tacit

Guys!! Fess up, who left me anonymous valentines love?

Ok, I have a guess as to who it is. And when I rule the world with my iron fist, I will not just remember you, I will be having people paid to abduct you and set you up down the street river from me.

Actually, that really goes for several of you. ♥ ♥

I need TV recs, oh wise flist.

I went over to my buddy Frank's this afternoon, and he showed interest in getting some new TV shows to watch. He goes to bed at 7 o'clock because there's nothing on TV and he has nothing better to do. He's widowed and lonely and bored. He's 83, but he has a DVD player, so whatever the Internet can provide, I can burn.

He likes crime shows - detective things like Jonathan Creek, Morse, Poirot, Miss Marple... but not so much CSI because of the bad language. His eyesight is failing, so no subtitles or reliance on subtle visual clues, but he's sharp and intelligent, and entirely with it brain-wise. He's an absolute sweetheart and I love him like he was my own grandpa (he's Claire's) and I want to be able to do something nice for him. I'll be seeing him for our weekly lunch tomorrow, and it'd be great to have some ideas by then. I was thinking maybe Dexter? Hustle? But really I'm stuck. I'd like to take half a dozen pilots for him to try out.

???!

Over to you guys! Virtual cookies actual real cookies to anyone who can help, if you give me your address!

I've got my dog back!!11!

Seriously, so pleased. His kidneys are a bit squiffy, but his liver's fine. The vet thinks he'll get better on his own. I'm taking him for more blood tests on Monday, but he's happy and his normal self, so I'm happy, too.

\o/


In other news, I'm hunting for tenants for the workhouse and just came across an advert that said 'I'll need a room from Monday, as I'm planning to leave my wife over the weekend.'

WTF? What's worse is that he's put a landline down as his contact number. I hope she doesn't answer the phone before he shares the news! O.o

I just called the vet for an update, and he's still asymptomatic. Which is a good sign! \o/ He could still go seriously south, but I'm encouraged. Also, I asked if I could come and take him out for an hour tmrw and have a good run with him so he doesn't go too crazy, and they're fine with the idea, provided he's still asymptomatic. That's the thing that's been upsetting me the most - he hates being cooped up, especially cooped up without ppl around. The only thing that sorts him out is tons of exercise. So, yay! I feel tons better.

Thanks for the kind thoughts this morning, I really needed the moral support!

And now I'm off to the cinema for the evening, see you all on the flip side. *hugs Internet hard*

I had young Dex neutered on Monday. Now that the dressing's come off, he just wants to lick and lick... he hates the lampshade the vet gave me to put around his neck, so I'd hate to have to put him in it 24 hours a day. It's not the stitches, it's his balls - what's left of them -  that are getting red and enflamed. I think it's only a matter of time before he breaks the skin... is there anything anyone can suggest to stop him licking? Bones and toys only occupy him for so long. Any creams I can put on to make it taste bad? Without irritating it further, obviously. Am I allowed to re-dress is so he doesn't have easy access? Presumably the vet took the dressing off for a good reason.

I've told him to leave it, which is a command he fully understands. Now he just looks at me to see if I'm within distance before the licking commences. We're annoying the crap out of each other!

I also had the kitty done, and she is good as gold.

Cats > dogs.

ETA: I rang the vets, and the receptionist (highest level of authority available) said he just had to wear the collar 24 hours a day. Which... Well.

Son of ETA: I went to the vets in person so I could menace them until they came up with an answer more to my liking. And they gave me some steroid cream to stop his balls itching so much. \o/ He wagged like mad when I rubbed it on, which felt a bit wrong to me...

I also got a different collar because the last one was a touch too small and if he really exerted himself, licking was still possible. So now he's even more ungainly and is having an even harder time navigating the house without crashing into doorways/chairs/tables. Which is one part amusing, two parts pitiful.

I owe people betas and emails and responses, but I have been eaten alive by Christmas. This is me poking my head above the digestive juices on my way down, pancreas-ward. Spleen-ward? Pre-ileum, certainly.

My family has descended upon me, and it's all fun so far - the first two days usually are. It may be a different story after my brother arrives, and by boxing day I'll be sick to death of them. But right now? Fun!

I wanted to share the British tradition of the pantomime with you guys. We went to the panto today, which is a totally normal Christmas thing to me, but according to various people it's incomprehensible and freakish to the rest of the world. What could be more fun than going to the theatre, watching singing, dancing, cross-dressing silliness and heckling the cast? The one we've been to the past few years doesn't have the semi-famous and their career-promotion - it's a purely amateur thing and much better for it. This year was (nominally) Aladdin, and it sold out in November because the writer is a legend in these parts. My group of family and friends caused the panto to overrun by almost an hour today with all the ad-libbing they had to do. They wondered aloud where the princess was as a cue for him/her to come on stage, but we yelled the traditional, 'He's behind you!!' and they looked over at us, like 'oh, it's going to be you lot today, eh?' They did the 'oh, really!? Let me look!' thing, complete with band accompaniment, even though the scene was in a little little set and the only place she could've been was like, in the oven). The tenor - who I quite fancy and who I will always think of as Buttons from a few years back - got the giggles, and the ugly sisters Widow Twanky and the genie diverged significantly (and hilariously) from any script they might have once had, to the point that the princess (less comically talented) was rather confused and my mother (my mother!) cried laughing. Plus, the Widow Twanky had an astonishing range (6? 7?) of garish, wonderful costumes with skirt hoops/bells/sparkles/clown feet/frilly knickers/'microwave safe' labels/5 foot wide hip flares. Buttons accidentally really slapped an ugly sister, the sorcerer couldn't hypnotise Buttons without getting wittily interrupted by a kid a few rows behind us, and a penguin lost a shoe; but everyone hit every note, nobody misdelivered any jokes, everyone danced in step. PANTOS ARE AWESOME. And I don't care how tacky and ridiculous they are.

Is it just us? Sod cricket, Wimbledon and the monarchy - someone tell me pantos have spread!

So, dodificus , naye , deltacephei ... I haven't checked my flist lately and have barely been reading email. I am not dead. I have a spare couple of hours on Wednesday, which I intend to use catching up.

dodificus ! It doesn't work on my ipod atm. Format suggestions?!?

My Welsh vocabulary consists entirely of words like araf (slow), heol (road), and - my favourite - gwasanaethau (service station), which I think you'll agree looks like an awesome word. Torchwood fandom has added some more random bits and bobs that I suspect were googled and as such don't entirely trust to be accurate, but I like to file away anyway. I am far more likely to swear or use sickly endearments than I am to discuss overpriced rest stops.

This article of translation cock ups makes me want to go hang out in Wales with a bilingual dictionary and learn Welsh. Just so that when I visit my parents I'll appreciate the translation jokes that their neighbours claim lurk in every corner.

Also, dimly related by virtue of being about, um, words: Every time I hear someone say 'don't patronise me!' in an American accent, it cracks me up. I particularly enjoy the affronted expression it usually accompanies. You... don't want people to come calling for goods or services?

ETA: ....because PAH-tronise means belittle, doubt; PAY-tronise means shop. At least, it does here in barmy balmy Britain.

Podficcing, brain freeze, and my SGA eps are elsewhere. Is it ah-thos or ay-thos??

[Poll #1271328]

Because I think it's cool, here is (blurry) evidence of a birthday cake I made at the weekend. It took all of Saturday to make, and various households in the Nottingham/Derby area are still eating it, but it did look pretty good. You can't really tell how excessive it was from the pictures - it was about 30cm (a foot) tall, and even had icing ivy growing up the side of the house. Those little dyed marshmallow bushes had perfectly formed icing flowers on them. The roof was a victoria sponge with chocolate icing, and the walls were coffee cake with butter-coffee mortar, and between them they used a mammoth twelve eggs. Is was like Extreme Cakemaking, the sport.

I need a job.



And, because I know that at least dodificus finds stories of My Tragic Lovelife deeply amusing, I will share with you the latest.

I went off boys for a while after several excruciating first dates, but then met a guy (at a funeral!) a few months ago who reaffirmed to me that there are some nice, normal, single men out there, even if good chemistry is a bit more hit-and-miss. So, I rejoined my old standby match.com and have had email conversations with a few potentials - no bad first dates yet, because none of them were appealing enough to subject myself to that nonsense. And then I discovered that PWP guy was back on the market.

First off, let me reassert the opinion that he is absolutely gorgeous. Also, funny and kind and cuddly and smiley. I do not know what I was thinking when I let it fizzle out. He'd just come out of a long term relationship and I'd been single forever, so we were out of synch and he was reboundy. I do tend to freak out when I get a new guy - either my entire future happiness rests on the perfect construction of the next text message, or I am bewildered by not being single... or both - so we were a bit out of step at times. But, gorgeous! Wonderful! He even called me on my shit, once, which I appreciated - I'd gone from total!floozy to too!cool!to!text and he eventually sent a late night text going 'WTF?!' But in a good way that totally fixed my dumb behaviour. ♥ At lonely, life-hating times, he's The One That Got Away, who I kick myself over. And he's back on the market! \o/

I spent an embarrassingly long while constructing an email to him yesterday - light, breezy, non stalkerish; while in reality I was not feeling light or breezy, and very much stalkerish. I agonised to deltacephei and naye about what to say. The mail is still up in a tab, waiting for me to read it over with the distance of a day or two before I decide send/not.

BUT HE EMAILED ME FIRST!!! He wants to know if I'm up for a drink! I no longer care that we have very little in common. I'm gonna meet up with him asap.

I am keyboard mashing over a 3 line email.

\o/ !!! &hearts

Yes, it will blatantly all go pathetically wrong. But this part? Is FUN!