Any advice on what to do about the following will be vastly appreciated.
I'm being sent on a job that will be 6 weeks on, 3 weeks off.  The 6 weeks on will be in the states...3 weeks in the gulf of mexico, 3 weeks in california.  (I don't know.  It's really bizarre.)  Because of the short turnaround, I probably won't be home for the first three weeks, certainly, and I'm probably going to be (a) driving around the north island with my parents in November and (b) driving around the south island with my friend Eleanor in February.  After that, who knows.

At the moment, the question du jour is: do I keep my apartment or not.

I've got my own little patch of paradise overlooking the Tasman sea.  3 bedrooms, one of which I'm actively trying to find a roommate for, and I'm watching a very rowdy, snarly ocean from my breakfast table.  I can hear the roaring of the surf from where I'm sitting, and it's a five-minute walk to a good swimming beach--something I did a lot more in the summer than I'm doing now!

OTOH, I'm not going to be here for 6 months, and it's costing me $1500/month to store stuff that I'll never use, a bed I'll never sleep in, etc.  Even were I to have to forfeit my deposit and a month's rent for breaking the lease, that's still 4 months worth of rent I'd be bankrolling.

OTOH, I'm not hurting for money at ALL, and when I'm out at sea, well, I'm not spending anything...plus I'll be earning twice as much in offshore allowance--separate from my regular salary--than I pay in rent/bills per month. 

OTOH, that's money I could be tucking away for when the tax man cometh, and because I'll be working BACK in the states, he's going to take a fsckin' HUGE bite out of my hide.  Pound of flesh, indeed.  And in the meantime, everything just sits there collecting dust.

OTOH (I must be an octopus today), I'd have to find somewhere to put all my stuff, pack up, move, find somewhere else to live, all that crap that I did just 6 months ago, and frankly, I don't know if I have it in me to move again so soon.

I guess what it really boils down to is it's time to make a hard-nosed financial decision versus the question "how much is my sanity worth?"  Because if I've learned one thing about myself over time, it's that I do need my own sanctuary.

The saddest bit of all this, to me, is that Bob and Mi-Ke will not be coming to New Zealand as planned.  There's no point in flying them down here, putting them in quarantine, etc if I'm not going to be here.  If I were doing a 6-week-on, 6 week-off schedule like I THOUGHT I'd be doing, it'd be fine, because I'd be here as often as not.  But now, when it looks like I may be in New Plymouth for 10 days total over the next 6 months, well, it's cruel to do that to them.  And I really, really, really hate that.

In case anybody was wondering.

Ficlet Suite:  Three Portraits of Divinity
Characters:  Jack, Gwen, Owen
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Angst and language in #2, none for #1 or #3
Spoilers: #1 has spoilers for DW 4.12 and 4.13, #2 has spoilers for TW 1.10.
Disclaimer: Torchwood is property of BBC and RTD.

This fic was kindly beta-read by demotu.  Thanks!

Yeah, so much for me walking to the movie theater tonight.

It's REALLY coming down!

File this under "Americans will sue for the weirdest things."  Ganked from Wikipedia, emphasis mine:

Gerald Mayo filed a claim before the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, in which Mayo alleged that "Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery and unwarranted threats, against the will of plaintiff, that Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has caused plaintiff's downfall" and had therefore "deprived him of his constitutional rights". This is prohibited under several sections of the United States Code.  Notably, Mayo filed in forma pauperis - that is, he asserted that he would not be able to afford the costs associated with his lawsuit and that they therefore should be waived.

In its decision the Court first noted that the jurisdictional situation was unclear. While no previous cases had been brought by or against Satan and so no official precedent existed, there was an "unofficial account of a trial in New Hampshire where this defendant filed an action of mortgage foreclosure as plaintiff", a clever reference to the short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster."  The court suggested that the defendant (who had claimed in that story to be an American), should he appear, might have been therefore estopped from arguing a lack of personal jurisdiction.

The Court also noted that the case was certainly appropriate for class action status, and it was not then clear that Mayo could properly represent the interests of the entire (immense) class. Ultimately, though, the Court refused the request to proceed in forma pauperis on what might be considered a technicality: the plaintiff had not included instructions for how the U.S. Marshall could serve process on Satan.

There you have it, folks--it is the LEGAL OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES that Satan exists and lives (or lived) in New Hampshire.

The actual text of the decision can be found here.

And yes, I know my choice of music is so ironic for the topic at hand.

My most excellent beta invisible_lift, who has been helping me muddle my way through Scratch, had a question about a word I used.  It's a nautical term, and not one he'd seen before.  He went to the Oracle of Wikipedia and sent me this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_nautical_terms

It's really, really cool.  I use a LOT of those words in regular conversation when I'm afloat, and it's amazing to see how many of them have crept into casual conversation (like son of a gun).

And it's amazing just how many of them are fodder for kink!fic.  Check out what they call the cat'o'nine that they would use on cabin boys.

 

LOL.  Perfect.

Title: Scratch Part 5
Characters: John Hart, Blowfish, Woman from KKBB, numerous OCs
Rating: HARD NC-17 (see warnings)
Summary: A retelling of the Faust myth using TW characters. 
Disclaimer: All canon characters are property of the BBC, all OCs are my own, and Faust is the property of Mephistopheles.

WARNING: The Faust myth is a story about dealing with the devil.  As such, this is an extremely dark and mature work of fiction.  Specific warnings for this chapter include assault, hitmen, murder, and weapons trafficking.

As always, kind thanks to used_songs and invisible_lift for the beta reading.

Part 1      Part 2       Part 3     Part 4

Title: Scratch Part 4
Characters: John Hart, Blowfish, Woman from KKBB, numerous OCs
Rating: HARD NC-17 (see warnings)
Summary: A retelling of the Faust myth using TW characters. 
Disclaimer: All canon characters are property of the BBC, all OCs are my own, and Faust is the property of Mephistopheles.

WARNING: The Faust myth is a story about dealing with the devil.  As such, this is an extremely dark and mature work of fiction.  Specific warnings for this chapter include pit-fighting, rape, murder, drug trafficking, and metaphorical slavery.

Kind thanks to used_songs and invisible_lift for their beta work.

Part 1      Part 2       Part 3



 

A while back I read a Gwen,Ianto fic where the two of them went to a rugby match, abused their TW badges to get front row seats, and had a good time.

The end went something like "it's rugby and they're welsh."

I can't find it and I like it.  Help me! 

Fic: Jiggy Jiggy Jiggy
Characters: Tosh, Gwen, aliens from Sesame Street
Rating/Warnings: G, TOTAL crack
Summary: Thing get weird while Tosh is investigating a piece of tech.
Disclaimer: I don't own either TV show, but have fun playing with them.
Thanks to jbs_teeth for the flash beta!

 

Title: Scratch (2/?)
Characters: John Hart, Blowfish, Woman from KKBB, many OCs
Rating: HARD NC-17 (see warning)
Summary:  John Hart recruits the Blowfish to act as his bodyguard as he travels about time and space. 
Disclaimer: John Hart, the Blowfish, and all other canon characters are property of the BBC and RTD.

Author's note: This fic is a retelling of the Faust myth, commissioned by fmanalyst as a birthday present.  Happy birthday, and have fun finding all the literary references and cultural references I've peppered in here.  Like a scavenger hunt, only dark and twisted.  :)

Kindly beta'd by used_songs and invisible_lift.

WARNING:  The Faustian myth is a story about dealing with the devil.  As such, it is an extremely dark and mature work of fiction.  Specific plot elements of this chapter include murder, rape, edgeplay, drug trafficking, mentions of kink, John Hart being a sexy bastard (emphasis on "bastard"), and some blacker than black cracky comedy.

If you're new, Part 1 is here.

Title: The Seven Ages of Man
Characters: All the team plus Martha, Tom, and John from Out of Time
Rating: All ages
Disclaimer:  All characters belong to the BBC.
Summary: a suite of drabbles based on Jacques' soliloquy from As You Like It by William Shakespeare.  Kindly beta'd by jbs_teeth.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

For those of you who've been waiting, I'm posting the first section of my latest fic either tomorrow afternoon or Sunday.  It's a WIP but the first 15000 words are done.  Yikes!  It's the darkest thing I've ever written save for one thing--a suicide note ten years ago (that obviously was never read by anyone but me).  It's that dark.  Really.

I've had off-and-on writer's block with this one, so there will be a collection of oneshots, ficlets, and drabbles appearing in between installments.  Some of them will be silly, some will be thinky, some will be angsty, and all will be sunshine and roses compared to the main work.  There may also be picspam of Catherine Tate looking fair and ginger and gorgeous (you know, the kind of complexion Shakespeare wrote sonnets about) and Daniel Craig in his Golden Compass costume. 

After it's all over, I'm going to purge my brain of the whole morass by writing pink glittery winged sugar pony fluff. ark. 

Yesterday I went to a ballet of Peter and the Wolf.  A friend of mine's daughter was in the cast.

Peter was wearing a pair of coveralls with a red patch pocket on the right cheek and had a slingshot sticking out of it, and Peter's grandfather had a red handkerchief in his pocket.  During the ballet, Peter pulled the red hanky out of grandpa's back pocket and began running around with it.

All of that made me think of the GDL fisting video from SWA.  Thank you, GDL, for making me thing seriously wrong thoughts at a dance performance for children.  Geez.

On a funnier note, the director's maltese terrier wandered out onto the stage halfway through, right as the wolf made its appearance.  It stood in the middle of the stage and looked very confused.  The wolf "hunted" it, grabbed it, and handed it backstage before resuming the dance.