(no subject)

So I got into some nostalgic reminiscin' on someone else's journal last night, and did some math.

In one week, I will have been on LJ for six years.

In two weeks, I'll have been in fandom for fourteen years. Just a little under half my life.

THIS IS SO STRANGE TO ME.

I got into fandom on the usenet, alt.tv.x-files.creative than you very much, and they literally taught me how to write. I got four whole comments on my first story, and they were pretty positive despite the fact that I often had three separate people speaking in one paragraph and hadn't yet learned that if I didn't hard-return after seventy characters the lines would cut off into gibberish at random places.

I've...improved a bit since then. To be fair, so has the internet.

Being here, I've seen things I never dreamt I'd see. Loved people I never would have known if I'd just stayed where I was. And I wouldn't change that for the world.

Fandom's been good to me. It's not time-travel or anything, but it's next best.

(no subject)

I am cooking today, and PeaPod is impending (and the people who came to look at the flat across the hall were heard to remark "Well, it smells like good cooking in here!" thank you, prospective new neighbours!) so I thought today would be a good day for a bit of food-obsessed Ogden Nash.

The Clean Plater
by Ogden Nash

Some singers sing of ladies' eyes,
And some of ladies' lips,
Refined ones praise their ladylike ways,
And coarse ones hymn their hips.
The Oxford Book of English Verse
Is lush with lyrics tender;
A poet, I guess, is more or less
Preoccupied with gender.
Yet I, though custom call me crude,
Prefer to sing in praise of food.
Food,
Yes, food,
Just any old kind of food.

( Pheasant is pleasant, of course... )

(no subject)

IT IS A NIGHT....FOR SNEAKING!

It's snowing out and I was cozily tucked up in bed, watching movies, but I got a sudden yen to creep about. Fortunately the flat across from me is empty and even more fortunately, unlocked. I've been wanting to poke around in it for some time, to see if I can reconstruct how our two flats must once have been a single one.

I know now that my flat is Vastly Superior. The living room's the same size, but I have a nicer view; their kitchen is bigger and has a dishwasher (the holy grail of my flat-dwelling life) but the bedroom is off the kitchen, which is odd, and the bathroom isn't ensuite. Plus the bedroom is TINY and again, has a much less pleasant view.

I'm still a trifle puzzled by how the flat must have been laid out. Mine is an L-shape with two front doors, while the other flat is a shotgun layout -- a long hallway leads to a living room, which leads to the kitchen and the rear porch. I think my living room and bedroom must once have been one room, probably the living room, but I can't quite figure out then what my kitchen would have been. Or what essentially any room in the other flat was. If the rear room was the kitchen originally, then their living room might have been the dining room, but that doesn't leave much left over for bedrooms -- and I'm sure it wasn't arranged so that you walk directly into the bedroom when you walk into the flat.

I might have to draw a map. :D Or I suppose there are records offices that would hold the blueprints for these things...