I am so glad there's only three weeks left before Christmas, when I get ten days off in a row (including weekends and bank holidays). Although the two weeks coming are likely to be the busiest as we try and fit as many projects in as possible before Christmas in a rush.

In other news, I had mushrooms last night and wasn't ill. They were nice as well, I'd forgotten! Even better, I had them on pizza. Sainsbury's Free From pizza bases don't go completely solid in the oven either. They're just expensive, which is why pizza is a treat. But since the smallest amount of mushrooms I can buy was 150g, I will be eating mushrooms every night this week.

Mushrooms are the last thing I have to try before I'm onto wheat and wheat gluten. It's a tricky one because I don't want to eat something that I'll remember the taste of and then might not be able to eat again, but I could eat half a breaded fish from the fish and chip shop, so I will need to eat quite a bit of gluten to test it. I am intending to have a tube of Pringles because limiting yourself to one or two is really hard. I think it'll have to be pasta - I have plenty, so I can always have half ordinary, half gluten free.

At some point I will have to try an actual egg and not just egg in bread and biscuits. But since I really don't want to remember what one tastes like and then potentially not be able to eat one again, I'm not in a rush.

I have finally finished my diet. When I started three months without anything I can't eat and sugar and yeast sounded like forever. Now I've got so used to it I can't remember what I used to eat.

But now I get to reintroduce foods one at a time to see if they make me ill. I'm starting with soya. When I first couldn't eat soya it seemed like it was in everything. Now I'm struggling to find things to eat with it in. It's my cheese, but I was eating that anyway, as I could tolerate that much. It's in chocolate, but the nicest (dairy free) chocolate is soya free. I've been forced to eat Swedish Glace ice cream, which is such a hardship as you can imagine. Especially since the only flavour Sainsburys had was Neapolitan.

After three months without cheese I had some in my sandwich at lunch. And it tasted so odd. Granted, it does anyway - it doesn't taste like cheese, hence why I like it. But ice cream tasted so odd too and I was eating that, albeit a different brand, three months ago as well.

Because moving isn't enough for one month, I am starting a new diet this week.

There's a theory all these food intolerances are caused by not enough good bacteria and too much bad bacteria in the digestive system. Which itself could well be caused by stress, at least in my case. I was stressed by becoming lactose intolerant in 2005 when I got most of my intolerances. And I became soya intolerant the last time I moved house...

In order to get rid of these intolerances I have to not have any of the things I'm intolerant to for three months, as well as not having any yeast or sugar. And only three portions of fruit a day.

I say that it will get rid of them, but the doctor couldn't say for sure. The only evidence is from alternative medicine, which doesn't prove anything. But Mum tried it and it worked for her, so it's worth a go.

So far I've been eating up things with sugar in that won't keep or are frozen. There are plenty of things I know sugar is in, which is fair enough. But then I'm finding it's in things like cornflakes, sausages, chips, stock cubes, pasta sauce. Ok, so I got unlucky with the chips because they don't all have it in, just the packet in my freezer. But there are no stock cubes I've found on the Sainsburys website that don't have either sugar or yeast in.

I'm feeling positive about it at the moment, but I might well be sick of porridge for breakfast and rice cakes for snacks in three months time. Especially when there's nothing I can find to spread on rice cakes except for butter. But on the plus side I did make my own pasta sauce tonight. I've tried it once before and I didn't like it, but I don't remember what I did. Tonight I had tomatoes, tomato puree and basil in what ended up being random amounts, but it came out tasting nice. I've been meaning to make my own pasta sauce for ages, so when I've finished the diet I might stick with it. Apart from the jar I have in the cupboard that will need using up before it's best before date.

My trouble when I'm ill is I tend not to want to talk to people, mostly because I have to be polite and I don't have the energy for that extra thinking. So it's usually better just to shut up and ignore everyone. Which has extended to me not wanting to post in here either, although I do have things I want to blog about.

I am getting better, if slowly (and don't have concussion, which is good after I hit my head on the kitchen side on Thursday night) and this has been marked as unread in my emails for a while:

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your blog and elaborate on the subjects given.

tanaquilotr gave me Doctor Who, Elrond, food allergies, Davis Cup, fencing: Read more...

Leverage has been renewed for a second series and Hustle for a sixth. Yay! Although I missed the mention at the end of tonight's Hustle, but you can't moor a yacht in Bournemouth. But you can go to the beach (and a very nice beach it is too, in the winter when it's not full of tourists and you can see the sand).

And I have just ordered myself four packs of sausages (I was down to four dinner's worth!), some soup (I ran out ages ago) and some matzo. Given that I seem to be running out of all my food (I do need to go shopping and do baking) I might actually have food after this weekend.

On the whole, this has been a bad week. But it did have some good things in it:

• I found Sainsburys did lasagne sheets made without soya flour, so I can eat soya again
• I now have a sofa and a wardrobe (even if the latter is currently in the kitchen, since that's the only space for it) and a coffee table
• I have some friends coming tonight to go to our Cheese and Wine quiz and see my new flat
• I found some white dairy free chocolate. I haven't tried it yet, since I ought to finish my current bar first, but I'm very excited about actually seeing some

And the bad:

• Friday last week the graphics card on my computer died. Friday, yesterday, my laptop keeps fusing, for reasons we're not 100% sure of yet. It's just as well I'd brought my work laptop home. You'd think two computers would be enough, but no...
• I haven't had any emails since Thursday - turns out that actually I've had 34, including the test one I sent to myself. Now it's sorted and I have them, but it would have been nice to have had them at the time...
• I worked ridiculously hard and late Tuesday and Thursday - the only days I had something on in the evening. So Thursday I didn't get to go back to fencing again and Tuesday I got in long enough to have a pot noodle before going out, then only had the energy to go to bed when I got back in. Although part of that was because I had yesterday off.

Ok, so there aren't any more bad things than that, but those are bad enough, I think.

I should have known today would be bad when I woke up at 6.30 with diarrhea, which meant turning lights on and putting my glasses on and therefore no chance of going back to sleep till my alarm went off at 8am. This afternoon I found out that it was because Sainsbury's poisoned me - they put milk in their Free From Chicken things. Which at least explains why I haven't been right since I had one on Sunday.

Then today got suddenly busy with last minute stuff ten minutes before the end of the day. But I managed to escape half an hour late. And when I got back my work Secret Santa present had arrived - I was getting worried since it has to be in by Thursday, the redirect on my post means anything sent after tomorrow takes an extra day and there's a postal strike here on Monday.

Tomorrow I get to get up at the normal time, manhandle my hoover into the car (I've never picked my hoover up for any more than very short distances as I have no stairs), de-ice said car no doubt, fit some other stuff in there, convince the car it really does want to start, convince the car it really does want to go, put petrol in it and drive to the new flat by 10am to pick the keys up. Then clean it and wait for the BT engineer to come sometime in the afternoon. And hope it's before 5pm so I can call Zen and tell them to give me broadband. And that's going to be the quiet day in comparison to Saturday...

Now, last time I moved my phone line cut off at 10pm, but my internet stayed on as long as I was connected. This time it's getting cut off at noon, so it'll be interesting to see if the internet's still working, since my router is permanently connected. Otherwise I'll be hoping my neighbours with the unsecure wireless network have it switched on (they don't always).

Gluten free bread is a pain. It's dry, it falls apart and it never tastes nice. The best I can say about the bread I eat (which I make myself, from a mix) is that it's the least disgusting one I've ever had. When it's just made and still quite warm it's actually quite nice. But after it's spent some time in the freezer, it really isn't. And you can't not freeze it because it only lasts about three days before going off because it has no preservatives in it.

However, in Ottawa I found a loaf of bread that I would describe as nice. It looks like normal bread, behaves a lot like normal bread (although goes off faster) and tastes almost like the real thing too. I looked up their website and they do deliver to anywhere in the world. However, each loaf costs about £3.50, plus a minimal shipping charge per order, plus £5 airmail shipping per loaf.

Which is annoyingly too expensive to justify. Although I'm almost tempted to ask for some for Christmas because I have enough left for lunch tomorrow (assuming it's not too blue by then) and then I'm back to the old stuff, which I'm really not looking forward to. I quite liked being able to eat lunch without having to read to take my mind off the taste of the food.

None of the online free from places sell this bread, which if it costs that much isn't really a surprise. You'd think someone in this country would come up with a similar recipe, but it seems not. It's like the best soya milk comes from New Zealand, which you can't get in this country (but can in Romania). I don't think there's anything free from we get here that's better than anywhere else.

I do like my new job, I just have to keep reminding myself that because I am ded from it this week, not helped by me not sleeping. Last night it was really cold, so I took my bunny to bed and before I fell asleep I'd run out of cold bit. And I have a double bed, so there is quite a lot of cold bits, in theory.

I have a project that they were absolutely desperate to go live on Tuesday, so I busted a gut working on it, along with another project that had to be done on Tuesday and a third that had to go live on Wednesday. At the end of the day we were just waiting for the client and it could go live Wednesday morning (that would be this morning - I'm terribly confused about the days this week, and the date).

What really rankled was that while I was doing this on Tuesday I had constant hassling emails on how it was going and why it took so long because it was a 'simple' project (it wasn't, let me tell you). After the client fiddled about with a few bits three times, we got the go ahead to launch it mid-afternoon, after I'd contemplated asking them what was taking so long since it was simple to test. It doesn't work that way though - it's alright for one department to hassle us about getting stuff to them now, but we can't hassle them when they're holding us up.

About one minute before the project went live the client changed their mind about something major in the project. So, this project that had to go live on Tuesday will now go live on Thursday. Probably. And I get to spend the third day in a row desperately trying to get it to go live. I wouldn't worry so much about it at this point except that I just want it to go away.

It doesn't help that I only have one bread mix left, the health food shop can't order it for me because their suppliers don't have it, and the only place that sells it is the big Tesco half an hour drive away. And I still don't know if I'm well enough to drive. There are no buses, of course. Because public transport is stupid and who would want to use that?

The bright spot is I went out to dinner last night at one of the Italians in town and I could eat three things on the menu! I actually couldn't decide what to have. The last time I experienced that was last August, I think. And they had sorbet for dessert, which was really nice.

Yesterday I went to London to the Maritime Museum with gmul. We managed to get round the whole place, but it wasn't half knackering. Photos will be forthcoming when I can be bothered to plug the camera in. When I got back to the train station at 8pm half the car was iced up and when I pulled on the door handle to open the drivers door, nothing happened. Fortunately it did the second time.

I have some very nice mango & passionfruit ice cream that I found in the big Tescos recently. Sadly, though, I have proved tonight that it makes me ill. Despite there being nothing in it that I am intolerant to. Honestly - I've checked the ingredients list three times. Unless it's soya and I refuse to be interolant to soya. I just have to decide whether to finish it.

Tomorrow I'm going to see the St Trinians film - I discovered it was filmed nearby in a place where I've been to a ball! So that should be interesting to see, for that, if nothing else.

My ficathon signing up knows no bounds, as I now have the Ian/Barbara one due mid-March, the SJA one due at the end of March and Remix due early April. And TARDIS Big Bang draft due mid-March (that part is done, thank goodness), except the whole thing is due end of May, so I have to be good when I'm in and get lots written. And then relax in June.

I decided today to go to Tesco in Abingdon, since I was about to run out of bread mix and, thanks to Harry Pearce, I needed some chocolate buttons. Since the bridge is closed I went the long way round, in a bit of mist only to find, when I got there that:
a) they've moved things around
b) they labelled their red grapefruit pink (doesn't make it pink, Tescos!)
c) they've got rid of the chocolate buttons. They don't even have a space for them. They were the only place round here that sold them. What am I supposed to do now?

I went back via Sainsburys, which was actually a quicker route, and found that they weren't too keen on the pink grapefruit idea either. Fortunately, I am going to London tomorrow.

I went for a roller skate after lunch. The tennis courts were great for it - slight incline, not too many nets in the way (nets on tennis courts, what a novel idea). The only trouble was that there were leaves all over the place.

After wearing myself out doing that, I lay down and watched Miss Potter. I wanted to see it at the cinema because it had Ewan McGregor in it. Although I was less convinced about his fake moustache in it, even if it was set a hundred years ago. And I'm not a Beatrix Potter fan at all. Even though there are rabbits in it. But I actually really enjoyed the film, I was pleasantly surprised.

I haven't done any writing today at all, but I am hoping I will wake up tomorrow in plenty of time before I have to leave, but not early, so might get some in in the morning. I did watch next week's Spooks and was quite excited that Lance from The Bill was in it. Again.

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.

Things I learnt tonight:

Jelly babies, jelly beans, chocolate sauce and cream taste good together.
Jelly babies and cheesecake don't go.

I can't clarify these since I can't eat chocolate sauce, cream or cheesecake and I don't like jelly babies or jelly beans.

You'd never tell but I've been to the Chinese restaurant for buffet night - where I could eat two main courses! Although coconut sauce turned out to be a bit much for a whole main course.

The noise is currently quiet enough that the fan on my laptop drowns it out. The fan's not on all the time, so this is not as useful as it first appears. And since I started writing this it's got a bit louder...

The woman from the council is writing the neighbours a letter. I'm not sure if they're allowed to break in. But even if they can, there's no longer any guarantee that they'll be able to work out what it is.

My weekend, in three bits. First of all the Conference itself. Then the food:

I had discussions with the person on the team running it about what I could and couldn't eat and she'd spoken to the hotel and she said they sounded very confident.

Except when it came to lunch on Saturday they didn't have a clue what I was talking about, but as an alternative to the buffet they eventually brought me out salad and fruit. Which is not what I call a meal. After more complaining from various people they managed ham and rice, which was mostly unhelpful, specially as they did something to the rice to make it taste horrid.

But I was more confident about dinner. Till I got there. I've been to these things before, so when they came out with the starter (tomato soup, yuk!) I told them I was special and asked if it was ok. They went away, came back and told me it was. I pointed out the croutons in it weren't, they asked me if I wanted them to take them out for me.

That should have been a clue really. The main course was chicken, so I expected them to bring me it without the sauce. Specially as I later found out that someone else had had it without the sauce. But when the waitress brought it round and I told her I was having something special they tried to bring me the veggie option instead, which had a pastry thing. Eventually I got smoked haddock, rice and some runner beans, which was edible.

Then for dessert they asked me if fruit salad was ok. I said yes, despite having had fruit at every meal, because there's not a lot else they can do. They asked me if I wanted something with it, I asked them what and they didn't know. Then they asked me what I had at home, I told them I had dairy free ice cream. What a stupid question.

The people running the conference, and the people on my table got angry over this, and on Sunday we went through the menu and told them what I could have as an alternative.

Then the highlights, which included me going round a roundabout in Watford twice, remembering I'd left my radio in the car on Friday night after I'd had a shower and got into bed to read. And getting scared on the M25, but that's pretty much par for the course.

My back does not like traffic jams. Understandably, really, having to press the clutch a lot and it's a long way away, so I have to stretch my leg.

Now, though, I have a clean car (as washed my dad and hoovered by mum) and the scratches painted over. You'd almost never know a pheasant had died on it.

I've just spent an hour adding in spam protection to comments on WP with a simple maths question (easier to read than those letters and numbers I never get right first time). That was the simple bit, the hard bit was adding in a preview of the comment. I tried the plugin dad had, didn't work. So I gave up and tried a different one, which still didn't work. So then I tried another one that worked perfectly first time. And then I discovered my keyboard had gone American in Firefox. Which is a bit bizarre.

I decided, that since listening to audio plays is helpful for my driving (or having a passenger works too) that something that beams it to the radio would be useful, since it's just become legal. And then I'd need a bigger mp3 player, since 256mb won't hold very many hours. I can't find reviews of these things at all, but play.com is doing 1gb for £17 (and in pink) and amazon does the transmitter for £2. So it all sounds good from the price (and colour) point of view.

Ooh, we've won our Davis Cup tie. Which I entirely forgot to watch.

My oat matzo is actually ok. It falls apart something chronic when spreading it, which is a pain. And it's dry, but a different dryness to ordinary matzo, which I could eat without anything on it. The oat matzo I had to add chocolate spread after half a one with only butter. And my soup was largely matzo because it disintegrated in that too. Since next year's Passover is nowhere near Easter, when I'll be at Eastercon, it's just as well it's alright really.

I enjoyed tonight's Doctor Who:
Read more...

I was good this weekend and tidied and cleaned the house and got my unread RSS feeds from about 32 to 13. Although they keep going up, which is annoying! And I booked my flights to America, which is quite exciting. Although then realised I'm going to be there during World Rotaract Week, which is quite annoying.

Saturday night was a Burns Night dinner. It's always quite funny to watch the reactions of people trying haggis for the first time. Although I say this as someone who loves it. As I had to go to Oxford Sunday, and wasn't going to be able to get round all the shops between lunchtime and them shutting, I went in the morning and stopped off at The Noodlebar for lunch, as I discovered their nicest noodles are made from rice flour.

One or both of the above dinners was a mistake though because I've felt iffy most of the weekend, really tired today, then sick this afternoon. So I'm not out at the Rotary dinner I'm supposed to be at tonight. And am trying hard to concentrate.

Trouble is, when I get really hungry I start to feel sick. So it could be that if I have something for dinner, it'll make me feel a bit better and more awake. Or it'll make me feel worse and more sick. I'm getting hungry enough to try the first option, and I do have plenty of stuff taped to keep my mind off it. And a whole series of Press Gang to watch.

I'd really like it if someone would just invent a pill you take once a day, so then you don't need to eat. Would make life so much simpler.

I decided this afternoon I'd do some baking since I've run out of bread and flapjacks. Sadly, I got to the point in the flapjack recipe where it required golden syrup - but I don't have any. Fortunately, the shops are still open for another hour and a half, and I am now only ten minutes walk away from Waitrose. Unfortunately, I've just put the bread on, so I won't be going anywhere for another half an hour.

This morning I checked my Firefox folder and found it was last changed on Boxing Day, which was when I downloaded the Firefox 2.0 file. So quite why it decided it was actually 1.5, I don't know. So I installed 2.0 again and now it is definitely 2.0. Although Pandora only worked once I had uninstalled and reinstalled Adblock. And NewTabURL, which opens my current tab (and history, like IE does automatically) doesn't work with Roboform. And CloneWindow, which I quite happily used before doesn't work with 2.0 and doesn't even appear on the add-ons list. And since I uninstalled CloneWindow, the only way I can go back to the old version is with System Restore. So I need to decide whether I want to before I install anything else.

I also tried out Filezilla and CoreFTP, thanks to those who recommended. I've gone with Filezilla since it looks nicer and has a portable version. I've now deleted the copy of my blog I made when I upgraded WordPress, so much simpler than in WS_FTP.

I discovered today that cleaning is not a good way to follow swimming. The people in the flat above were having a disco again from 9 this morning, so I gave up on hoping my book actually starts soon (I'm only page 70) and decided to get up and go swimming. Once I was ready it all went quiet, of course. I haven't been swimming since November, so ow. It was the first time I've been to the swimming pool in Abingdon and I wasn't impressed. Mostly because the changing rooms were in the same area with no barrier, so they were boiling. I got out and was quite warm. By the time I was dry I felt ill because I was so hot. And I couldn't get my watch on.

But then I went to the big Tescos, which is laid out exactly the same as Reading and Tower Park, although I still went round the whole shop twice before finding the Free From section. I'm very glad I did though, because it was the best Free From section I've ever seen. I found things in there I'd given up ever seeing again. So I'm definitely going back.

Driving to Abingdon wasn't too bad, so once I actually have a free Thursday (and make sure I keep them free) I'll be going back to fencing, which I'm looking forward to.

When I checked my post last night I thought the calendar looked quite red. So I scrolled down and discovered that I've made more posts in November 2006 so far than any month since I started this blog back in July 2002.

Last night I had a really nice meal out in the new Italian restaurant they've opened in town. I've been there three times now and had something different each time! I could even have the sorbet, which there was loads of. Only problem was that since it contained mushrooms it proved that I have developed an intolerance to them. So I spent the rest of the night watching videos to take my mind off it, and stayed up far later than I wanted to.

I realised that driving in the cold is not doing my hands any good, they're getting so dry. So I asked my mum for some driving gloves and she sent some. They don't quite fit - I've always had a problem finding gloves to fit, ever since I was little, no idea why. But I wore them to Tescos tonight and it was so nice to drive with warm hands, they're great!

The most exciting news is that I've finished my pico project. I wanted to write a radio script that I had started and had 673 words of, and it looked like I was never going to get anywhere on it. So I was determined to finish it for pico, and 5000 words seemed like a likely target. I have 5710 words, two of them being the fabulous 'The End'. I need to rewrite it now, though, not least because I realised one of the characters was redundant, so needs writing out. But at least now I have something to work from. And I have less writing to do, as my SG rare pairings ficathon piece is also done.

Work is looking to be really manic in December, so really not looking forward to that. My life might well end up consisting entirely of work and moving related things. My sister is also going to be moving in December, so she's offered to take me to IKEA on Sunday. So I might now be doing moving things on 16th and 17th December. I also found out one of the charity shops in town that sells furniture delivers. They're better for sofas than anything else. The flat comes with a sofa, but I might get an armchair later. I need to check out the other charity shop that sells furniture tomorrow.

Thursday I had tickets to see the English National Ballet performing Alice in Wonderland. I've never been to the ballet before (I'm amazed at the number of people I know who have) and since I like Alice that seemed like a good combination. I did realise just how many people there were in the strings section, violin is definitely the instrument to learn. I did like the way they used the props with the doors moving about, the table that grew and the massive bottle that swung from the ceiling with a note on it saying 'Drink me'. The actual dancing was boring though. It just seemed like they'd go into a scene, go here are some characters, thean randomly dance around for ages after I'd got bored. It probably doesn't help that half the appeal of Alice is in the words but all the dancing just seemed to consist of spinning and jumping, and how is that interesting?

The evening didn't start off well because I was talking to someone at work about work, so was late for the bus the one time it was on time. So I was planning to go to Borders and The Noodle Bar as I know I can eat there. I did try to get some beans and jacket potato but that meant relying on Waitrose for some decent potatoes, which was a bit of a vain hope. Instead I got Chinese from the new take-away, which turned out to be a bad idea because they put some disgusting sauce on their chicken and cashew nuts, which I discovered on Friday, had wheat/gluten in.

I went to work Friday morning anyway as there was work to do, but I didn't attempt breakfast. I went home not long after lunch once I'd pretty much done everything. Just that morning Doctor Who series 2 arrived, so I opened that up and watched the Deleted Scenes and Outtakes. It was just as well I'd already asked how to get to this stuff on the series 1 disks, since these had the same menus and I couldn't be bothered to plug my DVD writer in. Then I watched the School Reunion commentary, which did have a bit of David Tennant squee, and Julie Gardner complaining about how good Lis Sladen looked.

This weekend I went to Emma's. I definitely don't want to get the bus to Reading anymore cos it's horrendously busy. As was the train station. And I'm still annoyed I couldn't get a return - why can't you get a non-day return for somewhere close to, it doesn't make sense. We watched The Pillow Book which had a fair bit of Ewan McGregor naked in it, but was in general a very weird film. We discovered Sainsburys shut at 8pm on a Saturday, which is just not on when you need chocolate at 8.30.

We also went for a bit of Moulin Rouge and watched half a dozen episodes of Smallville, finishing off series 5, which was rather like torture. They rip off films, hit you over the head with the plot and you need a sick bucket for most scenes with Lana in. It all ended on a cliffhanger, but frankly, I don't care any more. I only watched it till the end cos I wanted to get to a good point to stop.

I have posted the latest chapter of Doctor Who: The Soap Opera but mostly I just really, really need to sleep.