frog princess

It's cold and I'm tired. Today's decorating included a lot of painting over mysterious stains, stripping wallpaper and then reapplying new wallpaper. It all looks really good but now I feel like I did too much. Mr Lux did emergency cementing when a massive chunk of plaster fell off the wall, followed by half a brick! Then he did some emergency plumbing on a leak in the shower pump. By that point it was 6 o clock so we gave in and tidied up.

We didn't even have the emotional fibre to organise poached eggs on toast for tea, so we got chips. With fishcakes! They tasted exactly the same as the chip shop fishcakes I used to eat three decades ago. Maybe they are the same ones.

Now I'm half watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I can't hear John Hurt these days without thinking that Kilgarrah is emoting at Merlin. Although in TTSS he really sounds like a cross between Kilgarrah and Quentin Crisp. We were going to watch the first of season two of Homeland, but I can't brain that much at the moment.

Mads Mikkelsen's mouth is one of those genuine bee-stung mouths - slightly too pouty and sensual, and it draws the eye in an otherwise rather harsh face. And that is perfect for Hannibal, because his mouth is where the crimes happen.

I really need a Hannibal icon.

Talking of kitchens, we are getting a new one. The current one suffered from mildew because the previous owner didn't care about fixing the guttering, and even though it's all be cleaned and bleached, that mildew smell just lingers and its horrible. I priced up what we'd need today: cupboards, doors, wall tiles, work tops and miscellaneous kitchen parts. We have a local reputable building dude who can come and do it. So I think that's going to happen in the next month or two. We're going to attempt to paint the tile floor because we decided that trying to get the current ceramic tiles up would be a nightmare and expensive.

Talking of the white noise in cafes yesterday, when I'm at home and I want an ambient noise that's not radio 4 (which is fairly often these days) I like to listen to 10 hours of rain

Roger lost to Tommy Robredo! In straight sets. That was the last thing I expected, seeing as how I was expecting him to painfully and frustratingly lose to Rafa yet again in the quarterfinals.

My default setting is that Roger should win everything, so this year has been sucktackular as a fan, and it doesn't look like it's going to get any better any time soon. His back has been a chronic problem for years, so maybe it's causing this downward slide? Roger never really talks about it in detail though, so it's hard to know.

A depressing quote from his presser about the match: "I just couldn't do it."

This tumblr posts only one thing - literally the same picture of High Dancy every day. It is a good picture though.

Yesterday tarteaucitron visited me. I took her to the local pool for a swim, and we did quite well - at least 20 lengths. Then we came home and cracked open the cava, and I coached her through a lot of Hannibal. She did really well, only having to hide behind a cushion at the most gory places. Counting last night and this afternoon, eight episodes. A lot.

Plus we fitted in a few Game of Thrones and a very late night episode two of the Great British Bake Off. The breadstick technical challenge has actually inspired me to try making some at some point. They look tasty. I used to make bread quite often, although I haven't made any since we moved here.

Ion I am still stupidly pleased that I actually finished and posted a fic this week, and I can feel vaguely involved in and contribute to a fandom again. It's good!

Okay, so I'm going to do this thing. The thing being the 30 day festival of non stop posting meme that I have seen happening on my flist. I like reading your posts. I like it when lj is not 70% a barren wasteland! Also, the perma-moan that is Tumblr being so clunky for having conversations on.

I had Unexpected Reading Festival last weekend, when new_kate arrived without the man, so I was able to use his ticket. Because I am middle aged now, I hadn't heard of anyone on the Friday night lineup apart from Green Day, but we had a great time! We had fun spotting legitmately middle aged people among the threshing sea of teenagers. I got my picture taken with Batman. We had a disaster at the female urinals, where you're given a flimsy cone that allows you to pee standing up. First I had perfomance anxiety and couldn't go. Then when I got over that... I'd drunk quite a lot of beer and it all went wrong. *Draws a veil*

Kate fell in love with an ephemerally beautiful youth who had a large tattoo on his back that showed the Hulk with chained Wolverine crouching shirtless at his knees. It was an interesting concept! Then I made her watch 5 episodes of Hannibal.

On Sunday I went up to see my Dad and spent the bank holiday gardening. The weather was beautiful - sunny but breezy with fluffly clouds. I harvested pink fur apple potatoes and planted curly kale and celeriac and carrots for the winter. It's a bit late to be sowing them really but we thought we'd give them a go. I'm not sure what to do with the potatoes beyond potato salad, but potato salad = yum so it's not really a problem.

Ion I'm thinking of reviving my fanfic recs, because I've been reading so much and tend to just lose all the good stuff.

The last day. What a slog! But by tonight I had got the uploading and making posts down to a fine art. I hope people have found it interesting - it's been good to do, and I gave it a lot more thought than I thought I would.

( Sunday )

It got late too quickly yesterday and I had to slope off to bed instead of posting, so here's two days worth of pics.

( Wednesday )

( Thursday )

This entry is a bit late as I had an unexpected after dinner nap. Also, arachnaphobes please beware - there is an eight legged critter in the middle of this post.

( Tuesday )

Happy (late) birthday to puddingcat! I hope you had a goodie ♥

~~

Ion, I was a bit surprised to see that I haven't posted anything since mid- November. Life has been something of a long dark tunnel over the winter. The combination of grief, cold dark weather, and a series of irritating colds and sinus infections (one if which is still lingering and giving me a bit of trouble with tooth pain) has left me feeling like a mouse hiding in a hole. I've been going up to visit my family menfolk reguarly, and we've been doing a lot of gardening and having bonfires together, so that has helped.

There is news on the house moving front. We still haven't moved! Not the best news, I know. But, our vendor has told us she still wants to go ahead, so it could be worse. My new hobby is harrassing the solicitors and the estate agents and we hope to at last exchange contracts in about a week.

I bought a guitar. I'm not sure about where I'm going with it but I'm really enjoying my lessons. tarteaucitron bought me the Justin Sandercoe book, which I would totally recommend for complete beginners. It offers lots of small stages of achievement, so I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere. My fingertips have gone leathery! I am competent on six chords and my ability to sing an actual tune is improving (my voice is a weak instrument).

For my birthday in Feb, buckle_berryy and tarteaucitron bought me a ticket to see the all male Twelfth Night, with Mark Rylance as Olivia and Stephen Fry as Malvolio. Hands down, it was the most joyous night in the theatre I have ever had. So good we went twice And we went to the stagedoor both times! So that makes Mark Rylance basically my boyfriend. I have not really got words for how much I enjoyed it, but it illuminated my entire life for weeks.

Anyway, starting tomorrow I'm going to do that week in the life project that matildafilch as just done. Because I loved seeing random pictured of her week! You basically post pictures of your day for a whole week. Seeing as how I post about once every three months at the moment, this should get me a bit more motivated.

to lovely daegaer! I hope you've had a super fabulous day of funtimes!

I just tried to access my old recs journal (miladysboudoir) because I have about a billion things I want to rec, but I've forgotten the password. Foiled! I tried so many times that I was temporarily banned. The email I used for that account is long dead (I haven't used it since 2005) so I've flung myself into the arms of lj support. Hmmm yes. I'll let you know how that goes.

I keep meaning to update about the Rebel Fitness programme I'm doing, as I'm sure you are all aching to know how I'm getting on. Suffice to say it's got a lot harder as I've moved up a level from rookie to recruit. Also, I bought a machine to exercise on! It's a cross trainer and I keep it in the spare room. Can I just say how much I love being able to merely climb the stairs to my tiny palace of exercise rather than going to the gym and doing it in public.

I saw tarteaucitron, buckle_berry a couple of weeks ago and we went to see Queen Christina, a film about a woman who doesn't want the life she's born to, both as a woman and queen of Sweden. I've never actually watched a Greta Garbo film before. She was astoundingly charismatic and attractive, despite the bizarre 1930s eyebrows, and it made me want Queen Christina fic quite badly.

The real Queen Christina ran away from Sweden and became a cross-dressing patron of the arts in Europe, and was finally buried in the Vatican. She also inadvertently caused the death of Descartes; he arrived in Sweden to instruct her and, due to living in an icy castle and having to get up at 5am every day to give her lessons (the only time she had to spare), developed pneumonia and died after ten days. Apparently she was distraught with guilt but carried on inviting the greatest minds of Europe to her death-trap.

I also went up to Manchester to see new_kate, where she lives in the middle of all the hipsters ever. We did a lot, mostly involving tea and cake, and a lot of hipsters.

( some pics )

to tarteaucitron! You are fab. That is all.

Oh, except I wish I had a picspam for you of Tom Hiddleston cross-dressing in armour while singing opera to you, but I don't so you'll just have to imagine that.

I cancelled my gym membership last week, partly because the guilt of not going was a swirling vortex in my soul. I was feeling so bad about not going that it was stopping me doing any other exercise, because I knew I shouldn't be wasting my gym membership by doing things that are free. Brains are very strange things, seriously.

I signed up for the Rebel Fitness Guide instead. It cost a tiny fraction of the gym membership and for the money I got six months worth of exercise plans, with exercise guides for everything on Youtube so I don't bork myself doing it wrong, but most moves are actually pretty simple. I've had to buy some more dumbbells and a set of resistance bands. In the later stages I'm going to need a pull up bar (D:) but they seem to be pretty cheap, so.

( moar about it )