lucitania had her ear to the ground and was able to point out that resonant8, besides being delightful in every way, was today especially, specifically delightful, as she kindly listed me as a person who makes her day. Being clever and a person of excellent taste, she had already listed tevere and thefourthvine as others who make her day, and so I shall not repeat them in my own list. Except that I so totally just did! Take that, list of 10! ( in which I go on at extreme length about the people I know and love in real life ) who should already know that they make my day, and go on to list people who I have never met in person, but who I should very much like to (that resonant8 is on this list is of course naturally heavily implied) and who are reasons (better even than bacon) to get out of bed every morning. And heck, I figured, why stop at ten? So I listed 35, one for each and every birthday so far:

aesc
basingstoke
chicklet_girl
devildoll
eleveninches
flambeau
giddygeek
gritkitty
isilya
j_bluestocking
katie_m
kaneko
seperis
minnow1212
shrift
newkidfan
toft_froggy
trinityofone
rageprufrock
nestra
slodwick
scrunchy
iamsab
lallybroch
almostnever
saffronhouse
pearl_o
panisdead
rydra_wong
seigeofangels
siriaeve
spaggel
toomuchplor
thingswithwings
seraphcelene
rusty76

♥

Truly, each person mentioned here today has inspired countless moments of absolute joy to be long treasured in even my shoddy memory. You have shot my ordinary days with threads of gold, babies, and I thank you for it. I love you for it.

Speaking of memorable times, the ever-groovy belmanoir and her really very charming friend Ursula (who can knit with four needles at once!) and I had the opportunity to hang about with the splendid astolat on Monday. As is only right, we spent a large portion of our time talking about cute boys, and let me say to whoever decided to cast Robert Downey Jr as the next Sherlock Holmes: I approve! astolat also gave us wise advice on how to survive a plane crash, and first-hand tips on what do to when menaced by amorous elephants on the prowl.

Come back soon, astolat!

And, in closing, I promised astolat that I'd say this, and after all, it's coming up on six whole months:

♥ I love my boyfriend.♥

So freakin' much, people. One day I'll try to explain, but I doubt I'll be able to.

♥

prillalar and runpunkrun and I are OLD SCHOOL, yo. And thus, a retrospective.

( A decade of solid mediocrity! )

Not counting quick and dirty drabbles, I've written something like 170 stories, thereabouts.

That seems... like a lot of stories. And I've attempted at least three original novels in that time, usually cramping up around 35,000 words.

Well.

Jinkies.

First snow! I love snow. However, I am renting a car to drive to Vancouver for Christmas, and you know, it didn't occur to me until today, that it might well snow at some point during Christmas week. And you know what? I lived in Orlando for most of my driving life, and there's no snow there. Which means, naturally, that I've never, ever driven in snow.

Good times.

Any tips, flist of mine?

Oh, so last night, I dreamt it snowed, and that I had a huge field behind my apartment, hip-deep in snow, and that it was brilliantly sunny and kids were having snowball fights. Then, today, it snowed? Coincidence? I think not, my young friends, I think not!

The night before last, ( I had a very charming dream about Elizabeth and Radek. )

Anyway, it was very nice.

( My snowy day! ) At least SGA gives me something to live for!

( Plot? What Plot? Wherein I jabber on and on and on about Miller's Crossing. )

Like many of you poor workaday shmucks, I too had to pull a shift for The Man today. And while, yes, the day dragged on like one of those fray-shirted lawyers crawling through the desert in a Gary Larson cartoon, I did manage to stay at work the entire day, and was even mildly productive.

I do my damndest not to read LJ at work, and I managed to avoid temptation even today. I did, however, send out an email to the other admins in the building and persuaded them to believe that slipping out for 45 minutes to catch the Macy's Parade totally counted as a "team building" exercise. In the end, I couldn't get my direct supervisor to come out with us, but as everyone else I support had a vacation day, I decided I could play hooky for a bit.

The thing is, kids, I don't much dig the actual traditional NYC Thanksgiving Day Parade, mostly because it reminds me of the dreary holidays of my youth: sullen relatives crammed into overheated rooms, the inevitable arguments, the bad food (For serious: none of the people I actually share genes with can cook for shit. It's tragic, my friends.) and a sensation of sort of torpid horror that the B-list celebrities condemned to describe the ten-thousandth marching band from Tuscon seemed to share. Seriously, you can just imagine them hunching down during commercial breaks in order to shoot up/take a slug from a hip flask just to be able to soldier on through the next litany of float statistics. It hurts my soul just thinking about it. Also, it's three hours long, man. That's a long time to sustain any level of enthusiasm.

Anyway, I adopted a strict "no blood relatives" policy for all major holidays. Now I don't watch the parade anymore if I can help it (and I can!), and I love life a lot more.

That said, I had a blast at the parade this morning. It was a crisp, sparkling day, and it was just a heap of fun to watch the shiny kids and the people in (usually vaguely creepy) costumes gallop and/or march around. I stuck it out for 45 minutes before the guilt got to me, and I walked back to The Ranch along the parade route, so I got to see all the bands and floats that had yet to start marching. I have to say that I was impressed; I'd expected the parade to last twenty minutes or so, but I bet it was more like an hour and a half. As I got to the end of the parade, I saw Santa's sleigh-- but it was empty! And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a Santa in plain clothes, clearly late and fairly running down the street holding bags that I assume contained his costume.

Can you imagine being late to parade that's basically designed around you? You're the high point! You're the climax! You're the franchise, man!

Get it together, Santa!

In other news, I have now eaten all the stuffing. In the world.

That is all.

So, Vinh called me in the middle of my brunch last Saturday to tell me a) that Dumbledore was gay! and b) that he was coming back to town... In order to play dodgeball. In disguise.

Vinh had been a New Yorker for all of a week before he decided to sneak back across the continent to play in the "official" Halloween Dodgeball game. "It’ll be great," he said eagerly, "People will say, 'Man, that guy plays like Vinh. Dude, I miss Vinh. I sure wish Vinh were here...'"

Privately, I had my doubts, and worried that he was setting himself up for disappointment.

He said he’d decided to come as Spiderman, since that would be ideal for playing and would completely hide his identity. I got there about half an hour before his grand entrance, chatting up the kids and passing around candy. This game, people wore entirely different Halloween costumes: the couple who had come as Little Red Riding Hood and Grandma Wolf now came as Hermann and Lily Munster, complete with baby Eddie Munster. There was a sexy alien, a leprechaun in a green velvet suit with gold shoes, an Elvis, a Dead Milkman, a skeleton, a cannibal, a vampire, several pirates, a pink fairy, a purple cowboy, The Dude from The Big Lebowski, a Nestle Chocolate bar and my personal favorite, the Beer-barian. This guy fashioned a very groovy gladiator outfit out of cleverly cut up Pabst Blue Ribbon boxes. He came complete with a Viking helmet with a PBR can stuck on one horn, and a huge “beer can” Thor-like hammer. Also? Two actual Mormons who had started showing up just the Friday before.

When Vinh finally did show up, he just slipped into the game already in progress, and exactly as he had predicted, people a) noticed him immediately, b) recognized his moves and c) began to wistfully reminisce about him. "That guy plays like Vinh," said the Fashion Model/Greek God. "Take off your mask!" They began razzing him and singing the Spiderman theme song, but they didn’t really think it was Vinh... until they saw him catch a dodgeball with his trademark panther-like grace. The Skeleton said, "Man, if that really was Vinh, I would jump in his face. Not in a dirty way," she clarified.

Finally, the mask, which Vinh had described as feeling like "a wool sock on his head", came off, and there was a roar of VINH! from the crowd, which promptly rushed the field. There was much joy. And joyness. "I knew it was you! I knew it by the way you walked!" crowed the Teamster.

A good time was had by all.

Meanwhile, I’m posting from work while dressed as a Valkyrie.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

So I went to the Symphony last night, with the elegant and superfancy katallison. The music was fluid and delightful, and the Assad brothers mostly gave the impression that they were playing in their kitchen just for the hell of it, and that their nimble notes graced only their own ears. It was very charming.

I had a groovy little "Welcome to Seattle" (weeks and weeks after she'd arrived, of course) brunch for Kat on Saturday, attended by such luminaries as T (whose LJ name tragically escapes me-- gah!), mlyn, wickedwords, and . I also met arallara, who may be the most adorable person living in or around the city of Bellingham. Also, I got a thank you note from the always delightful mlyn, which made me smile all over the place. Hopefully we can do it again sometime soon!

In other news: SGA SEASON FIVE! I knew there was a reason to get up in the morning! (Besides bacon!)

Yesterday:

* Woke up on the floor (as my inflatable mattress had... deflated.)
* Missed my bus
* Lost my bank card
* Called to cancel missing bank card; someone had already cancelled it (which was very nice, as opposed to making with the spendy; however, as someone had already cancelled it, I had to wait 24 hours to let the cancellation process before I could request a new one.)
* Worked late
* Had a sore throat
* Stopped the Scary McDonald's at the wrong time and watched a very hot, very scary bicycle cop take down two men, telling the one whose back he was kneeling on that he would shoot him. McNuggets: so very deadly, yet tasty. But not worth a bullet.
* Started downloading SGA
* Inflated mattress again; went to bed

Today:

* Woke up on the floor. At 6:30 A.M. On a weekend.
* Resolved to buy actual bed.
* Watched SGA. Squealed. A lot. Before 7:30 A.M. On a weekend. (My neighbors? Probably hate me. But John and Rodney are boyfriends! It makes me create high pitched noises!)
* Revised my dad's website. (He's running for office.)
* Called my friend Vinh--we were supposed to go to the Red Bull Soap Box Derby. Alas, he had a sore throat and begged off.
* Ordered a new bank card.
* Went to the Sustainable Ballard festival. Had some truly terrible pizza (Snoose Junction Pizza--just say no.) and the world's MOST DELICIOUS CARAMEL CORN.
* FINALLY mailed Ineke's book. To the correct address, even.
* Went to a mattress store and freaked out at the prices.
* Bought a baguette at Tall Grass Bakery.
* Went on line and checked out mattresses at JC Penney. These were reasonable and I called and asked, "If I buy a mattress today, can it be sent to me today or tomorrow?" Nope, seven to ten days. And then I'd have to be home to accept delivery, naturally.
* Went to craigslist; saw a very nice bed. Called and discussed it. Called mover who lugged my couch from Vinh's place. He said he'd call me back. Called lady and said I was trying to line up a mover; the very nice lady offered to deliver it. In an hour. Bought bed unseen.
* Did laundry.
* In an hour, a tiny adorable woman with a long yellow plait showed up with her freakishly good-looking and incredibly nice boyfriend (both early 40s) and they carried my bed in for me. I gave them an extra 50 (although they had never asked for money for delivery!) and the loaf of bread, because they are moving, which is why I got the bed, even though it's only three months old. (A few months ago, I tried to buy sheets at Fred Meyer, but they didn't have ANY queen sized sheets in the store. It was madness, I tell you. So I bought two sets of king sheets, because, hey, I needed sheets. So.) The bed? Is the poshest, plushest, tallest motherfuckin' king sized mattress you have ever seen. It's so tall, I don't even need to buy a bed frame so that I can reach my end table. Bitchin'.
* Vinh called and was feeling better, so we went to dinner and a saw a film.
* Saw Outsourced. It was very charming. It probably should have pointed out the rougher stuff more than it did, but hey.
* I'm going to bed. On an actual bed. Go team me!

I went to the library with katallison on Saturday, and afterwards we split a plate of weinerschnitzel at The People's Pub. She's excellent company, and we're lucky to have her here. (Kat, how are you so awesome?)

I've been doing my best to lure her into SGA. Like lucitania, she too started reading the fic before watching the show, and so she thought John's voice sounded funny. (g)

I went to the zoo on Sunday with my friend Vinh. I'm not a huge fan of zoos (prison for animals who committed no crimes!) but I had free passes and Vinh had mentioned that he wanted to see the one in town before he moved to NYC in a month. Although it rained all day, and some of the enclosures for the larger mammals seemed absurdly small, we had a pretty groovy time. In fact, a funny thing happened: we were in the Night exhibit, surrounded by fruit bats and slow lorises and two toed sloths, and I almost kissed him. This despite the fact that he's been beautiful and cool in broad daylight since March, and I've never felt a lick of attraction for him. But the Night exhibit is so dark, you bump shoulders and tug on arms to point out all the cool stuff and you duck your heads to whisper and come on, besides the planetarium, it's like the only other time science seems to exist primarily as a reason to make-out with someone.

I'm just sayin'.

In other news, I'm very excited about watching The Invisible Man on tv-links; Darien's soooooooo so pretty.

I'm sleepy.

xo

Yesterday, I went to three state parks. Three! I saw a lot of coastline and mountains in the distance that looked like dreams you hadn't had yet and miles of pavement dappled with sunlight falling through impossibly tall pines. We saw rocky beaches and jellyfish and tiny crabs. (You have to stare at one spot just under the water forEVER, like those stupid Magic Eye photos that are supposedly full of toucans in a tree, but it just looks like squiggles to you until you see the first toucan and then, hey, toucans everywhere! It was just like that, only with tiny rock-colored crabs.) Then we went to Teapot (shoutout to jcalanthe!) and had Rose Drummettes. Teapot is a vegan restaurant, and I will tell you that it is positively EERIE how much the little chicken wing things looked and tasted like actual chicken wings. Even on the inside.

A whole lot of wholesome adventuring.

Just about ten years ago now, I came to Seattle for the first time and slept on eliade's couch. It was very long, it was sumptuously comfortable, and I made one of those random and impulsive promises to myself that one day, as God was my witness!, I would own that very couch.

Somehow, this came to pass. And for a month or so, I was actually the owner of that green squashy lounge of groovitude. Alas, when I had to leave my basement apartment, the movers could not get my couch into the tiny L-shaped hallway of my roommate's place, and I called the old landlords and asked if it was all right if I left my couch in their basement, because that couch belonged there, in that paneled den with the orange shag carpeting, and I couldn't just leave it on the corner to get rained on...

I'd been shopping around a bit for a couch for about two months when my friend Vinh (he of Dodgeball Song and Story) told me that his job was transferring him to NYC in a couple of months, and did I want his couch? It was two years old, he said, very comfortable and he basically never used it anyway. Vinh has no pets and doesn't smoke (in fact, he's extremely wholesome and freakishly goodlooking-- ladies in the tri-state area, for reals, he's a total dollface) so I said heck, yes, my young friend!

Now, here's the thing; although I've been in his apartment several times and had actually sat on the thing, I had no memory of it whatsoever. For some reason, I thought it was one of those long, low, lean Ikea couches in a sort of golden-y orange color. In fact, it is very nearly the same sagey sort of green as Anna's Magical Couch of Superbitude, and quite as squashy, although not as long, and it smells like incense. It matches the bedspread Anna bought me. It matches the throw rug I bought when I first moved into this apartment. Also, and let's not forget, it only cost me what I paid the movers to haul it here.

It is, in short, COUCH PERFECTION.

You are all invited to come and sit beside me at your leisure.

My sense of direction is demented and sad, but I assume that the bus stop is due east of me, as every sunny morning I walk into a solid wall of light. Everything is drenched in a wash of gold-- you could touch it where it settles on people's lawns and mailboxes and walk away with it clinging to your fingertips like pollen. I have to tuck my chin and stare at the sidewalk or else risk the dazzle and perhaps walk out into traffic crossing the street. (You laugh, but it's happened before.)

Most clear evenings, coming home I walk into the sun, glimpse of sparrows vaulting across streets as I pass, a hundred healthy panting joggers bounding by. It blows my tiny little mind, I tell you.

In many ways, I've never been so isolated, but I've never loved a place so much, and if I've ever been so consistently glad to be alive, I can't remember it. Of course my memory's as shoddy as my sense of direction, but.

McSwain! once described my journal entries as "sentimental" and I was stung a bit and sulked a while, but reading this, I don't guess she's wrong. ::insert rueful grin::

We had ice cream at work today.

I love you.



(And I promise I'll shut up about it after this, but for anyone still possessing the random desire to listen to me read Ophthalmology aloud, the complete file, both halves, zipped together in MP3 format can be found at general_jinjur's swingin' pad here! Check out all the audio to be dug upon!)

(ETA: So I lied. Apparently the link at jinjur's place isn't working; through the magic of cuteFTP I managed to upload Part 1 and Part 2 to kormantic.com. Right click and save, my friends.)

ETA 2: sprat offered to mirror here and here. Thanks, sprat!

fiddle faddle was on sale for 99 cents at Bartell Drugs. The packaging lists several "Fun Facts" that are too relentlessly dull to recount here, but the slogan on the back has this to say about fiddle faddle: "It is a Mouthful of Fun!"

Mm-hmm.

In other, far more exciting news, I got mail at fabulous new downtown my place for the very first time. The day before I moved, the last piece of mail I got was a package of handmade hand soaps (shaped like hands!) from our delightful saffronhouse and the ever vivacious seraphcelene earned the distinction of being the first person to send me mail at the new digs! You two lovely contestants will please to be honoring me with a request for a snippet of your choosing.

I am finishing up those earlier requests, kittens, fear not.

Now, it has recently come to my attention that I am a bit of a cheese danish. A cream puff. A downy-headed, dream-eyed, mush-hearted milquetoast. Sentimental, some would say. Perhaps even precious, or fatally, twee.

I could totally be hardcore, though. In fact, I'm drinking the blood of the innocent right now!

In fact, would a nice girl bring you The Inevitable Pimp Post? I think not.

Take that, Pollyanna!

( five stories )

It could be that I'm high on Clorox, or maybe it's just the Coffee Heath Bar Crunch talking, but I'm all tender and puffy-eyed because everything is so beautiful today it hurts. The day was just a series of gold bars sliding over my walls while I cleaned and did my laundry and... didn't really pack very much at all.

The movers come in about 12 hours and sure, things are in boxes, but it could be a bit more organized. At the moment, I feel like I'm living in a tiny, shabby warehouse. A tiny, shabby warehouse that smells like fried rice and fabric softener. Contrasts!

In classic LJ fashion, instead of writing any of the ninjillion stories I've signed up for, I'm goofing off and listening to The Frames and today I have cried over: Stranger Than Fiction, the trailer for Once, and this video by Bright Eyes, The First Day of My Life.

It is perhaps slightly possible that I'm just a mass of naked nerves courtesy of PMS, but when the air is so soft and when the nights are this long and when I'm absolutely certain that no one but my brisk little massage therapist, a jaunty skinny biking ponytailed slip of a girl who is contractually obligated for two more sessions, will ever touch me again, I'm still so very glad to be alive that aside from the smoking and the not-directly-referred-to-but-so-totally-there-hot-guy-on-guy action (I mean, he died in a sandbuggy crash on Fire Island, people! [and okay, including the hot guy-on-guy action-- I mean, I write gay porn, after all]) I feel just like that Frank O'Hara poem.

Oh, really, sometimes I love you so much that there are days when I honestly think I'll *poof* and sublimate: just one sighing vaguely person-shaped breath of vapor. Mm, sublimation. Today, maybe all those definitions apply.

It is entirely official; I have had too much coffee and/or ice cream and not nearly enough love I was born for you with me now sleep.

Okay, so maybe I've been reading Billy Collins poems.

I proclaim it Billy Collins day and I think you should all write me a poem.

This one is mine:

( My brother gets hit by a car )

Well, it just crowded it a bit, but oh, so much love! I was trying to post a comment on laurashapiro's section of musesfool's love meme when it told me we'd maxed out the LJ comment capacity. (g) How glorious, I thought.

What can be more delightful (or more passionate or more ridiculous or more adorable) than an entire population of (mostly) women whose hobby is love? Being in love, falling in love, hoping/helping other people fall in love, mooning around all day grinning like a sap because a) you love people and b) people love you and c) you are made of love?

On the whole, we're a remarkable section of the world, don't you think?

No matter what the future holds, we have loved, we are loved, we love, we will love again.

♥

The sort of story he tells to friends after we've been together ten years? Or the sort he gets drunk with his friends with in ten days, while trying to exorcise the experience from his gin soaked mind?

Other than the very occasional quiche, I (for reals) have not "cooked" a meal beyond heating up leftover Chinese in the microwave since... Let's say May of '06. (I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Stove Top Stuffing does not count.) I eat a lot of salad and cereal and soymilk when I'm at home.

Anyway, I had a guy over for dinner tonight, and I got a bottle of wine and a roast chicken from the SafeWay and some salad from Whole Foods and I came home and put the (hot) chicken in the oven to keep it warm. I took a shower and tidied up a bit and when my date showed up, I took the chicken out so I could put the crescent rolls in the oven.

Peeling the foil from the wine bottle, I cut the pad of my thumb open. I applied Neosporin and a SpongeBob Glow-in-the-dark Band Aid and went to dutifully pry the lid off the chicken... but alas, the lid had melted. My tasty dinner bird corpse was trapped inside a plastic coffin. So I sawed the lid off with a kitchen knife.

My roommate has had all the stuff that was once piled in the closet in my bedroom on the floor in the dining area since before I moved in, but she recently put a dining table in. Alas, there are no chairs, so we picnicked on the floor while watching a Simpson's rerun.

Later on, flipping channels, we came upon a film starring Gary Oldman (with a terrible and hilariously uneven American accent) and Kevin Bacon as a lawyer and the serial killer the lawyer accidentally sets free.

So much 80s! So much hair gel and hair spray! So many polo shirts with standing collars! So many impassioned monologues! And dear sweet daddy champagne, the SYNTHESIZERS! Also? Joe Don Baker totally got shot in the heart, man!

I mean, we made out, but. I probably poisoned us. Chicken stewed in melted polymers can't be good for you.

from a friend of yours who has been trying to mail you a birthday gift from June that was then going to be a housewarming gift and that is now become a Christmas gift, and a Christmas card from your Auntie that you are fairly sure will never get to you because you may well have given her the wrong mailing address, seeing as how you were asleep (at 6:30 AM on a Sunday) when she called you to ask for it. So you pad downstairs with your socks on and check the little mirrored shelf where the mail carrier leaves deliveries for the building, and sure enough, there's one for YOU and you note that it's not hand packaged and you snicker, figuring your friend gave up on the original gift and just decided to send you a copy of Watchmen instead, because that's the sort of thing he'd do, and when you take it upstairs and yank the ripcord and unfold your treasure, you see it's The Complete New Yorker, every page of every issue from February 1925 through April 2006 and you grin at it stupidly and think, "Huh, I hadn't thought I'd bought that," but you're so pleased with yourself just the same, and then you read the packing slip, "Hey sweetie-- Happy 2007 to someone whose coolness makes Eustace Tilley look like a hick!" and you hug the box and burst into surprised, idiot tears of complete joy.

I used to skulk around the University library, and if I was flying I'd splurge on a copy for "in case I die in a nose-diving, fiery wreck, at least I'll have been reading this cartoon about Pynchon at home, or this short story about a Russian boxer who does a little knee-capping to keep a roof over his head, or that one about the boy at the resort who's in love with his father, or that one about the Japanese woman who marries a man made of ice, or that essay about twins raised by separate adoptive parents, or the woman who stayed home from her University job because she had to put her Collie down and while she was at home crying about her poor dog, a wretched, deranged student shot everyone in her office and then himself, or or or or..."

:: quavers:: It's indexed.

Thank you, oh, thank you. Thank you.

Meme.

January

::French kisses 2006::. MWAH!

February

I knew it would come to this, and yet I've imbibed assorted caffeinated beverages daily for the last week and now I'm at the point where I'm twitchy and fretful.

March

After a spate of dry runs, I have landed a three-day temp assignment in the lovely city of Cascade-- Wait, I mean Seattle!

April

There was a boy with a black felt cap and a long blond ponytail playing a guitar at the bus stop on Saturday.

May

Summary: He had plenty of impressions of the Nez're-al compound, but as most of them involved a moaning, writhing lieutenant and a kneeling, naked astrophysicist, John had to devote a fair amount of self-control to not letting his eyes so much as flicker their way.

June

I have been booting around town and in Ohio.

July

I think I'm finally getting the knack of Adobe Photoshop.

August

Dude, I just got dumped by a boy I've been seeing since May.

September

For no particular reason, unless you count the GIGANTIC 79 cent bar of Caramello I scarfed down, or Annie Dillard's An American Childhood, or the lazy September slant to the sun, or all the delicious STORIES (cesperanza's Being Right is Everything and 30toseoul's Brownian Motion and other delightful things all mangled into my brain that made me laugh-- like svmadelyn's Walter story) I read that made my skin buzz and my brain fizz like a new can of ginger ale, but I was too happy to sleep last night.

October

With me, it's all or nothin'.

November

I don't have a reputation as a fannish Pollyanna for nothing.

December

So, I moved here:

I've gotta say, that's a pretty good summary of my year, all told, actually. (g)

It is certainly within my power to walk the six blocks or so it would take me to get to the local Denny's and order me up some pancakes. And yet I have somehow found the wherewithal to resist. Although I am already planning to walk the twelve blocks or so it will take me to get to Vera's in the morning so that I can have a waffle. Don't you judge me! as the kids all say. Anyway, lucitania took a picture of the BEST BUMPER STICKER EVER with her spankin' new camera and I made an icon of it. I am strongly considering making it my default icon, on the basis that I am not always necessarily in the mood for a pink-hatted cheery wave, and the fact that there is pretty much no time ever that I would not accept a stack of flapjacks swamped in syrup and real butter.

I have written 244 words for my yuletide story.

It's not the kind of story where anyone eats pancakes, though.

I want you all to know that I was psychologically scarred googling for images of "pancakes". I am not so much about the naked pictures, despite my deep and abiding love of porn, a love comparable to my love of pancakes even, and I must say to you that I could have gone a long, long time without seeing... Well, let us all try to put it out of our minds, shall we?

In other news, I completed an SGA story. But now I've pretty much decided it needs to be ripped apart entirely and sewn back together again. It's not a story anybody's waiting on, there's no deadline involved, and I've been poking at it on and off for months now, as is my wont, and it's not even 10,000 words. (It took me a week to write 15 K for NaNo-- why should this be so different?) I doubt the internet would feel its lack, and yet (naturally) I've been neglecting the story I should be writing trying to make this story work.

Sometimes I'm tempted to do wash my hands of the self-torment and just post of all the stories that are slumped on my hard drive all half made, but I'm too possessive of them-- if I think they're wretched, self-indulgent and ill-conceived, I want them to be safely hidden from prying eyes. If they have a spark, if I think they could be something fine, I don't want anyone to see them in their underpants, as it were. So they twiddle around and I sigh over them and I chew on a thumbnail as you movers and shakers out there ply the world with rich, delicious plot and etc. and it can be... well, sort of discouraging. Seriously, don't you people have jobs? And you do! You have jobs, and often jobs and children and there are days I can't bring myself to put something in the microwave long enough to heat it up. I am a woman who eats cold cereal for dinner on a regular basis and I still can't seem to turn all that the time I saved not cooking a nutritious meal for my theoretical family of four into more time spent writing.

Mm, writing. I love writing. I love life best when I'm thinking about what I should be writing, when I'm writing, when I'm polishing what I've written. Today I used the word "carnelian". Isn't that a splendid little word? Mmm, wooooords.

Sometimes I toy with the idea of posting serially, the way rockstars like rageprufrock and saffronhouse do... and then I stop myself because, when you come right down to it, I'm the used car of fandom. I'm secondhand and I'm unreliable and sometimes I crank right up and purr like a kitten and sometimes I sputter and stall out in the driveway and I don't want to post something that I never get back to. (I did this exactly once, in my second story ever in XF, and I still smart from the soul-eating GUILT of starting something I couldn't finish.) I myself don't read WIPs in general (but for the above mentioned brillianteens and maybe one or two others) because I have trust issues and I want to read everything NOW NOW NOW GIMME GIMME. Television series on DVD are the best thing ever invented, as far as I'm concerned, because I hate suspense. I don't want a cliffhanger, bitch, I want to see that they win out and that everyone goes home and flops on the couch and pelts each other with Cheerios before they get a little drunk and start making out with each other. Is that so much to ask?

Oh my god, I love yuletide and I'm looking forward to it so so much that my little head might explode with anticipation.

I should get back to writing now.

Mmmm, stories.

Since I quit my job in July of last year, I have been, from time to time, desperately poor. Poor enough that over the summer, I lived for three weeks on peanut butter sandwiches and baked potatoes, a) because I love them and b) because five pounds of potatoes are so so cheap. Poor enough that I had to borrow money.

Over the summer, my brother Everclear was flush, sharing an apartment with his girl and working a job where they gave him full benefits after only a month rather than the generally recognized three, a job where they loved him so dearly they gave him a “double promotion and a triple raise” a month after that. He floated me a loan, and I promised to pay him back when I had a full time gig and a solid place to live.

Everclear called me about a month ago, saying he’d decided to quit his job and move back to Florida to open a bar with some friends who had raised a cool 1.5 mill in capital.

Last week I had a dream that Everclear and my dad POTUS were so broke that they bought new trucks that they planned to douse in gasoline and burn for the insurance money, so I called my brother and asked if he needed anything, but he said he was fine.

Yesterday, he called and asked if I could pay him back the cash I owed him.

It’s not a lot of money, a couple of days pay, maybe, and as I officially start my finally! permanent! job! Monday and I don’t seem to be moving in October, I had it on hand and was glad to pay him back. This turned out to be a problem; he needed the cash to cover a kited check, and in days of olde we used to just deposit cash into each others’ bank accounts, but there are no branches of his bank in this town, and so I had to wire the funds via Western Union.

As this entry is already deadly dull, I will save you heartache and tell you that after several false starts on-line and in person, four phone calls, and two long walks, I finally got the money to my brother, but in the middle of it all, I was bitching about it to Cakeboy on the phone as ( I was walking and had to stop and sigh, “I have to go help some old people,” and hang up on him. )