By Slanted Light

It's been a rough few days (weeks...), what with Job 1 and Job 2 and on top of that continued bombardments from Madam about my foodsaving project, but with no concessions whatsoever (gaaargh!), but I snatched a couple of hours today to wander up to the nearest Cathedral city for a bit of shopping, and happened to get there just at dusk...



Tonight was supposed to be my last Job 2 night, and I actually booked a day off tomorrow - and then I stupidly said yes when I was asked to pick up some Job 2 slack, so... waaaah! All I want is a bit of time to just dust! This weekend - surely this weekend I will have time for catching up on things like dusting and taxes (yeurch) and then lovely Pros-y things? Surely...!

How're you doing? *g*

Hello! It's the Monday after Christmas, and it's a bank holiday Monday, and after three days of mostly sitting on my couch and reading books, interspersed with watching telly, I think I should probably try and be a bit more active today... *g* So - a post isn't a bad place to start, I think? Hope you all had good days over the break - and still are having! Hello. *g*(My Pros-y Christmas-y view from the couch... Hurrah Pros, and ProsFandomCards, and thank you all! *g*)

( There's been reading... )

( Watching telly... )

What else? Astreiant fanfic! Three new ones - A Life in Star Signs, Wicked Grace and Four Things Philip..., all by Anonymous (I suspect the same one, but not sure). And of course lots of Pros that I'm catching up (too slowly) on. So much to read in the world, so little time... *g*

So now I'm at the bit between Christmas and New Year where you're thinking about all the possibilities and potential that next year has. What will I do? What's my plan? This year has been - well, okay, but it's involved far too much work and whinging about work, and not enough brilliant things in the world! I lost all my weekends away and holidays a couple of years ago, and I don't seem to have replaced them yet - so I guess that's part of my plan for 2016. And I'm enjoying reading still (well, as ever *g*), so more of that please. *g* But what else...? I'm toying with the idea of doing a 365 photography project (where you take a photo and show it to people every day for a year - guess who that would be. *g*), cos I seem to have put down my camera a bit- no reason other than work and all, really. There's a course I've got my eye on, not far away. There's bookbinding. Fiddling. National Trusting. Those all seem sort of background things though. What d'you reckon? What should I do in 2016? All ideas and thoughts welcome!

And what are you thinking of doing in 2016?

...and I've been wanting to post all through, and taking photos and starting posts and somehow it's just not happened - ack! So even though I have something that I really really really have to do today, I'm going to post here as well! Cos this definitely feels like left-overs!

( Christmas NT... )
( Winter walk... )

So - it's been Christmas... *g*...and this is what Christmas Eve looked like in my new place!

I've not been nearly as Christmas-y feeling as I'd planned to be, and I've only read one and a bit Christmas-y books instead of all the ones I wanted to, and I've not even kept up with the ci5hq advent calendar properly - and I've got two Dialj stories to catch up on, but I do have a reasonably tidy home, with most things put away at last, been discharged from my two Cambridge hospital thingies (just keep taking the pills, comrade *g*), have been to my first book group-that-was-the-Christmas-meal-and-book-exchange, a mulled wine postcode party, and... blimey, what else? Just about kept up with work, done a bit of writing, which I'm quite pleased about, and am planning to do much more over Christmas (well I'd better, my Dialj day is Boxing Day... eeep!) (See - I wrote that bit of the post the other day, and did it get here? No!). I even managed to find a Christmas tree that fit in my empty space, and decorate! And Riverford sent mistletoe! In fact I've never seen so much mistletoe around that people actually do use it to decorate - I really have never actually come across that in real life, but it's all over the place down here - properly Christmas-y. You can see my wee bunch just to the left of the door in the first picture... *g*I even found red berries on a holly bush a few weeks ago - properly Christmas-y (I left them where they were, cos it was a National Trust place, and they wouldn't have been happy!) And the nice Christmas-tree-man let me have extra off-cuts to take away, so I've hung more greenery around too (you can just see some to the right of the first pic...) *g* I haven't got everything put away properly yet, but I do have things mostly on shelves or in cupboards or pretending to be put away, so it's tidy for Christmas and all, which is good. I have many shelves (though still not enough for all my dvds - I think I need to build up and over the telly when I've saved up some money again!)

So... Christmas yesterday was a bit odd, on my own for the first time in years, but it was nice to be on my own in my own place, so that worked! It was less nice that Santa brought me face-ache that got progressively worse over the day (and is back again now that I've had breakfast - waaah!) and mucked up my plans for much writing, but otherwise I had surprise-emails and happy-emails and my sister sent me a present that in the old days would have been a book token, but is now an Amazon token. So effectively still a book token... *g* And I made nut roast and roast veg for dinner, with carmelised onion gravy, and that was yum, although face-achey, cos it's tooth-jaw driven. Just bloody ow!

( The prettiest bath... )