cal

Happy Hallowe'en, to any of you who celebrate it in some way! I have a fondness for Hallowe'en, for some reason. Germany doesn't really have much of a tradition of it, so I'm not sure if I'll get any trick-or-treaters or not, but I have some sweeties in a bowl just in case, and if not, well, I'm sure they won't go to waste. *coughs* Maybe later on I will don a black dress and my awesome wig and light lots of candles or something. I was going to carve a lantern, but the pumpkins in my supermarket didn't look very encouraging, and neither did the turnips (where I grew up we did turnip lanterns rather than pumpkins), so I bought a little pumpkin-shaped thing that lights up when you put a candle inside it. It's not the same, but better than nothing.

The other exciting thing is NaNoWriMo starting at midnight, eep. I'm quite nervous about Nano this year - I didn't decide to do it until really late, and I still haven't figured out what I want to write. This will be my fifth year doing it, wow. I've mostly really liked the fics I've written for it in the past, so fingers crossed I come up with something I'll like again this year. Good luck to all of you doing it or a mini Nano!

( My week )

Right, time to get ready for the trick-or-treaters! *rubs hands together* And deciding roughly what I want to write might be a good thing in the next six hours or so, ahaha. Do the rest of you who're doing Nano know what you're writing?

*waves to everyone* I'm finally back from my trip, and mostly alive! Jetlagged in a comedy way that involves a lot of stumbling into walls and swaying around, though. This has been my excuse for getting almost nothing productive done all weekend and sleeping a lot, oh yes. Back to work tomorrow, though, so my body had better figure out what's going on sharpish.

Hi to all the lovely new people I met! If I have failed to friend people or anything, it is a jetlagged oversight and you should draw my attention to it, plz. <3

( New York, New York, so good they named it twice )

( Putting the WIN into con )

( I totally made sure to wear flowers in my hair )

( Homeward bound )

...This was going to be a short entry, but evidently I fail at short. Oh well, it's been far too long since I did a proper update anyway, so it's all good. Anyway, the short version is hi everyone! I had an awesome time, and I hope you are all well!

And now I have to go and see if I can do this sleeping thing at the right time of day yet. *hopes*

I realise your flists have probably been spammed with this picture today, but it is just THAT AWESOME. Behold!



We finally own the servers! \0/ Soon there will be a shiny Archive hosted on them! Time for dancing in the streets!


(I also realise I'm overdue for a proper LJ update, but I think it's going to have to wait until we hit the code freeze deadline, hahaha. Sooooon!)

Currently at the airport waiting for my flight to be called. (It'll be a while yet, I fear.) I'm heading home for a week or so for my sister's wedding, which is on Friday. It's going to be held outdoors in a beautiful ruined abbey, but - crucially, given that we're talking about Scotland, here - a ruined abbey without a roof. So please keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't rain that day, hahah.

I've planned out loads of posts recently and utterly failed to find time to write them. Work has been insanely busy so far this summer. Normally we're a bit quieter in the summer recess, and this year there's the elections coming up, so really everyone should be off campaigning rather than sending me work, but not so much. I'm relieved to be on holiday for a couple of weeks now, anyway.

A few quick links to shiny things:

• Dreamwidth made it possible to search your journal (if you have a paid account) and paid communities! That's amazingly awesome. If anyone wants an invite code, btw, let me know, I have several.


• The OTW is carrying out a Geocities Rescue Project. Geocities was home to a lot of fandom sites, back in the day - I have fond memories of all the old X-Files sites with green font on a black background - and now they're closing down and all those sites will be lost until they're backed up somewhere. So if you know anyone with a Geocities site who doesn't have a back-up, please point them towards the rescue project!


• Also on the OTW front, we're running a poll at the moment about bookmarks and recs since we're currently redesigning them on the Archive of Our Own, so if that is something you're interested in, please go vote!

Okay, must try to get some writing done before my flight. *eyes looming deadline nervously*

Getting ready to fly off to Asylum for three days of the Js, Misha, and zooey_glass. Clearly it will be awesome. I'm not sure yet whether there will be radio silence from me or whether I'll be spamming you with every detail, but I guess we'll see. :D

Anyone else from my lovely flist going to be there?

First up, calling all my lovely flist people who have run/participated in challenges or managed communities/archives/fic collections! We're currently collecting ideas so we can design the Challenges and Collections functionality of the Archive, and to do that we need to know what people will need. So if you could add your thoughts / scenarios / wishlist at the Dreamwidth post or the LiveJournal post, that would be very much appreciated! <333

Also, your regularly scheduled reminder to anyone looking for me that I am cal on Dreamwidth, not parenthetical - that is someone else.

( State of the Cal )

I aten't dead! Even if it kind of felt like it from time to time in there.

Sorry for pretty much disappearing off the face of the planet for a week or two, I was in full-on fic flail mode. I made the mistake of not watching 4.19 of Supernatural immediately, due to mustwriteomgdeadlinepanic, which meant I couldn't look at my flist in case I got spoiled, and it all kind of spiralled into FLAIL from there. On the plus side, I managed to finish and submit my draft for spn_j2_bigbang on time on Friday, so that is a huge, huge relief. My fic for sncross_bigbang, on the other hand, is not under control yet - I have to post on Tuesday and, uh, still need to redraft it first. And do some mad proof-reading, as there isn't even really time for a beta anymore. OOPS. Still, that will all work out okay! And after Tuesday my life should have about 90% less stress, and I'm not going to sign up for any more challenges until Nano, seriously.

Very excited about Dreamwidth finally being in open beta, and being able to get an account! Very gutted that someone managed to get to parenthetical before me. :( So for those of you looking for me, I am just cal over there. I'm still setting up, and I haven't had time yet to hunt everyone's usernames down and subscribe/give access to you all, but it is high on my to-do list! My current plan is to cross-post everything and see how things go.

Must go and do more catching up! I hope you're all well, lovelies. <333