Some kind of a thing

There's been a box sitting on my desk for months now with 'FRMR BOSS OF SHIELD' written on it and I keep wanting to make a Nick Fury joke but no one in my office would get it.

Le Bloke needed help with some gardening yesterday, so I decided to walk up to his place. Note the use of the word 'up' there. Sheffield is a very hilly town, and he's decided to live at the top of the tallest of them. I live right down between two smaller ones. It was very warm, and I was very sweaty. I'm sure it's good for me or something though.

My friend Ellie came to rescue me from the lab on Wednesday, and we went for a few pints. Upon asking her whether she had holiday plans, she finally got around to telling me that she'd JUST WON A ROUND THE WORLD TRIP WORTH £20,OOO. People would not have to ask me about holidays if I had won that. I'd have had t-shirts made up the day I found out. The thing of it is, I'd have just deleted the e-mail. It was from soemone she didn't know and said 'congratulations'. It's like they didn't want her to open it. Hmm...

She's also having a Time Team weekend for us all at her parents new house in the country. We're going to go down and camp out in the grounds for a weekend and dig and get pissed. Ah, archaeology.

Tomorrow I have a geekfest thing to go to - a comic and SF sale thing in the town. Then we're going to go see the Beastie Boys movie. I love weekends. Hooray weekends! More of that, I say!

I've spent most of my bank holiday weekend alternating project work with avoiding doing project work. This will be of little surprise to most of you, I fear.

Friday afternoon I got a call that there was a beer festival up at the union. As I am, after all, only human, I headed up. As we'd had a fifteen minute burst of sunshine, everyone thought it would be a good idea to sit outside, where it was bollock-clenchingly freezing. I was cold, shall we say. Beer was good though. And abundant. That night a few of us headed down to a club near my flat, which was less cold. In that it was cloying and sweaty and moist with people. Had a pretty good time though. Le Bloke got ridiculously drunk and started moshing in the rock-y section of the club. I left him at it. Never interrupt a boy in the middle of a mosh.

Saturday I decided to take the whole day off from work, so I got up late and myself and le Bloke walked down to the continental market that was in town for the weekend. We got olives (SO MANY OLIVES), bread and cheese and other delicious vittles, then headed home to eat and nap. And eat and nap we did. Le Bloke had also recently purchased Star Wars Battlefront II for my PS2, so we spent quite a few hours on that, let me tell you. Basically, the laziest day ever.

Yesterday I actually did some work, as the guilt had gotten to be too much even for me. Probably not enough though. We went out for nachos and chicken wings for dinner, then headed to the Union cinema to see True Romance. Gotta love that movie. And rumours of us playing Star Wars when we got home instead of going to bed are probably greatly exagerrated. Probably.

I just watched the new Who that I missed on Saturday night. May have got a bit teary eyed. God I love Ten. Give that man a hug.

Edinburgh was just flipping fantastic.

Saturday we arrived around lunchtime and headed to the hotel, which at that point was still a 'surprise' because le Bloke likes to play mysterious buggers. Turns out we stayed in the Balmoral, which is the most gorgeous hotel I think I've ever seen. lil_nibbler - it was the hotel where we went to see the Serenity press conference. It was so very much too fancy for the likes of me. We had a king-size bed and, best of all, a king-size bath. I think it would probably be vulgar to talk about how many baths I took. Mmm, bath. The massive fuck-off wide-screen tv was nice too, but my heart truly belongs to the bath. Oh, and thingy, whatsisname, him, whatever. Yeah. Mmm, bath.

We headed out to Rose St. to find a place to watch the ruggerby, which was, if anyone watched it, an incredibly frustrating match. Yes, we won, hooray, but my lord it was tough going. That night we found a little Thai place for dinner. Mmm, Thai.

Sunday morning we (and by 'we' I mean 'he' because I was still dead to the world in the Bed-that-All-Other-Beds-Fear-and-Worship at that point) opened the curtains to find that a blizzard had hit Edinburgh. Now to fully understand the joy that this brings, you would have had to be listening to our endless conversations for a fortnight before we left Sheffield about how great it would be if it snowed while we were in Edinburgh. There may have been bouncing. And squeeing. I was quite pleased too.

So out we struck into the storm. Which - yay snow! Our first stop was the castle, but alas it was shutting because of the snow as we got there. The best thing about this is that we now have a fine excuse to go back. A FINE EXCUSE. Next stop was Greyfriar's Kirkyard, on siriaeve's recommendation. I imagine it's a gorgeous place at the best of times, but in the snow it was unbelievable. Plus, I found Voldemort's family! I'll get some pictures up when I get them off the camera. As we were right next door, we had lunch in Greyfriar Bobby's pub, over which I fought a long-drawn battle of Connect Four, which I'm afraid to say ended in a draw. Though at least that prevented either one of us sulking for the rest of the day. Refuelled on fishcakes, haggis and beer, we popped across the road to the Scottish National Museum to while away a few hours. After quite a bit of whiling, we though we'd better drag ousrselves away or waste the entire day looking at flint flakes, so off we headed to Mary King's Close. Unlucky (some might call us 'unprepared', but I would call them 'shut up yer face') bastards that we are, all the tours for the day had already sold out by the time we got there. Lucky for us, neither of us particularly minded heading back to the hotel room of wonderment and joy very much at all.

After a little more rugby, and yet another bath, we navigated our way to a Mexican place where, as well as a rather unpleasant amount of food, we put away a possibly illegal amount of Margaritas. But they were really, really good Margaritas. We stumbled our way back to the hotel where we felt that, though we had probably had an elegant sufficiency of Margaritas, we're not very elegant people, so we made our way into the hotel bar for, wait for it, more Margaritas. And after all those Margaritas I really felt I needed a bath, because, well, because... shut up. I wanted another massive bath. Screw water shortages, I was on holiday.

Stupid today of course, I had to come home. Today sucks. Except for the room service breakfast. That bit was okay I guess. But the rest sucks.

In conclusion, yay Edinburgh!

What's supposed to be happening: Me writing my palynology project which is due in on Monday.

What's actually happening: Watching Greg play Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory while updating my lj. Also reading Cable and Deadpool. God I love Deadpool. Cable's such a dork though.

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!!

As I was, as previously mentioned, on STUPID DIAL-UP at home, here's a quick summary of the whats and whens of my trip home -

Things I did -

1. Ice skating (So much fun)
2. MiniChristmas! (Cooking Christmas dinner for 11 people!)
3. Lots and lots of shopping (Some of it for other people, even)
4. Visited many different kinds of family (Where it snowed!)
5. Ate. Then ate again. Then ate some more. Followed up by some eating. (I'm hungry)
6. Went to the Leinster v. Munster match (GO ON THE LEINSTER!)
7. Had a fun NYE with the likes of jaaam and trinityofone (Absinthe - say no more)
8. Ate some more. (Still hungry)
9. Geeked out in a serious way with trinityofone (More on that later)
10. Also hung out with such luminaries as the_deb, lil_nibbler and siriaeve (YAYS!)
11. Played Trivial Pursuit (And didn't lose) (But didn't win either)
12. Played fast and loose with my punctuation in this post (!;!)

Things I saw -

1. Kong (Large and in charge, but a wee bit flabby round the middle)
2. The African Queen (Which I hadn't seen in years, so it counts as new)
3. Mysterious Skin (ouch)
4. Boa vs. Python (I wish that was a joke)
5. Brokeback Mountain (Broke my heart; lil_nibbler is still crying, I'm pretty sure)
6. Season 2 of Peep Show (The awkward would melt your face right off)
7. Where the Heart Is (Baby David Hewlett)
8. Copious hours of SGAquarium (most often with trinityofone)

Things I gotsed

1. The Naming of Names by Anna Pavord (Best. Book. EVAR.)
2. Paradise Lost, with introductions by Phillip Pullman (Mmm, gratuitous in the best way)
3. Clothes! (A lot of which Im wearing right now, I notice)
4. Blender (Now I can make soup!)
5. Hair dryer and straightener (And look pretty!)
6. MONEY! (Donations always welcome)
7. Perfume (Do I smell or something?)

So all in all a pretty productive break, methinks. Now if only I'd done ANY of the work I'd had planned...

I realise I don't have very much perspective on it yet, but i'm fairly sure that Monday was the best. day. of. my. life.

Who knew that could happen when you have to get up at four in the morning to catch a plane, after not sleeping because you can't breathe for snot? Not I.

lil_nibbler and I got in to Edinburgh by about half eight, which wasn't the most fun thing ever as we couldn't check in to the stupid crappy hostel until three in the afternoon, but whatever. We hung about 'til about ten, when we met up with Kevin, who gave us our tickets for Serenity, and is therefore the best man on the planet. We faffed about the town a bit, waiting for check-in, so we could have a nap, when who should we see but Nathan Fillion doing a bit of shopping on Princes Street. At that point Nibbler pretty much had a psychotic break, and the hero-worship part of my brain overloaded. Us being polite Irish girls who hate making scenes, we continued on our way. Until lunch time, when Kevin sent me a text asking if we might like to go to the press conference. Why yes Kevin, I think we might like that. Like it LIKE A FOX. Which is how we ended up sitting in on the EIFF press conference for the premiere of Serenity. Nibbler almost couldn't stay in the room she was so excited. Also, afraid that people might speak and do things (everyone who knows Nibbler knows what I mean right here). It was much fun. Joss, Chris and the cast all seemed really excitede to be talking about the film, and being at the festival, and the press all seemed pretty positive, though I guess that's par for the course. Nibbler managed to sit through the whole thing, and only gasped a few times when the cast came in. Which didn't give us away as not!press at all, no not at all.

After that we headed to the hostel for a nap, but were too excited to sleep, perhaps understandably. About half six we left the hostel to meet up with some other fans for drinks before the movie. And we didn't nearly forget the tickets at all, no matter what anybody says. We hung about outside the cinema waiting for the cast to arrive, which was cold but fun, talking to other fans. The talent arrives, cue lots of photographs and screaming. And cue queuing for another forty-five minutes to actually get into the theatre, though at least it was indoors queuing, for which I am eternally grateful. So we hand over our cameras and phones and after an introduction from the Director of the EIFF, and a few words from Joss, we watch Serenity.

Yeah, I'll talk about that another time. Suffice it to say, I felt feelings. Many feelings.

Brief Q and A afterwards, mostly crap questions, though Nathan did the Dance of Joy, which can't be a bad thing.

Back to the hostel, to sleep for the first time in about forty hours.

Yesterday there was some pottering about Edinburgh, which is lovely and all, but did kinda get eclipsed by the whole Serenity thing in my brain.

Yeah.

So it looks like the tickets for the screening sold out super-fast. Thus my decision is made for me as I can give my ticket to a poor unfortunate fan who didn't manage to get one in time, seeing as how I'll have seen it two days revious and all. Phew.

So thanks to certain BRILLIANT people who shall remain nameless, lil_nibbler and I look to be going to the world premiere of Serenity in Edinburgh. I refuse to believe it's real until I actually have the ticket in my hand and am sitting in the cinema, but am still ridiculously excited.

They're bringing back This Life! Or, okay, they might be bringing back This Life.
Link. Woo hoo!

Also,
kill Dumbledore, why not?