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I signed a contract with my landlord yesterday. I get to stay in my flat for the next three months at least, and the bills will be included in our rent during that time.
My internet might still go off. I tried to persuade the landlord to speak to the internet provider that we're with now and get a MAC code so we can get it transfered with as little downtime as possible. But, well, we'll see; it might go off for a week or so while they reconnect.

I should be more happy than I am, but I'm just tired. And I'll feel more certain once I know that my internet is here to stay, and we get our hot water back.

In other news: I watched the Tour de France in Hyde Park yesterday. And today James made me a lovely moussaka and let me use his shower. Thanks Jim!

Ah, I'm so tired. Let's hope I can draw a little next week...

My internet still works. Rejoice!
I'm still expecting it to be cut off any day though.

Nothing is much more settled than it was on Monday. We are waiting to speak to the landlord again on Saturday and hopefully sign contracts. After Saturday I should know if we are going to get kicked out of the flat or not.

Oh man. I was loving drawing last week. But I'm not in the mood to do it this week. I'm not in the mood to do anything really (not even put my clean clothes away).

The good thing that has come out of this, is that we realised that we have been living with HRH EIIR all this time! And we never even knew!

If only you could see it in real life. It's shiny and everything.

@Mariya:
I'm kind of tempted to draw Soubi with a kangaroo now. Like really tempted.

So today was a great day. You know, like really great. I was having lots of fun, for no particular reason.

Then it turned into the worst day in the world.

It turns out that this whole deal with the gas goes a lot deeper than I thought. I was told that I had to move out of my flat by tomorrow evening.

NOT AS PLANNED

It's a long story, and I don't have time to get into it. But the landlord came round later and we all had a chat, and it seems like we shouldn't have to move after all. We'll talk tomorrow evening and things should be settled then.

Bills and things will be transfered from one person to another, so I might not have an internet connection for a bit, while they switch things over.

Everything's a bit up in the air at the moment, but looking better than it was a minute ago.

I really need to sleep now.

We still don't have any gas.

Oh hay, there's a new page of Clematis up.

Golly am I slow when I can only manage a page a fortnight. Anyone that reads Clematis must either be very patient, or going out of their minds! I'm really pleased with the new page though, which is always nice. I've been drawing a lot lately (still not drawing that doujin) and really enjoying it.

Drawing is like the best thing in the world. I get so much pleasure from it. Sometimes it feels like anything else that I do is just wasting time before I can draw again. I seriously don't know what people who don't draw actually do, because without it I'd be empty. I get a big sense of pride whenever I draw something, especially when I look at how I've improved over the years; of course, I know that I've still got a long way to go before I can draw well, but that in itself is exciting too.

Haha, and my Dad draws comics too. I didn't set out to emulate him, because fruit rarely wants to fall close to the tree, but I just sort of started drawing comics without giving it too much thought. Hah, that's nature and nurture for you.

An insight into my mind for you there!

Now, onto some biochemical geekery. This animation is kind of cool. It's well interesting to watch, but it's also fun if you turn off the sound, play some music in the background, and just watch it go.

aghgjhgfjdsdj I won't have gas until Wednesday. Gyaaaghnnn! This is like that time when I didn't have an internet connection for a month. Only, much less traumatic. Going without hot water is fine, going without the internets is not.

So Mariya sent me a little doughnut:

I went home to see my parents on Wednesday because it was my Dad's birthday. We went to a talk at the local museum about '20s and '30s clothing, which was super interesting, and boy do I want the coat they had on display. Then we went for a walk, regardless of the fact that it was raining when we left. 'Oh, it'll clear up' we said. It didn't. We got completely soaked. I was wearing wellies, but my feet were completely sodden by the end! I almost got trench-foot! But, because it was wet, no-one else was out walking, which meant there was loads of wildlife to be seen. We saw tons of rabbits, a hare (it was jolly fast) and two (count 'em) two foxes! Not town foxes, but country foxes! They were bright red; it was super. Then we got chased around a field by a bunch of cows. NOT AS PLANNED. They were just hungry though, and thought we were the farmer. I hope.

As soon as I got home I had to watch Death Note 37. This was a brilliant end to a brilliant series. Death Note has been well done and very enjoyable throughout. I was so emotional throughout this episode that I had to stop eating my dinner and laugh until I cried. Super. Read more for spoilers.

Read more »

Courtesy of Nick. This made my evening.

Oh Aaron Kwok, you and your pink spandex!

*don't hold me to this

1 Kettle + 4 pans + cooker + boiling water + bath = I DON'T NEED NO GAS! YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!

Man, it feels good to be clean again.

On the subject of Death Note (I'll stop posting about it when I stop laughing):
School Note is, to steal a phrase, made of epic win.
Will Light-o ever pass that maths test? Will his sister ever give up the drink? Does anyone care? Awesome.

So yesterday I went to Seven Dials, which was pretty cool, because I've read all about its shady history, but I've never been there before. Although, according to James, it's actually called Seven Brides for Seven Sisters and involves a lot of lezzing up around the monument. Who'd have thought?
We then went to Tuffnell Park (I still don't know why) and walked to Camden. But it's always good to visit places you've never been before right? (And the tube stations around there look really cool, because they're covered in shiny red tiles). While dining in Camden we tried to estimate how clever we were against the other people in the restaurant (which is a horribly conceited thing to do). I concluded that I gained intelligence points by having listened to Radio 4 earlier in the day, but I lost points by not really knowing what ephemeral means, so it kind of evened out in the end.

It turns out that I did know what ephemeral meant (thanks dictionary.com!) but because I wasn't sure if I was right or not, it still counts as not really knowing what it means (what?).

And a final point:
Darker Than Black is seriously the best thing I am watching at the moment. I love it. And Hei is the kind of awesome that only fictional characters are allowed to be.

Dear flatmate. Please pay our bills. It's not that hard. We pay you so that you can pay our bills. We now have no gas. WE HAVE NO GAS. Jesus.

The rest is all fannish news today because I spent all day at work COPYING AND PASTING and it was so boring that I don't think I got my full quota of 8 hours, just the same 10 minutes over and over again. My brain is numb.

So I watched Death Note 36 yesterday. It was absolutely hilarious. I don't think it was meant to be. But everything was so over the top. What with all Mikami's craazy eye (and who thought writing could be so exciting), and Light's 'JUST AS PLANNED!!!1', and hahaha, it was all brilliant. To celebrate, have some text on a picture that I found:

Re: The Daft Punk that I missed.
It looks like it was absolutely amazing. I love the pyramid. This is the sort of thing that should be broadcast into space for the aliens to pick up; show them that we know how to get down! I think the robot costumes are getting to me. I want one. Hey Steve, do you still have that robot helmet? You should wear it to work one day. Don't mention it at all though, and see if anyone notices.

Annnnd about Tsubasa. Is it really just me? But why is FWR speaking out of a huge vagina? Is it an aid for him to show his masculinity? As if the bum-chin wasn't enough!

They new layout is up! Crikey, messing with all the php and css code for the blog gets annoying when you don't know what you're doing. I've tried to check everything, but if you do stumble across a link that doesn't work, or anything else that looks buggy, please let me know.

So. The story of this layout is this. When I mentioned that I was thinking about a new layout, and did anyone have any pictures I could use, Mariya kindly said that I could use any of her batiks (check them out here). I played around with a few of them, but this one of Venice seemed to work the best (I really like the sky in it; it has a lot of character), the colours work well too. And I've noticed that I seem to like red in my graphics at the moment; I can't help it. So, thanks to Mariya for letting me use your art!

In other news, I've been having vivid dreams recently. The night before last I dreamt that I was in Edinburgh. There was a very pleasant, intelligent, well-mannered Scottish gentleman there, who was saying that he enjoyed returning to Edinburgh, but he never had the time to see it, because he spent all his time there searching for papers and warrants. Throughout the dream, and once I woke up, I thought that this gentleman must have been Jonathan Strange (he was a scholar of sorts, and I think he grew up in Scotland), but some things, like being Scottish, just didn't fit. It was only once I'd been awake for a while that I hit upon the truth. The gentleman in my dream was none other than James Boswell! I'm reading The Life of Samuel Johnson by Boswell at the moment, and you really get the feeling that he did a lot of painstaking research for it; also, and importantly, Boswell was Scottish! So, being offered this insight into my subconscious, what I've realised is that I think I've got a bit of a crush on Boswell. It's a shame, that when I finally sought out a picture of him he doesn't quite live up to my expectations. Oh well, I think I'll stick with my imagination on this one. It would never have worked out between us anyway, what with him being deceased for the past 200 years and all.

Other dead people that are hot: Harley Granville Barker (there's a decent sized photo on this page)
I had to try to locate his will at one point for work, and I just thought of him as some old guy. Then I came across some photos of him at work, and I was all HOMG, is this the same person? Man oh man.

May I have your attention please.

tinnedfruitconundrum.net is currently under-going engineering works and will be running a reduced service for the next few hours.

Read: I'm updating the site layout A'IGHT? So things might look a little funky until it's done.

Have a new page of Clematis. I drew it so quickly. I'm very pleased with myself.

The problem is that I'm poor. Very poor. But let's not go into that here. Because I am poor I couldn't afford to go to the O2 Wireless concert in Hyde Park today ;_;
In honour of my raging jealousy of anyone that gets to go see Daft Punk today here's one of my favourite Daft Punk songs.

Also, this is why the 1920s were awesome.

I would list more videos, but this post would get well long. Hell, just go and type Daft Punk into YouTube; it's all good.

And one more. It's not one of the best MADs out there, but this MAD is like my entire week in a nutshell! I've been listening to this song non-stop all week, and I've found it's great to draw Code Geass fanart to. Did somebody say coincidence?

Happy Japanese dance music on repeat is currently making me very excited and I don't quite know what to do with myself.

I am also excited about the prospect of a TRC OOOOOOOOOOOVA. I am very excited about the prospect. I almost lost control of my bladder. And it's going to be the Tokyo arc to boot! The Tokyo arc would look brilliant animated; Kamui would be all pretty, and Syaoran would be all badass, and there would be blood everywhere. Super. Because, really, all I want to see in an anime is blood everywhere (and Kamui looking pretty).

Mostly though I'm excited because it's Friday! I've got the whole weekend ahead of me! I am going to draw so much I can't wait.
p.s. Still not drawing that doujinshi. Of course not.

Edit: Orange Juice. This still makes me laugh to this day.

Woo! The new page is finally up!

Also,
Re: Not drawing a Zero/Lulu doujin

Hahahaha oh god. It will be the first and only page I swear. I won't waste my time drawing this!

Note to self: Go to bed! For the love of all that is holy, go to bed!

Whew! It feels very close today. And by close I mean muggy. And by muggy I mean humid. And by humid I mean that I kept waking up last night because I was too hot.
I love my duvet. It has a high tog, so it's really nice to snuggle into on a cold winter's evening. But in the summer it's kind of oppressive.

Clematis news:
I was going to update Clematis on Friday. Can you believe it? But comicgenesis has been playing up again. It still hadn't updated by this morning, and now the whole site's down. So please don't lose faith in me! I actually drew quickly this week. You just can't tell out there in internets-land is all.

In other drawing news, I am not going to draw a doujinshi. It is not going to be a Zero/Lulu doujinshi. Because that makes no sense at all, and defies the laws of everything, everywhere, but mostly physics. Good job I don't have the time to draw it then!
Seriously, I don't know how I manage to even entertain the idea of drawing anything else when I'm so slow with Clematis.

Work news:
We got two new computers and three new monitors at work last week. I wasn't expecting them at all, they just sort of turned up. The delivery guy was all 'Are these yours?', and I was all like '....ok why not'. Anyway, they're both macs, and the monitors are all widescreens; they go with the mac that we already have at work, which got one of the new screens too. We set them up today; they're all sat next to each other on a big table. Now, I'm not a computer geek at all, and not really a mac geek either, but these new computers look so sexy. Seriously, it was all I could do to stop myself from jizzing all over them. Oh man oh man. We can now say that we have a mac suite. It's super.

Looooooooooook! Only CLAMP should ever be allowed to draw Lulu, ever. I concede that Lulu still fails to be as pretty as Kamui, even when drawn by CLAMP, but look at the outfits!

Q. So if Lelouch is Kamui does that make Suzaku Fuuma?
A. Not until Suzaku pins Lelouch to a wall with numerous sharp objects.

Also, gay earings are gay. Imagine them trying to walk in opposite directions! Ouch.