Do you still think that way about me now?

I have completely forgotten what sort of things you're supposed to put in an LJ. My life has been very routine since leaving university - the perils of regular employment, I suppose.

My transfer (see previous entry) started in August, so I've been working in Ballymena for four months now. The travel time is much more suitable. I now have a decent period for unwinding on the weekdays, and I can even spare time to go to things through the week. I've joined a local choir in the last few weeks, and on Tuesday I was at a Christmas concert by the Ulster Orchestra, which was fabulous fun. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I'd still been working in Belfast.

I just finished reading The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane. It's non-fiction; you might find it under travelogues or natural history. In a bid to discover if there is any "wilderness" left, the author travels around Britain and Ireland to caves, islands, moors, mountains, glens, beaches and woods. ( A brief review )

I've worked on Company too, though I haven't done as much as I should - which is the story of my life, really, when it comes to Company :-/

And now, I shall probably disappear until some time deep into the New Year lol. Happy Christmas, folks, in case I don't see you!

My ankles have been itching for the past four days. The need to scratch is so bad it's waking me up in bed. And my left ankle also looks swollen. It's very annoying. Like job hunting is very annoying too. Damn employers, turning me down/not getting in touch. I am the most brilliant worker you will ever have! How can you not employ me?!?

So, yeah, otherwise life is spectacularly uninteresting.

I love being subscribed to the Bookseller mag! I get all these previews and upcoming publication dates, and I stick 'em all on my mobile phone calendar so I never forget about an interesting book hahah!

I thought I'd better indicate that I am still alive (unless this is my ghost controlling teh interwebs oh noes). I didn't get the Google job *shrug* so it's back to the job hunt. I'm working on one of my possible short story entries, getting round to reading all the books I blew my student loan and grant money on, and every now and then I take a fit of building houses in The Sims 2. 'Kay, bye!

My hands are very cold right now. My bedroom is freezing.

I have been writing! Proper writing, not PhD junk! I did five pages on Thursday - I'm horribly slow cos I keep going back and adding/revising stuff - and I spent today thrashing out a storyline step by step, so now there are even more Post-it notes on the wall! I was never comfortable with the main plotline I'd taken with Company of Ravens; I'd saddled myself with a lot of inner-city grit and violence which a country girl like me knows precisely zilch about. So I've switched over to another strand of characters, who were originally going to be introduced much later, and I'm working through events from their side. I'm much more comfortable with this one. But again with the slowness; I'm probably at mid-chapter two material at the minute.

I'd like to salvage some of the original way it was going but I'm not sure how well the two would sit together. The new storyline features people who know all about vampires etc. while the original direction is from the point of view of people who don't have a clue. So one's giving away what the other is trying to hide. Plus (and I'm here going purely on the five pages from Thursday) the new storyline has a lighter tone to it which sits awkwardly with what was going on with the original plot. That's what I think, anyway; I could be being paranoid because I was still unhappy about working with the original plot.

I'd like to ask you guys what you think except that five pages isn't much to go on, and having worked through the new plot, there are now adjustments I wanna make. Oh the dilemmas!

In other news, the reason I've started back on the novel is that my PhD revision has finished... for now. I've revised every chapter now and the pertinent ones are in my internal examiner's hands at the minute to check that, at the very least, I'm on the right track. Also my Sims addiction is continuing in fits and starts. Creating Sims is giving me ideas for characters in my (still very vague) realistic novel.

I'm currently reading two books concurrently: a biography of Willaim Pitt the Younger (I have a fascination for that sliding period between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and a novel about a black law professor whose controversial and paranoid father has died, leaving him to deal with some mysterious "arrangements", which, at this point of the story, has led to the death of one person that we know of.

Anyway, I have talked a lot. I need to get offline and get my hands warm, and let Mum and Dad get to sleep (dialup outlet is in their bedroom). Bye!

Contrary to popular belief, I have not fallen off the edge of the universe. Nor have I been abducted by aliens or had my mind wiped by men in black. I have been busy and my dial-up connection has been playing silly buggers. I did have a massive entry written but lost it due to my somehow deleting a password >.< but here are the brief highlights:

- PhD is going well; long may it last!
- History books are good. Doctor Who is better.
- Pets have been ill and aren't out of the woods yet.
- I hate job-hunting.

Hope that helps.

Sooooooo... don't have anything to update you guys on, but I want to make an entry so here I am, lalalah!

I went to my pigeon hole this morning and found an essay waiting in it which wasn't there yesterday. The essays were due in the Friday before last. The person hasn't sent me anything to excuse explain the lateness. You get a nice fat 0% and I don't have to read your stoopid answer, yay!!!

I hate The Man of Feeling. Nothing happens, there's no connnection from one bit to the next, the sentences are confusingly long (and not good-confusingly long like Dickens's sentences are) and Harley is an idiot who does nothing and dies for no good reason *kicks Henry Mackenzie* I can't believe this was so insanely popular back when it first came out in the 1770s. Mid-eighteenth-century people were all so busy swooning and sobbing and going into paroxyms, they forgot to have taste. If Jonathan Swift had been alive, he'd have had a heart attack. Then written a satire involving lots of breasts and excrement, yay!

One merciful relief about it is that it's short. Imagine if we'd had to read Clarissa as our sentimental novel! o.O'' (Info: Clarissa makes a very nice doorstop.) But at least in Clarissa, something happens.

I slept in this morning, much later than I was intending. I'm not sleepy enough to go to bed at a decent hour, but when it comes to the morning, I don't want to ever ever move.

I had very interesting dreams about the farm at home-home. I dreamt we had all kinds of wildlife living there naturally . There were turtles, tree-frogs, swallows and penguins who lived in old rabbit burrows!! ( Read more... )

Huh. Guess I had more to say than I thought...

Happy birthday to featherypony and a (rather belated - sorry!) birthday to jellostar.

Yeah, I don't have much to say. Got a lift home which I wasn't expecting; had a very weird and detailed dream last night, in which I was doing my PhD, not in university, but in my old secondary school, and I forgot that PhD students don't have a timetable, so I was panicking because I hadn't got mine; finished the Ubiquitous Book of the Summer - I was disappointed with some elements but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt till the last book comes out; went on a bike ride with Mum and Sharon.

Damnit, I need to get back into a decent sleep pattern. No lying in till 10! *slaps self* I had stupid dreams about shopping centres: in one, to get to the next floor, you had to climb a wide steel ladder and haul yourself through a slot at the top between the wall and the floor, and in another, the store scrapped toilet cubicles because taking your handbag into the cubicle spread MRSA (or whatever that superbug's called), so the toilets were sitting in plain view, not just to other users, but to the whole store O.o' And there was another dream about a terrified slave-girl sneaking around a milking palour/cowshed, and another featuring anime-esque fairies, but I can't remember them as well.

Leon FINALLY got in touch, but I guess the original plan for a meeting got scrapped, cos he just told me to pick up my draft at the school office, read the comments and get back to him with a redraft in about a fortnight. At least I know what I've got to do now. I was wandering around with no clue what I was supposed to work on.

I'm on a big history-book kick. I don't know why. Novels have always been my choice of book, but recently I've become interested in history studies and biographies. My mum is alarmed at the number of books I've bought recently. To her, books are a luxury, and luxuries should never be bought if they can be borrowed or got second-hand. I see her point - her attitude to money and how to spend it was bound to rub off - but I've got a big, shiny new bookcase with lots of empty shelves, and there's been so many books recently that I've made grabby hands at, and I've got plenty of money but that's gonna end come September/October, so you see, I've got to get them NOW!! *ends self-justification*

Foof, whatever's going on, I hope you're ok and can get back in touch with us soon.

( Book meme from Marzi )

The Land is back! The Land is back! The Land is BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!

Stephen Donaldson is writing more Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. :DDDD

I love these books. They were my first proper adult fantasy. Think kinda like Narnia, but with rape and madness and despair and white gold and leprosy. Love love LOVE! Three scenes in particular have stuck with me: from the Chronicles, Covenant, going crazy because he can't get back to the Land where he's left his friends in the middle of terrible danger, stumbles into a revival meeting, which doesn't help his sanity at all; from the Second Chronicles, as an uncomprehending Linden watches the members of a cult in the real world being controlled by Lord Foul sacrifice their hands to a bonfire, Covenant screams, "Foul! Even children?"; and also from the Second Chronicles, Linden's experience of the real horror of the Sunbane, the Fertility cycle. I repeat: love love LOVE!

So of course, when I spotted a NEW BOOK IN THE SERIES, I had to get it. After reading seven-odd chapters standing in the shop ^.^ This is billed as the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. So it will be a trilogy of trilogies. There's something satisfying about that.

In other news I am currently sitting at the computer reserved for the duty supervisor (it's ok, the duty manager said I could have it) and it feels most peculiar. The angle on the rest of the room is all wrong and I feel tucked away from people. I'm also a little nervous about irate members of staff accosting me. Or worse - students asking me for assistance! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! Well, the students do that anyway. I dunno, I must have a helpful-looking face or something. Or I look old and knowledgable about these things. Or just old. Whatever it is, I keep getting people asking me how the computers work. And not just older people, who maybe aren't familiar with computers; it's people my age and younger o.O'

I had dinner last night with LJ (that's Lorna Jane, not LiveJournal lol), Ruth and Francesca last night. I haven't seen Fran in years. She seems fine, the same as I remember her.

(Remember how nervous I was about students asking me for help? It just happened. Twice. IN A ROW!)

Anyway, Ruth and LJ were on fine form; despite claiming that they were tired and had loads of work on, Fran and I could barely get a word in edgeways. And we all tried on LJ's engagement ring. You know, just in case we never got one of our own lol! Nah, it was more like, "Hey, you have a cool piece of jewellry, mind if I try it on?" It was quite heavy. One large diamond, and four little bitty ones around it, set in gold. It was nice but it wasn't very showy.

On American politics, because it seems that everyone has to say something about it, well, I predicted that Bush would get it but that it would be close. *shrugs* It's no skin off my nose. Suck it up and get on with it.

ANYWAY, to repeat the good news, THE LAND IS BACK!

And now I'm going to post this and run away before any other students can grab me for help!