tarotgal

It’s finally here (at least in my time zone): September 23! Exactly 20 years ago, I pressed the publish button to launch the Tarot of Sneezing website. At that time, I only had a handful of stories and wavs and lots of good intentions.

And now the publish button is back in use as I unveil this collection of 20 stories and much more. You can read more about it on my website and buy it now!

Stay tuned throughout the weekend for more celebratory posts with facts, content, and a chance to win your very own signed copy!

You heard it here first! :-) Next Saturday (September 23) is the Tarot of Sneezing's 20th anniversary. It's been 20 years since I started the site (the third of its kind in the "community"), 20 years since I changed my Anonymous pen name into an actual username, 20 years since I first realized my interest in snezing was something I wanted to make into an actual thing.

And now, after more than a year of hard work, I've made it into another actual thing. I've put together a collection of twenty of my favorite stories as well as some additional sequels, unfinished story excerpts, drabbles, and more. Lots of the bonus content and two of the stories will only ever appear in this collection. There's even a commentary section at the end where I reflect and give insight about the stories. It was a labor of love, and I just got the proof in the mail yesterday. It turned out better than I'd expected, so now it really is an actual thing! Twenty years of my sneeze fetish perfect bound together in one book I can hold in my hands.

Here's what the cover looks like:


The book willl be available for purchase on Saturday, September 23 for $20 (you can look at that as $1 per story with tons of extras included for free). I'll also be running a drawing here on my Dreamwidth journal for a free, signed copy. So, if you're interested, check back here next Saturday to enter or buy your own copy of my collection.

So.... I did a thing this week I can't tell you about yet until I get proof of it in the mail. But it's a thing and I'm super excited about it because I've been working on it for a year now and it's almost done! SQUEE!

Had a lovely write-in tonight. I finished story 3 of my BDSM club series just as the Panera was closing. I powered through some guilt regarding all the Hurt/Comfort Bingo prompts I haven't started yet. I got to explain the sex pollen trope (not sure I did a very good job of explaining, but it's hard to explain fuck-or-die situations... you just gotta read 'em to believe 'em), and I saw a bunch fo adorable cat pictures/videos.

I bought a lot of Christmas presents this week for friends. I need to stop spending money.

Though, speaking of spending money, there are some new Harry Potter FUNKO POPs out. There's Harry with a Marauder's Map--yay!!!!! There's Ron holding Scabbers, and Ron's got little scratch marks on his chin--awwwwww! And there's Remus Lupin... in butt ugly movie werewolf form--ew. No proper-looking Remus Lupin that I can put next to Sirius and have them embrace like "brothers." *sigh* I'm not buying that. But the other two... perhaps... I'm hoping they'll still be in stock when my Hot Cash is valid this month.

I have SO MANY STORIES I NEED TO WRITE!

Also, I'm trying to make up my mind about going to see John and Hank Green in DC next month. I really want to... but I've already seen them in person so I don't really need to. I also don't need two copies of Turtles All the Way Down, but I'm sure I can find a use for the second one :-)

I drove by my garage yesterday and my mechanic said I don't need another $350 fix for my car just yet. I love my mechanic. He said most garages will tell you it needs replacing because it's a super quick fix for them to make and an expensive part, so a high return on their part. He said he'll keep an eye on it every time I bring it in for an oil change and let me know when it really does need replacing. I love my mechanic. It's so cool to live in such a large town and have the people at the garage you go to remember you and remember your car as if it were a small town. I mean, my family's been taking our cars there for the past 30 years, so it makes sense they'd remember us. But, still, it's nice to have a mechanic I trust.

Last night I had a Harry Potter meetup. We discussed book 6. I reread it Monday through Thursday and finished the book in time for the meetup. Chapter 23 made me cry, and it's never done that before. Maybe I've been too hard on Dumbledore in the past? Hmm. I also came out of it with several REALLY fun ideas for fics that I want to write.

UGH There's just not enough time to write all that needs writing!

Friday, I realized Charlie was not breathing well. She was making a lot of noise when she breathed and kept trying to clear her nose or throat of whatever was causing the congestion. She's always had some congestion issues, but nothing this bad. I wasn't sure what to do for an hour or so. Then, realizing most of our animals have emergencies on holidays when the regular vet is closed (forcing us to go to the emergency room) I decided to take her in. They examined her and she produced some evidence of what was wrong with magical timing. They gave her a course of antibiotics to try (they're pretty sure it's bacterial, not viral). So that was $150 I wasn't expecting.

Yesterday I got into my car and drove out of the neighborhood, on the way to meet up with my friends for a snarfari & day of adventure. I noticed my car feeling a little wobbly, pulled over, and found that my tire was flat. Like an idiot, I drove it back down to my house and called melydia who kindly picked me up instead. The day, celebrating one of my friend's birthdays, was full of lots of fun--two private tours of museums, one private tour of a historic house (private meaning that we were the only people there on a super rainy Saturday in the middle of almost nowhere Virginia), signings of lots of historical markers, visits to a handful of Little Free Libraries so we could leave books there (I did come home with a few I swapped for, though), a trip to the Sugar Shack for amazing donuts (I bought 3: a mango-something one, a cherry pie one, and a Butterfinger one), and a great time with people I love.

Today, I get to deal with the flat tire. My Nationwide policy covered the roadside assistance, so I called this morning. The guy just came a little after noon and switched out the tire with my spare. He said to me "Wow, I didn't expect there to be a spare tire in such a little car!" I have an SUV--a Honda Element. Little? Anyway, it turns out there's a nail in the tire, which could be an easy and cheap repair. But I'd already called a local place and gotten a quote for replacing all four tires. My normal garage told me last month after doing an allignment that I was going to need to replace all my tires before the winter. And there's a Labor Day sale going on right now where the tires I like are buy 2, get 2 free with free warranties and allignments for tire life thrown in. With the labor, balancing, etc. it's still going to be $550, but they're great tires and I was going to need new ones in a couple months anyway. So I might as well just do it while there's a sale and while I actually have the time, right?

My 2-in-1 transformer laptop-tablet is nearly dead. It doesn't charge properly half the time (sometimes it says it's charging and so I leave it and come back to it a few hours later and it wasn't charging at all and is down to 7%) and I sometimes need to hold the cable at a weird andle manually to make it charge. It's got some system corruption issues--it won't open File Explorer to let me look at contents of files without freezing my machine up for about 5 minutes per action, and the applications in my task bar almost all vanished; if I try to open one, it gives me an erorr and says to reinstall the application (but they're applications that came with the machine like Calculator). It still runs Open Office, so that's good. And everything stored on it is in the cloud, so I won't lose anything if it crashes tomorrow. But it's getting pretty difficult to use at this point. A new one will cost me $250-$300. Again, not bad, all things considered, but it's not an expense I was planning on right now.

I'm going to have to dip heavily into savings to cover this, and I don't have much to dip into. But at least I have something. It's just frustrating. I finally get a little above water with my finances and... glug glug glug I'm back down again.

The good news is, I've got a project up that I'm super excited to share with everyone! The other good news is that today Charlie is sounding better! I had to give her her pill twice last night/this morning because she spit it up the first time. She's not eating the pill pockets like treats any more, which is annoying, but I'm getting her to swallow them, and the pill pockets help the pills go down smooth and easily. But I'm hoping this means the antibiotics are kicking in. She sounds so much better and is acting normal as well. I'm SO relieved. Still a LOT of pills left to give her, but hopefully she'll continue to be good and kick this thing officially.

If you could ask me one short question that I must only answer yes or no to, what would it be?

I felt icky (headache, stomach ache, twitching/tired eyes) for most of the afternoon. After medicine seemed to do little, I crashed on my couch after work and slept for a solid 2 hours. I felt better after that, but that was pretty much my night. I watched a few episodes of Escape! with Janet Varney and ate some soup. Played with Ozma kitten (who is very good at reminding me when she wants to be played with, as that reminder usually involves claws sinking into my arm).

I did manage to finish reading a book today, and I read two more picture books today, which caused me to hit my goal of 100 for the year in the Goodreads Challenge. YAY! So at least there's a little bit of accomplishment there. But did I do any writing today? NO. Did I work on my 101 Things? NO. Did I do any cleaning? Well, I did organize a few of my minifigs into different containers today during my lunch break when I needed to stop looking at computer screens, but that's like cleaning one square foot of a 1,000 square foot mess. Barely made a dent. So it doesn't really count.

I'm going to take a shower and hope I feel better after that.

More wisdom from the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Reminds me of the current situation...

Indiana Jones: "It's just not fair."

Arnold Toynbee: "It's not about fairness. It's about power and greed."

Indy: "Well then why did we fight in the war? Why did so many people die? Are you saying that it was all for nothing?"

Arnold: "No. No war is for nothing. But when it's over it turns out to be something quite different from what was believed at the start. And the result is never intended to be what it is."

Again, I haven't been able to figure out if this was adapted or taken from any of the real Toynbee's actual writings (I have never read all of A Study of History). It seems like the sort of thing he might say though.


This is one of my favorite episodes (partly because Ned makes an appearance in this one, partly because it's such an interesting glimpse of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Just watching the treatment of the German delegation instantly allowed teenage!me to understand how inevitable WWII was.

Awesome bonus: the actor playing Ho Chi Minh is a handsome, young Alec Mapa! I recognized him right away! I'm sure this must have been the first thing I ever saw him in though (way back in 1993). I must have watched this episode a dozen times or more.

Rifftrax (the MST3K guys) put on a live show tonight, telling jokes during the Five Doctors. I'd recently seen The Five Doctors during my watch of all of Doctor Who, so I knew how terrible and wonderful it was. I've been thinking about it for a while, but Ifinally decided not to go. Today I made sort of a last minute decision to just buy a ticket and go. I'm glad I did. It was a fun event. Some special geeky music played while we waited and on the screen were silly fan theories, funny/bad anagrams, completely fake trivia, etc. The fellow fans waiting for the movie and I laughed at many of them. I discovered I was seated in front of a fellow Slyvester McCoy fan (the 7th doctor is one of my absolute favorites, and I don't apologize for that!). I also discovered I was seated next to someone who really enjoyed Torchwood: Children of Earth. ICK.

The event itself was hilarious. They showed a short public domain PSA for kids in the UK about how not to electrocute themselves by flying kites into power lines. Then they jumped into the movie/special. I laughed a lot, though the "Hail Hitler" joke made me a little uncomfortable... I think I could have done without that this week. It was great to see three doctors and one replacement doctor (RIP William Hartnell) and one "we have to use unaired footage because he wouldn't join the project" doctor on screen. But it was especially awesome seeing some of my other favorite characters on the big screen--Sarah Jane Smith & K-9, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, The Master, and (briefly) Jamie.

I definitely had a fun time. I'm fairly certain there will be an encore broadcast next Thursday in select theaters: https://www.fathomevents.com/events/rifftrax-live-doctor-who?utm_source=RiffTrax&utm_medium=Website&utm_content=Riff_DoctorWho

I also went to Hot Topic tonight and bought a Yuri on Ice necklace and a new figet cube. I had a coupon and $5 in account cash to spend. So I ended up getting some little mini keychain pops of Sam, Dean, and Cas to push me up to enough for Hot Cash. I'd been thinking of getting a few of those for my new bag anyway, so it was all worth it.

I picked up some packages at the post office today (including one that is larger than my couch. I hope it's the photo studio kit because, otherwise, I've no idea what it could be!). My LEGO store order came in (among other things, I got a special case for my Batman minifigs and I got the Agent Coulson & Lola set), as did some LEGO I bought on BrickLink. The LEGO Dimensions Doctor Who set also arrived, as did the pajamas I ordered for the Harry Potter Halloween party this year! I ordered these lovely grey, fleece owl PJs. We're doing a Book 3 party this year and, as you may recall, during Halloween that year Sirius Black tried to get into Gryffindor Tower, so everyone in the school slept in the Great Hall. So it's going to be a PJ-friendly event. I might even have occasion to bust out my Harry Potter pillowcase. Anyway, when I looked at the PJs, I realized they were cotton candy pink, not grey. Not grey AT ALL. And someone had pasted a label over the label on the bag. The top label sayd "grey" and, when I peeled it off, the one below said pink. Maybe they thought I wouldn't notice the pink? But they are HUGE and fluffy and pink. Very hard to miss. Looks like they're completely sold out of grey, so they must have thought this was close enough. It was disappointing, though. I'm not really a pink kind of person, you know? Guess I'll just have to make them work.

21. Wet
(Due South, Fraser/Kowalski)

As Fraser and Ray leaned on the ship’s railing as it sailed toward the sunset, Ray’s head snapped down with a sharp sneeze.

Fraser frowned. “You really should cover when you sneeze. It's more hygienic.”

Ray nodded, but his eyes were already closing, nostrils flaring, head snapping forward. This time, his nose landed in Fraser's cupped hand. “Uhh thanks partner?”

Fraser pulled his hand away.

“What’s that called, anyway: ’Buddy Sneezing?’”

“It’s called ‘I hope you’re not coming down with a cold.’”

“Think I just got too much water up my nose earli-earlier.” He sneezed again. “On the other hand…”

So what do you do when you have a sneezing fetish and your new favorite show has an adorable, soft, snuggly tissue box that is literally canon? You buy the thing so damn fast. So I just wanted to share my fandomy joy.

Here's my brand new, plush, Makkachin-inspired tissue box cover!


And images of Yuuri and Viktor with it...

( Picspam of more tissue box images )

It's even there in my user icon when Viktor goes all affectionate and clingy.