So I realise I'm a huge dork for this, but does anyone else totally have a mad crush on Smash?

Cause I love the show so so much, and I know it's so, so bad, but I love it so much!

Broadway, musical theatre, dancing, friendships destroyed under mysterious circumstances?  REALLY HOT people all over the place?  And Angelica Huston chewing scenery.  God, it's like it was made for me.

I wish there were places that delivered groceries to me.  Or at least delivered food beyond pizza.  Or a Thai restaurant.  Oh man, Thai food. I'd be in major love.

On the other hand, I seriously lack the words to describe how excited I am about Korra.  I saw the magically appearing first episode and every bit of excitement I had tripled at the set up for the plot arc.  Also Tenzing's adorably hilarious airbending children and the politics and metalbenders and ugh.  April 14th can't come fast enough.

I've been stuck with this awful virus for the past two weeks or so.  It'd be less horrific if during any of the past two weeks, I'd actually felt like I was getting better, but no.  It's been flying around town here so the way my luck's been going, as soon as I manage to kick it, I'll pick up another version from someone else.  Working with the public kind of sucks sometimes. 

Other times it does not as I just got a copy of the galley for the sequel to A Discovery of Witches. I kind of loved that book last summer, and the wait until the sequel was driving me insane.  Of course now the choice is whether to read the galley instantly and then worry about a potential 18 month gap between books 2 & 3 if I don't get an early one of the 3rd book or to wait....  Decisions.

The decision will probably be made for me as my concentration is pretty much at an all time low with this virus.  On Friday, I was surfing pinterest at work under the guise of 'looking for the ways libraries use the new social network.'  Which actually was interesting, but also just about all the concentration I could muster.

The weather has been incredibly warm and strange this past week.  Highs in the 70s in mid-March are not normal for Michigan.  Watching the gorgeous sunshine and warm weather outside makes being sick even better. I love not being able to go outside in it because it hurts to breathe.  It's fantastic.

This is me pretty much just complaining now.  And I'm not even letting myself get into hockey because then the torrent would overflow.  We'll end now, and maybe I'll take my happy note as going to rewatch Korra...

Happy International Woman's Day, all.  Too bad it feels more like 1912 than 2012, but hey! Happy Women's Day anyway.

The icon and this quote express this day:

"Sometimes you get a miracle, sometimes you hit the post."

Yeah.

There are three cats in this room.

Three heating vents too.

You see where this story is going.  Luckily I have a blanket & a little dog since obviously I don't need any actual heat!  But there is actual snow outside and actual snow falling and it sort of even looks like winter finally!

The first day of 2012 has brought me a real live winter storm complete with a winter storm warning!    Theoretically we're going to get 8-10 inches over the next 24 hours so I'm spending today kind of hoping that tomorrow the library closes due to weather so I can stay home and watch the Winter Classic.  (I'm still annoyed it's in the freaking afternoon on Monday.)

 I spent last evening making spaghetti sauce, watching the Red Wings win, and chatting with people on AIM and twitter.  It was relaxing and completely free of those horrible 'best night of the year zomg!' expectations one gets when going out.

Today I slept in then made coffee and went to a free New Year's Day yoga class at the yoga studio around the corner (this is BFE for a lot of things, but the locally-owned bakery and yoga studio just across the way is really nice).  I've only done yoga on videos or in a gym setting so this was totally different and also really, really excellent both for the movement and the centering/relaxation.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to hurt tomorrow though.

And now I'm roasting a chicken and boiling potatoes to mash.  If the power goes out from the wind, at least I'll  have tasty food to eat!

So I did Yuletide this year and received a fantastic Enchantment Emporium fic.  Very well-characterized Alysha and Charlie and Graham, and a lovely pseudo-outsider look at the weird, messed up, and awesome dynamics of the Gale family.  I love it!

Family Ties (2983 words) by natmerc
Fandom: Enchantment Emporium - Tanya Huff
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alysha Gale/Graham Buchanan
Characters: Alysha Gale, Graham Buchanan, Charlotte Gale, Auntie Gwen Gale
Summary:  When Graham Buchanan got involved with Allie Gale, he got involved with her family too.

For once, I actually wrote more than my assigned story! I'm kind of proud of myself.  I'm way more proud of the fact that I pretty much like all three and (even more important) the recipient liked them too.  I don't write a lot of fic (obviously), so when I get a chance, it's nice to feel like I'm moderately successful.  All three of the fics have spoilers for their respective canons but there aren't any spoilers below the cut!

( My fics below... )
I wish all of you all the best life has to offer in 2012.

Most of this year has felt like an eternal slog through the Slough of Despond with neither the Celestial City nor yet the Wicket Gate in sight.  It's a Lost Year in some ways, but if it's Lost then that implies it's possible to be Found which, one can only hope, is a good thing.

Some of the best things of 2011 (in no particular order):

Seeing my brother (and sister in law, I suppose) at the cottage over 4th of July
Downton Abbey
Finding the job of my heart (if only it came in a full-time version with health insurance)
Doctor Who - and Matt Smith who is MY Doctor
The Red Wings - and the Canucks and hockey. I laughed, I cried, I loved that damn sport (and teams) more than reasonable
My Mom who was there when I most needed her
Twitter
The Great Lakes
Yuletide
My friends who were there for me through everything (especially coltsbane who talked me through every bad thing)
Kayaking

And books.  Which deserve their own category because...books!  *jazz hands*  2011 was seriously a year of good books, and I spent much of it reading.  So...

The Best Books I read in 2011 (in no particular order)

( Under the cut... )
Be safe tonight if you're going out!

Uh, so I just found my Christmas cards.  Unmailed obviously.  They were just hanging out all addressed and stamped in their box in plain sight, but I was certain they'd been mailed.

So those'll be going out today!  Luckily I subscribe to the old-fashioned thinking that Christmas doesn't START until December 25 and continues until January 6...because that means you all will get your cards on time.

And thank you to everyone who's sent me a lovely card this year.  It's been such a pleasure, this year especially, receiving lovely little messages of brightness and cheer.

I hope everyone who's traveling tonight (or tomorrow) has safe going and timely arrivals.  I decided to bow out of driving the six hours out to my aunt's house for our family Thanksgiving because a) I've already been traveling this week and b) I have to work Friday afternoon and driving at 6am sounds awful.

So I'm at home enjoying the Red Wings game in HD - I co-opted the living room's television since everyone else headed out.  For tomorrow I have a chicken to roast, potatoes to mash, cranberries to...sauce, and a wee pie to eat.  I will be so very set.  I'm pretty sure the little dog and the kitties won't mind it so much either.

SOMEONE (*eyes coltsbane*) informed me that my broken TV was a sign I needed a new one from Amazon's Black Friday sales.  It was difficult to argue. 

I'm fluctuating between gleeing and being totally terrified over my Yuletide assignment.  I'm really, really excited, but it's more a matter of "OMG WILL I LOVE THIS CANON SO MUCH! CAN I DO IT JUSTICE?"  My recipient's letter and prompts made me glee, and I got the canon to review in the mail today so now it's a matter of revisiting and letting my subconscious work for a bit.

I just finished Seanan McGuire's Late Eclipses and good lord, how does she keep getting better?  This is the fourth Toby book, and it's significantly better than the third which was significantly better than the second and so on.  I thought about stopping at Barnes and Noble today to get One Salt Sea...but I didn't.  And now I regret it.  Where I did stop was Best Buy to drop off my poor broken TV for recycling and there were already people camped out for Black Friday!  WHAT? What do people need so badly that they're camping out at noon on Wednesday?  Good grief.  That's just...I don't know.  Hopefully they never ever mock Twilight or Star Wars fans for camping out for premieres.

My very dearest Yuletide writer, hello!

First of all thank you so much for being awesome and volunteering to write in these fandoms!  I love you already for even knowing them and enjoying them enough to want to explore them more.

I hope this Yuletide is absolutely wonderful for you and nothing in my list stresses you out. If it does? Do what makes you happy.  You being happy makes me happy.

( My Requests... )

This is the best definition of middle grade (and to some extent YA) lit that I've seen since Diana Wynne Jones'.

But most kids are are at least as comfortable with complex characters and ethical problems as grownups are. And on the up side, kids are much more willing to grapple with big ethical or moral questions in their fiction. In fact, the best definition of middle grade I’ve ever heard is that it’s “books written for kids who are still young enough to think they can change the world.”

It's from an interview with Chris Moriarty posted over here at the Enchanted Inkpot.  And it makes me hope I'm never too old to stop reading middle grade and YA!

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation( Love after love )


Wait
by Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
( Wait... )

Antilamentation
by Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
( Antilamentation )

Since I've been hanging out at the library a lot what with working there and all, and they use the Dewey Decimal system, I've been trying to refamiliarize myself with it after spending more than half my life dealing with Library of Congress.

And so I've decided. I hate the Euro-centricism of the Dewey Decimal system. I know it's nearly a hundred and forty years old, but can't we move away from it? Or can't the revisions actually address this?

I mean, okay, if we just look at the hundred divisions and not the additional divisions within:

200s are about religion, right?

So we get 210 on philosophy and history of religion. And that's cool.
220 is The Bible - seriously? One of the hundred divisions is on the bible? Not even "religious texts" but solely the Bible.
230-280 are all Christianity - theology, practice/observance, organisation & social work, history, denominations. Really.
And 290 is "Other Religions." How gracious that non-Christian religions get one whole division.

Then we have 400s being on Language.

410 is linguistics. Cool, yo.
420-480 are English, German, French, Italian & Romanian, Spanish & Portuguese, Latin & Italic, and Classical and modern Greek.
490 is other languages. One tenth of languages section covers the languages that the majority of the world speaks. There's no specific sections for anything other than European languages.

If we look at 800s on Literature, it's the same thing.
810-880 are American and European literature. Because Spanish, French, and German all need their own specific divisions for some reason while everything NOT American and European is shoved into 890.

Ugh. Also I'm cranky, I have a migraine coming on, and I have to go to work in a few minutes.

Twitter's responsible for everything...and since my_belle_ put up her gorgeous Jensen Ackles picspam, I'm returning the favour with the boys of Friday Night Lights...and other stuff.

( PANTHERS WIN STATE! PANTHERS WIN STATE! )

Well, my favourite, favourite book is apparently packed up...which is going to be a problem when I want to read it.

So I went with an old beloved favourite instead.

Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil are not really sisters, but they have been brought up together like one family.

<3<3<3<3

The blogosphere has been rightfully up in arms this past week about the Missouri school board that voted to ban both Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer from their schools’ curriculum and libraries.  Given some school board members’ admission that they hadn’t even bothered to read the books and the quality of both books, one could wonder if they simply dislike titles with numbers in them. 

All flippancy aside, I think this decision by the school board is utterly short sighted and disturbing.  My feelings on banning books aren’t terribly sophisticated: no books should be banned.  All books have value even if that value is only to turn our stomachs or arouse our distaste.  Neither of the choices above fall under that category.

I’m not going to get into the value of Slaughterhouse-Five.  The book is a modern classic, and its defenders are numerous.  And this isn’t a review of Twenty Boy Summer.  I read it too long ago to give a proper review without a thorough reread, and I don’t have a copy to hand.  What this is a strong recommendation to read both books if you haven’t already.  Read them and see what is so dangerous that a school board feels just having the book on the shelf of the library would damage its students.

Twenty Boy Summer was banned because “it sensationalized sexual promiscuity and included questionable language, drunkenness, lying to parents and a lack of remorse.”  It does include some of this but I think those who determined this forgot how to actually read instead of simply ticking off demerits on a list.  What Twenty Boy Summer is about is friendship, lying and telling the truth, and how to continue living after the overwhelming tidal wave of grief has shattered the landscape of your world.  It’s about how people handle loss differently and how families fall apart and pull back together. 

That seems to me like the type of book I’d want teenagers to have access to as they’re learning to be adults, learning to live confidently and meaningfully, and learning that we all cope the best way we know how.

If you haven’t read Twenty Boy Summer, I strongly recommend it.  Read it and then give it to a teenager in your life or donate it to the local library so its available for all.

(This is mostly the same post as is on my book review journal so if you read over there too, I apologise!)

If you haven't by now, you really should read Lev Grossman's article in Time about fan fiction and specifically Harry Potter fanfic: The Boy Who Lived Forever. Also you should read Grossman's book The Magicians because it's freaking awesome and has this gorgeous atmosphere. But the article is a great look at fanfic - for a general audience because it's Time, but without judgement or condescension.

It also contains a quote that just confirms my feeling Naomi Novik is completely awesome (beyond everything else she's completely awesome about). But she says:

"Fanfic writing isn't work, it's joyful play. The problem is that for most people, any kind of writing looks like work to them, so they get confused why anyone would want to write fanfic instead of original professional material, even though they don't have any problem understanding why someone would want to mess around on a guitar playing Simon and Garfunkel."

For me, that would be it exactly - and it's why it's so dang hard to explain to people why one does what one does.

I never actually posted that I was back from the cottage, but it is, indeed the case. The cottage was - well, it's very disappointing when one's favourite place on earth makes one utterly crazy - crazier?. So it wasn't a very good trip overall.

But there were good points.

I finally learned to sail by myself (as opposed to managing the sail while someone else is in the boat) and I had several excellent afternoons tacking back and forth over the lake. I also tipped the boat a few times, oops, and still have bruises up and down my body to show for it.

On July 3rd, we had a bonfire on the beach and it was clear enough to see some of the Michigan fireworks just barely popping over the horizon.

Hank's 10 lb dog Zoe decided she was going to bite the nose of my aunt's 90 lb golden retriever while she (Zoe) was sitting on my lap. Apparently I must be defended from the big dog?

Nearly everyone up there tie-dyed shirts with nice Procion dye so they all came out very bright and completely awesome. Then we went out to breakfast wearing them and looked like a hippie commune out for a stroll.

But I'm completely thankful to be back. Never again will I go up to the cottage for a long period of time without a car (not being able to leave when I need to apparently results in screaming fights with my aunt. Fun), and when my concentration is already shot, going to places where I usually read for hours on end is pretty much an exercise in futility.

So that was the cottage. Chavez is happy I'm back.

And I am off to the cottage in just about an hour or so! Chavez vehemently disapproves of this "packing thing," but so far she hasn't knocked my coffee over. And that, my friends, is a win.

My brother and his wife are coming up to the cottage for the first time in forever. Forever for my brother, that is. Lis hasn't ever been there. Which was revealed dramatically in her Facebook update last week where she talked about having no time because of her appointments for an eyebrow wax, mani/pedi, haircut, and facial before she flies out. Yeeeeeeeah. Because when I go to the cottage, I make sure my nails are done perfectly first. Oh wait. I don't. I figure if I pack enough clean underwear, I'm good. So we'll see how the whole cottage ethos goes over for her. Hopefully the water won't back up again like it did over Memorial Day.

I packed about 30 books plus my Kindle last night. Which is probably overkill even for 2 weeks so I'm going to try to pare it down a little. I miss taking my own damn car so no one can judge how many books I bring...also so I can leave whenever I want. We'll see how this goes, my friends, but I am a little nervous.

Less nervous now than last night, but that's probably because I've had four hours of sleep and a pot of coffee so my brain, it is on drugs. Speaking of, I should make sure I packed sunscreen.

I shall see you all in two weeks if not sooner! (Probably sooner. I will need me some internets to get me through free agency on July 1.)

The riots in Vancouver make me so sad. It's such a great city, such a great team, such a great fanbase, and a few jackasses are making all of it look bad. But it IS just a few jackasses, and shouldn't reflect back on the team or city at all.

I'm from Detroit, dammit, I should know.

Thinking about it makes me also think about the riots at Michigan State when I was a student there. There were a few of them, but the biggest was in late March of 1999 after the basketball team got knocked out of the NCAA Final Four. It was all over the news, and for years after, when people learned I was a student then, they asked if I'd rioted, what I'd done that night, what it was life. And every time, I had to skirt around the question, say I didn't notice or whatever. It usually led to more questions.

Because - how does one say that she wasn't in town that weekend because her dad died the same day as the riot? It's not normal conversation.

Hockey always makes me think of my dad.