sit down son

So it dawned on me earlier as I was participating in
♚ THE Merlin Friending Meme! ♛ ► MY THREAD.
Which is not something I normally do, but hey, I like new people? But it dawned on me that I've barely updated in like, a few months. So hello, world! I'm alive.

So what's going on in the world of Meg QUICK RECAP!!

• Still looking for a job. Someday, this search will be lucrative.
• Applying to UNC at Chapel Hill for the archival science program. Went and visited it last week after mum dragged me into Raleigh with her so that I could judge her students' science fair projects. I wondered most of the morning how I got talked into these sorts of things as it involved me waking p at 4:45am. PAINFUL! But Chapel Hill is lovely and I only got a little lost. It's definitely where I hope to be next year.
• I'm still dating Matt. And like, officially dating him. On facebook even. Which still sometimes strikes me as surreal because I've been living in that transitory world for so long, where I'm always leaving for a long ways away very soon so there's no use getting attached. I'm still not entirely not-leaving, but Chapel Hill is not in the category of a long ways away in the least.
• I'm doing laundry, which I still hate, but I hate a little less when it doesn't cost me 8 euros to do in addition to having to haul it around. This is a plus.

Yeah, that's about it for the RL stuff. See why I haven't updated overly much? Not much going ON.

Now for the internetly/fandomy/televisiony stuff.

• Totally addicted to Chuck now. Oh my god, give me geeky spy shows any day of the week, I love it.
• WHITE COLLAR STARTS BACK TONIGHT. I think this may be the cutoff for Jeff Eastin's twitter war with Matt Nix--Go follow White Collar creator @jeffeastin if you aren't already!!
• I'm still sort of sad that I don't have Merlin to look forward to every Saturday at the moment.
• Doctor Who End of Time: Apparently not very liked by the fen 'round these parts, but I enjoyed it despite its failings. I don't tend to get upset with shows unless they like, kill people off that I really don't want killed off [IANTO] or do something really, really stupid and against everything I think the show stands for. I'm a pretty easy fan to please, honestly, when it comes to the canon material! Though some episodes do make me happier than others.
• SOMEONE OUT THERE: explain to me what was going on with Charlie being on Fringe last Monday? Didn't see the Thursday episode, was watching Grey's. But I am so confused. Also what's up with the Monday 9pm spot on Fox?
• SPEAKING OF FOX- I don't really believe they're honestly going to revamp Torchwood for an American audience. It might be wishful thinking, but I doubt they'll follow through on that one.
• Also behind on House on account of it being on at the same time as Chuck. Not cool, guys. Not cool. So many of my shows are in conflict with eachother!! Clearly this is a problem with the TV people and does not mean I watch too many shows. Obviously.
• Someday I'll finish watching SG-1 and get going on my to-watch list again. Provided people stop adding to it, that is.

RPISH NEWS...
Actually, I've been kinda lazy in this aspect of my internet life lately. Cardiff is doing well enough, quiet. Anachronismos is newly opened and doing pretty well for a new game, I think! I need to do stuff in both sometime in the near future...Also doing stuff in my musebox for shits & giggles.

FIC NEWS
Writing a Chuck/White Collar crossover and trying not to think about exactly how many WIPS I have in my files. But then, I don't usually post things/share them unless they're complete, so NO ONE HAS TO KNOW how many of those there really are!! But I do plan to finish/clean up/eventually post this one. So there.

Created chuckxbryce and made a rec list and really need to get around to doing some crossposting there...



UHM, that might be all for now. If you made it through, I SALUTE YOU!

EDIT: OHMG, I had forgotten and I was ever so proud. I have 30gp of free space on my harddrive now! Okay, this is a Big Deal to me because it had been pretty much FULL or ALMOST FULL for...a long time. I've been working on clearing it off and defragging and I now have 30 GB FREE! EXCITEMENT!!! Don't judge me.

See, now if I had the money to upgrade to Win7, I actually could.

[what went away, you may ask? all my old saved anime/manga fanart. I finally have CUT LOOSE! shocking.]

Hey guys! This is a quick note to let you all know I'm signing up for therealljidol, which means a few things!

• More frequent Posts About Things for the next...however long I stay in this competition.
• Me being you know, around more, as soon as I finish off the final bits of ye old awful dissertation thingy.
• AN INTRODUCTION POST. Which is something I don't frequently do and probably should just so you lot know who the hell I am, right? Watch this spot! Well, your flist, this journal, it'll be up later.

So yes! Hopefully this will go well for me and make me less lazy about updating this thing. If you decide you don't want to watch me do this, feel free to just scroll past the entries or defriend, I still very, very rarely make locked posts so if you ever want to swing by again, you're welcome to.

In the works for the next few weeks are also a lot of Merlin-related things, so if you're reading for that, don't worry! I haven't forgotten about you. I'm just busy and was existing on dial-up for the past week.

PS: If I were to offer to make custom layouts for fun, would anyone be interested in it? NOT NOW OF COURSE, THINGS TO DO, but later. Like other characters in the style of this layout. That sort of thing. Just wondering if it would be worthwhile!

In other words, I have, once again, changed my layout. No, we are not looking at that timestamp, we do not consider how long it takes me to code things from scratch, particularly when it's STUFF I HAVE NOT DONE. However, I remain incapable of coding custom comment pages, so I'm back to having them turned off.

HOWEVER.

I am really, really freaking proud of this layout okay. I think it might be the best one I have EVER done, and the past few I hadn't really felt that way about, SO THAT IS SOMETHING. Plus I get to look at Colin Morgan like, constantly while on my flist now. I may at some point do something with blockquotes, but I'm sort of tired of staring at CSS for now and it BASICALLY ALL WORKS OMFG.

Guys. You should have seen me after I'd done battle with the basic layout and sidebar and then came to doing the entries and it worked almost perfectly on the first try. I about died of joy (and then shifted a few things by like, a pixel, shut up).

SOOOO YES. INCREDIBLY MERLIN-CENTRIC LAYOUT IN HONOR OF....well, the show being awesome.

CLICK CLICK CLICK. TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK.

themegaloo



ps- I know the width won't be perfect if you don't have the same screen resolution as me. On my resolution, the right side of the title lines up with the right side of the entries. I may bother to make it so that always happens when I go tinkering about again. ♥ For now, you strange screened people, just IMAGINE.

Nez has said all this, possibly more coherently than I am able at any given point in my life, but I feel the attempt must be made for those of you who are not friends with both of us.

Also for the record it is slightly strange to use icons of people I have actually SEEN AND TALKED TO. Though we did not talk to them today as they were on horses the whole time. Well, most of the time. When they were anywhere near us they were, at least.

So today started off a bit slow, not much was going on, really, we went on another tour of the castle and Nez filmed it, though it will probably never see the light of the internet, but was good fun all the same. Yesterday I managed to fall down this great spiral staircase and bruise my shin, which was annoying and painful and we went back to it today and just were like NOT FALLING, DO NOT FALL, STONE STEPS, THEY HURT. Talked briefly to a few of the crew in the courtyard and found most of their filming today was outside the castle in the woods, until must later when they'd been in a few of the castle corridors. Of course, by then, the castle would be CLOSED so that was of no use to us, even if we COULD get up to whatever corridor they were filming in to watch.

So we went traipsing about the grounds. And found very little for a long while, the Lower Town was a bit wrecked from whatever they'd done last night and the WIND, and no one was about dressing that set so we figured that wasn't on the cards for today, and eventually, we came across Base Camp. Where nothing much other than a lot of horse trailers was going on. So we wandered again, eventually came back to the hill you can see Base Camp from and saw, oh, the horses are out! And the Merlin and Arthur stunt doubles! And a bunch of French knights!

SO YEAH, we followed them down eventually and as we're walking along, here come Bradley and Colin in a car. OMFG. BRILLIANT. EXCITING. WHAT IS GOING ON. We sit up on a hill with a bunch of other families, English, of course, who had been out on holiday and just stumbled across things, chatted, had a grand time just talking and watching them ride up and down this little hill from a distance, etc. Around 3, we get hungry and go back down to town for a snack and the like before coming back up. The castle apparently closes at 5 or so and yesterday we left before it closed so we didn't have to be kicked out. We wandered about a bit and talked to the crew some, because they're really lovely people and good fun to talk to and they get bored during all the waiting times, and they weren't really filming where we were and then.

Suddenly they were.

Everything came RIGHT TO WHERE WE WERE STANDING and no one asked us to leave so really, might as well stay, right? And ended up not FIVE FEET from the two of them, too afraid to take picture lest they realize that we really weren't meant to be there and kick us out, laughing and Bradley eating sneaky biscuits WHILE THEY WERE FILMING HIM FROM BEHIND and just. Oh, it was amazing. We didn't even talk to them, but it was still absolutely brilliant because we were THERE and seeing how it was all done and hearing a story or two about things entirely unrelated and one of the crew members we talked to had worked on Torchwood as well and. Dear god, okay? It was incredible. And I am just so stoked to have gotten to seen ANY of this and to know any of what's to come.

And everyone we HAVE talked to has just been so friendly. Actors and crew alike. I'm really looking forward to seeing what Rupert Young's role is about (Sir Leon, pictures just recently released of him) because he seems like such a nice guy.

But yeah, just so much excitement and fun and glee, and can I ever go back to the normal definition of fangirling something? I really don't think so.

So I've ended up back at Nez's slightly sooner than expected but oh my god, I don't think I've laughed so hard in, in. Oh I don't even know.

Basically amazing, alright. Last night so, she's trying to teach her mum how to use twitter and THE INTERNET IN GENERAL and comparing the back button to the REARVIEW MIRROR and how things aren't just going to disappear, if there's a car back there it's still going to be there when you look again a minute later (probably, there is a logic flaw in this in that the car COULD stop or turn off or the like). So that whole thing had me rolling half off the couch laughing, random other things throughout the night had me rolling all over the place, then she had me watching this show called Hex? By the producers who do Merlin, only several years back, and it's REALLY BRILLIANT only it's one of those things that makes me leap in the air every few minutes and I thin that about had Nez in stitches too, just me jumping about halfway across the room.

THEN WE WENT TO GO TAX HER CAR and her mum backs into a pillar and oh god I don't know why this was so funny, really, but in the end it really quite was. And Nez and I ended up in Harvey Norman's? Running around looking at all the electronics and I drooled over gorgeous kitchen stuff because I a girl girl girl and I like cooking and baking things, only I'm not allowed to make sweets right now bc she's starving herself for Bradley James.

Which leads to the AWESOME of this venture to CAMELOT we're making and how she's going to get one of those brilliant camcorders and we're going to make terribly nerdy video diaries the whole time and hopefully GET THEM IN IT SOMEHOW OH GOD. We're going to be hanging about the castle for like, 4 days, and they're supposed to be filming during that time so THERE IS A CHANCE, OKAY and if not we can just like, try to stalk them around town and stuff.

Was that coherent? Probably not. I probably won't be very coherent if I get to meet COLIN MORGAN okay, I'll go into a ball of flail, it's inescapable. I will try not to and I will try not to make Nez spit anything on Bradley James (though it would be a good conversation starter, she doesn't seem to believe me on this count).

ALSO. Grocery shopping. RANDOM HYSTERICS and scrambling about and laughing about baking everything into one big cake, which is doubly hysterical because there was a huge pile of chilies and scallions and lollipops and then the Bailey's and tampons and the entire lot all mashed together just had us ABOUT FALLING OVER.

And I owe people like, a million tags everywhere because I kept getting sidetracked by things off the computer and I'm getting to those, I SWEAR! You're all fantastic? Er. Those of you actually on my flist that is. Haahahaha.

So now I'm trying not to drool all over myself eating a Melody Pop and you know, breathe and type and all that sort of business.

OH AND IF YOU MADE IT THROUGH THAT AND ARE REMOTELY INTERESTED IN TORCHWOOD, I have a question I've been posing people.

If you could work at Torchwood, with all that's good and bad and ugly and wonderful and everything it involves--Would you do it?

THAT'S ALL. ♥

READ PREVIOUS ENTRY FIRST. This will not make sense otherwise.

( it continues )

And slightly GIP because Arthur amuses me.

Soooo back in Dublin and back to being human again! It's a nice feeling. I was mostly human at the start of the weekend but idiot housemates convinced me to not be for most of the weekend which is a bit of a story in and of itself that I won't get into because. Well because it's just not that terribly interesting.

So I missed every single class last week, but apparently didn't actually miss much outside of a bit of Joyce on account that it was mostly introduction all over again as its new option courses and the Joyce class is the only one that met twice so they got over that a bit. Which means I get thrown right into it now, but I don't mind so much, really. But! I got up and went today only to realize as I was ALMOST THERE that there had been an email. That might have said class was canceled today and moved to Wednesday at some time that I will have to look up again in a minute. I do not retain things read when ill, even vaguely important emails. But it was alright because I ALSO recalled on the journey there that I needed to pop in at the fees office and sign my financial aid checks. There are 3 of them, though I'm not really sure why. And the exchange is apparently better this go round which means I GET MORE MONEY IN EUROS! Huzzah! Roughly 2,000 to survive me til March and I DON'T have to buy ridiculous things like plates and shit this time around. Though I might buy a few because they like to grow legs and wander off, I've noticed.

( Here there be a VERY LONG RAMBLE about the Fees Office and Getting Lost )

Okay I clearly need to update more often again because I have at least two three more points to expound upon and I am probably drowning you all in my verboseness on the subjects here. Oops. And clogging flists. Maybe I'll cut something.

Tangentially related to the fees office ramble (as I was up on campus at 1, not 2, when the damned thing opened again),( Here I ramble about literature, bookshops and sex. In the books, not the bookshops )

The other thing I wanted to mention was this bizarre friendship that's sprung up between me and this undergrad who lives across the Halls and I've met face-to-face twice now. We mostly communicate via very, very random text messages but he asked me over for tea yesterday and I ended up staying and watching TV and exchanging very, very random questions throughout...well a lot of different things on the TV including The Simpsons, Southpark, City of Angels, part of Castaway and a few things I don't know the name of at all. I texted him about socks today. It's all very random and highly entertaining in a completely unexpected way.

Oh hell, one other thing. Merlin. This fandom has eaten my brain, chewed it up and spit it back out into pieces of insanity because I have the beginnings of an AU-But-Sort-of-Not sitting in Word right now that could be epic if I knew more about the workings of politics. I see pointless but entertaining research in my future. Hopefully after I've done something about that essay that's due next week.

Can I write my entire dissertation about sex in Irish lit and how it makes the best visual images? Because this entry shows that I seem to have a strange obsession in that direction.

Now to cut huge chunks of this. Holy god I'm sorry if you read all that.

( [edited in facebook lulz] )