I'm feeling really brain-dead now and completely knackered. I've just driven to Tescos, which is ten minutes away. Except that I went with a friend of mine who lives ten minutes in the opposite direction. And then I got confused on the way and we went the back way. In the end I was out for two and a half hours.

There's a war on between the Jamie and the Sarah supporters on the drabble tag, so I've been busy writing Sarah drabbles. There's a list on the SJ comm, so come and play! Since the last time I posted about it I've written Ten/Josh/Sarah, Sarah/Jack/Josh, Harry/Jack, Ten/Josh, Six/Sarah, Sarah/girl!Doctor, Two/Sarah, Eight/Sarah, Seven/Sarah, Sarah/UNIT.

I've been meaning to talk about stuff off the telly all week. Firstly, Atlantis, which is doing terrible things to me. The last one I saw I couldn't work out why Jack & Elizabeth weren't talking about the night they had sex until I remembered that actually, that wasn't in an episode. They did have serious UST going on though. I was thinking to myself, they probably were going to end up sleeping together. Except that she and Sheppard had some serious UST going on, then he was having UST and Teyla and Ronon, who were also having UST with each other. And it reaches the point where I'm wondering if there's anyone on Atlantis that doesn't ship well.

I'm watching Spooks on BBC1 because last year people at work discovered if you're a week ahead on BBC3 you can't talk about it at work because everyone else is a week behind. Plus I was too tired this Monday to stay up late enough to watch it. Anyway, it is exciting and I am enjoying it. Not entirely sure about what they're doing with Ruth and Harry but I suppose we'll have to wait and see about that one. I like Ros in that she's quite different from everyone else. Plus she's played by Hermione Norris, who I can quite hate, at least not yet.

I'm off to Collectormania in Milton Keynes tomorrow. There's no-one I want to see there, or at least no-one famous. I'm going to see a friend of mine from uni whose parents live there, and I don't think I've seen him in over a year. Sunday I might keel over after a two hour driving lesson followed by swimming.

I entirely confused myself this morning by glacing at my inbox. I had a message with the subject Re: Joe Flanigan and another one with the subject hot hot hot! and my mind put those together. The second one was from Emma about the weather, so what confused me is that she doesn't even know who Joe Flanigan is and certainly wouldn't be telling me he's hot because he's not her type at all. Probably.

I got entirely distracted this weekend by making myself a Life on Mars icon, and today submitting three postcards to the SGA Flashfic postcard secrets challenge.

I have got my Jack/Liz fic up to v4 but I'm still not convinced about most of it which is not good. It's not due till the 3rd, though, so I could leave it for a bit and try and work out some plot for my Remix fic (why did I decide to expand on something?)

I went to an Atlantis convention at the weekend - which was made more interesting by having the flu. I've done a quick page with a few photos http://www.paranoidangel.me.uk/peg1pics.html - I should point out that the text is for my dad's benefit and the photos together come to 328k.

Edit: Dad has just reminded me I have a flickr account! So all my photos of the guests (apart from the blurry ones) are there, unedited (sorry Saz).

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I decided the other week, because I am completely mad, to set myself the challenge of writing 20,000 words this year. Something is defined as written when it is posted up somewhere. So anything I've previously done most of the work on and just needs a bit (lot) of betaing that actually gets finished counts. And hopefully motivates me to finish. Like the one that celebrates its third birthday in April. And is only 1000 words long (although the first draft was 150, so it's grown a bit). As I've already posted one this year I decided it counted, so here's a pretty picture to illustrate my progress (with a different coloured bar to differentiate it from my reading my height in books progress):

3,851 / 20,000 (19.3%)

No idea whether 20,000 words is a good amount to pick, mind you. Although if I average 5000 words a fic (which I seem to be at the moment), that's only four stories. At the rate of one every three months, which sounds a do-able challenge.

Because, as has already been well established I am mad, I have signed up for the Free Your Mind challenge/ficathon thingy and have to write Jack/Elizabeth (that would be the Stargate kind, not the Pirates of the Caribbean). By the 3rd March. Um. Argh? And is there anyone crazy enough to beta it?

I did start a Weir/Caldwell fic the other week. I got three paragraphs in, and although they were very pretty paragraphs, it just wasn't going anywhere and I concluded that it just wasn't going to happen. Which is a handy thing to find out.

I am partway through writing Shep/Weir flirting for Langford U, which is currently at 2000 words and needs more plot - due to having eight characters in a scene and I've only focused on two of them so far. I'm only on the first draft, though, so based on the last two I wrote, the finished one should be more than 4000 words.

On Saturday night, at about 1am (so technically it was Sunday morning) I had a slightly (very?) crack!fic like idea of Sheppard in our universe accidentally swapping places with the Langford version. With twice the UST as people try to figure out what's going on and how to get them back. I'm sort of tempted to write it but I'd also have to figure out what's going on, how they got there and therefore how to get them back. Which I haven't so far. But I've imagined (and then forgotten most of) lots of interesting conversations.

The most recent episode of Stargate - Ripple Effect. When [censored] walked into the room full of [censoreds] all I could think was that he was probably thinking "I'm in heaven and it's full of Samantha's". But much squee over the credits. It's quite handy to know the actor's names.

The last episode of Atlantis I saw - Inferno - was it just me or did they miss a whole load from the end? I mean the team didn't die (duh) but how did they get home? I did like Sheppard and Weir's conversation near the beginning, that was quite funny.

I followed a link from the SGA newsletter to discover that the Documentation challenge on SGA Flashfiction has got some really excellent entries for it.

So much so that I ended up inspired to write one of my own - it's sort of a story anyway: Mission Form Checklist

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

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

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

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

4.1cm / 155cm (2.6%)

Something that occurred to me ages ago but I had forgotten all about until I was surfing around and was reminded about. In Atlantis, Sheppard/Weir is also known as Sparky, to save it being Shweir *sudder* Those sort of names are only good when they're funny (like McShep, which I find funny for some reason).

Only trouble is, Sparky is one of Rygel's nicknames in Farscape, given to him by Crichton. So I think all the ships should have a Rygel nickname. There's even a site with them all listed: Crichtonisms ( could only remember four: Sparky, Spanky, Buckwheat and Napoleon XVI). Maybe if we run out, we can go for other character's nicknames, there must be more than there are pairings, even when you get to multi-ones.

This did completely confuse me the other day when I was reading sga_newsletter and they mentioned a new community with spanking in the name. It was referring to, you know, spanking. Except that my first though was 'ooh, I wonder what pairing that is.'

Dad's set up a test blog for WordPress 2.0 and it looks really good. If someone just sorts out Live+Press I'd switch like a shot. Which leads nicely to the subject of Atlantis...

I'm not going to spoil any episodes past Sky. I was going to give the name of the episodes, but anyone who's been at a con with me knows what I'm like with episode names). I came to the conclusion during Epiphany (the one with the beard) that I actually ship Sheppard/everyone, not just the three in my icon. So to test this theory I read a John/Ronon fic, liked it, could totally see that. But, I thought to myself, I couldn't do Sheppard/Ford. Except I read one and I totally can.

All is fine until tonight's episode where I saw:
Caldwell/Weir, McKay/Weir, McKay/Sheppard, John/Teyla, Carson/Rodney(!), Teyla/Ronon, John/Ronon, Weir/Lorne (now I know who he is!)
Er, yeah. I don't like Teyla/Ford (even though I've written it, but it was in an AU, so doesn't count), although I'm quite like the idea of Teyla/Ronon. And Elizabeth/Ronon as well.

So all in all it was a good episode if you ship anything in particular, and a bad episode if you ship anything in particular, depending on how good you are at interpreting/explaining. I found it a really fun episode just spotting the ships and being all gleeful about all of them. It's so much more fun!

This is possibly something of a reaction against some of the stuff I've been reading where people are complaining about particular ones. I had enough of that in Stargate and I can't be doing with it. I'm not caring too much about people talking about episodes as well. I'm just happy to go 'that was fun' or 'that was crap'.

I had a whole plan of things I was going to do Friday night, which I completely scuppered by overdosing on biscuits. Technially speaking it was the egg in them that was the problem and I didn't actually know what my tolerance to egg is. Now I know: 2 biscuits. Which is higher than my milk tolerance (which is the equivalent of 1 biscuit) but is really annoying.

What didn't help was working my way through the different Atlantis Au communities - there does seem to a lot of Atlantis AU going on, and I actually like reading it for some strange reason. Anyway, I really liked Langford U, which is set in a university in Nebraska. Which sounds like it's up in the Arctic Circle for some reason, but isn't.

This morning, after beating mum's score on Screwball on the Dairy Free Forum after three attempts, I played with a mock-up website. All I wanted to do was add a row in a table. Which really shouldn't be that complicated. I got really confused with all the tables going on in Nvu so ended up in TextPad, and got myself in such a mess that I ended up starting the table from scratch and pasting the relevant info in. I can't decide whether converting it into LJ-speak is going to be easier or harder.

I should really do the Rotaract stuff I've been putting off half the week (two and a half weeks in some cases), otherwise I'll just put them off all of next week too.

I'm enjoying Atlantis more than Stargate this season, not just because I have three ships on Atlantis and none on Stargate, since they both revolved around Jack But also because Stargate makes me want to watch Farscape. I get to the end of an episode of Atlantis and think 'That was great, I can't wait for the next one' (except for Trinity, but the I can't wait for the next one bit was still there). Whereas I get to the end of Stargate and think 'Ben Browder was great, I really want to watch Farscape now'. Which is not really the idea. Now if they'd just cancel Stargate and bring back new Farscape I'd be just as more happy (assuming big denial at the end of PK Wars, of course - it's not just a river in Egypt, it's a way of life).

I also realised the thing I really miss about Stargate, as scary as the Ori and the Wraith are (naming them Steve and Bob notwithstanding), is the part where suddenly someone flashes their eyes and you get that sudden moment of fear as you go 'OMG, he's a Goa'uld'. I can't help feeling that the more we find out about the Wraith the less scary they get. The Ori get scarier, at least so far (I'm so not getting into the religion discussion about them, though, that has the potential to go to bad places).

This post brought to you by why am I more awake at 11pm than I have been all day? Usually by now I'm asleep on my feet (or asleep in bed, to be precise). This post also brought to you by I've just watched Atlantis and it was good.

I've just been watching Broken News which continues to be funny. Usually I tape it and watch Shakespeare but 15 minutes of Johnny Vegas turned out to be all I could take. The only annoying thing about Broken News is that you can't concentrate on what's being said and the ticker tapes that go across the bottom. The money and sports channels are even worse. Most memorable joke was right at the start:

"...destroyed four storeys, including the latest JK Rowling..."

I also loved that they as well as looking at tomorrows/yesterdays papers they also looked at the obituries, the crosswords, the sudokos and the horoscopes.

I managed to concentrate for long enough tonight to get the Sheppard/Teyla part of my Five Things fic up to v4. It's a stick-fighting scene, so I looked up some screencaps to describe the gym and I remembered how much I love the place. It's so pretty. And I love the whole stick fighting thing. I'd love to try it, even though it's mostly just spinning and hitting each other's sticks - much like lightsabre fighting but with a weapon in each hand.

Tomorrow at work I get to try and match up 511 questionnaires with 442 bits of data (or technically speaking, the other way round). Which is going to be a complete nightmare, except that I quite like it in some sort of masochistic way. Perhaps because it's a bit of a logic problem. Plus I quite like playing with data in excel.

It comes to something that 11 o'clock is a late night these days, and 10 o'clock is more usual. It feels like Sunday today, as I had Friday off. I saw Wallace & Gromit, which was very funny. And had bunnies in it, which were very sweet. I also found Lois McMaster Bujold's Falling Free in Borders, yay! Borders are doing £5 off vouchers if you spend £20 in the first two weeks of November, which really, really tempting.

I think my dad's addicted to QuizCall. He messaged me to tell me they had a matches game on. My digital TV is up and working and I watched Atlantis on it last night. Which isn't nearly as funny as watching it on my parents slightly crappy temporary TV which cuts off the edges, so you're actually watching Stargate Tlanti according to the credits. Starring some bloke called Vid Wlet.

I was good today and did some writing. I'm technically on the second version of my Five Things fic, although I've rewritten Jack/Daniel and McKay/Sheppard a bit. So today I completely rewrote Sheppard/Weir. Hmm. Could take a while. I also discovered a whole section on Wraithbait that it would actually fit it, which is quite cool.

I actually got my cross stitch out last night for the first time in a while - I've been tired and on the backstitch, which is never as interesting. But I wanted to watch Sunday's Midsomer Murders and it's slow, so needs me doing something else at the same time.

Last night I dreamt we had a company day out (although there was no-one in my dream I actually knew) and we had to split into teams to complete a cross stitch. The teams somehow managed to change into 2-people ones, although I have no idea how two people are supposed to complete one cross stitch at the same time. I spent a fair bit of the dream thinking about this. I managed to get out of the cross stitching though on the basis that I did it in the evenings anyway. I ended up helping two blokes who didn't really know what they were doing. It obviously got a bit strange(r) though because it started involving candles.

A meme, from Melli and Avon:

What are you working on? List your current writing projects (fanfic and/or original). Include a small segment describing the plot.

1. A long Gilraen/Arathorn one current called The Tale of Arathorn and Gilraen. In the Tale of A&A it's not stated explicitly that Gilraen loved Arathorn when they married, although he loves her. So I started from that premise and worked out reasons why she married him and didn't remarry and ended up writing the story of their lives together.

2. The HASA Tag Team Challenge fic that was due, er, last October. Never mind. Definitely untitled, and un-worked on by either of us for quite a while. It stars Aragorn and Faramir when they're King and Steward respectively but before Aragorn marries Arwen. It is not either serious or sensible at any point.

3. A Lord of the Rings fic I started two and a half years ago and haven't worked on for a while either. The plot is currently a secret to all but three of the people on my friends list who have beta'ed/read it at various points.

4. A have a file for this even though I haven't actually written anything, merely photocopied the relevant but of the Silm and forgotten the plot. In it, Elrond introduces his sons to the sunrise and explains it. It turns out he finds out something else is going on with his sons, if I could just remember what.

5. Because I still mean to write it one day, a Sam/Jack slash piece. Partly because it defies classification.

Following on from the other week when I wrote an Atlantis snippet I was trying to do a McKay piece and got sidetracked by trying to do a similar thing with Sheppard/Weir and accidentally writing Sheppard/Teyla instead. I could almost do a Five Things fic with Sheppard pairings (although given I ship Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/Weir and Sheppard/Teyla, as well as Sam/Jack and Jack/Daniel, that makes five...)

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(Although I started writing this yesterday, so I'm technically a bit late with that, never mind)

You couldn't make it up: Drunken prank led to armed siege

I had no intention of seeing Serenity. I've seen 20mins of Firefly and that was enough. But there was an article about it in the latest SFX that mentioned they go to a remote place called Maidenhead. I mentioned it to Rotaract and there was a general concesus we'd have to check out this 'Maidenhead' place. (A small note - Maidenhead is a town not far from here. One of our members is going out with an ex-member of Maidenhead Rotaract).

I discovered today this WordPress blog has the best thing ever - search. We were having a Myers-Briggs discussion and I knew I had what I was on my blog somewhere but couldn't remember which month it was. But I searched for it and found it.

I'm really bad with names, it takes me a long time to learn them. For some reason I find it much easier if I see them written down - although if isn't pronounced as it's written that doesn't help. I struggled with who Weiss in Alias was for two series. I was seeing it written when people talked about him and assumed it was pronounced Veiss, and I couldn't remember anyone with that name.

I've seen someone called Halling mentioned paired with Beckett (Carson, not Sam, which doesn't help). I assumed it was the woman from Duet whose name begins with a C or K, but no, turns out Halling is a man. Is he actually on the series? Admittedly, it's taken me a series and a half to work out who Zelenka is.

I'm doing really badly on episode titles as well. I keep seeing episode tag fics, where they'll say it's set post 'Hot Zone' for example. Which is great. Except that doesn't really narrow it down very much. Which is why I started putting an episode guide on my site - I need it for me.

The way Lost introduces you to a character each episode is really handy because I'm learning a name per episode. I think I've learnt the same number now as I would have in the entire series. I did confuse myself though, as I temporarily named Sawyer, 'that guy' but then got confused and thought Adam was 'that guy'. I think the only ones I have temporary names for now are Adam, the pregnant girl who I think was Tess in Roswell High, that guy who's been in everything, the kid, the kid's dad, the dog, the one with silly hair. I've even managed to learn Shannon without her having an episode yet, which is pretty good going for me.

After the two-part starter for the latest Spooks series I realised there was a new character and I should make sure I remember his name. Needless to say I'd forgotten it a week later and I still can't remember. It's only one name and four episodes later it could be anything. Although the other week I couldn't for the life of me work out who this Fiona Adam was referring to was.

In last week's Supernanny she commented that to the mother everything seemed 'this big because she was tired' which is pretty much how I felt this morning. I got sick of my dinner last night for being so dry and I desperately wanted some normal bread and as a result everything little niggle seemed like a major insurmountable crisis.

I'm not sure what it was that happened between then and now (specially as I was at work!) but it's all seeming a lot smaller this evening.

I read an Atlantis fic the other day, Day Break ,which suddenly made me believe in the Sheppard/McKay pairing. I think it was entirely due to one comment, where McKay off-handedly mentions that Sheppard is in McKay's meeting being Sheppard's pretty. And I thought that seemed exactly like something McKay would say. So now I can see Shep/McKay, Shep/Teyla and Shep/Weir. And I thought shipping Sam/Jack and Jack/Daniel was complicated.

Before I know it I found myself writing a Shep/McKay fic while I was writing a database this afternoon (which explains why my database was full of errors). It's fairly drafty but for once I don't care - it might make it into a longer fic at some point, I might never do anything with it again, but here it is anyway. Let's see if I can remember how to do this this simultaneous LJ-cut thing...

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It's been so long since I last posted I can't even remember when it was or what I said. Although this is partly because I've been so busy at work I've been a bit stressed and my memory goes when I'm stressed. Which is a problem because I have a good memory, so I rely on it a lot.

I got halfway through watching the first half of Lost tonight and got bored. It didn't help that there had been about ten minutes worth of adverts in that time. And, strangely enough, nothing in it had changed since I saw most of it last autumn. So I'm taping the second half and will find out at some point where I got up to. I also think that watching it just before I got to bed is a stupendously bad idea. That is assuming I manage to stay away till 11pm. It's not looking likely at this point.

I had a good weekend, despite working ridiculous hours to have Monday off. I met up with Sel, Kate, Beth & Terry on Saturday. Terry and I rowed in the Serpentine. Although rowed is perhaps putting it a bit strongly in my case. I think there was more swearing than rowing going on.

Sunday I saw a couple of friends in the London Triathlon. If I hadn't known anyone in it it wouldn't have been so interesting, but as it was I really enjoyed myself.

After that I was off to Somerset for the annual trip to the Windmill. It was good to swim in the outdoor pool on Monday while everyone else in the office was at work.

The only trouble with the weekend (and in fact, most of them) is I get some intelligent conversation. Or dirty conversation in some cases. But it makes going back to work so much more difficult when the main topic of conversation is Big Brother, clothes, shoes and diets. None of which I have any interest in at all.

On the plus side the latest Atlantis was great. Mainly due to David Hewlett, who was fantastic. Stargate was equally funny but can't quite match McKay and [censored] doing [censored]. I want a screencap of it as my wallpaper. At work, of course. (Note to people watching it on Sky, this is the fourth episode called Duet. It will be obvious which bit I am talking about).

First a link: Word Perhect - it's a word processor along the lines of Windows RG.

The week started off so well, then I accidentally ate some bread with milk in at the Rotaract barbecue, so spent the rest of the week trying to catch up on my sleep. And reading the last Doctor and Ace BBC book. Pity the ending was so crap.

Today was our tinshake, so I got to sit in a nice garden for five hours and spend one hour standing in the sun in a fairly empty town collecting. I managed to spend most of my time with my left side in the sun (or towards it) so I now have one brown arm and one white one. I will have to spend tomorrow the other way round so I have a matching pair. I also got to count money and we made just under £400 for the local toy library, which is pretty good going. For some reason it seems that any collection in the town gets between £300 and £500 no matter the time of year and the weather.

I enjoyed sitting around with nothing urgent to do so much I made plans to do the same tomorrow. Although finding shade in my landlady's garden is sometimes a bit tricky. After the tinshake I went to Tescos, mainly for some pink grapefruit which they couldn't manage to provide anyway, and got Harry Potter. To read tomorrow (although I read an hours worth this evening in the garden). I did tell myself in advance I wouldn't buy it if it was more than �8 and it wasn't, so I felt vindicated. Sort of. After all, I get the Discworld books in hardback when they come out for �8 or �9.

I have to say that as soon as I started it I felt like I was being talked down to. I've got more used to it now but it does serve to remind that it's a children's book. And I certainly have the children's cover - it's prettier and more colourful. And I certainly didn't re-read the others in preparation - I've read them all twice (or more, I haven't been counting) so I remember them now. I only usually need twice through anything to fix it in my memory for a good few years.

I also discovered Atlantis was on Channel 5 yesterday. It's just as well dad wasn't waiting for it to be on terrestrial to see it - otherwise I'd have been taping it for him because they don't have Sky and no intention of getting it. Sometimes mum asks me if they're missing anything by not being able to get Channel 5 and I can reassure her they're not. That's when I remember to read that column in the TV guide - I got so used to ignoring it before I went to uni I often forget it's there entirely.

Anyway, I enjoyed Atlantis. I had forgotten that Major Sheppard knew nothing about the whole Stargate thing before it started. And I can definitely see a Sheppard/Weir thing going on.

Annmarwalk and Avon did this one:

The One-sentence Meme

If you happen to be working on some new writing project, fanfiction or what have you, post exactly one sentence from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else -- this is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

So I had a look through my wip folder and found all sorts of things I'd entirely forgotten about, some of which may even be finished one day in the distant future. Don't hold your breath though, some of these were last modified in 2001.

* Unfortunately the ship was running smoothly and Trip temporarily run out of things to take his mind off the situation. (untitled, Enterprise)

* "You don't see me eating pecan pie off just anyone's plate." (untitled, Enterprise)

* "Aeryn can we please have a sensible conversation that doesn't involve talking in riddles and going round in circles." (Lost Without You, Farscape)

* "If you are referring to our destination of Place A then it is still 5 days away. We are only 2 arns from Place B, however." (untitled, Farscape)

* If he had been thinking clearly he might have noticed that not only was Aeryn not breathing, but there was also a bullet wound in her stomach, accompanied by a fair amount of blood distributed between Aeryn, the floor and the guards. (untitled Farscape)

* It has been said that hell is being stuck in a room forever with your friends, and we've certainly proved that. (Trapped, Stargate)

* Elrond made to get up and get some bandages but from the corner of his eye he saw Celebri�an's eyelids flutter and her breath falter. (Abduction, Lord of the Rings)

* He momentarily wondered if he shouldn't have cleaved to Arwen so early, in which case he'd now understand women a little better. (working title Adjustments, Lord of the Rings)

* Elrond did not easily express his emotions and Arwen was glad he had at least felt something. (untitled, Lord of the Rings)

* "I'm trying to seduce you and that's all you can think about?" (untitled, Lord of the Rings)

* There was always one or other of the Northern Rangers injured or dying and Elrond couldn't help worrying that one day one of the dead would be his son. (Choices, Lord of the Rings)

* He could taste the lembas that had been the last meal for both of them; he could smell metal and earth; he could feel the handle of his bow pressing against his palms and digging into the skin. (Last Alliance, Lord of the Rings)

* It was always dark these days and my mother had only found one candle to light the room we were in. (working title Servants 2, Lord of the Rings)

* They had an unspoken agreement not to reveal to anyone else the truth of their marriage but still his actions surprised her. (The Tale of Arathorn and Gilraen, Lord of the Rings)

* He could imagine what would happen if it got round that the king and steward were moonlighting as seamstresses. (untitled, Lord of the Rings)

* The Doctor, on the other hand, had clearly decided Paris was at its best during the French Revolution, when half of the population was trying to kill the other half (untitled, Doctor Who)

* Instead, I am scared of the future - it stretches before me, long and empty without you in it (My Angel, original)

Saz and Nic did this one (which I must reply to):

Why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself? Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's so and so...she/he wears mismatched socks." I'd love it if every single person who friended me would do this. Yes, even you people who I know really well. Then post this in your own journal.

I read dad's magazine this morning and it talked about extensions you can get for Firefox. I had a look and it turns out that there's one that means you can open a new window (or tab) and it will open the current page with the whole history - like in ie. I couldn't live without it, so I've been sticking to ie so far and only using Firefox to save images (for some strange reason ie seems to think everything is a bitmap). But since I installed this extensions I've been using both. Firefox does look a bit odd though but I suppose I'll get used to it.

We did presents this evening and dad got me an updated version of his php book. So I might get some done at some point! Usually mum buys all the presents - the last present dad got me was 3001 (in hardback).

Yay for this news: McGillion made Atlantis regular

I'm reading Textual Poachers at the moment (well, as well as Unfinished Tales and the second book of Simon Schama's History of Britain) and it's quite interesting. It is american, so based for that perspective (which seems quite odd when talking about Blakes 7, for example). And it's about ten years old, so it's interesting to discover how much everything has changed since then - mainly the impact of the internet. I'm currently reading the slash chapter

I also got the urge to watch some Quantum Leap the other day. I had a look through the list of episodes and remembered I'd seen The Leap Home part 1, but not part 2. And it was good. I even knew what was going to happen but it was still quite heartbreaking - Al essentially chose between Sam's brother's life and himself, and he chose Sam's brother. I can't cope with Quantum Leap slash at all - it feels like people talking about Noddy and Big Ears, which althought funny, feels like spoiling my childhood. But I do like the friendship between Sam and Al, which is especially important to Sam, being as Al's his only contact with the real world and his life.

I had a bit of a revelation today. I've been enjoying Atlantis recently and I've been trying to work out why - then it occurred to me. It's because I've been watching it on it's own and not straight after Stargate. The trouble is that I like all the characters in Stargate (except for the love to hate ones) and I've been watching it for a few years. Whereas on Atlantis I don't like Teyla and I still can't decide about Weir. In all fairness, I didn't like Teal'c at first so that could change.

Also, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is back on Monday. Of course, my dad, the minute I tell him this tells me I have to remind him. He'd be stuffed if it wasn't for Listen Again (mind you, so would I). I wish TV had the same system - once something had been shown, you can watch it any time within a week afterwards.