The BlogThis! button on the Google toolbar is great. I'm at a site I want to mention in my blog, so I just press the button and save it as draft. Then come back to my blog a few days later, decide I can't be bothered and delete the post.

In other news: I ironed tonight. I think the last time I ironed was last winter. I actually quite like ironing. It's not as bad as other housework-type jobs (like dusting - I haven't dusted for a month and I can see fingers marks on the video and stereo). But when I say I like ironing, I mean I like ironing, I don't like getting the ironing board out, putting it up, finding the iron from where it's buried under a pile of stuff, finding some clothes that need ironing. Then putting it all away afterwards, after giving the iron plenty of time to cool down. I'm also slow at ironing, although it's probably not helped by me watching TV at the same time.

I still haven't put the iron away and I finished at 9 o'clock.

It's quite weird how work can change so quickly. This time last week I was buried under it. Today I did about an hour of my job, the rest of it was spent helping other people because I had nothing else to do. It is nice to be quiet for a change because I have a load of adminy things to catch up on but it would be nice if it was a bit more even sometimes.

I listened to Hitchhiker's on Tuesday. Live, as well. It was a bit surreal to hear the usual music and then listen to something I hadn't heard before. I liked the way it followed the book, had a few extras in, explained the plot for people who were trying to work out how you got there from the last episode, and for people who hadn't listened so far. And the Eddies in the Space-Time Continuum joke still makes me laugh as much as the first time I read it.

It also made me think of something I could ask for for Chanukah, since up to this point the only thing on my list is a potato peeler (mum's got a cool, new one, I want it) and I only have the radio series on tape. It might even be something my grandmother can be trusted to buy.

I am going to Cadbury World on Saturday. And possibly the new Bullring shopping centre, depending on traffic. Saturday just happens to be Yom Kippur. You can tell I'm religious

And because I know I'm going to get questions on this, Yom Kippur is the most holy day in the Jewish calendar where you're supposed to fast from sunset to sunset and spend your whole time in synagogue. And not watch telly or use the computer. And that's all I remember. I hate it when I was younger because it was another night of no TV not long after two no TV at New Year. Although my parents don't really do that now. I started it - I got my e-mail address at uni sorted out the day before the first night of New Year, so they had to go on to read my e-mail. And I joined J-Soc to meet people and get apple and honey. There were two people there who weren't religious and they knew more than me. And the apple and honey was a piece of apple dipped in a jar of honey, which isn't nearly enough honey.

And that was supposed to be an aside. I'm going to listen to Hitchhiker's (again - novelty value) and do the puzzle. Or play Gryffindor Mah Jongg, which is horrible but addictive.

Behold the LJ cuts! Partly because Blogger keeps complaining about the html (it's probably right but they're horrible to search through). Out of all the memes I've seen going round recently, these had the funniest answers.

Your Political Career

What Kind of God Are You

The Ultimate Farscape AU

The end of last week was bad, mainly due to work. Thursday afternoon we had the company day out (well, afternoon) where we did West African drumming, which was really good fun. There were people who found moving their feet and clapping difficult and they were all impressed that I knew the answer to the question: what does c stand for in the equation e=mc². Oh dear. I work with arts students. This is not good.

In the evening I had my first Rotaract president's meeting, which was good fun. We established that as a club we all get our weekends booked up quickly. I could have done without it though, because I didn't get home till 10.30 and then was so tired I just fell into bed. And couldn't sleep.

I did get eleven and a half hours Saturday night though. I didn't hear my parents go to bed or get up. And the cat didn't come in till I got up, so he didn't even get to sleep with me (which was probably just as well because I was hot enough on my own as it was). It's almost worrying that the best bit of my weekend was the amount of sleep I got and the warm house I got to have it in...

Nilmandra wrote about things to be thankful for and it was quite timely for me because I was really stressed out about various things this morning. Part of it was work, part of it was Rotaract and not knowing things for certain. But I got more work done today than I thought I'd get through (although I did get to one point where my vision went funny and another point where I didn't think my right shoulder was going to let me go near a mouse again) and I've just come back from a meeting. We're having a chocolate day on 25th, so everyone's excited about that.

I also got a letter this morning to tell me I was the person who won their place at Conference free! Which is to the value of �174, so I am amazed. And great because I booked my flight to Australia at the weekend so I am now broke.

When various people post/tell me about crap stuff going on in their life I realise how grateful I am I don't have that. But I'm also grateful I have a roof over my head, a job and friends. No matter how much I might winge about the first two, at least I'm not leaving on the streets.

I do have proof that I am a rain god, though. On Saturday I did my washing. I pegged it out in the afternoon, went in, got as far as thinking about sorting out the stuff I'd bought in Reading (mostly food, I have to say), at which point it chucked it down. So I got my washing in, which by this point was wetter than when I'd pegged it out. By the time I'd got all of it, and me, inside it stopped raining. I decided to go for a simple life and leave it in. So it didn't rain at all for the rest of the day.

I've also been redesigning the Wallingford Rotaract website, which is currently a fairly generic one shared by other clubs in the district. I've just copied the text over, since I'm more worried about the design than the words, and the contact form doesn't work but it can be found at www.paranoidangel.me.uk/rotaract. If anyone wants to take a look and let me know what they think, as long as it's honest, I'd love to know because I know they look different on different computers.

Today at work wasn't long but it was intense. We've just started getting into internet research (ie doing research using the internet, not researching the internet) which at the moment involves using an external company. So they send the data in excel and I spend time trying to work out which question is which and whether the data is right (which it always is, except when you ask people what county they live in - the answers have ranged from 'Milton Keynes' to 'Scotland' to 'South England/North Somerset').

Anyway, I've worked on all of them so far, which is good because I think this is quite exciting, especially if we do it ourselves one day and I actually get to program the things. It's also bad because today I dealt with data from two of them (both complicated, although for different reasons) and some data we had in from America. In the latter case we've used the company many times and their data always comes back perfectly and I hardly have to do anything with it.

There is only so much playing about with data in excel you can do with a headache though. And I spend most of the day unable to feel my hands because I sit in the draft from the air conditioning. I must remember to take my gloves in, which are rapidly becoming fingerless.

While I was getting sick of the whole thing this afternoon I was thinking about fandom-related stuff. I'm supposed to be writing two Lord of the Rings fics at the moment. One is with someone else, for a challenge on HASA and words can't express how much we're not going to finish by the deadline in October. It seemed a long way off when we started.

So, first of all I should learn how to organise my thoughts so I don't digress in the middle of a paragraph, except that's how I think. I often confuse people by seeming to change the subject in the middle of a conversation, except the link makes sense to me, and carrying on a conversation three months later. My memory's odd like that.

And now I've had a paragraph of digression, I've spent so much time reading Harry Potter fan fic I don't have my head in the right universe any more. And I was trying to decide how best to get back into it. I might actually get round to reading Unfinished Tales, as I'm going home the weekend after next and will need something to read. But then, The Daily Snitch mentioned a new community: Idol Reflections where people can post essays about particular characters. So now I'm writing one about Elrond. Oh, yes, a maximum of 7000 words by 13th November to convince everyone to love him like I do.

If anyone wants to comment with anything they think I should say, or fics I should rec, feel free. Although LJ doesn't seem happy about sending me comments at the moment, and freeserve thinks ones from Blogger are spam.

I was reading the Jack/Daniel essay on Ship Manifesto this evening. I actually knew all of the slashy moments the poster mentioned. I can't decide if I should be worried about this or not. But one moment they mentioned I know I've seen before (it's from The Serpent's Venom for those who know episode titles better than me):

Jack gives him an affectionate Look, and then pushes up Daniel's glasses.

Now if someone did that to me I'd clock them one. Really. That is one of the most annoying things you can do to someone wearing glasses because it would leave a big finger smudge on the lens - in this case Jack has a finger on each lens - and then you can't see and need to wipe them. Okay, so sometimes people deliberately annoy those they fancy, but if someone I fancied did that to me, it really wouldn't endear them to me at all.

I had a bit of a mare yesterday morning. I downloaded the updated version of Abilon on Friday night, installed it and everything was fine. Come Saturday morning it had lost all my feeds. I eventually managed to find where they were but ended up having to uninstall it, reinstall it, then manually add them all back in again.

There was a big folk festival going on in Wallingford this weekend. I think it's only the third year it's been on and the first time I've been here for it. Which turned out to be bad because the house was invaded by my landlady's friends, which included two annoying little kids.

It pretty much started up on Friday, so I saw it all walking home from work, so I didn't really feel the need to go. I was asked to usher for a concert tonight at the theatre/cinema, so I went early and did the whole thing in ten minutes. Well, all the stalls.

The concert was Irish music, mainly. The first band were good, I wasn't so keen on the other two as they consisted mainly of guitar players. Although that could have had something to do with the keyboard player in the first band being a complete guinness. If only I could remember his name...

It was all very nice and relaxing, which means that now I really need to go to bed. I even managed to get over the part where I wanted to be up there playing. I generally can't go to concerts without itching to play. Or fancying one of the musicians, if they're young enough.

Quite a few times at work when checking questionnaires I've come across something like this:

Thinking about the crisps you eat. How often do you buy each of the following brands?

Now, quite often they will say in another question:

Now please think about the crisps you eat. How often do you buy each of the following brands?

That first sentence: Thinking about the crisps you eat. sounds to me as if it isn't a sentence. But Word doesn't flag it up in its grammar checker, so that and the other example I gave is probably why people do it quite a bit.

My question is, why isn't it a sentence? Or why is it a sentence and doesn't sounds like one. I don't know enough english to know the answer to that one. Ultimately, it doesn't matter because your eyes tend to skim over it if you're an interviewer reading it out, or a respondent filling in a questionnaire. But it's annoying me.

There is a long story connected with this but I'll cut off all the reasons why and go straight to the question. We need a publicity stunt we can do in the town (it's only a little market town I live in) that will get new members for Rotaract (so we're trying to attract 18-30 year olds) and be quite silly.

There have been various ideas and tales of what we used to do back in the good old days but my dad pointed out that at uni RAG tended to do that sort of thing. Be ridiculous, I mean (and raise money for charity, which is also good). So, does anyone reading this have any RAG stunts they remember that could be modified for our use?

I know we used to do gnoming (it took me a while to remember what it was called), which I think involved cling film, flour, water and water pistols. Which probably wouldn't go down too well with the town council. There were also deliveries (flowers, beer) which I can't see a way of using.

And now I'm off to watch last night's Bill. Which I'm only really watching for Gina Gold these days.