Another low grade migraine this morning. What the hell? That's the second in three days. Not as bad as getting a full-blown one, of course, but still not great for the productivity. I went into the grad center anyway, operating on the "if I ignore it, it'll just go away" principle, and I did finish up editing the last couple pages of Rufus's first chapter, but then I just gave up and came home. I had plans with someone for tonight, but my friend bailed because she's sick, so maybe it's for the best. I might try and do a bit of reading now that I've actually eaten something.

In the news of "yay!" I got another email about a job interview last night. It is not quite as ideal as the one I heard on earlier in the week, but it would still be a decent job. Not really sure how it would pay; the company generally does well by its employees, but it's very entry-level, which might mean peanuts. I'm over-qualified for it, though, so perhaps it's one of those "salary is commensurate with experience" deals. Money isn't necessarily the most important factor for me (that would be health insurance), but I'd like to be able to live someplace nice and eat out on occasion and also take over my car payments from my parents if I can.

And, oh yeah, fill my car up. With gas at, what, like $4.60 a gallon in the Bay Area right now? that's sort of an issue as well. *sigh* I foresee fewer trips down to Santa Cruz - though really, my little Civic is very economical that way.

I'm starting to consider the possibility that I might have options next year, and that's not something I'd really let myself think about before. I could end up with a job that I enjoy and might want to stick with for awhile, i.e. longer than the year that I had planned to take before heading off to grad school. Staying in one place for a couple years actually sounds pretty nice, and it wouldn't look bad on my resume either at this point.

And, well, I'm tired. The last three years have been a lot of fun, but I really want to go home and stay there for awhile. I miss people. I want to be able to really learn my job and get good at it and have a life without constantly thinking in the back of my head "well, it's all temporary." And yeah, okay, it is, because what isn't temporary in the end? But two years would really let me settle in, and I think I'd be ready for the PhD by the time I was done. I love being in school and I have every intention of going back, but the truth is that I enjoy being out of school as well. For one thing, I quite enjoy earning a paycheck! And I whine about working because I developed something of an allergy to it through a string of really just horrible jobs when I was younger, but I liked teaching and I think I'd like the admin/student advising/coordinator side of things too.

Downsides: Entering a PhD program at 27 and not finishing until I'm at least 32. This is normal, really, but at some point I want to have kids, and I'd like to have them while my parents are young enough to enjoy them. This is a problem when everyone in your family has kids late, which my parents did and my sister and I will do. I'm twenty-four and I already have grandkid guilt. Though it's not like I've found anyone to have them with, and my sister will probably get there before me anyway (since she's going to marry The World's Most Perfect Boyfriend). It'd be a lot easier if I just flat-out didn't want the little suckers, but part of me really, really does.

(Of course then I look around and I see all the little hellions I could get stuck with and I think of some of the shit I pulled as a kid - and I was a good kid! - and I think, "Hmmm, perhaps not. A cat gives you a lot less backchat and doesn't bring home infected tonsils from nursery school.")

Anyway, what's a year at this point? My philosophy so far is that there is absolutely no use rushing through life. Once I'm on that PhD => postdoc => (pleaseGod)tenure-track path, there is just no jumping off, so I might as well do everything I want to do before then, including holding down a 9-5, non-academic grown-up job. Which appears to be what I would like to do at this point.

Plus, thirty is the new twenty. So there. Nyah.

(This entry brought to you by the fact that I turn twenty-five three weeks from tomorrow, oy, and realized while watching a Friends rerun earlier this week that the characters are no longer ten years older than I am. We are, in fact, the exact same age. NOT OKAY.)

See, this is a phenomenon that I have rarely, if ever, experienced. I exercise sporadically, i.e. I do nothing 95% of the time and then get dragged on punishingly long/steep hikes by friends and family and expect my body to just deal with it. Which it does, because I'm still at a stage in life when it can.

So most of the time, when I exercise, I don't get this mythical "runner's high." I just get sore and sweaty and irritable. And, in the case of the six mile hike my father and I did in the Lake District, really friggin' wet. And occasionally, when hiking in Ecuador with dribom, who was some sort of mountain goat in a former life, left behind. *glares*

But for the last couple of weeks I've actually been good about going to the gym after I finish working for the day. The undergrads are all gone now, which means it's empty in there most of the time (hurray for a lack of super skinny blonde eighteen year old girls), so I basically go in, do fifty crunches, then half an hour on the treadmill. I started out powerwalking, but I've been working my way up to running for a couple minutes at a stretch (alternated with decreasing the speed and increasing the incline, and then a few minutes at the end where I slow down and increase the incline a lot just for variety). And the thing is, I realized today that . . .

. . . I sorta look forward to it.

Y'all have no idea how big a deal this is. I hate exercise and I especially hate running, but I do like the feeling I get afterward. My concentration is better during the day, too, though I'm not sure it's doing much for my productivity at night. Still. Nice feeling. Runner's high. Okie doke.

Anyway. I should probably report back on the job interview, which was, in fact, not a job interview at all, and I'm not entirely sure why we couldn't have done that over email. The deal is that there are two jobs in question, one full-time and one part-time. I applied to both and because this woman hires people for the entire department, she ended up with both of my apps. She would like me for the full-time position (yay!), but the timing is bad. She wants someone in by August, and I'm here until the 21st, and even then it would realistically be a week before I could get everything squared away at home enough to actually start work. Plus, there is that whole matter of Rufus the MA Dissertation and how he won't be quite ready to be released into the wild at that point. So, we're talking after Labor Day, really.

So that's less than ideal. But! I'm very encouraged by the fact that she didn't tell me flat-out no, and she was incredibly encouraging about my resume. Truly, it was worth it just for that, even if I don't end up with either position in the end. I will email the woman I spoke to next week to check up, and in the meantime I continue to apply, apply, apply, but with less of a sense of inevitable doom than before. Today I sent off two more apps and follow-up emails for two other jobs I applied for last week (the host family coordinator positions).

All in all, things go well here. Spent most of today revising chapter one of Rufus, which will continue tomorrow, along with hopefully some work on Rufus's friend Article #1 (the articles don't get names, which is sad for them, I know), which needs at least another 500 words to be of publishable length. I know what I'm doing for those five hundred words, I just have to sit down and, well, do it.

Fic is . . . slow right now. Slower that it's been for me in awhile. I'll make my summer_of_giles day just fine, but . . . yeah. Strangely slow. Blame Rufus.

Woke up this morning with a migraine - not a terrible one, or at least no flashing lights, but the sort that makes me useless for reading anything, which is not optimal when that was pretty much my plan for the day. I've spent the last four hours downing water and paracetamol, watching cheesy mid-90's sitcoms on SurftheChannel, and repeatedly applying my Chinese herbal-eucalyptus-menthol gel, which for some reason is really the only thing that actually works to fend off migraines (I rub it under my nose and breathe deeply - and it works!). I haven't had a really bad one since I started carrying the stuff around with me everywhere about a year now.

Though that might've had to do with leaving Ecuador, where going outside meant exposing myself to buses belching the blackest exhaust I'd ever seen. Ahhh, the crisp, fresh, invigorating Andean air. If only.

But! I'm feeling much better now, so I think I will attempt to get some work done this afternoon. I'm still a bit headachey and my concentration is not great, so I think I'll be tackling English-language sources today and save the other stuff for tomorrow. And, frankly, not even a migraine can ruin my day, because . . .

I have a job interview tonight.

YES I DO.

With a place I would love to work for, frankly. It's only half-time, but this particular employer gives (I believe) full benefits even to its half-time employees, and the pay is probably better than a lot of full-time positions I could get. And once I have the benefits, it'd be pretty easy for me to find a part-time TESOL job to supplement my income. It'd be a bit complicated, because I couldn't live at home for the month of September like I'd planned and take care of my parents' cat (it's just too far to drive everyday, especially with the current price of gas), but long-term it'd be awesome. The contract is for a year, too, so they can't get annoyed with me for taking off to a PhD program at the end of next summer (*cough* or in the best case scenario continuing my education at this particular institution).

Plus, part of me was simply overjoyed to hear that someone had read my resume and cover letter and was "very impressed by my experience and qualifications." I was starting to wonder if I'd dreamed the last three years.

Or possibly a lot in love.

"What do you have handcuffs for?!"

"Spoilers."

For that alone I love her. Please, please let her be the companion once we start getting Moffat scripts in 2010. Please!!!

ETA: Oooh, thinking about it, and looking at some icons from the ep, I'm absolutely certain that's what Moffat was setting up. It works with the whole "spoiler" theme, you see? That ep was a spoiler for what we're going to get in a couple of years.

Steven Moffat, may I have your babies?

ETA: I keep forgetting to post this here, but the enormous list of 135 prompts for the Bujold Fest is available here. It'll work the same as the Giles h/c fest. We've only had two claim so far (*wibbles*) so come on over and take a look.

Am hoping the lack of claiming just means people are thinking carefully about what they want to write.

*sigh* Tired tonight. Had a string of 5-6 hour nights this last week, and it's starting to catch up with me. I was insanely productive, however. Chapter two of the diss (which I should really name, actually . . . hmm, how about Rufus? Rufus the Dissertation has a certain ring to it) is drafted and at 3900 words is too bloody long, but that can be fixed.

I've applied to ten jobs this week, several of which I think I have some hope of getting if they aren't too horribly put off by the fact that I'm not in the country for an in-person interview. My favorites were the two host family coordinator positions (well, one was a more general "accommodations coordinator," but basically it was liaising between host families, the school, and the students), but we'll just have to see. Not being there is (unsurprisingly) a real problem. Can't say as I blame them either; when you have a huge pool of applicants and you're choosing between the ones who can meet you face to face and the one who's willing to call you from England, well, I'd choose the ones I could meet face to face as well, I think.

I got some reading done, though not as much as I'd hoped, finished up the math section in my GRE book (though I need to look over the geometry formulas in the back because it's been forever), and went to the gym twice. I would have gone again tonight, but instead I went to dinner with people at Nando's (chicken place with faux Portuguese theme and super spicy sauce - yum!). Will go tomorrow once I'm done at the grad center.

Fic wise, I got the second of two Vorkosiverse/Temeraire crossovers drafted. I've been too brain dead to do much writing in the evenings, but now I have to switch gears into the "Unprecedented" 'verse Band Candy rewrite I have planned for my next summer_of_giles day. That's a tricky ep to rewrite, actually, because it's just so damn good - everything slots together thematically and if you take one piece out, the whole thing comes tumbling down like a house of cards. So I'm tossing most of it and just starting with the basics: SAT's, Band Candy, Ethan Rayne - hijinks ensue!

Once that's done, it'll be more Bujold Fest stuff. I'm hoping for at least two more fics, both short: a "Winterfair Gifts" missing scene and then a Caz/Palli fic. If I have time after that there will probably be something with Aral and Cordelia. That's my next tag-fic prompt, actually, but it might end up doing double duty at the fest.

I turn twenty-five on the 10th of August (not thinking about it not thinking about it not thinking about it). Depending on both my mood and my level of stress, there may be ficspam. Stay tuned for more details on that (and probably a poll as well).

Uh . . . what else? OH. SOMEONE WROTE WHAT I HAS WANTED. Down to the Water by blackmare_9 is the post-Wilson's Heart fix-it fic that I've been dying to read. It's brief but not too brief, elegant, poignant, and cuts straight to the quick. And the emotion? Is true. Thank you, crack_van!

And, finally, because no entry would be complete without Doctor Who ramblings: ( Spoilers for 4x6, The Doctor's Daughter, or: What. The. Hell. (Oh, and some for the end of S3, it turns out) )

Well, then. I'm off to write (and, let's face it, probably watch at least one more Who ep). Have a lovely evening, peoples.

That was a highly unproductive evening to cap off a very productive day. I actually did mean to get some writing done, but then I watched more Who instead and read Whofic and now it's like eleven o'clock. Whoops.

Everything before that was good. Woke up an hour early, got 800 words of diss written, managed to scurry home in between torrential downpours for lunch and scurry back in a rare moment of sun to do some reading. Went to the gym, even.

And then . . . nothing.

Ah well.

I find Who very . . . well, it's addictive, obviously, but it's frustrating as well. There are some really good individual episodes ("The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances," "Girl in a Fireplace," "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood" - I'm sure there are more but I haven't got to them yet) but a lot of the time it just . . . doesn't make sense? And I know that's part of the madcap crazy fun of it, but dude. There's lack of sense and then there's "The Shakespeare Code," which was a waste of a good scenario to say the least.

Also, the Daleks? Homicidal pepperpots! R2D2 with a plunger! They do not strike fear into my heart. I can't help but feel they could have updated them like BSG updated the Cylons. Alas, they did not. Though I very much enjoyed this crossover, The Dalek Invasion of Discworld - that pretty much sums up my view of the Daleks as well.

All righty, might be time to get a bit of writing in before calling it a night.

The day off is going splendidly. The weather is a bit shit, but it's been the perfect day to curl up inside with Who eps and get some writing done. And I did manage the grocery store earlier, so it's not a total wash (room cleaning to commence shortly - maybe).

Title: Fantastic
Fandoms: Firefly/Doctor Who
Pairing/Rating: R, Inara/Nine
Word Count: 4400
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: The TARDIS thinks the Doctor needs a companion. (Set pre-series for both canons.)
Author's Note: This is for bodhibird, who wanted an incident from Inara's training. As usual, the first person to comment on the story gets to give me the next prompt; available fandoms are Harry Potter, Temeraire, Firefly, or Vorkosiverse (Who is negotiable, but I haven't seen everything yet), but not Buffy. (I have a lot of Buffy projects going at the moment and I'm looking for some variety in my fandom diet.) Other than that, rules for the prompts may be found here. Thanks to antennapedia for giving this a once-over for me.

( Fantastic )

First person to comment gets to give the next prompt!

I've been relatively un-stressed this year. I got through two batches of essays with very little trouble - turned most of them in early, as a matter of fact.

Not so, the dissertation.

It wouldn't be so bad if I had the full time (until September 8th). But I have to leave two weeks early because some people decided to go and get married (*glares*) on the 23rd of August and I can't very well go home for the damn weekend, so I'm struggling to get everything turned in by the 20th and no matter how efficient I am about it, it's going to be very tight. Added to which, Dr. P is making noises about going on vacation the first two weeks of August and not checking his email, so if I have problems I'm just going to be stuck, and then I've got six days max once he gets back to work everything out, get it formatted and bound, and turn it in.

This is just . . . really not cool.

I don't know what to do about it. What I should probably do is talk to Dr. P and if he really is serious about not checking email (why why why???), get the name of someone else I can go to if it's all going to hell and I need help now. Professor L is unfortunately also going to be on vacation at that same time, I think, though perhaps she at least will be checking email, but there might be someone else.

I really need a day away from it. Badly. I took today and did some other work and it was good, but Monday I really need to dig in and get a bunch of reading and writing done. What I should do is take tomorrow and go grocery shopping and to the gym and clean my room and do all the stuff I need to do to really be productive the rest of the week, not to mention giving myself a mental break, but I am so, so stressed about it that I don't know if I can. I came home from the grad center just now, took a shower, sat down, and promptly burst into tears because I am really, really freaked out about this. And I know it's not that big a deal, and I know it'll all get done, but I am so very afraid that it won't and my Distinction, which I have busted my ass for this year, is going to just vanish because of the stupid fucking dissertation.

I could have chosen something else. Something simpler. Something I actually had a background in, where I wouldn't have had to start from scratch and reinvent the goddamn wheel. I could have chosen a less ambitious approach and not let myself get talked into doing something I didn't feel I was prepared to do. I could have told Antonie and Mike that I was really sorry, but I just couldn't make the goddamn wedding. I could have done eight million things to make this easier on myself and I didn't.

ETA: Have been talked out of my tree by antennapedia, who pointed out that there were ways for me to do this from back home. I'm worried about getting the binding wrong (they are unbelievably fussy about it), so I really want to use the services here at the university, but if I gave someone the money ahead of time they could print out two copies for me and take them to get them bound when they took their own stuff, then deliver it all to the department together.

And I am taking the day off tomorrow. Because yow, that was the closest I've come to a panic attack in a long, long time.

Actually, the weather here has been fairly nice off and on. Monday during the day it was pleasant enough for me to sit outside and do my reading, and yesterday the evening sky was possibly the bluest I've ever seen it in Manchester while I was walking to a pub to meet some friends. Right now it's drizzly and gray, but the good and bad thing about weather in Manchester is that it always changes. By two o'clock, I have no idea how it'll be, but it'll be something completely different.

It was like that in Germany, too. And Cuenca. It took me a long time to adjust to the idea that in parts of the world that aren't California, the weather you have when you wake up is not necessarily the weather you have for the rest of the day.

Yesterday was productive, but stressful. I had a meeting with Dr. P at ten, which went well, though my first chapter will need a lot of work eventually. Then I worked until about 4:30, catching up on some reading I'd set aside while I was trying to get ready for my meeting with Dr. P. I came home and did some GRE prep, which I found strangely soothing. I'm working on the quantitative section right now, which was my definite weak point on the diagnostic quiz I took, and I actually enjoy coming home and switching sides of my brain for awhile. It's a lot less complicated and demanding than my dissertation and it lets me unwind (yes, I'm aware that enjoying GRE prep makes me, as jarsofwind put it, "special"). I met some friends at a pub later on, but I didn't stay for the quiz because I really wanted to try and write - which I managed to do! 1200 words of Vorkosigan/Temeraire crossover, yay! I think it probably won't be very long, though I might end up writing a companion piece to it.

So that was the productivity. The stress came from my meeting with Dr. P. I love meeting with him, but I always leave with this giant pile of work, convinced I will never be able to get it done. I always do in the end, but knowing that doesn't help, really. In this case, I have to produce my second chapter by the fifteenth - fine in theory, but I've never done this sort of analysis before, so it's a bit stressful.

At some point, I might actually have to work past five o'clock. I haven't had to do that yet this year, but it might have to happen.

I think I might take the weekend away from the diss and work on getting one of the essays I want to turn into journal articles ready to send round. It'll be something short-term that I can feel productive about. The dissertation is a marathon and I've hit that middle part where the end is not yet in sight and I just want to die.

Job hunting . . . I don't want to talk about it. At some point I have to decide to apply to teaching jobs even though I'd like some experience on the administrative side of things and would rather not be in the classroom at this point. There just . . . aren't that many jobs out there right now. The craig's list boards have a lot fewer postings, I think, than they did when I was applying to jobs last year. TESOL work has its high season during the summer, so finding a job the rest of the year is hard. And a TESOL job with benefits is like a unicorn - you hear tell of them, but in reality they just don't exist.

Anyway. The point of this post was really not for me to whinge about stress and job hunting and the dissertation, but a ( postmortem for Till Time Shall Cease )

Damn, ten o'clock already. Time for me to get out of here.

I've been a fan of yours since before most people knew who you were. But when I asked the Democratic Party to please not fuck it up this time around, I was actually talking about YOU.

Don't make me wish I'd backed Clinton.

No love at the moment,
Stacy

Seriously, I get that we have a political center and you have to win it over, but not with wire taps and faith based initiatives! Why does McCain think he can win by running to the extreme right, but Obama doesn't believe he can win without throwing the people who've supported him all along under the bus?

If you need me, I'll be over here, hiding under my desk and thinking how the whole world is headed straight down the crapper.

ETA: Interesting post by John Scalzi on the subject. I think he's a little too much of a blatant Obama apologist for my taste, but he makes a good point about Obama not only wanting to win, but wanting to win big. A big Democratic win would change the face of politics in this country, and that I can get behind.

Still. It's kinda dark down here under the bus.

I am in post-fic slump. I busted my ass these last few days, trying to get Till Time Shall Cease in post-able form, and, well, it ate my brain for the month of June. It's sort of a draining story, too, and possibly the most complicated thing I've ever written. It might, might even be better A Heavy Darkness Falling, which is something I wasn't sure I'd ever say.

I want to write a postmortem for it, but not tonight. I am without motivation. And rabbiting the prompts for the Bujold Fest sorta sucked out my will to live. 135 prompts! If it weren't for fuzzyboo03, I'd still be working on it.

Anyway. To recover from fic slump, which for the moment I'm not fighting because I damn well earned it, I've been watching more Who (just saw "School Reunion," which made me happy and probably made Sarah Jane fans even happier, though I'm not a fan of ASH with his hair slicked back) and imagining various Who crossovers. That fandom, like House, is not one that I seem to be interested in, in and of itself (though before the summer is out I might write the House/Wilson Fix It Fic). It's easily crossed with just about anything, though. I seem to have the biggest impulses towards Firefly for some reason. Vorkosigan would be fun as well, though, and there are some tasty Who crossover prompts at the Fest (I made damn sure of that).

Upcoming project list:

Tag-fic: The prompt is for an incident with Inara during her training. I believe this will be Inara/Nine. The TARDIS thinks it knows best.
Bujold Fest Fic #1 (I'm hoping for three - nothing like my insanity with the h/c fest, but I have the vague fear I will be the only one posting): Vorkosigan/Temeraire crossover o' crack. The Vor as dragon companions. Yeah, you read that right.
summer_of_giles Fic #2: This was going to be the Giles/Faith tropical island sex-mourning-fire demons fic, but, well, I just wrote 32,000 words of suicidal!Buffy, much of which involved having my characters wander about a Victorian cemetery, so I'd sort of like to do something that doesn't involve death in any way, shape, or form. At the moment, this will probably be an Unprecedented 'verse rewrite of "Band Candy." Because the idea of teenage!Giles systematically and ruthlessly corrupting teenage!Wesley amuses the hell out of me.

And now, because it's July 1st in about ten minutes (oy vey), I give you the ( fic round up for the first half of 2008 )

Total words posted for first six months of 2008: 223,200.

Um. Okay.

My goal for all of 2008 was 200,000 words.

It's possible I need a life. Actually, I fully expect this to slow once I get home, though possibly not if I'm unemployed and living on my own in my parents' house for a bit.

I'm doing pretty well with my other New Year's writing resolutions too. I wrote a novella-length Temeraire fic, like I said, I've written in three new fandoms (Sports Night, West Wing, and Firefly) and will probably write in DW before the year is out. I've done a bunch more ficathons, even run a couple, and I did indeed pick up two summer_of_giles days.

I did not write the Harry/Tonks novella. I tried. I have a prologue and two and a half chapters and no motivation. Maybe I'll reread 1-4 when I get home and find some. Or I could just decide that I'm probably done with that fandom and move on, except for things like tag-fic and Remix.

It became July while I was writing this. How weird is that?

Previous parts: Part One (with details and disclaimers), Part Two, and Part Three.

( Till Time Shall Cease, 4/4 )

And that, my dears, is that. I hope you enjoyed it. Please feed the Muse on your way out!

Disclaimer and details available in Part 1. Part 2, in case you missed it yesterday, is here.

( Till Time Shall Cease, 3/4 )

Part Four

See Part One for disclaimers and details.

( Till Time Shall Cease, 2/4 )

Part Three

Title: Till Time Shall Cease, 1/4
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing/Rating: PG-13, Gen (Giles-Buffy friendship + Angel)
Word Count: 32,000 total
Disclaimer: Not mine. They belong to Joss, Mutant Enemies, and a bunch of other people. S6 would have gone totally differently if they were mine. As you shall see.
Summary: Post-"Flooded" AU: An angry, exhausted watcher, a glowery, ensouled vampire, and a suicidally depressed slayer find themselves in the flat-share from hell in London. And, oh yes, did I mention that something's haunting Highgate Cemetery?
Author's Note: This was written for my day at summer_of_giles. I'll be posting half today and half tomorrow.

Betas, betas, oh how I love my betas. A million thanks are owed to antennapedia, fuzzyboo03, and kivrin for hand-holding, brainstorming, picking the nits that had to be picked, helping me see the forest for the trees, and, in the case of Antenna, dragging my ass to Highgate in the first place back in January, without which this story wouldn't exist at all.

( Till Time Shall Cease, 1/4 )

Part Two

Things one is not pleased to discover of a Saturday: That half of one's underwear is not in the laundry basket as it should be, and has, in fact, disappeared off the face of the planet.

What. the. hell.

Saturday night, my sister met Allison Janney. Got her picture taken with her and spoke with her and everything.

I don't do the celebrity cult thing, but that's awesome. She said she was reduced to pretty much stuttering inarticulacy. The only thing saving me from being actually jealous is the certainty that if it'd been me, I would have said something really stupid, like, "Hiiiii! I love you. You're awesome in everything you do and you have flippin' amazing legs. I have an LJ icon of you!"

So, yes. For the best, really.

I have a full day ahead of me. I'm going to start writing the first chapter of my diss (in which I lay out my theory), I've got lunch with Professor L to talk about publication (*crosses fingers*), and then German Boy and I are going to see Iron Man tonight, which I think I'm the last person on my flist to see. German Boy is leaving at the end of this week, so we wanted to get one last movie in before he left. Plus, I've heard rave reviews about it from pretty much everyone I know.

Fic proceeds apace. It's drafted and the first half is in decent shape. The lovely summer_of_giles mods have let me claim the unfilled spot on Saturday as well as my original spot on Sunday to post over two days, since 30,000 words is a lot to throw at people in one day (though not as bad as 64,000, which is what I did to people last year on my day in SoG).

Now if I can just get the second half to behave itself, we'll be in business.

Finally: Where is the post-Wilson's Heart fix-it fic????? I've looked everywhere I know to look (okay, not the Pit of Voles, but I don't go over there) and all I see is fic that breaks it more. Or starts to fix it and then stops! H/C is not H/C without the C, peoples!

Damn. I'm gonna have to write it myself, aren't I. As though I didn't have enough going on this summer, what with MA dissertation writing, GRE prep, job hunting, summer_of_giles, and the ficathon at bujold_fic. Hmph.

For House/Wilson or House-Wilson post-"Wilson's Heart" fix-it fics. Have checked housefic and found nothing (also, entries are not tagged - and dude, if I take over bujold_fic as it looks like I might, that's the first thing I'm doing). I also went over to not_lupus, but that comm is weirdly moderated and I'm not a fan of exclusivity.

There has to be some. If not, I have to write it and I have enough on my plate at the moment. Which has never really stopped me before (*contemplates*).

Just a reminder: Prompt submissions for the Bujold Fest end a week from today. So head on over to the call for prompts and suggest some (if you haven't already).

This entry has been brought to you by the letter C, for Caffeine. *jitters*

I've done not very much of note today, because I got sucked into the last four episodes of S4 House.

Oh my God.

I mean. Oh my God.

I lost my words. The words, they have fled. antennapedia tells me that they got two new writers this year and it shows. I mean, House always had great dialogue, but their plots sucked, the individual episodes were predictable, and it suffered from the fact that the main character essentially couldn't change (stories in which no one changes are not generally good stories). This year they really varied the individual episode structure, I was incredibly impressed by how they introduced all the new characters (mirror syndrome! brilliant!), and the ending, oh, the ending.

The last few eps, though. Wow. ( I don't want it to hurt anymore. And I don't want him to hate me. (SPOILERS) )

In-fucking-credible. Can I has S5 now, please?

So my little sister, who is much, much cooler than I am, has the World's Most Perfect Boyfriend. The WMPB is, among other things, an actor in Hollywood and friends with a lot of young up-and-comers in the biz, including Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno (and for anyone who saw that film and said, like I did, that no one talks like that, my sister assures me that Diablo actually does). Anyway, Saturday is, apparently, Diablo's birthday and my sister is invited to her party via the WMPB.

Her party in the Playboy Mansion.

My little sister is going to a party in the Playboy Mansion.

My mom relating this on the phone to me: "I have no idea what she's going to wear."
twitchylizard: "Not much!"

I'm not actually jealous, 'cause wow, so not my crowd, but it amuses me. And I can be amused because I just got back from Spain, so for once I don't have any complaints about how boring my life is.

Oh yeah, we're back from Spain. We got back late, late Sunday night and have been basically bumming around Manchester ever since. Under Liz's influence I spent way, way too much money in Lush on Monday (buys include a Godiva solid shampoo + conditioner (and travel tin), I Love Juicy shampoo and American Cream conditioner, Happy soap (because it's been discontinued, WAH!), and (omg *loves*) Karma solid perfume), and then tonight we went and saw The Revenger's Tragedy at the Royal Exchange Theater.

I love that theater. I've seen three productions there now - one of the Henry's (Henry V, I think), Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, and now The Revenger's Tragedy - and they've all been really different and they've all been gorgeous. The Wilde production was pretty classic, but this one and the Henry one were both weird enough to be interesting, but not so weird they distracted from the play. I mostly know The Revenger's Tragedy because a pivotal scene in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin is built around it, but it's a Jacobean play of uncertain authorship with anarchic undertones and a lot of blood. This one was also hilariously funny (I'm not sure it's supposed to be, but it was). A lot of murder, a lot of crotch-grabbing (including shower sex), and a lot of strange modern music.

Tomorrow is the Imperial War Museum North and the Salford Quays, then a drink with some of my friends. Friday Liz goes to London without me, and I go back to my regularly scheduled life. Hmph. Though I do have a nice long uninterrupted day of writing on Sunday to look forward to, which is good because my summer_of_giles day is coming up fast and I have about . . . hmm, 7-10,000 words to go. I can do it this weekend, I think, if the muse cooperates.

I also had a totally cracktastic idea and now I'm contemplating original fiction for the first time in years. We shall see.

I need to do a books round up from my trip. I finished A.S. Byatt's Possession (which finally picked up around page 400) and read Crap at the Environment (which was both funny and made me feel guilty) and the first Harry Dresden novel. And I never did talk about the Old Man's War trilogy by John Scalzi, which I finished (sorta) recently. So stay tuned for that, but probably not till after Friday, since Liz and I have one internet connection between the two of us, which works about as well as you might expect.

Stay cool, kittens.