I've given up Facebook for Lent, so this is my only social feed atm.

I feel great, before anyone asks how I'm 'surviving' without Fagbook. We simply put too much importance in being on that thing. Although it is bad timing to be off Facebook, with Keith in the Himalayas until the end of the month >_>

I'm a real sad sack of shit without him around. It's quite annoying, really. I can't seem to function, and the managers at work have noticed and are teasing me about how much happier I'll be at work when he comes back.

Whatev's.

Otherwise, I've turned back into a gamer again! Finally got around to starting 'Prince of Persia: Sands of Time', after borrowing the game about three or four months ago. I absolutely loved the movie, seemingly against popular opinion, and having played the game for seven hours or so, it's great to see these little in-jokes from the movie reflected in the game. This is the first video game I've sat down and committed to for fun, not review or work purposes, in well over a year. Closer to two, probably. Which is both sad and happy: sad, because I've always gamed and my life was so busy/hectic/shit that I didn't have time, and happy because it's reminded me how much I love RPGs and gaming in general. I want to play the whole trilogy I've got, then see what games come out that I want to play. Probably 'The World Ends With You', because I've always wanted to play that.

In other news, Top Gear Live BLEW MY FUCKING MIND. What an epic show! For a TG fantard, it was everything I could have hoped for. Unfortunately, the boys didn't come out to say a couple of words for those with the Paddock Pass, which would have topped the day, but not biggie. Clarkson sounded like he had the flu, and some fuckwit ended up harassing them the next day, so no big deal. Got to sit in a brand new Ferrari California and put the electronic hard-top roof on and off about six times, whilst revving the engine to red-line. Unbelievably epic car - made me want one :D Good times.

Now that I'm settling into a new routine of no thesis and 'real world', I'm hoping to catch up with a lot of people that I haven't seen in a while. It's gonna be fun without Facebook until April.

BONANZA.

wow, 3 months?

i need to lurk LESS and post MOAR.

alas, my life has been a rollercoaster these past few months. big points are:

> keith away for a month in south america
this was both good and bad. good, because i could finally devote the time i desperately needed to my thesis, bad because i missed him terribly and had FAR TOO MANY serious offers of courtship and beds whilst he was away. he's terribly useful when it comes to scaring off stalkers and i like it.

> uni
less talk about that, the better >_>

> death of sasuke
my beautiful laptop, the sweet sasuke (HP DV1610), died in november. his powerboard fucked up, and with that connected to his motherboard, meant he would cost $700 to fix, and at 4.5 years old it was not worth it. i really miss him. he was everything i wanted in a computer and he was in excellent condition, valiantly keeping up with his more modern rivals. he scared most of my friends with his contents and he had my whole digital life. i was able to save his HDD, so i didn't lose anything, except a friend ;_;

on a higher note, i did get a new laptop! essentially the updated sasuke, 'stiglette' (HP DV6 3131TX) is a very shiny (and engraved!) laptop that is hopefully going to replace the hardworking sasuke. although stiglette is part two of my new laptop adventure, as i had to exchange the first one of this model as its cooling fan stopped working on the second day >_>

everything else is pretty much 'meh'. i am still addicted to fanfiction, and am currently ruining my eyesight by now reading fanfiction on my iphone -_-; i am still addicted to top gear, and forked out the cash to get sweet seats at top gear live melbourne 2011. i am getting sick of living in melbourne and want to move back to the country, forget all my responsibilities and spend the rest of my life barefoot in front of a stove.

i miss the simple things.

i miss not being stressed.

everytime i hear that sentence, i instantly think of this hilarious remix of christian bale's 'bale-out' rant. :D

but it is relevant, i assure you.

i am struggling, again, to get focused for uni. i KNOW i have work to do. i KNOW this work needs to be done asap but i am truly struggling to sit down and write for extended periods. i constantly get distracted by other things, and find it hard to get back on topic.

i think i'm losing my passion for it. i'm sick to death of the fact that this study is keeping me away from quality time with keith and i'm resenting it. i absolutely LOVE what i'm studying, and once i get rolling i usually bring out some good work, but the knowledge that i have to ask keith not to come down every week and that i have to spend my only down time without him shits me. i've spent four out of our five years together doing this and i think i'm at the end of my tether.

i don't want to give up my honours thesis, seeing as i'm so close to the finish line, and i actually want to finish this and give it light, but i think that will be the end of my studying ways until i can somehow live with keith at all times whilst studying.

i love what i'm doing. i reckon i'd like to do university teaching as a career. but i can't do it anymore.

people tell me "but you've got to do what's right for you", in fact keith even tells me this, but it's really destroying me.

i've never had the pleasure of having a boyfriend just a simple drive away. i've always had to plan and we've always had to scrimp for time. i hate this so much i just want to throw it all in now, go back to the country and hide away. it's bullshit.

i'm falling into my old ways. fanfiction is again becoming my salvation and my destruction. 'top gear' now rules my life.

i think i need to sleep. and dream about being elizabeth bennett.

i'm in a bit of a dilemma.

all i want to do is wear elegant, frilly clothes. not as hardk0r as friezaess, mainly because i can't afford it, but i want to wear skirts and blouses and PROPER STOCKINGS with lines up the back and wear lots of eyeliner and bright red lipstick. it's been weeks since i wore any jeans and i've hardly worn flats.

the problem? keith likes girls who wear leather jackets with jeans and boots.

;_;

DSFARGEG.

i think i look ridiculous in my "skinny" jeans, and frumpy in flares. i feel far more happier in a dress with backseam stockings (although in this weather, it's one of my MANY MANY opaque tights (srsly, i think i have like, 20 pairs?). it's just too cold to have basically bare legs) and my bright red belted overcoat and my chorus-line-mary-janes.

le sigh.

i don't really know what to do. i don't -mind- jeans, but i'm finding myself wearing them less and less outside of keith coming over.

maybe now that i've started riding to uni (HOW MANY HILLS CAN THERE POSSIBLY BE IN 2KM??? DX) i might start slimming down and not feel so ridiculous in jeans. who knows...

---

oh, halfeatenmoon, i've already read all of your top gear slash reccs, and read one last night that was not on your del.icio.us account and thought YOU MUST KNOW ABOUT IT.

it's called Walpurgisnacht, it's OT3 (i'm a sucker for OT3), and it's supernatural AU. just brilliant and epic. i didn't want to post this on your fb, and i think you're most active on lj. i hope you enjoy it!

does anyone know what the actual point of an ipad is?

i just think of this, in particular the comment at 1:36:



it just looks like an overgrown iphone, with less actual usefulness.

*shrugs*

ugh.

i've been sick for over seven days now. had the whole runny nose + sore throat thing this time last week and it has just evolved into sore sinuses, coughs and two boxes of tissues into the bin.

i think i might see a doctor on monday :/.

in other news, i've done the most stupid thing i could possibly do when i'm behind on uni work - joined topgearslash. for some unfathomable reason i have become obsessed with top gear recently, and only having it on free-to-air tv four times a week was simply not enough (plus the dvds are ridiculously expensive and i just cannot afford them...yet...). i noticed an absence of top gear fanfiction in general on ff.net, and the lj comm is locked, so i actually went and joined it :D it's been brilliant thus far...but not entirely related to thesis work, so i'm weaning myself off it.

but i did buy the special box-set of the top gear specials in the stig's helmet. that was well genius and totally worth it :D.

top gear makes me so happy. so i'm doing my essay for class on the representation of women in the official top gear photographs on their websites. HAHAHAHAHH. now i have an excuse to fap to watch top gear more and more!

*le sigh*. i really don't do things in halves, do i?

ah. this is much nicer. i was getting sick of the overbearing cuteness of the pink-and-white 'cute eyes' layout, and felt it was time that i matured into something more streamlined and less 14y/o girl.

and something that didn't require a paid account. i'm sorry lj, but i just don't use you enough to warrant paying for you *pats consolingly*.

not much else to really report at the moment. still waiting to hear about a job (applied for a full-time job where buronzu works, and where half of the people i worked with a year ago now work), so i'm still only coming down to melbourne for uni, and i feel like i'm struggling with my honours work because of it. being up here with keith is great and all, but we keep spending time together in fear of our eventual separation, and i love it, but then i don't study because of it. i now have to have my intro written by next week and i'm still avidly researching things.

arrrgh i just want things to settle down, y'know? i want to finally just LIVE in one place and not be constantly between two.

i'm also sick of the 2 hour drive. my right knee is getting very sore after these drives now since i don't have cruise control, and i can't put my seat any further back :/

i hope i get this job with buronzu. please?

wow. has it really been over six months since i've logged into LJ?

it has.

i guess i went through a phase when i first moved here to the country where i didn't want anything to do with the outside world. my phone was off more than on, i didn't check any facebook, forums or msn and i had absolutely no desire to. i took the whole rural isolation thing to it's logical conclusion.

and it was wonderful, for a time.

but once egames came and went, i realised that i had missed my city-dwelling friends and that if i wanted to do more with my life, i had to get back onto the internets. and so i did, getting back on facebook and launching into research for my honours this year.

so, i'm back. after giving up fanfiction for lent, i realised that i had an awful lot of time on the internet, and i also realised that i had no idea what a lot of my good friends were actually doing. facebook is great for small titbits of information and spam posts, but most people don't express themselves very thoroughly on such a public and twitter-based platform.

so, i have returned. i have learned that one can live very well without the internet, but i missed you guys too much to give it up forever <3

in other news, i am now a host on 'Level 3', ch.31 melbourne's video game show. i just shot a piece on 'continuum convention' yesterday where i was a panelist for the 'pointy hats' panel, which looked at female representation in fantasy and sci-fi (you would have loved it, halfeatenmoon. very feminist, and incredibly interesting). i'll be mainly doing wii and handheld game reviews, and convention reporting. i'm so excited and incredibly grateful to the chaps at 'Level 3' who have allowed me to join their team. :D

i've also been accepted into honours. my main thesis subject is 'cosplay', and i'm leaning towards looking at gender issues/representation in cosplay as a finer point. i'm really excited to be doing this, as although i'm not as harcore into cosplay as others, i've been around many very dedicated cosplayers and seen much cosplay over my years with manifest. the research is so interesting - so many facets and different opinions, it has really reignited my love for research and a look at a possible future in teaching.

and lastly, honours = moving back to melbourne! i'm currently still searching for a place (melbourne's rental market is fucking insane) to live with some friends, but i'm excited to be back on the scene and hopefully bumping into a whole lot of you more frequently.

xox

i have now waved goodbye to the city and am a country girl. sheep over one fence, cows over the other, psycho geese knocking on the window for bread and hawks acting as guard dogs.

no shit.

i drove home one night and everybody else had gone out. as i was driving down the driveway the giant rottweiler comes bounding up to see who i am, and a friggin' HAWK is circling me as well checking out who i am. (A family of hawks live on the property and we leave out piles of meat sometimes to watch them swoop it and fight crows for it XD)

i love this place :D

it's so nice to be somewhere quiet. after living literally in the city for almost 18 months this is a complete 180. no mobile reception, no wireless internet, closest town is 10 minutes away @ 100km/h, ballarat is a good 45mins away...

it's refreshing :3 'cept for the lack of internet on my laptop...

so, if you text me and don't get a reply for a while, know that i don't have any reception where i live and i have to drive into town to get it. so, it may take a little while to contact me.

i really need to organise manifest, don't i? that's in a couple of weeks i think >_> *fails*

i forgot to pre-reg. looks like i'll be lining up with the rest of the newbies for an on-the-day reg....whoops

fucking hell.

what the shit is wrong with the news in victoria?

why the fuck is the useless news that buckley and malthouse are jointly coaching a football team?

WHO THE HELL CARES.

for FUCKS sake, there is far more important news at the moment. the rudd government proving how utterly useless they are (see: hospital reports), violence on our streets, society's downfall etc...the list goes on.

i am disgusted at the victorian news service. utterly disgusted. where the hell are their priorities? people are dying and the government is beating around the bush on anything important and all they can report about during their most prime time (herald sun had a whole front page, seven news donated a good five minutes of their first seven minutes to a shit interview) is about two people who have not saved lives or cured diseases but play a sport that only victoria really cares about and the rest of the world don't know how to play.

fuck.