Well, that’s it. It’s over and I did it. It was certainly an experience although not at all what I was expecting. It was fun looking at what other people were doing and finding a couple of blogs that I’ll be reading in the future. I managed to stay awake until about 6am, which is very impressive for me, and then I napped in between blogging which didn’t make me feel too hot.

I wanted to be a teacher because I had a really good primary school teacher and I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to be a firefighter, because it seemed like a very exciting and noble thing to do. I wanted to be a housewife because I like to cook and keep house. I wanted to be happy because doesn’t everyone? Although I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, I know that I am happy and that is a good start.

I’ve already mentioned my desire to buy a house and make it solar powered and very eco-friendly. It’ll be tough to do that in this country, given the lack of adequate space, and the cost of the space once you find it. The best bet is to move somewhere else, like France. But I want to get a nice big plot of land with plenty of space to sort out a vegetable garden and the usual compost and green features that you would expect. This does not come cheap. Nor does having the time look after chickens and vegetables.

Recently, I realised that my podcast collection was a bit… lacking. I liked what I had but there wasn’t all that much diversity. I was looking forward to finding out some new shows. Thankfully, with 24 hours to fill, I managed to find out some new podcasts, download them all and pretty much get up to date. Actually, that’s not true, there are still a lot that I haven’t got round to, but I’m much happier that my list is overflowing with gems.

It’s almost 12 o’clock and we’ve just had lunch. A little bit early, but given the complete mess-up of timings, it doesn’t really matter, does it? I couldn’t really eat too much during the actual marathon event and the staying up throughout the night, because when I eat, I fall asleep. I’m sure there’s a biological explanation behind it, but actually, it’s quite annoying. When I get home from work on a normal weekday, I make us dinner, and after that, I’m lucky if I don’t fall asleep.

I think there was a programme on the BBC called It’s Not Easy Being Green. I didn’t watch it but I am currently reading the book, and it’s brilliant. It’s all about a family who gave up their home and moved to Cornwall, to set up a much more eco-friendly life. They didn’t give themselves up to the land or anything, and are still normal people with jobs and lives, but they are “reducing their eco-footprint on the world”.

We went to a firework display recently. As is our way, we arrived late to the display, but nothing had started yet. We found an empty spot, climbed a fence, got a good view, set up the camera, and were ready to go. The countdown began. 3, 2, 1… Whoosh. The first fireworks went up. We tried to get some pictures, but nothing really worked. The lenses weren’t really capable of what we wanted from them given the dark, and the exposure time and things like that.

A long time ago, I walked past an art shop and saw the best painting I’ve ever spotted. It was a deserted beach, somehow done in purple, with two lonely figures walking along together. So, actually, they probably weren’t so lonely. And I suppose the beach wasn’t so deserted. Bad description. The price tag was out of reach at the time, and although still a stretch, a couple of years on I could probably scrape together the funds to buy something I really loved. Naturally, now that is the case, the picture is nowhere to be seen.

A while ago I was reading a blog that said they were going to ‘announce’ that they had decided to hold off on the having a kid thing. It struck me as weird when I first read it, that there was some kind of an announcement ceremony that went with this, in the same way there would be if there was an actual pregnancy. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I definitely do not want kids, and I haven’t announced it to anyone, but I haven’t had to. I’ve not made any secret of the fact that I would rather rip my own ears off than bring someone else into the world. People that do are great, it’s a choice and I’m choosing not to.

I am always correcting people. When they talk to me and pronounce a word wrong, I can’t help but correct them. When I am reading something they have written, and something is spelt wrong, I have to mention it. I suppose it is not a bad thing to like correct spelling and punctuation, but it often gets on people’s nerves. Nobody likes to be picked up on something they’ve spelled wrong.

I think I see the world differently to how normal people see it. When Mr C and I talk about something complex, like politics, I don’t always understand all of the things he is telling me. The answer always seems so simple. Why don’t they just give the prisoners back? That kind of thing. But even when the complications are explained to me, I am still adamant that there is a simple and peaceful solution.

I often go along with what the people around me are saying. It’s not necessarily that I agree with them or that I don’t, I just prefer to go along with them. It’s not that I am being influenced by them or even being ‘under the thumb’ about a particular subject. It’s just the way I am. My biggest problem is probably also my greatest asset. I can see arguments from both sides. Pretty much always. Unless something has actually hurt me, then I can be pretty unbiased about things, so much so, it infuriates other people.

Mr C always says it takes a lot to impress me. Quite often I come home to find he has discovered some new gadget or some piece of news or something that is just so important and he is really excited about it. All too often, I am less bothered about it. Yeah, whatever. The truth is, I don’t mind reading about something, or hearing about it, but it’s not until I see it in action that it’s really going to impress me.

I mentioned somewhen at the beginning of this Blogathon, eons and eons ago, that I jumped out of my skin when I saw a snake. That’s one of the few things that scares me. I didn’t jump when a scary moment happened in LOST. I don’t tend to be bothered by horror films, and ghost trains just don’t do it for me. However, when I come home from work and expect you to shout hello and you don’t, and then I walk cautiously into the room, worried about what I might find, and you’re waiting behind the door ready to jump out on me and say boo? Then I jump.

One of my New Year’s resolutions, as documented on this site, was to try and write some transcripts. I’d had some moderate success doing a couple and wanted to see if there was any future in it for me. Volunteering for a television site, and producing a couple of transcripts a week was a really great thing for me to do. It kept me active, gave me something productive to do, helped me to think, and also gave back to the script-reading community. Everyone’s a winner.

Is everyone still having fun? A lot of people are talking about a second wind or a renaissance in their writing. I am feeling the exact opposite. I was absolutely fine to start with, had a bit of a dip after seven or so hours, because that was my usual bedtime. Then I’ve been good all through the night. It’s now 6am and I’m really starting to feel it. I’ve been having fun though. I don’t think I’ve ever written so much in my life. Mr C sure is going to have a lot to read when he wakes up.

Something I realised just on Friday of last week - I am beginning to feel comfortable at work. You know how it can take a while to really feel like you’re doing a good job, well at this particular place of employment, it’s taken a long while. I don’t know whether it was one good day, or if it was the start of a new upwards trend, we’ll have to see how it goes. Here’s hoping.

I dream very vividly. Sometimes it’s very scary, and not at all a pleasant experience. But sometimes, just sometimes, I manage to get something out of the so-real-I-could-be-awake experience. Just recently I was having such a convincing dream that I woke up and immediately wrote it down. A couple of hours later and I had the plans for another story. It was quite amazing. I don’t know where my subconscious plucked the idea from in the first place, but it certainly turned it into something good. Perhaps it is worth having the horrible scary dreams sometimes, so long as it is made up for by the occasional dream that is inspirational.

My first ever job was actually as a waitress. It lasted four hours before I ran out of there screaming and never went back. So, my first real job was as a “kitchen assistant” in an old people’s home. I put the quotes in there, because where it says kitchen assistant, you should read: girl who washes up. It was a part time thing, and I only got the job because my best friend at the time couldn’t do it anymore. Her hands were a little bit worse for the wear from all of the washing up and she wanted to do other things.

People often ask me why I’m keeping our wedding a secret. Do our families not approve? Is it that we are embarrassed? Do we have something to hide? The answer is none of the above. I want to have a private wedding because that is what I want. I don’t want to have everyone we know and lots of people we don’t there. I don’t want to stand up in front of people and have to say all that stuff.

Just recently it has started to come to my attention that I may not be as good a driver as I first thought. I mean, touch wood, I have not yet crashed. It is bound to happen, but I would rather put it off for as long as possible! I passed my theory test first time, and my practical driving test first time after only six months of driving lessons. I think that’s pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself.

There are certain jobs I would love to do. For instance, I sent my script to the BBC to have a read through. There’s a process that unsolicited scripts go through, which involves being read by certain people and either discarded or moved along the chain. How do you get the job to be the person that reads the scripts? How do you get the job to be the person that updates the website on certain television shows?

When the window is open, all I can hear is the crickets. They chirp so loudly. Every time we pass some long grass, there are crickets making ridiculously loud noises. The building site nearby has just recently put up two flagpoles. The flags flap away in the breeze and look very swish, but the rope slaps against the pole with a really annoying clinking noise. Mr C says he likes the noise, finds it relaxing, like wind chimes.

I think everyone is OD’ing on the coffee to try and stay awake and focused on this Blogathon. Are you? Unfortunately I don’t like coffee, so this option doesn’t really work for me. I love the smell of it, and could sniff it all day, but to actually drink it gives me a headache. At work, I don’t drink tea or coffee. There’s a really nice canteen that serves good hot chocolate that I used to drink but I’ve gone off that now.

Having been staring at my very special Blogathon header picture for 12 hours, it is now seared into my brain. I wish that I could make things like that. When it comes to art, I can see exactly what I want to happen in my head, but I can never get it to come out on the paper, or whatever medium I happen to be working with. I remember one particular art class at school where we were drawing pictures of some fruit in a bowl, and my apples actually looked like an apple, and I got a B or something like that. I was so impressed with myself that I was skipping with joy for the rest of the day.

There’s a programme on the BBC at the moment, and it basically involves three “celebrities” going to France and trying to learn the language. It is a reality show, but it’s not like Big Brother or anything like that. The celebs are staying in a posh villa in a really nice, rural part of France. They are not allowed to speak English between 9am and 5pm, or something like that. They have their own personal French tutor to help them. They spend the morning having lessons, then they head out in the afternoon, into France and take on some kind of challenge to help them practise what they’ve learned.

When we got back from holiday recently, everyone at work scanned my hands to see if there was an extra ring on a particularly special finger. There wasn’t. I really like the fact that they’re all interested though. If I was a different person and talked about my wedding non-stop, they probably wouldn’t care less. Because I’m keeping my wedding quiet, they seem to be a lot more interested. One woman even went so far as to make me show my hands to her.

Is it just me or do some people swear too much? I don’t swear very much. It doesn’t sound right when I do it, and Mr C has been known to laugh at me when I swear, so I try very hard to avoid doing it. Sometimes, though, it’s just necessary. When you drop a hammer on your foot, or when something doesn’t work out like you planned, or if something bad happens, swearing is the perfect thing to do. Sometimes it works in a sentence perfectly, because it adequately describes the pain and frustration you are feeling at that particular point.

We have now officially started a new day! I was thinking, earlier, about how rubbish television is. I love watching it and I spend much too much time in front of that grey box in the corner of my living room, but it’s actually getting quite predictable. The thing that most dramas are based on know is the lack of communication. The only way soaps can have so many bust ups between characters and so many love affairs and relationship crises, is that they never talk to each other. Nobody does.

The last time I did go to the supermarket, and that was a while ago thanks to the all new super-duper home delivery service I signed up for, it was busy, as usual. There was one checkout boy who had a completely clear conveyor belt, so I headed straight to him. I usually try and stay away from the youngsters, particularly when I have alcohol, but this time I was being good and didn’t need an over 18.

While we were in Newquay, we ventured into a club. I don’t do this very often, clubs are definitely not my scene, but somehow Mr C convinced me to pay a chunk of money to get my hand stamped. Inside, I spotted a little desk set up in a dingy little corner of the club, that was selling balloons. At first I couldn’t figure it out. Then I remembered the news item I had heard on the BBC about people sucking up helium or whatever from balloons. Apparently it gives you a bit of a high, for about ten seconds. So worth it.

So, how’s everybody doing? I was really having a good time an hour or so ago. I was updating and listening to some podcasts, reading and commenting on some other Blogathon participants, and even sponsoring some other people. I’m actually quite amazed at how quickly the time passes between posts. You just manage to get one written, you surf around to see who else has updated and what they’re saying. Check to see if there’s any news on the Blogathon homepage, any new games to play, etc. And by that time, you’ve got ten minutes to write the next post and get it updated.

When I was in my teenage years, I pretty much lived in my bedroom. I had everything I needed in there, books, music, television, computers. To get out of the house and to get some well-needed exercise, my mother started dragging me along to her keep-fit classes. I wasn’t so sure at first, what with being a body-conscious teenager and all. Actually, they turned out to be quite fun. The emphasis was on the dance rather than the exercise, and I found that I quite enjoyed myself. I was amazed when we went to a demonstration, with groups from all around, and I got up and did a routine with the others in front of lots of people and had a really good time.

I don’t know much. I am constantly learning things. Geography, politics, history, general things in life. I am constantly learning new things. I love to learn new things though. I like it when suddenly something begins to make sense. Like why the government act like they do, or what happened in the past that makes the present what it is. I actually think I am pretty good at learning things. Usually, you will only have to tell me something once, and I will understand and remember. And if I don’t understand straight away, I can take the information away and process it without having to ask the same question twice.

Why is it that being in upper management makes you suddenly believe that you can behave rudely and aggressively and that it’s acceptable? I know of someone who is quite nice, really rather laid back and generally an okay guy to work with. Other times he’s lucky he doesn’t wind up with a pair of office scissors in the side of his head. So, what is it that makes him think he’s so much better than the rest of us, and that we can be talked down to like idiots?

I was on a communications course at work, and learned plenty of interesting things, even about the art of conversation. I was told that the best way to start and maintain conversations with people is to ask questions. Ask about themselves, and when they answer, let it initiate more questions. Apparently, people like talking about themselves and love when someone takes an interest in them. Here’s the thing I don’t understand. I used to have a Bulgarian friend who, quite predictably, came from Bulgaria. She would talk, incessantly, about herself. Her boyfriends (yes, that’s plural), her family, her ambitions, her work, her friends, her plans for the weekend.

Snakes. Last time I was at a zoo, I went into the tropical display and the first thing I saw was a huge, enormous snake. Just thinking about it now makes my skin crawl. At the time, I jumped a mile and hid behind Mr C. Never mind the very thick glass that separated us from the snake, and never mind that it was more interested in the thermostat control on the wall of it’s tank. It was horrible, and I ran into the building, away from the snake as soon as I could.

A colleague and I were discussing the Red Arrows - she was keen to see them, and I was saying it was a lot of effort. She was a bit flabbergasted. The thing is, you see, that we have already seen them twice this year, so far. We saw them at Goodwood, where they were fabulous, although a little lost behind the trees. We also saw them at the Air Tattoo, which I don’t think I have mentioned, but we took plenty of pictures and you can look forward to those soon. At the Air Tattoo, they did a really long display and it was absolutely amazing.

There are building works going on nearby. It’s quite annoying, but I think it could be worse. They have certain time restrictions from which they are allowed to work, and it usually manages to coincide with when I am out of the building. Not today, though, and this morning it was loud, loud, loud. People have said it must be awful for us, but I don’t think it is all that bad. When my parents visited, they said they hardly noticed it.

Last weekend, I had to catch up with all the television that I had recorded whilst we were on holiday and the recovering week. I basically spent all afternoon watching different dramas. I was busy doing other things at the same time, so it’s not like I wasted an afternoon or anything, but it was a lot of television. So many different stories appeared on the screen, that they started to merge together.

We met up with a friend a while ago and went for a drink with him. Discussing our jobs, I expressed dissatisfaction with mine, and he said: “What would you rather do?” “I want to be a writer,” I replied. Oh. My. God. I said it out loud. I want to be a writer. I went on to talk about how I want to write scripts for television and that I had written one comedy/drama type script.

A few nights ago, I came home to find a little solar panel hanging out the window. How cool is that? We’ve been talking about green issues recently (more on that later), and now we have our very first solar panel? We sat back and watched in amazement as the camera it was powering spat out a picture that had been picked up using the sun’s rays alone. Suddenly, the picture started to lose it’s colour and then the picture started to fuzz.

I’m eating chocolate biscuits. It’s very bad and useless for the diet but delicious. There’s a guy at work who is religiously good at what he puts into his body. He has precisely two cups of coffee a day, and then up to three cups of tea. He will not have any biscuits, cake or anything anyone brings in. He has a salad lunch brought from home every single day of the week. He tells us all about the delicious but fresh and home-cooked food that he eats every night of the week.

When I decided I wanted to buy a laptop, I was in the middle of a shop, I saw one I liked, I bought it. When I buy things, it is usually spur of the moment, with some but very little market research, and much excitement. Mr C is the complete opposite. He does not like to buy anything just like that, will research all the possible options ever, find the best one, but have to think about it for a while before he actually buys it.

Today, for the very first time, I had my weekly supermarket shop delivered to my door. It never really occurred to me to do this before, because how hard is it to go to the supermarket? But they can be difficult places to deal with - too bright, too busy, too much sensory overload. They say that once you’ve tried shopping this way, you never go back. I’m not so sure. It was good, and I was very happy not to have to leave the house, and not to have to go to the depressing place that is the supermarket. I was a bit worried about not being able to pick out my own goods, although they seem to be alright. The shopping came in way too many plastic bags, about ten or so, when usually I would only use four or five.

It always happens: I go on holiday, taking a week off work, and when I return, they’ve changed everything. The IT system was completely different, logging on had changed and we were on new servers. I managed to figure it all out but this time they’ve got a new, stricter internet filter. The only thing I can look at is BBC News and Wikipedia. I have never loved BBC News more.

I’ve noticed, and we’re only two posts in, that doing this Blogathon means that I will never be unsure of the time for during the next 24 hours. Each time I write a post, I am checking what the time is, and which particular half an hour I am relating to this time. This doesn’t really make a change because I am always aware of the time. It’s a rare day that I go out without my watch on, and at work, my eyes are always flicking to the clock on the wall. Although, to be fair, that’s just because I’m counting down the hours till I get to go home.

I’m blogging for Diabetes UK. It took me a long time to decide on who to blog for. I thought long and hard: cancer, lifeguards, children, Africa, but decided that I would sponsor something a bit more close to home. My family have been affected by Diabetes, and that’s why I’ve opted to support Diabetes UK.

What have I let myself in for? So, Blogathon 2006 begins and I find myself sitting in front of my laptop, tucked away at my desk, looking forward to the coming hours. When I woke up this morning, I was concerned at the shiny, bright weather outside the window, and that perhaps I would be missing out by staying only half an hour’s distance from my laptop. Now it is pouring with rain and I am not bothered.

Recently, I have slept a lot, and the more I snoozed, the more tired I seemed to get. Things do not bode well for my ‘staying up for 24 hours’ attempt tomorrow. One of the most annoying things about the whole experience is that it’s based in America, and they are blogging from 6am to 6am the next day. Fair enough. But you have to take into account the time difference, which means I will be blogging from 2pm to 2pm the next day. This, in turn, means that I am awake for a whole morning in advance of the blogging. Not fair.