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...

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.

This week has felt so long. After not being very busy at work for months, this week I was suddenly really busy. I was definitely ready for it to be the weekend on Wednesday, after I'd worked late on Tuesday, then come home and did some more work. But I still made it to ballet on Wednesday, which did make me less tense.

The crazy part is that I can't quite believe it's gone from being hot enough to need the windows open all evening to being so cold the heating needs to be on in the space of a week. This time last week I was at home, trying to take photos of the cat (who really doesn't pose). But he did recognise me, even though I hadn't been home since Easter, which is good.

Before work got busy I finished off my girlsavesboyfic fic, and have now managed to get the time to post it: Winds of Time (When Ian is lost on a cold, empty planet, it's up to Barbara to save him.)

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...

I've been home for a few days to see the cat, who is crazy. And very naughty. I get a few things done, then have to stop to play with the cat. He particularly likes paper. He takes it off to play with - no idea why but it keeps him happy. He also likes having a ping pong ball thrown up the stairs for him to chase. Or often for me to chase because he's just sat there and watched it. There are photos of him, some of them are new.

I have managed to change my blog about a bit to get rid of some of the crap I had down the sidebars, and only have one sidebar, so it doesn't look so cramped and busy any more. And discovered while I was doing it that my tag cloud didn't display. It does now. And I did my Remix reviews for Sel's website, which would have been so much easier if I'd done them at the time and not had to re-read them...

Writing-wise I have looked a bit prolific lately. Partly because I actually got off my arse and wrote stuff this month. I managed to write something for lotr_community: The Ghosts of Men about the Dead Men. I got my fic in for intoabar early: The Magic Ring where Maria Jackson unexpectedly finds herself in Rivendell. And I wrote an episode tag for SJA: Death of the Doctor by starting it before the episode was broadcast: The Importance of Family starring Jo.

For November there's picowrimo which is a mini Nanowrimo where you set your own goals. I haven't had the energy to do it the past few years, but this year I am going to finish my Four, Sarah and Harry end up in present day UNIT fic that I started a long time ago. I thought that after that I'd done every combination of Sarah and Harry fic, until I thought of two more I could write. So it seems not. And then there'll also be Yuletide, of course, but by the time the assignments have gone out and I've done some research it'll be late November by the time I start writing that.

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.

Now that the Yuletide authors have been revealed I can reveal that I wrote a 5000 word Press Gang story, Hoops and Bumps. I didn't intend to write any full length treats because I knew I wouldn't have time. But while I was writing this one I had some Spike and Lynda banter I couldn't fit into the story, but wanted to use. So I made a story out of it and ended up with 1003 words for selenay936: Memories Are Not Made of This. I had wanted to write some short stuff on Christmas Eve, but I was just too tired and work had been too busy and I didn't have the energy or time.

Although I didn't mean to, I managed to read everything I wanted to in the archive on 30th December and therefore two days before the author reveal (as that was quite late yesterday). In the past couple of years I've done a recs list of everything I've read and enjoyed (and therefore commented on) but it was just never going to happen this year. But I have already reviewed nine (I think it was nine) stories for Sel's site.

And on a completely different subject, I took some photos of the cat (the first three of these). He is very sweet and a complete idiot.

I think there were other things I've been meaning to blog about, but I'm buggered if I can remember what they might have been.

I only came up with my adventure weekend post after I saw a short program on Friday night about an island of bunnies: Skomer Island, off South West Wales. It's open from April to October but given that we are talking about Wales here (although it apparently has less rain than the mainland) it's going to be better in summer. Plus there should be more baby bunnies about. So that's something I'm going to do one weekend next summer. Expect lots of bunny photos. (Incidentally, the one in my icon my dad took when they went to Monkey World - they have a few bunnies there, so dad took some photos of them specially for me).

On the theme of bunnies, this reminded me that the Donkey Sanctuary not far from here has bunnies. You can only really get to it by car, and as it's nearly on the way to Tescos I ought to be able to drive there myself. So at some point, in the light, I'm going to up there to prove I can, then see about being able to help out with the bunnies.

On an entirely different note, last night's Spooks, noooooooooooooo! I'd say more but anything I tried to say non-spoilery and therefore cryptic would give the game away to Melli. I had started on the second draft of my SJ ficathon fic just before it, intending to continue later but I forgot Spooks tends to make you not able to think afterwards. I think I need it on DVD.

On the plus side, my ZoneAlarm is now fixed. Phew!

Flickr's RSS feed thing is great. I discovered, while working my way through my feeds that my dad had updated theirs. They went to Monkey World today and took photos of bunnies, specially for me. Which makes me happy. (Doesn't take much, I know)

And now for something completely different, more from Sex Tips for Girls:
Read more...

Some links to begin with:

419 Eater - This is a guy who scammed the scammers and a record of the emails they exchanged.

In yesterday's Guardian, Sophie Aldred had a little column: Time travel for beginners. However, the big new spoiler is in the first paragraph and links to similar stories at the bottom includes the not-quite-so-new-any-more spoiler. The non-spoilery bit in the middle I've copy and pasted to the Ace comm

My dad's obviously really busy now he's retired and he sent me a link to that very dangerous website whose tagline is completely true - it's full of stuff I really want but don't actually need. This is a USB missile launcher and there are even videos of it in action.

My gupi has once again proved it's a boy. For some reason it kept on crying and refusing to walk anywhere no matter how much I stroked it or plugged it into the mains to recharge it. Turns out he was really unhappy and wanted me to stroke him while he had his carrot in his mouth. Hmm. Anyway, now he is perfectly happy and running into things and laughing again. I will bring him to the windmill.

I really enjoyed the Baghdatis/Nadal match today. It was great when I got home and watched it. I've not really watched much tennis this fortnight, mostly I've listened to it on the radio, which isn't that unusual. This evening they really annoyed me at one point whenever Baghdatis won a point they showed his family up in the players box celebrating. Who cares? Not me, I'm watching the tennis. They do have an annoying tendency to show really weird angles so you can't see what's going on and a couple of times when Nadal was actually about to serve, rather than just pissing about, as he does, they showed a very close up of Baghdatis. And what's the point of that?

On the plus side, the Radio 5 commentators are much better than the TV ones, not least because they don't include John MacEnroe or Virginia Wade. I'm really looking forward to going there on Sunday, just as long as we can get a place on Henman Hill (we have Court 1 tickets and frankly, I'd rather see the men's final).

The second coolest fake pet in the world: Sam the Cat. My sister has one - he purrs and breathes when you stroke him. And when his batteries haven't run out.

The coolest fake pet in the world is Intelligent Guinea Pig it runs round like a real pet and everything! I so want one.

I enjoyed last night's Doctor Who, although it could have done without the addition of dad's computer mysteriously playing up in the middle. But they went to an alien world! And it was a quarry! And it was exciting. I'm really hoping next week's resolution isn't going to be a letdown.

Then we watched an episode of The Avengers where a guy has a machine that sends criminals back in time. Only at the end do you discover how they do it - it's very clever. I only have one colour episode to go now! (and about 22 black & white ones, so I think they'll last a while)

I went home this weekend, which means I came back with a whole load of food and some books. Saturday dad went to the OU in Milton Keynes, so he got up early and consequently we were all awake. Except the cat, who was taken to bed by mum. So we were all wrecked on Saturday.

Saturday was the Blakes 7 Dorset group Christmas party, which was good fun. Although I could have quite happily fallen asleep in front of Hitchhiker's. I could have quite happily fallen asleep in front of Rosemary and Thyme later on as well. As it was cold the cat decided to come to bed with me and slept all night, despite having slept all day (it's a hard life being a cat, obviously). A warm cat on one side is no substitute for quilt on the other, but he did wake me up from a bad dream, so he was forgiven. And also didn't take over too much.

Me and dad had an argument about the CD drive in the Atlantis episode Michael that involved watching the relevant bit of the episode three times, and we still disagree. He thinks Trip just took the CD out with no trouble at all, I think it did involve the usual pulling you have on laptops (well, Dell ones at least, which is what they have on Atlantis). This did, though, lead to a discussion about how they were powering them and just how many they had in the place anyway.

I also made good progress on reading my height in books. I read the latest Seven & Ace Doctor Who on the train on the way home and the other half on the way back. And I read Three Men in a Boat while I was home (which was really funny, if confusing because he keeps going off on a tangent, so you never quite know whether he's talking about that trip or another one). So I am now 4.1cm into my 155cm.

4.1cm / 155cm (2.6%)

First, there was Doctor Who on Children in Need; which was quite interesting. Although its only a month till the Christmas Invasion now. The funniest part was when Terry Wogan introduced it, saying it was exclusive - for all of three hours, anyway! Then he was easily spotted in Harry Potter, along with Roger Lloyd Pack (Trigger) and George from Drop The Dead Donkey. I enjoyed it, despite the length and the annoying under-12s who didn't shut up.

Yesterday, I got up early to collect money for Children in Need from people in cars waiting at the lights at the crossroads. It was actually not too cold, once you get going, although it did help that I ways wearing loss of layers. I then had the day off, so I went back at 12pm to stand in the sun (which was actually quite hot!) and collect more money.

I was really tired after that, but last night Merlin was curled up at the top of my bed looking smug and not leaving me any space to sleep in at all. Luckily, he doesn't mind too much being moved and was happy when I stuck bits of me under him. Once he settled down and stopped purring I actually slept well, although at 3am he wanted to go out and I discovered he'd been making me quite warm. And blocking my noise up. last night during Atlantis he'd made my eye itchy so I am definitely allergic to cats (I've lived with them all my life, so its probably safe to say I'm not that bad!)

I have been good and updated my website. Including music video recs that have been sitting around on my hard drive since January...

I was supposed to be playing tennis tonight but I stil hurt too much for that - but I can move a lot more than yesterday. So I'm not actually out a single night this week, so I am trying to be good and get things done. It's working so far but there's still plenty of time for it to go downhil...

I was followed home by a dog today who was very nice and just sat and wagged its tail while I stroked it. Which was more pleasant than next doors dog who is a bit enthusiastic - which is hard work in a big dog.

I feel much more relaxed after my holiday now. Okay, so it was a long weekend at my parents but I didn't have to do any washing or cooking, I got ferried round by my sister in her new car (so she could practice driving) and, more than that, there was no work, no Rotaract, no nothing I didn't want to go near. Of course, now I keep thinking it's Monday.

Unbelievably, the trains were just the right amount of late on Friday night that I didn't spend all that much time hanging round at stations. Neither were they too busy because I left an hour late. I wrote fic on the train as well, go me!

Saturday was the annual water fight in a quarry - the fact that it was used for Blakes 7 and Doctor Who filming is merely an afterthought and more of an excuse to have a good time. I was amazed it was nice weather because it's been so crap for a long time. But it was hot and sunny and it was good to get covered in cold water. I managed to tan bits of my feet as well (usefully).

Sunday I went to see King Arthur. The cinema was really hot, which didn't really help, but my sister (who went with me) had to explain the whole plot afterwards because I was so lost. Honestly, she picked up all sorts of bits that were quite important and I completely missed, like what Arthur was fighting for, for a start. So not a great success on the part of the filmmakers then.

Monday we went to Monkey World. I have the photos to prove it but I haven't quite managed to plug my camera in yet. It was cool to see all the animals they talk about on the telly. My parents spent all the time talking about how much it had changed since we last went (which was the year after it opened, apparently) but all I can remember from that is Amy the orangutan. Pictures just don't get across just how big adult chimps are either. They had a bunny there as well, which was stretched out in the shade and generally unimpressed at meeting me.

We spring cleaned my room as well. So now there's plenty of space for more stuff! And I found some things I'd forgotten I had, so that was quite productive. And didn't take long, since mum had already done the cleaning part. I took down a fair few posters as well. Blu-tac goes all sticky when it's old, and hard when it's older still. I think I still have some up my fingernails.

Then I came back here last night to find they'd had a storm and consequently a power cut. Of course at home, they'd had a few spots of rain and it was bright sunshine. My landlady has an electric cooker, so just as I'd given up (and finished my book) and had a sandwich, the power came back on. I had all these things I was planning to do last night and it was really annoying not to get to do them.

Then I was woken up by a moth flying in my ear. Which is very, very loud, and scary. I think I broke a piece of wing off getting it out, so there might well be a dead moth somewhere in my room. But at least it's not in my ear (I got the doctor to check - I was so paranoid I had to sleep with the light on).

My dad introduced me to Abilon, which reads site feeds from blogs (including livejournal). It's great, I love it! You can get my site feed from this address: http://www.paranoidangel.me.uk/atom.xml, which is also on the left hand side of the page. Obviously, it's paranoidangel42 for the livejournal version, but they're both the same.

And now I'll stop writing because I'm still on a Sirius/Remus thing, I have 11 alerts (ten from Stories of Arda, one from ff.net) to read, plus fileg's birthday present to avon (I'm a bit behind) and Sel's Five Things fic. And that's not including anything I have in book/zine form that will keep me going for some time. Do these people not know when to stop?

I tried to post this at 8.25pm on 2nd Sept, but blogger was being a bugger and didn't post it:

Didn't have a terribly good weekend, then today was really shite. I pretty much spent the day working on one project, on which everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And its still not finished. Will be nice to get it out of the way though. Discovered my landlady's cats have fleas because I've been bitten and also because I've seen them. Looking forward to going home this weekend as it'll be relaxing (yeah, right). Will have to go to Tescos, so might as well go to the cinema while I'm there as I still haven't seen Minority Report and The Importance of Being Earnest comes out on Friday, which I really want to see. Plus if I don't take my computer home I'll only get bored anyway.

Managed to miss Hywel this weekend, which was pretty much the reason for going to The Bill studios. Hopefully though I'll be able to get the day off for the next one, which will be before he leaves. I still have about 10 photos left on my film as well, which I'll need to use up at the Davis Cup match. Almost getting excited about that as well, not that much because I haven't really seen any of the US Open because BBC2 only show the semi-finals onwards, if that, which isn't much help as non of our guys are left in by that stage. And the year that Rusedski got to the final they didn't show it at all! I remember listening to it on the radio at 11 o'clock at night, in the dark, lying in bed, trying not to fall asleep. Have at least managed to find some good fic at the SG1 2002 Awards site, which is something.