The week that was...
Mar. 13th, 2006 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dennySo I spent last week off work, busy in various ways with various people. It was all very nice and I'd like another week off now, thanks.
The weekend starting my week's holiday, I had a visitor from the distant north (of England), who I haven't seen for nearly six months. We didn't get out much, so I don't have very much to say about the weekend other than it was a nice way to start my week off :)
Then I spent Monday fighting my laundry to a stalemate, which dull task was nicely interrupted in the afternoon by a visit to the distant North (of London) to see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bluecassandra. However, the laundry was still there when I returned, and I didn't actually find my bed underneath it all until 2am. Admittedly I have been avoiding sorting out the laundry for well over a year, so that's not entirely surprising.
On Tuesday I pounced a visitinglibellum, who stayed until Wednesday evening. Sometime on Wednesday afternoon I deposited all my laundry into a local laundrette on service wash, a decision which was to eventually turn out to cost me 78 pounds (!).
On Thursday, I went to Heathrow and collectedmissyasmina, who had flown in from the distant North (of Europe). I was starting to get a bit worried by the large amount of attractive blonde women coming off the plane, wondering if I would be able to recognise which one of them I was there to meet :) but we found each other okay and made our way back to the depths of the South (SW19). She was suitably impressed by the astounding clutter levels of my flat, and being somewhat exhausted by the early start to her trip, chose to avail herself of the very comfy sofa. I gave her a fuzzy blanket to cuddle, put a film on, and woke her two hours later with some food :)
(Incidentally, the attractive Norwegian blonde slept on the comfy sofa all week. Clearly, rumours of my irresistibility have been greatly exaggerated. Maybe I should get a less comfortable sofa.)
Also on Thursday I collected all my laundry, and spent some considerable time getting it all put away into wardrobes and drawers (whilemissyasmina laughed at me). Having all my clothes put away is something of a novelty for me here, as when I moved in I made the mistake of putting the piles of bags full of clothes that needed sorting out in front of the wardrobes and drawers they needed to go into. I'm sure you can see the flaw in that one, particularly once I started putting the clothes I was wearing on top of the bags of stuff that needed sorting out.
Actually, I say getting it all put away, that's not quite true. Apparently I own two entire bin-bags full of socks. I stuffed the contents of one bag into a large drawer, and stashed the other bag in the under-stairs cupboard (which my flat has, despite having no stairs). In defence of the high cost of the service wash approach to the laundry, not only had they paired up all my (hundreds of pairs of black) socks, but they had actually paired them correctly - i.e. they'd put the slightly thinner medium-faded ones with the other slightly thinner medium-faded ones, etc. I was quite impressed by this, I thought only goths were supposed to understand shades of black :) I also own a bag full of white t-shirts, which has likewise gone in the cupboard until summer turns up and renders them useful again.
(I'm mildy enthused by having actually got the laundry done, and there's a slight danger that I might even try to sort out the frontroom next (when I moved in, I put the piles of boxes full of books in front of the empty bookshelves that they need to go on. And then piled other day-to-day stuff on top of the boxes. Well, at least I'm consistent!). Although I do have a slight superstition that the day I actually finish unpacking will be the day my landlady decides to move back to this country and gives me my notice.)
On Friday my guest and I went touristing, and I finally went for a ride in the London Eye. Which was about as dull as I thought it would be. However, I can definitely see the appeal to a tourist from another country - the view of Parliament alone was probably worth it, if you don't drive past the place once every few weeks :) We also went to Madam Tussauds, which is fairly cool but hasn't changed since I was there last, and to the Planetarium, which also hasn't changed for years but I don't care because I love it anyway. Whee, planets! Stars!! Shiny!!! The Planetarium somehow manages to make me 12 years old and full of wonder, every time I go there.
On Saturday we went fetish-touristing, taking in Fettered Pleasures, Showgirls, House of Harlot, Fairy Gothmother, and most of the shoe shops in Camden High Street :)missyasmina bought some very nice shoes, and I got some boots which I entirely regretted within about a hundred yards. It would appear that the tautness and shortness of my right achilles tendon since the crash may mean I'm not cut out for wearing boots any more - they rub really really badly (not just this pair, some that I had before the crash do as well - although not my hugely broken-in (or broken-down) para boots, so there's some scope for thinking that if I could somehow soften the boots up enough then I might get away with it, maybe).
I also bought a cane while we were at Fettered Pleasures, which feels like quite a large step beyond my current experience levels with severity of implements. I'm sure I'll find someone to help me carefully explore its possibilities though. *looks innocently curious*
Saturday night was TG, where my Norwegian guest was suitably wide-eyed at a fetish party with about 500 times as many people as the ones she is used to in Norway :) It wasn't the best night out I've had though - Scala isn't a great TG venue for some reason, the atmosphere just rarely seems to be right at their events there. It does have a good dance floor, which I bounced around on for a while withindusbitch. I also did some glow-juggling on stage, but had to get back down because the last act had left a load of glitter all over the stage floor and it was really slippy up there. When I was getting down from the stage, people were trying to persuade me to get back up and carry on, so that was flattering :)
I managed to completely fail to recognisegoth_amalthea in the fashion show or on the dancefloor, and failed to spot ulorin_vex other than on-stage, so I didn't get to say 'hi' to them this time. In fact I didn't spot many people I knew, although I know there were quite a lot of people there who I should have recognised if I'd seen them. I did spend a lot of time sulking around on the top-most balcony area, so that probably accounts for it. I did at least manage to bump into crack_columbine and chat to her for a minute, which was nice.
Sunday daytime was spent sleeping, eating pizza, and watching DVDs. Then, at 11pm, I took my guest out for a midnight drive across all the central London bridges (she likes bridges - don't ask me why. We have plenty to look at, although she knew more about them than me) :) We got back home at around 1am, and headed straight for bed, her getting up at 4am (ouchouchouch) to catch her plane - me at 8am to go back to the daily grind.
Today at work was less tedious than I'd feared - there was the usual collection of odds and ends of server maintenance backed up waiting for me to return, but there was also a new project just about to go into development, and I appear to have been assigned to it, which is great. I'm so fed up of doing sysadmin work - I'm meant to be a bloody programmer! Even though today was mostly designing and setting up a database, at least it involved some constructive thought instead of just tweaking config files and directory permissions. Oh, and I had to write on the whiteboard during the project meeting, to label my database diagram... yet again, I am amazed and astounded at how terrible my handwriting has got - I actually forgot how to make an S for a few seconds - I wrote a C instead then just stared at it thinking "that's not right..." :)
Anyway, enough about me. How are you today?
The weekend starting my week's holiday, I had a visitor from the distant north (of England), who I haven't seen for nearly six months. We didn't get out much, so I don't have very much to say about the weekend other than it was a nice way to start my week off :)
Then I spent Monday fighting my laundry to a stalemate, which dull task was nicely interrupted in the afternoon by a visit to the distant North (of London) to see
bluecassandra. However, the laundry was still there when I returned, and I didn't actually find my bed underneath it all until 2am. Admittedly I have been avoiding sorting out the laundry for well over a year, so that's not entirely surprising.On Tuesday I pounced a visiting
libellum, who stayed until Wednesday evening. Sometime on Wednesday afternoon I deposited all my laundry into a local laundrette on service wash, a decision which was to eventually turn out to cost me 78 pounds (!).On Thursday, I went to Heathrow and collected
missyasmina, who had flown in from the distant North (of Europe). I was starting to get a bit worried by the large amount of attractive blonde women coming off the plane, wondering if I would be able to recognise which one of them I was there to meet :) but we found each other okay and made our way back to the depths of the South (SW19). She was suitably impressed by the astounding clutter levels of my flat, and being somewhat exhausted by the early start to her trip, chose to avail herself of the very comfy sofa. I gave her a fuzzy blanket to cuddle, put a film on, and woke her two hours later with some food :)(Incidentally, the attractive Norwegian blonde slept on the comfy sofa all week. Clearly, rumours of my irresistibility have been greatly exaggerated. Maybe I should get a less comfortable sofa.)
Also on Thursday I collected all my laundry, and spent some considerable time getting it all put away into wardrobes and drawers (while
missyasmina laughed at me). Having all my clothes put away is something of a novelty for me here, as when I moved in I made the mistake of putting the piles of bags full of clothes that needed sorting out in front of the wardrobes and drawers they needed to go into. I'm sure you can see the flaw in that one, particularly once I started putting the clothes I was wearing on top of the bags of stuff that needed sorting out.Actually, I say getting it all put away, that's not quite true. Apparently I own two entire bin-bags full of socks. I stuffed the contents of one bag into a large drawer, and stashed the other bag in the under-stairs cupboard (which my flat has, despite having no stairs). In defence of the high cost of the service wash approach to the laundry, not only had they paired up all my (hundreds of pairs of black) socks, but they had actually paired them correctly - i.e. they'd put the slightly thinner medium-faded ones with the other slightly thinner medium-faded ones, etc. I was quite impressed by this, I thought only goths were supposed to understand shades of black :) I also own a bag full of white t-shirts, which has likewise gone in the cupboard until summer turns up and renders them useful again.
(I'm mildy enthused by having actually got the laundry done, and there's a slight danger that I might even try to sort out the frontroom next (when I moved in, I put the piles of boxes full of books in front of the empty bookshelves that they need to go on. And then piled other day-to-day stuff on top of the boxes. Well, at least I'm consistent!). Although I do have a slight superstition that the day I actually finish unpacking will be the day my landlady decides to move back to this country and gives me my notice.)
On Friday my guest and I went touristing, and I finally went for a ride in the London Eye. Which was about as dull as I thought it would be. However, I can definitely see the appeal to a tourist from another country - the view of Parliament alone was probably worth it, if you don't drive past the place once every few weeks :) We also went to Madam Tussauds, which is fairly cool but hasn't changed since I was there last, and to the Planetarium, which also hasn't changed for years but I don't care because I love it anyway. Whee, planets! Stars!! Shiny!!! The Planetarium somehow manages to make me 12 years old and full of wonder, every time I go there.
On Saturday we went fetish-touristing, taking in Fettered Pleasures, Showgirls, House of Harlot, Fairy Gothmother, and most of the shoe shops in Camden High Street :)
missyasmina bought some very nice shoes, and I got some boots which I entirely regretted within about a hundred yards. It would appear that the tautness and shortness of my right achilles tendon since the crash may mean I'm not cut out for wearing boots any more - they rub really really badly (not just this pair, some that I had before the crash do as well - although not my hugely broken-in (or broken-down) para boots, so there's some scope for thinking that if I could somehow soften the boots up enough then I might get away with it, maybe).I also bought a cane while we were at Fettered Pleasures, which feels like quite a large step beyond my current experience levels with severity of implements. I'm sure I'll find someone to help me carefully explore its possibilities though. *looks innocently curious*
Saturday night was TG, where my Norwegian guest was suitably wide-eyed at a fetish party with about 500 times as many people as the ones she is used to in Norway :) It wasn't the best night out I've had though - Scala isn't a great TG venue for some reason, the atmosphere just rarely seems to be right at their events there. It does have a good dance floor, which I bounced around on for a while with
indusbitch. I also did some glow-juggling on stage, but had to get back down because the last act had left a load of glitter all over the stage floor and it was really slippy up there. When I was getting down from the stage, people were trying to persuade me to get back up and carry on, so that was flattering :)I managed to completely fail to recognise
goth_amalthea in the fashion show or on the dancefloor, and failed to spot ulorin_vex other than on-stage, so I didn't get to say 'hi' to them this time. In fact I didn't spot many people I knew, although I know there were quite a lot of people there who I should have recognised if I'd seen them. I did spend a lot of time sulking around on the top-most balcony area, so that probably accounts for it. I did at least manage to bump into crack_columbine and chat to her for a minute, which was nice.Sunday daytime was spent sleeping, eating pizza, and watching DVDs. Then, at 11pm, I took my guest out for a midnight drive across all the central London bridges (she likes bridges - don't ask me why. We have plenty to look at, although she knew more about them than me) :) We got back home at around 1am, and headed straight for bed, her getting up at 4am (ouchouchouch) to catch her plane - me at 8am to go back to the daily grind.
Today at work was less tedious than I'd feared - there was the usual collection of odds and ends of server maintenance backed up waiting for me to return, but there was also a new project just about to go into development, and I appear to have been assigned to it, which is great. I'm so fed up of doing sysadmin work - I'm meant to be a bloody programmer! Even though today was mostly designing and setting up a database, at least it involved some constructive thought instead of just tweaking config files and directory permissions. Oh, and I had to write on the whiteboard during the project meeting, to label my database diagram... yet again, I am amazed and astounded at how terrible my handwriting has got - I actually forgot how to make an S for a few seconds - I wrote a C instead then just stared at it thinking "that's not right..." :)
Anyway, enough about me. How are you today?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 11:08 pm (UTC)Also, you made me feel better about my and
I know what you mean about the writing. Since I've had to do less of it, it's get progressively worse, and it wasn't up to much in the beginning.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 11:19 pm (UTC)There is a product called " Leather stretch " comes in a tiny aerosol can, available from most high st shoe shops, spray on, wait a day, " Insta soft and broken in ". worth a try.
Most enjoyable read...
~ I'm fine today thanks for asking :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 11:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 11:56 pm (UTC)So so tired.
Slept trough both flights, then fell asleep on the sofa when I got home, later on I almost fell asleep in the bathtub, now Im soon gonna go bed-sleepy lots.
Speaking of sleeping; yes, that was a really comfy sofa. Trow it away;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 01:34 am (UTC)I suggest the sparing application, by clean rag, of neatsfoot oil, which is sold by any good saddlers. If you have no good saddlers near you (likely, seeing as you're in London), I have a tin of it from which I can decant some into a (small plastic) bottle for posting to you. I'd need an address though.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 04:56 am (UTC)Oh and yes, Norway is like that for blondes. I remember the first time I called in to port there, it was like a smorgasbord of blonde. Didn't know which way to turn or which way to look. Think that explains the 'scandiwegian women are easy' myth. There's just a higher proportion of pretty ones there, which makes men try that much harder, which is going to eventually result in a better hit rate.
Sounds like you had a great week, and glad you're away from adminning, I don't miss that at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 11:50 am (UTC)And what do you base that statement on? Wasnt you married when you got there? ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 12:12 pm (UTC)Besides, there really is a higher proportion of pretty girls over there.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 12:13 pm (UTC)That might be, I dont tend to look much at them.
Well..not as much as you men does anyway ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 08:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 10:29 am (UTC)Are we likely to see you this weekend?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 10:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 10:47 am (UTC)Fair enough. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 11:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 11:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 11:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 11:48 am (UTC)I'm not sure what this says about me, but I read this with genuine horror and incomprehension. Would you like me to come round and shelve your books for you? How would you like them catalogued?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 11:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 12:10 pm (UTC)I would like to have them all available again though... I really should sort myself out, I'm just quite incredibly resistant to doing practical stuff sometimes.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 08:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 02:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 02:21 pm (UTC)*thinks not-very-worklike thoughts*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 02:23 pm (UTC)We so need to take photos of that outfit sometime when I'm wearing makeup. And standing up rather than half-sitting in a random unflattering position ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 02:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 02:27 pm (UTC)Or we could just arrange for there to be photos taken when I wear it to TG. I must know at least one of the photographers there...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 02:36 pm (UTC)Always.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 02:43 pm (UTC)