Going behind the cut.

( episode thoughts )

Lauren is now On Board the Holiday Express i.e. has packed and is making lists (she's so my daughter). I got back from shopping to find this on a Word doc, exactly as is:

Miss tees books shaes pains hat saimsait gameboy

Seems to cover it all...

Okay, I asked for a translation.

'Miss tees' = Miss Tinkie's = binkie = the scrap of knitted stuff she takes to bed.

Shaes= shoes.

Pains = PJs

saimsait = swimsuit (which we've lost, do not ask me how).

Note that 'books' is spelled correctly. My daughter.

It's the birthday of one new friend, stagnation13 and an old, dear one, mireille719.

I hope that you're both so busy having fun that you don't have time to read this :-))

Have a wonderful day, filled with birthday things like cake. Mmm. Birthday cake. They make that flavor ice cream here and it's astonishing how much your mouth recognizes it as being spot on even though there certainly isn't just one sort.

::much love:;

David just called; he's taking some time off at the end of the month and we're driving (eep!) with the kids to Chicago (about 8 hours away) for a four-day stay, a lot of which will be driving, of course.

Anyone from there/been there? David went there on business once, I think. Good places to see/stay given the short time frame? We usually get a hotel room (a suite if we're feeling extravagant so the kids can sleep in a different room and we don't have to go to bed at 9.30.).

Fic turned angsty.

Not sure Blair will forgive Jim.

Pls send Healing Power of Smut.

Thnx.

I am seriously considering filling a bucket with ice-cold water and sitting here with my foot in it. I was sitting -- minding my own business! Inside! At my computer! -- two nights ago and realized my foot was itching. Two or three bites on my big toe and ankle. They kept me awake last night to the point where I came downstairs at 4.00 a.m. got an ice cube, wrapped it in kitchen towel and soaked it in witchhazel, and lay in bed running it over my toe which is burning hot more than itching.

It isn't helped by the fact that now and then I get these tiny little blisters, heat/stress-related and very itchy, on areas of my hands and feet and I have those on my toe, too.

Wah.

Make it STOP.

ETA I did it. Mmm. That feels nice. Not practical, but I've finished house cleaning and just plan to write, so this will work.

Doesn't everyone write with their foot in a bucket from time to time? Come on; this is LJ; I can't be the only one; that never happens.

We watched it last night, so as promised, here's what I thought and I promise there are actual words under the cut :-)

( episode thoughts )

I was going to do something special for my 700th fic (yes, I like round numbers) and then realized that I hadn't added to the list the stories I'd written for Moonridge, which, okay haven't been posted yet, but they still count.

So I'm already at 704.

Oh, well. 800 is even rounder; just look at it; it's all circles.

carodee sent out the advance copy of the Moonridge Orgasms for Blair anthology for the contributors to check over one last time.

Whew! Hot stuff. I read it and felt the temperature rise, I can tell you. If you want to get your hands on it early (and believe me, it's worth grabbing) there's still time before the auction ends.

Go here to donate.

Happy Birthday blacknblue2!

It's a hot, blue sky day here and I hope the sun is shining down on you, too.

Have a wonderful day!

:;hugs::

David and I have now watched everything apart from the finale.

( short episode thoughts for Turn Left and The Stolen Earth )

Don't spoil me for the last one! Will be watching asap.

Happy Birthday luna_61!

I'm sending a million wishes your way for a bright and sparkly day. And, no, that wasn't supposed to rhyme but what the heck :-)

::much love::

::does dance of completion::

I just added the final fic of mine to the new TS archive (and discovered in the process that I'd missed one off my own webpage ::meeps:;) and wesleysgirl and I just finished the TS fic we began on July 1 which clocks in at an impressive 25,500 words. Not bad in 15 days.

I've earned a break. Instead I get to cook supper and rush out for L's soccer game.

Oh, well.

Happy Birthday to dodificus and starting_gate, two wonderful members of fandom who deserve extra-sparkly birthdays indeed.

I hope that you're both kicking back and preparing to party (can you do both at the same time? Oh, I'm sure you can!)

:;much love:;

I just heard that it's the birthday of the adorable sassyinkpen.

I hope that you have the best of birthdays, Sassy, and I wish I could get Jim and Blair to deliver whatever your heart desires.

Besides them :-))

::much love::

Happy Birthday to one of my oldest LJ friends, the fabulous eloise_bright! I do so hope that today is bringing you much happiness.

Enjoy the cake and presents and general spoiling :-)

::much love::

---Please forward to all interested lists, blogs, LiveJournals, etc.---

Nominations for the 2008 Light My Fire Awards are open and the
nominating period has been extended to the end of July.

It's easy to nominate a story and you can nominate as many as you want
in each category, so if you've just read something you really loved,
be sure and nominate it!

To do so, go here:

http://lmfa.diagonalfiction.com/2008Nom/index.php

Nominations now run through July 31, 2008.

If you have any questions or comments for us you can contact us at
LMFAwards@yahoogroups.com. We also have a LiveJournal community,
lmfawards, for announcements and questions. Feel free to look for us
there.

The Light My Fire Awards:
Honoring Excellence in Online Sentinel Fanfiction
~ Read ~ Enjoy ~ Vote ~
http://lmfa.diagonalfiction.com/index2.php

LMFA Committee

I watched a vid with this pairing yesterday (the wonderful 'Office Politics' by wistful_fever Fabella) and it inspired me :-)

660 words, no spoilers, pure PWP.

( Reciprocal )

I feel very productive and pleased with myself, but my arms are wet spaghetti.

First, writing; WG and I are tagging like wild things and our J/B first time fic for the My Mongoose Moonridge e-zine is at just over 18,000 words and we have masses of story to go.

In my spare time, I've been uploading all my Sentinel fics, gen, het, slash, to the new archive, Artifact Storage Room 3. I'll continue to upload to 852 as well, but it's nice to have somewhere that takes all kinds/ratings and where I can edit my own fics.

The only problem is that I have 160 Sentinel fics and that's a lot of cut and pasting... 69 63 to go. I discovered that the fastest way, that also preserves formatting and italics, is to simply c and p from the fics on my webpage and use the summary there. Doing it from Word screwed things up.

The main reason I'm cream crackered, though, is that we cleaned out the basement today, partially, anyway.

I would say more, but I'm too tired hence the rambling nature of this post. Many, many bin bags of trash, despite David's answer to 'Shall we toss this out?' inevitably being 'No, it might come in handy, just put it over there.'

The Moonridge Auction is now live.

You can buy me! :-)) Sort of.

I'm in carodee's Orgasm for Blair anthology (twice) and she says the total word count for the anthology is 28,000 words, so getting that for $10, looking at the juicy snippets she's been posting, is a positive steal.

And for everyone willing to donate $15, you get to see my next story first; it's still being written, but you know me; I write fast. Minimum 15,000 words, most likely more, and it's set after Crossroads, when Jim's got some explaining to do... and maybe Blair isn't in the mood to listen.

Happy Birthday crimsonquills!

I hope it's shaping up to be the best birthday ever.

:;hugs you::

Happy Birthday to the lovely appomattoxco!

I hope that the day is the start of a wonderful year for you and that you spend it doing what you like best.

::much love::

The wonderful wesleysgirl suggested using a different browser and IE seems to work which means I guess, that's it's definitely a problem with Firefox :;sigh::

Thanks for the support and sympathy; hopefully things will be back to normal soon...

Of course, I can't reply to the comments in my inbox directly from there as they automatically open in Firefox which still hates me...

ETA2 I had LJ listed as a cookie exception (to allow it, I mean) and I just tried, briefly, allowing ALL cookies and suddenly Firefox and LJ were bestest buddies again. Hmm.

I posted and went to tag with WG on a locked posts and it kicked me out. Wanted me to click that adult content thing and wouldn't accept it when I did and then wouldn't let me edit my last post and won't let me go into my profile and, and...

AAAAAAAAAH!!!!

ETA HA! It's still not letting me edit the normal way, but I sort of snuck around the back off it. Sorry; can't reply to your posts; it won't let me do it as anon either. I'm in a sort of limbo; I'm half logged in and I can get to some of the behind the scenes things like my profile and settings (which is where I found an option to edit posts), but it logs me out in the main 'front' pages, immediately after saying 'welcome janedavitt". I've cleared cache and cookies, got a new password, done a system restore as I installed updates for Windows, Firefox and Norton yesterday; none of it helps.

I'm using Firefox and windows XP.

Woke up to find LJ wouldn't let me log on, not even when I changed my password, not would the computer let E log in to Neopets. We did some updates yesterday, so I rolled back and it's letting me do this but it still seems to be prepared to boot me off LJ at the slightest thing, so fingers crossed.

Only two three more to go!

Episode thoughts behind the cut.

( episode thoughts )

My second solo novel, Wild Raspberries, was published today by Torquere Press, both as an e-book and a paperback.

I'm very excited about it :-)

I'd like to thank wesleysgirl who held my hand as I wrote it and, as ever, was an unfailing source of reassurance, my wonderful editor, Nomi (gnomi), who made the process of getting the book ready completely trouble-free and smooth as silk, and any of you who go out and buy it, of course :;g:;

Full details about the book and how to get it, are here:

Wild Raspberries.

And this is what it looks like, cover art by Stella Price:



There's a very nice review of it by Vincent Diamond, the editor of Animal Attraction which I'll quote under the cut, because I'm feeling all fizzy and bouncy (I'll be back to normal tomorrow, I promise).

( Review of Wild Raspberries )

Two very special people indeed celebrate their birthdays today, theemdash and thismaz.

There isn't a big enough box in the world to hold all the birthday happiness I'd like to send you both; have a wonderful day celebrating!

::much love:;

sg_fignewton is celebrating Daniel Jackson's birthday with gen fic. I signed up for Teal'c Alphabet Soup fic.

And now I'm off to read the fic :-)

ETA The 26 Teal'c Alphabet Soup fics are all collected here.

26 letters and I chose O (for oranges).

300 words, PG13 for some remembered violence and angst.

( O is for Oranges )

I have been childfree from 9.15 and don't get them back until 3.15. Heaven.

I've done my library volunteering and masses of cleaning. I picked up the metallic paint chips yesterday; God, they're gorgeous, but David is adamant we can't afford to paint the bedroom. He wants to keep the navy ceiling as he says it's restful, so it'd just be the walls but I have to say, while stunning, this paint is very expensive at $60 a gallon and with a coverage of a measly 200 sq feet. Two coats of it would be on the pricey side as I just measured up and the approximate wall surface is 400 sq foot. Four tins of it...plus two of primer. Hmm. With tax and a new roller, around $380, maybe.

I compromised; I dug up an ancient can I had mixed to match the current color (the cats jump up on the window sill, back paws scrabbling, and have gouged a bit of the wall to bare plaster from time to time; there's a chair there now to prevent that) and I painted over the mural.

So at least that's gone...

Happy Birthday llaras!

I hope the birthday fairy has arrived (what? there's one for teeth, but not for birthdays? I don't think so) with presents galore, balloons and cake.

Have a wonderful time celebrating!

::much love::

Just wandered over to my webpage stats and to my utter bewilderment, I've had a load of hits from here

http://pacificair.com/

Why? Totally baffled. Airplanes read slash? Who knew?

In less puzzling news, wesleysgirl and I are writing up a storm on our 'first times' fic for the Moonridge My Mongoose e-zine; already almost at 9,000 words. I'd forgotten how effortless tagging is; the book/story just writes itself.

I'm simultaneously working on the 15,000 word minimum story I'm offering at Moonridge to all those people who donate $15. I don't want them to have to wait long and it's going along nicely; well over 4,000 words already. It's a tag fic to Crossroads, something I've wanted to do for a while now as Jim's declaration that he needs space and Blair's hurt reaction cry out for more resolution than the show ever gave them. I'm following in many people's footsteps, wanting to fix this episode, but eh, with a fandom this established, that's inevitable.

That caarianna is also celebrating her birthday today.

Happy Birthday! I hope the day's been a perfect one for you so far and stays that way until midnight at the very least.

::hugs you::

Happy Birthday to one of the people I knew pre-LJ (gosh; has to be a decade now since we met on afh...) the talented, lovely merfilly!

Sending a million birthday wishes your way, honey and I hope the day is at its very sparkliest for you

::much love:;

On a whim, I bought these at the LCBO (wine store)
Blackfly Vodka Spiked Ice

They're popsicles made of fruit juice and vodka and come in blackcurrant/blueberry (which I'm munching on right now), cranberry/blueberry, and strawberry/rhubarb.

Quite tangy and refreshing, but they don't freeze solid (too much vodka, I guess) and I'd forgotten how the corners of your mouth get sliced up by the edges of the popsicle wrapper; they're way too wide at the top. And my hands are going numb. Maybe I'll shove a straw in.

Still... yummy. And, yes, the kids have been warned not to try them. They don't look like popsicles; packaged a whole different way.

I was toying with the idea (in the face of David's scrunched up expression of sheer disgust) of doing the wall directly behind the bed a metallic shade to match the tops of the bed posts using something from the Ralph Lauren metallics line.

Then I saw this picture on their webpage.

http://www.ralphlaurenhome.com/rlhome/collection/sp08_mayfair_explore.asp

and gave this whimper of pure appreciation. Not the froufrou behind her, just that hat, that dress. So elegant.

Never in a million years could I pull that off but she looks SO PRETTY. Why can't we wear outfits like that now? Classic garden party.

Passing this on as the deadline for nominating is approaching:

Nominations for the 2008 Light My Fire Awards are now open.

It's easy to nominate a story and you can nominate as many as you want in each category, so if you've just read something you really loved, be sure and nominate it!

To do so, go here:

http://lmfa.diagonalfiction.com/2008Nom/index.php

Nominations run through July 15, 2008.

If you have any questions or comments for us you can contact us at LMFAwards@yahoogroups.com. We also have a LiveJournal community, lmfawards, for announcements and questions. Feel free to look for us there.

The Light My Fire Awards:
Honoring Excellence in Online Sentinel Fanfiction
~ Read ~ Enjoy ~ Vote ~
http://lmfa.diagonalfiction.com/index2.php

The LMFA Committee

Happy Birthday msbeata!

It is scorching hot here, so I have sunshine to spare if you need it but I hope the skies are blue where you are.

Enjoy your special day ::much love::

Happy Birthday nosurething2!

I hope that the day is off to the best of starts and that you're enjoying your special day to the max.

::hugs::

This is a fascinating article about Christian from the Daily Mail last year, with some great pictures (and some sad bits, though no one knows what happened to Christian after the encounter with his friends so we can assume he lived happily).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-452820/Christian-lion-lived-London-living-room.html

Title A Man's Reach
Pairing Jim/Blair (slash, UST)
Rating PG13
Length 470 words
Spoilers None

A/N Many thanks to carodee for the suggestion that the prompt could be misheard. Written for the 'c'est la vie' challenge over at sentinel_thurs.


( A Man's Reach )

For making me totally mist over with tears (the good, happy, awww... kind, don't worry)

Go watch this 2 minute vid kita0610 just pointed to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adYbFQFXG0U

and prepare to sniffle.

More about Christian the lion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_the_lion

I thought I'd do that, what did I post about, meme and post it into the echoing void as a lot of you are celebrating the Fourth of July and probably out in the fresh air (dangerous stuff that; be careful :-))


Soooo

July 4 2003

I won an award for best fanfic site which had me scratching my head then and does now as it's nothing much to look at today and back then it was pitifully bare. It's very, very strange to see people who ended up as arch memesisissies leaving friendly, appreciative comments. ::blinks::

I also wished someone happy birthday and rejoiced that David had come back from a trip, laden with fizzy wine gums.

Same old, same old.


July 4 2004

A mixed bag. Falling down power lines right outside my house, me whimpering sadly about Tim Henman at Wimbledon, plans to go to Steve and Shan's to swim, which ironically is what I'm doing tomorrow, too, and another birthday.

July 4 2005

Writing angst and a chipmunk on the loose in the house, pursued by Mac.

That happened just last week, too. Both of them. My life is an endless spin cycle.

July 4 2006

NO ENTRY!! Or for the Fifth. Was I ill? Abducted by aliens? What?

July 4 2007

Aha! The famous banana poll . That I'd completely forgotten about a mere year later.

Okay, that was... oddly depressing. My life is monotony interrupted by flashes of boredom.

... the Davitt family (just three of us then) arrived in Canada as fresh off the plane immigrants, blinking tiredly but excited.

It's been a good eleven years. Thank you for having us, Canada, and I promise I'll fill out those citizenship forms really soon because we're not going home.

This is home now.

Except when it comes to soccer, when we'd always support England against Canada in a match. Ahem. Sorry.

So how many days into the summer vacation does it have to be before no court would convict you for putting your children in the garden for a passing hungry dragon to devour?

Joking.

Sort of :-)

One of my external hard drives kept switching off as we were watching Doctor Who (second in the library two-parter) so I panicked today and cleared off a lot of stuff and backed up the C drive; which took many hours and meant I couldn't do much else.

And I'm tagging with wesleysgirl again! We're co-writing a Jim/Blair first time fic for the Moonridge edition of the My Mongoose e-zine. So much fun. I'm Jim, she's Blair. I love co-writing and WG and I always match up so well when we do it :;snuggles her::

We went on a family walk in the woods yesterday. David took us on an extra loop of the trail and if it hadn't been for the fact that we were lost and needed him to guide us, Eleanor and I would've staged a rebellion as the mozzies began biting; I got three bites, hand, shoulder, arm, all in that extra bit of the walk :;broods::

I've discovered a remedy that really does seem to work; you don't scratch the bite, no, but you draw a fingernail over it HARD in the shape of a cross and then rub a dry bar of soap over it. Don't have a clue why the soap works but it does, but the fingernail digging in gives your brain a pain to deal with that takes precedence over the itch and once the momentary owie does down, no itch. Technically. I also downed a Claritin and slathered it with anti-bite but even so...

Happy Birthday to the ever-adorable _minxy_!

And in your honor, we have a holiday here in Canada and the sky is blue and the sunshine warm, which is just what I hope you have, too.

Enjoy your day.

::much love::

Just saw on tx_cronopio's LJ that Don Davis has died. The Wiki entry