Fic from before 2005: http://recalibration.adamao.org

Fic from 2005 can be navigated to by my Dreamwidth tags (I had started to do this for earlier stories, but stopped when I realized a: anything before 2005 is at Recalibration; and b: I cannot remember when I stopped using this journal for workshopping thing), which are nested for your pleasure. Unlabelled content rated PG or below should be benign, labelled content or content rated PG-13 and up may contain dragons of the non-literal sort.

(So, a Supernatural story featuring Sam and Ruby would be fic:supernatural:het:sam/ruby.)

Yuletide Stories (possibly not crossposted):
http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/26/screenwritersblues.html (Harold and Kumar)
http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/72/tigerbeaten.html (Arrested Development)
http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/46/movingright.html (Dark Angel)

Stories I don't think I ever crossposted to my journal:
http://community.livejournal.com/spn_summergen/6942.html
http://community.livejournal.com/choc_fic/47101.html (Gunn/Wes)

Stories and snippets from this year's Porn Battle
Gladiator, Dark Angel, Alec/Normal, sides, fantasy

Hidden Depths, Batman, Alfred/Lucius, dedication

Stories written for Remixes:
http://recalibration.adamao.org/insomnia.html
http://recalibration.adamao.org/youjustdont.html

There is gronk, and then there is gronk, and then there is "spent the first part of the night unexpectedly in the toddler bed, wrote for a couple of hours, passed out in real bed for a couple more." gronk.

Which is, I dunno, gronk squared.

I'm usually closing in on lunch by this time of day. Right now, I haven't even motivated towards clothing.

I'd love to shower the smell of accomplishment away, but alas, I have errands that prevent that.

Here's hoping the beta squad thinks it makes, you know, sense.

And then they get the OTHER beta.

Ahahaha.

Paul just informed me he needed to run to the store for tonic, and did I need him to get anything?

One Red Bull, coming right up.

Damn. Forgot I'd sworn never to buy them again after all the offensive and offputting ads.

Oops?

The fact that I am hearing the call for the 1986 Arlington-Washington Lassies in my head is probably a sign of something. (Okay, it's probably a sign that I watched video of that particular race on a regular basis for years. And that Phil Georgeff had an incredibly distinctive cadence and catch phrase. Also? I couldn't remember Phil Georgeff's name for about 15 minutes, and it was driving me nuts. I had to put the 1981 Arlington Million on You Tube and listen while muttering out loud, "Damn it, what the hell is his name???" to which I was informed that it was weird that I even thought I should know it.)

So I'm in the Remix Home Stretch.

I am also about to *fall off my chair* from sheer exhaustion.

I see it this way: I have two choices. Choice 1 involves a cup of instant coffee and a shot of something strong and me hammering through so my beta squad wakes up to it in their inbox in the morning. Choice 2 involves me passing out and losing tomorrow to writing while I mutter that I should have gone with Choice 1. (I made a structural change today that makes it stronger, but involves me moving shit around.)

Decisions, decisions.

Maybe I can dissolve the instant in some whisky?

I'm going to thank our unexpected deep freeze. Last year, the cherries were scarce and unusable. This year, although a few had the nasty little buggers, they appear to be mostly clean. Had I bothered to put up lures, I might have had an entirely useful crop. Alas.

(I didn't put up lures because even the low hanging fruit is about 6' up in the air, the tree's not stout enough to climb, and I go all Fox-and-Grapes over it after a while.)

Anyhow, this evening I scrambled up the tree and balanced on the top of our privacy fence because the temptation to at lest check the cherries was too great. I managed to get enough less-high-hanging fruit (calling it low is a joke) to make a small amount of something, and a couple pounds of sour cherries are currently sitting, sugared, with half a vanilla bean.

I'm not going to bother, I don't think, trying to climb up on the garage roof to get a handful of the sweet cherries from the tree that grows up against the garage. It doesn't have a lot on it, the crows have staked claim, and last year, I kind of got stuck in it.

For those of you with cherries, how do you prevent/deal with cherry fruit fly larvae? I've searched the internet, but it hasn't told me much of any usefulness, and I can't count on another population-reducing deep freeze this winter.

(Realistically, both trees should go in the next few years. They're both in awful places for trees. But while I have them, I should use them, right?)

There is a clear winner in the pectin-free cooked strawberry jam sweepstakes.

The basic recipe was this one, but as my strawberries had been sitting in the fridge since last Thursday, I skipped the step in the middle where you boil up and then let the stuff sit. No, I went straight to "pour syrup into pot and boil! reserve strawberries."

Basically, I took the syrup up to about 220, dropped the berries in, mashed them some, and took it back up to 220.

Yield was 5 half pints.

There may have been some scraping and licking of the pot. Possibly.

I think this particular recipe will be a fun one to adapt (balsamic vinegar in place of lemon juice, and so on). Next year. When I'm not totally over the idea of strawberries.

(Of course, I found myself last night plotting how many alpine strawberry plants I'd need to get enough of a yield to make jam from them--I have 4 now--and determined that I'd need at least 8 plants, and an implant to keep me from just eating the damn berries as they ripen. So "totally over the idea of strawberries" is probably a big fat lie.)

It being a long weekend, us having no plans for the first time in years, and the entire group of in-laws (well, minus the great-grandmother-in-law) going to be up there, we decided, hey! Let us go to The Woods! (The Woods is what Lillian calls it. It's actually a series of outbuildings, at one point anchored by an old Fireball trailer that was towed away a few weeks ago, out in the Middle of Freaking Nowhere, Olympic Peninsula Version, in the middle of, well, woods. Once upon a time, my in-laws lived there year-round. This explains much about my husband's teens and his general void where pop culture knowledge should be.)

I think one night is about my limit for staying up there. We spent two.

I'm covered in mosquito welts, road dust, and wood smoke.

I'm about to build a shrine to my toilet and shower.

This isn't to say that we didn't have fun, but holy mother, I am so glad to be back home right now, you have no idea.

I had intended to do more Remixing this weekend. Instead, my brain was overtaken with more Epic on an iPhone notions, so any work done consisted of notes on that. (Driving up 99 on the way home from our post-excursion dinner with my parents, I found myself staring over the rooftops of Sector 7 and determining that I need to revise a section I wrote last month.) Alas!

Funny Lillian moment/milestone (the use of the phone to convey orders): while we were up there, she spent a lot of time playing with Paul's old model Ferrari, which she named Carley. We left it up there, and when she realized this had occurred, there was great sorrow. We were carting our nephew's dad back with us, so he called said nephew and handed Lily the phone, telling her to tell her cousin what she wanted. "I want the red car," said my child, carefully enunciating the words. "The red car. The Ferrari. Yessssssssss."

At least 16 is 12 years away?

Sadly, there was very little traffic. So I had to stop mid-dialogue stream. Woe!

I was writing until the bitter end, though, and didn't even get the netbook back into my purse until I was out of the bus.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Moreso than when last I did this, I'm finding the process fascinating. I swear, after the reveal, I'm going to want to write a big long post explaining why I did what I did. It will be filled with Deep Thoughts, and I'll use the word liminal a lot.

(Of course, the reason I never did manage to do any of the DVD Commentaries I planned to do was that, really, when I'm writing about what I've written, I tend to write things like, "I wrote this scene longhand in a purloined supply room notebook. I was using a red Papermate ballpoint, also from the supply room. There are smudgy bits on the original draft, because we stopped outside of Yakima for coffee and gas. I think I was deeply influenced by the stale Cheetos, but that might have been the exhaust from the semi we were stuck behind on I-90." or "When I was researching this part, I got sidetracked and wound up spending four days trying to knit." So sure, I might intend Deep Thoughts, but really, what comes out is, "Unfortunately, my B key kept sticking, so instead of Bob, I called the OMC Eric. I think he's still more of a Bob." Which all means I'll probably only ever INTEND to write up something.)

Or I need more sleep. Either is possible.

I divided the remaining amount of berries into two test run recipes. Despite the subject line, only one involves maceration. Both, however, involve lemon juice. Neither involve commercial pectin. Which reminds me, I need to get some green apples ASAP.

Batch #1 yielded 2 pints, 2 half pints, and a small dish for immediate consumption. Batch #2 is sitting in a pool of its own juices in the fridge until tomorrow.

I suspect batch #2 will be the preferred batch, due to the lower sugar content. Batch #1, while not seeming on a casual glance to have *that* much sugar in it, is somewhat too sweet for my tastebuds. This means the kidlet will love it. (I mean, she adores that peach blueberry spiced preserves thing I made last year, and I find it just appallingly cloying.)

Unlike last jam session, I didn't wind up burned or in pain.

I did, however, wind up incredibly sticky.