Winter is coming

Just did a quiz on which A Song of Ice and Fire House I belong to and I am, drum roll please, a Stark. Can't say I'm surprised. Now if only I had time to read the books, gah.

You Scored as HOUSE STARK.

Brrr. You hail from House Stark. Your house seat is Winterfell way up North. You are responsible, trustworthy, and know how to be a leader when called upon. You are a workhorse for the realm, and even with all those good things, sometimes you don't come out on top.

Your house motto: Winter is Coming.

House Stark               –         85%

House Greyjoy           –         75%

House Tully                –          75%

House Martell             –         65%

House Targaryen       –          55%

House Tyrell               –          55%

House Baratheon       –          50%

House Arryn               –          50%

House Lannister         –          40%

House Frey                 –          10%

Music: Play crack the sky - Brand New

If your life had a face I'd punch it

Scott Pilgrim is awesome. That is all.

I don't know why that last one cracked me up as much as it did...but it did *shrug*

Music: NCIS is on in the background somewhere

One track mind

Work is blocking travel sites as quickly as I can access them. Seems they are on to me and my trip planning ways. I’m just check things as they come to me, alright? I’m still working too, promise.

Anyway. I’ve been AWOL, apologies. Despite what the above might suggest, work has been entirely mad the last few weeks and I’ve barely had time to breathe. And since it feels like I hardly ever have time at home in front of ze computer, blogging suffers. C’est la vie.

My life at this very moment in time revolves pretty much entirely around airfares. Specifically, how to get out of paying them. It offends my delicate sensibilities to have to deal with how expensive everything is. Wah. And staff travel, it appears, is failing me. While staff are entitled to fly with partner airlines, most of them only allow staff’s children under 24 years of age. I just miss it by mere months! Life is cruel. And yet more proof that it's the worst age ever. You cannot imagine my horror when I discovered this the other night. And, not only that, BA are even more cruel and insist the staff member fly with you or they won’t let you on at all. Sigh.

I know most of you have absolutely no sympathy for me in this particular regard, but you don’t understand. This is a way of life for me. I’ve never known any other kind of travel. And to have it so suddenly yanked out from under me is…well, painful. Woe. Anyway. I can still fly Qantas till I’m 26, so screw all you other airlines. I’m going everywhere they fly before then, dammit! Even though they’re becoming very obnoxious and swapping their routes out with Jestar, like Hawaii *headdesk*

But my very, very, very vague plans until someone at the airport rains on my parade is to fly Qantas to JHB, Lufthansa to London (via Frankfurt) and then probably Swiss Air to NY (via Zurich – which seems a bit counter-intuitive to me, but hey, whatever). I’ll have to buy an actual ticket to get to Honolulu from San Fran/LA, and then I think it’ll maybe work out better for me to fly Honolulu – Sydney, then on to Auckland from here. Or wherever we decide to go when we don't want to come back to this so-called real life.

In other news, travel insurance is rather expensive as well. Don’t they realise I have a very strict budget for this trip? I’d take my chances but it seems like tempting fate…and my mother would have an apoplexy if I left without insurance. Or if I couchsurfed. Which is looking mightily tempting, let me tell you. But never mind. Being broke is all part of the adventure, right? Right.

If only someone would give me a weekend job, and buy my car for a decent amount, I could stop being such an annoying penny-pincher. I don’t think it suits me at all.

Music: Disappearing boy - Green Day

Tired eyes

Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt, we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in this moment this order's tall

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
And I told you to be balanced
And I told you to be kind

In the morning I'll be with you
But it will be a different kind
I'll be holding all the tickets
And you'll be owning all the fines

Come on skinny love what happened here
We suckled on the hope in lite brassieres
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Sullen load is full, so slow on the split

And I told you to be patient
And I told you to be fine
And I told you to be balanced
And I told you to be kind

And now all your love is wasted
And who the hell was I?
I'm breaking at the bridges
And at the end of all your lines

Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall far behind?

Music: Skinny love - Bon Iver

Climbing up the top sails

Hey look, another blog. Shock horror. I guess you can tell that I don’t particularly feel like working this week.

For those following my descent into full-blown geekiness, I finished Watchmen last night. I now understand why a friend of mine insists Matthew Goode was miscast as Ozymandias… but seeing as Ozymandias was the only character I really paid attention to in the movie, I’m not particularly fussed about this. On the page, he’s a bit of a prat. On the screen, I was totally on his side. Vanity? Perhaps. Obviously it’s been ages since I saw the film, but a lot of things make a lot a more sense now – the music, for example. Not that I don’t love the soundtrack (best part of the film really) but I would maybe not have been so quick to burst into hysterical laughter at ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ had I know how it was referenced in the text. This is a big maybe though because unfortunately I can only ever think of Mr Burns when I hear it. Poor Wagner, I’m sure he never anticipated that for his music.

I really do not like Nite Owl though. I kinda just want to smack him around. Don’t know why Rorschach doesn’t do me the favour. Anyway. I should really have read it before I saw the film. It was a pretty faithful adaptation, so it’s not like there was any mystery. It’s a good read - very nuanced, very clever – but it didn’t exactly blow my mind. And I know, I know. It’s supposed to be this genius work and the ultimate of the medium and what have you but…eh *shrug* I liked V for Vendetta more. I read it last week and that was just mind-bendingly good.

You know what else is a good read? One Day by David Nicholls. This book is a modern classic. It does everything a good book should and it’s presented in an interesting, engaging way that’ll keep you hooked. It’s one of those that, if you read it at the right time in your life, defines who you are. Read it before you see the movie. That’s the new rule.

Next on my reading list is the first Sally Lockhart novel and probably Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. I have to say reading graphic novels is much more compatible with work cause I just blitz through them in an evening. I'm one of those people who likes to read a book pretty much in one sitting if I can, all that stop-starting completely puts me off it. I've actually organised my TBR pile in order of the number of pages - anything around the 300 mark I can still finish in one night if I start early enough, so they're at the top. The ones I know will take longer, I'll leave to last.  Like A Game of Thrones which I'm dying to read but it's so huuuuge. I just know I'm never going to be able to put it down. Sadly it'll just have to wait. It seems like a ridiculous system, but if I didn't have one, I'd just end up reading nothing.

Now. Back to the craft shops. Joy.

Music: I'm shipping up to Boston - Dropkick Murphys