alytha

Hello,

I'm still alive...and I'm going to post something meaningful one of these days....

But for now: that book meme thing that's going round:

*Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find the fifth sentence.
*Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal.

*Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

"The sergeant looked up at her with an expression of mad gratitude."

For the heretics here who don't recognise that it's from Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters :)

You Are An ISFP

The Artist You are a gifted artist or musician (though your talents may be dormant right now). You enjoy spending your free time in nature. You are good with animals and children. Simply put, you enjoy beauty in all its forms. You live for the simple pleasures in life. Gentle, sensitive, and compassionate - you are good at recognizing people's unspoken needs. In love, you are quiet and sweet yet very passionate. You love easily. You have an underlying love for all living things, and it's easy for you to accept someone into your heart. At work, you do best in an unconventional position. You express yourself well and can work with almost anyone. You would make a good veterinarian, pediatrician, or composer. How you see yourself: Sympathetic, kind, and communicative When other people don't get you, they see you as: Incompetent, insecure, and overly sensitive

That is so not me...
Comments? ;)

From Tracey

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four- George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials- Phillip Pullman.
10 Great Expectations- Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca- Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole .
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

It could have been such a nice day. In fact, it was a pretty nice day up until about 17:45.
Then I noticed that my beloved mp3 player was braindead. The little on-light comes on, but nothing else happens. Empty screen, no music, obviously. My computer doesn't recognise it anymore either. It worked fine this morning, and I didn't drop it or anything. Does anybody have any ideas what else could spontaneously kill an mp3 player?
The only thing I can think of that caused this is the security check at the airport, although I've been through airport controls with it loads of times. My mobile survived it too.
However, my player is pretty old, and the airport equipment is brandnew, so maybe an old system isn't shielded or something.
Now I hope that I can either get the music salvaged somehow, and/or get Luxairport to buy me a new one. I'm grateful for any tech-wizzes reading this who could give me tips about what else I could do.

The second happy event of the day was getting an email from my coworker that an important excel file was mysteriously almost totally deleted. Now I'm afraid that I accidentally did that last Friday, when I selected one person from a drop-down menu in a column, and forgot to undo it before saving. I hope we have backups. If not, I'll have the honour of putting about 400 people back into it. But if I messed it up, I guess that's what I get. It's my responsibility. Just won't help the already weird relationship to the guy in my office (see my last post).

I think I need a hug...

Just noticed that I haven't posted here in almost 3 months, although quite some stuff has happened lately. And for once, it doesn't even involve Apocalyptica. (Except that I got the soundtrack for some obscure Finnish movie (Black Ice), which was made by Apo's frontman. It's really nice.)

So...
As you know, I quit my job as a teacher at the end of March. After doing some freelance language teaching I eventually ended up working for the Luxembourgish civil aviation authority. So if you want a pilot licence, you know who to ask ;)
I spent the last 6 weeks studying regulations and stuff, so by now I'm pretty good with managing current affairs, unless some weird cases show up, which they invariably do, especially when I'm alone at the office. Oh, and the other guy at the office, the one who knows how stuff works, is going on holiday at the end of next week. I'm a bit scared. Fortunately, I'm not allowed to sign licences, so any mistakes I make get caught further up.
The good things about this job are that I don't hate myself and everybody around me anymore. The people are nice, even if the guy at my office is amongst the quietest people I've ever met. (If you ever read this, don't take offense. I like you, but you could really be more talkative ;) ). Also, we get to see all the interesting places at the airport. We've been to the control tower, the radar, and driving up and down the runway between really big Boeing 747-400s :)
I also almost got to fly in a helicopter. I hope I get a second go at it.

I'm also decided to follow through with my plans of getting a hot air balloon licence. As soon as I have the money, as it's going to cost about 3500€. The thing about working in Luxembourgish public service is that it takes them a couple of months to notice that you're there and to start paying you. Another thing that I'm going to do when I get paid again, is finally getting a Seal of Rassilon tattoo. Really really for real, this time, after talking about it for a couple of years.

Speaking of Doctor Who...I really enjoyed season 4. I wasn't sure about Donna coming back, but she proved to be the best companion of the new series, imho. In contrast to Rose and Martha, she's not a doe-eyed girly in love with the Doctor, but a grown-up woman, who can hold her own against him if she has to, and who has a huge amount of compassion behind her loud-mouthed facade. What happened to her at the end of the series was really tragic.

All in all, series 4 had a good average quality. There might not have been any pieces of sheer genius like Blink, but there also weren't any stinkers like last year's Dalek two-parter, which, to be honest, was dreadful. I also prefered this year's finale to last year's. The Doctor turning from Dobby into the Messiah was just not that good an idea and a big letdown after Utopia and Sound of Drums.

As for Journey's End, I'm not quite sure what to think about Doc10.5 and Rose. Is she going to love the next best thing to the man she can never have? Also, what happened to the whole Shadow Proclamation subplot? They declare war across time and space, but after the Doc just says bugger that and flies off, do they just go back to polishing their rhino-horns? Also, I would have liked an explanation for how Rose appeared on various screens throughout the series? And what was she doing in Partners in Crime? If you start thinking about it, the plot has the consistency of swiss cheese.
Now, how long until Christmas?
Although, I'll hopefully get to see David Tennant life-size in Stratford in September. :)

Another thing: I'd really like to write stuff again, now that I have a bit of time, but I don't have any ideas. So I'm grateful for any suggestions, concepts, keywords....heeelp me please!!!!

Got this one from yma2:

Years spent role-playing: On and off, about 8 years?

Favourite three characters: Alytha Es'Tarié (see pic) from Maston, probably the character I got into the most, to the point that she pretty much had a life of her own. Then there was that vampire elf mage thing...He also wanted to infect himself with werewolf, just for the hell of it. I'm sure the GM still has nightmares. Also liked the mage of uncertain gender that I guest-played in Amy's game a couple of times. Forgot his/her/its? name though, unfortunately.

Least favourite character: Never had to take a prefabricated one, so I liked them all.

Male or female characters: Female, mostly.

Oldest character: Alytha was 400-something. Also the character I played for the longest time.
Newest character: Haven't played for ages :( So it would be my D&D teenage elf

Most popular character: Alytha, I guess. Never even got rid of the name again

Character you've (made and) never played: None, I think
Get married: Alytha, almost

Be far too hyper for their own good: Don't think I tend to go for hyper

Star in a horror movie: Elizabeth McDonald, my Malkavian. Victorian teen vampire with a split personality
Star in a video game: Emerald Sactuary, who was some kind of space officer
Make the world a better place: hmm...not really
Have a torrid gay love affair: Can't remember any

Is it really that weird to meet a young lady who goes "ohhhh, shiny" when she sees a weapon?

I went to a meeting where all the ministries and administrations presented their free posts, and ended up at the Ministry of Justice's firearms' licenses department. There was another candidate hanging around there, and the ministry guy said something like "I guess you (the male candidate) are more interested in the subject than the young lady here", to which I couldn't resist but give him THAT smile. After which he apologised.

They seemed slightly scared when I told them that I'm interested in bows and knives and swords and would like to learn more about firearms.

So what's so weird about a girl liking weapons? Are we still that set in traditional gender roles that I betray my natural place in the order of the universe by being interested in ways to kill people?
(It's not as if I'm particularly violent, anyway. [Those headshots were not on purpose. I promise. My bow pulls upward by itself] I just like weapons. They're beautiful. And shiny. In a way, they represent a facet of human nature that we might want to hide. They do have a deadly potential, but it doesn't have to be used. You can be a perfectly innocent person and just like weapons for their own sake.)

I'd be interested in getting some guys' opinion about this, if any are reading this blog ;)

Anyway...it appears that my new post is pretty secure, and it very probably won't be arms licenses. I'm a bit sorry about that but at least it appears that I'll be able to use my English skills in the job I'll get (with the civil aviation administration, taking care of pilots' licenses). And maybe I'll be able to transfer to arms licenses in a couple of years. And fortunately I'm pretty interested in aviation as well. :)

Things look pretty good in general right now. I can't keep from hoping that there won't be a karmic backlash though...

Well, almost.
Ran into an old friend of mine at the concert, which I wrote about last time, er...3 months ago?
So we decided to hang around at the backstage exit after the concert and got autographs and chatted with them, which was really nice. :)
I got home at 2am, and work the next day was not fun. (Pic's me and the sexiest cello player in the world)



Other stuff that happened in the last 3 months:

I quit my job. And I'm feeling much better now. I know this makes me a bad person, but I really really don't like teenagers. They freak me out. They're barely human. And I don't think it's getting better. I wonder how long it's going to take until we get the first student going on a killer spree here in Luxembourg. And I bet it'll be in that school I worked at.

In the meantime I've been working freelance at a private language school, and discovered that I actually like teaching. If it entails working with adult, intelligent, motivated people. (Who wouldn't even think about calling you the c*** word in class)

I'm also getting back into archery (which is why my arms hurt right now) Neglecting it for almost two years because of going crazy due to work hurts. In general, I've found that there are more ways to hurt yourself while doing archery than the minimal chance of actually hitting anything or anyone. Nevertheless, I really love archery. I hope I'll get good enough again to do competitions this summer. I also bought another bow, the fourth one *blushes*. It's a pretty Mongolian style horsebow.


Aaaaand...last but definetely not least...
I got a new job! I passed the exams to get into public service. I don't know which post I'm going to get, but I'm sure to get one. Starting in June :)
At last that nightmare's over.

I'm such a sad geek. But I just found out that Apocalyptica are coming to Luxembourg in March, and, of course, I immediately had to get a ticket. And to tell everybody about it...But well, I like sharing happy feelings.

What else has been going on in my life? I'm going to officially quit my job next week. My extremely well-paid job with 4 months of holidays a year. But I hate every minute of it. And I have no idea what's going to happen next, which is not a feeling I particularly like. Humans are creatures of habit, we like the illusion of knowing what's going on.
But the kind of job I have is not for somebody as mentally "stable" as I am, so, on the whole, I prefer not staying there. (btw, if any of you know anybody who's looking for a slightly weird young lady with an English Lit and Film degree, let me know) (jobwise, I mean. Oh well, romantically too, if he's cute)
As I got tickets for Hamlet in September, one of the first questions to my future employer will be if I can get a week off in September..always a good starting point...

Why can't anything in life ever be easy? Why can't I just be normal?

Ah well..let's see what happens...
btw, a nice quote I found in a book recently: If life gives you lemmings, jump off a cliff.

Good night
Aly

Happy New Year everybody!
Let's hope it will be better than '07, which, with a few exceptions, was pretty rotten...

On the positive side already, my cousin and I have booked tickets to see Hamlet in Stratford next September :)

 

Back again

After an awesome Apocalyptica concert :)
My entire body hurts. Either I'm getting old or I should go to metal concerts more often.

The pics are from a wonderful ride at the Brussels Christmas market, with great steampunky animals and creatures, and very creepy music.

I'm going to see Apocalyptica in Brussels in a month!!
Gotta love unforeseen coincidences. If they're nice.


Happy Aly :)

1. List 7 habits/facts/odd things that characterize you.
2. Tag 7 other people.
3. Don't tag the person who tagged you first and don't say 'Whoever wants to do this'

As requested by elfea:

This is rather difficult actually. I do consider myself to be quite odd but I can't really give any examples. If anybody can help me out here, they're welcome to ;)

1) I get obessions about things or people. They usually go away after a while.
2) I'm far too sarcastic for my own good.
3) I seem to be in contact with most of my best friends only through the internet.
4) I love wearing medieval/larp clothes. Even under "normal" circumstances.

I think that's all I can come up with.
And I don't think I have 7 people to tag :(



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Here's the end of my story, this time for real. Hope you like it :)

The usual disclaimer: Doctor Who and all related characters and stuff are property of the BBC.

Here's chapter 5. Enjoy :)

Remember when I told you the story was over? Well, I lied. :p
Here's chapter 4.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all related characters and stuff are copyrighted to the BBC.
Viaris is mine so don't use it without asking me first.

Here's the 4th and final part of my story. For now, anyway. If you want to know how the story continues, let me know ;)

Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all related characters and stuff are copyrighted to the BBC.

And here we go again...Enjoy :)

Doctor Who and all related characters and species are still property of the BBC.

Here's part 2 of my DW story. Enjoy :)
With greetings and apologies to you know who you are ;)

Doctor Who and all affiliated characters and species is propery of the BBC. No infringement intended.

I'm writing a new DW story, which could end up being pretty long, if all goes well. Feel free to comment and propose any changes to make the established characters look more real. I know that the descriptions are a bit off here, this one wanted to write itself as a screenplay, but I didn't want to :P

The usual disclaimer: Doctor Who and all affiliated characters and races are property of the BBC. No infringement intended.