I have mostly spent this week being dizzy and working. Although I have managed to get through most of my to-do list - there were things on there I could do lying down or only took five minutes of sitting up.

Although this weekend I have felt well enough to move around a bit and I have finally put all my books, CDs and DVDs on my bookshelves. And then I took photos of them. The last two (Flickr orders them in reverse) are from a funny angle because there's not much space in that corner.

As you can see, there's not a lot of space left... If I owned this house the shelves would be floor to ceiling. I don't have any more space left along the walls in the spare room. Although I might be able to fit another one in and have it sticking out a bit (the room's a funny shape). Theoretically I could have shelves in the middle of the room, but it is supposed to be a spare room too, and I do need space to unfold the bed. But I haven't used the tops of the shelves yet, so when I run out of space I'll buy some bookends and start on those. When I run out of space up there I need to get rid of some books. According to LibraryThing I have 435 books, which is plenty. Maybe one day when I have a house big enough to fit them in I can have more.

There are still things in my room at home. The bookshelves still have ornaments and rabbits (of the cuddly variety) on them. There are still things in the cupboards too (including a lot of videos). But the cupboard doors are being used to keep bunny's hammock up, so I can't open them, otherwise her hammock falls down and she falls out.

I went to Oxford yesterday morning, to avoid the royal wedding because a) I'm a Republican and b) wedding's just aren't that interesting. Although when people ask I've just been telling them answer b, which satisfies them, even if they think I'm odd. Although, this is mostly girls. I don't think I've come across any men watching it out of choice.

Given that I still had money left on my Waterstones gift card that was my birthday present from my grandmother last year, and she gave me another one this year, early, I had lots of money to spend on Waterstones! Which doesn't go very far on new books, I found. I'm used to not spending more than £2 on books and most of the ones I buy these days are from charity shops.

But I spent £22 and for that I got:
Doctor Who: The Way Through the Woods by altariel
Mothers and Daughters by Kate Long
On The Beat by Graham Cole (which is his autobiography)

I've read The Way Through the Woods, which was good. And there was a mention of Barbara and Tegan. And a bit where I went, "Are you sure he remembers that?" and then tonight's Doctor Who confirmed that yes, he did.

I ended up spending an hour at the train station because I got there just in time to miss one train. The next one was half an hour later, which I missed because I got distracted by reading and then the train left a minute early (when does that ever happen?). But it was just as well because I was tired and dizzy by that point and needed a rest and Waterstones only really make a token effort towards seating among the books.

Since I'm not doing any kind of book-reading challenge, I don't tend to talk about what I've read. But I've recently read a few books I wanted to talk about. Read more...

I had a good weekend - well, half a good weekend. I went to High Wycombe to drop off some knickers and other stuff for Knickers 4 Africa and go to selenay936's ex-local bookshop. Where I saw her parents and spent £17 on books - that was being restrained. I'm still working through the books I got from my mum and grandmother for my birthday yet.

It was a good day and we somehow managed to avoid the worst of the weather. I was really tired when I got home, which I expected. What I didn't expect was how dizzy I felt Sunday. All I ended up doing on Sunday is lying on the sofa reading and watching tennis because I wasn't capable of doing anything else. Fortunately, there was tennis on - exhibition matches under the new Centre Court roof at Wimbledon and I enjoyed them, although I could have done without the camera moving so much. I didn't even feel like I'd done that much either. I'm less dizzy now but back to going to bed at 10pm.

But on Friday I'm going to see if I feel well enough after work to go and see In the Loop, which wasn't at the cinema walking distance from where I live now. But it is at the cinema walking distance from work on Friday and Saturday. Then it is at least a three day weekend, although I plan to do things with it - not least find a place for all these books to live...

Also, in the unlikely event that there's anyone left who doesn't have a Dreamwidth account that wants one, I have four invites. And, it turns out, Trillian Astra invites, since it's now in beta. And probably has been for a while, I've just failed to notice, just gave them money...

Because I haven't got the energy for anything more substantial.
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I finally managed to get myself out of holiday mode and cleaned the house yesterday. It's hard to motivate myself to do it when I know I'm going to be moving out of it, but I'll be even less motivated when I'm not living in it, and the dirtier it is then, the worse it's going to be to clean. But it does all look so much better now I have cleaned it.

I also finished the book I started while I was away and it felt never-ending. I'm now a third of the way through The Graveyard book. I have two piles of books from the ones I bought in Canada and the Pratchett I finished just before I went. They're just the right size to fit my laptop on in front of the TV, so I can plug the TV into it. Now I've changed the books the two piles are more level too.

I made the mistake, when I got back, of watching all four Spooks episodes, which included the one from BBC3. So although I put it on last Monday because I was too tired to take it in much the first time, it's not the same as watching it new. So now I am back on watching them on Mondays because Monday needs something to look forward to, since I only watch SJA every other week. Suffice to say I enjoyed tonight's, even if I spent most of it wondering where I knew the bad guy from. Turns out it was one of the recent Poirots.

And just to make all the other people doing Yuletide jealous: I have a first draft of mine. At 1200 words I'm doing better than last year where I managed 1006 (but any padding to that one would have been just that, padding). I'm aiming to get it finished by the end of the week and hopefully writing every night will get me back into it and who knows, I might even get round to the requests I asked for back in June that are sitting in my inbox...

Thank you to all the people who made suggestions for book swapping websites. I registered on bookmooch and readitswapit.co.uk. At the moment I don't want any more books, because then that'll be more to move. So I put ten on bookmooch and have had requests for three already. So I'll see how that goes and maybe try readitswapit.co.uk later too.

Having taken those ten books out of my to charity bag I can now lift it!

I have a bag of books that's sitting in my room waiting for me to add to it, then I'll take them to the charity shop. Although by charity shop I mean one of the five in town. But I think some of them are a bit unlikely to sell in this town. And I know a lot of people keep talking about book swapping sites, so I thought I'd maybe investigate them since maybe it would lead to me buying fewer books.

So which ones do people use? Bearing in mind I have to be able to swap with people in Britain - I'm not planning on sending any overseas because that'll just be more expensive than buying them.

After reading loads of Chalet School books and then coming across Can Any Mother Help Me? I got interested in this whole idea in the 1930s of married women not being allowed to work.

I've discovered it's because of the Depression, which makes a lot of sense, but what I want is a book, if one exists, that tells me more about how it came about, how it affected people (men as well as women) and how it ended.

I've looked in Borders, in the history section, and found nothing. But a google search has various books listed in Women and Feminism sections, which makes me think I was looking in the wrong place. However, what I can't yet find are descriptions of any books that give me any idea of whether they'll tell me what I want to know.

So, anyone know anything useful?

I re-read Anne of Green Gables last year, and then Avon pointed out there were some more - seven more in fact. By the end, Anne's youngest daughter is older than Anne was when we started.

I came across all of them when I was in America, so I bought them. It's just taken me a while to get round to reading them, since the first one was a bit hard going. Anne has a tendency (or she did in that one) to talk a lot and sometimes you'd turn the page to find the paragraph was a whole page long.

The others I found harder because I liked Anne young, so I was less keen on her growing up and everyone getting married. Some of them went by really quickly as well. The 7th book, Rainbow Valley, seemed to focus on the Minister's children more than Anne's, but then they were probably more interesting.

It improved with the last book, Rilla of Ingleside, which entirely focused on Anne's youngest daughter. It's also set during the First World War. I don't know how historically accurate it is, but I still enjoyed seeing how the war affected the people at home.

And it was interesting in the books generally to see their reactions to such new inventions as telephones, aeroplanes and cars.

When Harry Potter came out and there was a big thing about it, I didn't read it on purpose because everyone else was. It was only after the fourth book came out and long before the first film that I decided that maybe that if so many people are reading it there's something in it. And I was glad I did read it.

Last year someone at work was reading a book at lunch called We Need to Talk About Kevin which was about a fictional boy who did a equally fictional High School shooting. I thought it sounded interesting but had forgotten about it the next day. Until someone else was reading it at work at lunch not that long ago.

Normally, the sorts of things the girls at work are into are not what I'm into at all. But it still intrigued me. And then the other day I followed a link to a blog and on it, the person who wrote the blog had read it and said it was good. I had a look and discovered the local library had it. So on Thursday (the only day they're open after work finishes) I got my first book from the library I didn't have to pay for.

I planned to spend this weekend reading it, except I started on Friday and just finished. And I'm very glad I did get it because it was very good. It's easy to get completely caught up in the characters and the writing style, of the Kevin's mother to his father. A part of the ending I predicted halfway through - if 'I wonder if...' counts as predicting. But none of it came as a surprise, though. Except that I read the last few pages in tears. And like Kevin, who it's impossible to say exactly why he did it, I don't know who I was feeling sorry for.

I didn't know, or had heard and forgotten that they're doing His Dark Materials in films. Which will be something to see at Christmas again! My daemon is apparently a wildcat called Romulus. Which I could live with (er, apart from being allergic to his fur...). I've just finished the first book in the trilogy, so I think I'll have managed them all by the time the film comes out.

Annoyingly, I bent my glasses last night. I have bendy glasses but they're not as great as they make out - I am on my spare pair since I bent the originals and they couldn't quite get it to be perfect again. They're good enough for a spare pair, but when I need new glasses I'm not going to be able to get away with just replacing the lenses. The bendiness is good enough when I walk into doors, which is handy since I do that quite frequently. But last night I hit my glasses into the shelf in the kitchen when I was emptying the bin. The opticians were able to fix them though, which is good.

I have to find 80s fancy dress for Conference the weekend after next. I could do the Ace costume again, but I did that two years ago when the District's theme was Doctor Who. And I really want to wear my pink bunny ears headband that I bought in Walmart. So what can I wear with them that could be 80s?

Moving is stressful, I've discovered. Although this is mostly because I wanted to tell Pipex I was moving but it turns out this means they cancel your current account and give you a new one. Which can take 7-10 days after you move in. So I could be broadbandless for a few days, till I go home. I don't know how I'm going to survive (although I can see it involving staying after work...)

I posted the latest chapter of Doctor Who: The Soap Opera, Chapter 6: The Truth, where I don't torture Sarah at all. But am making up for it in other stuff I'm writing.

My dad introduced me to Pandora where you tell it what music you like and it finds other things it thinks you will. I told it various artists and it came up with a Garbage song, and I'd forgotten to tell them I liked Garbage, so that impressed me.

I'm less impressed by the book I'm currently reading, which is 12 in the Star Trek New Frontiers series. I haven't read any since about book 4 and I think it's gone downhill since then, as I'm not interested in any of the plots in it. But what got me last night was the science being completely and utterly ridiculous. Basically, they've just found out that back in Kirk's era a god and a human reproduced and had a daughter. She had a daughter, who had a daughter, who had a son. None of the daughters showed any signs of godhood but the son did. The explanation was that the difference was that he had a Y chromosome (fine so far) and the godhood gene is on that. Er, no. You get your Y chromosome from your father, so the son can only be a god if his father was descended from one, not his mother. They could have made it work like colour blindness, where the godhood gene was on the mothers' X chromosomes but was cancelled out by the fathers' X chromosomes, but that bits missing on the Y (where the brain is, according to my A level biology teacher).

That's all fairly basic biology as well, like GCSE level stuff, so no-one should be getting it wrong in a published book. It's slightly more excusable in fan fic. I read something recently that was set now and had someone in this country paying with pound notes. And another where someone British was described as African American. (although it always comes up at work when we do an American questionnaire and ask ethnic origin, if you can be African American, [anything else] American why can't you just be American?)

Saturday, I went to Collectormania in Milton Keynes. Well, mostly I went there to see a friend from uni, whose parents live there. I felt ill on the coach on the way there, which wasn't a good way to start. The actual thing was just as I remember a few years back - no-one interesting, no stuff that's interesting and all the stalls crowded too close together so you can't see anything or get anywhere. And it's very hot. I also completely failed to find a suitably insulting birthday card for my dad.

But we did have very nice Chinese for lunch and we watched the skiers (and snowboarders) in the Snowdome. I really want to go now - I think I'd far rather try skiing there than somewhere abroad and cold. I ended up going before the last bus because I was really tired.

Sunday I was supposed to have a driving lesson followed by going swimming and generally taking some time to get some stuff done. However, I woke up feeling sick. So I did simultaneously watched two different Doctor Who stories and Midsomer Murders (when there was a break I switched) as well as the program about Monkey World and Jane Eyre. I'm convinced Mr Rochester is just playing with Jane and it's all going to end in tears. Baby chimps defy the law of all babies being cute because they're really ugly when they're just born, they get cuter later.

I also saw the last episode of Firefly. I just have the extras to go, then the film. I really enjoyed the last episode, it looked like they were doing interesting things with the characters and going further towards establishing what the Shepard's secret is. And finally maybe doing something about the Mal/Inara UST, which is driving me up the wall.

Annoyingly, I found that the new Terry Pratchett is cheaper in Borders than amazon, so I will have to go back to buy it. And might have ended up buying the Big Finish UNIT series instead...

But, yay, Spooks tonight! Which someone at work, correctly pointed out is the only thing on all week worth watching.

This weekend's been a bit mad. After not making it to a Rotaract dinner on Friday night because of work I was still going to have a Rotaract meeting on Saturday morning. Except that it was cancelled because the other person had to work!

This morning I was happy because I managed to sleep in till 9am. Which doesn't sound like much but I did keep waking up at 8am and it was getting to 7am and earlier, even if I didn't have to get up. I was still in bed when my driving instructor phoned to bring my lesson forward - so it was just as well I stayed late at work Friday instead of going in Sunday morning before my lesson.

Last night I changed my LJ to Plus on the basis that I can't see any adverts. It took me a while originally to work out that it was because the Adblock extension was getting rid of them. So I looked at the new Expression layouts and they're very nice. Apart from the breaking in IE part. And having to change everything with CSS rather than selecting options. Plus I decided when it comes to reading my friends list when I'm away then I like the one I have now just fine. And the tags list doesn't work properly because I have parent and children categories and the only way to find anything by tags is to go to my WP blog and look that way. Not least because there are more posts and they're all categorised.

I managed to spend £13 in a second hand bookshop where most of the books are 80p. It's one of my driving challenges to drive to Hay-on-Wye and shop till I drop (the books). The boot of my car is TARDIS-like so I'll be able to fit plenty in.

One of the books I bought was Sex Tips for Girls - written in 1983 and American. It's written very much tongue-in-cheek but mostly I bought it because it fell open on the section on manners:
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I'm currently watching Curling on one of the BBC Interactive channels, which is very cool. I've only got half an eye on it because they're only on the third end but it's better than the Ice Hockey they're showing on BBC2 and the other interactive channel. Plus it's the first time I've actually used it, so that's quite exciting. I've also discovered why all our curlers are Scottish: the only rink in England is in Kent.

I visisted Sel this weekend and we went to a little second hand bookshop, that despite its size has masses of books in it. And ended up wth £7 worth of children's books that I wasn't planning on buying. Um. They'll make a nice contrast to the thick history one mum's lent me.

I spent the weekend (ok, well, some of it) updating my website. I now have a contact form that works and I ended up with a ton of music videos to rec on there. I also reorganised my fanfiction page, so its actually grouped by fandom now! Plus I went through my drabbles and indexed them at the top of the relevant pages. As I was going through all of this I kept finding other, little, things I wanted to change. I've been thinking for a while that I want to go through and tweek some of the back-end stuff, perhaps I should actually get round to it.

Just after I uploaded it, I posted a new fic to Langford U - Divide and Subtract, which is a Sheppard and McKay friendship piece. I'm tempted to do some more with those two because they're so fun (although it was so tempting to go slashy!) and work my way through the rest of BODMAS (brackets of division multiplication addition subtraction = the order you evaluate an equation in, and is actually useful in my job!)

I really enjoyed Life on Mars on Monday. The DCI is so much like Burnside. I feel when he told Sam he had asked to transfer there that was important to the mystery of how he got to 1973 in the first place, although I have no idea how. I notice that, like Spooks, they've gone for the American style of starting with a bit of excitement before starting properly and telling us the names of the actors and giving us some pretty pictures. Which annoys me because it means you actually have to be ready at 9 o'clock, rather than just thinking about it. Unlike Spooks, though, they have actually kept the credits in and saved the trailer for next week till afterwards. The BBC are seriously pushing it, though - there was even a trailer for it before Doctor Who on BBC7 (which was the last one *sob*)

Last night we went to see Brokeback Mountain, which was very good and I really enjoyed. The only downside, apart from the 70s sideburns and that terrible moustache, was I couldn't always understand the Southern accents and as a result I have no idea of most of the characters names.

From the A people on my friends list - annmarwalk, avon and altariel - I am going to read my height in books this year. Because it is a good idea, and also because I'm only 5 foot 1 - which is 155cm in books, so shouldn't be too difficult.

And just to finish off, as I asked Una one of these:
Top 5 Meme: You post a topic, list, category, whatever, in my comments section (examples: "Top 5 Johns & Jacks on TV" or "Top 5 pairings in Atlantis"). Then, in a separate post, I'll post the answers to all your Top 5 ideas, according to me.

I've done quite well this weekend with getting things done. I was doing my backups, so watched the gymnastics, Stargate and Enterprise while it was doing it. Stargate I enjoyed, but I didn't get all the way through Enterprise. I was already reading during the adverts but ended up reading through the last third. In all fairness it was the first 'Last of the Jedi' book, which had some quality Obi-Wan angst.

Between those two and The West Wing on More4 on Friday night I saw the latest Barclays advert which is both funny and has Norman Lovett playing a computer.

I've had an email sitting in my inbox for a while now, reminding me (not very well) to talk about the MEFAs. There are loads of names I recognise in there. Congrats if you're one of them and reading this. Most excitingly the story I had nominated got an honourable mention! It was the first LOTR story I wrote, so that's very exciting.

I was good this morning and wrote another part of my Five Things fic. So I am now 4/5ths through the second draft, so it's getting there. Slowly. I worked out that my Sam/Jack slash fic should start off with Jack looking at Sam and thinking 'if only she was a man' but it's not got any further than that. It must have been SG8 last November when this was first discussed, so at the rate of a sentence a year it'll be finished, oh, sometime this century maybe. It could be a whole new record for me.

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.

Good

Payrise! Well, technically promotion but the only difference is the nice big payrise. Which needless to say, I've already spent. Dad had me addicted to QuizCall this weekend, so now I have bought a Freeview TV card, which is the size of a pen drive. So as of this weekend I will have three TVs....

I've read Thud! It was good, I enjoyed it. Specially Vimes's Gooseberry.

I've got Friday off, so am going to see Wallace and Gromit. I know it must be good because The Guardian likes it (they don't like anything).

Mum made me some muffins that are very nice and extremely chocolatey. We had chocolate mousse every night for pudding when I was home. Mum's chocolate mousse is 100 times nicer than any other I have ever tasted. She also made flapjacks but we all forgot that I should be taking them home. And even though they were a bit chewy they were nicer than ones you get in shops as well. She also made me bread, which isn't so good as it's white. And gluten-free, so dry and falls apart.

I've found a version of Hexic at MSN Games, although it's not as good as the Tablet PC version.

Captain Jack is getting his own TV show although it's on BBC3. It might be available on the internet afterwards though, like Confidential was, and The Thick of It will be for the second half of the first series/second series.

Very funny wikipedia take-off: Uncyclopedia. I particularly like the section on the religion of various particles (protons are catholic because they have mass) and various random things, like the links off the marriage article to slavery.

Bad

Broke a string on my guitar. Got it fixed fine at the shop. Went to lesson and the teacher pointed out it was the wrong type of string. So I'm taking it back again tomorrow. On the plus side, I now have an electronic tuner which makes tuning 5000% easier.

I've set off the RSI in my thumb again with my cross stitching, so that's out. It gets worse throughout the day after I've been using it - it is quite hard not to use your right thumb, specially given that it doesn't hurt until I've been using it a bit, so I tend to forget. On the plus side, I really should put my Australia photos in an album. On the minus side that does involve writing, which also involves my right thumb. On the plus side, I've just realised I could type the descriptions. How stupid am I?

Just travelling home Friday, back again Sunday, and walking round Bournemouth has completely worn me out. I'm still a bit tired from it.

My chocolate spread has vanilla on it. But I will see if my local health food shop will order me some Plamil Well, their chocolate is good, so I figure their chocolate spread ought to be good too. If not, there are other ones I can try.

Ugly

Which is really just a way of saying this could go either way. I've discovered spirits have a tendency to be made from wheat grain. The thought of having one drink and spending the rest of the evening doesn't really fill me with joy so my only options seem to be brandy (yuk) or wine (ditto). On the plus side, I'm a cheap date. And will be driving everyone once I have a car so I can remind them what they did the previous night. And increasingly, drink just seems to make me tired.