Well! I opened up an etsy store here to flog some crafty whotsits that have been cluttering up my desk: http://www.etsy.com/shop/badhandshakes (banner courtsey of the lovely and talented Green, and if you get what the shop name refers to, you're as geeky as me, and we should probably be good friends), and in its first 48 hours of existence, I sold the little felt Sniper and my cat ears hat, so I'm mega chuffed! Also means there's not a great deal in there at the moment, but I plan to make some more cute geeky bits over the next few weeks, and when I'm home over Christmas...Winter's the best time of year for being snuggled in bed with Jack Bauer (not literally), a big stack of fabric, and a pincushion. Cosy.

What the hell, let's stick a big imagey link in there, break up my rambling.

CHECK IT OUT FOLKS



So yeah, I think I might make some Left 4 Dead characters, or I dunno... I'm excited people want to actually spend IRL moneys for my nonsense :D

Hmm. What else? I had a bit of drama of Tuesday- tried out some new imigran injectors for migraine, and ended up having a really horrible and quite harrowing allergic reaction: as soon as I had injected it, my whole body went cold, I lost all feeling in my arms and legs, and suddenly there was a crushing, unbearable pain in my chest, like being punched. My neck swelled up, and suddenly i couldn't breathe or think or talk properly....I knew something was pretty badly wrong. Cut a long story short, I rang NHS direct and they called an ambulance, and promptly got stretchered off the hospital.

I was still, however, lucid enough to be slightly pissed of, while plugged into a heart monitor in the ambulance, when I remembered that I was missing the GamingSoc committee AGM, because I was dead set on a position, godamnit. Kinda messed up my chances a bit there. Ah well. Milo ended up getting the position I wanted, which is okay, because he'll let me frolick around making posters for LAN events, which is what I wanted to anyway. All the fun without the responsibility...and the admin status on the forums...;___: b'awww...

So yeah, they did a heart trace and stuffs, and I'm all okay, so that's good, and they said I could go home, after a few hours, when the pain stopped. I rang up Jon and he scooted all the way from Blackpool in his little car to pick me up from the hospital and cuddle me and take me home, which was lovely. He's damn awesome. <3

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On an unrelated note to ANYTHING, isn't the Uber Steam Five Day Sale kickass? Srs?

I have too many new games to play...and they're all so COOL

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So bedtime now, I think! I'm actually snuggled up with Jon on the sofa at his house under a duvet right now, and he's playing something violent with big trucks in it on the xbox......

zzzzzzzzzzz..........

There's something amusing about my creative writing lectures, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I think it's that all the speakers I have are so incredibly posh; or at least have these very pronounced accents (quite at odds with the distinctly northern students) that whenever they try and say anything vaguely modern or cool they sound like they're inadvertently putting it in inverted commas. Like so,: "Mr Darcy serves as an illustration to the concept of opaque characterisation- you can know him as a character, but never as a 'guy'. " There was another example as well, I can't remember the specifics, but the lecturer misguidedly tried to drop in a "Friends" reference.

Anyhow, although they serve no DIRECT purpose to the course, I quite like to go to them occasionally because they're invariably highbrow, and involve no audience participation- it's like listening to a favourite uncle read you bedtime stories. Apart from the bedtime stories are classic literature, and the uncle is a bit like Stephen Fry.

In other news, Left 4 Dead 2 is everything I wanted it to be! I am incredibly impressed. I'll knock out a review sometime later, but at the moment, suffice to say, I am very happy chainsawing the undead to pieces and manically laughing :D

and also this little TF2 sniper :O



Other than this? My migraines have been fairly brutal and frequent lately. They're getting pretty damn disabling, I'm seeing my doctor on Wednesday, and hoping to hurry along an appointment at the hospital.

I handed in my first ever piece of coursework as a degree student today! Only ten minutes before deadline, too! I knocked it out at the last minute, true to form, but it was fairly easy to bounce along with it, as I was writing an analysis/critique of the set reading notes, I was just dancing from prompt to prompt.
As a sidenote, I've been using this nifty little text editor to work in, while I've been all photosensitive and not a very happy bunny. Dead retro and it takes the strain off my eyes a treat.

L4D2 is out tomorrow, and Jon is coming round mine to LAN it up, providing my brain holds up, and all. I'm really quite psyched for it: I walked those maps of the original countless times, til I felt like I knew the route to every safe room, via rooftops and ladders, better than my own route home. To have new towns, new characters, new weapons, to immerse myself in the zombie apocalypse is good stuff!

Ermm...what else? I've been watching lots of 24, happily three seasons behind the general public, and getting frankly quite excited at the action-y bits. And doing lots of sewing! And jobhunting- running low on cash and it's getting me down somewhat. There are a few potentials, but I have to say work is thin on the ground up here....

Naptiemz nao.

 Oh! And because I'm keeping up with the half-arsed pretence that this is an art blog, here's my latest artistic creation (one of those god-awful "take some charcoal and EXPRESS YOURSELF" assignments).

Completely abandoned this here journal over the last few weeks- it's been a month and a half since I started uni and I've been dead busy, but I swore a PACT with Jon that I'd get back into blogging (and if that isn't the trendiest thing I've said all day, well I don't even!), so here we go.

Moving up to the north and settling in and everything has been a lot smoother than I thought it would be- although I haven't really gotten into the course yet (INCREDIBLY slow start- this time last year on the art foundation I had already produced half a portfolio's worth of stuff! And here we're still rotating jpgs.) I've made friends via the unexpectedly cool Gaming Society- cue lots of all-night LAN sessions, too much Relentless, and a scary amount of "What line from TF2 is best to say during sex" conversations. 
On top of that, I've been in the utterly weird and awesome position of having a long-term long-distance relationship turn into a much much much shorter distance one, and spending a tonne of time with Jon, hanging out, eating cake, shopping for cutlery dividers, driving to Morecambe beach at 4.30am due to rampant insomnia.....it's been fairly cool. 

The bad news: My migraines have got a lot worse since I've been up here- the flickering slides they use in lectures are a terrible trigger, so I've been missing a lot of  classes, which luckily the uni have been understanding about (I'm now in possession of the entire year's worth of Art History notes on a CD...I read ahead and feel very smug). The betablockers I was on have given me asthma, which developed into bronchitis, so I had to switch meds, leaving me a bit out in the cold- I've been migraining three or four times a week, agonising pain, vomitting and strobing and all sorts of fun. I've gone into hibernation- going out in the bleak northern countryside makes my lungs disintegrate, and I want to sleep 20 hours a day anyway. 

All of this staying indoors has had an up side though- I've taken to crafting again....

MEET THE FELT PYRO




I posted him and some other valve-related crafts I've been fiddling with lately, on /v/, on a whim, and got a surprisingly positive reception and more Steam friends than I know quite what to do with. I'm thinking i could make an entire bunch and stick 'em on etsy? Watch this space.

So! Three things, really. I finally got the mural finished, after a rather intense week-long slog of late nights, lots of red bull, sherbet, and dubious 90s pop music, and it is now officially instated in the centre for everyone to enjoy :3

It looks a bit like this




( more pics hereeeeee )
Another thing which is a thing, is that I'm sporting a rather cute new hairdo 8D



Yep, true story.

The THIRD thing is that oh my lord, i'm moving up to university the day after tomorrow. Up the ye olde frozen north. Arghhh! I'm kinda equal parts deliriously excited and slightly horrified. But in a good way. Hrmm. It'll be an adventure, like an RPG with lots of side quests and EXP to be gained.

I guess a secret fourth thing is that I've invented this really cool playlist system that i haven't really told very many people about, of assembling songs (to work to) in a special order that makes you roughly 80% more productive than you would have been otherwise, in my extensive research. But more on this another time....

Life is fairly good.

 About half way through this mural and it is DOING MY BACK IN! I can work on the floor quite comfortably in spurts of about an hour at a time, but because of very poor time management on my half, I'm having to do 8-hour days this week to get this creature done.

Well, 8-hour days punctuated by recreational bursts of TF2. Right, gotta go, spy sapping my sentry!



:edit: forgot to mention, the bunnies are still hopping along too

 

Progress on the mural I'm painting for the respite centre. Better quality photos when it's finished! Arghh, I'm cutting it fine....

 My mum's having this crafty party thing (not crafty like *shifty eyes* crafty, crafty as if in things made of other things by people. You know, crafts.) and selling jewellery and whatnot so I said I'd make a tonne of bunnies to sell/swap. Here's my first one, oh man I am so soppy.