"Do you have any new goals?" asked the physio/strength trainer.

I think being able to lift Big Hamster tank for ease of emptying and washing out would be a good one. It is a bit too big and heavy and awkward.

Later I can think about entering an Iron Pet Owner competition of some sort. Carry 40kg of cat litter home from the pet store! Lift your dog down from the top of the wardrobe (how did he get there?)! Sprint to beat the escaped hamster to the door! Speed cat-boxing!

EDIT: Have filled Small Hamster foodbowl for long weekend with seed approx 3xvolume of hamster. Am watching him try to fit it all in his cheeks.

2nd EDIT: Wow, I can lift it! Now I just need to grow a third arm to come out from around my knee, to reach in and help sweep the bedding out when it doesn't tip smoothly.

Books read (11 so far)
None. Started but have not yet finished Tristram Shandy and Ancillary Justice and The Sweetheart Season.

Films watched (78-89) (2 at the cinema, 5 DVD, 5 tv)
Strange Days
Zoolander (rewatch)
A Story of Children and Film
How to Train Your Dragon
Boyhood
The Rum Diary
The Woman in Black
Fast Girls
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Dazed and Confused
21 Jump Street
Only Lovers Left Alive

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (25-27)
Slow Club (gig, Portland Arms, Cambridge) + Fred's House support
Once (musical, Phoenix theatre, London)
Medea (Olivier Theatre, London)

Best film by far was Boyhood. Medea was powerful and stimulated lots of post-theatre conversation despite being over 2000 years old.

Books read (10-11)
Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (2012)
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (2013)

Films watched (50-68) (3 at the cinema, 13 DVD, 3 tv)
Frozen
Sci Fi Shorts 1 (Sci Fi Film Fest)
LFO (Sci Fi Film Fest) (Low Frequency Oscillation)
The Hunger Games
Frank
Cosmopolis
Fantastic Mr Fox
A Serious Man
The Sting
Once Upon a Time in the West (rewatch)
Raging Bull
Shaun of the Dead (rewatch)
Hot Fuzz (rewatch)
The World's End (rewatch)
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Never Let Me Go
Limitless
Rushmore
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (21-23)
The Fall (gig, Cambridge)
Slow Club (gig, London)
White Hinterland (gig, London)

Books: were both read on holiday for Book Club. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was fab and I am looking forward to talking about it. I made a start on Tristram Shandy and Ancillary Justice but find them both a bit slow (also I'm not on holiday any more and have other things to do).

Films: awesome month, first viewing of some classics, got to the Sci Fi Film Fest, rewatched a load of Edgar Wright films with my newly tuned eye for cinematography (here's a great video showing how he makes good comedy from framing), even the films I didn't like I got plenty of good discussion from. The least enthusiastic thing I have to say is that I think Never Let Me Go worked better in the book than the film. Lemony Snicket was the film it most surprised me to enjoy, it's a lovely dark gothic children's adventure.

Gigs: Three very different! The Fall were as good as usual, but as I've seen them a few times now it didn't feel like much new though I liked their new songs. Slow Club and White Hinterland are I think on their third albums now - give them a try if you haven't already! Slow Club have moved up a notch, from indie-folkie to wow, proper songs, not that their previous songs weren't proper (check out "Two Cousins" and stuff) (this is why I don't do music reviews) but their new stuff is kind of properer. White Hinterland was playing solo, amazing gig in a tiny venue, keyboard, drum machine and voice, singing and making her own loops as she went along to build up layers of sound.

I missed King Lear and Lip Service in the theatre due to dodgy back, which is a shame. Have a few more things coming up to look forward to though not for a month. Must look up what's on locally. I'd like to see Strawberry Shorts on June 6th if the back permits.

About this high:

I started noting down where I've eaten out this year, as well as books and gigs and films and stuff. This has the side effect of being a log of how many times they fail to follow through on a proclaimed understanding that I cannot eat gluten or dairy.

So far this year: 15 meals out, -1 creamy risotto, -1 salad with croutons, -1 sorbet on a bed of biscuit crumbs, -1 stealth ingredient (the other three I detected in time to not eat them) = 27% failure rate which is pretty fucking appalling.

I feel bad about making such a fuss every time I eat out, peering suspiciously and double checking everything instead of trusting them to have given me safe food, but with a hit rate like that I'm not going to stop any time soon.

NB Not currently broken from food, despite the userpic, and I have a lovely dairy free Easter egg to look forward to :-)

Books read
None. Not a one. Maybe 100 pages of Justina Robson's Natural Selection which I didn't finish for Book Club in December. An issue of Empire magazine. A bunch of articles on the internet.

Films watched (9-20) (5 at the cinema, 4 DVD, 1 tv, 2 stream)
Byzantium
Coriolanus (Fiennes version)
Zodiac
Death To Smoochy
Inside Llewyn Davis
Philomena (rewatch)
Oldboy
Bridesmaids
Her
12 Years a Slave
Dallas Buyers Club
Coffee and Cigarettes

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (2-7)
Coriolanus (NFT version at cinema, Hiddlestone)
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Itch (gig, Junction, Cambridge)
Sensing Spaces (architecture exhibition, Royal Academy, London)
Bill Bailey Unplugged (comedy, Leicester Square Theatre, London)
Avenue Q (musical, Mumford Theatre, Cambridge)
Of Montreal (gig, Oval Space, London)

Books incoming 1 (reader copy)

In February I got rid of my cough enough to get out to the cinema and catch some of the Oscar nominees (still want to catch The Wolf of Wall Street) and beforehand got shown some fine DVDs some of which I hadn't known of before. I also got out to quite a lot of gigs etc. Taking the last week of Feb as annual leave helped with this :-)

Gigglesome: Bill Bailey, Avenue Q (but why does it have to take such accurate swipes, darn it? I thought I was special!)
Fab: Of Montreal. Amazing show, I saw poor reviews of it elsewhere because this is the stripped down version they're touring Europe with.
Good films: Her was not the painful unreconstructed 50's build-a-girlfriendbot story I had feared; Coffee and Cigarettes is full of awkward conversations; Zodiac was great; Philomena still good on a second viewing; Oldboy was brutal.

I've not seen or read Coriolanus before, it was interesting to watch the recent theatre version (2014, starring Tom Hiddlestone) and a fairly recent film (2011, dir and starring Ralph Fiennes) and compare and contrast to see which themes were strongest. One Coriolanus was early 30s, the other late 40s, which gave a different interpretation of where they might be in their career/readiness for politics/skilled in social ways. The Fiennes version was set in a more contemporary setting, which highlighted how some issues were current. Seeing the same dialogue from two sets of people helped me understand it more, Shakespeare's words were not always that clear in meaning.

Books read (47)
London Falling, Paul Cornell (2012)

Films watched (148-167) (4 at the cinema, 6 DVD, 3 video, 6 tv, 1 stream)
Nebraska
Faust (Jan Svankmajer)
Control
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (rewatch)
Matinee (rewatch)
Saving Mr Banks
Kung Fu Panda (rewatch)
Enduring Love
The Woodsman
Queen of Outer Space (rewatch)
Fracture
Rock of Ages
Elf
Zoolander (rewatch)
Everything Must Go
Performance
Quartet
Emma
Planet 51 (rewatch)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (37-39)
Fairhaven Singer, Music for Advent and Christmas (Cambridge)
Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People (comedy, London)
Jesterlarf (comedy, Cambridge)

Books incoming 1 (1 gift, read 23/30)

WOO HOO - I have succeeded this year in reading more books than I acquired. I bought 10, was gifted 3, loaned 14, others were free/proof-reading.

Good films this month: Elf is lovely, very funny. I had thought I didn't like Will Ferrell but I was wrong.
Nebraska, Control and Performance. Performance was weird. I had heard about it from an early age in Smash Hits magazine (famously having Mick Jagger in it!) but I'm glad I did not seek it out to watch back then.
Zoolander is a classic. I seem to watch it most years.
Watching Matinee on a recorded-from-the-telly video and seeing how much it goes for on DVD has encouraged me to get the technology together to transfer some of my videos to digital format. Though maybe as a Feb/Mar project.

I get to this time of year and reflect on what I've done in the year that has been good, but it is so easy to forget things as time passes and people tell you to do emergency graphs that I often forget the good things. This year I have been writing them down.

... transition at work from a Strategic Health Authority to Health Education England in April. Many colleagues kept their jobs through the restructure, we're still working out at many levels what the new organisation does, and things are settling down. Jolly busy though, and we have not yet sorted out the firewall issue to allow us to connect to the online database.

... proofreading and transcription. Proofread a couple of short sf novels/novellas. I like this, I get to be helpful and fully indulge the pickier aspects of my nature :-) I started transcribing some interviews for Take One, a film reviews site which started out as the Cambridge Film Festival newsletter but has massively expanded. I have tried and failed to write reviews, it's like blood from a stone, but I can type up interviews, especially with scientists. It has been very interesting at the beginning, noticing how different people speak, that some slow speakers are easy to transcribe and others not so much, how people talk over each other and trail off sentences and while listening your brain is happy that it has absorbed all the concepts but it doesn't make any sense as plain transcribed words. One chap was a lecturer and managed to speak in whole sentences, a skill I had not properly appreciated before.

... met and fed lemurs (LJ post). Lemurs! I can still smell the banana in my hair and feel their little paddy paws.

... physio. Made massive leaps on the long-standing (sic) back problem to the extent I can now use underground trains when in London and drive to work and stay at the pub till nearly closing time. I hope to travel further afield next year. Several "I can never do this without hurting my back" have turned into things I can generally do.
Driving includes reversing into the garage, which I have been terrified of for the ten years I've lived here, but now it's fine, largely thanks to a parking lesson with Máiréad who I recommend if you are in Cambridge and want to learn to drive.
I have renewed my passport which expired a couple of years ago and has been languishing unvalidly in a filing cabinet while I give grouchy glares at people who said "You should renew it (for £££), it's useful for ID!" Now its corner is snipped off and I have a shiny new one. Paris in the the Spring, maybe?

... made a beaded butterfly bracelet for my mum who was very pleased with it, didn't get a good photo though. Painted some dinosaurs (Twitter pic). Made three cross stitch Christmas cards. Did not finish Many Other Things.

... had kitchen out of order in the summer due to a leak. Kitchen is so well repaired now I forget it happened.

... had some very nice meals, including at Alimentum who are always good about the dietary restrictions while being inventive and delicious. I'm tempted to see if I can get a gfdf tasting menu one day. Had a Fumo Martini (not at Alimentum), which had oaky smoky liquor and was garnished with a thin slice of bacon. I have had the experience, so now you don't have to.

Plus all the good films, gigs, concerts, comedy gigs, theatre, art exhibitions, first ever trip to the opera, books etc that I write up every month. I've had a good, rich cultural year.

Books read (45-46)
Phonogram vols 1 & 2, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie (2006-7, 2008-10) (graphic novel)
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (1940)

Films watched (131-147) (8 at the cinema, 7 DVD, 2 stream)
Scott Pilgrim vs The World (rewatch)
Amour
Gravity
Big Trouble in Little China
Full Metal Jacket
Forbidden Planet (rewatch at the cinema)
Star Trek: Into Darkness
Hellraiser
Philomena
Scott Pilgrim vs The World (rewatch at the cinema)
Shorts: Meditation (London Underground Film Festival)
Shorts: animated (London Underground Film Festival)
I'm A Cyborg, But That's Ok
The Selfish Giant
The Butler
The Consequences of Love
M

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (29-36)
Phil Hammond: Games to Play with your Doctor (comedy, Cambridge)
Mark Kermode: Hatchet Job (book tour talk, Cambridge)
Stewart Lee: Much Astew About Nothing (comedy, London)
Emiliana Torrini (gig, London)
Victoriana (art, London Guildhall)
Sarah Lucas (art, Whitechapel Gallery, London)
Wellcome Collection (exhibition)
Georgians Revealed & Permanent Collection (British Library, London)

Books incoming 1 (1 purchase, read 22/29)

A few days of holiday in London helped fill out the gigs etc list this month. I also seem to be back on the films after a slow October after a packed September, and saw a few classics I'd not watched before.

Good films: The Selfish Giant, Gravity, M, Full Metal Jacket, The Consequences of Love, the weird final film in the Meditations shorts

Stood up surprisingly well to a rewatch: Scott Pilgrim, watched for costume references because went to a dress-up quotealong event, where London Gigging Buddy and I were the only ones dressed up but it was fun anyway, and liked seeing loads more tiny details on the big screen.

Good other: Stewart Lee, Emiliana Torrini, Victoriana

I posted about Cokezone ending their reward scheme on Oct 15th. Since then I have bought enough bottles to get up to 150 and one last cinema ticket - but today fell foul of the rule where you can only enter 50 points-worth of codes per day, as it turns out it is 50 points per week and I stuck at 109 with another 42 sitting on the shelf un-enterable. My cinema-going loss is World Wildlife Foundation's £5 gain though. *kicks self for not entering the codes a week ago when I bought the Coke*