Gossip from inside my head

The world feels lighter today and not as heavy as before. Something is lifting. I think I’m almost well again. Still I’m doing the comfort thing, dressed in nightwear and wrapping myself in a huge woolen rug, drinking hot drinks by the computer listening to the whirring of the fan heater that is keeping me toasty. My mind is alert again. The last few days it has been dulled and the most I could cope with was watching DVDs requiring no thought. I’ve been rewatching all of Buffy Season 7, mainly. Hoorah! Now it feels up to a slightly more daunting epic, which I started reading at the new year whilst in Sweden, but have been distracted a lot from since. I’m referring to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I’ve been racing through it today, and it’s really growing on me.

There is a lot of banging and hammering and other strange noises coming from the kitchen, and has been all today and yesterday. This is really exciting, as it heralds the birth of a new kitchen. You see, what started out as a simple boiler replacement, became a “take out both boilers and replace with combi-boiler” and to that was added the new cooker installation, and then they decided they’d have to move the kitchen sink anyway to put some new pipes in, and they may as well put it back in a much better position ... and so on. It’s going to be a better kitchen, with heaps more space, and there should be room for more cabinets to be added and the like. Hopefully it’ll all be finished today. Words cannot express my desire for heating and cooking. Yay!

The perkiness may also be due to me expecting a visit from my sweet cassielalone tonight. Tomorrow my gran is having a 90th birthday lunch in Keyworth, and there Nini gets to meet my family. The whole extended family. All at once. *smallgulp*

ug. I feel even worse today. No sleep due to raging fever and delirious episodes. I’m all broken. Not going anywhere.

( dehermiting, a sapphic wedding and much karaoke badness )

( gas applicance woe )

Arrrgh! Yes, yes .. it’s that time of year again. I’ve been a muppet and not made any big birthday plans for Thursday. However, I will be in the Dev in Camden for glenndm’s birthday drinkies on the evening of Wednesday 15th, so if people want to join me there, that’d be nice. If you buy me slightly early drinks and birthday presents then, I’d be smiling lots.

[1] Not convinced that hag night is the right name for the party before a lesbian wedding. I think it needs a name. Any good suggestions? *wonders*

Aaaaaaaaaaargh! I’m screaming at the world now.

Seems I’m whinging a bit too much recently. I’m sure normal bouncey service will be resumed shortly. Cooker was delivered today. The question I asked a few days back What can possibly go wrong? is now swarming around my head like an angry wasp. Damaged in transit. Might be dangerous. So they took it away again. Not before having turned off the hot water which I can’t now get back on. Meep.

And now they’ve just called back to say they’re out of stock of that model and have no idea when they will next have any more. I’m less than impressed with the world at the moment. I’d been looking forward to cooking proper food today and had plans and everything and it’s all not to be.

Time to lose myself in another world. The plan is to rewatch all of Buffy season 5 this weekend. *nods*

I think I must have done something to infuriate the God of Gas Appliances. Somebody please tell me what.

Not satisfied with taking our cooker to big flamey death, today it was the turn of one of the gas boilers. Of which we have two, which I always thought excessive, but now I’m very glad of, as at least we still have hot water. *hugs hot water*

But what happened? Nothing as exciting as big flamey death, this time. Mr Gas Engineer insisted on inspecting the gas boiler, despite it being many months away from a check being due. Mr Gas Engineer insisted on checking just the one, despite them both being in the same room. Mr Gas Engineer decided that although it worked fine, it’s UNSAFE and DANGEROUS and rather than fixing it, ordered it turned off and put a big scary warning on it. *meeeeeeeep*

So no central heating. It’s the middle of winter, dammit, and cold out. Well, it’s cold inside now. No idea how long it will take to fix. I’m just hoping it gets fixed before the cold front of doom (-30C!!!) that’s been sweeping over East Europe this week hits London. That won’t be fun at all. Waaaaaaah.

Hoping that the God of Gas Appliances is now sated, I’ve now ordered a shiny new gas cooker. Meeped at the installation costs (£60?? eh?) lots. Still, what can possibly go wrong? *shudders*

Am on post-thesping squeeeeeeeeee buzz and I just want to hug anything and everything. So so happy. Fantastic weekend. We read absurd amounts of Shakespeare, and our gorgeously surreal reading of Tamer Tamed is going to have me in fits of giggles for days. *huuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs* and love to all. Wheeeeeeeee.

Sipping ice cold vodka until 4AM in a lovely hot sauna with many gorgeous naked darlings very stimulating and most wonderful, although also leads to having a totally unproductive day at work today. *waggleseyebrows*

When's the next one? *excited*

Update: The ever-lovely evil_nick has huge numbers of photos of the Beautiful People in Masks

Am in Tranås, Sweden. The snow is *really* coming down thick and fast. Huge fluffy snowflakes and all that. Looking out the window all I see is the big white winter wonderland it's *supposed* to be at this time of year. Just returned from a lovely walk in the local woods where I got covered in snow. I like it here. Everything makes me happy!

Happy new year, everyone. *hugs friendslist*

Sparkly merry christmas to everyone! *wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

*sprinkles magic fairy dust over everything*

I’m back from some fantastic adventures around central Europe. Lots of gorgeous fairy-tale castles and pretty christmas markets and mulled wine. ( no snow and lots of biker santas and other strangeness )

Traveled straight from Budapest to doseybat‘s birthday party, which had lots of lovely people and nice conversation - I’m really sad I couldn’t stay longer, and there were lots of people I wanted to talk to but never found the time (791point43, you free for lunch on Friday? ...actually, if anyone else fancies lunch in Wimbledon any day midweek, give me a shout - I’m feeling all sociable right now)

Horrible thing happened! Broke my glasses while passing through Victoria station - the screws holding the lens in fell out and was never going to be found again. *sob* Does anyone know how I go about fixing this? Is there somewhere I can get lens screws or something? In the meantime I’ll be forced to wear prescription shades, which will give me lots of strange looks at work tomorrow!

Me and Nini were discussing earlier how the sky had been eaten up a few hours ago, seeing a big black cloud roll in over London. I just looked at the news and found big fire at fuel depot. Gosh. That was dramatic - I thought that cloud didn’t look natural. I wonder if it’s still there - it’s gone dark now.

I just ate a week’s worth of advent chocolates in one go. Twice, as I have 2 calendars. Yummy. I feel happy and content.

Update: snow_leopard has put up lovely photos (and also some photos of me in silly poses...!!!) of Bratislava,Vienna and Budapest.

Also - please point me to anything I shouldn't have missed reading in the past week. Assume I won't read last week's LJ unless prodded.

Our kitchen is so goth. Everything has turned black. Heh.

Soot is actually horrible stuff. It sticks to everything, comes off on your hands and looks ugly. And it smells. It’s ponging out the house with this burnt stench. It’s not making me feel happy. Lovely kitchen all turned into a horrible mess just like that. It doesn’t seem real somehow, like it’s not my kitchen anymore. And my poor plants are covered in soot!! They look very upset and annoyed, and I hope they don’t die as I’ve had them for years. *sobs*

The gasman cometh to turn the gas back on, and yea he did that, but after a lot of prodding failed to get either of our gas boilers (why do we have 2 of them? - it seems silly!) to ignite. No hot water. No heating. We have windows open to let the smell out, and the house is therefore freezing. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! I want some warm. Gasman also discovered a gas leak (!! where did that come from??) in happygoff‘s place downstairs and turned off their gas, so no heating or hot water there either. It’s a whole house of cold here. Meh.

It sounds horribly bad, and it is, but I suppose we’re lucky in a way. It could have been a whole lot worse. Much much worse. Scary things. I don’t want to think about that.

Update: Yay! I lit the boilers! Happy blue pilot flames! Yay! We have heat again! *hugsheat* *cuddlesheat*