hmpf

Busy, busy, busy couple of weeks at uni(1). Like, *seriously* busy. *Insanely* busy. Sorry.

ETA:

(1) "Uni", in this case, means working at home, mostly. I'm bibliographising and doing preliminary research for my thesis, which is... well, actually kind of fun, but

*very*

time-consuming.

Also, none of the frelling books I need seem to be available anywhere near me. Grrr.

without warning when the pressure becomes too much.

I've been away from LJ for a few (2?) weeks, I think, and I feel terribly out of the loop, but what with getting sick and having to prepare for the 'Zwischenprüfung' and England and other stuff I simply *had* to reduce my online life. Drastically. Again.

So I moved to my parents, 'cause 1.) their place is much less hot than mine - where I live it was virtually impossible to concentrate on *anything* in the last few weeks, and 2.) they only have the most rudimentary online access. I've been barely able to check my mails, once or twice a week. Which was good for the 'Zwischenprüfungs' preparation. It was also good for my writing - I've written a lot, 'cause, you know, you can't cram knowledge into your head 24/7. ;-)

Now I'm back home, and back on line, though I still have four more days of revising for the exam before I can join the online community as a full time member again (wish me luck on Thursday...).

So, this is just an apology to everyone who hasn't heard anything (or very little) from me recently. I haven't forgotten you. I'll be back soon.

And, before I sign off to return to the bronze age ;-), a short fandom activity update:

- My first HP (and first slash) fic is almost finished, I'm going to do a last revision tonight. Actually, I sent what I thought was the final version to K'immie who's agreed to be by britreader already, but I discovered I had to rewrite part of it later. I rather like the story so far (only time will tell if I will still like it when I re-read it in a year or so) - in the two or three weeks I've been writing it's been rewritten close on 20 times, and I think it's really pretty good by now. Or at least as good as I can make it, with my still limited skill. It's short (4 pages, which seems to be my standard length for 'quickies') and depressing, as it should be. It's called, not without some degree of irony, 'Together'.

- I got feedback! For 'Mann Mit Mantel', which still is my most popular piece, but still... it's been so long since I last got feedback for that essay that I don't even remember. Probably a year or so. (The last feedback I got for anything was in March, for 'Epilogue'.) Anyway... that considerably brightened my day, and strengthened my resolve to rebuild my website as quickly as possible.

- The Scape Sisters have been at it again... We had a fun-filled evening yesterday, collecting material and creating the concept for a Scorpy/John vid, as well as trying to fill the holes that still plague our Braca/Scorpy vid. Sometime during the evening - we were watching 'Into the Lion's Den', loudly expressing our delight at all the John/Scorpy goodness - I remarked that we were like three old beer-bellied men watching porn... the Sisters didn't disagree.

- I re-read some of my old fics. Lots of stuff I would change now. But I guess one has to stop rewriting sometime, and just accept that a story is finished, and that one never will reach perfection, anyway. 'This Is Your Time', though, is so bad it really hurts. I probably should take it off my website, but then, I have the soul of an archivist - I want my *complete* works on my site. But maybe I should move it further down the fic list, so it isn't the first thing people will read.

- Scapekid has beta'd 'Simple Things 1: Rise and Shine' for me. I've had some issues with parts of that story for some time, though I'm very proud of other parts of it (namely the Chiana bit), and Scapekid had issues with exactly the same parts, and helped me a lot by clarifying what the problem is/might be. I've had the story removed from Leviathan, and will resubmit it when I've done a thorough revision. No compromises this time. (Last time I submitted it I had a nagging suspicion that something was wrong with the story, but couldn't put my finger on the problem, and so submitted it despite the feeling.) Who knows, I may even get feedback this time, if I manage to make the story as good as possible. ;-)

- And even more news from the writing front: for no good reason at all I translated my HP fic to German! And I even like the German version! Of course, now that I'm about to change a few things in the original English version I'll have to change the translation, too, but overall, I'm really pleased - even though it was a very fast translation, done in about 2 hours.

- Last, but not least, I'm soon going to be blue again, soon. A whole bunch of people from the farscaped mailing list will go to the Bochum comic fair 'cause Virginia Hey will be there, and we'll have a Scorpy and, well, me as Zhaan. Only this time I'll try and make the costume and make-up more convincing. We'll have a table there and will try and promote Save Farscape. :-)

Well... so much for my geek activities. I'll sign off now. Too much to do still...