My Wacky Life

Got some motivation, and have been doing my Wii Fit. As of yesterday it was two weeks, and though I didn't meet my goal, I'm not upset by it. I think I'm past caring whether I loose weight or not, since I do feel like I'm building muscle tone. Getting rid of the flab is the goal, really.

Yesterday, I mopped the kitchen floor, vacuumed the house, and did a fair bit of time on the Fit, so I slept through the night for the first time in ages. Hooray! I really need to sleep tonight as well, so I did 50 minutes in the hopes that it would tire me out enough. Tomorrow, I take a citizenship test which I need to pass to get my next (unlimited stay) visa. Having read the book they wrote for people to study with and made a few flashcards with numbers such as population and key dates, I think I'm ready. Most of it seems to be pretty easy: history and government stuff which I already knew. I guess it helps that I'm a total history buff.

Been practicing my music, and had a really wierd dream last night that I showed up at the first rehearsal only for Liz to tell me that they had cast me as Iolanthe. I was rather incredulous and kept asking her if she was sure (since I've never been cast as anything with a singing part) and then we started rehearsing the show on a stage. Rather wierd, since I knew in the dream we were supposed to be doing Patience, we never rehearse on stage until the day before, and the casting isn't done until a few weeks into rehearsal. Adrian also has been playing music - on his clarinet. He picked it up when we went to Alton, and despite the fact that he hasn't played it for 11 years, is still very good at it, or at least remembers more than I think I would after that long.

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: calm

Did my Wii fit again today. There's a test you do at the beginning which gives you your BMI and weight - when I did it, it told me I had lost three pounds. Go figure. So now I'm back to the weight I was at, and have a week to loose the two pounds I made as my goal! I've upped my time, and was hoping to give 45-60 minutes today, but didn't have enough time in the end, and only got 41 min done. Still, that's good for me, and tomorrow I'll just have to start earlier, although we're not going anywhere so I shouldn't be too pressed for time. I'm well pleased.

D&D was tonight, and we bought horses. We had lost ours trying to get out of Startin away from the paladins, and so we had to get new ones. All kinds of adventures happened with Talia trying to get Essault in trouble by convincing him to use Amari's horse when we borrowed some to ride to the nearest village to buy our own, and Essault running back to the village next day with some scheme in mind which didn't quite come to fruitition. Much roleplay was had, much laughter and unlocking of doors happened, and it was a very good game.

I'm hoping to sleep all night. Last night, I went to bed at midnight and woke at 3:30, and was up for a few hours. So it's back to 12:30 and maybe I'll sleep for a bit longer. We'll see. My first challenge tonight is to get to sleep. I'm a little happy about the weight loss, the good game, and the fact that we're going to Cornwall on Tuesday. *bounce*

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: cheerful

( Exercise, day 2 )

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: tired

I don't follow football (soccer to my fellow countrymen) all that much. But my husband is a big Manchester United fan, so I hear the names of their players and who's good and all. My homepage happens to collect headlines from several places (mostly Reuters and Sky) and one caught my eye just now.

Real Madrid has offered to buy Renaldo (one of Manchester United's best players) for £80 MILLION. Yes, you read right. Eighty million pounds. That's just disgusting. I mean, who throws that kind of money around? Can I have just one eightyth of it please? Just the thought of a team paying that much for any one person to come and play for them makes me cringe.

In other news, I have finally gotten off my backside and started on the Wii Fit again. You'd think for what I paid for it, I'd use it more. I find it far to easy to blame ill health and fatigue on not doing my exercises, or just procrastinate. But I managed to get 25 good minutes in (Fit time, not normal time) and hope to do the same if not more tomorrow. I'll need all the enouragement I can get!

Current Location: BS32 0EX
Current Mood: accomplished

Last week, I dragged myself out of the safety of the house for two nights in a row. Wednesday, Adrian and I and a few members of BGSOS went to see Iolanthe, done by the Bath Gilbert and Sullivan group. I'd never heard of them before, but they've been around for a number of years based on the fact that they last did Iolanthe nine years ago, and they are very good. Their men's chorus is more numerous and better than ours, and the women's, while probably not quite as strong, is also good. The only problem they have is that the people who had lead roles in the show aren't very strong singers, and catching the words was often a struggle. Still, we really enjoyed the show, and I think it's the best I've seen since I saw it professionally done in Guildford back in my student days. Iolanthe is probably my favourite G&S, so it's nice to see it done well.

Thursday night, Adrian and I went out to dinner at Cosmo in town with a bunch of people from his work. I didn't really know any of them well, but everyone was friendly, and we had a very nice dinner. The food was decent, but I'm not really sure why the restaurant is quite so popular as it is. They don't let you pay (or in consequence go to your table) until your whole party is there - rather tough when you have a party of 20 - and you can't order drinks until you are at your table. It's supposed to be all you can eat (well, it is) but the choice I found to be somewhat limited. The desserts were to die for, and they had a chocolate fountain, which somewhat made up for the lack of choice, but I would go to La Tasca over it any day. I suppose there was more choice than I give them credit for - lots of sushi and things I would never touch with a barge pole, but it was definitely for the specialised palate. And the alcohol was a fortune. *nods* Those prices remind me why I don't often go into Bristol to drink.

( And something about sleep )

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: tired

This morning, after not getting to sleep until after three, I got a call at 8:45. Luckily, I was just about awake. It was an engineer from the tech guys (who have been taking care of fixing my PC) who told me he would be around in the next 15 to 45 min. Oh, I said, today? Yes, see you soon he said, so I rushed around and got ready and he came about ten past nine.

He put in a new graphics card (the second replacement) and a new power supply (also the second replacement) and tested everything and sat with me a few minutes after the computer had all booted up to make sure it was running all right, and then left. Now, at ten to 5 in the evening, it's still running well. Huzzah! So my PC has had, in the past two weeks, a replace motherboard and two each of a PSU and graphics card. All for free. God bless warranties.

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: happy

I'm job hunting in a rather serious way, and have membership with several sites which send me possible jobs by email so I can decide whether I want to apply for them or not. Yesterday, I get an email from this is Bristol jobs, advertising an administrator/admin assistant. Wonderful, I thought, that's just up my alley. So I click on the link to go apply, and find that its not entirely what it seems.

"Learn the European Computer Driving License today and increase your prospects for work in administration!" (or something along those lines...) In other words, an advertisement for a class I should take (according to them) to improve my chances of getting a job in admin. Now, I've had a lot of interviews and worked a fair bit in admin, and no one has ever once asked me if I have the ECDL qualification, has told me I'm not good enough because I don't have it, or anything like that. I've heard it talked about in circles that involve people who deal with computer support and things like that, but not admin. Not to mention the fact that I'm already very comfortable with computers, understanding more than most of my colleagues.

... hmmm. Maybe they should be the ones taking it. Still, posing that as a job on a website? Highly dubious.

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: contemplative

And the saga continues. A third engineer came this morning to replace the power supply and motherboard, based on the hypothesis that the power supply shorted out the motherboard, so both were bad. He took the computer apart, put a new motherboard in, put the power supply in, tested it thouroughly along the way, and... you guessed it. The computer, once put all together again, didn't work. I was about ready to throw in the towel, but he said that something else was to blame and started taking parts out one at a time, starting with the graphics card. Upon removal of said card, the computer worked again. Yes, that's the card which was replaced last week. He figures the card was shorted out by... I think it was the motherboard, or possibly a second faulty power supply. At any rate, that now needs to be replaced again, and since he can't be sure it was the motherboard or power supply that was to blame, he's ordering a new CPU to be put in as well, just in case that was to blame. And possibly different memory - I can't remember. Oi vey. In the meantime, I'm actually using my computer! Just with onboard graphics, which isn't nearly as good as my top of the line card, but actually pretty decent. I don't know what it will think of LOTRO, and I shudder to see WoW, but at least I have my PC back. It's fast, it has my bookmarks and email and everything all set up, and all that.

In other news, I didn't sleep hardly at all last night. I went to bed about midnight, tossed and turned for four hours, got up and had a snack (try sleeping when your stomach is growling), went back to bed 20 minutes later, and still had trouble getting to sleep. I think there's something wrong with me. As soon as the sun came up, I was out like a light. I have no trouble sleeping during the day (indeed, often can't keep my eyes open), when the sun is supposed to keep you awake, but at night when a lack of sunlight sends melatonin throughout your body to put you to sleep, I can't shut my eyes. Ah yes. Me, the medical enigma.

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: exhausted

I've been feeling kind of blah recently. Not really sure why, since it doesn't feel like depression - more just like apathy and extreme exhaustion. Not really sure why, but that's pretty typical.

The last week or so has seen some serious ups and downs in my little life. Victory over Virgin Media, who have given me a three month free upgrade on my TV and broadband because of a mistake they made. Defeat over my PC, which first crashed the graphics card. I got it replaced, and 10 minutes after the engineer left my house, the power supply gave out. Two days later, another engineer came to replace the power supply, and decided that it had shorted out the motherboard, because nothing was working even after a new one was put in. So now a motherboard and new power supply are on order. I'm currently using the laptop, which isn't half as good as my machine for gaming, and really miss it. Stil, at least I have net access.

Been sleeping a lot, but only one night of real insomnia, which is good at least. Just really tired all the time, so I haven't been doing a heck of a lot. There's little on the job front, but I keep looking. Really getting anxious now, since I need to pay for my visa come August.

Ah well, life goes on. My life is dull right now, but at least it's not exciting in a bad way.

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: blank

Yesterday, my PC decided to die. I went to turn on Lord of the Rings Online, and it just crashed. Adrian had a look, but couldn't find anything that he would know how to fix, so we called the guys down at PC world. Thank God I had kept the extended warranty going. I got talked through restoring it to the last useable setting, and went on my merry way. Except it happened again, and this time I couldn't restore it. So I called them again, and spent at least 20 min on the phone this time with a really nice bloke who took me through every tool he could think of, short of ripping out the graphics card, to fix what was obviously some kind of graphics glitch. I mean, the screen was just a set of lines. I learned a lot about fixing computers, but in the end we decided that it must be the hardware - this after ripping out the drivers in safe mode and forcing the computer to reload them - and the guy arranged for an engineer to attend. The engineers don't work weekends, and I guess Monday was already fully booked, so he's coming Tuesday. Until then, I'm using the laptop. Thank goodness we have it. I think I would go mad without a computer to at least play on a little bit.

In other news... well, there's not much going on. I'm fighting something, be it the cold Adrian had last week, or maybe just allergies. Even the cat seems to be showing the effects of something, with his mews sounding more like a frog croaking than a cat mewing. I think he's been out in the wet too much. The jobs seem to have dried up again, so I'm doing less in the way of filling out application forms and more in the way of searching for things I haven't already applied for. Not to mention sleeping, reading, and watching TV. I'm reading LOTR again, as a result of starting the online game. Nearly through the first volume. Heh, I'm such a bookworm.

I could ramble on a lot more, but since it's all meaningless, I really can't be bothered. Maybe soon I'll have something real to post about.

From now on, this is posted to Dreamwidth and cross posted to LJ. I should really have put that in my last post, but oh well.

Current Location: bs32 0ex
Current Mood: blah

It seems that I keep getting delayed in using my new journal. I had originally waited until it was in beta, merely because I didn't want to be turned off by a program that wasn't at its best. Then I got tendinitis, and couldn't do much typing at all. Now, however, that is all past, and I plan to see what all the excitement is about.

I've always kept a journal of some kind. When I was little, it was mostly an account of what I'd done that day - if I could be bothered to write in it. As I grew up, it became a way to make sense of the world, of the philosophies I'd learned, and to help me remember the important times in my life. I kept a special journal when I went to Russia for two weeks, recording everything from the food I ate to how much I spent on each souvenir to what I saw in each village. All my journals were on paper, until I discovered livejournal in 2003 and proceeded to move my thoughts to the computer. I liked it, because if I wanted, I could allow people to read about my life, and they could make comments. I've always written my journals as if I was the next Anne Frank, expecting them to be published after I was dead and gone. Here's something even better - published in my lifetime for my friends!

And now comes Dreamwidth. I'm not sure what prompted me to sign up, but I have. I'll still keep my lj account, since as far as I know it's got archiving that Dreamwidth doesn't, not to mention the fact that my husband only reads lj.

But enough rambling. If anyone has dreamwith, please let me know so I can add you to my circle (well, if you want me to add you anyway). If anyone knows of a client for posting to dreamwidth, I'd love to know of it, although this early in the software's life, I doubt there is. I'm not as html proficient as I'd like to be, and clients help me post fancy things. More shall be heard of me anon, when I manage to get over this cold. Always something!

Current Location: BS32 0EX
Current Mood: achey

Happy Birthday spammerchant!!!!

I've cancelled my interview for this evening. After checking where the place is, and checking maps, I've decided it's miles and miles from the train station, not on any good bus routes, and impossible for me to get to. Why is it this country puts so much emphasis on public transport, and then half the places in it are impossible to get to using it? Really fucking annoying, pardon my language. So I'm back to square one, but I did apply for about 10 jobs yesterday, and am still waiting to hear back on the interview from what, 2 weeks ago now, so we'll see. Not that I have much hope about the latter, but at least the fact that I'm getting interviews is a step in the right direction.

It's hot out today. There's a lovely cool breeze blowing though, so the inside is nice. I've promised Adrian I'll go see him during his lunch today, since he went up on his bike, and so I'll be heading up in a bit for that. Then the doctors, to see if I'm staying on the happy pills, and then home to relax and look forward to the Gathering tomorrow. Can't wait!

Current Mood: tired

Yesterday was probably one of the worse days I've had in a long while. I had to go into town to register with two different agencies - or two different brances of the same, I've yet to figure out which - and it didn't turn out well. I managed to get in fine, for once enjoying the ride down to the station and then the train ride in. Once I was in town, I had a map to take me to where I wanted to go, but only a vague idea of where it was. I don't get into town often, and don't know my way around the city centre very well at all. So I got lost. In the end, I found someone who could direct me to Queen's square, near my interview, and I made it only a few minutes late.

( The First Place )

( And Searching )

I had thought to wait till Adrian got off work and call him to see if he'd come to town and get me, but after consideration I decided that just wouldn't work, so I limped my way back to the station. It took quite awhile, and I had no idea where I was or how I had managed to find a different route back, but it was well signposted and I didn't get lost this time. I got to sit down to wait for a train, but the train was rather full, so I stood on the way back to Parkway. Thankfully, it's a short train ride. I called Adrian when I got back, since I had expected to be back by 5 at the latest and here it was time for him to be getting home and I wouldn't be there and I didn't want him to worry. He, bless his soul, came and picked me up. So finally I was able to take my shoes off and I think it's going to be awhile, if ever, before I wear them again.

It turns out I only have one blister, but it's big and puffy and at least an inch across after my shower this morning.

My one consolement is my corset. I don't have a mirror big enough to see it all and the rest of me, but Adrian assures me it looks awesome, and I shall wear it to the wedding reception we're going to tonight. However, know I know why Victorian women always look so very upright in their pictures. If steel bones are anything like whalebones, you can't really bend at all.

Current Mood: drained

So much for security... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6936533.stm

Current Mood: amused