Quiet morning at the library, as Milwaukee digs itself out of the snow. I'm driving to Minnesota tomorrow morning instead of tonight. The roads look kind of scary between here and Madison, and it'll be dark. :( Oh, well. That just means I'll be out of town until Tuesday afternoon.

Ugh, I have to dig out my car when I get home from work.

One of the movies I got from our soon-to-be-defunct Blockbuster was the 2009 animated Wonder Woman movie. ( I was entertained. )

I don't know if you ever care but lots of people here in San Antonio are HUGE UT Longhorns fans.  So I guess I'll be seeing lots of long faces today.

Me? I don't care about college football, just NBA basketball. (Go Spurs!) 

Incidentally my weather bug says it is 25F (-3.8 C) here today... you usually see these temps at NIGHT, not during the daytime...  and I HAVE to go unlock Dave's truck (he left his keys inside the truck, *headdesk*) then go to HEB, then to a lunch date with a former student who has a business proposition for me, and THEN meet with two of my girlfriends who are leaving TDY soon.  Am I crazy or what?

gotta go! the streets await, gulp!

A weekend rec because fans of I Capture the Castle will want to immerse themselves in this story and give it the time it deserves.

The Account Book by rose_and_lizard is a perfect continuation of the book, written in Cassandra's idiosyncratic style, and set during WWII.

I Capture the Castle is one of those books I'm wary of reading fanfic for, because I adore the original so much, but this is flawless.

Enjoy - and if you do, please leave a review for the author!

Well, the truck is mostly packed. shinetheway and I have a few things left to put in there in the morning (like, you know, the bed that our laptops and us are curled up on), but I'd say that we have less than an hour's worth of things left to do. We're aiming to leave around 7am CST, which means we'll probably make it on the road around 8am or so.

We've pretty much spent the entire day packing. That, and cleaning out my supply of alcohol so that we wouldn't have quite as much to pack. Shine's helped quite a bit in that regard. ;-)

But, yes. T minus six hours, more or less.

I stole this from celandineb because I'm curious and might possibly be inspired by something if y'all comment. I'm considering it a meme, since there are no promises/obligations here. If something does inspire me, I might just write it, though.

If you could have me write a fic specifically for you, what would it be like? Fandom, characters/pairing, genre, plot elements, kinks (if applicable)... what's your ideal fic from me? [You can be as vague or detailed as you want]

So, we had a snow day today...sew I worked on these...all patterns are from ofenjen 's website, sewhooked....

( A few pics under the cut... )

Gacked from queenriley and hildigunnur...

Put all your music on your computer and ipod/mp3/mp4 on shuffle. What are the names of the first 15 songs that play and why do you like or dislike them?

( My Fifteen )

Many of you may know that Ms. Bean is a musician on the other side of LJ Land. I rarely share music stuffs here on the journal - not sure why, but perhaps I should. So here we go.

( Music and Art, Bean-style )

So at the moment, Leap Year is at 19% on Rotten Tomatotes, which, in case you were wondering, is NOT considered "fresh" but something you would hurl at someone performing live whom you would like to retire NOW, thank you very much. I'm not surprised, based upon the ads, but it's still interesting to read the reactions of people who've sat through more than a trailer or a 30-second commercial.

I watched a good bit of broadcast television last night, which I don't usually do, but ABC was having an hour of The Middle, which I have to watch when it's on or miss it altogether now that the network has taken it off Hulu (it also doesn't have episodes on the network website); we also can't get ABC on our digital box in the bedroom, where we have a DVR, only in the family room, which doesn't. And after that was Modern Family, and at ten Ugly Betty was going to be on, which I usually have to watch online because I can never remember to watch television on Friday nights, so I decided that it wouldn't kill me to sit through one episode of Cougartown, which had Lisa Kudrow guest-starring, plus I had two cats on my lap I would have had to move in order to stand. (Aside--turns out Cougartown, besides Courtney Cox, who's okay, I guess, also has Ian Gomez, Christa Miller and Busy Phillips, all of whom I LOVE, so I may be watching this again, even though the initial descriptions really put me off and I still haven't warmed to Cox's character; I know she's technically the "star" but it feels like it has the potential to be more of an ensemble piece, so if I never do warm to her I'll try not to let that bother me.)

ANYWAY--this particular comedy lineup apparently inspired the Leap Year people to buy a lot of ad time, and what I noticed about these new ads were that none of them--NOT A SINGLE ONE--had anything in them about women being "allowed" to propose to men in Ireland during a Leap Year. After my initial annoyance with the ads that did include this I saw the FaceBook survey in which most respondents felt it was wrong for a women to propose to a man UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES and while I'd like to think they decided to change the ads because the idea that a woman could only propose to a man at certain times was a stupid and antiquated attitude, I have a bad feeling that they're now downplaying the woman-proposing-to-man aspect because of the folks who feel that this is in general a Bad Thing and shows the Decline of Our Society and Blurring of Gender Roles to a Dangerous Degree.

:headthud:

And, yeah, I'm enjoying just a bit of schadenfreude when reading those abysmal reviews. I feel bad for the actors who got involved in the project though; what an embarrassing thing this'll be to include on a resume. Oy.

Title: Shall We Dance?
Author/Artist: almond_joyz
Pairing(s): Harry/Ginny
Summary: Tonight, we tango!
Rating: NC17
Author Notes: I had SO much fun writing this for ginevrawp and while I didn't get to everything you asked for, I really enjoyed working in the tango because of your love for it. I hope I did justice to the seductive dance.
Thanks to r_becca for running smutty_claus year in and year out. This is the ONE holiday exchange I absolutely MUST do and it's due to you, Becca.
Special shout out goes to queenb23more, luvscharlie and paukenfrau for their great beta work.

Title: Shall We Dance?
Author/Artist: almond_joyz
Pairing(s): Harry/Ginny
Summary: Tonight, we tango!
Rating: NC17
Author Notes: I had SO much fun writing this for ginevrawp and while I didn't get to everything you asked for, I really enjoyed working in the tango because of your love for it. I hope I did justice to the seductive dance.
Thanks to r_becca for running smutty_claus year in and year out. This is the ONE holiday exchange I absolutely MUST do and it's due to you, Becca.
Special shout out goes to queenb23more, luvscharlie and paukenfrau for their great beta work.


Shall We Dance?

( Read more... )

So, how are you all saying 2010 in your heads? Twenty-Ten or Two Thousand Ten? Just curious.

Well, I'm back in Colorado. It's been a long and busy week, catching up at work, and well, I've just been so exhausted since my vacation. I hope this weekend I can get back on an even keel with sleep. When I was in MN, I never really got to sleep in plus I was up a lot later than normal for me. So, I'm just sleepy. I hope that's it anyway.

Wow, after a nearly a week of not posting, I don't have a lot to say. Mostly I've just been doing the mundane things, catching up at work and then at home trying to clean up a bit and spend time with my cat.

I didn't do much for NYE. I played games, drank some wine, and just hung out with my mom. My idea of a fun NYE perfectly so I was happy. I got to catch up with some friends in MN which was also nice, though not everyone I wanted to. I was really busy so even though I was on vacation, it didn't really feel like a vacation. Oh well, it was still wonderful to go home.

( Weight goals for 2010 )

Wow, what a boring entry huh? I feel really blah tonight. I wanted to post, and I had things I wanted to say, but now I can't even remember what it was. LJ Loser, that's me. Hope you all had a good week, post-holidays!

And that is to post something, even a one liner this year.

There! I said it! 

Y'all let me know if I fail in my "duty" to post every day/nigh, y'a hear??  (after 10 years in TX I picked up some of the slang, *teehee*)

Incidentally, according to my weather thingie in my computer is 36F (2C) in San Antonio and dropping. O_O  I guess I'll be sleeping in sweats tonight.  yikes!

First of all, hpgw_otp is hosting its fifth annual best-of awards. Go here and vote for your favourite Harry/Ginny stories and art of 2009!

Secondly, a few upcoming fests that people may be interested in.

Springtime_gen will soon be back for another year! If you're a gen-lover, keep an eye on this exchange for plenty of high-quality gen fic. Last year, I wrote the story that's probably closest to my heart of everything I've ever written (The Lions of Gryffindor, and found plenty to recommend, as well; check out my recs posts here, here, here and here.

Another of my favourite fests, HP_beholder, will soon be back for another round. Aside from the fact that it's produced some of the best writing I've seen in fandom, this fest is close to my heart because it's all about those characters who are generally overlooked in romantic fanfiction: the staff of Hogwarts, the ghosts, goblins and other non-human characters; the Millicent Bulstrodes of this world. My recs for last year are here and here, and you can also check out the rules and schedule, as well as discussion about where the entries should be hosted, in Beth's posts on dreamwidth or livejournal.

Finally, for the Harry/Ginny shippers, takingitinturns will be running again! Check out the info post for the schedule and this year's theme. Last year, the fest produced some fantastic fic and art, and was a great way for shippers to get to know each other better. My recs are here, here and here.

Three of my favourite fests in the spring - clearly that season brings out the best in fans. :P