I think I've pretty much had all of my holidays worked out for next year (which includes conventions as holidays).

I've got:

• Redemption at the end of February
• Australia from Easter (end of March) till mid-April
• National Conference on May Day bank holiday weekend (where I will be celebrating my birthday)
• Banbury Camping Rally at the end of August (assuming the rest of the club talk me into it and we get a luxury tent between us - I really don't like camping)
• SG10. I just knew they were going to announce more of them at some point. There's no way I'm doing SG9 the week before Redemption, but since I know I'm going to be talked into going to SG10 anyway, I might just as well admit it now.

At least, of those, Australia and SG10 are the expensive things. Australia I'm saving for now, and I'll have time to save for SG10. And I should still have 9 days holiday left from work, although I may keel over from alcohol poisoning and lack of sleep after all of that.

I've been reading lots of Harry Potter fan fic recently. The thing about it that's really annoying me is that it's all full of Americanisms. Now, I know they changed the title of the first book, and presumably Americanised everything else, so there's probably no grounds for me complaining. But Hogwarts, does not have semesters. Some universities do, but I didn't go to one (on purpose) so I really don't understand how you fit two semesters into three terms. And unless boarding schools work differently, no-one is going to graduate. They'll just finish school and leave.

Something that really confused me in a fic today: Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were told to charm the windows of the first floor of the house they were living in at the time so that nothing would get in (as they were possibly going to be attacked). I spent a fair few minutes trying to work out why they would want to charm the windows of the first floor and not the ground, until I realised it had been written by an American, and they meant the ground floor.

Admittedly, this also confused me completely when I was in Las Vegas. When we first went down from our room back to reception I was looking in the lift for the button that said 'G'. The American friend I was with had to press the '1' button for us, because I was just lost. I really can't get my head round it for some reason, even though it ought to be more logical that our system.

I also meant to post this link last time - Funny Olympics animation. I particularly liked the fencing one, but then I would.

A fic I read today included a bit where Sirius and Remus had an argument. I got quite excited when they were building up to it because I love a good argument in my fic. I commented on someone else's a while back, when she had Elrond and Celebrian fight, that it was my favourite bit. She replied to say she knew I'd like that bit. So I know I like arguments, other people know I like them, I just don't know why. I know there are people who write them so the two people involved can have make-up sex, and there are people who read them purely for the sex. I read them for the argument - once they make-up I'm bored and skip the sex.

I was going to say I think I'm weird but I know that I am. I also think this morning came as a bit of a shock after three increasingly late nights followed by three increasingly late mornings, so I'm tired now and should probably go to bed once my housemate's out of the bathroom.

Two cool links: Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars Trailer. Very exciting. I just hope that the BBC show it, and after 9pm. It's not a children's program, BBC, take note.

I have also just found some of the Orange adverts they show at the cinema to remind you to turn off your phone. These are usually someone pitching a film and the Orange guys ruining it by putting mobile phones in it. You can't get to the Clockwork Orange advert for Orange Wednesdays but the Lord of the Ringtones one is there (generally agreed to be the best one so far, it even stands up to multiple viewings).

Work does often seem a lot like a soap opera. It's been weddings recently but it's good old technology doing it again. We have the main site with the main server at Wallingford House. Then we have a little second site above the Bakers Oven, which has it's own little server, which data entry use, and the printers there are connected to.

We came in Monday morning to find we couldn't connect to the main server. Or the little one, which was a bit odd, because there was nothing wrong with that. Half an hour later the IT guy told us it was because the modem that was our link to the main server had died and we had to wait for an engineer to get us a new one.

I then spent the best part of two hours going between the two sites, and setting up everything on someone else's computer on the main site. I have Windows 98 and most people now have XP, which means that as far as XP is concerned there are no programs installed and all the settings are the default really annoying ones.

Then I spent three hours trying to fight off a migraine (with the benefit of pills, that usually work) and I eventually gave up and went home ill, for only the second time in three years (the first time was for a migraine as well). I'm still really tired and a bit dizzy but I'll be better tomorrow. But that didn't really help things.

Tuesday morning I was on someone else's computer again. Since I was there all day I did actually set up more things this time. Which was good because I managed to get the same computer again today, but other people were taking up meeting rooms and the staff room.

We'll be back there again tomorrow though. Apparently, the modem is American and there aren't any in this country. So it has to be shipped over. I think. My short term memory's still not working properly. But everyday we come in and hope it's fixed and it isn't. There are more people off towards the weekend because it's a bank holiday weekend but going between sites is a complete pain. It takes five minutes each way and it keeps raining.

On another topic, I had bangers and mash three times last week (not on purpose, it just happened that way). Of the three, the best was mine, even though the other two were from pubs. No idea why though.

I've been in a really bad mood today for practically no reason. Luckily, I haven't had to speak to many people at work today. When I'm in a bad mood I tend to get kind of short with them, especially when they're being idiots. I did write a list of everything that's wrong with my work computer, though. It came to one side of A4. And I have small writing. Perhaps I'll finally get a new one in two years time. And that's being optimistic.

In the pub at lunch today the talk was all about houses. There seem to be so many people at work (like, 99% of them) that are into buying houses, living with boyfriends (most of the people at work are girls) and basically being boring grown-ups. Which I really don't get. I could just about cope with it though, because most of my friends from school and uni didn't have girlfriends (most of them are blokes). Except that now it seems that the opposite is true.

Occasionally I think about having a boyfriend would be quite useful (going out, going on holiday, someone else to do the cooking etc - I was going to say look after me when I'm ill but all I want when I'm ill is someone to provide me with pills, water and toast and leave me alone). But a friend would do that just as well.

When I was little and in middle school I always used to hope one of the girls was off sick on PE days because there were 15 girls and 15 boys in my class and I'd have someone to go with. I had friends but they were always in different classes. Things got better after that point but I never quite got out of the habit of wishing for a best friend that was only friends with me. Which is obviously completely ridiculous because that would also imply I couldn't have any friends.

But a boyfriend would require actual effort. I mean they tend to expect to see you occasionally, which is a complete pain because, frankly, I have better things to do with my time than spend it all with one person. I have so many friends round the country that I'd much rather spend my weekends seeing them than a boyfriend. Which I think is perfectly reasonable. It's just hard sometimes to remember that's normal. I don't understand some people, I really don't.

And I really don't want to see Neil Manson's (dodgy DI to my mum) chest ever again. That was not a pleasant experience.

I've just had a massive moth fly in my room, so I tried to lure it out by turning off the light and opening the door (the landing light being on and there's already a dead wasp, a big spider, a beetle and a moth out there). Sadly it was attracted to my computer and I got the shock of my life when I looked down and saw it sat on my CD next to it. I think I managed to throw it out the window.

I had a nightmare last night. I was about to fly to America when I realised I didn't have any travel sickness pills. I ran round the shops in the airport looking for some but couldn't find any. Then I remembered I had packed them, but in my suitcase. I went back to where I was sat and handed my suitcase over before getting on the plane. This made perfect sense at the time.

I then got on the plane and realised I had ten minutes to find some pills before the plane took off (I did think about the fact that they take longer than that to kick in but I had decided it didn't matter). I found a doctor's but the nurse/receptionist was more interested in the contents of the sandwiches. After that there was a supermarket and a cinema involved but my suitcase and backpack ended up flying and I didn't.

I couldn't face the idea of flying for eight and a half hours, specially without pills. But as I've been to America, that woule be my anxiety over flying to Australia, which takes forever.

I've been enjoying the swimming at the Olympics, although it really makes me want to swim. It's annoying that there are no pools round here I can get to except on a Saturday. Which isn't terribly helpful. I also can't see when I'm in there, I can only go swimming when I have plenty of time because I have no way of knowing how long I've been in.

I wish they'd shown some of the fencing, though, apart from just on Sky (which is really not very helpful when you don't have Sky - and I'd certainly not get it just for that).

My ADSL connection has been intermittent since last night. This evening I had to redial four times, it went slow then it disconnected me while I ate dinner and watched the swimming. It seems to be better now. It's not just me though, which is something.

First off, Happy Birthday fileg for yesterday. There may be more than a drabble forthcoming for you but it's been a long time since Verse and Adversity and it's got so much harder. And that's cryptic because it's not for public viewing.

I knew there was a good reason to check the Blogger news page before I post. Eats, Blogs and Leaves - reasons why you should use good grammar on blogs. But more importantly, it's funny.

Louise Bond-Williams goes in the individual sabre tomorrow. We're desperately hoping she wins gold so we get one hit of fencing in the whole Olympics. But she's only 22, so maybe next Olympics or the one after. Small claim to fame - I have a friend who has spoken to her. I have at least heard of her, unlike our other British fencer in the Olympics. I was at a party on Saturday with fencers, so we had a nice bitch about the lack of fencing shown in the Olympics. Admittedly, it's probably very boring to watch, as it's so fast at that level. But proof would be nice!

I'm so behind with my livejournals. I keep finding more, which is fine. Except that some I've added to Abilon only and some to my Favourites only. But, ultimately they need to be on my Bookmarks page, and my lj friends, and Abilon. And my Favourites list is going off the page, and I only sorted it out a couple of weeks ago.

I did discover The Daily Snitch via Sel, which tends to come up with interesting stuff. Like this post speculating on Sirius' upbringing and all the comments about it.

To summarise very, er, summarily, it comes to the conclusion that Sirius really isn't a very nice person. And points out that when he finds out about Peter Pettigrew's betrayal he goes straight to kill him, rather than reason with him, or understand why he did it. After all, Sirius did once try to kill Snape, whether by accident or design.

Which all got me thinking, what would have happened if it had been Lupin who had reached Peter first? Lupin seems much more of a reasonable person, except that he was quite happy to kill Peter in the Shrieking Shack. The question is whether that's purely to do with what he's been through, loyalty to Sirius and what he's been through, something else, or if he would have had exactly the same reaction twelve years previously. If someone's written that AU, I'd love to read it. I certainly couldn't write it, I just can't get enough of a handle on the characters to do it.

I've got to the bored stage where I can't be bothered to do anything at the moment, not sure why. Not so much Rotaract stuff going on, probably, and no more Tae Kwon Do till September. Although the men's synchronised 3m diving woke me up a bit. And not purely because they wear very skimpy swimming trunks. It was mainly because a few of them made a complete cock-up of it. Then I checked my mail and got some nice comments about one of my drabbles, which has made me happy for the evening. So I'm off to skim-read some angst so I can review it for Sel.

How can it be Friday tomorrow? Where did the week go? I was planning to get loads done this week and have not done too well so far. My to read folder e-mail folder is down to 12, although I also have some bookmarked and just mentally bookmarked in my head. I really need an early night though. The past two nights I got tired about 10.30 and eventually made it to bed at midnight. Whoops!

In other exciting news I cooked swede today and yesterday. That may not sound exciting but my dad doesn't like it, so the first time I tasted it was at Burns Supper in January. I love it. I only cooked it for the first time last night. It's a bugger to peel, but very nice. Which brings my selection of dinner vegetable options to three. And doesn't increase the amount of washing up if I'm having boiled potatoes as well, which is always a good thing.

Thursday does mean an update to The Shoebox Project. Although I don't know how I'm going to last till next Thursday to read the next chapter!

I am liking The Daily Snitch because it comes up with some interesting stuff. Like a Harry Potter Conference next July. I want to go because it's at Reading Uni, not sure about the conference part though. It will depend on the program I think. I can't quite decide whether I like the idea of academic discussion on Harry Potter (Sirius and Remus fancy the pants off each other - what more can you possibly need to know? ).

I was going to make some CDs tonight but discovered my program that makes videos smaller now makes them bigger. I made the mistake of fiddling with the settings and thought I'd put them back. Obviously not. But because I back everything up, I replaced the ini files and it's all ok now. Apart from it screwing my computer up I could totally marry Drive Image.

I am also completely in love with Abilon. It ignores locked posts, cut tags and you can mark posts as unread. Which is particularly good because I always forget to come back and re-read things. It doesn't tell you how many comments people have made on the entry though, but then I never usually looked at any of them anyway.

I will now go on a printing session and see if I can make it to bed before 11pm. Although making it to bed in half an hour would be something of a record (it usually takes an hour). There really aren't enough hours in the day, and who needs sleep anyway?

I thought I would re-visit my new year's resolutions and see how they were going. Admittedly, I pretty much came up with them on the spur of the moment and haven't looked at them since. I was planning to do this a month ago, then it really would be the middle of the year but I forgot. Plus I didn't have July on my calendar (it was Denethor, so I had June twice instead).

Make sure 2004 is better than 2003 by:

Not sure yet - that's something I will decide at the end of the year

a. Keeping in contact with my friends - specially the ones I haven't seen for a while

Yes! I have done this one. Not enough but it really is as easy as just sending an e-mail, talking about meeting up etc.

b. Getting pissed more often

Don't think I've managed it this year actually. I know I was planning to at SG7 and Conference and didn't. I will definitely be getting pissed at SG8 though, since I have more time to recover.

c. Going out more often

Yes. I think. Pretty much courtesy of Rotaract.

d. Getting more snogs and generally flirting more often (see b and c)

No. Nothing at all, in fact. Possibly due to lack of alcohol.

e. Going to Tae Kwon Do at least once a week (I would say more often but that's the same thing at this stage)

Well, it's only on once a week at the moment. It didn't work so well back when I was too busy to do anything at all except work, then too ill to do anything. I'm quite annoyed that I managed to do my knee in just before a grading as well because I've been a yellow belt since June last year.

I'll add a sub-section to e - make green tag by the end of the year (which requires part e and me reading the book)

f. Going to fencing at least once a month

No. Although since dad told me I could have his car when he retires in two and a bit years I've pretty much given up on it until then. I've played tennis though instead.

g. Learning grammar - and more importantly how to apply it

I read Eats, Shoots and Leaves, so that probably counts. Might need to re-read it though.

g. Learning how to beta read

Yes! Well, ish. Courtesy of the 'Try Before You Buy' Forum at HASA. Soon as someone posts something else that interests me (or at least that I know something about) I'll have another go.

h. Learning french

Er, that would be another no. Since I'm going to Australia next year and will be needing driving lessons in 2006, I'm not going there for a bit anyway.

i. Keeping my computer tidy (already failed)

It's not bad. Although probably more due to my external hard drive failing than anything else.

I'll add a sub-section to this - back-up - little and often.

j. Making more time to play computer games

Yes. I'm still stuck right near the start of Fellowship but I have been playing some Civ 3. Only trouble is I lose track of time and end up playing all night. Which is fine if I have all night.

k. Seeing more films (even if they're last years I haven't got round to watching yet and involve going to the video shop for)

Yes. I think the only film I missed so far I'll have to go to the video shop for is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Although I didn't decide I wanted to see it until they were taking it off. I did manage to see some films I'd missed a few years ago as well.

l. Booking trip to Australia

Well, I've booked the time off at work. I'll be booking the flights in the autumn when it is apparently cheaper.

I'll add another section - m. Learn guitar. I passed a guitar shop on the way to the doctors a while ago and discovered they do lessons. I'm just waiting for the new term to start in September. I've never played a string instrument before, so it'll be a new experience.

In summary, that's not bad. Except for the things that are quite pitifully never going to happen this year. And in the case of some of them, not ever.

I'm posting this from Abilon, so we'll see if it works (not least cos I'll have to change the settings to post this to livejournal after).

The Sirius/Remus obsession hasn't quite died down yet. There's an ongoing WIP (posted weekly): The Shoebox Project and I found an essay detailing the evidence for Sirius/Remus (since I came into it thinking it was a good idea more than anything else): The Case for R/S Version 2.0.

Edit: Since I've had to put those links in by hand, I'm going back to Blogger next time, now I've worked out how to avoid using the annoying WYSIWYG editor that makes everything much more difficult.

Edit again: It's made a complete mess of my links now, I really don't understand how you're supposed to me them work, I like Blogger, Blogger is my friend.

I feel much more relaxed after my holiday now. Okay, so it was a long weekend at my parents but I didn't have to do any washing or cooking, I got ferried round by my sister in her new car (so she could practice driving) and, more than that, there was no work, no Rotaract, no nothing I didn't want to go near. Of course, now I keep thinking it's Monday.

Unbelievably, the trains were just the right amount of late on Friday night that I didn't spend all that much time hanging round at stations. Neither were they too busy because I left an hour late. I wrote fic on the train as well, go me!

Saturday was the annual water fight in a quarry - the fact that it was used for Blakes 7 and Doctor Who filming is merely an afterthought and more of an excuse to have a good time. I was amazed it was nice weather because it's been so crap for a long time. But it was hot and sunny and it was good to get covered in cold water. I managed to tan bits of my feet as well (usefully).

Sunday I went to see King Arthur. The cinema was really hot, which didn't really help, but my sister (who went with me) had to explain the whole plot afterwards because I was so lost. Honestly, she picked up all sorts of bits that were quite important and I completely missed, like what Arthur was fighting for, for a start. So not a great success on the part of the filmmakers then.

Monday we went to Monkey World. I have the photos to prove it but I haven't quite managed to plug my camera in yet. It was cool to see all the animals they talk about on the telly. My parents spent all the time talking about how much it had changed since we last went (which was the year after it opened, apparently) but all I can remember from that is Amy the orangutan. Pictures just don't get across just how big adult chimps are either. They had a bunny there as well, which was stretched out in the shade and generally unimpressed at meeting me.

We spring cleaned my room as well. So now there's plenty of space for more stuff! And I found some things I'd forgotten I had, so that was quite productive. And didn't take long, since mum had already done the cleaning part. I took down a fair few posters as well. Blu-tac goes all sticky when it's old, and hard when it's older still. I think I still have some up my fingernails.

Then I came back here last night to find they'd had a storm and consequently a power cut. Of course at home, they'd had a few spots of rain and it was bright sunshine. My landlady has an electric cooker, so just as I'd given up (and finished my book) and had a sandwich, the power came back on. I had all these things I was planning to do last night and it was really annoying not to get to do them.

Then I was woken up by a moth flying in my ear. Which is very, very loud, and scary. I think I broke a piece of wing off getting it out, so there might well be a dead moth somewhere in my room. But at least it's not in my ear (I got the doctor to check - I was so paranoid I had to sleep with the light on).

My dad introduced me to Abilon, which reads site feeds from blogs (including livejournal). It's great, I love it! You can get my site feed from this address: http://www.paranoidangel.me.uk/atom.xml, which is also on the left hand side of the page. Obviously, it's paranoidangel42 for the livejournal version, but they're both the same.

And now I'll stop writing because I'm still on a Sirius/Remus thing, I have 11 alerts (ten from Stories of Arda, one from ff.net) to read, plus fileg's birthday present to avon (I'm a bit behind) and Sel's Five Things fic. And that's not including anything I have in book/zine form that will keep me going for some time. Do these people not know when to stop?