both safe for work, no warnings

Newtrek. Or Reboot Trek. Or whatever the fuck we're calling it.

Drunk Kirk and McCoy, drawn for the lovely incandescently's birthday. Because Kirk never gets hungover and McCoy hates him so much just a little bit for that before remembering that really, hating is just too hard when he's this hungover.

Watercolour, ink and gouache. Or, proof that it's been a while since I've played with those and I need to practice.

( drunk Kirk and McCoy )


X-Project - Doug and Marie-Ange, for the equally awesome technophobia's birthday.

pen and ink (Incidentally, feet are *hard*, people)

( Doug and Marie-Ange )

You guys, there was ice on my car this morning. Real, honest-to-god half-melted kinda slushy ice on my back windscreen.

And, okay, it did look kinda cool when I cleared it off because these little drifts of ice formed in places (it was like Antarctica had decided to come and migrate north, onto my car).

But, you guys. That was frozen water sitting in places where it has no bloody business being, since hi! It wasn't either up at the snow or in my freezer.

Seriously, do you know how cold it has to be for ice to spontaneously form in the wild? Yeah. That's how fucking cold it was this morning.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be sitting over here warming my hands up and feeling sorry for my poor, frozen toes and nose. (You could see your breath in my house this morning. That's how cold it was.)

I totally forgot to cross-post this about a month ago. Bad me.

( Art Post )

I, along with the wonderful jamethiel_bane, discovered the ...words-failing-ness that is Knightrider last night.

Michael is in love with his car. And KITT loves him back.

And the hair. OMG, the Hoff's hair. And his clothes. And the declaiming. This isn't dialogue. It's dramatic declaiming. And soulful pauses. And the clothes. The clothes are alternately awesome and claw-your-own-eyes-out bad.

Why is there a creepy, campy old English dude? And why is KITT's voice so campy?

Also, KITT is smarter than you and will beat you up if you hurt Michael.

If this wasn't from back on the dark ages of stone-age TV, I'd assume they're taking the piss. But I think they're taking it seriously. That's so cute.

I have just discovered that they sell instant scone mix at the supermarket. One of those "Just add milk!" deals.

I am appalled. Scones, people. They're not that hard. They're fucking piss easy. Look:

You toss two cups of self raising flour in a bowl and add a pinch of salt. Rub in two tablespoons of butter and then add 7/8 of a cup of milk. Give it a good mix, add more flour if it's too sticky, flatten the dough out, cut some circles with a glass and stick them in the oven at 210C for about 12-15 minutes. The entire thing is done in 25 minutes.

They're not that hard.

You don't need magic scones in a box. It's just WRONG. Wrong like that tinned corned beef I bought that one time, not knowing that meat in a tin was so... How was I supposed to know? Tinned fish is always find. Well, anyway, there was trauma.

Fuck.

I have an interview tonight at 5:30. This is fine. I had my clothes all picked out for it, even:

my black pants, the ones with very subtle black pinstriping in them*, a cute little blue t-shirt and a new little blazer-type jacket (the one I wore dancing), that's dark grey chequered with lighter grey stripes. But it's still cute and it's designed to be worn open, so it's moderately slimming.

But! The black pants were wet! And it was very late at night when I realised this. There was no chance, none, that they would dry overnight, even on the heater. So I dried another pair. A pair of grey-brown ones, with fine, slightly darker grey stripes. And okay, stripes and checks. It's pretty fucking dodgy already. But I figured I'd be able to pull it off. It would be fine. Right? Right?

No. Because I'm a moron. A total, total, amazingly oblivious idiot. I completely failed to notice that these pants have little horizontal stripes as well.

I can't wear chequered pants with a jacket with a similar pattern. I couldn't do it even if they matched. Which they don't.

I am so fuuuucked. I either have to get new pants or a new shirt (because it's winter and the t-shirt is way too casual without a jacket) by 5:30 tonight. Fuuuuck. And I'm at work till just before 5.

Okay, seriously, did I turn my brain off while I was figuring out which pants to hang over the heater and dry last night or something?

I am so completely, utterly over my hair.

I understand that my hair would annoy me less if I was more willing to devote time to it, rather than periodically deciding that the whole getting out of bed thing is just too hard and I can *totally* brush my hair at the station, rather than dealing with it when it’s wet, putting product in and combing later to loosen out the curls. ANYWAY. My hair annoys the crap out of me.

I’d cut it all off in an instant and go for something short and still curly but which gave me the option of jazzing it up a bit except:

- I am veryvery fat and have a very round face. I am considerably fatter than the last time I had short hair.
- I also have curly hair.

Do you know what often doesn’t work? Short, curly hair and a round face. There’s a real possibility that it will just makes everything larger, rounder and fatter. And then you’re stuck with short, curly hair, a very fat face and look like an utter train wreck in plus-sized pants.

Keeping my hair at least chin length really does work best because I can use it to balance out the roundness.

- Also, see above re: brushing my hair at the station.

If I were to do anything drastic to my hair at all, I’d have to give up my love affair with the snooze button, because I’d have to style my hair properly every single day. And, okay, I don’t mind doing that but when it comes down to choice between sleeping for five more minutes and tying my hair back or getting up five minutes earlier, well, the hair doesn’t always win.

And yet, despite all that, I’m so over my hair. I need a new style. Or a dye job. Or something. Anything.


Incidentally, I just realised – about two years ago, I was rather tragically asking the advice of the Laurens about makeup and being all “…bwah? I don’t understand! It’s too complicated.” And this morning I was all “Mascara! Eyeshadow! Concealer! Lipstick! Done!” for a job interview. Now, I’m going to sit over here and feel all accomplished for a little while.

One of the DVDs my Auntie Sue brought back from Shanghai was a copy of the most recent Fast and the Furious movies. New Model, Original Parts, I think it is?


And okay, I had to fight my dad for it - I settled it by seceding him one of the action movies - but I won. Because I am just that awesome. (These? These are the sort of movies my dad watches for the cars and the fight scenes and I watch for teh gay and the fight scenes.)

You guys? Seriously, you’re on notice. All of you.

Point the first:

See these pants? The ones I’m wearing right now? The wide-legged plus sized size 18 ones?

Now, I know this is complicated but you have to remember to adjust the cut slightly between the size 8 pants and the fat-sized size 18 ones. What ought to have been a pair of loose fitting, comfy pants are actually cut like sails. Just making everything wider doesn’t work. No, really. Also, seriously, how much fabric did you put in the hips and arse of these pants? I could fit two of me in them once you get below the waistband. And there’s a lot of me to start with, so, seriously, guys, what were you doing here? (And yes, I know that this could be a shape thing, since I carry most of my weight on my gut but, still!)

Seriously, I’m considering figuring out if I can take the stupid things in through the legs or not.

Point the second:

Do you people have some sort of pathological hatred of pockets? Really, do you? Is that why you refuse to put them in my work pants? Or sew them shut? Or give me some pissy little thing that’s utterly useless?

All I want from the pockets in my work pants is the ability to stick my keys and phone into one side and three pens, lipstick, two wadded up tissues and a not-an-ipod into the other side. Preferably with enough space left over for a handful of change. I can do that in my jeans. Why can’t I in my work pants? Do you guys really hate lumpy thighs that much?

I am *this close* to buying men’s pants, just for the damn pockets. *This close*.

Love,

Me.

"
WALLABIES are hopping into Tasmania's opium poppy fields and getting high.
The revelation has also solved what some growers say has spurred a campfire legend about mysterious crop circles which appear in the state's poppy paddocks. In true X-Files style, Attorney-General Lara Giddings said yesterday the drugged-up wallabies had been found hopping around in circles squashing the poppies, creating the formations

...

we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Ms Giddings told a Budget Estimates hearing".


This? This makes today an awesome day.

The good news of the weekend (as opposed from the parts where I drove like a moron and the work dramas) was my Dad’s third dan grading on Saturday.

Yeah, my 54 year old Dad and his 50-something year old karate partner Jeff went for their third dans. It’s pretty awesome – I started training when I was ten and Dad a little after that, so he’s been training for a good thirteen years. It was just the two of them grading this time as they weren’t any red or black belts going for anything at this stage.

And it was a damn good grading – the standard of technique at the club has just gotten better and better over the last ten or so years. And, because it was a third dan grading, it was partly a testing of their technique and partly a great big showy exhibition for the lower belts because they’d done the real testing earlier in the week.

( cut for length )

I've been enjoying my between-semester break by watching early season one NCIS.

It has quite a few issues and yet...

Kate/Abbey. That's not really not subtext, is it? It's pretty much text. Yay. \o/

1) A bath. An actual bath. That you can have baths in. I haven't had a bath in eleven months. Eleven months

2) Indoor laundry.

3) Insulation. I'm not fussed about how much. I just want there to be some, somewhere.

4) Heating in some part of the house other than the lounge room.

5) A warm bathroom.

6) To be able to get from my bed to the shower in the morning without my teeth chattering from the cold.

I've noticed my lovely little only three-years-old macbook making a funny rattling noise on occasions. This... this is, in every single way, a bad thing to have noticed, isn't it?

I'd better do a backup when I get home.

I just used Dreamwidth as an essay reference.

The girl in the desk next to me at the library asked me (aka the random stranger) to watch her bag and laptop while she goes and finds something to eat. She was gone for about fifteen minutes.

And now she's done it again! She hasn't even bothered to close her laptop or put it to sleep. (For the record, from the page I can see on her screen, she's writing a not-very-good essay about media and twitter). She's just left it there for over half an hour and assumed that no-one will go through her stuff. Because that would be wrong.

People seem to do this all the time. I don't understand.

Terry (the housemate's cat) was a roamer. We'd try to keep him inside. We really did but he'd out anyway and sometimes not come back for a day or two.

He just vanished one day about three weeks ago. We put up signs and called him for days and Helen asked the neighbors if they'd seen him. And we were rather sad because well, he's an old cat. Things happens.

Guess who was sitting on the back veranda this morning, meowing? He arrived home with a collar and bell on, fatter, sleeker and less bald.

I quite liked some of them but really have no interest in keeping them now. I discovered that some of these are amazingly crap and I got some at library sales/opshops where I wasn't being picky. I'm more likely to keep books I hate than meh, whatever books. Besides, I'm running out of shelf space.

Asaro, Catherine: The Charmed Sphere
Bawden, Nina: George Beneath a Paper Moon
Carey, Jacqueline: Kushiel's Avatar Claimed by connikins
Clarke, Arthur C.: The Fountains of Paradise Claimed by clappamungus
Cooke, Kaz: The Modern Girl's Guide to Everything Claimed by mstakenidentity
Forester, C.S., The Earthly Paradise
Gentle, Mary: Grunts Claimed by vivienne_aster
Guillou, Jan: The Road to Jerusalem
Hambley, Barbara: Dog Wizard
Lethem, Jonathan: Gun, with Occasional Music
Lisle, Holly: Diplomacy of Wolves Claimed by vivienne_aster
Macdonald, Carolyn: Lake at the End of The World
Maguire, Gregory: Wicked Claimed by vivienne_aster
McMullen, Sean: Voyage of the Shadowmoon
Meyer, Stephanie: Twilight Claimed by connikins
Murphey, Pat: The City, Not Long After
Naylor, Grant: Red Dwarf: Primordial Soup
Oldham, Jun: Foundling
Scarborough, Elizabeth: Brownyn's Bane
Steele, Allen: Lunar Descent
Sutcliff, Rosemary: Knight's Fee Claimed by jamethiel_bane
Swanwick, Michael: In The Drift Claimed by jamethiel_bane
Tepper, Sheri S.: Sideshow Claimed by vivienne_aster
Trollope, Joanna: Second Honeymoon

So does anyone want any of them before I send them to the opshop?

Poll #1411435
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

I should attempt to avoid being picked for a jury on Tuesday by rocking up at court with all-new gay hair and looking like a disreputable, leftie, commie scum bag

Seriously, who hell puts "Healthy" down as one of the key selection criteria for a receptionist position?

I quote: "We need a happy, patient, healthy and well-presented part time administration assistant…do you fit the bill???"

As the recruitment guy said, it's at a health clinic. You wouldn't trust a hairdresser if the receptionist had bad hair, would you? He let me draw my own conclusions.

I'm not at all surprised that they're recruiting based on that. I'm absolutely bloody furious that they had the gall to put there on the selection criteria.