I rather enjoyed keeping track of the books I read in 2011, so I'm going to try and do the same in 2012. This post will again be just for the list; there will hopefully be separate monthly posts with comments after each month, too.

For anyone interested, I also have a GoodReads account (feel free to friend me if you're on GoodReads, too!), where there might be the occasional longer comments as well as my personal ratings.

( Book list of 2012 )

Just to keep things more colourful, I've also set myself a goal of 100 120 books, and will try to keep this ticker updated:

I'm going to attempt keeping track of the books I read this year. No idea if I manage to keep it up, but it's worth a try.

( Book list of 2011 )

Pointless post just to remind myself I still have a LJ... there has not been much to post about, lately.

Have been on holiday - last week and this one. Have painted the balcony, which was in a pretty horrid state - it's far from perfect now (would need better tools for that) but at least it's all one colour now. Also (re-)painted some furniture.

Have planted some stuff on the balcony - radishes and dill (from seeds - both have sprouted now) and some lemon balm, which we got from some old friends of mum whom we visited on Sunday.

A tooth has been causing a bit of trouble for the last week or so and probing it with my tongue seems to indicate some of the filling may have broken. Have made an appointment and will be seeing a dentist next week. It's mostly just been tender, not massively painful (and I think it's one of the many molars I've had root canals done for), so I'm not particularly concerned that it will become unbearable until then. Especially if I'm careful to avoid eating with that side of the mouth.

Didn't sign up for the SSHG exchange. I did - vaguely - consider it until the end, but a complete lack of prompts of my own and a complete lack of interest in everyone else's prompts means it's definitely over for me. There is a twinge of regret, yes, but overall, I think I'd have regretted it more if I'd signed up.

Still no progress with my SP WIP. I'd hoped that maybe now that the stress of the first months of the year has lessened, the complete block may go away, too, but... dunno. Coming across people saying how disgusting and wrong fics of that kind are hasn't really helped either, although I suppose that if I had any ideas for the fic, the naysayers wouldn't really be a problem.

Another month has gone by and yes, I'm still keeping count of what I read. :D Although it's getting harder and harder to remember what the books I've read were actually about... but that's where these summary posts really come in handy.

Anyway: 17 books read in April. I'm well over half-way done with the goal I set myself for this year. ~blinks~

( Cut for the books and comments. )

Overall, an interesting month, with some real gems, such as Feed (and Angelfall and The Wine of Angels were unexpectedly positive surprises), and a higher than average amount of really bad books (1632, Empty).

And for a change, I know what I'm going to read next - Insurgent, sequel to Divergent, is released tomorrow, so I'm not even going to start anything else today. :D

I've been so terribly busy lately that I realised I never got around to posting the pics from my seaside/park walk two weeks ago. So today when I was looking at the pics from yesterday's walk, I remembered the previous ones and figured they should probably get posted first.

( Cut to spare f-lists. Mostly birds and patterns. )

LJ's scrapbook stuff has become so painfully slow that I'm almost looking forward to the switch to the new system I've been seeing some posts about. (Well, if I get to keep my permanent account 15 GB of space, anyway...) So the next picspam post, from yesterday's walk, will have to wait.

Also, I'll be horribly busy the next few weeks again (got an enormous, and I mean enormous - 345,000 total words, 68,500 adjusted words but that includes a massive amount of repetitions and strings-to-review which barely count in the adjusted word count but still need doing/reviewing and take time - amount of work on Friday, to be done by the time I go on holiday in two weeks). Gah.

We've got some more snow over the last few days, it would seem. On the plus side: everything looks gorgeous again, clean and pure and white again (the trouble with early spring is that there is an enormous amount of dirt and rubbish and piles of dog poop that's uncovered after the snow thaws away and nothing pretty whatsoever). On the minus side: it's supposed to be spring...

Went for a very short walk yesterday, basically just around the block (if we had blocks, that is) after doing some food shopping. It was sunny for a change (is today, too), so it was pretty.

( Cut for a few pics. Snow. And Kribu. )

Blegh. Back to work, now... *isn't particularly enjoying the current work*

Annoying week has been annoying. And busy. With annoying work.

Not feeling too well today either, which isn't helping.

Finally got around to reading Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, which I've had for months, and ended up reading the entire trilogy in five days. Great world-building, some excellent and original, imaginative stuff, good action & adventure, interesting take on alternative history, but really awful romance (insta-love, no chemistry between the leads, clichéd, cheesy, expected ending... meh). Also, I'm apparently fine with big living airships and fabricated beasts and lots of massive war machinery and a completely alternative sort of World War I, and yet I had great trouble buying that Archduke Franz Ferdinand's son could have been named Aleksandar and called Alek. It just... doesn't ring true to my ears.

(Also, and perhaps that was Westerfeld's intention in going with Alek instead of a far more natural Alex (not that Alexander is a traditional Austrian-Hungarian nobility name either, as far as I know), it seems to have lead to the fan name for the Deryn/Alek pairing being called Dalek. Which is just wrong.)

Anyway. Spring is slow to come here, but then, April is known for being the month winter still makes its presence known. ( Cut for a few pictures of the situation outside my window / on the balcony these last couple of days. )

I'm still terribly tired all the time but at least I haven't been close to falling asleep around 4-5 in the afternoon most days. I suppose that's progress.

Another month is almost over, so it's time for the monthly post summarising what I've read this year.

The list for March isn't nearly as impressive as February's 21 books were, as numbers go, but 15 books isn't too shabby at all, bringing the total for this year so far to 49. Which, *blinks*. Why, yes, I have spent all my free time (not that there's been a lot of it) reading.

( Cut for the books and comments. )

And now I need to once again decide what to read next. Gah. This is hard. My life is so hard. ;-)

It's been a grey, grey, grey, muddy, grey, windy, grey Saturday. Seems that we're now into that icky time of the year between winter and spring when everything is full of mud and dirt and dirty old ice and dirty old snow, liberally sprinkled with last autumn's / winter's dog poop, some of it fresh and some of it emerging anew from under layers of snow.

In other words, not walkies weather.

Managed to get myself to the post office (which now that the post office isn't conveniently nearby anymore takes planning, as it's only open until 3 pm on Saturdays, and the bus goes 2-3 times an hour on Saturdays) and can has five new Classic Who DVDs, woot! Three Three DVDs (um, that's three DVDs with the Third Doctor stories - Day of the Daleks, The Mutants and Planet of the Spiders), one Four (Creature from the Pit) and one Six (The Twin Dilemma). The last two are not among my favourites, but at least they've been out for a while now, so not overly expensive, and my aim is to get a full collection of Classic Who on DVD.

There are two more still in the post somewhere.

Also went by the pet shop in the same building as the post office and picked up a new scratcing post for Pätsu (well, for the kittehs, but Kribu doesn't care for vertical scratching) as we got rid of the old one when we moved; it was awfully old and pretty useless as Pätsu had scratched it into pieces quite thoroughly.

( Cut fwo not very good pictures: Pätsu approves. )

Feeling rather tired now, in spite of having done nothing but that shortish outing and reading all day. Think it's the weather, too. In any case, I've started taking multivitamin tablets again, so perhaps that tiredness will eventually pass, but it's only been four days, so probably a bit too soon to expect to have energy and stuff again.

Want to write. Sigh. Properly, not just random little crackish things, fun as they've been.

How is it possible to get SO excited just by finding out the title of the next SP book?!

But seriously. Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked just sounds so. damn. cool. Really. It was worth spending the whole day refreshing Derek Landy's blog every five minutes.

Now to manage to wait until August, somehow... ~has already pre-ordered both the hardback and the Kindle version~

In other news, I've discovered Tumblr. I still have no idea what exactly it is one is supposed to do there, but I've found there's an endless supply of pretty Third Doctor pics and gifs and stuff, so that's what I spent today on (the time left over from work and refreshing Landy's blog).

Also, I've been doing way too much work lately. Last week was... well, it's been a while since I've done so much work so consistently; 5000+ words on three days, ~8000 words on Monday and ~9700 words on Friday. And we're talking software/UI stuff here, not even help, so... that's quite a lot of words. I've also been dedded by it every day and have been extremely sleepy, in spite of consistent ~8+ hours of sleep every night. Anyway, work is good, and tomorrow I'll lose half the day due to seeing the pulmonologist again, so I've had to try and do a bit in advance.

Nicked from subversa.

Lots of people to vote for!
(In case you need pointers: I strongly suggest you vote for the Third Doctor under Classic Who, G'Kar under Babylon 5 and Max Eilerson under Crusade. Because they rock. And need more votes.)

Went to the zoo yesterday. Not many animals out and about, and the ice on the paths was sheer and wet and slippery, but anyway.

( Cut for pics. Cats of all sizes. )

So, unlike in the old flat, where we had one small balcony (from the kitchen), which was basically a place where we stashed any rubbish we couldn't take out right away, and never went to, we have three balconies in this flat - two closed / windowed ones that can be accessed from the kitchen (one small one and through there, a larger one), and one larger open one that can be accessed from my room.

( Kribu and the balconies. With pics! )

Good God. *looks at the February entries in the list of books read in 2012*

*blinks*
*blinks some more*

No wonder I didn't get all that much writing (or much else) done this month: 21 books read in February. Which, you know, is a shortish month.

( Cut for the books and comments. )

Whew. I think I could have read another book in the time it took me to write this post... Anyway, in spite of the horrible trainwreckiness that is House of Night, February was a good reading month. Although I think I really need something that isn't teen vampire stuff for a bit now. And I haven't yet decided what to read next.

Yesterday was an exhausting day. Today's been no better. Can't really even blame too much work - there has been, of course, but I'm just... tired. Really tired.

Anyway. Thank you, everyone, for the lovely hearts that adorn my profile page!

And I've somehow managed to get the rest of the pics from Saturday's walk uploaded. There is, probably not surprisingly, more ice and snow and frost.

( Cut to spare the f-list. )

I do like ice, and snow, and frost...

Woot! I finally got the scrapbook upload to cooperate again! Although only one or two pics at a time... uploading took forever. Anyway. I hope they'll show up, at least.

So, yeah. Saturday's walk. Guess what we saw! Can you guess? Yes... there was snow! And ice! And frost! And some more snow and ice and frost! ~may be slightly obsessed with all the pretty white stuff~

( Cut for the pictures. Snow, ice, frost. )

Where did this month go? *looks around*

Anyway. New year, same old thing - I'm still trying to keep up the monthly summaries of books I've read this year, with some comments. And I've set myself a goal this year - well, actually, the goal I set was 100 books, but I've adjusted it to 120 on GoodReads now, after seeing January's tally: 13 books (including one novella and one short story).

( Cut for the books & comments. )

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my January reading. I read more than I expected to, considering how busy I was with the move, and I read quite a few things I enjoyed above a "meh, it was okay" level.

First of all, happy birthday to talesofsnape!

Second, I read (admittedly, sometimes skim, when I'm busy) all the posts on my f-list - but I'm going to avoid this "who is actually reading my posts" meme doing the rounds now. Nothing personal; I've always avoided such things on any platform.

Third, here's part two of the picspam from Sunday's walk! Shockingly, it features ... drum roll, please ... more ice! And some snow! And rocks!

( Cut for the pics. Ice, snow, birdies. )

I've also still got a minor cold - the one I had pre-weekend. Just sneezing and some coughing, though, and nothing remotely like a fever, so not too bad, especially as the throat's not sore any more either.

Also, I never thought I'd say this, but it feels awesome to have a proper cold cough again as opposed to the horrible dry asthma cough - with this, I can cough and actually feel that it achieves something (such as clearing my throat, instead of just getting scratchier and scratchier with each cough)!

Yes! It's picspam time!

It's been reasonably chilly here for well over a week now - temperatures steadily around or below -10°C - so I rather hoped on Sunday that the sea might be iced over already. Also, it was a beautiful winter day, with a little bit of sun and the morning's -19°C dropping to a balmy -14°C by the afternoon, and most importantly, with very little wind, so mum and I decided to go for a seaside walk.

Alas, the sea was pretty, with its almost unnoticeable, slowly rolling waves and smooth light blue water, but the ice was kept to the rocks on and near the shore. Ah well. It was still a very pretty walk, and while I had problems with big toes and thumbs getting a bit cold at first, some enthusiastic wriggling of each kept them nice and warm for the rest of the afternoon.

As usual, I took far too many pictures, so there'll be two parts to this picspam. ( Cut for the pics. Ice, rocks, birdies, sea. )

Sigh. Back to work now... ~eyes work~

I do think there is some sort of cold that I've picked up somewhere (odd, that, considering I haven't been out for a week). Yesterday I seemed to have a blocked nose which led to me talk as if through cotton wool; I've woken up with a sore throat three days in a row now; this morning I'm sounding all rough and husky and growly.

At least apart from all that, I'm not feeling all that awful - not 100% well, but that hardly ever happens anyway.

Bunnies are now insisting on me writing Skul/Val's reflection. Skul/Val's reflection PWP, really, more than likely with Val finding out about it (yay, awkwardness!). I have no idea why, but it seems the horde of bunnies are determined to have me go through every possible permutation of Skul/Val before they'll let me get back to my WIP. And there is an slight inkling of an idea for a continuation / part two for the Vile/Darquesse drabbles I did on Tuesday, probably with even more yay, awkwardness.

Bunnies are weird. ~blames the bunnies, not own deranged mind~

I'm slowly getting used to living here. I still miss home, though. Sigh.

...a whole flock of them arrives, yes? (Or whatever one calls a gang of bunnies.) Alas, still nothing for the WIP, but I seem to have written 8x100 words of Vile/Darquesse: An Unexpected Moment. (I think I prefer yesterday's Skul/Darquesse to this, but it's nice to be able to write again anyway, whatever it is!)

On the other hand, I seem to have done far too little work today... I wonder how that happened? ~eyes work, gets down to it~

Feeling a little better than yesterday - stomach still a little achy (oddly it feels more like muscle ache and I can't really find a reason for that) and woke up with a very sore throat, but overall a little less fuzzy than I was. Whatever it is, I hope it passes soon.

Also, it's cold.

The dry spell in writing seems to be over again. Still nothing for the WIP, but at least I somehow managed to throw together a double drabble today: And the Darkness Rained Upon Them (Skul/Darquesse, which, needless to say, makes it a tiny bit disturbing (and obviously also spoilery for Dark Days onwards)).

~is happy~

Work, on the other hand, is making me less happy. And also I'm not at all feeling well today - feeling as if I might develop a fever later, cold & sweating at the same time, and stomach is all queasy and achy. Urgh. It'd better not turn into anything nastier.

Have got to the point of putting boxes with random stuff (old letters, various ... whatever random things I've apparently wanted to keep) away to a cupboard, without sorting through them. At least they're not sitting in the middle of the room any more and I'll know where they are if I ever get to wanting to see what was in them.

And today I took out the bags of clothes (T-shirts, home clothes etc) out of the cupboards and they're now sitting on the floor. I should probably get the clothes out of the bags and put them away to the cupboards without the bags...

At least my socks and underwear and all clothes that need hanging have been put away to their proper places by now. And the cameras & lenses got their very own drawer. Except that I think I'd need an even larger drawer .. 40x80x15 cm obviously isn't big enough. :-/

I wish I could wave a wand (I've located Snape's wand, woot, and put it by the HP books) and have all those T-shirts etc levitate to the cupboards.

I have too many T-shirts etc.

Worky week was worky (worked until 8-9 in the evening every day, so no energy for unpacking), and I have been incredibly sleepy and tired all week. Have barely managed to read a bit. Haven't managed to write a word for over a month now; I really hope my muse returns soon because I have no intention of abandoning that SP WIP - I'm rather proud of my "have finished everything I've started" track record so far - but I'm currently in a place where I'm lacking ideas and clearly lacking the energy to write anyway, so... maybe the muse will return once there is more time and energy again. ~hopes~

I still get out of breath really easily, and occasionally I have real problems holding my breath for the required ten seconds after inhaling the inhaler thingy, but at least I haven't had a single attack since getting the asthma diagnosed and the inhaler prescribed. Which is yay, I suppose; at least I can sleep!

I'm also tired of posting whiny posts. I suspect that won't improve until I've got everything unpacked and stuff, though.

Have moved.

It took three full days (of at least three other people in addition to us every day) to carry everything from there to here. :-|

Have Internet again (it's amazing how much cable a smallish flat can hold ... it took 44 metres of network cable to take internets to three rooms (TV in living room, my desktop, mum's desktop). But also have a flat overflowing with unpacked boxes and bags so there's almost nowhere to step, so I won't really be having a lot of online time for quite a while yet.

Will hand over old flat & keys officially tomorrow. Then on Thursday, ought to go and do paperwork stuff (electricity company mostly), go back to the furniture shop we visited recently as there was a nice computer chair there (getting rid of both mine and mum's old ones and replacing them with hopefully better and more comfy ones), and maybe some other stuff.

Text on computer screen looks incredibly tiny, although I'm quite sure no settings were changed while the computer was off and in a box. Weird. I don't think the monitor is any further from me than it was before either - if anything, it's a bit closer. Hmm. Not sure I like this. I can't have lost so much eyesight since Saturday morning, surely?

We have way, way, WAY too many books. So far I've only managed to locate the twenty or so most important ones; the other 1500+ are still ... somewhere. Around. Everywhere.

Kittehs are busy exploring, whenever they're not in hiding due to the presence of noisy strangers. They seem pretty pleased, although they also seem to have forgotten about eating and such boring things. Well, they do eat, but very little for now. I expect they'll get back into the routine soon enough.

I'm so incredibly tired. And achy. And I think there are some boxes in the kitchen that are calling out my name...

... then I'll go on radio silence (also known as "no internets due to moving") from tomorrow morning until Tuesday.

Contract was signed yesterday; we've agreed that we get to move in tomorrow. Might need another day, too. I agreed for Tuesday with the ISP people as I didn't know yet at the time if Monday would work or not.

So. Tired. Now. Have been packing all day, and there's still more. Where on earth do all those things come from?

Little old lady's final needed document arrived today; will be translated etc by tomorrow, but now the person selling the flat to little old lady is in Russia, so can't go and sign contract tomorrow yet - most likely either Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, says estate agent.

Well, whatever. I don't quite expect that we'll actually get to move this coming weekend yet in that case - I'd expect little old lady needs more than one day - but we'll see; it certainly wouldn't take more than a few days, I assume. In any case, I have to say I'm relieved.

It's 2012, and we actually got a little bit of snow yesterday and last night. Amazing.

I hope that everyone on my f-list, and your friends and families and loved ones will have a wonderful new year; I know that 2011 was hard for many of us, and I really wish for a better year this time around.

HEAD UUT AASTAT!

Woot - December is over and 2011 with it. And I've fulfilled my goal of keeping count of all the books I've read this year. Amazing. ~135 books altogether, although that includes a few short stories and a couple of books I didn't finish / haven't finished.

December was an interesting month, as far as reading goes. I read a bit more again and my reading was a bit more varied (just a bit, though). Unless I'm quite mistaken, the count for December ended up being 14 (but that includes two short stories and a novella).

( Cut for the books & comments. )

I should probably say something about the whole year, too, but... I think I've been waffling on enough, really. There were many books I enjoyed moderately or quite a bit, some that I don't think I'll be forgetting any time soon (Never Let Me Go and The Silver Metal Lover), a few new series I'm looking forward to more of (Crossed, Divergent, Chicagoland Vampires, Hex Hall) and the odd clunker. Nothing that would get anywhere near Skulduggery Pleasant, but then, I've only read two other series in my life that have got me that obsessed, so one can't really expect to come across a gem like that every year.

I'm quite looking forward to 2012, anyway - lots more books to discover!

Is it a crime to throttle people? Or punch them in the face? Or take them by the collar and shake them?

Back from the notary's... with basically nothing achieved apart from spending an hour listening to the potential contract being read to us. And why? Because the little old lady selling the flat did still not have all the required documents.

( Cut for the sake of f-lists everywhere. )

So. In theory, the document will get here next week, we'll sign the contract immediately, little old lady will get her new keys and can start moving and we'll get the keys to our new flat on 6 January and can start moving in right away. In theory. In practice... ~headdesks, hopes~