monanotlisa

The only thing more fun than hurrying through your pain-saving exercise routine to be back in time for a professional call at 10:30pm is dialling in and your counterpart not even being there.

Admittedly, he called me back ten minutes later, and also, I'm currently having oven-roasted green asparagus drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with freshly-grated black pepper on thin-sliced beef, so hey: all's right with the world again.

(If you like delicious recipes that take fifteen minutes -- five for prep, ten for "cooking" -- this one's for you. :)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

Got my US student visa today -- its run started 21 May and will run out only five years from now. Thanks to my twitterpeeps (I hear no one wants to hear tweeple) I now know this long time-span is par for the course; still it makes me smile and relax. If all goes well (ahahahah), I should hit the West Coast by mid-July. May also already have accommodation, all thanks to thelastgoodname, who's a rockstar.

::

When it comes to my main fandom, kerithwyn delivered an accidental birthday present for elfin:

Out of My Skin (3734 words) by kerithwyn
[Fringe. Explicit. Alternate Olivia Dunham/Alternate Charlie Francis and Alternate Olivia Dunham/Alternate Charlie Francis/Alternate Lincoln Lee/Alternate Frank Stanton. An AU scene for Elfin's Pack 'verse. Liv had never expected a heat to feel like *this*.]

For some reason, while other pairings get me on an emotionally deeper level (and I write them as if it were my job) Olivia/Charlie, any 'verse, continue to take my breath away. I don't really recommend reading this story at work. Or, you know: anywhere but your bunk.

::

US folks, don't make me regret leaving a country where familiar folks have no concept of personal space. Standing in your office kitchen in your sleek, sleeveless -- yet conservative, natch -- black dress: Yes, your co-worker and friend will drift by and admire the muscles in your arms, run a casual, curious index finger up your triceps. Ask about your exercise regimen too.

(Which in my case consists of, stuff that keeps the pain at bay most effectively. But that's not the point; only mildly crippled folks like me have a decent shot at looking good and healthy: as if it were their choice in the first place.)

None of this is strange, or suspicious. It would only be so with strangers.

::

Yesterday, I caught up with all but the last two episodes of Lost Girl, which is the show unfailingly cheering me up...and which ALL THE WORLD! should be watching too. I do get that fandom (not mainstreamed popular) response to it is a little sluggish, though. Canon is the starting point, of course. But a lot of us love the spaces in-between, filing them with bonding moments of friendship and/or porn.

Lost Girl hand-delivers those too. The -- gen -- events of 3x20 made me tear up just a little...and the rest realise that if there is a lostgirl_kinkmeme, they might as well just link to episode descriptions. Threesomes? Blood? Rough sex? Transformations? Body-switching? Knife-play? Girlfriends in a coma -- no, wait, it's more like, your heroine's girlfriend's girlfriend in a coma. The show is nonchalant about it too: Come and get it. Live, on-screen.

All in what's actually one of the sweetest shows on tv at the moment. This show has sass and smarts, in spades. I only wish it had a better budget, which pretty much echoes my first comment on the then-new kid on the block. Oh, Bo and Kenzi and Dyson and Lauren and Trick and Hale: You may be in a show not quite free of dodgy decisions, but I'll ♥ you forever.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

Back home after a weekend of meeting up with pukajen and her mother, my friend A in the same city, and finally my father as well as mother at the parents' house. As for our stroll past the cathedral and the chocolate museum to the gay quarter, we made a new friend in that English used-bookstore owner, who turned out to have tea for us, and also an impromptu tune. ( Skin & paper )

I can't generally complain my life is boring, but running around with Jen for some reason always kicks it up a notch. And her mother is clearly the cherry on the fundae. <3

::

How can a movie about a manchild presenting a mail-order blow-up doll as his Brazilian girlfriend in a wheel-chair be warm-hearted and life-affirming and genuinely sweet? But it is! Ryan Gosling, you. I don't even. A didn't lie when she promised we'd come out Lars And The Real Girl smiling. Who knew there was even such a thing as pseudo-Danish farces out there? Except all of you film buffs, I mean.

::

From the latest links roundup in the OTW blog: Blogger Noah Brand discusses drawerfic.
"I find incredibly esoteric and specialized porn to be one of the most life-affirming things in the world...every time I learn a new word like 'boytaur' or 'OT3' or 'docking' or 'unbirth'...all these things bring me a genuine and unironic joy." Such writing and self-expression is something that can never be co-opted or commercialized: "Every one of those weird kinks is a shout of human individuality in a world that wants to reduce us down to buying patterns and demographic trends. 'I am alive!' they cry. 'I am not an emerging new style, I am not a market segment, I am not co-optable.'" Brand argues that people who have access to current technologies are more fortunate than any other generation in history because they have the tools to make themselves understood. "We use those tools to keep Community on the air, and we also use them to create animated GIFs of Jessica Rabbit with a huge dick. If either of those things strikes you as a strange use of time and technology, that’s okay: it’s not for you. And that’s the point."

::

This is mostly a placeholder note:

I finished The Hunger Games trilogy and genuinely enjoyed it. For values of enjoyment; Collins really put the "stop" in "dystopian sci-fi" at certain points? Well worth reading, a sharp, fast-paced, and well-written series with so many elements that elevate it. I'll come out and say I even liked the ending without reservations -- some middle parts I thought would have needed fleshing out, but really: recommended.

(More thoughts on THG later.)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

Uncharacteristically, I've already done my grocery shopping for the long weekend AND gone to the gym AND straightened my place somewhat...all before noon just for pukajen, whom I'll now be meeting in the shadow of the cathedral with her mother during their Europe River Cruise.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

Okay, I will never get to write about ALL THE FANDOM! experiences I had, but let's try to cover a few things before the weekend hits us, shall we?

1.
( Tomboy, the movie )

2.
People have actually written things for me in the Black Widow Promptmeme! Rock on, girls:

a) I'll Come When You Call by lar_laughs
[Marvel Avengers movie 'verse. Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov. Prompt: my S.H.I.E.L.D. and my sword. Maria and Natasha have a good thing. So good that Maria's willing to jump whenever Natasha calls, even when Natasha doesn't expect her to.]

b) Untitled fic by my darling pukajen
[Marvel Avengers movie 'verse. Prompt: Natasha/Bruce, who's to learn more about control here? When she sees Bruce Banner again, it isn’t by accident. No matter what SHIELD tells the world, they never stop watching those that could be needed and those that could be trouble, and more often than not it seems to be that need and trouble go hand in hand.]

3.
Fringe --

( 5 Icons of Olivia Dunham )

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

The visa interview in Munich went well, and I should have my passport with that coveted entry back by next Monday. Should definitely be more joyful at the moment, but there you go; can't choose the brain you're given.

( Physical health )

Study-planning -- please don't ask. Sigh.

Munich: that one was wonderful because it was the last time of just me and my sister in our home country. ( Details, details. With photos. )

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

Greetings from Munich; visa appointment tomorrow that may fail like the Titanic, meaning I'll have to re-do the whole process, so I'm at once anxious and dead tired from today's fun with my sister right here, in what's still paradise for people like sis & me, who are...let's say young at heart.

The reason I'm writing is that I saw this ad in the Munich subway today...


...and of course immediately thought of Lincoln and Olivia. I know, I'm besotted.

And feel half-compelled to post a prompt over at the Fringe kinkmeme that features glasses now.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

Day was lazy and spent with the sister and her husband, who will far too soon emigrate Down Under, forever. She & I went to see Tomboy in a local Munich arthouse cinema, and then there was pizza at a neighbourhood Italian hole-in-the-wall. Too tired to type out my review of the movie right now, alas.

That said, in other media news, namely Fringe ones, I miss Lincoln Lee -- Redverse version, absolutely, yes. But especially my Blueverse boy.

So I've been circling the AO3 on my smartphone ever since it was posted on the fringe_kinkmeme, but what the hell; it's fantastic as-is, so have at it:

Untitled ficlet to the tune of 'Blue Lincoln, masturbation' -- spoilers only for the basic set-up of mid-Season Four, adult (duh).
The list of things that make it hard for Lincoln to sleep goes something like this: Robert, shapeshifters, sentient fungi, invisible men, alternate universes, and Boston.

The list of things that make it hard for Lincoln--to sleep, and otherwise--goes something like this: Robert, Olivia, Peter, Astrid, the other Olivia, and his own damn alternate.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.

Tags: fringe, fringe rec, lincoln lee is dorky deliciousness, rec fringe

Sitting happily in my sister's kitchen in Munich, watching her husband across the table play Angry Birds and listening to her discussing one of her projects with a particularly persistent Client in the background. Have sent out some -- thankfully, finally positive -- emails to the US, China, and our contacts in Germany, and am now leaning back and ready to dive into breakfast...preferably the fish she brought from Norway when she flew back in this morning.

After last night's wine and cheese and Harvey Wallbanger and this tasty cocktail I can't spell prepared by the husband with the mad bartending skills and rare vintage cachaca, that's just the ticket.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. Feel free to comment there using OpenID.