If you know the cat's name, you can read it. If you don't know, you can ask. If I know who you are, I'll tell you.

From Ann, although points 1 & 7 only make sense on LJ, not on the blog.

Leave me a comment and I will...

1) Tell you why I friended you;
2) Associate you with a song/film;
3) Tell a random fact about you;
4) Tell a first memory about you;
5) Associate you with an animal/fruit;
6) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you;
7) Tell you which is my favorite user pic of yours;
In retort, you MUST spread this disease in your LJ If you feel so inclined, post this in your own LJ to further spread the infection.

I am much better today. And my to do list is getting shorter, which makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere, finally. Although the list of things I have taped doesn't fit on my TV screen, but still, I've got masses of space left on my hard disk recorder. I'll get to them at some stage, they'll keep.

I have updated my website. I keep writing things, it's such a pain. So then that meant I could sign up for Remix, which I really enjoyed last year, so I'm looking forward to it. Although once the stories come out there's always so much to read!

I went to Rotary tonight, which involved driving there. Although first I went to get petrol. The trouble with it is that it always takes me ages to remember how to put the petrol cap on and take it off again. It's simple, it's just that it's so long between filling it up I forget. The most interesting part of the evening came when trying to get out of the car park and I discovered my handbrake was no enough to keep the car from going backwards. I did eventually get it on hard enough, although then had trouble taking it off once I'd balanced the clutch and accelerator and there were no cars coming. It's just as well there wasn't anyone behind me.

It's been about an hour since I ate dinner and I don't feel sick yet, so I think I'm better.

Since I've now seen this meme in three different places, I thought I'd make like a sheep.

How many times has someone on your friends list posted about something and you were really confused, but you didn't want to ask because you knew you SHOULD know?

How many times have you felt 'guilty' asking an LJ friend a question that should be 'obvious'?

Well, here's your chance.

If you've missed a few things, missed an entry and are confused, ask me anything. Even something EXTREMELY basic, like where I live! I'm not allowed to get even slightly irritated at any of the questions - we've all missed things before. But then, I also reserve the right to answer privately, or not at all.

I was good this weekend and tidied and cleaned the house and got my unread RSS feeds from about 32 to 13. Although they keep going up, which is annoying! And I booked my flights to America, which is quite exciting. Although then realised I'm going to be there during World Rotaract Week, which is quite annoying.

Saturday night was a Burns Night dinner. It's always quite funny to watch the reactions of people trying haggis for the first time. Although I say this as someone who loves it. As I had to go to Oxford Sunday, and wasn't going to be able to get round all the shops between lunchtime and them shutting, I went in the morning and stopped off at The Noodlebar for lunch, as I discovered their nicest noodles are made from rice flour.

One or both of the above dinners was a mistake though because I've felt iffy most of the weekend, really tired today, then sick this afternoon. So I'm not out at the Rotary dinner I'm supposed to be at tonight. And am trying hard to concentrate.

Trouble is, when I get really hungry I start to feel sick. So it could be that if I have something for dinner, it'll make me feel a bit better and more awake. Or it'll make me feel worse and more sick. I'm getting hungry enough to try the first option, and I do have plenty of stuff taped to keep my mind off it. And a whole series of Press Gang to watch.

I'd really like it if someone would just invent a pill you take once a day, so then you don't need to eat. Would make life so much simpler.

A friend of mine told me she had a myspace page but couldn't work out how to change the look of it. I can't quite get my head round myspace - I mean, what's it for? - but I thought that should be simple, I mean I know monkeys do it. So I created one (here, incidentally) and I managed to change the font colour of some text. The rest I just don't know how it's done and the help is incredibly unhelpful.

Trillian's been driving me mad too. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Trillian Astra because currently I can't send or receive files (which is a common problem), get anyone to see any messages I type in Google Talk (also a common problem), add contacts in AIM (guess what?), or join an AIM chatroom without being invited (that one's a bug).

The latter I've discovered as I ended up joining a Doctor Who RPG: Relative Space and they use AIM. I refuse to download or use AIM on principle because it's AOL and I refuse to have AOL on my computer. And I don't see why I should have to because Trillian should work, dammit! I have paid for it after all.

The person in the flat above me has woken me up at 6am with their radio on occasion. Bearing in mind that I don't have to get up for work till 8am. And I've heard them running the bath at midnight. So I don't know if they sleep. This time it's twice in a row, though.

This morning, I had my radio on because there's only so much of other people's you can listen to and they mentioned it had snowed. And it has. Which is interesting because it's not been that cold, I didn't think. I hate living up north in winter where it snows every winter. And I work with a load of northerners who think we get less snow than we used to. Yeah, right.

I really hope it's normal snow and melted by tomorrow and that's it for the year, and not northern snow where it lasts for a week, otherwise I won't be going to Tescos on Friday and certainly won't be driving to Burns Supper on Saturday. Driving in the snow is not a skill I feel I need.

It's not that I don't like snow, I just want to live somewhere civilised where that is a every few years thing.

I am so tired. My housewarming was this weekend, so I had my bookcases made (I hammered some pins) and we survived that without you gmul . Saturday night was our Cheese & Wine quiz which seemed to go well. Although it always seems to involve a whole load of running around setting up. And Nicola's teacher marking is a lot quicker.

My chocolate mousse tasted nice, even though I think I microwaved the chocolate a bit too long. Then we didn't go to bed till around 3am and for some reason one of my neighbours decided to use a strimmer/saw/something else very noisy about 9am. So oddly, enough, we were awake. My alarm going off this morning was frankly, rude.

I have now put stuff on my bookshelves, so I can find my books again! And I listed to Elisabeth Sladen The Actor Speaks, which is all ladyvivien's fault. Course now, I want the B7 ones. And Soldiers of Love.

Why are weekends not three days?

The OC has been cancelled! I'm obviously out of the loop because that article is dated 4th January, and I only vaguely read something along those lines today. In better news, as of this morning, we no longer have a hosepipe ban. Now I just need a hosepipe...

My leg's definitely getting better, albeit slowly. I'm supposed to be driving to Wycombe on 27th for Burns Night, so we'll have to see how that goes. If it's bad, I might end up in a dress and walking boots because I don't think 2 inch heels are going help somehow.

I watched The Invasion, courtesy of Lovefilm getting it right for once. I liked it but it was a bit slow. I quite liked the Second Doctor and Jamie. Zoe I'm not so sure about yet.

I saw my doctor this morning, who poked my leg and told me what it was, which I immediately forgot, as you do. But it was something along the lines of trapping my sciatic nerve sleeping and the reason it hurts more than usual is because something's inflamed. The upshot was that I need to take ibuprofen for two weeks whether it hurts or not.

Not only does it still hurt but my right leg's got in on the act too. Bits of my body do have a tendency to come out in sympathy with each other. My bunny hot water bottle on my back last night was very nice, and lavendery smelling. And I am finding it quite useful to have a spare half of my bed so I can throw it out when it's cold and in my way.

Now I have my bookcases sitting at work. I can't lift them because my hands are too small to get hold of them - so I can't even tell how heavy they are. And I can't drive down to work to pick them up with someone else's help because I can't use my legs. And if I did have them here, they're going to go where I currently have piles of crates - which I can't move because that wouldn't help.

On the plus side, Lovefilm managed to send me The Invasion disk 2 and they are actually posting me Press Gang series 1 disk 1. So we're getting there. Slowly.

Although at work today I had to write a database for such a horrible project that by the time I finished it at 4pm (when admittedly, I could do with a lie-down usually, I don't really do afternoons) my brain had dribbled out of my ears.

I knew, when I woke up this morning that it was going to be one of those days. The fact that it was 6.13am probably had something to do with it. The people who live above me seem to have a weekend disco, that goes from Friday night to Monday morning. The rest of the week I only hear the bath running. So last night it was quiet when I went to bed, then the disco started and finally stopped at 12.46am. And they obviously don't sleep given that was what woke me up at 6.13am.

I must have been tired enough to go back to sleep, though, despite the earplugs not really drowning out the bass (and there's only so much of that you can listen to without wanting to pull your ears off). As a result I was completely confused when my alarm interrupted my dream, because I was convinced my bathroom had see-through walls and my front door was in the wrong place.

When I got up I found I couldn't quite put any weight on my left leg, but since I get that from time to time anyway, I thought nothing of it. It had mostly gone by the time I went to work anyway.

I was waiting for Tescos to deliver my bookcases (not my first choice but I had run out of choice by this point). So they rung the first time I was away from my desk without my mobile. As I didn't know they were going to ring an hour in advance before I had a text yesterday, I had asked for them to be delivered to work. Two phone calls later, we established that they can't possibly deliver to any other address, it has to be that one.

So they arrived, after getting lost. I can't pick the bookcases up, mostly because the cardboard packaging they're in is too wide for my small hands to get round. So they're going to stay there until tomorrow night, when hopefully I will be getting some people to help me move them.

So then work was boring and nasty and towards the end of the day I noticed my leg getting worse. I thought it was just due to being sat down most of the afternoon and it had got a bit stiff. Except that by the time I'd done the ten minute walk home, with a strange sort of limp, I couldn't put any weight on it at all. So certainly not driving to tonight's Presidents meeting and wasn't convinced at all I could even walk from the car park to the pub if I got a lift from someone.

No idea what's wrong with my leg, NHS direct will only tell me to go to A&E. Resting it and/or taking a pill have helped. It'll probably be fine tomorrow, it just leaves the question of what's causing it because as far as I can tell, none of the times when it's hurt has there been anything in common. Except it's always in the morning, today being an exception.

I decided this afternoon I'd do some baking since I've run out of bread and flapjacks. Sadly, I got to the point in the flapjack recipe where it required golden syrup - but I don't have any. Fortunately, the shops are still open for another hour and a half, and I am now only ten minutes walk away from Waitrose. Unfortunately, I've just put the bread on, so I won't be going anywhere for another half an hour.

This morning I checked my Firefox folder and found it was last changed on Boxing Day, which was when I downloaded the Firefox 2.0 file. So quite why it decided it was actually 1.5, I don't know. So I installed 2.0 again and now it is definitely 2.0. Although Pandora only worked once I had uninstalled and reinstalled Adblock. And NewTabURL, which opens my current tab (and history, like IE does automatically) doesn't work with Roboform. And CloneWindow, which I quite happily used before doesn't work with 2.0 and doesn't even appear on the add-ons list. And since I uninstalled CloneWindow, the only way I can go back to the old version is with System Restore. So I need to decide whether I want to before I install anything else.

I also tried out Filezilla and CoreFTP, thanks to those who recommended. I've gone with Filezilla since it looks nicer and has a portable version. I've now deleted the copy of my blog I made when I upgraded WordPress, so much simpler than in WS_FTP.

I discovered today that cleaning is not a good way to follow swimming. The people in the flat above were having a disco again from 9 this morning, so I gave up on hoping my book actually starts soon (I'm only page 70) and decided to get up and go swimming. Once I was ready it all went quiet, of course. I haven't been swimming since November, so ow. It was the first time I've been to the swimming pool in Abingdon and I wasn't impressed. Mostly because the changing rooms were in the same area with no barrier, so they were boiling. I got out and was quite warm. By the time I was dry I felt ill because I was so hot. And I couldn't get my watch on.

But then I went to the big Tescos, which is laid out exactly the same as Reading and Tower Park, although I still went round the whole shop twice before finding the Free From section. I'm very glad I did though, because it was the best Free From section I've ever seen. I found things in there I'd given up ever seeing again. So I'm definitely going back.

Driving to Abingdon wasn't too bad, so once I actually have a free Thursday (and make sure I keep them free) I'll be going back to fencing, which I'm looking forward to.

Lovefilm are really annoying me now. I got sent a thing for a 3 month free trial, so I'm working my way through Press Gang with them. At least, that's the theory. You have to have at least 10 titles on your list and you can rate them at high, medium or low priority. So I bunged all the Press Gang on at high priority and some other stuff at low. The first two discs they sent were series 1 disk 1 and series 4. So I watch the first seven episodes and sent it back. So they sent series 3. So I sent them both back and am about to get series 2 disk 1 and Doctor Who: The Invasion disk 1. Which I'd quite like to see but the question is, would they ever send me disk 2? So I'll keep sending them discs back, until eventually, I get the next one. Could take the whole three months at this rate.

Amazon are much better though. I just got Dark Season through them and it's interesting, yet weird so far. And currently no sign of Jacqueline Pearce, who I noticed was in it. I completely failed to notice that Kate Winslett was higher up the cast list...

I had a TV watching night tonight. There was The Avengers, which I haven't seen for a while. I'd forgotten how good it is. There was a fair bit of Emma Peel running round a house, trying to work out what's going, with nothing to tell you how she feels about it except for Diana Rigg's acting. Which was fabulous. And Steed rides to her rescue, only to discover she's done it on her own

There was also Stargate, suitably loud. It's a tradition. And there was Colin & Justin, which wasn't as funny as usual, but they obviously still have no idea what the word 'budget' means. I failed to notice Mock the Week was back, but since it's repeated on Saturday, I'll tape the repeat instead.

Then I saw the first episode of Murder in Suburbia. Which was quite weird because I didn't start watching until series 2 (are they ever going to do any more?) when it was well established that Ash fancied their boss (who I'm sure has a name), it was just a question of whether he fancied her back. And whether she'd ever stop embarrassing herself over him. The murder stuff was interesting as well. I do like my cop shows.

I was thinking I really should go to bed at a reasonable time at some point this week. And I was going to bed but I thought I'd start a download off so I could just resume it tomorrow. Except that it started at 200k/s and is currently at 350k/s and now I don't want to stop!

Although according to ADSL Guide my speed is 1.9, the last time I checked it was 1.2. It'll be interesting to see what speed it settles at after 14th, when it'll have been the 10 days of variable speeds (and I had one day of really slow).

So I was playing with the District website over Christmas and added a Text Only link to it. And had no end of problems, some of which were caused by my ftp program (WS_FTP) being crap. I quite liked it when it told me the year was 100 but I feel I should get a new one. And since I can't be bothered to do any research, I thought you lot might be able to recommend me one that's good.

I should point out that it needs to be me-proof (ie 'I wonder what happens if I press this button' doesn't bloe up the world). Otherwise I just need it to upload files, store details of more than one account, not lose the connection due to inactivity, have a decent way of changing permissions, warn me about overwriting files, and most importantly delete folders even though there are files in there (I have my blog up there at least twice because WS_FTP doesn't let you do that and I can't be doing with going through all of them).

On a slightly different note, I've just realised that Firefox isn't underlining my typos/spelling mistakes. I thought I had installed 2.0 but it's telling me I'm using 1.5. No idea what I did there then.

I measured and wrote myself a list of what I'd read before I moved but didn't quite get round to an update, so there's been quite a few books since the last update and I am now at:

110.7cm / 155cm (71.4%)

Most of the Christmas viewing consisted of Doctor Who and penguins. Although not both at the same time... (here there be spoilers)
Read more...

It's been a busy day today. First the BT man came round to fix the phone. He stayed for a bit, then I went back to work and he used the box outside. When I got back I had a voicetext, so Tom Baker told me my line was now fixed, which is the funniest thing I have ever heard.

And then my landlady and her boyfriend came round. She gave me her number as doing things direct through them got it done much quicker. He fixed the washing machine, so I am now not going to run out of clothes, yay! He's coming back on Saturday to fix the hall light, which is simple. And it turns out there's a trick to the shower but it also requires something to hold the knob up, so he's going to sort that too.

And while I was out with the BT man, my freeview PVR turned up. The manual is 86 pages long because it does so many things. I'm going to have to rearrange everything to work out where to put it. Although I did realise I still have my old DVD remote control out whereas the DVD itself is in the box. There's nothing on till Doctor Who on Sunday, so I might be playing with that later because...

...my broadband is up! I rang Pipex yesterday, and although I rang them on 18th December to get it turned back on, which was the earliest they would let me, for some strange reason my file said I had requested it to be on on 4th January. Whereas in reality I wanted it on on 17th December. But it is on now. Not noticeably faster yet but then I had been getting used to dial-up, so it's harder to tell.

I had a letter this morning dated 29th December from Barclaycard to say they couldn't sort out getting me a refund for the bed until it hadn't been delivered for 30 days, and I needed to contact them by 3rd January if it had turned up. Which goes a long way towards explaining why the bed people rang me yesterday to try and tell me they'd had delivery problems. Which of course explains why they hadn't answered their phones for three weeks. They said they'd refund me and Barclaycard are too, so we'll have to see what happens and how many times I get refunded.

Although my magnetic pinboard has no way of attaching it to the wall, despite saying it came with fittings, so I'll have to ring them up to get that sorted.