Rusalka's ramblings

This post contains all the tags I have used to tag my posts so far. Tomorrow, I shall post-date it so that it always sits on top of the journal. And I will edit it to add new tags as I create them. Let's see how well this works.

I have made it safely to Santiago, as did yahtzee63. I´m only supposed to use this hotel computer for 15 minutes, so no detailed report yet. You shall have to wait till I get back for pictures, as well as tales of great food, pisco sours, pre-Colombian art and the world´s most incompetent taxi driver. I´m sure you´re all holding your breath.

( spoiler )

Wow, the Iron Man DVD has some of the best extras I've seen in ages. Maybe even better than the first PoTC movie, which was my previous favorite. I had originally been disappointed at the lack of a commentary track, but they really went all out to make up for it.

A lot of really good Rhodey stuff ended up in the deleted scenes, which is kind of a bummer. I'm still holding out for War Machine in the sequel, though.

I'm mostly packed for the Chile and Argentina trip, and raring to go. So no episode thoughts from me after tonight's episode, as I won't have time to write them up. Also, no episode next week for me.

I remember Chile as being well-supplied with internet cafes, and I presume Argentina is too, so I might update once or twice during the trip, but mostly I shall be computerless and happy about it, so if anyone has anything to say to me, it's gonna have to wait till after October 14. Ta!

How evil are you?

I'm having a really hard time focusing on work -- or on anything else -- this week, because all I can think about is how on Friday morning I'm going to get on a plane, and on Saturday morning I'm going to meet yahtzee63 in Santiago. And we shall wander the lands of Chile and Argentina, and look at art and architecture and pretty scenery, and eat a lot of steak, and not think about work at all. Life will be very, very good.

In other, also excellent news, my Iron Man DVD has arrived, yay! And there's a new SPN tomorrow, yay!

( Spoilers shall bear witness. )

Title: Chloe Liked Olivia
Author: marinarusalka
Fandom: Iron Man movieverse
Rating: PG, mostly for swearing and a bit of violence
Length: about 6400 words
Summary: One is the personal assistant to a billionaire-playboy-turned-superhero. The other is an ambitious journalist with a political conscience. Together, they fight crime!
Author's Notes: Thanks to dotfic for the beta. Title taken from Chapter 5 of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.


This way to the fic.

I don't seem to have a Pepper icon. Why don't I have a Pepper icon?

ETA: Okay, now I have a Pepper icon.

Damn. Show kicks ass this season.

Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations

Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency...The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.

Some good discussion of the legal issues involved.

So instead of going straight to the SIO campus this morning, I went to the upper UCSD campus first, full of vim and vigor caffeine and determined to be a good girl and do my errands.

First I went to the Graduate Studies office to get a voucher for my next quarter of Spanish, because I was told that I can get a voucher every three quarters. Well, guess what? The summer quarter doesn't count, even though I paid money and took a class. No voucher for me till winter, and I have to shell out $275 if I want to take more Spanish in the fall.

Then I tried to go to the post office and mail my citizenship certificate back to Grandma. Only there's no longer a post office where I remember a post office being. I tried to ask around to see if they moved it to a different location on campus, but everyone just looked at me like I was speaking ancient Sumerian, so apparently not.

Then I went to Student Health Services to try and refill a prescription. Only they wouldn't, because their computer says I have unpaid fees. What fees? The computer doesn't say. Maybe my insurance fees. But my department pays my insurance fees. Okay. So what's up? They don't know, the computer doesn't say.

So all my good intentions came to naught, my errands are undone, I'm at work an hour late, and all I have to show for it is a Jamba Juice. Also, I have killer cramps and I just took my last two Midol.

The universe has my permission to explode into a giant fireball anytime it likes.

Also copied from just about everyone on my flist.

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair - just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with the picture.

( taken with my cell phone )

Ganked from various folks all over LJ.

The Hypothetical AU Meme: Take any one of the fandoms you know I write in (or think I should), and give me a type of AU (space opera AU, pirate AU, superhero AU, Ancient Rome, etc). I will then explain what story from your chosen fandom I would write for your chosen type of AU.

From the New York Times:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

So much for the Republicans' brief and unconvincing attempt to drape themselves in feminist trappings. Since the convention ended, Palin's own side has been consistently treating her as an embarrassment. First the announcement from a couple of weeks ago that she wouldn't be talking to any reporters who didn't promise to treat her with proper deference, now this. The McCain campaign has treated Palin with more contempt than any of the most rabid liberals have.

Hey, look, a meme!

1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.

dragonsinger gave me a P.

1. Lord Peter Wimsey. One of my great fictional crushes. Like Harriet Vane, I think I would marry him just for the fun of hearing him talk. Sure, her's wealthy and elegant and ariistocratic a Great Detective and has an interestingly angsty past, but at the end of the day, what sticks with me from the Wimsey books is the banter. Nobody does banter like Dorothy Sayers. (Well, maybe Sarah Caudwell, but she only wrote four books, and none of her characters had "P" names.)

2. Palaemon, on Xena: Warrior Princess. Despite being in only one episode ("Blind Faith"), Palaemon was one of my favorite guest characters ever on XWP: a brash, ambitious young man whose scheme to make a name for himself by killing Xena was foiled not so much by Xena herself as by his own inability to suppress his basic decency. I was always annoyed that the show brought back Jeremy Callahan in about a million recurring roles, yet never in this one.

3. Pepper Potts. Pepper is the perfect antidote to everything that's generally wrong with female characters in comic book movies. She's graceful, adult and competent at her job. Tossed with no advance notice into situations where she's totally out of her depth, she gets the jitters but still gets the job done. Offered the opportunity to become the hero's love interest, she turns it down because she knows it would be a horrible idea. And at the big climax, she ends up killing the bad guy after the hero has lost the fight. Awesome.

4. Peter Parker/Spider-Man Since Iron Man's got me reading Marvel Comics again, I've been rediscovering how much fun Peter Parker is. He always gets the funniest wisecracks (something that got lost in the movies, unfortunately), and he's decent and likeable. And despite the ridiculous amount of angst that the comics keep dumping on him, he's really remarkably well-adjusted for somebody who's been a masked super-hero since he was a teenager.

5. The Phouka, in War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. A ridiculously charming character who starts off as the archetypal mischievous trickster, and then keeps becoming steadily more heroic and complicated as more and more layers of his character are revealed.

Because of the way the driveway in my condo complex is designed, getting my car in and out of my garage is a really tight squeeze and involves a turn at a really awkward angle. When I first moved in, I had some trouble with it, but after three years I pretty much do it on autopilot. Therein lies the trouble....

Backing out yesterday, I turned a little soon and clipped my recycling bin with the front of my car. Now you'd think this wouldn't be a problem -- in a contest between a flimsy plastic bin and a car, the car should totally win and the worst you'd end up with is a dented bin, right? Wrong.

The bin is on wheels, and the wheels are on a metal spoke, and I managed to hit it just right so that the spoke poked into my left front tire.

That's right, folks, I got a flat tire without ever leaving my garage.

You may all applaud now.

( Spoilers will grip you tight and raise you from Perdition. )

So is it Thursday yet? Huh? Huh? How about now?

OH HAI SHOW WELCOME BACK I MISSED U!!!!!!!!!

I'm trying very hard to concentrate on work, I really am. Unfortunately, the only fully-formed thought I can manage is OMGNEWSPNTONIGHTSQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

When you see this, post a Supernatural quote in your LJ

Sweetheart, I don't do shorts. -- Dean in Wendigo



Two more days, wheeeeee!