Home safe from the wilds of New York! I successfully shepherded the twin through her thesis-writing, visited my old roommates, and had a lovely fannish dinner with dotfic, followed by an intrepid hike through last weekend's blizzard.

I did not, alas, send any postcards. But I will when I go back after New Year's! I promise!

Also, Lindsey managed to hook me on Fringe. (How does she do these things? Am I just that easy?)

(THAT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION, LINDS.)

******

I was skimming the latest LJ news announcement, and stumbled across this unfortunate sell line:

FYI, an annual subscription costs less than a large pizza with everything on it, PLUS it's rumored to make you lose weight in your sleep!

All I could think was: I don't want to make alien fat babies!

Yes. Anyway. Another reason to defect to Dreamwidth, if I ever bother to set up my account there properly.

I'm driving up to New York to help my sister out through her last days of college, so don't expect to see me around for the next while. I'll be on the road for five or six days, but if any of ya'll New Yorkers are interested in hanging out while I'm in the city (16th-21st), leave a comment, or drop me a line at spatz13@gmail.com if you're shy. Don't worry, I'm a fully trained fangirl (as a fair number of you can testify) and I love meeting fannish people.

I'm back from backpacking with only minor injuries (hurray!) and I have skinny dipping pictures of inmyriadbits at 11000 ft that I can't show anyone, because she has skinny dipping pictures of *me* at 11000 ft.

Hmmph. This blackmailing business is hard.

*****

I seem to have missed wishing liketheroad happy birthday, but I hope you had a lovely day, and will have an awesome week and month and year, because you give other people so much happiness and these things should balance out. <3

Also, happy birthday to marthawells! I'm on time for this one, happily. May the Texas sun be not-so-scorching for you today, and may you have a wonderful time. I'm going to celebrate by re-reading bits of your awesome Ile-Rien series. Er, again.

(If anyone on my flist hasn't read Martha's books, she writes awesome female characters in fast-paced, plotty fantasy with really cool world-building and plenty of humor, so why *haven't* you read them yet?)

*****

In the past couple of days, I've read so many awesome crossovers that I have to rec some. If I didn't know better, I'd say the internet missed me.

RECENT STUFF
This River's Full of Lost Sharks (SPN/Veronica Mars): Dean and Sam go to Neptune at Missouri's urging, and find zombies and tiny blonde trouble. Solid casefile that digs up a lot of past issues (on *both* sides) in a subtle, interesting way, top-notch banter and good use of both casts. (the author's style is *so* familiar, too, and it's driving me crazy that I can't place them. Grrr, anonymity.)

This Bitter Earth (SPN/Criminal Minds): The BAU team and the Winchesters investigate a series of murders on a southern plantation. Worth the price of admission for Hotch's interrogation of Dean alone.

Vertigo (MCR/Batman): Opens with Bob dangling off a building with a bomb attached to his ankle, while Batman tries to save him. AWESOME. Also, good follow-up on Bob's emotional state afterwards, and ends with cuddling.

OLDER STUFF
Write A New Apocalypse (SPN/Good Omens): Castiel goes to Aziraphale for advice on avoiding apocalypses. Smoothest merging of these universes I've seen yet, and interesting insights on Cas by Aziraphale.

That Kind of Crazy (Iron Man/West Wing): In which Pepper is friends with Donna, and she rants about Tony. Adorable, with Perry's usual insight and humor.

Ghost in the Machine (and sequel, linked at bottom) (SPN/Iron Man): Ahahaha, how did I miss this? Hilarious story where Dean and Sam help exorcise the suit.

First and best order of business: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Celli!!! I'm not around much, but just knowing you exist makes me a happy person. You write awesome fic (and somehow get people to write fic about *taxes*, clearly you are magical), you give wonderful hugs, and have recently brought me much joy by insisting I watch Leverage. You just make fandom a better place to hang out, so here's to another year of your awesomeness.

****

In more disturbing news, a ominous pattern: I went to the Bahamas, and came back with an ear infection so bad my ear canal was swollen shut and I had to take painkillers (which is VERY odd for me and my super high pain tolerance). I went on a roadtrip to Yellowstone, I came back with bronchitis. At this rate, if I go to Europe, I'm gonna come back with freakin' gangrene!

Otherwise, the trips were totally awesome, and I'm going to post about them once I sort through the 2000+ snaps for the good ones. (damn digital cameras...) I also managed to marathon seasons 3 and 4 of Supernatural on the road, and I have thinky thoughts and lots of love. Thank god there's going to be a fifth season.

I'll be staying in Austin at least through the end of August. Who all from the Texas crew will be around?

*waves* Some Wyoming RV parks apparently have wireless, who knew? Hurrah for modern technology!

In between stopping at beautiful places to let my jaw stretch out and exercise my picture-taking finger, and occasionally stopping at less beautiful places to buy candy and exercise my aunt and uncle's herd of dogs, I have been immersing myself in the new Star Trek fandom. (has there been a consensus on an acronym yet? I'm fond of AOS myself, but I always refer to it as "the reboot" in conversation. ST:XI is just awkward to type.)

It's a weird experience, this fandom. I've never felt so familiar and comfortable with a universe before, while simultaneously feeling like the biggest newbie EVER and having that new-canon thrill. I didn't even feel this ignorant in my *first* fandom. (Perhaps I have gained fannish wisdom, knowing that I do not know anything, or something.) Whatever is going on, I'm writing fic, so help me. It may even get finished!

In the meantime, watching TOS (series and movies) is providing interesting food for thought.
( wittering and fannishness )

One last note: William Shatner (and therefore TOS Kirk) has grey eyes. GREY. I realize the filter on the show makes it difficult to tell, but internet research and careful observation have led me to the truth: not brown, not hazel, not green, not hypnotic pools of green. Grey.

I should go to sleep now. I'm going whitewater rafting in the morning! (don't hate me Lindsey)

Okay, I was really trying to sleep, I swear - I am tired and slightly fried from kayaking and teaching an adorable girl to do underwater somersaults. So I tried to go to sleep.

A sudden bright light, like one of those keychain flashlights, woke me from a doze. It was a little green flying insect, and apparently my childhood memories of that X-Files episode are still alive and powerful because I genuinely freaked out: adrenaline pumping, fully conscious, and scared. I tried to ignore the damn thing, but then it did another flyby, and I had to kill it for the sake of my sanity. And now I can't get back to sleep.

Fuck. Apparently I have a phobia.

(Also, my keyboard acting weirdly dysfunctional, so I have to cut & paste n, b, space, /, left, down, and right arrows. Space is worst, because I use it not just for words but for music, video, and paging down. Fuck.)

The trip from Connecticut to Austin was long, but really lovely. After dropping inmyriadbits off in New York - and helping her move into summer housing (for 4 HOURS - but okay, really, I owed her for helping me move. Lindsey, I hope you enjoy the fridge), we took a route along I-81 and the Appalachians, which was absolutely gorgeous. In Virginia, we rolled the windows down and the air smelled like the honeysuckle growing on the roadside.

We also ran into some unfortunate weather, all while I was driving. Heavy rain forced us to stop early on Wednesday night, and then we ran into a heavy fog bank in South Carolina. I thought that was the scariest part of the trip - twenty minutes of not being able to see more than 20 feet in front of the car, with lots of semis on the highway in front and behind me - until I almost hit a deer in Texas on Thursday night (or early Friday morning?). Crazy doe was right in the middle of my damn lane! I manage to dodge, but had a bit of hysterical laughter afterwards. Jesus, not fun at all.

I am leaving for the Bahamas in about 4 hours, hooray! I will return with pictures, if my camera behaves.

I have been hiding from real life by reading massive quantities of Magnificent Seven fic. Some of it was deeply, deeply bad, but I cannot stop myself.

However, I have a compelling list of reasons for hiding.
1) On Wednesday, a student at my school was shot and killed at her job in the campus bookstore. The shooter was at large until late last night, and the campus was on lockdown because they thought he might go after more Wesleyan students. I didn't know her, and I really don't know how I feel right now - it's still so surreal. I've barely left the house for a week.

2) I have three papers left to write. One is days late, and the other two are due on Monday. I have not written a single page. I am soooo fucked, and I'm having trouble caring.

3) I am graduating from college. My only current solid plan is going to the Bahamas for two weeks in June.


Some things that have made me smile recently:
1) Ryan Ross playing with animal horns (not like that!) and Brendon Urie quoting 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
2) Maine legalizing same-sex marriage. If New Hampshire joins, we'll have New England almost covered. Let's hope it spreads, like a zombie plague of awesome.
3) The shenanigans over at XKCD. I am frequently irked at how media and fiction portray fans as crazy in a bad way; Randall Munroe is one of us, and pokes fun at Firefly/general fandom in a way that neatly avoids any irkage on my part. Plus, there's a perfect dig at FOX, which I ALWAYS love.
4) Picturing the ATF-verse Mag7 meeting the Leverage gang. I mean, aside from imagining Ezra and Sophie's delightful verbal duels when they meet undercover, or how badly Parker would scare Buck, I like to picture Vin and Eliot in the same room, and all the separated-at-birth jokes that might follow.

Things that are new for me:
1) Er, 2009 (obviously)

2) Shiny, lovely Dell XPS laptop! My old darling died during finals week - stupid motherboard - which capped off a rough semester of getting mono and being forced to drop classes I really liked. Yay.

3) Fandoms! Lindsey and I are insane marathon girls, so we have watched all of Merlin (dorky yet wildly attractive heroic boys with no resemblance to legend! And the sassy women who are more competent and better dressed than they are! Most excellent.) and are mid-season 2 of Criminal Minds (dark content, subtle characterization, and mindfuckery FTW). (minor sidetracks into West Wing, Psych, and Numb3rs, but it doesn't count if we haven't done a whole season yet *g*)

4) Friends! *waves to arielchan and mercurybard* I don't post often and I suck at keeping in touch, but I definitely think you're awesome ;)

And... I have no deep thoughts to conclude. Back to the marathon I go.

I have been amiss in my fannish duties: I must fangirl about Abigail Washburn, an amazing banjo player and singer/songwriter who recently visited Wesleyan. She's fluent in Mandarin and incorporates Chinese with bluegrass music in some of her songs.

( About the concert )

As a temptation, I've zipped up three songs from her solo album, Song of the Traveling Daughter. The title song is an interpretation of an old Mandarin poem, with Abigail's Appalachian twist (lyrics and translation). "Coffee's Cold" makes me tap my feet, while "Sometimes" is just lovely and joyful. I should have included one of her traditional recordings (I adore "Nobody's Fault But Mine"), but I cut myself off at three. You can check her out on iTunes, or listen to clips at her homepage. Even her website is gorgeous.

Benefit of being a college student? I can buy Gushers at the campus store and eat as many as I want for the first time. And then my tongue turns funny colors. Isn't being a pseudo-grownup fun?

It's snowing! Beautiful, bright, fluffy snow! It looks like every cliche ever, and feels like it, too.

The best part is that I ran into my friend Beth in the courtyard, as she returned from rescuing her laundry, too. Ah, the benefits of doing laundry at 3 in the morning.

This weekend has been one of extended outings. I want to sleep, but of course I am plagued by homework.

( Lo, the saga of Katie's weekend )

****

On the (slightly) more entertaining side, I had a whacky dream last night. Initially, I was a character in a group that got sucked into a parallel universe, except we were from a sort of steampunk universe. The new universe was more traditionally medieval, so we found a castle where some sort of murders had taken place, and it was haunted and the lighting was very Supernatural-esque. I kept getting chased around and there were military factions and whatnot. The story strayed from realism at that point, and the culprit looked like the Nightmare Before Christmas guy (Jack Skellington?) and there was some sort of bomb about to go off? Yeah.

The dream shifted at that point: the first section was a new book by marthawells, and I was in a seminar led by researchgrrrl, which was located in my Austin bedroom for some obscure reason (any ideas, Kim? *waggles eyebrows*). I was sitting where the closet is - WTF? I can't remember what we discussed, but Kim had two large books in front of her: one on alchemy and one on explosives *g*. I do remember thinking that we both knew Martha (and were Texans?) and that should be included in the discussion, but we were both being discreet, or something.

My brain is weird, ya'll.

****

In other news, my history professor is adorable and I have a brain-crush. His teaching style and philosophy is reminiscent of my favorite high school teacher, and he's like a cross between David Tennant's Doctor and Marc on Ugly Betty - catty/dorky/hilarious with eyebrows that jump around like grasshoppers.

Last night was interesting: I went straight from bridge club to a sex toy workshop. They were even next door to each other! Both were awesome - a couple of the girls at bridge decided they were getting drunk and going to bed early (because they were tired), so S. was playing hysterically badly. At one point, she was horrified to find that A. was going to make what S. had bid, which is so not supposed to happen.

At the workshop, the two women who spoke were funny and informative, and there was pad thai. I was also traumatized by her commentary on the history of circumcision, which got a large boost in the US from Kellogg and Graham, brother of Kellogg Cornflakes guy and he of the graham crackers, respectively. It was intended to reduce masturbation, and they also advocated "the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris [as] an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement." HOLY CRAP THAT'S NOT ON. We were such a good crowd, too - all the girls gasped in horror at that tidbit. Gee, wonder why that didn't catch on? The ladies also brought a metric ton of toys and lube and such that they passed around for examination. It was very educational! I took notes!


Moving on, the "which movies have you seen" meme, from poisonivory:

( the AFI's greatest 100 American films of the 20th century )

Just a quick post before I collapse to sleep (again). I've been running around with Mom all day: we committed some aggregious acts of shopping with hefty hauls of cough medicine and dorm supplies, followed by Studio 60. I must say, I never expected to bond with Harriet at all, much less over random trivia geekery. Good job, Sorkin. More, please, with a side order of better ratings!

I had an amazing time at WinchesterCon, which I will post at length about very soon, and met many old fandom friends and made even more new new ones. My only regret is that I couldn't force my body to go to most of the evening parties. Stupid germs. Or virus, or whatever. Our hotel room was sooooo sick this weekend, yuck. We actually had to call down for more Kleenex at one point - an accomplishment that I am obscurely proud of performing.

Okay, time to sleep.

Greetings, fellow internet dwellers! I should be sleeping, but I'm not! A shocking, rare LiveJournal event, I'm sure. Warning: this post contains completely random topic jumps. Do not read if you have poor balance.

I've been working at my summer job, which has prevented me from posting as I wanted to. I'm a canvasser for an environmental group, which is fun and sucky by turns, so I'm looking for a nice boring job at a bookstore with better hours.

I have now seen Jaws and rectified my failure as a film fan. It was lots of fun, in a gory, totally scientifically-inaccurate, awesome way. I called the way that they killed the shark very early on. The music really made some of the scenes, I have to say. Major props to John Williams. Also, Matt Hooper really, really reminds me of Hodgins on Bones.

Random Links

for researchgrrrl: Alkali metal explosions
British accents and exploding metals! What's not to love?

for maribou413: Autopsy videos
More awesomely-accented science videos, this time autopsies and plastination with Gunther von Hagens and his AWESOME and NONSENSICAL hat. Warning for the non bio geeks: graphic depiction of human internal squidgy bits.

for, uh, everyone: Dean het vids
http://community.livejournal.com/the_dean_show/12013.html
The product of a vid contest over at the_dean_show, these vids are basically Dean Gen!Porn in pretty packaging, set to "Heterosexual Man." Mmmm, Dean. (The one by beluga is basically a slideshow with a Sam "voiceover" - I'd skip it. But the other two are very nice indeed.)

First of all: I turn 19 today! Happy birthday, inmyriadbits! Soon, I shall be in NY, and the city will tremble in fear....

Reason #2023 I Love My Westerns Film Course: While writing an essay on High Noon, I get to write, "The conflict set up at the beginning, however, requires Kane to chose to fight evil in the form of Frank Miller...."
Which is waaaay funnier if you are familiar with DC Comics and who these men are in relation to Batman, but if you don't know, I'm not revealing the depths of my nerdiness.

In music news, (I know, Lindsey, I have music news! *gasp*) I won a free CD through the power of Google. This group called The 35th Parallel came to Wes for a concert, and I signed up for their mailing list. They held a competition to see who could figure out the source of their new CD title, Crossing Painted Islands. It has to do with road markings, actually, but I got a free CD and I like their music, so: sweet! (Happy birthday to me ;) )

Also, I went to a Tuvan throat singing concert. Very cool.

It's been 13 days since my last entry. And I missed my own one-year LJ anniversary, which was apparently on the 15th. However, I did start writing a Twelfth Night fanfic, because my school did a performance of it and I was pissed that Shakespeare never told us what happened to Antonio. It's not like you can go ask the guy what he was planning to write, since he's (sadly) several centuries dead.

On the plus side, I'm coping well with sleep deprivation, and I finally have a list of colleges I'm applying to. Homecoming pictures will also be scanned and available to my flist as soon as I get them developed. I had a red vintage dress that was very sassy and fun, and I cut my hair to mid-neck.

I'm not thinking about the election. I'm not worrying and losing sleep. I'm not thinking about the 4 hours of campaign volunteering I still need to do sometime between now and Nov. 2, while writing several papers and going to Houston and RenFest. *smacks self* Most definitely am not worrying about my total lack of life and love interest.

******

A Conversation Following Yoga, Between Myself and the Evil Twin, While Severely Whacked Out On Endorphins and Blood Oxygen:

Dad: Okay, so we're getting breakfast tacos for dinner. And ya'll can have some fruit, so it's remotely healthy. I think we have some bananas.
Me: Bananas with breakfast tacos? You really have no taste buds, do you?
Lindsey: It's the cigarettes.
Me: Ya know, those grow back in a couple of days, or a week, after you stop smoking. Same thing with the cilia in your lungs.
Lindsey: Ah, but cancer is forever.
Me: *giggles madly* (starts humming the DeBeers diamond song) And then, you can have a silouhette with, like, a lump....
Lindsey: *can't breathe*
Dad: (to Mom) Aren't we so glad they went to yoga tonight?
Me: But I have oxygen in my brain. It's very exciting. Aren't you excited?
Mom: *snarky sideways look, with excellent use of eyebrows*

Ah, dinner discussions. My family takes them to whole new levels of randomness.

******

MEME! (gacked from copperbadge
Reply to this entry with whatever is in your cut/paste buffer. Just click on the "reply" link and do a paste into the resulting box. No cheating!

Happy birthday, apocalypsos!!!

Thanks for the snark, the schizophrenic Q&A reviews, the hilarious work stories (I laugh while I can, for I don't have a job yet), the communities for crossover addicts, the random links to strange and unusual things, and the Boo icons. Here's to another year of being metaquotes's Most Wanted ;)

*****

In other news, I got to go spelunking today at my internship. It was nasty, smelly, cramped, oxygen-deprived, and SO MUCH FUN! I think I could have started a garden with all the dirt in my jeans....

It's started to smell like fall at last.

For some reason, I always connect fall with a sense of potential. It's probably an effect of the school year, but fall begins and spring ends, despite nature's contradiction. It might be an effect of TV pilots, because I get the same tingle with new shows (or the echo of it while rewatching old ones).

So, I'm rather sad that none of the new shows this have the tingle-potential. Usually I can feel the good ones coming when I read about them, like static in my stomach. I'll have to resort to Smallville S1 reruns and my Firefly DVDs just to remember. There are some genre midseason shows that have promise, but they're very far off, and I'm wondering if I've become jaded.



This ramble was brought to you by Livia's Twenty-One, and by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which needs an essay tomorrow that I Can't. Bloody. Write.