Jagrafess, what Jagrafess??

Decided to take the opportunity to use the cute woeful kitten icon on this, because I haven't used it in awhile and both I and my cat are kind of woeful.

I have had workers in my home 5 of the last 7 days, and they're due to come again on Thursday, and then more yet to be determined. The things they are doing have required me to keep my cat Nova contained while they're present, and we have not enjoyed having her freedom of house restricted.

( Cutting for exciting (hah) details of home repair )

On top of the above fun times, work has been stressful the last few months as well. ( Cut for details )

In the middle of all that work stuff, my Mom had major surgery that stressed us all out. She's absolutely fine, and was only in the hospital about 24 hours, but it was to clean a blockage in her carotid artery, so I call that pretty major no matter what. I traveled to be with my parents for a long weekend, and my dad and I wandered around the hospital for awhile because there was some bureaucratic confusion about where her room was going to be for the post-surgery recovery, and we went back and forth and all around and basically got our steps in for the day. But she was able to go home for lunch the next day.

So, yeah. Infodump city up there, and most of it not great. Things could be worse, though - I still have a job, and a home, and the repairs being done to me home won't bankrupt me. So... happy 2024, I guess? It can only go up from here? I hope?

I hope you all are staying warm, and (if you're reading this) I assume your power is on, but hopefully it stays on! In Northern Indiana this week visiting my parents, and woke up to it being -7F outside (windchill -30 something something as the wind whistles past my window), and at least 10 degrees colder in my bedroom than when I went to sleep last night. Fortunately not cold enough that just keeping all of my extremities under the covers wasn't enough to keep me warm, but it's definitely chillier in here than I'd like. Today's definitely a fuzzy socks and slippers day.

I drove here, and am not planning on driving back until Monday, when hopefully things will be clearing up and it will be (slowly) getting warmer again, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit concerned over what the roads will still be like by then. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, I hope you're all safe and warm, and that if the upcoming holiday is one you celebrate, that you're able to do so the way you want and aren't having any travel woes!

I'm still here, even though it's been *checks* almost 2 years since I've last posted. And I almost regret checking, since my last post was a very sad post about my cat dying.

But anyway, I'm doing pretty well. I have a new cat, Nova, who I adopted a few weeks after my last post. Here she is:


She really helped me get past losing my previous cat. She's a sweet, affectionate girl, though her energy levels did take some getting used to, as of course Miss Bean was mostly sleeping through her last few months with me, and Nova has a lot more zoom in her.

Still mostly over on Twitter, though I have gotten more into Discord in the last 2 years, though I could never consider Discord a replacement for Twitter or Dreamwidth or Tumblr, but as a supplement to them. I like Discord a lot, but as someone on Twitter said, it has a major discoverability problem, as you can only access things you have links/invites for. Which is good for things you want kept locked down, but less good if you actually want people to find you. Posting here now mostly because of *cough* recent news about Twitter and realizing I should probably make sure people know I'm still reading my flist here, even if I haven't been posting more than the occasional comment. Plus, I don't know, I already had trouble writing anything that felt worth a post on here before Twitter, and now that I'm used to short news bursts on Twitter, it's even harder. But I'm still here, and I'll try to post at least a little bit more in the future.

Anyway, if you're looking for me, all my various social media links are in my profile, though the main ones I use are Twitter, Tumblr and Discord, and occasionally Instagram (though again, I rarely post there).

First post in forever is because I can't talk about this on Twitter without spoiler tags, and I don't feel like figuring that out.

( Spoilers Galore behind the cut )

Going to try giving this long-form posting thing a try again. We'll see if I actually click the button on this. :-)

This morning, I opted to sneak downstairs and grab breakfast and return to my room with it shortly after waking up instead of waiting until I'm actually ready for the day. This has the benefit of me not ending up starving and with low blood sugar by the time I'm ready to hit the door. :-D So I thought I'd take this extra time I've given myself and post a bit about VividCon.

( Thursday )

( Friday )

All in all, a really great time so far. Looking forward to day 2. Club Vivid tonight!

I keep forgetting to post here anymore. I am at Escapade, should anyone else at Escapade want to meet up. I will be here through dinner Sunday evening (have a red-eye flight Sunday night).

norwich36 was kind enough to give me an invite to Imzy so I can name squat there, and now I have 5 invites myself in case anyone else wants one. I have no idea what if anything I'll do over there, but just in case. :-)

I'll be traveling today, so if anyone comments I might not get to it until later this evening.

ETA: Should anyone else be interested, I have 3 invites left, but I forgot to mention earlier that I'll need your email address to send it to.

Well, after not-posting in forever, I seem to have a few thoughts about last night's Sleepy Hollow season 3 finale. Spoilers, of course. ( Warning: I am not a happy camper. If you liked last night's episode, you should not click. )

So because I'm nervous of spoiling anyone on Twitter even while using the Agents of Shield tag, I'm bringing it over here where I can freaking cut tag stuff. Spoilers for the episode airing tonight in the USA, 3x09 "Closure". ( Cut for spoilers... and language )

When does Agent Carter start, again?

Hey all! I’m headed to VividCon this weekend and ConneXions next weekend. I’ll hopefully (United providing) be landing in Chicago about 6 and hopefully be at the hotel between then and 7 in case anyone wants to have dinner, though I probably won’t want to go further than the steak place right there. :-) I will be staying through Monday morning, so if anyone wants to have lunch or get together, let me know! Also, I’m hoping to be able to watch the last Daily Show with Jon Stewart *sniff* tomorrow night at 11 (or I guess 10 Central time?), so if anyone wants to join me, let me know. Wish me luck as I’m flying United to O’Hare and back, and I didn’t have much luck with that the last time I did it in February (I returned home a day later than intended).

For ConneXions, I’m not quite sure yet when I’m going to get there. I can’t afford to take any time off next week, but since it’s starting in the mid-afternoon on Friday I might be able to make something work. I definitely plan on being there all day on Saturday. Not sure if I’ll stick around for any panels on Sunday or just go ahead and drive home. Having both of these back-to-back means I might be pushing the levels on my social activity meter, so we’ll see. Still, I would like to see anyone who’s going to be there, so let me know if you will be!

Probably the best way to reach me after tomorrow afternoon is via Twitter @beck_liz.

I mostly enjoyed it. Not as much as the first movie, but I think I'm going to go back tomorrow. For anyone wondering, Joss did not add a cute end-credits scene at the last minute. There is a mid-credits scene, but it's brief and plot-related. By which I mean, plot of future movies, not this one. ( Cutting for spoilers )

Typing this into OneNote on my iPad on board a plane on the way to Atlanta for my connecting flight. I am on my way home after a very quick trip home to visit my parents and other family this weekend because it's my Grandma's 90th birthday tomorrow. ( My Grandma's Party )

Last weekend, I attended the last (sob) Muskrat Jamboree in Boston. ( Con Report )

Anyway, that's what's been happening here. No I get to go in tomorrow for what I suspect will be a very uncomfortable conversation with my boss about how he's replacing me and moving me to another position. I mean, I think the new position will be good, but who wants to be replaced?

Well. As I said on twitter earlier, I'm grateful to be able to work from home today so I can sob in peace. For those of you who've been offline, Leonard Nimoy has died at 83.

He was such an important part of my childhood. Rest in peace, Mr. Nimoy.

We got some unexpected lake effect snow last night - it was in the forecast, but where my parents are they are frequently just out of the range for stuff like that while places 10 miles west will get hammered. Not so yesterday; our area apparently had the brunt of it, up to 4.5 inches. That may not seem like much, but we'd had the brilliant idea to drive my new car to Thanksgiving at Grandma's to show it off, and none of us really understood what the roads were like when we set out yesterday afternoon. I was driving, and I've been living in SE Virginia for the last 15 years, so I'm not as experienced at driving in snow as I used to be. (Generally when we get snow in SE Virginia like we got here, everything just closes and I work from home, so.)

So we were moving kinda slow the whole way. But we made it, and the car performed well, but when we left Grandma's, the snow was even deeper and the roads even worse, so I made my Dad drive us back. And we discovered that the antilock brakes and the traction control do, in fact, work quite nicely. And it gave Dad a chance to try it out because he's thinking about getting one - it's actually the reason I went looking at Kias in the first place, because Dad had already done a lot of the research and just hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it yet. But he wants a "Solar Yellow" one. :-)

Thanksgiving with the family was pretty good. The food was great, the people were pretty great except for two points, and my aunt has a new Australian Shepherd puppy who is soft and fluffy and completely adorable. ( Cut for picture of adorable puppy )See?

What wasn't pretty great was that apparently every single relative of mine is conservative, white and privileged enough to have really wrongheaded opinions on Ferguson and felt the need to opine upon them at length twice during the evening; once before, and once during dessert. I hid in the restroom, because there was no way I was going to try to take all that much Rush Limbaugh-ism on all by myself. I'm not confrontational enough, and they'd probably just pray for me anyway. *sigh* Food was good, though!

Anyway, I'm starting to drive it back to Virginia this afternoon after I do laundry and take care of insurance stuff this morning. I'll go to about Pittsburgh today and do the rest tomorrow, so be thinking of me!

I am so feeling the need for this adorableness today:



In particular I had a sucky afternoon because ( Cut for animal harm trigger warning ) ETA: I realize that the cut tag could be indicative of something bad happening to Miss Bean, but she is fine, if a little cranky with me for putting a collar back on her. This is regarding another poor animal.

Then I broke something I kind of needed and which is expensive to replace, so I had to run out to the store for some superglue, and then I proceeded to fail to get it to stick several times and get superglue on the tips of my fingers. No worries, I didn't get my fingers stuck to anything else, and it's mostly off, but UGH. And I have no idea if the superglue is even going to work to fix the thing in question, because it's something that will have some pressure exerted on it. Meh.

I really feel like I've adulted enough for one day.

So something else I've had open for over a week that's been making me feel better is Mr. Sebastian Stan: ( Cut for pic )

So enjoy that, everyone, and thanks ever so to destina for bringing it to my attention.

And I just realized I've bookended my post with an adorable kitty and a hot guy. :-D Priorities!

There's a post-a-day thing going on this month, and while there is no way I could ever do that, I figured I should at least post a little bit this month, especially since I haven't posted since Vividcon. At which I had a great time, and I really meant to post more about what vids I liked and may yet do so, but... eh. We'll see. I will be posting a personal post locked after this one, so if you can't see it and want to, let me know.

There have been two whole episodes of Doctor Who I enjoyed this series - the Robin Hood one, and yesterdays, which was especially enjoyable. I can't remember the last time that happened. And I actually had no issues or complaints at all with yesterday's episode, which is even rarer. I'm afraid to hope for a more general uptrend in enjoyable episodes, but I'll take the good ones if they've got them.( Cutting for spoilers for Time Heist )

Let's see, what else. After someone mentioned it on twitter (and after seeing Ken Burns on The Daily Show) last week, I decided to watch Ken Burn's The Roosevelts: An Intimate History this weekend. I didn't know what I was getting myself into - it's 7 episodes, almost 2 hours each. But PBS has made it available online, via the web, Apple TV, and Roku among others, which has made it very easy, and it's very good. If you're a history buff at all, you'll enjoy this. Also I just found out that Meryl Streep and Paul Giamatti are among those lending their voices to this, so that's neat.

I am also watching Outlander, which. ( Cutting for spoilers for 1x07 )

Let's see, what else am I doing fannishly. Still majorly into MCU, particularly Captain America, and still majorly into Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes. But for whatever reason, even though I'm really into that, unlike other major pairings of the past, this doesn't keep me from enjoying other pairings involving Steve and/or Bucky. *shrug* I'm just really into this particular one right now, and possibly forever. I am both looking forward to and dreading the next movies because of all this.

Still sort of in Teen Wolf, and marathoned the last season in 1 day (well, more like skimmed through episodes) so I could watch the finale live. I'm still sort of eh about the season as a whole, but there are several things about the finale that I thoroughly enjoyed: ( Spoilers for Season 4 finale )

Finally, I've gotten into Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries in a major way. It's Australian TV, so it's a little hard to get, but it's about an independent lady of 1920s Melbourne and the mysteries she solves and the trouble she gets into. I'm going going to say it's perfect, because it's not (it's got a few rather glaring racism issues in a couple of eps, for example), but it's got a ton of different awesome ladies being awesome in different ways, and the male characters are pretty great, too. You can see all the Miss Fisher posts I've reblogged on Tumblr here, but here's a good pimping post. Season 1 is currently streaming on Netflix, and both seasons are for sale as DVD sets on Amazon, but I just recently found out that Acorn TV (just Google it) has both seasons for online streaming and they currently have a 1 month free trial offer. Go forth and enjoy! Season 3 has just been greenlit, and I'm looking forward to it a lot.

So I realize I've been twittering all over the place about this, but (mostly?) neglected to put it anywhere else. (I think I may have mentioned it on LJ/DW offhandedly months ago, but.) This weekend, I'm attending my first Vividcon! Yay! \o/ This is the first year that I can afford the time off for more than one con - most of my time off is spent on visiting my parents and other family. :-) I'm really looking forward to it.

I got in early yesterday and bravely took the Blue Line into Chicago and walked and walked and walked over to meet thalia at Navy Pier to have lunch, and took a boat tour of the river and lake, and then wandered around the Art Institute for awhile. Great fun! Today I have ring around my neck sunburn and my legs want to stiffen up anytime I sit for too long, but it was worth it.

Anyway, if any of you are also at Vividcon, I'd like to see you! I'm wearing my same badge name, and will have a sticker of my default icon, so I should hopefully be easy to spot.

So I am very much looking forward to Con.txt in a few weeks (who all is going??? I want to meet you!), but I have questions about Vividcon. I've signed up to attend Vividcon for the first time ever, and I'm trying to figure out long I should plan on being there.

First, should I come in early? Anyone in Chicago want to hang out a bit that week? (For those not going to VVC, it's the weekend of August 8th.) Also, what's the Sunday schedule look like, usually? Trying to figure out when I should travel back.

===============

In other news, I'm exhausted. I'm starting my new job on Monday - I don't think I mentioned I'd decided to take it? But I did. It's really great, and I'm excited and nervous and really sad to be leaving my old team to the point that I'm really just done with people coming up and telling me they'll miss me because I tear right the fuck up every time. *sigh* And it's a terrifically quick turnover, and thus I've spent the last week finishing what turned into a 26-page manual for my job and trying to make sure my current department has everything it needs before I flee. I've barely been on social media at all this week - about all I've been able to handle is reading a lot of fanfic on my Kindle.

Speaking of which, I spent most of yesterday reading this great post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier fic. I had a really hard time putting it down for things like, you know, work. Even though I've been super-busy at work. It is actually a series on AO3 but I decided to go to the trouble of compiling it into one for my Kindle. It is Your Blue-Eyed Boys by Feather (lalaietha); Steve/Bucky. It feels like a very true and realistic telling of how Bucky slowly put himself back together again, with Steve's help. It also has some great secondary characters including Tony, and very unexpectedly, Betty Ross, who I loved in this. So yeah, 100% recommended. ETA: I should note that the tags say "psychological trauma" and "trauma" and they should be paid attention to. People with triggers should tread carefully.

So I enjoyed both of the superhero finales this week, for Arrow and Agents of SHIELD, but before I get into that, I want to add a link to the trailer for the new superhero show on CW, The Flash, which looks far more interesting (and entertaining) to me than Gotham. But then I've been growing steadily more tired of grimdark in my superhero media, and Gotham just looks like more of the same.

First, AoS (I refuse to type out the whole thing anymore): ( Read more... )

As for Arrow, ( Read more... )

Oh, and while I'm thinking of trailers for new shows, has everyone seen the one for Galavant? It will be either amazing, terrible, or terrimazing. It's a medieval fantasy comedy musical. On ABC. Next fall. I am amazed that the pilot got green-lit, let alone a series order. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with this.

Having seen Captain America a second time, I have some follow up random thoughts after my initial reaction post. ( Cut for spoilers )

Going back tomorrow!

So it's been a few days, so everyone who was only an episode behind has hopefully caught up by now, but those of you who are more than one episode behind on The Good Wife? You probably want to catch up now. Especially since it looks like even the episode blurbs for the next episode are spoilery. Major, major spoilers happened on Sunday night's episode, which makes it that much more annoying that the show is on Sunday nights and therefore frequently starts late due to sports events - it started around 45 minutes late Sunday night. I usually DVR it, especially with Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos conflicting with it, so my solution lately has been to DVR both it and The Mentalist even though I no longer watch The Mentalist just to be sure I don't miss anything. Annoying, though.

( Cut for major spoilers for the March 23 episode )

So I watched The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug for the second time, a month after I watched it the first time. In that time, I have read a lot of fanfiction. (I, too, have fallen into the Bilbo/Thorin trap. Sue me. And while I had read some of the fic before, I really dove into it over Christmas.) My main feeling after all that fic and watching it again, was ( Spoiler Cut )

After the movie I went to Target for supplies and groceries, which may have been a mistake. I think I hit the red zone on my social interaction meter at some point, and by the time I got to Target I mostly just wanted to run people down with my shopping cart so they'd get out of my way so I could get home more quickly.

While I'm posting, I might as well put in my two cents about the Sherlock episode "My Last Vow". ( Spoiler Cut ) I will not be livestreaming this weekend's episode, so it will be interesting to watch the reaction roll across social media at around 5 PM EST.

Two things I'm hoping the computer savvy among you can help me with.

First, my 4-year old desktop PC running Windows 7 has had a problem twice in the last six months where I log in and then it just gets stuck on the Windows loading screen and never actually loads Windows. Can get into safe mode with no issues. Last time I went back to a recovery point and that took care of it. This time I've gone into MSConfig and turned off a number of items that start when Windows does. Is my only option to go in and turn them on one by one until I hit the problem again so I can know which item to fix/get rid of? Any suggestions?

Second, I would like to get a new desktop, preferably soon before they start selling machines with Windows 7 entirely. I tried a Windows 8 laptop for a few weeks this summer, and while I could have lived with it, I'd prefer not to and it makes even less sense on a desktop. I have a perfectly good monitor that I have no intention of exchanging for a touchscreen unless that's the best option. Thoughts?

I got home last night after visiting my parents for Christmas week and my desktop doesn't work. So. Frustrating. And it's back to work for me tomorrow. Whoo.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! I hope that those who don't have a fantastic day also!

I've been mostly on Twitter and Tumblr lately, and let's face it: I was never the most prolific of posters in the first place. But I would like to share two things with you today.

1) Santa Kitty! (aka the most adorable kitty ever) ( Cut for image size )

2) Doctor Puppet - A Timelord Christmas (YouTube link), which is seriously adorable. Embed under the cut.

( Read more... )