It Is Important To Remember

when going to the Farmer’s Market, to look around before purchase.  Why? Because at one fruit stand peaches were 4 for £1.  At another, 5 for £1.  I bought the 5!

I also bought: –

2 tuna steaks to be seared and smothered in a combination of mayo and mustard

3 locally grown potatoes (they were 40p each or 3 for £1) for baking

About a pound of locally grown peas, to be shelled and cooked to go with the fish and the pototoes

5 peaches, as mentioned before

100g local cheddar

100g local goat’s cheese

All in all a good 1/2 hours shop.

In other news, we are experiencing some intermitten access trouble with Leyser.org, where this blog sits.  So if you can’t get here, try again in a bit!  Tech support (aka my brother) is investigating the trouble!

That Felt Good

Yes, I am actually enjoying my exercise.  Don’t tell my mother, she’ll only say ‘told you so.’

I haven’t recieved my next Yoga video from Love Film yet (I am still looking for the ‘perfect’ one) so instead I did the abs & back and the stretchy cool down parts of my aerobics vid.  Felt really good.  Got some good muscle work in.

The scale isn’t showing any weight loss at the moment, but trousers that were getting a bit snug are no longer snug.  And I feel great.  So I am definitely doing something right!

Really looking forward to my long weekend.  Tomorrow I will hit the Farmer’s Market.  Saturday I get my hair cut and coloured.  After that? Who knows!!!!

As Noted In My LiveJournal

Jar of passata + tile floor + bare feet = badness.

Luckily I only got a little nick in the side of my foot when the jar smashed last night.  And Simon was, as always, my Knight In Shining Armour, bringing me the broom and some shoes and helping me clean up the mess.

In other news, I had fallen off the cigarette wagon, but am back on it again.  Hopefully I’ll do better this time.

Up at 2:30 again

Ug.

But I just did Yoga so I feel okay.  Tired, but not totally wrecked.  That will come about 2:00pm today.

I did 45 minutes of Aerobics last night, almost my entire Aerobics Oz Style Fat Burning Workout.  I didn’t do the back and tummy bit, as I ran out of time.  The 45 minutes of low impact felt good.

So that’s 2 out of 3 days exercising.  Go me!

Work has been hectic and will be more so in the coming weeks.  Lots of Board Meetings coming up.  Then holiday to Tuscany!

I forgot to mention that I found shoes.  These are they.  I also bought a matching handbag, but I can’t seem to find that one online!  The shoes and bag are a bit lighter than the dress, but still look good together.  And they give me a bit of bling!

I Was Thinking

That my trip to Tuscany in September was the first time I would be in a country where a language other than English was spoken. This is not true. I actually spent two holidays in Mexico when I was younger.

What makes this trip different, however, is that I speak no Italian at all. I spoke, at that time, at least enough Spanish to say ‘please’ ‘thank you’ and ‘where’s the toilet’.

So I will be phrase book shopping next weekend.

Next weekend is a four day one for me.  Monday, 25th, is a Bank Holiday and I took the Friday off as a holiday.  Four.Days.Off!!!!

As for today, the good news is I actually slept until 6:38.  The bad news is that that meant I didn’t have time to do my aerobics.  So I’ll do them tonight when I get home.

Today I Preformed Major Surgery

On our old laptop.  We replaced it because it was having a severe overheating problem.  It kept shutting itself off, it was that bad.

So today, I took it apart. Completely.  From stem to stern.  From hard drive to mother board.

And found? Enough dust and other crap in it to make my own golem.  It was really really gross.

And then I put it back together.  And it works!  And its running much cooler!

So now it is defraging.  And then it will get a disk check.  And then maybe a fresh load of Windows.

And now we have two computers that work.  One is brand new and is good for *everything*.  And the other one is more or less refurbished and cruises the ‘net and can do word processing and such.

Also? I have my work laptop.  So really, we have three.  And the work laptop? Has Adobe CS.  So, when I bring it home, which I don’t always, I can do graphics on it.

And we have a wireless network at  home now.

So come on over, use a laptop.  Its here if you need it!

in other news, I’ve been doing a bit of freelancing, with my SMTs approval, on Belfast Rotary Club’s website.  My CEO is a member and he asked me to help them out.  The same company that did NISP’s site did that one, but I’m the overall web girl for it.  And I’ll be getting paid a bit to do it.

And i didn’t wind up actually losing any weight this week after all.  But I will.  Maybe this week.

So life is pretty good, technology wise.  If only I could sleep…

Well, That Was Cool…

So yesterday I get a notification that I have an email in my, of all things, LJ inbox.  The only email I *ever* get there is from LJ staff, so I was curious, to say the least.

It was a person I have never met or heard of asking me if I ever wrote Stargate FanFiction.  Why yes, yes I did, ages ago.  I asked why she (I am assuming its a she because something like 99% of the readers of slash fiction are female) was asking.  It would appear that she read my work at Area 52 (warning, that link goes right to my fiction over there.  It is for adults only!) and somehow found a very old email address for me and tried to send me a message.  When it didn’t go through she googled for my old email user name and found my LJ.  And not only did she just leave me feedback, so told me that I am stilled recced at many Stargate boards around the web.

I am amazed.  First of all that I just noticed that my story list at Area 52 has had 9600 views in 6 years (the last time I updated was 2002).  Second of all that anyone, anywhere, is still reading those stories.

Fanfiction writers always say that feedback feeds the muse.  And its true.  That’s part of why I stopped writing it.  I had no idea if anyone was reading it and if they were, if they liked it or thought it was total crap.

I’m guilty of that as well.  I read a lot of fanfic in many fandoms, including Torchwood, Stargate Atlantis,   and Harry Potter.  And I almost *never* leave feedback.  A story has to be amazing for me to do that.  And that’s wrong.

I vow to the fanfic writers out there that I will try harder to leave them feedback for the stories I read.  And if you want to read some of my other work? You can go here: Tee’s Fan Fiction.

And now, an explanation of fanfic in general and slash in particular.  This is for anyone reading this who has no idea what it is (hi mom!).

Fanfic is, obviously, exactly what it says on the tin, fiction written by a fan of someone else’s work.  Some people think it is plagiarism.  Some people think its flattery.  What it definitely is is fun, whether reading it or writing it.

What I write (like so many others out there) is called slash.  So far as anyone can tell, the term slash began waaay back in the 60s, when the major fanfic fandom was Star Trek and the One True Pairing (OTP) was Kirk/Spock.  Read that as Kirk Slash Spock, and you’ll see where we get the term slash.  Female pairs can also be slash, but are usually referred to as femmslash.  I don’t write femmslash.  I don’t hardly ever write het.  I don’t know why I don’t write those, but I don’t.  I write slash.

Why?  No idea.  Don’t even remember when I first found out so many people were writing such incredible stories about their favorite shows/books.  I know I had been noticing for years the sexual undertones in many many shows over the years.  Because if you look at the right? Every piece of fiction out there has them.

Back to OTPs for a second.  The Fanfic world went crazy when Ianto propositioned Jack on Torchwood and their torrid affair began.  I’ve written fics on it my self.  *However* Jack/Ianto is *not* cannon slash.  Slash is *only* a fanfic term.  Jack/Ianto are a cannon homosexual couple.  Makes me crazy when people call it cannon slash.  ::steps off soapbox::

So, I write slash.  And I read slash.  And I enjoy it.  But if you don’t? Don’t click those links up there.  K?

So I Am Four Days Into

My new exercise goals.  Here’s how I’m doing: –

Monday – Aerobics for 30 min

Tuesday – crunches etc

Wednesday – Aerobics for 20 min

Thursday – Yoga for 30 min

And I have decided that strength training bores me to tears, but yoga is awesome, so, even though SparkPeople counts that as cardio, I am going to do that instead of crunches and such.  The same muscles get used, but in a much more interesting way for me.  And that’s what counts.

I stepped on the scale today, even though it is not my official weigh in day.  And I’ve lost 2 lbs.  So its working!!!

Up at 5:30

Which is a whole lot more than the 5:15 I was up at  yesterday.  Yeah, a whole lot more.

I am trying to decide if I should do strength today or yoga.  I am leaning towards yoga as I received a new DVD through LoveFilm that I want to try.  Except that yoga counts as cardio in SparkPeople, and I am scheduled to do strength today.  Maybe I’ll do yoga now and strength tonight.  Wouldn’t that be buff of me?

Had my appraisal at work yesterday.  Didn’t go as well as I had hoped it would.  My appraisal itself was very good.  My pay raise? Not as much as I was led to believe.  I now have to figure out what I am going to do, in terms of my ‘threat’ that I wouldn’t work as hard if I didn’t get the money I deserve.  The problem is that I am, by default, a hard worker.  I am not sure I know how to slack off!  Not to mention that I have many deadlines that I *have* to meet.  So I’m going to think on it a bit.