ZOMG, Slaanesh loves me, seriously. You guys will not believe this...

A couple of years ago, I got a custom scent made for me by S'Amuser perfumers in Cambridge. It was basically perfect on me, the only scent ever to be so - all vanilla and amber and molten gold, and I adored it. Unfortunately, being all-natural, it eventually died on me... and S'Amuser closed down a while back. I thought I'd never have it again.

I managed to find their email address, back in June, and sent them an email. The email bounced, or seemed to. I figured they'd gone out of business and that was going to be the end of it. Much quiet mourning ensued.

Only tonight I just got an email from someone at the company, apologising for her mailbox having mislaid some of her mail! And she has all the supplies! And she's willing to make me up a custom batch just because I was dedicated enough to chase them down! I can have my perfume again!

You all have no idea how happy this makes me. ^_^

Laters,
The Navigator

So I googled "moogle" just now for reasons that are not particularly important, and I am now in stitches over this. (Read the whole way down - this is a rare, golden exception to the "never read comments on the internet" rule!) I also discovered that moogle.co.uk is the homepage of a National Lottery syndicate, bizarrely. I am very confused as to why, and also I thought that was illegal/against the Lottery rules. Someone needs to buy that domain and fill it with actual moogles, stat.

In other news, zeldenthuis, I've just found something for the strange covers collection, in case you haven't heard this: Monumentum doing "Fade to Grey". Italian goth-dark-metallers do weird things. O_O

I'm also currently in love with Mono Inc's "Grown", which I can't find on Youtube but the lyrics are here. Because, well, yes. O_O (Although whoever transcribed those lyrics didn't have a very good ear, but they're close.)

[The administration thanks you for your time. This post was brought to you by http://www.relentlessenergy.com, because there are so many empties around the house now that even I'm starting to wonder if I have a problem. >.> ]

Laters,
Rath

WEGOTTHEHOUSEWOOHOOO!!!!!!!

Ahem. I mean to say, yes, we got our new house in Whitby, and Koi and I will be living on...

CHURCH STREET. Yes. On the very road beneath St Mary's and the Abbey leading up to the 199 Steps, in the middle of the old town, right beneath the wings of the Shadow Over Whitby... in the top two floors of a rickety old little building tucked tight in between its neighbours, with the sun coming through the ceiling and my window overlooking Church Street itself. It is fragging perfect. There is only one place I'd have been happier to get and that would've been the very corner of the West Cliff, but there's nothing going up there so this will do just FINE, thankyou!

And... well, I have nothing to add to this information, really. There is no point in my filling up half a page with capslock when everyone who knows me will be able to guess EXACTLY how I feel about this. ^_^

Laters,
Rath

PS And some kind souls have put a ton of Ingrimm songs on Youtube since I looked last! Yay!

...and I'll be damned indeed, cos the corner shop just down from Kynesim has started stocking Jones cream soda. *_* American cream soda is LOVE, and Jones is better than most if I can't get Fitz's. Meanwhile, speaking of classic American things, I'm still dying of glee over here after finally getting to see SummerSlam last night. I love DX so much. Especially when they bring tanks. ♥

Finally, I would like to draw everyone's attention to the fact that my job with Kynesim is up for grabs. If anyone needs any encouragement to come and work for this company, I'm posting from the office right now and behind me I can hear a conversation about how to get better Internet for Selwyn students by flying an airship above the College and stealing bandwidth from somewhere on Mill Road. If you want a job with a company that is genuinely NOT a haven for brain-dead drones and people who will think you're weird, unlike most companies... you want to work for us. Seriously. And the stuffed squid on my chairback agrees with me. (You get to inherit him, too.)

That's me, anyway. How's everyone?

Laters,
Rath

So, as those of you who read (lj)faithinfire will already know, yesterday I was formally diagnosed with depression. This is a good thing, arguably, as it gives me some framework for handling the overwhelming sense of "oh shit, universe falling to pieces" that I've been suffering for the last few weeks and assuming was somehow entirely my own fault.

So while I was at home feeling sorry for myself and very small indeed, koilungfish went out and came home with lookingforsigns, and they brought me presents! ♥♥♥ There were cookies! And Seiber bought me pizza! And... and, and, and...

There were also a whole five booster packs from the Pirates CSG that Seiber and me have been fangirling over lately! Including one from the "Fire & Steel" expansion that has the gorgeous Switchblade and Scorpion miniatures, which have tiny moving parts! Blades that turn on miniature plastic cogs! Now, Seiber had been lucky enough to get a Switchblade ship, HMS Salient, in our very first packs of boosters and I'd been profoundly jealous. But...

As I tore open the Fire & Steel pack, I saw the glint of silver. My eyes widened. Silver-stamped cards! Black super-rare corner tags! All of them! And...

...three entire cards that went to make up a great, pale, hideous monster of a ship. Grey and black and dust white, the pallid shade of old skin and the rotten muted red of dead, stripped meat. And dazzling, silver, twin scythelike blades...

A super-rare, Cursed-fleet Switchblade. Oh. My. GODS.

Her name is Skin Flayer and she is gorgeous. I cannot believe that a random booster pack my friends grabbed for me as a "please cheer up!" present could manage to be the single most coveted set in the whole expansion - witness the bit of paper that fell out after the Skin Flayer (not to mention the Silver Coffin, the Soul Mark treasure card, and Tabitha McWarren, the Cursed pirate girl who joined the crews of the damned when she threw herself from a clifftop for the sake of a dead pirate lover): a note that read "Congratulations! You just dug up the most sought-after treasure chest in the Pirates of the Cursed Seas Fire and Steel pocketmodel game! It contains every super-rare game piece in the set!"

I mean, how extraordinary is that, in those particular circumstances? I think something out there loves me at least as much as my friends do. ♥♥♥

Laters,
Rath

*IS TEN THOUSAND TIMES DED*

Oh my... I cannot articulate how much I love this, mostly because I am laughing too hard. But seriously, this has just given me an entire year's worth of joy in the space of five minutes.

Okay, everyone knows The Wind Beneath My Wings, right? Here's Michael Ball's version, which I happen to like, for reference (excuse the Xena, but this was the only version of it I could find on Youtube). Classic, slow, sentimental, much loved song you can play at weddings, funerals and your Dad's sixtieth birthday bash. You know the one.

Now, here are my beloved, beloved boys Sonata Arctica (YES, the Finnish metal band, for those of you sitting at the back) doing their version of this pop classic. I... am INCOHERENT, seriously. Oh, my BOYS. This is simultaneously utterly and soaringly gorgeous and the funniest thing I have heard ALL DECADE. ~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~

Dear power metal scene, and Sonata Arctica in particular, I love you very, very much. Please do not ever, ever change, and in particular please do not ever develop ANY sense of how you look to people whose senses of the ridiculous have developed beyond the embryonic. Please keep doing wonderful, ludicrous, utterly unselfconscious things like this for ever and ever, because the world could more easily spare a million scoffers than it could spare one band THIS AWESOME. ^_^

...I would totally dance to this if it ever got played in a club. And if they play it live next time I see them, I bet I cry. ^_^

Laters,
Rath

Yesterday was a definite day of downswing. Mood, luck, Stuff, all rock bottom. Today? Is less than halfway through and already feels like that moment on the way up to the top on a swing, when your insides go over with the force of the lift and the iron frame around you shudders and lurches as your weight and momentum tug on its anchoring, and the wind and sun hit you in the face and it's all too exhilarating to be frightening even if it does feel like you're about to fall off. Today, so far, is good.

And this news article on measuring quantum effects without them realising that you're looking is just the icing on the possibly-existent cake. Apparently, if you can manage to observe reality without changing it, you discover that it is EVEN WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT. Somewhere in the back of the universe, I can hear laughter. ^_^

In other more local news, it's so good to be awake and alive and not half dead with exhaustion for a change. ^_^ I even have a story blocked out in my head, which is great as I've been utterly useless at getting anything into pennable form lately. And today there will be pub food, and useful work, and friends, and also Judgement Day pay-per-view over at Mark's... yep, stuff is good. Life++.

Laters,
The Navigator

PS Also, new best thing ever: Body Shop's brazil nut body butter. I have no idea how it goes from smelling of warm and creamy and, well, brazil nuts in the jar, to smelling like WKD-Iron-Brew-over-hot-charcoal[1] on me, but the fact that it does is frankly just fantastic. Win!

[1] You will learn strange things from pouring alcoholic libations over a disposable barbeque. You may also discover the most unimaginably wonderful caramelised-sugar smell in the world, seriously... ^_^

I didn't post this when I got in last night in the end because it was late and I was exhausted. So Friday's six, first:

1. Finishing work for the holidays! This is very important, obviously.
2. Getting a pack of the bracelet-type glowsticks on our table at the Downing Christmas dinner! And being very amused that all my colleagues were too, ah, mainstream to know what they were and how to make them work. *g* I stole two green ones in honour of DX, and a pink and a blue one just for the hell of it.
3. The fact that the puddings at said Christmas dinner CAME UP THROUGH THE FLOOR. Murray Edwards College (aka New Hall), where we were eating, has a servery area that can be raised through the middle of the dining hall floor, and they used this to bring up the dessert plates! Dimmed lights, sparkthrowers on the corners of the counters, and the James Bond theme as an accompaniment (O_O) - it was a fantastic piece of spectacle. Whoever came up with that one deserves a bonus.
4. Managing, early in the evening, to hit the DJ with one of those long balloons that you blow up and let go of and they go flying across the room. SCORE! (I wasn't even aiming for him, but don't tell anyone.)
5. Playing air guitar to Status Quo in front of all my colleagues. Admittedly that was the only thing they played at the disco that called for air guitar at all, but still. And the video was up on the screens (Rockin' All Over The World, for the record) and my gods, the Quo boys were adorable when they were young. ^_^
6. Stopping off on the way home to lie on the grass out on the fens, just basking in the knowledge that I was free for the next two weeks. I love the night, and the sky, and being alone just sometimes.

Admittedly (lj)naranek stood me up for said dinner, but you can't have everything. *pokes and grins*

And today, ie Saturday:

1. Being on holiday, which is still making me happy!
2. The epic success that was the Triad early-Christmas-dinner. I made a full roast dinner with all the trimmings and ate until I can currently barely move. No fewer than FOUR kinds of pudding were involved. I rock.
3. Getting awesome Christmas presents from my friends, the absolute pinnacle of which has to be the pageful of chibis that deepbluesquee drew for me. There are no words for how thrilled I am with this.
4. Decorating the Christmas tree(s) and getting tinsel all over everything and everywhere, including on my own head (where it still is).
5. Spending the evening belting out Twisted Sister, Lordi, Zodiac Mindwarp, Blue Oyster Cult and Whitesnake. I fucking love proper hard rock. I love feeling my heart lift and my feet tap and not being able to do a damn thing to stop it. And I love how easy it is to do anything from cooking to dishes to cleaning when I've got something to sing along with, too. Best of the night had to be Whitesnake's Saints and Sinners, which was one of the first rock albums I ever owned (taped for me by my cousin when I was only about fourteen) and I always love to hear again. I'm such a sucker for good memories. ^_^
6. The simple delight of hanging out with people I love... and who can reduce me to laughing until I think I'm going to turn inside out. Never underestimate the joys of daft, perverted, and completely deranged friends.

So yeah. Good day. Gooooooood day. *contented sigh* How are you guys?

Hail Slaanesh and happy Christmas,
The Navigator

I just had to move to sitting on a breakfast-bar-style wicker high chair at work, with my laptop, because I came back from the bathroom and found that one of my colleagues has stolen my sofa so he can play Lego Batman with the MD.

I ♥ my job.

Laters,
Rath