix it until it is warm
(if you are cooking for one, you may just want to use half the mix, and keep the rest for later)

Almond Chicken (not mine - comes from the back of Yeo Valley yoghurt)
ingredients:
150g pot yeo valley organic natural yoghurt
(skip) 1 medium onion
(skip) 1 clove of garlic
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 tablespoon olive oil (don't use olive oil - it tastes rotten, use soya oil or something instead)
2 tablespoons ground almonds
2 organic chicken breasts (it doesn't really matter if they aren't organic)
150g basmati rice
2 teaspoons fresh coriander

heat oil in a frying pan (definitely don't use olive oil in this case - when i gets hot it releases toxins). (onion and garlic go here) add curry powder. cook on medium for 5 minutes. chop the chicken into 2cm thick strips and add to the pan (if you are me, you may want to do this bit at the start. it takes me about 15 minutes to cut chicken, which in this case, would lead to very burnt oil and curry powder). Brown for 5-6 minutes. Turn the heat down low and add the almonds, stirring gently. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the yoghurt. As this is cooking boil the rice until fluffy (this should take about 13 minutes if you have a rice cooker. if you don't you should get one, you will be amazed at the amazing job it does to rice. it's amazing.) Serve the chicken with the rice and garnish with fresh coriander (if you are just going to set the coriander aside, you may want to consider not buying it in the first place).

Chicken Tikka (i never managed to get this recipe right; it always came out too lemony or something)
6x180g chicken fillets
140ml natural yoghurt (i find using sweetened yoghurt lifts the flavour a lot)
1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 chilli powder (i presume this means powder of 1 chilli? i figure you can just add whatever amount of chilli you like)
(skip) 1 clove of garlic
1 lemon, for juice (you actually only need a tiny bit - i would even say leave it out, but if you like sour food, then you may want to use a lot)
(skip) 80g finely chopped onion
60g tomato purée
80ml oil (does anyone actually measure out oil? i just fire in as much as i feel looks good on the bottom of the pan)
salt and pepper (what a cop out. if you get your spices right, you shouldn't need these)
6 lemon wedges for garnish

Cut the chicken into strips. Put them into a bowl. Mix together the yoghurt, seasoning, spices, (garlic), lemon juice and the tomato purée (it's mad that firefox automatically fixes this with the fada-thing). Pour this mixture over the chicken and mix it in very well. Cover with cling film and leave to marinate for at least four hours (i'm bad. i never marinate things).
Take a grilling tray and lightly coat it with a little oil, sprinkle with the chopped onion. Lay the chicken strips on the chopped onions. Place the chicken under a hot grill and gently let them cook. Turn them every few minutes to make sure that they are fully cooked. You can also cook them in a hot oven at 180C for about 20 minutes.
Serve with rice flavoured with turmeric (i never knew there was two Rs in this word), or with a salad of iceberg lettuce and yoghurt dressing.

woah - i cut the cooking instructions off a pizza box one day! wierd.

Macaroni Cheese (awh. i can't eat this anymore.)
water
pasta (if you eat as much pasta as i used, you just know how much pasta goes in)
2 tablespoons butter (half melt, then add)
200g cheese
1/4 cup milk (stir in)
pepper / herbs
serves 3-4

Pesto (i also can't eat this anymore)
1 cup parsley (i never used parsley)
1 cup basil
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil (i used soya oil)
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons boiling water
3/4 cup parmesan cheese
i think this serves 2-3... i don't remember ever adding in this much of everything

If you want the not-so-haphazard recipe for pancakes:
100g flower
2 eggs
300ml milk
i think it came out too runny, which is why i use more flower and less milk

Butterscotch Sauce (i made this once and it burned horribly - good luck if you decide to try it)
equal spoonfuls
butter
golder syrup
brown sugar
melt slowly
boil for 7 minutes (be really, really careful)

Pizza Tomato Sauce
Put
1/2 cup canned tomatoes (why does the plural get an E?)
1 teaspoon tomato paste
herbs (schwartz pizza seasoning, basil and herb pepper
into a small saucepan. Bring to the boil and reduce to thicken (aka simmer until all the liquid has evaporated)

Cornbread
1 cup flour
6 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter (some recipes call for oil, but it makes the bread really crumbly, which i don't really like)
1+1/2 cups buttermilk
3 eggs
9x9 pan, oiled
oven - 200C 30 mins
mix dry (and butter)
mix wet
"just" mix both (i wish i wrote clearer instructions to myself)

right. that is all my recipes. i remember making minestrone a few times - that must have been from a book. and french toast - bread fried with demerara sugar and possibly something else: it was interesting. and there was this kind of french egg soup one time, which was from a book. yea. i may have to bring the soups and sauces book with me.

japanese

i got loads done today. i drew my map in illustrator, and wrote a bit more on the geography of my world. that lasted from about 11 until about 3, when i got really tired. so i stopped, because i would just be wasting time and not getting a whole lot done.

so i went to lang-8 and helped some people with their english. then, for some crazy reason, i got the idea to do a post in japanese. (if you want to know the reason: it was because i replied to a message from a person and included one of the few phrases i know by heart - このコンピュータ は私のです。 "this computer is mine."). so yea. i managed to write 8 lines of japanese (in hiragana). it took me an hour and a half. but i got two replies and i wasn't too badly wrong - mainly trouble with verb endings. i'm so happy. if you are interested, you can read my entry.

i wish my cd drive wasn't broken. i'd totally congratulate myself by playing oblivion. oh well.

learning japanese

i just ordered 3 japanese books. does this seem a little over-zealous? i just happened to be on amazon and just happened to come across the languages section and couldn't resist looking up japanese books. and they had 1,000 first words in japanese. i had to have it. and learning hiragana. and the complete japanese course by living languages.

and now i have to stop spending money until i get a job. i think i'm making up for lordkilljoy not being around by buying things. or maybe his massive spending spree in america is brushing off on me. anyway, the books weren't expensive - averaged at just under €10 each; which is the price of a novel and a good price for books of learning.

yea. i havn't really done much today. i looked up editing programs for liz (who i'm doing the multimedia thing for). apart from that, i got trapped on youtube looking up japanese videos. found some good ones - and a link to a cool site, called Lang-8. it's a cool idea where you make a post in the language you'd like to learn and native speakers correct your mistakes. isn't that the best idea ever?

i made chicken curry for dinner (using a gourmet asian cuisine paste - they make the best pastes ever). it turned out good, but the milk went a bit wierd (like lumpy). i think i may have had the temperature too high. everyone liked it. i went down for seconds a while ago and it was all gone. i made enough for 4 people (there were 3 of us). ah well. i'll know that it's good for again. lordkilljoy and i can make it sometime. and we will remember to add in potatoes.

oh, yea. as well today, i put cardboard on my shelves (they are made of metal wire and things fall through the gaps). hmm, that was a kind of random fact. actually, i did that and then forgot to put everything back on the shelves. i should do that, since everything is on my bed... and i'll be heading to bed soon.

hand riviter

i just bought a hand riveter. call me peculiar, but it's something i've always wanted. now i just have to find something to rivet together. i'm thinking a large amount of paper, or some cloth or something.

i had my interview-thing. it was ok. my brain just shut-down and rebooted once. yeay.

the sun is shining today. not having been exposed to sunlight in about a month, i've gone a little crazy because of it.

lordkilljoy has been in my dreams for the last week, ever since he went to america. last night we were watching 80s fantasy movies on his psp, but fed through to the tv. it was a little wierd.

i havn't much else to say. i've read up to ch9 of the fall. ch 7 needs to be entirely scrapped and re-written as well. that's ok, though. chapter 8 is fun. my chapters are so long, though. like crazy long. but i think books with 30 or 40 chapters are just silly. 16 is a good number.

autumn changes

i just unsewed a top. and i just made up a word. woo!
i had this lovely top i got in KL, that was a black vest-type thing over a white shirt (or shirt pieces that were sewn into the top. but the first time i washed it, even though i was so careful, the die from the black ran into the white and gave it a kind of greenish tint. but it didn't do it very evenly and the top has been slightly unwearable since then. but last week i got a white shirt, and today i got around to unsewing* the shirt bits off the vest part :)
*unsewing; different from (is this the right preposition?) just ripping the stitches out and leaving bits of thread everywhere and risking ripping delicate wool.

so yea. that was very painstaking and took about 2 hours. my left arm cramped up half way through and the last bits were frustrating, because i just wanted to be done with it. but it's all good now, and i'm happy.

interview thing tomorrow. i'm not so sure if i want this job. it would be cool if it was closer. it's in sandyford, which is clear across the city. that's like a two hour commute on public transport or something... the idea of that just does not inspire me, and while people may say that i could use the time to write - i've tried and all the moving scenery out the window and shuffling people is way too distracting. but i guess we'll see.

i don't really have much other news. i drew a map today. that was fun. now i just have to come up with some city names (i have 2 of 11). city names are kinda hard. well, names in general are hard.
but just as i was saving the map my computer kind of had a spas attack. i had time to grab my camera and take a photo of my work before everything went into not responding mode and i had to restart the computer. i was so happy not to have lost the whole morning's work.

did i mention that i now have one and a half free shelves in my room? well i do. i'm trying to figure out the best stuff to populate them with.

heh - just making up a title for the post and i remembered a cool quote from Traitor's Moon (by lynn flewelling aka otterdance). it went something like: life changes and life changes you. it was so cool - the difference that one word can make.

ooh - i forgot to say: i printed out the fall yesterday. i have come to the conclusion that chapters 1 and 2 need to be utterly scrapped and re-written. i'm up to ch. 5 and it's not going too badly. the problem with writing for the nanowrimo is that i went way overboard on the exposition because i just wanted to fill up my word count. so there is lots that needs to be pulled out and written in a more dynamic way.

2 days of news

penelope_stone left us yesterday for the naturalistic charms of murky kerry. i've had years to get used to the idea that she would eventually leave home, so the lack of her being around hasn't affected me too badly.

i pulled out old boxes of college notes last night for dumping. what with that and me being too lazy to put my clothes away into my various wardrobe-apparatus things, my room is a total mess; the kind of mess where i can either sit at my computer or lie on my bed, and everything else is out of bounds behind the piles of stuff that are on the floor. ok - i exaggerate a little, but not nearly as much as you might think.

i enjoyed the mind body spirit festival (aka the health fair). i spent all day saturday going to talks and workshops on topics from radiation to remote viewing. it was fun - i learned how to dowse with a pendulum (i don't think dowsing is my thing - i wasn't very good at it) and did a 10 second psychic reading for a random woman. madness. but it's the health fair so i'm allowed to dabble in wierd things.

while there i met a woman who wants me to work for her on a multimedia project she wants to do. it seems like a bit of fun - kind of video work, but working with still images and motion effects.

i started on my swashbuckler over the weekend. it's very formulaic, but should be some fun. i think the main problem when i'm writing for genrechallenge is that i don't really care for my characters. not like i care for zachery or zan or kej - or even the way i care for computer game characters. so i think i'll try focus on that a bit more. not just writing to get stuff done, but actually coming out with a character i care about and perhaps even a plot i care about. that would be cool.

yea... i read my zan / kej story again last night. it's not nearly as bad as i was expecting. the first half is kinda fun. the second half does lose it totally, but there is definitely stuff to work with in the re-write.

my spore creature

i downloaded the trial creature creator of spore. it's very cute! that was my second attempt at making a creature. my first attempt didn't turn out so well.

random points of life

"Last updated 3 days ago." ooh - how did that happen? i'd like to say it was because i was just so busy doing world-building, but that would be a lie. i'm using liquid story binder (which tracks the amount of time you spend with it's window open) and i write for only half the time i spend in front of my computer. on some day last week i had my computer on (supposedly writing) from 12pm to 9pm and i only had story binder open for 4.5 hours. that's really bad :/ i should try harder to motivate myself.

i do have an excuse for today, though. it was the first day of the mind, body, spirit festival and i spent the whole day in the city hall randomly wandering around the stalls. it was fun. it's good to just wander and look at shiny crystals and flick through hippy books and hang around my parent's stall.

i got started on my genrechallenge for this month. i'd like to get it written kinda fast, so that i can spend longer on editing. i did no (or minimal) editing for last month's one.

my cd drive decided to work for me last night and i stayed up until 1am playing oblivion. it was so much fun. my non-fighting / merchant character now owns the manor in skingrad. it's such a pretty place to live :)

ooh - i saw a church hall for sale in the news paper the other day. if i had quarter of a million i would totally buy it. it's always been my dream to live in a converted castle or church. that would rock like total coolness.

i have a telelphone interview on wednesday. i should care more about it, but i just don't. i've lost all confidence in society.

guild wars part 2

genrechallenge has started a sister-comm: genrechallenge art (gc_art). this is going to be so great. i'm really excited about something that can get me drawing every month. i like drawing, even though i may not be very good at it, but i just don't spend enough time at it. i'd like to improve, but you can't improve if you never do anything. so hopefully my excitement will transmute into motivation and i'll be getting at least one drawing-thing done every month. yeay.

lordkilljoy and i played guild wars for a few hours last night. it was so much fun. (woah - i just rubbed my cheek and it's so soft - i exfoliated in the shower. i never exfoliate, maybe i should...) we roamed the country-side delivering things and killing monsters and getting killed occasionally, but it was good. lordkilljoy was the tactician of the evening - i just wandered around looking at pretty things and thinking up a name for my pet cat! heh - nah, i wasn't that bad. i have one good spell that does 19 damage - i used it lots and shot my bow at things and sikked my cat on things. yeay.

yesterday i created a long list of animals that exist on earth so that i would have a good base to work from for random animals in the world of my novel. random animals don't even come into the story, but if i want the world to feel richer, they should.

i didn't sleep well last night. i woke at 3 feeling very thirsty and didn't get back to sleep until after 5. note to self: do not eat a lunch-worthy meal of tuna and relish on toast at 11pm. it's not good for sleeping. and my brain just wouldn't be quiet. between images of guild wars and ideas about animals and other random things, like random songs and directions for my life, sleep just was not happening. i have a feeling i'll be tired this evening. oh well.

guild wars

i installed guild wars today. lordkilljoy gave me a 14 day trial to see how i like it. it's fun enough, and the world is so pretty. as i do with pretty games, i spent most of the time i played it today wandering around going: awh - that's so pretty. so i'm playing a mesmer / ranger. i wasn't sure what else would suit a mesmer, and rangers get pets, so i thought "why not?"

i watched a film called "the fountain" last night. it was interesting. it affected me the same way requiem for a dream did (it's the same director). it is very different to anything else i've seen, but i would recommend it if you like indie / alternative movies. it's not quite arthouse, but it's close.

aether_muse is back after her trip to america. it was good to see her again today.

we've got black hawk down to watch tonight. i saw it when it was in the cinema and even though i don't remember anything about it, i seem recall that it was good.

not much else to say. i'm quite looking forward to going adventuring around ascalon with lordkilljoy. it'll be something interesting, because the only other experience i have with mmos was with aether_muse when she tried to get me into wow.

right. i'm gone.

[edit - actually, i just want to say that jeremy soule totally did the music for guild wars. while i was waiting for 12,223 files to download before i could play the game there was some music playing and i was totally in bruma in cyrodill. it made me want to play oblivion again and wander around the cold northern areas in the falling snow. ahhh oblivion.]

i have ink all over my fingers

i got a new a4 pad today - one with narrow lines. i think standard lines on a4 pads are too far apart, narrow lines keep everything neat and small.
anyway, as you do with new a4 pads (well, most people probably don't) you have to christen the first page with some writing. so i started writing randomly, nothing special and switching pens and writing hands, when i remembered my fountain pen. it seems that travelling across the world needed lots of space in my brain for memories and dealing with new experiences and learning new stuff, so my brain chucked out some old stuff. one of the things that got chucked out was my memory of party shuffle. the other thing was my fountain pen. so i remembered it for the first time today, but thanks to my amazing organizational ability, i knew exactly where it was. it was in my pencil case, along with some pencils, 2 rubbers (erasers), a parer (pencil-sharpener), a permanent marker, a gel pen, some lip balm and my genie fork and spoon which i got in disneyland tokyo (which i had also totally forgotten about).
so i just spent the last while cleaning my fountain pen - it was manky - a whole cartridge of ink had died in it (which is to say it had dried up and stuck to the nib and the barrel and the top). but it cleaned up well and all is good again.

yea, so today has been good. i started my world-building. it's going well enough. and i got a white shirt in case i ever get an interview.

yea. i havn't much else to say...

some big news

i kept meaning to update, i just kept forgetting.

it's turned cold here, cold like winter, cold like it stings your nose when you breathe in. i'm wearing a jumper and gloves today. still, i'm kind of excited about winter. the last winter i had was a year ago, in new zealand.
the thermometer in my room read 17.4 degrees earlier. it's sayiing 20.1 now. a computer is an amazing room warming apparatus, really. lets you update your journal and listen to music while heating your room. woo!

so - my big news of the week: i got new boots. lordkilljoy and i went on a slightly random road trip to limerick and i got them in wacky shoes. wacky shoes is also where i got my funky red boots a few years ago - it's just this godsend of a shoe shop - like zarkia's shoe shop or something.
and the trip ended up being doubly good because lordkilljoy got a present for his nephew (who is 1).

my other massive news is that i'm moving up to maynooth at the end of september. i still don't have a job, but actually being there will (hopefully) help me get a job a little quicker. i guess it will be a bit wierd for lordkilljoy to have me hanging out with him all the time and making a big mess with my stuff and invading his shelves with my books and dvds and my computer peripherals (graphics tablet, printer, pink mouse, etc). i'm quite excited about it.

i've been thinking about my novel too. there is a reason why i havn't been working on it so much recently and that is because it is deeply flawed and i have no idea how to fix it. a lot of things just don't make sense, mostly in the cultures in the worlds. so i'm thinking of going back to world-building and doing it properly. i totally concentrated on characters and plot before i started writing and didn't do proper world-building at all. which is fine. i'm ok with doing things higgledy-piggledy. i couldn't have done world-building first because the story is not about the world, it's about the characters. but now that the plot is well entrenched in my mind i can go back and play with the world all i want, and make it so that the characters are actually a product of where they are from rather than things just feeling random. and what i also didn't want was the world dictating the plot.
hmmmmmm. yea. i'll see how well that works out for me. i'm a very random person, and having to pin things down utterly gives me serious procrastination symptoms.

[edit - i really like this music. it's very mellow, and sort of ambient. but it reminds me of vangelis a lot.]

my dream last night

i had a strange dream last night. in it i was in a massive group of people - like a town or something and we were all running away from something scary. we ran up a hill and there were three big tents in the way. most people went around, but i went through because i knew it was shorter. but there were traps inside the tent (which i knew about beforehand) and it wasn't safe if you weren't careful. but i was careful. i stopped just inside the tent and looked around. a big pit opened out and down in front of me, filled with spikes and pressure traps. off to the left there was a ledge that had crumbled apart and mostly fallen into the pit.

i could see a person on the other side of the pit, standing where the ledge met the floor over there. he looked at me with no emotion - like a robot or a construct. so i started forward but got stuck and was too scared to move. then he came over and picked me up and carried me to the other side. the construct was liam and when we got to the other side i didn't want him to put me down, so i clung on to him. and since he was governed by a set of programming he didn't drop me, just held me and waited for me to let go myself.
the last bit i can remember was me clinging to his neck and him hunkered down to get me as close to the ground as possible without actually shoving me away.

yea. it was kinda wierd, but it didn't feel bad. it was one of those dreams where you feel utterly trusting of someone else - like they will support you through everything, and while this means giving up your own will, you don't mind because you trust them so much. it's a wonderful feeling, actually - no worries at all, just this kind of blissful acceptance that the other person has absolute control over you. hmm - i guess the main reason why it's a nice feeling is because you don't have to do anything for yourself. you just follow a set of instructions / let someone else do all your thinking and decision making.
of course, this feeling would never work in reality, but it's nice when it happens in dreams.