Skeren Dreamera

http://viridian5.livejournal.com/1473286.html

Amazon.com is offering these holiday songs for free this month.

+++

Hey, if somebody wants to get me a little something for the holiday, my extra LJ userpics expire in the next few days. I thought I had more time than this....

My grandparent's tree ornaments again. :)

http://kracken.livejournal.com/2195225.html

Jon:This is what I got my brother for Christmas. *Shows roadside diner cook book.*
Me:*Pouts* That's the book I wanted.
Jon:*Scowls and hands it over* Back to the store....

http://kracken.livejournal.com/2195146.html

The boss cut all of our hours today. Merry Christmas.

Title:  Look Under Your Seats!
Characters/Pairings: Genesis, Angeal, and "other"
Team: SOLDIER
Rating:  G
Word Count: 100

“It was horrible, 'Geal.”

“I know.”

“They started shrieking before I entered the studio.”

“I saw.”

“She grabbed my hands and I really couldn't send a Thundara through her and kill her on live tv, could I?”

“No, that would have been bad.”

“And, Goddess, then she started jumping up and down on the couch and you know I adore Loveless, and having my annotated edition as her book club selection is wonderful exposure to the masses, but I feared for my life and.....you made apple tarts.”

“Looked like you'd need them.”

So far today, I've started writing FOUR fics. FOUR. Yet another ill-advised Keppler/Greg CSI romp, a distressingly cracky Lennox/Epps/Optimus, an I don't even KNOW Lennox/Optimus, and something that should be Victor/Remy dubcon but is more like Victor/Remy-is-dangerously-self-destructive.

I haven't gotten further than 600 words on any of them.

And now I am seriously considering a Tony/McManus brothers, because a) he has guns and they like guns, b) they are twins and he likes twins, and c) Tony apparently really does want to screw everything that breathes, and some things that don't (I'm lookin' at you, Prime).

WHAT AM I DOING.

Originally posted at Dreamwidth here. Please comment there using OpenID or ask me for an invite code. :3

Drop a comment (they're screened) with something you'd like seen drawn for someone else.

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Any fandom/character/ship eligible other than Roy/Ed from FMA. No guarantees I'll stick to the initial idea, but I'll pick randomly and doodle as many as I can before Christmas!

It's strange, but I've been getting the urge to buy a pair of pointe shoes and start dancing again. maybe it's just the season and the Nutcracker with Mikhail Baryshnikov is on. He's the one who got me interested in ballet at the tender age of 4. I told my mom that some day I was going to dance on the stage with him and nothing could change my mind. *wry grin* Then my dad got me intereste din Tae Quon Do in sixth grade, my ballet suffered and then my grades did. *sighs* ah well.

But yeah. I miss dancing on pointe. Maybe I'll do that as a birthday treat to myself out of my next paycheck. Not like I won't have the money to spare which brings me to....

( Ranting ahead )

At least it's snowing and pretty for a while.

And I got new glasses. Rimless with black temple pieces and nose piece. Very nice.

http://kracken.livejournal.com/2194874.html

So, after our 3 year audit, they found that they must take away the money my mom left me after her death, a few years ago, including the $130.00 from her profit sharing. Let's keep in mind that I'm supporting a family of four, two kids and a disabled husband, on my salary, and I've still managed not to go on food stamps, Medicaid, or an other program besides Janice's SSI. I make $1400.00 a month. They are docking me until it's paid. I see lots of rice and pasta in our near future.

As for work, everything is resolved. I expressed concern about management reaction to my incident and was fully validated and taken seriously. I was told corrective measures were being taken.

Still sick as a dog. Not sure about work this morning. Let's see how I feel after a hot bath and a few cups of coffee.

I have to get out of here.

My family was always kinda dysfunctional, but now it's just gone sailing completely into dysfunctional land. I think my big clue was when two different people warned me to not leave my purse around because my youngest little brother might try to steal money.

Then came the other clue--that I am expected to somehow magically "fix" things. I was ordered to go "talk to" my older little brother because Mom was ready to call the cops on him (yeah, I don't know why either--OK, he didn't sweep the floor, wtf). Because god forbid she talk to him herself. And she has presented me with a list of my little brother's chores, as if I am supposed to make sure they do them. I'm kinda like, why are you talking to me about this stuff? The ones you need to be having the conversation with is THEM, not ME.

And the older little brother is a mess and refuses to see it--never mind he was in tears talking to me, and he's also very angry at me for having left in the first place.

I want out. I want out of this crazy family where I'm supposed to magically make everything better and to give up the few things I have to come back and fix all the fuck-ups everyone else stuck their head in the sand about. I've only been here three days, and already I'm tired--tired of the yelling, tired of the stress, tired of having to smooth things over and defuse crappy situations, and tired of the pressure to somehow make this shit not broken. And tired of the subtle and overt blaming of me because I got the hell out of Dodge--my little brothers wouldn't be so fucked up if I had stayed and taken care of them. Because that's apparently what I was supposed to do; the rest of the family being around be damned.

I want to go home. I want to go home and pretend none of them exist; I want to go back to my quiet, peaceful life where there is no constant screaming, no shut doors with blasting music because everyone is ignoring everyone else. And I know, if it's like this with me having only been here three days, it's just going to get worse and worse as the week goes on.

And already I've gotten the whole, "Well, you can find a job here as good as your one there, right?" thing, and there is no nice way to say that I would sooner slit my own throat than move back to the same hemisphere as them. It's funny; yesterday I was kinda like, "Wow, it's so easy in America; it's so easy being able to completely understand everything, and everything being so completely familiar," but today, I just want out.

I want off this emotional train wreck.

*sigh* On the plus side, HC is now over 24,000 words, and I'm going to work on it more now. I need the distraction.

http://viridian5.livejournal.com/1473050.html

The year-end LJ meme, ganked from mayatawi, so here's the first line of each month of 2009...


January: I've been trying to install OpenOffice from what would seem to be the official site but keep starting out with a reasonable estimated length download that finishes suddenly after about 30 minutes and refuses to install.

February: Coraline: HBO First Look is really an amazing look at the film.

March: I won't post anything from the WIPs currently playing in my LJ anyway, but it's not like I lack for WIPs lying around to choose from.

April: the_other_sandy got me a virtual cupcake in honor of part 250 of "Glass Houses."

May: I saw Wolverine this weekend and found it disappointing.

June: Another day at Lutheran All-Faiths...

July: It's been flipping between high heat and hard rain with a temperature plunge, so my head is messed up in different ways depending on what's currently going on.

August: Every cat owner has had an experience like this at some point....

September: I had a walkabout in Manhattan today, leading to some photos of somewhat freaky Hello Kitty public art.

October: Happy birthday, maitai1!

November: One of the batteries in my VCR remote went bad, and even new batteries won't get the remote to work now.

December: Has Tokyopop made any announcements I should know about?

http://viridian5.livejournal.com/1472802.html

Since filling in the fair hearing request form online just led to me getting server errors trying to submit it, I went back to trying to call to get a fair hearing. I started calling at 3 p.m., trying again every two minutes because I got a busy signal every time. I stopped getting a busy signal at 4:50 p.m. and waited on hold until 6, when it was obvious that they'd gone home and abandoned me to automated message hell.

Tomorrow I hope to get my hopefully undamaged car out of the snow packed around it and get to the library to try the online form there and if that still doesn't work print up a letter to fax to them.

It's frustrating as hell.

http://viridian5.livejournal.com/1472760.html

This person got some incredible shots of the Bergdorf Goodman windows, particularly "Chapter 16: Reflected Reveries and Meticulous Metronomes" (scroll down). It looks like it's easier to get the fine details on "Chapter 16: Reflected Reveries and Meticulous Metronomes" to show up at night when the window interior is lit more. I have to get there at night myself some time, but it also has to be less beastly cold for me to do it.

I haven't been to Blomingdale's myself, so seeing this shot in one of the groups I follow surprised me and made me smirk. wirrrn, I think you may be especially amused.

My schedule makes my head spin sometimes, lol.

I managed to give everyone at WSE their Christmas cards and little gifts. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an Angel ornament from a coworker (she calls me her "Library Daughter", she's so sweet).

At the downtown library, I've been sorting through tax forms. I've put out the ones that we've received and I've been noting down the quantity of the shipments. New York State makes me unhappy because they label their box one thing, then there's other things inside and they don't list how many forms or instruction booklets are in the box. -_- Federal is much more efficient, though I haven't received all the forms yet. I've been keeping a spreadsheet of the forms we've received so far, so I'm going to put that in a folder on the S drive for both departments and let the other librarians know since we've been getting questions.

One day I had a "little buddy" help me with the tax forms. I was sorting through them and smiled at a little girl (about 5 years old) who was sitting next to her mom (who was on the computer). She came up and asked if she could help. I said it was okay if it was okay with her mom. I had her help me push the cart (much to the amusement of the other patrons & my coworkers) and help me put the tax forms in the rack (much to the amusement of security). I gave her some stickers from my cart for helping.

My little tax assistant wanted to come downstairs with me for Reference duty (which is on the first floor, tax forms are on display on the second floor), but I told her that I had to go help other people and that she should help her mom. I ended up going back upstairs to find a book and she comes running back to me, "MY BUDDY!!!!"

Security Guy who is bringing her cookies: "Hey, I thought I was your buddy!"

Little Girl: "I have TWO buddies!"

Me: *chuckles* "Want to help me find a book?"

Little Girl: *assists*

Me: "Thank you! I have to go back downstairs now, so why don't you go see your other buddy."

Little Girl: "Okay!!"

In other news, I'm teaming up with another librarian to go through our collection to find out if we have any test booklets that can help with the New York State Unified Court System exams. A board member wants to have the library be a place that test takers can utilize, so we're seeing what we have and researching where we can get purchase study booklets. However, what we don't have the board member can point us in the right direction.

I'm slated to work Christmas and New Year's Eve. *tilts head* Hmm, not sure quite when I'm going to relax. I think I have a day off somewhere in there, yeah, I think there's a couple. I'm soooo not getting out of my PJs on those days.

Let's see, over the past few weeks I saw a few advanced movie screenings. I took my mom to see Up in the Air (okay movie) and thanks to a kind little old lady patron, I got to see Sherlock Holmes (Hee!! I liked it!! I even managed to snag the good seats next to the critics!). I also went shopping with my mom to get some new work outfits (I even found some sexy pirate boots for super cheap! Okay, not so much sexy as comfy. These shall be my working pirate boots and the other my show boots, wait that sounds wrong...moving along!).

The house is still coming along. Counter tops are being delivered in a couple days, then once they're installed the plumber can come back to work on everything all at once. Electricity is running (yay!) and gas has been hooked up. The tile in the kitchen still needs to be done and we need to get carpeting. I'm crossing my fingers that we'll be back by the end of January.

Yuletide fic: written and uploaded. Yesterday, even!

Christmas cards: f...finally sent? With little prayers over them that they might ACTUALLY get there by Christmas.

Whew. I dunno what it is this Christmas. I'm just kinda discombobulated and constantly not knowing what day it is or what I need to do and plagued by this persistent feeling that I'm forgetting something. Part of it is probably that I'm not taking a big chunk of time off, like I usually do around Christmas. Can't, this year, because I've got an experiment going that requires kinda constant monitoring. So, I've got to go into the lab for about an hour every day, even if I just turn around and go home after that. Which I might do, for some of the middle of the week between Christmas and New Year's. I really need a vacation. Like really. My brain is too full. Obviously this needs to be fixed by lazing about.

Also, if my lovely FF6 stalker Roxana is reading this, I have not forgotten about our deal! I just...suck, obviously. I have Setzer and Edgar all ready to roll up their sleeves and get down and dirty in the Falcon, and I just need to clear out the brainspace and find the spare time to concentrate on them. I wanted to have something written for Christmas, but since that is...this week!...um...possibly not. But I still have them front and center on my mental list of things to do. They got bumped for the past month or so by my Yuletide fic, but now I'm ready to haul them out of the mental hottub and put them to work again, as soon as I can find two minutes to rub together. ;P

This entry was originally posted at http://white-aster.dreamwidth.org/551064.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Some candy cane lights at my grandparents' house.

And, HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE everyone!!!!

I'm watching the Grinch who Stole Christmas.

That is all.

Dear AIM,

I woul dearly love to be able to scream my joy and thanks at the people for their gifts. Their OMGAWESOME gifts, at that. *twitch* So please, let me get on. *snarl*

Not-so-much-love,
artimusdin,

Unhappiness = Snow, cold, wading through same up to my thighs, unshoveled sidewalks, sketchy delayed and re-routed buses, and working late so that I get to make the return trip in the dark. I've opted to do it again tomorrow (I'd rather face late night streets in the dark when it might not have frozen solid again yet rather than early morning streets in the dark when it's DEFINITELY frozen solid.)

But Happiness is a well designed program, by which I mean that my favorite Just A Text Editor for Mac (Bean) has decided to take exception to opening any .html file that's been touched by a web browser lately. This is making me unnecessarily unhappy, so today I went looking for a better text editor and/or HTML editor.

Enter Smultron (yes, my fingers keep wanting to type Smutron) which is Leopard compliant but unfortunately isn't being developed any more, although the creator put out a Snow Leopard Beta before abandoning it. Coming highly recommended, Smultron is small, free, runnable from a thumb drive, has tabbed multi-open-file windows, line numbers, color sorted code, will flash to tell you where your open and closed brackets are in relation to each other, has a drop down menu to tell you what line number your div ids start (in html) or where your functions are (in css stylesheets), will preview (complete with functioning javascript) right in the text editor, keystroke commands for closing tags or going to specific line numbers or indenting blocks of code for easier readability, and is all around a very spiffy and shiny text editor for a hand coder. THIS is what I want. Not Dreamweaver or any other WYSIWIG or things to make it "easier" so that you "don't have to know the code". PFFFFT. I WANT to know the code! And I want to be able to view it and edit it easily. [pets new program] I think I found my new best web designing friend.

In other news I finished my paper on mySQL databases. In the process I discovered that I know more about the subject from mucking about installing and uninstalling Wordpress blogs than I thought I did - enough so that it was once again a game of "go find an official citation to back up what I already know" and "dumb it down to the class level instead of going off into technobabble". grrrargh. v_v

We're back! Thank you for being extraordinarily patient with the absence. It's been more than hectic lately. ^^;;;

No points were awarded for the last prompt.

This week's prompt is #124 - Talk Shows

Is there a beloved Oprah figure on Midgar television - does she have a book club with free copies of Loveless for everyone in the audience? Did Godo ever take Yuffie on "My daughter is out of control"? Is Lazard addicted to the daily gossip show? Is Rufus being grilled by an environmentalist on the late night? Has Sephiroth landed a gig on the equivalent of Letterman as PR for  the SOLDIER program? Is Cloud faced with a slew of young women claiming that he is their "baby momma"? EDIT: or "baby daddy"...hey, in fanfic fantasies it completely works!

Whether the character is a guest on a talk show or just watching one on television, write it in just 100 words.

<<prompt courtesy of white_jenna>>