melannen | epic post is epic

...so much for posting something substantial every day for two weeks. :P

Interesting things I have been up to intsead:

Writing the story that is tentatively titled "13 Times Rachel (never) Had Lesbian Sex With Keith." It features guest appearances by everyone from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Raven Colbert. I'm so proud of myself.

And the thing about Keith/Rachel fandom? I ought to be ashamed for shipping RPF. I ought to be ashamed for shippng RPF about newscasters who I barely know canon for anyway and ignoring their canon long-term relationships and for shipping a lesbian with a man.

But the only thing I'm actually ashamed of is the fact that this 'ship has somehow brought the phrase "great and t00by love" back into my vocab for the first time in about six years. (I think my mind translates 't00by love' as 'I ought to feel shame about this fandom, but I so don't'.)

(I probably also ought to be ashamed of saying things like "It's not that we turn her straight; it's that we turn him into a giant girl." But I so don't.)

Playing with the story that has the preliminary title "Unfinished Choices", in which Richie Ryan dies on Ordeal, the-Power-formerly-known-as-Death is sick 'n' tired of putting up with that sort of thing, the Lone Power has *no* idea what's about to hit him, and somewhere in Timeheart, Ed is laughing.

myriadwords aren't helping matters), and now I'm falling into the fandoms for it again.

(You say, I ought to just cross-over YW and Punditfic! ... Actually, once I plotted out a massive crossever where teams of wizards from about a dozen different New York Cities (from Franklin Richards to Barney Stinson) have to deal with a threat that's affecting them all, and they end up going to the Senior wizard for all NYCs across all the universes, and of course, it's Jon Stewart. ...that fic was fun. I wonder where I left the notes, assuming I ever made notes.)

Last weekend I went to

synecdochic's monthly Open Fangirl Stitch And Bitch in Baltimore, which turned out to be more bitching about LJ and Why DreamWidth Is Going To Rock than stitching, which I more-or-less expected, since they're very close to going to beta!

I kind of ended up appointing myself Journalfen Spokesperson in the DW discussion, since I was the only one there who uses it beyond the wanky communities. I basically said not to cross your fingers about DW getting much of the JF userbase, because active Journalfen users, almost by definition, don't care about a) convenient features, b) a large community, c) good service and support, or d) general site functionality, which are the advantages DW is planning to have. (Apparently the founder of Dreamwidth knows lol_meme! Like, knows meme better than I do . And would love to have it move to her service, which made me ask her if she was crazy. She would also love to have the wank communities and ufb move there. I don't even know how you'd go about moving a large community like that, without the original version getting TOSsed/deleted, but is intriguing.)

But, hey, if anyone has any Questions About Dreamwidth, you can ask me. (I will probably be getting an account as soon as open beta starts in a few months, at which point I will have a steady trickle of invite codes to give out...)

This weekend I am going on a road trip with

stellar_dust to Meadowcroft Rockshelter, one of the oldest archeological sites in the Western Hemisphere, for a special tour by the guy who the crew chief at the original dig there in the 70s and is also her archeology prof. It's going to be *so cool*, yo. And I've lost my camera and it's supposed to snow.

Yesterday I came from Annapolis to her place in Leesburg without any car-ness at all; it only took me $16, five hours, two trains, three busses, and two hiker-biker trails to go about 80 miles! Suck that, oil industry. :P (ooh, google maps is starting to add in a public transit option? Beautiful. I wonder if it will be as unhelpful as the "walking" option.)

Sister's work has apparently been very exciting this week, since Tuesday when they ~~blew up the sky~~ set into motion an earth-orbit-collision chain reaction that is going to take out all of our satellite communications and space programs within a few months (Actually, I lie. It's not their fault. It's because the deep-space radar telemetry people at Cheyenne Mountain were not actually doing the jobs they're supposedly doing on paper.)

And combining the last three items, I've been thinking about cooking lately. (Also the first item, really, in that writing Rachel Maddow is the best excuse ever for working in obscure cocktail recipes, and where is the fic already where she tends bar at a speakeasy?) Duncan/Methos is one of those fandoms (like Snape/Hermione) where a significant proportion of the stories have more food porn than they do the other kind of porn, and I'm looking up recipes as I go. (I still get to my favorite HL crossover by googling 'liquamen "pop tarts"'.) And Synecdochic's meet-ups are vaguely pot luck, and it's the first time I've really been to pot lucks where there are people who get new recipes from places other than the latest local Ladies of the Church cookbook. And I wanted to make something to take on the road trip tomorrow, so I was pulling out my small cookbook collection and going through it and some recipe blogs for ideas.

And what I have realized is that while I am interested in cooking, the kind of cooking I am interested in is -- well, the kind that shows up in Ladies of the Church cookbooks. Traditional American cooking, and by that I mean not the buffalo wings and terducken and everything-wrapped-in-bacon and men-can-stick-it-on-a-grill that passed for American hearty cooking these days, but things like ho cakes and po' man's hamburgers and molasses candy and fried grits and mock apple pie and peanut stew and flummery.

So, as soon as I am have posted this entry, I am going to make Colonial Cheez-its to take in the car tomorrow. The recipe is from the old Williamsburg cookbook, where it is called Cheefe Bifcuit, but they taste *exactly* like Cheez-its (or Cheetos, or any given cheez-flavored mass-produced snack food.) It is good to know that my` ancestors ate the same crappy junk food that I do. :D
Since I don't actually have a copy of the cookbook (unlike my mom & sister):

Cheefe Bifcuit
SIFT one Cup of Flour with one-fourth Teafpoon of Salt, cut in one third of a Cup of Butter. Add one Cup of grated Cheefe. Work lightly into a ftiff Pafte. Roll out one-half Inch thick and cut with very fmall Cutter and prick Tops with Fork. Bake in a moderate Oven about twelve Minutes, but do not brown. Thefe burn very eafily.
(old Williamfburg Recipe. Prov'd Blair Kitchen, 1938.)
(and yes, I am using the approved otf_wank method of bringing butter to room temp.)

After that I'm going to try this home-made oreos recipe, which has been on my to-cook bookmarks list for months. mmm.