► Pick up to 15 OTPs.
► Describe them in less than (or equal to) 15 words.
► Have your flist guess the OTP.
► ????
► PROFIT.

1. She never even saw his face.
2. She learned nothing from him.
3. Upsetting her brother was the least of his worries.
4. She died thousands of years ago, but she's still looking after him.
5. Someone else won the battle, but he received her kiss.
6. She only knows him in an official capacity.
7. After she lost everything, he kept what was broken.
8. One is seen; the other sees.
9. She calms the storm.
10. Beauty and the beetle.
11. He changed the world because he lost her.
12. She thwarted his mind by stealing his heart.
13. Their promise was an umbrella.
14. They weren't just made for each other; they were made with each other.
15. Their relationship was entirely professional - as long as they were at work.

Pairings come from various incarnations of Power Rangers, Digimon, and all three incarnations of Yu-Gi-Oh. Some characters may be used more than once.

Since singing along with this is difficult, I made lyrics. Try it. ^_^

( Say what? )

It's all ice outside today. I can't go to work. Forget that - I can't even get out of the house, because the only way out is up a flight of cement steps, which are now slicked over with a nice layer of ice. If I can't even get out of the house without busting my butt, I'm not going to work.

In other news, congrats to Neil Gaiman for winning the Newberry Medal for The Graveyard Book. Bravo!

During Spring Break, a friend invited me to travel with her to Miami via Greyhound bus, because she lived in Miami and the bus line was doing one of those bring-a-friend-free deals. So we went. That was fun. At one of the bus stops, I was approached by a very obviously stoned fellow who attempted to sell me a gold chain. At least, I think that was what he was doing. Actually he was just sort of proffering it at me while mumbling incoherently. I eventually managed to persuade him that I wasn't interested, so he ambled around the corner and stood facing the wall. A few seconds later, I saw a puddle spreading away beneath his feet. Shortly after that, the nice security men came and escorted him elsewhere.

Also on that same trip, I got to overhear a man lecturing his friend on why masturbation is essential to maintaining a proper Christian spirit.

I bought a hot chocolate maker. It was $18.99 before tax, not counting the money I spent on ingredients. However.

HOLY CREPES IN A CRAB SHACK, THAT'S GOOD HOT CHOCOLATE.

Nayh, nyah~ I'm playing hooky from work today! >:-}

I produced my first clutch of baby dragon eggs today. Here's the one I kept:



Baby Autumn is coming along nicely:



And Lacey's split dragons produced this egg that I adopted:

I caught a little Autumn egg! Yay. ^_^

So while I was visiting home, my dad thought it would be a good idea for me to take my car to the Wal-Mart tire-and-lube center to get the oil changed. Wal-Mart has a policy that if they find anything wrong with your car, they won't work on it until you've fixed it, so you can't come back later and say "You people worked on my car and now this is broken - it's your fault!" Fair enough. So I took my car to them and came back and they said, "Your car has a broken oil pan gasket." Okay, says my dad, that sounds like something easy to fix. We'll fix it tomorrow and bring it back. So they took it out to the shed and they opened it up and they had a look...

Turns out the model of car I drive hasn't got an oil pan gasket.

So for a long time I've been saying I'm going to finish a long, chaptered, Edo-and-Saioh centric genfic. It is now within less than a scene of being complete, so I'll probably be ready to post the first chapter or possibly Tuesday, depending on how long the editing takes. That will be a relief, I don't mind saying! Until then, here's a little teaser-snippet.

( Teaser goes here )

Also, I have new dragons. I didn't mean to click on the blue one but I did by accident, and now I have two. Be nice to them, please?

So today I made falafel. This was my first attempt at actually frying something, and I think I could have done it better. I probably should have cooked it at a higher temperature, for starters. They still came out pretty tasty, though. Not as highly spiced as the ones I get at the shish kebab place, and they don't have ranch dressing. I'm pretty sure there's something culturally inappropriate about putting ranch dressing on falafel, but it does taste good. ^_^

This is my new dragon egg. I wonder if it will hatch?

My book is supposed to come out sometime early next week. I've already seen the proofs, but it will be nice to have the complete book in my hands and see my name listed in the title page as "Managing Editor" in black and white. Good to see that all my hard work hasn't been for nothing, you know? I think I'll go out for Japanese food to celebrate.

I was looking at reviews for The Graveyard Book on Amazon, and someone was going on about the trend of making books for children darker and edgier, and saying it was a sign of our violent and turbulent times. What I want to know is, when hasn't childhood been dark and scary? Everybody always talks about how children are innocent and carefree, and forgets that when you're little, you just KNOW that Dracula is going to come get you when the lights are out, or that there is a Thing living in your closet. I know when I was small, I was convinced that if I let my feet hang off the edge of the bed, the scary man who lived underneath it would grab my heels and eat them. Those are real fears. Kids don't know much about the world and they don't entirely understand everything going on around them, and that makes the world a scary place. On the whole, it might be better to acknowledge that instead of pretending that the life of a kid is all sunshine and daisies.

"Let me tell you one more thing," said Hoyt, raising his voice. "You may tell this to your Mrs. Beeson, if you like, who likes everything to be neat and clean and normal. I am not particularly neat or clean; I am certainly not what anyone would call normal. But I am as good as anyone else."

- Jeanne DuPrau, The Prophet of Yonwood

( Book talk )

Also my dragon hatched! Isn't it cute? Thanks to all who clicked to help her (I think it might be a her?) hatch.

Please click the egg lots of times!

Just popped a pie in the fridge to cool. I hope it cooked long enough. It seemed like it still might be a little... wobbly. Now my whole apartment smells like chocolate and hazelnuts. Mm, yummy... There was enough pie filling left to make another pie, so if this one doesn't turn out so great I'll try cooking the next one a bit longer.

I just got a laugh. I was cleaning out some ancient e-mails from the bottom of my e-mail box (things I'd been saving because they were important at the time but are now no longer useful) and I hit upon several from the head of my old grad program. All of them are flagged with a warning saying that I may not know this sender and all images and links have been blocked for my protection. Hotmail is obviously very intelligent for knowing that Dr. Bankert is potentially hazardous!

So let me tell you what I found today.

A few months back, I went shopping and visited a used bookstore, where I picked up a copy of Remake by Connie Willis. You may have heard of her - she's won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards for her sci-fi fiction. Her To Say Nothing of the Dog is one of my favorite books ever. So here I have this book, but it slides to the bottom of my to-read list and I don't so much as open the cover for a long, long time.

Fast forward to today. Today I wanted something to read on my lunch break, and I remembered I still hadn't read this, so I brought it with me. When I finally opened it, I found something scribbled on the title page. This is what it said:

To Greg -
See you at workshop, where you can critique this! (Just kidding!)
- Connie Willis

Now, I ask you, how cool is that?

I've been reading Ultra Maniac today. It's like eating a bowl of sugar-frosted sugar, with a side order of sugar, and sends me into diabetic shock every time I read it. It's so darned cute I can't stand it but I read it anyway because it's also addicting. And everbody is in love with each other, even the cats and dogs. Leo/Tamako is the best pairing ever.

Exhibit A: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4223326/1/Gifts_of_the_Elements
Exhibit B: http://larkathewhitewolf.deviantart.com/art/Elemental-Gifts-part-1-84767814

I don't know who this LarkaTheWhiteWolf is, but it sure as hell isn't me. I've already reported the thing and told the reviewers and the "writer" who really wrote that story, but I'm still pretty ticked off.