frog princess

Things that make me happy:

saiyuki_manga has some images from beautiful Salty Dog 5.

The latest chapter of Saiyuki over at radiofreebanri, where ( spoiler )

Oh, just fyi, there is a new challenge over at saiyuki_time - this week, it's about clothes.

daegaer insisting that I write a robot au. Robot tennis au. Rafa Nadal is discovered to be a tennis bot in the middle of the Wimbledon final. I know, stop looking at me like that! She thinks I'm already writing it. I suspect she is already writing her OWN robot au.


Things to make me sad:

R Fed lost his match today at the Cincinnati Masters, where he should be winning. Or, if not winning, at least in serious contention. I wasn't able to keep track of the scores, from nerves. God. You know, I am suddenly learning how people get totally over-invested in sport.

I am writing more tennis rps (stop laughing). I'm just having a thing here, and emungere is helping.

See buckle_berry's awesome and very pretty manifesto for more information on hot tennis players and the gay sex they might hypothetically have. Okay.

Also, daegaer is arriving in sunny UK tomorrow, and is coming to my house where I have specially made sure the toilet paper matches the new lino in the bathroom. Except not really. On Friday we're going up to York for squeefest and then after that I have the entire week off. We are going to hire and car and go quietly insane in the English countryside, I think. Hoorah!

I had a completely awesome weekend.

Yesterday I went to the gym then, exercise achieved, I slormed on the sofa and watched Rafael Nadal's arms the Wimbledon's mens singles final on TV. Rain stopped play twice, and despite that the game went on for 4 hours and 45 minutes, finishing just as the light was fading at gone 9pm.

It was a totally fantastic experience, an epic struggle, and I now can proudly say I understand tennis scoring, if not Roger Federer's love of personalised monogrammed cardigans. Nadal won! It was a great moment. He fell over and then climbed into the stands to hug parents and to shake the Prince of Spain's hand. Then he cried. And then him and Roger Federer were all polite and nice about each other in the interviews. ♥ I might be developing a minor obsession, which emungere isn't really helping with by showing me picture of Roger Federer looking actually handsome instead of just be-cardiganned and then telling me she wants tennis slash.

On Saturday I met up with new_kate in Birmingham, sort of a halfway meet up for us. I was an hour late because my early train was cancelled, but it didn't stop us spending the day at a fever pitch of excitement. We'd planned a girly day of shopping and also PEDICURES, which I have never had before. We packed a lot into our 8 hours together.

We had brunch (bircher yoghurt for me and salmon sandwich for Kate, plus some wasabi peas that I couldn't actually cope with at that time of the morning) and coffee drinks. We ate sitting on the limestone steps in the Bullring in the sunshine and catching up with each other about life, fandom, what we'd been writing.

After that we plunged into Selfridges to ogle clothes. We did mean to go to the women's department, but the men's designer clothes department got in the way. I have to say, I never seen anyone get as excited about a well knitted sweater as new_kate, and she likes to rub her face against them and coo, and we spent a lot of time stroking shirts and sweaters and leather jackets. Also designer swimming trunks!

( junk de luxe )

( sparkly tiny swimwear )

( rolled up sock package )

The pedicures were at a place called the Obsession Salon, in an upmarket mall called The Mailbox, because it used to belong to the Post Office. The rumour is that there are tunnels underneath it that run from there to New St Station, for the mail to be delivered from the train to the sorting office. If so, I want to go in them.

At the Obsession Salon we got foot massages, foot scrub, nail tidy and finally a to nail colour of our choice, applied twice over a base coat, and with a top coat to seal. The only drag was that it then took about half an hour to dry, and even then it was still slightly tacky. Some rubbed off later in my shoes. The pedicurist warned me though

( Post pedicured feets )

So, on coming out of there, with freshly pampered feet, we spotted some more men's designer clothing in Harvey Nichols and were sucked inside. Paul Smith shirts! Gucci belts! Kate tried on about 75 pairs of ridiculous enormous sunglasses, and we found this:

( beard lube )

Then we moved onto shoes. Omg so many shoes.

( Fendi sandals )

( Scarlet Louboutains )

( Alex McQueen silver princess diva shoes )

Then dresses. None of the ones I tried on fitted me particularly well, but Kate found two brilliant ones. I had a lot of trouble finding a size (UK) 16 in Harvey Nichols in anything. In fact, I didn't find a single one even though I looked quite hard, and I was really surprised at the lack. I managed to squeeze into some size 14s though, but it's never as much fun if they don't fit right. So I lurked around admiring seams while Kate was in the fitting rooms.

It took us two whole hours to free ourselves from Harvey Nichols, but after that, ehausted, we had a late lunch at the cafe in Malmaison.

( Obscene looking sausages with mint jelly in a shot glass )

So, we failed to actually buy anything girly, so we moved onto the bookshops, where spending success was acheived! Kate got the luxury Hellboy edition and vol 1 of Nana, and two other mangas that I can't remember now, and I got vol 1 of Vassalord. Then we moved on to Borders, where I got vol 2 of Wild Adpater and a DVD of The Prestige, which I must watch soon. Also, I forgot to take a picture of our books.

Finally cold crisp Italian lager and the wasabi peas, which was a delicious combination. Then the train home.