Whoo hoo! The sshg_exchange sign-up post has been made and can be found here. The rules for the exchange can be found here, and it's strongly recommended that you read the rules before signing up.

The Fangirl Tour is still making its rounds, and Friday's stop was brought to you by dream_labyrinth. Her recs can be found here, and she's offering story and art recs from the Harry Potter and Labyrinth fandoms.

lorena_snape is hosting today's stop on the tour, and her recs include fic, art and videos for the Harry Potter and House fandoms and can be found here. So there's lots of lovely recs just waiting to alleviate either those post-Portus blues or that pre-Terminus tension. ;P

During Portus, droxy surprised yanniconny by appearing as the Severus Snape from Seven Preposterous Things. It was an amazing performance, and I think that everyone involved enjoyed it immensely. Before I left on Sunday, I had the opportunity to speak to droxy again, and she mentioned something that surprised me. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to talk about it, but everyone was rushing to leave, so the thought has just been rattling around in my head.

( Cut for rambling and a pic )

I've finished cropping and resizing the pics I took, and I'm sending links around to get permission from the various people to post them. In the meantime, I thought I would nip a couple of Portus rumors in the bud:

1. No, ginny_weasley32 and I are not plotting to steal the sshg_exchange from shiv5468. ~shakes head~ In fact, the three of us took some time to sit down and discuss how we want to handle the next round of the exchange. We're still working out the details, but we're not plotting behind each other's backs.

2. No, I do not hate annietalbot. WTF? Where did that one come from? annietalbot is a lovely woman, and I've never once exchanged a cross word with her. In fact, I admire her very much. We had a nice chat and settled all that nonsense.

3. Yes, I did douse yanniconny with the remains of my drink, but it was an accident. I tripped with a slippery glass in my hand. Although, I'm sure there are witnesses who speculated about why I threw my drink on her, and why she didn't kick my ass. (Okay, that's not a real rumor, but I did try to get it started for a while there. It just never seemed to catch on. ~grin~ )

Sorry to disappoint the rumor mill, but I thought it was better to settle a couple of those things in public. ;)

I'm home, and I had such a good time! I have tons of things to talk about and lots of pictures, but I'm too pooped to go through them all tonight. Tomorrow, I'll post more on all the fun people and things. (I missed meeting a few people that I wanted to meet, which sucks greatly, but damn, there were a lot of people there, and it was easy to lose track of people in the crowds.) I'll also reduce the pics into a more manageable size, email copies to the people depicted and see which ones I have permission to post in the wild. Right now, I'm going to take a shower, then put my feet up, cuddle my grumpy, grumpy cat, and wish I was back at the Gossip Bar hanging out and talking. ;P

This will be short, and I will explain more later on.

1. Having the best time ever!

2. Have met so many people from my flist (and need to friend Lariope, who is very sweet.)

3. Am looking for the rest of the people from my flist so that I can meet them, too.

4. I covet Shiv's Lucius scarf and am plotting to obtain hers one of my own

5. Camillo1978 - I'm not always such a smart ass, I promise. You'll see what I mean later on. ;P

Today's stop on the Fangirl Tour is brought to you by the very busy subvers, and her recs can be found here. She's provided lots of lovely Harry Potter fic and art recs to take your mind off the fact that it's Monday again. They're also a wonderful distraction from the pre-Portus frenzy that some of us are engaged in. So what are you waiting for? Don't you want to relax a bit? ;)

Today's stop on the Fangirl Tour is brought to you by gardengrrl13, who's posted recs for the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fandoms. Her post can be found here.

Happy Birthday, Professor. I hope you have a lovely day. ~hugs~

themoreyouclean is handling today's stop on the Fangirl Tour, and her recs for the Harry Potter fandom can be found here. She has links to fic and fan vids - just the thing to tide you over while waiting for the weekend. So what are you waiting for? Go and have fun. ;)

I'm so behind on posting the Fangirl Tour links, so I hope that you've been following along on the community. If not, you've been missing lots of lovely recs!

Last Monday's Fangirl Tour stop was brought to you by hjsnapepm, and can be found here. She's given recs for the Hannibal Lecter series, Harry Potter, House and The Pretender fandoms.

Friday's Fangirl Tour stop was courtesy of bambu345, who gave us recs for the Harry Potter, JAG, Pride and Prejudice and Twilight fandoms, and her recs can be found here.

And today's stop is by ozratbag2. She has recs for the Harry Potter and West Wing fandoms, and her recs can be found here.

So if you're looking for something to distract you from the upcoming workweek, you should have no problem. ;)

whitemunin is in charge of today's Fangirl Tour stop, and her links can be found here. She's offering recs for the Harry Potter, Ivanhoe, Labyrinth, Peter Pan, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Trek - The Original Series fandoms, so there's lots of goodies to distract you from having to work on a Friday. ;)

And in follow-up birthday news, I received a lovely stack of virtual presents from madamsnape, and new icons from laiksamarei:



and from sshg316:

.

~pauses to admire the pretty~

And warded_portal wrote me a brilliant set of paired drabbles, and if you haven't read them, you really should! Who can resist a Harry Potter/Labyrinth crossover, after all? ;P

And someone sent me flowers. Real, honest to goodness flowers! I love them, and they're absolutely beautiful, but the card was unsigned, and the "Happy Birthday" card only read: "Thanks. Have a good one." I thought it was whitemunin, but she swears it wasn't her. It wasn't anyone in my family, and Smokey hasn't learned how to use the phone, so... I'm now at a loss. If you sent them, please let me know and accept my profuse thanks and gratitude as is your right and due. ~uses pleading puppy eyes~

Also, Happy Birthday wishes to camillo1978, sapphiretragedy and marinleche, all of whom share a birthday today, and belated Happy Birthday wishes to vanityfair00. ;)

Today, there's an extra stop on the Fangirl Tour, courtesy of rillalicious. She has recs for the Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars fandoms and can be found here. Just the thing to break up a monotonous workweek. ;)

My birthday yesterday was lovely, and thanks again to everyone for their good wishes. I have goodies to show off, but right now the kid who mowed down our mailboxes is on his way over to replace them, so I need to run for the moment. I'll be back later. ;)

Thank you to everyone for the wonderful birthday wishes! You've really brightened my day considerably. So far, my birthday has been somewhat... eventful. Nothing dramatic, but just the day-to-day annoying stuff.

After the lost checkbook/flat tire incident yesterday, I apparently annoyed fate by pronouncing that "the day is already improving". ~sighs~ A 16-year-old kid came flying down our road (we live sort of in the boonies), swerved to avoid a horse trailer, lost control of his vehicle, ran through my parents' yard and wiped out our mailboxes and the newspaper box. No one was hurt, but he mowed down the metal post holding the newspaper box (we have to have one here or they won't deliver a newspaper), hit the 4X4 mailbox post that was set in concrete and snapped it right off at the ground, and threw the post and mailboxes across the yard. After an hour spent standing in the rain with my neighbors (a witness and the owner of the horse trailer), the kid's parents (very nice people) and a Department of Public Safety trooper, I now have promises that the kid will return and replace everything. I felt a little sorry for him. He didn't have much damage to his truck, but he had to endure the "speed kills" lecture from the trooper (twice) and from his mother, who muttered under her breath about insurance premiums. His father was a little more implacable. His dad just asked to borrow a tape measure and began taking measurements for what needed to be replaced. The kid's mother promptly informed the young man that this was going to be an expensive lesson for him because she was going to make him pay for all the materials. He just hung his head and agreed. ~grin~

And my first act on my birthday was to clean up the hairball that Smokey gacked up on the carpet.

Sooooo... You can imagine how lovely I found all the birthday wishes. Thank you again. As I said, you've really made my day. ;)

Today's stop on the Fangirl Tour is brought to you by outinthestorm, and she's offering recs in the Firefly, Labyrinth, Naruto, Phantom of the Opera, Pirates of the Caribbean, and X-Men movieverse fandoms. Her recs can be found here and should be enough to take the sting out of going to work on Monday. ;)

In less fun news, I've had a weird morning so far. When I went over to my parents' house this morning, I noticed their van has a flat. How does a vehicle get a flat just sitting there? It had a slow leak, I suppose, but now I need to get the compressor out and air up the tire and take it to be repaired. I think I'll wait until this evening to do that. It's too hot now. Then my parents, who are on vacation, called and said they've lost their checkbook. So I went to their bank and stopped payment on that series of checks. Fortunately, I'm on their account (in case of emergencies), and they hadn't written any checks out of that series. Stopping payment was easy enough to do. All I had to do was fill out a form, sign it, and authorize the processing fee be taken out of their account. However, none of the bank employees ever asked for my ID, which - now that I think about it - they really should have done. On the other hand, after years of working in local law enforcement, there are a lot of people in this town who know me on sight when I don't actually know them, so... Possibly that was the case.

But I'm back home and out of the heat, so the day is already improving. Now if we can just manage to avoid the round of severe weather the meteorologists are predicting for this afternoon. ~crosses fingers~

It's back up. Thank you for being so patient!

vashka_kat is in charge of today's Fangirl Tour stop, and she's posted recs for the Gundam Wing, Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice, Ranma 1/2, Rurouni Kenshin,Sailor Moon and Star Wars fandoms. Her recs can be found here. That should be enough keep you busy on a Friday. ;)

And I would have sworn that I posted this to my LJ, but clearly not. ~looks at LJ and is puzzled~ At any rate, amberdiceless posted the stop for Manic Monday, and offers recs for Harry Potter and Good Omens, so there's plenty of goodness to go around. Her recs can be found here.

Today's Fangirl Tour stop is brought to you by tudorpot. Her recs include Harry Potter, Lord Peter Wimsey, Mary Russell, Jeeves & Wooster, and some lovely cross-over fic between those universes. You know you'd rather be reading fanfic than working on a Friday, so go here and take a look. ;)

Today's stop on the Fangirl Tour is brought to you by dmacabre, who's recced fanfic and fanart for Labyrinth, Pirates of the Caribbean, Criminal Minds, and a House/Agent Pendergast crossover. Her recs can be found here. So there's lots of lovely recs with which to distract yourself while waiting for the office clock to signal that it's time to start the weekend. ;P

Fangirly Friday was so very frantic that I'm just now getting around to posting, so please forgive me. ~hangs head~ Fangirly Friday's stop on the Fangirl Tour was courtesy of dreamy_dragon73 and features 13 wonderful HP recs. They can be found here. And for today's Manic Monday stop, mcfly85 is in charge, and offers recs and links to fanmixes for HP, Labyrinth, Doctor Who/Torchwood, and for another special HP surprise. Her recs can be found here. So go and enjoy!