I thought of an excellent time-travel story name: Imminent Victorians.

No, I don't have a story to go with it. Just the title. But it's a very nice title, don't you think? *pats it*

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I'm on leave next week, hoorah! Which means this week I'm panicking slightly about getting a load of stuff done. 'Tis always the way.

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Tea and biscuits was the only sensible way to deal with today's miserable weather.

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Argh, I am a bad person: I have two fics that I said I'd beta ages ago and haven't yet (I'm sorry!), and one fic that someone kindly beta'd for me but which I haven't given a final tidy up so I can post it. And I started on the end run for Valentines, but now I've stalled again. Fail, fail, fail, fail, fail.

On the other hand, I'm getting along awesomely (at last) with your thing, lolmac! So... nearly... finished...

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Kat has a new "lawn" (patch of wheatgrass growing in a tray), and it makes her a happy kitty. Without it, she was a sad and mopey kitty, who liked to sit and poke at her old, decrepit, dried-out lawn and then stare at us, meowing pointedly. She hid while we got rid of it, and then helped out with planting the new one, patting down the earth and supervising the watering. While it was growing, she kept running upstairs to gaze longingly at it on the windowsill, out of her reach. It took forever (five days), but finally it was ready to give to her, and once she'd pigged out on grass stalks, she was a sleepy, purry, mellow kitty all evening.

She tries to pounce on the water whenever it's being watered, and then sticks her nose right into the damp earth and sniffs and sniffs and SNIFFS.

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Hey, there are still some excellent episodes available for recapping on redial_the_gate! This is Season 10, your last chance...

Flesh & Blood, Uninvited, Counterstrike, Company of Thieves, The Quest pt 2, Family Ties (go on, you know that would be awesome to mock), Dominion (I think that and Family Ties may be partially optioned...? It's in some way negotiable? I can't see LJ at the moment to check what exactly the situation was).

ETA: Someone has claimed either Dominion or Family Ties, so I guess if you particularly want one of those, you can probably have it.

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I... have forgotten what I was going to say here.

I'm okay, and in no kind of danger, in case anyone was worrying. I was in London on Monday, but I saw absolutely nothing of the riots. It's a remarkably big city. It's more like several cities stuck together.

This all reminded me of the Brixton and Tottenham riots back in 1985. They began for similar reasons, in a similar climate - economic depression, Conservative government, the possibility that the police had caused the death of an innocent. That was a scary time. I lived close to Tottenham, and I went to school with the son of a policeman who was violently killed in the Broadwater Farm riot. I didn't know him that well (I didn't like him that much, either, but then I was eight and he was a BOY), but I keep thinking of him now, wondering how it affected him, and how he feels about this current situation. It must be difficult.

Broadwater Farm is a name fixed in a lot of North Londoners's minds as a Place You Do Not Go. Reminded about it, I looked it up. It's been reconstructed, both in the local organisations and in the buildings themselves (although the ugly high rise blocks are still there). The results are amazing:

Since the regeneration, Broadwater Farm now has one of the lowest crime rates of any urban area in the world. In the first quarter of 2005, there was not a single reported robbery or outdoor assault on Broadwater Farm, and only a single burglary, from which all property was recovered and the suspect arrested; this compares with 875 burglaries, 50 robberies and 50 assaults in the third quarter of 1985 immediately preceding the riot. In an independent 2003 survey of all the estate's residents, only 2% said they considered the area unsafe, the lowest figure for any area in London. The estate also has the lowest rent arrears of any part of the borough.

In 2005 the Metropolitan Police disbanded the Broadwater Farm Unit altogether as no longer required in an area with such a low crime rate.

Do you read to go to sleep? I've never managed it, but it seems like most people do. I can't allow myself to read at bedtime any more, because I can't stop. Time vanishes. I have no willpower. It's partly that I'm a night-owl - but even when I want to go to sleep, when I'm really tired and my eyelids are heavy, my eyes are gritty, if I pick up a book, I feel compelled to stay awake and keep reading, fighting sleep all the way. I know that, if I try to put it down, my mind won't shut off - it's generally the only time I'm insomniac - so I might as well just stay awake and keep going. Eventually, I realised that I had to make a choice between reading at night and functioning at work. Sometimes I lapse (damn you, Hundred-Thousand Kingdoms), but mostly the latter is the only real option.

( Some thinkiness. )

I keep starting posts to say "hullo world", and then running up against the too-much-to-say problem, you know? So, in summary, or I'll never post again:

- Nice Christmas, thanks. Quiet. Ate too much. Nice presents.
- Eventually got to see my family. Ate more food, played Trivial Pursuit. Me and my brother and mother are triviaholics. Fun game.
- Boo at being back at work.
- Boo at other stuff.
- Off sick Thurs & Fri. Watched all of Sanctuary season 2. ( Someone please tell me... )
- Spoiler-free warning to ultranos: if you're anything like me in your reading habits, only read 'The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms' by N.K. Jemisin if you don't have to get up the next day. I started it on Saturday evening, and read it until I fell asleep at about 8am on Sunday. (I have the second book, and oh dear, I better hide it until the weekend, my sleep cycle is screwed up enough as it is...).
- Phoned the cat protection people (left a message, they will call back) to arrange a home visit, to really begin the kitten-getting process. Eeee...
- I really should do that 2010 fic summary thing.

My brain is being very tricksy, lately. It's messing with me, via dreams. It's trying various different ways to keep me asleep.

The other day I woke up with the alarm, but dozed back off again, and dreamed that I was getting up and getting dressed - my brain's way of saying you don't need to worry about getting up because you're already doing it, shhh, go back to sleeeeep. It's tried this before. Sometimes it's successful. Fortunately, A woke me up, this time.

Last night I dreamed that I went to a bakery, and bought a load of cakes, including some particularly lovely cinnamon doughnuts, to take to a party. Then I dreamed that I woke up, and thought 'ooh, cinnamon doughnuts, what a good idea!', and on my way to work I went to a bakery and bought some.

I'm fairly sure I'm awake right now, if only because I don't have a cinnamon doughnut.

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I was innocently playing on my computer on Sunday, while A played console games - and then I heard a familiar voice purring smart remarks laden with single-entendres. "Hello," I thought. "That's Vala!"

A was playing 'Uncharted 2', in which Claudia Black does indeed voice one of the characters, Chloe. And Chloe is enough like Vala to make the game much more entertaining for me. For instance, the main character asked to be left in prison rather than deal with her - he said it was safer. It was very Vala-and-Daniel-esque. Or this:

Chloe: The files are in his tent, and his tent is in the middle of the camp. It's like an armed compound, there are soldiers everywhere.
Nathan: Well, that's why it has to be an inside job. From someone they know and trust.
Chloe: Oh, okay, I see where this is going.
Nathan: I'll just need a diversion. You give me five minutes in that tent, that's all it'll take.
Chloe: Really, five minutes? Well, that's great, I won't even have to get my top off.
Nathan: Chloe, I was thinking more like an explosion.
Chloe: Or that... can be arranged.

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I wish I had a cinnamon doughnut.

Went through my wardrobe this weekend, culling the stuff I don't wear. I'll take some of it to a clothes swap, after which I'll take the rest to a charity shop. I've been meaning to do this since - well, since I last moved house. I can be quite ruthless when doing clearouts, but I was a bit soft-hearted yesterday and still got rid of a ton of stuff. Clearly it was about time. I might have to have a phase 2.

As well as the old and decrepit and the looked-better-on-the-hangar, I'm letting go of all those if-I-just-drop-a-couple-of-dress-sizes clothes. Well, except for one - I let myself keep one: a blue flower print dress, embroidered with unicorns and lightning bolts and skull & crossbones and pills and stars and locks and rainbows... I had to keep that one. And when I drop a couple of dress sizes, and my magnificent but rather cumbersome bosom no longer forces the buttons down the front to gape, I will wear the hell out of it! :)

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( The best thing about having read Twilight is getting the jokes. )

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ETA: Hey. Has Sam / anyone invented a remote dialling device, like they have on the ships, only one they can port around with them? So, like, when they need to report back to the SGC, instead of schlepping back to the SGC, they can just dial in the co-ordinates on a nifty armpiece, and tell Gen. Hammond they're okay and need another couple of hours to look at some important ruins? Because, were I in charge of SG-1, that would be my first order. "Make something that means we don't have to keep walking back and forth from the Gate or rely on the SGC dialling in. My feet hurt." Of course, I am quite lazy, plus sometimes I wear impractical shoes (but only if they REALLY go with my outfit), so.

I can't remember if that exists outside of the ships. Am I being really forgetful? If not, Sam should get right on it - after the hoverbikes.

Today I thought I'd share with you a... curio, I suppose. A past memory; a book from my childhood.



( Essential reading in the household I grew up in. )