Once on a donkey in Tunbridge Wells

Dear Nose,

We've been together a long time. You may have a tendency to itch at the most embarrassing moments, and you may be unable to decide whether you want to be straight or snubbed, but generally speaking, you've done your job and I have no complaints.

Right now, however, you and my sinuses are ganging up on me to make my life hell. I am a snotty mess and my bin is overflowing with tissues. My head is pounding and my cheekbones feel like they're going to explode. Just remember, if they do, they're taking you with them.

I would quite like to be able to breathe again and maybe actually taste what I'm eating. I'd appreciate it if you'd cooperate.

Best wishes,

Your body.

My interview? Was seven minutes long. It started at five to two. I got back home at half past two.

I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THAT'S GOOD OR BAD.

Not-edit: Okay, apparently it is, because I just got offered the job as I was writing this. Woohoo!

I HAVE AN INTERVIEW ON WEDNESDAY. AHHHH.

*huff*huff*huff*

I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST!

And I just babysat for two young boys and convinced them that they were no longer allowed to ride their bikes until they passed a second cycling proficiency test.

I did tell them the truth eventually. XD

My mother is in the rather bad habit of volunteering me to babysit for two young boys on our road without asking me first if I'm free to do so. Most of the time I am, purely because the boys' parents ask far enough in advance that I don't have anything planned.

This time, however, they organised it with my mother and my mother then a) forgot to tell me and b) forgot when it was. So I went over to their house today and discovered that they wanted me to babysit today.

There went my evening.

As much as I detest children in general, I have to admit that these two boys are lovely. Really sweet, really polite. The younger one has clearly been well-trained by his parents - he hasn't quite worked out yet that I watch TV after sending them to bed, so when they go up to bed he switches off the TV and makes sure it's turned off at the wall as well. He did it again today - it's so cute I've not enlightened him yet. :D

I've been distracted somewhat recently by the Rurouni Kenshin manga, though - I took it with me today. I watched a lot of the fansubbed anime back, oooh, some six of seven years now, but never finished it - and I have a preference for manga over anime anyway. I picked up the Vizbig vol 1 of Rurouni Kenshin (vols 1-3 of the manga in the one volume) at the London Film and Comic Con last weekend out of sheer nostalgia, and then pretty much fell in love with the series all over again. Kenshin's "Oro?" is just as funny in print as it is in motion, thankfully - and the Vizbig edition has some sections in colour in every edition so far.

I'm now halfway through Vizbig vol 3 (so roughly halfway through vol 8 of the manga, I think?), just after Kenshin's left for Kyoto. I didn't get further than this in the anime, so it's new territory. Liking Kaoru much more this time round, too - although she does need to actually remember that she can use a katana when it's useful, though. Fingers crossed the Kyoto arc will fix that.

At some point, I will stop playing with my DW layout. Promise.

Moving on:

( LIFE: I am an ill thing. )
( GAME: Disgaea )
( GAME: Sims 3 )

Today is father's day. Therefore, I have prepared the most appropriate and loving gift a daughter can give to her father to show her appreciation for his (lack of) parenting.

Yup, he got a coconut.

( What? You want context? )

So my pre-emptive hiatus is now ix-nayed, less than twenty-four hours after I decided to implement it.

The reason for the pre-emptive hiatus was that I was going to be a prosecution witness in a trial about stuff that happened when I was a child. The trial was set for next week, and it was going to dredge up some particularly unpleasant memories.

Today, however, I got a call from the witness people saying that the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) have decided to discontinue the case.

While I am relieved in a way (because now I won't have to air a distinctly unhappy time in my life in a very stressful environment and be questioned by people whose job it is to make me look like a fool), I am also disgusted at the way the CPS have handled this.

I was first contacted to give a statement about this two years ago. The offences the defendant was charged with were rape and indecent assault on a child (edit: not me, for the record). I was willing to go to court to give evidence for the prosecution because I actually give a shit about getting justice for the victim, and I understand that it takes a hell of a lot of guts for someone who has been the victim of that sort of offence to get the courage and willpower together to accuse their attacker in the first place. It then takes even more courage and willpower to survive through the court process. The person who can do that deserves vindication, and deserves the support of any evidence I can give.

How is it justice for the victim when, after two years of waiting, the trial is cancelled five days before it is due to start.

And let me be clear right now: I don't even actually know who the victim is. I know who I think it is, but there were any number of children it might actually have been. I object to this on general principles, not because of a personal investment in any of the people involved.

Well fucking done, CPS. Well. Fucking. Done.

EDIT: End of hiatus. WTF. See this post.


::waves:: Hiya. Just a notice that I'm about to disappear off the face of the intertubes for a while. Real Life is about to hit me like a particularly unpleasant train wreck, what joy!

Normally I get through bad RL stuff by clinging ever more firmly to the fandom stuff, so the reason I'm issuing this hiatus is purely because the upcoming RL situation is not one I have ever been in before, so I've no way of knowing exactly how I'll react or whether I'll be fit for human company (either on the intertubes or in RL).

With luck, any fallout will be isolated and dealt with quickly and I'll be back posting inanities before you can blink. Buuuuuuuut I also might not, so, hiatus post!

If you want to get hold of me while I'm not about here, you can always email me at anria [AT] solelyfictional [DOT] org. More sensibly formatted, of course. :)

Okay, so I'm beginning to believe that my lack-of-being-able-to-write lately has been less to do with writer's block and more to do with having the attention span of a gnat.

This afternoon I have gone from writing more on the Penelo's Navel fic (which, since it is unfinished, I have ported over to DW) to scribbling down ideas for a rather depressing coming-of-age original story to being determined to get something written for young adults published to deciding what I really want to do is read some book reviews, and possibly write them. And then I remembered about my LibraryThing page, which I haven't touched since 2007/8.

I don't know either.

Earlier this week I had a discussion with people about deja vu, and I mentioned that I sometimes get pre-deja vu, where I know that I am going to get deja vu in the future about something that's just happened.

It's not jamais vu, which is when you feel like it's the first time something has happened despite knowing it's happened before, because I only ever get this when I know that it's not happened before, but that it will happen again.

I thought this was fairly common, but the people I was talking to at work had no idea what I was on about - does anyone else get this, or is it just another weird quirk of my brain?

I've now got a Dreamwidth account, courtesy of Jadey. Come find me - I'm almighty_frog over there too (because I r imaginative, yar. Just not so much at 2am.)

Went to Roz's today for a barbecue. It was a very good day, but there was one WTF moment when I realised Roz's cousin was flirting with me.

This was a WTF moment because when I have met this cousin before and I happen to know she is straight. Not gay, not bisexual. Totally straight. So, yes. WTF.

I am currently sitting at my desk at home (holiday, yay!) eating Cajun Squirrel flavour crisps.

I don't know either.

Sooooooo. It appears that my car is approximately four inches taller than normal.

And when I say "approximately", I mean "at least".

I think, for the first time in my life, I am actually snowed in. I see no way of getting into work this morning.

In honour of this, have a fic snippet. Anyone remember the Penelo's Navel fic beginning thingy I posted ages ago? Well, this is the first bit of the next part. Or something like that.

Edit: forgot, standard warnings apply: is neither finished nor edited, therefore may be subject to spelling errors, grammatical errors, gibberish, bad plotlines, stupid metaphors and/or discontinuation.

( FIC: A Tale of Archadian Passion, or, Penelo's Navel: Part 2.1 )

I took pictures.

( Cut for piccies )

I'm tempted to take even more pictures. Back soon. XD

Edit: I would like to point out that I live in SURREY, in the SOUTH of England. Surrey winters are normally pansy winters that don't get snow and don't go below -1 degrees C. THIS IS REALLY FREAKING UNUSUAL.

According to my doctor, I must eat three full meals a day and snack in between time in order to avoid me fainting, developing a migraine, and/or dissolving into a boiling pile of achy unhappy goo, although not necessarily in that order.

Thus far this weekend, I have managed to eat a grand total of two meals, half a bowl of porridge, and three croissants. I had to fight for one of the full meals - after half past ten at night I finally got to order a large kebab from a kebab shop, who then gave me something small enough that I'd regard it as a starter rather than a full meal. And by "this weekend" I mean "from Friday lunchtime until now".

Subsequently, I feel like a pile of crap and may never visit that particular friend's house again. She is well aware of my dietary requirements, but also happens to be a model and therefore doesn't have quite the same idea of a) what "three full meals" constitutes and b) what "eating regularly" constitutes.

(On the plus side, she is lovely, and further on the plus side she helped me figure out that my weird allergy to baked beans' sauce and eggs is caused by tartrazine, because she gets exactly the same symptoms. So twenty-odd years after developing this allergy, I finally know what I'm allergic to. Yay for the NHS.)

Edit: aaaaaand I apparently lost 2kg in weight this weekend. That's roughly 5 pounds, right? So yes, special diet is the only reason I am not a SKELETON.

There's snow outside.

YOU'RE TWO WEEKS TOO LATE, YOU BASTARD.

And I have to go to work in about five minutes. D: Who wants to place bets on how delayed the trains will be?

So I've realised that I have this thing about my writing.

I don't like it.

Or at least, I don't like it for longer than a day or so, by which time I'll be going back over something I've written to make sure I know where I'm picking it up, and by the time I get to the next bit of white space that needs filling I'll be doing that half-frown pout-thing which I'm told makes me look like a constipated kitten, and I'll have so many critiques in my head that I won't write anything.

That's part of why I decided to just finish the DDS fic and post it, regardless of the fact that I didn't end up making it Heat/Serph like I wanted to. I can see how I could do a sequel/similar fic in which I could add the Heat/Serph, buuuut ... meh.

---

On a ligher note, I now have a PSP and have been playing Crisis Core. Whee! 'Tis fun! Just met Cloud! Unfortunately, it gets very repetitive very quickly - most of the levelling is done via the sidequest missions, which are all "navigate this route and kill something". So far, however, the story is looking like it could slot into the original FF7 background without too much ret-conning, which I wasn't expecting. Shall wait and see.

...this. Just, what, Australia. Seriously. I want to see studies supporting this, Mr Judge, before you sentence.

It's probably just as well the guy didn't get a jail sentence, seeing as - if the Australian system is at all similar to the British one - the poor people in the prisons would have to try and work with him on his "sex offending". The probation officers at my work complain that it's hard enough to get people who actually do download images of child pornograpy to see how they contribute to the harm caused by the people who make those pictures - how the hell would you do that for Simpsons characters?