Reluctancy Waltz

I now have a DREAMWIDTH account (throws confetti around), which means that LJ can let the door hit its collective ass on the way out. I will be cross-posting here because a lot of people are still here, but my IJ account will go dormant after this post and eventually I'll be over there permanently.

If y'all want me, you can find me at http://mrshamill.dreamwidth.org! Yay!

(BTW, lferion, I haven't made the reservation yet at the hotel, but I swear I will by Wednesday!)

Because of this, keep it up.

Because of this, http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank/.

Ahem.

Pay no attention to that weeping woman behind the, um, thing there.

What I wanted to say, is, I need a beta. And not just ANY beta. I need a sucker beta who's willing to put up with a ridiculously long SGA story (I think it's going to end up around 130,000 words or so). I need strict grammar, characterization, and (prolly most importantly) someone who will catch my loathsome repetitions. You know, how many times can a baby 'gurgle in [adjective]' in one paragraph/page or how many times can Rodney/John lick a stripe up the other's cock in one sex scene. That kind of stuff. It most certainly needs to be looked at by more than one person (and has, the wonderful kisahawklin has given me some lovely feedback on the first part, ailurophile6 has read through it and so has someone else and gah, I don't even remember who I've been writing this fucking thing for a YEAR) and I've had good comments on the locked fic only journal, all of which have helped. But it's very close to being done, and man, this is going to be harsh, so I thought I'd beg ask now.

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller??

Oh, and I really do want an invite. I've been, uh, kinda mugging everybody I know. I have got the openID thing going over there, so maybe soon, but. Yeah. puppy dog eyes

Ick.

Anyway, I have a friend from work who is an editor, and who asked me to pimp her mad editing skillz. She will do college papers and will do 'em down to citations. She has master degrees in English and creative writing. She charges per page and is flexible -- $25 for the first page and $10 for each additional, but again, she's flexible -- she needs the money. If anybody's interested, email me and I'll put you in contact with her.

Does anybody know if we're going to have a new Supernatural tonight?

I have a big bowl of washed and cut strawberries in my fridge. They're yummy.

Oh, and yeah, like everybody and everybody's aunt, uncle and cousin, I'm looking for a DW invite.

Before I return to eating worms (you know, the pitiful kind), I leave you with another nice, feel good video (thanks to lanning: ( behind the cut )

So I posted the story I'm calling:

Fairly Stupid Tale
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: Around an R, I guess
Spoilers: Oh please.
Summary: A fractured fairy tale retelling of East o'the Sun, West o'the Moon
Disclaimer: Please enter standard useless boilerplate disclaimer of all intent to damage here.
Warning: Gratuitous character assassination pretty much across the board. Um. Also kind of crack-y.
Notes: I've managed to crack up everyone who's read this, including my beta, so that's a good sign, I suppose. deadcat_vagrant says it should be a drinking game: every time John says something doofy, drink! every time Rodney whines, drink! but I won't press that on anybody. Beta by nat_am_drachen, but if there are mistakes or if you hate it, blame me. Dedicated to (one of my) EBDs, linaerys, because she could use some cheering up.

Story here on my site.

ALSO!! Please to be voting in the BadFic contest! I need to get more votes!!

Yes, the BADFIC CONTEST OMG YAY is now LIVE!! Go read'em and weep (and then wash your brain with bleach) and vote, make sure you vote! Remember, these poor authors have toiled hard for their trophy.

In other news, saw the ptherapist today and she confirmed that no, I'm probably not completely insane for hearing things and maybe seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, it's probably just a reaction to the change in meds. Somebody build me a tinhat, please. Also got the secondary boob squish, which I was expecting and Hey, scriggle! I got cysts too! Looks like two of 'em in the left one, this time. I wasn't worried. The doc was kinda taken aback by that, actually. Heh.

I leave for Muskrat Jamboree tomorrow EEEEEEEEEEEEE!! My flight gets into Boston around four and I'm taking the T to the hotel, so I figure I'll be there around five-ish? The Meet'n'Greet doesn't begin until seven, so look for me to be camped out in the hotel lobby and take pity on me, buy me dinner or something. ;-)

Okay. Back to work.

The Great BadFic Challenge of 2009 goes LIVE a week from today. To my surprise, those last three slots are still open for submissions, so if you've got a stinker in mind, please, send it in! Remember, though, if it's not in to me by 9:00 p.m. EDT Tuesday, March 31, it will NOT be accepted!

That trophy makes an excellent conversation piece! ;-D


Please feel free to pimp this far and wide... I'm on a bunch of communities so I've cross-posted wherever I can, and a lot of you lovelies have mentioned it as well (thank you!!). I'm really surprised I've still got those three slots open, to be honest, because I really thought I was going to fill right up.

Gave blood today (I've got generic blood, they love me) and actually felt really hungry by the time dinner rolled around. I usually just shrug it off, but not today. And then I got to use our new (horribly expensive, I thought we were in a recession or something?) dryer, which is v. nice. It sings! Ghosthunters starts soon, and I got to watch my Tornado Chasers stalk a nasty one near Austin Texas. Hope everyone down there is fine. Didn't get to write at all, damn it, but I'm taking Friday off and maybe I'll get some time then. MrHamill is going on a business trip to Denver on Saturday, and then when he returns, I leave for Boston and Muskrat Jamboree!! Whee!

OH, yeah!

I'm watching the live tracker on tornadovideos.net and there's a nasty, nasty line of thunderstorms literally thundering across Texas at the moment. One bad cell is making its way towards Austin and has already spawned a couple of vortexes (okay, I'm a geek, I can't get over the squee of watching them live! on the webcam!! SQUEEE!) so my buds in Austin? Please be careful!

I now return you to your regularly scheduled porn, still in progress...


squeeee! tornadoes!!!!

Random bits and bytes and flits and jetsoms and whatevers...

My pshrink upped my dose of one of the antidepressants this week, in a bid to make me slightly less obsessive about the wrong things (this would be a good thing, trust me). I think it's working, but

I feel a little... odd. Good, happy and calm and all (which, those of you who know me is pretty weird right there) but... the only word that comes to mind is tight. Stringent? I don't want to goof off, I want to get things done. Which is

Good, because this has been the second (of TWO, ONLY two) twelve hour days at work and I whupped 'em, I got every goddamed workstation in the office patched and close to two-thirds of 'em cleaned out and scanned, too. Considering I'm the only one doing this, it's quite a feat, something I'm not sure I could have actually finished because I'm not usually that goal-oriented. See first bullet-point above. So that's good, right? But where has

My patience, where has it gone? I guess that's what's odd. I don't feel short-tempered, just not as patient. Maybe I should get somebody to have a scripted flame-war with me. synecdochic was supposed to way back when but she wimped out. Or I could go to NYC and hunt down Fred Phelps and his Merry Band of Bastards and teach 'em what pain feels like. Then again,

Maybe I should just meditate more. Missed Temple last week, but I won't tomorrow! Then after that, we've gotta bite the bullet (not point), because

The dryer died. sigh At least it waited until the last load. But it's dead, Jim, and the van is looking ready to fall apart at the least bump, and the fridge is making rather obnoxious noises. Another day older and deeper in debt. Hey, I've got two twelve-hour days under my belt! Guess I know where that money is going.

But now, I'm going to bed. Tomorrow, after we buy a new dryer, I'm going to try and finish that silly fractured fairy-tale. And next week, I'm NOT going to work on Friday, I'm taking it off with my hubby. So there!! ;-)

Going into work late today because I'm working this evening, trying to get Microsnot to perform properly for me (ha! as if!) tonight. Just got off the phone with the lawyer we hired to get our wills (yeah, because we have such a HUGE estate) and durable powers of attorney and medical proxies done, talking to her about what to do with all my fannish stuff should I get hit by a bus any time soon. And it occurred to me, in light of Natasha Richardson basically getting hit by that bus, that it really could happen. One minute you're here and laughing and talking, and the next, you're gone.

I'm open about my fannish life, I don't particularly care who knows it. But I'm not the rule, I'm the exception who proves it. A lot of you are so far in the closet about that you might as well be in Narnia. If you drop dead tomorrow, what's going to happen to your fannish stuff? I've already got that taken care of, and MrHamill knows what to do, as does MissHamill. It's not a nice thing to think about, but you need to. Any minute, an asteroid could fall from the sky and flatten your car with you in it.

MissHamill thinks we're being morbid, but she's nineteen and therefore immortal. We know better. Natasha Richardson had a medical proxy in place, saying she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary means. I don't either. I'm going to make it official, as is MrHamill. If I die next month, I've already got someone who'll deal with all my fannish stuff, so MrHamill won't have to. Do you know what's going to happen to your stuff?

Yeah, it's not something you want to think about, but do it anyway, okay? Don't put your loved ones through more torture than you have to.

Oh, wait, it's professional writing and therefore disqualified.

I think my brain just melted.

There are only THREE SLOTS LEFT for the BADFIC CONTEST. If you're working on that absolutely perfect horrifically nasty so-bad-it-makes-your-eyeballs-bleed story for submission, you'd better step it up! This is gonna be a good one this year, the FIFTH ANNUAL (wow!) contest (now with actual embedded footage of the Plushie Theater reading thanks to my daughter's new video camera!).

So hurry, hurry, hurry! Getcher BADFIC in ASAP! For information on how to submit and the rules to the game, go here!

Why hasn't anybody ever told me about this guy? (If guy s/he is, anyway.) I haven't laughed that much (or made that many embarrassing dolphin noises) in quite a while. Makes up for a lot of the crap I've been dealing with, lately.

UPDATE ON THE BADFIC CONTEST: There are only FIVE slots left, people, and it is only the beginning of the month. If you are thinking about tribbing, do it quickly!!

There was something else, but I forget, so whatever.

It's BADFIC TIME!!!


The BADFIC contest is now open for submissions! Think you've got it in you to write like Edward Bulwer-Lytton? Prove it! You've got one month to write the stinkiest, smelliest, rottenest fic imaginable and submit it to me for the BADFIC Contest. The rules are here, the time is now, so GET WRITING!

crossposted liek whoa, so apologies up front!

Thank you, p_zeitgeist, for pointing this out about Adobe 9 vulnerabilities. seperis has some very VERY important information about viruses in Megaupload here. Looks like February is the month for viruses and spyware.

So if you think you're infected, what do you do? There are several good (and FREE for home use) Antivirus programs out there. I use and have been very happy with Avast! antivirus. It's easy and intuitive. Others prefer AVG. YMMV. For free spyware checks, I prefer SpyBot Search and Destroy. It seems to catch about 98% of spyware, and will even tell you what it can't clean. There are also two one-time free AV/Spware cleaners -- McAfee's Stinger and Trend Micro's Sysclean. Stinger is a little easier to use, but they're both excellent tools.

Here's a good site with various apps and descriptions on how to use them.

Anyone having more information on the crap that's coming in lately, please post in comments. If any new info comes in, I'll post another note pointing back to this entry.

PSA first: Check what version of Adobe reader you've got and if it's not nine, PLEASE deinstall it and get nine. There's apparently a nasty virus going around, hiding in a .pdf file that can activate with any version of reader less than nine. Or something like that. Don't take a chance, get nine.

In other news, the fucking printer has claimed another victim and I'm taking a sick sanity day, or at least half day, off work. Migraine, bery bright day and printer dat do not keep fooking IP address do not mix no dey don't.

Film at eleven.



P.S. If anybody has a guess why that goddamned printer won't keep its IP address I'm willing to listen.

Can anybody steer me in the direction of an online reference (or book I could borrow from the library but online would be better) of Czech, Slovakian (or Polish or even Ukrainian at this point) homilies or fairy tale-ish type things? I've found the online translator English-Czech and have read the Wikipedian article on the languages of the area, but I need something that would really be endemic to the people/language.

Anybody? Anybody? Fox? Bueller?

Oh yeah, it was MissHamill.

So yesterday, MissHamill and I went down to the National Gallery to see the exhibit on Pompeii. She needed to visit it for her college art class and I just wanted to see it. I think I walked something on the order of ten miles (part of which was my stupidity of getting off at the wrong stop on Metro, though it all was downhill) and my legs and back, they hurt today. MrHamill sez, good! Exercise more now! Muscles say, No! Are you crazy lady?! But the exhibit was very very wonderful making. There were many sculptures in bronze and marble, mosaics, reproductions and some actual painted walls, carefully removed and restored. Marvelous! Once we returned, we ate dinner and watched Dr. Who season four, The Fires of Pompeii, of course. MissHamill says she was a little disappointed not to find the Doctor, Donna and the TARDIS as 'household gods' in the exhibit.

And I have health news that is very good for a change. My three month blood work was extra delightful this time. My hemoglobin A-1C dropped below 6.6 for the first time in ages to 6.3 (which is very, very good for me, since I'm diabetic) and my fasting was 103. My cholesterol was excellent (the good one went up), and my blood pressure was 103/60, which meant my BP meds got dropped again, to 5mg. I think I'll be taken off them altogether before the end of the year. What's interesting is that since converting to Buddhism, my BP has dropped precipitously, so much so that the medicine I've been taking has lowered from 30mg in less than six months. My mood has improved and I'm happier, I'm calmer, and life has just evened out. I know there's a mind-body connection, I just hadn't realized how deep it runs.

Still haven't really lost any weight, but it'll come. Eventually.

We're very, very lucky to have two stable incomes in our household, but we're still feeling the pinch. There's so much I'd like to do but we're putting off, like buying a new (used) car to replace the slasher-mobile. It really needs to be retired, the poor thing, at 130,000 miles it's reached the point of diminishing returns. But we need to squeeze a bit more out of it, because we're still pretty far in debt due to the recent renovations. It helps that my job is still trying to kill me, because that gives us a bit more money to play with, but not nearly enough. But because of that little bit, we've managed to make reservations to see two shows this year, and I've managed to get to two cons, though I'm squeezing every penny on those, too! Thank heavens drglam is willing to put me up at Muskrat Jamboree!

As far as fannish things go, writing has been infrequent, that damn vid has been giving me fits so I've kinda shelved it for now (maybe I should work on the other one, it's a lot quieter), and mostly I've been reading here and there, in my 'copious' spare time. There are still a lot of stories I want to tell, and that fucking epic really, REALLY needs to be finished, dammit. One of these days. I noted that the Flashfic community had a crossover/fusion challenge and that made me take out that idea of the fusion with Galaxy Quest, but I just can't seem to get myself started on it. sigh

Okay, that's enough of an update, right? Right. To bed.

Oh, and a P.S. -- Happiness is finding out that you can substitute a med that costs approximately $7 for one that costs $275 and not lose efficacy. Medicine is SO overpriced in this country!