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I'm sure you'll all be relieved to hear that I have recovered from Saturday's awesome levels of drunkeness. After waking at 5.30am on Sunday, and spending four hours reading Sheppard/McKay fanfic, I ventured outside to buy the newspaper, apples and cherry coke. Alas, the entirety of Shawlands conspired to refuse me access to Cherry Coke and I ended up buying Pepsi and Limeade instead which, you know, just not the same. It then took me like seven fucking hours to read The Sunday Times but it was hard and broadsheets are so difficult to fold, especially when your coordination has been somewhat impaired, and they're so tall which makes it hard for me to read the text at the top of the page, and there was a DS9 marathon on Virgin 1 so whatever.

You will also be relieved to hear that I think my alcohol tolerance is returning to levels closer to normality. I had about a pint and a half of Heineken in the flat whilst watching the Wales v. Argentina match (mostly dull but jesus, those tries!), then I had about three pints of Heineken whilst watching the Scotland v. Australia match (!!!!!!!! Unexpected Scottish genius for the win!) in the pub, and then a pint of Staropramen and at least three bottles of Peroni at the engagement party. Which is somewhat respectable and I am not disappointed in my shocking lack of tolerance like last time.

In less fabulous news, my time off is over and I'm back at work. How dull.

Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk!

Only in Scotland would I ask for a cheeseburger and end up with a battered burger with the top of a bun, but not the bottom. Deep fried burger is odd and the whole thing is crazy. Crazy drunk!

EDIT: ALSO, THE RUGBY!

I've just been ambushed by a very enthusiastic man from Scottish Hydro who counted out the many ways in which I was fool to get my gas and electric from a French company who are a) French and b) based in England and c) EVIL. Which, yes, fair enough, but he woke me up and then scared the bejesus out of me with his aforementioned enthusiasm and was a wee bit disapproving of the fact that I need to pass changes in my utilities companies through both my flatmate and my letting agency (although, when I rang my letting agency they said it was nothing to do with them, which is not what it says in the contract they make us resign every six months but whatever). I'm not even awake enough to process any of this properly but at one point I swear this guy sounded like he was giving me a sales pitch direct from QVC. Very charming man though, god bless him.

In other news, the whole fucking world's gone mental over Thierry Henry's hand ball and it's BIZARRE. Like, I knew Ireland was going to go mental because OMGWTF?! But it was on all of the main news reports here yesterday and people are ANGRY. Mainly because Thierry Henry is like the last bastion of football having any claim to be the gentleman's game, but STILL. I don't think his hand ball was premeditated but it was still cheating and they SHOULD have a replay. They won't because football is all about the cheating and the lack of video refereeing, but DUDE, WE SHOULD GET TO GO TO THE WORLD CUP FOR FUCK'S SAKE. FUCK YOU FRANCE!

Between my excellent housewife-like exploits of the past few days, I've been reading Generation Kill by Evan Wright and One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer by Nathaniel Fick. Both books have hammered home how little I actually know about Afghanistan and Iraq. I consider myself to be fairly well up on things. I read the newspaper. I watch the news. I discuss political situations with people. But, seriously, I have giant glaring holes in my knowledge. Reading Fick's book especially made me realise that I didn't actually remember the chain of events that happened after the September 11th attacks in America. I don't remember the retaliatory events in Afghanistan directly afterwards. I just remember the move into Iraq and the massive protests here and Hans Blix completely failing to find weapons of mass destruction. The whole bit between September 11th and the invasion of Iraq is oddly blank in my memory.

In a way, I'd like to blame this on the fact that I was on a dig in Hungary on September 11, 2001. I had spent my day excavating a Neolithic shell midden in the blazing sun on the edge of the great Hungarian plain. Back at the hunting lodge we were staying at, we were all looking forward to showers and cold beer only to be told by the people who'd stayed behind for finds processing that someone had flown a plane into the twin towers. Which we thought was a joke. I remember genuinely not believing what they were saying until I followed them into the common room and saw the images on the TV. It was like a demented sci-fi movie. Now, the problem was we were in the middle of nowhere in Hungary and the only news we could get was German and I was the only person with any German at all and school-level German doesn't really cover death and destruction. So, I'd like to say that it was this remoteness from my usual surroundings that led to my absolute lack of memory of what happened afterwards. For me, what happened afterwards is that we all eventually dragged ourselves away from the TV, had showers and went about our business as usual the next day. A week or two later flying back to the UK was extremely complicated and involved armed soldiers which was in direct contrast to our flight into Hungary which had involved a member of our party making it through passport control with an out of date passport. Then, protests and Iraq. Nothing in between.

What I worry about is that I don't remember the bit in between because it didn't seem important and so it floated right out of my brain just as soon as it entered. I had some personal stuff going on around that time but you would I think I would have retained some information relating to America and various coalition forces bombing the shit out of Afghanistan. Of course, all of this has helped clear up the burning question of why, exactly, British forces were first sent to Afghanistan, which is something I've never really been sure of despite the huge coverage that war is getting at the moment.

I've successfully caught up on both Livejournal and Facebook. Now, you may think this is no big deal but I feel like I've achieved quite a lot. Go me! I freaking hate the way Facebook works but it is the easiest place to stay in touch with the people that I know, so I continue to use it (incredibly) grudgingly.

I plan to spend the rest of the day baking (I bought a delicious looking cookbook in a sale the other day) which requires leaving the flat to acquire ingredients but it will be worth it, people!

(I'm kind of obsessed with this song at the moment and I can't figure out who it reminds me of. Pearl Jam? Nirvana? I DON'T KNOW!)

After informing my mother that I got scandalously drunk, on her birthday, on a disputed, yet emphatically small, number of pints (either four or five, depending on whether you go by what I remember or what I told my flatmate, in a conversation I completely don't remember happening, when I got home, and if it was five it means I skipped out just as it was my round *cough*) and completely didn't remember the birthday phonecall I'd made to her (actually, I remember making the call, I just don't remember what I actually talked to her about) she tutted disapprovingly and told me that I was going to have to get in training for my trip home because getting drunk on four pints was just not going to be tolerated.

At moments like these, I often wonder if there's anyone else in the world who has conversations like these with their mother, because I've never met anyone who has.

The point, though, is that she's right. So right, it pains me to admit it. I've been getting drunk well easily lately and if I go home from Christmas and get drunk on four pints I will be the subject of much ridicule from everyone. Including myself, quite frankly. I've always had a wildly varying tolerance for alcohol and I spent most of my drinking time in Galway honestly thinking that I only ever managed to drink about four pints on a night out before I had to stop. On a memorable field trip in Mayo, I proclaimed something along these lines at seven in the morning as we were finally turfed out of the pub, and was looked at in much confusion by Eoghan who broke the news to me that I'd had at least thirteen pints, which, given how long we'd been drinking, made much more sense. So, yes, I've had times where I've drank thirteen pints and still been able to walk, but I've also had times where I've had, like, three and thought 'jesus fuck, I'm completely fucked'. I think part of my drunken charm has always been that I get kind of drunk kind of fast but that I maintain that level of drunkeness over the course of many drinks before moving to the sloppy drunk part, if you know what I mean. BUT ANWAY, the current situation is not good enough and must be improved upon. Yes.

It's been a week of sports (mostly mediocre, sometimes frustrating as fuck), drinking (to an excess that produced hangovers of sadness), working, being told that foreigners should go home but that I'm not foreign enough to count, excessive fan-fiction reading, marches through Glasgow city with fascists clashing with anti-fascists and the police looking somewhat confused. And occassionally, I have slept. So, yeah, that's what I've been up to. I'm going to attempt to actually make posts about, you know, stuff, rather than these lame 'so I've been doing things but nothing in particular' ones but who knows how that'll go.

Today, I'm going to do a bit of cleaning, go to the bottle bank and respond to all the comments I owe people. FUN!

EDIT: *FLAIL*

THERE IS RUGBY TODAY. This is good. As you may have inferred from the use of capital letters. I am going to drink beer. Maybe in a pub. I don't know. But there will be beer and rugby and it will be good and I will forget about the fact that my week off is over tomorrow because I will be drinking and watching TV. Yes.

This morning, I caught up on Generation Kill and I just love it. At first, I wasn't too sure about it because it's so different from anything else on TV but after five or six episodes I've made my mind up (because, as the man said, it's pretty fucking ninja). It's just so beautifully shot, the dialogue is fucking awesome and the characters and their interactions are so close to perfectly done. Plus, jesus fuck they're so hot. If these guys really had been the ones that invaded Iraq, Iraq would have just rolled over in deference to their hotness. Seriously. (I may have spent a huge chunk of yesterday downloading fanmixes and reading Brad/Nate fic (which I totally didn't mean to, but they were so good and so hot and it totally overrode the whole 'this a programme that doesn't actually need homoerotic subtext to be awesome' considerations) but that is neither here nor there.)

A meme, from stillxmyxheart, because why not?

Current Books: A Matter of Death and Life - Andrey Kurkov
Current Playlist: Generation Kill fanmixes (rock! hip hop! electronica!)
Current Guilty Pleasure: Staying in bed until lunchtime
Current Colour: Um, white? Because there's still paint all over my glasses from the hallway excitement
Current Drink: BEER!!
Current Food: Pizza
Current Favourite Show: Generation Kill
Current Wishlist: Generation Kill - Evan Wright (there's a pattern here which is undeniable)
Current Needs: Shower
Current Triumphs: I PAINTED THE HALL, CLEANED UP AND PUT THE FURNITURE BACK, MOTHERFUCKER
Current Bane of My Existence: Work
Current Celebrity Crush: Alexander Skarsgård
Current Indulgence: I am eating too much, as always
Current Blessing: You know, that whole making enough money to roughly support myself and lead a decent life
Current Slang: I really just want to say 'that was pretty fucking ninja' in every possible situation
Current Outfit: Pyjama bottoms, fuzzy socks and a NIN t-shirt
Current Excitement: BEER AND RUGBY!
Current Mood: Happy and whatnot

After the horrifying nature of ending up paint-splattered and bitter yesterday, today took a turn for the better when natural light rapidly made it apparent that a third coat of evil white paint would not be necessary. Thank fuck for that. I have a problem with heights (I mean, I'm not terrified, and I have deliberately jumped off a bridge before, but I've also fallen out of an attic and I don't like being on uncertain ground at any height above about six feet) and sadly for me, my flat has stupid high ceilings that I can in no way reach which resulted in me clinging precariously to the top rung of a ladder that always seemed in danger of tipping over. It upset me. So no third coat meant no ladder clinging which, in turn, meant good times.

Which I celebrated by going shopping and spending £22 on fucking light bulbs. I don't even want to talk about the scowl I gifted the woman behind the till with when she announced the total. I also bought a Cadet McCoy action figure from TK Maxx though, so all was not lost.

And, after a nap, I caught up on the last three episodes of Supernatural and episode five of Stargate: Universe.

( Supernatural Ramblings )

( Stargate: Universe Ramblings )

All of these catch-up shenanigans have made me miss True Blood and Generation Kill, damnit.

Oh, and veraxia, I finally posted your parcel yesterday =)

EDIT: I just opened the fridge and immediately asked myself why the milk was sporting a Scottish flag only to almost simultaneously realise that I. Live. In. Scotland. Duh, Lorraine.

I've just finished watching Slings & Arrows and god, how amazing is that programme? I love, love, love it! It's so funny and so bleak. So crazy and so touching. And Paul Gross literally could not be any more endearingly wonderful. Especially with that hair. I don't understand why this didn't make it to some prime time slot on this side of the pond because it's exactly the kind of thing that someone like the BBC should be showing. SO GOOD.

Bed time now, but Happy Hallowe'en to anyone still up and about to enjoy it.

I may come back and talk more about this, I may not, but basically, dude I'm drunk (on 3 pints! So cheap! Mostly because it's been 3+ weeks since I've had a pint but whatever, it is all good)! YAY! And I worked like 13 days in a row and now I'm off for just over a week and that's good and so is alcohol and yay for stuff - woo!

Work today was work-like. I read a book and tried not to scowl at the public. Same old stuff, really. Then I came home, ate, and watched a bunch of TV.

FlashForward is still dull, ridiculous and needlessly melodramatic. And Dominic Monaghan fecking still hasn't made a proper appearance. Balancing all of that out, Joseph Fiennes is still super hot.

Defying Gravity is a programme I've seen mentions of here and there. The vague opinion I'd picked up on seemed to be that it was somewhat overrated, so that added to the ASTRONAUTS! part made me curious to see it. I was actually going to download it but, happily, BBC showed the first two episodes last week and I caught up with them on iPlayer today. And it was shit. Complete and utter shit. Jesus. (I miss The Cape. Now that was a proper astronaut goodness.)

Last night, like a good, conscientious girl, I changed the time on my phone to take account of the time change and set my alarm. I, I thought rather smugly at the time, was not going to be one of those people who flailed around on Sunday morning, early for work because I had thought ahead and taken things into account. Only my phone took things into account too and, at some unknown time through the night (3am? I thought the time change happened at 2am, but 3am probably makes more sense because of licensing laws and whatnot.), pushed the time back another hour, with the result that I was late for work.

Plus, when I woke up, my right eye had tried to glue itself shut throughout the night and continued the attempt throughout the day. Which was not fun. But, on the upside, I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, so that was nice.

ALSO, I HAVE NOW WATCHED THE WIL WHEATON EPISODE OF THE BIG BANG THEORY AND IT IS AWESOME SQUARED! HOW IS WIL WHEATON SO COOL?!?

And, last but not least, I'm enjoying Grey's Anatomy so far this season, especially because MITCH FUCKING PILEGGI keeps showing up!!!

I've just read a discussion in comments to a fic where people are maintaining that "if you think [insert topic here], you've got another think coming" is both correct and widely-used. In Britain. (And America.)

Seriously? I don't even know where this has come from because it clearly makes no sense. I have never, ever heard anyone threaten someone with the words "you've got another think coming!". I mean, that doesn't make any sort of grammatical sense, never mind the fact that it sounds ridiculous.

Anyway, moving on. I've been sick in this really annoying, low-grade way for a week or so. Sick enough to be annoyed but not sick enough for it to actually matter. Only, I think I'm graduating into actually properly sick and balls to that, people, balls to that.

This is an incoherent post because I'm tired and still boggled by the "another think coming" thing. I AM SO INTERESTING!

After a lot of dithering, my flights home for Christmas have been booked (courtesy of the parents because fuck knows I can't afford flights over Christmas) and I have successfully avoided flying with Ryanair after their horrendous decision to charge me £70 excess last Christmas and then have the gall to refuse payment in Euros. For some reason, this visit is turning out to be inexcusably complicated and the original plan was to fly into Belfast, spend a night or two there, get the bus to Donegal and spend a night or two there seeing family before getting the bus to Letterkenny and spending a night with my brother and then heading down to Sligo. Now, I'm flying into Donegal, doing the family thing, then going to my brother and then to Belfast, before going to Sligo. Which has me travelling in the wrong fucking direction for the vast majority of my travel time. And it's fuck hard to get from Belfast to anywhere that's not Dublin (not to mention getting from Donegal to Belfast), so I may have to go to Sligo via Dublin which is really out of the way. AND, I'm going to have to keep swapping fecking currencies as I jaunt back and forth across the border. But these are things that I can worry about later.

The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

I kind of forgot that I was in the middle of a trouble check over at TFL... So my update has come a few days late, but it's done so I feel like I've achieved something. And to further this paltry sense of achievement, let's talk about the books I've read recently (I'm still mostly waaaay behind on TV).

230. Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan
231. Big in Japan: A Ghost Story - M. Thomas Gammaring
232. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Devil in the Sky - Greg Cox & John Gregory Betancourt
233. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Laertian Gamble - Robert Sheckley
234. Stories We Could Tell - Tony Parsons
235. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Objective: Bajor - John Peel
236. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Heart of the Warrior - John Gregory Betancourt
237. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Wrath of the Prophets - Peter David, Michael Jan Friendman & Robert Greenberger
238. The Host - Stephenie Meyer
239. Broken Angels - Richard Morgan
240. The Snow - Adam Roberts
241. Berlin Blues - Sven Regener
242. Budapest - Chico Buarque
243. The Final Solution - Michael Chabon

( Some musings and whatnot )

Since the expenses scandal is the scandal that refuses to fucking die, I have some thoughts to share. Be thankful you're getting these via the internet because when I run through them in real life, my voice escalates and I gesticulate a lot.

The politicians have been instructed to pay money back. In some cases a lot, in others not so much and then there are honest souls who don't have to pay anything back. Unquestionably, the whole designating your primary residence hoo-hah was completely immoral and they should pay the money back. The problem is that it wasn't actually illegal. Making the rule changes retrospective on the other hand... that strikes me as ever so slightly actionable. Don't get me wrong, I think they're absolute bastards. We're talking about a group of people making a good wage and getting all sorts of perks and yet they continued to wring every penny they could out of the system. That sucks. But it wasn't illegal. This is important to remember.

That said, a lot of the focus has been on the money people have been ordered to pay back for gardening expenses. GARDENING EXPENSES. John Snow pointed out that the amount of money MPs are now allowed to claim for gardening would result in them paying their gardeners less than minimum wage. Which they're not allowed to do. He brought it up several times. Which, fair point, EXCEPT FOR WHERE I SHOULDN'T BE PAYING FOR AN MP'S GARDENING EXPENSES AT ALL! OH MY FUCKING GOD! A garden is a fucking luxury and keeping it in 'good order' is your own fucking responsibility. STOP TAKING MY MONEY TO DO IT.

Politics, man, it enrages me.

(Unrelatedly, I just watched Pan's Labyrinth. Why didn't anyone tell me how depressing the end of that film is?)

I slept for twelve hours last night, which I'm quite impressed with. It does mean that I managed to sleep through FlashForward but never mind (I'm really only watching at this point for Joseph Fiennes and John Cho).

The woman who is publicising her book on Today FM is so boring. So, so boring. I want some music to wake me up and give me the energy to actually leave the flat for work, radio!

As you can see, I have nothing worthwhile to blog about. OH WELL!

So, I'm not entirely sure why I haven't been posting lately. I think I've fallen into a vicious cycle of working and then when I'm not working, bitching about how I have to go to work in a mere matter of hours. And I've more or less fallen out of the habit of yammering away on LJ. Which is stupid. Because I like LJ and I've had so many things that I should have been rambling about.

Like the near incoherent levels of rage I've sustained over the past few weeks in relation to politics. The party conferences have had me yelling at my television (DAMN YOU, QUESTION TIME!), calling entire groups of people cunts (seriously, could the Conservatives be a bigger shower of cunts if they tried? UNLIKELY!) and crumpling the defenceless Guardian when the rage causes hand spasms.

The anger has reached such epic levels at times that I have actually gotten angry at the fucking sports section of The Guardian. The SPORTS section... (But seriously, the British and Irish Lions is NOT the same thing as a rugby team GB and fuck you for saying so, British rugby union.)

Absolute confusion as to why Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Price. Did he bring peace to the Middle East when I was mired in one of my fits of self-indulgence?

There's also been all the television watching (Stargate: Universe - this is seriously what the cancelled SGA for? Wow. The deep urge to indulge in physical violence when confronted with the new adaptation of Emma (it's a good adaptation, I just fucking hate Emma). The vast inappropriateness of outing someone on The X-Factor (and wtf? He's totally likable you jackasses) and the piss-poor apology that was made after the fact.)

Then there's the recent reading in which I have inadvertently stumbled across the best science-fiction book EVAR. And, it turns out, it was written by a Glaswegian. Aces.

My continuing poverty and the bludgeoning myself over the head with the fact that it's no one's fault but my own that my loan repayments are sneaking closer and closer to £400 every month. (Well, I can also blame the fucking Euro and the motherfucking UK for their continued EuroScepticism (SO MUCH RAGE) and refusal to join the Euro for reasons which THEY CANNOT ARTICULATE.)

The dawning realisation that I undervalue myself, my skills and my experiences and fuck if that isn't a depressing thing to slowly worm its way into your consciousness.

So, yeah, you know... stuff!