I've been wanting new icons for posts about books lately, so I decided to make some. My image-hunt took me to illustrations of books I loved as a kid, and from there to the websites of other illustrative artists and I ended up with quite a few more than I can use on my own. So I'm posting them here, in case someone else can use them. Lots of these are cropped from illustrations by Taeeun Yoo, Sam Weber and Alexander Jansson, along with a few from other artists and also some stock ones and author portraits. Samples:

1	2	3	4

( TAEEUN YOO )

( SAM WEBER )

( ALEXANDER JANSSON )

( MISCELLANEOUS BOOKISH ICONS )

I also wanted a new food icon, a small homage to the avocado sandwich, with which I am having a passionate affair. I ended up with too many of those, too, so please -- if you want them, help yourselves:

( FOOD )

I keep telling you guys that I'm going to stop lurking and get back into the LJ thing and then disappearing for another month or several weeks or whatever. So I guess I'll avoid saying anything like that this time. Instead, here is a list:

1) Our new house seems to come with children. We didn't realize this until it started to be spring here and the snow melted enough to free up the loose board in the fence that separates us from our neighbours. It seems this loose board, when nudged, opens a gateway to Narnia (or someplace similar) for the three little kids who live next door. So although it's weird to look out our kitchen window first thing in the morning and see small people creeping through our pine trees like they're on a recon mission in 'Nam, there's no way we can nail that loose board shut now. I've never lived in anybody's Narnia before. It's a big responsibility, man.

2) At my doctor's recommendation, I've been tapering off my antidepressants for the past month and a half or so. It's harder than they make it sound -- along with the physical withdrawal symptoms, I got these weird neural-electric shock things several times a minute for a couple of weeks, something between vertigo and headrush and that strange fuzzy absence you get when you stretch really huge or yawn. I'm pretty much through the worst of it now, though, and haven't had any meds at all for a week and a half. So far, I have noticed that a) weight loss is again possible and b) I am no longer limitlessly patient with difficult customers and also c) I seem to be able to write stuff right now. Possibly this is just placebo effect, I don't know. But either way, it's mostly cool. *tentative Paul Gross arms*

3) My brother has a motorized scooter (something like this one) and he might be selling it and it's really, really fun to ride and would also make my commute to and from work cost less than 2 bucks a day. So, a poll:

Poll #1198129
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

33 year old people riding scooters:

4) Do you guys know about Launchy? And its Mac counterpart, Quicksilver? Because I didn't know, and then someone told me about them, and now my life is totally replete with geeky joy. (They basically just index your programs and commonly used files and then let you search for stuff and open it via the keyboard. But seriously - so much cooler than it sounds. Quicksilver has made my work Mac do stuff that seems to be pretty much just magic.)

5) And lastly, since we're on the subject of stuff that's probably only news to me: Bishop Allen is pretty great, huh? I've been listening to them a lot lately -- they sound kind of poppy and kind of folky, but in this unusually upbeat way compared with a lot of indie bands these days. Here are some of their songs, in case you, like me, are late catch on.

( Supernatural 3.16 spoilers )

In other news, it seems I haven't posted anything in this LJ thing for more than a month. It doesn't seem that long -- I've just been working and making a garden and helping build this multifandom archive for E-Book-formatted fanfiction. Not spectacularly interesting stuff, but fun stuff. It's been a productive hiatus.

I missed you guys, though, and work's slowing down, so hopefully this won't be the only thing I post this month.

*watches Mininova for SPN torrents*

* I've successfully moved into the new house. It is an older house and has lazy susans in the kitchen cupboards and a whole bunch of strange nooks and crannies, and the floors are scuffed-up hardwood and there are actual storm windows with little port-holes you can open at the bottoms, and the garage roof looks somewhat precarious, especially under the weight of the remaining snow. I kind of love it, though -- it's the type of house I grew up in, and because it's a corner lot, there's room for six giant pine trees in the front yard plus a back yard you can make a garden in. Tomatoes! Hopefully. One day. Should the spring ever actually get here.

* I'm trying to write a story for SPN Big Bang. Actually, I've got two contenders in the works, because I had two big ideas that seemed like they might be worthwhile and I thought it might be wise to try and hedge my bets. However, despite having just had a couple of days in which there was free time for writing, both stories seem to have stalled. Worrisome. *pokes self with stick*

* I'm going out to visit my littlest sister today, yay. She lives a couple of hours north of here and we don't get to see her as often as I'd like. I am bringing her some homemade hermit cookies because she's pregnant and craving molasses and brown sugar and spice. Anybody know of any other good molassesy recipes?

• 12:19 Am trying this out, since 140 character posts are more my speed these days. Not sure if I'll keep it up...opinions? #

Posted using LoudTwitter

I am spending the day packing. Seriously. You'd think that my sitting here typing this would indicate that I am, actually, not packing at all, but you would be totally WRONG. Because, you see, I am packing in my MIND, like, planning my line of attack and determining the priority of various items to be packed and generally making a Grand Packing Scheme of Overall Grandness. Truth!

I'm jealous of all you Seattle-bound people, but I am trying to be happy for you also, in a vicarious yay kind of way. Yaaaay. *pom-poms* *pouts*

I've been watching the second season of Torchwood this week and you know what? That show is craaaazy. I kind of love them for it, though -- especially Ianto, who is tiny and gay and totally kickass in his pinstriped suits and crisp pink shirts. I'd have killed to see a character like that on TV when I was a kid, man, and I think I'd watch any kind of nonsense as long as he was in it. ♥

( Wanna see something awesome? )

Okay. I guess I'll go, you know, do work and stuff. SIGH.

Lo, these many internet eons ago, way back in December, vsee made a post about the state of fic archiving in due South. At the time, it looked as though people were divided on the subject -- some people were pretty LJ-oriented and had no trouble finding new fic as it was posted around here; others wished for a more centralized, one-stop shopping kind of thing, but admitted that the existing archives have issues (no editability after posting, no way for authors to track stats, outdated interface, etc.).

china_shop suggested creating an RSS feed of links and summaries for newly posted dS fic and vids and art and whatnot (eta: I mis-remembered -- the proposal China Shop made included only fic) -- kind of an aggregate of all the various comms around LJ and elsewhere, which would have the effect of centralizing new fannish output without sacrificing people's control over their own work. Happy medium! We talked about using Del.icio.us as an easy way to collect the links and turn them into an RSS feed, and thought that it could be a collaborative effort, with volunteers tagging in all areas of fandom. People could then subscribe to the main due South feed, or just to the tags they're most interested in seeing. It would be readable on LJ or IJ or in other RSS reading services. It seemed like a great idea...but then we kind of forgot about it.

Now, though, with the most recent LJ goofups and the growing number of people getting frustrated enough to go off and make new blogs elsewhere, I thought it might be a good time to bring it up again. Del.icio.us feeds won't work for keeping track of personal posts in this situation, but at least they'll let us have a centralized, searchable place to keep track of new due South (and 6 Degrees) art and fic and vids and meta.

So what do you guys think?

Poll #1159131 DS/6D Goes Del.icio.us
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

If a centralized DS/6D-oriented RSS feed existed, would you use it?

Would you be interested in volunteering as a tagger in your area of fandom?

Which LJ or IJ communities, websites, archives or other blogging services featuring DS/6D content do you think should be included in this project?

Any questions, comments or suggestions you might have would be most welcome. Please feel free to pimp this out wherever you think people might want to see it.

From scriggle, I think: ( 200 things I have and haven't done )

It's grey and chilly here, and I have the whole day off. I think I will spend much of it in my PJs. \o/

So historically, February is not a great month for me. It's the ass-end of winter, when the snow is all grey and filthy and the cold is that ferocious, breath-stealing cold you associate with uninhabitable planets, and it's dark all the freaking time, and everybody's sad and broke. But man, this February was the King of All Februaries, full of difficult family stuff and a lingering sickness that would not go away. So that's where I went for a while there, in case anybody was wondering.

Things are okay now, though! I'm finally not sick (\o/) and I got to spend a couple of weeks in training for work, which involved learning how to take portable computers apart (fun!) and put them back together again (not so much fun). Plus, bestly, my sister and I are moving at the end of this month, into our newly-rented HOUSE, where there will be a YARD which is filled with big old evergreen trees and a garage and enough space for a GARDEN. WOOHOO. The house itself is in need of some work (the living room walls are pink 0.o), but it's in a neighbourhood I like, and considering the fact that the vacancy rate in Saskatoon is hovering at around 1% right now, we are feeling pretty damn lucky to have found a house to rent at all.

(You guys. I am going to have a WASHER AND DRYER. Right there! In my own laundry room! I can't even tell you how exciting this is. I think I'm going to spend the whole first week washing things, just because I CAN.)

Other good news:

* My coffee this morning is really quite good!
* The snow is almost all melted.
* I bought two new pairs of jeans the other day and both of them look pretty good.

Also, unrelatedly, has anybody heard anything about these guys? They make computers with Gentoo (a build of Linux) natively installed instead of Windows, which means they can sell their portable model for less than $300 (plus the service plan). I'm considering it, but 300 bucks is still 300 bucks, so if anybody's had a bad experience with them, I'd love to hear it.

And finally, in conclusion, HI.

Title: Dating Is Hazardous
Author: Sprat
Pairing: Fraser/Ray K
Length: about 1300 words
For slidellra's awesome DS/C6D Tag Game. Somewhat late, because I suck at time zones. /o\

( Dating Is Hazardous )

Okay! And now I tag...laylee.

Awww, somebody gave me a rose for my userinfo! Thank you, anonymous! I love it. *hearts back atcha*

1. ( SPN 3x11 and the 3x12 preview - spoilers! )

2. Somebody Valentined me at svmadelyn's Valentine's Game! Thank you, whoever you are! I smooch you in an anonymous fashion.

3. I'm kind of bored with the music on my iPod right now, so I'm in search of new-to-me music that I might like to listen to. Are there any bands or artists you've recently come across that you're just burning to rec? I'm pretty open-minded about such things: genres aren't as much of a consideration as heartfelt-ness and/or melodic prettiness and whatnot. (I'm not looking for uploads, necessarily -- just point me in the general direction.)

4. I'm almost finished writing my picfor1000 story! Early, even! \o/

5. In German, five is fünf. This is a fact which has delighted me since childhood. Fünf! It's just so fun to say.

I will be back tomorrow to post embarrassingly squeeful reaction to tonight's SPN (because ♥ and !!! and all manner of EEEE!) but in the mean time:

Thank you thank you, anonymous candy-hearts giver! I am munching them happily even now. Mmmmm, sugar.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Ahem.

*clears throat*

*taps microphone*

Dear everyone,

I have a small yet important announcement.

This has long been suspected but I am happy to be able to tell you that we, as a fannish community, finally have tangible, incontrovertable proof: ( Ray K hearts Ray V forever, the end )

The card says:

Yeah, okay, so Frannie has all these scrapbooking supplies and I was really bored, shut up.

Sorry about the front, it turns out you're supposed to measure before you start sticking stuff on, who knew.

I still can't believe you're undercover again. I mean, I know you signed up it before we started figuring out -- whatever the hell this IS -- but I probably can't even give you this dumb card until March or April, which SUCKS. Don't do this again, okay? Please? [transcriptionist's note: <3]

So, here's the plan for when you get back:

[knot-tying sticker] [hotel sticker]

Think about it. Yeah.

(Why does Frannie even HAVE knot-tying stickers? Never mind. I don't wanna know.)

Be careful and not-stupid, and get back safe and soon, and if you get yourself hurt I'll hurt you again myself, so DON'T.

Miss you,
Kowalski

DUDES. So much goofy grinning today when I pulled this out of my mailbox. My neighbours probably think I am nuts.

Thank you, secret Valentine person! You made my entire week. ♥

Okay, despite a brief, too-sick-to-do-things-requiring-literacy delay, I am finally back with the list. I'm sure I'll think of plenty of others to add later on, so please to be thinking of this as a work in progress. And feel free to come back here any time to comment with more suggestions if you find stories that fit. I'll edit the post to add them.

Note -- some of these stories were kindly recommended to me by other people in the comments here and here. I've written the name of the reccer next to their link; if you'd like to read the rec in its entirety, you should check out their comment in the original posts.

STORY RECS BY FANDOM:


( Bandom )

( Dead Zone )

( Discworld )

( due South )

( Harry Potter )

( Hot Fuzz )

( Shakespeare )

( Stargate: Atlantis )

( Starsky and Hutch )

( Supernatural and Jared/Jensen RPS )

( The Sentinel )



LISTS AND AUTHOR RECS:

Wilby Wonderful fic (Vsee)

Spuffyduds's entire oeuvre (Vsee)

Brynnmck's More Joy Day Fic Recs

Speranza's dS stories (China Shop)

Wordwitch's Fic Lists:
* for novels

* for smutlets

* for comfort reading

* and for highly recommended stories

Sansets's Week of Comfort Fic Recs

Rei17's H/C recs (SPN)

Iniq's J2 Schmoop recs

IfYouWereMine's Sam/Dean Schmoop Recs (SPN)

General Jinjur's Audiofic Archive (for multifandom audiofic)

fluffandfold (for domestic SPN and J2)

motelwincest (for Sam/Dean audiofic)


NON-FANFIC FICTION RECS:

Georgette Heyer, Jennifer Cruise, Dianne Wynne Jones's YA books, especially Archer's Goon and Fire and Hemlock - china_shop

Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan stuff, especially Shard's of Honour and Barrayar - wordwitch and girlfan1979

Diane Duane's Young Wizards Series, which starts with So You Want to be a Wizard. Anything by Madeline L'Engle, especially A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels. Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. The Everlasting Story of Nory by Nicholson Baker. Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently books. Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population. Ancient Light by Mary Gentle -- along with its sequel, whose title I forget. The Hobbit! Harry Potter! More as I and/or you guys think of them.

Have terrible head cold of doom. Am gross and pathetic and whiny and un-showered, and somebody should come get me juice. Juuuiiice! *flails feebly*

Okay, fine, I have plenty of juice. But since I've been ill for two days now, I have run out of to-read links on my Del.icio.us, and am turning to badfic as a result and...maaaan. Somebody needs to save me from myself. And then I thought hey, you know, it's cold season -- chances are I'm not the only one in need of comfort fic, so maybe I could ask you guys what your comfort fic favourites are, and then I could dig up some of my own recs, and then I could come back here and post all the links later! Like a comfort fic festival! Or something!

So does anybody want to link me their favourites? Any fandom is cool -- mostly I'm looking for long and absorbing stories, preferably with happy endings and not too much angst. Romance, schmoopyness, AUs, mild h/c -- all of these things are also excellent qualities, especially if the writer can pull them off without compromising the quality of the writing or characterization too much.

ETA: Actually, if you have any recs for non-fannish fiction that fits the bill, I'd be interested in those, too.

All right, so I've been meaning to post these for so long that many of them have been recced already, and despite my slowness, I actually haven't read everything that was posted in this year's challenge yet...but still. These are my personal favourites out of the stories I've read so far.

Title: About a Girl
Author: Vienna_Waits
Pairing: none
Rating: G
Length: 2831 words

In the show, Inspector Thatcher doesn't really get a chance to be a three-dimensional character -- she's played for comedy most of the time, even when she's being Fraser's romantic complication. This story gives her a voice and a really plausible history, and I actually liked her a lot at the end of it.

Title: Apartment Story
Author: Exeterlinden
Pairing: Fraser/Other, Kowalski/Other
Rating: PG
Length: 3400 words

This story is set during an uneasy night for all the characters involved, and there isn't a tidy resolution at the end. But everyone feels very real and human, and the Stella pov is fantastic.

Title: Double or Nothing
Author: BrynnMcK
Pairing: Fraser/Ray Vecchio
Rating: NC-17
Length: 14,000 words

I actually don't read a lot of Fraser/Vecchio stuff, but I had the advantage of knowing who wrote this before I went in, and since I always enjoy BrynnMcK's stories, I thought I'd give this one a chance. And oh, her Ray V sucked me in right away, with his post-Vegas brokenness and his stupid bravado, and I bought this F/V relationship a hundred percent.

Title: Five Things Ray Wanted That Surprised the Hell Out of Fraser
Author: Bluebrocade
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2450 words
Why I'm reccing this fic: It's funny and sweet wonderful in many ways, and there's just the right amount of angst and obliviousness to make everything that much sweeter...but really I'm mostly reccing this because of Ray's mush dance. ♥

Title: Five Ways Ray and Ray Redefined Romance
Author: Slidellra
Pairing: Ray/Ray
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1700 words

You guys! You guys! This story is made of LOVE and HEARTS and AWESOMENESS. It's wee and not even porny, but it is nevertheless hot and also perfect, distilled essence of Ray/Ray.

Title: Love, and a Series of Telephone Calls
Author: Aerye
Pairing: Ray/Ray
Rating: G
Length: 4800 words

This story is adorable! It is G-rated! It contains no maiming, heartbreak, irreparable psychological damage, death or mutilation of any kind! And yet it was written by Aerye. o.0

Because it was written by Aerye, it's wonderful in many ways -- great characterization, humour, pitch-perfect voices -- but mostly I'm still boggling at the whole adorable thing.

Title: Mosaic, Piece by Piece
Author: China_Shop
Pairing: F/K/V
Rating: NC-17
Length: 24,600 words

When China Shop writes shorter stories, she hooks you with the dialogue and characterization, which she somehow does in such a way that the characters are immediately recognizable, but still somehow hers. Those elements are very much present in her longer stuff, too, but we also get this whole cast of supporting characters, all of whom are lovable weirdos in their own rights, and the town itself, which feels like a real place you could hang out in. Add that to the complex relationship(s) she's building in this story and you get a novella that was so absorbing I couldn't stop reading once I'd started, even though it was long past my bedtime. Also, there is a scene in this story in which Vecchio is hot enough to take your breath clean away (which is not what you normally expect of Vecchio, so whoooo -- when it comes, it kind of blindsides you).

Title: Tip, Slide, Tumble
Author: JS Cavalcante
Pairing: F/K
Rating: NC-17
Length: 42,700 words

Okay, so this is kidfic. It's long, romantic, USTy kidfic with a RayK voice that made me crush hard on RayK all over again, and a heartbreakingly vulnerable and sometimes idiotic Fraser; it has a casefile and there's action and a bit of a mystery, and although it deals with complicated social issues in places, I never felt like it hit a wrong note. In other words, I loved this story bigtime -- it feels like classic dueSouth, and is exactly the kind of thing you want to read on a rainy Sunday afternoon, maybe with a big cup of cocoa or something. (Or, you know, tea, if that's your thing. I'm not trying to fence you in.)

Dreamhost's billing team made a pretty gigantic fuck up last night, accidentally billing everybody for the whole of 2008 in advance and then suspending everyone's accounts for non-payment. They're working on getting it fixed today, but my site, and the dSSS archive with it, is going to be unavailable until they do.

(And heh, it looks as though the mistake was made by one poor dude, whose picture they've posted on their status blog for mocking purposes. I guess that's...sort of a deterrent?)

Ah, Dreamhost. You do excel at the doucheyness, on occasion. It's a good thing you're so cheap and adaptable and generally reliable -- you'd have been kicked to the curb long ago, otherwise.

Anyway. I have been meaning to post my recs from this year's dSSS for ages, and then I missed out on the ds_recsredux challenge due to my own lameness, so I thought fine, I'll post them today...and now the site is down. So -- stay tuned! I finally have some links all ready to go, and I'll post them as soon as they work again.

In other news, ( January weather kind of sucks on the Canadian prairies: )

(That's a tiny video of our miserable blustery day, taken from a friend's balcony this morning. In it, you can also see my usual Tim Horton's and my place of work, vaguely, toward the top left. Just in case you were curious. *g*)