Selenay's Ramblings

I have a thoroughly vile headache that I suspect is in large part due to my current bout of insomnia. Ugh. Migraine pills have been deployed so there's no nausea and the pain is down to "ugh" rather than "OMG!". I'm determined not to take a sick day this week. Too much to do!

( Girly discussion of hair and shoes, you have been warned )

And then I finished the day off with a second trip to see The Avengers. So much love :-D

How much do I want a Black Widow and Hawkeye movie now?

How awesome is Black Widow? She totally saves the day on several occasions. Love her so much :-D

I'm going to end up making a third trip before it leaves the theatres, aren't I? At least? And then I'll end up pre-ordering the DVD as soon as the pre-order appears on Amazon. It's that kind of thing.

It's rapidly becoming a very large fandom as well. I can tell this because AO3 keeps going down and the AO3 status Twitter reports that this is largely due to Avengers fanfic. Heh. Poor AO3, It survived Yuletide fairly well this year and is being clobbered by Avengers fans.

I may possibly be one of those people. I've managed to download a rather insane quantity of Avengers fic for my Kindle, even though I only Kindle stuff that's over 10,000 words. Heh.

I need some Avengers icons. Really.

( Cut for archery discussion )

And wow, this turned into the post of epicness. Thank goodness for cut tags.

I definitely need to hit this headache with some more caffeine. Ugh.

Today I am feeling much better and I have plans to go into London for supper with my sister, yarn trawling in John Lewis (yay!) and possibly a quick stop in the British Library so that I can say that I've been. I have also spent the morning bagging up a huge stack of magazines for the tip. Go me!

So, weekend.

Friday night was my work leaving do and it was great fun. I'm not normally one for going to lots of work dos, but as this one was in my honour I couldn't quite escape! I did end up a few minutes late because I was trying desperately to finish the handover - oops. Still, the do was brilliant fun. We had a few drinks in the pub so that those who couldn't get to the meal afterwards could pop along and then 20 of us toddled off to Old Orleans for food and more drinks. It was just the right thing and I got a bit of a surprise when Da Boss announced that the company was paying. Thank you so much, Da Boss, that was a really lovely surprise :-)

Needless to say, we all got silly and happy and had a fab time and I realised just how much I'll miss them all.

I listened to Pottercasts on the way home and reflected on the irony of the FM transmitter I bought to play my iPod through my car radio only starting to work properly two weeks before I leave. Bah.

Saturday morning involved a very early start so that I could catch a train up to York. The train journey was lovely and relaxing and I met historyterry only five minutes late. We drank coffee in the station coffee shop and then wandered into the heat of outdoors (oh god, the heat!) to walk into the city centre. We split up at the Minster, T to find us a suitable lunching venue and me to explore the Minster. That turned out to be a great choice because I enjoyed spending the time quietly exploring, taking photos and having the freedom to sit and think a while as well. I've always found my faith to be a quiet, private thing and I think that I would have felt awkward having company for that trip.

Hundreds of photos of stained glass will be posted tomorrow.

T found us a real ale pub to eat in and I was starving by the time I met him for lunch so it worked out perfectly. After lunch, we wandered through the Shambles and found a vegan tapas bar that I must remember for future visits. There was also fudge, lots of it, and we got to watch them make the most fabulous chocolate orange fudge ever.

OK, yes, I brought some home with me :-)

Then it was onto the train for a trip home that turned out to be an epic trip thanks to faulty trains, cancelled trains and other shenanigans. There was a lovely moment, though, when the chaps across the aisle called out and handed me the Guardian supplement for the day: Mazzmatazz's Rebel Knitters Guide! I'd taken the wool for my sister's blanket with me and it proved to be a talking pointed on the train in the nicest way possible.

Having arrived home rather late, I still had to get up early the next day for the club championships at my archery club. I'd been planning to compete for months so I had no intention of letting a silly thing like complete exhaustion stop me!

It turned out to be a blazingly hot day and, despite being outside for eight hours, I only have the tiniest bit of sunburn on one arm to show for it. Phew! Mostly I'm just looking a little more tanned than usual.

It was an all day shoot, six dozen arrows before lunch and another six dozen after. I was shooting a Bristol III which was six dozen arrows at 50 yards, four dozen at 40 yards and two dozen at 30 yards. For some reason competitions bring out my best work so I ended up shooting a personal best. Yay! As icing on the cake, I also got a medal for 2nd place in the handicap adjusted score category so I felt really pleased with my performance. Unlike the last time I competed, all that physio and hiking has paid off because I didn't ache at all afterwards.

When I finally trailed home from the champs, my sister and father had cooked a lovely vege sausage and mash dinner so we ate that while watching the final three stages of the Tour de France. Despite a couple of drug-related upsets, this has been a great Tour and I'm so glad that I got to see the end. I had a feeling that the yellow jersey would bring out something special in Sastre, so it was great to see him retain the jersey through the time trial (what the hell happened to Evans out there, anyway?) and pull it on in Paris. A great end to a fabulous weekend.

Photos from Wales and York will be up tomorrow and now I must grab some lunch before I dash for my train.

Today is turning out to be one of *those* days. My neck, which hasn't been
right since it went spectacularly wrong a month ago, is sore and stuff and
not keen on letting me look to the right. It's not as bad as it can be, but
it's enough to be annoying. I have a feeling that I'll definitely have to
mention it to the rheumy when I see him next month. My back and hips are
also unhappy and have been all week, although my hip was sore enough that I
had to limp into work. It's less stiff now and I'm hoping that it stays that
way. I am dearly hoping that this is just the effect of my body aclimating
to the new orthotics so it will wear off eventually. I'm not stopping using
the orthotics, though, because I'm hoping that they'll be a big benefit
eventually.

Of course, all of this could be due to extreme exhaustion. I did manage an
early night last night, but was sleeping very restlessly so it wasn't the
recovery I'd hoped for. Hey, that's what weekends are for!

Tonight is the fun night at archery club. It's the end of the indoor season
so we usually have some silly games (shooting at paintings of beetles or
clowns for points) followed by food and prize-givings. I'm not anticipating
any prizes because I'm really not shooting well, but it's going to be a fun
evening and I am not letting assorted aches and pains get in the way of it.

Tomorrow night I'm round at a friend's flat for snacks and gossip. I'll
probably take along my knitting (I know have 6 of the 63 blanket patches
completed!) and try not to stay too late, but I haven't seen this friend for
over a month and we have some serious catch-up to do.

Is it time to go home yet?

At club night two weeks ago, the best that could be said about my shooting score involved words like "barn", "the broadside side of" and "couldn't hit". Bleh.

Last week our hall was being used for panto practise so there was no club night.

Thankfully, the panto is apparently fully rehearsed so we were able to have club night and this time my score was much less disastrous. Not amazing (got a way to go to be back at the level I was before my back went insane) but much better and I'm feeling far happier. Phew!

So I shall now celebrate with birthday cake :-)

I've filled out the forms, written the cheque and I'm going to be rejoining my archery club.

It's a little scary.

And a little exciting.

Can't decide whether or not it's the right decision yet, but I'm surprised by how much I've missed out now that I'm finally giving myself the chance.

Back is still being a bastard, though. I may have to sort out pain control properly before I do a huge amount.

Today was a much better day. For a start, nothing crashed at work. Although I had sneakily saved backups of all my work to my hard drive, just in case.

For another thing, it's Friday. I did some French college work and have now caught up with my parents (er, how the hell did they get ahead of the studying expert?) so I'm all set for tomorrow's tutorial. I've even marked in the dates for everything in my diary and now feel much calmer about getting the work done on time. Go me.

This weekend is going to busy. Tutorial tomorrow morning and Thai food with a friend tomorrow night. I had planned to go to the archery shop tomorrow for some new (more powerful) limbs, but on checking my diary it turns out that I have a hairdresser's appointment. Grr. Sunday is mostly OK, but I have my uncle coming to supper in the evening. Hopefully I'll be able to take off for bed when I need to because I'm going out to another folk concert on Monday night. I am pretty sure that it's Cherish the Ladies - very excited about that :-)

Somewhere in there, I need to find time to work on websites and get some writing done. I really need an extra three hours in every day.

Sunburnt, windburnt and thoroughly exhausted, but very happy - just about sums up the weekend. Today was the day of my first archery competition, AKA the club championships. It was an all day event, so obviously we couldn't shoot our usual six dozen arrow rounds. The really good members shot a Hereford, the rest of us shot various grades of Bristol. This entails twelve dozen arrows at three different distances. A Bristol IV, the round that I shot, consisted of six dozen at 40 yards, four dozen at 30 yards and two dozen at 20 yards, with a break for lunch after the first six dozen. I have no idea what the folks shooting the Hereford had to do in addition to all this - they were out at 80 yards (then 70, then 60), as were the Bristol Is, so it must be some esoteric archery thing that I haven't stumbled upon yet.

I came out of it rather better than I'd expected - runner up ladies novice and first place in score corrected for handicap. Of course, the fact that I've had a very high handicap until now and apparently shot much better today than I thought I had helped. The downside is that today's work will have improved my handicap (made it lower) so I'm going to have to shoot much better just to maintain it. Erp.

But it was a really good fun day, lovely to see people get prizes at the end and now I have two medals to find homes for.

All of that fresh air and exercise has completely exhausted me so I'm going to have some supper and a very early night so that I can be reasonably intelligent at work tomorrow. Tomorrow I may photograph my medals for display here. Or possibly not. Hmm.

Harry is here!!! Not going to be checking my f-list until that's finished, just in case. I may also be picking and chosing my emails carefully, just as a warning. Beautiful book.

Also bought my own bow, finally, which is cause for much excitement and sqeeing. All in the same day! The bow is a KAP Evolution II, measuring 66 inches with a 22 pound draw weight. She has a blue handle and is utterly beautiful. Photography may follow soon :-)) I've gone for a draw weight that I can actually draw comfortably because the shop will allow me to swap limbs for free to a higher draw weight if I need to within the next six months. Very reassuring. I've also bought a warm-up band that I can use to excerise and build up some strength in my shoulders. Basically, it allows me to make the 'pulling a string' motion with appropriate resistance without having to set up the bow in my bedroom and risk hurting someone. If I use it every day, I should start building some muscles and get moved up to heavier limbs within the six months. Woo!

Thursday was also my best scoring round, ever. I pretty much doubled my usual score. I think it's because I haven't been scoring myself for the last few weeks so I've been able to concentrate on what I'm doing rather than worrying about bad shots. It's very satisfying to see that kind of improvement :-)

Well, I'm going to get some lunch, open Harry...and have the Tour on in the background because today is a big Pyreneean stage. Not that I'm a sports fan or anything...