I'm feeling all Sunday afternoon-y at the moment: ie I have things to do, I just can't be bothered to do any of them.

The annoying thing at the moment is I ordered a little Ace laptop (in blue, since despite them saying they were going to do red, they don't) from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. After a while they emailed me to say they were having trouble getting hold of it, so couldn't give me an estimated date, but they would let me know.

So I waited for a bit, checked the forum and discovered that quite a few people had had trouble with Amazon sending them theirs, so I ordered one from laptopsdirect, which cost a bit more because of delivery and them changing 0.95% to use a credit card.

A few hours later I had an email from Amazon to say they had an estimated delivery date for it, and it was later than the date I was expecting to get it from laptopsdirect, so I thought I'd wait and see who managed it first.

This morning I had an email from laptopsdirect to say they'd despatched it and I could track the order after midnight. So I thought I'd wait till midnight just to double check and then cancel the Amazon one.

This afternoon I had an email from Amazon to say they'd despatched it.

I looked on both websites and you can only cancel before despatch. So Tuesday/Wednesday ish I will have two of the things and then have the fun of sending one back and waiting for a refund. Both payments will made August's credit card bill, I think, but the refund won't. So September's credit card bill will probably be a minus number.

I just know that if I'd done nothing I wouldn't have any.

So that's the Olympics done for another four years (except for the Paralympics in a couple of weeks).

What am I going to do with myself now?

I realised, a while ago, that I've been doing that volunteering thing in Doctor Who fandom. I reckon I've inherited it from dad, but I can't get involved in something without volunteering. It's why I've done every exec post in my Rotaract club, am on my third year on District and am on the National Conference organising committee. I did it in LOTR fandom when I was an admin at HASA. Now in DW I've run a ficathon and was an editor for the Sarah Jane newsletter.

I've also reached a point where I just don't like DW fandom any more. As a whole I mean. I'm quite happy with my little corner(s), but the rest I just can't be doing with any more. So I've now stopped doing everything, apart from reading and writing.

While I was taking relevant comms off my LJ friends list, I had a bit of a sort out of the whole thing. I have managed to get my friends list down to 42. I took off a whole load that I'm either just not reading or haven't updated for a long time (mostly the latter, I have to say).

Because the term friends in LJ is so loaded, I just want to repeat that my friends list is a copy of the LJs I am reading in RSS Feeds. I have people on there that aren't friends and people that are friends that aren't on there. Anyone not on my friends list isn't missing out on my friends locked posts because I very rarely make any, and when I do I'll put them on my blog too, which you can ask me for a registration on, and you can use your LJ ID for that.

And while I'm here I want to plead to the people who only say what they're posting about in the LJ cut text and nowhere outside of it - please can you put something in the text of the post or the heading to say what you're talking about? Otherwise I have no idea because I don't see LJ cuts in RSS Feeds, and it also means that the page where you write comments doesn't say either.

I wrote fic: Rain, Rain, Come Again for the Sarah & Harry ficathon, which has lots of good fics in and you should go and read them all.

So now, my list of things to write consists of:

1. LOTR request from
2. Atlantis request from
3. LOTR request from
4. Doctor Who or The West Wing request from
5. Ian/Barbara fic I know the start of and no idea yet how to end
6. Post-Genocide fic with Eight & Jo, as we never see their goodbye in the book
7. Arathorn & Gilraen long fic I started years ago and mean to finish

That lot'll certainly keep me going till Yuletide.

(I was interrupted in writing this post when the Athletics stopped and I looked up to see a medium-sized, very black thing with eight legs on my ceiling. It's now in my hoover.)

I haven't done an update for so long I've almost forgotten what I think of these books...

22.264 / 50kg (45%)

I think I've been very confused this week. I knew it was Thursday yesterday but I didn't quite grasp the fact that it's Thursday. To me Thursday means fencing, even though I haven't been for a long time, but it's also the day I buy the paper because that's when it has the Online section. Even though they've changed the name of it and what's in it.

It only occurred to me this morning that buying Thursday's paper at lunchtime would be a bit tricky, seeing as how it's actually Friday today. I'll have to go and read it on the website instead, which is never the same.

It was only this evening that I realised I also have no TV guide for next week because I usually buy that at the same time as the paper. Admittedly, I've usually forgotten what I found in there that I wanted to watch, but the thought is there.

Although it's probably not that much of a problem really, since all that's on next week is Olympics. I haven't watched last week's TV or the DVD I've had from Lovefilm for the past week, so I don't think I really need to worry that much about what might be on next week.

Except that there will be no more swimming. I was forced to watch some athletics in between the swimming and gymnastics on 302 tonight (or as the BBC website calls it, Freeview 2) and all I could think about was that they were just running. And 800m was a lot shorter race.

This evening I've enjoyed watching the diving and swimming. Now there's some horses running and jumping. I don't know how they get the horses to do that - in my experience horses generally do exactly what they want. It is quite amusing that when they fall off the horses carry on.

It's annoying that all the tennis has been on during the day when I'm at work. Although it is something that's harder to show highlights of, as opposed to swimming, where a race might only last a minute. And the fencing highlights really are highlights, ie bits of fights. With the results listed on the right of the video. So I'll live without seeing the stuff in the week, and concentrate on watching the fencing this weekend.

Tonight I bought myself a new laptop! It's the Acer Aspire One, which they promised would be available in red, but it turns out my choices are white and blue. So I picked blue. Although it isn't out till next Monday because I wanted one with 1Gb RAM (rather than 512Mb) with Linux. I ordered myself a wireless keyboard with a touchpad, so I can plug the baby laptop (it weighs just over 1kg) into the 26inch TV and type on a laptop-size keyboard, while sitting on the sofa.

I am enjoying the Olympics. I've seen fencing on TV for the first time. Although, to be fair, it was fencing on the internet with a computer plugged into the TV. But still. It's annoying that most of it goes on overnight and during the day, which is fine for weekends, but less good for the week, when I'm at work. I'll have to go and find the fencing highlights when I get home, especially tomorrow when it's women's foil.

But I am liking having Freeview. So far this evening I've watched lots of swimming from earlier today. Last night we watched lots of rowing from earlier today, which was also good.

I like how the Olympics allows you to see sports you wouldn't usually on terrestrial and sports you'd never usually watch too.

I have a bit of a dilemma, caused by LJ and its mislabelling of 'friends list'. If only Dreamwidth was out already.

Basically, my friends list on LJ is a copy of the journals and communities I'm reading in my RSS Feed Reader. So I have friends that are not on my friends list and people that are on my friends list that aren't friends. Which makes the name of it rather a misnomer.

But, people friend me and I feel like I should friend them back, even if their LJ doesn't look like it contains anything I want to read. And I also friend people and then find that actually, I'm not reading their LJ. It seems a bit funny to friend someone and then unfriend them again not much later.

But it also seems really deceitful to friend people without reading them. Because putting someone on your friends list is pretty much a statement that you're reading this person.

To make it worse, a lot of people in TR put stuff related to the RP under friends lock in their personal LJs. I don't like to ask them to friend me, because if they wanted to read my LJ then you'd think they would friend me anyway. And I don't want to be on their friendslist with the knowledge that they're not reading it.

I did think about having two LJs, one which had the people I'm reading friended and one with the people I would friend whether I want to read them or not. But I think that would confuse other people. And not be particularly helpful either.

In theory it shouldn't be a problem because when I write a friends locked post I planned to copy it into my blog as a protected post, which anyone I allow can read it - and anyone that's friended me that I haven't friended back will certainly be allowed. As well as people without LJs.

It's just that, well, I feel bad about not friending people back, mostly.

Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your LJ profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.

gave me the following: Read more...

Dear Andy Murray,

Henman is not your hero and he's not someone to emulate. I only have a finite number of fingernails and the edge of my seat is really uncomfortable.

Just win or lose, none of this mucking about in the middle, okay? Or at the end either, I mean, win when you have championship points, not five games later.

Love, a British tennis fan.

It was at 4.30pm on Friday that I thought my brain might dribble out of my ears. And there was still an hour of work to go at that point. I did quite a bit of overtime last week, which has something to do with it. The weather isn't helping. At the moment it's slightly too hot for a quilt and slightly too cold for a sheet. At least, it is in the night. Once the sun rises I wake up boiling and have to put my sheet on. And consequently wake up really early.

I also seem to be allergic to something. Last night once it got dark I blew my nose every five minutes before I shut the windows and decided I'd rather be hot.

And what's really annoying me at the moment is WP keeps logging me out, even if I don't close Firefox and even though I tick the 'Remember me' box. My fanfic blog was fine, until I decided to check it this morning and it won't let me in at all.

For ages I've had two stories I've been meaning to dig up and post. And rather than let July not appear at all on my list of all fic I decided to polish them up and post them.

So, there's the second (or third, I can't remember) LOTR fic I started: Last Alliance which is Haldir/Isildur. It came from the random pairing generator and that was the first pairing in which the two people were alive at the same time. So I wrote it. And then got to v14 in edits. And then it's sat around on my hard drive for three and a half years. So now I've posted it to HASA.

The other one is the first Stargate Atlantis story I wrote, albeit a crossover with Stargate: Five Relationships Jack O’Neill and John Sheppard Could Have Had. It represented my OTPs at the time: John/Teyla, John/Elizabeth, John/Rodney, Jack/Daniel and Sam/Jack. It was only afterwards that they were all trumped by Jack/Elizabeth. And I'm also quite partial to quite a lot of other pairings - I think I once found one pairing in Atlantis I didn't ship, but now I can't remember what it is. But this fic I even managed to post to Wraithbait. I did get an account to post fic there after all. The rest of my Atlantis fics I'll put up there too, but not all at once.

I was unimpressed to find that Scrabulous on Facebook has been taken away for US and Canadian users. It was even in my BBC News email, which only gives the three top stories in each category. There is a Scrabble application on there, but there are separate ones for North America and the rest of the world. Although I don't know what's to stop anyone from installing both, I haven't tried.

However, it turns out this isn't a problem because it turns out Scrabulous has the same application on their website that not only works all over the world but also emails you when it's your move. Which is a big improvement. So anyone that wants to play with me over there, use my gmail address and I'm up for a game. Let's see if this version gives me consonants even when I'm winning.

Recently I found out what the use of Facebook was - it's the status changes that tell you what people are up to. Like blog posts, but in one sentence. The trouble is, when I go to the 'home' page I can see some status updates but they're buried in among the friend adding and application adding that goes on constantly.

However, it turns out there's an RSS Feed that just gives you your friends' status updates. So now I have that instead of the notifications RSS Feed - because that just told me when someone else had started a Scrabulous game with me, or, really unhelpfully, when I'd started a game with someone else (do they think I didn't notice I did that?).

So what Facebook really need to do now is sort themselves out with RSS Feeds or something to tell you when there are new posts in your groups - just like every other forum out there!

After dinner (and making flapjacks) I sat down and wrote the first draft of my Sarah & Harry ficathon story (which is due three weeks yesterday). There's something to be said for working out the plot in advance and writing it down (especially handy since I had forgotten some of it). And I think writing prompts helped me to get the plot down too.

I just need to go back and add in description, expand the two paragraphs that ought to be a scene and the 101 other things that need revising. But I feel more like I might actually finish in time now!

I haven't posted for so long I have such a big update. With headings. Read more...

I went to see Prince Caspian last night and it was really good. I really want Peter's sword, which I think I thought when I saw The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I've been working on getting the books in the same version my sister had when we were kids, because I remember so little about the series.

The only thing was I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for Peter because he was having to make all these really hard decisions, just because he was the eldest. Possibly this has something to do with me being the eldest and possibly it has something to do with my mood not really having improved at all.

Today I had the day off and I'm not going back to work till Wednesday. So I don't have to worry about the project that loses me the will to live on a daily basis. When I eventually managed to wake myself up I spring cleaned the kitchen. It took two hours and I didn't half ache afterwards (and sweating in rubber gloves really isn't pleasant) but it looks so much better now. I will definitely be moving the microwave and cleaning under and behind it more often. It's amazing how little stuff I actually got rid of, yet how much more space I have. Not that I'm complaining. I did manage to fill my recycling box with carrier bags, though. They must have been breeding.

Tomorrow I'm off to a windmill in Somerset for the weekend with some people from uni, which I am looking forward to. Then I'm coming back to do more spring cleaning and see if I can get it done before my parents come to visit (then I might have space to put the router).

I've started reading my Canadian guidebook, so I can work out roughly where I'm going to go and when. And basically I'm trying to fit in a lot in two and a half weeks (between 18th October and 3rd November), not helped by the train from Halifax to Quebec not going on the day when it would be most convenient.

So, to help me plan:
a) What is there to do in these places that people would recommend?
b) Does anyone want to meet up in any of them? (the trouble I always have going away is what to do in the evenings)

The plan is to start off with in Halifax, so that part's sorted. From there I'm thinking of going to Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. I fly out from the latter, so I definitely have to go there!

The only thing I know I'm going to do is Niagara Falls. Apart from that, going to Canada/US/Australia is always a problem because the main thing I do on holidays is castles. And other old things. So apart from those, I'd like to do stuff that'll tell me the history of the country, go up tall things. I don't really know beyond that.

I have finally managed to read through all the TARDIS Big Bang stories and have a list of recs. I also liked all the art and vids, and commenting on art was a new thing for me because I never usually look at any of it. In order of author: Read more...

I am determined to read all the TARDIS Big Bang stories, despite the rampant Americanisms in many of them, but there was one I read this morning which really made me laugh. I don't know that I could describe it as an Americanism, but it was certainly funny.

I once saw a story describe Mickey as African-American which remains the worst Americanism I've ever read (I mean, how can you not notice that you're describing someone British as American?), but this looks a lot like someone trying to transcribe that into British English and failing completely, when Owen describes Martha as Afro-European. Admittedly, the phrase is in Wikipedia but that doesn't make it any less nonsensical and it certainly isn't something Owen would say.

Although now I'm wondering how you could describe me using the same phrasing. Euro-European perhaps?

The second worst Americanism I've seen was when the Torchwood team drove down a highway in Cardiff.