By Slanted Light

Just as I posted, I thought check the time, check the skies... - and look!


Just... yes! It was paler than this, because the camera picks up more colour, but on the other hand I could see it moving, and tinged with pink, and oh, so beautiful! *g*

And also wow, because I could never have taken these photos when I was living in Alaska - this is what 16 years of technological advance can do for us! I barely even had a mobile phone back then, but now I have one that can capture the aurora... *sighs happily*

I know I haven't been on here for ages, but I'm still on lj really, just... being dragged hither and yon by life still too. The latest yon is going to be interesting though - for various reasons which I'll explain when I have more time, I'm going back to Alaska! Only for a week, and it's very short notice, but... Alaska! Where I fell in love with the lads again, and there was lj and isotopes and much writing of fic!

And it's such short notice this time that I'm flying out tomorrow - I leave here around 7.00am!

The main reason I'm going is to finally sort out the belongings I left with my Ak friend all those years ago, thinking that I was going be back in six months or so to carry on with my PhD. I can barely remember what's there, but I know I have some family stuff that I want, and some personal things, and I also know that there are zines...

I'm not going to be able to bring much back home with me, so if I come across zines that I can't or don't want to take, then they could be yours for the price of the postage! I'll post them on my lj, so keep an eye out. And it'll have to be quick - I fly back to England again the Saturday after. I only have a week! That was all the holiday I had left from work - now that was an advantage of proofreading, I could have gone for as long as I needed if I'd still been doing that... But hey-ho, that's life, and swings and roundabouts!

Must get to bed now for an early start, but... Hello everyone! Yet again I'll try and be better - and I'll try and post Alaska pics this week too! I might be there to sort out things, but it's going to have to be a bit of a holiday too, so... I'm going to holiday! *g*

How're you all doing? Are you still here? I hope so...

...lads. It's Job 2 and 3 time again, and in this first week I'm combining it with Job 1 for a few days, because everyone wants my money, and argh! And of course with foodsaving, which is a good thing, but sometimes - people argh! And I will get ProsFandomCards sorted in the next couple of days too. And catch up with comments and watching Pros vids, and emails... and... I will. *g*

All of which is fine, but its nice to see the lads on lj to help me through days that feel a bit overly... busy. So here they are, two shads of our lads. *vbg*

Just as I was about to fall into a bit of a glump today, look what arrived in the post to cheer me up!

How fab is that? *vbg* And of course it makes a nice way for me to start putting my lj-posts where my mouth is, having challenged everyone to make as many Pros posts as they can this autumn. *g*

Thank you very much sender, and everyone else involved - what a lovely surprise! (This might seem like a late thank you, as I see it's post-marked the 8th August, and so apparently took over a month to get here - but it did finally get here! Also, hmmmn - looks like we might need to take slow post into account again for the Pros Fandomcards Christmas exchange...)

I finally got my internet back last Wednesday night, luckily just in time for my first Job 2 online meeting the next day - and then another one on Saturday. Phew... But of course the meetings didn't leave much time for anything else then, and in between of course life has been happening...

( On Sunday... )

And the bright side of all this? Having been up early for meetings and detecting, I was so knackered last night that I was in bed with the light out by about 11pm, and awake at 6.30am this morning, all set for a nice early start to work.

( So what obviously happened...? )

All of which means - I'm not starting work early today after all, which means I will probably end up finishing it late and all... Gargh! Hence some serious-looking confront-the-world lads in my flist, because I really need to see them facing it down together and winning!





And because there's usually a lot of Bodie pics in our flists these days, and much fewer Doyle... Our gorgeous Doyle *g*

So - how're you doing? (Is anyone still out there?!)

I can finally go back to moaning about my ordinary Job 1, because I will have time to moan about it again! *g* Now is also the moment when I get very excited about finally catching up on emails and posting to lj again, and All the Things I am Going to Do (which often didn't get done before Job 2 either, but it feels like such a relief that surely they must do this time. *g*) And it's the weekend, and for the first time in over a month, I have no work to be doing! *g* Okay, I have to do my taxes, and actually I have to finish my Job 2 report which is almost done, but that doesn't feel like the slogging-work of the rest of it, and it's forecast to rain for a substantial amount of the time, but... le weekend! *vbg*

So - I reckon it's a picspam moment. From Female Factor, because... well, because Bodie and Doyle really, innit? *vbg*

The lads playing pool in these pics always makes me think of my still-favourite Voice-Over, by Elizabeth O'Shea...



I love that the pics from the Network dvds make it so clear that the lads were enjoying themselves on set! I mean, neither of these to me look like people who wished they were somewhere else, or with other people, right? *g*

So - how's your world? Any Pros in it? Anyone reading Pros? My bedtime reading is currently a collection I put together of Lizzie's stories, and I'm on the last one, which is Nice Boys, featuring the inestimable Margery Harper. And Alf. Or is it 'erbert? *g* It's Lizzie, who's good fun, anyway! We did have Nice Boys up via discoveredinalj, but of course I actually posted it to my old palelyloitering website and then linked, so it's gone again... Oh! It's up at ProsLib, I just checked. *g*

I seem to be having one of those blah-days, even though I have lots of work to get on with, and there's lots of things to look forward to. Next weekend the clocks go forward here, and it will feel more cheerful again. Next Monday might be the end of lockdown here, and it will be lovely to be able to escape a bit (and finally buy some things that aren't essential, but would be very handy, like a metal bin of some kind to keep bird food in outside rather than in the way inside, and a clothes line in anticipation of the nicer weather, and curtain rods for my office shed so that I'm not blinded by the sun through my window when it's not grey like today, and... you know. Stuff. *g*) Then the weekend after that is the long Easter weekend, which will be nice even if I don't go anywhere.

And yet I am still sitting here today at my desk with hours of very dull reading ahead of me and glumping about it... *headdesk* - honestly, some days I just need to get over myself, right?! Let's have some pics of pretty things, and then you can tell me how you're doing!

Look - the sun's coming back! Someone also put up a nesting box in this old barn, and I almost always see the big ghosty-white barn owl flying around the field if I walk that way around sunset. And there have been some lovely sunsets - later and later in the evening.


There is blossom about!


And flowers springing up.


And lads always on the verge of stories in the background...

On the bright side, my heating's working again, but - grrrr!

1. Two young male plumbers (when only one was necessary), no masks, no gloves, no apparent awareness that there's a covid pandemic with ever-expanding new variants, and that they're visiting the house of someone who's more likely to be seriously ill with it than they probably are (older person, dodgy throat - and that's not even invisible, cos I've got a scar across to show the old surgery!) No apparent memory or giving-a-shit that I asked them last time they came whether they had masks.

2. They'd given instructions about turning the heaters and heating off and then on again via my landlord the other day, and I did that and it didn't work (the only effect of their instructions seemed to be to cool the the two that were working...) So this morning before they were due to come, I turned off the two affected radiators again in the hope that it might bump the other two up to be hotter again It didn't seem to work, but I didn't bother to turn them back on again since the plumbers were due. So the lads come, I say I'd tried their suggestion and nothing, and that I'd just turned them off this morning. "Oh, you shouldn't turn them off" says lad, and turns them back on again. And of course the bloody things started working again. Gaaargh!

Obviously I'm happy that they're working, but you could see lad thinking "well of course she couldn't work it out" and I hate that. Like taking the car to the garage with an odd persistent clanging, and then the clanging stops in apparent fear of the mechanics and nothing else, so that they think you're making it up... And would the plumbers explain what had probably happened? Would they bollocks, just "That's okay..." as they left...

So now I feel endangered and patronised!

I'd better get over that, hadn't I, so that I can get on with work and then post the first Pros Novel Read-Along post for Waiting to Fall! *g*

Have lads, for more cheerful viewing than my grumpy post. I saved these pics somewhere for their similarity, but right now I'm loving the differences... *g*


* nicked from Aussie slang, cos I quite often want a word for a collective of various-tradespersons-like-plumbers-and-carpenters-and-electricians-and-what-not, and there isn't really one over here. *g*

I am eternally behind, it seems, and tradition says that since I've started the new year like that, it's going to carry on. We'll see... *g* It's been ages since I posted - it seems like the less officially busy I get, the harder I find it to post too, weirdly enough. My last post was 26th November, just before examining was over and I settled back into proofreading, then I had two weeks off, with only a day and a bit left - and how many posts have I made? Well, a few if you count discoveredinalj and Yuletide, but none here...

So how are you? Hope you had a good December and Christmas and New Year, even if they were quieter than usual. I finally had time to sort this place out a bit more - I've alphabetised music, dvds and books; I can find things again! And put photo-type things into chronological order. Cos I'm like that. *g* It feels better, though there's still all sorts to do, including the UK Paper Circuit Library. I'm hesitating a bit because despite deciding, and people agreeing, that it's best to just throw out the stories that are online, since they're old and hard to read and often slightly smelly, I hate throwing away paper fic! I will though, I'll gird all the bits that need girding, and do it.

( In the meantime - 2020...  )

Fandomwise, I have to say that emotional rollercoasters aren't brilliant for writing - but then that might just be a continuation of me over the last few years. That said, I seem to have written ten fics - all but one Pros. And Pros FandomCards was fun and brightened up Christmas no end, and I still have to catch up on commenting on the Discovered in a Box of Baubles posts, and replying too, but I will...

The other one was my Yuletide fic, which also turned out to be on the crazy side - I requested and offered my usual small fandoms (Astreiant, Charm of Magpies, and Mathey/Lynes) (and I received an Astreiant fic! Wheee!), but I was thinking about re-reading an old favourite series at the time, and so I threw them into the mix - and that was only the assignment I was given, wasn't it! So I ended up writing Altogether Your World, which is for The Dark is Rising fandom, and set many years later when the characters have all grown up. Among other things I remember telling someone years ago that I couldn't even think of that as a slash fandom, because they were kids books, and I really couldn't... but then you glance at the odd story to see how much it makes you go eww, and when it's well-written enough... So I was able to offer it, in the end. And the story seems to have gone down pretty well, so phew - I wish I'd had time to make it a bit longer though, I think it needed more... Still - done!

Have some pics from the end of the year...




I'm thinking maybe I should try posting a pic each day again to try and cheer up January a bit... I've one more day before I'm back to work, and then I feel like I'm going to need something! Decorations down on Tuesday, too, so yeah, I need to think about a different kind of decoration, right?! *g*

The world continues interesting...

Was nice to find surprise daffs planted by the market cross - that made my happy. Finding gold made me happy too. Momentarily. Until I realised it was the gold foil top off something, not actual gold. *sigh*

But snatching a couple of hours for detecting in the garden made me happy in general, especially because I was serenaded by a blackbird for most of that time.
It also made me happy when Landlady told me that since over-70s weren't supposed to be leaving home, and the country was fast shutting down, they'd now told the estate agent that they'd delay, and it would probably be the end of the year before they got into selling mode... I swear, the main reason I need to move house is the bloody roundabout of it all! But at least that urgency is gone overnight, which is indeed a happy thing. You know, until the next twirl of the hurdygurdy...

Saved food from being thrown away. Always a happy thing.

How're you doing?