Wondering where my tags are?

Along with my icons and my memories, they have gone MIA, and LiveJournal has not been any help in retrieving them.


Thankfully, my old posts are backed up at deird_lj, and the tags there are still intact. (No joy on the memories or icons.)

All new entries are at deird1.

Have fun with that...

This is your former thirty year old, speaking to you from the lofty heights of thirty-one.

The view from here is excellent. Everything smells better and looks nicer, I feel so much wiser, the world makes sense, somehow, and I have this sort of peace...


Okay, I lie.

I am still the same person who pretends to be asleep on Saturday mornings while her cat stands on her face demanding breakfast. I still check my email first thing in the morning. I'm still hugging soft toys because apparently I won't ever grow out of that. And I just managed to put my foot through my fitted sheet - thus meeting my klutzy quotient of the day.

About the only thing that's different is that I now have to adapt to put the "one" on the end whenever I'm asked my age. Wish me luck...

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This was written for the Sunnydale High School 10 Year Reunion Anniversary Comment Ficathon, for daria234, who gave the prompt of "10th Annual Slayers Convention".

Title: The 10th Annual Slayers Convention
Rating: G
Word Count: 677

Summary: Slayers can create a lot of paperwork.


( a conventionCollapse )

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I have this hobby. Just inside my head - but a hobby, nonetheless.


There's a group of streets near my house that are all Camelot-themed. Street names like "Camelot", "King Arthur", "Chivalry", Excalibur", and so on.

So - when I'm bored, I pick a fandom, and then start naming streets.


I try to see how many street names I can come up with before it becomes blatantly obvious what I'm doing. The trick is to keep it subtle, while still getting as many character names in there as possible.


For instance:
Summers Drive, Harris Street, Willow Road, Rupert Avenue, Dawn Road, Finn Street, Calendar Close, Chase Avenue, Angel Street, William Drive, Master Court, Wilkins Crescent, Adam Avenue, Glory Road, First Street, Osbourne Drive, Jenkins Lane, Tara Road, Faith Court, Joyce Street, Wells Road...

Or:
Potter Street, Granger Drive, Ronald Road, Owl Court, Albus Grove, Minerva Avenue, Twin Crescent, Ginevra Street, Griffin Road, Serpent Grove, Badger Crescent, Raven's Claw Road, Riddle Court, Auror Avenue, Ruby Road, James Drive, Lily Street...


I think it's rather fun.

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On Sunday, we finished printing our wedding invitations. And the fiance and I turned to each other and said, "That took much less time than we expected."

Last night, we finished addressing the invitations. And we collapsed on the couch and said, "That took so much longer than we thought it would."



*exhausted, but with completed invites*

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For those who would like to remix things...

buffy_remix is now taking sign-ups for Buffyverse remix fics.

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Saw the World War Z trailer today. (Also saw Iron Man 3 (the movie not the trailer), which totally rocked!)

Was expecting to be annoyed by action scenes, explosions, and Brad Pitt being his movie-star-ish self.

In the end, wasn't annoyed by any of those, because I was too busy restraining myself from yelling angrily about the FAST ZOMBIES.


The zombies were running. RUNNING. In WORLD WAR Z. Running. It was like it was an action movie or something. An action movie with FRELLING FAST ZOMBIES.


Do they not understand the point of the book at all?


*weeps for humanity*

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Crafter's Paralysis: the inability to start a new project because, by choosing one to do, you'll be simultaneously not choosing all the others, and they're all so nice!


Just finished my blanket. Am now trying to choose between crocheting three different headwear things, crocheting slippers, sewing a cloak, sewing a quilt cover, or finishing my cross-stitch...

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Elf is extremely hungry - and complaining bitterly at me - because he hasn't eaten anything since 10am.

I know he hasn't eaten since 10am, because that's when I filled up his bowl. And he hasn't touched it since.

Which means, basically, that he's meowing at full volume and trying desperately to get me to feed him bikkies, while standing in front of a bowl that is ABSOLUTELY FULL of the very bikkies he's asking for.

(Elf would, no doubt, maintain that they are, in fact, totally different from the bikkies he's asking for, because the bikkies in his bowl are old, used bikkies. But I'm ignoring him and his insane feline logic.)



He's actually been fairly upset with me all week. First Prince moved out, then his secondary patter-and-feeder (dr_carrot) moved out, and now, horror of horrors, he doesn't have a second bowl of (Prince's) bikkies to snack off, so he's feeling starved and ill-treated.

I remain hard-hearted. I will calmly ignore my cat's piteous meows, and read the internet instead.

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Okay, you guys were right. Lost Girl is fabulous.

I'm three episodes in, and I'm already squeeing every few minutes, and also shipping Bo and the doctor.

Currently I'm watching Kenzi be tortured by having to pretend she likes pink. Heh.

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A fly just suicided in my honey jar.

I missed the moment of impact, but it's quite clear what happened. While my back was turned, focusing on my pikelets, a fly flew in, found the open, inviting honey jar, thought "Score!", dived in with great enthusiasm, and then discovered its mistake.

By the time I turned around, pikelet in hand, it was wriggling its little legs frantically, no doubt shrieking "Help! Delicious sticky death! HELP!!!" in whatever language flies speak.

I was powerless to help it. And I would have felt bad for it – but mostly, I was just annoyed about it ruining my honey.

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Apparently the US ambassador is complaining about Aussies pirating Game of Thrones.

*rolls eyes*

For the benefit of His Ambassadorship and other uninformed people - here is what I would have to do to watch Game of Thrones:
- Buy a subscription to Foxtel to watch payTV! Woo! $70 a month to watch one show! That's... what? $16 an episode? Score!
- Watch them on Netflix or Hulu! Awesome! ...for all of five seconds, until I remember that I live in Australia and *headsmack* oh yeah, we can't use those.
- Wait for the dvd. Generally, dvds come out about two years after a season of tv airs in America - if things go well. So, only a couple of years to avoid spoilers and stay off the internet. That's not hard, right?
- Piracy.

In other words, ambassador? Give me an easy way to pay, and I will. Otherwise - stuff off. I'm trying to watch telly.

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House Hunting

So far, we've put in offers for two houses. Didn't get the first; waiting to see if we got the second.

Buying houses is this weird kind of psychological torture in which you guess random numbers until you hopefully get one right. It is like no other buying experience on Earth: it would be so much more convenient if houses came with price tags attached, or at least with the ability to bargain with the seller. I know how that works; but this? Not a clue.

The house we're currently after is an absolute wreck, but a salvageable one. It would require an awful lot of immensely difficult work – and I would so enjoy watching it turn into something better. (Also one of the reasons I like editing, so...)


Parties and So Forth

Had an engagement party last weekend, at my parents' house. We packed out the house, with heaps of people ...who I mostly remembered the names of! Go me!

My sisters organised for every person at the party to have their photo taken holding a sign or a funny prop. I would really recommmend something like this for anyone having a similar party; it was so much fun getting to see what everyone did, and now we have a guest book full of photos.

I don't think I have to send thank-yous about people giving us cards – which is good, because we have the most enormous stack of cards, matched only by the enormous number of comments on our facebook pages.

Despite saying 'no gifts', we also have a table stacked high with presents from everyone who decided to give us something anyway. Rather fun, looking at all the pretty things and figuring out how we'll use them...



Still so much to organise – but we'll get there.

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NCIS is still annoying me with its abuse of Latin...


Rewatching season 6, and once again gritted my teeth at the following exchange:

Abby: "Gibbs! Primitus Victor*? It's Latin. It means 'first victim'."
Gibbs: "Yeah. I know, Abbs."

* from a message the killer left them


GRRRR.

No. No it does not mean that. It does not mean anything of the sort.

'Primitus victor' is indeed Latin. And it means 'first winner'. 'First victim' would be 'primitus victima'.

I understand why they did it. They thought "victor" sounded cooler, and didn't think anyone would notice. But that's no excuse for doing it wrong.


*is petty and pedantic*

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I wrote slash! Me! Weird, huh?

Title: On the Other Foot, or Hand, Whatever
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 1195
Pairing: Spike/Angel
Warnings: Dub-con

Summary: Angel's ready to forget the past. Spike's got other plans.

( getting his attentionCollapse )

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Is anyone interested in a Buffyverse remix ficathon?


Since the Remix doesn't appear to be happening this year, I'm missing my remix-ness. That one was huge, though, so I can see why no-one wants to take it over.

So – if we held a smaller remix, of Buffyverse fics, would anyone come?


Show of hands?

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I'm managing to confuse the world with name-change stuff.


(For the purposes of this post, my last name will be Smith, and the fiance's last name will be Jones.)

Most people seem to think that there are two options. Either I can be stuffy and traditional and change my name to "Mrs Jones", or I can be radical and feminist and keep my name as "Ms Smith".

Occasionally, someone allows for a third option, where I am hip and modern and take the name "Mrs Smith-Jones".


I am... doing none of those. Which seems to be confusing everyone.


My plan is to change my last name from Smith to Jones. And to change my title – from Miss to Ms.

The pro-"Ms Smith" people are worried that I'm subsuming my identity into the fiance's. The pro-"Mrs Jones" people are baffled that I don't want to be a Mrs. A smaller selection of both groups are still stuck back on my current title – weirded out by the fact that I'm a thirty-year-old professional and still going by Miss instead of Ms*.

* Except on those forms which don't give me an option, but simply expect me to tick "Mr", "Mrs", or "Ms", even though my title is none of the above.

All in all, I'm apparently confusing.


I've seen a lot of internet discussions about name change recently, and in almost every discussion at least one person will say "Well, I decided not to change my last name, because I don't want to be a Mrs." No-one ever seems to point out that it doesn't have to be all or nothing.


So, why am I doing it the way I am? No grand philosophical reasons; it's just that I thought through all the possible permutations, and "Ms Jones" was the one that sounded most like me.

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Discovered this evening that, despite having grown up in the same house, my sisters and I have heard different versions of The Princess and the Pea – and had no idea that the other version existed.

In my sisters' version, the queen tests the girl to find out if she's princess material, by placing a pea underneath umpteen mattresses and finding out if she can detect the pea through the mattresses or not.
And the girl, who is princess material, does indeed detect the pea. And marries the prince! Hurrah!

In my version, the queen still tests the girl. But the girl can't feel the pea under the thousands of mattresses, because, let's face it, that's pretty much impossible.
But the servants (or animals, or the prince's sneaky little sister, depending on the version) like the girl. They think she's nice! So they sneak in and tell her all about the queen's plan – and in the morning, the girl makes sure to complain about how badly she slept, thus proving with her awesome pea-detection skills that she's princess material. (Although, actually, she's just princess material because she's so darn nice.)

My sisters had never heard of a version where the girl got help with detecting the pea. And I, although having heard versions with a whole bunch of different groups of people helping the girl, had never heard of a version where she didn't get help at all.

Weird, huh?

So – show of hands? Who's heard of which version? And has anyone heard of both?

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Rewatching Battlestar Galactica, and doing lots of squeeing.

Or at least I WAS doing lots of squeeing, until the Battlestar Pegasus showed up. Now I'm trying to restrain myself from throwing heavy objects at the television.

...at least I'm invested?


I really hate these episodes, because they're pretty essential for plot purposes, and yet watching them is horrible in every way, what with snooty Pegasus guys, Cylon rape, and Cain being downright EVIL. It's painful.


BRB, searching for kitten gifs so I can maintain my inner happy...

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So... you might have noticed, from my previous post, that I'm engaged. :)

Yay. :)

Because of the levels of secrecy that have been in place for the last couple of months, I haven't been able to make many posts about my life and all its engagementiness. So... here is one big bumper post in which I shall talk about many things.

( the juicy detailsCollapse )

( the big dayCollapse )

( the vendor rantCollapse )

( the dress beginsCollapse )

( the house huntCollapse )


....that's all for now. :)

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