Whoops, I haven't posted for a week. Work keeps being busy and I keep getting woken up by the boiler, so my evenings feel really short.

I got my Yuletide assignment on Tuesday and I got the fandom I secretly wanted to write. As I research I am appreciating my recipient's favourite character more and more. And I have started writing - I just need to find the time to write more.

This evening's short because the tennis was long - not that that's a bad thing. Today was the final of the ATP World Tour Final and it was a good, close match, so that was good. I went to the first semi-finals yesterday and saw Mirnyi/Nestor vs Bryan/Bryan, followed by Federer vs Ferrer. There are photos and some of them aren't blurry.

The doubles match was not terribly exciting. The Bryan brothers challenged at the end of the first set, but then went and sat down, so they clearly knew it was out and they'd lost the set. And then they challenged at the end of the match, but were trying to shake hands before Hawkeye had confirmed the call.

The singles was more exciting, but confusing. Whenever the umpire said Federer, then he was clearly talking about Federer and that was fine. But when he said Ferrer it could have been either. And after the first set Ferrer changed his white shirt for a black one, and Federer was already in a black shirt. So you had to pay attention to which was which based on the colour of their headband.

I got dizzy due to sitting in the dark and watching tennis. When I wanted to go to the toilet between matches and my sister didn't I had to get past people on our row without being able to hold on to her. But the people I passed started holding on to me!

Afterwards we stopped off at Westfield to go to the Lego shop. When we came out the Jubilee line was closed. We were really lucky we weren't coming out of the O2 when that happened because that's the only tube line from the O2. Whereas from where we were we could get back into central London on the Central Line. But it didn't help the busyness on the tube caused by people Christmas shopping and a load of lines being closed for the weekend.

We get to repeat the experience in just under two weeks for Coldplay, albeit on a Friday evening rather than Saturday during the day.

I have been meaning to post all week, but I've just been so tired. Work was busy and I keep getting woken up by the heating coming on. Which is bad enough usually, but was worse on Friday when I got up extra early to collect for Children in Need at 8am. I would have caught up on my sleep this weekend, if I hadn't been waking up early for no reason.

But I do have a meme from selenay936:

Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your blog/LJ/DW (or just add a reply back to me). Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

Read more...

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you for writing a story for me. The optional details are optional. I've just tried to give you some ideas of what I might like to see, but if none of them are your thing feel free to disregard them. I am sure I will love anything you write with the character(s) I've requested. Feel free to us any other characters you'd like - there are none that I dislike in any of these fandoms.

What I like:
- Stories that explore the relationships between characters
- Stories that explore characters
- Scenes/fic that is like it could be (part of) an episode

What I dislike:
- Sex scenes, so nothing over PG-13 please
- British people using Americanisms and American people using Briticisms
- Relationships other than those in canon (and the exceptions noted in my optional details) - but you can never go wrong with gen

I know there are two Sarah Jane-related fandoms on this list. Don't think that I'd like one of those more than the other two - I want each of these requests equally.

Below are my prompts: Read more...

I have finally finished my diet. When I started three months without anything I can't eat and sugar and yeast sounded like forever. Now I've got so used to it I can't remember what I used to eat.

But now I get to reintroduce foods one at a time to see if they make me ill. I'm starting with soya. When I first couldn't eat soya it seemed like it was in everything. Now I'm struggling to find things to eat with it in. It's my cheese, but I was eating that anyway, as I could tolerate that much. It's in chocolate, but the nicest (dairy free) chocolate is soya free. I've been forced to eat Swedish Glace ice cream, which is such a hardship as you can imagine. Especially since the only flavour Sainsburys had was Neapolitan.

After three months without cheese I had some in my sandwich at lunch. And it tasted so odd. Granted, it does anyway - it doesn't taste like cheese, hence why I like it. But ice cream tasted so odd too and I was eating that, albeit a different brand, three months ago as well.

Very excitingly today, I found out we got loads of Paralympic tickets. We were allowed to put in for ten session, so we went for all of the swimming at the weekends (six in total), all of the wheelchair tennis at the weekends (three in total) and then a wheelchair fencing. We got but one of the wheelchair tennis! So we're going to be going to the Olympic Park in September next year and seeing quite a lot of swimming. Which is good because we're not going to anything at the Olympic Park for the Olympics and not seeing any swimming.

One of my neighbours across the way has a black and white cat. After the first time it saw me it's been really friendly and bashing its head against my hand, wanting to be stroked. Today, when I got home I found it sitting outside my back door. Which wasn't that much of a surprise because there's quite a big gap under the back fence. But then it meowed to be let in! So I let it in and it wandered around my lounge and purred when I stroked it. When I decided I really ought to put the dinner and opened the back door it happily went out. It was a very good cat.

I hate it when people spell names wrong. Well, mostly mine, but I can do hatred by proxy too. It would have been more timely if I'd posted this on Friday, when I was called by the wrong name twice by email and Alexander Armstrong posted this to twitter about people getting his name wrong.

I have got used to people spelling my last name wrong so generally I spell it straight after saying it. It cuts down on people saying "Is that with an e?" me saying that it is and them then putting two es in. Yes, there is an e in my surname, but not there.

I have got used to people getting my pseudonym wrong. No one ever spells it wrong, but people do put random capitals and spaces in there. The only capital is a p and there are no spaces. Despite it being two words put together it really is one word. But I reached the stage of not caring about that long ago.

My first name, on the other hand, that I care about. People spelling the shortened form wrong is quite annoying, but people give you odder looks for spelling it than they do when you just tell them what it is, so I've given up on that and just don't look when they write it down, it saves time. My full first name on the other hand... There are some other spellings of it, but on the whole they're rare and people don't guess those. What they are incapable of is one letter that changes my whole name. That's not my name and it's not me and there's nothing that annoys me more than people getting that wrong. Even the Tories having a general election five days before my 18th birthday is only second on the list of things that really wind me up. Don't get me started on that.

So I get annoyed my proxy at people writing Sarah-Jane Smith or Elizabeth Sladen or Russel T Davies because that's not their names (and there's no excuse given that they're clearly written on screen). It's also because I can't personally mix and match spellings. I can't remember someone's name unless I know who it's spelt. Even though they're only one letter difference and pronounced the same, Clare and Claire are different. Perhaps it's the way my brain works, but it probably has something to do with why I can never remember character names on TV programmes. Although in that case it doesn't help that people mumble and pronounce things differently and it turns out that what you thought was Emma was in fact Erin.

So the moral of this story is, get my name wrong at your peril. Or at least be prepared to apologise profusely afterwards.

My October's been quite boring. I've just done nothing to speak of at all. Which is partly due to not having Rotaract any more, so I have much more free time, partly because I've not organised myself to do anything, partly because work's been busy because I've not had the energy, and partly because I just can't do that much anyway.

So I am being better for November. I'm already going to the tennis at the end of the month and home for a long weekend. At some point once I can get everyone to agree on a date we'll have a Wii night at my house, where we can use my big lounge to its full advantage. And I'm going to the fireworks on Saturday - I haven't actually been to a firework display in years. It looks like it might be dry, not too cold, but muddy.

I have still been going to ballet. Last half term there were only three of us, none complete beginners and it was nice to have a small class. Now we have more beginners and it's nice to see how far I've come in a year. Although I still get very confused. The most amazing part about it is that, given my dizziness, I am getting better at pirouettes. Last night I even managed a couple where I didn't completely fall off at the end. But when the Winter Olympics were on one of my exercises was turning round in a circle slowly, which I could just about do. So pirouettes is a major advance. I can't do many, but then I wouldn't have been able to do before I was ill either.