First off, many apologies for any incoherence. I am hellishly sleepy and want nothing more than to crash out in my nice bed, with my nice quilt over me, and quietly die. But I'm not going to because I actually want some time to myself and think, after the day I have just had, that I deserve it.

I was not designed to spend entire days with no time to myself.

Anyway. My father was late picking me up from outside Goodge Street tube station yesterday, leading to an uncomfortable 20 minutes stranded outside the London headquarters of the Church of Scientology. All I need to know about Scientology I learned from Operation Clambake, so you can imagine that this was a rather awkward experience for me. I kept feeling like I should have been doing something to protest against the seeming legitimacy of this place. I don't hate Scientologists, I feel sorry for them. I do hate Scientology, though, and I really wished I had known I would be stranded there. I would have left a stack of Xenu Leaflets on their tables proclaiming their FREE STRESS TEST and copies of the infamous OCA Test if only I'd thought to take some...

I did manage to stop a couple of girls from taking the FREE STRESS TEST, though - largely because the end result of it is that it will be recommended the testee sign up for Scientology auditing, and from there on in will (theoretically) be sucked into the Church. When one of the staffers left to chase down a man who tried to steal a copy of Dianetics (because it was there, perhaps?) I told them it was a money scam and they left. Thankfully my father showed up shortly after - and, thankfully for the potential thief, the Scientologist in question retrieved their absconding copy of Dianetics before he could actually try and read it. He had a lucky escape there...

One question remains, though. Why would anyone want to steal a copy of Dianetics?

Today was my grandparents's Golden Wedding. Like most family celebrations it was nice but perhaps vaguely dull. I always enjoy thses events well enough, but I can Though it was nice to see my younger cousin again. I don't get to see him anywhere near often enough and that depresses me. He's a cool guy. It's also his 17th birthday today so a happy birthday to him even though he doesn't read my LJ.

My younger cousin is great. I managed to corrupt him, at some point in his adolescence, with my anime/manga obsession and though he prefers other things, he can at least understand what I am talking about when I talk anime/manga and is interested enough to hold his own end of the conversation up. Needless to say I spent a few minutes this afternoon explaining the premise of Weiss Kreuz to him, leading him to make the rather accurate observation that Americans don't tend to make shows like that. They certainly don't. There's something rather Japanese about the whole endeavor.

Very hard to explain what I saw in Ken. Very hard indeed. And yet I tried, didn't I?

(Speaking of Ken - please, please, just tell me what's wrong with him, weaveratropos! I can't take being kept in the dark much longer!)

Oh, before I forget, today's gathering came complete with its own obligatory The Da Vinci Code conversation. My mother and my older cousin have both read the book and very earnestly discussed its various merits for a while. I had to bite my tongue, honestly. How the Hell my mother, who is an English teacher and usually rather selective about the things she reads, could have got any enjoyment out of that book whatsoever I don't know. I don't care what she says about it all, I still think that book sounds terrible and am not about to read either it or its prequel. Its hero looks like an utter pain in the pole, too (thank you, amazon.com).

What is it about my parents that makes traveling with them so freaking stressful? Drives me wild. There I was trapped in a car with them, headed through the wilds of south London and not only did they choose that time to have an argument (sorry, 'debate') about the roads and the like, focusing largely on wheter or not my father was a bad driver, but my mother also decided to start flinching every single time another vehicle drew quickly near to us. Which began to get wearing after barely any time at all, needless to say, and left me wondering if I'd be better off catching the bus home after all. Only having a Hell of a lot to carry deterred me.

Placement is still going okay, but it is tiring. Oh yes, very tiring indeed, and it makes my poor brain pulverized and frightened. It will get better, once I've gotten used to the timings - though God knows I'm not looking forward to pulling my second night shift ever over the weekend. Not a bit of it. Damn nursing and its antisocial hours.

You see, I have one big problem with night shifts - they're boring.

Oh well, at least I finished my isotype post after I got home and I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as I feared it would be even if Ken does appear to be in a rotten mood at present (give him a hug, Youji... actually, maybe not - you might get another plant in the face. Give him a while, though... he'll warm up to you, I'm sure). So I'll get to post that just as soon as I've finished this update, then I'll probably backdate a couple of entries I wanted to write earlier this week and was prevented from by sheer exhaustion. What was that about silver linings?