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Just checking prices at thetrainline.com and if I travel down to London on the Monday before and come back on the Friday after New Year, I can do the whole trip for under £14. That's insanely awesome and probably the cheapest I've got tickets to London for, ever. Okay so add the £20 I'll need to spend on a new railcard before then but that pays for itself.

That's going with a change at Crewe each way and buying singles instead of a return... the cheapest of which was £41. I love thetrainline for reminding me to try buying singles. Yay! So I will be buying train tickets when I get home. I thought they'd have shot the prices up for New Year but apparently it's gone the other way.

All the more money to spend in the Forbidden Planet sale. :DDD And then I'll have something definite to look forward to, because right now there's just six weeks of woeful boredom until Christmas with more woeful boredom after. This might actually get me through to January with my sanity - relatively - intact.

Only now I've exhausted possibilities for wasting time via internetage and have to actually go do work. Sigh. I just want to go home and curl up in bed with The Graveyard Book. Which is even more fun than I was expecting and has my name on a gravestone drawn by Neil Gaiman in the front, which I still have almost as much glee over as my double-signed Good Omens. Which made it back intact to my bookshelf by the way, though I didn't stop stressing until it was safely tucked back into the space it left when I packed it almost two weeks ago. Totally worth dragging a hardback book around London with me.

Mmmmm. Bed and books. Only another four and a half hours to go and I am so there.

Like kindoftrouble said, we're not dead but have just been watching lots of QAF (I wasn't expecting to love the American version as much as the British but I do) and not really anything like hard work, which means I shouldn't feel as knackered as I do today. I could've stayed sleeping longer this morning but I haven't started my NaNo yet and I need to walk the ten minutes to Tesco (oh London you are ridiculously convenient, sometimes) before around half three when I'm heading to Covent Garden.

Why Covent Garden? Well Forbidden Planet is there. And, at the Neil Gaiman talk & signing on Friday, the girl in the queue behind us (we got to know everyone pretty well over the two hours we were standing there; thankfully they were awesome) told me that Pterry was signing sometime this week at Forbidden Planet. Which I thought was probably a mistake and it'd be after I left or next year or somewhere else, because as I was packing my hardback copy of Good Omens to bring for Neil to sign, I thought sadly that I'd never get Terry to sign it too because I'd never even seen him do a signing, nevermind one I could get to and there'd probably be less signings in future from him. So I thought I'd check the Interwebs and it'd be wrong because seriously? There's coincidence and then just plain weird.

But no. Terry Pratchett, Forbidden Planet London, Monday 3rd at 5:30pm. I still don't quite believe it and won't until I get there and see him, complete with awesome hat and all. It's for The Colour of Magic DVD so I'll have to buy that which I wasn't planning on (I don't like Rincewind and I don't particularly like David Jason, so it's a no-win situation for me) but the price is so worth it to get a Good Omens signed by both of them. I'll never let it out of my sight again. I'm trying to talk myself out of picking up The Bromeliad in hopes he'll sign that too because it's my other favourite Pterry thing, but I already own it at home and so cannot justify it. Probably. And then I would have too many things to get signed anyway because I'm taking kindoftrouble's Good Omens too and I don't know if she'll get there in time after work, so... cannot buy another book. Really. Especially one I already own.

Also, I was told about Pterry literally a minute before we reached the front of the queue for Neil and I was still bubbling about it when I went up (he looked knackered but was still taking the time to write personal messages and doodles in everyone's books, bless him) so when he asked how I was, I was all "Yay! You! Pterry next week! Double yay!" And he said right, well if you're seeing Terry I'll write 'Burn this book!" in Good Omens to see if he writes the punchline and also, tell him to 'Watch out for the weasels'.

So I now have a message from Neil Gaiman to pass on to Terry Pratchett. Even though I have no idea what it means but I'm going to ask Terry when I tell him, because weasels? What? I'll let you know.

But yes. In short, life is awesome and I still have another week off; a week that includes DVDs, Terry Pratchett, te British Museum, maybe the British Library which Ive always meant to go see, Lancaster, Crows, fireworks... awesomeness. I still can't believe Gaiman&Pratchett chose the week I was in London and had Good Omens with me to do signings only three days apart. Honestly, stuff like this happens when I'm in London. It's the City of Bizarre Coincidence.

I should stop watching To Buy or Not to Buy and go get dressed. Really. Any minute now.

I cannot tell my workmites because they wouldn't appreciate just How Awesome this is but NEIL GAIMAN NEIL GAIMAN GOING TO SEE NEIL GAIMAN ON HALLOWEEN MAY BE QUITE OVER-EXCITED ABOUT THIS. *mad flailage*

OCTOBER = BEST. MONTH. EVAR. YES. Dylan Moran, check. Chester Zoo, check. Cardiff, check. London, check. Neil Gaiman, check. And my birthday! SO MUCH AWESOME I MAY EXPLODE.

Terry Pratchett and I have just agreed to allow BPAL to do a set of Good Omens scents, the money to be divided between freedom of speech and orang utans. Terry also thinks the Agnes Nutter scent should have gunpowder in it...

... I am so doomed. Good bye money. It was nice having you but there are more important things in life. Especially if they do a Crowley scent, because awesome.

I love Neil Gaiman. He can make even Shakespeare, after days of endless reading, seem fun.

However, haven't started planning yet. Um. Did I mention that I wasn't planning to sleep tonight anyway?

edit: God. I'm not even writing the essay yet and I'm bored. Planning's hugely annoying because I have all these ideas while reading, scribble them across various pages and post-its and books, only to have to hunt them all down again to form the plan. You'd think that after two years and multiple essays, I'd have learnt what a dumb idea it is but no.

On the plus side, I've decided to open and finish with Neil Gaiman quotations. To make myself feel better, if nothing else.

And I'm already tired. >_< Oh dear. HELLO FAILING.

If you haven't heard it before, Maddy Gaiman interviews her dad. It's really very sweet and surprised me no end because I've never heard Neil Gaiman speak before. I don't know what I was expecting him to sound like -- I don't think I'd really thought about it -- but it wasn't that. That's kind of sweet too though.

I need to go to bed. >_< Urgh.