I fell in the street, skinned both my knees and upset my bad knee again. :( Ice packs, pain killers and bizarre stretches have become me. It’s very strange to fall asleep with an ice pack against your knee.

New phone <3 I finally replaced my beloved iPhone 4 with an iPhone 5. It’s shiny and new and with an utterly amazing camera (for an iPhone ). Just getting all my apps on it is taking an age. I haven’t totally discarded my iPhone 4 – it’s just evolved into being my music-and-amusement gadget.

Iron Man 3 was amazing and incredible. We saw The Avengers on the big screen first (so, so much better on the big screen. The details I never noticed before were incredible) and then, at midnight, when into the Gold Class cinema (16 seats, all of them the most amazingly comfortable recliners) to see Iron Man 3. It was so much fun – I was so worried I’d fall asleep, being after midnight and have already sat through The Avengers, but I was transfixed the entire time. But now I totally have to see it again, so that I can write a ‘Avengers come to help Tony out because the shit that went down was way too major for them to simply not care’ fic.

University is okay. Finished Nightmare Group Assignment #1, onto Group Assignment #2, with a group that works way better together. On a not unrelated note, the next person who tells me they have a domain, when yes, they have a domain named but its re-routed to their tumblr page/blogspot/facebook, is getting punched in the face. It. Does. Not. Count. Seriously, before I finally mastered WordPress, I coded all my pages in HTML in Notepad; all of my blog posts were written in HTML by hand, and uploaded by WS_FTP; definitely a labour of love.  I also ran 10+ fanlistings the same way. Dedication, thy name is Alexandra. I get so frustrated how easy it is for people to ‘have’ a website these days and yet have no idea how it works. 

And on a totally unrelated note, I am actually totally prepared for Mother’s Day – I have three amazing presents, ready to be beautifully wrapped, and it’s going to be a weekend that my father is working away, so we get to have a nice, quiet all-about-Mum day. This has to be the first Mother’s Day in years that I’ve actually be organised, which is so both depressing and embarrassing. Living in Sydney has made gift shopping a lot easier.

And now I’m off to make tea and have a shower

Just a quick note – since WordPress enjoys swallowing them  - that I’ve somehow broken my blog fiddling with settings.

I’m hoping to sit down and find the root of the problem this weekend, and get all my entries from Christmas and stuff back.

WordPress really hates me.

I did it! I finally did it!

What did I do?

I managed to finally get the game mods in my Sims 3 game working. It sounds easy, but since I like core-mods (mod files that basically change the core coding of the game), it was more fiddly that I expected. But then, the last time I actively modded a Sims game was the Sims 2 (with a very different system – dump everything in a folder called ‘Downloads’ and you’re set!) on a PC.

It’s been bugging me for months, that I couldn’t get anything to work, and it finally clicked today – an important file had somehow been moved into a folder. Now, I can go crazy downloading custom hair, clothes and body sliders *drools a little* If you’ve never downloaded custom content from the Sims, then back away and never, ever even consider it. It is highly addictive -and perfectly normal within the community, to have 8 or 9GB of custom content. When you realise the initial files are in the kb range… well, that’s a lot of stuff. Your game takes ages to  load, and it’s a total nightmare, even if it is a highly attractive looking game.

Super, super psyched. Even if I absolutely, should not be planning or touching a game until my university interview and NanoWrimo are done.

I just need Santa Claus to slip a copy of the Seasons EP in my stocking, and I’ll be set!

1. A Hilary Duff singing game for the Wii.
2. A Sims 3 expansion pack focusing on medical things – broken limbs, accidents, illness.
3. A second Professor Layton film
4. A Dead or Alive movie sequel
5. A cover for the swimming pool that you can skate on in the summer.

Nanowrimo isn’t going too badly – I’m a little bit ahead, but not as ahead as I would like to be. I have decided that 30 entires rambling about how my Nanowrimo project is going was liable to bore me, so I’ll be posting about every little, random thing just for fun

Wow. The weekend was kind of crazy. 

Thursday: Mum went up to the hospital for seven hours with severe dehydration. My sister went with her, and I stayed how to feed the pets and get some sleep, since we were meant to be going to Sydney early Friday morning (we didn’t know that Mum would be up there quite so long. She left just after 4pm, I expected her to be home by 9pm. She didn’t get home until 12am.) I ordered pizza for tea, and my dad yelled and bitched and complained because we had no white bread or potatoes for his dinner; he wanted meat and vegetables. Apparently potatoes are the only vegetable in the world. By 10pm, I was crying because he was so nasty . At 11pm, I fell down our concrete laundry stairs and cracked my bad knee (I’ve done something horrible to the muscles in my right thigh, so that all the tendons are getting trapped … or something. It’s super painful and feels like felt ripping every time I walk).

Friday & Saturday: My mother and sister undertake a massive, incredible, huge task of cleaning out our laundry and the kitchen. We had so much stuff we don’t use anymore. We have two giant bags of things to donate to the animal shelter (beds, coats, blankets, bowls and food) and two giant bags of food to give to one of my sister’s university friends. Plus five huge bags of things that couldn’t be donated, recycled or repaired. It’s crazy, we have so much space! I spent most of my Saturday cleaning out my tiny closet of a bedroom and studying.

Sunday: Oh man. Part of the ctazy-laundry-clean was because we were ‘interviewing’ a dog for a possible adoption. Meya is a 2 year old beagle that was being rehomed. Now, we originally had one sort of beagle – they had hunting instincts but were ultimately affectionate, friendly and obedient dogs. We got a pair of white rabbits, Blossom and Harriet, when Molly was roughly 10 years old and Bella was 8. Normally, beagles hunt rabbits. But we managed to introduce our rabbits to the beagles to the point where they liked them and considered them pack of the ‘pack’ (well, when they got out, Bella like to herd them, but she never hurt them. Molly was better, She’d get in their pen with them and just lie down with them.

Meya was taller than Molly and Bella were, and full of energy. We were leaning towards no in the first fifteen minutes, but it was when she made eye contact with Harriet that it was a firm and fast no. Then she worked out our neighbours had guinea pigs. She was determined to have two guinea pigs and a rabbit for lunch (and I learnt that the old gate between us and our neighbours’ property isn’t as strongly blocked off as I thought (next time we go to the hardware shop, we’ll have to get some kind of bolt or something). We quickly put Harriet back in her cage on the verandah and blocked off access to the verandah completely. We couldn’t keep her – we could never leave her alone with a rabbit on the property and the guinea pigs next door. It would end in tragedy. (It didn’t help that she was frightened of our cats and once she realised we had five of the scary, fluffy things, she waited at the gate for ‘Mum’ to return. 

Alls well that ends well, though: Mum learnt that we’re not ready for another dog and that she’d like a puppy she can train to suit herself, and Meya’s owner made the decision to keep her, since we couldn’t take her, and the first family she visited were… well, idiots (they had a toddler and another beagle in a townhouse with a courtyard. Beagles need land or roughly 10km of exercise a day. Anything else is cruel.)

The only vaguely amusing thing was that the owner brought her daughter and she went to City School. Mum mentioned that my sister went to Another City School and the daughter glared and sneered at my sister and I the entire time. God, we are ALL in our 20s. Who cares where we all went to school? Grow up, no one cares about high school rivalry anymore.

And now, today? My knee is going again – I can feel the clicking, the next stage is the muscle ‘ripping’ sensation. My father is still an ass, my printer refuses to scan and the software updates are for a newer OS release than I have and I think the frelling optical drive in my Mac Mini has died on me.  So I can’t even dig out the original printer CD and reinstall from that because the drive is probably dead OR install the software for my DSLR. (I wasn’t going to install it at all, then I figured I better since I know diddily squat about photography and DSLRs and cutting corners is always a bad idea.)

I don’t want to have to go to the local Apple Store. :tantrum: I know and dislike several of the Geniuses – wouldn’t trust them with a glass of water, let alone my computer. This blows. I’d say next week HAS to be better but at this week I will end up at the Apple Store and that will not improve my mood at all. Upside: at least I’ve got repairs covered. Nothing would tick me off more than having to have the same problem repaired twice in twelve months and have to pay for it (last time, the quote for repairs came to more than I paid for the actual computer and the monitor… and the keyboard and mouse. Luckily, it was within warranty.)