I went to Oxford yesterday morning, to avoid the royal wedding because a) I'm a Republican and b) wedding's just aren't that interesting. Although when people ask I've just been telling them answer b, which satisfies them, even if they think I'm odd. Although, this is mostly girls. I don't think I've come across any men watching it out of choice.

Given that I still had money left on my Waterstones gift card that was my birthday present from my grandmother last year, and she gave me another one this year, early, I had lots of money to spend on Waterstones! Which doesn't go very far on new books, I found. I'm used to not spending more than £2 on books and most of the ones I buy these days are from charity shops.

But I spent £22 and for that I got:
Doctor Who: The Way Through the Woods by altariel
Mothers and Daughters by Kate Long
On The Beat by Graham Cole (which is his autobiography)

I've read The Way Through the Woods, which was good. And there was a mention of Barbara and Tegan. And a bit where I went, "Are you sure he remembers that?" and then tonight's Doctor Who confirmed that yes, he did.

I ended up spending an hour at the train station because I got there just in time to miss one train. The next one was half an hour later, which I missed because I got distracted by reading and then the train left a minute early (when does that ever happen?). But it was just as well because I was tired and dizzy by that point and needed a rest and Waterstones only really make a token effort towards seating among the books.

I was going to be all productive today, but then I wasn't much. I did play with the cat in the garden a bit. I hadn't seen him since Christmas and now he's a fully grown cat. Pictures to follow once I get round to uploading them.

But I did sort out, with my sister, what Olympics tickets we want to apply for. We ended up with the maximum number of sessions at £1550 between us... But think we'll only get half of them, if we're lucky, so it won't cost too much. And it'll be the price of a holiday, so it'll be my holiday for the year.

In an effort to wake me up from the hot weather and holiday stupor, have a meme, that I saw on lost_spook's LJ:

Give me the name of a character and I will tell you the following:
1. How I FEEL about this character
2. All the people I ship romantically with this character
3. My non-romantic OTP for this character
4. My unpopular opinion about this character
5. One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon.

PS Doctor Who was good, I liked it. And if anyone's not following Stephen Fry on Twitter, who announced it this morning, John Sullivan (writer of Only Fools and Horses) has died. It's clearly that sort of week.

I am, amazingly, up to date on Midsomer Murders! Well, until tomorrow. I struggle to get round to watching it because I have to cross stitch while it's on (or watch it in bits) because it's just so slow. I wish they only had an hour and Taggart had their two hours back. But aside from that I am liking the new bloke. Although the last episode was like a Drop the Dead Donkey reunion - it had Alex (with dark hair), George Dent and Dave in it.

Then Lewis, of course, keeps on having people in who've been in other things. I spent the whole of the last episode going mad over the psychiatrist's assistant. It was only after I'd finished watching it that I looked it up on imdb, which thankfully is up to date on the cast per episode. So then I found out she was Jasmine in the new Reggie Perrin.

On the subject of murder mysteries, on the advice of hhertzof I think it was, I tried an episode of Castle. And it turned out to be good! This is unusual because American cop shows spend too much time on soapy stuff and not enough on the crime. But Castle have got the balance just right - which is quite impressive given that they have 10 minutes less than an hour long program on ITV.

And lastly, Red Dwarf is coming back. I'd be excited about it if I knew it was going to be good. But the three episodes they did at Easter a couple of years ago were not that great. I can't decide whether I want more Red Dwarf, or I'd rather it died if it wasn't going to be good. Although it is going to be on Dave, so it will be shorter by definition. Mind you, I'd love to go to a recording, even if it wasn't very good.

Today I posted my Remix fic. Which took ages - I can never get the A03 form right. But at least the archive was fast for once. But I did do it this morning, which probably helps. All I have to do now is wait for it to go live and the archive to go slow.

I am working on the rewrite/first edit of my Big Bang story. The rewrite and first edit are usually separate things, but I'm doing them in one go. The week before last I resented it a bit because I was trying to do a scene a night and it was taking up all of my evening that wasn't spent lying down (I can type while lying down, but it makes my back hurt). This week's been a bit better, partly because I've been staying up later to see if that'll make me sleep later, but also because I spent half the week to tired to do any writing.

But I have 24 scenes in this version and I have done 14 of them. So I am over halfway through. It's looking like it's going to be 20,000 words, if each scene that I'm keeping comes out a third as long as the first draft. So then I'll just need to find 5000 more words in the next couple of edits. I have two months until Wimbledon, when it'll need to be done, so at the moment it's looking doable, fingers crossed.

And since I posted a snippet at the Sci-Fi Big Bang comm, I will post it here too. Read more...

I'm really liking the people I work with at the moment. I keep remembering back to when I was going to SG cons and I hated how at work all the talk would be of Eastenders and Big Brother, and the cons were the only places I could talk about interesting TV (in person, obviously I can on the internet).

And then the other day someone mentioned that Dave are making more Red Dwarf. Someone else was talking about Kochanski and said "You might remember, but she was played by someone else at the beginning." Someone else pointed out that "You might remember" was a really stupid thing to say because of course we all do. And then we had a discussion about exactly which series which actress was in, what Craig Charles was up to and how the new episodes a couple of years ago weren't that good.

Other discussions this week have included a chair that makes you feel like Captain Kirk and whether you can hook one leg over it, wearing your pants over your trousers, when Doctor Who starts again, the varieties of Star Trek, Forbidden Planet and the late lamented Friar Street Bookshop.

Also, Tablets, Ubuntu 11.4, IE9, Safari and Macs. Most of these were work related.

Back at the beginning of the year I made a resolution to have one day out a month. I had things planned for the first three months anyway, so I've been doing that. And now after a busy March I've had some time to clean and get some jobs done (last weekend) and relax (this weekend). And book some more things out:

June - I have tickets to the finals at Queens! I was expecting a stampede when they went on sale at 10am on Wednesday, but I could have got any tickets at all. And at 10.30 there were still tickets left for Centre Court on the Sunday. I've never been to Queens before and it will definitely make up for not going to Wimbledon this year.

March - this doesn't count as a day out, but I am going to see Chris Addison on his next tour. Yes, this is March 2012. But he's coming near here and how can I not go? And there shouldn't be anyone I know likely to get married then.

This still leaves April. I've been thinking about getting away from the Royal Wedding. Especially if there are likely to be street parties anywhere. And to celebrate my birthday. So a day out would be a good way to do it. But I can't go to London or to the seaside (since it's the start of the May Day bank holiday weekend) or anywhere full of tourists. So I think I might go to Bletchely Park since I've wanted to go for ages and there's a coach to Milton Keynes which is ridiculously cheap. I am quite happy to go on my own, but does anyone want to come along?

You wait ages for one, then three turn up at once. Then two won't let you on and the third turns out to be going somewhere else. At least in bus analagy.

I want to move to a two bedroom house (which I've worked out I can afford). So then I'll have more space for my stuff, a garden and I want a garage. And decent heating.

Admittedly I hadn't done much because I was busy and ill. So last Saturday a house came up that didn't have a garage, but given the scarcity of them, I thought I ought to at least consider it. So I arranged to see it yesterday. Then on Monday a house with a garage came up. So I arranged to see it yesterday. Then on Tuesday a big house with a garage came up that apparently hadn't been updated in a while, hence why it was cheap. On the basis that I couldn't tell if that meant it was alright or falling down, I arranged to see it yesterday.

Friday, one of the estate agents rang to say the house without a garage wasn't available because the tenants had decided to stay. Then another estate agent rang to say the big house wasn't available because someone had let it that day. Which left the one I liked most. So I went to see it and the estate agent had arranged for twelve sets of people to view it, all one after another! It turned out it had electric heating, so I don't want it.

So now I'm back to waiting for more houses to come up that I can go and see. This time I'll go at lunchtimes in order to get in first...