HoldoutTrout

I vowed not to start watching LOCI, because I was sure it was going to be more of the same as what drives me crazy about SVU--cases that were interesting enough, but next to no personal interaction between characters, and little to no character development. (And no canon ship, which is apparently a little like air to me on many shows.)

I'm still afraid I was right, but SOMEHOW *cough*Annerb*cough* I ended up watching it anyway.

( rambling )

First of all, thank you to everyone who has (or will!) wish me a good birthday! It's always just a bit strange to me to wake up and check online and see so many mentions of my name--it's a little like being a BNF for a day, perhaps? *G*

Thank you to the nice anonymouse who gave me an lj gift certificate, which is going toward reinstating all my userpics, currently sad and locked away beyond my reach.

Onto the shareable goodies!

ziparumpazoo wrote a Special edition of Christmas Cookie Theater that is very sweet, although not sappy.

mrspollifax wrote me birthday fic! Shine Tomorrow, which is set during "Beneath the Surface" and is Sam/Jack (Jonah/Thera), and brilliantly buoyant in an angsty way.

beanpot ALSO wrote birthday fic (for me and rigel_7, who of course I forgot to wish a happy birthday yesterday *facepalm*). Et Tu? West Wing/Stargate crossover, in which Bartlet learns about the "top-secret" Stargate program that might be about to destroy the world. The banter in this fic is awesome to behold.

EDIT: pepper_field wrote and DREW stick-figure SG-1 for me. I love her. This is delightfully cracky and is perfect in every way.

***

In other news, my birthday is going pretty well. I woke up to find cinnamon rolls and strawberries waiting for my breakfast--a gift from my roommate(s), and there were flowers, candy, and brownies at work. *g*

Tonight, I'm going to eat out with a couple of friends, and probably watch more LOCI, even though I'm still not *quite* seeing the ship, guys.

Now if only work would stop being quite so annoyingly work-like. And long.

There aren't many days that qualify as nearly perfect, but today was a happy exception. I woke up just before my alarm, and in plenty of time to shower, eat breakfast, and read before heading out the door at 8:30.

( you will be jealous )

Add to that the beautiful weather today brought, and I've had the nearly perfect day. And...that's really it. SO FAR. I wouldn't be surprised if I got a phone call that says, "You've won a thousand dollars!" Because that's the kind of day I'm having.

( That book meme that's been going around )

In other news, I'm now the maintainer of alchemy_of_4, which is a prompts community that surreallis started a while ago. The idea is that you work on a table of four prompts, to create four fics--usually the prompts are linked in some way. It's omnifandom, too! I thought it was a lovely idea, but it hasn't yet taken off, so I'm going to sit with the idea for a bit and see if anything comes of it.

...I should probably also do something with samvala, huh? Maybe Splash and I can get on that, someday.

One of my friends just asked me for book recommendations for a friend of hers. The friend liked these books: Water for Elephants, Time Traveler's Wife, and Replay. Based off of this, I recommended a couple of books, and then was told that my recommendations should be romance-free, as said friend just went through a breakup.

After racking my brain, I'm left bereft of any books that have no romance--I know of a few with little romance, but I tend to ship even in my novel reading.

Anyone got any suggestions for "gen" novels? Or breakup novels? ;-)

Today began like any other Saturday, with the promise of pancakes, laundry, apartment cleaning, and a few hours spent in someone else's garden, weeding. I guess that last part might sound strange, but weeding other people's gardens is significantly more fun than weeding your parent's. Possibly your own, but since I've never done that, I wouldn't know.

Anyway, I didn't notice anything strange until I was on my way back home, and I hit three separate weird patches of weather. One moment I'd be in the sun, then next my windshield was splattered with large, heavy raindrops. Still, that is not that unusual for Oregon at this time of year. I shrugged it off.

It was only thanks to amonitrate's brave reporting that I realized the true extent of the danger I had been in all day, unaware of what lurked behind an ordinary Saturday. Suddenly the pale countenances of my fellow shoppers seemed to have hidden mindless menace all along. How could I have mistaken their groaning and shuffling for that of weary farmer's market shoppers? Why did I dismiss their rotting flesh as a normal Oregonian skin mold?

I must have had a thousand close calls; I shudder with the recollection of the pushy skin care salesman in the mall. If he had given me a sample, I more than likely would have been infected and unable to type this message at all.

Then there was the old woman in the store where I bought the awesome new skirt I may never have the chance to wear. Perhaps she, too, was infected and intended to grab me and eat my brains, thwarted only by my refusal to open a store credit card and save $9.60...

It's too late to flee; I will have to remain here and hope the stairs provide some measure of protection. It doesn't seem as if the hoards outside can lift their knees very high. I have locked and barricaded my windows and doors. I have a variety of swords within easy reach in case the barricades fall.

I might make it to tomorrow after all.

Who would you ship me with? *g*

(I took this from that meme thing going around, but I don't really want to play in someone else's journal (whom I do not know). I'm allowing anonymous comments, but still tracking IPs. Oh, and if you want to play here instead of setting up your own post, just comment with your username and ride the coattails of lurve!)

ETA: It has been brought to my attention that I may have posted this at some time in the past. Just ignore this post if you remember that. *g*

Today I was discussing a rather funny post with ultranos. I was bemoaning a certain insanity in a particular group, and Ultranos mentioned that I myself had spent some time among these particular people and must have some idea of what they talked about. I agreed, and began to tell her of some most curious adventures related to me by a fellow anthropologist.

She thought they were perhaps enlightening, and it just so happens that I have a number of excerpts from her journals, typed up and ready to share with all of you. I have redacted the one or two names that appear in the originals, but as the anthropologist was concerned mainly with the group and not the individual, there should be no cause for alarm. I have refrained also from mentioning which specific group is studied here, although I fear that, at least, is rather obvious to anyone with a connection to said group.

(Disclaimer: I mean absolutely no harm from this and hope it comes across as a gentle sort of parody of shipping culture in general.)

( a most fascinating adventure )

Lesson Learned: If you want to do something potentially humiliating that involves being outside, early Sunday mornings are the time to do it.

( Read all about it! )

:-)

I totally forgot to mention this earlier, but in case you don't watch sg1_five_things, they have an extra-special all-woman themed set this time around. The responses will be unscreened on Monday!

I watched So You Think You Can Dance tonight, and I couldn't tell you if I really have favorites yet or not...it's hard for me before I've really seen a lot of the actual competition, although last year I had a clear favorite going in. I really, really love this show, though. Like a LOT. (Except when the judges are assholes.)

( my rather random weekend )

Some fun stuff:

Google Wave looks awesome, in a very web 2.0 sort of way, in which conversations become short and choppy, and yet so very, very interactive. I am kinda in lust right now.

Star Trek Theme Music Over Time, aka "Why the new movie didn't sound like Star Trek." It satisfies a very deep, geeky place in my piano-playing soul.

Star Trek: The Parody made me laugh.

It seems there's a rash of anti-fannishness going around these days, and I'm no exception. I'm pretty sure I'm just a little burned out from trying to do getyourwordsout, and from my opposing viewpoints with much of fandom on the awesomeness or lack thereof of Star Trek, especially since I don't want to harsh anyone else's squee. I'm hoping this post will make me feel a bit more squeeful, since it's about what I HAVE been feeling fannish about lately.

I've been re-reading Harry Potter this past week and a half, at a somewhat voracious rate, remembering just why I love this series in all its adverb-dipped glory. ( not so much spoilers as length )

ANYWAY, I've been reading Harry Potter. A lot.

And when I haven't been reading HP, I've been watching Sliders. Season three, to be precise, which is hilarious in its cheese. I've been entertaining ultranos with my tally of who gets the chick of the week, because I'm fairly positive it's fairly evenly split between Rembrandt, Quinn, and Wade (who's a girl, in case you didn't know). I swear there's actual femslashy subtext here, people.

Sliders was The Fandom that gave me several awesome friends in high school, and there's not a day I don't feel glad that it did. I...almost never ficced it (and oh, god, PLEASE don't read my one fic that's out there, because it's probably really, really bad (and non-canon compliant), and possibly triggering, and I didn't know better yet), but I loved the show and had a MASSIVE crush on Quinn. Which...not so much anymore. I'm kinda all about Rembrandt and Wade, now, and want fic for them, damn it! (Shippy or not.) (I want femslash with Wade and every other female character ever, too.)

The special effects are terrible, the skirts are really, really tiny, the dialogue is just...hilariously bad sometimes, but...it's all about these four people, thrown into this...team that's more than just a team, and they travel through...wormholes to other...worlds.

...

Huh.

Well, then.

Harry Potter with Zombies.

It's the new book series everyone should be reading!

Hogwarts students dash through corridors, shrieking as decaying flesh collides with their perpetually ready wands as the teachers try to stave off panic...and Hogwarts struggles to remain open. Meanwhile, Harry Potter, the only known survivor of a massive zombie attack, is the subject of endless speculation, admiration...and fear.

Seriously, though, I've been tricked--tricked, I say--into re-reading Harry Potter. I really love these books, although I must admit that The Goblet of Fire is boring me ever so slightly at the moment. Not to the point where I notice as I'm reading, but I know there's so much good stuff* coming right at the end I just want to hurry up and get there. I'm hoping the series lets me go long enough tonight and tomorrow to really knock out my sjficathon fic, which I might have a direction for, if not a real solid plan, yet. I'm assuming it's buried in my subconscious somewhere and will come out if I just sit back and write for a while. (If it's not, I may have to cry and admit defeat...for now.)

Did anyone else watch So You Think You Can Dance? ( spoiler(?) for making it to Vegas )

*By good stuff I don't necessarily mean objectively good.

If you've ever thought, "Well, holdouttrout just posted this fic, and it's okay, except for this one part, but I don't know if I can tell her that, because she might turn into a rampaging beast and beat me over the head with a raw piece of cod," this is your chance to tell me without me ever knowing who you are.

*grins*

Seriously, though, I signed up for the anonymous writing feedback meme. It's fair game, y'all--the good, the bad, the ill-considered. Let me know so I might improve someday in the future.

(Also, I totally accept non-anonymous fic feedback all the time, in case you were wondering.)

THE ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME

I've been annoyed by Internet Explorer at work, because I'm a multi-loader--I let lots of pages load at once to read lj to improve my efficiency. I'd set a few going and "work" in another window, but as soon as one would finish loading, IE would pop it up in front of me as if to say, "Look! I did what you wanted! I'm shiny, right!" And I would inevitably be in the middle of a sentence and would have to glare at the computer screen and it was making me very, very unhappy.

Today I decided to do something about it.

I googled.

I googled several variations on my problem, trying to find that magic combination of search terms that would give me my answer. "Page load windows IE pop up finish," "Internet Explorer pages pop up when finished loading," "Internet Explorer sucks," all got me nowhere before I found the right words and found out what my problem was called.

It seemed IE was "stealing focus." This term makes sense to me, because my focus was certainly shot. The solution? Change a single value in the registry.

I opened regedit with great trepidation. I scrolled. I clicked. I changed. The computer didn't crash. I breathed.

I clicked on IE. Loaded a page that always steals focus. Clicked to another window.

Waited.

Waited some more.

Surely it was done loading?

IT WAS.

I WON!

(Now for the long haul and field test of my change.)

Oddly enough, the two items in the subject heading aren't really related. *g*

Nor is this going to be a post with TMI.

Just wanted to make sure everyone's expectations were set properly. :-)

So... abyssinia and I were talking last night, and ranting a bit about fannish fascination with unhealthy relationships, and I mentioned that sometimes I wanted to right about people who had completely normal and loving childhoods, who grew up and fell in love with someone based on mutual respect, and then spent the next few decades having boring sex. ultranos assured me that if I wrote such a story, she would read it, especially if the people involved did super-exciting things during the daytime, like being international spies or time-travellers, or defeating evil robots bent on world domination. (I'm detailing a bit from what she said, but the point's the same, I think. We also kinda thought that maybe they'd let the man be on top every once in a while, just to spice things up a bit. ;-P)

I'm currently on a quest to rediscover my Sam/Jack lurve, which means watching various episodes of SG-1 (mostly in the later seasons for fic research) but also includes reading fic. I have a few fics I'm planning on re-reading because they're my go-to favorites, like Bird Stealing Bread, by surreallis. It's got a somewhat unusual premise, it's hot, it's angsty, and did I mention it's hot? Besides those things, though, it always captures a mood for me--kinda sad, kinda hopeful, and very grounded in the reality of the three people involved.

What I want to know is: What is your ONE favorite fic (for today)?

Sam/Jack is, of course, helpful and especially welcome, but if you're not into that pairing/show, then you should answer the question generally. Just...you can only answer ONE fic, and it should be one of the top ones you immediately think of. You CAN rec yourself, though I'm guessing no one will, because we all like to pretend we're modest sometimes other people seem to say it better.

So I suppose my last post could have been titled "Holdouttrout: boring people on Mondays since 2007!" except that y'all seem to have totally enjoyed it, which is a big win for me, except that I'm now really, really hungry. And I already ate lunch, too. :-(

I saw Star Trek this weekend. ( My reaction )

*****

Bonus: An article from the Guardian on the "progress" of Star Trek and Abssinia's detailed concerns, which says what I said and more, only better.

Um...So in other news this weekend I read Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs, one of those light little paperbacks about "vampires" that I find addicting like crack. This one has a nicely sarcastic heroine. Fun weekend reading.

I also thought about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the difficulty of understanding in which ways Lizzie is a "strong" female character according to our perception of what a "strong" female character looks like these days. There may be a post on this after I actually read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I did absolutely no writing, because apparently I couldn't take the pressure any more. I'm not sure when my fingers are going to start itching to write again, but instead of looking at my "to write" list with doom and trepidation in my heart, I'm actually looking forward to it.

I told my mom I loved her and that she was awesome.

I cleaned my room.

:-)

( in which i talk about food and not-quite vegetarian options )

I'm not trying to be a vegetarian, exactly, but I am trying to move a little closer to that edge.

So...what about you? Favorite vegetarian foods/dishes, favorite ways to prepare veggies, thoughts about the whole thing?

It's expensive (possibly more than DCon would cost me this year, once flight and hotel costs are factored in), but...

AMANDA TAPPING.

So. Convince me?

(Also, can you tell me what else there is to do in Chicago? You know, as far as the typical sight-seeing stuff goes? Because as long as I'm there...)

The icon has nothing to do with the post*, except I still think it's hilarious.

Next in a line of bad movies: My Little Pony Live Action Trailer. Make sure to watch to the end, no matter how terrified you feel. It's worth the emotional scarring.


I also discovered My First Dictionary, which brings that subtle note of creepiness you've always wanted to associate with innocuous words.

*I suppose I could mention that my boss's wife is having her baby today, but...well, the icon still doesn't actually apply.