A miscellany
I know, I know, I never call, I never write, and then I lurch on in and prattle on about my own fiscal foolishness.
First, and contextually: a few weeks ago, out of the blue, my one surviving grandparent (My Grandma/my father's mother) apparently came to the sudden and unexpected conclusion that if she wants any kind of civil relationship with her grandchildren--particularly in light of certain family dirty laundry that I won't go into, but that culminated in her Saying Things to my mum on the day of Dad's funeral and ended up with Mum in tears and me having a shrieking argument of sufficient volume that speakerphone was not necessary (and then phoning my Aunt/Dad's sister to have hysterics of my own. That was fun), and has resulted in a year of frosty silence not venturing the bare minimum required to not be a shitty human being. So, as part of this realisation, Grandma sent me a cheque. For £300. Being 1) always thankful for extra monetry padding for my bank balance, 2) the opportunity to near zero my credit card for most of a month, and, 3) mercenary, you better believe that I deposited that thing post haste.
So. Three hundred unexpected pounds. I did near-zero my credit card and had it sit like that for most of November. At the same time, the big television in the communal living room finally gasped its poor CRTy last (the thing could barely cope with having the cheapest freeview box in existence connected to it, and was a leave-behind by a former housemate because it was so old and unwieldy) and decided that even working intermittantly, when the wind was blowing in the right direction and the stars were aligned was just too hard.
I started investigating televisions. I did a lot of investigating television. Then, through a confluence of happiness involving online sales and Tesco doing "double your vouchers" promotions and me getting a random £20 off if I spent over £100 on electrical stuff, I order significantly more in the way of television from TescoDirect that I even remotely thought I'd be able to afford.
I'll pause here to beam happily at said lovely thing (Samsung 32" full HD LED smartTV). I picked it up on Friday and, piecemeal over the weekend because I had V and family invading me this weekend, have been sorting it out. Currently it does freeview, is USB connected to my external harddrive, is connected to my wireless network, does internet and syncs happily with big laptop and my phone (right now currently, I am utilising the pairing feature on Youtube ahahahaha, I am so easily amused you don't even know), is connected to Indigo via a HDMI cable and means I can play hockey games via GCL onto the big screen (upcoming purchases: VGA cable to link big laptop to telly because the GCL video player has temper tantrum issues and dislikes the NHLVault for some reason, and Indigo dislikes the full NHL.com site, blank USB stick to stick in the slot for recording television) and mostly what I'm doing is laughing lots.
(To the surprise of very few, I am materialistic)
In other news! V and family invaded this weekend and we went to the Barbarians vs. Fiji game at Twickenham. V has seating superpowers (plus I think she gets a preference thing because of the company she works for), so we were in row seven of South stand (for the unaware: riiiiiight in the incoming path of any balls kicked for conversions or mistakenly kicked out. The game itself was very exhibition-y at first (Fiji tried and converted first, and jeepers fricking christ that fly half can run like there's a rocket up his arse), but then the BaaBaas woke up and remembered who they were and proceded to steamroll their way from 0 to 36 in a total of about 20 mins of game time all told (despite missing ALL the angled conversions. The BaaBaa kicker was not having a good day unless his team mates managed to try the ball dead centre).
The referee and linesmen were more disliked as usual as they video refereed EVERY SINGLE try attempt by the BaaBaas. There was some pretty hilarious singing from the crowd and, at one point, a wonderfully synchronised mass shout of "should've gone to SpecSavers!" and, all in all, it was very enjoyable and rounded off by dinner at Wagamama. Nom.
'sup DW/LJ?
Also on DreamWidth, comment where you will!
First, and contextually: a few weeks ago, out of the blue, my one surviving grandparent (My Grandma/my father's mother) apparently came to the sudden and unexpected conclusion that if she wants any kind of civil relationship with her grandchildren--particularly in light of certain family dirty laundry that I won't go into, but that culminated in her Saying Things to my mum on the day of Dad's funeral and ended up with Mum in tears and me having a shrieking argument of sufficient volume that speakerphone was not necessary (and then phoning my Aunt/Dad's sister to have hysterics of my own. That was fun), and has resulted in a year of frosty silence not venturing the bare minimum required to not be a shitty human being. So, as part of this realisation, Grandma sent me a cheque. For £300. Being 1) always thankful for extra monetry padding for my bank balance, 2) the opportunity to near zero my credit card for most of a month, and, 3) mercenary, you better believe that I deposited that thing post haste.
So. Three hundred unexpected pounds. I did near-zero my credit card and had it sit like that for most of November. At the same time, the big television in the communal living room finally gasped its poor CRTy last (the thing could barely cope with having the cheapest freeview box in existence connected to it, and was a leave-behind by a former housemate because it was so old and unwieldy) and decided that even working intermittantly, when the wind was blowing in the right direction and the stars were aligned was just too hard.
I started investigating televisions. I did a lot of investigating television. Then, through a confluence of happiness involving online sales and Tesco doing "double your vouchers" promotions and me getting a random £20 off if I spent over £100 on electrical stuff, I order significantly more in the way of television from TescoDirect that I even remotely thought I'd be able to afford.
I'll pause here to beam happily at said lovely thing (Samsung 32" full HD LED smartTV). I picked it up on Friday and, piecemeal over the weekend because I had V and family invading me this weekend, have been sorting it out. Currently it does freeview, is USB connected to my external harddrive, is connected to my wireless network, does internet and syncs happily with big laptop and my phone (right now currently, I am utilising the pairing feature on Youtube ahahahaha, I am so easily amused you don't even know), is connected to Indigo via a HDMI cable and means I can play hockey games via GCL onto the big screen (upcoming purchases: VGA cable to link big laptop to telly because the GCL video player has temper tantrum issues and dislikes the NHLVault for some reason, and Indigo dislikes the full NHL.com site, blank USB stick to stick in the slot for recording television) and mostly what I'm doing is laughing lots.
(To the surprise of very few, I am materialistic)
In other news! V and family invaded this weekend and we went to the Barbarians vs. Fiji game at Twickenham. V has seating superpowers (plus I think she gets a preference thing because of the company she works for), so we were in row seven of South stand (for the unaware: riiiiiight in the incoming path of any balls kicked for conversions or mistakenly kicked out. The game itself was very exhibition-y at first (Fiji tried and converted first, and jeepers fricking christ that fly half can run like there's a rocket up his arse), but then the BaaBaas woke up and remembered who they were and proceded to steamroll their way from 0 to 36 in a total of about 20 mins of game time all told (despite missing ALL the angled conversions. The BaaBaa kicker was not having a good day unless his team mates managed to try the ball dead centre).
The referee and linesmen were more disliked as usual as they video refereed EVERY SINGLE try attempt by the BaaBaas. There was some pretty hilarious singing from the crowd and, at one point, a wonderfully synchronised mass shout of "should've gone to SpecSavers!" and, all in all, it was very enjoyable and rounded off by dinner at Wagamama. Nom.
'sup DW/LJ?
Also on DreamWidth, comment where you will!