the spirit of giving (sometimes till it hurts)

Challenges

Three out of four challenges this month -- the Femslash Ficathon 05 (femslash05), the Four-Color Heroines Challenge (4colorheroines), and the Comic Book Genfic Feedbackathon -- are over with, and stories for the remaining challenge (comica_obscura) are due to begin appearing Wednesday.

Because I'm not just in the midst of my winter relapse but actively insane (and a recovering workaholic), I signed up for all four, in addition to running 4CH (albeit with help from my co-moderators and others). ::facepalms::

On the bright side, happy new reading opportunities!

( cut for length )

Icons

My new naughty-rubber-duckie default icon actually isn't new; sparklebutch made it and gave it to me weeks ago, and I only just recently got round to uploading it.

I also have a new SUPREME POWER icon, courtesy of Te:

Goodies in the Mail

*Months* ago, weirdnessmagnet sent me a holiday-gifts package. It contained How to Read Superhero Comics and Why, a book by Geoff Klock which is sure to lead to many meta thoughts once I get a chance to finish reading it, and four pairs of novelty socks. (For those of you who weren't aware, I have a fairly serious novelty-socks fetish.) One of the pairs Mag sent has the design from Milton Bros.' MONOPOLY board game knitted into it, and goes perfectly with a fleece top and pants I love to lounge about in; one is decorated with glittery green frogs with googly eyes (actual googly eyes attached to the socks) surrounded by aqua lily pads and buzzing flies; one is a shade of blue that matches perfectly with blue jeans and features a peace-sign motif and glove-style toes; and one with brown, tan, olive and prussian-blue stripes and little crocheted dimensional puppies at the cuffs. What makes these socks even better is that they're considerably more unisex than a lot of novelty socks, geared as they are towards girls, tend to be. I have a pair of pink novelty socks with beavers on them that someone gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago, and while they're hilarious, I still haven't worn them -- they're PINK.

Then, just last week, I received *two* packages in the mail from fannish friends!

The first one came from basingstoke, who cans her own jam in honest-to-goodness mason jars, and sent three for me to sample: strawberry jam, tangerine marmalade (which makes a fantastic glaze for poultry), and a gingered cider jelly. Yay, home-made foods!

I also got a bundle-o-Japanese goodies from jamjar (who ironically sent me no jar of jam). She had sent me some yaoi manga collections last year, along with an assortment of profoundly strange but delicious Japanese snack foods. This time round, the package contained:
a Wolf's Rain doujinshi;
three Bohra Naono takeshobo (including Three Wolves Mountain and Fingertips' Love);
three large (60g each) bags of sesame-candied dried fish, my favourite from the assortment in the first package;
two Japanese KitKat bars, one green tea flavour and one... some sort of fruit flavour that I can't figure out from the picture;
two boxes of POCKY! one chocolate flavour (but green?) and one red-bean flavour;
a packet of "Pocari Sweat" drink mix;
a brass origami-crane charm and bell on a cord, which Jam says comes from a local shrine and is for making wishes on, but which Tara is convinced is a cat toy;
and a lovely postcard with a medieval-style painting on the front and explanations of the charm and drink mix on the back.

I love getting presents from my fellow fen. (:

And speaking of presents from my fellow fen...


Watch this space

The lovely and talented Jane St. Clair (3jane) wrote some Bruce/Dick smut for me while I was composing this post! I'll link to it as soon as it goes up...
ETA: And here it is: Seven Night