Patron Saint of Falling Over Things

Yeah, it's 42 degrees (107.6 for you Northerners) and there's a grass fire up the road. Life is rocking on in rural Australia.

I'm propping lilacsigil up with ice packs and icy poles. She's a hot little hamster right now. The air-conditioner isn't really cutting the mustard, though it's cooler in here than out there.

Hey, Aussies, what do you call one of these?


I grew up in Melbourne, and we always called them "frozens", as in "I'd really like a frozen." But the other day, when I said "Oh, we should get some frozens and put them in the freezer for the hot days" lilacsigil was very confused. Apparently in Gippsland, you call them by their proprietary name: Sunny Boy. I find these differences to be fascinating. Or maybe my brain has curdled in the heat. Tell me of your snow, people of the north. Tell me of the icicles and the frozen ponds and the need for woolly mittens.


In other news, Yuletide reveals are up!

I wrote The Infernal Celibacy Rededication (Or how Roxy decided she didn't need her groove back after all). (Check out my Roxy icon! The sum total of my creative effort in this heat!) I had so much fun reviewing canon for this fic - I even dug out the original comics to remind myself of certain aspects of Middleman history.

I also betaed lilacsigil's Famous Five fic, Anne and George of the Thirds. (Go read it, it's a glorious thing where Anne gets to be the competent one for a change.) lilacsigil did not have so much fun reviewing canon. We had a lot of conversations like this:

lilacsigil: Julian is such a prig!
Me (mishearing): Yes, Julian is an utter prick.
lilacsigil: That too.

If you have always thought Julian was a prick, go and read Anne and George of the Thirds. Julian isn't in it at all, and there are (not very) secret lesbians on the side.


Now, to get to work on fandom_stocking! *rubs hands together but not enough to make a spark*

ETA: Fire is out! That's really good news.

It's nearly midnight on New Year's Eve down here, and we're having our traditional 'sit on the sofa and watch the fireworks on the television' celebration. Good times! The Lord Mayor of Melbourne admonished rabble-rousers, telling them to "Bogan it up at home." I think they've come here to bogan it up - I can hear feral hooting and squealing tires drifting up the hill. Bogans! Boganing it up in my town!

Our Christmas present to ourselves was an LCD television that is bigger than... I fail to find a metaphor. It frightens me. It squats on an improbably small pedestal, humming like the monolith in 2001. But we can run a cable from a laptop, and watch all our torrented TV in widescreen glory. But still, it troubles me. It lurks.

WIPs! I have them! I will finish them! I swear! My WIPs:

The one that was last year's NaNo
birds_almanac needs another two chapters to wrap it up before I edit it. newredshoes and I have a vague kind of editing plan for each of our novels for 2009, so I really have to finish Almanac. It doesn't need much. I just need to do it.

The one with the NaNo characters that I can't let go
I have 1500 words, and it has picked up a title - "Tobacco, Plums and Vice". Edgar was a voice of reason in my NaNo novel, and in this story, he's callow youth, and I love him to bits.

The one where Sirius is the next companion for Ten
A sequel to You Can Never Go Home Again, a gaslight werewolf drama, with Edwardian Torchwood people. I have some scraps of dialogue down, and a skeleton plot. I need to rewatch some sections of S2 Torchwood before I can properly commit to this one.

There's only seven minutes of 2008 left! Happy New Year, everyone!

OMG, who's letting off fireworks already? I'll bet it's that arsonist kid down the street. *scowls* (OMG, 2009 is the year of the crotchety old cat lady? Who would have guessed?)

In local news, there was some kind of riot on the civic green at Warrnambool. It's the nearest big town to where I live, about 40 minutes drive.
Read all about it
Salient details: 40 men, women and youths were "running around and swearing" at 3.30am, and took around half an hour to settle down. At Lake Pertobe, a group of youths in their early 20s were spoken to for setting cardboard beer boxes alight at the picnic tables. A man was seen standing on the bonnet of a car opposite the mini golf area.
And eskies full of alcohol were also reported missing at a Warrnambool caravan park. Wild times.

A while back, I thought I saw a thylacine but concluded that it was probably a tiger quoll. Now it seems that I'm not the only one who saw something mysterious and stripey in that area. Or maybe we're both just crazy.