Birthday! And Quote Your Own Fic... Special Edition

A Very Happy Birthday to fer1213!!!

I couldn't quite manage to turn out any new fic for a present, but...

( Quote Your Own Fic - The All-Sex Version, NC-17 )

But anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! I hope you have a great one, sweetie!

Today is also the birthday of outofthisworld, who I haven't seen around LJ much recently. (Cue one of those "woe, where has the fandom gone!?" moments, sigh....) If you're checking in today, we haven't forgotten you, hon! Have a great day!

Randomness

More updates for today - I think I'm gonna be a spamming a little.

One of those fun things about the Web
Even sites that aren't really maintained any more sometimes are still out there, if only you can find the link: here's a place where you can still see a full episode of Film Fakers, which Toys and I loved when it was on AMC, even though the episodes get cringingly uncomfortable toward the end where the actors are told that the movie they're making is just a reality show. The episode on offer is "The Committed," the faux western segment that proves conclusively how vital performance really is - the actress in this episode, Sarah Burkhardt blew everybody away by salvaging their badfic-on-purpose writing and making it, believe or not, emotionally affecting. [Fess, a cannibal madwoman, recounting her murders of three men]: "And I stabbed them in their lily-livered livers and ripped out their yellow-bellied bellies.... do I look crazy to you, mister?" I feel like I learned SO much about the film industry from this show.

The things people leave by the side of the road
Good fortune smiles, just when I was really starting to have back problems with the straight-backed chair I was using for a work chair. A castoff office chair turned up on the street, with a fuzzy coat of cat hair its only sign of wear. It took awhile to vacuum/sponge/sticky-tape the hair off of the upholstery, but otherwise, it's been perfect. I'm going to mark down this windfall as a good omen for the new year. Although...

Ants in the butter
We've gotten ant invasions before, usually in wet weather when the tiny black variety of ants decide to move out of the rain and en masse into a potted plant, but this time, the little buggers came in through some spot on the wall up near the kitchen ceiling, ignored the open sugar bowl and box of cookies, and went straight for the sugar cannister, which is a glass jar sealed with a gasket. Maybe there was reside on the outside from a recent baking escapade, who knows. Frustrated, they went for the butter crock instead. Yech. And I hate having to keep the butter in the fridge. (We'll see if they show up again now that we've got a Christmas tree.)

What is the relative value of a Douglas Fir versus a Scotch Pine in our area?
There is a difference, you might ask? Price-wise, you bet - approximately 4 to 1. A five-foot Scotch pine cost me $10, and would've been $42 minimum in a fir. Ouch. (This is from Delancy Street, BTW, the charity that does big tree lots every year - they also do moving and run a restaraunt, among other things.) But it's a great little tree, not even A Charlie Brown Christmas could do me one better on this one. I carried it the mile or so back home myself, over one shoulder like a lumberjack. And it's decorated now, all miniature and sweet and cute. Happy Holidays.

It's 'birding' now, not 'bird watching'
I only realized this recently, by way of trying to find pictures online of the local water fowl I keep seeing. My favorite being the American coot, a hilarious not-quite-a-duck that has suddenly appeared in numbers in and around Golden Gate park. Coots have a very woobly way of swimming, thanks to their not-fully-webbed feet (which look kind of like chicken feet with a badly applied layer of latex fringing), and their legs are HUGE compared to the rest of them. And they make an incredibly goofy squeaking sound, sort of like a novelty rubber mallet. And I think I might've seen an American Wigeon the other day. I'm actually turning into a bird watcher. Or "birder." Whatever.