Arctic Light

I guess that if you've read the news today, you've heard about Haiti's devastating earthquake.

I'll keep the editorializing to a minimum, but I did want to link to a moving post by abyssinia4077 in which she talks about receiving help from Haitian volunteers after Hurricane Katrina; you can read it here.

My usual go-to charities in situations like this are Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross (both of which I donated to this morning). There is also a list of relief organizations at CNN, a slightly different list at NPR, and a list of on-the-ground charities at skywardprodigal's LJ.

A fannish relief effort is being organized at help_haiti. I'll probably be offering some fic over there, but I don't have a link yet. ETA: You can bid on a custom-written fanfic (I'm offering minimum 1000 words, but knowing me, it's likely to be much longer) by posting a comment with your bid - i.e. pledge to donate - at this thread! (Min. $30 USD) If you can't afford to donate right now, you can offer your own services - anything from fic to cookies to custom-made crafts - at the help_haiti comm.

I just went out to run the dogs around in the yard -- and also the cat, who likes taking walks with us, for reasons known only to him. It's dusk, and I was out at the edge of the yard when a gigantic bird swooped over my head and landed in the tree above me. I thought it was a raven, though they don't normally fly around so late, because it was about that size and there's almost nothing else flying around the woods that's so big. But when I got a good look at its silhouette in the tree, it was a great horned owl.

I know we have quite a few of them, but I've only seen one in the wild once before, and that was on a nature walk that was specifically showing us an owl's nest, which hardly seems to count. *g* But this was much, much closer -- probably only twenty feet away from me. And they move like a cat! It's so creepy! The graceful, sinuous movement of their neck and head is just like a cat's body language, especially with the flat face and the ears.

The cat, in fact, was what the owl was looking at, with a speculative and hungry sort of air. Discretion is the better part of small pet ownership, and I scooped him up to make sure that he didn't end up an owl-kebob. Cat in hand, I strolled up underneath the owl's tree to get a better look at it, until it got fed up with that and flew away. I wandered after it for a little while (still carrying the cat, since I didn't dare put him down) and got a few more good looks at it on top of a pile of gravel in the gravel pit.

The cat was most put out by all of this. When I put him down, he showed his gratitude by flinging his arms around my leg and biting me on the shin. ("Cat sovereignty - violated! You bastard!") Decided it would be a good idea to take him inside for the night ...

galpalficathon is currently taking prompts (you can leave prompts even if you don't want to write) and spook_me is taking signups for Halloween stories. (I wrote for that one a couple of years ago - I wrote Ghost in the Machine, and it ended up being 48,000 words and didn't get finished until the following July, which kinda made me leery of signing up for another one *g*). Also, Ramadan began yesterday/today, and eid_fic is open for stories about Muslim characters in movies/TV/books.

It's full-on fall now -- yellow leaves, crispy days, occasional frosts. I love fall -- I love the way it looks and smells and feels, and I love how I get endearingly domestic at this time of year. It makes me want to harvest stuff (which is just too bad, since I was a total bum about the garden this year ^_^) and knit stuff and bake stuff. I've been spending way too much money at the farmer's market and getting all kinds of tasty things. (I'm particularly fond of little colorful potatoes, for some reason. Purple and red potatoes delight me. Consequently, we've been eating a lot of potatoes lately.)