hello

"last update 1 week ago" hmmmmm.

well - it's not so bad. i didn't really have anything much to say. the days have passed in a sort of blur of randomness. penelope_stone went home on saturday, but while she was still around we went for walks and stuff, and to see harry potter (which was only ok. if it had been half an hour long it would have been really good, but there was just too much teenage stupidity). on friday we had a sushi party. that went quite well. some of lordkilljoy's work friends came over, and goblin_insane and claudia. it was a great night - everyone enjoyed the food and while a lot of the conversation was about people i don't know, we did discuss music a lot and that was good.

i'm playing daggerfall at the moment. my character, ajira (spy) is on 14th level and over half way through the main quest. the game is old and the graphics are bad, but i can see why i spent so much time playing that game when i was 15ish. there's so much to do and the world is so big. i'm thinking of going on an elder scrolls binge and playing morrowind again too. but morrowind takes a huge time investment and i'm not sure if i want to give it that. i might play for a day or two and see how i'm getting on. i still have sacred 2 to finish and it pops into my head every so often.

i recently rearranged all the plugs in the sitting room. we can now plug stuff out at night, instead of just leaving it on stand-by. i think lordkilljoy thinks i'm crazy and i know it only saves a tiny bit of electricity, but still.

i don't think i have any other news. we went to see moon last night. i enjoyed it.

right, i'm going to go now.

a new week

so, i brought my bike for a service. now everything is working again and i've taken to exploring the countryside looking for a good route. i think i've found it. it's 13km - starts along the canal, goes over the train tracks and the motorway in a kinda big loop home. it's lovely, though, because there are hardly any cars on the roads - just people out walking their dogs or their children. yea - might do that one again tomorrow. if it stays dry today and dry the day after i might try some trails the next day, but right at the moment it's way too wet and muddy for it.

i've rewritten the start of the fall again. i now have 2 pages that i think might actually stay as the final thing. i need to add a bit more atmosphere, but it might work. or i might look back on this in a few months and go - i was so wrong. and i'm thinking of changing the title. the fall is used for so many books and films. i want something a little more original.

lordkilljoy got threecornersquare back for me. he's hosting it on his site and he bought me the domain for my birthday :) looking forward to getting it up and running again, since google closed down it's pages thing and sites isn't nearly as good. actually - i'd say that if there was one service i thought google was doing a bad job on, it would be sites. it's just not versatile enough.

mmmm, i don't have much other news. i had a good weekend at home. barry's game was great. because we don't get to meet that often, doing single quests each session works out way better. and we still manage to make a heap of trouble for the world... adventurers! pah - good for nothing but breaking things and being ignorant. yea... this week we released a litch-prince on the world. and of course we ran away and left whatever villages are nearby to thier fate. see - adventurers!

bike troubles

yea. my brain really wasn't working yesterday. i knew there was something good that i wanted to post about, but i just couldn't remember it. it was the trip to denise and eamonn. seeing everyone was brilliant. louise is a mentally lively girl of 6, denise and eamonn haven't changed much, and their house is very similar to how i remember it. it seems everyone is getting on well. we tried to make plans to meet up again while penelope_stone is around, but everyone is busy.

My bike is giving some trouble at the moment. i'm not sure if it just needs a service or if there's an actual problem with it. the chain doesn't stay on the gears - it keeps slipping down to the next one and sort of permanently clicking over, as if it wants to change, but can't. i wish i knew more about bikes and how the gear system works. so that's really annoying. yesterday the chain fell off in the middle of me cycling - with no provocation at all. i haven't gone out today, because it's a little intimidating and aggravating not being able to trust your gears. i should look stuff up online.

not much else to say... i'm still playing sacred2. my main character is almost at level 30. i got to fight a dragon last night, but he killed me. well, actually - i just wasn't fast enough to drink a potion.

i think that's all my news.

the weekend

ahh, i have so much news that i can't remember it all. penelope_stone was over for the weekend. we played mariokart wii, rock band, went for walks and on monday i helped her carry a load of climbing gear over to dalkey (on the train).
dalkey is a lovely spot, full of expensive mansions and pretty homes. it's the kind of place where more than one house has a round turret room and all the properties have massive walls around them and the cars that you see on the street are all bmws or mercs or porches or other sporty types.

hmm, i really can't think of anything to say.

summer fun

i cycled 16.3kms today, mostly by accident. i left the house intending to do 12, had a nice route all planned out, but somewhere along the way i must have missed a turn-off, because i ended up in celbridge. yep - just checked google maps and that turn-off was easy to miss. but at least now i know that i can do 16kms with only slightly more difficulty than 10. well, the last km was all downhill, so maybe i should set my new target at 15. agh - i just had the worst thought: go the other way and have a 1km hill at the start of the journey. maybe i won't do that. i'll just have to keep a super-special eye out for the turnoff.

i'm still playing sacred2. my seraphim (whose name is seraphina) is at level 18. she's annoying and i want to play an evil high elf, but i don't want to invest 10+ hours leveling another character. i don't think lordkilljoy would let me. i'm hogging the tv every evening. i feel terrible. i'll just have to buy sacred2 on the PC and play it on his computer instead.

penelope_stone is coming up on saturday evening (giving me a change to get into town to see delichan and mytholder's comic launch thingy). we're going to visit denise and eamonn on sunday evening. I haven't seen them in forever. I'm kinda excited about it. and granny and martene will be there too. it's great. i'll finally get to meet louise too. it's crazy having cousins that you've never met.

ok, gotta go now - make the place presentable for penelope_stone. and hopefully get a bit of writing done too, but i doubt i'll get much done before lordkilljoy comes home.

Sacred 2

rob, mulkabu and lordkilljoy went to ac/dc on sunday night. on that same night, i played 6.5 hours of sacred2. that game has the worst premise ever, but it's totally addictive. how is this? why does it take over you brain and run riot with suggestions of "just one more quest!" and "just get to the next village!" It makes no sense. The story is paper thin and the world is held together with cobwebs, yet I am totally addicted. hmmmm.

I got a magnetic aquarium glass cleaner for Nymph yesterday and cleaned away all the algae this morning. Yeay for clean glass. now i need to water-vacuum the gravel, because a lot of the algae fell off the glass onto the gravel.

Ok, that's all i wanted to say really.

lighthouses and sandy shores

i left the house yesterday with the intention of getting sand everywhere and that's exactly what i did :)
well, maybe it didn't go everywhere, but i did my best to get it all over the blanket and in my bag, stuck to my skin (sun cream is sticky and sand sticks to it) and in the fold ups on my jeans. and how did i carry out my plan? i went to howth for the afternoon.
it's a nice enough place, touristy, and reminded me a lot of kinsale. i walked along the harbour, out to the lighthouse and back, then out the other side of the village looking for a way down onto the beach. it's like secret beach entrance... took me ages to find it.
the beach itself was kind of disappointing. small, no waves, too many cigarette butts... but it was warm and the sand was soft and the blue sky was perfect. i ate lunch, dibbled my feet in the sea (it was freezing), read a bit of a comic and then went home. i need to find a better beach, i think.

i don't really have a whole lot of other news. nymph's tank has an algae infestation. this is good because it means the water quality is high, but bad because the tank is going green.

i finished drakes fortune the other day (monday, i think). i enjoyed it. kinda wanted to play more after i had finished it. i'm almost to the end of assassin's creed as well. might finish that tonight if lordkilljoy doesn't have any plans.

right, going to go now.

news news

new art up on dA

Colour CyberByMutantmushroom by ~zarkia on deviantART

happy summer solstice. today is roasting - it's as if we've offically hit summer, the air has been heated by the sun heading up to this point and now we get to bask in the heat. yea... except that it's a very muggy kind of heat. a thunderstorm would be fun right about now. don't think the clouds are ominous enough, though.

i don't really have a lot of news. went in around the world street performance on saturday - just for a bit. and made sushi on saturday night. that turned out well. hmmm, i might have sushi for lunch. yummy.

i'm playing drakes fortune at the moment - well i started it on friday and am almost finished. it's kinda fun, but there are too many gun fights for my liking. (i have drastically improved at aiming with a console controller since last summer, though.) but i was at a bit last night where it was really dark and all i could see was a little flashlight ring segment of the screen and there were baddies and i was so scared. i even screamed a little at one bit. hhaaaaaaa, games shouldn't be allowed to have dark segments. i get so frightened. i could never play a game like dead space or alone in the dark (if that's the one where you can only see the bad guys through your camera) that just seems like the most frightening thing ever.

yea... not much else to say.

speed speed speed

today, i hit 40km/h on my bike. it was cool :) that's almost the speed limit - i'll bet with a good wind behind me i could totally make 50. i had a good cycle today, though maybe i pushed myself a bit hard. i was pretty wrecked when i got home - all buzzy eared. i don't think this is such a good thing, but i recovered quickly. so according to my bike computer today, i did 7.4kms in 24 minutes at an average of 19km/h. my normal average is about 17 (or 14 if i'm just cycling to the village).

anyway - the 40km/h thing - i was going down the only hill in my journey (actually there is another hill, but it's the downslope of a bridge and isn't long enough for me to get up much speed and the road slopes up again straight after), it's like this pathetic hill, though... more of a slope, really. i mean, gravity was helping, but only a little.

in other news, i had a good weekend in cork. the street performance festival was good fun and the weather held up for it. it's on in dublin this weekend, and i might go along again. there were a few acts that i didn't get to see in cork that seemed good.

the bamboo out on the balcony has two new shoots coming up... at least i hope it is bamboo shoots, it could be some sort of random weed, because it is outside, but these stalks look serious, not like weeds which are weedy (which is why we call weedy things weedy). yea...

we watched speed racer last night. i really quite enjoyed it. just so long as you didn't question anything it was a fun movie, i liked the effects and the colours and the characters.
ooh - over the weekend i watched a film called push. i'd been iffy about it, not having heard anything about it, but i enjoyed it too. i liked the setting and the character powers. i'd classify it as an urban sci-fi - sorta gritty camerawork mixed with elements that you won't find in a normal action flick, but which arn't like aliens and spaceships and stuff. or maybe urban fantasy would be more like it... because there was really nothing to make it science-y, but a bit to make it fantasy-ish.

yea, i think that's all. got to get back to writing now.

there is a slim chance that getting online twice a day might help with Lj posting

I did a 10k cycle today. well, my bikecomputer tells me i did 11k, google maps tells me i did 11.6. either way, that's not too bad. it was a lovely cycle too - took 35 minutes. if i could just do that every morning, i think i would solve all my angst problems. because i have loads of energy today... or it could just be hormones.

i made an interesting lunch today. couscous with tuna, but the couscous was taking all the flavour out of the tuna (i think that's all couscous does - remove flavour) so i added some hot sauce and it was yummy. hot sauce (the stuff that goes on chicken wings) goes really well with fish.

i don't really have much else to say. there's a street performer's competition on in cork this weekend, so i think i'll head down for that.

ooh - in all the fun with london, i totally forgot to say that i'm going to muse in november. kinda excited about that. i saw them at glastonbury 05 and they were brilliant.

ok, back to writing now.

bonsai

i went a little mental yesterday and decided that the big bonsai (which should be called daibonsai) needed to be cut back, only i think i went a little extravagant with it. all i can say is yeay for the way things grow back, not like when you cut your teddies' hair when you were smaller.







i also cut back the mini shrubs we have growing in the kitchen - i considered going bonsai on one of them, but i resisted.

i don't have a whole lot of other news... bought some ice tea in lidl today - it's yummy.

right so, bye.

London

For most of my life that I can remember, I've wanted to go to London, because it's the closest famous city to me and you'd think it wouldn't take that much to go visit it. But there was never anyone who wanted to go with me and I wasn't going to go on my own.
So I finally got to go to London. lordkilljoy and I went over to see Gordon and Niamh for the weekend. We saw loads: Tate Modern, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (which should be called the horse parade), Camden, the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral and random bits of the city walking to and from tube stations. I loved all of it. I'm definitely going back some day, maybe when I have more money. There were some amazing things in Camden, but I curtailed myself to two tops.
It has great hanging out with Niamh and Gordon. We had some great meals and went out on Saturday with friends of theirs: good fun even though I was wrecked.
And on the flight back I spotted the apartment - that was mad.

In other news:
Nymph ate half a cricket today. He hasn't really been eating well since Newt died, and it had been a while since he'd eaten a decent amount. So I was delighted when he gobbled down the bit of cricket that I had chopped up for him. See, my problem is that I have no idea how big or small his stomach is and how much he's meant to eat.

In a strange sort of contrast, Yoshi refused to eat anything today. That's a first in a long time. But I'm not worried about him. He ate a pinky (new born mouse) on Friday and I imagine that he just wasn't hungry.

Our internet is down at the moment... so I'm writing this on monday, but not really sure when I'll get to post it.

one step forwards two steps back

this editing a novel malarkey is so hard. i keep on making up new bits to throw in, and the next day cut them out again as i realize they are doing nothing but clogging up the story. so i get two or three pages up and then cut back one or two pages. it means i'm getting an average of one page a day. it's a killer slow pace. i have a text file called cuts and it is slowly becoming bigger and bigger.

anyway...
i had a really wierd dream last night. penelope_stone was showing me around intel (where she worked as a scientist) and i was really excited to see what this mystery place looked like on the inside. it had a very 70s vibe - lots of wood and plastic and textures and people with afros and wearing flares and old-style suits. it was packed with people, like an airport or a shopping centre, all wandering through the corridors and going up and down on the escalators and chatting and laughing and everyone seemed to be in the best mood.
the first room she showed me was a telecommunications / support helpdesk kind of place. everyone wore little telephone headsets and stood around white tables (made of plastic like a macbook) shouting into the mics of their headsets. the phones were little neon pink router-like thinks in the centre of the tables. we rushed through, because there was a lot of stamping and arm waving going on and everyone gave us mean, angry looks as we passed through.
then we went up an escalator, but before we got to the top the roof caved in, or it had caved in already and we had to try to wriggle around the debris. there were some guys there and they were telling me something (can't remember what - something about the building or my day or the damage or something).
anyway - the fabs were broken up into houses and each house was just that - a pleasant home-style building with four people working in it. penelope_stone's house was kinda medieval fashioned, with the upper floor build out over the lower. the inside was open, with comfortable furniture, but a total mess. the other three people she lived with seemed to ignore it, but it bothered her.
she quickly showed me a bit of her work - some sort of scientific research. but i was distracted by the planes that were flying over the main building, which i could see out the window (the window took up on whole wall of the house). they were so loud and i was afraid that they were going to crash into the building.

i can't really remember much else. i think there was another bit where i was talking to some people, but i don't really remember.

yea. not much else news. lordkilljoy was sick for the last few days. i hope he's feeling better soon.

i think it was sunny all over the world today

it was a beautiful day today - blue skies, no clouds, a little windy, warm, summery. i wore flip-flops for the first time this summer and went out without bringing a jumper with me.

lordkilljoy had the good idea to go the the japanese gardens and national stud in kildare today, in celebration of the wonderful weather. we wandered through the gardens, went on a guided tour of the stud, saw some horses and took some pictures. i will upload them at some later stage; i'm using the mac to post and want to use my own pc to make some crops, trims and adjustments.

so, yea... we had fun. last weekend was fun too - i totally forgot to mention about it. delichan and mytholder got engaged, so we all went out to the franciscan well to wish them well and celebrate. got to see loads of people and had a great night. then saturday we went to a barbecue in kanturk. the house did not burn down and the food was yummy, so it was a big plus. and to cap off the evening we watched the eurovision. yea....

not much else news. i'm kinda stuck in psychonauts. lordkilljoy is playing wolverine at the moment.

i think that's all, really.

again with the dreams

i guess it must be this time of year again. my dreams have become crazy and vivid and scattered.

last night my dream involved (possibly) the end of the world. there are just a few scenes that have come back to me - the first is:

i was in a car going past my secondary school, but the whole place had been knocked down and there were bulldozers and diggers on the rubble. loads of cars were parked along the road by the school and i wondered why they were there. someone beside me told me it was the last swimming class in the pool around the back. as i watched more cars pulled up and children got out and ran around the piles of rubble to vanish down the hill behind the school.

the second bit:
i was on a deck (of a ship? or maybe a train) and i needed help with something - something bloody (which i can't quite hold onto in my mind) but the guy i was talking to (the captain?) wanted to sell me poi. they looked like a good set and i was interested. so i took them out of the pack and unfurled them. they were massive wing poi, made of heavy cotton and too bulky to spin properly, but they did look impressive so i bought them.

the third bit:
i was with my aunt martene, in her room in her old house (only in was in the place her bathroom is) and we were having some sort of girly discussion. i'm not sure if i could move or not - it's very vague, but i have this idea that something exceptionally violent happened and there was lots of blood.
i know there is one image in my head of my arm split open and a huge gouge taken out of it and blood pouring everywhere. and my leg was the same and i could hardly walk.

and there was some other bit entirely set in a forest with an overlord and i was with a group of slaves. the complex was under attack or something and we were hiding out.

there were more bits, but they flit away when i try to focus on them. there was definitely something involving getting away from the end of the world on a train...

hmmm. oh well.

a soup of words

yesterday i made soup. it took me ages, way longer than it should have. it was as if time was sucked into a wierd soup-making vortex. but anyway. the soup i made was carrot and coriander (really good - a lot like the soup you get in brackens on paul street). but the thing that gets to me is that the coriander reminds me of ginger bread for some wierd reason, so it's confusing me eating it because it smells like ginger bread, but tastes and looks and feels like soup. so i'm not sure if i'll make this one again. and the recipe said it made 4-6 servings, but i only got 2 and a bit bowls out of it. yes - my bowl holds a pint, but they should know that real soup fans have bowls this big.

i'm not getting much writing done today. but i'm happy with the new beginning of the fall. that had always been my problem, when i wrote it for nanowrimo three years ago, i spent the first few days just getting into the flow, so the first 5,000 words or so were complete rubbish. but now i have a whole new starting, which actually opens the story well - sets the tone and holds elements of the main conflict. i've also dumbed down the two main races a bit too. and gotten rid of a tonne of the religious overtones. the only thing really remaining of that is the names of the characters.

i don't really have a whole lot of news. the princess bride (on monday night) was brilliant. i smiled for the whole film. and for the last few days i've been quoting it around the place.

god, i'm really not in a writing mood at all. it's taken me 20 minutes to get this far in my post.
i'll just go now.

today is exciting

yoshi ate 3 locusts yesterday. yeay, he's such a happy-eating little dragon-pou! he also ate 5 crickets along with them. oh, and he shed another bit of skin. there had been a bit on his back that hadn't come off and it's coming off now.

ok - i probably shouldn't update right now, because lordkilljoy just sent me a link to some prince of persia movie first-look stuff and i am totally excited about it. i'm going to have to make some new PoP icons. the ones i have are so old.

anyway... went to see star trek again last night. we got to go to the showing in the massive-large screen (aka screen 17) and it was fantastic. going to the princess bride tonight. i'm so excited. woo - everything is exciting. even the fact that i potted some coriander in the kitchen sink (ok - i potted it in a pot, but used the sink to catch all the soil that fell out) and and to buy a plunger because the soil blocked the sink up.

apart from that, i havn't much news. not doing any writing today, because the apartment is a big mess and needs cleaning and other such jobs - like potting the coriander (who i christened mr. coriander, after the character in the neverending story) - need doing.

nymph's eating is sporadic these days. i think i might put him down to feeding every 3 days, instead of every 2. yoshi begins to look a little starved after 2, but i think nypmh is fully grown and doesn't need as much food.

i bought a Japanese-learning thing in aldi the other day and it's really good.

and i finished ratchet and clank: quest for booty yesterday. that game was way too hard. there were some bits that took me days to pass. i hate games like that, because i love adventure games for their flow and forgiving ways. so when i get stuck because some stupid bad guy keeps knocking me off a ledge at the exact same spot (no matter what i do) it makes me really annoyed. the game was fun, just annoying.
i'm back playing psychonauts. it's a fun game. i started from the start again, so that i could get a handle on the controls, and remember the story.

soup and free stuff

i had a really good day today. the sun is shining, it's fresh, a lovely day to be outside and doing things, or even inside and doing things - just doing things, really. so, we brought a bunch of stuff for recycling and then bought bunch of new stuff to replace it O_o. heh - no, it wasn't that bad. lordkilljoy convinced me to go make some soup, so we got a hand-blender thing. and then, of course, i had to get a recipe book on making soup, because i'm timid when it comes to making up food stuff.
so we went to eason to look for one, which i found, but it had no price. the girl at the counter couldn't find a price and after checking with her manager gave it to me for free - much to my surprise and delight. while still in the shopping centre, i went to get a bagel and the dude made it wrong, had to re-do it and gave me the one he'd gotten wrong for free! madness. lordkilljoy's comment was that i might end up winning a car or something. i didn't.

the rest of the day was normal enough - got ingredients for carrot and coriander soup, and locusts for yoshi. we're going to try getting him to eat them again. we're being optimistic, but he's eating really well at the moment and i think he may eat them with just a little encouragement.

ahhh - my foot has fallen asleep and now has pins and needles. euwww - it feels icky.

almost a month's worth of news

lordkilljoy and i went to see star trek last night. i loved it - everything about it made me want to watch it again. it was funny, exciting, adventuresome, i liked all the characters and seeing how they all ended up together.
i want to go back and see it again this weekend; we'll see how things work out.

i finally started the rewrite of the fall. lots of things have been changed, mostly from the first half, because i was never really happy with it.

it's been almost a month since i made a proper post, gosh - that's terrible. i guess script frenzy just kept me from updating and then i was down in cork and things just got ahead of me. so this will probably be lots of short points.

in pet news, newt died. he hadn't been eating and then we went away for the weekend and he was dead when we got back. even if we'd been around, i don't think he would have survived. he just seemed to go off his food and that was that.

ooh - we got a surround sound system in the apartment. it is so cool. the sound out of it is so clear and loud and rumbly. playing games on it is fantastic. and it makes finding gargoyles in fable2 way easier.

yea, we went to see wolverine too. it wasn't nearly as good as star trek. i seemed to lack something, or the story just wasn't grand enough, or heroic enough or something. i did like gambit, though. he seemed cool.

it was lordkilljoy's birthday last week and we went for korean barbecue. the way that works is there there's a little firepot at the centre of your table and you cook the food they bring you. it was delicious. then we went for after-dinner drinks and dancing at the village. that club is way trendier than i had expected. but i still had a really good night. i got to see lordkilljoy and goblin_insane get their boogie on. it was funny to see.

so... what other news do i have? yoshi is eating voraciously these days. it's good to see. nymph isn't eating so well, but he's eating a little. i think he's turning into a nocturnal newt. he just seems to sleep until 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

i don't think i have anything else to say...

I won!!!

I won script frenzy! Wooo!! I'm so glad I did it this year. I struggled with my story from page 15 to page 85, telling myself every day, "I'm giving up today - this story is going nowhere." But it was actually going somewhere and I'm quite happy with what I have now.

I found that way harder than Nano. But now I can brag that I've gone from knowing nothing about scriptwriting to having a 100 page screenplay to call my own :)

Actually, I blitzed from page 85 to 100 today. Well, truth be told, my script ended on page 99. But the story was finished and I'm sure it will pad out a little with editing. Shhhh. It's 21,308 words long, so it's actually got more words than most 100 pages scripts (20,000).

I'm happy. Now I get to deal with all the little tasks I've been ignoring, like setting up the watering system in Yoshi's tank, playing Fable 2, making penelope_stone a playlist.

But first, I'm off to the shop.