The Cassandra Complex

... I might look like this:


From here - that was fun! :)

... One of those corny, B grade (barely) ones where some sort of plant gets a case of the mutants and tries to eat everyone.

I am speaking, of course, of my discovery that a vine on the outside of my house had broken in via one of the windows.

The window was already cracked (it had been that way since I bought the house) but the enterprising mutant plant seems to have figured out it was a point of weakness and smashed its way in. That offshoot had since died, leaving little dead leaves all over the floor. I only just discovered it because I was cleaning up the spare room - the broken window was hidden behind permanently closed blinds, under a table.

Freaky.

So I am sitting here waiting for a window dude to arrive to replace the window. And I've decided vines are evil and scary and will be getting rid of the guilty party.

We've finally managed to choose bridesmaid's dresses. The irony, of course, is that we've ended up getting them from the same place I ordered my dress (think of the time we could've saved if we'd just gone there in the first place!).

The colour of choice is claret red (a few shades darker than scarlet). They are going to look uber sexy.

You know you're having a bad day when:

* you find a significant error at work and, when you inform the big boss about it he rants on at you for ten minutes about not having faith in your work (before apologising for shooting the messenger, admittedly);

* it's only your third week in the job so you haven't yet mustered the business knowledge to answer all the questions off the cuff;

* you have a job interview scheduled for said same job - and you haven't had time to study (it seemed to go ok, so we'll see);

* it's your last day of work for a while because you have nail surgery booked, so you have to get everything tied up before you go;

* you have to have two separate performance management meetings with your ex-supervisor and new supervisor, and while they are mostly positive they also give some valid criticisms that you have to take on board (making you feel a bit meh); and

* the button on your pants falls off (lucky you have a long shirt over the top).

It's been a while since I posted any pictures here (hell, it's been a while since I've done any) so here are my latest bits and pieces from dA. Some time in the past few months I've somehow cracked 20,000 views on my page there. Weird.

The building I work in is several stories tall; as a result, it has two elevators in it, of varying reliability. A couple of weeks ago some enterprising soul put a cork board up in each one, so that people can pin notices for various social club events to it rather than using sticky tape on the faux timber walls and scuffing up the laminate.

Each corkboard comes with its allocation of pins with translucent white heads on them.

The instant that these pins became available, people started making art with them. (I also am not immune from the temptation to rearrange.) We started with smiley faces and words like "hi" (there aren't enough pins to go beyond two letters). Once someone had spelled "ho", which I thought was a bit much!

But often the pin art is more abstract - a spread out series of hieroglyphs that I often can't make sense of even if I tip my head to the side.

I guess it's sort of like staring at clouds and seeing a dragon as opposed to a large white fluffy mass. Or one of those visual puzzles that you can either see as a person with a long nose or a duck. Sometimes you can see it, and sometimes you need someone to tell you what the hell it's meant to be, and even then you might not be able to figure it out!

…

Anyway, onto other things, we still don't have bridesmaid's dresses yet. We'd organised to go shopping at Harts last weekend but it was still closed due to water damage from the severe storm we'd had earlier in the week. You could smell the carpet rotting from under the door - it was gross. Not their fault, but it's starting to get a bit frustrating.

And on WoW news, I've taken ages to get my main character to the new level of 70 since the supplement came out. There were a few weeks where I was only playing it once a week rather than more often, which slowed me down. But I am now at 68 and because I'm playing a druid that means I get access to a flight form I can use in the new areas. Soaring along as a crow over mobs that would like to stomp my face in is rather fun!

It's eight months out and maybe I am being uber organised, but here's the stuff I have done so far:

Venue - a hotel where we can get married at the same place
Celebrant - and we've done a draft of the ceremony
Cars - one limo, one other
Dress - mine, ordered (I'd link it but can't risk that M. will look here)
Honeymoon - booked. Daydream Island, aww yeah!
Photographer - using Fusion Photography. He's good but awfully expensive. But you get what you pay for and I do NO T want shit photos.

Things I'm currently looking at:

Bridesmaids' dresses - we've looked but haven't yet found one. The colour of choice is likely to be wine red.
Hairstyle - have a few ideas
Shoes - ditto
Bridal registry - I've had the Myer bridal registry package posted out and we'll probably go with them 'cause they are interstate
Wedding rings - started browsing
Flowers - I have some ideas but can't go any further till we have the dresses

But the list of things to do is quite daunting:

Accessories, groom's gear, cake, Bonbonerie (I never even knew what that was till I got engaged, I called them "the little present things on the tables"), invitations, seating plans, menus, eek!

I don't think I can realistically get started on it any sooner though.

...

The engagement party went well. We had spit roast, which was delicious, and lots of friends and family showed up. The only thing that was a bit of a shame (though inevitable) was that I spent so much time running around doing stuff I didn't really get to sit and enjoy myself. Two or three times I was handed a can of something alcoholic and managed not to even get as far as opening it! Whoops! :S

Bloody tags.

I got tagged by Mikey to name my five favourite quotes. This is hard for me because I have a very bad memory for that sort of thing and so must try and remember and then look stuff up (and decide between a number of cool quotes from the one source). But I'll give it a shot.

Bloody Mikey.

1. "For instance, assuming that there is a heaven, who would ever want to go there? Ya know? I mean think about it; it's cool, you're sitting there up on this cloud. It's nice, it's quiet. There's no teachers, there's no parents... but guess what... there's nothing to do! It's fucking boring!" - Happy Harry Hard On, Pump Up the Volume (My all time favourite teen movie - see more cool quotes here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100436/quotes)

2. "Ain't logical. Cuttin' on his own face, rapin' and murdering - Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight ... or if he bothers me … or if there's a woman ... or if I'm gettin' paid - mostly only when I'm gettin' paid. But these Reavers... last ten years they show up like the bogeyman from stories. Eating people alive? Where's that get fun?" - Jayne, Serenity (Trying to pick one quote from that movie is hard, so I just went for one that was funny AND internally consistent! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/quotes)

3. "Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping. Waiting. And though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir, open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have?" - Angelus, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer (All time favourite Buffy quote - he was the best bad guy. http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/buffy/season2/buffy-217.htm)

4. "Oh, yeah, what are you gonna do? Release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark, they shoot bees at you?" - Homer Simpson, The Simpsons (Again, how can you pick just one Simpsons quote? This one gets used a lot around our house so I picked it, but any Ralph Wiggam quote would also do! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096697/quotes)

5. "Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day... a red day... ere the sun rises! Ride now!... Ride now!... Ride! Ride to ruin and the world's ending! Death! Death! Death!" - Theoden, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (That speech always gives me goosebumps when I watch that movie. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/quotes)

I tag Cthu1hu and Capital_Mum.

Haha, revenge is mine!

A new manipulation I did today in the (belated) spirit of the holidays. Ain't she purty?

Christmas is a busy time of year for most people, but as one half of a newly engaged couple who have one half of the combined family in a different state, it's been spastically busy.

On the marriage front, we've secured a venue for the wedding and reception (we're hoping to get married in the courtyard there - it's a rather popular Canberra hotel), and I've started looking at wedding dresses. I've also emailed a few photographers, though only one has gotten back to me so far.

My parents have also agreed to host an engagement party next month, so we will get to organise that soon. It should be fun, I hope! :D

On the Christmas front, we finished our shopping about two weeks before Christmas (the mall was scary, and we got there at opening time!!). Christmas Eve we had a late breakfast with my parents and sister, then drove up to Sydney just after midday. Christmas day was a BBQ with M's family, which is quite a bit bigger than mine - about twice as large, and they weren't even all there! :O

Boxing Day we drove home first thing in the morning, waved hello to the dogs, and then went to a mate's place for our now traditional (it's been three years in a row!) post Christmas left-overs BBQ. It was awesome.

So yesterday, my first day of actual holidays (despite having been on leave since Friday), I spent all day playing Warcraft. Today we went shopping (I got a giant stuffed elephant as a Chrissie present to myself!), and when we got home I played with Photoshop (as above) and tidied up my deviantART page. It's been SOOOOO good.

I am off work till 8th January. And I need it. Since I started this new job in August, things just haven't stopped. What's more, there've been some changes in the management there that mean I don't enjoy working there as much as I thought I would. I miss my old job - I was good enough at it that even though it was busy I could do it with one hand tied behind my back.

Rassenfrassen.