Last weekend, whilst watching the few remaining episodes of Baywatch that we had stored, I thought to myself “That’s two days of my life, cooped up inside.” Although it was brilliant fun and I absolutely adore Baywatch, having done the exact same thing for the previous three weekends as well, I was starting to think maybe there was something else I could be doing with my free time. Now Baywatch seems to have been taken off the air so we have an entire weekend to fill, and no idea what to do with it.

Towards the end of December, I ordered something off the internet. I really wanted to support the project, because I’m becoming more and more interested in people self-publishing. Plus I like photographs. The money was taken in early January but I didn’t see anything for a month. After emailing to chase it up, I discovered the order had got lost and would have to be redone, meaning another 2-4 week wait. I wasn’t best pleased with this, so I chose the refund option instead.

UKTV Gold have been playing repeats of Baywatch. Man, I love this show. I think I got into it when I saw my brother watching it, but that wouldn’t have been until about the seventh or eighth series. We’ve been watching the first series. It was on every weekday, so I recorded them all up and we’ve been settling down to watch them at weekends. Five hours of Baywatch certainly sucks up a lot of time. It’s totally worth it, of course, but there’s always a niggling doubt that I could be doing something better with my time.

I can’t remember what it was like before I read and wrote blogs.

Every night I set my alarm for the morning, and at some point during the night I will always add an extra hour to the time. Then when the alarm finally goes off, I know that I have to get up - there is no option. I don’t know why I can’t seem to get up when I want to. I’m tired, yes, but I’m always tired and this shouldn’t make any difference. I can count the number of days that I have woken up feeling refreshed on one hand, so you’d think I would be used to it by now. Maybe it’s ‘cos I don’t want to get up and go to work, but I’m trying to convince myself that I could use the extra time in the morning to do something useful.

I didn’t win the lottery. It buoys me somewhat that no one did, however this means I will have to buy another ticket this week and go through the whole process again. For the last three months or so, I’ve been volunteering to design and update a website for a friend. I’ve spent days on this website, making the different sections, writing the content from the information I’m given, and sorting out all the pictures. I also spent a very long time getting a database up and running for visitor polls.

Last week, I saw that the Euro Millions Lottery had a jackpot of £85 million. This amount of money is beyond my comprehension, but it sounded like fun and I was tempted to buy a ticket. I didn’t. This week, the jackpot rolled over again and is now up to £100 million pounds. This time, I thought a ticket might be worthwhile. So, I bought my ticket, chose my numbers and now sit and wait for the draw. I absolutely detest playing the lottery, or competitions of any kind. The practical person inside of me is saying “Don’t be silly, you’re never going to win, look at the odds. And you’re the unluckiest person in the world so don’t even think about it.” But there’s always a tiny voice, deep down in my toes that pipes up “Someone’s got to win it, why couldn’t it be me?”

As usual, when I proclaim that this weekend we will spend no money at all, we go out and find something to buy. Perhaps one day I will say “You know what? Spend all the money you can,” and I will not come home with anything new. (This is not a good idea.) Thankfully, I didn’t buy the bulk of it, and merely adopted the toy as my own: A PSP.

We went to Autosport International this weekend. Needless to say, I was ready to leave on Saturday morning quite a long time before Mr C had even contemplated packing his bag. The headless chicken phase kicked in and he rushed around looking for shoes and toothpaste and the usual rubbish. He sat in front of the computer and struggled to print off the directions we needed to get from the NEC to the hotel. He cursed and kicked the machine and eventually got it to print out. I mentioned checking the traffic, but it went over his head and we were soon on our way.

There’s a drain right outside the door at work. Every time I leave the office, I grip my keys very tightly, in case they fall in. Even if they’re in my bag, tucked at the bottom, I still have to make sure I hug it close to me - they could jump out and fall in, you never know. Tomorrow is Friday the 13th - unlucky for some. I am the unluckiest person in the world - it’s official. Although life is pretty good, there’s always something. Like my car breaking down a week before I’m buying a new one, and other things like that. But traditionally, Friday 13th has been lucky for me. Good things happen on that day.

Although we do try and insist on no Christmas presents, some people still prefer to buy us some things - my future mother-in-law being the main culprit. Mr C returned home one Friday night with a box full of presents. Oh well. This year, if you ignore the copious amounts of chocolate and wine, there were actually some very useful bits and bobs in there. A mini tripod for the camera, a tow-rope for the man, and some very nice torches.

I was like any other young girl in the world, and wanted to be a famous pop star when I grew up. I would prance around my bedroom, with my hairbrush as my microphone. I would get very excited about finding a karaoke album with up to date pop songs, so that I could really show off how great I was. Problem was, I could never actually sing out loud in front of other people. Not a good start to a career in the music business, eh?

It was kinda a tradition. To sit down and relax with a glass of something strong, a duvet to snuggle under and the remote control. Now I find out this: …If we’re not whooping it up and dodging strangers’ saliva in someone’s nasty flat as Big Ben bongs, we feel consigned to the socio-economic sector that picks its spots in its anorak in front of Jools Holland’s Hootenanny - which I recently found out, to my naive disappointment, is filmed much earlier in the day, even though they’ve got a great big clock and all the celebrities cheer at pretend-midnight. Not that I’ve ever seen it, of course.

Blogging This is the one that has my attention most at the moment. I’ve been thinking recently about changing the layout of the blog, and I did a couple of test designs, but they didn’t really seem to work. Then I realised, I like how my blog looks at the moment. And once I’d decided not to change it completely, I realised that the scope was there to make it better. Don’t ditch it, make it better. So that’s what I’m trying to do.

Learning This is just a short one. I’ve really decided that despite the fact I’m not even sure this is what I want to do, I really need to start making the effort.

Writing I’m always telling myself that I’m a writer, but just lately there has been very little evidence to support that theory. I’m too much of a perfectionist and every time I start to write something, I can’t get past the first chapter without thinking it’s absolutely useless and quitting right there and then. The new plan is to actually get things written. I’ve been writing a few things, and getting my mother to read them, and I think this second opinion is really starting to help me let go of the desire for perfection. If someone else is looking through it as well, then they can suggest any necessary changes, whilst I am writing the next part. And it seems to be working.

Theatre On my new 2006 calendar, I have marked down everything I want to see, and I am totally prepared to go and see everything I have noted. In one particular week, there are three different things on that I want to see!

Fitness I don’t think I have ever felt this uncomfortable in my own skin. Therefore the first of my New Year’s Resolutions is definitely to start doing something about this. My usual plan of action would be to stop any kind of food passing my lips for a week or so and then go back to normal. This time, I’m going to do it properly. Cut down on the biscuits, start doing some exercise (ugh) and try and be a lot healthier.

There’s a particular electronics retail outfit that starts with a PC and ends with a World and has rude staff. I was sent to the World today, and was very happy when I found exactly what I wanted straight away. I took it to the desk, where a man with a ginger beard took it and scanned it. “Is this for business or pleasure?” he guffawed, “need I ask.” How RUDE!! Why is it the funniest notion ever to think that I could be buying for business??

I was talking with someone recently about how quickly this year has gone. It seems like only five minutes ago, I was badmouthing Christmas for the first time and no one was listening. The whole year has gone where exactly? I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t feel like I’ve achieved anything this year. Yes, I may have got a certificate up on the wall, but what about the rest?

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Doctor Who when it came back. I quite enjoyed the first episode, and watched any others if I was near a television at that time on a Saturday night, but I wasn’t really bothered if I missed any. Not so, this new series. Starring the delectable David Tennant, you are going to have to kidnap me and keep me locked away in a padded cell before I will miss an episode.

For ages, I’ve been wanting the new Monopoly Here & Now Limited Edition. Mr C wouldn’t let me buy it because he has some kind of ‘scarred for life’ childhood issues relating to Monopoly. As an act of kindness, he relented and said I could get it. We’re going to see my parents over the holiday, and I said I would take it to play with them, and he even said he might join in! (Somehow, I don’t see this happening.)

Overheard today: “Is it just me or are you completely bored about the whole George Best in hospital saga?” “I haven’t really heard that much about it, I don’t watch the news.” “I mean, honestly, he’s back in hospital, he’s on a life support machine, he’s in a coma. Aren’t there any real newsworthy stories to report on?” And that’s the thing. There aren’t. Not when you have to fill up an entire 24 hours of news. It’s easier for the hourly news programmes on the regular channels, because they can just pick the best of what their longer cousins on the 24 hour news channels have reported. But to have to think up news to fill every second of the day must be incredibly hard. It’s no wonder that things like George Best’s ailing condition, and Elaine Lorden collapsing in the jungle, get hours and hours of speculation and guest interviews with very little facts.

I’ve been looking into buying some more piano music. Every now and again I sit down at my keyboard and bash out some of the standard tunes that I have, but my music is the same it’s been for about three years. It’s about time I purchased something new, something I really want to play, something to get my teeth into. However, nothing is grabbing me. I’ve been to the best music shop in the world (which upon searching for the website for, I have discovered has been sold - my world has crashed down upon my shoulders…), I’ve even been searching on Amazon, but nothing is jumping out at me.

We have purchased a laptop, something Mr C has been talking about and thinking about for way too long now. We looked at one, we walked around a bit, looked at some more, and then went back to the one we first thought of. But either way, I was pretty excited about the new and shininess of it. So, because he would be playing on his new toy for the rest of the weekend, I was granted permission to purchase some new games for the Playstation. First on the list: The Sims 2. Although I have been bored of the game on the computer, this would mean a complete new wave of interest, and what I’ve seen so far is pretty impressive. My one concern is that I created a Sim and was just testing the waters, and somehow, within about three hours of knowing each other, she had married another Sim called Ossie. Hmmm.

It’s new. I like things that are shiny and new. It has a TV guide within it that is actually correct. Our previous Freeview box kept losing the time and would show us a guide for the following day. Not very helpful. Within said TV Guide, you can schedule a recording with one click. It doesn’t always work and I’ve yet to figure out why it is so selective, but when it does, it’s pretty fabulous. You can rewind live television. As soon as you change channels, it begins recording what you are watching for up to half an hour. No more “What did she just say?” You can pause live television. You can pause live television whilst you are recording something else. Now that is clever. There’s no more worrying about only having three hours on a tape, or whether you are recording over something important. We’ve got 40ish hours before you even need to think about deleting anything. It completely revolutionises my evenings. Instead of scheduling things around my television guide, I can just record everything and watch it at my leisure. (Sometimes, when I write things down, I suddenly realise how much I really do need to get a life!) It had the facility for Top Up TV, which means we just had to get it. We can’t have potential being unfulfilled now, can we? I watched Entertainment Tonight! This has nothing to do with the PVR, but I was quite excited about it.

I think I might need to visit the optician. The obsessive compulsive in me cannot stand the optician. For a start, the optician must sit very close to you to look into your eyes, and it’s usually pretty dark. This makes me very uncomfortable. And then there’s the matter of all the questions. So many questions, and none of them with a correct answer. “Which colour is brighter, the red or the green?” they will ask me, and after a moment’s deliberation, I will pick one. They will hmm, make a note on their paper, and continue with another question.

I have recently finished reading the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? book. It was a memoir from Chris Tarrant about all the contestants that meant something special to him. It made me sick. All those people earning thousands just for answering a couple of questions correctly. Who wouldn’t love £500,000 for a half hours work? But if I went on there, you can guarantee the questions would be horrible and I would struggle to get to £1,000. And that’s assuming that I didn’t pass out from the fear of being on television first.

I used to believe in standard education. I thought that it was important to get your GCSE’s. They’re a standard qualification that everyone can recognise, and are necessary before you even apply for certain jobs. And that is true. Partly. This time last year, I was signed up for Key Skills classes to complete my qualification. I was annoyed. Why should I have to take lessons in numeracy (hello? I’m training to work with numbers here) and communication (I work for a living. I use the phone, I write letters, what more do you need from me?). So, I complained and there was a kerfuffle and they said with copies of my GCSE certificates, I could be exempt from the Key Skills part of the course.

The nights were drawing in closer, and the afternoons never really brightened up, leaving a dull mist over the entire town. But through the dingy weather, a brightness would spring up and make all the locals smile: It was carnival time. The streets were filled with flags, the local brass band was practicing every night, and the fair was setting up on the local rec field. For us kids, it was especially exciting, as it was half term.

I just watched The Hoobs (absolutely rubbish, potato printing is so not what kids these days want to do), and I realised that one of the Hoobs is voiced by the same guy that voices one of the Hyenas in Ministry of Mayhem. I need to get out more.

“So, do you export much out of there?” “Um, not really. I don’t think we do export anything really, most of the stuff gets exported inwards.” Ha.

Three things I need to admit to before I start this post: I didn’t know there was such a thing as the Stirling Prize before we caught the awards on television. We only watched two and a half out of the six entrants I am biased towards all things F1 So, flicking through the channels, we stumbled across Kevin McLoud. I got all excited, thinking a new series of Grand Designs had started without me knowing, but soon realised it was actually coverage of the Stirling Prize announcement. The Scottish Parliament building won.

I will take any opportunity to drive my new car around, so this weekend I decided to go to Stonehenge. I wasn’t as impressed as I should have been. Why is it so impressive that these ancient people had the technology to get the stones into position? They must have gone and forgotten it afterwards because it wasn’t passed down from generation to generation. The audioguide said we didn’t know for sure how they did it. I can’t find it impressive that they are thousands of years old because it doesn’t compute. 2,000 years before we even started counting time? I can’t begin to imagine that sort of date. If they were clever enough to figure out that the sun was in that particular position on particular days and stuff, why did we have to wait 2,000 years for a calendar to be developed? The fact that the audioguide actually said to me: “Why is this stone here? We don’t know. Were there others like it? We don’t know.” What exactly is the point of a guide that doesn’t know what it’s talking about?

I bought a new car. I didn’t mean to. It just happened. Mr C: So, which one would you have if you were going to get one? Me: Dunno. I don’t need a new car. Mr C: Hypothetically speaking. Me: I don’t need a new car. Mr C: Do you like this one? Me: It’s okay. Mr C: Let’s sit in it. Me: Why? Mr C: Just sit in it and see what you think.

Have you seen that sketch in Catherine Tate where the woman gets her colleague to guess something, and then gets really annoyed if she gets it straight away? I was reading somewhere about MiG Ayesa finishing in the top three to be the new lead singer of InXs. There was a programme or something, I think. I was quite upset about this because last I heard, MiG was still in We Will Rock You, trying to replace Tony Vincent and failing. This means that I am now officially out of date with news of the musical, and I can’t seem to find any new cast lists anywhere. (Not on any website does it tell me who’s in it at the moment. Even Google can’t help me. Although, it doesn’t help that the main website is about six months out of date as well.)

I’m obsessive about my windscreen wash in my car. I worry constantly that any second now it is going to run out. I fill it up regularly even when I’ve only used about a teaspoonful. You can imagine my displeasure, when I was driving down a misty, muddy road and thinking I would have to start using up some of the precious water. Then imagine my pleasure, when the car in front decided to clean its windscreen first, and the water cascaded in a beautiful arc over the top of his car and onto mine as well. Excellent. Clean windows, free water.

You know when you were at school and you used to go to the toilets and find the walls covered in graffiti? You know the sort of thing: “Jenny was ere” and “Paula 4 Mark” circled in a giant heart shape that went wrong at the top and was half scribbled out? You know when you go to a public toilet in a less than posh part of town and there are more grown up scribblings about sex and drugs and, well, not so much about rock and roll, but still with the badly drawn hearts?

There’s a blog thing doing the rounds, whereby you find your 23rd post, and read the 5th sentence of the 2nd paragraph. You post this to your blog and encourage others to do the same. I was sorely tempted to do this, although I usually try and stay away from the chain games that pop up everywhere. You can end up with nothing but them and I often think that no one’s really interested in them other than yourself. When I looked back into my archives, my sentence would be thus:

Firstly, the Sims Nightlife is not as good as I thought it was going to be. It’s alright, adds a little bit of colour to the game, and it’s always nice to get new wallpapers and clothes etc, but it’s a half-hearted attempt at an expansion pack. The only thing that makes it worth the money is that the Sims now get to own cars, the rest of it I could live without.

Jo Whiley on Radio 1 is starting a campaign to stop people watching television for one week. It’s part of her ‘I Have Never’ slot which is there to get people doing things they would never normally dream of, getting them to engage with other people (I have never given a flower to a stranger), getting them to embrace new things (I have never been to see a band I’ve never heard of) and that kind of life-enhancing thing.

I’m currently reading Don’t Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock, the guy who made the film Super Size Me. It’s basically more of the same, talking about how bad McDonalds is for you, and full of facts that will scare you away from the Golden Arches forever. But apparently Subway are just as bad. If you don’t order one of those six healthy sandwiches, and instead order something off the menu, it’s packed with calories and not very good for you at all. You may as well stuff your face with a burger from the evil that is Ronald McDonald.

Obviously, this isn’t set in stone and could change at any moment, considering I haven’t seen every single musical under the sun. I haven’t included any songs from We Will Rock You, because that would just be called Top Ten Queen songs, and I’d be hard pushed to narrow that down to ten. The Epilogue - Les Miserables Seasons of Love - Rent Had to Be - Heathcliff The Sun - Metropolis This Is The Moment – Jekyll & Hyde Past the Point of No Return – Phantom of the Opera People Will Say We’re in Love - Oklahoma Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat – Guys & Dolls I Just Can’t Wait to Be King – The Lion King Tell Me It’s Not True – Blood Brothers

It was one of those days where whatever can go wrong will go wrong. This included me almost tumbling headfirst down a flight of concrete stairs whilst clutching onto a pizza box and a can of coke. The pizza place didn’t have half the stuff we wanted, and although we got a refund, it’s really just not good enough. But it doesn’t matter about any of that, because it was still the most perfect day.

Two doors down from us, there used to live a big-nosed man and his girlfriend. I don’t mean anything horrible by that, but I didn’t know his name and he had a big nose. Every morning I would hear them slam the door at 3 minutes to 8 precisely, then I would watch as they exited the building. I would be stood at the sink doing the washing up, and smile as I saw him back the car out of the car parking space, so that his girlfriend could get in. Then they would set off for their days at work. I would be concerned if she didn’t join him, worried in case she was off sick that day, hoping she was alright. I thought it was incredibly sweet when one day it was raining particularly hard and he backed the car right up to the door so she wouldn’t need to get wet.

We decided to go to Swanage, which was incredibly busy, although there was surprisingly little traffic around, considering. I was a little disappointed that the beaches were so busy, because I wanted to build my sand castle. The last time we were at the beach, I felt like digging but was told that I couldn’t build a sandcastle without the proper equipment - a bucket and spade. So, when we got to Swanage, I made a beeline for the nearest beachside shop and purchased some. When we finally managed to pitch a spot on the crowded sand, Mr C sat down and said he would watch, I put my bucket and spade down and looked at the ground.

Extras I really liked this. Lots of people and a hell of a lot of critics have been whining about its similarities to The Office but it not being as funny. I think you have to take this show as it was intended. It’s similar to The Office, in that it makes you cringe and the people won’t shut up when they really should. But I think that’s where the similarities end.

I just Love This. It made me laugh so much, I almost spilled my Diet Coke. And yes, I know I shouldn’t be drinking Diet Coke at this time of night, but I’m addicted to it. Okay? The Brooklyn tea shop is playing an eclectic mix of ‘80s music. We’ve been there working for an hour or so when “Fame!” comes on, and the cashier turns it up. FAME! I’M GONNA LIVE FOREVER! BABY REMEMBER MY NAAAAAME. (Remember! Remember!)

In order to get my lazy backside off the sofa and doing a bit of exercise, but not wanting to go into the big, bad world of outside, I purchased a fitness DVD. I already own the Hotpants Workout (let me tell you now though, I will never wear hotpants), but I was starting to get bored of it and fancied a change. Enter Angela Griffin and her Dance Mix Workout. It’s actually really good, and I don’t find myself getting breathless but feel myself being exercised, which is always a good thing. My only criticism is that the woman showing us the moves (that’s not Angela Griffin) is way too skinny, and she keeps saying “bootylicious”. I don’t need to hear that.