Now I've seen all of Torchwood, Children of Earth, and it's excellent, very good science fiction.

( Spoilers, lots of. I do thinky stuff. )

I think Alfred got all the best lines.

Either God is sifting icing sugar (or maybe the Devil is snorting cocaine) or it's snowing outside. Just ever so slightly - enough to dust everything in white. I don't think there will be anymore though - the clouds are too high up.

I'm in bed - tried to get to sleep, but I'm not tired (probably due to nanna nap this afternoon). I'd really rather be knitting but my shoulder hurts so I know it's time to rest it. Am knitting baby clothes as a couple of women at work are pregnant. YAY LOVE KNITTING - and baby clothes are quick, which is always good.

Minx is being a toad as usual.

Got my application for a job as a probation officer submitted the other day - go me. My manager liked my application and CV and so did the other people I showed it to, so here's hoping. My manager says I should at the very least get an interview, but I'm trying to be realistic and not get my hopes up beyond that - the job market is tough and there are two people on temporary contracts already working as probation officers who have the specific experience I lack and yeah. But it's hard, because I get quite excited at the thought of doing the job.

Time to surf the net a bit before trying to get some sleep.

You know, between the swine flu, the earthquakes and now snow . . . it's a wonder NZ is still standing.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

I made one.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103764&id=621185807&l=93faebc7be

I hope Leo likes it :D

1. Up too early (after going to bed too late) because my throat hurts.

2. Also, mind was going crazy with the things I could be doing rather than laying in bed not sleeping. Like making clothes for Pennsic.

3. Speaking of clothes for Pennsic, I made two apron dresses (no straps yet, trying to decide if it's crack induced to try to make two sets of tablet woven straps prior to Pennsic), complete with designs of awesomeness thanks to the assistance of Svava. I can not WAIT to wear these. Oh, yeah, I do have quite a bit of embroidery to do first.

4. Also thanks to the assistance of Svava, I have been trying out a gluten-free diet to see if my crazy symptoms go away. So far, I haven't noticed a change, but what I have noticed is that gluten can be in the weirdest places (like brats the future in-laws brought from a meatshop in NJ), and there's a (small) gluten-free section at our local crappy Stop & Shop. I may have gone slightly mad in the gluten-free section, I bought crackers, bread mix (which isn't dairy free, so Svava can't have it), and pasta. If nothing else, it's a neat, eye-opening experience.

5. Pennsic is in a week. AHHHH!

6. Mike's parents are here for the weekend, which puts a slight hitch in my Pennsic prep. Like, right now, I wouldn't normally think for a second about using the sewing machine, since Mike sleeps through most anything, but I'm sure it would wake them up. And I feel badly using it when we're all sitting around watching tv, since it's so loud. I'm trying my best to work around them, and I was able to get a bit done last night, and I also like them a lot, so it's not all bad.

7. I don't think I have anything else. I've been less lonely, largely due to the combination of camp keeping me busy, weekly visits to Svava's for craftiness, and events the last two weekends (and Pennsic right around the corner!). I'm going to quietly rip some seams now.

Meeeeeeeeeeme! Nicked from the lovely pontisbright 

• Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.• NO CAPTIONS!!! It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.
• They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.
• You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.
( cut for photos )

hiding in my broken little car
stealing wireless and the battery's all but gone
cold and lonely lately
but mostly upset by the false beginnings,
my car nearing the end,
and losing the visions that i had for this time.
i feel kinda rude for not being able to keep up with people
or get back to them
but i have lack of money, credit, sleep and energy for the time being.
so i hope they'll forgive me for just trying to get by.
for one with such calm ness, it's surprising i haven't felt the quiet
open, emptiness.. for such a while.
its not really worth investing in what i thought was going to happen
because the dates and deadlines are conspiring for something i haven't even thought of,
it seems!
get your shit together, universe!

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Supernatural

Boy Falling Out of the Sky by wordsothewitch (Sam/Dean Sam/OMC) INSTANT REC!!! This story blew me away, I LOVED the character voices, the plot, the build up and I loved the way the story ends. Truly wonderful storytelling.

lovely! @DirtyUrine: "what 'bout a 'lil live Yellow Ledbetter???"

favorite. --> Counting Crows – Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)

And I'm trying to believe
In things that I don't know
The turning of the world
The color of your soul

I've been in a poetic mood all day - I was thinking as I cringed at the giant blister on the side of one of my toes about this lyric - that the color of my soul is purple. A rich and warm color, of royalty and bruises, a mix of warm and cool.

Last night and this morning I finished the initial edits on my wedding photos from last month, and after my morning editing I took a glorious shower with borrowed honey shampoo and made scrambled eggs from free range chickens that were orange instead of a sickly yellow color. The eggs were lovely. My hostess explained to me the bussing system to get downtown, so I hopped a bus and got off beside a Shopper's Drug Mart when I realized I had no hand cream and my hands were dry and crackly... After that I stopped at Chapters, chiefly to find their washroom, and ended up capturing a photograph that I couldn't have planned out, but that perfectly matches another photo I took previously.

I proceeded to shop in Downtown Victoria, take in the waterfront and two of the other local attractions, and generally wander about enjoying myself with camera in hand and life on autopilot.

Physical things I ended up with:

• blisters
• hundreds of photographs
• a tiny shell that has huge oceanic-sound magnification skillz
• a box-less crank music box that plays the Pink Panther theme song. Best thing ever.
• A unique and perfect Christmas gift for a friend
• An original Lego figure Spider-Man from a geek store (because it caught my eye, it's rare, and was just too cool to leave there)

Today also marked my first time in a red telephone booth. So special! I wish you could have seen my face when I rounded the corner and saw it, literally sitting there in a shaft of light. I totally should have called someone from it but I didn't think about it at the time. Totally took lots of nifty pics of it and a couple of self-portraits and wished vehemently I hadn't been travelling alone because it was so cool and I was SO bubbly about it and my great mood was wasted on silent walls and strangers who were not amused.

The two local attractions I saw today were the Bug Zoo and Miniature World. At the former I actually took several stunning photographs of nifty bugs (especially leaf bugs) that made me very happy, though I didn't get to hold any cool living things because the place was stuffed to the gills with kids and I had to give them all dibs. Miniature World was way cooler - some of the dioramas were impossibly detailed and I know I could go through there 2-3 more times and not be bored as long as I kept picking different focus points. Worth seeing, would see again with friends to make them better.

There were tons of performers on the docks - several human statues, a juggler, a man playing romantic music on a piano (it captured me and I sat down and listened for awhile - he played with heart), banjo players, harmonica players, and more. Vibrant and interesting. Lots of market-type shops, caricaturists, and nifty food. I intended to buy lemonade from a stand shaped like a lemon, but after a brief conversation with the lady in front of us, who was in a great mood, she bought my lemonade for me, and I was so surprised and pleased. Then I caved and bought myself a belgian waffle from the vendor there, too - it had carmel and sugar embedded in it. So crunchy and sweet and good.

I totally loved Fisherman's Wharf and the harbour in general - actually got out in the tiny little ferry boats on the way to and from the Empress Hotel pier. It was a wonderful time. The man driving the ferry had camera lust for my D300 and opened a window so I could shoot unfettered by plexiglass.

As is my wont, I went further than the average tourist at Fisherman's Wharf and actually walked out to where the boats were used and smelled like fish. There was a ship called the Enterprise. Betcha that was for geek cred. And there were lots of great things to photograph, a tire covered in seaweed and junk on the actually used ships...

I have a bunch of closeup photos of the seals that hung out by the docks to get fed fish by tourists. Big, fat, lazy seals who lay on their backs in the water several feet away from me. That was a pretty cool thing to see and beats only whale watching from afar and was totally free.

After the seals at Fisherman's Wharf I headed back to downtown for more not-exactly-aimless wandering. I entered every store I thought looked cool and every toy store I saw. It was great.

There was a Christmas store downtown (only in a tourist town, eh?), so I took the opportunity for having Christmas in July. My goodness. Some of you may know that I collect nutcrackers? Well, if you're at all familiar with Nutcracker collecting, you'll know that there's one very famous German company called Steinbach who makes the coolest Nutcracker characters ever, most of which are limited edition... Well this store had HUNDREDS of them, the really super expensive ones ($300+) too. There was an Amelia Earhart nutcracker, a Jester nutcracker, a Moses with the tablets nutcracker, and the one I wished so hard I could have - the Queen of Hearts from Alice. I wanted her so badly, but I didn't buy anything there. All the things I really wanted were over my entire monthly budget, sadly. Someday, someday.

I got really tired towards the end of the afternoon and shops were starting to close. I got a toasted sandwich from a hole in the wall called the Sandwich Corner (recommended!) toured back down through Chinatown, went into the tiny little alleyway of shops and took a cool detail shot of a dead weed in a window ledge which sounds lame but was really quite pretty.

Took the bus to my hosts' place... Found out I have a terrible sunburn and iced it, then my host was good enough to walk over to Shoppers to pick up some aloe After-Sun lotion for me since I am the primary color of red all over my back and shoulders. It doesn't hurt much but I could rent myself out as a furnace. Took a walk after this with my hostess to a great little Chinese food place nearby and took an even longer walk afterwards talking and checking out the Victorian style houses in the richer area of town.

This part of the trip has had me in my element, enjoying good company and good sightseeing. Tomorrow I will be taking it much easier, as I rather wore myself out today with six solid hours of touring. I think tomorrow I will stick around here for my hosts' son's birthday party and shoot it for them, and then likely walk over to Government House Gardens, which is rather nearby. I will probably take Sunday morning to go see the other major park that everyone loves, and then I'm on my way home...

Today was a totally fantastic day of great awesomeness. No regrets. Except perhaps not thinking to wear sunscreen when out on water at noon.

Despite the fact that it was eight hundred degrees outside (and nine billion inside, fuck having no air conditioning ._. ) today was a good day.

I should probably give you something more than that, but I'm a lazy arsehole.


Someone make me popsicles. D:<

Let's talk about...

( HAAAARRY POTTER )

Huge thanks to kylecassidy and trillian_stars for HI-TECH-VIDEO-FONE chatting with me today and cheering me up! It was just what I needed to finish tying up loose ends with my media frenzy ambush today and settle into a relaxing evening!

Hello again, ladies and everybody...

I'm not on HBC, nor do I want to be, and I don't want to start taking antidepressants again, either. However, I really think I need some sort of extra help with PMS. When I got my period this cycle, the effects were just abysmal: crying, anger, mood swings, deep depression, etc. I have a feeling I was adversely affected in this regard by taking Plan B recently--I've been tracking my periods for about a year and a half, and I can't recall a cycle since then when my PMS symptoms have been quite this bad. Despite the added hormone woes, I do have a tendency towards pretty extreme pre-menstrual emotional (and physical--backaches and cramps like whoa) problems. I don't know how extreme they have to be to qualify as PMDD, but I would really like to not feel like an absolute madwoman every month. Any suggestions?

I've heard vitamin B supplements can help, but does one take them just around period time or every day?

reading the pages for deathly hallows on imdb is making me very, very happy. bill nighy as scrimgeour! ciaran hinds as aberforth! november 2010 for part 1, july 2011 for part 2, just like i wanted! also, the casting for young!dumbledore and young!grindelwald makes me think they're going to go for broke, re: the canonicity of that pairing. because those are two pretty dudes (although, aaaahhhh, why do we have another twilight actor? hp fandom has enough problems already).

death cab for cutie was really good last night. (i feel bad though, i was so tired i kept falling asleep during the new pornographers' set.) they played so many older songs, it made me very happy. they did "photobooth" and it was weird though, because it sounded different live; i didn't even realize what it was until i was automatically singing along and going "wait, i know these words!" they played quite a few songs from transatlanticism - even "the sound of settling". plus, obviously a lot of songs from "plans" because they are the best to sing along to. the first song of the encore was just ben, doing an acoustic version of "i will follow you into the dark" and uh, it may have made me burst into tears juuuuust a bit.

I feel numb inside right now and I noticed while I was talking on the phone with Randy that I'm speaking slower and more monotone than I usually do. He said my okays don't sound very enthusiastic. I remember the exact last time I felt this way.

Is it possible for men to get dry skin on their penis without having any kinds of infections, yeast or otherwise?

Complicated backstory: I thought I had a yeast infection for like 4 months. NOTHING was working but the pain during sex (with condoms b/c of the yeast) was just so bad and I was sure something was really wrong. So I go to the Dr finally and she tells me that it looks like BV instead. Great. So I went on antibiotic and it was cured and everything was fine. Sex got more easy, we started having condom-less sex because the infection was gone. However, the pain started coming back plus funky discharge about two weeks ago and, this morning, I noticed a patch of dry skin on his penis. Oh no! So I thought, shit, we're passing this back and forth. I know this is a very common sign of a yeast infection in a man... but then I thought, if I didn't have a yeast infection in the first place, how can that be it? Can men pick up a penile version of BV? He told me that he's noticed dry patches before and has for years (although I've never seen it and we've been sexually active for 3 years).

My first reaction is to just douse him in Monistat and/or yorgurt for a couple of days just in case... but is this something that can happen to men when being perfectly healthy? From jerking-off friction or something?