Borededed....

Happy birthday to livejournal, which is apparently four years old today. Happy birthday to frank, too.
I am in the computer room yet again, bored slightly, and I can't get on to Yahoo! Groups again for some as yet unexplained reason. No firewall, it just refuses to load the page.

Becca keeps chanting "Two months, three days!" and I just had to ask, two months and three days until what.

Until May 21st, 2003. I think I speak for everyone when I say...
...fuck.

It's something to do with the fact that that is the day I have my first two GCSEs, English Lit and Drama. Um, eww. I hate AQA. Everyone hates AQA. And the really scary thing is, a couple of days ago we were given a bunch of sample Physics questions, and I knew they weren't AQA questions. They didn't have the same feel to them. The questions were phrased differently, they were set out differently, they were different. And it's rather frightening that I could feel the difference.

Boringness. I was writing last night, or at least trying to. I was actually having a conversation with cucharita, snowdrop24, and... wait for it... Saria. She isn't in school today, so I think we may have frightened her off permanently, and I blame Enid.

I mean, she's the one who's trying to corrupt her. I can't say I was exactly discouraging of the idea.
( First, this happened )

I swear, I shouldn't have done this. Corruption of an innocent girl, my, my, we are evil.
( Aren't we? )

The conversation progressed, through livejournal, fanfic, porn, necrophilia, shippiness, slash, so on and so forth. But first of all:
( Meet the minions )

Naturally, the poor girl gets confused very quickly. I mean, it does sound like she's been introduced to the local Satanists/freaks/all-round perverts' association/
( Huh )

And then comes the more characteristic part of the conversation, where Enid is scary, Em is Em, and I sit and say "fuck" a lot.
( And so on... )

No.

In other news, Becca is being obsessive-compulsive. She's currently desperate to keep the cursor at the exact middle of a Paint bitmap. For some reason.

Saria didn't come in today. This worries me.

Gate supply

I am a teensy bit frightened. Make that a lot, actually. A lot frightened.

I got back home not long ago - Alex gave me a lift - and I reached into my bag and pressed the gate control. Nothing happened. So, deep sigh, I took it out, aimed it squarely at the gate and presses firmly. Nothing happened. I shook it, and tried again, giving the gate a kick at the same time, as that always works when it's frozen shut. The little red light flashed - once, twice - and I heard the electric current start to hum... and fizzle out into nothingness.
I stared at it for a moment. Time for Plan B.

Plan B began by me emptying my bag. I took out all the books and fed them one by one through the gate bars, and having done that, I squashed the bag flat and threw it over the gate. Thankfully there wasn't any wind. Then, I went into the nature reserve, keeping to the path, up to where there are three slats set in the fence. I climbed up them, balanced precariously on the fence, and just held my breath and jumped upwards. I landed on the gatepost, from where it was easy enough to drop into one of the trees and make my way, hand-over-hand, down the trunk to ground level. Mission accomplished. I picked up my books from where they were strewn all over the floor and went to let myself in. Obviously, the first thing I did was to try all the other gate controls. None of them work. Not one. Not even the base one. I went to investigate the circuit breaker box, but as far as I can tell, the current is still flowing. It can't be a battery problem, as the base control is connected to the mains supply, and that doesn't work.

The problem, as I see it, is the fact I can't get out through the back, because it's fenced all round; the gate is insurmountable, and it will be very difficult to get out the way I came in. I am a prisoner. The only way I'll ever get out if this continues is by sprouting wings or being picked up by helicopter. So forgive me if I'm a little paranoid.

My mother won't be able to get in. Pedar isn't getting back till late. There are twigs falling out of my hair. I don't like this.

Um....

Things are [slightly] better.
I couldn't find the key. So when my mother arrived, I climbed halfway over the wall carrying a stepladder, and dropped it down onto the path. My mother clambered over the wall with me clinging to the ladder from one side, and we promptly all fell backwards in a heap. Thankfully there was a nice pile of pine needles there to break the fall.

Lots of running around with keys followed. My mother refused to believe I'd tried them all twice, and proceeded to try them all again, twice. And then we invaded Pedar's study, and found another box of keys. Having gone through this lot, we struck gold in a dirty silver metal key. I used it to open the box. Inside, there was one circuit breaker. One. And a lot of cobwebs, sycamore keys, and some sort of nest. I took a deep breath and flicked the breaker. Nothing happened. And at this point, I snapped and started to kick the gate. I think I broke my foot. Oww. Did I mention it (the gate, dammit!) is made of wrought iron?

So... next plan. Plan E, if I'm counting right. Go back inside with my increasingly paranoid mother and sulk. And shiver. My mother had started to blame "new technology" for all the evils of mankind. I said something like, "Could you be more Amish?" and walked out, and walked straight back in again at her shriek of alarm.
"Someone's broken in!"
"Based on what?" I demanded.
"Look!"
Her socks were on the floor. They'd fallen off the radiator. I kid you not. "No-one's broken in," I all but howled, "'cause the bloody gate's stuck shut!"

Pedar called. He can't get back until about ten. He then proceeded to inform us we were looking at the wrong box. Not the circuit breaker box, the other one.
Yes, the other one. The other one I'd never heard of until today. Thankfully the keys to it were on the same keyring. The keyhole is at the base of the gate, one on each side. So, I flicked off the power, inserted the key, twisted, and then grabbed the gate bars, expecting them to yield.

Nothing happened.

So. Things are not, in fact, slightly better. They are exactly the same as they were. We're still trapped inside, Pedar's still stuck outside, there are still twigs in my hair, and life is beginning to resemble a French farce.

[In the middle of this, I somehow found time to do Chemistry. Anyone who can tell me how to find out which reagent is in excess when presented with a balanced equation and the masses used?]