Tag Archives: meme

Hobkin woke me up at 6:30 this morning, demanding his breakfast. After he snarfed his veggies, he went under his hutch to nap. But now I can’t go back to sleep, and my brain is stuck on Slow.

Um, yesterday was Bubble Bath Day, and to celebrate it, we soaked until we were pruney in the hot tub. Ahhh. Today is National Apricot Day, but despite going to the store yesterday, we didn’t pick up any apricots. I wonder if dried cherries will do . . .

And, because my brain is too mushy to be pithy and insightful:

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Guidelines:

Step 1:
– Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered…whatever you’re comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related (“I’d love a Snape/Hermione icon that’s just for me”) to medium (“I wish for _____ on DVD”) to really big (“All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.”) The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

– If you wish for real life things (not fics or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it’s your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.

– Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ so that the holiday joy will spread.

Step two:
– Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here’s the important part:

– If you see a wish you can grant, and it’s in your heart to do so, make someone’s wish come true. Sometimes someone’s trash is another’s treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don’t want or a gift certificate you won’t use–or even know where you could get someone’s dream purebred Basset Hound for free–do it.

You needn’t spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn’t to put people out, it’s to provide everyone a chance to be someone else’s holiday elf–to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not–it’s your call.

There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just…wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you’ll have the joy of knowing you made someone’s holiday special.

All I Want for Christmas is:
1. Food, comfort, and/or best of all, a loving family for all the needy critters at the Atlanta Humane Society or any animal shelter near you. Adopt a fuzzy/scaled/feathered companion to love, or donate food, supplies, and toys to a shelter.

2. A donation to one of my favorite charities: The Humane Society, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, The American Civil Liberties Union, or Amnesty International.

3. A poem written by you, especially for me.

4. A picture painted, drawn, or photoshopped by you, for me.

5. If you’re not a vegetarian, give it a try for a week. If you are one, make a vegetarian meal for one of your non-vegetarian friends.

6. Send me a little-known book or story you loved as a child.

7. Read something from my published bibliography and send me a review of it. (If I like the review, I might blurb it and post it on my website.)

8. Buy my chapbook: Ascendancy of Blood and give it to the vampire/goth/fairy tale lover on your holiday list.

9. An “Unfortunate Animal” from the Unfortunate Animal of the Month Club.

10. Stuff: any of the myriad material goods a la my Amazon.com wish list.

I’ve become so soft. Lows in the mid-30s, and I think it’s getting cold down here! Piffle. Must remind myself that I still don’t need to wear an overcoat outside and it’s the middle of November. That’d be an unheard of luxury in the Midwest.

For something completely different (and funny!) – a website that takes some of the popular spam headlines and makes cartoons out of them: spamusement.com.

Writing Stuff:
I don’t usually do memes, but this one seemed apropos. WIP meme (post a single sentence from your works in progress):

From “The Center of the Universe” (slipstream fantasy): Memories like shadow shapes grew from the sightless emptiness, spurred by the familiar scents.

From “Rue and Ruin” (fantasy): Hunger was a close companion to all; his brother starvation hovered nearby, only awaiting a moment of misfortune to descend.

From “The Promise of a Princess” (working title, fantasy): In the sunlight, the pond was a burnished green, filled with water fronds and an underwater root labyrinth.

From “Gilded Cage” (working title, science fiction): The holovision was blaring some femme program with a glitzy off world set, and super-gorgeous men and women prancing around, jiggling and rippling suggestively from all angles.

New words: 100

In addition to the new words, I also cut a couple hundred in the course of a pair of editorial passes–post Matthew’s critique. He liked my story and had some very useful suggestions to make. His comment after reading it: “You were hit a lot by [Iris Chang’s] suicide.” Guess it was pretty obvious.

Anyhoo, I implemented (most of) his suggestions, and the story’s at first draft. Sent it up the Critters queue. Not sure if Andrew will post it tomorrow or next week since I submitted it pretty late in the Critters cycle. Either is copasetic.

Now should I return back to my various works in progress, or start something new? I seem to write much better with the impetus that fresh inspiration gives me, but at the same time, I feel like I ought to finish some of the projects I’ve got in various states of half-completion.

Club 100 for Writers
11/100

Headache is definitely better. To make up for it, I slept funny, and now I’ve got this truly annoying crick in my neck. I can’t turn my head very far to the left. Sigh.

Had a lovely evening last night with dire_epiphany, astralfire, and their son, Blake. They swung by to drop off some film festival stuff, and stayed to gab. Although Hobkin spent most of the evening cowering under the hutch. Silly, antisocial beastie. Or it could be the heat. We’re pretty sure we need to have someone come in to look at our A/C unit. It’s just not doing a good job of keeping the heat at bay, making for hot humans, and a cranky skunk.

Writing Stuff:
Did some dwelling on the work-in-progress story, but no new wordage.

Haven’t started writing a review of the new Sci-Fiction story for Tangent yet. Last I checked, the new story hadn’t posted yet. I saw on the Nightshade Books board that they’re doing server maintenance so they have to manually load it, hence the tardy. But in any case, the impetus to complete my review and get it to my editor as promptly as possible is mitigated by his apparent disappearance into a sucking vortex.

Another of the writers’ boards I drop in on is conducting a “why/how/when you write” survey–so I engaged in a nice bit of writerly procrastination, which seems to be a recurring theme today . . .

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I rarely do these sorts of things, but this one seems so nice. So, the meme-of-the-hour:

I know very little about some of the people on my friends’ list. Some people I know relatively well. I read your fic, or we have something else in common and we chat occasionally. Some of you I hardly know at all. Perhaps you lurk, for whatever reason. But you friended me and I thank you.

But here’s a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: “Ah, there’s so and so…she likes spinach.”

I’d love it if every single person who friended me would do this. Yes, even you people who I know really well. Then post this in your own journal.

Had a wonderful evening with britzkrieg and her fiancé last night. They treated us to dinner at Café Sunflower. Yummy. And again, I am stuffed. There seems to be a reoccurring theme there. Every time I see them, I gorge. Positive reinforcement at its best. Heh. But again, we had excellent conversation in addition to excellent food. Much fun was had by all. And sometime in the hopefully-near future, we all have to get together again so britzkrieg and I can watch Thelma and Louise, a film I’ve never seen but always wanted to, and the boys can watch Zulu, a film I’ve seen most of and have no interest in ever seeing again.

Writing stats:

Rejection from Strange Horizons and Your-entry-was-not-a-finalist-this-quarter from WotF. Sigh. That’s six.