Have finally decided to make my journal friends only, as I've realised how bad it would be if someone actually read this.

I might even get a banner one day.

Did anybody know that Disney's Lion King is loosely based on Hamlet? Apparently so. Pretty snazzy.

Back to work tomorrow and I can't wait. I've spent a week staring blankly at walls and annoying the hell out of Alex. The problem with swine flu isn't the actual illness, it's the fact that you still can't leave the house for a few days after you're better. I've been in such a foul mood - I felt fine but still just had to sit here and gaze longingly out of the window.

I'm just glad it's over - the aches were awful. One morning I woke up, rolled over and actually shrieked it hurt that badly.

Dad's managed to avoid getting it - they gave him Tamiflu immediately when Mum got it because he's 'high-risk' because of his asthma.

Spenceley (at work) went home from work today because he's got it too. He was texting me about what to do and what to expect. I was the first one at Game to get it, you see. It's quite nice to have it out of the way.

I hereby demand that you all run out and purchase this book. Hurry. Go now. Don't waste a second. Failing that, here's a link to Amazon.


I bought it the other day as the third book in the Waterstones' 3 for 2 offer (in other words, I didn't really want it.) But it's brilliant. So different to anything else I've ever read. Thing is, I can't really describe it apart from... sweet.

It takes the form of a series of letters written by the inhabitants of Guernsey to an English author that's writing about their occupation during the war. Eventually she goes for a visit and writes home to her friend and publisher. Each letter writer is given a completely different voice and personality, and you start to feel you know them after just a few letters.

Buy now. Then hurry back and tell me what you think :P

Lol, I have swine flu.

I had a headache from when I woke up but didn't think anything of it really. Just a headache, okay, whatever. So I go to work and I break out in this awful rash thing on my arms and face. I scratch and scratch and eventually work sends me to Boots to get some cream. It doesn't really help, but again, whatever. But then I start having this awful racking coughs and Matt drags me into the staff room and says "I think we should send you home, don't you?"

So yeah, I got to go home four hours early and I don't have to go to work for at least a week. On the downside, I feel like shit. My head is pounding, my skin's all sore from where I've been scratching, I have an awful cough and I feel sick. Oh well, it's just flu, I'll survive.

At least I'm not in trouble with work though. Matt said I get brownie points because I actually turned up at work when I was ill and was sent home not out of my own choice. I feel kind of bad though - Dan had to work a 12 hour shift because they sent me home. I heard him asking his girlfriend on his mobile as I was walking out.

Alex was sent home too. I went downstairs to tell him not to meet me after work and he told his manager why he was there and he got sent home too. He seems okay though, for the minute anyway.

Robyn was staying at home tonight anyway, but she's thinking about staying there for another few days so she doesn't get it too.

Oink.

Oink cough oink.

Only I could break my finger two days before my first exam, aren't I clever?

In other, non-ridiculously-stupid, news.... I adore the Sparhawk books by David Eddings. It's weird, I always think I prefer the Belgariad but when it comes to actually reading the Elenium, it makes me so happy. I kind of want to reread the Tamuli too, but I don't like The Bad Thing that happens.

Surprisingly good mood, considering my finger hurts, work hates me and I have an exam tomorrow.

Sorry, this is a pointless babble post, but I'm sure you'll survive :)

Also, I can't get Miley Cyrus out of my head and I'm so ashamed.

I've knocked To Kill A Mockingbird off my 20 Books Everybody Should Read Challenge. Not a bad book actually.

I spent ages this morning worrying about how to get to work because of the snow, and even more so about how I was going to get home. I get halfway to Sheffield and work rings me and tells me that Meadowhall's closing. I'm so pleased! It was really worrying me what I was going to do if I got out of Meadowhall and all the trains were cancelled.

The snow must be bad if Meadowhall's shut though. It never closes. Ever. The only days it's shut are Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and that's only because nobody wants to go shopping then. Neil said it might be shut tomorrow as well, there's supposed to be a blizzard.

I seem to be into book challenges at the minute, so I thought I'd make up my own. Well, ish. This is the list of 20 books that members of the Book Club Forum voted everybody should read. There's a list for 2008 and one for 2009, so I've decided that I'm going to read all of the books on there. I haven't set myself a timescale, but I've read a fair few of them already, so it shouldn't be a problem.

2008

1) To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
2) Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
3) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
4) The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
5) The Stand - Stephen King
6) Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
7) Discworld series - Terry Pratchett
8) The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
9) Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
10) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
11) The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
12) A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
13) Watership Down - Richard Adams
14)  Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
15) My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
16) 1984 - George Orwell
17) Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
18) The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
19) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
20) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

2009

1) To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
2) My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
3) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4) The Stand - Stephen King
5) Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
6) Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
7) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
8) Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
9) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
10) Crimson Petal and the White - Michael Faber
11) Discworld series - Terry Pratchett
12) Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
13) Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
14) The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
15) 1984 - George Orwell
16) The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
17) His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman
18) Hamlet - Shakespeare
19) Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
20) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

I know a lot of them are repeated on each list, but never mind.

So what do you think? Are there any books that you think shouldn't be on there? Any books that you think should be but aren't?

Look at this. Internet pervert jailed for having sex with young girls. Not so unusual, to be honest. Thing is, he was the IT technician in my school.

There were always jokes about him being a paedophile, but no-one ever took them seriously. He was always around, seemed fairly friendly really. I just can't believe that he was grooming 13 year old girls. It seems like something people that you don't know and will never meet do, not someone you saw pretty much every day for 7 years. It's really freaked me out.

I only found out because a girl from my school posted a link to the story on her Facebook. There's a huuuuge list of 'WTF?' comments from Salts people.

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.

"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon his knees.

Wow. What an amazing book. I've never got round to reading Charles Dickens before, simply because his books always sound so long-winded and tedious. Today, however, I got the 100 Classic Book Collection for my DS and was absentmindedly browsing through when I saw a Christmas Carol and clicked on it. I just started reading the first few lines... and then a few more... and then a few more. I practically read the whole thing in one sitting.

It's definitely one of my favourite books, I never expected it to be so good. The plot starts right away and isn't bogged down by too much description. The description that is present is just so vivid, you can practically smell Victorian England.

I cried at the end, and when Tiny Tim died. I adore this book.

Okay, so last year I got through 115 books. Continuing my yearly challenge to read more books than the year before, lo and behold, we have the 2009 challenge! To be honest, I don't think I'll manage it this year. I've just been so busy I haven't had time to read. But we'll see :)

As always, the really, truly amazing books have been bolded.

1) Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong

2) Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

3) Three Tales from the Arabian Nights by Malcolm and Ursula Lyons

4) Miss Chopsticks by Xinran

5) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

6) The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks

7) To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

8) Out Of My Depth by Emily Barr

9) Making Money by Terry Pratchett

10) Shadow's Edge by Brent Weeks

11) Beyond the Shadows by Brent Weeks

12) Undead and Uneasy by Mary Janice Davidson

13) The Accidental Sorceror by K.E. Mills

14) The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar

15) Men of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong

16) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

17) The Diamond Throne by David Eddings

18) The Ruby Knight by David Eddings

19) The Sapphire Rose by David Eddings

20) The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong

21) Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey

22) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

23) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

24) The Wizard of London by Mercedes Lackey

25) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

26) Charmed Destinies by Mercedes Lackey, Rachel Lee and Catherine Asaro

27) The Kaiser's Last Kiss by Alan Judd

28) Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik

29) Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

30) Female Chauvinist Pigs: Woman and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy

31) Running with the Demon by Terry Brooks

32) Checkout: A Life on the Tills by Anna Sam

33) The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

34) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

35) The Atlantis Code by Charles Brokaw

36) Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons by Lynn Peril

37) Undead and Unworthy by Mary Janice Davidson

38) A Knight of the Word by Terry Brooks

39) Angel Fire East by Terry Brooks

40) Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist

41) Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman

42) The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

43) Undead and Unwelcome by Mary Janice Davidson

44) The Chocolate Bear Burglary by JoAnna Carl

45) The Dresden Files: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

46) The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

47) Foundation Collegium by Mercedes Lackey

Sorry I haven't updated lately, but expect a forthcoming, action-packed update featuring -

Break-ups!
New boyfriends!
50 hour working weeks plus a law degree!
Fancy fake trials where I trip over my law gown!

And much, much more!


Lol. I'll do a real update tonight, as this is purely a procrastination exercise.

To all the Cubs we managed to confuse this evening:

Mafeking is not real. It is a fictional place, much like Narnia. You may even fall through if you touch the back of your wardrobe. You may see it on a map, but the map is lying. They do that sometimes. You may see it in a history book, but it will also probably mention Baden-Powell who is a fictional character, much like Sooty, and therefore it cannot be believed.

It is simply too silly a name to be real and has never been mentioned before in my hearing. It is therefore not real and cannot possibly be a major aspect of how Scouting happened.

Narnia. Seriously.

Aww, I feel all chipmunky.

I'll be posting the London holiday post tomorrow (maybe) as it's in handwritten format with accompanying bad drawings. If not, it might be on Monday when I get back from Sheffield.

I've been all draw-y lately. I've started doing the Everyday Matters challenge. I may post the results, I may not. Aren't I mysterious? :P

In other news, I hate my job. To be fair, it is Back to School season, so it's been jam-packed (at one point on Thursday there was an hour long wait to be served) but even so. I understand that the parents don't want to be there and the nor do the children, but trust me - I want to be there even less. There's absolutely no need to snap and bitch at me if you don't like the shoes I bring out for you. I don't design them, and they're really not that bad.

Also, I know those shoes fit. Your child is lying when they say that they hurt them. It happens a lot. Children want fashion-fit shoes, not Clarks ones, so they say that they don't fit so they don't have to buy them. I've spent three weeks being trained how to assess whether they fit. I know those shoes fit those children. Problem is,  Mummy would never believe her daughter would ever do such a thing, it must be the fault of the nasty shoe lady.

I know I'm a Shoe Monkey, I really do. So called because we spend so much time climbing upstairs. But look.

Obnoxious Parent: I want to try the 3G again.
Shoe Monkey: We tried that three shoes ago.
OP: I want to try it again.
SM: It didn't bit.
OP: I WANT to try it again.
SM: *traipses upstairs to get the afore-mentioned shoe. shockingly, it doesn't fit*
Supervisor: Are you okay there Hannah?
SM: Yeah, but we're having problems trying to get any shoes to fit Daffodil here.
OP: *sniffs* I told her the 3G wouldn't fit.

I hate it. I thought I didn't like Build-a-bear, but looking back, it wasn't so bad. Easier, at any rate. Plus, the children there actually wanted to be there. Plus, all the staff are in their little cliques and all ignore you. One of the supervisors, James, won't stop trying to shock everyone with how crude he can be and it just doesn't affect me. The mananger, Jo, is really nice. She doesn't shout or snap, no matter how many times you fuck up, which is good.

Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a work rant, but I really need a new job.

What can I say, I'm a sucker for pretty books. Although the synopsis sounded interesting too -

'London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of sixteen-year-old Billy Wood, posed by candlelight in a dark stifling attic room, he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle he sets out to solve the crime - but it is Wilde’s unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian life, from society drawing rooms and the bohemian demi-monde to the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in their investigation of what turns out to be a series of brutal killings.'

Don't bother. Go buy a Sherlock Holmes book, cross out 'Holmes' and just write 'Oscar' instead. That's really all this book is. The protaganist even admits as such, he keeps running around going "Whoooo, I'm just like Sherlock Holmes!" over and over again. Well, not quite, but you get the message.

There's even a grand unveiling at the end, where anybody who has ever read a Sherlock Holmes book could guess who dunnit - the person you would least expect, naturally. He speaks like Holmes, and even the narrator has the voice of Watson.

The plot is passable, but the characters are very bland - all except Wilde, who gets a two paragraph description every time he waltzes on to a scene. It's as though the author was so busy glorifying Oscar Wilde that he just couldn't be bothered with any of the other characters. They all get a physical description, but they have no depth. I just didn't care who murdered Billy Wood, I'd have done it myself if it would have made the book end quicker.

It's well written throughout. My only criticism of it is the blatant way Oscar Wilde quotes are rammed in. And I do mean rammed. The flow just seems to stop at most of these moments, so it is rather obvious that the conversation was led that way purely to get another quote in. One or two would have been interesting, almost funny, but there are just so many.

I won't be buying the next one, pretty as they may be.

Today has not been a good day. But you know what? I can deal with that. I've decided that everytime I'm in a bad mood, I'm going to make a list of the things that make me happy at that particular time. Kind of like Things I Love Thursday, but more of a Things I Love Bad-Mood-Day. So here goes...


Also, I did this quiz and got -

The Battleaxe
Deliberate Brutal Love Master (DBLM)

Sharp. Hardened. Dominating. The Battleaxe sweeps all before her, smiting and what not.

You've had a number of serious relationships, so you obviously have many attractive qualities. You're well experienced in dealing with other people's weirdnesses, and it's likely you're good in bed by now, too. Also, like the drunken housewife chucking Heinekens at her no-good husband, you've got a lot of energy.

People can tell you're sophisticated, and so you find yourself the object of infatuations quite often. But it's how you handle yourself in your relationships that gets you the 'brutal' tag. Controlling? Imperious? Overbearing? Yes, please.

Remarkably, you don't mind the same from your men. You've experience enough to take whatever you dish out. Overall, you're a very good person and a capable lover, and when the time comes you'll make a fine divorcee.




Niiice. I'm mean and nasty. Smiting and what not. Huh.

Has anybody read or heard of the following books? I bought them from Amazon using vouchers. Well, kind of. The total was £60-odd and I only had £30 in vouchers... but never mind :)

My Secret: A PostSecret Book - Frank Warren
Pop Babylon - Imogen Edwards-Jones
Superior Saturday - Garth Nix
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Woman and the Rise of Raunch Culture - Ariel Levy
The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be the Artist You Truly Are - Danny Gregory
Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII - Karen Lindsey
Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey

Whoo. I can't wait for them to arrive. Obviously I have read Sherlock Holmes before, but I'm slowly buying them all in that edition as they're all different colours and look pretty on a shelf!


Meme stolen from
hollycore
.

I know it doesn't look like it from the lists above, but I did enjoy the book. It just wasn't as good as I expected to be. I don't think it would have made it on it's own; it's kind of coasting on the success of the other books.