Last week was my birthday (and my twin sister Sarah’s). On Tuesday, to be precise. But the actual breakdown went more like this:
Midnight Monday/Early morning Tuesday: I received my Christmas present early from my fiance, Dave, because my birthday present got tangled up in some courier delivery drama. It’s the Harry Potter Wizard’s Collection, and oh boy… it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous box set that covers every aspect of the movies, but just looking at it makes me feel guilty. I could never, ever spend that kind of money of a luxury for myself and the fact that someone else did just makes me feel even guiltier. I am not very good at receiving expensive presents.


Tuesday: A package just arrived in this post with a card, in French, and I looked at it like ‘French?’ because I don’t know anyone in France. Turns out my best friend school made me an AWESOME hand-knitted Sherlock Scarf. I spent that morning in my pyjamas and a Sherlock scarf, and I regret nothing.The card also contained the commands ‘gayly celebrate this agreeable event’ which is always a good plan. Later that afternoon, Dave fitted multicoloured remote-controlled LEDs to the bottom of the bed and now our room becomes a rave at the push of a button.
In the evening, I went to a birthday buffet at my parents house. There was an awesome cake and an even more awesome ‘Happy Birthday’ banner on the way to their house.

Wednesday: Went to for a birthday meal at a swanky Inverness restaurant with my lovely friends. The highlights of the meal were a lovely (but pricey) strawberry daiquiri, wood pigeon, and a crepe wrapped around Malteaser ice cream.
Thursday: THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT ARRIVED. I received Castiel, a desktop PC more powerful than my wildest dreams: built like a gaming machine but also capable of handling all my writing, art and multitasking without flinching. He was bought for me because my loyal Macbook workhorse, despite several resuscitation attempts, was on his last legs (and because I’d been craving a bit of PC gaming).
In all seriousness, though, I am extremely lucky that Dave and Josh put this machine together for me. It’s absolutely fantastic, and because I didn’t build him, there’s a whole load of awesomeness in this machine that I’d never dare spend on myself. Here are the specs, for bragging rights:
Machine name: CASTIELProcessor: AMD FX(tm)-6100 Six-Core Processor (6 CPUs), ~3.3GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM Corsair ‘Vengeance’ RAM
Card name: AMD Radeon HD7770 (Black Edition)
C Drive (LEVIATHAN): Model: Seagate Barracuda 1TB
And an awesome Logitech Wave wireless keyboard was supplied to finish off the machine, by my friend Allan.
So if I disappear from the Internet, you can rest assured I’m in my room on this beast of a machine. So far, my Friday and weekend has consisted of building a bookshelf, playing Borderlands 2, playing Bastion (love <3), and supervising Josh’s addition of extra case fans and a non-stock CPU cooler (read: new shiny bits) to Castiel.
Don’t forget the epic keyboard with many buttons!
It is a very epic keyboard, and it’s front and centre in the picture. :) Thank you sir!
Sounds amazing. Welcome to the Wizard Collection Owner’s Club. It is gorgeous isn’t it? Don’t feel guilty, feel joy. Happy belated birthday from me too – have fun writing on Castiel!!
Thank you! :) It is absolutely gorgeous! I loved reading your posts about it, and now I have one to look through myself. It’s all very cool!
Congrats on your birthday Emma! Wow, these gifts you received are so awesome! I’ll be marking October the 1st in my diary so I’ll know next year, and be able to properly congratulate you, on the correct day. ;)
@Roan Weterings It’s October the 2nd, and thank you. :) Next time I’ll try to actually put a blog post up in the day, I got a bit distracted. :)
@EMaree And like Dave, I too approve of the new messaging system of course. But I do wonder what the 6 pts next to my name means?
@Roan Weterings They represent how many likes you’ve received. You get five for joining up, and +1 per like — so right now you’ve got 8 points, one like on your original post and two on the one above this. :)They don’t do anything, apart from show who the most ‘liked’ commentors are (and probably the most active ones).
@Roan Weterings Oh yeah, and the ‘likes’ carry across between any blog that uses the Livefyre system. Mine’s at 12 right now because I was in a discussion over at http://cuddlebuggery.com/
@EMaree Wow, that’s a really cool feature!
And umm… I don’t mean to bother you with this, but I have been writing poems to stop hiding from my feelings, and I’d like to get feedback on them… I was wondering if I could share them with you through your forum, if it wouldn’t be a problem… Like a poetry thread, though they aren’t very upbeat…
Go right ahead and share them on the forum, but it’s been very very quiet there. If you want, I could put up a ‘share what you’re working on’ blog post which might be more visible?
@Roan Weterings Roan, did you get my reply to your comment re: sharing your work? It’s not showing up here so I’m not sure if the system’s misbehaving.Go right ahead and share them <a href=”http://emmamaree.com/forum/” rel=”nofollow”>on the forum</a>, but it’s been very very quiet there. If you want, I could put up a ‘share what you’re working on’ blog post which might be more visible?
@EMaree Hi Emma,
I hadn’t seen it, but I’m happy you’ll have a look at them! But I liked the forum better because it’s only you there, but if some are actually good you can put them up of course. But I’ll be on a holiday for a few days, so I’ll put one up after that. :)
@EMaree Well, the first post is up… It´s in `The Sanctuary` under the `Your Creations` topic…
@EMaree Hi Emma,
I hadn’t seen it, but I’m happy you’ll have a look at them! But I liked the forum better because it’s only you there, but if some are actually good you can put them up of course. But I’ll be on a holiday for a few days, so I’ll put one up after that. :)
Wow! Cool gifts!! Happy Birthday, Emma!!! With lots of exclamation marks!!!! :D
@Colin D Smith Multiple exclamation marks! You flatter me with such a gift. :D Thank you Colin.
You’re far to kind hun I’m just glad you had a good week and I approve of the new commenting system.
@DavefaceFMS I liked this comment! Because this is a thing I can do now.
@EMaree I liked you liking this because I like you being able to like this now.
Happy Birthday! =D Sounds like you had a fantastic day!
A very, very Happy (albeit belated) Birthday to you! This sounds like a fantastic birthday week, and now I am pining for Inverness. After spending some time there this May, I’ve decided it is one of my favourite places on this earth, and I’ve been to a decent amount of places. Glad you had such a great birthday! :)