Whoops, I haven't posted for a week. Work keeps being busy and I keep getting woken up by the boiler, so my evenings feel really short.

I got my Yuletide assignment on Tuesday and I got the fandom I secretly wanted to write. As I research I am appreciating my recipient's favourite character more and more. And I have started writing - I just need to find the time to write more.

This evening's short because the tennis was long - not that that's a bad thing. Today was the final of the ATP World Tour Final and it was a good, close match, so that was good. I went to the first semi-finals yesterday and saw Mirnyi/Nestor vs Bryan/Bryan, followed by Federer vs Ferrer. There are photos and some of them aren't blurry.

The doubles match was not terribly exciting. The Bryan brothers challenged at the end of the first set, but then went and sat down, so they clearly knew it was out and they'd lost the set. And then they challenged at the end of the match, but were trying to shake hands before Hawkeye had confirmed the call.

The singles was more exciting, but confusing. Whenever the umpire said Federer, then he was clearly talking about Federer and that was fine. But when he said Ferrer it could have been either. And after the first set Ferrer changed his white shirt for a black one, and Federer was already in a black shirt. So you had to pay attention to which was which based on the colour of their headband.

I got dizzy due to sitting in the dark and watching tennis. When I wanted to go to the toilet between matches and my sister didn't I had to get past people on our row without being able to hold on to her. But the people I passed started holding on to me!

Afterwards we stopped off at Westfield to go to the Lego shop. When we came out the Jubilee line was closed. We were really lucky we weren't coming out of the O2 when that happened because that's the only tube line from the O2. Whereas from where we were we could get back into central London on the Central Line. But it didn't help the busyness on the tube caused by people Christmas shopping and a load of lines being closed for the weekend.

We get to repeat the experience in just under two weeks for Coldplay, albeit on a Friday evening rather than Saturday during the day.

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.

So that's the tennis over with for another year. Well, until the US Open in August, which isn't on TV and is mostly at night. The evenings suddenly seem so much longer, I almost don't know what to do with them.

Of course it helps to have some time in the evening. Last week was the end of the Rotaract year, so Monday and Tuesday I was out at both the Rotary clubs handover dinners, which took all evening and meant I had two late nights. Wednesday was ballet as usual, Thursday I had stuff to catch up with and before I knew it it was the end of the week. So then after all that I woke up dizzy on Saturday morning, which wasn't really a surprise.

As of last Friday I'm no longer a Rotaractor. And my Rotaract club no longer exists, which is the sadder thing of the two. We've been talking about it and sorting out closing it for so long it hasn't quite sunk in yet. And we stopped doing stuff every Tuesday a while back, so I won't even notice much on Tuesday. I do still have some website stuff to do, but there's no rush. Now I have all this free time I could conceivably do something with it. I have established I can go out two nights a week (but not three). I have lots of ideas, the trouble is having the energy to do them.

Wimbledon started and I've been listening to it on the radio at work in the afternoons and have had it on in the evening. When it started I was a bit unsure what I was going to do with all this Wimbledon on. I got used to not being able to see much of the French Open and Queens and I just concentrated on the big names.

But then I remembered what Wimbledon is all about. It's spending evenings doing nothing much while watching tennis. Until 8.30pm you even get a choice of two matches. I am making the most of it this week because next week I'm out more than I'm in. It's mostly Rotaract things, so I can't begrudge it that much, as I'm only a Rotaractor for another week and a day.

And I'll be making it up for next year. This year we couldn't go to Wimbledon due to both my bosses being off. So we went to Queens instead where it rained all day... So next year we'll be going to Queens and Wimbledon, and the ATP Tour Final as we have the past two years and will do this year. But also we have tickets for the second and last day's of tennis at the Olympics. Although on Court 1, but we're bound to see something interesting.

I was very excited to be going to the tennis at Queens yesterday to see the Men's singles final and the Men's doubles final. Except... it was raining.

They moved the start time from 2pm to noon because it was forecast to rain in the afternoon. It was raining when I left the house not long after 9.30am. But we got there early and hoped it might stop raining... Optimistically, I thought that the big screen by the food court might tell us what was happening. Since my sister had an iPhone we checked the official app and the website, neither of which said anything. Twitter, on the other hand was the most useful source of news all day.

We ended up going back into the centre of London. I introduced my sister to Foyles and she introduced her bank account to four books. We discovered the iPhone is useful for finding Starbucks when you can't walk any further and are cold and wet.

Despite the sky being grey and horrid, and it being cold and windy out, we were amazed when it stopped raining. Just as we found a Starbucks with seats. So we didn't linger and went back to Barons Court.

When we changed trains a woman and a boy ran past us. Then we we got off at Barons Court the same woman and boy ran past us. Then they ran past us on the road on the way from the tube station to the Queens Club. I don't know how they managed that.

By the time we got there and used the toilets, it started raining again. So we hung around for an hour. We discovered that all the places to sit that were on seats were in the cold and all the places to sit that were on the floor were warm, but really hard.

We ended up leaving when it was clearly not going to stop raining and people were leaving. Once we got to Paddington we found Twitter said it was called off for the day.

Fortunately, we get our money back, but it was so annoying to see Murray win today after taping it and watching it this evening when we could have been there. But we are planning to go next year - the tournament's only gone to a third Monday three times in the 125 years it's been running, so we'd have to be really unlucky to be rained out again.

Next year we could go really overboard with tennis with Queens and Wimbledon and the Tour Final and if we get Olympics tickets. But this year there's no live tennis for me until November.

The new ballet term started last week, so tonight was the second class. It's such a different experience from last term when I had no idea what I was doing and gradually got the hang of it and then it was the end of term. This term there's a few of us from last term and lots of new people. It's strange having twice the number of people I was used to before.

But it's also really strange feeling like I know what I'm doing. I don't completely, but everything is either the same as last term or similar enough that I understand it relatively easy. It makes it all a lot easier, so I can concentrate on doing it right, not just vaguely doing the right thing at the right time. Not that I always manage that anyway, but.

The next thing will be remembering to look up and put my shoulders down, but perhaps that will be next term.

I'm so busy at the moment it's crazy. Work is busy and then I have things in the evenings and when I don't I'm so busy catching up that I never manage it. Mind you, it didn't help that there was tennis every evening last week. And then we went to see the final on Sunday. And took 73 photos... Read more...

It is 10/10/10, an exciting date. There won't be another exciting date until 12th November, and that's not nearly as exciting.

I meant to post a few times this week and then it just didn't happen... Mostly because I've been spending my time working my way through the Commonwealth swimming. I tape what's on BBC1/2 during the day, then watch it in the evening. So then I can fast forward through everything that isn't an actual race, which is a vast improvement. Although sometimes I miss bits and only discover which stroke they're doing and how far they're going once they've started the race. It just makes it more exciting!

I got very excited this morning when I went up the road to Sainsburys and discovered the old Woolworths is turning into a Currys/PC World. Playing with an iPad is only ten minutes walk away!

This week I'm off to London to see the third Sarah Jane Adventures episode (ie the one with Jo Grant in). And then back again the next evening to see Chris Addison, which I'm really looking forward to. I will definitely write up the SJA thing, and depending on whether I can make it spoiler free or not, I'll either post it next week or in a couple of weeks time.

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

Since jay_of_lasgalen asked, a write-up of my two days at Wimbledon. Read more...

The end of Wimbledon's like finishing a good book - you don't quite know what to do with yourself. It's good that it's over because now I can get some stuff done. And there's only so much tennis you can watch (and Virginia Wade you can mute). The downside is that there's now no tennis, two weeks of TV on my PVR to catch up with and stuff I ought to do and don't want to. It's a good thing I'm not into cycling as well, otherwise my summer would completely consist of sport!

I was going to write about my two days at Wimbledon, but I just don't have the energy. And work is busy enough that I'm not going to get the energy before I forget it all. But there are lots of photos. And I mean lots. There are 41 from the first Thursday (including my annotated ones - also Murray, Nadal and the Queen) and somehow I managed to take 110 yesterday... I now have more photos from Wimbledon than anything else, at least based on my flickr tag cloud.

I suddenly feel that weekly posts might be more common from now on... Basically, work is very busy and not looking to get any less busy. In fact, I think it's possibly only likely to get more busy. And to make it worse, that means I won't get to see as much Wimbledon because I'll be getting home later and the World Cup is on every afternoon so I won't get to listen to it at work either.

I am looking forward to Wimbledon, though. I have picked out my fantasy Wimbledon team which will hopefully not be as crap as last year's. Although since I take no notice of the women my team mostly consists of the Williams sisters and cheap people who have interesting names. I have added the Wimbledon feed to my Twitter, so I can read all about what happened at Wimbledon six hours later when I get home.

Friday night I went to see the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue stage show. It was so good my throat still hurt on Saturday from laughing. The new series starts tomorrow - it'll be one thing I won't be saving for after Wimbledon.

TGI the weekend. This week has been so busy at work - I've been doing 9 hour days. Which at least means I leave after the rush hour, but doesn't leave very long evenings or energy to do anything in them. This would be why I haven't been around very much.

And my right wrist hurts. It's caused by me sleeping on it, and I sleep on my right when I'm stressed (and I've been dreaming about work this week - and not sleeping much because my brain won't stop working). And the bit of my left hand between my thumb and forefinger hurts. I only just worked out last night that it must be caused by holding the mouse. I might have to try a small mouse out next week and see how that goes.

On the plus side I didn't get as tired and as dizzy as I thought I would. But I did get a sore throat instead. And had to miss my two Rotaract meetings this week, which is really annoying. I do only have a four day week next week, as on Friday I'm going to see ISIHAC. Although this does, of course, mean doing five days work in the space of four. Mind you, this week I did six and a half days work in the space of five...

I did, however, manage to write 25 of my 100 drabbles (well, I started on 1st June). I ought to sort out posting some of them this weekend. I did also find mini eggs in the health food shop, which kept me going in the afternoons (I was looking for smarties, and got some of those too, but mini eggs are nicer).

Because our overtime year ends at the end of June and I'll have at least three and a half days then, I'll get paid for it at the end of July. And I've just won tickets to the final Saturday at Wimbledon (Women's Singles Final, Men's Doubles Final, Women's Doubles Final) and because I know this money is coming to me, I can afford to go. I am also going on the first Thursday - both times are to Centre Court too. Mind you, if I'd got tickets to the final Sunday I wouldn't be caring how much money I had

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 am so behind on the Olympics - I have a PVR full of curling. I did discover that team GB will play 18 matches between then and that's if they don't get to the semis... I think it's safe to say I'm not going to be watching all those in a week. So after spending Tuesday and Wednesday night (around pancakes in the case of Tuesday) watching the first men and women's matches, I swapped back to skating. So now I've seen the pairs and the men's short program and I'm all skated out. So this morning's skating will just have to wait until tomorrow.

The rest of the curling will wait until after the Olympics - I'll just wait and see if we get into the semis and watch that.

Because of this I haven't watched any TV all week and I have a whole load of RSS feeds marked as unread that I just haven't read/commented on. And a whole load of other things to do. And other sports I'd quite like to see some of. I really could do without having to work...

I don't know how I'm going to watch all the Olympics. I saw bits yesterday morning in their extended highlights, which was just the right amount of all the sports that look crazy enough to watch but get samey pretty quickly.

Tonight I managed to get the pair short program into about an hour but cutting out anything that wasn't the actual skating. But tonight's the free program which has more skating, then tomorrow there's a GB curling match and I'm going out for pancakes in the evening.

And there's only so much Olympics you can watch in an evening. Fortunately I have nothing planned for the weekend, so it might involve watching a lot of ice skating and curling and a bit of other sports...

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that various people have been posting their TV series for the meme at isurrendered and there's some really interesting stuff there. I think I have the smallest cast...

Copper won the prize for guessing the connection between the actors in mine: they've all played policemen/women:

• Peter Davison was DC 'Dangerous' Davies in The Last Detective
• Ben Peyton was PC Ben Haywood in The Bill
• Philip Glenister was DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes and also DCI William Bell in State of Play
• Jaye Griffiths was DI Sally Johnson in The Bill

Georgia Moffett only played a policewoman's daughter: she was Abi Nixon, DS/DI Sam Nixon's daughter in The Bill.

It's that time of year again... Well, it's a new time of year. This is the first year the ATP tour final (formerly known as the Masters series final) has been held in London. So, we went yesterday afternoon. As a result I feel terrible today while not lying down, but I have the week off, and anyway, it was worth it.

We saw Nestor and Zimonjic play a Polish pair I've never heard of, can't spell and certainly can't pronounce. They're ranked 8, so they're the lowest ranked pair in there. It was a bit odd because they played a variation, so when it got to deuce whoever won the next point won. And if they won a set each they'd play a tie-break, but to 10 points. It made it very quick, but it felt like it all turned on those deuce points because the Polish pair broke once per set on those points. But it was a good match and now I'm reduced to seeing the rest of the doubles matches online.

We had half an hour's break after that and then there were a lot fewer empty seats for Murray's match. This was back to usual point scoring and because they spend a lot more time than the doubles per point, made it seem really slow. The doubles match was an hour long, this one was two and a half. But it was a battle and Del Potro played well, apart from in the middle of the first set and towards the end of the third. That was a good match too, but we really wanted it to end because the seats just go so uncomfortable after sitting in them for the best part of five hours, I was really dizzy and it was really hot in there, which didn't help.

But we had a good view, even though we were near the back. People at work were trying to tell me we wouldn't be able to see a thing, but it was no different from being at the back of Centre Court.

And there are photos, some of which are a bit blurry because they're all taken with the flash off and the lighting was terrible (really bright on the court and we couldn't see a thing, which made eating lunch interesting).

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.

On Friday I went to the World Gymnastics Championships in London. And took lots of photos, which mostly consist of blurry gymnasts upside down. I really must check if my camera has a sport setting. My sister's are better, not least because she can zoom in further, but hers are set to friends and family only.

It made me really dizzy, but was good fun. We went to the women's all round because the men are boring and we got to see every piece of apparatus. We were sat high up and behind a metal bar, which hid the vault completely. So you'd keep checking to see that there was a girl still stood there, and the next thing you knew everyone was clapping because she'd vaulted and you'd missed it.

There were two Brits competing and you could tell when they were up next because the crowd would go mad. So I made sure to watch them, but apart from that I watched a bit of everything. What you can't tell from watching it on the telly is how much of nothing goes on. While they're busy showing you slow motion replays and discussing the routine there's just waiting around for the score. Which adds up to quite a lot of waiting sometimes.

It was nice not to have to get annoyed with camera angles. Which I did at the weekend when they kept moving the camera around unnecessarily and made it impossible to watch some of it.