Hello all!

Well, after – what? – eight months, I’m back with a post. I find the prospect of addressing the many things I’ve been up to in the last few months a bit daunting, so I’ve decided to do it in bullet point format.

Ten things I’ve done in the past year:

- Started going to evening Japanese lessons. I love it! Learning some Kanji and all.
- Went to see our friend Georg in Amsterdam. Ah, Amsterdam is a great city, and I’m not just talking about the pot :P
- Became a big fan of figure skating.
- Did an Open Water Diving course in the Canary Islands, up to 30 metres. Went to a maximum depth of 27 and had some great dives. Got a couple of videos and a bunch of pictures somewhere.
- Finally got the chance to see MUSE live in Wembley Arena last November, on the 23rd. Oh, how they rocked. Best. Night. EVER. Also saw Cradle of Filth and Tenacious D live in Brighton XD.
- Went to see a few other performances which I loved. My favourite was seeing the Sleeping Beauty Ballet performed by no other than the St Petersburg Russian ballet company. WOW. Also went to a ball room cabaret night and saw two professional dancers (Australian Latin champions) perform. They were amazing.
- Went karting, LOL!
- I had two serious career interviews and failed on both of them miserably… change subject.
- Went on a serious diet and finally shed that weight I’ve been meaning to shift for ages. All in all, I’ve lost almost ten kilos in the past 18 months, yay! I’m done now. ( See for yourselfCollapse )

- Learnt how to play Texas Poker and lost a couple of pounds (of money I mean) gambling XD
- Finally moved to our newly-refurbished house. My new room rocks. I’m much more focused and happy here.
- Failed not one, not two, not three… but FOUR driving tests – all for different reasons. I rock. I’m still paying Tax and insurance, though. And booking more tests *cough*
- Had more arguments with my mother than in the previous twenty two years of my life put together…
- Was close to a nervous breakdown when Tim completed the Bedlam Cube TWICE and I didn’t. Not after weeks of trying. I’ve yet to do it once *dies with shame*

Okay, that was more like fourteen things. I cheated, so what. And here are...

Ten things I would like to do in the New Year

- Carry on learning Japanese.
- Go somewhere really cool on holidays.
- Try skiing for the first time and go diving again. Maybe try an adventure sport, too.
- Exercise more and tone up.
- Pass that stupid driving test for once and for all (test this Thursday) and drive my lovely around cool places.
- BUY a house. Yeah…. Mmmh, a lot of things have to happen before I can do that, but I’m working on it. I have a master plan.
- Have an absolutely mad and great time when I go see Muse on the weekend of the 17th and 18th of June at Wembley STADIUM, with 75,000 other people. Bring it on. Yes, I do have tickets for both dates ^__^
- Improve my confidence in real life situations, come more into my own. Grow up.
- Write – and but that I mean start AND complete – one of the many stories that have been going through my head. There’s an original story in particular that I’d love to write.
- Make an effort to keep in touch with friends and family more. I really ought to not be so lazy about these things.
- See a figure skating competition live.
- See more live shows (music, theatre, etc).

Ah, that was more than ten as well >_< So much for Ten Things. Hahaha.

And there you go, a bit short but to the point. Feel free to post about a few things you’ve done recently and what other things you plan to do. That would be great to read :D

I hope you are all doing okay. Those people I wrote a personal e-mail to can expect me to keep in touch regularly for sure. I got e-mails from Aria, Aja and Liz. Thank you for getting back to me, you people are the best. I shall return the e-mails soon.

I’m going to do a clean up of my LJ friends, so if you find yourself removed, please don’t take it personally.

And that’s it for the moment.

To round off the post feel free to check out the Gallery Tim set up. It’s full of pictures and videos. This is the link:

http://midget.evilbyte.org/gallery/

The username and password are both "gallery". Easy, no? Check out the Muse pictures! We have to upload a ton of others but they’ll soon be coming, so stay tuned. I’ll probably post a few here in the journal, too, for those who can’t be bothered to sort out through the gallery.

And because I think Tim looks sexy in his goth-ish get-up, ( here’s a picture of him and our friend MiladCollapse )

And a ( couple of pictures of the Muse concertCollapse )
because that was just the best thing ever.

See you all soon!!

Well, I guess it's about time I updated here.

First off, I'm REALLY SORRY I've been ignoring everyone by not going online at all lately. I mean it. One, I've been having internet trouble. And two, I've been busy with a lot of stuff lately to even sign online when the internet has been available >_>

I don't come here so much any more, but I still think about many of you and would like to keep in touch with most of you. It probably sounds like an egocentric thing to say when I don't even bother dropping a line to ask how you are. For that I am sorry. I do come here and read posts from time to time (like today), I just don't say anything because I feel I've nothing to add at present. I'm going to do a clean-up of my lj friends since I mostly look at my friends page through filters these days anyway, and there are a lot of people whom I haven't interacted with in a long time. It's time to let go.

This post was simply set up to say hello to all, especially to the following people:

imayb1
bakayaro_onna Look after yourself ♥
angrybee
rocknlobster
ambrosewulf
cheerio_yotan
chibikame
fel
nolan_ash
infected_wound Get better sweetie!
kageotogi
kitarin
fel
rieloflorien
robtengel
xenophyle

I have an interview with the University of Sussex in June. I have to prepare a little oral presentation and do a half an hour written task on the day of the interview. Then, if everything goes well, they'll get back to me within a week and let me know if I'm to be given a PGCE post to train as a Physics teacher in September. Wish me luck! To get some experience prior to the interview I've been helping my mum correct Spanish tests and I'm giving Math lessons to a guy who wants to take an University Access Test.

I've been to two driving tests and failed both. Agghh. I'm terrible. The first time I was so nervous I failed to reverse park properly (wheel touched the curb) and the second time I made a mistake on a roundabout. It was considered a serious mistake so even though all else was fine, I still failed. I have another test next Friday and hopefully I won't be totally stupid next time. I actually OWN a car already. It's a little, green 1.0 L Nissan Micra with no power steering. Haha! It can be a bit of a bitch to drive.... but it's cute, it's five doors, it's very economical and - above all - it's MINE! Bwuahahahahaa! I shall post pictures of it soon. My little baby ♥

I'm also working part time in Gian's office. It's boring as hell, let me tell you.

House still not finished although looking damn good and almost ready. I shall post lots of pictures when it's done. It's a bloody palace, I say! It's going to look very cool and modern when it's completely done and it's worth all the headaches we are having at the moment.

I've been doing some writing recently, but nothing I want to discuss here, really. I made a new journal where I post all my crap. It's all private so no one can read it, ha! It's all for my own personal enjoyment at the moment, although I might post a little fic or two soon. We'll see.

In other personal matters, I have a post to write. But that post is going under a strict friends filter because it's too personal for just anyone to read.

Take care all!

I'm so excited XD Tim got me my birthday present yesterday and I almost smashed him in the head with it as soon as I saw the wrapped little box, because I knew that if it was what I thought it was, then he'd spent a fortune... A moment later, my suspicions were confirmed and even doubled because he got me a better one than I could have hoped for.

See, I've never been too interested in this thing and it's been out for quite a while, but I've always thought it overprized and unnecesary. But then... the other day I saw someone using one in the bank and I thought to myself, "Mmh, that's pretty cool. I'd like one of those" XD I told Tim casually and he went and got me one! Can you believe it? He's so sweet ♥

Want to know what it is? I'll tell you then: an iPod! But not just any iPod, oh no. It's a fifth generation 30GB video iPod! Ooh, it's so sexy and slick, baby. Don't believe me? See the pictures for yourself!

( My iPod PicciesCollapse )

I also took a little video with my crappy digital camera, so that you can see my awesome device in action. The quality of the camara video is not great but the quality of the video in the iPod itself is just GREAT!

Not only that, Tim downloaded a great program for me yesterday so I can convert between different types of video. I converted the .mov video my camera took into a .wmv file, uploaded it to youtube and... voila!

You can see the video (Plush skating Tosca viewed in the iPod) if you go to this link below. It's very short (just under a minute), just so you get an idea of the navigating system and the video output.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk9YsPc0mGA

Hahaha! This is just too good XD Just think of the possibilities! I can put anime, music, skating videos, movies, etc in it and watch it on train journeys or plane flights. And no more messing around with mini discs, plus I can store pictures and regular files in it as though it were an external HD. It's great for carrying things around and for taking it on long holiday breaks, etc. Plus is very light and thin. Ah, I love it to bits ♥

It's about time I updated my journal with some stuff.

Lately I've been busy helping my parents with the house stuff. I'm still looking for a job and waiting to hear form Sussex university about my PGCE application.

( My sixth Year Anniversary and Ice SkatingCollapse )


I didn't do anything special on my birthday, but I got lots of happy wishings from many people and an e-mail from Victor in Spain :D Thank you all!

bcslfsshrt drew a great picture of Plushenko for my birthday:


Isn’t it great? Thank you!

In the writing department, I got Awakening back from imayb1... what a disaster! Haha, I managed to totally confuse her with my story. *sigh* Not so good. I've changed a few details in the piece and I'm waiting to hear if ambrosewulf would read it for me for a second opinion. Mmmmh, I wonder how it will be received if I do go ahead and post it. As far as reading goes, I've done very little as of late.

I'm currently doing a new badge of skating icons and I can't wait to be done with them! Mainly, they are of Yagudin and Weir, with a couple of Plushies thrown in for good measure XD

I also downloaded some of the performances from the Marshalls exhibition of figure ice skating and it was fantastic. It was just great to see Plush skate again to Tosca. He seemed to really enjoy the performance and I loved it. Lysacek's routine was a lot of fun and Weir was magnificent as always as well.

Yesterday, when I was out with Gian, I tried a 1996 Nissan Micra his cousin has in the garage for sale. It was a bit weird to drive, but I think I could get used to it. Maybe I'll have a car soon!

Whilst we were up there, I went into our storage crate and picked up by bag of quad skates ^_____^ I couldn't believe they are in such good condition after all these years. They are practically as good as new. The boot is still hard and white. The interior is immaculate and the rubber stoppers are barely worn, if at all! I can't believe I used my last pair so little. I brought them home and tried them on last night. They felt strange and for a moment I was a little lost because of the ice skating and the inline skating I tried recently. I think it should come back to me, though. I can't wait to take them out on the streets! Maybe I'll go for a little roll in a while... even though the weather is dismal today.

Also, when I can, I need to post a few pictures here. I've also taken to playing tennis with Tim recently and my muscles are achy most of the time, but I have great fun doing it. My serves suck and I'm only starting to manage to keep the ball play inside the court for a few returns, haha! My backhand returns leave much to be desired, but hey, I'm only starting and it's all a bit of fun.

Anyway, I also wanted to write a review of The Last Confession of Mabel Stark since I finished reading it ages ago, but that'll have to be another post me thinks.

I've rambled enough for the day and still not said everything I should have. Meeeer.

I hope bakayaro_onna gets better soon in the health department and my congratulations again to daiyaonna and xenophyle for their recent success in the job department. If only sammy_h and I could be so lucky ^___^

Oh, my. My night is totally made. Seriously. All thanks to this video:

Brokeback on Ice.

Mmmmmmh, Yagudin ♥

Now I'm off to bed.

I slept just under four hours last night and though I was all right for most of the day, now I'm in that kind of half zombic state only sleep depravation can bring. I've been out all day, driving around with my parents and sorting things out for the house. Today they started tiling one of the bathrooms! It's looking absolutely GREAT. And they lay the floor down in my room, yesh. I can't wait for the work to be over.

Now we are going out for dinner because I've barely eaten all day. After that, if I still have some energy and don't collapse in bed instead, I shall carry on reading. I have a few Gravi fics and a couple of skating slashy stories picked out next ^____^


More later.

I went to Gurabite a couple of days ago and ended up having a look through Aja's rec list. I came across a fic which involved the Gravitation characters the day of Tohma's wedding. It was totally hysterical I found. I'm not going to say it was a great piece of literature, but I certainly had a lot of fun reading it! I left a good review and now I'm in the mood for reading some Gravi fics again. Hopefully involving as little emo/girlified Shuichi as possible. I find bad characterization of Shuichi and repetitive Eiri-Shu stories are one of the main turn-offs in the Gravi fandom for me. But there should still be good stuff out there for me to read.

I'm currently compiling a list in Word of "To Read Fics" with hyperlinks, so I will not have to go looking every time I feel like reading. So, I'm going to go through my favourite authors and pick out stuff I haven't read and strikes my fancy ^___^

Yay!

I'm not so much up to date with the new authors, however. So, if you know the style I usually enjoy and have a recommendation to make, feel free to leave it here. Thank you!

Oh, and just so you know, you can save your recs from the following authors:
Aja, Onna, Bee, Dave (as in ambrosewulf), Genesis, Kmyth, Hawkclawd and Tenth (Nolan :D).

They are a given.

I've been writing like crazy for the last couple of days and I've actually finished that Gravi one-shot of mine called Awakening. Finally! It stands at around 11,500 words (28 pages in Courier font 12pt). I'm going to let it stew overnight, then give it a quick read in the morning and send it off to be betaed.

imayb1, I don't remember if you agreed to beta this one for me, but I'll send it to you anyway :P I'll also reply to the e-mail you sent me about GMM fanfic feedback, okay?

That is all. I was just soooo happy and thrilled to get this one done I had to share it here. I hope people like my idea, hehehe ^_^

I did something really unexpected today: edited chapter one of IOYH. I'm tons happier with it now.

Further edits to be carried out over the weekend. Maybe it means I'm getting back into writing?

I'm not the only one who thinks so :D I just found this on a forum:

Johnny Weir:
I’ll tell you who was really kind to me, and this is someone whose opinion I highly value: Evgeni Plushenko. We did some ice shows in Spain and France after the Games were over and he said, “Johnny, you’re going to be the next ‘One,’ but you have to do quads!” He was very supportive and nice to me. He would watch when I skated, as would his coach Alexei Mishin who would sit with my coach Priscilla Hill. It felt like a rite of passage to me to be accepted by them.

See? Plush said Lambiel would win at worlds last year and Lambiel did. He also said Lambiel is a better skater than Joubert and so far Lambiel has beaten Joubert in all competitions (including this worlds!). And now Plushenko says Johnny Weir is going to be the next one (by which I assume they mean the next Olympic champion). I think it's totally awesome they have such high regard for him. It goes to show they know good skating when they see it.

Go Johnny! Go Johnny!

Haha! The men's world championship of skating did not dissapoint. Wow! What an absolutely awesome competition it was. All the way to the last minute. Hugely entertaining and top-notch skating from lots of people. It was more exciting and had cleaner skates than the Olympics, where everyone cracked under the pressure.

I'm ever so sorry for Weir, though. I could watch that guy skate around the rink, doing no jumps whatsoever, for hours on end and not get bored. He's incredibly graceful and smooth and his performance gave me the shivers on the straight line step sequence, but he didn't get the technical merit necessary to medal and he fell hard on the ice on the triple flip, not to mention his back was giving him trouble before and afterwards ;_; One day, though, one day I'm sure he'll show everybody. Just you wait. And big kudos to him for trying the quad after falling three times on it during practice. Go Weir!

The medals were well deserved though.

( More skating rant hereCollapse )

The new Japanese skater, Nobunary Oda, is the 17th direct descendant of Oda Nobunaga, who was a major daimyo during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. He's proving to be a very impressive young skater and I look forward seeing more of him in the future. I think he's destined for great things.

Totally unrelated now, I have a new journal layout! I'm such a fangirl. It had to take this long and this level of fangirlyness on my part to finally change that blue layout I had before. I'd like to improve on the current one soon because I'm not 100% happy with it, but it's a start.

I haven't been around much lately and I probably won't be around a whole lot more in the days to come. I'm busy with things (house and other stuff) and the 2006 World championships of Figure Skating are now under way in Calgary. Right now the Men's Qualifying round is taking place.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

I don't have means to watch it live, but I'll be downloading videos from the skating forum as they come (and they are already coming in!) and I'm following the news live online in Eurosport's website. Apparently Lambiel just took the ice for the qualifying round and scored a MASSIVE 160.9 points! That's about 7 points less than Plushenko scored at the Olympics, and a whole 20 odd points ahead of Lycacek (who was second up to now). It's mighty impressive! He must have had a clean skate (wearing the zebra outfit of course...). Ah, can't wait to see the videos.

Anyways, I'm rooting for him, yay! And for Weir and for Buttle, who are still to come out on the ice. :D

♥ Fly high little zebra! XD Go Lambiel! Go Lambiel! Go! Go! Go! ♥

Man, in this world you can find wank everywhere. Even in skating forums and by people of all ages...

My skater is way better than yours!
My skater's injury is worse than your skater's injury!
That skater can do lots of jumps but his artistry is teh shit (just look at his posture, eeew!).
He left his heart at home during the performance, nerves didn't play a part at all.
She can do jumps but her extension and lines are just terrible.

Where do all these people get off at ripping apart the hard work and effort of these athletes who have given so many years of their lives to the sport? People who obviously love what they do. People who try their damn hardest. People who injure their bodies for something that doesn't even pay all that well.

One thing is to critizise when critique is due, but some of these people are right-down vicious. It's disgusting.

What the fuck? I'm so confused right now.

I haven't read it in the official websites and no one (to my knowledge) has said anything to the effect in the skating communities. So why is it that now I found a forum and articles discussing Plushenko's retirement from amateur skating? Dated the 3rd of March. The fucking 3rd of March, people. That's ten wholesome days ago. That's a bloody lifetime past, for fuck's sake. I refuse to believe I might have been living in bloody ignorant bliss of this fact for the past ten days, thinking I could actually see him skate live at the Europeans next January in Poland.

I saw an interview in the Olympics saying he wanted to skate, to compete, for many years to come... this doesn't make any sense. I can't believe this. I don't know what to say because I'm so confused. I am running out of words. Running out of thoughts.

The weirdest thing happened when my eyes went over the word "retired". First immediate incredulity, and after realizing the date the tears came to my eyes unbidden, just like that. It was like someone oppened a tap and they just poured out. My chest hurts. What the hell? I'm distraught and I'm confused that I'm this upset over this. I'm actually fucking bawling my eyes out over here and I don't even know what the hell I'm saying in this entry anymore.

I don't want to discuss my thoughts or the possibilities for the future. All I know is I'm fucking upset. I can't even go and look up more information for fear of tipping the balance one way or the other. Shit.

Edit: It's written on fucking Wikipedia. Wikipedia.



Just fucking shit is all I can say. Fuck.

I know I'm over reacting. I know my emotions are stupid. But, damn, I'm so excrutiatingly sad all the same.

I just found Johnny Weir's journal online ♥ He calls Evgeny, Zhenya. He's so adorable ^_^

I don't care what people say, he's an awesome guy. And a bloody amazing skater, too. He might have fallen to pieces in his long program and he might not have been concentrating hard enough for the Olympics... but give the man a break. He's beautiful on the ice, just beautiful.


Sometimes when I see other great skaters perform I miss the passion and spark Plushenko gives his performances, but I also miss the elegance and great, soft lines of Johnny's skating. He's like a swan gliding across the ice. I'm so writing him an encouraging e-mail this weekend. He deserves it.

I love Johnny :D

( Here's a picture of two of my favourite peopleCollapse )

Um, yeah...

Ooops, yesterday I said I might offend some people in my friend's list with my entry and it seems I might have done just that, except I offended the wrong people and for the wrong reasons :/

This is not directed at anyone in particular, but I thought I'd make a general post to clear things up a bit. I wasn't attacking monogamy or saying that being faithful is an uncommon occurrence. How it came accross that way I'm still trying to figure out.

I was saying that in the case of Gravitation in particular there have been a couple of discussions as of late suggesting that for a few months Eiri was sleeping around with women, and that Shuichi wasn't living full time with Eiri. This came across as a surprise to some people and some got into a bit of a huff about it. It wasn't anyone in my friends' list but I thought some people might be offended by my saying the instance above wasn't such a big deal.

It wasn't meant to come across as a message saying all couples at the beginning are unfaithful and there's nothing wrong with that. I was merely saying that if cheating was indeed the case in the beginning months of their relationship, that people shouldn't despair and think Eiri was an asshole and didn't love Shu because of it.

Nothing more was meant to be read between the lines, so I'm sorry if it came out sounding that way.

This might piss off some people in my friends list... but when I see people in communities and message boards getting thier nickers in a twist about the possibility of Eiri cheating on Shuichi a few months (or even a year) into their relationship, something boils deep inside me and screams "That's life! Get on with it!"

Seriously, cheating is not such an uncommon thing at that age, for the kind of people the characters are and in the society they live in.

Some people need to stop looking at it through their rose-tinted glasses of perfect love(Western TM) = monogamy to the death, and see beyond that. I'm sorry their perfect bubble is threatened, but it's a very real possibility Eiri might sleep around. It happens, and it's not the end of the world and certainly not the end of their relationship. Please, get a grip.

/rant

Phone interviews with Plushenko:

Q: Hello Zhenya, I am Misha. I really like you.
- In what way?
Q: Physically.
- Ok. Do you have any questions?
Q: How do you feel about my liking you?
- Oh, so that’s what you want to know. I’m very happy to know you like me.
Q: So that means we can see each other?
- No, that’s probably impossible.
Q: I work at a television station, I only see you on the screen, and you can’t see me at all. Maybe you want to hook up?
- Young man, I am not oriented in that way.

Mmmh, I haven't been around much for the last few days, I've been too busy following the ice-skating and investigating everything there is to know about Evegni Plushenko, aka God of the ice.

I made a wallpaper, a color bar, which I am proudly displaying on my user info, and a few icons. Yes, my obsessions know no bounds ♥ I have fallen in love with this man, even if he has a huge nose. He's so charimastic and ever so graceful on the ice, or passionate and funny. He can be every thing ansd anything, baby Fangirl squee

I totally can't wait for the Free Program tonight. He already got an amazing personal best and the highest score to have been given out with the new scoring system on his short program on Tuesday. And you know what? I fucking missed it by ten minutes because I was out having a Valentine's Dinner with Tim. The dinner was lovely and I had a great time, but now my heart aches because I missed his program :( I've been looking for it online and there's a very popular video of the performance on an american website, but I can't "view it on my country". Fu*k%(U)£&"%!!11!

If you are curious you can see some of his stuff on the NBC Olympics website. Go to the Video tag on the top, then click on Figure Skating under sports (on the left) and watch him perform on Salt Lake City 2002. I highly recommend his short program to Michael Jackson music and his Free Program to Carmen. AMAZING STUFF.

So, anyway, Happy belated Valentine's Day to everyone. I hope to be catching up with everything soon. I shall also post the results of the Gravi zodiac experiment I carried out the other day. I also need to catch up on a few reads and on a lot of posts that have been made on gravi_muse_meet.

So much to do and see!

Love to you all my lovelies!