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*tentatively posts*
Semagic has loaded on the first try so I'm taking that as a good sign and attempting to post this for about the fiftieth time. If you read between the lines (literally), you will see the entry I've been trying to post since Friday bloody afternoon. I would cut it, but there's a cut in it already. I would also backdate and link to it, but nobody'll bother reading it if I do that. So I'll inflict it on you here, instead. Suffer.
Friday
Well, the afternoon didn't get much better. The work was thin on the ground and was still being taken. At one point Val popped her head around the door and said "Oh, you've got no work!". I almost replied, "Well, whose fault is that?" but managed not to.
I had the journey home from Hell, too. Not as bad as it's ever been, but unnecessarily annoying. The bus took bloody ages to turn up, and was packed, and I had to share it with a screaming child, and the bus driver was doing that annoying stoppy-starty-brake-too-hard thing that really gets on my proverbials.
And then I nearly got run over by a woman with a pushchair who wasn't looking where she was going and just had to cross the road at the exact point I was walking towards the kerb to give her a wide enough berth to pass. Her husband / partner apologised, but UGH. When I have a small child I'm going to use my pushchair as a battering ram like everyone else does...
In other news, here is a meme from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jackiesjottings. She requested explanations for three of my interests and three of my icons. You can comment and I'll do the same, if I remember...
Interests:
abandoned buildings - I like abandoned buildings, and there are plenty of them knocking around in Birmingham (and there was a fair amount in Derby, too). Mostly I'm just curious as to why they're abandoned, especially when they were obviously something useful at some point - or why they aren't being used. I always want to get inside them and look around, but unfortunately they're usually barricaded up.
desolate landscapes - A bit like abandoned buildings but on a larger scale, really. I'm a non-posting member of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
urban_decay and there are frequently amazing photos of places in Russia and the Ukraine. A while ago there were some shots of a ghost town post-nuclear-holocaust which were amazing. It kind of links to my interest in history, a bit, because it's like a freezeframe of time.
ambigrams - an ambigram is a word that reads the same when you turn it upside down, or alternatively reads an entirely different word. They're often used in logos. Derren Brown's recent series Trick or Treat used ambigrams for the trick / treat cards (they read 'trick' one way and 'treat' the other). I can't really describe them very well in words, but if you visit John Langdon's website you can learn more. Some of his designs are amazing.
Icons:
Priscilla - Drag Crossing
This was the default icon for one of my layouts but I liked it so much I kept it. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, assuming you've not seen it, is a film about two drag queens and a transsexual travelling across the Australian outback to do a cabaret show on the other side of the country, and their subsequent adventures. They travel in a lilac bus christened Priscilla, the Queen of the Desert (hence the title). It's a brilliant film and highly recommended film, and the format was used in a Hollywood version called To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (also quite brilliant, though not as dark).
The shoe in the icon is taken from an image near the end of the film where it appears on a fake roadsign. Hence, 'drag crossing'. :)
I try and use the icon whenever I go to cabaret at the Wellington (local gay pub with friendly punters) but it happens rarely these days.
Photo - rose
On Friday nights in Birmingham, pub- and club-goers will encouter men carrying large baskets of roses, for which they charge £2 a pop. When we were in the early stages of going out,yoshi bought me a white rose (my favourite colour other than red) from such a rose-man. I put it in a vase on a bookcase and it opened up into the creation you see in the photo. So I made an icon out of it. Naturally. :)
Edward - snow
I'm going to recommend another film now - Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton's gothic fairy tale from the late 1980s. It starred Johnny Depp as Edward and Winona Ryder as Kim Boggs, pictured in the icon. In this particular scene, Edward had created 'snow' by carving a giant ice statue in the garden and Kim was dancing in it. Whenever it snows I want to dance outside, so that's when I use the icon. Originally it was part of a set for my Edward-themed LJ layout, and one of my first attempts at animation using ImageReady, the animation programme attached to Photoshop...
I hope that answers your curiosity. :) The majority of my icons are fandom-based (mostly Most Haunted, as you probably realised) and those that aren't are random photographs taken of various things. They're also mostly mine, except for the four or so which are credited to other people...
I'm extending the meme: comment if you want to know about my interests / icons &/or if you want me to reciprocate. :)
This weekend we did blissful nothing. I read a lot of HP:OotP and am now about 7/8 of the way through, which is progress from Friday. We went to Wetherspoons for Sunday lunch because we had no brocolli or cauliflower and encountered that strange phenomenon of deep
fried roast potatoes...
On Monday, Noor came back off her long-term sick leave, but she's doing less hours than before to get her back into work slowly. I wish I'd had the frelling choice of that after I was off in July, let alone the luxury, but I guess that's what happens when you're practically holding a Department together. *eye roll*
So I left early again, at 4.30... Monday is my early-leaving day anyway, but I'd decided about an hour prior to that to go down to Supercuts hopefully before the rush and get my bloody hair cut. Considering I've been umming and ahhing about this for about two months now, and despite the fact I can't really afford it, it had reached the point where I'd tried to un-knot the tangles at my neck too many frelling times. So I wandered down to Supercuts (which shuts at 5.30) to find it completely full, with a hairdressing contingent of two, one of whom was going home early. And of course, they don't do appointments.
This is going on my ever-extending list of Reasons Why Birmingham Is Crap, under the sub-category of Opening Hours. 5.30 is not a suitable closing time for ANYTHING in the city centre. Average working hours are no longer 9.00 to 5.00; in fact, BCC average working hours at 8.45 to 5.15, so basically we're fucked if we want to get anything done after work that isn't going to a supermarket. Birmingham, kindly drag your arse into the 21st century and at least try to be a viable modern second city. Most places in the West End of London will remain open until at least 8.00pm - whilst I appreciate that the West End is probably a specialised case, it is nonetheless an example to work by. It would not only increase customers, but increase employment. Worth considering, hm?
So that put me in rather a bad mood all the way home. I went to Somerfield to get sandwich fillers (2 for £2.00) and picked up some more frozen fish and some milk. Exciting, I'm sure you'll agree.
Friday
Well, the afternoon didn't get much better. The work was thin on the ground and was still being taken. At one point Val popped her head around the door and said "Oh, you've got no work!". I almost replied, "Well, whose fault is that?" but managed not to.
I had the journey home from Hell, too. Not as bad as it's ever been, but unnecessarily annoying. The bus took bloody ages to turn up, and was packed, and I had to share it with a screaming child, and the bus driver was doing that annoying stoppy-starty-brake-too-hard thing that really gets on my proverbials.
And then I nearly got run over by a woman with a pushchair who wasn't looking where she was going and just had to cross the road at the exact point I was walking towards the kerb to give her a wide enough berth to pass. Her husband / partner apologised, but UGH. When I have a small child I'm going to use my pushchair as a battering ram like everyone else does...
In other news, here is a meme from
jackiesjottings. She requested explanations for three of my interests and three of my icons. You can comment and I'll do the same, if I remember...Interests:
abandoned buildings - I like abandoned buildings, and there are plenty of them knocking around in Birmingham (and there was a fair amount in Derby, too). Mostly I'm just curious as to why they're abandoned, especially when they were obviously something useful at some point - or why they aren't being used. I always want to get inside them and look around, but unfortunately they're usually barricaded up.
desolate landscapes - A bit like abandoned buildings but on a larger scale, really. I'm a non-posting member of
urban_decay and there are frequently amazing photos of places in Russia and the Ukraine. A while ago there were some shots of a ghost town post-nuclear-holocaust which were amazing. It kind of links to my interest in history, a bit, because it's like a freezeframe of time.ambigrams - an ambigram is a word that reads the same when you turn it upside down, or alternatively reads an entirely different word. They're often used in logos. Derren Brown's recent series Trick or Treat used ambigrams for the trick / treat cards (they read 'trick' one way and 'treat' the other). I can't really describe them very well in words, but if you visit John Langdon's website you can learn more. Some of his designs are amazing.
Icons:
Priscilla - Drag Crossing
This was the default icon for one of my layouts but I liked it so much I kept it. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, assuming you've not seen it, is a film about two drag queens and a transsexual travelling across the Australian outback to do a cabaret show on the other side of the country, and their subsequent adventures. They travel in a lilac bus christened Priscilla, the Queen of the Desert (hence the title). It's a brilliant film and highly recommended film, and the format was used in a Hollywood version called To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (also quite brilliant, though not as dark).
The shoe in the icon is taken from an image near the end of the film where it appears on a fake roadsign. Hence, 'drag crossing'. :)
I try and use the icon whenever I go to cabaret at the Wellington (local gay pub with friendly punters) but it happens rarely these days.
Photo - rose
On Friday nights in Birmingham, pub- and club-goers will encouter men carrying large baskets of roses, for which they charge £2 a pop. When we were in the early stages of going out,
yoshi bought me a white rose (my favourite colour other than red) from such a rose-man. I put it in a vase on a bookcase and it opened up into the creation you see in the photo. So I made an icon out of it. Naturally. :)Edward - snow
I'm going to recommend another film now - Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton's gothic fairy tale from the late 1980s. It starred Johnny Depp as Edward and Winona Ryder as Kim Boggs, pictured in the icon. In this particular scene, Edward had created 'snow' by carving a giant ice statue in the garden and Kim was dancing in it. Whenever it snows I want to dance outside, so that's when I use the icon. Originally it was part of a set for my Edward-themed LJ layout, and one of my first attempts at animation using ImageReady, the animation programme attached to Photoshop...
I hope that answers your curiosity. :) The majority of my icons are fandom-based (mostly Most Haunted, as you probably realised) and those that aren't are random photographs taken of various things. They're also mostly mine, except for the four or so which are credited to other people...
I'm extending the meme: comment if you want to know about my interests / icons &/or if you want me to reciprocate. :)
This weekend we did blissful nothing. I read a lot of HP:OotP and am now about 7/8 of the way through, which is progress from Friday. We went to Wetherspoons for Sunday lunch because we had no brocolli or cauliflower and encountered that strange phenomenon of deep
fried roast potatoes...
On Monday, Noor came back off her long-term sick leave, but she's doing less hours than before to get her back into work slowly. I wish I'd had the frelling choice of that after I was off in July, let alone the luxury, but I guess that's what happens when you're practically holding a Department together. *eye roll*
So I left early again, at 4.30... Monday is my early-leaving day anyway, but I'd decided about an hour prior to that to go down to Supercuts hopefully before the rush and get my bloody hair cut. Considering I've been umming and ahhing about this for about two months now, and despite the fact I can't really afford it, it had reached the point where I'd tried to un-knot the tangles at my neck too many frelling times. So I wandered down to Supercuts (which shuts at 5.30) to find it completely full, with a hairdressing contingent of two, one of whom was going home early. And of course, they don't do appointments.
This is going on my ever-extending list of Reasons Why Birmingham Is Crap, under the sub-category of Opening Hours. 5.30 is not a suitable closing time for ANYTHING in the city centre. Average working hours are no longer 9.00 to 5.00; in fact, BCC average working hours at 8.45 to 5.15, so basically we're fucked if we want to get anything done after work that isn't going to a supermarket. Birmingham, kindly drag your arse into the 21st century and at least try to be a viable modern second city. Most places in the West End of London will remain open until at least 8.00pm - whilst I appreciate that the West End is probably a specialised case, it is nonetheless an example to work by. It would not only increase customers, but increase employment. Worth considering, hm?
So that put me in rather a bad mood all the way home. I went to Somerfield to get sandwich fillers (2 for £2.00) and picked up some more frozen fish and some milk. Exciting, I'm sure you'll agree.
I don't know when I'm going to get my hair done now. I'll probably go through another two months of dithering about it because I don't really know what I want to do other than get this great mass of horribleness away from my neck in time for summer, and to get rid of the split ends. If I get it cut into a funky bob I'll only hate it after the first wash, I keep thinking about getting that loose perm I wanted but I'm paranoid it'll go horribly wrong... Oh, fuck this. Where's the razor?
I also spent the majority of Monday night trying to post this entry via email from both Outlook and Yahoo, without success... at least as far as I know. I also bit the bullet and posted the first chapter of my Ugly Betty fic on FFN. It can be found here if anyone is remotely interested... It seems to have gone down well, anyway: 10 reviews overnight, two of which consist of more than five words and most of which have all the words spelt right... ;)
I jest. Reviews are kind of like drugs. And apparently it's very easy to relapse after you've detoxed. MORE!! MORE REVIEWS!! MORE, DAMMIT!
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It's a pain in the arse to use, though, really unncessarily complicated and just dissimilar enough from Photoshop to be annoying. So good luck. :)
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I promise to read the rest, too!
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London tubes are electric? I could still always smell diesel. Probably just psychosomatic in that case...
Ta muchly for reading. I still have no idea where I'm going with it, but possibly suggestions in reviews will help...