First, I posted winners for the Best of 2009 at voy_stillness .  Congrats to my fellow winners.  And, how great is this icon?  airlockhero  made my week with that one.

Speaking of Star Trek, Z got me Star Trek Scene It for Christmas (Kroger had it for $8, so why not?).  Since I'm leaving for Indiana (again) tomorrow night, we opened it up and played.  I kicked butt.  And by "I kicked butt" I mean, "I showed off just how big of a dork I am and how much useless knowledge is floating around in my brain."  It took me three tries before passing Biochem 511, but I can rattle of Veridian III in my sleep.  Go figure.

Honestly, it's been the most excited I've been about anything sci-fi in months.  I have no desire to write fanfic, even though I (in my opinion at least) nailed two holiday fics last year and would to dabble in that again.  And even with drabbles, I'm tempted to pass off running that challenge to someone else.  I know I go through phases when it comes to hobbies, but this one is a little hard to let go.  Maybe because I've put down so many words or created a universe that's all mine.  Two in fact.  I don't know.  As hard as it is to let it go for a while, it's even harder to get motivated enough to pick it back up.  I'll get little glimmers of idea, but they fade away just as quickly as they come.

I have the sudden urge to go off about Dollhouse right now, but I think I'll wait till the series finishes.  This past week didn't do too much for me (at least in anything where Echo is concerned.  I love Victor/Sierra.  Even Topher is growing on me.) Anyway, I have to pack.  The thought crossed my mind to do a graphic representation of things I've loved in 2009 since tonight will be my last night with Photoshop access until the new year, but why be creative like that when you can waste time playing Restaurant City on Facebook?

So, in case I don't post again: have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

EDIT: Anyone know why LJ is ignoring paragraph breaks when working with Safari or is it just me who is having this issue?

 We're having a big, end of the year, "best of" vote over at voy_stillness .  Please take a second and join in on the fun.

Did you enter at least one icon in voy_stillness this year? Well go re-enter it. We're doing a best of the year contest this week. You can re-enter up to 10 icons you've made for the community's challenges this past year. Challenge details are here.

If you're interested in custom holiday icons (like I mentioned in my last post), here's an example of what they look like:



Let me know what holiday you want on the icon and what you want your gift to be. You can request up to 10.

Couldn't justify spending the money to keep my extra userpics, so I just had to delete 70 of them. I feel naked.

Naturally the perfect icon of this would be my animated one of Jim from "Fun Run" asking if this is an office or a French beach, but I had to delete it. Boo.

It's been so long since I've done an icon update and I had so many that the 202 icons had to be split into two posts:

Do me a favor and go break the ties over at voy_stillness , pretty please?

Be cool and head over to starttheclock  and vote in our big Challenge #100 madness.

• Go pick up Troy Denning's Abyss from the library and commence my totally biased review.
• Redo one of my icons for starttheclock  and hope it turns out as good as it is in my head.  But so far that's only happened for two of the thirty icons I made for the big challenge.  *le sigh*
• Monday night = my night with the boys = cooking chicken nuggets and mac & cheese (of the Scooby Doo variety since we had Sponge Bob last week), and playing games, and maybe making them watch a little Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy
• Using my McDonald's coupon for lunch.
• Constantly checking SubFinder in case some teacher has a doctor's appointment or something tomorrow. 

But for now it's time for some cheerios and Huluing last night's Defying Gravity.  Anybody else watching this show?  I kind of like it.

I need a tie broken, can you go and help please and thank you?

And I know I told jade_skywalker at least that I'd get to wrok on a SYTYCD YouTube extravaganza post, but instead I spent a good couple of hours (at least) playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook.  I did finish one of the library books that are due tomorrow.  Too bad there are three more to go.  Those are going to need to be rechecked out.  Anyway, I'll do my best to stop procrastinating and be productive this week.  Speaking of which, I've got to figure out what the challenge will be for this week voy_stillness .  Hmm...

First, look at the awesome icon crazyvictoria  made.  Loves it.

Second, speaking of Voyager icons, go be cool and vote in the tie-breaker for this week's challenge.

Third, I've added two friends to my f-list because they have Sims 3, make BSG characters for it, and post about it.  I keep trying to remind myself that it looks a lot like Sims 2 (which I have), but little attribute creep in that make me really want to get it.  But on top of having to pay for the game, I'd have to pay to upgrade my computer's OS, and I can't justify spending that much money, especially when my car is currently being repaired.  I myself have fandom neighborhoods in my Sims 2 (Star Wars, Star Trek, and BSG).  Maybe I'll starting posting about them.  *Looks at to-do list and five library books to read*  Then again, maybe I'll do that later.

Fourth, I'm in chapter 7 of Omen.  Nothing horrible or fantabulous yet.  I'll start posting a review tomorrow maybe after I do some more reading tonight.

A reminder for those of you who play over at TF.N--Beyond noms are due tonight.  The qualifying list is extremely sparse.  Go help out.

EDIT: We have a couple of ties that need broken over at voy_stillness , so if you haven't already, go vote for Challenge 119.

My Omen request came in this afternoon, and I just picked it up.  I knew it was under 300 pages, but it wasn't until I held it in my hand that I realized how thin it truly is.  I'm just happy I'm reading a new Star Wars hardback without paying thirty dollars for it.

As usual, I'll get a chapter-by-chapter review going as soon as I get going (which should be tonight after I go see a mechanic about getting the air conditioning in my car fixed).  I'll do my best to remain unbiased towards the new author to the Star Wars realm, but I make no promises.  I wasn't too impressed with her Voyager book that I read (granted, have yet to be impressed by a Voyager book).  And I'm not to thrilled about the person on the cover being a new character.  I don't want this to be another Karen Traviss/Mando-esque... thing to get my blood pressure up to unhealthy levels.  Why can't they put some of the new generation on the covers instead of people we haven't met?  Although, thanks to duncatra , I think I saw a blurb about there being two characters on the next Allston cover.  Could we finally be getting some Jaina/Jag cover love?  Please, oh please, let that be the case.  The icon possibilities would be endless.

Anyway, time to hop in the shower, then go into to town to once again have the inside of my car be cooler than the 90-some degree air outside of my car.

This is the tie-breaker that will never end.  Will you please go vote for which icon you like better, even if you aren't a Star Trek fan?  Thank you.

EDIT: Tie was broken with a two-vote margin.  So no need to vote anymore, but thanks to those who did on my awesome f-list.

Thank you Entertainment Weekly (and my sister for the free subscription) for pointing out that if you go to Coldplay's website, you can download nine tracks from one of their concerts for free.  It includes "Fix You"; therefore, you must go download. 

Second, I've taken over voy_stillness  and our first challenge back from a five month long break is up, and you should definitely go participate.

Rules
-credit callmelydia  or iconic_lydia 
-comment
-no hotlinking
-textless aren't bases
-feel free to friend


Table of Contents
1-64: Battlestar Galactica
65-67: Fringe
68-70: The Princess Bride
71-73: Stock images
74-92: Star Wars


Preview



The rest are over here.

Since I made it to the final round at bsg_lims , you should go cast your votes.

First, I know I have a lot of Mara fans on my f-list.  So all of you should go over here right now and vote for your favorite Mara icons.

Second, duncatra  hooked me up with a Dreamwidth account, even though yet another blog is the last thing I need.  And since I'm not currently feeling the need to back up all my posts here over there, I'm thinking I'm going to make this a "(Fill in the blank) of the Day" kind of journal.  But the only problem is figuring out the subject.  Here's where you come in. 

Poll #1405130
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

What do you want to see a daily journal of?

For the first time, I've made it into the final round of a LIMS (Last Icon Maker Standing) contest over at bsg_lims .  Ack, the pressure of trying to make something new and pretty in a 100x100 pixel box.

But now I have to push that out of my mind and work on retooling the next chapter of my fic.  You know, something I was supposed to have already done for several past deadlines, but never got around to doing.  So I need to get to work on that... as soon as I eat breakfast and watch last night's Daily Show for my dose of news for the day.  I'm awesome at procrastinating.

I've been in a bad mood all day.  Can't seem to shake it.  Any of the reasons below will help explain things:

• Being a sub and living in a house with kids makes me really wonder if being a teacher and having kids will be a good combination.  I spend eight hours a day with kids who, for the most part, listen to what I say but are overshadowed by the one or two who are hellbent on ruining my day.  I then come home to a five year old and an eight year old.  The five year old, like most of the kids I see during the day, gets along with me.The eight year old however is a different story.  Tonight I had to leave the house to keep from going ballistic on him.  I know he's eight and he's entitled to do stupid stuff like running around making clucking noises at the top of his lungs or kick a soccer ball around inside the house, but I'm just tired of it.  I end up coming home and feel like I'm yelling at him for every little thing he does.  It makes me wonder if I'll someday do that to my own kids.  Of course, they won't come back at me every time I ask them to do something with "Did Mommy/Daddy say I had to?"
• I restarted my computer yesterday and now Photoshop is acting weird.  Normally I'll save my icon files in .jpg format using "Save for Web", but today when I tried that, the icons lost a ton of quality if they weren't black and white.  So I tried to save in .png format, but even that didn't look the same uploaded to photobucket as when I saved it in Photohsop.  It's really frustrating since the icon I noticed the most change in was for an elimination contest where I've made it to the final four. 
• After posting the prologue to the new story (where I only got four replies), the only consistent replies I've gotten are from Nat and YodaKenobi.  And while I love his comments dearly, it's not quite enough to keep me from feeling like a loser.  I could get 15-25 replies to a chapter on Family Album, but now I'm only getting two?  Must I really stick to sappy, sacchraine storytelling in order to get a higher number of readers?  I really hope not.  But still, part of me wonders if I'm not "past my prime" in a sense.  Am I that unpopular?  Is the story that bad already?  (THIS IS NOT A PATHETIC ATTEMPT TO GUILT YOU ALL INTO READING AND REPLYING.  ONLY DO SO IF YOU TRULY WANT TO... I'll stop yelling at you now.)
• I feel exhausted.  I think I'm still trying to play catch up from last weekend where I went four days without being able to sleep through the night.  Or at least only wake up once or twice.
• My summer job place that I interviewed at a week ago Monday and told me I'd hear back either way at the end of last week still hasn't contacted me.  I'm trying to tell myself that no news is good news, but after last year's round of teaching position interviews, it's hard to convince myself of that.

I guess the running theme is I'm not feeling like I'm getting the respect I feel I deserve.  So either I need to reevaluate myself and try adn figure out what I'm worth, or I can just try and get over it.

Since the only times I've felt at peace today were while reading Wicked in a quiet room, that's what I'm going to do.  I'll watch The Office in the morning.  Oh--that's another thing.  Chuck has had the only good season finale in my book.  Don't you Hollywood people know that finale is supposed to equal fantastic?  The Big Bang Theory and NCIS just felt like regular episodes to me, which was extremely disappointing for the latter since they hyped up all this stuff about Tony and Ziva, and nothing really happened.  I could even predict what was going to happen on Fringe.  JJ, you should never let me be able to predict what's going to happen at the end of one of your shows.  Granted I didn't figure out the last shot, but everything else?  I totally called it.  I just stopped watching Bones two-thirds of the way through because it was absolutely dumb.  And Dollhouse?  Ditch Topher, give Boyd and Paul they're own mystery solving show, and replace Whiskey as your lead instead of Echo.  Because her storyline is ten times more interesting than anything Eliza Dushku has offered in thirteen episodes.  *Sigh*  C'mon, TV, you're supposed to be better than this.