Feeling...
... a lot better than at the start of the week. Thanks for asking.
Whatever bug was in my system seems to have gone, thank goodness. I feel pretty much human again. Or at least as human as I normally get. Reading...
... my new issue of Simply Knitting.
My friends are all rather amused by the fact that I have a subscription to a knitting magazine and it doesn't matter how many times I point out that as knitting magazines go, it's a pretty trendy one. I would say something here about only getting it for the articles, but I would be lying, I mostly get it for the toy patterns.
I'm actually reading it as I type because I came home today to lots of post. It was a little like Christmas. There were some new socks (I do enjoy a good (mismatched) pair of socks), a postcard from my Mum, and my knitting magazine. The latter was totally unexpected as I'd heard there were delays getting this issue out, and my last issue went AWOL so I only received that a couple of weeks ago.
I'm also reading a Robert Louis Stevenson book on my Kindle. It's called Merry Men and is a collection of short stories. Last night I finished reading 'Olalla' which I read in the Penguin Little Black Classics edition last year. It's a good read and I'm getting through it really quickly.
Eating...
... sweet and salted popcorn.
This stuff is so good.
The diet wasn't going so well at the beginning of the week (I put on, the shame) but I think that was largely because last week we had a celebration day and I ate all. of. the. food. And a doughnut. And I tried my first ever corndogs. And I had a cupcake.
Can you see why I put on?
I'm being a little more restrained this week and I'm feeling better for it. Though some of last weekend's yuckiness is almost certainly due to the bug and not the food I ate.
Enjoying...
... the fact that we picked up new pillow at the weekend.
What is it about a pair of big fluffy pillows that makes a bed so much more inviting? Pretty much as soon as I finish this blog post I'll be heading off to bed, with my new socks, knitting magazine and comfy pillows.
I'm telling you, it's absolutely wild in the Click household tonight!
The first of today's two books is Dracula The Undead which is the official sequel to Dracula, written by a descendant of Bram Stoker, Dacre Stoker, and Ian Holt.
The sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula follows Quincey, Mina and Jonathan Harker's son, as he heads for the stage. Quincey winds up in a production of Dracula which is being directed by Bram Stoker himself. Meanwhile, someone is out to get the original party who took down Dracula. Could it be that the Prince of Darkness himself is back?
The fact that the first time I picked this book up from a freebie table at work someone told me that he couldn't let me read this book because it was awful really should have been my first clue. Alas, I did not take his advice and the second time it popped up as a freebie, I took it. It then sat on my bookshelf for months and months until last October I finally picked it up to give it a go.
This was not a good book.
I really struggled to get through it and I pretty much only finished it because I couldn't stand reading it any more. By the time I was about a quarter of the way through I was ready to be done with it. I could almost have left this one unfinished, something I haven't done in over five years!
Dracula isn't an easy book to read, but it's a classic and for the most part, I enjoyed reading it. Dracula The Undead is not Dracula. This book just butchered the characters from Dracula. I hate that no one made it out alive and none of them really bore much resemblance to the original book. They were just caricatures of the source material.
Personally, I think it probably would've made a halfway reasonable fanfic but for an original novel it was a let down. Too much was twisted to make it fit the story they wanted to tell, rather than building on the original story and making something worth reading.
Probably the only highlight of this book was that Sir Henry Irving got a couple of mentions. He's a distant ancestor on my Nan's side, so that was nice. Otherwise, take my advice, don't bother with this one.
At the time I was reading Dracula The Undead we were preparing for our first frozen embryo transfer so Mr Click gave me strict instructions that I was to read something 'nice' when I was done with it. I think if I'd taken too much longer to finish the book, he would've confiscated it.
I followed it up with a book off my 'children's bookcase'. One which I picked up in Dunoon quite some time ago and which also fulfilled Reading Challenge Week 44, a book you own but have never read.
The valley were a host of dragons live is under threat of developers so one brave dragon, named Firedrake, ventures out into the world to find a mythical place where it's believed they can live safely. Along the way he picks up Ben, an orphan, as well as making a lot of new friends, whilst trying to escape from the man who wants to capture Firedrake.
I was a little surprised to find that I didn't enjoy this book so much. It felt quite slow. I felt like there was a lot of time travelling from place to place without very much actually happening along the way. Then again, I think that probably does lend it well to a bedtime story since the chapters are fairly well contained. It is just very, very long.
One of Firedrake's companions on the journey is Sorrell, a brownie. Sorrell mostly just annoyed me through most of the book. And apparently Sorrell's only power was spitting on stuff. Why did it have to be magical brownie spit? I wish she'd been able to do more than just spitting on stuff. Perhaps it's just because spit kind of grosses me out, but really?!
I did really like the premise of the story; dragons leaving the place they've called home because they're under threat and trying to find the mythical place that they could call home, but which may not exist, sounded like a brilliant story. I just would've liked to have seen more of the dragons along the way, not just Firedrake.
Then again, there is a special place in my heart because while I was reading this we had our embryo transfer. Despite not really enjoying it, I did spend a lot of time lying in bed, reading it out loud to the embryos. It obviously helped because a couple of days after I finished it, I got my positive pregnancy test.
There's a bug going round the island at the moment and I seem to have picked it up. Yay!
Not.
I'll spare you the details but I'm feeling kind of rotten, so to take my mind off it I'm inviting you to share your Patronus.
A Patronus is a sort of protector in the Harry Potter series which is cast with the spell Expecto Patronum. It takes the form of an animal and in order to produce it you must summon your happiest memory. They're supposed to help ward off Dementors but I like to think that they'd also help you feel better when you're under the weather.
When Pottermore opened up the option to find your Patronus I jumped at it. I've been waiting to find out mine for years.
I've always imagined that perhaps I would have some sort of dog so I was a little surprised to get my result on the site:
I know some people were really disappointed with their results. I think I would've been too if I'd always seen myself as a ferocious big cat and I wound up with a salmon. But as far as Patronuses (Patronii?) go, a sparrowhark is pretty cool (apart from the whole snatching little birds out of the air thing).
Ironically, the day after I got this, my boss came over to show me photos of and tell me about the sparrowhawk he'd photographed at the castle the day before. Must be a sign.
I don't normally go for the artsy spreads in my Bullet Journal, but this month I've decided to try mixing things up a little bit, beginning with my month overview page.
If you remember, for the last few months I've adopted this as my monthly overview spread:
It's taken a bit of tweaking to get it the way I wanted it, giving me enough space for everything I need and it's great.
But this month I moved away from it for two reasons. Firstly, it's a wee bit boring and I decided I wanted to go for something a little more interesting, and secondly, I've just not had that many things to schedule in recently so it felt like a bit of a waste of two pages. I'd carefully lined out September's Overview and only really used the Work column and then odd days here and there so most of it was blank.
Each month I pick a selection of colours to use for my theme. These have ranged from every shade of green in my collection to just the colours of the rainbow, to autumnal shades. Without a doubt, I knew this month would be black and orange, with a hint of green and purple in it. So when a pen pal sent me some Halloween-themed washi tape, I knew I had to include it in my Bullet Journal this month.
And since I was going Halloween-themed, I figured I would include one of my favourite October films, Nightmare Before Christmas. Which is how this happened:
I'm ridiculously proud of this page, particularly old Jack Skellington himself.
I'm not an artist at all. I used to get really frustrated when I was younger, I'd have an image in my head but would be completely unable to transfer what was in my head onto the page.
But, I'm pretty good at copying simple line drawings.
I've spent the last few weeks saving interesting looking fonts on Pinterest and copying them for my daily headers in my Bullet Journal. I stumbled across the Nightmare Before Christmas font so used that for the header page here. Then I figured I might as well include Poor Old Jack.
The picture above is my third attempt at drawing him, well, technically fourth. I made two attempts in the Bullet Journal; first I drew him too high up the page so he was just floating in the air, second his head was in the right spot, but his legs were comically short. Then I had the bright idea to draw him on some scrap paper and trace it onto the page. And he turned out pretty damn well, if I do say so myself.
The only other thing I've added to my Bullet Journal this month is a variation on my Habit Tracker. I don't have a photo of it yet since it's all in pencil still, but the basic idea is that the month is laid out as it is above and instead of colouring in a little box each time I do something, I'm drawing a little Halloween-themed doodle when I do it instead.
Once I've got it all inked in I'll share it. I don't think it's the sort of tracker I'd like to use every month, but I can see it coming out again in the run up to Christmas.
As you're reading this I am currently out to dinner. I told Mr Click I was taking him out for a date and then casually mentioned that the group at work who organise social events had actually got us a good deal on a theme night at a local bar and restaurant.
I'm spoiling him, but I'm on a budget too.
And tonight the theme is Grease. The film, not the food (hopefully).
With that in mind, while I'm out chowing down on a corndog, I'll leave you to enjoy this:
Yesterday's post rather cryptically suggested that something interesting was happening at home in the Click household.
In order to do that, let me give you a little sensory tour of the place where I live.
I live in the grounds of an estate which belongs to the Marquess of Bute. The house itself, Mount Stuart, dates back to 1879 and was built to replace an earlier house from the 1700s which burned down.
Spring is pale greens with a haze of blue above the grass; summer is vibrant greens with explosions of pink and red and yellow; autumn is a spectacular burst of oranges and browns, purples and yellows; winter is greys and browns. I love each season in its own way but this season is my favourite for walks and photographs.
I love my home. I love the estate where we live. Especially at this time of year when all the leaves are changing colour. You can take the same walk three or four times and each time there's something slightly different about it.
Like yesterday, for example. Mr Click and I walked Tara at 7am and the road was thick with leaves. We repeated the walk at 6pm and someone had gone out and tidied up the road. I suspect it was a man with a leaf blower, but who knows. One of the reasons that I love autumn is the crunch of the leaves. There's something so satisfying about throwing on your welly boots and going for a good stomp around. Tara likes to 'snowplough' through them; she puts her head on the ground, tucks in her forepaws and propels herself through them.
I like to jump in them, kick them around and generally behave like I'm about twenty-five years younger than I actually am. There's something about autumn that calls for long leafy walks, followed by a hot chocolate at home and a Disney movie. Last Saturday we watched Disney's Robin Hood; it needs to be something of about that vintage to truly work.
And then, if it's especially cold, you hop into the bath to chill. Or rather, warm up.
Our water on the estate used to be piped in from a private loch, which made it rather more special than the regular water that people in town drink. Nowadays, I'm not so sure where it's coming from (well, my drinking water is coming from a bottle, for reasons which will soon become apparent), last I heard we had a bore hole, but who knows now.
One of the things I used to love most about having a bath when we moved in, was that if there had been strong winds or heavy rain, our bath water would take on a greenish hue and develop a wonderful peaty smell. I'm fairly certain that spas charge a lot of money for people to bathe in water like that and we get it for a nominal monthly fee.
It also tasted amazing. The water from town always has a slightly sharp taste, almost chemically. The water at Mount Stuart is soft and it has a really fresh sort of flavour.
Until Tuesday night that is.
A couple of weeks ago we got a letter warning us not to drink the water. Bottled water was provided, with instructions to go and pick up more if we needed it. There's a quality issue. There's been a quality issue on and off for the last few months, so we're used to the routine now. Cleaning your teeth with bottled water is easy once you get the hang of it. Keeping a bottle of water beside the kettle for refills is second nature.
What we weren't prepared for was a strange seaside sort of smell when we took our showers on Tuesday night. I commented on the sea smell to Mr Click at which point he mentioned that he could taste salt on his lips (he was in the shower at the time). Sure enough, our shower seemed to be pumping out salt water.
The following morning, we still had sea water (or something very similar coming out of our taps). I called the office and by tea time, normal, non-consumable, water service seemed to have returned. I'm still a little at a loss as to where it could have come from as although we're only a short walk from the beach, we're some height above sea level.
It's really just another day on the estate.
We rarely get much in the way of excitement out here. The fact that one of my favourite parts of the day is walking along the road for a conversation with Big Pig who lives in a field almost half a mile from my house probably says a lot.
But occasionally we do get the odd celebrity wedding or big event on the estate. We get the letter warning us of impending fireworks, we stay up late to watch them with a labrador who is convinced that the world is coming to an end, and we enjoy seeing the slightly hungover people stumbling out of the holiday cottage behind us the following morning.
Last Saturday though, we had the party to end all parties.
You have to understand that we are country dwellers. The most noise we get is the randy pheasants during the summer and the occasional startled donkey or cow.
We are definitely not used to all night parties.
And we are definitely not used to parties which go on until 5:30 in the morning!
Which is what happened on Saturday night or should I say, Sunday morning.
In hindsight I can see the funny side of it now. At the time, when I had given up sleeping so I could move into the living room so I could figure out what songs the DJ was playing at (approximately) 473,394,497 decibels, I was about ready to murder someone, a fact that was made more than readily obvious by my social media commentary on the night.
From what I can work out from the social media of the people who attended the party, a good time was had by all, apart from the estate residents who didn't get much sleep.
But hey, it's the first time I've been kept up all night by my neighbours playing music in five years. If it's five years til it happens again, I'm good.
