My Blue Castle

Considering hiding in my office all day and doing as little as possible. Can't I just watch scrapbooking videos? Was down with a migraine and a couple of nightmares yesterday and am pretty wiped out. Oodles of work stuff to do but zero enthusiasm to do it. Also I can feel the headache looming back there behind my brain. The bastard.

yuck. today isn't fired so much as laid off. on hiatus. 

I'll just be here at my desk hoping the day goes fast. And thinking about how I have to get some writing done soon. Two Lewis fics due before the end of the month! 

*hides from real life*

so.... I just made a list of everything I need to get done at work today, and freaked out a little. then pal CeeCee called to make a date for lunch, so that was good. But before I launch into web stuff, and paperwork and more paperwork ... here I am to say HI!

Our weekend theatrical adventures went okay. it was the first time out for this 1800s theme, so there are surely improvements that we can make. And it was a hideously humid day which I'm sure didn't help.

My station with the stamp and ink pad crafty thing (we were making fake horn books, but it took WAY to long to explain a horn book to the parents much less the kids, so I just called it a Saturday School Lesson. 

I was suitably terrified, and not helped by the fact that the girls working at the coffee shop where I had my stop didn't know I was coming. ugh. So NERVES for a little over 2 hours, and I saw about a dozen kids. And naturally the annoying ones arrived about five minutes before I had to pack up and head down to the town park. But Miss Marmalade handled it! :)

Then down to the park for country dance lesson (gosh am I out of shape!) (um. also it was, as mentioned very hot and humid!).

Then JUST as we started our finale set piece ... Professor Bigler's Travelling Patent Medicine Show ... Like 2 minutes in we had everyone stand and sing the Star Spangled Banner (hello small town wonderfulness) and we had no sooner started singing then the heavens opened up and it POURED DOWN RAIN. All the while the sky overhead was blue and full of sweet white fluffy clouds mocking us! So we scrapped the sack race finale, axed most of the rest of the performance, and just gave out sack race prizes and packed up and went back to Cee Cee's and collapsed!

Amusingly, the big hit of the day seemed to be the butter making. Not so much at the kids butter making station-- though they enjoyed it -- but we found ourselves making at least three batches of butter in jam jars for dinner :)) It's really cool and easy. Fill a jam jar about half or a third full of heavy cream. shake. Anywhere between 2 and 10 minutes depending on the amount of cream and how hard you shake the jar. it will go first to whipped cream, and then if you keep shaking the butter will form, and the buttermilk will separate out. Then all you need to do is drain off the buttermilk, and then salt to taste. Unless you really work it and drain it you do pretty much need to use it up as it will sour pretty quickly. But soft dreamy yummy butter ... it's SO GOOD!

So these things are exhausting, and fun, but the best thing is hanging with my pals afterwords. I end up with a sore throat from talking because I just don't get to TALK to people most of the time. So YAY! And onwards to our fake radio shows at the end of the month! 

Next year for this event ... we're thinking STEAMPUNK! :)

so yeah, it's friday and I'd rather be at home working on my Lewis fic(s) and watching Olympics coverage. What can I say I love me a spectacle...

I SUSPECT that my very fave scrapbooker, who lives in London, might be part of the opening ceremonies. She's been hinting at a super seekrit project involving dance, the Olympics, background checks, and very nearly the official secrets act. From which I can only assume she's performing in said ceremonies. But maybe not, we'll wait and see. :)

Thanks to my cableco's ondemand thing, last night I watched a couple of episodes of TNTs new series Perception starring Eric McCormack as a schizo neuroscience professor who solves crime while dealing with a tenuous grasp on reality. No really. I like Lewicki his teaching assistant and live in sort-of-nanny. And Levar Burton is his department chair (or something admin like at his Chicago U). I think my problem is I don't especially care for his ex-student perky girl FBI/cop type person who drags him in to help her solve cases. Not sure if its the acting or the writing or some combo of the two but she's pretty two dimensional right now. But she has an awesome fat cat, so I guess that's something LOL! Pretty much its just A Beautiful Mind the TV series ... and gives Eric the obligatory lecture scenes for him to monologue about how awesome wicked cool our brains are.

So much work|work to do, so little inclination to do it.

Um, yeah, there was probably something else but now I can't remember what ... so more later if I remember!

Today's been just full of real life drama at ye olde workplace ... and more to come tomorrow when the NCAA hands down their sanctions. At least we get to keep the partial name of the library whereat I work. *shrug*

So while things are messed up in RL ... go and read this Merlin fic if you're into Merlin AU's

The Practice Boyfriend (24495 words) by giselleslash
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Merlin (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon, Elena/Gwaine (Merlin), Lancelot du Lac/Merlin
Characters: Merlin (Merlin), Arthur Pendragon, Gwaine (Merlin), Elena (Merlin), Morgana (Merlin), Lancelot du Lac
Summary:

Merlin’s been in love with Lance for years, but he hasn’t had much experience dating and he wants to figure out the ins and outs of dating before Lance comes back into his life. Cue Arthur and his manwhoring ways, ready and willing to show Merlin the ropes.

It's just the fluffliest, sweetest, nicest fic I've read in a while. (fluffliest is a typo, but I like it! :)

meanwhile I'll settle down on the couch for tv (Lewis 6.3 later tonight!!) and thinking about those Lewis ficlets I need to write.

Because naturally there's a Tumblr for everything ... there's one for pictures of Tom Hardy hugging people (and pets) (and Dark Knights). LOL

http://isitcuddletime.tumblr.com/

Oh Tommy!

(I especially like the one where he's hugging Benedict Cumberbatch and thoughtfully getting his suit jacket crumpled so we have a better view of his arse. But maybe that's just me. LOLSNARK)

In the last couple of weeks I think I have read most/much/the bulk of the Lewis fic out there. There is not surprisingly a lot of hurt/comfort, a lot of curtains fic, and a fair amount of Hathaway = woobie. Or some combo of all three. 

There's also enough fic which has Hathaway wearing makeup to work to make it a _thing_. I don't know, enough anyway for me to note "hey there's fic about that." 

And while I'm all for people writing whatever fic they want to write, my headcanon for Hathway doesn't include base and mascara (or sparkly pink glittery hairspray for his off hours for that matter unless he were headed to a rave-y club kind of thing ...)

BUT

Most of my fic is usually sparked by an image I get in my head. And having seen in my head for reasons mysterious to me, Lewis fixing Hathaway's eye makeup, I kind of can't stop unseeing it. Which makes me think I should write a fic about it. But I kind of can't because my headcanon won't let me. I can't find a REASON for it, a story logic or whatever.

I realized this morning in the shower I could make it work as RPF, if I could figure out a reason for smudgey makeup w/o makeup persons etc. But I haven't seen any RPF in this fandom and on the off chance that I might someday write it I don't know that I'd post it so as not to step on any fandom toes, although otoh Laurence Fox's tweets are fanservice to the nth degree :) 

Anyway ... not the point. I'm as mystified as I can be why this image won't leave me. I find some things in fics sexy. Boys wearing makeup isn't generally one of them. And it I were going to write it I'd more likely do it with AU Merlin/Arthur ... or Eames in a dream or s/thing... not two world-weary Oxford cops!

But hey... its a bunny. And maybe some day I'll figure out how to write it. Meanwhile welcome to my brain.

So I might possibly have sprung for all all-region dvd player and the UK versions of the first five seasons of Lewis today. Paydays are dangerous, yo. and not all the fault of wanting to see the full versions of Lewis. I've been thinking about a all/multi-region dvd player for a while now. 

also a pale pink ink pad and a brown pen for my scrapbooking. 

I totally need/want a nap as I was up for about an hour between 3-4 this morning thanks to a nasty storm that blew through. constant thunder and lightning for at least half an hour and wind and rain like crazy. had to drag downed limbs off my driveway to get out and go to work this morning. the winds shifted my trash can 3 feet to the right and flipped the lid open.

and having finished up a giant project at work just now I am going to try and do as little as possible between now and 5pm!

Happy Weekend!!!

So I've gotten through all the Lewis episodes except the 4 series 6 ones. can't put my fingers on them legally, and haven't had the time to sort of whether I can get them other ways. But they're being aired next month on PBS Sunday nights (hence the lack of ready availability), so if I have to wait I suppose I can.

Meanwhile I think I've read most of the Lewis fic on AO3, save those fics marked at explicitly s.6 post-eps. I try not to spoil myself if I can help it. But having read a lot of fic, its amazing how woobie'd Hathaway gets. Not all that surprising given fandoms tendency to do that. But at least there isn't much Dr. Hobson bashing. 

Also not surprisingly I have somewhat the same reaction I had to a lot of the Sherlock fic. I am fine reading the slash, but I really want fic that really looks at a complex friendship between two men. The fact that they work together and Lewis is Hathaway's boss... there's far too much handwaving in the fics about how this should just go away and be a non issue so we can skip to the naughty bits. 

Anyway ... it's all lovely and I've started a re-watch to keep me going till I can check off the last 4/24 episodes! LOL

So I guess its good that I can make myself laugh like a loon. 

Being sort of apathetic about yesterday's Movie Monday, I decided I would go and see the Norwegian film playing at the Performing Arts Center where I used to work part time. Dunno exactly why. Was just in a mood for something different. 

So I get there and I'm chatting to the projectionist who'm I've known and done theater with since the good old days. 

Behind me in line was a local Uni theater professor who works in films and TV occasionally in addition to his teaching gig(s), and he's also currently running for local office. I do not think he actually knows who I am. I do not think we've ever formally met. But he might have a vague sense that he's seen me hanging around the theater stuff that goes on locally.

At any rate we three are having a low key chat about the crazyness of the press/news vans/etc back in my town, and then his wife arrived and we all wandered off and I didn't think too much about it. 

The film ... Headhunters ... was -- save for some of the OTT violence and stabbity -- was pretty good. I hear they're looking at making a Hollywood version which will no doubt star someone like Mark Walberg ... and Benicio del Toro will be the bad guy!

Mostly it was amusing to see Jamie Lannister Nickolaj Coster-Waldau up there going to gallery openings and drinking coffee and speaking (presumably) Norwegian. (Nickolaj is Danish, so kudos if so for an acting career in at least three languages!)

Anyway, the point of all this is that as I was walking back to my car I was idly thinking ... "self, you just saw a movie with a guy (the theater prof) who's done a movie with Bruce Willis (Diehard)." And that made me smile in a vague "I know someone who knows someone whose famous" kind of way.

INSERT MANIAC LAUGHING FIT

...when my brain caught up to the fact that Theater prof KNOWS NICKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU given that he was in one episode of the short-lived series Amsterdam that starred Nickolaj. (Anyone remember that series? I rather liked it -- maybe the premise more than the execution. Theater prof played N's one-time father-in-law in an episode). 

Well it made me laugh. a lot. so bonus! :D

(Also, I should hit up the PAC for more movies. They're cheaper than the local cineplex, and you can get a giant bucket of popcorn for $2. Also beer!)

I just attended (virtually) a demo of screen readers. Accessibility is big here, and since I'm deputized to do web page stuff, I thought I'd better check it out. 

Totally useful, but MAN annoying to listen to. And then I found myself thinking about Auggie (as everything is sort of filtered through a fandom filter for me lately!) on Covert Affairs and while he clearly has a braille translator hooked up to his computer (the little doodad in front of his keyboard where the wrist rest usually is), all that chatter in his ears all day long must be so wearying. Made me want fic where he just craves silence, except of course, that's taking away another sense.

All of which is totally wtf!random but it's better than the other crap floating through my head today.