Anyway, seems my last entry was from Boston last December. I probably should say a little more about that.


( And a lot happened in a few days in Boston (with photos) )

But yeah, back for Christmas with the family in Sydney, NYE fireworks around Sydney Harbour and back to work for another year, but...

Starting in January 2009, I'm only working only 4 days a week. YAY! I spend my Tuesdays mostly with my niece and nephew (4 and nearly 2 years old respectively) and I've taken up pottery again on Tuesday evenings (used to potter about when I lived in Melbourne). So um yeah, not working Tuesdays anymore, but it's a very full day.

In some ways, although I've technically been working less, I feel like I've been doing more. Bought a new oven recently too (the old one finally gave up the ghost) and I've become strangely addicted to baking things. It seems like every second week the kids and I are baking biscuits, muffins or cakes. Also got myself an "idiot proof" sewing machine, on the pretext that I want to mend and alter some of my clothes, but maybe might start doing a bit of sewing... y'know, if I can find some time for it...

Oh, and I haven't exactly been a "stay-at-home" gal since January either. I went to a conference in London in March for 2 weeks and stopped over in Dubai for nearly a week beforehand, to visit one of my brothers and his wife who were finishing up a 6 month stint working there. Unfortunately, Cuddles missed the flight out of Sydney (okay, it was me who left him behind). He tried to catch up with me in Dubai, but in all honesty, their postal service isn't the world's most efficient and he ended up arriving a few days after I'd flown on to London and my brother had to send him home.

( Photos from Dubai and London )

Then at the end of April, I went to the Supernatural con in Sydney with mcalex22, yokiem, starrylizard, rinkle, kaaatie and Cuddles of course (he still hasn't forgiven me for leaving him behind on the London trip, but at least he made it home from Dubai in time to make it to this con). The guests were Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins who were all hilarious in their own different ways (Jensen Ackles is dryly sarcastic, Misha Collins has a wonderful sense of the absurd and Jared Padalecki really is like "a puppy on speed" as someone put it). We had a lot of fun and much has already been said about the con on at the LJs of my aforementioned friends (and many other LJ sites, this is the SPN fandom we're talking about, after all)

So, I'll just leave you of with Cuddles' pictorial souvenir of meeting Misha Collins.


And well, now it's July. A quiet time for most things fannish. Most of the shows I watch are now on hiatus (or ended in the case of beloved SGA). I'm not planning to leave the country again until November (although I do have friends returning from overseas soon whom it will be great to catch up with).

Hmm... and I suppose that, it now being July, I should probably get started on my tax return soon.

Well, actually, we're now in Boston, having left my computer cable plugged in at the hotel I stayed at for an overnight stopover in New York, I’m using the computer at tipper_green’s place. (Luckily, the New York hotel is gonna send the cable up to me overnight).

Anyway, about Cuddles and I returning to Montreal, it’s our third sojourn to that city. It was winter the first time we went (and almost froze solid), summer the second time and now winter again for the third visit.

Freezing? Yes. But I invested in a very warm winter coat. Might get some use out of it in Boston and then... well, I'll just have come back to get some more use out of it.

( Montreal with plenty of dial-up unfriendly pics )

Anyway, having spent quite a lot of money and drunk quite a bit of beer and ice cider – oh, and some champagne – oh, and other wines in Montreal. We bade goodbye to the city (once again vowing to return) and caught a flight to New York (managed to leave a computer cable there) and have now met up with Tipper and Mog (and will meet up with Tidia later) in Boston. In fact, Mog’s actually waiting now for me to finish on the computer (and wearing a very interesting moose hat that was given to her by some weirdo friend who’d recently been to Montreal) before we head out to see what damage we can cause we can see today.

More news as it comes to hand...

Centennial Park to Central Park

Greetings from La Guardia airport (well, that's where I was when I started writing this anyway). Cuddles and I left Sydney on Friday afternoon and, due to the time-bending qualities of crossing the dateline, we arrived in New York on Friday evening (despite a journey lasting 20 hours or so). The jet lag has actually been a little weird. Fine to start with, but it might be catching up with me now.

The Centennial Park reference is because my mum offered to drop me off at Sydney airport and since she was looking after some of my nieces and nephews at the time, we decided to spend some time at Centennial Park beforehand. Possibly because of this (or possibly just because I'm geographically challenged), over the past few days, I've kept referring to Central Park (in NYC) as Centennial Park and getting strange looks from the people around me.

( Photos of New York - not even vaguely dial-up friendly )

And so, Cuddles and I caught a flight to Toronto (yes, although I started typing this in La Guardia airport, I'm now typing it in Union Station Toronto) where we were met by gaffer42. Spent the day eating, shopping and geeking out (yes, again). Snow on the ground in Toronto, so it was nice to have a day mostly indoors.

And now... waiting to catch a train to Montreal with lizmc1212.

And I thought New York was cold! Geez!

I'm supposed to be writing a lecture, but I just watched the latest Supernatural and I won't get to meet up with the MAJIK circle or anyone else to talk about it until next weekend and I really feel the need to say this.

( NOT a spoiler, but a personal prediction about what will be revealed next episode )

Thanks. I just had to get that off my chest.

Edit: and I was totally wrong.

And now... lecture to write... but SGA should available soon...

*is torn*

So... it's only a week and a half after the con... not quite as late as I have been on some previous occasions.

But yes, weekend before last, Cuddles, K9 and I met up with mcalex22, starrylizard, yokiem, kaaatie, garneteve and others in Melbourne to go to The Armageddon Expo which featured David Hewlett, Kavan Smith, Andee Frizzell, Gary Jones, William Katt, Ernie Hudson and others as guests.

Gotta admit that the name of this particular con amuses me. Whenever we talked about "getting tickets for Armageddon" I kept getting this mental image of going to some kind of End of the World party. Sorry, small things amuse small minds, I know.

( But anyway, I promised some people that I'd post some pics... )

So, hope you like the pics and see ya round, 'kay?

Cheers.

Title: Incredulity
Author: derry667
Genre: Some strange demonic variant of angst? And aside from the brief mention of John/Mary, it's totally gen.
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: Never been mine, never will be.
Spoilers: "In the Beginning", "All Hell Breaks Loose", "In My Time of Dying", "Devil's Trap" and the pilot.
Rating: PG
Notes: Thanks to starrylizard for casting a quick beta over this, but all mistakes that it still contains remain my own.


(  Azazel never believed it, not even for a moment.  )

I'm a firm believer that people are entitled to have all sorts of different opinions which I do not agree with.

Some of those people, like gnine, express those opinions very well indeed.

She has posted a lengthy essay on what she thinks are the deficiencies in Jennifer Keller's character. I don't agree with her argument and neither do several other people I know. The debate has been extensive and very interesting.

Unfortunately, I seem to attracted the attention of another person who is far less reasonable. I hesitate to call them a troll, but the to and fro between is beginning to clutter up gnine's LJ, I fear.

So, the purpose of this post here is two-fold. 1) To point out a very interesting discussion elsewhere. And 2) to provide a venue for this other person (or persons) to vent their ire against me without cluttering up gnine's journal. They might not take me up on my invitation, of course, but I feel that I have to offer out of courtesy to someone who didn't ask for that sort of sniping to be brought to their LJ.

Busy weekend at the end of a hectic week (having to go in to work on the weekend never makes me happy). But amongst all this, Supernatural's back with its season premiere and for the most part I'm pleased and intrigued. Despite my inherent recalcitrant tendencies, it was never really gonna be a hard sell, but I'm well and truly hooked on this new chapter opening up for the Supernatural saga.

And yet, because I just can't being a bit of a smartarse, there's a couple of points, I'd like to make...

( Not exactly DEUS ex machina )

Oh, one more thing, the new title sequence! Season 3's titles sequence was the flashiest yet and I'm also really impressed by the way the one they've chosen for season 4 is much less showy and yet so evocative.

All in all, I did rather think that last year's the season 3 premiere was okay in terms of setting up the oncoming season, but it was perhaps a little too flashy for my taste - seemed more style over substance in too many places. But the season 4 premiere has substance in spades. I'm more optimistic about Supernatural's future than I have been in a very long time.

EDIT: Another aspect of this new development occurred to me this morning and then wouldn't stop rattling around my head all day - ( there's something about Mary ) And then I posted these comments over at supernatural_tv which then went off on another tangent.

Also *waves Aussie flag* AC/DC FTW!!! Loved the musical montage at the beginning. Yeah, how the hell did I forget about that bit?!?!? *face palm*

25 first lines of fic meme nabbed from friendshipper

( The opening lines for my last 25 fics )

What I have learned from this...

( which got a bit rambling and then somehow morphed into a rant about some current real life issues *sigh* )

Hey, stop laughing, you gits!

Seriously, Tipper, if I'm ever a character in a TV show getting sued for medical malpractice, I want you as my lawyer!

I've tended to stay out of the fandom kerfuffles in SGA for about a season and a half. No spoilers. Just squee with my friends. I'm loving the show as much as I ever did. I think keeping peripheral to fandom has actually enhanced the show for me.

So, I was aware (in fact, I had predicted it) that there would a lot of resentment to Dr Keller as a character. I haven't heard a lot of it first hand coz I'm just not going to places to read that kind of stuff, but I still hear about the various rantings here and there.

In response to some of those rantings, tipper_green has posted this superb defence of Keller's actions in The Shrine.

I respect some of the counterarguments (I really do), but Tipper wins! (IMHO)

SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

I now have new all time favourite episode of SGA. I'm sure there must stuff that they got wrong in this episode - somewhere. But I really don't care coz I'm just too thrilled about everything they got right!

In some ways, it's funny that I'm so blown away by this ep because nothing in it really surprised me (and I usually like to be taken by surprise). I really didn't know many spoilers; I didn't even know who the guest star would be. I knew the basic premise (in a next-week-on-SGA promo kinda way) which I was moderately ho-hum about actually. I'd heard Jewel Staite say that she loved it for the character interactions and that did intrigue me. But all in all, nothing astonished me, and maybe that was the point, in a way. All the characters behaved exactly in the way I personally want them to behave. It was "perfect characterisation" in terms of my own view of the current Atlantis crew, almost could have been written to my specifications.

( And so sorta like a reverse Flowers for Algernon this time... )

And in terms of other SGA news I heard this week (I'm so out of the loop that I found out from mcalex22 when she called me on the phone about something else entirely), I'd rather the show went out producing episodes of this calibre, rather than dwindling away into mediocrity. Five years is a good run. Not the ten that SG-1 got, but a respectable back catalogue nonetheless (and I remember my interest in SG-1 waning during its fifth season to the point where I seemed to be one of the few fans not outraged by the news that Daniel was leaving). And I actually remember a conversation about the longevity of shows, including SGA, a few years back, during which I agreed with friendshipper that five years would be a good length of time for the show. Now that five years is almost here and that's all we're getting (apparently), I don't regret it. Provided that it's tied up well, of course.

So this is me not in mourning. I've enjoyed this season so far, and I'm just gonna keep enjoying it as long as I can.

And this week, I enjoyed it more than I have in a very long time. Which is saying something.

mcalex22 suggested that I'd been conspicuously quiet about my reaction to the finale episode of Dr Who.

Okay then, ( basically, there was a lot I liked, but some stuff I hated )

Don't tend to talk too much on LJ about my work, but here's a SGA moment that I really had to share.

The lab recently employed some new people. I kinda knew this and had been told the names in passing, but it didn't really click with me until I read the name that's just been put on the office next to mine.

Dr Biro.

She's a pathologist.

I'm not kidding.

With less than 48 hours before the Dr Who finale airs, I've a few brief words to say.

( Speculations about Journey's End - with big spoilers for everything up to that and the aired promo for the episode (in case you haven't seen it/them) )

Um... did I say "brief words"?

Anyway, roll on the finale!

EDIT (7/7/08): Spoilers for "Journey's End" in the comments.

K9 is the ruler of the world!!!ELEVENTYONE!!!!11!

All others bow down before him!!

EDIT: It's really me this time. Note to self - well, more of a reminder really - you'd think I'd learn - anyway, note to self: must not leave LJ signed in with certain "friends" around. Not even when you signed in specifically to get access to certain comms so these "friends" could watch stuff. #%^$@*!$@% ingrates!