*flump*

London was very hot. My feet are three times larger than normal.

It was great fun, though :-) The Eye was great and I took tons of photos. Must transfer them to my iPad tomorrow.

Then we stopped for a cool drink because we had a couple of hours before tea. That was followed by a wander in Fortnum and Mason to see how the other side lives (and because they have air con) to kill more time.

Tea at Brown's was amazing. It's in a wood paneled lounge in the hotel, very discrete and comfy. They bring you a menu to chose your tea from and then you just have to make the decision between traditional tea, healthy tea (pfft!) or champagne tea.

We opted for a traditional tea which meant a beautiful stand with plates of finger sandwiches, scones and pastries with big pots of cream and jam plus our selected type of tea. And they keep replenishing the plates whenever they get low, so you unconsciously eat so much food. I lost count of the scones and sandwiches I ate. I never get proper scones with jam and cream in Canada so I was taking advantage :-) My sister worked her way through sampling all the pastries and my mum loves sandwiches, especially egg ones. They did come round with a trolley offering us slices of Victoria sponge, but we'd rather filled up by that stage! It's so elegant and lovely, definitely a treat worth doing.

We've now done Claridge's and Brown's. So mum and sis have decided that we have to work our way through the Dorchester and the Savoy over my next few visits so that we can properly assess and compare. You don't have to ask me twice!

I'd say that I enjoyed it equally as much as Claridge's. The sandwhich selection worked slightly better for my pescetarian sister (only two meat in the five flavours) but Claridge's had a longer tea menu. The plus point to Brown's is that they didn't refresh my teacup every time I put it down so I drank a reasonable four cups of tea as opposed to ten. Thus although I'm very full of scones and sandwiches, I don't slosh as I walk :-)

If people are planning to do tea at a posh hotel in London, I'd definitely advise skipping the Ritz and going for one of the hotels I've mentioned :-)

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Today is a big day. I'm off to London with Mum and sis for a girls day of extravagance. Around noon we'll be on the London Eye, which is huge for me because I have a terrible fear of heights.

Hopefully I'll be so distracted by taking photos that I won't be terrified :-)

Then we're off for afternoon tea at Brown's hotel, which is where Agatha Christie set Bertram's Hotel. I'm very excited. The dress code is rather smart, no jeans, and as the weather has turned very hot that meant a shopping trip yesterday to source me a suitable outfit that I won't overheat in. I'll be very stylish in linen.

If this is anything like Claridge's tea, we're going to be stuffed with finger sandwiches, scones and cake and we'll slosh as we walk from all the tea. It's going to be epic :-)

( Cut for Avengers fic talk )

Time to run! Must pretty myself up and catch a train :-)

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I figure that I should probably 'fess up about the books I bought, particularly as I just spent some time carefully listing them for my own anal cataloguing purposes.

( Cut for list length )

Listing it out somehow makes it that tiny bit worse...

I couldn't remember where everything came from, which is why some have nothing next to them. I kept feeling guilty for leaving shops without at least taking one thing :-)

The Chalet School books are things that I'm especially proud of, particularly that first one. The School at the Chalet had major cuts when it was put into paperback so I've been itching to get hold of the full text for ages. Admittedly, those two books cost about four times what the rest cost combined but I honestly don't care. After all, I saved for exactly this kind of thing :-) It was so tempting to leave with more - Rose's had loads of great hardcover Chalet Schools and I'm sure that I'll be ordering from her in the future. She also had a terrifying cabinet of "things too expensive for mortals to touch" with more Chalet Schools. That kind of thing, I suspect, will always be out of my price range and I'd be terrified to actually touch and read them even if I did have them.

It did make me wonder whether I should, at some stage, get my own books assessed if only to make sure that my house insurance covers them.

I'm planning to hit another bookshop this afternoon but it should be much less disasterous. Although I do have plans to visit Foyles tomorrow and Forbidden Planet when I'm in Manchester on Tuesday as well, so there is still disaster potential.

It's a good thing my luggage only weighed half my allowance when I left, that's all I'm saying. I'm going to dread weighing this lot when I'm going home...

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This was written several hours ago and I forgot to post it when I finally had wifi. I blame the ridiculously hot weather and lack of AC in Dad's car that resulted in me being to sticky and overheated to think about it.

And so, this is what you nearly missed:


Driving back from Hay on Wye after a lovely two days. We hit three more bookshops this morning before declaring ourselves bookshoppped out :-) I managed only to buy four more books for less than £10, including an Anglo Saxon Chronicle that I'm particularly pleased with.

My book buying is eclectic.

My parents also bought themselves a puzzle and a puzzle roll and Mum and I have plans to reverse engineer a puzzle roll for me so that I can do puzzles in Canada without kitten-shaped interference.

I'll do the full roundup of books when I can lay them all out. Suffice to say, I found almost everything on my list plus a few things.

Our journey home just got broken for a nice reviving cup of tea. I may also have taken the opportunity to have a scone with cream and jam for the second time in two days :-)

Canada just doesn't have the right type of cream.

Tomorrow is a rest day. Er. I'll have to take a trip into town to buy dress trousers and I'm also planning a trip to the local second hand bookshop to say hi to the nice ladies and check their childrens' stock. But that's mostly restful, right?

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I think that we hit around 10 bookshops. Whee!

It's been a very successful day. My credit card may not be so happy :-)

I managed to find the childrens' dealers and scored some Chalet Schools! Most importantly, I now have The School at the Chalet in hardcover. So excited! I can finally find out what the full text is :-)

I've also got a few classic SF, some Agatha Christie...

Yup, having a great time. We're planning to go back tomorrow for a wander and some lunch (we've picked out three important shops to hit) before heading home. Now we're at the hotel having a nice sit down with some reading. So tired :-)

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I'm typing this on the road (yay iPad) - theoretically there will be wifi at the hotel tonight so that I can post this. We'll see. I'm on my way to Hay on Wye with my parents where I will hopefully not be buying my weight in books.

Only half my weight :-)

Yesterday was a busy day, my first big day in London. I got fitted in Bravissimo (can't afford to lose any more weight - I'll never be able to buy bras in a small enough back size if I do) and bought some new, properly fitting pretties. Then I had lunch and a stroll with gmul, which was great fun. I even got some of my souvenir shopping done and some photos of key London landmarks for friends at home. We ended up sitting by the Serpentine in Hyde Park where nobody was selling us ice cream. Very disappointing in the ice cream.

Then it was on for coffee and supper with an old school friend. Loads of catching up and we discovered a mutual love for Strictly Come Dancing :-)

I didn't get back to my parents' place until nearly midnight which made this morning's five thirty rising mildly painful, although insomnia did me a favour there because I was already waking up when my alarm went off.

Now I'm driving through Oxford (huh? Probably a good thing that I'm not navigating because I don't understand how this gets us to Hay) in lovely sunny weather and looking forward to buying all the books. This is turning out to be a great vacation :-)

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My father's family came over today. I'd forgotten how loud they can be. Thirteen adults in a small room, all trying to talk at once and over each other.

Loved seeing them, but wow.

Can't imagine why I have a headache...

I think I'm pretty much on UK time thanks to yesterday's marathon awakeness so I'm not feel too bad. I got up at a good time this morning, giving me time for a leisurely breakfast and a walk before the insanity started. Tomorrow I'm up early so that I can get the first off peak train to London, so adjusting to the time zone is important.

First up, I'm heading to Covent Garden for fitting at Bravissimo. Then I'm hanging out with gmul for lunch and part of the afternoon before I head to Mayfair for coffee and supper with an old school friend. Going to be a fun, busy day!

I'll probably not be back until pretty late and then I get up early on Tuesday to head to Hay on Wye. Yup, the next few days are crazy :-)

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Well, that flight was not fun. Only twenty minutes in a six hour flight were free from turbulence. Hence, no sleep. I'm now attempting to stay awake until this evening (when I will have been awake for 36 hours) so that my sleep cycle will reset.

I am so tired that I've lost contact with my legs. And brain.

I just logged in and out of DW twice before I realized that I was hitting the log out button instead of the post button.

It's probably a good thing that mum refused my help with building pie :-)

At least I'm here and safe and tomorrow I can be intelligent and do stuff.

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I'm at the gate, posting from my iPad. Again, I am the walking stereotype :-)

I'm also listening to a man with a death wish entertaining his friends with stats on airplane crashes. Someone is not going to be popular on this flight if he keeps it up...

Should be boarding soon so I'll be signing off until I get to my parents' wifi'd house. Oh, god, I am ready for this flight to leave and be over now.

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In less that twelve hours, I will be on a plane to England. Squee!

I'm sort of packed. There's stuff in my case and I've got some odds and ends to add to it (toiletries, medication, that kind od thing) but I'm sure that I'll find I've forgotten something. Definitely not socks, though. I've got lots of socks.

My hand luggage is a small stack of stuff on top of the case that I will sort out when I get home. I'm slightly concerned because, despite having an iPod, iPad and Kindle, my collection of chargers seems smaller than normal.

I'm working today, which is good because it prevents me unpacking and repacking my case a billion times.

( Cut for small rant on anti-gay marriage crap )

( Cut for discussions of work stuff and the hilarious idea that I'm a morning person )

Plan for tonight is to get home and hit the exercise bike for 45 minutes then have a quick shower and finish packing everything. I've got some stuff out for supper that just needs popping in the oven and some veggies nuking so hopefully that will all be done and cleared away well before my ride to the airport arrives.

Due to panic and craziness, I'm getting to the airport nearly three hours before my flight even though I will have checked in online the moment I get home. Hopefully that means I'll be there before the bar closes so that I can get a glass of wine. I'm currently experiencing a phase that I call Total Insomniac Who Only Sleeps Four Hours A Night so I doubt that I'll sleep on the plane, but I'm sort of hoping that the wine might help me doze a wee bit.

Oh god, this day is so long.

Ways to tell the Avengers thing is getting out of control: despite the trashing it got in the comic reviews, you have the first two issues of the Black Widow prequel on your iPad (thank you Comixology) and got overly excited at the prospect of a Hawkeye comic starting in August.

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I am starting to feel vaguely organised for my trip. As I'm leaving tomorrow night, this is probably a good thing! The cats went to their vacation home with my aunt yesterday and I cleaned and mopped so that the house is, for once, relatively unfluffy. It won't last but at least when Mum returns with me she won't freak out completely.

I did the cleaning while playing music as loud as the stereo would go. It's the last time I'll be able to do that until mother leaves in November(!!!!). She does not do loud music.

Tonight I need to pack. Never my favourite thing. Although it is easier without cats trying to steal my socks.

I still need to get my Kindle loaded with new books, but my iPad has been loaded with comics and stuff so that's all done. I've been waiting to see when the Hugo voter packet comes out and it's looking like I won't be able to get that before I leave. So I'll have to raid my wishlist for a few things.

I'm not going to bother digging out the link, but I saw part of the trailer for Elementary yesterday. I say part because I got so completely bored that I shut it down halfway through. I'll probably check out the pilot but nothing in that trailer convinced me that it's going to be a roaring success or do anything unusual enough to stand out from the other cop shows out there. Ugh.

Things I have learned from Tumblr: Jeremy Renner has some shockingly awful haircuts in his past. And also he can sing. Huh.

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Today I am working from home. For once, it's a planned thing and everything. It's so that I can have the washing machine running while I work and to make it easier to get the cats over to their vacation home (my aunt's house) as early as possible. Then I can Clean All The Things! because my mother will be returning with me from England. This house needs major de-fluffying.

Just to keep me on my toes, today is also post-Humira day and I have no side-effects. Nothing. Not even a hint of nausea. The last two doses have been rotten. Today, when there is no chance that someone eating toast might accidentally cause me to vomit, I am feeling absolutely fine.

Oh, body, you are so contrary.

As I drove home last night I was thinking about Sum of Parts. Bambera has decided to be in the fic and I was thinking about how I keep writing her and this will be my third fic with her and...

Hang on, when I wrote Treaty of Llangol did I do anything that interfered with canon? It's set while Rory is 'gone' and I'm pretty sure that I didn't actually tamper with canon at all. Hmm.

I need to re-read Treaty to make sure, but I'm fairly certain that Sum of Parts could actually be a sort-of follow-up. Or at least, make use of the same Bambera. Huh. That would even make a couple of things work better. I'm only 1,700 words in and it will only require changes in a few lines so...

Sum of Parts is turning out to be a lot of fun to write. Let's hope the momentum continues, shall we?

And now I shall remove one load of washing from the machine and chuck another one in while I wait for someone to tell me why the data in their tables is insane.

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Today I woke up without an epic headache of doom. My day is already much better than yesterday.

Hopefully it will also be marginally less caffienated as I'm not trying to control headache and keep it from being a migraine through the power of Tylenol, coffee and chocolate. I know that coffee and chocolate are triggers for many people but I'm weird. If I time the application of coffee and sugar (preferably in the form of chocolate) correctly, I can actually stop bad headaches in their tracks. Sadly, this doesn't work if I wake up in the morning already well into the migraine, argh.

We shall not discuss how much caffiene I probably imbibed yesterday. There are days when I am the walking cliche of the over-caffienated geek.

Just to add to the cliche, I now have two monitors at work. When you add in my headset and fancy keyboard/mouse thingy, it looks like I'm sitting in NASA control. Anyone who thinks that in my head I'm pretending to guide a space shuttle to a landing would not be far from the truth :-D

Continuing the Avengers obssession, this blog is doing a fantastic series of articles on the costuming: http://hellotailor.blogspot.ca/

The next post will apparently look at Black Widow and Hawkeye :-D

In fannish but non-Avengers news (I know, shocking, life outside Avengers), I have ordered this T-shirt: http://www.threadless.com/product/2899/Doctor_Hoo

The fact that it finally got re-printed makes me ridiculously happy and I had to buy it immediately. It will hopefully be here by the time I get back from England :-D

Also, Sum of Parts made it to 1,500 words today and has become the longest non-ficathon fic that I've written for three years. Go me. Apparently Brigadier Bambera wants to be in it as well. And I've promoted Captain Magambo. Heh. Must remember to pack my wireless keyboard for easier writing-on-iPad while I'm away. Can't lose this momentum.

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Yup, I went hunting for some icons. And got my LJ icons synched back up again :-)

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I have a thoroughly vile headache that I suspect is in large part due to my current bout of insomnia. Ugh. Migraine pills have been deployed so there's no nausea and the pain is down to "ugh" rather than "OMG!". I'm determined not to take a sick day this week. Too much to do!

( Girly discussion of hair and shoes, you have been warned )

And then I finished the day off with a second trip to see The Avengers. So much love :-D

How much do I want a Black Widow and Hawkeye movie now?

How awesome is Black Widow? She totally saves the day on several occasions. Love her so much :-D

I'm going to end up making a third trip before it leaves the theatres, aren't I? At least? And then I'll end up pre-ordering the DVD as soon as the pre-order appears on Amazon. It's that kind of thing.

It's rapidly becoming a very large fandom as well. I can tell this because AO3 keeps going down and the AO3 status Twitter reports that this is largely due to Avengers fanfic. Heh. Poor AO3, It survived Yuletide fairly well this year and is being clobbered by Avengers fans.

I may possibly be one of those people. I've managed to download a rather insane quantity of Avengers fic for my Kindle, even though I only Kindle stuff that's over 10,000 words. Heh.

I need some Avengers icons. Really.

( Cut for archery discussion )

And wow, this turned into the post of epicness. Thank goodness for cut tags.

I definitely need to hit this headache with some more caffeine. Ugh.

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Don't get overly excited, guys, but I may actually be writing again. I've got a Doctor Who fic started. Eleven, Amy and Rory, hijinks and adventure, with a basic idea that I think weill provide a decent-length plotty fic. Working title is Sum of Parts.

Hopefully this hasn't jinxed it. I'm determined to get my writing muscles back in shape.

Before anyone asks, despite haunting AO3 all week (how much do I love the .mobi download for my Kindle?) there will be no Avengers fic forthcoming. I just don't feel like I know the canon well enough.

Doing the rounds on Twitter today there was a producer looking to interview people for a Radio 4 programme on slash fiction. My mind is slightly boggled by the idea of discussing slash on Radio 4. My, how the world changes...

Also, how awesome is it that Obama actually came out publically in favour of same-sex marriage? I'd just like to say that up here we've had same-sex marriage for years and society has not collapsed. Nor has straight marriage been devalued. We've got Brittany Spears and the Kardashians working hard enough to devalue straight marriage *sigh* This announcement makes me feel rather more hopeful than I often do about same-sex marriage outside Canada even though it won't mean much (yet) in a practical way.

And finally...

Happy Friday, everyone! We made it through another week, well done us! My reward for this is a latte in a nice coffee shop after work (where I can read Unwritten Vol. 4 without kitty interference) and veging out with my cable box and some pesto topped flatbread when I get home.

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Thing the 1st
You know, when an office computer upgrade changes the entire damn process for logging into the work VPN the helpful thing is to send a memo about it.

From the tone of the IT helpdesk guy's voice, he agrees with me.

Please note: I do read my memos. OK, sometimes I get bored halfway through sentences and just skip bits, but I do at least skim them. There was no memo.

Thing the 2nd
UPS has, for once, decided not to fake my signature on a parcel so I'm working from home and hoping they turn up with my package at some stage today. They're going to get here at 4.30pm, aren't they?

Thing the 3rd
Today's Leveson inquiry day is providing a mental disconnect of epic proportions. It's *Andy* Coulson on the stand. Not Agent Coulson. Yeesh.

Thing the 4th
I'd like it noted that today, for possibly the last time, Project Doom hit a deadline on time. Two days early, in fact. This is unlikely to happen again. We're savouring the moment.

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Dear local library system,

I love you. No, really, there is no bad here. I love you.

Your on-line catalogue that allows me to renew things and, most importantly, put things on hold from my sofa is lovely. I particularly appreciate the free holds because paying for every hold (I think it was a couple of pounds, last time I used the the order system in my parents' bit of England) always put me off actually putting things on hold. So I rarely had books held in England and if there was nothing in the library that I fancied then I'd wander off and buy something.

I'm actually using you, my beloved local library, because I can get pretty much anything I might want with no problems at all.

Whoever manages your comics and graphic novels collection is amazing. So far, I've only found one thing that you didn't stock and I can ask you to order it if I really need it. I'm waiting to see what comes in my Hugo packet before doing that :-D

Lovely local library, you may have some careless patrons who ruin all the DVDs and CDs for the rest of us but for printed material, you are the bomb.

Much love,
Me

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( Cut for discussion of back pain and medication )

In fannish news...

Three days with AO3 and the "The Avengers (2012)" tag have shown me that:

1) Coulson/Hawkeye may be my OTP. Just shoot me now.
2) I'm not completely averse to Tony/Steve, even though I adore the Tony/Pepper relationship in the films.
3) Thor/anyone at all does not work for me.
4) However, Thor as comic relief does work for me. I don't even...
5) I'm still at the fluff and silly stage of discovering a new fandom
6) There needs to be more fic (of all types) about Natasha and/or Maria Hill
7) I love my 3G enabled iPad because I can browse fic during my lunch break
8) I may need to load some fic up on my Kindle for the trip

Speaking of the trip, I'm starting to plan my reading and watching stuff. There is going to be a long of plain, train and automobile time. The Hugo voting packet should be out sometime within the next week, so I plan to take all of that with me (yay Kindle PDF conversion!) plus the pre-reading that I've planned. If Chicks Dig Comics ever arrives, that will be with me for reading when I have to have electronics off during the flights. I would argue about whether a Kindle could possibly take down a Boeing 747, but as I want to stay on the flight, I'll just have a dead tree book to dip into instead.

Now I'm planning out my other entertainment. I need some non-Hugo reading with me so that I can take breaks if I need it. That means I need to go through my Amazon wishlist and select a few things that I've bookmarked. Note to self: pick a mix of fun and serious. You know what happens when you pick all silly or all serious.

I have taken advantage of the Avengers sale on Comixology and grabbed a couple of things. There are also new issues of Batgirl, Nightwing, Stormwatch and Demon Knights waiting for me. I've also got the first couple of issues of a newish Wolverine book. I may conduct another Comixology raid when new stuff goes up tomorrow and get the last volume of Joss Whedon's run on Astomishing X-Men at the same time.

I'm planning to download some videos from the BBC iPlayer app because I know that won't work overseas. I'm also half-thinking about Game of Thrones.

You see, on the one hand I'm still attached to having physical DVDs of my videos just in case. On the other hand, the only DVD player in the house is attached to the only TV in my house and my mother is unlikely to want to watch GoT. As she's staying with me for six months after I get back, this could put a serious crimp in my attemps to watch GoT in a timely manner.

So I'm seriously considering purchasing from iTunes and popping some of the episodes onto my iPad. Am I talking the crazy talk?

My iPad: bought to be productive, primarily used for fic, comics and videos. Heh.

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I have caved. There is now a completely empty Tumblr that I need to do things with.

Where my Tumblring f-listies to be found?

ETA: I hear actually including the URL to said Tumblr is popular with the cool kids - http://selenay936.tumblr.com/

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