i feel stupid, and contagious

+ I haven't checked my f-list in what feels like days which is weird for me. TRYING TO CATCH UP. If you've come across anything important I might have missed, link? I'm only checking your LJs so any stuff in communities and feeds is gonna have to slide until the weekend.

+ Still nothing re: Bingley. All your comments mean SO MUCH, and I will answer them; I just... haven't? :/ Now I've done everything I can I feel distinctly weird and avoidy about it all. I've been posting a lot on tumblr; I'm not sure when picspamming became a stress-mechanism, but.

+ World Cup! I'm really excited. It's up there with the Olympics in terms of sporting events I get excited about. There are some teams I like - Brazil, Spain, US (obligatory), but mostly I get caught up in the fun of it. I don't care who wins. Even work is fun during the World Cup. On our campus there are more people from all over the world than from the States, and since football's huge pretty much everywhere but here, the whole campus buzzes with excitement and ESPN is always playing on the TVs in the cafeteria, etc. Also, hotties. Mexico is playing South Africa as we speak and Rafael Marquez looks like a straight-up model. Just thought you should know my thought process.

+ This weekend will be packed. I'm hanging with some fandom friends tomorrow, which is always good times.

+ I've been watching Breaking Bad this week. It's ridiculously good. Also recently caught up on The Pacific, The Good Wife, Torchwood: Children of Earth (season 4 yay!), and I'm finishing Parks and Recreation. True Blood starts season 3 on Sunday. Doctor Who is winding down (sad). Leverage starts S3 soon, but hopefully not too soon for me to get caught up on season 2.

TV-TOWN, basically. No idea how I'm going to fit it all in. What's everyone watching? Doing anything fun this weekend? I MISS Y'ALL.

Happy Birthday to the ever-fabulous inell! In all the time we've known each other you've been the most amazing person, writing partner-in-crime, co-mod, and (most of all) friend.

Have a good one, sweetie. ♥♥♥♥

I planned on doing some kind of end-of-year post thingy, but I haven't had time, heh. I miss you guys! I resolve to post more and actually come onto Yahoo and MSN occasionally because I miss chatting it up with ya'll. XP

I'm out the door in a bit, but meanwhile, have some Merlin pretties:


HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thanks for being such an awesome f-list. Whether you've been around for a while or we just met this year (or this week!), I heart you guys and look forward to next year.

Be safe if you're going out tonight and I wish you all a great 2010.♥

+ Actually, I can't, but you can thank such_heights for putting the song in my head. She did a Merlin vid yesterday that is epicness, go looky.

+ Mom's home from the hospital! It's mostly good, she feels okay and is in good spirits, but she's going to need to start seeing a cardiologist regularly. :/

+ I have so much to do. Went shopping earlier, which took up some time and I spent too much money, but I do have new shoes. Now I have to do some serious cleaning because this week has been crazy and I haven't had time, and tomorrow morning I'm going down to help straighten up Mom's house; she's having her physical therapist come by and wants things to be neat. And then inell will be driving up (Yay!) and then we're meeting seakisst and bratkartoffel for a movie or something else that's fun. (Yay!)

+ MERLIN IN TWO DAYS. You have NO IDEA (okay so you may have some idea) HOW EXCITED I AM ABOUT THE NEW SEASON. All signs point to more of the girls, awesome new plots, plenty of slashy funtimes, MORE OF THE GIRLS, and basically my cracky show will be back in my life.

I AM EXCITE

Would do some sort of spam to celebrate but it will prove FAR too diverting and others have already done epic picspams from the latest trailer - but here's the trailer anyway for those who haven't seen it yet or for those who want to see it again not that I've seen it fifteen times or anything:

( two minutes of sheer gorgeousness and a couple of gifs under the cut )

So, road_ahead closed yesterday. :( For those of you, and I reckon there are quite a few, who weren't on my f-list when I was nattering about this every other day, RA is an Harry Potter RPG I helped start and run with Inell and Flora, that we were involved in for upwards of 20 months. It was time, I think. When you have a game that takes place post-war and is as focused on everyday life as RA was, the world's bound to reach a sort of equilibrium. Things were settled and activity from players (myself included) had slowed down quite a bit. Most games don't stay active for as long as we did, and it's been amazing -- bit of a rollercoaster at first, but eventually it settled down and became my happy place for a really long time. I met some awesome people and definitely grew as a writer. I'm going to miss the characters I wrote there, both the main ones and the NPCs, so much, and I'll miss reading everyone else's stories. And good lord, I'm going to miss writing Harry. I love that boy to a ridiculous degree.

That said, I think I'm done RPing for a good while. Which is a bigger deal for me than it sounds - I've been in fandom since 2006 and have been RPing in Potter fandom for almost the entire time. It's going to be weird not being in a game. But at the same time, it's become harder to split my time between all the things I want to do in fandom -- and in real life. I want to spend less time at my computer, but I also want to write more fic, make more art. I won't lie and say that new fandoms have nothing to do with it, but the truth is RP has been more of an effort for me since before I got into Merlin and SGA and Trek. RP is a huge time-suck; it eats your brain in the best possible way. But it's got to be fun. It's meant to be a diversion, something to escape to. And when it's a good experience, it's REALLY GOOD.

But when it's a bad experience (and if you have RPed for a long time, you've probably had these to some extent or other) there's nothing fannish I can think of that is less fun. I've made friends that I lost four months later. I've moderated player chats that have made my head hurt. I've been disillusioned by people, and maybe they've been disillusioned by me. I've shed tears and wasted a LOT of time on things that really aren't a big deal. I've learned that people are basically the same from one game to another, and that no game can escape wank completely -- and as such, I've learnt to be very, very zen about the whole thing.

Thing is, road_ahead was an AMAZING experience, on balance -- that's what I've loved about it; that's why I'll miss it, and that's why I'm so, so proud of the world we created together. I'll miss the folks who stuck with us from beginning to end (omg you guys, it's been a looong and bumpy ride). I'll miss those who've joined us along the way and those who've moved on since. And mostly, I hope I won't be missing ya'll too much anyway, because we've become more than co-writers and players -- we're friends, and I'll be in touch. ♥

You know where to find me on YM and gchat, or come poke me on Twitter if you can brave the zombie horde. *g*

Thanks, guys. <3

Random things wot make me to smile:

+ The fact that I just finished giving a presentation at work and it is now behind me. Whew. I only have to do it like twice a year, but meeep.

+ Star Trek stills. I am the shallowest of shallow fans, because I never really watched Star Trek beyond a handful of the original eps, TNG, and a bit of Voyager. But I am still so very psyched for this movie. So much pretty.

+ Dev and Frieda. D'awwww.

+ The fact that I just downloaded a pdf file of an article for work and read it on my iphone, wtf I love technology.

+ this post by setissma on women and how society teaches us that it's cute and feminine not to be able to do simple math. (um, no, it's not; we are every bit as capable of it as men.) Definitely worth a read. (hat tip to glass_icarus for pointing to it.)

+ You guys make me to smile, too. ♥ I hope everyone has a great Friday.

+ Cassie Hannah Murray as Matt Smith's companion? LOL, they must be trying to start wank. People whined because they thought Matt was too young and Hannah's nineteen ... still, if this happens, it might make me poke my head back into that fandom, like I did for Freema. :P

To be honest, I can't see it happening, but it would be better than Kelly Brook or Lily Allen.

+ I got yet another boxofmagic idea while driving to work this morning, and I think this might be the one. XD It's weird, and I don't know what the pairing(s) will turn out to be, though.

+ Come leave some prompts for some of our hermionebigbang authors to pick over! Hermione-centric, gen, crossover, or shippy bunnies all welcome, for adoption, feeding, or breeding purposes. Whether or not you're participating there must be something you want to see. ;)

+ Question: There's been random friending by Russian journals and empty accounts, and various other weirdness happening here and elsewhere on LJ, so I'm thinking of friends-locking my journal (except for the fic and icons). Of curiosity, why do you guys lock your journals or if you don't what made you decide not to? (Just generally speaking; obvs I don't need to know exactly what caused the decision. :P) I've thought about it a couple times before, but haven't ever gone through with it. I hesitate because ... well, I don't know. I just don't like the idea of locking everything down and I don't have a lot of personal stuff on here, and yet, recent happenings are making me consider it.

Stolen from a bunch of people:

One little compliment can make you feel great. So give me a compliment, anything in the entire world, even that my shoelaces are pretty. Put this in your journal. Once you get some comments, put that entry in a memory or tag and when you are feeling down, just go to that entry and this will remind you how great you are.

Comments are going to be screened so none of you will know if I'm uber-popular, who gets over 100 comments on this, or who's a total loser and doesn't get any.