There's a elephant in this room, here....

I'll huff, I'll puff, I'll set your furniture shop on fire!

Isn't that how the saying goes?

I don't know! Riots. That's what I'm talking about. Well, not talking about because I'm quite happy to let the elephant stay in the room - I won't talk to it, I won't feed it and eventually I assume it will go away of it's own accord, because it will get bored and want to return to it's natural habitat. (but hopefully not steal from, or burn down said Habitat).

It's all over the news and now the riots have hit Manchester and that's all anyone is talking about. Well. I refuse, so if you want riot news, go elsewhere. I'm not going to harp on about how scallies are running around and the police won't use deadly force, like they should be doing!

My blog today is about... well, it was about 2 things really. The first being I just got back from my run (I decided last week to jump off the treadmill and run outside, why the hell is it 100% harder?!), and I did ok. I'm not a fit person. I have asthma and as a rule I like to be lazy. What can I say?! But 2 miles in 25 mins (roughly), is probably the best I can ask for right about now so I'm saying hurrah to myself. I need to tone up and I have decided running outside is my way forward. I need to find better running songs to listen to though, so if anyone has any suggestions - please help me out! I find anything by Katy Perry is good, especially my favorite one - E.T... oh come on... it's amazing! Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me!



I'm totally doing my makeup like this next time I go out for a run! hahah!



In other unrelated topics I wanted to talk about fitting in. I never really fit in anywhere, and part of it is because I don't want to, but sometimes I find myself on the outside looking in, especially when it comes to Internet society. I don't want Internet 'fame' - what I do want, and what I used to have on some sites, is a community. Because that's what the Internet is great for! You can talk to people as much or as little as you want about specific topics and not feel the need to know about their personal lives, unless you actually become super duper friends, in which case you add the on Facebook and photostalk them until you realise you're being a crazy person.

Community - it's the Internets silver lining, but I sometimes feel like I can't quite get my foot in the door. This place is great for that, this old Blogger here, because people drop in and out and if they like you they follow you. I never really feel any pressure to out-do anyone or try to be anyone else on Blogger, because I try to be as honest as I can be and people can like it or lump it, but I don't feel like I'm truly a 'blogger'. I don't feel like I'm in this blogging community. I'm trying to get onto a site with a forum at the moment, which will help with my writing, but I can't seem to because of technical difficulties, but I also want to try to find actual writing forums, a place I can go and get involved, enter competitions and such - but as I'm not involved in that world I find it really hard to even find the door... I can't even sneak in an open window because I don't know which one will lead to a nice community and which will lead to... dum dum dum, certain death.

Now, this blog didn't make sense because I lost my train of thought, but if you stop by here and know of any good writers forums or a site that hosts writing competitions, I would really appreciate some guidance, as there are SO many, I don't know which ones I should be looking at!

Argh - SAM need shower.

Sam

Oh yeah... and this is TOTALLY how I run!



MORE Pottermore

In my last blog, I blogged about Pottermore... and forgot to say what my username is...

I believe it really captures my personallity - like it was made JUST for me...

DreamMugwump63.

That's right. I'm the dreamiest Mugwump you'll ever meet.

Anyone else get through (well, yeah, I'm guessing there are a million people with ubercool usernames right now).

Which level did you get through on, and what's your username?

Sam

Spinebreaking Pottermore!

What a week! Not that I've been up to much, but I feel like this week has been manic. I think mentally I have been in turmoil, from worrying about my internet not working, to getting my 1st year grades (PASSED! WOO!), to finding out my boss (and really good friend) is leaving work next Friday (Is it wrong that I will miss my boss?!), to frantically trying to get early registration on the new Harry Potter website, Pottermore, to trying desperately to get involved in the website Spinebreakers (more on that below).

It's been one of those week where I feel like I have progressed... maybe not mentally, but in some way or another a progression has been made....

Yep - my internet stopped working this week, which was annoying for 3 reasons. The first reason was mostly due to the fact that I got the email from OU to say that my grade was available on the website for my first year... and I couldn't get onto the site to get it. I finally managed to get on the site after a few hours and saw the only word I needed to see - PASS - which made me quite happy, but made me realise I need to pay for my next year... which I don't want to do because I don't want to see that much money exit my account in one go! But... I know I have to... so I'll suck it up at some point and do it. I'm just putting off the inevitable!

Other things I have been internally stressing about for no reason what so ever is this new Harry Potter website Pottermore. I don't even know what it's all going to be about, but they were allowing 1 million people to submit themselves for early registration, so they can help with the development, point out bugs etc. and I just HAD to try to get in. It's not like I wouldn't have been able to join at the usual time in October, but... well, I didn't want to be left out. However the stupid website was putting up clues to be answered to win a space at the most stupid hours of the day. I.E when most people are at work, or asleep, so the only time I could actually try to get on the site was today, on the LAST day. And I managed it. I knew it was going to be between 12am and 3am that the clue would appear, and on Friday nights I don't go to sleep until about 3ish anyway, so I stayed on the site and got in there straight away! It's sad, how much I want this site to be good, and how excited I was when I signed up. But Harry Potter has been a huge part of my life - keeping me reading, and keeping me watching films and it's the thing that made me actually start my internet life - when I first signed up to Mugglenet and got on the forums, which led to working on forums making graphics for HP sites, and then being admin on a HP forum, and then watching certain people on Youtube who loved HP and made fan videos, and even setting up Blogger, because by that time there was no point not doing it because I was already living a seperate life via the internet anyway! So you see, I couldn't abandon HP now!

I've also been trying to join Spinebreakers, which is a website for Penguin books. It's a place where people review books and get the breaking news on new books coming out and it just seems like a great community. So I'm in the middle of trying to get into being a contributor and trying to get on the forums (which I can't get on at the moment for reasons unknown) - but as reading and writing are where I see my life heading more and more these days it's a place I really want to be involved in. Who knows - I'll try not to dwell on it until I hear from the admin folk, but it seems like such an exciting site I can't wait to get involved!

Well - I'm off to watch crap TV now, and for the rest of the day (Hello, The Audrina Show), and tomorrow I'm off into Manchester to watch Super8 at the IMAX (woohoo).

Have a good weekend folks!

Sam