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Thanks to my friend,

choisyleroi</lj> , I've decided to keep a running list of books I read this year, so even if I don't review them, I'll have a record. Spiffy, huh?

January

New Moon by Stephanie Meyers
Not particularly interested in reading the rest of the series, especially after the girl filled me in on the utter fail of the last book.
Breakfast at Tiffany's (plus 3 short stories) by Truman Capote
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
Meh. It was doing okay, I could see the appeal, and would have loved it at an earlier age, until the time travelling began. Then it was all deus ex machina, you know?
Alpha by Catherine Asaro
A female super-cyborg (think Terminator) falls in twuuu love with a dashing hero/pilot. A Harlequin romance for robots? Told from the human male's POV? It's the first of a trilogy? I dunno. I used to like Asaro, but I think I've outgrown her.

huh, 3 women and a gay guy.

February

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
So I've figured out why Bujold is my favorite author. Besides being insanely creative, with a real penchant for political machinations, she's got the best vocabulary evar!

March

Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages (short stories) (reviewed in my LJ)
My reading is really taking a hit this year because of all the extra work hours :(

April

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
both of these are rereads. Ethan is for bookclub, and Mirror Dance, because I had a particular scene I wanted to reread. Unfortunately, that scene was not in this book! LOL. That's okay though, because I'm never going to complain about spending time with Miles, in whichever persona he's playing.

May

Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold (found the scene!)
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
OMG so much love for this book even though it has the insanely crazy cliff-hanger ending. I laughed and cried alot while reading this (both times).
Filter House Stories by Nisi Shawl (which Nisi signed for me at the WisCon signout!)
After I get it back from the loanee, I'll probably review some of the stories.

June

James Tiptree Jr. The Double Life of Alice B Sheldon by Julie Phillips
this has spilled over into July, but it took up most of my available reading time in June. That Alli led a fascinating life! I think I've still got 12-15 yrs to go...

July

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey
Ok, lots of 60s (or is that Heinlein?) style treatment of women. It was definitely dated, but the cyborg science was interesting and believable. A fast read.
Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven
This was just sitting at our campsite when we arrived, left behind by the previous occupant I guess. Written in the 90s, has a male narrator/POV although he ends up on a team with 2 women and the 3 of them learn how to utilize their combination of strengths. Even so, I think there's still "too many dicks on the dance floor" but the women get decent treatment. It's supposed to be a time-travelling romp, with some good "in" jokes for the better-read and history buffs. Lots of acknowledged borrowing from other authors' view of Mars. So it reads like fan-fic where you're supposed to know loads of backstory, and you get very little explication if you're unfamiliar with the canon. Pretty quick read, probably pretty forgettable.

August:

Water Logic by Kelly Marks - Third in a series, and was pretty good considering that I was a little disappointed with number 2.

October:

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult - OMG, I cried so much! This is really good, and really hits home for anyone with any experience at all with a terminal illness.
Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold - another audiobook. I lucked up and got this on tape for $4.50 at Vinny's. There were a few others too, so I thought I'd go back, but alas, I waited too long. :( Anyway, I was thrilled to finally find out what had happened at Dagoola IV. This was the only piece of the universe I'd never read. It did NOT disappoint.

On Deck:

Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is up for July's bookclub. No guarantee I'll get to reread though.
Also the August and September and October AND November! book club picks. Sigh - behind everywhere in life.

I'm up to 15 by women and 3 by men. Of course, with 6 by LMB, that skews the count...

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: busy

I had 5 days off and lots of half-formed plans for fannishness that never got fully formed or implemented. I've got 3 books in various stages of completion: Tiptree - still just 15 yrs to get to the end, The Ask and the Answer - about half done, and The 5 Dysfunctions of an Organization (or something like that), which is for work, but is still reading.

I've also spent hours re-reading old faves in DS and SGA and LOTR (what, we watched FOTR on xmas day), and have finally succombed to Merlin. This, because while I've never watched an episode, is being written with all the smoking excellence that I have been trained to expect by Astolat, and since I'm reading Astolat, I may as well read Lamardeuse, because she's one of my faves in my existing fandoms anyway. Resonant hasn't started in on Merlin yet, but if she does, I'll be toast. I resisted Merlin for so long because I knew I'd be sucked in, even if the boys themselves are way too young and pretty for my taste. I've always had a huge thing for Arthur and Robinhood and the 3 Musketeers, so any fandom featuring them is going to get me eventually.

I only got to read a couple of Yuletide stories before AO3 went down, stories recced by friends who'd received them, not so much with the exploring on my own yet. I usually wait until after the 1st anyway - I like knowing who wrote what before I read. But thanks to Yuletide, I must always check out Breakfast Club and Die Hard. Yeah, IDK about that, but there you go. I don't participate in Yuletide because my muse is extremely flighty, and I can't guarantee that I'll ever finish anything for a deadline.

I spent zero time on the artsy craftsy love meme, so I'm gonna need some amnesty there, and I also spent zero time attempting to record podfic. I've got a long list of stories I'm wanting to record though. I thought I might also spend time loading music on my phone, but no.

Other than the reading and the one LOTR movie, I did nothing fannish all month. Except last night I had not one, but two dreams in which Cesperanza was a major character. WTF? I rarely dream about famous people, but this was a first - dreaming about a BNF. The good part was that we were great friends, and planning fannish get togethers here and in Atlanta - again with the WTF, but still. She was delightful in my dreams. I don't even know her well enough to write and tell her I dreamt about her, LOL. She'd think I was some crazy-ass stalker.

Wednesday, if all goes well, I'll be getting together with some friends to be introduced to something new. :)

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: content

Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, re-arrange, and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
-Banksy, street artist (b. 1974)

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: lazy

Of particular interest to my fannish friends:

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Reading a book is like rewriting it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. -Angela Carter, novelist and journalist (1940-1992)

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: blah

Had a 3-day weekend that didn't feel at all like a vacation.
Tried, during the weekend, to finally record a podfic. Picked something about 20 min long. A good practice piece. Except, my built-in mic picked up way too much internal noise, leaving me with a loud, annoying hum that I could only get rid of by turning down the volume so far that I couldn't hear the reading.
Bought an external, noise-cancelling mic. Same results.
After much fiddling around with all volume settings I could find, got the loud buzzing down to a quite fuzzy noise, so I tried again.
In the middle of my first set of edits (clipping out flubs), Audacity "experienced a problem and had to shut down."
Lost the entire project, because I was so tired and out of it, I hadn't saved before starting to edit.
If I ever have any spare spoons again, I will be ready. I even have a perfect sound-effect for the transitions between scenes. It's a little extra frill, but it's really appropriate, so why not?
I did NOT do any work to speak of, which meant I had to get up at 0430 yesterday, and 0530 today to prep for the week's meetings. I must get back to work now though. Just thought I'd update my non-progress on the fannish front.

Current Location: still earth

OMG, where does the time GO? Over two years ago, I was so taken with the rash of stories coming out of my favorite authors that I got it into my head I would start doing podcasts. I love reading aloud, and since I read faster than I write, I felt this would be my lasting contribution to fandom. (Big head much?)

So I started working on a little snippet by Speranza, because I wanted to get the technical stuff down before committing to the longer piece I was dying to record. Unfortunately, I didn't have the correct software for the job, and I got tired and distracted before producing something shareable. I did a little research (l asked Rupert-hey, I said it was little) and learned I should be using Audacity.

Well, sometime last week, I was downloading some scanning software, thanks to emorog's solution to a different tech problem I was having, and thought, "I should get Audacity while I'm at it." I was delighted to find there's a portable version that can run from a thumb drive (since my laptop belongs to my job, I avoid putting too much of anything personal on the hard drive. That's what my 8 Gig thumbdrive is for). It's been sitting on my desktop for a week. Last night I finally installed the app, and read the help file (no tutorial). While it was installing, I also installed the NY Times daily app. Which, I don't really want to read NYT daily, and I won't be upping to a paid subscription any time soon, but it's got the Crossword! Not that I should have daily access to the NYT crossword either. But, it plays better than any other computer crossword I've tried over the years, and I'm going to like this better than constantly playing Bejeweled or Alchemy when I'm zoning. /digression

This morning, I thought I'd do my practice piece again, to try out the new tool. And the old .wav file was dated August of 2007! I cannot believe it's been that long. And all the beautiful podcasts that have come out since I started thinking about this have me a bit intimidated, but. I'm going to do a few and see how they go. Because Audacity so far has been very easy to work with. Hah, aren't you glad I have something new to play with in my copious amounts of "free" time? I knew you would be.

But right now, I have to get ready for my weekly 0730 conference call. ::sigh::

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: creative

AHAHAHAHA!

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: amused

It turns out that I created this journal to post my fannish stuff, and then promptly quit posting fannish stuff. I haven't made a DW post since July 29! Sheesh.

So, TV: Hell's Kitchen, No Reservations (Anthony Bourdain), Glee (I've always loved musicals, and envy people who can sing and dance), most of season 5 of Weeds (Oh, Nancy!), and I need to catch up with Big Bang Theory,

DVDs: The last season of Due South (mmm, CKR and Oh, Fraser, you goofball), Suspicion (Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, and OMG so glad we've been liberated since then), lots of Band of Brothers (DH is rewatching).

Music, Movies: No Report

Books: Nada, except I re"read" Heat by Bill Buford (audio book) and am all inspired by italian cooking again.

Fanfic: Pretty much rereading all my faves in Due South, SGA, and all of Astolat's Supernatural, plus her new Idol RPF. Seriously, WTF? I don't DO RPF/S, except for when Astolat writes it. And I thought her Cook/Archuleta was sexy and charming last year, but her "Kradam" (Kris Allen/Adam Lambert) is totally smoking. I must report I have reserved a luxury box in hell. Want to join me? Also enjoying the DW comm: singularity (Star Trek reboot).

In other fannish news: Last weekend at our annual Oktoberfest, some of the WisCon book club members (you know who you are, LOL) introduced my co-worker to the concepts of slash in general and Wincest in particular. I was pretty shocked by this turn of events, but he (HE!) is a pretty open minded guy, and he has mostly women in his life (he's a fraternal twin, he's married and has 3 girls). So he rolled with it, and there was much hilarity. It gets better though. He shared with the group that his nephew is Eric Szmanda. That's right, his nephew plays Greg Sanders on CSI! So awhile later, I hear one of my friends say to co-worker, "gee, I bet there's even been slash written about your nephew..." at which point, 4 faces turn to look at me for confirmation. And what can I say, but "Oh my god, yes. Yes there is slash written about your nephew." Then I jumped up and ran to the other side of the bonfire, where I confessed to emorog this horrifying truth, "Not only is there slash written about his nephew, but *I've* written some of it!" Of course, I had to follow up with "I've written about the character he plays! Not him personally! ewww!" LOL.

As much as I love all of my friends, I was very glad to have you all finally drift away so that conversation could come to an end. Except of course, I had to check in with co-worker on Monday morning to see how traumatized he was. And yay, he wasn't. He said he had an excellent time and enjoyed hanging out with all y'all. By then I had learned that my WiPoly friends had also introduced him to the concept of polyamory (reported by DH) and he had rolled with that one too. There was just a touch of confusion later on, when he turned to emorog and mentioned "your ex-wife."
emorog: um, no, she's my current wife.
me: his *only* wife.
co-worker: But, but, there's that other gentleman, 'W?' (and we didn't realize at the time that W and N had already explained the parentage of the 3 boys).
emorog does not say: Yes, he took the boys home with N for some quality time, and I stayed here to catch some quality time with my girlfriend.
co-worker (turns to me): what am I missing? Don't leave me in the dark.
me with deer in the headlights look to emorog: Ummm....
emorog: Yes, he's our friend from Eau Claire. He hangs out with us a lot. Any questions?
co-worker: No. I'm good.

And lo, he was good. He had finally connected the dots from the two earlier conversations, realized the 6 of them were a family unit and didn't need any further details. But I'm really glad no one else from work showed up. I don't think I would have survived it.

Current Location: still earth
Current Music: the early birds

Attempted to go to bed at a reasonable hour - 10ish last night, what with the lack of sleep on Mon night and the early start to the day. However, as we were heading that way, the girl comes home and announces her mini tire blew out just down the street. Le sigh. La drama. Whatev. She's a big girl, she's made her choices this month, she's going to have to figure something out for herself before I shell out anymore cash.

Get in bed. What's that noise? Apparently M, the neighbor is doing something in his garage. From the banging around, he's looking for something. I'm sure it will quit soon (he finds it or gives up, right?) Wrong. Now there is the distinct sound of a grinder on metal. This goes on for awhile. A long while. I try meditating it out of my awareness. DH is working on his own issue (tooth pain) so the noise is worse for him, with the added bonus of sounding like a dentist's drill. (He did call the dentist yesterday, only to learn that the office is closed for vacation this week.)

Around 11:30, DH says, "I'm so glad M has nothing better to do than grind metal at this time of night," which is followed sometime after by blessed silence. Woah, my ears are ringing. Okay, we can do this thing. We both readjust position for maximum comfort. It's about 11:55. Then, I don't know what, but it sounded like a CHAIN SAW started up next door. "OH. MY. GOD!" DH jumps out of bed, puts on his slippers, and stomps out into our driveway.

"HEY! DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S PAST MIDNIGHT?! GET A !##$!#!!**% CLUE AND QUIET DOWN! Then he stomps back into the house still yelling about people thinking building a FRAKKIN BOAT in their garage in the middle of the night is a good idea.

Blessed silence again. I'm thinking the neighbors in at least the 3 closest houses to ours are quietly cheering for DH. Of course, sleep does not come easily to the justifiably riled.

Should be doing morning yoga, would rather be sleeping.

Current Location: planet of the insomniacs
Current Mood: more pissy

I awoke at 2:20ish in the night to use the bathroom. Upon my return to bed, DH said, "we have an appointment with the financial guy for breakfast at 7:30 tomorrow."

He didn't even ask me if I wanted to meet with the guy before setting it up.
He hasn't been out of bed before 7:00 in I don't know when.
He can set this up, but not make a dentist appointment for his abcessed tooth for what, 3 months and counting?
How much more sleep do you think I got during the night?
Yeah, getting back on track with my daily yoga apparently is not happening this week.

We need to leave the house in 30 minutes and he's not even out of bed.

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: pissy

The word of the day is "pingo" and the accompanying illustration is near a place that is dear to my Mountie-lovin' heart: Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada:

Good timing too! I have been rereading Cesperanza's Due South for comfort and joy (and tears) this week.

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: tired

It's been exactly a week since I got my new laptop, and just this morning I was able to get the dang thing to talk to my home network.

OMG, why is it so hard to use our tools? I'm horribly behind in my work because I haven't been fully connected for a total of 2 weeks now. I'm even more horribly behind in correspondence and fannish love, including missing out on helping Beta a cool new story from a couple of friends... no time to even link as I need to be on a conference call in 60 sec.

ttyl

It's just that after being on the computer all day for work, and dealing with family and house, and reading & commenting on my amazing flist at LJ and my amazing reading list here, I never have any time or energy left for actual posting.

Seriously, I think I have a seriously cool reading list, full of smart, thoughtful, funny and pragmatic women. All y'all rock so hard, and make it so much easier for me to spend my "productive" hours among men.

Thank you!

Current Location: still earth

I've gotten a couple of messages that people have unsubscribed to me lately, and today, when I was subscribing to someone, I noticed that 3 of my circle were no longer subscribed to, and I promise you I did not voluntarily unsub. So, you are probably seeing notices now that I have subscribed to you *again.* And I will have to go look at your journals to catch up on all the stuff I have undoubtedly missed.

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: aggravated

I have 3 possibly 4 to give away. In exchange, I'm willing to accept kisses and/or hugs and/or friending.

also, as still deliriously happy over granite countertops. Today = SINK!!

Current Location: home planet
Current Mood: happy

I've subscribed to a lot of people on my LJ flist over here so I can read them here (because they are fandom friends) instead of reading them on my LJ flist. The set up stuff for DW says this is possible, and I was fairly certain it was working when I was just using open ID to read over here. But since I've paid for my account, I'm not getting any of those external-to-DW people showing up on my DW reading page. And after doing some research, I've found that yes, these people have been posting during this time period, and I have been missing out. The thing that initially tipped me off was a comment

were_duck made about a conversation happening in the Beer and Marmalade community that I never saw. Until then, I was just thinking everyone else's lives had gotten as busy as mine.

If I had known this wasn't actually going to work as advertised, I wouldn't have spent a whole day rearranging my reading pages on each site to contain the specific content I thought I was going to get. Does this not actually work or am I just doing it wrong?

Current Location: home planet
Current Mood: aggravated

I've never wanted to live in England as much as I do right now! For one week only, those lucky bastards will be licking and slurping and sucking the delectable Daniel Craig. Life is SO unfair!

thanks to emorog for the pointer. He knows how to put a smile on my face at 0600.

Current Location: still north america
Current Mood: envious

Ran around mid-day doing party shopping for brdgt and grocery shopping for us. Everything is put away, and most of the laundry is done. I'm getting ready to head out.

I guess I'm taking the wardrobe one day at a time. Today it's blue on blue, short-sleeved knit top, blue jeans, blue Privos and dangly blue earrings which I never get to wear because they're not work-appropriate. I've got a white hoodie in case the rooms are cold (and they always are) and a comfy sling pack for carrying stuff.

Unless things really heat up, I'll probably head home at a reasonable hour, so I can get up early-ish with DH, pack for the rest of the weekend, hit the farmer's market and then the con.

Of course, all this is based on no real knowledge of what the schedule looks like yet. I haven't had time to peruse the online version, and won't have the hard copy till I get there. I better pack a highlighter!

I'm looking forward to hanging out with the book club all weekend though. Although, in a sense, WisCon is like the largest, coolest book club ever :)

Current Location: still earth
Current Mood: productive

First of all, my "M" key is sticking all of a sudden. A few months ago, this happened with my "O" and I was unable to fix it well enough to be lasting. I ended up with a new keyboard on my laptop. This is annoying.

I spent the better part of the weekend working on the separation of LJ and DW. Locking fannish stuff at LJ, unlocking it at DW. Locking non-fannish stuff (only as far back as 12/07 so far). Straightening out the icons (OMG! So thankful for 200 at DW! Not going to pay for extras at LJ anymore). Setting up my friends lists and filters in both places. It's kind of exhausting. Plus, I'm concerned that I'm going to lose the feed on some stuff accidentally, and I can't believe how many new things I've added at DW.

Went to bed late last night, and am really groggy and sleepy - something that's been going on for at least a week, no matter how much sleep I'm getting. Seriously, I thought I might fall asleep during Star Trek on Friday (but yay me, I stayed awake).

I'm gonna try the cross-post thing again ::crosses fingers::

Current Location: home planet
Current Mood: sleepy

I've got this shiny new account on DreamWidth, and I'm planning to use it exclusively for my fannish posting (and for my LJ archive, JIC). This is so I don't have to filter/lock my fannish posts anymore. So I'm going to be going through my LJ flist and thinning it out, because I want to read my fannish friends on my DW flist, and my RL friends on LJ. If you don't have a DW account, and you're fannish, I'll be subscribing to your feed at DW, and filtering you off my LJ default view. THIS is because, a lot of you with accounts in both places are cross-posting (Yay!), but I keep getting confused about where to make my replies. I'm only medium-tech after all.

If you're a RL and fannish friend, I guess I'll have to filter you off of my LJ default view, but not defriend, cause I still want you to be able to access my RL ramblings if you want.

Hmm, here's a bug: all the boxes for tagging etc, the post are on top of the text box. The text is now wending it's way through a maze. Hmmm. at least it was that way until I started filling in the boxes.

Current Location: home planet
Current Mood: content

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Fan Girl Wannabe

2009 Reading List

How I Spent My Xmas Vacation

Another Quote on Transformative Works

From the Wordsmith

Ugh.

TWO YEARS?!

TRUTH!!!

Huh

Why? - Part Two

Why?

A.Word.A.Day Feeds My Fannishness

OMG, I'm Back ONLINE!

I Swear I am Not a Sock Puppet

More DW Wonkiness

DW Invite Codes

Has Anybody Noticed?

< whine > I Want One! (or a Hundred...)

Off to WisCon!

Monday, Monday

DW and LJ Friending/Defriending Announcement

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December 2009

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