Galvanizing

1. Last Friday, the 29th of November, was the 20th anniversary of the initial posting of Stephen Ratliff's ST:TNG fanfic "Enterprized", the first in his long series about Marrissa Amber Flores Picard. Spelling and grammar errors, a proper Mary Sue of a main character (forget these modern heroines labeled "Mary Sue" solely because they're unusually competent; Marrissa is the real thing), long-winded introduction scenes, tedious space battles, summarizing of major dramatic events as a dry speech after the fact -- these fics were prime fodder for the denizens of rec.arts.tv.misc.mst3k, and to his credit, Mr. Ratliff was a good sport about the whole thing (and actually improved his writing quite a bit over the years, though the ratmm folks still found plenty to have fun with). I'm very grateful to norabombay for bringing the MSTings to my attention many years ago; they've given me much amusement ever since, and I hope Mr. Ratliff is prospering.

2. After watching him roughhouse with other kids last week, Spouse and I think Middle Son has a fine career ahead of him as a professional wrestler -- sports plus drama!

3. Youngest Son is officially a toddler. Eek.

4. I have about half the required word count for my Yuletide fic; I need to claw out some room-of-my-own time to finish it. I'm trying something that I've never done to this extent in a Yuletide fic, and one of the pieces hasn't quite clicked :-P.

5. Dear self: buying yarn is really, really not the same thing as buying knitting/crocheting time. (Corollary: buying fiber is really, really not the same thing as buying spinning time, let alone knitting/crocheting time.)

6. One of the mysteries surrounding my (presumed) paternal grandfather has been solved. Back in January, I'd learned that someone of his name (and right age and birth state) was in federal prison in Oklahoma in 1940. This week, while searching a database of old newspaper articles, I found a couple of articles in the Dallas Morning News that confirmed it was the right man. The crime? Stealing/destroying third-class mail when he was working as a substitute letter carrier in 1936, and then running off to Chicago and hiding out there for three years. (And the best part: his job in Chicago was as a clerk of the criminal court.) He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, three of those suspended, so he might have been finishing up his jail time at the time of the census. Fun with genealogy!

There don't seem to be a lot of webpages discussing how (or even whether) one can take a snake's pulse. There are, however, plenty of pages discussing snake anesthesia.

(This fact brought to you by the letter S.)

1. Survived a trip to my parents', involving plane travel with the chronologically challenged and a few afternoons with seven boys (all under the age of eight except for the autistic preteen) running around together. It was great fun, and it's going to take me weeks to catch up on my DW/LJ reading. If I usually comment on your fic and haven't lately, that's why. (If you're writing a particular Sherlock crossover, I'm saving it as my reward reading for after I get another chunk of the Fic of Doom done.)

2. Trip threw off my 60-for-60 writing; will write a makeup fic later.

3. The ACD/BBC Sherlock Holmes Crossover Fic of Doom is now about a third done, I think. (Just under 20K words in the coherent in-order draft, plus another 20k of later scenes, and I expect anywhere from 10 to 30k later fill-in yet to be written.)

4. The working title is "Not Dead Yet", which is thematically appropriate but, I suspect, too closely linked to Monty Python to work as the actual title for a story that isn't intended to be crack. I still haven't found anything I like better, though.

5. If anyone is interested in betaing what I've got in the coherent draft so far, I'm at the point where it'd be useful. (Given the time of year, I don't expect a quick turnaround; I'd hoped to finish before Sherlock season 2 airs in the UK, but I don't see that happening.)

6. Damn, I've got to get my Yuletide fic written too. (800 words so far, and getting it over 1000 will be easy, but I think it's more like a 3000-word story. Ack!)

7. I want to see a game that's a crossover between Angry Birds and Pocoyo. It would of course be called Sleepy Birds and have a plain white background; you catapult Sleepy Bird at a picture of an object, and if you hit it, Pocoyo jumps out and shouts the object's name.

8. Yes, I have a preschooler. How could you tell? (Quick! Under the table!)

9. I'm debating whether to try and see the new RDJ!Holmes movie in the theater. On the one hand, I wasn't especially enamored of the first one (aspects had some merit, but there's a reason I never bought the DVD). On the other hand, I now know to approach the franchise as steampunk action flick rather than Sherlock Holmes story, and if I'm viewing it that way, big screen is the way to see this puppy.

10. There are actually three movies out now or coming soon that I want to see enough to consider seeing in the theater. This has not been the case in years.

11. Writing this post is not helping me make progress on Yuletide story or Fic of Doom.