Chris and I are heading down to Edinburgh next weekend and I was just wondering if anyone has specific suggestions of things to do. There's a christmas/winter festival going on and obviously the castle, but what else? Favorite museums? pubs? What should we do?

Going through my wardrobe I'm somewhat amused by the fact that I have manymany more pairs of jeans now than I ever did when I was at a more stable weight XD Now I have 5 pairs of jeans/cords, plus 2 that are a little too small but will be wearable soon. This time last year I had 2, and when I washed one I would wear the other, and vice versa.

I think a big part of this is having some fab friends who just happen to have lost a load of weight and shot down through the sizes, so have some jeans going for cheap prices. But its also due to Ebay bargains. My old jeans would have been about £25-35 a pair and bought new, whereas for 4 of the 5 pairs I've got now (1 was a free hand-me-down so doesn't count), I've paid less than £20. Plus, they're all really wearable jeans of varying cool styles! I may never go back to buying a pair of jeans for over £5-10! (well...unless they have some especially nice looking ones at Sohos... XD )

In other news, today I tackle cleaning...the kitchen! Dun dun duuuuuun!

Our kitchen is like a vortex for a buildup of horribleness...we seem to always be washing up and trying to keep it clean, but its like entropy works especially hard in that area ~sigh~

Today I'm going to get all the straggling washing up done, plus clean the counters/sink/floor (~shudder~), but also go through all the food and crockery cupboards and chuck out anything that's out of date, and possibly get rid of a load of random crockery/kitchen gadgets that we own but never use (I swear, 1/2 our kitchen cupboard space goes on stuff that's never actually used ¬_¬ ~grumbles~ )

I'm thinking next year might well be the year I can finally clear the very last of my stuff out of my parents' house! Only 10 years after I left home XD

Feeling much better this morning, and off in a few minutes to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family.

(I am once again relying on TIVO to record the Giants - Broncos contest tonight, so no commentary about it here, please. I probably won't watch it until tomorrow).

I have a lot to be thankful for. My readers, my friends, and most of all Parris.

I hope all you reading this are similarly blessed.

Happy Thanksgiving.

snarfed from darth_funk

You know how sometimes people on your friends list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

-

FIRST NAME

Victoria/Vicki. Given to me because it was a long name that could be shortened in a few different ways (likewise my sister's name, Jennifer). I don't mind it, tho it is kind of annoying that there are always at least 2 Vicki's in almost every workplace/class/social group ~sigh~

AGE

28

LOCATION

Cambridge, UK. Moved here Januray 2007 I think. Most of the rest of my family is from Gloucestershire. Strangely, my mum and dad met while they were at uni (different unis, but both on this side of the country), and it turned out that both of their families were from Cheltenham...then my dad had to move back to Cheltenham because of his job, so everyone ended up in the same place ^^;

OCCUPATION

Over the last couple of years I have grown to hate this question ¬_¬ I guess 'freelancer', seeing as I actually do make a bit of money each year doing freelance illustration/website building jobs (tho not enough to be taxed on it). 99% of the time tho I'm working on perfecting my 3D environment work - takes a lot of time and effort as its a massive subject and to get a job in it you have ot be pretty damn good to boot.

My 'trade' tho, or what I went to uni for and can do professionally, is draughtsmanship on AutoCAD and building surveying. I can also plan refurbs (i.e. lay out interior walls, services and furnishings), tho I haven't done it in a few years now so would probably be pretty rusty ^^;

PARTNER

Lee (Banemoo). He's a 3D character modeller. We met at a Wing Chun Kung Fu class when he was in his first year of uni and I was in my 4th (final year). Don't know what else to say about him really - we've been together since I've had an LJ so I'm pretty sure everyone would have heard him mentioned quite a bit. We've been together 6 years, we have a 4 year age gap between us (I is an old lady XD ). His favourite things are doing artwork, martial arts, PC/video games, old 70s low fantasy novels like Conan, and possibly cake...

KIDS

Nope. Don't know if I want to have them at some point or not. I don't get on super well with kids, and the prospect of having them doesn't fill me with the kind of squishy joy that seems to affect a lot of my old friends nowadays. I think its because I'm so focussed on improving my artwork at the moment, I can't imagine finally getting a job after years and years of hard work, then giving that up after a year or two to have a family o.o;

BROTHERS/SISTERS

One little sister, Jen (wren). She lives here in Cambridge now so we see each other all the time (some weeks, every day XD ). We get on pretty well and me, Wren & Banemoo hang out almost constantly together in our free time. I'm really glad that I'm still close to my sister, especially as I don't think my parents are particularly close to any of their siblings any more (they might see them once a year). Actually I think Jen is probably the person who knows most about me in the world: my parents know a lot about my childhood, but not so much about my adult life, and Lee knows the most about who I am now but not a lot about my childhood (in terms of actually being there), whereas altho we've lived in different cities for quite a few years in the middle, Jen grew up with me and now lives right next to me again ^^

PETS

Very sadly, none ;_; I want pets dammit! But our landlord doesn't allow them ;_;

I grew up with cats tho. My granny used to always have a full-female cat that had kittens, so my mum grew up looking after kittens, plus their other cats, and also a couple of dogs. She managed to persuade my dad to get cats, and we've had kittens in the house periodically since I was a teenager (she hasn't quite managed to persuade him to get a dog yet tho).

At the moment they've got 3 cats: Puff, who is quite a rare ginger female, Sprogg, who is a long-haired grey tabby, and Piglet, who is ginger with white patches and has kind of medium length fur with a massively fluffy tail randomly XD

List the 3/5 biggest things going on in your life

1. At the moment, cleaning the flat. Done the bathroom, bedroom and hallway, still got the living room and kitchen to finish off...and I've been doing this for a couple of full days already! Then again, our flat had basically devolved into a cave curved out of junk - half the bedroom floor hadn't seen a hoover in over a year as it was covered in boxes full of random computer bits >.<;

2. Hmm...after that I guess everything to do with christmas/December. We still haven't finalised who we'll be seeing when over the holidays (the 2 weeks of christmas/new year are always constant travel/family visits for us). Also we have a wedding, a birthday party, a work do, parents visiting...and I think a couple of other things to do in December before the holidays even start >.<;

3. Next up, 3D work - gotta get back to it ASAP. Very optimistic about the laser project tho - should look good when dome ^^

4. Things hanging over my head vaguely bugging me: Jiman results note being announced til Feb is a pain, plus I'm waiting on news for a pitch for a decently sized freelance job, which would be very nice to get as some income just after christmas ^^;

5. Really should do my Sweatdrop Secret Santa pic and get back onto Daily Draw >.<;;;;

PARENTS

I have a good relationship with my folks, tho nowadays they're really busy most of the time and we're really busy most of the time, so I don't spend as much time with them as I would like (not helped by the fact that we live the other side of the country now ^^; )

My mum is called Charlie, she studied something in the biological sciences in uni and also has a first class hons degree in some kind of maths subject from the OU (argh, I have no clue what the actual subjects were >.<; ). She stayed at home and was a full-time mum to us until we were old enough to look after ourselves, then she eased back into the world of work via admin. Mum and dad started their own company in the mid-90s doing stuff with how data is managed and given out nationally for uni courses (dad used to work for UCAS), plus other IT bits and bobs and the odd web design project (yeah, I don't know much about that >.<; )

She likes doing art/graphics, reading fantasy/sci-fi novels, reading non-fiction books especially ones based on human psychology, playing board games/socialising, and cooking loads of food to feed masses of people XD

My dad's called Alan, he's always wanted to be a board game designer. Well, TBH he has always been a board game designer, just not made huge piles of cash from it (tho I think they're covering their outgoings better now ^^ ). When I was little I'd often go up to bed to the sounds of dice being rolled and pieces being moved around (and sometimes also the chatter of D&D playing). Once I flung a sock accidentally into the middle of a very complicated game involving many many counters, and I got extrememly told off o.O;; My folks have an indie board game company now, along with one of their close friends, and publish a new game every couple of years ^^

Dad likes military history (that's what he did for his degree), reading mainly history books but also some fantasy/sci-fi and philosophy, designing games, playing games, Watchmen (he reads it once every few years, and says that if you have Watchmen, why read another comic? XD ), the Total War series and Civilisation...also likes stodgy puddings like jam roly poly with custard XD

My LBD for the entire christmas season arrived today yay! (its from Collectif again - je'taime <3 ) I thought investing in one, well-made but not too expensive, dress would be the best thing to do as I plan to be about 2 clothes sizes smaller this time next year, so there wasn't a lot of point in getting anything too epic this year (plus, I can accessorise to make it a bit more funky, and then still be able to wear all the accessories with future smaller clothes - bonus!)

I'm kind of in a bit of a limbo of all my larger sized stuff from last christmas being way too big, but none of my super small stuff from back in the day fitting yet ^^;;

The dress is this cut (below), but the fabric is plain black with a cool tattoo design in velour flock all over it - you wouldn't notice the pattern unless you were standing quite close, but its covered in roses, skulls, hearts and other cool things XD



I'm not sure what colour to accessorise it with yet - not black, as I'm going to be wearing it to a wedding in December! I'm thinking either white or a bright colour, such as bright blue maybe? I think it will mainly depend on what shoes I can find - I'm going to look for shoes first as I think they'll be the hardest thing to find. I want to make a foray back into heels, but only about as far as kitten heels, as I don't want to be stumbling around stupidly >.<; Thing is, most of the nicest shoes have heels that (to me, knowing I have no sense of balance) are insanely high - so I'm kinda hoping for a miracle, like kitten heels suddenly being in this year or somehting ^^;;

In other, somewhat related, news I reached 40lbs of weight lost yesterday woot! If I can lose just 2lbs more before christmas I'll have lost 3 stone in the year :D Contrary to what I might have thought before, I think there's actually I good chance I can do it - the only foodily-excessive thing I'm doing this week is stopping for a christmas coffee and dinner at CB2 on our big christmas shopping trip on Saturday, but I'm cleaning the house all week which is going to burn a ton of calories, plus we'll be walking to and from town (about 50 mins each way) so that should burn off the rest of it (hopefully) ^_^

So I'll probably have about 2.5 stone (with maybe a couple of extra christmas pounds) to lose next year. I hope I can do it. I'm pretty sure I can, but the last stone or so can be rather a pain to get rid of from what I've heard >.<; I'm going to work harder on my fitness next year too - I'm feeling really good about getting back into regular badminton playing and gym going ^_^ I don't feel so super overweight now tho - I'm about 12.5 stone which is a pretty normal weight, albeit not a particularly healthy one. But I don't feel like the largest person in the room so much any more, which is nice ^_^ I'm looking forward to spending next year in 'normal' clothes sizes, like 14s and 12s (I'm still wearing 16s in trousers at the moment, 14s in skirts, but I happen to have got skinnier fitting jeans than I would normally wear as hand-me downs from others, so I'm guessing I'd probably take a 14 in my usual super-flares or boyfriend jeans ^^ )

I swear, next winter Camden is not going to know what hit it! I'll have been wearing hand-me-downs for about a year and half by then - I'm gonna buy an entire new wardrobe! >:D (hmm...all the more reason to work harder and harder on getting my 3D to epic levels, for job getting ^^;; )

I am about halfway through watching the football games that were TIVO'd for me while I was overseas.

I came back from my trip sick to my stomach, as I reported last post. These games are only making me sicker.

Life is meaningless and has no joy but the Raiders.

I got home a little past midnight on Sunday night, after a long and gruelling trip from Casablanca. Three flights, changes in NYC/ JFK and Minneapolis/St. Paul, close to twenty-four hours in transit since the wake-up call came through in my Casablance hotel. I was pretty much a zombie by the time I stumbled off the last flight into Parris's loving arms, and a rotting zombie at that. After being oh-so-careful in Morocco -- not drinking the water, brushing the teeth with bottle water, avoiding uncooked food, etc -- I made the grievous error of eating at the McDonald's in the Minneapolis airport during our layover there, and came down with an nice all-American case of food poisoning. By the time I boarded my last flight my stomach felt as if I'd swallowed a lead bowling ball. It was the first time I'd eaten at a Mickey D's in a decade, and I hope that it's the last.

Anyway, the last day and a half I've spent mostly in bed or in the john, but I'm feeling a little better now. This is the first time I've felt strong enough to boot up my computer... where, of course, I found five hundred emails waiting.

The trip was great, and I hope to write more about it later, when I'm feeling stronger.

I have to say, though, I am not sure how many of these overseas trips are left in me. It's great when I get there, but air travel has just become SO exhausting and SO uncomfortable, especially when oceans are involved, that the mere thought of any more just now is daunting.
Where are the rocket planes that I was promised in the SF of my youth?

Well with the competition work behind me I'm putting on my rubber gloves and cleaning the flat! (well in reality wishing I'd remembered to buy some rubber gloves and watching the skin of my hands slowly dissolve over the course of a couple of days >.<; )

There's a ton of cleaning that needs doing - Banemoo's been absolutely amazing the last couple of weeks, keeping us with enough clean dishes to cook and eat off, plus doing a lot of the cooking too (all while having a milestone crunch time at work), but yeah, the flat's still a complete bomb site of work papers & books, washing up, recycling, clothes washing, you name it >.<;

I'm hoping to have it finished over today and tomorrow tho and keep it nice all the way until christmas! This should be do-able as I'm scaling back my 3D to hours that will actually fit into my life again (i.e. I will be taking time out to wash up, cook, go to the gym etc.) - which will slow my progress to a big extent, but its completely unfeasible to give up all my time to 3D, much as I would like to sometimes ^^;

In other news the pub crawl this weekend was fun. Thanks to everyone for coming along! ^_^ A few less people turned up than I thought would, so overall it was relatively quiet (I think we had about 10 people), but any more and I think it would have been harder to find enough space to all sit in decent proximity of each other anyway. I've learned a couple of things which I would apply if I wanted to organise another one.

Firstly I think starting in the afternoon is good, but I would organise it to only fall over 1 mealtime (probably dinner), as no-one really needs 2 pub meals in a day >.<; Secondly I would try to find the time to grab some more interesting facts about each pub off the net so I have a bit more to say when people ask 'so why are we going there next then?' Thirdly, I would say 'gain a better sense of direction' but that's pretty much impossible ^^;

Fourthly, I would actually drink more! I was saving myself for the evening, but drinking only about 5 drinks over the course of an entire afternoon meant I really wasn't feeling the drinks at all o.O; I had nowhere near a hangover, by the time I got home I felt 100% un-alcoholled...

I hope everyone had a good time ^^; We kind of disbanded mid-evening due to illness and tiredness amongst the group. Banemoo had been struggling with a bug + massive workload all week and I think it finally hit him hard Saturday evening - he came down with a horrible temperature when we got home (you know the ones where your skin's boiling hot and dry but you feel really cold?), but thankfully it broke overnight so he's just resting up to get rid of the last of it now. Argh! why do these things always have to happen together?! >.<;

But other than that, I did learn a couple of things about the Cambridge pubs that I didn't know before! The Pickerel Inn is a cool old fashioned pub, in an old builsing with wood-beamed ceilings and lots of nooks and crannies with tables to sit in, and it also does a very cool mixed long drink menu which changes seasonally (I had gorgeous ginger apple drink made with vodka, ginger ale and cloudy apple juice ~mmm~ :D ). Also, the Eagle is open again and I think its had a bit of a facelift as it seems a lot nicer in there than it used to be. Unfortunately tho it was so nice it was too rammed to find a table >.<;

Final tidbit - several pubs are in fact serving mulled wine yay! :D Tho it often comes with a mine pie automatically, which is no so good for the ol healthy eating regime ^^;

In conclusion, I enjoyed the pub crawl and would like to organise another one at some point (hopefully sans so much cold, rain and illness >.<; ). We have yet to try out the fabled selection of ciders, ales and fruit beers at The Elm Tree! I sort of consider this one to have been a bit of a trial run tho, as there's several things I can think of that would make another one more epic! (tho it might have to wait til we're feeling a lot more flush with cash - drinks and food out are not cheap, even tho Banemoo was drinking mainly water and diet coke the entire time ^^; )

Right...better get back to the cleaning...hmm, this isn't going to be easy with the living room lights off due to sleeping boyfriend on the sofa...might have to stick to working on the kitchen for now...

Five words from Miss Krissy:

travel I've always wanted to travel. I like the idea of travel. Travel sounds like a lot of fun and then you get to say, "oh, when I was there..." or "yes, I saw that in person once and it's..." and "oh, I love Tuscany!" and sound all worldly and cool :o) Mind you, as a child, my travel was limited to road trips in the camper van and annual sojourns to New Mexico to visit my maternal grandparents. This is where my distaste for deserts comes from, mind you.

This last 18 months has been particularly travel heavy: Florida, Hawaii, Detroit, the UK, and now the UK again :o) I'm sad that I can't see more of Europe while here (don't want to tempt fate about being able to get back into the UK should I leave) but Chris and I are free to see Scotland, England, Wales, and at least North Ireland :o) We've already got a trip to Edingburgh in early December that should assuage some of my Dickens' Fair jealousy.

exotic for some reason exotic has always been linked to tropical and, more to the point, south pacific. Hawaii is exotic (even though technically it shouldn't be) as is tahiti and Japan (though now we've lost tropical) whereas Jamaica or India or Norway wouldn't be. Even though as far as "exotic," which is to say "different" or "unusual", goes, they're more exotic than Hawaii.

crumpet it's a type of scone, isn't it? Chris says, "not really" and when asked for clarification, "they're crumpets!" Right, apparently we're missing a few things in my British Education :o) He eventually came up with "it's more pancakey than scones" and then something about extra baking powder. I'm going with my original answer of it being scone-like. Mostly "crumpet" makes me think "stumpet" but not as pejorative.

curl I consider my hair curly, though most of my life I've been told it's "wavy". They're just large-diameter curls that have been too weighed down and brushed out to bounce. But with my hair shorter I get natural sausage curls that would do Shirley Temple proud. I think curls are great and I envy you (Miss Krissy) your super curly hair.

Lately, as in the last week, Curl has also taken on the connotation of "curling" the sport, as my local ice rink has 3 sessions this month (!!!) for general ice skating and the rest is pretty much curling - either practice or competitions. I've come to learn that a young man on the UK Curling team for the '10 Olympics is from Inverness.

cold my first though still involves sneezing, rather than shivering :o) I am really bad at dealing with cold: I start shivering really easily and if it's more than mildly shivering, my back spasms. Though that hasn't happened much lately: I think I'm better at dressing warmly. I'm not sure about "warm enough" here, though. It's mostly been in the single digits, but hasn't dropped to, let alone bellow, freezing. Also, Chris keeps the place pretty warm so I can't even wear sweaters around the house. I suggested the place doesn't need to be warm enough that I'm comfortable wandering around in my undies and he didn't see the problem :o/

It actually does make it difficult to get bundled up to go outside. I sneak around turning the heaters down :o) Even going outside, the few times I have bundled up I was quickly too hot and sweating. So it's just been a coat and hat and scarf with an option of adding gloves if I'm cold or leaving the coat open if I'm hot.

twitter name = IRC nick

ACH1000=ach
Aynber=BriGal
Bytor=Bytor
Darph_Bobo=J White
Densaer=Densaer
GlitchedGent=Ooka
Katzmandu=HomeySans
noirem=noirem
ParsingPhase=Wechsler
PnkRckLibrarian=Lisha
Rit=Rit
Sarah_Katz=HomeySans' Wife
Sirilyan=Sirilyan
Sunbug=Sunbug
Teknomantik=SnowDrake
TheDramoth=Dramoth
Unixgoddesskate=Junii
Wildcard0=Wildcard0
Xanthein=Xanthein
ZBurnham=Evil Otto

Tell me, how come the majority of people I have forum-muted are from Cobalt?

Not that I'm planning on a major hangover on Sunday ^_~ (I'd better not as we don't have any decent food in o.o; ) But it got me wondering and now I'm really interested to hear from everyone out there!

I've got 2:

1. Black coffee and a bacon sandwich (if its a work day and there's a good cafe on the way to work that I can buy it from then alls the better)

2. I still have a soft spot for my traditional student hangover brekkie: Big Mac, large fries and a vanilla milkshake XD

(tho I haven't been to McDs in a few years now o.O; )

A mate of mine said the best hangover breakfast is the rest of the night before's pizza (even better if you left it by your bed so all you have to do is roll over and eat XD ) - I'm not a big fan of cold pizza tho >.<; Especially not cold greasy kebab shop pizza! urgh

Beautiful sounds out of this guy's busking with an electric violin :D



Wow, this guy is pretty amazing judging by his wikipedia page --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Alleyne-Johnson

I'm going to be starting a 3D games environment modelling blog next week and I need a name! I'm drawing a complete blank, can anyone think of anything?

It could be concise, snappy, witty, stupid pun-y, or even something incredibly random that's completely unrelated to 3D...

My best ides is to call it 'marmite toast', after the fact that I've been eatingthat as my breakfast (and sometimes also lunch) for the last couple of years at least, so its been my companion through a lot of 3D work ^^; Of course, that doesn't really make any sense if you don't know me o.O; (and Wren - I managed to eat porridge for breakfast for 1 day, then I went back to the marmite ^^;; )

But yeah, something a bit better than that would probably be good >.<;;

Up close n personal with some instant heart attack food concoctions...

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

The giant scotch egg is horrific looking! >.<; But with a burger called The Steakinator how could you possibly go wrong? XD

...pity books cost money >.<;

Anyway, there's an excellent short primer on getting into Tezuka over on Robot 6 --> http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/11/comics-college-osamu-tezuka/ (link via Mangablog)

I've read MW and the first volume of Black Jack, but that's it so far. I'd like to read more Black Jack, Phoenix, at least the first volume of Buddha, Ode to Kirohito, Apollo's Song (possibly just because it was described as a bizarre sex-ed guide set on an island of copulating animals XD ), and actually I'd really like to sample Nextworld and Metropolis as, altho the general consesnsus is that these series are more clunky than the others, I love the idea of flipping through some really cool looking Tezuka futuristic city backgrounds XD

...weirdly tho, I've got no real urge to try out Dororo...probably because I know it doesn't end properly ^^;

Oo! and I'd like to read vol. 3 of Astro Boy as I'm asking for Pluto for christmas (I wonder if they're doing roaring sales of just vol 3 of Astro Boy now? I kind of hope that Pluto has helped Astro Boy sales in general as I would like to see as much Tezuka as possible come over into English ^^ )

I'm also kind of interested in at least looking at (if not getting hold of) Helen McCarthy's 'Art of Ozamu Tezuka' - probably not so much to read as to flip through the pretty pictures. One day I'd love to have a house with a great big coffee table, so I can put out coffee table books! :D Gorgeous art books are so wasted stuck in shelves 99% of the time, but if we put them on our coffee table here they would probably either immediately get moved off onto the floor (as we use the coffee table to do brainstorm/sketch work), or covered in curry or ramen broth splats (as we eat all our meals at the coffee table too)

...I guess I can also aspire to one day owning a house with a dinner table ^^;;

We've been hunting for a while now looking for a dog suitable for our family. If the dog is older than 3 months it must have been socialised in a family environment and been handled by children. Does anyone know of a spaniel or spaniel cross (or similarly tempered breed of similar size) aged up to 18 months old for sale?

We've been hunting through rescue organisations and through puppy ads but as yet haven't been happy with what we've found. The breeders in the papers all seem to be scary home-breeders we wouldn't want a puppy from or elitist KC registered breeders who treat our simple needs and ambivalence about breed with disdain. I do not wish to line either of their pockets with my cash.

Rescue organisations, who almost without exception have been very helpful, don't generally seem to have child-friendly dogs, after all if the dog hasn't got any issues it's unusual for it to end up in rescue.

Anyone else remember this one from Mannequin? I used to adore this song XD Still love it actually - its epic XD

Suddenly want to buy Mannequin on DVD o_o;;


I must have gone insane from overwork ^^;; I'm actually going to listen to Belinda Carlisle next >.<; I'll hate myself in the morning XD Right, just a couple more hours modelling to go...might even listen to Lisa Stansfield o_o;