The Way of the Wombat

You can tell I've been off work this week - this is the fourth or fifth post!

There are a few things I keep meaning to pimp to people who may not know about them - I'm going to bundle them here.

Firstly Where I Live Day. This originated five years ago, when a number of us thought it would be nice to learn a little more about the places our LJ friends lived. To enable people to take part more easily, the much missed frimfram set up a community to post the pictures. That way we got to see places that were the homes of those outside our own friends list - and a few new friendships were formed.

When we decided to do it all again, the decision was to have a weekend to post over, to make it easier - but the community was already called wild_photos (for Where I Live Day) - which is why Where I Live Day is a weekend...

It is a while since the least Where I Live Weekend but a couple of discussions here and there gave me the impression that there was still interest, I put a post on the comm (Frim made me a co-moderator when she left LJ) asking was anyone still interested. The answer is YES.

So - anyone who wants to join in is very welcome - the posting weekend is July 10th and 11th, but a day or too early or late will not upset anyone, I'm sure. Take as many or as few pictures as you want, and then post to the community over the weekend, and enjoy seeing all the pictures coming in from other points worldwide. Not necessarily the tourist brochure stuff, but the real life stuff.

The comm is friends locked - here's the profile page - do join and then join in!

Secondly - WriterCon UK. This year's annual get together is August 6th to 8th, in Coventry. The official description of the event is Intended Audience: Anyone currently involved with, or wishing to become involved with, the creative side of any fandom as a writer, vidder, artist, beta or reviewer. All levels of experience welcome.

In practice it is just a wonderful chance to be a geek, tosit around talking fandom, the internet, life, the universe, and everything, with others who won't regard you as in any way weird for enjoying those things.

lilachigh wrote the answers to all the reasons you might think it's not for you here - reasons like 'I won't know anyone', 'my fandom is not very big...', 'I'm shy and hate having to speak to new people' and so on; and I can just say - she is absolutely right.

Everyone is welcome - they really, really are. And it is certainly not intimidating as I gather some of the US Cons are - we have a top number of 40, and there has never been a single slanging match... For more info click here.

Thirdly - the Plot without Porn Challenge. This brilliant idea was quinara's and the first challenge was last year. I have to hang my head in shame and admit that I didn't get my bit finished in time... but I will this year.

The idea is to write something with a plot "events must progress from beginning to end," and any sex must be relevant to the plot. More info here. The week to post your stories this year will be Friday 13th(!) to 20th August. A good thing to poke the muse for!

Fourthly - for anyone who's got this far - I am polishing up my original Buffyverse long fic, Ten Years After, and posting it at Twisting The Hellmouth - here if anyone would like to reread it, with better punctuation... or even if you would just like to read it for the first time... I think it has stood the test of time quite well.

This is just a pimping post!

Firstly, for those who have mentioned it over the last months we are going to have another Where I Live Day - wild_photos has reopened and we are going to set a new posting date - maybe a week in July - what do you think?

Those of you who weren't involved in this the first time around, it grew out of a conversation between frimfram and I about how nice it would be to be able to visualise where the people we were talking to lived. The resulting posts gave us a fantastic insight into other communities all around the world - often not places that appear in the tourist stuff or unusual views of famous places.

Secondly - trying to lose weight? Lost weight successfully? Need a diet-buddy? Or a healthy-eating-buddy? Then I would totally recommend its_monday - so called because we all say 'I'll start on Monday'!

And thirdly, raingirl26 has been musing about the menopause - and wondering whether anyone knows of any ceremonies or rites of passage associated with this milestone in a woman's life. She feels it should be marked, maybe celebrated. And I suggested that she might like to form a community to discuss it/get info or descriptions from other people.

So if you know of any sort of recognition of menopause, or want to just pitch in a few thoughts on whether there should be such a thing, and what form it could take, go over to menses_end and help her explore this concept.

frimfram, bless her little cotton socks, has set up the community now for posting the Where I Live Day pictures wild_photos.

December 4th will be (the first) LJ Where I Live Day (WILD). The idea is that people take photos of their area, and post them on the community (which will be locked to members only to help the posters feel secure)on December 4th. Then we can all browse around and see what other places in the world REALLY look like, and help us visualise our friends in their natural habitat!! If you want suggestions to help you decide where to go snap, there is even a suggestions list.

Spread the word via your FL, and you friends FLs etc, join yourself up, and let's see how much world we can get on there!

Feel free to gack this WILD icon to help spread the word.

frimfram posted some lovely pictures of Cambridge a couple of days ago as an adjunct to her Hallowe'en story 'Reality Ends at the Checkpoint' (which if you've not read - go read!). She and I came up with the idea that a Live Journal 'Where I Live Day' would be cool - participants to put some pictures up of where they live (obviously!) on a certain day, so we all get a better idea of some of the rest of the world - not just the 'tourist brochure' stuff, but the real stuff. I know quite a few people already have put some pictures up that are what we were talking about - but - hey! you can recycle them if you don't want to do any new ones!

What do you all think? Good idea? Would you be willing to join in? Frimfram is cleverer than me and has made a poll - here is a link to the Where I live Day poll - http://www.livejournal.com/users/frimfram/40476.html#cutid1

We wondered whether soon was good, or would northern spring be better?

(There are two other questions as well - one is for AtS fans, and the other is related to a discussion about her default icon - is it a chicken or a tooth? Which is more interesting than 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?'!)

And in family news - Daughter-dear has just checked the UCAS website, and has discovered that she has her first offer of a university place - already!! It is from Glasgow, on 3Bs - which is cool, she only applied to places she would really like to go to, so even if no-one else offers a place she would still be happy with this one. So she has had the weight of waiting to see if anyone wants her lifted!