Sophinisba Solis

30. Last week I got a $25 gift certificate for Amazon.com so I got to order three books for cheap, and they arrived in the mail today. Yay! I've been having a sort of stressful day on the Internet so I wanted to get away for a while, and my roommate suggested that rather than go somewhere else I just take a blanket out on the lawn and sit and read there for a while, and I did, and it was really nice, warm and sunny but with a nice breeze. I started reading Reza Aslan's book No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, and it is really good so far. (Claudia, I think you would like it!)

Also last night I made some brownies and they are delicious. And the party I brought them to was way more fun than I was expecting.

31. omg I finished the happiness meme! Finished both in the sense of "yay I did what I set out to do and stuck with it through the month" and also in the sense of "yay it's over!" I didn't enjoy it quite as much as last August and also don't think I did as good a job – like last year I did more posts of several paragraphs really explaining why I liked something – and I didn't enjoy it quite as much, but it was still fun. I don't know, I still don't think I'm a post-ever-day kind of girl but it has been sort of nice to have an excuse to post about random nice stuff. I don't know how August will be.

I like commenting on fic that I read. It makes me happy to know that I'm encouraging authors that I like and making them feel good. This is a nice, easy way of participating in fandom even at times when I'm not feeling creative or finishing any stories myself. Reading a fic I like and not commenting makes me feel bad – it's true I often neglect to do it if I have to e-mail, but LJ/IJ/Dth makes it so easy, it seems silly not to. ( cut for length )

Anyway, the real reason for this post is that I signed up at idof_feedback to comment on 20 femslash fanworks by July 25th, and one of the requirements is to link to all the fanworks somewhere, so I'm doing it beneath the cut and will add to it as I go along. I'm at 12 so far so I expect to go over 20, especially with all the new stuff that's now available at remixredux09 and femslash09. I'm enjoying this – it sort of reminds me of 50books_poc where it's worth it to go out of my way to read something that I wouldn't necessarily pick up otherwise, and I sometimes find that I love it and sometimes not so much. I'm starting to get a better idea of my own taste in femslash and to look differently at how a lot of other fanfics neglect female characters.

I liked all of these fics (or I wouldn't have read them!) but I especially want to recommend What We've Become by thedeadparrot and What We've Become (The Mt. Saint Helens Remix), both Donna/Martha fics. When I was talking the other day about how much I like Gwen/Morgana I was sort of comparing it in my mind to shows like Doctor Who where you usually only get to have one female character at a time and I always thought femslash would be hard because the companions relate to each other through the Doctor, and some fans tend to pit the companions against each other and all that. Anyway, I really liked the Donna/Martha relationship being about Donna and Martha in both of these, and the Doctor and Jack being present but secondary to the women's story. Also they're just so well written. I wasn't crazy about the jumping around in time on the remix but I think it's still my favorite of the remixredux09 stories I've read so far. ( links )

Today I had lunch at a Chinese restaurant and my fortune cookie said, "Share your happiness with others today." :D

I'm happy because smaragbird wrote a New Year's Resolution fic for Yuletide based on my request for a story about Luke (that is Chiwetel Ejiofor's character) from Children of Men and his mention toward the end of the movie that he had a sister. Children of Men fic, you guys, I'm not the only one who writes it hooray! smaragbird did Luke/Patrick growing up and falling in love as the world is falling apart! Go read it and share in my angsty apocalyptic happiness! Children of the Fall

In other news, the preview function on Dreamwidth never works for me. I always just get a message saying, "Sorry, there was a problem." I don't see this as a known issue on the Support page. Has anyone else run into it? I don't like not being able to test my (frequently faulty) html before I hit post.

I missed yesterday so I'm one post behind, will catch up some other time.

Today I'm happy that so many of my friends were able to get together this past weekend and especially that you all had a good party for mews1945. Moots are so awesome. I'm really glad you guys had a good time..

I'm happy for the fans who are going to Azkatraz next weekend.

I've never been to a con but that's probably just as well because I think I would have been stressed. :) I'm happy for the chances I've had to meet up with other fans in Houston in 2006 and 2007, Chicago in 2007, and Seattle the last two years, plus the extra little meet-ups I've had with danae_b and claudia603. I love interacting with you all online but it's been a completely different feeling since I started getting to meet you in person too.

Okay, I'm doing this:

For every day this month, post about something that makes you happy.

I did this in August of last year and it was great. It got me to post more and when I wasn't online I spent a lot of extra time thinking about things that make me happy and how to talk about them, which helped my general mood. I might not post every day but I intend to post about 31 things. Some of these posts will be friends locked.

Today I'm happy that it's July 1st. When I posted yesterday I was thinking it was July 1st already, but it was only June 30th. This means that I'm less behind than I thought, I have one more day than I thought to write my remix, and I still have time to do lotr_fic_recs mod stuff later today. This reminds me of starting daylight savings time in the fall or of finding a five-dollar bill in a coat I haven't warn in six months.

I'm also happy that my f-list is so great and helpful. Like I love that we came here for hobbits or other fannish reasons and since we're friends we help each other out with major life stuff but we can also help with little things like whether you can take knitting needles on a plane and whether owning a Mac will actually make you feel cooler. Thank you!

Here's a link to a happy-making Doctor Who fanvid: Shine by futuresoon, music by Carbon Leaf and images from all four seasons of New Who (so, you know, spoilery to some extent). It has a lot of the Doctor and companions hugging and kissing and smiling and good stuff like that. You can tell futuresoon how much you liked it on this post.

Here's a great music video, R.E.M. on Sesame Street:

Hey, Claudia! I had lunch at a Indian-Caribbean restaurant today! I ordered a roti with potato and chickpea curry and it was very yummy. I'm going to have the leftovers for dinner in a little bit.

*

Today I'm happy because I have a working bike. I bought this bike about five years ago but stopped using it around three years ago when I moved to an apartment at the top of a hill. :) It was in bad shape then but I never bothered to take it in to get it fixed until last week because it just wouldn't be practical or fun for me to bike anywhere from there. But I finally took it in last week and was able to pick it up this afternoon. My parents' neighborhood is awesome for biking and I just went for a very short ride by the nearest lake, and it was absolutely lovely. I'll be out of town for the next few days but at least I should be able to use it a little more before the end of the summer.

Of course I'm also happy that I'm leaving for Seattle tomorrow and will be seeing some of my dearest friends in the next few days, but I'm saving that for future posts. Whoo!

Today I'm happy that I've stuck to my tiny daily writing goals so far this month. I've written at least 100 words of fic every day, most of it on my Doctor Who fic for the tindogs_fic exchange. To be honest, this is really not going very well. I've been treating it like a chore and not enjoying it much at all. Most days as soon as I get over the 100 words (which is really very little) I stop and go to do something easier. Connected to that, what I've written has been pretty bad and I still don't know what I'm doing with the story, which needs to be posted by the end of the month. I like the assignment I got but I'm not sure it was a great idea to jump into a new fandom with an exchange where I'll really be letting someone down if I don't finish or if my story sucks. :( I just don't know what I'm doing, writing wise; I feel disconnected from my old hobbit stuff but I haven't found my place with a new fandom either. Still, I am proud for having stuck to the resolution at least, and today I brought it over 1000 words, which is the fest minimum, so that is a happy-making milestone.

I've also stuck with doing this happy meme every day since I started on the second, and I'm feeling really good about that. I worry that I'll run out of happy things to post about and that keeps me looking for them all the time, even looking for the bright side of things that bug me. For instance, yesterday almost as soon as I realized I'd gotten my period I started trying to spin it into something positive (not pregnant, will have most of it over with when I travel next week, etc.). It's nice having an excuse to post about stuff that's not newsworthy or profound but that's on my mind but that could be a chance for a connection with one or two people on my f-list. And of course it cheers me up to write them out.

I'm not sure how well I'll be able to keep up with either of these things while I'm in Seattle next week (the 13th to the 18th) or once school starts up at the end of the month, but I will try. Heck, maybe being busier will be good for me and help me get organized and motivated, or something.

There's a meme I saw last night in which you post every day in August about something that makes you happy. I didn't pick it up because I don't think I can handle posting every day, but today I decided that if I bend the rules a bit I should be okay, so my plan is to post about something that makes me happy for every day in August, and I won't feel bad if I miss a day here and there (because goodness knows I don't need guilt over the happiness meme). I am looking forward to this.

1. Yesterday I set up a delicious account! I am having so much fun with it! I save bookmarks of things I have written and things I have read and things I intend to read, and I can see whether other people have saved the same thing. I can search other people's bookmarks to find fics and other interesting things! I know this is very old hat to some people, and some are annoyed with the new interface, but for me it's all very exciting.

And a nice surprise for my ego: in the past I had read conversations where people said what fun it was to see their own fics bookmarked by others, to see what tags and notes had been used. And I thought, Eeyore-like, Ah well I am not famous enough to have that happen to me and anyway nobody in my fandoms uses delicious. However! Last night I saved my own Yuletide fics, and it turned out other people had already saved them! There were even some nice positive comments, especially on the long one I worked so hard on last November and December. Wow!

2. Lots of people have been reccing fics featuring original characters at lotr_fic_recs in the last week and a half, including a couple people who hadn't participated there before. Also I had a really nice e-mail last week from someone I didn't know requesting that we do a femslash challenge. Sometimes I get glum and think that nobody cares about that comm anymore so it is really awesome to know that other folks are paying attention. Plus, someone besides me wants femslash! Now I must go rec something myself and then put up the post closing the challenge. Yay!