megotelek

( echoes of the past )
Day 20 - A hobby of yours

Aah, I'm behind! Hmm, a hobby. I'm going to go with baking, because it fits with tomorrow's recipe, and because I really do like to bake. I entered a pie in the state fair two summers ago and won second place (cranberry-apple pie) and every Christmas I bake cookies and bars and shortbread for the family. Plus any and all other food holidays. Such as...

Day 21 - A recipe

Since the next major food holiday for me is St. Patrick's Day, my recipe for soda bread:

4 cups (16 oz) of all purpose flour.
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1 Teaspoon salt
14 oz of buttermilk

Method:

Preheat the oven to 425 F. degrees. Lightly grease and flour a cake pan.

In a large bowl sieve and combine all the dry ingredients.

Add the buttermilk to form a sticky dough. Place on floured surface and lightly knead (too much allows the gas to escape)

Shape into a round flat shape in a round cake pan and cut a cross in the top of the dough.

Cover the pan with another pan and bake for 30 minutes (this simulates the bastible pot). Remove cover and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

The bottom of the bread will have a hollow sound when tapped so show it is done.

Cover the bread in a tea towel and lightly sprinkle water on the cloth to keep the bread moist.

Day 22 - A website

Because I just discovered it: The Ironic Catholic. If only for this quote in their sidebar:

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says, "Oh crap, she's up."

I enjoy the reminder that I can be both devoutly Catholic and not lose my sense of humor or quirky ways of looking at things. It's true!

( moar )

( echoes of the past )
Day 18 - Whatever tickles your fancy

Somewhat weirdly, I'm going to go back to fanfic for today. Because apparently I'm reading more of it now. I'm not sure if that means I'm more disappointed in the shows I watch, or I'm realizing more of the value of using fanfic to flesh out areas that the shows never will.

Anyway. Today I give you Ten Nonlinear Moves, a wonderful NCIS fic. It takes place in the period of time after Gibbs left, when Tony was in charge of the team.

And just for fun, The Scottish Play (No, the Other One), a Community fic from the help_haiti auction.

( moar )

( echoes of the past )
Day 16 - Song that makes you cry
Since it would be too complicated to explain the various bits of movie and TV scores that make me cry, I guess I actually have to come up with a song-song.

It would have to be Four Green Fields by Tommy Makem.



The poem at the beginning, "Requiem for the Croppies":

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching... on the hike...
We found new tactics happening each day:
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave.

( moar )

( painting the roses red )
Day 14 - Non-fictional book


I've been on a biography kick lately, and this one was particularly good. It helped that it was my "airplane book" when John and I went to Walt Disney World last January, of course.

( twitterpated )

Day 1 - Your fav song
Day 2 - Your fav movie
Day 3 - Your fav TV program
Day 4 - Your fav book
Day 5 - Your fav quote
Day 6 - Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 7 - A photo that makes you happy
Day 8 - A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 9 - A photo you took
Day 10 - A photo you took recently
Day 11 - A photo you took 10 years ago
Day 12 - Whatever tickles your fancy

Well, since it's brand-new fresh news (and I'm super excited about it), yesterday Paragon Studios (who does my MMO of choice, City of Heroes) announced some development team changes and growth.

Chief among them is that Melissa 'War Witch' Bianco is now the Lead Designer. Her interview with MMORPG.com is here.

Not only is this great because she is an awesome person and (from what little I've seen of her at the conventions I've been to) lots of fun and very interactive with the players, but...she's a she. Gaming still sometimes feels like a very boys-only thing to me, but City of Heroes has a major female playerbase and now a female developer in charge. One more reason that it's the MMO that gets my $15 every month.

That...plus the game itself: depending on my mood, I can either play one of my superheroines and smash bad guys into the dirt, or play one of my villains and just go to town with mayhem and destruction. And minions. Especially my robot minions. *evil laugh*

( holding out for a hero )

Day 1 - Your fav song
Day 2 - Your fav movie
Day 3 - Your fav TV program
Day 4 - Your fav book
Day 5 - Your fav quote
Day 6 - Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 7 - A photo that makes you happy
Day 8 - A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 9 - A photo you took
Day 10 - A photo you took recently

Gorgeous full double rainbow from the last big storm we had.
( the lovers, the dreamers, and you )

Day 1 - Your fav song
Day 2 - Your fav movie
Day 3 - Your fav TV program
Day 4 - Your fav book
Day 5 - Your fav quote
Day 6 - Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 7 - A photo that makes you happy
Day 8 - A photo that makes you angry/sad

Not having any RL pictures (that I'm going to post, anyway) for this, I'll take a tip from adinarj and go to fandom.

Angry:

Ugh. I haaated the whole derailment of Luke/Lorelai with this awful forced marriage-to-Chris storyline. Hated it. The whole Rory/married Dean nonsense is a close second to this.

Sad:

No matter how much or how little of the end of this episode I watch, I always end up bawling like a baby.

( void stuff )

Day 1 - Your fav song
Day 2 - Your fav movie
Day 3 - Your fav TV program
Day 4 - Your fav book
Day 5 - Your fav quote
Day 6 - Whatever tickles your fancy

Hmm...this is a hard one. But let's go with this:

I wasn't an immediate convert to the new Battlestar Galactica fandom. But in the long, long hiatus between season 3 and the beginning of season 4, I watched the miniseries and then launched into season 1. One of the first things I noticed was the music. Lots of taiko drums, very little orchestra. Until the last two episodes of the first season...when Baltar has his visions of the opera house on Kobol, a gorgeous string orchestra piece plays. I was hooked.

And then, I found composer Bear McCreary's blog. First, he would do general entries on the character themes in the show, which eventually became full fledged detailed musical analyses of each episode. And as music became more and more an integral part of the story, I got hooked.

So, last year, when Bear McCreary and the Battlestar Galactica Orchestra performed in San Diego during Comic-Con, I decided I had to go. And I went, and it was awesome.

The icing on the cake? He's also scoring "Human Target", which premieres tomorrow night, and "Caprica", the BSG prequel show, which premieres on 1/22.

( It's in the ship! )

Day 1 - Your fav song
Day 2 - Your fav movie
Day 3 - Your fav TV program
Day 4 - Your fav book

This isn't nearly as agonizing as the last few. There are only two books that can vie for "favorite" in my head:

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott -- I've read this book so many times; it's like comfort food to me. And if I don't have the book handy, I'll just pop in the movie (the 1949 version, with June Allyson as Jo and Elizabeth Taylor as Amy).

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card -- I first read this book when I was probably 11 or 12. I've reread it countless times since, and I recommend it to everyone I know. Card captures the essence of the "precocious child/loner" so well, and the story is heavy and real the way so few stories are nowadays.

( the enemy's gate is down )

Day 1 - Your fav song
Day 2 - Your fav movie

Hmm....again, it's hard to pick just one. But I would have to say that my favorite movie of all time is Jurassic Park. I begged my parents to be able to go see it when it came out in 1993...I was eleven. And it was rated PG-13. But it had DINOSAURS! (This was smack-dab in the middle of my dinosaur-obsession years.) And I remember sitting in the theater watching it...and then having to go to the bathroom and missing the T-rex/jeep chase scene. It was amazing and thrilling and literally the best thing I had ever seen. Thanks for giving in, Dad!

I read the book a few years later and loved it also; but I'm sure that if I'd read the book first I would have hated the movie. But I still love watching the movie (and will stop to watch it if it's on TV), and I enjoy rereading the book. So I'm glad it worked out as it did!

Day 3 - Your fav TV program
Day 4 - Your fav book
Day 5 - Your fav quote
Day 6 - Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 7 - A photo that makes you happy
Day 8 - A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 9 - A photo you took
Day 10 - A photo you took recently
Day 11 - A photo you took 10 years ago
Day 12 - Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 - A fictional book
Day 14 - Non-fictional book
Day 15 - A fanfic
Day 16 - Song that makes you cry
Day 17 - An art piece
Day 18 - Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 - A talent of yours
Day 20 - A hobby of yours
Day 21 - A recipe
Day 22 - A website
Day 23 - Youtube video
Day 24 - Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 - Your day in great detail
Day 26 - Your week in great detail
Day 27 - This month in great detail
Day 28 - This year in great detail
Day 29 - Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 - Whatever tickles your fancy