(no subject)

... and after all that worrying and not finding any shipping confirmation in my e-mail and buying up a load of 14 imps on Ebay for a little less than what it would cost me to get a whole new set from BPAL itself?

... My imps for my mother and sister came today. Bzuh.

Now I have a metric shitload (a metric shitload is two cheeks full, for those of you who haven't heard that one) of BPAL Imps and, god. I think I have time to try most of them out. Like a sneaky person, before I give them to my sister. I feel so much like I'd be giving her a used gift, then. But it's an imp! You know how little you use when trying/sniffing an imp. Besides, I'll probably wind up not only giving her a bunch of the ones I did use, some of the ones I haven't used, but also a lot of my imps that I don't like enough to keep and want her to try. I swear, there's going to be a scratch 'n' sniff party or something when I get to DC. For a WEEK.

I should write in my pillow book. I haven't been. I'm a bad Heian (Heian?) dynasty courtier woman. I do, however, smell like my Mahabharata. This amuses me to no end.

Oh. And the list of imps, for those of you who were curious, is: (Ebay) Crossroads, Danse Macabre, Dragon's Claw, Dragon's Musk (already tried and TOO MUCH MUSK, going in the give away pile), Eos, Sword of War, Incantation, Khephra, Langour, Masabakes, Perversion, Sri Lanka, Silk Road, Tzadikim SomethingIcan'tspell. (BPAL) Hurricane and Hades are the frimps, Moon Rose, Whip, New Orleans, Kabuki, Black Lotus, Dee. Bliss, Eve, Fallen, Namaste, The Hesperides, Antique Lace.

... Holy shit. That's a lot of imps.

Today I have discovered that I can make a pirate shirt in two undistracted hours, provided I actually sit down and bloody well make it instead of sewing a few seams and then chatting online. This actually isn't bad; it'll take me four hours to make two and that's a good amount of time from getting home from work and just sewing. This is also, though, presuming I already have the pieces cut out. A not so bad assumption, since I tend to cut out pieces of pirate shirts as I get the fabric out of which I want to make them, then just stick them in the project box permanently labeled "Pirate shirts" and sew them when I get around to it.

I have Batman Begins on in the background. Christian Bale makes me extremely happy.

Actually, today in general makes me extremely happy. I got off work pretty much when I got in which, although not the best thing for me to do? Not so bad. Taking one day off isn't going to hurt my upcoming paycheck, I'm back to only making one payment to the college loan people per month. I did spend more in the last 24 hours than I expected to, however, only one thing was outside what I've budgeted for. So even if I'm spending it earlier than I really expected, I'm not completely blowing everything. I also got paid today, and got all my vacation time approved. Which I thought had happened already, but then they scheduled us to work President's day, despite the fact that we don't work the day before or the day after! OI! But we got other people to take our shifts. So, of the yay. And half of our time in DC is going to be paid vacation! Very much of the woot.

There have been posts on gratitude and posts on friendship, as well as posts on privacy. I have... You know, actually, I'm not sure I have much to say on the subject. I've been blessed with most excellent friends, in the past (some of which are on this friends list, wavings, hello!) and in the present, and hopefully in the future. I really have no urge to keep most of what's on here private, and you all know that, I've said it enough recently. I am grateful that my life, while not handing me the nice easy acceptances I ask for every birthday and christmas, pout and sulk, does not suck. My life is actually pretty damn nice. I have enough money to take care of what I need, and yes, I do count little luxuries in the needs department because we need little luxuries for our morale. A good book here, a pretty shirt there. I have friends to keep me company and a boyfriend who has enough good sense to leave me alone when I don't, along with many other good qualities. I have several hobbies I enjoy and my work actually is turning into something much less onerous than it began as. So, really. Life, she is good. There, a tag to prove it, and so I can go back and find this entry again when I need cheering up.

ETA: AHAHAHAHA OMGSOFUNNY

[Fic] BDL #82 - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Title: A Man Who Opened A Door
Fandom: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Characters: Title
Word Count: 500
Rating: G
Summary: Entering and leaving a room. What else? :)

"Oh."

"Oh?"

The door opened.

"This isn't where we left off."

Footsteps through the door, one pair clacking and sure, one pair somewhat less so. Two pairs of eyes look around the room as though they haven't been there before, although of course they have.

"Are you sure?"

"Was there anywhere else?"

It's a room of mirrors, or so it seems, although the closer they get to the walls the more they realize that these aren't mirrors, they're walls of glass. Soft-paned glass, cold to the touch. They can see the sky outside, which unnerves them.

"Is this heaven?"

"Are you asking me to believe that heaven is a room made of glass?"

"Well…"

It didn't make sense, to be true, but they were dead.

"This would have to be one place or the other."

"Presuming one or the other exists."

Fidgeting. The door was still where they had left it, but the sky was not where they had left it, or perhaps it was just the clouds moving.

"If this is heaven, shouldn't there be wind?"

"What?"

"The clouds." Point. "They're moving."

"So?"

One stared at the other.

"Never mind."

They had spent most of their life, or what they could remember it, wrapped in confusion and locked in an enigma to which every clue left as soon as it had entered their thinking. Why should the afterlife be any different? If this even was the afterlife, and they weren't convinced that it was, each in their own way, which differed not a whit from the other except in the level of irritation.

Hand by hand along the wall until they reached a second door, the knob of which their hands touched at the same time. There was an awkward moment in which one of them might have said something intelligent and insightful, but they looked at each other instead and chose to view it as awkward, rather than as a moment.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you."

"Why?"

"Not after what happened last time."

"What happened last time?"

"Don't you remember?"

"Opening a door?"

Pause. "Which door?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't you remember?!"

"No!"

Longer pause.

"I'm going to open it."

"No you're not." Tired.

"Are you sure?"

"Of what, exactly?"

Longest pause yet, inasmuch as they weren't doing anything for which they should be pausing. There was a memory of someone playing a flute somewhere that had some sort of significance neither of them wanted to admit they couldn't remember.

They also couldn't remember why they were supposed to be afraid of what lay beyond that door.

"I'm going to open it."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Aren't you happy right here?"

"Are you?"

"I…" Pause, mouth open. "I don't know."

"It can't very well be worse."

"It doesn't have to be better."

"I'm going to open it."

One hand that did not tremble turned the doorknob. One of them took a step through. And then was falling, out of sight.

"Oh dear."

"What?"

Silence.

[Fic] Rear Windshield

Title: Rear Windshield
Fandom: Kingdom Hospital
Prompt: Rain
Characters: Stegman, Paul
Word Count: 550
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Stegman's going slightly mad.

It was raining the first time he experienced what a more professional head doctor of a different kind might have called a psychotic break. The wounds inflicted by the sound of the water drops, like crashing glass on the pavement outside. His car was slowly being demolished by fiends from the outside. The rain was just one more aggravation on top of everything else.

Stegman put his hands in his pockets and pulled out a knife, a scalpel with a dull and rusty edge. Not rust but blood, clotted with blood and hair at the end. Ridiculous. He would never have let his instruments fall into such an appalling condition.

He dropped it back into his pocket without thinking about it, though, and didn't notice when it made no drag or impact on the cloth.

The hospital was reflected in the glass of his rear windshield (which was the only intact glass left in his car) but what he failed to notice was that the ambulance in the reflection wasn't the one that should have been parked in the hospital bay. It hadn't been parked in the hospital bay in nearly seventy years.

The rain went away but the visions didn't. The elevator went down two floors too far, sliding back at the hands of a smiling, pasty faced boy with pointed teeth. Although the pasty faced boy with pointed teeth was preferable to having the hounds of hell chasing him after that rat-trap crumbling cement building they called a hospital. No rats at Boston General but the ones that served their time in the labs.

It was raining again when he huddled in the doorway and insisted he was a good person. A nice person. And didn't he try to help people? He did, he did. He did his best to make people better, take the disease out of their heads. He was a good doctor. A good person, a good man. No matter what those spiteful, jealous hags said. The hangers on, the people who wanted to tear him down just because he was from a good hospital with a good reputation. Not some back-country hick town. Not some back-country hick doctor.

"Not some back-country hick crazy."

The boy with the dark eyes smiled and tipped his cap for him, how kind. So nice to see young people with some respect these days.

He nodded back politely to the young man, having forgotten already what he had said. Bad case of water on the brain. No, knee, wasn't it? Water on the knee. Or the brain. He had forgotten that already. Liquid between the brain and the skull, pressing down. Just a temporary problem. Subdural hematoma. Easy to fix.

Stegman contemplated trepanning as a form of enlightenment before he realized the rain would leak in that way and put even more pressure on his brain. That would never do. Never do. He shook his head as he made his way past the old ambulance that had never seen the twenty first century, into the hospital. In one night, he had lost whatever chances he had had. His mind, cracked, like an egg, like a windshield on a car. Everything he had kept with him, the last things he had kept with him, gone. Washed away by the rain.