Down Amongst The Yla

New Words: 1111
Total Words: 70711
Pages: 224

70,711 / 100,000 (70.7%)

A damn fine hour or so's writing. It was really flowing today, so I couldn't stop when I should have done... Which is slightly naughty of me considering that I was very late this morning - I had to take Max to nursery and walking there took a LOT longer than I thought it would. We weren't late (I was aiming to get him there for the Breakfast Club - cos I know he'd really hit it off with Molly Ringwald - but managed to get him there for just before nursery actually started.) but it meant that I got to work much later than planned. Oh well.

I haven't yet saved the cabin boys from the Kruzhenstern yet. It'll happen in the next bit of writing. But there has been a major and important piece of plottage, which was going to happen at another point a little but later on but I realised would work just as well, if not better, there.

In other news my new Dell should be arriving tomorrow, which is a very good thing, although it means that I have to take the day off tomorrow, which I wasn't really planning on. Oh well, maybe I can persuade Candy to leave her laptop behind and I can do some writing while I'm waiting for it.

And, oh yes - over 70,000 words! Yay! And still so much to do...

Down Amongst The Yla

New Words: 461
Total Words: 69611
Pages: 221

A bit short today, but at least I wrote something...

And I destroyed this ship. It's a very pretty ship in real life and didn't deserve it's treatment, but I needed to destroy a ship in order for the next bit to happen. Although the name may need changing - Kruzenshtern is more of an Yla name than a Franckish name. And, considering the Yla are the baddies, it may not work. Well, that can be left to the editing process, I think.

In other news, I killed my computer over the weekend. I was having a few problems with the hardware communicating with other bits of hardware (like my printer and wireless hub and keyboard - you know, minor things like that...) and so decided to try reinstalling Windows. Which I always hate doing. And this was no exception when it was all going well. When it decided to start going into Safe Mode and then saying 'The Reinstall can not continue in safe mode, restaring computer' and then constantly repeating that bit, hate became to mild a word and I descended into loathing the whole thing.

Anyway, it got to the point that I had to wipe the whole hard drive and then try to reinstall from scratch. Which didn't work. And then I got the bright idea of trying to install a back level version of Windows and upgrade from that. So, I got a copy of Windows 98 that my big bro had lying around - as one does - and tried installing that. It was at this point that the hardware problems reared their ugly heads again. It got the point where it asked if I wanted to boot from the Hard disk (which was, remember blank...) or the CD and the keyboard stopped responding! So, it tried booting from HD and, surprisingly enough, failing when there was nothing there to boot from.

So, at this point, having discussed it with Candy and deciding that we were both sick of having old or second hand PCs we'd buy a brand new one from Dell. This one. It looks nice even if it's not a sexy black Dell computer... I hope it works nicely as well. We'll find out when it arrives.

I've spent that last two days being not very well at all. I've got a really crappy cold - that I am desperately hoping isn't the return of my rhinitis (I don't think it is, because it hasn't really worked the way that my rhinitis-induced colds have - they tend to leap on me and kill me for a day, whereas this one started with a scratchy throat on Saturday and then proceeded to get worse over the weekend until I was totally dead yesterday and am still feeling pretty crappy today - bad enough to take the day off work - which is partly due to the fact that I've had two really bad nights sleep as well, because I've basically been unable to sleep.)

However, a good thing has occurred. The office is now set up. Mostly. It started out as a crappy storage room with hideous shelves and cupboards and a vile floor. It's been papered and painted (by Candy - who is a decorating genius as shewhomust will, I am certain, attest) and carpeted and now has all my comic boxes in (which actually take up less space than I thought they would) and the computer is set up. The only drawback now is that the wireless internet connection which worked excellently with 5.5 Mbps speed when the hub and the computer were in the same room is now very low with a 1.0 Mbps speed. This is annoying. Anyone have any ideas for speeding it up?

However, other than that, everything is going swimmingly. We've got rid of the majority of boxes and we're just about in an actual, liveable condition. Which is pretty amazing, I think. The rest of the house needs re-decorating at some point, but we can take that slower.

Yes, yes, I know, my lunch hour is over so I should be working now rather than writing in my LJ. And, if I'm not working should I be writing the novel?

However...

I did the PC maintenance thing last night. My friend Gail's internet connection died on her and being the incredibly knowledgeable PC person that I am (and having worked on BT's internet helpdesk for all of... ooohhh... six weeks) I went around to try and fix it.

Fortunately, for my self-esteem and Gail's email, the first thing I did fixed it - a standard 'power cycle' (unplug the modem from PC and power supply, reboot the computer and the plug the modem back in) which rebooted the modem. So I was glad of that.

As a reward, she let me go through her clothes that she was giving to charity (Luckily for me, we are pretty much the same size). And I found several things that I liked lots and fitted me well - a gorgeous skirt and several tops. So, I think I came out ahead on that one. Now I just have to find somewhere to store them.

The other thing Candy and I (and Max, although he took less active interest in it than we did) did yesterday evening was look at a house. We've decided that rather than fork out £500 a month in rent, we'd rather start paying a mortgage again. We have quite a limited budget (around £100,000 - which should really be more than enough but the way that house prices have gone recently... We bought a flat about ten years ago for £34,000 and sold it about four years ago for £80,000 and the prices have just kept on rising) but it's at least enough to get something. The house we saw yesterday was in a reasonable area, two bedrooms and a garden both front and back. It's bigger than where we are now, but not by much. It is, however, a very strong possibility. It has a lot of potential (including a workroom/outhouse area that could conceivably be converted into an office/library). We have another place to see tomorrow that is very close to this house. That one has three bedrooms and is quite a lot larger than this one, but it only has one paved garden area at the back. Looking at it again though on the estate agent website, it does look very promising (and we could always rip up the paving stones and lay turf. We've done the turf laying thing and we're very good at it.)