Computer is working (for the moment), so of course, a meme
Have backed it the hell up. Going to attempt to update Flash in Firefox, as I *think* that's part of the problem. Meanwhile, I've been meaning to write & post this for some time.
Comment to this post, and I'll give you seven topics to talk about, which you then post your LJ/DW, and so the meme spreads.
Here are the topics
sahiya gave me: first fandom, cooking, holidays, hometown, favorite fic ever, weather, travel
This is going to get long, I can tell.
First Fandom
That's actually really tough to answer. First fandom I posted fic to the internet for is Vorkosigan. First fandom I wrote for ever? Buried back in my early teens somewhere. Could be ChiPs, Code Red, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica (the original), but most likely the very first was Little House on the Prairie.
I have no idea what happened to the giant five-subject spiral notebooks I had filled with episodes for all these shows. Most likely they got waterlogged during one of the many basement floodings at my parents' house, and that is probably a good thing, as I imagine they were all pretty cringe-worthy. Never mind the fact that I had somehow come to the conclusion that since I often saw screen credits for guest writers, all I had to do was write the perfect episode and submit it somewhere and they would make it.
Thank all the Gods I never got anything “done” enough to try. Now that would've been embarrassing.
Cooking
This is not a thing I do much of anymore, and I miss it. When I do cook, it tends to be of the “throw it all in a pot (possibly crock pot) and let it stew” variety. I love doing stir-fry, but as relatively simple as even that is, it just takes more time and energy than I seem to have lately.
Holidays
My personal holiday calendar is, to say the very least, confusing. I'm operating on two luni-solar calendars that don't map perfectly onto either the Gregorian Calendar or each other, so I depend on others who've worked out what the closest dates are to tell me when stuff is going on. And that is often a matter of opinion, too.
For one example, this Sunday, we'll be celebrating Delphinia at HTAZP, which is the return of Apollon to Delphi after His winter vacation. It's also the celebration of His patronage of dolphins who watch over seafarers. A third thing we include is a celebration of Hyakinthos, because even though the Spartan Hyacinthia would have traditionally been celebrated sometime in the summer, this is the time of year when hyacinths are in bloom around here, and so it just makes sense.
Meanwhile, it's also Easter, so I'll be starting the day up at my parents' house to help them celebrate their holiday and then venturing southward to HTAZP for my own. Lately I've been chaffing at feeling pressured to keep celebrating the holidays of a faith I've left, even though rationally I know it's really about helping others celebrate something that is important to them. Meh. I'll work it out at some point.
Two calendars, I'd said, because with Kwan Yin as my patron Goddess, I also end up following the Chinese calendar (by default, as it's the one used by Chuang Yen Monastery, where I sometimes go for Her festivals, but there are other relevant calendars too). So the major holidays of my year end up looking something like this:
Sometime in February: Kwan Yin's birthday
Spring Equinox
sometime in late March/early April: Delphinia
sometime in May: Thargelia aka Apollon's and Artemis' birthday
Summer Solstice / Philokhoria
Sometime in late July/early August: Kwan Yin's Enlightenment
Sometime in July/August: Panaphobeia or the Feast of Pan, God of Fear
Sometime in the Fall (this year it looks like mid-November, though I swear last year it was early September, which is a bit more variety than I'd expect even given the occasional leap-month in the Hellenic calendar): Panagon, a festival of games in honor of Pan.
Autumn Equinox
Late September/early October: Puanepsia, a harvest festival of Apollon.
Sometime in October: Kwan Yin's Renunciation (decision to remain in samsara or the world of suffering until all beings are freed from suffering)
Also sometime in October or possibly November: Panaia, Pan's birthday (This is a modern interpretation. If His birthday was celebrated in Ancient Greece, we don't know about it. But the other Temple patrons get birthdays, so we settled on this one for Him.)
Late November/early December: Pompaia, asking Zeus' protection from the coming winter storms (While I do celebrate other Zeusian festivals with HTAZP, Pompaia and Diasia are the two that resonate the most for me, so those are the two I'm including.)
Sometime in December: Dendraia: decorating pine trees for Pan. (Another modern interpretation, because, well, the polis at large is decorating pine trees, and pine trees are sacred to Pan, so it only makes sense. We just do it rather differently. I doubt many are clicking on the links, but do check out this one, as it has pictures of our handiwork from last year.)
Winter Solstice/Kheimonia.
Sometime in early February: Diasia, thanking Zeus for getting us through the winter and a teddy bear drive for some children's charity to honor Zeus Melikhios, protector of children.
Whew!
Hometown
My hometown is a little blink-and-you'll-miss-it town in Massachusetts. I have an odd sort of relationship to the town, as I never went to school there, always attending Catholic schools and even church elsewhere, and yet I really wanted to connect to it. I'm not sure hanging out in the library at all hours quite counts as successfully connecting with the town, but that is where some of my fondest memories lie.
I delivered the weekly paper for awhile in my early teens, which was when I finally learned more of the town than just the route to and from the library. Despite being scared spitless of several dogs on the route, I loved walking or biking along the route and discovering a new (to me) pond here and a gorgeous copse of trees there.
Then high school came along, and I was traveling even further for school and there was no more connecting to the town to happen. Erm, probably not the sort of thing one expects as a writeup to the prompt “hometown,” but then, when have I ever been normal?
Favorite Fic Ever
Ummm, dangerous territory much?
Even if I weren't concerned about offending any of the writers on my flist, it's hard to pick a single Favorite Fic Ever, or even a favorite fic for a specific fandom. Partly because there's such breadth to what I like.
I like fic that could have been canon, could have slotted into canon, or is a perfectly reasonable fix-it to canon. I like fic that goes way out there and just gives favorite characters some experiences I think they deserved to have, even if there is no way in hell it could ever have happened in canon and even sometimes goes into the realm of OOC. I love crossovers, especially highly improbable ones.
I like plotty fic, crackfic, and mpreg. I like drabbles, especially when they manage to encapsulate more than you'd think possible in a mere hundred words. I like genfic, het, slash, and femslash.
How can I pull a single Favorite Fic Ever out of all that? There's only one way I can think of, and that's to go with the fic that got me writing again (by writing fic of it!) after formal creative writing classes took all the joy out of it for me for a good decade or so, A Deeper Season by
sahiya and
lightgetsin. Ironically, it fits in with “feels like it could pass for canon” as well as simultaneously being “would never have happened in canon,” is very plotty, and has a plot device that both is and isn't mpreg-ish, which, ironically is a canon issue.
So, yep, gotta go with that one, and not (though it probably looks like it) because it was
sahiya who asked.
Weather
I live in New England, where the old saying, “If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute” has never held truer than this Spring. We've gone from days in the 70s in early March to freezing again, to a couple of days of normalish March bluster, to a sunny and mild (so far) April.
Like Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, I rather think “temperate” implies a somewhat less insane climate, and they need a new word to cover the rollercoaster of weather we have here.
Speaking of, just because the computer's working is no reason to be inside missing this gorgeous day, so I need to wrap up soon.
Travel
I love to travel. I need to be independently wealthy so I can travel lots and lots all the time.
Unfortunately, I don't see much travel happening in the near future. Ah well.
Mostly I've traveled within the US, and someday I would like to be able to tick off the box on my list that says, “visit all 50 states.” I've also been to Canada several times, mostly Quebec with my folks when I was a kid, but also Ontario a few years ago, though that was a lot of back-and-forth to see both sides of Niagara Falls. Newfoundland is a place I really want to see someday.
It's been ten years almost since the first and only time I crossed the pond for a ten-day whirlwind trip through Scotland and England with three days in Paris. I still remember meeting up with
willowfae at Stonehenge (in November … don't do that without serious heavy coats people) and checking out Avebury and eating at the pub there in the middle of the stone circle. I desperately want to get to Wales, now, and high on my list of things to do there is catch a Blue Gillespie gig, plus whatever DW/TW-related things we can manage in Cardiff. This would ideally mean arriving while The Doctor Who Experience is in Cardiff, but I don't know how long that'll be. Even if it's the same length of time it was in London, there's probably not much chance, but hope lingers on.
I also want to see Italy and Greece. Those few days in Paris were the closest to really travelling somewhere I don't know the language, and that doesn't entirely count. While I'm not remotely fluent, I spent 8 years in a school run by French Canadian nuns and took French classes from grades 1 through 9, so I actually managed fairly well.
Ireland should probably be higher on the list than it is, given that it is the land of a large percentage of my forebears, but for some reason it doesn't hold a very strong draw for me at this point in my life. Maybe that'll change by the time I'm able to do much in the way of travel again.
Whew! Okay, there's my 7-topic babble. Comment to get your own 7 topics! ETA: In the absence of coherent thought, which abandoned me sometime this afternoon, I will probably raid your tags and/or interests listed on your profile. You are duly warned.
Comment to this post, and I'll give you seven topics to talk about, which you then post your LJ/DW, and so the meme spreads.
Here are the topics
sahiya gave me: first fandom, cooking, holidays, hometown, favorite fic ever, weather, travel
This is going to get long, I can tell.
First Fandom
That's actually really tough to answer. First fandom I posted fic to the internet for is Vorkosigan. First fandom I wrote for ever? Buried back in my early teens somewhere. Could be ChiPs, Code Red, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica (the original), but most likely the very first was Little House on the Prairie.
I have no idea what happened to the giant five-subject spiral notebooks I had filled with episodes for all these shows. Most likely they got waterlogged during one of the many basement floodings at my parents' house, and that is probably a good thing, as I imagine they were all pretty cringe-worthy. Never mind the fact that I had somehow come to the conclusion that since I often saw screen credits for guest writers, all I had to do was write the perfect episode and submit it somewhere and they would make it.
Thank all the Gods I never got anything “done” enough to try. Now that would've been embarrassing.
Cooking
This is not a thing I do much of anymore, and I miss it. When I do cook, it tends to be of the “throw it all in a pot (possibly crock pot) and let it stew” variety. I love doing stir-fry, but as relatively simple as even that is, it just takes more time and energy than I seem to have lately.
Holidays
My personal holiday calendar is, to say the very least, confusing. I'm operating on two luni-solar calendars that don't map perfectly onto either the Gregorian Calendar or each other, so I depend on others who've worked out what the closest dates are to tell me when stuff is going on. And that is often a matter of opinion, too.
For one example, this Sunday, we'll be celebrating Delphinia at HTAZP, which is the return of Apollon to Delphi after His winter vacation. It's also the celebration of His patronage of dolphins who watch over seafarers. A third thing we include is a celebration of Hyakinthos, because even though the Spartan Hyacinthia would have traditionally been celebrated sometime in the summer, this is the time of year when hyacinths are in bloom around here, and so it just makes sense.
Meanwhile, it's also Easter, so I'll be starting the day up at my parents' house to help them celebrate their holiday and then venturing southward to HTAZP for my own. Lately I've been chaffing at feeling pressured to keep celebrating the holidays of a faith I've left, even though rationally I know it's really about helping others celebrate something that is important to them. Meh. I'll work it out at some point.
Two calendars, I'd said, because with Kwan Yin as my patron Goddess, I also end up following the Chinese calendar (by default, as it's the one used by Chuang Yen Monastery, where I sometimes go for Her festivals, but there are other relevant calendars too). So the major holidays of my year end up looking something like this:
Sometime in February: Kwan Yin's birthday
Spring Equinox
sometime in late March/early April: Delphinia
sometime in May: Thargelia aka Apollon's and Artemis' birthday
Summer Solstice / Philokhoria
Sometime in late July/early August: Kwan Yin's Enlightenment
Sometime in July/August: Panaphobeia or the Feast of Pan, God of Fear
Sometime in the Fall (this year it looks like mid-November, though I swear last year it was early September, which is a bit more variety than I'd expect even given the occasional leap-month in the Hellenic calendar): Panagon, a festival of games in honor of Pan.
Autumn Equinox
Late September/early October: Puanepsia, a harvest festival of Apollon.
Sometime in October: Kwan Yin's Renunciation (decision to remain in samsara or the world of suffering until all beings are freed from suffering)
Also sometime in October or possibly November: Panaia, Pan's birthday (This is a modern interpretation. If His birthday was celebrated in Ancient Greece, we don't know about it. But the other Temple patrons get birthdays, so we settled on this one for Him.)
Late November/early December: Pompaia, asking Zeus' protection from the coming winter storms (While I do celebrate other Zeusian festivals with HTAZP, Pompaia and Diasia are the two that resonate the most for me, so those are the two I'm including.)
Sometime in December: Dendraia: decorating pine trees for Pan. (Another modern interpretation, because, well, the polis at large is decorating pine trees, and pine trees are sacred to Pan, so it only makes sense. We just do it rather differently. I doubt many are clicking on the links, but do check out this one, as it has pictures of our handiwork from last year.)
Winter Solstice/Kheimonia.
Sometime in early February: Diasia, thanking Zeus for getting us through the winter and a teddy bear drive for some children's charity to honor Zeus Melikhios, protector of children.
Whew!
Hometown
My hometown is a little blink-and-you'll-miss-it town in Massachusetts. I have an odd sort of relationship to the town, as I never went to school there, always attending Catholic schools and even church elsewhere, and yet I really wanted to connect to it. I'm not sure hanging out in the library at all hours quite counts as successfully connecting with the town, but that is where some of my fondest memories lie.
I delivered the weekly paper for awhile in my early teens, which was when I finally learned more of the town than just the route to and from the library. Despite being scared spitless of several dogs on the route, I loved walking or biking along the route and discovering a new (to me) pond here and a gorgeous copse of trees there.
Then high school came along, and I was traveling even further for school and there was no more connecting to the town to happen. Erm, probably not the sort of thing one expects as a writeup to the prompt “hometown,” but then, when have I ever been normal?
Favorite Fic Ever
Ummm, dangerous territory much?
Even if I weren't concerned about offending any of the writers on my flist, it's hard to pick a single Favorite Fic Ever, or even a favorite fic for a specific fandom. Partly because there's such breadth to what I like.
I like fic that could have been canon, could have slotted into canon, or is a perfectly reasonable fix-it to canon. I like fic that goes way out there and just gives favorite characters some experiences I think they deserved to have, even if there is no way in hell it could ever have happened in canon and even sometimes goes into the realm of OOC. I love crossovers, especially highly improbable ones.
I like plotty fic, crackfic, and mpreg. I like drabbles, especially when they manage to encapsulate more than you'd think possible in a mere hundred words. I like genfic, het, slash, and femslash.
How can I pull a single Favorite Fic Ever out of all that? There's only one way I can think of, and that's to go with the fic that got me writing again (by writing fic of it!) after formal creative writing classes took all the joy out of it for me for a good decade or so, A Deeper Season by
sahiya and
lightgetsin. Ironically, it fits in with “feels like it could pass for canon” as well as simultaneously being “would never have happened in canon,” is very plotty, and has a plot device that both is and isn't mpreg-ish, which, ironically is a canon issue.
So, yep, gotta go with that one, and not (though it probably looks like it) because it was
sahiya who asked.
Weather
I live in New England, where the old saying, “If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute” has never held truer than this Spring. We've gone from days in the 70s in early March to freezing again, to a couple of days of normalish March bluster, to a sunny and mild (so far) April.
Like Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, I rather think “temperate” implies a somewhat less insane climate, and they need a new word to cover the rollercoaster of weather we have here.
Speaking of, just because the computer's working is no reason to be inside missing this gorgeous day, so I need to wrap up soon.
Travel
I love to travel. I need to be independently wealthy so I can travel lots and lots all the time.
Unfortunately, I don't see much travel happening in the near future. Ah well.
Mostly I've traveled within the US, and someday I would like to be able to tick off the box on my list that says, “visit all 50 states.” I've also been to Canada several times, mostly Quebec with my folks when I was a kid, but also Ontario a few years ago, though that was a lot of back-and-forth to see both sides of Niagara Falls. Newfoundland is a place I really want to see someday.
It's been ten years almost since the first and only time I crossed the pond for a ten-day whirlwind trip through Scotland and England with three days in Paris. I still remember meeting up with
willowfae at Stonehenge (in November … don't do that without serious heavy coats people) and checking out Avebury and eating at the pub there in the middle of the stone circle. I desperately want to get to Wales, now, and high on my list of things to do there is catch a Blue Gillespie gig, plus whatever DW/TW-related things we can manage in Cardiff. This would ideally mean arriving while The Doctor Who Experience is in Cardiff, but I don't know how long that'll be. Even if it's the same length of time it was in London, there's probably not much chance, but hope lingers on.
I also want to see Italy and Greece. Those few days in Paris were the closest to really travelling somewhere I don't know the language, and that doesn't entirely count. While I'm not remotely fluent, I spent 8 years in a school run by French Canadian nuns and took French classes from grades 1 through 9, so I actually managed fairly well.
Ireland should probably be higher on the list than it is, given that it is the land of a large percentage of my forebears, but for some reason it doesn't hold a very strong draw for me at this point in my life. Maybe that'll change by the time I'm able to do much in the way of travel again.
Whew! Okay, there's my 7-topic babble. Comment to get your own 7 topics! ETA: In the absence of coherent thought, which abandoned me sometime this afternoon, I will probably raid your tags and/or interests listed on your profile. You are duly warned.