themis1

The plan for this weekend was to get the 'Every Child Matters' articles sorted out and ready for insertion in the relevant bit of the thesis (which is pending, really it is - I finally figured out where Neighbourhood Policing fits!). On Sunday, when sun was expected, I had a list of gardening things to do.

What actually happened? For some bizarre, inexplicable reason I found myself sorting out the box of accounts papers that's been sitting around for over 2 years waiting for me to do something with it. I have sorted, typed out, thrown away and shredded at length. And the sun barely put in an appearance today, so although I did some tidying up in the garden and watered in the greenhouse, that's all I did.

Sigh. So much for plans. Oh well, I'll just have to force myself to do some thesis work in the evenings this week ...

Yeah, yeah, I know, I keep saying I will update more regularly - but, really, so little happens!

Any Dream - pleased by the result, amused to discover later that Connie was pre-recorded (we did wonder whether a whole theater full of people were disappointed because she wasn't there!).

Who - last few eps have been better - it had got seriously bad! - and I'm highly amused by their casting for the Master.

Baby - Simon Patrick, that is - seems very placid and thoughtful, and was completely unphased by being passed from person to person at work, apparently including (I missed this!) the Deputy Chief Constable!

Garden - doing quite well, despite periodic torrential downpours. The greenhouse has arrived and is sitting in the garage in pieces whilst I clear the piece of land for it to go on, sort out a base, and then arrange for the boys from work to come and build it - it appears to be a giant meccano set, and that was definitely a boy's toy when I was little (my brother wouldn't let me play with his, anyway!). We're thinking of making it a team building event - the girls can sit and laugh at the boys as they struggle to figure out the instructions!

Cats - mad as ever.

And that's about it, really.

Started my birthday 2 days early by driving down to Hayling Island to meet the gentleman caller. "I hope there isn't a traffic jam on that stretch of the A34 past Winchester," I said. "Oh, you were just unlucky at Xmas," said he. And again on Thursday :-S However did pass a railway engine, which on a road isn't something you do every day!

Arrived Hayling Island to torrential rain - irritating since we had planned to visit a beachside pub we had been to before, but you can't park near it and it was raining so hard we couldn't face the walk, so we went to the Bear in Havant, about which the best I can say is 'Average'. Ah well!

Friday dawned ... well, we made it in for breakfast, anyway! Weather still blowy and overcast, but not actually raining. An improvement. Cruised down to Southport and visited the D-Day Museum, which reduced us both to tears (gentleman caller is almost as soft as me at times) although the Overlord Tapestry was impressive. "It's not a tapestry," I observed, peering at it. "It's an embroidery - actually, mostly aplique with couching and some long/ satin stitch." This was mostly in revenge for, "This panel's wrong, they didn't introduce that particular weapon until the following year ..." (Men!)

After that, nothing would do but we went to the Isle of Wight for lunch. This was mostly because the GC loves any form of transport, and just couldn't resist the hovercraft (I seem to remember a previous GC who did a similar thing with a helicopter and the Isles of Scilly). Half way across, the sea choppy and the sky grey, GC said thoughtfully, "It's going to be very silly if we get stuck and our clothes are still on Hayling Island ..." Well, yes, dear! Fortunately by the time we'd had lunch, and I'd acquired a stupidly cheap amber necklace from a conveniently located 'new age' style shop, the wind had actually died down a bit and the return journey was made without incident.

We did some wandering around shops, and then departed in convoy for A27, M27, M3 and A34 (I think - I am mildly dyslexic with numbers and can never remember them. At any rate, the roads that join Hayling with the A34!). GC headed west just before the M4, I headed north and back to Oxford in time for dinner, Criminal Minds and NCIS.

Saturday (my birthday) dawned ... damply. Wannabedolphin arrived from London in the afternoon, we watched Any Dream Will Do and sent for an indian take-out so that we could savour the Eurovision, although actually it was a bit dull this year - the first half, anyway, the sillier acts seemed to all be in the last half. Including ours, which wasn't half as bad as things that did better - but as we all know, every country votes for their friends and neighbours, and we haven't got much of either - Ireland, our nearest neighbour, gave us some points, and Malta, which still loves us for historic reasons, did also. And nobody else ... ah well.

The Eurovision did have *some* positives, since it appears to have done the trick where nothing else did and ensured my workmate and friend Sabine went into labour, 9 days late and just short of threatened inducement. Phew! Simon Patrick and his mother were apparently snoring peacefully when the proud father rang me this morning to let us know.

And so, another year older. I have many DVDs to watch, books to read and crafty things to do (thanks, Mythic!).

Today, Wannabedolphin and I braved the local garden centre - it used to be Blooms but now is mysteriously Wyvale, not sure if this was a take-over or a merger. Despite practically torriential rain, the place was heaving. I came away with a bootfull of plants as always - a half price bright orange Azalea, the tomato plants for this year (we're trying cherry this time around) and the antirhinnums I couldn't find last time we were there. I have always been fond of snapdragons, but could never grow them in London as we had rust.

One day I will keep this up to date ... but please don't anyone hold their breath!

Today I dug dandelions out of the patch of lawn we own, that's outside the wall of the garden, and that can't be seen from the house.  And dug.  And dug.  The awful truth about dandelions is, however - however many you evict, twice as many will appear a week later.  I may have to get serious with weed killer.

In between de-dandelioning, I nipped over to Homebase and bought bark chips.  These were 3 bags for £10, so you have to have three bags, whether you need them or not ... and they FILLED the boot of my Corsa.  The garage, which was as far as I could lug them from the car, is now heavily scented of wood chips.  And my back may forgive me, sometime later this week.  Possibly.

Yesterday Norton kindly removed a .DLL file it thought was suspicious.  Naturally, it's one Outlook Express requires to run.  As a result, I currently have no e-mail.  This is not desperate, as I don't actually get that many e-mails and I can always use the work address, since the Blackberry is like the Force (with me - always!).  But we're coming in to Birthday Season - why do nearly all the people I know have their birthdays at the same time?! - and it does make getting the confirmations from Amazon at a sensible time more difficult.

Have been re-reading the incomplete novel* I started in Grimsby.  Still like it.  Suspect I still can't manage to get the last 3 chapters right.  It's far too fannish to publish, of course, but I suppose if I got it finished I could entertain my readers by posting a bit at a time over a long period.

(*It's novel LENGTH.  But it's the bastard child of Irwin Allen via Mortal Kombat.  Which may make calling it a 'novel' a bit of an exaggeration.)

PS - note I have snagged a Dresden Files icon.  This show lacks decent special effects, and the scripts have been a bit mixed - but it's still a million miles more watchable than this season of Dr Who, I regret to say.  Mind you, this may be because I loved the books!

And now, since I have to get up at the crack of dawn to get to Wokingham for 9.00 and the Pan-Berks ContactPoint conference (my life's a thrill a minute), I had better disappear ...

 December has gone in a flash, really.  We've been busy at work, and I do like to try and get things at least moving in the right direction before packing up for the festive break.  One or two things didn't get done, but on the whole I feel reasonably happy with the state of play. I was doing quite well on the 'throwing things away' front, too, until we got a huge delivery of packages which, for lack of space elsehwere, got stacked in front of my filing cabinet until the New Year - !

I haven't done anything at all on the PhD front other than collect more paper - but I now have a week off, so hopefully some of that will find its way into files.  If I can just get some order into the chaos, everything else should follow naturally (she laughed).

The unusually warm Autumn has meant we have a rose in bloom in the garden for Xmas - actually with the freezing fog the last few days I think it's freeze-dried, but nonetheless!  The heron I've seen once before passed by again this morning, which was nice as Phoebesmum and Wannabedolphin saw it too.  It must live in the area - last time I saw it I just thought it was lost!

We are now just about ready for Xmas - the turkey's in the freezer (well, the turkey breast, there only being two meat eaters), the vegetables are all over the place, and there's the usual abundance of twiglets, cheese and crackers around the place.  I've nearly finished the wrapping, and tinsel has been draped over everything that doesn't move (the cats narrowly escaped).

I never did get into Neverwinter Nights 2, I'll have to give it another go at some point, got back into Neverwinter Nights 1 instead - and I must check up on some of the downloads!  Have also discovered Dragonfable, a free (or very cheap, you get benefits from a one-off payment) game which plays in the browser.  Silly, simple and great fun.

My passing gentleman hasn't managed to get here in time for Xmas so one of my pressies will be late this year, he had flu and then his daughter's car broke down, so there went the week before Xmas ...

No other news - merry Xmas to all my readers!!