I had a really good relaxing night tonight. Went around to Claudio's to have the latest lesson in cooking Italian food. Today's lesson: pizza and antipasto. Aubergine slices roasted in olive oil and served with a spicy dip, a simple pizza margherita and an aubergine and mushroom pizza (well it was a big aubergine). I had always thought that pizza dough was really hard to make but it is so simple, easier than ordinary bread. And homemade is always scrummier than shop bought.

Yummy!

Favorite restaurant is open again after major refurbishment works. It's absolutely fab. The area that used to be smoking is now non-smoking, they've added an extension at the back that is now the smoking area and there is a huge new "Party Room". There's a new menu too, with lots of yummy additions, (polenta, spagetti served with mixed veg). I need to check my bank balance because I can't wait to be testing all the new things.

UPDATE: Wednesday 16 April 2003

Oh it has been so busy around here what with one thing and another, that I have only just had time to sit down to thing about the things that happened on the Wednesday bash. Got to the Tav late because I was rebuilding part of the network, cables everywhere. I really need to get some truncking and run the cat 5 under the floorboards. As ordered by I wore the lycra top of impossible cleavage (that was one of my best buys in Gap, it's only lycra but it gives the same support as a loose fitting ribbon corset). There was the point when we tried the Mexican boob jiggle, though being the Tav no one batted an eyelid. Sarah introduced me to a friend of hers (sorry can't remember your name) who is looking to get her first corset and didn't know what she wanted, so that set up a discussion that seemed to take in half the women in the place as well as a couple of the men.

Some of the writers were in the pub so as things started quieten down just before closing, I sank into the sofa but as they were discussing the planning for a forthcoming event I ended up talking with and a couple of people he was with about value of culture, of life and the media perception of it's value. Said cheerio to them at closing time and went with the writers on to Favorit. Nice cafe bar open till 3am with great food. Finally got kicked out of there at 3:30 (we think the staff wanted to lock up) and headed home, sun was already up before I finally got to bed and so I'm now completely out of sync wanting to sleep during the day and party at night. Ho hum!

Oh-Oh

It would appear that my stalker is now enlisting the help of others to attack me. A poor wee innocent thing by all accounts. Well I don't doubt that. I wonder if she is aware that her "hero" wanted me to try to get in with her so that I could report back. Yes. He was pushing me to be her best buddy so I could let him have all the juicy gossip about her, including who was her boyfriend because at the time she wasn't telling, and is she was sleeping with anyone else. She also better beware, because it was only 12 months ago he was declaring how I was his "Chosen One", so when she gets fed up of his demands on her time she will have to suffer the same barrage I'm getting now.

Stalker Alert

It's official, I have a stalker. There is now a police incident about this person. Whilst I didn't want to put anything that would identify him in my journal and I have been very careful not to name him I find that I am now forced to do so. I have used all avenues to try to stop him from contacting me. I have made a call to the abuseteam of my phone company who are going to work with the police. I have blocked his login from commenting on my journal, I have all anonymous messages screened, though I was going to have all comments blocked, but this might be counter productive. I have logged an abuse call with the LJ abuse team and basically I am doing everything I can to get it across to this person that he (a) isn't frightening me (whilst really he is) and (b) I don't give a rat's arse about the lies and crap that he is spouting. I have email logs which I will make freely available to any of my friends who ask that actually prove beyond any doubt that this guy is talking out of his arse. Whilst I do not want anyone to take sides in this, I think that the various abuse teams, police and myself can handle this adequately, I feel that it is only fair to warn everyone who has me listed as a friend that this person may start to use your comment space to gain access to me. If this happens I would ask that if you have email logging on that you forward a copy of the email on to me at rathgild (@) blueyonder dot co dot uk so that I can add it to the pile of other stuff that I have retrieved from my backups, in relation to this guy. If you don't want to pass them to me there is an incident report at Lothian and Borders Police I expect that you will be able to pass it directly to them quoting incident number 545 17/4/2003.

And now for the bit that I find really hard the naming of the culprit. The journal that he created purely to harass me is [deleted]. He had gone out of his way to pay for an account here and his only postings are as I said a pile of delusional witterings, and I repeat anyone who wishes to compare what he is saying in that account with real events can upon request to have a copy of the email back up.

Tip of the Day!

For all you out there in blogland who wear contact lenses please heed the following advise.

First put your lenses in, then brush your teeth.

Even washing your hands after brushing teeth still leaves faint traces of toothpaste on your fingers which gives your eyes that zingy, minty, wide awake sensation, which is kind of weird.

That was a public service announcement.

Oh that was so funny!

Stalker has removed the postings. However he seems to have forgotten that some people save webpages to their hard drive, so that they can be posted as attachments to abuse reports. Duh!

Like I said before though it is all lies that are easily refuted, so anyone who knows me, (that's the Tav crowd, the KJ lot, the swimmers, the corsetiers, and sundry other reprobates) are more than welcome to come around and read the emails from said stalker direct from the mail server. Hey that's it! Why don't we have a party, and we can sit around getting drunk and pissing ourselves laughing at the emails where he is saying all the things he is trying to claim I said. I nearly fell off my chair when he said I was only making accusations based on collusion with an ex-friend of mine who is also an enemy of his. No I got no info from that source, but there are, of course, the hundreds of other people that he has pulled the same crap on who are all only too pleased to dish a bit of dirt back.

Some saddo out there in internet land thinks that he can frighten me by using lies and threats to intimidate me. Fortunately for me I have email logs that prove that what he is saying is complete b****x so I couldn't give a rats arse about his opinion. However, his ISP seem to be interested and so do the police.

Oh Boy

It seems that a certain person of my acquaintance has thrown another wobbly. God knows what is going on in his mind, but apparently I am threatening him (whereas the opposite is the case). Last time this happened my ISP were reporting him to the police as a potential stalker who would pose a physical threat to me (and having gone back through the email logs I can see why). This time it's because I made a comment that it would have been nice to see him up but I realised that I wasn't friend enough to warrant his travelling half way across the country, to which he responded with a barrage of abuse. I think this guy is sick. For example: he threatens me then accuses me of threatening him. He can not or will not take responsibility for his own actions and always projects his unacceptable behaviour onto someone else and plays at being the innocent victim/bystander. It's very tiring dealing with him because just to say hello you have to consider how many ways that can be taken as an insult, attack, accusation or threat. I find it hard to outright condemn him because over the time I have known this person it is clear that there is something weird going on that drives him and I really wish he would get help, because he has the potential to be a great guy.

But it is my own fault, half the world and his dog warned me away from him, all saying that he is a womaniser, bully, fantasist, etc and I didn't listen, not even to the people who said that he was a downright psycho and I should watch my back because "you never know what harm he could do me". I'm just glad that I have plenty of friends who know of him and know what he is like who will watch my back.

Meanwhile I worry about anyone else who has got mixed up with him that doesn't have this support network, because who knows what might happen.

Ho Hum!

It would appear that she who shall not be named (because I'm one of the mad people attacking her) has finally got herself into a position were lots of people are likely to stop talking to her. It would apear that the rude and thoughtless comment she made under the pretence that it was a joke is likely to lose someone their job. If this does happen she will suddenly find herself unwelcome in a lot of places.

I've had enough!

I am retreating into the examination room to wash my hair and get ready for my leaving do tonight. having been somewhat crafty I have tied this in with my normal Thursday night drinking session, so if anyone who knows me is remotely interested I'll be in K Jacksons from about 8pm onwards.

Bloody computers

I have three computers that are working after a fashion and nowhere to put them. That will be fixed shortly as I have acquired a desk from work that was going to be put into a skip. It was deemed as being too small to work on, so was replaced by a huge thing that has half an acre of working area. However, as my flat is tiny, a small desk is perfect.

Meanwhile....

At work I have about half a day's work to do and the best part of a day and a half to do it but the iMac has decided to play silly sods and keeps crashing. I open a browser... crash. I open my email... crash. I sneeze too loudly... crash. I think it knows that I am leaving and has decided to go on strike. Not that I actually care a flying fart. I can't remember the last time I was so looking forward to unemployment. This could be something to do with the way the boss has gone off on annual leave without even bothering to say cheerio, or thanks for all your work, or anything. Or it might be the way that I have been given the shittiest jobs to do (like the ones that you'd be embarrassed to ask the office junior to do as a favour) and has had life and death importance put upon them. I've worked late, I've worked weekends and all I've had in return is complaints that tasks aren't being done quickly enough. The only problem with not working is the lack of money, but if the worst came to the worst I could always move back to Manchester and become a lady of leisure, or get my other half to finance me through a degree of something. So even that isn't too bad, I suppose.

Fun with computers

Got up relatively early on Saturday. Okay so 9:45 isn't that early, but seeing as I hadn't gone to bed till about 3:30am I think I did well. A friend came around at 10:00 and we went off to Maplin's to get one of their motherboard/CPU/fan offers. We also got a case and a few other bits and pieces. Walked home with purchases, stopping off at Henderson's for lunch (giant potato, spinach and cheese croquette, with a three of the salads on the side and a nice big glass of fresh fruit smoothie to wash it down - yummm).

Arrived home inspected purchases, and took existing computers off line. Opened up the boxes to see what was where and decide what additional bits were needed (not much). Friend had some things to do at his home so we went to the cash point for more dosh, on to another computer shop for the missing bits (RAM, hard drive, ect) and we each went to our respective homes.

Friend came around later and we built the new machine, set it up to install the OS and set up my old machine so that we could transfer the data from one to the other. At that point we called it a night.

Sunday wasn't such an early start (about noon). Friend has a machine that is in a half size case and is running out of room , whereas I am going to have a firewall machine with next to nothing in a full size case, so we were going to swap them over.

Problem one

Both machines are old, but not of exactly the same vintage so whilst my stuff would happy go into his case, his wouldn't go into mine (power supply cables were different). We thought about swapping the power supplies but the switch on one wouldn't work in the other case.

Put everything back and then my power supply unit failed completely. Not a problem I have a spare. We balance the spare PSU on the case and wired it up, the machine booted okay. So we swapped it for the broken supply. At this point the newly installed supply decided not to work. Anyway it was Sunday, it was late, and I had work today so we left it.

I set up what was my old machine (and is now going to be a windows (games) machine) and started playing Command and Conquer to relax before bed only to discover

Problem Two

The CDROM is cutting out intermittently. It was working fine right through the first mission but then just died, causing the game and by extention the machine to crash. I rebooted and this time the CD wasn't even detected, three attempts later it recognised the CD and spat the disk out but when I closed the tray it had decided that the disk wasn't there again.

The result is that I now have three machines that are currently about as much use as door stops and no time till next weekend to get things up and running. It seems that whoever said that computers were going to make life easier was lying.

Ha!

Last night I went to the pub. She who is trying to make out that she is being maligned behaved as though my being there had spoilt her whole night. Went to the pub tonight she stood on her own at the bar having done a u-turn upon seeing me. Do I look like someone who cares? Yeah your right.

It's getting to the point where she is looking like a complete prat, and people are actually noticing this and commenting that she is behaving like a five year old. And I just sit there and smile and ignore her. You see I have learned that I can hold my own with people, I don't need to make other people look small to make myself look big. I grant that I have a nasty temper that wise people do not get on the wrong side of. More importantly, I've decided that I am going to have a social life and if some psychotic attention seeker wants to fantasize about my being a threat to them then okay. If they want to lie about me - fine. I know the truth, the people that know me know the truth, and it isn't actually hurting me. The person who is behaving like a brain dead twat is on the other hand starting to get bad press as people notice the stupidity. Lets face it, if you insist on being the center of attention when you're actually a complete bore, people tend to be glad to see the back of you.

I knew it!

Got the letter telling me that I hadn't got the job I was interviewed for.

Shall I just slit my wrists now and be done with it?

Poo!

Got a letter from the University today. I had a feeling that it was a rejection letter, so took a couple of deep breaths prior to opening it, and guess what, it was. However, it was telling me that I hadn't been invited for interview for one of the posts I'd applied for, which is good news I suppose, though I'm still waiting for news of the job I was interviewed for. I'm not holding my breath though.

Not a great deal I can say. Great march, excellent turnout (though the police estimated down the numbers - again). Noticed that Plod thought that the American Express shop and the McDonald's next door to it needed special protection (????). Met lots of people I knew, made some new contacts. Generally had a good time, whilst letting it be known that I oppose the illegal and immoral actions that Blair is forcing upon our troops. The biggest surprise was as we were going up Lothian Road, a group went through the barriers and totally blockaded the road. Unfortunately by the time I was at the spot Plod was stopping more people joining and so after a bit of deliberation most of the people at the back of the march carried on toward the Meadows. The march was really spread out at this point. A couple of the drivers stuck in the traffic were sounding their car horns and giving us the thumbs up. Many more were waving and giving the thumbs up sign. A group of young people on a bus started cheering and chanting. I suddenly realised that whilst the govt are busy saying that the protesters are a vocal minority, there are many more people out there who are against this madness that just don't want to get involved with the marches. I can understand it to a point.

These anti-war demo's, like all others end up being hijacked by other groups who want to make their cause visible, so there are the inevitable speeches that are nothing to do with the issue we were protesting. But, hey, that's all part of the fun, though I do wish that the organisers would realise how it alienates people.

Walked home, stopping off at Waterstones where I spent too much money (I know, it's traditional), but the end result was that I was in bed reading till about 5 am (Fatherland - Robert Harris been promising myself that I would read that for at least the last five years) and so didn't get out of bed till past noon. Of course, that has lead to the usual tired clumsiness, so I now have a wound on the back of my ankle that is gushing blood, and a laminate wooden floor that is going to need a going over with the mop. Hope it heals for the next march.

After complaining of the massacre in Iraq whilst waiting for my curry at the local carry out, (exactly what is the military significance of a museum dedicated to the life of a country's leader), I was surprised to be given a gift of The Quran by one of the members of staff. I thanked him politely, and left without knowing what else to say. No hard sell "this is the only true religion" stuff that you get from the likes of the Jehovah's Witnesses,etc. Just the simple words "Please accept this as a gift from me to you".

Strangely touching.

WOW!

Having been up most of the night being mostly shocked by the news footage of Baghdad being blanket bombed, I slept in and missed the beginning of the anti-war march. Got into town and managed to duck in as it was crossing the top of Leith Street. Met a few new people and had some nice chats about various issues, made a few new contacts. There was apparently a scuffle somewhere at the back of the march and a few people were arrested, though the reports from many witnesses were that the people arrested were doing nothing and that the police were heavy handed using batons. A police officer who spoke to the crowd said that the arrests were for minor incidents and that the people would be processed and released shortly. However, by the time we had heard all the speakers no one had been released to it was decided that we would all move on and block the junction of Princes Street, Lothian Road, Shandwick Place. That turned into an open mike and a bit of a party. Met up with and and had an interesting discussion and planning session for next weekends protest.

Crowd then all moved on to St Leonard Police Station to demand the release of the arrested people.
Police tried to keep stopping the march at various junctions and to direct the route of the march but the marchers were having none of that. The police horses were great. They went virtually all the way over the bridges backwards and horses do not normally like doing that. Anyway we finally got to the police station, the crowd settled down for a long wait and the banter began.

An example:

Protester 1: I want to see Inspector Rebus
Protester 2: Is he the Rankin officer? [1]

After a while as it was getting dark and I hadn't eaten much, I decided that home would be a good idea. And now I am waiting with a mixture of excitement and dread over the action that I have volunteered myself for next week because when I told my mother I was protesting, she told me not to get myself arrested. Of course, she did then tell me not to go hitting any more policemen, so I suppose that she thinks hitting policewomen will be fine. Well okay maybe not.

[1] For those who don't know Inspector Rebus is the central character in a series of crime novels by Ian Rankin. They are set in Edinburgh and have Rebus based at St Leonards Police Station.

Anti-War Protests

I was just sent a post on a mailing list about a feminist protest plan. Full details follow, though it's not one for the narrow-minded.

Tampons for Peace

Against the war in Iraq? SEND BUSH A TAMPON!

From March 15th to April 1st, people all over the country are going to send President Bush a tampon that has been dyed red (with marker, paint, food coloring, anything but actual blood--that would be a biohazard...) along with the message:

"YOU WANT BLOOD?

HAVE SOME BLOOD.

FEMINISTS AGAINST THE WAR.

~
By sending these tampons we are saying that just as we won't be silent about our bodies, we won't be silent about our opposition to this war. Silence is compliance. Silence is undemocratic. We make a connection between blood shed for life and the blood our supposed enemies shed in death. We say not by our blood, not in the name of the American people."

Get your friends together for a tampon staining party--it'll be fun *and* productive! Try to mail your tampons in the second half of March (the earlier the better, but any time is okay) to The White House / 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW / Wash, DC 20500.

That way President Bush can absorb the heavy flow of anti-war sentiment!

I thought it might be fun to do something similar, but then I remembered that the Government charge VAT on "women's hygiene products" so they still be making revenue out of the protest.

Could still be worth it though.

Dammit. I'd forgotten how much fun civil disobedience can be