Selenay's Ramblings

Hello Internet! Why yes, it has been forever since I last updated this thing.

( Cut for babble amount life milestones )

Anyway, everything is so different now and I couldn't be happier.

The last few weeks have been quiet due to a lot of reading and watching stuff. I've got so much to say about it all so I shall try to get something up on here about it over the weekend.

Suffice to say, since the beginning of 2012 I have read 10 books, watched a season and a bit of Deep Space 9, watched season 2 of Buffy, watched half a season of Castle and assorted other bits and bobs. It's been so much fun!

And in the most important bit of news yet, I'm now a supporting member of Worldcon 2012 and a Friend of Worldcon 2014. It looks like I'm going to Worldcon in 2014 :-D Let the countdown and insane bouncing begin!

ETA: Correct the years, I'm a supporting member of this year's Worldcon :-D

Well, not quite. I'll save you from the enourmous review list of books. I will give you The List for 2011 behind a cut-tag:

( Books in 2011 )

Yup, 84 books this year and that is five more than last year. None of them have been complete duds, although there have been a couple of 'meh' reads.

I've discovered the joy of Connie Willis (definitely my favourite author of the year) and been thrilled by Mistborn. I've loved the C J Sansom books (who wouldn't love mysteries set in Henry VIII's reign) and my iPad has given me access to some amazing comis. I got so caught up in The Magicians and Mrs. Quent that I had to order pizza instead of cooking one night so that I could finish it. Diana Wynne Jones kept me reading late into the night and a group read finally got me through Northanger Abbey.

I'm a bit divided about my favourite books of 2011, but here are the main candidates:

Daughter of Time - Joshephine Tey
Mistborn: The Hero of Ages - Brandon Sanderson
Soulless - Gail Carriger
Doomsday Book - Connie Willis (and her other books, except that would be half the list)
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
Unnatural Issue - Mercedes Lackey
Dissolution - C J Sansom
Mastiff - Tamora Pierce
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Persuasion - Jane Austen
The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett
Astonishing X-Men Vol 3. Issues 1-6 - Joss Whedon and John Cassady

The worst books of 2011 is easier, although they weren't dreadful, just not that brilliant:

Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
Septimus Heap Book One: Magyk - Angie Sage
Asimov's Science Fiction magazine (September 2011)
Virals - Kathy Reichs

My thread for the 75 books for 2012 on LibraryThing is here so follow along for next years books if you're interested!

So far this morning I have:

1) Bought groceries
2) Bought booze
3) Bought flea preventing stuff for cats
4) Uploaded an extra yuletide story
5) Done my banking.

Still on my To Do List:

1) Apply flea preventing stuff to cats
2) Bake mince pies
3) Make stuffing
4) Clean All The Things
5) Collapse with DVDs

I can achieve all this...can't I?

My yuletide fic is done, posted and complete. Go me!

Now, I may be playing with a couple of little Treats...

On the plus side, someone from my church is coming out today or tomorrow to sort out the soffit (sp?) under the eaves. He did come on Sunday, but due to the faulty doorbell that we haven't been able to fix I didn't hear him. When he came round yesterday, he saw the "Please knock" note on the door and followed instructions. I need to make that sign much, much bigger, I think.

On the down side, it is not the thermostat that has packed up. It is the valve that lets the heat through from the furnace to the currently unheated section of the house. That was too big a job to do last night so the technician will return today with the new valve and a plan that involves turning off the furnace, draining part of it and soldering things together. I suspect this may mean that I'm entirely without heating today for a while.

Working from home is less fun when you have no heating. Brr.

House, could you accept that this is your lot for the next few months and save further repair situations until the weather is warmer?

It's poetic something or other that the unheated part of the house is the bit with the comfy chairs and TV. I need that section tonight: it's injection day and I want to be able to watch movies and eat cake after I've stabbed myself!

I had this great plan that I was going to do my Christmas shopping (on Amazon) when I got home. And also that I was going to read massive chunks of my current library book.

I spent a couple of hours relaxing on the couch. Then I heated soup for supper and watched Angel as part of my Buffy re-watch. Now I'm writing this up before I head back to the couch. I may get really active later and sit up in my recliner with the TV remote.

I did accomplish something: I read some of my library book. It's not that I hate the book, but I don't love the book either. It's a very 'meh' book. It's a YA urban sci-fi type thing, which should be great fun except the characters are rather 2D and the storyline is nothing that I haven't seen before, usually better. I usually enjoy this author's grown-up books, but it looks her YA stuff isn't my thing.

I've reached the "I'll finish it or die trying stage". Woe is me.

When I get too bored with the book, I keep switching to fanfic because it's so much more fun.

I'm not sure whether this is a reaction to the book or a reaction my current level of brain-dribbling exhaustion, but I'm going through a bit of a re-boot Star Trek fic thing. I have fics on the go on my iPad and on my Kindle. And as all the good, long stories are K/S, I'm reading rather a lot of K/S reboot slash. For some reason, my brain cannot handle TOS K/S, but I'm quite happy with reboot. Hmm.

It helps that in with some quite excellent plotty fics, there are also some rather cracktastic fics and I'm loving those as well. Oh, fandom, my love for you is eternal.

If anyone has good recs for reboot K/S stuff (if it's on AO3, even better) I wouldn't say no...

The appointment with the rheumatologist could definitely have gone better. On the one hand he examined me for hours with great thoroughness and admitted that the symptoms, history and reaction to steroids implied inflammatory joint disease.

He conceded that could be sacroilitis, which is the early stages of ankylosing spondylitis. I'd actually be happy with that because there are treatment options and doctors would be willing to help with the pain relief.

On the other hand, it should have responded to the Humira which is a big minus in the "Sel has proper back problems, not in her head" column.

I had run out of energy by then and didn't feel like explaining that the Humira only partially controls the colitis and needs other meds as well to keep me in remission. If I'd been thinking more clearly...

Anyway, he's ordered x-rays because if it's anything inflammatory, the damage of over six years of it should be visible now. If anything shows up, he'll contact me to come back in. Otherwise it's back to my GP for help, but as he doesn't like to prescribe analgesia, I'm on my own.

I was pretty depressed and hopeless last night when I finally got home. It's looking like yet again my back pain has no origin, no soloution and no help available. The only good thing is that it has been behaving slightly better over the last five days. While it did not help with the rheumatologist visit, at least I can start to hope that just maybe this flare is coming to an end.

Mum is not going home tonight due to the border agency strikes tomorrow. Sis has to because she has work on Thursday. We're leaving for the airport in an hour or so and we'll know then whether her flight is going or not. Hope she doesn't sit on the Tarmac for too long tomorrow!

In other news, I think that I want the new Zelda game for my Wii. It sounds awesome.

Also, Infinity Blade for the iPad rocks :-)

I should probably get on with useful things like composing my Yuletide fic, right?

Had a busy day today doing the trip we postponed from Wednesday. It was fun, but totally exhausting!

I now have yarn for myself, yarn for the Christmas swap at my knit group, some lovely new tea and my mum brought home the gorgeous new painting that she and dad bought last month. It's a fantasy work called Nine Dragons and they were waiting for it to be framed. I love it and may need to pay the gallery a visit next year...

It's been great having time with my sister. We keep up reasonably well through Skype but it's not the same as sitting down with a cup of tea for a natter.

I'm still loving my iPad, possibly even more than on the first day! Comics look amazing, Netflix looks great and the word processor is a nice bit of kit. Er, Infinith Blade may also be rather more fun than it should be :-)

It's definitely turning out to be what I was hoping for. Shall have to give thought to a proper review later.

The only dark cloud on the horizon is the strike in Wednesday. Mum and sis are supposed to be flying in that day and mum is trying to decide whether to rebook her flight for later in the week. It's looking like they'll be spending most of the day sitting on the Tarmac in a plane otherwise because Heathrow will be insane with barely anyone processing customs and immigration!

She's going to trying calling the airline tomorrow to see what they advise.

Dear Yuletide Author,

First of all, thank you so much for doing this! I'm sure that I'm going to love whatever you write. There's a lot of family stuff for me to do on Christmas Day (the price I pay for having my family scattered around the world - lots of Skyping) so if I don't comment on my story on the day, don't worry. I'm overwhelmed with Christmas and will be reading it on Boxing Day :-)

This year I surprised myself both in terms of the fandoms that I chose and the lack of femslash in my wishes. Usually there is at least one fandom where I would love some femslash. I briefly considered requesting Lady Sybil/Gwen in my Downton request, but 1) Gwen wasn't on the nomination list (oops!) and 2) I discovered that I really wanted to know more about Lady Edith.

My favourite fics involve a bit of good plot and some nice character insights or development. If you get that in the story then you're going to score big with me :-)

You want something more specific? OK, let me think...

( Ballet Shoes )

( Oxford Time Travellers )

( Downton Abbey )

You can take these ideas or discard them entirely, it's your choice. The only things I'm really not into are PWP, death fic and non-con. Thank you so much, Yuletide Author, I think you're smashing :-)

I have my Yuletide sign-up all worked out. I'll be entering it tomorrow. It's taken all week to put together 3 prompts.

It took me thirty minutes with the nominations results to find 15 fandoms that I felt confident about writing in. For the first time ever, I'll be putting in a bucket sign-up. I am undecided about whether this is progress or madness.

In other news, I have a ton of credit on my iTunes account and a big list of apps that I want to put on my iPad on Wednesday. I'm all about list making this week, it seems.

We should probably not discuss how many pretty games I appear to have listed. Let's instead focus on the fact that I've picked out a word processing app that apparently synchs well with Google Docs (QuickOffice Pro HD, for the interested) so I'll be able to write my Yuletide assignment(s)* wherever I may be.

* I may be seriously considering signing up as a pinch hitter. I know, I'm insane this year.