livejournal-related news.

I've finally caught up with reading everyone else's livejournals! This might not sound like a big achievement, but Richard put some new memory into the computer the other day, and it doesn't seem to be completely compatible with the motherboard. Now, instead of Netscape crashing every hour or two, it won't stay up for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I've had to switch to using Opera, which is a lot more reliable - but even that's been crashing a couple of times a day! You try reading people's web journals when you can't get a bloody web browser to stay up!

Oh, and before anyone does - don't even mention lynx!

I put some new userpics up last week, so I now have the full complement of 10 that I'm entitled to as a paid user. I really like all of them, particularly the arty ones - they're all images I've made myself, although obviously I didn't take all of the original photos :) The pic accompanying this post is my absolute favourite of them, though it doesn't seem appropriate to use as my default userpic.

"Put that thing back where it came from or so help me!"

Haven't written anything since Thursday 8th November, so I suppose I should catch up a bit. Lately, I've been mostly busy and happy. The main reason I haven't posted much recently is that my job is knackering me out! I know this sounds crazy - I'm only working for 4 hours a day most days, but I haven't worked for so long that I'm not used to it. I've been coming home from work, eating dinner and falling asleep almost immediately, then getting up in the early afternoon as late as I can get away with whilst still getting to work on time. This week, I've had a bit more energy, so hopefully I can get into a routine of getting up and going to bed at normal times, and sleeping for a normal amount of time. Then I'll be able to do things like write up my PhD and get a job with longer hours.

It was Richard's birthday on Friday 9th, so we celebrated by spending as much of the day as possible in bed - sleeping, not doing anything else! Then I started panicking about the fact that we'd have people coming back to the flat and spent a couple of hours frantically tidying it, and then we went out for dinner with 8 or so other people. Richard actually wrote something in his livejournal about his presents! The rest of the weekend was quiet - I hadn't booked any shifts at work all weekend because I wanted to have some time with Richard. Tim & Peter came round on Sunday, and Tim and I played a game called "Retro Force" all night because we liked it so much, stopping only when "Playstation thumb" started to set in. I made a toad-in-the-hole. On Monday 12th, we went to see Silver Ginger 5 and The Jellys in Camden, and that was a truly great gig.

I was depressed on Tuesday for no particular reason, and horribly depressed on Wednesday. I started to think "Oh God, that was my recovery from depression and now I'm relapsing again", but I was ok again by Wednesday night. I bumped into chrismoose at Waterloo station and we got to talk on the train, which was nice. On Thursday I came back from work to find an Important Email from one of the guys on the alt.polycon committee which I had to deal with, and I ended up sitting in front of the computer until gone 5am trying to get my thoughts down. And then I found I couldn't sleep because I was so overtired. Argh. On Friday, I felt so ill that I couldn't go into work - which emphasised that (a) I still have a sleep disorder - it's not gone away and (b) how important it is for me to keep absolutely regular bedtime hours in dealing with it. On Saturday, I went to Brighton to look at hotels, and in the evening, we went to the European premiere of Monsters Inc.. We loved it - came out wanting to go straight back in and see it again - only to discover that it's not actually released here for another FOUR MONTHS! ARGH! As with "Almost Famous", I should write a proper review sometime.

Nothing much of interest has happened so far this week, other than the fact we all got sent home from work early today because the computers crashed, so I'm doing an extra shift tomorrow. Also, my long-running fairly minor milk allergy has flared up to the extent that if I have anything with dairy produce in, I get terrible stomach cramps and diahorrea (can't spell that word). This is going to cause my life some serious grief if it doesn't clear up soon - I don't particularly want to be vegan! Ah well, we'll see.

I should go to sleep now.