Severus Big Bang Birthday Bash

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'm taking Faeon, Chad and Patrick out to a nice buffet, then coming home to wildly throw things into a suitcase. I leave for Loscon in Los Angeles tomorrow morning (and because of the logistics of getting me to the airport, Faeon will have to drive me out to an airport hotel tonight). From there I'm going straight to Austin for SMOFcon. I'll have my laptop, of course, so I won't be entirely without the internet - not sure I could survive that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To all my dear friends celebrating Thanksgiving I hope you have a wonderful holiday!



"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you', that would suffice." ~Eckhart von Hochheim

Title: San Diego Marriott Hotel
Challenge: snape100 challenge 309: Wikipedia, Redux I got this
Author: fancypantsdylan (on LJ as rage_jt)
Pairing: Harry/Severus
Word Count: 200
Summary: Harry and Severus go on holiday (awful summary but hey *shrugs *)
Rating: R
Beta: katiebell_0408
Disclaimer: All characters owned by JK Rowling, I just play with them. No profit made on use of characters.

Title: My Son/Part 8
Author: lilyseyes
Prompt: thematic_hp - Round 7 – Vows and life debts, Prompt #30. Severitus – Snape knows he is Harry’s father, but his desperate attempts to gain custody fail. He vows that even if he cannot tell Harry who he is, he will always protect his son.
Pairing: None
Rating: R for the warnings
Word Count: +/- 5200
Warnings: *Mentions of child abuse and child selling, manipulative!Dumbledore*
Author's Notes: This story took off on its own journey, choosing its own way – this is a WIP that will be updated as real life allows.
Betas: whitecotton and the_minx_17

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

( Part 8 )

( WriSoMiFu Day 26 - Everything I Needed to Know About Life, I Learned from Harry Potter )

Title: Gratifying
Author/Artist: alisanne
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Challenge: Written for harry100's prompt #59: Quidditch
Rating: PG
Length: 100
Warnings: None that I am aware of.
Summary: There are parts of Quidditch that Severus actually enjoys.
Beta: sevfan
Notes: It's been a rough week, so you get silliness. This is dedicated to unbroken_halo. You know why. ♥
Disclaimer: The characters contained herein are not mine. No money is being made from this fiction, which is presented for entertainment purposes only.

( Gratifying )

First, the feast preparations are underway!

• The turkey, all 21 # of him, are brining happily in the cooler outside. It was so freshly... uh... processed it needed a thorough rinsing, then it's soaked overnight in salty ice water. In the morning, I'll push rosemary under the skin, and stuff it loosely with lemon rinds and onions just for flavour. The stuffing gets baked seperately, which makes it lighter. and the bird cooks faster and more evenly.
• For classic stuffing I use Pepperidge Farm brand and enhance it with sauted onion, celery, turkey stock, butter. Maybe mushrooms. And cracked green peppercorns.
• For a green veggie: Roasted brussel sprouts
• My Irish housemate makes divine mashed potatoes to go with my awesome gravy.
• Houseguest from NC is making baked Delicata squash, low-sugar apple pie and cranberry-apricot sauce.
• We also have pumpkin ice cream to embellish that pie.

And now, for some gratitude.
I am incredibly grateful for my warm and beautiful home, a place people want to be. I am blessed with wonderful friends, nearby and all over (**hugs you!**).  I have wonderful animal companions whom I adore. I am grateful for the time I have had away from work, to recover , to look ahead, to plan and prepare for much-needed change. Many blessings come to me from the amazing passion and creativity of my friends and colleagues. I love all the inspiration, entertainment, amusement, motivation, stimulation and challenge your art, writing, music and healing work brings into my life.I am grateful for my parents and grandparents, (all deceased) from whom I received so many gifts. I treasure the intellect, imagination, talent and passion you gave to me. I love the land I walk on, the food that grows in her, the river that waters us, the trees, flowers, vines, grasses, berries, briars, wild irises, underwater grasses that make this world so soft and green and beautiful. I cherish the animals I love with in these wild woods, the deer, possum, fox, racoons, chipmonks, squirrels, weasels, otters and mice. I am in awe of the birds, from the enormous bald eagles to the tiny hummingbirds, the herons, ducks, geese, cormorants, coots, grebes, grackles, crows, vultures, osprey, seagulls, warblers thrushes and wrens, I love you all. Even the crawly and flying things... for every nasty bloodsucking mosquito there is a Luna moth or swallowtail butterfly, an irridescent beetle, a colorful caterpiller, a dazzling dragonfly. Even the spiders are awesome.

May you all have a day filled with blessings.

1) I'm grateful for my family, friends, and pets. (hugs f-list)
2) I am glad to be able to help prepare a big meal for family tomorrow.
3) I'm grateful to the stock people at the store who work for corporations and not the grocery chain that were smiling, happy and helped the short person reach things.
4) I am glad to be able to pay most of my bills on time.
5) I'm grateful to have one of the girls home for this holiday, even if she does leave the house lights on at all hours.

~~

So, what are you all grateful for this week?

I went to my appointment and discovered I'd have to go through another CT scan. This means more barium sulfate, the evil of all evils.

The last time I was scheduled to have that kind of scan, the lady that set up the appointment (and gave me the nasty-stinky chalkdrinks barium sulfate) said, "Do you like fruit smoothies? This is JUST like a fruit smoothie!". Obviously someone who hadn't actually tried the stuff. It is the most overwhelmingly foul-smelling, gross-tasting stuff ever. I took apple and let me tell you, it took me a YEAR to be able to even eat real apples again. I still can't touch apple juice.

Last time I had to take two large bottles of the barium sulfate (I refuse to call them smoothies) one at night and one the next morning, followed by ANOTHER large glass of the foul stuff right before I took the scan. Almost as soon as the thing started moving I felt so horribly sick. I just barely managed to keep from throwing up all over the scanner. I spent the next few days vomiting everything back up and getting completely dehydrated. It took nearly a week on nothing but liquids to get back to normal. GAH.

I don't want to do it again. :( And the lady this time said it would be better than the NEXT test I have to do on Dec 23rd -- the colonoscopy. Only liquids and no red and purple or it'll look like blood. :S urgh, it was a creepy thought.

December is going to be one big nightmare for me, now. I'm feeling stressed out at the prospect of my CT scan on Dec. 2nd. It's not helping that I'm beginning to worry if I'll manage to finish the Snarry Swap piece. I really want to finish it in time, but if I end up spending much of that first week and a half of December being too sick to even get to the computer, I don't know if I'd manage to get it done. I only have a few days before the CT scan now and that's not much time at all. I'm going to try really hard to finish it, but gods, I'm regretting even going in to set up the colonoscopy.

I also have new medication. Do not want. :( *sigh*

Title: True Sincerity
Author: alisanne
Rating: PG
Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy
Summary: Draco masters sincerity, with a little incentive.
Word Count: 100
Challenge: Written for draco100's prompt #68: Giving Thanks
Warnings: Fluffyness abounds.
A/N: Yay fluff.
Beta: sevfan
Disclaimer: The characters contained herein are not mine. No money is being made from this fiction, which is presented for entertainment purposes only.

( True Sincerity )

As Advent approaches, I'd like to draw your attention to adventdrabbles, a multi-fandom drabble/drawble/ficlet com. We operate all through Advent.

So if you're looking for a low-pressure com to write or draw for in the holiday season, do check out my 2009 Welcome Post, and come and play with us (that may not have come out right...) *g*

I thought I'd share my recipe for sweet potatoes with everyone. They are always a favorite at our table.

( Apple Pecan Sweet Potatoes )

Title: Always Hungry
Author: alisanne
Prompt: Written for harryron100's prompt: Hungry
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Category/Warnings: Romance, schmoop.
A/N: Yes, I like to use this last line to poke JK in the eye, why do you ask? *g*
Beta: sevfan
Disclaimer: The characters contained herein are not mine. No money is being made from this fiction, which is presented for entertainment purposes only.

( Always Hungry )

Title: Quidditch Predictions
Author: fancypantsdylan
Pairing: Harry/Severus
Word Count: 2 x 100
Summary: Harry makes a bet with Severus on a Quidditch game
Rating: R
Beta: katiebell_0408
Disclaimer: All characters owned by JK Rowling, I just play with them. No profit made on use of characters.
Challenge: harry100 challenge prompt 59 – Quidditch

Hmm. I'm not finding a couple of the blog posts I'd spotted yesterday, that aren't related to the adult privs checklist but were about child agency and the concept that kids, acting like kids, in public, is something the public should just deal with--kids are people, and age-appropriate behavior isn't something that should be kept out of sight of nonparents.

Some of these have fascinating comment threads. And by "fascinating," I mean "soaked in privilege and offensive as hell."

Related but not necessarily connected posts:
Nov 3, Noble Savage: On Child Hate and Feminism "Participating in child-bashing is participating in the oppression of a vulnerable group. … admitting that motherhood went from overrated to undervalued in 40 years flat isn’t something many of us want to acknowledge."

Oct 23, Look Left of the Pleiades: People who dance between tables "Having a need for age-specific support should not make anyone any less human."

Apr 23, Have A Lovely Time: I'm sorry, does my children's presence offend you? "HOW do you cope when your arrival leads to an immediate and sharp intake of breath from the other customers?"

Aug 8, Syracuse.com opinion blog: Discrimination against special needs is unacceptable "They had just as much a right to patronize that restaurant as anyone else. They deserved to be welcomed with respect and kindness. This was not the case." (Does not mention whether younger children without disabilities would be equally accepted.)

Adult Privilege Sound-off:
Nov 24, Dr. Helen: Your right to bring your screaming child on a plane ends where the rest of our ears begin. "If a kid does not understand how to act in certain settings, teach him or her or don't put them in that setting until they are older. The world will be a better (and quieter) place."

Nov 24, Tim Cavanaugh at Reason: No Child's Left Behind "here is (very unscientific) evidence that spanking is poised for a comeback" (With special bonus racism in the comments!)

April 8, Guardian: There comes a time when you want to live without children "To buy a property in the village, you have to be 45-plus with no dependent family in tow, and you must sign a contract agreeing not to sell property on to those with children."

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284210.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

It's the day before Thanksgiving and I have some sort of stomach bug. I've been in and out of the bathroom ever since I woke up this morning. I have a borderline migraine to top it all off, and I still have to go to work. I've got a nine and a half hour shift to pull. I hope this day doesn't get any worse. I was up until midnight baking pies and making assorted side dishes to take to my mother in-law's tomorrow, because, as usual, I had to work yesterday. I didn't get home last night until almost 7:30 in the evening. I'm exhausted. I won't be online tomorrow until in the evening, after we get home.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I'm dropping out of my own fest, how pathetic is that?
Well, not entirely, I have a short fic finished which I'll post.
But the longer fic... there is no way that I could finish that without rushing it. I don't want to rush stories any more. It gave me a lot of trouble, made me all insecure (there's that movie that seemed to be similar in plot, but isn't, really), then I ran into a plot hole, one minor thing that stopped the thing from getting to a logical conclusion... and now I have all that, and now the time has passed.

Eek. I really don't know where this year went. I think my story has the potential to be decent, but not when I rush it. So I'll leave it, and hope to finish it, twist it, tweak it until it is how I want it.
Did I mention that I hate posting WIPs? This one will only be posted, if ever, when finished.
And before that, I'll finish my WIP of doom, which has been dormant long enough.
Sigh...

But: the Big Bang doesn't really need my entries, there are great entries coming our way, and wonderful art. So I'll most likely drop out of my photomaniping, too.

I may or may not find time to make a coherent post about this anytime soon. This one's important to me; the way we treat children in this country ranges from atrocity to tragedy. But it's late; I have to be up in five and a half hours (because, heh, one of my kids does not mesh well with public school). As a placeholder, have some linkspam:

Nov 16 @ Shut Up, Sit Down: Adult Privilege Checklist

Reading a post by Elena Perez at California NOW made me think about privilege checklists (like the Male Privilege Checklist and the White Privilege Checklist, for example) and I came to the realisation that, as yet, nobody had written an adult privilege checklist. So with some help from my good friend Jenny, using some of Elena Perez’s ideas from the aforementioned post, I set about writing the Adult Privilege Checklist.

Background; older posts:
April 13, Mothers For Women's Lib: You’ll never truly be “child free”

Oct 22, Raising My Boychick: Dancing between the tables: on the personhood of children

Nov 11, California NOW: Feminist Parenting: The Larger Picture

Nov 4, Left of the Pleiades: Dear Kate Harding

Reactions:
naraht: Adult privilege

hl: The Opression of Chilhood. In which I try for emotionless and hard analysis (and fail)

sqbr: Intersections of youth and other aspects of the kyriarchy

Saraspeaking: Mind. Blown.

flourish: Adult Privilege

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284122.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

( WriSoMiFu Day 25 - I need a vacation from my husband's vacation )