This week has been interminably long. As I indicated on twitter today, we had IT problems that were making the IT department actually, literally beg for mercy from God and they weren't fixed by the time I left shortly before six.  Perhaps I will have email access tomorrow! Perhaps I will spend the day revising a story for class instead. The possibilities are...well, they lean more towards the second, really. Which is good, as major revising is a thing that needs to happen.

In other news, I've reached the point where my burned skin from Spain is in a peely state not unlike the plaster by my front door. Despite this, I've decided I want to attempt a color slightly darker than Disney Princess pale this year, and as such, I will be trekking to Governor's Island or one of the six beaches in New York this summer. Therefore, I will need things to read. And here comes the irony: I, master's degree holding librarian and girl who used to buy books by the pound, has no idea what to read. It's sad, people.

So most of last week I was gone on a corporate retreat in Alicante, Spain. These involve training for the Employees That Matter, i.e. the consultants, and lots of hours sitting either by the pool or on the beach for those of us who make their work lives run smoothly, and it didn't exactly start on what one would call a high note.

1. Eight. Hours. In. Dusseldorf. International. Starting at 7am on an incredibly cold and rainy day, so going out to wander around the city was kind of pointless.
 

2. Nearly 12 hours later - 24 hours after I left New York - I land in Spain to realize that that I don't have a ride from the airport. Or the hotel address, because the London office manager (further idiocy to follow) didn't email it out in time for anyone leaving from the US office; no, only the European offices got that information. Eventually, I managed to get online, get the address, and pay for my own cab there. 
 

3. Wednesday morning, I get sick from breakfast, and spend the day by the pool calming my stomach and getting sunburned while the important training goes on downstairs. Around 11 a couple consultants come up and look completely crushed  by the relaxation going on. I smirk from behind my book.
 

4. Friday, during another five course lunch in which I decide I'm a little bit done with paella (2 meals in a row, man, I can't eat that much rice), Idiot Office Manager rushes over to inform me that she mixed up reservations and I'm essentially being evicted from the hotel tonight despite the fact that my flight doesn't leave until the next morning. 
 

5.  I get moved to another hotel several hours later, probably because I told a director what happened.
 

6. Next day, I catch a cab, go to airport, check in, hop on the computer to update the parents, and find out that the cat has been a rageriffic pain in the ass for my little sister, i.e. the free catsitter.
 

7. When I get to Dusseldorf, I find out that in contrast to the epic layover of epicness, I have approximately twenty minutes to make it from the plane to passport control, through passport control, and to my connecting flight. This was only managed because everyone in the non-EU line let me cut to the front. 
 
8. Eight hours later, I'm finally landing in JFK, finding my bus to midtown, going to my sister's apartment to pick up my keys, and then finally - finally - getting back on the 7 to Queens. The 7 that is, again, choked with signal issues or electical malfunctions or livestock crossing the tracks or whatever it is this week.

They're talking about making this a biannual event. I'm not sure I can take it.

You have a story due in a week in writing class. It's mostly done, and you aren't doing anything but shopping at work today.

You should maybe finish it?

Sincerely,

The Voice of Responsibility

( On Castiel, and shades of spoilerific gray )

Mirrored from zonkered.net.

I've signed up for help_japan




I'm offering a 1000-2000 word fic in the following fandoms: Watchmen, Supernatural, Criminal Minds, Alias, Prince of Tennis.

You can bid here. Do look around, there are lots of opportunities to get fic/art and help!

As part of my requisite fandom binge, I've been reading six tons of Supernatural fic, and since it's season 6, and the first half of the season had Sam missing his soul...well, that's a major part of what gets covered in stories. Which would be cool, awesome, except for the fact that the prevailing view of soullessness is so very uninteresting.

I realize part of it's how it was dealt with on the show. I mean, for the most part, Sam was callous, certainly uninhibited, and he admits outright that he doesn't care about anyone. And maybe another part of it is that I interpret not caring to be different from actively harming, but I've got to wonder: if Sam cared so little, what was the purpose of saving Dean from the djinn in the first episode of this season? Why not just let him die, clearly he didn't matter. Except it seems like he did, actually, at least a little bit.

And it's so much more interesting that way, when you think about it. If Sam's still a man, albeit one with the cold, methodical tendencies that could be considered monstrous, isn't that struggle more interesting than assuming that he's just a straight up monster? I think so. I think it makes him one of the more interesting characters of season 6.

But the more I read of Sam as a straight up, uncomplicated monster, the more I realize that I'm pretty alone in that view. Most of what I've read either doesn't deal with the soul thing at all, or it deals with Sam as the latest enemy to defeat. And I sort of wish that the only story I've read that deals with him as a more nuanced character, well. Wasn't written by me.

Is it anyone else's headcanon that Balthazar got bored and started working for Interpol, where he met Emily Prentiss?

Just mine? Okay.

Not for any specific reason I could pin down, but between work kicking my ass, sudden and debilitating writer's block and some pretty depressing loneliness, I'm really damn glad that March is finally here.

Despite the writer's block, I managed to write a few things - one was written in the middle of the blockage, and so it's one of those things that I will never think is good - but the other two I like a lot, and I have hopes that March will be better than February was.

Writings: 

• It's Times Like These | SPN, Dean/Castiel


• The Unexpected | SPN, Sam/Castiel


• Masquerading as a Man with a Reason | SPN, Sam-centric

Other than that, I'm hopefully joining an RPG to keep the creative blockage from sucking me in again, but this only works if the first-person writing sample stops kicking my ass.

And now I'm writing fic. Send help.

On the plus side, I guess I'm actually using the creative part of my brain, which is good considering that I hadn't written anything since wm_secretsanta. Of 2009.

Um, wow, I haven't updated this thing in six months. I'm sort of failing at blogging although I manage to blog effectively for people who don't exist.

Anyway, since we last left our heroine, she has:

• Moved to actual New York, as opposed to suburbia. Queens!
• Written a book, possibly a screenplay, in a month with glasspyramids 
• Been refunded $600 from the Vacation from Hell
• Purchased a new laptop with it!
• Named Verthandi.
• She's, um. A PC.
• Started RPing at sixwordstories as the Greek god Pan and the Egyptian god Set
• Started watching Supernatural. Oh God halp.
• Also watched Sherlock! Which does not require help.
• That's...it really.

I will endeavor to post more frequently, maybe. On the other hand, lists are fun.

On vacation, in Ecuador. It's 6:30 in the morning, and if I were a reasonable person, I'd still be asleep. But I'm unreasonable and so I'm up on my sister's laptop, posting to LJ.

So far I've been to Cajas National Park, a panama hat factory, a ceramics studio, a cathedral and Ingapirca, the ruins of an Incan city, and it's all been interesting, but it would have been more interesting if Delta hadn't lost the luggage I didn't want to check anyway.

Well, more fun, at least. I wouldn't have spent the last two days in varying degrees of pissed off.

Here's the story: I distrust airlines with my luggage, and thus I very carefully packed for this trip so that it would all fit in a carryon and headed for LaGuardia. This way, I thought, I could guarantee that nothing got lost, and I wouldn't have to wait for my suitcase.

That's what I thought. Delta, in their infinite wisdom, had overbooked my flight. On top of that, people were bringing on more carryons than they were supposed to, and they weren't doing anything about it, and the end result was that by the time I got on, there wasn't any space left, and they forced me to gate-check it.

I sat down with the sneaking suspicion that my bag wouldn't make it Guayaquil. In reality, it never made it out of New York, and had just made it to Atlanta when I landed in Ecuador at 11 pm.

To make this all much more fun, I wasn't staying in Guayaquil. I was going to Cuenca the next morning at 8am, and I'd be hiking in between, and the only clothes I had were what I was wearing. A tank top, a pair of jeans, and a pair of flats. Delta claimed I could go shopping and be reimbursed, but nothing would be open at that hour.

I ended up borrowing my mother's clothes - and I might add, looking terrible in them, seriously, the photos on Facebook are making me shudder - and heading out at 8am with the promise from Delta that they'd have my luggage in Cuenca via either LAN or Aero Galapagos on Saturday morning.

Then it became "midday."

Then it became "7:30 pm Sunday night."

Then, somehow, it became 3pm again, but by this this time, I was operating under the assumption that the next time I would definitely see my clothes would be when I got back to New York. Still, we headed to the airport, where no one in either the cargo department or the ticket counter was working. We talked to the people in the office, but they didn't have access to the cargo. They couldn't find anyone who did. I still had no clothes, no toothbrush, no comb.

So we headed back to the hotel, and I played a game on my iPod to keep from ranting.

About twenty minutes later, my dad and I headed back to the airport, where someone was finally working, and they sent someone back to find my bag.

"I kind of expect them to come out with someone's bag at this point," I said.

"Or no bag at all," Dad said.

Miraculously, though, my brown duffel came out, and they gave it to me, and I used my extremely meager amount of Spanish to thank them profusely, and Dad and I headed to the supermarket to buy peanut butter and jelly, because none of us were up for eating out after all this.

Moral of the story, kids: Don't fly Delta. Even if they're the only airline that goes to a location. Walking's better.

Have to leave on a work trip to Spain today - I know, I suffer - and it just reminds me how much I absolutely hate traveling. It's not the flying itself so much as everything that comes before it. The packing, the cleaning, the paying for a catsitter, the hauling luggage on my epically horrible commute.

Also, I hate leaving the cat. Yes, we know who rules the roost here.

Since the weather is intermittently hot in New York - you know, approximately twice a week, prompting me to go to work in opaque tights and come home to change into shorts - I've been going through my summer clothes, and I've come to a conclusion:

Everything is purple.

I have purple t-shirts. I have purple tanktops. I have a purple swimsuit. It's all purple.

Dammit, Adrian.

A synopsis of this week's the next episode, "Chuck Vs. The Honeymooners":

Chuck AND Sarah GO ON A EUROPEAN ADVENTURE – While in Europe, Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) and Chuck (Zachary Levi) realize they're traveling on a train with Spanish spies. Even though they're all alone, they decide to take on these rogue agents. Of course, this impromptu mission doesn't go smoothly. Meanwhile, Beckman (Bonita Friedericy) orders her newest "unlikely" spy team – John Casey (Adam Baldwin) and Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez) – to track down the missing couple.

John Casey. Morgan Grimes. Spy mission. I don't know if I can take this much potential hilarity.

So, glasspyramids and I watched the new episode of Criminal Minds last night together through the magic of the internet and dvrs. In the past month and a half, thanks to dvds and syndication on two channels, we've basically watched the entirety of the first four seasons, so despite my relative new fannishness over the show, I think it's safe to say that I have fairly extensive knowledge of it.

This was the only episode I've ever disliked, and it was all because of the spinoff characters. You see, CBS is doing what CBS does (see CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, not to mention NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles) and spinning off a successful procedural into another undoubtedly successful procedural. It'll probably work out, but I won't be watching it.

Seriously, these were the most painful, almost caricature-like archetypes of characters I've seen in quite some time.

( Cut tag because I can )

I think I would have been less annoyed if in order to make Improbable FBI agent #1 look awesome, they hadn't felt the need to de-badass one of the coolest characters on the show, Emily.

And also if there'd been more Reid, though that goes without saying. He did have an excellent outfit on, though.

I closed every single one of my fanlistings last weekend and removed them from renji.org (this was after I got three failure to update notifications and a removal, oopsie). I figured fanlistings were over for me last year when I got into Watchmen and didn't apply for VeidtOwl. It was even more obvious this year, when I got into Criminal Minds and did not promptly go to join every related fanlisting.

It was kind of sad letting some of them go - I'd had Yanagi and YanaKiri for six years, for instance - but I'm not really into them anymore.

I have no clue what I'm going to do with renji.org, though, as it currently hosts two defunct blogs. Might let it go, too, when the domain expires.

It is awesome.

glasspyramids made it for me, because she is composed of pure awesome.

The tinhat has returned.

But I think I can say with some authority that this much bronzer isn't in the original canon:

Nabbed from donella

The BBC thinks most people will have only read 6 of these 100 books.
Put an X next to the ones you've read.
Count them up at the end.

( 100 Books )
Total: 45

Better than I expected, though I was aided by the fact that I read everything growing up.