Lou-quacious

I have no blogging inspiration today, so let’s have a meme instead!  I’m going to fall back on the Friday 5, which is always fun when I remember to do it!

Friday 5 for November 5: Packing

1. How far ahead of time do you begin packing for a weekend trip?
   Planning, 2-3 days beforehand, depending on where I’m going. Actual packing will be the night before. I am little miss last minute!
2. What was your most recent purchase of a six-pack?
   Technically yesterday when my groceries were delivered, including a couple of six packs of Pepsi.
3. What do you look for in a good everyday backpack?
   Comfy straps, at least two pockets with a couple of small compartments for things like my mp3 player etc, waterproofing, and in colours that I like!
4. Among people you know, who’s the worst packrat?
   Me, I think. Ooops!
5. How do you know when it’s time to pack it in each evening?
   When the cat comes to demand his supper, or when I’m starting to doze off, if I don’t have anything in particular on the next day. If I have something on, then it depends on what time that is, because if I don’t get a good night’s rest I’ll never get up in time for it.

Mirrored from Enchilada Sunrise.

Originally published at Enchilada Sunrise. You can comment here or there.

Here we go, my answers for this week’s Friday 5:

1. What is your favourite fizzy, bubbly drink?
   Pepsi!  Or Coca-cola as a second - I don’t like the diet versions (unfortunately!), and I’m not keen on the non-branded ones either.  They just don’t taste the same.  Picky, picky me.


2. What is your favourite deep-fried food?
   Um.  I don’t really eat deep fried food.  Oh, except for crisps I spose.  So, crisps?  And sometimes chips, but not if they’re too greasy.


3. What is your favourite hot beverage?
   Hot lemon squash.  Weird, I know, but I don’t drink tea or coffee, and although I do like hot chocolate I only have it as the occasional cold-weather treat.  It’s too thick / sweet for a regular drink for me.


4. What is your favourite really messy food?
   Depends what you call messy!  Spag bol, maybe?  Or maybe tortilla chips and dip because you’re bound to get dip on you at some point.


5. What is your favourite recipe for a blended or mixed beverage?
   Not really sure what this means!  Like a cocktail?  Or a smoothie?  If we’re talking alcoholic beverages, I like Archers, vodka and orange juice.  If not, then banana smoothies are probably my favourite.  The recipe for that when I make my own is one banana (chopped up into smallish pieces), either (a) a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or (b) a tablespoon or so of natural yoghurt (depends what I have), and about half a pint of milk… or maybe more than that, I’m not sure!  I generally go by ‘feel’.  Then I whizz it all together with the whizzing device.  Add a bit more milk if need be to taste, whizz again, etc.  Serve with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Nom!

In other news, an actual knitting post should be coming soon!  I’ve just cast on for the second SKP09 pattern, which is a pair of entrelac socks.  There’s a new challenge right there - I’m just about to start the actual entrelac part and it’s all very exciting.  And nerve wracking!  Photos will be forthcoming… assuming I can make it all work.

I keep meaning to post, but then I forget. Um. But I am still mostly here, and reading my flist a fair bit of the time.  I'm just sometimes doing other things, like knitting and spinning (moar below) and reading.  Since I've mainly been reading, here's that book meme from a million years ago in interbets-tiem:

The BBC allegedly believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here:
How do your reading habits stack up? Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish
(I shall also add a little "m" to the ones I've read multiple times)

( Booooooooooooks )

Of course, none of those are books that I've been reading recently - those have mainly been of the sci-fi / fantasy bent.  Nothing very new there, then.

Otherwise, as I said, I've been spinning and knitting (and playing with websites, of course).  The knitting has mostly been socks, mittens (fingerless and ... not), gloves, and finally finishing off Mum's birthday shawl.  From last year.  Ahem.  I now also have the strangest urge to actually sew up those two jumpers I knit about a bazillion years ago.  It's not the actual sewing that's been putting me off: it's clearing the space to pin out the bits.  My tip flat, let me show you it.
The spinning is something new.  Ish.  I've been spindle-spinning for a few months, but only a little bit every now and again, and as a result I'm verrrrry slow at it.  This means that my small fibre stash has been nevertheless "too much" for me to be likely to get through.  Not any more, though: Jo has lent me her spare spinning wheel (an Ashford Kiwi), and for the last week I've been zooming away.  I'd learned the basics last October at the Knitting Safari day in Brighton, and then I went to the Kent Guild of Spinners Dyers and Weavers meet with Jo this last Saturday.  I haven't broken out the 'good' fibre yet, but as soon as I'm done with my current lot of 'practice' (= I'm not sure what it is... it's blue!) stuff, I will. :-)

I be sure I done this before, but it be Talk Like a Pirate Day, ye know! And I be awake again cuz the landlubbing wench wot lives upstairs in the decks above had to ring my bell to get into the building ship. I be guessing her scurvy cove (not really, but still, grr) of a husband has been knocking back too much o' the old grog and wasn't waking up hisself.

( My Pirate name )

Swiped from waltzingalong.  BeCOZ.

( Meme! )

1. I seem to have a thing for lists recently.  I think it's all the web coding I've been doing.


2. I have a few people to wish a very Happy Birthday to - some are a little late, sorry!  So, elen_ancalima and megolas, I hope you had lovely ones, and sbisson, I hope yours is similarly fab.


3. Web server still down.  Or rather, new server not up and running yet.  Gaaargh.  Naturally, I now really want to do all sorts of things that I need that server to be up for.  Like post to my knitting blog, and read my blogroll.  Why didn't I back that up into a feedreader?  D'oh!


4. I made my friend C some fingerless mitts for early-xmas.  Apparently he liked them lots, because today I received a really nice webcam in return!!!  Bweeeeeee! :-D  I'm now all set up for video chatting on Skype - don't know yet if I can v-chat through Trillian, which is what I use for AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo chattage.  But if anyone wants to see my ugly mug and have a voice-natter (the camera has a built in mic), now you can.


5. Must get on with the xmas knitting.  I'm getting there, but I'm not done yet!  Wish me luck...


6. And talking of xmas, thanks to those of you who've sent me cards.  *hugs*  I... haven't sent any out this year.  Thing is, I'm now on a really tight budget, and I can't actually afford the cards and stamps.  Sad but true!  Therefore, it's e-cards this year.  Just as soon as I've made the graphics. *slacker*


7. The knuckle joint of my left index finger hurrrrrts.  Probably from the incessant knitting, unless I squashed it when I nearly dropped the printer.  But I think it hurt before that.  I reckon I need a splint.  Or the wah-mbulance. *nod*

And now, have a meme:
I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know very well. I read your journals, or we have something else in common and we chat occasionally. Some of you I hardly know at all. Some of you I don't know at all because I didn't friend you back (yet?). Perhaps you haven't been around for long, perhaps you lurk, for whatever reason. But you friended me and I thank you for your interest in my words.

But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: 'Ah, there's so and so...'

I'd love it if every single person who friended me would do this. Yes, even you people who I know really well. Then post this in your own journal and see what gems of knowledge appear.

In the spirit of posting something cheerful / non-whiny, I've nabbed this from ionaonie:

Comment to this post and I'll:

1 - Tell you why I friended you.
2 - Associate you with something. A fandom, a song, a colour, a piece of fruit. SOMETHING.
3 - Tell you something I like about you.
4 - Tell you a memory I have of you.
5 - Associate you with a character/pairing.
6 - Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7 - Tell you my favourite user pic of yours.
8 - In retort, you must spread this disease in your LJ.

GO! :-)

Well thank feck for that: I seem to be sleeping again.  Only about four hours on Wed/Thurs and Thurs/Fri nights, and it's been a bit all over the place since then, but I feel like I've slept rather than just having dozed.  Plus, I woke up about half an hour before my alarm was due to go off on Thursday, so I got to my Creative Writing course with no problems.  And wheeee, it was excellent!  I'm all enthused.  So much so that I've been poking around the Sussex uni website and looking at the related degree course(s).  I do want to get mine finished one day, after all, and this course can count towards degree study.  So there's something to possibly aim for.  I also started a digital photography class yesterday - this one is purely for fun.  And fun it was, so that works out well.  If I can manage to get into a routine with sleeping properly at night, getting up and going to either one of those two courses or to the gym (or pilates class) in the morning most days, I'll be very happy.  The idea being that that gets me going and motivated, and I'll get other stuff done in the afternoon.

However, I do still need to ring the clinic ( blah bipolar blah )

Anyway, I might be offline for a few days now - hopefully not, but I always say that, and then I always am. *g*  More upgrades to be done.  This time it should be simple enough - I'm just reformatting the C:\ drive and reinstalling Windows.  Actually, I'm installing a newer version, because I forgot to get the upgrade along with all the hardware upgrades, and now it refuses to update and I'm getting the blue screen of DETHHHH at least twice a day.  Argh!  Oh, and copying CDs is like pulling teeth, so sorry you guys who I said I'd send some stuff.  Luckily burning from my harddrive is not so much of a problem, so I can at least back up everything.  And it bloody well will be everything this time.  Just in case.  Because 'should be simple' and real life don't always meet ;-)

And finally, since I'm sort of back doing studying things, and I'm just too impatient to wait (How incredibly appropriate it is too.  Bwahah!):

The University of Blogging Presents to soulstar An Honorary Bachelor of Emo Majoring in Self Portraiture Signed Dr. GoQuiz.com �

Username:

Blogging Degree
From Go-Quiz.com

# Hoorah!  I'm back.  And my brother, with no prompting from me has named my newly upgraded computer "Rodney".  This is beyond perfect, as the extra-fast 'brains' of the machine are currently clad in my old rather bulky and unflattering beige case (which will be replaced with something more sleek and appropriately coloured soonish).  Meanwhile, my new monitor is slim, attractive, and black-and-grey.  Naturally, I instantly christened it John.  Fandom rulz etc.  No change there then.  Anyway, I now have a system that's 4 times faster than my old one.  So much quieter, too - don't know if it was the old fan or hdd or both, but there's a huge difference.  I like it muchly.

# However, the reason the upgrading took so long was that there was a period of oh-crap-it's-all-gone-horribly-wrong because after M had put the new system together, he reformatted the C drive, reinstalled Windows.... and it all crashed hideously, had some kind of cascade failure and took my secondary drive (the one with all my stuff on it) with it.  And because I'd been a bit manic and my old system was so knackered, I hadn't bothered backing everything up properly.  Some stuff I had, but not all of it - not any media, basically.  The big stuff that would have taken ages to burn since it was taking about an hour to burn one CD.  Whoops.  So anyway, it was off to the computer shop after all for a recovery job, and the end result is that I have a new secondary drive, and that I'm using the smaller spare drive I had hanging about as my C drive.  The computer shop managed to get about half of my media back - naturally they were able to restore everything that I did have backed up to CD anyway.  But I should be get my other stuff back again, so it's all good.

# The Xandermog seems to have hurt his back leg again: it keeps giving way under him, causing him to randomly fall over even more than usual.  I think I know why / how he did it: he's been really daft and playful, and seems to have got the idea in his head that he's a monkey.  Some cats can carry off that kind of leaping and climbing.  Not him.  *sigh*

# I'm having a bit of a wonky time and my meds probably need adjusting or something.  So I might not be around much, or I might be around a lot, or I might be manic and annoying, etc etc.  Anyway, have been trying to have it sorted out before it gets worse, but if I disappear for a while then I'm in the process of doing that.  Or something. :-)


In other news:
I am worth $2,169,676 on HumanForSale.com
How much are you worth?