OK, so arcadiane says I should be posting a bit more often on LJ. So why the fuck not!

So, lately I've started looking into something which looks really cool and pretty low-maintenance: home brewing. I'm a big fan of mead and cider, as I discovered when I moved to the UK (LINDISFARNE MEAD IS THE BEST), and the idea of making it myself is really appealing.

It also looks like it's fairly simple, as long as you're not too obsessed with checking gravity and hydrometry and all those complicated things. But then again as Patrick Rothfuss puts it in his recipe for mind-bending metheglin that I reall want to try: "Vikings made this, and I guarantee that they did not own a hydrometer. They just thumped it together in a barrel and then drank it and pillaged some shit." And that is a modus operandi I can definitely get behind.

The only problem I have with that is having to wait. I mean, I like my booze. Quite a bit. I don't drink in high quantities, but I do enjoy alcohol (a lot more than I used to, now that I've figured out what I like) and I am not a very patient person by nature.

And now that I think about it I could make a list of alcoholic stuff I want to make/replicate:

- Patrick Rothfuss's metheglin. That shit sounds delicious. (Should I use some lapis, I wonder...)
- Mead with some of my cousin's honey. (Preferably chestnut honey, which has a really strong flavour and would be amazing in mead I'm sure)
- Cider. I'm not exactly sure what exactly, but I would ideally like to make the apple juice myself (because home-made apple juice is SO different from the store-bought stuff, even the cloudy one.)
- Ginger beer. A vague acquaintance of mine does home brewing, and he makes ginger beer with chilli in it, which sounds like the BEST thing.
- Chilli gin - does not require brewing or anything like that. Just sticking coriander and chillies in a bottle of gin. A friend of ours did that and it was the most AWESOME thing in a

So there, as you see I'm somewhat ambitious. But the idea is that, if I ever have to move away from Edinburgh (and seriously if Cameron and the conservatives don't get severely kicked out during the 2015 General Election it's very likely to happen) I can take a repertoire of wondrous drinks with me and I won't have to miss British cider (too much).

PS: This morning we "mysteriously" received a copy of The Ethical Slut in the mail. I've wanted to read this for the longest time and I was realy happy and excited to get it. Jay claims that he doesn't know anything about it and it "just appeared". With that smug smile of his. I claim that it's the most romantic gift he's ever got me. (This month, anyway.)

<3

I mentioned this on Facebook but also wanted to complain about it here, for the benefit of the people who don't know me from FB, and also because it gives me an excuse to procrastinate.

So As You Know (probably? Maybe?), I've been writing my dissertation.

Note: If you don't know - I've been living in Edinburgh since September and studying for a Master's Degree in Translation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. It's been great. The program was very interesting though fairly theory-oriented, which suited me just fine because I know how to do the practical side of translation fairly well (except I don't know how to use Trados which is a bit of a problem, but I might be able to figure that one out myself). My classes ended in April, and I've got something like a 71% average grade on my coursework. For French people, it's pretty good. The equivalent of a Mention Bien. Other international types refer to this handy comparison grid thing.
And now, to gain my full Master's Degree, I have to write a dissertation (Master's thesis for people in North America, I think).

And it is the single most boring and agonizing process ever.

It's due on the 15th of August (not looking forward to that...) and it's been driving me insane. I just hate it. The topic is interesting, but I'm just not a researcher, and I have to write about 9 000 word of research. (To be fair, some of it, approximately 4K-5K is actually fairly easy to handle, but I haven't got to that part yet).

I'm just BORED. It's just boring. There is just no other way to put it. Bored bored bored and no fun at all and deeply uninteresting, because I SHOULD BE TRANSLATING dammit.

Urgh.

Sorry about the complaints. This is just making me feel horrible.

Blowing off almost €100 because I locked myself out of my own apartment at the ONLY TIME IN THE YEAR when there is no-one else there (apart from a very confused cat.)

WHEN WILL THAT EVER STOP BEING FUN YOU GUYS.

(Honestly had I had a proper ladder I would have climbed up to my bedroom window. The glass has been broken for more than a year now, I would have got in without any kind of problem. Apart from the fact, of course, that it's two meters high. Fuck.)

I don't even know how I feel about the whole thing. I'm at the same time highly annoyed at myself, proud that I managed to keep my cool, relieved that the guy didn't take three hours to arrive, and just completely indifferent to the whole situation. And add a bit of inexplicably wanting to cry into the mix, for some reason o_o

I think this might be me coming down from my first adrenaline high in, um. Either a few years or two weeks.

(Yeah I don't remember if I mentioned this here, but I went to Scotland to get an apartment in July and somehow MANAGED TO GET THE WRONG AIRPORT.)(Did I mention that my mother is a fucking saint? BECAUSE SHE IS. She got me there without even losing her cool.)

Oui alors je ne sais pas ce qu'il me prend mais en ce moment je m'amuse sur Wordpress et je lance des blogs. Ce sont des blogs à thèmes spécifiques, donc ne craignez rien, je continuerai à faire des updates sur LJ/DW etc. Je veux juste donner une vague chance à ceux-là d'être lus par plus de deux personnes, quoi XD

(For my English-speaking flist, I'm probably going to post in English too! I'm not sure quite how I'm going to manage it exactly, but I'll try, especially if some of you are interested!)

Donc, si ça vous intéresse, j'ai :

Un blog d'écriture/traduction où je vais probablement beaucoup couiner pendant le mois de juin (puisque je fais Camp NaNo). Si ça vous intéresse, je vais probablement poster quelques extraits...
(A writing blog! Woo!)

Un blog d'expatriation où je vais papoter d'Edimbourg (mais que je n'ai pas encore vraiment lancé parce que, ben, je ne suis pas à Edimbourg. J'aime bien le layout ceci dit.) Je referai sûrement un chouïa de pub ici en Septembre histoire de vous rappeler qu'il existe.
(and a blog about Edinburgh! Double woo! Except I'm not there yet! Boo.)

Je... Je viens de me rendre compte que mon dernier cours de licence s'est terminé il y a une heure.

C'est assez drôle, parce que ça m'est à la fois totalement indifférent et très étrange. Bon, j'ai encore des examens à passer, et après ça, il y aura mon Master à Edimbourg, et je ne sais pas si doctorat ou non, mais, dudes, je vais bientôt être officiellement, euh... Bacheleuse ? Licenciée ? Celibataire ?

Pfff en fait laissez tomber, c'est naze, on n'a pas de titre cool comme "Maître" ou "Docteur" ou "Professeur" quand on a juste une licence, c'est trop de la daube.

Bon, bah, il faudra attendre l'an prochain pour qu'on m'appelle Maîtresse. :D

(Et maintenant il faut que je me fasse une putain de to-do list, voire un emploi du temps, pour ne pas tomber en deliquescence totale pendant les vacances, vu que je n'ai pas de boulot. Ce qui comme d'habitude est très con.)

Don't worry, I'm not going to harass you with pictures of birds again.

I just wanted to say that, for those who are interested, I recently rediscovered that I have a Twitter account: @Translatotron

In case you guys are interested. Who knows.

I've been sick those last few days, so I decided not to go to university yesterday and today. The weather is absolutely horribly, miserably COLD, and there was no way I was going to get better as long as I went outside every day, even for ten minutes.

So, since I didn't have anything much to do, I was very procrastinative the first day (I think I watched something like 10 episodes of The Mentalist in as many hours...), but today I've been drawing! And since I was pretty happy with what I did I wanted to show it off.

Well, I'm going to show it off under the cut, since it contains a mild case of boobies and I don't want the people on my flist who have uptight bosses to lose their job because of me, but, you know. I was hoping that maybe that way more than three people would see it XD

I felt like drawing something warm and cute, because it's cold outside and I am tired of coughing my lungs out, so I went for it and drew my boyfriend a "pinup" (so to speak) of one of my RPG characters, Lucia. It's more cute than sexy, really, but I'm really happy with how it turned out, so.

( Here be boobies, OMG )

Je viens de finir The Hunger Games, mon premier livre de l'année ! ^^ (Bon, techniquement j'ai aussi fini Moll Flanders cette année... Et j'ai lu le premier trade paperback de Blade... Mais c'est mon premier vrai roman commencé et terminé en 2012)

Le livre est très bon ! Mais, euh, comme je ne suis pas très inspirée pour parler de mes lectures en général, et que ce livre est très populaire en plus, je crois que je vais juste dire que ça m'a beaucoup plus (je l'ai lu en moins d'une semaine).

Je crois que le côté dystopie de ce livre me plaît beaucoup. Autant le post-apocalyptique pur et dur (genre juste après la fin du monde) me déprime horriblement, autant les dystopies sont extrêmement cathartiques pour moi. J'adore particulièrement le moment où tout commence à se casser la gueule. Que voulez-vous, je suis d'alignement Chaotique Bon, je ne peux pas m'empêcher d'approuver quand je vois une dictature Loyale Mauvaise se faire poutrer la gueule par des rebelles. (Ca remonte à mon amour de Star Wars, je pense...)

J'ai déjà commandé le deuxième tome, Catching Fire... (Mais pas encore Mockingjay, et d'ailleurs, j'aime les mockingjays, je serais curieuse de savoir comment ça a été traduit en français.) Cela dit je vais attendre d'avoir fini le roman qu'on doit lire pour les cours, Truth And Bright Water de Thomas King, avant de le commencer. Une manière de me motiver, en fait... Même si le livre en question a l'air vraiment chouette, très intéressant à étudier avec beaucoup de recherche au niveau de l'écriture sans pourtant être lourd (au contraire, il est très léger, apparemment la figure du trickster, notamment Coyote, y est très importante, ce que J'Approuve ^^)

J'ai aussi reçu un autre livre, Empire State, d'Adam Christopher, recommandé sur Boingboing (et acheté à cause de la similarité, en tout cas superficielle, avec un des scénarios de JdR que Jay a maîtrisés, et qui était particulièrement badass, et qui mériterait vraiment d'être transformé en roman, à mon humble avis). Je ne sais pas du tout ce que ça va donner, mais je suppose que je vais le lire après Truth and Bright Water et Catching Fire.

Si vous avez encore des recommandations, notamment de bon trucs de fantasy / fantasy urbaine / poutrage-de-dystopie en français, je suis toujours preneuse ! ^^

Here is a post about why I want to start reading again on a regular basis.

The exposition took a little long, so I decided to put it under a cut (tl;dr: I'm an English major who doesn't read. This is deeply wrong. Please send help!)

I. ( The Sad State of Affairs )

II. ( Why It Matters )

III. What Can Be Done About It

Essentially I just need to kick myself in the arse and stop with the perpetual being stuck to my laptop. I'm bordering on addiction -- no, if I'm being honest, I'm completely hooked. Which is bad enough on its own, but also a huge annoyance, since I can't really read on a screen for very long lest my eyeballs fall off. Basically: more reading and less laptop for bedtime.

What you can do is recommend me some books! I'm not usually very picky about reading, though I'm usually more of an escapist than a realist as far as my fiction is concerned. Just tell me about your favourite books!

If you need more specifications, I like urban fantasy and steampunk best (my favourite writers are Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman, to give you an idea.) At the moment since I'm a little brain dead I'm looking for rather quick and/or easy reads. Maybe children's or YA books? I love children's literature dearly and I don't read quite enough steampunk, so, YA steampunk would probably be the thing I'd most likely read? I'd love to hear about anything, though, really.