bluflamingo

So far, August and September have been... hectic.

Of the good:
1. I have a cat! She's all white, about three, fairly deaf, called Rosie, and a total little love bug. Even my mum, who is notoriously iffy about pets, loves her :)
2. My car was written off for about what I paid for it (actually, this is mixed, since I was hoping it wouldn't be written off at all!)
3. I just posted my SGA Big Bang fic to the archive.
4. Off to Berlin for three days at the end of the month

Of the less good:
1. My anti-depressants have started giving me nightmares. It's been going on for long enough that I get to talk to my doctor about changing my medication
2. My car was written off, and the car I was going to buy turned out to be a total lemon - speedometer was 10 mph out and the engine made knocking noises, just for starters - so I'm back on the bus until I buy a new car
3. Work at all three jobs is ridiculously busy

That said, apparently I have more good than bad, so life could clearly be worse.

Question:
To the H5-0 people on my flist/dwircle: if you'd written a pre-relationship Danny/Rachel/(Steve) post-season 1 finale fic, what comms would you post it to? I started looking, got confused, and ran away. Help?

What's the verb for a motor boat? Do you sail it? Drive it? Something else?

I'm writing SGA fic again. I haven't written fic in ages, not since my flyboys fic back in January and I've *missed* it. Is it crazy to miss fictional characters? Because I miss John and Cam and Lorne and Ronon and Keller and Cadman. Even though they're not real.

Actually, don't answer, I already know the answer!

I don't know if anyone reading this is a Star Trek Reboot fan, but I'm guessing someone is, so... would anyone have time to give a quick read through to a 1500 word Kirk/McCoy fic for torachan's transfic mini-fest, preferaby by the end of the month?

New fandom is making me nervous, especially with, you know, *decades* of history that I don't know at all (what is it with me and coming in at the end of something? Like SG1 wasn't bad enough!).

That said, I love the film so much, despite my lack of Trek knowledge - seriously, I don't think I've ever seen a single episode of any of the TV series. Do I have to hand in my sci-fi fan badge now? But I love that they're all *smart* - I mean, them being the Enterprise crew at the end is still implausible, but less so. And Uhura is awesome (I love Zoe Saldana, ever since I saw Center Stage), and so is Captain Pike (I'm not the only one who's really, really strongly reminded of Gibbs from NCIS whenever he's on screen, right?).

And Spock: I intend to assist in the effort to reestablish communication with Starfleet. However, if crew morale is better served by my roaming the halls weeping, I will gladly defer to your medical expertise.

I love that line, it makes me grin every time he says it.

Do Atlantis or the SGC have a way of knowing where they're being dialled from, if someone doesn't tell them? So if say Todd the Wraith dialled Atlantis, could they tell what planet he dialled in from?

I'm inclined to say no, but I can't remember if it ever came up on the show to say one way or the other (or indeed came up in the eight seasons of SG1 I haven't seen, yes, I suck as an SG1 fan).

As a general rule, is 'piss off' as in 'go away' something that people say in the US? Particularly in a semi-professional setting, not meaning it as an insult?

For context, if it helps at all, it's Laura Cadman talking to someone she thinks is a new arrival on Atlantis and saying, "I won't be offended if you tell me to piss off," because she thinks the other person wants to be left alone having not set anything in response to, "is it okay if I sit here?"

If she wouldn't say that, what would be the alternative? Other than 'go away,' but I'm looking for something a bit more informal.

Thank you!

I wondered if anyone might be up for beta reading my sga_genficathon entry? I think it's going to work out about 15,000 words (it's 11,000 at the moment, and closeish to being done) and gen, obviously, but since it's an anonymous contest till the reveal, and I think mine will be pretty easily distinguished, I can't actually tell you who's in it or what it's about, so I guess if you might have time, comment and I can email you the details or something. It should be ready for beta reading by the middle of this week, and it's due late April, so I guess I'd need it back by the end of this month.

And in totally unrelated news - there's a mouse in my flat. Like, a wild mouse that's got in through a whole in the wall, and keeps running between one wall and the other, and it FREAKS ME THE HELL OUT every time I see it on the edge of my vision. I mean, better a mouse than a spider, but I still want to leap on a chair every time I see it. I'll be off to see my letting agent on Monday about getting rid of it, but until then... *shudder*

Is anyone else finding that Firefox screws with most lj layouts these days, so that tags for entries are all listed going down instead of going across, and the formatting is just generally wacky? Also, that google docs homepages just come out wrong, with no links for most things, and no scroll bar?

Or is it just me? I tried unintalling and reinstalling, which didn't make the slightest bit of difference, and now I'm seriously contemplating going back to ie again, as much as I like firefox, because this is driving me batty.

Where do you go if you want to buy paint, like for an inside room? Either the generic name for the kind of store (is it a DIY store, like in the UK?) or the name of a specific place.

Because I'm pretty sure Cam and John aren't shopping for paint in B&Q.

I'm remembering now why I like writing for sci-fi shows - as a general rule, they don't require me to find out random bits of American culture. Not that it won't, I'm sure, come in useful at some point in the near future, as newly discovered bits of randomness tend to do.

Thank you!

So, I'm sitting here, all ready to draw up a header for the fic I've just finished, and I've got a problem. My header for fic in my journal includes, amongst other things, the pairing, or the main character(s) in a gen piece, because I personally like to know who I'm going to be reading about in a story and so assume other people like to as well.

This is the problem, however: there's a very brief, non-explicit sex scene in this story. It's maybe a couple of hundred words out of a fic that's over 5 1/2 thousand, and while it's an important part of the story, the story isn't about the pairing, the relationship, or sex/romance in any way. Even the sex isn't about those things, it's about comfort between two friends. The story is about John's relationship with his father who's just died.

So, the answer is probably It's your journal, it's your story, label it however you damn well please (or a more polite version thereof) but I'm curious to know how you'd label this in terms of pairings. I want to label it John-centric gen, which it is, but I think if I saw that, I'd be kind of surprised to see a sex scene later on. That said, if I saw a story labelled with a pairing, I'd expect the other half of the pairing to be around more.

Help me - my brain is no longer up to these kinds of complex and vital decisions!