How demoralizing is it to have their smarmy smirking mugs welcome you?

I'm here! the trip was painless (outside one exceptionally moronic incident which I will spare you)! I'm awake! giantessmess is making me lunch! the weather is glorious and we're out in the country and we may just sit around all day and write like the uncool dorks that we are :P

it's a magical thing, this having one dimension of a person and then suddenly having three. I adore it. why does everyone else find it so strange? giantessmess is gorgeous and I am so happy to bring her to sydney with me and introduce her gorgeousness to everyone there.

cheese calls...

Barra on the barbie from din last night w/ sebsan8. Too dark 2 photograph the f00d well, sadly. I'm off, bye!

wow, catching up on the flist was more of a project than I expected it to be. that skip=200 was dense with fic, and I don't like to let it pile up because it rapidly becomes overwhelming. but done for now, except I've got ficathon entries by iamsab and mazily and makesmewannadie and mandysbitch and thenewhope and sundry others loaded up in tabs for the trip. there were several Safari snafus along the way, so PLEASE let me know if I didn't pipe up about something that you would have expected me to.

comments, on the other hand, are a train wreck. I swore I was going to get through at least the ones on my most recent posts, but I just ran out of TIME -- like seriously, I have to leave for the airport SOON. I'll take another stab at the backlog when I can.

I've been doing as much as I can to catch up with a select few friends in my select few days in town. but it's probably a good thing that a couple of them never materialized, as I would have been left with no eljay time whatsoever, rather than the hours upon hours that I actually needed. quasiradiant, darling, I tried to rustle you up (left you a couple phone messages) but you or your technology (or mine too? I got none back) are conspiring against me/us/nice girls everywhere. woe!

uh, I should probably make sure iamsab and/or sorlklewis know when I'm appearing in LA and have some plan for how I'll get from the airport to their house.

3 drabbles during the flights, is the goal, and 3 or 4 more by monday. I can't decide whether to write McGonagall/Jean Brodie or Mary Poppins/Jane Banks (futurefic, say) (having scrapped the idea of a Poppins/Hogwarts xover for the moment -- anyway, it's been done), so perhaps I'll try to write both and bump West Wing to the "three" challenge. anyway, rather an odd set of ambitions to overlay on an international voyage, but welcome to my life.

in conclusion, leaving (THE INTERNET) is always hectic, even when you think it shouldn't have to be. and cathexys has alerted me to the existence of http://www.zizekthemovie.com XD!!

will try to post my first field report from Melbourne soon -- I imagine I'll be able to get online now and then via the generosity of others, just not in the Manner To Which I Am Accustomed (and I just realized that I don't have a plug adapter for AU -- crisis! I'll try to buy one on the way)... giantessmess, I'll look for you and a dorky gentleman resembling you at the airport!

i. so, uh, you really couldn't hear the cacophony on my last phonepost, huh? stupid noise-cancelling directional mics! you'll just have to take my word for it. I lost the $20 I'd won, though my bro also turned 15 cents into $12. and I hit for another $6 on the penny machine. all in all, we ended up down about $6, which isn't bad for a day of gambling. um, the family pastime is sort of growing on me.

ii. my cousin's fourth grade class is doing the best project ever: they each picked a stuffed animal who they sent off to travel the world with willing volunteers. said volunteers will send postcards back to the class and make entries in a journal. in this way, they will learn geography. so I've inherited a travel buddy named Mr. Twitters, a small white bunny who is metrosexual, we determined, because he wears a pink ribbon. see photos chronicling his adventures @ http://flickr.com/photos/bunnylog

iii. sent: 105 holiday cards, not including ~8 joint ones that clyde wrote and 10 I had to scrap because I couldn't get any address at all. certain of the addresses I tried were long shots, too, so I imagine some will come back to me. recipients include: mandysbitch, heathers+lonejaguar, eighthblackbird, happyhop, n0r1_h, iamsab+sorlklewis, pene, sscheckter, surblimity, boxmint, ceciliaregent, ibrakoor, warlordkittens, zazuomgwtf (I forgot to look up your postal code! hope it finds you anyway), boydyke+vegasgrrl24, celeria, mazily, sparklebunny, cabenson, museumfreak, thatfangirl, giantessmess, sinful_ceasar, chyryan_blog, bechover_blog, and tibbers (who, as far as I can tell, is an entirely random person who happened to stumble across my request for addresses) -- should be everyone who asked.

celeria takes the prize for the best card I received. handmade! personalized! TICKY BOXES!

iv. I need a drabble idea. I've decided I should write for my seven deadly sins challenges at femslash100 -- though it's not clear WHEN this writing is going to happen. six must be completed by monday for remainder. I'm planning:

#44 ~ gluttony - Starbuck/Roslin + a cucumber
#45 ~ pride
#46 ~ wrath - Wicked, Elphaba/Dorothy
#47 ~ envy - CJ/Kate/Abbey, after the wedding
#48 ~ sloth - Weeds, Nancy/her lawyer (name?)
#49 ~ greed - Neuromancer, Molly/3jane
#51 ~ lust - Helen/Nikki

so as you see, I've got nothing for Pride. any requests? I don't know if I can actually manage Lou/Annabeth. trying to come up with something rare, but I don't know if any of it is clear enough in my mind, and I don't have time for research. I could default to The Birds, because when I was watching it I thought "wow, this is slashy," and I try to follow through on such thoughts on principle. or possibly I should attempt Mary Poppins or Jean Brodie, both of whom are prideful.

v. eighthblackbird, I'm giving NeoOffice the old college try -- I organized the toolbars so they're livable and I'm willing to overlook the ugly grey interface. but there is no word count feature whatsoever! MS Word keeps a running tally in the status bar, which is crucial to me with all the drabbling. so I think it's a no-go, and I'm doomed to worship the evil empire forever. plus, it keeps trying to get me to save things in its weird format rather than .doc, which isn't going to work if I have to communicate with the population at large.

vi. holiday ficathons! so much tasty goodness and so little time in which to savor it. I'll read all your stories, of course, and many of you are reccing as well, which I appreciate. but given my predilections what I'm most excited about is femslash_today's yuletide femslash masterlist! I'll certainly be getting to all of those... eventually.

vii. in preparation for my adventure, I went back and read the emails I wrote in august 1999, the last time I went to australia. didn't find much info about what I actually did as a tourist, but that era in my life rushed back with startling vividness -- its cacophonous emotions and palpable riot of growth. stories of four different lovers happening roughly simultaneously (five if you count the still-vibrant correspondence with my FL), and I'd forgotten they happened all at once. about the trip, I wrote:

"So Australia. Australia is mind-blowing. It is more like the US than any other country I have ever been in except for Canada. Which only makes the differences, and there are many, stand out and chafe me with how little I understand them. It is so new and weird and post-colonial--still not independent from Britain, in fact. I am focusing on the language right now--the fact that I can understand every word doesn't make it any more strange to be surrounded by a totally different way of talking, and being marked as foreign every time I open my mouth (and only then) is interesting. I'm obsessed with the accent. Morocco [where I had just completed a semester abroad] totally changed my way of being a tourist, and I would rather be doing informal fieldwork than going to museums and sterile wildlife parks and historic buildings. The family activities have been rather tame. But I am having fun with them just the same."

and I'm hovering around xmas on the flist, oy -- I'll catch up before I leave for Oz on thursday, I promise...

View from our window this morn. New years in the Poconos was lovely. Happy 2006!

So i cajoled clyde into gettin our first hanukkah bush, which we decorated soley with objects found around the house!

Did u know that b'way was an indian trail long before the dutch settled lower manhattan? The 18th C church @ the former WTC.

Purging my wallet of pennies again: 43. I h8 pennies!

Nana's cat, which she stole from the neighbors long ago. Final Russo wisdom: some ppl eat 2 live, others live 2 eat.

Ah, home sweet JC. Clyde already posted these neighbors, but here's my rendition. I think lights should stay up till spring.

our family passtime. Russo family wisdom: it's not how tall u r, it's how tall u r when u stand on yr wallet.

Casino spam! If this were mo. sun the animals would be animatronic.

Mkay, now we're @ foxw00ds, the BIG casino. my 1st time. Mohegan Sun is much classier.

This 1's 4 3dogcircus - yes, it's really tiled w/ gingerbread. @ the casino. My bro is kneeling like an elf.