Blog Archive — Page 61
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Wasting Away Days
I continue to be bored. I continue to spend most of my days filling in forms. I continue to smile involuntarily whenever my colleagues refer to the computer I’m working on as “Unit 01”, and they continue to not know why.
I need to get back to Southampton again…
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Fire and Faith
As the majority of readers aren’t interested in in-character stuff, I’ll avoid a full report of the weekend. Also I’m just starting to crash, so I can’t be bothered with writing a lot. (At least crashing now will mean I can go to work fully out-of-character tomorrow, which is probably a good thing.)
Anyway, yes, the weekend just past was shiny and fantastic and wonderful and awesome! Most of my body has become dinner for mosquitoes and my parents are being sarcastic about roleplaying and whinging about the things I bought while I was there, but this weekend’s Maelstrom LARP event was really, really great. I can’t wait for the next one, but I’m going to have to - it’s six months away…
Plans for next time: Save the entire Kamakuran colony. Pah, should be easy. Or, um… Maybe it won’t…
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Something Like a Day at Work
Pretty much everyone on my project was out at a meeting today, leaving me with pretty much nothing to do. So… I wrote. I feel a bit guilty for having been paid about £50 for my work today, which mostly consisted of about 3000 words of fiction. Still, beats playing Minesweeper.
Here’s today’s cranked out junk:
The Golden Age, an extremely apocalyptic side-story to the latter stages of Dreaming Awake, and
Caramel’s Talent, a fragment about Caramel, because I wanted to write something about her and I have semi-permanent writer’s block on Serenade of Sunlight.
Enjoy! Comments, as ever, appreciated.
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Topicality
The number of my friends who have had work published grows once again, and I’m getting left behind! Looks like I need to excavate some talent from wherever deep in my mind such a thing might hopefully lurk.
On the subject of hope, I’m afraid my latest short-story-fragment-thing features rather a lack of it. It’s set in New Orleans. This afternoon. So, er, yeah. Not the nicest of subject material, but still… It begged me to write it, so I did. I’ll reiterate what’s in the author’s notes on the page itself: This is fiction. I am not in New Orleans, I have never been there, and I don’t know anybody there. All I know is what’s appeared in the news and on blogs, and I’ve extrapolated bits of that in various ways to make a story.
It’s only on its second draft, so it’s far from perfect. All comments appreciated!
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Saturation Point
Today, I am full of thoughts and chemicals. I drink more coffee than is probably good for me, I know that much, but today caffeine and stuffiness and humidity and people and work and, well, everything, just seemed to crush me under their weight. I had to stop work and go for a walk earlier on. I feel a bit ashamed that I can’t keep up working even for just one eight-hour day without getting fed up, but then I guess the Health and Safety people would tell me that I should be taking breaks like that anyway.
Still, having 12 solid hours of my day set aside for work (and getting there and back) is really starting to get to me now, six and a half weeks in. I can’t wait to get back to Southampton, the twenty minute walk to Uni every day will feel like heaven by comparison.
I dread finishing Uni, though - I’d like to keep working for the company I currently work for, but none of their sites are in places where I’d want to live, and I couldn’t stand four hours of travelling a day if it was indefinite, if there wasn’t a time in four and a half weeks when I knew it would stop.
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Have Another Story
Started work on Friday, finally - I think - finished it today. Thanks to Claire for suggesting improvements!
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Emotions Hidden in Twilight
I understand less and less about the way she feels with every passing hour, despite people’s best efforts. Right now, I’d settle for knowing how I feel, let alone her.
I didn’t realise it would feel quite like this…
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Of Azure Skies and Golden Wings
And so, at the end of a painful week, Friday passed in an instant, no more substantial than anything that I experience in that soulless and dreamless weekday world.
The train to Southampton was filled with dreams as if I was catching up; making up for lost alarm-punctuated time. No less than four times did I drift from wakefulness to daydream to sleep and back again. And, once I finally got there - cursed work, even leving work at the earliest possible time still meant I was the last to arrive - we sat and chatted. For about eight hours. I don’t think there’s any proof of how good friends we all are and how much we missed each other than that. There was pizza. There was Gundam Wing bondage slash fic. But we don’t talk about that.
I did get wondering, that night, though… Have I changed by having been in Bournemouth for the summer? Am I, maybe, quieter now than I once was? Is it just the suddenness of seeing everyone again, or might I really be a little different than I was - and if so, what does it say about me that just nine weeks away can somehow change me?
Saturday started with a full English breakfast - except in the case of Racheet, who had a “singluar” egg. I also followed Lap’s advice and ate more toast… than I was really hungry enough for. Shortly, we realised that to get to the girls’ house from the cafe would involve walking past the sweet shop… Eight different varieties of sweets later, we were on our way again.
That afternoon we went shopping in town, meeting up with some friends of Racheet’s whose names I forget, and also with Zane. I came away from the whole experience having only spent far too much money rather than ridiculous amounts of money, which at least is an improvement on my predictions. However, I am now in posession of an L5R 2nd Ed Player’s Guide, another RPG book called “Shattered Dreams” which looks pretty bad but should at least provide some source material, a DVD that technically isn’t called “Shaolin Panty Raid” (of which more later), five blocks of Kendal mint cake, and the cable I need for rigging up my computer to the TV for the FMA marathon. At the time, I was also in posession of a stomach full of Shakeaway and chicken ramen. There was also the Galaxy Angel plan - but we don’t talk about that either.
We stopped by the girls’ house for a while, to watch more of a terrible martial arts movie - “Ways of Kung Fu” bef
ore heading to the Hobbit for Rhiannon’s birthday party. Everyone there was, as always, awesome. Highlights of the evening: Recruiting a member for GameSoc before term started (which involved me playing Kotori in the “scene under the tree” that never happened (of which more later)). Pretty much everyone agreeing to come to the Dungeon, since I wasn’t sure what I’d do if half the group didn’t go). Glowsticks - thanks Sam! - which came in handy for dancing, although they still fail to be three feet long and made of steel. Noticing at one point that pretty much everyone - even those who didn’t initially want to come to the Dungeon - was on the dancefloor. They played a Nightwish song, “Nemo”, during which I think I cleared a sizeable section of the dancefloor with my… uh… “dancing” style.
Oh, and… they played Sweet Child O’Mine too. And that was when it all went weird. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any kind of emotional issues right now, but at least they’re concerning real people. It’s I guess slightly worrying that just a few guitar chords can break my heart into tiny pieces and reform it centred around Kai, who isn’t even real. It feels like it kind of cheapens the whole experience. It feels very strange, but then I guess I’m getting used to that - everything feels a bit strange at the moment.
That evening, we
went to bed at about four. There goes my sleep pattern.
Sunday morning started with a shopping trip so satisfy our seemingly-insatiable hunger. We returned from Safeway with a ton of salad, a big loaf of bread, doughnuts, muffins - and two whole roast chickens. Needless to say we didn’t manage to eat it all, not by a long way…
Andy left in a hurry, as he and Donna had to run to catch their coach. I never got time to say goodbye to them properly, but it doesn’t matter that much as I’ll see them both again soon.
The rest of the afternoon and evening went slowly - we watched some anime, Pirates of the Caribbean and the aforementioned Shaolin Panty-Raid, which rejoices in the actual title of “Shaolin Chastity Kung Fu”. Amusing as hell in that way that all the worst martial arts movies are! We had curry, which was really tasty, but I found myself unable to finish it - I blame the roast chicken breakfast!
That night, we went to bed at about five. My sleep pattern is so far gone it can’t even be seen on a good day. How time flies…
And that leaves only this morning. Racheet had left for his coach before Mark and I woke up, and after breakfast and chatting for a while I left too, heading back on buses and trains to a home that feels less like home than the one I left. The sun burned down
through a pure blue sky, giving glittering life to the wings that grace my back when I shut my eyes. I’m left with a lack of words to describe how this past weekend was. It’s left me in a kind of stunned emotional state that’s slightly zoned out from reality. Tomorrow, no doubt, I’ll have to be back down to earth. Probably. It is, after all, only five weeks until I can live my dream again…
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From Dawn 'til Dusk
I left home before dawn today, and now the sun is setting over the horizon as I return thirteen hours later. It’s been a long day, no doubt, but a successful one. The conference was a fantastic success, and I learned a lot - including about a plan for creating a single national (or international) database for neuroscience data. I’m not sure if it’s going to be possible for someone like me, but I’m going to try and get at lest slightly involved with it. It sounds pretty exciting, and the technical details that need sorting out are exactly the kind of things I’m good at - data formats, metadata, data security, stuff like that.
Got a free lunch, too, as thunder crackled around the sky and rain beat down on the noisy, flat roof above us.
In 24 hours’ time I will be in Southampton. This past week has been far, far too slow…
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Three Days Remain
For some reason, the facts that it is not Friday and that I am not currently in Southampton are verging on painful. Damnit - hurry up, weekend!
Before that, though, Thursday looms. We’re hosting a conference at work, attended by some of the most important people in neuroscience. People who, at some point in the morning, I am going to have to stand up in front of and blag that I actually know something about the subject and am not just a programmer. Scary…