Part-time Ghost

June is on her way home to Oslo, which means I'm officially free not to have a life outside the internet again (not that we spent hours browsing Tumblr together, noo...).

It's been a quiet almost-week, at least partly because of the sporadic opening hours of basically everything over New Years-- but I think we needed that time to just relax. Mostly we've spent time at home, watching movies and Doctor Who although we did go on a bookshop excursion on monday.

New Year's was spent away from home, at gluecookie's house. We made a three-course dinner (a shrimp sallad, baked potatoes with tuna and garlic butter, and gino with vanilla ice cream) and watched the Doctor Who TV movie (there is a Doctor Who story for every holiday!). Also played a round of DW Trivial Pursuit, which is really hard ("What does rapper 50 Cent have in common with a helicopter from The Daemons" IS AN ACTUAL QUESTION).

Other things watched this week includes Pacific Rim (finally! Not really disappointing, but not really what I was expecting either; Tumblr had made me expect more focus on the characters and less giant-robots-fighting-monsters. Luckily I think giant robots fighting monsters is pretty entertaining) Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCHhhh) and The Empty Hearse (I'd... rather not talk about it *Twitch*).

And so, the new year. It's... strange. On one hand 2013 doesn't feel like it's been that long; on the other once I actually think about what I've done this year it's... a lot. Hmm. Some bumps, but a good year overall. Perhaps the best one yet!

I don't really have any New Year's resolutions, but I've promised myself to at least try to write more this year. 2013 has been an absolutely abysmal year writing-wise. Also, try to update LJ/DW more.

Coming up: an End-of-Year book meme and fanmix rec post (bless u 8tracks).

It's almost nine in the evening here, so Christmas has pretty much passed (yes, we go all out on December 24th in Sweden; I'm not sure why that is). I don't think I've ever posted photos of the presents I've received, mostly because I always feel I get much more than I deserve. But it's all very lovely and the food's been nice and I CAN FINALLY WATCH THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD (THOUGH I HAVEN'T YET). So there's that.

I will, however, share a Christmas card. In fact, the only Christmas card I've received this year. Why? Because it's glorious.

( Merry Christmas )

(It took me approximately 30 minutes to upload that to Photobucket. I really, really need that new laptop.)

I am having Thoughts and I want to get them out before I read too many other people's opinions.

Let's begin by saying that (as I'm sure everyone has noticed) I'm not Steven Moffat's greatest fan. I have loads of problems with his time as screenwriter, both when it comes to plot and representation. I almost didn't go to see the special in theaters, partly because I didn't find out they'd actually screen it here until the day before, and even then because I was 90% sure I'd find it disappointing and didn't know if I wanted to spend 140 SEK on a ticket for that. I was fully prepared to stay at home and rewatch The Five Doctors.

That being said, The Day of the Doctor? Was excellent.

I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS?? But I really did love it. I haven't felt like this about New Who in years. Am I catching something? It was lovely, though. Not anywhere near perfect, but no episode ever is-- I think, for me, as someone naturally prone to nitpicking, it's more a question of whether I enjoy something to the extent that I'll be willing to overlook the less good bits and usually Moffat doesn't do that for me. Except this time he did.

It probably also helped to be surrounded by other fans who were just as pumped as we were. The theatre was almost full, and that was the second screening we attended, not the first (it was sold out). Take that, mum, who thought we would be the only ones silly enough to go (hah!!1).

"We" were me, stalkerbunny, another friend, my sister and a friend of hers, btw. Sis and friend were not actually caught up on series 7/hadn't watched more than a couple of episodes, but seemed enthusiastic enough and even more so afterwards, which made me happy. I recently got sis to watch some McCoy serials and she's really in love with Seven, so hopefully the months to come will be a successful process of conversion. :D

All that being said, what about the actual episode?

( Some not very concise and spoilery thoughts )

TL;DR it was not what I thought I wanted, but it turned out to be something I wanted anyway. Presumably they sucked all the awesome out of series 7 just to pump it into this special instead. I am okay with that.

Still have The Light at the End left, and have been unable to watch The Five-ish Doctors because BBC hates me, or something.

Life continues and I continue to be ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE at updating this thing.

- Had an exam this friday, located a 45-minute walk from the central station in Uppsala. At 8 AM. So I got up at 4. This worked out surprisingly well, actually; I'm feeling mostly confident I'll pass. I don't really feel that I have time to worry, as I have two more exams this month...

- Somehow managed to convince sis to watch Ghost Light AND Remembrance of the Daleks with me-- perhaps she was feeling charitable that day. I don't think she was overly enthused, but she seemed quite taken with Seven and Ace's relationship (and Seven's sweater). I mean, she said she'd leave the room if I put on another serial but didn't, so I must've done something right. That or she was simply too tired to leave. :P

- stalkerbunny and Anja came over yesterday; we bought a pumpkin and had a pumpkin party. By which I mean we spent four-ish hours making pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup and roasted pumpkin seeds. They were four-ish hours very well spent. <3

- Finished Eight's audios with Mary Shelley today. This means I actually have less than 25 audios left of the main range? V. weird. The extent to which Doctor Who has become a part of my daily routine is actually ridiculous (and a teeny bit frightening).

- Attended NaNoWriMo meet-up here in Stockholm today! It was extremely encouraging-- I actually managed not to be completely socially awkward and exchange words with some people. But as always, the Word Wars are probably the most uplifting part. It's just rather empowering to me as a writer to find that I'm actually able to write something coherent in three minutes based on seemingly incompatible prompts.

And for the first year, we Stockholmers have our own equivalent of the Night of Writing Dangerously! We're supposed to have a sleepover in a cabin north of the city. Sadly, this is the 23rd of November, so I highly doubt I will attend because of obvious reasons.

(A girl sitting near me with a TARDIS wallet has a cry of despair when I pointed it out to her. We bonded a bit over that.)

- New course on the Bible and text interpretation beginning tomorrow. I'm going to have to start carrying a Bible around with me-- I assume this means I'm doing theology studies right.

- Going to see a Lovecraft musical (yes, really) with sis on friday. Also going to start NaNo on friday. And the friday after that, I have another exam. We'll see how this goes, if it goes at all. :P

It's been ages since I updated here, and I haven't been a particularly prolific commenter either, which I'm really sorry about. I promise I've been lurking around, but ironically I've had so many things to do I haven't really thought to write about them. This is mostly because what I'm doing is usually related to uni and about how stressed out I am more often than not, but, you know.

Uni is fun, if frequently frustrating and incredibly demanding both in regards to time and effort. My study group is nice, but inexperienced; three out of five of us are fresh from upper secondary, which has lead to some pretty frantic late evenings of editing. Especially with one group assignment per week...

Other notable events:

- Sylvester McCoy is coming to Uppsala in november. You know, the place where I just happen to study. I have no idea what dark forces the people who run the English Bookshop had to make blood sacrifices to to make this happen, because lord knows there has to be some occult involvement; the English Bookshop can hardly house more than fifty people, if even that (although they moved to a local theater when they realised how many people were interested) and it's. Well, it's Sweden. Sweden is the worst geek country.

(Okay, so we managed Gary Russell this year, but that was at least to one of the country's biggest and only conventions...)

There was a frantic day or two where I desperately tried to contact people who would be interested despite not actually owning a functional cell phone, but the bottom line is: I managed to reserve four tickets.

And if I seem incredibly calm about this it's because I spent thirty minutes running up and down the stairs when I first found out.

- Finally, after three months, got a new cell phone. Haah.

- Started my epic Complete Works of Lovecraft read-through. Have also been reading plenty of EDAs and gone through audios like my life depends on it (finished A Death In the Family today).

stalkerbunny finally came back to Sweden and spent a couple of days at my house, so I've been mostly absent from the internet this week. We didn't really do much except watch movies and cook delicious, delicious food, which was just as well as my eczema started acting up again on wednesday, leaving me feeling pretty extraordinarily shitty.

Other stuff that happened this week:


- Finally applied (and got approved) for student allowance and bought a travel card to Uppsala. So that's pretty much all I can do in preparation for uni done.

- Bought Jago & Litefoot season 4 despite not having season 3 because it was on sale. Some day I'm going to be grateful for this decision, but atm I'm wondering if I'll ever get around to that day. I still have about fifty audios of the main range left, am halfway through season 4 of Gallifrey and have a bunch of other audios lying around. .__.;;

- On friday, dad came home with an almost-complete Beatles discography. I have no idea how or where he acquired them, but it was probably legal.

- Bought Holly Black's latest book, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. Not sure when I'll get around to reading it though, what with uni... also picked up four Hornblower books in Swedish (70s editions, to boot) from the local library because why the hell not. They cost 15 SEK; that's less than two pounds, folks.

- Made a shitty, shitty third Doctor fanmix. So that was one afternoon wasted.


First day of uni tomorrow. Eek.

Haven't updated in a while, mostly because... nothing much has been happening, but at the same time too much has been happening? I don't do much, but I stress about doing things. It's all course registrations and account applications and allowance I need... stupid adult stuff.

Hopefully I'll get a bit better once uni starts and I actually have some structure to work with. Hope springs eternal, and all that.

Other stuff:

- I have become addicted to 8tracks. It's pretty much the only place to find fanmixes these days, which is a shame, but I suppose one has to move with the times.

- I've committed myself to writing a story for a Doctor Who anthology (!) that needs to be finish before november. While I haven't started yet, I think I have a decent outline, so I'm. Really hoping it'll turn out well. This means I don't have much hope to finish the Trope bingo, though hopefully I'll at least get a couple of entries done... but who knows. This project takes precedence.

- Aaand because I have no self-control, and seem to think that the best course of action when you have too many things to do is to do more things, I created a Tumblr for Doctor Who novels. Mostly because I spend way, waaay to much time reading these things and wanted a place to post reviews. Which escalated into posting/reblogging all sorts of other stuff related to the novels.

So that's. What I've been up to the last couple of days. I'm sorry I haven't really left comments anywhere; I still hope you're doing better than I am.

I did the thing. The thing where I watched ALL OF THE CLASSIC WHO. And all of the New Who, for that matter. All of the Doctor Who. All of it.

I feel like I should say a couple of words to mark the occasion, but it's late and I'm mostly writing here because I feel like shit and don't want to go to bed (my normal circadian rhythm lasted for almost a month, go self). While I did have a short moment of "BUT WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH THIS GAPING HOLE IN MY SPARE TIME??" I quickly realised I could just fill it up with more Doctor Who audios and novels. Existential crisis solved.

(Also, I'll have more time to watch other shows. Like, I could actually pick up where I stopped watching Blake's 7 for reasons unknown even to myself. So that's. A thing.)

I do want to do a bit of writing, the way I always want to do a bit of meta or just obnoxiously share my opinions with other people about things I love-- if anyone has anything Who-related (or, um, not Who-related too, I guess) to suggest, that would be cool. I don't know about other people, but I find it a joy to read about other people's love for things. It's why I like The I Like Doctor Who Project a lot.

Rl update: walked in my first Pride Parade on saturday, which was both tedious and wonderful. It was really really hot and almost no wind, and our float (the Teachers' Association and the student council of my old upper secondary school) was near the end of the parade, so we who were there early waited for almost four hours to get going. But once we did, it was great fun; Stockholm Pride always attracts a huge audience, and while the LGBT community frequently criticises it for being too commercial/white male gay-oriented, I found it extremely liberating. It's a triumphant feeling, refusing to be ignored, even if it's only for a week a year.

Of course, the downside to this is that I literally danced 3,5 kilometres for two hours. And have been unable to walk properly for several days because of my blisters.

On the positive side, this is the most grievous bodily harm I've ever received for my sexuality, and it's self-inflicted. :P

Went into town today to run some v. important errands (i e buy comics and art supplies) and went through about as much emotional anguish as hot drinks can cause you as I walked past the tea shop near my old school. They had their "summery" flavours out, which included strawberry cheesecake and lemon-meringue.

I. I have no idea how you make meringue work in tea. But I want it. Curse my expensive taste.

If any of you are into comics and are not reading Saga (yes, yes they're comics, graphic novels is a stupid term some elitist twat invented to feel better about enjoying The Sandman) you're seriously missing out. Actually, if you like reading at all and are not reading Saga you're missing out. Is it science fiction or fantasy? We just don't know! But it has amazing worldbuilding, a compelling cast, great dialogue and beautiful art.

Seeing as it's gained so much critical acclaim it never really occured to me to make a proper rec post, but the first volume blew me away and I read the second today so I'm just. Telling you to try it. Seriously.

Still doing terribly at writing, but to everyone's surprise, including my own, I've been drawing more these past couple of days than I have in months, probably (if we count finished products, I mean). I started practising using ink, which has been interesting, as I'm not even particularly apt at painting. But I think that has been good for me; using a new medium I haven't really mastered means I can't have high expectations of myself, and the drawings themselves become more bare and minimalistic than what I normally do.

Behind the cut there are pictures of:

- the third Doctor
- original character
- Dana Scully

( In order of production )

So that's what I've been doing for these past four days. More to come, probably (hopefully?).

Exactly what it says on the tin.

Breaking news first: my university application went through. Starting this autumn, I'll have three years of religious studied at Uppsala university. I don't think there's much to say about this except: squee!

I don't really have much to say about the week that's passed; it was enjoyable, but we didn't really do much. We stayed in a village called Massouri on the island Kalymnos, outside of Kos. Unless you're into rock-climbing, the most strenuous activities available for tourists were sunbathing and plain old bathing. So I've mostly lazed about in the sun, eaten delicious food and read books all week.

(I would've bathed, but salt water is, apparently, terrible for my eczema. I was not aware of this because I seldom get eczema in summer, and when I go swimming here it's usually in fresh water. Because of that, I somewhat foolishly never realised bathing in salt water with dry and irritated skin is literally pouring salt in wounds...).

Haven't taken any photos either, because... frankly I sort of forgot. And I didn't really get the urge to, either.

I have finished five books:

- Shada (the recent novelisation by Gareth Roberts, which was enjoyable enough I suppose)
- Placebo Effect by Gary Russell(a completely random EDA I picked mostly because Wirrn frankly scare the shit out of me-- it was also ok)
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt (The Completely True Account of What Happens To Classics Students, obviously; I greatly enjoyed it)
- H. G Wells' The Time Machine (this week's classic, I guess; interesting in a genre-shaping sort of way, but otherwise pretty dull)
- Goth Opera by Paul Cornell (WHY DOES THIS BOOK EXIST?? HOW DID PAUL CORNELL WRITE SOMETHING THIS BAD??? WHY DID I FORCE MYSELF THROUGH ALL THE 229 PAGES?????)

Also started Blue Remembered Earth by Alistair Reynolds, but haven't finished it yet. So far I've read 32 out of 50 books for the 2013 Reading Challenge on GoodReads. That's already heaps better than last year, when I only managed 21 books in twelve months.

Also, speaking of books, guess what was waiting in the mail (well, at the nearest supermarket for us to fetch anyway)?

( More books )

All in all, a nice vacation, if uneventful. Now I just have to decide what to do with my continued existence...