uke_nagashi

OH MY GOD WE HAVE LONG-TAILED TITS IN THE TREE OUTSIDE MY WINDOW EEEEEEE!

THEY ARE LIKE BALLS ON STICKS!

*LOVE!*

Also a blue tit, who was looking particularly graceful and charming, climbing all over the tree trunk, while the long-tailed tits bounced and squeaked like maniacs.

Eeeeeeee!

Autosummary is my new favourite toy. Gaze upon a 500 word summary of my NaNo.

( WHY DID I NOT KNOW OF THIS BEFORE? )

Middlesbrough and Wales are both very, very tasty.

Recipe coming soon.

And back to NaNoing.

OFF TO DARLINGTON TOMORROW.

HERE'S HOPING I RETURN AN IKKYU IN IAIDO.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Shit you guys I think I just levelled up in poetry.

Aaaand back to your regularly-scheduled programme.

1. I would like to thank Greece, Turkey and Cyprus for yesterday's feast (fasolada, saganaki, khofte), and also whoever the fuck thought making the Fantastic Four 90s movie was a good idea (IT TOTALLY WAS, YOU GUYS, IT IS BEAUTIFUL) and also schroduck for letting me sit and whine about nuclear abolition and various other things while also cooking for me <3 Recipe is here! Enjoy!

2. I'm trying really hard.

3. I'm also really trying.

4. Pachelbel's Canon in D is not the wedding march. Full fucking stop. It is commonly used as a wedding march, but it is most emphatically not the piece of music we know as The Wedding March. So fuck off plz.

5. Uni admin is actually continuing to piss me off. I filled in all those forms and got them signed by everyone in the world and they haven't bothered to update my modules, so I can't access the stupid VLE and read up on four weeks' worth of Japanese Environmentalism. THANKS YOU GUYS.

6. I keep running over in my head what I have to do today. The updated list is: eat breafast, get dressed, find USB stick, proofread someone's translation, send it back, export a TM in TMX format, make a glossary, export it in TMX format, go to lesson, apologise for not being able to do the background reading, read some books on Manon Lescaut, read part 3 of Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror. Eating is in there as well. I'm a list-based life form.

7. I keep dreaming about dogs.

8. The snail eggs haven't hatched, and I need to get some lettuce for the boys.

9. They're hermaphrodites really, but I call them boys anyway.

10. I'm not sure what I want out of today. Maybe to write more Questseekers, maybe to get the beginning of Djinn and Tonic so firmly embedded in my head that come Sunday and the afterglow of a HOPEFULLY successful grading I'll be able to make a good start on it on the train. Probably to wish away a little more time.

11. I have to chase Matt up about that £32 he owes me. I will use £20 of it to pay for my menjo when my grading goes awesomely well, and I won't even feel guilty.

12. (and this is very important, Danni, so listen well) The only people responsible for me being taken advantage of are the people taking advantage of me.

So grow a backbone, kid. Yeah?

OH MY GOD I ALMOST FORGOT I HAVE THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY LES MISERABLES SOUNDTRACK AND IT BRINGS ME SO MUCH HAPPINESS.

THE ENCORE OF ONE DAY MORE! WITH THE SEVENTEEN INTERNATIONAL JEAN VALJEANS MAKES ME JOYGASM.

Oh shit, you guys, next Sunday I will be standing in a freezing cold sports hall in Darlington in my hakama, waiting to get on the floor and grade and hopefully not fail. Today's training was... well, it was FUN. It was definitely fucking fun. We had three hours instead of two, so Stuart was all "SUBURI YAY WHO NEEDS ARMS ANYWAY", which I have always loved. Then was pub meal! Good day. Actual level-of-iaido-wise, I guess I'm not bad? I should definitely be good enough for ikkyu, at least, but it's the whole ritual of grading that freaks me out. Chris Mansfield is going to be there. I have this recurring daydream/nightmare that he'll take one look at me and say, "RUBBISH."

Also, I haven't mentioned Sunday's cooking! We took a trip to Jamaica, with some stew beef and pineapple punch and caramelised bananas from the cookbook of Levi Roots. It was rather tasty. RATHER.

Tomorrow shall be a Greece/Cyprus/Turkey threesome, which, although politically dodgy, promises to taste like heaven.

Uhhhhh anything else?

I finished that stupid project at last >:( and tomorrow I'll be proofreading someone else's work. Got another translation on nuclear something (seriously, I love Ikuko Williams but she seems pretty preoccupied with anything that has 核 in the title), and got to read some more academia on Manon Lescaut, which I finished! And it was actually quite good! Unreliable narrators are basically my favourite kind.

I've gone back to a half-done writing project to while away the time before NaNo, as well, so that's been fun. The basic premise is a Jobcentre but for all fantasy worlds. It's turning out to be more of a worldbuilding exercise, which is interesting because I fucking fail at worldbuilding, and also because I am learning that I can be quite imaginative on the fly.

Speaking of imaginative, my last batshit dream of note was that I got a puppy! Except it looked and behaved exactly like a small slice of cheese! I kept it in my pocket while I went about my daily business. To be fair, my daily business seemed a lot more exciting and full of explosions and getaways than usual, but I paid no attention to it because I had to keep my cheese-puppy safe. Eventually it started to kind of mould and crumble, but that was cool, because it grew into a golden retriever after that.

Stupid fucking CAT class.

There just arent even WORDS.

So, I've had to be translating this thing and the glossary won't fucking work for me and I don't know why and I would be doing this at uni where everything vaguely works but there aren't enough computers for everyone so I ended up having to come home and make the best of a shitty job and I'm SO CLOSE and now it decides that MS Word 2007 really does hate me and I just need some form of Unicode because I want to see actual fucking characters that I can translate as opposed to fucking nonsense why do you hate me Bill Gates?

Ahhh.

I don't really feel better at all.

ARGH.

Just ARGH.

I have to have this done by fucking 5pm tomorrow AND NONE OF THE SOFTWARE IS COMPLYING.

I WILL TALK ABOUT CHEERFUL THINGS LIKE THE SUNDAY COOKING THING AND ALL THE AWESOME FILMS WE WATCHED LATER.

ALSO MANON LESCAUT AND HER RIDICULOUS LOVER ARE IN NEW ORLEANS AT LAST.

I HATE EVERYTHING.

Aaaaahhhhhh today is first NaNo meeting of the year! I MISSED EVERYONE SO. Also, I think I might have some kind of actual plot. I'm rapidly falling in and out of love with it/my writing/my characters/my writing. Roll on the writing, and then we'll see what I make of it.

Still haven't solved my module problem. Haven't really had time. Will definitely decide on a module today, after the meeting.

Souji (snail, not historical personage oh god what did I just do to my mind) has laid two eggs, either out of boredom or ecstatic joy for a particularly tasty bit of cucumber. Not quite sure what to make of it. Will leave them and see what happens. Am curious, and also kind of want baby snails, though it's unlikely there's anything in them.

Need to try to finish Manon Lescaut before Tuesday. Argh.

Just emailed my CAT ~*~project manager~*~ with my translation rates (god, I wish I was actually getting paid, damn uni work), so that manic race will start on Wednesday. Also have to translate an article on the restoration of a kabuki theatre, which will hopefully be easier than translating an article on the nuclear umbrella.

Our washing machine is being a knob and won't wash clothes with soap. Boo.

The Necronomicon actually scares me, which is impressive, as I thought it wouldn't.

Got to run to iaido. GRADING SOON. AUGH. I'm thinking 1, 4, 5, 6, 9? Or 1, 5, 6, 8, 9. Depends how confident I am that I won't skewer my shoulder with the toothpick XD

The VERY EXPENSIVE toothpick. Shit.

Uhhh nothing else in my life is really interesting? One day I'll do something of consequence.

I spent most of my dreams last night crying over how one day we're all going to leave Leeds - me included this time! - and all go our separate ways pretty much forever. No, really. Anyway, there was a thing called a 'banishment party' (which I thought was weird even in the dream) presumably as a celebration of our completed MAs and to send us out into the world, so everyone dressed up (but as like Byronic poets and belly dancers and shit, and I felt quite out of place). My family were there, viedt and Matt were there, and there was much talk of dead students who couldn't be here and haanging around some kind of changing room. There was a lot of indulging in cherished traditions for the (first and) last time, and there was a cat that liked me. But yeah. Lots of crying about how we'd never be here again, all of us together, and yet the time was right to move on!

Whatever.

I'll cross that bridge next September.

So yeah, moar Japsoc last night, and moar drinking and moar plotting and I'm not quite sure because I was drunk, but I miiiight have a complete plot ready for November. With any luck, my drunken enthusiasm won't have tainted the coherence too much. I decided to go for a Lighthearted Urban Fantasy this year, which is a genre I find myself returning to a lot, along with Bad Samurai Fiction. And, like most of the Lighthearted Urban Fantasy I try to write, it started out fairly lighthearted, and quickly got a bit srs bsns. So we'll see how that goes. I'll probably be shoving it up here as I go along, flocked at least, because lol whut first drafts.

Now all the fun is waiting wheeeee

ALSO OMG ROSE I WOKE THE BIRD UP THIS MORNING AND HE SAID "HELLOOO!" TO ME IN THAT WAY YOU SAY HELLO TO HIM. THEN HE SAID "BABY BOY!" A FEW TIMES AND MADE THE KISSY NOISE. IT WAS LIKE THE FUCKING TWILIGHT ZONE.

I'll start with the bad news so I can end on the good.

I got a phone call on Saturday from the landlord saying my rent hadn't gone through. This means that either the bank is playing silly buggers (entirely likely) or I'm fucked. So I get to go check that out today. Hurrah.

I got an email this morning telling me that I need to drop my Chinese Cinema module because it's not relevant to my MA. Wtf, I like that module! So now I have to go find another. UGH. All the Japanese modules are either meh, clash, or I've done them already. Just - in this particular place in my life, when I'm desperately trying to get my money's worth out of this degree, find a job and try to minimise the impact I have on my bank account because THERE ARE NO FUCKING JOBS, I really can't be bothered for uni to start playing up for me as well. Fuck off. I like my Chinese cinema.

SO NOW ONTO THE GOOD NEWS.

Last night we made Tibetan momo! It's pretty much dim sum, but steamed over soup instead, and MAGICALLY we got it right! Also, it was SO TASTY. Will link to the recipe when schroduck puts it up. With more pictures. Oh yeah. The Sunday film was Young Frankenstein, which was every bit as fabulous as I remembered! Everyone must see it. Gene Wilder is the consummate mad scientist <33

ETA: Aha, my bb came through!

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO MENTION HOW AMAZING GOOD OMENS IS!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT AND AMAZING AND YAY AND OMG AMBIGUITY.

So yeah, uh, until I have an actual income I've been not buying books (except for textbooks and set texts), so my reading list is almost on hold. I say 'almost', because luckily I have friends with good taste in books. So I've been borrowing from viedt, schroduck, woffle... The list goes on.

I've just started the Necronomicon, and it is going to last me forever.

After next Tuesday, I have to speed-read Prevost's Manon Lescaut.

Jesus Christ I am so glad uni started again. I can fill my life with a checklist of things to do, and pretend to myself that I'm making some kind of life progress! Actually, doing a Masters means I have enough time to do everything required of me and comfortably have a job, at least so far. The only problem is, no one wants to employ me ._. halp

It was Light Night last night! Which means there was loads of random free shit going on, and it was class. There was a false start or two before things finally got started with the one-woman cabaret The Last Confessions of Ruby, and then it was all fun and games before we almost got arrested for chalk-drawing on a wall that - alas! - wasn't part of Light Night.

OH MY ANTAGONIST HAS A NAME NOW, AND I HAVE A SOLID FUCKING BEGINNING. ALL I NEED NOW IS A MIDDLE AND AN END BEYOND "I WANT IT TO END HAPPILY, BUT IT WILL STILL BE SAD BECAUSE ZE HAS TO LIVE IN FRANCE."

Quick poll. Favourite gender-neutral pronouns? I'm writing a djinn, and I feel bad saying 'it'.

AUGH FAIL.

Anyway.

International cooking-wise, last Sunday was Peruvian ceviche! Which I didn't get to help that much with, although I got to beat the shit out of some coriander (you are so good to me, schroduck; I always get the most fun stuff!). You can find his recipe AND PHOTOS here, for not only the ceviche, but for the Indian lassi we made to drink with it. Finally, a use for the rosewater. Maybe we should do onigiri or something to get rid of the sushi nori that Daryl left behind...

Wait, hey viedt, should we do some onigiri some time?

LET'S COOKING しましょう!

Watched Dragonball Evolution (OH GOD MY CHILDHOOD) and Outlander (FUCK YES VIKINGS VS ALIENS). Outlander was actually *enjoyable*, as well as being the most cliche thing ever. And schroduck, they didn't kill Boromir twice! The first one was Gunnar! I DON'T KNOW, MAN, THEY'RE BOTH BALD.

Uhhhhhh oh, also watched Street Angel in the Language Centre because my Chinese Cinema was cancelled. Firstly, I realised that I have become one of those swots who keeps up with homework above and beyond the call of duty ._. Then I learned that early Chinese cinema is batshit. It was really interesting, because there wasn't that much dialogue, but some very visual jokes and sequences almost certainly inspired by Chinese theatre. The sound quality was horrendous (it was made in 1937 and recorded in 1983) and the ending was pretty blunt, but all in all it was an oddly sweet film. I may have fallen a little bit in love with Xiao Hong. Seriously. Awwwww. Her little face!

OH MY GOD IT WILL BE NANO SOON AND MY ANTAGONIST DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A NAAAAAAAAAAAME *JOY*

ETA: FUCK YOU HTML

So I had the coil put in on Thursday. For me, it was unbelievably painful, but I was kind of expecting that. I've always had issues with painful sex as well, so why should a speculum and coil be any different, right? The cramps since then have been pretty horrible, but slowly improving. Someone needs to make Nurofen that actually works. That would be amazing.

My lessons have been fine (kind of interesting, as well), and blah, my life is boring again.

( Moaaaaaaar???? )

Last night was clearly a success, as we met the single Hosei student! and promptly adopted him yay <3 because seriously, if there's one thing I know, it's being alone in a foreign country. Jaeger bombs were cheap last night, and I wore a pretty dress! I yell-sang myself hoarse, and Martin was there, and Beak was there, and all in all a surprising number of people I knew, but still insignificant on the face of it.

I wrote 694 words of a cyberpunk grail quest in intervals every time I went to the loo. My drunken writing is still pretty good.

I still can't get over French plays in verse (but it reads so well!) and I think if I'd started Moliere's Les Femmes Savants without the context of "he's making fun of everyone!" then I'd probably have exploded and thrown the book at the wall already. I'm waiting till next Tuesday to hear where the fuck this satire thing is, because right now it looks like the same old jokes about how women - and especially educated women - are crazy and inappropriate. Only at Act II Scene 8, so he has some time left to impress me.

Today I have Computer-assisted Translation and Chinese Cinema, so I'm not going to know a single soul. I don't know anything about translating with a computer, so I'm pretty nervous. Same with Chinese Cinema, though I'm pretty experienced at bullshitting about film and literature. It's one of my particular skills.

All About Lily Chou-Chou is a strange and beautiful and painful film, and I fear it's changed me forever.

So, me and schroduck have started weekly culinary experiments! In which we will make and devour the national dish for a different country every week. I'll try and keep up with it through the old lj. It'll be every Sunday, except for this week thanks to Freshers' Flu, you little bastards. *shakes walking stick* Although apparently the bin strike is only going to add to the disease. Thanks, bin men. You're totally winning people to your cause. And thanks government, for your sterling shows of empathy for us all here. We don't even have a fucking bin after it was burned. Someone needs to do something, because I'm frankly sick of being punished for something I have absolutely no power over. My health and personal safety are not pawns in your fight for higher wages.

ANYWAY.

This week: Moambe chicken, the national dish of the Congo and about half of West Africa!

Verdict: West Africa tastes gooooooood.

schroduck's recipe is here.

It was easy to make (throw some things in a pot, mash some bananas, leave a while) and I got to help <3 so even making it was fun! Though it was hard to get the khobez not to tear when we ate it. It had a warm, pleasant spiciness that I could just about detect, and then the fruitiness of banana and tomato over that, and of course generous bits of chicken to enjoy, so it was basically just amazing in every way.

Below the cut is some rage based around the reactions to the latest xkcd.

( Rage rage rage blah )

Next Sunday: The National Dish of Peru: ceviche!

My run of bad luck has continued with the Freshers Flu (damn you freshers) but I'm getting over that nicely and am ready to face the year tomorrow! Huzzah! Reading more French books! Spent £60 on the year's books - a big text book for translation and like six French novels for one of my electives.

Finished The Midwich Cuckoos, saw the ending coming a bit, which was a little disappointing, but there's no way of telling whether I was kind of primed for it by more recent stuff that used the same kind of twist? I dunno. Either way, creepy fucking book. Nicely done, yet again. Go Mr Wyndham!

Started reading Kwaidan (Lafcadio Hearn), which is shaping up to be as weird as it promises. After that I have the Necronomicon and then all my French books.

Still no luck on the job front, but I registered as a tutor on uktutors.com, so hopefully someone will need English/French/Japanese tutoring... T_T PLZ GIVE ME MONEY PLZ.

Hope everyone else is cool <3

Ugh.

So I got onto the Master's course (Japanese-English translation only, OH NOES I WON'T BE ABLE TO KILL MYSELF WITH TWO LANGUAGES THIS YEAR), I got the Fighting Spirit medal in the iaido summer seminar taikai (because I made a really really stupid mistake in the second round, but was actually pretty fucking good), I haven't written much recently. That's mostly my updated life.

The reason I haven't been doing much is that we've had some pretty serious arson incidents. At first it was laundry and petty shit, that you can explain away and ignore, but on Wednesday they pushed the wheelie bin up to our front door and set it on fire, so that was pretty fucking scary, and being a massive failure I keep jumping at strange noises and whatever, so. I was too panicked even to call 999, I was like "HAY ROSE HERE IS MY PHONE, FIX IT PLZ!!!!" We got the snails and bird out though! For pictures, see here. The yard has since been swept.

One of the guys next door has a trombone. I now feel totally fucking confident about my musicfail! *plays instruments*

And tomorrow I have to be in at uni to do an iaido demo and wow the new kids! Join us, new kids. Join us. We have swords and hakama.

I SHALL NOT ABANDON YOU AGAIN, LJ. I AM SO SORRY.

Uhhhh so I've been neglecting everything. I promise here and now that The Whole of the Moon will be finished before the month is out unless I die or something.

I haven't been doing much except iai, which I'm still pretty bad at. Been practicing koryuu for the taikai in Brighton (OH GOD I AM SO FUCKED) which is, says Ed, open taikai, which means everyone in the division goes on, does their thing, and is told whether they're on or off. Ha. Me and Ed will probably be the only mudans, but it goes up to shodan, i.e., the level of Femi, i.e., the guy who TAUGHT us the kata we'll be doing. Lololol.

Had an enbu on Saturday, which was cool, except for the fact that I hadn't even done the last kata we had to do (tsukikage) even once. Like, ever. Femi was like "You know mae, you can turn around, you saw it, you'll be fine."

Uh.

The others said they couldn't tell that I was bluffing my way to hell, so that's all right.

More iai yesterday, but the Sports Centre fucked up our booking AGAIN, so we only got one hour. Feeling much more confident on tsukikage, mae's all right, and most of my yaegaki feels quite nice as well, except for the block, which I fail at.

Been reading some more, all good stuff. Going to buy the first of the Nightworld series though, because I've read too much good stuff and too much stuff with notes in the back, and too much stuff that makes me lose confidence. I don't think it's an unhealthy habit. It might be. I don't know.

Written a ton of Ero, which went quite beautifully and had a plot for two or three chapters, which was amazing to write, but then it came to the end of the sequence and I have no idea where to take it, so fail. Writing a bit more Autumn; I'm in the kind of mood to break up fictional friendships and ruin lives XD Sometimes you get the urge, you know?

( Fail )
( Joy )