To sum up where I've been:

+ WisCon, which was marvelous, and involved meeting a number of wonderful people, most for the first time (and including nikitangel who was absolutely brilliant and actually had Michelle Rodriguez vids and clips on her iPod which we watched at a party, which is just one of many signs of how wonderful she is), being introduced to Alias (the comic) by kphoebe's paper presentation, lots of interesting panels, seeing the fantastic cabell again (I stayed with her, actually), meeting revena (and loving her car), and on and on and on. I left it feeling positive for the first time in awhile, because I met so many women who are out there, in the world, making a difference.

+ Nevada and Utah, which was a fun, relaxing vacation with J.

+ attending wedding events for a local friend

+ working. a lot. more than a lot.

+ riding my motorcycle

Did I mention that before I disappeared (for six plus weeks)? I bought a '78 Honda 400 Hawk, which is a small bike, but just the right size for me. It's a neat little bike, and I'm having fun riding back and forth to work and around in the sun. (Yes, I'm careful and wear my helmet and heavy jeans and solid boots. I don't want to break my brain.)

I probably have skip three million to read, and there is no way I can catch up on over six weeks of posts, so please point me to things of interest.

So after I posted that Rogue story last night, kphoebe (almost all my X-Men and Harry Potter writing, and definitely future writing, can be blamed on her, and her wonderful X-Men/Harry Potter crossover I inspired the beginning of with my desire for Bill Weasley/Gambit) brought the xmenflashfic community to my attention, which is wonderful and means I'll probably be writing more X-Men fiction in the future. (Well, that's partially wonderful. I'm supposed to be focusing on non-fanfic writing these days, and a lot of times I am, except the past couple of months have been almost all fanfic, all the time.)

It's a fairly new community, so I go read some of the comments on the introductory post, as I do, and one of the members mentions a femslash X-Man list which for some reason I read as a community. I'm very reluctant to comment to people I don't know (I struggle with this a lot, and trying to balance it with the need to leave feedback), so I went to look at her user info to see if I could find it. (Obviously, I couldn't, because I need to learn to read first.)

However, the world is very small and sometimes lucky things just happen. (Plus I'm easily entertained and made happy.) She goes to the school where I did my undergrad studies. She has the same major and minor I had. She's the vice-president of the same literary magazine I was fiction editor, vice-president, and then president of, and involved in for all four of the years I was there. Dude.

What's more, we're in a couple of the same communities here, have a lot of the same interests. I'm thinking obviously the English program there does something to its students. Either that or we're just drawn to it. Heh.

So that was pretty cool. Welcome aphrodite_mine!

Work has not been cool today, in fact, work has been so bad I'm ready to stab the rock chip drill into people's temples, but that's not for the public journal. The day's almost over, and S. bought everyone lunch, including all the guys working out on site, and I've had so much diet Dr. Pepper I wouldn't be surprised to turn into a bottle of it. (No, really. I don't normally drink this much, but I started out the morning with a bottle on the way to work and have had three cans while I'm here.) I have a chocolate muffin for later, and I plan to update my website tonight, and write some more, and probably play Tony Hawk on the PS2. I'm wearing baggy jeans which are so much baggier now than when I bought them, my skater boy shoes, and a short-sleeved t-shirt over a long-sleeved t-shirt. I still marvel at not having to dress up; I'm in an office job and dress like I used to for class, and yet when I worked retail, I had to dress business casual. Crazy. My non-fandom writing is going extremely well, despite my complaint earlier, and my (slightly) increased participation in fandom makes me insanely happy.

Plus Brokeback Mountain has now come closer than St. Louis, though I doubt it will ever come to this tiny conservative town, and now I can drive to go see it. I wouldn't drive to St. Louis, because I have this fear my car will fall apart again (this is not unfounded, because the last time I drove it to St. Louis, in December, it did fall apart--the rear end fell out on the interstate and let me tell you, that was not an experience I ever want to repeat), but I will maybe drive to Springfield or Jefferson City.

I have a bass guitar waiting for me at home, and I love it, and people who make me feel cool and wonderful and intelligent. Yeah, I should have been in England visiting thestalkycop today, but I'll get to go see her sometime this year, and we did just get together in Florida back in September, so it's not like it's been years. (Though it feels like it.)

I'm going to get through the rest of today and then I'm going to go home and do fun fandom things. I'm not even going to the gym, because everyone is always too talkative on Fridays and I just want to be left alone to work out. So I'll lift at home and go for a hike this weekend if the weather holds and all will be good.