wordplay

(1) Baked cookies (oatmeal and chocolate chips and coconut and pecans YUMOMGYUM!) and made more pesto for the freezer and baked a gorgeous blueberry pie (with little stars for the top crust, it was completely adorable) and made creole.

(2) Celebrated the anniversary of the birth and the fullness of the life of chromodynamics, who continues to be made of pure wonderful and made just for me. I love him. ♥ Can you believe we'll celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary this Christmas? Me neither!

(3) Remembered why we love Samwise Gamgee and reaffirmed my desire to move into the Shire, just so long as Manhattan is a train ride away and I can weekend at Rivendell. Let's get on that, k? Also, god, Elrond's attitude during the Council at Rivendell will never get old. First there's the whole Mr. Anderson vibe and then he's just so completely irritated at how utterly gauche and unsubtle and ridiculous the entire Fellowship is. What I love about that scene is how very very old and superior and, like, done with them already he feels, which is so very perfect for the Elves' attitude, and they could have screwed that up and it's just hysterical to watch him not roll his eyes.

(4) Watched BBC P&P (and ruminated upon the "is McKay really Mr. Darcy?" question) and La Vie en Rose and a few episodes of The Wire. And obv Fellowship, so if you're getting the idea that I spent most of this muggy, sticky, rainy, hot holiday weekend in my lovely air-conditioned house bouncing between the family room, our bedroom and the kitchen, you're absolutely right. Best. weekend. ever.


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ALSO! A couple of weeks ago at con.txt, during the 4th wall panel, somebody said something about the fanhistory of the squirrel terminology for Hewlett fans and said something about how DHew had reappropriated the folk etymology for his own marketing purposes for ADB, blah blah. I'd really, really like to read about that, and she mentioned that somebody posted about it on LJ but I fail at the trackback. Can anyone help me out there? And if the flist fails, do you think it'd be OK to post on the con.txt comm to ask?

Through a dazzling feat of schedule juggling (well, OK, so maybe not DAZZLING, but when I pulled the laptop into bed at 6:30 this morning it was to open Excel instead of CNN or Gmail, so that's something!) Marc and I made it to a noon showing of "Children of Men" today. He's working reduced hours now and it's working out so beautifully - and being able to see a film in an almost empty theater and not have to pay for a babysitter is pretty great.

The movie was truly fantastic. I'd heard so much about the long shot and really, it was gorgeous and the only thing I wish is that ( spoilerish? just a little? ) This is absolutely the best, most engaging film I've seen in a long time. I know some of you are cynical about dystopias and I get that; I tend to have a perverse fondness for them, so it might be easier for me. But this was really wonderfully done - definitely recommend.

(Also, if you've seen it - have you read it? Did you want to fic the film? I'm always so interested by what captures us in that way and what doesn't. The level of pathos here was so high that somehow it just never felt depressing - just genuinely sad, which is so different.)

I know, I know, I KNOW ALREADY, I totally get why we don't and why it's a bad idea and the whole bit about fanspace and, fine. FINE. However, I really really hate that. Ohnoez, indeed.

emrinalexander made a very nice post encouraging people to cool it and stop making a collective ass out of the entire SGA fandom over on the forums at David Hewlett's new website. To be perfectly honest, I can't even go OVER to the forums to have a looksee - I am too anxious about what I'll find and can imagine only too well. *winces* ( ETA: OK, so I went and looked. And, you know.... ) I've posted before about how conflicted I am about contact with the people involved in the creation of fandoms I'm part of. I think a big part of that is good old Fannish Shame, which I readily own and which I wish there were more open conversation about. And certainly, when things like this erupt, I remember all of the reasons why fannishness is shameful and something I don't feel completely comfortable with. At the same time, though, I'll totally cop - I sent an email as soon as I knew the site existed to encourage him to drag ADB out to DC, and I posted to his blog a few weeks ago saying the same thing. And while I feel weird about it, I also feel generally OK - I don't usually have a problem asking for things I want, after all. I think that the balance of power between creators and fans is something I'm really coming to terms with, and I think that's part of my anxiety. And certainly the truth of the matter is that I'm a pretty normal person and I LIKE the place I occupy here on one particular fringe of the mainstream and, to be perfectly frank, I don't want to be thought of as a stalkerish, socially inappropriate freak. Sue me.

< /fan neurosis>

Anyway.

I changed the name of my journal and although I'll miss "Bing Tittle Tittle Bong: Logan Echolls' Feelings Journal" and it may make a reappearance, "Here is the Universe: Solve for X" is much more representative of my current state of mind. I blame it on longtimegone, who called me on a Saturday night when I'd already had too much rum and then omg forced me to talk about physics. I think I broke her when I went into this rambly thing about all the reasons I sucked so hard at electrodynamics.

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Locals: I'm idly thinking of going to see Parallel Lines tomorrow night at 7 pm at UMD. Is anyone else interested? I'm still not sure I'll pull it off, as I'll be out latish on Tuesday because of the election and it's stacking up to be a busy week, but I'm really interested in seeing it.

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Finally, I kicked serious Uno ass this afternoon and my family is gunning for me - I overheard chromodynamics and our six-year-old colluding to spy on my cards and never pick my strong colors. Meep!

Joined ellen_fremedon, sanj and neotoma for (MF)Soa(MF)P. As advertised, there were snakes. And a plane. And the most lovable cast of flight attendants EVER. ♥

Unfortunately, in the process, I managed to sprain the fuck out of my ankle, because I am just that good. It is all swollen and bruised-looking and nasty. Tomorrow, depending on just how pathetic I'm being about the whole thing (and whether I can stand showing my sandal tan to the LJ viewing public), there may be pictures.

Annnnd, while looking for an ice pack, we discovered a pool of standing water under our bathroom sink. Everything is drenched, we're attacking the problem with towels and garbage bags, and thank god I wasn't storing my Lush stuff under there or we'd have a big, fizzy, bath bomby mess on our hands.

See, it's days like this - I mean, life is not so much bad, really, just occasionally an enormous pain in the ass.

However, the 200th SG-1 episode? Is making up for a lot. *loves, deeply and geekily* God, I hope they get to keep ( cut for spoilers )

I woke up in a FOUL mood today, ready to lose my patience at the slightest provocation. That's no fun, is it? M. took the kids and got the hell out of the house, a wise move on his part I feel, and I've baked cookies and biscuits and may well go for bread here in a little bit - baking always helps calm me down.

Last night I went to see Wordplay with ellen_fremedon because, as she said, this was one movie that I of all people needed to see. My favorite puzzler and yours, jiggery_pokery, clued me in months and months ago that this was coming, but it's still been odd seeing my username-only-not pop up all over LJ and it gives me pause every time. I've only had this name since October, and it's surprising how personally identified I am with it. Anyway, I VERY much enjoyed the movie, and we agreed that in many ways it captures the feel of fandom (particularly the warmth of conspace) better than many others. She's also a fan of "Galaxy Quest", but I saw it prefandom and my memory is that it's unduly harsh on fannishness, so now that's up for reviewing in our household. And, you know, it's absolutely not coincidence that I came home and bought a subscription to the NYT crossword online - the movie is very well put together and they put a considerable amount of thought into how best to make watching people do crossword puzzles interesting. Definitely recommend, especially for fannish types. Good music, too. (And! kaalee! There's a bit of footage of an Indigo Girls concert and Ty and Doris are playing with them and I was very OMG GIRLYMAN!!! It was such a happy surprise to see them!)

The one other little bit of news that has cheered me right up and made me feel really all warm & fuzzy inside is that someone contacted me to ask if she could do commentary for my Weir/Zelenka story for seperis's DVD commentary challenge thingy. I have such insecurity about fanwriting (so see, I am one of those delicate flowers who would be easily crushed - in fact, I AM one of those delicate flowers who WAS crushed by H/D) and the idea that somebody liked something I wrote enough that they wanted to think about it more than once is just immensely flattering. It's doing a great job toward lifting my mood, at any rate. :D

I rented the first bit of "Slings & Arrows" and hope to watch that this weekend. I have a lot of reading to do and my family is calling a couple of times per day so I can give baby advice and I'm trying not to think about the job situation and yeah, it's all a very lowkey kind of busy. VA is having their tax-free weekend, so we may brave back to school shopping. And here's something else to think about - there's a "Superpower" challenge over at sga_flashfic, and I'm thinking about writing from a "oh, I wish I had X superpower" perspective. The problem is that every desire to have a superpower ends up coming out a little bit creepy and I'm finding it hard to write about without feeling like, wow, Zelenka isn't really this much of a little creep, is he? And yet it doesn't FEEL creepy when we're playing "which superpower would you have" over ice cream. (Just totally geeky, which is way different. :D) Is that a matter of perspective, or do you think that wishing to have a superpower, wishing for just that much more of an unfair edge over everybody else, is always kinda creepy?