I sat down to watch Ugly Betty on time delay and discovered my Channel 4 had gone so bad I was only getting two words from every conversation. Now I've played around with the wires it's fine, so I'm waiting for it to start on Channel 4 + 1. Which, according to my TV guide is on Channel 13. In fact, it's on Channel 31. Although I don't know how much that's due to me playing around with things on the PVR. It's so annoying having a crap signal on 850MHz - every time I hoover I bash the wires and the signal goes crap.

My back continues to improve, with the help of one pill at a time and Deep Heat. The rabbit helped a lot, but I didn't expect that much of a lotion. It really does work though. Tomorrow I think I'll get the bus to Tescos - while the rugby is on.

From agapi42:

Ask me what happens after the end of one of my stories. I may have more than one answer depending on the story (and the question). Or tell me your own theories--really, I'd love to hear!

All of my stories are on my website.

And that TV meme that's been going round for ages:
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Thank you to all the people who replied to yesterday's post about my back. It is a bit better today. How I managed to spend the whole night on my right side, I don't know. I had very strange dreams, though, maybe they were from sleeping in the warm bit all night.

It is a bit better today. I thought I'd start well by taking two pills. I then spent the whole morning feeling ill, so I'm back down to one now. Well, one sometimes, since it doesn't seem to do much. But I'd far rather be in pain than feel ill.

I'm just glad that I live on the ground floor and the office has a lift because I can't go up stairs at all at the moment. I have to go to Rotaract tomorrow - for which I'll have to get a lift because I can't change gears, as it's on my left side, and certainly won't be able to do a reverse hill start in a narrow car park. Fortunately, though, after that I don't have to go anywhere else except for work for a bit. I am going to run out of food, but if it gets desperate I could get the bus to Tesco on Saturday.

In other news, I rang Barclaycard, who had sorted out the money on my statement I didn't spend. Amazing how quickly that got sorted once I rang them. Although I'm not quite sure what's going on and if they've refunded the interest because I think I owe them less than they think. So I'm going to have to spend the weekend going through all my credit card statements getting them to add up. It probably didn't help that I accidentally paid the interest last month. But once I've worked it out I can ring them again.

There is Dirk Gently to listen to tonight - although on Listen Again because my PVR seems to have suddenly decided it is going to give me Radio 4 (or Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3 or ITV2). Something else to investigate. Also, the thing on the wall my shower lives in dropped off the wall, which I think I'll have to get my landlady's boyfriend to fix.

It's all go here at the moment.

My back is clearly in competition with Sel's except that mine has no reason at all. I felt it hurting more and more last night as I slept and turned over. Sometimes it hurts to turn over and I pull myself by my nightie. This morning I woke up when my neighbours got up (it was still dark) and by that point it hurt so much on the left that I couldn't lie on my left. By the time I woke up again, five minutes before my alarm went off, I couldn't lie with my legs bent either. My bed's against the wall on my right hand side, lying on my back, so I ended up getting out of bed backwards.

So I spent the day drugged up on ibuprofen. Only trouble is you can only take one or two every four hours and only six every day. Whenever I need them one is enough. But I've definitely had all six today, sometimes two at a time. Two does make it a bit better, but then I feel really drugged up.

I just laid down and watched TV with my rabbit hot water bottle on my back and it was doing really nicely. And then I got up. And the pills ran out. I'd go to bed and read my book at this point, except I need to give the pill time to kick in before I can think about getting up again. The most painful things being getting up, sitting down and putting any weight at all on my left leg.

It took me just over twenty minutes to do my ten minute walk to work this morning because the bus goes a different route at that time, so isn't terribly useful. I did get it home, though, which was nice. The good part is that the doctor has contacted the physio. They just don't seem to have contacted me. And they don't answer their phones. I left a message on their answer machine, no idea if they'll call me back or not.

The two most annoying things about this is that firstly I've not done anything to aggravate it. It's been mostly good recently because I've been careful not to do too much to aggravate it. The other annoying thing is that I was supposed to be going out to a quiz tonight, but didn't think I could sit in an uncomfortable chair (relatively speaking) for that long.

I really, really hope it's not this bad tomorrow.

Sunday and Friday seem to be the days for most TV, it seems. Till next Monday anyway when Spooks starts again. I was very glad I have a PVR with two tuners last night because Michael Palin started a minute and a half before Top Gear finished.

When I got home tonight, though, there was SJA halfway through - the PVR comes into its own again. SPOILERS for Eye of the Gorgon part 2:
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I decided, this morning, to sign up for Yuletide. Everyone's starting to talk about it and I thought I'd try it once. It's for rare fandoms, for which the stories go up on 25th December, authors revealed on 1st January. I've been looking through the list of 1662 fandoms, trying to decide which to request and which to offer to write. Some of the ones on there surprise me.

I'm amazed at the number of books and (slightly obscure British TV series. And even more amazed that Blakes 7 is on there, because I wouldn't call that rare by any stretch of the imagination. Every time I think I wonder if X is on there, it generally is, unless it's very old. Although Dirk Gently is listed as The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, so literally only covers that book, not any other of the series.

I was expecting The Bill to be full of new characters, but there are old ones on there too - Mike Dashwood, Ted Roach, Yorkie Smith are on the list. It's really interesting just looking through. Torchwood has been on there in the past, so I was wondering if SJA was, but it isn't. The Gallifrey audios are though. Even The Silmarillion is on there.

On a related writing note, the epic that I kept talking about is finished and mostly posted, starting here. It's Sarah and Harry gen - this is how I see their relationship, however else I've written it too (I've nearly exhausted all the possibilities!)

Melli asked for a commentary on my favourite fic. My favourite is generally the one I wrote last, which is fortunately short. And a small snippet of what's in my head, so there's a lot more going on than is written - which makes it a good thing to do a commentary on.

Doing the Right Thing commentary (my comments in bold).
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A writing questions meme from Melli:

You reply to this post and I ask you five questions about your writing. It can be about anything. Then you post the answers in your own LJ and can if you wish do the meme yourself.

Melli asked me some questions, which I have finally answered:
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I can't believe nearly a day of the weekend has gone by already, I feel as if I haven't got nearly enough done.

I started the day by doing a logic problem. I had a cupboard full of boxes and three that needed to go in there. With lots of rearranging the cupboard and the top of the wardrobe I not only fit them all in but have a bit of space to spare. I still have the other logic problem of where to put my speakers, though.

Then I phoned Barclaycard. Back in June I discovered £100 on my statement that I didn't spend. I sent off the dispute forms and since then I've not been paying that amount and not paying the interest they promised not to charge me. I wanted to know what they were doing about it. After explaining this, I got put through to the Fraud department who then proceeded to fail to ask my security questions. Well, that's not quite true. They asked me them, we just disagreed on the answers.

She asked me what music I'd bought recently. I don't think I've ever bought music with my credit card, so I said that and she disagreed. After lots of um'ing and ah'ing she asked what shops I regularly buy from. Well, that's none really, but the one I've probably bought stuff from most, at least recently, is Amazon. So I said that and she asked me what Amazon was. I boggled at her having never heard of it, then she said she had, but she'd asked me that question before. I was left trying to work out if she was even on this planet, when she confirmed that Barclaycard had done bugger all with my dispute and would continue to do bugger all unless I rang them back on Monday. Preferably in the afternoon.

What gets me is that they must deal with lots of this sort of thing. So do they ever sort any of them out I wonder?

I've been tired out by work, so while I'm waiting for Ugly Betty to start and get twenty minutes through, since Channel 4 are putting twenty minutes of adverts into an hour (!!!), I did the books meme going round.

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The long version...

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It was fortunate I'd done pretty much everything I wanted to before today because it didn't stop chucking it down with rain till I got home. I'm so pleased to be here - it's cold because turning the heating on just before I went away seemed stupid, and my neighbours have decided I need to hear every word of their TV really clearly.

A proper write-up to follow - I still have 2 hours 15 mins of TV to catch up on and 40 unread RSS Feeds. For now, though, there are photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/paranoidangel/tags/cardiff/

I read six Chalet School books in preparation for my TARDIS Big Bang story, and now I think I need to read more. But I definitely like the Austrian ones better than the English & Welsh ones. I wrote 10 pages of notes on A6, which hopefully I'll be able to make some sort of coherent sense out of. I'm not sure some of the original makes sense, which doesn't help.

I watched SJA live:

Spoilers for Eye of the Gorgon part 1:

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