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.