Met up with the brother at the Chandos this lunchtime to hand over his family's Christmas pudding and a pile of books and DVDs (Sherlock, Hannibal, Rare Exports and Casino Royale - basically a big old pile of psychopaths/sociopaths*) and receiving in return my birthday present from October (a nice, non-iPod MP3 player) and some books (new Temeraire ( Read more... )

It's a horrible dark, wet morning, and I'm putting off going to the shops by sitting here organising my Christmas viewing.  I've just realised that, added together they come to a good bit more than 12 hours, not counting anything actually on the television ( Read more... )

The godson came round on Wednesday to collect a few sock monkeys for sale.  He and his girlfriend are doing a stall at a car-boot sale on Saturday, and he very kindly offered to sell a few of them for me.  I packed them all up neatly with price tags and labels, but couldn't find any business cards, so had to use some of my old ones.  The wording ( Read more... )

The jobsearch is on again, I suppose. On Thursday I revisited the agency I saw last spring, and they boosted my confidence enough for me to start thinking of myself as employable again. I also got orders for four more sock monkeys (one "large and pink", one pirate, a Batman and a Mr Spock), which was also cheering. On Friday, I bounced out of ( Read more... )

Spent most of yesterday and today pottering about at home, looking out at the rain and cooking. The weather has been unusually bad for early June, with pretty solid rain since Sunday morning. I managed to get several minor house things sorted out, including finally planting out the rest of my summer stuff (strawberries and tomatoes now upstairs ( Read more... )

Well, we had a good, if extremely wet, time yesterday. We all met up in a ludicrously crowced Waterloo station, and headed for the river bank. The news today said there had been over a million people and most of them were standing in front of us, so we couldn't see much of the river even then. It was pretty clear that there was nowhere we could ( Read more... )

Another long gap, this time due to a really annoying combination of computer problems, broadband problems, and my usual virus thingy combined with hayfever. I did get to the doctor, who unsurprisingly told me I had a virus, and sent me off for some more blood tests. I suspect gettingh a proper job would help more than anything, but that would ( Read more... )

Thanks to Neil Gaiman and a recent episode of Dr Who, I now know that petrichor is the word for that lovely smell you get after rain on dry earth ( Read more... )

As I went to bed last night I could hear rain starting to blow against the window, and when I got up most of the snow had gone, and we had reverted to proper English Christmas weather, i.e. grey and damp. The temperature has risen to a balmy 4 degrees (39 F), and I even went out without my wooly hat ( Read more... )

A very pleasant, if quiet birthday, mostly spent indoors, as it rained solidly all day. My boss rang to say that although there isn't any work going at the moment, when there is some not only do they want me back, but there will be a possible raise, which was encouraging. There were plenty of greetings from my lovely flist and cards, and the ( Read more... )