First off, wishing a happy birthday to linnakat!! Hope your day has been fabulous!

The great Turkey Day visitation is now officially over and chickwriter sighs in both relief and regret.

We all had a fabulous time: at the Air & Space museum, turkey day dinner at Clyde’s, Friday lunch with my boss and N; another fabulous dinner at the hotel restaurant; Saturday zoo visit and lunch at Bastille. (And thanks to beledibabe‘s darling hubby, A, I *found* the damned zoo!) – darn google maps.

Such a blast to share bits of my life in D.C.

By Saturday at 5:00 p.m., I was pooped. birki_lib and BIL had a 5:00 p.m. flight out, so we dropped them off at the airport around 2:30ish. Mom & stepdad and I hung out at my place for a bit, then they really wanted to just veg at the hotel. Their flight left at the asscrack of dawn on Sunday, so the rest of Saturday evening was me trying to wind down.

Sunday, was utterly veg day. Reading a bit, watching Jericho and catching up on Veronica Mars.

Today was all-day client meeting day.

Sooooo glad they all came to visit, but really glad things are back to normal.

Tomorrow, I’m back at the Doc to see test results, followed by our monthly MWA dinner.

Maybe one day, I’ll catch up on LJ.

Many of you have said it, but I have to agree – there is a special meaning to fandom, to my fannish friends and to those brilliant people that I’ve connected with on an even deeper level.

Thanks for all of you, for understanding, for being there, for knowing what it’s like to have a fangrrl squee moment (or a thousand such moments!). Being back in touch with the joy of fandom means more than I can say.

I am also so very thankful for the amazing opportunity this year to rebirth my fledgling fiction writing career. All was dark and despairing at the beginning of 2006, then Boom! Here I am again, with a re-release of a book I never gave up on, a publisher that believes in me and my work nearly as much as beledibabe and starrkat do, and a brand new chance.

A great many thanks to the PTB for the joy of having my parents, my sister and BIL here with me. I get to show off my space, my turf plus have some fabulous bonding time.

Special hugs to my not-blood family: beledibabe, starrkat, cousin allaboutm_e (and the clan) – without you all, there would be no chickwriter, as fandom and I would have stayed broken up and writer-me may not have succeeded. Love you all beyond the telling of it.

Today will be breakfast at the Royal, a fantastic home-cooking style diner in Old Town Alexandria, followed by a trip to the National Air & Space Museum, then turkey at Clyde’s.

Tomorrow, a trip to my office so I can show off the geek; lunch with my boss at Bohio’s Cuban Grill and perhaps the National Zoo, should the weather cooperate.

Saturday, who knows?

It doesn’t get any better than this.

First and foremost, a very happy happy birthday to aukestrel! You are extremely cool and I’m so glad I’ve gotten to “know” you.

Secondly, if you’re shopping on Saturday, please take part in America Unchained – shop in your local stores!

Lastly, I am jealous liek woah of all you people that are in LA tonight, getting to attend the special A Dog’s Breakfast screening and getting to meet David Hewlett.

I’m off to visit starrcat tomorrow, so will be checking LJ sporadically, but there had better be some great LJ reports!

I’m keeping a low profile this weekend, mainly because in 10 days, my parents, my sister and brother-in-law arrive for turkey day and their first visit to me since I moved to the DC area.

Since I live in efficiency-land, they’re all staying in a nearby hotel and plans are to do the touristy thing while they’re here.

Next weekend, I’m off to NJ to visit with starrcat and whomever else shows up. Just needing to get away for a couple of days before the ‘rents descend. I’m taking my spankin’ new Sony Reader with me. Spent all day Saturday setting it up and copying files. I now have 475 “books” – which means, the pre-loaded books and excerpts and a bunch of lovely fiction. It was a little tough to get set up, the Connect Reader software only works on PC, so I brought home my work laptop and got it set up there. My fic files are on a flash drive, so that was fairly easy. Only real caveat is that the Connect Reader ties up a LOT of resources on the machine and froze up several times before I got the hang of how to transfer files.

I really like the format – it’s the size of a paperback book and the text can be made small, medium and large. There are some minor usage details that I’d have changed, but nothing that made me want to throw the thing against a wall. At some point, I’ll check out the e-bookstore, but not until I’m ready to spend more $$.

Other fun things:
Just got added as a Library Thing author – be sure to stop by and comment (you can do that on my profile page). My page looks so lonely. ::g::

Yay to the CKR Bravo interview – what a lovely lovely man. Thanks to those of you that made it possible for me to watch it…over and over again…yes, I am an obsessed fangrrl, why do you ask?

Just finished reading Lois McMaster Bujold’s A Civil Campaign. Really happy that I finally dove into this series. Also just ordered a bunch of books from my cousins at Mysterious Galaxy (my favorite indy bookstore).

The day’s been all rainy and gray here, which is fine by me, since I’ve been cocooning – reading and resting. At some point, it’s naptime, even though I have yet to watch Friday’s BSG ep. Will do so sometime tonight.

Cheers to all.

First, belated birthday wishes to kelliem! Hope it was fab!

At chickwriter‘s tiny apartment, there was a flurry of activity as the writing procrastination gene took over and yours truly decided that it was finally time to organize the gazillion DVDs.

I’d bought DVDpedia, an easy and cheap Mac application that will take input of the barcode number, the title, or even a person’s name (e.g., actor, director, etc.) and search for said DVD in its vast database. Made it tres simple, because all I had to do was type in the barcode number and voila, all the data was there.

First however, was finding all the disks. In the six and a half years I’ve lived here, I have single DVDs and box sets stacked everywhere. Took about an hour to pull everything out, then I spent some time sorting the boxes by alphabet (all the As, Bs, Cs, etc.) into various piles on my floor.

I was able to search/find all but two DVDs into DVDpedia – and those are two indy products not available through standard distro (Amber Benson’s Chance and James Leary’s Stunt Cocks – a fabulous parody of the porn industry. James Leary played Clem, the floppy eared demon on Buffy, FYI) DVDpedia does allow manual input, so I could enter the data myself.

According to the total on DVDpedia, I have 276 DVDs – and that counts box sets as 1. I have about 75-80 box sets – TV series. I’m not counting the extra copy of Interview with the Vampire (anyone want it?). I was pleased to discover that I only had the one duplicate. Yay, me.

The single title DVDs (movies and such) are now shelved in alpha order on the Target shelves I bought (stackable black metal mesh shelves that are sturdy and nicely priced.

I have about 70 DVD sets that have no home, as the 2 small media shelves are just that, too small. Looks like I’ll be making a Target run sometime during the week. I think 5 more shelves ought to do it.

Glad to have LJ back and all of you!

(And by the way, many thanks to the LJ staffers that worked through the night to get it back. Power problems and servers: never a good mix – and IT staffers usually pay the price.)