1600: Clover and Socks

As some of you will remember, we got a couple of new(er) rats a while back, initially to give Lucy Rat some company after her cagemate Lara died, and then to keep each other company when Lucy passed away not all that long afterwards.

It's been interesting to get to know Clover and Socks since we've had them, as they have markedly different personalities to Lara and Lucy. While Lara was a lazy rat who enjoyed attention and Lucy was an energetic psychopath who also enjoyed attention, both Clover and Socks are much more reserved. Scared is perhaps the word, although it seems to be the strangest things that set them off — certain noises and certain sudden movements will send them bolting for the nearest piece of shelter, but with other things they're absolutely fine.

I'm not sure if they're actually proving more difficult to "socialise" than Lara and Lucy were, because in retrospect it was relatively late into both of their respective lives that they started coming out of the cage of their own volition, exploring, responding to stimuli and, indeed, doing absolutely anything for a prawn cracker or piece of lettuce. Socks and Clover, meanwhile, are both willing to come out and explore a bit — Sock in particular likes climbing up on top of the cage where she has a Lego house in which she can hide — but they're not yet willing to be picked up or petted with any reliability. It's a shame, but hopefully they'll come around eventually.

They do both have very distinct personalities that they exhibit when they're not running for shelter, however. Socks is curious, cheeky and keen to run around — both of them will run on the wheel we originally got for Lara and Lucy, but Socks does it with far more regularity — while Clover is a little more timid and careful about what she does for the most part. I say "for the most part" because there are times when she'll skitter around the cage, dig a big hole for no apparent reason and then look out as if to say "…what?"

Rats are very interesting pets to have and, despite the fact they have a slight tendency to keep antisocial hours — Socks and Clover both tend to get up and be most active when Andie and I are going to bed — they're good company. They're not the same kind of pet as a dog or cat, of course — while those animals will happily wander around and come and see you when they damn well feel like it (although most dogs, in my experience, are attention whores even more than cats are), rats are a pet you have to actively engage with due to the fact that they're — in most cases, anyway — not free to just roam around your house at will.

It's kind of a shame that they're not in some ways, as it's fun to see them wandering around on the floor. And it was some "out of cage" time that gave me the fondest memory I think I have of Lara in particular: it was back when we lived in Chippenham, and we'd let them out for some reason — I forget exactly why, perhaps to clean them — and I was upstairs doing something on the computer. Suddenly, I felt something on my feet. Thinking it was just an itch or perhaps a fly or something, I moved my foot, but then looked down only to see Lara trundling around on the floor of my study; she'd climbed all the stairs in our Chippenham house — which must be like ascending a mountain for a rat — and come to see me, presumably by following my scent.

I miss Lara and Lucy, particularly as Socks and Clover are yet to come out of their shells enough to interact with us a great deal. But I'm sure we'll become friends eventually, and then I'm sure we'll have some fun, silly stories with them, too.

1596: Efforts

Trying to stay positive. Got up early today, went for a swim before doing anything else (only 25 lengths, alternating crawl and my laughable excuse for a breast stroke, but you have to start somewhere) and then took the bus (the bus!) back. (I managed to find all the Obsidian Mushrooms in Demon Gaze during the bus journey back, which treated me to some enjoyable scenes with catgirl maid Pinay, so it was very much worth it.)

Got back. Applied for two jobs, nearly applied for a third before I realised I'd already applied for it last week, took delivery of our new table (it's humongous, and it has metallic animal feet, because it clearly belonged to an old lady before ending up in the British Heart Foundation shop), attempted to assemble new table, was mostly successful, did some work, played some Game and Wario (the freebie game I got with Mario Kart 8, which I will almost certainly write more about tomorrow evening after a night of multiplayer fun) and… that's about it, really.

I feel like I've got quite a bit done today, and, as usual, it can be attributed at least partly to getting up reasonably early and getting started on things before I have to do stuff. I think this every time I get up early, then I go and get all depressed and find it hard to get out of bed until immediately before I have to start work. (Also our new bed is really comfy.)

As I say, trying very hard to stay positive right now, but it's a challenge. Too much is unknown. Several of the jobs I've applied for won't be letting me know one way or another for two or three weeks, and by then that's the time I will really need to have a new job sorted and ready for me. But I guess there's not a lot I can do about that. As time ticks on, it becomes more and more likely there'll be a gap between my current job ending and my new one starting. I just hope it isn't too long.

In the meantime, I just have to keep doing what I can in order to stay as positive as it is possible to stay under the circumstances. I have to be grateful for the things I do have, rather than upset about the things that I don't have — even if the things that I don't have could cause potential difficulties. I can't think about that, though. I have to assume that things are going to work out all right. I have to assume that things are going to be fine, and that by this time next month, I'll be wondering what on Earth I was panicking about.

Hmm. Well, it's going to be a challenge, but I guess I have no option but to try right now, huh?

1595: Other Side Up

A sense of low self-worth tends to coincide, oddly enough, with those times in your life when things aren't going all that well. The time when your actual worth is lower than it could be, in other words.

I'm going through one of those phases right now, and it sucks. There's only so much I can do about it in the short-term, though. But there are probably at least a few things I can do, starting with outlining all the things that are causing me stress, anxiety and depression right now. This isn't for the benefit of any of you kind enough to read my self-indulgent ramblings: I'm simply hoping it will prove to be something of a cathartic exercise, or something.

Okay. Number one on the list of Things That Are Getting Me Down is the lack of job. I still technically have a job until the end of June, of course, but after that I'm on my own. Far from making me feel relaxed, though, I just feel incredibly awkward about the whole situation. I've pretty much been cut off from the rest of the staff — partially voluntarily, since I didn't really trust myself to contribute meaningfully to staff meetings when at risk of bursting into tears at any moment — and am being largely left to my own devices. With the site's shift in editorial direction, I don't have to worry about news stories, either, so that takes a bit of pressure off, but it's still a bit of a weird situation.

The main thing causing anxiety in this instance is the fact that I don't yet know what I'm going to be doing after the deadline of the end of June is up. I have a few applications in, but I've only heard from one so far, and that was a rejection. I have some more positions I need to apply for, but I also have to contemplate the possibility that I might not get any of those, which might leave me in a position where there doesn't appear to be anything worth applying for. What do I do then? Aim lower? That doesn't sound right, but it might be the only option.

My issue, as I've pondered on these pages once or twice in the past, is convincing employers that the work I've done for the past few years is directly relevant to something that is… well, not directly related. I am good at writing about video games. I am good at writing in general. However, I worry that there's still a certain amount of "stigma" around professional games journalism, like it's not a "real job" and that, when attempting to apply for a position at a "real" company, I'll be judged negatively for the hard work I've put in over the last few years.

This is an irrational and probably completely incorrect assumption, of course, but as I said, I'm simply spouting off the things that are causing me anxiety right now.

Unrelated to the work issue is the fact that I'm just generally feeling pretty shitty about myself at the moment, particularly with regard to my body image. I'm painfully aware that I've put on loads of weight over the last few years, and I can't shift it. When I get depressed, I often turn to comfort eating, and it's a difficult habit to break. Right now, I'm making a conscious effort to try and eat more healthy things wherever possible, but sometimes you just want a chocolate bar or a cookie.

I can feel the additional weight translating into unfitness, too. I get breathless, my legs ache and creak, and I feel crappy most of the time. I need to get up, about and being active again, but I know that for a good while after I start doing it, it's going to hurt. It's going to be difficult, I'm going to be gasping for breath and I'm going to feel like I'm not making any progress. And the prospect of that is putting me off doing it in the first place — which, of course, is making me feel worse about myself.

I think I need to try and ease myself back in with something reasonably "easy" like swimming, and later graduate back to the gym and running and the like when I've built a bit of strength back up. I feel like a useless lump at the moment, so I don't know how long that is going to take, but I feel like I probably should start on this sooner rather than later. This week, perhaps; I already joined the gym in town shortly before we moved, so I just need to try and get into some good habits, getting up early and going in the morning.

If I can stick to that, that solves part of my semi-conscious objections to indulging in regular exercise and the like. My main issues are that I get too ambitious too quickly — deciding I'll go to the gym every day every week, for example — and then lose motivation quickly, and also that I feel like taking time to do exercise is time that I'd rather spend doing literally anything else. I don't really enjoy exercising while I'm in the state I'm in at the moment; it's demoralising, embarrassing and painful. I need to work through that pain, somehow.

All of the above, then, is conspiring to make me feel monumentally crap. I wish I could say that I knew things were going to be okay, and I have plenty I should be grateful right now — not least of which is the fact that Andie and I now own our own house, and with a little more work on it, it will be very much how we want it. But there are more immediate concerns weighing on my mind before I really feel like I can relax and enjoy that, and I need to figure out how to address those sooner rather than later.

1594: The Changing Times, As Seen Through the Lens of Challenge TV

Challenge, for those of you not in the UK, is a digital television channel whose programming consists almost entirely of gameshow reruns from the '70s, '80s and '90s. There's the odd bit of original programming and occasional repeats of more recent stuff, but for the most part it's about enjoying old gameshows.

One of the most interesting things about rewatching old gameshows in 2014 is pondering the sort of people who are on them — specifically, their jobs. In the older stuff you get on Challenge — stuff like Blankety Blank, 321 and any number of other shows with wobbly cardboard sets and LCD readouts of the participants' scores — people tend to have very straightforward jobs. "I'm a plumber," one contestant will say. "I work in a shop," another will say. "I'm a newsagent," another will say.

Compare and contrast with the sort of contestants you get on today's shows — best exemplified by Challenge's repeats of shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Catch Phrase and The Chase — and it's a very different situation. "I'm a management consultant," one will say. "I'm a business development manager," another will say. (Andie informs me that this is the new name for what we used to know as "salesmen".) "I'm an information technology technician in an educational establishment, specialising in campus-wide distributed network solutions," another will say. (I made the last one up. Sounds convincing, though, doesn't it?)

Notice the difference? That's right, modern jobs all have utterly meaningless titles. Rather than being a straightforward description of what the person actually does, modern job titles obfuscate the person's true purpose behind layers of doublespeak, presumably in an attempt to make everyone seem more important than they actually are. It's probably the same reason that Asda has a "Colleagues Entrance" instead of a "Staff Entrance", and why Waitrose employs "partners" instead of, you know, people who work in a supermarket.

It's a trend that's grown over the last ten or twenty years in particular, and it's not a particularly positive change for the use of clear English. There seems to be a mistaken assumption that using the longest, most complicated and fiddly words possible to describe something makes it sound more "formal" and "intelligent" — it's the same reason why people in suits incorrectly use "myself" instead of "me" when they're trying to impress clients or superiors — but I'm pretty sure that most of us are wise to this little trick by now. Any time someone starts "myself"-ing at me, I just want to shake them and say "speak like a normal person! Do you talk to your friends like that?"

Actually, talking about this conjures up a number of fairly amusing mental images, the first one of which that sprang to mind was — don't judge me — a management consultant having sex and breathlessly gasping that "the copulation between myself and yourself is approaching its conclusion, please prepare the personal cleanliness solutions for the removal of errant ejaculate from those areas in which it was unintended to fall", by which point he would have probably already jizzed all over her tits anyway, rendering the entire statement moot and the pair of them sitting in slightly uncomfortable silence, both wondering why he can't just say "I'm gonna cum" or "unnnnnggggghhhh" like a normal person.

[glances back at how this post started and where it ended up.]

I, uh… sorry, I don't know what happened there. That sort of escalated quickly, didn't it? Oh well. It's late, all right? My brain is wandering to weird places and I apparently need to get some sleep.

1592: Funnymen

I really enjoy a good bit of stand-up comedy — emphasis on the good — and so it was with some delight that I recently discovered the work of Louis C.K.

Louis C.K. is someone whom I'd heard mentioned before — mostly by my American friends — but I'd never checked out his material before. I'm always oddly wary of American stand-up — I think it's because I'm conscious that a number of stand-ups from the British Isles have struggled to make an impact in the States, so I find myself wondering if the reverse is true, too. Past experience — the best example I can think of being Bill Hicks — has demonstrated that good American comedy can very much still be funny on this side of the Atlantic, though, so I'm aware I'm being irrational; it's just one of those things.

Anyway, Louis C.K. is extremely funny. I've watched two of his stand-up shows on Netflix and the first episode of his TV show Louie to date, and all of them have had me properly laughing out loud. He seems to strike a good balance between shocking — his discussion of the words "faggot" and "cunt" during the opening section of one of his shows is a particularly good example of this — and witty, intelligent, observational comedy with just a touch of cynicism. Meanwhile, Louie appears to show that he's a good character actor, too, with some wonderfully deadpan scenes throughout — my favourite being "…can you stop smiling exactly the same way at me every time I look at you?" "…No." — coupled with just the occasional dip into absurdity. I'll have more to say about that when I've watched a few more episodes, I'm sure.

The reason why discovering Louis C.K. is such a pleasure is because I feel UK comedy isn't in a particularly good place right now — at least not the stuff you generally see on TV. There's still stuff like Dara O'Briain and Russell Howard being shown on repeat-centric channels such as Dave, of course, but the main face of British comedy right now appears to be Russell Kane, whom I just simply don't find particularly funny. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or simply because I don't like his style, but I find the show he comperes — BBC Three's Live at the Electric — fairly excruciating to watch, not only for Kane's sequences, which are by far the strongest element of the show (which isn't saying much) but for the truly dreadful, painfully unfunny sketches and skits that punctuate the format.

Louis C.K., meanwhile, has a style that I very much like. There's an air of seemingly defeated cynicism about a lot of it, with occasional crescendos into furious anger about something or other. He never seems to take it too far, though; the rants tend to stop before they become too preachy, and any tension built up through the yelling is usually defused nicely by a pithy comment or a reminder of what he was talking about beforehand. It's a style I really like.

Anyway, if you've never checked out the comedy of Louis C.K. and you've been meaning to, I'd encourage you to do so at the next opportunity. I've really enjoyed what I've seen, and I hope there's more material out there to discover. In the meantime, I'll be enjoying the Louie series.

1587: The Most Important Part of Moving

Unpacking shit, painting and hammering nails into walls are all very important parts of moving house, but by far the most important thing to do is to determine whether or not your local takeaways are any good. The prime time to do this is immediately after you've moved, when you almost certainly don't have anything good in the fridge or freezer. And we've been doing just that.

Last night we tried the local chippy, which is just over the road from us. It seemed pretty good — as good as a chippy ever is, anyway — and was noteworthy for having absolutely astronomical portions. The definition of a "large" chips varies enormously from chip shop to chip shop, and it seems that this place errs on the side of "large" meaning "enough to feed at least four people". Hard to beat value like that.

Tonight, on the other hand, we gave the local Indian takeaway a go. This, too, is just across the road from us, and appears to have some involvement with one of the best curry houses in Southampton: Kuti's Brasserie on Oxford Street. We popped in yesterday to grab a menu and have a quick look and it smelled amazing, so after receiving a generous cash gift from my grandmother in the post today, we thought we'd give it a go to see what it was like.

Turns out it was delicious, and again, very good value for money. Andie and I bought a couple of mains, a couple of starters, a couple of rices and a couple of bready things for a little under £30 and all that was clearly enough for about four people instead of just the two of us; consequently, a hefty chunk of it has gone into the fridge for warming up as leftovers at some point.

One of my favourite Indian takeaways was in the Sholing area of Southampton when I used to live there. The building where my flat was located was attached to a small block of little shops and offices, and among the shops on the ground floor was an Indian takeaway, the name of which I've since forgotten. I have vivid memories of going in there, however, because the guy who owned it had obviously seen us moving all our stuff in: the night we moved in and wanted nothing more than to simply stuff our faces with delicious food we didn't have to cook ourselves, I was greeted by the gentleman in question standing behind the counter of his takeaway, arms splayed wide as if he was about to embrace me, bellowing "Welcome to the Sholing!" (The takeaway was not, I don't believe, called "The Sholing"; his greeting was simply a slightly broken English welcome to the area, which was simply called "Sholing" rather than "The Sholing".)

Our experience with Kuti's Express this evening wasn't quite as heartwarming as that particular incident, but the food was good and you can order online to collect about 30 minutes later, so that's all good. And I'm almost certain we'll be heading back there — particularly with my board gaming friends' affinity for the spicy side of cuisine.

1586: pkunzip -d house.zip

The unpacking is done! I think. Unless there's a secret box hiding somewhere, just waiting to taunt me with its meaningless contents. If there is a secret box hiding somewhere, just waiting to taunt me with its meaningless contents, my response to it right now would almost certainly be to simply empty its meaningless contents straight into the bin. The house is full; there's no more room for crap.

That's not entirely true, of course — though I've had to find some creative storage solutions in my study — but this place most certainly now looks "lived in", in a good way. We have Things on Shelves in a vaguely organised fashion — the shelves in the living room are the best example of this, while the rickety bookcase in my study shouldn't be examined too closely lest one of the two loose shelves come crashing down, bringing a ton of heavy books with them — and there are places to sit. (We have two sofas in our living room, but that's largely because we had to buy a second one in the previous place because our nice leather sofabed wouldn't go up the damn stairs. Here, meanwhile, it came through the door without a single issue — and thankfully without any damage from having been kept in the garage for a year and a half.)

We even have a spare bedroom, which is a first for me. (Second bedrooms in places I've lived have tended to end up converted to office/study space — here, we not only have a spare bedroom, but a study each.) Said spare bedroom had a bit of a paint accident earlier, leading to an ugly bare patch in the middle of the wall, but that was the one room we haven't yet redecorated anyway. I guess now there's an incentive to get it done, huh?

The area that probably needs the most work at present is the dining room, which is in the small extension on the back of the house. Right now, we have a half-full shelf of board games — the other half of the board games are proudly displayed in the living room — and some display cabinets that Andie is yet to put her ample Lego collection in. Sitting in the centre of the room and looking rather lonely is the dining table and chairs I inherited from my former housemate Claire; the chairs are old and faded and the table is far too small for the space it occupies. At the very least, the table will be replaced with something much bigger at some point: the aim is for the dining room to become a suitable space for playing sprawling board games in. The room is certainly big enough; we just need a nice flat surface to put all those bits of card, wood and plastic on.

Anyway. I'm aware I'm becoming a house bore. This is probably the last "yay house" post for a while yet, since most of the major things — unpacking, mainly — are done. There's a minor bit of decorating to do here and there still, and I'm sure we'll find some "projects" we want to work on in the near future. But what was an empty, slightly grubby house a few days ago is now very much a place where we live.

And Andie and I have both agreed that we are not moving again, ever.

Uh-huh. Sure.

1585: Taxing Polls

Did you vote today? I did, and so did Andie. I don't actually really care all that much whether or not you did — I'm guessing you didn't if you're reading this from outside the UK — but it seems to be "the done thing" to ask today.

For those reading from outside the UK, it was a combination of local elections and European elections today. I don't follow politics with any great interest, so I'm not really 100% sure what both of these elections will decide in the long term, but I do know that a significant proportion of people on the Internet were absolutely adamant that we must not vote for UKIP.

UKIP, for the uninitiated, are a party led by a sour-faced trout called Nigel Farage who are strongly in favour of, among other things, the UK's independence from the rest of Europe. They've also garnered something of a reputation in recent weeks in particular for being possibly a little bit racist, maybe. Not quite as flagrantly, unashamedly racist as the British National Party (BNP), mind, but still enough to give people pause, especially if they are a member of an ethnic minority group or an immigrant themselves.

Before we go any further, I'll note up front that I didn't vote UKIP. I disagree with what I know of their policies, I don't like racist attitudes and I think Nigel Farage is a twat. This site also suggested that I fundamentally disagreed with UKIP on all but three of the thirty different policies and opinions it tested, and had the greatest affinity with the Green Party, most closely followed by the Lib Dems, then after a bit of a gap, Labour and the Conservatives. I didn't have any particularly strong feelings before taking the test, so I voted Green today. They're one of those parties that are pretty unlikely to ever have any real power, but the way democracy is supposed to work is through you voting for the party that most closely aligns with your beliefs, right?

Anyway. Now I've said that, I feel I can say that the run-up to this election has been absolutely insufferable largely due to the number of smug people pointing out with great delight how they're not going to be voting for UKIP. I saw the same "hilarious" Twitter messages that "Farage hates" being retweeted time and time again; the same Stewart Lee speech shared over and over again; the same people congratulating one another on how awesomely politically switched-on they were.

Trouble is, the stated (or implied) intent in what these people were doing — to convince other people that voting UKIP would be a bad idea — was somewhat flawed. When it comes to political views, people are pretty ill-informed (I'm a fine example) and yet pretty stubborn when it comes to which party they choose to attach themselves to. (I am less of a fine example of this latter aspect.) This means that when you proudly declare how awful UKIP are and how you wouldn't possibly vote for them ever, and how nobody else should vote for them ever, you're not changing anyone's mind. If anything, all you're doing is reinforcing your own beliefs — and those of people you know already agree with you — and causing those people who do claim to support UKIP to dig their heels in and be more determined to vote for this party you detest and despise. Meanwhile, you end up irritating the fuck out of the people who don't feel particularly strongly one way or the other and who wish the Internet would go back to arguing about whether 1080p and 60 frames per second really matters.

I suppose I can't really fault people for at least appearing to stand up for what they believe in — particularly in these increasingly apathetic times. I simply don't feel that the way people have chosen to express themselves in this instance — as with so many topics that people get passionate about on the Internet — has been particularly helpful or productive.

I guess we'll find out when we hear the results of the elections, won't we?

1584: Seriously, Hire Movers

I am writing this from my new bed in my new house. Downstairs is a partially unpacked living room, a not-at-all unpacked study and a mostly done kitchen. I am pleasantly, satisfyingly tired, and not feeling stressed out about the house or the things in it. Moving Day has, in short, been a Big Success.

And a significant part of this can be attributed to one thing: the fact we hired a removals company. Not a man with a van, not some friends who offered to help, a professional removals company.

They weren't cheap, mind, though thankfully they weren't one of the companies that wanted to charge us over a thousand pounds to move our stuff less than two miles down the road. (We get the impression that the companies who quoted us particularly stupid prices simply didn't want to do the job — fair enough, since it involved lugging a shit-ton of stuff down from a second-floor flat, but it would have perhaps been nice if they'd just said that rather than arguably attempting to take advantage of us.)

But no, the company we used — Robinsons, if you're curious — were great. They showed up promptly at the agreed time with a big truck that was more than capable of fitting all our stuff in — I've proven on more than one occasion that I have too much stuff for a Transit van by myself, let alone with Andie's stuff in there too — and then proceeded to lug everything down the stairs for us while we alternated between twiddling our thumbs, making cups of tea for them and playing games on our phones, the only entertainment devices that were still within easy reach.

Then they drove the truck to our new place, unloaded everything and were gone before 4pm. If we'd been doing this ourselves, we'd still be shifting things well into the night, probably taking multiple trips and getting increasingly irritable.

But nope; the additional expense was well worth it for the peace of mind and lack of stress it brought. Tomorrow we can wake up refreshed and tackle the rooms that still need working on. We can buy and fit a dishwasher. And then we can flop down on the sofa — the sofa which wouldn't fit up the stairs to our previous flat and which we consequently haven't had the chance to sit on for a year and a half — to watch some television, safe in the knowledge that holy shit, this house actually belongs to us. Pretty neat, no?

Now it may be a ridiculously lame hour but I'm off to get some sleep. Photos will undoubtedly follow at some point in the near future once the place is a little more presentable!

1583: Imminent New Digs

So, this time tomorrow we should be officially moved in to our new house. We almost certainly won't have everything unpacked by then — though I guess you never know! — but we will be in there. Which will be nice.

This all seems to have rolled around rather quickly and surprisingly smoothly. You hear all sorts of horror stories about people buying houses (particularly their first house) that are full of stupid words like "gazumping" and this has just been… well, pretty straightforward, really, and we haven't had to do nearly as much faffing around as I thought we'd have to. It was pretty much a case of going in to the estate agents, saying "we want to buy this house", answering a few questions and then, a couple of months later, taking possession of our new house.

That's an oversimplification, of course, though not by much; the people we were buying the place from didn't dick around, and even the lawyers didn't seem to spend too much time arguing with one another, though there was a little of that. The process was so smooth and straightforward that the act of handing over a not-insignificant amount of money for the deposit felt no more "serious" than just paying a bill or something. And now here we are; one sleep away from moving in.

While I was working last week, Andie and her mother spent a lot of time doing the new place up — painting, hanging curtains, cleaning, that sort of thing. I helped with a bit of the painting, but I stayed out of the way for most of it largely because I was busy, but also because I don't trust myself an inch with DIY. As a homeowner I'm supposed to start caring about this stuff now, I think, but I've never been particularly fussy about what colour my walls are or if they match the ceiling; generally speaking, so long as I have walls around me and a roof that doesn't leak above me, I'm fine. (Oh, and it should preferably be a comfortable temperature, too; warm when it's cold outside, cool when it's hot outside.)

I'm interested to see what it will look like with our stuff in it. It's been a little hard to picture so far, but I'm sure it's going to look good. I'm looking forward to having my own downstairs study for working — though with my current employment situation, it remains to be seen how much use it will be getting on a professional basis — and having an actual spare bedroom. We have a brand new bed, too, which I'm hoping is going to be significantly more comfortable than our current one.

There are still acquisitions to make before it will feel "finished" — though I'm aware once you own a house it's never truly "finished". We need a big-ass dining table for our extension out the back — big enough to fit sprawling board games, specifically — and we're getting a dishwasher and tumble dryer, too. The dishwasher in particular is something I'm looking forward to; there are few chores I hate more than washing up. I'm not sure why, but my mind has always somehow equated dirty plates with being utterly disgusting — even if you've only just finished eating off them — and thus sticking my hands into a bowl of water with them has never been especially appealing. If you can get a magic box to wash them for you, then great; having our own place gives us the freedom to do just that which you just don't get in most rental properties.

Oh, and we're probably going to get a dog, too. We both quite wanted a cat, but we feel that would probably be foolish while we still have the rats Clover and Socks. Neither of them are big fans of coming out of the cage — except to climb up it and get into their Lego house that we usually put on top of it — so it probably wouldn't be a problem, but I still feel it's probably best not to risk having them in the house with an animal that might want to eat them. A dog, I feel, is less likely to want to munch on them — plus it's a good excuse to go out and about and get some exercise by giving it walks every day.

Anyway, this is all hypothetical for now, but it's not long until it becomes reality. Pretty exciting — though to be perfectly honest I'm looking forward to the "exciting" bit being over and just being able to get down to some serious and much-needed relaxation.