Things and Stuff

Today has been a day of variety, which has been nice!  I started out by going up to the Christmas fair for Mum’s church – I got there quite late on, so I helped clear up and carry the remaining stuff back up to the church.  I got a few nice cards and nick knacks for gifts, so that was a worthwhile trip.  Then I walked with Mum back to her house for a drink and then a lift home.

On the way up to Mum’s place, I stopped off and did a geocache that was en route.  It took me a bit longer than I’d planned due to me being disorganised with my stuff, but it was still a speedy one.  Not a micro one this time, but a still small one.  So not big enough to put the travelling monkey into, yet.  Poor monkey!  I’ll move him on soon, by hook or by crook!

After visiting at Mum’s for a while, we came back here and had dinner – stir fry followed by cupcakes!  Then Mum went home and I’ve been knitting and watching Strictly Come Dancing.  I’m still working on the Travelling Woman, but hopefully I’ll be done soon.  Maybe tonight?  Maybe tomorrow.

And then I’ve been playing with Blip.fm – I’ve put a widget linking to my account there in the sidebar, and I think it’s possible to play some tracks directly from here?  I’m not sure, I’m still figuring it out.  That’s not what I’m using it for, anyway.  Mostly I’m listening to the songs my friends have playlisted.  Is that even a word?  Probably not, but I know what I mean, and I’m sure you do too.  Anyway, I thought I’d put the widget up here because in the first place I can, and also because I’m trying to get all my web stuff better linked together.  Integrate my web presence.  Oh how pretentious. ;-)

Fun things (Part 1?)

Alright, so I said I’d make sure I was doing at least one necessary thing and one thing for fun every day… how’ve I been doing so far?

Monday: Cleaned the bathroom and kitchen thoroughly; knitted and listened to podcasts.

Tuesday: Did my library volunteering (this doesn’t really count as a chore, but it’s a commitment, so I’ll count it!); went out to lunch and then round the Old Town with my Mum and visiting aunt and uncle.

Wednesday: Made a whole slew of necessary phone calls; went out for the day to Rye with Mum, aunt and uncle, and later to KnitJam.

Thursday: Waited in for a parcel and did housework; went to knit & natter at C House, took it easy in front of the telly (and caught up on Holby).

Friday: Did housework, sorted some paperwork; watched TV and knitted.

Saturday: Went to the vet, the chemist, the cash machine, the local shop and the post office (whew!); went geocaching along the seafront and found six caches, watched SCD then had a massively early night!

Sunday (today): Filled out a health cost help form (must remember to book my eye-test when/if that comes back), cleaned the kitchen; done a bit of knitting and listening to podcasts, and might pop out to do a geocache in a mo.

Days of summer

Wow, and there goes another month – I did so well blogging all through June, started out in July…. and then Real Life took over!  What a shock to the system that’s been ;-)  Seriously though, it really has been a pretty good summer.  The “busy day” to come that I mentioned about two posts / six weeks ago way back on 5th July was the day that I had an interview for a volunteering “job”, and I’ve been doing that ever since.  Not every day, I mean.  Just once a week.  I’m really enjoying it!  (I’d better not go into specifics just yet.  I’ll check with them first if they mind me blogging about it a bit.  I’ve been almost-burned with that before, when a manager at my job up north told me I should remove all references to work.  And none of that was specific stuff about the company at all, if I remember rightly, and certainly didn’t name anything or anyone.  Just occasional anecdotes about colleagues and work life.  So, double-check first, blog later!)

Other than that, I’ve been going to the Bipolar Course, which is nearly over now.  That’s also been really good.  I hadn’t been going to choir for a while because I’d been ill, but I’ll be going again when rehearsals start back up in September so I’m looking forward to that.  And I’ve also taken up Geocaching!  What-y What-ing?  Well, in case you haven’t heard of it, it’s a sort of a cross between orienteering and treasure hunting, done with GPS.  In my case, I use the GPS thingy in my phone rather than a dedicated device, and it’s been spot on every time so far.  It’s getting me out and about and giving me a reason to go for walks, and it was surprising the first few times how much glee and satisfaction I felt when I found the caches.

Right, I must be getting on.  I’ll try to remember to blog more about geocaching, update my knitting and spinning stuff… um…. oh, and talk about Pirate Day, Promming,  and how much I liked the BBC’s new “Sherlock” adaptation!  I think that’s about it.  Probably.


NaBlo-ing again

I’ve decided to sign up for July’s NaBloPoMo again, because why not?  I won’t do the alphabet thingy again, even though it really helped me going, because I’ll have the Tour de Fleece to post about for a good part of the month.  I’ll find other things to keep me going for the rest of the time.

The summer spring-cleaning is continuing on here in my flat.  I’m on a roll!  I’m also going to be doing some tidying of the computer.  I haven’t done that for waaay too long.  There’s a whole load of pointless old files that need deleting.  Plus, I’m going to change my broadband provider to a better tariff.

I’m also ridiculously excited because I just found out that Question Time is going to be on in Bexhill in a couple of weeks.  I’m so applying for the audience.  I must find out if anyone else wants to go too, though.  I’m not sure if anyone I know locally would be up for it, but I’ll check.

W is for Who!

Doctor Who, of course – today was the season finale.  No spoilers here, because I know it doesn’t air in the US (and Australia, I think) for another couple of weeks, but I will say that I loved it!  The solution to the cliffhanger of last week, and the arc that’s been on-going all season was wonderfully twisty and just right.  And oh, there were just enough little hints dropped that I really want to be able to see next season as soon as possible now, too.  Evil, evil showrunners!  It’s six months til the Christmas Special (and if that’s what was mentioned at the very end, then hee!), and about nine months until season 6.  Aaaaah!  I’ll just have to keep busy until then, won’t I?

Spinning again

As well as not having blogged since July, I haven’t done any spinning since then either.  During the blogathon, I posted that I was spinning some gorgeous merino fibre.  I got maybe 10g of the 100g braid actually done, and the spinning wheel has been in a corner ever since.  I suppose I sort of lost my spinning mojo / motivation, then I was busy with other things.  But I’m now feeling much more motivated, and I suddenly felt like actually finishing that.  So, yesterday I hoiked the wheel back out of the corner, sat it in front of the telly, and spun all through Strictly Come Dancing and Casualty.  And then, because I was on a bit of a roll, I put on the last two eps of Flash Forward which I still had to catch up on, and kept going.  I’d split the braid into two approx 50g sections so that I could spin two roughly equal bobbins full, and I’d been aiming to finish the rest of the first 50g.  In fact, I finished that first bobbin, and now I’m half way through the second:

I’m going to see if I can get a bit more done tonight before I go to bed.  I’m still on a little bit of a sci-fi high from the new Doctor Who episode / special tonight, “The Waters of Mars”.  Can’t wait til the next one at Christmas!  But I need to wind down a bit more, so a bit of podcast listening and spinning should do the trick.  Hopefully, I’ll get these singles bobbins finished and then plied within the next couple of days.  I might use the remainder of my birthday money to get a niddy noddy, too.  That’ll make winding the finished yarn back off the bobbin much easier.

Chriiiiiiistmas time…

… mistletoe and wine. Or in my case, mince pies and lemsip! Yes, I was feeling a bit grot, but I had a lovely day nevertheless. I spent it, as is traditional, at Mum’s. We ate loads of nummy food, opened all our pressies, and watched Dr Who and Wallace & Gromit. Yay :-) I hope you all had one that was as good (or even better and germ-free!).

Anyway, I’ll try and remember to write more tomorrow, but now I’m off to bed. *ded*

The amazing expanding feet :-/

It’s looking like I’m experiencing a side-effect from the new medication I started a couple of weeks ago: oedema. My feet and legs have swollen up, and I think my arms have a bit as well. My skin feels too tight. Oh yay fun. This happened to me a few years ago, quite severely. It was in the summer, so I thought it was because of the heat or something and I ended up having to go to hospital for a few days for tests-and-boredom. I’d rather like to avoid that this time, so I shall give the doctor / CMHT a call in the morning. This time of year, I don’t really want to get to the point where I can’t fit any of my shoes on!

In other news, I’ve been knitting away – and in fact I’m going to go back to that now, with my feet up on the sofa (should help the oversized feet problem a bit!) and podcasts in my mp3 player. Aaaah :-)

However, before I go back to that, I just wanted to mention that I’ve now downloaded and watched Strictly (ILU iPlayer) …. and woohoo! What an awesome finale! I’m sorry it’s over for another year now though, cos it’s so sparkly and feelgood! Still, there’s the Christmas special to watch. Yay!

Under the wire

Ooops, only just got this entry done. And I can’t even think of much to say. Um. It’s been a pretty average day, really. A normal one, even. I did housework*, the postman delivered the last parcel I need for Christmas (phew!), I knitted, I even wrapped one present, and I went over to Mum’s this evening. I’ve actually had the computer off for most of the day – most unusual!

I haven’t watched any telly either: we had a yummy Chinese takeaway at Mum’s, then played board games. So I’m going to set the Beeb iPlayer to download the Strictly Come Dancing final shows and Casualty for me overnight, and watch those tomorrow. I very nearly got “spoiled” for the Strictly final, I think, by foolishly looking at my LJ friends page: someone was talking about it, but I only got as far as seeing that she’d mentioned Strictly and hurriedly scrolled back up! *g* Of course, now it’s really tempting to go back and read to find out who won. Or look at any number of news sites. Or Twitter. Oh internets, sometimes you tell me too much! It’s all too overwhelming!! ;-) I’m off to bed!

* although there’s still some to do tomorrow because my brother picked me up earlier than I’d anticipated

Project 365 #6, Days 35-44: 13th – 22nd Feb

Since I’m still playing catch up, here’s yet another picdump: days 35 to 44 of my Project 365 photos. If you want to see all the photos so far, click on the Project 365 category link, or check out the Project 365 folder in the photo album.

On to the pics (click them for the full sized versions):

Continue reading “Project 365 #6, Days 35-44: 13th – 22nd Feb”

Project 365 #2, Day 7-11: 16th – 20th Jan

Here are the next five days of my Project 365 photos. If you want to see all the photos so far, click on the Project 365 category link, or check out the Project 365 folder in the photo album.

On to the pics (click them for the full sized versions):

Continue reading “Project 365 #2, Day 7-11: 16th – 20th Jan”

Internetless

I’m internetless! Well, obviously not this instant: right now I’m using a computer in C. House to make this post. But at home my broadband died on Saturday afternoon and hasn’t come back yet. Argh! It’s driving me potty. It doesn’t appear to be anything at my end that’s the problem, and my ISP has checked everything at their end as well. So it looks like it’s a problem on the phone line disrupting my ability to connect. :-( I don’t know how long it’ll be until I get back online from home again. What’s almost worse about this is that I only had my broadband upgraded (for the same price I was paying already, mwahah) to glorious speeds only last week. And now, kersplat! No internets at ALL. I don’t think it’s related to the upgrade – it was working fine for several days, and I technically have a perfectly good connection still. I just can’t connect to my actual ISP. Apparently it’s a line fault, so BT have got to check it out. Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long.

On the plus side, I’ve got loads of knitting done – I’m pretty much done on the gusset of my Hedara sock, having started from the ribbing just a few days ago. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone! And while I’ve been knitting, I’ve been catching up on season 1 of Alias, which I haven’t watched for ages and ages. But today I’m having withdrawal, so it’s back to the internets I come. However, there are other people waiting to use these machines, and even though I’m a speedy typer, I have other stuff to do. So I’d better get going. Let’s hope I’ll be back soon!