Selenay's Ramblings

Lazy weekend plans were mostly successful, although yet again the curse of my brain meant that my nine hours of sleep on Saturday night caused a lovely headache on Sunday.

My body is ridiculous sometimes.

Today my body is not doing the headache thing. It's doing the nausea and dizziness thing instead. I'm vaguely offended by this because it's rather inconvenient. Thankfully Mum needed to borrow the car today so she drove me to work and thus I don't have to 'fess up that I'm feeling like crap.

I don't even have anyone to yell at today. Nobody is willing to telling me why my stuff on the dev box is broken ("We're still looking!") and apparently I have to yell at the right people not just yell at everyone even though that guarantees that the guilty party will get included somewhere.

Um.

Yeah, this is why I'm not a people manager :-D

In lieu of yelling at people, I'm making Power Point presentations. Sadly, they're deeply boring and I'm not allowed to insert anything fun into them, nope not even a cute cat gif.

One thing that I did manage over the weekend (in addition to finishing two books, two volumes of Fables and setting up a Blu Ray player, go me) was reorganising a few things on AO3. My addiction to the "Mark for later" button was getting out of hand so I went through the many pages and got all the stuff that I've read and loved bookmarked instead. It tamed the history pages a wee bit and made my bookmarks look that bit more Avengers obssessed. Oops.

I'm hoping to have Thing 2 of the 5+1 Things fic that I'm writing nearly finished today. All the Things have been outlined (in so far as I have vaguely descriptive titles for them) and so this fic wins the award for mostly completely outlined thing that I have ever written in my life. Go fic!

Today is my father's birthday. There will be Skyping with him later so that Mum and I can observe him opening his presents in an completely non-creepy way. I'm almost entirely certain that I can remember what I gave him. Possibly. It was weeks ago. It could be a fun surprise for all of us.

The AO3 is having major difficulties this morning. Poor servers. Good thing that I've got lots of stuff loaded onto my Kindle.

The weather outside is terrible so I'm glad that we made the decision not to knit in public this afternoon. I have a "slept too long, I.e. more than 5 hours" headache, which is being tackled with coffee and pills. My plans for the day involve soup making and then lounging on the sofa with Fables, Leviathan Wakes and possibly a fic or two. There could be much tea and biscuits consumed today. I may also try to do the official cataloguing of books on LibraryThing and possibly some more crack fic writing.

My Son of Coul t-shit has been dispatched. Yay :-)

In other words, lazy day ahoy!

I've decided that the best way to fix leap years so they don't break code is for us all to get off the planet and push. Speed it up.

No?

I suppose there are a few technical difficulties with that plan...

It's Friday! It's nearly the weekend! I am filled with delicious croissant!

There needs to be some serious sleep happening over the weekend. Sadly, I think that's a bit unlikely. It's going to be a busy one and I need to find time for watching rugby and Doctor Who. And Spooks.

There needs to be an extra day in my weekend.

Thank goodness my vacation is coming up in two weeks and I'm allowed to not do the community thing and sub another, way shorter event that I did in my review. I need it :-)

If anyone has missed the fandom pimp post on yuletide, please head on over! I think that I'll try to pimp out Holby to see if there's any interest before I nom it in the survey. I really want Holby fic, but after three consecutive years of being the only person signing up for it (reading or writing), I suspect that it's such a tiny minority fandom that nobody will ever sign up.

Woe is me and all that.

Every time I see a news report about fracking (a mining technique, apparently) my mind does not go to the right place. BSG has warped me.

And now I must go to my meeting about the testing on Project Doom to explain why my report cannot display data for things that are not there and possibly explain the difference between revenue and claims to the tester.

It's Friday! Woo! You know the best bit about this particular Friday? It's a long weekend! That's right, I get Monday to do whatever I want because it's Labour Day.

As it appears to be planning to rain, I'm thinking it's just crying out to be a day curled up with tea and a book. Mum and I are seriously considering a roast, preferably beef, because what else can you want on a rainy lazy day?

I'm also seriously considering trying this out: http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/08/everyday-chocolate-cake/

Looks yummy, oui? And it is blueberry season, so I could try out the fresh berry idea. Win!

In other food-related things (seriously, when did this journal become 9 parts food, 1 part babble and 1 part fandom?), it's Friday so I'm having supper at the local place of yum. I went for the burger last week and it was amazing. Best burger I've ever eaten. What shall I go for this week?

And tomorrow we're celebrating my aunt's birthday by taking her out for Thai food. I haven't had Thai since February and it's possibly my favourite thing, so this is a source of much excitement for me.

In non-food items, I need to get Mum caught up on Doctor Who before tomorrow evening. Also, Torchwood and the Great British Bake-off. In addition, I have Page Eight to watch because Bill Nighy is awesome. And the Tudors is stupidly addictive for being terrible. So that's lots of TV to watch.

Book-wise, I'm nearly finished with Hospital Sketches by Louise May Alcott and I have either Perdito Street Station (Mieville) or Darkfire (the second Matthew Shardlake mystery) queued on my Kindle. I'll have to see how I feel on which I do first. I'm also halfway through The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston and I've got a couple of Diane Wynne Jones (sp?) books on my coffee table to read first.

My non-fiction read is Medieval Law in Context. Shut up! It's dead interesting, honestly, all about how the legal system grew and became established and how law as a profession evolved.

OK, OK, my non-fiction reads are weird. I've got a book on the Templars in Britain to read next :-) Or possibly a history of the Thames. And I've got my eye on a book about The Black Death...

Hooray for weekends!

Except, instead of goofing off and spending the day doing lazy, fun stuff tomorrow, I am getting up at the crack of dawn for a day filled with chores and being an adult. No kidding, I'm getting up slightly earlier than I would for work to get my car to the dealership for its inspection. Oh, Saturday, you are supposed to involve a wee bit more sleep than that.

Tonight I shall make sure that my Kindle is filled with a good mix of books because many of my chores involve sitting in various offices and boring places while other people do things with my car, hair, life etc. Ugh.

I'm totally sleeping in on Sunday. Yup, I'm blowing off church for some kip so that I don't have an exhaustion-induced melt-down next week. I'm so incredibly tired right now.

( Cut for food talk )

I think that tonight will either be veging with something on Popcorn or veging with Netflix. Tomorrow night may be the same. OMG, I am so very, very tired. It is a miracle that I didn't fall asleep at work. Heck, I nearly did when I ended up eternally on hold at one stage. Such a shock when someone finally answered the phone...

This morning was one of those days when it was a total miracle that I made it to work and the fact that I was ten minutes later than I like to be (yay, flexi time!) was a mere trifle. I am working a slightly shorter lunch break to make it up. I have no idea what happened, although I suspect that the epic neck pain the middle of the night might have undone the benefits of an early night due to no knit night.

Seriously, why must lying down be so incredibly painful at times? Argh!

Thankfully, in a few hours it will be the weekend and it won't matter when I get up. Woo! Also, bake sale today and I restrained myself to a couple of very delicious cookies so I feel much better than I have after previous bake sales. I keep ending up with fudgy delicious brownies that are filled with so much sugar that I feel ill for the rest of the day. Ugh.

Delicious cookies are delicious and not over-sugared. Win!

When making up the week's menu, I somehow ended up planning a largely veggie or fish-filled week. Three days are veggie meals, two are fish, one is meat but a very small amount. Obviously my brain went straight to "I can nom all the meats tomorrow!" because I'm planning to either eat out or order in.

And I see no good reason why I shouldn't if that's what I crave tomorrow. Although sushi also sounds good. As does fish and chips. Or yummy meaty pizza. I'm so totally not planning it until it's time to eat and I'm definitely not looking up any nutritional info on my potential choices. This should prevent the flail and food fail that I keep experiencing when I try to eat out.

I have cheese cravings. I may need to hit the cheese counter at the store tomorrow. It's lethal and I always buy too much, but I love cheese so much :-)

Mother arrives in nine days. Oddly, I am become calmer and more optimistic about this the closer it gets. After all, as long as we set down some ground rules up front about how we will handle things like groceries, gas money, splitting chores etc. it's all going to be fine. Right?

Last week I was shattered. No, seriously, but Friday I was at "world occasionally greying out, falling asleep at traffic lights" levels of exhausted. I really need to figure out some way of getting back from England that doesn't leave me with epic levels of exhaustion afterwards.

Friday night I had a plan with some friends for dinner and a Big Bang Theory marathon (several of us hadn't seen it before and needed conversion) but didn't trust myself to drive over the bridge and find the house of the friend hosting. Thankfully another friend gave me a lift otherwise I would have conceded defeat and stayed home. I'm glad I went because I now love Big Bang Theory and had a brilliant evening.

Yesterday I slept in, did some chores and then napped through the afternoon. The evening was a sushi plus Star Trek movie combo, which was fun and relaxing.

There may have also been hot chocolate. Yes, my idea of a good Saturday night ends in hot chocolate. But it was awesome, Whittard's mint hot chocolate which turns out to contain actual bits of mint chocolate!

Plan today was to do some baking and talk to parents and friends across the Atlantic. The baking has been scuppered by the discovery that I do not own any pans large enough for the brownies I'm making, and it's a new recipe so I don't dare mess with it yet. Hmm. Possibly need to check recipes more thoroughly before doing the weekly shop! I may stop in at the store and buy a new pan tomorrrow...

In summary, my weekend has been filled with sleep and laziness. Let's hope the coming week is a bit more productive!

I was going to write a post about the weekend, about the pizza I made (from scratch including the base!), the over-indulgence in cheesy herb bread resulting in a low-fat plan for this week and the baby shower I went to on Sunday. Except that I've largely forgotten how that post went and instead I have bits and bobs of stuff that I'm not sure are connected.

Just finished Elantris by Brandon Sanderson and thought it was rather excellent. I'm now on a kids' lit run, though.

Grey's Anatomy is so stupid. And so addictive. Yargh.

I'm obviously losing my mind because I watched the first week of Strictly Come Dancing and am currently acquiring week two. OMG. I had a ton of commentary and thought on dancing, choreography and why the first elimination sort of deserved to be gone and sort of didn't because a large part of his problem was that the choreography that his partner put together showed her off and didn't do the celebrity in question any favours. Except that is a really boring post.

I actually bought the yarn for my Tubey sweater today and thus I am impatient to begin it. I still need to seam my sister's cardigan, though.

My sister arrives for her visit in a little over a week. Woo!

The first week of American TV that I'm actually following has been rather good (yay House!) and I'm enjoying my silly, stupid new series of Merlin as well. In fact, there's more good TV than I have hours to watch it in right now!

I should really go and do something constructive with my evening before NCIS starts.

After 3 months of fog, apparently summer has decided to appear. The temps are in the high twenties with humidex taking it to the low thirties at the shore (where my house is). The humidex even two kilometers inland is taking it to the high thirties.

Yes, this does feel a wee bit extreme.

Still, I'm feeling incredibly grateful to have my house where it is because it's noticably cooler here than it is in the city. Walking out of the office is like walking into a furnace and my aunt is suffering badly.

The forecaster is promising that things will cool down a bit by the weekend. I'm praying that this is so. The forecaster this morning also said that Hurricane Bill is heading our way, will hopefully veer off to sea before it hits us but will be bringing high winds and heavy rain for the beginning of the week. Better get everything tied down outside over the weekend, then.

The heat has slowed my knitting progress. Yes, even cotton isn't *that* nice when the temps in the house are high twenties. Fear not! I have nearly finished the shaping on the second sleeve of my sweater so I should bind that off today. Then I can start swatching for some socks and doing the seaming for the sweater. I just have to pick my times to knit and admit defeat when it all gets too warm.

The weekend was largely about "OMG, too hot!", Mum and I did go out on Saturday for various shopping chores, which was lovely while we were in the mall and horrible the moment we stepped out. We did have to make a detour to Chapters for books and drinks - strawberry banana smoothie turns out to be delish. I finally got myself a Chinese cookbook filled with lots of gorgeous repices of varying degrees of simplicity/difficulty and absolutely not a celebrity one filled with complicated recipes that I can't get ingredients for. So that's quite yayful. There's even a receipe for peking duck...

Last night I tried out a new recipe: oven-baked mushroom risotto. It turned out really well and is definitely going into the making-again list. Portobello mushrooms, bacon, parmesan cheese, tarragon...mmmmm....

Also over the weekend I grilled steaks on the BBQ and didn't burn them too badly. Woo! Mum is being quite complimentary about my culinary efforts.

Our new front-loading washing machine arrived on Friday and we've been stupidly excited about this. It's so easy! It's so automatic! It's got so many controls! It's so quick to put the washing on! Yeah, we're crazy.

This coming weekend I'm hoping to go away with my knitting crew, but this is dependant on the weather. If it's still miserably hot then we may cancel - lots of people plus 4 babies in one small cottage with 30+ temps would not be fun. We're playing it by ear.

Over this weekend I managed to get two books of my to be read pile. I was feeling really pleased until I realised that I hadn't catalogued the two Enid Blyton Adventure books that Mum found and brought me. Darn. They're gorgeous, though, lovely old hardcovers with original text and illustrations. I'm thinking that rather than trying to beat my unread pile down to a tiny number, I'm better off trying to read at least as many as come in. So two out, two in kind of deal rather than fifteen out, none in. It's the only way to stop beating myself up about my book habit!

Well, that wasn't the weekend that I'd planned.

As of Friday afternoon, the plan was that I would be hosting a BBQ on Saturday after spending a day shopping for stuff (like dressy shoes and an outfit for the post-rehearsal cocktails) for the wedding next month.

Friday evening I got a phone call to say that plans had changed, we're going to a wildlife park on Sunday instead. With portable BBQ and steaks. This sounded like a lot of fun, I was promised the chance to finally meet my cousins partner and I wouldn't have to be sociable after a hard day's shopping.

Saturday went as per the new plans. I got all the things I needed, spent time with some knitter friends and even got ice cream. I was knackered by the time I got home so it was nice to know that I could just veg out for the evening.

Sunday, the weather forecast was checked. Oh, dear.

Sensibly, we decided not to do the wildlife park. My cousin was still going to come down and we decided that we'd grill the steaks on my deck anyway because it wasn't going to rain *that* much.

Hmm.

My cousin said that he'd be up after lunch and he and my aunt would be over soon after. Spent most of the afternoon curled up comfortably on the sofa with a book and the cats, which was lovely. Er, after lunch turns out to mean just before supper, though. My usual Sunday plans could have happened if I'd known that. Still, no matter, I spent a nice afternoon reading and there were going to be steaks.

My aunt called to let me know when she and B would be over (finally!). I settled back with the book. Around 5.30pm I decided that it would be a good idea to get the BBQ out and ready so I looked outside and promptly called my aunt to ask her whether she was sure she wanted grilled steaks.

The rain was *bouncing*.

We ordered pizza instead. And my aunt bought us evilness for dessert.

Then aunt and cousin went home and I spent the remainder of the evening with Holby City and A2A.

As an aside: OMG, Holby! You are boring as heck for a month, leading me to think that it might be time to give up the crack, and then you pull that? Ack!

All in all it was a good weekend, got all the things done that I wanted to and got a some of my to be read pile tackled, but there were some elements of frustration there. Ho, well. That's the way life goes. Now I must finish making supper and get some lace shawl done!