For months now, I have been collecting fic recs, meaning to post them and, dammit, I just can't seem to get around to it. idunnoh has been gone most of the weekend, doing Buddhist meditation things, so I am gritting my teeth and sitting down to do it. I know I've already lost a couple of links due to my chronic inability to organize anything.

( Behind a cut for those who don't care )

While I was on vacation, without internet access, I got out of the habit of posting regularly and even of commenting on other journals. Long story short, I've been lurking, mostly. Oh, I've made a comment here and there and I did post here once, a little over a week ago and I have done my updates in dickinson_poems and xf_book_club. I have posted a couple of things privately, one a reaction to the discussion about warnings. That post, if it ever sees the light of day, will be considerably more coherent and less ranty than its current version. The post that comes closest to my own (unfiltered) range of feelings and thoughts is Bite my privileged speaking position by eyebrowofdoom.

Discord in Fandom often creates a sort of free-floating anxiety in me. Why can't we all get along? I whine to myself. I don't like this, I don't like this at all and I wish this would stop Right Now have also been playing on the wendelah1 network.

The reasons for this are complicated and have to do with my personality as well as my personal history as a rape survivor. Trying to sort through the many, many posts on metafandom about the warnings issue and then sorting through my somewhat conflicted feelings about giving them, has been draining to the extreme. I mean, to be honest, I prefer not to read warnings, for the same reason I try to avoid spoilers for books, movies and television. The less I know about a story the better. But finally, my ethical system demands that I respond to people who are hurting with compassion.

Thanks to amadi's entry at DreamWidth, the stories of mine that are not total fluff now have warnings on them. Just in case. The only exceptions to this new rule are the stories that are archived. They are in plain text so there is no way to put this kind of warning on them. For that, you need html.

If I had it to do over again, would I put warnings on from the beginning? For the badfic porn, certainly. It is a parody of BSDM fanfic and maybe even of Badfic Porn, but it is still largely badfic, even if it is funny. Honestly, it just never occurred to me that a fic like that would require a warning or even a genre label. I'm still thinking about "An Everywhere of Silver," because the warning I posted on it here is clearly a spoiler. It's complicated. Since I haven't had anyone complain they were traumatized, for the time being, I'm going to put the concern aside. It's in a tiny, specialty archive that I would imagine gets very little traffic now that the excitement about the movie is long past and everyone but yours truly has moved on to the BSG Porn Battle. However, under no circumstances will I warn for "Old Person Sex."

Today is the last day of the latest round at ficfinishing so I want to try to do a little more writing. It astounds me to be able to say this, but after four plus years I think I may have a complete first draft of the season two novel of doom. It's still--terrible--and a long way from posting since it's mostly on paper, in four (five?) different journals, but it is all there now for me to sift through and type into a format that first readers and betas can respond to. Writing a long, plotty story is so much harder than I ever could have imagined. I respect anyone who attempts it and am in awe of people who do it over and over again, and do it well.

My vacation ended last Tuesday, sob! I had a wonderful time in Pittsburgh with fellow fangirls counterphobe and estella_c, and do plan to try to post about it at some point. I miss them. son_of_wendelah is home from college, returning Sunday to attend summer session. idunnoh is on the home stretch, giving finals and will be done, with pupils anyway, on Friday.

Because I was without internet access from June 1-9, I am pretty hopelessly behind on my flist. If I missed anything major in your life, please comment here or send me a PM.

The Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship! The Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup!! Does this mean the New York Mets are going to win the Pennant Race? Or maybe the Yankees? Probably not. Sorry, New Yorkers, my good sports karma is probably used up for the year.

Did anyone else watch the pilot episode of Nurse Jackie on Showtime? I would like this show to be good. She's a nurse, I'm a nurse. God knows, the profession could use some good media exposure but this is not that show. Our Nurse Jackie pops pills, she has sex with a doctor at work (nurses do not have time to sit down, let alone have sex, not even a quickie). There is this heart-warming scene where she is lying on a gurney with her best-friend-at-work, moaning over the fact that a patient of hers died of a subdural hematoma because the new resident didn't order a head CT.

You stupid bitch. You knew the guy needed a head CT. It was your responsibility to make sure he got one. What is the point of chewing out the resident after the code? Did you call the chief? Call the attending? No, you did not do everything you could to save the patient and faking an organ donor card for him does not let you off the hook. Nurse Jackie: you need to get yourself to rehab, stop fucking people who are not your husband, take responsibility for your actions and grow the hell up!

This is why I'm a nurse and not a television writer. No one would watch a show about what a nurse actually does.

The first leg of my journey is nearly over; I leave Manhattan tomorrow for Pittsburgh. counterphobe is driving with me to visit our friend estella_c. Although we are good friends, we have never met each other in person, so this is quite a special occasion.

Thursday, I took the subway all the way from 116th street to the Fort Hamilton stop in Brooklyn to visit amalnahurriyeh and her family. This probably seems like no big deal to a native New Yorker, or to anyone who has grown up riding mass transit, but to me it felt like an accomplishment. I even changed trains. Not only that, I did it by myself and I didn't get lost.

She welcomed me and cooked for me and let me into her life and her home. I got to hold her baby, who is adorable, and meet her wife, who is charming and intelligent. She also cleaned for me, which as a hopeless packrat and indifferent housekeeper, I could certainly appreciate as the act of love that it was. Amal, I hope to have you all for dinner in Los Angeles someday in the not too far distant future. Of course, I will need a years notice, in order to clear a path through the piles of books and boxes from the door through the front room.

The museums here are so amazing. We saw "The Model As Muse" at the Met, then Jenny Holzer's "Protect Protect" which just closed at the Whitney. Her work using declassified US government documents about the "war on terror" was horrifying. One room featured row after row of prints (or paintings?) of enlargements of the hand prints that our military had taken from prisoners. When the documents were declassified, the government censor used black permanent marker to try to make them unrecognizable. It was chilling.

The restaurants here are incredible. I have probably gained five pounds in less than a week. But the most wonderful experience is the time I have gotten to spend with my dear friend. There was a LJ post recently about female friendships that had a lot of people commenting that they had never had a close woman friend before they were in fandom. That was a surprise for me to hear, and I have to say, that certainly was not the case for me. I have had the good fortune to have made close female friendships my entire life; in fact, my oldest friend is a woman I have known since we were thirteen years old. I've known the woman I am visiting here in NYC, Susan, since we were both twenty, when we found ourselves roommates at UC Santa Cruz.

Our friendship began in youth but has strengthened over the years, despite marriage, children, demanding careers and living 3,000 miles apart for the past fifteen years. I can't imagine what my life would have been like without her friendship, her support, and her love.

My computer has managed to fry a second charger within minutes of plugging it in, so clearly it is the laptop, not the charger. Well, now it's the charger too, but in any case I will be mostly without internet access after tomorrow until I return home on June 9th. Until then, I'll be keeping this journal on paper.

I arrived in New York City about 3:35 p.m. local time yesterday afternoon. The Jetblue flight was uneventful, if crowded. I watched Milk and CNN, and drank water. Everyone has their own little screen, so you can watch whatever the Direct T.V. satellite is picking up. They charged me fifty bucks for my giant suitcase, which was twenty pounds over their limit. At least they didn't charge me extra for my personal poundage. The baggage guy said it would have been cheaper at $20.00 to check a second bag. Next time I will read the fine print.

Today we are going to do a walking tour of Greenwich Village. Tonight we have cheap tickets to see Guys and Dolls on Broadway.

I love New York.

I have to share this easy and delicious recipe from the New York Times that I just made for dinner. It calls for cheese but since idunnoh is lactose intolerant, we left it out and thought it was fine. I also did not salt the pasta water as we watch our salt intake. The freshly grated nutmeg is essential.

This isn't a spring dish but I'd found a squash I had bought some time ago and decided I had better use it up. All I did was google "butternut squash and pasta" and this is what turned up. After I printed it, I slipped it right into my Portochef recipe holder.

I love the internet.

***

This pasta shows off winter squash and helps work it into the fall repertory. The combination of squash and nutmeg has a whiff of pumpkin pie about it that children especially seem to like.

~Mark Bitman


Pasta With Butternut Squash

Yield 4 servings

Time 30 minutes

Some butternut squashes are sweeter than others, and there's no way to predict this by appearance. Since this sauce relies on sweetness for its character, if the squash seems a little bland, add about a teaspoon of sugar. It will brighten the flavor considerably.
Ingredients

* 1 pound peeled and seeded butternut squash (start with a whole squash weighing about 1 1/2 pounds)
* Salt to taste
* 2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
* Freshly ground black pepper to taste
* 1 pound cut pasta, like ziti
* 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, or to taste
* 1 teaspoon sugar, optional
* 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Method

* 1. Cut squash into chunks, and place in food processor. Pulse machine on and off until squash looks grated. (Alternatively, grate or chop the squash by hand.) Set a large pot of salted water to boil for the pasta.
* 2. Place a large skillet over medium heat, and add the butter or oil. A minute later, add the squash, salt, pepper and about 1/2 cup of water. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Add water, about 1/4 cup at a time, as the mixture dries out, being careful not to make it soupy. When the squash begins to disintegrate, after about 10 or 15 minutes, begin cooking the pasta. While it cooks, season the squash with the nutmeg, sugar if necessary, and additional salt and pepper if needed.
* 3. When the pasta is tender, scoop out about 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid, then drain. Toss it in the skillet with the squash, adding the reserved cooking water if the mixture seems dry. Taste, and adjust the salt, pepper or nutmeg as you like; then, toss with the cheese and serve.

I haven't been anywhere. I've been working, or at home getting ready for my trip back east. I'll be leaving Tuesday morning, flying out of Burbank to JFK at 7:00 am. I still don't have a comfortable pair of shoes to walk in that I can wear for more than a couple of hours. This is not good. Nordstrom is having a sale, beginning tomorrow, so I will try to find something then.

Now that the weather has turned warm, my feet and ankles are swelling. Also (feel free not read any more of this aging sucks crap) I think I have developed a neuroma on the bottom of my right foot, which makes it go numb if I wear any kind of heel over an inch high. Since all of my shoes, except the ones I wear to work in, have heels of at least 1 1/2 inches, I have a big problem, albeit one that will have to wait until I get back to be investigated.

Doing the recs for The X-Files for crack_van this month has kept me busy, as has posting my daily entry to dickinson_poems. Now I just need to read them.

We did go to see Star Trek the first weekend it was out, which was terrific fun. Everyone should go see it, whether or not you are a fan. Over the past few weeks, I have collected many fic recs from lgbtfest and the new Trek communities but I just haven't had time to post them.

Since no one commented on the entry from May 7, I deleted it and re-posted Nascent's "Theory and Practice" at xf_book_club, which worked out well. It got people's attention, anyway. By the way, it is a terrific story, so if you haven't already, go read it now. Yes, I am a bit of a nag.

Since everyone who cares already knows, I don't even know why I am mentioning it, but I am very disappointed that The Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled. I had already stopped watching Dollhouse due to its bad writing and boring, predictable plots but it got renewed despite how much it sucks. Don't mind me, Fans of Whedon, I am just a little bitter. Oh well, I still have my Farscape and Babylon-5 tapes to watch. And The X-Files. And thirtysomething arriving on DVD in August. And a house full of books I haven't read.

Who needs network television anyway?

There are no spoilers here because I haven't seen the new Star Trek movie yet. The Saturday evening shows were mostly sold out at the Arclight in Hollywood and even in Sherman Oaks, so we are seeing it early this evening after the Laker game.

We should beat the Rockets easily now, but this is the Lakers we are talking about. They like to make things difficult for themselves. In fact, at this very moment, we are losing by eighteen points, to a team that is missing some key players. It looks like they came prepared to play and we just didn't.

I spent the morning with my family: my mother, my sister, J., who is a close friend of the family in town visiting from Utah, and both my brothers. We went to Dario's Colombian-Mexican restaurant in Newhall, which serves a very reasonable champagne brunch to the locals. It's our family hang-out, I guess. My entire family has migrated north to Santa Clarita except for me. I'm not leaving Panorama City until I retire or pay off my mortgage, whichever comes first.

I got my mother this standing recipe holder from Delight.com where it is now sold out. I think you can still get it from Amazon or even the Umbra website. Since it was on sale, I bought myself one and picked up a couple of extras to give as gifts.

Doesn't everyone who cooks have a messy pile of recipes? Mine is comprised of hundreds of stained newspaper clippings and computer printouts where the second page, the one that tells the oven temperature and baking time, has mysteriously gone missing. To be fair, I do have many of them organized into file folders by category: Thanksgiving, Valentine's day, summer entertaining and so on. But there is a really nasty group-- the recipes I have used so frequently that they are nearly in tatters. For those, I can print out clean copies and slip them right into the sheet protectors. It even folds flat for storage! Now, if I just had someplace to store it.

You're right, I have no life.

As always, on days like this, I spend some time thinking about the woman who is no longer with us, my mother-in-law, Barbara. Actually, since the evidence of her death is still sitting in cardboard cartons everywhere, I think about her daily. Hundreds and hundreds of books, even some cookbooks, though not very good ones. . . Barbara hated to cook, God bless her, but she did love to read about it. Dear Lord, let me have the courtesy and presence of mind to divest myself of at least some of my earthly possessions before I leave this life so as not to burden those I leave behind.

Yeah, I still miss her. I think I always will.

For those who are celebrating, Happy Mother's Day!

I changed my journal style. I know this print is gigantic, but if you hate it, you can make it little with your view, right? Now I can see the print on Live Journal even when my eyes are blurred, as they often are now at the beginning and end of the day.

There is talk and a poll at xfiles about having an XF Big Bang. This is a great idea. This fandom certainly needs more long fic, especially gen casefiles. If I ever finish the Season Two Novel, I might even think about trying another one. I do have an idea. (I always have ideas.)

Which reminds me, ficfinishing is open again for member sign-ups. The X-Files fandom there could use more first readers and writers. If you have an unfinished story sitting on your hard drive but can't seem to motivate yourself to even look at it, check the place out. I have added several thousand new words to my still unfinished novel since I joined. Apparently, deadlines and little motivational reminders and writing tricks are helpful to me. Now I just need to type up what I've got so I can figure out what chapter to tackle next.

I am driving the van at crack_van this month, albeit very slowly. This year I am having a harder time because of the impending closure of geocities web sites. I won't rec anything that doesn't have a non-geocities web address, even if it's just at Gossamer or the Wayback machine. One of my pet-peeves is going through rec lists and finding broken links. One of my recs to crack_van from last year had a broken link, which I was able to fix now that I have access again. The other difficulty I am having is the need to endlessly scroll to make sure I am not duplicating a rec. I really wish they hadn't stopped updating their memories.

I am having the same problem at xf_book_club. I am going to have to start going through all of the links to see which are going to break once geocities goes down. If there is anyone out there who has time, there is an effort being organized to try to save the fic, at least. I did write to OTW about the huge number of XF sites that are going to be lost but haven't heard back from them yet.

One possibility that has opened up as a result of Dream Width is people using the service to archive their fic. They have a much bigger word/character limit per post than LJ, so it is a more viable option for an archive, although perhaps not as good as a website. Still, at least one geocities based writer, Vehemently, is transferring her fic there, which is good because three of the stories on her website are not at Gossamer. I am trying not to lose sleep over this, but this is our history, and more than that, it's fandom's history. We need to try to salvage as much as we can before it's too late.

I did the recap for "Talitha Cumi" for trustno1_redux because no one else volunteered. It's not great but it is posted. There is still an opportunity to write the meta, for you myth-arc lovers out there. Sign-ups are underway for fourth season plus they are going to have an late recap/meta amnesty week. Woot! Maybe I will finish the recap for "Space" you have all been waiting for lo, these many months!

idunnoh and I went to Borders on Saturday night because I had a 40% off any one item coupon that was burning a hole in my wallet. We left having spent more on over-priced chocolate bars than we saved with the coupon. As we were walking back to the car, I looked at my latest acquisition, a Star Trek magazine about the new movie, then over at Kyle's purchase, yet another book on some obscure to me aspect of Buddhist philosophy.

"We don't have much in common right now, do we?" I stated a little too bluntly.

"Probably not." He thought quickly. "Why don't you create that community to post Emily Dickinson's poetry you are always talking about? I'll read the poems and comment on them. I just don't want to have to do anything else, like post them. "

To be honest, I have been a little grumpy about his interest in Buddhism, mainly because he keeps buying books we have no room for and can't afford. Of course, he wasn't exactly thrilled with my conversion to Christianity, but he certainly wasn't going to tell me how to live my life. My attendance at an occasional weekend retreat was not a problem to him, nor was my four years of study in the All Saints' Education for Ministry course. I, on the other hand, have not been so sanguine about the prospect of him spending a week in the mountains of New Mexico at a silent retreat, while I stay behind in Los Angeles.

His alternative plan to the retreat is to follow Steven Levine's A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last. This sounded unworkable until he explained that one of the things he would have to do if he only had a year to live was to dispose of his books so that they wouldn't be a burden to me after he died. This idea sounds good. Very good. Very, very good.

We've never spent more than a few days apart in nearly twenty-nine years of marriage, but I think one of the reasons our relationship is still very vibrant and exciting is how willing we have been to allow the other person the space to grow and to change.

"Look, I've already written a comment for the first entry of that Emily Dickinson community." He said this to me after I came home last night from my shift at the hospital.

To honor our love and our journey together, last night I created dickinson_poems. Today I made the first entry. There was another community here that made an attempt to post a poem a day of Dickinson, but they left off at entry 37. We intend to make it all the way to 1775.

There is something about the current public uproar over the H1N1 flu that has me puzzled. Recent estimates of deaths in the U.S.A. due to the ordinary seasonal variety of influenza are in the range of 30,000 per year, on average, with about 200,000 people hospitalized annually. Despite that fact, we can't even get the majority of health care workers to get vaccinated, let alone the general population. Of course, most of the people who die from the regular flu are over the age of sixty-five. The elderly are a population at risk, as are people with other health problems like heart and lung diseases, very young children, whose immune systems are not as fully developed, and people who have compromised immune systems, due to HIV, for example, or chemotherapy treatment.

So far in the U.S., we have had one death from the H1N1 virus aka Swine flu and 160 confirmed infections. So why is there this huge panic? Is it because of the otherwise healthy young people who have died in Mexico? This is, of course, a tragedy and it certainly deserves attention, investigation and intervention. But we don't close schools every year when the regular flu hits. Why are we closing them now? I know this is a new virus, and we don't know exactly how it's going to behave, but isn't that true of the regular influenza virus, too? It changes every year, which is why we have to make a best-guess vaccine for it every year. Maybe I'm being a little cynical but does anyone else think this is a media-driven distraction from the real problems facing our society and our planet?

I am also really tired of seeing pictures of pigs in every article. I am tired of reading reports of people avoiding eating pork, and even refusing to eat in Mexican restaurants. Egypt has decided to go whole hog and slaughter their entire swine population, despite the fact that their pigs are not even sick. There are plenty of reasons to limit or avoid consuming meat but the H1N1 virus isn't one of them. The best way to avoid getting sick is to wash your hands, thoroughly and often and keep yourself from touching your face. I routinely try to make myself clean my hands anytime I touch something at work that someone else may have touched. Doorknobs, computers, and phones, even the sinks themselves are all covered with germs. So are the elevator buttons. When I get off the elevator, the first thing I do is head for the free-standing alcohol hand wash dispenser. If your workplace doesn't have them stationed outside the cafeteria and the elevators, maybe you should consider carrying around some in your purse or jacket pocket. I do.

The only good that might come of this is that maybe some of the people I see leaving restrooms without properly cleaning their hands will mend their dirty, filthy ways. Maybe some of the people who keep showing up to work running fevers and spreading their germs everywhere will stay at home. Maybe some of the parents who drag their runny-nosed infants and small children to hospitals to visit sick relatives will think twice and keep them home where they belong.

Or maybe not.

Here is my unofficial contribution to your health and well being: the Official CDC Hand Washing video. There is no requirement to come up with imaginary fan fiction for it, cryptotoxin, though feel free to do so if it amuses you. (; The other thing I guess I just want to say that there is no reason to panic. Scientists are convinced that the H1N1 virus does not appear to have any of the characteristics of the one that caused the huge numbers of deaths worldwide in the 1917 flu epidemic. However, there are a lot of other nasty bugs out there. So protect yourself, and wash your hands. <3

First, The Obligatory Dreamwidth Update

Dreamwidth the business goes to Open Beta at 9 pm EDT on April 30, 2009, at which time you can purchase an account. If you think you might ever want a free account, go create and validate an Open I.D.. Everyone who does this before the end of closed beta will be offered an invite code.

For my part, I am still not moving there. I'm not even going to cross post. It's true, I am just that lazy. Plus, I don't want to (a.)split up my comment threads or (b.)make people get Open I.D.s in order to post in my DW account. I've had a hard enough time convincing my friends and relations to come here to read my blathering. I am not about to try to make them move again. I am still hoping someone will make me a shareable Phile sheep from the blank I am using now. Big eyes, with the little flying saucers from Mulder's I Want to Believe poster all over it? I can picture it, I just can't make it.

EDIT: I now have not one but two Alien Dream Sheep, thank you, ruuger. Both are shareable!

While there may be fandoms who will migrate there over time, something tells me that Philes are not going to be the first in line, since there is still this big bloc of us who haven't even made the leap to Live Journal. Currently the DW Phile community has, what, eight members? Maybe ten? Anyway, we have another more pressing problem facing us than whether or not to stay at LJ or crosspost and redirect comments.

Geocities is closing later this year. This is a fandom emergency for fanfic for The X-Files, people. Practically our entire fucking fandom, or what's still left of it, is on geocities. XFiles Authors' Sites? Geocities. Specialized Archive Links? Geocities, again. OneMillionandNine's site? Geocities. But at least her stuff is archived at Gossamer. Prufrock's Love's fic is only archived at her own site which is on--you guessed it--Geocities. Then there are all the rec sites being affected. Think of all of the broken links for fanfic recs!!! Even The X-Files Lost and Found Community is on Geocities!

This has gotten some attention at Haven, where there are a few people banding together to try to save some of these sites. There is no plan in place yet, but it gives me hope that at least there are people making lists of what could be lost. And there is the Wayback Machine, which, as difficult, infuriating and unreliable as it can be, is often the last best hope of the fanfic reader.

Let us all stop and give praise to the great patron Saint of lost causes, Saint Jude, and to the patron Saint of the internet, Saint Isidore of Seville, who was surely smiling down on we fan fic obsessives when that wonderful idea was born.

The other fandom news is good. Finally, after eighteen years of waiting, thirtysomething is coming out on DVD, with the first season due to be released August 25, the three subsequent seasons at six month intervals thereafter. They aren't going to be cutting any of the music and they are creating high definition master copies. I might have to get a new fancy T.V. because it looks like a thirtysomething re-watch is just around the corner. Maybe I will be getting some thirtysomething fic for Yuletide after all. Heck, maybe I'll even write some.

In honor of National Poetry month and Earth Day, I give you yet another poem by W.S. Merwin, who just won his second Pulitzer Prize for The Shadow of Sirius. The link takes you to NPR's website, where you can listen to an interview with Merwin from 2008 on "Fresh Air." He reads some poems from the book and discusses the themes of memory and death.




Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours

When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
Consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And fore-ordaining as stars
Our sacrifices
Join your work to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important

W.S. Merwin

So as it turns out, that super-adorable Dreamwidth Sheep icon belonged to someone SO I HAD TO GIVE IT BACK. Sob! She made a whole flock to give away, but I really liked hers the best because it had a twirly-swirly rainbow pattern. So if anyone wanders back a couple of entries and reads about the Dreamwidth rainbow sheep, it's gone now.

I found this one with Bears and Raccoons and Vampires and Lincoln and Zombies and Kittens at parfumeries, which made me feel a little better.

Work kicked my ass this weekend but I remain injury-free! I even managed to write a little on the season two novel's new chapter one, which I will go add to what I've already typed up.

I also found time to read onpaperfirst's vignette "The Magician's Assistant". She apparently posted it some time last year, but as they say about reruns, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you.

As my contribution to saving Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I have pre-ordered season two. Some fans are having viewing parties at Fox's site but my computer is too slow to do that. It is a good thing that there is nothing worth watching on television because now that the NBA playoffs have started, basketball will take precedence. Actually, basketball nearly always trumps regular television, although I did watch the SCC finale in real time. It was the best season finale I have seen in years and I have nothing meta or speculative to add to that statement.

What I will do for the first person who comments to this post who is not already a SCC fan, is send you a copy of season one for free. If you love it, watch season two on Hulu or Fox.com (or wherever it is people go online to do that sort of thing), and pass the DVDs of season one on to someone else. Or buy a set yourself to give away. Everyone needs to write postcards to Fox. All of this needs to be done well before May 18th, which is the magical day in Fox Land, when they will decide what shows to cancel and which to keep.

We haven't driven to Venice in years but I am going to be heading there this coming weekend to see Rebecca Campbell's new multi-media installation at LA Louver, "Poltergeist". It looks so intriguing, with its rooms filled with off kilter manifestations of her childhood memories from the seventies. Brown shag carpet! Avocado green kitchen appliances! Metal folding chairs and parquet flooring! The centerpiece is a real live dead tree, which she had covered in hand-tailored black velvet, with a flock of glass bluebirds in the branches. Actually, this sounds disturbingly like the house I live in now.

Maybe I should just forget about renovating and start thinking of this place as a new art form.

EDIT: The free copy of season one is gone!!!

So today I won the Dreamwidth Open I.D. Lottery. Quite a coincidence, isn't it? I know, I know, I've been watching The X-Files for too long.

I suppose this means I have to stop with the oh poor baby I'm feeling so left out whining part. I'm still not planning to post there, nor have I "added anyone to my circle" that I don't already know. Frankly, I'm still recovering from the shock and horror of BNF rejecting my Open I.D.; I am not going to subject myself to that a second time. There is apparently some kind of a feed widget whereby I can watch without subscribing? That might work.

You notice I'm not jumping up and down in glee at this new development, so maybe my issues with Dreamwidth are more related to fears of abandonment, and of rejection? It's like being back in junior high school again. I hated junior high school. Now that I have an account of my own, it makes it more real, and maybe even more annoying. I'll get used to it eventually, I suppose, or just learn to ignore it all together.I know I shouldn't have let this bother me as much as it did. Don't worry, I'll get over it.

Not to change the subject, but here on Live Journal, lgbtfest has started up and there have already been some terrific stories posted. In particular, I enjoyed "Modern Love" by penknife written for the Discworld fandom, for this prompt: Discworld, any character, The ongoing changes in dwarven views on gender and sexuality have any number of repercussions. How many young dwarves are "coming out" as the gender they weren't born as? Conversely, is all this openness actually eroding dwarven freedom to view themselves however, and marry whomever, they wish? This story feels as real as though it were taking place on Earthworld, and the writer captures Terry Pratchett's offbeat humor perfectly.

I just finished reading lls_mutant's "I'm No Superman". The fandom is Battlestar Gallactica, the characters Felix Gaeta, Eight, and multiple original characters. Don't be put off by the author's mistaken belief that the reader needs to have seen all of the web episodes. I have seen nary the one. The prompt: Any fandom, any characters, Two queer characters (not in a relationship with each other) discuss the differences that age, gender, nationality, class or race make in their experience of being queer. The summary: There wasn't much on New Caprica that Felix could change, not with the Cylons in charge. But some people he could help, even if he'd never expected they'd need it.

"singing with the sound off" by ghost lingering was written for Yuletide, not the lgbtfest but it could have been. The fandom is "Singing in the Rain" and the story is about Kathy and Cosmo and Don. Sweet, funny and poignant, it was just what I needed to cheer me up today.

We are reading Kipler's "Strangers and the Strange Dead" in xf_book_club. Also, in other XPhile fangirl news, OneMillionandNine, who came by to visit when we discussed "The French Inhaler" at book_club, has created a journal and made her first post at onemillionnine. She is really too brilliant for me to keep up with, though I did try my best. This may be a silly fantasy, but I am hoping now that she is here that she might write us some more fic, Hey, a girl can dream.

I will be working this weekend, so I need to run some errands and do laundry. Since writing is going well, I want to keep some forward momentum on that. Oh! And I have brand new glasses waiting for me to pick up, to replace the pair with the cracked frame.

Have a great weekend!

After letting my writing get completely derailed last month, I hesitated about signing up for ficfinishing this month. Frankly, I was a little embarrassed. Fortunately, I overcame my reluctance and just did it anyway. Last month was all about throwing words out, but this month I have actually written some words that don't entirely suck, one thousand of them so far on the season two novelette. After cutting so many chapters, I don't think it qualifies any longer as a novel. I am also formatting it so that it could be posted on Gossamer, not that anyone who only reads there is going to necessarily be interested in it, since it's gen. No romance and no sexy tiems will be forthcoming. The "I only read fic at Ephemeral and Gossamer" part of our crazy fandom also seems to be firmly in the "I only read Mulder/Scully" happy-fic camp.

While I have mostly given up on trying to entice people into joining Live Journal so they can join xf_book_club and read fanfic, I now have another worry. There is a new kid on the block, that many people are getting very excited about, called Dreamwidth. So far, I am not so excited. After pondering this for awhile, I think the reasons for that are complicated. I am not a pioneer type, or an early adapter. I know absolutely zilch about coding, nor do I think it likely I am going to learn, so that alone makes me a little wary about migration. The default journal is butt-ugly, and the directions I have seen for making it prettier look impossible for someone as non-tech-proficient as I am to follow. My eyes started to cross just reading them.

So far, most of the people I know who are migrating over are not people I know well. Even if they are on my friends-list, it has only been a one-way street. These are people I might admire from afar, but they are not nor will they ever be my friends or even my online acquaintances. This is for the most part okay with me, although I admit it hurt when the BNF whose work I have pimped constantly, whose journal I have read and commented on faithfully for the two years I have been here, did not grant me access to her inner circle there.

You see, at Dreamwidth, the friending and trusting functions have been separated. This means that if you like someone, and think they are trustworthy, but also a tad boring, you can let them read your locked posts without having to read their journal at all. Conversely, if you think someone is interesting, but not someone you know well enough to trust with your dark inner secrets, you can subscribe to their journal without having to let them read your locked posts. This is a useful function, but you can see it has its downside, too. Believe me, I never expected someone like this BNF to read my journal, either here or at Dreamwidth, assuming I ever get an account there. After all, I am a total non-entity in fandom, and while that doesn't diminish my worth as a person, it does make it less likely that anyone fannishly important would be interested in reading my journal for content. I get it. I even accept it. But it did surprise me that I wouldn't be granted access to even level one of her trust circle.

Don't worry, I'll get over it. BNF, I still love your fic and worship the ground you walk on, even if I am no longer certain you are entirely deserving of the worship part. Ahem.

The other thing that is weird and annoying is that there are now all of these people waxing poetic about a place I can only visit. I can't belong right now, unless someone gives me an access code. This annoys me to no end, and every time I read a post from someone who has won the Dreamwidth lottery, it annoys me even more. Hearing over and over about how I will be able to have my own account when they go to Open Beta is kind of a poor consolation prize. The fact that I have no current want or need for this account makes no difference. I'm being excluded, and okay, I'm a little pissed about it. Feel free to call me names, or condescend to me, or be irritated at me for "creating drama." I bet I'm not the only person to be feeling this way.

Don't worry, I'll get over it.

Anyway, here is my tip to all of you people out there who think you might ever want a Dreamwidth account. Go here now and create an Open I.D., then set and validate an email address. This will at the very least allow you to comment there and receive email notification of replies to your comments. It might even get you a win in the Dreamwidth lottery, as they are giving away, randomly, invite codes to create a journal nearly every day. Also, I have read that they are going to offer an invite code to everyone who has created an Open I.D. and set and validated their email address during the closed Beta period, which ends April 30th. Since a paid account will be costing $3.00/month, there's an easy way to save a little money. If you are a cautious, worry-wart techno-phobe sort like me, you can create your DW journal, then sit back and wait to see what happens.

All together now: "Don't worry, you'll get over it."

This is, jeez, I don't know what this is. It's a type of visual representation of my flist. I can't see this very well myself. Maybe one of you all can make sense of it. I got the idea from emily_shore. It was made by osymandias.





This is not what I expected to see, at all. It would look better in 3-D, I expect.

( there are two more under here that are pieces of the whole )

There is a meme going around where you post the number one song on the Billboard music chart on the day you were born. Since I had heard of neither "St. George and the Dragonettes" nor its progenitor, Stan Freberg, I was surprised to find this at YouTube. Very surprised. It is silly, but now that I have listened, I suspect my parents had this record. In case you don't recognize it, it's a spoof of Dragnet, the venerable police procedural radio and television series.

( It started as a meme then turned into a story )

Wendelahland News Alert: idunnoh is mostly over his cold whereas I am still in the worst stage. He is off work this week due to spring break, whereas I am just--off. If I hadn't gotten sick, we might have done something fun, like see a movie or take a hike. Have sex.

Instead we are home, waiting for the plumber to come fix a broken pipe in our shower and the ball-cock mechanism in the toilet, where the chain has broken off from the handle. Sometimes I miss having a landlord.

My spring trip is nearly planned, and paid for, aside from meals and other incidentals. I just need to arrange for a car rental in Manhattan, close to my friend's apartment near Columbia. Planning what to take for the weather on the east coast comes next. For a Californian, it isn't the heat that is so problematic, it's the humidity. For someone used to dry heat, it's like taking a shower with my clothes on every time I step outside in the summertime in NYC. When you couple that with the rain that seems to come out of nowhere, much of my time in New York is always spent drying out or drying off. According to the weather tables, May and June have 11 wet days each. Wow. Now I'm trying to remember if we've had eleven rainy days this year. I guess I had better find an umbrella. Will I need a raincoat, too, I wonder? To help me decide what to take, I also looked up the average daily temperatures for May and June for both Pittsburgh and NYC, which to my surprise, are nearly identical: high of 81, low of 64 for June, a little lower for both numbers for May. That sounds really--pleasant.

Nearly every trip I have ever made outside of California has been in July or August. Once we managed to get to Hawaii in the middle of their rainy season. But my parents were both teachers and since my husband is as well, until retirement, we are stuck with the academic calendar. New York in July is bad news, but Maine in July is quite wonderful. On our last trip to NYC, we broke it up with a week in New England, which I would do again. New England is beautiful in summertime.

When I was younger, I was very hung up on blending in, not looking like a tourist. I'm so over that now. Frankly, I don't have the time or money to try to impersonate an east coast hipster or a well-to-do matron. As Joni Mitchell once sang, "take me as I am", in this case, a fifty-five year old woman who frankly is beginning to show her mileage. With that in mind, I have abandoned the idea of buying a party dress to wear to A&G's "Visa Realignment Party", which is what they are calling their wedding reception. Instead, I am wearing a dressy, straight legged black pant, a cream colored silk shell and a stunning tunic length silk blouse, with three-quarter length sleeves and a high necked collar, from Citron. After searching their site, I couldn't find the exact print but this will give an approximation of the style, although I'll be wearing the blouse as more of a jacket. Black slingback pumps with modest two inch heels will complete the look.

While it might have been less expensive in the short run to have bought a dress, I measure purchases by the cost per wearing. The Citron blouse has gorgeous material and a timeless style; after one wearing, a party dress would have just sat unworn in my closet for a decade. Plus my outfit eliminates the need for a girdle. The modern term for this abomination is "shapewear" but I say it's a girdle and I say to hell with it.