notes and queries

[raven]

So, internets, what have I done today? Mostly... failed. Yeah, failed. But I'm surprisingly cheery for someone who's been ridin' the failroad all the live-long day. Stuff and things:

-Woolworths has gone into administration. I mean... seriously. Woolies. I appreciate I live in one of the few English cities without one, but there is at least one in Temple Cowley. Where do I get my pick 'n' mix now? I am a grown-up! I demand sweeties!

...yeah. Although it pleases me to learn that the one I remember from early childhood, where, one might say, a lifelong passion was formed, was in fact the first Woolworths in this country, having opened in 1909.

-The cat has exploding diarrhoea. Hurrah. Well, she doesn't any more, but the last couple of days have been... traumatic. "Poo on the walls!" wailed chiasmata, who is a saint. I fully intend to bathe the horrible creature tomorrow; she smells, and has got into the habit of stuffing her little face into my bowls of chocolate cake/breakfast cereal/unripe mango.

(We are currently consoling ourselves, every time the cat does something horrific, with the thought that her tiny furry testicles will be chopped off soon. Some of the men of our acquaintance have expressed concern at the sheer amount of glee to be found inherent in this fact.)

(Also, the end is nigh: the cat has learned to use a computer. At any rate, I left my open laptop in my room, only to return to find shimgray maintaining a conversation with her over Google Talk. Well, I say conversation; his side of it was "HELLO CAT", and hers, "09?"\'olpp--------------".)

-I own a corset. I'm not sure exactly why this is. It is purple and velvety black, laces up at the front, has lace and trimmings, and I totally don't have the breasts for it, and I love it. I mean... yeah. I don't know why, but I've been in the sort of mood to get dressed up and go dancing. I may have to wait until the next Intrusion (for the initiated, this is Oxford's monthly goth night - because goths only need to socialise once a month) before I can deck self up in corset and glitter and ludicrous amounts of eyeliner, but still.

-I am trying to write some notes about duress and necessity defences in the criminal law, but I keep finding myself looking at the open window of, er, Merlin fic. (Fic! I am writing fic! Should I be happy or incredibly embarrassed!)

-My awful essay on EU preliminary rulings has come back and is, predictably, awful. This is mitigated somewhat by my tutor's style of softening the blow; he is apparently of the opinion that exclamation points make everything better. So: "Not a bad essay! Satisfactory citation! More case law required! Presentation needs improvement!"

...and so on. I am actually very fond of the man. The last class I went to was on free movement of people within the European Union, which in retrospect was a very bad idea. Naturally, this eventually fell into some white-privileged arse standing up and saying, "Those immigrants! They come here, steal our women, take our jobs!"

I paraphrase, but I'm sure you all know the type. So, he said that, and then there was a long pause, while everyon in the class tried very pointedly not to look at me, sitting there quietly being brown, and then tried very pointedly not to look at the Amazing Greek Dude tutor, who is, er... Greek.

And then everyone looked very embarrassed. I had schadenfreude. It was good.

-My braaaaain! Is still a bit of a bugger, really. I've had some serious dips in my mental health this week, and also am beginning to quantify the side-effects of the citalopram. It makes me ridiculously, continuously sleepy, is an appetite-suppressant (which is why I have spent the last two weeks of my life living off fruit and breakfast cereal), and, annoyingly, makes me stupider. At any rate, it gives me issues with my short-term memory, which leads to lots of wandering into rooms and wondering what I went into them for.

(That said, I had a nice moment of affirmation last Friday; having mostly spent the day failing, I had got sick of my lovely lovely land law lecturer looking at me with big sad disappointed eyes and said, "I'm not really fail! I love your subject! It's just that I'm a crazy person!"

Maybe not quite like that. But, anyway, her response was, "You poor old soul," in a very motherly tone of voice, and yeah, I kind of heart her. Anyway, I went to her lecture at the end of the day, and said, "I have a question." (It was not a very interesting question. If anyone really wants to know, it was: if a mortgage of transfer is no longer legitimate in English law as of LPA 1925, and as such the deads of title are held by the mortgagor, how may the mortgagee possess and sell in law and not in equity?)

She got a really horrified look on her face and said, "Oh god, I didn't tell you all that? Everyone, stop it, you can't go yet, thank you so much for asking that."

I don't know why it made me so happy, but it did. Something about oh hi, I'm still sometimes smart.)

-And that's it. Hopefully, no more fail. Or at least, just a little bit of fail, because it's nearly Christmas. Maybe back to duress. Or fanfic. But probably duress.

Comments

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

ROFL at the computing cat. (I suspect one of these days one of the moggies I'm looking after will learn to do the same.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

And then our domination of this planet will be over, dude.

[sunlightdances.livejournal.com]

I own a corset. I'm not sure exactly why this is. It is purple and velvety black, laces up at the front, has lace and trimmings, and I totally don't have the breasts for it, and I love it.
PICTURES.

Sorry, mixture of 'purple' and 'velvety' and 'lace' and 'corset' and 'breasts' and I think my gay kind of all exploded.

At any rate, it gives me issues with my short-term memory, which leads to lots of wandering into rooms and wondering what I went into them for.
Oh thank god. *squish* Not you, I mean, I was just wondering why I am like this too, and was feeling kind of rubbish about it all.

+ The oil we've just ordered is from a company called Emo Oil.
+ There is a village I drive past on the way to my Grandma's which is called Lolworth.

Also, I am upset over Woolworths too.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Definitely the pills, on the short-term memory thing - I mean, I know for a fact I'm smarter than this, because I'm usually better at academia than this, you know? And it's very much my normal self peering through fog, rather than actual impairment-of-brain. I'm actually considering going to the GP tomorrow and requesting a meds-change - because, o hai, not exactly functioning here.

The corset is AWESOME. Next time I am not frantically doing law, I will take pictures of it for you, it is made of win.

(Emo Oil! Lolworth! Those are also made of win. *g*)

[icepixie]

Is "administration" what we might call "bankruptcy" or "liquidation" over here? (If so, BOOOO! The Woolworth's in downtown Exeter was the only place on the whole friggin' continent that I could find Reese's cups! It must live on for other peanut butter candy-deprived Americans on junior years abroad!)

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

It's the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US - an attempt to reorganise and rescue the company rather than simply closing up shop and going home.

[icepixie]

Ah, thank you. I thought it might be.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's like the last stop on the line before actual bankruptcy.

(You have no idea how funny it sounds to hear of Exeter having a downtown! I forget it's not something only American cities have... :P)

[icepixie]

Yep, it's like the last stop on the line before actual bankruptcy.

Poor Woolies.

(You have no idea how funny it sounds to hear of Exeter having a downtown! I forget it's not something only American cities have... :P)

Well, they probably called it city center or central city or something like that, but I always called it downtown. (Come to think of it, it was practically nothing like an American downtown, at least any that I know of. We don't put our grocery stores, or much of anything retail, there. Nashville's is entirely composed of corporate headquarters/other stuffy business buildings, cultural venues and museums, bars and restaurants, and my old high school.)

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

*solemn* Good luck bathing the cat.

And that doesn't sound like an amazing amount of Fail to ME. I mean, you turned IN an essay. I didn't always manage that, trust me.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* I can't quite take credit for it; the essay was handed in before this current bout of fail. The essay that needs to be handed in tomorrow has just seen the light of day, thankfully.

(Our cat likes water. Srsly. I am baffled by this.)

[yahalomay.livejournal.com]

My old medications made me sleep a lot too. =( But you're doing very well from what I can tell! If you like that medication, I'd just like to say the short term memory thing gets a little better as you learn to work around it, in my experiance. (It throws my boyfriend for a loop when I can remember conversations word for word from months ago but can't remember something he said to me 5 seconds before!)

Less seriously - YAY CORSETS Woo!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That's the funny thing - I've been on it four months, and I've only just started noticing this particular side-effect. And there are other side-effects, so I'm weighing up the benefits of staying on it right now.

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

When our youngest cat is wicked, we STILL bring up the chopping, even though it was, well, about five years ago now...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

A threat that can be made in retrospect! This is good to know!

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

I think cleaning poo off the walls is something everyone with either cats or children has had to do at least once, but it doesn't make it any more fun! I hope the computing and the de-testiculation and the corset help make up for it a little, at least!

Also, I agree with everyone else that your fail is really, truly impressively less fail-y than most other people's would be in your position. Again, not that that makes any of it less fun, sadly, but I hope it helps a little.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* I have never been around children or cats, before this. It's a learning curve. :)

(and, thank you, that does help to know. Here's to less fail.)

[stupidore.livejournal.com]

My cat, who is now mad and very old, rather than mad and small with enormously long legs, has two favorite places to sit. The first is any open newspaper or book and the second is my laptop.
Mohawk has had many a conversation along the lines of hello, dh9phprjpt409i54jbkm .

My mum heads the Race Relations and Integration unit at the Exec so we've has some pretty interesting conversations on the whole THEY COME OVER HERE AND STEAL OUR JOBS AND RAPE OUR WOMEN! GUN CRIME? ALL THEM! AND THEY STEAL OUR FACILITIES AND I CAN'T GET A JOB BECAUSE OF ALL THOSE POLISH PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WORKING! thing. The people who seem to be shouting the loudest are the ones who're fiddling the benefits and therefore NOT contributing in any way.
Also I worked with a Polish girl this summer who was meant to be working where I am now during term time, but she got a different job, so it's more a case of THEY COME OVER HERE AND WE STEAL THEIR JOBS! which I find terribly funny.

I have no short term memory too (god bless fibro) and the brain fog means I know that I ought to be able to come out with words of more than one syllable, but my thoughts aren't even joined up enough to come up with sentences which even mildly make grammatical sense so that last essay was a bitch to write.
I have a white board of productivity upon which is written every single thing I have to do otherwise I just forget...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I think it might be that laptops are warm? And possibly aesthetically improved by application of large furry arse?

The whiteboard thing is very handy; I have a notebook, bright red so I don't lose it, for just this purpose.

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

Why is K a saint? Ohmygod, cleaning up poo must be so horrible for you both - i don't know how I'd do it. Have you resorted to face masks and clothes pegs yet? I have visions of you both even thus. Massive sympathies for you, dude. If you are doing anything other that VOMITING EVERYWHERE than I think you are win. Is good prep for the 49 children, obvs.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

K is a saint because of the cleaning up of poo, having dealt with the whole thing entirely calmly whereas I would, had I discovered it first, be running around the house like a madwoman. I cleaned up in the kitchen with my scarf tied around my mouth, believe me.

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

Oh god. Have you just had to clear up poo, like, everywhere? Please tell me it's not all over the house. And KEEPS HAPPENING, of course, ack. Why did she get diarrhoea in the first place, do you know? Has she been eating something she shouldn't? i mean - not anything dangerous, right?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Well, K said there had been some in the living-room, which was when she discovered it; after that we kept her in the kitchen, where K cleaned up some and I cleaned up some, because tiles are easier, natch. And she's a lot less messy now, and has returned to litter-tray defecation.

We don't know why, actually. Given she's her usual boisterous self otherwise, and her habit of sticking her nose into rubbish, she's probably just eaten something she shouldn't. We'll probably have a word with the vet if it continues...

[chiasmata]

Kitten is no less messy; I have been following her round with the mop...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh noes! I am keeping a strict eye on her...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Also! For heaven's sake tell me to do it if you spot it before I do, you've done quite enough.

Re: the fic

[http://users.livejournal.com/selina_/]

You should be happy, and then post it for all of us to see!

Re: the fic

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heee! It needs written, first! Currently it stands at 426 not-very-good words, but we shall see...

[tau_sigma]

Oh, the fails, they are all over the place. I've been having a particularly faily week of being terribly awful to be around. *hugs* You are awesome, Iona. Don't worry about fail.

her tiny furry testicles will be chopped off soon - that is hilarious, mainly because of the gender pronoun. Poor kitty.

Coooorset. I have one, too, and am awaiting delivery of another (which will hopefully fit better, me having over-estimated my size last time) to crush me into my ball dress tomorrow. They are great, are they not? One of mine is also purple and black. It's a good combination.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I am sort of shameless about mine! I kind of just want to wear it over a shirt and dance. :) And, hey you, you are also awesome. Don't forget it.