~Verbal Diarrhea~

It's launched!

interfaceleader — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 06:12:25 GMT

So, the blog is up!

It's not perfect, and I have some tweaks to do, but the first two blog posts are published. The posting schedule looks like:
Main/big post every Monday.
'Tips' post on a Wed/Thurs
Link roundup on a Saturday (Weekend Reading)

The two posts that are up are:

How I finally fixed my sleep issues (for once and for all)

Three Fundamental Life Skills

I feel excited, but also sort of overwhelmed... blogging has changed SO MUCH since I last did 'serious' blogging.

POLL

interfaceleader — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 06:08:10 GMT

View Poll: HELP! I need to pick a name

Public transport woe

interfaceleader — Sun, 22 Jan 2017 13:01:56 GMT

So, I organised to go and see my friend who lives in a town in Suffolk this weekend. In lieu with 'try and use alternative transport' and 'I don't really want to drive in the dark on Friday night' I looked up trains and buses and what have you.

And basically, it's shit. There's a relatively straightforward train journey there on Friday, but to come back on Sunday I have to take a train, a bus, a tube, and another train.

To get a coach on Sunday would mean a journey that would take SIX HOURS as opposed to 2 hours 15 minutes by car. (And that six hours doesn't even include the travel to/from the coach stop).

And the cost of this? At least twice as much as the petrol would cost to go by car!!

Life is boring, then you die

interfaceleader — Sat, 15 Aug 2015 20:38:17 GMT

I think, maybe, touch wood, my period might be ending.

At least, no cramps today! And far less bleedage everywhere.

Money is going to be an issue reaaaal soon.

I worked out my budget and I basically have nothing left over after paying rent/bills/food. I really need P. to get a job that earns actual money. But no call from Waitrose yet :(

I spent pretty much the entirety of today playing Hearthstone, listening to music, and lying down with my eyes closed. I am not sure if that was a good day or a bad day.

I made this for dinner:

https://instagram.com/p/6acIcvJUwj/?taken-by=interfaceleader
(Edit: instagram's embed code doesn't seem to work... blah!)

It was super tasty.

Having money is awesome.

interfaceleader — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 21:10:25 GMT

So! I totally have money to ~~burn~~ occasionally spend on frivolous things. Like shoes! And clothes!

So I am going to buy these shoes with my next paycheque -- assuming my size comes back into stock anyway D: They are so prettyyyy!

I also desperately want to buy this dress, but it is way too expensive. And I would never have occasion to wear it. But it is so beautiful.

I want to buy myself a new top, as well. But I haven't found the right one. I used to have this lovely silk top with a belt that I LOVED. But it finally went at the seam, and I had to get rid of it :'( Haven't found anything I like as much yet...

Paid vacation

interfaceleader — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 14:14:33 GMT

Sooooo... the last week I haven't had internet, as I was housesitting and the internet was meant to be transferred from one phone line to another and instead got cancelled.

It actually ended up being rather nice. I did LOADS of reading. I walked over 60 miles over the week. I got a free foot massage from one of my webdesign clients XD And I got to hang out with two cats, drink hot chocolate, sit in front of a log fire, and generally have an awesome time....

.... and get paid for it.

Some bits were stressful. The house has this ancient coal-fired range cooker, and I nursed it like a baby I was so afraid it would go out (it heats the whole house, does the hot water, provides the cooking etc.) Also they had an aviary, and one of the birds died on Sunday :( Which was fine, he'd been sick and I'd been warned but it still felt a bit like... oh blah. Also I then had to handle a dead pet, which is kind of gross.

Also living in someone elses house is a bit weird.

Anyway. Home again now, and need to crack on with work. I have SO MUCH web design work it's ridiculous... which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on how I look at it XD

Wow

interfaceleader — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 19:47:13 GMT

I am consistently amazed at the number of people willing to let me live with them.

So many good friends xx

Officially back in the UK. Off to a housesitting gig on Friday. Lovely little farm out in the country.... with wood fires and an aga :P Haha, we'll see how well I cope.

LJ is crashing my computer o.o

Look at all the foooooooood

interfaceleader — Sat, 31 May 2014 07:18:01 GMT

My leaving do:

Such an amazing feast!

Someone rec me some Loki fic

interfaceleader — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 18:17:41 GMT

Someone rec me some Loki fic. Or good Sif fic. I'm not fussy.

I'm on a train tomorrow. Need something to read.

Exercise and meal plans

interfaceleader — Mon, 27 May 2013 09:21:57 GMT

So I've been feeling a bit ropy since I left my gym - I took up karate again but that is only on a Saturday. I try and get to zumba classes, but with my commute I miss them more often than hit them... :'(

So I decided to look back into gyms, and I found this awesome FREE outdoor gym in Oxford that's more or less on my way home :D

It has a pull-up station amongst other things ;)

ALSO it's outside, and I feel like I don't get outside enough either! Now that's it summer, it stays light and hopefully warm enough that I can go.

So this is my tentative plan:

MONDAY / WEDNESDAY / FRIDAY: Gym & hand-weights - 50-60 minutes

Warm-up - 10 minutes on treadmill

Legs / Abs / Arms (10 minutes on each, varying exercises)

Cool down - 5 minutes on cross-trainer

Stretch - 5 minutes

TUESDAY / THURSDAY: Zumba - 1 hour

Basically try my damndest to make it, but if not, so be it.

SATURDAY: Karate - 2 hours

SUNDAY: Gentle walk - 1-2 hours

Also, I am going to try and quit sugar again. We'll see how it goes o.o

Food plan for this week

MONDAY:
Breakfast: Yoghurt with seeds & nuts
Lunch: Baked sweet potato with side-salad & proteinball
Dinner: Home-made burgers & salad

TUESDAY:
Breakfast: Porridge with almonds & dried fruit
Lunch: Greek salad & proteinball
Pre-zumba: Nuts and fruit?
Diner: Chicken casserole (zumba night so eat late)

WEDNESDAY:
Breakfast: Porridge with almonds & dried fruit (I always have this, as I make it at work)
Lunch: Sweet potato & Salad & proteinball
Diner: Mixed-bean soup

THURSDAY:
Lunch: Mixed-bean soup & proteinball
Pre-zumba: Nuts and fruit?
Dinner: Ready-meal (zumba night so eat late - I usually get an innocent veg pot)

FRIDAY:
Lunch: Greek salad & proteinball
Dinner: Mac 'n' cheese with broccoli & salad

SATURDAY:
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with veggies
Lunch: Ham & beans & cheese on toast
Dinner: Chicken kievs and vegetables

SNACKS: Nakd bars (raw whole fruit bars with no added ingredients), yoghurt, nuts, fruit, dark chocolate, carrot and celery sticks

I miss my blender - green smoothies are SO AWESOME. But never mind. No point buying a new one until I get to the USA.

I won't have proper internet access until April

interfaceleader — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:28:07 GMT

I'm running off my phone (and have all images turned off in my browser). So if I'm quiet or uncommunicative... please don't de-friend me! :( I promise I'll be back to 'normal' once I get my internetz back.

I don't know how to live without it. I can't even watch TV!!

Camping

interfaceleader — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:02:45 GMT

A quick recap:

Too many screaming children. Campsites are awesome because they have showers and toilets, but actually wild camping is better in terms of peace and quiet.

A really long circular walk that was notable because a: it was ten miles and b: I didn’t get lost despite following some poorly marked by-ways and footpaths across farmers fields etc.

A laughably terrible pub lunch in which it took an hour for them to give me a menu after I sat down. Luckily I had nowhere to be.

Getting a lift up to the campsite with some random guy I met in the pub. His dog had muscular dystrophy. It was sad.

Walking the footpath from the campsite to the town each day, and each day a herd of ‘ornery looking horned cows getting closer and closer and staring at me in that intent, contemplating-your-impending-death way that cows have. Said journeys finally culminated in me having to walk right through the middle of said herd with one of the baby cows doing its level best to chase me off.

Seeing some of the most expensive fuck-off houses I’ve ever seen. Move over florida mansions. The people of the cotswolds have serious money.

Getting to see the Charlbury streetfair. Also: the Charlbury museum and the Charlbury Art Exhibition.

Not having to worry about anyone else. Getting up when I liked, eating what I liked, doing what I liked. This is what retirement must feel like. I cannot wait.

interfaceleader — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:59:28 GMT

There is a tuneless buzzing in my head.

It is the sound of sunlight on water, fractured fire-red and white. A shattered mirror that shows the world burning and the peace that settles me when I see it. Listen to the hollow space in your soul, because this is where language empties out and all the meaning is strung like glass beads.

Ready to spill.

But when they spill, across the page, through the air, flying like bullets, like kisses, like black feathers, curling ink, milk in coffee. When they spill, somehow they smash, dull, crease, flatten out. Meaning shimmers away and you are left with a mess, a blood-stained, mascara-smeared, mundane little tragedy.

And I bounce back to the mirror, back to the tuneless buzzing and slash my hands through the waves. Words flash, silver fish, darting in beauty but the shape is smeared by the water. And I look, and I look, and I look while my hands paw uselessly. They dart up to the sun and the bodies blacken and burn.

Meaning is but a moment, a slash, a flash, a seeping. Happy tears, the cool, clear, frozen grief that smears and fractures the world until for a moment, a moment, you see it as it truly is.

And I want, I want, I want to share this second, this moment, this endless timeless flash of a second, so you feel my heart and share my soul and for a moment we are the world and the world is us and all things are as they should be.

But as I reach out, as I open my mouth, as the words dart into song, into light, into ink, into a fixed lasso with nothing more than a definition, a history, a culture, a context, a rhythm, a cadence, an accent. These words dart towards you and I watch them change, mid-flight, colours glow, fade, edges stream away, I see your history, your culture, your context, your voice, your ear catch them and they hold nothing but a faint memory.

I repeat and repeat and I list and I list in a bid to catch the meaning, the moment, the clear cool fractured mirror of my fire-soul. But here I am I am and meaning collapses down and instead I must find the simplest way, the clearest way, the single word that sums it up that carries it all, the hydra-headed word, the songword, the word of truth, of light, of God. But it is done and done and all the dictionaries in the world cannot give us our shared language, our shared soul.

New Years Resolutions

interfaceleader — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:31:37 GMT

I make these every year, but this year I'm feeling pretty positive aboutt them :) I am getting better each year at keeping them too. I managed the 'get up at 6am' one for over six months, and the 'workout every day' one I blew out of the water.

Anyhoo.

Priorities for this year are HEALTH and MONEY

HEALTH

1. Workout every day, and focus on results.

Karate twice a week.
Running
Weight-training/body-weight workouts
Swimming

2. Eat a healthy diet

Take vitamin supplements
Eat 7 portions of fruit and veg a day
Cut down on sugar; do not eat it day to day, only when friends are visiting or I am socialising.

3. Get more quality sleep

Get in bed at 9pm every night and read until I fall asleep.
Wake up at 5.30am every day and do a 30 minute stretch workout
Get a sunrise alarm clock
Switch off all electronics at 9pm every night.
Do not drink caffeine after 4pm.

MONEY (goals in order)

1. Pay off all non-student loan debt
2. Save up a £1000 emergency fund
3. Start saving for retirement and a house deposit

interfaceleader — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:23:11 GMT

Native American Music

interfaceleader — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:59:05 GMT

Music by Wuauquikuna on Spirit Trails - includes songs like The Last of the Mohicans

interfaceleader — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 11:01:21 GMT

Isn't it weird

interfaceleader — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 23:14:51 GMT

You can sit down with a hundred ideas and have them dry up into useless dust the second you try and write them down. And other times you can load up your story with the intention of doing a few bits of editing and tweaking and next thing you know you have 11 new pages.

Eight fucking years

interfaceleader — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:47:58 GMT

I woke up this morning with the urge to write. I have grabbed every spare five minutes today, thirty seconds before racing out the door to work, twenty minutes at lunch time, and hopefully later tonight after the food and clothes mending is done.

I can't even begin to explain this. It's like a piece of me has been missing for the last eight years, and in the last two days it came back. Once upon a time I was a writer, and stories were my reason for living. I would wake up impatient with ideas, characters, sentences, scenes.

Then I lost it. Bam. Maybe not quite overnight, but certainly quickly. I still wrote, because I bought into that idea that you use it or lose it. But everything was flat, paint-by-numbers stuff. I didn't feel it, it didn't excite me.

I did a three year degree in creative writing, and I couldn't write. My third year creative project, I wound up presenting it to my two lecturers at the end of the year. They asked me how I felt about it, and I said - honestly? It's crap.

This was identity so it died hard. I was a construct built around a passion that no longer existed. It took me so damn long to give up. Days of hacking at words, pulling teeth painfully. A dozen, two dozen stories abandoned after a page or two.

And sometime last year, I don't know. It all went. I stopped. I was done trying. Last year was crap. I didn't actively listen to music - ever. I didn't read books. I didn't play games, except half-heartedly. I filled my life with money, work, housework, budgets, and crap TV.

It will have been worth it. I almost cried this morning. It's bad writing, don't get me wrong. I am not the next Hemingway or Pynchon. That's not the point.

It's like I got a piece of me back, a piece of what made me alive, what made me Suzie. I laugh randomly at work now, because I am imagining a scene and someone says something that makes me laugh. I am doodling, not in a bored, random way, but in a way that makes me happy.

How can I explain this? Eight years and I've been just a shell of myself. Now, suddenly, I have my snail back.

interfaceleader — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:47:54 GMT

I vaguely want to write fanfics about ff7, but I also have no interest in filling in story details from Before Crisis, Advent Children etc.

Also, I'm like a grown up now, and grown ups don't write fanfics.

Christmas Poll - Curious

interfaceleader — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:32:50 GMT

Pick any and all that apply, even if they contradict. Comments welcomed too, if I missed anything.

View Poll: #1660316

Book Meme

interfaceleader — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:06:36 GMT

INSTRUCTIONS: Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Copy this into your notes. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book lovers. Tag me as well so I can see your responses! Seeing the movie doesn't count!

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray (Oh FUCK have I read this)
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Today

interfaceleader — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:44:37 GMT

The river froze over. As I came back from work I saw a group of kids walking about on it, and trying to throw bricks through it. There was also an old mattress they had been using as a sled down the hill. It reminded me of when we used a dustbin lid as a sled.

It was a beautiful day that made me think of Winter's Tale. (Mark Helprin)

Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. It was a mad and beautiful thing that scoured raw the souls of animals and man, driving them before it until they loved to run.

The sky was translucent grey with pink and blue flushing through. The trees were stark and icy, the grass frosted and crossed with footsteps. The air was still, but so cold you could feel the warmth of your blood flooding your body with every heartbeat. Nothing makes life so keen as the little-death of winter.

TAG

interfaceleader — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 13:15:55 GMT

Stole from in_the_flicker

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets [and comic book authors] included)* who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag everyone, because I'm interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

Phillip K Dick
Kurt Vonnegut
Jean M Auel
Harry Harrison
Chuck Palahniuk
Masamune Shirow
Katsuhiro Otomo
Robin Hobb
Phillip Pullman
Louis de Berniéres
Victor Hugo
Dodie Smith
Damon Runyon
R Crumb
Anthony Burgess

My brother rocks (literally)

interfaceleader — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 18:27:10 GMT

The band he is in (KRIEGAK) have totally just scored the chance to be an opening act at the O2 Academy in Oxford. It's like a real band from Canada that they are opening for too XD

http://rockschools.co.uk/october-news-latest-update/ for details.