With apologies to the flister who lives there...

Council in Liverpool gets a bad name for poor spelling

Since the article is very, very short, I've c&p'd it below:

Council officials were left embarrassed after an eight-year-old boy gave them a spelling lesson. Matthew Spurgin was appalled when workmen from Knowsley council installed road signs with a glaring error near his house. Matthew lives on an avenue in Liverpool but the new signs said “avenune”.

Matthew, who got full marks in a spelling test at school this week, said: “They should learn to spell correctly. If they aren’t sure, they need to look it up.”

A spokesman for the council insisted that the error was made by contractors and that correctly spelt signs had been ordered.

From The Times

It's the quote that made me sporfle. Someone's going to be a beta when he grows up...

So, for the Oxford Libraries Carol Choir, I will be singing mostly Alto, apart from the song where I'm singing second soprano.

For Oxford Singers, I will be singing mostly Part One, which is sort of Soprano, and in my small group I will actually be singing soprano.

And when we sing carols (different from our concert songs), I will almost certainly sing descants.

I'm not sure I have enough brain cells for this...

I am attempting to fill the bath using the shower. It's taking quite a while, and I kind of feel it should be a metaphor for or statement of something.

Mostly what it is a statement of is "I should put the hot water tank on earlier if I want a bath."

Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that it's the kind of thing that, if used in a story, would hold deep and meaningful significance.

*waits*

Nope. Still just boring...

becky_h, you're going to love this one...





Think of all the money you could save!

Credit to Awful Library Books.

We are currently doing scary grown up financial things, and this made me snort in an undignified manner while J was on the phone to the mortgage people:

From The Times: Paxman says Mastermind is Dumbing Down

[John] Humphrys [presenter of Mastermind], who also spoke at the [Cheltenham literary] festival on Saturday, said Mastermind questions were also more difficult than in the past. When told that Paxman disagreed, he said: “Well, deliver this message to him. He’s welcome to test this proposition by appearing as a guest on Celebrity Mastermind.

“We’ll deliberately make the questions a bit easier for him, if he likes. Alternatively, we could have a shoot-out. I could put to him a set of questions chosen at random from the last ten programmes and he could do the same.

Come on, Paxman, if you think you’re hard enough.”

(er...emphasis mine, because that's the bit that made me giggle)

How much would I have loved to have heard him say that? Honestly, what are they feeding them at R4 at the moment?

When I put my Netbook in front of the main computer, I suffer from severe mouse confusion.

That is all.

I actually slept last night, deeply and properly for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long. It makes a staggering difference, and I am therefore obnoxiously cheerful. Seriously, it's horrible, but I don't care XD

On the other hand, I opened up my flist to find that just as I'm having a good day, everyone else seems to be being hit by life, and hit hard. Apparently 2009 didn't get the memo that it's supposed to be better than 2008, not worse. I am currently looking for someone to write to to complain.

Because of this, I don't think my usual "HOW ARE YOU AWESOME??" meme is quite going to cut the mustard* this morning. So I propose this meme instead, nicked from apiphile (er...hope that's okay *smiles winningly*) from a while back:

ORGY OF EGO-BOOSTING!

Here's your side of the deal, you comment and tell me:

1x AWESOME thing about me.
2x AWESOME things about you. (That's right. TWO)
3x AWESOME things about a friend of yours, on or offline. I don't have to know who they are, just tell me.

Here's my side of the deal! I will reply with two AWESOME things about you. If I don't know you very well, I will make something up, post a picture of a baby animal, or write you a poem. drabble (seriously, no one wants me to attempt poetry, it's painful for all concerned)

Come and play! And if you know someone in comments, or even if you don't, remind them how awesome they are too. It's always a free-for-all around here, but this time, I'm making it an official free-for-all.

See, I told you. Utterly, obnoxiously cheerful and with no intention of stopping :P

*I'm British, I can get away with phrases like that and keep a straight face. Mostly

I just heard the words "Come on, if you're hard enough" uttered on the Today programme on Radio 4. Please can I always start my Monday mornings like this?

In case you're wondering why, it was in relation to this news story: Evan Davis vs. the Karate Kid. The 'kid' in question being the world's youngest holder of a black belt at the age of 5. Appropriately enough, she's in the UK to promote the video game Mini Ninjas!

All you need is a lack of muffin tin, a roasting tin and 12 paper muffin cases and voila!

[Apologies for terrible webcam picture - our camera is broken :(]

It is entirely possible that Moroccan-style mint tea is the best thing in the world. Ever. 1 peppermint tea-bag + 1 green tea bag, teapot, boiling water, brewed for at least 5 minutes (preferably more), drunk from a small glass with sugar to make as sweet as you want.

Seriously. Best. Thing. Ever.

*is refreshed*

Between a list of chores that takes up an A4 page, and J's reading for his viva, it could be a long weekend. Anyone out there? Doing anything interesting? Got any good banana muffin recipes? Mine always seem to burn...

There's a dark blue Aston Martin DB9 parked oustide my window. How am I supposed to get any work done now?

*drools on keyboard*

Things you do not expect to see while walking through North Oxford:

( Is it a bird... )

Things you do not expect to need in the normal course of your work: a Finnish-English legal dictionary. Damn, but Finnish is a difficult language...

Things you do not expect on walking into the workroom: for the power-assisted door to be neither powered nor of assistant and to hit you hard on the shoulder instead. You also do not expect your colleague to laugh as a result.

Things you do not expect after the August we've just had: the glorious weather this afternoon. That helped somewhat :)

Home! Holiday was wonderful, pictures to follow as ever, work's nuts (I think at this point I have more books than Blackwell's) and I'm already knackered.

Therefore, in lieu of content, I bring you links:

In honour (or more appropriately 'honor) of the holiday weekend, cm_exchange is keeping sign-ups open until the 9th. It's a Criminal Minds Christmas fic exchange, and produces some lovely stories. I can't commit to it this year, but hope lots of you can! Sign up here

The spn_summergen masterlist is live and can be found here.

I received This Bitter Earth by art_savage, of which I've only read the first little bit, but it looks to be an awesome SPN/Criminal Minds crossover that I can't wait to get my teeth into.

My own entry spawned a story that didn't meet the prompt before I wrangled it into shape, and despite current misgivings about anything I've ever written (I'm in the downswing - this too shall pass), I'm quietly pleased with it. I'm finding lately that I love creating OCs and am interested to see where this is going to take the writing. Anyway, the story is linked below.

The Hustlers
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Huge thanks to greyias for last-minute beta and hand-holding.
Summary: Sometimes, it's better to just not see anything.

Hopefully I'll be more with it once work is under control and my brain starts behaving again. Time to crack out the light-box, I think...

Chair dancing to (I've had) The Time of my Life makes typing apparently endless invoice payment grids vaguely bearable.

That is all.

I spent a good chunk of this evening sorting out my icons file on the home desktop. They are renamed, re-ordered and hopefully now sorted so I can find them. This is more important than it sounds.

It is important because there are 500 of them. And that doesn't include the ones on my work computer, in online storage or on my netbook. Top types are "Jack" with 54, "Stock" with 86 and "Text" with 99.

Apparently I have a lot to say, I just can't decide how to say it.

All I have to do now is figure out how to fit them into 110 icon slots...

I woke up feeling like absolute death warmed over, so you might spare a thought for miss_zedem, trying to get some sense out of me today. Yesterday turned out well after all, largely helped by the humungous blanket fort that we built, so I fully intend to carry all those cushions and pillows around with me so that Z and I can huddle in a corner somewhere with tea, cake and fic.

In the meantime, hope everyone has a good Friday *waves* And that you all pick up this meme (gakked from perspi) so that I can tell you how awesome you are:

the I think it's awesome that you are/do/have meme

I honestly could not love London more. Heaven only knows that I don't want to live here long-term, and Oxford has my heart, but London owns my soul. Pret now has free wifi, so I'm watching the traffic along Oxford Street - pedstrians and cars - and it's the best theatre and energy-booster in the world. Just walking these streets makes me feel more bouncy, like the paving has a direct line to the mains. Yes, it's dirty and over-crowded and noisy, and I'll be walking down the back streets to avoid the Oxford Circus crush, but this place has more life in one square metre than most do in miles and miles. It can be scary and smelly and horrible, and it can be beautiful and majestic and terrifying. But it's never dull.

*ahem* Obviously I'm feeling a little better than I did last night, and enjoying my free afternoon in the city. And I have my organiser, so expect postcards!

Hope everyone is having a good and dry day. I'm going to brave the rain and hit the shops :)

Things that occur to me today:

~ I don't post here as much as I used to. I can't work out whether this means my life is more interesting or less interesting.

~ Work is currently going well. This fills me with dread because I worry I'm missing something. It's possible that I just got more competent, but that seems unlikely.

~ We go on holiday on the 26th. That is not even three weeks away. Woot!

~ On Wednesday evening, I managed to lock myself in an unlocked room at work. This requires talent, I feel.

~ The microwave at work does strange things to potatoes, making them hot, soft and uncooked, all at the same time.

~ I really, really don't have a clue about my own stories, and thus owe people four fics as part of the Stump the Author Meme. On the plus side, I might get my cliche bingo card done after all.

~ Collaborative writing is one of the best experiences, ever.

~ My new netbook is Simply Awesome. I have also noticed that other people's technology tends to be named, while I've just been calling mine "my baby". I have decided that this is slightly creepy, and have therefore decided to call her Sapphire instead, since she is a lovely shade of blue. Hopefully, I will eventually get a silver iPod Nano that I can call Steel. This will make me very happy.

~ So far, we have viewed 3 flats, all of which needed work doing to them. That was the good part. The bad part was that they were all 1960s/70s Best of British Design - ie small and concrete. While I don't doubt we could do good things with them, none of them really got my soul going. We are currently pursuing a Very Exciting Opportunity which I can't say anything about in a public post, and which has about a 95% chance of not happening, but. Very Exciting, and worth the work and the risk. Possibly not worth the over-excited state that I tend to work myself into, though.

~ Speaking of which, New Pills are better than Old Pills. Instead of my mid-month downer, I've had mid-month severe instability. While this has left me kind of wrung out today (when I'm feeling better), it's actually better than the downer, since I can get things done. Still waiting to see what happens when I get another two weeks down the line...

~ I need to do things for bau_bigbang today, as well as edit a podtour of the library, answer some questions for my Staff Development Review on Monday and generally pretend to be a grown up. This is hard when you are wearing shiny red shoes and light purple tights.

~ Job-hunting is hard. I'm not sure if it's harder on me or major_jim, but it's hard.

~ It is probably time for an icon shuffle. Anyone who has my icons on alerts, consider yourselves warned.

~ I need a new bike. Fond as I am of my pink and yellow baby elephant (I maintain that the paintwork is an anti-theft device), the back brakes are rubbing against the wheel and neither set work particularly well, especially in the wet.

~ On Monday, the library begins moving, relabelling and replacing 16,000 books. I can't wait to see what it looks like.

~ Responsibility is over-rated. I'm off for chocolate cake. Anyone care to join me?

I finally have 250 words of fic that I don't hate, so am pressing onwards. Music is helping, although I am starting to fear for my brain. The music that is inspiring me right now?

Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart

closely followed by

Europe - The Final Countdown.

I wasn't old enough to listen to pop music in the eighties. How did this happen?

If 9 to 5 comes on next, I'm possibly doomed. Although at least my fic will be written...

ETA: *sigh of relief* It's the Manics. That's my teenage years ;)

For various reasons, I have no content for you.

Have the Jeremy Clarkson Beat Box instead.