HOLY FUCKING SHIT I CAN'T BELIEVE WE DID IT!!!


I'm so proud of my country right now.

*is so crying*

Dear Honda,

That CR-V commercial where the cookie dough bakes in the oven and turns into the car? Does NOT make me want the car. It makes me want cookies.

Better luck next time.

Me

"You were our favorite! We loved the hot chick in the green shirt!"

That's what a complete stranger said to me last night. First time anyone has EVER called me the hot chick.

So yeah, I'm way into this whole rock star thing. Except that I'm not *really* a rock star. Feels like it, though.

Here's the deal: Last night was the second performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (we're performing the whole Simon and Garfunkel album, plus a few other tunes, with as much of the original instrumentation as we could possibly muster). I'm playing keys, french horn, trombone and doing some backup vocals and aux. percussion (which are really just hand claps, but for "Cecelia" it's pretty vital). I also bounce around on stage, dance, and generally help get the audience going.

It's pretty sweet. And the trick to making it all awesome? This little nugget of wisdom: "Don't ever form a band of people who play. Form a band of people you like to hang out with and learn to play together." No wonder these guys have been playing together for ten years and show no signs of slowing down soon. I can't believe how damn lucky I was to be brought into this little group.

This is SO the way to have a career as a musician. Screw union scale!

Okay flisters, I know there are coffee fiends out there. You know who you are. This is a message for YOU.

Muggsy's Beans

Best. Coffee. Ever. It's fresh, it's perfectly roasted, and lots of it is organic or Fair Trade Certified.

And Muggsy is one of my favorite people on the planet. I love him like family (anyone remember my character Zee from "The Hills Are Bare"? Totally based on this guy), and he's SO good at what he does.

So go. Buy coffee (cheaper than Starbucks or Caribou, and so, SOOOOO much better). Make your companies and offices join his office program so that you always have good coffee at work. Enjoy your buzzed state, and tell everyone you know.

The end.

I feel like such a bad cat mommy.

The poor baby was cowering in her litter box, hiding from me last night.

All I have to do is pick up her pain medication now, and she flees in terror. Damn you, cystitis! *pets poor, abused baby*

I has a discography!

Coming soon to iTunes: The George Maurer Jazz Group's newest album, "Sniff the Mitten" (and oh, the layers of dorkdum required to appreciate that title). Not that you'll be able to pick ME out of the group, but I play on "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," "Ding Dong Merrily On High," "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" and "Someday at Christmas."

I'll let you know when it's released, because you should all go get it! And I say that in all seriousness. There are so many crappy Christmas albums out there, but these guys...well, they named their album "Sniff the Mitten," shouldn't that say something about the sense of humor they have? And the banter, oh the banter!! There's a track of them talking about George's Action Figure Mozart ("Take that, Beethoven! Pow! Pow!")

So it sounds like I have a potential oboe gig.

I don't play oboe. The woman who wants to hire me KNOWS I don't play oboe.

But it's in a year from now. Guess she figures I have time to learn.

Now I've got to get an instrument that doesn't suck.

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

And quite frankly, some of you have things that I really wonder about:

Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

Dear Fate,

Please to be leaving Minneapolis the fuck alone for a while, okay?

No love,
Me

Seriously, I had no business making it home last night. I don't mean I should have been dead in a ditch somewhere, but really, it's amazing that I didn't get stranded in one of the impromptu lakes that formed where roads had once been. I have The Little Car That Could, though, and I plowed through very, VERY deep water with only one close call.

Flash floods = no fun.

so is laurelgardner

I don't know how many people out there know that I do live in the Minneapolis area in Minnesota, but for those of you who saw the news coverage about the highway that fell into the Mississippi, obviously, I was not on it. I went right by it today, and was in the area when it went down, but I have almost no reason to take that bridge most days, and thank god! Several of my friends use that route every day, and for some reason or other didn't today, or went earlier than they normally did.

Very, very lucky day for some. My heart and thoughts are with those who were not so lucky. I still can't quite believe that something so horrifying happened so close to where I was today. It's naive, I know, but still it's hard to ever imagine that something like this would happen in Minnesota. Fucking midwest, dudes! Nothing happens here!

My grandfather raised and trained registered Morgans and Belgians. My uncle is a veterinarian (large and small animals). My best memory of childhood is going for winter sleigh rides with my grandfather and his horses. Unfortunately, just about the time I was getting to be old enough to be really interested in the horses, my grandfather got too old to keep them any longer. My dad has said on a few occasions, that he feels he didn't raise his children *quite* properly because they didn't get to grow up around horses (my dad grew up knowing how to ride, and in high school took his girlfriends for carriage rides down by the river).

And a few days ago, I was going for a walk and passed a couple carriage horses. Now, everytime I so much as see a horse, I get this stab of, "OMGWANT!!" and this time I got close enough to SMELL them. God, I love the smell of horses and horse barns. It's sweet and earthy and reminds me of tagging along with my grandfather out to his barn (something I only got to do once, as far as I know).

My parents did as well as they could for me, growing up. I took riding lessons, and was told I was a natural at everything from bareback to barrel riding (which I put down to having good teachers. Human and equine). But the idea of having a horse was never even considered. When your parents are public servants (teacher and librarian), you don't have a lot of money to throw around. Especially when both children then decide to go off to a fancy and expensive boarding school.

But it still took me years to realize that, now that I'm an adult, I can do what I want, and that includes having a horse. It's strange; I have the least restrictive parents I can imagine, who have always supported me and my right to do what I want with my life, and somehow having that much freedom meant I rarely ever asked myself what *I* wanted for my life. I just assumed that whatever I was doing was what I wanted because hey, no one told me I had to. I *must* be off pursuing my dreams, right?

Well, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I know I'm going to be a horse owner. Not right now, of course. I'm living paycheck to paycheck as it is, no WAY I'm adding a horse to that equation! But someday. And someday soon.

There, see?  I have time for memes like everyone else.

List seven songs you are into right now, no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your livejournal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.

1. "Shadowcatcher" by Eric Ewazen (for brass quintet and concert band.  I'm lusting after this piece.  Really.)
2.  "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi
3.  "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" by Led Zeppelin
4.  "Trouble In Mind" by all kinds of people (blues standard.  right now, I like Nina Simone's version best)
5.  "Sinnerman" as done by Nina Simone (speaking of....)
6.  "Six One Five Seven" by George Maurer
7.  "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganinni" by Rachmaninoff (probably my favorite piece in the classical repertoire.  It's a perfect piece of music.)

I tag...anyone who wants a go at this.

So I haven't been writing recently, but I did find this little piece that I did back in December.  It was originally going to be the first in the "Five kinds of sex Gil Grissom needed to have" series.  I've got number 2 started, and I hope I'll finish the series, but for now, here's this one.

Fair warning, though.  It's het.  And it's Sara.  And I'm not the least bit sorry.

Title: Five Kinds of Sex that Gil Grissom Needed to Have (Number 1: Impulsive)
Author: Me
Rating: Hard R
Pairing: Gil/Sara
Kinks: Not really.  A few things that trip my kinks, but nothing anyone would need to be warned for.

Six ships I like
1. Gil/Nick (CSI)
2. Mal/Jayne (Firefly)
3. Remus/Sirius (Harry Potter)
4. Crowley/Aziraphale (Good Omens)
5. Gil/Heather (CSI)
6. House/Wilson (House)

Three ships I've abandoned
7. Luke/Mara (Star Wars)
8. Jareth/Sarah (Labyrinth)
9. Gil/Warrick (CSI)

Three ships I've never liked
10. Twincest (Harry Potter)
11. Frodo/Sam (Lord of the Rings)
12. Anakin/Padme (Star Wars)

Two ships that have piqued my interest
13. Sara/Sofia (CSI)
14. Kaylee/Inara (Firefly)



 

I really wanted to love CSI all the way to the end of its run. Two years ago, when I joined the fandom, I couldn't imagine a time when I wouldn't be a raving CSI/Grissom fangirl.

I still love CSI. And I still love Grissom. But I love what they were, not what they are.

Maybe this is what the writers wanted all along. Maybe this is where they meant all the characters to go. Maybe Grissom never was as complex and interesting as I thought he was. About the time "Still Life" aired, I started to realize that the writers just didn't see Grissom the way I did. In my head, he was my ideal character. Just the right amounts of intelligence, faults, quirks and tragedy to make for a great hero. The kind I really worship, the kind I want to write and develop and see bloom into a god among men.

But he's become much more mundane than that. Yes, he's still a genius, but he's lost his edge, somehow (and his snark. I miss Gil with his double-bitch on). Or rather, the writers have lost their edge. They've gotten safe with him. They're not willing to hurt him, I mean *really* hurt him, or push him. They're letting him stagnate and giving him a hat and a contrived love affair and calling it character development. (And for the record, I'll just say that it's not the Gil/Sara thing that bothers me, it's the way it's been written. I could believe that relationship, I really could, but not like this. Again, they've taken the safe road with it, while blindly claiming that they're pushing their characters by having Sara "not be as excited to see Gil" when he returns from sabbatical. There's a word for this kind of writing: pussy. There. I said it.)

But then again, maybe Gil was all the things I thought he was. Maybe CSI just fell into a trap, a dangerous trap that threatens all who write or create in any way. I've fallen in it myself, both with my musical compositions and my written ones. And the way I know I'm in it, is when I look at what I'm doing and realize that it's not only more difficult than it used to be, but it isn't as good. It happens when you start creating what others want and not what you want.

Here's how I see it. Some of the greatest authors I know started writing simply because they couldn't find anyone else who had written the stories they wanted to read. I know that's why I started writing. I had stories that I desperately wanted told, and I eventually realized that, unless I told them, they would never exist. So I wrote "In Search of a Reason" and "The Balance of Power" because no one else would "get it right"."

But it's such a slippery slope. You start off writing the thing you want, and if it gets a positive reaction, you write more. And eventually, you can start to hear the voices of the fans in your head as you're creating, trying to tell you what they want and what they like. So you think, "Well, why don't I just do that, then?" Except that what you're hearing is what you *think* your fans want. Or what you think *they* think they want. It's a convoluted mess, and you'll end up neglecting the things you were doing before that made people like your stuff in the first place!

I haven't been able to bring myself to watch any episodes lately, because there's nothing left in it for me to love. At first I loved all the way cool forensic work, the chance to sit there and say, "Okay, we KNOW that Suspect X did it, now we need to find a sneaky ninja way to prove it." And now it's so much interrogation room stuff, which is cool to a point, but lately I've been going, "Shouldn't the detectives be doing this?" I've suspended a lot of disbelief for this show, and now I'm feeling maxed out.

I'm not ready to leave fandom yet. I'm going to start "Stump the Mod" back up again at grisskink. But I'm going to keep writing the Grissom *I* fell in love with. I'm going back to season three, and I'm moving in with Classic!Grissom.

And while I'm at it, I've realized that the time has come for me to move into writing fiction of my own. Because, as I discovered with Grissom, no one is going to create the character I want to read about above all others. No one else is going to create the hero I want to see, or put him in the peril that will make him great. So I guess I have to.

Lately, anyway. I mean, jeezly-christ, it's been...over a month since I posted? And how frickin' long since I acted like any sort of mod on either of my two comms?

Yeah. Suckage.

But I'm not sucking at real life so much, so that's a good thing. The Evil Corporate Employer job still sucks, but the good news is that I had an interview with MPR last week. Squee!! It's for an internship, so it wouldn't be the end to all my woes, but it *is* a paid internship, and it would be a way for me to make even more inroads and get myself hired on full time. Plus, it's with the show that I really, very badly, want to work on (Performance Today). I haven't heard anything back yet, but I'm not expecting to. The job wouldn't start until late May, so they've got all the time in the world to make their decision. And I have spies on the inside who would tell me if anything important happened.

I'm also writing again. This time, it's my own world, and my own story, and I'm pretty damn excited about it. I do hope to get some fannish writing again, although I doubt I'll be as prolific as before. I'd like to start doing the "Stump the Mod" again, but that'll stay on hold for a while. I gotta finish a smutty piece I owe nicky69, and a few other deals that I don't want to leave hanging. I'd like to finish "Anthem," some day, but hell if I know if I even *can.* That story has...problems.

By the way, any of you folks been trying to friend me over at myspace? I've been denying requests like a mofo, because I'm not interested in having, OMGTHEMOSTFRIENDSEVA!!! like so many people over there seem to be. But anyone who's friended me here, can certainly do so over there. So if you've already tried, and I've denied you, it's cuz I didn't realize who you were. Send me a note and say, "Hey! I know you from lj!" and that'll be cool.

Dear Evil Corporate Employer;

I'm having a fan-fucking-tastic day. No really, I mean it. I'm in a great mood. I'm well rested, and happy, so much so that I was actually being a good little Wage Slave, and getting my work done more efficiently than usual.

Now. In light of this, don't fuck up my afternoon. I know you want to. You always do. Afternoons suck with you. I'm just sayin' is all. That's why I'd really rather not work them anymore, if you'd be so kind.

But for now, considering I *have* to be here until 4:45, be a pal, okay? What did I ever do to you?

No love, but no actual hate, either,
Me

Dear Uterus,

You suck. Really. A lot. And if you don't listen to what those nice painkillers I sent to talk to you have to say, I may just have to terminate your lease.

Cuz really, I don't need you. Think about that for a while.

No love,
Me