Hello, greetings and welcome to the first of what will hopefully be many roasts from the city of the dreaming spires. If you haven’t been stalking paying attention to what is going on in my life, I got a job! THE job in fact! Not even a week in Oxford and I’ve somehow accomplished what I moved here for. Either the karma gods are paying me back for the past shitty six months, or they want me to enjoy the present because there is something monumentally bad waiting round the corner. I am so overwhelmingly bouncy and in orbit right now, I just hope it doesn’t all come as a great disappointment. It won’t, but still, the practical side of me is muttering warnings.

But joy all the same. Neko said she could hear me smiling down the phone on Friday, I was that happy. It is true that you don’t realise quite uncomfortable you were in a situation till you are out of it. I loved my last job and the people I worked with, but I can accept now that it was time to move on. The environment was not for me. It is nice to be able to go the night through without waking up from a screaming nightmare about something work related. I feel lighter, more relaxed, and more me than I have in a long time. It shows.

I’m acting like a highly caffeinated five year old on a sugar rush, basically! Hence the gruesome over abundance of exclamation points in this post. Once I knew how to craft a sentence to show enthusiasm without resorting to crude markers, but no more. Things will settle down to a more even keel shortly, but for now, please bear with the digustingly high amounts of happiness exuding from this blog, and read the roast I have spent the past few hours writing 🙂

Jason Donovan is making a new album. Dear god above, no! I absolutely adored Jason Donovan when I was younger – in fact, his were the first albums I brought *blush* – but they were very much of their time. Would I want to buy a Donovan album now?! Hell no. I have some pride left.

Um, if anyone gets the album, can they, like, get me a copy…

The Sony Reader came out a short while ago and I must admit, I had a brief moment of gadget lust, but I stopped myself rather easily. Why? I agree with this piece though: it still hasn’t cracked it. On the other hand, I got myself a Nokia E71 on Friday as a way to celebrate getting my job, and I’ve already loaded it with oodles of ebooks from BooksInMyPhone and MobiPocket. Reading them is simple, I can bookmark, easily download new books over wifi or the 3G service, and to top it all, I only have to carry one device (phone, camera, book, email, internet, book…) On that front it is pretty much the ideal ebook reader for me because as a plus, it plays nicely with the Mac.

Community and geographically based, automatically updated internet? Sounds like an amazing idea, so long as it can help me find a place in Oxford that does eyebrow threading!

You think only fools would be caught out by phishing and spam attacks these days, but it can happen to the best of us.

This man is my hero: he invented the kettle thermostat. Yes, there is a sense of romance and history and pleasure to be got from boiling a kettle on a stove, but in the morning when I am still asleep and just want a cuppa, I would far rather flick a switch and doze till it clicks off than wait an eternity for my kettle to whistle and demand removal from the heat before it burns the place down. As I said, the man is my hero.

I love the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books – fluff I can read in a single sitting, but enjoyable – so I am pretty keen to see True Blood, from Alan Ball (him of the Six Feet Under credentials). DVD methinks? Unless anyone from Stateside has seen it and tells me it absolutely sucks, but not in a good vampire way…

Rarely have I chortled so much over emoticons… how to be an empowered stalkee (though in mine Bella would also be getting a slap to tell her to stop being so wet and to just go with Jacob already!)

I don’t read many book reviews, preferring to go on recommendations and whatever grabs my eye, but this one has me wanting the book, regardless of it’s less than glowing review. Well, if nothing else I have a booktoken to spend and I think it should be spent on something I wouldn’t normally try.

Top 8 Most Dangerous Animals of 2007 (thanks Neko!)

Another intriguing idea from Harpercollins.

And to finish off for you to enjoy whilst I go for a womble round Jericho, some movie trailers:
Milk
The Haunting of Molly Hartley – I’m not normally a big fan of horror, but this one could be fun on DVD
The Lucky Ones
The Soloist
Frost/Nixon
Repo! The Genetic Opera – so totally surreal, I have to see this!