Lathany

Since the duo left on Sunday I have:

• Given blood - given the timing (post that monthly thing) I was very surprised to have no problems with iron levels and was whisked off to a bed... well, fairly slowly. They were extremely busy, apparently it's one of their busiest locations (plus being a Sunday thing makes it busy). The blood giving went well, but afterwards I discovered a large bruise. I usually have a small one where the needle goes in but this was much bigger, much darker and triangular. I think it surrounds the needle area. It's an equilateral triangle with sides of about an inch long. How the hell did I get a triangular bruise? It doesn't hurt though.
• Tidied and cooked - On Monday we finally tackled the lounge and removed all the wrapping bits and relocated all the presents before vacuuming it so it looked presentable. Because we had a quisalan on Monday evening. Food was small turkey pittas with pots of things (cashew nuts, cheese chunks, olives, etc), king prawn pasta and chocolate pots. We started with gin and tonics, moved on to Orvietto and finished with coffee. We talked into the early hours of Tuesday and quisalan stayed over.
• Been a fairy - Yesterday we watched bateleur design levels and then played Little Big Planet. I started with my usual sack-outfits (the red-haired bride and the Spanish outfit 'cos they both have trains) then quisalan and I redesigned... as can be seen on bateleur's journal.
• Played The Lost Crown - The other thing I've been doing over the last few days is playing this. Turns out that it's not just by the Dark Fall creator, it's also a sort of sequel. A ghost hunter who is also looking for the crown of Anglia (hey, I come from there!). It's early days, but so far, so spooky. I dreamed about it last night.
• Started planning new book - Having not written anything pretty much all year, I'm finally getting some ideas together for a new book. Hopefully the lack of OU next year will mean I'll get on and write it too.

I finally missed a day - by accident.

We're now pretty much ready for the festivities and my parents are due to arrive this morning. Ryan has been expecting them for days whilst both twins have been talking about presents. I gave them their stockings to hang up this morning at Bea's request.

Now I have some chocolate mousse and fruit salad to make.

I found this on the BBC website and thought it was a superb story.

Today Bea ran her first RPG for me (she did one for bateleur yesterday). Given that she's seven, it wasn't too bad and had a character system (d6 based - although she seemed to think anything that wasn't a six counted as a fail) and a bunch of disappearing robots. However I'm not so convinced by the prospect of taking my elderly parents to Jupiter with me to fight some evil Robot King. We'll see if part 2 ever happens.

I re-read Mourn's Gift yesterday and today, finishing at lunchtime. (My first novel written some years ago - for anyone I haven't told.) I discovered one really nice thing about it - I love it; despite being far more aware of its flaws than I was at the time. Much as I want to be published, I realised that it's a really great thing to enjoy my own work and I'd rather never be published than turn out stuff that I don't really like. Not a surprising epitaph, I guess, but still a welcome one.

Finally, with my parents due in a few days, bateleur and I started the cleaning with a blitz on both bathrooms. I love a clean house, but such a thing involves a constant battle against entropy and hippos.

Ryan announced yesterday's window as a swimming costume, which was much more interesting than the dull container it looked to be to us.

That was my last day in work. I felt that I got an awful lot of emails today from people after one thing or another and was totally mystified that the last Friday before Christmas should be so popular. Then I realised that it was really down to everyone wanting to clear their "to do" list before Xmas.

without a pear tree.

Not quite an oxen, but still a point to metame, I feel.

Last night I finished the Xmas cake - which was a nice feeling as it's the first piece of Xmas cooking completed. Not to mention a rather yummy-looking cake (last time's was a touch over-cooked).

Which means that 1st December must have been myrrh and 11th December frankincense. The gold, unlike the other two, is obvious.

With only a week of work to go, I feel I've never anticipated a break quite as much as this coming one. My Xmas shopping is done, my card writing is done, so when I get there it'll be OK to fall over.

I've been thinking in the last couple of months, about how livejournal - and probably on-line in general - is something of a one-way mirror.

If I have a substantial on-line presence, particularly if I talk about My Life at all, then people are aware of what I'm doing, how things are going and so on. However, if they don't communicate back then the reverse simply isn't true. I've been surprised on a couple of occasions recently when someone was talking to me and it suddenly became clear that because they still knew a fair amount about me, they seemed to think I must be up-to-date with them and their life. I wasn't and it gave me a very odd feeling.

OK - these last few windows are more on the Xmassy track.

I received my Open University course mark today. Turns out that the exam was much worse than I had thought, but that everyone else also did very poorly. So, despite receiving a (lowish) pass 2 mark for the exam, I have a distinction (something about grade boundaries changing at the discretion of the examiners, etc)!

I worked from home today, which was fine and I'll definitely be well enough to go in tomorrow (fingers crossed).

Bea was also sick last night, so the washing machine will be going all day again today. So far, neither bateleur or I appear to have caught it, although that's assuming that my current state is more down to lack of sleep.

I have a GameFAQs account and, as of yesterday it ticked over from 999 karma to 1,000. This moves me from Elite to Icon status. Icon is cool, but I've always loved Elite status after playing the game over two decades ago.