zana16

The correct response, upon learning that an employee was in the office until 10 pm the night before fixing the internet connection, is "Oh my gosh, thank you!" It is not, "Well, why'd you do that?"

I think it is karma that hers is the only computer left in the office that still cannot access the internet.

I was lucky enough to not only get the Yuletide fic of my dreams, but in fact to get a fic better than anything I had dreamed of! Crossdressing lesbian crimelords (with bonus femmeslash) FTW!

So, I've not had a voice since Sunday.

It's been interesting to see people's reactions to this. Sir Now Appearing had a game on, so I wrote in my notebook: Who's playing?

He wrote: The Bears.

I wrote: You don't have to write, you know.

He wrote: Oh yeah, you're right.

He's not the only one. The bank manager when I dropped off papers for work on Monday responded to my mouthing words by mouthing words back at me.

Fortunately, my girlfriend is a veteran of laryngitis, and knows how to babble at me and let me type back the answers.

I'm carrying a little notebook with everything I've needed to scrawl down, and since I'm visiting family now I can recycle the answers. Some of them get a lot of play. Hot tea, please probably has the most hits, right after Sorry, I've lost my voice. Another one I've used several times is Thanks. I had to get new glasses when I lost mine riverrafting last summer, in addition to My girlfriend made them for me! regarding my earrings. He works in the [redacted] department at [redacted] has been used at least three times.

And because I'm in fandom, I've had more than one occasion to use the Ew, incest page.

The Singing Quaker Women had a concert last night at Friends House. It was my first concert; I only started singing with them about a month and a half ago, so it was a little nervewracking. On one song I couldn't figure out which part I'd been assigned to sing! But overall it went well. I'm really glad I went.

Sidenote: I do not associate retirement communities with happiness, but there were a whole lot of happy people there, both residents and staff. Good to know that it is possible!

I finally bit the bullet and ordered my brother's birthday and Christmas presents. I still need to finish up making some presents, and I'm still at a loss as to what to give my cousins and my aunt & uncle, but the end is in sight! Holiday presents are stressful...

The number of grants due between now and the end of the year has shrunk from four to two. Yay!

Cuteness!

My Yuletide story continues to be 1) not written and 2) full of sadness and despair and depression. This is not the sort of story one gives as a gift! *sigh* Why am I incapable of writing happy stories?

You know you are in South Texas when your reaction to your doctor saying "May I say a prayer over you?" is Well, at least he asked first...

ETA: But the food, it is to die for. Why is there no decent Mexican food in the entire DC area?

Dear Author,

Thank you thank you thank you for writing me a story! I am so excited about these characters, I can't even tell you. This is only my second Yuletide, so it's the first in which I have any idea of what to expect.

Optional-details-are-optional, but I babble a little below just in case it helps. I will love anything that involves my favorite characters, so no worries.

I love gen, het, slash, anything; any rating, too. Deathfic is okay though not preferred, but non-con is not a story I want as a gift; mention of it is fine (and canonical for several of the characters) but nothing on-screen please. I prefer happy endings -- but I want you to write the story you want to write!

( Tale of the Five, Segnbora )

( Hustle, Ash Morgan )

( CROSS-DRESSING LESBIAN CRIMELORDS FTW! )

Hopefully, that helps a bit. And thank you again! You rock!

This made me happy. Keep Wall Street occupied!

This was appalling. The Fourth Estate was complicit with the police -- and that undermines everyone's basic rights.

When I was ten, shortly after my mother died, my dad took my brother and me to Switzerland for a retreat. I don't know the name of the group he was there with; my memory is entirely of being in a tiny village on top of a mountain accessible only by cablecar, with a profusion of wildflowers everywhere you went, and lots and lots of cows. I had a sense that the people at the conference were slightly... something. I wasn't frightened of them, but there was an intensity there that I knew wasn't the norm. That was okay; the flowers were endlessly awesome. I still have pressed flowers somewhere.

It was some sort of psychological conference/support group. My dad was there grieving the death of his wife. I know now that he had contemplated suicide -- he'd never use that word, but that's effectively what following your wife into death is. I'm sure there were people there with mundane things they were working on, but those aren't the ones that stick in my memory.

Some of the meetings were in a church. I remember sitting up high in a window alcove in the church on a sunny afternoon, watching a facilitator work with a man who was wrestling his demons. The man started by wrestling with the facilitator, but then he spun off wrestling with his invisible demons. It made a strong impression on me as a kid.

After the conference, my dad told me about another man there who was a mercenary. He was addicted to killing people, and was trying to figure out how to stop, how to break that addiction, when it was his only way of living in the world, and his whole identity. This is the person who made the strongest impression on me, and continued to be a figure in my imagination and in my writing.

I have always been glad that there was a place for this man to go, to learn how not to kill. I don't know his story, I don't know if prison would be a better option; I don't know anything about him. But this was a real-life person, not a novel, and that made a deep impression. The possibility of redemption when lost, I suppose.

Until this morning, I never put that together with my work against the death penalty. The possibility of redemption is something that I believe every single person is capable of -- I don't believe in absolute evil (all evidence to the contrary). It's one of the few unshakable beliefs I have.

The mercenary showed up in a novel I started in college. His name was Stephen, and he was lost and awful and the entire cast of characters hated him, and he was just beginning to realize that he had created this hell, but also struggling against it, and against the other characters. It was hard to write him, not only because he was so different from me, but also because he was so much the same.

I suppose there are people in this world who go through life not realizing that they have the capacity to murder. They can believe that somehow they are different fundamentally from people who kill and commit evil. I was not given this luxury. The feeling of wanting, with my whole being, to kill the man who raped and murdered my sister, is a feeling I will never forget. The murderous rage isn't something that I can explain away. I wanted to kill him. I wanted him to hurt as much as I hurt.

It wasn't a fire I could bank; it would have consumed me. I knew it, immediately. I knew I had to forgive him his crime because otherwise I would feel this way forever until it ate me from the inside out. I had to look for the good in him because otherwise the dark would win.

It occurs that forgiving myself is much harder. It's strange how at every age, one has to reinterpret the formative events of one's life. After 20 years, I'm still processing my mother's death. After more than 15, the most profound moment in my life remains finding redemption for the man who destroyed my family. But the way I relate to it has changed over the years.

...This is the first year that I haven't marked the anniversary of Rachel's death. It's not that dates matter that much to me, but somehow I have remembered every year, and this year I didn't. I think Rachel would 42 this year. She died 17 years ago, this month.

Things I do not understand:

1) Why grantmaking organizations want me to answer these stupid questions. ARGH.

2) Why the US Post Office does not have a handy page -- with pictures -- of the current Forever stamps that I could buy. Why do I have to click on each stamp to find out what it looks like? Sadness.

3) Why the bank has STILL not managed to set up our online banking after TWO MONTHS.

4) Why grantwriting does not automatically come with a sword to a) subdue the grant proposals and b) fend off coworkers who want to know why the copier/printer/stapler/phones/ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS OFFICE does not work, while I am working on grants.

Brought to you by a grumpy office manager who has had grantwriting added to her job over her objections.

Someone has bought me six months of paid time!! *in shock*

Whee!! Icons! And polls! And I don't even know what else! So exciting!

Thank you, kind anonymous benefactor!