drakyndra

Well, to follow on from my previous post (And yes, I am enjoying the rebloggings on tumblr. Though if your name their is different from LJ or what-have you, please let me know, oh mystery follower), I once more have things!

This time, a bit more physical. Mostly.

There's volume 5 of the Utena manga (in English), since I finally managed to find someone selling it second hand for a reasonable price. Yes, it's an ex-library copy with the reference sticker in place, but given as new copies are like $80 at cheapest, I think my just over $20 was rather a bargain.

Also: new second-hand furniture in my room. With actual drawers. Which is greatly helpful when it comes to storage - or will be, once I've finished sorting things out (I'm currently at the mid-point of cleaning, where everything is messier than what it started out.)

Then there's plans for my birthday (mostly family related for now, though if anyone knows of something fun on at the end of the month, give me a buzz), or at least the weekend beforehand. So, dinner at a nice Mexican place - note to self, actually book tables sometime this week - and then on the Sunday we'll go to the museum for the Ancient Mesopotamia exhibition thing.

Plus I am informed my mother has a large present to be dropped off at my place, which has me hmmming away.

Oh, and finally I have this week's Korra episode, which I must get to watching now I have some free time...

I see that certain sections of my flist seem to be on a run of randomly producing snippets of smutfic.

... I can't say this is something I am against. My flist has been rather G rated, lately.

Work is being work. We had some other electrician guy come around to replace the light fixtures, since that seems to have been what caused the most recent blackout. Oh, and there was a dinner with Dad on the weekend, you know how it goes.

I think I am missing shopping (or at least browsing through shops) at the moment. eBay isn't quite the same. Even when you find nifty stuff. Curse you, full hours!

Well, I am back in Melbourne after my weekly jaunt to Wodonga, which was both rather wet (yeah, so about that flooding...) and involved me getting sunburnt, which I actually didn't notice until this morning.

Which was alright for a worky thing, but I don't think I'd want to do it too often. I think I prefer being able to actually have some time away from co-workers. And also with internet access that isn't just my phone.

Hopefully the pay will end up being decent for it, though.

Then today I had lunch with Mum and my sister, since Mum was in the city again, and then watched as the HouseMatt cleared out all his stuff, since he's going to be moving out later this week, I think.

Since he has gone and packed the TV stand, we are now displaying the latest in student decor, having the Enormous Nature Strip Telly sitting on a pile of milk crates - so yes, there will need to be a look for some decent second hand furniture soon.

The other housemate's brother is apparently going to be in the third room for a few months, while we sort out a more permanent housemate, but I hope we'll find someone permanent soon. Anyone know of someone who could use the place?

Beyond that, I think I am mostly caught up on LJ and other important internet things, but what else has been going on in the last week that I may have missed out on? I feel so uninformed.

Oh, today. Proof that even when you stay home to avoid the heat (and the crazy wind; seriously, the wind has been noisy as hell all day) you can end up really busy.

This morning involved more spamming of resumes via email, and I have decided it is rather convenient when you find a whole bunch of similar jobs on seek.com.au. Then you can just use the same cover letter, and copy-paste the appropriate company name and details in the right spots.

I do have one more interviewy thing coming up, but it's for a volunteer position. Which will be helpful on a resume, but doesn't exactly pay. On the plus side, it's close enough that travel will be pretty convenient.

And then I got involved in the cleaning up-ness, since we have that iPartment inspection coming up on Wednesday. We've still got vacuuming and mopping of floors to-do tomorrow, plus the kitchen benches need some work, but it's a bit better now.

I got into some of the cupboards, going through things so we had some more space, and alongside some really very random things, like a fruitbowl, I've also managed to sort things out so we've now officially got a booze shelf. There was some seriously random stuff there, like bottles of things I can't even identify. And some almost finished bottles we are intend to very shortly turn into completely finished bottles.

Checking out some of the boxes from my room also turned up some interesting stuff - lots and lots of old photos, from when I as back in Kinder, and some of my old ballet ones. I sort of wish I had an actual scanner to show the ballet ones...

I also got randomly creative with my dinner, since I decided if we are cleaning the benches tomorrow, I hardly want to mess them up by having to cook tomorrow night. So I decided to make something with enough leftovers for tomorrow night and ended up with P Pasta - Penne with Pesto, Pine-nuts and Parmesan. Also, I have rather more than one meals worth of leftovers.

And your regular supply of links for today:
- Naturayarte Leaf Art. Some of which qualifies as holy fuck how do they even do that? Plus, obviously, teh pretty.
- Dalton M. Ghetti's Pencil Art. So, this guy took thrown away old pencils, and carved them into amazing arty things. Some of which are honestly quite astonishing.

...Yes, I did find those two links from Cracked.com.

- Super Seeking Sidekick. Well, what else would an ad for a superhero sidekick even sound like?
- Lego man launched into space. There's a video of it and everything. Those darn kids, making me feel so unaccomplished at my age...
- Microwaves Ruin Everything. Haven't you ever wondered what happens when you put all those things you aren't supposed to into the microwave?

I see it doesn't take much being in Melbourne time for there to be stuff going on. Hooray for keeping busy.

Because courtesy of the great resource that is twitter, yesterday afternoon I heard that there was going to be a free ninja gig at the city library with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer.

So, I rushed down there with one of my housemates (and, later, Grace, whom I had known until then lived that close by on my tram line) to see them. Didn't manage to show up early enough to get a seat, but I could see fairly fine, and so got to hear two short story readings from Neil and ...several songs from Amanda. And her ukelele. I'm sure they'll show up on YouTube sooner or later.

And then after I got Neil to sign my copy of Good Omens, and got a picture with him (...which is on my camera, so not yet on the computer), and had Amanda sign my metcard. Because, you know, I had it in my bag.

Then I went with some people to have dumplings for dinner. The end. Huzzah!

But it was a fun way to fill an afternoon. I approve of this ninja gig thing.

...Though I am also reminded that I need to chase up ephant so I can pay her back for the Dresden Dolls ticket. Which is only a bit over a week away, now I think of it.

In other news, the enormous nature strip TV that the housemates found in my previous post has been fiddled with and is now working fine, sitting in the middle of the living room. Hooray for free TVs!

Oh hey Penguindrum fans! (I know there is at least one on my flist) You can make your own flashback boards!

I even made one for myself (Please forgive the crappy Google Translate Japanese. Now, if only I could work out how to embed it...

For those who are curious as to what it's about, Mum was down in Melbourne last night, so The Sister and I went and had dinner with her. I was actually rather hoping for Mexican, but the place we looked at had an enormous queue, so we ended up back at the hotel restaurant. It actually wasn't all that bad, even if it meant I ended up walking in a great big circle in those absurd heels I was wearing.

But yes, family dinner then, which means I must now really got onto sorting out the rest of my Christmas shopping before I head back to Hamilton for Christmas itself (Or to be precise, a couple of days before - which, yes, does mean I will probably miss out on seeing the last episode of Penguindrum for a few days. No spoilers for it, plz.)

I also have to ponder what I shall get with the Harvey Norman gift voucher, which was Dad's present. I could be useful for the other iPartment residents, and get a food processor so they could use it too. Or I could be more selfish, and get a new digital camera - mine's a few years old now (5 years, actually, now I think on it) and tends to play up in really hot weather.

*sigh* Oh the great pains of having to think about shopping.

Some other entertainment (on neither shopping nor penguin related topics):
- The 10 best commercials of the year. I love it when advertisers show a little intelligence. And fun.
Also, the 30 freakiest ads, if you want a little more WTF in your advertising/
- Cello Wars. Ah, the Star Wars cello duel. Because what could be more niftily entertaining than that?
- There's a new Dark Knight Rises poster image out. Plus there's all that stuff about the prologue, but there are no special screenings of it in Australia. *pout* And I ain't paying for Imax tickets to see Tom Cruise's movie, sorry.

...I guess I'll just have to wait for Sherlock Holmes and the full TDKR trailer.

Well, we now seem to have the iPartment back, windows and all, even if the construction guys left rather a mess. I am not impressed with the sawdust all over my books, of my now broken Newton's Cradle.

I mean, they broke my science!

Also, I still have to put stuff in my room back where it belongs. And rehang my curtains.

They actually finished up on Saturday - which was not without it's problems, I assure you. My housemate checked with the office, and they said that the tradesmen would be arriving at about 9am, so I was sitting around waiting for them then. For the next three hours.

After some minor freaking out and trying to chase people down on their mobiles (because no-one seems to answer on weekends), I ended up finding out that the tradesmen were planning on arriving at 1pm, and had no idea about the 9am time I was given. Who knows what happened there.

So I headed off and spent the afternoon hanging out with cat_empress, wandering around this Fair Trade/Enviro friendly fair thing at Federation square. Which was interestingly different (or not so different, since I'd seen some of the stalls at the Night Market), but it's always nice to properly meet up with people you've only known online.

I hope you're enjoying the little plush echidna you got, cat_empress.

Then after that I met up with my sister and father and his gf and we went to a rather fancy Japanese restaurant for dinner. Mmmm, tempura vegetables.

And then I just got to bum around for the rest of the weekend, listening to random music I downloaded.

Anyway, one of the positive parts of all this fuss over the windows is that I now have the kitchen back, so I celebrated by testing out this recipe for vegetarian laksa for dinner. Which actually mostly worked out, it just need more spices. I wonder if there is a way to spice up microwave leftovers? (Recipe was for two servings, so I have Tupperware of laksa in the fridge).

And now for your regular dose of random entertaining links:
- The Harry Potter theme played on Piano, in "every style known to man". It's old, but still rather entertaining. And I'm very impressed by the improv skills.
- The mysterious paper sculptures of Scottish libraries. I had actually seen some of these before, but now there are more of them: 10 in total. That's a whole lot of creative effort.
- Photos of water splashes that look like hats. Hey, it's me. How could I not link this?

Someone is coming to the iPartment tomorrow morning (...at 8am) to replace all our window frames. This process is apparently going to take 2 days.

It would have been really nice if the landlord had actually bothered to TELL us about this, instead of me having to find out from a phone call on Friday from the window people.

Especially since one of my housemates has been away for the week (and won't be back until it's over) and I have no idea where the other one has gotten off too.

It was supposed to be a last minute confirmation of details from them!

*has spent the last hour pushing stuff around so you can actually get to the windows in my room*

What's some stuff I can go do for the next couple of days so I can avoid carpentry and machinery noise?

Oh Melbourne weather. It was actually really hot for most of today - like summer weather - and now it's the middle of a thunder storm. Of course.

Which made lectures today a bit less than fun, but that's beside the point.

It's not doing any benefits to our bathroom window with a bird-induced hole any good, that's for sure. (Yes, a bird managed to make a hole in our bathroom window. No, it hasn't been fixed for weeks, because the problem is with the window frame, we are on the second floor, and there isn't enough room between the outside wall and the fence for the machinery so someone can fix the outside part. Well, that's for our land-lord to work out.)

Speaking of bathrooms, last night I had an unfortunate encounter with a spider in my pajamas. And yes, the spider was in the pajamas, not me. After a bit of shrieking and flapping clothes about, I managed to dislodge the damn thing, which I believe is current in Witness Protection somewhere in the bathroom.

And in other news, I have discovered how to make anything you do more awesome: do it while listening to James Bond theme songs. Things instantly become more awesome.

Case study: grocery shopping last night. Deciding which potatoes to buy is far more exciting if it is done while listening to Diamonds are Forever.

Here, have some random links of entertainment.

We have Alot of cake. I'm sure of you will get what is meant there.

Also, the time the Foo Fighters defeated the Westboro Baptist Church. Go rock and roll!

Oh bleh.

My Exam/Presentation/Whatever thing was today. And I am grumpy at myself because it went less well than I had hoped. I kept forgetting what I was supposed to say next and having to look at my notes. In retrospect I seemed to cover all the major points I meant to, but as presentations go, it was rather less than spectacularly executed.

And for some bizarre reason, my body decided the best time to be all nervous and unable to eat was after the damned exam, which rather ruined my lunch.

*sigh*

At least that's done with, leaving my just one more assignment to get done for the rest of the semester, and that got it's due date pushed back a couple of days.

Though, I feel the need for some cheering entertainment - anyone up for taking advantage of Cheapass Tuesday movie tickets tomorrow? I could use a movie, and I hear that the new X-Men movies is actually quite decent. I also hear that Charles and Magneto have a whole lot of homoerotic subtext going on, but that's an entirely seperate point. Except for when it isn't.

Aside from that, I've mostly been watching Doctor Who fandom go mildly kerblooey - either because they had their minds blow, or were underwhelm/predicted things, which is interesting.

I had the personal experience of seeing one of my housemates walk in just in time to hear only the very last line of the episode. Poor bastard.