nishatalitha

This is posted from Pania, who is my new laptop. She is a Compaq Presario with a 15" screen and a number pad attached to the keyboard. She is mostly so that I can sit in the sun in the lounge and do my homework and read on the internet. I will try very hard not to use her when lying in bed (yes, that's what I'm doing now, but she's new and shiny and one night won't hurt, right?) and only use Annabelle.

First thing I did when starting to set uo: try to remove Nortons.

People who already have multiple computers: is it possible to be logged in on livejournal, gmail, hotmail and delicious on two computers at once without any problems when both computers are on, or am I going to have to remember to log out on one or the other?

I rewatched Twelve Angry Men tonight. It kept me entertained through eating dinner, polishing two pairs of boots and one pair of shoes and only started to lose me towards the end when I started setting up Pania. It's a very good film. I haven't seen it since first year psych back in 2001 when we were learning about group dynamics. It was very good then, too.

The hardest thing for me to get used to so far (apart from Vista) is the mouse. I am so used to having to use one of my hands to deliberately move the mouse that I keep brushing the touchpad and occasionally hitting one of the buttons and then end up going places or doing things that I don't really want to do. Vista is somewhat annoying - I managed to turn off the pop up that asks for confirmation every time you add or delete things and that made it a bit better.

Saw the teaster for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie that is going to come out sometime next year. Seem to be quite a few changes, but that's more than okay because I seem to like almost every other version of Alice (and especially American McGee's Alice) more than I like the original. I just don't like Lewis Carroll's Alice, but I really like what other people do with it and the changes they make; the creepier the better, in my opinion.

I should shut down and go to sleep. At least I've found the shut down button now...

Just watched Cyrano de Bergerac and it was excellent. It's been a very long time since a movie made me cry. The last one I remember was Little Women when Beth died - I managed to eek out a few tears for that. Or maybe that was the book...

The wind is blowing strongly outside. I love the wind, I really do, which is good since I live in Wellington, but I could do without it making my building sway enough to make me slightly queasy, especially since I no longer possess the wrist bands I used to wear to prevent car-sickness. I should take in the lemon and ginger tea we're not drinking... work would be a useful place to abandon it.

I passed my Estates test acceptably well. Have a lot of work to do before the final exams in a month. I really should have done some work on it tonight, but didn't feel like it. Oh, well. And we have a week's break next week! No making up time for an entire week. Awesome!

Christmas is mostly over for another year. We have our Wellington one to go yet, on New Year's Day, but all the family ones are over. The presents I chose seemed to be successful and I was pleased with what I got, although I am endeavouring to lose the cracker gift as I am no longer particularly enamoured of china figurines with teddy bears, fairies and glitter. I left it at Rotoiti only to have it returned to me by one of the aunts at the stock cars last night.

T, my sister-in-law to be, and I just went to see Enchanted. It was lovely: very girly, sweet and Disney with happily-ever-afters all around. Some slightly deeper themes than one would usually expect from Disney. I thoroughly enjoyed it and T did too.

I don't think I brought up enough books with me. I've already read most of mine and only have one left.

I've been out on the boat a couple of times and even tried my hand at waterskiing today. My brother said I almost got up, but I'm not so sure and I kept going sideways, not sure why.

Gmail is currently annoying me, as are a few of the other tabs I have open in firefox. When I click on a link, the bar up the top which has all the useful information and buttons (such as website, forward, back, refresh etc) compresses slightly and then moves down again. And of course my eyes follow this, but it also feels like things get smaller on the screen and it's really frustrating and disconcerting.

Have my results back for the first set of optional homework questions now. Apparently only nine people of twenty plus handed some in. I managed to get them all done and got 84%, which is a nice starting point. They were fairly easy questions in my opionion, so I will be more interested in seeing how I do in the next set, which involve answering things using the correct rule from Rules of Professional Conduct for Barristers and Solicitors.

Got back to the gym this morning, which was good. It was very strange getting up at six and having it be light, let walking down to the bus stop at twenty past six in daylight. I'm sure I'll get used to it. Although by the time I'm used to it, it'll probably be dark at that time of the morning again.

Watched Howl's Moving Castle and the first three episodes of Neverwhere last night. They were both very good. I'd seen the former before, but not the latter. I very much like the Marquis. I'd like to reread Howl's Moving Castle again and compare differences again (I did this last time I watched it), but my copy of the book is somewhere in Argentina with an ex-workmate from the hotel. She's promised to mail it back to me and even asked for my address to do so, but I'll expect it when it arrives. She mentioned it to me via MSN the other day - I hadn't completely forgotten about it, but I had more or less given up on getting it back. I won't hurry about replacing it.

EDIT: All right, so it's Firefox that's annoying me rather than gmail, since the contracting thing up the top seems to be happening whenever I wait for a page to load and sometimes when I switch between pages. I blame my computer. Stupid Jack. I look forward to his eventual complete organ transplant.

I was somewhat more awake this morning when I went to catch the bus than I am usually. For this, I blame the cat.

I had just climbed out of the shower when I heard a squawking and growling sound, and thought that the cat was being chased by something, and it served her right.

But no.

The squawking got louder, and I burst out of the bathroom to see Jemima carry a bird under my desk, getting there just in time to hear the crunch as she bit down on its neck. I yanked her away by her collar, and she started purring. The bird stayed still.

Jemima got dumped in the kitchen, I got ready for work, the bird didn't move.

I got a couple of plastic bags to pick it up with, then noticed that its chest was rising and falling very rapidly. After I picked it up, it started moving, strugging feebly. I struggled with the window (I thought I would see if it could still fly) and it got away; flapped over to the other window, which I then opened, and flew off, somewhat lopsided, leaving a pile of feathers under my desk and scattered around my room.

This is the second bird in a week. She might love me, but does she really have to show it by giving me birds?

...apparently Terry Pratchet is doing a new Tiffany Aching book. I will be interested to see what it's like.

Went to see Stick It with maudlinrose this evening. A gymnastics movie! It was lots of fun, although aspects of it felt very disjointed.

Occasionally, over the past few years, I've wished in the vaguest of ways that I was more heavily involved in fandom. However, I've had that desire completely knocked out of me, and I am quite happy that the only fandom I am involved in as fandom is Lois McMaster Bujold, and that primarily in the form of a mailing list. I have never been so glad as I am now that I was only ever involved in fandom for the fic and the slash. And it's all because of this. I only caught the very beginning; the first Cassandra Claire plargarism debacle and the move to Fiction Alley and Schnoogle. I had no idea all this was going on, and it's scarily fascinating and disturbing.

I had the delightful experience yesterday of finding that my workmate F. not only knows but likes Era, the group I keep mentioning here, with each comment on them falling into the black hole of the internet. I've invited her over for dinner on Saturday, and since she mentioned liking Emma Shapplin, whom I am also rather fond of as an artist, amd Sarah Brightman (I like her in Phantom of the Opera), I thought she might appreciate some music videos I have of them. I said: "Era." She said: "Ameno?"*

Have been cleaning, both in preparation for F's visit, and to make it easier to tidy when my parents are down in three weeks. If I sweep the ceilings and dust thoroughly now, there'll be less to do then.

Must go start dinner soon, or at least finish defrosting the meat, since maudlinrose and I are going to Serenity tonight. The tickets are sitting on my desk. I also need to rescue my necklaces from behind my dressing table, since the nifty display I just made fell down. Something stronger than bluetac should work... EDIT: Ended up using a strip of gold satin I had lying around and drawing pins. It's not stretchy, so the effect is much the same. And then I did the same for my solid bracelets on a different piece of fabric.

*One of their tracks for which I have the music video.

It occurs to me that I haven't actually updated for a while. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - really, it just means I'm either lazy or busy, and it's more likely the former than the latter, although I have done things this week that I really can't be bothered noting.

Work has been work. We had the Black Caps staying with us (see house_monkey, I do occasionally put things of interest to you in), and I cleaned most of their rooms. Some of them were rather messy. I was on different floors the day they all checked out though, which was good. Actually, Thursday was a busy day. Dad was in Wellington that day, and I completely forgot about it! So, around five, my phone buzzes in my pocket, and it's him, and I asked why he was calling me! So we sat and talked in the foyer for a while, and then he went to the airport, and I went home.

Went to see the fourth HP movie at the Embassy on Friday evening with laputain, jessikast, anschee, and darthsappho. It was better than I expected (not hard - I've given up having any sort of high expectations of the HP movies whatsoever), and the guy who played Cedric was really cute! They missed out a lot, like they had to, so I'm not sure how well the details transfer over to someone who hasn't read the books. Thanks to that, and a fic maudlinrose linked me to, I actually feel like rereading OotP and HBP, both of which I've read once. I may regret this impulse.

I also went to see The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe this afternoon with C., and it was quite good. A fairly accurate adaptation, all told, and while there are a couple of things from the book that I missed, there were also gryphons! Decent gryphons! There was one shot that I want a screencap of, and will earnestly work towards finding.

anschee and I put up our Christmas tree this afternoon. It wasn't dusty this year, because I had very carefully wrapped it up in plastic last year. Still got dust from the year before on it, but it didn't need vaccuming, which was nice. Now, if only someone in the flat would do the dishes! I did the last two lots, and I am resisting the idea of doing this lot as well. I may yet surrender, since it seems to be bugging me more than the others. On the other hand, I could distract myself with fic and/or Rurouni Kenshin...

Finished Blade of Tyshalle the other day. It's the first book where I've flipped to the end before I've finished it to check if people survived for quite a while. Normally I try to avoid doing that, since it's a reprehensible habit, but I needed to know. *shakes head* And it's really about the insane LARPers that your parents always warned you about, whose characters and world are more real to them than the world they actually come from. Fortunately, the world they play in is an actual place.

The next new Bujold book comes out in October next year: The Sharing Knife: Beguilement. Irresistable Forces has Winterfair Gifts in it, and will be out mass market paperback in Febuary, or so they say. They said that at the beginning of this year, too.

The most amusing incident for today was actually at church. You might remember me mentioning a certain incident that occured at the Good Friday service earlier this year, involving candles, smoke alarms, and fire engines. Well, at the children's service today, we had a repeat. There were only three candles involved this time, but they must have been positioned directly under the sensor, because shortly after the three advent candles had been lit, most of the way through Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, the smoke alarm went off. Everyone got up, filed out in an orderly fashion, and five minutes later the fire brigade turns up. Seems we don't have much luck with having candles at our services. I'm now vaguely surprised that the alarm didn't go off at the carol service last week, since there were many more candles. They probably weren't right under the sensor, though!