Free Rice now offers quizzes on a whole bunch of things, not just vocabulary -- including English grammar! (In which term they include punctuation and usage.) It's strictly American and tends (unsurprisingly) toward a formal register, and it has a limited number of questions and only five levels, so I topped out immediately, but -- dude, it makes me so happy to see it smack down "between you and I" and "alright" and "for awhile"!
It turns out that when I mix together everything I've been doing, and everything I've been watching, and everything I've been compulsively reading, I get a ( fantastically NSFW dream. )
Northern exposure: Canada to unveil a porn channel
Thursday, August 21, 2008
By Samantha Bennett, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Got two words for you this week: Canadian porn.
I don't think I need to write anything else. I'll just let you think about that, and I can log off and head home early. Sometimes the universe hands you a lovely gift with a big bow on it, which makes a nice change from all the days the universe jumps out from behind something and stabs you in the head with a railroad spike.
And she just gets funnier and funnier.
(Thanks to ![[info]](../p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
storm_grant!)
I didn't go to the Also Premiering show, and all the rest of the weekend people were telling me, "You have to see aycheb's Scarlet Ribbons."
I just watched it on the con DVD, and it made me cry. I love it utterly. ( Here's the comment I just left for the vidder )
I also rewatched obsessive24's "Climbing Up the Walls" (which is available here I don't think is online yet), which was among the most fascinating, most want-to-rewatch-on-frame-by-frame of the vids I saw all weekend. ( Some thoughts on that one. )
Fandom makes me so happy.
me: Hey, reality-check me.
Geoff: Mm?
me: It's Tuesday.
Geoff: Yes.
me: And we're leaving Thursday.
Geoff: Yes.
me: ... *faceplant*
Geoff: *amused pity*
Some delay due to thunderstorms in Montreal (not Chicago!), but home safe and getting my feet rubbed. OMG fandom is JOY.
and on day five of a three-day con, that's all I got. But seriously, it's all I need.
Wow. I thought I was a dumbass four days ago, when I asked par_avion if she was coming to VividCon (as elynross said to me this morning, "You'll recognize her; she'll be wearing a concom button," and I was all I know, I know, I'm a dumbass). But this morning I walked away with the medal.
When I put my right contact lens in this morning, it started burning, and I thought it would settle down after a moment like such things usually do, so I started to put the left one in, but the pain got worse and worse and finally I couldn't take it any more, but I still had the left lens in my hands and I was getting flustered because of the my eye! my eye! pain, so I managed to take the lens out and get them both put away and the pain subsided, and I figured I'd give my eye a few minutes to settle down before trying again.
So after ten minutes or so I went to put my lenses in again, and I couldn't find the right one. I thought I'd put them both back in the case, and the left one was there, but the right one wasn't. And I couldn't find it anywhere. So I figured crap, I must have been so flustered I thought I put it in the case but accidentally washed it down the sink when I washed my hands, I'm a dumbass. Fortunately I travel with a spare pair, so I put in the right lens from that pair. But it wasn't sitting right, and my vision was all blurry in that eye, and now I have no spare if I screw this one up, aiee, and I was all cranky about it at breakfast and wondering if I should call Geoff and have him overnight me another pair (which God knows how much that would cost, international overnight) just in case, and bah.
But I just came back to the room and took the lens out to rinse it off and try to reseat it properly, and -- I had both lenses in my eye. I never actually took the first one out.
But the pain had stopped!
So now my vision is better and I again have a spare right lens, and I have also walked away with the gold on this one, y'all.
I am at the VividCon hotel! It's very odd being here with no other fans in sight; the even-earlier-in-than-me roommate is off sightseeing. I think I will see if morgandawn and xlorp are in their room and up for visitors -- after I go across the street and get some food.
We're all the way at the end of a hall and my iBook can't find a wireless signal here. If the other roomies' computers can't see one either, I'm sure we will be able to calmly and rationally share the single Ethernet cable and remain friends.
Right?
I just upgraded my G4 iBook from 768 MB to 1.25 GB; since it came with 256 MB built-in and only has one expansion slot, this means that I replaced the 512 MB chip I had originally put in with a 1 GB chip. Which now means that I have a spare 512 MB chip for an old computer; my friend who does Mac consulting and got me the new chip cheap basically laughed at me when I asked if he'd like the old one. I mean, anyone who still has an iBook has got to be running it with at least this much memory added already. But just in case: anybody want it? I can always try Freecycle, but I'd love to see it go to someone I know, or in my wider circle.
(It has stickers saying "OWC2700DDRS512M" and "DDR333 CL2.5 512MB," and it works in a G4 iBook. That's about all I can tell you.)
Geoff has been reading The Chains That You Refuse, a collection of short stories by Elizabeth Bear, and he just handed it to me open to page 171 and said "You have to read this."
It's a Napoleon/Illya slash story.
I realized a day or so after my last post that it totally sounded like a spoiled child at a birthday party refusing to attend to her guests because she wants to play with her presents. Apologies! It was nonstop socializing (including visiting four households in twenty-four hours!), but I really didn't mean to come across as "I'm having too much fun to be polite."
Nonetheless, I did have a lot of fun and very little sleep (and oceans of coffee). I got home about five pm and was greeted with enthusiastic hugs from the partner and stepkid and mild interest from the cats, and have caught up with email and LJ/IJ for values of "caught up" that equal "verified that nobody died, and opened a bunch of background windows to respond to Real Soon Now." Geoff is making dinner, which will be ready momentarily, and then I will pretty much collapse. Because tomorrow morning we go out for breakfast with his mother. I have made clear that that needs to not be a four-hour schmooze of a visit, because I have VVC and TW&C work, and am expecting another paying job any minute now as well...
And Geoff has just announced dinner. And because the stepkid is here, I won't even have to do the dishes! Yay! And faceplant. Hugs to all.
There were no further incidents, and my father was discharged at 4:30. SO I have embarked on the more fun portion of my weekend!
Thank you all so much for your notes of support. I don't have time to answer them, because of the aforesaid fun portion, but they mean a lot.
My father had another episode of ventricular tachycardia, this one worse and longer, though still relatively slow as VTACH goes (his pulse hit 135, which doesn't sound bad until you remember that it's supposed to stay at 60-70). So he's not being released now; they reprogrammed his ICD to pace him out of such episodes and adjusted his meds, and we need to see what happens this afternoon. It's still likely he'll be discharged today, but it won't be before three, more likely four or even five, and there is a chance he won't be. So I'll be here through the late afternoon. I have my cellphone (which can be on in hospitals now! Wonders never cease) and the charger for it, but my laptop charger is in my suitcase which is in my car which is back at the hotel, so I'm conserving battery here. (So much for the VividCon and journal editing work I was planning to do this afternoon!) Bye for now.
My father had minor surgery today to upgrade his implanted pacemaker/defibrillator -- minor, but, you know, any time they're threading wires through his heart I get a little, what's the word?
Tense.
But he came through it fine and is in good spirits, though pouting a bit that my stepmother and I finally left him alone in the hospital for the night to get some dinner and go back to the hotel. (There was a minor hiccup in his heart rhythm this afternoon, but they didn't seem too worried about it, though they drew some blood to check electrolyte levels. I am, what's the word? Not tense about this. [Mostly.]) Tomorrow morning, all being well, we go back and pick him up, and then they leave for home and I leave for friends' houses!
I'm leaving Wednesday morning for five days in the Boston area (the latter few are filled with visiting friends, but the first couple are for my father to have minor cardiac surgery, eep). I have much to get done before then!
This morning I proofread the VVC program book and sent Amanda notes on missing commas and so on. (Doing this also means I get to see the playlists ahead of time, and may I just say EEEEEEE? Thank you.) Then I put the finishing (I hope) touches on the volunteer schedule and sent out fifty-three email messages telling people what jobs they have. Once again I think I gave everybody their first or second choice, but if I didn't, I'm sure they'll let me know!
Now I have to go start dinner. I still need to edit several articles for Transformative Works and Cultures (which warrants another EEEEEEE!). And shower. And other stuff.
And we have baby robins! They are rather wet and bedraggled-looking -- but they are baaaaaby robins!
kid: Another episode of Buffy!
us: No. It's too late.
kid: Noooooo, there's time!
us: We've already watched two!
kid: Anotherrrrr!
us: No, you have dishes to do.
kid: I can stay up late, it doesn't matter! Pleeeeeeze?
us: If you finish the dishes by nine p.m., we can watch another episode.
kid: OMIGOD REALLY? YOU PROMISE?
us: We promise!
kid: YAAAAYYYYY! *charges into kitchen*
Absolutely fascinating analysis: part one, part two, part three. Synecdochic's brain is very very shiny.
What she doesn't mention here, but is important subtext, is that she is one of the people heading Dreamwidth, a project to fork the LJ code to create a newer and better social networking, content management, and personal publishing platform. "Dreamwidth will function as a partial-subscription service: core account functionality will be available to any member free of charge, while extra features and services will be available for a fee." It will not have ads.
The more I hear about Dreamwidth, the cooler I think it sounds; and the more I hear from synecdochic, the more I trust her to pull this off in a way that will be awesome. The moment Dreamwidth starts accepting money, I will be there with checkbook in hand.
http://failblog.org/2008/07/17/do-it-you
Coffee/keyboard warning. If you're male, possibly also a "sudden empathetic stabbing pain you don't wanna think about" warning.
And yet, as a Pros fan of a Certain Age, I keep remembering that lovely Sebastian story.
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