Selenay's Ramblings

At last, that glorious day of days is here and it's time for some new Doctor Who! I have been doing chores this morning and I am sitting down to write, but after I've got the words down (and a nice walk outside in the sunshine done), I plan to have a mini Doctor Who marathon.

Just because it's been so long.

I can't decide what to watch, though. Should I rewatch the last few episodes of season 9? (Probably.)

The Christmas special? (Er, maybe not.)

Some favourites from earlier new Who? (But which ones?)

An old favourite serial? (Which, let's face it, will be Battlefield because it's my favourite old Who serial and I'll never get tired of watching it.)

Anyone else doing a wee preparatory marathon? What are you watching?

Today is one of those "surviving by distraction" kind of days. It's my appointment with Awesome GI Guy this afternoon and I don't have a good feeling about the outcome, so I'm distracting myself with fannish stuff and being mean to the DBAs.

OK, the being mean to the DBAs bit is necessary (yet fun) for my project.

The fannish stuff though...

OMG, Doctor Who trailer! With all the things! And the other things! And did you see the thing on the thing? OMG!!

I'm hoping that wasn't too spoiler-tastic for those who are avoiding spoilers. Please feel free to spoil in comments :-D

My Tumblr dash is a happy squee-ful Doctor Who place today :-D

Also, my Hugo vote is in (some tough choices were made) and...

...I'm still battling my way through GRRM book 4 because I'm determined to finish it. Then I'm taking a break before tackling book 5. I have other stuff to read that will be way more fun.

Note to self: no matter how depressed you are by this evening, you must read Fables 16 so that it can go back to the library tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow...

It's my first day off on the new work pattern arrangements. OK, so HR screwed us all up and have us all down with weird days off that aren't anything any of us signed up to, but we're all taking what it says in the paperwork as correct and not what they've programmed into our time tracker because the time tracker is nutso. Anyway, day off tomorrow and civic holiday on Monday. Ergo, I've got a four day weekend and I so totally need it :-D

So, LJ appears to be back now. And filled with spam! I've received more spam on my journal this week than I usually do in a year and most of it doesn't seem to have a 'mark as spam' option when I go to delete it - WTF LJ?

Argh.

Today I did lovely boring stuff like banking and filing taxes. Then I thought that I'd take myself out for lunch and have that burger I've been promising myself as a treat.

Tip to the wise: never look up the nutritional stuff on a treat.

I got myself so stressed about the calories+prednisone fear, the "what if it hurts me?" fear and my generalised food fear that I had nightmares about it last night and decided this morning that I was definitely not doing that. Instead I took myself out for lasagne, which wasn't amazing but was filling and I hadn't looked at anything to do with the nutritional stuff before I went. It also only contained meat, cheese and pasta which have never caused me problems before and the burger that I really wanted contains onions, which have on occasions caused problems. I feel absolutely fine right now, although I do feel like a bit of a crazy lady for getting myself so totally stressed over a treat.

This whole experience appears to have traumatised me. Urgh.

Only a week to go!

Today there was finally some good news for me: the insurance company approved the Humira with no restrictions. That means I get what my specialist thinks that I need for $10 co-pay rather than going bankrupt to pay for it.

I am so relieved.

The pharmacy is ordering it in and a nurse will be out possibly as early as Friday (I'll know when they call tomorrow) to train me on taking it. Pretty soon, we'll have my immune system damped down and my innards healing. I hope. It will be good to start feeling better :-)

Also, new Doctor Who trailer today! I couldn't resist and peeked. It's going to be so good .-D

I need a Five icon :-)

( Cut for length and spoilers )

Tonight is Castrovalva, a story that I'm absurdly fond of for no good reason at all :-)

In just over a week, season 5 of Doctor Who starts in the UK and as you can imagine I'm very excited. I'm also a little bit nervous.

It's not as bad as my nerves were before Rose aired. That was a combination of "I won't believe it until I see it" and "What if they muck it up?". There had been so many rumours over the years that didn't turn into anything. Even the TV movie, while fun, didn't lead into anything permanent. I'm sort of glad about that because, as much as I loved Paul McGann, Doctor Who really doesn't work when it's made in America. Anyway. With all those rumours and disappointments (actors had been 'signed' before, writers had been attached etc.), I couldn't quite convince myself that it was really happening until I saw it on my TV screen.

There had also been a number of old TV shows at that time brought back for series or movies and done as parodies, so a part of me was very scared that this would be the tactic they would take with Doctor Who. After all, as much as I love it and can overlook the dodgy effects to see the great storytelling in many episodes, I knew that this was a show that could easily be parodied. Bubble-wrap monsters. Eep.

I knew nothing of Russell T Davis apart from the fact that he'd written a few things that I hadn't watched but had been well-received. It was only a couple of years later that I discovered that he wrote Century Falls, one of the best children's drama serials that I've ever seen. That one still stands up well even now - hunt it down if you can, you won't be disappointed.

Christopher Eccleston was an actor that I'd liked since his time on Cracker, but all I knew about Billie Piper was her disastrous pop career and her marriage to Chris Evans so I had no faith in that bit of casting.

When I sat down on Easter Saturday in 2005 to watch Rose, I was terrified that it would be really, hideously bad. Dad and I were both a bit of a nervous wreck that day. Two huge Doctor Who fans who have been watching since their childhoods made for a certain energy in the house. UK Gold had done a day airing a story from every Doctor (still can't understand why they chose Dragonfire as the Sylvester McCoy ep - Silver Nemesis and Ghost Light were much better and the same length) so it was a really fun, Doctor Who-ish day building up to it. We still got progressively more nervous as the day went on, though!

I am so happy that my nerves were unneeded. It happened, Rose was good and the rest of the season was even better.

So this time my nerves aren't quite as bad. It's been nearly two years since the end of season 4 and the specials really didn't satisfy the gap, which is why I'm very excited. It may explain a tiny bit of my nerves, although this time I do believe that it's really happening. Stephen Moffat has written some of my favourite episodes and is also the man responsible for Press Gang, the other children's drama that really stands out in my mind as excellent. He's a massive Doctor Who fan.

Matt Smith didn't impress me much initially, but all the trailers and interviews have grown on me. He looks to be full of energy and yet able to do the quieter moments as well. He says "Trust me, I'm the Doctor" and I trust him.

It's just that there's this nagging little voice that's scared. Logically I know that all the elements are there for a great season: Moffat's vision, lots of Moffat eps, other great writers including Curtis and Gatiss, Matt Smith. That little voice keeps whispering "What if Moffat can write, but can't create the vision?" and "Matt Smith's trailers might look great, but what if he actually sucks?"

I suspect that little voice won't shut up until I get to the closing credits of The Eleventh Hour and sit back with a huge grin yelling, "Woo, that was brilliant!"

Doctor Who special day is finally here. Anyone excited yet? :-D

Yesterday I managed to leave on work at my actual finish time, which meant that I actually made it home with enough time to eat before going to my concert. In fact, we rolled up before the doors opened! Most unexpected, that, although it did mean that we were in line to get decent seats.

We saw a band called Feast of Fiddles and I can heartily recommend them. The band consists of seven of the best folk fiddlers around (Chris Leslie, Phil Beer, to name two) plus a rock backing group. So they covered everything from haunting duets to beautiful ballads and bright jigs with the odd rock anthem thrown in for good measure. It was a terrifically fun evening and now I need to find recordings of some of the best stuff :-)

The only downside is that I am incredibly, unbelievably tired today so I shall be signing off shortly for an early night.

I do need to mention that I got the new Radio Times today. Well, Mum got it and she claims that the superstore only had the Ood cover. Heh. I haven't actually read more than the editor's bit yet and I'm feeling even more hyped up for Doctor Who than ever now. Only three days!

Was it my imagination or were there more April Fools' jokes going on than usual yesterday?

So, in less than an hour the season finale of Doctor Who will start.

In preparation, I have re-watched the previous season finales this week and thoroughly enjoyed them both. Of course, they also were both a little teary and incredibly dramatic, something that had lessened in my mind over the months. Re-watching them reminded me of how good they were and how much I enjoyed them. Also, of how much they both moved me.

The interesting thing was that I noticed they both had cliff-hangers of a sort. The main plot was resolved by the end, but there was a hook there. Parting of the Ways had the Doctor's regeneration and Doomsday had the appearance of the Bride. I can only assume that the same is going to happen tonight and I don't even want to speculate on what it could be.

( Spoilers for Utopia and The Sound of Drums )

The only other thing that I'm really hoping for from this finale is an absorbing, amazing episode that will leave me impatient for the Christmas special. That's not too much to hope for, is it? ;-)

Only forty minutes to go. Better get myself in place and waiting!

The art website that I have been working on since September (ack!) finally went live today! I got the 'You have a go' email this morning (after letting them know that it was ready to go live around two and a half months ago...), checked that everything was ready and hit the button. The site is now running, everything works and I'm hoping that my clients are very pleased. I'm certainly very pleased with how it's turned out, despite the headaches and delays. It looks really good, it runs very quickly, it doesn't seem to break in any set-ups that I could find and even my father thinks that it's a good piece of work :-)

Plus, this can now go on my CV. Yay!

And now I must make myself pretty and presentable for when terrylbirch, yragg, and sazzle_02 pick me up in a few minutes. We are going for lunch at the noodle place in town followed by a tour of a model village. Woo!

Hopefully I'll be back here with enough time for a lie-down before new Doctor Who starts. Only seven hours to go!