Just a quick message: to all those who are celebrating Christmas, have a very merry Christmas. To those who don't, have very happy holidays. Drink, be merry and so on.

I can actually use this userpic with pride now because, on Saturday, I actually caught up and watched Enchanted. I will now retract my previous fears about it being a travesty, as I loved every second of it - though I felt Susan Sarandon was wasted in her part. I didn't expect to see Timothy Spall (but he pops up in everything, so I don't know why, to be honest), James Marsden was utterly fantastic - but the film really does belong to Amy Adams. Her performance was amazing, and I loved the fact that she was so natural in the part. It's a shame they won't put Giselle in the Disney Princess range, as she deserves her place there, but because they'd have to buy lifetime image rights to Adams, they pulled out. Silly people.

And yeah, Idina Menzel! Wasn't expecting her to be in there either - bless Nancy and Edward. They're an odd pair, but I can see it working well - he has someone to sort him out and she gets the romantics. To be honest, it's a shame she wasn't singing, but I suppose the film's a departure from her norm. I can't find the track she recorded with James Marsden anywhere, because it was cut from the film - I don't know whether it's still on the soundtrack or something. The only problem with her singing is that her breathing technique is lacking - but she can't help it, because she's asthmatic, apparently. It's a shame, but never mind.

In other, mildly related news on vocal performance: after two concerts and two carol services, it would seem my singing voice is back with a vengeance! I've been absolutely frazzled the last few weeks, and stress affects your singing ability to the point where I was going flat on the higher notes. Thankfully, it seems this has sorted itself out. And I (hopefully) will never have to sing in Latin ever again. Thank god.

You know, you do something small and seemingly insignificant on LJ like changing your theme, and suddenly, you feel the need to swap everything else about as well. This might just be me. I have not given into the temptation, however, as the mood (thankfully) then passed and I didn't feel the need to do it after a couple of days. Like many in my family, I have an obsessive personality, but some things don't keep a grip on me for that long, because other things get in the way. For instance, my manga obsession turned to the X-Men and I've not looked back (or forward, because I've not found anything better to replace it yet).

The most extreme example of this obsessive personality I know of is my great uncle (and godfather), who is eccentric and fantastic. He was a Buddhist for about a week at one point. His last phase was learning Italian and I think he's kept going with that one, thankfully. I think our family is just genuinely idiosyncratic, verging on the point of madness, but it may be something to do with a strong creative vibe within the family. We've got amateur artists, writers, a film maker and all sorts floating about within the family.

Of course, there were a couple of people who used to have genuine funny five minutes. My great-great grandmother went through an old photo album with Victorian photos in of the family, and went through whiting out each name with correction fluid, or rubbing out anything in pencil. However distressing this was (we spent a family party recently scraping as much of the fluid off as possible to get at the writing beneath), it also took dedication from her. She would have had to go and get the correction fluid before she could actually complete the task.

We also had Bonfire Night recently (or Guy Fawkes Night, or whatever - basically, a celebration that the Houses of Parliament didn't get blown up by plotters trying to kill the monarch of the time and kill the first step towards democracy for Britain), and we did manage to get the entire family together for fireworks and pumpkin soup. It rained a bit, but we had a good time watching everything in the back garden before the weather set in in earnest. We also put Hot Fuzz on, a hilarious cop film... set in a quiet English West Country village. The significance of this was that my uncle, the super-intendant of a local police force, laughed until he cried along with the younger members of the family in attendance.

Yeah... I'm just trying to fill in Anna on events recently... oh! Oh! Eight letter word in Lexicon (think scrabble with cards, in essence), Anna, from yours truly. I managed to get 'litigate' on the table, and I cannot tell you how excited I was at this. Regrettably, I didn't win the round (damn you, 'x' and 'z'), but it was something.

Anna, the opportunity has arisen for us to catch both Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in a comedy, "Waiting for Godot", at the Theatre Royal. Please reply back ASAP in relation to your interest in this event, as we need to get tickets and, naturally, these things sell out quickly.

Website link, clicky clicky for info

RSVP, plzkthx!

(Nano word count currently 3060-something)

(Oh, the tribulations of theatre tickets.)

The word "Discuss" in an essay title is a disgusting term and whoever came up with it should have been shot on the spot. I do tend to moan about essays, don't I? I suppose I've made my bed and I should lie in it. Still, once I'm finished with the Glass Menagerie, I will be ever so, ever so happy. It's the most depressing thing I've ever had the misfortune to come across. No one is happy during the course of the drama, and once it finishes just about every character is even more depressed.

I must admit to being vengeful about the English Lit course this year. I was promised Shakespeare and Chaucer and got given Williams and "Girl with a Pearl Earring" instead, the latter of which is written in such a dull fashion (but who am I to talk???) that I am purposely re-reading Pride and Prejudice for the other side of the course and ignoring it until at least Monday.

( In other news, the US election is coming up (if no one had noticed)... )

Finally, a holiday. Time to relax, plan my NaNoWriMo novel and genuinely unwind from eight weeks of torture via essay. While, of course, I like my current subject choices, they do comprise an awful lot of work. Last night, for instance, I started my Politics essay at six and finished it at eleven, five hours and four and a half pages later (and I still wasn't happy with it, because I hadn't included everything in there which I could have done). Democracy is a pain in the behind to write about.

In any case, I get Friday afternoons off, so I got home at 1:15 today and now I need to find a way to keep myself occupied for the rest of the evening. I will, no doubt, need to do some homework, so I can get rid of it all fairly quickly, but I also have to assemble my costume for tomorrow morning (I will, no doubt, be in no fit state to get it all at 5AM). I'm just going to spend the time reading up on my subjects and generally having a break.

Oh, half term, how glorious you are. Couldn't possibly have come at a better time.

I might have an entry of Expo stuff, generally because we're taking a zombie horde with us and I'd like to show Anna my costume, if it looks decent.

Well, I'll be popping off to Scouts in a few minutes, but I thought I'd make a quick post just before I go.

It's coming around to Expo time once again: I'll be up in London next weekend. The thing this year is that, as a huge group, there's a general dress-up theme of 'Death', so I'm going as a dead scientist, 'Johnny'. Basically, this involves a re-hash of last year's Hallowe'en costume (damn you, spell check, I am spelling that correctly), a mad scientist whose experiment had gone horribly wrong, and then a generous coating of pale make-up and blood beneath that. I'll probably end up drinking through a straw all day so I don't have to re-do it. As we're taking the 7AM train, and I have to actually get to a train station, I'll be up at 5:30 getting myself sorted.

I do love my house, but its location can be niggling. To walk to a bus stop is either two miles on the flat, to the nearest town, or a good kilometre up-hill to the nearest village. In fact, to get home today, I walked down the hill in high heels, a minor feat. For one, most of the walk is through livestock fields, which have uneven ground, severe dips and, on top, the hill is very steep. The small section done on road is treacherous as there's no pavement, and the bit you walk on has a stream of water cascading to the drain further down, which has eroded the tarmac below it: very slippery at the best of times. Then you get motorists who think that they can drive far too fast on a country lane, and you end up throwing yourself into the hedge for safety when cars and lorries come by.

There are good things and bad things to living in the countryside, I suppose. The view from the top of the hill is utterly beautiful, looking over the trees to the sea in the distance, so it's worth just sitting down on a stile to look over everything for a while. I know that jackks is loving city life, but there's far too much hustle and bustle for me. Give me my home any day, even if it is in the middle of nowhere.

My F-List seems to be having problems with strange/infuriating noises coming out of electrical equipment today. My commiserations - it really must suck.

On a more personal note, I've been doing the same History essay for at least four hours now, and I still haven't finished it. How long can it take to do one of these bloody things???

No, not a reference to Polyphemus (...though I do need to do some Classics homework). My left eye has gone a little bananas, in that it's nearly completely bloodshot. As long as there's no force beam coming out of it, it's absolutely fine, I'm sure, but eye drops have, thus far, had little effect.

Yes... why was I posting again? Ah, that's it. Anna (you know who you are). Please e-mail me and give me assurance of your continued survival. I've just realised something completely crap - my draft of that GF bunny we worked on last year, Meche/Dom, died with my computer. I had a cunning plan for that, too, damn it.

I've had computer turmoil over the last couple of weeks. I have (comparatively) just gained my own PC, Windows XP, a beauty of a machine, new 19 inch monitor... and then, as soon as I'm all happy and working on it, it tries to automatically update and then proceeds to crash and die on me. [Insert large, melodramatic, cliché 'NOOOOOO!' here.]

I'm not quite sure what caused this problem, but I assume it can be put down to malware eating through the system, as the computer is comparatively old. Nonetheless, the only solution was to reinstall the operating system and start all over again; a tragic loss of a lot of work, even more fanfic and many, many photos which have all joined the choir invisible. Additionally, my speakers are now refusing to work; incredibly vexing indeed, as I can no longer annoy people by playing Adiemus over and over.

Thank goodness I'm starting all over again with new subjects this year. I (rather foolishly) am doing four essay based subjects: English Literature; Classical Civilisations (woo Greek literature!); History; Politics; finishing off my Maths AS level with a unit of Decision (i.e. playing dot-to-dot and drawing pretty things!). They all go together quite well, in all truth, but between homework, school, eating and sleeping (or not, as the case may be), there's little time for much else - aside from procrastination, of course. xD Everything's very interesting, but I do wish that they'd leave off on the homework front a little. My darling twin brother comes home every night and can play on his X-Box 360 as much as he pleases, lucky sod.

Oh, and a new addition is coming into the household: a Nintendo Wii will be arriving soon enough. Whether I'll actually have time to play on the thing is another matter entirely, but never mind. In theory, it's just there to bring the family together.

Anna, if you don't email back in the next week, I'll assume you're either dead or with some sexy Italian's flat somewhere in Milan. Do come along, now.

Just tried to read my monthly comic dose as respite from my homework mountain - I swear, there are more adverts in comics these days. My Ultimate X-Men this month (is it embarrassing to admit I'm still reading that?) had so many advertisements that reading the bloody thing made me feel like a deer in the headlamps. I don't need double pages telling me not to do drugs, for crying out loud! Is that the audience for comics these days: do you have to be high on smack to suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy the plot? I wouldn't mind if they were Marvel stuff, but they're not, they're just annoying as hell TV programmes I've never seen before because they're so crap no broadcaster in the UK will buy them.

America is commercial hell, mind you: you can't watch sport (Olympic coverage etc, not grown men playing rounders), or a film, or even a ten minute TV programme without being advertised to. Every programme has product placement in it ("this show bright to you by..., the [insert bad slogan here]!"). On one TV channel there are more advert breaks as the transmission goes on, meaning a two hour film takes three hours as - during the climax, no less - there's a five minute break every ten minutes, and by the end of your stay there you never want to see a advert for prostate medicine again. I spent two weeks (got back Monday) in the historic part of Virginia, away from all the huge billboards; a wonderful relief.Despite that, they've got huge posters spread across everywhere else in America, and you can see fast food chains from miles off. I do like the USA as a place - don't get me wrong, we had a lovely stay there - but enough is enough, in my honest opinion.

As a finishing note, I've just let my tea get cold. Perfect.

Okay, I've been dead on LJ. This is because I've been feeling very guilty, as I have been spending time getting addicted to PC solitaire and Gaia Pinball, plus writing a load of shite that will rot on my hard drive forever, rather than doing anything particularly productive.

Note to self: never promise reviewers that you'll get chapters up 'in the next two weeks', as two months later you know you'll have done absolutely nothing about it. It's not worth the apologetic author notes. This is also known as 'ah, crap, I have written myself into such a state', which probably shows how bad a writer I am... and there I go again. With this attitude, I'll never post anything ever again, will I?

Anyway, why was I posting? Ah, yes. Found this on MSN: Marvel Production Company!. This made me very excited, especially the list of movies supposedly coming out. I haven't seen Iron Man yet, though all reports are good. I suppose it's partly lack of time and the fact that the local cinema is far, far away. Civil War took Tony Stark from my good books anyway.

Ahem.

Also, this gives me slightly more hope for Marvel movies in future. Because they're in the company's hands, hopefully they won't go the same way as X-Men 3 Spiderman 3 and the Ang Lee Hulk film, all of which (IMHO) were a load of rubbish. If they have (good) comic writers penning movie scripts, hope may not be lost for the whole franchise yet.

Yeah... you'll probably hear from me again around mid-June, when all my exams are over (my first two are tomorrow, joys of joys). See ya, guys!