With magic soakin' my spine

Here in balmy NZ it has just passed midnight - it's no longer Jan 10: My darling Dad's 80th birthday - but it is now offically Jan 11, which is the birthday of the most awesome best friend a gal could ever wish to have.

She's a writer, she's a beta, she's an editor, she's an excellent cook, she's a generously empathic counsellor, she's a sucker for hot, tall, complex guys and for shows that sandrine uggests to her and she's really all-round awesome in every single way.

glitterburnhope you have an incredibly special day and I am incredibly sorry I can't be there to celebrate with you.

The hamsters and Wolfy have strict instructions to show you a good time, and I'll take you for birthday coffee the very minute we're in the same country again (allowing for travel north and jetlag, of course)

**************

Meanwhile, random trip to NZ is indeed random - I found out I have a cousin in Amsterdam I never knew about: I met both the new babies in the family (neice and great-nephew): I thought I'd lost my wallet in Singapore, so cancelled cards in Melbourne and then got notified that it was recovered with all contents intact at Heathrow: I saw just how hard-hitting my favourite bro-in-law's kindney cancer has been (he can still party hard, but the recovery takes all week); we've had floods and torrential rain and at one stage my computer told me it was warmer in York (middle of winter) than it was here in Southland (middle of summer). 

I've managed to catch up with all four of my siblings and nearly all of the neices and nephews, including two who are at uni in Oz, and my Godfather who I haven't see in pretty much 10years, and sped loads of quality time with my Dad.

Ad I have been remided again that my Dad and the rest of my family are incredibly generous and loving and while we may be scattered and have more than a few skeletons in our collective closests, we sure do know how to throw a great party.

Reading a Klaine fic that's a reworking of Legally Blonde made me want to watch the film again for the first time in about 10 years.

So we find it online and start watching and it's cute but something really bugs me about the ex-boyfriend Warner, apart from him being a massive arse for dumping Reece Witherspoon's character.

"I know him from somewhere" I say to glitterburn then I do what I usually do to age someone up and squint a lot.

About 20 minutes in I finally work out where I know the Warner actor from.... It's ALARIC from TVD!! 

Nice work avoiding being type cast Matthew Davis - I don't know what he was doing for the 10 years in between but it aged him from dull, preppy college-type into rough, hardy, can-keep-up-with-Damon-no-worries-type. I'm impressed.

Apart from that we spent today in York where I had bulgoggi and bubble tea for lunch and later my favourite barista totally undercharged me for coffee and when I pointed it out gave me a very cheeky grin and a "I know". Flirting with young guys has more advantages than I remembered.

And then came home to check the Tumblr coverage of SMTown in Taiwan where we find it was very hot because the boys were very sweaty and making themselves very crossover-worthy - Donghae appearing to kiss Changmin's neck while being giving a piggy-back ride, and Yunho grabbing Sungmin from behind in a way that made glitterburn's week.

Happy birthday to deltachild from the House of Ham!

My not-sure-if-it's-a-lurgy has moved from throat to bronchial tubes which is ace, because I know how to handle that sort of lurgy.
However, because of the lurgy yesterday's date was a bit of a wash-out. The movie was really quite dull and couldn't be bothered to get the frapp afterwards. So came home and marathoned three eps of NCIS. We is so rock and roll.

Today I will mostly be watching the Leveson Inquiry and still laughing a little at my boss who is spending his penultimate day at work at home because his wife filled his diesel car with petrol last night... or at least, that's what he's claiming. If he doesn't come in on Friday I'm drinking the wine we got him.





  

Tim Minchin is going to play Judas in the new ALW version of Jesus Christ Superstar. Yes, yes, yes and again I say yes. Snarky, Australian, back-combed, ginger Judas is just my cup of tea.

And if that didn't make me giddy with piano-thumping excitement, Chris Moyles (my totally inexplicable secret crush) is going to play Herod. Ohhhhh what a pity if it's all a lie - still I'm sure that you can rock the cynics if you try.

I don't care who the public picks to play Jesus (or that Mel C is Mary Magdalene) - I am going to see this show!

Just have to decide if it's more practical to go to Brum or Sheff.

In other news... I have no other news. I'm off to the beach on Saturday and I'm not coming back until it's properly summer and not fecking freezing every morning.

ETA: Last night I accidentally turned off the thing that sends work emails to my Blackberry. Coupled with IT idiots not telling either me or Howard (who are guinea-pigging the Outlook upgrade) that the old webmail address would no longer work for us, it meant that I didn't have a clue what was happening at work for more than 12 hours. Very liberating. I should try that more often.

...although sometimes I still doubt I ever had it.

So my day was totally made this morning when my favourite barista, whose coffee chain shop we visit maybe only two or three times a month, confirmed in the most blatant terms that yes he was flirting me.

His name is Alex, he's no more than mid-20s, he's seriously cute and he makes excellent coffee. And despite the hundreds of people he serves every day (he's in a super busy store) he always remembers my slightly complicated coffee order (skinny vanilla latte, normal gingerbread latte, both large in takeaway cups but to have in) and today he asked me my name.

glitterburn has been trying to convice me he's been flirting with me for weeks, but I scoffed. However today, there really was no denying it. She thinks this is hilarious, but like a good best friend is totally chuffed for me.  

If I was single I'd be working out how to best sharpen my cougar claws... but as sweet as Alex is, I wouldn't swap what I've got for him. Even if he threw free coffee into the deal.

Although if it was Changmin flirting with me like that and he had a milk steamer I would be might be slightly more tempted *ducks*

The IT guy has just wandered up stairs with the remote control for the electronic clocks and set them all forward by an hour.

This means I only have to work seven hours instead of eight.

I have to confess that I like our overnight shift (10pm to 6am for seven nights and then the next seven off) - but logistically it's a bit of a nightmare to be effectively out-of-office for two weeks which is why I only do it twice a year.

However, there is one downside to the clocks going forward: both lixia84 and glitterburn have furnished me with new fics this evening and I owe them a wealth of commentary and have less time than usual to doss around.

In other news SHINee's Stranger and Sherlock have eaten my brain. I can't believe I'm considering a need for an icon of these ill-dressed children. Two of them were born in 1991 which is the same year one of my best mates at school had her daughter at age 16 and one of them wasn't born until my first year at Poly. That's ridic and verging on creepy. Stupid earworm-provoking K-pop talents. At least they make The Homin seem nearly as grown-up as me in comparison.  

..I'll let you in on a little secret.

This morning as I was walking in to work at 5.40am the sky was not black. There was actual sun-rise lightening of the sky!

You know what that means kiddimalinks? It's SUMMER!!!

Not only do the clocks go forward next week, but I actually put the lawn mower battery on to charge yesterday (which means it will rain tomorrow, but never mind)

I'm such a sucker for sunshine that I'm going to bouncing on the "nearly summer"  thing all week.

Also I made really kick-ass chicken noodle soup in the slow cooker overnight and it's proper moreish and works out about tuppence a serving.

Well, what a week that was.
There was a birth, a birthday, brownie, new boots (sadly the b's end there); plus Shropshire, a new cocktail, a new Homin fic, marathoning a most excellent new US drama and indulging in my favourite Korean rom-com thanks to a gifted boxset.

The best part of the week was that our lovely Val gave birth to the most beautiful baby. A seriously handsome boy and not remotely squished or red like the majority of new people. That was the best-ever txt message to wake up to on Wednesday. We're so proud of you Val!!

Second best bit was that it was my birthday and I got hugely spoiled (again). I was secretly hoping to have a baby born on my birthday, but I'm happy to make do with new boots, the Paradise Ranch boxset and some other lovely treats plus glitterburn wrote me a fabulous Homin fic called The Seaweed to your Sashimi after telling me that she didn't have time to write me a birthday fic (sneaky, sneaky) AND she baked me chocolate brownie.

Third best bit was watching all of Homeland in a week. A really brilliant US thriller that was proper edge-of-seat tension with both great writing and great acting. If you like tense drama you should really watch Homeland. It's on Channel 4 right now, but I wasn't patient enough to wait for it to play out each week so I found another source :D

I'm going to give up on the ranking now because the rest of the week was all awesome too - we had a few days in Shropshire, Wales, and Birmingham and just chilled. I also invented a new drink. Ginger wine and Pepsi Max - incredibly sweet, but I love it - and it has been named a Ginger Shim for reasons I'm not going to explain because I'll look like a fangirl.

Moving on (haha) I'm introducing S to Paradise Ranch with the superbly grumpy Changmin - and every single time he throws a strop on the show we turn to each other and say "poor Yunho" because I don't think there's much difference between his acting strops and his real strops and the only person who can grin sunnily in the face of that? Jung Yunho.

Which reminds me of the only less-than-good part of the week. Bloody 2am having a comeback means the Changmin tumblr tag is full of ugly. Not as bad a clash as is going on in the Sherlock tag (laughs hard) but annoying to have my pretty Korean lad diluted with the pure grim that is the 2am version.

Hope you all have a wonderful March - I plan too xxx