Emi

I got more artses! And it's beautiful!

Title: One of Their Favourite Things
Artist: This time, I have no idea
Rating: G
Summary/Prompt: Hermione and Severus having a quiet night in, curled up together and reading. The twist is that at least one of them is in their Animagus form.

It's a lovely black and white that has a woodblock-print look to it. And I love the way they're snuggled together, and the intense look on Severus' face, and the contented-reader look on Hermione's. And no I'm not tellling you who is/isn't in Animagus form, you're just going to have to go look. ;-)

*DIES*


I just HAD to share this. Now I must go to bed. 8 AM classes are of the suck. I'll try to catch up everywhere tomorrow.

So now I can say with certainty that my lovely gift, In the Spring of Their Forever, was created by karasu_hime. It features an older Snape and Lupin and I just love it to bits. *more squeeage over awesome art*

I can also lay claim to the fic I wrote: Words Left Unspoken. It's an R-rated PWP set post-DH, and you can probably see that ubiquirk is rubbing off on me, as this wrote itself very non-linearly. *g*

*kicks LJ* Drat. Won't let me upload my SnuSa icon. Dammit. Ah well, I'll use the usual Snupin icon on LJ and just switch it to the SnuSa icon on IJ.

By some miraculous twist (and yes, there will be bay leaves offered in thanks to the One most likely to have been involved), I actually got a call from the person doing the clinical scheduling to give me a choice. She even said as a preface that that almost never happens. Like I said, miraculous.

So I am now safely ensconced on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The other option would pretty much have had me leaving work at midnight on Mondays and driving to go try to nap in the parking lot of the hospital until it was time to get in there, changed, and on with things.

W00t!

That's an end to Tuesday video nights with Patsfan, but that was kind of a given anyway, alas. And we can still do them during lab sessions.

With the fate of LJ hanging in the balance I have come over to dust off my IJ. I completely forgot about the Stargate prompt table I have here. Since the only thing I have pending right now is the SGA Vegas tag, I should really work on some of those prompts. :D

( icon meme knicked from Julia )

Title: Burnt Offering
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Rating/Characters: G, Miles, Cordelia
Word Count: 200 (yes, it got away from me a bit)
Summary: On the anniversary of his father’s death, Miles ponders the way they mark it.
A/N: Happy birthday, cordelia_v! You said, I have sometimes wondered what Miles makes of their beliefs and practices---or Cordelia's---after having spent so much time offworld, and I hope this rings true to that.

( Burnt Offering )

I'm a bit behind on these. Oops!

Title: Memory {Shattered {Shattering
Author: ubiquirk
Fandom: Buffy
Rating/Characters: Willow, Dawn
Word Count: 1580
Summary: A look inside Willow’s mind during “Two to Go.” When one of the people who made her feel special is gone, Willow lashes out at another.
Why you should read it: Willow's mind during "Two to Go" had to be a scarier place than usual, and ubiquirk has given an inside view of what sort of things may have pushed her far enough to actually go after Dawn. It also gives some insight into how, in the S8 comics, Dawn can actually say after this that Willow's been like a mother to her.

Title: The Professional
Author: ramie_k
Pairing/Rating: Remus/Sirius, NC-17
Word Count: ~5200
Summary: A chance meeting changes two lives.
Warnings: AU. Prostitution.
Why you should read it: It's a bit dark, looking at Sirius just after he's run away and a Remus whose life is entirely different than how it really turned out in canon for a number of reasons. It's hard to say more without giving too much away.

Title: The First Time
Author: ramie_k
Pairing/Rating: Remus/Sirius, NC-17
Word Count: ~2400
Summary: Remus and Sirius’ Big Moment
Why you should read it: Believe it or not, ramie_k does not only write angst and darkfic! So if you're in the mood for something a bit lighter, go with this one.

Wonky. I kinda don't want to go back to Santa Barbara.

I'll miss home, sleeping in, eating whenever I feel like it, TiVo, knowing where everything is, my dogs, laundry without quarters, my bed, a shower that actually has some freaking water pressure, fast intarwebs, and.. home.

Then there's the whole male-shape problem waiting for me back there that makes me want to curl up under my sheets and never come out.

Alas and alack, I'm going back tomorrow. Winter break is over, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a new, fantastical year.

Not hugely surprising, as I usually come up either INFP or INFJ. As to the narrative ... hmmm. They say "freak" like it's a bad thing. *shrugs* LOL

Your result for The Brutally Honest Personality Test...

Freak- INFJ

13% Extraversion, 87% Intuition, 33% Thinking, 60% Judging

Took my car in on Tuesday for a tune-up and to get the reverse lights fixed. Tune-up is done, and the car is running much smoother. I guess it does make a difference when you go an additional 40K miles beyond the recommended time frame. Reverse lights, on the other hand, still not fixed. Need a switch that is apparently going to have to be ordered and probably won't arrive until next week. It's not like my car's exotic or anything. It's just about the lowest-end Chevy there is. *shrugs* And of course, today, the running lights aren't working. They do this periodically. Sometimes it fixes itself, sometimes it doesn't. I'm hoping it fixes itself, as I'm soaking enough into this car right about now.

Went to Curves this morning and did better than I have in a while. W00t! Even with the time missed due to the holidays, I'm regaining strength and stamina, and that's always nice to see.

Got a trim and color today. Less happy with the fellow who did most of it. Of course, that's the risk in going to a salon school: you can't be sure who you'll get. He wasn't quite grasping that my hair is very dry and very processed from years of coloring and does not actually need to be completely saturated from root to tip. On the contrary, it practically grabs the color from across the room. (Not the grays, of course, just the rest of it. *facepalm*) Someone else stepped in when he was taking too long about working it through to the ends and pointed out that this really was just a touch-up, so fortunately it didn't completely overdye. But it did a little. Ah well. It'll fade. Also, while I'm not terribly chatty and am sometimes uncomfortable when hairdressers start trying to get me to be chatty, the opposite extreme doesn't quite work either. "Okay, let's let this set for 30 minutes" would be good though. As opposed to wandering off and leaving me to finally decide to pick up my book because he's apparently not coming back.

I think I finally have all my i's dotted and t's crossed for the paperwork they want for clinical, so I thought I'd drop it off today. Well, the college is open, kinda, but it's a ghost-town. I think I know which office is the right one, so it was tempting to slide it all under the door in an envelope, but there's no names on any of the doors yet or anything, and with all the moving and construction, I decided not to take the chance. Monday's the deadline, so Monday I'll be heading back. At least it's not that far.

The one unmitigated success was the stop at the uniform shop. I have ordered my uniforms for clinical and am the proud owner of a pair of Danskos. They feel weird, so I'm going to wear them around the house a bit to get used to them, but they had by far the best support of anything they had. If I need to throw in a soft insole, all well and good, but that arch is better than anything I've even managed with an OTC orthotic, and that sold me on them. Dropped almost $200 all told. I'm hoping work counts that as "other academic supplies" for reimbursement purposes.

Now to try to get some writing done!

I'm trying to find ways to make things I tried in 2008 work better. Several of them fic-related or at least writing-related.

There's a poll up at lmb_challenge to see where people would like to see the comm go. Obviously, me coughing up weekly prompts isn't going to work, so I'm looking for other ideas. If you're interested in the Bujold fandoms and have any interest in a prompt/challenge community for those fandoms, please go have a look and give me your ideas.

Also, I'm rethinking how I do birthday fics. I haven't even attempted to do them for everyone, because a) there's too many of you and b) not all of you care about fanfiction. But some of the ones I did undertake to do have turned into monsters that I'll be lucky to finish by the recipients' next birthdays. The other thing is I've relied on LJ's birthday notifications so that I at least send people an ecard. However, this means that people I have friended only on IJ are left out, as birthday notifications seem to be broken over there.

So here's my thought, inspired in part by how ubiquirk does birthdays: I'm going to wish a general happy birthday at the beginning of the month to everyone who shows up on the listing of birthdays for that month on IJ and LJ, and offer to write a drabble, which can be either fanfic or original fic, for anyone who would like one and gives me a prompt. That should cover everyone, I think. Well, except folks who've opted to not have their birthdays available through their profile, but that I can't help.

So, starting now: Happy Birthday to paperspirit, cordelia_v, rodabug, sylvanawood, magically25, annwynri, droxy, treelit, pern_dragon, and talesofsnape! If you would like a 100-word drabble for a birthday gift, either original or fic set in one of the fandoms I write, please prompt me!

Fandoms I write so far (though I'm open to trying others that I'm familiar with): Angel, Black Jewels, Buffy, Chalion, Doctor Who, Firefly, Harry Potter, Sharing Knife, Temeraire, Torchwood, and Vorkosigan.
Pairings and squicks I won't write: Giles/Buffy, Giles/any Scooby, Spuffy, Hermione/Ron, Sirius/anyone unless you want to see him being a jerk, Harry/Remus, Miles/Ivan, BDSM, non-con (you get the idea, and most of you already know I'm pretty vanilla and have an incest squick a mile wide)

May 2009 build on the good things that came with 2008 and leave behind the suckage.

I usually do goals moreso than resolutions. Looking at last year's, I see that I didn't quite succeed on the fic front. TKWIA still has one chapter to go, though that chapter is shaping up nicely.

I did, however, get a bit more certain that I'm doing what I need to be doing educationally and career-wise. There are still definitely moments of wondering, "Am I just doing what everyone else expects me to do?" or "Dude, why am I going to embroil myself further in this seriously broken healthcare system?" but they're fewer and further between. Because while I can't fix the system, one of the things that got me moving in this direction was the desire to do *something* about the problems I see when the folks I work with in mental health, who don't need to be hospitalized for their mental illnesses but need a lot of support, interact with a medical system that doesn't know how to handle their illnesses other than to wait until they decompensate and then sedate and restrain them.

So, goals for this year. Finish TKWIA and Turbulence. Write some of the back-burnered things, including birthday fics that I'll be lucky to get done by people's next birthdays. Survive my first year of nursing school without having a nervous breakdown over the fact that it is humanly impossible to maintain a 4.0 indefinitely. (Though it did survive Microbiology, amazingly enough. Yay!)

And keep my spiritual practice going. It helps me a lot when I do. Part of that, though, is going to be keeping a balance. Kwan Yin is still my Patroness and shouldn't be overshadowed by the Greek Gods just because of the proximity of HTAZP. Interestingly, the hieros there said something that gave me an inkling of an idea to have ... something here that would involve my "personal pantheon," to which he and other HTAZP participants would be invited. Not going to make that a formal goal because the logistics would be challenging to say the least, but it'd be cool if I could do something like that.

By the same token, keep up some sort of regular physical activity. Probably Curves. I'm paying for it, after all, and it is fairly convenient. But if I don't keep moving and stretching, it'll be a fibro flare for me, and I can't afford that. Also, if I don't keep up with some sort of strength training, my already-vulnerable back is going to go out. Can't afford that either. Weight loss would be a nice bonus for the complainy ankles, knees, and hips, but not the main point. Like spiritual practice, I feel better when I do it, but when I stop, it is soooo easy to just not get started again.

That's probably enough to be getting on with, as they say across the pond.

Happy New Year!

Well, this was a lovely year-end surprise. My summer_of_giles story, Almost a New Friend (BtVS/HP, Giles/Snape, G) won a Judge's Choice Award in Round 7 of the Rogue Poet Awards.



Congrats to all the other winners too!

In other less fun news, it's snowing here. A LOT. I dashed out to get my PPD (TB test) read, as if it didn't get done today, I'd have to do it all over again. It was just barely starting when I headed out. The visibility is now almost nil and there's a good inch or two on the ground, making things nice and slippery. Because oh yes, this is a heavy, wet snow. I'm glad I didn't end up with any plans for the evening after all, and I wish Patsfan didn't have to work tonight. Even if they declare it an allowable snow day (which I'd doubt they'd do on New Year's Eve), he'll never take it, what with the rumors of more layoffs coming. Dammit.

( application for clairmont )

So, in my prior post, I mentioned wanting to find supplies to make appropriately erotic, mostly phallic, candies or ornaments of some kind. Which I have found. Haven't settled on what to order yet. But there's plenty of basic phallic and other molds suitable for setting chocolate or soap or any number of things, not to mention cake pans and cookie cutters.

One thing I really wasn't expecting though? The Solid Milk Chocolate Clone-a-Willie Kit (scroll down as it's the second item) I ... seriously cannot imagine any reason why I would want to cast a chocolate mold of a specific penis. Ever. No, not even Patsfan's. *boggles*

No staying up all night again for me... even though I was tired last night, I couldn't sleep until after 4am. So very annoying. And of course I'm exhausted today as a result, despite grabbing a small nap this afternoon.

Which, of course, does not help my extreme weirdness, by which I mean that the things that I think will make me feel better are the things I want the least.

To illustrate:
-I want to be social, but end up feeling frustrated with others.
-I want to go out and do things, but nothing appeals to me.
-I want to write/draw/be creative, but can't concentrate on anything.

So... I am a confused kitten!

Went to HTAZP today for Pompaia. ( More under the cut because it got long. )

Aside - I wish Semagic could xpost to TCN: The Cauldron Network. This is the sort of thing I'd like to stick in a blog post over there, but will most likely forget to do (except tonight since I'm actually talking about it).

Enough blather. Can't believe it's already 10pm. Still have much to do before I can call it a day. *waves* G'night all!

What sucks? When I want to pick up another character at a game, but someone wants that very same character for a SL I really don't want. Icing? Not just one character, but two I've considered picking up. So, I think I'll just stick with who I have there.

While I'm on about games, I think ya'll should check out wizardisland via wizardislemods because I really really want to play Draco. C'mon! There are loads of characters open and what's not fun about a premise of everyone stranded on an island? If it's not fun, I'll find a way to make you amused some other way.

Christmas went well. Didn't stay up in MA as long as I'd planned, but I'll be back up on Mon anyway for my nephew's bday. Picspam will most likely come after that.

Figured out the one thing I forgot, something I should have taken care of as soon as I got home from Portus: putting the correct SM chip back in the camera. Damned thing was (not surprisingly) still full. Deleted a couple of things that I was reasonably sure had made it into the computer in order to take some Christmas Eve shots, then hit CVS for a cheapie chip. This turns out to probably not be as wasteful as it sounds, because one of the gifts I received is a GPS system (!!!) that can also be used for other things such as playing mp3s or viewing photos, but you need to switch out the mapping software SM chip for your music or whatever. As I've seen several of my classmates make very effective use of their iPods as study devices (and as my mp3 player all but shit the bed and never had photo/image capabilities anyway) this is far more likely what I'll end up using it for, so an extra chip is probably going to come in handy. I just need to start carrying the chip/flash drive case in my purse instead of my laptop bag so that I have the mapping software chip on me if I need it.

An odd thing I noticed: on Christmas day, all the coffee shops were closed. CVS was open ... but not the pharmacy. Liquor stores? Open. *boggles* If liquor stores want to be open, all well and good. But I'm sure the coffee shops used to be open, because I swear I remember my sister going out and getting us all Dunkin' Donuts coffee to go with breakfast. Or possibly Honey Dew, which she seems to prefer. So I wonder when that changed? Not that it's any big deal, just surprising. And if you're going to have a drug store open on a major holiday (and I'm glad they were, as I found myself in dire need of "feminine supplies" about a week earlier than expected), why wouldn't you have the pharmacy part open??

Anyway, one of my big vacation projects is going to be organizing my "office" and clearing bookshelves to make room for my nursing texts, which are starting to roll in from Amazon and the various used book sellers. I saved a fair bit on the things I managed to get from sources other than the bookstore, but damn if I didn't spend nearly $400 on Amazon/used and another $200 at the college bookstore! Thank goodness most of these will be used over multiple semesters. They'd have to be. Even I can't read all that *looks at pile* in a single semester and retain enough to be useful. (Seriously, they haven't all arrived yet and I haven't even ordered all the "recommended but not required" books yet, and the pile is already over two feet tall. *whimpers*)

There will probably be a "who wants these books" post at some point, as I'm going to have to thin the collection a bit in my bid to make room. Some I can move to storage bins, but some I'll just have to admit I'll probably never actually read again and need to pass on to be enjoyed by someone else. Plus I now have all these Amazon boxes to recycle, and they might as well be used for their intended purpose of shipping books. Once I've sorted out what the give-away books will be, I'll post a list or something and see who's interested in what.

Also trying to catch up reading Snupin Santa. I put off some of the longer fics until now. Starting on Ghost in the Machine this afternoon. Very intriguing premise. I wonder why Snupin seems to be so into the non-magical AU? I've seen some of that in Snarry, too, but nowhere near as much, and extremely little in any of the het ships. One could argue that it's a way to get around some of the canon obstacles to the ship, but frequently those obstacles get written into the AU in some fashion as well (and in some truly innovative ways), so I don't think that's it. After all, it's those obstacles that make it interesting.

I didn't do as much writing for adventdrabbles as I'd hoped to, but I did write a few more things:

Keeping the Goal in Sight (Vorkosigan, Miles/Ekaterin, G)
Poor Substitute (Firefly, River, Simon, G)
Peace or Warning? (Sharing Knife, Fawn/Dag, G)
Nesting (Torchwood, Gwen, Ianto, G)
New Tradition (BtVS, Willow/Tara, G)

They're all actually in a single catch-up post, but I gave the individual cut-tag links for those who are only interested in certain ones. They're all very short, though I don't think any are actually true drabbles. And there's loads of cool ficlets and drabbles and drabble series over there. I recommend using the wrap-up posts as a sort of table of contents.

Which reminds me that my other big vacationy goal is to get the next and last chapter of TKWIA cleaned up, revised as necessary, and off to ubiquirk, hopefully before her semester resumes. And then tackle the next bit of Turbulence.

As far as LJ ... I've attempted to catch up and comment, but I've undoubtedly missed things. Please poke me if there's something you've posted that you're wanting to hear from me on and haven't. To give an example of my ability to epically fail in catching up, I discovered last week that I'd somehow managed to miss a pregnancy announcement from someone whose blog I thought I was religiously following via syn feed here on LJ. Discovered this when we caught up with each other in a chat for the first time in ages and I stuck my foot halfway down my throat. So, um, yeah. Don't hesitate to poke if you're thinking, "Why the hell hasn't she said anything about xyz?"

That about does it for a catch-up post, yeah? LOL