oanja

Two months since I started the new job and it's still pretty nice. Things have gotten a lot more busy, but I like it much better than my previous jobs.

I bought the humble bundle for all the art programs and spend the afternoon installing them. I hope I'll get back to drawing a bit more. I haven't really had a proper art program to use, except an ancient version of photoshop from like 2005. I'm not actually any good at it and with digital art it's all wonky because you can't just look at what your hand is doing, but you need to draw and watch your screen... very complicated. I'm kind of tempted to spend money on some other stuff as well but I managed to stop myself... :'D Good thing too, because I realized I hadn't paid rent yet this month and now my band account balance looks a lot less cushy. I did spend some money paying off more of my credit card dept. I still have too much after the Rome trip in May, which I haven't paid off + everything else I've gotten since, but the other card only has like 200€ on it anymore, which is a relief and I can pay that off later this month and get to the other card after that.

As I'm on the topic of money, I tried to do some math to see how expensive it would be to go to Worldcon 2020 in New Zealand. The flights weren't as bad as I had thought, it was like 1100€ return trip, but when you add to that accommodation and the event tickets + spending money it would be closer to 2500€ trip and no freaking way do I have that kind of money to spend on a holiday!

Especially because I'm thinking of applying for a Advanced Solution-Focused Practitioner training program next spring. The program takes almost two years and costs over 3k all together, so I need to save up for that. It's basically short term therapy/counseling thing, and I feel like I really need it for this new job. It's also useful later if I want to apply for psychotherapy training programs. I can apply for that in two years (need the right kind of job experience first), so it kind of lines up pretty well. It's another expensive program, but I guess it's not so bad considering I didn't have to pay anything for university before this... Also I'm hoping the prices might go down, there has been talk that there aren't enough therapists around and the cost of the training is definitely part of the problem.

It's kind of funny how interested I've become in psychology and counseling in the past year, when back in university I didn't do any psychology courses even though I could have until my last year. (hindsight 20/20). It's also made me wonder if I should get therapy for myself now, but then again you need to do therapy during the psychotherapy training and I don't want to spend the money twice! -_-

I'm thinking I should try to do nanowrimo again this year. I haven't been writing much of anything all year and I feel like the format actually worked well for me the one time I actually finished it. I have a few romance novels plotted out, now I just need to write some words down, which is always the hardest part.

I'm still doing a lot of d&d, I might have a problem... I'm only playing in two games (and I'm thinking I might drop the other game. Tomb of Annihilation just isn't for me, there's so much of just traveling and nothing happening + the plot seems almost non-existent somehow?) The other games starts on Monday. I'm a bit worried about the other players, they are all really young and one player seems obsessed with his drunken master monk being drunk all the time and that seems like a recipe for disaster. I ended up making a new paladin (conquest this time) because paladin was great and this campaign should do to high levels and I'm curious to see how that would be like.

I would really like to play Descend into Avernus, but haven't had luck finding a game yet. (I basically need it to be on a Sunday or Wednesday)

So two games seems like a reasonable amount right? Well the problem is that I'm also DM'ing three games right now... :D Oops? They are all premade modules, so it's less work for me, but there's still prep I need to do. I'm doing Waterdeep Dragon Heist, Dragon of Icespire Peak and then a GM Guild's Module called Call from the Deep. I just like the power too much I think, which I'm not gonna examine more right now xD I am totally a benevolent god though, I think I might be too nice sometimes, but then again I'm still learning the ropes and it feels bad to kill the players, so I've been avoiding that (mitigating damage or splitting the attacks among more than one player most of the time)

Oh and last weekend I went to see arilyn9 and her bf looked at my PC to see how I could upgrade it. As I knew already my graphics card (or driver, I'm not sure what it's called in English) and most of the other components are super old now and I should put about 600-700€ to get new things. Urgh, why does everything cost so much money? I have two graphics cards in mind, one would be cheaper, under 300 but if I put a 150 more I could get a significantly better one, which would then last longer, which would save money in the long run. I'll have to think about it some more. I get paid on the 20th so I have time to figure out how much I want to spend.

Just generally I feel pretty good, I feel like I have a lot of creative energy, which I think was rekindled by d&d, so that's been nice. Work is good, the pets are doing good. One thing I'd like to change would be to somehow get one more irl friend I could hang out with. Hanging out with people online is pretty good for my need to socialize in general, but right now I only have one irl friend, which seems precarious. I went back to find out when messy_kisses died and I totally missed the anniversary, it was on the 17th of September and now I feel guilty about that too, I thought it was in October. I can't believe it's been over a year now. :(

Well that's a cheery note to end the entry on.

Had my birthday on Friday. 33 now... Not sure how to feel about this tbh. Also didn't do anything fun for it, or get presents or cake or anything. Kind of depressing all around.

It's been kind of amazing and fun to follow GoT through twitter. People are always so angry on Mondays now and it's fun to try to figure out what happened in the episode just from rage tweets. :'D I'm so glad I never watched beyond season 2 (I've actually read all the books, but I don't feel invested in those either)

random fandom thought I had today about enemies to lovers pairings and why I don't like them. I think it has something to do with my trust issues and the fact that these types of pairings are usually about the hero and the villain falling for each other and that goes towards my issues about power imbalances and general aversion to conflict. I guess I just can't wrap my head around why anyone would start to like someone they previously thought was their enemy (or as a bad person). The only way I can really see myself liking enemies to lovers is if there's first a real redemption arc for the enemy/villain and I get to see that they've actually changed.
---> of course there are exceptions to these, because I do like arranged marriage fics where the pairing doesn't like each other at first (or at least they think the other person doesn't like them)
--> I also really ship Thor/Loki which could fit into enemies to lovers, except the dynamic doesn't really start out from there
--> I might also be thinking enemies to lovers and villain/hero pairings are the same and they might not be, but I can't really think of any enemies to lovers pairings where the other person isn't the villain...

I may have started creating my own d&d campaign world... oops? (except I think this is peak me, as I love worldbuilding... I think the problems will come from trying to come up with quests and a plot for the thing)

Oh and my Italy trip is next week! How is time going by so quickly???? I've only planned my Naples days so far... I'm afraid I may have kind of bollocksed up the Rome part already, as I haven't booked any tickets in advance. *shrug* idk, I think there'll be a lot of stuff to do anyway even if I don't get to go to all the super touristy places. (and that'll be a reason to go back some day. I think going during the winter would be smart as there wouldn't be so many other tourists around)

Went to Helsinki to see two hockey games this past weekend. Had to take the Onnibus because the trains were super expensive. (the bus tickets were 29€)

This all worked out really well because I got an online friend to go with me so I didn't have to sit alone (which sucks and I don't want to do that again) She's a HPK fan and I wanted to see Jokerit play and both teams had a game this weekend so we went to see both :D

( photooos )

Huh, the trip to England is only a little over a week away! Time is going by so fast. (this is not a good thing) I'm also kind of annoyed with myself for not feeling that excited about the One Direction concert. I wish I was more fandom loyal for longer periods of time, but maybe the concert will rekindle it for me.

I got one of those small suitcases with wheels yesterday, so now I don't have to lug a backpack with me. We'll see how that works out. It's bright light blue, so at least it should be easy to spot on the luggage carousel among all those black cases people have. :D

The Wild have been doing poorly as of late. Three game losing streak... It doesn't look good right now. I just hope they can get into the play-offs still, because if they don't I think the fanbase in Minnesota is going to revolt.  They got a new player on the trade deadline (Jason Pominville and he seems nice enough. There is going to be a short Becoming Wild clip of him tomorrow, I'm curious to see what it's about.) I just wish they would have gotten a defense-man instead, because right now everyone kind of sucks (even Suter and Brodin haven't been at their best)
And the next three games are against Lumbus, the Hawks and the Blues... and they are all doing really well right now. =(

I've been playing so much Dragon Age II, I always forget how much fun it is until I play it again. And then it's all: "One more quest!" for hours and hours.

So I went and took some photos... most of which are from the HP tour (if you discount the 2000+ photos I took of documents and I think we'd better) and I'm posting some now \0/ (because it's not like I should be doing something more productive with my time... oh no, never that!)

( Miscellaneous photos )


( Harry Potter tour photos )

It's actually pretty nice here right now, the sun is shining and everything.
The research down at the Archive has been going pretty well too, so can't really complain (well I might once I actually start reading through all the material and find out if anything I photographed is actually usefull to my topic)

I also think I'll actually have time to look through all the materials I might need! That is pretty good, because I was worried that I wouldn't have enough time. I might actually have too much time on my hands, I have no idea what I should do on Sunday when the Archives are closed. >_> I was thinking that it would be a good chance to go see the Avengers again, but that only takes care of a couple hours.

Oh and a funny thing happened today. This old man asked me for directions and I of course didn't know anything helpful... but the funny bit was that he asked me if I was Canadian and when I said I was from Finland he said "Selanne! The hockey player. He's from Finland, right?" which is all kinds of awesome, because you really don't expect old British dudes to know much about hockey. (which made me think about how I'm missing the games and that made me a bit sad, but hopefully I'll get to see a few games once I get back.)

I'm going to try and find a HMV today and see if Sherlock season two bluray has gotten cheap enough that I want to buy it. I'm also thinking that I should buy Downton Abbey dvd's if they don't cost as much here as they do back home.

The hostel where I'm staying in located right next to the train tracks, which was sort of annoying the first night but since then I've gotten used to the noise...

(This was my third visit to London and this was the first time I actually had Fish & Chips! It was pretty good actually, but I thought the mushed peas were a bit odd. And I also got a huge cup of tea here at the Archives. I bet it had close to 4dl of tea... Gotta love it)

Finally I got my ass into gear and sorted through my Panic! photos.

This first one was taken by arilyn9 though, but the rest are mine. ^_^;



( A lot of photos ahead (and some rambling) )



We went shopping while in London and I got two Austen novels from an awesome bookstore.

( a few other things )

So I went to see messy_kisses this weekend and it was so much fun! I had never been to Turku before so it added an extra dimention of exploration to the visit. messy_kisses was very patient with me and showed me around the city and waited while I played tourist and took pictures of every old looking building. =D

And that of course means: picspam time! \0/
( pics or it didn't happen )

Sent my BBB fic in, so yay for that. \0/ (can't wait for posting to start! I need new fic to read!)

Edinburgh was awesome and I will do an epic picspam about it later, so for now I will share just one, because I want to. ^_^