I meant to write something in here ages ago, but then I got concussion. Self-inflicted as well. I spent the whole weekend (and Friday) trying to think of what to write for this weeks Farscape Drabble. Just managed to write something (although it's currently only 96 words). I won't get it posted on time though as it will need revising and that will have to come tomorrow. I really haven't done anything to write about in the past week and my short-term memory's gone, so I really can't get anything coherent written down. Really must go to bed as I have to get up early tomorrow for work. Only 5 more days to go and then 3 off. Woo hoo!

Have been busy today and updated website. A bit anyway. I got the book for Once More, With Feeling, which had the sheet music inside. But it was really hard to play because I can't remember my chords. I went back to my old music books where they at least wrote them out, but it was still hard though. My bass clef reading was never that good to begin with. I found reading treble clef hard till I realised I was thinking about it too much. I wish I had the opportunity to practise more - I wish I'd done that right back at the start of uni. Why do I play an instrument that's expensive and not portable?

I happened to look at Friends Reunited, which I don't do very often and I found Marian had written something in there, just 6 days ago! We've only seen each other once since school, so now I have her e-mail address, maybe we'll be able to keep in touch better this time.

I wrote a drabble for the Weekly Farscape Drabble. I'm suddenly finding Chiana more interesting than I first thought.

I put all the bits of my Isildur/Haldir fic together. It started off as one 160 word scene. It's now 12,000 words! I have more I want to add as well. I'm quite impressed at the amount of plot there. I have some nasty thoughts about the Farscape epic (might not be quite as epic as that at this point!). Have been listening to my CD of 180megs on my DVD player. The manual for my stereo says it plays CD-Rs and CD-RWs. This one doesn't work on it though. So what it actually means is it plays CDs. So why bother saying that in the first place?

Got desperate for lack of Cornflakes, and determined not to order anything from Tescos till after Easter, so I had a choice between Kellogg's and Waitrose. Picked Waitrose as I know Kellogg's are crap. Turns out Waitrose ones taste of cardboard. At least I know now. I think they might actually be worse than Kellogg's cornflakes, which is quite impressive really.

Working on a pizza project really makes me want to eat pizza. I'm so tired, I feel bed and a book might be a good idea tonight, otherwise I won't last the weekend (no idea what I'm actually doing yet, mind you). Looking forward to lie-ins, downloading and Passover food at Easter.

Yay at Blogger! We'll see how long it lasts though. I'm up to 650meg for my CD of mp3s. A few of those need re-downloading though. I'm running out of things I can think of to download (although there are some things I want that I'm not quite so desperate for, so maybe a second CD at some point). Can't listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without thinking of the dirty version though - at least the bits I can remember. Have completely failed to make it to bed before 12.30 any night this week. And I have to get up at 9 tomorrow morning.

My books have arrived! Only took a week. So I've been reading the latest Jedi Quest book. It's nice to get back to TPM after I've been reading practically nothing but LOTR. Can't help feeling I should write some Obi-Wan & Ani stuff. It's interesting looking at the two of them together. Obi-Wan's trying to be more like Qui-Gon, but is actually more like Anakin. So it's kind of a case of 'do as I say, not as I do'. But Obi-Wan/Anakin slash? Ugh! And ew! Despite the fact they're closer in age, I'm happier with Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan. Not that I see their relationship like that, but I think it easier to deal with slash when the two characters already love each other.

I can just about cope with Elladan/Elrohir, as nasty as that is. But sometimes Aragorn/Arwen can squick me if I think about it too much - they both think of Elrond as their father, that's just weird. Have worked out how to use Scorpius/Braca in the unnamed-Farscape-epic. In fact, I think it'll solve some of my plotting problems. Should maybe start writing them down. I was thinking about the number of pairings in it, and as well as the aforementioned S/B, there's John/Aeryn and Crichton/Chiana. Also Chiana/D'Argo and Chiana/various Peacekeepers I suspect. That gives me an idea - Crichton/Peacekeeper red-shirt. Must go and read now.

It's really crap that it's nearly April and I still can't publish my template (ie update the archives). The address of them is fairly easy to guess from the addresses of the others though. I have another recommendation that I will add in there for when it eventually decides to behave. It's another LOTR fic (have I been reading anything else recently?) called Captain My Captain. It's VERY long and has, if not all, many of the Mary Sue cliches in it, but it works. And is very good. And I think I've fallen in love with her Elrohir. And I haven't even finished reading it yet.

Today is special. Mother's Day, first day of BST and its a palindromic date: 30-3-03. Although we'll get a few of those this year. In fact every month except for February, October and December. It occured to me last night there is no such time as anything from 1 to 1.59am on 30-3-03. Which is quite strange to think about. It's like when we lost 10 days in September all those years ago when they changed the calendar. It's reallt hard to understand because it just doesn't make sense. The trouble is the days go on one after another, we just assign arbitrary days and times to them. Which, unfortunately, don't work because they don't give us whole numbers.

Hopefully, now we'll have darker mornings I won't wake up at 7am (8 on weekends). Thought I was doing really well this morning by waking up at 9, but I didn't go to bed till after 2am (BST) and my body clock is still on GMT. I know this, because although the clocks say midnight I'm hungry. Which always seems to happen about 11pm. Should maybe go to bed with an undemanding Buffy book.

Uruk-Hai Unhappy with Portrayal in Films

Have booked my ticket to America, yay!

Discovered all these funny fics I'd missed on Bagenders because I hadn't discovered LOTR slash the last time I looked.

Have no hot water in the house, but at least have water and heating. Will have to get up early to boil water to wash with though.

Have been re-reading TTT VSD's, hence style of today's entry.

According to humanforsale.com I'm worth $1,362,000. Not sure anyone's going to buy me though. I've sort of sorted out my life this weekend, which was the plan. I have a job-related plan at least. I got myself all excited about the idea of getting a car as a solution to my fencing-related crisis but I realised yesterday that I would actually much rather spend the money on other things - holidays for instance. Getting excited about booking for Las Vegas this week though.

I meant to work on some fic today, which I did a bit of this evening. Had an idea for some serious Elrond-angst so had to write that up this morning. I think its a reaction to all this happy stuff, my head can't cope with it. Fan fic is all about making the characters unhappy, that's the whole point!

Going to have a busy week next week, which is good, as everything is back on. Work is going to be boring, I can already predict that, but then it always is. But only four weeks till Easter. Sod it, haven't had enough sleep this weekend. Going to do the puzzle instead.

I now have two new stories up at ff.net: I Can't Do This, which is a Star Wars TPM one I wrote a few years ago and found abandoned; and Dropping Eaves, which I've got finished before the challenge deadline, yay! And I wrote 2000 words tonight and downloaded a load more mp3s. I was nice to Haldir for a change, Isildur wasn't.

I noticed last night it was a full moon, so I thought that must mean something. According to my calendar it's Purim, which I have no idea what that is. Suggests apples for me for some reason, I don't know why. Probably has nothing to do with apples. But what it also means, and this is much more important, is that it's a month till Passover. First night is the Wednesday before Easter. Yay! Looking forward to nice food and a long weekend. And getting the spyware off my computer so it'll hopefully mean it won't spend ages thinking about nothing.

Finished Rendezvous with Rama - now I need to re-read the other ones, if I can just get hold of them. Have discovered loads of interesting stuff in LOTR Appendices though about the kings of men, so will have to read that, I think. I really want to watch The Bill but I need to save it till about 50mins before I want to go to bed so I can go to bed to watch it and be warm and warm my bed up at the same time.

Need a spell checker on Blogger! Not enough to pay for it though.

What I want to know is: who were the blokes with the suitcase of money in Auf Weidersehen, Pet in Comic Relief on Friday? I can't help feeling I should know, but I think they probably used to be big. Plus I never know what any musician (if that's the right word) looks like anyway. I now have a hole in my inflatable chair that I can't fix. I think I'll have to buy a new one next week. Just as well I picked up a new Argos catalogue last time I was in Oxford.

Slept till noon yesterday, which was good. Went to bed at 1am though cos my feet were cold. And I was bored. Still haven't watched the Angel episode I finished downloading on Friday. Might do that after Cold Feet if its finished virus checking. But probably not as I have loads of mp3s filling up my hard drive. I'm trying to get enough to fill a CD, so far I have just under 400megs worth, which lasts about 6 hours. I've got a few more ideas of songs to download yet though. Should keep me going at work and at home when the radio's really annoying me (so always then).

Very nearly have the final version of Dropping Eaves done (go me!) and managed to write another 1000 words of Isildur/Haldir. The latest bit is angsty though, which is my forte. Love writing angst, its so fun to do nasty things to the characters.

Spent most of today helping out at the world pooh sticks championships. I got to sort the sticks out again as I did it last year. But the marshalling of people went much better this year with more people. And I got time to have a go myself. I did spend the day facing the sun though, so it seemed really dark when I got in. Plus my face feels hot and looks a bit red, so think I have got myself sunburned already! And technically its still winter - although explain that to the daffodils.

Went out for milk and a pizza yesterday and came back with three books as well. Damn those charity shops! Although I don't have to worry about not having anything to read now, specially as I don't think I'll be going home before Easter to get my books and doubtless borrow one of mum's. Very annoying - they're resurfacing the hall at the lesiure centre so no Tae Kwon Do on a Monday for a bit. Now that Farscape's finished. I won't know what to do with myself - although I should really finish the LOTR DVD. And then start working through another one.

I actually remembered to watch Red Dwarf on Thursday. I thought it wouldn't be that exciting as I've seen it so many times before and it was only series 1. But it was great - I haven't seen any Red Dwarf for so long I'd forgotten how go it was (prior to series 7 of course). Must watch some more soon, I think. Blogger template still a pain in the arse, surprise, surprise.

Bit of shameless self-promotion: my contribution to Quantum Leap Virtual Season 9 is up - the printer friendly version is at http://quantumleap-alsplace.com/virtualseasons/season9/921p.html

More at the weekend.

From MaggieFic's Handy-Dandy Mary Sue Generator:

My Mary Sue Name: Angelique Foxworth
Eye colour: Gold-flecked Emerald
Hair colour: Sun-kissed Chestnut
Signature Scent: Antique Sandalwood
Paranormal Power: Time Travel
Specialised Skill: Master Diplomat
Distinguishing Mark: Navel Ring
Newly-Revealed Relationship to a Major Character: Cordelia Chase's Long-lost Twin

Which is all quite sensible in comparison to what you can get if you press the buttons often enough.

I've been reading The Official Fanfiction University of Middle-Earth which I thought would be crap, but its actually very funny.

I had a really bizarre dream last night that was a cross between Buffy, Lord of the Rings and Star Trek. Giles had turned into Gandalf and was leading the SITs from danger. In a possibly unconnected incident the entire Voyager crew died on a planet they'd decided to settle on. It turned out there was a deadly disease on it (which was why it was abandoned) and they couldn't get off again. Then my rational mind intruded and pointed out that they'd been alive in later episodes. Luckily the dream switched back to the Buffy/LOTR bit before I could work that one out. There was definitely a point at which me and Dawn (how we got there I don't know) were pealing potatoes that when peeled looked suspiciously like mixed vegetables. There were lifts involved earlier on, which were a bit scary. Or possibly they were stairs. But I slept for 11 hours which is good given that I forgot to turn my alarm off and woke up at 10 to 8 on Saturday morning. It was very cold and I couldn't get back to sleep again afterwards.

I went to see Daredevil yesterday. It was quite funny seeing an trailer for it today as they were saying how it was the movie event of the year (they all are, mind you) and the cinema wasn't exactly packed. The other advert that makes me laugh at the moment is the Vodafone one with a load of boys playing with their mobiles. At the end it says "How are you" and I keep thinking it says "How old are you".

I've finished my little LOTR fic. At last. Haven't put it up anywhere readable though. Cleaned out my hard drive by putting all the crap on a CD. My virus checker has gone from taking 2 and a half hours to 1 and a quarter.

Just noticed I created a new mini-Balrog by accidentally missing the r off Haldir's name. Whoops!

Whoops! Didn't slash my center tag yesterday.

I was really annoyed at a stupid (male) driver in a flash car today. Somewhere between work and home I have to cross the main road. It was really busy close to work, so I thought I'd walk on the other side and cross later. When I reached the mini roundabout I realised there weren't many cars about so I decided to cross there. There was one car turning right, so I stepped off the pavement intending to cross behind him. But for some inexplicable reason he decided this meant he would slow down to a ridiculous speed and by the time I realised this I had to take a few steps back onto the pavement because a load of cars had appeared behind him and another load were about to run me over. So then I got to stand there for 5 minutes waiting to cross, all because of one stupid idiot. How do these people manage to pass their driving test anyway? Bribery?

A couple of recs, the website that goes with Posh Nosh and Vila's e-mails.

A new LOTR rec - Legacy by Anglachel. Its about how Frodo comes to live with Bilbo. Its almost horrifying in places (I don't see any of the slash in LOTR) but it is quite sweet, and sad in places.

I got up in time to watch Quantum Leap on UKGold this morning and it was the only season 1 episode I haven't seen. It wasn't that good, but its always nice to be reminded how good the series was as a whole. If they did any more - TV movie or whatever - they couldn't do it without Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell though. I'm sure they can fit it in round Enterprise.

I considered watching Stargate on Sky One on Wednesday, but then it occurred to me that it would have adverts in it in annoying places and it clashes with The Bill. So I think I'll download it.

I have now watched every documentary on the Lord of the Rings DVDs. And I worked out how to get to the Two Towers trailer. I found a really funny set of fics yesterday - Bagenders. Its a cross between LOTR, The Young Ones and Father Ted. Its one of the few stories that have made me laugh out loud, the others being The Sith Academy (where Darth Maul is given menial rage-honing tasks to do by his master, Darth Sidious) and Daniel Jackson's Diary (similar to Bridget Jones's Diary).

I wasn't that impressed with Farscape last night. The story's been done before (Polymorph springs to mind for a start) and the ending seemed a bit contrived. The writers probably had it mind the whole time, but it doesn't explain why he doesn't tell her earlier. And Scorpius gobs in his eye. Ugh. He gets more gross with each episode.

Now this Lord of the Rings 'rumour' is funny. There's a site out there called What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex. Its almost worrying really. And lastly a nice Hobbit-theme piece of fanfic called The Care and Feeding of Hobbits.

I took a while, but I realised why I keep thinking The Two Towers should be shortened to TT, and not TTT. Its because there's no T at the start of FOTR or LOTR is there? Can we at last be consistent here?

The annoying thing about watching the FOTR DVD is it keeps making me want to read the book again. I'm nearly up to the Frodo and Sam bits of TT and thats only because I spent three and a half hours on a train (techincally there were two trains involved) reading it. I seem to remember the first time I read it (I'm on my second reading now) that I pretty much skipped the non-Sam and Frodo bits because they were boring. And I only had a week to read the second and third books (the first had taken me three weeks on its on, and I still skipped all the descriptive bits). Although I am liking any bits with Merry and Pippin in, and Aragorn and Gandalf are getting quite interesting too.

I have established that I can't find DVD Easter eggs even when I have exact instructions. It just doesn't work! Its no use typing numbers in, they just refer to menu items. Aah! It's doing my head in. But I do like the zoom button. There are some quite interesting documentaries on the LOTR DVD, its just hard to find anything amongst all the stuff on there.

Quick Nemesis review - it was good. I think there were some other bits they could have done differently and, going by the length of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, it could have been longer. But it was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. And I noticed one of the ships they were headed towards (but never got to see) was the USS Archer. Ever since Virtual Voyager had a shuttle Mayweather (last week, admittedly) I remembered to look out for anything like that.

I added some fic recs, one for LOTR which is one of the few I've seen that isn't slash. She's also written some other stuff, all focusing on hobbits. The Elves one is very funny. Also strange, but thats the point. I'd add another journal, but unless you've seen Buffy season 7 so far (in America) it will totally spoil it. I can't even add the link without the address revealing so many things. So its not going in here until we're halfway through it on BBC2. Assuming this journal, and mine, still exists, that is.

Quick Farscape review - I thought we found out in Look at the Princess that Crichton has two sisters? I could have heard wrong though. It was very interesting, and sad at the end. Now we're back to the rest of the season after that 2 week break on Earth. And hah! to all the Americans out there.

Martouf 87 %
Martouf comes complete with Lantash, his Tok'ra symbiote, although Lantash is quiet most of the time. Marty is a romantic soul, but there's a darker side to his character...

Which seems fair enough to me.

Have finally managed to update my web site as well now. Plus another fic rec, this time for Alias: The Invitation by Rhonda. Thinking about the 100 Things about me meme as well, might get to that at some point.

Going to buy a DVD next week! I'm all excited and so broke its unreal. And don't get paid till Tuesday.

Feeling bored already and I haven't even been home a whole day yet! Took advantage of having a fast connection to download a load of music videos - I recommend Die Another Day by laurajo. It's listed near the bottom of the page. Watching all these videos is almost inspiring - almost because I wouldn't know where to start and don't have the time anyway.

Going to see Lord of the Rings tomorrow. I'm going to get my website updated at the moment. Dad had a demo of Unreal Tournament 2003on one of his computer mag DVDs, so I looked at the specs for it:

Operating System: WIN 98/ME/2000/XP
I have 98, so can just do that one

CPU: Pentium III or AMD Athlon 733MHz processor (*Pentium� or AMD 1.0 GHz or greater RECOMMENDED)
So Pentium II 233MHz probably not going to cut it then?

Memory: 128 MB RAM (256 MB RAM or greater RECOMMENDED)
How about 16Mb RAM?

Hard Disk Space: 3 GB
Total hard disk space: 6Gb, unused: about 600Mb (and thats quite a lot for me)

CD ROM or CD/DVD ROM: 8X
I'm not sure what my CD speed is, but the CD writer is 20x - finally a requirement I'm over the minimum for

Video System: 3D Accelerator card with 16 MB VRAM (*32-128 MB VRAM RECOMMENDED) 16 MB TNT2-class DirectX� version 6 compliant video card. (*NVIDIA GeForce 2/ATI Radeon RECOMMENDED) DirectX� version 8.1 (Included on game disc)
Well the original required 4Mb of video memory, it just about worked with my 2Mb, so I think not somehow.

The computer I want would cost �3000 but it would have 100Gb hard drive, CD-RW/DVD drive, 1024Mb RAM and 1.8GHz. But I would end up having the same problem in a few years time, so I think on balance I'd much rather go to Vancouver. I also really can't muster up the energy to think about having to set it all up.

I'm gradually adding more blogs to my collection of ones I read. I will update this page at some point to put them along the top. Annoyingly there's one I can't seem to get to here (I tried twice yesterday and it crashed ie twice), but there was a recommendation for a Farscape music video there which was Right Here, Right Now. If you've never seen the video to the song then its kind of a history of the species. The Farscape version is kind of a history of Farscape and its really cool.

I watched Celebrity Wheelchair Challenge on Channel 4 this evening, which was really interesting. The idea was that three celebrities would spend a couple of days in a wheelchair. They had specific places to get to and they all had such problems. It really showed what life was like for disabled people, wheelchair users in particular. It also makes me really grateful that however crap I think life is, at least I'm not disabled.

I did three CDs at work today. For some strange reason it will write on the 32x CD-Rs at 40x, but only 32x on the 40x CDs. In what world does that make sense? The faster ones are at least bigger and its not actually that much slower. I took the time to write down some plot for my planned Farscape epic and a few things about it sprung to mind. So I now pretty much have the backstory down, I just have to think about whats going to happen and where the story will start and finish. At the moment I can see three possible endings:

1. They win and everyone lives happily ever after
   
2. They lose and everyone dies
   
3. They win one battle but are left at the end to carry on fighting the war
   

I can see the picture of Trip in the bottom half of this window as I write this and my eyes keep straying!

Words subject to change, but about the only part of what could in theory be quite an epic Farscape fic not subject to change:
Rygel - who only ever thought of himself and his stomachs - gave his life for Moya's.

Tired. Done nothing much really today. Not looking forward to going back tomorrow. Although I did work out I'm not going to be in till the 14th. Must write some e-mails to send when I get back.