Kyle aspirated again yesterday morning. Fortunately, he hasn't gotten as sick this time. He started the antibiotic within the hour. Yesterday his T-max was 101 F. Today he hasn't cracked 100. He's congested but not horribly so. He says he feels well enough to work tomorrow; I said no way. There's a three-day weekend coming up. He can go back next Tuesday, after a week of rest. Good grief. What is he trying to prove and to whom?

WE ARE LEAVING FOR PARIS IN LESS THAN THREE WEEKS.

I am still having back pain. But it feels not-too-bad today, thank goodness. I am lying on my bed in a semi-reclining position to type this.

( Boring Stuff about my feetCollapse )

( Less Boring Stuff about My Fucking Thyroid Gland. Cut for possible triggers and mentions of the C-Word.Collapse )The next post will be more positive, I promise.

The 2013 het_bigbang has extended the signup deadline to midnight tonight, PST. So that's really tomorrow for most of the planet.

I am debating whether or not to sign-up. On the one hand, I will be in Paris for a month of the writing period. The mandatory check-in is mere days after we get back. On the other hand, I need something else to think about besides my feet. I have a RPF story I started last summer that could conceivably be finished for this challenge. The "B" plot needs work. Okay, so does the "A" plot, especially since it's set during the winter of 2013, which has already passed us by. Maybe I'll print it out and see if it looks like it could be completed in the six weeks after we return.

I'm posting this now. I'll decide before I go to bed.

het_bigbang

Big Bang: 25,000 words. Any Fandom. Any Het Pairing.
Little Bang: 10,000 words. Any Fandom. Any Het Pairing.
Author Sign Up I Artist Sign Up I Beta Sign Up I Cheerleading Sign Up

Timeline
Author Sign Ups - Open till May 17th, Midnight PST
Mandatory Author Checkpoint - July 15th
Artist Claiming of Big Bang Stories - July 20th
Art and Fics Due - August 26th, 11:59 PM (Midnight) PST
Debut Date (DD) - August 31st

FAQ here!

"Different decades of one's life bring with it different levels of discomfort, and the overriding thing to remember is that the only constant in life is change. And the only thing to do is keep showing up, being the best version of yourself you can be. And the rest is out of your hands completely."

~ Gillian Anderson, from her Reddit AMA.

When I read that, I felt like she was speaking directly to me.

I am still having back pain. As long as I don't sit for more than half an hour at a time, the sciatica is manageable and (I hope) slowly improving.

( medical stuff, mostly whining about my feetCollapse )

This has been a week to remember. Two devastating international earthquakes, a bombing in Boston and a block-leveling explosion in a Texas fertilizer factory. I've had plenty of time to pray for the victims and their families since there hasn't been much else to do. Well, much else I can do.

My back is a little better, with the pain coming and going now instead of being constant. Thank you for your kind and encouraging words. Thanks also to all of the people who have offered to help out with xf_book_club, which is currently in the capable hands of lyryk. We're reading "We Could Have Made Music" by Discordant Words, a creepy horror story set seven years after "Eve."

Since we will be leaving for Paris in less than two months, I'm studying French, or trying to. I have engaged a French teacher, a native speaker and credentialed teacher, who has been making a living teaching privately in Los Angeles for five years. She's very good, and very organized. When I am able to sit, I'm watching Stargate SG-1 season one in French with French subtitles, and The X-Files in French with no subtitles. Madame P. is a scifi buff so she approves of my choices. I am watching the early episodes of French in Action, which my husband found used at Amazon, deeply discounted. I am trying to speak French to my husband whenever we're together, which isn't much since he's working so damn hard.

He's not supposed to eat a heavy meal in the evening and nothing at all in the night. But whenever he wakes up at night, I find him eating. He eats all kinds of things: cereal with milk, bread, whatever is leftover from dinner. But at least he hasn't aspirated again, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

( cut for discussion of chronic medical problemsCollapse )

My sciatica is back. Has been back. Which is why I'm not updating or writing or doing much of anything that requires sitting, bending or lifting. So no writing, very little reading, not much television either. I can walk and I can lie down.

xf_book_club is probably going to die due to lack of attention. It's a discussion forum. If I can't post or discuss what I post, there isn't going to be a community there for long. This is where having a co-mod was helpful. I'm going to try to post something there this afternoon or evening.

I defaulted on my unconventionalcourtship story. I can't write if I can't sit. The mods said I could post it whenever it gets done, so that was nice.

To anyone who is waiting on a story I am supposed to beta, I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN YOU.

Someone at tumblr is having an auction to benefit AO3: Fanfic Authors We Want You. Obviously, I'm not signing up, but maybe you can.

I'll be back here when I'm better. I'm trying to read and comment when I can.

Today is the anniversary of the day I met my husband. We met in 1979 at a St. Patrick's day party. We talked. I thought he was cute and funny and the smartest person I'd ever met, so I gave him my phone number. He didn't call me so I called him, but that's a story for another time. I'd broken up with my college boyfriend over winter break. Kyle was supposed to be my transitional relationship. I was in my last semester of nursing school. A year and a couple of months after our first date, we got married. Couples did not do five year engagements back then. Looking back, I don't know why we were in such a hurry, but it all worked out in the end.

Last night, after multiple attempts, first by Kyle and then me, I successfully created an account at Opera National de Paris. That website is a challenge to navigate, at least in English translation. The registration form kept telling me I was entering "too many characters at 38." What the heck did that mean? I decided the problem was that LA addresses in no way resemble Paris addresses, so I broke our address down and entered it on separate lines, and it stopped doing that weird thing and let us register. Or maybe I just got lucky. Then the credit card wasn't entered correctly (or something else?) and we had to start over again. Four times. Finally I managed to snag the last ticket for the last performance of Twilight of the Gods, the final opera in Wagner's Ring Cycle, for Kyle. He didn't want to go without me, but I insisted. He's the major opera buff. It's on Father's Day (in the US). I think I can manage to find something else to do in Paris, even on Sunday afternoon.

Then I purchased tickets for both of us to Handel's Julius Caesar at the Palais Garnier. I'm so excited! We're going to the opera! In Paris!

Naturally, this morning I got the requisite phone call from the ever vigilant computers at the Fraud Alert Department at My Idiot Bank. I suppose this is a good thing, but I doubt the first thing a thief would think of to buy are tickets to Handel.



The photo of the Palais Garnier in Paris was taken by scarletgreen (at Flickr).

Hi! My absence is due to my inability to sit for longer than 15 minutes at a time. The reason: sciatica from a pinched disc in my lumbar spine. It's getting better but I am taking no chances.

Kyle is doing fair. He's back to work but still feels exhausted.

Zombies, anyone? Go leave some prompts, preferably short, non-serious and for fandoms I could write.


March 31st, The Dead Will Rise! @ zombi_fic_ation

I was amazed to see that both Joan Watson and Olivia Dunham made it into the next round of f_march_madness. I'm voting for both of them, while hoping they don't end up pitted against one another. Nothing those mods do would surprise me. They misspelled Molly Hooper's name!

My fifteen minutes of computer time is up. If I was a better typist this could have been a longer entry.

I received three wonderful X-Files stories from mala_ptica. My favorite is the last, but they are all good. And short, all you folk out there who don't have time to read long stories. So go read them.

Song Twice Rehearsed (324 words) by mala_ptica
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Fox Mulder, Samantha Mulder
Additional Tags: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1


The Forgotten Queen (414 words) by mala_ptica
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: X-Files - Fandom, Elementary (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Diana Fowley/Fox Mulder
Characters: Diana Fowley, Fox Mulder, Joan Watson
Additional Tags: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2


Monsters, Inc. (410 words) by mala_ptica
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Dana Scully, Cigarette Smoking Man
Additional Tags: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3


Tomorrow I'll post links to mine.

For a multitude of reasons, which would only bore everyone, I don't care for the Oscars. They do put people to work and contribute to the local economy, so I'm not opposed to them. Usually, I don't bother, but the television was already on after the Laker game ended so I did watch part of the broadcast last night.

It was even worse than I'd expected. This piece in The New Yorker expressed it well: Seth MacFarlane and the Oscars Hostile Ugly Sexist Night

I loved her performance in Silver Linings Playbook, (the movie—haven't read the book, don't plan to), so I was pleased to see Jennifer Lawrence win the Oscar, although it might have been better for her if she hadn't. The backlash began even before she'd won. I was sad to see her trip on that ballgown Dior put her in, since that's the clip people will keep playing over and over and over again. This continuous "news" cycle culture just eats people alive. She's only 22, for heaven's sake. And she's just an actor, a very, very good one, but still. I'm worried about all of the attention being focused on Quvenzhane Wallis, too. There was Twitter nastiness focused on her and she's a nine-year-old. God help us.

I wrote two treats for purimgifts, but only posted one. The ficlet for my recipient needed more work and my beta is in a different time zone, so I'll post it in a few days, and just link it to the others in the series. It might turn into a longer fic. Because I don't have enough unfinished writing projects.

I loved the stories and art work I received. Tomorrow I will link everything here.

While I was working on my purimgifts treat, I took a break to do some basic research for my unconventionalcourtship story, which is next on the writing agenda. I thought it might be a good idea to find out something about the genre of romance/suspense, especially since I've never actually read one.

( quotes about romantic thrillers under the cutCollapse )

MORE SEX SCENES. No. Fucking. Way. Man, I thought there could be fewer sex scenes since there was actually a plot. Not so. Recently, my husband read a thriller that had a romance woven into it. He was not happy with it at all.

Mr. Wendelah: "The problem was there was so much happening that there was no time to develop the characters or the romance, so by the time they got together you didn't care."

THIS GENRE IS A MINEFIELD.

Also, "more equal"? Ahem.

Maybe I'm over-thinking this. Anyway, I need to get back to writing my treat. I was also considering trying a treat for my author. Eh, I'll never get around to that, plus I have no idea what she'd like! My day two story is still a Mystery Work, but I'm enjoying reading the others.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday (or survive your Monday).