Arctic Light

1. Apple's gone DRM-free on all iTunes music! *cheers* And they're implementing variable pricing, from 69 cents to $1.29. This is actually good news for me, since most of what I buy from iTunes are older or obscure songs that are likely to fall into the cheaper price tier.

2. I love having so much light in the evening. It's not fully dark until 10 p.m. or so; it means that I can get off work, make dinner and still have time to walk the dogs or do outside chores before it's too dark to see. (Of course, soon we'll have more light in the evening than we know what to do with. But at this time of year, it's very pleasant.)

3. I read a totally awesome coda for SPN 4x17, Apocrypha: Alias Smith & Wesson (with spoilers for 4x18), which is gen and deliciously meta. (Warning: if you really like the direction this season has gone, you may not find it nearly as happymaking as I did. It reads very much as a fixit. But 4x17 has done amazing things for my fannishness about the show. The only problem is that now I want to watch the Smith & Wesson show, not the Winchester & Winchester show.)

4. Edited with more happy: I just checked Amazon.com's package tracking, and the package with my Dresden Files book is in Fairbanks! It should be in my mailbox tomorrow. *squees*

I appreciate the irony of my icon. Thermometer says -20 (about -28C); however, the Internet weather claims that it's -30 in town, so either it's warmer on our side of the hills, or the thermometer is reading high because it's next to the window. It's definitely cold, though -- bitter, hands-freezing-to-metal cold. Isn't Dec. 21 supposed to be the official "first day of winter"? Is it entirely fair that it's supposed to be -40 tonight when it isn't even officially winter yet?

Some recently read stories that I can't rec at stargategenrec because they're either not SGA, or not gen:

Next Year in Jerusalem - SPN, PG, gen
A short, really wonderfully written Bobby POV, overlapping with the events of the flashback in the SPN Christmas episode. It reminded me how much I love Bobby, and why.

12 Days of Christmas - SGA, PG-13, John/Rodney
Rec'd not so much for the Christmas-ness of it (which doesn't matter that much to me) but the hilarity of it. My sister and I used to joke about this exact problem with the "12 Days of Christmas" song when we were kids, and I loved this Atlantis twist on it. If you're not a slash reader, there's actually just a little bit of slash at the end; you might want to give it a try anyway.

Crap, my dish towel just fell in the bread dough! Ahem. Sorry. You can tell what I'm doing while I'm writing this. Continuing...

Male Enhancement - SGA, NC-17, John/Rodney
I'm actually very, very torn on this story. I'm torn because the first 3/4 or so is, hands down, one of the best AUs I've ever read in this fandom; I would seriously read this one as a novel. I was amazed at how deeply it drew in my emotions. And then there's something about the ending that I had so much trouble with that it affected my enjoyment of the rest of the story as well. I wish I could give this one a wholehearted rec, but I just can't -- however, it impressed me so deeply that I want to rec it anyway despite the problems I had at the end.

Because I know people are going to ask, ( here's the problem I had with it -- READ THE STORY FIRST. REALLY. )

Aha, I just figured out how the dish towel which was on top of the bowl of bread dough ended up in the bread dough. *glares at cat*

And a couple from my slightly older bookmarks, but I don't think I've ever rec'd them here:

Dysmas - Due South, gen
I don't usually read DS fic, but this was absolutely brilliant.

The Doctrines of Natural Law - Coldfire, gen (yes, gen!)
As book fandoms go, finding Coldfire fic isn't all that hard, but I didn't think there actually was any such thing as Coldfire gen. It might not stay gen if the author wrote the full version (as mentioned in the author's notes), but I was delighted to find this nonetheless.

Eight Crazy Pilots Serenity Didn't Keep - Firefly (crosses over with a bunch of fandoms), PG
A bunch of very entertaining what-ifs. Although one of them broke my heart ... again. Guess which one. *g*