First Among Sequels

I doubt I'm a unique vector on anyone's f-list, but just in case, the Yuletide mods asked for a signal boost:

Hey guys, urgent! With the huge increase in membership this year, we have a corresponding increase in last-minute pinch hits left to go out, and thanks to a new exciting Yahoogroups snafu, the original list has been silenced at the worst possible time. D:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE if you are by any chance up for doing any Yuletide pinch hitting, join the new pinch hitters list:

Send a blank email to yuletidepinchhitters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. To activate your subscription, just reply to the confirmation message you receive from the group.

Or if you have a Yahoo! account, you can join at the group website!

There are some pinch hits sent there already but we are holding off on more until we get more people on board.

Please pass this along...

via theshadowpanther.

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Never Quite What You Expect (McKay/Sheppard, PG), ~7400 - If your taste runs toward the "dorks in love" approach to John/Rodney, RUN DON'T WALK, this is a completely wonderful story in that vein.

Aphorism (McKay/Sheppard, PG13) - The senator in control of funding to get Atlantis back to Pegasus visits the city to grill John. Breezy, funny, warm, really nice for the holidays.

Second Chance To Make a First Impression (Gen, PG13), ~7000 - Rodney's deaged to seven years old, and while kid!Rodney is adorable, this story is more about John's reactions to li'l Rodney.

crysothemis: Funny Little Secret (McKay/Sheppard, NC-17), ~17,000 - A secret admirer leaves gifts for Rodney. Meanwhile John's acting a little cagey. Hmmm.

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xposted to IJ and LJ

According to the Weather Underground, here where I live we had 9 hours and 29 minutes of sunlight today. Tomorrow we'll have just two seconds more. There's a slim crescent moon and after a rainy day the sky is clearing and the stars are coming out.

I've been taking a little break from fandom and the journals, spending my time writing my never-ending Teyla story (almost 35,000 words at the moment, with more to tell; my god, I love Teyla and I have so much to say about her!) and running all kinds of errands that have unexpectedly cropped up. However, darling Tex is holding her Casa McShep festival till January 1, 2010, so I did post a little story over there, The White Island.

Other than that, I plan to remain away for a bit longer. I feel I just got too caught up in some stuff and that's unlike me. At least, I think it's unlike me, but who the hell knows. I do know that I'm missing wonderful stuff, but I'll catch up eventually. Thank god for the SGA Newsletter.

So. Six years ago, the final chapter of The Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, was released. Eight years ago, the first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, was released. And ten years ago, principal photography had begun.

I note these dates because six years, the very night The Return of the King came out, my husband was hospitalized and I was crazy with fear. He had a long, hard recovery; in some ways he will never recover. I joke that I've had three husbands: before, during, and after the experience -- and fortunately, I like the "after" version of him quite a lot.

But this time of year remains difficult for us. Even though good things have happened since (we found him better doctors, I got a much better job, we moved to a beautiful place), during this dark time of the year I get afraid. I cry more easily and more often, and everything feels tender, almost sore. I'm always so glad when the holidays are over and the new year has begun; I feel more hopeful for the future then.

I also mention those dates because The Lord of the Rings is inextricably bound up in my memories of the bad days. I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again, but the Lord of the Rings books, movies, and fandom saved me. All you Lotrips folks kept me going. Writers and artists and readers, people I met in RL and those I didn't: I am so grateful to you. Thank you for helping me through those dark and sad days.

Here's a song I think is fitting: Hope for the Hopeless, by The Frenzy (at Sendspace).

I may need some quite exacting Britpicking beta help on a fic in a day or two. Any takers?

...Meanwhile, in further Farscape news, we did a run today and hit our top Crichton-hating episode yet, "Jeremiah Crichton." In the first three minutes, he insulted each of his crewmates while they were trying to be helpful and took off in his space module in a sulk. He even had the gall to complain that his shipmates were confused by incomplete translations of his metaphorical idioms. HEY ASSHOLE, STOP USING IDIOMS. PROBLEM SOLVED. Anyway, the ship had to starburst (read: abruptly travel really fast and far) and left Crichton behind.

Then they brought the ship back and looked for him for months. Laurence and I couldn't fathom why. ( Read more... )

The only fun thing was that in his months on Eden World, Crichton grew the fakest looking beard this side of a mall Santa. Poor Ben Browder, guess he couldn't just skip shaving for a week and get a beard that could pass for six months' growth the way J-Flan did during his exiled-in-paradise episode. Bonus hilarity, every other dude on Eden World was clean-shaven. Apparently no one would loan Crichton a razor, and I can't blame them. He'd probably just insult them for being thoughtful and go pout in his NASAmobile. ASSHOLE.

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I just took on Winsor Pilates for the first time, and I lost. I had no idea I was this out of shape!

Time to flop on the couch and watch the season finale of Beautiful People... yes, again. And you can't tell me they haven't watched AWZ. I swear I heard strains of "Unzertrennlich" playing during the tabletennis rooftop confessional! (Is anybody else watching this show besides omarandjohnny? And if not, then why not?!!! Take Glee, make the musical numbers glitter even more, swap out the moralistic lesson-per-episode with naughty innuendo, slap on an extra heavy coat of campy sparkle, and you've got this show. So much love!)

Wow, it becomes surprisingly tricky to keep up with all the stuff I want to read online if I actually do stuff during the day. I had an unusually productive day, for me... ( Read more... )

Then after all that, Laurence and I watched two episode of Farscape. ( Read more... ) We're also watching Life on Mars more slowly (getting the disks through the mail... only two episodes per disk, tsk!), so I'm simultaneously three and ten years behind the times.

Farscape's pretty good. Of course I've been thinking about SGA fusion possibilities. D'Argo = Ronon and Zhaan = Teyla are easy matches, of course, since those characters use the same othered stereotypes. :P More interestingly, John Sheppard maps to John Crichton if you only look at the way the characters are written, but as played by J-Flan, IMO Sheppard maps more to Aeryn Sun, what with Sun's repression and emotional immaturity and need to be part of a team.

That leaves Rodney in the John Crichton spot. That doesn't really work, personality-wise, because Crichton comes off as kind of a lunkhead. But Rodney could easily fulfill Crichton's narrative position: Crichton designed the spacecraft that sent him through a wormhole and landed him in the Uncharted Territories, and then he just makes the best of things.

And putting Rodney in the John Crichton role would give a Farscape/SGA fusion a decided advantage over the original Farscape, because Crichton is the weakest link by far. Laurence says "That asshole" at least four times an episode: it drives him crazy that Crichton constantly uses slang and pop culture references that his alien shipmates don't get. Plus, Crichton's always trying to put himself in charge of situations completely beyond his ken. And the narrative usually rewards his intrusions, because he's the "hero."

On the upside, they do show Crichton gradually adopting the aliens' measures of time and distance, which I appreciate. Also it's pretty amusing that the Farscape writers obviously took some cues from Red Dwarf. Little robots running around cleaning up a massive ship: DRDs = scutters. Crichton = Kryten. Rygel declares Crichton dead and proceeds to steal his shoes = Cat: "Hey, monkey, you're sick... If you weren't my friend, I'd steal your shoes."

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Oh, -17C? That must be why I'm shivering. I've got to go pick up my new glasses today, but I'm really not so keen on going out. This is forehead-freezing weather, people, when those ice crystals start forming in your eyelashes.

On the plus side, if it stays below zero for awhile the canal should freeze well. I'm already craving beavertails!

*sigh* I should bundle up now. *bundles*

Coolness! abraxas_life has created her own Chocolate Lime Muffin recipe! Bakery!John is impressed. (Bakery!Rodney, not so much.)

So that post I did, soliciting requests for snippets... is working, but in a backwards kind of way. So far I only wrote the SGA/Venture Brothers fusion snippet. BUT! I've written a lot more on the next Bakery story! ^_^;; Perverse, I know, but hey, writing is happening! Woooo.

Bonus: I have extra crossposting options with my paid Dreamwidth account, so I'm crossposting to Insanejournal now. Of course, I doubt anyone still reads me here. Comment and let me know?

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Christmas is next week? When the hell did that happen?

I owe a real update soon, but it won't be today. Suffice is to say that real life is surreal these days, blending with fandom in unexpected and amazing ways. Instead, have a snowy picture:



I took ton of pictures yesterday, and as usual there was only one I liked -- it's the lines of the buildings and the railing, kinda flow-y. By the way, that's the Rideau Canal, aka my skating rink. The snow's pretty, but it's going to be ages before it freezes at this rate. It's hardly ever open for skating before Christmas, I know, but every year I hope.

Got to bundle up now, I'm off to Slasher's brunch with my girls!

xposted to IJ and LJ

I love bread. I have always loved bread. Bread for breakfast, for dinner, for dessert, any and all kinds of bread. For several years, we went without because Webster had been diagnosed as having celiac's disease. Celiac's is "a digestive disease that damages the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. People who have celiac disease cannot tolerate gluten, a protein in wheat, rye, and barley. Gluten is found mainly in foods but may also be found in everyday products such as medicines, vitamins, and lip balms" (from here).

It was a pain, especially living here in the Wine Country where our artisan breads are known and loved. Within three miles of where I live is a world-renown bakery, and fewer than thirty miles away are a number of others equally well known. For my birthday, we go to a restaurant in San Francisco with its own bakery that puts the most delicious bread imaginable on the table, with fresh local olive oil.

We had to give all that up for years. I know that others suffer much more, and that we are lucky. And we were luckier than we knew because eventually Webster got a new gastroenterologist who ran the tests and discovered that, whatever is wrong with him, celiac's isn't it. We could eat bread again.

Almost at the same time, I discovered the New York Times's recipe for no-knead bread. When I was a kid I'd made bread a lot; I loved the kneading, and watching the dough rise, and oh, the flavor. But when I grew up I somehow lost the knack. The bread wouldn't rise. The crust was too hard. The bread lacked flavor. I decided that the yeast no longer loved me, and gave it up.

But now, armed with the NYT recipe and medical permission to eat gluten again, I tried my hand. We loved the results. Unlike me, Webster hadn't grown up in a house with fresh bread, so this was new to him. At first, he would eat about half a loaf at one sitting! Oops. Not good for his tummy, even if he could eat gluten. But it was soooo good.

Not long ago, I started hearing about another no-knead recipe, Artisan Bread, one that lets you make one big batch of dough and then bake whenever you want (recipe here). I think MRKinch mentioned it? Whoever did, I bless her. Now we have fresh bread literally every day, and if Webster wants something dessert-ish and quick, I turn some of the dough into little cinnamon buns or plain rolls that he slathers in strawberry jam.

I'm so enthusiastic about my breadmaking that I've documented it! So if you dare, here is ME making BREAD!

( Seriously, links to BIG pictures of me making bread )