Wherever you are, whatever you do

Anti-inflammatories are working! \o/ It's showing me though, now that the pain isn't just ALL OVER EVERYWHERE, that it's my right side this time, instead of the usual left side. Not sure if I should say "well at least now I'm symmetrical" or "well shit, now the other side's gone too."

So, I have this habit of writing at night and then reading through it the next day see if it was actually coherent or not. Today I find myself laughing at my own jokes...

Don't suppose anyone here wants to/can take a look at some SnK Eruri stuff I'm in the middle of writing? >_> You need to be caught up with the manga though, or not mind spoilers.

My immediate plans for day to day life in general appear to be categorised under "before Ayacon" and "after Ayacon", which is terribly strange considering I'm only an attendee and occasional helper.

Before Ayacon:

• Finish extra costume for Pete


• Finish Yurick's bum bag, which I would've done already if I hadn't damaged both my hands cutting worbla and punching holes in leather (I've managed to hurt my hands, yes. Specifically, I haven't been able to grip things properly without pain because of the base of my thumbs and the muscles that go up the arm from there are refusing to cooperate. It's been in this semi-RSI state for nearly a week now and after much resting they seem to be returning to normal. Still, punching holes in fabric, using pliers or lifting our big bench sellotape holder by grabbing it from the top? No.)


• Do some cleaning before we leave because oh my god the state of this place

After Ayacon:

• EAT ALL THE THINGS


• Finish cleaning the flat


• Hermitise and play all the games that have piled up (a quick look at the pile reveals Assassin's Creed series, Mass Effect series, Nier, The Last Story, Alan Wake, Tales of Vesperia, amongst others)


• Retake a lot of wig photos for Coscraft, since the old ones really aren't up to scratch. Order more stock.


• Do VAT return, and maybe even gather up all the accounts information so that the accountant can get things done for us

Lately I feel as though I'm all socialised-out. The need to hermitise is strong. I think for at least 3 weeks, preferably longer, I'd like to just be at home or go out and do things without friends. The sort of meetups where everyone sits around watching TV is fine, but there's been quite a lot of... intensive friendship days and it's time for me to recharge.

At the shop we ran a week of sales, which ended on Saturday. Monday are usually our busiest day in terms of processing the orders and getting them sent, because it includes Friday afternoon and all of Saturday and Sunday's orders. Today, because of the sales, we must have taken our biggest load ever to the post office. I still don't know how we managed it.

Randomly, a wig shipment from Shanghai, China seemed to have travelled to Memphis, Tennessee before arriving at Stansted, Essex, if the tracking information is to be believed.

My sleeping pattern became out of whack just before the clock moved forward, so now it's even worse than before. For no reason I don't seem to be able to sleep before 5am recently.

Today storme and I went to our monthly cake meet with a bunch of friends. It's just something we do to make sure we don't only see each other at conventions or other events where everyone's too busy to chat. Also, we've become so reliant on Facebook these days it's too easy to think we're up to date with what's happening in our friends' lives when all we've seen are vignetted pictures of their dinners and posts about how much they all supposedly like cocks. XD;

Anyway, before we left home I was deciding on what to wear, and out of curiosity tried on a pair of shorts I bought from the motherland, size L, that had always been too small for me. They now fit!

This brings me to the topic of my diet. I'm a UK size 8/10, a pretty good size and weight for my height. Apparently I'm still too large for Chinese size L but Chinese women are typically shorter than me so hey. But anyway, I've been on a diet that's teaching my body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates for energy. At first it might seem like there is no reason for me to diet/lose weight, but there are really two.

One, and this is the shallow one, is that there's a cosplay I want to do this year that requires me to become a skinny boy.

Two, I've had a bad back since 2001 and it's only been getting worse. There had been times when I strained it and I wasn't able to walk or stand properly for days. Most recently, I did it in bending down to pick up something. I hadn't even touched anything yet and I wasn't bending very far down, but my back just went. The doctor told me before that to pick up anything at all, I should always use my knees because when you bend from your waist, the back muscles are supporting the weight of all your upper body, not just the thing you're picking up. But of course I forget about that, especially when all I wanted to do was pick up an empty plastic bag. >_>

But if I lose some weight, even if it's just a kilo or two, that's less weight my back has to carry.

So my diet involves eating a lot of vegetables and a lot of meat. Fat is also fine, because my body's learned to burn that for energy now. Loads of meat for muscle-building protein. I discovered that protein powder + instant coffee granules + water/almond milk + ice in a blender = pretty damn tasty drink. But there's practically no sugar or carbohydrates in my diet at the moment, so while I'm (hopefully) gaining muscle, I'm also losing body fat. This is a good thing.

Since the start of my diet I'm now about 4kg lighter. That's far easier on my back and when I exercise I shouldn't be tired as quickly because I'm not having to carry as much. I think I can't get much lighter than this (and I wouldn't look good if I do), in fact exercising will build muscles so that my weight would go up again. But that'd be /quality/ weight. Muscles on my back will hopefully get stronger so I won't break so easily.

But yes, the cake meet tonight broke my diet because of the scones. Ah well, I can get back into it.

On the writing front, I'm 43 chapters (!) into the TLR/RoF crossover and the end is in sight. I'll be very sad when it's all over. :( There is currently a dilemma because I don't want to split up a couple, but Storme said I'm not allowed "another OT3" because "there's already an OT3 in this fic" which... is and isn't correct. But one of them really can't choose, the other, because of personality and past events, would not force anyone to choose, and the third person, well, he has many very correct reasons for doing nothing about it as well. MAYBE NONE OF YOU DESERVE EACH OTHER, MON DIEU.

Storme and I have booked flights to go to HK at the end of May, where there will be Glay concert and lots and lots of tasty food. It's quite hard for me to imagine what sorts of things a tourist would want to see/experience in HK, but we're slowly compiling a list. Still, it's going to be pretty freeform I'm sure. We just aren't the kind of travellers who must have a fixed route with a fixed list of things to do, it's too constricting.

I think I'll go back to trying to find a way out for the OT3 now...

So, I haven't been writing Rikkai. *ducks* Instead I'm working on a Resonance of Fate/The Last Remnant crossover (yes, I know) and in Zephyr's words, "I don't know what this is, but I likes it." It has a fair amount of back story which is quite heavy, and then the "current" timeline which is about people coping with life but also generally just moving on and having fun - a rather different sort of thing for me to write, you might notice. I'm writing at such a pace that if I was doing Nanowrimo I would've done quite well.

I keep meaning to do a big update post about what's happened in the past couple of months, but the photos are still on the camera - I'm just that lazy and distracted. But here are a few of the things that's happened/I can remember right now:

The second bedroom of the flat, which had been shop storage/office + cosplay storage + storme's office, is now all of those things minus being Storme's office. I'm working on expanding the shop with Storme, now that we're both on it full time. We've also been building/shifting furniture, and generally moving stuff around. It's getting there, I think.

There's a tooth that's been giving me problems for years, and this week it's finally given up. The half of the tooth that's inside the gum is still there, but there is no longer any tooth at all outside the gum. Today I went to a dental technician, where they will make me some sort of a stub to put on there to make it look like I do have a tooth (because crowns won't work when there's no exposed tooth to crown over). The technician's place looks like it comes from a survival horror game, without the blood. It was dingy, there were sparse shelves on the wall full of thin boxes that aren't shut properly. There was a single old desk near the front door with a desk lamp and some mouth moulds and a few loose teeth. And then this man came out wearing a white coat, his gloved hands holding a set of teeth, and asked if he could help me. It was so comical I almost laughed. XD; (Fortunately I'm very unsqueamish about teeth and dentists.) This is my last resort, if it doesn't work then I'll need to pay two grand for an implant if I want to look like I have a tooth there.

We've been shopping/making things for yukimannequin et al.'s Christmas exchange, it's all ready now, we just need to write the card. There's still plenty of time before Christmas postal cut-off so it should all be okay! Storme had too much fun making the gifts, but I'm sure she'll talk about that in due course.

There are 2 Christmas celebrations that we are going to next month, and maybe there'll be some impromptu ones, like a pizza/movie night with a few friends? But personally my hope is for the rest of this year to be generally uneventful. There are shows to watch, games to play, costumes to make, cakes to bake, things to write. I'm happy to stay at home all day long. Hmm, must be getting old.

My laptop of 5 years has become quite impossible to work with (the hinges are dying, I risk pulling the screen out every time I try to move them. And it's so, so slow) so finally I bought myself a new one! The old one's keyboard didn't have a backward slash so I usually only did this for a raised-arms emoticon: /o/ but now I'm capable of raising my arms this way: \o/! Happy days! \o/

Aaaaand I go back to writing. And sleep.

The doctor thinks the skin problem behind my ear is either psoriasis or eczma, more likely the former even though it doesn't usually happen behind one's ear. Anyway it should be a minor thing, it's not like I have chunks of skin coming loose from my scalp. Got prescribed a steroid gel which should solve the problem.

I've been reading Claymore. Fighting girls, Shounen Jump style! It's kind of fun. I do prefer mindfucks when it comes to manga but once in a while shounen stuff is pretty entertaining.

Not done much else lately... making a costume for a friend. He's about 6 foot 6 I think. Next time I'm going to factor in the time for all the extra hemming and long seams I have to do just because of the size! XD; Not that I plan to take commissions often. I'm seeing this more as a sewing practice really.

And then Qubine squeezes his way into the story. He'll be a lovely addition... once I start to actually write. I've done a few paragraphs so far only. But yay, I ♥ Qubine! \o/

Yesterday I was meant to have a meeting in London. The client postponed it to today after I got to London because their project manager wanted to lead the meeting but he was too busy. You'd think he should know his own schedule and not agree to a meeting on a time he could not make, right? So it was rescheduled to today, I got there and... the project manager couldn't make it again. But we went ahead with some discussion anyway. WTF, man? If you're going to reschedule at least make it a time you're sure you can make. The other consultant couldn't make it today and had to send someone in his place. We might as well have had the discussion yesterday and it would've been more productive. Apparently "all the other projects make way for this one". Well if that's the case I worry about the other projects they have. Along with all the other things they've (not) done, I'm so pissed off I can shoot someone.

I seem to be having energy level problems lately. Also, my head hurts frequently, sometimes almost as soon as I wake up. Bah.

I want to talk about how much I hate my Client, but there just aren't enough expletives to use.

My back went sdfhjkslafhlasfa again last Saturday in the morning, though it was the middle/upper back this time which was something new, and luckily it mostly went away after a day.

Need TLR fic.

World domination plan is moving along slowly, but it is moving.

I want to write something. Something that involves long suffering Torgal, butterfly livers for the Dave and Rush's amazing spoils pile.

Got a new crown for my tooth today. I think it's set too high, although the dentist alread filed it down quite a bit. I reckon nobody understands how deep my bite is, and how my lower jaw is pulled in quite a bit compared to the upper one. I forgot about the crown just now and bit down the way I normally did and went fdshkjfhasklfskad OW. Which is strange considering the tooth has been root canaled and the dentist didn't even need to use aneasthetic when she drilled at it.

So, either get the crown adjusted (if it's filed down more I think it'll break) or suffer enough until I learn to adjust my bite. Dammit.

You know how they always talk about getting dental work done in Eastern Europe? Has any of you actually done it, or know someone who has done it? What's the experience like?

Seems like the hand wound decided to start closing overnight. Yay. Still careful about not squishing it wide open...

Every morning the people at work ask me how I'm feeling. My answers are always along the lines of "still not good", "crap" and "urgh". The meds from the doctor aren't doing anything at all. Not pleased.

One of the bastards at head office is making me change my hours booked to his job to marketing instead because they've overspent. I clearly recall our phone conversation - which he initiated - that I'll be booking 8.5 hours to it and he agreed to that. Now he's shifting 5.5 of that to marketing. HELLO, I'VE GOT A UTILISATION TARGET TO MEET. But boss did console me by saying that my marketing hours will be considered as winning work anyway since that's what I've been doing when I'm not off sick.

Speaking of which, I hear that one of the jobs I've won recently has had the site work stopped because the Designers (not us) made some really elementary errors. That's how all our tax money is being wasted, folks - Designers not finding out thoroughly what's under the ground (including a huge shaft left over from WW2) and properly organising utility diversions etc. I think they'll be sued for compensation.

Um! Enough of stupid. Gotta think about what to wear for the cosplay picnic. Something that won't make me boil inside. I could make something for it, I've got... a week and a bit. If I could make Dave in two weeks, surely I could put together something simple in this amount of time, as long as I decide before the weekend so that I can do the shopping on Saturday. If not, I suppose I could go as Kiryuu Zero, I just need to make a few repairs to his outfit. Or Belial, mad hatter's tea party picnic lol! Otherwise... anyone got suggestions? WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE ME DRESSED AS? \:D/

I'm still gleeful that Unni got me TLR doujinshi at Comiket. XD

Aaaaaand back to work.