YULETIDE???

YOU GUYS I cannot believe that it's already practically time for Yuletide noms! WHERE DID THE TIME GO????

Right now I have two thoughts for nominations:

1. Michelle Cooper's Montmaray Journals, though I feel kind of greedy asking as I got two awesome fics for them last year. But more is always better!

Plus, this gives me another chance to tell you why you all need to read A Brief History of Montmaray and its even more delightful sequel, The FitzOsbornes in Exile! (The third book hasn't come out in the US yet. I WANT THIS BOOK SO MUCH IT BURNS IN MY SOUL.)

Our heroine-narrator is Sophie, a charmingly bookish young women with a voice like Cassandra of I Capture the Castle, who lives in a decrepit castle with her brother and her cousin Veronica (who is made of AMAZING and is a socialist) and her mad uncle the king, on the island of Montmaray in the Bay of Biscay in the 1930s.

This ruling an island gig would be much better for Sophie and co. if they a) had any money, or b) had any inhabitants - but sadly they lost both in the first World War. And if that weren't enough, then the Nazis arrive to do some surveying.

The characters, you guys! (Seriously. VERONICA. But I love them all.) The light but expert hand with period detail! The seamless melding of personal emotion with fraught political peril! These books are brilliant and I urge you all to indulge.

2. The Baby-sitter's Club, so I can finally get the Claudia Kishi/Ashley Wyeth fic that I've wanted since I was, like, twelve. HALF OF MY LIFE, YOU GUYS.

I haven't decided who else to nominate for the other two BSC character slots - so many possibilities, you know?

And I haven't decided what to nominate for my third fandom. If no one else definitely commits to it, I'll probably nominate Megan Whelan Turner's Queen's Thief series, because what is Yuletide without Queen's Thief fic?

But if someone else does commit to that, I'm not sure what to nominate.

Then again, I could always just go with this Russian music video...

Autumn is coming!

It's such a beautiful day! For the past three months its been about ninety degrees every day, but today it's seventy, the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, and someone was playing a harmonica at the farmer's market.

I bought four storybook eggplants, never mind I have no idea how to cook eggplant of any kind. They cost twenty-five cents all together - storybook eggplants are quite small - so it can't be too much of a loss, and it might be delicious.

Also! Raspberries! There will be a raspberry tart!

And Starbucks had samples of pumpkin bread when I went there for hot chocolate. Mmmm...pumpkin bread. I love autumn.

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If this post hitherto has been too chipper for you, here, have Henri, the French New Wave Existentialist Cat. Oh, the first world problems! Oh, the existential despair!