It's been a lovely, cool, QUIET morning. I got up fairly early for me, had my tea and toast, finished my next-to-final draft for my term paper, read the paper, browsed the Internet and blessed the cool fog and the lack of upstairs noise. But Junior Jackass is UP and the sound is thudding into the living room; by 12:30 - unless he goes out - my two front rooms will be unbearable until he goes to bed. Thank heavens he works - or has some sort of job, so I "only" have to endure the rap crap every evening from 4 PM on and every weekend from when he gets up until he goes out. And then comes back in the middle of the night with a half dozen buddies and cranks it up again. Junior Jackass indeed!

Of course, I haven't heard from my landlord about fixing the paint in the bathroom which was ruined by the leak from upstairs. Again, something that could have been prevented if Junior Jackass has thought to put a pan or bucket under the very visible leak. Furthermore, JJ knew that it was dripping into my bathroom and runing the paint. I showed it to him. He took a photo on his cell phone and talked to his father in my presence. That was four months ago and still, nothing as been done about the mess. JJ's bathroom was fixed. I'm ignored.

if I don't hear from him by the end of the month, I'm going to have it done myself. I was advised by the Rent Control Board NOT to deduct the cost of repairs from my rent check as that could lead to eviction proceedings. Isn't that horrible? If your landlord doesn't respond and you get something fixed at your own expense, you can't deduct it. You have to file a petition at the Rent Board for a reduction in rent and then, there's supposed to be some sort of arbitration procedure. But as the landlord is currently ignoring all the building code violations and the letter from the city, I am not optimistic that this would do anything other than antagonize him. I DO have cheap rent and so, I'll get some of the work done myself. I'd sure feel better about it if I didn't have to deal with Mr. Wanna-be-DJ upstairs and his noise but it could be worse. Apartments are expensive and hard to find so I hold on and wonder what the future will bring.

namaste!

Last night was certainly craptastic.

Thank goodness it's over.. now to consume nourishment and fry my brains just a little on WOW. Then more knitting, then sleep.

If anyone ever tells me to fuck off on the phone at work again I'm going to let loose with Meccahi-rage. Goddammit I was freaking polite to them the whole time while they indulged in sheer idiocy. Idiocy on DIAL UP none the less. Phenomenal.

In other news.. my dreams yesterday consisted of me being captured by an Evil Faire Owner.. trying to escape an island in a truck with Molly that was surrounded by a giant loch ness monster, a ninja fight, and chocolate chip cookies. I love my brain.

I leave for Kentucky like.. next week. I am still so boned. I still can't fucking wait.

The Navajo Nation sprawls across northern Arizona, into Utah, and New Mexico. It's 26,000 square miles. Very often getting from here to there involves a drive through Navajo country. It's some of the most beautiful geography in America -- the scale of things -- distances, objects, vistas, is astounding. I got myself stuck on the wrong side of the Colorado river yesterday for about sixty miles but the pay-off was getting to see this marvelous moonrise.

One should not be getting up at the weekends at 6:45am *pouts*

Yesterday consisted on running all over south London to get cats vaccinated and hire car fixed - they rented me one with no brake or headlights! And then when they fixed those it ate my Steve CD *grrrr*. Had to cancel session with PPT M due to aforementioned car problems.

Then over to ravurian's for 3:3pm to buy more paint and brushes and pretty much finish the decorating (achieved by 11:30pm with breaks for Dr Who). Now all he has to do is empty the room, decide on flooring and buy new furniture. I think he may have gone off the idea of decorating unless one has *people* to do the manual labour in future. He's a dab hand with a roller though *G*

Today I ran back to my flat (am staying at S's to babysite cats whilst he is away) to do urgent paperwork, clean and do the pile of ironing and washing because I may have an aproposofnothin staying tomorrow \o/!

Then to my "real" flat to check on rebuild, collect post and take piccies....roof will be finish next week I think - awesome! And electrics going in too. also had to measure up bathroom and kitchen since I can#t find the measurements I did before (and I need them to plan OMG yes I do). Then to tile shop, bath shop and B&Q superstore.

Am definitely begging an extra week on choosing bathroom and kitchen as head is now spinning - but I have all my bits and pieces of paper, stuff ripped out of magazines, colour chats (and samples of bathroom tiles) to take to Wales on Wednesday so I can spent four days plotting what it's all going to look like (with ravurian's help of course).

Am now shattered. But I have tea (*g*), scones, strawberry jam and cream (\o/) and kitteh's - not to mention BSG to watch. So 45 mins downtime coming up before I do an initial sift of two bags of misc paperwork relating to decorating etc etc etc.

Dinner with sucrelefey was just lovely. She kindly walked me hither and yon to point out all the sites, and then we went to one of her locals for a super meal. Every dang place in this town has Strongbow cider on tap. I keep trying to give a new cider a go, but everyone says, "Oh, that's not as good as Strongbow." I think I'm going to have to admit that it is the Ur-Cider and just be happy with it. (Happier, that is.)

The statistics class was great---I know, right? Who'd have thought? By the end of the day my brain was full to the top. My work buddy and I went for a long walk with her husband. The day was warmer than in Houston, but bright and gorgeous. I love the way the mountains peek out between buildings.

In the flagship Fluevog store, in my mind I spent $2,000 on shoes. In reality, I spent $0. Have seen the Countess Olivia boots in person. Managed to not actually drool ON them. Assessment: worth every red cent of their $400 price tag.

Around the corner from here is a famous steam clock---we walked by yesterday just as it whistled the hour. Gorgeous.

The homeless population here is HUGE. The panhandling is not aggressive, but it's persistent, and there appears to be a thriving market in crystal meth, if we can judge by the number of wobbly, thin folks with open sores. The abrupt changes from yuppie to derelict are jarring/fascinating. I'm glad that I'm not staying in the conference hotel, or I might not have seen this.

sucrelefey tells me that there are urban ravens. I keep hearing them, but not seeing them.

The three pieces of sushi I had for dinner last night were equivalent to about 7 pieces anywhere else.

Today: I'm watching cartoons in French. Not that I understand much of it. I guess I should, you know, head over to work soon.

missyjack's crack brings all the fen to the yard. She could teach you, but she'd have to charge.

No Rest for the LOLcats ~ Highlights from the SPN Season Finale

• 16:53 Worrying that my migraine is going to come back if I don't go and lie down again. 8-( #
• 17:00 @semiotic_pirate - Oooh, Brimfield!!! :is jealous: #

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In far less polarizing news, I'm temping at Stanford again.

My schedule's all weird now, since instead of 9-6, I'm working 12-9. Which means I'm gonna have a hard time carpooling with pops since I don't want to get up at 7am, and he doesn't want to stick around until 9pm. And the person I was hoping to carpool with (she lives in the city and worked 12-9) apparently left. I'm apparently filling in for her while they look for someone new.

On the other hand: Oh, money! How I missed you. ♥$$$$♥



And on a different note, amara_m wrote me a Sweet Charity fic. It's not posted yet because I want to keep it to myself for a few days to savor the triumph. (I kind of hate Supernatural, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Samantha Ferris will never fail to be extraordinarily attractive.)


I should go to sleep, but my stomach hurts. :(

Okay, I swear I'm going to bed after this.

Here, for posterity, is the master list of vampire movies I know I've watched. I know there are others, including at least one Chinese vampire movie (figured that one out), but these are the ones whose titles I can remember and look up.

( In mostly chronological order... )

That's a large chunk of my childhood right there.

I've just been watching 'Core' on the FX channel.I remember seeing the trailers for this when it first came out, and scoffing a bit, but there are times (as witness my Irwin Allen obsession) when I'm in the mood for a bit of skiffy adventure without plucky heroes and implausible science, and this definitely fit the bill. (Giant amethyst geodes in the Earth's mantle! Diamonds the size of Cape Cod! Famous landmarks exploding! Whales!

#6. Cold Hearts

Or, Lost Boys II: 90s Vampires of the Jersey Shore (Reality really does bite)

Too much "day in the life of a 90s vampire", not enough roller derby. But some really hilarious Lost Boys homage scenes. And bonus Power Ranger! This movie has two serious flaws: realistic dialogue is not good fictional dialogue, and the David-and-gang analogs were totally lame. Otherwise a noble effort.

Also, if you're going to play a Temple of the Dog song over a vampire suicide, I think the song should really be "Hunger Strike." I'm just saying.

#7. Perfect Creature

Genetically engineered not-quite-steampunk vampires! With dirigibles! And Dougray Scott!

Very pretty, but also very slow.

Argh. Now I have "Hunger Strike" stuck in my head!

Because my brain is totally inundated with Hammer films, and because it got good reviews, today the boy and I went to Austin's Romanian restaurant, Drakula. I am now very full of the blood of innocents good goulash and apple strudel.

And while we were in there, we heard three different remixes of the Numa Numa song. Seriously, how fabulous is that?

We've just come back from the trip down to the border to actually do the "landing" bit of being landed immigrants. Some of us were a bit worried that they'd change their minds at the last minute, but they didn't. We left Z's girlfriend in our apartment with instructions to post all the books if they wouldn't let us in again... but they did. We are home! We are as Canadian as possible under the circumstances!

We've been working towards this for a long time.

She's amazingly patient about it, too, and contemplates the board pretty well. I'm... impressed.

Spouse is sick. We managed to plant four things today anyway. Blargh. I do not like the not-quite-vision-going-light-headed stuff.
Nor do I like ticks. But I was wearing white pants and the two that jumped on me were found and flicked off quickly. Evil little blood-suckers.

INwatch: Lilith: 334, Core Rules: 324, Eli: 302, Liber Umbrarum: 197, Litheroy: 179, Asmodeus: 137, Infernal Player's Guide: 70, GURPS In Nomine: 17.
Adventures: City On Fire: 105, Feast of Blades: 84, Strange Bedfellows: 80, The Rats' Revenge: 76.
Free Adventures: A Very Nybbas Christmas: 3841, The Sorcerer's Impediments: 2340.

Guests around today so this'll be very short and sweet.

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - Episode 7: The Unicorn and the Wasp )