Things I have done and not done

Well, the obvious one is the serious amount of NOT BLOGGING (for which I have already made my apologies).

Still, on a more optimistic note, I have...

• been to Oxford for the day and visited the WONDERFUL Pieminister stall in the covered market. Hot pie - I had wild mushrooms and asparagus - layered on mash potato, with minted mushy peas on top and with a red wine 'groovy'. We also had a book splurge. So shoot us.
  
  And I bought the David Tennant calendar for the year. Hey, a girl needs treats.



• read lots and lots of books - two Jasper Fforde books, two Lawrence Blocks, "A Metropolitan Murder" and The Dante Club. All frothy and quick reads.
  
  A longer read was Martin Millar's latest "Lonely Werewolf Girl": I cannot recommend it highly enough. Totally good fun. A transvestite wolf. Addiction to laudenum. Violence. Thwarted love. Teenage angst. Pop, punk and rock music. A Fire Queen who has flaming fits about clothes and worrying that the other elements will mock her wearing out of date clothes. It's very funny and very exciting. A very fine read.



• been listening to music - we've moved the stereo into the front room and have now properly set it up there. This is encouraging us to listen to more radio and music sat on the sofa and reading (hence the books). This has included such delights as a CD of Lee Hyla featuring bird-song. Oddest experience though was listening to Bob Dylan's Radio Theme Hour Xmas special. Figgy Pudding recipes anyone?!



• saw "It's a Wonderful Life" at a small cinema and everyone spontaneously cheered and clapped at the end. Sniff.



• watched some TV - you know what, against the run of opinion, we LIKED the Extras Christmas Special (particularly the cross-show joke with George Michael going off to record Catherine Tate's special)



• watched Doctor Who: this comes into a separate category of delight. They chucked a film budget at "Voyage of the Damned" and there was a lot to like about it. Plenty of death and destruction. Some very comical Bruckheimer moments. The Timelord speech (I have no shame in delighting how it made me punch the air). Earthonomics. Sinister angels (though could have done without them lifting Saviour Doctor... sheesh, would RTD PLEASE get over the God-Complex he has allocated to the new series Doctor). Brilliant gold gleaming dazzling stuff.
  
  Mind, it WAS a bit of a sugar/carb-rush Who: thoroughly enjoyable at the time but fading a little too fast for my real pleasure. Still, the Who dominance was entrenched in the house when Cloud alerted me to them re-screening "The Runaway Bride". (You can tell I wasn't fully with it since I had TOTALLY missed seeing that in the schedules). I think I enjoyed TRB even more this time around. And I'm sorry, whether you're a Rose-fan or not, you have to admit that Tennant nails the choke of "Her name was Rose" with such finesse. With Cloud's passion for red-heads and a fancy for Tate, I suspect that S4 will still get some excitement in this house.

Things I have not done:

• been online to do much more than read emails or to clear out bloglines - and even that was irregularly. So most of my promised posts have not (yet? ever?) emerged: I still owe a year-long music round up and a review of "A Hawk and A Hacksaw" to Music is Our Hot Hot Sex, as well as a summary of the London trip with pictures and much more besides. This past term has been too busy, too tiring, too... ah, stuff it. I apologised already.



• been able to fully catch up with forums, LJ and fan-fiction. Similar to above, but with the result that I now feel totally out of touch with what is going on and have resigned myself to always being very behind with long-running narratives. SOME people have seriously active fiction bunnies in their heads!
  
  I'm still apologising aren't I...?



• been able to keep up with commenting and cheering fellow bloggers. Heck, Behind The Sofa is closing to revamp! Medium Rob is considering abandoning/scaling back the blog! What is the world coming to?! Is it my fault??? [NB I'm not THAT egotistical that I think it's down to me, but i can't help but feel I haven't been there for everyone as much as I would have liked to be...Yes, I spotted it: I haven't stopped apologising...]



• made CDs for a very long while. Meh. I did try over Xmas and I realised that a chief problem is less that the CDs won't load up or be created and more that the playing facility on the computer is basically FUBAR. Still, it isn't perfect and made CDs are still playing a bit cranky on other players. Meh.
  
  And then my printer bosted and now won't print. I can't even make my fancy-Dan covers for the damn things anymore! GRRRR!



• re-synced my iPod since I first loaded it up.... oh, did I not say? Neilie Cloud bought me an iPod ... it is making me VERY happy.

So, despite all my gloom and apologies, even my "things I have not done" has been able to end on a happy note.

Happy New Year peeps. I'll try to do better.