I'm feeling really brain-dead now and completely knackered. I've just driven to Tescos, which is ten minutes away. Except that I went with a friend of mine who lives ten minutes in the opposite direction. And then I got confused on the way and we went the back way. In the end I was out for two and a half hours.

There's a war on between the Jamie and the Sarah supporters on the drabble tag, so I've been busy writing Sarah drabbles. There's a list on the SJ comm, so come and play! Since the last time I posted about it I've written Ten/Josh/Sarah, Sarah/Jack/Josh, Harry/Jack, Ten/Josh, Six/Sarah, Sarah/girl!Doctor, Two/Sarah, Eight/Sarah, Seven/Sarah, Sarah/UNIT.

I've been meaning to talk about stuff off the telly all week. Firstly, Atlantis, which is doing terrible things to me. The last one I saw I couldn't work out why Jack & Elizabeth weren't talking about the night they had sex until I remembered that actually, that wasn't in an episode. They did have serious UST going on though. I was thinking to myself, they probably were going to end up sleeping together. Except that she and Sheppard had some serious UST going on, then he was having UST and Teyla and Ronon, who were also having UST with each other. And it reaches the point where I'm wondering if there's anyone on Atlantis that doesn't ship well.

I'm watching Spooks on BBC1 because last year people at work discovered if you're a week ahead on BBC3 you can't talk about it at work because everyone else is a week behind. Plus I was too tired this Monday to stay up late enough to watch it. Anyway, it is exciting and I am enjoying it. Not entirely sure about what they're doing with Ruth and Harry but I suppose we'll have to wait and see about that one. I like Ros in that she's quite different from everyone else. Plus she's played by Hermione Norris, who I can quite hate, at least not yet.

I'm off to Collectormania in Milton Keynes tomorrow. There's no-one I want to see there, or at least no-one famous. I'm going to see a friend of mine from uni whose parents live there, and I don't think I've seen him in over a year. Sunday I might keel over after a two hour driving lesson followed by swimming.

I just watched Who Do You Think You Are with David Tennant. It's something my mum watches religiously but although I'm interested in our family tree I didn't think famous people's would be quite the same. David Tennant's wasn't that exciting until he traced his back to Londonderry. It was really nice to hear Northern Irish accents again, I've actually sort of missed hearing them. And they gave a history of Northern Ireland, most of which I knew bits of. I like hearing about how ordinary people lived, so I enjoyed that, it was interesting.

So I thought I'd talk a bit about my ancestors. My mum's been researching her family tree for years, with the help of her mother and me a bit. So we know quite a bit. It's what she's planning on spending lots of time doing now she's retired. My dad's family come from Germany, so we know as much as my grandad knew and that's it. Except I'm probably not related to Nic and one of my ancestors married a Battenburg, so I'm probably millionth in line to the throne.

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Before I give one of them back to the library tomorrow:

782 / 1,550 (50.5%)

Woohoo, I'm halfway through!

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The drabble tag at who_otp is a terrible thing, if fun for getting two random characters together. So far I seem to have written Sarah Jane/Josh, Five/Sarah, Harry/Sarah Jane/Rose and Benton/Harry. And all actual proper 100 word drabbles too. Although having not yet seen Doctors 1 & 2 I think I might be getting entirely the wrong idea about Jamie.

My dad's quite funny. He came on msn to tell me 'Just happened to change to Channel 5 before 10 tonight and I thought I heard a familiar voice. It was a much younger Daniel Jackson in CSI Miami'. When I pointed out it was quite recent he told me he looked younger. So, Michael Shanks episode was on Channel 5 tonight, which seems quick.

It seems time for another extract from Sex Tips For Girls:
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That previous post is viewable on LJ if you're on my friends-list. Otherwise it's viewable on my blog if you know the name of my cat, or ask me what the password is. It's only not visible to everyone to stop certain people seeing it - it's obvious who when you know what it's about.

First day back at work today - feels like I never left. My boss stunningly failed to do the one thing he needed to on one of my projects. Is it Christmas holidays yet?

I really enjoyed Spooks - I can't believe they started it just as I went away.

I realised I wrote some fic (all Doctor Who) and forgot to mention it here. There was the prequel to Dream a Little Dream that didn't originally start off as a prequel: The Last Dinner. The sequel(s) (I may split it into two parts) are currently being plotted, since there seems to be rather a lot of plot. I swear it multiplies.

Then there's the drabble to get the whole soapy idea of Sarah getting pregnant with Harry's baby (why should it always be the doctor's? ) out of my head: Same Idea, Different Father. Except that hhertzof and I 'encouraged' each other and now it's turned into a wip: Doctor Who: The Soap Opera, Chapter 1: Telling Harry with a nice soapy plot to come. Look at it this way, at least none of it is going to be in anything else.

What I should now be writing is my piece for the Sarah Jane gen ficathon. I could have quite happily written any of the prompts but one of them in particular I was hoping someone would write. Not thinking that someone would be me. Hmm.

I still can't breathe but now I've seen my doctor (who is very nice) and now I have drugs. Very nice, but cost an arm and a leg. I have a BUPA-like thing through work but of course the one thing they won't cover is prescriptions - the one thing that would actually be useful.

My mother turns out to be quite cool - I rang to tell my parents about Ireland and my mum updated me on the Doctor Who rumours. I think she has too much time and she was surfing looking for stuff about Torchwood! So I can now confirm that it is starting on 21st/22nd/28th October on BBC1/2/3 at 9pm. I'm crossing my fingers for any date that's not a Tuesday or Saturday. Or Thursday once I can drive and can go back to fencing (I can't wait now).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paranoidangel/tags/northernireland/

I was awake earlier but now my head hurts from the noise and I can't breathe. I want to go back to Belfast!

I'm back home now, sadly. I really liked Belfast and coming home always reminds me how much I hate living here. The room I was in, even though it had three other people in, people shouting outside on Friday and Saturday nights, and a ridiculous amount of traffic in the mornings, was still quieter than my landlady.

I don't think there was a single day with no rain; I have blisters; my legs ache from all the walking; I'm really glad I don't have to eat out again for a while; I really, really hate taking off; I was practically stalked by a guy staying in the same hostel; and there were other things that just went so wrong.

But, I really enjoyed myself anyway. And for everything that went wrong there were things that went right: the City Hall was impressive, I met some nice girls in my room (and one nutter!), I really enjoyed the fencing (I so want to go back to it now, but I just have to be able to drive there first), and I met a fencer on my first night who I got on really well with and hopefully we're not going to lose touch. Only trouble was she's Australian and I ended up supporting them more than England!

Tomorrow I'll post the rest of my photos and tidy up the tags and categories etc. The travel sickness pills have knocked me out so I'm not good for much tonight any more.

I am in the process of uploading some (75!) photos. I'll sort all the tags and everything out later when I'm home.

Loads of things have gone wrong: my bread went furry, I have a blister on the bottom of my little toe (how is that even possible?), I got both soaked to the skin and sunburnt yesterday, today I got lost and walked loads up hills, I haven't had more than 6 hours sleep a night, and I can still only understand 2 sentences of every 3 in an Irish accent.

I am looking forward to sitting and watching some fencing tomorrow. And cheering on half the people there at this rate.

Yay for I have packed. Apart from the things I can't pack until Saturday morning. Most fun was trying to find an ice cream tub to fit in all my bread and rolls (can't guarantee finding them anywhere else). I am only packed one day early because I'm going to the theatre tomorrow night, I am not usually that organised. This will probably be my last post before I go, although I will upload my photos there if I can, so keep an eye on my flickr photos (it even has an RSS Feed so you can just bung it in your feed reader/live bookmarks thing).

I've watched the next four episodes of Firefly this week: Out of Gas, Ariel, War Stories and Trash. I liked in them how stuff that had happened in earlier episodes came back to cause them more trouble. I didn't like all the blood and guts in the middle two but apart from that they were the ones I liked the best.

gmul said: "If Out of Gas [...] doesn't move you, give up." So I got all excited about that episode. I liked seeing how all the crew came aboard, except it was only tiny little snippets and I wanted more. The rest of the story bored me - the best parts were the fire in space and the air coming in when the other ship docked.

The thing I really like best about Firefly is the music though. I'm not convinced about the theme tune but I love the incidental music. Jayne is actually starting to annoy me less and now River's a bit less insane she's quite interesting. Inara is really doing my head in though, I wish someone'd shoot her.

My mother found my blog while searching for Monster Cracking (it's good to see google finds it, although blogs are never terribly helpful to get in ordinary searches) and tells me that the pointless dance with bendy swords is called Rapper and is a pointless Northern dance.

I spent some time this evening adding a plugin to subscribe to comments on the blog. I tried adding it when I first got the blog but it refused to work. No idea why because it's fine now. While I was there I realised there's so much stuff I need to do to the blog at some point. What I really want (and have since I moved to WP really) is to get the comments sorted so they're better than LJ, then turn off commenting there and make everyone move over here. Which involves exactly the same number of clicks. Anyone opposed, speak now and give a damn good reason.

In Doctor Who news, the BBC have confirmed the Sarah Jane spin-off. I'm waiting to see if it merits a position in the top three entertainment news stories tomorrow in my email. And I didn't start it but I might well be writing what feels like Doctor Who: the soap opera (and beta'ing the person's I blame).

Probably just as well I'm nearly leaving the country for a week.

I had a meeting tonight that I thought about driving to, for practice but decided I actually needed to be coherent for, so walked. It was at dusk so not very dark but still dark enough for the street lights to be on and it actually looked really pretty. And we'd had a tiny bit of rain so the humidity didn't feel quite so bad.

Now, though, I'm feeling like I just don't have enough time left. I'm going to the theatre Friday night and given that I have a catch a train Saturday morning to get me to Bristol to go to Northern Ireland for a week (my parents hadn't quite clocked that it was for a week) that leaves me the rest of this evening and tomorrow evening. In which I need to do my washing, pack, do some Rotaract stuff and watch episodes of Firefly, so I can send it back to amazon before I go. I could do with not being at work really.

I signed up for my second proper ficathon - the Sarah Jane Smith gen ficathon although its due before the SGRareathon.

Can I be in Northern Ireland now please?

I keep seeing <3 posted on blogs but it looks like it's used to mean love, not less than three. I am entirely confused now. Can anyone tell me what it is that I've missed?

Flickr's RSS feed thing is great. I discovered, while working my way through my feeds that my dad had updated theirs. They went to Monkey World today and took photos of bunnies, specially for me. Which makes me happy. (Doesn't take much, I know)

And now for something completely different, more from Sex Tips for Girls:
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This weekend's been a bit mad. After not making it to a Rotaract dinner on Friday night because of work I was still going to have a Rotaract meeting on Saturday morning. Except that it was cancelled because the other person had to work!

This morning I was happy because I managed to sleep in till 9am. Which doesn't sound like much but I did keep waking up at 8am and it was getting to 7am and earlier, even if I didn't have to get up. I was still in bed when my driving instructor phoned to bring my lesson forward - so it was just as well I stayed late at work Friday instead of going in Sunday morning before my lesson.

Last night I changed my LJ to Plus on the basis that I can't see any adverts. It took me a while originally to work out that it was because the Adblock extension was getting rid of them. So I looked at the new Expression layouts and they're very nice. Apart from the breaking in IE part. And having to change everything with CSS rather than selecting options. Plus I decided when it comes to reading my friends list when I'm away then I like the one I have now just fine. And the tags list doesn't work properly because I have parent and children categories and the only way to find anything by tags is to go to my WP blog and look that way. Not least because there are more posts and they're all categorised.

I managed to spend £13 in a second hand bookshop where most of the books are 80p. It's one of my driving challenges to drive to Hay-on-Wye and shop till I drop (the books). The boot of my car is TARDIS-like so I'll be able to fit plenty in.

One of the books I bought was Sex Tips for Girls - written in 1983 and American. It's written very much tongue-in-cheek but mostly I bought it because it fell open on the section on manners:
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I was anticipating a nice quiet day today with not too much work, after the past couple of days. So I left at about 8.10pm. Hmm. Especially given that I was going out to dinner with the 2009 (or 2008) Conference crew at 7.30. Er, yes. Never mind. I did get myself some Chinese takeaway though, as I wasn't anticipating needing dinner tonight. It was very nice and non-poisonous. And I have half left for tomorrow night.

I can't write any more, my brain's died and my eyes have gone funny. I am not made to deal with long hours and late dinners.

I drove by myself for the first time ever tonight! I went into town to usher at Superman Returns. Although seeing planes, boats and cars crash did not help my anticipation of the return trip. I survived, although I managed to take longer to drive than it took me to walk (mostly due to my parking by the side of the road - it's really hard). The whole thing was really scary and I'm not doing it again until Tuesday. I would say go me but I haven't stopped shaking yet and I've been in for 20 mins.

I've actually seen five episodes of Firefly since I last mentioned it. Not that I can remember the episode titles of most of them but I've just finished the second DVD, so I've seen the first 7 episodes.

So far I like Kaylee, Mal is very like Angel, Jayne really has some masculinity issues (why doesn't he just shorten his name to Jay and not tell anyone what it's short for?).

But, most importantly there was an episode with swordfighting. Okay, so it was television swordfighting rather than actually trying to hit each other but still, you have to take what you can get. Why did no-one tell me there was swordfighting in Firefly? I would have watched it years ago if I'd known.

69.7cm / 155cm (45.0%)

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I may have posted some Sarah/Harry sort-of crack!fic this weekend, namely:
Aliens Made Us Do It (So We Made The Doctor Talk Them Out Of It) and The Path of Irresistible Temptation Does Not Lead to Enlightenment

I went swimming with my sister again yesterday and don't ache too much today - we did stand in the showers in the changing room, stretching, which probably helped I did do some playing about under the water, which I used to love but now seem to be crap at. For some reason all the water goes up my nose and hurts, but I think I am getting better at blowing bubbles through my nose without having to think about it, which is good. And also, the leisure centre is next to an Asda where the petrol is 4p cheaper than here!

Today I did some tin collecting at the Bunkfest, which is a local folk festival. I watched some Morris Dancers, of which there seemed to be many. They got a bt samey after a while. I also watched some dances that seemed to involve putting some long, bendy knives together to make a star. I have no idea what the point of that is at all.

I watched Superman II last night, in preparation for seeing Superman Returns on Thursday. I only got to see Superman last year (I'm a bit behind on this) and was assured that Superman II was better. And it was. Apart from a few things they just didn't seem to think of. Like how Clark was supposed to get back from the North Pole, in the middle of nowhere, when he's lost his powers. Or how come he gets them back - I kept expecting that to be explained but it never seemed to be.

I was good last night and posted my whofest fic: Tango, where the Doctor, Rose and Jack visit Victorian England and regret. Well, except for Jack.

I also signed up for the SG Rare Pairings Ficathon but as the assignments don't go out until 1st October, I don't have to worry about that for a while.

I also realised that the Dream sequel might be solved with Torchwood, which is a good excuse for not finishing it (not that I've started, I'm being good and finishing other things first).

I also moved Firefly up to the top of my amazon rental list. Because it's been around for a while and so many people have seen it, I already knew the names of the characters, it was just a case of putting them to the faces. I'd seen 20 minutes of the first episode (Serenity) before so I was a bit skeptical. But, nonetheless I was determined to watch the whole DVD before I made up my mind.

7 minutes into Serenity I was bored. 20 minutes in I'd lost the will to live (although that wasn't helped by being really confused about where I was with my cross stitch). 35 minutes in, the plot kicked in and it actually started to look interesting. My conclusion by the end was that it was ok but I was still confused. Why do they have a companion on board again?

So then I watched the next one, where they rob a train, and this is the point where I forget episode titles after I've clicked on them. First episodes are generally crap for seeing whether you'd like a series because they bear no relation to what the other episodes are going to be like. This episode, I liked, it was interesting. I was less confused - or when I was I didn't care, there was actually some subtle stuff going on there were actual clues to and Mal didn't sound like Angel half the time. Although Jane seems to be Avon half the time.

In conclusion, I might watch the rest of the series. And the film. It was entertaining enough but I don't yet see what everyone is raving about. And Joss Whedon cannot name his characters for anything. I thought Buffy, Willow, Xander, Rupert were bad enough, but Jane? Jane was half the reason I was determined not to watch this because I can't get over there being a bloke called Jane. Do you think someone could give Joss Whedon a baby naming book and point him to the places where it tells you whether they're male or female names please?