Wandering Around Talking To Rainbows

First up. Happy Diwali to those that celebrate and a light in the darkness to the rest of you. We're firmly into the dark now where I am and more generally I suspect we all need a light of one kind or another in these troubled times.

I have not made a book post since the end of September because I have not in fact read any books since then. (I have listened to some podcasts but none that really stood out as worthy of being written about - all the usual non fiction suspects, still worth listening to, nothing new of note, basically.) I suspect mainly because work life after slowly gradually creeping back towards something approaching normality went full tilt all at once in October and continues to be so and between that and my attempts to actually have some sort of life outside work, really I've mostly been to tired to do any much other than listen to music and play a daft colouring in game on my tablet. I have been reading my flist and occassionally commenting but absent more often than not. I completely forgot about the November Group Read over at readingtogether until kalloway messaged to ask if it was happening this year. Kalli offered to run it and I'm delighted that it'll continue even though I'm definitely too short of spoons to do it - so if that's something you normally enjoy doing in November and missed the comm posts, I encourage to toddle over and get involved. I'm vaguely planning to read one fiction and one non-fiction from my shelf this month, along with listening to one Big Finish audio and watching one unwatched DVD, instead of my usual four books, I'm dubious of my chances of success but we'll see.

But on the positive side, things I have actually achieved since I last posted. I returned from being away in Edinburgh for work in mid-September to find a cucumber hiding between the slats of my blinds - the plant had wound itself round the slats, having finally given up on climbing/strangling my tomato plants - and my tomato plants having decided that it was in fact finally time to produce some actual tomatoes. I therefore found myself with two whole cucumbers that grew to a decent size - and tasted amazing, I'd forgotten how good cucumbers with actual flavour taste - and about a dozen teeny tiny tomatoes that did in fact ripen despite never getting even to cherry tomato size. After thinking that I'd only get that one pepper in August my pepper plants have given me a steady supply of small but very tasty peppers. They are actually the perfect size for me - about the size of those mini-peppers you get in the supermarket - ideal for chopping up and adding to an omlette or a pasta/gnocchi dish for one.

I'm knitting my dad a sweater for the winter festivities and I've just completed the back of it. As that's easily the biggest piece of it, I'm now feeling much more confident about my ability to finish it before the end of December. Before that, I'd also got about half-way through my 'knit-up-my-stash' project of a throw for the spare room bed and even stitched some of the panels together so I wouldn't be left with a daunting pile to tackle once I was finished the knitting.

On the wording front, I have signed up for mini_wrimo for 250 words a day, in an attempt to get my words out this month. I'm doing okay so far, it took me three days into November before I'd finished more words than I did all October so I'll call that a strong start. It's going to be a harder slog this year, not just because of pandemic brain, but I normally take leave in November for the film festival and to write, and for work reasons - nonsense ones it turns out, annoyingly - I wasn't able to take it this year.

So far this year - as at the end of October - I'm sitting at just over 20,000 words for the year, which is just...yeah. Anyhow, if I successfully complete my mini_wrimo challenge I'll be at 7,500 for the month, so I'm aiming for 10,000. (The last couple of years I've managed over 15,000 but I do not see that happening this year - we'll call that a stretch goal!) I'm hoping to write enough ficlets to get a bingo line on my genfic bingo card because I haven't written any fic in ages and I miss it.

Nicked shamelessly from silly_cleo because quite frankly I think its an excellent idea. One's I've seen struck through, ones I'm halfway through italicised. Shame I can't include the target novellisations and (in the case of the Two serials) audio tapes in this as the number crossed off would be far higher...

( Old School Who List )

( Drumroll...Big Finish )

Entirely off my own random back...

( EDAs )

So in the interest of taking care of myself, I've essentially had a lazy weekend and completely bumped the family stuff I was meant to do.

In fairness I did have a lot of stuff to do. I didn't actually get most of it done because honestly there are only so many hours in the day and working myself too hard when I really need to chill out is self-defeating. I listened to a couple of Big Finish audios and did some cross-stitch. Made a start on sorting my paperwork (not very much of one but I'm no longer being attacked by empty envelopes so that's a start). I wrote some fic (nearly 2000 words, I hoped to squeeze another drabble out before the end of fic rush to round it out to 2000 but that's clearly not happening) did my stint as mod over at fic_rush, replied to some comments and made some soup. There was also a long luxurious bath had this evening with the reading of an interesting queer theory book. (Been a good month for reading non-fiction actually, less so for fiction).

Also got a considerable amount of much needed sleep which is always helpful.

I still need to finish sorting my paperwork, do some vacuuming and do more studying for my derby rules test resit but a start has been made so I'll take my victories where I find them.

Title: Ice-cream Castles
Pairing/Characters: Peri/Erimem
Rating: PG
Word count: 822
Summary: This travel lark is quite fun when no-one's actively trying to kill them.
Notes: Written for wishfulaces in the dw_femslash ficathon, prompt was 'Light-hearted fun. A beach ball. Sunlight. Whatever works for you. Mostly, just something happy.' I did try to write you Sam Jones/Martha Jones, but it refused point blank to be cheerful, unlike Peri and Erimem who were apparently quite happy to go off to Geneva and eat icecream... Many thanks to moviegrrl for wrestling my grammar into submission.

( In which a Swiss tourist attraction goes missing and our heroes have icecream )