T'eyla Minh

Well, I don't think my foot is broken - turns out the ankle bandage was actually making it worse. I can walk on it okay, though still limping a bit and need to be careful on kerbs or anything remotely pointy because it hurts like a bugger.

Just as well, as otherwise I would have been unsure about swimming tonight. Not so much about the actual swimming but walking around the pool - I'll have to play it safe as it is, but at least I can walk on it, which is more than I could manage yesterday.

I don't think I went out for the entire weekend, come to think of it. I spent the majority of Saturday on the new PC either installing stuff or just playing around on it (nice to have things work when you click on them...) and as Paul went out for metalmikey666's birthday do, I had it to myself for the night. Wrote lots of fic and am definitely feeling the fandom love returning, though at this stage I think one new fandom (plus old ones to a less extent) is more than enough to be coping with at the moment, and I'm staying clear of being an opinionated presence at the moment. Trying to build a reputation through fanfic instead, as that's usually a lot more fun, and makes me feel a bit enigmatic. :)

On Sunday I also didn't go out due to having a headache and a sore foot, though I mostly blame staying up until 1.45am for the former... I had a shower and went to bed early and wrote a bit more of the uneventful chapter four of my fic. Three is just about finished but my plan is to stay at least a chapter ahead of myself. Also, as far as Muse-awakeness is concerned, I've been back on my pills for two days and so far, so good. I'l give it another week, but it looks like they're not going to kill my creativity off. :)

My mum is bringing me their external zip drive on Saturday (nobody wanted it on ebay!) and I need to investigate external hard drive costs and capacities*, because I cannot work with 10GB and I need to change my MP3 playlist... meant to do it before I swapped PCs and completely forgot. I could do with re-ripping my music anyway. Starting from the beginning, rather than doing random CDs. Maybe a couple a night, just to get it over with.

That's about it.

Still finding this sudden burst of new writing quite strange to get used to, but god damn, it feels good. I'd forgotten what it was like to have the ideas in my head actually translate to words on paper... Not particularly pretty words, at the moment, but it's better than no words at all...

Well, better do some work, I suppose.

*Wow. PC World are total rip-off merchants. The cheapest external hard drive they do is £75, and I don't even WANT 160GB. Christ's sake, 40 would do... Ebay here I come...

This only occurred to me quite recently, but seems to ring true consistently. In every single one of the fandoms I have or have ever written fanfiction for, I have one piece which is my 'magnum opus' of that fandom. This is a fic which is epically long, fluidly written, explores as many issues as can be crammed into one story and focuses heavily on character. And, every single time, it remains unfinished.

( The case for the defence, milud... )

I don't have one for Ugly Betty yet because I've only just started. I'll keep you posted, though "Strange Glue" is shaping up to be similar in form, as it explores emotional and character issues and very little else.

---

We have a 'new' PC from a bloke at Paul's work. Unfortunately it's a desktop (not a tower) but hopefully should work better than the one we have at present. I might ring my mum this afternoon and see if she still has her external Zip drive (mine is internal) and failing that, find a nice person to swap it for me. ;) Otherwise I'm going to have to put everything onto CD - along with everything on the old HDD.

I'll hopefully get around to plugging it in tomorrow and have a proper look at the spec then. In any case, it's free, and it can't exactly be any WORSE. :P

I'm going to lunch now. Over and out.

Edit, 18.21: I added another fic to the list. Have PC; must now do copious copying of things to CD.

It's kind of bizarre how the universe starts to conspire against you when you're approaching PMT...

Having said that, work seems to have mellowed me a bit - or it could just be the coffee...

The traffic was awful this morning around by St Martin's / Moor Street. Everyone had pretty much ground to a standstill and was stuck for about five minutes. In the end I got off a stop early and walked from St Martin's (up the bloody great hill) to work - I was only 15 minutes late by the time I'd been to Pret for coffee and a croissant... Of course, I happened to wear a shirt today, which now has delightful sweat patches due to the walk...

Executive decision: I'm making a doctor's appointment when I take my prescription in. This is for two reasons:

1. I need to get a referral for physio for my back. Lisa has also recommended acupuncture, but I suspect that will not be as free as NHS-provided physiotherapy. As there will doubtless be a waiting list, I can at least content myself that light exercise (i.e. swimming) will also help a bit.

2. I've nearly run out of pills, which is a perfect opportunity to ask about trying something different. I'm getting very fed up of the annoying side effects (weight gain, for one, and I'm convinced the hyper-hydrosis is connected; I only noticed it really during the heatwave, though in retrospect I think it must have started earlier.) As I've mentioned before, I do't want to stop taking them because they balance my hormones to a manageable degree, and my periods are actually regular and can be planned for, instead of being a long-awaited surprise. So really, I just need to ask if another type of pill or method will work to that same, positive degree, but eliminate the side effects. My suspicion is that all of these things work the same, but it's worth a try...

Choir last night was much more entertaining. We didn't do the horrible Verdi (I'm sure I will grow to like it when I know it a bit better) and instead practiced a bit of the Borodin (Russian's brilliant to sing), a women-only bit of Carmen with Adrian ("The Card Song") whilst the men did a men-only bit with Colin, and the beginning of the Mahler. Which is absolutely beautiful - lovely haunting dischords. I need to find a copy to listen to, I think... There is an absolutely brilliant top C in the final piece of Carmen (in "The Toreador's Song") right at the end, which I can actually, surprising, hit. I can only hope we're doing that last in the line-up, though...

Another post will house my dream from this morning, so as not to make this entry too long. I need to get into the habit of filtering the dreams properly. I've had lots of bizarre dreams of late that I keep forgetting to write down, another habit I need to break.

Wrote more of the UB fic last night, though it was mostly pointless ramble to get it to the place I wanted it to be. Chapter 1 is pretty much done, though, so I'll try and post it tonight.

That's about it. Dream post next.

I was up until 1.00am last night (this morning, even) writing fanfic. :) I opened up the beginning of my new Ugly Betty fic ("Strange Glue", based on the song) to have a look at it, and the tweaking became new writing. Annoyingly, it's going to end up being a chapter-fic, as it's become a lot longer than I was intending. My "burst balloon" theory strikes again... (I was going to link to the entry which mentioned said theory, but I'll be damned if I can find it.)

Felt good, although I have a late-night hangover as a result. Please not to be going back to the regular Sunday headaches? Thx.

Other than that we did precisely nothing yesterday... Oh, I went to the post depot to pick up my parcel from Katie. She got me a cookbook and a Wizard of Oz t-shirt that says "Be gone! Before someone drops a house on you, too!" Possibly if I ever get to see Wicked I may wear it - assuming it's a matinee, obviously. :)

Nothing else to report...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to joetimewaster, first of all...

I have a cold, or at least something resembling one. Spent most of yesterday with a sore throat and most of Friday with a cough, and this morning I'm full of snot. Lemsip cold tablets are fairly crap, it seems, but I can't be bothered to go out and get any Benylin Night & Day. At least the Benylin ones actually knock me out when I want to sleep; there's nothing in the Lemsip tablets to make you even slightly drowsy, which kind of sucks. Given that they're "Cold & Flu" relief tablets and they're struggling to cope with my cold, I dread to think what might happen if I did have flu...

Anyway. Paul went out to a party last night and returned about 20 minutes ago and has now popped out to Sainsbury's for stuff. I was meant to do lots of stuff last night, not the least of which was adjusting my choir skirt, but due to feeling generally rubbish I spent all night watching crappy television, and also The Devil Wears Prada, which was interesting to compare to Ugly Betty in some ways... I'll have to hope the cold clears up by Wednesday so I can adjust my skirt then...

This morning / early afternoon I finally got around to putting the washing upstairs to dry (I'm definitely buying Lenor softener again, it's lovely) and randomly decided to look in a box marked "X-Files Stuff - Fic" out of curiosity. Because obviously an old box is much better storage than, say, a folder. Anyway, within said box I discovered my VERY FIRST FANFICTION, and it wasn't even for The X-Files.

My First Ever Fanfic, ladies and gentlmen, was for Red Dwarf and was a very bad parody of A Christmas Carol. I was going to re-type this, but I think it deserves to be immortalised in its original, badly-typed glory (I wrote it on my dad's crappy electronic typewriter), so it's scanned, under the cut.

I did promise a Red Dwarf drabble a while ago, so you can have this instead...

Enjoy!

( A Red Dwarf Christmas Carol )

Reviews are appreciated. ;)

Chapter 3.

For what it's worth, anyway.

Last night's metres: 130. Beaten last week by 5.

As we'd just missed the bus (it doesn't matter HOW early we try and leave) we decided to walk back. The scenery looks a lot different when you're walking. We ended up following a trail of white paint that was dribbled on the floor all the way home, almost. At one point it had been dribbled into the outline of a person. "A giant's been murdered!" said I.

"It's a very funny shaped giant," said Alison.

"He's been beaten to death!"

We were also passed by a man who was humming rather ominously in an about-to-explode fashion...

During swimming we also ended up discussing Pirates 3, including what happened to Ana-Maria, Liz not being irritatingly feisty, and crabs that Should Not be rocks (& vice versa). All in all, quite a randomly entertaining evening.

Paul and I went to the pub for tea, which turned out not to be that good an idea. They apparently do a limited menu after 10.00, meaning "nothing fried or grilled". So, actually, their claim of providing a full menu until 11.00 is a big fat lie. I have half a mind to write to the Wetherspoon news magazine and indignantly ask the editor to fix my problem. :P

Anyway. Last night I remembered the golden rule about reading things on FFN - always remember to set the rating filter to 'All'. I'd forgotten that it defaulted to 'G - PG-13' in order to pwotect the childwen. It's usually the case that the better writers will have higher-rated fics (because they swear or something) and hence, you're more likely to find something readable.

( Some ramblings about FFN. )

Now that little rant is over with, I'll get back to the point of the entry. Not that there was one, really...

Um. Yes. I was deathly tired this morning so ended up buying coffee. Since I burnt my tongue on my cupasoup yesterday I couldn't drink much of it until it cooled down, but I let it cool down so much I only managed to drink about a quarter of it. I can't stand cold mocha; it's not quite as bad as cold drinking chocolate, but certainly a close second. My retching hatred of cold drinking chocolate comes from deep-seated psychological issues, incidentally - my maternal grandmother apparently used to force-feed me cold cocoa. Until that point, my mother said, I used to love milk. Afterwards, I hated it. I still can't drink it to this day and only have it on cereal...

To make up for that, though, I had a Pret croissant, which was lovely and warm and crisp. Yum.

At least it's Friday tomorrow.

Work is thin on the ground this morning (lots of people in, most of them back off leave with no hearings and subsequently not doing any work) so I'll probably surrepticiously work on Rain Will Make The Flowers Grow if I can. I need to tweak the second chapter, and make the third one a bit longer. It's currently entirely a Daniel introspection thing which jumps all over the place and doesn't flow. It's possibly a little ambitious of me to try and get into the head of a character I don't know that well, but we'll see how it goes... With the exception of Sunset Blvd (which is exceptional in most cases of my fandoms) I don't usually start fanficcing until at least the second or third season, by which point I'm thoroughly drowning in it...

Need to get back into fandoms. All of 'em. There is ALWAYS room for more fandom.

I've been trying to post this since Thursday but LJ has been on the fritz...  Anyway, here's the post that was meant to be posted on Thursday night...

( Ugly Betty fic update )

Happy birthday to kht for today and miss_scooter for yesterday, at least according to the LJ update client...

I will post again later...

Last night when I went to bed I sat down with my personal journal and scribbled a 'plot synopsis' for my Ugly Betty fic. It's more... random introspection than an actual story, so said plot isn't very plotty. It was, however, inspired by Tuesday's rainstorm.

( Writing stuff under here )

And finally, at 11.00, one piece of work has come in... about bloody time, too.

...and an hour later, nothing again. I might go on lunch in a bit.

Wow. I really need a haircut. I can actually see my split ends perfectly clearly.

*stops writing LJ entry*

(Except that it's taken this long to get the internet to work...)

FAO herringprincess:  Read.  Reeeeeeead!

Back from swimming, obviously.  Have bran flakes and apple juice.  Mmm.

And that's all I have to say, really.