25 things

I got tagged for this on Facebook, but I didn't really want this sort of rambling about myself on FB, so I decided to post my response here instead.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

I'm not going to tag anyone with this either, but feel free to do it, and do let me know if you do.

So, here goes:

1. When I was very little I wanted to be a ballerina (like most little girls), sadly nature intended me to be not delicate at all.

2. Through my teens my dream job was to work for ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) as a programmer.

3. I own in the region of 2000 paperbacks, and about 75% of them are Fantasy or Science Fiction.

4. I like reading bodice-rippers, including Mills and Boon.

5. I have one leg slightly longer than the other, enough to cause back problems now, but not enough to have been spotted when I was younger.

6. My favourite colour is purple, with blue a close second, and not bright colours.

7. The book I have probably read the most number of times is The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

8. I have a vampirish smile thanks to missing my two middle teeth on the top. I don't have a huge gap there because I never had them as adult teeth, the baby teeth fell out and nothing grew in their place, so the others 'shuffled up' to fill the gap. This means you can clearly see my K9s when I smile, which is one of the reasons I don't do an open mouth smile for photographs.

9. I am a natural redhead. No, I'm not going to prove it ;-)

10. The only physical activity I ever really enjoyed doing (apart from the obvious) was trampolining. Having a chronic back condition sadly put paid to that many years ago, although I frequently think about trying to do it again, to see how I get on.

11. I have an addictive personality, especially for games. I will very quickly become obsessed with something and spend/waste waaay too much time on it. Fortunately I also have the staying power of an asthmatic snail, so I will eventually lose interest and drift away from most obsessions after a period of time.

12. Some things I will stick with, like stitching.

13. My house is full of stuff I bought for projects, that I never then got around to starting. This is aside from my stitching stash.

14. I love gardens, gardening not so much.

15. My dream home would be one where I could buy a farm, build my dream house right in the middle of the land (complete with octagonal library tower), re-forest the remainder with native trees and try to reintroduce some of our endangered native animals. Unfortunately this would require winning the lottery and then some.

16. I am a southerner by birth but a northerner by blood.

17. I attended educationally, what was at the time, the top secondary school in the country. Shows doesn't it *smirk*

18. I hate doing my taxes and despite all good intentions, will always end up putting it off until the last minute. NOTE: For those not in the UK this one is topical, our taxes have to be filed by the 31st Jan each year, let ye incur a fine, so I've just done mine.

19. I wanted to call my son Patrick. Wookiee wouldn't hear of it because of Coupling, specifically the episode from series 2 called My Dinner in Hell (youtube link).

20. When I was much younger (still in junior school) I was so desperate to not seem 'boring' that I made up a middle name for myself (I don't actually have one).

21. I have, in the past, seriously considered moving to Canada. It was the thought of missing all my close friends (not my family) that stopped me.

22. Using the criteria; the name of your first pet + the name of the street you first lived in, my porn star name is Muscles Bisley.

23. I have a 'thing' about stationery (especially pens), towels, china and glasses (the drinks kind). This made living just down the road from Denby for 8 years a potentially expensive prospect.

24. I'm afraid of wooden roller coasters. Steel ones, no problem, love them, wooden ones just scare the whassanames out of me. This is based on experience. First The Grand National at Blackpool, and second the Mighty Canadian Minebuster at Canada's Wonderland.

25. I don't particularly like doing these sort of things but I didn't want to disappoint my tagger(s).

Reconstructive Surgery

or Taking a keyboard apart, washing it and then putting it back together again.


Yes folks, this is one of the things I had to do today. It comes from not paying attention to my own snippets. I left an almost full pint glass of milk on my desk earlier, it was pushed well out of grasping range, but not out of slipper throwing range (my slipper that is). I was just leaving the room when I heard the fateful 'clonk' and rushed back in to see a flood of milk streaming across my desk and creating a lovely waterfall effect onto the carpet below.

Fortunately nothing was ruined, and the only thing that got soaked and needed a good clean was my keyboard, and as someone who did a Computer Science degree back in the day, it's not the first time I've had to clean out a keyboard.

I did struggle a little getting it apart because they had cunningly hidden two of the screws underneath the little sticky rubber feet at the front, and I managed to rip one corner apart with the screw still in place before I realised. Then I had to pop all the keys out of the casing and take them and the casing into the kitchen for a good scrub down, and then left them to dry.

I've just spent about half an hour putting it all back together again. This isn't actually as easy as it sounds. Think about it, if you had to, could you say where all the keys go? The letters shouldn't be too much of a struggle, and the numbers slot in quite nicely, escape key, function keys, all ok. How about Shift, Ctrl, Caps Lock, Tab, Alt, the stupid windows keys that you never use? The arithmetic function keys on the numeric keypad, Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page up and down? It gets trickier doesn't it. How about Scroll Lock? I've just checked and I've got that in the wrong place. Not that it matters too mcuh, I never use it, however it also means I've got the Print Screen button in the wrong place and I do use that.

I think I'll worry about that in the morning.

I've been nominated...

With a You Make Me Smile Award courtesy of Suz of Woozle Madness.




What's really great is that I read her blog because she makes me smile, so I'm revelling in the mutual-making-me-smileyness of it all.

I'm also supposed to nominate some people for this, which might be tricky as I don't keep up with all the blogs on my blogroll like I used to, but here goes:

A Little Pregnant
A Joyous Place
Gemmak
Little Cat Blogs
I Wasn't Always Like This...
Scheiss Weekly


I have enjoyed reading all the blogs on my blogroll at one time or another, and so they all make me smile, but these are some of the ones that I try to keep up with and manage to make me not only smile, but laugh.