2013

I'm only 11 days late: happy new year, livejournal! 2013 isn't off to the best start for me ever, but it's getting better as I get over this cough / cold / 5-day headache / general affliction in which nothing much is actually wrong with me, but I don't feel quite right. Anyway, today I've been feeling mostly better.

I'm playing spec ops: the line at the moment and it's making me want to visit Dubai. I want to go on an architectural holiday. Because if the buildings in the game are anything to go by this city is the most amazing looking thing ever. I just took a moment to look up the actual buildings in Dubai and I think the game took liberties with reality.
So, apart from the architecture, the game is very pretty with dust-filled skies making everything pink and orange and red. It's also impossible. I keep dying (playing on normal), but at least it saves checkpoints often so you never get set back too far. Which makes me think they set out to make it so that you die lots. Twice now it's asked me (very politely, I might add) if I want to go down to an easier difficulty. But mostly it's fine, just when we get pinned down I die a lot. And once again, I've found that I am most successful with a humble pistol. And I don't run out of ammo with it either.

So apart from games and not feeling well, I'm back writing after the christmas break. I'm only managing a page a day, but it's better than nothing. I'm going super-hard on poor Zachary this time around. It's all good.

Right, I must eat.

Sick River

We're just back from the vet with River. She got lordkilljoy's inhaler and bit into it - puncturing it. We have no idea how much medicine went into her, but about an hour later, she was drinking way more water than usual and a bit after that she got sick. At this stage, I was pretty worried that she'd been seriously poisoned, so we dropped everything and rushed her to the vet.

They induced more vomiting and gave her charcoal. She's really pathetic now - just lying next to her water and drinking every so often. She couldn't even jump out of the car when we got home, or walk up the stairs. She made it up 3, then just stopped. lordkilljoy carried her up. Poor thing.

The vet said she should be okay by tomorrow, but to keep an eye on her.

Okay, while writing this entry she's been sick again. She's now lying on the floor with kitchen towel under her head.

winter mornings

i fell over on my bike today. please note the distinction from falling off my bike - i was stationary when this happened. it was really frosted over and icy this morning, so i cycled carefully into work, not speeding down the hill like i normally do and going at a generally slower pace. so i made it to the bike railings in work just fine, but just was i was getting off the bike, the one leg i had on the ground slipped causing me to fall and my bike to fall on top of me. i'm sighing and rolling my eyes at myself. so after all of that, i have a slightly sore wrist and probably a bruise on my bum.

did i mention i have a cold at the moment? i'm heading into day 3 with it, and things are getting better. i hope it's gone by tomorrow.

two days off tuesday and wednesday - wooo! ugh - i can't say woo anymore without thinking of the episode of "how i met your mother" that featured woo-girls. it's really annoying.

the weekend was good - what little i caught of it. we played wipeout for a bit and marvel alliance or something. it was just about the worst game i have ever played. (no offence or anything to mulkabu and lordkilljoy, who enjoyed it a bit more because they knew all the characters.)

tonight i am going to come home and write 500 words, or for an hour (which ever comes first). i find that 500 words is impossible and takes an hour. 1,500 takes an hour and a half - it's just that getting started bit that takes ages, but i will write 500 words today.

i'm getting worse

yesterday all i ate was a half a bowl of cereal and 2 trail bars. i lay in bed last night starving and trying to force myself to sleep so that the hole-pain in my stomach would go away.
it's not that i'm trying to starve myself or anything. i just didn't have an appetite all day except for last night in bed. having a sore throat always kills my appetite.

we have a new addition to the household today. penelope_stone had a baby! no!!!! she got a laptop (might as well be a new baby, except that you can hit ctrl-alt-del when stuff goes wrong). why does nobody say del-alt-ctrl, does it have to be delete that gets hit last or something? yep - alt-ctrl-del works too. amazing.
:shake head: anyway.

not much to report here. i got a missed call on my phone yesterday and what with meteor being silly i can't check my voicemail, so i have no idea who called me. i'm so worried it's the company i applied to for a job. so i rang them earlier asking if someone from the company had tried calling me. the receptionist said she'd check and get back to me, but that was over an hour ago and no call, so now i'm worried if i've screwed up my chances.
i got a letter in the door from college, letting me know that there's a flash development position available in south dublin, but just reading over the specs made me realize how much i really don't want to do flash stuff for the rest of my life. 3d modelling seems so much more fun and creative.

my illness has improved vastly from the weekend - now i have a dry-sort-of-cough and a bit of a sniffle and that's it. yeay.

liam's party and other fun things

the weekend was great. i did so much + should have been updating on a daily basis, but i didn't have the time. when i wasn't out i was sleeping and pretending that i'm not sick.
anyway - the weekend began on saturday night with lordkilljoy's birthday. 70s theme party featuring big hair, big glasses and big flares. it was a fabulous night of dancing and meeting people i'd not seen in years. it was so good to see lordkilljoy again. he's someone i definitely don't get to see enough of.
so then sunday was taleweavers meet and the start of dave's planescape game - nothing happened - we spent the evening making characters and watching spaced (the best geek-soap tv show ever).
monday was more gaming - only this time with barry, adrian and craig. we're trying to find the 13 lost shards of aphrodite and we got all the way to 12 on monday - so close to the end. we finished early (5ish) and that gave me a chance to go to gavindillon and jerry's barbeque. good food, a nice fire and mostly good company.

i did spend the whole weekend with a painful swollen throat and possibly a mild fever - last night was the worst. i was half asleep, having a bad coughing fit and in my delirium, i was cataloguing the time between coughs, the intensity of cough, the predicted length and intensity of the next one and it was all flashing in my brain as some kind of wierd dark skewed spreadsheet of doom. it was a bit scary, and it felt like i was coughing for about half an hour (but time is messed up during the night).

then i had this crazy dream about a construct-woman with special abilities who had been cast out of the corporation who made her. she was exiled to a deadly island and as she walked around she saw all sorts of evil looking humanoids who felt nothing but evil towards her. they didn't attack, though - just stared menacingly until it drove her insane. she got back to the town of the island and fell, begging, into the arms of her maker - crying and sobbing about the monsters. then all the monsters leapt to the attack and even though she was this wonder-woman fighting expert amazing construct, she was powerless. but then everything stopped and her maker eased her to the ground and she realized that she's been hallucinating.
it was a bit crazy.

my brain goes totally insane when i'm sick.