Zorac's LiveJournal

Once again I ventured forth into Oxford in search of jeans. After a long and arduous quest upon which I tried on what seemed like every pair of appropriately sized jeans in the centre of town, I finally settled on something "good enough". That goal achieved, I did potter around the shops a little more, but in the end I decided that I really wasn't feeling up to anything more and beat a hasty retreat in the direction of home.

I am, you see, suffering from some sort of a lurgy- swollen glands and a sore throat, and generally not feeling on top form. Still, one has to soldier on, and it is more of a painful annoyance than a "can't face leaving bed" sort of a thing. I was dosing myself with a lemon and honey concoction suggested by sophie10, until I cleverly ran out of honey. More shopping tomorrow, methinks. Meanwhile, I really need to pop some more vicodin ibuprofen...

Ah, that's better. Anyway, on to the next, and something that probably won't mean anything to those of you who haven't watched Babylon 5. Earlier today, frayer sent me a picture message containing proof that the Psi Corps is, in fact, real. Yes, they're undergoing a re-branding exercise, but they can't hide the truth - I even managed to locate the web page for their assessment centre. Sinister stuff, indeed.

Anyway, back in TVland, I got a bit of a late start with Heroes - not X-Men, the TV show, honest - which definately shows promise, and I'll be eagerly awaiting the next episode (and if the cheerleader's mother turns out not to be Calista Flockhart, I'll be most disappointed). Next up was the season premiere of Lost, to which I say OMGWTFBBQFISHBISCUIT (oops, minor spoiler there) - stay tuned for my comment on next week's episode. After that, came my very late start on Rome - although, to be fair, I was waiting until I finished my way through Colleen McCullough's Roman novels - and I suspect that I'll be romping through the DVDs at high speed. Finally, there was the two-part opener for Battlestar Galactica - why is it that the second half always downloads faster? - which continues the high standard, and certainly gets the third season of to an interesting start.

Right, that's enough for one evening. I'm off to take a happy pill - or, at least, drop one into a nice, hot bath...

I just had a couple of random emails from Amazon. One of them was to apologise for their screw-up in sending me an email over the weekend saying that the Prisoner of Azkaban DVD was available for pre-order. The other was to tell me that they've dropped the price on the Blake's 7 box-set I bought a couple of weeks ago - and are going to refund the difference to my credit card. W00t! Mind you, considering that my sums the other day showed that I've sent well over £3,500 worth of business their way over the last few years, it only seems fair ;-)

Update: Just had another one come through. I like this new new post-sale discount thing!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring to your attention Amkells.co.uk. alnitak pointed this site out to me - the similarities in the site design to Amazon.co.uk are quite breathtaking. For the most blatant example, have a look at their safe shopping guarantee and compare it to that on Amazon - they're word-for-word identical, as is much of the "Where's My Stuff?" etc. section at the bottom of each page. Google searching turns up virtually nothing for amkells other than link shops.

I'm not quite sure what's going on there, but it certainly smells like fish to me.

Updates: The email I fired off to Amazon has had nothing but a form reply so far. Googling for amkells now turns up my LJ on the first page :)

More updates: The information in this comment does lean towards their legitimacy, but on the other hand, the site appears to be down at the moment...

Gacked from Slashdot:

Now for sale on Amazon: Presidential canditates.

The last few days in brief:

Thursday: Saw Return of the King. It was good.
Friday: Made t00by faces at hermorrine via webcam when she wasn't looking. Well, except that she was...
Saturday: Went Xmas shopping in London - traffic very light, Oxford St. not really any busier than a normal Saturday. Found many presents, then had lunch with my aunt in the National Portrait Gallery - a very-nice rooftop-level restaurant with excellent views across the London skyline. Did more shopping, then came home and collapsed.
Sunday: Did the last of my shopping in Oxford, including sever tons of Lush stuff. Saw RotK again with kay_taylor and justamephit. Still good.
Monday: Had birthday. Felt older (OK, not really).

Sundays are strange. They have this weird way of just disappearing into thin air, and I find myself totally unable to account for much of the time that has passed. Admittedly, today I didn't actually crawl out of bed until noon, which really isn't a good start. I headed into town to do some shopping which I cunningly forgot to do yesterday, and got some lunch while I was there, but was back not long after two. Somehow, the six hours since then have gone by without me actually doing very much. I finished sorting out Christmas cards, and have the first one ready to go (folk, on the grounds of having a last posting date of tomorrow - the rest will follow later this week - so let me know your address now if I don't have it and you want a card), but that certainly didn't take all that time. Yes, I checked email and LJ, and played a little MAME, but...

I suspect the laws of relativity are to blame. Perhaps my flat has been zooming around at 99% of the speed of light or somesuch. Yes, that must be it. *t00bs off to work on RS stuff*

This weekend I had my first experience of Thanksgiving, thanks to the wonderful hermorrine. I flew out on Wednesday afternoon and caught the red-eye back on Sunday night, so it was a nice long stay. Thanksgiving itself involved a not inconsiderable amount of cooking - with me acting as sous-chef (making myself useful and trying not to get in the way too much) and turkey-chef (well, there's a first time for everything). Starvation was fended off with cheese (having completely forgot about it last time), as dinner was heading for around 6pm. We had roast turkey with stuffing, green bean casserole and sweet potatoes. The pumpkin pie we put off (for reasons of time and space) until after we got back from the cinema (Love Actually). Yum!

Friday had a much later start (not having turkey to contend with, and also having no great desire to catch the 6am start of the sales), so when we headed out, lunch was the first stop (at Steak 'n Shake, where we had ...er... Steakburgers 'n Shakes). After this, we went shopping for pants (that is, trousers) - hermorrine had heard about my difficulty finding trousers that fit and had selflessly volunteered to help out, in particular with getting me into a pair of jeans (something I haven't worn for many a long year). After that, it was the cinema again (The Haunted Mansion) and then to the store (to stock up on Dew and Reese's, plus getting more immediate necessities).

Saturday featured a Super Sekrit. After that, we had time to kill, and ended up in Starbucks (my first time, despite their omnipresence) before our final cinema trip of the weekend (Brother Bear). After that, we had some rather fine Italian food at Luigi's House (and yes, the Portillo name continues to amuse me). Sunday was a quiet day at home , watching some DVDs (X2, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas and the final part of The 10th Kingdom). Alas, all to soon, it was time to head off to O'Hare to catch the last 'plane home.

Some days it really isn't worth getting out of bed. Or maybe it's the not getting out of bed until after midday part that's the problem. Either way, by the time I'd got myself organised to head into town it was fairly clear that I wasn't going to manage to grab lunch and get to my originally planned showing of Seabiscuit, so I switched to Plan B (watch Finding Nemo again). This left me time to potter around the shops (ooh! shiny discs!) and scope out cocktail kit. I headed down to the cinema to pick up a ticket before getting lunch, only to find that the 3pm showing of Nemo was already sold out and there was a huge queue for the box office (so little chance of getting a ticket and lunch in time for the 3:30 showing), so I switched to plan A' (the later showing of Seabiscuit) and went for pizza. After lunch, the queue was gone, so I went to get my ticket, only to find that contrary to their listings (including the ones on the wall of the cinema), there was in fact no late afternoons showing, only an evening one.

At this point, I decided to cut my losses, finish the shopping and head for home. In the last charity shop I went into, I spotted a book I wanted, except oops: no cash. The first cashpoint I go to, one machine is dead, and the other happily dies whilst dealing with the woman in front of me - apparently debiting her account but not giving her any cash. So I go to another bank, get some money out and head back to the charity shop - only to find that in the mean time somebody has bought the book I wanted. Argh! Clearly I need to do more work on the whole "cutting losses and heading home" thing. Bath ballistics from Lush, comfort food from Sainsbury's and I really do head home. After repeated squeeing at the Prizoner of Azkaban trailer (GIP!) and some "shooting virtual bad guys with a light gun" therapy, I am feeling much better (thankyou, Time Crisis 3). Even so, tomorrow may be the day to try out that whole not-getting-out-of-bed thing. I have wireless internet, so...

Gacked from huskyteer: Mac Eye for the Windows Guy (and there's more hilarity in the archives)

Amazon haven't been winning any prizes for promptness of delivery lately. I had an order go into 'dispatching soon' a week last Friday, but it was only after chasing them up via email that they finally sent my order off (in two packages for some reason) on Saturday. This led to happy!zorac this morning on finally, after many years of waiting, receiving my very own copy of The Lion King on DVD. I shall not squee about the movie any further as I have done so previously. Instead, I shall squee about cute!ickle!beanie!Simba - which leads to a GIP, and goodnight.

Further to this post, I have decided that my flat shall be henceforth known as The T00blerone - partially because I like that name best, but mostly because the walls of my lounge are in fact the colour of a Toblerone box. hanacandi wins a ( Collapse ) for her suggestion. Also, I'm pleased to report that no further trick-or-treaters dared to darken my door.

Saturday saw me making my usual foray into Oxford. This time, head of the agenda were some hair reduction measures, followed by lunch and a movie. I even managed to resist the temptation to spend money on CDs/Games/DVDs for once. The movie in question was the highly entertaining Intolerable Cruelty - we certainly seem to be doing well for rom-coms at the moment, with last month's Down With Love and the upcoming luvvie-fest Love Actually. Also went to Lush and must un-recommend the Xmas Pud ballistic on the grounds of it generating nasty scum and leaving a horrible ring around my bath.

Yesterday followed the usual stay-at-home Sunday formula. An unexpectedly large chunk of the day was taken up by an extended game of Warblade (see the second comment), so it was gone four before I even had lunch, and I have no idea what happened to the rest of the afternoon... After dinner I had a brief Y!M with malachan regarding T00bage Revolutions, and a longer chat with hermorrine (although Y!M's webcam functionality seems to have become unreliable since I upgraded to Panther. Grr).

Oh, and just in case no-one on your friends list has pointed it out to you yet, you can now but more userpics. Unless you have a permanent account, in which case you've already had your limit increased for 15 to 20. No, I'm not gloating, why do you ask?

( Collapse )