I've been gone a while from LJ and I'm not sure where my head is at right now, but I wanted to take a moment to post. I didn't want to let another day go by without saying thank you. kormantic did an amazing thing on her own initiative for me, and everyone who responded to her--you all did an incredible thing too, and I'm blown away. Kind of still shell-shocked actually, and buoyed. It was an amazing, unexpected birthday present. I hope to--I look forward to--paying it back in the sense of karmically paying it out and paying it forward.

I only just now skimmed Dawn Marie's post, by the way; I'd been avoiding reading it ever since she told me what she did and passed along your gifts (just from a somewhat natural angsty, self-conscious reflex) and despite her kind and sympathetic description of my circumstances, I'm not sure I'd claim that I've been doing worse than anyone else in these times--but more likely I just don't want to admit it. It's true I've been struggling with a lot of day-to-day things, not to mention feeling bad and lost for a long time now. I've been trying to get back on track though, and this helps more than you'll probably ever know. Among other things, I'm now able to bring my car back from the red-tape of repossession and pay the cost of renewing several prescriptions I need.

And for anyone who wonders what the hell I'm talking about, I apologize! :) And while I'm not going to explode a long pent-up gush of chatter over LJ right now, I'm hoping to poke my head up more often and maybe get back in the groove of things.

Much love to fandom and the people in it,
Anna

Last edited in pursuit of hair-splitting nuances @ 11:31 p.m. PST

monanotlisa, a darling creature who is currently nestled to my bosom (despite her panicky struggles and unnerved cheeps, and in purely a virtual sense) has made me the icon on this post. It needs a caption, though, I think.



Poll #892727
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What should it say?

Inconstant, fitful, fluctuant, irregular - I love the thesaurus. I can't believe it's been so long since I posted. I apologize for not following up sooner on my last post; I said I'd have news "soon" but soon took a while to happen. There were a few good reasons I didn't post right away and then I think I just got superstitious about it. I'd been planning some fairly big changes, and I think I feared they might not happen if I talked about them. But they did. I've moved away from Seattle and for the last few weeks I've been travelling south through Oregon and into California. Today I'm sitting in a cafe in San Francisco. I think I want to move here. I passed over the Golden Gate and into the city and fell in love immediately. It's beautiful.

If anyone in the general area (anywhere between Petaluma and Palo Alto, basically, and of course East to Oakland) is interested in touching base, let me know. :)

I have no idea what else to post about right now - I'm a little giddy and distracted. But if anyone has questions about the mundane details of my life, please ask and I promise to answer. *g*

"While the inhabitants of Atlantis believe themselves to be in another galaxy, the island city itself was actually constructed by auto-factory workers from Detroit and placed in the middle of lake Huron. The other planets they visit look suspiciously like parts of Canada, with many rocks and trees, and sometimes water; but it can't possibly be Canada, because that's where SG-1 does most of their exploring. It is suspected, however, that these planets were terraformed millenia ago by Canadian Ancients, who also brought with them the Arrogant Worms, who promptly ascended and renamed their band "The Ori." However, this is widely disputed. It is also rumored that at least one of the addresses that the Atlantis gate can dial leads directly to Delaware." - Uncyclopedia


"Dr. Rodney McKay, a brilliant snarkitist with an advanced degree in Snarkology. Is deathly allergic to everything and has frequent delusions (a.k.a. wet dreams) of scoring repeatedly with arch-rival Samantha Carter. Played by super crime-fighting ninja David Hewlett." - From the primary Stargate Atlantis article--impressively scholarly

"'How can such vitality and such pathos co-exist in such a perfect body?' ~ Oscar Wilde on David Hewlett

Fattening up to hide his superhuman muscular formation, Hewlett trained in the arts of the ninja and the Batman while helping to found popular beat combo Hewlett-Packard. His diverse activities have made him a hero to many Canadians, and it is not uncommon to be accosted on the streets of Toronto by enthusiasts wanting to know if you've 'experienced the love of David' yet.

The 'love of David' is the source of much criticism inside Canada, with at least ten percent of Canadians believed to be the fruit of his crime-fighting loins." - Excerpts from the David Hewlett article

Sadly, Mulder didn't either. I'm here! Alive, vaguely hungry, wearing a scarf.

I've accumulated a lot of dust in my head these last few weeks, but rather than coughing these nebulous thoughts out at you, I thought I'd just summarize my existence with a collage.

( Try to find the flying pig in this picture. )

Hello! I didn't mean to be gone for so long. Life has been pretty good lately. kormantic stayed with me for several weeks, and I had a great time offline. She is cuddly, sweet, thoughtful, and possibly telepathic. For a while there, she became the audience for all my conversational thoughts, ones that I never got around to repeating online as journal entries. Oh, the reams of inane, disjointed, incoherent babble that went unrecorded for posterity! Tragic.

Fortunately, I have an unending supply of inane, disjointed, incoherent babble, like the outpourings of one of those magical food bags in fairy tales. I'll shake the bag out again soon, thoughts like muffins tumbling across the grass....

I'm off now to have lunch and be spendy on some trifle, in celebration of the fact that today is one year sober for me. :) I think earrings to mark the occasion.

I feel that I should have something to say about Rodney's mouth, but maybe you can just visualize it, like world peace.

At home, either my monitor or my video card is crapping out. The symptoms and conditions are:

Usually when I start up, it works fine at first. If I stay on and the computer's in constant use, it continues to work.

If I leave it long enough that the screen saver kicks in, I can't get the picture back. (I've got screen saver set to kick in after 90 minutes, maybe two hours right now, but that's not ideal.)

At that point, if I turn the monitor on and off, I'll get a half-second of image before it fades.

If I turn off the computer and restart immediately, I get the initial Windows logo, and the cursor shows up briefly, but the screen remains black when it's fully up.

If I wait several hours, I can usually get it to start fine again--but the time frame is inconsistent.

Any thoughts? I can take it into a shop for diagnosis, but if it's something I can just replace myself--either the card or the monitor--that'd be easier.

I'm offline--living the dream! In case you were wondering. *g* More from me later. But for now, man-seals.

Care of the Hide, or Why Rodney McKay Is Molting for stungunbilly

Proving that, in my loyal service to the kingdom of crackfic, I will stop at nothing, I turn Rodney into a sleek and beautiful man-seal, or selkie. It was a secret he'd worked hard to keep all his life, and it was easy when he was inland--Siberia, Antarctica--but now that he's living in Atlantis, surrounded by water, his longing for the sea makes him restless and irritable.

What he doesn't realize at first is that it's also stimulating his selkie self to surface. When he begins to molt, he panics and tries to hide it, but eventually the skin around his collarbone begins peeling, and then his neck and face, arms and hands. When he can't hide it or explain it away any longer, he's confronted by Carson, Elizabeth, and John and must confess his secret. Carson, after a predictable boggle and recovery period, theorizes that Rodney's selkie nature is manifesting out of his control because he hasn't taken proper care of himself in so long. Carson reproves him rather sternly for not nourishing his selkie side.

So Rodney unpacks his treasured sealskin from the box he's been keeping it in and it molds itself magically to his body--John watches in fascination and possibly alarm--and dives into the ocean waves for a long cavort. When he comes back a week later, he's refreshed and perky, and much calmer than usual, because he's happy in his skin again. And he puts his seal coat away, but now he will take it out on occasion when the moon is full, et cetera et cetera, and John of course falls helplessly for Rodney, because now that his selkie magic is back in force, people keep giving him candy and asking if he wants to come back to their rooms and see their etchings. But John glares at everyone and his razor-sharp hair frightens them, and so he and Rodney cavort happily ever after.

I'm still working on these. (No more, please! :) Here is what I have so far. From what I can tell, I'm making this post because I'm vaguely disgruntled and distracted (again) today and need to post something--and anything else would tax my brain too much.

( The Year of Magical Thinking )
( Rodney McKay's Big Day )
( 16 Reasons to Hate McKay...and Why I Don't )
( Xanadu )
( Curling Adventures of the Terminally Sports Inept )
( A Brand New Set of Hands )
( Pirates of Atlantis )
( Home on Derange )
( Babes with Blades )
( The Night with the Pop Tarts )
( Rodney McKay and the Prisoner of Atlantis )
( Two Rights Make One Wrong )
( The Curious Incident of the Doc in the Night-time )
( The Sheltering Sky )

If it had been my goal today to fritter away valuable time on things I now only vaguely remember, I'd be *so* proud of myself right now!

Instead, this is the face I am making at myself.

[image deleted]

That's what's on TV right now. I couldn't think of a subject line.

So sorry for not following up yet on the story meme. I've spent my weekend alternating between virtue and sleep. I worked out today and yesterday. Two days in a row is...I wow myself. It's been five months or so since I was going to the gym regularly (or, really, at all). It turns out by the way that crunches actually do something. You may *think* that they're just a form of painful, ab-killing torture. But I've learned that even without gaining any weight, my shape can radically change if I'm not doing any of the weight machines or ab exercises. Unbelievably, I didn't gain any weight back over my crappy winter, even though at times I felt like I was eating nothing but pastries. However, all my jeans got much tighter. Lean muscle mass loss, my trainer said when I saw her in the locker room.

Anyway. Meme. Yes. *shifty eyes* ...let me get back to you on that. I think I may need pastries before I tackle any projects.

ETA: Just now, when I yawned, I drooled a little. *sigh*

I'm afraid I got sleepy. I will follow up on my last post tomorrow!

Ennui.

I would like to go to the gym tonight, I planned to, but I don't know that I'm going to. I'm in a blank and restless mood. I'd like to write, but don't know that I'll do that either. I see a vague shape in my future, large and green--it is becoming more clear now--it is...my couch.

So it's time to meme. Comment with the title of a story that doesn't exist, and I'll tell you about that imaginary story. Etc. Etc. SGA only. It's just my comfort zone of the moment.*

(*It will explain a lot when I tell you that I have an image folder entitled "Rodney" full of pictures of turtles, hedgehogs, and baby otters. Some day I will look back on this era and really, really facepalm.)

I keep checking my creative mailbox, but it remains empty.

My river of creativity has been dammed up and diverted--by The Man!

My stories are songs too beautiful to be sung. Or too stupid. I get those confused.

My stories are unhatched eggs...mm, delicious eggs.

Though I continue to strike the match of my imagination against the box of language, the red stuff just flakes uselessly off the head. Too bad I never figured out that whole "flint" thing.

I have a recipe for a story, but not the ingredients. Because I haven't gone shopping yet. Or possibly because I have no money to shop with.

My writing is that pigeon I see at the 2nd Avenue bus stop that has only one foot and hops around kind of pathetically. And yet survives! Survives...despite its one pathetic little stub of a foot.

My ideas are porn stars who can't get work.

I left my fingers at the office again. (I need to tie them to my coat cuffs with a string so I don't lose them.)

The cage of my creative consciousness contains a wild and powerful tiger. If I let it out, it might attack people. Better off just keeping it where it is.

The lead of my pencil is impeded by marshmallow. The marshmallow stuck to my mental pencil point, I mean, which represents...yeah. Still not writing.

My stories are unborn flowers curled beneath the surface of a desert where the rain does not fall. Also, I am an umbrella seller.

My words are only bees. Bzz. Bzz.

I myself am a story unwritten. How can I take pen to paper before I have written myself? Shyeahh.

My words are trapped and unspoken, like soft, muffled sounds locked in the throat of a beautiful man. If only I could walk over to that man, cup his face gently, and pull that dirty sock out.

I could try turning on the lamp of my writing, but I think the electricity's out anyway.

I invited the strippers to my literary party, but...um, wait. I might possibly have forgotten to call the strippers.

My story is the last digit of pi. Fucking pi, man.

My cup does not runneth over. It runneth away.

My creative faucet may be turned off, but the gentle drip of words never entirely ceases. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. OH MY FUCKING GOD I'M GOING INSANE. Drip.

I've been bitten by the vampire of ennui and lost my creative soul.

I sold my soul to Satan for the ability to write, and the bastard gypped me. Seriously, learn from my mistake: don't trust this guy "Satan."

I cannot conceive, for my authorial womb is but a rocky, barren void--yadda yadda.

I've conceived. I just can't get this thing to come out. It's been nine years now. I'm actually pretty used to it. The cats seem to like it.

The cake of my fiction is only half-baked and I used baking soda instead of powder, so you totally wouldn't want to eat it anyway.

The stars above have all fallen down--and so of course we've all died and you couldn't read anything I wrote anyway.

I'm not a creator...ha ha! I lied! I'm actually The Creator. I'm just having a bad eon.

The story I want to write is a cat trapped in a bedroom, unable to escape and meowing like an insane freak.

My authorial pen has run out of ink and I have no squid.

I'm actually writing backwards from my ending, but I can't get beyond the period.

The llama of my words is hungry and cannot mwaa. (Wikipedia: The sound of llama making groaning noises or going "mwa" is often a very good sign of fear or anger.)

Before I can create, I must first eat my words. And by "words" I mean "worms."

The words I wait for are apples that do not fall. And by "words" I mean "worms."

My muse does not return my calls.

My muse was run over by a tractor.

My muse left on a jet-plane, which crashed in the ocean and sank three thousand feet where her rotted corpse was eaten by mollusks.

My muse was killed by a six-fingered man. Someday I will find him. And when I do, I will say to him, "Hello, my name is Anna. You killed my fiction. Prepare to die."

My muse is a muzzled dog on a leash who refuses to bite me.

My muse is a bone and I gnaw and gnaw at her, but to be honest, this metaphor really isn't going anywhere. I was going to try something that played on the idea of nutrients or maybe sharpening my teeth, but then it suddenly didn't seem worth the effort. Which is possibly a metaphor in itself. Do you like doughnuts?

The wind of my voice blows but the sails are not raised.

Oh, these eel-infested waters....

Hello!!! My name is Kate, Good day, is'nt it? Maybe it will seem to you strange that I have written to you the letter, but I really would like to get acquainted with you and to know you better. I think you are surprised but I have decided to try. I hope it does not offend you.

I want to find the man of my dream. The love, mutual respect and honesty in relations with my man are on the first place for me.

I am tired of lie and hypocrisy and I would like to love, to respect, to appreciate, to care of my man and in exchange to receive the same.

I shall tell a little about myself. I'm from Russia, from Stavropol city. I'm 27! years old, I have never been married and I do not have any children. If you are interested in me, if you would like to know me better please write to me to this e-mail: tolmach@storeclub.cc I hope to receive the response from you!

Tolmacheva Kate

I'd MiST this, but it seems so unnecessary.