Wooho! My Ian/Barbara fic now has about 1000 words and is nearly finished. I did have three v1s of it, two half the size of the first one. But now I know what I'm writing about, which is much better. And I have a few pieces from the first version of v1 that I could potentially re-use sometime later.

A fanfiction meme from pretty much everyone else by this point:

The thing is, when people look for stories, they always make it sound like badfic. Now, often that's because it really is badfic, but sometimes it's good and they just suck at describing the story.
So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to summarise badly any one (or more!) of my stories and I'll try to guess which it is. You could even pretend you don't remember the pairing or fandom to make it harder to guess.

Here's a handy link to all my fanfic to help you

From avon7 and just_ann_now because it's always good to have nice things said about you.

Reply to this post, and I will list three things I love about you. Maybe/Probably more than three. Then repost to your own journal and spread the love.

There was an earthquake up north last night, which for once I didn't sleep through, even though I've slept through ones with an epicentre far closer.

I thought I hadn't been asleep, but since it was at 1am, I must have been woken up by it. All that happened is my bed shook for a few seconds, but not knowing what it was, it was quite scary.

Now I know though, it's very exciting.

Sunday night it had got to the point where I'd had my Ian/Barbara ficathon prompt for nearly a week and still hadn't come up with anything beyond a setting, which isn't terrifically helpful. So I put on a relevant episode and then wrote 250 words.

And then didn't quite round to having any time to write any more. Not that I had a clue where to go from there - and all of the prompts on the list this was one of my favourites too, so I can't blame the prompt. But on my way home I thought of something and now I have 1400 words! It's not terribly cohesive and doesn't really go anywhere, but at least that's something to start with.

Now I really need to think about my SJA ficathon too. And the TARDIS Big Bang one. I am determined to get the first two written by the end of next week before I have a busy couple of weeks, then I'll have time for Remix and getting the second draft of Big Bang written. Since, as usual, I've picked a ficathon to write something different, I might need to get it betaed for plot before I worry that much about the words.

I'm looking forward to being less busy. In July, maybe.

My car reached 60,000 miles yesterday! In fact it's done 60,005 in its life now, and it's 18 and a half years old.

It's very weird looking at the speedometer and seeing all those 0s. I was so distracted by it clicking over to 60,000 that I forgot my full beams were on until the car coming the other way had nearly passed me and flashed theirs. Whoops!

I think the ice cream that made me ill on Monday knocked me out for the rest of the week, almost. Wednesday I felt really tired before I ate dinner, but that's nothing new. What is, is that I was shaking after I'd eaten. So I had a piece of chocolate, which sorted that out and went out to a quiz. When I got back I was so hungry I could have quite happily eaten dinner again. So I had porridge with plenty of sugar and managed to make it just right as well.

Thursday I was so tired that I didn't go to my meeting and spent the night watching TV before going to bed at 10pm. Yesterday was a bit better and I managed to stay up till 10.30!

Today I feel more awake, if not 100%, but I am planning to get lots of things done this weekend as I have nothing planned. I'm still keeping to my New Years Resolution of going out every weekend, and I went into town to take my library book back and buy a Mothers Day card (not that I was impressed with the selection). I might have also bought some coffee flavoured ice cream, which is going to create some problems with space in the freezer when I make bread tomorrow - that's the trouble of having it full of sausages.

I thought I was being really good in actually making an appointment to go to the dentist. I think it was a year ago they sent me a reminder to go. It had been long enough that I'd forgotten how much I hate it. And how much my bank balance hates it (you can't get NHS dentists round here). For once I didn't get the usual lecture about how badly I clean my teeth. I'd have preferred it, though, because I have a wisdom tooth decaying, so it needs to come out.

I can at least get it done under general anaesthetic - it's interesting how quickly my dentists work out how much of a good idea that is with me. The most annoying thing about it is that that tooth was a complete bugger coming up and it took years for it to do it too. I can totally understand why teething babies scream - it's bloody painful!

I got my Ian/Barbara ficathon assignment today. I've got as far as working out the setting, I just need some sort of plot so I can write it this weekend.

I went to see St Trinian's this evening, which was really funny. It wasn't filmed at the place where I've been to a ball - I think the cinema got confused on their leaflet (they had the right town, wrong posh place). Needless to say, as there are only four actors in Britain (all of whom have been in The Bill and Doctor Who), I recognised quite a few of them. And the head cameraman is my friend's neighbour. And his wife is a script editor, apparently.

Yesterday I went to London to the Maritime Museum with gmul. We managed to get round the whole place, but it wasn't half knackering. Photos will be forthcoming when I can be bothered to plug the camera in. When I got back to the train station at 8pm half the car was iced up and when I pulled on the door handle to open the drivers door, nothing happened. Fortunately it did the second time.

I have some very nice mango & passionfruit ice cream that I found in the big Tescos recently. Sadly, though, I have proved tonight that it makes me ill. Despite there being nothing in it that I am intolerant to. Honestly - I've checked the ingredients list three times. Unless it's soya and I refuse to be interolant to soya. I just have to decide whether to finish it.

Tomorrow I'm going to see the St Trinians film - I discovered it was filmed nearby in a place where I've been to a ball! So that should be interesting to see, for that, if nothing else.

My ficathon signing up knows no bounds, as I now have the Ian/Barbara one due mid-March, the SJA one due at the end of March and Remix due early April. And TARDIS Big Bang draft due mid-March (that part is done, thank goodness), except the whole thing is due end of May, so I have to be good when I'm in and get lots written. And then relax in June.

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• I don't know what it is but a few weeks ago, after much drilling and hammering my upstairs neighbours did something that makes a very loud transformer hum above my lounge. I don't hear it all the time, but then mostly it's covered up by the noise they make. It's quite annoying when I do hear it, but fortunately you can't hear it from anywhere else in the house.
• They also have one that I can hear best from one side of my bedroom - and that would be the side that I sleep on. I think that might be a fan heater either in their bedroom or bathroom, though. They tend to turn it on half an hour before my alarm goes off, which is really annoying - and it's so loud that not even ear plugs block it out.
• I don't know if it's the same thing but there's also an annoying transformer hum that's not steady and often goes on all night. That at least is blocked out by ear plugs, so every night this week I've worn them to sleep. Except last night when I only got woken up at 8am by one of them getting up to go to the toilet, but since I got back to sleep again, I didn't mind too much.
• Amazingly this morning they were quiet till 11.30 when they went through every TV channel at top volume, then put their music on loud. So I hoovered - and I have a Dyson which is the loudest hoover known to man. I'm still waiting for them to shut up and bugger off out so I can get some peace and quiet, though.
• I think March is going to be a tad busy, what with Eastercon and World Rotaract Week, I also signed up for another two ficathons. But I just couldn't not. I am constantly surprised that there's another two weeks left in February though. I think the weather makes me think it's spring. The flowers think it too, though, I've seen a few daffodils this week.

P2150710,
originally uploaded by paranoidangel.

I discovered by accident that John Barrowman was coming to Borders this afternoon to sign his autobiography. So I thought it would be interesting to do. And then I took the afternoon off (which was just as well) and then the book cost £19. His sister was at the signing as well, as she wrote the book.

We got there an hour before he was due to start signing and joined the back of a long queue that got a lot longer. We were in the best place, though, as the aisle we were down had lots of toys, so we amused ourselves with the marble in a maze thing and the dice in a dice, which I just couldn't work out the point of.

They started quarter of an hour early - given that before he came out he also signed copies of the book for Borders to sell signed, he can't have spent that long in Reading. He probably didn't spend all that long here either, because they did rush people through. We got to him less than hour after he started. It didn't feel like we'd queued that long, though.

He was lovely and sweet and handsome and thanked me for buying the book. I was worrying too much about cameras and taking photos and I should have told him that if I hadn't come to get it signed I wouldn't have bought it at all.

He did his signature on the very inside, to people's names. Then his sister flicked a few pages and signed - she pointed out that as she wrote it it meant we got it signed by the author too

And then that was it, apart from taking photos of the TARDIS and walking miles in search of the buses due to roadworks. I'm glad I went, though. Now I just have to read the book - the friend I was in the queue with read some of it in the queue (I was distracted with queueing in the children's section) and said it was very droll.

I have been unexpectedly in tonight. I was supposed to have a Rotaract meeting, but last night I thought I had better check with the person running it when and where it was and his response was, "What meeting?" So, that was cancelled, funnily enough.

So tonight they had a second episode of Torchwood on BBC3 immediately after the one on BBC2. Well, according to the EPG it was immediately after. According to my TV guide it was 10 minutes after. Mind you, the TV guide also said there was a character in the second episode called Martha Jojones, so clearly they can't be trusted. Fortunately, I always go by the EPG when setting things up to record.

The bit with spoilers in (for both eps): Read more...

From selenay936:

Pick 10 people and give them the "you make my day" award. If you're picked, you are charged hopefully going to pick 10 of your own.

I've come up with this entirely based on memory - I'm sure if I looked through more people's LJs I'd want to put them on the list too.

andrealyn
avon7
boz4pm
hhertzof
ramblemuch
jedinic
netgirl-y2k
selenay936
velvetfascism
wadjet-theperv

tanaquilotr and eponymous-rose get an honourable mention because they've been posting fic every day and it didn't seem fair to everyone else to include them on the list.

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I keep feeling like I haven't written in here much because I've just been so busy. So, an update, with headings in place of LJ-cuts, because on WP once you cut you can't come back (not without a plugin anyway). Read more...

The short spoiler-free review: I liked it, although not quite as much as Life on Mars so far.

Spoilers: Read more...

Since everyone's doing it and I have 5 minutes before my dinner is ready: Read more...

I kind of feel like I've not been updating this much recently. I've been making an effort to get the first draft of my TARDIS Big Bang done. So far I've written 17 chapters of 26, for the best part of 13,000 words. I've been writing a chapter or two a night and I have to fit it round my back and the other things I have to do that involve the computer.

Last night was Burns Supper - albeit a week after Burns Night. Which was good, although it got a bit confusing with women pretending to be men in the celidh. Mind you, we were confused enough as it was, but then that's half the fun. I just wish I could still eat the haggis - it's very nice, as long as you don't think about what it is. I've remembered why I hate driving in High Wycombe - we got confused with two of us, navigating and my sat nav.

I'm quite liking the new printer. It does actually have a paper-out tray - it's the same as the paper-in tray, but has a divider in between so they don't get mixed up. Despite what I said I ended up getting one that's also a scanner, since it was only £30 and had good reviews. I'm still getting used to how to use it, but I like the way it does back to back printing.

I got Hot Fuzz from Amazon rentals because it seems like everyone at work has seen it. I think it's supposed to be funny. But it's just a bit of a bad parody really. So now I'm doing other things while it finishes, and I'm getting the gist.

I went to Comet this morning (via Tescos, who had 8 packets of chocolate buttons, but no orange juice with calcium) to take my printer back. The bloke on the desk spent twenty minutes on the phone, as he had to tell someone or other the details and they couldn't verify the printer's existence. He did also, unpack the printer, then seal it up with brown tape.

After he gave up on the phone and I had another one, I said I wanted to unpack it there just in case. He got out his stanley knife to open it and pulled everything out and there was no plug or ink cartridges in there either. The bloke then suggested they might be hidden away somewhere, opened the paper tray and there they were.

Fortunately, he just let me go, but I can't now remember if I looked in the paper tray of the other one. I definitely took the bit of tape off it, but after that I can't remember.

Anyway, I now have a working printer, although it's very confusing putting the paper in the front because it prints on the wrong side of the page.