Otter's Rock

Plot Bunny free to a good home

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:19:47 GMT

bradygirl_12 has an essay on Batman Begins in which she notes in passing that Bruce's mother Martha is scarcely mentioned in BB, while Clark's father Jonathan is scarcely mentioned in Superman Returns.

That gives me the idea for a crack!fic that I'll never write. Thomas Wayne survives somehow (pick standard comic-book explanation--frozen or held hostage by mad scientist out for revenge, magic, cloned, etc.). He comes back to find his son is a costumed superhero. Meets Martha Kent through his son's friendship with Superman. Friendship/tips for dealing with superhero sons turns into more. Watch Clark and Bruce freak out, with assorted side-kicks and other heroes thinking this is the most hysterical thing ever. (Because it so totally would be.)

This plot bunny free to good home ...

In other superhero fic news, I'm finally working again on a big SR fic I've been working on for a while on and off. The bad news, ljs_lj, is that it's not the one based on the same plot bunny that gave you Biopsychology. It's the other one, the one focusing on Richard.

Genre

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:20:39 GMT

My absolute favorite author, Lois McMaster Bujold, was the Guest of Honor at Denvention 3. Her speech is a fascinating look at genre, as defined by (and as it defines) writers, readers, and publishers, and the ways in which genre expectations color and shape both works and our response to them. (She particularly focuses on SF/F and romance genres, with a little dabble into mysteries.) You should go read the transcript.

And, oh, for those of you who are Miles-fans like I am, the next Vorkosiverse book should be out sometime early/mid 2009. Yay!

Internship!

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:17:49 GMT

So, I had a good time this summer (mostly), doing things with family, sewing bridesmaids dresses and other things, etc. But all good things must come to an end, and among them is summer break.

Friday I flew from Salem to Baltimore, with a stop in Salt Lake City. When I got on the plane in Salt Lake, across the aisle from me was a woman with two small children. She asked me if I was travelling alone, and if I'd like to fly first class. I said YES. (Her husband flys frequently for his
business, and they bump him to first class automatically. But he wanted to be with his family to help with the kids.) So I flew first class for the first time in my life. The seats actually had adequate space to be comfortable for a long flight. The food was actual, you know, real food (I didn't know airlines were capable of such things!) served on real plates with real silverware. It was awesome. Rick picked me up in Baltimore, and drove me to Gettysburg. The next day, my supervisor and a council member drove out with a U-Haul van (bigger than needed, but they decided to do that rather than just take a church member's truck or something) to collect my stuff and lead me to Greensburg.

We got here to my new apartment and found that the associate pastor, her husband, and a member of the intern committee were there to help unload and help me settle in. With their help, everything was in the apartment in a jiffy. They even helped me get my clothes unpacked and hung up in the (walk-in) closet.

I like my apartment. It's not perfect, but it's not bad, either. It's in the "basement" of an old house that was divided into apartments in the 1960's, and my landlady (a sweet little old lady) lives in the apartment above me. There's off-street parking, and the lawn is nicely manicured with shrubs and everything. My apartment is in the basement, and the ceiling is kind of low and there are a few exposed pipes, but it's only three steps down from ground level at my front door (which is at the back of the house). The furniture is kind of ugly; it's a mix of seventies and eighties stuff, but it's in good condition and that's what slipcovers were invented for. It's in a good neighborhood, and within walking distance of the church. Everything is kind of small, but (aside from the bathroom) it's not *too* small. The only two things I don't like are the fact that the bathroom is practically microscopic, and that my internet and cable don't get connected until Friday morning.

I was installed Sunday morning. Everyone was very nice, and I think my supervisor and I will get along well, and I like the associate pastor. It's a good sized congregation (209 on an average Sunday, slightly lower than that because it's summer). I've already been invited to go to the National Lutheran Youth gathering in New Orleans next July.

Sunday afternoon I had lunch with the associate pastor and her family, then went to a visitation at a funeral home with my supervisor. He asked to meet with the director of the funeral home, introduced me and explained about my internship, and asked him to send me as many cases as he had where the family wanted a clergy person for the funeral but had no pastor of their own. He said several times that they were to call me as often as they could. It's a valuable experience that I was planning on doing, but I wouldn't have said "give me every one you can." Oh, well. It'll be a learning experience.

Monday morning I got my keys to the church and brought my books from my apartment to my office. It's a nice office, with gorgeous wood panelling on the walls. See, back in the fifties when they were renovating the church they were looking for a new pastor at the same time. So they made a gorgeous new office as incentive. Then they called a new pastor, and he said it was a beautiful office, but it was very small and not connected with the office the secretaries were in, and asked to have the big office next to the secretaries. And this one has sat unused ever since. (Well. I believe they used it for storage, but it wasn't used as an office.) So yeah, it's small, and it's not directly connected to the rest of the church offices. It's still a very nice office, and it looks good with my seminary books up on the shelves.

This afternoon I went out to lunch with the head of my internship committee, and she drove me around Greensburg to help get me oriented. Then the funeral of the man whose visitation I attended, and now I'm catching up on my e-mail before walking home for the evening. I'm so excited, I think this is going to be a great year.

Birthday fic for me!

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:42:25 GMT

htbthomas wrote me a fic for my birthday. It's a fun twist on the Superman Returns cliche.

I needed the pick-me-up. I leave for Pennsylvania at six in the morning on Friday, and there are some things that simply have to be done between now and then. Such as finishing the bridesmaid dresses. I thought I was in good time; all that needed to be done was the final fitting to make sure everything fits right with the zipper in, and mark where the hem needed to be. It had been fitted before I put the zipper in, so I wasn't anticipating it needing any alteration. Yeah. It needed an inch and a half taken in at the waist. That's not "take in the zipper an eighth inch or so," that's "take it apart and put it back together." I have no idea how I screwed up that badly. So, yeah, a lot more work and a lot more stress than I really wanted my last few days at home.

Fanart for Meeeee!

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:05:57 GMT

I just received my first piece of fan art made for a story I'd written. It's a manip for my story Survivors.

Go check it out.

Fic: Thine Own Self (the Lady, Be Good Remix)

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:25:56 GMT

gateverse_remix is open, you should all go read the great SG-1 and Atlantis remixes. butterflykiki wrote The Weight of Non-Existent Years (The Gravity Remix) for me. I wrote an almost 13k-word Sam fic.

Title: Thine Own Self (the Lady, be Good Remix)
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Samantha Carter
Word Count: 12,962
Written for: Christi (daisycm83) for gateverse_remix.
Betaed by: the awesome redbyrd_sgfic
Original story: On Your Mind
Summary: Sam’s always a good girl. Except when she isn’t.

Part One
Part Two

Fic: "Survivors," Doctor Who/Atlantis

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:44:22 GMT

Title: Survivors
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Doctor Who/Stargate: Atlantis
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: some violence
Spoilers: early season 4 SGA, season 3 New Who
Word Count: 7,402
Written For: Tali (aworldinside) for the Multiverse 5000 (multiverse2004)
Betad by: lilbakht
Summary: The Doctor doesn’t know why he’s here, but he knows it’s not an ordinary stop.

( “This is all just a misunderstanding,” the Doctor protested )

Women In Refrigerators

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:01:52 GMT

In 1994, comic book superhero Kyle Rayner (the Green Lantern) came home to find that one of his arch-enemies had killed his girlfriend and stuffed her body in his refrigerator. This caused a public comic book fan recognition of the "women in refrigerators" problem in comic books and (by extension, when you think about it) most literature and pop culture over the centuries.

This happens when bad things happen to women solely to motivate the men around them. Female characters are raped, murdered, mutilated, depowered (in comic books) etc., so that their boyfriends/husbands/brothers/etc. can grieve and seek vengeance. The female characters are only important for their impact on the men around them. They have no agency or weight in the story in their own right. On a fundamental level, they don't matter. A good example of this is the TV show "Supernatural," in which the primary cause of Dean and Sam (the heroes) starting on their adventures is the death of their mother Mary. But the only important thing about Mary for the purpose of the story is that she died, and that only because it affected Dean and Sam. Another good example of this is the movie "The Searchers, starring John Wayne. Ethan (Wayne)'s niece Lucy is abducted by Indians, and he and his nephew Martin spend the whole movie searching for her. The movie is not about her. At the end of the movie we know little more about her than we did at the beginning. The movie is about Ethan and Martin, and their friendship and strife in difficult circumstances. There are other female characters besides Lucy; their job is to die in the raid (so Ethan and Martin can grieve) or write to them while flirting with the men who stayed behind (so Martin can worry about his girl back home). Now, there's nothing wrong in principle with having a character who exists only as motivation for another character. You can't flesh out every character in a work; it's simply not possible, at least not if you're writing anything coherent and reasonably well written. And a lot of great works of art and literature use this model to great effect (including The Searchers, which is arguably the greatest Western of all time and is twelfth on the American Film Institute's list of the hundred greatest movies of all time).

The problem is when the characters who exist purely as motivation are all women and the characters who get motivated are all men.

This is one of those things where if you're looking at it in the abstract, it's real easy to tell when "fridging" is happening. In practice, with an actual story, it may not be so easy to tell the difference between chauvinistic cultural assumptions (even ones so deep you're not aware of them) and good storytelling. Where do you draw the line? At what point does it become objectionable? resolute has an interesting discussion of this you should check out, particularly the writers out there.

Project Peanut Butter: fighting child malnourishment

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:09:43 GMT

This is a project everyone should know about. Did you know that with the best medical care we can provide, traditional treatments for malnourishment in children were only effective 20%-40% of the time? Twenty percent! That's especially horrific when you consider that places like Malawi have a 70% rate of child malnourishment. Not only that, but the treatment required a long stay in a hospital, which meant that the mother had to neglect her work, home, and any other children for months. Also, even with good sanitary procedures the rate of secondary infections was high, and a kid who's severely malnourished enough to land in the hospital dosn't have the strength to fight them off.

With a new treatment developed by a pediatrician in 2000, the rate of recovery is increased to 95%. More than that, it can be administered at home by the parents, which means that the mother can stay at home and continue to work and care for all her children, and the malnourished child is at significantly lower risk of secondary infections. Also, it allows for the treatment of children before they become ill enough to need hospitalization, because mothers can't afford to spend months at a hospital unless things are really dire.

How does it work? Peanut Butter. They make peanut butter, add milk powder, vitamins, sugar, and oil. Nurses travel around evaluating children for signs of malnourishment. They give the stuff to the mothers of malnourished children, who then feed it to their children (it can be stored for several months at room temperature--it's just peanut butter with additives). A couple of weeks later the nurse comes back to evaluate the child and see if further treatment is necessary. Simple, huh? Did I mention that this stuff is packaged in reusable containers and made by local people in Africa from local commodities? And that it only costs $15 US per child? And is endorsed by the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition, the World Health Organization and UNICEF in a Joint Statement?

When I get my first month's stipend, I'm definitely donating to this project.

Putting the girls to work

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:37:22 GMT

Bwahahaha.

Maybe it's not very sexy to see breasts as a pair of batteries, but oil prices are so high, people are jogging to work. It may be time for breasts to start pulling their own weight.

Thank you, layec, for pointing this out. This is awesome. And the fact that at least parts of it are feasible within the next few years?

::goes away snickering::

Today's To-Do List

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:12:30 GMT

*Finish the second bridesmaid dress so I can have a final fitting.

*Sew the tunic I have cut out, so I can show it to Grandma when I go over to her house tomorrow to work on the bunad.

*Go over the notes given my on my gateverse_remix by the awesome redbyrd_sgfic, beta extraordinaire. The first draft's 12k words, and she's pointed out some things that are missing, and other stuff that needs to either be fleshed out or dropped altogether. It's due Monday, July 28th.

*Nag my ten-year-old brother to do his chores.

My new cell phone has arrived ...

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:26:47 GMT

... and I want to get a Stargate ring tone for it. Help! I would prefer not to have to buy one, the operators manual says the only way to get ringtones is to buy them, and there are all these sites that pop up on Google with free ringtones except I go to their site and I can't find what I'm looking for and they only offer free ringtones if you subscribe to their service.

My new phone is a Samsung a737 on AT&T, if that helps.

Gateverse Progress Report

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:33:46 GMT

Wrote about 2,500 words tonight. If you don't count the three long fics that were among my first fanfics ever and aren't very good and aren't much like most of the stuff I write, my average story is only about 1700 words long. So far, my gateverse_remix is at 11k+ words, with one more section left to write. And I have the feeling it's going to need extensive betaing to make sure all the thematic elements tie together. And I have ten days to finish it and get it betaed. Yaargh.

The Seed

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:45:36 GMT

Radek, honey, have you never watched any sci-fi? Stepping into a mass of weird alien vines that you know are dangerous is a very bad idea. Even if you've never been a sci-fi fan, you've lived in Pegasus for over four years. There are life-sucking vampire aliens!!!1!1!!! And killer robots! And other creepy/ooky stuff! I know you don't go offworld much, but still.

On other news, I've seen two previews for Continuum. Oooh, shiny!

Ostentatiously tacky is ...

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:36:10 GMT

... a huge concrete fountain (as in, at least a foot taller than me) in front of a pink manufactured home that sits on a postage stamp of land barely wide enough for the house to sit perpendicular to the street.

What I'm Afraid Of (Star Wars, Owen Lars)

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:22:40 GMT

Title: What I'm Afraid Of
Author: beatrice_otter
Summary: An hour in the life of Owen Lars
Rating: G
Fandom: Star Wars
Characters: Uncle Owen, Luke
Word Count: 1,183
Betaed by: redbyrd_sgfic

( What I'm Afraid Of )

Gateverse Remix Report

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:41:08 GMT

Okay, the story I'm remixing for gateverse_remix is under 1,000 words long.

So far, my remix is 4,755 words long, and I only have six sections (out of probably eleven, total, when it's done) written. The good news is, it's really flowing from my fingertips. The bad news is, I didn't expect it to be anywhere near this long and it's due July 28 which means I need to get it done soon so it can get betaed, because something this long isn't going to get betaed and returned to me overnight. If I'd had any idea how long it was going to turn out to be, I'd have started it earlier. It's a character piece, it's not supposed to develop a plot arc!

I'll be interested to see what people think of it, once it's done. It's about Sam, and some of the significant moments in her life.

Preaching this Sunday

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:30:10 GMT

I will be preaching this Sunday, July 13 at my home congregation, Saint Mark Lutheran in Salem, Oregon. Anybody who will be in the area is welcome to come. Worship starts at 9:30 in the morning.

View Larger Map

Fic: Ghosts in the Dark

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:43:42 GMT

Title: Ghosts in the Dark
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Han Solo, Luke Skywalker
Word Count: 1293
Written for: starwarsficfest, July 5.
Summary: Han and Luke, prisoners together in Jabba’s dungeon. Vader’s torture was very thorough. AU.

( Han had been in the cell in Jabba’s palace dungeon for a while )

Fic: Friends and Enemies (Star Wars, Darth Vader)

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:16:57 GMT

Title: Friends and Enemies
Author: beatrice_otter
Rating: PG
Characters: Darth Vader
Word Count: 651
Written for: starwarsficfest, July 4.
Prompt: OT: Darth Vader; Thoughts on Obi-Wan Kenobi--"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."

( Darth Vader let the man drop in a crumpled heap at his feet, reveling in the dull thump of a dead body hitting the floor. )

Question: classes in the late '70s?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:27:02 GMT

What would they have called the equivalent of "Talented And Gifted" programs in the US in the late 1970's? You know, the special classes for the smart kids, particularly in math and science? How young would they be available, and what would have been the ratio of girls to boys? I know by the late 1990's, the TAG program (at least in Oregon) was a joke and did pretty much nothing in a lot of schools, mine included, but my Dad was in a program in the 1960's that started when he was in fourth or fifth grade and taught a lot of advanced stuff--math, geology, astronomy, etc.

Bottom line, I want to know what kind of programs would have been available to Sam Carter as a girl, assuming she was born in 1965. As an Air Force brat, she probably moved around a lot. How would that have affected her schooling? I'm assuming she would have gone to a regular school off-base even if she lived on-base some times.

Quick beta?

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:01:04 GMT

Is there anyone who would be able to beta an Atlantis/Doctor Who crossover, and get it back to me tomorrow if I sent it to them today? It mostly needs help with plot and characterization, and a double check to see if I'm being too wordy.

It's for the Multiverse 5000, and it's due the 30th. I can get the first draft done, but it doesn't feel like it's "clicked," to me. I don't know if it just needs some polishing or if there's something that needs to be fixed. Or if I'm being a nervous writer panicking over a deadline.

When I have my own house ...

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:15:49 GMT

I want a kitchen with a large island. Or a peninsula. Because cutting fabric for sewing is easier on the kitchen table than it is on the floor, but it's still hard on the back. Those extra few inches of height make so much difference.

Right now, I'm working on the bridesmaids dresses for my brother's wedding. Two cotton sundresses (it's going to be outside in Hawaii). I am so glad my future sister-in-law said "Just buy the extra yard and a half on the bolt" when we were getting the fabric. Because the skirts are very full, and each panel is to wide to fit on 45" fabric folded in half (the standard fabric width), so you're supposed to unfold it and double it up (so you can still cut two pieces at a time). Except ... they're obviously assuming you're working with a fabric that has no "up" or "down," because it doesn't work at all if you do. The way they tell you to arrange the pattern pieces on the fabric to cut it out usually sucks, but this was worse than usual. I needed actually quite a bit of the extra yard to make it work. Fortunately, it's cotton, which is so easy to work with. It just lies there flat and straight on the table, needs a bare minimum of pinning, it's great. The lining, on the other hand, is thin rayon (breathes better than polyester, and these are designed with Hawaii in mind, after all). Rayon lining is a bear to work with--it slides around on you if you so much as look at it cross-eyed. Even if you use lots of pins, it's going to find some way to slide around ... and it's real easy to have it slide on you when you're putting a pin in, and the more pins you put in the more chance you have of that. On the other hand, if you use too few pins, you risk a catastrophic slip when you're actually cutting.

It's an easy pattern to alter to fit--it's a halter top dress with a relatively high waist, so only the bust and waist measurements matter. One girl has a size-14 bust and size-16 waist (there's no size 15 in between), the other has a size-14 waist and is just under a size-14 bust. Very simple to make the adjustments. Pattern sizes are much different than ready-to-wear sizes--I'd say both girls are probably a six or an eight in ready-to-wear. See, stores have been slowly increasing sizes in ready-to-wear garments for decades, because playing to the vanity of the women trying on garments sells clothes. If you can say "Oh, I must have lost weight--I'm not really a fourteen, I'm a twelve!" you're more likely to buy it than if you say "yeah, still as fat as ever." (This is also why sizes can vary so dramatically from store to store and brand to brand--they haven't all been increasing at the same rate.) Pattern sizes, on the other hand, have stayed exactly the same. If you take out a pattern from 1950 and look at the measurements they give, a size-14 is the same as a size-14 today. This is actually a bit of a problem, for me--I didn't start buying ready-to-wear clothing for myself until college. I'm not a clotheshorse, never went shopping for fun; all my store-bought clothes came from birthdays and Christmas, and the only time I had to actually look at the sizes myself was when I was looking at patterns and fabric to make something for fun. So when I went away to college and started to buy my clothes myself, my first instinct was to grab twelves or fourteens, and then wonder in the dressing room why they didn't fit, before going "duh, sizes are different" and going out to find something my size. (First few times, it took like four trips out to the rack to grab the right size; I am so not joking.) I still don't shop for clothes much; I'm only now getting to the point where my first instinct is to grab the right size in ready-to-wear.

This is just sick

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:20:30 GMT

Parents of 12-year-old Vegan girl who has degenerative condition may face charges.

Anyone who allows their child to be harmed because of their philosophical (or religious!) beliefs should be charged--and found guilty. Now, usually when a child is harmed by their parents' beliefs, it's emotional or mental, and you can argue that the parents didn't know they were harming the child, emotions and the mind being relatively difficult to accurately measure/understand, particularly with people we're close to. (Might not be true, but you can at least argue it.) A diet that causes malnutrition severe enough to give a twelve year old the spine of an eighty-year old? THAT IS KIND OF OBVIOUS, AND TAKES A LONG TIME TO DEVELOP. Not to mention the incredible number of broken bones this kid has suffered, with various other problems due to malnutrition. There's no way they could not have known what they were doing to their daughter.

Adults can live on a vegan diet (no animal products at all, including eggs and dairy products) if they're very careful about it, although they still can suffer problems from malnutrition, depending on their health in general and what their eating habits are. But it is simply not possible to provide a child with all the nutrients he/she needs on a vegan diet. I mean, children have died from being put on a vegan diet too young. Granted, there are many children who don't have serious problems being on a vegan diet, but is that a risk you really want to take with a child's life and health? When adding in eggs and milk will drastically reduce the risk? You don't even have to feed the child meat! And if you decide to try to raise your child as a vegan, you darned sure better be on the lookout for any problems caused by malnutrition.

No day is ever perfect, you know? But good is still good.

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:09:09 GMT

I had fun today. Grandma and I went up to Mill End Store in Portland to buy black wool for my Bunad, finally. A Bunad is the traditional Norwegian folk costume, worn for special occasions like Christmas and Syttende Mai (May 17, Norwegian Independence Day). I grew out of my last child version at least ten years ago, and we've been procrastinating on making the full adult version ever since. (The dress pattern is fairly simple. The embroidery is not.) I already have the bunadsølje (silver jewelry), bought when I spent a semester in Norway for a study abroad program in college. Here's what it's going to look like when it's done:

Except I'm not blonde and blue-eyed. The silver jewelry (sølje) is interesting. Norwegians have been very poor for the last thousand years or so, and Valdres (where my family is from) was not one of the more prosperous areas of Norway. So how come they traditionally wear bling if they're poor, you ask? It's the woman's dowry. A woman would go into marriage with a large sum of money (dowry), and it would all be spent on jewelry, so her husband could not use it or spend it and it couldn't get absorbed into the farm or what have you. This ensured that if he died or lost the family farm, she still had something to live on, and if all went well she had an inheritance to pass on to her daughters that the men of the family couldn't touch. It was a good way for a woman to protect herself financially in a highly patriarchal world.

By the way, did you know that two areas of Norway have officially registered tartans? One of them is the area my family was originally from. My last "child" bunad (I was a teen, but not quite fully grown) was in this style. Looked something like this:

Except I was older, and the red stripes were larger. And I'm not blond.

So Grandma and I had fun picking out the fabric for my bunad, and while we were at the store we found some cool patterns for fashionable dresses/jumpers/jackets/etc. that can be worn over a clerical collar blouse. Two of them we paid full price for, and the other five were in a box marked "two for $1.00," which was cool. Now, we're obviously not going to get all of them made before I have to go back to PA ... but I have a Cunning Plan. See, Grandma's style choices leave something to be desired. She likes to give clothes to people for Christmas and birthdays, but since she retired twenty years ago and doesn't get out to see what people wear these days, her choices have been, well, the less said the better. But! If she has a pattern, then all she has to do is get fabric to make it with, and that's within her abilities. She's an excellent seamstress, the sewing isn't the problem. She gets to give clothes (which she likes) and I get clothes I can actually wear. By the way, the icon used here is a picture of me taken as a senior in High School (taken by my parents, of course). The dress I'm wearing in it is one I made with Grandma. Our sewing together is a longstanding tradition.

Tomorrow, I go with my future sister-in-law and her bridesmaids to pick patterns and fabric for the bridesmaids dresses. It's going to be a destination wedding in Hawaii, so they're thinking sundresses instead of formal wear, and there are a couple fabric stores in Salem that would probably be fine for what we need, so I don't have to go up to Milwaukie twice in two days. Should be fun.

What keeps it from being an ideal summer day: I just got a notification from LJ that my extra icons are going to expire soon (which probably means my paid account is going to expire soon), and do I want to purchase more time. No, I don't, as I'm going to be switching to Dreamwidth Studios as soon as they're up and running, and I don't have money to pay for both LJ and Dreamwidth, and it's only going to be a month or two before I can switch over, probably. Which means a month or two with only six icons. Ah, well, I suspect I shall survive the deprivation.