A glance at the past seven days…

♫ Number of closing night performances of Orphée attended-- 1 :( Sorry it's over!
♨ Number of social engagements-- 3 (shocking!)
♨ Number of frozen dinners bought for a friend who's fiscally at the end of her rope until tomorrow-- 6
♨ Number of sweater sleeves nearing ever closer to completion-- 2
♨ Number of hold requests at the library-- 15 (the limit)
♨ Number of fest and other stories started-- 3
♨ Number of stories posted-- 1
♨ Number of trips to Fred Meyer (grocery store)-- 4 (??)
♨ Number of letters written-- 2
♨ Number of days/rehearsals/services missed due to illness-- 0 \o/
♨ Number of visits to fast food restaurants-- 0 \o/
♨ Number of full-time positions applied for-- 1
♨ Number of house and petsitting gigs secured-- 1.5

I'll be out of town over the weekend and since I don't have a laptop, I'll probably not post much. But during my furlough week at the nice warm house? That's a different story. ☺

I think I mentioned I attended a pub knitting night last month and had a fabulous time. Well, it turns out that the picture the yarn store (Yarn Garden) has on their front page is from that night, and yours truly is in the bottom right of the picture!

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The next gathering is this coming Friday, but I've decided to take the offer of not coming in to work on Friday and going up to visit my aunt and grandmother Friday and Saturday.

I'll be brief- first and foremost, thank you for writing for me! Whichever fandom we had in common, I hope that you have fun writing it and are delighted rather than disappointed. And whatever fandom you write in that I requested, I'll be exceedingly grateful. As is obvious in my request, I'm a slash fan, but you needn't necessarily go that route if you're uncomfortable with it. I'm far more interested in character development and wordcraft, though of course some scorchingly hot interaction between any of the slash pairings I mentioned is welcomed. I do have an aversion to epithets, writing in the present tense, and fluff. For someone who knows well what I like in regards to the four fandoms I requested, elfscribe5 is the one to consult.

Mostly, I do hope that you're looking forward to writing whatever you do! For what it's worth, the person I was paired with has requested something I'd never considered writing about and I think it's going to be quite an adventure. Thank you again for writing for me. I'll very much look forward to whatever you've selected!

For the few of you on my flist who also read in the Slave Breakers universe, I've written another Lee/Andrei. Cross-posted of course to slavebreakers. And now it's time to start thinking what I'm going to write for the couple of holiday fests I signed up for!

Title: Adoration: A Triptych
Pairings: Lee/Mona (non-explicit), Lee/Andrei
Rating: Adult
Word Count: 3351
A/N: The request was for Lee riding Andrei, and while this is a bit PWP, I also wanted to explore the interesting relationship between Andrei and Mona and how that might have been seen to Lee's eyes, especially during his first few months as Andrei's slave. Thanks as always to maculategiraffe both for allowing people like me to play in her sandbox, but also for establishing this community. We're coming up on a season of giving, and I want to thank her for gifting us, her devoted readers, with this universe.

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Now granted, having regular massages at home is pretty sweet. But something else really wonderful? Being all cozy in my bed with the heating pad on my back, coffee in hand, listening to celtic hammer dulcimer music and having a good hour long chat with a friend on the phone. Thank you, emansil_08! ♥ Following that up with a cleaning frenzy to make my room and my bathroom super-duper clean is also made of win.

Oh, and cim_halfling, did I ever send you said hammer dulcimer music? I know we chatted about it but for the life of me I can't remember if I ever did make a zip file and upload it for you. :facepalm:

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The coloring is a little funny, probably due to the fluroscent lights in my room. Anyway, I'm finishing up the left front. The part in the middle is the back, and then the completed right front. After this I'll begin working on both sleeves at the same time, then there's assembly, sewing in a zipper (which should be interesting), and completion! Sadly the instructions for the baby hat were misleading and now I find I need to take out several inches so I've put it off to the side. Maybe I'll make my own pair of fingerless gloves first.

Today it's gone from sunny and still to blustery and grey, my favorite! And my housemate is off at an all-day Acupuncture thing! :D So I'm about to start calling people and knitting, bundled up in a down comforter, then later on I'll make a fire and do some writing.

Oh, and the opera last night was absolutely amazing. It's being recorded all four performances and will be the first recording of this work by Glass! His company will remaster it and then be for sale next spring. Very exciting times for Portland Opera, and I'm so gratified to be on their staff while this is happening.

One is a very new friend, and one I've known since I was a wee bairn freshman at Sewanee. What's so wonderful is that I treasure you both and am glad that I've been able to explore fic, life, music, and in kymyrra's case, visit from time to time. My dear twin two_point, it is rather an ironic twist that you and I found each other after I'd moved to the pacific northwest! Still, I don't doubt that we'll meet up one day.

Very happy birthdays to you both. B, you can expect a phone call and a serenade if you don't answer. ;)

♥♥♥♥

With work/opera/choir/opera/beta'ing/more opera/more work/more choir/more beta'ing/more opera, I'm probably not going to be posting a whole lot between now and the 15th. But I'll check in daily and doubtless I'll have a squeeing post about Orphée after I see it tomorrow, opening night. :)

Busy, but fun times!! :)

A few things, not to do with Philip Glass. One, on the mundane but practical side, today is sunny and breezy, so I'm doing a bunch of hand-washing that can then dry outside. Two: yesterday I spent a few fun hours with snottygrrl that was primarily to do with her new chairs, but ended up being a fabulous shopping spree at the most incredible thrift store I've yet gone to in Portland, Better Bargains Thrift Store. Now I need more clothes like a hole in my head, but I did cull a lot before moving cross-country and there were just great finds! Including random pieces of artwork/handcrafts and me buying a lot of green clothes. snottygrrl said that green represents the heart chakra, so I'm intrigued by what that means at this point in my life. Three, I found out that my other stepsister, the older one (but still younger than I am by four years) is three months pregnant. I'll phone her soon.

Last, but definitely not least: I went by the store on my way home because one of the Opera former young artists (who sat behind me at the Glass event last night) mentioned nachos, and I decided I really wanted to make some. Oh, and have I mentioned that my housemate is gone for two and a half days??!! :D :D :D It's just me and the cats!!! So I bought an avocado and was going along the aisles when I saw… Tim Tams. I couldn't believe it. Apparently they've decided to try them on a U.S. market or something. You'd better believe I bought them and will have them with my lunch, whatever that ends up being.

I honestly thought that since I'd been diagnosed with being far-sighted in my mid-20s that I'd go straight from reading glasses to bifocals. My most recent eye exam thwarted that. I'm no longer far-sighted, which is odd, but does explain why I'd quit using my purchased reading glasses. I have a mild astigmatism in my left eye. Picked up my glasses this week, so here 'tis. I am trying to break them in, in that I'm used to reading glasses and looking down my nose to see things in 'correct' vision, but what I've discovered is that things have been fuzzier than I'd like. Still. When I feel the glasses on my face, I feel as though I'm wearing sunglasses. My astigmatism is slight enough that it's optional, to a point.
( pic below )

Tonight was also the Philip Glass event, with him talking about things, showing a bit from certain Cocteau films, and me being inordinately glad that he caught me lurking outside of our music studio. I'm glad that I was just a someone on the Portland Opera staff who got him to the restroom when he needed a break. And I'm glad I got to tell him that he meant something to me. That kind of mutual reciprocity, when the giver [say, me] is more toward the mundane scale and the receiver [him, say, major American composer/but just another guy who's getting older and whilst composing drove a cab, and helped a sculpturist and did what you do to get along] are able to have a normal conversation here in the Pacific Northwest and it's just all good…

I wholly admire him. If you're here in Portland or environs, come see Orphée. It's eloquent and transcendent and both stylized and down to earth and the best of that great soup we all draw from for our writings. Yes. I'M BIASED. I've studied Glass since 1989, I'm a Music History and Theory Major, but I'm a writer at heart. I may sound like more of a fangirl than I have in a while, and it's because before I knew I was a writer, I knew I was a musician, a singer, but those are in equal parts. It's why I was a history/theory major rather than performance. I delight in the fact that I can't read without a critical eye, and I cannot hear music without analyzing it. Orphée is even more exceptionally glorious because the composer was here. He's not dead. And I got to meet him.

And I'm still an insane squeeing fangirl because his music has influenced me throughout my adult life.

I've just had a short conversation with Philip Glass, who was practicing in the music studio next door. I was lurking in the hallway as he started and stopped, then after a while the door opened. He didn't look super startled to find me there. I told him how to find the men's restrooms (he asked) and I told him how much I was looking forward to his opera. He asked if I was in the production, and I said no, I was on the staff, but I'd begun seeing him live in 1991. "Here?" he asked, genuinely baffled. "No, in Nashville."


:D :D :D :D :D :D

This is definitely a highlight in my little life. Up close and personal. Wow. I'm totally starstruck.

Woo hoo!!!


If you're at all Roncentric and would like to participate in a non-exchange, non-holiday-themed and multi-genre extravaganza, hie thee hence to go and claim a prompt. This was the comm I founded with the support and assistance of several other Ron lovers a couple of years ago and with my blessing it's been revived/renewed/re-energized. Go and show your Ron love!

I'm a few days late m'dear, and it's short, but I hope you like this wee gift of fic.

Title:How to Succeed in Malfoysian Gift Giving Without Resorting to Dark Magic or Going Prematurely Grey
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Ron/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2400
Summary: What do you get Draco Malfoy for his birthday, especially when you're Ron Weasley?
Author's Notes Lack of angst! Massive thanks to wolfiekins for looking this over and giving feedback! This is set within my Like Wine Through Water universe (and therefore AU as it was written before DH) with knitting!Draco and surfer!Ron. Sorry this is belated, dear Mo, but I hope you like. :)

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Never again. If you're ever going to do colorwork knitting again, it will be Fair Isle in which I'll only ever have two colors to work across any given row.

This doesn't showcase the tangled mess of colors as much as I'd hoped. Still— at least for the baby hat there are only five nightmarish rows of both the inexplicable pattern in which I'm somehow supposed to do both yarn overs and knitting together whilst keeping said pattern correct and multiple colors. Seeing as how it literally can take me about 35-45 minutes per row right now to untangle and follow the pattern and whatever, I'm glad I only have a few rows until I get to the rest of the hat, which is blissfully monochromatic.

Boy do I need something to eat! < / random>

It's your birthday in your time zone, anyway, so I'm posting before bed my time. I'm so glad that you're in this world, that you and I came together through love of R/D and have become friends far above and beyond that for several years now. My birthday fic for you isn't quite done, but will be within a few days.

You inspire, enlighten, support, tantalize, encourage, lewdify (yes, I'm making up words) and astonish me in so many ways. Your writing is scorching, and you've managed to get through a great deal of rough times without the kinds of spectacular crashes and burns that have marked my life in recent years. I admire you for you being you, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart that you count me in an inner circle of friends.

Happy, happy birthday, my irreverent, bold, fragile, take no prisoners, loving friend.

xoxoxoxox

So this was week two of having Mr. Fabulous Massage Therapist come over at 9:30. He'd mentioned cupping last week and I knew of it- so we did that today, in addition to some more serious body work, but also Swedish massage, which is more theraputic. The cupping effects were very interesting: as you can see by pics below, there's something major going on in my left rotator cuff, which is very dark.
( cut for my bony spine and cupping circles )

So I took a shortish hot soak in epsom salts and now am thinking about lunch and writing (two stories now! :D) and knitting. Here's a pic of my the current status of my work in progress Celtic-braid bottomed cardigan:

The 'helper' is my dæmon (a la Philip Pullman), Gymnopedie. My youngest stepsister is expecting her first child in a week or so, and I'd not busted myself to knit something for her because she, too, is a knitter extraordinare. But then it occurred to me that I had plenty of the colorway yarn of the baby sweater I knitted for my brother and I could knit a cute hat that would be its partner! And I checked my yarn stash this morning and I can make this hat, the one in the bottom left.

So I'm having a fabulous Monday. And you all? ♥

Just a super-fast fly by post to link to a few pictures I took of one tree in the backyard yesterday. The changing leaves are beginning to really jump out all over the city now and it's paradise for me. Now if only we could keep the grey skies instead of it so resolutely clearing up each day... I'll get my grey, though.

( three pics under here- not professional quality or anything )

Long day today- I've put off buying frames and thus getting glasses to deal with my minor astigmatism, but after reading in bed for a while this morning, I've realized that I really should address this. So I'm going to eat something, go back to the lens/frame place where I saw the ophthalmologist, and for the first time in my life, get regular glasses and not reading glasses. Wow. Choir tonight, too, so once I'm out the door I won't be back until after 10:00. But I'm really grooving on having choir back in my life.

A colorful Thursday to you all!

Sheesh! It seems like absolutely forever since I've written something that I could just post and not wait for this, that or the other. Guess that's what happens when you're focused on a novella rewrite. Back at the end of September I asked for a few story suggestions to tide me over until signups for ginger_lust and Yuletide. The story I finished first was requested by elfscribe5: Oh gad, I'm so in the Wraeththu head right now, that I could use a break, so Slavebreakers -- Bran/Yves with a side of Holden.

Dearie, sorry it took longer than I thought, but I do hope you enjoy this! Cross-posted of course to slavebreakers.

Title: Sonata in the Key of Three
Pairing/Trio: Bran/Yves, Holden/Yves, Bran/Holden/Yves
Rating: Adult
Word Count: 5300
Alerts: Threesome (d'oh!); double penetration
A/N: Outline for the story is based on standard sonata format. The vignettes are set chronologically but do jump at non-standard intervals through the story arc. Self-beta'ed, so if you see something, let me know. Thanks as always to maculategiraffe for allowing people like me to play in her sandbox.

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... getting up, having a cup of coffee, and then having the what turns out to be best massage therapist of your life give you an hour and a half massage at your home for a cost of $25.

OH MY GOD.

At that price, we now have a standing Monday morning appointment. He did some serious work on me and it's only just the beginning. I'm going to be sore as all get out, but I expected that. I'm sucking down loads of water, too. The only missing element is to soak in the tub with Epsom salts, but I'll work on taking care of that next week or the following.

If that's not the best start for a single woman on a Monday morning, I'm not sure what is.

I'll just be over here, a pleasantly aching pile of goo.

Without even as much fanfare as I emailed the M+M revision, I've just emailed the rewrite to Storm. I had three trusty friends read it, and two of them provided both overwhelming positive responses and a couple of suggestions. The third reader is an absolute love who is a great cheerleader, and those are marvelous to have as well. I had a long conversation with my aunt yesterday morning and as part of that realized that before meddling with it any more, I should go ahead and let the editor read it and get her feedback. I alerted her to the two elements mentioned by my betas, and figured I'd let her do what an editor does, and go from there. Still... yay! :)

In writerly news, I'll hopefully have a new Slave Breakers story by the weekend, and thanks to brumeux77's prompt, I've been doing research on Glastonbury but need to quit that and simply write the Neville/Percy. It's just that research can be so much fun!

I've also done the gauge swatch on my new sweater project. I'll need to take it to a local yarn store to get the contrast color in person, but that's fine- I know in the long run I'll be much happier. The green heather that I did get is a lovely color, so I think I'll make myself a hat! Or maybe I can find a cool vest pattern and use both skeins. Hmmmmmmm…