The longer I don't post, the harder it becomes, like a lot of things in life. Hm. If there were some way to get paid for procrastination, I would be richer than Bill Gates by now.

Numbers!

1. ( Tennis )

2. I'm reading Duma Key, by Stephen King. The first three quarters is total awesomeness. The last quarter reminds me that I don't actually like Stephen King's books very much.

3. I'm taking Studio Lighting over the summer. It's going pretty well, I think.

4. I bought an iMac yesterday. Because I'm technically a student (see point 3), I got an iPod Touch free. I almost said no, because I have an iPod, what do I need with another one? Guys. IT HAS CHANGED MY LIFE. In 24 hours. I love it so much, I can't even tell you.

5. I'm doing this weisskreuznoir thing that indelicateink has put together. I think it will be super awesome! Yohji Kudoh, private dick. <3

6. My mom got that box that pipes Netflix watch instantly movies into your TV. I hooked it up for her last night--I was there till 9pm rewiring her whole system. In case anyone's wondering, the box works great.

7. Will be canceling my cable. And getting that box. For real this time.

8. It is impossible to textually render how much I need to clean my apt.

9. I joined a photography group! *geek*

10. A meme: Post the first line of a story here, and I'll write the next five. No context or prompts, just a line, and if I don't twig who it is then you'll get something slightly surreal back!

I have been such a slacker about reading the last few years. It used to be all I did, two books a week at least. Now I start things and then read my flist instead, or random websites, or fic. Which is all great, but I miss books.

So, these are the books I have started and not finished. Tell me which one to finish first?

( poll )

1. Meme: Comment with a story I've written, and I will tell you one thing I knew, learned, or wondered about while writing the story that didn't make it onto the page. (Or at least I will try. Some of them I wrote very long ago.)

2. ( cut for tennis )

3. One of my stories has been podficced, thanks to kanzenhanzai and malnpudl. I am super excited about this, and malnpudl did a great job with the reading!

4. John and Rodney had this exact conversation, didn't they?

5. The Prisoner is online! I'm so excited to watch this again! How to explain. Um. This will fall far short of its true surreal awesomeness, but: If Blake's 7 and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. had a baby, and that baby had an acid trip, that's The Prisoner.

6. I have a Holga.

I've seen this done in a few other fandoms and am shamelessly stealing the idea for tennis.
( Thanks for the awkward embrace... )

Title: Choosing Sides
Fandom: Leverage
Pairing: very vaguely Eliot/Hardison (possibly only in my head)
Rating: PG
Notes: sparky77 wanted Leverage wingfic, and then this happened.
Warnings: Short and crack-addled. See above re: wingfic.


( Things went wrong so fast. Nate should never have mentioned terrorists, even if it did make a good cover at the time.  )

Title: Perfect 10
Fandom: Tennis
Pairing: Roger/Rafa
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: This didn't happen. Totally made up.
Note: Thanks to louiselux for the beta.

( Rafa paced.  )

I tried on four pairs of jeans today, all the same brand. Style 1 size 8: too small. I expected that; I only tried them because they didn't have a 10. I mean way too small, like I couldn't pull them up. Style 1 size 12: much too big. Okay, I thought, but style 2 has a 10 left, hurrah! Style 2 size 10: so big they were falling down, wtf. Style 2 size 8: correct fit. Seriously. Is consistency within the same company too much to ask? Also, they are on crack, I've never worn an 8 in my life.

But I'm not too irritated because 1) style 2 has an awesome gold dragon painted down one leg, and 2) jeans that fit me! That happens so rarely that it's cause for celebration.

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, but what I am doing is a thing where I get rid of one thing every day and take a picture of it: here. Because their picture upload is so much easier than LJ's. I've also got one of the pictures from my photography class up there, possibly with more to follow.

Also for the new year, I really need to find somewhere in my (tiny) kitchen for a recycling bin. Maybe under the sink? What is under my sink now? It might be a portal to Narnia for all I know.

Netflix's watch instantly thing has Action! I forgot how much I loved this series, and I'd never seen the pilot.

( spoilers for an almost ten year old series )

I'm on the fourth episode now. It has Jim Ellison from Sentinel!

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for 8 days without fail.

Someone got me a virtual penguin. :D Thank you, anonymous person! Aaaand, I got the rest of my Christmas stuff mailed, finally. Man. All I want to do is fall over and sleep for a week.

And I know this is supposed to be happy, but how about some whiny too? My tai chi teacher today says, "So, do you guys want to do chen su chin, or push hands, or sword sensing?" And they picked chen su chin (which I am definitely spelling wrong, but I'm too tired to look it up), which is totally boring compared to the other two! They picked it over sword! Sword is awesome! Hmph. Anyway. Sleep: I want it.

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for 8 days without fail.

justblue0162 and Jason Mraz and Roger Federer:

"I've got a big mattress."
-- Roger Federer, on how he's coping with the financial crisis.

For your 43 million? Yeah, I bet you do. Heee.

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for 8 days without fail.

Tree decorating! My aunt has this red ball obsession. We put all the ornaments on until the tree is sagging under their weight and there is no place left to stick one more, and then she adds an entire box (like, large moving box, three feet high) of red balls to "balance the tree out." Also, we have jingle grapes.

Also, The Mentalist. This show, I love it.

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for 8 days without fail.

Orange ginger truffles: successful! Almost all of my happies so far have been from food. Hmm. Leverage is also making me awfully happy, although I haven't yet seen last night's episode. Will do that soon. I love Eliot. And Parker. And...everyone, really. I'm not crazy about Sophie, but I don't dislike her.

Also, because a bunch of people wondered what they were: Noels.

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for 8 days without fail.

This giant green penis lauand drew me! :D It is awesome. And from outer space!

Also, I made peanutbutter cups and noels and I have warm feet. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure allll of my Christmas stuff is going arrive late. Oops.

Rules:
1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for 8 days without fail.

Uhh. Today is a hard one, because I feel like shit and had to go do things anyway. I'm happy I didn't puke in the middle of the craft store! It was a close thing. Ugh. I'm definitely happy I feel a bit better now. And I made smashed potatoes with onions and mushrooms, and that was nice.

It rained all day. My crazy family went to cut down the Christmas tree anyway. I am happy not to have spent hours trudging through the mud and rain. Oh hell yeah. And now I have a moderately clean apartment and clean sheets.

In conclusion, cousins could've been a lot worse! :)

I'm doing that happy meme. This is a good time of year for it. Hopefully it will counteract the bitterness and whinyness I usually develop around the holidays.

Rules:
1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for 8 days without fail.

I'm staring with yesterday, because there was Indian food, mmmm. Also, I made white chocolate lemon truffles, and they came out pretty well. The first batch did not come out of the molds pretty well (60% failure rate), but the second batch did, and I now have 40 of the the little buggers. Woot.

Today I slept till 9.30, which has already made me pretty damn happy! Also, it is sunny and not frigid, and I am going to walk down and get a bagel soon. Upon which I can put some of my leftover Indian food. Mmmm, multicultural gluttony.

PS: Christmas song, which is exactly as NSFW as it sounds: Fist Me This Christmas by the Wet Spots.

Desert Places, part two. Notes, etc., in part one.

( Don't be stupid, Rogelio. You're not stupid. )

Title: Desert Places
Fandom: Tennis RPS
Pairing: Roger/Rafa
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is entirely fictional.
Notes: ~21,000 words, because Louise wanted an epic. This is actually the first R/R story I wrote; it's just that it's taken months and months to edit it because...I suck at that. Many, many thanks to Louise and Chrissy for betaing the beast. Title taken from a Robert Frost poem:

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

( The match is billed as Nadal vs Dimitrov, but Roger thinks they might as well call it Las Vegas vs Dubai.  )

So, last night I was reading the new bb_shousetsu stories, and they are all good, especially...well, especially all of them. It's a really good batch this time. But this is the one I'm sharing because it's maybe the scariest thing I've ever read ever.

And while I'm pretty easily spooked by things on TV (I think it's the tense music), things I read don't usually scare me. It? Not a scary book for me. Dean Koontz? No problem. This story? I could not sleep last night for worrying about the Tall Men crawling out of my floor. Gah. It's also just an awesome story.

All the Way
by Tsukizubon Saruko

An excerpt:

That was the full-length mirror hung from the inside of the closet door, and the huge, jagged red letters scrawled across its surface:

ALLIE
( ALL THE WAY )

***

In non-terrifying news, I found a purse in the back of my closet that I thought I'd lost two years ago! Rockin'. Even better, inside it was lipstick I'd completely forgotten I owned, and it's lipstick I really like.

So, elfiepike made a cool zine called Lycanthropy, in which I have a story (ETA: kindly betaed by louiselux, which I forgot to say earlier because I suck). It's original fic. It has werewolves (okay, only one) and takes place on a commune in the sixties. I will warn you in advance that it has no porn, sorry.

I am super tired. Tai chi lasted three hours this morning, which is about an hour longer than usual. It's been stretching longer and longer since we started learning push hands. I do enjoy it, but ow, my thighs. I think I want a nap.

We're meant to be doing a self portrait for photography class, which I don't mind as much as other people in the class seem to, but...how to stand in front of the camera and focus the camera at the same time? Troublesome. None of my pictures so far are sharp. Boo.

( I can't stop staring at this picture )

It's Halloween! Give me a prompt, and I will give you a treat of some kind; a few sentences of fic, an icon, picture, song, somethinggg. it will be a surprise. No toothbrushes, I promise.

ETA: That's it, guys. Sorry, I'm done. :)