The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) was... strange. I'm going to get the original and watch it, because this was not at all as I remember the original.

The ending wasn't resolved very well (what happened? Why does clockwork suddenly not work? Whut?), there was insufficient justification for a change of mind, and the line, my favourite line, "Gort, Klaatu barada nikto" was conspicuously and tragically absent. (I thought I caught Klaatu saying it once or twice, actually, but you'd only have noticed it if you were expecting the line.) It also took away the main character's big moment, replacing it with a muddied and unclear moment of self-sacrifice or perhaps survival against odds (no way to tell!) for Reeves's character. I also expected the biological altruism angle (John Cleese's character) to be remarked upon specifically. The main character had an adopted child. They missed an obvious theme there.

Good things were largely the effects: Gort and the subsequent effects of its apocalyptic tantrum. I have a real weakness for metallic insects dissolving things and burrowing into people's veins. I liked that a lot. Klaatu's escape was quite stupid, but you couldn't help enjoying it with the technokinesis and the badass suit.

The science throughout, however, was atrocious. Animals need plants. Something hitting the planet at a tenth the speed of light would destroy a large area, never mind any helicopters flying towards the landing site (WHAT WHY ARE YOU IN THE SKY AT THE PREDICTED IMPACT TIME WHY?), and let alone what it'd probably do to the atmosphere before it got to Manhattan (WHY ALWAYS FREAKING NEW YORK WE LAUGHED SO HARD AT THIS). Also, aliens with DNA? Puhleaze. DNA isn't 'genes': it's Earth's implementation of the concept of genes, which are a pretty good idea in themselves. It's possible that aliens would have genes. But their genes would, I imagine, be overwhelmingly likely not to be DNA. To take another example: aliens having computers, definitely possible. Aliens arriving with computers that run MacOS, impossible. Oh, hang on a moment, WILL SMITH, I AM LOOKING AT YOU, XENU BOY.

More reviews (with spoilers) from IMDb here. I agree with pretty much all the criticisms—except that Keanu Reeves playing a blank-faced alien is, IMO, the role he was born for.

Ah well, so I can still say Klaatu barada nikto and leave people none the wiser.

After the film, the three of us (dad, Slen and I) went to eat, and I told my father about my change of name. I think he took it well. (Well, he thinks it's an extremely eccentric choice, which it most definitely is.) His lack of knowledge of Shakespeare is very much mitigated by the fact that he knew who Diogenes was.

Ah, Diogenes, my hero. Is it pathetically sad that I've been really tempted to register tubphilosopher dot com for some time?

We also chatted about other stuff, like my intention to go for publication with Mews, the possibility of Slen getting a job, and, yeah. Stuff. A good, normal catch-up type chat after the main news. I don't think I could've hoped for that to go any better.

I was most nervous telling him about the surname, of course, because I still had his name. My mother changed her surname by usage some time after they divorced, many years ago; I chose not to at that time. I still think that was the right decision for me at that point. I wasn't ready. I didn't particularly want to make such a change then. In addition, there wasn't anything I wanted to change to—any other name I chose wouldn't have been mine either.

Baskerville is mine. It's unquestionably English with a decent pedigree (which is important to offset the unusual abbreviation "Herm"), it's a reference to giant Sherlockian monster dog and it has overtones of John Baskerville's attractive, old-fashioned-looking typeface. And it has an enjoyable rhythm and sound. First syllable stress and a skuh in the middle.

The fact that it's a B name is pure coincidence, really, but there are a few of those in the family. On my mother's side, anyway. Dad's side has a few Ps. I don't think I'd ever have plumped for another P; it's too plosive. Anything I can't say to a gerbil without causing it to flinch is just mean.

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http://wordle.net/ makes word clouds from text. Although it isn't any use for web development, because it only outputs a graphic. (For text output, use other tag cloud tools.)

Anyway, I put Mews into Wordle. The result (790×346 px) is behind the cut.

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It was Slen's birthday yesterday. It was sad to see him miserable all day, but at least I know it was nothing I did. Huh.

I got him loot: the recent Helloween album, Gambling with the Devil, and one by the Hellacopters (this purely because he likes their name!). As Slen ironically remarked, I didn't need to stray out of the H section in the music shop. Actually I looked all over their metal section, having looked up a list of the best power metal albums of last year and chosen a few, but that shop's range is pretty bad. They had one out of ten in stock. OK for a store in the centre of Manchester, I suppose; there evidently isn't much call for good music around here, and they do at least stock DragonForce.

There was also pirate T-shirtage, a book of mnemonics because it was in the rack near the tills and looked pretty interesting in a stocking-filler sort of way, and some white chocolate raspberries. Then I called for pizza (Slen being easy to please in some ways) and we watched the recent two-part Doctor Who, the one in the library. After the direness of The Doctor's Daughter I was close to stopping watching the programme altogether. This was pretty good, though.

I knew I couldn't top last year's gift and didn't try. He knew not to expect another book this year. I will write the sequel sometime, though.

Writing Mews has been unexpectedly helpful to me. I still get warm squirmy fuzzy feelings thinking about the fact of having done it, or remembering giving it to him. I hadn't ever done anything comparable with my life before. It's a warm golden-red-brown glowing point to curl around, the first really pure and good alternative I've found to my usual habit of dwelling on mistakes and bad things. It's a carrot on a slender string.

Either that or I just really like resting on my backpats.

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A conversation partner was telling me she hates worldbuilding. Not shoddy worldbuilding, the sort of stuff that contains Wiccan utopias and Aryan elves, in other words the sort of things that can muck up your average penny dreadful fantasy book (in my view, of course). No, she hates the very idea that writers make up worlds and tell you about them. The adjective used was "arrogant".

Well, the solution to that is simple: stay out of science fiction and fantasy, an area that tends to contain an awful lot of people who feel the other way.

I thought it was a bit insensitive to rant about this to someone who, she's very well aware, is a second-rate worldbuilding writer of fant-shamelessly-mixed-with-SF. But I didn't comment on this, I sat through it and did my best to understand exactly what she was talking about.

Pratchett is OK because his tongue's in his cheek and what he's really writing about (Discworld, world and mirror of worlds) is our world in disguise. Pullman is fine because he sets things in our world or nearly (except when he doesn't, i.e. most of the second and third Dark Materials novels, but apparently that's OK; I didn't manage to get enough clarification as to why). Watership Down on the other hand was hated (I can't comment; I've only seen the film, and thought it was just lame: not worth my time, but certainly not a life-marring experience I'd rail against on numerous occasions in the following years. It seems to have scarred my conversation partner deeply). And Tolkien is detested. Not because of any of the criticisms I'd level at him; simply because he had the "arrogance" to build a world and run an example story or two on it by way of demonstration.

"You can almost hear the geeky little minds ticking over as they decide 'this magic works like this, this species can do this, the limit of this is that'." Said in a rather contemptuous tone.

She's read The Hobbit and gave up a short way into LOTR. (I thrashed the whole way through Hobbit and the trilogy but skipped the appendices and never had any urge to read the prequels.) Other than that, I believe the only SFF she's read has been by the other authors mentioned, barring classics (ie possibly Frankenstein, 20KLUTS, etc).

She finished up by talking about some film she'd seen, set in the real world, in which the premise involved a departure from reality, but nothing was explained because the film itself was all about the reactions of the characters to this event. This was approved of precisely because nothing was explained so there was nothing to "nitpick" (I suspect, didn't have a chance to ask, that a stickling for consistency or realistic fictional rules is also looked down upon).

Now, personally I don't like the attitude that things are inherently superior if they're about Real People or The Real World. I think that's arrogant in itself (edit: and possibly based on a misunderstanding of the point of a large chunk of SFF lit). That aside, the film she described doesn't sound like the sort of film I'd like, because nothing significant in my view seemed to have happened. That's fine and, following my own advice, I simply won't watch any film billed as (for example) "coming-of-age" or "an intimate portrait of" or other helpful warning labels.

But when I said the film sounded boring, which I intended as shorthand for "the sort of thing I'd find boring" because I can't speak perfectly precisely when I'm trying to fit in with a conversation with someone who talks faster than me but nevertheless I hoped it would be perfectly comprehensible that that's what I meant, I got "omg why did you have to say that, that was completely unnecessary, you don't even know anything about it, omg omg".

The hypocrisy hurts. And I was already a little shaken to have sat through someone who has read Mews (which is set in a fictional world, and goes some way to explaining the rules of magic in said world) and said it was great, saying my chosen sphere of writing is arrogant and geeky-in-an-unmitigatedly-pejorative-sense.

I'd also ventured to say that things that completely refuse to explain their premises annoy me, because "it's basically religion; if there's no testable hypothesis, how can you make up your mind?" I should've known better. That won me some contempt. "How ridiculous, it [the film]'s not an experiment!" (Um, yes, it is. Putting Real People characters in a situation and seeing how they react is a thought experiment. Just of a different sort.)

Oh, and then I was accused of being contemptuous of her because I didn't like the sound of some film she liked. This conversation ended with a door being shut in my face. I do not mean this figuratively.

I'm trying to understand the viewpoint that something set on Earth, even if it's warped to the extent of the alternative Earth in Northern Lights, is potentially OK, but something in a fictional setting is damned (at least, if the narrative requires explanation of how the setting works differently from Earth). I'm trying to understand this, because it's so very out of whack with my view.

My view's this, and I tell it to you because I didn't get much chance to express it to her. A barely-fictionalised Real World and a fictional completely alien planet can both be equally ridiculous if used to push a moral. If the entirety of the setup exists to prove that the author's right, then whether your straw men are orcs or record executives (potentially both, in the sort of thing I'd write) and whether your Ethically Compatible Hero saves the day by plucky use of a buttonhole camera or plucky use of the Ancient Macguffin of Kru, I don't think I'll love your writing. 'Course I may like the book if I'm too young to know who the lion is and am enticed by talking dogs, but when I grow up, I'll feel annoyed. Point is, Writer On Board isn't just a fant thing. Nevertheless, still, given the choice of good Real World writing and good fictional world writing, I will take the fictional world. Not only does the Real World grind me down sufficiently all day while I live in it, but fictional worlds have more likelihood of teaching me about those aspects of the real universe that are important to me.

Now I am going off to worry about whether having my villain protagonist agree with much of his author's worldview while being an utter bastard is sufficient recourse to prevent me being tarred with my own 'moralisation' brush. I won't, however, lose too much sleep about whether or not it's arrogant to make up a happy fun playworld. There's no answer to that, except the obvious: don't you urinate in my pool, and I'll stay off your jungle gym. Which, incidentally, somebody built.

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Old meme. A few questions changed for readability/comprehensibility etc.

Character Q&A

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"Why isn't your book sat on the bestseller lists?" demanded [D], a colleague to whom I've lent a copy of Mews, as I passed her desk on the way back from returning some CDs to Beyond Belief and Sunday. "Get it out there!" she directed.

She's only a quarter of the way through it...

By way of declaration of interests, though: D is another cat-lover.

...Yeah, I'm running out of excuses, amn't I. Dog help me.

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...and the same goes for poetry and anything else creative that I enjoy. Music, maybe. Even art... well, very distantly possibly. I'll settle for overcoming the self-loathing around poetry before I try for any of the rest, which are more deep-seated.

I'd make some airy declaration about health and whatnot too, but a year's a long time; I've no idea where my body or mind will be by December.

So no proper resolutions, but a few shoulds. I should do the audio recording of Mews for my grandmother. It will throw my issues surrounding my voice into painfully sharp relief, though, so I'll need to be ready for that. And then there's a possible rewrite of Mews to make it 'marketable'. I have no intention of marketing it, but I would like to improve it generally. Slen keeps dropping oh-so-subtle hints about both submitting it for publication and writing a sequel ("anything, as long as there's more Felicita and Pranciskus"). I'm amenable to the second idea; the first, waagh. I truly honestly wrote Mews as something completely personal for him, not even thinking about what any other reader might like. So although I suppose publication would be "heh, yay", the idea's too farcical to be real.

More shoulds. I should get some proper training at work, and I should play a lot more with Drupal. I want to do the latter, too. What else do I want for the year ahead? No idea!

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I got props from a forum full of DragonForce fans for my parody/tribute. Frickin' sweet. \m/ \m/

Oh, and last night we were invaded by vampires. And lo, it waseth hilarious. Certain parties are still fuming at certain alt-universe versions of certain bandit queens. <3

edit: Transcript now available thanks to Anke!

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Continuing Mutt's Personal Amusement Month, Slen has The Witcher. I have watched Slen play it through the early stages and have noted the following:

1. He is Grunge Sebbie. Because he is.
2. Apparently all men (except the main character, and dwarves and elves) are utter bastards.
3. Also, all women have big boobies.
4. There are Barghests. WIN for Barghests.
5. Quite a few bugs and gameplay issues.
6. Interesting combat and levelling systems. Nothing new or special, but fairly extensive.
7. Dwarven dice = crack
8. Elves = squirrels
9. Dwarves = Scottish (GROAN)

In terms of sense of humour, it's like a darker version of (the recent) The Bard's Tale without the fourth-wall-breakingishness.

edit: Just met a character that reminded me spookily much of Pranciskus. Slen saw the resemblance too, thankfully.

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It's looking like I'm going abroad for this dental work, to a dentist acquaintance of my mother's in Poland. Likely dates are the week around the end of October. I'm sure there'll be internet cafes there and such.

Apart from getting rid of some amalgam and getting this cracked tooth fixed and crowned, I don't know what I'm going to do over there. I'm no tourist and don't like sitting by pools, whatever the time of year. (This is why I end up every year with spare leave days. I just don't like holidays.)

Write, then? Slen has been angling to get me started on the next Skyler book, and the end of October is the beginning of November...

I should take a notebook along, of course, because you never know when Galia¹ may strike, but I wonder if I should even buy and equip a laptop. I've thought that one of the new £100 ones might be worth risking on travel - not to mention being the sort of fashion accessory I would actually pay to support. (Edit: ok, only available to North Amerka and not yet.)

There's a discussion about NaNoWriMo on one of the techie mailing lists I read. Dammit, events, stop conspiring. I hear you whispering behind my back. I won't have it, you hear me?

(And Zenbie - not a word from you, young goth, or I'll be making sketches of Greenway and the elven quarter by tonight, I just know it. Aargh. ;)

¹ Galia's my muse, a green-skinned human(oid) woman. My other type of muse is a red panda named The Effulgent Bede. Neither exists, but Bede is cuddlier.

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The trams are open again, with their new tracks, and quieter; admittedly I had earphones in and forgot to listen properly, but it was noticeably closer to a scrapy whoosh than a gouging rattle now. This is good, because it will cut my travel time down and let me sleep longer so I will no longer be as the title implies. (Or if I am, we'll know it's my own fault.)

This bank holiday weekend just disappeared. No, really, I think I lost Saturday. As in, Saturday is missing from my memory and throughout Sunday I thought there were two days to go. So, er. Whoever used those 26 or 28 hours, hope you had fun and thanks for returning my chassis in reasonably good nick, I suppose. I also note that my antibiotics did get taken during that time, so yay.

Damn I look good in my orange shades and evil coat. I actually scared a small child at the shops. Anyway, on with the news...

Bio-batteries. To the writer/worldbuilder of Mews, this sort of thing is (curd-)meat and drink.

Stone and Parker - props. They're fun dudes.

Hippo for Sarina, plus cute big cats et cetera.

Hey, Muslims? STFU.

It's a toy ball, for sanity's sake, with a bunch of countries' flags on it; it was obviously an honest and, let's face it, completely understandable mistake; nobody's trying to insult Islam; you are obviously just looking for something to protest about. Well, stop it.

Someone buy me this. I have designs on the site. Mwahahahaha.

Every time you think space is empty, they find a way for it to be emptier.

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I now have antibiotics, so should last the weekend with no problems at all. Nice dentist. Somewhat free with the affectionate diminuitives, but I didn't retaliate in kind.

Driving my disorganised self towards getting these gorram books sent out, I've just realised what one of my mental stumbling blocks has been throughout. And now, in all seriousness and with impeccable methodicalness, I am inventing a signature for myself.

Whaaat? It is an entirely new (pen)name, after all. Seeing as my current signature's just my name written messily, different each time, and seeing as I'm going to Be Somebody Big Some Day, I should have a distinctive, reproducible scrawl.

Ah, the backup's finally finished and I can go home.

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Because the nearest books to hand are quite amusing, I'll lift this meme from Thad:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that 'cool' or 'intellectual' book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people, if so inclined. (I'm not)

Teach Yourself Allaire ColdFusion in 21 Days¹ by Charles Mohnike and Mews by Herm Baskerville were about equidistant (one on my desk, the other in my backpack) so let's do both. MIXED TOGETHER.

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My unbrother (yes, the same one that just learned the word geisha) is having a spot of trouble at work. Some property of another employee went missing on his shift (he’s a manager). It was something that wasn’t meant to be there and there was all sorts of dodgy shit going on, mostly not his fault. The detail he’s got caught on is a lapse in security, but one that every manager is guilty of, since before he started there. Nevertheless, he and only he has been suspended and has a written warning on his records (for a period of time, then it expires and is removed).

Various complications mean the company is trying to make out that company property was stolen, which is wrong; it was signed out, which meant it was private property, not the company’s responsibility and not supposed to be there at all. There’s all sorts of other dodgy stuff going on, about which I won’t give details, but the whole thing stinks like week-old dunny skids. Sorta looks as though they (thief and/or employer!) are trying to pin it on him as a handy dupe.

Mum (mine, not his) helped him write a very good letter to the higher-ups. Don’t know yet how it’ll turn out. They have him bang to rights on the bad security practice, but on that point only. And on that point they should treat everyone equally. It was presumably pure chance that he, and not someone else, was on when the item went missing.

A family friend/former au pair from Germany is here for the weekend. The friend and mum, chauffeured by Slen, have been out visiting gardens, because there’s a garden show/event going on in the area, and they’re all off to see Harry Potter at some point. (Me not included because I’ve already seen it. Man, was Lovegood good or what? But it was a complete cipher to someone who hasn’t read the books. …Which I must do again before next Friday night.)

Interesting remark by the friend about my book Mews. My mother’s had health problems recently, serious ones—hospitalisation type serious—and naturally the friend called her to ask how she was after the operation. According to the friend it was “Yeah yeah I’m fine but guess what Herman’s done, wow!!” Really proud of me.

And that’s completely not the impression I’d got. My mother helped by providing a picture and proofreading the book, but hadn’t really talked much about it since. Hell, the last actual conversation I had with her she was saying—well, not very nice things, and certainly no impression she thought I’d ever done anything worthwhile.

Speaking of supportive parents, my father has shown no interest whatsoever in the book. Slen said he even dropped some none-too-subtle hints to my dad that I might appreciate him at least saying well done, if he’s not interested in actually reading it. (And, look, I’ve got plenty of lending copies right here.) But that approach has never worked yet. The man treats me with utter contempt, making it plain that even speaking to me is an unbearable hardship except during those times when he wants an offspring to parade at family gatherings. I’m not good enough for him, because I’m not him. (Whereas to other people—especially if you ask mum—I’m a good deal more like him than is appealing. You know, teenage angst is not something I thought I’d be catching at 25 years of age.)

Well, fine, buddy, but you don’t get it both ways. I hope he hasn’t boasted to his side of the family about the book and caught some reflected glory. That’d be most unfair. Like showing me off after I’d lost all that weight. Hello, folks, he had nothing to do with it! Me! Here! Right here! You know, the dark sheep firstborn son! Hi! Yeah.

A second cousin is coming round briefly tomorrow, and I will lend a copy to her for her mother, who has shown interest. She’s a nice woman.

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Good vibes power tiny generator

Besides all the squee factor, I’m glad I’m not too way out at all with the magoscience in Mewsverse. Movement power’s nothing new; I hear there are these watches worn by poncy, pretentious people that do it…

Chuh…

If you go home to parents who teach you to swear at policemen or whatever, what your teacher says will probably not have much effect.

You need to catch them both earlier and later, I think. The basics of “living in society” and “this is what we do so we can all get along without killing each other” have gotta be laid down from the earliest of ages. But there’s no point teaching your child to be a man or woman, in the most admirable sense of the words — or indeed an adult, if you’re not hoodwinked by binary gender rubbish — before they’re old enough to understand why they might want to.

I’d rather let them be children first; there are enough pressures on them to be kidults without going all Victorian “seen and not heard until abrupt transition into miniature adult” on them.

How far can freedom of speech go?

Further than it does! Suppressing talk isn’t an answer. Suppressing thought isn’t either.

People who want to control others’ right of reply, while presumably not similarly limiting their own speech, are people to watch with many wary blinks.

Way to predate! I’m impressed. No, really. That’s thinking outside… the box.

If I lived in Scotland and could be fashed, I’d try to organise people to slide furtively in there and say “Father, I watched Jerry Springer - The Opera.” (That show started its life as an Edinburgh Fringe sketch.)

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(11:05:36 PM) Mutt: Hehe. I like it when people imagine Weft is the Fox's terrier, but he isn't.
(11:05:59 PM) Anke: he played at it.
(11:06:31 PM) Mutt: Yep, he plays at it. He and various diplomat brothers do a very good double act.
(11:14:12 PM) Mutt: You know, a sort of 'good cop, bad cop' routine.
"My honoured friend, I assure you, I have no wish at all to see this negotiation become unpleasant."
"Can I take out his eyes, Tortile? I can hit 'em with a throwing blade from here."
"Weft! [looks shocked] Don't be so impolite to this nice member of the criminal classes! Sir, please ignore my overzealous brother..." etc.
(11:15:36 PM) Mutt: Tortile is more articulate and better-written than that, but you know what I mean.
(11:16:43 PM) Mutt: Or even, rarely...
"Well, honoured sir, much as it pains me to say this, the fact is that only I can control my stab-happy friend here--"
"[grr! looks crazy!]"
"--and if you don't stop telling me half-truths and lies, I'm going to walk away, and he may not follow me."

You know what --- I've been reading too much Mr Crane. That's why Suitov's nervous about killer robots and dragons, and Weft's being more overtly sadistic. :D

I'm not altogether pleased with the sequence alluded to, when Weft was playing the dumb heavy and letting the Fox do the talking. I think it was reasonably in-character, but it wasn't the best writing I'm capable of; it was done when I was writer's-blocked.

There are big bits of ongoing stories that I can barely force myself to reread because I'm convinced my writing is so awful, waah waah. I'd like to edit Kit-Fox severely if we ever finish it. There was a gap of - a year? something? even more? - in the middle of the story before Anke joined and rescued it. And recently I've been treading water a little; I could probably easily tighten up my sections.

(There's also a crazy bandit called Jeeck who seems to belong to me, and I'm not sure yet what, if anything, I'm going to do with him. In fact I've left in quite a few potential plot points/loose ends with the bandits - deliberately so, but the ones we don't use could be got rid of in an edit.)

Really going to send those books off soon. I'll be contacting people for addresses and to ask if they want signatures/dedications. You could email me with that info to speed the process up, but please don't use my @hellhound.net address for the next day or so - it may not get through/may get deleted. Instead use the name of the character I said earlier on was nervous @gmail.com.

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I think I've sat around basking in the "At last, I feel as though I can really call myself a writer without the need to include sarcastic single quote marks!" glow for long enough and need to create more low-grade fun. Problem is, there's nowhere (/no-one with whom) I can write at my usual haunt. And I'm certainly not ready to start any more long solo projects just yet.

I don't feel up to seeking another RP venue either. I dipped into a couple of the multiversal communities on LJ a few times, with a slightly alternative-universe version of one of my regular characters, but those comms move so fast that I don't feel up to that either.

Stupid me. If there's no polite opening for me to write, I'll jolly well make one. It's about time to boot the Unnamed Taverna anyway.

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My brother went off to America. *sad* Stupid Indianapolis. Stupid Formula One Grand Prix.

With any luck there won’t be as much utter, utter metal carnage as last week. That was quite something. (spoiler warning - also read the sections from the bottom up to make chronological sense)

Last Sunday’s was the first race I’ve watched in a while, and a chaotic one. I discovered that I still enjoy it to a moderate degree; I still don’t think I’m going to waste that much time every fortnight watching it, though. I will snag the Indy one, in case they’re in the crowd, though I’ve no idea where they’re sitting.

Slen took a book with him to read. *evil grin* Yes, that one (which he’s already finished once, of course - we read quickly round here), and a Neal Asher or two as well.

I may be using his computer while he’s away. I have an Oblivion addiction that has been woefully denied over the last three months.

My mother’s going into hospital on Thursday for the weekend, which I mention last and fleetingly only because I don’t want to give details.

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With everything else that’s been going crazy, one thing I have completely neglected is my birthday.

It’s cool. I don’t mind. I was intending to postpone it until the boy got back from Turkey, anyway.

However, it meant I didn’t ask for stuff from people. (Although I have got a slim package that I haven’t opened yet.) There are a few things I’m watching on eBay and stuff, that I might buy for myself and let people give me the money for or something like that.

I just haven’t felt like thinking about it so much. Apart from that it’s my quarter century (which is slightly aaagh), various things going on with family — Slen’s holiday in Turkey being the very least of those — meant it wasn’t going to be a ‘normal’ birthday however you looked at it.

I did manage to do one Major Life Thing sort of thing before I turned 25, and I’m quite pleased about that.

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