Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

The football was good - Stevenage v. Spurs in the 5th round of the FA Cup. I say "good", I mean that in the sense Stevenage forced a replay after holding Spurs to a 0-0 draw. The game itself wasn't anything to write home about, in fact it was pretty dire. But that was partly down to Stevenage refusing to let Spurs get settled and play their kind of football. Replay will be at White Hart Lane and I suspect it will be a very different kettle of fish there.

I've spent most of today reading. I'm on a real Sherlock Holmes kick at the moment and discovered, to my joy, that The Complete Collection Kindle edition was available for the princely sum of 0.77p. "I'll have that!" I cried, clicketty clicking happily. Right now I'm reading "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" and the first story in that collection, "Silver Blaze". That story is not only one of my faves but it gave us one of the best Sherlock Holmes quotes:-

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Hee! :)

..I think my postman is going to hate me. I've added up all the parcels I'm due to get after my two amazon sprees and if they don't put two items in the same parcel, I'm due 15 packages through the door over the next 10 days....*winces*.

The first 3 have arrived! Say hello to The West Wing Season 7, ST:Voyager Season 5 and Criminal Minds Season 3 :D Obviously I can't watch TWW until seasons 5 and 6 show up.

Gleeeeeeeeeee!!

Work went ok today, I did six hours and it didn't completely wipe me out. Although that said, I'm about to tuck myself up in bed for the night with a hot water bottle and a good book :)

I must do the lottery this week, I feel the signs are favourable. Picture this. I was trying to recall a book I'd read ages ago, a mystery set in some snowy area of the US. I picked jenni411's brains and it rang a vague bell but she couldn't recall the details. So I posted a plea on rec.arts.mystery and settled back to wait. RAMmers always know the answer to these things so I knew it wouldn't be a puzzle for long.

While I was waiting, I idly poked the internet and ended up on amazon.com where I planned to hunt for DVDs. And this was the main page that greeted me:-



And there it was!! "Nordic Nights" by Lise McClendon! "Recommended" for me, first book in the list. THE VERY BOOK I'D BEEN TRYING TO RECALL ALL DAY!!

I've not bought fiction from amazon.com for a long time, so it's inevitable it would throw up old orders at some point, but what were the odds it would throw up the one book I was trying to remember?!

So yeh, TOTALLY doing the lottery this week :D

I had to resort to another complete reformat and re-install of my PC. No, I still haven't got an external disk drive upon which I have made careful back ups. On the plus side, apart from my email, I didn't have much to lose since it hasn't been that long since I last did this :p And thanks to my shiny, shiny iPod, all my music is safe! Hee!

I've reached the point now where I've got the basics installed and working, and I'm now working on the supplementary items, like games and utilities. If you've sent me an email with any important info prior to today(Hi smokingboot!) could you please resend it? Thanks :)

At least I can get to my beloved internet, which I couldn't do before the reformat - the virus did something very evil to the modem executable files, from what I could tell. Bah. *cuddles her internet*

Tomorrow there will be memes and cute cat photos to make up for the boring techie spam :)

One item though - today I received the most ginormous box of books from jenni411, who clearly spent her time at Bouchercon wisely :D Seriously, it was a fantastic collection and a lot of effort went into it. There's an anthology in there, "Wolfsbane and Mistletoe", which I've had my eye on, and Jenni went to the trouble of nabbing the autographs of as many authors who were there as possible! Hee! I've got Alan Gordon's autograph! Heeee!!

So huge huggles to Jenni, for verily, she rocks :D

I don't think eating that much houmous and that many crisps this early was a good idea. *whimpers* But I was hungry! *whines* And they were right there tormenting me! :P

I never learn...

In better news, yay bibliogirl! Your book arrived today, many thanks :) It's next on the list of Books to be Read.

I'm actually pondering having a huge cull of my books. I know I've got many that I'll never read again and, frankly, I could use the space. It's what to do with them that bothers me. I could hold a book sale I 'spose but ideally, once anyone on my flist has had first pick obviously, what I'd like is to find a second hand bookshop that would buy 'em off me as a job lot. At least I might make a few pennies. Anyone know a good place?

Just watched the latest episode of Numb3rs. It hasn't been wowing me this season but it's been better than last season. I'm liking the replacement they've brought in for Diane Farr's character, she's a good addition to the mix. As a very junior agent, she can screw up and piss people off and bring an edge to the proceedings that couldn't happen with the existing characters, at least not now they've got years of working together under their belts. The "Charlie's security clearance" thing is getting a little old but I think it's being wrapped up next week. Hope so, they need Charlie back in the FBI, the stories will go much more smoothly.

*streeetches* Today I plan to do some laundry and watch football and, quite possibly, have a snooze or two. I didn't sleep well again last night, its getting irritating. I go to bed on time, I'm not having tea late at night and yet, somehow, I'm still awake, albeit dozily, at 3am, 4am, 5am. Last night, I got up at 5am and played on the computer for half an hour, then rearranged all my bedding and tried again. Slept like a log after that and woke up about 10.30am but I'm still pretty groggy. I think I can risk a nap today provided I don't sleep too long and don't have the nap too late in the day. I suspect this is a result of not being more active during the day, so I'm going to try getting out and about a bit. Might go over to Morrison's after the football and get a couple of bits and pieces I forgot to order from Tesco's. At least that'll get me walking about and out of the flat.

thalinoviel, are you up for the cinema on Tuesday? There's a few things on I wouldn't mind seeing and I think I'm up to an evening out, especially as it'll involve ice cream and sitting on my arse for a couple of hours. I'm really good at that :P

It's the little things that make a day, isn't it?

First of all, the latest paperback in the Dame Frevisse novels finally arrived this morning. Yay!

Then at work, I was very surprised and pleased to be given a Galaxy chocolate bar by PartyGirl as a thank you for getting all of next terms funding forms out to the nurseries yesterday. (PhoneChamp got one too). It was really nice to have the work appreciated, as I usually think uncharitable thoughts about how I always get lumbered with the envelope stuffing.

So now I have a shiny new book AND a bar of chocolate to scoff while reading it this evening. Hee! If anyone wants me, I'll curled up on the World's Comfiest Sofa. There may well be purring :D

I had a fantabulous dream last night, one of those that I actually thought, while dreaming "I MUST remember this!" and I have, mostly :) There were 3 people, 2 men and a woman. The woman is the shadowiest figure, because at times I was the woman and at times, she was a separate character. The men, however, I can remember clearly. One was a guy who had been working for whomever we worked for for a while, the other was a new guy who had just been brought in. There was a bit of rivalry because new boy had been more places and had way more experience than the guy who'd been there a long time. The kicker is, both guys were, well, not robots, but some form of androids/x-men type enhanced human beans.

All three of us worked for some shadowy agency, that seemed to be involved in some sort of anti-espionage or anti-crime work, but we weren't police. We were official but not MI5 or anything like that. Heh. New Avengers, mebbe :D Anyway, we did good work in the dream, bugging a hotel room and tracking the bad guy through, bizarrely, my old home town of Dunstable. I have no idea what the bad guy had done but I do know we got our man :)

Even when I was asleep, I was thinking this was a great concept and I should remember it. I've been pondering it on and off all day and I'm not so sure about the concept now, but it was a lot of fun to dream about :)

Talking of dreams, I am SO going to bed once the football is done. I can barely keep my eyes open. Like an idiot, I stayed up too late last night and then compounded the felony by reading for an hour (new book! 's really good!*) when I got to bed. I never learn :P

* "The Janissary Tree" by Jason Goodwin. Just won an Edgar. It's a historical mystery, featuring Yashim the eunuch, who lives in 19th century Instanbul. The setting is superb - historical Constantinople has fascinated me ever since I read "Pawns in Frankincense" by Dorothy Dunnett and the Jester novels "Jester Leaps In" and "A Death in the Venetian Quarter" just aided and abetted that interest. I'm liking the character of Yashim so far, although we, the readers, are still learning about him. The mystery is promising to be very twisty indeed. I'll post a proper review when I'm done :)

My shiny new book arrived today, "A Play of Knaves" by Margaret Frazer. I love these books :) If anyone wants me, I'll be on the World's Comfiest Sofa. Purring.

:D

First, my MacGyver S4 DVD boxset arrives! Yay!! (Look, I was weak, I'd watched all of S3, there was withdrawal...need I say more?)

THEN my Starsky and Hutch S1 box set arrives! Yay!! (Dirt cheap, on amazon, under a tenner, including delivery. She says, defensively)

AND THEN!! *extra squee* my signed hardcover copy of Diane Duane's "Spock's World" arrives! *dances in glee* (Look, it was a signed DD and I bought it ages ago, hush).

Budget? What budget?

OK, OK, I'll be good now. Promise.

I was at thalinoviel's excellent cheese 'n' port birthday party this evening. Didn't get there until nearly nine due to the hour and a half nap I'd planned lasting over two hours. Damn those anti-histamine tablets! Anyway, I scampered over to Edgware via the petrol station just in time to help scale the south face of the cheese mountain.

Holy cow, was there cheese or was there cheese!!

Much happy scoffing ensued, although I was a good Mitchy and avoided alcohol as I had to drive. cookwitch was there, which was a nice surprise as for some reason I'd got it into my head she was busy this weekend. We nattered and she reminded me about this LJ conversation which resulted in me ordering a series of novels by Susan Cooper. "Oh yeh!" I nodded. "I must poke Amazon about that, cos I got a parcel from them last week but it wasn't the Susan Cooper, it was another novel I'd forgotten I'd ordered! Must find out where the Cooper order's got to."

Well I'm home now and I've just prodded amazon.co.uk and there's no trace of the Susan Cooper's ever having been ordered. The novel I got that I'd forgotten about was ordered on the same date of that LJ conversation, so feck knows what I did. *scratches head* I could have sworn I used Amazon's one click, I even posted I did! Oh well. *shrugs* I've just ordered a load of books so I'll put this one on my amazon wish list for now, and wait til my budget's recovered. Harrumph!

*adds to wish list. Gets message alert from amazon* Ah. Apparently I added it on 6th January. So clearly it wasn't the One-Click button I clicked.....*sobs into keyboard*

If I had a brain, I'd be dangerous!