In any of the major cites that you have been made Thane of (you should at least be Thane of Whiterun) go and talk to the Jarl's steward. He will tell you how much it is to buy a house (it'll be some multiple of 5,000 gold I think). If you have the money, buy the house from him and he will give you a key and tell you where the house is. Then go find the house and the key will unlock the front door. You can buy furniture and etc, plus if you've got married your wife/husband can live there. If you buy a bed, sleeping in it will give you several bonuses.

Jon

I'm still running around with loads of crap from quests. I tend to hoard and then sell as much as possible. That's why I now have something like 15000 gold.

I want to buy a house too. I also want to buy a horse but I've lost two already, both from falling down from a great height, usually from slipping off a mountain as you try to ascend/descend by going sideways.

I spent some time today playing with the aim of clearing off some of the quests.

I'm now Thane of Winterhold, have joined the Thieves Guild and have found a lot of new places. I can now decapitate people in battle!

Frustratingly, despite learning lots of Shouts, I haven't killed enough dragons to use most of them. That may well be the next aim.

I occasionally find a dragon circling above me and try to fire at it, but it is usually out of range of arrows and ignores me, and flies off after a few minutes.

Definitely get a house, comes in very handy for storing stuff, especially the heavy things like dragon bones and ingots. In whiterun you want to go to dragonsreach and find the chap with the monks hair and thin tash, he sells you the house and the decorations. You will need another 1000 to do it up, which installs cupboards and beds etc.

I married Ysolda too

I've encountered one dragon whose soul I didn't/couldn't absorb after killing it. I've had two that circle overhead and fly off.

There are some areas where there are shouts out in the open but a dragon appears as soon as you get near.

I was considering the possibility. However my character is female. Are the residents of Skyrim enlightened enough to cope with that do you think?

Jon

My character is female too. Works just fine. No comments from anyone.

After the ceremony, you leave the temple and need to go back inside to find her again to discuss where you both shall live. She now refers to me as "my love" and gives me 100 gold every day share of her trading profits (aggregates up until you next ask how business is doing)

RIP Lydia, I know you weren't supposed to die, but you stood in the middle of a fight between a dragon and a mammoth, and you are way too annoying to go to the effort of re-loading far enough back. I shall miss you complaining about having to carry my stuff.

Faendal is awesome. You pay him to level up your archery, then trade with him as a follower and take the gold back from his inventory!

I did this (and I didn't even need/want the archery skill!)

+1

Up to level 80 smithing, any change I get I'm using it to level up, about to get into enchanting items so I can make cheap enchanted daggers for quick cash

Faendal turns out to be less useful as a follower, especially if you need him to actually do something like, say, help fight off two snow bears at the same time. Tricky for level 17 if your follower is a bellend. He gets beaten into submission quickly and then fails to bother joining back in again when he recovers. I didn't give you that epic forged warhammer for no reason, you useless git!

I'm concentrating on smithing for now, have a fair amount of stuff laid by to make dragon armour when the time arrives.

With regard to dragon shouts, what have people tried out and found to be useful?

I think I've discovered around 10 dragon shouts but don't have enough dragon souls to be able to use them. The only ones that I can use are the whirlwind thing which makes you sprint fast. Very useful in corridors with lots of switches and vital in one crypt thing where you cannot get past the timed gates without it. Unrelenting force is great for subduing dragons so they can't breathe fire at you.

However these are the ones you start with! And I've not done much of the main story line past going to High Hrothgar!

I've had some luck in finding dragons recently, so have a couple of souls to spare. I just got "marked for death" which seems to be only moderately useful but I've not had chance to try it much yet.

Two-handed combat rank has improved a lot, when face to face with a landed dragon I sometimes get an awesome critical hit move where I leap over the dragon's face and land on it's head, then bring my war hammer down on it

I appear to have become some kind of vampire.

I also have contracted Rock Joint.

That happened to me, I had to reload an earlier save. If you fight a vampire, you can catch their disease and must take a Cure Disease potion or visit and acivate a shrine within 36 hours of game time. Once you get beyond this point, it becomes a royal pain in the arse, and you have to complete some quest in Morthal to cure yourself. After so much time, everyone will attack on sight unless you feed on (sleeping?) people every few days until the quest is complete.

Long story short: check under Tab menu-> Magic -> Active Effects every so often after a fight to check if you caught something (disease effects appear here: intuitive fail!) and cure that immediately. Always carry two cure potions.