And in creeps the morning

I need one of two things: A beta, or a good recommendation for finding one. I did all the look arounds at sga_beta and most of the entries are either REALLY old (journal gone, clicked on journal, obviously out of fandom now, or the most recent entry says something like, "OMG I'm stuck on my SGA santa story help!" and obviously this person would not be a good person to ask. OR the categories they'd beta don't mesh. I really looked for a long time, really I did.

I have: A long WIP that's, oh, half-done. about 10,000 words right now, but the good news is that I don't think it needs much grammar help. I'm decent with that, unless I miss stupid things. What I need is a read-through and someone to tell me that where I'm going with the story is OKAY and NOT STUPID. Or, you know, to tell me it IS so that I can do something about it. I can be more specific about Issues of Concern later.

So, it's an SGA historical AU, not quite team gen and not quite OT4. Somewhere in-between. At least the first half is gen (It will never be explicitly rated, regardless). (This may actually be giving too much away already, dur)

And if I get my issues worked out with the first half, I won't really feel like I need the second half beta'd, unless someone really wants to. It's due on December 10th, and I'd be able to send out the first half now. I'm hoping to have the rest done this week.

I know I have a smallish friends list, but I thought I'd give it a shot. *hugs regardless*

Wow, I just did this huge *SIGH* I guess I'd better go watch the new episode of SGU on Hulu, whatev... and was actually relieved that there was no new episode this week. Is that not sad? But really, after last week left me thinking, aren't they supposed to be, like, in a SPACESHIP and in some kind of MORTAL PERIL, OR SOMETHING? I just...I dunno. I think I gave it more than a fair shake. If every episode had been like Time with the ACTUAL alien planet and having to figure things out and time loops and stuff, I'd be totally into it. BUT IT'S NOT. WHY ISN'T IT? Why do they think I care that Lou Diamond Phillips is trying to get all up ons with Dude's wife (see? I STILL DON'T KNOW ALL THEIR NAMES)?

Hey, writers! Why don't you write the science fiction and let us write the fanfiction, k? Develop your damn world and your damn plot, and let us write teh sex and people mucking around with the stones. We'd do it a lot better, anyway.


Thank you.

Lorne/Parrish chibis and an obscene plant. You have been warned.
( IDEK. )

Like, wow, I know, didn't we all? But duuuuuuuude...This caramel apple pie is TEH BOMB. Best pie I've ever made, hands down.



( More, if you like reading about food and aren't so full it will make you puke )

So I was at my brother's house this weekend, and I babysat the two girls for a little while. The youngest was down for a nap, and the older one wanted to draw, so we got out the big paper, and I drew chibi versions of her and her sister dressed up as princesses. "Draw princes for us!" my niece demanded while she drew the fairy godmother. So I drew a chibi Lorne for her sister and a chibi Sheppard for her--all dressed in princely clothes with little crowns and everything (and wrote "Prince Evan" and "Prince John" next to them). My niece looked at them and said (she's four), "Oh, they're so pretty! I know you're not supposed to say that about men, they're supposed to be 'handsome,' but...*sigh* They are very pretty!"

As if that didn't make me laugh enough...she showed my brother when he got home, and he listened to her explanation and then did this kinda awesome ruffled feathers thing and asked, "Who's this 'John' guy?" Ahaha, why no, I can't explain why I'm laughing like a loon.

Like...getting an image of Lorne stuck in my head of him stranded offworld with his hair grown out and dressed like an Amish farmer...or, uh, like Harrison Ford in Witness.



(self-critique: I spend lots of time on the face--this is true of any drawing--and then get kinda bored with the rest. *sigh* Unless I set out to actually paint a landscape, which I love to do in watercolor, but I can't seem to make the interests merge. It's one or the other. Oh, well)

( Stargate Infinity. Um. )

Yeah, er, so...sgabigbang is live, live, live! I've looked at all the art (amazing!) and read one story (skinscript's--sooooo goooooood), and I wanted to clean the house this weekend, but.

Anyway, so I did five pieces of art, two as a pinch hitter. I have no idea of the total amount of time this has sucked from my life in the last month, but I'd guess around 40. Which...is why my house desperately needs cleaning. :)

Go. Read. Look. Be in awe. Thank the people who put all that together.

( Larger PG-13(ish) image under the cut )

So as part of the field trip today, the students went out to find "time capsules," little wooden boxes about shoebox size, hinged at the top. Each one holds different models, pictures, or fossils representing a different time in Earth's history.

ANYway. We're walking in with them, and a kid says, "You know, this box is just about the right size that you could stuff, like, fifteen squirrels in it."

?

Apparently this child has a very interesting personal unit of measurement. Completely inaccurate, of course. That box would hold two squirrels, tops. Those suckers are bigger than you think.

I rescind yesterday's comment that kids suck. Kids are awesome.

The neighbor's four kids were playing in my driveway when I got home from work (I swear they're always there since theirs is gravel). When I got out carrying a pumpkin they immediately interrogated me about what kind of candy I would be handing out Saturday. One of them had the nerve to nitpick that my fun mix included Twix--he doesn't like them. Am I getting old or do kids suck?

Anyway...we had our big Halloween program Sunday and I'm finally recovered. More or less. ( This year I made a bat costume )

Bad facebook quiz, bad!

Out of terrible curiosity, I clicked on "How white are you?" It asked my favorite drink, what I dressed up as for Halloween, how many gay friends I have, if I know who Strauss is (not if I listen to him), what I eat (I had to choose between organic food and Mexican, which, come on, hello, they aren't mutually exclusive), and who my hero is (odd choices--I could pick Obama, Sara Silverman, a bunch of people I didn't know, or David Sedaris. I chose Sedaris because he's hilarious). Oh, and if I appreciate irony, which--???

I am, according to this person, 100% white. Well, duh, according to those questions. Why does having gay friends make me more white? I mean, if there were 10 questions, obviously my answer fell in the "white" column or I wouldn't have scored 100%. So POCs don't have gay friends, or aren't gay themselves. HUH. Nor do they drink coffee, eat organic food, listen to classical music; they are only allowed to dress as Bob Marley for Halloween (I assume the other choices were also "white"), and MUST consider Obama their One True Hero.

Stupid stupid stupid.


I guess I should have known better.

What a week-! I was at the Midwest Environmental Education Conference in Champaign, Illinois (home of the University of Illinois and the Fighting Illini). WOW. If there had been three of me I still would have been busy.

So...( cool stuff and pics )

Or I'm going crazy. Whatever.

( weird shit, yo )

SO anyway, why are there so many nomination categories for the Stargate Fan Awards that don't match the final actual awards? Why is slash in the regular Atlantis category but femslash has its own category? And there are, like, twenty slash pairings listed for nominations but only two McShep stories won any awards. Can someone explain this?

Also I made my mom angry on my behalf over SGU on the phone today. "You should write the producers," she suggested. Oh, mom. *huggles*

But it was good...whatever...brownie berry cake-thing that I baked. It's...if you like brownies but also like licking the batter, and also berries, HEY, then. All of that.

( what I did--baking type-stuff here )

This diabetic coma was inspired by Jaimie Oliver, Better Homes and Gardens, and a deep craving for real brownies after a terribly disappointing bake sale purchase.

Have another one.



(I really hope these do the automatic small preview thingy in y'alls flists like it does on my screen because if not, holy Zoidberg, sorry).

Soooooooo...I wanted to draw Lorne (!) swimming, and then I thought, "with an alien sea turtle!" and then my brain also realized I'd have to do a background, which... *mumble mumble* But it's all, you know, submerged Atlantis AU and stuff, and you know they'd adapt pretty well to that and have happy swimming time with...alien sea turtles, apparently.

I love drawing light on skin, like through stained glass or in this case refracted through water, even though it's a pain in the butt to get it to look right.

SOMEDAY, and it may not be until Thanksgiving, I'm going to have a weekend with no weddings, girl scouts, work trips, etc. and I can PAINT in real life. Watercolors done this year = 0. Epic fail.

Sounds really good right now. I think I will have coffee instead.

Boss man asked me to help with his big field trips this week--the fire, cornbread, candles, pioneer thing....ugh. And he pulled a couple of complete douchebag moves with other departments that totally pissed people off (this makes me happy because usually it's only me or our department who sees it). These are his big field trips--his main job--and someone went home sick, so he had to call in two people from other departments to help. Then he went home early and left us to do all the work. The problem is, I feel like I have to stay late and pick up the slack in situations like this, and he knows it. I absolutely cannot do a half-assed job. Whoever has to fill in tomorrow would be screwed if I left things undone, and it's not their fault that he's an asshole. Anyway, I had witnesses this time so it was kind of worth it.

Also, see if you're with me on this. We're hiring a receptionist/administrative assistant. With the job market the way it is, we've gotten 140 applications. I never saw any of them until today but I was told that we had our "pick of the litter," like, people with crazy degrees and all kinds of experience. The admin person in charge of hiring narrowed it down to ten to interview. I was in her office today and the stack of ten was sitting there, so I thumbed through them. Um, okay...I don't think that the person who misspelled "administrative assistant" and then scratched it out and re-wrote it would have made it into my top ten. Also? Where it asks if you know any foreign languages she wrote "English." Also there were at least three other things misspelled including "employeed." "Pick of the litter" huh? Though curiously, four people, including the HR manager, looked at the application and circled "no" on the little sheet stapled to it but the admin manager put her on the short list anyway. Interesting. I probably wasn't supposed to see that :)

I'm going to a wedding this weekend, and I have an awesome dress and new shoes and I've been tanning (terrible, I know!) and I even got a French manicure kit which I've never done before. I haven't dressed up in a long time!

On a final happy note, the best thing I heard this week: one of my students on my field trip (that comes out for three days, not the pioneer one), asked how old I was after guessing that I'm 29. HA. I told her I'm 36 but she didn't believe me. Her response was, "That's impossible! My mom is 36 and she doesn't look like you!" HAHAHAHAHAHA. Children are awesome.

Otter face!

So, my second van trip went well. Much better than my fossil trip, though this one was longer. And it meant that I didn't have a weekend (again). By the time I take this next Friday off, I'll have worked 15 days in a row *sad face* Yesterday was 13 hours, 5 of which was driving the van full of old people to Iowa and back. BUT I got to go on a riverboat ride, to the Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium (otters!), and had dinner in Galena (cutesy town). I've put 600 miles on our 15-passenger van in a week, yep. Today I had to set up for school field trips, which start tomorrow. Have I mentioned how much I hate September? I always forget that it's like this. And I had two programs scheduled that didn't fill up and got canceled--I think I'd be brain dead if they had gone because I didn't need Girl Scouts on top of everything else.

Also I need a new show to watch. Something with a lot of eps available online that I can watch a couple of a night? Mmmm...Maybe I need to give in and get the X-Files on DVD. I have them all on VHS, what a shame.

Well, ok, not really. But my last drawing bugged me and I didn't really like it. So. Yeah, I wanted to draw Lorne in his underwear again. Mm. Quick drawing (for me--meaning I didn't obsess over cleaning it up and blending and etc etc. for infinity hours):



/\
Made an icon from it that I love and will never really have an opportunity to use, but that's the case with about 100 of my 110 icons.

I made the comment at deviantArt that I've crossed the line that now if I ever meet Kavan Smith in real life I won't be able to look him in the face or talk to him--I've drawn his nipples too many times. I'd probably start babbling and blurt it out.

And hahaha, I have to be at work in...five hours, but I'm totally using up weekend comp time and going in late, so there!

So my email at work was down today--apparently it had been down the whole time I was on vacation and sending people "full inbox" messages or somesuch. I can log in online, but I have a new computer and I forgot the address; it's something complicated at horde. So I did a google search with "horde" and the name of work, thinking why not? I think that had worked before, or that I'd at least gotten close and found the login page.

Oh. No.

What I got was a page in...Thai?...with what appeared to be a bunch of links to...??? Who knows, but I clicked on it because I had to know. But no clickable links, no full addresses, just half-Thai, half-English web addresses. The English parts were like, "Pretty ladies," "Free glucosamine," and then, partway down the page, "Nude photos of Teryl Rothery." And I stared at it, thinking, there's a Thai website with naked Janet Fraiser From Stargate and somehow my work website is also on this page, what? Just...what? Why Teryl Rothery? But as most of the page was in Thai, I have no idea what was going on.

Sigh. So I have my first adult van trip tomorrow and I'm not exactly excited. I am driving a 15-passenger van full of people two hours to go fossil hunting--which is fun--but, ugh, driving the van sucks at the best of times. Like, when it's empty. Do I have to keep these people entertained? I don't know. Also, the last time I went to Braidwood I got lost on the way down AND on the way back. I have a TOMTOM this time, but still. I hope they know what they signed up for.

And seriously, if my neighbor doesn't turn down the single track repeat of that stupid Latin techno song I'm going to shoot out the windows.

Grrr...I'm in a bad mood. Bed now.