Comfortably numb.

Subject:	B-Day and Recipe
Time:	3:49 pm.

Happy Birthday spikedluv!

Blue Cheese Dip
(family recipe)

1lb blue cheese crumbles
3lbs sour cream
onion salt
hot sauce
worcestershire sauce
milk (optional)

Using a wooden spoon or something similar (spatulas don't work well with thes large quantities) and mucho upper body strength, stir the blue cheese and sour cream together until well mixed. Next (and this is the only time I don't use exact measurements when I cook) toss in whatever amount of onion salt you feel like and do the same with the worcestershire and hot sauces. Just keep in mind that those are all seasonings and use appropriately. Everyone's tastes being different, I can't tell you how much of each you'll want. Personally, I prefer the worcestershire sauce to be the prominent flavor. If you want to thin out the dip add a bit of milk, but otherwise you won't need it.

Refrigerate for a couple hours and enjoy!

Makes enough for a small party or in our case, two people who think blue cheese is a major food group.

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Subject:	Disappointment in fic recs
Time:	10:05 pm.

I love reading stuff recced on my flist because for the most part, it's wonderful stuff that I otherwise would've missed out on. People on my flist dig up things I'd never know to look for in the first place and it usually ends up as a few night's entertaining reading for me. It's taken me a bit to realize -- I think I've been in denial -- that one section of recs I've been following are just overall bad and they're not going to get any better, no matter how much I peruse the list. It sucks, and it's surprising because I've always liked the reccer's writing and she has interesting points/discussions on her LJ. Just...not so much good taste in Spander.

( In which I whine. )

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Subject:	Semi-incoherent mea culpa
Time:	11:56 pm.

Okay, so I'm trying to get an online life again. Things haven't been all that smooth in RL, but that's no excuse for not answering feedback from five months ago. I really, really never planned on leaving it sitting that long. I've never done that before and I apologize to everyone who had to wait that long for me to get my ass in gear and thank you for it.

I haven't been writing, but as always, I still have ideas. I just really need to find the time to sit down and watch some eps so I can get a handle on characterization again. But I don't know when that will be. Things in RL are stable enough, I suppose, but I've had it with my job (sooo many issues there) and I'm looking for a new one. I don't know when that will happen, but when it does, my schedule will be in upheaval again.

I caught some sort of mystery virus a couple days ago which made me lose work since I couldn't get far out of bed. I'm hoping I'm over the worst of it now. But sitting here, fiddling on the computer, I just realized that I needed to get back in touch with everyone and I couldn't believe I'd been out of touch this long. I think I've caught up on my thank yous and I'm working on things at the strife lust list. I need to read more through everyone's LJs, too. I just feel like I've let part of my life slip away and now I'm trying to catch it again.

I know I said I'd try to post last time, but this time I'm going to make myself because I hate this falling out of touch thing.

Again, I'm very sorry to everyone who should've had an email/post from me months ago. I'll be doing better from now on.

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Subject:	Uhh....
Time:	10:57 am.
Mood:	annoyed.
Music:	Jerry Goldsmith - Mulan's Decision (Score).

Apparently a spam bot or a virus or something got hold of my personal email addy this morning and sent a bunch of crap out to everyone on my contacts list. A list that hadn't been cleaned out in over ten years. (Which means that the White House just got spammed.) I apologize to anyone who received that junk. I've changed my password, I'm running a virus scan and I've just finished cleaning out my contacts list. Hopefully this won't happen again.

Oh, and yeah, I'm still alive. Just really, really busy. I'll try to update soon and maybe, you know, post the last part of that Herc/Strife story that was supposed to be posted back in December. Right.

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Time:

1:59 am.

I'm trying to get myself on LJ at least once a day here, even if I just do a little post and read a few flist entries. I see others are going through some serious RL things and *hugs* to you guys. I hope you all pull through well.

Checking my email (which I hadn't looked at in weeks), I see I missed a couple birthdays. So happy (very late) B-Day wishes to

marinarusalka and

luthien. I'm sorry I didn't get those out more on time.

I just got my paycheck that covers the week when I was pretty much entirely gone due to the flu. It's one of those paychecks that you just cringe when you look at it and start counting the days until the next one shows up.

I got my other eyebrow pierced last Sunday. I still wasn't feeling great, but I have a vision for how I'd like my face to look and I wasn't feeling so bad that I wanted to put that on hold. Unfortunately, the piercing was just the tiniest bit off and had to be repositioned, which meant repiercing the hole at a different angle. That actually came pretty close to my definition of pain. My eyebrow's been very sore since then and yesterday it was pretty red around one of the balls. But tonight the pain is mostly gone and the swelling is really down. I'm guessing it should be fine now.

I don't have any extra work scheduled for this week, and other than dying my hair green on Monday, I don't plan on doing much except going to work, doing housework when I have to and just relaxing the rest of the time.

Hope everyone on my flist managing all right.

ETA: I replaced my "Heroes" wallpaper with SPN wallpaper. Dean is now staring at me.

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Subject:	Still here. Sort of.
Time:	8:36 pm.

I owe many of you many apologies for not responding to the FB for the story I posted here and on the lists. I'm so sorry it's taken me this long to get back to the net and I'll try to get replies out in the next few days. The flu hung on pretty tight these last few weeks (I managed to finally go one day without coughing yesterday), and then some sort of stomach virus hit me last week. I picked up extra hours of work this week (backshifting, the 700s, massive art books) which has left me utterly exhausted. I knew I should get online and see how everyone was doing, talk, etc., but I couldn't find the energy. I don't know if I'll find more energy now, but I'm going to try. Again, I'm very sorry for being totally uncommunicative here.

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Time:

10:25 pm.

My insane workload ended last week. I got my left eyebrow pierced. Unfortunately, for the first time in two years I've fully come down with...something. I have no idea what it is. I started getting sick Tuesday and by Thursday I was barely dragging myself into work. I spent all of Friday (literally) in bed running a high enough fever that I was hallucinating and I simply couldn't make it into work this last weekend. I was a little too busy coughing up blood and losing my voice.

I thought it was a simple cold because I'm hungry enough to eat nearly anything and there're no muscle aches. But since when does a cold run a high fever (one I'm still trying to fight off) and have me coughing up so much mucus that it's bloody?

I'm hearing about something new going around that's not a cold but some odd new strain of flu. I had a flu shot, but whatever I have, it just can't be a simple cold.

I tried going into work this afternoon, but I only made it for half the time. When I asked my boss if anyone would mind if I just went home, he was relieved that I'd finally decided to go. No one wanted to be near me and there's a good chance I can still get other people sick. Maybe I'll be better tomorrow, but I'll have to take it hour by hour.

I haven't been well enough to concentrate on much of anything; reading's been a total bust. But I can stare at the TV just fine, so I downloaded and burned both seasons of Dexter to DVD and watched all of that. I'm so hooked now. I also caught up on Supernatural and although I ran out of DVD-Rs, I'm well enough now to sit here at the computer and watch stuff, so I'm currently working my way through SGA. I have a ton of other series to catch up on, but not too much stamina in one go. I'll probably do a couple more eps tonight (just finished "Mortal Coil" and I loved the ending scenes -- actual character development! What a shock! This is starting out to be a good season for a change) and then just go to bed.

I'm sleeping a whole lot right now. Although, watching all these shows and then sleeping so much is giving me weird dreams. I don't know where the hell my subconscious came up with the one where Rodney becomes a vampire, but manages to hide the fact so he can seduce half of Atlantis -- I haven't watched/read anything with vampires in months and no SGA fic in weeks. I do remember it being a cool enough plot that when I woke up, I just turned over and for the first time ever managed to will myself into continuing a dream. Too bad I can't write SGA, or I'd give that a try as a crackfic or something.

Damn, I'm so so tired right now. I think I just used up all my brain power for the night. I'll stare at another ep and go to bed. Ep shiny.

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Subject:	Book review: "Taboo: One for the Money" by Willa Okati
Time:	6:30 pm.

Title: Taboo: One for the Money
Author: Willa Okati
Genre: Cowboy romance (is that a real genre? Maybe Western/Romance, but it's modern day western).
# of stars (out of 5): Three.

crimson_willa is a pretty good writer. That's going by reading one of her e-books, but I think way back when I read her fanfic and I liked her then, too. She's good at character development, very good. After reading this book I feel like I have a full picture of who Heath and Vanner are -- at least from Heath's point of view. They feel real to me, as do many of the secondary characters. I liked the backgrounds she gave her characters and the world she's built up around them.

I didn't know much about rodeos or bronco riding; through Heath's eyes and internal monologue, I feel like I learned a bit more without it being an infodump and detracting from the story. The "bad guy" could've easily been two dimensional, but the way he's described by Heath, the descriptions of the way Heath reacts to him, it gives the guy more substance than he would've had otherwise, made me actively dislike him without feeling like it was a forced response. His motive seems believable.

Vanner and Heath are twins (wiry, blond, blue-eyed twins, for those in the audience who'd care to imagine an occasionally blond actor who would be a nice fit for the parts), so this story isn't for anyone who has a problem with fictional incest (twincest). However, it's one of my kinks and it made the story sexier for me. I'm not sure how realistically it's dealt with because of how it ended (more on that later), but for Heath's part it did feel realistic. He knows it's all sorts of wrong and tries to use other men to get it out of his system. (The details about how a guy goes about picking up other men at a rodeo is pretty interesting. Good details there.) He constantly tries to talk himself out of it, even as he finds excuses to oggle his brother. When things finally happen, the circumstances are extenuating enough that I can believe it might happen that way. But I'd really need to know more about what Vanner is thinking to decide if the whole thing is believable or not.

Which brings me to the problems with this story, and why I just can't rate it higher. The biggest thing is that it's not a whole story. It has a TBC note at the end and we're left sitting there wondering if the brothers will ever talk things through, what's up with their sister (how did she get there, anyway?), how will they deal with Sidney -- will Heath even tell Vanner about all of that? A whole bunch of questions and while the note at the end promises a sequel, the fact that this story isn't even listed on the author's website (and her LJ hasn't been updated in over a year) doesn't fill me with confidence.

I think that the author is a little too good at characterization, or rather, she's far weaker at plot than characterization. She gets so into building up her characters and their backgrounds that for pages the plot gets lost. It's obvious when she realizes she needs to move on because the story is abruptly moved forward in some way. It's jerky and feels off.

Without the rest of the story, I can't say how realistic the twincest is, because I simply don't have a complete picture. In fact, it's hard to review anything but the writing itself without the whole story. If she ever does publish the rest of it then I'll have more to say about the completed story. For now, as much as I do like her writing, her style, and think the story has promise, I was disappointed by the sudden TBC when it hadn't been warned for anywhere. (I wouldn't have bought it if I'd known.) Hopefully one day I'll get to see part two, but I'm not holding my breath.

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Subject:	Clueless line crossage.
Time:	11:08 pm.

So I was home sick Monday and pretty exhausted at the same time. For whatever reason I got the writing bug, decided it would be fun to do a "sometime in the future" story for the Herc/Strife thing. Not an epilogue so much as just a story set in that universe. I got most of it done but I was too tired to finish it. When I picked it back up Tuesday afternoon, I took one look at what I'd written and had that gut reaction of: "Oh my god, ladies do not write this sort of thing!" Which I only get when I've done that line/social taboo crossage thing in my writing. I just had no idea I'd done it. I was too out of it Monday night/Tuesday morning to realize that it wasn't the sort of thing I'd normally write. It was graphic, sure, but at the time my main thought was along the lines of: "Oooh, this is hot!" The fact that I couldn't look at it well-rested and in the light of day without turning into Ms. Prim and Proper is...interesting.

I finally managed to be tired and funky feeling enough very late Tuesday night/Wednsday morning to finish up the story and I don't think it's bad, just different. And going places I didn't know my mind went. At least not in anything I was willing to post. Which I intend to with this one. I just need to run through it a couple more times first. Preferably without blushing like a sheltered Midwestern girl.

I also managed to whip out part one of a story idea I've had running around in my mind for years. If I can get more of it done, it'll be told in bits under 1000 words each, just enough to get a feel for the setting and a hint of the larger picture going on. It's pretty damn AU, but in a fun BtVS-feeling way (fun for me, anyway). I'll be interested to see if I can go anywhere with it.

Now I've got this Deimos/dragqueen!Strife story running through my head and I need to see if I can pull it off.

I'm feeling the urge to write in the BtVS universe again, but for what I want to do, I'd need to watch some eps for character research and I just don't have the time/patience right now. But damn, it would be fun to be back in that fandom.

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