A productive day

Yesterday was not a productive day. Not at all.

Today I shortened and proofread 11 articles, recorded a video and arranged some of the stuff I hoping to do this weekend. So probably the most productive day in the month. And I feel so much better for it.

So they're all emailed in, thank goodness. Over and done with. It's been really interesting, but I can be a really poor self-motivater when I know the deadline is fairly far away. I'm still having flashes of panic about getting names wrong/ writing quality etc, but this is what happens with me and any official work, I get really obsessive. Still, I hope it is ok.

In other news, the hairdryer blew up in my hand today. Flames and smoke and everything. I'm fine,and mum says this is a fairly normal thing to happen, but still. It gave me a bit of a shock. (haha)

Oh, and I woke up at 7.30am today. Wide awake, not a single yawn. Divine intervention? Subconcious stress? Nightime ipod? I dunno, but it was good.

Achievements

Today I:

*Got 6 pieces up to standard for emailing in to work.
* Decided what I will (hopefully) vlog about tomorrow.
* Came up with (yet another) best idea for a novel in the world ever, which (yet again) will probably never work out . . . but for the moment a rough draft of the first few chapters is in my creative writing journal, and I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself :)

I also slept in way too late, and spent too long on the internet. But that's life.

In other news . . . I'm beginning to think that I should keep a dream diary, because my dreams are so vivid, weird and random at the mo . . . usuall in a good way though.

The Wire

I'm sitting in front of the TV, post-work for once, watching The Wire. This is meant to be the greatest show ever made, and this is the first time I've seen any of it :'( Mainly because BBC didn't buy the rights until a year after it had completely finished in America, and then did the craziest piece of scheduling I have ever seen - they showed an episode a night at 11pm five days a week until they finished series 1, then took a week off, then did the same with series 2. And so on. I, like the rest of the nation, had totally intended to watch online on the iPlayer, but they didn't bother telling anyone that they didn't have the rights to show it online until after the first 3 episodes had already aired, making it pretty difficult to catch up, even for those who did have regular access to the TV (which i don't at uni). This is probably the biggest #BBCfail ever in my books. What were they thinking?
One day I'll have enough money to buy the boxsets, and enough time to watch it all. Until then, it is strangely reassuring that there is still some amazing TV out there that I havn't seen yet.

The Chocolate War

So today I read and reviewed The Chocolate War. This was not what I intended to do with my day when I woke up, but I was in the mood for reading something, then I ended up finishing it . . .and I wanted to talk about it, so I turned to the internetz. So it felt like a really productive day, even if I didn't actually do any work. I'm beginning to wonder if this video lark is some strange emotional replacement for the English degree I never took :) Oh well, it'll do me good to have an outlet.

In other news . . . I booked a coach to Manchester for next week :D :D I'll be staying fo 4 days with friends from my sixth form days. I'm excited, I've been really homesick for Manchester recently. If only I was better at managing my work schedule, I'd have been there before now.

Next night, same story

Yes, I am again doing work in front of a Bourne film. This one is better directed and the music is great, but it's the one without a girl in it, and strangely that does take away from the film, as this is one spy franchise that treats its women with respect.
And that's my thought for the evening.

So I should be working . . . .

. . . but instead I'm sitting in front of the tv, watching the Bourne Identity (which is another film I always forget how much I like, until it's some unearthly hour and they're showing it again on ITV2, and I switch over to it half-way through, and get totally drawn into the choreographed fight scenes, Matt Damon's angelic kickass looks, and the rather sweet romance at the centre. And this is the weakest of the 3. Time to raid the dvd shelves), with a pile of information sheets beside me, a Word Document open, and too much sugar cursing through my veins.

Wow

I managed to get two things writen up for work today. As the deadline is fast approaching this is good news. That was pretty much my day. Apart from going to a shop to try and find some wallpaper for the room I'll be sharing with little sis when we move in a couple of months. We campaigned to get plain so that we could draw and paint all over it (or at least she can, being the artistic one), and eventually the parental people agreed. So that'll be fun :)

Oh, and it's John Green birthday. So Happy Birthday to John, and Happy John Green Day to everyone else :)
Oh, and my brother made an amazing song video for John's birthday, and the Vlogbrothers freakin' subscribed to his videos. Oh my gosh. He waaaaay deserves it, he is a massively talented young chappy. But it's still amazing just how quick it's happened to him. Two months after starting, and he's in a collab channel with Dr. Noise and Alan Distro . . . that's kind of wow. I thought me and the sisters would be just an incy bit jealous, but we're all just mega excited for him. None of us can sing or write songs, perhaps if we could we'd feel differently, but right now we're just big fans.
And if you've stumbled across this blog and didn't understand any of the above . . . . you should go on Youtube more often.

And now I need to sleep.

Opticians

Another fairly unproductive day . . . not as unproductive as a lot of my days, but still . . . pretty darn unproductive *sigh*
The trouble is that it feels like I did stuff. Ok, so I set my alarm for 7.30 and then didn't get out of bed until 10.30 (the whole 'trying to find a church to attend when I'm home from uni' goal has really not happened yet). And then I made a vlog book review . . . for pretty much all the rest of the day :-s Ok, so I was talking about one of my all-time favourite books, so I had about 13 minutes footage that I eventually managed to cut down to 7, and editing takes me ages . . but it really shouldn't have taken that long. And it's one of those books that there is so, so much to say . . .I was really sad that I had to cut anything out, but vlogs shouln't be 13minutes long. They probably shouldn't be 7. Oh well.
So the only other thing of note I did today was go to the opticians. That was actually pretty fun. It was a cheapo opticians belonging to a supermaket, but they gave amazingly thorough eye-tests - the type of 'push the button when you see the spots', 'focus on the picture in the tunnel' type as well as the usual letters, questions and colours. Dad was paying, and feeling generous (work must be good) so I got to choose two pairs :) I went slightly radical . . . for me anyway. So I'll have one pair of thick black-rimmed glasses, and one pair of thin red frames by next week :D wooooooo.
And now I'm sitting in front of the TV hoping to get some work done before I sleep at the usual crazy hour . . . I really need to get my body-clock sorted out this week. Deadline is approaching, and there's still a lot to do :-s

Edinburgh

I went to Edinburgh yesterday. I really love that city. Actually, what I really love about it is the park in the centre, the one near Waverly station, which the castle overlooks. Definitely in my top 5 parks :)
My friend was late (well, we hadn't agreed on a time, but I was aiming for 11-ish, and due to long car journeys, out of centre parking, and neither us knowing the place very well, we didn't meet up til 2.30. She's still amazing for driving all that way), so I spent a couple of hours exploring, reading in the park, and then in a coffee shop when it got too windy. There was an amazing display of unusual road signs in and around one of the shopping centres - 'Beware of Invisibility', 'Please check under your car for Penguins' etc etc. After we met up, we got pasties from the station (though annoyingly they'd given me a pizza one instead of steak and stilton - guess you can't really check with a pasty), and headed back to the park to eat. We had ice cream too, and a giggle. Then we decided we wanted to see a show, though our limited time meant we didn't have much choice of what to see . . . in the end we got some very cheap tickets for a cabaret act. But we had to put some money in the metre at the car park first, and by the time we'd dashed there, we thought we'd better drive back . . . and then we couldn't find anywhere to park. So we missed it, but I don't think either of us were too devastated - there's always next year.
Instead we headed off to Arthur's Seat. We didn't go right to the top, just for a walk on one of the lower levels - the view was stunnng though. I'd never realised how close Ed was to the sea. Which of course meant that, after inspecting the bizzare Scottish parliament building, we headed for the sea itself, or at least a drive along it. And then to the chippy :)
The drive back was fun - music a-blaring, and sat-nav at the ready- though we also drove through one of the worst rain storms I've ever seen, which was pretty scary. After much pondering my friend did stay over, getting up at 5am to head back home to work.

Today was pretty boring. Only thing I did of note was to watch Empire Strikes Back for the first time in years. Still a brilliant movie, even if Trek currently has a stronger grip on my sci-fi affections.

I should be asleeeeep . . .

. . .but there is beautiful music coming from BlogTV (eddplant) and I'm staying for this song. Work piece just finished (yey), a lot more of book read. ooooh, and I heard Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for the first time today and it was AMAZING =) Cannot believe it took me so long to get round to watching it. It is just so me :D

And now I really must go to bed, as I'm off to Edinburgh at crazy-time tomorrow :-s

Star Trek

Ok, I admit it . . . I'm into Star Trek again. Like, big time :-s At first it was just the DS9 boxset, but thanks to Virgin 1's afternoon repeats of Voyager I'm now totally hooked on that for the first time too . . . .
What is it about Star Trek? I've always had a fondness for sci-fi, but Star Wars, Stargate, Twilight Zone and the others never had ths type of grip. And I must admit that I'm not a huge fan of the 'tech' episodes with the alterate timelines, or weird alien of the week etc. I guess all sci-fi has that totally escapist feel (unless it's the bleak, future earth type). Also, there's a type of deep friendship and romance in sci-fi which is kinda sweet but that would seem totally melodramatic and daft in any other genre - some of the Trek male friendship episodes are just so . . .gay. Which I would be totally fine with, only the conservative producers really don't intend them to be. Although playing 'spot the alternate story the Voyager actors who want gay storylines are trying to show us' can be pretty fun.
I guess what I'm tring to say is that I don't like Star Trek for the reasons I'm meant to like sci-fi. I like ST:NG because I adore both Patrick Stewart and Captain Picard, find Geordi very sweet, and Data rather attractive. The storylines are or the main part fluffy and cosy, and that's fine with me. I like DS9 for totally different reasons. DS9 is full of incredibly well-developed characters - pretty much every single one changes dramatically in the seven years, and has a large backstory to boot. You really only have to mention Sisko to me, or Kira, or Odo, and it's like being back with old friends. Plus, unlike most other Trek, it has an ongoing storyline that runs almost throughout. And not in the 'we're still exploring/heading home, let's stop off at yet another alien planet' sense, but in a way that means you have to keep track of the political alliances, ideologies and religions of a number of alien races and reoccuring characters from about series 2 onwards. The usually holy Starfleet is splintered and far from perfect, and so much of real history and American ideology is explored through fairly provocative stories - the writing is in a different league.
As for Voyager - well, who couldn't love that cast? They just sizzle with chemistry, and they make Trek look like so much fun, even when they're dying . . . it had some really underveloped character archs and misguided romantic pairings (Chakotay/Seven - :-s), it really should have got with the 24th century and introduced those gay storylines, and I'm still not too keep on the alien/phenomena a week thing . .. but when it was at it's best it was hilarious.
Just don't mention Enterprise.
75 days until the new film is out in dvd . . . I'm still hoping the hype will lead to another TV series being made, I'm worried that one day soon I'll have seen all the episodes :'(

Creativity

I miss writing just for the sake of writing. It’s something that I used to do a lot. Of course it helps if you’re in school, and they’re setting you the type of homework which you can lock yourself away with and fill page after page with words, ending someone else’s story, writing a poem on someone else’s topic. It’s not so easy when you’re meant to be coming up with all the ideas yourself. I’ve thought about fanfiction, but I don’t think it’s the type of thing that I could write. The type that I’d end up writing I really shouldn’t, and I havn’t got the creativity, or the interest, for anything more inspiring. I’d want it to be perfect. I‘d want it to slot seamlessly into the series, or follow on as if it had always been meant to be there, and that would require hours of research. Perhaps if I was one of those real fangirls that would be possible, but my little obsessions change topic so frequently that I never quite reach that point.

What about vampires? It seems to be the thing at the moment. Twilight, Moonlight, True Blood, Being Human. All with varying levels of success, and totally different styles, but all exactly the same core idea – vampires interacting in our world. That seems like the type of thing I could do. But how to make it original, and which mythology to go for?
And I like TV shows that mix genres. I love the idea of zombies and Jane Austen, or vampires in the middle of a Blitz flick. My sci-fi should be firmly set in the past. But everything I like I only like because I’ve seen it done before, and better than I could ever do. And so another summer passes with me barely writing anything at all, except the occasional letter to a pen-pal, some stuff for work, a few Facebook messages, and this blog. And this really needs to change.

In other news, after cleaning the house for about two days the landlords didn’t even look at it. The usual miscommunication, it was a chat and not an inspection. Ah well. Guess it’s good that the house is tidy anyways.

Goals

Well, my to-do list was eventually done, just a day late. I, and pretty much my whole family, have come down with a really horrible cold, and whilst cleaning and jigsaw were done yesterday, I was so exhausted that I didn't get any work done. Oooops.
But one unit of work was achieved today, and I'm hoping to embark on another one within the hour, so we're getting there. Writing in fron of Star Trek re-runs definitely helps, even if it makes things take much longer.

To-do tomorrow:
2 more work 'units' =)
Help clean house a bit
Video

Achooo!

Got up early to say goodbye to my grandad, who left on the train a few hours ago. And I seem to have caught my middle sister's head cold =( Of course, it being her, it has developed into a full-blown chest infection, so I really can't complain about my slight sniffle . . .but I will anyway. Lets hope its not swine flu :-s

So today? At least 1.5 pieces of work, finishing the jigsaw, finding a great poem to vlog, and tidying the bedroom a bit. I'll let you know how I get on.

Hmmm, yeah . . .

So it's been a while. Ooops. I love the fact that by 'a while' I now mean a couple of days instead of a few months =) A good sign I suppose. So what's been happening recently?

1. The discovery of 'The Twilight Zone'. Now balding actors with full heads of hair, ridiculously high-concept shows, unintentional humour. Fantastic stuff =)
2. The arrival of my missing Usbourne Superpuzzles book. Fiendlisly difficult.
3. Huge re-obession with DS9.
4. My grandpa is visiting.
5. Return of my rowdy younger siblings from camp.

Oh yeah, and a little bit of work.

I should write more

Decided that I need to write more. Not just blog posts and stuff for uni and work, but creative writing - stories, scripts. Or just fanfiction. Anything to get the imagination whirring again. I miss that all-consuming dreamworld that used to hit me at school, when I could write fourteen pages straight about any story topic given. These days a paragraph is difficult. I hate that my brain is slowly turning to lazy, tv-saturated mush during the holidays. I'm not even reading as much as I should. This needs to change.

Having said that, I'm more absorbed in Deep Space Nine than ever - forget the political and historical shows I always claim are my favourite, DS9 has always been where its at. And Twilight Zone arrived today. Havn't seen any of it yet but I am so darn hyped.

Just found out some news about someone I grew up with, and I won't go into it here, but sometimes life seems really unfair =( Or sometimes you realise just how precious good health is. Thoughts and prayers with him tonight.

My back hurts

Ouch ouch ouch. My back hurts. Not helped by my doing a jigsaw or a lengthy vlog today (think I'm beginning to get the hang of editing, woop). And I really need to catch up with the sleep I missed yesterday. So I'm off to bed.

Wii

I just spent 3 hours on the wii . . . .can't remember the last time I played a computer game for so long :-s It is called 'Disaster Day of Crisis' and has a crazy plot involving the hero running around shooting at an ex-navy armed gang, whilst trying to save his dead best friend's sister, rescue numerous citizens and perform firt aid, and escape a numer of natural disasters. He's only been a it from 8-9pm so far and has probably encountered more danger than the average SAS person does in a lifetime. And the dialogue is super cheesy, peppered with expletives. Fun times. I'm addicted already though.

Vlogging

I uploaded my first vlog today. Craziness, I know :) But I've been saying that I would for about a year now, and then I was the only person in the house this morning, so I thought I would try out the camera . . . .

It really has made me appreciate just how difficult and weird vlogging can be. Firstly, you neither sound or look anything like you think you do. My voice isn't quite as whiny as I'd been led to believe, but still . . . very strange seeing yourself on youtube!

Secondly, videos require a lot of retakes and editing. Like, a lot. Takes much longer than I thought it would.

Thirdly, you soon run out of things to say. I think unless you have a 'hook' of a particular style or theme you're aiming for it must be pretty difficult to be even vaguely interesting. I'm probably going to do a mixture of normal 'vlog' stuff, book and film reviews, and the occasional tame-ish rant. No idea how often I'm aiming to record at the mo.

In other news . . . we ordered a lot of the stuff for my dissertation today, so fingers crossed a large amount of JFK books and films will be arriving soon. I'm actually really excited :D 1960s nerds ftw! ooooh, and I ordered Twilight Zone and the last of the usbourne Superpuzzle books :) Double yey!

It is very late . . . .

Ouch, it is late. Again. And I failed to blog yesterday. Again.

Oh well. Today this is late because I was checking my emails, and then I checked youtube, and saw that Karen Kavett was doing a blogtv show. So i watched that instead of sleeping, ordered one of her amazing wallets and a rose, and now I'm very awake! Oh well. i did sleep in veeeeery late this morning . . .

The younger three siblings set off for Newday (a rocking Christian youth camp - fun and with some fantastic music), so its just me, Paul and the parents which is weird. Did mean that we could watch 'watchmen' in the middle of the day though (awesome film), and i can have my laptop turned up fairly loud even at 1.30am at night. Great stuff :) It'll be weird by the end of the week though.

Righty-ho, off to sleep now.

zzzzz