This weekend I've watched lots of tennis. Which was good, but I wish they'd just stick to showing us the court in such a way that they don't have to move the camera, and not show us a picture from behind one of the players where you can't see anything and the camera moves too much. I also could do with them not showing us an aerial view of the court and then spiralling round and in. But at least we get six days of French Open viewing (at the weekends) whereas for Wimbledon we only get three.

I saw Sports Island 2 for the Wii and I want it - it looks good. Not that I can play on the Wii at the moment, mind you. Or cross stitch, which is really quite frustrating.

All of a sudden remix is happening, so I'm going to be writing two at the same time.

I need to do a reading my weight in books update - it might be in a while when there's no tennis.

My hayfever's gone from practically nothing to me spending the afternoon blowing my nose, last night with itchy eyes and sudden asthma when it got dark Friday and today. At least it's quite late, so hopefully it'll only be a month and half - which I calculated should only cost me about £30 in drugs.

This weekend couldn't be more of a contrast to last weekend: Last Sunday I spent freezing and wishing I could go back in time to the day before to turn the heating on. This Sunday was boiling and I had all the windows open. Today at least there's more of a breeze and no sun. But I do have to close the windows in the lounge to hear the telly over the trains...

I tidied and my lounge feels so much bigger, even though pretty much all I did was sort out all the piles of paper I had on my dining room table and coffee table. I also rearranged it a bit. I realised, after coming back from being at home, that the telly wasn't really in the best place to see it from the sofa. And because I'd pulled it out of the corner a bit, there was a whole load of wasted space in the corner. So I rearranged my desks and telly a bit. And even took photos: Before 1, Before 2, After 1, After 2. Spot the magically moving pictures above my desk and amazing disappearing balloon!

Friday I saw In the Loop, which was really good. It was nicer to see it on a smaller screen than the one I saw Star Trek on. But I did spend the whole thing trying to work out where I recognised Simon Foster from and it was only when I looked it up that I discovered he was Guy Burgess in Cambridge Spies. One of the funny bits in it was when Malcolm Tucker (who's Scottish) told the American General not to call him English, and the General just look bewildered as to why! In an interview with Armando Iannucci he says that he's doing a second series of The Thick of It, which will be good.

I've also signed up for who_remix, partly on the basis that if I don't have to write anything I never will while I'm still ill.

According to my radio controlled clock in the kitchen today is Friday 1st May. I did have to look at it for quite a while to work out whether it was trying to tell me if it was the 1st, 5th or 15th and if any of them were right. Sadly, it's not Friday.

I have an amusing saga of my council tax to tell. For anyone reading not in this country, everyone who's not a student has to pay council tax based on the size of the house they live in. Well, ish, but let's not over complicate the matter.

They have a strange system where they work out how much you owe for the year and then divide it by ten - so you pay council tax every month for ten months of the year and not at all for two. Which presumably made sense to someone at the time, but certainly not to me.

When I first moved away from home and wasn't a student council tax was included in my rent. So I didn't start paying it until I moved into a flat two a half years ago. When I moved in December I still had two months of council tax to pay. Since I was moving to a similar sized flat I knew the council tax was likely to be the same, and since I would still be paying it to the same council, I just kept paying it.

After a couple of months they wrote to me to tell me that I'd paid too much and they wanted to give it back to me. So I thought I'd let them, since that money might as well sit in my bank account until they ask for it back. For some inexplicable reason you have to send the stuff to Kent, despite me not living anywhere near Kent.

Eventually I get a letter back to say they can't give me the money, they have to write a cheque. I don't really care at this point, so I let them do what they like.

Then I get a letter back to say they've just worked out that I told them I moved in December (and in fact I told them a week before I moved) and they haven't asked me for any council tax in the new place. They want me to tell them if I'm still living on my own so they can work out how much I owe (you get 25% off for living on your own).

The next day I ring them, can't get through to anyone useful, but do get through to someone who tells me to email them. When I get home I find three council tax bills. One to say I've paid up for my last flat, one to say I owe them money for the end of the last council tax year for this flat and one to tell me how much I owe them this year.

So I email them to point out that I do still live on my own.

A month later I get two bills. One to say that not only have I paid for the last council tax year, but I've paid £1.29 too much, and one to tell me how much I owe for this year. Which is slightly more than last year and therefore probably right.

I'm so looking forward to the next time I move...

I was thinking about the differences between my new, two year old car and my old, twenty year old car, and all the things that are now standard that seem new to me.

So there's automatic choke, 5 gears, back windscreen wiper, electric windows, electric wing mirrors, central locking, point and click key.

But there are other things you can get too, if you spend more money, like air conditioning, parking sensors, heated wing mirrors, 6 gears, sat nav, buttons on the steering wheel to control the radio. Basically a whole load of things you'll never use but will go wrong and beep at you.

I vaguely remembering hearing on Top Gear years ago about an S type Mercedes, I think it was, that knows how close you are to the car in front and essentially drives for you.

So that makes me think. In twenty (or more) years time, what's going to be standard in all cars? All of the above, plus not running on petrol. And probably ability to plug your ipod in directly and control it from the radio. Can anyone think of anything else?

I had a good weekend - well, half a good weekend. I went to High Wycombe to drop off some knickers and other stuff for Knickers 4 Africa and go to selenay936's ex-local bookshop. Where I saw her parents and spent £17 on books - that was being restrained. I'm still working through the books I got from my mum and grandmother for my birthday yet.

It was a good day and we somehow managed to avoid the worst of the weather. I was really tired when I got home, which I expected. What I didn't expect was how dizzy I felt Sunday. All I ended up doing on Sunday is lying on the sofa reading and watching tennis because I wasn't capable of doing anything else. Fortunately, there was tennis on - exhibition matches under the new Centre Court roof at Wimbledon and I enjoyed them, although I could have done without the camera moving so much. I didn't even feel like I'd done that much either. I'm less dizzy now but back to going to bed at 10pm.

But on Friday I'm going to see if I feel well enough after work to go and see In the Loop, which wasn't at the cinema walking distance from where I live now. But it is at the cinema walking distance from work on Friday and Saturday. Then it is at least a three day weekend, although I plan to do things with it - not least find a place for all these books to live...

Also, in the unlikely event that there's anyone left who doesn't have a Dreamwidth account that wants one, I have four invites. And, it turns out, Trillian Astra invites, since it's now in beta. And probably has been for a while, I've just failed to notice, just gave them money...

After a week of not being too ill I've gone back to work and am so much worse. The trouble is it's really busy and I had a really intense day, so tonight I'm having trouble mustering up the energy to hold my book up. Or keep my eyes open. I can't even go to my Rotaract meeting, which is my sole social life at the moment.

I just want my life back. You wouldn't think that was too much to ask, would you?

I've been trying to think all morning about what I can do with my time. For the whole of May I have three things planned and two of those are Rotaract meetings. It's a bit tricky at the moment with how far I can go and how much I can do and people going away.

But what would be good is to actually talk to people - in addition to blogging and emailing. I have msn, google talk, aim and skype and I can use all those from my netbook, so I can lie on the sofa at the same time (because I can only sit up at the computer for a finite amount of time).

I don't tend to open up Pidgen or Skype on my netbook, though, so I could do with being organised about it really (and my emails could have delays on them of an hour, which is not that helpful).

So is there anyone who would like to chat at some point in the next few weeks? And if so, what medium and what time?

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

lost_spook gave me: Harry (Sullivan), Harry (Pearce), Sarah Jane, Hobbit and Blogging. Read more...

I went to see Star Trek yesterday. It's been tradition, starting with Insurrection to go and see it on the opening day. Even if it didn't, technically speaking, open until today...

I enjoyed it, specifics below (needless to say, with spoilers). Read more...

I've now had labyrinthitis for ten and a half weeks. It's been slightly better for the last two, but shopping is currently the worst thing I can do. Closely followed by using the computer...

I had a good time at Conference at the weekend (there are even some photos). I did hate that I had to go to bed early because I was dizzy - watching people dancing and especially the bright, flashing lights didn't help. But I did get to speak to pretty much everyone and it was fun. Apart from the last few bits of getting money from people I need to do (not helped by Royal Mail delivering all my post two weeks late) I'm looking forward to not doing any more Conference stuff and having time for things I want to do.

We went to see Star Trek yesterday, which was good, but I'll write about that in a separate post so anyone who hasn't seen it yet can skip it.

I've been playing around on the blog front.

On my blog you can now comment using just your OpenID. It would have worked a year ago if I'd only known the plugin to show you a preview of your comment was interfering with it...

Also, I'm using a new crossposter. The big advantage of this one is that if I create a password protected post here, it posts it on LJ as a friends locked post. Which is what I always wished the crossposter would do, so that's handy. You'll notice on LJ that the header has changed and now become a footer. Exciting, ay?

Since Dreamwidth made it from closed to open beta the other day (at least from my perspective) I now have an account there: paranoidangel. The crossposter posts simultaneously to both LJ and DW, so I now have three backups of my blog.

When I finally wade into RSS Bandit and the 1157 unread feeds I had in there this morning (some of which I've read in Google Reader, to be fair) I might well take some people off my LJ friends list, since that is merely a list of who I am reading and I suspect I will find that I will just mark some of those as read without reading them.

But it's ok because there are other ways of reading my very rare protected posts - which I only really want to hide from random people who've surfed in randomly. Either you can ask me the password and read it on the blog (or search the blog to find it). Or read it on DW. What I plan to do there is give access to anyone who wishes it - basically if you subscribe to my DW journal, I'll give you access. But if you friend my LJ, I will only friend you back if I'm reading your LJ. Clear as mud?

I also have a second DW account (which I did pay about £2 for but there's really nothing a paid account does that a free one doesn't - the same can be said of LJ). This one is paranoidangel42 and is purely for talking about RP things. So people reading my blog/LJ/DW who aren't interested aren't bored by it and I can have RP-related emails in the right email account. No really, that is important.

I know I have a load of comments to reply to and posts to read and people to subscribe to on DW, it's just going to take me a little while to catch up - feel free to subscribe to me and save me the effort