1) Transition back to posting after sad hiatus = difficult.

2) SGA = awesome - I am loving the new season so far.

3) The Dark Knight = entertaining, but, really...Heath Ledger was very good, and A+ to him for working hard and whatnot, but...this is what he tragically destroyed himself over?

It's a comic book, dude! Dial it back a notch. If you can't achieve a performance of the Joker without locking yourself in your hotel room and driving yourself actually crazy until you're too strung out to come down afterwords, UR DOIN' IT WRONG.

Or, in the words of Sir Laurence Olivier, "Dear boy, it's called acting"

In other news, can we talk about prime / not prime for a second?

I am not a math person, so I didn't really think about it much before I started writing it into a story, but...

Is it actually a dorky memory game? I used to think, "eh, I guess I'll suspend my disbelief" about Mckay and Zelenka doing the math in their heads - it takes computers years to calculate new primes - but whatevs, I hear that McKay at least is a genius...and then I started thinking that it was a pattern recognition thing, like on an IQ test where they give you a series of numbers and you're supposed to figure out the next one in the sequence...I think real math people can just "feel" what's right, the way a great jazz musician can feel the right notes to play.

But now I am starting to think that it's really just that they know a lot of prime numbers - that it's the equivalent of Mckay discussing the trivia of Batman episodes (see - ha - this entire post does have an underlying theme) with Sheppard.

Yes? No? Prime? Not-Prime? It's important, because it changes the game from a conscious display of mad math genius, to an unconscious display of an intensely dorkitudenous hobby (defeating people by memorizing special numbers.)

Oh Rodney. I love you anyway.

A friend of a friend got the press packet for SGA Season 4!

It has DVD's of the first two episodes!

OMG!!

As soon as I get home tonight, I am going to be in SGA heaven!!!

Watch this space for gigantic spoiler-filled squee! (Under a cut of course)

Does anyone else do this? I am constantly starting stories, and working on them a little, and deciding I hate them and then deleting them.

Partly this is a time issue (let's be clear, nothing I start writing at 10:00 pm on a Sunday is ever gonna go anywhere, really, and you would think that I would know that by now, but I never learn).

But also I have found that I have to write very quickly in order to stay ahead of my inner critic, because the second I stop and eat something or whatever, I re-read what I wrote and I hate it and I kill it.

The alt. version of this is the like 5 long stories that I keep messing with. And the plan there seems to be write 2000 words stare at them in horror, delete 1900 of them and close it again.

I recently figured out that it's JUST BARELY POSSIBLE that editing everything I write into oblivion is standing between me and PROGRESS. So - from now on, when I am about to kill a story fragment, I am going to post instead, so that all of you can suffer with me. Suckers.

I thought I was going to write this story in which John has Hypoxia for the SGA Flashfic Sickness challenge, but I guess not.

Here's what I would have said:

( Baby, It's Cold Outside )

Aha! I found the index post of the Ring-Eye stories that I started a while back (before I began breaking computers right and left).

These are stories that mostly center on Ronon, although everybody gets a little bit of love.

( The beginning of it all )

( Meta )

( The Atlantis Stories )

( The Sateda Stories )

There are some drabbles here and there that I haven't tagged or indexed yet, which I may get to someday. Someday...

So here's my moment of recreational internet time for the, you know, month.

Which, btw, ( blows )

Meanwhile - the internets are chatting about John Sheppard.

( Playa hatin' aside )

Am I the only person for whom the holidays are an unmitigated stream of frenetic activity and crisis management? My family is delightful beyond all sense, but there were all these presents to buy, and a Turkey to Wrestle into Submission, In-Laws to Appease and instead of sitting at home staring at each other (as Sanboy and I usually prefer to do on New Years Eve), there were public places, and a fancypants gig, and Good!God! a party to go to on Dec. 31.

I have been delighted to catch up on the Holiday Stylings of the LJ community, 'cause there has been some great stuff (I'm looking at you auburnnothenna)- but I am also a little stunned and impressed and intimidated by all the yearly summaries and amnesty flashfics and Yuletide glee and general productivity around here.

Now be honest LJ...did you do all this and send out Christmas Cards too? Or is it all just a thin facade of cyber-efficiency while all around you RL collapses in flames?

Ahhh - this started to wander off into more ( Episode Speculation )

However, porn and Exhaustion do go together as well as some of those end of Season One stories implied.

So I will limit myself to saying, Happy New Year Internets! 2006 brought me many new friends here, and a whole bunch of imaginary nookie -

I can't wait for more.

I am feeling lazy and happy - since I have had THREE DAYS OFF IN A ROW.  Which I realize everyone else also had, but it's been a long long long time since I had even one day off, so I am sort of drunk with glee at the revelation that getting like ten hours of sleep and lying around in bed with sanboy all day, and drinking wine at 2:00 in the afternoon while it rains like crazy and watching the SG-1 marathon that I inexplicably recorded is my new favorite thing EVER.

re: the SG-1 marathon.  Well - that was kind of interesting.  I finally saw Dr. Weir: the Blond Ambition Mix and I can't begin to describe how happy I am that I don't have to watch her every week.  She annoyed me.  Not anything she did, just her self.  (poss. unfair response to her being an IMPOSTOR - what with how she came first.  But her hair was stupid, and I don't think Lorne would like to have sex with her, so there you have it.)

Also - Rodney in Mobius!  Hee hee!  He grabbed Sam's butt!  And before he did that, sanboy was kind of watching the screen and said "whoa, that blond girl is a naughty librarian" and then Rodney called Sam a sexy librarian ONE SECOND LATER.

so - actually - my dreams have all come true - I am married to Rodney McKay.

And speaking of...

I saw the preview for next weeks SGA approximately 5000 times during the SG-1 marathon, and I watched it every time, and by the 2437th I developed a theory - which maybe other people already realized, or maybe has been articulated in spoilers,  but here it is:

( spoiler from my brain, so maybe only a spoiler in my imagination )

Let it be said and acknowledged freely: I mock where I love.

I hereby admit that I Love and often Mock my weekly dose of Space Opera (especially the often questionable writing and The Flannigan's Very Special Acting Choices.)

But this! THIS! I think it's fair to say that the SGA writers, the entire ensemble, and Joe in particular, suddenly busted out the Sekrit Stash of SKillz with ( Common Ground )

In other news...

The 129 word limit still stands on my primary computer, I am borrowing one at the moment, just to get my LJ fix.

Also - I meant to record Counterstrike as well, because I wanted to see ( slight spoiler ), but I had to work all night and messed it up.  Did anyone see it?  If so, what did you think?

Let's see if I can edit it down...

(BTW spoilers for Duet contained herein)

Laura Cadman is a natural blond.

That's the theory running around the marine quarters anyway. It's a theory based on rumor, innuendo and hope - not on certain (intimate) knowledge. None of the grunts currently assigned to Atlantis have ever been in a position to find out for sure.

If she were on one of the regular gate teams, they'd know for sure. And not because any of them had gotten lucky enough to get intimate. Every one of Atlantis's first contact teams has had some kind of Alien Encounter leading to a Wardrobe Malfuntion. SGA-1 seems to have had a Wardrobe Malfunction at least once a month.

This post has 125 words

So, Runners, man. What's up with them?

When I was thinking my thoughts about Sateda here, I was mostly caught in a "yum! yum!" zone.

( Delicious Treats for All )( ! )( ! )

Also! Two lovely people made me things!

The first is here. melagan made a beautiful picture of Ronon holding a baby, the way he imagines himself doing in that latest little bit of The Last Home Season.

It's beautiful! There is something about a man with a baby in his arms...hmmm. Thank you melagan!

The second is a hot! porny! story! by neery here which stemmed from this delightful conversation. Hooray! What a nice present to wake up to!

Some passing thoughts ( about Sateda )

I have completely come over to the Excited side of the Force. I can't wait to see an episode that is All About Ronon.

I really was quite stressed out about it two weeks or so ago, when I thought that I might have time to finish the Ring Eye Stories (The Ring Cycle!?!) before it aired -

I realized last week that I was clearly on crack when I thought that. Or at least, still coasting on the adrenaline/sleep deprivation high from the Big Project. When I get all caught up in the rhythm of a work project, I sometimes (read: always) blur my work behavior into the rest of my life. So everything else becomes just as high-paced/high-stakes or else is utterly abandoned. (see: my unpaid phone bill, and MCI's lack of interest in my plight).

Something that I think about a lot, and make intermittent attempts to work on in my life, is finding a way to not let that happen to everything. Because as much as having that energy spilling over into some relationships or activities is GREAT, there are other times when I am sure my nearest and dearest want to strangle me with my own shoelaces to shut me up. Also, there is always at least a metabolic debt to be paid for all that energy expenditure(if not an emotional one). The head full of snot/post-project depression is not something I want MORE of. So. Balance.

In search of balance, I found a Hobby.

Now, this has happened to me before -
When Sanboy and I got married, I started doing beadwork. A great hobby! Featured in hobby shops, actually! Discussed in hobby magazines!

I started out repairing my grandmother's necklace, made some earings for my Mother-In-Law, branched off into making more and more jewelery for different people, and ended up spending 10 hours hand-stitching 650 Austrian crystals to the hem of a wedding gown 5 days before the ceremony.

So you see, it's a slippery slope, me and the leisure time activity.

Last week, inspired by the impending All About Ronon show, still caught up in the "Go! Go! Go!" of the big project, I started hacking away at proofreading the reconstructed Last Home Season, and posted a bit of it, and then had to go back and edit that part as I kept proofing forward in the story.

And then I realized that I was so lost to reason and decency that I had started posting a WIP.

Which is ok, I think, if you tell people what's happening. But given my own solid policy of not reading WIPs (with the exception of Ard, because, damn~!), it seems like a bit of a mean trick to pull without telling

I realized that I was starting to bring my regular charming competitive fascist/perfectionist drive to FANFIC. And it was JUST LIKE THE BEADS!

AND! I noticed that I was actually DREADING the impending SGA episode about Ronon, because it was a deadline I could only meet by pushing for it hard. My brain got it slotted into the post-project work that I am doing on last month's thing, and the steadily increasing pace of my current thing, and then I started feeling guilty when I started writing a thing about John bugging Rodney in the lab, instead of more Ronon, and then I got another short-term job offer that's going to take me out of town for a few days, and I thought, "Damnit! I'll never get it done in time, unless I work on it at night!" and then I realized that I was stressing out about WRITING PORN.

Hmmm. Not ok. And also, totally antithetical to the whole hobby thing.

I mean, why shouldn't I write a story about John bugging Rodney all day, while he's working in his lab trying to figure out the function of an Ancient Device? And Rodney gets worked up and accidentally finds the trigger to the device, which turns out to be part of the Ancients' system for dealing with criminals. It forces John to experience what Rodney is feeling. Which for one glorious moment might seem as though they could get themselves into a pleasurable feedback loop, where making Rodney feel good makes John feel good - but it turns out to be a lot more complicated than that, because those Ancients, they were a bit fucked up, you know? And the device was intended as punishment after all. Fortunately, John is fucked up too.

So I am going to keep working on The Last Home Season (and all the other Ring Eye Fic) at pace that I enjoy BUT I will also write other things that I feel like writing when I feel like writing them, AND I will sit back and relax and enjoy tonight's episode, even if Ronon doesn't take his pants off, or even blushingly reveal that when he was little, he wanted to be a dentist.