There is no more curling and I am sad. I watched about six games at the weekend and we lost most of them which was depressing. Especially as we didn’t get to the semis, despite the men being the top team in the world and two of them being full time curlers. Rubbish. There’ll be no more curling for four years now – I can’t imagine the BBC will show the wheelchair curling at the Paralympics. If there’s some International curling in Scotland at some point in the future I make go on holiday and watch some curling while I’m there, though.

On the plus side, I now have time to do things other than watch curling and ice skating. I just have two weeks worth of TV to watch instead. Which actually won’t take me a week – there’s not really much on at the moment.

Saturday night I helped run the bar at the annual Welsh evening (it being St David’s Day today). It consisted of quite a bit of singing in Welsh… We had a whole load of beer left over that we couldn’t take back to Tescos, so I took it into work because I know people there would go mad for free beer. And, I brought it all home again. The reason: they’d have to get it out of my boot. Despite my car being parked a whole two minutes walk away, it was a sunny day and I was parked in the same place everyone else parks. I knew people at work were apathetic, but not being able to get off your arse for free beer is something else. So I’ll be throwing that away now.

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 do mean to update this more often, but I’m so behind on everything in my life it’s just not funny. The last week of Wimbledon was so hot – around 30C, and humid – that it was just too hot to do anything. Well, I watched Wimbledon (and am now sad it’s all over – no more tennis till the US Open and that’s only on the radio), but my TV puts out a lot of heat. I could only use my laptop or netbook if I sat back from them and used the wireless keyboard, so my hands didn’t get too hot. And I even got hot sitting under the light. But I did a lot of reading.

Then it got cooler again and I planned to do lots, but I had a busy couple of days at work and that nearly wrote off last week. The crowning glory was being really sick that I thought was a stomach bug, but might actually be an intolerance reaction to something. I don’t know what, but I can’t find out until all my symptoms go away, once my system’s cleared of whatever it is.

So my dizziness hasn’t really improved much over the past couple of weeks therefore… But I saw an ENT yesterday who said it can take 5-6 months and it’s only been four and a half so far. But every doctor and ENT I see say something different, so who knows. But it says something that I’ve become resigned to it now. Well, I am today, when I’m having a bad day I’m not so much. But I am typing this on my netbook while lying down having a break from packing because I got too dizzy to do any more.

In other news, Wallingford Rotaract won Club of the Year within the district, which was great and unexpected. I’m still quite thrilled about it and we found out at the handover on 4th July. I finished my remix fic, although it’s annoying the archive goes live this weekend because I’m away till Tuesday on the annual windmill trip, which should be nice and relaxing. Then when I come back I really need to write my who remix fic, since that’s due in on the 3rd…

I’ve now had labyrinthitis for ten and a half weeks. It’s been slightly better for the last two, but shopping is currently the worst thing I can do. Closely followed by using the computer…

I had a good time at Conference at the weekend (there are even some photos). I did hate that I had to go to bed early because I was dizzy – watching people dancing and especially the bright, flashing lights didn’t help. But I did get to speak to pretty much everyone and it was fun. Apart from the last few bits of getting money from people I need to do (not helped by Royal Mail delivering all my post two weeks late) I’m looking forward to not doing any more Conference stuff and having time for things I want to do.

We went to see Star Trek yesterday, which was good, but I’ll write about that in a separate post so anyone who hasn’t seen it yet can skip it.

I was going to write something exciting, but I got bogged down in Conference stuff and lost the will to live a little bit. So instead I’m going to finish off my packet of smarties (they’re pretend smarties, so they come in packets, not tubes) and watch some more stuff off my PVR.

But I wanted to say that I got a fantastic fic in the TARDIS Gen ficathon: The Inestimable Value of a Good Pair of Shoes which stars Harry.

I actually had some time at work today where I wasn’t trying to do a million things at once by the end of the day. I almost didn’t know what to do with myself! So when I got home I had plenty of time to listen to the six o’clock news on Radio 5 for once, make muffins and watch Chuck. And then my TV guide (aka my dad) told me there was a programme on about time, which put paid to my plan to actually do some writing tonight. And as interesting as the programme was it featured quite a few physicists, none of whom were fat or bearded. One of them was even female. What is the world coming to?

For the next couple of days everything gets put on hold for Rotaract. Tomorrow I am not looking forward to venturing out into the cold (not that it’s that warm in here) and breaking my car out from under a load of ice, while the car only gets even colder than the outside air. But I am driving far enough that not only will it warm up before I get there, but I might also be able to get warm air on my feet too! It’s very hard to drive when you can’t feel your feet, your hands and you’re shivering.

Thursday I get to spend several hours outside in the evening selling chestnuts (bonus: I like chestnuts). I discovered last year that two pairs of trousers keeps you warm, but it looks like this year will be colder than last year…

But on the plus side, because I have a long weekend to do moving things, this is my last five day week before Christmas!

I tried a different tack with BT today – I rang them up and told them exactly the same thing. Now, instead of not wanting to know, they are sorting out putting a line in, since the one there can’t be changed back to BT and without a BT line I can’t have internet. They tried to sell me broadband as well, but given that they cut my phone off completely twice in two years I don’t trust them. And I want to go with Zen.

Last night was our Human Board Games Event and I have the bruises to prove it. Well, not bruises exactly, but my knees really hurt from kneeling down on a hard floor to tape out a 8×8 grid for Snakes and Ladders and Draughts. My legs ache from walking around the Snakes and Ladders board picking up the big dice (although I’ve seen bigger) and passing it to people. And I have a couple of cuts on the inside of my fourth finger (what everyone else would call their ring finger, but then everyone else counts them wrong too). Those I have no idea how I got.

But I had great fun watching Snakes and Ladders and I got to play a couple of games of Hungry Hippos and one of The Game of Rotaract (loosely based on The Game of Life). Everyone has had great fun too, which was the main thing. Even at the end when there were four of us left on our hands and knees, polishing the floor that we’d cleaned with the masking tape…

It’s Children in Need again, this time a week early, for some inexplicable reason. It’s a big event in the town I live in with people collecting money on the streets from 7am to 6pm. Normal street collections are only usually from about 9am till 3pm, but because this is a nationwide thing it means everyone knows it’s going on. What’s also extra for this one is that we collect from cars stopped at the traffic lights.

This morning I got up at 6.30am when it was still dark to go and run around in the road. Which sounds like a crazy thing to do, but it’s good fun. You have to run when the lights turn green and you have to get back to the front by the time it turns red again, so you can get as many cars as possible.

Although some of the interesting parts come later when you compare stories. I had one bloke who told me he didn’t believe in it, one who forgot he hadn’t wound his window down and hit his hand on it giving me some money, one lady who gave me a bag full and someone who gave a £20 note.

Every year I get hot doing it, so I tried to not overdress. But I got hot just walking to work to dump my stuff and I then I got really hot running around for an hour and a half and nearly ended up just in a long-sleeved shirt and my tabard. Except that my coat would have been a pain to carry, so I left it on. The sun didn’t go in until later, so it was lovely and warm.

When I went out to the pub at lunchtime I could see loads of yellow where people were collecting. Although because I know most of them I ended up rationing my change so I could give each of them a bit while I spoke to them.

Have you ever wanted to play chess with real people like on Harry Potter? Well, at Rotaract we’re holding an event where you don’t get to do that. But you can play the likes of Hungry Hippos and Snakes and Ladders amongst other games.

It’s on the evening of Saturday 22nd November and if anyone wants to come it’s £6 and my sofa is apparently very comfortable. BYObreakfast.

I thought that since I talk about it a lot (55 times so far) I’d explain about Rotaract, what I do in and what I get up to. Specially since I don’t remember the last time I did and I’ve definitely had more people reading this since then. Read more…

In reverse order of how near they are:

Rotaract National Conference 2009
Next year’s Rotaract Conference is in Cardiff over the May Day bank holiday weekend and I know it’s going to be great fun because they always are and because I’m on the committee that’s organising it. Although I don’t expect non-Rotaractors to come (although you’re welcome!) the part that I’d love people to come to is the Gala Dinner on Saturday 2nd May. For those that can remember back a month, that’s my birthday weekend, and next year I’ll be turning an age ending in a 0…

The Gala Dinner is a black tie do, although really couldn’t be said to be posh. Well, ok, so it’s in a 4 star hotel and there’ll be a few courses, so you get to grapple with cutlery etiquette. But there are always all sorts of toys on the tables, such as party poppers, bubbles, those balloons that you blow up and let go around the room and try to hit people with them.

The dinner is £36, but if you pay £99 you can stay in the nice hotel on the Saturday night too and have a weekend in Cardiff. And you can pay by standing order and spread the payments out, so you only have to pay a bit per month. There’s more information on the website, including booking forms and no photo of me.

Eggheads quiz
This is a fundraiser for the Conference. The Conference itself gives its profits to charity (although we’re having trouble trying to decide which of the many worthy causes to support), so in order to make the biggest profit without charging too much and making sure we are covering our expenses, we have a few fundraising things going on.

The quiz is on Saturday 12th July in Theale and costs £10 including a fish supper. I am told my sofa is very comfortable if anyone wants to stay over.

Knickers 4 Africa Launch party
This is a new charity being set up by a friend of mine who went to Sierra Leone last year and discovered that many people there have no knickers or have to wear second hand knickers. The launch party is in Marlow on 14th June. For more information and tickets see their website. The sofa offer goes for this one too.

How is it nearly the end of the weekend already?

On Saturday I went to EUCO 2008, which is the European Rotaract Conference, which was held in London. I was quite surprised to find how warm it had got all of a sudden. I was standing outside in just a t-shirt and considering moving into the shade.

The afternoon was the ordinary RGBI (Rotaract in Great Britain and Ireland) part, where my club won an award for weirdest place to eat breakfast. This was a national challenge to eat breakfast in an unusual place. The club that won ate theirs on a raft they’d just built in the middle of the Thames. The last time we did it we had breakfast at RAL with lasers, so to top that we had breakfast in cyberspace.

The evening was the Gala Ball and there were 1000 people there from all over Europe! I ate, danced a bit, but mostly chatted with people and had a good time.

The hotel I stayed in was one that was definitely an experience. Don’t ask me why, but it was ages away from where everything was going on. Only four of us stayed there, everyone else being much more sensible and staying much closer.

So we left the Ball about 1.45ish and made our way to Hammersmith bus station. The night bus we wanted turned up at 2.15am. We’d worked out where we needed to get to to change buses for one that ran 24 hours. However, we had no idea where that actually was, so we stayed on until we got to Heathrow. Thankfully we only had to wait ten minutes there for our bus. But it ended up being 3.45am by the time I got to bed.

I was rudely awoken by my alarm at 10am. When I got up I found that no matter how many times I pressed the switch, the main room light wouldn’t turn on, despite it working the previous night. Also, the bathroom light wouldn’t turn on. There was a light above the sink, and I’d established the previous night that didn’t work anyway. There was a light above the desk and that one worked. So I had a shower with the bathroom door open and there was just enough light to see.

However, towards the end of my shower I realised I was standing in quite a bit of water. I worried that it was going to go above the level of the bottom of the shower, but it didn’t and I assumed it would go down. I went back in there once I was dressed and had my glasses on and noticed the water was still there. I had a shower the previous night and that hadn’t happened, so I don’t know what was going on.

The most worrying part came when I cleaned my teeth and turned the cold tap on and some water bubbled up out of the shower. I looked at it and it was quite disgusting. It reminded me of the horrible water that comes out of the washing machine. Remembering that made me realise what the smell in the bathroom was – old water.

Like I said – it was an experience.

I had to think about whether to make this my 1000th post (as calculate by WordPress – LJ is wrong because some posts aren’t crossposted and some are crossposted twice), but I decided to in the end because it’s probably quite typical at the moment really.

I shouldn’t be in tonight. I should be at a meeting about the National Rotaract Conference in 2009. We can start publicising it after this year’s over the May Day bank holiday weekend, so this is the last meeting before that. I didn’t make the last meeting because it got changed at the last minute. I made the one before, but before that I was ill, I think. And the one before that my back was bad, I think. There’s a pattern here.
Read more…

Saturday I went to Birmingham to meet up with a friend and go to Memorabilia. I bought four books – I was limiting my spending to books, so that was good. What wasn’t so good was when we went into town afterwards and I bought a discounted remote controlled K9…

Anyway, there I saw the likes of John Billingsley, Deborah Watling and Lisa Bowerman and some Spitting Image puppets.

I went and got Lisa Bowerman’s autograph. I knew she was there but thought to myself I didn’t have anything for her to sign. No, just the Survival DVD cover and all those Benny CDs and books. Nope, nothing at all then. But it costs the same regardless of whether you have something to sign or use one of their pictures, so at least this way I got a free picture. She only had one that was her rather than her in a cheetah outfit. She said lots of people try to tell her they recognise her from that, which she said was mad because they couldn’t possibly tell.

Davros had a Casualty DVD from when she was in it a long time ago. So then they discussed how much it had changed and she helped him put the DVD back in the box as they discussed how difficult it is to do because they don’t make them big enough. She’s been in Casualty more recently too and she sent them her CV, but they clearly didn’t look at it because they asked her all sorts of questions about whether she knew what it was like and whether she’d seen it!

It was nice that there was no queue so there was plenty of time to stand and chat. I’ve only just remembered that she was in Spooks too (briefly) and I should have asked her about that.

After a day spent on my feet I then got up early (well, it was early by GMT at least) to go and help out at the World Pooh Sticks Championships. I got to direct traffic, and people for a few hours. By the time I got home all I wanted to do was sit down and eat lunch – I didn’t eat until 3pm which is late in any time zone. I just threw all my stuff down and didn’t worry about most of it until this morning.

I noticed last night that my keys weren’t in their usual place on my bedside table, but I didn’t worry about it because I’d probably left them in my coat pockets. This morning I put my coat on and my keys weren’t in there. I spent a couple of minutes frantically searching my untidy lounge and checking the outside of my door just in case but they were nowhere to be found. You can’t get in the house without them, so I knew there was in the house somewhere.

Since I was going to be late for work I dug out my spare keys and decided to worry about it later. When I got home I had my spare keys in my hand and wondered where to put them temporarily, as I’d put them back in my bag when I found my other keys. I came into the lounge, saw the top of the shelf nearest the door where my doorbell lives and considered there briefly before I realised I was in fact looking at my keys. I just wasn’t looking high enough this morning…

I kind of feel like I’ve not been updating this much recently. I’ve been making an effort to get the first draft of my TARDIS Big Bang done. So far I’ve written 17 chapters of 26, for the best part of 13,000 words. I’ve been writing a chapter or two a night and I have to fit it round my back and the other things I have to do that involve the computer.

Last night was Burns Supper – albeit a week after Burns Night. Which was good, although it got a bit confusing with women pretending to be men in the celidh. Mind you, we were confused enough as it was, but then that’s half the fun. I just wish I could still eat the haggis – it’s very nice, as long as you don’t think about what it is. I’ve remembered why I hate driving in High Wycombe – we got confused with two of us, navigating and my sat nav.

I’m quite liking the new printer. It does actually have a paper-out tray – it’s the same as the paper-in tray, but has a divider in between so they don’t get mixed up. Despite what I said I ended up getting one that’s also a scanner, since it was only £30 and had good reviews. I’m still getting used to how to use it, but I like the way it does back to back printing.

I got Hot Fuzz from Amazon rentals because it seems like everyone at work has seen it. I think it’s supposed to be funny. But it’s just a bit of a bad parody really. So now I’m doing other things while it finishes, and I’m getting the gist.

It’s amazing what a bit of sleep will do. Except for the part where I only slept till 8am and wanted to sleep till 10, but I feel more awake this morning, even though it’s cloudy and I haven’t opened the curtains and haven’t seen the sun yet.

I rewatched the Doctor Who thing from last night. I was most amazed to find it was 8 minutes long – it felt about 2!

There are still large parts of it I dislike. The Hotel Babylon thing, which was probably about the same length, was clearly poking fun at itself, whereas the Doctor Who one felt like it couldn’t decide whether to poke fun or be serious and it’s ended up being a bit of both and neither and doesn’t work. And I dislike the Confidential where they said that Peter Davison was the first of the modern Doctors, because you could pretty much define that to be any of them.

But, I did like:

• Belgium
• Describing the console room as having a desktop theme
• The Master’s beard being described as rubbish
• The Cloister Bell – it’s such a great harbinger of doom
• That at the start when they say the world’s only got 5 minutes left, it really means 5 minutes of real time
• How it fits between the end of Last of the Time Lords and the epilogue

I didn’t watch it quite so closely, so the Fifth Doctor felt better. The trouble is that in the original episodes he’s Tristan and now he’s just Peter Davison. It’s only in the audios that I can believe he’s the Doctor.

I did really hate:

• wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey – that joke only works once and not with Five
• A black hole and supernova at the same time. I can suspend my disbelief for some science but there’s a limit and that’s over it. The one leads to the other – they can’t possibly be simultaneous
• Ten going ‘You’re my Doctor’. I can sort of see Ten loving his past selves rather than hating them, but that was just OTT

I’ve seen lots of people talk about it this morning on my RSS Feeds (I think I’m the only person who didn’t love it) but only one person mentioned giving any money. So if you bothered to take the time to watch it on TV, or go to the website to watch it, then you’ll know where to go and give some money to help disadvantaged children in Britain.

I ache this morning, but collecting money yesterday morning was still the best part of the day.

Being tired last night and needing an early night was not a good start. When my day started this morning, it was dark. It wasn’t really light until I left the house in the freezing cold, dressed in two jumpers and two pairs of trousers as well as other layers. It’s not easy to get a pair of jeans with slim legs on over a pair of trousers with baggy legs. I’m very glad I did though, because at one point I had cold legs. At least it was the traditional cold weather for Children in Need and not pouring it down like it did last year.

Then I walked down to where I was collecting money from cars stopped at the lights on the bridge. For an hour and a half I had great fun attempting to get money from people. One bloke gave me a massive pile of coppers. Another gave me a bag of 5ps. As a result my bucket was really heavy – I am discovering muscles that ache when I lift my arms. It almost makes me wish for the American way of lots of notes. Towards the end people did mention how cold it was while they were looking for their change. By that time I was hot and looking forward to stripping down to a normal number of layers.

I have seriously not had enough sleep, though, so today has been such a struggle. But I saw Doctor Who on TV. Which I thought was a bit crap – it seemed to me like it was easy to tell you were watching something fictional. But perhaps it’s tiredness – I’ll watch it again on the website tomorrow. (I quite liked Peter Davison in Confidential, though).

The Bill doing the Rat Pack were very good. Although their behind the scenes thing was almost more interesting than their song! Of the four actors I only recognised two: Graham Cole (who I’ve met) and the one who plays Terry. I think the ginger one is the Super. No doubt all will become clear if I watch any of The Bill at Christmas – it was last Christmas that I watched an episode.

Now I’m just waiting for Sybil Fawlty on after the news. I’ve never seen Hotel Babylon, only trailers, but she’s got to be good.

Last night was our Retro Birthday Party. We played Musical Chairs, Pass the Parcel, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Wink Murder and What’s the Time Mr Wolf? As well as having a paper aeroplane competition and a colouring competition. And proper party food including jelly and ice cream. I even made some blue jelly – it was entirely academic what flavour it was because it tasted of blue (as proved by my A Level Human Biology group – jelly tastes of the colour, not the flavour).

It was slightly nerve wracking, as always, with whether we had enough people and whether they’d take part and enjoy themselves or whether there was the right amount of food. But everyone said they enjoyed it, which is good.

I actually got round to putting some insoles into my roller skates this morning. They’re old, so the insoles in there are looking a bit tatty. I used to skate quite a bit when I was little, so I was expecting it to be easy. No. I did get the hang of it again by the time I’d been to Waitrose to the bottle bank and back. But some of the surfaces are really hard to skate on – lots of leaves and holes lead to nearly falling over. So I think that next time I’ll walk to the tennis courts and skate round them instead.

This evening I finally got round to sorting out my LJ friends list. Since I added a whole load of people recently, and I keep adding communities too, the people have been in three folders in RSS Bandit, as I don’t like them going off the bottom. So I took off anyone I wasn’t reading (and some by accident that I decided was fate and I couldn’t be bothered to put back), thereby reducing the number of people on the list from 105 to 72. I still need to play about a bit, I think, but that’s a distinct improvement.

Dear Tesco

Taking a red grapefruit, putting a ‘pink grapefruit’ sticker on it and putting it in the pink grapefruit section does not make it a pink grapefruit.

No love,
Me
(missing her pink grapefruit)

Due to the party tonight, I have a fridge that smells of jelly and a freezer of poisonous ice cream. Other poisonous foods are in the boot of my car. Which I had to de-steam before I could go anywhere yesterday – winter has definitely arrived.

Do you ever miss the sort of games you played when you were little? Like What’s the Time Mr Wolf, Musical Chairs and Wink Murder? Well, miss them no more because Wallingford Rotaract are holding a Retro Birthday Party on 20th October, giving you a chance to be as childish as you want. With the addition of a licensed bar.

Obviously, this offer only extends to people who live near me. If you don’t want to have to get home after I have a sofa that more than one person has told me is very comfortable. There’s also floor space. (I have space to have people over! It’s very exciting!)

It’ll cost you £7 to get in, but you do get some party food and there will be opportunities to demonstrate your skills at making paper aeroplanes and pinning the tail on the donkey. And the profits are going to Thames Valley Air Ambulance.