Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
Things I Should Probably Sort Out Before It's Too Late
You know how it is, of course. Vague opportunities for Fun! present themselves out of the blue, requiring nothing more than a quick penciling-in in your diary, followed by a cursory glance at said chronological notebook, and a quick "Right, let's go!" ... Unless, of course, you're me.
At the risk of eternally stuck-recording myself into a "Oh woe is me. I'm so crap. I wish I had a girlfriend¹. Blah blah blah" caricature of myself, I do seem to have no ability whatsoever to actually do the things that would no doubt enrich the quality of my life, and perhaps give me something interesting to write about every once in a while, rather than just moping around lamenting the quality of online women's fashion (which is what I've been doing this morning).
Case in point: "Hey Siobhan! How would you like to be on one of the floats at this year's Pride?".
"Oooh. That sounds like fun! Yes, deffo."
(Four weeks later)
"Oh shit. It's Pride this weekend isn't it?"
See what I mean? Opportunity For Fun™, and I ballsed it up by Not Actually Organising It™.
With that in mind, here's a list of the things that are sort of forming vague plans in my head — things that really I need to get off my arse and solidify before the summer ends, and I get hurled back into the hectic frenzy of academic life².
One: See my nephew
Through some freak rent in the space-time continuum, my entire family are going to be in the same country for a few fleeting hours at some point in the next few weeks. My ridiculously wealthy jet-setting brother (with wife and new-born in tow) will be stopping over at Heathrow on the way back to the States, and my ever-resourceful mother mentioned it would be quite nice if we all congretated at the airport to see them.
"That sounds like a great idea" I said, instantly forgetting what day it was that she just told me.
Need to: find out what day it is, and book tickets of some kind. Perhaps combine with...
Two: Visit that London
It was two months ago that I was last there. And while two months isn't a particularly long period of time, I do feel that it would decrease my perpetual moaning about feeling left out of things if I trotted down the West Coast Mainline at least one more time before the end of September.
Plus, I have an increasing list of people that I'd like to meet — to put faces to gravatars, if you like.
Need to: same as above. But also give people advance warning. Maybe even arrange stuff to do for a change.
Three: Finish new website
It's sitting there, on a server in Leeds, cocooned from the outside world by the most draconian firewall in existence. Most of it is done, all it needs is for me to transplant the old code into the shiny new template, and transfer a hundred gigabytes of photographs and moving images from one place to another.
The problem is that I seem to progress at a rate of one function per day, and each day costs me twenty quid in petrol.
Need to: find a flat in Leeds.
Four: Find a flat in Leeds
Still haven't heard back from the estate agents about that place I saw two weeks ago. I'm starting to get a little grumpy about the way they've been so uncommunicative to be honest, however I'm determined not to let that deter me.
As much as I've been rekindling a love of Lancaster these past few weeks, moving to Leeds is a life-changing thing that I need to do — primarily for my sanity, but also so I can squeeze that elusive extra-day-a-week out of some funding body, go full time, and be on a million pounds a year.
Or something like that.
Need to: get newspapers with flats to rent in them. Ask colleagues to keep an eye out for me.
Five: Do something creative, in a frock
I dunno what it is, but I do seem to have a great yearning to Make Things™ at the moment. It's the vacation I guess — these long months with a vague agenda of "scholarly activity" attached to them, and the sense that without any students around, I'm somehow liberated into a state of creative frenzy.
I mean, sure, I've knocked up a couple of interesting little things over recent weeks, but I really want to pull off some fantastic coup d'état — photographically at least.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I found myself re-enjoying the buzz of frocking-up and prancing around in front of a camera again. And as fun as my little 'studio space' was, it prompted me into thinking that I'd like to do it properly — in a proper studio, with a proper photographer rather than just me with a remote and a Heath Robinson set-up.
Perhaps that one's a bit ambitious — but I can dream yeah?
...
So, in an attempt to justify this long-winded (and slightly pointless) post, I thought I might ask you — the Collective Wisdom Of The Internets™ — to help me out with a few of these things. Does anyone:
fancy meeting up in The Smoke sometime in the next few weeks?
know of any flats going in Leeds where the landlord isn't fussy about bad credit?
happen to (a) know, or even better (b) be a photographer who could put up with a precocious madame desperate to have her photo taken all day?
¹ Two years today, as it happens.
² Yeah, just don't. OK?
Find yourself a "GTD" bit of software and start to use it!
I use (not as often as I should) iGTD which is free, user friendly and I'm still using it some months after first looking at it.
It lets you do all kinds of nice things like recurring events "buy the Leeds paper with houses to rent in it each Wednesday" say so you can get little reminders of what to do, check them off and see the list get shorter!
Interesting 
I'll look into that...
Product Comparisons
"Doing (and not doing) exactly what it says on the tin packaging."
I have, I like to think, a healthy scepticism for the marketing claims of products. So many things offer to solve your entire life's problems, just by buying them, and I'm convinced that they're mostly all bullshit.
I also have a complete laziness when it comes to Things In General™ — an unwillingness to put the effort into certain actions, and wish that there was some kind of magical potion to achieve the same results that would normally take a few hours of fiddling.
You see, I long for curly hair. Well, not curly I suppose — wavy. I was browsing through some online clothing stores earlier, desperately searching for the dress/top/skirt/nightie that screamed "Buy me Siobhan! And every one in the world will beg to sleep with you when you wear me!", and stumbled across this model
"That's what I want my hair to be like!" I concluded. "Thick, wavy and tously".
I'm sure, of course, that I could wander into a salon with a print-out and ask to have mine styled like that. But I'm A Wuss™. I'm equally sure that I could get something approaching that style if I sat down with my curling tongs for an hour or two. But I'm Lazy™.
"Perhaps," I wondered, "there's some sort of 'curling serum' you can get that will magically make my hair beautiful".
So I went out to Sainsburys, and stood for half an hour staring at all the things on the hair-cair shelves. Smoothing serums, straighening serums, anti-frizz serums galore. But nothing that promised Instant Lazy Tranny Curls™ just with a couple of squirts from an atomiser.
The closest I found was Phil Smith's Scrunch and Curl Jelly, "for bouncing curls and tousled beach waves".
Cool "...just apply through the hair and scrunch dry with a hairdryer!!"
The double exclamation mark should have been the giveaway I supose. After washing and conditioning my hair with Aussie 'Luscious Long' (which I am currently loving BTW), I whacked the jelly on, and set about scrunching.
I scrunched, and I scrunched, and I scrunched. Then I scrunched some more.
And the result?
Stunning huh? 
Completely as straight as normal, just a lot more stickier and frizzy 
...
In stark contrast though, the other thing I bought when I was out was one of those Gillette Hyperbole Fusion razor thingies — the one that you just know could double as a vibrator if you were so inclined.
Gillette's advertising makes me chuckle — the machismo of it, the OTTness of the voiceover, the continuing quest to find the most 'manly' and exciting words to name their products.
It makes you wonder what's coming next, doesn't it? We're at "Fusion" now — where else can they go when they make a six bladed razor?
But the claims that the vibrating blades make the shave a lot smoother have always struck me as being ludicrous — a cheap gimmick to make us all go out and buy new razors. It's always felt, to me, like something that belongs in an Innovations catalogue — a superfluous battery-addition just to make it seem more 'technical'.
But OMG 
I have never had such a smooth shave.
As you probably know, the steel wool consistency of my facial hair is a constant gripe of mine. I shave and I shave and I shave — with the grain, against the grain, across the grain — and I'm still left with stubble just like that which farmers used to burn every summer.
OK, so I still have a very dark shadow across the bottom of my face (but that's what Dermablend is for, right?) But it feels smooth, and the razor just glided over every bump and crack of my mug.
Gillette one, Phil Smith nil.
Suppose I'd better go do my make-up now then...
That hair is curly hair that's been straightened. So it's kind of still holding a curl, since it's been straightened against God's will. 
Try using a diffuser on your hair-dryer to see if that gets you anywhere. It makes my curly hair controllably curly instead of a big mess, so put that stuff on your hair and scrunch it up in a ball and stick the diffuser close to your head and see what you get. Could be a big poof-ball, but if it starts getting anywhere near where you want it, it's a success. And put hair wax on it when you're done. A little dab'll do ya.
Yes, I always like to laugh at the Gillette Macho ads. But they puzzle me. Do the advertisers think it necessary? Do they believe that men suspect that shaving their faces is a bit, well, feminine? Do they think straight men are standing in front of the bathroom mirror telling themselves "look, I'm not a pouf, my razor's right macho". Do they worry that if men aren't reassured that it is all perfectly manly they'll all stop shaving and start growing beards?
Anyway, I too am a recent convert to the Gillette Hype range — although I haven't got the vibrating one. I've used an old-fashioned razor almost since the day I started shaving — one with a fixed blade. I used to think a smooth shave was a myth. I used to think it normal to tear great lumps of skin off your knees when doing your legs. So now I've got a Fusion and a Venus Divine and I love them. It's the way they go over bumps and the way you don't have to press hard — they just glide.
It's amusing to compare the men's with the women's razor — essentially they are exactly the same. It's only the holder and the packaging which is different. Still, it's useful for me — the silver one is for my face and the pink one is for my legs
So can I read this as a "Get this vibrating razor thingy"? Is that an endorsement or something I hear? I hate shaving right now and if it makes it all smoother then I'm all for it.
I was pretty amazed by my vibro-fusion too, it really does shave well. Not sure theres much point to that little sixth razor on the back, but its good to know its there I suppose, I guess it could be put to use to zest a lemon or something. What is the difference between the normal fusion and this new stealth one anyway?
I saw that picture of your hair on flickr before reading your post here and did think it looks a bit wavier than usual. It seems to have a bit more volume and wave if that makes sense. I get the opposite problem, hair far too curly and in desperate need of straightening, but alas, there just aren't enough steamrollers in the world for it to work on my hair.
Led Astray
Never let the past take such a hold of you that you forget you have a future
Re. hair- I've a nice hairdresser in Newcastle who's totally t-friendly; give us a nudge if you're ever over this way and I can get an appointment. He can do things with straighteners that would- literally!- make your hair curl. ^_^
Mel xxx
And never let the future distract you to the extent that you forget to live in the present
I shave my head... It's easier. (I don't have much hair, anyway. :-O )
Oh, am I tyred! (Sorry. Sort of. )
The Ducati distracted me from "what I should be doing", which I did when I got back home. Thing about getting things done: make a list, and work the list. Not too detailed; something along the lines of:
run bass speaker conduit, power/audio
find that other speaker
Patch remaining holes
get b'day card for niece (this was the excuse to haul a leg over the Ducati...
)
should do it. I use a bit of paper; I used to use a Palm Pilot and Outlook, but I'm not in CorporateLand anymore.
Each day I have a goal; if it's done, it's crossed off. If it isn't, it's added to "tomorrow's" list. It's quite effective. I wonder how many more "it's" I can get in here...
It's time to go watch some telly.
Carolyn Ann
Oh, yeah: I use one the the vibrating shaving thingies. They actually do seem to give a smoother shave. Although I still look like I neglected to shave that day.
(I once used "Nair" hair removal cream on my face. Ouch! I went to dinner with a very red lower half of my face — no amount of makeup could that up! Never again.)
Carolyn Ann
Heh. It's Monday evening, and I've accomplished exactly none of the things I planned to Get Done this weekend. Still, I did drink a lot, see many friends, and generally bask in the glorious weather, so it was still a pretty big success.
And yeah, let us know when you're in London
If your London plans involve any time before the 9th of September then you'll safely avoid me yet again... if they are after then you risk bumping into me. Are you feeling lucky?
I've found the Gillette Sensor Excel for Women quite good (nicer to hold than the bloke version too), as long as you replace the blades vaguely frequently. For getting rid of the blue shadow, you could always pay someone £45 an hour to kill them with electrolysis. Worked for me.
I miss London.
I had such a good time when I lived there.
Ah well: rural New Jersey isn't quite as dynamic, but it is home. (I do like the 'big sky' around here, though. Not as dramatic as Indiana or Ohio, etc, but still pretty big!)
Carolyn Ann
I'm in London not that you'd want to see lil' old me though.
Oh yes, as for the wavey curly hair, I'll happily style yours for you if you like
Wish I could help on any or all of those points, but sadly I live too far away to be able to do anything on any of them. I can totally identify with your state of mind on all this though. I have a list a mile long of stuff that I not only need to do, but that I actually WANT to do. (And another equally long list of stuff I really must do but I don't want to.) I have spent much of the last few years bemoaning the state of my life and how it is all slipping past and I can't get it back. And yet still I do nothing much to improve it. If you find a solution to this mindset — please share with me