Merry Christmas (almost)! We've survived the family dinner and gift-opening and are currently collapsing before the 11:00 service.

Today's song is "Personent Hodie," performed by the Cambridge Singers. It's nice and perky.

( lyrics )

( translation )

There. I think I am done with the shopping. I had to pick up some tape to wrap presents with, and before you know it, I was picking up paper and boxes, and oh! another little present, and so on and so forth. Evan and I had a lovely lunch together, and shopped separately, which was awesome. I am so glad that he's old enough to be able to mall it by himself.

So now I need to do laundry and other home things, but man. I just want to play video games or watch tv or read LJ. I do finally have a draft of the 3ships story, so that's a yay! I wish I had the wherewithal to be able to write a yuletide madness snippet, but such is not to be.

I started new day hours...but on the other hand I'm still working. So I'm quazi happy about that. Have a good weekend. It's been requested that I post more. Since I'll be home earlier in the day an my computer is no longer dead I'll try to do that. No promises but I'll try. *HUGS*

Wrote this last year -- a combination of two wonderful Christmas specials. In the Supernatural 'verse, and completely safe for general consumption. (May contain some nuts.)

Feliz Noche Bueno a todos.

Seuppernatural

I wrote this story 11 years ago for Sentinel fandom. Sometimes you need to re-invent a celebration to truly feel it again. (One LOC thanked me for giving the reader back the joy of the season after all the stress and work of a "traditional" Christmas had bogged her down.)

Oh, and ask me how freaking thrilled I was when Sheldon produced his bust of Sir Isaac Newton on the Christmas episode of "Big Bang Theory" this season.

( The branch that bears... )

Time for some more brass. Here's the Illinois Brass Band performing "The Christmas Song."

I might survive this week....

It's only 2 hours and change until Santa mounts up and dashes away, all! See for yourself! NORAD tracks Santa all the way through his flight, and those lovely personnel at NORAD will be there answering emails and phone calls from children for the duration. (If you feel like giving them some cheer, just shoot them an email thanking them; you can bet that will brighten a volunteer's night.) For those who don't know the story of why NORAD does this -- it's here.

eeeeeeSANTA! Swing by here on your way! I have some stuff that needs delivering!! :D :D

I haven't been online much (oh December at work, how I love you NOT), but I whizzed past A03 this morning, and when I clicked on the "White Collar" tag, as one does, I saw that there are eight new stories all wrapped up and ready for the big Yuletide reveal. Which will increase the number of White Collar stories on the archive by about 25%. And Yuletide madness may bring us MOAR. And there are also a whole lot of prezzies under the tree for Leverage, and NCIS: GAY.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

to quote the Pointer Sisters, I'm so excited.

Also posted at Dreamwidth.

I fixed the broken link to last night's Jethro Tull song, so if you were having trouble, go for it.

And Happy Birthday, darthhellokitty!!!

I like to think of her as a Christmas present that Santa delivered a couple of days early. XD

A very, very happy birthday to the utterly delightful and adorable darthhellokitty!!!!!!

*waves at the internets* Quick update on the State of the Melle: visiting the family in Belgium, had a lovely 29th birthday on Sunday, and found out that I am actually, genuinly, related to an actual, genuine Saint, which is kinda awesome. :D

And yes, assorted pushy people, I'm working on fic. :p

The song that played during the scene where Kyle and Oliver almost made love on One Life to Live, "My Confession" is now available on iTunes.

I would love to have it, especially since ABC Daytime went out and had a song written just for Kyle and Oliver. MY SHOW, you guys. MY SHOW.

Problem is, it's on iTunes. I cannot access the iTunes store with my Eee PC or Lek's. (I've checked the Amazon mp3 store, which I can easily get to and use. It's not there.)

Would any of you mind snagging it for me in DRM-free mp3 format? I'd be willing to pay you back in some way, of course.

The artist is Rie Sinclair & Friends.

Help, please?

I just heard this one for the first time yesterday--it came on the car radio, and I grabbed my iPhone and used Shazam to track it down: "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow," by Jethro Tull. From what I can tell it was released around 2004, but it seems to have passed me by.

( lyrics )

Hi! I'm leaving for Michigan on a train tomorrow, and I won't be back until the wee hours of the 27th. I most likely will not have internet access during this time (oh, dial-up), but I've taken the 28th off work to read yuletide stories!

The wireless on my new Windows 7 PC mysteriously stopped working over the weekend. I may have just fixed it. Sort of? This is good because I have a pinch-hit to write. And also laundry to do, dinner to make and eat, luggage to pack, and Christmas presents that also have to fit into my luggage somehow.

Laundry's in, electronics are charging, I have red wine, and now I must stop surfing the internet and write like the wind.

'Tis the season for food orgies at work. Brownies and cookies and pastries, OH MY. I have a plate on my desk right now full of stuff; it'll probably take me two days to eat it all. What a hardship. *scarfs happily*

( cut for personal stuff )

Anyway, enough of that. I have a question about Yuletide Madness. Can anyone explain to me how I can search the participant spreadsheet in Google Docs? I would really like to search for one or two particular fandoms, but I can't figure out how do so, and I'm really not up to searching every single page of the original 'dear Yuletide writer' post. I'm not that determined. *g* Any suggestions would be awesome.

And re my post from a couple days ago - Probst agrees with me about the outcome of this season's Survivor, and so does Dalton Ross at EW. And then Linda Holmes at NPR offers a thought-provoking essay on why we are all wrong, which I think many on my flist would agree with.

The AO3 is holding up fine under the Yuletide load (though I imagine the coders, testers, and support staff are frenetic) -- but Yahoogroups suspended elynross's account for sending out so many pinch hits! A backup list has been set up: if you're interested in doing some Yuletide pinchhitting, send a blank email to yuletidepinchhitters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. To activate your subscription, just reply to the confirmation message you receive from the group. Or if you have a Yahoo! account, you can join at the group website. I just joined, even though I haven't written anything in years, just in case I can help out.

ETA: huh, it occurs to me that I don't even know if non-Yuletiders can pinch-hit! Probably not. Therefore my joining the list is irrelevant. But I do know that anyone with an AO3 account can participate in Yuletide Madness, the last desperate push to make sure that all Yuletiders have a gift on the 25th. And it's very unlikely that I'll be able to write anything anyway -- but maybe I will...

[a Dreamwidth post! | read comments at Dreamwidth | post a comment at Dreamwidth | How to use OpenID]

Happy Solstice! I'm very ready to welcome back the sun at this point.

And here's a song from Sufjan Stevens, The Winter Solstice. It's an instrumental, and it's nice.

So, about these Sufjan Stevens holiday songs: I was introduced to Sufjan Stevens ages ago, when miraminx (whom I still miss horribly) mentioned his "Illinois" as an example of music she wouldn't listen to if it were the last CD on earth. (I may be exaggerating, but not much.) I thought it sounded intriguing, and I listened to a bit of it, but I didn't buy it until king_chiron posted about it several months later. I ordered the CD, loved it, and bought "Michigan" not long after.

Sufjan has, apparently, been recording EPs of holiday music as presents for friends and family for several years, and, in 2006, he released five EPs as a box set, Songs for Christmas. I just got it, and it's lots of fun--there's a booklet, and stickers, and comics, and each disk has its own cover. The music is a mixed bag--some of it is trite, but he has some interesting takes on traditional songs, and some of his original songs are great. I don't think I'll ever listen t the whole thing again, but there are a bunch of songs I'm going to get into iTunes.

As The World Turns - My interest in the show (which was admittedly low even when Luke and Noah were on) has plummeted to the point where I'm almost not caring if I stop to watch the preview for the next episode.

Days of Our Lives - I'm not sure what it says about me that the ideal episodes of Days using the current cast would alternate scenes of Victor/Vivian/Kate snarking at each other with scenes of the various hot guys in Salem being shirtless together for various reasons.

...now that I think about it, that sounds dangerously close to Passions. Maybe Days should stay the way it is. I'll just keep fast-forwarding to the storylines that interest me and hope for a freak heatwave to hit Salem sometime soon.

Melrose Place 2.0 - I'm done. Especially after the most recent episode. ( Read more... )

One Life to Live - Oh, ABC Daytime. Please to be bringing back the closed captioning for your soaps. It's there on SoapNet, so why isn't it on ABC? How awkward was that promotional insert for Nine? It was terrible, but you know what? If that's what it takes to keep my show on the air, they can do a daily/weekly storyline advertising thing. ( Read more... )

A blessed and merry solstice to all!

The current count of Things for the season:

Shirts made - 4 (this isn't quite cheating, they were all made After Thanksgiving, even if they are for me :-)) Flannel, blue tye-dye corduroy, red calico cats, blue morris floral.

Shirts to go - 6 (for various dates & people, hopefully all done by 12th night) blue, feathers, yellow 1, shell, ysflowers, tbd 1, tbd 2

Batches of EggNog - 3

Stories Finished-
HLH_Shortcuts: 1

Yuletide: 1

Fest Stories in progress: 3, so far. 1 should be done & postable when the Yuletide archive opens again after the pinch-hits are determined/sent. The other two aren't as certain. And I am hoping to maintain my streak of at least 4 stories in 4 fandoms for Yuletide.

Bam Margera did a holiday special/movie. For Warner Home Video. It is seriously weird to see a project from one of the Jackass guys that doesn't involve Paramount or some small studio. (I didn't pay for it, it was on MTV.)

April: "Is this a holiday ding-ding show?"

( Read more... )

I tried valiantly to survive Moonlight & Mistletoe, which has Christopher Wiehl in a starring role. (It also has Matthew Walton from One Life to Live in a supporting role, so... bonus!) But also starring? Tom Arnold and Candace Cameron-Bure as father and daughter.

Even with liberal use of the fast-forward button, I only made it through thirty-something minutes before giving up completely and deleting it from the DVR.

...can anyone explain the Star Trek reboot DVD ads airing on TV now? Guys talking about the movie and acting like they were alone until the reboot hit theaters. "Turns out there were millions of us!" I don't get it. Were all of these men unaware of the internet? Of the Star Trek series after the original one?

And 1700 stories uploaded. My story is in there, but it took me a few edits to get the header all fixed. I am on pins and needles waiting to see how close we come to the having everything uploaded.

I turned in one of the books I'm working on today, and I'm ahead of schedule on the other, so I can kick back and get to the gym clean the house take a shower.

I podficced! I podded a fic? I sat on my bed and read one of astolat's Merlin stories to xenakis's tiny adorable MP3 recorder, and only screwed up right at the end, and I hope I started the paragraph over in such a way that xenakis can just clip out the screwup. Next up: another one of astolat's Merlin stories.

The Archive of Our Own now has almost four thousand users and more than thirty thousand stories, and although I don't do Yuletide I've been having a ton of fun reading yuletide-admin and watching everybody squee. Also, watching the Collections functionality of the AO3 come into being is seriously awesome. There have been a few bugs, but judging from yuletide-admin they've all been handled quickly and well -- my god, I cannot imagine how hard the coders and testers have been working, and I want to give them all hand massages and cups of tea. And the functionality looks great. There are already a couple of other collections on the AO3, as well as Yuletide, and things are really going to get interesting when the subscriptions functionality arrives.

I stalled out on uploading my stuff to the AO3 a while back, but I will get back to it. Having my ISP crash and burn a while ago really made me want a secure place for my fic; my ISP did come back and my website is alive, but I still want an archive of my own. And I can has one! (And so can you!)

I betaed a Yuletide story, which made me happy. I love betaing.

And I gave away my old heavy futon sofabed on Freecycle, which freed up enough space in the basement for a treadmill. I've already bought a laptop shelf for it, which should be waiting for me at my parents' when we go down to visit them on the 26th.

And we're going to visit my folks on the 26th!

Meanwhile, I have been entertaining myself, and getting exercise in the form of aerobic eyerolling, reading up on Andrew Blake, he who used to be Amy Player/Victoria Bitter/Jordan Wood/Mr. Frodo/etc. I very rarely look at fandom_wank -- it often leaves me feeling depressed about people and vaguely unclean -- but this time I cannot look away. EVIL TWIN SISTER. It just doesn't get better than that.

Okay, time for that shower. Whee!

[a Dreamwidth post! | read comments at Dreamwidth | post a comment at Dreamwidth | How to use OpenID]

Alaina Reed Hall, who played Olivia for 12 years on the PBS kids' show, died on December 17 in Los Angeles.

Among the highlights from her career (aside from Sesame Street), she starred in Broadway and Off-Broadway productions such as Chicago, Hair, and Eubie. After 12 years on Sesame Street, she joined the cast of 227, playing Rose.

A more in-depth remembrance can be found here.

I don't know if I'll be able to watch Christmas Eve on Sesame Street at all now. And who else watched 227 just because Olivia from Sesame Street was on it?

Short week for some soaps due to Christmas. (I believe Days and ATWT are airing all week, while the ABC soaps are just Monday-Wednesday with a random repeat on Thursday. For OLTL, it's an episode from September when the Llanview PD are big damn heroes rescuing Starr and Hope from the evil mobsters/drug lords. If we're lucky, it's the one where we get to see Bo and John roll into the warehouse.)

As The World Turns spoilers ( Just the Luke/Noah )

One Life to Live spoilers ( Just the Kyle/Oliver/Nick )

Louise at Serial Drama talks about last week on OLTL and I agree with most of what she had to say. (Except for the parts I fast-forwarded past. Heh.)

Congratulations to Scott Evans, Brett Claywell, Nicholas Rodriquez and Ron Carlivati, the men behind the gay storyline on OLTL for being named AfterElton's Men of the Year in the 2009 Visibility Awards.

( Survivor winner spoilers )

In other news: Yuletide story completed and uploaded, yay! As of this writing, 974 stories have been uploaded, which is less than half. (ETA: 1016 now! Things are picking up!) Which actually means that in the next 19 hours, about 1200 people need to upload. Theoretically. Not factoring in all the defaults which resulted in pinch hits, and I'm sure there are many. Good times!

Bed now. (PS: GO COWBOYS OMG \o/. Next up: we flip a coin to see whether Romo will be Consistent Romo or Can't Complete A Pass Romo against the Redskins. It's always so tricky to predict such things.)

This one is a little unusual, in that it's not one of my favorite songs. [g] It's called "A Little Christmas Music," by the King's Singers with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and it's fun, but I find it a bit over the top. Lots of people will like it, though, so I thought I'd make it available. Give it a try and see what you think.

And in case it's too much, here's a more staid version of "Deck the Hall," performed by the Cambridge Singers.

My sister and I grocery-shopped in the morning, and then I dropped by my local taqueria to pick up the dozen tamales I'd ordered. Sister and her son came over; and we spent a cold wet afternoon eating tamales and ribs, listening to quiet instrumental carols, playing Scrabble, and napping.

Halfway through the game and my first cup of peppermint tea, I murmured, "Wait. Shouldn't we be elbowing our way through a screaming department store right about now?"

"You're thinking of five years ago," my sister replied, and we went back to watching my nephew glare at his tiles and thumb through the dictionary.

***

After the family experiences we've both had, we both agree that the two best things about Christmas are the food and the peace; a long day of napping and nibbling trumps anything that might come with packages, boxes or bags.

And we both agree that family togetherness is a wonderful thing -- when taken in extreme moderation, and definitely not connected to any sort of holiday.

It's that time of year again!

Poll #1501350 Yuletide Season
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 172

My Yuletide story is:

My holiday shopping is:

This is the kind of Sunday I am having:

Do you have a snowpocalypse?

If shrift pulls off a miracle and writes a story for her birthday, what fandom should it be?

Sting made this song popular, but I'm not crazy about his version. This is "Gabriel's Message" sung by The Elizabethan Singers. It's not very long, but it's a nice song.

( lyrics )

People should not be allowed to have birthdays right near Christmas.*

*Irony fully intended.

(I don't know how many of you are interested, but just in case.)

Next Saturday, December 26th, ABC Kids will be showing the final two episodes of Power Rangers RPM, "Destiny and Destruction" Parts 1 and 2. (Check local listings. Some ABC affiliates aren't showing PR. I don't know.)

And by series finale I mean finale. This is it for new Power Rangers for the foreseeable future. Seventeen years of PR comes to an end next Saturday. Seventeen years. Who would've thought that teenagers in spandex fighting bad guys would last so long?

Disney's going back to the beginning starting January 2nd with digitally remastered Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers on ABC Kids.

Just home from Christmas shopping, and I have to say, it's a lot less stressful late at night. Tiring, though.

Here's an interesting version of "White Christmas," by The Trophy Fire--it's from a CD called A Foggy Holiday-Carols From The SF Scene, Vol. 1. I haven't heard any of the other songs, but I'm going to check into them--if they're as good as "White Christmas," they'd make a good collection.

I have no cookie icons, sadness. (However Lapillus made me one, so happiness too!) When I came home from work today to many, many cookies. There was apparently a festive baking day, so there are now: macaroons, sugar cookies, chocolate peppermint pinwheels, some sort of haystack cookie, lemon volcanoes, chocolate chip bar cookies, and a shortbread. The house smells terrific. I've sampled a couple of types, but most of these are for holiday exchange gifts, so they are not to be touched.

Help me.

How can Christmas be a week from today???? I need more time.

Matt and I have been working so hard on Christmas stuff for his mom that we're insanely behind on our own. We've bought one (1) present so far, and that's a scrapbook that I'm making for his mom from their 50th anniversary party photos--it's not even done, but it's close. Which wouldn't be so bad, except we've got a bunch of presents that need to be sent down south. We've got her Christmas letter pretty much ready to go, and we're trying to get her to finish going through her addresses and making corrections, so we should get her cards out today or tomorrow... but we haven't even started our own. Matt got her apartment decorated the weekend after Thanksgiving; we still have boxes everywhere.

*sigh*

She's getting more and more frail by the week. We're expecting her to have to move into assisted living sometime next year, and she's going to hate that, but she's getting to the point where she just can't live on her own--she could barely get out of a chair without help even before breaking her wrist. (Which is doing much better, thank heavens. She's still wearing a splint, but she says it's hardly bothering her any more.)

So, today: Finish the scrapbook, take care of the presents that need to be shipped. Tomorrow: Our Christmas cards. Clean house. Decide on Christmas Eve menu. Sunday: More cleaning. Bake cookies. Avoid watching the Bears get pummelled by the Ravens. Monday: Christmas shopping liek woah.

This'll be over soon, right?

If you have money to give at the end of this year, or you know of a charity that desperately could use some donations, considering posting over at givtree. mz_bstone created The Giving Tree a few months ago, and I know she'd like to see more traffic at the community.

This reminder brought to you by someone who has two thumbs and recently gave an end of year donation to the EFF, and not just because I'll be getting an xkcd T-shirt featuring a WOMAN wanting to be a superhero.

And now I shall drink some South African Syrah while making "OMGWTF BEND TO MY WILL" hand gestures at my yuletide story.

P.S. Oh, my god, you guys. There has been so much crazed heavy lifting going on trying to get the AO3 ready for Yuletide, and the day has finally arrived! I need a nap, and I didn't even do that much. Remember to love your amazing, international, and predominantly female coding and testing team this holiday season.

Here's a traditional English song: "The Boar's Head Carol," performed by the King's Singers.

( lyrics )

I've gotta start doing this earlier....

Here's Empire Brass performing "The First Nowell," one of my favorite Christmas songs. I'm completely incapable of singing any part other than alto on this one--it's kind of annoying.

( lyrics, not that there's singing in this version )