(let's try this again!)

I made a piece of jewellery.

I'm a huge fan of Wyrding Studios but I can't afford any of their beautiful pieces at the moment, so I decided to try to make my own.



I've called it "night sky". It's stirling silver wire, with moonstone chips and a blue goldstone base. The blue goldstone is filled with these tiny silver sparkles.

And yes, it's meant to be a tree. ;D

Photobucket has been futzing with their settings, and now I can't figure out how to post pictures.
Halp? Plz?

ETA: I think I've done something dodgy, but it seems to be working.

SPN Primer (or, what episodes you have to watch to know important things in the Supernatural series)
for lassiterfics

Code: if it's indented in, it's good because of character developments rather than plot developments. The numbers at the end are ratings of how important they are to watch.

Warning: Contains like three trillion spoilers, though I tried to avoid major plot developments post-Season 1, and tried to avoid telling exactly what happens in the episode.

( Here there be demons.  )

Enjoy! Watch SPN! And by the way, when you have time? You should totally watch all the other episodes. Any comments about episodes I missed that are important, or episodes that really don't need to be on the list are welcome.

(on a completely different note, come on, LJ notifications! I'm only now getting comment notifications from yesterday. Plus? 46 emails in my inbox this morning, almost all of them notifications of my f-list/me receiving snowflakes. That.. was a bit of a shock.)

Thank you very much to everyone who sent me a Snowflake cookie. I was very touched to receive them! Unfortunately, the Great LJ Snowflake Cookie Snowfall came to an abrupt end yesterday, and I apologize to everyone on my flist who didn't receive a cookie from me. :( I intended to give each of you a cookie, and I was thinking of you; I just wasn't quick enough. But I don't want you to go without, so here is a cookie for you from me:



Part of the reason that I wasn't quick enough sending out those snowflakes is that I was puppy-sitting. Last week, Buford, my parents' Bull Mastiff/Rottweiler mix had to be put down. Buford was little more than a huge baby, and we loved him very much. So much in fact, that when his hip dysplasia wouldn't allow him to move without severe limping, we babied him through, desperately ignoring what was staring us in the face. But when the local television meteorologists warned that the weather was about to turn bitterly cold, we knew that we couldn't allow Buford to continue to suffer. Cold made his pain worse, and so we bawled and gave him extra treats, hugged him and said our goodbyes, and Buford made one last trip to the vet's office. ~sniffles~

Maybe we moved a little too fast, but the opportunity to adopt a new puppy sort of fell into my parents' laps, and now they have a new baby. (I'm sorry for the picture quality, but my phone takes crappy pics.) Meet Cody the Puppy. He's seven weeks old and is a Rottweiler/Labrador mix. Cody is too small to go outside yet, so he's a house dog for the moment. And good grief, he's a little pee/poo factory. While he usually manages to make it to the pee pads that we put down for him, I don't think the den floor has been mopped so regularly in years. ~grin~ He's also a bundle of energy, and it makes me laugh out loud to see him play. He literally bounces from place to place, and he apparently has only two settings: On and Off. He plays as hard as he can for an hour or so, then he's ready for a nap:

( Cody the Puppy Takes a Nap )

The large green thing next to him is a stuffed frog that is Cody's sleeping companion of the moment. Cody has been something of a shock to Lexie, my parents' other dog. An eight-year-old Labrador, she was spayed before she came to live with my parents, and she seems horrified at Cody's determination — each and every time my dad takes him outside — to find dinner someplace on her body. So far, she's sniffed Cody and retreated into her doghouse to watch him suspiciously. Cody will eventually be an outside dog, but until he's big enough to make the transition, we have a new baby in the house. I know that someday we'll look back at these days with fond thoughts of having a bouncy puppy in the house, but after cleaning up more pee/poo, today is not that day. ;)

I am feeling wretched today. I went to bed with a dryness in the back of my throat, woke this morning to a full-blown cold.
There is nothing worse than getting up, getting dressed and then vomiting all over yourself and having to re-work out what you are wearing for the day.
I've made it to work, but I think I'm going to just do the minimum that has to be done today and then go home. I don't think anyone would blame me.

So, not only have I surpassed Part 1 in Words, Words, Words (ahem, right), TQSiT is approaching 200. To repeat, AACK! Which give how WEIRD this stuff is, says something not easy to interpret about both reader and writer.
( Musings on part 3, Asim, Lucy, Peter, Richard (remember him) and still more writing )( Read more... )

So, in my defense for how TQSiT is already and will be considerably longer than Part 1:

• I don't really get to Not Tashbaan until Chapter 4
• And 2 chapters so far are even more superfluous than the rest of it, meaning the Mrs. Ellis and Mrs. Brown Not A Chapter and now, Chapter 12, Heart and Mind, subtitled, What Lucy Thinks About All Of This

At a mere (for me) 5,900 words there is still a lot going on, and as I reflected on this first foray into Lucy's point of view, I realized that in writing Lucy, she most fully integrates Narnia and Spare Oom. The story looks back and around to the other characters floating around this vision, including Sir Leszi (referred to earlier in TQSiT and The Palace Guard), Mr. Hoberry (TSG Part 1, By Royal Decree, and TPG), Rats and Crows (BRD, TPG, and my short, Black As Rat and Crow), Jalur, Briony, and others.

And, why yes, I am hinting at some one else waiting especially for Lucy in Aslan's Country. That too is referenced in previous stories. Twice.

As stated, Lucy has the shortest journey in this particular vision. Further, back in Chapter 2, when we learned that Edmund had heard his Narnia friends, companions, and others from behind the Wall at World's End, readers asked me, well, what about Lucy? Did she sense them too? To which I decided, yes, she did, but that for her, it was not as tumultuous an experience because Lucy lives, very much like Asim, with a foot in both worlds and so Aslan and the dead are always with her.

I wish I could say that back in April when I wrote Edmund in Chapter 3 of BRD saluting his Rats and Crows with the 2 fingered salute to his brow, or when Min23 asked me about how and why Jalur was sworn to Edmund's Order of the Stone Table, that I knew that Peter and Lucy, in the Order of the Lion, would return a salute of fist over heart. Nope. It is appalling how much of this I make as I go along. Shhhh! Don't tell anyone, OK?

As for Lucy's future, I think that's shaping up. As I said in Chapter 1 of TQSiT, "Unleashing the indomitable Queen Lucy the Valiant upon an unsuspecting England was a fearsome, wondrous thing to consider."

So, that's my first attempt at the point of view of the Valiant Queen, wherein I learned that it is much easier to have other people say a character is insightful and have that insightful character say amazingly perceptive things when that character is not the point of view character.

hey guys! my x-over exchange fic is up.

Whose Other Side Is Salvation
for beatrice_otter
Doctor Who/Chronicles of Narnia crossover, Susan/The Doctor. Another installment in my firm belief that 'OMG the Doctor and Susan would be FABULOUS together.'

+ agh, my dad is so frustrating. I'm not even going into what happened earlier, because RAAAAAGE, but then he flipped completely in the space of an hour, and on the way home from puppets he was all 'let's watch the Matrix and eat TV dinners and get lots of chocolate!' and I was sitting in the car going, "I'M SORRY I CAN'T CHANGE MOODS THAT FAST WHAT?" yeahhhhh.

+ the official Journey tonight was canceled, but the performers (puppets, harpist, brass band, singer, and illusionist) put on a show for all of the other Journey workers who aren't able to see it at all, which was nice. so there was that.

+ drama with Rachel and Isaac update: Isaac's mom (Mrs. I) wasn't at church tonight - I guess they didn't want to stay for the performers or something, or they just found out it was canceled and not about the show. but yeah. so now I'm having to put that off until tomorrow night, which is only making me more and more nervous about it.

+ watched the Matrix for the first time! movie's CRAZY good! I loved it, start to finish. I can see why so many people do, too! that's a good movie. I have heard bad things about the sequels, though - those of you who know these things, should I watch the second and third, or no? from looking at the plot basics really quickly, I'm thinking no. it looks all sad and fate-oriented and 'the world sucks let's die now.' which I don't need. seriously don't need.

+ had logarithm test yesterday in math. I think I did fine. English portfolio Monday, Tuesday I have to take the in-class essay I missed, and then finals week the next week. and then I'm actually back, not just running around in frenzied circles going AAAAAHHH a lot.

my dad's a fucking jerk.

yay.

oh, this is going to be a fantastic Christmas, isn't it?

puppets. got home at 10:00 tonight, puppeteered for 3 1/2 hours (not continuously). ran around too much. did camels and sheep and singing and a star and am exhausted.

found out that a girl I KNOW is really bad news for guys (I know of at least two times in the last two years that she's been leading two different guys on at once, she's had five relationships in two years that ended badly, her parents don't let her date but she goes behind their backs too, she flirts with every guy in a fifteen-mile radius, and she's just bad news, okay? BAD) has an 'arrangement' with a guy at my church, this really sweet guy (about 15? he's around Kat's age) who's really nice and shy and, I suspect, kind of naive. and I am not letting her hurt him. I've stood by and watched her flirt with friends of mine, and be an idiot, and hurt guys, some of whom I know, and I'm not doing that again, and Isaac and I were pretty close once. so I'm going to ask her what's going on between them, and if the answer isn't 'oh we're just friends' I'm going to talk to his sister. which I really don't want to do, but. what else do I do? tell Isaac? I'm not close enough to him to do that - we've been no more than passing acquaintances ever since his family stopped working in the Children's Church. ugh ugh ugh. suggestions? how do I go about saying anything? I want to at least get him a warning, and I have evidence to back it up, so.

A lovely woman contacted me about selling her a costume - I'm going to sell her one of my old ones as she needs it for this weekend.
But, I found it rather interesting that she's been trying to get a hold of me for 3 years. In fact, she called my old bellydance school about years ago (when I was still there) and was told by my ex-teacher that I was far too busy to make any other costumes.
I think I pulled this face: O.O
I wonder how many other people she had told that I was far too busy to make costumes? What a lovely way of keeping my skills just for them.

so even though I'm pretty sure most of my f-list has already seen this (I AM LATE TO THE PARTY, SO LATE), caramelsilver is hosting a three-sentence multifandom ficathon. no huge commitment, easy to just drop by and write a few and receive a few fics (I've gotten three out of the two prompts I managed to drop off early on). there's like, 3 pages of prompts already, so you're sure to find something to write. have fun!

(yeah, totally not alive yet. maybe end of this week? I dunno when I'll be fully back, probably when I manage to finish this semester. omg. :( *dies*)

I feel like I'm running to keep up these days.
End of year is always a hectic time, but I just feel like I can't catch a break. I ended up having a day off yesterday because I was just too physically tired to come to work, but even then, I don't feel like I've rested at all.
The bump is beginning to dwarf the breasts, so you know that it's pretty spectacular.
For those that I owe emails and things, my apologies, I will get to you, I'm just trying to work through my pile.

A DAY EARLY. I WIN.

Last line: "Behind you, Anna smiles at the ceiling."

I'm kind of sniffling right now, because I saved the emotional high point of the story for the last scene to write, and I just wrote it for the last thousand words and it made me sad. *sniff* But I am also riding a complete high right now, so. wheeeeee!

OMG I WON A DAY EARLY.

(things to do before I'm fully back: English portfolio, College algebra project, FINISH THE BLOODY A.P. GOV. AND LATIN II CLASSES DEAR GOD. also, will be doing puppets every night this week except for Monday at a church Christmas thingie. but the crossover exchange is out to beta, so!)

YOU GUYS I LOVE THE WOOOORLD.

As posted previously, this chapter was a culmination of thought that goes back a year. I had intended to address this in Part 3, not here, as I'd not originally intended to tell the story of The Queen Susan in Tashbaan at all, or at least not in this way. Best laid plans and all that.

The Jewish Virtual Library
What We Knew And When We Knew It
Chronology www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/chron.html

The NSA Report, Eavesdropping On Hell
World War 2.net Timeline of the Holocaust, 1942
New York Times article discussing the NSA Report

I've been working toward this for a while now as I've tried to explore not only how Narnian culture is different, and how it made the Pevensies different, but why their exposure to that differentness is important and relevant. It's a thematic element that is woven throughout all the stories. I see that compassion and tolerance as a fundamental thematic element in the Chronicles and so have made it a centerpiece here, taking it out, stretching it beyond all recognition.

So. That's that. I need a drink. And an analgesic.

Chapter 11 of TQSiT will likely be up tonight. Oi. This one has taken A LOT out of me. It's sort of a culmination of thoughts I had a year ago when I first started thinking of Narnia, even if I did not anticipate it would end up being told in precisely this way. Lots of research and a lot of thought has gone into this. I just hope it works...

I write you t his from a laptop. and not just any laptop, no. a huge-screened, completely new, REALLY FAST laptop with sound.

the story goes: yesterday, my brother came home for Thanksgiving. my mom had been thinking about getting a laptop for us kids and for her occasional use when she needs to go places for a while, but she wanted to talk to him first, and besides she wasn't sure if we had the money just now, maybe we should wait a little bit OR NOT, because Matt promptly explained the types of laptops, got our input, found a really good bargain that would be going on today, and Esther, Katherine and Sam volunteered to get up at 5:00 a.m. and wait for Best Buy to open.

so now we have a new laptop, one that is pretty much predominantly for mine and Sam and Kat's use, named Anna. and seriously, this screen is gigantic. *bliss*

OH YEAH.