my heart is a glorious machine;

THEY MOVED EDWARD. 

Now he is absolutely making extremely grouchy eye contact with me throughout my entire shift. I look over and there he is, glaring at me, clearly suffering from some kind of supernaturally awful sinus infection. (Also his hair grows straight up and he is bloody stupid.) 

Also, we sell Twilight calendars. (...Drat.) So he's there, everywhere I turn, and I SWEAR THOSE CALENDARS KEEP MOVING THEMSELVES IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. So: Edward Cullen is stalking me?

I mean, not that that's unusual behaviour on his part, but -- Edward, I am an intelligent, compassionate, fiercely independent young woman who likes having her windows squeak. I'm really not your type.

My mother called Verizon and apparently chewed them out until they relented and promised to send out an internet installation force this evening, instead of on Monday. I am well pleased (and also amused). I now have a way to watch Pushing Daisies tonight, as we do not get television until tomorrow. I am also considering making pumpkin cup-pies. If not this week, then next? (If only I had someone else to watch it with. :p)

My bed is on its frame at last, but I am still feeling somewhat overwhelmed where my bedroom is concerned -- so many books! (I know, I know.) And the ones which actually belong to me rather than being Family-Owned Books are rapidly increasing in number, and besides those are quite a lot I don't want to let out of my sight. I have two shelves in the shelfiest closet full of my most important books -- one shelf with my poetry, and the books I am closest to, and another shelf with my books-about-the-English-language and my Tolkien (of which there is a lot), and one more shelf with Harry Potter and Anne Shirley and some L'Engle. There is a box of books I don't need to have in my room, and two more boxes of books which I haven't found places for just yet. The closet most full of shelves I am turning into a reading nook -- it's quite large, and tall, and has a sort of -- bottom shelf? which is exactly right for sitting in, once I take out the air mattress the Presbyterians left in there, and put in some cushions. Other shelves currently house attractive vintage boxes of papers (one is a hat box), a pile of notebooks, and an amusing little collection of items: a blue glass inkwell shaped like George Washington's head (look, I don't know, I didn't buy it) filled with two feather pens, the fountain pen barefoottomboy sent me for my birthday, and a black cloth rose, nestled with left-over magenta Manic Panic and cheap black nail polish, and the notebooks.

By the way, my black and pink notebook, which I will have to take pictures of as the pattern never ceases to make me very happy, has been officially designated the Evangeline Notebook (I may start calling it Evy -- the black-with-felt-overlays spiral notebook Kyra got me for Christmas wrapped in sparkly paper named itself Edward, and now all the notebooks are clamouring for titles and starting unions and things). I am hoping things start being written in there soon. I have attempted to write a list of characters, but nobody except for the three sisters even has got names, and the youngest sister is on her third name now. (She started out as Priscilla, which suited her, but the middle sister is Camilla, and that would be silly. She was Phoebe for a while, then, but that didn't suit her much, and now she is telling me that she wants to be called Briony, even though I told her I wanted to use that name some other time, but Briony Nox does have a ring to it, and it does have a sense of feistyness, and the youngest Miss Nox is a bit of a spitfire. Which I can already tell. Though none of the Nox sisters is exactly docile and conformist to begin with. I haven't written Briony into the notebook yet.) The mother is vague, the father isn't showing up at all, despite my trying so very hard to have a complete happy family in one story at least, the primary vampire is nameless, and I am trying to do what Orson Scott Card said in Characters & Viewpoint and think about who else is in the story? -- who works at the library with Evy, who is part of the vampire-hunting organisation, who are the Noxes neighbours, their friends, who owns the shops where they buy food and household supplies, who are the vampires? (But then the vampires are the absolute most difficult bit of the entire novel. Oh dear.) But not a lot is coming clear. HALP.

Digressions aside. The bedroom desperately needs sorting, the living room is not currently very liveable, but the kitchen is coming along nicely. The stove, we have discovered, was manufactured in the sixties -- it's full of vintage quirk and whimsy. The shelves are metal and painted white. The kitchen itself is largely yellow. Most things have been put in their cupboards and drawers and the refridgerator, and Mum & I are planning a fifties and sixties diner theme of decor, already established by the stove & cupboards. There will probably be ruffled curtains, and already she has bought a pair of vintage metal signs. (Excuse me, a bloke came into the library just now and said something and his vocal inflections sounded disturbingly like Connor. I'm not sure which of the crowd he was, which is good, for both of our sakes.) 

Last night I registered to vote. It was very exciting. Well, no, it wasn't, really; I walked into the office and collected an application and filled it out and had to remember the new address (I am currently terrified that I mixed a number), and then I walked down to the post office -- this was after dark!! -- and slipped it through the mail slot. But yes, I will be voting, hurrah. And that is likely the last discussion of American politics that you will see on this journal for some time, wot wot.

I had lunch in the back yard. There's a bench on the border of it, but that clearly belongs to the preschool next door, which was in session, and I didn't want to get myself into unnecessary trouble, so I sat down on the edge of the hill instead. The house is on a hill, which is sort of more like a very soft short cliff -- the road is straight down from the edge of the yard. (Well, no, the two yards of grass are straight down, and then there is the road.) It's been raining -- very cosily, making lots of pattering on my window! -- so everything was a bit damp, but there's long bit of wood at the edge of the yard, and then bracken all the way down from there, so I sat on the wood and dangled my legs over the road and watched people go by (or anyway when I wasn't reading Ender's Game). I foresee much interesting people-watching in my future.

And now I am desperately craving sweets, so off I go home...on the route that passes by places which sell such things. La la la la la...

(Shall be catching up at last over the next several weeks, and yes, of course there will be many many many pictures!!)

So, I've decided deduced that sometime during the period in which Angel first moves to L.A. and is getting drunk a lot due to mopeage, he meets the Doctor in a bar, and they have a few beers and angst about the downsides of semi-immortality and the blonde young women who are no longer in their lives. (Also they probably save the world, completely by accident, and possibly in a manner that necessitates the quoting of "The Hollow Men".)

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

So, I have a confession to make.

I have a massive, irrational, insurmountable crush on Spike.

This goes contrary to all logic! I don't fancy the bad boy character! (shut up, the Master does not count. THAT WAS THE FAULT OF THE SLEEVES AND THE CAPE AND THE CRAZY AND THE JOHN SIMM WHO IS A NEIL GAIMAN FANBOY AND IT WAS A BRIEF FLING ANYWAY WHAT I AM NOT IN DENIAL GO AWAY.) I mostly fancy side characters anyway! I rarely find blond men attractive! Especially blond men who aren't even naturally blond! I go for the awkward tragic bookish sorts with weird senses of nobility; just look at my fictional boyfriend list! Statistically, I should be fancying Giles! (Well, I do, a bit. But that's beside the point.) IT'S ALL WRONG, I TELL YOU! IT'S THE PRETTY ACCENT PUTTING A GLAMOUR OVER ME! AND THE CHEEKBONES! AND THE SWIRLY LEATHER COAT OF AWESOME AND WIN. I AM INNOCENT IN THIS. I AM A FLY CAUGHT IN A SPIDER'S WEB OF...STUFF.

SOMEONE STOP ME BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

So, I've realised an interesting fact about myself. Most of you will probably not be surprised.

When I enter a new fandom, or am rediscovering an old one, I attempt to connect it to Eliot somehow. Um, yes. While I was waiting to get sleepy last night, I paged through my Complete Eliot and decided that Angel (so far the most likely candidate for Elioting) might find certain passages of Ash-Wednesday and The Hollow Men rather apt. A bit of Rhapsody on a Windy Night, too. Um, yes. I have a feeling it is too late; therapy cannot do me any good now. (But just look at them, will you? I mean really.) And hey,

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

-- reminds me of Simon Tam rather a lot. Oh dear. I haven't really found anyone in any fandom who suits The Waste Land, although I can see River quoting:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight     
And fiddled whisper music on those strings     
And bats with baby faces in the violet light     
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall     
And upside down in air were towers     
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours     
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

And most of you lot know that T.S. Eliot is Remus Lupin's favourite poet. (Shut up. He is. Look at Preludes! And Prufrock! They were practically written about him! And, um, I actually possess about half a draft of an entire Remus-fic based on Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Yes.) And that Four Quartets was written after Mr Eliot took a spin in the TARDIS (definitely post-Time War, because there are references all over the place). And ressie_noldo and I decided once that the Weialala Leia are an alien race, but that's beside the point.

So, this is Banui's brain on, er, madness. Yes. Going away now.

(Stuff about Life later, maybe. I've been having a few days half-out of the world, which is nice, but I also feel about three times as absent-minded as usual, and I've always been terrifically absent-minded.)

So, I'm watching "The Shakespeare Code", because Doctor Who is the best therapy ever, and I've got to the bit where the Doctor is talking to Peter Streete in Bedlam, and he says, "Go into the past. One year ago. Let your mind go back -- back to when everything was fine and shiny."

SO NOT ONLY DO WE PRACTICALLY HAVE PROOF THAT THE DOCTOR HUNG OUT WITH T.S. ELIOT (VIZ. "THE LAZARUS EXPERIMENT"), BUT HE HAS ALSO CLEARLY BEEN TO THE FIREFLY-VERSE. FANDOM, I LOVE YOU.


(What? River and the Doctor would be best friends in ten minutes.)

SEVERUS SNAPE IS THE RAVEN KING.

(He's from Yorkshire! He's got black hair! He does magic! IT TOTALLY WORKS.)

Bartholomew-the-not-quite-kitten has been getting high on catnip lately and rolling about on the floor pawing at a) things which are not there, b) his bit of scratching cardboard, or c) us, not to mention embracing his scratcher and otherwise acting like a kitten whose sense has gone away without leave. This is especially funny as Roscoe, the Alpha Cat, has never been particularly drawn to catnip, although he has been exhibiting kitteny behaviour lately, such as wildly chasing tin-foil balls through the house, and, not satisfied with catching them so easily, sends them flying again, as he goes flying himself.

Speaking of cats, you'd think bagels are safe, right? You would. I mean, we're used to covering food carefully and not leaving it on the table or suffering Dire Consequences if we do (Heidi left a plate of meat in the middle of the table a few weeks ago when she didn't finish eating before we had to visit Mum in the hospital: when we returned, the plate was upside down on a chair, the dinner roll had tumbled onto the floor, and the meat was so very gone that there was a hole through the paper plate), but we don't necessarily worry about protecting our bagels. Well, we got a dozen bagels from Panera (♥!!) when we were in Pittsburgh visiting Leandra yesterday (read Mum's post for more on that), and I had an Asiago cheese one warmed up and sitting on the table whilst I hunted about (futilely, alas) for ham lunchmeat. I heard Bartholomew batting something around, but I didn't pay attention, because he is always batting at something, being a kitten and being curious--but when I finally turned around, there he was with half of my bagel on the floor, nibbling away. I sent him fleeing, and the bagel was saved, but I am still astonished. Cat? Bagel? Really? We do know that he loves cheese, but--really? Bagel? 

By the by, I'm nearly convinced that this cat is the Doctor in, well...cat form. (Can Time Lords regenerate into cats?) Because, seriously. He is cocky and reckless and also adorable, and, being a cat, is devastatingly intelligent. OMG TEN = ANIMAGUS YAY. 

If he's not the Doctor, maybe he's SIRIUS. I mean, he's black. And cocky. And he exhibits a lot of general Marauder-like traits. Maybe the curtain didn't kill Sirius, it did the next worse thing: turned him into a cat. How embarrassing that would be for Padfoot, you know? :DD

i. So, I went into my little sister's room this afternoon, and she has a noisy ticking clock. Yes, really. I had completely forgotten about it, but there it was, TICKING MECHANICALLY AT ME. AAAAH. (And yes, I did check to see if it was broken, and yes, I do have Issues.) I'm really scared now.

ii. Dear brain:

Douglas Starr and Dean Priest did not, I repeat, did not equal James Potter and Sirius Black in school. Stop already, will you? Even if the possible personality parallells are too interesting not to consider.

iii. Dear last.fm radio:

I love you, I do. I am discovering all kinds of awesomeness that I wasn't aware existed. However--please explain to me just how people such as Leonard Cohen and Simon & Garfunkle and Alanis Morissette are supposed to sound like Loreena McKennitt. I mean, really. This is absurd. I'm trying to get some pretty Celticy new age music, and so far I haven't got anything (Altan? is traditional-and-not-noteably-innovative standard Celtic music, not atmospheric Celtic/world). Also, why does Vienna Teng appear profusely in every station I create? (So far, I've done Hannah Fury, Deb Talan, and Loreena McKennit, who are, um, not really similar. At all. Loreena McKennitt and Hannah Fury both have the pretty eerie music thing going on, but that's about it.) Is the universe trying to tell me something, I wonder? 

Also, I think I am fangirling harps now. I really, really like harps.