jenepel

YOU GUYS, HAI YOU GUYS! HOW ARE YOU ALL? Yeah, it's kind of been a while, huh?!
[Warning: The word "awesome" gets massively overused in this post.]

As usual, I can't even begin to sum everything up or tell you all about it, and I'm likely to resort to bullet points. So let's see if we can avoid that for now, eh?

( Housemates, concert tickets, fandom, Nano, Mac-store, work, etc. Mostly quick and painless! Kind of. )

I guess that's enough info for now, huh? I have three (THREE, OMG) 12 of 12's that I've shot and never posted, so I'm actually considering a bumper post just to get them up. We'll see if I can be productive about that. At least some time off work should make me get some things done? I have made a list of goals for the end of the year, and so far have been pretty good about starting on them, setting up some appts relating to them, etc. Although, every weekend from here to December is booked up, so how's that for free time?

Anyway, no more work now as I'm off to Cardiff for the weekend with some Nano folk. I'm really excited actually - a road trip and an awesome reunion. What more could I ask for?

Also, it has come to my attention that my icons are woefully out of date. I am missing at least two important new(ish) fandoms. I really need to sort that! And let's see if I can post a little better so that I don't play this catch up game. (Ahahahaha - lately that's all I ever say.)

P.S. ALSO MY IPHONE 4 IS AMAZING. It has quickly become my lifeline.

So April kind of sucked. And when I say kind of, what I actually mean is that IT REALLY sucked*. I spent the entire month working on taxes, stressing about working on taxes, not working on script frenzy, stressing about not working on script frenzy, freaking out about world cup tickets, not sleeping at all, getting terribly sick halfway just in time for the April 15th deadline, and burying myself in Kradam/Bandom fanfic every time I got a chance just so that I would stop worrying about all of the above for a while. So yeah, it sucked. I sincerely hope next year's is better. I'll have to be better prepared...or something, IDK.

*Except for all the parts concerning Adam Lambert.

But now it is May! I have high hopes for it! I've already had over a week of it, and so far it's been lovely and relaxing. Of course, the first three and a half days I was home in Norfolk at my parents' house because of the bank holiday weekend, so I'm not quite sure it counts, but even the workish part of it after that was good! Norfolk as usual was easy and diverting and filled with people who knew me when. I played tennis with my dad and bridge with my mom and her friends, and ate lots of good food. And then the work week, whatever, although I did manage to make it to Glee night, FINALLY meet up with Rach for a drink, and then have a DrWho marathon while watching sily_cleo pack, on, you know, various days. (OMG those Angels/River episodes were SO SCARY. I am a total wuss; I was completely freaking out.)

We had our long planned BBQ on Sat, which really would have been better with nicer weather, but what can you do? That's what happens when you plan things six weeks in advance! We had a decent turnout, and we did end up grilling, but it was threatening rain all day, and there were a ton of people who wussed out because of weather. Probably better just to look outside, see that it's a nice day, and then invite people over? On the flip side, we spent much of Sunday, which was slightly better weather, inside, mainlining three different Robin Hoods in readiness for the new one. We did Prince of Thieves, Men in Tights and the Disney one, and I have to say Disney pretty much beats all. It's SO GOOD. Not sure about the new one, but it's all free with my Cineworld card (LOVE IT) so I'll probably go with Daniel.

In other news, changes at home and at work. Londoners listen up! Job going at my office - part time, 20 hours a week, £10 an hour, mainly secretarial, no tax experience required. Starting probably early July. Also, we are making plans for the house since Julie and Nick leave in early July. We are trying to get subletters to fill out the lease, and right now need one for July plus the first two weeks of Aug. Probably around £540 all inclusive. We also *might* have a room going from September for the full year (rent £427, bills around £75) but that isn't at all definite yet. At least it looks like we're actually staying in the house. Basically (as I say every year) I NEVER WANT TO MOVE AGAIN. Famous last words, I know.

As it is summer finally, I'm in the middle of holiday plans. I leave in FIVE WEEKS for South Africa! Thankfully we have everything sorted except the possibility of a safari, which is kind of half-sorted. Also, I've already paid for everything, and currently am owed $500, so I'm feeling good on that front. Next up is planning my US trip in August. I'm waiting on my parents to plan THEIR US trip, other people coming to the wedding to decide when they'll get there, and (yeah) Kris and Adam concert dates. There actually is a GA concert (Kris) that was announced today, and since I was (probably) planning on going through there to see my bro it could work. But if I could manage to be in a city to see Adam too that would be awesome. It's not that I would rearrange my entire trip, but there are people in lots of different cities I could visit, so if there is one at the right time it might work out. Texas, for example = PERFECT. Anyone live in GA and want to come to a Kris concert with me? I don't really want to go alone, but I can't see me convincing my bro, especially since it also includes Maroon Five! (Too bad it's not the Barenaked Ladies portion - I would LOVE to see them.) Blah blah blah whatever. I can't make a post without AI stuff in it lately, huh?

Tomorrow is 12 of 12! I'm going to attempt to, you know, actually do it and post it for once. I haven't since Dec I think - I just got out of the habit and never got back in it. I'm hoping that once I start back I'll be doing it every month like I was before. I kind of miss the pictures.

Lo! it is the 15th and Lo! I am posting my 12 of 12! Well, it's a start anyhow. This is a bit of a back to life, back to reality month, since it's all normal again after holidays and moving and such. No city beaches and glass boxes in the sky here! Which is a reference to my Sept 12 of 12, which may have been mostly missed because I posted it like, a week ago and never put it on Chad's page. So if you're interested, that's here: yay Chicago!

Post 12 pics of your day, and then link back to Chad, who started it all!

1) ALL PHOTOS MUST BE TAKEN ON THE 12TH OF EACH MONTH.

2) After you post your pictures onto a webpage of your choice (Livejournal, typepad, MySpace, Flickr, etc...) please post the TIME, LOCATION, and A SMALL COMMENT on the pic.

( Cats! Roller Derby! Netbooks! )

So there it is. A 12 of 12 posted kind of on time! I'm sitting here on the couch watching Gossip Girl with my housemates. Awesomely, Nick is totally addicted, so we've been working our way through season one. Fun stuff.

So I have a really bad habit of starting entries in a word doc (or lately, due to my obsession, in a google doc!) and then not finishing them. Which means I have all these strings of half entries that don't get posted. Since this week was particularly ridiculous that way, I've decided to give it to you day by day, as is, or with small edits. It's kinda like a snapshot of the past week!

Monday - This weekend was our first in the new house (without moving and my parents and stuff) and it was pretty awesome. We planned to have a debate party on Friday night to watch the VP debates - in the end only Amy (American) and Claire (French) came, but that was probably for the best, as many things went wrong. (The oven turned out not to work so we couldn't cook the lasagna or the brownies! etc.) It still was a beyond hilarious night. Like half the (other) nation, we had planned to watch it as a drinking game, feeling that we actually might need the alcohol to get through. Unfortunately, due to the fact that we were *stealing internet* it took hours to download and wasn't ready until 11PM. This led to us being drunker than expected at the BEGINNING of the debate, so it was kind of all downhill (or uphill depending on your POV) from there. It seriously took us until about 4AM to watch it, with all the stopping and back-watching and everything. But much fun was had, really, although I don't remember as much of the debate points as I did from the presidential one. But Amy brought margaritas! We never get those over here! The mix was imported from Texas! And then there were tequila shots! Riiiight. The only point I remember with clarity is a whole lotta anger (at both candidates) when the subject of gay marriage came up. When the frak will we have someone who can just man (or woman) up and say "yes, I believe in it, and I will vote for it, and that's that"? They're all so afraid. Don't even get me started on the whole "it's the choice of the states" thing. I just do.not.get.it. Meh.

Tuesday - I woke up this morning from just the freakiest dream ever. It was long and complicated, but here are the basics. I was on some sort of spaceship, and I was working with this older guy to do some special demonstration or something - not sure what it was but it involved stop motion photography (seriously!) and his son was around, helping out too. The kid was about 10 or 11. It went on for ages with us setting stuff up and joking around, and the whole time I had this freaky feeling like something bad was going to happen. Then just minutes before we were about to do our thing, the dad went to go set up one last thing (not sure what) and then didn't come back. So we're all "where did he go/ this isn't like him/ it's about to start" or whatever. And whatever he had to do was on the outside of the ship I guess, or maybe he had to open a door to do it? Anyway, we look up out the big window that we were gonna use for observing during our demo, and there he is, floating all dead. (Like that Dr Who ep!) It was horrible. The last part of the dream was me holding back this screaming sobbing kid while he stared up at his dead dad. Freeeaky. I mean, wtf brain??

Also, new oven was delivered today. Yay for actual *good* landlords! Also, after a few snafus earlier tonight (yeah IDK, my computer is on crack) I FINALLY HAVE INTERNET! And it's fast! Yay. Just in time to post for the GGVS tonight.

Wednesday - It turns out that there was no Gossip Girl this week, which saddened me greatly. I never know when the hiatuses are, because I'm not seeing them as aired, just downloading, so I'm not in on the commercials and stuff. I should really look up schedules or something so that I don't get meanly surprised! I am so loving this show though - it is bar none my favourite show on the air right now (well, excepting NMTB of course - but that's different). Best new show of last year, definitely.

I took my nail polish off and my fingernails are still orange! (From henna-ing Rach's hair.) I think nails are like hair and thus absorb the dye. So I'm going to have to wear dark nail polish until they grow out enough!! I'm such a dork.

( Seriously, they look ridiculous. )

Thursday - Found this today (through one of those trails of a thousand links) and it's so weird! I actually thought it might be fake at first. "This Life cover from September 2004 with John McCain, who didn't run for president that year, and Tina Fey, looking a lot like Sarah Palin, is pretty darn creepy."

I was randomly thinking of the movie 12 Monkeys today. It's such a great movie and I haven't seen it in years - I wish I owned it.

I don't know if any of you guys noticed, but ggseason8 was in LJ spotlight! I am totally amazed at what a difference it's made in our numbers. The number of people we have watching the community has more than doubled. I just had no idea it would be such a big thing. I guess people really do pay attention - although if you think about the total population of LJ, it's a tiny percentage. But you have to consider that it's the percent that actually look at spotlight, then the percent of them that like Gilmore Girls so bother to click through, then the percent who are obsessed enough with the show to actually want to read a virtual season, especially when there are already 24 back episodes posted that they need to catch up on. That's some weeding out, right there! Either way, I am totally on board with spotlight, and I'll definitely pay more attention to the communities on there in the future.

Friday - So last night we finally broke down and finished packing away all the landlords' crap in our house. This house is awesome, but it came with one major drawback, namely that when it said "furnished" it meant "not only just the awesome furniture which actually includes some nice antiques but also a whole lotta crap like pictures and horrible ugly nick-nacks that are scattered through-out the house and are all breakable". Riiiight. So since we moved in (only two weeks ago!) we've been saying we would pack it all up. And I did do a few boxes last week, but we needed more packing material, so I had to stop. Now, after stealing tons of the "free" papers off the tube, we were ready. It took Rach and I hours (Seb was cooking, cleaning, etc) but we did it! And we also moved enough furniture to set up our shelves with books and DVD's. It's all so pretty! So these aren't proper pics of the house yet (next week! I swear!) but you can see how much crap we packed away (thank goodness there is a big closet to stash it in) and also how pretty the shelves look.

( Pictures! )

Saturday - That's today! I'm giving myself a break to put this entry together, because I just finished a quick read/edit of 9.03 in order to write the draft promo. But now I need to go back to cleaning, because our house party is tonight. Rach and I did henna last night (with gloves! shut up) and my hair looks awesome! I slept in it (never tried that before) and it's actually quite a nice bright (almost carrot-y! ha!) red. It looks really natural I think. Too bad I can't do much about my stupid eyebrows - I guess I should get them waxed or threaded again so they aren't so big - they just give the whole game away. At least my fringe (bangs) kinda covers them though.

Jgeez this entry is unwieldy. I have to get better at posting things when I actually write them.

On the virtual season news, here are the actual numbers from today. We've gone from 173 watchers to (currently) 429! That is truly amazing. Thanks LJ spotlight!

In weird and random news, my hands are stained orange from hennaing hair last night. Last time I did my own hair, I forgot gloves, and they got a little orange but it was mostly gone by morning. Well, it turns out that the difference between just doing your own hair with no gloves, and doing two people's hair plus stopping in the middle to make more henna, is BRIGHT orange hands. It's pretty hilarious looking actually.

In house news, we have signed the lease and paid all our money. Both Seb and I have sent in references, so now we're just waiting. We should be able to pick up the keys on Friday and move in this weekend! It happened so fast.

Our couchsurfers of the moment are great. I'm pretty sure we're going to be friends - they are moving to London - so that's exciting. It already feels like we've known them for a really long time, plus there has been fandom talk, so the barriers are down...

Leaving work now to go to karaoke! And sushi before that! Yay! We're all themed and stuff.

Heroes premiere tonight!

Hmmm. Lots of exclamation points in this post. I have certainly been cheerful lately. I guess things are just going well at the moment.

So the biggest news is that after an (extremely short) house-hunt, we found a fantastic new place to live! Seriously, this house is so great, and it has so many things that I was sure we wouldn't find or be able to afford, so it's just incredibly awesome that it worked out. The deal isn't done and dusted yet, as we still have to do references and pay in full, but we've put the deposit down to secure it, and everything seems to be going to plan. It was the third house we looked at, which I think made my mom nervous, but really once she sees it she's totally going to understand. ( Info about the house, because it is AWESOME. )

Okay, I have this other section that I wrote up before and never posted, so here's our weekend and some shopping:

On Sat in the AM we went house-hunting. [BLAH BLAH BLAH - it's all out of date now so I deleted it!]

Then in the Sat PM Rach and I went to this Democrats Abroad thing. We weren't sure what it was, but it turned out to be canvassing (at a festival on the Thames) to try and get Americans registered to vote. It was a bit scary at first but after you got used to it, really fun. A few people were rude, but most were really nice - probably tons easier then doing something like that in the US because the sentiment was overwhelmingly Democrat. We got a lot of confused Brits though - "why are you doing this here?" - but it did seem to be worth it because there are just SO many Americans in London. We were some of the last to leave, so we inherited this huge sign "London for Obama" that we have now hung in our front hall. :) Also, I randomly saw a friend of mine from university, so that was weird. I just heard my name and turned around, and there he was. (Actually, if you ever follow/remember my stories, it was the guy who got married earlier in the year and didn’t invite me.) Anyway, overall a positive experience on the campaign-related stuff, and nice to feel like we were actually doing something! ( Also, it got me a new facebook profile pic, so that's cool. )

Then on Sunday we cleaned. Ugh. (Well, mostly Rach cleaned and I just sorted out my room.) But at least now my room looks beautiful. It was really getting out of control. Oh, and I made cookies, which if I do say so myself, turned out awesome. It's much harder without an electric mixer though.

Also, have been doing a bit of (US) shopping online:

Erin(Kristen’s sister) found a dress for the Costa Rica wedding. We're dressing matching, to give a semblance of a wedding party feeling I guess. I think it’s really pretty, although I’m sure I’m gonna have to hem it. (Or get someone to hem it if the fabric is too delicate – we’ll see.)

I’ve been looking for a new laptop bag, and have searched a bit in actual shops but not found anything that fits what I want. I needed it to be something that didn’t look too much like a laptop bag, because when I carry my current one around London I feel like a target. Also, I wanted it to be big enough to hold quite a bit of other stuff, and also to be pretty! So I finally ordered this one from the Mac store. I was just a bit worried because the straps don't look that padded, but hopefully it will be okay. I found it for about $20 cheaper on some random sites, but none of them ship to APO's. Stupid. I talked to mom this weekend and she was just saying "why buy it online? you can't look at it that way" but I just think it's so much easier! Real shopping is such a pain in the ass.

The last thing I was considering (but haven’t ordered) is this raincoat. I have been looking (for like two years! man I suck at shopping) for a raincoat/trench that would be nice for work. The only summer/fall coats I have are casual, so I mostly end up wearing sweaters until it’s cold enough for my wool ones. (I have tons of winter coats!) But I don’t know – the pretty blue doesn’t come in petite, so I can’t decide.

Other than that, not much. Except that I think I might be allergic to the new shampoo that I bought. AND THAT WE FOUND THE PERFECT HOUSE. Ahem. I'm done now, I swear!