What I’ve done on this:

• Wash my hair – Although the depressing thing about having put this on here is that I need to do it again on Tuesday
• Tidy
• Clean the flat
• Deal with things I’ve uncovered while tidying – might just be pay credit card bill, do finances and call Toyota to fix my car (which isn’t broken) – I mostly did this, but the Toyota service department weren’t in at the weekend, so they wouldn’t book my car in. Helpful.
• Make muffins, biscuits and flapjacks
• Read/reply to/do something with all the RSS feeds I have marked as unread in RSS Bandit I did do this, but now I have more
• Do some writing. I have about three things to write before the end of the month, so I should get on with it, really I wrote quite a bit last night and this morning
• Sort out what I’m going to say at our Rotaract talk on 18th – I have two minutes on the club non-fundraising stuff and one minute on me
• Only watch stuff on my PVR taped while I watched nothing but Olympics and also lovefilm DVD I finished the DVD and am down to just three episodes of Being Human out of all the stuff I taped while watching Olympics
• Do a load of washing today and another tomorrow
• Do monthly backup
• Get LibraryThing book list up to date

I would have managed all of it, except that I went for a walk in the afternoon. I felt great while I was doing it and for about five minutes after I got back, but despite lying down for two hours afterwards I just feel increasingly more terrible the longer I spend not lying down. So the rest will have to wait and I’ll get started on the Being Human instead.

Things I should do this weekend:

• Wash my hair (I know that’s something I’m hardly likely to forget, but at least this way I’ll get to cross something off)
• Tidy
• Clean the flat
• Deal with things I’ve uncovered while tidying – might just be pay credit card bill, do finances and call Toyota to fix my car (which isn’t broken)
• Make muffins, biscuits and flapjacks
• Read/reply to/do something with all the RSS feeds I have marked as unread in RSS Bandit
• Do some writing. I have about three things to write before the end of the month, so I should get on with it, really
• Sort out what I’m going to say at our Rotaract talk on 18th – I have two minutes on the club non-fundraising stuff and one minute on me
• Only watch stuff on my PVR taped while I watched nothing but Olympics and also lovefilm DVD
• Do a load of washing today and another tomorrow
• Do monthly backup
• Get LibraryThing book list up to date

I think that’s probably everything…

Yesterday is the one year anniversary of me being ill. But since it was Rotaract last night I didn’t get the time to post here between that and the skating and the curling (only 8 round robin matches to go!). I’m a lot better than I was a year ago, but then I had labyrinthitis and couldn’t move without feeling like I was on a Waltzer. Now I’m just recovering from it.

I feel ok about it at the moment, but that’s because I’m having a good week. At the moment my aims are:

• To stay up late for the general election, if I get one for my birthday, as is being predicted (everyone I’ve told about this thinks I’m crazy, but it’s exciting! Especially at the moment when it’s not clear who’ll win).
• To go to Wimbledon on the first Thursday – when we have tickets for Centre Court! – and get through the day (it’s usually tiring…)
• To go on some days out this year, like I was planning to last year
• To go back to New York to see hhertzof’s bunnies and Flushing Meadow, and maybe go back to Canada too, since I can only cope with America for a week and that’s pushing it. This I obviously can’t do until I’m really sure I’m better, so that’s probably more likely to be next year at this rate.

In contrast to last year, I’m not planning anything at all this year because I have absolutely not idea at all when I might be better.

This weekend I have:

• Tidied
• Cleaned
• Done my finances – and discovered the electricity bill I thought I’d paid on Christmas Eve I actually hadn’t
• Sorted out some paperwork – and found a two month old letter from the doctors inviting me for an asthma review
• Baked chocolate chip cookies, fairy cakes (with purple icing), chocolate chip biscuits, flapjacks and chocolate sponge puddings

And if that wasn’t enough, I have uploaded a load of stories to A03. These are some of the stories I have on Harry’s journal that are written for weekly prompt comms. It’s useful to have them in order, but these are essentially quick things that I dashed off. They’re not the greatest things I’ve written ever, but they’ve been useful for getting me writing – and sometimes it’s useful to just get something over and done with without spending weeks on it. Think of them as flashfic if you will.

I thought it’s entirely possible that some people might be vaguely interested in them, so they are:
Harry’s childhood
Harry’s present

The latter starts where the Sarah Jane Smith audios stop and run concurrently with New Who, Torchwood and SJA and I did work out what went where at one point, but I have since forgotten.

And now I am tired and fifteen minutes late with Being Human.

I can nearly breathe out of my nose. This wouldn’t normally be an achievement but it is the first time in a week. My mouth and throat were so dry that I was drinking 1.5l of water a day, which is ridiculous. I know you’re supposed to drink 2l a day, but I was going to the toilet every hour and only really drink about half a litre a day usually. I just don’t have the capacity for large amounts of liquid.

And a drabble meme from lost_spook I’ve been waiting to put up until I’m feeling well enough to think:

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request that I write a drabble of any pairing/character with a prompt. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

Although feel free to ignore that last sentence – it’s not like I’m going to be checking. By first ten people, I mean first ten notifications in my inbox regardless of whether they come from my blog, LJ or DW.

There’s a list of fandoms I’ve written in on the left of my fanfic archive, but feel free to request anything I know. If I really can’t write it I’ll just get you to pick something else.

It’s just one thing after another at the moment. Last week I was doing really well, felt really good and consequently overdid it. So this week I’ve felt terrible and been busy, which hasn’t helped. I’m just at the point of starting to feel a bit better again and now I have a cold.

Why can’t I just sleep until I’m better? Or more to the point, why is it that whenever I put 301 on there’s either no Australian Open or they’re just finishing? And why do we always have to listen to Sam Smith rabbiting on annoyingly?

Considering that I don’t like driving and given the option would far rather not, I can’t quite believe I’m going to say this but… I really want to be able to drive to work.

I’d be warmer, I could leave later, so get up later, so get more sleep, I could listen to the radio (I haven’t heard Chris Evans at breakfast yet and I’m missing the Five Live guys with the news on my way home). It wouldn’t matter if I left a few minutes late, I would have to slide over so much snow, I would spend ages waiting for a bus and I could leave work whatever time I liked (well, after 5.30pm obviously).

I can’t drive at the moment because although the main roads are fine, I’d have to park down a side road, which aren’t so great. My road isn’t great and to make it worse, I’d have to turn my car round 180 degrees, it’s currently on a slight slope and there’s a pile of snow behind it because it’s been parked there ever since we had the heavy snow Tuesday night last week. And most importantly, having experienced driving on snow once I’m not desperate to try it again.

It’s supposed to be a lot warmer from tomorrow (where a lot warmer means above freezing) so hopefully there’ll be lots of melting going on. But I am so sick of the snow.

I thought this last week would be quite quiet, I’d get lots of things done… I don’t know why I thought that. It didn’t help that I kept waking up at 6am – except on Friday when I woke up at 5am. Monday it snowed during the day, and I was sick of waiting in the freezing cold for a freezing cold bus and getting home half an hour later than I would have if I’d driven, so I drove to work on Monday. I contemplated leaving my car at work, but decided to drive home. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done – not helped by two police cars and two ambulances going past me in the opposite direction with their blue lights flashing. They couldn’t go above 20mph the same as the rest of us, though, so the blue flashing lights didn’t exactly do them much good.

But now I know what it’s like, I won’t be driving in the snow again. But I’d only ever seen it snow and settle during the day once before, so I assumed it was a freak event and it would just go back to snowing in the night again. But I also live further North than I grew up, and there it snows every year, which I find utterly ridiculous weather, but moving back South would mean I was living far from anywhere, so I supposed I’m stuck with it. If the Gulf Stream ever goes away, we’re seriously buggered.

On the plus side, I have a week off work and it is now Boxing Day, which is miles better than Christmas Day. Except that for some strange reason all the good TV is on on New Years Day.

And I have a Yuletide fic! The site’s really slow, so it’s best visited in the mornings before the Americans get up, but it’s a Quantum Leap fic: Returning Home and Meeting Memories for the First Time. Reading through the rest of the archive is taking time, not just because of the slowness, but also because I find the contrast between the text and the background gives me a headache. But fortunately, the other week I came across a site called Readability, where you can decide what you want the page to look like, then create a bookmarklet. So all I have to do, once the fic is loaded, is press on the bookmark, then hey, presto, I can read it! And to think that when I found it I never thought it would be useful…

Which I’ve been meaning to write for the past week…
Read more…

I am so busy at the moment, it’s crazy. Yesterday at work was terrible – I worked straight through lunch and didn’t leave till late. Today I didn’t think it would be quite so busy. I did get a lunch break, but didn’t quite manage to start on today’s work until 4pm and then left late. Tomorrow I have so much to do I can’t see how I’m going to start on tomorrow’s work. Then I’m off on Friday and Monday and going to the Balance Clinic on Tuesday afternoon. Which means the only way I can get tomorrow’s work done in time is going to be to do it at the weekend, I think. Everyone else is busy at work too. The only good thing is that at least there are only two weeks left after this one.

I’m still catching up with stuff I need to do at home after spending my week off ill. I got really anxious about Yuletide and wrote the first draft while I had a really bad cold and felt awful. Which is something I’ve learnt to do from being ill for so long, it’s just something I’d rather not do until I have to. And then I had to work hard to get it into something vaguely readable. Tonight I managed v3 – of 5500 words! I should just have to read it through a couple more times, then it can go to beta. Which is good because I need to get it out of the way so I can do betaing, treats and my TR secret santa. And maybe catch up on my viewing.

There were all these things I was going to do with my week off (apart from watch/listen to a lot of tennis). I knew I’d be fine because I’d get a lot of sleep and wouldn’t have to do much.

At least, that was the theory. In practise yesterday’s random asthma has turned into a cold and sore throat. I don’t have a blocked up nose, but the rest of me feels bad enough to make up for it.

So everything will have to be wait and I’m just hoping I’ll feel well enough to go to Collectormania on Saturday, not least because I’ve paid for some bits of it already. I really wish I was the sort of person that sleeps when they’re ill, because at least then I wouldn’t feel like this.

I keep meaning to update more often but I’m just so unmotivated by everything at the moment. I think all that time reading and watching videos and not doing a lot else and I’ve got used to it. But there isn’t nothing on tonight (I’m most upset that The Bill’s off for Celebrity nonsense), so I am determined to do something constructive with my evening.

In Yuletide news I am currently reviewing the source material in the hopes that I might manage a plot at the end of it. I’m quite excited about what I’m writing and it helps that my recipient likes a lot of the same things that I do. I’m hoping that writing that will help remind me about the whole doing something constructive thing.

It’s Children in Need tomorrow, so it’s guaranteed to rain, since it’s not that cold. Normally I’d be running around in the road with a bucket before work, but I’m not well enough to do that, so I am counting money after work instead. I don’t think I can quite cope with the idea of not doing something for Children in Need any more.

I’m having a week off work next week, which I will mostly be spending listening to the tennis, since the BBC aren’t showing much. I was very excited by a twitter post of Andy Murray’s today because he revealed that he’s playing Sunday afternoon and that’s when I’m going. We’re further back than we were for the gymnastics, so expect pictures of ant-sized people.

I am most distressed my today’s paper when they announced they are discontinuing the Technology section in the Guardian. I liked it best when it was the Online section with the Science section inside, but it’s still been worth buying the paper once a week for it. Without it there’ll be no reason to buy the paper any more – and I don’t like reading the paper online, it’s not the same. These days I tend to get my news from Radio 5 on the way home from work.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for ages, but wanted to wait until I had the complete story first.

Back in January, once I’d settled in, I remembered that the last time I moved the water company insisted on installing a water meter, on the basis that I’d just moved in. I didn’t get as far as ringing them up about it before they sent me a letter. So that was all good because it costs a whole lot less to have a water meter.

So a man came round, handily the day I had off before I went to Redemption. He told me there was already a meter there, it just needed connecting. It all went a bit downhill from there… Read more…

I had an MRI on Monday, which I’ve been meaning to write about all week, but it’s been a bitch of a week. So have a review of my week, including what it’s like to have an MRI (when you’re dizzy). Read more…

I didn’t have anything on this weekend and I didn’t have to go anywhere, so I thought I’d get a few things done, housework and writing and so on. Well, I managed the first. I thought I was doing well for getting all my washing done, until I thought “that’s making a bit more of a watery noise than usual”, opened the kitchen door and found water on the floor. Which is just what you want from your washing machine. It was just the waste water pipe from the washing machine that had come out of the pipe that takes it to the drain, so it was at least easily fixed.

Recently I discovered Pidgin, which is the messenger program I use on my netbook, doesn’t belief AIM exists any more. Since I was awake annoyingly early this morning I thought I’d get up and see if anyone was in any of the RPG related chats. Which they weren’t, but I discovered that Trillian in your browser doesn’t do chat. After lots of searching on the forums I uninstalled Pidgin then reinstalled it. At which point it refused to open. But I did discover why it refused to open links in Firefox and just did nothing. In the end I installed Kopete, which I’ve decided I like far more than Pidgin anyway, but not as much as Astra.

Just because it seems to be that sort of weekend, the netbook keeps randomly disconnecting from the network (it just seems to be a common bug with it, which is unhelpful, but at least I know how to get it back on without restarting). And I watched a DVD using my computer as a DVD player and the wireless keyboard as a remote and twice the computer decided that every keystroke was actually me right clicking and wouldn’t acknowledge me left clicking. Why it decided it didn’t like the wireless keyboard today when it’s been fine up till now, I don’t know.

On the plus side, since Azureus kept disconnecting my computer from the internet (which also seems to be a common problem with Vista) and there’s something clearly not right with it, I thought I’d install μTorrent, which seems to work perfectly and looks pretty much the same.

So that was my weekend of trials and tribulations. Next week I have an MRI, a flu jab and a trip to the dentist and the week after is a trip to the balance clinic. So it’ll all be a bit medical.

I am off to see the World All Round Gymnastics Finals tomorrow, in the Millennium Dome, so I have tomorrow and this afternoon off. Which is probably just as well because I’m quite dizzy and a bit snotty. I suspect the two things are related. On the plus side, when I’m recovering on Saturday there is at least plenty to watch, despite there being no Merlin (the TV series).

Everyone who signed up for the Sarah & Harry ficathon got a story in, which I am glad about. I wrote Not Just a Pretty Face. There was quite a bit of time between me putting everything into the posting box and actually coming up with a title…

I got all excited looking at fandoms for Yuletide. How I’m going to narrow it down to four, I don’t know.

Today, or yesterday depending on how you count it, I’ve been ill for seven months.

Things I have been doing:

Watched Generation Kill, which turned out to be surprisingly good. After seven episodes I can name seven characters, which is pretty good going (Ray, Trombley, Reporter, Brad, LT, Captain America (who I recognise from somewhere but can’t work out where), Godfather). Plus there’s also the bloke that wears glasses who lost his helmet. There may or may not have been other speaking characters, I got a bit confused – they all dress the same, it doesn’t help!

I finished v2 of my Sarah and Harry ficathon story. So I have a draft or two to go and it will be about 5000 words. Handily, the SG Rare Pairings ficathon starts up once that’s done and I’m hoping there will be some Jack/Elizabeth prompts for me to write (and I’ll be leaving some, just as soon as I work out what). Then there’ll be Yuletide and I so want to add Teachers to the list of fandoms. And after one episode of Merlin I want to request Gaius & Merlin again.

I’m meeting Avon on Sunday, yay!

I have a new shower. It’s cunningly fitted into the corner of the bath so if you want to stand under it you have to stand on the bit of the bath that starts going upwards. So I take it down – which required me to take the shower head off so I could get it out from the middle of the soap dish so it would actually stretch far enough to shower with, and to rinse the bath with.

There really isn’t anything else at all going on in my life at the moment. Just lots of things I want to do.

I am so bored. It’s not lack of things to do, it’s not being able to do things I want to do. It’s a really nice day outside with sunshine and blue sky and probably getting quite warm by now. I’d love to go and do something active, but the best I can really do is a slow walk to the shops and back again and then I’ll need a lie down afterwards. But I want to play on the Wii and go swimming and go off somewhere on the train since the station is so close. But I can’t do any of those things.

Instead I’ve taken a load of people off my LJ friends list, mostly because they didn’t post and it’s not as if there aren’t other ways of reading my friends locked posts on the rare occasions that I make them. I can’t remember when the last one was. I added people on Twitter, though, on the basis that I play with them in TR regularly so I feel like I ought to know them a bit. I did add loads of people before but it was just too much to keep up with, so I am keeping the numbers of people I’m following on Twitter down for the moment.

The most exciting thing I’ve done all week was yesterday when I got my hair cut and bought some coconut ice from the olde sweet shop that’s new in town. And then found my shower didn’t work when it came to washing my hair… I need to phone my landlord but can’t quite work up the enthusiasm. It doesn’t help that my letter from the estate agents with his name and number just gives his first initial and last name and I failed to write down his first name. I might be able to remember it except that his first initial and last name are exactly the same as someone at work, so all I can remember is that his first name isn’t the same…

This week hasn’t been too bad a week. It helped that it was only four days long and working from home Thursday afternoon. Although I spent the whole week confused so I forgot that it was the day I buy the newspaper until Thursday evening. It is all on the website, it’s just such a pain to read that way, I’d far rather have the paper.

This weekend I even felt well enough to clean the flat and go out to Sainsburys, so that’s an achievement. I’d quite like to go out for a walk at some point, as I currently get no exercise. I couldn’t fit that round cleaning, though, but maybe next weekend I’ll do that instead.

I’m onto the head moving exercises, which are really hard. But I knew they were going to be because I already don’t nod or shake my head, and try not to turn round at work when I hear something interesting from behind me.

I am working on watching all the stuff on my PVR so I actually have some space to tape everything that starts this autumn. After having had the prompt for a week I managed to come up with the whole plot for my Sarah & Harry ficathon story. I even started writing it. I seem to be on about 300 words at a time at the moment, which is about half my usual, but will get there in the end as long as I keep up with it.

For some inexplicable reason half the week’s TV is on tonight (Last Chance to See, Miss Marple (who I don’t like as much as Poirot) and Joanna Lumley doing something with cats. And the US Open is on the radio from tomorrow, so hopefully there’ll be lots of exciting tennis to listen to and they’ll get it done quickly because I really can’t stay up late these days.

And now I need to have a lie down so I won’t be too dizzy to cook dinner.

I am doing better this week. Sunday morning I went out to the community project and mostly stood around and looked at it because they’d all worked hard on Saturday to get most of it done. But at least I got out of the house and a bit of sunshine. Then I spent the afternoon lying down.

So far this week at work’s been alright, although I haven’t managed to leave early any day. This morning was particularly interesting as we all moved offices. I knew it was going to be this week, just didn’t realise it would be this morning! I was ok, sitting down packing stuff up until I realised I was really dizzy. So stopped packing and did some work until I realised I was so dizzy I felt sick. Just walking to the toilet I couldn’t do without holding onto something! So then I spent some time lying on a hard, dusty desk directing other people to move my stuff. Who then got to unpack it at the other end, since I clearly wasn’t up to it.

On the plus side, the new office has sofas in the staff room, so I can lie down at lunchtimes! And any other times I need to, as long as no one’s having a confidential meeting in there.

So I am feeling a lot better than last week and am hoping to move on to exercise 3 this week, maybe… And go up to Banbury on Sunday where there’s the other big Rotaract event of the year – a camping rally. Although I’ll just be going up for the day, since I need sleep and can’t walk in the dark.