Luzula

1) I have almost 1000 words on my Yuletide story. There's some plot that I'm not sure of, but I think it'll work out okay. Which is a relief--it's been half a year since I've written anything, so I was a bit worried about signing up.

2) I had exeterlinden here for a visit last weekend! We went hiking, tree climbing (I have gotten a second harness just so I can take friends climbing), watched movies (she showed me Whale Rider and I showed her Papillon) and did Yuletide writing and mutual beta-reading. It was pretty great.

3) I have discovered the comforts of putting a hot water bottle at my feet when I go to bed. This is a discovery that many people have made before me, I know. I have no idea why I haven't done it before! *has cold feet and a cold house*

4) I can recommend the due South story Origin Story by scribe and seascribe! It's 30 000 words of Ray/Ray/Stella, which is a pairing I've not seen much of before. There's also Oasis by scribe, which is a lovely Ray Vecchio/Anita Cortez story set in Vegas, with some great undercover stuff. And finally I can recommend In A Yellow Wood by Deputychairman which is a bit of a different take on Fraser/Victoria than I've seen before.

I was in Denmark this weekend and met up with exeterlinden, calvinahobbes, ximeria, oneiriad, blnchflr, and noracharles. The Danish fen, how are they so awesome? We had a great time, and watched lots of vids, and also Frozen (especially appropriate since we were in H C Andersen's home town Odense) and Pacific Rim. And went to an all-you-can-eat meat grill restaurant.

And now I'm on the train home, writing pegging fic. \o/

So hey, guess what I did today? Finished the first draft of my Yuletide story! I do actually mean to write a second Yuletide story as well, but now I have one, and if I get stalled on the second one, it won't matter. But I should really get to work on my dSSS story instead.

I spent today meeting up with the Danish fen outside Copenhagen, and it was most excellent! Except that I just missed exeterlinden with five minutes, but you can't have everything, I guess.

I have also signed up for Bitching Party in Seattle in April. I am not 100% sure that I can go yet, but if I can't, I'll only lose $20 when I refund. So who else is going?

1) Author rec: check out Ogiwara Saki's (who seems to be the same person as jibrailis) original fic over here. They're all around 20,000 words and either slash or femslash, and I dare you to read a couple of paragraphs of any of them and not finish it. There are, like, lesbian zombie hunters, and star-crossed 19th-century lovers separated by Faerie, and Chinese martial arts boarding school shenanigans.

2) I'm leaving for the US the day after tomorrow! I am all excited. (And still have not decided what to wear for the BP dance party, which I know is not the most important decision in my life, but whatever.)

3) I should really work on a work-related article, but I just can't motivate myself to do it. Maybe this is because I'm actually unemployed right now and so not actually getting paid for doing it, but academia is like that. I mean, this article is almost finished and it would be stupid of me not to finish it since my number of peer-reviewed published articles is, like, the sole measure of my worth in some contexts. Er, not that I sound bitter now or anything. /o\

4) Why am I suddenly reading hockey RPF, even though I've never watched a hockey game in my life? *bewildered* No, that's a rhethorical question--I know it's thefourthvine's fault. Also, I've never seen fic that's stuffed so shamelessly full of tropes. It's like eating chocolate fudge ice cream or something.

As I said yesterday, I've been doing a lot of teaching and lecturing lately. I have one more week of that, then it lets up (and I get to do the graaaaading instead, but anyway). It appears that I'm going to be unemployed after January. My research money has run out, and there's not enough teaching in the spring to go around. This is not a problem financially--I'm hopefully working in the mountains this summer again, and I am assured that I can get teaching in the fall, if I haven't found anything else in the meantime. And I'm applying to other jobs, too (augh, job applications suck).

But in the meantime, I go on the dole. Which means that I will have more time for other things--it's not like I have a problem with coming up with things to do. *g* And I plan to get a driving licence, too (boring, but probably useful).

This also means that I can spend several weeks in the US when I go over for Bitching Party. \o/ podfic_lover and I are planning to take a roadtrip south along the West Coast, visiting national parks and fangirls (I get to meet malnpudl! Yay!). So, if you want to hang out with us in Seattle after BP and before we leave on the roadtrip, let us know! And if you live on the way down and would like a visit, or if you want to come with us for a bit, let us know about that, too. : )

I'm here, safe and sound. The trip was long, obviously, but I got to see lots stuff from the plane: an erupting volcano on Iceland, lots of pack ice on the sea, the huge glaciers on Greenland, and bits of Nunavut and Hudson's bay. Very cool.

Also, more weird customs stuff: it was apparently not enough with that weird online form I had to fill in. No, I have to fill in the exact same form on paper on the plane, too. Plus another form that I had to turn in before I boarded, and yet another form that was about what I had to declare for Customs. About 80% of the information on these forms are the same, and the funny thing is that there are notices on them about the Paperwork Reduction Act. Hee. Maybe they should get on that.

Also, did you know that it's forbidden to bring "obscene articles" into the US? What does that even mean?

I actually checked the ticky box for "food", because I was bringing some presents for the people I'm staying with, and the Customs guy did a double-take that someone had actually checked "yes".

Customs guy: So, what food are you bringing?

Me: Two jars of cloudberry preserves, and...

Customs guy: Yeah, yeah, ok.

Me: And then I also have...

Customs guy: Sure, go on. *waves me on*

I felt kind of like Fraser.

Anyway, I'm here now. Tonight I'm going to a Jeffrey Foucault concert with keerawa and some other people. Tomorrow: lunch with more fangirls. Saturday: the people I'm staying with are celebrating Passover, and invited me to join them. Sunday: only vague plans as of yet. Monday-Thursday: possibly going out to the Olympic Peninsula and seeing the rainforest (yes, I'm aware that I'll probably get wet). And I'll go by public transport, so basically Monday and Thursday are for getting there and back.

I'll be checking email, so drop me a line if you're in Seattle and want to meet up!

Okay. I, um, do not know how this happened, and I'm kind of embarrassed to tell you about it, because it's so incredibly stupid. I got the dates for Bitching Party mixed up. I thought it was the weekend before. This means that my flight is 4.30 on Sunday afternoon, and I will have to leave the con early.

How on earth could I do something like that? Obviously, I can't change my flights now.

Yeah, this means that I am free the weekend before BP, so if any of you local people want to hang out then, I am obviously at your disposal. Or maybe I should just jump into Puget Sound and rid the world of my stupidity (no, I don't mean that).

I have now bought tickets for bitchinparty! Yay!

I'll arrive on the evening of the 31st of March and leave on the afternoon of the 11th of April. The reason I'm staying so long is that I want to have enough time before the con that I won't be half dead of jet lag, and it feels stupid to fly halfway across the world just for a weekend.

So if any of you Seattle people want to hang out with me, I would love to do that, and the same if anyone else is staying before or after the con. I also have acquaintances in Seattle from the time my family lived there, and I hope they remember me enough for me to visit them.

I'm planning to return to places that I have fond childhood memories of, such as Pike Place Market, the Burke Museum and Baskin-Robbins ice-cream. And I definitely want to spend some time doing nature stuff--for example, I might go out to the Olympic Peninsula for a couple of days. I would love to get advice on other places to go, though. Although keep in mind that I'm kind of limited by not having a driver's license.

Right, now I'm going to an entomological film festival. Yes, really.

I thought I'd do the meme about recurring themes in my writing. I found this one hard to answer, but keerawa gave me one answer: she thought my writing was about "the web of relationships among and between people. Romance, family, friendship." And I think that's pretty accurate. Of course, I mostly write F/K slash, but I'm also interested in parent child relationships, sibling relationships (I have a WIP with a lot of Fraser-Maggie interaction), and the boundary between friendship and romance. I also have a WIP that focuses on Fraser and Thatcher's professional relationship.

I'm also interested in how people change over time. What they were like when they were young, and what they'll be like when they're old. And when I say they, I basically mean Fraser. I really am very Fraser-centric. I've written almost nothing that doesn't in some way include Fraser or his family, and I mostly write Fraser POV.

I'm also very interested in nature, how people relate to it, and how it relates to the concept of home. Besides having a lot of landscape description in my stories, I don't think it's a coincidence that I've written both wingfic and werewolf fic.

Of course, this all sounds very serious--I also like writing PWP. Anyway, on to the second part of this post.

It's time to sign up for muskratjamboree soon, and I'm trying to decide whether to go. Is anyone I know going? Are large cons scary?

What makes this decision harder is that I'm also trying to decide whether to go dogsledding this year again (hey, it's addictive). The tour I'm interested in is the one where you camp out instead of staying in cabins, but it ends on April 1 and MJ starts on April 3. There would theoretically be time to do both, but it'd be tight--I'd get home on the first and fly out on the second. Arrgh, indecision. OTOH, it is a win-win situation, right? Both of these things are fun.