Monday I had a Rotaract meeting about our bid to run National Conference in 2008. We all got so excited about it we just want it to be now! It is sounding very exciting. On the way I had an hours wait for the bus in Henley so I stopped off in Starbucks and had a hot chocolate with soya milk. Although since the chocolate has milk in it I had a couple of lactase pills first.

Now, the nutritionist told me I was intolerant to milk proteins and lactase pills wouldn't help. Except that they have in the past. I've been good recently and not needed to take any though. So this was a bit of an experiment. And I felt fine. But spending an hour waiting to see if you're going to be ill is quite hard and you do start imagining symptoms.

I stupidly didn't eat lunch till 3pm. As a result by the time I had reached the pub with Sel I had shaking hands with pins and needles in, so ended up having dinner at 4.30pm. After which I felt much better. But I won't be doing that again.

Yesterday evening we went bowling. I actually did quite well in the first game and got 101 - I think there was one spare in there. The second game I was my normal crap self for 69. In my defence, two-thirds of the way through it they switched the ordinary lights off and turned on the excitingly flashing ones. Which made me dizzy - coupled with the slippery shoes did make bowling a bit tricky. At least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

As today is Wednesday, I've been doing Rotaract stuff. And some other things I've been meaning to do. My inbox is now a lot smaller, although there's still some other things that are going to have to wait until tomorrow. I've updated the Wallingford Rotaract website so it makes us sound more exciting. So now I shouldn't have to worry about it too much next year (which starts 1st July) as I'll have the District one to think of instead.

(Well, Ann and aervir, anyway)

Comment and...

1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a colour that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If you feel so inclined, go ahead and post this on your own journal

And real post to follow this evening.

I was going to write about one thing but then a whole load of other things crept in too...

Yesterday I went to Dangercon. Well, technically I did, since I gave them money and wore a sticker with my name on it. What I actually did was sit around in the bar, drink, talk, tried not to fall asleep (due to waking up at 3am the night before and not being able to get back to sleep for ages coupled with waking up again at 7am and really not being able to get back to sleep), and tried not to watch Doctor Who (as there was no sound for the first 15mins and it competed with the music for the last 30). But it was good fun.

Also, all the tubes I wanted to get were actually running, I bought up the sausages and soup cubes in Sainsburys in Whitechapel, and I made a new record in finding the pub that was 5 mins walk away in only 15. And I spent half of that trying to get out of London Bridge tube station.

This morning I rather annoyingly woke up at 6.15 and didn't think I got back to sleep again, but since I haven't fallen asleep yet I must have done. I also pegged my washing out and didn't make it rain!

I listened to the second half of not-the-latest-anymore Seventh Doctor Big Finish audio, Night Thoughts. There was some interesting stuff between the Doctor & Ace & Hex. I'm still really confused about why she's now back to being called Ace again. But there was a bit near the end where the Doctor had to kill a girl to save time, or something like that (which is simplifying the situation a lot, otherwise I'd have to explain the whole plot). And I was absolutely convinced he was going to do it.

Last night's Doctor Who was quite fun. Except that I sat down to watch it and five minutes in, just after the beginning credits, my dad messages me to ask me if I've watched Confidential because he thought it looked like they were writing scripts on typewriters. Which I didn't notice when I did watch it but either way I'm not convinced he's on this planet, half the time.

I've also watched a load of second series Drop the Dead Donkey this week. Even though it was broadcast in 1991, if you just change the names the politics really hasn't changed that much and is just as funny. And one episode had the guy who played the DCI in Life on Mars. And one of the writers discussed that he demonstrated it's possible to do a joke where Alex staples a piece of paper to Dave's chest, by stapling a piece of paper to his thigh. Neil Pearson got to wear padding for the real thing, which hurt less, apparently.

Ewan McGregor was on Top Gear. He was quite funny. And I noticed when he swore, while driving this car round their track, they not only edited the sound but the picture as well! I laughed so hard I was crying when the two guys drove the car Jeremy Clarkson had interior designed it was so funny. It's repeated at 7pm Tuesday if anyone missed it.

For I have been good today and got many things done this evening. I posted a short little Doctor Who ficlet with big major spoilers for the recent Cyberman two-parter: To live....

So after that I thought I ought to think about uploading it to ff.net. I have a tendency to put off uploading there because it's such an arse. Once I got there I discovered I was a couple of months behind. So I got up-to-date on that and then remembered there were some other fics that needed uploading in other places. So I did that too. I only have my website left to upload to now.

I also did some Rotaract stuff (a traditional day after the meeting activity for me) and did a beta. Now I am going to find something on DVD to sit down and watch before bed.

Not content with merely having a bad day, Barclaycard, in their infinite wisdom decided to change their website, so not only can I not find anything but I couldn't get in either. I'm finally in to my account but it took me three calls to a national rate number.

And Trillian decided for no particular reason to lose all my sounds. And messenger isn't working properly so I can't check if the ones I have now are the right ones because I can't get anyone to message me.

I was comforted as I walked home (while it had actually stopped raining!) by playing a game of If I was Prime Minister:
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I'm nearly a quarter of the way there! It's just a pity we're nearly halfway through the year...

34.1cm / 155cm (22.0%)

Doctor Who - Unnatural History
This is the second Eighth Doctor book I've read and manages to be another parallel Earth type one. It's a good introduction to Sam because the one in this is an alternate one. Sadly, though, I didn't like this Doctor or Fitz or the original Sam. Or the story. It was good for a couple of days and 2cm and the charity shop.

Sadlers Wells - Principal Role and Swan Feather
I read somewhere that all the Sadlers Wells books are the same story. That's certainly true of Swan Feather: Sylvia Swan has pretty much exactly the same story as Jane and Ella and Rosanna. These are the first two of the series I hadn't read originally. They're quite interesting for a day, though. After this they get quite horribly expensive, for books.

Lois McMaster Bujold - Mirror Dance
I was slightly intimidated by this being 600 pages and having lots of Mark in. It seemed to go by quickly, though because I really liked this one. There were some horrifying things that Mark did, and had done to him, that were...horrible. I was really interested to see Mark discover who he is. And it had Cordelia in it, yay! And I loved Miles thinking, near the end, that although he doesn't pick up nearly as many women as Ivan, he can't seem to put them down.

I was expecting last night's Doctor Who to change my opinions of their cliffhangers. But then it was resolved in 2 seconds and took me 2 minutes to work out what was going on (I spent most of that 2 minutes being annoyed it had been resolved so quickly). But I liked the episode, though. It was only when watching it with the commentary that I noticed the Doctor was still wearing his trainers with his DJ! Yay, for the Doctor has made it cool to wear trainers with trousers.

I was supposed to go on the Winchester slouch yesterday but there was engineering works that meant it would have taken three times as long to get there as it should, and I needed the sleep so didn't set my alarm. And consequently woke up too late to get there. So I finished my spring cleaning instead. My haul in the end was:

• 4 black bin bags of rubbish
• 4 carrier bags of charity
• 2 carrier bags of stuff to take home
• 1 dead moth and 1 live spider (it didn't live for long) and 1 wasp that briefly came in and was persuaded to go back out the window
• more space on my bookshelves than I actually know what to do with (it won't last)

So, today I decided to have a day of doing nothing. I ended up watching most of an episode of The New Avengers that was on the bonus disk due to having an Emma Peel cameo in it. Except that the cameo was completely pointless. And I couldn't quite see the point of much else of the episode either. It seemed a lot like they'd given Gambit Steed's character and Purdey Cathy/Emma/Tara's. Which made Steed a bit pointless. In all fairness it might not have been the most interesting episode for all I know, but it's certainly not made me want to watch any more.

I do love The Avengers. Even though BBC4 have got to the end of the Emma Peel era and seem to have stopped there, my DVDs arrived from amazon.com the other day, so now Thursday night is still The Avengers. For another 25 episodes anyway, which ought to keep me going for a while.

The interesting thing was the documentary about it on the bonus disk. I already knew what Honor Blackman looks like now because I remember her in a comedy series many years ago with Joe McGann. So I got to see what she looked like then (totally different!). Diana Rigg sounds different - which I knew because she was on Radio 2 recently - but doesn't look as if it's been 40 years at all.

I also re-watched Genesis of the Daleks. I saw this when they repeated a few stories when I was in the third year at uni (I don't like to think to much about what actual year that was because it's too depressing) but I didn't remember anything about it.

Some of the cliffhangers were a bit iffy, but then I think that's the problem with having to have a cliffhanger at the end of every episode, and this story had six episodes. Davros was, well, horrid. Not just in the sense of him not being a nice person, but generally. The daleks I just wanted to pat on the head, they were so sweet.

The commentary was interesting too. I found out that Ian Marter, who played Harry, died suddenly nearly 20 years ago, which I didn't know. And looking at the imdb, I keep finding that half the actors in Doctor Who have been in Blakes 7 as well. But then given that half the actors in Blakes 7 seem to be doing the Big Finish CDs, that seems fair.

Because I have 70-odd DVDs on my amazon rental list (I keep thinking of things I want to watch, it's terrible) I signed up to screenselect to use their free month (and I have a list of other places who do free months I can use). Only trouble now is I've had about enough of the Tom Baker era as I can take. So Drop the Dead Donkey is a nice contrast! The next Doctor Whos on my list are Jon Pertwees, which I'm looking forward to because I really like his Doctor.

If anyone wants to read my previous post, email me for the password. Which will be granted, as long as I know you.

The Ark in Space

I really liked The Ark in Space. Sarah Jane didn't do a lot at the start, but was quite interesting towards the end. I really like Harry. I'm quite glad he's in Genesis of the Daleks, so I get to see him again. I really liked the Doctor in this one too, although his big, wide eyes scare me a bit.

There were some really dodgy white flares and high heels going on, but then you did get Harry and The Doctor under a desk, which was a really funny scene.

The commentary was quite interesting as well, with the producer talking about how they used to do it in those days. Tom Baker was pretty useless, though. He admitted at the start that he remembered nothing about the episode and his contribution pretty much entirely consisted of him saying "Yeah, yeah," to whatever the producer said.

Until they mentioned it in the commentary I hadn't noticed the monster was made from bubble wrap. It was just so horrid and green, especially when Noah's arm consisted of it. I wasn't terribly keen on the big insects either. But then I'm not particularly fond of insects at the best of times - just making them bigger doesn't really improve them.

Rise of the Cybermen
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I've done most of my spring cleaning this weekend. The last bit I'll get done next Sunday. But I have been really ruthless and so far filled up three black bin bags with rubbish, and four carrier bags to be charitied. Most importantly, I have more space for book, DVDs and CDs

Trillian is annoying. As per usual, really. Turns out the connecting to Gmail is an issue loads of other people have had. But none of the fixes that worked for other people worked for me. I also had to reinstall it to a different folder to fix an icon problem. Which it did, but then the skin didn't behave properly! So I decided the skin was more important than the look of the taskbar icon and went back to the original.

It's almost tempting not to bother, but when it works it is better than msn messenger, plus I've got used to the way this one looks.

Through the magic of free months at different DVD rental sites, I currently have all three Sarah Jane Smith Doctor Whos here. I started with the Pyramids of Mars. It had its moments but they were a bit few and far between. It didn't help that I was confused about who was who as well. The short extra on how the location has changed between now and then was interesting. I've made it halfway through the commentary but I think I might just send it back now, because I can't quite be arsed with the rest.

Trillian is really annoying me. I set a global away message the other week. Ever since it seems to think I'm away - but only to me. Tech support suggested reinstalling it over itself. Since then, Jabber has refused to log in to Google Talk - although it likes to think it has occasionally. So now I'm going to have to uninstall and reinstall it to fix both problems. And make sure I save the skin and the sounds I'm using. (which come from a different skin).

Also according to Tech Support, it won't let you share files with ZoneAlarm. Except that it worked quite happily before I upgraded Trillian...

Very sad that tonight was the last episode of The Avengers BBC4 are apparently going to show. Also the last Emma Peel one. It was, quite rightly, full of innuendo, as usual. I want to say it was sad when Steed and Peel parted but it kind of wasn't. Anyway, when amazon.com send me my DVDs I still have all the black & white Peel episodes to go and a couple of colour ones I missed.

This is how it works: Comment on this entry and I will give you a letter. Write ten words beginning with that letter in your journal, including an explanation what the word means to you and why, and then pass out letters to those who want to play along.

Avon gave me an M.

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I managed to fail to tape yesterday's episode of Doctor Who on my TV card and then fail to tape Confidential on the Freeview card. I ended up watching it on the TV, which isn't widescreen so doesn't have such a good picture (I tape it on that to watch with the commentary). It was so sad though. I watched it with lunch, then went into the Dairy Free chatroom, which was a bit quiet anyway, and was just too depressed.

Where does the horse on a spaceship joke come from? I know the writer didn't get it from anywhere specific, because he talked about it on the commentary, but I'm sure I've heard a joke with that in somewhere.

I also saw City of Death this week. It's the second Tom Baker story I've seen and the first with Romana, if you don't count the BBCi Shada remake with Paul McGann. I'm scared of Romana's hat. It somehow seems to stick on the back of her head and defies gravity. And I almost can't quite believe Tom Baker doesn't trip over his scarf. I think at one point he was holding it up while running.

I read somewhere this week where someone was saying that David Tennant's Doctor is a lot like Tom Baker's. Having seen them both in a week I can see where they're coming from. The Doctor had a habit of coming out with something that just wasn't quite in keeping with the tone. And the comments he made about Leonardo DaVinci ('Leo') and Shakespeare were great. It seemed to fit in so well with Mickey's comments in The Girl in the Fireplace about Cleo(patra).

I liked the character of Duggan - although mostly the Doctor's comments about him, but he bugged me all the way through because I was so certain I recognised him. It was only when I looked him up and found he was Del Grant that it was so obvious!

On balance, I liked it. I think I'm going to like Tom Baker's Doctor, although he does have a lot of teeth and hair.

As it's my birthday today I offered to write people drabbles, in a hobbit birthday present idea:

Tanaqui wanted a drabble with either Faramir or Sheppard discovering something unexpected about himself?. I resisted the temptation to have Faramir discover something unexpected about Sheppard, so instead I wrote:

The Power of the Mind

Faramir gripped the wooden sword tightly in both hands. He looked at his opponent, who could easily reach out and touch him without moving, and tried hard not to be frightened. Boromir would not be scared, he thought.

An image came to him from a story he had been reading. He imagined himself to be the warrior in it, who was quick with a blade and could defeat any enemy. It was no longer Faramir facing an unbeatable foe, it
was Daermaethor who won every fight.

When they began, this time, it was Faramir who got a hit in first.

*Daemaethor - literally great warrior in my dodgy Sindarin (ie entirely got from Dragon Flame)

And Avon said I'd be happy with LOTR - especially Legolas, Dr Who - the first new Doctor if you see what I mean or non-relationship HP and I could only resist the temptation once it seemed:

Harry Potter and the TARDIS

"We've managed for six years without you, we don't need your help now!"

"But until now we've had Dumbledore."

Hermione automatically opened her mouth to argue until she realised the truth of Ron's statement.

"So who is Voldemort?" Rose asked, which seemed to be the most important question.

"Standard megalomaniac bad guy. We'll have him sorted out by tea time, not to worry." The Doctor grinned.

Rose rolled her eyes. The only trouble was he was probably right. One of these days he was going to get it wrong and then who would be left to clear up the mess?

In the opposite way round, Nilmandra wrote me a fabulous Elrond & Estel conversation.

We had an update on the state of the server at work today and it could take up to 12 weeks to fix. I was kind of hoping for the end of this week...

My back has a tendency to be set off by the slightest thing, so spending a lot of time at other people's desks is not very helpful. I was a bit reluctant to to do much to help, not knowing how much I could do before I upset people. But our HR person has had really bad back issues, so she pretty much forced me to do something. So now I have my keyboard with me (not necessary for the back but it's so much easier to type on) and my chair, which has pretty much sorted it out in one move. Although the person whose desk I have this week comes back off holiday on Monday, so we'll see how other people's desks measure up. At this rate, though, I'll have practically everything off my desk and I'll be carrying it around in Waitrose bags and not being able to find anything for goodness knows how long (well, max 12 weeks, in theory).

On the plus side, amazon have refunded my marketplace purchase that didn't turn up. So I have now ordered it off amazon.com, who have reduced their price in the meantime, so it is going to save me about £15. I'm quite impressed that it was happy with my amazon.co.uk account information, so it was easy to order. I just have to wait a month for it to turn up now.

I've updated my website. I seem to have written a lot since February. I've been really good and listed everything I've added on the updates page. If anyone is curious about what I got up to in the Lake District I've written that up too (www.paranoidangel.me.uk/lakedistrict.htm).

I had great fun (in a not sense) sorting out the fanlists I belong to, and ones I thought I belong to that I don't seem to be listed on. Most of them seem to think it's a good idea to have their whole website in a tiny little box, then put the boxes on the form you fill in so tiny I can't see which of the drop-downs I want and I end up having to type it.

The exception, though, was the Wesley fanfic listing - thank you Gemma, you saved my sanity! And let me say I was in the UK - having to put England annoys me for absolutely no reason.

Well, it's May Day (in two ways, this year) which is usually when I celebrate my birthday. But I was at a friend's party on Saturday night and her birthday's more than a week before mine, so that was just weird. Plus I'm actually celebrating on the day itself last year (although nothing can really quite top a general election for my birthday).

I've also got so horribly behind on writing birthday drabbles at HASA that I haven't dared go anywhere near the relevant thread. So I thought I'd have a hobbit birthday instead, so that can also include non-HASA people and non-LOTR drabbles.

So, leave a comment with something you'd like and I will try and get them all written by next weekend - depending on how work goes. If you don't manage to leave a comment by then, I can do belated presents too. As regards to subject I will try writing pretty much anything you'd like. If I really can't do that fandom/character/theme/whatever then I might get you to think of an alternative.

Bring it on!