every so often i get a night on my own, i try to make the most of it - i'm a busy gal and living at home kind of impinges on my solitude. so here's a diary of my lovely night in.

8.13 i have prepared by getting two (small) tuna steaks, a watercress and spinach salad, a girlie video (not that kind of girlie video - i mean mona lisa smile, although it does feature kirsten dunst and maggie gyllenhaal, mmmm, that's a girlie video i'd like to see. yes i am a perv.) and three bottles of corona.

i've squeezed the juice of a lime and a lemon into a bowl, combined it with some extra virgin olive oil and a little bit of salt and pepper, i am marinading my tuna in that (and i've saved some for my salad dressing).

i'm now relaxing in front of queer eye for the straight guy with my corona. do you think having a lime in a beer counts as a fruit for your 5 a day thingy?

8.39 the straight guy is crying. he's a wrestler. how do they do it? also i've finished my corona, dare i begin another one before i start cooking (at about 9)?

9.33just finished eating, i think i overcooked the tuna a bit, because the grill was hotter than i thought (i gave it a couple of minutes on each side), and both could have done with a bit more olive oil, but otherwise it was a very nice meal, which i ate while listening to rhapsody in blue. because i felt like it. so now i'm watching big brother, with my second corona.

9.54 am debating having an amaretto instead of my third corona. but i might not, not a very exciting thought that, really is it? big brother's finished. i think i'll be voting for jason to go (not least because he's probably a bit lonely in there now). thinking... thinking... *urgh anti smoking ad*

10.09 those ads always make me change the channel, i detest them. i don't smoke, don't make me watch them. i also loathe the speed kills ads. i don't drive, and i think they may be slightly responsible. i appear to now be watching daredevil. it's ok. i do have a slight fetish for comic book characters (see below - i currently have the escapist as my wallpaper) and also for ben affleck doing vulnerable (see also my love of chasing amy), but it's no spiderman, relies a bit too much on matrix style imagery, and general cgi-ness.

my cat has joined me. i imagine he's slightly miffed not to have got any tuna.

10.48 the cat has now gone out, and i've washed the dishes. the action has moved to my bedroom, where i am now watching the trailers for mona lisa smile. now drinking the final corona, decided against the amaretto, because i like it too much. *urgh dawson's creek ad, fast forward* i used to really like dawson's creek, but i just got over it when they went to college and it went pants.

10.58 mmm spiderman 2 trailer. come on get to the movie already. ok i think it's starting. oooh.

11.33 decided to have an amaretto as well. quite enjoying the film too, has julia stiles in it too, with these fererro rocher you are really spoiling us.

11.39 the p's are home. thus endeth my night of solitary pleasure. wow i managed nearly 4 hours that time.

bits and pieces odds and ends, the south coast leader appears to be sponsored by vfd. they claim it stands for verified free delivery, but that clearly makes no sense, so i'm very dubious.

then stuart murdoch was talking about his ideal woman in the guide, which is weird because i had a dream about him last night - a bunch of us were going to see b&s play live and struan was on the door, he greeted us all by name. the hack says "stuart's ideal woman would surely be small, cute, dark, with a page-boy haircut. a darker version of jean seberg in a bout de souffle, say". me! it's me! i so heart struan.

i've been a fan of michael chabon for a while now. i posted last year about re-reading the mysteries of pittsburgh, which i first read when i was about 14. i re-discovered him when i was in my first year of university - the beginning of 2001 - and i bought and read all his books. this was shortly before the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay was released. i cannot recommend this book more, i once said about it: "the most amazing novel i have ever read - covering every theme imaginable: desire, gender, war, religion, comic books, circus freaks... you name it it's in there."

i started reading it in my bed in goodricke b block (it had a lovely view of the lake, but there were always spiders sitting outside the window which freaked me out quite a lot), i thought 'i'll just read a bit of this before i go to bed', and ended up reading the entire way through, it's a fairly hefty book, and it took me maybe 18 hours straight. and then i did something i never do: i emailed the author to tell him what an incredible book he'd written (i didn't include the fact that i'd read it in a day, my godfather was an author, and once told me that he hated to think that something he'd spent years on would only last 24 hours). i told him how much i loved the book, and that i'd enjoyed re-reading his back catalogue. and he emailed me back:

"Thank you so much.  It's hearing from readers like you that makes me so grateful to be a writer... I so appreciate your taking the time to write.

I love the reference to my "back catalogue"; it makes me feel like a band! Short stories: singles.  Novels: LPs."

well, if i hadn't thought he was fucking cool before, i knew he was now. and i didn't think anything could put him any higher in my estimation. the amazing adventures of the escapist is a comic book based on the comic book that the cousins sam clay and joe kavalier produce in their novel. it's presumably intended to publicise the up-coming film but with stories by chabon and glen david gold (who wrote carter beats the devil - another fantastic semi-historical novel - and is married to alice sebold, author of the lovely bones) it's got to be good.

so i think that today is flying ant day - that day when the flying ants leave their nests to go and create new ones. i say that i think this (i have no proof), because i have seen at least four today, but it has not been nearly as spectacular as some flying ant days - including one memorable one when my brother and i saw an entire swarm leaving from our front garden - starting with a small number, building up to hundreds, and then within ten minutes they were all gone.

somewhat incredibly, on thursday, my brother and i are going to be on question time (in the audience obviously). i may try and get a blogging question in there - or maybe pick up on something topical (any suggestions welcome). not really sure yet - the way it works is that you submit your questions on the day, and they pick the ones they like best, and tell you beforehand if you are going to be asking a question, giving you lots of time to get nervous. so if you can tune in at 10.30pm on thursday, you may catch a glimpse of me or my sibling. exciting innit?

according to my pilates teacher, i'm "slightly lop-sided", we're coming to the end of our ten week course, and i'm slightly inclined to think that this is because he wants me to come back for more (which i would do anyway, because i totally heart pilates, it turns out), but actually i can feel it when he puts me right, but somehow i can't convince myself to sit/stand properly when i'm not at pilates. weird.