Ashton Press

Down to the wire for MediaWest

Wed, 13 May 2009 17:07:44 GMT

The deadline to order zines for MediaWest pick-up is Friday, May 15^th. We are leaving for the convention on Tuesday, May 19^th. You can preorder print zines, calendars, CD zines (for those available on CD) and DVDs. To preorder, please email me with your name and details of what you want to order. Of course, you may submit mail orders, as well.

We will be located in the dealer’s room during open hours at MW. We will also be having a huge fannish garage sale in our room at the host hotel featuring books (used and new, hardback and paperback – if you love science fiction, romances, mysteries, cookbooks, Egyptian fiction, gardening books, nonfiction and more, you have to check this out!), DVDs, videos (vids of fannish interest as well as a huge collection of Disney and more), original fannish artwork, music boxes, puzzles, Egyptian and Celtic items, other fannish items. Many hardback books for $1 and paperbacks for 2 for $1. I will be offering a special coupon to those who purchase something from our dealer’s table so make sure you visit us both places!

To see which zines are available in print and on CD, check out the main pages for each fandom: http://fanzines.ashtonpress.net/ I’m working on a website to list all of the CD zines in one place but it isn’t completed yet.

I will have a limited number of Leah’s cartoons available as art prints at our dealer’s table. We don’t usually sell them in this format and they are only $5.00 each, so make sure you come and check them out. If someone wants to mail order, let me know and I can tell you which pieces are available.

I will have a new 2010 Supernatural cartoon calendar by Leah available, some 2009 Supernatural calendars by Montana (available at a discount – but I only have a few), and a few of Leah’s Multi-media 2010 calendars as well as a “Best of Startoons” for 2010 (only a few copies!). If you want any of our other calendars, please preorder: http://calendars.ashtonpress.net/

I will have a few copies of bri’s wonderful music vid DVDs for Stargate, Volume 1 and 2. I will only have a few so if you want to make sure you get them, please preorder.

I have five new zines appearing for the convention, including Miami Vice slash, Atlantis gen and slash, SG-1 gen and Supernatural gen. Details of all of the new zines at the link: http://fanzines.ashtonpress.net/newzines.htm

Christmas Elves!

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 19:44:55 GMT

Those who have received the annual Christmas card in the mail will know just how appropriate this is ...

Christmas Elf Name

My Christmas Elf Name is

Get your Christmas Elf Name at JokesUnlimited.com

Happy Holidays

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 17:45:14 GMT

Happy holidays, everyone. I haven't posted anything in ages. Just going crazy getting ready for our trip out of town. We're leaving next Friday and won't be home again until January 2nd. Luckily, I'll have my laptop along, as usual, so will still be able to check emails.

I hope everyone has a great holiday season.

Cool!

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 05:19:35 GMT

Copied the idea from Teneya ...

Lord of the Rings Convention

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:06:45 GMT

I've started posting my convention report from the Lord of the Rings convention here in Orlando. Right now I've only posted the first part about the first day and a half. I'll have more and photos, of course, as time goes by. And it will all be up on the site and maybe some on my LJ eventually. For now, though:

Our Stargate LotR Convention Thread

Happy Birthday

Tue, 26 Jul 2005 20:04:13 GMT

Happy Birthday to my significant other, Leah bizarro7!

Waaaaay Behind ...

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:13:24 GMT

Well, I'm way behind on updating my journal. We had lovely, lovely company last weekend. Maryann came down from Jacksonville and Susan came up from South Florida. We had a rocking party Friday night for the SciFi Friday premieres, complete with special cakes with Leah's cartoons on top -- one for SG-1 and one for Atlantis! If we'd had more company, we would have made one for Battlestar Galactica, too. LOL. We had hoped that local fans Patty and Randi could come, too, but Patty was in Australia and Randi had family in town. We're hoping to get together with them soon. Anyway, we put up a huge banner of Daniel in the dining room, barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs out on the grill, had all sorts of good eats, and settled in for the premieres.

We all spent SG-1 laughing, cheering and clapping and as one we groaned when it said "To Be Continued" at the end! Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica were equally as fun.

At the end, we all piled into the van and went to Books a Million for the Harry Potter premiere party. It was great fun, too. There was a lady dressed up in a robe who went around with a Sorting Hat and let us all pull out a really cute "house" pin. Exactly at midnight, everyone who had prepaid for a Harry Potter book was sent through the line very quickly and handed their book. We went to Barnes and Noble afterwards to see if they were giving out free stuff, too, but they were being stingy. They had posters but they wouldn't hand them out unless you could "prove" you had prepaid for the book and they made you stand in a huge line first to boot. It was chaos there. The Books a Million party was a lot more fun.

Thankfully, we had Maryann and Susan here for the rest of the weekend, so we spent the time watching DVDs of Ben Browder, Michael Shanks, Chris Judge, rewatching the SG-1 premiere, chattering, and shopping! And eating cake, of course.

I have to say that Part 2 of Avalon didn't disappoint, either. Mark was just here visiting today and right now I'm counting down to Queer as Folk. I don't know about everyone else, but last week's episode ranks up there as one of my all-time favorites. I can't wait to see what happens next.

So, nothing profound. Just lots of company the last week or so and lots of happiness with all the current TV viewing. I'm hoping to write some "real" reviews sometime this week.

Hugs to those in the UK

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 16:17:32 GMT

There are no words. I hope you are all safe.

Home Again

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 07:33:27 GMT

Well, obviously, we're finally home from our vacation down "south" to the Everglades and the Keys. We had mostly a nice time although it was hot and humid, of course. But no more so than here at home except for the last day when it suddenly shot up to 100 degrees! It didn't rain the entire time we were away, which was amazing, considering the fact that, being in the sub-tropics, we usually have rain showers at least once a day during the summer and it has been raining like crazy here in the Orlando area for the last few weeks. This *is* the rainy season in Florida, after all.

We saw lots of wildlife, including tons of fish on the coral reef at John Pennekamp State Park, lots of alligators, turtles, birds, deer and the most bizarre sight of all: bottle-nosed dolphins in the heart of the *Everglades*. We visited the Coral Castle, a place I've wanted to see for years, and the gorgeous Vizcaya Estate and Gardens, as well as a fantastic place that was a Fruit and Spice farm run by the local agriculture department. We got to actually eat some of the weirdest and most exotic fruit, picked fresh right off the trees. I couldn't even tel you the names of most of them they were so unusual but they were all tasty! I do remember one of them because it was one we saw in Australia: Jackfruit! It was tasty, too, and we actually brought one home with us. It's huge and not quite ripe. We have to wait a few days to eat it.

Down in Islamorada, we went to Robbie's and fed the pelicans and the Tarpons. Some of them were so huge they were as big as sharks. They would come right up out of the water and eat the fish out of your hands. If the pelicans didn't snatch them away from you first. Then we drove back up to Key Largo to take a trip out to the coral reef. The day before we'd watched the sunset in Key Largo from a place at the Marriott on the bay called Breezers.

On our last day, we drove home on the famous Alligator Alley (Tamiami Trail) and stopped to take an airboat ride while we were on the Indian reservation. At one point, we were out in the middle of a sea of sawgrass and we'd stopped at a deserted dock. There was an alligator up underneath the dock, just sitting there, all beady eyed. I took some photos of him. But something suddenly annoyed him (I don't think it was my photos because I wasn't taking one at the time!) and he started thrashing and banging up underneath the dock where we were standing! It was something else.

Photos later ...

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 07:12:37 GMT

I am The Chariot

The Chariot often appears when hard control is or could be in evidence. At its best, hard control is not brutal, but firm and direct. It is backed up by a strong will and great confidence. The Chariot can mean self-control or control of the environment. This card also represents victory. There are many types of wins; the Chariot's is of the win-lose type. Your success comes from beating the competition to become number one. Such moments are glorious in the right circumstances.

For a full description of your card and other goodies, please visit LearnTarot.com

What tarot card are you? Enter your birthdate.

More "Amusement"

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 21:51:36 GMT

To add to today's amusing quality!

Apparently someone was so disturbed by my long, detailed review of the newest Stargate book, "City of the Gods" by Sonny Whitelaw that was recently posted to Amazon UK that they complained to Amazon about it ... and Amazon has *removed* my review. Now, I don't know why, because Amazon didn't see fit to tell me they had removed it. And last time I looked, the review itself had received 11 out of 11 "helpful" votes (which was obviously annoying "somebody").

I have written to Amazon and asked them to explain why the review was removed. Because I guarantee you that I will be fixing whatever they perceive as a "problem" and will be resubmitting the review immediately.

Amazingly, the same exact thing happened when I posted a review for the *first* Stargate novel published by Fandemonium "Trial by Fire." My review posted to Amazon. It was well received. And then it suddenly *poof* disappeared off the site one day. That time I didn't write to Amazon. I surmised that perhaps the problem was that I had used *gasp* a curse word (I think the word was "crap" or "damn") in my review and someone had used it to complain and get the review pulled. I rewrote the review without the naughty word and it has been there ever since.

Dang. I guess I'm going to have to get busy reading that Sally Malcolm Fandemonium novel so I can post a review of it ...

Not Amused

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 16:27:45 GMT

I am not amused. Not at all. I woke up this morning to find an email from one of the heads of MediaWest. It was a rather curt email regarding the art show. The subject heading was MediaWest Art Show. Since I exhibit my photos there every year for the last several years, before I opened it I can be forgiven for presuming that the email was probably something in regards to next year's art show space or something else equally mundane.

But no. The email was to inform me that I had purchased a piece of artwork in the art auction and failed to pay for it. They now wanted me to pay for it plus shipping. The artist has already been paid. They told me the name of the artist and the title of the piece of art.

The problem is that a) I've never heard of the artist, b) the title of the piece of artwork was totally unfamiliar to me and c) the only piece of artwork I bid on in the entire art show was a large piece of stained glass that I didn't win. Also, generally, since I am an exhibiting artist, they do give you any artwork you've won when you're checking out your art but I can understand how something like that can get overlooked, too.

When I emailed back for more details I was told that it was a photograph of two people so presumably the title (which is two names) refers to the two people in the photograph. The two names are of two people that have nothing to do with Stargate fandom (my primary fandom).

So apparently someone wrote my name and my badge number down as a bonafide bid on some artist's artwork in the art show. Whoever you are, if you are out there, this is not funny. You have not "screwed" me over. I am not obligated to pay for this because I did not buy it. You have committed a fraud. You have screwed over the *convention*, who are obligated to pay the *artist*. And if you are the same people who did the same thing to *me* last year by bidding on my artwork and then never paying for it -- I was paid by the convention and never even knew it had happened until this year when the convention auctioned off the unclaimed art for the Fan Fund.

Zine Correction

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 18:54:55 GMT

A correction to the list of zines I posted earlier.

The Forge of Fire -- GEN, SG-1. A novella by Marianne Evensen. This one is dated last May, 2004, but I don't recall ever seeing it before.

This zine is most decidedly NOT GEN. It is SHIP. It is Jack/Sam SHIP. It has a bit of Daniel/Sha're in it, too. The editor/publisher told me it was GEN. But now that I've read it, I know otherwise. Sigh.

New Fanzines at MediaWest

Sun, 12 Jun 2005 00:38:10 GMT

Here's a list of the new zines I've made up from MediaWest this year:

My own zines:

Redemption #6 -- GEN, SG-1. Team oriented. Lots of Jack and Daniel friendship.
Pretense #7 -- SLASH, SG-1. Jack/Daniel.
Off the Record #2 -- SLASH, SG-1, Jack/Daniel, but what-if stories and AUs.

Other folks' zines:

Fragments -- GEN, SG-1. Team oriented. Episode based stories.
Foundations #6 -- GEN, SG-1. Jack and Daniel friendship stories. Anna and Cathy and crew have done their usual lovely job with all of the Pyramid Press zines this year.
Where a Man Once Stood -- GEN, SG-1. Novel by Charli Booker & Gallagater. Jack and Daniel friendship.
Atlantis Utopia -- GEN, Atlantis. Looks like two long novellas.
1BDR, OCN VU -- SLASH, Atlantis. McKay/Sheppard. Edited by J. M. Griffin. I don't see a website address inside the zine. I know the editor, though. If anyone wants the zine, I suppose I could forward an inquiry!
Sodality -- SLASH, SG-1. Jack/Daniel. Lovely color Lovett cover. Wonderful stories. I've read about half or more of it so far.
A Hundred Days More -- SHIP, SG-1. Jack/Sam; Sam/Pete; Jack/Laira. A novella by Marianne Evensen.
The Forge of Fire -- GEN, SG-1. A novella by Marianne Evensen. This one is dated last May, 2004, but I don't recall ever seeing it before.
Chaapa'ai #2 -- GEN, SG-1. The 1st issue won the Fan Q for Best Gen Zine.
DHD #5 -- SLASH, SG-1. Jack/Daniel.

I've taken the links from those provided inside the zines, so hopefully they are all correct!

Adventures in Travel

Sat, 11 Jun 2005 04:31:38 GMT

Well, obviously we are home from MediaWest. I suppose most of you know about our "adventures in travel" but for those who don't or even if you do and you just want to read about it, here is the story of the curse of Georgia and our van's vacation at Mammoth Cave National Park ...

Everything started out so great. I actually had all the zines bound before we left. The van was loaded ahead of time. We set out for Lansing on Tuesday night fairly early -- about 9 pm. We stopped at a Denny's and had a nice dinner. We even found a place where the gas was about 10 cents cheaper a gallon than anywhere close to our house and filled up the van with a free gas card that Leah had won at her office. We made it to Lake City, FL, our usual stopping place for the first night, around 1 am. Leah had said to me, "How's the cruise control working?" and I had thought it was an odd question and even said to her, "Fine? Why would you ask me that???" but there were no signs of trouble.

The next morning we got up early and the weather was great. I went to pull onto the highway and ... "Uh, Leah. We're going 0 mph." Cue Twilight Zone music because we were most certainly moving very fast onto I-75. All of the gauges on the van seemed to be working fine. Except for the speedometer, that is. It was very unsettling but there wasn't much I could do except proceed down the highway, following other cars until we reached Valdosta, GA. Once there, I phoned a GMC dealership. They told me that it had to be either the speedometer cluster or the speedometer cable ... but the service manager told me not to bother bringing the van in because he didn't have either part. I asked him what we should do since we were already several hundred miles from home and we were heading to Michigan. He told me to just keep following the traffic until we got where we were going or maybe I'd have better luck at another dealership in a bigger city. So we headed on down the road.

I do NOT want to know how fast I drove that day because people in Georgia drive really, really fast and we were making really, really good time. I'm just glad I didn't get a speeding ticket. I was starting to think that, hey, we'd actually make it into the mountains of Tennessee in the *daylight*, for a switch (this was after we'd taken a wrong turn in Atlanta, btw, and got held up there for over an hour extra due to one wreck on the highway after another ... sigh). We were in Northern Georgia, just south of Dalton when all of a sudden, the road seemed awfully ... bumpy. I looked in my rearview mirror and the back end of the van was really wobbling. And it was getting worse. I pulled over to the left lane and slowed down as it got worse and worse. I finally pulled off to the shoulder and stopped. We got out and walked around the van but could see nothing wrong other than the back tire was bulging some. Leah said it had been doing that all along due to the weight from the boxes in it. I'd had the tires checked before we left and had the air pressure adjusted, etc. Well, if the tire wasn't flat, that meant something *worse* was wrong with an axle or something. Sigh. We got back in but the wobbling was even worse when I tried to drive it further. So I pulled back onto the shoulder. It was only a few minutes further and BANG!!!! Huge blowout. Well, at least it *was* a flat tire and I hadn't been going 100 mph when it happened!

I phoned AAA and tried to figure out exactly where we were. They promised we'd be a priority since we were sitting on the side of the highway with huge trucks whizzing past only a foot or so away from us and nowhere safe to go. We had to simply sit in the van and wait. I also told them to make certain the repair truck brought a jack because ours was unreachable, buried under stacks of boxes. An hour and a half and about six phone calls later, in the pitch dark ... the tow truck finally showed up. With absolutely no equipment. No jack. Not even a flashlight. He had to pull the van up onto his truck and take us back to his service station. I told him to put two new tires on the back. Kaching! $200.00.

By the time we finally got on our way again, it was so late that most restaurants were now closed. We didn't find any place to eat until almost midnight (ironically, it was at a truck stop called Danny's -- I kid you not -- and the radio station in that area was called Jack FM ... we got a story idea out of *that* whole fiasco, anyway!) and it was 2 in the morning by the time we reached Nashville. Then we got up at 7 am so I could call the GMC dealer there. The dealership there told me that there was no way *any* dealer was going to have the parts to fix my speedometer. He said it was a part that had to be ordered and would take a minimum of 3-5 days if it was the cluster, since it had to be recalibrated. He advised me to just keep on following the traffic to Michigan. Sigh. It was a stressful way to drive, but what choice did we have? So that's what we did. At least we got an early start that morning.

We drove on to Kentucky and reached the Mammoth Cave area quite early after stopping at a couple of wineries in Tennessee that we normally pass during the night on our way up to MediaWest. After lunch, we went to take a scenic drive through the park. We had just started out when suddenly the car stopped dead in the middle of the road. No power brakes, no power steering, nothing. Just dead as a doornail.

We were in front of a little motel -- the Parkview Motel -- so we went in there to get the address to give to AAA. The owner was so kind to us. He called all over the place and looked up the name of the local GMC dealership and called ahead to them for us. He even offered to drive us there if we needed him to and said he would come and pick us up there, if we had to stay in town.

The wrecker showed up and it was bright fuschia. The driver told us he hated driving it but his boss's little girls had picked out the color. LOL! Once we got the van to the dealership, they were lovely to us and just bent over backwards to try to help us. Alas, our poor van, was in dire straits. The mechanic took us out to the van and said "I ain't never seen nothing like this before" and held up the black box computer that runs the entire van ... and gasoline poured out of it. He told us "You're danged luck it just stopped and didn't explode and burst into flames." It turned out the fuel injector was pumping gas up through the electrical system into the *computer* and that was what was killing the speedometer! The van was deader than a doornail. The dealership spent several hours calling all over central Kentucky to find another van for us to rent and finally found one at Rent a Wreck. It cost us $500 but we finally got to Michigan at 2:30 in the morning that night. When we got back to Mammoth Cave the next Tuesday, they had ordered our parts but still hadn't started working on the van due to the holiday weekend. They managed to get it fixed by that afternoon, but it cost $1600.00. Sigh. And of course we were a day late getting home because of the delay.

One nice thing: we took our scenic drive through Mammoth Cave, since we had to stay over that Tuesday anyway, and we even took a boat cruise on the Green River. I should have some photos here in a little bit. It was a lovely day. Which is a good thing because the next day sucked -- it rained all day on the drive home through Georgia and Florida! Georgia is cursed, I tell you.

Leah has taken to calling the van Frankenvan since it has a new brain. After we got home, only a couple of days later, the air conditioning on the van started cutting in and out. Aaaaaargh!! I just took it in to the dealer today. They couldn't find anything wrong with it. I think it's just haunted. They replaced a relay switch and didn't charge me for the part, just for the diagnostics. It seems to be working. For now.

Review of Stargate SG-1: City of the Gods

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 23:08:10 GMT

“City of the Gods” is the latest of Fandemonium's officially licensed Stargate SG-1 tie-in novels. The publishers have gone out of their way to make this book sound like a dream come true for fans of Daniel Jackson – their descriptions of the novel’s content emphasize Daniel, they refer back to a well known and beloved Daniel Jackson episode, “The Crystal Skull,” and to add fuel to the fire of any Daniel lover’s heart, they promise that the book also contains a special section at the end with Daniel’s Mission Report *and* they even throw in a little hint that there is Jack and Daniel content in the book by referencing a scene between the two of them as if it is representative of the story contained in the book.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, the Jack and Daniel scene that the publishers, when questioned, claimed they used to describe the book because they considered it a “pivotal scene,” takes place on page 143 of a 200 page or so novel. It is not one scene of many between Jack and Daniel. It is one of the few times they interact in the entire novel and is, in fact, one of the few times they are in the same place at the same time. The scene is about a page in length and it takes place in a briefing room between all of SG-1. It is not a particularly compelling nor pivotal scene. Actually, every scene in the book which contains Daniel (or Teal’c, for that matter) has a forced air about it, as if the author didn’t want to write those characters at all and they just shoved them in there as some kind of afterthought. Given how much of the novel revolves around Sam Carter, I'm left wondering why all of the advertising for this book seems to revolve around Daniel Jackson and none of it so much as *mentions* Sam!

The majority of the book is, in fact, written from Sam Carter’s point of view. When it isn’t written from her point of view, it is usually written from the point of view of someone *thinking* about Sam Carter. Often they are thinking about how wonderful she is or how beautiful she is or they are wishing she was there … in short, this book is a romance, masquerading as a science fiction book. The romantic heroine is Sam Carter and therefore the entire universe revolves around her. Every once in awhile she pines after her commanding officer, Colonel Jack O’Neill (who sometimes stops to think about how she is his guardian angel or how lovely her hair looks when he really should be concentrating on the mission … but, like the author, I digress). Anyway, Sam spends a lot of time thinking about all the times she’s certain that Jack has let her know in the past – not in words, mind you – that he also pines after her.
Aside from the romantic, well, asides and subplot (if you want to call it that), the book quickly becomes a jumbled mess. The names are impossible to follow – most authors when dealing with difficult to pronounce foreign names simply translate them for their readers and use the translated names. This author chose to translate *some* of the native’s names (mainly the children Jack and Sam meet up with) and not others. Why? Who the heck knows. The end result is a book that is very difficult to follow and read simply from the aspect of the cast of characters alone. Oh, did I mention Jack and Sam also meet up with a cute dog, too. Yup. Children. Dog. They’re a happy little family …

The plot is another matter entirely. For one thing, vast amounts of it make little logical sense. Parts of it seem to contradict the very canon of the show itself (something that these books, being officially licensed really shouldn’t do), and other parts of it seem to *change* the canon of the show (Nick’s giant aliens are now the *Furlings*???). To make matters even worse, characters seem to wander in and out of scenes without rhyme or reason. Nick should have played a very integral part in this story and instead he was relegated to a very small, very background role. He barely appears at all and when he does, he just seems to pop up, as if the author didn’t want to have to deal with him (or Daniel, for that matter). In fact, Nick disappears near the end of the story and we never see him again! We don’t even know what happened to him! The way this book is advertised, it is supposed to be highly focused on Daniel, Nick and the giant aliens, and there is NO resolution whatsoever to Daniel’s story with his grandfather and the aliens. Nick simply disappears from the book and that’s that. The author is obviously more interested in writing cutesy little scenes with Jack and Carter hugging each other. Oh, and things “moving” between them. (Don’t worry – it was only the little dog.)

I was also taken aback by some of the rather jarring historical inaccuracies. The author is supposedly an anthropologist and I’m going to assume their specialty is something in the area of Ancient MesoAmerica … uhm, the children Jack and Sam meet would not have the faintest clue what a chocolate bar was or recognize it *as* chocolate. This was a pivotal plot point that supposedly identified Jack to them as their returning god, Quetzlcoatl. Chocolate in the ancient world was bitter, unsweetened … and a drink.

Oh, yeah. And there is also the little matter of the supposed tie-in to Julie Fortune’s novel, “Sacrifice Moon.” There are a couple of sentences and paragraphs tossed into the story here and there that make little to no sense that obliquely refer back to events of Julie Fortune’s story. If you haven’t read it, you won’t even understand what is going on. Actually, even if you *have* read it, you might not understand what is going on. To me, it read like nothing more than an excuse to be able to point to it and say “Look! This novel is related to ‘Sacrifice Moon’!” Uh, no, it isn’t.

The special “Daniel’s Mission Report” at the end was also a joke. It is nothing more than the author’s historical notes with a sentence or two thrown in every once in awhile to make it sound like Daniel might have written them. And I do mean only a sentence or two.

If you're a completist as far as collecting Stargate merchandise, you adore Jack/Sam (or just Sam) or you can get a copy cheap ... well, otherwise, I wouldn't recommend bothering with this one.

Ba'al Better Behave

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 02:32:42 GMT

*Faints* Ba'al "wants" me. Oh. My.

Q&A Time

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 23:30:28 GMT

Gakked from Amy...

1: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4.:
"The Game" by Laurie R. King. "...laid plans might leave us stranded i the middle of Kent." Well, that's rather boring.

2: Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?
A photograph of Michael Shanks (that I took) pretending to be Puss in Boots.

3: What is the last thing you watched on TV?
Survivor Palau on Thursday night.

4: WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what time it is:
6:45 pm

5: Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?
7:10 pm

6: With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
The air conditioning. The ceiling fan overhead. Leah coughing in the other room. The TV in the other bedroom. Something scratching (probably one of the bushes blowing in the breeze) on the screen on one of my office windows.

7: When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
A couple of hours ago. We were out running errands and shopping for most of the day. We started out by going to the post office, went to lunch, went to Wal-Mart, went to Best Buy, etc.

8: Before you came to this website, what did you look at?
My email and the Our Stargate Forum.

9: What are you wearing?
Uh. Nothing. And none of your business!

10: Did you dream last night? When did you last laugh?
I don't remember if I dreamed last night. I don't remember when I last laughed. Probably at some point when I was reading Live Journal. ;-)

12: What is on the walls of the room you are in?
Lots and lots of fannish artwork and photos based on Blakes 7, Star Wars, Highlander, Stargate, cartoons, Young guns, Genesis (the band), Lestat the vampire (a poster) and more.

13: Seen anything weird lately?
Is that a trick question?

14. What do you think of this quiz?
On a metaphysical level or just on a scale of 1 to 10?

15: What is the last film you saw?
Sahara. Last night. Brilliant.

16: If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?
A house in Arizona or New Mexico so I could get out of humid Florida.

17: Tell me something about you that I don't know.
I'm pretty much an open book because I talk a lot, online or off. Hmmm. Don't know. I'm really shy and I hate to talk to strangers and I always have to force myself to do it. It's true. In fact, I hate to talk to strangers on the phone. Leah will confirm this.

18: If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
Make people more tolerant. Live and let live. I'm a Libertarian at heart.

19: Do you like to dance?
Yes, but I can't really do it anymore.

20: George Bush: Is he a power-crazy nutcase or some one who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?:
If I say he's a nutcase, is the FBI going to visit me? Yes? No comment.

21: Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
Elizabeth.

21: Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
Gareth

22: Would you ever consider living abroad?
In a heartbeat.

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:03:42 GMT

And just to show my week consisted of more than assholes being nasty to me in restaurants and cutting me off in traffic and migraines due to the stupid Florida weather that can never make up its mind whether or not to be hot or cold (but is almost always humid ) ... I've spent the last week finishing up the edits on the latest issue of Pretense 7. And I'm almost finished. I'm working on the masters ... the best part is that I've gotten some really kick ass artwork of Jack and Daniel this time around. Some lovely, lovely photo manips as *well* as some beautiful hand drawn artwork, both from old-time regular contributors and some up-and-coming new artists. (Or at least new to my fanzines.)

Best of all, I'm feeling energized about Jack and Daniel fan fiction, about SG-1, about Stargate, and I'm really looking forward to Season 9. I'm already moving forward on the edits and the masters for the other new zines, Redemption and Off the Record 2.

It was great to see Michael Shanks, Carmen Argenziano and Gary Jones here in Orlando a couple of weeks ago. I wish we had the funds to go to a few more conventions this year. Of course, who knows? Something might come up unexpectedly!

I can't wait to see those of you who attend MediaWest every year.

Spring Fever?

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 23:27:05 GMT

Sooo, to top off a weekend where I swear every single time we went into a restaurant we had some kind of problem (we should have known better by today, shouldn't we? I should have just cooked at home?) ...

Leah needed to go to Kinko's. So she says "Let's go out to lunch!" So we go out to Nathan's. It's not quite a buffet. It's got a salad bar and you can get soup and salad (which is what Leah ordered) or it's got all kinds of funky wraps and sandwiches and such (which is what I was thinking of ordering). There was no one in line. The placed looked like a disaster zone when we walked in, though. There must have been some *big* parties of people in there earlier. There were tables all pulled together and such and all dirty. The place was a mess. But a lot of people had already left. It was later in the afternoon.

Anyway, as I was saying ... no one else was in line to order. We walked up. Leah only wanted the salad bar so she told the girl behind the counter that she wanted soup and salad. Then she had to pick her soup. She did so while I was looking at the menu. I was trying to make up my mind what I wanted. I swear, we'd only been standing there all of a minute or two. I wasn't even aware that someone had come up to stand in line behind us when all of a sudden I heard Leah say "Uh, she's still taking our order."

And then I hear this masculine voice behind me say "Well, SHE doesn't know what she wants."

Leah says, "Well, you'll just have to wait a minute until we're done ordering."

He says: "Maybe NOT."

I'm standing there, blinking, stunned, still trying to take it in that this man (and he had a woman and I think even *children* with him), was trying to SHOVE past me to order because he couldn't stand to wait a minute or two for his turn. He YELLS past my ear at the girl behind the counter "I'll have a tuna fish sandwich ..." and, bless her, the girl shakes her head at him and says "Just a minute" and continues to wait for ME to order. I didn't even turn around to acknowledge him. I just ordered, although I felt pressured to hurry up then.

But I couldn't believe it. I have to admit, I turned around after I ordered and *ahem* looked him in the face and called him an asshole and walked off.

Is it just me or have people taken their stupid pills this week? Especially the drivers ... Especially here in Orlando ... Maybe I need to take a soma or something ...

Vulkon Rocked!

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 23:59:10 GMT

I'm still trying to recover. We had to get up early almost every day this week -- on Monday to take Deej to the airport and then on Tuesday and Wednesday because Leah had to take a training class. So the recovery time from the convention has been slow!

I'm sure everyone who wanted spoilers has seen the news I posted at http://www.savedanieljackson.com about Season 9 by now.

I and others have been posting tidbits of convention reports as well as photos at Our Stargate in the Vulkon thread beginning at this message: http://forums.delphiforums.com/ourstargate/messages?msg=5945.246

The OS group got together for a fantastic breakfast meeting on Sunday morning. It was great fun meeting everyone from the forum that we hadn't seen in person before. And then immediately afterwards, lots of us got in line to have photo ops with Michael Shanks. Always a fun thing.

And, of course, we had a house full of guests throughout the weekend. It was an absolutely fantastic weekend for us and I hope that all of our guests enjoyed themselves as much as we enjoyed having them here!

More later as I recover!

Woohoo!

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 23:16:20 GMT

I outrank Carter!

Colonel
Congratulations! You scored 84!

You probably have a dedicated tower just for Stargate and possibly have an outfit in the works. Keep up the good work, Colonel.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on gatepoints

Link: The Ultimate Stargate Test written by joram on Ok Cupid

At last!

Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:22:12 GMT

At last Michael Shanks (along with some other Stargate guests -- Gary Jones and Carmen Argenziano) is coming to Florida! I'm so excited. Leah and I have been begging Joe Motes (of Vulkon) to bring Michael Shanks to a Florida convention for years and years. Long before Michael had ever even done a convention in the United States. And even better than the Stargate guests converging on Altamonte Springs, Florida (at a venue literally 5 minutes from our house) are all of the friends from far and wide who are coming into town, as well. Some of them are even staying at our house. I can't wait to see everyone. Especially since, as of right now, this Vulkon here in town is the only convention other than our annual trek up to MediaWest that is on our schedule for this year. Although I suspect we'll end up going to some, if not all, of the other Florida Vulkons in the coming year.

I've been doing a lot of work on the house the last few months, whenever my health allows it, and the fact that we have lots of company coming for this convention has spurred me to finally sort out the 2nd guest room. It's used mainly as a storage room for Ebay supplies and materials, the zine masters and supplies and my photographic supplies. But it also serves as an extra guest room. It was a lot of hard work to get it back into order after years of neglect but the end result is quite nice. I'm enjoying seeing everything more organized and the other half of the room looking like a guest room again. Plus, over the last few years we've changed the decor of other parts of the house -- the dining room is completely Celtic in decoration, the library and living room are all Egyptian and the kitchen is Art Nouveau. So all of the art and such that we had previously used throughout the house that had a distinctly "cat" flavor was just piled up in the guest room. I had sworn I was going to turn that into the "cat" room. And I did!

The only bad thing is that I've overdone things so badly and gotten so little sleep that my fibromyalgia is flaring up really bad. My x-rays came back from the doctor showing arthritis had set in on my injured ankle and knee. Because the fibro makes me stumble a lot and also fumble things, I was fixing some leftovers for lunch yesterday afternoon and when I took the pasta sauce out of the microwave, I dropped the container. Meatballs and pasta sauce went *everywhere*. Aside from the fact that I really didn't want to have to scrub the floor and the cabinets and my floor mats (which had to be washed twice to get the stains out), the boiling hot sauce went all over *me*. I have 2nd degree burns on my wrist and my thigh. The one on my thigh has an absolutely huge blister on it already. Luckily, I have some amazing burn treatment cream called Silvadene and it seems to have helped the burns on my fingers and wrist already. There's not much to be done for the one on my thigh except put some gauze over it. Sigh. It's always something!

But I've got the guests starting to arrive tomorrow and then the convention all weekend to distract me. I can't wait to see Michael and the others. It's been so long, it seems!

And after the convention, it's the rush towards MediaWest, with one zine almost ready to go to press (Pretense) and two others still looking for submissions (Off the Record and Redemption) in the hopes they'll be out in time for MediaWest as well! I love it when a zine comes together.

Bwhahaha

Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:08:08 GMT

You Are Belle!

Intelligent and kind. Your beauty goes much further than your apperance. Also, you make judgements of people based on their personality and not their looks. Attaining all the knowledge that you can is one of your major goals in life, but you are also a person who can make things happen.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

Karen!

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 23:37:43 GMT

You naughty girl!

ashton7's LJ stalker is karendreamer!

karendreamer is stalking you because you said something bad about them on your LJ. They are also deluded!

LJ Stalker Finder
From Go-Quiz.com

My Torrid SG-1 Romance
Name
Favorite scent
You are wanted by	Ba'al
In the	Infirmary
When?	During the lunch break
With	Siler's wrench
You will be dumped for	Siler's wrench
But you will end up with	Ferretti

This quiz by AmyMcCabe - Taken 42 Times. </a>