in the moderate Aristotelian city

I'm not sure how many things yet, but I'm trying to talk more about the things that happen in my head because of, um, reasons.

*

It's Christmas! Happy Christmas if you celebrate, happy holidays if you don't! And happy Wednesday if you really don't. I've had a nice day (a bit of family stress, but who's surprised?), a DVD-heavy haul of pressies (all the Iron Man films yay!), and a nice dinner including ice cream for dessert. Now we are doing Richard Osman's Pointless Quiz.

I also received lovely gifts from flippac and kaberett, who I love and adore. Thank you! <3 llamabitchyo, your card arrived at my old house and is on its way to me, thank you much!

I have failed at presents beyond the family and at doing cards at all this year. If I get a job soon, I might end up doing random midwinter cards at some point.

*

I received three excellent stories for Christmas this year! One from Make the Yuletide Gay and two(!) from Yuletide. I haven't read any more stories yet, but here are the ones I received!

awake my soul
Justin/Lance! 19th century AU! H/C!

Tell Your Story Walking (6434 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Haven
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Audrey Parker/Nathan Wuornos
Characters: Duke Crocker, Audrey Parker, Nathan Wuornos
Summary:

No matter how long he lived in Haven, Duke Crocker would never actually be able to believe the shit that went on in and around his hometown. It wasn't that he hadn't lived through totally unrealistic crap for way too long, it was just that it seemed to keep getting more and more completely unbelievable.

The fact that there was a guy standing on Main Street in the full sunlight putting off sparkles like a damned frosted Christmas ornament was pretty high on the list.

Unknown Similarities (480 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Abbie Mills & Jenny Mills
Characters: Abbie Mills, Jenny Mills, Maddie (Sleepy Hollow)
Additional Tags: Yuletide, Yuletide Treat, Sibling Bonding
Summary:

Abbie and Jenny find some common ground between them.

Eeeee, stories! I have several open in tabs and a mission to download allllll the fic onto my Kindle.

*

Thanks to the generous tuition of flippac, I have been getting into electronica a bit. Specifically, hard trance has grabbed my heart with an iron fist and won't let go. I have lots to say about the interesting things it's doing to my brain, but that needs a post of its own to unpack really. But it looks like it has the potential to be a really excellent brain hack for certain things, and I'm looking forward to playing with its potential more.

*

I've decided on a theme for 2014 - and tentatively, a theme for 2015, too! 2013's theme was "recovery", and though I didn't do much with it in the journal or consciously, the truth is I have actually got a lot better and am working on improving further. So that's a good thing. I'm hoping to consolidate on this year's successes with 2014's theme, which is going to be "resilience". At some point before the new year I'm going to sit down and write a post about my aims for the year and the tools I'm going to use to help and support me along the way. (2015's theme is, provisionally, "escape".)

*

I have a daily theme post to write today, and lots more 31 days to catch up on, too. I'll get there, though I suspect some of those topics will get pushed back to January!

I now have both my assignments! Quite excited to write both of my fics, at least right now. Must do a little brainstorming and figure out the shape of my fics.

Any interest in a supersecret writing filter? I might need a little support here...

So apart from Harry Potter and the Methods of Anti-Gravity, I haven't posted any fic at all in almost three years. And I have written very little of anything in that time, either. I keep starting things and then abandoning them.

And yet I'm tempted to do two different Christmas exchange challenges this year. TWO.

One is Make the Yuletide Gay. I did it for the first three years, but have skipped it for the last two. It's in my old main fandom, popslash, and it must be admitted that I miss popslash dreadfully.

The other one is the famous Yuletide. This is much more work, because I have to figure out what fandoms to request and offer.

I think, however, that writing two 1000 word stories in 3 months is not impossible.

Friends, tell me if I am reckless and insane?

I finished my employability course. Now for some job-hunting.

Sign-ups for MtYG opened today and I am all signed up! Need to write a Dear Santa letter at some point. But beyond that, it's just sitting around waiting for my assignment to show up. (If you are, were or have considered being a popslasher at any point, you should totally consider signing up. Just saying!)

Haven't caught up with this week's SPN yet.

I am definitely Getting Better. Social life, daily showering, attending an employability course, improving the situation in my room. It's all good stuff! And I start therapy tomorrow, which should be interesting at the very least. More social life and more connection in general would be awesome, though. Working on that part.

Made bread yesterday. It was pretty tasty, but the texture was a bit dense. According to my book, that means it needs more kneading. So we'll see about trying again next week.

Also missed my nap yesterday which meant I was extraordinarily cranky all evening and had a very early night. Note to self: naps are good.

Oh, and absolutely everything has changed on World of Warcraft. Quite stressful - I have to learn to play Warrior all over again! (And all my other toons, but I'm definitely not thinking about that yet. New Warrior is enough of a learning curve all by itself, thanks.) Looks like the new expansion's going to be quite fun, though.

I'm still obsessed with Hit Record and its shiny awesomeness, but I'm also completely stuck on what to do over there. (I haven't even got my head around the UI yet!) But I did record my voice for a collaboration encouraging people to vote in the US mid-term elections. I approve of efforts to get people out to the polling booth, even in countries where I don't live!

I think that's all the updates for today! I think I'm going to try to make a conscious effort to show up more here. Hello!

All The Best Washerwomen Drink Mountain Dew (4618 words) by randomling
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Popslash
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chris/Lance
Characters: Chris Kirkpatrick, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe
Summary:

Lance. Chris. And two crappy jobs.

First, a meme:

If you could force me to write anything, what would it be?

Second, some stuff:

-I managed to get my SeSa written and posted by the deadline. Whoo! It's not my best story ever, which I suppose is what comes of writing the story in the last two days before the deadline, but I am rather proud of the title.

-This means that I'm now free to start working on something of my very own. It might be finishing off The Plan or one of the other big Priority 1 stories on my bunny list. Decisions, decisions.

-I have otherwise been rather fannishly lax recently, to my shame. Too much going on in real life. OMG, how is it Christmas so soon?

-That said, my friends, and particularly my fannish friends of all stripes, are pure awesome.

-That's all for now.

SHIT.

No, really.

ETA: Okay, not so bad. Really. I'll live. (MEEP, though.)

There are two more days to sign up for Make the Yuletide Gay this year.

We have 39 santas this year. The more the merrier, as always, so if you haven't done already - sign up and make it a merry Christmas for yourself and your recipient! It's such a fabulous challenge. I can't even tell you what a difference it made to my Christmas to be part of it and last year, as a brand new popslasher, really made me feel like I was part of the fandom.

So! It's time to sign up! If you haven't already, and you've been thinking about it, considering it, putting it off, or wavering, it's time to bite the bullet and join! Come on, people, you know you want to... yes, really you do! It will be awesome!

Pimping hat ON.

I just grabbed this from last year's MtYG icon post. Because, yes. I didn't even have a SeSa icon last year!

Santa count: 31.

Are you signed up yet? You know you want to!

Make the Yuletide Gay Sign-Ups Are Open!

And may I say: SQUEE!

Yes, I'm already signed up. Why do you ask?