Back on the 22nd I posted a list of things I wanted to get done during the holidays. I finally remembered to look at it yesterday, and since I've done quite a bit, I thought I'd post a progress report:

• Sort out my bookmarks - I have done this. Although I have since added more
• Finish categorising my old posts so I no longer have any uncategorised ones - I had forgotten about this, but I've put my head done and actually done them all. Must remember to back up the database now.
• Look at my finances, as at the end of the month I’ll have a year’s worth of categorised spending - Well, it's all written down, which is what I think I meant.
• Get Melli’s LJ layout into LJ format - Tomorrow, really.
• Get Five Things to a point where it can be betaed - Yes!
• Try and do the same with the Langford U fic I suddenly seem to have started (and has made it v2 already!) - This one's doing a whole lot better because it is finished, betaed, and posted
• Do some work on my Arathorn and Gilraen fic - I am aware I should do that rather than start anything else. But that's as far as it's got
• Do some more reviews for Sel - Well, I did one because I posted it on Crack Van and hadn't reviewed it yet.
• Read through all the SoA stories/chapters I missed due to not getting notifications and not realising - Well, I've started

I feel this list would look a whole lot better if I didn't also need to write half of the Cheese and Wine quiz questions, sort out my desktop icons which have all moved about and I can't remember where they are (I have a picture of them, but sadly it's from my old computer), work out some sounds for Linux, and I only really have two days left, as Monday will be spent packing and travelling and buying fruit and veg for the week.

The G2 section of dad's paper yesterday was full of puzzles. They did a special big quick crossword (something of an oxymoron?) and a big Kakuro, along with 16 Sudokus and some other Japanese puzzles. The Hanjie was really easy, and I finished an Enigma for the first ever. Dad helped me get started, and finished, with the Kakuro because I've never done one before - so a big one possibly not the best one to start with!

They've been such good fun, though, that I've not been doing much else. I have been reduced to doing the Sudoku, though, although it seems so tame in comparison to the Kakuro, which I much preferred. Even if I showed an inability to add at times!

The day before the first night of Chanukah always seems to drag. We got there in the end though, but not before discovering my parents have four boxes of candles squirreled away in the cupboard, and not one as they first thought. Although one of them is white.

The usual fun ensued when lighting the candles, when mum suddenly popped up on messenger on dad's computer when he was in the middle of a prayer at the time. Then mum and my sister mainly spent the song laughing. Me and dad were doing a good impression of two people playing the same song entirely separately. He wanted to go quick, I didn't let him. At one point we were a whole note out, which certainly sounded interesting.

I got my dad The Uxbridge English Dictionary, which turned out to be good because he said only a few days ago that dictionary definitions was his favourite ISIHAC round (mine too). I got socks (which I needed but couldn't be bothered to shop for), Peacekeeper Wars on DVD (for when I next watch Stargate), another two cross stitches (I think I still have three to do apart from them), a little Hutch (from Wallace and Gromit) and four Lois McMaster Bujold books - one I haven't got to yet, the others I've read but do include the first two, which I like best.

Doctor Who was excellent. We listened to the commentary track this morning, which was also interesting. Dad got the Hitchhiker's reference before the Doctor mentioned it, my sister got the Lion King speech before the Doctor pointed it out. There were also definitely Star Wars and Independence Day bits in there. It was nice to see a big alien spaceship over London for a change and not The White House! And I did like Harriet Jones effectively telling the US President where to stick it.

Basically, I entirely agree with the review in The Guardian, and the Doctor is brillian when he wakes up and does his stuff. I'm really looking forward to the new series in the spring (as well as series 3 and the Christmas special next year, and Torchwood).

We've just got back from Narnia, which I really enjoyed. Peter's sword was absolutely beautiful - not quite up to Anduril's standard but that is quite difficult. I remembered nothing about Narnia except that it's at the back of a wardrobe, although my sister remembered more and told us over lunch. Some of it vaguely comes back to me now.

Just before the battle when Peter is riding up to the others me and mum were both wondering whether the unicorn's horn was stuck on or CGI'ed later. Which was probably not what we were supposed to be thinking at that moment!

I think all the Christmas TV is on tonight. We had to sit and work out, last night, what we were going to watch, what we were going to tape and when therefore we could fit in candles and dinner. So the current plan is candles (and presents) at 5pm, dinner at 6pm, Doctor Who at 7pm, followed by The Green Green Grass (with Coro taping) and Booze Cruise II.

At some point I am going to get some work done - but there are too many distractions! Linux turns out to have Freeciv, and I need to go and find what sounds I want for it. I'm quite glad I printed out the stories I wanted to edit because I've been sitting in a nice comfy chair to do that. But tomorrow we're off to Narnia, Tuesday we're going to my grandmother's (not sure why though) and Wednesday I'm doing my Christmas shopping. I really want to spend a day (or more) getting my head round LJ language to do Melli's layout, but at the moment that's really not going to be happening before Thursday.

If only I didn't have to go back to work...

A few year ago I pulled a muscle in my back, mainly from carrying heavy things. It has decided, for some reason, to come back and hurt again. I've just adjusting chairs etc but I didn't worry about it too much this week because I knew I'd be coming home and it would be in totally different situations anyway.

Because of my back I decided it would be a good idea to get the bus to work (15mins walk away) on Friday as I had my suitcase and computer with me. Sadly, this did rather rely on the bus actually turning up. Suffice to say that my back's been really bad today.

Ibuprofen, though, is really good stuff. When it kicks in it makes such an improvement. I have also nicked mum's chair, which is much more comfortable than an ordinary dining room chair, and I have a footrest (little step things I remember we used to use when we were little to reach sinks and things). Hopefully, it'll be a bit better tomorrow.

I had entirely forgotten that we were going to put Linex on my computer, so we spent the whole afternoon doing that. It's on there now, although the sound is too quiet on my computer to hear it on the Virtual Machine, and it can't currently see the network to be able to share files between it and Linex, but those can wait for another day. I found a very cool screensaver showing little coloured dots orbiting round a bigger dot in the middle.

We've also just watched Thursday's Avengers - I was most excited when Mrs Peel rescued Steed, for a change. I am suffering (well, not suffering really) from Doctor Who overload. I remembered last night there was a new one on BBC7 on Saturday, so I listened to that, and just finished in time to see David Tennant on Jonathan Ross. Then I listened to tonight's episode live, on the TV. And there's less than 24 hours to go to the new one tomorrow!

Copy & paste the first sentence of your first post for every month of 2005:

January 2005: A multi-part post.
February 2005: Happy Birthday for yesterday, Nessime.
March 2005: I wrote down a list of all the things I went to, then a list of all the ones I wanted to go to and it was almost as long. [This is in reference to Redemption 05]
April 2005: Just a quick hello from Melbourne.
May 2005: I should really post this when I’m feeling more awake but I just won’t get round to it otherwise.
June 2005: I discovered today I didn’t quite manage to tape The Dead Zone last night.
July 2005: This weekend’s been good and bad.
August 2005: I have been good and updated my website.
September 2005: This morning I got an adaptor for my keyboard at work.
October 2005: (Although I started writing this yesterday, so I’m technically a bit late with that, never mind) [In reference to the post title: Happy New Year
November 2005: Which is entirely true, but sadly, I can’t write it. [In reference to the post title: You can't make it up]
December 2005: I realised the other day that I hadn’t had any emails from the Blakes 7 lyst.

It's nice to be home but I am so tired!

Not that writing them will guarantee I'll actually do them but still:

• Sort out my bookmarks
• Finish categorising my old posts so I no longer have any uncategorised ones
• Look at my finances, as at the end of the month I'll have a year's worth of categorised spending
• Get Melli's LJ layout into LJ format
• Get Five Things to a point where it can be betaed
• Try and do the same with the Langford U fic I suddenly seem to have started (and has made it v2 already!)
• Do some work on my Arathorn and Gilraen fic
• Do some more reviews for Sel
• Read through all the SoA stories/chapters I missed due to not getting notifications and not realising

I'll take any and all bets!

On a related note (it is, really) I love the draft setting on my printer - it's like laser printer speed! I hope it's readable, though, cos it is kind of grey. I also printed double-sided without having to do a page at a time - go me!

From Tanaqui and Ann:

The Rules: The 1st player of this "game" starts with the topic "Five Holiday Traditions" and people who get tagged need to write a LiveJournal entry about their five holiday traditions as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged.

Since it doesn't say I'm interpreting 'Holiday' to mean Christmas holidays, and as Chanukah is in the Christmas holidays this year, I'm putting in some Chanukah traditions as well.

1. We always do puzzles in the Christmas holidays, while watching TV. Although we tend to get caught up in them and spend all evening on them, then get up in the morning and do just a bit... When it's late and we're trying to get it finished before we go to bed then dad will do some as well, otherwise it's mainly just me, mum and my sister (there are only so many people you can fit round the coffee table!).

2. The candles have to be coloured, not white. This is absolutely essential. My sister likes it when they dribble down the candlestick, so she has to clean it. For some reason, though, the candles never seem to sit properly, so end up with bits of silver foil round them so they stay up and don't set fire to the house. They also have a tendency not to light properly, so there's much swearing by dad as he tries, vainly, to light them in order.

3. We eat chocolate cakes for tea (about 4pm). Usually it would be chocolate gateaux/black forest gateaux/death by chocolate, although this year me and mum will be having her home-made one free from milk, eggs, wheat and gluten.

4. Me and dad always argue (and by argue I mean a friendly winding each other up) over Ma-oz tsur. This is the song that dad 'sings' after lighting the candles and saying prayers, and I play along. Generally, we argue about who is following who and what speed we're playing. This is not an arguement that's confined to words either, we argue with music.

5. We generally go to bed late and get up late, which leads to meals being later. Often dinner isn't until Coro(nation Street), which mum and dad watch. We have to shout to mum to tell her it's starting when she's in the kitchen dishing up/getting pudding/washing up in the adverts. We all complain that her estimate of when dinner will be ready is half an hour out.

And an extra one, 6. Christmas Day is a really good day for getting work done, and traditionally a day when we're all doing our separate things and pretty much don't speak to each other all day. This is because there is nothing open, everyone we know is busy falling out with their families and there is bugger all on - although this last one seems to be changing. We used to go to my grandmothers on Boxing Day for dinner, which was when all the stuff was on TV. This has swapped round since we stopped going.

There was a bit of excitement in town this morning as Princess Anne visited. We watched out the windows at work, so we got a glimpse, as the Elizabeth Coach was in the way. I have just seen it on the BBC local news though. That would be BBC South, although not the same BBC South as dad was watching. Hmm.

And now for a meme from Una and Gemma:

1. Post a list of up to 20 books/movies/anime/TV shows/video games/etc. that you've had an obsessive fannish love of at some time in your life.
2. Have your friends list guess your favourite character from each item.

They don't all come under the heading of obsessive fannish love, but I did come up with 20. And are under the cut, if I can remember how to do it.

Read more...

Tomorrow is our work's Christmas party and next Friday is Christmas Eve - where Christmas Eve at work is defined as the last day of work before we get a week off. And it doesn't feel like mid-December at all and it was only today that I realised why - I haven't had Chanukah yet.

The last few years it's been quite early on in December, so what usually happens is that I get all excited (okay, so that's a bit of an exageration), then after Chanukah I can't quite understand why everyone else is excited because I've been there and done that.

But this year is special: Chanukah is so late it starts after Christmas and doesn't finish until January. I only remember it being out of December once before, and that was a few years ago when it started in November (it finished in December though).

I just remembered this evening that tomorrow means we'll get our gift vouchers, which is usually £15 for Smiths. Not that I ever buy anything in there any more, but I'm sure I'll find something. The party is 70s themed. Admittedly I am missing it by a few months but I am at least doing something different and going as John Steed from The Avengers. No-one'll pay any attention to the date.

I knew it would be a good idea to keep the bowler hat I got at someone from work's hen night. It is festively trimmed with tinsel - the first tinsel I have ever bought. It breaks off when I try to tie it in a knot, though, which isn't terribly helpful. The other, longer, bit of tinsel is going to be my tie. I have even done some business cards. Although having tried on the hat, I think I might look more like a gangster, but still.

Much more excitingly, the evening is our Rotaract Christmas party. Following on from another event we heard about, we're having a back to front party. Which means starting with dessert. As we seem to be a club full of chocaholics the only bad thing with that plan is that we might not make it past dessert.

And on, but not really, the subject of The Avengers I continue to love it every week. It's great. Even the bits that are quite obviously cheap. I am going to have to have an Avengers category in the anticipation of using it again.

There must be something going round at the moment because two people on my friends list have posted pictures of Ewan McGregor. So, because it's such a hardship, I thought I'd get in on the act. The hotness is behind the cut because too much in one go melts your screen.

(Just working out what category to put this post in, and oh look, there's one specially for the man himself).

Read more...

For Melli:

Snow at Christmas is deep-seated in British culture, and many of us long for the likes of the scenes depicted on traditional Christmas cards and in works like Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' or 'Pickwick Papers'.

The interest in snowy Christmases has its origins in the colder climate of the period 1550-1850 when Britain was in the grip of a 'Little Ice Age'. Winters were particularly persistent and severe - 1813/14 was the last winter that a 'frost fair' was held on the River Thames in London.

For most parts of the UK, Christmas comes at the beginning of the season for snow. Wintry weather is more likely early in the deepening cold of January. White Christmases were more frequent in the 18th and 19th centuries, even more so before the change of calendar in 1752 which effectively brought Christmas day back by 12 days.

Although the met office website goes on to say that the last white christmas was in 2004. I don't know where, though, because I've never seen snow on Christmas Day!

Seen on the Online Blog: The top 10 weirdest USB drives ever And some of these are really weird.

Whoever thought electricity meters are a good idea, was so wrong. I absolutely hate it. I would never, given the choice, have one. I was happily sat down watching Secret Smile, as it has David Tennant in, when all of a sudden the room goes dark and the sound goes off. Not having any power to my TV card made it go totally non coping, so it carried on for a bit, then got to the part where the power went and refused to do anything. I pressed lots of buttons and my computer crashed.

I then ended up watching some of it on the actual TV, which was completely confusing being as it was 10 minutes on from what I last saw. Now I have it back in pause so I can fast forward through the adverts again.

It's not missing the thing that's annoying me, because I think I've pretty much caught up really, it's the part where I was all settled, although had just discovered I've gone wrong on my cross stitch.

I so can't wait to have enough money to have my own place where I can have hot water that takes less than 5 minutes to actually go hot (and stays hot), and electricty 24/7, except in a power cut.

I had a whole plan of things I was going to do Friday night, which I completely scuppered by overdosing on biscuits. Technially speaking it was the egg in them that was the problem and I didn't actually know what my tolerance to egg is. Now I know: 2 biscuits. Which is higher than my milk tolerance (which is the equivalent of 1 biscuit) but is really annoying.

What didn't help was working my way through the different Atlantis Au communities - there does seem to a lot of Atlantis AU going on, and I actually like reading it for some strange reason. Anyway, I really liked Langford U, which is set in a university in Nebraska. Which sounds like it's up in the Arctic Circle for some reason, but isn't.

This morning, after beating mum's score on Screwball on the Dairy Free Forum after three attempts, I played with a mock-up website. All I wanted to do was add a row in a table. Which really shouldn't be that complicated. I got really confused with all the tables going on in Nvu so ended up in TextPad, and got myself in such a mess that I ended up starting the table from scratch and pasting the relevant info in. I can't decide whether converting it into LJ-speak is going to be easier or harder.

I should really do the Rotaract stuff I've been putting off half the week (two and a half weeks in some cases), otherwise I'll just put them off all of next week too.

I'm enjoying Atlantis more than Stargate this season, not just because I have three ships on Atlantis and none on Stargate, since they both revolved around Jack But also because Stargate makes me want to watch Farscape. I get to the end of an episode of Atlantis and think 'That was great, I can't wait for the next one' (except for Trinity, but the I can't wait for the next one bit was still there). Whereas I get to the end of Stargate and think 'Ben Browder was great, I really want to watch Farscape now'. Which is not really the idea. Now if they'd just cancel Stargate and bring back new Farscape I'd be just as more happy (assuming big denial at the end of PK Wars, of course - it's not just a river in Egypt, it's a way of life).

I also realised the thing I really miss about Stargate, as scary as the Ori and the Wraith are (naming them Steve and Bob notwithstanding), is the part where suddenly someone flashes their eyes and you get that sudden moment of fear as you go 'OMG, he's a Goa'uld'. I can't help feeling that the more we find out about the Wraith the less scary they get. The Ori get scarier, at least so far (I'm so not getting into the religion discussion about them, though, that has the potential to go to bad places).

This post brought to you by why am I more awake at 11pm than I have been all day? Usually by now I'm asleep on my feet (or asleep in bed, to be precise). This post also brought to you by I've just watched Atlantis and it was good.

I seem to have been really intolerant today. A word I associate so much with food nowadays I almost forget it has another meaning. For some reason today, loads of things are winding me up, more than usual. I have a tendency to be annoyed with the whole world on my way home - it does seem to be motorists that are the last straw. Today one of them decided at the last possible minute that perhaps he wouldn't run me over on the zebra crossing. Last night I noticed one car didn't seem to feel the need to put his headlights on, even though it was clearly dark.

Today when I got home, though, my recorder came in the post. It's a bit of a guilty secret at the moment. I get quite frustrated sometimes playing the guitar when I can't do things that would be so easy on the organ. But since I don't have space/money for one of those, I thought I'd get myself the tenor recorder I had when I was little (and broke, twice). I bought it off ebay, and not only is it exactly the same but my hands really haven't grown that much - it's still quite a stretch.

I've forgotten the fingering for the sharps and flats since I last played, and there are a few notes I can't quite get every time, so I'm going to need to practice it. Not least because maybe then my right hand wouldn't hurt so much.

Slightly worryingly, my Five Things fic is now on v4.1 I didn't mean to detour into decimal points, it just didn't seem like enough of a change to make it v5. I am very bad and must go and eat chocolate and work on Melli's LJ design before watching Atlantis.

I realised the other day that I hadn't had any emails from the Blakes 7 lyst. Since October (yes, it's taken me that long to notice). The most likely thing seemed that there was something wrong with the lyst and I pretty much left it at that.

Except I realised I hadn't had any notification emails from Stories of Arda either. And come to think of it, my notifications of spam at my Gateworld address might not actually be a Gateworld problem.

After convincing dad this was not actually a problem with any of the websites and was with my email, we established the emails are not getting through to any address on the server or the backup server. And they all stopped in mid-October - when nothing happened.

They're working quite happily with a different email address but it's still annoying. I think dad is looking into it.

At the same time, my mum felt the need to diagnose me with all sorts of nasty illnesses. I was so tired on Thursday I was practically falling asleep in my guitar lesson. And Friday I don't know how I made it home, especially with the wind trying to take me off my feet. I'm feeling more awake now - although that means I can now stay awake till 10pm, rather than 9pm.

Hopefully, the nutritionist I have an appointment with tomorrow will be able to tell me something, otherwise I'll be going back to the doctor again. I feel like I've practically lived there this year.

I've just been watching Broken News which continues to be funny. Usually I tape it and watch Shakespeare but 15 minutes of Johnny Vegas turned out to be all I could take. The only annoying thing about Broken News is that you can't concentrate on what's being said and the ticker tapes that go across the bottom. The money and sports channels are even worse. Most memorable joke was right at the start:

"...destroyed four storeys, including the latest JK Rowling..."

I also loved that they as well as looking at tomorrows/yesterdays papers they also looked at the obituries, the crosswords, the sudokos and the horoscopes.

I managed to concentrate for long enough tonight to get the Sheppard/Teyla part of my Five Things fic up to v4. It's a stick-fighting scene, so I looked up some screencaps to describe the gym and I remembered how much I love the place. It's so pretty. And I love the whole stick fighting thing. I'd love to try it, even though it's mostly just spinning and hitting each other's sticks - much like lightsabre fighting but with a weapon in each hand.

Tomorrow at work I get to try and match up 511 questionnaires with 442 bits of data (or technically speaking, the other way round). Which is going to be a complete nightmare, except that I quite like it in some sort of masochistic way. Perhaps because it's a bit of a logic problem. Plus I quite like playing with data in excel.

My computer is all better now. Basically, something in the screen had broken, so that after a few minutes the screen went so dark you could barely see anything on it. And when it wasn't dark it was a bit red (my old computer, on the other hand, has had a distinctly red screen for years now). Luckily, it is still under warranty, so I spent three hours on the phone on Wednesday night to Dell technical support, trying to get them to send an engineer out.

If you've never had to phone them up before you're lucky. They've moved their call centre to India, so you get to speak to people who know less about computers than I do and incidentally, don't understand a word you say. 30 minutes of that three hours was spent trying to give her my address. I've rung them before and they've either just made the problem worse, or just told me to reinstall Windows and not really cared about trying anything else. They do have a tendency to try and get you to go to a website as well, which is a bit tricky when your computer doesn't work. I only ring them as an absolute last resort.

Anyway, the engineer was great, fixed it in 10 minutes. Now my screen looks a bit blue - that could just be because it was a bit red before Wednesday and I had got used to it. It's also very clean, which, strangely, is making everything look quite textured. Dell do two types of laptops, Inspiron and Latitude. The engineer told me that Inpsiron is dealt with by the Indians, but Latitudes are dealt with by the Irish. I've spoken to them many years ago before the Indians even existed (you know what I mean) and you can't understand a word they say, but they're very helpful.

Possibly all the stress of that, and work, and not sleeping has got to me. Friday night I very nearly went to bed at 7.30pm. Saturday morning I got up to go to the ZZ9 AGM in Nottingham, fell over half the stuff on my floor because I was dizzy, and went back to bed instead. I impressed myself last night by staying up till 9pm. I also have the office cold, so I am wondering if it's just me being more tired than usual, or whether I have flu (despite having had the flu jab).

In slightly more exciting news, I am rec'ing Lord of the Rings on Crack Van for December. I've managed to get my recs list down to the maximum allowed, which was hard enough. I was feeling quite accomplished until I realised I need to work out what to say as well. But as I'll not be posting any of them until Friday (I'm busy on the 1st), I'll worry about it later I think.

...my computer is sick - hardware sick, which means it'll take longer to fix than if it's software sick. I think I know what's wrong (it seems to be a common problem on the Dell Inspiron forum), which is a start. I do have my old computer but I only have emails I've received since about 8am this morning, and I can't remember what I had marked as unread in Abilon.

The only good thing is that I emailed a couple of fics I'm writing to my gmail account, so in theory I should get a lot of writing done in the next few days! (It's all backed up on a 750mb zip drive. My old computer will only read & write 100mbs, my new computer will read all but only write 750mbs. Oh, the fun.)