rivers_bend

Thank you to my shy lurker anon for the surprise balloons, and to the not-so-shy Dru :D ♥♥♥

It's that love time of year! __tiana__ was just saying that this reminded her of elementary school and making those little envelopes or boxes to put on your desk so that everyone could come around and put tiny superhero or puppies or princess valentines in it. Only Valentines Day was when my mostly entirely un-crafty mother decided to get crafty, so I didn't have storebought cards like everyone else, I had ones I'd made out of construction paper and paper doilies and stickers. I think I like this new version. Less glue, and more sincere messages :D

SecretAdmirerAnonymeme

and here is my thread over at fab_feb_friends for today's post a picture meme. like so:
A picture is worth a thousand words, but can you guess the word that inspired the picture?

Today's activity is a photo meme. Drop your name in the comments and link the thread to your own journal.

Then, ask you friends to go to Google images and type in one adjective they think describes you. They should pick one image from the first page that comes up, and put it in a comment to your thread. See if you can guess the adjective they used to get the image they picked! [Very sweet and thoughtful friends can fill you in later if you are completely befuddled and can't guess.]

In other news, I am having an intensely frustrating and infuriating day, part of which involves the fact that the modem at home is dead, and the internet at school wasn't working. I am now in a cafe. But might have seriously limited internet for the next few days until the new modem arrives. *weeps* I am hoping to get hooked up tomorrow so I can go and give you all some anon adoration ♥♥

I just did a quick little add up of the first 50 or so offerer-confirmed donations on help_haiti and it's over $2,300. And pinkfinity reported the first 35 or so mod-confirmed ones totaled $1500. I think this is going to be AMAZING way beyond the amazing I was imagining back on the 13th.

Also, I am SO EXCITED by the requests by both my winners. I was going to be happy to write whatever people wanted, even if it went out of my writer's glee-zone, but OMG they both want things that have me TWIRLING WITH HAPPY. win/win/win!!!!!!!! I am also super happy with the item I won. I am buzzing with excitement.

Sadly, I now need to drive 30 miles through the world-ending storms we are having, in order to be in my apartment when the woman buying my sofa turns up. But I can get some more packing (most of the rest of it?) done, and then there is just the cleaning and the moving of the rest of the boxes/furniture left to do. Nice men with physically active jobs and young, strong arms and backs are helping with that.

I snagged one of dreamlittleyo's lightning round fics over at help_haiti and she wrote me Jo/Kaylee!!!! SPN/Firefly crossover of glee and joy.

I ended up having to ditch on church, because I am absolutely wrecked after concert and dinner. But dinner was lovely, and two of the "kids" I grew up with in the church were there, one with her eight year old son, the other her brother who is closer to my age. It was nice to catch up with them a bit. I haven't seen her since before her son was born. Also nice to see some of the other people, who are more mom and dad's generation. Sometimes I feel sad that my tolerance for organized Christian religion has fallen to pretty much zero, even the UBER liberal Christian religion that is the UCC church I grew up in, because there are some really good and wonderful people there who were a big part of my growing-up years. But. This is not what this post was going to be about. It was going to be about the concert.

This was the 20th "Home for the Holidays" concert put on by the SFGMC, but the first one I'd ever been to. It was in the gorgeous Castro Theater, which I love. We got there only about ten minutes before it started, and the place was packed, but over at the side there were three empty rows at the front, so we sat in the third row and had no one in front of us. We couldn't see the sign interpreter, because he was on the opposite side of the theater, but we had a great view of just about everyone else. At first it was jolly and merry, and there was even a HILARIOUS song about fruit cake embellished by a drag Julia Childs "making" cake, and by making cake, I mean drinking a lot of "rum". But then this boy who I'd had my eye on anyway--because he was really cute in that Adam Lambert would probably fancy him if he were just a little bit shorter kind of way--stepped up to the mic. And started singing in this AMAZING, sternum-vibrating bass voice, a song about the paper menorahs in Billings Montana. As he was singing, I noticed that he had a star of David on a chain around his neck. I was already crying by then, but tears started flowing down my cheeks, and I was wiping them with my fingers and drying them on my handbag because it's cotton, and my shirt was all filmy and not appropriate for drying purposes. I was still weeping when they started the next song which was about the meaning of Christmas and family and has a line in it about remembering the Christmas they weren't welcome at home any more. Having just recently heard a few of the GMC members talk at a PFLAG meeting, I know for a fact that several of them came out to their families and were told never to come home again. So on with the weeping I went.

I'd just about recovered by the time the sing-along started, and managed fine with Jingle Bells and whatever the next one was, but then, before we could launch into Silent Night, one of the men read an abbreviated version of the story of the spontaneous Christmas Eve cease-fire during WWI where men from both sides sang Silent Night, in English and German. Well. I was gone. Tears dripping off my chin because I couldn't catch them fast enough. I could hardly breathe, never mind sing. Missed the last two sing-along carols, too, because I was still crying.

They did have me laughing again by the end, though. And I kind of have to say. A hundred-odd gay men singing their hearts out in the Castro Theater, past which Harvey Milk marched, and past which his supporters marched the night he died, which has been the symbol to so many queers across the country over the years as a place they can go and be accepted and be at home? That's all the church I need.

My dearest wish for all of you is that you have a place where your heart is at home. ♥

When I was but a babe in arms in LJ terms (back in 2006), my obsession with hands was legendary rather more obvious. My header was a collage of pictures of celeb's hands, half my icons were hands, and almost all my sex scenes had a focus on hands and tactile sensation. Then I moved on to other fandoms, fic tropes, and journal looks, but I still definitely have a thing about hands.

All of which is a preface to saying that this fic has some of the best sex scenes ever if hands are your thing. Love is Strange by garryowen over at dreamwidth is a Star Trek mash-up with Dirty Dancing. Or a Dirty Dancing redux if you prefer. Whatever you want to call it, I loved it. Kirk/Spock, with all the longing and dancing and discovery from the movie, but all the character and brilliance of the nuTrek cast. And finger-touching that made me melt into a puddle of goo.

even if Trek isn't your big thing, if you have seen the movie or know anything about the characters and have any fondness at all for Dirty Dancing I urge you to read this story. But expect to sit a while. it's 45k words.

Also, thank you to Cathy for my santa cthulu, and to pkoceres for my card! *is grinning lots*

And last, but most assuredly not least, happy birthday to longleggedgit and meret! ♥

All you SPN peeps should go here and entertain me dru everyone with pictures of Sam and Dean/Jared and Jensen over at drvsilla's interactive photo meme.

There can never be enough pictures of the boys. There are already some great ones, but I the world needs MOAR.

It seems somehow appropriate that my 2000th post is my Wincon report. This weekend has been all about fangirls, and fangirls are the very best part of livejournal. I'm on the airplane right now, feeling sad to be going, but also looking forward to getting back to my own bed and my cat and my kitchen. It was an amazing weekend and I got to spend time with a lot of truly awesome people. It was long enough that I will cut for the sake of your scrolling finger, though.

( It snows in October in Denver, CO )

Now to figure out how I am going to see the 11 shows my DVR completely failed to record while I was gone. I don't understand what happens EVERY SINGLE TIME I go out of town that it stops recording, but it's clearly something. It for some reason didn't want to record House or Heroes tonight either. Really, though, it's hard to care as much as I would had I not been spending all weekend with such awesome women. I love Wincon so so much. I've bought my ticket for next year already. More on next year later.

You people! I am overcome. Honestly. Doing that thing with tears and a grin so big it literally hurts my cheeks. The v-gifts and emails and messages and posts and cards and fic and wishes and texts and EVERYTHING. *hugs and loves so much*

I've been out all day and only just got home, so I need to go through everything again, and thank you all individually, but I just had to get it out there that I am having a great day, in large part to you.

I have also had a great day because me and the parents went up to SF and took the ferry over to Tiburon (which is MUUUUUUUCH less crowded and touristy than Sausalito) and had OMG the most AMAZING lunch. We were at a Mexican restaurant right on the water and I had steak and chicken skewers and my parents had salmon and swordfish with veggies skewers, and there was plenty to only need to eat half and we are having the other half for supper. Which is AWESOME.

So tons of love and tons of fun, and soon, tons of cake. It's the way to go, I'm telling you.

Thank you all again! ♥♥♥

Empire Magazine's 10 Greatest Movie Bromances
thanks to sandrine for the link.

I used to subscribe to Empire when I lived in England, and more importantly, Empire online film forums was my first foray into fandom life and internet friends, and if it weren't for the people I met there, I don't know that I would be here, and that would make me very sad indeed. *smishes all my Empire girls tight*

Have to say though, that the picture that link opens to is not helping my resolve to NOT go and spend another ten bucks seeing Fast and Furious at the cinema today.