Last week I recieved some money and I decided that I deserved some shopping. Yesterday I went to pick up my nerdy package from the post office.
I had ordered the library edition of the Dragon Age comics, the first book in the Dragon Age series, and the first book from Elder Scrolls Online: Tales of Tamriel Book 1: The Land.
I spent yesterday reading through the comics, which I liked but I was done with it so quickly that I felt disappointed. I'm too fast a reader to read comics! :P It was a lot of fun reading about Alistair, Isabela and Varric doing a quest together, though. The comic perfectly embodied Alistair's and Varric's personalities and I loved reading about Isabela's past. Sten is also in it, and a transgender magister from Tevinter.
I've been curious about the Dragon Age books for a while so buying the first in the series was a must. It's called The Stolen Throne and tells the story of how Maric and Loghain took Ferelden back from Orlais. Basically a prequel to Dragon Age: Origins, and reading it might give me som insight to why Loghain acted the way he did in the game.
I've been a busy-bee since Tuesday last week. But it's been an interesting week.
Tuesday 9th: I got up early to go to Stockholm and my first ever shift at the tourist agency. To my surprise the first customer we got was a Japanese elderly couple, but since I knew nothing yet and was supposed to mostly just watch for a bit while the shift leader showed me the works, I said nothing. I feel a little sad about that, kind of feels like I lost my chance. But on the upside I've seen and heard several Japanese people about town this week so hopefully I'll get more chances! I've been practising my Japanese tourist vocabulary. Anyway, this first shift went really well and afterwards I decided to have lunch at McDonald's before heading back home where I finished reading my book (Eldritch Tales) and watch some more Supernatural S01. I hope it picks up, because I'm not overly impressed with Supernatural yet. Eldritch Tales however was really interesting. It wasn't as good as Necronomicon, obviously, but it had its perks. There was a lot more poetry in Eldritch Tales, and although I'm not very keen on poetry one of my favourite stories in that anthology became a poem called The Poe-et's Nightmare. I also liked The White Ship, Hypnos, Two Black Bottles, and The Electric Executioner. Most stories in the book were too short to really leave an impression, but I still love his style.
Wednesday 10th: I started work at the day centre at noon and had a really nice day. When work was done I didn't go home but went by bus to the train station (halfway there I met up Toni on the bus) and then we went to Stockholm. We were hoping to catch Marilyn Manson playing live at Gröna Lund amusement park that evening. Both of us were skeptic if we were going to make it, since they would close the gates if the amount of people would reach the limit (which isn't all that unusual with big concerts), but we made it. It was terribly crowded and we had to wait in line for about 30 minutes before we could order food and eat, then we had to wait another 20 minutes to use the toilet before heading off to the stage where we met up another friend. The concert was alright. It had its moments and unlike the last time I saw Manson this time he wasn't high as fuck. But his singing has deteriorated a bit. The songs were still great, though, and the audience was very welcoming. Especially when Manson dared us to throw our bras up the stage. I think he got about 15 bras! xD I was too far back to throw mine, though I seriously considered it :P After the concert I basically fell into bed at 12.30 am.
Thursday 11th: Got up early for a full 8 hours work day at the day centre. Another nice day, especially since I was allowed to leave earlier, which really surprised me. So I decided to use my extra free time to make use of Steam's summer sale. I bought five new games for €7 :P Three point-and-click (Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink, Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness, and Vlad the Impaler), one FPS (Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi), and one RPG-ish (Eldritch). I also started up The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II again, which I hadn't played since January-ish when it crashed on me. In the evening Toni and I had our weekly cosy-up-day with sushi, crisps and dip, and a TV show. We caught up on the two Game of Thrones episodes we had missed during prep-for-SRF and Sweden Rock :) And then I fell into bed again at 11.30 pm.
Friday 12th: Got up early for another full 8 hours of work at the day centre. This day was tough. It was just me and another substitute and one of them just wouldn't listen to any of us. At some points during the day I just wanted to crawl up in a corner and cry, but of course I couldn't and didn't. I felt so proud when the day was over and we had made it without any incidents despite the no-listening thing. When I got home I picked a new book to read, another anthology called Eleven Doctors, Eleven Stories. It was released for Doctor Who's 50th anniversary back in 2013. I only read the First Doctor story and although I appreciated the references to Peter Pan, I really didn't feel like the story captured the essence of First. So I played some more Van Helsing II and watched some more Supernatural S01, until Toni got home and we watched an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. together before going to bed.
Saturday 13th: WEEKEND! I woke up at 11 am after having slept for 12 hours (working is tough!) and then spent most of the day reading Eleven Doctors, Eleven Stories. I really liked the stories for Second, Third and Fourth, then it went downhill again. I did some shopping and laundry and cooking and then continued playing Van Helsing II. When Toni got home we watched two episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and then we went to bed.
Sunday 14th: Got up early and then read the last three stories in Eleven Doctors, Eleven Stories. I really liked the stories for Eighth, Ninth and Tenth. The Eleventh story was written by Neil Gaiman, but I had already read it in his compilation Trigger Warning so I skipped that one. Wasn't too fond of it anyway. Then I watched some more Supernatural before going to bed at 8.30pm.
Monday 15th: Got up at 1 am (yes, not kidding, I do this every week), put on my work clothes, had a sandwich, watched an episode of Supernatural S01, and then went to catch the bus at 2.30 am. I arrived at work at 3.20 am and immediately noticed that the coffee machine was broken, as well as the soda dispenser, and the soda streamer was leaking. No coffee, no sodas, and water on the floor, great. Then I started reading Stjärnklart by Lars Wilderäng. A Swedish post-apocalyptic novel, which starts out with every electronic device getting broken and unfixable. The books selling-phrase on the cover was "Electronics have no immune systems." So there I was reading about society as I know it falling apart due to no electricity and no electronics, while being in a room with broken appliances... The book was suddenly a lot scarier! Work started at 5 am and it went great, and already at 10.15 am we were done and free to go home. As soon as I got home I continued reading. I just couldn't put it down and the next time I looked at the clock on my phone it was 5pm, and I reluctantly put the book down to grab some food and watch an episode of Supernatural. As soon as that was over I went back to my book. Around 8pm I had finished it. Despite figuring out the end punchline in the very beginning, and despite getting sick of the occasional military and wepons drivel that I understand nothing of, and despite the fact that I hated how he killed off characters towards the end, I really liked the book and I can't wait until the sequel is released next month. I watched some more Supernatural until Toni got home. As soon as he was home I fell into bed at 10.30 pm.
Today: Got up early to go to Stockholm and my second ever shift at the tourist agency. Started off great with the new guy not understanding what I said when I introduced myself. Maybe I should just start getting used to being called Ellen, because apparantly that's what it sounds like to stockholmers when I say Elin -.-' Other than that the day actually went impeccably great. We had lots to do and sold lots of tickets and sightseeing cards, by the end of the day the shift leader told us we had the best cash results yet of this season. Felt amazing! Both of us also got complimented on our work so I felt really happy when I headed back to the metro. Instead of going home I took the tube to the university. I had a resit at 4pm and wanted to spend those four hours to last-minute-study like crazy. They're not gonna do that course anymore so this was the last chance ever to resit. I'm hoping I passed, but if I don't it's not the end of the world. It was just a part time thing and I never went to the seminars anyway, because the teacher was not very good at getting her message across. What I failed last time was the seminar part, the part based on the literature went well and I was only 1 point away from passing the damn thing. Hopefully I got that damn point this time. I got home at 7.30 pm and have been clicking around the internet since then, checking out E3 announcements. Still a little annoyed that Bethesda apparantly manages to make Doom, Dishonored 2 and Fallout 4 at the same time, but they can't find time to make Elder Scrolls VI. Guess it won't be around for another 2-3 years then :( At least they announced the Dark Brotherhood for ESO :) And I can always be excited about Dishonored 2 :)
And now I'm going to sleep. Work at noon at the day centre again tomorrow!
I've been home for one whole day now, which feels amazing because although you really enjoy it and have lots of fun it's always nice to come home. It's nice to come home and sleep in your own bed, eat things besides fast food, not be outdoors 24/7, not queue for the bathroom, and actually be able to take a shower :P
When I went there I had a lot of bands I wanted to see, in the end I think I saw half of them - but that's the way it is. There's always so much fun crap going on in the camp that you don't really want to leave unless it's a band that you really, really like.
We went there on Tuesday and the weather was shitty. Rainy and cold and windy, but we managed to get the tents up. We left the marquee for some other day since the wind would've destroyed it in a matter of hours anyway.
On Wednesday we went to see Evergrey, but the sound really sucked from where we were standing so we left again after only a couple of songs. Later in the evening we went to see D-A-D, which were okay, but we only knew a few songs so when those songs had been played we left again. There was also a class 1 storm warning for this day and we saw several tents rolling down the lane next to us, having gotten loose from their tethers.
Thursday was my busiest day concert-wise, it's also the day when I managed to burn my face really badly. This day I got to see All That Remains, Steve 'n' Seagulls, Children of Bodom, Slash, Airbourne, and Toto. I had planned on Def Leppard and Ghost as well, but we had so much fun in the camp that I decided against it later. I only knew one song from each band anyway.
Friday we finally got the marquee up and I could sit in the shade all day and cool my burning face. I spent the entire day in camp - the only band I saw was Mötley Crüe in the evening. There were other bands I had heard of playing this day, but I didn't want to risk sunshine for a band I only knew one song by or of whom I had only heard, so... But getting to see Mötley on their final tour was really special, although it wasn't the best concert I had been to and it was really obvious by how much Vince let the audience sing that his vocals really couldn't keep up with the songs anymore. But this is still a milestone in my concert experience.
Saturday we were all very haggard and done with the festival. It was the hottest day yet and we were sleepdrived after only getting 4-5 hours sleep each night. So while I had planned on seeing Judas Priest this evening, we decided to go home early instead. I saw Hardcore Superstar (which was great) and then when the boys left to see Avatar and Five Finger Death Punch I packed mine and Toni's stuff together, so that when they came back from the concerts we were ready to go to the car.
We got home at 2.30 am and just fell into bed.
This year was really good. Last year was better obviously - it let me see Alice again :3 But I had a really great time this year too.
This whole getting my blogging business up and running again didn't really work out. But I'm gonna try to make random posts again about my uninteresting life :P Maybe someone will enjoy it. In any case here's something similar to a proper update about what I've been up to the past two months.
I'm tired as all hell. I've been up since 2 pm yesterday. Being up for 29 consecutive hours will do that. And it's no good! I wanted to finish reading my book before tomorrow and that's most probably not going to happen while I'm this tired. Instead I'll probably start up the next first season of some random TV show that I have lying around on my old hard drive, from when I got the ambition to see every show I heard people talk about + some that I hadn't watched in ages. That hasn't been going well, although I'm still trying to catch up and go through everything I have on that hard drive. Thus, explaining the list to the right, I assume. This far, Falling Skies, Orphan Black, Under the Dome and Sleepy Hollow seem the most promising. Most episodes of the first season of Grimm are either boring or laughable. I can't decide if Pretty Little Liars is too girly for me or if I actually like it. After watching an entire season of Merlin I still don't understand what people love about it. I'm still waiting for the 'horror' part of American Horror Story, Fringe was scarier than AHS at times. And Buffy is still as amazing as she was 12 years ago.
The book I mentioned is the second H.P. Lovecraft anthology by Gollancz: Eldritch Tales. I have a little less than 200 pages to go, which I could manage in less than four hours if I wasn't this tired. The last few months I've been reading too little for my liking. I devoured The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith a.k.a J.K. Rowling, which came as a surprise since I wasn't too fond of her first crime novel, The Cuckoo's Calling, but I just couldn't put The Silkworm down and I finished it in a day. Then I decided to take on a challenge (which is probably the reason why I haven't read as much as I'd like): Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stonein Japanese. It took me a month and I kept having flashbacks to being 8 years old. I had decided long before that I wanted to read a proper book in Japanese, but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so the obvious choice was a children's book. Stone is by no means an easy book although it's a children's book, but because it's a children's book it has furigana next to every single kanji, which makes reading a lot easier since my kanji is a little rusty. Reading was also made easier by the fact that I've read the same book in English and Swedish about 20 times (not kidding), so even if I didn't completely understand a sentence I knew what it meant either way because I knew exactly what that sentence said in the English and/or Swedish versions.
I've come across a rough patch in ESO, otherwise I'd probably start that up and just lazy play. But as much as I love running through Morrowind, Black Marsh and Skyrim in the Ebonheart Pact, and exploring Summerset Isles, Valenwood and Elsweyr in the Aldmeri Dominion, I am 100% absolutely bored by High Rock and to some extent Hammerfell in Daggerfall Covenant. I don't even know why, but every time I get to Glenumbra my game time wanes, because I get so frickin bored there. I have finally managed to get to the Alik'r Desert, which means I'm through more than half of boring DC. Can't wait to get to AD. Even Craglorn and Cyrodiil are better than DC... I think I'm starting to rethink my goal of having a max level toon in each alliance... I think I'm just gonna go with max level EP and AD. My EP is Veteran 5, and my original AD is Veteran 13, though I'm working on a new AD which is currently on lvl 7 :P I still considered my old AD toon important enough to get to be in a guild group shot at least :)
Old screenshots of Summerset Isles, Skyrim, Hammerfell, Morrowind, Valenwood, and Elsweyr
In other news I have two new part time jobs. I now have packing boxes on Mondays, then there's a job in health care for mentally disadvantaged people, I'm at one place until Midsummer then I don't know where I'll end up, but hopefully at a place I like! I also got a summer job at a tourist agency, which I'm really excited about and I'm hoping that I get to make use of more than my English this summer. Getting to speak Japanese with Japanese people again would be amazing. And these past few weeks I've actually had to turn down three job offers for more part time jobs. I just don't have enough days in the week anymore. Would you look at that?! Completely unemployed for 1½ years (which I've discovered isn't even considered a long time, but it sure feels like it!) and then the jobs just keep pouring in :P I'm just hoping that my silver lining will be getting my book published, but it's looking rather bleak.
Now I'm off to do some packing. Will spend several hours in a car tomorrow with way too excited people travelling south to spend a total of 6 days on Sweden Rock Festival - camping, drinking and rocking. It's gonna be awesome! :D
