Welcome to my perfumed garden

Where I spent a most pleasant long weekend at fluterbev 's from whence we all drove down to Liverpool to get picked up by drunken Irishmen have dinner with Garett.

I can't say more right now as I'm feeling very poorly sick and about to get into bed, but words and pictures should be forthcoming just as soon as I can raise the energy.

In the meantime, fluterbev ,  fingers and I have committed fic. Jim has Flu. Only Blair can heal him.

There's not so much we can do today, we've washed the walls and paintwork, put a skim on the two outer walls, finished filling all them pesky holes and undercoated the two still-green walls in white so they match the freshly plastered ones. Now everything has to dry so it can be sanded and what-notted tomorrow prior to painting and there's still one wall to be damp-gunked but... nothing much more we can do today, only wait for everything to dry. I feel very idle.

Tomorrow's the worst job - gloss-painting the woodwork (ick! sticky gloss paint, horrid nasty smelly stuff that I'm sure to be cutting out of my hair for the next several days) and painting the walls.

The end is in sight.

So, taking a break for a cuppa and a hob-nob. I just fired off my LMFA email...

( More pesky LMFA stuff )
So. What now? ::twiddles thumbs in a slightly awkward and embarrassed fashion:: There's nothing to be done downstairs. I feel all at a loss.

Drinking coffee, nibbling on a hob nob, staring at the wall.

Oh man, I SO don't wanna do this thing and neither does Mark and we're sitting here, encouraging each other in idleness. Hey ho, I reckon, if we start at 12 - or 1, maybe *g* - work till five, that should see the thing done. Once the damp-seal's on, we can't do anything for 12 hours anyway (it says on the tin).

That should be enough, shouldn't it? (nod head, say yes. Thank you.)

So I'm browsing LJ, listening to The Archers, occassionally glancing at this LMFA email from Caro...

( Cut for LMFA ramblings )
Now back to contemplating the work that has to be done without actually doing anything. ::lifts coffee, dunks bikkie, stares at wall::

Thanks for all the noms, sweethearts. Whoever you all are, your kindness is much appreciated.

Shamelessly lifted from the pocket of starwatcher307:

Post the first line from your 25 most recent fanfics and try to find a pattern.

Well, I don't have 25 fics. I think it's pretty well established by now that I write very few, very long stories, but adding in some ageing tales from another fandom, I can bump it up to 15 which is a reasonable writing sample. telesilla's adding last lines now, too, and I say, why not indeed?

And LJ still won't let me post urls under any circs that I can work out so I''ll just have to say  - all the ASJ stuff is here:
http://turkey88.com/aliassmithandjonesfanfic/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=13&Itemid=101

And all the Sentinel fics are here:
http://www.templeofthesentinels.com/FICpanik.htm

( Walk this way (if I could walk that way and etc. etc.) )

Where Hilary, my sister, was spending a day working on a show-reel for voice-over work. It’s something she’s wanted to do for a long time and she found a studio in Nottingham that specialises in that very thing. They’re also an agency and they’ve put her straight on their books. Talking to the sound-engineer after, it appears she impressed everyone mightily with her talent for characterisation – apparently it’s really hard to get voice-actors to characterise, they tend to want to do everything in their own voice - and Hilary is really good too, with a massive range. They’re sending her audition disc up for a couple of ads, talking books and the new series of Creature Comforts, which is most excellent news indeed.

I took my lappy assuming there’d be a green room where I could sit and work since I was only there for the moral support. There wasn’t, so I spent the morning in Starbucks, had a browse about (its been years since I wandered the streets of Nottingham) and passed a very long afternoon in the Costa in Waterstones where at least they had comfy sofas and a host of students and academics similarly occupying space for hours on end on the strength of a pot of  Earl Grey  and a ginger snap. *g*

I got a goodly bit of my sitcom worked out and some interesting ideas for the novel, switching to notes when the lappy batteries finally failed – a productive day, if a tad tedious and massively tiring, but there are far worse places to spend a day than drinking coffee, writing and browsing in a bookshop.

In other news, I got my first ‘where’s this story then?’ email from one of my Moonridge winners today. Gently worded but a prod nonetheless. Gentle reader, if  you too are one of those poor, patient souls waiting for the next update to the Academy tale (and/or waiting for Rainbows 3 to start) I can only tell you what I told them – I'll be back with you as soon as I can. I’m truly sorry, but the muse just isn’t dancing in that direction right now. I guarantee I will finish them  – barring death or coma – but I honestly can’t say when that will be.

Needless to say, I’m not offering anything for Moonridge this year.

And as my fannish life continues to diminish, I dropped another 23 communities from my flist – the bulk of them fandom and fic-related -
doctorwho, crack_van and the like. My morning sojourn on LJ hasn’t been this quick, easy and stress-free for a very long time. (o:

75 of the 113 messages in my inbox are LJ links to Doctor/Master slash

I'm just not living right. Not right at all.

There is some first class, grade A porn there, though. Just sayin...

A number too massively depressing to commit to print (for that would make it real and that would never do).

OK. My Weekend in which Nothing Happened, but I shall tell you all about it anyway...

We went home to Withnell where the already sucky broadband sucked even worse than ever - all weekend it sucked, like a huge, sucky thing made of bubble-wrap, painted green and frothing slightly at the edges, covered in little suckers and making big, wet sucking noises, like a Krynoid from The Seeds of Doom. Consequently we could neither upload nor download so I couldn't watch part four of Nathan Barley which was, likewise, a very sucky thing.

We went to Morrisons and Aldi and spent many of our English Pounds on pasta and Satsumas; bunches of coriander, tins of tomatoes, chick peas and baguettes and Ribena.

It snowed quite a bit, and then it melted.

Builders came and relieved us of £160 and yet, the gutters still leak.

B&Q was visited. DIY occurred.

No writing was done. Not a word. I have no defence for this strange and unusual situation except that I was very busy from Wed till Sat, stripping wallpaper, filling giant hairy (literally) gaps in the crumbling, pre-Victorian plaster then spending most of Friday cleaning the house to within an inch of it's life. When Saturday came along I was knackered. I spent the whole day drinking coffee, Ribena and wine (ah, the decadence!) eating a big bag of praline eggs (90p, Aldi; highly rec) and watching telly; Cadfael, ROS, Mighty Boosh and Nathan Barley parts one to three.

And lo. no writing was done; not on the novel and not on the fic -Which leaves me with a bit of catching up to do. Sorry, everyone who's waiting for the next bit of the WIP; as soon as I can, I swear...

Words on Entanglement this morning; just a bit of exposition in which Matt asks about his sister and Angel shows us he can travel to the Other Side (cue spooky music). And I finally found a working word meter.

( Cut for word-meterage and other tedious book and fic stuff... )