Outside, It's America

I think I'll just skip over the part where I haven't posted on LJ on over a year.

Hi!

Just wanted to let you know that I'm headed to Leviosa in Vegas in 10-ish days, so keep an eye out for me and I'll look for you, too.  I'm going to be on the H/D panel with a bunch of wonderful folks, and I'll be hanging around the halls and such.  Hope to catch you, too!.

Background for those of you who know me from non-Harry Potter fandoms:

hp_reunion is happening for the first couple weeks of November to encourage those of us who've fallen out of HP fandom to reconnect.  There are posts to say hello, to discuss the books, to reminisce about lost friends, to squee over great memories, and so on.  It began on Saturday.  Come say hello if you haven't already!  It's great to see so many familiar names.  Here's my roll call post.

Am I surprised that I missed posting with the other returnees until tonight?  Nope, it's kinda my new normal.

This post also links back to my very first LJ post made in August of 2003.  HP was my first online fandom, so my first LJ post was all about my new love, squee, squee!  I'd been given an LJ code by isiscolo.  She found me through my very first HP fanfic (a gen Snape thing), and being the encouraging, nurturing person she is, she gently brought me towards the light.  Thank you, my dear!  She also was one of the best fic betas ever for nearly all of my stories after that, even though the H/D pairing was definitely not her favorite (or second-favorite, or probably ninth, either).  Now that's going above and beyond!

My First LJ Post  I say hello and link to my first story.  An auspicious beginning, right?

How did 11 months go by without me posting? Like this: whooooosh!

So hi, everyone who still might be here. I never imagined myself turning into an LJ lurker, but apparently I have. I still click on my flist all the time, but I've just felt, I dunno, thinking that my fannish interests and little life stories would just be dull reading. But so many of you have popped up on LJ recently that I feel inspired! However, I'll break it down into separate posts so you're not overwhelmed by TMI.

( My fannish life )

You have 10 minutes to complete this test.  Show your work.

Problem #1.  Geoviki's house was bombarded by hail and rain at 3 pm on Monday.  Geoviki's basement began to flood at 6 pm on Tuesday.  How many hours did it take for all the water falling from the sky to percolate down to her foundation?  [answer: 27 hours]

Problem #2.  Geoviki's wet-dry vacuum holds 8 gallons of water before it needs to be manually shut off and emptied.  If Geoviki has to empty her wet-dry vac 3 times an hour, how much water is seeping into her basement per hour?  [answer: 24 gallons]

Problem #3.  If it has been flooding since 6 pm on Tuesday and it is now 6 pm on Thursday, how many times has Geoviki or Mr Geoviki has to empty that fucking wet-dry vac?  [answer: we've lost track.  Dozens and dozens.]

Problem #4.  Geoviki has narrowed down one major point of water entry to a 12" gap in the storage room foundation.  If Geoviki puts the shop vac nozzle there, she can fill the wet-dry vac in 4 minutes flat.  How much water can Geoviki extract this way?  [answer: 120 gallons per hour.  However, it takes 180 seconds to detach the hose, snap off the top, roll the tank to the sink, scoop out the water, then reassemble, so her mileage may vary.]

Problem #5.  At 120 gallons per hour, how long before Geoviki can suck dry the entire city of Lakewood through a 12-inch crack in her foundation?  [answer: the experiment continues]

Problem #6. By rapidly repeating the 4-minute method described above, we can dry up enough of the hidden water supply to extend the time before the wet-dry vac must be manually shut off.  How much time can Mr. Geoviki sequentially sleep before he must wake up and empty the POS wet-dry vac?  [answer: 90 minutes if he's lucky.]

Problem #7:  If it has been heavily raining almost the entire flood time, how big is the underground reservoir of flood water that Geoviki must suck up?  [answer: a whole fucking ocean full]

Problem #8.  Mr Geoviki went to the store today and bought a new wet-dry vac to which he can attach a garden hose.  This means he can run the hose directly down the floor drain and never have to empty the tank.  It can be left to drain the crack all day and all night.  He paid $105. for this item.  Did he get a good deal?  [answer: OMG, Yes!  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!]

Problem #9.  The relative humidity outside is 100%.  The relative humidity in Geoviki's basement is 100%.  Hw many minutes does it take before Geoviki is dripping sweat while sucking up water?  [answer: about 2]

Problem #10.  The rain is forecast to continue until Saturday.  How many more drinks will Geoviki need to get through this?  [answer:  at least one more, and right now.]

This time I've got a decent excuse as to why I never have time to post: My daughter got married last week. So far this year we've now had 2 funerals (my mom and my mother-in-law), one graduation (my son), and a wedding. We had a boatload of visiting family as well, the last just left yesterday. It was a great wedding, with a fun theme of games (hence the dice for earrings and the pinwheel bouquets made by the bride). We like her new husband, too, which is always good.

Here's the happy couple...



And, left to right, my son, my sister, my daughter, and me
(being cheerily photobombed by some bridesmaids)...

For my non-American friends, there was a big lottery drawing here a few days ago, called Powerball, with a top prize of 587 million dollars. (Sheee-it!) The last time the prize grew so large, Mr. Geoviki bought us one ticket for the drawing. Only one, of course, because the difference in the odds goes up the most between 0 tickets and 1, and not so much after that. We've had too much math between us, clearly.

And then we spent the time until the drawing hoping we wouldn't win. We just decided that the negatives outweighed the positives: it would ruin our kids' motivation, it would draw all kinds of remote relatives into our lives asking for a handout, we couldn't decide what we'd do with the money anyway...

This time, we deliberately didn't buy any tickets. I think that says a lot about how satisfied we are with our financial life right now. Not that we're rolling in it, or anything, but that we're happy with what we have.

Powerball Prize: $587,000,000.
Ticket cost: $1.
Contentment with our current lot in life: priceless

I must post more.
I must post more.
I must post more.
I must post more.
Gah!

What does it say that I spent more time picking out the effing icon than deciding on content (Japanese pORn stars FTW)? What happens, see, is that it's been so long between posts that I have become overwhelmed by the sheer content of what I should have posted all along; therefore, I can't even wrap my mind around what I should say at the moment.

Or whom I'm even saying it to.

I know: I'll ask a question, one that someone may even be able to help me with.

I want to post "A Thousand Beautiful Things" to the Archive of Our Own. And so I need a program that will convert a Word file to HTML. A program that isn't Word, of course, which fills the whole friggin' thing with incomprehensible and useless code. I want clean, streamlined code. My file has some italics, yeah, but what's it really has is those bloody lyrics that needs blockquotes, but without extra lines and crap.

This program should be freeware or online.

Also I may be travelling to Geneva, Switzerland, very soon. Any tips?