clo_again

Something seems to have gone horribly wrong with Rizzo. One minute he's fine, the next I look up and he's floating on his side near the surface. He's down towards the bottom again now but still on his side and on a few darts around the tank he clearly can't stay upright or find any sort of balance. He was fine. Not overly active but I just assumed he was missing Gonzo.

I cannot cope with dead fish on top of the dissertation. Not when I've had them since first year and they're my uni fish. I really can't.

edit: Well he's upright again, though not looking anything like normal. I'm at a bit of a loss when fish go wrong. I'm much better with fluffy things. :-/

My afternoon and evening have been entirely consumed with reading this. Work, what? Why work, when I can read something this amazing?

Transfigurations by Resonant. Harry Potter, NC-17 Harry/Draco, beautifully written and heart-breaking and all the things that make me furious when people treat fanfiction as generally substandard, because canon can barely compare to the sheer brilliance of this. It didn't put a foot wrong from start to finish, in anything. Fanfic does not get better than this. Go, read. Marvel at the brilliance.

And when you're done -- or maybe before, because it's the order I read them in and it worked well, though I suspect totally differently to how they'd work read the other way round -- read the prequel: Night-blooming Heartsease by Julad, which is equally incredible, even being Neville/Snape which is a pairing I spend most of my life boggling at. It made it work and made it believable and made your heart ache for them. So read that too.

You might want to set aside a day for it though because once you start, stopping is very difficult and they're long. Christ. I missed Hotel Babylon in favour of reading this and I don't even care.

*

In something other than a fic rec, Gonzo doesn't seem to be getting any better. I'm at a loss. I don't think it's environmental because Rizzo and Kermit are fine, not to mention that Gonzo's always seemed to have more trouble swimming and with buoyancy, both floating up when he was smaller and getting stuck on the bottom lately, so I think it's more likely to be genetic or ongoing and there's nothing I can do about that. Equally I can't keep him in the small tank forever because I live in *one room* with one desk and a chunk of it is already taken up by the main tank but in the big one he has too far to go if he wants to go to the surface, plus Rizzo being his usual precocious self and rough gravel to rest on instead of smooth plastic. I don't know what to do. A tiny plus side is that his tail seems to be healing back together pretty well and he is, for brief periods, swimming around perfectly happy and upright until he goes back to slump in his corner.

I knew I should've got rats. Stick 'em in a box, take 'em to the vet. No trouble. I hate this.

For the first time in-- well, *years*, I'm almost up-to-date with Stargate SG-1. It's weird, given that I pretty much stopped watching when I came to uni and only decided on catching up a month or so back. A little disappointed that I seem to have run out of episodes when Sky One's site is telling me they're at least five episodes further on and only three from the end of the season but this is what older brothers were invented for. I need to call him about Mother's Day anyway; maybe I can beg a favour in return for catsitting for him. It's not like I should really watch any more episodes until the end of May anyway, given that I've watched two and a half seasons as an excuse not to do work. That's what, probably like forty or so hours I could've spent on dissertation. Hm.

I also have new and fuzzy love for Daniel Jackson. (This Stargate marathon has reminded me; has anyone ever said in an interview whether Jack and Daniel's characters were named after Jack Daniels? Because it's what I always thought and characters in one of my favourite shows being named after my favourtie drink would be all kinds of hilarity.) Poor little spacemonkey. He needs lots of huggage from Vala. And maybe from Mitchell too, though that's more for the pretty than the emotional support.

Really. Pretty.

Don't even ask how much I squeed when Inara Morena Baccarin showed up. It's like they're collecting awesome but out-of-work sci-fi actors. We want Nathan Fillion next please or maybe Summer Glau, I'm not fussy over who comes first.

Then again, the entire Stargate cast will be out of work as of the end of this season right? Maybe everyone should simply shift to Atlantis. OR. New sci-fi super!show, with every awesome sci-fi actor. How great would that be? Someone should totally do that.

... Anyone up for kidnapping Joss Whedon and staging a hostile takeover of a studio to get the money for him to do it?

Non sci-fi-y, Top Gear was indeed awesome tonight but I think I've been spoilt by the last few weeks, because it didn't seem to quite measure up. The paintballing was a thing of beauty and Jeremy getting knocked over and soaked by the water cannon was hilarious but I don't know. As funny as the limo thing was, it didn't seem quite as awesome as the tractors or the American episode or, I don't know. Guess I was expecting new heights of awesome and got a plateau instead.

Gonzo seems an Unhappy Fish tonight. I left the filter running longer than usual and they're truly sucky swimmers (yeah, fish who can't swim well. Go figure) so I'm hoping he's just a little tired. It can't be fun swimming when your tail is bigger than you and you have a worse sense of direction than James May (seriously, I've seen Gonzo swim into a corner and have to turn upside to get out again, because he can't work out which fin to wave. I never said they were smart).

This song is beautiful. And, oddly, it makes me want new icons.

Back in Lancaster and I think the moment I've got the chance to just *sit* and not have to worry about parents or... well, parents, everything's suddenly caught up with me and I'm zombified with tiredness. Though, that might be partly the damned cold I caught in Cardiff too.

But. *Back in Lancaster*. For two weeks I've been referring to it as "going back home" and been getting yelled at by the 'rents every time; "What do you mean?! This is home!" Only, not so much anymore. More home than a hotel, but not home-home, not home that's your happy place where you could wake up every day for the next forty years and be happy about it. Back in Lancaster and, despite self-defrosting freezers, windows that only open a couple of inches, only having two shelves of books instead of my bookcase and having to walk down four flights of stairs to check my post... all is once again right with the world.

Especially when my post includes the two newest Doctor Who books I haven't read yet. I might've jumped up and down a bit with glee when opening them. The question is though, do I read them now or do I get The Da Vinci Code, which I have to read for Long Fiction and started today, out of the way first? Hhhhhmmmmmmmm.

Hey, there's a thought; do we get Torchwood books anytime? Practically every other show in the 'verse does it these days, so I can't see why not. Besides, Jack's already given them a few plots from his immeasurable backstory, namely that thing about the twins...

I love this show. It's only now starting to dawn on me just how *much* I really do.

In News of A Fishy Nature, the Muppets survived the two weeks alone superbly; I didn't believe the blurb for the block of vacation food I gave them when it said it kept the water clean too but it's crystal. A little mortified that I didn't bring back the new gravel and pirate ship I promised them before Christmas but a trip into town tomorrow will fix that. Kermit really does look ridiculous trying to wind his too-long length under the small skull. They're doing a great job of soothing my Casper deprivation, which past experience suggests will really start to kick in tomorrow. I wish I could bring him back with me. I'm sure he'd help me chill enough to focus on my essay.

Essay. Ugh. I have two weeks from tomorrow to get it done but I wanted to push myself into finishing something *before* the deadline, for once in my life. Maybe I should give up on DaVinci *and* 'Who and start reading some Shakespeare.

...Not likely but I *should*.

I get to cook for myself for the first time in ages tonight and I'm torn between savouring that thought while I finish unpacking my clothes or going now and saying to hell with the clothes. Unpacking is the least fun of living in two places at once (the second being that I always, always forget something like my toothbrush. I now own two of everything like that, except mouthwash which is what I forget to bring with me this time. Curses!)

Maybe clothes until I get bored. Maybe nap. I don't know but I do know I can do whatever I like without having to explain it to anyone. *Finally*. Two weeks never went so fast but felt like they lasted so long.

edit: Dammit! I started this post to say something particular -- two things in fact -- then clean forgot. scoobydumblonde and kindoftrouble, picked up your Christmas cards just now because I forgot to check my post before going home. Thank you! :D And kindoftrouble and lossi, I've meaning to say this since Christmas and everything kept distracting me; the teapot is the most adorable thing I've ever seen. Thank you!:D