Time passes

It's often given as a measure of 'how far I've come' whenever something goes wrong and I manage to get through it. Back at the start of the year, one of the real turning points for me was after so much else had gone wrong, we got snowed in with no power for a few days, and it even surprised myself just how much I rose to the challenge. I always say whenever things are hard to get through that time just goes by regardless – whether you're happy and looking forward to it or dreading every last second, the time will just tick by and the world will keep turning around you, so long as you just keep breathing in and out all things will eventually pass.

It was the release of Civilization V on Friday, one of the games that I mentioned in my pre-order post a while back; it was the one that I had the free map for via Game. The disc came on Thursday, but since this is the digital age of bonus exclusive, digital and encrypted content, the game wouldn't even let me install it until midnight on launch day. Midnight GMT, that is. Why they felt the need to display that when we're not actually in GMT for British Summer Time, I don't know, but either way, it was only an extra hour to wait.

An hour later and we had stage 2 of the problem, with the game refusing to run. Eventually after several reinstalls and driver updates, I gave up at 3am, and got up just 5 hours later when my mind refused to switch off of the problem solving mode it had drifted into in my semi-sleep. Fortunately though I had managed to stumble across the solution, so at long last I've got the background noise back that I've been bemoaning the lack of over the past few weeks. Really, its been a lifesaver.

The problems rapidly shifted to the foreground though, since an outing was needed to get a parcel posted, only already a week late. In a nice bit of synchronicity, I was only actually able to get it posted at last because I could use the padded envelope the game came in, so one thing rolled nicely into another on that count.

Things were... bad, though. Hopefully for the last time, since this week I should be starting some new pills to help eliminate that, but still. The outing itself went perfectly and I got my achievement, will hopefully make a friend's day tomorrow with post and I've made another one of the baby steps towards normality that everyone seems to think is so valuable. What's stuck with me though, instead of the 'good' parts, is the way that I felt before it, the sense of impending doom that took so much to conquer that was attached to something so utterly mundane as driving for 2 minutes to post a letter.

I've laid all the foundations so that hopefully, just by getting by and breathing in and out, the wheels have been set in motion to drag me along forward to the place I want to eventually go. It's all I can do to just keep at it, knowing that the time will be there regardless of whether I am. Sometimes, when it comes to posting parcels or solving computer errors, things work out. And sometimes, for reasons that we can't influence as time marches on regardless, they don't.

Onwards and upwards

I received a very... helpful email this morning. It was from play.com, responding to my third complaint (submitted 6 days ago) and finally passing on my code for my free horse. If you had been paying attention, you may have noticed that my last entry said a similar thing. It would appear that that one was in fact the ORIGINAL email, promised to be sent within 72 hours, finally arriving after 23 days, and this one was just them finally getting back to me after complaining about it repeatedly. Needless to say, I'm not exactly impressed by my first time shopping experience with them, and I don't think I'll be going back. But then... Gran Turismo 5... they DO have a nice pair of very shiny black cars...

I got another package in the mail today, one of my games arriving a day early! And unlike my experience with other retailers, I've got a nice email sitting in my inbox already promising my lovely map of the Americas, all ready to install the second I've got the game set up. But then, that leads me to my next problem, and my next reason for grumping – the bloody game won't even install itself until midnight and the official launch date. I'd accepted that I wouldn't get to play it until then due to the fancy high-tech copy protection, but not even able to INSTALL it? Meaning that at midnight, I can finally put the disc in the drive... and spend the next 2 hours getting it configured and patched, and faced with the choice of leaving it til morning or pulling an all nighter. Considering that the last couple of nights my mind's seen fit to keep me awake til after 5 anyway, the latter option might just be more appealing...

I've still been technically 'continuing my progress' towards my grand dreams and schemes, and even today I could say that I've made another big step towards making it all real. But I don't know, maybe its just the winter drawing in and depression taking a bit more of a hold on me, but it all feels just that extra bit further away. In the early stages its all about the purity of the dream and focus on the changes that achieving it would bring, but the longer I have to dwell on it the more holes get picked in the practicalities and the further away it all seems to be. I'm pretty sure I've done everything right in setting it all in motion, now just like everything else I have to wait for that little seed to take hold and grow before I can get to the eating the metaphorical fruit. When you're dreaming of home-grown apple pie though, you don't tend to consider how much dirt you need to get under your fingernails to get there.

The horse(man) cometh

And lo, on the 23rd day the heavens did part, and David did receive unto himself his long-missing steed. And he did nameth him Steve, and there was much rejoicing.

P is for...

It would seem that my limit is 20 days to wait for an email about a missing free horse. Today makes 3 full weeks and two emailed complaints, so yesterday I had finally had enough of waiting for it to 'sort itself out' and decided to take matters into my own hands, and actually call the play.com customer services number instead of waiting for them to get back to me.

I had been pre-warned about their call centre being based in the Philippines, and while the lovely girl on the end of the phone spoke excellent English, it was apparent that she was having a few minor problems understanding my Scottish accent. The problems arose when she was trying to confirm my address, and we got to the postcode...

After listing the first letter as F, she promptly read S for sierra back to me. I had to think quickly on my feet, and in fairness did a decent enough job fishing out “Freddie” to confirm it. The problem now was that I had many more letters to go, and my lack of confidence at dealing with phone calls was being shaken further by being put on the spot and being tested on my knowledge of police callsigns from The Bill. Sensing my floundering, this was the moment that my mum decided to 'helpfully' step in, to help fill out the rest of the code with... sierra for S. Thanks for that! Clearly my wild arm and eyebrow flailing successfully communicated that she was not helping, so she quietened down, leaving me alone to desperately plough the darkest recesses of my mind to find a K for Kilo, and a P for...

…

PIE!

I don't think I'm going to be allowed to live that one down. In my defence, it's not easy to be put on the spot like that, especially with an audience! Were I looking to glean any minute positives from it I could claim that being able to both make the phone call and deal with the scenario taking a turn for the unexpected is further proof of my progress, but for some reason I suspect any attempts to bring that up might be shouted down in a fit of giggles in favour of the very minor faux pas.

And by this point its barely even worth mentioning that my third submitted complaint altered nothing and I remain without my lovely imaginary horse. Sigh sigh.

Backwards birthdays

Don't you hate it when you wake up in the morning feeling like... wait, wait, stop, I've done the Ke$ha joke before. Start over!

It's been a full 7 years now since I dropped out of school (and, by extension, society), and yet in my half-asleep dazed state this morning I still managed to whimper “but mummy, I don't WANT to go to school, I'm tiiiired!”. I'm just never going to be free of it, am I? I'll be 83, dreaming about that damn school bus. Assuming science doesn't find a cure for dreams by then, that is.

The framework and background time fillers have, as predicted, been slightly lacking this week, so I'm very fortunate that I've been able to be amused by some of the apparently backwards happenings around me, starting with a lovely parcel I got on Tuesday! See, I always thought that you were supposed to RECEIVE presents on your birthday, instead I've been sent a lovely bonus one from Alex before I've even sent hers! My parents seem to have got the whole birthday concept a bit wrong too, considering that they got a nice watch for the wrong brother. He might well need it now he's a big senior at school, but isn't a watch meant to be a 21^st sort of present? Maybe they thought if there were watches all round I'd feel left out, so just decided to prioritise the littlest son. Ha, now he knows how it feels!

You know, I'm not entirely sure I've got the right message out of watching House. I'm sure the writers thought they were getting across a responsible message about the dangers of painkiller abuse, instead I seem to have taken the view that it took him 5 years to have any adverse effects from them, therefore a month or so of scoffing them like smarties isn't going to do any damage. Actually come to think of it, the “being mean to a girl for an extended period of time until she finally admits she wants you” moral of the Cuddy arc has worked out pretty well for me too.

Oh, and for all who laughed under your breath about my hatching Bulbasaur eggs last entry? Calm nature with perfect HP, Defence and Special Attack IVs, making it one of the best in the world on the day that its revealed grass drain moves have received a power boost for the next gen. HA.

Life In A Northern Town

It's the medium brother's birthday on Wednesday, so he's home for some bonus chaos! The bar has been set with his first story about his feuding room-mates – I'm not sure how you're supposed to react when you walk into the kitchen to catch the tail end of an anecdote that ends with “so she bought a paddling pool, but it got filled with beans so she threw a pineapple at her but it missed and broke a window”. Student life in Glasgow, apparently! Next item on the agenda: surviving the grandparents visit for his 'special day'.

So, the pope is about to make his first visit to Britain in almost 30 years, amid a storm of controversy. Meanwhile, Susan Boyle is preparing to perform for him. This is the country that produced Shakespeare and The Beatles, and apparently now the high point of our cultural achievements in 2010 is... some woman that sang on Britain's Got Talent. If only he'd arrived a week early we could have gone the whole hog and stuck him in Ultimate Big Brother. "Day 35, 9:15pm. Chantelle and Brian are in the garden, boasting to Benedict XVI about the footballers they've blown in the toilets at China White."

I had a thought. I have quite a lot of them during the days, but this was a particularly profound one. Imagine there's a girlband. Lets call them.. the Wednesdays. Now, 4 of them are really keen to do a sexy photoshoot in their underwear for FHM, but the 5^th one is shy and doesn't really want to. But the offer was only for the whole band to do it... that's a lot of peer pressure, and something pretty major to end up getting forced into! I'm sure there's some sort of moral to this story, but as usual I'm not entirely sure what it is.

And while we're on the subject! Imagine a pair of identical twins. One is shy, one confident and outgoing. The confident one does a Playboy shoot. Does the shy one get embarrassed that now everyone knows what she looks like naked?

I do realise that this makes me look like some sort of deviant sitting about all day thinking about embarrassed nudey girl scenarios, but its probably still better than what I've actually been doing. Hatching hundreds of Bulbasaur eggs relaxes me, ok?! And I'll be laughing when I see the benefit of my master race of superior genetic plant monsters. In 9 months. When the game I'm doing it in preparation for actually comes out.

Oh and the fact that my horse has failed to materialise on day 16 goes without saying, of course.

Clouds

When I woke up this morning, (as well as feeling distinctly un-like P. Diddy, because that's not even a thing), I was struck by a thought, something incredibly profound and meaningful that I thought would make an excellent blog entry. Unfortunately for me and the world... by the time I was awake enough to organise my tangled web of thoughts into something resembling words, I'd forgotten it. I'm sure it was nothing earth-shatteringly important, just... actually wait, this is my blog and its completely unverifiable, so no, it WAS earth-shatteringly important, on a scale of solving the energy crisis or bringing peace to all faiths. Which only serves to make my later ponderings about clouds all the more mundane in comparison.

Have you ever really thought about clouds though? Like... really thought? If you took the concept of an ever-changing sky in abstract, it would sound like something out of a sci-fi novel. The ground beneath their feet on this mighty new planet was uniform and constant as far as the eye could see, but when they turned their pressure-helmets towards the heavens the canvas above danced with colours and shapes, transforming seemingly at random through epic phases of clear and dark streaks and patterns, infinite in their variable majesty! We just never really stop to question something that is and always will be.

And of course it goes without saying that even after a fortnight, I'm still without my horse.

Spare some change?

Day 13. Big Brother is no more. And David still DOES NOT HAVE HIS HORSE.

Sigh, all in all this has been 'one of those weeks'. I'm pretty sure I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I was expecting the next fortnight or so to be tough, and if I didn't, well... I was certainly thinking it quite loudly. And yet, as I definitely did say, every single time it still manages to catch me by surprise when things turn out a bit rubbish. There's only so many times I can say that I should have learned before I just have to shut up and ACTUALLY learn it. So expect another moaning entry next week complaining how I wasn't expecting to be this tired after doing something embarrassingly trivial!

I suppose by the standards that I'm supposed to be working to, I've made yet more progress this week with more outings, but when the rest of the web is filled with joy and excitement about the steps into the world with new college terms and adventures to be had, making it for 7 instead of 6 minutes in the car to buy some crisps just feels all the more hollow by comparison. It's been a decade now in this rut, and to be honest the chipping away at it isn't good enough. Things HAVE to change. I can try building things up on this twisted scale of 'progress' towards 'normalcy' for the rest of my life, but I will ALWAYS be behind because of where I've started from and the limits to my progression.

Since I've started this blog, I've tried to move past the differences in my life to the norm, to accept and embrace the fact that I've had circumstances forced on me that have shunted my outlook sideways and make the most of it. I think it might be time to take that a step further. I'm not getting any younger.

Feelin' Fine.

DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY

DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY
DAY 11 WITH NO HORSE MAKE DAVID STABBY

Girl Frightened By Boogeyman #3

Day 9 in the big brother house/since the order was placed. David has gone on a murderous rampage, because he STILL HASN'T RECEIVED HIS FREE HORSEY!

I was surprised to receive especially positive feedback for my last post – apparently lyrics, music trivia and nudity is a good direction for things to go in. I'll keep that in mind for occasions when I've got very little to say. Like today!

I've been pondering – has there EVER been an actor or actress who left a soap because they felt they were getting 'too big for it' who went on to do something remotely credible? I was (pleasantly) surprised to find that one of the cute girls who used to be on Emmerdale has successfully managed to crack Hollywood with a breakout role as “topless totty who gets eaten by crocodile” in Lake Placid 3. For further viewing, see Candice off Corrie's stunning performance in Boogeyman 3 – I was particularly moved by the harrowing scene where she was frightened by the boogeyman while showing her bum. I'm surprised she didn't receive any Oscar attention for it.

Trivia fact for the day: Craig David's 7 Days video was reshot for American release, almost frame for frame, but with a black actress in the love interest role. Apparently they were 'uncomfortable' with the original British version where a black man was dating a white girl.

Untouched... unhinged.

Don't you just hate it when you wake up feeling like P. Diddy? Oh wait... no. Because that's not even a thing!

For the last couple of days I've been using up all my writingness and creativity on real-life, pen and paper stuff instead of this. If I had a few more followers it might be a bad trade off, but seeing as a third of my audience will see the benefit, its probably worth it!

This is such a boring lull just now, with all my last wave of projects taken care of but their replacements to work towards still a couple of weeks away. I had hoped that one of my game deliveries might help fill some of the gaps, but most annoyingly I've had to use some of my writing allocation to send them angry emails for not sending me my free in-game horsey! It may be minor, but I bought from that shop solely on the basis that they'd give me free stuff, so I want it fulfilled damn it!

Did you know?: That Tatu's All About Us was in fact written by The Veronicas, before the record company reassigned it to the Russian pair? Isn't there something a bit off about that that it was originally written by and about sisters, and then co-opted to be about lesbianism?

Talking of the Veronicas (neither of whom is called Veronica, but still), one of them had a nudey picture scandal. Oh heavens! In this puritanical day and age, no less. Someone must inform the elders! However, it was made somewhat worse by one of their fan forums organising a “post your own nude pics in support of Jess” thread, requiring the poptart herself to intervene begging them to call it off. I think that might possibly be the most misguided show of support I've ever seen. But still, full marks for the execution.