Hi everybody! Long time no see.

It’s been a rather weird time for me the last six months or so, and that’s why I’ve been so absent.

Work was very busy all the way right up to Christmas, with me working overtime just the day before Christmas Eve.

It took me most of the holiday to unwind, delayed stress crawling like tiny insects inside my scull for days, and having to deal with my family on top of that.

The one thing that really brightened up my holidays was my boyfriend. He is such a sweetheart, I don’t deserve him.

He gave me my some really neat stuff for Christmas, a Smallville T-shirt property of Smallville athletics department, which I wear when I exercise (twice a week now, go me!). And a Smallville mug which is huge and therefore excellent for my breakfast tea.

As I’d also wished for various TV series DVDs, and I got some of them, among them season 1 of Stargate: Atlantis. I devoured the whole DVD box in just a few days. And then I had to go read fic, of course. And download season 2, and as much of season 3 I could get my grabby little hands on. Yeah, that was a great way to spend the holidays.

But that didn’t last long, of course. In January my work load increased again; in fact, the final deadline for the project was due late February.

I had to put pretty much all my private life on hold, friends, fandom, writing, the very Internet. Everything that wasn’t work, sleep and commuting was ruthlessly eliminated from my life. I’m lucky my boyfriend loves me, because he took care of the apartment and all that stuff, and took care of me when I got home more asleep than awake most nights.

In February the busy period at work it was finally, finally over. Then, typically enough, my laptop broke. It was completely toasted; I was lucky to get most of my fannish endeavors extracted through various recovery programs and the help from my amazing computer-savvy boyfriend. He’s my savior!

Even though he could save most of my files, my old laptop was essentially dead. I got a new one, a Dell this time. It didn’t arrive until the end of March. I named him Nataxis, and he’s very pretty. :)

By this time I had slipped back into lurkdom (my default setting) and found it surprisingly difficult to ease back into active fandom. Work never got back to the same level it had been before The Great Stress Period, as my superiors deemed me worthy of more responsibility and started heaping jobs at me.  Blessing or curse, you tell me?

It’s just now that I’m finding peace enough in my life to engage myself again.

So I guess there is much that I have missed, please feel free to pimp good Smallville stuff from yourself and others.

 
Some thank-yous:

Thank you talitha78 for the pretty virtual birthday gift, as well as the valentines gift! You’re a sweetheart!

Romanyg gave me 2 months paid lj-time! Thank you so much!

Serenography virtual x-mas gift. Thank you!

It’s good to be back. I have a WiP to continue (I have been writing on Lex Marks the Spot) and manips to finnish. Expect to see more of me over the next few weeks, as I finally have sweet, sweet vacation.

Got tagged by norwich36for this meme:

Rules: Write a journal entry for this meme with six random facts about yourself. Then pick six of your friends list and tag them – no tag-backs! These rules should be included in your entry.

1. My boyfriend and I met for the first time when we were seventeen, and got together two weeks later. That’s eleven years ago.

2. I don’t eat eggs if I can help it. I am in no way allergic. I can eat foods containing disguised egg, i.e. bread, cake, pancakes etc, but anything identifiable as eggs (fried, scrambled, boiled, omelettes, chopped up and put in a salad, you name it) immediately turns me off my food. Except eggnog. Raw eggs with sugar and alcohol works just fine for some reason. J

3. When I was about 13-14 years old, I was rather convinced that civilisation as we knew it would collapse, the third world war would break out and any survivors (i.e. me) would have to turn to the wild. I pre-emptively studied wilderness survivor skills for my area (rural/woodland Sweden) including starting a fire, purifying water with moss, crushing insects and worms to a protein rich powder to add to wilderness veggie soup, identifying, gathering and storing/cooking edible berries, herbs, lichens and roots (to go with the worm-powder, I presume. I mean, I made the powder but I never ate it. Blech! Live ants, on the other hand, taste quite good.), as well as making simple bird/rabbit traps. I never got around making any bigger traps (for deer and the like), though. My mother insisted that a garden filled with sharpened poles and heavy logs set to fall if disturbed was a Bad Idea with a toddler and a dog in the family.

4. For my ninth birthday I got my first knife. I was overjoyed and spent the whole summer carving things; a bow, little ships, everything you could think of. In the fall, though, mom and dad borrowed it to use when they slaughtered our rabbits and they returned the blade unsharpened. It never got quite the same after that. L

5. I had a period when I was very interested in the meaning of manes. I still am, but back then it was pretty much an obsession; I knew the meaning of hundreds of names off the top of my head. Both my first names stem from Hebrew and they mean “devoted to God” and “God is merciful” respectively. They couldn’t be more ill-fitting if you ask me; I am an atheist, I was born to an unwed couple and was never baptized. I don’t want to have anything to do with God, or organized religion of any kind. But I got my name because it’s my grandmother’s name, and I love her, so it’s good. My boyfriend’s name also has Hebrew origin and means “beloved”. Very apt, that. J

I’ve also helped name two of my younger sisters. Both of their names have old Swedish/Scandinavian roots, and their meanings are “Norse spring goddess” or "to decorate with fresh leaves" and “she who sees (things hidden from others)”. The last one could also mean “fairytale”, but that’s not the original meaning – see? Obsessed. \o/

6. I’m the oldest of five siblings. My mother assigned a color for each of her children when we were born. I was first so I got what she thought was the prettiest color; pink. I lived in a pink room until the age of 19. Walls? Pink. Bed cover? Pink. Carpet? Pink. Posters, lamps, cushions, drapes? PINK, fucking PINK! Until I was old enough to stand my ground against her this color scheme also applied to clothes. The others got (in following order) baby blue, mint green/turquoise, pale yellow and violet. Yes, my mom is a bit nuts.

Tagging:
elandrialore
clarkoholic
ciaan
shattered
betrue
mahaliem
 
Now, I haven’t checked if you already have been tagged by someone else, so if you have, ignore this. *g*