2007 Year in Review Meme
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I know it's after Christmas but I'm never that organised. I only ever work out how I need to send Christmas cards to based on who sends them to me. And most of those are based on who I see at Rotaract events anyway.

But in lieu of the Christmas cards I would have sent to people had it not involved buying stamps, Christmas cards or spending my entire lunch hour in a queue in the post office, I donated some money to charity instead. I feel a bit silly telling people this because it's not like I should be getting praise for doing it or anything.

I did a google search and found a charity I'd never heard of: Contact a Family so I donated to them partly because I'd never heard of them, but also because they sound a bit different: they help the families of disabled children, rather than the children specifically (there are plenty of charities that do that already).

So if you're someone who I might have sent a Christmas card to had I considered it, or you would have sent one to me, then this donation is on your behalf.

I really hate shoe shopping. Usually what happens is I try on loads of pairs of shoes and end up with one that fits, so I buy a couple of pairs. Today was no exception.

I went to the cheap shoe shop. The ladies section had no shoes - it was all silly sandals and boots. The trainer section, where I got my current school shoes only had trainers. The men's section only go down to size 6, which were too big. But at least had ordinary shoes.

The kids section was better. There were actual shoes that were non-pointy and had no heels and actually had something on the top so you don't walk out of them. Annoyingly, none of the sale ones fitted so I ended up buying two pairs for £60. They were the same but weren't £30 each. Don't ask, I don't know why.

So now I have two pairs of spare shoes for when my current work shoes fall apart (they already let the rain in) and far less money.

I have finally managed to sort out all the tags and categories on the blog. Although I have 187 in Other Stuff that I don't quite have the energy to go through. And they're in there in the first place because they didn't really fit into any other category.

My sister bought herself a Wii for Chanukah (me and mum just bought ourselves books, and I thought I was extravagant for spending £15). I'm alright at bowling on it, but terrible at tennis and working the menus. And being able to strap the remote to myself. It gives me a headache too, although not as bad as the PS2.

I'm also up to date on my prompts so I am getting through the things I need to do over Christmas. There's just some bits that are more urgent really that I haven't quite go to yet...

In the following fandoms: The Avengers, Spooks, Chalet School, 10 Things I Hate About You, Coupling, Midsomer Murders, Little Miss Sunshine, Vorkosigan series, Wonderfalls, Discworld, Blakes 7, Ugly Betty, Pushing Daisies, Quantum Leap.

First the ones that were written for me:

The Avengers
A Funeral for Mrs Peel - This is just like an episode and has just the right amount of everything. It had everything in it that I asked for, which I am amazed about.

Spooks
The Book of Ruth - This was an unexpected treat and such a lovely Harry/Ruth fic, with some fabulous description and a great way of reuniting them.

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Spoilers, funnily enough... Read more...

Happy Christmas to everyone that celebrates it, and happy bank holiday to anyone that doesn't.

I have a working 4oD and BBC iPlayer! There was a solution on the iPlayer forums, but annoyingly you can't search the forums. Basically, there was something wrong with the database. So I deleted it, reinstalled everything and now it's happy.

I obviously slept funny last night because my left shoulder & neck hurt, so apart from listening to Humph in Wonderland (they cut One Song to the Tune of the Other!) and watching an old Top Gear, I've mostly been reading Yuletide stories. I've read 16 so far but the best were the two written for me!

I had no idea you could get more than one story for Yuletide until I spent yesterday writing seven short ones. But I was lucky enough to get two longish ones, really good ones. I still need to go back and comment on the stories I've read, but since the comments are taking ages (I assume, since I've only had a fraction emailed to me of the ones posted) there's not really a great rush, as long as I get it done today. I am aiming to get them all read today, then I'll post a list of recs.

Now I am home it really is the Christmas holidays. The journey yesterday was interesting though.

I got up and it was warmer, so I thought that was a good sign. Except when I opened the front door I discovered that actually it was foogy. And my car was iced up. I considered waiting to see if it improved but decided I might as well go anyway. I had to stop off at Tescos to take my coat off and put my wing mirror back where I'd bashed it clearing the ice off it.

The minute I got onto the dual carriageway the fog disappeared and the sun came out. In the direction I was driving in. Also, the windscreen got incredibly dirty and my windscreen washer had frozen. It had unfrozen by the time I stopped at the services to put my sunglasses on, but it was quite interesting driving without being able to see.

I got lost coming out of the services (and going in, although not so much) and nearly went back the way I came. Fortunately there was a roundabout in between (which Tom Baker hadn't spotted).

On the way back there were still patches of fog. All of a sudden you wouldn't be able to see for it, but only for a minute, which was very strange. But did mean everyone drove with their lights on, even though the sun was really bright.

We have a wireless network here, which annoyingly goes down a lot. Everytime it comes back on Trillian decides I'm not as away as I think I am. My room now has a double bed on it, but I wasn't going to sleep in the middle of the room, so I have to climb across it to get to the bit I want to sleep on. Although it has a double quilt, I still managed to have both top corners round me when I woke up.

Yay, it's now my Christmas holidays! Although I'm not going home till tomorrow, so it won't feel like it till then. But I have packed and slept late and helped with a tinshake today.

Yesterday's work's Christmas party went ok. Except for not getting lunch till 3pm and as I have low blood sugar meant I basically fell asleep at 8pm although managed to stay up till 10.30. My hesitance at believing the people about the food was proved correct because apparently the head chef had a different view. But it was at a golf club connected to a hotel and the hotel did some of my food for me. The potatoes were nice, as was the soup, but there was also turkey, which I hate, and although there was cauliflower, which I like, it was crunchy, which is horrible.

I actually got a decent Secret Santa present for the first time ever. It was Doctor Who Top Trumps. Which although being series 2 & 3 stuff, and Top Trumps being the most pointless game in the world ever, actually shows that someone knew something about me at least. And it is well done - the cards with Toby and the Ood have their eyes in sparkling red, and all the names on the cards are in sparkling silver.

Then there was the work Oscars, where I was nominated for best charity worker. I sent round an email in the morning about our Cheese and Wine quiz evening (12th January, if anyone wants to come it's £8 and I have space in my house to sleep and I'll make chocolate mousse if there's enough people). Talking to someone before we went he said I should have sent the email earlier when people were still voting because then I might have won. So I thought he probably knew something and all the people on there were more popular than me anyway. Although some of them I'm hard pressed to know what charity-related stuff they do.

When the nominations were read out there were suddenly a whole load of people chanting my name, as had been done on other categories. And I did win - with 30% of the vote and twice as many votes as the person who came second. I used my 15 seconds acceptance speech to mention the cheese & wine quiz again, which got a laugh. And then I sat down shaky with pins and needles!

Amazon are having their January sales already. I wasn't going to click on any of the links but I was weak. And then discovered they have both series of Life on Mars on DVD for what would cost me £30 for them both, since I have 10% off as I'm on their rentals scheme. Oh, if only I hadn't spent December's budget for that sort of thing. I just need them to still have them on sale after the Christmas holidays. The Big Finish sale, on the other hand, I haven't gone anywhere near out of self preservation (but I do have Peter Purves for my journey home, looking forward to hearing him compete with Tom Baker).

Only 3 hours of work to go, then it's the work Christmas party and then it's my Christmas holidays, since I have Monday off! And I am up for best charity worker in the work Oscars (I only found out when voting), so wish me luck!

Current computer-related problems that are doing my head in:
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I had to save the last episode of series 6 of Spooks till tonight and then I thought I'd write something about this series and what I've thought of it generally. Except that I'm not yet past the OMG stage and can therefore just about manage 'bibble'.

So, because for some reason I was thinking about this yesterday: Places I want to visit: Read more...

It was this weekend last year that I moved house. I don't remember it being so cold as this, I think it got colder in the week. Actually, I know it did because it got foggy and my car wasn't terribly impressed about that. At the time, when I moved in, I really appreciated the quiet. I heard my upstairs neighbours watching Songs of Praise about the time everyone left on Sunday and that was pretty much all I heard. Oh, how times have changed.

This weekend I've been quite productive. I cleaned the house and tidied it, as I have people coming round on Tuesday. My dining room table suddenly looks quite big. I fixed the doorbell (the battery in the outside bit was looking distinctly blue). I attempted to fix my printer, but it's refusing and won't print black. Although I seem to remember once running out of black ink, so just printed everything in dark blue instead.

I thought I'd attempt to fix my Channel 4 transmission but I put the telly on and it was fine. So basically, it only works as long as I don't want to watch anything. 4oD refused to open up yesterday even after I restarted, so I'm hoping my signal will be good enough to watch the repeat of Ugly Betty on E4 tonight.

I did discover a fix to a problem I'd been having with plugging my computer into the TV. For some reason once you do it sometimes decides the TV is 1280 by 768, but the TV doesn't like that and flickers really badly. I thought it was related to 4oD since that was the only time it happened, but it did it last night. I realised that the only thing I'd done since it last worked was to watch Have I Got News For You. So I switched the PVR on and it immediately switched to 1380 by 768, where it's happy. I could then turn the PVR off and it stayed like that. So no idea exactly what's going on there, but as long as I have a solution that'll do.

Oh, look another fandom character meme a bit like previous ones, but with different questions. And I've quite enjoyed the similar ones I've done. Read more...

I left the house early for Rotaract tonight because I knew my car would be steamed up. And it was - the back windows were anyway. The rest was covered in rather a lot of ice. It took me ten minutes to get it off. The wires on the back window did that, although couldn't help with the large amount of condensation inside. Even after that time with the engine on and the five minute drive, it was only just about managing to warm up by the time I got there.

Then, of course, after less than two hours, it had iced up again. And although there was less of it, it was practically impossible to get off. Driving home I kept thinking there was fog because there was still ice at the top of the windscreen that I could see out the corner of my eye.

I also did all my driving in my proper gloves, which are thicker than my driving gloves. It took me a while to notice I was doing it, but perhaps that was because I couldn't feel my fingers either. Or my feet, but turning the heater onto them was useless because it just blew a cold draft on them.

According to Weather Underground it's -4C here (25F), and there is nowhere in the country that is colder (although some places that are equally cold). It's 10C in Belfast, I'd far rather be there!

Yay for me for I have finished things. I posted the 118th story in the Yuletide archive and was seven words over the minimum. It's small and perfectly formed.

And then I finished the two Sarah/Harry fics I've been battling with for a bit, and sent them to beta. So now I have no excuse for not working on the TARDIS Big Bang story.

Except that I need to do things with the Rotaract website. And update mine. And play with the blog some more (not least sort out re-tagging quite a bit of it).

It's a strange combination of things I've been watching and reading that led me to thinking that given that Harry Sullivan (Doctor Who) was in MI5, wouldn't it be cool if his boss was Harry Pearce (Spooks)? If only because they're both called Harry.

In Thursdays G2 there was a review of the last two episodes of Heroes. Reading it tells me everything I missed since the last episode I saw (which was ep 8 ) and I can confidently say I'm not missing anything. But also, the review was really funny. My favourite line of the review is:

It is wrong, I suppose, to hope that Peter dies because of his haircut, but, you know, the heart wants what it wants.

The trouble with Heroes, I think, is that it was a good idea, just poorly executed.

I'm enjoying some web-based advent calendars at the moment.

The BBC Doctor Who site has one, although every day I'm in hopes of it being exciting and it hasn't really been so far. And where's the 8th?

I'm loving the Sarah Jane Smith Wardrobe Appreciation Society one because that does have different, interesting things every day.

And just-ann-now has been entertaining us with good looking men.

Who needs those cardboard things with chocolate rationing that no one ever seems to keep in the fridge, and who wants to eat warm chocolate?

The saga of my Barclaycard is now 6 months old and still not sorted. Since this is now my fifth post on the subject, I think it needs its own tag.

The story so far:
At the start of June I discovered an amount on my bill that wasn't mine. After four months they finally sorted it. But didn't refund the interest that had built up while I was only paying the part of the bill that was actually mine. Last month I rang them up, the bloke I spoke to refunded it and told me I wouldn't be charged any more interest.

The story continues:
I got this month's statement and they did indeed refund my interest at the start of the month. But at the end of the month they charged me more interest. After banging my head against a brick wall for a few days, I rang them. The bloke I spoke to refunded it and assured me I wouldn't be charged any more interest. Hmm, I wonder where I've heard this before.

I await developments at the start of January...

Edit: you can read now read the whole saga using the Barclaycard tag