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I am so behind on NaNoWriMo today. (So, naturally, I'm posting instead of writing.)

I've been playing with AO3 today and haven't even put word one on my NaNoWriMo story. I've got a comfortable cushion at the moment, but my goal is to be done before I go to my Mom's to become her Thanksgiving helper. The cooking process begins, ideally, two days beforehand, so that doesn't give me a whole lot of time. Granted, we're celebrating on Friday instead of Thursday this year, but that's only one extra day.

We're having Thanksgiving a day late this year for a number of reasons, one of which is that my sister lives in North Carolina. Many of you probably heard about the 1-40 landslide closing off the main route through the Smokies from North Carolina to Tennessee. A lot of you also probably saw the video of the landslide that occurred a couple hundred miles south, on Highway 64.

What you probably don't know, unless you live in the area, is that Highway 64 is one of the better alternate routes through the Smokies if one is heading from North Carolina to the area around Chattanooga, especially if one's hometown is right on 64 (like ours). My sister and brother-in-law are probably going to make lemonade from the lemons and just detour all the way through Atlanta so he can visit his family, but that's a pretty significant detour.

So, Friday Thanksgiving. At least the grocery stores will be open if we run out of stuff.
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Aaah, the twice-yearly hard drive purge. Nine whole gigabytes in which to stretch out, for a while anyway. I tend to dread doing it, because while my backing up involves sticking a thumb drive in and throwing over the few tiny text files that are new, the Great Hard Drive Purge involves actually moving computer stuff around and disconnecting drives from PCs and hooking them up to Macs and other gargantuan efforts. Which is why I only tend to do it when I'm having to delete yesterday's podcasts to have room for today's.

I realize that 9GB doesn't sound like much, but my entire hard drive is only 80GB, and frankly, if it wasn't for my habit of saving certain podcasts, I'd probably not even be close to filling it up ever. Fan fiction, after all, doesn't take up a lot of space. It took me three years of obsessive story saving to hit 500MB on my Torchwood folder, after all. Though, admittedly, if I saved the HTML instead of just the text, it would likely be about ten times that size. Which is why I save the text. :)

Then again, I have about two terabytes hooked up to the PC, so it's not like I'm practicing hard drive economy anywhere else.
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Greebo tried to assist in my word count yesterday. When I'm using the computer in bed he thinks it a prime opportunity for snuggle time. He may be right about this, but he also tends to want to snuggle right on top of where I'm using the mouse. This means that sometimes the mouse does things I hadn't necessarily planned, especially when I give up trying to move it around under seventeen pounds of cat and just leave it there. Yesterday, he managed to select all the text in my Nanowrimo file, and when I pasted it all in later my stats returned a miraculous 22K+ word count, almost exactly twice what the count should have been. One of us (and I have my suspicions) had duplicated the entire novel in the file.

Good kitty.

NaNoLOL

Nov. 6th, 2009 04:44 pm
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I'd totally forgotten about the NanoCat Word Counter. (Because it is very important to see my word count in as many forms as humanly possible.)

This is why I was very happy to see that the widgets are finally working today. Well, mostly working. There seems to be a bit of decimal issue with the full progress reports, but it's not a big deal. Unfortunately, I discovered that, despite my doing my own math, I actually missed my word count yesterday by 14 words. Fourteen. Words.

Is this really a big deal? Well, okay, no. )

And yet, I have still managed to crack 10,000 words. :)
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3883 / 50000 words. 8% done!

I don't know if it's aided my writing productivity, but since I started using the CPAP machine I have dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. I had regular dreams before, but it's astounding the scope and depth and length of the dreams I've had the last four nights. I guess that's what happens when I'm not waking up forty times a night and interrupting my dream cycle. My brain has free rein to work through the day's crap without interference, and it seems to be making up for lost time.

I'm a bit paranoid about NaNoWriMo this year because last year was the first year I'd ever finished early and you all know what happened then. While I feel pretty certain that that was a one-time mishap (pretty certain), I can't help but think that I should maybe push a little harder this year, too.

Just in case. :)
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Yep, it's that time of year again, when I move my NaNoWriMo bookmarks up to the Toolbar. Of course, the site designers have, as usual, rearranged everything so that most of them are broken, but re-setting the links is always a nice time-waster those first few days.

I have to say that, despite thinking about what I'm going to write since the beginning of October, the actual arrival of NaNoWriMo snuck up on me this year. I've been tootling along with it in the back of my mind, then suddenly I look up and it's three days before the start.

Part of my distraction has been my nesting behavior over at the new rec journal. I'm really, really glad I moved all the rec stuff. Not only am I no longer spamming people who are not necessarily interested in the recs, I've also been able to do a lot of tagging and organizing that wasn't really practical here. I feel like the rec journal can now be an actual resource that will, hopefully, remain useful even if I stop having the time to do as much recommending.

In other news, I picked up my CPAP machine today. I think it says something that I'm looking forward to strapping the thing on at bedtime. (Probably that I'm willing to do almost anything for a good night's sleep. :))

I also discovered that if you wait until the last few days to buy Halloween candy, you a) don't have time to eat it beforehand and b) can get it on sale. Also, Cheetos are not kosher.
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I don't know about the rest of you, but my own rec spam is driving me nuts. I love doing the recs, and I want to share them, but they're completely overtaking my personal space.

So, to stop my journal from being subsumed by recs, I've done what I probably should have done in the first place, and created new journals just for my fanfic recommendations. From now on, if you wish to follow my Torchwood recs, you can do so at [personal profile] dmarley_recs on Dreamwidth, and [livejournal.com profile] dmarley_recs on Livejournal. Both journals have sticky posts with more links and information about how/what/where/when I rec.

I'm leaving all the old themed lists in situ, under the torchwood finder lists tag (torchwood finder lists tag on Livejournal. I've also imported them to both the new rec journals. I won't be keeping or importing the daily Tweets because they cause too much clutter and you can find all of them archived much more tidily at my Twitter page and the full list of tagged links on Delicious.

Sorry if this has caused anyone headaches, and I also apologize to anyone who may have subscribed to this journal for the recs, and now has to go subscribe to the other one. Sorry for the hassle, but I think it'll be better all around. :)

(Edited February 16, 2010 to clear up references daily Tweets.)
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I had my second sleep study over the weekend, and it went really well. I used the CPAP machine all night, and did not, according to the sleep technician, have any apneas. \0/ (I did, in fact, make actual victory arms when he told me this.) I did feel claustrophobic a couple of times, but it was very mild and I was able to talk myself out of it by remembering that the machine was there to help me breathe.

The mask wasn't too bad, and didn't really keep me from sleeping. We'll see if that changes once I'm no longer so tired that I don't care, but for now I'm more than willing to strap the thing on if it means better sleep. I'm also, on advice from [livejournal.com profile] thewordoffred, going to look into the possibility of just using a nose tube. We'll see.

I also found out that I apparently re-arrange my iPod in my sleep. I go to sleep listening to podcasts, and while I'm falling asleep I move the iPod from side to side as I turn over. This behavior, according to the sleep technician, does not change once I'm asleep (or, indeed, after the iPod's sleep timer has turned it off). As I toss and turn, I move the non-functioning iPod around with me without ever waking up. This may explain why I haven't yet strangled myself with the headphones in my sleep. :)
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This is a search that tends to come up a lot, so I decided to just go ahead and pre-emptively make a master list of Torchwood BDSM stories. Since most of the time the request is for Jack/Ianto, and also specific about who the Dom is, I've split the list into three parts: Jack/Ianto where Jack is the Dom, Jack/Ianto where Ianto is the Dom, and other pairings with the Dom indicated in a note. I've tagged all three lists as follows:

storyfinder:bdsmjackiantodomjack for Jack/Ianto stories where Jack is the Dom.

storyfinder:bdsmjackiantodomianto for Jack/Ianto stories where Ianto is the Dom.

storyfinder:bdsmotherpairings for all the stories with other pairings.

All three lists are consolidated under the storyfinder:bdsm tag.

Jack/Ianto BDSM, Dom Jack )

Jack/Ianto BDSM, Dom Ianto )

Other BDSM Pairings )
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Boo has been really fascinated by the discovery of "Ardi." It started last week, when she asked me why we have hairs all over our bodies, and I explained about our evolutionary ancestors having hair to protect them. Just a couple of days later the news about Ardi finally hit the front pages. When the drawings of what Ardi may have looked like appeared, I showed them to Boo and explained a bit about how Ardi's traits have changed some of our thoughts on hominid evolution.

But I think the big attraction for her, really, is the simple fact that Ardi--and Lucy--are girls, like her. I know it was just chance that two of the major game-changers in hominid evolution happened to be females, but it really hit me hard to see how much that simple fact changed Boo's perceptions. Ardi and Lucy might be hairy, and have ape-like features and long arms and--in Ardi's case, anyway--feet that look like hands, but they're still both girls, and she can identify with that.

I really hope that as she gets older, we don't always have to go back four million years for our female role models. :)
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In order to avoid blathering incessantly about Yet Another Health Issue, I decided--this time--to wait until I had a firm diagnosis.

The desire to fall asleep into your mashed potatoes is not normal. Just so you know. )
dmarley: Animated clip of the Torchwood title (Torchwood)
Click the cut to see what Torchwood stories I've tagged on Delicious today

Daily Torchwood Recs )
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One of Boo's homework assignments is that she has to write a sentence every day describing something she learned in class. Usually I ask her what she wants to write, then I help her with the spelling by sounding the words out. Not surprisingly (because this is, after all, English that she's trying to spell), she doesn't always guess the correct vowel, and last night she got really discouraged about it.

This is one of those parent situations where there was really nothing I could think of that was encouraging. Saying what I felt was the truth ("Yeah, English is a bitch to spell and even if you're really smart you'll probably be really grateful for the invention of the spellchecker for the rest of your life") wasn't, I thought, exactly the uplifting words of encouragement she needed.

So, I told her about The Great Vowel Shift instead.

My thinking--if it can be called such--was that if she knew that the vowel sounds weren't always spelled the same, that they were arbitrary and messy, she might feel a bit better about finding it hard to do. Amazingly enough, this worked.

Later, I had to Google how to spell "pink" in Hebrew, but still, mostly a win in the mom column.
dmarley: Animated clip of the Torchwood title (Torchwood)
Now that I have over a thousand Torchwood stories tagged on Delicious, I think it's time to make an official plug post for my Torchwood recs.

I read through a lot of Torchwood stories (both old and new), and as I do I pick out the ones that I think are enjoyable and readable and bookmark them on Delicious. With lots of tags. I think of my recs primarily as a reading filter, aimed at readers who might not have time to click through everything posted to [livejournal.com profile] torchwood_three every day, and also aimed at new fans who might feel overwhelmed at the sheer volume of stories out there.

If that's too broad for your tastes, I also have a five-star (literally, *****) tag that I use for stories which I found outstanding in some way. I also highly recommend [livejournal.com profile] torchwood_house, which is a well-organized and comprehensive recommendation community.

Where to find my recs, and how to follow as I update them )

Any questions, please drop a comment.
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I'm restoring my confidence by messing with the Windows computer, and I decided that I would conduct my semi-sporadic search for a multi-file search and replace utility for Windows. At the moment, I'm completely unable to survive without TextWrangler, which allows me to re-do those teeny coding errors I might make across twenty files, and also is the secret behind my thematic lists. (What, you think I have time to read 3,000 stories for mentions of blue cupcakes? ;)) The only difficulty is that it's MacOS only.

Shockingly enough, I found one this time. It's called Actual Search and Replace and it does exactly what I want. It searches across multiple text files for words or phrases, displays them in context and also--as the name suggests--can perform multi-file search and replace. (Take that, SmartQuotes!) Joy!

Well, if "joy" means "worth $30." The free version works for thirty days, which is enough time to make a decision about buying it, but I've been really spoiled by Bare Bones freeware the last fifteen years. Still, it would possibly enable me to not go completely insane if my Mac craps out on me, which is certainly worth thirty bucks.

I just hope I'm not jinxing my Mac by eyeing other utilities...
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I just had a huge computer scare, which I am going to describe in excruciating detail under the cut. To save you the suspense, I've left the resolution outside the cut. )

The anti-climactic conclusion: Computer restarted, everything's fine, I do not have to re-sort 3,000 files from the unsorted back-up. I'm currently testing the existence of the disappeared files by backing them the fuck up. Again. Then I'm having a beer. Possibly two.

I'm also taking this as a sign that it might be time to start saving for a new Mac laptop.
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This list was made in response to this request for timetravel fix stories (not "fixit"s necessarily, just stories that altered canon events) on [livejournal.com profile] twgenrefinders. It's tagged on Delicious under storyfinder:timetravelfixes.

Time Travel Fixes )
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This is actually a composite list of a couple of different requests, both for first-time Jack/Ianto stories. One request was generally for first-time stories, with a few preferred subcategories, and the other was for first-time stories, "the schmoopier the better," but also willing to read anything that was good. I decided to just take the lists I made and use them as a base for a general Jack/Ianto first-time list. It's tagged on Delicious under storyfinder:jack/iantofirsttime. If you're brave, you can also delve into the (currently) 66 stories tagged under jack/ianto+first-time.

Jack/Ianto First-Time )
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This list was made in response to this request for long Jack/Ianto or general team stories on [livejournal.com profile] twgenrefinders. For the purpose of the list I arbitrarily defined "long" in Tardis Big Bang terms--20,000 words or longer. This list is tagged on Delicious under storyfinder:longjack/ianto.

Long Jack/Ianto Stories )
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Bad news first.

I had a talk with my physical therapist yesterday about DragonCon, and while he didn't say "don't go," the things we talked about led me to the conclusion that going would not be fun. Everything I want to do involves either standing in line (or sitting on the floor in line) or sitting in horrible hotel conference chairs. I finally realized that I would either be in the hotel room lying down, or in a lot of pain. While the opportunities for hotel-room socializing are not to be discounted as a primary factor in my going to the con in the first place, I finally realized that I just wasn't prepared to face the prospect of the pain involved to do anything else. Such as drive five hours and haul my luggage through the Atlanta subway. So, I'm staying home.

The silver lining to all this (there's always one :)) is that I'll be able to maybe do some bookmarking. I've been trying to figure out a way to cross-post my Delicious bookmarks directly to my journals. I've been using the always-awesome Text Wrangler to code my finder lists by hand, but it would be nice to have a way to share the links.

This can be done from Delicious with other blogs, but not with LJ-based clients. I know there are a couple of scripts that can do it, but I don't have the hosting capabilities to run them. I'm experimenting with Twitter, but the automatic Tweeting from Delicious doesn't seem to work, at least not from the LJ add-on window, and doing it from the Delicious site is a royal pain in the ass. We'll see how it goes. :)

ETA: Ha! Figured out what was wrong with the auto-Tweeting from Delicious. I've now set up LoudTwitter, so hopefully my links will now funnel back onto my journal (under a cut, of course :)). Right now, I'm only doing it on Livejournal to test it.
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What with my vacation, and catching up from my vacation, I've fallen a bit behind on posting my finder lists here. I'm going to try to make it a point to get that done soon, but I'm not sure it will happen before DragonCon. If you're interested in the latest lists, you can check the storyfinder tag, which covers all the storyfinder lists.

Links to some of the recent lists )
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Why didn't I know about the iPod Sleep Timer function before?! I discovered it by accident while trying to use the (useless) alarm feature, and it's the Best Thing Ever. I go to sleep every night listening to podcasts or audio books, and the biggest drawback is that if I fall asleep before turning it off, I have to backtrack for hours to find my place (not to mention the battery issues). If I turn on the Sleep Timer, the window shrinks to fifteen or thirty minutes. Best Thing Ever.

It's the little things that count, really. :)
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So. We have met Boo's new Head of School...

...and she is Yvonne Hartman.

My husband and I went to a Meet the Head of School and Have Coffee thing this morning, and as I listened to her talk and answer questions I really, really had to work hard not to roll my eyes. Okay, I understand that management jargon is probably the way Things are Done now, but I felt like I was listening to a politician dodge the press rather than a Head of School talk to parents.

I do understand that it's not an easy gig. (In fact, I was amused that the questions were evenly divided between "why aren't the kids running around more?" and "why aren't the kids studying math/science more?", neatly displaying the never-ending conflict of parent expectations in microcosm.) I don't, though, like to come away from a meeting feeling that the person in charge hasn't really said anything. I also feel like that a meeting with her would be more like a battlefield than a conversation.

It's entirely possible that this first impression will be proved wrong, and it's also possible that, even if it isn't wrong, these will be qualities that will make her a good Head of School.

That doesn't mean I won't still think of her saying, "If it's alien, it's ours," every time I see her.
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One day, I'll make a post and there will be nothing medical in it. This is not that post, but let's just live in hope. :)

The importance of the spine, and why muscles are not substitutes )

iMom

Aug. 17th, 2009 12:09 am
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Spent the weekend at my mother's, doing iPod maintenance and continuing iPod education. My mom, as I may have mentioned, has two iPods in order to keep up with her audiobook habit. While we were on vacation, iPod number one--which had already shown signs of wear and tear--began to really screw up. I brought it home, downloaded the files from it (confirming, by the way, that it was Seriously Screwed Up), and put them all on a new iPod. So far, so good.

This just in: WAV files are Really Big )
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If you buy the same mouse for both your laptops, and for some reason are using both laptops at the same time, try not to wonder why the mouse isn't working every time you pick up the wrong one. At least not after the first three times you do it. Also, possibly be smart enough, after this has happened more than three times, to put stickers or something on one of them.

If you are smart enough to only use one laptop at a time, but have both the trackpad and mouse enabled, make sure that your cat is not sitting on the mouse while you use the trackpad, lest you become convinced that your computer has locked up.
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If you don't care about the color of the yolks of your boiled eggs, move along.

If, on the other hand, you're curious about the things that are topics of earnest debate in our family while on vacation, proceed to the cut for two amazing photographs of...boiled eggs.

No, seriously, it's pictures of boiled eggs and a summary of different ways to boil eggs so the yolks don't turn dark. Don't say I didn't warn you. )
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These two podfics were actually recorded a year ago, but I only just now got around to editing them.

Stages. Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio. NC-17. 4,043 words. Download the podfic at Megaupload (permanent link) | Download at Mediafire (temporary link, will expire 10/09/09) (26:43) 10.56 MB
Summary: A small cabin, a cold night, two lonely cops.
Livejournal: Stages

Stages II: A Thousand Miles. Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio. NC-17. 5,354 words. Download the podfic at Megaupload (permanent link) | Download at Mediafire (temporary link, will expire 10/09/09) (35:25) 12.16 MB
Summary: When Fraser is transferred back to Chicago, Ray realizes that they need to have a little chat.
Livejournal: Stages II: A Thousand Miles
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After laboriously updating two separate index posts, with two sets of links, and then editing two separate journal entries, I had an amazing revelation. Why not, I thought (two days later, but who's counting?) make one post with both sets of links? Genius!

So, um, yeah. I consolidated my Dreamwidth fiction index and my Livejournal fiction index, making the Dreamwidth posts the primary links (since Dreamwidth's generous posting limit allowed me to load all my stories as single files), and adding the Livejournal links to that list. Now, instead of keeping track of two separate posts that are identical except for the URLs, I only have to fiddle with one post (that I can, in fact, crosspost from Dreamwidth).

Seriously, I'm surprised sometimes that I manage to leave the house with my shoes on the right feet...
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I finally buckled down to the Very Important task of updating my fiction index. I'd been meaning to consolidate all the multi-post stories on Dreamwidth anyway, and while I was at it I updated the story headers, finally getting rid of some of the mailing list artifacts that aren't really necessary anymore.

For one thing, I had great big asterisked and allcapped warnings about the slash content. It was a good idea ten years ago, when a lot of people didn't actually know what slash was and might very well click on a story expecting either lots of gore or perhaps fiction about Guns N' Roses. Now, however, I feel that "warning" about slash sends a negative message that I certainly don't want to perpetuate, and the information about slash is pretty well known these days. Especially when the pairings are right there in the headers anyway. One day, I will have to go through and update the mailing list formatting, which means going through and changing all the asterisks to emphasis or whatever. Today, however, is not that day.

Updated Fiction Index on Dreamwidth (All the stories are consolidated into single posts here)

Updated Fiction Index on Livejournal (Stories longer than LJ's 10,000-word/60K limit are split into parts)

I also added download links to all the podfic versions I've made of stories. Since I've never actually posted them to my journal before, here's the complete list of podfics:

Due South/Twin Peaks

Cold Heart. [Download the podfic (83.6 MB)] Benton Fraser/Dale Cooper, Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio. NC-17. Twin Peaks Crossover. 19,702 words.
Summary: Fraser is acting strangely, and an unexpected visit from a man from his past only makes Ray more determined to discover what's wrong.

Law & Order

Cascade. [Download the podfic (19.71 MB)] 4,554 words.
Summary: After the arrest of Father Joe Krolinsky, Mike Logan has a talk with his father.

Louder Than Words. [Download the podfic (73.36 MB)] Mike Logan/Ben Stone. NC-17. 17,814 words.
Summary: As Mike Logan investigates the Lowenstein case, he and Ben Stone begin to re-evaluate their broken relationship.

Stargate SG-1

All the Pens That Ever Poets Held. [Download the podfic (6.91 MB)] Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson. 3,277 words.
Summary: While stranded on a distant planet, Jack O'Neill thinks about home.

Excuses. [Download the podfic (2.97 MB)] Jack O'Neill/Teal'c. 610 words.
Summary: Jack O'Neill ponders the progress of his relationship with Teal'c.

Taking Care. [Download the podfic (3.26 MB)] Challenge Story. 1,427 words.
Summary: Jack O'Neill has had a very long day.

Twin Peaks

The Secret Tapes of Dale Cooper. [Download the podfic (4.09 MB)] Dale Cooper/Albert Rosenfield. 832 words.
Summary: Cooper didn't address all his tapes to Diane.

The Private Letters of Albert Rosenfield. [Download the podfic (2.98 MB)] Dale Cooper/Albert Rosenfield. 620 words.
Summary: Albert writes a letter.
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When Boo was around a year old, I was diagnosed with arthritis on the left side of my lower back. My doctor told me it's not uncommon for new mommies to develop back problems, because we spend a lot of time picking up and carrying twenty-pound babies, and tend to do it consistently on one arm/hip. I took an anti-inflammatory for a couple of months and changed how I lifted and picked up things and how I sat, focusing on making non-spine-twisting moves and on balancing my baby-lifting. That took care of the pain, and I hadn't had any problems for the last five years.

You can probably guess where this is going )

I'm just hoping this is the last side-effect of my fall. :)
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My vacation inspired me to get back to making recordings of my stories, since I spent a great deal of time listening to the podfics of others. I did some podficcing for [community profile] amplificathon last year, when I had carpal tunnel and had to take off knitting. I must have gotten distracted by something very shiny, because I a) found two stories I'd recorded but never edited and b) realized that I never posted links to any of the ones I did finish here. D'oh! (I'll be doing both soon, by the way.)

Of course, after I'd done several stories I figured out all the stuff I was doing wrong, so there's a bit of a learning curve. I tried to spoof the learning curve by recording several stories with no intention of posting them, and only then started recording others to post, but the second hump on the curve happened, alas, after I'd posted several finished audios. Mostly the problem is that volume is too low, so it's not an epic disaster, but I would like to re-record a few of them.

Right now, I'm doing one of my longer stories, an SG1 story from 1999-2000 called "A Thousand Stars." It's about 28,000 words, which I estimate will mean a finished product of four to four and a half hours. So far, I've recorded four hours of audio, and am about halfway through the story. This kind of worries me, because at the first draft stage I expect to have audio about three to four times as long as the finished product--and it's not that I haven't been recording several different readings of every damn sentence. I'm wondering if I'm speaking faster for some reason, and if this will mean that I'll end up thinking it sucks and have to do it all over. I hope not.

Catching Up

Aug. 1st, 2009 08:50 pm
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I've realized that I haven't actually, formally updated anything about my wrist lately. As it happens, no news is good news, but since I've been blithering about it for months I might as well offer closure, too. :)

I am healed! )

All in all, I feel pretty darn lucky. It was a hellish winter, but I came out of it with all the important things (for instance, knitting) still possible, and I'm not in pain anymore. This is all good. :)

In other news, I'm done rescuing files from my Mom's malfunctioning iPod, and am about three-quarters done transferring the files back into iTunes so I can load them onto her new iPod. This has taken some time, both because I want to make sure that everything's being transferred, and also because I'm converting a bunch of WAV files to MP3. She has a machine that converts cassettes into digital audio, but it saves the files as WAV and we've never really coordinated that "How to convert files to MP3" tutorial I've been promising to do for her. So far, I've saved about 50GB (!?) of space.

I've also plowed through the backlog of Torchwood stories that were posted on LJ during my vacation. Without going into brutal statistics, I estimate that I had to read roughly twice as many stories, and tagged about the same net number as I would have pre-Children of Earth. I would despair, except that I sort of suspected that this would be the case. I also saved a bunch of stories that I didn't tag, some of which may end up working their way into the rec list. We'll have to see.

All in all, it's good to be back.
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Right. I'm going in. Eleven days of Torchwood fanfic, waiting to be read and tagged. And because I love my mother and am currently using my Mac to rescue the files from one of her iPods, I'm even doing it without TextWrangler. Think of me fondly.
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It's 2:30am, and I've reached skip=600 on LJ. Unbelievable as it seems, that actually took me all the way back to the point where I left.

The beach was completely wonderful. I managed to keep both Boo and myself from getting sunburned, despite the fact that she did nothing but run around in the mercilessly hot sun for six solid days. There were four adults to one six-year-old, and between all of us we managed to mostly keep up with her. Mostly.

There was no internet at the condo where we stayed, and I didn't manage to get to anywhere with wireless, so even with the backwards scan through LJ I still have some catching up to do. Starting with the huge pile of Torchwood stories posted in the last ten days. :)
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I'm leaving tomorrow morning for the beach. (Yay!) I won't have internet access for about the next ten days, so I won't be engaging in my usual hobbies of story-finding and Delicious tagging. I'm really hoping I can get occasional access and at least download stories and podcasts, because if not the ten-day backlog of post-Children of Earth stories alone will likely bury me.

I'm actually already packed, and am a little disconcerted with the crap-volume of my packing. Somehow, packing more than four shirts is not a priority, but having three spare sets of earphones is. I'm also thinking that, with my flip-flops and rubber beach sandals, bringing along my Birkenstocks as my civilization shoes might be overkill. There's absolutely no way, though, I'm going without both the PowerBook and the NetBook. And both iPods.

Let's also not mention the ten-day entertainment requirements for a six-year-old, which includes a shoulder bag crammed with sparkly pink My Little Pony accessories, three separate board games, and her own knitting bag.

*Checks priorities*

Yep. Looks good to me.

Take care, everyone!
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Okay, I'm cheating, because this isn't an actual story list. Or rather, it's kind of an on-going story list.

What with the recent airing of "Children of Earth," the Torchwood fanfiction community has been--understandably--a bit overwhelmed with stories about the mini-series. In an effort to aid those readers who a) might not have seen "Children of Earth" yet or b) want to take a break from reading about "Children of Earth," I have (inspired by [livejournal.com profile] zortified) added a "nochildrenofearth" tag to my Delicious bookmarks.

http://delicious.com/dorothymarley/nochildrenofearth

These are stories which contain no spoilers about "Children of Earth," and do not take place during that time period of the series.

I've only tagged back as far as July 6th, the day "Children of Earth" began to air. If you want to read non-"Children of Earth" stories I bookmarked before then, just go to the main bookmark page and scroll/page until you get to July 5th. You're safe from there on back. :)

ETA: Playing the part of my brain, [livejournal.com profile] adina_atl has reminded me how easily the Bulk Edit function works (we won't mention that I used it to add the new tag to all the recent stories and then failed to think about the fact that it would work on all my tags at once, no really), and I've gone ahead and tagged all my bookmarks with "nochildrenofearth" as appropriate. That means that if you begin by using that tag and keep adding other tags to it (there's a list of + tags to the right when you get to the bookmark page), you will not encounter "Children of Earth" stories. Yes, it means that a huge majority of my bookmarks are tagged that way, but that's not really a problem and it does mean that readers can surf un-spoiled. I hope. :)

For those who do want to read more stories about "Children of Earth," I've tagged everything having to do with it with "spoilers:childrenofearth." I've also tagged most of the stories "torchwood:series3" and, where applicable, "torchwood:post-series3."

Also be aware that the "torchwood:post-series" tag--which covers stories that take place in the far-enough future to be unlikely to ever be covered by canon--may include "Children of Earth" spoilers even if there's not a specific Series 3 tag. In that case, there will be a "spoilers:childrenofearth" tag in place. As a final warning, be aware that some of the tags on "Children of Earth" stories may in themselves be spoilers.

(ETA September 6, 2009: It's been two months now since "Children of Earth" aired, and most communities have eased up on spoiler protection. I've thought about whether or not to stop using the spoiler tags, and have decided that, for now, I'll continue to use both the "nochildrenofearth" tag and the "spoilers:childrenofearth" tag for at least another month. It's very likely that I will eventually drop the "spoilers:childrenofearth" tag, but I may continue to use the "nochildrenofearth" one, simply because I can see where readers might want to filter those stories.)
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This list was posted in response to this particular request for Jack/Ianto smutty fluff stories, but there have been several requests for stories on similar themes. So, I made two lists: One for stories that are fluff (without necessarily having sex in them), and another for stories that are mostly about sex. The PWP list fits into the spirit of the fluff list; nothing dark or heavy or angsty, just lots of sex. The request was also for shorter stories, but fluff and PWP stories tend to be self-limiting, so I just left the few longer stories on the list.

I've tagged the listed stories on Delicious as follows:

Fluff Stories: storyfinder:fluff

PWP Stories: storyfinder:pwp

Combined List: storyfinder:pwpfluff

Jack/Ianto Fluff )

Jack/Ianto PWP Stories )
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I am slowly plowing through stories from the TARDIS Big Bang. As I read, I'm tagging the stories I liked on Delicious, under the "tardisbigbang" tag. (This tag does cover stories from both rounds, although I haven't got around to wholesale tagging of Round 1.)

Recommendations so far )

I've also finally cleared out the 300+ stories from the folder where I dump newly saved stories, and as a result there are quite a few new Torchwood recs up. While they're skewed towards newer stories, there's a mix of older stuff in there as well.
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This was a two-fold request, first for stories where Ianto is unappreciated, and second for stories where Ianto is Myfanwy's caretaker, where he talks to her or otherwise treats her as if she were a normal pet.

In reponse to the first request, I posted this link referring to an earlier post where the seeker was also looking for unappreciated Ianto stories (also reposted under my "torchwood finder lists" tag). I also re-linked a few of those below, because they fit both parameters. I'll be retroactively tagging the first set as "storyfinder:unappreciatedianto" and the second set as "storyfinder:ianto&myfanwy." Or both, as the case may be. :)

Unappreciated Ianto + Ianto&Myfanwy )

Ianto&Myfanwy )
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Another list from a couple of weeks ago. This request was for stories about Ianto and Tosh, either as friends or in a relationship. These will be tagged on Delicious as "storyfinder:ianto&tosh" for friendship stories, and "storyfinder:ianto/tosh" for stories about them having a sexual or romantic relationship.

Ianto&Tosh (Friendship) )

Ianto/Tosh (Sex/Romance) )
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I saw this on [community profile] metafandom, and think it's important to share:

Nerdy PSA by [personal profile] hope

It's a brief guide to some important information about using the right HTML to make your posts and/or pages more accessible to people who might, for instance, be using text-reading programs. I was really embarrassed to not know that the em and strong tags have an important function for text readers, that they actually affect the inflection of the reading, unlike bold and italics tags. I also wasn't using the title tag for my links--at least up until now--and I wasn't always careful about making the linked text informative. This is what happens when you learn just enough HTML to be dangerous around 1997-8 and never upgrade.

A lot of the information in [personal profile] hope's post is from the HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. I feel that this will be an invaluable resource to help me join the 21st century. :)
dmarley: Fingerpainting (Default)
Request number one was for stories featuring pheromones, and request number two, made shortly thereafter, was for "aliens/sex pollen/alien tech made them do it." Since the two requests more or less overlapped, I've smushed them together in one post. All the stories carry the usual dub-con implications that go with the AMTDI trope, but I've also noted the stories that go well beyond that base assumption and into non-con.

I've also been working on my Delicious tags this week, and have a) caught up with my "totag" tag and b) starting adding tags for storyfinder request lists. This set, for instance, will (hopefully soon) be tagged with "storyfinder:pheromones" and "storyfinder:aliensmadethemdoit." I have also laboriously divorced my personal bookmarks from this Delicious account, since it was just too unwieldly to have the tags for my 1000+ personal bookmarks cluttering up the tags I really use.

Stories featuring pheromones )

Aliens, etc., made them do it )
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Every year, my mom takes myself and Boo to the beach. Boo drew a picture of the beach, and as it encapsulates our experience pretty well, I thought I'd share.

Boo's Drawing of the Beach )
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I am pin-less, cast-less and have the ability to be splint-less at will. I still have a couple of stitches in (literally, like, two stitches), but those will be coming out next week. I'm cleared to do pretty much anything I want so long as it doesn't hurt beyond certain parameters. At the moment, those parameters are very small, but it's nice to be able to eat a meal without worrying about breaking my pins lifting a soup spoon.

Medical Details )

Personal Details )

The timing of all this good-feeling is fortuitous, as it turns out. Boo's school is going to be closed today and Monday because more than 30 kids (about a quarter of the student body) and half the teachers are sick with the flu. They haven't specified if it's H1N1 or suspected H1N1, which irritates me greatly because, hello, I'd like to know, but the school is advising everyone to avoid other people for a few days. The Jewish Community Center will be taking kids from Metro schools in the daycare-aftercare program, but kids from Akiva need to stay home. That means it'll be just me and Boo. As much as it's inconvenient, and as much as I don't want Boo or me or Al or anyone else to get sick, it's also kind of nice to be able to take care of my own kid for the first time in weeks. :)

We have also released Tom back into the wild. Or tried. We opened up the garage door for him, but as of a few minutes ago he was still hiding under his favorite shelf. He seems to be very well healed up, no sign of his injuries apart from a slight bald patch on his foot. Boo has been taking care of his medication for the last few days, and has proved a very able assistant.

In other words, the household is on the mend. :)

ETA: I should really learn not to tempt fate by posting things like the previous sentence. Right after posting the above I realized that I didn't actually feel that well. Current condition: sore throat, aches, fever 100 degrees.

I would headdesk, except that would hurt. I'll headpillow instead.
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This poster was seeking hurt/comfort stories where a member of the team was delirious. Not surprisingly, in most of the stories I found, that team member was Ianto.

Delerium )

I've realized that there's often a lot of overlap on these lists. There are certain types of stories that get asked for a lot, and certain stories that seem to fit into many of those types. I suppose repetition is inevitable.
dmarley: Fingerpainting (Default)
I had my final cast removed yesterday, and am sporting a highly fashionable black Velcro splint. All I have to do is refrain from breaking my pins until Monday.

Surgery details )

In other cat news, I took Greebo in for his checkup on Tuesday. While I had Tom there, I realized that I might as well get Greebo his (overdue) shots and have him looked at. Greebo is nine years old, so I wasn't surprised that he needed his teeth cleaned. Apparently they have a nifty anesthetic that the cats can breathe that doesn't stay in their systems, so they can put older cats under for non-critical procedures like teeth cleaning. This was something we were never able to do with Sylvester. As seems to happen, he didn't need his teeth cleaned until he was too old to have his teeth cleaned. But Greebo is going to have his done in three weeks.

I also found out why, despite the fact that he was obviously huge, my other vet never mentioned Greebo's weight.

Pictures of my big-boned cat )

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