By Slanted Light

For the first night in ages I've barely B&D-d at all, and I definitely wrote no fic! Need a break after the week-that-didn't-go-anywhere. Well, it did, but its gonna take a lot more than that to get it done right. So I shall post it next halloween perhaps ; ) Well, at least I shall get on with some of my others and come back to it later...

What I did do tonight - no, not work, sillies - was compile a list of zine recs from replies made by the lovely people over at ProsLit. enednoviel and I have both been trying to figure out which zines to splash out on, cos there are just so many to choose from... and even saying things like "Anything from Doghouse Press" doesn't help hugely cos the list is lo-ong. The various rec sites are great and helpful, but I'm the greedy type I guess - I want more information! So if anyone out there on my flist has any recommendations it'd be really appreciated too *grins hopefully*. (With big thanks to minesapint for the many excellent ideas already contributed, btw...) And if anyone else is interested in seeing the zine rec compilation when its done, then do let me know, I'm happy to share!

And now - Heat Trace beckons...

( Non-Pros-ness - Getting Cold )

Well now, here's a thing. I've been happily watching Pros on my computer's dvd rw, which I installed myself and is working just fine. Its set to Region 2, because the whole point was I could use it to play my Region 2 dvds if I couldn't get a multi-regional player over here. I'd only just got it sorted before I left, but I had checked that it was working. It was. Now I'm here. This same dvd drive, with no changes made to it, won't play my shiny store-bought R2 dvds anymore. Except for my Pros dvds. Which say that they're R2. Now, I'm not complaining. Not exactly. Cos it'll play my "back up" dvds, which have been region freed. So I guess I can just back up the others and the effect'll be the same.

*pause to back up an R2 dvd that won't play, to see if this works. Yup.*.

There's clearly something up so that it'll only play region free dvds, even tho' it thinks it'll play R2. And even tho' it'll read and copy R2. I suspect its all fixable. But my wtf is - why will it play my Pros box set? I don't understand! Does it just have really good taste in dvds? Or maybe it's been converted to slash! Maybe I should try a Starsky and Hutch or Due South R2 and see what happens..?

Hmmmn...

Well - just as I got all worked up to post my little fic-thing LJ started having problems with rich text! Argh! And since I have to catch the last bus of the day in 10 minutes, its just not gonna happen now after all. *sigh grumble grump waste of nervous energy...*

On the bright side, I get to go home now and play with this week's challenge...

And pretty new icons... : )

Must find somewhere to tell me the difference between things like drabbles and ficlets though. Is a ficlet bigger than a drabble?! It sounds as though it should be somehow - a drabble should be less than a page long, a ficlet longer and yet not actually a short story as such... hmmn...

Snow didn't last, of course.  Was pretty though, in a grey-and-white kind of way. 

Lots of best news today though.  Well, yesterday really, but hey-ho.  My boxes came!!  Yes!!  And somewhere in them are the rest of my Pros episodes, and I am gonna find them and treat myself tonight... yeay!!  So much stuff I wanna check out now that I'm writing...!  That said, I denied myself a laptop last night, and my eyes feel so much better for it this morning... course I read print-outs instead... ; )

Which reminds me, I must find out more about my current favourite tale, "Voice Over" by Elizabeth O'Shea.  She doesn't have anything else posted on Circuit Archive, and "Voice Over" is just lovely.  She's got the Boys just right for me, and its all warm and fuzzy, but its way too funny to tip over into goo...  P'raps I'll ask the nice people over in ProsLit...  I wonder if anyone ever did a review of it somewhere, I'd be curious to know what others think.  Must look into this *puts on list of things to do*

And my other nice news, I can move into the Gorgeous Cabin next Friday!  I talked to my landlord, and she was peeved but a sweetie.  I don't blame her, mind.  I've offered to wash all the nasty walls that lead down to the Hole-in-the-Ground, and do some painting in lieu of the short notice.  Its so not the sort of thing I do normally, but I swear this is a special case...

And finally - was very happy to see an LJ explaining how she'd write whatever she wanted in her LJ, cos it was hers!  Yeay.  Means I don't have to justify writing all this pap, cos its just for me in the end!!  Well, I knew that, but nice to see someone else say it!  (Huh.  How long did it take us to go from hearing what people say, to seeing what people say... and will it make any difference in the long-run?)

Right.  Work. Again.

Well, that'll teach me. Its snowing out.

Pass along this small tribute, copy this code.

Found this while I was cruising LJs (is that what you do?!) and had to put it up, even so long after. Sigh. So nice it was to stream his show when I was feeling homesick, last time I was here.

Otherwise, today is grey and wet and miserable, again. This is weird, it doesn't rain like this here, that's why I like it! At least I should have moved into the cabin before first snow - at least I hope so! Be so much nicer not to have to faff with buses and shuttles and things this winter. Downtown is great for buying coffee, the town library, and drifting around giftshops, but... Okay, let me tell you about the cabin. Its right by work, so I can fall out of bed and into The Department if I have to. It was built by one of the guys whose research I'm following up, way back in the 40s (-ish), and has been lived in by all kinds of famous-in-this-little-world types, whose ghosts are definitely still floating kindly by. Its old, and historical and gorgeous, and I was in the right place at the right time, and I get to live there. Yeay! I am somehow surviving the fortnight until I can move in.

The bad news - I left my disks at home last night, so couldn't play with the Boys in the IOM after all. I was so tired after yesterday that there was a limit to how much I could longhand! Terribly draining, the day was - but mostly in a good way. I got all beta-d up, and it was SO spot on with all the little bits I hadn't quite realised were still niggling me..! Of course I didn't have my disk to make the changes last night (having been so restrained all day), so I shall do it tonight instead...

Of course Tuesday night was "House" night, so I would have been curtailed anyway. I'd've been dragging myself away, but for Hugh Laurie I'd have made the effort. He is good. It didn't even take me all that long to get past the accent. I wonder if anyone's started slashing him with his doctor mate (can't remember his name) yet? Seems like a likely pair, although I can't imagine being into it myself. But I can't imagine HP either *shudder*. I kinda think it may only be the Boys for me...

Right. A proper work day beckons.

Well, that'll teach me to feel all accomplished now, won't it?  I wonder what B and D would do with Kramer's Rule and other fun stuff like that?  I can guess what they might wanna do with it... and I reckon I feel the same way.  Yup, the vortex took me, and sucked what few braincells remained right out through my ears... apparently I didn't need them to talk baby-Russian, for which I am thankful.  Only the Boys can save me now.

So I managed to find the teeny-tiny sentence I'd been missing in my drabble-type piece, and before I could chicken out I sent it off into the ether in the hope of a comment or two.  Well, no I didn't post it somewhere, I sent it to a poor hapless soul who I understand is sometimes prepared to beta stuff.  I hope she doesn't mind too much, I was probably a bit quick off the mark, maybe took a liberty...  I should probably have waited a bit - "Nerv-y?"/ "Must-be" - but I'm a bit of a band-aid ripper at heart.  Well.

At least its a pretty night outside - 7-ish, and just sun-setty, all pale wash blues and peaches and pinks.  Bodes well for the aurora tonight - now there's one slant of light I've really been missing.  For ages after I left I would look up automatically when I went out at night, not sure what I was looking for at first.  Although they did show themselves when I was in the Shetlands, gloriously, for our last night there.  But now I'm back up north properly!  I actually did peer up out of my hole-in-the-ground a couple of weeks ago to see them battling the streetlights for the right to dance.  They won - well, they dragged me into the night anyway, for all I was dodging the way-too-bright neons (or whatever they are these days) with tree branches and telephone poles to help keep my night vision.

Right, the bus is imminent, so I shall leave off blathering.  So much easier than that nasssty spectrometry stuff though...  And I have plans for the Boys tonight - off to the TTs I reckon they are.  I'm pretty sure they'll approve...  And turns out the official website has all the info I could want about the early 80s too.  Although since I was actually around in '85 myself I just might start there... Dunlop won the Seniors that year.  Yeah, I reckon they'll approve.

*Gasps at her own audacity*

I have snagged my first icon from the amazing Probodie at the Safehouse, and here it is. (Well, at least, I think it is, but the preview doesn't seem to think so - sigh... apparently I am somewhat LJ-challenged) I'm not sure how the netiquette goes next actually - I commented and thanked at the community, but if I change my default pic to the gorgeous icon now, then it appears beside my comment about taking it. Is that okay, or should I wait to see what Probodie says first (if she does, but then she seems to reply to everyone, so we'll see!)? And about crediting - I assumed you did it in your LJ, so that people linked back to it and thus to the gorgeous iconner, but now I've seen some people with snagged icons who've managed to put a credit as part of their header-thingy... Why can I find no guidance on this matter?! I will figure it out, only a little later, if not sooner. So before anything else - general apologies to anyone and everyone if I accidentally do something bad to you, I promise it will only ever be accidental, and I will fix it as soon as I know and can.

Wish my computer (and all my other stuff!) would hurry up on its way up north from the Carolinas - it was apparently held in the thrall of hurricane Ophelia, and I'm not quite sure what is happening now, except that its nearly a month overdue getting here! I am itching to have a play around at making icons and things myself, and I don't dare do that here at "work".

Also playing around with the idea of joining in this week's Safehouse challenge, but I think I may need some more practice first. Perhaps I'll have a go at it tomorrow in a kind of made-up way and see how it turns out...