Somehow I managed to read all the Yuletide fics before New Year. The Madness ones I read the same morning they opened. It helped that the static version was really quick, no matter what time of day. But the real versions seem to be pretty quick now, even when the Americans are up, so I'll link to those.

Here are my recs (in alphabetical order of fandom): Read more...

I remember parts of yesterday because I spent it so tired. I woke up at 6.17am to go to the toilet and then I couldn't get back to sleep. And my neighbour's snoring made me get up. So I ended up watching half of an SJA episode that was randomly on in the morning... while reading my SJA Yuletide fic. I'm loving the static version of the archive - it's instant. I never expected to be able to read any Yuletide fics on Christmas Day.

And then I had the fun of driving in the snow. It's fortunately, just my road - I live down a cul-de-sac, so not enough people drive down it to have melted it. I wondered how slippery it was, so I went out to empty the bins, took two steps and nearly fell over. That turned out not to be that much of a problem because I just drove at 2pmh in 1st gear. The problem was all the snow iced to the windows and piles of it on the roof. And that was after it spent a week melting.

Then the evening had Doctor Who, which was alright, and Confidential, which was far too heavily padded. And Poirot, which was annoyingly the only one where I can remember whodunnit.

Today I've spent the day setting up my new netbook. There's still stuff to do, but I am at least typing this from it. The old one is 9inches and this one is 10.1inches and it's amazing how much bigger it is. And red.

In important news, the snow is melting! Well, it's melting a bit on the roofs. It's hard to tell if it's melting anywhere else because there's either just lots of white stuff, or lots of grey stuff where people have walked on it. But this evening when I left work, in the dark, it was snowing a bit, but not settling, which is a start.

It's also warming up, although that's not hard. When I left for work yesterday it was -10C. A temperature which I'd never before thought I'd experience. It turns out it's cold. I mean, obviously it is because it's a big minus number, but it means it's colder than you ever thought possible. Waiting for the bus for 30 minutes was quite cold, but not too bad. But the bus itself has no heating (well, I discovered later it has one heater by one seat that can heat up one foot) and a cold draft round your feet. Since then, it's been around 0C which feels only a bit chilly. Possibly because I'm wearing a ridiculous number of clothes outside.

I don't like this sort of cold and I definitely don't like snow. I have SAD, only instead of the dark making me depressed, it's extreme (relatively speaking) temperatures that make me grumpy. Ideally I'd like to live somewhere that had seasons, but the temperature generally stayed between 10C and 20C. Maybe it could go down to 5C in the winter, just to make the point that it was winter, and go up to 25C in the summer just to remind you what hot weather was like. But never went below 5C or above 25C. And also doesn't have earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes or stupid amounts of rain. I think I might have ruled out every place on Earth...

Unlike the rest of the country, here we had our first snow of the week on Saturday morning. Driving home on Friday the road reports were all about the snow, but it was sunny here. Saturday I woke up to find the world covered in snow and it kept snowing more all morning.

What amused me yesterday was someone in my road clearing the snow off his car with a dustpan at lunchtime and then not going anywhere in it. So then it iced up, then it snowed a bit more. So whereas my car, for instance, has a blanket of snow, his is covered in ice and a bit of snow. Then today one of my neighbours spent most of the day clearing the snow off part of the car park at the back of my block of flats with a shovel and a broom. I have no idea why. He did get it pretty clear, though, so it might not ice over tonight. But since there are no cars near it, it probably doesn't matter.

I'll be getting the bus all week, which is fine because I have plenty of Big Finish audios to listen to on my mp3 player. The only question is what the roads will be like on Saturday when I want to drive home. It's so far in advance that the weather forecasts for this week change daily. It doesn't really matter if I go later - the shops are only shut for one day, I have enough food to definitely last until Boxing Day and Sainsburys is only ten minutes walk away. I hate not knowing, though. I like to have everything planned and then get all of a do when it doesn't go to plan.

I'm ready for it to be spring now. Or as warm (relatively speaking) as it was at the beginning of the week will do.

I really enjoyed Dirk Gently on Thursday night. I hope it gets a whole series. I knew from the many interviews and articles about it that they weren't going to follow the book (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency) so I was pleasantly surprised by the number of book references in there. Including the ones that weren't involved in the plot but were little things that you'd spot if you knew the book.

And I can't really say any more than that without spoiling it.

Given that it's getting close to Christmas I thought that things would slow down this week, but no. I went to see the ISIHAC tour, which was funny, although that didn't do much for my ability to breathe. But it gave me an excuse to eat at the Noodle Bar. A lot of it was the same as the one I saw earlier in the year, but since I can't remember the jokes after it finishes, that didn't matter. And it had Jack Dee as chairman, who was very good. At the end they dressed Jack Dee in gold tinsel and gold tinsel-edged reindeer antlers, and gave him some jingle bells. He looked ecstatic about it.

I drove to work on Tuesday, having not driven since a week last Friday. It turns out that's quite a long time not to drive, as I was struggling to remember how to drive. I'd happily get the bus to work more often if it wasn't for the fact that it takes twice as long, has no heating, only goes once an hour so is useless if you have to stay late and costs more than driving. And they wonder why no one gets buses round here...

I have discovered the secret to sleeping and breathing (apart from not lying down): don't move and give your chest plenty of room. Well, it worked last night. The trouble I've been having is that I keep coughing instead of breathing, which then makes my throat hurt more. I am now reaching the point where I really want to lie down and drink orange juice. I'm so sick of water and I can't drink my milk because it's just not that nice.

Yesterday I realised that my dry throat and cough was actually a sore throat and asthma. Although the latter improved a bit this morning when I realised that my brown inhaler had run out. The trouble with inhalers that the only way to tell they've run out is if you take the canister out and shake it, and can't feel or hear anything moving in it.

Of course, the only two nights I have anything on in the next two weeks are Monday and Tuesday. Which is just typical. But given how busy I've been and all the bugs that have been going round work, I'm not at all surprised that I'm ill. Just glad that it's warmed up a bit.

On the plus side I now have a clean house and lots of food due to shopping and baking.

Also, after thinking about it for the best part of two days, I put myself in the anonymous holiday love meme.

If I ever needed proof of how rubbish electric heating is, I got it yesterday. I turned my oil heater off while I was away for a few days and when I got back, just as it was getting dark, it was 13.4C in the house. I opened the fridge and it felt warm inside.

It's been so nice to have a break from work and other (mostly Rotaract) activities. So this week I have:

• Read a couple of books, one on my Dad's ebook reader. I discovered that wearing gloves indoors makes your hands sweat after a while, but by that time the ebook reader has generally warmed up enough to touch it
• PC World had the latest Sony ebook reader and it is much better than the old one. I want one! But since one of the things I was going to read on it was Sherlock Holmes (I haven't read any and they are out of copyright) and my parents bought me a book with all the stories in, I have even less reason to buy one now
• Also because I bought a new netbook... I've wrecked the old one, and it did have a crap operating system to start with (Linux Linpus). The new one is red and I'll be putting Ubuntu on it at Christmas.
• I've played with my sister's iPad. For half an hour and that was enough. I don't feel the need to spend any more time on it at all. So I definitely don't want one of those.
• The cat is just as mad and sweet as ever. And likes sleeping on the printer...
• I have finished my Yuletide fic! For some reason I only managed to get anything written on this on Mondays, but it has gone off for a beta, so I can get started on some fandom stocking stuff. And by started I mean I have a list of names with links. At some point I'll have to decide what to do for them...

So after a week with lots of work, lots of Rotaract stuff, but fortunately less snow than everywhere else in the country, as far as I can tell, I now have some time to catch up... and am too dizzy to do anything. On the plus side, I have written the first draft of my Yuletide fic, lying down. The rewrite is going to require more of a brain, though, but probably also involving lying down while I write it.

But I am determined to participate in fandom_stocking this year, because I'm not moving house and don't have flu (yet). So mine is here and I will be putting things in other people's. During Christmas week if necessary.

I'm so busy at the moment it's crazy. Work is busy and then I have things in the evenings and when I don't I'm so busy catching up that I never manage it. Mind you, it didn't help that there was tennis every evening last week. And then we went to see the final on Sunday. And took 73 photos... Read more...

I don't like this weather. It's not the weather itself that I dislike - I quite like it when it's cold and sunny, as it is now (well, before the sun went down). But I hate living in a house where the crockery and cutlery is too cold to touch and you're only warm if you're wearing three jumpers, three pairs of a socks and a pair of gloves. It's very difficult to type in gloves. However, I do have an oil heater that I bought last January that I have switched on now it's reached that point. I am now pleasantly warm while wearing two jumpers, which is a vast improvement. It vastly improves my outlook on the world.

Except for the threat of snow. I grew up on the south coast where it only snows every three or four years. Or did while I was growing up. Although it didn't snow while I was at uni, which was further north than I am now, it has snowed every year I've lived here. Including two years when it started snowing and settling during the day (although it was dark), which I'd never previously known was possible. And two years (that would be the last two winters) where it's snowed and not melted for a week. Until then I'd never seen it last more than a day. So to me this is all a bit unnatural.

What makes it worse is not knowing if it's going to hit. If it does snow my choices on a work day are either to get up early and get the bus in (so I have to set my alarm early the night before) or work from home. Which is slow at the best of times and really frustrates me. Plus I hate having to talk to people by email. And work is really cold the fewer people are in there. Although I taped up my window with masking tape, which helped a bit. And bought a heater to put under my desk, which helped enormously. I haven't got it out of the box.

Sunday I'm going to east London to see the tennis. So I could really do with there not being any snow to disrupt anything, especially as the tube strike means that some tubes might stop early (and it's a Sunday so there are fewer trains in general anyway). According to the TfL website it should be ok at the time the tennis will finish. If it isn't, there'll be 17,500 people all wanting to get across London...

Dear Yuletide Writer

First of all, feel free to ignore anything I've said in the prompts. If you can write any of those then that'll be great, but they're mostly just some ideas of what I'd like and something to give you ideas if you'd like them. At the end of the day I'd far rather get something you're proud of than something you're less happy with but fits in with what I’ve put down. I put in a few different prompts so hopefully there will be something in there to suit you. I'm not in any way expecting all of them - and some of them are mutually exclusive. Feel free to add in any other characters you like - as long as the one(s) I've requested are in there, you can bring in to the story whoever else you like. There aren’t any characters in these fandoms that I dislike.

Generally speaking, I love stories that have an emotional punch in some way. Whether it makes me laugh, cry, be happy, be all gooey inside, be shocked etc. What particularly fascinates me are parent-child relationships, particularly when they're not related. If you can write something that has that in, that would be amazing, but don't feel that you have to. I also like stories that explore the relationships between characters, whatever that relationship might be. I don’t mind whether you write something shippy or gen for any of the prompts, so long as you stick to canonical ships. I’d just rather not have any sex above a PG-13 rating.

If you're writing for one of the British TV show prompts and you're not British, then please get your fic Brit-picked. There's nothing likely to annoy me more than characters being out of character because they’re speaking American English when they should be speaking British English. If you're writing for one of the American TV show prompts and you're not American, then please get your fic American-picked, although I am less likely to notice this.

If you want to do more research then my fic recs can be found on this site. There are recs from a few people on there, mine are the ones that say they are recced by Paranoidangel.

For reference, here are my prompts: Read more...

I am still around, just had a busy two weeks. Usually I have Rotaract on Tuesdays and ballet on Thursdays. The week before last I also went to see Jeremy Hardy (who was interesting and funny). This week I also went to see Armstrong and Miller (who were very funny) and got up early to run around in the road collecting for Children in Need. In theory I rested last weekend, but actually I got lots of sleep and felt fine, so went to the shops, cleaned the house, did a load of baking and did all my Christmas shopping (online). Which turned out to be overdoing it... And I woke up annoyingly early this morning so I am really tired. So this weekend I am finishing off watching Dollhouse, catching up on the week's TV and watching the tennis. Which I'm going to see next Sunday (so that would be the final of the Masters final).

I thought, rather than do a catch up on what I've been doing or watching or what I've been thinking about writing and all that jazz, I'll have a questions post.

So, ask me a question about anything (doesn't have to be related to the past two weeks). And then I can answer it. Which I can do lying down.

The end of the series! Which is just as well now that Edwardian Farm has started on Wednesdays and what with SJA as well I haven't had time to watch it until the weekend. SPOILERS Read more...

The good part about watching SJA on a Wednesday is that I got to see part 1 with no annoying CBBC logo, which was a definite improvement. SPOILERS
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Lots of people online talking about ebook readers makes me want one. Well, I wanted one ever since livii showed me hers and even more so when Dad bought one and I read And Another Thing... on it. Since then they've gone down in price. But not enough. If it came with all the books I have on my shelves on it automatically, I'd buy it at the current price. Sadly, that's not going to happen. If it was £50 I'd buy one, but the cover and light is £50...

Technically speaking, there's nothing to stop me. I have the money, I just have more important things to spend it on. The main reason I haven't bought one is... I don't need one. I have a pile of books that I ought to read and an ebook reader isn't going to help with that. I rarely buy new books and you can't really get second hand ebooks... So basically I'd just use it for borrowing ebooks from the library and sticking pdfs on.

And then there's the problem of where/when I'd read it. I wouldn't take it to work because I'd get the piss taken out of me. Although it would help for the times when I don't want to take a book to work to read at lunchtime because I'd have the piss taken out of me. I wouldn't read it on the train, or anywhere public in case it got nicked. So I could read it at home, but you can't read it in the mornings in bed because it's too cold. About the one thing it is useful for is reading while you're eating because you don't have to hold the page open.

So in conclusion, I don't need an ebook reader. I wouldn't use it enough to justify the cost.

I also want an all-in-one computer - I played with them in PC World the other week. They're really heavy, but so cool. Well, ok, the cool part is the part where you touch the screen instead of using the mouse. Which is handy for solitaire. And probably surfing, but less useful for typing. Not least because you'd have to sit really close to the monitor to touch it, but then you're too close to it to see properly because it's so big. It's utterly impractical, but very cool. Needless to say, I don't need one. I already have two computers and I definitely don't have space for another one. But they're cool and I want one.

The one thing I don't want is an iPad. I did, until I played with one in PC World and it was exciting for the first ten minutes, then I got bored.

After having yesterday off it was so weird to be at work while it got dark - whereas everyone else had had that weirdness yesterday. And then I had to drive home in the dark and I'm not used to driving in the dark. And the small car park we have where the likelihood of hitting someone is about 90% has no lights. So that was fun. But then tonight's social got cancelled, so I watched SJA. And now there be SPOILERS.
Read more...

I've been home for a few days to see the cat, who is crazy. And very naughty. I get a few things done, then have to stop to play with the cat. He particularly likes paper. He takes it off to play with - no idea why but it keeps him happy. He also likes having a ping pong ball thrown up the stairs for him to chase. Or often for me to chase because he's just sat there and watched it. There are photos of him, some of them are new.

I have managed to change my blog about a bit to get rid of some of the crap I had down the sidebars, and only have one sidebar, so it doesn't look so cramped and busy any more. And discovered while I was doing it that my tag cloud didn't display. It does now. And I did my Remix reviews for Sel's website, which would have been so much easier if I'd done them at the time and not had to re-read them...

Writing-wise I have looked a bit prolific lately. Partly because I actually got off my arse and wrote stuff this month. I managed to write something for lotr_community: The Ghosts of Men about the Dead Men. I got my fic in for intoabar early: The Magic Ring where Maria Jackson unexpectedly finds herself in Rivendell. And I wrote an episode tag for SJA: Death of the Doctor by starting it before the episode was broadcast: The Importance of Family starring Jo.

For November there's picowrimo which is a mini Nanowrimo where you set your own goals. I haven't had the energy to do it the past few years, but this year I am going to finish my Four, Sarah and Harry end up in present day UNIT fic that I started a long time ago. I thought that after that I'd done every combination of Sarah and Harry fic, until I thought of two more I could write. So it seems not. And then there'll also be Yuletide, of course, but by the time the assignments have gone out and I've done some research it'll be late November by the time I start writing that.

I was going to write a review of this episode when I saw it, or last weekend, but didn't get to it. And I've been writing an episode tag and I wanted to check a few details, so I re-watched bits of this Monday and Tuesday night. And now I'm awake stupidly early, I thought I'd write it up now. And include the odd detail that came out of the BFI panel which I couldn't say before because they would have been spoilers. SPOILERS. Read more...