Taking Eccentricity To New Levels

Lest you think I won't have turkey...

I will. Not tofu turkey either *smiles at debjunk*



Oh, yeah, I'll enjoy it tomorrow after the latkes and sauerkraut and applesauce. Courtesy of Godiva in case you wonder.

Happy Thxgvng to all!

What is it with some people joining fandom to cause nothing but discontent??? Reviewers, who don't have fics of their own posted, leaving thoughtless/rude reviews and low ratings for no other reason than personal disappointment about how a fic concludes; writers, who have no shame to plagiarize entire paragraphs with blatantly minimal paraphrasing; newbies, who very obviously don't even bother to at least skim the submission rules of a moderated archive before submitting. It leaves me disgruntled.

Where reviewers are concerned, seriously, deduct a star or even two if you're really pissed off with how the story develops or if the writing technique is poor. But to give half a star just because you're pissed off is not the way to go. Give half a star or one star if the grammar is really bad and the chapter is full of spelling errors. And that simply isn't found on a moderated archive.

As to plagiarists, I KNOW how easy it is to have phrases slip into a fic that originate from another writer, and, yes, I have no doubt it can happen entirely unconsciously. But whole paragraphs? And almost verbatim???

And new authors, do you walk into a grocery store, fetch things you need and walk out again? No, I didn't think so either. You know the rules for that one, so why on earth do you think a moderated archive is free of rules??? Let me spell it out: If you leave a grocery store without paying, you'll be arrested. If you submit to a moderated archive without knowing what you're doing, your chapter will be rejected.

Apparently the slow season has arrived. Not the hot, sweaty, uncomfortable one, but the one where foodstuffs don't grow so much outside. So... Time to preserve, right?

The feta is doing well. It's still aging, at various stages, in one container, but there's lots.

I made manchego yesterday and outdoor temp absolutely obliged me with 55F, so I put it in brine, covered it and placed on the balcony for six hours, then dried it and placed in olive oil in the same container, also outside because the low for the night is 49. I'll have to place it into the fridge in the morning once it warms up outside, but at least it had, for once, the absolutely ideal temperature for at least a day. It will be still young and absolutely tasty at one month old for Yule.

I salted a brisket of beef last week, then placed it in a brine with various spices and herbs and it now smells like salt beef. The guys will have it on Thursday, together with latkes, and I'll have the latkes with my last of the sauerkraut, and Sara will have the latkes with no sauerkraut because she don't like it.

Dorkboy brought home a beautiful cabbage today, so I should have another three jars at least of sauerkraut, which will be ready in 3 weeks' time. I may ask to him to go back to that store and get some more. One can never have enough sauerkraut. Don't laugh. Home-made sauerkraut is drastically different from the store-bought variety. If I'd find a barrel to buy here, I'd spend a day cutting 15 cabbage heads and process them. But I only have glass jars, and not many at that, so I tend to do one at a time.

The sourdough starter for the rye bread to go with the salt beef is working right now. When I get near, there is a hint of the scent that promises good bread. I'm excited.

I'm glad I get excited about that kind of thing. Oooohhhh, I haven't mentioned that Dorkboy managed to find chanterelles for the second time this week! If you want a scentasm, fry green onion with a chanterelle in some butter! Most. Divine. Scent. Ever.

So, okay, I get excited about foods. What's new...

Are you not all afraid of Mercury moving into yet another retrograde? Do you think you'll make friends with the planet by ignoring him? Honestly! *exasperated sigh*

Here is your chance to show your respect, and Mercury might just not affect you so badly in the next retrograde.

We've not needed heat (the only thing that's run on gas here) since about April or thereabouts. Last night, however, it was quite cold, so I decided to turn it on. O_o. It didn't come on, so this morning, we phoned the utility company who has been supplying us with electricity, water, and gas since we moved here over a year ago, saying that the pilot light has probably gone out and can they please send someone to switch it on (yes, they don't let their customers do the task; it's a complicated thing, that). This afternoon, technician arrived. We were grateful, for the high today was about 45F, and we'd been sitting here in our warmest sweaters. So, technician does complicated things, and I wonder why, remembering last year it was a 20-second job and we had heat. So technician scratches head and says, the meter is locked. We stare at him. Why would they lock the meter? Oh, they probably changed the meter while you were out and left it locked because they couldn't contact you. Oooookay. Not that they'd notified us or anything. Technician says to call them and tell them to unlock the meter. Fine. So Dorkboy phones them again. And gets the world's biggest idiot on the line. She couldn't understand what he was saying. Now, I get this at fast food places around here on the very rare occasions I go there. The creme of uneducated youngsters who refuse to comprehend anyone who doesn't speak Southern American. Dorkboy gave up after about ten minutes, having been put on hold frequently because fuckwit on the other hand pretended she couldn't understand a word he was saying, and phoned again. This time he managed to talk to someone who had no trouble whatsoever understanding every single word and said she'd send someone straight away. Within half an hour, another technician arrived--we were highly impressed with this bout of efficiency--only to inform us that we are not customers. What? Thankfully, he had more than one braincell, and he didn't speak Southern, so he listened patiently to our claim of having resided in this particular dwelling for over a year and having had no trouble whatsoever to run the heating last winter. He agreed it looked somewhat ridiculous that we should be their electricity and water customers but not their gas customers and was kind enough to offer to sort it out himself. Five minutes later, we had heating.

We are lucky that this incident ended happy. Complications are had every single time one deals with anything official or public.

A very Happy Birthday to you, alabastard!

Have a very happy day and a most happy year!

My week has been tough in terms of divaism.

What absolutely made my day, nay week, was debjunk's ficlet tonight. Go read A Complex Diva. There were several good drabbles tonight, by the way! Thirteen (!!!) in total! Yay for Saturday night drabbles!

That means good things, right?

Let's see:

- Dorkboy went to Fresh Market yesterday and brought home chanterelles, which resulted in the most amazing omelette for lunch today. <3

- The Dominosteine season, aka Christmas season, has finally arrived, and the one sophisticated store in the ghetto actually carries them. I am one happy Germish person this week, for I have Germish Christmas cookies.

- Despite being a month later than I'd hoped, the supplies for super-sekrit Project Awesome arrived today, and I'm working on the first one. Some friends have done amazing deeds for me, ensuring that this has been an amazing year despite all the troubles, and it took me a while to figure out what I could give in return in order to maintain the karmic balance. I'm happy right now.

- The temperature during the day is still regularly in the mid-70s, but it cools down by about 4.30, which is pure bliss. Last night, the low was 40, and I put on my woolen sweater, the one I only managed to wear maybe five times last year. It made me very happy.

- I've been writing. Lots.

For ferporcel, who prompted with Severus, white stone, and barefoot

( Here you'll find haiku )

The Happiest of Birthdays to pokeystar and ferporcel! I hope you had a most wonderful day, and may this year bring you nothing but joy!

Feel free to give me a prompt; it may even result in a drabble or ficlet.

I remember this day twenty years ago. Just having started maternity leave, I was at home and had been following the news quite avidly. There had been demonstrations and peaceful, passive rebellion all over Eastern Europe, but on November 9th, the Berlin wall finally, finally came down. I cried because I was unable to travel, but was happy--for the only time in my life--that I had a tv on which I could follow all the events. May today be the start of the journey on the road to true freedom for humanity.

A friend posted a rec somewhere for Harmonic, wondering whether music, mushrooms, astrophysics were part of my knowledge, whether I'd researched it, or whether I had friends who had the knowledge. I felt an incredible surge of affection for her when I read that because she was one of the very few who went beyond the pleasure-reading and wondered about those things. Which probably brings me to writing, but I'll start by answering those questions.

Mushrooms: I knew the names of mushrooms before I could even speak. And I could speak the names of chanterelle and cep in German before I could say the names of my closest relatives. I find mushrooms where nobody else finds them. I remember an occasion some years ago when I lived in Berlin and a couple of friends and I went for a walk in the woods in autumn. We returned home with a basket full of chanterrelles and ceps and other bolets, and those friends thought me weird for finding them; I'd simply dive into a space and pick them whenever the mushroom fairy whispered to me.

Music: I do have a decent foundation of knowledge, but I did do a lot of research with regard to the music of the spheres, for that particular knowledge was less than basic. But then, I love researching, getting really deep into a subject to enable me to view it from every possible angle. For me, that's part of the writing process.

Physics: Let's not go there, lol. When I lamented the fact that my knowledge of physics is non-existent, my friend told me that I didn't need to know about it as long as my character did. Uh, yes. Hermione surely knows a lot more about that than I do. When it comes to maths and physics, I seem to have a block, and even when I did make the effort to dive into it, the result was epic fail. So I'll just pretend I know something about it... :)

I do tend to write about the stuff I know, and most of the time, when I feel I don't know enough about it, then I learn about it until I do know.

I have various fics in various stages of writing, but at the moment, I'm concentrating on one that I'd like to see completed by Yule. One friend unleashed a monster when she mentioned something, and I've been scribbling away happily.

Being part of team Mercury in the Intergalactic Quidditch Cup is great fun, and the first poll, in which you are Imperioedinvited to vote for your favourite first chapter, is posted on the potterplace community.

Before I started rambling here, I beta-read the final chapter of A Murder of Crows by hogwarts_91. While I'm happy, very happy, that this story is completed, I'm feeling bereft. Kind of similar to the way I felt when little_beloved sent me the final chapter of Denial. I can only hope that Dani gets bitten by a rabid plot bunny that will produce another epic.

Yay, the first chapters of the Intergalactic Quidditch Cup are up now. Our first chapter of Quicksilver was written by stefdarlin, and it sure is worth the read. I should mention that teams receive points for every review, and you totally want my team to win, right? And besides, who would want to mess with Mr Malfoy?

You can read it here.

/Imperio

I needed it. Nice lady at Godiva gifted me with a lemon chiffon truffle. I like her, yes, I do.

Am very happy with my new pyjama pants.

I'm tired of the histrionics of some authors. Really, you're nobody. Live with the fact. Most of us do happily so. Why can't you?
I'm tired of the shit that's hitting me left, right, and centre. Yes, RL, I know. But rly? Get real. I don't need this.
Yes, I came second in the Variety Challenge one-shot category. Oh, thanks so much for spoiling it. You'll be pleased to know now that it means absolutely fuck all to me, even though it was an anonymous challenge, in which, one would think, people voted for what they liked best since they were unable to vote for names. Of course, seeing certain authors vote for each other just deflates the whole thing.
Tired. So tired.

A belated, but Very Happy Birthday, m_mcgonagall_65! Hope your day was wonderful and the year ahead the best yet!

Clearly, there are days I should stay in bed. Today was one of them.

1. I don't care for wank, so pls humor me and stop. kthx.

2. It's freaking 73 degrees at 2.30am. The a/c is back on for now because srsly, can't cope with that kind of temperature in the middle of the night. It's warmer now than it was at 3 in the afternoon.

3. It rained in the morning, which was blissful. But then it stopped and got warm and humid and yuck.

4. The freaking sprinklers are on. Again. We've had more rain in the last two months than we normally have in a year. And they're still running the sprinklers every night. In order to think positive, I envisage a hydroponic set-up. *snrk*

5. The car park is flooded. That's because of the sprinklers adding to the rain water there already. The good thing is that I have boots that don't get wet.

6. The humidity messed up my hair. I'm divinely unimpressed by that.

7. I didn't write today. Well, 22 words don't count, really.

Now, to the good stuff:

1. At Starbucks, I received an extra shot of espresso in my triple cinnamon dolce, which made it a quadruple, because chick who did it made an extra shot accidentally and offered it to me.

2. My second sock is finished.

3. Tomorrow is a new day in which the low will drop to 45 degrees. Bliss.

4. I will be writing tomorrow. At least 500 words, possibly more.

5. I have friends whom I absolutely adore.

6. The Intergalactic Quidditch Cup is on, and we're plotting. Sort of. It's going to be good. My team is an awesome mix between intelligent, quirky, and cliche, which makes it very exciting. I expect to have fun.

7. I've been knitting six rows a day on Sara's scarf, which I started two years ago. It may be finished by next week. Yay.

8. Lucius tells me it's time to listen to tango. *disappears*

Shamelessly stolen from ferporcel.

The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So ask me something you want to know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you.

Here's your chance. :)

Speedy healing vibes
For friends and strangers alike
Everyone needs love.

So, corianderpie gave me a prompt, and Lucius gave me the words.

( Fluffy ficlet this way )

Wow, just wow. Look at this amazing art made of food.