Television!

( Leverage )

( A Town Called Eureka )

( Supernatural )

( The Vampire Diaries )

I started work this morning at 7.39am, finished at 2.39pm, started again at 5.15pm and am technically supposed to be there until 12.45am (happily, the event I was working for finished early so I'm already home). I'm tired. And I really have nothing of substance to say but I felt like posting before going to bed...

I finally saw some L.J. Smith books in an actual bookshop today. I think this is the first time I've seen any of her stuff in a shop since the goth TVD reprints came out. I noticed that the Dark Visions reprint is actually a UK one and not a US import like I'd assumed, which means I have some minor changes to make to the cover site. BUT, what was most interesting about the reprint was that it said a TFG reprint was coming soon. Yay! Yay for Julian's irresistible hotness and crazy stalking!

I'm hoping to catch up on comments, e-mails and fanlistings tomorrow but until this, violentviolette, I LOVE YOU *squish*

I've finished my update. Hallefuckinglujah!

But, like, what the shitting hell is this? All the secrets and lore of the Night World in one spellbinding book. Seriously? I... What?

Hey, though: new books! Actual new books (Random Fan Guide! Strange Fate! Shadow Souls!)! AND new covers from random countries. Germany continues to bring somewhat quality covers, even if they have given Delos the most amazing emo hair that ever emoed. (They're also reprinting the NW wildly out of order but whatever floats their boat, I guess.)

Italy have gone for some kind of crazy Renaissance S&M on their covers for TSC, which I actually love in a WTF kind of way. PLUS, they've given us this complete travesty of a NW cover. Poppy would not approve.

GOOD TIMES, PEOPLE, GOOD TIMES!

Am updating the L.J. Smith Cover Resource.

Am losing the will to live.

Help me.

My parents are in Portugal at the moment (and not Spain as I'd previously thought *headdesk*) and I'm trying to convince them to pick up the LJS books that have been published there for me but they're being all 'But you don't speak Portugese' and 'Why do you want more than one copy' and I JUST WANT THEM TO BUY THE BOOKS AND NOT ASK ANY QUESTIONS THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF TEXT MESSAGING, DAMNIT!

In other news, the postman/woman did not come and I am going to kill Royal Mail.

Things to do, things to do! Hurrah for things to do!

• GO TO THE BANK AND CONVINCE THEM TO GIVE ME AN ACCOUNT SO I CAN TELL BARCLAYS TO FUCK OFF!
  
• Go to the bottle bank x 3
  
• Go to the post office I HAVE FINALLY DONE IT, stillxmyxheart!!!
  
• Arrange for redelivery of parcel (veraxia, I suspect this is the stuff you sent me)
  
• Do the dishes
  
• Clean the bathroom
  
• Iron shirts for work
  
• Work out bills and actually pay them
  
• Buy food (but mostly beer)
  
• Replace batteries in smoke alarms
  
• Put handles back on doors in hallway
  
• Ring Mum
  
• Ring Siobhan
  
• Update The L.J. Smith Cover Resource (windian, thanks for the e-mail you sent a couple of weeks ago about this. I'll be using what you sent as well as stealing from your site again =D )

In good news, I finally finished the Sam, Dean and Bobby fanlisting (Family Don't End With Blood). I've been so rubbish with fanlistings lately that it makes me sad. The problem, I think, is that my work schedule is totally fucked. I have no routine because I'm taking extra hours all over the place (I worked 92 hours of overtime in June). But, hey, at least I might be able to pay my bills this summer so that's good, right?

EDIT: I CANNOT FIND MY PASSPORT AND I CAN'T OPEN A BANK ACCOUNT WITHOUT IT. I HAD IT YESTERDAY SO WHERE THE FUCK HAS IT GONE?!

The relentless march of LJS reprints continues and with it comes yet another update of The LJ Smith Cover Resource. Hells, yeah. New things:

• 1 new country! (Portugal)
  
• 1 new cover! (Portugese TVD01)
  
• 2 new ads! (USA & Portugal)
  
• 9 bigger scans! (TVD, TVD:TR, NW - UK & Ireland, Italy, Russia)

There are 170 covers from 10 countries now which fairly boggles my poor little brain.

Later I might do a Parrish/Lorne rec list because that pairing has recently eaten my brain. It is equally likely that I will fuck around reading J2 and pretending to write something of my own. Six of one, half a dozen of the other to be honest.

Unfortunately, with the exception of a stressful ten minutes in which I repeatedly asked a group of French students to please stop touching the art, nothing of note happened at work today. I think the excitement of yesterday was too much.

To make up for this sad lack of shenanigans, I reread The Vampire Diaries: The Struggle & The Fury. I don't really want to reread The Reunion. The Fury wrapped everything up to my satisfaction and I remember being intensely annoyed at a lot of the fourth book, even though it gave us Klaus and more Damon. And again, Stefan, I gotta say, no matter what Elena says you did have a reason to apologise to Caroline. Trying to kill a bunch of people while she watches isn't really cool, you know?

I've just added 26 new covers to The LJ Smith Cover Resource. 26! Okay, so I'm not sure if 9 of them are actually reprints, but that would still be 17 new covers. Basically, loads of covers, everywhere!

• The Night World series has been published in its entirety in Russia. I think it was originally printed in 2003 - 2004, with reprints appearing in 2005, but I'm nowhere near sure about this. In any case, I quite like some of the covers, so go check them out.
  
• The Forbidden Game trilogy was published in Russia in 2006, so all three of those covers are up.
  
• The first two books of The Vampire Diaries have been published in Russia and both of those covers have been added.
  
• Hodder are reprinting the Night World books in the UK & Ireland, but they're basically just fobbing us off with the recent NA 3-in-1s, which is not cool. The new versions do have added swirly bits though...
  
• I scanned the Polish versions of The Vampire Diaries that I picked up in Cracow, so you can now view those in super massive sizes.
  

I think that's about it, but, damn it was a lot of work.

For those of you who take an interest in this sort of thing, I've just updated The L.J. Smith Cover Resource. So, what's new?

• 5 covers from Poland (4 for TVD, 1 for TVD:TR)
  
• 5 covers from Italy (4 for TVD, 1 for TVD:TR)
  
• 2 covers from North America (1 for DV, 1 unused cover for TSC)
  
• 3 textless covers from North America (1 for TVD, 2 for TVD:TR)
  
• 2 bigger covers (1 North American NW, 1 Spanish TVD)

God bless my cover whoring ways.

TV Flailings:

01. Supernatural has been renewed for another season. Hurrah! Also, the teaser for the next episode looks amazing. (Of course, One Tree Hill and Smallville have also been renewed. Who's watching those programmes? I tried to watch One Tree Hill the other day because I noticed Danneel Harris and bekkis has me taking more of an interest in her than I would have otherwise. I got about 4 minutes in before I had to stop. Man, it's bad.)

02. Leverage!!! The last episode was last night. I'm currently downloading it impatiently. IT BETTER BE AWESOME! (Like it could fail to be awesome.)

03. The Vampire Diaries. Dude, I'm so going to enjoy this series if it gets picked up. It's going to be full of the LOLs.

In other news, that interview that I had last week went okay. I'm pretty sure that I won't get the job, but it was probably good experience. However, I had a missed call from them yesterday which I returned this morning. Apparently they've readvertised the job but 'we haven't discounted your application'. Yeah, whatever. If you've readvertised you're hoping to discount my application. *sigh*

Things what must be done in the next day or two:

• Sort out Paypal
  
• Finish cleaning bathroom
  
• Work out finances
  
• Ring Clydebank people back
  
• Buy thank you present for people in Boots
  
• Wash towels
  
• Rearrange books in bedroom so as to allow display of action figures
  
• New layout for InsanitySandwich.com
  
• Upgrade Enthusiast
  
• ?Food shopping
  
• Book flight home
  
• Job search
  
• Update L.J. Smith Fanlisting
  
• ?Get drunk
  
• Post package
  
• Submit closed forms for unadopted FLs
  
• Burn DVDs for Ian (buy DVDs)

I've just spent a ridiculous amount of time updating The L.J. Smith Cover Resource and giving it a new layout, listing to LJS-themed mixes all the while, and now I'm completely shattered.

All in all, I've added 16 new covers, brings the total up to 127. We have 1 new cover from France (TVD is being reprinted there), 4 from Spain (also TVD, but being published for the first time), 4 from Germany (they reprinted (and renamed) TVD again) aaaand 7 from North America (TVD:TR x 1, TSC x 2, NW x3).

As always, if any of you have better scans etc. then let me know! Oh, and feedback is welcome on the layout. It's pretty plain and I spent forever on the colours only to steal the scheme from one of my fanlistings...

I brought The Vampire Diaries - The Return: Nightfall into work today and spent my whole shift laughing my arse off as I read it (most disconcerting for the people actually looking at the art, I have no doubt).

Dude, seriously?

( Spoilers! )

But my general response: HILARITY!

EDIT: Also, why couldn't this whole thing have been wrapped up in the one volume? What exactly are they all going to be doing for two more books? My mind cannot comprehend the joys of discovery that await them (and us!).

zomg!

EDIT:


Oooohh!

I know I've become a bit of a posting machine over the last few days, and I put it down to good old 'avoiding work syndrome', so apologies.

Just been over to check the post list and I had a lovely package from Amazon (does anyone remember when Amazon used to send you free post-its and stuff with your orders? I miss that. Now all they do is send excess packaging and ads for stuff you don't want) which included the new Vampire Diaries 2-in-1. It's just as sexy as the preview images suggested. However, it is American, and not British as I'd previously thought. I've uploaded it, along with a preview for the next 2-in-1 to The L.J. Smith Cover Resource. But I'm going to share the sexy here too. The first one can be clicked for a much larger version, but the second is just a thumbnail.



I'm not too sure about the cover for the second volume. It doesn't quite live up to the first, but at least they've managed to stay away from goth!Elena ;) The book is the newly popular oversized paperback, by the way, unlike every other LJS book ever which is going to play havoc with my shelving system.

And should anyone be interested, my other Amazon purchases were:
Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman
A Certain Slant of Light - Laura Whitcomb
Fluffy - Simone Lia
Looking for Alaska - John Green

I was hoping that some movies I'd ordered would arrive today, but they didn't. So I channelled my I'm-ignoring-work-as-usual energy into two LJS projects that I've been neglecting.

First up, Solitude - the Nick Armstrong fanlisting. I've finally given this a new layout! I'd had the old one for, literally, years - ever since alas_caitlin adopted it out to me, in fact. And I hadn't even used new graphics, I just reused hers :/ I've started from scratch this time and have come up with something I'm pretty happy with. Nick is hot and he deserves and vaguely hot layout. There are also new codes, so feel free to swing by and pick up a new one to replace your crappy old one.

Next, The LJ Smith Cover Resource. It's actually over a year since I've updated this - oops. Anyway, I've added five higher resolution scans (HoV, DV1, TFG1-3 - all North American, 1994), and the five brand-spanking new UK TVD covers. I've also added a plea, by way of aethyrkitten, for textless versions of the covers. Have you spent hours removing text from any of the covers when making LJS covers? Well, don't delete the damn file when you're done. Send it to me!

I really, really need to redo my Ash Redfern site, but the content needs a complete overhaul which will take aaaaaaages, so meh. Ah, I have achieved today. Nothing academic, but that is not the point.

Oh, and are you people aware that there's currently no fanlisting for The Vampire Diaries?! It's starting to drive me insane, so someone apply damnit!

Well, knock me down with a feather.

I just got approved to run the fanlisting for The Forbidden Game.

Nifty!

My LJSGiftbox is all done, dusted and sent.

And now the nerves set in. What if the recipient doesn't like it? What if they don't think I've interpreted their character right? What if they don't like meeeeeeeeeeeee?

;) Okay, so I'm a little nervous, but I'm hopeful that the package will be liked.

Now I can start thinking about the one that's on it's way to me *g*

Soooooooooo, Gabriel Wolfe is once again mine! Well, his fanlisting at any rate. Kayleigh put it up for adoption and I almost fell of my chair in my eagerness to apply ;)

I've spent most of today working on it, and I'm rather pleased with the layout, although I'm still quite unsure about the model I've used. I've checked it in Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer, and although the colours don't match in IE, it looks decent enough in all three. Best in Firefox, naturally.

Psychic Vampire - The Gabriel Wolfe Fanlisting

Please to be checking it out and letting me know what you think. And if you haven't already joined (I'm waiting on the members list to appear in my inbox) then what are you waiting for?!