Weekly Rundown: Pandemonium & Post

It’s been a fairly eventful week for us, what with going and buying a car on Monday. Suffice to say, Bluebell is here and is awesome. She’s so neat and compact and yet spacious inside. I suspect her previous owner may have been a Timelord because that’s about the only way to explain how we were able to get so much stuff in her boot.

And Mr Click bought me Bamboo to sit on the dashboard on my side of the car, because every Panda needs a panda:

Having a car that we love and feel confident in has also prompted us to change plans for my birthday at the end of the month. It’s become somewhat traditional to take a trip up to Oban for my birthday and this year was going to be the exception (when we went to Ayr on the bus). Since we did that last week I’ve got a fun-filled day planned wandering around the charity shops in Oban.

I feel like I should clarify that the above paragraph is sarcasm-free. My idea of a fun weekend does actually involve trawling round charity shops, picking up bargains and lots and lots of books. Last year when we went I think I scored eight new books for about £6 and it’s something I’m intending to repeat again this year. You’ll hear all about it on the first Sunday of May (how organised am I?!)

This week also saw lots of post with my name on it. I nearly never get post with my name on and this week most of it was election bumf that I’ll be cutting up for my Wreck This Journal soon. But one item was very exciting and interesting.

The other week Pempi from Pempi's Palace offered to send me a book that she’d found during a clear out. I may have practically hit my head on the ceiling from the way I jumped at the offer. Suffice to say, I said a very emphatic yes please! and true to her word, she got it packaged up so it arrived on Thursday.

Starting way back at the end of 2010 I made it my mission to read all of the Terry Pratchett Discworld books. I’d acquired everything published up to that point and I managed it, despite several more books being published while I was working on it. It took me about three year in between reading other things. Pempi sent me a copy of Raising Steam, the second to last published Discworld book and one of the only two that I’ve not read yet.

It arrived on Thursday, along with a cute little cat card, and I restrained myself from starting to read it right away (as I’d just started reading The Pickwick Papers that morning for the Reading Challenge). I’ve squeezed it onto my bookcase and I’ll start it soon. I’m not sure how soon exactly, but it’s a good chunk of a book which I think will help make journeys into Glasgow in the next couple of months go quickly.

Speaking of books, I got a couple of bargains on Monday (along with the new car). We arrived back at the ferry early enough for me to stop by the bookshop at Wemyss Bay. I managed to find Toys to Knit for £3 and Unfinished Tales for £1; I’m always on the lookout for toy knitting patterns so that’s another one of those books to add to my collection (that I really should get to work on actually making stuff for) and a Tolkien book I’ve never read before. That’s another book that I’m really looking forward to reading.

After spending the Easter weekend at my in-laws’ house, I’m back home now (with no internet on my laptop) so my progress through the A to Z Challenge has slowed down somewhat. I’m getting caught back up today with the reading and commenting and return visits for people who have stopped by my blog. If you’ve popped by and left a comment, don’t think I’m not returning the visit, I just don’t get online everyday; my internet on my phone is good enough to approve blog comments but not quite good enough to respond to comments.

Oh, I do have one little blog thing to celebrate, that my blog stats look like this:

Yesterday I officially passed the 85,500 pageviews total for my blog (since I started it). And as of today I've had over 3,000 pageviews so far this month. I'm quite enjoying seeing the pageviews increase and it won't be long until we're into a six figure number!

What about my plans for this week?

To be honest? Not a whole lot. Easter weekend was pretty exhausting, so I’m planning on taking things fairly easy. It’ll be more of the same for me, reading, knitting and trying to keep on top of blog stuff (because you never know if the next blog you comment on will be the start of a new friendship).