Guys, I kind of want to start writing my Yuletide story RIGHT NOW.

This is a problem, as I have to reread canon first. (My hard life, let me show you it.)

Have I mentioned recently that I adore Yuletide?

Yuletide letter

Dear Yuletide writer,

First of all: I love you for writing me any story in any of these fandoms. Seriously. All these fandoms I picked not because I want to receive a specific story in them, but because I would be happy to receive just about any story in them. If you're the sort who doesn't like too many details, feel free to stop reading here! Go off, write freely, and have fun! Ignore my details and prompts entirely, if you'd like. Write the story you want to write, and I'll be delighted to read it.

But if you're the sort who feels more secure with more details about what your recipient likes, I will attempt to ramble about that here. :)

( Perhaps at length. )

( Specific fandom stuff )

Thank you so much for writing! I'm looking forward to whatever I get in any of these fandoms, and I love you, o writer, for offering one of them.

Home from Dragon*Con! The super-summary version: tons of fun, lots of pictures, very happy with my costuming, seriously tons of fun, veeeery little sleep.

I am way behind on my friendslist and I am way behind on online hobbies and I am way behind on commenting on gen_ficathon stories and replying to the comments I got. But catching up will not begin until tomorrow at the earliest. Because tomorrow is a workday, and the first day of my Japanese class (so no real lunch hour), and right now I am going to bed. And I will sleep, and it will be both overdue and glorious.

Guess who is posting from the living room couch, from her new netbook?

It is tiny and blue and awesome, and it is now named Nightcrawler. Am I full of glee? OH AM I EVER.

About your business, citizens. :D

Home from upstate NY! It was lovely and fun, and the weather was pretty much perfect -- the one day it rained was the day Dad and I spent either indoors or in a car, and the other days were sunny and warm. And I read a lot and swam and raked seaweed and read some more and visited with my parents and met our new dog and visited with the old dog too, and it was great.

Aaaaaand also I have found that our home internet went out today. Thus, tomorrow will see wranglings with the cable company, but in the meantime, those of you I told I'd be on tonight? Except for quick email-checking now (yay pirated wireless) I shan't be. But tomorrow, I trust! Meanwhile, I wish all of you a lovely night, and I'm off to read some more.

Meme... survey... thing!

If you woke up tomorrow and you were the Doctor, what would you wear?

schiarire borrowed this question from mad_maudlin, and I am madly curious about everyone's answers. Mine, for the record:

* Jeans -- but it's the Doctor, so they'd have to be in some crazy color. Let us say red and purple swirls. With a practical-yet-sparkly belt.
* Bare feet. Shut up, I'm the Doctor, I can get away with it! For times when I must wear shoes, sensible black boots with knee-length stripey socks -- mismatched -- underneath.
* Black t-shirt
* A succession of crazy jackets and swishy coats, a different one in each episode. If you have the TARDIS's dressing room, why not use it?

I dunno what I'd do with my hair. Probably cut it! I like it long, but I can't be bothered to tie it up for every adventure in the wild corners of the space-time continuum, and it'd get in my way otherwise. And really, if waking up to find you're a Gallifreyan isn't a sufficient excuse for a new hairdo, what is?

Today I forgot to pack lunch. I was annoyed at myself -- I don't like to spend money on buying lunch, because of how it adds up if you make a habit of it, and anyway packed lunches are nearly always better than the decent-but-limited fare at the lunch cart nearest me -- but now I'm delighted that I did.

I closed up the office doors and stuck up a sign saying I'd be back in 10-15 minutes, because I'm manning the office alone this week while my boss is on vacation. And I slung my purse over my shoulder and headed out into the summer afternoon. It's sunny and warm, treading that hazy borderline right between uncomfortably muggy and comfortably summery, and the grass is thick and soft; on the quad, they're putting up some kind of event tent that I peered at curiously.

The building's ITS guy invited me to meet his dogs, whom he'd brought along in the car for a quick errand, and I gladly assented. They're sleek and friendly and wriggly, some brown slim breed I can't identify, and they licked my palms and shoved their heads under my fingers for petting while they pranced around the car.

As I was walking from there to the lunch cart, a mouse scurried across my path. And a very plump mouse it was; somebody's found a good food source! It froze when it saw me coming, and darted back under a parked car, and I went on my way amused.

And then, when I was almost to my destination, I heard a screech from overhead, and I spun to see a hawk swooping over me. It soared over to a nearby building and perched there on the gutter, flirting its rust tail at the world before it picked its way neatly around and glared around, saying k-k-k-k-k-k to all and sundry. I tossed a grin at Grazia, the lunch lady, who'd come out to watch with me. "There are two of them," she told me.

"Do you see them very often?" I asked, and she shook her head. Today was the first time, she said, but there were two of them, and weren't they beautiful? While we were saying this the hawk soared over us again with another cry, sun-silhouetted and barely twenty feet above my head, and disappeared over the trees. Its calls punctuated my lunch-buying, and half my walk home.

I think it was a red-tailed hawk, though I'm not good enough at raptor identification to be totally certain. I've seen them around before, once in a great while, and maybe even that same bird -- but never so close and so brazen. It was gorgeous.

A ten-minute walk like that is more than worth buying lunch for.

OH AND.

I am getting, sometime in the near future, a laptop.

This is not meant to be my primary computer. I have a desktop for that, and it suits me fine. This is meant to be something portable, which I can use to do things like write in coffeeshops and browse my f-list in the living room and watch dvds on bus rides.

Accordingly, the things I want in this laptop:

( List )

I am thinking strongly about getting a netbook, since portability is a major consideration and screen size and immense processing power are rather less so. I'm not 100% decided, though. A good laptop for the right price would also be awesome.

So my question for you, o f-list: Do you have any recommendations? Or anti-recommendations? I am of course looking at reviews and specs and will test out whatever I get at the store before I buy it, but personal experience is always valuable to hear.

Stuff! Also, impending absence.

So I have been meaning to update for days! As is my usual. Accordingly, here is a list of the stuff I have been meaning to write about. (I actually wrote this post a day or two ago, but I got the settings wrong so I'm pretty sure it didn't actually show up on anyone's friendslists. Oops. Reposting ahoy!

( assorted stuff )

Just call them Steve McQueen

This morning, at the charming hour of 6 a.m., my housemate wickedtrue rushed into my room. "Gen!" she said. "Where are the cats?!"

"Uh?" I mumbled, intelligently, from my comfortable nest of blankets.

"Your screen's popped out! The cats are gone!"

And then I was abruptly very awake.

Yes, everything's fine. We found the cats -- Portia right away, because she stuck close to the house like the sheltered little purebred she is, and came running towards the door as soon as she saw us. We're not sure she's ever been outside in her life before, and I expect the wider world was a pretty intimidating place. Eva Luna, our grumpy little ex-stray, led us a merry (and constantly meowing) chase through a couple of neighbor's backyards, then went to ground under a hedge before we managed to collar her.

Meanwhile Portia had peed somewhere she Ought Not To Have, and so we got to clean that up. At 6:30. It was a very exciting morning!

There is now a new rule that we do not open windows when a human being is not home. *facepalming* Until we get something worked out so the screens are more secure, anyhow.

On the other hand, a very cool guy who used to work in the building (and is now retired, but stops by every so often to visit) proved his coolness by not only knowing that this weekend was AnimeBoston, but telling us about his grandson who lives down on the Cape and was visiting for the weekend and the con, and would be trotting out to the bus every day in costume. "I'll have to ask who he's dressed as," he said thoughtfully. I hope he does, and remembers; I'm curious!

One of these years I'll get to AnimeBoston, really. Not this year, though. This year, I'm off tomorrow morning for a mini-road-trip to Montréal! There will be pancakes and schoolgirl French and dorkery; I am anticipating it immensely.

And now I have a salad. So the morning's not a total loss. But aiya. Dear cats: you're lucky I love your fuzzy little heads.

Things I have done recently:

( Star Trek and reading and gardens, oh my )

There's a meme going around, which goes as follows: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. I've been really enjoying everybody else's answers; it's fun to read what your friends ramble about!

( My associations from Gramarye; long-windedness ahead! )

*flops*

Several days belatedly: we're moved in!

Well, more or less. ( But all of these are details. )

(And speaking of superstars: all you guys who came to help us move have my eternal love and gratitude. Seriously. I cannot imagine how we'd have done it without you. jothra and wyrmofbooks are the extra-special winners, for trekking down from Maine and staying till the last midnight car-trip back to the old place, respectively, but all of you are my SAVIORS and my FAVORITES. (Along with Random Brazilian Guy who jump-started my car when it refused to start at 10 a.m. on moving day. The battery turned out to need replacing, which has since been accomplished. But he is second tier to you!))

I will be online again eventually, I promise you guys. At the moment, as I say, we have internet in theory but not really in practice; even if it were working right, though, I don't have anywhere to set up my computer quite yet. (This would be yet more impetus to get a laptop soon, if I had any intention of moving again before I've thoroughly forgotten what a pain in the neck it is.) At any rate, soon! For now, I post this sneakily from work to let you know I'm alive, and otherwise will sneak online on borrowed laptops with stolen wireless, and soon, my pretties, we will be all settled in and life will be back to normal except with bonus awesomeness.

LA LA LA PACKING. Oh my god, you guys, there is so much to do.

We're actually in pretty good shape, really, but it doesn't entirely feel like it. Tomorrow will be a marathon day. But Heather is up here and the three of us will put in a packing marathon tomorrow, and then Sunday we will move! And then we'll be DONE (um, except for unpacking everything again) and settled in at our new awesome place.

Speaking of: if any of you live in the Boston area and want to help us move this Sunday afternoon, you are still TOTALLY welcome to do so! We will love you forever for the help, and also feed you with beer and pizza and geeky conversation! Drop a comment or email or whatever and I will happily pass on all necessary info.

And now, back to packing!

I have committed fic again.

This is for bookelfe, because it's all her fault.

This is also SPOILER-TASTIC for the ending of Princess Tutu; seriously, do not read this unless you've seen the whole thing. (If you haven't seen any Princess Tutu at all, I'm afraid it'll make no sense whatsoever. Also you should totally remedy that ASAP, as it's a fabulous anime.)

( From The Ashes )

I don't normally post about politics. When I do, it's generally behind an lj-cut, so people can skip it if they want. This is short, and you can still skim right past it, and feel entirely free to do so if you like, but just this once I'm saying it right out front:

Yes.

YES.

Oh my country, thank you.

I don't usually say I'm proud to be an American. That's not from any lack of patriotism; I love my country, and I'm glad to be an American, and I'm grateful I am. Even if I emigrated and lived the rest of my life in another country, and came to love it equally (as I'm sure I could), I would still be an American on some fundamental level. This is where my roots are, and this is what I am. But proud? I was born here -- that's chance, and no accomplishment of mine. It seems as fundamentally wrong to me to say I'm proud of that as to ask God to bless America, as if other countries' peoples are less worthy of equal blessings and joy and peace.

But tonight? Tonight I am so proud to be part of this. So proud, and so glad.

I'm still wearing my little I VOTED sticker, and I'll be sad to take it off. This, tonight -- this is my America. (And if you voted otherwise -- it's your America too. Just as much. And that's why I have hope, because tonight, it feels like this country belongs to all of us, and we're reaching out hands to all the rest of you who aren't Americans, because we're all in this together. This is our world, and I'm so glad to be in it.)

We've got a long road ahead of us. Of course we do. And not every step's going to be smooth, and not everything's going to turn out right, and not every problem's going to be solved well. But today -- today, I'm just going to sit here looking at the news and political websites, and I'm going to keep on beaming.

This is mostly directed at shoroko and rabswom, but hey, if anyone else has input please do chime in!

My aunt is going to Cairo this winter, for a couple of weeks. My uncle is going for work, and they're taking the time to get in some vacation and sightseeing as well; he's been to Egypt before, but she hasn't. They'll be staying in central Cairo, at a hotel near the Egyptian Museum, Midan el-Tahrir, etc. I don't know exactly which one. They have guidebooks and all the usual stuff.

( The main question here is that my aunt is highly gluten-intolerant. )

I have actual things to write about one of these days, but I choose memery instead.

Every time someone on my friendslist does a big icon revamp, it makes me want to do the same. Except I don't want to get rid of most of my existing ones! WHAT IF I WANT TO USE JUST THAT ONE AND I DON'T HAVE IT. And yet I don't want to just keep adding, in hypothetical defiance of all LJ userpic limits, because then I'll forget half the cool ones I already have. Such a dilemma!

Uh, yeah. My life is hard.

Anyway, as a reminder to myself that I really should do at least a minor revamp one of these days -- there are some I never use, and some icon fandoms or categories I've been meaning to acquire for ages -- I am stealing a meme from fahye.

Ask me about my icons! Pick a handful and I'll tell you about the characters, the keywords, why I chose to upload them, anything.

Then repost the meme, because I am endlessly nosy about everyone else's icons.

Three things

1) Today and yesterday have felt like fall -- real, proper New England autumn. There's a crispness to the air; I can almost smell apples and hear leaves crunching underfoot, even though the trees are all still green. I'm wearing long sleeves and jeans, and jackets in the evening. The highs are in the 60s, and the lows are in the 40s; soon I'll have to give into inevitability and close my windows, but not yet. Not yet, oh no. For now I'll huddle in a blanket at night but beam at the cool air and the chill of my fingers. For now I'll sit out on the porch after work, curled up in the beat-up free-from-the-curbside armchair I keep out there, and read with a cup of tea at my elbow until the light fades too much.

This is my favorite season, and I intend to revel in it.

2) Anyone in the Boston area (or beyond, I suppose) want to come to the New Hampshire Highland Games this weekend? They're up at Loon Mountain, by Lincoln, NH, which is about a two-hour drive from where I live, and tickets are... actually I'm having trouble finding how much tickets cost at the gate, but it's something like $20-30 for the day. (Steep, I know, which is one reason why I'm debating going.) There are performers (fiddlers, harpers, pipers, dancers, mostly free though there are a couple of special concerts that require further tickets) and competitions, and vendors, and the usual games like caber tossing, and sheepdog trials. At least some of it is audience participation; not sure how much, and a lot of it isn't, but I do know there'll be Scottish country dancing, because my parents are running it for part of the day. I'd go Saturday if any day, because I already have Sunday plans.

I'm undecided on whether to go. It's fun, and Loon Mountain is gorgeous, but I'm not particularly enthused about going by myself. So if anyone else wants to go, your enthusiasm may sway me! And we can make a day of it! Otherwise, I'll debate up until the last minute, maybe go but probably give it a miss, and consider it again next year.

3) Another event thing: anyone Bostonian want to come to a panel discussion next Thursday evening, featuring Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, Rabbi Irwin Kula, and the Sakyong, Jamgön Miphon Rinpoche? (All have short bios on that link there.) The subject is Compassionate Leadership, and tickets are free but need to be reserved ahead of time. I for one am highly intrigued. This one I do plan to go to alone if no one else wants to -- it's free and it's right nearby and everything, so why on earth would I not? -- but I thought I'd toss it out there for you guys.

And now, I go to make myself a cup of tea and read Diana Wynne Jones on the porch some more. (Later: dinner, and some more of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.) May you all have equally lovely evenings!

Fic! Gundam Wing fic, in fact.

So I wrote this fic ages ago, in an attempt to figure out how a certain piece of canonical backstory could happen, and have just had it kicking around waiting to be posted properly. Which I am finally getting around to doing.

Title: Names
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Length: 1800ish words
Rating: gen, PGish
Spoilers: Spoilers for backstory revealed in the manga and movie, I guess, if anyone cares. None for the plot of the show.

( Summary: What's your name, kid? )