Mentally unstable like a fox!

Is it the right-brain or the left-brain that best handles technical stuff? Whichever it is, I think mine's overloaded. I've been wrestling with technology since pretty much the moment I woke up. It's all because of the soopersekrit project (the one that isn't really secret at all, but I don't want to jinx it with premature squees) that my darlings shellydkitty and aldiara and I will have ready very soon.

I *love* it when technical things go smoothly. There's such a rush of accomplishment when you pick something apart and it finally rewards you. And then there are the times when you don't and it doesn't. That's what's been happening today.

Granted, some things did go beautifully. That's all due to the amazing paraka, who spent all day with me yesterday going over vidding techniques, sharing her favourite vids (you see them so differently when you know what to look for!!), and giving me just enough taste of vidding theory to want more. It's really fascinating stuff! I don't know that I'll ever become a serious vidder (famous last words, right?) but because of her I feel much more capable of handling this project. And check out her lovely QAF video.



Of course, as soon as she left I started fumbling. I never truly realised how much patience you have to have for this kind of work. And how much I just don't have. That 50 min. downtime for rendering drives me batty, since I have to devote my entire computer to it.

I'm trying my best to be zen though. I played with the animals, I finally got out my exacto and salvaged some of my graphic novels that got wet and the pages stuck together, I remembered how much I loved Sandman: The Dreamhunters when I reread it, I tried to take a walk but it was -9 so I didn't get far. I even picked up a pen and pad and wrote a silly little story by hand, which I haven't done in forever:

Making Out (Alles Was Zählt, Deniz, 350 words, PG-13)

It's just a little thing, but I'm quite pleased that at last one of my stories is inching towards porn. It's about time. And that alone beats my entire 3rd week of WriSo, in which I wrote one AWZ drabble and a Dumbledore crackfic. Not my best week. I'm one paragraph away from finishing another story, but I haven't been able to touch it for a few days. Do your muses ever scare you? Mine took a very dark, very disturbing turn down Obsessive Avenue and I had to coax him back. I let him wander down there one of these days, but it needs to be in another setting -- this story did *not* warrant that kind of behaviour!

I'm thinking bed now, and musing, and rendering more video files, all at the same time. Good night, kits!


p.s. Oh, and if you were ever thinking of getting a perm account, now's the time. $30 for forever? That's hard to beat. (And I really don't need 5000 icons, do I?)

Don't put a picture of a measuring cup on your brownie mix that looks *exactly* like my 1-cup measuring cup, and then write under it "1/3 cup." When I need to procrastinate from my writing with some mindless baking, you can't expect me to think!!!

I'm just shoving it into the oven anyway. How bad could it be...?

(I guess I'll let you know in 24 minutes.)

ETA: Not bad, not bad at all. They didn't rise, and they look like little bits of dessicated lava, but they don't taste bad at all. Not that I'd recommend or replicate this modification, but at least I don't have to throw them out.

Lovely evening tonight, seanchaidh joined takhys and me for Torchwood fic brainstorming, several episodes of Merlin to convince seanchaidh that it was the gayest show around (the "I'll take you down in one blow" won her over, I think), and my veggie chili that came out quite well if I do say so myself.

Then seanchaidh said her goodbyes and takhys went to bed at a normal hour like a normal person, whereas I stayed up late to drabble (why am I still in Marian's head? why?!) and to putz around with vidding. Both of which are probably much better put off until tomorrow!

So question for the flist: Can any of you vidding folks recommend any helpful asylums/communities? Places where I can go to ask questions without feeling like a complete n00b?

I don't seem to be double posting now, but I'm still double-commenting. If I'm spamming you, I'm really, really sorry. I've opened a support request and hopefully they can fix it soon. I'm hoping it's not a nasty thing from one of the many programs I've d/led in the past 24 hours. And I'm hoping that it will behave like nice self-healing technology and I'll wake up tomorrow and everything will be back to normal. But for now, I'm trying to hold back on commenting unless I really, really must say something. It's hard!

~~~~~~

So I should have spent the day writing or maybe even cleaning up for company tomorrow. What did I do instead? Pretended I spoke German, battled video editing software, and wrote a crack!ficlet to prod shellydkitty's Harry muse. If this doesn't get him talking, I don't know what will.



And check this out: This is your protest! SO COOL! It just goes on and on and on! Did any of you guys see/attend protests today?

Now I've got my rubber gloves, scrubbing implements, and enough chemicals to bring down an Oliphaunt. I'm off to tackle the bathroom. Wish me luck, I could be stuck in there a long time.

Is anybody else getting double posts and leaving double comments?

(Sorry if I spammed your flist with multiple potter_prophets earlier.)

I forgot to post my WriSo record for the week. I'm quite proud of myself this week -- in my first week I had just 500 words, and this week I'm just shy of 5000! (Although I'm kind of cheating, since I just posted one a few minutes ago. Yeah, I'll probably regret that next week.)

Wahr (Roman/Deniz, Gen, 1000 words)
Connecting Flights (Roman/Andrew, Smutty, 2800 words)
Left Behind (Roman, Gen, drabble)
Something Borrowed (Deniz and Marian, Gen, 1000 words)

bunnysquee, why no peppermint Baileys?????!!!! NEEDZ MOAR NAO!! You've got to fix this!!!

The LCBO guy was great tho. When he said that LCBO doesn't carry it anymore he recommended I try caramel Baileys instead. I said it was too sweet and he said, "Yeah, they're going for the crack cocaine demographic," then made this bizarrely hyper face. *loves*

Got some regular Baileys tho, got some Guinni, got some cheap Spanish wine. Bring on the weekend!

Overheard while walking home: A girl telling her friend (in English) about meeting some friends last night, and how she went *kiss kiss* to Hélène and *kiss kiss* to Philip and *kiss kiss* to everyone else there, and then she got to Louis and just said, "Um, hi." The other girl said, "Quel dis!" Reason 2,384 why I love Ottawa.

Well I got my coffee first thing this morning, so my wheels were spinning all day. I did loads upon loads of laundry, hours upon hours of work, and caught up on schmaltzy vampires with sarcastic_jo. *snuggles her lots for surviving time with the family*

Now I have a question for you eBay-savvy folks. As you may recall, two weeks ago I won Ingo on eBay. Two weeks on and I still don't have him in my hot little hands. Apparently the seller is having some trouble getting Win XP installed -- I emailed him again today and he said he's going to get help from a friend. He asked me to be patient; I'm not a patient person. *sneer* So what's the protocol here? Can/should I cancel the sale? How long should I wait? Fortunately I haven't paid yet (he's local so we were going to meet up) so I'm not worried about that, but I hate buying something and not being able to fondle it.

While we're on the pissiness, there's my friend in London, who last week I emailed to let her know that I'd bought her a ticket to James McAvoy's play. I expected at least a thanks, if not an ear-piercing squeal, but so far I've heard nothingnadazip. *is grumbly*

But on the good side, my cat is exceedingly snuggly tonight (is snoozing on my chest as I write this even), I have an extra-strong rye & ginger, and aldiara wrote a really lovely DeRo ficlet that crawls right inside Deniz's head and peeks out through his eyes. Beautiful! So today's not entirely a wash.

ETA: randombastery just turned my night to *fabulous* with this link: Man Submits Drawing In Place of Payment. OMG this is *genius*!

I'm going nuts here. I've never been an addictive person. Obsessive, yes, I'll give you that, but not addictive. My flirtation with cigarettes never went anywhere, I drink in moderation relative to my friends in Dublin, and even toying with nose powder in my college days never blew up into an addiction.

But now I'm jonesing BAD.

See, for several weeks, SwissLady had been posting regular updates of the subtitled episodes of Alles Was Zählt. Then she stopped!!!!! It's like she was rolling out the good stuff to get me hooked; now I'm happy to settle for the lesser quality stuff, cut with broken hearts and cheap plot devices, but I go to the abandoned lot to look for her and she's nowhere to be found. I swear, I'm checking youtube so frequently that I'm bound to get a letter from their lawyers for harassment.

Now, on the bright side, the clips she's posted so far do carry us through a perfect arc. And really, if you haven't watched it yet, do yourself a favour and take a look.
If this was a movie, the story would end here. And I know that, this being a soap, there are dark days on the horizon. The last rational sliver of my mind tells me I should stop here. But when did a junkie ever stop and say, "I've had enough, my life is fine now, I'll quit." I want more, I want it to keep going, even if I know exactly how excruciating it's going to be.

I'm really not in good shape here.


And apropos of absolutely nothing, can anybody tell me how to save off the flash clip on this site?

My but I'm dragging today. I didn't even have that much work, but I was just crawling through it and barely made a couple of deadlines. Then I realised the problem: I'm out of coffee, and for some silly reason thought tea would do the trick. Wrong wrong wrong.

Living without coffee reminds me of poor takhys who's now living in her grandmother's caffeine-free house, poor baby. But joy! She's coming into town this Sunday and sleeping on my lumpy futon for a few nights. I'll have to ply her with alcohol so she doesn't feel a thing. I can do that.

As for me, I think I might head to bed early tonight. I tried to drabble for my HP comms, but of course nothing came out except more Roman. It's kinda fun having a loud muse again. But I'm not getting anything else done tonight, and I had some hot chocolate with mint Baileys, and now my bed looks so comfy...

But first I want to share something that was posted in WriSoMiFu today. I just loved it:


Good night, people!

Oh, HP costume designers, how can you get it so right...



...and then turn around and get it so wrong?

Just buzzing through to wave hi to everybody. *waves* It's going to be a very late night tonight, and unfortunately not nearly as fun as staying up late soaking in the soapy bathtub last night with omarandjohnny, aldiara, and shellydkitty. Hours and hours of bees and boys and boxing. And pretty, pretty shirts. (See icon.) Because we're shallow like that. Our marathon viewing of German soaps just left me craving more, and made my head think of doing silly things. (And no, stalking their Köln studio is not silly at all, that's destined to happen.)

Oh, omarandjohnny, that Hot Chip song that they use in Verbotene Liebe is "Ready for the Floor." (Download here.) And I thought you'd be happy to hear that your Duffy covered it in that languid, soulful way she has. (Download here.) It's quite lovely!

I'm going strong on WriSo, at least. I finished a smutty little fic that I just started on Sunday: Connecting Flights. It's Roman/Andrew from AWZ and will probably have a readership of one (*waves at shellydkitty*) but that's okay. Roman needed to get laid.

And now it's time to get back to work. Wasn't I complaining last week about having nothing to do? Feast or famine, I swear, feast or famine.

Wow! Have you guys seen this? eeyore9990 posted it yesterday, and I've been using it this morning, and cranked out over 200 words in 20 minutes. I think that's a new record for me. I don't know if they're good words or not, but still!

(I'm only using the normal mode -- I'm totally chicken about kamikaze mode, but I bet it's effective!)

(Oh, one thing to note -- when you finish, the program removes line breaks and coding marks for the count. So just be sure to copy your work and paste it into your doc before you click "Done".)

But now it's time to put the writing aside. For the rest of the day you'll find me in the Chatroom O'Fluff with Verbotene Liebe and my eeeevil enablers.

For my new old friend, Johnny Angel, I put together a soundtrack to celebrate his new self:


EATA: And there's more! Here are some from shellydkitty:
Iggy Pop: Angel
John Butler Trio: Seeing Angels

And German angels from aldiara!
Christina Stürmer: Engel fliegen einsam


Also. Grégoire drag is making me smile big:

Yet another boy for my harem of small blond men. Mwahahahaha!

I JUST BOOKED TICKETS TO SEE JAMES MCAVOY ON STAGE!!!!!!!!!

I CAN'T BREATHE!!!!!!!!!!

I pulled an all-nighter last night--it's been a while since I've done that. I really love dawn when I don't have to get up for it. The birds start singing just before daybreak, and the sky was the colour of a cornflower crayola when I finally stumbled off to bed in that delicious fuzzy haze.

Unfortunately that meant I totally overslept my Slashers' brunch. :( But it also means that I can/will write today. :) The muses are bouncing in my head and very happy about this.

BTW, did you ever notice that Dennis Grabosch's profile is different, depending on which side you're looking from? One side is pointy, the other is smooth. *ponders at length*

Huh. Jeremy Northam did an audiobook of Brideshead Resivited? You know, I'm really not a fan of audiobooks or podfics--my mind just doesn't process verbally. I remember a project in my college interpersonal communication class where we measured cognitive communication competence--basically how much of a message gets through when two people communicate. My ability to recall the message was near-perfect on the written measures and almost nil on the oral side. If I read something, I'll remember it nearly forever, but apparently sound goes into my ear and gets lost somewhere before it reaches the part of my brain that retains knowledge. (Music lyrics make it through somehow...funny that.)

That being said, I do think I could listen to Jeremy Northam talk for hours on end about Charles and Sebastian's naughtiness.

OK, I'm going to race out for my quick walk before the sky opens up. My cornflower sky's gone menacing all of a sudden.

I just got off the phone with Dad ... our first chat since the election, and I'd been dreading it. I knew he'd be upset that Sarah "Shopping Spree" Palin lost -- she was "a breath of fresh air" according to his hillbilly church elders -- and now he's panicked that Obama's going to "redistribute the wealth" and tax his savings. He's a retired schoolteacher! Exactly what wealth does he have to redistribute? I tried explaining that Obama and McCain's voting records aren't actually that far apart, that Obama believes in the free market, and the basic fact that he has no wealth to redistribute but it's hopeless.

For this degree of teeth gnashing, there's only one solution: A BEVY OF PANDA BEARS!

By your crazy Russian time, I've missed your birthday by miles, but by my clock I'm golden.

Hmmm. I took Rudy to the dog park this afternoon, where we met a woman who had a sheltie as well. Sheltie people have to gab, you know, and her dog was *beautiful*. (Unlike my ungroomed mess of a pup.) Anyway, she asked where I lived, and when I told her, she said that she'd been attacked right across the street from my apartment by a man who didn't like her dog being on "his property" (the sidewalk in front of his condo). And when I say attacked, I mean he hit her and had her pinned on the ground. Some people helped her, and the police came and nabbed him, but turns out he attacked another woman with her dog -- and *kicked* her dog several times!! -- before this. He's being charged, but now I'm more than a little freaked out. I walk Rudy along that way a couple of times a day. Or I did, I think I'll be changing my route. WTF is *wrong* with people like that?!!

But on to happier things. First off, it's Friday, how great is that? This week definitely overstayed its welcome. I'm looking forward to a weekend of reading, writing, and brunching with my slasher girls.

Speaking of writing, it's going ... well, it's going. I don't usually do fic recaps here, but I want to keep track of what I've got to show for myself after the first week of WriSoMiFu:

Inevitable (Harry/Draco, R, double-drabble)
Refuge (Draco, Gen, drabble)
Dawning (Deniz/Roman, Gen, drabble)
The Best Thing About Halloween (Harry/Draco, Gen, drabble)

I may be able to add to that total tonight with a longer fic, as I'm so close to finishing another. The ending just keeps eluding my grasp. *wrestles it to the ground*

And I've been reading some amazing stuff recently:

aldiara wrote Different, an Alles Was Zählt fic that just stole my breath away. It does not matter in the least if you don't know this pairing -- this is one of the best first-time stories I've ever read, chock-full of humour and clumsy head-bumps. And if you know the characters at all, you'll see what a tremendous job she does in getting into their heads. It's a scary and beautiful place. Go read it! I command you!

Speaking of smut, pushdragon finally posted the third installment of her Tale of Horns series (here are parts One and Two -- remember the sexy Quidditch calendar? Draco all hot and bothered?) Push says this yummy addition, Claws That Catch, will be her last H/D, which makes me very sad. I think her story The Astronaut Phase will always be one of my favourite tales.

I'm also about halfway through furiosity's Interregnum and I'm loving it. It's all about what would happen if magic was "outed" -- how the world would change. Really different and incredibly imaginative. I'm not holding out hope for a happy ending -- her stories always manage to break my heart at the end, but it's worth it.

~~~~~

And finally, in a desperate attempt to lure my darling goddessriss out of hiding (what are you doing? admit it, you're already putting up Christmas decorations, aren't you?) I wanted you to know that your Renaissance man John Cusack also writes poetry. And it's not bad!



Hope you all have wonderful weekends. Be nice to dogs!