Dira Sudis

Due to the scheduling weirdness of holiday weeks, today is my day off. Which is good, because I have an important writing goal for today. So far today I have:

1) Gotten U-Verse installed by a very punctual and efficient tech while her fellow tech hung out on my couch, lamenting how much he'll miss her when he has to move on to training someone else.

2) Canceled cable and returned all the cable paraphernalia to my cable company.

3) Laundry.

4) A smidge of canon review for an exchange story.

5) Drano'd the bathtub, resolved to really for real buy one of those little drain colander things to see if that will keep the hair clog buildup from becoming a menace every three to six months.

6) Continued to be entertained by the thing I posted on Tumblr last night.

6) Set up a twitter account: @dsudis


Needless to say, there has been absolutely no writing of any kind.

...Please tell me that there is already fic where Dick Winters meets Steve Rogers and/or Captain America. PLEASE. PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME WRITE IT YOU GUYS.


Also someone please tell me a) from where I osmosed this impulse to say uff da when something sort of annoying or unfortunate happens, because I don't think I've ever actually heard an actual person say that, and b) when exactly I, a deeply not-Norwegian transplant Wisconsinite, can get away with saying it out loud.

(I am thisclose to giving in and accepting "bubbler" into my vocabulary. It's gonna happen. /o\)

I manage to go long periods of time without remembering this about myself, and then it occurs to me again. I am a Midwesterner/Rust Belter in this very specific, defensive way.

I get sincerely angry when people impugn the awesomeness of the Great Lakes.

THEY'RE REALLY BIG, OKAY. REALLY, REALLY BIG. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THEM, BUT YOU HAVE SEEN OTHER LAKES THAT ARE NOT OFFICIALLY TITLED "GREAT", AND THEREFORE YOU THINK YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE LIKE BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT A LAKE IS, NO. NO, YOU DO NOT.

PATRICK KANE DOES, THOUGH, I FUCKING PROMISE YOU.

1. I have heat in my apartment!

2. I have LIVING ROOM FURNITURE in my apartment! It's a sectional and it's GINORMOUS, like, it takes up very nearly literally all the space in the room, but, uh, what else was I going to do with that space anyway? And now I have a sectional! I have so many places to sit I don't even know what to do with them all! Clearly I need to have some fangirls over. I have seating and heat AND booze, fangirls! To say nothing of Red Wings hockey on DVD! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO SEE THE MARCH 26, 1997 DETROIT/COLORADO GAME IN ALL ITS GRAINY GLORY. \o/

3. I finished reading The Sparrow while having a stressful move, AND SURVIVED. And now I just sort of resent what I vaguely remember of the sequel (what I vaguely remember of the sequel is: nothing works out well for anyone) because, look, this is obviously one of those hurt/comfort stories where the author just kept mashing the HURT button--oh, yes, in really exquisite and interesting ways! but MASHING THE FUCK OUT OF THAT BUTTON--and then got bored and wandered off before the comfort part happened. AND THEN SHE WROTE A SEQUEL WHERE SHE FOUND NEW AND DIFFERENT HURT BUTTONS TO MASH, JUST IN CASE YOU WERE THINKING ABOUT FILLING IN THE COMFORT PART FOR YOURSELF.

Uh. Is how I remember it.

4. Okay, so #3 was supposed to be "I finished that depressing book and moved on to a much happier one!" But apparently I had stuff to say.

ANYWAY: HAPPIER BOOK! lamardeuse/gn_chevalier's absolutely lovely debut novel, Bonds of Earth! I had had a copy since, er, January? February? A WHILE, is my point, and did not get around to reading it until Monday, when I really, really needed some properly constituted h/c, and oh man, it delivered. ♥ ♥ ♥

It's the story of two veterans of WWI (one military, one an ambulance driver and medic) who are both supremely damaged by the war--as well as by the experience of being gay men in the early twentieth century. It's one of those stories about growing things and healing that just unfailingly makes me incredibly happy. PLUS, hot porn. :D

Also, it make the project I'm participating in at work involving WWI service records much more interesting...

5. Hockey playoffs! I think I am maybe excited about this in a slightly different way than 85% of the people I see being excited about it on my reading page (waves to iulia, thelionforreal, shoshannagold), but here we are! Playoffs!

And as far as how the playoffs are actually going for my guys, um, I am going to assume the Wings are doing that thing where they drop the first two games of a series and them remember where they are and what they're doing and win the next four straight until I am forced to believe otherwise. Yes.

Helmer nooooooooooooooooes, and what the actual fuck, slap on the wrist for Shea Weber. No love for you this week, Shanny. NONE.

6. I am hanging out in my new apartment, making pasta fagioli while the last of my laundry finishes drying, and it is sunny, and I am warm, and I am comfy on my new couch, and last night I wrote a bunch of words of babyfic and I have this scribbled sheet of paper to turn into progress on the wolf-verse, and everything is fine.

ETA 7. Wolf puppies named Frost and Flurry. <3

Anybody in the US want my copies of the Duet (Fraser/Kowalski) zines? They really ought to belong to someone who will not leave them sitting on the DVD shelf for four years and then go, "Huh. I... still own these." I will happily mail them to anyone willing to give them a good home, cheap as free. Zines rehomed!

Also, lease on the new apartment starts tomorrow (although Actual Moving does not happen until Friday). I've boxed up the last of the books and all the DVDs. Tomorrow's To Do list includes such items as "couch shopping" and "assemble shelves at new apartment" and "pack everything that can be packed".

And yet, what is it that I find myself carefully bracing myself for, and developing meticulous strategies for handling, emotionally? Yeah. Rereading Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow for the first time since I was in high school. (It's my book group's book for April, and we meet on the 9th. I will read pretty much anything for my book group, and I actually have been curious to read it again and see if the impact is anything like the same now that I'm not sixteen and Catholic.)

But seriously, I'm really scared.

Sando::::::::::::z.

;_______;

So I'm changing jobs (getting transferred to a much bigger library within my library system) a week from Monday. I don't really know which department I'm going to or exactly what I'll be doing or what my work schedule will be. And because the universe is full of wacky random convergences, on the same day I found out about the job transfer, I also found an apartment I wanted to move to in a very different neighborhood from where I presently live. So three weeks after I change jobs I'll be moving. Happily the new place will be exceedingly convenient for the new job! And, uh, at least I'm not changing states and time zones like I did the last time I got a new place and new job all at once. Also, hiring movers.

Anyway. There has not been a lot of writing getting done in these parts. I am developing an intense relationship--like unto a couple in a movie who meet on an ordinary day and then sixteen huge explosions later are in love for the rest of their lives--with Unfuck Your Habitat, so lots of things are getting thrown away, donated, and tidied up, which is very satisfying and sort of reassuring in the way that covering one's windows with plywood and laying in many gallons of water is reassuring.

Plus, today on UFYH I saw this gif:



And, realizing the double-Scottish adorability bound to result from Karen Gillan being interviewed by Craig Ferguson, I went and looked for the clip. I wound up watching this one, instead:



...From which I conclude that Karen Gillan, when not being Amy Pond, has not quite got the hang of a) staying upright or b) being interviewed. Which is sort of adorable in its own way, but not entirely what I expected.


Unrelated to any of the above, after eight episodes of watching them be bestest partners (well, okay, like, six episodes of bestest partners and an episode and a half of MISERY), this week toward the end of Southland I was suddenly beset by the desire for Sammy/Ben. It seemed almost plausible during one three-second pause in a conversation, and then it went away.

I just thought you should know.

Apart from the checks which I am assured are in the mail (I am assured of this), the car accident experience seems to be largely over now: I have seen two doctors and a massage therapist, been promised sums of money by two different insurance companies, and with iulia's able assistance I bought a new(-to-me, but almost new-new) car. \o/

She is red, and her name is Lottie, for the Charlotte Church CD we found inserted upside down in the CD drive. The fact that the car was two years old and driven less than five thousand miles suddenly made a lot more sense after that discovery. She has four doors and an aux jack I can attach my iPod to, and everything that should be firmly attached is firmly attached. YAY CAR.

Sooooo I was in a car accident tonight. Silver lining: don't have to figure out which story to work on tonight! Also, I guess that cracked side mirror/cracked bumper/whatever was going on with my transmission is no longer a concern, because I totally fucking caved in the front of my car. (Guy pulled out in front of me, perpindicular to me, I couldn't brake in time; I T-boned him. The cop who responded to the accident assigned no fault to anyone, though I guess we'll see what the insurance people call it.)

I'm fine! He's fine! He kept apologizing to me and went and got ice for my (SPECTACULARLY bruised) knee (Iulia says that is what I get for sitting so close to the steering wheel when I drive) and let me use his phone after mine died to call Iulia and tell her exactly where I was, so she could come collect me off the side of the road within about five minutes of my car finally being towed away. And then we went to the ER, and everything went very quickly and smoothly, and I got an assortment of x-rays, and they concluded that, dang, I had a lot of bruises and I should take some acetaminophen & ibuprofen for that.

So then Iulia bought me acetaminophen and cold packs and ice cream, and know I am home elevating stuff and trying to talk myself into going to bed now that everyone has told me that it will all hurt SO MUCH MORE when I wake up. :|

But, you know. COULD HAVE BEEN MUCH WORSE.

Except I missed the book group meeting where we were supposed to discuss To Say Nothing of the Dog, due to totaling my car on the way there. So, please feel free to fill up the comments with your thinky thoughts and/or squee about that one, because Ned! Verity! Cyril! ♥

But this is also to say: tonight I wrote 1300 words of Southland telepathy fic, bringing the total to 8,708.

How many significant scenes to go, you ask? Oh, probably four. Or so. Probably not more than another six or seven thousand words, I hope.

It depends on how attached I am to the idea of logical transitions. I'm beginning to think they're overrated.



So, yes, that's been my evening. Oh, and I broke a bowl while washing dishes, and cut my thumb. Yesterday I scraped the hell out of two fingers on my left hand trying to get in the door of the post office with a big box. My goal for tomorrow is don't draw blood.

This entry is crossposted at http://dsudis.livejournal.com/523469.html.

Been home about 39 hours: got into a shouting match with my mother, defending the honor of Ellen DeGeneres.


(In the kitchen. In front of the toddlers. And while the "is there any amount of money, or fame, or anything you want, that could make you willing to go down on a girl?" argument does not seem to have swayed her at all, it did at least make her sputter entertainingly. Um. Yay?)