I'm currently trapped in my nephew's apartment because the deadbolt thingamajiggy broke. What next, I ask? To add insult to injury, I don't have access to a phone (my nephew uses a cell and my sister took ours back to Smiths Falls when she had to return on Sunday). Thank goodness for the internet!!

FYI, I did remove the screws on the inside of the deadbolt so I can get out if needed, but then there'd be no lock on the door. The super is going to replace it.

Well, at least that gives me time to work on the sv_fca results. Wait 'til you see the stunning work that ctbn60 has come up with for the occasion!

I haven't been on line for the last few days because of a family emergency (more on that later when I have some energy). But I did want to remind everyone that the Smallville Fandom Creativity Awards (sv_fca) are still open for voting over this weekend - polls close May 6, 2012 at 23:59 PST. Vote, vote, vote! Details here.

(But don't try to send in multiple ballots because that just creates extra work for me, and I really could do without that now.) Thanks.

Snow in late April after we had practically none all winter. It makes no sense!

A while back I threatened to do a few posts on astronomy, but then inertia took over. So here goes!

First off, the Lyrid meteor shower will be at its peak tonight - the later the better as Lyra doesn't even rise in the eastern sky until about 10 PM. Expect to see about 7 meteors per hour.

On the western horizon, Venus continues to put on a dazzling show around sunset. It is absolutely unmistakable - the biggest obstacle to identifying it is assuming its an airplane or other manmade (or alien!) object. Venus is currently in the constellation Taurus the bull.


( Touring Orion )

My birthday is officially over but I wanted to say a quick thanks to all my flisties for another wonderful year. Special thanks to:

• patrese1, priscel, svgurl and voldything for the lovely sparklies on my profile
• ctbn60, who made me a sexy, clexy manip - yum
• bradygirl_12, tallihensia, talitha78, lapetite_kiki and ... Oh dear, I know there were others who sent me messages. Thank you all and forgive my failing memory.
• josephina_x for the wonderful story Aliens 601, for Humans
• and tasabianfor the brilliant picspam, Tom: Golf Course Freedom Fighter. I would totally watch that movie.

They were all much appreciated.

I had a pretty quiet day and then we went out to see the Ottawa Senators, who unfortunately lost. Well, we at least had fun heaping abuse on the refs, who were pretty off form alas. And I get another celebration on the weekend since my sister couldn't make it to this one. My main gifts were gift certificates to Richmond Nursery, so I can indulge in my annual May gardening shop. I always wind up buying a lot of plants each year because we get a lot of winter kill hereabouts. But its getting harder and harder to find spaces for all the plants, so I may wind up starting another bed.

Lately, I've been nit picking. No, not at plot inconsistencies this time - the real deal. My sister is a kindergarten teacher and one of her little ones passed on head lice -nice. Join me in a massive, "Ewwwwww!" Or "eeeeek!" Anyways, I've become somewhat of an expert nit picker in the last couple of days - not exactly something I ever wanted to be. The worse part is that I'm itchy all over, all the time. My sister has done a few checks and I've come up clean but I must say I'm freaked out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_louse

I've started to fill out my ballot for the Smallville Fandom Creativity Awards - so many choices! Unfortunately I stopped bookmarking my favourites half way through last year so I don't have a "short list" of more recent fics for reference. This means I'm going to have to do a whole lot of rereading, but there are worse fates I suppose.

Here's a by no means complete list of who I'm looking at:

• twinsarein - I did a speed re-read through twins' list and think I'm going with long-time favourite Shifting Paradigm for Clex/drama/long/overall, Zuzu's Petals for medium and It's Curtains for short/humour
• tallihensia at alatrific - I'll have to look again at the more recent stuff, but it's going to be hard to knock off the Not A Villain Series, Twilight's Secret, Growing Up Familiar and Office Space
• rednihilist - the Colin Luthor verse for series and Teenage Wasteland are going to be strong contenders
• me_ya_ri - The Long Road and The Kryptonian Historian are definitely in the hunt
• danceswithgary - the Kent Identity for best adaptation is an obvious one, but I know there will be others, especially in the short categories since I love her drabbles
• ladydreamer - No One Noticed the Cat and Must Be Dreaming are in contention
• josephina_x - the good news is that she's new to the fandom so I don't have to go back far. The bad news is I really like them all!
• nonotthatone - Carol for one.
• sue_dreams - I don't know how I'm going to choose between these all
• bradygirl_12 - ditto
• phoenixnz - ditto in spades
• babydee1 - ditto, though The Perfect Gift and Agenda have a headstart
• ellyfanfiction - yikes! 79 eligible fics!
• marikology - Stress Fracture comes to mind
• firebunny - she's going to be hard to beat in the humour category IMO
• legendarytobes - lots of lovely Chlark to catch up on
• svgurl - eligible works for a whole bunch of ships
• xenokattz - Lois and Clark's Wedding... comes instantly to mind
• plnunn - how to choose?
• twilighthdfan - ditto!
• roxymissrose - sadly no longer as active in Smallville, but still some lovely stories to consider
• babettew54 - lots and lots of Cloisy goodness

And that's just for the fic! I don't know how I'm going to choose between all my favorite artworks from ctbn60 alone! And vids...

Yikes!!

Nominations for the 2012 Smallville Fandom Creativity Awards (aka the SV-FCAs) Are Now Open!

We want to celebrate the excellent fanfic, art and vids created in the last few years. We have lots of categories (more than the Oscars, though fewer than the Grammies) to reflect the diversity of our fandom. All ships are welcome! Refer to this post for the rules, categories and nomination procedures.




NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN NOW AND WILL CLOSE ON APRIL 22, 2012

I haven't been posting or even commenting much lately because of computer problems - the 'r' key on my laptop was crooked (the horror, the horror) so my ever-so-slightly OCD sister started fiddling with it and broke it off. And when she took the laptop in for repairs, they had to replace the entire keyboard (!) so the laptop is currently still in the shop. Fortunately, at least one person on my flist had warned me to get the full warranty so at least I'm not out of pocket. Using my old PC though is practically torture now.

Did you hear that Zenyatta had her first foal on Friday? Here's a link to a lovely video by HRTV showing mama and son on their first outing. They're both doing splendidly! There are also near daily updates in the diaries section at Zenyatta.com - too cute!

I've been learning the basics of digitalr astrophotography and have been thinking of doing some posts on stargazing - I think I can answer 'what does Orion look like' somewhat better than Siri methinks! Anyone interested? Any burning questions?

From sv_fca - the Smallville Fandom Creation Awards:
 
Do you write fanfiction?
Have you created artwork?
Or videos?

We think all that hard work deserves recognition. So, for the next two weeks, we want you to send in lists of your eligible work. In two weeks we will call for nominations from all members.

So, here's what we need from you: Send us your eligible stories, icons, banners, covers, videos, manips etc. Make sure you provide a link as we do not want to have to go searching for it.


Nominations will be open on the 18th of March and will stay open until the 22nd of April. Voting will be open for one week following that. For rules and eligibility criteria, please see sv_fca

I'm running a test to see who's reading my posts. So, if you read this, leave me a one-word comment about your day that starts with the third letter of your LJ USERNAME. Only one word please. Then repost so I can leave a word for you. Don't just post a word and not copy - that's not as much fun!


My word was "vibrant." I haven't done all that much lately (yet another setback from my concussion I think) but it just feels good to be alive. The weather here has been fabulous lately - so very atypical for February in Ontario!

Beauty and the Beast wasn't my favorite TV show ever, but Linda Hamilton was my Catherine. Not sure what to make of the latest news on the remake - Kristin Kreuk lands lead. I'l try not to let my hostility towards late season Lana colour my reaction to Kristin, but it will be hard!

PS - thanks so much to patrese1, svgurl, josephina_x, voldything and twinsarein for the sparkly hearts on my profile!!

Title: The Special Two
Pairing: Chlark (Clark/Chloe)
Medium: video
Type: angst, romance

After one shock too many, Chloe reevaluates her relationship with Clark and vows to fight for their future together. Chloe doesn't go back to Jimmy.

Song by Missy Higgins. Clips from Smallville seasons 1-6 with a couple of scenes from S8. No copyright infringement intended.

Notes: created for the secret_chlark gift exchange for the wonderful babydee1. Thanks to simplytoopretty for all her work organizing the event.

Download link: .wmv file (47 MB)

Streaming video from viddler*:

* alas, YouTube blocked the audio :( I recommend using the download link for somewhat higher quality.)

PS - Wow, it took 4 hours for me to do a few vid revisions, reupload and type this in. I guess I'm still a bit muzzy from the concussion!

That slipping on ice so that you fall backwards and bonk your head _really_ hurts.

Owww! I don't think I'm going to get much done over the next few days.

I haven't posted recently as I've been so busy with the holidays. No idea where all the time went, though I did get in lots of baking (though not as much as last year - I focused on my favourites instead this time round), shopping (not just my own but I also stepped in for my sister and got a few for my nephew as well), cleaning (ugh) and all round busy work. Not to mention Christmas dinner and the inevitable tons of dishes (no dishwasher here - boo). And last but not least, turkey soup - a nuisance to make but a delight to eat (all 2+ gallons of it!!) It all turned out quite well - especially the tree. I do love our collection of ornaments - which is your favorite?



(More Christmas pics at my facebook album)

On a fandom note, I've really been enjoying the goodies over at clexmas, and can't wait for the postings to start at secret_chlark. Yes, I love both ships (and Clois too) thanks to all the talented writers and artists out there. Thank you all! Here's to a fabulous 2012.

Yikes, just over two weeks to Christmas!! I've got the Christmas tree up finally though I'm a bit dissatisfied with it. I didn't notice until after I'd added the garland and ornaments that one of the strands of lights, which I ran along the bottom branches, doesn't have any yellow lights in it. So there is this kind of subtle disconnect in the colouring. I guess I'll just have to ignore it.

I wrote a ficlet (or whatever you call something about 300 words long) for the smallearth advent calendar. Nothing brilliant to be sure but it was fun to write. There are still some places left on the calendar so why not consider joining in the fun. Crossovers with any justice league member are welcome!

I'm going through Smallville withdrawal so started rewatching my S1 DVDs for comfort. It was such a different show back then - IMO no better than S10, certainly no worse, just different.

Season 1 was dominated by the later maligned "Freaks of the Week", and the quality of an episode often was dictated by the quality of the antagonist. A FOTW episode had to do a lot of things in a very short time span - establish the new character, their power and their back story, build a connection with some of our main cast members, set up the ultimate confrontation and find a way to resolve everything by the closing credits. And that doesn't even count the time the show needed to spend on the 'B' and 'C' story lines to develop the relationships between the main cast members, almost always my favorite parts of these episodes. For example, Reaper is the worst episode of the season IMO with a truly dreary FOTW, but is somewhat redeemed by the fishing trip confrontation between Clark and Jonathon. In later years, I would have welcomed a few more FOTW stories to show us Clark at his superheroing best. 

( My favourites, under the cut )

Want to share some love for FOTWs? Chime in below!

We only had 26 hours in Yosemite, which isn't nearly enough. A lot of the most famous sights can be glimpsed from the Yosemite Valley loop road, but it often takes a hike of an hour or more to get a proper view. My sister Barbara and I had made a list of the hikes we thought we could fit in, including the Mariposa Grove, Glacier Point and Taft trails to be done as we drove into the park on Sunday from LA, then the Lower Yosemite Falls, Cook Meadow and Bridalveil trails as we left the park on Monday for San Francisco.
( Then it all went wrong )
If you want to see more of my favorite pics of Yosemite, check out my Facebook album. So beautiful!

I thought I'd share a much belated summary of my recent trip to California. Long story short, it was amazing and I definitely want to go back. There's so much I didn't get to see! ( A week in Los Angeles is not enough! )

For a link to all my favourite photos from LA, check out my Facebook album. Note that you don't need to have an account to see the pics, although I don't think you see all the comments if you're not. LMK if you want to friend me.

cw_land is an interactive challenge community dedicated to shows from the CW Network, including some from the WB and UPN.
The three teams are BAMF, GQMF, and HBIC.

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CW Land has lots of fun challenges, from puzzles to writing and icon making and beyond. If you're interested in signing up, please mention my name! Note that I'm on Team GQMF.