It's kinda chilly inside, as I can't quite bring myself to turn the heating on yet. I'm snuggling into thick jumpers, stuffing my knitted-sock clad feet into the sheepskin slippers that P brought back from Australia - honestly, if they didn't have that association, I would be base-over-apex in love with them - and sporting a hot water bottle at every available opportunity. I'm also making hot drinks, although on Thursday, I shivered so violently while putting my coffee on the table, half the coffee ended up on the floor, which was less than fun.

It's only just half term. Can't turn the heating on until half term. Preferably, can't turn the heating on until after half term. We shall see how cold I get next week.... it's just the sitting in the sitting room which is chilly.  Bedroom still has the window open, for heaven's sake (at this point, I'd tell you all about the similarities between myself and my boy, but, in all honesty, it's a list that's only of interest to me, so I'll forbear.  We do both like our bedroom windows open, though).  Am I being stubborn enough? You'd have thought a woman who'd had a somewhat prolonged asthma attack on Thursday night - it went on for what felt like hours - would be slightly keener on staying warm. This one isn't. If it's cool in the flat, then when I go outside, it's not so much of a shock to the old lungs.  The Thursday asthma attack was such a shame, too: we'd been having a lovely evening until that point. We went to an exhibition of Venice photos, had dinner (mmmm, boeuf bourginon), and then meandered over to the Old Vic tunnels for an exhibition entitled 'Minotaur'. It was a great, intriguing exhibition, but, alas, full of smoke, and it was a bit of a struggle. Then out from the warm to the cold, and boom! I started trying to self-eviscerate my lungs!  It was a very long walk from the tunnels to the train station where there were both seats and water.  And then it was cold, and a taxi home was required.  My boy is very good at looking after me: he noticed, almost immediately, that I was struggling. He hugged me, he looked terribly worried, he went at my speed, and he made sure I got home safely, despite this meaning that he missed the last train home and, really, being at home on Thursday night was slightly necessary as he went on tour with his heavy metal band yesterday. Plymouth last night, Portsmouth or something similar tonight.

Yes, I'm going out with a guy who's in a heavy metal band. The Brownies are particularly impressed (well, the seven of them that were at Brownies - out of 19 Brownies, 9 didn't show up, and 3 managed to apologise late on Thursday night!).  "He plays an electric guitar? In a band? Is his hair really dyed red?" No, that would be the lights in the picture... no, I don't quite know how we got onto the subject of Brown Owl's boyfriend, but there you go. He thought it was all ridiculously sweet, and then went to be all grr metal on stage (we're going to watch on Monday, they're playing a local bar. I have no idea what to wear, but it's OK. M's taking me shopping in the market this afternoon).

This was not meant to be a ramble about him. I digress. I miss him. Wah!

Anyhow. A list.  I like the way these things seem to have become slightly more manageable recently

• Laundry
• Supermarket Shop
• Knitting - Sir's Fair Isle, F's cowl, E's hat, N's hat.
• Buy appropriately metal-top. Visit F on her stall in the process.
• Email everyone who was trying to find visitors for Brownies for 11th November to say that, really, there seems to be too much going on this year, what with dinners and whatnot, and next year...
• Rugby
• Visit the divine @FotheringtonThomas, Mrs @FotheringtonThomas and their very new daughter
• go for a run (laundry dependent)
• acquire gaiters
• Sort out calendars for Christmas presents
• Something else which will doubtless come to me later.

xxx

Ah. The joys of an online course. I'm working my way through FIM - Forefront Identity Manager, upgrading my skills from ILM2007. I am an overachiever. One day in, 3.5 modules (out of 10) completed, and I have until Thursday. Also, I'm slightly annoyed at only getting 90% for the second quiz.  Because I got 100% for the first and the third.

Anyhow.  I'm tired, almost stir-crazy, and considering a trip to John Lewis to get my Japanese Mummy's Christmas Goodies.  They'll need to be mailed soon, if I send them surface.  And the store is open until 8pm. I don't need to decide for another half hour.  The hot water bottle on my toes is making me distinctly disinclined to go out, plus I didn't have the most enthusiastic night's sleep last night (it wasn't awful. There just wasn't enough of it).  If I put my mind to it, then I think I can get the ribbing on this darn slipover done tonight.  A good film, instant supper.

There's always Thursday before I go on date #no-idea-which-who's-counting-anyway?

I think I've just talked myself out of going out in the cold, and into staying in the warm. I want this corrugated rib DONE, you understand, and it is just so incredibly slow.  Pretty, but slow.

And I must remember to photograph the socks tomorrow, before I hand them over.

Hmmm. What to watch?  Has to be something without a complicated menu system. The DVD player in the TV @dozydormouse gave me has begun giving up the ghost (two perfectly good DVDs have refused to even register as existing recently), and the spare DVD player's remote is currently awol.  However, it is functional, so that's OK.

xxx

But not very much else. And that's partly because I now have a lovely, interesting job, and I don't blog at work. My job keeps me occupied, happy, challenges me. Ties me to a computer all day and I'm less enthused about the idea of writing anything when I get home. Work is fun - work has me working today, briefly, but I'm not that bothered. I mean. SQL 2008 SP3. Let me at it. Let me geek out.

Besides, I'm rarely at home, or so it feels.

On Monday night, I was at home. I didn't achieve terribly much, I think I did the Brownies Admin that had been leftover from the weekend - there was more important stuff to do over the weekend. So it happened on Monday. Cheques were written, the accounts were balanced. Emails sent.

On Tuesday, I went out on a date. We walked so far that I have enormous blisters. I don't particularly care. It was a lovely date. I'm cooking risotto for him tomorrow night. I don't quite know what to do about pudding, I shall think of something. Or there may just be ice cream. This is all I am going to say. I'm happy. Actually scrape-me-off-the-ceiling mustn't bore my friends to death happy. Suffice to say, that, when he smiles. When he really really smiles, rather than just looking a bit pleased, it's like the sun is shining.

Wednesday, I helped at an extra Brownie meeting, made leaderish-noises at the Brownies, rather than letting them go their own sweet way (two of them have very strong personalities, and in a group of 8, this rather wrecks the dynamic).  I sorted out a panicking Queen's Guide Candidate, showed up at the Morris AGM late, and drank gin until 11pm. Only one gin, mark you, but I felt it was needed.

Thursday we had coffee, and post-coffee steak. I felt ill and exhausted after the steak, but much better on Friday morning. Since the last batch of antibiotics for bronchitis, my digestion has been somewhat delicate, and I tire vastly more easily. I keeping thinking that I'd like to go for a run: I'm doing lots of lying in on weekend mornings.

Friday was Brownies. We filtered water. We made really mucky water, and filtered it. It looked much better once it had run through gravel and sand and towel and cotton wool - but we lost about 2/3 of the water in the process. One of the Brownies remarked that they'd done this at school - but it was much better at Brownies because they got to make their own filters.  Grand fun.  Less grand fun was scrabbling round the gate of the local gated community trying to assemble four decent handfuls of gravel when we realised that the gravel that we had fondly imagined was gravel was actually closer to cat litter in consistency, and thus not exactly what was required.

Saturday I actually went for a 4.5 mile run. Still a bit slow, but I wasn't really pelting about the place, and I'm less than bothered about the pace.  Since I didn't manage the half marathon, and the next isn't until March, it's just "ticking over" for now.  I might go for another tonight, or tomorrow morning before work. We shall see. Then an awful lot of rugby - the park was warm, the sun shone, autumn leaves are beginning to carpet the grass, and making a delicious rustling noise as passers by (and I) scuff through them. It got colder, I applied more layers. We had our ambulance of the season (totally unnecessary: it will be interesting to hear if it is really broken or not), and I skived off post-match as I wanted to get ready for L's birthday dinner. Dinner was lovely. Funny, silly, stupid, no-holds barred, and there was a TARDIS cake. L makes excellent gluten-free cake. Everyone who makes me gluten free cake makes excellent cake (although Mum's do get a bit experimental sometimes...)

And, today?

• sleep in
• launder sheets
• make flapjacks, biscuits, pack up biscuits to mail
• photo socks
• some calligraphy
• supermarket shop
• some knitting
• maybe a later run Nah. I've eaten now, at 7.14pm.
• Brownies Admin

xxx

• Retrieve bedspread
• Brownie admin I just need to update my phone list in my phone.
• Brownie accounts
• Write up notes from Div meeting and publish
• Tidy bedroom
• Tidy sitting room
• Sew badges onto camp blanket/Em's blanket
• Go for a run
• Supermarket shop including Cif and furniture polish
• Rugby
• Find parts of bedstead for dolls house and work out what's needed to assemble I need epoxy resin to stick it together. And maybe gold paint or find the black enamel paint to make it shiny and hide any imperfections.
• Prep for brownies (locate source of gravel)
• Knitting: unravel hat and elongate for Eff, continue with Sir's slipover, sort out mittens plan, finish off socks by darning in ends, and take pictures if the light ever improves
• Upload photos
• Link to photos from Lake District for y'all Here be pictures.

The editor has gone a bit weird in firefox on the iPad, so please excuse the partial line of text at the bottom of this. It is nearly noon, and I am still in bed.... I wonder if there is a xanga app to make life simpler. I shall wander off and see.

ETA: No Xanga app, but, apparently, the whole ruddy lot came through in plaintext. So, now I have Rich Text Editor again, I have dealt with it. And will remember the html next time I use the iPad.  Honestly. Technology. Who'd have it?

Xxx

Apparently, I am capable of an 8m 30sec mile over 3.5 miles.

This means that I am fitter than I was at university, when my best was a 9 minute mile on the running machine. Over one mile.

And, I would like it noted, this time last week, I was only just getting over bronchitis.  Heck.  The Friday before last, I was bedridden.

Of course, now I really, really, need to pack for the conference and the hiking, and I'm so entirely stoked (can I, as a Brit, use the word "stoked"?), that I'm seriously considering taking running gear and using the gym at the hotel.  Before anyone thinks I've taken leave of my senses, I do have my knitting for the trip planned out. A pair of socks, then a hat (needs concentration, so for the car journey home mostly, and for driving about) and a cowl (no concentration required).

I am also entirely sweaty.  Shower.

xxx

• Sort out the agenda for Div Meeting
• Email out agenda for Div Meeting
• Send email refusing to be Senior Section CoOrdinator
• Laundry
• Take bedspread to laundrette
• Find out what this afternoon's play is actually aboutPeople finding God. In Essex. Mixed Reviews. Taking an online date, this could backfire terribly... Oh. It did.*
• Tax Return Drat. Need to find another statement!
• Find Brownie six books, email old six lists to Snowy Owl
• Related. Email Brownies who are moving up to the Guide Leaders
• Try to work out when to get hair done. Get hair done (maybe after theatre?) Sunday morning
• Take stuff to charity shop Sunday morning
• Early dinner and dancing on Sunday
• Perhaps go for a bijou run (I am getting fidgety and flabby and PMS-ing. Yes, I know my definition of flabby isn't very flabby. It's still relative)
• Photograph Jo's Socks. Upload along with baby knitting photos.
• Give Jo her socks.
• Pack for three days of conference plus two days of hiking next week. 
• Either add some cash to the 3G card on the iPad or locate the laptop dongle Or check WiFi provision: free in all locations.
• Knit some more on Sir's Fair Isle Then I measured it. My gauge was off, from the swatch, by SIX stitches per 10cm. I have frogged 22,000 stitches and begun again with 50 fewer stitches per round.
• Decide whether V's socks are still too big and sort out a smaller needle while south of the river.  Cast on a third time if required.
• Sew poppers onto baby shoes, and wrap them up to send.
• Descale the kettle. Buy new kettle when it becomes apparent that the scale was holding it together.
• Clean the fish tank Don't really have time.
• Collect parcel from sorting office Monday night
• Collect prescription.

I probably ought to get out of bed and get more coffee inside me.  Oh, and as for the living inside my stash/library thing (which may extend to DVDs too, as I seem to have enough of those to keep me going for a while), it was all prompted by buying a copy of "Howards End is on the Landing", in which Susan Hill reads from her home library for a year. I don't have enough will power for that.  However, the to be read pile has 20 books in it, and that's getting silly.  The yarn stash threatens to take over the sitting room, and, in addition, there are books that I have no recollection of buying, have owned for 15 years, and still not read. Enough.  It's not even as if they're on an outer wall and providing insulation!

xxx

*So, on the basis that a free theatre ticket is a free theatre ticket, I went to see God of Soho. I think that my internet date was a bit up tight about such matters - which is fine. Not everyone is broad minded.  And, as the appalling language continued, I was intrigued - and very aware that he was standing next to me hating it. So, I suggested we left in the interval. It's maddening: I rather wanted to see the ending (apparently it was happy), but I was cold, and uncomfortable, pulled in by the acting but faintly repelled too.  And it would only have become worse.  Oh well. We meandered up and down the south bank instead, spent a perfectly nice afternoon, however, I never want to see him again. Anyone who thinks that cheese-driven nightmares are a good topic of conversation on a first date is probably not quite right. That and he kept saying 'yah'.

Apparently we weren't the only ones to leave early.

xxx

There is more than enough yarn and books to not need to buy any for the next six months. So, until my birthday in March, I intend to.

Exceptions: books for presents for other people, possible GGBP reprints, special knitting commissions from Mum or Dad.

xxx

Not exactly ill, but certainly not well. Wheezy.  No longer hacking up phlegm, but, then again, with an interesting dry cough.  Poor lungs.  They probably want extra steroids, but I'm not willing to throw those into the system until I'm done with the antibiotics (so, Wednesday).  I can only deal with one set of side effects at a go!  I feel OK - until I try and do anything slightly strenuous, and then, well, I feel the effects.

Was that all too much information?  Tough.

I've been productive, though, between all the random bits of work that have gone on this whole weekend. I've knitted a baby hat, knitted two flowers for baby hats, made some progress on Sir's Fair Isle, and knitted half a sock: Jo will have new socks by the time she's home from her hols, and then I'm onto socks for V.  I've prepped for Brownies (although, that silly little felt creature was not a penance to make at all), done the laundry, gently tidied up, changed the sheets, and organised a home delivery of food, and found some lost gloves.  I've watched 3 episodes of Dr Who, 3 episodes of Jeeves and Wooster, Sirens (failed to watch a documentary about the Regency because the presenter's voice was incredibly annoying).  This all seems like a lot.  Most of it was done in bed, or while on the sofa.  Tidying: one thing at a time when I got up to make tea. The bed needed doing, and I had a surge of energy on Sunday morning, so I took advantage of it.

And now?  Well, I'd like to be at work. I'd like to be out. And I'm just not getting quite enough air in.  At least, that's what it feels like.  Perhaps I should check my peak flow. Not done that... hmmm. 90-95% of normal levels.  That explains it. Not low enough to do anything about, but low enough to feel grumbly!

I hope, at some point, to upload the photos of the hats, and the socks. I think I'd like the socks to be complete first.  So, I must knit.  First, though, I probably ought to brush my hair.  Before the Ocado man arrives, and I need to use my feminine wiles to persuade him to carry things up the stairs for me.  These things generally work better with brushed hair, rather than hair at a million different angles.

xxx

The plan, as partially delineated in the previous entry, did not involve getting bronchitis, sinusitis and being put onto antibiotics. Nor did it involve having to work at 9pm tonight (or 8am this morning) from my sickbed. It did not involve being told not to run a half marathon next weekend, nor did it involve codeine. But, the codeine is good...

So, in lieu of anything useful, I present

The Berlin Pictures

And, the beginning of Sir's Fair Isle.

Lush, isn't it?

(No, I haven't been watching too much Gavin and Stacey recently. Not at all. Nor am I waiting for pay day so I can buy series 3 and the Christmas Special. Not at all)

xxx

Frankly, if I don't have a list here, I might just lose the plot. It was rather a full weekend, with promming, Christmas present shopping, seeing Mum, seeing the Duchess of Cambridge's Wedding Dress, and then collapsing in a heap of fair isle

• Make cute felt creature for Brownies Friday week, establish how much felt required, buy Think need a packet or so more: only needs 1/3 piece per child, but then I'm assuming that they can cut straight... plus we can't use the black felt because, well, it's black.

• Put poppers on those booties, mail. Need poppers. Damn.
• Get glue, card, 20 piece jigsaw puzzles and a pen refill
• Chiro 9am Tuesday, Dentist 12.15 Tuesday
• Find out where health insurance checkup actually is before FridayOr cancel it due to being ill.
• Concert Thursday: work out logistics of getting thereOr cancel it due to being ill
• Morris Wednesday(work out logistics of going for a run on Wednesday) Or cancel due to being ill.  Well, apart from the run, which was ace.
• Acquire, after payday, a Train album.  For they rock.
• Rugby 7am Sunday morningOr cancel due to needing to be at work at 9am.
• Work 9am 10am Sunday morning
• Sort out tax return, and file it (n.b. may need to phone pension people for correct version of statement) still need statement, which has been requested.
• Chase up publishers who have failed to produce any royalties this year
• Chase up lost cheque from doing children's crafts at folk festival
• Tidy the sitting room well it looks less ghastly.
• Do some laundry
• Go to bed before 11.30pm every night
• Dinner out Tuesday
• Brownies Accounts
• Brownies Admin (print off new register list, having added new Brownies to list)

It could be worse. At least I have more than enough bog roll.  Lidl were selling packs of 24 rolls, and I bought. For the convenience. I don't think they were any cheaper than anything else, but 24 rolls means that I don't need to think about bog roll in the near future.

I shall now proceed to collapse in a heap of fair isle. When I have located the camera, I may share it. It's motoring along nicely, the way colourwork so often does.

xxx