Since its The Avengers night, yet they've got to the ones I've seen, I put on one off my DVDs. And now I've seen every colour Emma Peel episode, woohoo! It was one with an invisible man in and I spent the episode wondering how it was done. Some episodes are very clever like that - they look like science fiction but turn out to be reality. Escape in Time is another one that springs to mind. Mind you, there was also the boots that meant the wearer could walk on the ceiling...

I haven't posted an extract from Sex Tips for Girls for months, so here's another:
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B2Mem was trickier this year than last. Last year I wrote 25 drabbles for there_n_back. I'd have liked to have written some for their alphabetic theme this year but going to America doesn't go that well with that.

I thought I ought to write something at least, since those drabbles were the last things I wrote in LOTR, I think. I was thinking how this means I haven't done anything in the fandom for a year.

Then I realised I was wrong. It's not all about the fanfic writing. And the one thing I can point to and say I have done, since I have proof, is read. Admittedly, I'm a bit behind: I have 10 email notifications from Stories of Arda sitting in my inbox, I have Tiriel's GAFFS bookmarked and her latest is marked as unread in my RSS reader.

I have read things earlier in the year, though, and since I try and review everything I read, and SOA keeps records of this, I had a look back through what I've been reading since last March.
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Wow, we're in the semi-finals, I can't believe it! And interestingly, there's no Oxbridge in the semis at all. I thought we were shit in University Challenge. And it means I have to go through that knuckle-biting tension again in two weeks.

And I'm entirely behind on this, but thank you so much to Ann, Lady Branwyn, Aervir, Tanaqui and Hilary for donating to my Romania fundraising.

I will manage a B2MEM post before the end of March, really I will.

135.2cm / 155cm (87.2%)

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There was something I read a while ago talking about looking at people's searches on google and what you can tell about them. That would bring up all sorts of interesting things about me given that I've been looking up pregnancy (for Doctor Who: The Soap Opera), torture (for Dream a Little Dream) and courting in the 1930s.

But you can learn all sorts of interesting things through fandom. If it wasn't for The Bill I wouldn't know what a doona is. And I think I've learnt more about American words through beta'ing hhertzof's fics than I did by going there.

Mind you, I've also discovered that there are no 24 hour Tescos in Ealing. Which is important for Doctor Who: The Soap Opera: The Sequel. No, really. And tonight I got all excited when I looked up about decimalisation for the sake of one line on Relative Space and found this page. I had no idea the sixpence continued after decimalisation.

Although it's not fandom per se that's the font of all this knowledge, or making me look it up, it's that I'm meeting people in different parts of the world where they do things differently, or just people that have different areas of knowledge.

It's great, I love it.

I mentioned a month ago that I was going to Romania with Habitat for Humanity and that I needed to raise £350 for it.

Now that I'm back from America and can think about Romania instead of America I have some (hopefully!) fun things for you all to participate in and raise money at the same time.

Sponsored Drabbles
The first thing I'm going to do is some sponsored drabble writing. So the idea is that you suggest a topic/person/pairing/whatever and give me a £1. In return, I'll write the drabble. I'll certainly write Doctor Who/Torchwood/SJA, Stargate/Atlantis, Lord of the Rings, TPM, Farscape, Harry Potter, although you can suggest any other fandom as long as I know it. If I get inspired and it ends up being a double drabble or longer it doesn't cost you any more money. I reserve the right to ask for another prompt if I think I really can't write yours. I'm going to make this an April thing, so I won't post any before April and I won't write any prompts posted after April.

Postcards (from an idea by Avon)
There are two parts to this. The first is that you send me a postcard (email me for my address). The second is that you pay £1 to guess how many postcards I'll receive by 20th May (so that's in two months time). I'll take photos to prove how many I've had, so this is your chance to find something crazy. Or just really pretty. In tradition of guessing the number of something, you win the postcards. And the kudos of being good at guessing. So you can either send a postcard, guess the number, or do both.

Now you may be asking yourself just how to go about giving me this money. Well, if you see me in person you can just give it to me. Or if you live in the same country, send a cheque. Or, I have a page at justgiving.

And if you want, there's nothing to stop you giving me money without requiring me to do anything, I'm not going to stop you.

It's Sel's idea, although I started it. Since I am staying spoiler-free, I know there's a rumour about Elizabeth in Atlantis season 4, but I don't know what it is, and intend for it to stay that way.

What is much more fun, I'm sure, is to play guess the rumour. Funniest/craziest gets the most laughs, since there's no actual prize.

I am back from America. I would have posted from there but the server kept going down, so I couldn't. And it meant it lost my emails between about 4th and 13th March. Some of those I've read but others I've never seen. So if anyone's emailed my anything between those two dates, I probably haven't seen it - and if I have I've forgotten about it.

I liked America, and it was good to meet Melli and hhertzof. It's very nice to be home away from American acccents, though, I can only take them for so long. Washington was worse than New York for that, but even then there were some accents I just couldn't take seriously.

I have uploaded all 80 photos to at flickr

As promised, here are photos of the lunar eclipse. It did look a bit red once it was in full eclipse but sadly not bright enough to photograph. It looked really spectacular through binoculars, though.

I've now watched the first four episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I thought the mini-series was really slow and could have done with being ten minutes long. It didn't really improve appreciably. The episode plots are slow, the ones across episodes are even slower. The characters come across as really stupid and I can't bring myself to care about them.

It was all right, and if it was on TV I might give it another go. But the end of the fourth episode was a cliffhanger and I didn't feel any compulsion to see the resolution, which decides that, really. It was an alright program, and I'd watch it if it was on TV, but since it isn't, it's not good enough to make the effort to watch it on DVD.

I'm starting to feel a bit more caught up on my life now. Although when it comes to my friends list that's mostly because I'm marking them as read. I have a tidy house and a clean bathroom and kitchen. And am empty Dyson - which I did all on my own without doing it wrong! It was actually quite easy. I also have a working car and a clean windscreen.

It's very exciting that there's a lunar eclipse at the moment, and the skies are clear. That doesn't happen very often. It's supposed to go red later. I am taking photos, don't know how they'll come out though because I only have so much zoom. And it's cold out there.

I established an easy way to tell my American coins from the Australian ones and Euros in my mug of foreign money - the American ones don't have a number on to tell you the amount. Which is really helpful. And dad told me they're putting the clocks forward next weekend - when I'm there. So I'm going to lose an hours sleep, but there will only be four hours difference between them and us for a couple of weeks.

I've always been fascinated with time. When I was little I always used to wonder how it worked if you worked overnight and the clocks changed. If you worked an hour less or an hour extra because of it that didn't seem fair somehow. When I was in Australia two years ago it was when we changed the clocks. Except that although we went forward here, there it was autumn so the clocks went backwards. Which meant that for me that year the clocks went backwards twice. So my year was two hours longer than everyone else's. So now I'm going to lose an hour of that. Which is quite weird to think about.

The coolest thing about my The Avengers calendar: I turned it over for March and for mother's day there's a picture of Mother. How cool is that?

I really must try and get something in for Back to Middle-earth Month this year, since I don't think I've done anything LOTR related since last year. Don't know quite what yet, but it won't be till after I get back from America anyway.

And continuing on the subject of March, I noticed on the same day, that it was confirmed that the new series of Doctor Who was starting on 24th and 31st March. I feel disappointed there aren't more options. I'd point out that the second option is more annoying since it's Conference, but then I don't think I was in for many episodes last series anyway. At least now I can tape the Confidentials. Which means they'll probably put them back on the website, just to annoy me.