jadesfire

Following on from yesterday's surreal readers, today's has come to me in my workroom.

Our lift broke at the end of last week, and we were told that it would be next week before they could repair it. To our utter delight (because books are heavy and currently have to be carried up 2 flights of stairs), the workmen actually arrived this morning. They're working now in the lift shaft, going up and down, yelling to each other and generally banging things.

I therefore have the distinct impression that the lift is talking to me...

Today has gone all topsy-turvy on me, and I'm still trying to find my feet. Headlines are: Lovely Weekend If Somewhat Wet, We Have Achieved Crochet (I Have The Pictures To Prove It) and I Love It When Work Pays For Lunch.

It's likely that I'm going to be at a loose end in London for an hour or so tomorrow afternoon. Any suggestions for 'must visit' yarn shops so that I can alarm J further with the size of the stash?

Love to y'all and hope everyone else is drier than I am...

With apologies to the flister who lives there...

Council in Liverpool gets a bad name for poor spelling

Since the article is very, very short, I've c&p'd it below:

Council officials were left embarrassed after an eight-year-old boy gave them a spelling lesson. Matthew Spurgin was appalled when workmen from Knowsley council installed road signs with a glaring error near his house. Matthew lives on an avenue in Liverpool but the new signs said “avenune”.

Matthew, who got full marks in a spelling test at school this week, said: “They should learn to spell correctly. If they aren’t sure, they need to look it up.”

A spokesman for the council insisted that the error was made by contractors and that correctly spelt signs had been ordered.

From The Times

It's the quote that made me sporfle. Someone's going to be a beta when he grows up...

I am attempting to fill the bath using the shower. It's taking quite a while, and I kind of feel it should be a metaphor for or statement of something.

Mostly what it is a statement of is "I should put the hot water tank on earlier if I want a bath."

Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that it's the kind of thing that, if used in a story, would hold deep and meaningful significance.

*waits*

Nope. Still just boring...

We are currently doing scary grown up financial things, and this made me snort in an undignified manner while J was on the phone to the mortgage people:

From The Times: Paxman says Mastermind is Dumbing Down

[John] Humphrys [presenter of Mastermind], who also spoke at the [Cheltenham literary] festival on Saturday, said Mastermind questions were also more difficult than in the past. When told that Paxman disagreed, he said: “Well, deliver this message to him. He’s welcome to test this proposition by appearing as a guest on Celebrity Mastermind.

“We’ll deliberately make the questions a bit easier for him, if he likes. Alternatively, we could have a shoot-out. I could put to him a set of questions chosen at random from the last ten programmes and he could do the same.

Come on, Paxman, if you think you’re hard enough.”

(er...emphasis mine, because that's the bit that made me giggle)

How much would I have loved to have heard him say that? Honestly, what are they feeding them at R4 at the moment?

I actually slept last night, deeply and properly for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long. It makes a staggering difference, and I am therefore obnoxiously cheerful. Seriously, it's horrible, but I don't care XD

On the other hand, I opened up my flist to find that just as I'm having a good day, everyone else seems to be being hit by life, and hit hard. Apparently 2009 didn't get the memo that it's supposed to be better than 2008, not worse. I am currently looking for someone to write to to complain.

Because of this, I don't think my usual "HOW ARE YOU AWESOME??" meme is quite going to cut the mustard* this morning. So I propose this meme instead, nicked from apiphile (er...hope that's okay *smiles winningly*) from a while back:

ORGY OF EGO-BOOSTING!

Here's your side of the deal, you comment and tell me:

1x AWESOME thing about me.
2x AWESOME things about you. (That's right. TWO)
3x AWESOME things about a friend of yours, on or offline. I don't have to know who they are, just tell me.

Here's my side of the deal! I will reply with two AWESOME things about you. If I don't know you very well, I will make something up, post a picture of a baby animal, or write you a poem. drabble (seriously, no one wants me to attempt poetry, it's painful for all concerned)

Come and play! And if you know someone in comments, or even if you don't, remind them how awesome they are too. It's always a free-for-all around here, but this time, I'm making it an official free-for-all.

See, I told you. Utterly, obnoxiously cheerful and with no intention of stopping :P

*I'm British, I can get away with phrases like that and keep a straight face. Mostly

All you need is a lack of muffin tin, a roasting tin and 12 paper muffin cases and voila!

[Apologies for terrible webcam picture - our camera is broken :(]

There's a dark blue Aston Martin DB9 parked oustide my window. How am I supposed to get any work done now?

*drools on keyboard*

Home! Holiday was wonderful, pictures to follow as ever, work's nuts (I think at this point I have more books than Blackwell's) and I'm already knackered.

Therefore, in lieu of content, I bring you links:

In honour (or more appropriately 'honor) of the holiday weekend, cm_exchange is keeping sign-ups open until the 9th. It's a Criminal Minds Christmas fic exchange, and produces some lovely stories. I can't commit to it this year, but hope lots of you can! Sign up here

The spn_summergen masterlist is live and can be found here.

I received This Bitter Earth by art_savage, of which I've only read the first little bit, but it looks to be an awesome SPN/Criminal Minds crossover that I can't wait to get my teeth into.

My own entry spawned a story that didn't meet the prompt before I wrangled it into shape, and despite current misgivings about anything I've ever written (I'm in the downswing - this too shall pass), I'm quietly pleased with it. I'm finding lately that I love creating OCs and am interested to see where this is going to take the writing. Anyway, the story is linked below.

The Hustlers
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Huge thanks to greyias for last-minute beta and hand-holding.
Summary: Sometimes, it's better to just not see anything.

Hopefully I'll be more with it once work is under control and my brain starts behaving again. Time to crack out the light-box, I think...

I spent a good chunk of this evening sorting out my icons file on the home desktop. They are renamed, re-ordered and hopefully now sorted so I can find them. This is more important than it sounds.

It is important because there are 500 of them. And that doesn't include the ones on my work computer, in online storage or on my netbook. Top types are "Jack" with 54, "Stock" with 86 and "Text" with 99.

Apparently I have a lot to say, I just can't decide how to say it.

All I have to do now is figure out how to fit them into 110 icon slots...