I hadn't realised how long it has been since I updated! Sowwy. Mary says I must inform you all that I am alive. Dutifully informing. Started new job, all going well. Can't wait to get paid. Paid account up in a few days, not sure I should spend the money to renew it but I know how much lack of userpics and ads are going to drive me crazy. Decisions, decisions. A Doll's House in July, can't wait. Qually at Silverstone in less than two weeks, ULTIMATE SQUEE. I don't want to talk politics because it makes me want to cry. So this would be it. Dull Sam is dull.

For background: on the sci-fi con scene, it is expected that when the DJ plays 'Ghostbusters', the crowd shout "Who ya gonna call? Fox Mulder!". Which clearly makes my life before I even began teaching it Joey. Cue this evening, when I play the song for him and ask, "Joey, who you gonna call?" Joey: "Not Fox Mulder, I'm going to call Mummy". Whether Mummy is afraid of ghosts is yet to be determined.

Oh f-list, I am so happy recently. Things seem to be all slotting back into place. Behold, the list of happy things:

- I'm really enjoying my job at the DCU.
- I got paid last week. OMG, actual money that I actually earned and paying my actual rent without any help. I forgot how good that felt.
- I got an i-pod classic for £100. It wins at electronics.
- I was all panicy because I had promised myself the first thing I was going to buy with my first pay was the IWTB special edition, FINALLY, but HMV have stopped stocking it. I found it on play.com though, and it will be with me shortly. Eeee!
- There is no better feeling than driving in the sunshine, windows down, sunglasses on, Blur's Song 2 blasting from your stereo.
- My beautiful Wolves football team officially win the Championship and get promoted today. I wanna be next to you, Black and Gold indeed.
- In even better sports news, I still can't contain myself with how amazing Brawn GP and Jensen are doing. It's like a dream, but better. I feel like I've been waiting my whole life to see my boy win race after race, to see him lead the Championship. And this is where all the hopelessness and tears of the past few years pay off - no Hamilton fan or Ferrari supporter could feel the way I do now. My heart leaps everytime I think of it. Even without Brawn, the whole season so far has been exciting and interesting and fascinating. I hearts my sport hardcore.
- I have the two most cutest little nephews ever (yes, Joey technically isn't my nephew, but second-cousin-but-we're-closer-than-that-because-I've-lived-with-him-all-his-life is a bit long winded.)
- I have so many amazing plans with my friends coming up. I have no idea how I'm going to afford all of them but whatever, it will be worth it.
- The house has had a serious spring clean and looks all prettified.
- I am making (yet another) knitting attempt. I've tried to learn to knit 289435 times, ever since I was a kid, but I've decided that I will get it this time.
- The sun is shining, the world is good and I'm at peace. X

So, I finally have the cash and the reason to buy an i-pod nano. I would like an XF special edition. Fox don't have them for sale anymore, but they do have a load of shuffles that have only just become available, so I'm hopeful that there will be more nanos coming soon. I emailed Fox asking them if they will be producing anymore. Fox's reply? :

All of the items that we have currently available for purchase are listed on the site. If you do not see what you are looking for on the site please feel free to register online to receive email updates with new products and promotions. You can also try using the “Product Suggestions” feature on our Customer Service page. I hope this information helps!

How, exactly, does that answer my question? Grr Arg. Anyway, does anyone know where I can get a XF nano from please? I have exhausted my Google-foo and I need one sooner rather than later.

Hello f-list. I am in a bright and sunny mood and I thought I might tell you all about it.

I have had a good weekend. Yesterday I put a deposit on a car, a little blue Honda Jazz. She's gorgeous and I can't wait to pick her up tomorrow. I'm thinking I might name her Hermione, but I'm still not 100% so suggesti1ons of female names starting with H or J are welcome.

This morning I watched the Grand Prix and it was once again an amazing race. I can't be down that JB didn't win when he still got a podium. The memory of him nearly not racing at all is too raw for me. Plus if Brawn GP hadn't risen from the ashes I would have probably transferred my support to Red Bull, so it's great to see them doing so well. DC being all choked up and denying it was only beaten by Vettel nudging Jense after he complimented the team in the press conference, and Jense calling him "cheeky". And laughing. Oh the laugh. Yes I did replay this several times. No I am not ashamed.

I watched the latest of Dollhouse, which was ace, and Dr Who: Planet of the Dead, which was also brilliant, though highlighted my obsession with tall lanky men with gorgeous smiles even further. This is possibly getting worrying. Hmmmm.

Finally, I need to make it my mission to watch all things once a week. It soothes me in a way nothing else does. I watch it and I do slow down, I look around me, I do believe. And that is that.

And now I shall go to work, which I am enjoying a lot and is really focussing my attention on where I want to be in life.

Everything happens for reason.

Apparently I fail at napping during the day. This is worrying as I am doing my first ever night shift for the care home tonight. Cue me dead by 5am. Anyhow, since I am not sleeping, I am instead watching Dollhouse (November and Caroline ftw. Why are you all not watching this yet? It's really getting into it's stride.) and going to bore entertain you all with my activities of the past few weeks.

In Which I Fucking Totalled My Mercedes:

- Yes, Martha has gone to the great garage in the sky. I crashed into a line of emergency breakers and the tow bar of the car infront has killed her. I am so unbelievably gutted about this. I love that frakking car. She was perfect, and now because the insurance company won't cough up enough to save her she's going to scrap. Sniff. I am now carless until the insurance company pays out, my dad gets back from holiday and we can buy another, not necessarily in that order.

In Which I Went To Cork:

- Went to Ireland, spent lots of warm and fuzzy time with Joey, sat in chewing gum, found the most excellent veggie feminist cafe EVAH, visited friends, pushed stroller up large annoying hill. And that's all I have to say about that, but it was worth mentioning because I hearts Ireland.

In Which I Finally FINALLY Saw The His Dark Materials play:

-Oh Em Gee. This was amazing. I cried so hard at Lyra and Will. Thank you so much outintherain for getting me tickets, I loved it liek woah. Birmingham Rep with two weeks left people, go see now.

In Which the Walking Corpse of A Dog Died Of A Chocolate Overdose:

- No, but seriously. For those who have not already read the explanation on so_vieh's journal, the story goes as follows. Vieh comes to stay and brings chocolate. I forget to tell Vieh not to leave chocolate out. Toby eats all chocolate overnight. Toby has done several things like this in the past (Artex for next doors conservatory, pain killers and coal from our fake fire are just a few of his accomplishments) but he was extremely old and his body just couldn't cope with this one. Of course I am heartbroken that he has gone, but I can't help but be amused that he went out in the most Toby-like way. He was so old anyway that we were all amazed he was still with us, and I'm glad he went peacefully at the vets, on oxygen and pain-free. You could get ridiculous with 'blame' here (If I hadn't crashed my car I wouldn't have had a curtsey car, Vieh's suitcase would have fit in the back, we'd have taken the bags in in a different order and they would have gone upstairs...If my parents hadn't have gone on holiday we'd have been staying in Burton instead...If the dog wasn't so bloody stupid he had to eat everything in sight...etc etc etc...) but it's no-ones fault, it just happened.

In Which I Had A Second Birthday and Lolled So Hard I Couldn't Breath:

- Since my actual birthday was rubbish, we celebrated on the the 4th instead. Hurray! splodge04, so_vieh, red_scully and medland cheered me up massively over the weekend with hysterical bouts of laughter, much photo taking, cherry pie with candles in the shape of an X, more laughter, drunken Wii playing, veggie rocky road specially for me, more laughter and XF watching. My friends are the most amazing people, I am so thankful for each and every one of you. Just so you know. ♥

In Which I Am The Happiest Fangirl Known to Humankind:

Brawn GP. Pwning everyone. Jenson Button. Winning both races of the season so far. DC. Bigging up his home boy Jense on the BBC, so much bromance it kills me ded. I HEARTS MY SPORT. I HEARTS MY TEAM. I MOST DEFINITELY HEARTS MY BOY! I HEARTS FINALLY BEING COMPETITIVE SO MUCH I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO FAIL ENOUGH ABOUT IT.

In Which I Can Haz Employment, Yes I Really Can:

Preparations for me starting at the hospital are (finally) running smoothly. Occy Health have cleared, references have been collected, needles are soon to be stuck in me (boo) and I am due to start on the 27th. In the meantime, bank work at the Care Home has taken off, with me doing my first ever night shifts today and tomorrow. Which means I need to get off my ass and eat and shower now. And book a taxi. Sniff. People, this was long, cookies to those of you who got this far.

Separate extra special post for olga_keepout, whose birthday it is today! Happy Birthday darling, have a brilliant day. xxx

I think I've confused you all as much as I have confused myself with the whole job situation, so to save my trying to haphazardly explain in comments, here, have a timeline (of sorts):

Some few weeks ago:

Sam gets invited to attend an interview at Cedar Court Care Home, to work as a Care Assistant on the Dementia Care Unit. Interview is duly attended, seems to go well, Manager informs Sam she'll be in touch.

Last Week:

Among others, Sam attends interview for a Clinical Support Worker at Sir Robert Peel Hospital. This basically involves looking after elderly people in rehabilitation before they go home, doing general Health Care Assistant stuff. Interview goes very well, Sam is offered a job, though possibly only part time, later that day. Sam is informed someone from HR will be in contact with her in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, Manager at Cedar Court finally gets in contact and invites Sam to a trial day, with a view to covering holidays and doing bank shifts. Sam feels this would fit in well with the not-quite-full-time work at Sir Robert Peel, and accepts.

Saturday

Sam attends trial day at Cedar Court. This goes well so Sam thinks; Sam enjoys herself, the Care Assistants Sam works with compliment her on how well she is picking everything up and say they are sure she'll do fine. Sam is informed the Manager will contact her on Monday to let her know if they'd like to keep her on.

Monday

Having still not heard from Sir Robert Peel, Sam phones HR to find out what is going on. HR can't find her paperwork, but inform Sam not to worry, it's only a glitch, they'll find out what is happening and phone her straight back. They don't.

Sam hears nothing from Cedar Court.

Wednesday, what where we are now.

Sam still hasn't heard from either job. No-one is picking up the phone at Cedar Court, HR at Sir Robert Peel didn't know what she was on about and again, promise to find out and phone straight back. Job Centre want date that Sam is signing off. Sam can't give them this until she has an official start date with one of the two jobs. Job Centre get even more nasty, because everyone knows that of course there aren't a record 2 million people out of work, we're all just lazy layabouts. Sam kills herself with despair at the hopelessness of it all.

Keeping up? I'm not.

...to say I didn't get the job, but they were very complimentary about me and said they'd be happy to consider me again a few months down the line, they would just like me to have more experience before they chuck me in the deep end of mental health services. Which is fair enough and not all bad I guess, as I was half convinced they had mixed up my application and hadn't meant to give me an interview at all. Thank you all for your well wishes, I really appreciate it.

Happy birthday to frostbitepanda!

Joey: Where do you live?
Me: Where do you think I live?
Joey: Me don't know.
Me: Well, where do you live?
Joey: Manchester.
Me: Manchester?! Don't you live in this house? In Burton?
Joey: Nooooo
Me: Did you move?
Joey: Yes, I did move to Manchester.

Apparently we have a spare room now then, if anyone would like it. Must be prepared to upkeep train maintenance and share with lots of cuddly toys.

Interview seemed to go well. They were positive and friendly and complicated my passion and enthusiasm, saying that was more important than experience. BUT they are interviewing loads of people, they only have one opening, and I probably won't find out till Monday.

I want this job so much. So so so much. I'm trying not to think about it as there is nothing I can do now, but it's just perfect for me. I CAN DO THIS. I want to do this. ARGH.

( Partay )
In other news, the interview I went to yesterday? I got the job. :) This wasn't the job I really really wanted, I hasten to add, that interview is tomorrow, but it is a job so even if tomorrow doesn't go the way I'd like, it seems I'm back in the game. I'm kind of hesitant to get too excited about it as once bitten twice shy, but it seems like a nice enough job with nice people and relatively decent pay, so here's hoping this doesn't fall through.

On the back of medland's question about why the Syndicate chose Scully to bring about the end of Mulder's work. I can has brilliant idea:

So the Syndicate are all getting old, right? They need to create a new race of little Syndications before they go to the big mothership in the sky. So they start looking for likely candidates to take over their work. Hence we have a crop of younger, better looking wannabes, such as Krycek, Marita, Fowley, Spender Jnr etc. My theory is that they were keeping an eye out for new FBI agents, government workers or whatever that might be suitable. Scully would have come to their attention, what with being a MEDICAL DOCTOR and all, and so they gave her project debunk as a test run before inviting her into their cosy little conspiracy factory. But we know to Trust No 1, we know there are spies everywhere, they must have recruited a fair few from the FBI other than Diana in their time.

My idea therefore, is thus: How great a spin off would this be? They could call it Syndicate: The Next Generation, and cover the training programs needed to become a world renowned government conspiracy player. It could be set in a school! Like Harry Potter but for murderers! You could have lessons from aliens! Field Trips to UFO's! Oh this is so genius, they should start filming yesterday. And as my reward for coming up with it I should be flown out to the set and get to bite on David Duchovny's bottom lip all day. In the name of research of course. There is nothing I don't love about this plan.

And now I shall go to an innocent children's party and not think of aforementioned bottom lip. Nu-uh. Not at all.

Oh, I need help.

Fly by message to say Happy Birthday to okelay and lsugaralmond, I hope you both have a wonderful day. You have the distinct honour of sharing your special day with my beautiful nephew, who is one year old today! No, seriously, it's been a year since Harry was born. How scary is that? He is walking and (sort of) talking now, and is the most cheerful baby you have ever seen. I shall bore you all with cute birthday party pictures later, do not fear.

...it's oh so still on LJ and Facebook today. In an effort to entertain you all, I shall now regale a brief story...

Once upon a time, believe it or not, this journal used to, you know, be a journal. Or a blog, whichever you prefer. I will not argue semantics. The point is, as my ability to write on here got more sporadic, due to one reason or another, my LJ just became somewhere where all I did was flail then disappear again. Now don't get me wrong here, I am not renouncing the flail. No way, it is an integral part of my personality (some may say it's the only part of my personality, but I choose to pretend this isn't true). But hence forth, I am going to try and use this space as more than somewhere to fangirl every now and then. Consider yourselves all dutifully warned.

( So then, onto the post, now with actual content. )


And now for the Announcements and Questions of the day:

Things are looking a bit more promising on the job-hunting front this week. I have two interviews and one trial day coming up. In particular, one of the interviews is for a job I would love so, so, so much, and I can't believe they are actually considering me as I'm vastly underexperienced. If I got this job it would make my year, it really truly would. Help me, f-list. It's a panel interview and I suck at those, how do I convince them that I would be good at this job? Because I truly believe I could be. Any interview tips, anyone? Please?

I got Twitter. I won't be linking it to here because I don't really understand why I would want to, but I can be found at www.twitter.com/samincittagazze if you so desire. ATM I can't really follow the logic of why it's so great too well, other than it allows me to know what Stephen Fry, Chris Moyles and Richard Bacon are up to on a regular basis, which caters to my stalkerish tendencies just fine thank you very much.

I also got Delicious. At the moment I have all of one thing bookmarked but I have decided I MUST get more organised about my fanfic reading, and this is the way to do it. Again, I'm at www.delicious.com/samincittagazze if you would like to network with me, whatever networking actually is.

I still have some userpic spaces waiting to be filled. I have decided that I need a) more BSG icons, and b) more IWTB icons. Any suggestions where I can get some decent ones, f-list? Plzkthnxbai.

So I'm updating my userpics. And I honestly can't decide whether to delete my Kim Manners icon or not. Looking at it makes me so sad, deleting it even more so. Help?

( Islanded in a stream of stars )

Happy Birthday randomtimes! Have a good one, lots of cake, etc etc...

Honda F1 is now Brawn GP. Powered by Mercedes. MY TEAM IS BACK. MY BOY HAS A DRIVE. ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD ONCE MORE!!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7927488.stm

- I spent four whole days in London with my beautiful London people.

- outintherain is here!

- so_vieh is also here!

- splodge04 will soon be here!

- The first thing we all did was sit down and play with our laptops. LMAO.

Oh f-list, the immortal ways in which the word 'Starbuck' has a profound effect on my soul. I am so in love with my new baby it is unbelievable. It has been so long since I had a computer which actually does what I ask it to, when I ask it! I am aware that I have to be careful with getting back into bad habits with my laptop and allowing myself to waste days just surfing around doing nothing, but I also need to have my honeymoon period. *Happy sigh* I did manage to tear myself away today long enough to perform some much needed cleaning and errands, so now I can play away guilt free.

I have a lot of decisions to make over the next 24 hours involving jobs, too complicated to bother writing down here but occupying most of my mind-space nonetheless. I know this is far less of a problem than those I had a week ago when I thought I would never, ever get a job, but it is still a problem and it needs to be solved. Possibly not as big a problem as the fact that I still haven't told my mum about aforementioned laptop-on-credit purchase. Gulp.

Anyway, I shall think upon it all until it is time to go to my Tai-Chi course, and then afterwards I shall be so at peace the right decision will have been made for me in the deeper regions of my consciousness. Or so I am assured.

Finally, Happy Birthday to redoren! Have a great one loveliness.