Laligin Tashika's Ramblings

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Back from Hub. Hi folks. Discos were awesome, I reunited with lots of lovely people and met a few EXTRA SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME people for the first time... *waves* XD Went to see La Cage Aux Folles on the Monday, had a cabaret table, saw far more of John Barrowman than I'd ever expected to (or really needed to... ^_^') had a drag queen dance on said table...

Good times.

I'll come back with photos soon. (I know, I always say that. I will, though. I WILL.)


(This, not so good: Because we couldn't have the law be FAIR, now, could we?

This, I think I may be buying: Because this would mollify me now.)

Someone remind me never to try and do text in a circle when my photoshop won't manipulate the text for me. Changing the angle of every letter individually, for every new person's name, is a little... time consuming. And insanity-creating.

And will eventually lead to me giving up and just putting the names in a straight line straight over the top.

See here for a better idea of what I'm talking about.

*headdesk*

Anyway. jantolution Challenge 23 now officially over, with a few particularly nice fics in there. ;) Go read, peoples. They're all oneshots, and they all have happy endings. You know you want to.

No, seriously, I really can!

Remember that magazine I mentioned in my recent LJ post? My co-editor and I are hoping to get it printed and distributed UK-wide. This may not come about but even if it doesn't it will still be printed and distributed on a more local scale around our university.

So. We've set up a very basic website, which we'll be updating and improving as we go, which currently has our submission details.

We take ANYTHING from ANYONE. We don't care where you live!

(Though, fanfic is probably a bad idea. I'd stick to original, since it's for publication. ^_^')

So yeah.

Come, join us.

There's no guarantee of acceptance in this - we'll pick and choose, and may ask potential contributors to make a few changes here or there, and I won't be giving anyone any preferential treatment just because I love you all (I do still love you all, though) but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? (: Give us a go!

- screencap pictures of John Hart's holsters, since I appear to have left my best reference pic at home. (D'oh!) Anyone help?

- This.

- moar jantolution challenge entries! *rawr*

- to stop leaving my automatic signature on emails that include my lecturers. (Miaow)

Hm. I'm (very) behind on comments, let alone updates here. I haven't replied to most of my personal emails for about two weeks. I should be writing more for university but find myself blocked whenever I try. :/ Still haven't written my thank-you letters from my birthday...

Ah well.

I'm involved in running a magazine from uni this year. It's called In the Red and it's a fairly professional production, with professional poets and authors published alongside students from... well, anywhere. The year before last had stuff submitted by people in New Zealand. And those editors have cheerfully informed me and my co-editor, at our first big meeting about it on Friday, that we will have no lives for the rest of the year because we'll be too busy with it.

:/ Oops? Surely it can't be that bad... </famous last words>

Meanwhile, I need to finish my holsters for my John Hart costume, since the Hub in... ohcrap2weeks... may be the last time I'm wearing it for a while.

Meanwhile, I need to get times and stuff sorted for going to the gym with a friend of mine here in L'pool.

Meanwhile, I need to invite more authors to come talk to the book group I've helped said friend set up.

Meanwhile, I need to keep looking at organising the possible trip to Hay on Wye with said book group.

Meanwhile, I need to start getting next summer properly sorted out, especially since the Camp America group I provisionally signed up with have essentially said, "Oh, this clashes with your graduation? Well, tough! You'll just have to skip that once-in-a-lifetime event. Clearly we're much more important, right? Right? Why aren't you emailing back?"

Meanwhile, I need to finish the Jantolution banners and see if I can write a fic for it myself under certain people's assurances I will still be taken seriously as a prompt-setter even if I then submit fic too... ^_^' And I really do want to submit fic for it...

Meanwhile, I need to point out that the Sekrit Superspecialawesome Evol Plans I was working on for Jantolution #25 are apparently being broadcast from my mind on multiple frequencies. Yes, there will be an Amnesty Challenge, any prompts available, from any challenge, in any combination, in any number of fics. Yes, I am looking forward to it with nigh-on demonic glee. (:

Ah, funtiems.

Ack. Officially 21 years of age now. :/ There's a scary thought. But I had lots of lovely messages from YOU PEOPLE (*divehugglomp* Thankyouuu!) and Facebook people, and Email people, and Text people, and In-Person people too.

So, day started off with Ninja Post-its on the wall outside my door. Plus a blue-tacked Jack 'n' Ianto picture from shadowbyrd, of a scene from one of my fics. XD Win. Then we had pancakes for breakfast. And then we made butterfly cakes, which involved me mixing up some nice green buttercream icing stuffs, of a lovely consistency and pastel colour. Vanilla essence makes it taste heavenly, too. (: And I unwrapped my lovely fan-themed, Doctor-Who-wrapped presents from shadowbyrd. (Man From UNCLE book, Flash Gordon DVD, Japanesey doll.) Left my other cards for after uni, 'cause we then had to go in for our induction session. (And give Laura some elf ears, modelled here by shadowbyrd in her elfin outfit.)

And after I got hacked off with that, and finding out my prose tutor this year is the one who's a bit of an anti-fantasy man (among other things preying on me :/) we went round town and I bought, for example, Dexter season 2 on DVD. Which cheered me up a tad.

And then she said her feet were hurting (she *was* wearing her beautiful but agonising previously-unworn high-heeled things) so we headed back to the flat.

And she walked me straight into an EPIC Surprise Party of Awesomeness!

So, while I stood there like a prat, going, "Er... wasnotexpecting..." she wandered back off out, saying she'd be back in a minute.

At which point I managed to burst into tears. (Joy, I assure you. Well. You know. The old, "Has always wanted Surprise!Party and thought no-one ever would and was convincing self that it'd be three of us chatting for half an hour or so whenever Laura brought round my specially baked cake. THIS IS AWESOME AND I LOVE YOU ALL!" sort of tears.) Just about had that under control (with the help of group hug from everyone) and then shadowbyrd walks back in, trailing a ranamag, who'd driven an hour to come join and then snuck around hiding outside while we walked in.

There may have been leaping-over-chairs-ninja-attack-glompage.

Then followed many hours of copious shovelling of party food, Time Warping, Robot-dancing, Pass-the-Parcel with rather brilliant forfeits (catwalk poses, face-pulling, Wizards' Duel and warpaint with Attack Balloons included here), singing, further dancing, pin-the-tail-on-the-dragon, the chocolate game (don't tell me you've never played it!), Fluffy Bunnies (my title, I retain it!), yet more dancing, a Super Smash Brothers melee or six (Gamecube. I even won two, much to the astonishment of the boys. "Not bad for a girl!"), and the obligatory all-the-candles-out-in-one-breath moment.

(: I love my friends. Lovelovelove.

And I'm off to London with shadowbyrd at some awfully early time of the morning tomorrow to see Wicked again. (:

Is good, ya?

Well, there goes another one. I think I saw everyone I expected to be here (except for one, but I just checked and thou wast not present, I see) and I got to quite a few cool things. (Thriller Dance World Record Attempt, anyone? (Vid is one of the practices!) Shoulder step, nothing step, shoulder step, shoulder step!)

Parade also very fun. Somehow I ended up carrying one of the banners for the Doctor Who group, but I still managed to show off my t-shirt plenty, and had lots and lots of yells of support and photos taken all day.

This was the costume. (: The shirt says "Save Eyecandy Jones". I thought it appropriate. Many people agreed. XD

Anywho. Camera's freaking out, so I've only got the first 200 or so pictures I took, rather than the full 300ish. The others will have to wait. I've uploaded some to my Photobucket for the moment. (:

So yeah, good time had by all, though occasionally a bit quiet and occasionally a bit and-now-where-should-I-go? Fun to play Werewolf again, though. And I may have slightly bought a ridiculous amount of t-shirts. :/ Oops.

Home on Wednesday/Thursday, then uni on Sunday. Joy!

Arrived, in hotel, becloaked. (: All good!

Lali:

• owes you beautiful people a lot of comment replies
• has been to the doctor's and was not examined (at all) but apparently is fine, based on the patented One Look Diagnosis
• has been mentally hiding in her shell for ... er ... well, anywhere from a week upwards really. When was I last on here?
• is liking Jantolution at the moment, and hoping you do too
• is gone to DragonCon for a week, not that there'll be a noticeable difference in activity. (But I am taking my laptop and know where there is free Wifi, so, perhaps...)

Anyway. If you're going to be at DragonCon, I will be making every effort to get to the Thriller world record attempt, and most of you know what I look like by now. See you then. ^_^' If not, I hope you have a good week, best of luck with everything, and see you soon.

Right! Guys, seriously, thank you all for the concern, well wishes, suggestions and hugs. That helped a lot with the nerves. ^_^'

According to my eye test I'm in perfect health. (And have 24/12 vision - what's that? Is that better than 20/20 or what? Wikipedia cannot answer me!) So it's not a fault they can detect. And Mr Optician Man says the most likely cause of the blindness is a plain and simple migraine, though the causes of that could be just about anything and I should go see my Doctor.

*blink*

Sorry, unintentional capitalisation there. XD

Anyway. I'm not panicking now, and it's nice to have it confirmed (particularly for my mum, who's been nagging fussing concerned about the possibility of my needing glasses) that my eyesight is fine.

So, next up is a trip to the doctor's. Could still be a vein thing, I guess, but photos of my eyes showed nothing at the back there, so it'd have to be further out. My dear ranamag, who is a med student, I hasten to add, reassuringly says it's not likely to be a brain tumour (honestly, I didn't really think that, but I always consider the worst case...) either, since that'd be degenerative symptoms rather than off-'n'-on. (: Jolly good.

Yes. Right. Thank you for the concern. *hugs back* I'll keep you posted of any further developments.

<relief>

Mes cheris, how are you all? Myself, I'm a little nervous. See, I kind of went (temporarily) blind in one eye on Thursday morning.

And it's not the first time recently.

Okay, in more detail:

Since July 10th I've been doing a lot of gardening. Couple of weeks ago, after I'd spent the day digging up some particularly pesky bushes by the roots, I got a bit of a headache in the evening, and a small blind spot in my left eye... which spread to cover my whole left eye in about twenty minutes. We put it down to overexertion bringing on a migraine, and off I went to bed, even going so far as to take some paracetamol (cue gasps - I avoid medication at almost any cost). Was more or less fine the next day, avoided computer screen, TV and books. (Woe.)

And then on Thursday morning the blind spot came back, took out my left eye again, set up some pressure-pain in the right of my brain, and went away again after I'd gone back to bed for an hour. Aside from getting up early, I hadn't done anything out of the ordinary...

Right. So I have an eye test booked in town tomorrow (andIdonotwanttogo). Theories so far include simple migraine (based on: eye strain, some kind of dietary deficiency, or the fact that Mum keeps having the TV volume twice as loud as me and my brother need it), or a haemorrhage in the veins around the eye (or a clot, perhaps?), or some kind of fault in the eye itself.

Or, you know, a brain tumour.

Yeah, Lali has not been at all worried since those suggestions started rolling in. Anyone else have any thoughts?

The thing is, if it wasn't for Dara O'Briain's latest tour, in which he mentioned the top ten "symptoms you should not ignore" and was joking about the first being "sudden blindness" ("Seriously? Who ignores sudden blindness? Hey, guys, who turned out the lights? Ah, never mind, I'll be fine...") I probably would just have ignored the second one as a causeless migraine and not even bothered mentioning it to my Mum.

*sigh*

In other news, my Captain John Hart jacket has half of its braid on, looks not too bad.

And I will get to my many month-old comments soon, I promise.

I've thought hard about this for a week, and I decided that since I already had 4500 words of this written, I should finish it. And that means I'm staying in fandom. Though probably quietly.

Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Word Count: 6354
Summary: Some things are out of Torchwood's league. They're about to tackle two in a day...

Prompt: Jantolution Challenge #21, Crackfic, Amnesia, Releasing A Single

( Attention Seeking )

*dances* And let it begin.

In theory, if I go and write fast, I'll be back before nine with my Jantolution. :/ I do rather want to put it up before Children of Earth, y'see. (Edit: Fail. ^^')

*takes a breath* And I'm still relatively unspoiled. I know... three things, aside from obvious casting stuff that was unavoidable. And I'm looking forward to finding out the rest. (:

Squee.

Also!

Torchwood stuffs in Carlisle! Imagination Station - the comic book shop in the little alcove and up the stairs on Bank Street - has at least two of the official Torchwood mugs (fractionally cheaper than elsewhere) and a few back issues of the magazine. But not the latest magazine, because I bought it. ;)

And the Works, next to Natwest, has hardback copies of John's Anything Goes for £3.99...

Just to let you know, on the offchance you'll be passing by. (:

Tata for the moment.

Ahem. Darlings, tardis_bigbang has gone live with its second round. There are 45 stories, so I hear, all more than 20 thousand words long, and all with lots of lovely beautiful artwork.

So, generic plug for the lot of them and a specific plug for the one I beta-read. XD

Go read "Parallel" by Shadowbyrd!

'tis enjoyable and clever and well worth the time. Action! Danger! Romance! Of a sort! It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry (or at least wince in sympathy), it'll change your life! You'll never look at slugs the same way again... ;)

Right, now I should actually go read a few of the others too. ;) Enjoy.

Right. So. Lali hasn't been sleeping well recently. Lots of nightmares, including a variation on the old "giant spider on the pillow" one, in the form of "spider dropping towards your face from the ceiling". That kept me up a bit, looking for the blasted thing. Kept me awake longer than the giant robot hell bent on smashing my house down around my ears so it could get to me and kill me. (Torchwood made a brief appearance early on in that and were utterly ineffectual. Even in my dreams they can't achieve basic competence.) But not as bad as last night's combination of house-falling-down-with-me-in-it and SADAKO IS TRYING TO KILL YOU! (Yup, the creepy dead girl from The Ring. She had a go at strangling me while I tried to strangle her and the house fell over.) Which is never fun.

And I think I know why I've been stressy and fitful and having such lovely anxiety dreams and other random waking-up-at-three-in-the-morning stuffs, but never mind.

Anyway, the point is, I got up this morning in a hurry and went to evict Mum from the bathroom as soon as she was finished, with the fateful words, "Could we swap places, please, 'cause I'm about to keel over otherwise."

Mum managed to open the door, at which point I keeled over.

I should point out that this is the second time in my life I've ever fainted. The first time was... standing in the self same bathroom doorway. Then, I woke up on the floor with my head an inch or so from the bathroom scales, and a nosebleed. This time, for a little variety, I went in a different direction. Ie, headfirst into the landing window, apparently bashing my ribs on the windowsill, and collapsing on the stacks of books underneath.

Nothing bleeding, nothing broken, but my nose does hurt.

Gave Mum a hell of a fright, too. :/ She insists it was heat-induced and proceeded to steal my duvet and fling my window open so wide I'll have whole hordes of actual!spiders descending upon me tonight, never mind the hallucinatory ones.

Anyway. Torchwood's back on the radio next week, and on TV the week after, so the Radio Times promises me. It depresses me beyond belief that there haven't been lots and lots of adverts for either. :(

Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys
Word Count: 2215
Summary: Ianto's used to waking up in odd situations, but this is one he really wasn't expecting...

Prompt: Jantolution Challenge #20, Spock, Cooking, Team Bonding

( The Evening After )

*repeated woeful headdesk*

I avoid spoilers for so long and so diligently, and then, when I go looking for those lovely new Jack/Ianto pics, you had to say *that* in the comments?

DID NOT KNOW!

): Honestly, first time online in days and this happens?

Didn't even find the pictures, either.

*weeps*

I'm off out to the sunshine. I have comments to reply to and fic to post and much other online stuff to do, but I trust not the internet (unless I'm wearing gloves. Which I'm not. Bonus points to anyone who gets the mangled quote).

Oh, and I have Dreamwidth invitations but that furore seems to be quiet now, I guess... Absinthefairy, you wanted one for your friend before I disappeared to Cornwall (I'll explain later), is that still the case?

*vanishes into the sunshine*