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.
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