Satelite 5

Good news on pretty well all fronts!

1) The wasps seem to have come out of hibernation and given me my bedroom back.
2) The flat sale has finally completed, and I am debt free.
3) I have a new computer, having been without for the last two months. It is a thing of great beauty.
4) I have a fledgling business and have very nearly finished a plan to go away for a month or so. Thailand at the moment, but Australia keeps creeping in at the edges. I really want to to back to Australia.
5) I have been writing. In pen only, and writing on the computer isn't working for me at the moment, but writing has been happening!


After a very long, tortuous sale in York, which doesn't bear thinking about any more and doesn't need to be thought about, I am no longer a property owner. My mother and I are currently looking into rectifying that, to invest the money.

I am also investing in starting my own business, selling gift hampers of stationery. I've got some beautiful storage boxes shaped like books, and I've filled them with notebooks, pens and sticky notes. Everything you could possibly need, I hope. I'm also spending a lot of very enjoyable time seeking out new brands to use, especially in the notebook department. I may actually need to just set up a website selling notebooks, with options to sort by paper colour, lined or not, size, acidity and number of pages. For that, though, I need to learn a lot of coding.

The first thing I was going to buy was a new laptop. My little laptop is 4 years old and not very functional these days, and my desktop is still trucking on but is a bit tucked away in the corner of my bedroom until I get that sorted out. As I do a lot of work in the living room and kitchen, and do like to spend time with my parents sometimes, I needed a new machine that would allow me to do that, so we loaded up a prepaid card that gives cashback off our fuel bills and off we went to Argos - having spent the last three months picking out exactly what I wanted. Went up to buy it and... my mum didn't know the PIN.

So we tried again the next day, once she'd dug it out. That was the wrong PIN and the card was locked. I paid on my card instead, and I've spent a fair bit of the last few days getting to grips with Windows 8.1, installing important software like Sims 3, and trying to plan this trip.

I was hoping to go out in mid-June, see Thanatos Kalos in Borneo, do a teaching course in Thailand and then do a trek across to arrive in Hanoi on my birthday. Unfortunately, the timing for all of that doesn't quite work out, so now I'm reworking my plans and trying to stop Melbourne sneaking in there. It's persistent, though.


Among the stationery I have been collecting are some really lovely sets of letter paper and some card making kits. As I'm really, really into handwriting, actually legible for a change, and have a lovely pink gel pen, would anyone like a letter? PM me your address if you would.

So, I had a fantastic weekend at Towersey, which requires a full and frank writeup, but that is not giong to happen because omg the madness. I am still trying to catch up on my big bang, which is progressing but not fast enough, and realised that a large part of it is in the wrong damn tense. But hey ho.

This is a drive by post to say 'hi, I'm alive!' and that I'm coming to London next week. My mum and I are there from the 13th to the 16th, and I would love to have a get together at Pizza Hut or somewhere similar. (I like Hut, it has awesome memories for me already, and more are always better).

Bearing in mind that we're also seeing a family friend and some of my mum's friends, so I might not have a coice anyway, I made a poll.
[Poll #1775028]

I'm totally not hyper with tiredness. Why would you think that?

Guess what? I'm going away for the weekend!

I was supposed to be at Hub, but various things have conspired, like a lack of money and the fact that a family friend needed more stewards for a festival, and I'm off to a folk festival instead. It will be awesome, because several of my favourite bands are playing, but I'll miss everyone who's at Hub :(

I may or may not have internet access - the pub in the village has wifi, so I may be able to get to that, but I can't guarantee it, so my daily updating schedule for the Timelord!Ianto stories may be disrupted. We shall see.

Whatever happens, I hope that everyone at Hub has a fantastic time, and I'll definitely be back on Monday.

Time to go home, time to go home...

( Fiwen is saying goodbye )

Footsore am I, but in posession of happies.

( A day of fun and much walking )

There are times when Cardiff looks very like Melbourne

( Parts of today were times like that )

Things I learned today of note for Torchwood writers:
As late as 1913, Roald Dahl Plass was a lock allowing fairly large ships entry to a wharf where Lloyd George Avenue is now.
When the docks were working, before the barrage, there was a beach outside the TI office entrance. It wouldn't have been very nice, though, and there were boats pulled up on it.
Mermaid Quay was built up with warehouses and merchant offices. The first million pound deal is believed to have been struck in one of the offices down there.
There were some really interesting ruins at Grey Friars that were only pulled down in 1977. The friary was converted into a mansion.

I have arrived in Cardiff, safe and sound and more than a little giddy. The story of today is under this rather attractive cut.

( Rather attractive cut )

( Tomorrow's plan )

There endeth the first day's inanity

Oh boy. What A Day.

But first...

It has been called to my attention that I was a jerk is the recent wank, and ignored something I should have not ignored. If you know what I'm apologising for, you know what I'm apologising for. If you don't, it doesn't need to be aired any further than it alredy has been. I was a jerk, I wasn't the only one, and I'm going to try to learn from it.

I've been having Thoughts about this since it started really, and I'm going to post them ocne I've found my happy place and can say it without, I hope, coming across as a vindictive, sarcastic, butthurt arse. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Hopefully the whole thing will be over, but I do feel I need to say what's in my head.

That may change when happy place is found, though.

Anyway, today. I:
( Got my flight rearranged on me. )

( Lost my key )

( Missed the bus. )

( Had to pay $100 in excess baggage fees )

( Left my phone in a friend's room. )

( Fell downstairs. )

( Left my wallet behind in her room. )

( Got very very very homesick. )

And that's about the saga up to now. I used GlobalGossip for a while on my ailing internet battery, then found somewhere that would charge Skylar whilst I used their internet, so here I am, typing on a strange Australian keyboard. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Current plans include seeing in the first dawn of the New Year at 5.47, finding my wallet and booking a really nice hotel room and sleeping a lot.