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prunesquallormd) wrote2014-03-07 07:44 pm
prunesquallormd) wrote2014-03-07 07:44 pm
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Spring is just around the corner :D
- Actual inklings of spring this week. Yay! Of course, given that it's the Spring Equinox in less than 2 weeks it's kind of timely. (I'm just hoping that horrible Arctic vortex thingy that's been hammering North America all winter doesn't make its way to this side of the pond. Another super late spring after the winter we've had would be most unwelcome.
Still, I've managed to get through my least favourite month of the year relatively unscathed. Only one unpleasantness, so that's nice (though that unpleasantness looks like it's going to be indefinite, which makes me sad).
- For the first time in my life, I'm doing the whole giving up something for Lent thing. I considered chocolate and failed before the first day was out. Of course, I could have gone back to being fully vegan for 40 days but that's both too easy (I did it for more than 10 years, after all) and also too hard (1 word: cheese). Does that even make sense?
So anyway, I went with the rather unimaginative booze ban. Which in my case really just means quitting gin. And oh my gosh, it's hard. I don't drink much but Friday and Saturday nights are going to be the really difficult ones. I miss it already and it's only been 3 days! (Though I'm not sure when I last had a drink. It's the not being able to have one that makes it tricky).
- After likecharity mentioned that she'd started watching the X-Files I had a massive attack of nostalgia for it. I was totally devoted to it for the first 3 or 4 seasons when it was first out but I kind of let if slip by the wayside somewhere in the middle of season 4. (Partly due to living in a shared house with only 1 TV and obviously no internet cos it was 1996 or something). I have to admit the continuing conspiracy plot occasionally annoyed me but it was still one of the best shows around, and a lot of its one-off 'monster of the week' style episodes were little things of beauty. "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", in season 3, was especially fabulous: my favourite X-Files episode and one of my favourite episodes of anything ever.
So, I started watching season 1 again, and yes, it's definitely dated in a lot of ways but it stands up incredibly well still. I'm only about 12 episodes in and have just recently sat through what may be the worst episode of the entire series (and definitely of the first season): Fire, which featured a very young Mark Sheppard, and some really awful English stereotyping, and a rather poor script which included an English character referring to a government minister as a 'Minister of Parliament', which, just no.
That low point aside, I'm very much loving watching again, and I'm really pleased that I went back to it (thanks, Jenny :)). Maybe I'll get through the entire series this time (though it'll take me a while as it's presumably 216 episodes (9 seasons of 24 each?) and 2 films!).
- I caught up with my friend Emmie in Texas on Skype on Sunday for the first since my birthday, which was lovely. The conversation included her describing me as her 'awkward older brother' which may actually be the sweetest description ever.
- This week, in 15 and 20 minute snippets here and there, I completed the first draft of the epilogue of the story I've been working on since spring 2010 (I recently found an untitled document with the first couple of paragraphs of chapter 1 dated early May 2010, though obviously there would be an earlier written copy as well). Now I just have to type it up, polish it, get it betad - oh and go back and rework chapter 9 because both me and my lovely beta (thanks again, Jenny! :)) think it's horribly unbalanced. That might take a while but what it does mean is that it's all over bar the shouting. It'll be somewhere around 40000 words and have taken me almost 4 years and I never, ever expected it to take this long, or to finish it. So yeah, feeling quite proud of myself.
- Things with Brie are rather lovely. The distance is haaaaaaaard, and the time difference is a killer, but we're winning, I think.
- Randomly: an email went round at work the other day asking if anyone had found a pen that one of our visitors had lost. It was a Montblanc. Eep. Careless! I'd have liked to have found it just so I could give it a test run before I gave it in, because while Montblanc has a bit of a reputation among fountain pen obsessives as being very much the sort of pen that businessmen buy just because they look impressive, they're still kind of legendary and I'll probably never get a chance to use one (the 149, which is their 'flagship', so to speak, is over £500 new O_O).
I may have mentioned that I watch fountain pen reviews on Youtube to relax. I'm sad like that. There's a Dutch guy called Stephen Brown (not a very Dutch sounding name, I know) whom I love. He's super enthusiastic and geeky.
Here's his review of the 149:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkMRbo0eqno&list=TLRdv_Ex24BoCL4EvqK6aaFiCxA82iTkSR#aid=P-3-EdT7z3E
(It won't let me embed it). Even if you're not a fountain pen fan, he's always entertaining :)
So yeah, if you pay that much for a pen, you probably don't want to leave it lying around!
- Did I mention that I saw Frozen a couple of weeks ago? Soooooo good! It probably helped that that Christophe Beck (of Buffy fame) wrote the music. While there's been a few Disney films that I've loved recently (Tangled, Wreck-it Raplh, Despicable Me) Frozen definitely enters my top 5. And Let It Go (which won the Oscar recently, I think) is fabulous (and it has a similar feel to Wicked's Defying Gravity, which I also loved.
I hope you're all well.
*hugs*
Still, I've managed to get through my least favourite month of the year relatively unscathed. Only one unpleasantness, so that's nice (though that unpleasantness looks like it's going to be indefinite, which makes me sad).
- For the first time in my life, I'm doing the whole giving up something for Lent thing. I considered chocolate and failed before the first day was out. Of course, I could have gone back to being fully vegan for 40 days but that's both too easy (I did it for more than 10 years, after all) and also too hard (1 word: cheese). Does that even make sense?
So anyway, I went with the rather unimaginative booze ban. Which in my case really just means quitting gin. And oh my gosh, it's hard. I don't drink much but Friday and Saturday nights are going to be the really difficult ones. I miss it already and it's only been 3 days! (Though I'm not sure when I last had a drink. It's the not being able to have one that makes it tricky).
- After likecharity mentioned that she'd started watching the X-Files I had a massive attack of nostalgia for it. I was totally devoted to it for the first 3 or 4 seasons when it was first out but I kind of let if slip by the wayside somewhere in the middle of season 4. (Partly due to living in a shared house with only 1 TV and obviously no internet cos it was 1996 or something). I have to admit the continuing conspiracy plot occasionally annoyed me but it was still one of the best shows around, and a lot of its one-off 'monster of the week' style episodes were little things of beauty. "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", in season 3, was especially fabulous: my favourite X-Files episode and one of my favourite episodes of anything ever.
So, I started watching season 1 again, and yes, it's definitely dated in a lot of ways but it stands up incredibly well still. I'm only about 12 episodes in and have just recently sat through what may be the worst episode of the entire series (and definitely of the first season): Fire, which featured a very young Mark Sheppard, and some really awful English stereotyping, and a rather poor script which included an English character referring to a government minister as a 'Minister of Parliament', which, just no.
That low point aside, I'm very much loving watching again, and I'm really pleased that I went back to it (thanks, Jenny :)). Maybe I'll get through the entire series this time (though it'll take me a while as it's presumably 216 episodes (9 seasons of 24 each?) and 2 films!).
- I caught up with my friend Emmie in Texas on Skype on Sunday for the first since my birthday, which was lovely. The conversation included her describing me as her 'awkward older brother' which may actually be the sweetest description ever.
- This week, in 15 and 20 minute snippets here and there, I completed the first draft of the epilogue of the story I've been working on since spring 2010 (I recently found an untitled document with the first couple of paragraphs of chapter 1 dated early May 2010, though obviously there would be an earlier written copy as well). Now I just have to type it up, polish it, get it betad - oh and go back and rework chapter 9 because both me and my lovely beta (thanks again, Jenny! :)) think it's horribly unbalanced. That might take a while but what it does mean is that it's all over bar the shouting. It'll be somewhere around 40000 words and have taken me almost 4 years and I never, ever expected it to take this long, or to finish it. So yeah, feeling quite proud of myself.
- Things with Brie are rather lovely. The distance is haaaaaaaard, and the time difference is a killer, but we're winning, I think.
- Randomly: an email went round at work the other day asking if anyone had found a pen that one of our visitors had lost. It was a Montblanc. Eep. Careless! I'd have liked to have found it just so I could give it a test run before I gave it in, because while Montblanc has a bit of a reputation among fountain pen obsessives as being very much the sort of pen that businessmen buy just because they look impressive, they're still kind of legendary and I'll probably never get a chance to use one (the 149, which is their 'flagship', so to speak, is over £500 new O_O).
I may have mentioned that I watch fountain pen reviews on Youtube to relax. I'm sad like that. There's a Dutch guy called Stephen Brown (not a very Dutch sounding name, I know) whom I love. He's super enthusiastic and geeky.
Here's his review of the 149:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkMRbo0eqno&list=TLRdv_Ex24BoCL4EvqK6aaFiCxA82iTkSR#aid=P-3-EdT7z3E
(It won't let me embed it). Even if you're not a fountain pen fan, he's always entertaining :)
So yeah, if you pay that much for a pen, you probably don't want to leave it lying around!
- Did I mention that I saw Frozen a couple of weeks ago? Soooooo good! It probably helped that that Christophe Beck (of Buffy fame) wrote the music. While there's been a few Disney films that I've loved recently (Tangled, Wreck-it Raplh, Despicable Me) Frozen definitely enters my top 5. And Let It Go (which won the Oscar recently, I think) is fabulous (and it has a similar feel to Wicked's Defying Gravity, which I also loved.
I hope you're all well.
*hugs*