frog princess

Squeefest was so good - my favourite one so far and not just because of the copious amounts of cake, but because of every single person there being essentially a bag of awesome. *massive group hug to all, love, tears of pure joy etc*

Now we are back and getting into the swing of slorming about and drinking tea. I think we're going to see Wall E tonight, and I might make pizza, and tomorrow we are going to rent a car.

My obsession with tennis continues. YES. Today, Roger Federer is playing his first round game in the Cincinnati Masters series. He crashed out of the Toronto Masters horribly last week, to everyone's shock and much doomsaying about his career being in freefall. I can't hardly bear to look at the news to see what happens with him today, as I think he is playing pretty much right now. The pressure on him to not fail is enormous. Gah. I just can't watch.

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.

I had a great time in Cambridge with puddingcat and her friend Wes, scribblemoose, Mr Scribblemoose and Ms dark_squall, even if my visit was far too short. We hired the Bacon room at Corpus Christi College and sat in its panelled cosiness and drank copious tea (and later port) while it lashed with rain outside. We watched anime and talked a lot about lots of things, including the dementedness of what we were watching and Wes and puddingcat's long trailing personal histories of who met who and when and through which friends, which was very entertaining. Also, the Bacon room had the world's largest and most secretest lavatory, which was accessed via a small secret panel in the, um, panelling. Inside it had tardis-like proportions and looked out over the beautiful stained glass windows of the college chapel. I had a great sense of peace whilst using it.

But anyway! We watched Goku's Burial arc, which made me grin like soppliy a lot-- Sanzo smiling!-- and an episode of Executive Committee. Kubota and Tokitoh are so much less angsty than their WA counterparts and its kind of nice to imagine this as an alternative life for them. I've forgotten the name of the last one we watched - the one with the were-lovers, the handcuffs, blue hair and pink hair and the hot school mathemetician.

Afterwards, we wandered off for food to the Rainbow Cafe vegetarian, which is tiny and crammed into a cellar. The food was gorgeous - I had spinach lasange and a bottle of organic cider with mango and cardamon cheesecake for pudding. The cardamon came through very strongly and the cheesecake seemed to have a thick layer of cream on top, so much that I couldn't actually finish it. Then we all climbed in a taxi and I got on the train back home, so I could parent-wrangle the morning after.

So I don't forget, dark_squall showed me some of the beautiful art she picked up at Yaoi-con. I wrote the artist's name down somewhere, because she is just that good. There is just something so inspiring about hot elves in samurai outfits.

We fly back early this evening. It feels like I've been here far longer than six days - in fact they've gone by in a blur and I'm so glad I have tomorrow off as well. Right now, we are in daegaer's sitting room, drinking tea and vaguely thinking about packing, and I have been writing up my week.

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

In random other news, I've begun reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince again. It hits me anew just what a bunch of little shits most of Rowling's child characters are. Harry is particularly appalling, all boiling rage, rudeness, badly thought-out plans, smirking and general me me me. A teenager, basically.

Yay, happy birthday to me!

I am safely in Dublin, at daegaer's home and I can indeed confirm that the lavatory paper matches the colour of the bathroom! Thank heavens, or we would have gone straight back to the airport. I can also report that daegaer has the world's most extensive collection of tea bags.

I let daegaer hear the Ding Ding Dong song by an incredibly camp man called Gunther, who pouts and has a moutache at the same time, and now she is addicted. For emungere, and anyone else who wants to hurt their brains, there is a whole website of Gunther.

scribblemoose gave me balloons. ♥ ♥ ♥

Late night AIMing sometimes throws up strange things from my brain, like I'm already dreaming. It's a phenomena often noticed.

Which I think is why emungere wrote me the beginning of a poem about Tennyson mysteriously catapulted through time only to fall in love with Johnny Weir.

I don't know either! No, I do. It's because I said Tennyson was hot when he was younger. With fabulous hair! I saw this portrait of him in the National Gallery, you see, and things went from there.


She is a strange and wonderful person. ♥

***
In other news, there are 14 photos up now on my 365 project.

Oh, youkai Hakkai! Guh. I feel like Minekura just showed us a tiny glimpse of the secret porn stash she surely must have hidden somewhere.

Also, hello. I am back in sunny Reading. The squee fest in York was a lot of fun and I met some very cool people, new friends and old. Also, me and daegaer stole the remaining men's pocky from the fridge this morning. Sorry! scribblemoose did a fantastic job of organising the whole thing, and is just as huggable in real life as online. Also, sorry that I didn't manage to say goodbye properly to various people or talk properly to enough people either.

But still, it was much fun and now I feel very very tired indeed. I enjoyed the writing workshops on the lawn so much, and the discussions that arose - would love to do more of that at some point.

Work tomorrow. Drat.

Okay, so it looks like I will defintely be going to squee_fest_uk, and in the company of the illustrious daegaer, yay! So, perhaps now might be a good time to find accomodation, yes? I must remember to sort out my connotations booking too. And decide about Yaoicon this year while I am at it. And find a nice cheap holiday on a beach somewhere.

In other news I am working my way slowly through Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, and enjoying it. I like the style and the tone - it reminds me a lot of Neverwhere, but seems far more solid somehow.

I have been writing screeds of fiction, but none of it is in a postable state, or often even properly finished. But about a 1000 words a day on various things, which I am pleased with. This morning on the train I began an original short story that I hope to send off for a deadline at the end of this month. I don't know if I can meet the deadline, or if 23 days is long enough to write and edit it, but seeing as it's going to be about 6000 words long, it seems enough time if I don't let myself get too distracted by other things, by which I mean manporn. Shut up. Speaking of which, I need to start editing my chapters of the epic porn novel. There are just so many things I want to write, aargh. Frustration. I wish I had more time for them all. But at least I have a plan, even a vague plan.

So, June looks like it's going to be fairly busy, and here I was thinking it seemed quiet. My parents are insisting on taking me to a boat show on Sunday, and the weekend after that is a family party in Kent. The week after that I hope to have off and was planning on doing the face-down onna beach thing. Thankfully work is not too demanding at the moment, or I feel like I might pop a gasket.

Finally, have a photo of my garden:

( big giant poppy )

Am back. It's good to be home, although I think I'm in love with Glasgow. What a fine city. Worldcon was immense fun, even if I completely ran out of energy by Sunday afternoon and couldn't face one more panel. Sunday night curry with hfnuala, yonmei and the soon-hopefully-to-be-livejournalled Heretickal One was great fun and they helpfully planned out my Famous Five thirty years on story for me. I alo spent a couple of very pleasant hours that day with weyrlady talking about all sorts of things including anime, gadgets and Japan.

I'll do a longer con report later, when the painkillers have kicked in. I have arm pain (from a bad shoulder-- too much beer drinking... ?) so am typing this one handed. I'm off to the doctor tomorrow to get it checked out. Hopefully it's only a muscle sprain, not galloping tendonitis or something.

Oh and, please let me know if any of you wrote fic, otherwise I will probably miss it and I would hate that.

I had a great weekend and visit from daegaer and toscas_kiss. On Saturday we picked up some romance novels (don't ask) from a jumble sale-- it's hard to comprehend that people can still willingly write dialogue like 'You treacherous little vixen!' but they do. Or, 'kiss me before I die of loving you.' *heaves* OR 'When the teacup began to sway they simply smiled and attributed it to the magic of their love.' Their love is teacup-shaking! And:

'She met him thrust for hungry thrust, soaring through the primeval jungle of desire that took them to the beginning of time and slung them back into the future.'

Anyway, moving somewhat dizzily on, I have much love for xxxHolic by CLAMP. Okay, I'm going to change my stance on CLAMP art yet again because I love the art in this. The story is very cute, reminiscent of Legal Drug but with a much better plot so far. The black and white, tone free art is very pretty.

I finally watched episodes 18-26 of Samurai Champloo. For the first few I was wondering where the plot had gone and what had happened to the art, but then the last three turned out to be very good indeed and ( big spoilers for the ending )

I had to lock my last post because it was making me feel gloomy to read. It's one thing pouring angst out-- it made me feel better. It's counterproductive for me to read it and get depressed all over again.

Anyway, I should get my act together because daegaer is coming to my house tonight - yaaay! There will be much anime watching, cracktastic chatting and wine swigging and also, later this week, Harry Potter reading.  toscas_kiss I will email you later about Friday, but you're welcome to stay over.

About meeting up at Worldcon - astolat has kindly offered to organise a Thursday evening get-together for media fen. If you're interested, RSVP to her post here to let her know.

My face is hot and pink-- this is not to do with anything exciting, but it might be the gardening and the Cava. 

The parental units were here all day and we did the garden and were all very industrious. I don't think I've ever made so many cups of tea in such a short time.  Then a friend came round with one of the little people, who insisted on trying to throw herself in the pond for an hour, until she became too random and had to be bundled in her pushchair and taken home.  Now, I'm utterly knackered.

The week ahead is exciting!  The remixredux archive will be going up tonight/tomorrow, hopefully. Writing your own remix of someone's story, you tend to forget that someone's doing a remix of one of yours and it gives me alittle glow to remember.

daegaer is coming tomorrow evening and there shall be much watching of anime and giggling. Tuesday we are meeting irisbleu in London and there is a high chance there will be a snowballjane there too-- yay!  Interspersed with the fun there's work, but only till Thursday, thank god.