Iesus Non Amat Me

So my plan to actually try and do something productive today hasn't really worked out because, apparently, my computer is like a cat and wants to punish me for leaving it for so long. I can no longer check my email or open apps and I've spent the last few hours trying various ways to fix the problem to no avail.

It is incredibly annoying.

Less than two weeks to Christmas now, so I think it's safe to say we are officially in the festive season. I've changed to the Christmas icon and theme for my LJ. If I knew where my USB fairy lights were I'd have them round my laptop screen right now, but I don't and that makes me sad. Maybe I'll find them tomorrow when I continue decorating.

Today I dressed the tree. I'm like the Christmas fairy. People left the house with a bare tree in the living room and when they came back -bam- all pretty and decorated. The good thing about being the only person to do it is that all my decorations get to have pride of place at the top. Although, having said that, most of the decorations are mine anyway. Sometimes I think my family doesn't appreciate Christmas like I do.

London was good, although the Winter Wonderland was disappointing. It was too busy to enjoy it properly and we made a quick escape without actually doing anything. But no matter, other things were good. I got quite a lot of shopping done and I met Ian Hislop and Professor Brian Cox. All in all, a pretty successful trip.

Now I think it's about time to start my Christmas viewing. I shall have to make a list of appropriate films and TV episodes that I've got on DVD and work my way through them. All I know at the moment is that I'll be watching Muppet Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve because it's my tradition and I love it.

Greetings, my adoring public. I am here to post another day. And it's good that I am. We've been having trouble with our internet connection and there was a truly terrifying moment where I thought it might not come back at all. I don't even have a smart phone so if the wifi goes down I'm lost. Stranded in a meaningless, internetless shadow of an existence. I shudder to even think of such a thing.

It's kinda funny how I went through all of university without having internet in any of the places I lived and had to rely on the computer rooms all the time. I look back on those days and wonder how I survived.

So... it's Friday. CAPSLOCK day. Not that I feel very CAPSLOCKY. I've been ILL and I HATE being ILL. I missed out on WEDNESDAY goodness and this week was one of the RARE times when I got to finish work at 4, which I REALLY like and probably won't happen again for AGES.

But I did watch a hell of a lot of FARSCAPE, which is EXCELLENT.

I'm currently using GOOGLE CHROME as my browser because FIREFOX is being SHIT. I quite LIKE it so far, but I can't get SPELL CHECK to work, which is ANNOYING.

NaNo word count: 50,252

But it has been stressful getting to this point today. Stupidly I hadn't been backing up the document as I was writing it ("I'll do it at the end. It'll be fine!") and lost it all when Word decided to be a complete and utter bastard when I tried to save it. After a couple of hours of desperately trying to find any recovered document of the novel that wasn't corrupted beyond all hope, I gave up, posted a expletive-filled post lamenting my stupidity and decided to see what I could remember of the story to start again.

That's when I saw a file with a weird name in my Writing folder and decided to see what it was. Lo and behold, it was my story! Minus the last few sentences I'd written but otherwise completely healthy.

Clearly the Computer Gods smiled on me today, after punishing me for my hubris first.

I keep trying to write an entry about the last few days but I'm too tired, so I'm just going to summarise things for you:

Monday - Unremarkable.
Tuesday - New power adaptor arrived. Able to use laptop again. Much joy.
Wednesday - Off to Aberystwyth. Very pretty.
Thursday - Interview for PCGE course at Aberystwyth. Didn't go well.
Friday - Out for drinks after work. Solved Eternity II clue puzzle 3 in about ten minutes in the pub. Feel very proud of self.
Saturday - Hasn't happened yet. Apparently will involve helium balloons and Love Hearts sweets at work. Sounds fun.

* It's time to start using my Halloween icon.

* My brother has become a filthy Mac user.

* My PGCE application is completely completed and sent off, reference and all.

* Autoassassinophilia has nine syllables.

Hey everyone. Thanks for the replies to my last entry. I'm feeling better now. A lot of that is due to last night when I spent a wonderful evening with Blue, Dwarfy and Paul. As well as having a great time, it also made me realise how far I've actually come. There I was, sitting at a table with three other people, one of whom I'd barely met before, chatting and laughing and having fun. A few years ago in that situation I would have been anxious and nervous and too scared to say anything. I'd have been sitting there silently, desperately wanting to get away and then later would have berated myself for being so pathetic and stupid and wasting such a perfect opportunity to have a social life.

I also got the train by myself, ordered my own drinks and walked with my head up rather than staring at my feet. All of which are great achievements from how I used to be.

And I'm getting out more. As well as last night, I'm giving blood this evening and going to Paul's to bake on Sunday. That's three trips out of the house this week!

Speaking of Paul's, I'm not sure I'll be able to get my files off my Apple laptop even with his computer because I'm not sure there are any ports to do it with. It doesn't have a firewire port because it pre-dates the creation of firewire. It does have a plug-in floppy drive, which is the best option. Unfortunately I cannot find it.

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Despite the upbeat nature of this post and recent events, I do find my optimism wavering just a bit with the two more library rejection letters I received today. One doesn't bother me too much, but the other was the Oxford OULS placement - The one I really wanted. So I'm kinda sad about that.