It's been a really long few months. I'm a little under the weather at the moment, nothing major, just seem to have managed to catch a bug that is going round work at the moment, and could do with a break.

We're still trying to sell our flat. Everyone is still giving us annoying amounts of advice on how to sell our flat, which despite some of it being well meaning I am finding largely irritating. Parents (both sets) are major culprits here, and I am trying to avoid talking to them about it. I am also getting increasingly fed up of being told that "we really need to move". No shit. I had noticed this.

Anyway, work is up and down, as are my moods when thinking about it really. Kind of hard to tell what is happening from one minute to the next. I still feel like I'm floundering a little, the situation has some definite drawbacks, but I'm sticking with it largely because there is little alternative at the moment, but also because it does have its upsides too. I get on pretty well with most of the other girls there - a rarity for me really. The girl I share an office with has few-no habbits that irritate the shit out of me which is probably little short of a miracle, in fact I get on really quite well with her, and most of the others there are OK. This does make up for a lot of the other things that I do not enjoy about the job. My boss could be better. He could also be cleaner. He has a wide variety of disgusting personal habbits that I am studiously trying to ignore, and just get on with doing my job. The travelling is a bitch though.

I am missing socialising a little. Rich is trying to do stuff at the weekend when we're not out the house for a stupid number of hours each day, I'm mostly just wanting to sleep. It's meaning that I do relatively little which is sort of depressing. I also realise that a lot of the things I am getting sudden urges to do I don't really have the time to do, I'm probably a bit old for a lot of them, and most importantly I probably wouldn't enjoy them any more anyway. I'm just at a bit of a loose end.

Going up to mum and dad's this coming weekend which I'm mostly looking forward to.

Really, much as it annoys the crap out of me when other people point out the blatantly fucking obvious to me, we just need to sell the flat, get moved, and then I can start spending a sensible amount of time out the house each day. The extra few hours really do make a massive difference in the amount of time I get to spend at home doing things I like, and spending time with Richard - actual time not just time next to each other on the PCs.

Tonight we were joking about something, I realised it's been a while since we just sat and talked about nothing in particular and laughed. It felt good. We used to do it more, we should do it more.

Extremely misleading entry to anyone who knows me, I really didn't think it through, my apologies.

Wyx.

Completely, from start to finish.

I thought about posting frequently this week, and didn't get time when at home.

But...

Marks and Sparks machine washable suits are the dogs 'nads. Wash 'em, hang 'em up, put 'em on. I swear, they barely need ironing. I hate ironing. These things are bloody great.

Long week, more like it ahead. But good week.

I've been playing City of Heroes quite a lot again recently and it really got me thinking about games communities, good and bad, and the different attitudes I've seen in different games.

I have to say, with the possible exception of EVE, the average IQ in CoH would definitely appear to be the lowest of any games I've played online. I have met, and still do occasionally meet, some fairly nice people who I would and do happily chat to on a regular basis, but overall the player base tends to be irritating, immature, and thick as two short planks.

Planetside had some real downsides, the level of sexism displayed when people didn't agree with you was absolutely horrifying, BF 2142 has some complete plonkers and the usual complement of "we pwned you" type people, as do most of the FPS type games I've played.  I think what I like most about games like that is policital correctness is creeping in for the areas I care about - ie most guys aren't now totally horrified about the fact they may have been killed by a girl - but not in the areas that I don't care about. It is not deemed necessary to be polite if someone is clearly talking bullshit, it's totally acceptable to rip someone to shreds for writing like they're a 13 year old with a mobile phone sending text messages. If someone is being a pedantic arsehole, it's absolutely fine to tell them using those words, and people who've obviously read lots of manuals and memorised all the games stats but just as obviously have very little grasp of the game are very seldom given much time of day by anyone.

It actually surprised me how much contempt I have come to hold the majority of the CoH "community" in. The very few relatively intelligent ones seem to devote their entire waking life to congratulating each other on how great they are on the forums, sucking up to the forums mods (who, it has to be said, obviously show a very keen interest in the game but can on occasion seem to lack the ability to stand back a little. I actually think that's preferable to having people who just don't give a toss, but it can be very annoying at times, they also have a typically British attitude to customer service - it's directly proportional to how pissed off they are, but I'm digressing), and the rest of there time deliberately (I really hope) misinterpreting pretty much everything by taking it too literally.

Anyway, overall, as games communities go, the CoH EU games community, to use a typically internet expression, sucks.

The attitude in PvP zones is particularly bad, I have to say PvP in CoH is OK, but not that great, the zones can be fun, team play can be fun, but everyone who goes in there seems to take the attitude that they only want a 1v1 (ridiculous, given there are areas set up where you can get exactly that, or 2v2, or 3v3, or pretty much any other combination you may wish for), having three people teaming together on teamspeak is grossly unfair on everyone else in there, and they also seem to do quite bad things to the English language when telling you about it - something which frankly always gives me the impression the reason they take PvP in a stats based game so seriously is that they quite clearly do not have the coordination to deal with any other type of game. Normally, I just turn of the entire chat system when venturing anywhere near there, occasionally I'm tempted to turn it back on, and, as today, realise what a complete bunch of fuckwits the majority of people in there are.

This rant could go on all day, the thought that people like this are going to go off and breed is terrifying apart from anything else, but I think that's it.

My apologies from afar to the several reasonable, intelligent and pleasant people I have met on the EU CoH servers, I wish there were a few more and thank God  for OV or I certainly wouldn't bother playing it.

Christmas was spent at Fell's parent's this year.

I always tend to look forward to Christmas, I've always enjoyed it. Spending Christmas with Fell's family was a little daunting though. Generally, I tend to feel stupid when around them. I'm not entirely sure why. They are terrible gossips, and quite judgmental at times. I always get the entire family gossip every time I go there, I'm sure when his mum talks to everyone else she's exactly the same about me. I feel like I constantly have to live up to some standard that I'm not even sure of, and don't really want to. I like to know things about areas that interest me, I could wish that I had a better memory for names but that probably wont happen, when I'm in situations where I really need to remember names I write them down. I don't really care that I don't know a lot about TV or pop music, or that I'm quite out of date on a lot of issues. It doesn't bother me that I'm not particularly technically minded as long as I know what I need to know in order to do my job.

Apart from when I'm with Rich's family. They seem to look on every waking moment as a way to learn more or to demonstrate how much you know, frequently the latter. I'm sure it's a good way to be, if you like that kind of thing, but it's not me, and it makes me feel edgy and a little inferior, while also annoying me quite a lot. They're so pedantic. It annoys me.

Anyway, Christmas could have been better. I really made an effort to join in all their family stuff, but I did get a bit fed up. Charades type games annoy me, partly because I am extremely bad with names, partly because I'm a little shy, partly because playing them with people who really really care if they win is quite annoying and takes any potential fun out of them. For some reason I was quite upset on Christmas day, partly I just missed my family, I wished I was at mum and dad's. Rich's dad was obviously in a bad mood on Christmas day morning, opening presents round the tree was just crap - half the family were on the phone for half of it and his dad appeared to be trying to pick an arguement with his brother. I didn't want anyone to see that I wasn't really enjoying myself because I didn't want to spoil anyone else's day, I'm not sure that I managed it.

The meals were a bit of a nightmare, his mum cooked something on christmas eve that I just couldn't eat, normally I'd just have eaten it and shut up, if I just didn't like it, but when I cut a piece of meat open and bloody pours all over my plate and the rest of my food, I know that I'll just gag if I try and eat it. Christmas dinner I managed to throw half his dad's wine all over the table cloth just as dinner was being dished so Rich's mum was probably understandably pretty pissed off, and Christmas dinner was a bit of a trial, despite being very nice food - his mum can cook.

Mostly I felt bad because Rich knew I was upset, and I was struggling to hide it. It'd been my idea to go to his parents for Christmas in the first place, I thought it'd be good, maybe I was just a little hormonal - I screwed around with going back on the pill recently which appears to have had some fairly wide reaching affects on my moods which I know aren't really sorted out yet, add that to a fairly stressful month looking for work right up to Christmas, and trying to get the flat sorted out ready to move, and I probably wasn't in the best frame of mind. I just didn't really know why I was not enjoying it. I hope it wasn't obvious to Rich's family that I wasn't in the best of moods.

Christmas day finished with me and Rich tucked up in bed cuddling. Rich was wonderful, I thought he'd be cross with me for not really enjoying myself, I'm crap at hiding how I'm feeling from him so I know he knew I didn't, but he was wonderful, and so loving, and suddenly it wasn't such a bad Christmas after all because we were together. I really am so lucky.

Just seeing what this does. Still not sure how to make it work or find the other people's stuff that I want to. Seems very strange compared to g-blog, but it should hopefully allow me to still read people's stuff when I work out how. Haven't really done much in the way of blogging lately on g-blog for a couple of practical reasons which make it a little awkward now, but now that I'm actually sitting down at a keyboard and thinking again I could see myself realistically posting on a blog site again about certain parts of my life, I would do it now if I didn't have to go and eat dinner with the in-laws, and if I wasn't typing on a laptop keyboard which appears to randomly replace the mouse curser in the middle of sentences when it feels like it. :D

Even besides that, I do like reading other people's blogs from g-blog.

Also not sure who can read or see this on here, will have another poke later when I have more time.