At Home x At Work x In Bed

Huge gap between posts yet again, whoo! Update time.

Hello World!

Decided to keep this post for two reasons; the first, to mark my coming to WordPress, and the second, because as a programmer the title made me smile.

Yaaah, so another new blog huh? I wonder how well I’ll keep up with this one… I’m hoping to use this as a writing journal where I can rant on without bothering people on my LJ flist who frankly have most likely had enough of it. I imported this month’s posts from LJ as a kind of introduction and so that this blog isn’t all lonely with its one post if I forget about this place for a little while (unlikely now that I’ve added it to my Firefox ‘home page’ array but eh).

An earlier post refers to a competition that I have decided to enter next year due to lack of time and proper preparation, which is in fact the Bridport Prize and probably (though I’d like to think not) out of my reach at the moment anyway. Still, this blog will be the palpable (how palpable is an online journal…?) proof of my resolution to work hard at my writing and become good enough that whatever I hand in for the competition next year will be something I’m proud of.

Well, enough of my rambling for now. I shall end this post, make this place pretty and go back to the HP fic I’m in the middle of (well… somewhere near ten percent but shhh). Adieu.

Kaja

Writing x Current x Thanks

Been thinking and re-reading old fic and am wondering, who would be interested in reading a ‘Hydra’ re-write?

I wrote Hydra as practice really, like Immortal Storm, so I didn’t spend a great amount of time on it. However, as I was re-reading I realised I still rather like the series – unfinished, unpolished, edit-needing and thin as it is – and the later chapters aren’t too badly done… I’m considering finishing it and re-writing the old chapters, adding in news ones probably and putting in more detail, blah; you get it. So the question remains:

Who would be interested in reading the re-write if I did it?

Just wondering so I thought I’d ask. I should be doing something with ideas for the competition right now but my soul has died in respect to that now, I just don’t have enough time or confidence to do it in less than a week. It’d be bollocks of the worst kind and I couldn’t bear handing something like that in. I’ve pretty much committed competition seppuku; I thought too much and did no real writing of the ideas I was having. This also put me behind on the regular writing quotas I’d put myself on as well, which is a bit hard to admit to myself. I’ve only been writing ideas and small paragraphs and not very much at that. I suck. And not well.

So I’m giving up and I’ll try again next year. Hopefully this anger and frustration will go some ways to helping me actually become a good writer so next year’s entry won’t make me throw myself off of a bridge lol.

This entry is getting longer than I anticipated… Hmmm… Ah well, no one minds I’m sure :D

Many small fics may be appearing and I hope the lovely people on my flist will see fit to use some of their valuable time looking them over. I’m hoping for a bit of criticism so I can improve. I know I’m getting better, I know I’m a hundred times better now than I was this time last year. I have to keep reminding myself so I don’t get discouraged.

Thanks to those who put up with my rants and uselessness and read my too-long LJ entries, I love you all and hopefully I’ll have some results for your pains some time soon.

Kaja

Back x Clean x Ill

Wai, the Kaja is back. Bet no one even noticed I was gone, LOL.

Just sat down after a full night’s sleep and a trip to the bathroom and I’m wondering why the upstairs hall smells like hamster food… No joke. Hamster food. Definitely hamster food.

So~ since last post a lot and not a lot happened. Let’s see, Ra visited, writing happened and didn’t, anime was watched, I was ill again and there is a war being waged outside my bedroom door. Also I think I’m losing days somewhere and I can’t seem to find where they slipped off to…

Well, first Ra visit. I was sick again Monday (Monday and Tuesday were the worst days for it) with monster headaches that went crazy when anything touched my head and a sore throat that could kill. Felt like swallowing knives. Anyway, I kept waking up; at five, seven, nine and eleven am. Then I couldn’t sleep again for pain at half one so I got up and then curled up under my furry blanket on top of the bed in a strange position that allowed me to keep my head from touching anything. I dozed until about half eight pm when Ra showed up. Then he ordered food and very kindly went for shopping while I tried to gulp down water and keep my somewhat horrified and agonised expressions to myself. He took damn good care of me, did Ra. Thank you for that. Even if you did force that VILE, VILE concoction down my throat three or four times D: I don’t take medicine anyway, now I have a reason not to.

Ra and I mostly watched stuff Tuesday. We went to bed about one because I was knackered (despite having only been up for about four hours XDD) and didn’t sleep in much in the morning. Wednesday we went to town and I got a Swing textbook (Java programming stuff), a film and some ramen. We found a really nice cafe for lunch that I never even knew existed; it was one of those instances where, when looking for food on that street you don’t go further than the Wetherspoons so you don’t get to know any places beyond it. Lovely little cafe though.

Anyway, then we met up with Matt after a two hour cup of tea. I positioned us in a cafe next to the bus stop that the bus Matt should have used would stop at, only a little ways down the street from the restaurant we would be going to. But no. He had to be awkward and ruin my forward planning by getting the bus to the station and walking down from completely the wrong direction. *sigh* that boy…

Restaurant was The Fountain. Good food and service that’s almost too efficient and that really pretty Asian waiter I’d joked with Gav about dragging into a secluded spot and having my way with. Went to Riley’s after that, which was nice. Would have been better with more people, but oh well. By this time my sore throat was just minor discomfort BTW, which was brilliant when we were paying so much for food. Got a taxi back. Ra and I sat up for a while listening to his new Adam Ant CD (why he buys music I have no idea XDD). He left the following morning at some ungodly hour. It was nice to see you again, Ra-chin!

Other than that I haven’t done much. Watched most of Juuni Kokki but I had to stop because the episode 37 I have is corrupted *angry face* but I asked Gav to re-download it for me, so it should be okay. I hate not being able to bittorrent here. Finished the first season of Maria-sama ga Miteru, which is cute and pretty. Watched Legend of Basara, which has an awful cliffhanger ending but I didn’t like it enough to find the manga for it. I also discovered the wonder that is Romeo x Juliet. Up to episode ten now and liking it a lot. It’s a nice change and I love that the heroine is such a strong character. The little jokes are nice too and the setting just works.

I watched another episode of Full House, the Korean drama, last night and decided it really is just good. It’s done so well that despite initially supporting the less likely pairing (as is my sod’s law way), which included the main girl and Min-hyeok who is rather yum, I’m now fully supportive of the pairing I wasn’t as keen on before (the actual pairing) in a stone statue, they-belong-together, affectionate kind of way. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside in a grossly sweet and adorable way. You just have to love it.

Watch it – you know you want to – here: Crunchyroll Link

I’m having a long standing battle with my two remaining housemates about the three or four bursting-full bin bags on the landing. I refuse to take them out because they’re nothing to do with me and they won’t because they’re lazy sons of bitches and obviously like to piss me off. I took one of them out with my own rubbish the other day because I had a spare hand, but I couldn’t have taken more at that time and I wasn’t about to do extra trips to the skip area just to dispose of THEIR stuff. Unfortunately it’s a battle of patience and I’m losing at the moment. I have a feeling that I’ll probably take them out whenever I next leave the house, but I don’t want to be defeated because they’ll think they can do it again and I know they will. Ugh, so annoying. I have to keep the hall window open most of the time to filter the smell. Also, it’s not like the bags are inconveniencing anyone but me; they’re on my part of the hall so I have to climb over them to get anywhere. With James’ encouragement I keep wanting to put the bags in front of my housemate’s doors as revenge and a none-too-subtle hint, but I know that won’t work. They’ll just put them in front of my door and ignore them again. They did it with the fridge. I moved the magnets into letters that said ‘Clean’ and they changed them later to say ‘Fuck U’ -_- I’m not the one who makes the fucking mess in the fridge but I’m ALWAYS the one the who cleans it! If anyone had ever seen/smelled the job being done before they’d feel my pain. /rant

*sigh* This is my life. Fantastic isn’t it? I have one particular long!fic idea which is demanding attention and the short fic for the competition is not being kind to me… Still, I will be strong. Till later, adieu.

Kaja

Travels x N64 x Nestor

Yay, another post.

Yesterday (Wednesday) was my brother’s birthday and I kind of didn’t realise I was visiting home that day… oops. Luckily no one but me knows this so sshhh XDD

Bearded Rob drove me to my parent’s house (in his VAN), taking the long way so he could visit his house en route and pick up some things, and I had great fun finding out just how amusing it is to piss of Range Rover drivers :D Rob drives like college!Chris on acid. I loved it XD Bombing down country lanes and weaving through traffic is even more fun, also, when you’re making fun of the people and cars you’re passing as you go.

We stayed at my parent’s all afternoon, until about seven. We had pizza for lunch and sat outside on the back patio while my parents went about their business. We had tea and I orgasmed a little over my new laptop (now named Nestor). Nan was very kind and gave me my ‘pocket money’ (£40 – that’ll keep me for a while) and the Bearded One and I walked the dog with my Mum. Strange experience. But ah well.

Chinese was had when we got back, I went to Glenfern with Rob and we joined in on the n64 night people were having there. Matt seemed happy to have his laptop (especially after throwing ‘Unknown Caller’ phone calls at me all afternoon – James text to reassure me that it was Matt and not some random pervert XDD). Games were played (James beat me at No Mercy, damn him!) and enjoyed but I managed to ruin it by feeling ill about midmorning. Coughing and such, not nice. Then Matt and I taxi’d home and I WENT TO BED IMMEDIATELY.

Today has been ‘play with Nestor’ day :D Have installed Ubuntu, which is quite nice, and am playing with it. Takes getting used to since Windows is all I’ve really ever used but the change is kind of nice. Am considering having Solaris too since I’d like to poke it somewhat…

Nestor won’t let me win at chess or connect-4 and I can’t get past Poppy on Klotski D:

*cough* Anyway, I should be looking for a job but right now I’m kind of… procrastinating a lot. Illness delayed it and now I’m just finding things to do, or so it feels. I earlier wanted to write La Corda D’oro fic but didn’t feel right about it when I’ve only seen twelve episodes of the anime and don’t know anything about the manga or games. Ideas are coming for the competition and I’m thinking I kind of need to have started ‘sketching’ by the weekend. And that’s this post, I guess.

Kaja

First x Of x Many

Teh first WordPress post. This and a few of the posts that follow are imported from my LJ, which can be found here.

~

Okay, so my recount is going to be patchy (because I can’t remember much of what’s happened XDD) but you’ll probably gets bits of ‘back story’ as time goes on because of the whole everything-related-to-everything thing :D

So, first. I’m poor. Horribly poor. But it’s my own fault so I can’t complain too much. And I need a job but have not yet gotten off my ass to get one. Mostly because I was evilly ill all last week, but yeah. Not into my overdraft yet but I will be because I’ve pretty much sorted accomodation that will allow me to stay in Bournemouth over the Summer and that means £400-ish gone already.

Second, exams and first year are OVER. I got a great surprise one morning because Suzy had misplaced my PAL application and I had to fill the annoying thing out again so she could pass it on the supervisor person. That sucked somewhat. Exams were a mix of ‘yay’ and ‘death’. SysNet killed me. Really and truly. Admittedly, if I hadn’t panicked I could have answered one or two of the questions but as it was I couldn’t have passed. I basically handed in a blank answer sheet, it was THAT bad -_- WAD and ADT were… alright, not fantastically easy but not hard by any means. Programming and Databases… god, if all my exams were like that I’d be laughing and dancing. In these I had a choice of which questions I wanted to answer, rather than which ones I could answer. Brilliant. I loved it. This does mean that I’ll be retaking at least SysNet in September though (or whenever the retakes are, I heard it was September but someone else said it wasn’t, so *shrugs*) which isn’t a nice thought. On the other hand I now know to do proper revision on my retakes rather than just skim (I did considerably more with SysNet but I didn’t start early enough for it to make a difference because I was practically learning the whole damn thing right before the exam D: ).

Anyway, so exams were alright overall. I had to do my Student Finance thing for loans so I can live next year and it’s in my parent’s hands now (I should have done it earlier really), which will be a relief to have sorted out. I’ve been looking into Proofreading courses again but the money problem is too prominent for me to do anything about it really, though I’m sorely tempted because doing freelance proofreading would be my ideal part time job. The only thing is I just don’t have £300-odd to spend on the course. I’m having doubts about the laptop purchase now (or have been since the money crisis began) because without it I would have had an extra £600 to keep me going and spend on the course. Of course, I really want/wanted a laptop so I can’t say it’s a waste but…

Speaking of, I’m going to visit my parents with Bearded Rob tomorrow to pick them up. Due to a whole lot of random problems with bank addresses and Novatech policies and such, I had to get them delivered to my parent’s house instead of to Matt’s or mine. Pain. I spent ages on the phone to them (or rather, some time on the phone to them and a lot of time listening to awful, cheesy music) trying to sort all of it out and in the end I just went with the easiest option. Still, it means getting out of the house.

Since being ill all of last week (to a horrible, horrible degree – I couldn’t get out of bed at all at some points and got dizzy spells and all sorts, ugh -_-) I haven’t done a great deal. I’m still slightly ill, but nothing too bad.

Saturday, my parents visited and we went out for lunch, food shopping and dress buying. I’m going to my new cousin Harry’s Christening in a few weeks and I needed a suitable dress for it. It’s a nice one though, I’m pretty happy with it. My Mum was making jokes while we were looking and I was trying things on, that you know when I like the clothes because I’ll start posing and dancing around in them (true but I didn’t realise it lol) XDD

My parents are moving in two or three weeks, so when I visit tomorrow it’ll be the last time I see that house and when I go to the Christening in July I may or may not see the new house; if not the first time I see it will be Christmas. Amazing…

I’ve been doing some film watching since the exams were over (though I couldn’t concentrate enough to watch them on a lot of the ill days -_-). I watched the three Evil Dead films, the night before last, which I enjoyed; I appreciate weird zombie films so much more than I used to… Second was much better than the first. The third one was just hilarious (“Shop smart, shop S-Mart. You *got* that?”). I watched Alexander finally (mostly wanted to see it ’cause, hey, Colin Farrell) and was simultaneously pleased and disappointed; the film overall isn’t great, but there’s pretty boys kissing and some nice scenes so it’s worth watching. I watched ‘The Core’ (entertaining), ‘The Condemned’ (not bad, kind of an Amercian ‘Battle Royale’ that I thought was worth watching just for Vinnie Jones), ‘Delicious Love and Sex’ (a Korean film worth watching just for the nice sex scenes – sex in a fridge! – I can get you guys a link to this one if you need it, I know how hard it is to find), ‘Raped By An Angel’ (Asian and incredibly funny even though I’m not sure it’s trying to be), ‘Friday the 13th’ (lol, just lol), ‘Ghost Rider’ (I liked it, I don’t care what anyone else says) and ‘One Night With The King’ (I thoroughly enjoyed this one, even if I didn’t really expect to; a nice film about Persia, its Jews and Greece). I watched others but, eh, can’t remember right now.

Anime and manga… I’ve kept up with the Bleach and Naruto (against my will, though recent developments have given me hope) manga and watched the entire series of ‘Busou Renkin’ with Gav the weekend before last. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant, I love Busou Renkin and Pa-pi-llon! :D

Writing-wise, I haven’t gotten much more than ideas done because of illness and general uselessness. However, I’m now searching for ideas for a short story piece (5000 words max.) I’m writing to enter in an INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION. Cash prizes and prestige, wai~ :D I’m a little doubtful that anything will come of entering but I really want to. I just need a good idea for it…

That’s my entry for now I suppose. I’m going to watch ‘The Emporer’s New Groove’ (because it’s great) now. Another (shorter) entry tomorrow hopefully. Ja.

Kaja