♥ Honey & Clover (see picture above) We just finished watching the second series of Honey & Clover and I absolutely loved it. The first series didn't end so much as just stop, leaving everything kind of drifting and unresolved (part of the subtle beauty of this series). I knew that the second series was going to tie things up somewhat, but I really didn't expect it to end how it did. The second series wasn't as funny as the first and is only half as long, but if you enjoyed the first series and care about the characters and want to find out what happens to them, then you must watch the second.

And if you haven't seen the first series but are at all into anime, you really should start watching it. Even if you think it's not the kind of anime you're into, give it a try. At first it'll seem a bit weird and you won't really be sure where it's going, but then you'll realise it's not really going anywhere, and that's the beauty of it. It's all about the confusion of youth and not really knowing what you want. I love it. Best animanga ever. Go on, start watching it now. (Oh yeah, it has a really weird opening credits, but don't let that put you off.)



♥ My new livejournal layout! made by the talented ghost_factory and featuring my favourite colour, brown.

♥ Ristorante Paradiso A really sweet 12 part anime series (though I've only watched seven episodes so far) about a 21 year old girl who gets a job working in a restaurant entirely staffed by middle aged men who all wear glasses XD She develops a crush on one of them in particular and begins to pursue him quite shamelessly, so if age differences squick you out then this isn't the anime for you, but the series is much more than that. Most of the episodes focus on one of the men in particular, explaining their backstory and/or exploring their personality, and it can be really touching and thoughtful. It's nice to see older characters in an anime for once, and characters that actually look their age too. And you can stream the entire series for free (legally!) over at Crunchyroll. Click here to see a trailer.

♥ Alan Rickman, specifically in this video:



♥ Kate Beaton (beatonna) A cartoonist who tends to focus on historical subjects. Here's one of her cartoons, with a very true observation of Shakespeare's talents:



Honourable mentions: not having toothache anymore ♥ my new haircut ♥ Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate ♥ Cadbury's chocolate sponge pudding ♥ knitting something that actually fits me and looks good (photos soon) ♥ The Beatles Anthology DVDs

I went to the dentist on Tuesday. Chris rang for me and found out that my dentist has two "emergency clinics" each day, one of which is at 2.30, which we found very amusing. We went to the earlier emergency clinic, however, which is at 11. We weren't in the waiting room long, and I didn't have to see the dentist for long either. Perhaps that was why she didn't charge me anything, which is nice of her; the receptionist had told Chris on the phone that I'd have to pay the standard £16.50 check-up fee. But as it was the dentist only had to glance at my tooth (or rather, gum, the tooth is barely poking through) to see it was infected, and she wrote me out a prescription and I was out again within two minutes.

We got the bus there and back which wasn't too bad. It took about half an hour and we felt travel sick on the the way but for some reason the way back didn't feel so bad. We decided not to rush back after the dentists and to take a look around the village to make it feel like more of an outing but there wasn't really much to see. We went to a cafe called Beans and had yummy luxury chocolate milkshakes and paninis. (We knew it'd be yummy because we used to go to another Beans in Olney on the way to Milton Keynes.) Then we went and looked at a pretty church before realising there really wasn't anything else to do in Higham Ferrrers so we got the bus home again.

I've been taking antibiotics for three days now and I'm feeling much better. Which is funny because yesterday I didn't feel any better. I'm just really really tired. The toothache was preventing me from sleeping well, and then when I started taking the antibiotics I seemed to get even more tired and I had a particularly useless day at work yesterday where I was really slow and took forever to do anything. On the plus side, I did arrive on time, due to not being in a deep enough sleep to have trouble waking up. But last night I got a lot of what felt like very good sleep so hopefully everything is getting better.

Sonia is going to be here in a minute; we're going to start watching Skip Beat! as we finished Honey & Clover II (♥) last week. I signed up for a premium membership at Crunchyroll which seems pretty good so far. I can use the PS3's online browswer to watch the HD videos on our big television, it saves me having to delete a load of stuff on my hard drive or buy an external one, and I'm glad to have a cheap way to watch things legally instead of paying the extortionate price of legal anime boxsets. And I am pretty excited to see they're going to be streaming a live concert of Hangry & Angry soon (Yossie ♥). My only doubt about Crunchyroll is that they don't seem have a huge amount of series that I want to watch, but hopefully they'll add more fairly regularly. Anyone else a member of Crunchyroll? What do you think of it?

I've filtered this post to be visible only to my favourite LJ people who don't already have paid accounts ♥ If you would like a coupon that'd let you buy a year's paid account for $15 instead of $25, let me know! I have eight to give away.

What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
I got married!

Did you keep your new years’ resolutions?
My resolutions were to:

• take (and post) more photographs & get to know my camera better. Not really. My camera broke halfway through the year and although I'd been trying to take photos regularly before that, I hadn't really learnt what the different settings on my camera were for.
  
• start a public blog & post in it fairly regularly. Yes! Page of Cups. Looking back at my resolutions, it seems I intended my public blog to be for my family and RL people to keep up with my general news, but I forgot about that and instead it's a place for me to post book reviews and knitting/crochet projects. Oh well, it's still a public blog!
  
• research Paganism further & do some more rituals with my mum and my sister. Yep. I read a few books and websites about it, incorporated some Pagan elements into my wedding, and we did a Samhein ritual again this year. I've now started thinking of myself as a Pagan.

( 2009 meme )

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
Your wedding should be exactly as you and your partner want it. Remember that a wedding is just a big party to celebrate getting married. People have their pre-conceived ideas about what a wedding should or shouldn't be, but you don't have to go along with that. Just because you're getting married, doesn't mean you even have to have a wedding, and if you do choose to have a wedding, you can do whatever the hell you like. It's nice to follow tradition sometimes, but always know why you are doing something and what it means to you. Don't do anything for the sake of it or because it's what everyone else does. I'm not saying you should go out of your way to be different. I'm just saying that you shouldn't do anything that isn't what you want.

This is a good recipe for when you realise you've eaten far too much stodge and/or food with little nutritional content recently, and need something simple, nutritious and yummy to eat while your body is still coping with the after-effects of your previous unhealthy eating. (So it's a good meal to have when you're recovering from the festive season, as I am.)

This recipe uses bulgur wheat, which is sort of a cross between rice and couscous, but more nutritious than both. It's a good filling source of carbohydrates without being difficult or slow for the body to digest. I buy it from Tesco but I think other supermarkets stock it too.

Ingredients
bulgur wheat
onions
peppers
courgettes (or any vegetables that you like)
Cauldron Marinated Tofu or Quorn Fajita Strips or any other small pieces of Quorn/tofu, ideally marinated or seasoned
chilli pepper (optional)
chilli powder (optional)
tortilla wraps

1. Measure out 200g (7oz) of bulgur wheat and put into a saucepan with 1100ml (1 pint) of water. Add chilli powder to the water if desired. Bring to the boil. The bulgur wheat will be ready when it has absorbed all the water. This will take around 10 to 15 minutes, but that's just a very rough guide and shouldn't be relied upon. If you don't cook it for long enough, the bulgur wheat will be soggy (which will be horrible to eat) and if you cook it for too long, it'll boil dry and you'll have a horrible mess in your saucepan. So keep an eye on it -- when there's no visible water and the bulgur wheat is nice and moist, you'll know it's done.

2. Slice up the vegetables (and chilli pepper, if you're using it). Start frying the onions in a wok, and when they've started to brown, add the tofu/Quorn. After a few minutes, add the rest of the vegetables (and chilli) and then the beans. When the bulgur wheat is done, add that to the wok and fry everything for a couple of minutes, mixing it all together well.

3. Serve wrapped in tortilla wraps.

Hope you like it! I'm going to go and make it myself now.

Before my Tante Klara (my great-aunt) died, a few years ago, she wrote down her life history. She wrote it in her native language, German, and last year my aunt and second cousin put together an English summary of it, which was then emailed around the family. I didn't know anything about Tante Klara before that and I hadn't even met her, but I found the story really quite fasinating. The summary I emailed was a list of facts, some of which were not in chronological order. I've put it into full sentences and put it into order, and thought I'd share it with you here.

Ask all your old people to tell you the story of their lives. Otherwise these stories will be lost forever.

--------

( Tante Klara )

♥ The Little White Horse - Elizabeth Goudge When I was young, I had a whole bookcase of books that used to belong to my mum when she was a little girl. I read and loved nearly all of them, but one of the exceptions was The Little White Horse. I never read this book, for the very silly reason that I had never read it before, and I preferred to reread old favourites rather than start new books. I would occasionally look at the very pretty cover and think that it was a shame that I couldn't read it. The stupid thing is, there were other books I read that I hadn't read before (of course -- otherwise I'd have no books to reread) so why I felt this way about this particular book I have no idea. Anyway, I don't know what happened to that old copy but a few months ago I saw it half-price in Borders and decided I would finally give it a go.

I was really very silly to put off reading it for so long because it's just the kind of book I would've loved as a child (and still have a fondness for now). It's the story of an orphaned little girl who goes to stay with a kind old uncle in a castle-like house in a hidden valley, and discovers all the fairy-tale mysteries that exist there -- the legend of a Moon Princess, a generations-old feud between proud and powerful men, long-lost loves and magical creatures. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys old-fashioned children's classics such as The Secret Garden or The Wolves of Willoughby Chase or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (NB: I am not saying the story is like those stories. I'm just saying that if you like those stories, you'll like this.)

♥ The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, or the Murder at Road Hill House I kind of bought this book by accident a few months ago at Borders. (The same day I bought The Little White Horse, as it happens.) There was a promotional offer where this book was only £2.99 if you spent a certain amount of money, and when the cashier asked if I wanted it I said yes without thinking. When I got home, I had a look at it and failed to notice that it was non-fiction, and assumed it was a crime novel, something I'm not really into. I was going to put it on Bookmooch, but never got round to it, and then forgot all about it until wolfylady posted about it, saying how good it was and I realised it wasn't what I thought it was at all.

It's actually a non-fiction book about a murder in 1860, that inspired the country-house murder sub-genre of crime fiction and was one of the first crimes in Britain to be investigated by a detective. Not only is it a fascinating and chilling case, but it's a very interesting insight into Victorian society, such as the relationship between the upper classes and their servants, how the media reported crimes, and how people reacted to the new detectives. It was such a thrilling book that I read it all in one night, despite having an early shift the following morning.

♥ Star Trek (the reboot) I liked this movie more and more as it went on and now that it's over and I've been dwelling on it for a few days, I've decided I loved it and can't wait to see it again XD We rented the DVD from LoveFilm originally, but I think I'll buy it on blu-ray after Christmas. I'm not really a huge fan of the Star Trek franchise but I like the original series and I think the movie was a pretty respectful and fun reboot. Plus, although I don't usually find Zachary Quinto attractive but there was something rather hot about Spock XD



♥ Tumblr Which I think I mentioned in my last TiLT post (or possibly the one before) but feel like mentioning again because I'm still having a lot of fun with it. If you're familiar with Tumblr, it's a site that lets you reblog imaes, words, music, vidoes, anything you like and want to share with the world. It's simple and it's addictive. Here's my tumblr. It mostly contains pretty pictures, equality activism, and funny cartoons.

♥ This Swedish guide to the "vaginal corona", which aims to dispel some of the myths about the hymen and virginity. Really interesting, and very necessary. Why can't school sex ed be as informative as that? (Well, it probably is in Sweden. Good for Sweden -- they seem to get a lot of things right.)

Honourable mentions: Buying presents (almost as much as receiving them!) ♥ the adorable Totoro bento box and bonus Totoro plushie my Japanese penpal Yoko sent me ♥ mint hot chocolate ♥ my new gloves ♥ making mini shortbread with my bento vegetable cutters

I haven't been posting pictures of my bento because they all look kind of the same, but I was rather pleased with the one I did last night for Lucy so here's a photo:

( bento )

Salad with chick peas and chedder cheese flowers; noodle stirfry with peppers and courgette flowers (which you can't really see -- should've done carrot instead but the shop only had massive bags of carrots and I didn't need that many); kiwi fruit, Lindor snowball chocolate, and a Peppa Pig lolly. I was originally going to put raspberries in with the kiwi fruit but they went mouldy, so I substituted more chocolate instead along with a note suggesting she share them with her co-workers as she already had the lolly.

She text me at lunch time today saying "I love you so much. You're the best sister ever." Aww.

Sadly, the Snufkin bento box is no more, because it fell out of the cupboard and one of the side clips came off and snapped. Back to boring tupperware for the time being, but not for long because my Japanese penpal Yoko is kindly sending me a Totoro bento box ♥

*

I realised yesterday that I hadn't updated my reading list since September. I added every book I could remember reading but to my horror I couldn't remember a single book I'd finished in October. That was probably the month I was playing Apollo Justice, but still. I can't believe I didn't finish a single book. Perhaps one has just slipped my mind.

So far my reading list for the year consists of 24 books. Not bad, but I've done better before. This month has been quite a good reading month actually -- I've read two very good (but extremely different) books: The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, or the Murder at Hill Road House by Kate Summerscale. I'll tell you about them in my next Things I Love Thursday post. I've also just started Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners by Ellen Kushner which seems very good so far.

*

I failed Nanowrimo spectacularly with only 8k words by the end of the month, but nonetheless my novel is going very well (by my usual standards) and I am now at around 10,500 words and have written three chapters of my planned twelve (which, when they're written out, might end up being thirteen or fourteen). I expect those first chapters will be expanded when I write my second draft, and later chapters are going to be longer because more happens, so I'm doing quite well in the word count department. For me, anyway.

And I'm having fun, which is, of course, the main thing.

*

Slept in until 2.45pm today, ugh. Yes, I wasn't asleep until 4am last night, but still that's eleven hours, was that really necessary? And I only woke up because there was a knock at the door (our supermarket order had arrived). I start work at 8am on Wednesday, I'm not looking forward to that, given how much sleep I am likely to get on Tuesday night.

*

It's nearly Christmas! I'm really excited -- I love Christmas. I still have quite a bit of Christmas shopping to do though, so I'm counting down the days or anything >.< The trouble is I'm paid weekly so I have to do my Christmas shopping a bit at a time right up until the last minute. (I know I could've saved in advance, but this is me we're talking about. Plus I get paid more in December because I work extra shifts.) I've got some knitting and crochet stuff I really need to get finished though -- a tea cosy for my grandma, a pair of Clangers for my sister-in-law Nic, something for Lucy that I haven't even started. Also a jumper (sweater) for rocknrollpixie that's over half-finished but has suddenly got a bit confusing, but that's not specifically a Christmas present so I guess I can go back to that in the New Year. Same with the slippers I am crocheting for Yoko. I do really want to get those two things done though and not just carelessly forget about them like I did with those Clangers. Two years I've been working on those. They're not even that complicated.

So Chris and I have been messing around playing Beatles songs for the last week or so and tonight we had a go at recording a few. This was really only a practice run, to see what kind of recording quality we could get with some free software and the microphone that came with Beatles Rock Band. Also, to see if I could figure out how to put another track over the top for a guitar solo (success, yay).

And it turned out pretty well -- a few little mistakes and I've sung better before, but all the same I'm excited and wanted to share these two songs with you :D

Right click and save, or just click normally and play in your browser:

I Should Have Known
You're Going To Lose That Girl

That's Chris on guitar and me singing, which him joining in on the second track. Our "band" is called Her Majesty & The Imposter, after the Beatles song (Her Majesty) and the Elvis Costello (The Imposter) song.

As I said, please remember this was just a practice run and we'll hopefully do better later XD

Hello My name is

Kate

My identity is

admirer, adorkable, ally, bi-romantic, bisexual, bookworm, brunette, cat lover, chubby, complex, creative, curious, cute, daydreamer, different, dreamer, eccentric, fangirl, female, feminist, friend, full of love, gay-friendly, geek, girl, girl lover, happy, hippie, intelligent, introvert, kinky, left-brained, liberal, library dyke, loved, lover, loving, Miss, man-loving, married, minx, myself, nerd, open, pagan, pan-romantic, pansexual, passionate, person, polycurious, pro-choice, pro-sex feminist, queer, quiet, quirky, romantic, sapiosexual, sapphist, sensitive, sex positive, shy, spiritual, submissive, sweet, trans-friendly, understanding, unique, vegetarian, XX

What's yours?

Well, that was interesting.

So back in April of 2007 Chris and I went to London for the day and decided to do "A Day in the Life". For some reason, I never actually got round to uploading the photos or posting them. I'm not really sure why. But here I am, two and a half years later, sharing them with you XD

( one day in April 2007 )

We're going to London again next week, so I may do this again :D

Since paying off some of our arrears we realised that Chris would have quite a bit of money spare each month from his wages. Enough for us to pay my course fees without having to borrow from my mum, and to save up for getting the car fixed. And, what with me earning some extra money this week, enough to buy Beatles Rock Band: Limited Edition before everyone else rushes out to buy it for Christmas...

It's actually even more fun that I expected. I've been mostly playing drums, which is funny because drums are not something I've ever really expressed an interest in in real life. Of all the instruments in Rock Band, drums are probably most like the real thing. And they're really hard. I think it'll help me with my ukulele playing because of course it's all about rhythm, and strumming is where I have the most trouble on the uke. Chris has been playing a lot of bass, because he used to be a bass player in a band, but he switches over to vocals when Lucy plays because she likes to play guitar and we only have one guitar/bass at the moment. When all three of were playing together yesterday it was loads of fun, it was almost like we were really playing.

We also went to Ikea and bought a new saucepan because I ruined the old one by letting it boil dry. This is very dull news, but I mention it because we got a £5 Ikea gift voucher in exchange for donating five old books we didn't want anymore :D It's a special promotion (possibly UK only?) to celebrate Billy (the bookcase) being thirty years old. They had some really prettily decorated Billys there that was I rather tempted by because I do need a new bookcase. Probably more than I needed Beatles Rock Band XD Never mind, my books are coping okay in boxes. While in Ikea we also got a 19 piece tupperware set for £2.50! This is not dull, this is very exciting. They'll do for Chris' bento, because he doesn't have a box of his own and for some reason he doesn't believe that a cute box will make his lunch taste better. (He's right, in a way -- the magic ingredient is actually LOVE.) Speaking of bento, I got some very cute bento things from ebay recently. I'll show you some pictures next time.

I went to my mum's again today to pick up a knitting pattern she'd photocopied for me, a knitting magazine of mine that she had borrowed, Lucy's washing (our washing machine is broken), and a stamp to post my OU registration form back. Last time we were there, my mum gave us some home-made cake to take home, so this time I returned her tupperware and put some cupcakes in it, as Lucy and I made quite a lot yesterday for her boyfriend's birthday (Lucy's not my mum's).

Maisie and Muffin were both very pleased to see me. Maisie chewed my hands again but has learnt to be more gentle about it. She's funny because she's like a real dog. Well, of course she is, but Muffin has never really been very dog-like. He's never really grasped the concept of fetch, for one thing, unlike Maisie who picked it up right away. She also loves to bury things and dig things up, and she's been finding plums all over the garden and hiding them in the house. She had a rawhide shoe yesterday and she took it to pieces and hid each one in various places, including one in Muffin's bed, which confused him when he found it. She also dug some weeds out of a rather large flowerpot and then emptied the pot entirely of earth. Muffin has never really done any of those things. Perhaps he's right -- perhaps he really is a person and not a dog.

I'm excited about the knitting pattern my mum has copied for me. It's a cardigan called Whisper and there is absolutely no seaming involved! You start with one sleeve, knitting in the round, then switch to flats for the back of the shoulders, and then back to circs/DPNs for the other sleeve, resulting in a shrug-like thing. Then you pick up and knit to lengthen the back, as well as to do the neckline. There's a schematic here if that made no sense. I ideally wanted to do it in a nice variegated red colour but I can't find any suitable yarn that's fairly cheap and in the UK, so I think I'm going to go with the plum shade from here.

I still haven't finished my Mrs Darcy cardigan yet >.< Neither of the needlework shops in town had the right size DPNs; one of them has ordered them in for me but they hadn't arrived when I went in to check the other day. So no casting on for Whisper until I've finished Mrs Darcy. I'd better hurry up though because I'd ideally like to finish Whisper in time for Christmas so I can wear it on Christmas Day, and it's lace-weight yarn so it's going to take forever. I have a few Christmas presents to knit/crochet too but they're fairly small and shouldn't take long.

I attempted to bake again cookies again yesterday. I made a lot of dough, enough for more than three baking trays worth of cookies. The first lot were undercooked. The second lot caught fire(!) in the oven. By the third tray, I was feeling rather disillusioned and just put all of the rest of the dough on the tray, knowing there were too many on there and that they were too close together. Of course, it came out as one giant cookie that had to be chipped off the baking tray. Tasted nice though XD

I got an anonymous package yesterday containing a little booklet of biscuit recipes, a bear shaped cookie cutter and some lollies. Of course, I knew right away it was from mwandie and then the postmark confirmed it XD Mandie is sweet like that.

My mum said she'd lend me the money for my OU course ♥ I don't know when I can pay her back, but she says it's okay if it's not for a long time because she doesn't have a pension so she'll be in more need of the money then anyway. Aww.

I went round there today to lend her a knitting magazine and to see Maisie. Maisie is still lovely but she has sharp little teeth and thinks chewing on people's hands is fun. My mum says she's got bigger but she still looks tiny to me. She's getting blonde bits in her fur but her face is still really dark. Muffin has taken to just ignoring her which is an improvement on snapping at her at least. He's also got much better at not barking at other dogs in the park. My mum says it's because he's realised now that he is actually a dog and not a human. Perhaps in time he'll learn to be friendly with Maisie and be a proper big brother.

Tomorrow I am going to wash my hair and catch up on all my emails. I know that was hardly an interesting thing to say, but I thought writing it down might increase the chances of me actually doing it.

my anime stereotype

(if you're not familiar with anime but want to play anyway, here's a list of stereotypes!)

♥ This Big Train sketch. We've watched a couple of Beatles documentaries recently as there seems to be a bit of a Beatles season going on, and I just can't help but start laughing whenever I hear George Martin, thanks to this sketch XD



♥ FreeRice.com. I'm sure you're all already aware of this site, but it's a good cause and so always worth a mention. Thanks to _phoe mentioning it earlier, I'm now trying to get to level 60 and have raised 1980 grains of rice so far!

♥ Stella Artois, because it's the only lager that doesn't given me an instant stomach ache. I'm on my own tonight so though I'd treat myself to a whole pint can. Hope it doesn't make me ill!

♥ Lovely Complex. I said this last time, so it may seem pointless to repeat it now. But last week I'd only seen five episodes. I loved it for being a cute and funny typical high school romantic comedy with pretty animation, but now I love it for all those things and additionally for being quite a realistic and touching depiction of love, despite the silly concept (a tall girl falling in love with a short boy). It also has a very similar ratio of romance-comedy-angst that I'm aiming for with Mon Petit Chou (the manga Sonia and I are working on. It's coming along very slowly. Nothing really to show yet.)

♥ Tumblr. I signed up for this because reformatme and charlipscombe told me to. (Well, actually, I signed up for it ages ago but then didn't do anything with it until they tweeted telling everyone to get tumblr XD) I use it just to repost pictures, quotes, songs etc that I find pretty/interesting/inspiring.

Honourable mentions: succeeding in making cookies that taste nice and don't fall apart when picked up! ♥ Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice -- so far! I miss Maya though :( ♥ Trades of the Flesh by Faye L Booth -- more on my blog soon! ♥ buying a new bento box and bento supplies -- pics when they arrive!

I feel like I have so much I want to do and not enough time, which sounds silly because I only work 16 and a half hours a week. But you see, whenever Chris is at home, we're doing things together, so the only time I have to myself are the two evenings a week that he works a late shift. Of course, I love that we never get bored of spending time together and that we have so many shared hobbies and interests, but every now and then I find myself with too much to do and not enough time. This week, Chris' late shifts have been Sunday and Thursday, which are the two days that sadrlegends comes over, so I've had even less time to myself. I have emails and book reviews and this journal post and a Things I Love Thursday post to write, and I'm not sure if I'll fit it all in.

I should've got up earlier, really. I slept for 13 hours last night which is ridiculous. Okay, so I only got about five the night before (yesterday being a work day), but for the four nights before that I was sleeping for between 11 and 15 hours. Why do I sleep so much? I've tried setting an alarm on my days off, but I've just turned it off in my sleep. I could try putting it on the other side of the room or something, but then I'd wake up grumpy. I just want to wake up naturally at a reasonable time after a reasonable amount of sleep, why is that so difficult?

*

I am suddenly yearning for shoes, which is quite unlike me. I want:

• a pair of tall gold gladiator sandals, which I hope to find in the sale. I've wanted some for ages and was actually considering wearing some on my wedding day (for a kind of goddess look) but didn't, because I didn't want to look like I was influenced by the current fad for them (so I went for barefeet/beaded foot thongs instead). I know it'll be too late for me to wear them now, but I can keep them for next summer and hopefully they'll be a little bit less popular then.
  
• a new pair of kitty mary-janes. I've actually had two pairs of these before, but both wore out because I was wearing them to work. I really want to get another pair and this time not wear them to work.
  
• a pair of mary-janes in a really shiny dark cherry red kind of colour. I saw some last year (in Tesco, of all places) and didn't get them, and now I regret it.
  
• A new pair of knee high boots. I have a gorgeous brown pair with laces all the way up and hooks at the top, and one of them vanished last winter and I still haven't found it. I didn't ever take them out of the house (except for when I was actually wearing them) so it must be here somewhere but I've looked everywhere without success. Curiously, my yoga mat disappeared at around the same time. They must've run off together.

*

Cardigan progress: I've now reached the point where I need to start doing the sleeves, which will have to wait until tomorrow (pay day) because I need to go out and get the right size DPNs. I also need to buy some more yarn because I'm starting to run out. It looks quite good so far but I can't help but feel it looks really, well, bulky. I don't know why, because I'm using the right weight yarn and I have the right gauge, but it just looks a lot chunkier than other people's. I guess photos are not the same as real life though. Maybe blocking will help sort it out. I'm not really sure how to block but I'll have to try and learn.

*

In other news, there were TWO massive spiders in the living room last night. Thankfully, Chris was on hand to take them away. He doesn't like spiders either, but he's brave enough to be able to catch them in a glass and carry them to the back door, unlike me. I can't even look at a spider without completely freaking out, let alone go anywhere near one.

There was a spider at work the other day and I asked this boy I work with to do something about it and he brushed it onto the floor (with his hand!) and stamped on it. I felt a bit bad then, because it's not really fair that spiders should have to die just because I have an irrational fear of them :( I just don't want them near me.

Anyone have any tips for spider deterring? I know about the conkers thing but I don't have any horse chestnut trees near me. Do those ultrasonic wave emitting things you plug in actually work? Is there some kind of spray I can just use on the little crack under the bay window where they get in?

*

That'll do for now -- I have some more meme questions to answer (this time from karohi) and some work-related stuff to talk about but they'll have to wait because I want to get some emails written. I may also have to pop out and get some chocolate digestives because this craving is not going away.

That meme again.

• leave me a comment saying "GOOBLEDIGOOK",
• i'll respond by asking you five questions so i can get to know you better.
• update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

This time, the questions are from reformatme.

1. What's the last tune you had stuck in your head?
I Feel Fine by the Beatles. Presumably because of all this Beatles stuff that's going around. Speaking of that, we're currently saving for Beatles Rock Band. We've never had any version of the game before, so don't have any instruments for it, and Chris really wants the Hoffner bass so we're saving for the limited edition premium bundle. Hope it doesn't sell out before we have enough.

2. Which of your hobbies would you like to spend more time with?
Knitting, I think. I get bored if I just sit and knit so ideally I need something else to do at the same time. Sometimes I knit and read, but I mostly read at bedtime, when knitting would keep me awake, or in the bath, where I couldn't do both at once even if I was reckless enough to take my knitting in with me. The ideal time to knit is when I'm watching a movie, but I don't do that very often because I don't have the attention span for that either. So currently, I mostly knit when I'm watching Chris play video games, or if he's not here, in between refreshing my friends page obsessively and reading random Wikipedia articles. I'm actually knitting right now, in between thinking of things to type.

3. Where have you found most of your LJ friends?
Probably makeafriend_uk and addme_sa. I also have a few friends left over from my days as a Harry Potter fanfiction writer (between about 2001 and 2003). And quite often I just click on any interesting usernames I see commenting on friends' journals and have a nose around to see if they're interesting. I've made a few friends that way.

4. What was the last program you installed and was it any good?
DVD Slideshow GUI. No, it didn't really work. It took forever to export the slideshow and my computer made a lot of noise doing it and then told me it was running out of virtual memory. Finally it sorted that out, and then it got to the burning stage and just did nothing for 40 minutes. Eventually I got fed up and just turned my computer off. Anyone got any recommendations for good, simple, programs for putting a photo slideshow onto a disc? I just want to send my grandma some photos to play on her DVD player, I don't need to do anything fancy with them. I might just try Windows Movie Maker but I heard the quality wasn't very good, and some of these photos aren't all that good quality to start with.

5. How did you have fun as a child?
My dad used to be the senior ranger at Brigstock Country Park and in the holidays I'd often tag along with him, finding secret, hidden places to read, or exploring the park, pretending I was on an adventure. Sometimes I'd write my daydreams down, but most of the time they just stayed in my head. My dad stopped working there when I was about thirteen, which was probably just as well because when I started secondary school real life suddenly caught up with me and I wasn't able to lose myself so easily in make-believe anymore. I've been back to the park as an adult and it's not like it used to be, it's more commercialised these days, so I'm glad I left before it all changed. It doesn't even really feel like the same place anymore, it's like I left the old park behind a long time ago.

Incidentally, a few years ago I wrote a short story about all this, which you can read here.

Real post coming tomorrow! For now, have a meme:

1. Name:
2. Date of birth:
3. Where you live:
4. What makes you happy:
5. Currently listening/the last thing you listened to:
6. Do you read my journal?:
7. If yes, what makes it especially good or bad?:
8. An interesting fact about you:
9. What do you love at the moment?:
10. Favourite place to spend time:
11. Favourite lyric:
12. The best time of the year:

RECOMMEND
1. A film:
2. A book:
3. A band, a song, or album:
4. A manga/anime:

PLUS
1. One thing you like about me:
2. Two things you like about yourself:
3. Look at my friends-list and tell what you like about one of our mutual friends:
4. Put this in your journal so that I can tell you what I like about you.

This is freaky, because I was asked this question in a dream last night! Seriously! Not word for word the same but pretty much the same thing -- "if a psychic gave you advice for the future that conflicted with your plans, would you stick with your intuition or follow their advice?". I don't remember who asked me, but I remember that they were satisfied with my answer.

Perhaps I'm psychic. Haha.

Wait -- I was very tired when I read my friends page yesterday, so if one of you posted this question it may have got into my brain without me noticing. As far as I know, the only one of you who posted it was the_mollisher, and that was this morning. Did someone else among you post it yesterday?

Anyway, to answer the question...

I wouldn't consult an online psychic in the first place. Too many psychics are just there to trick you out of your money, and besides, I don't think they could predict something with such accuracy. Even if they could predict something terrible would happen to me tonight, I doubt they'd know the exact circumstances. This terrible thing could just as easily happen to me at home than at a party. Perhaps the psychic was fated to warn me not to go to the party, and so I was fated to stay at home, to succumb to this terrible fate. Etc. It just gets complicated if you start worrying too much about stuff like that. Easier to just trust your own intuition.

As for clashing astrological signs -- no, I wouldn't. Chris is a Gemini, a sign which I do not really like the textbook description of and is not traditionally supposed to be well-matched with Pisces ("A very destructive union for both parties involved", one rather gimmicky novelty website claims). However, compatibility is much more complicated than that.

You see, there is much more to astrology than your sun sign. Just because someone's birthday is in the same month as yours doesn't mean you're identical in personality, after all. moon signs and rising signs play a huge part, and the other signs have their influence as well. For example, although I am a Pisces, and appropriately sensitive, emotional, and sentimental, my rising sign is Aquarius which means I present myself as somebody who is much more aloof and distant. So instead of there being twelve separate astrological signs, there actually thousands of combinations.

I suppose, of course, upon meeting an attractive person I could ask for their time, date and location of birth and go and look up all their signs. But that rather takes the romance out of it. Love is not a science. It's more fun getting to know somebody as you go along, rather than being presented with everything upfront.

By the way, if you're interested in discovering your Moon, Rising and other signs, this website will draw you up a free birth chart, complete with descriptions of what it all means.