Weasel reads to me before we go to sleep most nights. We’ve been working our way through the Moomin books. We’re reading Moominsummer Madness at the moment, there is a volcano eruption followed by a tsunami. The lower half of Moominhouse is flooded and the Moomin family and friends are upstairs. They decide they need breakfast and Moomin bravely volunteers to swim to the kitchen for food. Moominpapa says there’s a better way and using an augur cuts a hole in the floor to the kitchen. He finds the process, ‘disturbing, but highly satisfying’. The phrasing slayed me. I told Weasel that that would be the title of my autobiography. She said the reviewers would love it because the title says it all.

This hails back to a few weeks ago when Weasel and I were leaving the grocery store. We’d packed our bicycle panniers and I’d just put the trolley back. I enjoy narrating my life sometimes so as I walked back to her I said, ‘I approached her from behind, she was surprised, but willing.’ She loved this and said ‘Surprised, but Willing’ would be the name of her autobiography. The titles are all worked out and every time we talk about it we get a laugh.

Whilst trying to find out the title of our book, I was on Wikipedia and I discovered the existence of Moomin World in Finland and now I really, really want to go. Must find money.

When I was in the States in November I bought some fudge covered graham crackers. I finished them rather too soon so I decided I needed to make my own. The crackers were the easy part, it took some doing to figure out how to cover them in fudge. I tried dipping, but the fudge was too thick. I tried dipping half, but it didn’t look very nice. I finally just spooned some on top. Then decided a sandwich style was best. They taste wonderful, they’re rather rich so next time I shall make the crackers smaller. I’ll also reduce the sugar slightly.

My headphones decided to die recently so I switched to an old pair. I did all right for ages, but then the right cup stopped working. I hate shopping for headphones, the things I need to know are rarely listed as features. As I’m moderately deaf, I need headphones that I can wear for a long time without pain or being overheated. I need it to be loud, but clear. I didn’t want cup style headphones again because I think they might have been encouraging my ear chronic ear infections. I thought I’d be able to go to Google and ask for headphones for hard of hearing or deaf people, but no one seems to want to share. After I fair bit of comparing and dithering, I settled on the aiaiai Tracks Headphone. I bought the peach set because Amazon had it for three pounds cheaper than the other colours – £29.99 + shipping. Weasel said that boys don’t like peach so it has less demand. I’m not fussed at the colour.

Anyway! I love them. They clamp more securely to my ears so the sound is clearer. I can hear the sounds from my hearing loop microphone much better. The overspill sound is much less [according to Weasel]. They’re very comfortable as there are no sharp parts or plastic bits poking in my ears. The headband part is so light weight, I feel much cooler wearing them. So there you are, deaf/hard of hearing people – if you need quality headphones I recommend the aiaiai Tracks Headphone.

In my book club this month, we’re reading W.M. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. I am about 200 pages in so far and find it quite charming. I was however, suffering with Crawley confusion. There is a baronet, his brother, his half-sister, two deceased wives, two sons, two daughters and a host of ancestors. I was getting the brother and the son confused and didn’t know who was trying to marry whom. Finally, I had to ask the internet, draw a family tree and re-read portions of the book. I think I finally have a handle on all of them.

One thing I absolutely adore about books written during that time [1848] is when the author addresses the reader. Like you’re on this amazing adventure together. It is proper story telling instead of the current style to pretend that the fictional world alone exists. If I ever feel like writing something, I think I’ll break the fourth wall and talk to my readers.

I organised our CDs the other day. When we buy new ones we tend to stick them in at the end instead of shifting everything along by one. We are sorted alphabetically by artist then by album name. While I was at it, I decided to update our spreadsheet. I hadn’t updated it since 2006. I can now tell you that we have 473 albums. Then I started having a look through ones that still need ripping. Which lead me to look through the MP3s we already have. Then I saw how messy some of the tags were. I’ve been correcting artist names, putting in album names and finding doubles. We have 53.7gb on one computer and 115gb on the other. I’m going to be working on this for a while. Plus, I need to make sure I get proper back-ups of the album I bought digitally [VAST's last few albums have only been released online]. It’s still my kind of project, I love organising things.

I walked to Scrabble today. Shortly after I left the house I had a coughing fit and managed to bring something up. I went to spit it out in a tissue and it was already gone. I couldn’t find it, assumed it landed on the ground and kept going. Got to Scrabble, played three games [best word today, 'candies' with the 'd' making 'tithed' for 80 points] then got my MP3 player from my bag. Where I discovered something sort of sticky. My thing I coughed up landed on that and I found later, my coat. I’m one classy broad.

Speaking of being classy, I had a doctor’s appointment at the hospital a few weeks ago and I went in my wheelchair. Outside of the outpatient’s entrance there is a huge banner saying that the hospital grounds are no smoking. There’s a audio message about not smoking playing at the doors. There’s also a bench outside the door, in front of the huge banner. Nine times out of 10 when I arrive at the hospital there is someone smoking there. I usually gently seethe to myself and carry on. This time though, I was exhausted before I got there [thus the chair], I was short of understanding and I watched as this man exited the hospital, stood in front of the bench facing the giant sign and lit up a fag. I wheeled up to him and said, ‘Do you not see the no smoking signs?’ He looked flustered, apologised then looked helpless because he’s just lit it and didn’t want to waste it. I continued, ‘People like me with lung conditions have to come through here.’ and I went on my way.

This would have been awesome if I could have moved on from there. Unfortunately, I suck at confrontation so I had a pounding heart, felt shaky and kept replaying the scene in my head. He was fine, I was fine, it was no big deal, but I just couldn’t stop reacting. Ah well, at least I did it.

I don’t begrudge people smoking, to each their own, but it just seems sort of cruel to do it at the entrance to a hospital.

A friend called yesterday and pointed out that Google Reader caches one’s feed. I’m amazed that they’ve not been taken to task for this. I found loads of threads in Google help forums from people who’d put tests posts up to see how the feed looked only to find that they’re there forever. As a result, I have to change my RSS feed address, I haven’t done it yet, but I’ll tell you when I do. Google are supposed to not be evil but then they keep doing evil things without telling anyone. If anyone has any other tips like that please let me know. I’m not going to spread the word to new places for a while. And who knows, I may well panic and change my mind again.

I appreciate that this is past due, but Christmas! We had plans, three days at her parent’s house. Christmas Eve with Weasel’s family, her Nan, aunt, uncle and a handful of cousins. Christmas Day would be just the five of us. Boxing Day would be Weasel’s half-brother and his wife. Except, Nan had a bad turn and was unable to come. No one else wanted to come and leave her. Then the turn turned out to be a worse than expected and Weasel’s parents needed to go to her.

Christmas Eve changed to just the five of us our house. It was still a wonderful day, we played games, chatted, ate yummy things and selected our Christmas charities. Fergus put on his Christmas jumper and I had a Santa hat hair clip. Christmas Day featured a Doodle coming to us. We ate yummy wraps and drank Buck’s Fizz.

Boxing Day was just Weasel and I at home.

Nan is a wonderful woman, I feel like I’ve known her for so much longer than 12 years. She’s an exceptional Mum and grandmother. I’m helping by supporting Weasel, so she can better support her Mum. The whole thing sucks.

Here we are again, another new beginning. I’ve kept a journal on the internet since 1998, the archives get heavy over time and I have to shed them. I can tell when it has become too heavy because I no longer wish to write.

With this latest phoenix rise, I am doing something I’ve never done before. I’m integrating my website into all of my internet dealings. I’ll be linking to here from Facebook, I’ll share the address with my Mom, I might even add it to my e-mail signature. I may no longer be so anonymous, but I still give pseudonyms to my friends and family.

The clock has just rolled over to 2nd January, which means today is Weasel’s 32nd birthday! She’s keeping things low-key. I’m going to make Spicy Peanut Butter Chicken* on Broccoli for her.

* I discovered new word recently, flexitarian. Basically someone who is a part-time vegetarian. Weasel and I rarely eat meat, in my case, monthly maybe. Depends on my mood. Anyway, this won’t be chicken, it’ll be Quorn.

Steroids continue to kick my ass. I’m alternating 5 and 7mg at the moment. I’m hoping to be 5mg even when I see my doctor on the 12th.

Doodle lent me several DVDs over Christmas, I’ve watched all of the first season of Sherlock [awesome] and all three seasons of Arrested Development. I enjoyed it, but compared to season one season three was falling flat a lot, I can see why it got cancelled. Having said that, I’m still excited for the movie. I’ve still got the latest seasons of Scrubs, American Dad and Miranda to get through. Doodle is so very good to me.

Speaking of Doodle and TV things. He came over for NYE last night. We planned on ordering Domino’s, they’re having the three small pizzas for £5.55 deal again so I told Doodle we could either have one and a half each OR we could have two and a breakfast pizza. I then left him to order his first. When I got back, I saw he went for all three, I was delighted of course [I may have done a Mr Burns impression] and he told me he was my enabler. He totally is. Food ordered, we started watching films.

Rubber staring a homicidal tyre called Robert was first, I said it put me in mind of something that would have appeared on PBS in 1974. Weasel did an excellent voice over thing about how if we enjoyed this classic piece of Ukrainian cinema we should send donations. I honestly have no idea what I thought about it. We watched Moon after that. It featured many HAL impressions from us. I enjoyed the twist and the ending was fairly satisfying. The Exorcist followed. I’d not seen it before [that I remember anyway]. The most intriguing thing to me is that there is no CGI in the film, it is all proper masks and fake blood. Most disturbing part was Regan crab-walking backwards down the stairs with blood pouring from her mouth. Creepy. We finished off the marathon with John Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man. It stars Chevy Chase and Daryl Hannah. I don’t think I need to say more.

We watched Big Ben strike midnight then the fireworks display. I don’t know the tosser they had hosting it, but he was a tosser. The music mix they played so distracted and upset me that I couldn’t properly focus on the display. They mixed really awesome songs with really crap ones and it was very jarring.

Today has been quiet. Weasel and I went on a long walk. I’ve done a bit of cleaning. I thought about making Graham Crackers, but my butter needed to thaw first, so that’ll be tomorrow. Weasel had some friends visit. Tidied up the old website and now I am long over due for bed.