Flutterings

From photoblogging

My birthday was excellent. I sang at two services; helped make sandwiches for delivery to flood survivors; took a long nap; read parts of the New York Times; and went to a local bar for a cocktail and steak tartare. I wore a silk dress I'd found via eBay and earrings from xanthophyllippa.

There were funny cards and lovely messages and notices of donations to Second Harvest and other charities. And there were poems and fic, too!

maribella008 sent me "Phantom Yardstick," a Safin/Berdych drabble. (For you non-tennis people: think Sirius Black and, uh, the love-child of Viktor Krum and Luna Lovegood? *ducks* Put another way: Marat has a reputation as one of the hottest and craziest elite players. Tomas is five years younger - practically a generation in tennis-years - is arguably attractive, looks bug-eyed when he wears his damn caps, and has a reputation as a flake.) (For you tennis slashers: yes, there's literally a long story behind this. No, I'm not going to explain or share it right now.)

brit_columbia posted a poetic portrait of a bull in celebration of our Taurean-ness

geri_chan dedicated episodes 13 and 14 of Unmasked (her Haru wo Daiteita series) to me, giving my favorite character (Yoshizumi) considerable screen time and goosing along my OTP in her Comeback-verse (Yoshizumi/Kenzaki).

*happy flailing*

Oh, and I finally finished the FAKE one-shot I'd started as a one-nighter nine days earlier: The Ties That Do Not Bind. (Dee/Ryo, 2300 words, NWS, handcuffs)

Monday morning, microcosms tweeted one of my poems.

The rest of the week has been a blur of volunteering, working, coughing, scrubbing, and plotting (Snupin remix assignment; the next scene of Not as Dumb; other poems and stories I have no business teasing into existence until I finish the ones already in progress). There's been a little bit of tennis-watching (the end of Gulbis-Federer and most of Murray-Ferrer) and some poetry-dipping (A.E. Stallings's Seasonal Anxiety reminded me of the academics among you).

The game plan for next week: edit like a fiend and take a walk every day. That's it. (There will be paperwork I can't ignore and poems I'll want to draft, but this is me telling my hamster-wheel brain to take a break from its ceaseless self-badgering about Things That Will Still Be There To Do/Make/Encourage a week from now.)

In spite of being a rational, "it's just a number" gal 99.13% of the time, I'm admittedly somewhat freaked out about a Certain Birthday being less than a month away. ( So, to tell my subconscious to SHUT UP ALREADY... )

... but the ultimate point of this list is that these treasures shouldn't stay confined to my hodgepodge of archives and memories; if by linking to them I can spark new connections, commissions, and/or gleeful mayhem among all y'all -- or just provide you with an extra bit of sparkle or comfort to your day -- that will make me very happy indeed.

( 40 splendid creations )

In short: network of awesome. And now I gotta get back to hammering away at my own stuff... :-)

Open Palm Press has been producing a series of pocket-sized poetry booklets for Haiti relief. #10 in the series consists of three poems by me: "Drop," "Portion," and "Assignment."

The cost is $3 per copy; please click here for details on how to place an order. Thanks!

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My minister is a great pastor overall, but she does have her blind spots: I encountered one of them this past Sunday when, in her sermon, she spoke with pity of someone whose social life was primarily online rather than in the "real" world.

*sigh*

It's easy to point out where the disconnects stem from: the minister is around 15-20 years older than me and an extrovert. Her job depends on her being able to interact with people face-to-face at will 24/7 with equanimity, no matter how unreasonable some of those people can be. (This is something I really wish more people considering div school would get asked sooner rather than later: in my experience, too many of them aren't realistic about the demands of providing pastoral care.)

Whereas my own work depends on me spending a lot of time alone, and that's how I prefer it. I do have a decent set of social skillz - this week, I started/sustained a fair number of conversations during Sunday's coffee hours, chaired a meeting, attended two lunches and a wine tasting, and have a third lunch date lined up for tomorrow. I would've gone to movies with the BYM Sunday night if I hadn't fallen asleep.

But these are equally "real," in my book: Trading snark and squee with another tennis junkie over the ongoing mishegoss that is Indian Wells. (Short version: Nadal looking great, how did I end up rooting for Nico over Blake, and davai Elena!) The box of gorgeous tea that just arrived in the mail, from a longtime Snape/Lupin-and-now-manga copine. Postcards from St Kitts, South Africa, downtown Seattle... The gift-card-as-casserole another longtime Snupin friend sent when my mother died two years ago today, along with literally dozens of condolence notes from others. The acquaintances and strangers who quote and rec not only my fics but my poems (and sometimes my rants, eep). The fun of being generous in like wise to others. The quiet satisfaction of volunteer work done late at night and behind the scenes so that old texts and new stories reach more people.

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I enjoyed reading Ivan Ljubicic's perspective about various aspects of playing on the ATP tour. As a fan of both Roger and Rafa, I loved the opening:

The people on tour are different than they were 15 years ago. You see more players doing so much more fitness. I remember coming into the locker room 10-15 years ago and guys would be talking about other sports and now if you want to survive you have to be focused 100 percent. That's what Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal have done for our sport as they are asking 100 percent out of all of us. If you are not totally committed, you can't even play with them, and I'm not even talking about beating them, I'm talking about how ridiculous you would look out there if you are not playing your best and totally there mentally because you can't even compete.

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The current haul from the library includes a concert recording of Chess (the one with Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and Adam Pascal as the leads), Tired of Being Tired (like my tangent above, I don't truly expect it to say much of anything new to me, but seeing old truths in different type is sometimes the kick my brain needs to get out of its ongoing ruts), and Posy Simmonds's Tamara Drewe, blurbed as a graphic-novel retelling of Far from the Madding Crowd (my favorite Thomas Hardy novel).

But before I get to any of those: thank-you notes, housework, spreadsheets, several hundred more words, and a long walk (or at least twenty minutes involving some variation of situps). Onward!

I'd planned to have my snapshots properly organized and captioned before posting about my awesome afternoon with etrangere last Friday, but that's not going to happen before I'm back stateside (reasons include being behind on work, getting ridiculously lost in Reims, and the fact that I'll be looking for a hotel room at the last minute tomorrow because there's a train strike planned and I'm waiting to see if it affects my schlep to Strasbourg). Likewise with catching up on comments - they are very much appreciated, and I'll do my best to get back on track and in touch after I'm home.

In the meantime, here's some interim indecent gloating: I got to meet etrangere! And in addition to being brilliant and friendly and patient, she very good-humoredly led me to an assortment of bookstores offering secondhand manga -- none of which had v. 4-7 of the French edition of FAKE, as it happened, but some other goodies separated me from my Euros nonetheless (including a French edition of X/1999, tome 13 that later set off two sets of metal detectors at Centre Georges Pompidou.

One of the stores (Little Tokyo, I think) had a corner heaped with Totoro swag, which instantly reminded me of geri-chan...as did the characters on the storefront of another shop down the block:

From Europe 2009 - set 10

From Europe 2009 - set 10

(Click images to view the Catbus and Totoros up close!)

Other fannish notes:( thumbnails under the cut )

Busaikko-san, you are a NUT. And I freaking adore you. Domo arigato gozaimasu!!!

(A surprise package showed up today. From Japan. Its treasures include a squid-mobile. Photo TK!)

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Writing log
LJ-springkink fic: finally broke past the paragraph I'd been pummelling into existence the past two days. 935 words today + some new insights on canon + several hours of research ...and an unexpected OMC, who ended up being a major reason the additional research became necessary. (And most of it won't even appear in the story -- it's just me wanting my timelines and schedules to correspond at least glancingly with canon and reality.) Seriously - 652 words in, I tried to put some words into a canon character's mouth, but they didn't ring true, and I couldn't think of anyone else who would say them -- and then the OMC suddenly sauntered into the scene with both a name and a personality, and the dialogue's got the right snap to it again, and his presence sorts out some other plot issues I hadn't dealt with yet, but ACK, this started out as a short fluffy PWP and so far there's been one belt unbuckled. Why have I not learned to run like hell whenever a prompt crooks its finger at me and asks, "Got a minute?"?

Yuletide fic: wrote the first half of the first line last night. The assignment is very well-suited to me, and yet it's something I wouldn't prompt myself into writing on my own, so yay algorithm!

It came to pass that, amidst a fearsome deluge of work and chores, a shriek of unbridled joy was heard in the land. For a package suddenly arrived contained swathes of shininess, from which emerged early birthday greetings and a wondrous creature fashioned by none other than the marvelous Marion:


(click on image to view larger version of photograph)

After emitting aforementioned shriek, Ribbons reluctantly returned to careening around in circles and hopping through hoops, but not before introducing her newest housemate to one of its more sedate companions-to-be:



:-D :-D :-D Thank you, aunty_marion! :-D :-D :-D

My sinuses currently feel like they're the size of pumpkins. Intelligent design my foot.

Also have another hour of work I have to log in before I can go to bed. *grumble*

That said, on the eight night of Christmas, my true love stopped by my sofa, handed me three Lego keychains -- one of Dumbledore, one of Hagrid, and one of Hermione -- and said, "I looked for your favorites, but they weren't in stock."

*still grinning from ear to ear*