Ramblings of a Tea-Drinking Loon

I'm sorry but it had to be commented on, I just can't keep it to myself; G's experience of the new sims game was...disappointing to say the least. Earlier, I had commented on my addiction to Sims 2 and the various neighbourhoods I had compiled for the different fictional dramas I intended to have played out in my perversely God-like manner. Understandably, upon hearing the various announcements for Sims 3 I was very curious as to how I could create a more life-like cast for the different dramas...alas, this was not to be. I bought the game after arriving home from my Eastern European Tour (of which I shall mention more of later) and excitedly installed it onto my computer. Imagine my surprise when none of the dreaded crashes or 'fatal error' messages that so many people had commented on appeared. The game installed itself perfectly, with no glitches whatsoever. I logged on and downloaded a few things to test out the download manager and G was off, ready for her latest Sims adventure. Confusion reigned. No new neighbourhoods. Okay, we could manage that, we'll just carry out our various plotlines in one neighbourhood. Not a problem. I was incredibly impressed by the 'create a sim' function. From changing skin colour minutely to having practically any kind of eye colour or hair colour you wanted, G was prepared to brush aside the criticisms about the lack of clothing and hairstyle content, it being the first game of the new series out. Families were created with imaginative aplomb and safely nestled in the family lot area for distribution. As a trial, I thought I'd start with my favourites: Final Fantasy VIII characters. Carefully choosing lots with houses already in place as I was eager to start the gameplay, I chose the Leonhart/Loire family as my active household, thinking nothing of the term at the time. Imagine my horror when, upon deciding to finally introduce the intrepid hero Squall (at the moment in child form) to his future wife (yes, I am THAT much of a Squall/Rinoa fan - obsessed? Me? NEVER! Ahem), we appear at the Caraway/Heartilly household to find that General Caraway has died of old age and Rinoa is now the proud mother of 'Bubba', 'Billy' and 'Omari' and the contented wife of sixteen plus stone 'Malcolm'. Horrified does not adequately cover the emotion welling within me. I stared at the screen in mute shock, and quit the game. It was that bad. Okay, I may be exaggerating a tad (raised eyebrows all round), but this was not what I had expected from a 'seamless neighbourhood'. No more the contented triumph of clicking the friends button on the household menu and having the green lines pointing to the different households the highlighted one was linked to, whether by friendship, family, or marriage. No more the intricate family trees...and no more the drama! It was like sitting through the dramatisation of a very bad Mary-Sue esque fanfic. Horrifying.

Now that that trauma is out of the way, and Sims 2 is being re-installed and Sims 3 sold, the second half of my title shall be addressed *clears throat formally and tugs imaginary beard*. It is my final year at Uni...I am scared witless. My dissertation should be incredibly fun to write. 8000 words focusing purely on the gender identities and homosexual connotations (if there are any, I am prepared to argue) in Lord of the Rings. I figured that if I had to spend a whole year researching and writing a dissertation, it would have to be on something that would hold my attention and not melt my admittedly limited brain, without being too vague. I sent in my proposal for this and got a 70 for it, so obviously I'm on the right track there. It's all good.

The Eastern European tour was a trip of extremes. I flew (by plane - my cape was being dry cleaned) from Heathrow Terminal five, which is intimidating in its designer-label monstrousness, to Oslo and spent a couple of days in Norway with father. We then travelled from Oslo to Berlin with father, Edda (father's girlfriend/partner/politically correct term for cohabiting relationship person) and her daughter Tekla, a typical sixteen year old, though very nice. Berlin was brilliant. The people were wonderful, the food and drink was AMAZING, and the sights were fascinating, especially for someone with my interests in that area of history. After three nights in Berlin, we caught the train to Wroclow in Poland. That was...interesting. The train ride itself was 6 hours long, and Tekla is not easily entertained unless she has a book or a television so she was a little annoying (i.e. G refrained from throttling her several times), and when we got to Wroclow we just made it into the taxi before all hell was unleashed in the form of a massive thunderstorm, complete with forked lightning and torrential rain. The hotel was nice, if a bit cramped, and the food was okay. The one good thing about Poland was the prices. Everything was incredibly inexpensive. Four steak dinners, a bottle of wine, two soft drinks and a beer were £30 or there abouts. I understand that Poland is heavily Catholic; the sheer number of churches we visited was mind blowing, my grandfather would have loved it. From Wroclow, we travelled to Krakow which was much nicer, and visited Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau. That was an experience. The atmosphere in both places is disturbed somewhat by the many tourists, some of which don't truly appreciate the tragedy of what occurred there. People had taken the month-old babies; young children who couldn't possibly comprehend, let alone appreciate the educational and emotional qualities of these places. It was humbling to visit, and definitely a highlight of the holiday, which can be construed as a little twisted but there we go.
We left Krakow after two nights and took a coach to Budapest - 8 hours in a cramped seat, slowly losing all feeling in my feet and butt, whilst watching subbed versions of films, most of which I wouldn't watch. Needless to say, I was incredibly glad to be off that coach. The flat where we stayed was really nice, despite its rather shabby (as in eroding cement, pot holes that were mini impact craters and very little lighting on the four flights of stairs we had to carry our luggage up) exterior. We spent the last six days there, and I was exhaused. I had never walked so much in my life over the course of the twk weeks, Edda being our primary guide and not being very profficient with the city maps.
The baths were an experience too. I'm somewhat prudish when it comes to walking around naked, mainly because I wouldn't want anyone to be subjected to seeing me in the buff (to steal one of my sister's wonderful phrases), so the communal changing room was interesting *image of G practically crawling into the footlocker to change into her swimming costume, whilst everyone else parades around in their birthday suit springs to mind* and the bathing itself was a little boring, aside from the pedicure...that was fun. It was unbearably hot in the water and out, what with a cloudless blue sky. It was also incredibly busy.
The Hungarian food was good; we had goulash every day for lunch, or at least father and I did. It was THAT good. I flew back on the Friday, and they went back to Oslo on the Saturday. All in all, an interesting trip but not one I'd do again. Visiting five places on two weeks is too much. I was on the verge of a mental meltdown by the end. I've not really done justice to these amazing cities we visited, but I think I'm going to have to peruse the photos father has just sent me to jog my memories. Everything is a little bit of a blur.
I've, rather stupidly, signed myself off for the next skiing trip with my sisters next winter. Bare in mind I am the ultimate accident prone individual, though ironically I've only ever broken my toe, nothing else. But, as shown in earlier entries, I've ripped tendons, ligaments, sprained muscles, jarred and slipt discs, though mercifully, I've never dislocated anything *shudders at thought*.

That about covers this rather long winded ramble.

Toodles!

Obvious references to song titles/lyrics aside, it has been a while since I've posted an entry. Things have been pretty hectic. Second year of uni has started and that's always fun *sigh*. I got my course list and thought for some of them, 'did I really choose this?'. Of course, a certain amount of that is random luck, whether or not you'll get a course that you rated highly. I wanted so badly to get on the Creative Writing Course, but alas, that was not to happen. And there was no way in hell I was going to sit through technical creative writing, where the course code was FILM etc. Stage and Screen were enough for me thanks. So now, I'm panicking about my essays, dissertation topic and editing our group research skills project. At least with next year's group work we'll all actually be interested in the course itself; theoretically at least. I've got a ton of books to read, most of which I've never even heard of, such as 'The Female Quixote' by Charlotte Lennox. Apparently it's not too bad, but I have a load of other books to get through as well, so it's going to be a challenge to get it all done in the necessary period of time.
Only four weeks to Easter, then four weeks of bliss. The Eastern Bloc trip is all sorted out, so I'm simultaneously dreading and looking forward to that. Nothing much else to report; Annabel and Rebecca are back from their ski trip, and Annabel has already started hogging the phone once more, so things are more or less back to normal in that sense.
As for my dissertation topic, I'm thinking of looking at the portrayal of homosexual identity in either an author's works, or works of a particular time period. Part of the reason for this is that I've recently been reading this book 'Stone Butch Blues' by Leslie Feinberg, and it is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. I'm only a few chapters in and I already love it. Hopefully this topic hasn't been discussed over a million times before, so fingers crossed!!

Despite the flippant title, today has been a rather eventful day. It's funny...when introduced like that it seems trivial.
Anyway, I'd gotten ready to take the dog for a short walk around the block as per usual. Just as we were going out the gates that make up the entrance to my house, I turned to the left and witnessed a sight I'm sure I'll not forget for a while. My house sits on a relatively sharp bend that hooks to the right and it's a road that serves as a through road for traffic heading towards Portsmouth etc, via Alton in Hampshire. The speed limit is 30MPH which, when rounded up, comes to about 50 KmPH. No one sticks to this, and there have been accidents before, including one that ended with a car ploughing through the front fence of our house, before we'd moved in. A car was travelling around the corner at, well, I'm pretty sure it was well above the recommended speed. As such, said vehicle mounted the curb and hit a man out cycling with his young son. It was incredibly fast, none of this 'it felt like everything was happening in slow motion' stuff. Wham! The car knocked the man off his bike, running the over the bicycle in the process and pushing him into the hedge that lines the pavement, whilst the boy bounced off the windscreen, which shattered, rolled off the bonnet of the car and slammed into the middle of the road, where he lay, unmoving. I couldn't believe what I had just witnessed; I just kept thinking 'No, that didn't really happen'. A car driving on the other side of the road stopped and the woman got out to check on the boy, followed closely by the father who, despite severe facial lacerations and probably a concussion, was otherwise okay. I ran back inside to call an ambulance. When I got back out, the boy was screaming, moving around and repeating over and over again 'I just want to wake up from this dream'. Thankfully, the road opposite the crash leads to a cul-de-sac, where an ambulance technician lives. She was home, so quickly ran out with her first aid kit and saw to the boy. His arms and legs seemed okay; he was waving them around and trying to get up, but his face was a swollen, bloody mess. Soon he was on his back, head held in place by the technician, and a blanket put over him. The police and ambulance arrived within minutes, hoisting him onto a stretcher and taking him and his father to hospital. The man who had been driving the car had pulled up further ahead but had not come back to check on the two people he had hit. The road was subsequently closed off and statements were taken. I've now got to fill in a form explaining exactly what happened.
I do realise this is probably nothing compared to what some people have witnessed road-accident wise, or perhaps accident-wise in general, but it was a huge shock nonetheless. We weren't allowed to walk out of the gates, lest we 'invade the crime scene'. The sad irony of it is that the road speed limit has only just been changed to 30MPH because of accident risk. The fact that the guy was going fast enough to need to drive on the pavement to avoid hitting another car coming in the opposite direction is testament to the ridiculous speeds that most drivers, including my mother's partner, drive along this road. Hopefully the boy will be okay; it was lucky he was wearing a helmet, otherwise he probably would have died.
I suppose I just needed to write it down here so I can remember what happened. It certainly was a shock to the system if nothing else.

Yes, I am still bitchy about the splint-on-thumb issue. I only have another 2 weeks left, I know, but it is rather annoying. Mother's been ordered off driving for four weeks, another nuisance for both herself and me, because it means I have to get up to drop her in and pick her up and I am not a morning person; thankfully, her final appointment is a week today so that should hopefully end positively. There's been a bit of the usual drama in the house for the past few weeks, culminating in Annabel (my sister) and Hannah (my stepsister) getting their AS level and GCSE results respectively.
Annabel is an individual who can be hard to get along with, mainly because she's one of life's takers who only does something if it directly effects her positively. I generally get along with her well as we share the same sense of humor, albeit the usual sibling rivalry does occasionally rear its ugly head. Getting exam results is one of those occasions. Annabel received an A in drama, two Bs both in History and Psychology, and an E in Biology. I managed to pull in 3 As and a B for my AS's and this meant she was upset by her results. She has since calmed down, and she's never really held it against me, but there is underlying resentment there, however subconscious and trivial. Hannah on the other hand, is an individual I cannot stand. She is the physical embodiment of all the traits in an individual that I dislike, even going so far as to say I hate. Hannah is an individual who uses people for her own ends, and then discards them. Unlike Annabel, who whilst to an extent also does this but still has friends, Hannah is incapable of holding down any sort of relationship for an extended period of time, having a falling out with certain people if she spends too long with them. She is also incredibly stupid, but is one of those people who believes herself to be the female equivalent of Einstein, a characteristic that her father also believes. This brings me to her GCSE results; 5 Cs, 2 As, and the rest were Bs. Needless to say, a lot of people were surprised, but when you hear that she got an extra hour and 1/2 for her Art coursework and similar leeway in other areas of study, it becomes more believable. Her family was very proud, because none of them have ever made it through GCSEs, so it's a first for the Savages (yes that is their surname, not some childish nickname, though the label is apt both in title and nature). Mother, who hates Hannah just as much as myself, didn't ask about her results, which meant that David, who had himself forgotten to ask about Annabel's results, had a huge screaming session at her; I say 'at her' because he was drunk and my mother didn't say anything in return.
He did apologise, but in a roundabout way that didn't actually involve saying 'sorry'.
So Hannah is currently on her high horse because of this. She starts 6th form college on Monday, and A levels are a whole different barrel of fish, so I'm waiting for the usual excuses, such as 'My teachers are crap', because after all, it's never a Savage's fault; the family is most adept at playing the victim card in any and all situations. David himself (my mother's partner), is a damn nightmare, and on several occasions I've imagined telling him just what I really think of him. This experience, along with my parents' divorce really has shown me that if I ever do marry, it's going to have to be someone pretty damn special...either that, or I'll end up gay.
On a brighter note, G has applied for a job, meaning that we shall hopefully have more income before uni starts again. I've made a small dent in my reading list, and hopefully will be able to get ahold of more of the books, which thankfully aren't as expensive as last year's were. If I keep my head down, and avoid all contact with the Savages, I should be able to keep from a verbal explosion. Hopefully...

The end of this week has been pretty annoying. It started when I was invited by my darling cousins to attend a showing of The Mummy, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Now, I have four cousins in total, all of which are boys and all on my father's side of the family (mother is an only child). The older sister has twin boys, Nick and Zander who are 18 years old, whilst the younger sister has a seven year old and a ten year old (I think). The invitation came from the latter, who, according to my grandmother, worship the ground I walk on. Now while I'm not the nicest person to have walked the earth, I'm not going to refuse an invitation to a film from little children, so I said I'd go. The movie itself wasn't brilliant. I've seen the first two 'Mummy' films and enjoyed them a lot more, plus this one didn't have Rachel Weisz in it, which let it down (though Jet Li did make up for that, somewhat). We arrived back at my grandparents' house and I was leaning against the car waiting for my cousins to get out, when my aunt slams the door, successfully trapping my thumb in the car door. I dislike this sort of thing, not because it's painful in so much as it is incredibly inconvenient. I realise now that I have been taking my thumbs for granted. The skin has been forced back so much, allowing me a nice view of how long my nails really are under the skin, the thumb itself has swollen to twice it's size, and I later found out it is infected and possibly fractured as well. Which brings me on to the next (and thankfully last) injury, this time sustained by my mother. She tripped on her way down our driveway, and fell, HARD, on her shoulder; suffice it to say, she dislocated it *shudder*. In the end, we had to call 999, get an ambulance, and I spent four hours (which is quite an impressively short time for A&E) watching them first try and push it back in using just 'gas and air' then finally deciding that morphine was the way to go. My mother doesn't remember anything that happened, which is most amusing, but at least her arm is back in the appropriate socket. So now, G is going to visit the doctor some time next week to get some antibiotics for her thumb and hopefully the nail won't come off and the cuticle and skin behind that will grow back okay. It hurts like a bitch, right now...so there it is, my moan about injuries...and it was supposed to be lucky what with it being 08/08/2008. I do realise that this is nothing compared to some of the stuff I've heard about, but goddamnit, I want to bitch about the inconvenience of it; I can't even hold a book properly in my left hand!!

It's over!! I survived my FIRST YEAR AT UNI!! Yes, G is well aware this is not a huge achievement, but damn it, it is to me! I never have to deal with another night of blaring dance music, drunk students and things being thrown at my window again...well, unless my sister arrives home from a party at 3am completely slaughtered; first time for everything, after all. 
On the huge scale of life, we've had little dramas in the Nut House. There's been a huge ruckus at my mother's work; my mother's boss, a woman she's worked for and has been friends with for going on seven years has been made redundant. My mother only found out recently, despite the fact that this has been 'in the works' so to speak for a while. Needless to say, that puts my mother in an iffy position as it's only her and her boss in the department of this company. It's a pharmaceuticals firm (selling drugs, no testing etc) and my mother works in the regulatory department, which basically ensures quality of product. It's a small company and there's been a lot of rumours about redundancy etc so my mother is understandably worried about the situation. David is absolutely no help whatsoever, but then, when has he ever been of any help? Thankfully, it appears she is having some success with job interviews etc, so fingers crossed, it'll turn out okay. They're all buggaring off to Crete next week, which means it'll be just G, Monty (the puppy), Frodo and Domino (the crazy cats who are not cats but entities unto themselves) in the house (G feels a strange urge to type: 'In da house' before her inner grammar nazi shrieks in horror and attempts to burn her eyes out). The conversation will be limited...no change there.
There's been a bit of drama on my father's side of the 'family': His girlfriend's father was diagnosed with cancer not too long ago (his entire family suffered from minor liver trouble, so when he felt pains, sickness etc he didn't think anything of it) and unfortunately it was too late to really do anything. Whilst I didn't know the man well, I know he was a sweet bloke, even if we never quite crossed the language barrier the few times I met him (My father lives in Norway and Leif didn't speak a word of English, and G had a hard enough time with Spanish, so you can imagine what I would have done to the Norwegian language) and far more friendly than his daughter. I'm not really very good at conveying this sort of news, especially when it's someone I don't really feel anything for, apart from a polite sadness, if that makes any sense whatsoever...probably not, knowing me. I don't get on with my father or his family so there is a lot of emotional distancing on that count, which I suppose is a good thing...or G really is an emotionless cad. This is nothing compared to a fellow LJer, and brilliant author's loss: My thoughts are with you sweetie.
Now that that's out of my system, that's all there really is to report at the present time. We are now preparing for Year 2. I got allocated my courses and I really don't remember picking any of these...some of them I vaguely remember thinking 'That sounds interesting' but others...slightly worrying there.
Wish me monsters!!

Well, we're back at Uni ('we' being myself and my other personalities) and, sitting on this rather squeak wooden chair, glancing around my room and listening to a telephone conversation in greek right outside my door, I can definitely say that I really DIDN'T miss this place. Just 10 more weeks to go, though (6 in Spring and 4 in Summer). 
On a plus note, Christmas was really good. My darling mother bought me a deck (as in Vinyl/LP player type deck, not wooden surface usually found in gardens or ships) which means G is now on the hunt for more records to play. I bought a load of them from this little Record shop for about £5.50 altogether, which was cool. Survived my one week between breaks and then was off for another three weeks for Reading Week and Exam weeks which was great, so now I just have to get through the next six weeks and I have a month off for Easter! YAY!!
Also, my Christmas present from David was amazing! He bought us tickets to see Linkin Park at the O2 Arena (a.k.a. the Millennium Dome). This is the band that, when I was but a lowly year seven, got me into metal/rock in the first place. It was fantastic seeing them live, and they're brilliant. Chester's vocals are perfect as are Mike's and it was just overwhelming. So much so that my sister, who wasn't really interested before, now can't stop talking about the band; an instant convert as soon as Chester took his shirt off, which is so very typical of her. 
I brought ALL the books back with me that I'd taken home, so I had about three carrier bags of books, and two of food, plus my laptop and two rucksacks...I looked like a pack mule. At the moment, I'm trying not to think about the next six weeks, just taking one week at a time. I'm looking forward to my new classes etc. I would have been soo much happier just commuting every day, but at least I can say from experience that life in Halls really does suck.

G's ticket!!

 

I have nearly survived my first term at Uni...G is about ready to stick pins in her bloodshot, overtired eyeballs. As you can probably tell, all is not well in the house of G. I seem to have reached a peak in around week 2-3 and then it just went downhill from there. For the past ten weeks I have hovered between unadulterated hatred for my flatmates (more so the males, the females are fine) and unadulterated hatred for students in general. 
Firstly, my room is right next door to the kitchen which is both positive and negative - the latter more so than the former. As a result, G can scuttle back and forth from her room without worrying too much about being unwillingly sucked into a conversation about boyfriends/hair and makeup/whatever usually fills the minds of 'normal' individuals my own age. However, this also means that everyone (and I mean flatmates plus friends) congregate outside my door or in the kitchen, meaning I am an unwitting participant in aforementioned conversations...which are often spoken loudly and obnoxiously and seep straight through the rather poor excuse for a door G has. I'm so happy my headphones are the kind that almost completely seals out all outside noise...though the flatmates have managed to penetrate this supposed soundproof barrier on numerous occasions, when coming back from a night out and completely off their faces at two to three in the morning. As a result, G gets very little sleep. Another issue is the inability of individuals to cook anything without reducing it to a charcoaled state. We've found out, on no less than 6 or 7 occasions that our smoke detectors in our block really do work...VERY WELL....we had someone forget they were cooking garlic bread at 3am (Why?!?) and another person decide to blow dry her hair under the heat detector, a feat that has been repeated twice since arrival, leading G to internally threaten to break into her room and cut all her hair off, thus terminating the need for said dryer. My mind is now subconsciously waiting for the fire alarm to ring every time someone goes into the kitchen, which means I don't get much sleep as the kitchen is a common room for flatmates.
It's Wednesday today, and mother dearest is picking me up on Friday...I can't bloody wait.

Yay!! I finally figured out how to post pictures up here...okay, so all it took was a click of the mouse on that icon thingy up there, but this is me we're talking about! 
 Okay, so G is writing this from Uni...a place that has once again both proven and emphasised the general consensus that G is absolutely NOTHING like anyone her own age. I arrived yesterday, and my first concerns were getting all my tech organised and plugged in ('tech' being my laptop, PS3, TV and new printer). After that, I am content to stay in my room with my numerous books and videogames, or simply just read or write fiction online. Others my own age, as apparent by my flatmates (who are very nice), made it a priority to find out where all the good bars and/or nightclubs were, and went out. Although, I have to say, I'm quite impressed that they came back so early. They only stayed out for a couple of hours, returning at midnight. 
Thankfully, all of them seem to be perfectly fine, studying medicine, law and maths and finance *urgh*. So, G is the only 'creative' (and I mean that in the loosest sense of the word) one, seeing as all of them professed a hatred for reading and writing in general as soon as I told them what I was doing...I feel so alone!
Accommodation is okay...not really anything to comment on with regards to it. I prefer my room at home, which leads me to the idea, depending on how this year goes, that I might just commute. We have less lectures next year and it's only a rather straightforward 45-50 minute drive from my house. It makes more sense really...plus, it's like £5000 to stay here!! I'll be in less debt if I lived at home. Second years are allowed cars on site so all's well. G just has to survive 6 months of Uni...how depressing...
So, I think I've proved that I am really nothing like my age group...my mother did say I was born old and weird...Seems she was right.

I've been officially an ex-student of college for about...2 months now...and all the 'personal projects' I wanted to get done are still festering away on my laptop/in a corner of my room (not literally because that would be icky). Ah well. 

So, updates on G's oh so boring life. Got my A-level results *gasp*, and all my panicking turned out to be for nought because <insert drumroll here> I GOT THREE As!! Woohoo!! So, no more worrying about uni as I now officially have accomodation and a course, so I shall be furthering my education, or attempting to at least. Not much else to talk about really...have become strangely addicted to Sims 2, mainly because it is soo much easier to download the skins I want from the main site (G has broadband!! So much quicker...yes I know, I'm like Russia before Stalin, 100-150 years behind everyone else) so now I have a Final Fantasy, Star Wars, Teen Titans, Rurouni Kenshin, Elfen Lied etc community. It's great, but oddly complicated. I might run out of room for everyone as well ¬¬*

Still addicted to videogames, fanfiction, reading and writing in general and still completely off the wall, but judging by some of my friends, I'd say that's completely normal.

Yes, random titles are a specialty of mine...as are random rants but we'll go into that later. Only a few more days of college left; I really can't wait as this last term has dragged and dragged, to the point of being a complete brain drain. Am quietly confident that I will fail most of my A-levels, apart from perhaps English. Meh, I only need English for Uni anyway, G is creative (*Voice in G's head: Stupid you mean*) enough to actually want to to English Lit at Uni, a subject my father has taken great delight in stating just how useless it will be in 'the real world' *Said in scary Ultimecia-esque accent*. 

After a spectacularly crappy weekend with my father (Feel the love), things are looking up. As mentioned above, only a few more days left of college and then no more history or psychology lessons EVER AGAIN!!! *arms make windmill like movements. G may be an attempted writer and artist, but alas, dancing was not her forte* Ah, sweet, sweet bliss. After the Fall was updated (a cliffhanger Ashbear!! HOW COULD YOU!?!?...Loved it though and have already reread it multiple times) and I've actually had a few other updates as well. Why do I always pick fics that no one updates for years?? Wait, don't answer that *looks out into dark, empty cyber space*...¬¬*

Am this close to killing both the cats and dog...though with the way my mother is behaving, she might psychologically damage one of the cats enough to put it in a semi-comatose state. She's been waving my sister's birthday balloons around and giggling hysterically...at around midnight. The other two (Montgomery and Frodo) have been with us since they were 7 weeks, so they're used to the craziness...they probably think its normal. Bless them ^_^ Besides, I need Frodo as my second in command for world domination...that is, if my sister doesn't beat me to it.

Yeah, got sick of the horrific grammar of my last LJ and thought, what the hell!! I'll start one that (hopefully) doesn't read like a 5 year old's creative writing assignment. And here we are....good old, obsessive G with way too much time on her hands...and feet. 
So, without further ado...

A dark and winding road, rarely traversed, leads up to a majestic though eerie looking castle, the parapets and turrets jutting out at odd angles from the ominous monstrosity. A door, crimson in colour, stands out from the stone, the dark red wood reminiscent of the viscous gore of battles long ago. Upon approaching, it creaks open, admitting the weary traveller to a large ornate atrium and foyer, a shining gold staircase leading up to a set of double doors in the centre, left and right of the balcony. A light can be seen through the crack of the latter, its yellow flame lapping at the stone walls of its prison. The door is ajar, a large wing backed armchair can be seen, perched next to a fire place that roars with an ethereal blue light. Bookcases line the walls, leather-bound tomes and volumes occupying the sturdy mahogany shelves. Stepping inside the room, a voice is heard, coming from the armchair facing away from the entrance.

'Ah, so you've kome at last' a whisper drifts from the seat, a calm, intoxicating voice that is laced with amusement. 'I had hoped you would have arrived sooner, but such things kannot be avoided. Welcome to my humble abode' The word humble hardly seems to apply to the vast library, a small portion of the castle's contents. 'Please, take a seat. Would you like some tea?' A shake of the head, an eyebrow raised 'No? Very well' A second armchair joins the first, emerging from the shadows like a wraith. 'Kome, sit. It has been a while since I have had guests' A foreboding ring to the last word uttered, as the owner of the castle waves one, darkly gloved hand to the chair. 'I would hear of your adventures in my land' Sitting down and unsurely turning towards the figure in the chair, a gasp is heard, followed by a thud, as silence reigns once more in the room.