Happy birthday to your_darkness and a happy belated birthday to skully01 Sorry I didn't wish you one yesterday. I was too tired to do much of anything when I got home yesterday.:)

I got my fic back! The Tween had to have my help copying some of her fic from our old P.C. to her Macbook--she didn't know how to convert to .doc files so I showed her--and after she got hers transfered, I asked her to transfer mine. It took about one minute to do it. I had to figure out a way to save it so that it was all easily accessible. Now that that is done, I can just click on a folder and there it all is.:)

I'm so happy to have it all back where I can get to it. I hated having an idea and not being able to do anything about it because the story was on the old computer.

We ended up having a very low-key New Years Eve at home. The Tween wasn't feeling well so we stayed home instead of going over to your_darkness's house. I splurged and ordered a pizza the way I like it instead of for the Tween. I've been eating a couple of pieces a day. That shouldn't throw the weight-loss too off course.

We thought we had lost another appliance for the second holiday in a row. Yesterday morning I turned on the T.V. and nothing happened. I had just said the day before that if I can nurse this one through 2010, we'd see about a new one for 2011. It turns out that all I had to do was unplug and plug it back in. The cats must have bumped it and slightly unplugged it. They did it again this morning, but I was standing right there so it was easier to fix.

I've managed to get a lot of laundry caught up this weekend. I haven't felt this accomplished in months. I have about two loads to do and it will all be done.:) I'm hoping that 2010 is the year that I get all excesses under control. I want to finish losing my excess weight, and get rid of the excess clutter in the house. Hopefully I'll have some success. The weight seems to be the easiest right now. I've lost 17.4 pounds since October 20. I want to lose about 38 more. At least I'm not starting the new year with that nebulous "I want to lose weight" resolution.:)

Here's to a bright 2010.

I actually have a paid account now. I owe it to an lj friend who gave me discount coupon for a paid account. I decided that after almost four years with the same theme and more than four with the same mood theme it was time to change. I like the new look.:)

Now, I have 20 more userpics that that I can use. The problem is, I don't know a lot of good resources for icons that I can navigate easily. If anyone knows where I can get more LOTR/actor icons, especially with Pippin or Merry in them, could you let me know. Or, if you just know of some cool icons that I might like, let me know that, too.

Thanks.

I don't normally do this, and I've hesitated for several days before I decided to go ahead and write this. But I can't put it off any longer because it is affecting my love of my fandom and writing.

( Read more... )

I really meant to do this sooner.

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

Here are the answers to the questions dreamflower asked me last week.

1. Why is Pippin your favorite hobbit?

Actually, when I first read the books, my favorite was Merry. I identified most with him. But the more I read and the more I thought about it, Pippin began to hold more and more appeal. He is the only hobbit, other than Frodo who has to deal with Sauron invading his mind, and he recovered so well from that, so it is clear that he is strong-willed. He has tremendous loyalty to both old and new friends, and he has a great sense of humor and fun. This last is something many other characters could learn from him. To me he is one of the most multi-layered characters in the whole trilogy. I could go on, but I'll move on to the next question.

2. What is the earliest book you can remember reading?

I remember my mom reading to me from "A Child's Garden of Verse" when I was about three years old. I also remember her reading "The Pokey Little Puppy" to me at about that same time. The first book I remember finishing all on my own was "Green Eggs and Ham" when I was about seven or eight. I was way behind grade-level in reading until I reached about fifth grade.

3. If you could meet Pippin in person, what would be the first question you would ask him?

Oh goodness, this is hard. I have so many. What was the date of your wedding, what was it like, how many children did Diamond and you have and what were their names, and what other important things happened to you after the war and when you went back to Gondor? Is that a Pippin-ish enough sounding question?:)

4. If you had a day in which you had to do something to please only yourself, what would you do?

I would probably talk my best friend, who I don't get to see much these days, into going out to the mall and lunch with me. I know that sound so small, but I don't usually thing large-scale.:)

5. What do you know now that you wish you had known in the past?

Probably that that lady was going to hit me on St. Patrick's Day in 1998. Then, maybe, I could have done something to prevent it. Well maybe not really. I guess that accident has made me the person I am, so I guess I'd just want to be able to deal with the aftermath better. This is a hard question. It kind of makes me think of "Flashforward".

Thanks for making me think.

Happy birthday to sue_denimme

Happy birthday pearltook1!

Sorry to disappoint anyone who thinks this might be about my beloved hobbit. No, this time it's about my beloved cat.

Since springtime our little Pip-cat has had a very bad case of wanderlust. Every time the door opened, she'd run out. Almost every time she came back within a few minute. There were a few times that we were heading out and would be gone for a while. At these times she'd just hang around and await our return.

Last evening, we were headed out to the state fair when the little rascal escaped. We couldn't stay around a wait for her to decide that inside was better, so we left, believing she would follow her usual routine and be waiting when we got home. That was 24 hours ago. We have not seen her. I am trying to believe that she will come home when she gets good and ready, but I'm beginning to give up hope. She's a resourceful cat. She was a stray for six months before we took her in at Thanksgiving in 2004. I just hope she hasn't been hit by a car or attacked by a dog. She has all her claws and she's been spayed, so I don't worry about her and most cats, but I'm still worried and sad. I feel guilty that I didn't do more to try to keep her inside. She was quick and clever and the only way I think I could have stopped her would have been to lock her up, and that would not have been right either.

Thanks for listening.


ETA. About 9:20 this evening I went out to through something in our large trash can and I heard a familiar meow. Pippin was standing right beside me. I think she's made some enemies while she was out. Another cat was outside our door and Pippin was hissing madly at it.

Big sigh of relief.

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

Here are my five from dreamflower02

Motherhood

The hardest job I'll ever love. As many times as I've cried and ranted, I wouldn't trade it for anything. For all the bad there are the great moments when your child does something amazing and you just have to smile and say, "Yeah, it's all gonna all right. The moments of laughter are priceless. Who ever thought that corndogs could be so funny as they were at lunch today.:)

Pippin

Of course my favorite character in Lord of the Rings.:) I know there are many of us who truly appreciate him, but for the longest time I thought I was the only one who saw him as more than an extra in the story. I remember the first time I read the scene at the Black Gate and feared he had died; I felt worse than when Shelob got Frodo.

Pippin was always one of my favorite characters to speculate on for backstory. I pictured him as small and kind of fragile almost from the beginning. I always saw him a musically talented. I think that scene where Denethor asks for a song as a lot to do with that--this was back in 1977.:) From the time I read the family trees I always wondered why it took so long for Pippin and Diamond to have children. I know now that they probably had at least a daughter before their son, but back when I was younger I didn't realize the whole thing about girls names not always being recorded in short-version family trees. This led to a lot of speculation on my part and finally gave birth (pardon the pun) to the first of two stories about three years ago. I hope to someday finish the third story and have my own little Pippin trilogy.:)

Indiana

Indiana is home, in a word. It is not a glamorous state. It is often hot in the summer and cold in the winter and we don't deal with snow as well as most states that get a lot of it do. It's small and way too conservative, in my opinion, and it doesn't have a lot to recommend it, but it has things that I can't imagine not having around. Unlike many, I like most of sports stuff, and I like the way you can't quite tell where the cities end and the country begins. I love our state fair. I even like some of our weird words and accents. I've visited several other states, but Indiana will always be home--even if, by some strange twist of fate, I should ever end up living someplace else.

Music

I love music. I like traditional music and a lot of popular stuff, too. Where as many people have visual memories of events, many of my memories are tied to songs. I can hear a song and usually think of an event I associate with it. It's strange, I know.

I also love to sing. I'm not as good at it as many people I know, but I enjoy it. My daughter has been blessed with a very good voice and I'm overjoyed when she uses it. I was just thrilled to hear her singing loud and clear this morning in church.:) Our house is almost always filled, at least in one room, with music. Either she's playing it on the computer or I am playing it on mine, or one of us will have a radio on. It just makes our home a happier place.

Fanfic

I guess, like many of us, I started coming up with Mary Sue stories when I was very young. I think my first attempts were Star Trek,--the Enterprise crew is dropped in 20th. Century Earth and a group of kids, a character very much like me being the leader, has to help them hide and get back to where they belong. Sound familiar?

Then, when I became a Lord of the Rings fan, I started writing stories where the hobbits, especially Merry and Pippin, were somehow sent to our time or a future time. These were not Mary Sue stories. These were out and out Angst and Hurt/Comfort. I wrote stories of the this nature all through high school and college. Only part of one still survives and it is in a little notebook in a drawer of my desk.

I the late '90's, I went back to Star Trek fandom when I got hooked on Deep Space Nine. This lead to my first finished and printed fanfic. It was an Odo/Kira story called "Destined to Relive It" and was printed in a fanzine called "Love and Justice VI" in 2001.

I had vowed, after a bad internet experience with some Lord of the Rings fans, that I would not get involved in online LOTR fandom. I friend gave me link to a sight that had some of her LOTR fanfic on it, and I was re-hooked. I wrote my first completed LOTR fic for one of Marigold's challenges, and I never looked back. I have been writing and reviewing ever since. I don't get to do as much of either as I once did because of my work schedule and other real-life issues, but I still love fanfic and all the friends it has brought into my life.:)

Happy belated birthday to Dreamflower. Sorry I didn't post on the day.

Happy birthday Thedoingofit. Hope you had a wonderful day.

I'm still finding my way around the new computer, but I'm making slow progress. I think I need to get my friend the Mac guru to show me a few things.

I'm not going to get the e-mail up tonight I don't think. It's getting close to 9:00 and the cable company closes at that time. If I get off here and do it, I may still get it done.:)

I'm posting from work so this will be short.:)

The tax refund finally came in so a new computer is in the near future; possibly this weekend.

Work has been crazy. We're headed into a very busy stretch.

The Tween tried out for the high school color guard. She didn't make it. They didn't take any of the short girls. The Tween was really mad about it, too. She felt like not only were the short newcomers treated baddly, but one of the girls who had been doing this for years was rejected, and not treated with any sympathy at all. The Tween was ready to kick butt and take names on this girl's behalf. I have to say, while her language left a lot to be desired, the Tweens willingness to stand up for a person she hadn't known until three nights ago made me proud. I think both girls will land on their feet and do just fine.

The good new with the Tween is that her mid-term grades came out Wednesday and she had three A+'s, three A's and one C. Now all she has to did is hang in there for four weeks and two and a half days and middle school will be behind her. Yes!

Hopefully, my next update will be from home on my brand new iMac.:)

Sad to say, my computer took another hit. I cannot get onto the internet at all. I may be able to check things at work, but that is all. I will be looking to buy a new computer as soon as i have the money--and it won't be a P.C., I can tell the world that.

Catch y'all when I can.

I haven't finished anything in quite a while, so I feel a special sense of accmplishment in this.

I also almost wrote a true drabble. Each of these three scenes is less than 200 words, and the last one is only 106.

They're not as good as I had hoped they'd be, but they're what finally made it to the page after I posted my speculation question the other day. I may post more questions since they seem to get my muse enspired.

Without further comment I present "What if"

( Read more... )

I don't know what made me think of this, but I've been contimplating about who would have become the Ringbearer if Frodo would have either died on the way to Rivendell or at some other point on the Quest, or if he had not accepted the charge to carry the Ring.

Anyone have any ideas, oppinions or theories? I'm not going to share any of my ideas just yet. I want to see what other people think.

I don't see any fic being born of this; it's just a question that has run through my mind several times over the last 32 years.:)

Happy belated birthday to skully01

Happy birthday today to your_darkness. Hope you enjoyed your day and watching hope return to our nation.

Happy birthday tomorrow to slightlytookish. Hope you have a wonderful day.

Oops! I almost forgot. Happy birthday lindelea1.

I seem to know a LOT of people born in January.:)

It's been almost a month since I posted anything, and on that occausiion I put my foot squarely in my mouth, and now I don't know what to say.

Thanksgiving was just weird. My daughter enjoyed herself, and that was good. She ended up going to Kentucky the next day to visit her great-grandmother on her father's side of the family who had just got out of the hospital--the woman is 94 and we kind of figure this was their last time to see each other.

Work's been slow but it allowed us to get all our Christmas orders filled quickly. Our department Christmas party was fun and the company party was okay. I wasn't thrilled with the food, but that's all right.

I had the last of my teeth pulled last Monday and I've been miserable ever since. I couldn't take the pain meds and nothing really helped anyway. They took the stitches out today and that helped a lot. They also adjusted the temporary denture on the bottom, but I'm still very uncomfortable. I did manage to eat about half my dinner this evening and that's an improvement. Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy Christmas dinner without my table mannors disgusting everyone else.

Hopefully I'll be more chatty online soon.

Oh, thank you to KnittedMerry for the lovely Yule card.:)

Yesterday in my Thanksgiving post I made an error in judgement. I mentioned the fact that our plans for the holiday had to be changed, but I did not explain why.

A frined of mine, who is the Best Friend of another lj friend, was hospitalized on Wednesday. we had all been going to spend Thanksgiving together, but because of hospitalizatiion the plans were postponed.

What I should have said was that I was thankful that my daughter, who was distressed by what had happened, would be able to have a day with a friend who could destract her from things. In fact, I almost just sent her to her friend's house. Yes, I wanted some sort of Thanksgiving on the day, but it was not absolutely necesary. I still don't even know exactly why I went.

Unfortunately, I don't always react the most wisely when sudden medical disasters strike, and this was the second this month. My father almost died of an emphysema attack back at the beginning of the month. Apperantly I didn't use good judgement once again by posting what I did yesterday.

Please consider this a public apology, to go along with the private ones I've tried to make, for my callus and thoughtless behavior.

I hope everyone else had a pleasant holiday.