( Mood crash. )

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The weekend has been really relaxing. ^^ I think it helps that I've been starting my weekends on Friday nights instead of halfway through Saturday after the cleaning. Finally saw The Long Kiss Goodnight (which was AWESOME by the way) and thought thinky thoughts about AtM on Saturday morning.

I think it's actually time I set AtM aside and worked on stuff that actually... y'know... has a point. The characters are still my babies, obviously, but I feel like they need to have more to them, or something. Might be a 'verse morph, might be a shift in focus, but something's niggling and unsatisfactory at the moment and until I'm sure what it is, there's really nothing for it but to let the whole thing stew. I think it's to do with pacing. The whole thing is too slow. I need more subplots. *rattles her character bag* C'mon, guys; if that's not asking for trouble, I don't know what is.

In the meantime, I'll catch up on my novel reading and cram on research material for Conductor, which has been popping up in my head reasonably frequently of late. I saw folk on the bus platform on Saturday who looked exactly like Owen and Yuuri, I swear. It was weird as hell. XD

Shopped for fabric with Rage and Xanthe today; didn't find what we were after, but found a few half-options, I guess. Will be hunting further in the coming weeks.

Anyway, have just been informed that Darrin's mum is coming to Brisbane in a few weeks, so I have to go over here and hyperventilate a little bit and then go to bed because goddamn I am beat.

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Just tired. It's been a busy few days, and I've been ready to sleep since lunchtime. Lots of stuff is being sorted, but lots of stuff has been hitting the fan, too. My schedule is full of ultimate fail.

Tomorrow night I'm going bowling with Wyrren and Tree. \o/ Should be fun. <3

And now, bed.

x-posted from http://cheloya.dreamwidth.org/464407.html || comments

Well, I didn't so much break it as discover it was broken. I cannot actually have broken it. But, um. It's the build system. For the whole of docs. And, uh. I SWEAR I DIDN'T TOUCH ANYTHING I WASN'T MEANT TO TOUCH. orz

We went for lunch at Govinda's today. Vegan food is goddamn delicious, especially on a Monday, and especially for $10 all-you-can-eat. (And they mean it. Because I cannot get more than halfway through the first plate on a good day. And then there are the kofti. Mmm, kofti.) We got rained on en route, but that's okay.

My right arm/shoulder is really quite sore today, but my throat is pretty good, so that's all right. I think it's just my neck that's causing the hand/arm problem.

This is kind of awesome. Cats are special.

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Throat actually looks relatively normal today! Is less painful! Slept like a dream! Well, I did wake up and take painkillers but I'm pretty sure I woke up because of the rain, not because I was hurting. :D

And speaking of rain: RAIN! :D It is exciting by itself.

I have to go figure out what I can do with myself today. I could stand to put some study time in, I think, and to make sure mod_cluster is still on-target, but I suspect I will devote the day to drawing and video games instead.

x-posted from http://cheloya.dreamwidth.org/463897.html || comments

Throat doesn't feel any better today, but I think it looks a little less angry, which is a relief. (What is not a relief is that Darrin had a headache when he left, so I hope he isn't coming down with this. *frets*)

Spent last night fiddling with trigonometry and chatting; most of today was spent on Assassin's Creed II. I've just gotten to the end of Memory Sequence 11, so... now I need to go find all the codex pages I'm missing. XD I have 16/30. (I follow the story first, and my OCD second, okay?)

James spent most of this morning wandering in, making fun of my button mashing, and wandering out again. I probably wouldn't be annoyed by this except that he made several value judgements based on Darrin being male and an XBox owner in the process; I freely admit that I'm not great at video games, but it's not because I'm female or because I own a PS3. Daft little fucker.

Fiddled about in Photoshop this afternoon. ( Tah-dah~! )

Trying to work out what to do with my evening. I don't really feel like writing, but I sort of feel that I should. Will probably watch the rest of Being Human and finish reading the Sherlock Holmes stories. (Yes, at last!) Then I can get back to New Amsterdam. :D

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Throat looks vaguely like I took a hot poker to it. Pills are starting to fuck with my stomach. I would like to stop feeling like shit now.

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Ow, ow, ow, motherfucker; or, When my painkillers wear off, they really wear off.

Had my meeting this morning, arrived at work later than I wanted to because getting dressed without moving your neck is a pain, and having to eat breakfast before you take painkillers is not fun at all.

Worked until lunchtime. Then decided that if I had to walk into the mall three more times that day I was going to die, so walked to my bus stop instead and spent the afternoon working from home. Got a decent number of release notes written up for EWS, but not as many as I was hoping. Not due out for a few weeks, anyway.

Neck continues to ache like fuck. Throat kind of just feels like it has carpet burn. Is very raw, but only really painful when I swallow. The swollen lymph node is pretty much a golfball-sized knot in my jaw, so everything to do with moving my jaw hurts like a bitch. It's a bit like the post-wisdom tooth ache, actually - which just makes me long for the painkillers they gave me to deal with that. Mmm, fake codeine. Anyway, because lymph nodes are crowding everything in such a prime location, I have also been having delightful twinges all down my arms and into my hands all day.

Upright for a brief period of time to eat toast so I can take more paracetamol, so I can eat dinner when it arrives, so I can take my antibiotic for the damn lymph nodes. Somehow I doubt tomorrow is a go; I am exhausted just from holding my head upright.

Would like to pretend I can do something useful this evening, but no, probably not. Have been harbouring a vague desire to watch Being Human, but I will probably need to save that for tomorrow if I'm not feeling grand.

Coughing, sneezing, and yawning are all things I should not do. Remind me.

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Last night I dreamt about:
- Amanda Palmer staying with us at the Ashgrove house while she acquainted herself with a new double bass
- shopping in the massive dream!shopping centre that I've dreamed about before (the one with David Jones) and Wyrr found an impossible-to-find favourite chocolate
- being rejected in my attempt to assist a person with a broken leg, and being told I'd done all I could by my old art teacher

The Ashgrove house never has a deck when I dream about it; it's always half-built at best. Amanda was playing double bass on the barely-in-place planking and asking whether I knew how double basses were tuned. I have no fucking idea how double basses are tuned and now I have to find out on the off chance that I am ever asked this question.

(Ooh, are they really tuned in fourths?)

Everyone was wrong in the dream anyway because it was essentially violin tuning octaves below for the first three strings... and then a violin's E. Er.

But yes. Really detailed dreams, the 'plot points' of which were pulled from random bits of conversation at the housewarming. Usually my dreams are faintly foggy or have a sort of light swirl filter over the top that makes them a little unreal - these were just incredibly detailed. Or the Amanda Palmer dream was, anyway. XD If I had to pick one of them, that'd have been it!

Today:
- clean bathroom
- vacuum
- pack things in hall into boxes cancelled on account of sudden shelving advice
- look at Transactions documentation and see how community books can be combined reliably every version (NB. Branding? ODT-->PDF atm.); get a TOC together
- read more Heart's Blood
- write

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Was held against my will and forced to watch Romancing the Stone this morning, which is all I deserved, having held Darrin against his will and forced him to buy a container with which he could cook. (When the answer to, "Could you cook pasta if you wanted to?" is "Er...", it is time to take drastic measures, okay?) In this case, the drastic measures were the siren lure of pancakes, and the movie was actually kind of excellent. Yes, I am a dork. You knew this.

Headed to Maddie's new place to warm it, though it was plenty warm already, and met Blake, who is lovely. I am very relieved to find her surrounded by people who think she is amazing. ^^

Kind of want a cuddle right now, but that is because I get upset when other people lose or are in danger of losing their cats. Utmost empathy for Gneil and Miss Olga and everyone else loved by Zoe right now. Have lost far too many cats, and it only takes one.

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Today was good. Didn't get a lot of material work done, but did solve all the problems I had, and dealt with two of the small niggly issues that were driving me nuts. Also discovered an unfortunately large bramble in terms of getting my next project out on time, but there you are.

Took Tom and Darrin to Java Coast for lunch with Rage today, too. :) They talked WoW. Or ex-WoW, I guess. XD It was entertaining. I just made rather a mess of my steak sandwich. I am such a lady.

Really, really tired right now. |D; Time for bed before I collapse. Will be offline for most of the weekend, so SMS is the way to go if you need me.

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Pretty sure I spent my whole day on todo lists, plans and schedules, except for a lunch break and a Mario Kart break. My brain is ready to do some actual work now. Except by 'actual work' I mean 'reading and possibly video games'.

It's very still tonight. Not quite uncomfortably warm, so I'm going to leave the air con off for the time being. Gotta finish Three Hearts and Three Lions, and then start Heart's Blood so that alleyne doesn't try to kill me tomorrow. >_>; Then, possibly, AC2. Because I am at the beginning of an assassin's tomb and I would like to find out who this one is.

Also I would like for mosquitos to quit biting my feet. *shakes fist*

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Dreamed I was Harry Potter collecting magical crickets from a pond with Professor Slughorn, followed by ninja-stalking through Voldemort's large and suspiciously mediterranean house. I think I was someone else, somewhere else, earlier in the dream, but that's gone now. There was a massive shrieking eel-style water worm in the pond, which at first was terrifying and then just looked (and giggled) like something from The Muppets. Voldemort as Oscar the Grouch? IDK.

x-posted from http://cheloya.dreamwidth.org/461750.html || comments

Really tired today for unknown reasons - actually, probably because I didn't wear my glasses this afternoon, so my eyes are getting ready to pack it in. My mind is still pretty awake. (Chyeah, what else is new?) Spent most of the day in meetings, and the rest of it getting annoyed at how my todo list never gets any shorter. Oh well. The minute you finish all your work is the minute you can be fired, I guess. (PROTIP: I will never be fired.)

Going to do some writing tonight, and try to finish Three Hearts and Three Lions. I'm bored of it and I don't care about any of the characters, but I think it's important to finish, since it's different? Something like that, anyway.

Mood is really suspiciously good, and has been for about three weeks. I think I know who to blame for this, but that makes me feel kind of retardedly clingy, so, uh. Yes. Anyway, three weeks is about as long as it's been able to hold out over the past few years, so statistically something has to cause a moodcrash soon, but I remain hopeful that moodcrashiness can just generally bugger off.

(tbh, it is probably because I have been too distracted to be properly guilty about not doing things. But that is another story.)

Anyway. Off to do chores and sing to Tori Amos; will return to write to Tori Amos later. Because apparently tonight is Tori Amos night.

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Today was a Monday. I'm sure part of it was frustrating or something, but I can't remember anything of the sort right now. Mum has been grumpy all evening, but that is her problem up until she makes it mine.

Bed time. ♥ Night, world.

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So AFP and Gneil are getting married and I probably shouldn't care this much but I totally do. X3 Eeeee. That is one celebrity relationship I can see working wonderfully forever. Kind of irrationally happy for them both.

We got out of the off-site meeting a little early yesterday, so Darrin and I went to grab something to eat and then caught the first half of Batman. The original. With C is for Catwoman. :') It was awesome. Came home, played Rock Band, utterly failed to sleep, and headed off to the book fair today~! Books purchased:

- Battle Axe by Sara Douglass
- Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, v1-3
- Five Plays by Anton Chekhov
- Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
- The Father Brown Stories by G K Chesterton
- The Thousand and One Nights, trans. E W Lane
- The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas
- Folklore and Fable, a compilation of Aesop, Grimm and Andersen
- English Critical Essays from C16-18, ed. Edmund D Jones
- The Approach to Latin Writing by Paterson & MacNaughton
- The Birthday of the World by Ursula Le Guin
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Played a little more Assassin's Creed II with Darrin this afternoon, and now I'm just about ready to go to sleep again. Should put these books in some kind of order before I do, though, or I am going to be sorry later.

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Now that I am not being distracted by work and decidedly-not-work, my ovaries kind of really fucking hurt ow.

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Had a dream last night that I was discovered by the publishing equivalent of Miranda Priestly, played by some strange and wonderful mishmash of Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep. I was trying to choose between four short stories for a publication I'd never heard of and trying not to admit that I knew precisely buggerall about whatever she was talking about regarding the submissions.

I believe her sullen assistant was played by Neil Patrick Harris, and he was very sullen.

She was operating out of Dad's old house at Ashgrove, and apparently couldn't stand insects, so instead of selecting a story I spent the dream chasing a fly and a mosquito out of the room.

I only got to look at the first three short stories because she whacked the fourth down on her desk and then got distracted by the fly, but they looked to be about twenty to thirty pages each, and none of them were anything I recognised - which is obvious enough, since I've never managed to write more than three short stories of any quality ever.

Perhaps this is a good sign. XD

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My stomach was actually really good today! A little iffy in the morning, but it cleared up quite nicely by the time I went home.

So naturally when mum brought home coke from McDonald's, I had totally forgotten about the no-caffeine rule and got halfway through my postmix before I remembered. |D; FAIL.

Still, it was delicious. Tipping the rest of it down the sink probably shouldn't have been as difficult as it was.

Today was still not very productive because I kept getting distracted by eight million other things, and tomorrow is going to be worse because I have to sit in on an interview and read up on stuff for the meetings on Thursday and Friday. So, y'know. Totally writing off the rest of the week. Sigh.

Anyway, I was basically sent home to do home and writey things tonight, so I am going to go do some writey things - specifically with AtM - and then read a little more of the book David lent me. It is very interesting and from about the same era as Lord of the Rings, but from an engineer's perspective - so very interesting for a fantasy novel.

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I have not had tea for 39 hours. I am just saying. ...no, in all honesty, I'm not going too badly. XD Today was tolerable, as Mondays go, and my stomach, while still acidic, was better than it has been. I got a decent amount of work done, but there was some screw-up in the scheduling program which meant that my changes of the morning didn't go through, which was mildly frustrating. Only got through two chapters of the Admin and Config Guide, but that's about 50% now, which is good. Need to find out the best person to tech review the thing at tomorrow's meeting though.

New record in busfail this evening. |D; We will simply pretend that was intentional.

Going to bed. As soon as I put the sheets back on, anyway.

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