Malfoycentric - Malfoy, Any Malfoy

It's not so easy to make a post when you haven't posted in a while because suddenly there's all those things you've wanted to talk about, all those posts you never made because you were lazy/busy/sick/whatever, the ones you typed only "telepathically" (like, you know, the "telepathic" comments I suppose we all tend to make to other people's posts without actually making them, so people never know we did read their posts and had something to say. Erm. It's not only me who does that, is it?)

Anyway, no point talking at once about all the things I wanted to post about in the last ten days or most likely couple of months, it would just make for tl;dr. So I'll just stick to something I've been thinking about today, prompted by something accioslash said about her OTPs in her post here: "With an OTP I go in convinced of the rightness of the pairing and fully expect to love the fic." The post is actually about reccing but I was thinking about that particular statement and how for me it's usually the opposite. Although... it depends.

( Read more... )

Anyway. This was just my thoughts in a jumble. So I'm not sure if there was somewhere I was getting at with all this. But anything anyone might have to say about your reading habits regarding your favourite pairings/OTPs - like, if you're a more or a less picky reader when it comes to pairings you like or anything else you want to say - I'd love to hear it. This subject would probably make for an interesting poll if only I had an idea what kind of options to include. ;)

You have no idea how long I've been waiting for a picture for which I could use that caption. Not the portrait I anticipated, but Lil took this out in the park last week.

( Cute overload )

I've just finished watching the service at the Cenotaph on tv.   I'm surprised at how emotional it was for me.   My grandparents were too young to fight in the war - they were only just in their teens when WWII ended, and my great-grandfather was a miner, so whilst he still contributed to the war effort, he didn't see active service.   My grandfather did his national service with the RAF, but that was in the 50's, and my cousin was in the Navy, out in the Gulf during the Afghanistan and Iraq conflcts, but he was lucky in that no-one he knew was killed, and he left the Navy a few years ago.   I am sure some relatives must have fought during major conflicts, but they would be distant ones.   Still, watching it really got to me this year.  I am lucky that my parents raised me with awareness of our history and the conflicts we have been engaged in, and the bravery that those involved demonstrated, and so I have always appreciated what people have done in order to preserve our country and our freedom. 

I suppose, same as last year, I dislike how some people just don't seem to care.   At the start of the service they showed a list of the British soldiers who have died in the last year, and their ages.   The majority were teenagers or in their early twenties.   The youngest person to die in WWI was 14.   I am 23 and I could not show the courage which people of my age have been showing over the last century.   And yet, some people will keep going on about how this is an illegal war and they don't support it, and so they won't buy a poppy.   That isn't what a poppy is for.   I do not support war, I feel that if we are threatened we should fight to preserve our country, but we shouldn't fight to gain something, just to defend.   However, I seperate the war issue, to the soldier issue.   I agree with the current war, in some ways, and disagree with it in other ways.   But I  unconditionally support the soldiers fighting, for they are doing what they believe to be right for their country.   And I will show my recognisation and appreciation of what past generations have done also.   I am just disappointed that a lot of people in my area think boycotting what the Royal Legion are doing is a way of protesting against the war.

Mia and Kaya visit the Goodrich site

Woke up early today to have breakfast at one of our favorite restaurants, Dan's then head as a family to get our eyes checked. I haven't seen the optometrist in 3 years which with my prescription is not wise to do but my eyesight's not changed much. I can usually tell when my eyesight's going and for the past three years, I haven't had any problems. It's been pretty awesome actually.

My checkup today confirmed what I knew, very mild change (basically just needing the letters to be a bit sharper) so a new set of glasses was in order. Since the plan covers new frames every 2 years, it was a good idea to get a new pair. He did caution me to be more careful with my eyes though because my retina's very thin. Torn or detached retina is not a good thing so I need to make sure to keep up with my annual checkups and go in immediately if I see shadows, spots or "flashes" in my eyesight.

The big change this year though came from learning that orlando_mcnally would need glasses as well. He's never needed glasses but has been complaining for a few weeks that his eyes were bothering. He's had one eye that's been worse than the other after a car accident we had ten years ago where the airbag deployed but exploded at the same time and the powder inside went into his eye. Since then, he's had some deterioration in his eyesight. Now, the other eye, that's been compensating for the "poor" one is starting to show signs of fatigue. He has astigmatism in the "poor" eye and a slight loss in the other one. I helped him pick out a pair of glasses and I have to say, I'm rather fond of them. I love men in glasses! They're sexy! ;)

Daughter got contacts this year. She's not happy. She didn't want them but really, I had to get them for her if she was going to get a new prescription this year. She doesn't qualify for new frames because of the plan (sucks) and I can't send her glasses away (her only pair) to have the new lenses put in so I decided to go with what she qualifies for now which are contact lenses. She can now do Karate and PT for ROTC without worrying about knocking her glasses off and believe me, that's a big deal for us! She's abused her glasses so badly in one year that they've fallen apart several times already. She put in the contacts (after many tries) and hates them. She doesn't like anything in her eye. When she got home, she took them off and won't wear them again. I will have to force her to wear them later to make her eyes adjust to them. I don't always know what's best for her, but this I'm sure of. She needs to be in contacts and she needs to get used to them. So Mom's going to be a pain about it, that's just the way it is!

It's a lazy Saturday and I really should be cleaning (mopping at the very least) but I really don't want to do anything but go to the movies (maybe) or take a nap. I'd love to see Christmas Carol but Mom and Sis want to go and Hubby's working. Meh... I may take the kids anyway. If we don't see Christmas Carol we can go laugh at Cirque Du Freak.

This evening the lovely alisanne was in town, so we met up for dinner and tea and much chatter of fandom and other topics.  It was quite a nice time. 
Now I must prepare for my weekend adventure in Austin, plus try to make some progress on my art coming due.

Just a few points today:

• My final grade for school posted today and I'm ecstatic that it was a 98.5% it brought my GPA up to 3.8 which is still shy of honors but not by much. I can't even begin to tell you how great it feels to be done with school.


• Found a loaner Blackberry at work so I'm not without a phone this weekend. A new one's been ordered for me so it's only temporary but the poor thing is so old it has the Cingular logo on it. Hehehehe. It gets my email and I can get text and make calls so it's good for now.


• Mom finally caved and signed up for a 2-year contract with T-Mobile. She's been month to month for close to 10 years. I kid you not! In that time she's paid bills ranging from $140 to $210 but wouldn't sign a contract. I could not get her to budge. Today, she finally agreed and we got new phones and added the daughter to the plan.


• Tonight is family game night so we're waiting for orlando_mcnally to come home from his Poker gig to play. I should've taken a nap like I usually do. It's usually a late night.


• I'm going to search for silver and green Christmas decorations tomorrow. It's a Slytherin year. If you'd like to send me Christmas decorations this year in lieu of cards, I would greatly appreciate it.


• My medical benefits have gone up for next year but I had to choose the non-deductible plan. The plan I have now is $500 family deductible and we haven't even met that this year and it's NOVEMBER. Plan premium's gone up by $100 per month, at least I'm hoping it's per month and not biweekly or I'm going to have a coronary.

Off to finish plotting the Harry/Draco fic. I actually added 500 words to it yesterday! Yay me!

What is it that makes Felicity collectors so fricking insane?

Who on earth pays $239 for a set of plastic food? Or even thinks anyone else would pay that?

I went up to Concord with my mother, to apply at a certain apartment complex. We also went to the Dept. of Education because she had to pick something up there. A lot of the state offices are housed in the old State Hospital grounds. A sprawling, redbrick and white gingerbread trim, notoriously haunted example of Victorian creepiness.

I'd like to go back some time and get lots of good pictures.

After a week and a half of pulling our hair out and shaking angry fists towards Luxembourg, we finally got back to what we should've been doing all along -- promoting this bloody Show! Yes, free publicity, RTL, why do you make this so hard?

The situation's not ideal by any means. Instead of capturing clips directly from the video stream like we used to, now we're stuck spending literally hours on screencaptures. It's totally draining -- the RTL player is, quite frankly, crap. Everytime it stalls, I have to rebuffer and restart the recording. On about a third of the files the soundtrack comes out wonky. And even at its best, the quality is jerky because it is, after all, a string of screencaps. THANK GOD THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE REUNION!

Still! We posted episode* and we're getting comments again (they are like a drug, I tell you!) and I'm going to sit here and drink wine and spam like whoa. And if I have enough wine, I just might make a defiant "you can't take the Show sky from me" vid.

Hope you're all ready for an awesome weekend!


* This episode was nabbed before we left for Germany; it's not representative of the new stuff we're getting. You'll know what I mean when you see those in a few days. Boy, will you know what I mean.

...you know better than to go snooping around prompt communities.

*headdesk*

Seriously. *points to header*

Her delicious header and tweaked coding to make it work properly.

*smooches qafmaniac*

Tuesday morning I took Truck to town. It was one of those do-it-now impulses that I am prone to, and I reasoned that 9am on a weekday morning would probably give me the least amount of traffic to contend with. (Not that there's much traffic out here at any time. If I pass three cars on that road it rates as rush hour.) There are some curves on the winding road down into town that I don't even like in the Toyota, since they don't have a shoulder and there is a steep drop on the outside. However, I reminded myself that Truck is only six inches wider than the Toy, and off I went. No problem. I drove to town, turned around in the museum parking lot, and came back--for a total round trip excursion of twelve miles. Now I feel a lot more relaxed about driving the thing.

This morning I bagged Chuck's three-piece suits for the trash. He worked for IBM for 17 years and I worked for Xerox for 18. When we moved up here, we both brought along our suits, and I packed my high heels as well. Naturally we never wore any of it, but who was to know? My suits are still in boxes in storage, somewhere, but his suits were hanging in the closet covered with a film of dust. They were beautiful wool suits, and Chuck got them from a Hong Kong clothier who was recommended to him by another IBMer. We called the guy Hong Kong Harry. He came to the Los Angeles area every six months or so and took a motel room. Customers came into have their measurements taken, selected what fabric they wanted, and handed over a check. About a month later some absolutely gorgeous wool suits showed up in the mail.

I kept putting off doing anything with the suits, telling myself that I could offer them to the local Little Theatre group, or maybe recycle the cloth. Some women do that; cut their husband's old clothes up into largish squares and sew them together into comforters. I finally faced the fact that I was never going to do either of those things, so away they go. It has only taken me nine months.

As some of you know, yesterday included a trip to the vampires and some of the usual testing. So, yeah, that tires me out anyway. But then, one of my closest friends called upset and in tears.

Let me say, cancer sucks.

Five years ago, she had to have a hysterectomy because of cancer. This past summer she finally hit her 5-year clear mark. Then yesterday she found out she has breast cancer.

Talk about a slap in the face. *sighs*

So, anyway. My mood still sucks. I can hold onto pissiness like nobody else. But, for Michi, I'm trying to let it go and be upbeat and what have you. We'll see how that works out.

Thanks for the emails. I didn't respond to them all, as some of you told me not to and for once I listened. But they did mean a lot. So, yeah, thanks for that.

The master list for qaf_scavenger's Fall Contest is up. Lots of icons, headers, vids, and fic... even a few from me. ;)

Go read, look, watch and leave everyone some love!

The master list is up for the QAF Challenges weather/vacation challenge. So, yeah, I can claim my ficlet. *g*

Title: One More Dance
Written By: the_minx_17
Timeline: Early S2
Rating: G
Author's Notes: Thanks to leela_cat for the beta. Boys and all their baggage belong to Queer as Folk and are the property of Russell T. Davies, CowLip Productions, Tony Jonas Productions, Showtime Networks Inc. and others. No copyright infringement is intended. Written for the QAF Challenges weather/vacation challenge.

( Whoever said sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain… )


Can real life please sit down and shut up so I can go and read the other posts. *headdesk*

( I could have gone on about the weather ... but that gets old )

( No point in ranting about writing, you've read it all before )

( How about some fic recs? )

( Seeing my nearest and dearest soon )

( DVD-watching )

Sinks back into sloth.

So much for posting every day. Nothing to say, no time to think about fannish things. Just stagger from one meeting to the next and one job to the next. If I have to suffer through one more SWOT meeting (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) I will scream. Same people say the same things every year. BORING and POINTLESS.

Weather has been nice. No horrible diseases yet. Not watching any new series this season so don't have to worry about spoilers. Need a new book to read. The history I'm wading through now is too heavy for my brain.

Mass shooting at Fort Hood.

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone this touches.

Today = Teh Suck.

See you all tomorrow.

Unless it sucks too.

Talk about having a bad day! I was feeling achy yesterday afternoon and by 3 o'clock I knew I needed to leave the office if I was going to make it home in one piece. The aches are arthritic, I know this and I get them from time to time when the barometric pressure changes so not overly concerned but I know that if I don't get home, take some painkillers and lie down, I end up feeling like the Tin Man. Anyway, got home, took meds, crawled into bed and slept for an hour. Felt better and even got to watch the full Yankees/Phillies game (GO YANKS!) before my head started to ache. Took an ibuprofen and went to bed. Forgot that I'd left my unfinished coffee on my bedside table and fell promptly asleep.

Alarm goes off at 5:30 and my head is reeling. I can barely open my eyes in the almost black room (I keep all the curtains closed off real tight) and reach for the Blackberry to snooze the alarm. I do so, put it back in the cradle and go back to sleep. 10 minutes later, the snooze goes off and I decide that I should really just call in. Reaching for the Blackberry with one eye open, I find that I've dunked it in my coffee cup. Yes, I'm a dork! Panicked, I sit up fast which did not help my headache ONE BIT and take the phone into the bathroom where the light almost knocks me over. Migraine! Lovely! I try to dry it off with my hairdryer with cool air (thank God for that feature or I'd fry the phone) but it's no use. I can still hear a bit of the coffee swishing around inside. Dammit!

I try to wake my daughter up (as it's now past 6:10 and she needs to be at the bus stop by 6:30) and find she's in pain too. Lower back, beginnings of a UTI. She's had so many of them we can diagnose her without medical intervention, I kid you not. No fever but achy. I go back to my bed, wake hubby to help her and explain that I have to e-mail my bosses and let them know I won't be in today. While he helps her get into the bathroom and take a shower (usually helps her muscles that atrophy from her trying to adjust in her sleep to avoid the pain) I e-mail my bosses and the Telecomm lady to let know that the 3rd Blackberry I've had in 2 years, needs to be replaced AGAIN. Thankfully, she's got a sense of humor and knows my pain so she just laughed and said she'd order me a new one.

Thing is, I don't have another phone. Hubby uses my T-Mobile phone and he decided to pick up a gig go play Poker during the day so he's off doing that while daughter and I are at home, achy without a phone. At least, I can e-mail people and post LJ entries like this one.

I swear some days I wonder why I even bother rolling out of bed!

And for those who need to know how to salvage your wet phone, enelya_oronar sent me this DIY link. Which I hope helps. Blackberry's submerged in rice can right now.