the best imitation of myself

baby's first anonymous love meme! if you are full of holiday cheer, or are not full of holiday cheer but would like to share some anonymous love anyway, my thread is here!

i don't think i've seen this recced anywhere, but i wholeheartedly recommend you download and watch—perhaps repeatedly, as i have done!—kitakatzz's sga vid welcome to the black parade. i'm working on an overly long and gushing review, but the condensed version is !!!1! and <3!

today will be a good day. i don't know what i'm doing with the computer bag and two—two!—laptop sleeves now in my possession, though i think the postal service will be involved; and i'm continuing to drive myself crazy over the idea, but m. gives the thumbs up to applying to—and possibly ATTENDING—grad school on a whim, so here i go! i will decimate the stacks of paper before me this week, and also i will buy boots this week, and also this week, perhaps, i will wander on down to the gym to remind myself what it looks like. and what i look like when i'm wandering by there regularly! it will be a good day! exclamation marks are the best of omens.

a. cold around the edges by out_there. READ THIS STORY. no one was around at three a.m. EST for me to foist it on, so i'm foisting it on all of you now. the short version is that rodney and radek discover time travel; it left me wired and shaking, it took me two read-throughs to understand it completely, and when it all clicked i realized out_there is a GENIUS. i hate giving anything away, and she's got all the warnings you'll need, so go read it, read it, read it.

b. last night¹ i dreamed that 1) an old family friend had a carnival ride set up in his garage, a ferris wheel/gravitron crossover, which i was riding for free—or was i?; 2) i was playing a word-association game with myself, in my head, in which i paired gainesville with home²; 3) i'd done a livejournal meme that involved copying-and-pasting rules, in which i unwittingly promised to write FICLETS for people, and people were gleefully RESPONDING; 4) mutant houseflies were being pumped through a vacuum hose into the pool³, and we were likely going to be running from them in terror momentarily, but first we had bagels.⁴

c. gainesville thoughts are easy enough to trace to my aborted plans to travel to gainesville, via bus, last sunday, i.e. yesterday. those plans fell apart when people kept asking, "so when does gjstruthseeker graduate?" and i said, "she already did, saturday" and then they said, "oh. wait, why are you going to gainesville?" and i had no answer. so jules was looking around her empty apartment and couldn't remember why staying was a good idea, and i couldn't remember why going was a good idea⁵, so we confusedly called the whole thing off. she's coming into town today . . . or tomorrow. ish. we'll watch more atlantis and maybe nip/tuck, and go 293487234 rounds on fic preferences and characterization.

d. my parents and i are planning to visit the atlanta crew over MLK, jr. weekend, which is fine and nice, until i remembered this afternoon while lying in bed that i have JURY DUTY beginning the ninth of january. best-case scenario is that i come in and they send me home, but i'm technically signed on for two weeks, and the worst-case scenario is, you know, i get assigned to a JURY for a trial that goes on however long. now i get to write a letter to federal court asking for a postponement, when really it was my fault for not remembering. i don't like being stupid, but i also hate trying to wiggle my way out of stupidity once it's happened.

e. [insert bitching about inherent laziness, lack of direction, why it's so completely uninvolved being me, the tribulations of living with parents who love me and want me to be around all the time, etc., etc.]

f. my library books are coming overdue. apparently i go through these phases where i'll read three, four, five books in a week and then be completely uninterested in reading anything⁶ for another two weeks, and then the cycle will repeat.

g. do you ever want to footnote your footnotes and realize you've lost all control of the situation?


1. honestly, it feels RIDICULOUS to say last night when in reality i didn't go to bed until after six a.m., gjstruthseeker woke me up with a text message at ten a.m. (and i called her back), and then i slept again until two in the afternoon. but, whatever, okay?
2. which i then cried about to gjstruthseeker when i called her back at ten, because SO WRONG.
3. we don't have a pool; i have no idea where any of this took place.
4. this list is not exhaustive. did you know that having vivid dreams right before you wake up is a sign of sleep deprivation? it doesn't sound right to me either.
5. disregarding my understandable lack of love for five-hour bus rides (though on this one i would have had plenty of crocheting and a shiny blue ipod (which i named hortense, i don't know if i mentioned) to keep me company) going to gainesville would have had the following benefits: a) weather that isn't eighty degrees and muggy, b) coffee, board games, and old movies at maude's, c) sweet potato fries consumed outdoors at cafe gardens, and d) (though i didn't realize this one until later) seeing silentfire, who could have driven down from georgia. but if i can finally get my ass up to boston to visit her next semester, wouldn't that be even COOLER?
6. i am always, always in the mood to read fanfiction.

( my rec50 table )

i've mentioned what a hardship it's been to read through the hundreds and hundreds of stories i've saved over the last six months, right? *hand to forehead*

the prompts make it challenging, which i understand is the whole point. at the moment i'm aiming for all fifty, but i'd rather not settle for a story just because it happens to fit. there are prompts i find myself wishing i had been given to fill, the themes that writers seem to return to again and again when they're writing about john sheppard: home; abandonment; isolation; torture; post-traumatic stress disorder; leadership; loyalty; sacrifice; origin myths. i still mean to talk about fanon vs. canon someday, but obviously not today, and in the meantime so many other people are busy hashing it out! (see here, here, here, here, etc.)

saturday night

the parents and cousin m. and i went out to downtown hollywood for an "art walk," which in principle is a nice way for some of the galleries and shops to showcase their work and get people in the door, and in practice is actually like a pub crawl, but with art and tchotchkes and finger food in place of, you know, ale. some of the art was quite striking and beautiful; some of it was easily surpassed by the shows my high school ap art class put on. it was september in south florida, so it was warm and muggy even well after sunset, but in the course of our walk i downed a glass of champagne and a glass of wine, and then finished it all off with two scoops of the most amazing gelato, so i was feeling no pain.

after we got home i planted myself in front of the computer and chatted with silentfire while i read my way through the harlequin challenge stories at sga_flashfic and laughed myself into a wheezing fit. seriously, these authors need to write harlequins for a living. were they born awesome, or did they have to go to awesome school and take advanced degrees? i kept sending erika links and summaries and back-cover blurbs and choice quotes, followed by my reactions, e.g. *dies* and *DIES* and *dies and dies and is reanimated and DIES AGAIN*. that last was to hyperfocused's TEASER that ended with An all-knowing Mountie, a know-it-all Canadian Physicist, and two American men with experimental hair fight against the odds to brave the wilds of the Yukon in Overdue South.

i was up and rolling around in the crack until after seven in the morning. at that point i had a dozen stories still unread in open tabs, but it was, you know, after seven a.m., and the parents tend to get tetchy when they hear me heading to bed just as they're waking up.

sunday

i had myself a great workout, and, and. i can't really remember much of sunday. my mom and i visited my grandmother, who was pretty perky and very chatty; we had a huge vegetarian taco salad for dinner and finished off season one of sports night. i'd just like to take this moment to state right now, for the record, that i love dan rydell, and i love josh charles for being dan rydell, and i really wish we saw more of his mouth him around these days. i love him and casey together, even when i'm not picturing them comfortably in love and rejoindering happily ever after, because they're such good *friends* first.

earlier my mother had been watching season three gilmore girls, particularly a scene where rory comes downstairs to find lorelai going through stacks and stacks of all the catalogues they receive, with the good intentions of calling the companies to cancel the duplicates, but she bails mid-project, as rory had predicted; in despair, rory calls after her, "these catalogues are gonna be here forever!" to which lorelai replies, "no they won't—they're biodegradable." that scene, plus watching josh charles, et al. give life to aaron sorkin's dialogue, led me to an epiphany regarding interpretations of characterization and fanfic, especially concerning the recent kerfuffle over rageprufrock's hindsight, and the epiphany was delivery.

one of the criticisms of hindsight that i remember most clearly was that rodney's characterization was off, specifically that he shouted all the time. i had to admit that he did do a lot of yelling, that it made him come off as shrill, and i had a little trouble reconciling that with the rodney i saw, until i realized it was more a problem of translation and transcription than characterization. because on the show rodney does do a lot of shouting—except that's not quite the right word for it. the prototype in my mind for "yell" isn't what necessarily comes out of his mouth onscreen, though it might be the best word to describe it.

it's easier to go from the written word to the spoken one: there are layers and layers of nuance to add to a single line-reading, incorporating tone and speed and emphasis, facial expressions and body language; you could perform any given line a hundred different ways, but when the time comes to transcribe that performance, the hundred different readings are compressed back into a single line of dialogue—plus descriptions of body language and facial expressions, the context clues of the entire scene, and adverbs (use sparingly). but one of the best tools that a fanfic writer has is that we know the characters: we know what they look like, sound like, how they move; if i can hear a character in a story i'm reading, that is it, that's the best thing. i think what i do too often is read the story and try to let the words give rise to the action, instead of giving the characters a chance to act out the words. so the text says rodney yells, and that strikes me as not quite right; but david hewlett could pull it off, and suddenly rodney's speaking snappily and unhappily, exasperatedly and maybe even angrily, but it's rodney, it's not all-caps anymore. i loved hindsight pretty unequivocally the moment i laid eyes on it, but i take my epiphanies where i find them.

on an unrelated sga fanfictional note, i am a sucker—a SUCKER—for that moment when john is smarter than rodney expects. i LIVE for that. and as silentfire said, rodney's always surprised! every time! he is nothing if not predictable.

monday

my father woke me up today, but it was almost one p.m. at the time, and it was because he needed help putting up the hurricane shutters, so resentment was given no opportunity to build. we're only expecting tropical-storm-force winds in broward county, but my parents regretted not putting up the shutters a couple of weeks ago when katrina came through, so up they went today. no harm in it, better safe than sorry, etc., etc., and it's more comforting to hear things slamming into the metal than into the windows. between the two of us it only took a little over an hour and a half, under hot hot sunny skies with the occasional darker cloud passing overhead bearing a drizzle, and a stiff breeze that waxed and waned. when we were all done and i went inside, dripping sweat and dirty from climbing in all our shrubbery, the dog came bounding up to me, freaked out by the noise we'd been making and the way it had gotten steadily darker in the house at three in the afternoon.

it's a weird feeling, artificial nighttime inside when the sun's high in the sky, and it's weird to look at from the outside too. a house with hurricane shutters up looks suddenly blind. a boarded-up house is a signal of abandonment, but this is a matter of protection: we seal up the walls and ourselves inside. i walk down the hallway and glance out the back doors, but my line of sight is abruptly shortened to the metal panels a couple of inches beyond the glass. it's the constant visual equivalent of feeling for the landing at the top of the stairs when there's really one more step. the dog seems to have gotten over it; these days the cat only moves back and forth between my pile of dirty laundry and his food bowl and litterbox.

and then we threw an impromptu hurricane party, like you do. my mom and i picked up wine (frank at the liquor store is a super-nice guy who knows his stuff and is thrilled to recommend things we might like), fish and chicken at delaware chicken farm, and a prescription for my grandmother at target. (we delivered it to her too, as she had a new caretaker start today and that kind of transition confuses her terribly. sometimes she falls asleep, and when she wakes up can't differentiate between dreams and memories.) cousin m. came over after she'd put up her own shutters, for wine and fish in this incredible sauce that my mother whipped up from the tomato sauce that had been languishing in the refrigerator, garlic, onions, red peppers, and i know not what. we watched how i met your mother; i forgot about the premier of kitchen confidential, but i'm hearing very good things about it.

i've been working through the rest of the harlequin stories and the latest recs from ship_recs all night. at one point i solved the sudoku in three minutes, forty-six seconds, and i wanted a COOKIE, or like, sirens to go off and quarters to start flying out of the cd-rom drive.

we have hurricane days like other people have snow days, and there's no school tomorrow, though i think cousin m. is still obliged to show up at work. i'll be sleeping in, just as usual; in case of power outage we're in good shape for bottled water and peanut butter, my ipod is fully charged, and i've got a stack of unread books that just won't quit. house and NCIS are on tomorrow though, so hopefully it won't come to that.

i know i'm late to the season one sg:a party, and i know "home" has been done to death, but it's new to me, so.

( 109: home )

i've been promised ninja!john in the storm/the eye, up next.

and, okay, rageprufrock is writing another atlantis story, this one involving john as a stripper and it is SO AWESOME that i have no words other than AWESOME, that's the extent of my vocabulary. i could read about john being john and doing john things forever and ever and ever. bell curve, or, ladies night at the boom boom room, a work in progress.

ciderpress is talking about joe flanigan's accent here if anyone wants to 1) weigh in, or 2) upload samples of your own american accent for comparison and contrast. which would be fun for everyone! i'll do it if you will?

eta: he grew up on a small ranch in *nevada*, this makes SO MUCH SENSE omg.

Y'all, I did something so bad to my neck in my sleep last night. So bad that I had to think very carefully about how I was going to get out of bed when I woke up early this afternoon, and after I did make it upright, the first thing I lunged for was the heating pad, and the heating pad and I then communed for a couple of hours. I've gotten back about three times the range of motion I woke up with, which is still less than half of what I'm used to. There was a time in there when it was warm and loosening up that I thought I'd be able to make it to the gym today after all, but both parents made that-probably-isn't-the-best-idea-you've-ever-had noises, plus I can't even pretend to look over my left shoulder and therefore can't drive; also it hurts when I walk. In summation: ow. I took care of my body and my body abandoned me.

It turns out I'm going to be taking bellydancing lessons with cousin M. for the next six or eight Thursdays. I agreed to it because 1) I don't think she was going to do it if I wasn't, but she really wanted to; and 2) my dad called across the house to tell me she was on the phone when I was in the kitchen and had just sliced a nectarine in half: I answered with the knife and the nectarine in hand, and the phone cord is like two feet long so I was stuck holding onto both of them and dripping for the duration of the call—which was long, and consisted of four parts—so I was looking to end it and get back to the sink as quickly as politeness would allow. And then suddenly I was taking bellydancing lessons. Okay.

I started re-reading the Harry Potter books starting with Philosopher's Stone, intending to take epic, epic notes for both research and general knowledge purposes, but first got distracted by properly coding my notes, and then got totally absorbed in Chapter 4 ("Yer a wizard, Harry Potter!"). Considering how cold HBP left me (and, as I told gjstruthseeker, I don't know if that's just because I approached it with my analyzation glasses on or what, but I thought other people had had the same reaction?) I was greatly heartened to find I was still thrilled and touched by the world we were establishing and that Harry was finally gaining entrance to. I have not yet made it past Chapter 4.

My family and I have finished Season Eight of M*A*S*H and have therefore exhausted our current supply. To compensate, we've cracked open the Sports Night DVDs. It was a fantastic show, and would feel even MORE fantastic if only every episode upon re-viewing didn't feel like a dress rehearsal for The West Wing.

As for tonight's network television, namely the episode "Heavy" of House, ( does S1 House talk need to go behind a cut? watch me now as I err on the side of caution )

But! Oh! Livejournal, since last we spoke rageprufrock posted both Part 3 AND Part 4 of Hindsight, and says now we can probably expect two more parts before it wraps up, if anyone has been keeping away out of habitual WIP-avoidance. Who are you people, by the way? Where does all that cast-iron self-control COME FROM?

I love Said the Gramophone so much, both for the music they feature and the methods they come up with for talking about the music. There was, for example, Nikto Ti Nepovie Pravdu by Zivé Kvety, "the hottest garage-pop band in Bratislava. Yes, Slovakia," about which Sean said,

If this song were having a conversation with itself:

SONG: Hey! Are you going to the movie?
Song: Movie? Look what I'm doing!
SONG: You're jumping up and down on the grass!
Song: I'm jumping up and down on the grass!
SONG: Yes! That looks fun!
Song: Join me! Look, I'm baking cookies too!
SONG: My electric guitar is a baseball bat that only hits home-runs!
Song: Thank god we're no longer controlled by the Communists!

How can you not appreciate people who appreciate something so much? I don't find every description they post appealing, and I don't adore every song I download, but I love plenty, and no matter what, I love reading what they have to say.

My HBP thoughts finally got written up over here. I don't know if I said much, but I sure did talk a lot.

Other things I have done in the past two weeks:

S. and I studied together three (3) separate times for the GRE. It's utterly demoralizing to be set the task of doing middle-school mathematics problems and not be able to do them, since I haven't done them since, you know, *middle school*. There's nothing like being asked to solve a linear equation like 4 - 5(2y+4) = 4 and hearkening nostalgically back to sixth grade. I keep conflating four steps in my head like I'm used to doing, and then I mess up on the arithmetic—it's been way too long since I worked with numbers on a regular basis. My dad is all confused about the relevance of this test, and I just keep saying, "don't get me started."

On Saturday I got 214 pages into HBP before and after dinner, and then malelia_honu called around 9:30 and said she felt like she should be going to a movie, so she swung by and collected me for the 10:05 showing of Bewitched. It was cute, we laughed a lot, and we snorted a lot. We had fun, but I don't think I'd actually recommend it. We also saw five or six trailers, one of which was for Elizabethtown, where Orlando Bloom is a pretty, pretty boy, though I dislike Kirsten Dunst for being smug and smirky; and one of which was for RENT: a fabulous trailer, beautifully shot and of course their voices are all incredible (Jesse L. Martin on "or the way that she diiiiiied" = goosebumps omg). They're all way too old (I mean, Mimi is supposed to be nineteen—and look like she's sixteen) but that's okay! and I am excited about it.

Then we found a Dunkin' Donuts on US-1 and sat down with our donuts and coffee and cards for a couple of rounds. Technically they closed at 1:00, but the drive-through was open later, so the lady didn't mind us staying a while; we headed out by 1:30 or so. We got caught by the late-night train, the long and slowly-moving one, and started a game of regular-card Uno while we waited. We finished it off in my driveway and then sat in the dark with the car running for a while longer, just talking. Only the animals were awake when I finally came in. We were all supposedly heading to the beach for breakfast tomorrow; I left a note telling my parents to wake me up twenty minutes before they wanted to leave and I would be ready.

. . . However, it turned out that I was the first one up Sunday morning (c. 8:45) even though I'd been the one to go to sleep at five. We did make it out to the beach, though it was more brunch-time than breakfast-time by the time we got there. We stopped at the organic market for lettuce and parsley. At home I continued reading HBP, stopping for dinner consisting of bruschetta and goat cheese on toasted artisan bread plus enough wine to get buzzed on, then roasted chicken over sweet potatoes and some sauteed vegetables. My mother's been on-vacation-without-leaving-home and not cooking, but she broke down tonight. Started Season Eight of M*A*S*H and we cried and cried when Radar left. And then we cried and cried some more when BJ broke down at the end of the next episode, after his incredible all-night drinking binge.

We've been promising ourselves for weeks, but Mal and I set aside this Thursday for movie day! Movies watched:

1) Say Anything. Everyone should have a Lloyd Dobson: being a good boyfriend is totally his calling in life.

2) Saved! Which was HILARIOUS. Whoever said Macauley Culkin was the best part of this movie? You are correct! But everybody else was great too.

3) Ghost World. Um, weird. Steve Buscemi is always creepy. And the ending kinda came out of nowhere, though it was intriguing. I loved her clothes.

4) I <3 Huckabees. Quirky and arty, and I loved it. Also in which Jude Law has what I think must be the least successful American accent ever attempted on stage or screen. Awesomely bad. Though I saw him (unfortunately) in Sky Captain, and he couldn't hold on to a single dialect there either. I'd heard this movie didn't have a plot, which is confusing, because there absolutely was not only a plot, but a theme, a message, a mystery, development, epiphanies, revelations, and a very satisfying ending. Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman were cute as could be.

Also in the past two weeks, I have been to a gym exactly one (1) time, but I just got signed up at the health club starting tomorrow, so I will be attending regularly once again, hurrah.

ciderpress has recently discovered Stargate: Atlantis and is all a-squee about it, especially Major John Sheppard, and just reading about it makes me clap my hands and squeak. The North American DVD release date is November. In the meantime, rageprufrock has just started an AU called Hindsight (Part 1: In which somebody expresses their true feelings for Rodney, John isn't able to find Rodney's head injury and never joined the Air Force, and Montana's tourists really get a run for their money) that is AWESOME and will hopefully be a billion chapters long, but I will take whatever I can get.

I'm going to go read a book now.

You know what I need? A Stargate: Atlantis icon. Of John. And/or Rodney. Wither shall I go? Who has the hook-up?

These are the stories I've read and saved in the past couple of weeks and am now recommending to you:

Stargate: Atlantis

Exigencies by Rivier
*whistles long and low* Check out the plot, the POV, the dead-on characterization, and the implications.
He's half the bulk of Calmoore, but something about this man makes her bodyguard look like an amateur, a fake. He smells of sweat and blood and metal and dirt, and a static crackle of nervous energy. He's lean, and handsome, and she's never met anyone so frightening in her life.

As Seen On Television by Layton Colt
This is just so damn cute. It would make more sense if deathbed cave-in sex were bad sex, right?
As they headed back into the hall, there was that moment of awkwardness two people who have been caught in a cave-in and had sex because they were going to die, but didn't, in fact, actually die, always experience once things are safe again.

Under the Influence by Chelle
John's expression turned incredulous. "Nice? You called a meeting because Rodney is being nice?"

Intersections by Kaneko
Seriously though, everybody read this within twenty-four hours of its posting, right? The pre-Atlantis story, clocking in at just over 150K. A strong candidate for best ending of a work of fanfiction. And the "fan" there is optional.
It becomes a joke between them - how little they have in common.

The Weight of My Hand by Chelle
John would tell Rodney what he imagined, in detail. Rodney had concluded months ago that sex was the one intimacy John was comfortable with. Rodney was okay with that, because John was the most uninhibited lover he'd ever had.

Atavistic Pie by cofax7
You know, I really don't understand exactly what's going on here—how much is canon, how much is real or imagined—but it certainly sucked me in.

Letting It Go by dirty diana
John/Ford and it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.
John could have ignored it. Anyone else would have ignored it. But John liked Ford, and anyway, they were going to be here a long time.

Detox by Jane St Clair
Rodney and Zelenka come down.

Maybe He Didn't by kyrieane
All my buttons pushed at once! John changes the rules on Rodney and it's about breaking habits and breaking down defenses.
Rodney thought open and the door slid obediently. John didn’t follow him in, just stood there waiting for something. It took Rodney too many seconds to figure it out, and then he waved John in.

The Ways by Layton Colt
They fall back on his bed, and its surreal enough he could almost believe he was dreaming, except that John feels real enough. "I'm sorry," he says again, because he is, he's sorry about all of it and he's sorry because he doesn't think there's any going back from this—can't imagine how things will ever be the same.

Face Value (Part 1) and Part 2 by minnow
Long enough to wallow in and it's so, so good. Rodney can read minds! And it's so not the story you think it is.
Summary: "Yes, I think one telepath per Atlantis is enough," Elizabeth said. One too many, she murmured internally.

Advantage by Resonant
John turns out to be a very bossy slave. I squeeze this story and never let go.

Equate by Rivier
Ah, John and Rodney, feeling their way around and to and through each other.
They're doing something, Rodney and the Colonel. He doesn't know exactly what it is or what the right name for it might be.

Stepwise by Tigerlady
And thank god, Rodney got it, too. A warm, sweaty palm met his own. They were both shaking, gripping each other desperately, but John was pretty sure that was okay for two friends who had just survived certain death.

SG-1

East of Eden by dirty diana
A crossover with Stargate: Atlantis. A New World Order.

Hysteria by dirty diana
Daniel reached out, his hand restlessly turning pages. There was something relieving about the feel of paper, thick and with ink smudged in the corners, where he had written too fast. There was something relieving about leaving.

Out of Season by Anna S
After another moment, Jack reluctantly removed his hand from where it rested. He was feeling hungry, and not for doughnuts, and he was also feeling like a real shit-heeled bastard for what the next few weeks would do to his team. To Daniel. When he'd outlined his plan to Hammond, he'd secretly felt its biggest problem was that Daniel would never fall for it, would never buy that Jack was at heart a jingoistic thief with no stake left in the system.

Fools Can Dream by Icarus
Jack and Daniel get married. In a non-cloying way.
Yep. Terrified. Which was S.O.P.

Double Bed by paian
Achy in the best possibly way. Bleak until it isn't anymore.
Jack detached himself a little, moved up level with Daniel's face. Daniel turned onto his back. The thumb at the end of the arm that stayed under Jack rubbed lightly, absently. He didn't pull away, except he did. Jack laid a hand on his chest. Too sticky to rub. He squeezed a little. Daniel's eyes closed, part pleasure and part pain. He wanted this, he wanted contact, affection; except he didn't.

Syllepsis by paian
Sara O'Neill drops by, unexpected.
"I'm afraid Jack's out," he said. "He's picking up snacks for the games this afternoon." It was Sunday, football season, and he wasn't exactly lying; Jack would pick up munchies and burgers and dogs, but really he was just doing the weekly shopping, because it was his turn and because Daniel had this translation to work on. "Can I get you a drink or something?" He considered and discarded the temptation to say It's not really my place to play host, but . . . His mind was working fast, the way it did during an unexpected negotiation or first contact. He'd gone into work mode, he realized -- offworld mode, or NID mode, or something. Balling up tight, deep inside, what he finally registered as a low, quiet panic.

Home From Here by Merry
Merry wins at last lines. If a fic could grin, this one does.

A Bird in the Hand Gets Tangled in the Sheets by The Grrrl
He slides under the covers carefully, because Jack is already asleep, and has been for hours. It's late. Or early, Daniel thinks as he squints at the clock. Very early. He didn't mean to stay up so long, but the damn bird thing . . . maybe the bird ate the man?

Miscellaneous

The History of the World by Wintertime. (House)
This was a re-read this past week, but it's so pitch-perfect and finely balanced.

Asymptotic Behavior by rageprufrock. (Numb3rs)
Gen. Driving lessons: Charlie is the immovable object and Don is the irresistible force.
Charlie's mouth opens and math spews out, which Don has learned over the course of going on seventeen years to ignore. When Charlie finishes in a feverish babble--something about "impact ratios and twisted metal"--Don smiles patiently at him and says, "Charlie, press down on the God damn gas."

Change Is the Only Constant by marag (House/DC Universe)
For something completely different.
Summary: When Bruce Wayne becomes Dr. Gregory House's latest patient, House's hidden past might just be disclosed.

I sit at the computer but never write. What's the last thing I can remember posting?

It rained all day Monday. In the morning my mother mentioned a flood warning was going to be in effect until 8 p.m. at least, and it poured all day. I got up early for the dermatologist, who took less than five minutes to examine me head-to-toe and said both "you don't get much sun, do you?" and "you really shouldn't be living in Florida." WELL, IT WASN'T MY IDEA. I keep breaking out around my chin, something I'd never done before the start of the last school year; he gave me a prescription for that.

My mother and I brought Thai food over to my grandmother's apartment for lunch: it wasn't exactly a bad day for her, but a very quiet one. We left to run errands but stood downstairs for a long time, waiting for the rain to clear enough for our walk across the parking lot. We got batteries at Target and toiletries, and spent a lot of time in the travel-size aisle: dozens of tiny tubes of brand-name toothpaste and body lotion and contact-lens solution, all for a dollar or less. Keep a bag packed and be ready to flee at a moment's notice. We looked for nail polish at Bath and Body Works; we looked at CVS; we looked in Publix. We parked as high as we could and dashed between the car and covered sidewalks, the car and home, stepping quickly and carefully to avoid the deepest of the puddles. My mother made chicken salad for dinner and gjstruthseeker called to tell me to expect her tomorrow.

I slept in Tuesday and managed to do laundry and tidy up my room a bit before meeting malelia_honu for yoga. Our instructor admonished us for missing class last Thursday—it's nice to know we were missed. Afterward I called my mom to tell her I wouldn't be home for dinner and we headed over to the Galleria for sales at Victoria's Secret (where I never end up getting anything) and Banana Republic. I found a skirt that fit me for too much money and a skirt that didn't fit me for the right price, and in the end came away with only two plain t-shirts, white and black. We ducked into the Gap fifteen minutes before closing and ran smack into one of our friends from high school and her seven-month-old baby boy. She's married and the baby is adorable. She seemed happy, and I wouldn't have said she was happy when I knew her, though we hadn't been close at all: sullen, maybe. She seems happy now, confident and relaxed and happy

Jules came from dinner with her father to spend the night and we talked about the things around here and the things in Gainesville and the mysteries of the Harry Potter universe before we put ourselves to bed. In the morning I got up early again and headed out without breakfast to my doctor's appointment. They seemed glad to see me, the staff that had been there when I'd been there last summer, and I realize I need better stories. I have no boyfriends or girlfriends, no interesting plans, no anecdotes to share when people ask me to tell them what's going on, what's new. They did an EKG to check out my irregular heartbeat and the doctor gave me a clean bill of health and a note saying I could donate blood whenever I pleased, so perhaps now my dad will get off my back.

Mal met us for lunch at Einstein's at 12:30 or so, whenever I got back and we headed out again. Today was another perfectly rainy day, if more gray than wet. The humidity is fierce but the storms keep the heat down nicely. We sat outside at Einstein's rather than inside in the air conditioning and I dropped food on my skirt three or four times until Mal reached over and stuck a napkin on my lap. You can't take me anywhere. We browsed Bath and Body Works further down the strip (I am not swayed by packaging, but I'm certainly attracted by it: so much of their products are so well-wrapped, and I am drawn to the heft of the pots, the fonts of the text, the colors of the bottles, and the texture of the creams) and Payless right next door. I remembered my haircut appointment at two and Mal and Jules sat reading magazines while I got a badly-needed trim. I think it had been four months. It looks quite fetching now, though it won't fall half as nicely tomorrow.

Back at my place Jules sat us down and showed us the South Park movie, which both amused and horrified me. I laughed and my eyes bulged, sometimes simultaneously. (Someone brilliant made a Smallville vid, Lex-centric, to Saddam's "I Can Change," and it is, as you might have guessed, awesome.) We played some ball in the house; Mal left to rescue her mother from over-working outside and Jules stayed while we all ordered Chinese food. We watched, of all things, Super-Nanny (a much better show than I would have thought! the children are just as bad as I'd imagined, as were the parents, but she really does everything right) and then Jules went off to make her mother happy by sleeping at home tonight. We've made tentative plans for Friday, and Mal and I are doing yoga tomorrow and possibly seeing Cabaret on Saturday; I remembered too late that cousin M. is having my family and some other company over for dinner on Friday, but I can see if Jules would like to come along, and then we can do things both before and after. Too many thing and all at once.

Things I've read tonight:
1. the last 140 entries on my friends page
2. Part 26 (the latest and perhaps the best installment to date) of peter_and_fran
3. the latest SG:A and House recs at ship_recs (and elsewhere), including an untitled John study, a John/Atlantis ficlet, and Trojan Horse (SG:A); and No Exchange of Payment, Leave This Harbor for the Sea, and Dysgeusia (House)
4. isilya's giftedness ramble to which I am trying to formulate a coherent response
5. a column marythefan transcribed about Simon, his character, his sexuality, and what it all has to do with Jayne (Firefly)

Things I've saved to read later:
1. Ride (My Chemical Romance), the latest long story from synchronik
2. The Generic Slash Defense Form Letter (linked by cesperanza)
3. a metadiscussion of gender, sexuality, and fandom (linked by viggorlijah2).

I'd read them all but I'm too tired now to even want to. My mother gave me back The Tipping Point; maybe one of these days I'll read a book again.