This is the greatest Christmas mix ever. It’s got the Jackson 5 in it. 😀

Yes. I am listening to Christmas music in the month traditionally devoted to more spooky holidays.

Only though, because I’m listening to my giant all-music play list and this 50 minute mp3 has popped up on the play list. 😀

Originally from her divine shadow on October 3, 2006, 4:21am

in other news, i got a nice fat 300gb external hard drive as my dad’s retirement present. 😀 once again i have more hard drive space than the PC in the other room!

fairly well timed too as my internal laptop hard drive is 95% full and my old external hard drive is about 90% full and my pen for writing on dvds died.

i figure that in about ten years i won’t need to turn the heating on in my room in winter due to a nice array of external harddrives. 😀

Originally from her divine shadow on September 29, 2006, 9:30am

Randomly a black plastic box appeared on our lawn yesterday, apparently for putting plastic and cans in. We also got a leaflet saying that our blue boxes for paper and green waste bins would be collected every other week and our non-recyclable wheelie bin and new black box would be collected in the week in between the every other week.

Which was a bit concerning since at the moment, even with the big green wheelie bin for green waste, the green box for glass, the green box for plastic and cans and the blue paper box… the black wheelie bin for non-recyclable stuff is full every week when it gets taken away.

Plus it seemed that our glass bottles and jars would no longer be taken for recycling.

So I emailed Hertsmere Council yesterday asking about the glass:

Currently glass, paper, plastics and green waste are being collected for
recycling. As far as I can tell from the leaflet that we received about the
new recycling scheme, glass will no longer be collected. What should we do
with glass bottles and jars?

Today I got a reply.

Thank you for your email dated 28th September 2006. Hertsmere have never
done a kerbside collection of glass. We recommend that all residents that
wish to recycle glass and plastic take there items to their local collection
point.

…

…

So. I have emailed Hertsmere Council again asking who it is that’s currently taking the glass and plastic from my road if it’s not them.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s Watford Council and that someone’s made a bit of a cock-up with the boxes and leaflets. Which is understandable as, as far as I know, the dividing line between Watford and Hertsmere Councils’ areas goes right down the middle of my road, leaving our house under one council and our garage under the other.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 29, 2006, 7:31am

also, while i was in portugal i saw two films. The Big White or something that translated vaguely to it being easier to find dead bodies and another film called “Havana – Cidade Perdida” which I think is “Havana – the Lost City”. The first one was funny and funny and funny and cool and stuff. The second one, which I actually saw first, was a really really really good film. About cuba and this nightclub owner and his family. And stuff. during the revolution. Go and see it.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 26, 2006, 3:27pm

1. oh wow i feel sick.
2. i’m back btw.
3. if anything important happened, to you, people you know that i know or y’know in the world in general over the last two weeks (because i don’t understand anywhere near enough Portuguese to fully comprehend news reports) tell me about it! especially about you people on my friends list because i have a bazillion journals and communities on there and i think i can only go back about 3 days before there becomes too many and it all drops off into an unknown lj void.
4. i seem to have again successfully maintained my deathly beige pallor whilst in a hot and sunny country
5. wow, nausea
6. i have three postcards that i totally forgot to bring addresses with me for, so those will be posted…tomorrow probably. three out of fourteen isn’t bad i think, considering my mum had just the 3 and completely forgot to post them all together, even with addresses
7. just as i thought, two packages arrived for me two days after i left, so tomorrow it’s down to the sorting office to pick them up.
8. also, i have other things to do. like delete loads of email that isn’t important enough to need reading (mostly newsletters)
9. yay comics

Originally from her divine shadow on September 26, 2006, 1:45pm

On 11th September 2001, two things happened in New York. One, you’re unfortunately probably very familiar with and have been hearing about related things all day. The other was the announcement of an international day of peace, that would occur annually on 21st September.
The idea behind it was to try and work towards world peace, starting with one day of worldwide peace and ceasefire. Now, even one day of world peace doesn’t seem very likely to occur, but maybe if everyone works towards it a step at a time it could happen one day and then maybe after that continual world peace won’t seem so far away.

I found out about the whole peace day thing from a documentary I happened to catch on tv one night about this one guy’s attempt to get an international day of peace recognised by the UN and his subsequent realisation that just having a day of peace declared wasn’t enough and that people have to actually do something towards bringing about peace in any of its forms, even if it’s just on that day.

“ Documentaries sometimes document incredible things and I think our film did that because the creation of the Day came four days before 9/11. It was a beautiful moment and probably the greatest day of my life. Then to be outside the United Nations on the morning of 11 September and have the cameras running and for the planes to hit the buildings, words can’t really describe it. It was unbelievable. But as I say in the film I think it makes it all the more poignant. This is why we’ve got to come together. We’ve got to stand together as one. As Ahmad Fawzi from the UN says at the end of the film, we can’t sit around in our armchairs and expect peace to come, because it won’t.. “
– Jeremy Gilley, peace one day founder

Peace One Day website
Article from the times.
my lj entry on last year’s Peace Day

cross posted to peaceoneday

Originally from her divine shadow on September 11, 2006, 1:54pm

Spent the last few days with my auntie, uncle and minicousin from California. On Friday we went to Legoland, which was cool and Lego-y. Yesterday was spent buying Wedgwood in Harrods and then zooming about on a bus tour of London. I suspect that the tour tape that we were listening to was trying to be funny, which only would work if the bus was full of probably British people who know various British-like in-jokes. So mostly, it was lost on a bus full of non-British tourists. And also, there were bits that were blatantly wrong as Tower Records got replaced by Virgin Megastore and why would you point it out on a bus tour anyway? Then there were bits that went “And on your left is the Tyburn Tree,” *cue everyone but me looking for some kind of a tree on the left* “which wasn’t actually a tree but a gallows and loads of people would be executed there and everyone would come and watch and it was better than Big Brother and very popular on bank holidays.” *cue people (again, except me) looking for a gibbet* “All that’s left of it is a tiny plaque marking the place where thousands of people died. In the middle of the traffic island.” *cue the rest of the passengers realising we went past it some time ago and stifled giggles from me*

A number of times my auntie turned round to ask me where something was and I had to point out that “oh, um. it’s not here anymore. they knocked it down. a few hundred years ago.” and stuff.

Randomly, the only time I seem to go sightseeing in London is when various family members arrive from other countries. Probably because I am the least baffled by the mysterious workings of public transport. Well. I can listen to announcements while applying them to the route we were intending to take at the same time.

Today, several hours were spent at the airport. Then some more hours were spent at Oriental City, where my mum had various chinese medical things done to her because she’s sick of the failure of western medicine to fix her high blood pressure satisfactorily.

During this… I mostly loitered and then had some teh tarik and bought a picture frame for my mum. And some delicious green kueh. I think the green kueh is the best kind.

Tomorrow… I will pack. Well. Try and stuff clothes into my suitcase around the box of tea for my auntie that takes up half of the suitcase. :/ I may resort to removing all the tea bags and shoving them in a more easily squashable bag. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be too much work. I have a tiny suitcase and a list of things other than clothes that I will be bringing.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 10, 2006, 1:29pm

Today, my auntie and uncle from California and my littlest cousin came to visit. They’ve been visiting various places in Europe and are dropping by for a few days on the way back to America. Tomorrow, we go to legoland, hopefully with some kind of better discount than the web-preorder on, but sadly not quite as good as the one we could have gotten if we’d booked a few more days in advance.

This… is an interesting version of “Straight Out of Compton”.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 7, 2006, 3:37pm

right-click, save as

Instructions

1. Download the zip file and unzip it.
2. Upload the files to your web space or a free image hosting service (e.g..
   Photobucket).
3. Go to the admin
   console.
4. Type in:

   moodtheme_create "Keanu Reeves " "Keanu Reeves mood
theme by herdivineshadow"

5. Click "execute". You’ll be given an i.d. number for your mood theme, make
   a note of it.
6. Open the "moodtheme.txt" file from the opened zip file and replace
   where it has "12345" with the number you were just given.

   moodtheme_setpic 12345 90 http://www.yoururlhere.com/accomplished.jpg
100 65

   (the bit bolded above)

7. Replace where it says "www.yoururlhere.com" with the url of your web space
   or photobucket album.
8. Copy everything from the text file and paste it into the admin console
   and click "execute". Your mood theme should now be installed.
9. Go to the Custom
   Mood Editor page and click on the "use" button next to your newly installed
   mood theme to begin using it.
10. Alternatively, you can also use the custom mood editor to install the mood
    theme, but it’s probably quicker to use the admin console.

NB: The Keanu Reeves mood theme has one mood icon with a shot of a bare bum.
If you don’t want Keanu’s naked buttocks appearing in your journal, replace
the "naughty" mood icon with another.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 6, 2006, 10:24am

Randomly got a call from a Nottingham number that hung up after ringing once. Other than people I know that I can’t remember if they live in Nottingham, the only other option is someone ringing to book a taxi.

Which has happened in the past.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 5, 2006, 10:35am