Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Apparently, miracles can still occur in politics - they passed the bill that had me potentially unemployed at the end of June, but they did it while striking the amendment that would have cut our funding - they still have to figure out where the money goes, but I'm a little more optimistic today than at this point last week.

I have managed to respond to all the visible comments on Graffixation, still need to comment on one more story and piece of artwork in the batch, but for the moment I am done - of course, as soon as any other comments are unscreened, I'll respond to anything else that's out there. It's been a wonderful experience and thank you again to everyone who took part.

Work has been rather horrid this past week. With the potential shutdown, people have been hyper-vigilant about tracking files and getting things through the system, but with four admin staff people, who do they keep coming for all their nonsense? Yours truly. I took a mental health day today to de-stress.

( hockey stuff behind the cut )
Did some gardening the other day. I planted two tomato plants and two pepper plants so hopefully they'll produce some delicious results later this summer.

I also discovered a lovely coffee shop in the neighborhood - not a Starbucks, but one of those great little independent places that were kicking around all over the place in the 90s. I will definitely be going back, especially since they have the equivalent of a free book exchange in their back room, so between donating and acquiring, it'll be a good thing.

Protector by ellu_ellu - Jericho fic

and this twisted little branch on the Oz drabble tree by nindevotee which you'll just have to read for yourselves -

You Think Those Rumors About Her Having A Puppet Fetish Are True?

On the bus from hell, heading toward heaven for me a.k.a Chicago. We were expected into Chi-town at 1:30 but developed some air pressure issues (no pressure, no brakes - which I'm told are somewhat important). The climate in here was upwards of 80, with the heat still pumping - we weren't allowed to open the emergency windows to let in cool air, and then as soon as the bus got rolling again it got down to 40. Not fun.

But we're heading to Chicago and right now that's all that matters.

There is a wonderful prompt over at hardtime100 that is basically a request for Pre-Oz moments. I've been having fun with it, and I think that other people would too. End PSA.

Looking forward to the Magi reveals - I think I've figured out four stories (not including my own) and two art pieces, but I have no idea who fulfilled my wish at this point. And I want to run a rec list and give credit where credit is due.

I find myself with many, many different ideas of things that I would love to see the OZ fandom take on. Comment fic-athon featuring minor characters, something exclusively about the staff, something AU based (my mind is more centered on pre- and post-series stuff rather than Keller and Beecher fighting dragons). I don't know if any of these would get a response.

( Non-fandom related work stuff )

Been trying to get organized with tracking my what I write. I managed to get all the fics that I was missing from last year onto my list, so that's good.

I'm really loving Magi this year. The diversity is great. I've enjoyed the three McManus fics that I've read, the artwork and one vid that I've looked at, Miguel Alvarez and Ryan O'Reily who are all over the place, and I really love the Schibetta fic that was written for me (it's definitely a different look at Peter than I've seen before, but not out of character.)

"Justified" should be "on demand" fairly soon. I'm looking forward to rewatching Season 1 - either there or on DVD and then jumping into Season 2.

As for my beloved Blackhawks, well... at least they won tonight.

Sometimes it never hurts to remind myself how fricking awesome OZ is. Seriously.

I started watching some of the episodes from the first season and - wow. I just want to keep going, even though I probably should jump into bed and get some sleep.

Those McManus-Said and Said-Adebisi scenes really are something and watching Beecher go into full-on crazy mode is definitely one of my favorite things about Season One (and S3 as well).

Enough squeeing... on to Season 2.

In a little over 11 hours, I will be headed to Chicago for a couple days of R&R. I really don't know why I don't do this more often, because after four months of being around my family, I need a break.

NaNo is going all right. I haven't written today, but I'm up to 17K words so far.

I have a thing for ritual and the annual selecting of oz_magi prompts is one of them. Sit there with the list and an ink pen drawing little arrows to the prompts that I like and think I can write. It's fun being able to take part every year although by December 15 (mark your calendars, folks), I will probably be going through the annual ritual of "What the heck am I going to write for Magi?"

Work is a little bit iffy right now, and I'm glad to be leaving it for a couple of days. They are going to be combining two departments in one space - not sure when it's going to happen and they really haven't where we admin temps are going to fit into the whole scheme of things. Although one flow chart did seem to list the title of Customer Service Support Manager for essentially what I have been doing for the past year. No word yet on if I'll be collecting a manager's salary soon, but it's highly unlikely.

The Blues (local hockey team) are playing extremely well, as are the L.A. Kings. Not so much my beloved Blackhawks, but there's still a lot of season left. (Although if they don't win when I'm at the game on Wednesday, I'll be supremely peeved.

I skipped about 50 messages to find that, yes, indeed, OZ Magi is open for the year. You can find the instructions here.

Right now, I'm so exhausted that I can hardly think of an idea for it. I fought with a bout of stomach flu/food poisoning all day yesterday and haven't eaten anything since yesterday morning. It's not that I'm feeling particularly hungry, but I also didn't sleep well all night so I'm ridiculously tired right now.

And if I wasn't in a stupid, stubborn "must start my NaNo novel at midnight" mood, I probably would do that.

Been a somewhat productive period (especially if you like femmeslash) so I thought I'd let you know what I've written lately:

( a little OZ, a little Leverage, a little more Angel, and a whole lot of Buffy )

With all of the hoopla of being caught up in NaNo, it completely slipped my mind that oz_magi wishes would be available for claiming today, so I was happily surprised to see the list go up. In the past, it's been one of those days where I've been obsessively refreshing my friends page to see when the wishes go "live". Oz Magi is one of those things that is near and dear to my heart because that's where I started reading fanfic and what got me into LJ and more into Oz in the first place. It's fun to see those odd requests that pop up every year and discover which requests are going to make me squeal like a kid in a candy shop (there's always one) and which ones I'm going to look forward to reading come January 1st. There's a lot of good stuff on the list, so fellow Oz-zites should go and get to claiming.

By the way, my NaNo count is over 7000. I'm trying to overwrite it now because I have the feeling that either a) I'm going to slow down considerably in the next 27 days or b) I'm going to have to edit the hell out of the puppy by the time December 1 rolls around. Actually, choice "b" is pretty much a given at this point. And I love my male lead so much that I'm getting disgusted with my female lead for causing him angst (even though things will turn around at some point).