What part of "Head hurts. Tiny tribe of dwarves mining brain with pickaxes and hammers," is unclear? Specifically, what part of it sounds like "Go ahead, play with the lightswitch every time you walk up or down the hallway" -- a game with which I have very little patience on the best of days?

The downside of my current job is that I have to say that to my boss.

The upside of my current job is that I can say that to my boss in exactly those words, not get reprimmanded and recieve an apology and a cold can of coke as reparations.

And headache could be worse. Sure, I've got the light sensitivity going on and there are muscle spasms spreading down my neck, but at least I've only thrown up once so far. And the coke is helping with the nausea.

I'm still sulking, though, that now that my job involves supporting the engineers in State College, PA as well as the ones here in the office, that not a one of the bunch got the joke when I called myself their "Spooky Admin at a Distance."

Anybody who reads this in or around Northampton, MA? I'll be there the end of the month for Conbust, Smith College's sci fi convention. Err, Sean, I know you're there. AT least I hope so.

Gotten a bit of writing done.

I participated in the Dimension Shop CLAMP fic exchange this month -- all the fics had to be under 1,000 words. Which was rather difficult for me. I like to read myself type too much. It's a Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles ficlet, written to the prompts of 'first date' and 'misunderstanding.' I tried to go for humor -- you decide if I suceeded.

I also polished the ficlet I wrote for factorielle's birthday and posted it to the DoumekiWatanuki LJ community, even though it's more about a developing threesome. If you're curious, it's here.

Attention Drae, Kat, & Retsuko -

The deadline for the pay it forward meme thing is no doubt looming. I refuse to go back and see what it really is, because you never, ever look back to see if the things chasing you are about to catch you. Ever.

I'm not a very crafty person. I can crochet, though, and thought, hey, I'll just make everybody scarves... until I realized that some of you don't live in climates that ever require scarves. So I need some input from y'all on what you would like.

I've already made one scarf -- it's a black fringed yarn with little blurbits of blue and purple.



A close-up:



It is quite soft and pettable and doesn't bite, and would anybody like to have it? You might even get a matching hat, if I can convince it to be more hat-like and less round-lump like.

Otherwise... I can make other scarves, wraps, coasters... errr... if you have your heart set on a blanket, we can talk. Give me some idea of what you might like -- if you want something lacy and fancy or something more solidly constructed. And give me some color ideas... either a color pallet or some favorite shades. If you want to see some of what I've made, check out my Crochet Projects gallery in my scrapbook.

Because rallamajoop asked if I indeed possessed a beanie baby version of the Grim Reaper, I took a picture of he, his buddy the squishy brain, and a Smithee button that decorate part of my cubicle.



Beanie Death is the best office toy ever. Not only can you shake him in the general direction of people who piss you off, you can construct so many wonderful tableaux with him! He's graced the office Christmas tree. He's perched on the cubicle wall, with a fishing rod made of office supplies and a post-it note with a fish drawn on it dangling from his hand. He's been posed on people's phones, chairs, and computers.

I'd have named him Bill Door if anyone at work would have gotten the reference. My boss Jeff (who has never outgrown the urge to point his fingers at people down the hall and say "Bang!") calls him Skeletor. Which is ok, I guess, but I just call him Beanie Death.

Even odder than me, though, is a new person who will be starting with us Monday. I'll call him John, because that is his name. On first impression, John's a bit of a good ol' boy with a fair amount of charm -- which is good, as he's going to be doing mostly sales work for us. But dig a little deeper, and you'll discover that John is a conspiracy theorist.

He came into work on Friday to fill out his HR paperwork. He hasn't even started officially, and he's already scared me. Things were fairly normal until the topic of direct deposit came up.
At which point, he said he always cashed his checks, because he wasn't ready for a cashless society with bar codes and implants. Jeff pointed out the political pressure for a national ID card, and he replied along the lines of "Not gonna happen. Hillary isn't gonna become president."

From there, he went to the Illuminati. Seriously.

When yet another co-worker (the rather Christian guy) was trying to explain what the Illuminati were, and said they were trying to take over the world, Jeff said, "Like Hitler?"

And John replied that no, so far as he knew Hitler was only responsible for creating the New Age movement. With stuff he did with his girlfriend.

I was all adfa;hf;dahWTFWTFWTF. Didn't know if I wanted to laugh or cry. Jeff still wasn't getting the concept of the Illuminati, so I said that if anybody brought up the gnomes of Zurich, I was going to make silly faces at them.

I think I am already on John's 'not-favorite-people' list.

John has worked with several of my co-workers before. They were happy to tell me about his paranoia about the government, his conviction that UN would invade, and his belief that both Lincoln and Kennedy were assassinated because they planned to issue "US Government" currency and get rid of the "Federal Reserve" currency we have now. Because the Federal Reserve is controlled by foreign currencies.

slyon or dagoski, can one of y'all make me up a conspiracy theory bingo card? And we can take bets on how long it'll take me to get a John bingo.

While all of this seems fairly harmless and amusing, he was also the source of an e-mail that expounded on why Muslims can't be good Americans, so how can we possibly elect Barack HUSSEIN Obama, a Muslim, as president. When Jeff printed it out and showed it to me, that sent my blood pressure sky-high.

On the downside, he's probably the type who has a gun in his car. But as badmovie pointed out, at least he'd know how to use it.

This should be interesting.

Fic geekery post. Skip it if that's not your thing.

Two things. First, rallamajoop wrote me a fic set in my xxxHolic Incubi world. (Somehow she even managed to keep it rated PG – an impressive and somewhat baffling feat!) I thought that was the coolest thing in the world for her to do, and it's a highly amusing fic. Go read it here, and don't forget to tell her how cool it is.

So when rallamajoop generously threw open her Superhero AU. I simply couldn't resist playing in her sandbox. If you have soft spot in your heart for superhero comics, give her three snippets a whirl – you don't really need to know much about xxxHolic to enjoy them. You can find them at: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

So here's my fanfic of her fanfic:

Title: Spandex, Capes, and Cowlicks
Pairing: DoumekixWatanuki
Rating: Teen
Warnings: AU. Crossover. My sense of humor.
( Tune in this week )

Stolen from kyrielle

"If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you're finished, post this little paragraph in your journal and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you."

Frankly, I am more interested in seeing what you imagine we'd have gotten up to together.

And because I am sometimes way too impressed with my own cleverness, I will share two I've written.

The first, for Kyrielle, whom I've never met but I'm reasonably sure went to college in Iowa. Not the same colleges as me, though:

I remember crossing the Iowa tundra, in our dogsled pulled by three dozen Pomeranians -- "Everyone has huskies," you'd said. "Huskies are passe. Macho dogs for men compensating for undersized equipment. So Jack London. Besides, dogs with blue eyes are creepy. Pomeranians, that's the ticket! Massively distributed dogpower!"

I remember how the arctic winds in our face stole our breath -- stole a few toes, too, but we had some to spare in those halcyon days. It was just the bitter wind of an Iowa January, not the invigorating breeze of high-speed transit. Who could have known how important it was to only have one lead dog? And how inconsistent the hierarchies of 36 Pomeranians could be?

Not us, that was for sure. But at least we didn't have too far to walk back, and the distributed dogpower made for the toastiest dorm room north of Iowa City, and who could have asked for more?

And for Retsuko, whom I have also never met, but am sure would make a beautiful mad scientist, Thelma'n'Louise kinda team with me:

I was cleaning the closet, and came across an old picture of us from our grad school days. You in your your top hat and labcoat, me in my scuba gear and aviator goggles, posing with Flopsy across both of our shoulders. God, I loved that snake – to think he started out tiny little grass snake that wandered into the greenhouse. Then you had your advanced Genetic Enhancement lab. No one could resist the puppy-dog eyes and lop-ears you gave him. And he was so happy the day you finished grafting those wings on! He did loop-de-loops until he got sick, and threw up all the rats he'd eaten that week. Yuck.

If only I'd realized that I needed to put a cap on the growth serum I gave him. It wasn't his fault, really – he was just hungry, that's all. Nobody's ever gonna miss the Southwest Regional Junior High Marching Band, anyway. I remember how we cried when they made us put him down. Damn anthropocentric administrators!

So tell me how I misspent my imaginary youth with you, ok?

So. I took a nap this afternoon, and slept way longer than I expected to. But I had an amusing dream.

In the first part of my dream, I was wandering around this abandoned city. Some doors to houses were open and some were locked and there was no one else around and no clues as to where all the people were. So I wandered around, feeling very strange as I walked into other people's houses, and not feeling comfortable searching through their stuff.

So I walked into one house that had a tall wooden fence around the backyard, and in the kitchen is a guy and a gorilla. The gorilla is sitting at the kitchen table, and it looks like past him might be a door into the fenced-off yard, and a hallway into the rest of the house. But the gorilla won't let either the guy or I get past him. And we're not sure that it's worth trying to figure out a way past the gorilla, because we can't be certain whether there really is a door and what might be in the rest of the house.

I realize that if we had a mirror, we could use it to get a peek at what was past the gorilla, and the guy says, "Didn't you find the hand mirror in the earlier house?"

I said yes, I had, but I didn't want to steal someone else's hand mirror. I'd get in trouble.

The guy replies, "You idiot. You don't get in trouble in a game for taking stuff. You were supposed to take the hand mirror!"

He wandered off in high dudgeon at my idiocy. I hadn't realized we were in a computer game.

Later on in the dream, I'd found my way into a castle full of ghostly people who didn't really come fully into existence until you interacted with them in the proper way. I'd found my character's father, and gotten some instructions from him, but was kind of stuck on how to proceed, when I found the guy again.

The guy is still cranky and demands to know if I've gotten Corwin out of the puzzle box yet. (I had picked up a brass carved puzzle box, right out of Hellraiser, earlier on.) I reply that I didn't think I was supposed to let Corwin out of the puzzle box, as apparently he'd caused a whole bunch of trouble and that was why he'd been imprisoned there. The guy rolls his eyes and tells me that I have to let Corwin out of the puzzle box, he was the hero of IX, and I need him to win.

I protest that Dad said I shouldn't let Corwin out of the puzzle box, and the guy yells at me. "He's not your Dad, he's the villain of IX! How do you not know that?"

At least I was able to lord it over cranky guy that I'd figured out how to get past the Beholder thing. The trick was to put on the Veil, and to look at yourself in the mirror while wearing it. You'd realize you couldn't see your eyes, and then you could get past the Beholder without being Mindwiped.

Frankly, it was a pretty cool game my unconscious created... though I think you shouldn't have needed so much meta-game knowledge to win.

...because I just engaged in a massive exercise thereof, and I'd really hate to have sprained it.

If you don't care how I voted and why, feel free to skip the rest of this. It's all my being political.

The exercise in question was voting the Michigan Democratic Primary. Not because the media annointed two candidates front runners ludicrously early in the election process and by selective coverage gave those two a massive edge but -- for those not local -- because of internecine strife amongst the Democratic National Committee.

As of now, Michigan delegates to the National Convention will not be seated, effectively disenfranchising my entire state. Even if the DNC relents and seats some or all of the delegates, though, Edwards, Obama, and Richardson all chose not to appear on the state ballot -- and they don't count write-ins. Clinton did appear on the ballot, but pledged not to campaign in Michigan.

This disenfranchisement -- not to say, this giant 'fuck you!' to all the Democratic voters in what is a pretty damn populous state -- is because Michigan moved up the date of the primary. I think a great many people can agree that having the first two primaries always be in the same two states is a sub-optimal situation. Iowa and New Hampshire have immense influence on the outcomes of the national race, which is simply not fair. The issues important to both states get intense coverage, and pandering to local interests -- support for ethanol, for example -- is entrenched. Not to mention that both states are quite atypical of the modern US -- both very rural. Very white. Rather conservative. Very Christian. And while the front runners of Iowa and New Hampshire don't always show staying power -- Pat Buchanan comes to mind -- I can't help but think those early primaries skew the available list of candidates to the political right.

People from other political perspectives can and have pointed out other ways in which the political landskape is skewed. Changing the order of state primaries is neither a radical nor an unpopular notion. But when Michigan and Florida decided to hold their primaries at an earlier date, the DNC response was downright draconian. Completely out of line, in my opinion, and I think the party will pay a heavy price come November.

Whether my vote gets counted at the National Convention or not, I wanted to vote. There'll be media coverage of the results, and the talking heads will see portents and omens in the rankings and that will help decide who stays and who drops out of the race. (Frankly, the last few states to have primaries have even more irrelevant votes, as the candidate will for all practical purposes be determined before they even go to the polls.)

If I lived in another state, I'd probably end up voting for Edwards or Richardson, to tell the truth. My beliefs line up better with Kucinich and Gravel, but I don't think either could win the nomination, much less the presidency. But since I can't vote for either of them... I went for full-fledged futility. Kucinich. Because there was no reason to let pragmatism have any quelling effect at all.

I have my voice back, but I'm really having a hard time shaking off the last of the plague. Peristent cough and drop dead-exhaustion do not make for a happy Amy, although at least I'm back at work.

And the requisition to make my position full-time permanent -- instead of the temporary part-time position it has been -- was finally signed and approved Friday. I don't have an offer letter yet, but I gave them my resume and expect one within a week or two.

And in what I must admit is a stunning turn of irony, Friday was the day my husband was informed that his entire group was going to be laid off as of February 8.

Well, we could move to Oklahoma or North Carolina or Virginia, and he'd still be employed. But we have zero desire to do so. We kind of like living in the North, and we haven't even been in our house two years, and it would be very difficult to sell it. Kev has some leads, so I'm not as stressed by this as I could be.

But it sucks that I felt too sick to attend the Laidoffpalooza party yesterday.

A liberal is me!

The results were not at all suprising... *sigh* Now if only my vote in the primary actually counted...

91% Mike Gravel
88% Dennis Kucinich
84% Barack Obama
83% John Edwards
79% Joe Biden
79% Chris Dodd
78% Hillary Clinton
72% Bill Richardson
39% Rudy Giuliani
28% John McCain
26% Ron Paul
23% Mike Huckabee
23% Mitt Romney
21% Tom Tancredo
10% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

I am back from my vacation travels and I have the plague.

OK, probably just the flu with an extra special case of laryngitis, but I am indulging in drama and self-pity. I got nothing accomplished over the weekend -- I did very little but sleep -- and I am home after only a half-day at work, because not only was I all laryngitic and head-hurting and coughing, I was also getting very, very shaky.

So. Anyone have cheering material? Cute things to look at? Good fics to recommend? At the moment, I'm looking for fluffy over angsty, but I can handle angsty fluff. My reading comprehension is somewhat curtailed by cold meds... so please don't send me to Tolstoy or Conrad, ok?

And I'll try to post about my vacation later, which had very good moments -- meeting sparklingduo-- and very bad moments -- travel rerouting and disappearing luggage.

But now I'm going to sleep.

I have been feeling throughly 'bleah' both inside my head and inside my body since I got back from my parent's place this weekend. So... to counteract that, here are three things that amused me lately:

1) A dream I had, wherein I was part of some anti-American organization trying to break the spirit of the American people. (Dear Homeland Security officers: This was a dream. I am not in fact engaged in any such thing in real life, kthxbai.) So apparently we'd decided the best way to do this was to alter all the coin dies so that the presidents that appeared on the coins would be cross-eyed.

It was pointed out to me when I mentioned this dream to people that only one coin (the current nickle) has a president full-on rather than in profile, and clearly this nation isn't all that enamored of Jefferson anymore. Would have been better to go for the bill engraving plates.

2) My boss was naggedpersuaded to bring decent coffee in for the office, and brought in some stuff he'd bought at a church event from Lutheran World Relief. This is some of the text on the bag:

For the perfect cup: as a general rule, use 2 tablespoons of coffee to 6 ounces of filtered water. Then, pour justice to the brim!

How can you not hear that in the voice of The Tick, I ask you? And you have to stick a 'chum' to the ending. *nods*

3) Last weeks edition of Quirk's Evil Little Webcomic, even though I knew what to expect, still made me lol. But not cat. It's here.

This made me laugh:

I can has Wasteland

Yes, it's selections from Elliott's The Wasteland translated into lolcat. As the hubby remarked, pictures would have been even funnier, but anything that opens with:

April hates u, makes lilacs, u no can has

Can be forgiven much.

On a less laughing note, my body is giving me all the irritating symptoms it displayed while on fertility meds -- hot flashes, nausea, ouchy personal bits, sleep disruption, many many migraines, cranky from hell -- though it's been well over a year since I last took them.

F*ck you, body.

And I have to drive to South Bend this afternoon for the baptism of my nephew CJ (and the annual ND game that all my siblings come into to town to watch). I'm not really looking forward to this, which is sad, because even a week ago I was. I haven't seen any of my family for months.

But it can be stressful and it will be busy and worst of all, I missed lots of get-togethers over the summer, and will thus not be in on the in-jokes and such and am afraid I will end up with a severe sense of being excluded. And usually I could laugh that off, but see the cranky reference above.

I realized I am peeved that my parents managed to go visit all of my other not-in-South Bend sisters over this summer, some more than once, and haven't visited me. Which is stupid -- it's just the way plans worked out this summer. But there you are. It's the cranky talking. Usually I get more than my share of visits as I am only 3 hours away.

Stolen from cheloya.

Make a list of all the characters in your icons and order them alphabetically. Then write a sentance or two about the romantic relationships possible between the sequential pairings. Err, more or less.

I had an odd number, unless you count either BatRatSpiderCrab or my cat Kipling (I wasn't going there), so I cruelly excluded the only non-2D character -- Starcrash's villian, Count Zarth Arn, he of the fist-shaped battleship and excessivly happy face. Though if I ordered by last name, he was paired with Narbonic's Dave Davenport, which makes a lot of sense. Only a madman would install giant cathedral stained glass windows on a space ship, and Dave's used the megalomaniac mad people. Think of all the things Dave could invent for him!

Anyway. The list, alphabetized by personal name for my amusement:

Enma Ai (Hellgirl) x Ohtori Akio (Revolutionary Girl Utena):
The daughter of the Lord of Hell -- she who will deliver your vengeance in return for your soul -- and the Fallen Prince? He of the Red Sports Car that will bring you the the Ends of your World, the ultimate seducer? Yeah, I can see it. In an evil incestuous OTP kind of way.

Himemiya Anthy (Utena) x Tsuzuki Asato (Yami no Matsuei):
He's almost too easy to manipulate, and he'll gladly stick a sword in his own chest, even if it isn't a mystical soul blade. Not to mention that all the excessive martyrdom could get tiresome. Anthy would find topping from the bottom to be kind of boring with another bottom.

Dave Davenport (Narbonic) x Fai D. Flowright (Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles):
A mad scientist and a cursed magician. I can see it, and Dave would be a pretty good straight man for Fai's teasing. Dave-chan? Dave-rin? Davey-pon? And Lovelace and Chi, their respective AI creations, would get along splendidly.

Umeda Houto (Hanazakari no Kimitachi e) x Muraki Kazutaka (Yami):
Only possible if they were both at a convention, and Umeda got drunk enough to ignore the "holyshit run while you still can!" vibes Muraki gives off in favor of the overwhelming gorgeous hotness. Unfortunately, I don't think Umeda would interest Muraki enough to live through the encounter.

Watanuki Kimihiro (xXxHolic) x Kurogane (Tsubasa):
Errr... while Kurogane could be the keeper Watanuki is so desperately in need of, neither of them really knows how to play properly. Kurogane just wouldn't properly enjoy Watanuki's high-strung explosive emoting. No, Kurogane belongs with Fai, and Watanuki with Doumeki.

Kiryuu Nanami (Utena) x Hanajima Saki (Fruits Basket):
*blinks* I'm sure Nanami would give off some really fascinating waves, but... Saki loves 'em sweet and clueless. And Nanami's had it up to here with creepy otherworldly chicks. Not happening.

Tatsumi Seiichiro (Yami) x Sohma Shigure (Fruits Basket):
Could be fun, in a perpetual battle for dominance kind of way. Tatsumi might be the one editor capable of forcing Shigure to stick to deadlines without suffering a nervous breakdown.

Doumeki Shizuka (xXxHolic) x Tasuki (Fushigi Yuugi):
Mutual assured destruction.

Tenjou Utena (Utena) x Shinohara Wakaba (Utena):
Plausible, even in cannon. Wakaba does glomp Utena and pronounce Utena to be her boyfriend... while Utena rolls her eyes. And it was Wakaba who helped Utena get over Touga's manipulative crap.... And they're cute together, too. But Utena and Anthy are my OTP for the series, I'm afraid.

Nagato Yuuki (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) x Ichihara Yuuko (xXxHolic):
...
...
Ok, I can see Nagato having a wish she needs granted, and being the one person who wouldn't be driven mad by prolonged exposure to the Dimensional Witch...

I was in a car accident coming home from work a few hours ago. I'm ok and I was able to drive the car home, so as far as accidents go, I was way lucky.

It wasn't even at all my fault, which makes me happy. I was in the left hand turn lane of a 5 lane road (Packard, planning to turn left on Carpenter, for the locals), when some chickadee in a huge-ass SUV decides that turning left out the CVS parking lot across 3 lanes of traffic at rush hour is a good idea. Slammed directly into the side of my car. I didn't even see her coming -- I was driving, and then there was a loud thump and things were shaking and my face was getting hit by little hard things and it took my brain a minute to realize, oh, that's the fragments of the passenger side window I'm feeling.

But the car still worked, and I got out of the lane before anybody else hit me and into a parking lot (White Castle, for the curious.) It wasn't until I got out of the car that I realized what an impressive amount of damage had been done to my car. I'll take picture of it tomorrow and post it -- it really is impressive. But all y'all know enough about physics to know that an accelerating SUV plowing into the side of a compact sedan isn't going to be pretty for the sedan.

And it's not fair to call the other driver a chickadee. She was very nice about everything, admitted it was her fault -- we even had a good Samaritan witness stick around to give a statement to the police. And it's a little strange -- I parked the car, looked at the damage, and talked to the other driver, all perfectly calm and even kind of chipper, reassuring the poor kid that it wasn't the end of the world, had called the cops and only internally sulked that all she had was a tiny dent in on the nose of her car. Anyway. I was calm and polite and had it all together, pulling out the insurance and registration info, having everything prepared, chatting casually with the witness -- until the policewoman talked to me and was very nice, and looked at my car and said, "Would you like me to call someone to take a look at you? That's a lot of damage to your car," that I started sniffling and couldn't stop.

Wierd.

Drove home (very carefully!), took advil and put cold stuff on my back and neck which were starting to ache, got all the stuff I needed to file a claim with insurance -- though I had an impressive case of the stupids and had to go back to my purse three times because I kept forgetting that I'd come over for three things, and wandering off with only one. Filed the claim, figured out how hubby and I could manage with only one car for a week or two (his hours just got shifted to 2 pm to midnight, and I'm only authorized to work 20 - 30 hours per week, so if I get into work at say, 7 or 8, and worked until almost 1 I could have the car back to Kevin in time to reach Southfield by 2) and only then did I call Kevin and let him know what had happened.

It's just one of those things with me -- I don't want to talk to people until I've got things figured out. Caused a huge fight with my ex-hubby over a decade ago when the brakes went out on our car while I was driving, and I didn't tell him there was a problem until I'd gotten us stopped and parked. (Seriously, though, what could he have done but make the situation worse?)

I suppose I should call my mother, but if I sniffle at her, she'll freak out and I don't want to do that to her. But now I've eaten, and I think I am safely non-sniffly, so I shall stop babbling and go call her now. And I really am babbling. Sorry.

Baibai!

( Whining unsuitable to inflict on anyone on a Friday morning )

I apologize to everyone I owe either feedback or meme responses or anything else to. They'll be a bit late. Trust me, it wouldn't be very useful or entertaining if I did them just now.

Is it stealing from booniverse if she asked other people to post this? Anyways, if you are so inclined, answer the following questions in a comment.

1. Do you have a tattoo?
2. How old are you?
3. Are you single or taken?
4. Fish?
5. Do you dream in colour?
6. Ever seen a corpse?
7. How about them hipsters?
8. How did we meet?
9. What's your philosophy on life and death?
10. If you could do anything with me, and have no one know, what would it be?
11. Do you trust the police?
12. Do you like musicals?
13. What is your fondest memory of me?
14. If you could change anything about yourself what would it be?
15. Would you cheat ?
16. What are you wearing?
17. Have you ever peed in a pool?
18. Would you hide evidence for me if I asked you to?
19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?
20. Which do you prefer - short or long hair?
21. What's your favorite day of the week?
22. What's your favorite color?
23. If you could bring back anyone that has passed, who would it be? 24. Tell me one interesting/odd fact about you?
25. What was your first impression of me?
26. Have you ever done drugs?
27. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

I've been fic-ninja'd by the wonderful factorielle! *does the happy dance*

You can read it here if you'd like. But it's a snippet from her collaborative DoumekixHimawarixWatanuki xxxHolic fic, so it might not make much sense in isolation. If you wanna read more, snippets in chronological order are:

The premise
Part One in the first two comments.
Next bit is her fic-ninja-ing my lj!
Top two comments are my angst-filled offering, which go somewhere after these bits
The actual post where in the smutty threesome goodness the whole fic is about can be found.


Now excuse me while I freak out because the in-laws will be here on Friday. Not just his parents, not just his brothers and their spouses and offspring, but some subset of his uncle, aunt, and cousins, too. Including vile cousin Matt. No one is staying with us (ohthankgod), but people are curious to see our house and we still haven't compeletely unpacked and we've been here over a year and I am such a slacker and I've got to clean and the front yard is a ripped up wasteland and AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

K, I feel better now.

So apparently there is a sign for me in booniverse sign language. If you want to say Amy in Boo-sign, have your hands at about chest height, palms toward the chest, fingers almost touching, thumbs tucked to the palms. Then wiggle your fingers. And look abashed.

I alternate between finding this highly amusing and worrying that I am so often a pain in the butt, and thus need to use the abashed pose so frequently that it has come to define me.

I am working on finding a sign to for booniverse. I have considered holding the hands up on either side of the head, palms facing in, hands spread wide, and wriggling them front to back at high veolocity, but I fear that it is a more appropriate sign for "Help, I am being attacked by KevinSpace!"

Any suggestions?

Also, for the second night running, I have dreamt about running a role playing game with the same post-apocalyptic, failing technology and sputtering magic in the decline of a large empire scenario. And it involved really annoying versions of prophecies that owed something to "The Dark is Rising" and something to CLAMP's notion of "hitsuzen" (inevitability, as opposed to destiny). Except this time the system was home brewed, and character generation involved hands dealt from a deck of cards, and a pinochle-like bidding system to determine trump, which determined card point value, where one could either really increase the value of one's hand (and thus one's character stats) or turn it into trash.

Maybe my subconcious is saying I should run something. I've been in a post-apocalyptic mood lately.... I had a ficbunny for xxxHolic, which I managed to pawn off on rallamajoop, and she is doing an amazing job of it. And then the original bunny mutated into a post-paradigm-shift world where the shift had not completely succeeded and had rather horrible uninteded consequences, and I realized that it was the natural sequel to my Watanuki-in-an-asylum fic and it would be a huge story.

And it would also be a keen setting for a role playing game.

Cue bashful look and Amy-sign. Bad brain. I have enough balls in the air already, thanks.

The biggest ball of hate in Ypsilanti last night would have been our cat Frost. (Not the cat pictured in the icon.) He doesn't like me very much on a good day -- he is, heart and soul, badmovie's cat. He regards me with a combination of fear and jealousy, and it is only the fact that I feed him sometimes and have the mad petting skillz that has led him to regard me with any degree of fondness.

And I had to give him a flea treatment. Which involved giving him a thorough combing with a flea comb (which he hates, to the point where the mere sight of the comb causes him to waddle away at great veolcity in fear and loathing), and then to add insult to injury by putting wet, stinky stuff on his back where he could not groom it off.

His hatred was epic. Sufficiently epic that he did not come out for treats, nor could he be lured into the basement to eat his beloved dry food. (And he loves it. Otherwise he would not top 18 pounds.)

It's not really my fault, you know. Niether he nor Her Imperial Sable Majesty Violet showed any signs of fleas, but thier brother Kipling (pictured in the icon) had a few. Where he got them from, I do not know... he is an indoor cat, except when he bolts out the door to chew on grass in the yard. Yes, chew on grass. Like a cow. I cannot explain it.

Frost is still glaring at me. And I've been busy laundering all the bedding and everything else Kipling frequents (including my crochet bag, which is also pictured in the icon. Containing the cat.) I am very paranoid about fleas, since I am a cat-mom of the long-haired variety with a minor phobia of bugs in my hair.

On a totally different topic, someone else put this link in her lj, to a little article considering how late-onset schizophrenia impacted an artist's work. What struck me was the remarkable similarity of the third- and fourth-to last images to some of my migraine auras. The author remarks on how the images are evocative of Eastern dieties... I always call them my neon-Aztec auras. But that kind of jagged, growing, repeating high contrast quality shows up in a lot of religious art, doesn't it?

Makes you wonder.

Finally (  fake cut for ickyness of the totally non-pornish variety )