Clarisse Mc'Clellan's Daughter

I suppose the usual designation doesn't really apply, as I'm no longer at uni, but it's a similar sort of post, so I imagine it works. Anyway. Heading home for family Thanksgiving; expect scarcity and/or more than my usual degree of scattered-ness until roughly Monday. I'll still be around, just more sporadically than usual. Alex already knows about Sariel-Kirk things, and Saph, I hope you don't mind I tagged in to Yrael's latest? For super slowtime fun? Let me know if you do. As for SouCon folks, Lina will still be around between now and Monday, I just can't promise any great long scenes.

Off I go. Must finish packing and clearing up before my lift gets here.

Checking in from my parents' place while I have a second. Yesterday was filled with much geocaching as anticipated, which meant it was also filled with much fun! Slept like a petrified log last evening and night, which I sorely needed. Darn sleep schedule. Heading back to Madison in a few hours. Whee!

Must EP Sariel and get some sceneage in with Lina today. Threadfall out of pattern and the IMDB flu, wheeee--er, not in the same place. That'd just be a mess for whoever drew both at once. I need to do some further sniffing for IMDB flu fodder once I'm back home, now I think of it. I think Millifolken have also convinced me to check out Gargoyles, since apparently it's Trek voice land. *curious* If Sariel ever tags Xanatos, which she very well might, there's going to be initial confusion and how, I think. :)

Oh, and just saying because it's true like a true thing: Finding old friends literally days after consciously wondering where the frak they'd gone? Awesome city. :D You four know who you are. Much, much love, and love to all the other wonderful SC folks as well. If I keep going on this subject it's going to degenerate into incoherent happy squee. XD

Guess what?

SouCon's back!

:D :D :D :D :D *dances about* I've missed that place like you wouldn't believe! I finally got up the courage to sign back in last night, and oh my goodness but there were people! Alina's wingleader of Firedance again (not that she stopped being wingleader IC, but it's official OOC, anyway) and oh my goodness. We have a Tala, and a Q'ton, and a Naltia and a Cammy, and all four of the sisterhood, and a Z'vin and a Lish and a Gwen, and people I've never met who're returning or appearing and eeeee! :D :D :D *beams*

It's really, really good to be back/home. Yes, I'm weird for phrasing it that way. No, I don't honestly mind my weirdness that much.

soucon.silvertree.org 4201 will get you there, people on my flist who are/were/want to be SouConers. :) Just for info. :)

And yes, this song's a bit more serious than the bounciness of the rest of this post might suggest, but it's upbeat and lively and it's stuck in my head, so nyah. XD

Seriously, you deserve a round of applause for this one. I suppose the fourteenth time's the charm, or something. I won't dwell on that rather horrible statistic just now; for the moment I'm content and more to say better extremely late than never. You've finally done it.

I thank you from the bottom of my liberal, nontraditional, soon-to-be-better-recognized heart. and I doubt I'm alone.

This ficlet is looooong overdue, and for that I'm sorry, Tarii. this's another one written for a WZZT art trade, only the recipient owes me nothing at all in return. I hope this fits.

( Falen )

This was written as part of another Whazzit Weyrd art trade. This one came about just because I felt like indulging my muses; Kythen doesn't owe me a thing in return. Here y'go, Ky! Hope this suits the kitty in question.

( Sivanna )

I'll have answers for yon lovely words meme thingie in the near future. For now, here's two more memes. Whee! both of these are stolen from a whoooole heck of a lot of people.

Here's the first...

Has my portrayal of a character(s) changed the way you think of him/her?

And here's the second.

Pick a fandom, any fandom I'm in. I will tell you some stuff that may involve canon ships, fanon ships, fanon trends, and whether or not I think things jumped the shark or went absolutely nuts, or where I myself stopped watching and why!

*strives to turn vague ficcy ideas into proper drabbles for people* gah, this song's spawned yet another plotbunny, but I'm not quite confident enough in the voice I'd be using to write the thing. Dang. *turns song up*

Hello flu vaccine, nice to *wince* meet you. My arm aches a bit, but oh well. At least I'm protected now. Noooo nasty flubug for me, say xiexie.

Now to find a Madison-local place to get yon swine flu shot once they start distributing it. ah well, I've got three weeks or so to look for that one.

I bet I've got a great purple bruise come tomorrow morning. I wouldn't be surprised; every time I donate blood, I come over black and blue. *unbothered*

This is for anybody in the Baltimore area who might be looking for a pair of wonderful kitties. I found this link via Love And Hisses and said why not spread the word. who knows? Somebody might see this and fall in love. Norwegian forest cats are *beautiful* in my very biased opinion; I haven't forgotten Vanessa, the amazing Norwegian forest kitty calico from Touched By a Paw. Oh my gosh, the soft, silky floof! She got adopted, too. :D Anyway.

This is the link to the initial blogpost about the kitties in Baltimore. I really, really hope they find a happy new home together. That post breaks my heart, jeez.

Aye, ye scurvy dogs, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day, and for once in me life I've not forgot it! Yarrr!

Ahem. XD I had to. Carry on. :)

I'm 25.

Well, technically I'm not 25 until 19:27 this evening, but still. The day is upon me. Yes, I know 25=a quarter century, and yes, it's freaking me out. Aaaaack! I feel ooooold, shard it!

I'm sitting here going... But I don't *feel* any different. I don't *feel* any older. I'm the same woman I was (and that's still weird, calling myself woman instead of girl) yesterday evening. Do I have to be all mature and... parent-y now? I know I'm not exactly a paragon of responsible adulthood; I have my own way of doing things, I know it, I like it. I've openly said I want to be my generation's cool aunt figure. I'm not suddenly going to change the person that I am just because I'm another year older. Reconciling that reality with the calendar is totally doable, and shouldn't take *that* long to happen... I hope. I'm working on it. And I won't lie. It's going to take a little working on. I suppose my own preconceptions about just what people 25 and older think about and do are getting in my way here. I know I can still be me. I know I don't have to change the way I live and think and approach things and... everything just because I've had a birthday. I just... need to let that knowledge sink in a bit.

Good lord. I sound like I'm having some quarterlife crisis or something, don't I? Anyway. Serious rambling about my mental state aside, I'm actually doing rather well. On my grocery run yesterday - and I finally bit the bullet and became a member of the lovely local co-op, yay! - I finally found lavender tea. Needless to say it, plus a couple other flavors--dandelion root and rose hip herbal, and let's see if the rose hip one tastes like I remember it--came home with me along with a few food essentials. Whole grain bread, strong cheese and a couple other things, yes. Anyhow. My first-ever mug of lavender tea was sipped while RPing Sariel, and that was very much deliberate on my part. It seemed only fitting, seeing as she was the reason I wanted to try the stuff. And for the record? Yum. :)

Anyhow. I'm in Waupun for the weekend, just because celebrating with family is nice. I wish Katie were able to be here, but as neither of us drive, that's not exactly possible. Dang. Ah well, if nothing else I'll call her at some point or other.

Now I'm off to make an apple orchard run. Mmm, cider.

Okay, so. This morning I went to do my usual once-a-day click of the button over at the hunger site and it's fellows. I clicked, I had the warm fuzzies, and then I spotted a link that said something about protecting the rights of Afghan women. And I went 'Ooooh, this looks interesting. I wonder what it is?' and I surfed over.

As it turns out, that link was to a petition--a totally legit petition, I might add--in support of a bill defending the rights of Afghan women and girls. You can bet I signed it, and when I got the confirmation e-mail with the little 'this proves your e-mail address and name are for real' clickable link inside, guess what I found after I confirmed myself as not a spambot?

A whole slew of other, equally worthy petitions in a list. :) Yes, I'm something of a dork. I know it's bordering on cliched, but I'll say it anyway. It actually feels like I might make a difference by signing some of those. All of those? I can only hope. Here's a link to the whole great lapful, and seriously, they're all worth looking at. I sent the updating of school lunch nutrition guidelines one to my parents, seeing as they're both educators. I might send one or more of the critter-related ones to Katie at some point as well. Anyway. Link ahoy!


http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/ti/1/ctg_ths_takeaction

And he has. I'm still getting all my personal programs and settings back - Jaws and Real1player are good to go, AIM will be shortly, MushClient's got a fault so not yet grrr, my favorites list is being slowly put together again - but the fact remains. As of now I can safely say...

I have my lovely laptop back! :D :D :D

Talk about always coming through in the end. :) Considering what it's been through, maybe the phrase should be something closer to 'takes a licking...', but Quark's a laptop, not a watch and anyway, I like the original description too much to change it. Besides, it still fits better than anything else. :) *is a happy, happy Chanter* Currahee! *coughs* Ahem. Yes. :)

In addition to being paid for saving my bum again, Adam the computer savvy family friend has a literal armful of basil heading his way today. Apparently he's a pesto fan; when I offered him basil and/or rosemary in thanks for his help, he said yes to as much basil as I could send him. So that's what he gets. He's earned it, too. :)

Right, now off to make a phone call or two, then see about redownloading AIM.

Alternately titled dealing with spywear in dairyland - I originate in dairyland, of course, not the spywear. Heh. :) anyhow. From what Adam* says, whatever spy crap hit me, it's *bad*. Bad enough in fact that Quark needs an entire wipe and reinstall of systems. Bleh, I say! Bleh! Ah well, at least it's doable. He's got my installation discs as of this morning, and hoooopefully things will be sorted by Saturday. Must keep fingers crossed. I'm suddenly really, really flipping glad I backed up all my documents a few weeks ago. At most, I'll lose half a dozen textfiles, the novel I was proofreading for Bookshare, the dozen odd songs I've downloaded, and my version of MushClient. The songs all came to me via radio_alouette, so they're retrievable, and MushClient is equally so - thanks Zhiun! Getting the Bookshare book back is as easy as returning and checking out the novel again. The couple files or fragments of files I can't recover are a shame to lose, but from what I remember, they weren't anything hugely important anyhow. I wouldn't mind getting back that funny exchange between myself and Lexie@AlterAeon, but oh well. If nothing else, I'll be able to rewrite the couple lost files mostly from memory, if they are what I think they might be. It's a good thing that world building happens mentally as well as in text, with me. Even Jaws is downloadable off the Freedom Scientific site, and if worse comes to worst, I've a portable version of NVDA on my flash drive (which also needs a name, come to think of it) as a backup. Thanks for the year-old clue about NVDA existing, Trent in Colorado. It came in handy.

I'll stop spamming you guys with computer crap, now. Although hmm. I think the flash drive's going to end up being called Rom. Quark's an essential character (and I do mean character) who always comes through in the end. Rom is utterly essential too, but doesn't seem like much at all to start with. Yes, Rom it is. *happily geeks out*

*Adam=the sweet computer-savvy friend of the family who's saved all our butts over the years. I owe him lunch, or something, in addition to paying him for fixing Quark.

I frakking well hate spywear. A lot.

In other words, my lovely laptop is bawked at the mo. I'm at my parents' place for a couple days, which is rather opportune, so I've at least got computer access while I'm here. If these issues of mine aren't resolved by Saturday however... well. Expect some scarcity until they are. *curses spywear* All I did was click through to see someone's userinfo. Honestly. That's all I did. and now Quark's flooded with stupid balloons popping up every twenty seconds, on top of a few other things. Grrr.

Just letting folks know. I'd sort the spywear issues myself, but half the time my start menu/desktop/everything are inaccessible to me, and the other half the computer gets too bogged down in spy crap to let Jaws do any reading before I get anywhere close to downloading an anti-spywear program. *curses spywear again* Gods, I hate this rubbish. I mean really. Someone's userinfo? I ask you! The heck's that about?

Anyway. Off to see if the lovely tech savvy friend of the family's been able to e-mail that anti-spywear program over yet. Thank goodness for sweet people. Adam, if you ever read this, I owe you lunch or something. Seriously.

Oh, and for fellow Millimuns on the flist? I may end up copy/pasting at least part of this to ways_back_room so Millifolken know what's going on. That's for later, though.

Instead of bringing you lot a post with actual content of the 'this's what's been going on in my little corner of the world' variety, you get a quote. A quote from the ever-amazing sarahtales, she of the infinite number of clever and truthful turns of phrase. I really hope she doesn't mind me quoting her over here, but this's the sort of thing that needs doing.

The femme fatales, the ninja ladies, the shy girls, the chatterboxes, the ones several guys wanted, the ones none of the guys wanted, the heroines, the sassy sidekicks, the girl the hero fell in love with in one episode we never saw again, the girl who wanted a guy she didn't get, the girl who was with a ton of different guys, the girl who was devoted to her job, the girl who was into other ladies, the murder victim, the tomboy, the feisty redhead, the dumb blonde. There was never anything wrong with any of them.

It's worth it to recognise that we're all okay. We were always okay.

I applaud you for this. Loudly. So do Sariel, Alina, Tracy, Kayla, Lor (Lorany-that-was), Leah, Amy, Jillian Rhodes, Nancy and even Butterfly. And countless others besides; naming them all would make this list of headvoices *much* longer than necessary. At risk of oversimplifying things a bit, all I'll say is this.

Sarah? You've got it right. *salutes!*

Yesterday, not long after I wrote my last post, I got up from the family computer and my kid sister sat down. A minute later, we heard this from the next room:

"Dad, the computer's broken. I think Chanter broke it."

Of course, the thing had been working utterly fine when I'd left it, and I'd only visited a couple livejournals and a feminist news site before getting up and going elsewhere. There had been that one aborted search for said feminist news site, but it had involved nothing worse than a page of search results... not exactly scary stuff, in other words. But still. Outlook Express worked fine. Telnet worked fine. Internet Explorer did not work at all fine. Internet Explorer just... sat there. And sat there. and claimed it was connecting while doing exactly nill. Ugh.

There was muttering, and there was restarting of the computer, and there was calling of a local computer savvy friend who's saved all five of our butts several times over the years. And then there was logging on to AlterAeon, because with IE down there was no accessing anything else. Muds and MUSHes were it, which isn't really all that bad - at least I A) knew the Internet itself still worked and B) could potentially RP and/or XP. and it's here that there needs to be some giving out of kudos.

I logged on to AlterAeon, and naturally started yakking about my Internet Explorer issues. As it turned out, Gahan@AlterAeon was having the same trouble as I was and thought it might be a virus. Naturally, I signed off and passed that info on to family on this end of things. A few hours later, I logged back in, and Mathayas@AlterAeon said 'Hey, gahan fixed his Internet issues by installing IE8. If worse comes to worst, I could send you the installer.'

Worse did come to worst, and Mathayas wound up sending me said installer; third time really was the charm, thanks to router issues and my clumsy fingers. The thing was successfully downloaded, the installation was pretty self-explanatory (I ran the same one for my own laptop, so at least it was recognizable) and the desktop was restarted. and lo, the 'net worked again. Quoth the Chanter when the family-types weren't listening...

"Currahee!"

*dances about* I feel oddly proud of myself now. I owe Mathayas and Gahan, that much is for sure. Still. I fixed the family computer! ... Er, with help from outside, but anyway.

On a much, much more serious note, many hugs and lots of love to simplykimberly, who just lost teeny smoke Siamese foster kitten dusky. *sniffles* You're amazing, Kimberly. That bitty kitten was clearly loved, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one melting from afar over him. I'm so, so sorry.

Oh right. I was going to write something on Friday about it being fourteen August, but it didn't happen. Whoops. Is it strange of me that I remember that day not only as VJ Day, but as the day the Academy students were liberated and escaped to Taos? I are Millimun, yes.

*eyes clock* Oooh, old time radio drama ahoy. 'Scuze me, folken.

Right, that bloody well does it. Hamid Karzai, you have lost my respect.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt before this; you've gone to university, I said. You're an educated man, you have to have something of a clue.

Oh boy and tell God sorry, was I ever wrong.

How dare you? How *dare* you stoop so low? Are you truly so desperate to court voters that you'll legally set a segment of your own population back decades, if not centuries? What you've authorized is not only legalized rape, but possible sexual enslavement. Don't even get me started on the provision for buying silence from victims you've agreed to. I... truly have no other words fit for public airing, never mind fit to sling at a head of state. Dairene Callahan has it right, though. speaking truth to power is never out.

You horrible man. I hope this depravity you've signed into law generates an international outcry loud enough to make your ears ring. I thought you were quite alright, once. I respected you when friends and colleagues didn't. I defended you.

I won't be doing that again.

Well, on the positive side, the job interview went very well. On the negative side, I've just had an e-mail from the lady who interviewed me saying thank you for your time, but we've chosen to go another way. Damn. I know they were only picking two people out of however many applicants there were, and I know they'd already chosen one by the time I'd interviewed, but... dangit, am I ever frakking well going to find work, or am I just going to sit like a bump on a log forever?

... Er, say sorry. Mini rant over. At least the interview went well? Looks like that verse worked in part, Gen. Interview practice is plenty nice, don't get me wrong. I just wish there'd been a job at the end of it.

O well. *goes back to job-searching*

Job interview. In a couple hours. Aaaaah! Gods, this never gets any less nervous-making, does it? *jitters all over her journal* Mew!

I mean, it's a receptionist-type job, so it's not exactly NPR yet, but *still*! No more coming up with nill on the endless job search front, no more sitting on my bum feeling like a bump on a log, finally having a proper paycheck again... good gods but I hope I get this! They're willing to train me on the job and everything! I really, really hope this works. Frak, but I'm afraid I'm going to screw this up and have bad news to report come the end of today. But come on, it's talking to people and interacting and--jeez, it's nothing that I haven't loved doing forever. Part of me is thinking how can I go wrong? The rest, however, is going do not make a bad impression, do *not* make a flipping bad impression, do not fall all over yourself do not screw this up! Aaaah mew! *quakes about*

Please God, let this work. And please drop a Tesla invocation/reference or some township music or a verse of Welsh language poetry or something in my path so I'm slightly more confident it will. Yes, I'm weird. No, I don't mind. :)

Off to... um. Do everything I need to before interview-ness hits. Took me a second there. Off to... dry my hair. right. Expect a report, good or bad, later today. Please let it be a good report meep! *coughs* ahem.