in my life

Perhaps inspired by watching the Smallville series finale last week after not having watched the show since 2003, I caught up on a few other season/series finales today. The Office, which I stopped watching regularly about a year ago, was kind of charming. NCIS was not very interesting case-wise but aww, I will never not love these characters (I also watched the "Baltimore" episode, which yay, flashbacks!).

I watched the latest episode of House, and I kept watching the whole way through like a masochist even though it was one of the most painful House-watching experiences I've had, oh my god D: ( spoilers )

And THEN I watched the Brothers & Sisters series finale. I haven't watched the show since mid-season 4 and didn't even know it had been canceled, but when I read that the series finale aired I had to watch. Aw, Walkers. I do love that family. ( spoilers )

In continuation of my vague squee at Grey's Anatomy yesterday, if you want to see what I was excited about -- mainly smart, well-written, wonderfully acted (&Sandra Oh;) scenes about abortion -- I am posting the relevant scenes under the cut. Spoilers for the season 7 finally, obviously. ( Cristina Yang fiiinally )

Sooo... I think that's all about TV. Well, I also watched this week's Glee and like Jane Lynch a lot. and that's really it. Which means I can move on to movies:

Yesterday I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Um, that's basically all I have to say about that, actually. I was disappointed. I loved the first movie, enjoyed the two sequels, and this movie was meh enough that I actually nodded off near the end, and I don't think I was that tired. The music and stunts were cool -- I think Pirates is one of the only movies that still have those kind of old classic action-adventure kinds of stunts that are perfectly choreographed and inventive and just plain cool, with costumes and settings and music that just sweeps you in for those few moments. But then the plot happened, or "plot", idek what that was to be honest. One thing I can say with absolute certainty is that the 3D is entirely pointless and I hate that they are making me pay 10 extra shekels for movies these days ugh :/

On Thursday evening I went to my boss's wedding. It was fun and sweet and I danced like I have not danced since Club Vivid. Some of my coworkers got utterly sloshed but I did not drink more than appropriate for driving, which I slightly regret. I'm not a huge fan of alcohol, which is also why I don't like spending actual money on it, but there was a free bar and good company and had I planned it otherwise it would have been an opportunity to drink some more. But whatever, I had fun. For those of you who are maybe interested in how these kinds of Israeli weddings go, here is how it went: ( wedding in points )

And oh, one last thing about the wedding -- one of my coworkers, an Israeli French (sweet married-with-kids-)dude, was looking really sharp in a white pressed shirt and nice black slacks. When I mentioned this, the girl next to me murmured, "You should see the pictures of him online". So I did. Why hello there.

1. OMG SRUGIM. Season 1 was awesomesauce, and season 2 started out weak, and then got awesome again on the fourth episode, and then TODAY'S EPISODE OMG. ( Spoilerspoiler )

2. Aaaaaah my entire fucking weekend I've probably read like 300K of fic because apparently I am reading fucking bandom now what the fuck. I hate bexless. I don't even know My Chemical Romance, okay. (no, do not link me in the comments, I can google. Also don't link me to recs. I have tests, goddamn it.)

3. I just had to pass up skiing in the Hermon on Tuesday because I have a test! YAY. Not. D:

4. NCIS, final scene of the episode: whaaaaaaaat? Also, I looked up the actress who plays the lawyer because she was familiar. Apparently she's familiar for playing Heidi Petrelli on Heroes, but more importantly, she is apparently a direct descendant of the Ba'al Shem Tov. Shene'emar: LOLOLOLOL.

5. Grey's Anatomy: I still watch this show, and just want to say that I love Callie and Arizona, and I love Callie and Mark as BFFs, and I approve of the three of them sharing a bed. Also, Cristina's speech? Thank god.

6. SPN: :DDDDDDDD, and FNL: HOW IS THIS SHOW SO AMAZING OMG MY HEART. ( fuck it, I can't do this without spoilers. )

7. American Idol: Please let there be a fic somewhere about a show called American Agent where the judges panel includes Adam Lambert, Neil Patrick Harris and Katy Perry and the contestants are Simon, Kara, Paula etc. Because I would read that fic. I really would.

8. My baby sister told me this afternoon: "I think I want to start reading the Discworld books." I think I scared her by almost having a heart attach right then and there, literally fluttering my hand and needing to swallow before I could speak. I've been trying to convince her for years, and the moment has finally arrived. SO MUCH JOY. She better love it, damn it.

9. I'll go now. I think my dad's going to watch the Superbowl downstairs. I can join him and... feel American and stuff.

Having just been treated to a surprise!miarr coffee break, I am sitting in the 24-hour coffee place across the street from my apartment, otherwise known as The One With The Wifi, under the merry illusion that coffee place = free time. I have some articles to read for tomorrow's classes, but I'm going to (maybe) have some free time before classes tomorrow, which makes the reading all too tempting to postpone…

Anyway. I would like to talk to you about podfics! Podfics are the Best Thing Ever. Inspired by an ontd_ai spinoff comm, I have decided (again) to try and get in shape. I've been linked to the Couch to 5K Running Plan, which I will attempt to follow in the upcoming weeks. I hate jogging, but I also know that the truly difficult part is getting in shape – once you're already in shape, jogging isn't so bad.

In any case, the part that was always difficult for me with jogging was the boredom, because when I'm suffering (and jogging = suffering, at least at first), music isn't enough to distract me. Music I know bores me because I know it too well; music I don't know isn't interesting enough to grab my attention. PODFICS, however, are genius! They are distracting and fun, and their only drawback for me right now is that my earphones suck and I can't hear very well when cars drive by me. But I've already done two workouts, and tacked on 30-40 minutes of walking to each of them just so I could hear more of the fics I was listening to.

My playlist so far has included:

That Guy by wearemany, read by zabira - American Idol RPF, Kris/Adam, 32 minutes. I love this fic, it's really cute, and it was a good reading -- it wasn't boring despite the fact that I've read it before.

Shell Shock by aphelant, read by her. NCIS/Iron Man crossover, gen and really fun and funny, 13 minutes. I am in love with aphelant as a podfic reader – she was the one who read astolat's Time Of Your Life, which is two and a half hours of epic Cookleta (RPF) That I cannot rec enough, and I've probably listened to the whole thing about four times now. So now I've just downloaded a bunch of stuff she's read and plan on slowly go through them all.

Things I Learned My Freshman Year of College by Ashley, read by celtic_cookie. It's a Jared/Jensen (RPF) college AU fic; kind of epic (nearly 7 hours all in all). I'd never read a J2 fic before, but I was linked to this, and I really, really love the reader. There's a little background noise sometimes, and enunciations aren't always perfectly clear, but she makes up for it her vocal acting, which is so great – it's like I can hear both her and the actors' voices saying the lines at the same time, she has their accents and intonations down, and the fic itself is long and funny and romantic and very college :-) I'm on part 15 or so out of about 30, each one 10 minutes long; I've been listening to this fic at random intervals and public transportation and such for a few weeks now.

And Be One Traveler by amireal and trinityofone (individual chapters can be downloaded here), read by a whole bunch of people. It's SGA/SGA RPF, meaning John/David Hewlett, John/Rodney/David, and John/Rodney. Apparently it's a really famous fic that I'd somehow never heard of? But anyway, it's really long, and the first chapter was 40 minutes long and awesome. Actor-meets-characters-from-their-show is one of my favorite tropes; my very first Buffy fic back in 1998 was actually about the characters switching places with the actors who played them (it remained a WIP forever. Surprising, I know.) Anyway, the fic itself is so far great, and made me smile and laugh out loud a couple of times, and the reading is really cool – it's a collaborative work, so every character is read by a different reader, which was startling at first but I grew to really like it.

The Shoebox Project by ladyjaida and dorkorific (which you already knew) – Harry Potter, MWPP (Remus/Sirius). I've listened to the first chapter so far, which was about 40 minutes, I think. I haven't read the fic since the first time I read it in 2006, I think, so it was almost new to me, and omg so amazing, even chapter 1. Chapter 1 is basically Sirius and Remus correspondence. I don't know if the readers' accents are genuine or not, but the girl who reads Remus has this Scottish kind of accent that is so freaking adorable I want to hug it. And Remus.

That's all I've listened to so far. thingswithwings has recently posted an amazing collection of podfic recs, five separate posts that are all worth checking out; I've downloaded a bunch of stuff that's sitting on my hard drive. My one cardinal rule is that I'm not allowing myself to listen to any of these stories outside of workouts, so if I want to know what happens next in And Be One Traveler, or the next chapter of Shoebox, or the SGA/BtVS crossover that's sitting in my iPod – and I do – I'm going to have to go outside and, you know, exercise.

Do you have any favorite podfics? If you do, link me! It might take me some time to get around to hear them (workouts only!), but at some point I will. The combination of a good fic + a good reader is a blessing that should be shared far and wide :-)

(ETA: omg, water has just started dripping from the sky and onto my laptop. Time to post, pack up and leave. Rain! \o/)

I've only been making numbered posts lately! I will now curb the instinct, watch me:

News:

Everyone's posting about Polanski so I feel like I should mention it too. Um... I agree with most of my flist and Kate Harding and all. I'm also trying to reconcile what he did with the fact that I still love his movies that I've seen, which is difficult. Not the main issue in any sense, but still part of what's on my mind.

More importantly, our government has: a) decided that the defense budget needs a little boost, at the expense of education, welfare, etc. They have decided this four months (IIRC) after already settling on the 2010 budget, so now they're just... changing it. Priorities: you're doing it wrong.

b) Decided to release 20 female Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a one-minute video of Gilad Shalit shot within the past two months, to prove his good health. One can't actually call this progress -- not for Israel, anyway, I think it's pretty clear that negotiation-wise, Israel loses points for releasing 20 prisoners in exchange for a one minute video -- and the whole subject is, as usual, upsetting to think about. Thinking about the tape in particular freaks me out, as I can't help but imagine how he might look, how much he weighs, whether or not he'll be shaven, what his voice will sound like, what language he'll speak. My mental image of Gilad Shalit is of the two photos that have been circulating the media, papers, posters, t-shirts, stickers, and dozens of other awareness-raising products over the past three+ years, and you know, ideally I would like that image shattered only if I knew this story has a happy ending with Gilad returning home. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. In the meantime I hope the video and images won't be leaked to the public, as it will probably do more harm than good, negotiation-wise.

God, the situation sucks. So bad.

Meanwhile, in happyland: TV shows:

House 6x02! The best thing about this episode was me discovering that I still love this show. The second best thing was that -- WAIT FOR IT --

ROBERT CHASE _____* HIS HAIR! FINA-FUCKING-LY, guys, omg. I am so happy.

*I wouldn't dare to inappropriately spoil anyone by mentioning that THREE-LETTER-VERB, okay? But. YAY.

... I was going to post a whole reaction thing when I watched the ep, but it's too late now, so:

NCIS: :D :D :D Character interaction continuity omg, I love this show. Every Ziva scene was fantastic and satisfying, and there was even Chad Gadya continuity. (If Chad Gadya ends up being this season's running joke or something, I will die.)

Other:

I watched My Sister's Keeper tonight. It has its faults, and it also totally made me cry. It also has the most romantic vomiting scene I've ever seen in a movie. My sister, who'd read the book, was disappointed by a certain plot twist; I hadn't and so was not, although once she told me what the book plot was, I agreed that I too would have been pissed off at the filmmakers.

Over the past three days, I've been teaching myself how to play piano via YouTube tutorials! It is brilliant, you guys, so much easier for newbies than to struggle with reading notes like I used to. I used to give up after 3 bars; now I'm pretty good with simple arrangements of Let It Be, Don't Stop Believing, and Hey Jude. (To anyone who senses a theme here... you are correct.) I'm also working on the The Office intro, which is not as complicated as it sounds! Hurray.

Lastly: for anyone who enjoys writing meta, I must link to this amazing list of fannish writing resources collected by goseaward for idolmeta. A few links are RPF/Idol-specific, but most are general awesome resources, metafandom essays, "how to write porn" links, et cetera et cetera et cetera. It is really pretty darn cool.

Breaking news: sabra_n does not, in fact look like this: ! Shocking, I know, almost as shocking as it was to discover last year that bironic didn't actually look like Wilson staring pensively out a window. In any case, Friday night the Birthright group arrived in Jerusalem, and I -- in a quite fitting honor of Jerusalem Day -- drove down to meet her. And yay we talked! In the hotel bar at first, where I showed zero local savviness and ordered the wrong kind of coffee and then drank the disgusting thing anyway. And then they turned out the lights on us at midnight and kicked us to the lobby, where we talked until the janitors kicked us out of the lobby as well, so we went to a slightly creepy abandoned dining room thing, and then it was suddenly 4AM and time to go.

Then last night I met her again, this time with sabrina_il -- we managed to navigate ourselves to Ben Yehuda street (or: Americatown) in Jerusalem, and hung out some more. Surprisingly, the possibly Korean Christian choir I saw singing in the street last year were still there -- I'm starting to think they just bought the street corner to spread their merry gospel, and if so, they are adorable and I approve.

I'll take this opportunity to once again pimp Birthright -- if you are of Jewish descent and 18-26 and want an almost free opportunity to visit meeeeeeeee (and, like, the rest of the country, whatever) -- sign up! And tell your friends to, too. I am always up for lunch with tourists.

And now, links:

Just because I wrote and posted it before a bunch of people watched the movie, I'm re-linking now -- The Law of Unintended Consequences, House/Star Trek, post-movie gen crack. This is what happens when you cast Jennifer Morrison in places where I don't expect her.

Some more Hebrew slang that sabrina_il posted, for all interested. Every single quote attributed to me is false, and I say this with love; the examples, however, are quite informative.

Tieleen's HIMYM NCIS AU, written for my prompt, with a side of -- eee -- butterflies. Barney as Senior Field Officer! Ted with a studded collar! Crack = ♥.

Laws of Motion by miarr (Star Trek, Kirk/Spock/Uhura PWP). I was given the privilege of betaing this fic, which is funny, in character, and ridiculously scorching hot -- and has a truly delightful, smug Kirk POV, which includes the lines:

Add another tally to the scoreboard:

      Womankind: 0
      Kirk: → ∞

So far, everything was going according to plan.

(Don't worry, not everything will go according to Kirk's plan.)

Hi! I seem to be starting a lot of posts with "hi!" lately, but I guess I am just very very banal that way.

Okay, I haven't even had a chance to read half the Purim fics, but for now, I just have to post a few recs. Authors have just been revealed -- here is the master list, with 150 ficlets in 54 different fandoms, which is, you will agree, a very generous dose of awesome. Or you can browse by fandom in the community tags.

First, the stories that were written for me! In 3 different fandoms! I got:

Anger Management (Sports Night, Dana and Jeremy), Mitchell L. Gainsborough (The West Wing, Josh and CJ YAY), and Bedtime Stories (Brothers & Sisters, Norah and wee!Kitty and Sarah, so cute!). Thank you, urban_stoop!

Then, the stories I wrote for daegaer:

By the Terebinths of Mamre, part 1 and part 2 (Bible/Good Omens, PG). Aziraphale has many missions in Genesis; this is one of them.

and

Absalom, Absalom (Bible/Good Omens, PG-13). Death comes to Absalom. “Well,” Absalom observed, “this is humiliating.”

But I am not actually reccing myself, just... pointing myself out :-)

And here are my recs, or at least the first batch:

( 12 recs under the cut from miscellaneous fandoms )

End batch #1. I will definitely continue reading the fics; I hope I get around to making another batch of recs. In the meantime, enjoy :-)

I haven't really been following this season, but oh, Desperate Housewives, I love you just for this:



There are no anonymous actors on this show, seriously, it's just one case of intertextuality after another. Just from this random episode:

Lois from Lois & Clark: "Don't you just want to run your fingers through his hair?"
Brian from QAF: "Fortunately for you, I don't." (Sure, Brian. The dude had bleached blond hair and a gorgeous face, like, oh, no one we know.)

Two other guest stars included Jack from Studio 60 and Ruth Fisher from Six Feet Under.

And oh, hey, I forgot to mention in my earlier but already crammed with too many links post: courtesy of nikomaria, NCIS - the little show that became cool to watch. With links inside to LA Times, NY Times and USA Today articles, all supporting the ♥♥♥ that is this show. It's rare to find a show this fun in its 6th season.

TUESDAY TV MAKES ME CAPSLOCK.

( NCIS 6x02 & House 5x03 squee and not much content under cut )

I was gonna wait some more until I really felt fall was here, but I am impatient, and damn it, it's coming - you can feel it in the air, even if it's not quite here yet. At least not in the 30mile radius of where I live; it's different in Jerusalem, in the mountains, up north.

The song goes: the summer has passed, the great heat; a new year arrives for all; the winds blow, and the birds migrate; the cold days are nearing. One of the songs. (Not my favorite; I'm saving that quote, perhaps, for a daysofawesome fic, if all goes well and I can finally figure out how to write Ziva.)

So never mind today's suffocating humid heat and weirdly ugly sky, fall is coming. To wit: we have pomegranates! However, the fruits on our tree don't seem to work like they're supposed to - apparently they jump straight from unripe straight to rotten-and-or-bird-eaten. So they're green, and then suddenly they're red but exploded:

------->

So we end up eating store-bought anyway. Sigh.

What else is up, you ask? Or maybe didn't ask? I met two army friends for lunch today, which was fun - we were really close friends in the army and they're practically the only two girls I kept in touch with, but I hadn't seen them in a year. We reached the conclusion that every single thing we did in the army was, as they say, for naught. Which sucks. All those 4AM nights, for nothing, all erased from the army's collective memory, the people who came after us changed everything around. It's how it goes, but... it's a little depressing. But lunch was fun.

Also, remember the NCIS/SGA crossover I recced a few weeks ago? It's finally complete, and just as good as it was when I started. I love Ziva and I love Sheppard and I love their respective teams, and there's action and humor and a little Tony/Ziva and delightful hints of McShep - it's just the kind of crossover I love.

Okay, so ( two more random photos )

And that is all. GIP! Fall! I am waiting for the holidays.