Oooh look, a castle!

3:52pm: =D
Can legally drive. Just need an insured car now...

11:50am: On the verge of spontaneous combustion.
Soo....
Things pretty rubbish but looking for the good surprisingly easy considering i'm definitely feeling the fingers of depression stroking the edges of my mind.
Recent rundown of happy:
Thurs/fri: crippling period pains meant Al gave lots of lovely cuddles
Sat: NaNoWriMo TGIO party - meeting up with everyone lots of fun. Was told about this website, which has lots of lovely happy moments. Also, LarLar managed to battle her demons and made it out to meet us all, which is a big deal and i'm really glad she did - it was so nice to see who she is. Also, met Polo at the station to walk her down to town adn we just clicked and talked so much that she missed her train home and had to crash on our sofa! (Which again shows how awesome Al is, cos he didn't mind me invading our house with someone he'd never met despite his shyness.) Think i've acquired a new long term friend there. Also nice to see Aqua and Leebear and Laura and Andy and everyone again :)
Sun: Erin and Will came over and Al cooked dinner for all of us.
Mon: left keys at home so Al drove down to work with them and gave me a kiss instead of a winge.
Today, had to go to bank to find out what i can do about rent coming out before pay going in (again...). Saw an interesting book on a stand outside a secondhand shop. Spoke to lovely person in bank who was so helpful that i feel much calmer about everything, then on way back book was still there and woman in charge said i could have it for 20p. It looks like a proper children's book, Swallows and Amazons sort of style.

Share your own happies - they all help!

5:20pm: Procrastination...
( Quiz )

12:11pm: Rage for Christmas?
Bill Bailey has pointed out on twitter that the christmas number one is always whiny x-factor stuff and has directed his followers to this site, to see if enough people can be convinced to buy 'Killing in the Name' on the 13th of december to ensure that that becomes the christmas number one instead. Sounds a pretty good cause to me, at least!

12:57pm: NaNoWriMo
I won! 50 000 words written in 30 days whilst working and studying. =D

10:02am: Give me more cheerful things!
So life is still pretty bleak for me and i'd love it if you'd all continue to keep me posted about the little things that make you smile.
As anyone who follows @eddieizzard on twitter will know, the weather down here has been fairly impressive lately; proper rain and winds almost strong enough to push me the wrong way when cycling to work. Absolutely stunning when you're indoors, less fun when you're not... Today is much calmer, the sky on side of the house is a lovely bruised purple and on the other that post-rain clean blue. Even the wind is a little calmer.
And on the subject of Eddie Izzard, we saw him live on Monday and he was fantastic! Really good evening. The gig seemed mostly to be a long pro-science and pro-atheist argument, delivered so well that i don't think anyone would have taken offence and everyone would have laughed. Dinosaurs didn't have religion: they got up in the mornings and went "rahhh!" (or "arrr" cos they were pirate dinosaurs!). Right at the start, he made a joke about Bournemouth and the geography of it, asking for what type of stone we're on (the louder audience said sandstone, but i thought it was lime...) and remembering this right at the end when he mimed god making the world. Very funny, very clever, and very well remembered, considering this was about 3 busy hours later! Anyway, i had a fantastic evening overall.

1:09pm: Sickiness explained
I'm officially poor for the first time in my life and i hate it. I mean, i've been skint and broke before, but i've never looked at my bank account and realised that not only can i not afford next months rent but i also don't know how i'm going to get the money together to do so. Fortunately, my bank has extended my overdraft to give me a bit of breathing space. I think my boss hasn't paid me properly this month - i got a lot last month cos i'd done lots of extra hours but i know (from conversation with him) that there were more hours to be included in this months pay and they haven't been. I need to chase that up and insist on him giving me a payslip so i know how much i've been paid. I also need him to start paying me before my rent comes out, like he promised, instead of the day after.
Anyway, saw doctor about sickiness and he thinks its caused by the stress of being poor, which sucks cos there's not much can be done about that. I came home and had a good sob on Al and felt much better for it.
I'm grateful to have a job, i'm just getting a bit concerned that i may run out of money before finishing the web design course. I know we can always move back in with my Dad if it came to it, but Al's pride wouldn't be very happy with that (and living with my step-mum would probably result in one of us dead and the other in jail...)
Will be making the time to get a CAB appointment soon, see if i can claim any sort of benefit whilst working just to ease the stress a little.

12:20pm: Still feeling tired and icky - thought it was the cough mixture but haven't taken it and still all icky. Will be seeing doctor this afternoon.
Came home from work early last night and Al sent me downstairs to his mum's to have a bath. I soaked for an hour with Good Omens which is possibly my favourite book. Combined with finally having completed all the dreamweaver modules of the web design course (on to photoshop now!), that's probably my happy thing to share. Was a lovely bath.

9:35am: Hello!
Ok, enough about me. Tell me something lovely that's happened in your life recently. Anything at all; a nice meal, a stranger smiling at you, a stranger falling over in a schadenfraud manner, winning the lottery. Just some nice anecdote to make people smile with you :)

9:47am: You convinced me!
It was, of course, negative.
So, still no explanation for the intermittant nausea :(

Is it odd that a little bit of me was disappointed?

9:00am: A bit of early morning excitement.
Bit of clattering going on in flat above: the very noisy person who was there has finally moved out (yay!) and I assumed the new person was moving in. All of a sudden, there's a strange noise... It's loud enough to wake Al who gets up and goes to look - a small waterfall is splashing down into our library. There's been a damp problem in that corner since before we moved in, but this hadn't happened to us before. Al quickly begins rescuing things and i run downstairs to get the landlord's number from Al's mum. She says that the people upstairs are actually from the landlord and leads me up to confront them. They come down and are suitably aghast at the mess that's growing in our flat and we've been promised a proper fix, a redecoration and that it won't happen again.
Hurray!

1:02pm: nano stuff
Writing currently not going so well - have some exciting stuff to write about later but need to build up characters and stuff so people will care when Taryn dies (not that it matters, i'm the only one who'll be reading it, but still...). I'm not very good at this. He's only a bit part really, a captain of the guards who's job is to get killed off so the prince ends up more or less stranded in unfamiliar territory. Very cliche and so forth. Prince gets stranded so King can go properly mad and try to use magics to become immortal, Prince returns with new entourage to stop him. Have introduced all the characters i want to except one group of bad guys who are too similar to a group of good guys for me to want to introduce just yet. Also, i'm not sure how to get Ishilde down from the mountains or who's going with her. It was going to be Taisto, but now i'm not sure.

Hmmmm... it is a cliche plot, but this is an exercise in perserverance rather than creativity so i'm not gonna care. Just gonna keep writng and see what happens :)

10:49pm: NaNoWriMo
Well, it's begun. I'm now writing like a mad thing and most of it's rubbish, but ya know what? I'm having fun.

I started writing my novel on Sunday and couldn't get into it, so monday i started again with an entirely different concept and outlook. I'm now writing fantasy instead of mainstream. I'm a little behind the official wordcount target, but catching up considering the fact i've effectively wasted a day.

Anyway, there may be some random questions related to my novel put up here at various points. Feel free to ignore them.

For starters, what birds live in mountains? What can you tell me about whichever one you've chosen to tell me about?

Mwahaha! X

10:09am: Ooh, the irony!
In an 'amusing' twist of fate, since the boiler has been fixed the house is no longer freezing. In fact, even with all the radiators in my flat off, and windows open, it's still warm... It was too hot to breathe yesterday!

Basically, they've removed the thermostat which we could control so if we want the temperature changed we have to phone them. And then wait a few weeks... The radiators all only have on/off switches, no temperature variations but we don't want to ask them to turn it down because they won't get around to it until it's cold enough to justify this amount of warming and then they'll take ages to turn it back up...
Bleh!

11:29am: :(
It's still so cold and i took my anti depressent late and i just want a big hug from Al but he's at work and everything feels pretty sucky right now :(

2:02pm: household woes
Our electricity is paid for by coin meter, so is expensive. Currently, our heating doesn't work. We've been pestering the landlord since weds... But the only way to heat the house seems to be to leave the computers and tv on. I mean, this morning i was dressed in a blanket and gloves over a jumper etc because it's so cold. Pretty sure landlords are meant to treat lack of heating as an emergency, but then i know they're meant to give 24hrs notice before coming round, and that never happens :(

What makes it worse is that there's nothing on tv so it's just depressing :(

5:26pm: Happy Birthday Ms le Guin
My favourite sci fi writer is 80 today. My Dad was the one who first introduced me to her work, i think starting with a book of short stories entitled The Winds Twelve Quarters. The story Semley's Necklace made me cry and really upset me but i was hooked. I enjoyed The Wizard of Earthsea, but it's her sci fi and short stories i really love: The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, Rocannon's World, The Word for World is Forest...

Anyway, Happy Birthday Ursula le Guin! If you've never read any of her work, do so =D

11:02am: Arkham Horror
Finally had a chance to play the Arkham Horror game. Really good fun - had the Innsmouth expansion which Al hadn't played before. We actually won the first game - the elder woke up and we beat it into submission through a combination of luck and snicky items. The second we lost, though it did look close at one point. Still lots of fun! (Which especially surprised Al given my view of Lovecraft's work)
4 of us played, though someone joined us half way through first and left half way through second. Unlike wererogue, the people i played with are of the opinion it gets harder the more you have, citing 3 or 4 as optimum. We also played Roborally and Atmosphere (DVD version). Much silliness.

PS, i'm quite enjoying carpool at the moment. Found out about it on twitter cos i'm stalking Kryton :p

1:39pm: Geek Questions
What's a deprecated tag and why does XHTML strict not allow them?! The lecture says it doesn't but hasn't said what they are. Probably not vital for the course because i still passed the comprehension test at the end, but i managed that before listening to the lecture and i would like to know so i don't try using them inappropriately.

I'm sure i'll be told eventually, but how exactly do you put the code/images/css onto the web and connect them to each other? It's told me how to link to images/css but not how to put them somewhere appropriate to be linked to and i'd like to know now rather than in a couple of months!

I think i may have to go visit my brother and get him to talk me through how he put our Dad's site together. Probably the easiest way.

12:51pm: < geek >
One of the things i'm enjoying most about the web design course is that i can look at the coding that makes up a web page and, whilst it still looks bloody complicated, i can at least follow what it's talking about. Makes me feel like i'm hovering on the edges of joining some bizarre sort of social elite.

Problem with course is it's currently 'listen to' lectures, which is why i'm looking at the code of random web pages because i wasn't sure any of it was actually sinking in. Am also using a couple of web sites to help me practice. Any book/site in particular anyone can recommend? I'm attempting to go from complete novice to web design genius in about 6months so any help is hugely appreciated!

3:41pm: Dragons
Patrick was asking what the dragons that have been appearing all over my LJ are all about, so i guess some people may be interested. If not, don't ( click here )

2:22pm: Still suffering waves of nausea, but i will be working tonight regardless because i need the money. Being ill is the suckiest.

8:36am: yaddayaddayadda
Have taken 2 evenings off sick. Feel a lot better for it but still contemplating another evening off. Still achey, though fever has subsided and nausea is much milder. Not sleeping very well doesn't help...
[Edit: nausea not worn off at all, just took longer to wake up than the rest of me. Nearly threw up during driving lesson D=]

NaNoWriMo ideas are flowing thick and fast. Fairly convinced i won't hit the 50k word count next month but am taking this year more to learn what it's all about and will use next year to be more serious about finishing.

5:30pm: Dwayne Dibley, fashion icon!
Ok, don't watch the show, but this has been flying around twitter.
First watch this <--about the 2min mark is the best point.
Then, this is a little rant from someone about the fashion world using this to support his arguement.

2:19pm: Dilemma
I'm ill but so is the other cleaner for the office in the evening...
She's meant to be back tonight, but she was meant to be back on Monday too...
If i call in sick and she isn't back i'll feel very guilty...
I feel really ill!