Hi there. I'm Clare, and I like writing. A lot. I also like playing games and reading books and comics and manga and watching films and tv shows and anime and consuming as many media products as I have time for. A lot. And I especially like writing about them. A lot.

I'm a perpetual student, currently reading for a PhD in media studies (media convergence and transmedia storytelling specifically), with a background in English lit and a handful of other academic loves that I left by the wayside (French, Spanish, Old English, Maths). And I'm an incurable fan, unreasonably passionate about fandom and fan practices even when they make me facepalm, for whom fannish activity (esp. fic and meta) = default brain setting. I overanalyse everything; I get shamelessly enthusiastic about things I like, and colourfully ranty about things I don't; and I'm incapable of shutting up once you've got me on a topic I'm interested in.

I use this journal mostly for fic, meta, and reviews of things I'm currently overinvested in, and the occasional non-fandom post about my thesis or my family or other random personal and RL crap. I don't have much of a friending policy; I always welcome new friends, and will add back 99.99% of the time, and conversely there's always a defriending amnesty on this journal (although if you're someone I've had more than a couple of conversations with I'd appreciate a note as to why). I read everything on my flist, and do my best to get past my social awkwardness enough to comment whenever possible.

Still interested? Then go ahead and enable me :) It doesn't take much.

Thank you for my Christmas card, 0x! It was mega exciting to receive, and the message really made me smile <3

This odd and usually rather dismal peninsular microclimate has finally produced the closest to a white Christmas we're ever going to get:

( let it snow )

The house is warm, I spent all afternoon making bees out of Fimo, Christmas Eve dinner is in the oven and smelling nom, and I am full of good cheer. Much love and goodwill to you all, and a very merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it ♥

Thoughts on rewatching Death Note:

( nowhere near as tl;dr as usual, but I'll still spare your flists )

Thoughts on watching Last Exile, @ about halfway through:

1. It is the most videogame-y thing I have ever seen that isn't actually a videogame. Fortunately, were it a videogame I would very much want to play it, so I'm enjoying it a lot (also, yay intermedial cross-pollination; you make me and my thesis happy).

2. It's really exposing for me the degree of genre competence you acquire by growing up exposed to and immersed in a culture's general rhetoric of fiction, and how much fiction relies on that - because I don't have anywhere close to that level of genre competence when it comes to anime, and as a result there are bits of Last Exile where I feel like I'm missing basic tools of reading. Dio as a character, for example, is completely opaque to me; I can't orient myself with respect to his representation at all.

3. Does fandom love Alex as much as I do?

Thoughts on playing Opoona, @ about 4 hours in:

1. OMG SO CUTE. SO UNBEARABLY CUTE. I COULD LOOK AT OPOONA'S LITTLE DETERMINED RUNNING FACE ALL DAY.

2. The gameworld is one of the creepiest fictional worlds I have ever inhabited (why can't I see my sister? where are my parents? why is it that every time you tell me I have to fulfil my obligations as a good citizen I feel like I will be Erased if I don't?), and I have no idea if that's intentional or not. To me, it feels like one of those creepo "utopias" where Everything is Fine As Long As You Comply.

3. I fucking love the controls and the combat. There is something immensely satisfying about releasing charged attacks (pull analogue stick back, hold, let fly!) - which is making me think about the current gen move towards motion controls and other forms of supposedly immersive, intuitive control; that's not necessarily what I want when I'm gaming - I like interfaces; I like having my interactions with a gameworld mediated by a controller. No idea why, but I do.

Yesterday's cooking win:

( cupcakes! )

Cashew-cardamom cupcakes, with orange-cardamom-chocolate ganache, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which is pretty much single-handedly revising my deeply-held scepticism about vegan baking. Nom.

- Went to see New Moon at the weekend, drunk and desiring lulz; it didn't disappoint. It is, in many respects, a laughable film; you can laugh at the acting, the script, the narrative, the characters, and like probably about half the internet, galvani and I did, muchly.

BUT. That said, the films are...not irredeemable for me. Tbh, what I read of the first book wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. It wasn't aimed at me, at a queer, unromantic woman with an unhealthy and probably kind of snobbish degree of investment and academic interest in the vampire as fictional device and cultural force - it wasn't aimed at me, and so the characters and the relationship didn't engage me, and so having already seen the film and finding SMeyer's writing style less than compelling, I just didn't have any interest in finishing it.

Something about translating it into film, though, produces a couple of things that actually catch my attention. The silence of the camera, Kristen Stewart and RPattz's (whether intentional or not) halting, awkward, portentous yet always eventually anticlimactic delivery, gives space for reading what's going on as an exploration of teenage intensity, lack of perspective, and inarticulateness (which is about the only reading of Edward and Bella's relationship that doesn't make me :/) that the book doesn't. And terrible actors they may be, but one thing the pair of them can manage to get across in an impressively non-cheesy way is all that barely suppressed wanting to fuck.

Also, film!Alice = yes please (and the idea of Alice turning Bella? VERY YES PLEASE).

So I'm not always LOLing, and I'm not always bored or alienated by Twilight...but at the end of the day, I am always frustrated and annoyed. The kind of behaviour being held up by these books as ~*so romantic*~ is still a huge fucking world of do not want for me, from the way Bella treats her non-Cullen friends and her dad (I may have an irrational degree of (entirely non-sexual) affection for Bella's dad, though), to Edward deciding to chat about his death wish with her (OH EDWARD CULLEN NO, you are bringing out my angry eyes >:( ), to Jacob's weird Nice Guy-ness, to the general sex-negativeness (however much great UST it makes possible) and glorification of obsession and everything else that's been said a million times before by a million other critics.

Still, though, I do wonder why it is that the Twilight series has received the degree of vitriol and mockery that it has. There are worse-written books; there are worse-made films, and ultimately, there are more or at least equally problematic representations of heterosexual relationships out there. Thoughts, or comment, or links to thoughts or comment, would be welcome, as right now I'm just feeling cranky and mistrustful about it.

- Visiting Oxford at the weekend was for once unqualifiedly lovely. Well, apart from the fairly massive qualification of me suffering from some form of unspecified Dreaded Lurgy that is still shredding my throat and filling me with phlegm, also the SURPRISE (well over a week early, cheers for that, body) BLEEDING, but none of that is Oxford's fault. I think a shift is finally happening in my brain, and Oxford is becoming "the place I go to visit my sister and my best friend", rather than "the place that fucked me up a litle bit for three years". Plus, how can I hate anywhere that provides me with a cocktail of vodka, strawberry puree, basil and black pepper for £3.25? Om nom nom.

- Thesis Chapter Three is finally getting going, as World's Busiest Term draws to an end. Mostly, however, what has emerged from the initial stages of my research is that I am going to need to become familiar with Avatar: The Last Airbender. This will be a fun way to spend the holidays, Y/N?

- I am more excited about Christmas than I have ever been, because for the first time in my life I get to buy and decorate my own tree!

This post is brought to you partly by my current inability to produce coherent thesis-related sentences, and partly by the tension I've been feeling lately between my compulsive want to communicate how I respond to and experience media and performances, especially when it's things that mean a lot to me or have had a profound effect on me, and the fact that live performance tends to leave me utterly overwhelmed, overstimulated, and inarticulate. Half-formed thinky thoughts about these shows have been trapped swirling around in my strange obsessive brain since I saw them, and so I am going to do what I always do in this situation: attempt to write them down. No doubt at length. I'm sorry in advance.

1. Eddie Izzard, Stripped, @ the Manchester Evening News Arena (07/11/09)

( cake or death? )

2. The Rocky Horror Picture Show @ the Liverpool Empire (14/11/09)

( when Eddie said he didn't like his teddy, you knew he was a no-good kid )

I am alive, just so horrendously busy atm that I try not to find time to stop and think about it because when I do I make small fearful noises that sound something like ~*wibble*~. In the (oh god, really?) month since I have last posted, I have:

1. moved out with Hazel, not too far away from home but far enough, into the top floor of an old converted house in a road full of stately trees and little old ladies that has the tiniest sliver of a view of the sea. I have a living room with two tvs (one for watching, one for gaming :D) and the second bedroom is accidentally becoming an approximation of a library thanks to the SHEER VOLUME OF BOOKS we have combined; I want for nothing. Pics will come when I find my accursed camera cable, which seems to be the only thing(touch wood) that's gone missing in the move :/

2. started teaching, which is difficult and emotionally draining and I am not yet very good at it. But my first years are all nice kids, and the discussions we've had have already been rewarding in flashes; I think once they and I have gained confidence it'll start being a lot of fun. Plus, I fucking love marking, and wish I hadn't listened to all that management wank about ~de-motivation~ and got myself a proper red pen.

3. been upgraded from MPhil status to PhD status, which is more a gesture of faith in my ability to finish this research and the value of me doing so than anything else, but which was accompanied by a very nice end of year report from both my supervisors and the head of graduate studies, which made me happy.

4. had a lovely birthday, which involved perfume and chocolate and the Necronomicon and Scribblenauts and a replacement for my broken N64 and two lots of lovely food (sushi for lunch and tapas for tea, oh my!) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - which, I fucking loved, more than maybe anything I've seen at the cinema this year; I loved every last clever, horrible, chaotic, spectacular, dense, incoherent, amoral moment of it, and you should all go and watch it too. I am also now in possession of the complete box set of Last Exile; I should be excited about this, Y/N?

5. developed hopefully not too fanciful dreams about the field I want to work in when I am a proper grown-up researcher with a proper grown-up researcher's job (adaptation studies!). I am not sure if this speaks to a promising degree of focus and ambition, or to me having serious attention span problems that may well compromise my ability to finish this PhD :(

6. watched Hellsing, which was kind of shit but also incredibly awesome and yes, yes I am swooning all over Sir Integra, and Dorian Gray, which was kind of shit and, well, just kind of shit. Still, I am all over the current wave of fin-de-siecle Gothic films and adaptations that seem to be happening, and cannot wait for Sherlock Holmes even though there is no doubt in my mind that that too will be shit.

7. learned how to cook some fucking awesome vegan food, including a deathly hot aubergine curry and a tomato, fennel, and white bean soup. Experiments with muffins have so far been less successful, though :(

8. presented at Liverpool's staff-postgraduate research seminar, which was made more stressful than it should have been by the fact that I was asked to do it with two weeks' notice, and while the guy running it said I was welcome to present something I'd already prepared, I didn't have anything that could last the hour (!!) he wanted me to talk for. So I wrote a 6000-word presentation pretty much from scratch in a week, which was fun. It went well, though; everyone seemed really interested, and I managed not to snap or flail at the couple of arsey-ish questions I got.

Over the next three weeks, I still have to:

1. write and deliver 20 minute presentation at adaptation conference in Leicester, on the cultural and critical discourses surrounding the videogame adaptation.

2. produce detailed plan of 3rd thesis chapter for supervisor.

3. adapt 6000 word presentation into 20 minute presentation for conference in Leeds about innovation in arts and humanities research.

Sob.

But I am getting more on top of things, and I have missed getting online and posting and commenting with you guys, so many of the above things may be turned into actual posts at various points in the future. I will also try and get back into the swing of commenting on people's posts; I've been reading pretty much everything on my flist eventually, but mostly long after the fact of posting, so haven't been commenting much :/ Back soon, though, I hope!

I've posted a couple of times recently about how bittersweet it is to be confronted with the reality of your relatives as people, but mostly with emphasis on the "bitter". This weekend, staying with my dad, I think I saw more of the sweetness of it. I went for a drive with him on Saturday, and we talked (as we always end up doing - I've lost count of the number of times I've sat in Dad's car until hours after we've stopped driving, because a Serious Conversation got started) about the fact that, if all goes to plan, I'll be moving out at the end of this month, and how I'm going to negotiate my relationship with my family when I do. He talked to me about his decision to leave Gibraltar and his family, about managing the informal joint custody arrangement he's had with Mum since they split up, about how he sees my relationships with people and how he thinks moving out's going to work for me - and I could see with a clarity I've never really felt before, my dad not relative to me. My dad at the same age as I am now, with me and my sister 7 years away and having just started seeing my mum, figuring out where and how and with whom he's going to make a life for himself. My dad now as someone who doesn't just love me and support me, but who negotiates a relationship with me through the filter of his own experiences, his own personality, his own opinions of what I'm like and what I do.

Sunday afternoon, I watched him and my sister play squash, after a week or so of half-hearted bets, cocky challenges, and mutual promises of arse-kicking. Which was duly delivered by Dad (although Sis put up a bloody good fight), because, well, he may be 53, but he's been an amateur tennis player for probably getting on 40 years now, and played at a pretty high level when he was young (not that that means too much when you're Gibraltarian, given that the entire population could fit comfortably inside most major sports venues elsewhere in the world). And as he played, he gave Sis tips, and didn't go easy on her, and you could see what a big part of him that talent is, and how happy it makes him, and how it's part of the relationship he has with my (immeasurably less athletically inept) sister - and it made me happy to see that.

It's been nice, I think, to see that getting older doesn't have to disillusion you about your family, but can give you a sweeter perspective on them too.

*

I am teaching my first class ever in two weeks' time, before which I will have had a grand total of one morning's training. I am CRAPPING MYSELF, but also very excited. Yesterday I finally saw the lecture syllabus that I'll be running my tutorials alongside, and already I have Plans and Ideas. I also spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to settle on when I was going to hold the damn things, anxiously cross-referencing campus maps and first-year lecture schedules and trying not to make them hate me from the off by scheduling anything first thing on Monday morning or last thing on Friday afternoon or immediately after a lecture taking place half an hour's walk away from my teaching room. I am already overthinking this, Y/Y?

*

Relatedly, from now until the Christmas holidays, I will be not only teaching, but a) moving out (touch wood), b) presenting at two conferences within two weeks of each other, and c) trying to get a decent draft of thesis Chapter 3 finished. As such, fair warning: although random personal crap posts will probably keep coming, the fandom content of this journal is going to be limited to my sporadic tl;dr reviews for the next while.

*

Idk what it is about the weather that's producing them, but there have been some gorgeous sunsets around here recently.

( I do like living in a west-facing house )

1. Watchmen (film): ( in which I'm not entirely sure I get what all the fuss is about )

2. Inglourious Basterds: ( in which I am both surprised and impressed )

3. Perdido Street Station: ( or, how I spent four rainy days in Jura )

Full of a cold. Possibly have trench foot. Entire rucksack of clothes somehow smells like boots even though I never kept my boots in there. Boots smell like death and bogs. 2x1 inch patch of the skin on my right shin left for posterity on the rocky shores of Jura.

And yet, I had a truly lovely time, as I will attempt to illustrate once I've got the time to tidy up my photos and make a real post.

For now, though, I have come back to a mountain of work, so though I will try to catch up with comments and posts and things, I will probably still be quite absent for the next while or so.

Totally incommunicado for a few days; going on an adventure to what I believe is most commonly known as the Back of Beyond.

If you haven't heard from me by the end of next week, assume I have been claimed by the world's third largest whirlpool. Send experienced scuba divers asap.

Finished Hotel Dusk: Room 215 this morning! AND IT WAS AWESOME.

( review under the cut - completely spoiler-free; it just got a bit long )

Not much to report RL-wise, at the moment. My thesis-brain is working at 100% efficiency, but my ability to sit down and actually concentrate on anything has flown out of the window. Conversely, I am finding myself with both the time and the inclination to sit down and get some creative writing done, and yet cannot muster up any inspiration whatsoever. Not even the idea of an AA lesbian boarding school AU has been able to break my fiction-writer's block. Normally, these two things combined would put me into the kind of stress and misery that would have me paralysed with depressive episodes whenever I'm left on my own and crying at the drop of a hat whenever I'm with other people; in a (for the most part successful) effort to stop this from happening, I've written a week of work off and spent it relaxing with Hazel and Sis, getting into a routine of swimming, and going on Very Long Walks along the local coastline.

Being by the sea always has a very profound effect on me. Part of it is sensitivity to all the social and cultural resonances that coastal towns and cities have, whether historic ports like Liverpool, or seaside towns like Blackpool, with all the weight of the past and all the fading, disaffectedness of the present sitting on them. Mostly, though, it's a purely sensory thing. I always feel an incredible clarity of contentment when I can look out over water, and feel sea winds, and listen to waves - a kind of physical relaxation that overrides my usually indefatigable propensity for overthinking. Which ties in, I think, with something else that makes me happy when I go to the sea - the fact that the people there are there purely for the sake of being in and enjoying that natural environment, of just being in sunshine and clean winds and natural beauty for an afternoon. It's living for the sake of living, and I like seeing that from time to time.

I'm not feeling all that good with words at the moment, so in the light of previous comments about photography, have a photo essay instead - a week of afternoons on the beaches, cliff-tops, waterfronts and sandstone walls of the Wirral coastline, looking out over the sands, the marine lakes and the marshes of the Dee estuary.

( image-heavy )

At many points over these last two years at Liverpool, I have regretted that I've not seemed to be able to find the intense focus and motivation and ability to work long hours that I had at Oxford. This last week, compelled by having an actual srs bsns deadline for this New Who article, I finally got it back - and now I remember exactly why I was so miserable for so much of my time at Oxford. I am now so. fucking. tired, both intellectually and physically.

But the article is done and submitted, and though I've spent too long revising and hacking at it to be able to make any kind of clear-sighted judgement about how good or otherwise it is, I am still proud and excited at having done a Real Academic Thing.

As I was getting to the end of the final proof-read last night, Edgeworth's Great Revival theme came on WMP. Fit my mood as I finished pretty damn well, and brought a huge grin to my face.

So now to August, which is mostly going to be a month of revising thesis Chapter 2 and turning it into something that doesn't make me go ...eh... when I read it (also talking with supervisors about whether the genius idea I had whilst in France for reorganising the entire thesis is in fact a genius idea or whether it is profoundly wrong-headed and unhelpful). Also want to stick in a proposal to another conference CFP, this one for early November; it'd be a bit close to the one I've already got lined up, but it's such a perfect outlet for what I'm working on (theme is innovation in arts and humanities research methodology) that I think it'd be silly not to try for it.

This weekend, however, I am taking off, and I intend to fill it with nothing more taxing than adventuring with galvani, vegan baking, playing Hotel Dusk and replaying Radiant Dawn, and titting about on lj.

In which vein, a meme, taken from biocaam:

Leave me a comment and I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better. Update your journal with the answers to the questions. Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

( my questions and answers )

Questions will happily be provided to anyone who wants them.

Saw Half-Blood Prince for the third time last night (hey, I never got to go see it in costume on opening night; I had to give my HP fangirlishness some kind of outlet), so by now I figure a review's probably in order :D

Together with OotP (which I love for being JKR's light social commentary at its strongest, funniest, and most successfully depressing, not to mention The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and Snape's Worst Memory and oh god Neville's parents D:), HBP is my favourite of the 7 books. I love the Half-Blood Prince plot, and what it says about Snape and Harry and how they relate to each other; I love the prominence of Dumbledore. Apart from the Harry/Ginny, which I just cannot like no matter how hard I try, I like the silliness of the adolescent romance, and how the more serious side of the "Love Is Dangerous" theme is developed. The Pensieve is my absolute favourite form of magic in the whole series, and I am always up for trips to the Department of Backstory, so that plot structure suited me down to the ground. It's got my favourite ending of all of them; the scene with Dumbledore and Harry in the cave, and the final battle and confrontation with Snape just about kill me. I think it's got a great balance between darkness and jolly-hockey-sticks-ness, and although I know a lot of people dislike it for being a stop-gap, I'm very fond of the way it doesn't so much build momentum as let you soak in a web of Things That May Become Important Later.

Given that pretty much all these things were very much underplayed in the film, and that in addition HBP has some of my favourite lines of the whole damn series ('there's no need to call me "Sir", Professor' - 'I am not worried, Harry. I am with you.' - 'I am good-looking enough for ze both of us, I think!') and they left ALL OF THEM OUT, I should probably be in a bad mood with this film. And yet, I'm very much not. Because if you move away from standards based on fidelity (and I am an obedient fledgling adaptation theorist and toe the party line in doing so), it's actually a pretty good adaptation.

( an attempt at a semi-serious review. May unravel into fangirling )

( a love song to the Harry Potter fandom )

In other, less tl;dr news: at last, I got the 100% final, not going to take it away from you at the last minute, confirmation that as of October 1st, I am indeed going to have a full AHRC studentship. Fees paid, and then according to the rates on their website for the 2009/10 academic year, a maintenance grant that works out at about £1100 a month - until September 2011 at least, and possibly until September 2012. I have never had anything approaching this kind of money in my life. It's an actual salary, and not a bad one - and as I write this article for publication it's slowly dawning on me that I really am starting a career, I really am doing what I've wanted to for a long time now. It's a happy thought.

Back from spending today at my cousin Adam's wedding. This has left me thoughtful and rambly and maybe a little melancholy, because, well.

( it may not surprise any of you to learn that... )

Bed now, I think.

Back from France at last, a little earlier than expected after Mum decided to put us & the car on the Brive-Calais sleeper train for a big chunk of the way home, instead of driving. I'm feeling much, much better for the trip, in many ways - I got an awful lot of work done (much more, I think, than I would have done if I'd been at home for the week, and in much less time), work I'm very pleased with at that; I've had enough sleep and general relaxation that I've actually almost got rid of the perpetual bags under my eyes (plus thanks to lack of computer I am no longer suffering from the disquieting slight stabbing pain in my right eyeball that I was starting to develop after too much screen time again); my hair has blondified in the sun and I almost have a tan! At least, I have tan lines, and while they may be inelegant and somewhat unsightly at least it is pleasing to no longer be a reflective surface.

I thought about writing up a trip diary, but decided there isn't really much point, as it would look something like this:

Day 1: drove
Day 2: drove
Day 3: drove
Days 4 through 9: cheerfully and wilfully did bugger all
Day 10: drove, then got on sleeper train
Day 11: disembarked sleeper train, drove

But I have an assortment of fragments of an account, and an awful lot of pictures, alors, some glimpses of a lazy week in the département Tarn-et-Garonne:

( Wirral to St. Avit and back again, illustrated )

So that was the 11 days, in possibly the largest and most unwieldy nutshell that has ever existed.

Back to finishing this New Who article, now, which given that I spent the holiday producing a 28-side plan that pretty much anatomised it on a sentence by sentence basis, should hopefully be a relatively straightforward and painless process. I imagine an HBP review will probably not be too long in coming, either, now that I can finally go see it :D

Am relocating me+work to the south of France until Monday 20th, to accompany Mum and Sis and eventually Aunt. Seeing as last year I missed the family holiday because of dissertation stress, this year I couldn't escape am compromising by bringing work along with me. Should be a quiet, lazy, retreat-type holiday, so my intention is to work hard and hopefully efficiently (absence of internet should help :D) for 4/5hrs in the mornings, then spend the afternoons and evenings swimming and playing cards and Trivial Pursuit and reading and writing fic. I'm hoping that by writing that down, and therefore being accountable to more people, I might actually stick to that plan. We shall see.

Anyway, we are deliberately not taking the computers, so no internet for me until I get back. Hope you all have lots of fun in my absence :)

I have been dreadful at replying to comments this last week, I'm sorry - despite not really having anything much to do, I somehow managed to make myself unreasonably busy. They were all read with yay and interest, though, and I will almost certainly attempt to pick the conversations back up at a point when you've all forgotten about them :D

After ~120hrs of play time, spread over about a year and a half, I finally beat FFXII!

This is actually the first Final Fantasy game I've ever finished ¬_¬ Normally, because I am a lazy gamer who plays RPGs primarily for the story, I blitz through with the minimum amount of training and sidequesting necessary, get to the final boss, realise I'm horrifically underlevelled, briefly contemplate the grinding necessary to finish the game and then give up.

( but I broke the habit )

Instead I'm just sitting here bawling at Father's Day.

GDI I cannot EVEN DEAL with Dead Dad plots.

;_;

First draft of Chapter Two finished @ 11,491 words

Thesis word count progress: 28,121/100,000

Chapter Two is now being set aside until I've finished up the New Who article. I'd probably be feeling more excited/pleased with myself right about now if I didn't know already that this draft of Ch. 2's going to need a lot of revisions when I do come back and redraft, including possibly adding a whole new section that it only occurred to me might be a good idea to include as I was writing the conclusion this morning. Buggeration. I hate sending it off to my supervisors like this, too, no matter how much I try and tell myself that yes, getting feedback on an initial draft from people more knowledgeable than I am is helpful, possibly even essential, and isn't something that should be avoided at all costs out of desperate fear of criticism by never showing anyone anything I write until it is polished and finished and final.

I can't say it's quite sunk in yet.

BUT. I stuck to my work schedule for pretty much the first time all year, I finished what I set out to do this month, and now:

a) It is epically hot here. I imagine people from warmer climes would scoff at my idea of extreme heat, but w/e; as a freckly ginge from the North West coast of England anything above 25 degrees celsius will make me make a beeline for the outdoors wherever possible, burn my skin to a crisp because the idea that you might actually need suncream in this country does not exactly spring readily to mind, and then retire to my fainting couch with a dozy grin on my face and my brain feeling like it's been baked in an oven. This makes me so fucking happy I can't even tell you.
b) My thesis work for the next couple of weeks is "primary text research", by which I mean marathoning every single episode of New Who and Torchwood with a notepad in hand (there may be rambling posts about it as a result).
c) Second week of Wimbledon is about to start, and although I'm gutted Nadal pulled out I fully intend to now devote my energy to cheering on anyone who's playing Andy Murray (screw patriotism, he really gets on my tits, and it's only exacerbated by how much media coverage he gets over here). I really enjoy watching Wimbledon - and other similar big sporting events (been enjoying watching the Confederations Cup over the last couple of weeks, too). Idk why exactly, maybe it's something about the sense of occasion? Or maybe it's because I associate them with my Dad, as it was thanks to wanting to spend more time and bond more with him that I got interested in sports at all. Who knows.

Anyway, in short: GOOD TIMES. Fingers crossed they'll last a little while.

I am now going to give myself an afternoon of total freedom, and go wandering with Hazel around Liverpool bare-legged, bare-armed and sandal-ed, before going to see Sunshine Cleaners in the evening. Hope you all have lovely days too - and so much love for indulging me with that last meme thing; so many interesting comments from everyone (and there are some that I still want to reply to, which I will do, as it keeps bringing up many fun things to talk about)! Kept me very much entertained and stopped me from throwing myself or my thesis out of a window :D