aruan | Entries tagged with big lights will inspire you

The tl;dr of my three-week radio silence after the fannish renaissance that was VividCon was a whole lot of real life stuff crashing down on my shoulders, and my response to stress is keeping as busy as possible so I can't think about anything else and just collapsing into bed at the end of the day.

So let's talk about the fun bits of the past week!

I have it on the good authority of a guest star that Tom Mison, who plays Ichabod Crane on my favorite new guilty pleasure, Sleepy Hollow, is a very funny man who finds humor even when it wasn't in the script. They had me at doughnut tax outrage.

( Speaking of new fall TV: Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Blacklist, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Big Bang Theory, Masterchef Junior )

We had a seasonal beer tasting at work on Wednesday (journalism doesn't suck ALL the time) where many good brews were had, but the surprise of the event was finding a pumpkin-flavored beer I actually like: the hoppy and not at all sweet Saranac Pumpkin Ale, a 125-year-old brand brewed in upstate New York.

It looks like I've got a lead on a pair of Bastille tickets for Monday's show at the Bowery Ballroom, at face value too, which would be an amazing birthday gift to myself. The milestone birthday was last year, but we were too busy trying to get settled in New York to do much more than eat take-away Chinese food just before midnight and pretend the fortune cookies held some particularly profound significance. This year, to say that we don't have anything to celebrate is an understatement, but damn it there won't at least be good music.

Current Mood: discontent
Current Music: Tom Odell - Can't Pretend

To consolidate my fannish presence, to the extent that one can when one has been putting it off for the better part of a decade and every username has been claimed, I've renamed all of my accounts with a variable number of Ns at the end. At heart they're all permutations of Aru, because after being praised, screamed at, begged and wheedled by that name for years by my fellow Misanthropes it has become as much my own as the one my mother gave me. That and my LJ (formerly

gjstruthseeker) was created in 2001, so the handle was not only dated but I got tired of spending a tongue-tying 10 seconds trying to say it when introducing myself to new people. All of my new contact info is in my profile, in case you want to follow me on Twitter for all the cat photos I gamely stop myself from posting here.

As a treat for wading through this memo, please to enjoy an outtake from our walk in snowy Central Park this morning:

( Romeo and Juliet as a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, courtesy of Nemo. )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: not outside, hurray for central heating

You know what's a great way to lose three months of your life? Move. Four times. Once intercontinentally, once cross-country, once from the fifth floor during a hurricane-induced blackout, into an apartment with zero furniture, and nothing of your own that didn't fit into four suitcases. It's been a bit of a rough start in New York.

As such, I've been neglecting LJ and Tumblr and everything, really, because my brain simply can't handle any more newness, which means I've been doing the mental equivalent of eating comfort food: rereading Stargate Atlantis fics. To give you some idea of my mindset, Supernatural has been my happy place. (It's less dysfunctional if you know that

khaleesian got me into it after we traded Groundhog Day episodes of that show and SG-1, so it's all wrapped up in the warm fuzzies of Monday TV date nostalgia.)

Speaking of her! I was obviously holding her back because since she's been left to her own devices in the Arabian sandbox, she's produced The Song Unsung, an astonishing feat of worldbuilding that enchants from the first scene. Her Thor is refreshingly mature and empathetic while still retaining his bravado; her Loki confounds you right up until the end. It's a mystery AU featuring so much sexual tension that it will have you tearing your own hair (if you like that sort of thing, AND I DO), dragons, sassy women, and riddles in an offworld tavern. ~~(But the best part? There is a sequel in progress and I am reading it right now!)~~ Go forth and talk funny for the next day after you finish it like I did.