My sole post all week has been the latest Big Finish releases, which included the subscriber special The Five Companions. Which was fun - I want to see more of Ian and Steven teaming up now.

Friday was our work Christmas party, which I've only just recovered from. All I did was to sit around and talk (and stand for an hour) but I was tired from it I slept for 11 hours Friday night, still felt tired and slept for 10 hours last night. Now I don't feel tired.

In the work secret santa for the first year in I don't know how many, I didn't get a Doctor Who related thing. I got a rabbit instead. Which is good, because generally you can't go wrong with with rabbits. However, this one has a hole in it that you're clearly meant to put something in, but no one knows what. There was no packaging, so presumably my santa doesn't know either. The most suggested things at the party were mobile, iPod and remote control. I tried putting my phone in it and the hole holds together too well to get anything in there easily. So I am stumped.

There was also food, which I mostly couldn't eat. The chef wouldn't understand that I just wanted to know what was in it, I didn't care about contamination, which she was more interested in telling me. I don't think she wanted me to eat at all. Fortunately, I brought my own - I remember last year well when I got a salad.

I have things booked for January now. I am going to see the Gymnastics at the O2. It feels like we can't get away from that place. I'm also going to see Spamalot. For the third time. But the first and second times were on Broadway and in the West End, this one's in my nearest city.

I have finished my Yuletide fic. And uploaded it. After I had it opened and the form filled in for ages while I tried to think up a summary (the title on the other hand came quite easily). I usually try to get it finished early, but I don't generally manage quite this early. The difference this year is that work hasn't been so busy for so long and I haven't had Rotaract. Usually I'd be dealing with our stall at the Christmas fair at the start of December, Cheese & Wine in January, various Christmas dinners and all the usual Rotaract stuff. It's actually been a quiet time of year, which makes a nice change.

Next I have six fandom_stockings to write. And I've signed up to write a 2000-5000 word Five Things fic for fivetimesbb. That's 400 words a thing it can't be too hard, can it? (famous last words). The current working summary for it is Five songs Johnny Chess wrote based on the stories his parents told him of their adventures with the Doctor in the TARDIS.

Along the same lines, but not involving actual writing, I am reccing for calufrax the first week in January. I know there were fics I wanted to rec last time but had to narrow it down. If only I'd written them down...

Of course, there's still Yuletide Treats. I haven't decided if I'm going to write any of those yet.

Friday I went to see Coldplay at the O2 in London with my sister. Read more...

It's definitely winter - my hands are dry and have started cracking This is even though I wear gloves whenever I'm outside or in the car, and for doing the washing up and when it's cold in the house I wear fingerless gloves. But there's only so much you can do and I'm not feeling desperate enough to wear gloves when washing my hair or showering. It's not as bad as when I had a rabbit because there are some things you can't do with gloves on because straw and food sticks to them.

But at least there's only 11 days of work left. Well, 10 and a half for me as tomorrow I am off to see Coldplay. Annoyingly we have to be there two hours before it starts to avoid the rush hour, as it's on the wrong side of London. And by the time it finishes we'll be on the last train and I'll get home at 1.15am! Which is why all I have planned this weekend is to catch up on some of the stuff on my PVR because that's definitely all I'll be capable of. I know I will enjoy it, despite the fact that I got dizzy last time I was in the O2 and the last time I was up that late at night I couldn't stand up without falling over...

This morning I had a massive excel file I needed to run one macro on. It should have been a case of setting it off on the super computer and coming back when it was finished ten minutes later. Instead it took two hours and involved me running it multiple times when it crashed, opening and closing excel multiple times when it refused to save, and copying out bits of the file when it refused to do anything.

And then my netbook refused to boot into Ubuntu. Fortunately it's a problem I've had before and did actually take ten minutes to fix, rather than the two hours it took the first time.

Don't you just love computers?

This weekend I was watching some of the publicity The Bill actors did the morning the last episode was shown. By publicity I mean appearing on things like GMTV. But they mentioned that Sean Bean was in episode 4 (back in 1984). It just so happens that I have that one on DVD and thought some of my friends list might be interested. So I have some screencaps. Read more...

It's been that sort of few days. Life was much simpler when it consisted of working out what toy the cat was going to play with that involved him doing more work than me.

In a couple of weeks time I'm going to the first wedding that's not an aunt's. Or I thought I was, it turns out I went to one when I was a baby. Funnily enough I don't remember that. So this'll be my fifth wedding. I'm looking forward to seeing my friends, but I don't really like weddings much. They're just overly sappy, and this one's in a church, just to make it worse.

Friday I booked to go and see the SJA preview screening, which will be good, but I'm going on my own. So then I spent a while wondering why I only have friends who like the same things as me but live too far away to do them, or don't have enough money to do them, or friends who live nearby but have no interest in the same things. Until I remembered that this is all ridiculous and having a good time doesn't require someone else to be there to have it with. Sometimes having someone else there is a hindrance. And when it comes to going to the theatre you can't talk during it anyway and I'm perfectly capable of reading a book before it starts.

So then we came to Saturday and I went to Rotary's Last Night of the Proms. This year they had a quartet play various things, then we sang some patriotic songs and waved flags. It was good. Specially as I won a £30 voucher for a really good Chinese near here. But I ended up the only Rotaractor there. I did know other people and I did talk to other people, but they all came with their other halves (the modal age was probably about 60).

And then I came home to an email from my (younger) sister to tell me she'd got engaged. Which is not unreasonable given that they've been going out forever (actually forever as well, not just my idea of going out forever which equals more than a couple of months). And given that I keep getting his name confused with that of her previous boyfriend, it's just as well that there won't be any other names to remember. At least she won't be getting married in a church, but I will only know various annoying relatives. Assuming she can't get away with not inviting them.

So suddenly it feels like the whole world has boyfriends or girlfriends and I'm strange for not having one and not wanting one either. Plus I only fancy arseholes, which isn't a help. I have to remember that actually, it's all these other people that are strange and most of my friends are single.

I'm having a month of getting things done at the moment. Today I've been going through my shelves and drawers, getting rid of things. I clearly haven't gone through them for a while, because I'm sure I don't need water bills and car insurance details for two houses ago. I've filled up a bin bag and a recycling bag and have a big pile of stuff to sell, charity or bin. Which would be a bigger pile if I didn't keep taking stuff off it and putting it back on my shelves.

On Monday evening I updated the plugins on my blogs, most of that time was spent trying to work out why OpenID didn't work. Eventually I discovered that it does work, it's just LJ it doesn't work with. But I can now choose my icons for this post on LJ and DW without leaving WP. If I just remember, as long as I remember to do it.

Today I've done so much that I'm completely worn out (although that's not helped by my neighbours waking me up at 7.30am by talking for ages). So I intend now to do nothing that requires getting up for another hour, at which point I have to go out anyway.

This afternoon we sat down to listen to the tennis we taped last night... and discovered it had rained in New York so they hadn't played. So now we need to listen to it tonight and tomorrow instead (depending on when they finish and if it rains).

So with the afternoon I suddenly had free, I re-did my LJ layout. It's less red, although I think it looks more red. It's all a bit academic anyway because the only people who will ever see it are people looking at my actual LJ, and me when I come across an unreadable one.

I also discovered the layout I have for Dreamwidth now has a sidebar on the left variant, which I've wanted ever since the layout existed. So now I have that. It's also red, suffice to say.

Since people are suddenly talking about Dreamwidth, I'll mention where I am. I write my posts in my blog, which automatically cross-posts them into my LJ: paranoidangel42 and my DW journal: paranoidangel. You're welcome to read or post in any of those three, I don't mind. But if you're reading by RSS then I would read the blog's RSS (or Atom) feed because it has more useful stuff in it.

Since I read by RSS, I don't care whether I read people's LJ or DW - unless one of them doesn't allow me to see full posts. So if anyone is crossposting to both and would prefer me to comment in one, then I can just change my link and I'll never notice the difference.

I've been meaning to post for days but have been distracted by too little sleep and a kitten. These things are mostly related.

I'm having a week's holiday from work at my parents with the new kitten. Who is mad. He was scared of me at first, but this morning, just after I'd caught up on my sleep and then stayed up late listening to the tennis, he wanted to play with me at 7am. Whereas I wanted to sleep... But I have been putting up photos of him on flickr. Basically, he's small, sweet, talkative and a complete pest. Whatever's going on, he wants to be in.

In between playing with the kitten I have read the latest Discworld book, I Shall Wear Midnight, which was good. And I've been reading lots of LOTR fic. Well, lots of Elrond fic, to be specific. I'm on the MEFA nominees that haven't been self-nominated now. I intend to write some reviews, but then I intended that the first year they ran and I still haven't written any...

At some point I will write some fic. But I looked through my archive and I have written a lot of drabbles. So I really want to write stuff that isn't drabbles. And I've decided to take this month off to do other stuff, like go through my bookshelves and get rid of some rubbish because I know the telephone manual is there, I just can't find it. And play some games - I've played a bit of The Fellowship of the Ring the Lego Harry Potter so far. I like that the former is third person but has a first person option. The latter is a bit of a pain because it doesn't recognise the mouse, and I'm used to using it to move with.

I like elections - I think of them like birthday presents.

When I got home today there was an electoral roll letter on my doormat. Well, in fact it had missed the doormat and was just lying in the hall, but that's not the point. I opened it, thought, "I suppose I just put this in the envelope and post it" when I looked closer to check. I discovered that if you don't want to change anything you can text them (which I didn't do because it didn't say if it costed, plus texting takes me forever) or you can call them, free. You just dial, press some numbers and that's it.

To be fair, it could have been like that for a while, but I've always had to change it. But I was quite excited about confirming I want to vote by phone. Of course now I have a form I don't know what to do with. I suppose to be on the safe side I should take it into work and shred it (as I'm too cheap to buy my own shredder).

I had intended to write a post about The Bill the night the last episode aired (in this country) and now I'm looking at a blank input box, I'm not sure what to write. I'm not sad, actually, possibly because the last episode wasn't as good as some we've had recently. Partly that comes of having everyone in it and it having a lot of Jack in a uniform (which I still can't get used to) and Neil Manson aka Dodgy DI (who seems to have had a personality change from dodgy to bland).

For anyone who hasn't got a clue what I'm talking about (which the Americans reading won't), The Bill is a cop show. Read more...

Back when I wrote some LOTR drabbles for my drabble a day month, I thought about how much of the whole universe I've forgotten. I thought a bank holiday weekend would be good for watching all three films, one a day because it's been years since I saw them. I didn't quite make it for the May ones, but I did manage it this weekend.

And it's not just facts I've forgotten either. I'd forgotten how funny and brave Pippin was, how loyal Sam was, how pretty Anduril was. And Elrond. I don't think he was right in the film, in terms of looks -he was too old and not pretty enough. But he spends most of the last two angsting over Arwen, and for that, I can forgive a lot.

I stopped writing in the fandom because I thought I've said everything I could about Elrond and Estel. Well, Elrond in general, but those two especially. And now I'm thinking there are loads of things I didn't write. Which could have been because I read them instead, but, that was years ago anyway.

I am currently re-reading Nilmandra's History Lessons because it's good and has lots of Elrond, but also because I've forgotten a lot and if LOTR is hard to get through (and it is - I hate description, Tolkien loves it...), The Silmarillion is worse.

I did, however, manage to write a drabble: My Heart and in the words of Samwise Gamgee: I'm back. Or at least, I intend to be.

And I leave you with my new found screen capping ability of one of my favourite scenes (despite not being in the book) as it features Elrond, Aragorn and an exceedingly pretty sword.
Read more...

I keep thinking I should update, but then I have nothing to say. I feel like my life has nothing going on it at the moment. Or at least nothing interesting. Which I've just realised is a terrible lead in to this post, which is a summary of what I'm up to... Read more...

Back at the end of May I signed up for a challenge to write 100 drabbles by early September (I forget the exact date). And I intended to write them all about Harry Sullivan, not knowing if that was possible.

And it turns out it is. I've written 100, 99 of which from his point of view. You can see them all using this tag. If you look at the tags at the end of each post that'll tell you who is in the drabbles in that post and when they're set. I started off posting them in sets with similar times and characters, but by the end I was mopping up a bit.

On the whole I quite enjoyed it. There were still some ideas I had to do that I had left over. It was good to get into the mindset and write 5-10 a day. But it's a hard way of writing 10,000 words!

1. Upon seeing a small tent-like thing by the side of the road you automatically assume there's a dead body underneath. Whereas it is in fact a BT tent to keep the rain off the engineers/hole. In hindsight, why I thought there was a tent concealing a dead body without any police cars or police officers around, I don't know.

I just went away and now can't be bothered with ordinary boring things. So in short:

• Work is not currently too busy! Although in saying that I'm sure I've jinxed it
• Yesterday it rained only while I was out. I do so enjoy shopping in the pouring rain and driving down the dual carriageway in rain so hard you can't see anything and not all cars put their lights on. Still, the last time I did that I had sunglasses on, so not having them on was a step up. And I did see a rainbow.
• I can't remember how many years ago it was that I bought my swimming costume, so it's not a surprise that it's wearing out. It was a surprise that it was so hard to find a new one. Everywhere sells bikinis and swimming costumes with shaped bits at the front, but if you actually want one to swim in, you have to go to the sports shop. Who had about three that were under 40" chest size.
• I have photos from Cheddar Gorge
• After telling people how none of my friends that I'm close enough to to be invited get married, I have been invited to a wedding. Which is a bit strange to me because I don't quite see the point of getting married, I refuse to set foot in a church again without a book to read to stop me from getting bored, and I was friends with them both before they got together. And I think that other people might be all sappy, saying how whatever they look together etc, etc, and I'll be thinking 'pass me the sick bucket'. I don't do sap. Fortunately it's in October, as both my dresses are black.

I tried to open Spotify the other day and immediately it told me it needed to download a new version but couldn't. Because my computer had disconnected from the internet. So I reset it, opened it again and the same thing happened. Which rather suggested Spotify was the culprit.

So the simplest solution was to download a new version. Which was instant. Installing it took less than a minute and it's now fine.

However, before I installed it I first wanted to create a system restore point. In XP I just went to the link I'd pinned to the Start Menu. In Windows 7 I stare at the Start Menu for a while before giving up. Fortunately, when I got Windows 7 I found a great site with tutorials on how to work it, so I went there and found how to create a system restore point. It's in Control Panel->System, nowhere near the System Restore menu, which is in Accessories->System.

I decided it's really silly to keep searching for how to do it every time and ended up following another tutorial which adds a shortcut to your desktop, which you just have to click and type your restore point in and it does it. Much quicker and easier. This is why I also have shortcuts to Start Menu for user and all users because I have no idea how to get to them in Windows 7 because right clicking on the Start Menu doesn't work.

Then I remembered that I wanted to add TextPad to the Quick Launch. In XP you dragged the shortcut. Doesn't work in Windows 7... I ended up going back to the same website to find where the Quick Launch lived and then sticking it in there.

I know Microsoft have done all this so people can't cock it all up (and people really can cock anything up on computers given half a chance). It's just that, by doing that, they've made everything so much harder if you know what you're doing. Which is the opposite to the version of Linux I have on my netbook, where if you don't know what you're doing you're reduced to copying and pasting into scripts... (which works, mind you)

I have nothing on this weekend apart from cleaning and catching up on sleep (which would work better if I'd slept later), so how about a discussion.

I think occasionally about what would be the worst job I could possibly do. Not because it's a terrible job per se, or something I couldn't do because I haven't had the training, but something that I just couldn't do no matter what.

I think the worst thing I can come up with is hearse driver - because I have a phobia of dead bodies and I hate driving.

So what's yours?

Our (unofficial) work car park is small and has no lines printed on it. After living somewhere where the parking spaces were really narrow, I tend to feel that if I can get out of the driver's side easily I've parked too close.

This morning I parked perfectly: I had to get out the passenger side.