Stoney's Fic Journal

I'm alive. I've been sick. I'm better, but tired. And now I must go do my part of the pre-cooking for Thanksgiving, because we'll be driving most of tomorrow, and we want to be able to mostly just heat things up on the day. It'll just be three of us, I think, and I'm looking forward to knitting, spinning, writing, reading, and playing with the cat.

Beach later in the week, and then, even later, after a brief moment or two at home, a wedding. We will speak of that no more until I return to whine...

Sorting has continued, very slowly (there was lots of sleeping last week), and has spread to the earring mess in my closet (it was small! I could do it in bed!) and the confusion in the craft department, which is in the bedroom, so I could just stop and drop onto the bed when needed. Found the origami paper I was looking for! Found the size 0 Hiya Hiya dpns!

Knitting, spinning, and writing all took a hit when I was sick, because there was a lot of Tired and Dizzy (and huge case of Fuzzy Brain), which was mostly med side effects. Yay. Fortunately, I'm now moving along on all of those.

I've yet to do any volunteering, due to being sick, but I'll set things up when we get back next week.

I hope you are all in good health and spirits. Happy Holiday of Overindulgence and Gratitude to those of you celebrating!

Edited to clarify.

some days, the bear definitely eats you.

favorite repeated typos of today:

RPF for RFP
partners hips for partnerships

***

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Well, American Thanksgiving to those that celebrate.

I'm on my way to Nevada to reconnect with the clan

*promise not to start the fight with the Grannie*
*promise not to start the fight with the Grannie*
*promise not to start the fight with the Grannie*

I'll be back, late, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. At mom's I should have some connectivity, but I'm not completely sure of the situation. There's an extra grandparent aged person apparently living their now, which would make

-My grandmother who has reverted and makes teenagers look sane, even tempered, and pleasant
-M's (M is Mom's husband who is not my dad) Dad who was pleasant if curmudgeonly
-M's Mom whom I remmebered as being nice -- note that M's mom and dad are divorced.

I'm hoping this means that I get the tiny spare room, because that room has the internet connections ;-)

In other news, you know how company suddenly results in you cleaning your house like a mad man? Or possibly you've experienced the phenomenon that a ficathon story that's due inspires yardwork? Well I found the flipside last night. Packing for a morning plane flight inspires 1500 word completed stories -- note this does not seem to help with your ongoing WIP.

Catch you on later on this week. I'm about to test my new long life batter on the plane.

Big Bang Theory

( spoilers )

***

Castle

I don't think I like Beckett's hair. It's too...helmety. Or something.

( spoilers )

*happy sigh*

Castle is my happy place.

Now I need to sleep because I have to be in early tomorrow for meetings. Ugh.

***

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your ears tuned to the roar
Supernatural; Jo, Ellen; pg; spoilers through 5.10; 1,510 words
In which Jo grows up.

Thanks to angelgazing for handholding and title-wrangling.

( your ears tuned to the roar )

~*~

Feedback is adored.

~*~

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Sigh. My cake didn't rise, and worse, it tastes like failure.

*crosses that recipe off the list*

On the upside, there was reviewing of yuletide source. Now I just have to figure out what I'm writing.

***

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Okay, this is the plan for hiatus:

1. yuletide
2. Broken Toys
3. the 5.10 story I'm working on right now (I keep having to stop because it's making me cry! That never happens to me when I write!)
4. The Dean-Michael dream story
5. Drought Conditions (casefile)
6. Nothing but Winter in my Cup (casefile)
7. the Dean/Sam/Pam story

That's quite a lot, considering November and December are usually the time of my fannish malaise.

This song is not helping with the crying, iTunes!

Now, though, I think I am going to bake a cake.

***

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Oy, this day. Or, well, yesterday, at this point. The less said, the better. And did I mention I got my period this morning? oy.

I left work late - I think I was the only person left in the office - and all I wanted was to come home and watch this week's Friday Night Lights. But the file I dl'd wouldn't play on WMP or QT or even VLC. I updated DivX and it wouldn't play on that either. So I deleted it, rebooted, and redownloaded, and it worked.

I thought I might actually get through the episode without crying. I don't know why I thought that. I don't think it's ever happened, and it certainly did not happen tonight.

Friday Night Lights: A Sort of Homecoming

( spoilers )

***

Okay, I just asked this in meret's comments, but ( spoilers for SPN s5 that's aired so far )

***

*yawn*

Man, I totally need to sleep.

***

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Supernatural: Abandon All Hope

Okay, so I tried to do a rant section and a non-rant section of this post, but the ranty stuff kept intruding. So while I really liked many aspects of this episode, the rage kept intruding. Just so you know.

( spoilers )

***

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I have a new all-time favorite SPN episode.

And I'm wearing my Harvelle's shirt to work tomorrow. I don't care.

(Also - props to Mark Sheppard. "My first on-screen kiss" indeed. I tip my hat to you, sir!)

So I watched the Space promo for tonight's SPN.

( spoilers for the promo, speculation for the episode )

On a similar, but not quite the same note, faye_dartmouth has an interesting post about the issues she has with the show in s4 and s5, and while I don't agree with a lot of it (I am more optimistic about how the end game will play out, at least in terms of Sam and Dean and their relationship), I think her point about the apocalypse is sound.

The thing is, they used to connect with the people they saved - they used to save people because people needed saving, and they used to get some satisfaction out of it. At least Dean did, and I think Sam was getting there.

Stopping the apocalypse means, yes, saving 6 billion people, but it also tends to make them 6 billion faceless, unknowable people. I said this way back in season 2, but this kind of arc always draws things inward and narrows the world when it should expand it out - instead of concentrating on saving people! hunting things! Sam and Dean are themselves hunted and in need of saving, and the lack of connection with the people they are saving hurts the show as much as the fact that they can't really go all out and give us a real apocalypse. Last week's episode was a nod towards earlier seasons, when they did connect with the people they saved, but now they spend too much time being backed into corners and having to save themselves, and it's just less compelling to me that way (the same thing happened in the later seasons of BtVS and Angel, so it's not like I wasn't expecting it).

( casting spoilers for tonight's episode )

Meh. I am PMSing and cranky. Hopefully tonight's episode won't give me more reason to be.

***

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Criminal Minds

( spoilers )

Glee

*facepalm*

Could we have one woman on the show who isn't crazy, scheming, manipulative, or simply around to serve the men's storylines?

Also, ( spoilers )

***

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Maybe the best thing about yoga is that you always approach it as a
practice.

- You don't expect to hit every position
- You don't expect it to heal every ill

And very rightly, teachers and students describe the work done on the
mat as a practice for life. Sure, it starts off as a physical
thing and maybe for some folks it stays that way, hopefully increasing
their balance and flexibility over time and easing some aches. But to
really get to those goals, you have focus on what you're doing on the
mat. It's impossible to balance if you aren't focusing on what your
body is doing right then and there. You can't be thinking about where
you're going to be in an hour or what a crappy meeting you had earlier
in the day.

One of the reasons I love yoga is because I know for the length of the
practice, I won't be thinking about anything else.

And there's a lot about life right there folks.

I get some daily articles from Yoga Journal and they pointed to a
great article on the site titled The Heart's Intention
by Phillip Moffitt. Even if you aren't interested in yoga or
Buddihist philosophy, there's good stuff in there about the difference
between intentions and expectations; intentions and goals. It may
just save you some stress.

( thinky thoughts on expectation )

Work = busy and will be from now until 12/1, when we have our board meeting. I just wish they'd stop springing surprise!committee meetings on me at the last minute. The time to tell me you need a committee meeting is two months ago, when I was scheduling all the other committee meetings. Not yesterday afternoon. Oy.

So my writing brain is pretty fried and probably will be until after 12/1. At least yuletide source has been acquired, and will probably be reviewed numerous times.

Tonight, I left work right at 5 pm (usually I saunter out at about 5:15) so I could get home and change because I was meeting fleurdeleo for a super sekrit sneak preview of "Nine". Except that apparently, the super sekrit sneak preview of "Nine" was last Tuesday night, and she'd confused the dates. So we went to the diner for dinner and chit chat.

Since I was home by 8, I stopped off at Associated and bought some dried cranberries and slivered almonds and an orange so I could make innie_darling's orange-cranberry-almond loaf, and it smells absolutely fantastic. Tastes good too, although my oven apparently runs hot and I probably shouldn't have cooked it the full 55 minutes, because the edges are overdone. Ah, me. I should have learned from the banana bread. But otherwise it is very tasty.

So writing might not be happening, but at least there is baking?

In TV news, I watched The Good Wife and ( spoilers )

***

There's something adorably failtastic about Peyton Manning and Alyson Hannigan in those MasterCard commercials.

*hides from amberlynne*

***

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/96271.html. people have commented there.

I woke up this morning at 4:52 am and had one of those middle of the night freakouts. Ugh. Then I fell back to sleep and dreamt that the train I was on derailed. Thanks for that, brain! Nobody was hurt - it was just a convenient excuse for me to be unable to get to work. Clearly I need to be independently wealthy so I can stay home all day and watch dvds and read fic. WHY HAS THE UNIVERSE NOT SEEN FIT TO PROVIDE ME WITH THIS LIFESTYLE?

***

I am not a Sheldon/Penny shipper (or, as some of them call it, Shenny. Which will never stop being hilarious), but if I were, last night's Big Bang Theory would have put me over the moon. As it was, I thought it was hilarious. ( spoilers )

Actually, I did read a casting spoiler for BBT, ( casting spoiler )

Castle as always, was adorable. ( spoiler )

***

So I am victoria_p aka musesfool at AOOO. I've been fiddling around with uploading stuff and I think the importer is nifty, even if you still have to do a shitload of editing once you've imported stuff (stripping out headers and code etc.) and adding fandom and character tags etc.

I will probably attempt to upload the year of stuff that I never managed to put up on my site before I switched to the WordPress version, but I just can't be arsed to move everything. I've got over 700 stories, and even if I don't bother with drabbles and first line ficlets etc., that's still probably, like, 500 stories. That just ain't gonna happen.

Otoh, if there's some way to import the non-LJ remix archives, I would be all over that, because I don't want to lose those stories but I also can't maintain that database. Hmm...

***

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Title: The Deluxe Tour
Author: angela_snape
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Charlie Weasley
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~2300
Summary: Draco Malfoy goes to Romania to learn about dragon-induced injuries, but gets distracted by a certain dragon handler along the way.
Disclaimer: The characters contained herein are not mine. No money is being made from this fiction, which is presented for entertainment purposes only.
Highlight for Warnings: *semi-public sex, oral sex, rimming, anal sex*
AN: Thank you very much to my beta, leela_cat, who greatly improved this story. Any further mistakes are mine alone. Written for lilyseyes in fall_fantasia, 2009.

The Deluxe Tour

copracat gave me the following words to talk about:

discussion
I love discussion! Debate! Argument! I have been known to debate whether it's day or night! I've been known to dispute things I agree with, just to keep the conversation going! I have been known to pull out the dictionary to win arguments! To me, it's a normal mode of discourse, the back and forth, the rambling tangents that help me figure out what I think about things, and that occasionally change my mind. I started out in online fandom on discussion newsgroups, and discussion of the sources I love is what I came to online fandom for, and even more than the fanfic is what makes me feel engaged and excited about a source. I mean, fic can be a solitary pleasure - amirite, lurkers? - you never have to interact if you don't want to, but discussion - you need someone else to bounce ideas and theories off of, to multiply squee and talk you down from rage. At least, I do. Once I don't have someone to discuss a source with, I don't stop loving it, but I may stop being fannishly active about it. It's the lifeblood of my fannishness. Even fic, in a way, is a discussion - with canon, with fanon, with my own stories and other people's - and it certainly fosters discussion and relationships - a lot of the people I am friends with now, I met through leaving or receiving comments on fic, or on posts about sources we have in common. Discussion! It's what's for dinner awesome!

Xander
Okay, so I mentioned above that I came to internet fandom via discussion newsgroups, and the second of those was alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer, soon after Becoming 2 aired. That was the summer of Xander Lied! A flamewar discussion that went on so long as to become legendary. I was on Xander's side, of course. I still don't think he did anything wrong in that particular situation, but I don't really want to revisit the topic here and now.

Anyway. What I love about Xander is that even though he has no special powers, no special destiny, he's just a nerdy loser who somehow never even gets trained in basic self-defense, he throws himself into the fight over and over again, because once he knows what's out there in the dark, he can't not. He can be bitter and angry and resentful, he can hold a grudge, but he's also loyal, funny, and kind, and smarter than he looks, and he will have your back when you need him when the apocalypse comes knocking, and he'll find a way to help you win. Because he's awesome like that. Xander! ♥

rock
I don't even know what to say - music is so fragmented these days, so niche marketed that it seems almost ridiculous to talk about rock'n'roll and have it mean something. I mean, the history of rock, of R&B, of country, of doo-wop and Motown - it's all rock to me on one level, before it splits out into genres. Most of what I listen to is rock - alternative rock (or modern rock, as we called it in the '80s), classic rock, hard rock, southern rock, angry chick rock, pop rock - right this minute, my iPod is playing "Love Reign O'er Me" as covered by Pearl Jam. I am less hung up on genre than I was as an indier-than-thou teenager - nowadays, I like what I like, mostly without regard to the labels the music comes with - and I wish there were more public outlets for that kind of mixing and mingling. Have I mentioned that NY radio sucks? So I don't really listen to it anymore, and that makes me sad.

New York (it's one word, Frank says so)
Frank! I love New York! There's just something wonderfully alive about walking down the street here - on one of those unexpectedly warm days in February, or when it's a beautiful spring day in March, or a cold crisp night in November - there's an energy, a powerful belief that anything could happen at any moment, and that even though we don't know each other, on that street in that moment, we are all in this together. It's corny, but I do feel like my heart swells with love sometimes when I walk down the street, even when I'm just going to CVS or picking up my laundry or whatever. I love the neighborhood I live in, where I can walk to the movies, to the bookstore, to a great bagel place and more restaurants than you can shake a stick at. Where I can hop on a bus or subway to go to someone else's neighborhood. I find it energizing, even though it is also very fatiguing sometimes to live here.

poetry
I love poetry. I find the way it uses language fascinating, the way words and images can double back on themselves, invert, subvert. The way so much emotion can be packed into something tiny, something regimented, something that is both subject to and free from rules. I love that it can contain itself and its opposite, ideas that seem jumbled but with the right rhythm, it all makes sense. I think my fascination with playing with structure and tone in stories comes from my love of poetry. I write to the rhythm in my head.

***

*yawn*

I am very tired. I dreamt last night that I woke up late for work (at 8:46 am, which is usually when I'm arriving at the office), and called in to say I was late, and then I woke up *in the dream* and went to work and told one of my co-workers about it. Even in my dreams I have anxiety dreams. I don't even know.

***

I posted a story last night:

swim in my blood when it's warm
Supernatural; Sam/Dean; pg; spoilers through 5.04; 3,434 words
Sam's seeing everything clearly now.

Talking about playing with structure - this is built around the five senses, and started out mostly as a way to make myself write more sensory detail, more vivid imagery, so it's pretty plotless and very schmoopy and features the staples of my oeuvre: boys doing laundry,brotherly banter, insults, and references to Pinky and the Brain.

***

Ugh. I suppose I should work now. Sigh.

***

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/95836.html. people have commented there.

swim in my blood when it's warm
Supernatural; Sam/Dean; pg; spoilers through 5.04; 3,434 words
Sam's seeing everything clearly now.

Thanks to luzdeestrellas for betaing and to angelgazing and amberlynne for handholding.

( swim in my blood when it's warm )

~*~

Feedback is adored.

~*~

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/95677.html. people have commented there.

We are redoing the floor in the hallway. We are going to continue the wood laminate in there. In prep, we pulled up the carpet. Unexpectedly, there is a half-dollar size hole in the floor in one spot. About what you would expect for some sort of gas pipe, etc., only there is no pipe there. Well, since we pulled up the carpet, things have gone missing around here. Today, Rosebud spotted Liam dropping something down the hole. So Mr IR got the flashlight and peered through the hole and...holy moley we've hit the motherload! *g*

In view are several butter knives, a couple of Mr Ir's good screw drivers, a bag of cheetos (how'd he get those through there?), and a corn skewer. Goodness knows what else is down there.

Only problem is, it's on top of the basement ceiling, kind of right in the middle. So we have to go through the crawl space, and somehow figure out how to get to the middle of the basement ceiling to get all that stuff.

Just goes to show you, if there is a hole...children will put something in it!

( Spoilers Big Time! Just saying. )

And while one can draw innumerable comparisons with the characters of the Jossverse, Supernatural is its own story. And while Joss will certainly take a stab and laugh at the show, himself, and wink at the fandom, maybe even try to persuade them as to his intent, I don't think he would outright mock them in the serious way that Kriple and Edlund have. Was it a friendly ribbing, or was it a reprimand to certain less than desirable aspects of fandom?

Ah well, in conclusion, I miss Castiel!

Holy shit, you guys, I was so panicked about a couple of the sources I offered to write (not being able to do them justice) that I totally blanked on some of the things I did offer, and OMG YOU GUYS, I GOT THE BEST YULETIDE ASSIGNMENT EVER!!!

Ahem.

Assuming it's not like two years ago, where they snatch the awesome from my greedy little hands, that is.

Of course, I realize now that I don't actually, um, own the source. That shall have to be remedied shortly. But ZOMG! YULETIDE ASSIGNMENT = AWESOME!

I mean, I'm sure 500 words in I will hate it with the fiery vengeance of a thousand suns, but, you know, right now, the shiny hasn't worn off yet. *g*

If otoh, you have stumbled over here because I am your (probably not very awesome, sorry!) yuletide assignment, here is my dear writer letter.

To reiterate, optional details are optional, and please have fun. I'm sure whatever you do will be awesome, because I asked for four awesome fandoms!

***

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I woke up at 8:20 this morning and that was it, I was done sleeping, even though I went to bed at 2 am. Sigh.

Since I was up, I made these popovers, which came out really well. Only one of them deflated. Hopefully they freeze well.

Last night I made apple cake again, with Fuji instead of gala apples this time (not planned - just what I grabbed in Food Emporium on the way home), and it is good too. Plus, the whole apartment smells like cinnamon while it's baking.

Then I watched this week's Friday Night Lights.

( spoilers )

In slightly fewer words, oh, Show...

***

Maybe I will take a nap now.

***

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Open beta is going on!

I left the alarm on and crawled out of bed at 6am to put my e-mail address into the queue. -- I was #83 and it gave me the estimate that I could have an account sometime today. The invite was timestamped at 8:30 - I was asleep until 10, so I have to go by the timestamp ;-)

To request your own invite:

http://archiveofourown.org/invite_requests

I've uploaded a couple of stories as a test, because there are various methods! They have a URL importer where you give them a link to one of your story pages and it attempts to fill out the upload story form.

Depending on the key words used in the headers, it managed to automatically fill in the Notes and Ratings sections on some of my stories. Their header section is going to be great because the turn the categories, fandoms and character names into links, which will no doubt be searchable.

My Importer experience:

No matter the source you should expect to do some amount of editing when it brings the story in. A lot of it was deleting header information out of the body of the story and transferring it to the main header. By the way, they've left spaces for notes before the story and notes after the story and you can use both. I like this approach better on a webpage. Short summary up top and then the credits and notes at the bottom. But that's just me; great thing is you can roll your own.

From my website - Worked really nicely. My pages are very simply constructed, so it wasn't a tough challenge. I just had to delete a little header and footer code along with the usual moving of notes and story information to the header form.

LJ-import - Worked really nicely. Not too much extraneous code that needed to be deleted.

DW-import - Not as nicely. Although, wow! The preview of my DW import looked like a screen shot of my DW page, including the calendar, interactive tags, links to other parts of DW and my journal and the feedback comments under the story.

And while it was tempting, I deleted all those comments out along with the other non-story stuff. It was one thing to import my journal with comments from LJ to DW - that was archiving my journal and preserving the original conversations. Also, any commenter that objected to the import could work with DW to have their comments deleted or could pick and choose comments to delete on their own by logging in with OpenID.

That would not work so well on AO3 because the person objecting to their logged comments would have to contact the author to do the clean-up and we all know the kind of messes that could lead to. I've reported it to AO3, because they might want to take a look at the situation and prevent that from happening in the future.

Also, you know the way that some stories end up with like 4 lines between paragraphs? That's usually some kind of miscommunication between the html editors and the rich text editors. When you looked at the preview of my DW import and the actual posted story, all was good. In the editor, there were all those extra lines between paragraphs, making it difficult to see where edits needed to be made to get the line spacing right.


****

Overall, the import from my web pages to AO3 worked the best for me. A lot of this is because of the way I treat story header info on my web site verses the way it's posted in journal land. The html code I use on the website is also much cleaner than the way the journal html comes over. -- I do things like use the P tags

Second choice for now is import from LJ as the DW import required a lot of extra editing.

White Collar

I am totally crushing on Peter Burke. <- that is not a spoiler.

He's cranky and rumpled and competent and smart, and did I mention cranky? I find that kind of irresistible.

( spoilers )

***

So I keep checking my gmail, waiting for my yuletide assignment, and then I remember I signed up with the unfit address and I check that one instead. *facepalm*

Speaking of assignments, I sent out the Broken Toys assignments tonight. We got a whole twelve people participating (including me and ranalore, and you wouldn't think it'd be that hard to match that few people up, but there were a couple of tricky things. I managed it, though. Or, at least, I haven't heard back from anyone in horror yet anyway.

Now I just have to decide which prompt to write.

***

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Doctor Who on sale!

Via spikewriter and dragonydreams

Amazon's Deal of the day -- Any season of 9 & 10 for $32.49

WooT!


***

Remember the dark ages of 6 Apart (spit!), when we feared for all fannish works on LJ? Someone said, What if we had ? And after much thinky thoughts the Organization for Transformative Works came into being. The archive took a while, but the OTW *owns* the servers and is dedicated to preserving fanworks and fighting to make sure everyone understands that they are fair use.

The Archive moves into Open Beta in under 6 hours -- you can read about it in this post in otw_news

To control the traffic on the site, everyone needs an invite to log in. I'll be signing up for an invite code, but if you've got an extra, I'd love to have it.


***

And speaking of invite codes, I've got plenty for Dreamwidth if you'd like one :-D

Bwahahaha... no, really?

Trust me when I say this, because as a nurse I am being completely straight with you, the one thing you never want to hear from a doctor you are paying to evaluate your problem, is that you are "interesting". I don't know if there is anything worse than being "interesting" in the medical sense. *g* I once said that to a doctor when he commented about an "interesting" case. He laughing and said that is very true.

Which is what I did when the pain management doctor made the comment that I'm not the average patient. I laughed. He's right. And yes, I am "interesting" in the medical sense. If my family had a crazy rare inheritable problem, I inherited it. I inherited things that most doctors learn out in medical school but are told they will "never see a patient who has this." I'm just lucky that way.

(But for the most part, I ignore them. *g*)

But hey, the doctor was very thorough and comprehensive. I liked him. He only annoyed me once. Maybe twice. He very clearly explained what was going on, and what we can do to fix it. He did do a little head and beard scratching since I'm such an interesting person and present some unique challenges. After all, I'm not the average patient.

Anyway, they can fix my pain. Yay! Not today, because they have to get the insurance to authorize everything first of course. But they can make my head feel better. So I say "yay" to that!

Shit week, shit mood, tears before breakfast. (To be fair, breakfast was at 11 AM.)

SO. I'm going to list things that made me happy. In no particular order.

Finding the next two JD Robbs (in my apartment!), and reading. I'm 3/4 of the way through the first, and I have the second right where I can see it.

Dinner out with SL Wednesday. We were going to Applebee's, for the free meal for a vet thing, but there was a line out the door, and nowhere within two blocks to park. Not our idea of fun on a dark, damp evening, so we went to Hayden's, where we sat in the bar, and he got his hamburger, and I had just enough steak and garlic mashers to make me happy. He followed his burger with something evil and chocolate and filled with assorted Irish alcoholic items (and Irish Coffee--the other thing was cake), and I had pumpkin cheesecake and Freixenet. It was lovely.

I spoke to the volunteer coordinator at CAT, and just got into the next orientation tomorrow. If I hadn't, I would have had to wait until January, and I'd like to go pet kitties before then.

Realizing (and getting it, and discussing it) that I may have good, valid brain issues for not being able to read knitting charts, and ceasing to beat up on myself about it. (The fact that I am nearly always unable to understand traffic signs that are only pictures should have been a big clue, but, you know, we all understand things in our own time.) I do think I'm going to have to write out those charts in the Cookie A. book, though. Ah, well, at least I'll be able to actually KNIT Sunshine, instead of frogging it, over and over and over.

Realizing that nearly everyone I know understands my intense need for down time, and doesn't immediately assume that I'm OMG, DEPRESSED. And they believe me on the days that I tell them I AM depressed. It's nice, really. ::may still be twitching from working in that damned office:: Not having to act happy all the time is a freedom I may be unwilling to give up.

Pulling out of implied obligations to do what I wanted the most. (This may be Really Big.)

Figuring out why a lot of the things that fell out of my former office-mate's mouth made me stabby. So it took a year and change. I'm good at pushing down my own reactions, or rationalizing them when all around me are reacting the opposite.

Spinning. It's slow-going this week, as is everything, but I'm adding to the bobbin, and enjoying every inch. And after being obsessed with the color in my previous projects, I'm delighted by the heathery grayness of this one.

Knitting. It's been all socks this week, and following the patterns, and it's been fun. My world is small right now, this minute, and the way the color is playing out with the knit pattern has me fascinated. Perhaps that's odd, or silly, but it's keeping me going.

I get to wear my Friday the Thirteenth shirt and scent(s)! I wear them anyway, but it's extra fun today.

shaggydogstail articulates my problems with last night's episode in a pithier way than I managed.

sistermagpie also has a good post discussing the gender issues present in the episode.

( spoilers )

So in a very large nutshell, that is the stuff that made me so unhappy.

Just so it's not all whine whine moan moan, the thing I did really like was that ( spoilers )

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I am trying to decide whether my desire for a specialty iced coffee beverage outweighs the fact that it is ridiculously windy and possibly raining outside. Hmm. Dilemma, dilemma...

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Bones

( spoilers )

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Supernatural: The Real Ghostbusters

( spoilers )

hit enter too soon, if you saw this post while it was still incomplete.

On the promo for next week: ( spoilers )

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The Pain medicine people had another cancelation and can work me in tomorrow! Thank goodness I don't have to go through the weekend like this. The nurses at work didn't seem too bothered by the short notice absence, but we'll see how the ones from on high feel about it tomorrow. (They were all gone by the time I got the call.) Then again (ah), I am thinking that (ah) they might be a little (ow) tired of me (ow) spending all day like (ow) this.

I'm just amazed that I'm still running into people who I haven't explained why I stop every few seconds and grad the side of me head and grimace.

Yay for getting my head fixed tomorrow!!! (ahahaha...like THAT is possible! Ahahaha.)

(and yes, all of my children are still alive, thank you for asking. *g*)

You can't fool me. The title of tonight's episode can't be "The Real Ghostbusters".

Clearly your chyron operators meant to type "Payback's a Bitch".

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing-these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire. Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured. They kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.

~The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Thank you to everyone who's served in the past, who is serving now, and who will serve in the future, and to their families and loved ones, as well.

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Criminal Minds

( spoilers )

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Glee

( spoilers )

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So Fox has canceled Dollhouse, which is no surprise, but honestly? If they were going to give us 13 episodes of something and then cancel it, I would have much preferred Sarah Connor Chronicles. The worst part, though, is that we're going to have to hear from crazy Joss fans about how persecuted he is. Which, whatever. He was dumb to go back into business with Fox after Firefly, but honestly the show was pretty dire most of the time. At least it was last season, except for a couple of episodes and Epitaph One. So I'm not really crying for him, you know?

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There's still time to sign up for Broken Toys, the Dark Angel ficathon ranalore and I are running. I won't be doing the matching until tomorrow morning, if you want to sneak in there and sign up on the over night. Though as I mentioned yesterday, it is a very Max, Alec, and OC-centric bunch of participants, so if you are looking for Max/Logan, that's probably not going to happen.

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This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/93988.html. people have commented there.

I love them. And on occasion I want to choke the living $%&^ out of them. *g*

I'm cleaning off my desk at home this evening, when I notice this little piece of paper with a phone number on it. I recognize the phone number as belonging to the pain medicine doctor with whom I have an appointment on the 23rd so he can fix my wonky nerve that makes me want to rip of part of my scalp. Nothing else is written on the paper, just the phone number.

So I roam around the house asking each of the girls who wrote the phone number down and why. Finally get to the transplanted rose and she says, "oh yeah, I forgot to tell you....your doctor's office called and they moved your appointment up. I think it was today sometime. Sorry!"

AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

I was on the cancelation list. My head could be better right now.

Sorry?! SORRY?!?!?!

Dear yuletide goat:

It's that time of year again, huh? First of all, I want to say a big thank you for agreeing to write a story in one of my fandoms. I love them all, and all the characters I've chosen, so I will be happy with a story for any request.

Since it's entirely possible we don't know each other, hi. For tips about things I really like in stories, here are links to my past yuletide letters: 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005.

As for this year, each pair of characters I've requested has a strong working relationship and I really like stories that show that, that highlight the partnership aspects, especially when they are equal partners. If you're writing smut, I love it when there is a sense of fun, that they're enjoying not just the sex but the person they're with. Banter during sex is even better than banter by itself.

I know I mentioned a pairing in each request, and I do love shippy fic, but it's not a requirement. Gen is totally welcome. I love stories about close friends and familial relationships as much as I do romance. Whether shippy or gen, I especially like insults as terms of endearment, and in stories, I prefer it when love is expressed in ways other than actually saying, "I love you."

I'd really rather not have stories that are dark and angsty - I like hopeful, not unhappy endings. In cases where it can't end happily, I really dislike despair. I need some kind of hope, some light at the end of the tunnel. I have a huge embarrassment/humiliation squick, so please avoid that. I am also squicked by non-con and sexual violence.

Mostly, I want the characters to sound like themselves and have fun hanging out with each other, because I love hanging out with them. These are all just possible jumping off points if you feel the need. If you've already got a story in mind, then go for it - I'm sure it will be fabulous.

If it helps, all the stuff I've written is indexed here and my recs live at unfitforsociety, which is navigable by tags.

This year, I feel like my requests were specific enough that I am just going to list them here without much editorializing:

1. The Middleman: The Middleman/Wendy Watson

( specifics )

2. Megan Whalen Turner - The Thief series: Eugenides aka Gen/Irene Queen of Attolia

( specifics )

3. Scott Lynch - The Gentleman Bastard Sequence: Jean Tannen/Locke Lamora

( specifics )

4. Warlock: Giles Redferne/Kassandra

( specifics )

I realize this sounds like a lot of requirements, but I really am flexible. I just know what it's like as a writer to get an assignment where you only match on one fandom, with one character, and the recipient just says, "Anything is great!" and doesn't have a blog or LJ, and doesn't leave a letter to guide you. So this is just a lot of blather that is meant as guidelines in case you're flailing.

I want you to write a story you enjoy writing as much as one I'll enjoy reading.

Thank you again, dear yuletide goat! You are the bestest!

~victoria p.

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Because everybody loves an icon meme!

I used my DW icons, because I have more of them there, though most of these are on LJ too.

( 100x100 )

I could probably have filled this grid with nothing but Jensen Ackles and Katee Sackhoff icons. Heh.

Honestly, I could have put any number of icons in any number of slots - I love all my icons, which is why I have a hard time switching them out, even though I forget sometimes that I have some of them and never use them.

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This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/93627.html. people have commented there.

This evening after dinner, I made this apple cake recommended by wildestranger, since all I had to buy were a couple of apples.

It is very tasty and it smells like heaven when it's cooking. I used Gala apples instead of Cortland, and I misremembered the recipe and so used heavy cream instead of milk, but overall, it is very tasty, would cook again. I'm not sure it's going to work as a "wrap it in foil, shove it in my bag, and eat it at my desk with my fingers for breakfast" kind of thing, which is really what I am looking for, but it was quick and easy and delicious, so it definitely goes on the list of things I will make again.

There are more links to tasty baked goods in my last post, if you're looking for ideas, or if you have recipes you'd like to share.

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I watched The Big Bang Theory while the cake was baking and oh, Sheldon. *pets him*

Also, Raj and Howard are ridiculously married. Though I totally think Raj could do better.

Then I watched The Good Wife, which never quite does what I think it's going to, which is a plus in its favor. Also, the acting is really strong and I like Alicia, Will, and Kalinda a lot. But I'm just not big on courtroom dramas, so it never quite engages me fully.

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There's still time to sign up for Broken Toys, the Dark Angel fic exchange ranalore and I are running. Sign ups close tomorrow night (though if you sneak in before Thursday morning, I won't hold it against you). You know you want to! Think of all the futuristic transgenic-y goodness you could be a part of! (Uh, if you want Max/Logan, you might have to bring along friends willing to write it, since it doesn't have any proponents yet among those signed up. but the sign ups are visible, so you can see if there's anything there that piques your interest.)

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This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/93251.html. people have commented there.

71 years ago Kristallnacht was taking place.

If you don't know what that was, then this is the perfect opportunity for you to learn a bit of history. I do not bring this very sensitive subject up to shame or spotlight any particular people, country, or religion. But rather, I bring it up to highlight what can happen when religious intolerance becomes the bedfellow of political power.

And it doesn't have to be religious intolerance. Iintolerance to any subgroup of people can result in this kind of sanctioned hate crime. When we start thinking of people in terms of "us" and "them", and how infinitely right we are, which means that "they" are infinitely wrong, this can happen again. And again, and again, and again.

When we forget what happened, or excuse it, we begin setting the stage for it to happen again. And it is becoming so distant an occurrence, that people are already forgetting.

And people are still hating. People are still being intolerant of those who are different. Those who aren't "us".

So take a moment tonight, to meditate on the past. Tomorrow, continue to work on changing the future.