This list is a work in progress. I'll try to keep it updated. I'm using the same format I stole borrowed from antennapedia last year (2007 list).

By Length
( 100-word Drabbles and Drabble Series )
( Ficlets: 101-500 words )
( Short-Shorts: 501 - 5,000 words )
( Shorts: 5,001 - 15,000 words )
( Novellas: 15,000 - 50,000 words )
( Novels: 50,000 words + )

By Fandom
( Angel )
( Buffy )
( Chalion )
( Crossover )
( Firefly )
( Harry Potter )
( Temeraire )
( Vorkosigan )

While I'm flattered to have been tagged a couple of times on the "ten people who make your day" meme, there's no way I can name only ten people who make my day. So I'm merging this with the following meme, which covers quite a lot of you:

If there are one or more people on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

===================================

In other news, yet another day of work lost. At least this one has personal time to cover it. So while my tutoring paycheck will be pathetic, at least the main job check will be status quo.

Got a little writing done today. Have crumpled and tossed what I was working on for summer_of_giles and started over. Not sure if I'll ever get that other story written. Probably should have done it before DH came out, as it very much would need to be non-DH-compliant, never mind that it goes back to much earlier times. Tis a characterization issue. Or maybe inspiration will suddenly strike and I'll end up with two stories. By next Tuesday. Riiiiight. Still in crossover land though. Tried a few ideas for something BtVS-only earlier in the week, including a couple of Giles/Ethan and one Giles/Anya, and they all ran into dead ends. HP has stolen my brain. Here's hoping I can get some more done this evening.

Was I wishing for thunderstorms? Oops. They've been coming. Continuously. It's rather quiet now, but that probably won't last. So long as we have power, that's dealable. *knocks wood and crosses fingers*

Oh! And I so have to pass on this fanart rec. Am graying out spoilery stuff, highlight if you want to see it before clicking.

Title: Caught Practicing
Artist: twilightsorcery
Fandom: Harry Potter
Ship: Ron/Hermione (sort of) (no, seriously, and I expect SS/HG and HG/anyone-but-RW fans to get a kick out of this)
Rating: R
Theme/kink chosen: fornicatory dolls
Warning: Not the artist's warning but mine: do not have any food or drink in your mouth when you click.

Right. Now to figure out whether I've got the energy to try some more writing, should catch up reading a bit more, or need yet another 2-3 hour nap.

Title: Feet of Clay
Author: ubiquirk
Rating: PG13
Genre: genfic: angst, drama
Word Count: ~4000
Summary: Sent to determine why a Watcher and Potential stopped communicating with the Council, Giles confronts his own “Conversations with Dead People” in the Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague. Set during early season 7 and just after “Chosen.”

I really love the way this story works on multiple levels. Without giving too much away, I'll just say that it fills in some of the gaps from season 7 as well as the comics very believably.

So, after leaving work early for the third day in a row, and this time in much cooler conditions (though still muggy as hell), I called up my APRN's office and asked to be seen.

Apparently, it looks like I have the stomach bug that's been going around. The only thing I'm missing is the vomitting. I felt compelled to point out that I am not, in fact, missing the vomitting at all, I simply don't have it.

Treatment is what I've been doing anyway: force liquids, stay comfy, sleep lots. Possibly less with the cold showers. And she dipped a urine (was clear) and drew blood (will hear in a week) to rule out anything else, particularly "tick stuff."

Told Patsfan to start taking vitamins/drinking juice/whatever *now* in hopes it's not too late to prevent him getting it. If he does, I'm sure I'll never, ever hear the end of what I gave him for our "lucky" 13th anniversary.

Well, that's one way to get over-dependent tutees to stand on their own two feet: be out sick. Have also called out to psych job. No both-jobs 13-hour Wednesday from hell for me this week. No writing either, probably. Too fuzzy-brained and supposed to be resting.

Thanks so much for deciding today was the best time to work in the Writing Center and shut off their a/c. Had I known you were going to do that, I probably wouldn't have come in, pathetic paycheck or not.

No love,
firefly

At least it's a bit cooler here today, though gills would still be useful for breathing. Still a tad fog-brained. Still feel like I could just sleep for another 12 hours or so, even after sleeping most of yesterday away. Oh well. If the headache makes a comeback, I'll bail.

I sincerely hope we get at least one good one soon. This heat desperately needs to break.

If I even go in to the tutoring center tomorrow, I need to set up shop across the way in the air conditioned writing center. I knew something wasn't right yesterday, and I did leave early once I'd seen my last scheduled tutee, pleading a headache, but it took me until rather late last evening to comprehend that I might actually have heat exhaustion from being in the 100+ muggy "shop wing" all freaking day, despite having guzzled lots of water while there, and that the weird cramps, headache, difficulty concentrating, and general "out of it" fibro-fog-esque feeling might be part of that. I'd headdesk, but that'd hurt.

All of which is to say that I know I've got a bunch of comments to reply to, but I can just about stand staring at the screen long enough to type this, so I won't be getting to them for a bit. Sorry.

Theme for the day: water and air conditioning.

I loved Acts I and II. It took me awhile to even deal with Act III, and at first I couldn't figure out why. Then I started reading all the commentary all over the net, and some of it started slotting into place. The bottom line is that as much as I enjoyed it, I don't think they quite managed to do what they were trying to do.

( Spoilers galore )

While trolling for Lewis Black icons, I ran across an HP icon in a batch of Daily Show stuff. It's a reasonable facsimile of a book cover for "Harry Potter and The Streaker of Azkaban." Um, buh? Anybody know what that's about?

Also? fakenews_fanfic and fakenews_fanart exist. Who knew?

Anyway, the show was great! Two hours of mocking the government and the idiots we elect to run it. What's not to love?

Though I think my favorite was when he went off on the re-starting of offshore drilling. "Forty years ago, we decided not to do this anymore, so we could try to find something better. Forty years later, where are we? ... I can get email on a box this big [shows his iPhone]. Tell me we can't come up with something better!"

There've been some comics I've liked less live. Jay Leno, for example, doesn't work anywhere near as well without his band to riff off of. Lewis Black does just as well live as he does on TDS. He just riffs off the audience instead of Jon. While there were points where I thought they should've tried to project something like the little inset box he often has to go with his commentary on TDS, it still worked just fine. Oh, and apparently his show has shot another 10 eps that are set to go at the end of this month.

Techie Dude wouldn't let me pay him for the ticket. Not hugely comfortable with that, even though his rationale was that he won money in a slot machine the day he bought the tix, so he's always considered them essentially free, plus he just didn't want it to go to waste. I also got slightly annoyed with him when he was talking about how he just knew nobody would end up going because the one single-and-childless coworker was working tonight. "Whose husband is going to let her go?" he asked.

Ummmm, let? As in, permission is needed? Not so much. I didn't ask freaking permission to go to Dallas for four days; all I asked Patsfan was if he wanted to come with me. I'm sure as shit not asking permission to go to a comedy show. *rolls eyes* I can't speak for the rest of my coworkers, but I imagine most would have a similar reaction. The one thing was that the not paying for my own ticket did make it seem vaguely date-like. That does bother me a tad, even though I think Techie Dude is utterly clueless of that implication. He's just weird about money.

Of course, then I got home, poured myself a glass of wine, and realized I'd never bothered to eat lunch or dinner. So I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the perfect accompaniment to a nice cabernet. LOL

Babblebabblebabble. I should try to get some sleep.

My hermione_smut gift posted!

Title: Sleep in the Dust
Author: as yet unknown
Pairing: Remus/Hermione
Rating: NC-17 (don’t let 9,000 G-rated words fool you)
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Deathly Hallows sans Epilogue compliant.
Summary: This is a tale that charts Remus and Hermione’s gradual agreement with Westley’s great declaration: “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”

I really, really like what the author did with my prompt, which was "resurrection leads to romance, but there's some angst about those who couldn't be saved." It's funny, because some of us got into a conversation at Portus about Remus fic and how it's much more problematic to write him post-DH -- at least if you're not going to just disregard DH, which is a valid option -- because, since Harry brought him back with the resurrection stone, there's no question that he died. That's just a bit more of a challenge though, and I like the way my gifter worked around it quite a bit. There's some that's explained and some that's left for the reader to piece together, and I think that bit of ambiguity really works.

One caveat: there are quite a few graphics in the middle of the story. I couldn't see them the first time I read it, and Firefox didn't even show me that there were graphics missing. The first try in IE only showed the first few, but as of just a little while ago, all of them were showing in IE. The story is readable without them, but as these graphics are letters, there is a fair bit of character development that you'll miss if you can't see them, as well as a plot point or two.

Despite that one glitch (which we can probably blame on Dr. Horrible continuing to break the internet), it's a wonderful read, and I'm very pleased with it.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get caught up on other fic reading. Finally got caught up on I F***ing Do! this morning and made a bit of progress reading at summer_of_giles. Even skipping all the Giles/Buffy and Giles/other Scooby, there's quite a bit to read though, so I'm still back in mid-June someplace. Also, it'd be good if I made some progress on my own SoG fic, as I've got something like 11 days until my posting day. The most progress I've made on it was actually made *at Portus* over a week ago. *whimpers* May need to rethink what I'm actually writing if it doesn't start to gel soon.

I should get on that then. But first, I think I may go reread this.

The Graduation Year Song Meme

- Go to musicoutfitters.com http://musicoutfitters.com/
- Enter the year you graduated from high school in the search function and get the list of 100 most popular songs of that year.
- Bold the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate and underline your favorites. Do nothing to the ones you don't remember/care about.

This was an amusing trip down memory lane.

( 1986 - back when I was a bit more pop than rock )

I'd vaguely heard that Techie Dude was trying to offload some sort of ticket to a show this weekend. Didn't know what show, didn't ask him about it. Pretty much forgot about it.

So, he just called to ask me to leave a note for tomorrow's first shift person and just happened to mention that he still hasn't managed to get rid of this one Lewis Black ticket.

Er, do I want this ticket? *rolls eyes* DUH!!

Techie Dude remains mystified by the whole fanfic thing. Wonder if I should tell him I've ficced Lewis Black not once but twice? I imagine he'd be shocked. (Does that count as RPF? I tend to think of his Daily Show persona as a character, but I suppose that's more true of Colbert. Speaking of, why is it I have icons of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert but not Lewis Black? Huh.)

So, um, yeah. Squee!

I feel almost guilty getting this now, as I haven't been participating *at all* since around mid-May or so, and probably won't until I dig myself out from under my "to be written" list a bit more, but the participation banners for April just came out at still_grrr, and I got a huge kick out of mine:



In other news, it looks like today and the next several days are going to be utterly miserable weather-wise. Seriously, can I go back to Dallas? Because I can now definitely swear that it's not the heat, it is the humidity. I'll take 105 and dry there over 85 with 60% humidity here any frickin' day.

ETA: Whether you've watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog or not (and you totally should), I think quite a few of you will get a kick out of Dr. Dreadful's YouTube Riposte. He's applying for the job of evil sidekick. Reason number one? "I have an English accent, and all the really good bad guys have an English accent." Three guesses who the first famous English bad guy actor he named was, and the first two don't count. Actually, I kind of missed the rest of the list. ;-)

I'm very glad I weighed myself before the trip. Today was my end-of-study weights-and-measures day, and I'd have been hugely disappointed in my results if I didn't know I'd managed to lose mroe than 2 pounds. miamadwyn is right about Tex-Mex, of which I ate far too much: it is loadedloadedloaded with the sauces and cheeses and stuff. Hard to believe I put 5 back on in the space of 4 days, but as ubiquirk kindly reminded me, it's also that time of the month, so some of it is probably also water retention.

Still, net loss of 2 pounds and 5.25 inches is nothing to sneeze at. And if the main factor was the splurging while on vacation, then next month should show better results. And the main thing, after all, is the getting and keeping moving and rebuilding my cardio capacity, which is muchmuchmuch better. Honestly, a month ago, I'd have been huffing and puffing just walking between the two hotels, I'd become that sedentary. Instead, I managed just fine. Yay!

I'm now all signed up as a regular member and will get put on CurvesSmart next week. Really, that's the perfect system for a feedback freak like me. What muscles did I work and to what extent and how does my intensity level today compare to last time? Very much looking forward to that.

Wow. My head is still spinning, in large part because I'm writing this in the airport waiting for my plane and the shuttle ride here jangled the hell out of my nerves. I'll just say that the driver was having a very, very bad day and leave it at that. Also, unlike Hartford, the wi-fi here appears not to be free, so this'll just be a draft that I save and post later.

It was absolutely wonderful meeting people! I didn't quite manage to meet everyone on my flist who was there, and at points I felt like an ADD hummingbird trying to flit around and find/meet people (very seriously out of character for this recluse), but I'm glad to have met those I did. And still more folks who I'd seen around the archives or the comms but hadn't really gotten to know yet. *waves to all* It seems there was a lot of that, and someone (don't remember who) suggested that to help with the massive friending frenzy followed by "now who went with this username?" confusion and the "but wait, which stories were yours?" confusion, we should put a link to where people can find our fics. So mine can be found here and here. Those links go to the 2006-2007 fic wrap-up post and the in-progress 2008 wrap-up post. Dunno if that helps, but it sounded like a good idea, so there it is.

I'm not going to do a play-by-play. Too much happened and I would certainly miss something! So, a general overview.

The con itself was so-so. I'm not particularly inclined to go to any others put on by HPEF, as the programming was not that well organized. From what I hear, Snapefest was far more professionally handled. Quite a few of the Portus sessions were disappointing, and more than a couple had the session leader just not show. Some were great, mostly the after-hours things like hearing dickgloucester read two of her fics and Snapecast. The really good stuff was hanging out with people.

Pics will be forthcoming (though flocked) when I manage to get them out of my camera.

Ah well. There's Leaky Con next year, which may or may not have better programming, but with the proceeds going to charity, I'm likely to begrudge the fees less. (Plus, Boston! Driving distance! Woohoo!) And there was talk this afternoon of WriterCon 2009, which would very much intrigue me.

Oh, and (adding on Monday morning now that I'm home) a few individual things. Huge thanks to annietalbot and ordinary_magic for helping me a) get to CVS to get my emergency refill of the medication I forgot to bring (about which Patsfan will never hear a single word) and b) get the insurance to pay for it, even though it was denied at the time.

droxy was amazing. I have absolutely no idea where she gets the energy to do that much cosplaying. Her Voldie was uber-creepy. I missed canon!Snape, but Muggle Snape (aka Seven Preposterous Things Snape) and fanon!Snape were absolutely awesome. She (and the other cosplayers, but especially droxy really added a lot to the whole con experience.

In the midst of much hugging and good-bye-ing on Sunday, I somehow managed to whack ginny_weasley31 in the chin with my shoulder, which is slightly different than punching her in the face. Just to set the record straight. ;-)

And hanging out with everybody was just awesome. I'm still disappointed that I didn't get to meet everyone who I know was there, but I'm thrilled to have met as many as I did.

The trip home was less fun. My flight changed gates at least twice and was delayed, so I got in sometime around 1:30am. Then what with baggage claim, waiting for the parking lot shuttle, and driving home, it was after 3 by the time I stumbled into bed. I'm half surprised that I'm up this early! (noon) Very, very glad I took today off tutoring. I'd be useless. And that I scheduled a massage for this afternoon. Much needed, as I did nap on the plane in a rather awkward position and my neck is a bit unhappy with me.

It looks like lots of great stuff posted, particularly at portus_envy. I can't wait to read it all! But I should probably unpack and such first.

Patsfan is being sweet but annoying. At least, I suppose it's sweet that he's all worried about me all of the sudden. However, I'm hugely glad he finally had to go to bed, because things were getting annoying.

Patsfan: Did you pack your bathing suit?
Me: Yes.
P: Do you have money?
M: No, I'm going away for four days and not bringing any cash at all.
P: What about your passport?
M: ?????
P: Well?
M: I'm going to Texas, not another country!
P: But what if you and your friends decide to do a day trip to Mexico?
M: Dallas is, so far as I can tell from a map, not remotely near Mexico, except in the sense that it's closer than Connecticut is. No, we won't be doing day trips to Mexico.
P: *pokes around suitcase* This is a weird-looking bra.
M: Please stop helping.

I'm packing way too much, I'm sure of it. *checks weather.com* So, here, it's currently 83F, feels like 88F, with humidity 66%. In Dallas, it's 86F, feels like 90F, and the humidity is 56%. Might actually be an improvement there! LOL Though the 10-day forecast shows thunderstorms tomorrow and temps in the 90s and 100s through Sunday.

*runs around in circles some more*

This is a great time for my rechargeable batteries to stop recharging. *scribbles note to stop at WalMart for more on the way* Camera batteries. Get your minds out of the gutter!

Squeezed in Curves today, so if I don't make it to the one in Dallas, I'll still have done my three for the week as per fitness study agreement. Decided to weigh myself before the trip, as no doubt I'll undo some of what I've accomplished over the next few days. Lost 7 pounds. Yes!

Heh, this post has sort of taken about three hours to write, as I just every so often stop what I'm doing and add a sentence or two. Now I'm as packed as I'm going to get, and with the extra stops I need to make along the way to the airport, tis time to go. See you all later! *waves*

Title: To Know Who I Am
Author: firefly_124
Fandoms: Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: SS/OFC
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to my beta reader, ubiquirk, my Brit-picker, saracen77, and my alpha readers, bluedolfyn and willow_kat. Many thanks also to camillo1978, who drew the above illustration of a scene in chapter 6 that I just had to share again.
Disclaimer: If you think I own these characters or am making any money off them, there's this nice room in St. Mungo's for you.
A/N: Sorry for the long delay. This chapter gave me a very rough time about getting written. Hopefully 22 will come along a bit more smoothly (and quickly), as I ended up having to write quite a bit of it before 21 would cooperate.

Previous

Table of Contents

Next

( Chapter 21 )

One of the downsides to using your wheeled carry-on bag to lug school stuff around is that when you start packing it with clothes and such for actual travel, you discover that you damn near forgot that your dissection kit, complete with scalpel and replacement blades, was still in the pocket. I'm sure that would've gone over very, very well with airline security. *facepalm*

I'm not worried about not managing to meet up with SS/HG folks. Between the side trip to Desert Designs, the Dark Revel after the Welcoming Feast (should I be worried about trying to sneak in as a Muggle?), the Saturday morning meetup at the Mariott, and the Portus contacts spreadsheet, we actually look kinda organized.

But how'm I going to find some of you other folks? You Snupineers and Snarry-ers and others? If you're going to Portus, want to meet up, and weren't planning to be at any of the things I mentioned above, please comment so we can figure out how to not miss each other.

Also, I need to organize my (so far reasonably short) list of things I'm supposed to be trying to find for folks while I'm there. My former lab partner's 7yo daughter has a massive crush on DanRad Harry, so I'll be looking for something she'd like. Probably a picture or something. My friend M is a massive Cowboys fan, so I'll be attempting to find something that wouldn't just be found in your average sports memorabilia shop for him if at all possible. Patsfan wanted me to go to the Hard Rock and find him a Stevie Ray Vaughan pin. Which would make sense, that a Hard Rock in Texas might actually have one, considering we've not been able to find one anywhere else. Except the nearest Hard Rock is Houston, so he's s*&t out of luck. (If any of you folks do the pin collecting/trading thing, let me know, and I'll run down to the Foxwoods Hard Rock and get some to bring.) I think that's it. Except I'm sure that I'm missing something. *wibbles*

Fic

Title: The Lost Boy
Author: theturningworld
Rating: PG
Fandoms: Harry Potter, Doctor Who
Characters: Teddy Lupin, Tenth Doctor
Summary: Out Christmas shopping with Harry, five-year-old Teddy gets lost in Knockturn Alley, and an unexpected rescuer turns up to help him out.
Why you should read it: Teddy is adorable without being cloyingly sweet, and his perspective on things is a neat one, particularly his take on the Doctor.

Title-ish: The War of the Rings
Authors: beer_good_foamy, speakr2customrs, and a guest appearance by lauratd
Fandoms: Lord of the Rings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Poirot, Murder She Wrote, Greatful Dead bandom, Chronicles of Narnia, Lindsay Lohan bandom
Rating: ??? I dunno. There's a bit of innuendo here and there that I suppose warrants a PG.
Individual drabbles/ficlets: Everybody Knows Men Never Ask Directions, The Only Way to Travel, The Evils of Capitalism, There's Something About Frodo, Be Adequite, In the Dark, Crime and Pun-ishment, Hey, Mr. Clean, You're Dirty Now Too, Spell Check, Resurrection Shuffle, Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Stop Using Sex as a Weapon, Love is a Battlefield, Heartbreaker, and Les Orcs Dansant, and You Little Thief
Why you should read these: If the titles and insane fandom list aren't enough to tell you just how hysterical this all is, I doubt anything I could say would be convincing. Seriously, go and read. But don't be eating or drinking anything.

Art

Title: Even Wronger
Artist: tripperfunster
Fandoms: Arby's commercials, Hamburger Helper commercials
Illustration of: Hand in (G)Love by elfwreck
Why you should see this: The fic was great in and of itself. Social commentary and crack all in one. And the illustration is just perfect for it. I didn't even attempt to figure out the rating. If the characters were people, it'd be very not worksafe. It's still probably not worksafe. Except that it's an oven mitt and a glove, so what's not worksafe about that? Except for what they're up to. Um, yeah.

Squee!