purplerabbits

Well that was a pretty good weekend, and I'm off work today so I have proper time to recover.

Gigantor rocked as usual, and I gave my giant pink skirt an outing for the first time. It's rather fun to dance in, and I danced a lot - it would have been even more if I didn't also want to talk to people, but Gigantor is conflicting like that: the only time you're going to hear these things near a dance floor combined with the only time you get to meet all these people at once. zotz has posted a play list, which stops me having to remember. I do remember disgracefully requesting All The Things She Said, which was correctly ignored in favour of Addicted To Bass, and I am slightly surprised that anyone could even read my request for Ten Dollar Bill later on - I think it read 'you are going to play $10 Bill AREN'T you', only with less spelling and legibility and stuff. What can I say, I was very very drunk by then, and shamelessly galumphing over the stage to get to the dance floor. Two pitchers of Long Island Iced Tea will do that to me, even at Teviot strength, and then there was a pint in between.

So Sunday I was horribly hung over for a bit, then I managed to drag myself out to meet cairmen over a hot chocolate. Now there are those who might say that £4.95 is too much to spend on a hot chocolate, even when it contains coffee, brandy and chantilly cream, and normally I would agree with them. But damn it was good. Curse you Plaisir du Chocolat, it's a good thing I don't really get that chocoholic thing.

And then there was Vaudeville. Earlier in the day I was worried I'd be lonely there, but I'm glad I invited pavlos and then we met joexnz who came in time to get a seat by us. Later on all sorts of other reprobates arrived, including thewomanmeg, figg, scunthorpe, akicif, Jackie and Raz WIDTAOLJ, and oddly, Graeme from work, WINOLJE. Graeme had come because Jenny, who works in the same building as us and is the person who got me into Samba, had said she was in a band there. Which she was, playing the double bass, which is a bloody big instrument, by the way, and an odd choice, along with a guitar and an accordion, to cover Glory Box with.

So there was juggling and falling about and contact juggling with those cute glowy glass spheres, and more acrobatics, and some Mexicans who couldn't remember their own names and diablo and juggling with basketballs while riding a giant unicycle, and a smaller unicycle, and unfortunately a performance poet (but he only did three numbers, of which one was kinda OK) and burlesque and a very attractive lady dressed as a tiger. On the whole it was pretty good. And did I mention I was wearing my gold corset through this? I was, with giant pink skirt and pink shrug. It certainly made me sit up and pay attention and apparently the cleavage was impressive. Well it had to be, I felt it was going to leap up and strangle me a lot of the time. It got too hot for that later, though, so I gave up on the corset before The Ruffness came on so I could dance. And lo, they were good, and people dance, and they were cheerful and laid back and not at all goth, so there.

And then I went home for it was late and I was too knackered to party on.

I'm certainly feeling better. One reason being that after a certain amount of unnecessary hoop jumping I have my new prescription and don't have to worry about Doctors for another 3 months. I also ordered and paid for my glasses. £233 for both pairs, but they will be very nice - and purple! They will arrive on the 5th, apparently, and at the same time I'm getting a free 7 day trial for the new toric daily contacts. They don't go quite up to my prescription, so probably won't work for every day, but they'd be fine for going out. I've cancelled my monthly contact lens contract, which along with my cancelled moblog subscription will pay for the glasses in a year. And the remaining monthlys and the free dailys should cover me for all my goings out until the end of February. So after some boring calculations I feel better about my finances for a while.

And we got rid of the tumble drier and some chairs, leaving only a chest of drawers, a monitor and a wardrobe (plus a fan heater and a dining table bit for the Ivar shelving, but we could just throw those out). I may have takers for the monitor and the chest of drawers, too.

And it's my Icecream drinking party on Friday. From 8pm, at Laputa. There will be icecream and syrups and wafers and sticky liqueurs and you may combine them any way you like. There may also be margueritas...

[Poll #373621]

Weekend was good, even though I seem to have mysteriously bruised my heel and can't walk far without wingeing. Still I made it to the Revolutionary picnic, which was fortunately reached by taxi rather than a Long March. I did try to take a tally of actual revolutionaries present, and made it 5 or 6, but for some reason people look at you funny when you ask this question, even at a revolutionary picnic. I'm fairly certain, though, that there is something ideologically unpure about playing communist anthems on an iPod with its own cute wee speakers... The real coffee vodka went down well, anyway; some might say TOO well. I am not responsible for any people running around like maniacs that may have occurred. I'm told Leila is like that most of the time, anyway.

And today I shall be mostly doing data entry while pressing reload every five minutes. People must entertain me. Dance, my little muppets! Dance!

I feel pants. I want to stomp up and down shouting PANTS at the top of my voice, but people in the office would look at me funny and besides I don't have my stomping boots on.

Neon on Sunday was good. For some value of good. I mean it was free, and the booze was cheap (and nasty) and the musical choices were between OK and excellent, and the venue is a suitably low dive with inadequate seating, and the crowd were very friendly. But. If I go again I'll have to bring my earplugs - I no longer have any tolerance of places that make my ears whistle for hours afterward, and the sound system made my ears hurt at the time as well, which is unusually bad. Yes, I know it wasn't entirely their fault, though I still think that if you're stuck with a crap sound system you could compensate by turning it down instead of up. I'd like to go again, anyway, but it's a school night so I'll save it for special occasions.

On Saturday (working backwards) I finally went to the mythical pub known as The Pond, which had a very fine selection of Central European beer as well as a pond. I only just got there in time for a cheap pint as I got turned round twice while looking for it: Leith confuses me. I did get free barbeque, though, which was very tasty and helped soak up a rather large amount of Schwarzbier.

Soon I can go home, and then I will feel less pants, but I feel the need of human contact, so if you are human and would like to contact me, do ask...

Well that was less of a party and more of an At Home day, but it was no less fun for that. Between 2.30pm and 2.30 in the morning we had about 20 folk including: nickys, skx, hfnuala, chillies, keyeto, dragel23, atropinesulfate
gnomatron, selectnone, akicif, kisin, cairmen and two friends of Hugh's whose names I am embarrassingly forgotten (I think one was an Alex?) As usual the LJ user names outnumbered the non-LJers including Gav, Justin and a late and very loud Andrew W, who I got quite angry with. Still, any party where topics of conversation range from fullerenes to the Kama Sutra has to be good. And there was Sangria and Peach Spritzer and rhubard crumble and cookies and slightly dangerous pakoras and stuff. And I found some lovely bread that Tara had made that I'd completely failed to notice and had it for breakfast today, which was a nice surprise.

I am back at work. Joy. Thanks to my efficient and charming co-workers I didn't have an inbox full of outdated invitations to go to the pub, exhortations to take coloured paper our of the photocopier when you've finished with it etc etc. Thanks to various other snags, snarls and entanglements, though, I also do not have a finished training guide. Grrr. Still, new funding has been awarded (finally) at a somewhat more realistic rate, so my job is safe and I can afford to hire people to stuff the training guide mailout when it does eventually arrive.

Meanwhile I will keep myself strong by looking back over all the good things in the last few days. ( tra-la-la-la I'm back at work and I can cope, yes I can... )

I've been too busy either travelling round London or having fun to update lately. Which is probably a good sign as I'm supposed to be on holiday. Now, however, I am chilling with beer and pringles while I listen to ciphergoth and ergotia make some fascinating noises from downstairs. Haven't heard lilithmagna yet, but no doubt I will...
( so what have I been up to? )

Well, Velvet Chains happened, and people turned up, all but one in dress code and many looking very pretty, and people played, and the music was pretty good apart from the short but totally inappropriate cheesy eighties bit, and people behaved themselves, especially after I'd had a good glare at a certain badly done drag queen who seemed to think that putting on a wig means you have to be bitchy (I know it's not an uncommon view, but I really loathe it).

It was good to see avarita and cairmen, and a number of other LJ types that I'm too crap to remember. I was feeling pretty unperky, so I got a bit restless towards the end and I'm not the best person to ask about what it was like, but I'll probably go back if I feel more up to it next time... (and I did manage to get my corset closed, which felt good even though I decided to loosen it later)

Meanwhile, I'm managing to do some BiCon stuff, and going out to buy curtain hooks and other dull-but-useful stuff. Tonight will be a quiet night in, because many of my friends will be at a bloody wedding, and I don't do weddings. So many useful things may get done which I will feel good about when I am in a better state for feeling good. At least I hope so - it's a strategy that's worked for me in the past. Moop.

I seem to be going to Joy tonight with pavlos, sibelian and Other Paul. I have bought a virulent glowy pink net top to celebrate. I don't know what it's going to be like, but it will certainly make a change... I just spent about eighty quid on clothes, which I can hardly afford. It was only my great will power that I resisted most of the stock of Underground Nation. Having realised that Cyberdog stuff can fit me is going to my head - and I still want the light up belt with the pockets, it just that it's hard to envisage over any skirts that I might wear (and it was 27 quids...)

The most amazing thing I bought today, though, was tights. This won't make sense to anyone who doesn't know me well, but it's been twelve years or more since I've worn tights - it's very weird to be fitting into all this stuff.

Which by a fairly obvious association of ideas leads me to remember that I've only eaten 280 calories today. Must. Eat. Food.

Well, Saturday saw one of the best parties we've had in ages. Including, in no particular order: an interesting new person called Richard, who's just moved into Emmental. Nuala and friends who've just moved to Edinburgh, Hugh, who I haven't seen for ages and who always brings nice booze. Many people looking alarming in tuxedos, including Ian, Charlie, Bobbie, pavlos, and Chris. A number of splendid evening gowns, including ciphergoth's dainty cocktail frock and gothtart's bitch dress. Pretty people, venomous cocktails, a big platter of fruit, intellectual conversation (yes, but what if you are Descartes solipsistic hell?), a lovely mask from Pavlos, Nik looking scary in the evil genius chair, and nobody being sick. Which was nice.