| Good news/bad news |
[Mar. 20th, 2010|02:26 pm] |
Good news: borrowed laptop from ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) gblvr (yay! Thank you! It works.)
Bad news: have to call Verizon to find out why my WEPKEY isn't working. Huh. Tis a puzzlement.
Added new scene to SGA/SPN crossover. Dean with a water pistol is a menace.
The final action scene now has more Rodney.
One beta says: way to leave me at a cliffhanger, Icarus. Plz send rest of story.
The other beta says: uh, where are we, exactly? Plz to be adding well-researched setting.
Drat. I need more online time to do that. Which leads us ... back to Verizon.
Everyone, place your bets. How many hours will Icarus spend waiting on hold? |
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| Ooookay, the final scene of this SPN/SGA crossover is really violent. |
[Mar. 19th, 2010|09:58 am] |
Oooookay, the final scene of this SPN/SGA crossover fic is really violent.
I swear the thing with the little girl has nothing whatsoever to do with an irritating second grader I'm tutoring. Really. I swear. In blood.
Now who has recs for SPN domestic fic? Because a buddy of mine has a craving annnnd I think people might need it as a chaser after mine.
Getting together with gblvr tonight. At first it looked like there was a scheduling complication, but that's all worked out. |
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| SPN/SGA crossover fic |
[Mar. 15th, 2010|10:57 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | sga, spn | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
And now, the finale!
As much as I enjoyed watching Dean have his ass handed to him by Sheppard (when technically both Sam and Dean were guilty, but that's what happens when you're the oldest)....
... I still wonder if Sheppard would stick up for Dean later on. My instincts say yes, he would. The guy who irritates you is the one you recognize. But I eagerly await my beta's thoughts.
I should stop worrying and write the final scene, no? I mean, John thinks Dean just killed two of his men. |
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| Computer time! SPN/SGA crossover mystery fic |
[Mar. 14th, 2010|02:20 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | sga, spn | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | happy in the rain | ] |
My fanfic life is currently living on a flash drive (borrowed from my mom's roommate, hmm, I should get my own). I've borrowed a circa 1999 laptop with no internet access or wireless card.
Hello, folks!
My 1,000 word Help Haiti fic for somnolentblue has, as predicted, expanded to 5,000+ words.
Sam and Dean Winchester have found traces of EMF all over the wreck of John Sheppard's car. But they're not convinced John's a ghost. Then ... much more happens after this.
I'm almost done. Two scenes to go.
Anyone want to beta a crossover action mystery fic? :D |
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| Asking for extensions. |
[Mar. 7th, 2010|01:43 am] |
Came home tonight, expecting to write, and found mom's roommate on the computer. She had a workshop brochure to design. Hour by hour my writing time slipped away, while I watched killer-dull TV. She finally went to bed at 1am.
Reality hit home.
I have computer time only as a charity from mom and her roommate. I have no control over when that computer is available, or for how long on any given day.
I've now contacted all of my writing obligations to ask for extensions. |
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| On my day off: fic and Bollywood. |
[Mar. 5th, 2010|04:47 pm] |
I had a day off! Whoo!
Just printed out one of my original fics for editing. This morning parts that were missing from the main character's family just ... fell into place. (Yes, I know I was supposedly meditating, hush.) I thought the story didn't need the background, but maybe, maybe.
I might even get to do some writing on my very, very, very overdue Help Haiti fics. *pats Merlin and Arthur, John Sheppard and Dean Winchester* Don't worry, boys, I'll be with you soon.
*turns up the Bollywood music* |
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| Dancing with the Stars: Evan Lysacek! Eeee! |
[Mar. 4th, 2010|01:08 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | skating | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
Evan Lysacek decided to skip the World championship and "go play" on Dancing With The Stars.
Let's back up.
Last fall, mom and I had a blast every Monday and Tuesday to watch the likes of Donny Osmond and snow boarder Louie Vito dance and play and groan with frustration...
... wow, that sounds downright indecent.
Anyhoo, with or without slash goggles, Dancing With The Stars is an upbeat reality show sans the mean-spiritedness of most reality TV. The competition stays out on the dance floor, and every star comes in as an underdog. They're famous. But they're not dancers. Not really. You get to know your favorite stars -- and a few you've never heard of -- while watching them work under intense pressure in a supportive but honest environment.
Lysacek has no idea what he's getting into. Kristy Yamaguchi have said DWTS is the hardest thing she's ever done. Figure skaters learn usually three routines made of familiar elements each competition season. They spend months perfecting them. In Dancing With The Stars Evan will have to learn and perform two new dances, with unfamiliar steps, every week.
On the other hand, Evan's one of the odds on favorites going in, because skaters Kristy Yamaguchi and Apolo Ono both won. Athletes do well in Dancing With The Stars because they have discipline and stamina. And even among competitive skaters Evan has a reputation for being a workhorse.
The gamblers rank the competitors:
Nicole Scherzinger (of the Pussycat Dolls) - +175
Evan Lysacek - +200
Erin Andrews - +400
Aiden Turner - +800
Pamela Anderson - +1000
Jake Pavelka - +1200
Shannen Doherty - +1400
Chad Ochocinco - +1600
Niecy Nash - +2000
Kate Gosselin - +2500
Buzz Aldrin - +5000
I just can't wait to watch Evan ... train. Oh, I look forward to seeing him dance too. But my favorite part of the show is getting to know who the stars are when they're putting in the work for their performances. After all, that's the main focus of Out Of Bounds. Time to see the real thing in action.
Go, Evan, Go! |
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| A new novel length story in the Black Helicopters series has been posted! |
[Feb. 17th, 2010|07:00 am] |
Eeeeee!
Black Helicopters has been updated! A full novel, plunked down before you. Ready to devour.
Run, run, read now. Do not wait. It might evaporate. |
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| Reading list (thus far) |
[Feb. 15th, 2010|10:15 am] |
Avast! Here is the tentative first cut of vocab-building works for my SAT students, a menu of genres so they can find something they like. I'm thinking of including a quote from each work or a blurb to help kids decide. A blank list of books is so daunting.
Thank you all for your excellent recommendations.
Still needed: possibly two sci-fi works, and non-fiction. Ender's Game and Fahrenheit 451 might not make the final cut if the vocab isn't challenging enough. I'm still checking the vocab on all of these, hunting through googlebooks. My rule of thumb: at least one $10 word per page.
We're collecting short stories but that's a different list. Poetry and plays are separate lists as well.
A third list will encompass all of the recommendations so you can enjoy them and they're not buried in comments. I'll also use that to build from for other reading recommendations.
( ACTION/ADVENTURE )
( HORROR )
( MYSTERY )
( 19TH CENTURY LITERATURE )
( SCI FI )
( FANTASY )
( HUMOR )
( NON-FICTION )
( HISTORY and HISTORICAL FICTION )
Thank you again. This is still a work in progress.
* Both of these great works I loathe, so I'm not sure I want to inflict them on my students. |
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| What should high school students read? |
[Feb. 14th, 2010|12:23 pm] |
Happy birthday, amothea. I know, I'm a couple days late. But I'm always late.
Teens should be able to read, yes?
Hellooooo, English majors. Prepare to be appalled.
The local school district's high school reading list includes not one, but three books by Stephanie Meyers.
Yes, three out of five recommended books are the Twilight series.
Now I'm a populist when it comes to books. You like it? Read it! I even enjoyed the first Twilight movie (sorry, folks). I can see the teenage girl emotions, the fears and hopes that it hooks.
But. As an SAT tutor I'm finding again and again that my students are stymied by vocabulary.
I'm talking about advanced placement English students and non-AP kids. They're stumbling over sentence completions, unfamiliar with a third of the words presented. They misconstrue college level journal articles because key phrases go over their heads. One poor girl couldn't grasp the meaning of a paragraph because every word she could have used to triangulate the meaning of the others ... she'd never encountered before.
One look at what they read, and yeah, I can see why.
Even books assigned for English classes are accessible modern lit, accessible world lit, or easy translations of The Odyssey. I don't complain about the exposure to a broad range of literature. That's excellent. But aside from the occasional Dickens, I don't see any challenging vocab.
Now I've been asked to create a reading list for our tutoring center. Thank god.
Off the cuff, I'm thinking 19th century lit, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters (what Twilight fan wouldn't love Wuthering Heights?), the bible (for those who lean that way), the British-produced World Air Power journal for the military-minded boys (I've had to look up vocab in their country-by-county analysis).
I'm open to suggestions. What do you think high school students should read? |
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| Pulled in 20 directions. |
[Feb. 11th, 2010|01:14 pm] |
Ha. Turns out it's not the main office in Georgia that wants us open today. It's my boss. She just uses them as an excuse
Boss: "Can you come in today?"
Me: "Tell the Georgia office that I-270 wasn't even cleared as of an hour ago. And they needed to rescue firefighters by sending in snow mobiles."
Boss: "But I saw on TV that 355 looked clear...." .
The snowplow has not been by. She wanted me to call her the second it did. I can't see the road from the house. I told her, carefully, "I'll call you tonight."
She wants me to come in tomorrow. She wanted a commitment from me on the spot to come in tomorrow. Riiiiight. Give her a commitment when I have no control over the weather, the plow, or even my ride? I told her it was possible but I wouldn't know until tomorrow.
Now mom's roommate is standing by with a shovel, anxiously suggesting that the best time to clear snow is now when it's sunny ... I've heard about shoveling from mom about four times in a row while typing this post.
My hair's wet. I need to eat. No, I'm not going outside yet.
So much for my plans to write today. I'll be out there with a shovel all bloody afternoon. |
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| Project update: Merlin, Supernatural, and Stargate Atlantis in the works. |
[Feb. 10th, 2010|05:24 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | merlin, sga, spn | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | happy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Muse - Bliss | ] |
Wow, thanks to the time spent shoveling I'm behind on my fics. Funny how:
a) shoveling takes hours and,
b) leaves one tired. Especially through the shoulders.
The Merlin fic is fun, but I'm in one of those re-writing death spirals where I can't. seem. to stop. editing.
I should either switch to the fic that with a drag race between Dean Winchester and John Sheppard, or just write the next part of the Merlin fic and fix the transition problems later. |
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| Apparently we're getting Toronto's snow. |
[Feb. 10th, 2010|05:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | home, work | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | recumbent | ] |
We got another 10" dumped on top of the 30" we had already. My boss gave me a ride home last night, and it was more like skiing on wheels.
The weather is more rugged than Saturday, due to the winds whipping the snow around, carving drifts.
The snow removal trucks had to be pulled off the roads this morning due high winds.
The federal government's closed. Schools are closed till Monday. The state government offices are closed tomorrow as well (and the state never closes).
Our tutoring office main office is in Atlanta, Georgia. They wanted us to open today and are demanding we make up the hours we lost when we had to close to the 30" of snow on Saturday. I'm wondering if they don't watch the news, or if they've just never seen a blizzard. My boss suggests we send them a cooler full of snow. |
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| The snow plow came by. |
[Feb. 7th, 2010|05:00 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  nostalgic | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Muse - Butterflies & Hurricanes | ] |
What tops shoveling four feet of plow-packed snow?
Shoveling four feet of packed snow with two cute young guys. Talked about teaching, grad school, figure skating, skiing, and the Olympics.
An offer to help me shovel in the future? Why yes, thank you kindly. |
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| Muse scheduled another concert - Baltimore, March 3rd! |
[Feb. 7th, 2010|11:30 am] |
Muse scheduled another concert - Baltimore, March 3rd!
Uh. I can get there, but I can't get home without, oh, renting a car.
I don't suppose any of you are Muse fans. And would like to go to a concert this March?
Inspiration:
And:
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| Snowmageddon. :) |
[Feb. 6th, 2010|09:45 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
Snow, snow, snow.
Woke up this morning under a pile of warm kitties and the hush of a snow bound home.
In DC we have snow to our thighs and it's still coming. About 20" so far. Falling 1-2" an hour.
It looked like inside of a snow globe yesterday. The light, teeny flakes filled the air, drifting down from a white sky. The grass coated in white at first, barely sticking. But the trees were frosted.
By evening a thick blanket covered everything. Damp snow stuck to the windows.
Now deckchairs are mounded lumps. Landscaping has disappeared under waves of white. Tree branches bend to the ground. We have to theorize the location of the driveway.
Work is closed today. Looks like my Superbowl plans are off.
Good day to write, eh? |
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| SPN and SGA recs: Suicidal in the Morning & |
[Feb. 1st, 2010|04:09 am] |
I consistently like Musesfool's work, but every now and then one of her stories truly stands out.
Suicidal in the Morning. Supernatural. Sam and Dean, PG
Powerful and simple. The story is exactly what the title says: Dean Winchester contemplates various ways to commit suicide and then talks himself out of it. His self-deprecation and practicality keeps this story from being a bleak trip down a toilet bowl of misery. It's quite clear he doesn't intend to go through with it. But he has to work to keep himself going, every day. I understand Dean at the end of this story. More than that, I respect him.
Now for something completely different.
I asked my f-list for believable MPreg with excellent characterization and a compelling story. (Hey, hope springs eternal.)
Guess what? They found it.
Surrogate by Seekergeek, McShep, NC-17 bordering on R.
We all know John is completely crazy. We also know Rodney, though a egocentric jerk, is more willing to sacrifice himself than he'd ever admit. In Surrogate the two of them play a fine game of "bug on a windshield" for each other. Just when you think John sacrificing his life (again) is big--he sacrifices even more.
Surrogate opens with a tense action-adventure plot, then turns into a warm and gentle romance; MPreg for those who hate MPreg.
Seekergeek slays all the MPreg tropes. She wisely avoids a lurid focus on the baby and instead draws a bead on the tenuous relationship between John and Rodney. The baby is no magic "true love" formula, in fact, there is a considerable amount of denial surrounding the situation. Rather than romanticizing the stages and signs of pregnancy (the bile rises as I recall some MPregs I've read), we see the whole process through John's battle plan mentality. Particularly interesting are Seekergeek's insights into the issues that MPreg would create: she doesn't pan the camera past slapstick reactions but explores tough issues that would arise, the double standards, the say the military has over John's life, the personal exposure this would bring to a very private man.
I chewed my nails throughout and read quickly, on the edge of my seat. How could this ever work out for John? Even as all the typical problems of MPreg (the attitudes of his men, his team) fell away quickly. The big problems that I'd never considered loomed large. Because John is crazy to do this. Absolutely crazy. And I'm not surprised he did. |
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| Merlin fic and cars driving into the Twilight |
[Feb. 1st, 2010|02:43 am] |
I really like this Merlin fic I'm writing for the Help Haiti lightning round. I keep rereading the first section from Uther's POV and grinning. I need to stop reading it an move on to the next part.
Yep.
I read, and reread my first scene of my story, delighting in it instead of writing the rest like I was supposed to.
Not exactly writing the Lightning Round fics at lightning speed. Part of that's due to limited computer time and new work schedule, too. I desperately need the extra work hours, but I realized this week I've only had one day off a week.
So much going on, from the car search (seriously, Maryland has a 6% excise tax on auto purchases - shit), to working around two people's schedules, to the stuff with WG, to school applications, to the work search, to the bloody problems with the bank (don't ask).
God, so nice to have Sunday off though. Milked it for all it was worth. Stayed up half of Saturday night watching Twilight (why do people hate Twilight again? I was just like this as a teenager. Wished that I had magical power over the male half of the species, which seemed both powerful, fascinating, and distant). Now staying up most of Sunday night. I'll get a two-day weekend out of this if I have to stay up to do it. :D
I'm doing research on cars, looking at what's out there.
( Stumbled across this by accident, not in my price range. But I'm in lust. )
But. If I must have a car, I'll take that one, thank you. It oozes sex.
Which I imagine is why we have so many cars. |
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curious
still awake, yipe