the better part of me

Hello :)

This is my blog, where I post updates on my various projects of all kinds and generally ramble. As far as I know, I'm the only Dejana in fandom. If you've run into a Dejana anywhere online since 1996, that was probably me. (Please do say hi if you know me from some old website of yore!)

If you're trying to get a fast message to me that's not directly related to any of my recent entries, you can comment on this post. Anonymous commenting is enabled. Likewise, if you're friending me and want to tell me who you are so I can friend you back, this is the post to shout from. Please don't be offended if I don't friend you back right away. I just like to get to know people a bit first. Almost all of my entries are public anyway.

If you're looking for stuff specifically related to dotmoon.net, check dotmoon. I post all .moon announcements there.

ETA 1/2/09: I made a friends cut and removed a lot of idle journals. If you're coming back from a long absence and find I've defriended you, I'd be happy to add you back, just let me know. :)

ETA 5/10/10: I'm not as active in online fandom as I used to be. I'm still here now and then, add me if you like, but there won't be many posts. If you know me (and I mean really know me), you can ask me for my Facebook info.

Short report this time, because I spent most of the weekend running a room party and didn't set foot outside my hotel room for 8 hours straight both nights. I'm glad I did it, I've wanted to host a Sailor Moon party for ages, but if I'm going to do it again I need more help and shorter hours. @_@

( On to the madness! )

The con, however, went well on the whole. And I think... I've decided to be back on staff officially next year. The year off did some good, and a lot of the stuff that had been bothering me personally doesn't matter as much anymore. I like being part of Detour. If I can balance everything I want to do, I'm gonna do it. ^_^

My fic for yuletide. I considered adding the original ending I didn't have time to write before the deadline, but in the end I got lazy. :P My recipient was happy with this version; that's good enough for me. :)

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Title: A Tale of Two Suitors
Fandom: Futurama
Characters: Fry, Leela, Zapp
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance/Comedy
Setting: Post-canon, a few months after Into the Wild Green Yonder

Summary: Fry decides to propose to Leela, but when his best-laid plans go astray and Zapp Brannigan stumbles back into their lives, he'll be lucky enough to get another moment alone with her. Written for lozlan in the yuletide exchange.

( Strange news, everyone! )

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A general FYI to whoever, I've finished my training period in my new job and am working my 2 PM - 2 AM shift now. It's going well so far, I really like it. I still have a lot to learn - there's a lot more than I expected that's completely new to me - but in the long run I think it'll be a good fit for me. :) Anyway, the point is, I'm now working the same hours all the time, so if you're ever trying to get ahold of me you can be reasonably sure I'll be awake the same hours every day - noon to 3 AM. Please no texts before noon. T_T Unless it's an emergency, of course.

Also!



NaNoWriMo's only a few days away! I'm looking forward to it, but I've been having a terrible time trying to outline my plot. We'll see what happens. It looks like I'll be doing a lot more of the traditional "start typing and see where it takes you" thing, which may prove to be interesting.

On an even more fun note, in 12 hours shel_b_129 will be boarding a plane to my state! :D I am practically bursting with excitement. We have a whole week of fun stuff ahead of us, including a few write-ins. Yay for Wrimo friends! :D

So, I've been absent for a month again, because with training and all I've been pretty busy, but things have been going well. How is everyone? :)

It's my birthday today. I failed at my goal of completing an original piece of fiction this year, but I came back from the Discworld convention (I will finish that con report, I swear it) more determined than ever to become a writer, so I aten't dead yet. If all goes well, I'll have several finished irons out of the fire by the end of my next solar tour. :)

In the interest of NOT falling into that hole where I end up not writing my con report for weeks after the event, I'm starting it now.

This trip got off to a rocky start when my plane was delayed at the gate for nearly two hours due to a faulty door sensor. On the plus side, I was able to get through about half of So You Want to Be a Wizard, which I'm rereading because Diane Duane is here at the con. I loved it and its sequel, which was all there was of the series at the time, as a kid but I haven't read them in ages. It's amusing the things that stick with you, though - every now and then the snippet about the growing grass interrupting its song to boo and hiss at an approaching lawnmower pops into my mind, but I had forgotten where it was from.

My last unread Pratchett is Nation, which I saved for this week so I'd have an excuse to carry it around the airport when I got here, haha. Success - it led to a conversation with a guy waiting for the hotel shuttle. My first friendly chat of any reasonable length with a random fellow congoer, believe it or not. I fail so hard.

My first roommate, Tiffany, was waiting for me when I got to the hotel. The other two won't be here until tomorrow. She's from Florida, is about my age, and reminds me a bit of nephthysmoon. We got checked in, picked up our registration stuff, and then headed out to find a CVS and dinner. It's hot here, but it's a dry heat, and I was prepared for it, so it hasn't been too rough thus far. Hoping not to spend extended amounts of time outside the air conditioning, though. I've never been to the southwest before. For some reason I wasn't expecting palm trees, but there are a lot of tall graceful ones here. Seen cacti, and barren hills, and desert sand, which were all new to me.

After dinner we went to the meet & greet mixer thing. I have to admit, now that I'm here it's evident the organizers of this con are a lot more solid than I feared they were. Information was really late getting on to the website, but everything here seems to be well planned out and full of generous goodies. There's a consuite, and on top of that they served hors d'oeurves at the mixer. Our registration bags contained water bottles, pens, and pins, all printed with the convention information. Nice stuff. The mixer really got things rolling with a trivia contest, where each table of random new acquaintances was a team. The trivia was really difficult, and not at all Discworld related aside from the Name That Cover round, but it worked out for the best as everyone knew different bits of each category. My team tied for second place. :D The prize for the first place team was a bag of books to divide amongst themselves. They're really going all-out here. For the record, I hear there are around 800 attendees, and registration was about $90 if I recall correctly. The con runs through Monday afternoon.

A major difference between this convention and anime conventions has already made itself evident. Totally obvious, of course, but the implications of it didn't really hit me until tonight. Everyone here has read and loved the same series. Imagine going to an anime convention where all the attendees have watched your favorite show and love it as much as you do. It's awesome, but weird at the same time, being surrounded by people who know just as much as you about a series and think it's just as great. An entire convention of them, from all corners of the world, all ages and walks of life. I'm trying not to freak out my roommate by being too crazed with excitement, haha, but I'm totally pumped. I think this may be an event to rival Fiddler's Green.

I'm back again for Chad Darnell's 12 of 12. This month the 12th fell on a work day again, so the pics are pretty blah. Last set working my current job, though.

( see 'em )

Next month I will most likely be at the Renaissance Festival on the 12th, so the pictures should be more than awesome enough to make up for this boring batch. :D

You may have noticed I'm barely around lately. It's a combination of factors. I became really disenchanted with the world at large recently, but I've mostly gotten over that by deciding to be over it. So now it's more that LJ doesn't grab my interest like it used to. These days I'm more interested in doing things than being social, so I end up not visiting here for days at a time and feeling like I'm always behind and out of the loop. I can't remember what I used to post here, aside from con reports and fics, or think of what I should post. It's been mostly Twitter for me, since I can fire off a one-liner there and move on instead of spending half an hour trying to come up with enough material for an LJ post. I'll probably get interested in LJ again at some point, but in the meantime it's going to be few and far between from me. :\

In fact, I can't even remember what else I was going to say in this post. Oh, I got a new computer and a bunch of new software toys to play with, but since it runs Vista, I have a lot of headaches to solve before you'll see any product. I sprained my knee last weekend falling down the stairs at my friend's place, and it's still costing me a lot of sleep. I have a meeting tomorrow to figure out the schedule for transitioning to my new job, but I'll be in my current job through the end of August, and probably on regular day hours for training for a couple of months after that. I'm hoping to still fit in the Discworld convention (and a meetup with alexielnet!) but that hinges on what New Boss says tomorrow. I'm very tired, and old anchors are weighing me down. But I've been writing again, and I have a bunch of new project ideas I can't wait to sink my teeth into.

These are very late, but I took the pictures, I'm posting them. :P I don't have the original files on me to get the timestamps, but if I don't go ahead with this post now, I'll probably never do it. So here goes. I'll edit the times in later.

( 12 of 12: May )

( 12 of 12: June )

( 12 of 12: July )

My knee is still iffy. I did end up seeing a doctor before work on Monday, but since there wasn't any swelling and it moved OK in all the normal ways, he pronounced it a sprain that should be fine in a couple of weeks. It's been a week now, though, and I'm not sure if it's really that much better. Sleeping is still a struggle and mobility comes and goes. If it's not significantly better by Wednesday, I may have to go back in for an MRI. :\

I forgot all about sm_fanswap finishing. I can finally post this.

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Title: Silent All These Years
Fandom: Sailormoon
Characters: Haruka, Usagi
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst/TAFF
Setting: Crystal Tokyo

Summary: Centuries pass slowly for the nearly immortal, and the years eventually take their toll. On a rare visit to Earth, Sailor Uranus finds the cracks beneath the surface growing harder to ignore. Written for generalie in the sm_fanswap exchange.

( one day in a thousand )

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