Birthday! And Catch-Up…

A Very Happy Birthday to petzipellepingo!!

Buffy fandom is seriously in your debt. Without your lovingly compiled links lists, I would be totally lost, especially these days. Thanks so much for all your hard work, your great perspective, and for just being such a great all-around ambassador of why it's worthwhile to spend time on the Internet. Have a great one!

The new work schedule continues to be just short of all-encompassing - I've managed to carve out enough time to look at LJ about once every two days, though only about as far back as skip=20 on my friends list, so it kinda goes without saying that I've missed things. If you've had a major event, updated a fic, or just want to say hi, please let me know. In the meantime, I share with you the most touching/heartwarming/heartbreaking story I've heard about a videogame lately, and something I find infinitely soothing, a video of three guinea pigs eating a cucumber.

The Thanksgiving holiday went well - I had three days off in a row, a novelty I haven't experienced in some months. Toys and I had an entire adventure involving a van rental and moving bookshelves, including using a skateboard as a makeshift dolly (seriously!), so despite all sorts of ambitious to be super-creative this weekend, I haven't written a lick of fiction. (I did, however, perform some fairly herculean book restocking and cabinet shuffling.) This lack of free time thing is really becoming an issue - I must figure out some way of conserving the few ergs of energy I have left after a full day's work instead of letting them get drained away on the interminably long bus ride home. I have just-launched stories to tend to, dammit! And a ficathon entry for the end of the month I haven't even had a chance to think about yet. Urgh.

TV-wise, Nip/Tuck is back, yay. It's about all I'm watching regularly, so the writer's strike isn't going to affect me much - every other show I'm tried out and quite liked (Pushing Daises, Moonlight - cheesy, yes, but in a way I'm enjoying - and Bionic Woman - it's got the girljockiness going for it, what can I say?) I've missed too many episodes to really follow what's going on, so I'll have to catch up to them later on DVD. I have a whole related train of thought on that, about how television is being written in a far more serial manner now than it ever used to be, quite a bit more like telenovelas (which reminds me, add Ugly Betty to the above list; love that show) or comics-intended-for-graphic-novels. This approach has its pluses and minuses, as we see from this season's Heroes (a great illustration of one major minus: getting so caught up in the I'm-building-an-intricate-mystery plottiness that you forget to make the individual episodes entertaining), but it's certainly an interesting experiment that's having an effect on the type of stories we're seeing as well as the style.

I did pick up the first issue of the Angel: After the Fall comic, and so far I'm liking, although I can't help but feel that one of the major pitfalls of having Angel be the main POV character is the overserious tone he brings to everything. It can get a little emo-tastic for me, and I usually enjoy it most when it's gently punctured a little by his supporting cast, but this is clearly not that type of story. But I do really appreciate that we're now seeing some aftermath to "Not Fade Away" - I've never been able to see that as a "heroic" ending to the series, and I'd be disturbed if I thought I was supposed to. So yeah, bring on the hellscape.

How are all of you?

Totally Scurry Hurry

GAH. I only just now realized that I've got comments and emails from a month back that I haven't answered yet. And that I won't be able to get to them, or answer any new comments for a few hours. This having no time thing SUCKS. (bangs head)

I'll be back later tonight. Apologies.