*No, this isn't the start of the Roadtrip
*Yes, this is me going to Shore Leave with media_junkie
*Yes, I am ready to start the panic packing phase of the Roadtrip

In other news:

*I baked a cake in my electric frying pan -- since it will be my primary cooking device during the roadtrip, I am well pleased with the experiment - will post pictures sometime this weekend

* I have seen the first 4 parts of Torchwood's Children of Earth. To say more than that I must see part 5 would be spoilers. Although, reactions to episode specific content aside, this is orders of magnitude above better quality than anything we've seen from Torchwood before.

*Based on the fighting style of my backyard ground hogs, it is now easy to tell that at least one of them is male. There may be pictures of that too ;-P Unfortunately the screens were closed and I have a hard time focusing through them.

*Ack! I've got to leave and I'm still not packed!!!

I think it's trip planning that's making my brain short circuit, and make me think that oh, I posted the other day, didn't I?

What I've been doing for the last two weeks is gearing myself up for Roadtrip '09 - A Fan and her Prius.

-->Let's start there, I need a cool name for the roadtrip, suggestions?

Just in case I though that I posted about it and didn't, here's the run down.

-I need to get to Minneapolis for Writercon
-While thinking about that, Megacorp told me to used oodles of my banked vacation time or lose it
-So I thought, what if I go the Minneapolis and just keep driving?
-What if I drive so much, I can join up with media_junkie at Gencon in Indianapolis in the middle of August?
-Huh, what interesting things could I do on the way to Minneapolis?

So on July 24 (possibly the 23rd) I head out for

Niagara Falls; Hillside Music Festival - Guelph, ON; Bruce Peninsula, On; Car Ferry to Manitoulin Island, ON; Sault Ste. Marie, ON (possibly Michigan too); Thunder Bay, ON, Cloufet, MN; Minneapolis - Writercon

And then after Writercon

Pipestone, MN; Badlands, SD; Mt. Rushmore-Crazy Horse-Deadwood, SD; Devil's Tower, WY; Cody, WY; Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. -- I'll be spending about 4 days there

On the way out, Craters of the Moon National Monument, ID; Lava Hot Springs, ID; Arches National Park, UT; Rocky Mountain National Park - Trail Ridge Road, CO; Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indianapolis - Gencon

I may see the salt mines in Hutchinson, Kansas depending on how I'm doing for time. I'll stop at least long enough to see the arch in St Louis.

--> Any must sees along that route? For those of you who have been to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, any preferences for campgrounds whether they are in the park or outside of it. I have reservations up to the doorstep of Yellowstone and reservations for my first two stops out of Yellowstone. Still working on the park itself. Worse come to worst I'll get a site when I get there -- most sites in Yellowstone can't be reserved and they are first come, first serve.

***

In the meantime, I've been doing work around checking distances in Google maps and gathering equipment. I'm armed with a new, moderately priced camera and a bag full of extra batteries and accessories to go with. I also have the spiffiest new tent that whooshes into existence and folds up just as quick.

I'm downloading audio books and music --> by the way, I would still love everyone's Podfic recs. Got a few from my last request :-)

I just dragged the camping gear out of the shed. Fortunately, it looks good, unlike a lot of other things in the shed that have suffered because of weather and critter incursions. the camping gear was in an 18 gallon hard plastic tub, which the mice seemed disinclined to gnaw.

I have to go through the gear and see what's usable, in need of repair or needs to be replaced. I'd like to pack the old tent in the bottom of the trunk just in case. It's small and will be invaluable should I get caught in some kind of tent-rending storm. Don't forget, I'll be camping for most of a month. I have to check the lantern/flashlight type devices.

I've already washed the air mattress sized sheets and started gathering the road food. Most of the places I'll be staying, I'll have electric at my tent, so I'm hoping to do most of the cooking with a hot water kettle and an electric frying pan. Yellowstone will be a bit of a pain because no electric. I'll have to fire up the camp stove and see how it's doing. Still debating the whole cooking thing.

***

Today, also in prep or my trip, I finally primed the spare room - go me! I had to go by a second can of primer from the store, but the priming is done. I also had them tint the second can of primer and I'm feeling *MUCH* more confident about the color. See, I had colors picked out and then I went to the mismatched paint pile and found two cans of the low-VOC paint in nearly the exact same color. It's official name is Nantucket Gray - which I didn't pay much attention to until I got home and saw it under different lighting where the fact that it was gray and not a exactly an olive green showed up. In the room, it looks green again ;-)

Still a bunch of work to do before I take off. I want the room painted and the new floor laid so that when rockin_violin and family borrow my place while I'm off on the road trip, they don't have to visit a construction zone.

I've been keeping up with summer TV and have nearly finished The Shield on DVD. The Shield, by the way, is awesome; it was so robbed of Emmy's. It's like a modern version of Shakespear. You have kings and kingmakers with treacherous generals and both loyal and foolish foot soldiers. It seriously rocks.

I've also been watching the 30th Anniversary edition of Close Encounters because omg!Devil's Tower!

I hope the holiday is sunny and warm for all my Canadian peeps - Enjoy!

If you are not part of the challenge or are done with the challenge, this is *ENTIRELY* skippable. I was going to reply to a post on the comm discussing the prompts. I wrote over 12,000 characters which would have meant breaking this into 3 comments and I'm not even sure if the post is taking new comments, ( thus... )

The case was Safford Unified School District v. Redding and here are the details

13 year old girl, Savannah
8th grade
Another student says that Savannah is carrying around
prescription-strength ibuprofen concealed on her person
The school did not call her parents
The school did not try to check the veracity of the tip
The school strip searched her - two female administrators, on the
order of a higher placed male administrator, checked in her bra and
underpants for the pills
By the way, she didn't have any medication on her

The court ruled 8-1 that her 4th Amendment Rights to Privacy had been
violated. In case you're wondering, the Justice who thought it was
okay to strip search a 13-year old on a tip from another 13-year old,
without even informing the parents, because it was in the best
interest of the school trying to enforce good order and discipline -
Clarence Thomas

-- oh yeah, are middle schools are just like the armed forces.

But because kids in school do not enjoy the same kind of protections
that an adult facing the cops do, they did allow that it might have
been okay if

-they thought she was carrying very dangerous or illegal drugs
-they had restricted the search to her outer garments
-because the law was not completely clear at the time, the
administrators involved are not liable -- Ruth Ginsberg (we love you
Ruth!) disagreed on this count, thinking that the entire business and
humiliation of questioning the girl for 2 hours and not talking to her
parents should have been more obvious. Not to mention accepting the
word of the classmate as solid evidence.

I feel a little better about the world right now - not perfect, just a
little closer to fine.

.Voting is up in ncis_lfws, Session 2, Round 4. - Prompt is in the voting post.

Voting closes Friday, June 26, 9:00PM US, EST EDT

It was a quite celebration with friends on a rainy Saturday. We did a
lovely brunch and watched some videos with the kids. We did set up a
little altar for summer wishes. I asked for good camping weather and
no flat tires. Midsummer is one of those holidays that kind of speaks
for itself - like what more would you want that a day that was filled
with more light than you can use?

...which seems so strange with the things on my mind today

I like my We'Moon Calendar - lots of spiritual and especially feminist
spiritual art and musing. I'm often turned off by the
political/activist track that so many of the works take. It's not
that I don't agree, but I prefer to separate the two...

This weekend, like so many, of you I saw the footage of the Death of
Neda. For those that haven't seen it yet, it is the raw footage of a
16 year old girl in Iran that was murdered while watching the
protests. She was shot from some distance, and her family is in
anguish as they try to save her but cannot. This Time Article, In
Iran, One Woman's Death May Have Many Consequences brings more
context to the events. Neda is not the girl's name - or perhaps it is
now. Neda is Farsi for the voice or the call. If you
Google or do a YouTube search, you will find it. Even though it is
graphic and disturbing, think about watching it anyway; it is a crime
that deserves witnesses.

One of the things I wondered as I watched - Was Neda a random victim
or was she targeted the conservative factions, because she was wearing
jeans.

This is a poem in We'Moon's Summer Solstice pages...

Dancing as Liberation

There are countries where it is a punishable crime to dance.

Women must cover their heads,
never raise their voice in song and
never ever display such immoral conduct as dancing.

Those who forbid the dance forbid life.

If they tied me in ropes
Held a gun to my head
And forbid me to dance
I would dance in my head.

If I woke up tomorrow
Without limbs that would move
I would dance in my soul.

If dance was taken from me
I would snatch it back.
I would dance with my eyes.
I would dance in my breathing.
I would dance completely still.
I would dance with the atoms moving inside me.

I would dance in the mingling of voices around me
Layering transcending swooping into each other.
I would dance in the red-blushed sky that caresses the tree line.
I would dance on the call of the geese
that cut through the sky above me,
my winged partners in the dance.

If dance was taken from me
I would snatch it back.
I would dance passion.
I would dance pain.
I would dance magick.
I would dance at my labor and dance at my rest.
I would dance my power.
I would dance my palpable joy of existence.

In some countries it is illegal to dance.
It is illegal to display such immoral conduct.

Dancing is an act of liberation
It is for those who must dance in stillness
that I open myself up in dance.

Victoria Day 2007
As printed in We’Moon ’09, At the Crossroads

***

The World is watching.
And some of us are dancing for you, Neda.

Things *YOU* can help with
*Podcasts! I'm going to be taking long ass road trip and would appreciate
cool things to listen too. Based on my experience with audio books, a good
reader is the key to success. I'd love recs for fanworks in NCIS, SG-1, SGA,
Angel, or just about any fandom that I enjoy watching even if I'm not a big
fic reader in that fandom. This is a chance for shows like Eureka!,
Supernatural, Bones, Psych, BSG, Dr. Who and Torchwood to represent.
*Oh! I know that Dr. Who and Torchwood also have pro audio works out there,
so recs for them appreciated.
*Also, radom works with the favorite actors doing readings would be good.
Somewhere I have a bunch of the ST:tNG cast doing The Time Machine,
and at Tribal Forces I picked up a bunch of the SG-1 cast including Claudia
Black doing some audio plays. By the way, Gillian Anderson and Tim Curry
are totally hot, no matter what dreck they're reading - the only way that I
will subject myself to Anne Rice anymore.
*And while I'm rambling about all this, Johnathon Davis, who read Snow
Crash and Diamond Age is one of my favorite pro readers.

Fannish Stuff
*Icon for Media_junkie that she asked me to make months ago
*Post to Writercon archive
*Assemble fic for Writercon library

Writing (technically not all of these are due before July 24, but who
knows how much writing I will do on the road)
*NCIS_LFWS prompt for this week
*Kink Bingo - at least one story by August ?, uhm 15?
*NCIS_Ficathon - write prompt by August 20

House stuff
*Keep mostly up with the outdoor work
*Keep mostly up with dishes, laundry, vacuuming and ugh, the bathroom
*Finish makeover on the wolf room - That would be sand, prime, paint, pull
staples from floor, install ceiling, install floor - funky new light fixture
would be a bonus

Road trip Prep
*Dig out camping equipment from shed access what needs cleaning, replacing,
repairs, consumable materials
*Practice with the new camera - get DT that pic she asked for :-)
*Cooking experiments with dry ingedients - stuff I can pack and will make it
for the month long trip. Although, trust me there will be much
supplementing with fresh stuff from local stores and restaurants. After
all, a huge feature of the road trip is the road food.
*Load up external hard drives with music and media
*Load up GPS with known addresses
*Figure out audio books for GPS
*See if portable tape player can be resurrected and will sound okay played
in car -- dude, I have the unabridged Snow Crash and The Diamond
Age on tape - prohibitively expensive to replace and no luck so far in
getting a decent conversion.
*Figure out how I'm getting from Yellowstone to Indianapolis. If anyone can
recommend anything about Kansas or Nebraska it would be appreciated. I've
talked to natives of one state, haven't gotten any definitive must sees from
any of them. One sold me on sites in Colorado. So now you know all my
impressions of Kansas and Nebraska ;-)
*and about a million more things

I skipped this round, but there are stories to be read.

Voting is open for Session 2, Round 3 in ncis_lfws.

Round 3: 'Day at the Movies'. Choose two characters (one primary and one secondary) and send them to the theatre. What's going on? Are they on stakeout? Or are they having a secret rendezvous? Oh, and the movie that's playing...has to be released in 2009. Word count: 1000.

Voting closes tonight, Wednesday June 17, 9:00PM US, EDT

For more information:
PICTURES:
here and here
NEW INFORMATION:
Here - near constant updates
Here - ONTD_political live post
ON TWITTER:
@StopAhmadi, @ProtesterHelp


</div></div>

Fandom is a smaller place today.

I'm sure many of you have already heard that minotaurs passed away yesterday. He was a great member of the fannish community, both book and media fandom. Like so many others I met him briefly at a slash con, but knew him better through his blog and the web resources he provided to help us slash writers figure out body parts that most of us don't own. Having seen him with friends online and at cons, I know that he will be greatly missed by those close to him, but he will also be missed by the community as a whole.

Rest in peace, Minotaur.

Title: Never Too Loud
Author: justhuman, justhuman
Rating: PG
Genre: Het? Technically Abby and McGee are "broken-up" whatever that means to them ;-)
Category: Character Study
Characters/Pairings: Abby/Tim, past relationship, Team
Spoilers: No spoilers beyond Witch Hunt
Warnings: No spoilers beyond Witch Hunt
Summary: Abby explains what her part of her world is like.

Word Count: 3092
A/N: Written for Session 2, Round 2 of ncis_lfws. The prompt was 'Character Study'. Select a single character, primary or secondary, and get inside their head. What goes through their mind? Their emotions? Give some insight that we might not see on screen.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to DPB, CBS, Paramount, et al. No copyright infringement is intended.

ETA: I received my critiques for this story over at the challenge site. One felt that I did a poor job with the handling of deaf culture in this story. My apologies for what I may have gotten wrong, mischaracterized or simply presented poorly. I welcome additional critiques on this topic or indeed with any part of this or any of my other stories.

( Never Too Loud )

Happy Birthdays out to fings, theferretgirl, bcassie, inkandchocolate, kaydee23
trish_punch, and ladycat777!!!

Yeah, I'm behind again - Sorry! hope you had great B-Days :-D

Did I mention that I cut off most of my hair yesterday? Probably not. It may be an inch and a half in the front, but no longer than that anywhere else. We managed to get 3 10" ponytales and one 9 1/2" one to donate to Locks of Love.

Locks of Love you ask? They're a charitable organization out to help kids with cancer have a better self-image. They take the hair over 10" and create wigs for the kids in chemo. Hair 6-10" and gray hairs (some of which I donated ;-) will be sold to other wig making organizations and the profits used for the other wig making supplies.

Anyway, it's much easier to wash and so one more step on the list of things for the roadtrip. Long hair and coin operated showers at campgrounds, not mixy things.

Speaking of roadtrip. With tent now in hand, I did my research and bought a new camera this morning. I opted for the Lumix FZ28. It's technically a point and shoot camera -- I couldn't justify my skill or interest with a Digital SLR. However, it is a point and shoot which can go into manual mode. I thought this is important because the shots I keep trying to take with my little point and shoot just don't come out right. I try for wildlife and close-ups of flowers and the moon. I needed a camera with better zoom and adjustable shutter speeds. This one's got a 60 second shutter on it and pre-sets for "fireworks" and "starry sky" -- I can't wait to get to the places with minimal light pollution like Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Forrest. I got it for a decent price. There are accessories I'll need like a tripod and a bag, but I don't have to buy a lens that's more expensive than the camera.

I want my special cable back! I think it's in the house, but no clue where. I took it to tribalforces but distinctly remember packing it to go home -- it was on the check list 3 times. I think I remember having next to the TV after I got home. Then I cleaned. Grrr - It's like having it in a safe place. I went to stream a movie last night and no streaming.

I should be outside mowing the lawn, but I've felt *blah* all day long. Something did not agree with me yesterday and kept me up last night with an aching belly. Today my appitite is off and the tummy is looking for the heavy carb variety of comfort foods. I'll be fine, but I just couldn't face pushing the lawnmower in the sun.

So other things.

I actually have been to the movies *twice* in the last month. I saw Wolverine a couple of weeks ago - big thumbs up. Although, I was struck by some of the more violent images in the early part of the movie and the idea that there was a 6 year old in the audiance.

Then yesterday I saw Star Trek XI - The Reboot. I've been thinking how to phrase this, so bear with me for a long analogy.

One of my favorite shows is No Reservations where chef Anthony Bourdain goes all over the world experiencing everthing from native foods to hot food trends. One show he went to Minibar in Washington DC, which specializes in so called "molecular gastronomy" - (MG for short). MG uses science lab equipment to take a dish, break it down into it's components, intensify them and then reconstruct into some pop art style of the dish often with a different texture - so your mohito may come out in the form of a fragile bubble on a spoon, but taste more like a mohito than the cocktail at your side.

So at Minbar you pay a fixed price to get a single-bite menu of 30 or so of these complicated gems. The meal isn't about the one fabulous dish, but the experience of tasting amazing flavor in unexpected ways. Then thing is that Tony summed it up right. No patron is going to sit down for that meal and like all 30 things - but the experience will be worth it.

See and that's what the new, re-visioned Battlestar Galactica by Ron Moore and company was. It wasn't a show that I loved every moment of. There was never any hope that it would have a good ending or a bad ending; to me, it was something that was something that was spinning itself into existence and the question was would it hold itself together or collapse under it's own weight. Whether it did or not almost didn't matter because you could find amazing things in the various shards you could look at. It was a piece of art that I wanted to visit but not necessarily hang on my wall.

( Now let's talk about Star Trek )

Porn Battle VIII (The Eighth Wonder – Bigger, Longer, Uncut) is live! New fics and other fan works posted until June 15, 9pm (UK time - they have a link to a time converter in the post ;-)

Also in the post is
Link to Prompts - also links to Word and PDF Downloads. OMG! The prompt list is *enormous*! So many fandoms, big and small represented. I downloaded, found my fandom name and highlighted. Finding the main fandom section is easy, but finding seems to me to be the best way to find your fandom in the crossover setion

Link to a post with Dreamwidth invite codes -- the main post is not open for anonymous comments. You either need to have a Dreamwidth account or sign in with your LJ name using OpenID. To make your Open ID life easier, sign into LJ, click the openID link, sign in with your OpenID at Dreamwidth (validate an e-mail if you'd like the comments sent back to you) and then go to the post. Once you're signed in with OpenID you can post comment on DW just like you had an account there.




All the fic and art fit in a comment, but if comment fic doesn't work for you, they will all be up at the Pornbattle Site. -- And you could go up and read previous porn battles there too!

Voting is open for Session 2, Round 2 in ncis_lfws.

Round 2: 'Character Study'. Select a single character, primary or secondary, and get inside their head. What goes through their mind? Their emotions? Give some insight that we might not see on screen. Word count: Unlimited.

Voting closes Monday June 8, 9:00PM US, EST

New tent is AWESOME!!! - Click on the pic if you want to see the vid of taking it up and down along with the specs.



When I picked it up from the post office, it was wrapped in it's disc shape - they were curious :-D They're best guess was that it was a snow saucer -- a hard plastic disc that kid's uses instead of a sled.

I did finally find out what happened to the US distributor. The tents launched in the US in 2006 were all recalled by the Consumer Safety Commission. The tent fabric did not meet the industry standards for fire safety. This is probably why I couldn't find the tent sold in Canada either -- a lot of US and Canadian safety standards are coordinated. That being said, the tent is sold all over Europe and Australia. Fire resistant is a good thing, but let's be realistic - no tent fabric is going to slow down a fire by that much. I've camped in canvas tents and one that were made *long* before there was such a thing as fire resistant standards. I'm good with my tent.

( The Initial Review )
___

Overall, this is just what I wanted. I can have it set-up - ground cloth, tent, tent pegs in under 5 minutes. Likewise I can have the whole works back in the car in under 10 minutes easy. This means that I'll be able to spend more of my road trip seeing the sites.

I believe I'll be doing some backyard camping before I take off, so I'll give you a usage review soon. Those of you who will be at writercon, if you want to see it, we can do a demo at some point :-)

*Finished my ncis_lfws fic and turned it in. Voting post should be up sometime tomorrow.

*I've got a package waiting at the post office - I think it's the awesome tent I ordered off E-bay. It's this one. *crosses fingers*

*In other awesome mail news, someone on SwapaDVD requested my copy of Monster - which did deserve the awards it got, but you won't want to watch it more than once. I've been requesting things that I want to keep from the service, and slowly whittling down the DVDs that I'm not interested in anymore. Currently I've got only one of my original listings on there - my extra copy of Matrix Reloaded. I don't remember how I got a second copy, but there are questions as to how often I may rewatch the first copy ;-)

*Received my kink_bingo Bingo Card. It's not completely scary. I think that there are some that would consider it tame, lol. My goal is at least one bingo.

( card undercut to spare the flist and, of course, nsfw ;-) )

-I got from the opening lines to the end of my next LFWS fic. It's not done but any fic I can make reach an end point, I can edit :-)

-I got my assignment for ncis_ficathon which I may be posting from the road. These assignments came with 3 options - thank goodness because the first two were daunting

-I'm compiling few prompts for oxoniensis Porn Battle VIII. I'm helping NCIS represent! Well, them and maybe a little SG-1 and crossover with SG-1 and Burn Notice

-I got incredibly brave and/or stupid and signed up for kink_bingo. Dude, there's about 25 cards/page in the comments; I'm on page 12. There's somewhere between 550 and 600 authors. Yay! Kinkfic!

Now I can't claim to have never written kink - I wrote in Angel fandom - it was inevitable :-) No, seriously - I can prove it with one word.

Bucket.

I rest my case, and if you're still not buying it - I will take yours away ;-) But I was looking at the list of possible kinks and there's stuff on there that I'm not sure I can write -- which doesn't mean I won't happily read it :-D *crosses fingers for a doable card*

-I survived the last round of LFWS. Half my comments were positive and half negative. ( more under cut )

Stolen from the lovely redbrickrose

Here's something we haven't seen for the last 8 years. Read it on Whitehouse.gov President Obama declares June 2009 LGBT Pride Month

The world is a tiny bit better today.

But tell me my friends, June has been LGBT Pride Month for quite a while. So where's the multifannish community asking for Pride fic? Or, you know a comm for a specific fandom I write.

In the meantime, a movie rec! On the Other Hand Death - A Donald Strachey Mystery. The Donald Strachey Mystery series is by Richard Stevenson. The books are being produced independently starring Chad Allen and Sebastian Spence with director Ron Oliver. This installments co-stars Margot Kidder and Rose Gallagher as a heartwarming lesbian couple who've kept it together for decades.

I haven't read the books but understand the movies take a slightly different track by having Donald (Allen) and Tim (Spense) as not just boyfriends but as committed life partners. I can wholeheartedly tell you the change was worth it. Tim and Don are an amazing couple and play well to the noir/Thin Man feel that they emmulate. I have to say they were a bit heavy handed with some of the Thin Man themes in the first two movies of the series, but in this third installment, they hit the right notes. BONUS: There's a slash girl posse in one scene, rightfully sighing over the boys in love making up :-D

I've read so many thoughtful and justifiably angry posts about the murder of Dr. George Tiller. There's nothing I can add to it - nothing that I can say that will makes sense of shooting a man *IN A CHURCH* when one professes to be "pro-life."

Dr. Tiller's clinic ran independently from Planned Parenthood, but I thought it was a good place to make a donation to honor his lifelong work and persistence in the face of opponents that had previously shot him and burned down his clinic.

If you are one of those people who I have read about that are figuring that "he got what he deserved" -- this is not the fucking post for you. You have a journal with your own name on it.

Title: Ohio State, Peoria, Philadelphia, Baltimore
Author: justhuman - justhuman
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Category: Character Study/Episode Tag
Characters/Pairings: Tony, Abby, Gibbs
Spoilers: 3.07 - Sandblasted/1.02 Hung Out To Dry
Warnings: None
Summary: In the aftermath of Sandblasted, Gibbs reminds Tony of decisions of his own that brought him to NCIS

Word Count: 745
A/N: Written for Session 2, Round 1 of ncis_lfws. The prompt was to fill in a missing blank - 750 words max
Disclaimer: These characters belong to DPB, CBS, Paramount, et al. No copyright infringement is intended.

( Ohio State, Peoria, Philadelphia, Baltimore )

Tags: myfic_ncis

Holy Crap! it's only 63 Days until Writercon

So here's my plan so far -- *she laughs - you call that a plan?*

July 24 (Fri) -- JH leaves home in NJ and travels to Auburn, NY to crash
with favorite crazy!aunt and godfather
July 25-26 - Make way to Rochester, NY to visit cousin and free-spirited
pagan friend
July 27 (Monday) - arrive Toronto via Niagara Falls

What about it my friends north of the border? Would any of you like to do a
meet up? The date of July 27 can be a bit flexible. I could show up Sunday
afternoon as well. Also, i don't know where everyone lives in relation to
Toronto, so another location might possibly work as well. I'll be heading
west, sticking near the Great Lakes, so anywhere North of Lake Erie also
works. But on Tuesday I need to be on my way west because

July 30 (Thursday) - Arrive Minneapolis, MN

You'll note that there is a gap between July 27 and July 30. I'm looking at
my options of when I should leave Ontario, which by the way is *huge* and
re-enter the US.

A- Should it be Windsor-Detroit (Michigan)
B- Should it be via Sault Ste. Marie through Mackinaw City (Michigan)
C- Should it be Thunder Bay - Grand Portage (Minnesota)

Basically how long I stay in Canada determines which parts of the Great
Lakes I'll see. I'll definitely see Ontario and Erie.

Route A will mean that I'll probably miss Huron, but will take a car ferry
across Lake Michigan. I'll miss Superior
Route B will get me Huron and the car ferry across Lake Michigan, again
missing Superior
Route C will get me Superior, missing Huron and Michigan.

I'm more inclined towards A & B because the ferry ride across Lake Michigan
would be *cool* and fulfilling a bit of Due South fantasy thing
(*cough* even though Michigan isn't one of the border lakes).

But the question is what's out there? I have to say that the Thunder Bay
area is looking pretty barren, the same going for Northern Minnesota ... of
course, there is the whole Stargate fantasy thing of going to the
land of Jack O'Neill's cabin

I'm thinking the crossing in Windsor-Detroit is seriously busy and citified
and industrial and not necessarily the best tourist country -- keeping in
mind that while I like museums, I'm more inclined towards natural scenery. I
am given to believe there is nothing natural about Detriot.

Which leaves us with the Sault Ste. Marie route - anything interesting to
see between Toronto and Sault Ste. Marie?

Holy Crap! it's only 63 Days until Writercon

So here's my plan so far -- *she laughs - you call that a plan?*

July 24 (Fri) -- JH leaves home in NJ and travels to Auburn, NY to
crash with favorite crazy!aunt and godfather
July 25-26 - Make way to Rochester, NY to visit cousin and
free-spirited pagan friend
July 27 (Monday) - arrive Toronto via Niagara Falls

What about it my friends north of the border? Would any of you like
to do a meet up? The date of July 27 can be a bit flexible. I could
show up Sunday afternoon as well. Also, i don't know where everyone
lives in relation to Toronto, so another location might possibly work
as well. I'll be heading west, sticking near the Great Lakes, so
anywhere North of Lake Erie also works. But on Tuesday I need to be on
my way west because

July 30 (Thursday) - Arrive Minneapolis, MN

You'll note that there is a gap between July 27 and July 30. I'm
looking at my options of when I should leave Ontario, which by the way
is *huge* and re-enter the US.

A- Should it be Windsor-Detroit (Michigan)
B- Should it be via Sault Ste. Marie through Mackinaw City (Michigan)
C- Should it be Thunder Bay - Grand Portage (Minnesota)

Basically how long I stay in Canada determines which parts of the
Great Lakes I'll see. I'll definitely see Ontario and Erie.

Route A will mean that I'll probably miss Huron, but will take a car
ferry across Lake Michigan. I'll miss Superior
Route B will get me Huron and the car ferry across Lake Michigan,
again missing Superior
Route C will get me Superior, missing Huron and Michigan.

I'm more inclined towards A & B because the ferry ride across Lake
Michigan would be *cool* and fulfilling a bit of Due South
fantasy thing (*cough* even though Michigan isn't one of the border
lakes).

But the question is what's out there? I have to say that the Thunder
Bay area is looking pretty barren, the same going for Northern
Minnesota ... of course, there is the whole Stargate fantasy
thing of going to the land of Jack O'Neill's cabin

I'm thinking the crossing in Windsor-Detroit is seriously busy and
citified and industrial and not necessarily the best tourist country
-- keeping in mind that while I like museums, I'm more inclined
towards natural scenery. I am given to believe there is nothing
natural about Detriot.

Which leaves us with the Sault Ste. Marie route - anything interesting
to see between Toronto and Sault Ste. Marie?

Voting is open in the Session 2, Round 1 of ncis_lfws - NCIS Last Fic Writer Standing - Revampted.

The community is under new management and they chose to start from the beginning. This time around folks are being asked to vote for their top 2 and bottom 2.

We have 11 stories this week. The prompt was

Round 1: 'Missing Scene'. Select any episode before Season 5 and fill in the unexplained that left the viewers wondering just what went on. Word count: 750 (maximum).

Voting closes Saturday May 30, 8:00AM US, EST.