Yuletide signups are open! (my apologies if you already knew)

Yuletide signups are open. They close Thursday the 12th.

Yuletide is a fic exchange for small and rare fandoms. The idea is to make three or four requests, and in return for someone writing you a fic in a fandom you love but never expected to get fic for, you give someone else the same gift. It is a lot of fun, and produces a lot of really cool stories.

You should sign up!

This year I have requested fic for The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay; the Acts of Caine series (Heroes Die, The Blade of Tyshalle, and Caine Black Knife) by Matthew Woodring Stover; Song for the Basilisk by Patricia McKillip; and the Lucifer comics series by Mike Carey, Peter Gross, et al. This is basically what I requested last year, only I have swapped Lucifer in for Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, because I received a lovely Westmark fic last year: Restante, by general_jinjur.

In a possible sign of insanity, I decided this year to put my money where my mouth is, re: all characters being interesting if written well, and have offered to write any character in any fandom I offered to write at all. Hopefully this will work out!

wherein Liz has the flu

I am not sure if I have regular flu or swine flu, but it's definitely flu, not a cold.

I felt a little ragged last night when I went to bed, so I took a couple NyQuil generic knock-offs. I woke up at 8am shivering to death while wrapped up in a thick comforter in a warm apartment. So I took some more fake NyQuil, and then when that did nothing, I took two aspirin. I was able to get back to sleep around 8:45am, but I kept waking up every half hour to hour thereafter, needing to use the bathroom and drink more water because my throat and mouth felt like the Sahara.

I got up properly around 1:30pm, whereupon I took more aspirin and practically boiled myself in the shower, attempting to unfreeze the marrow of my bones. (This was only partially effective, incidentally.) Then I called work and told them I was not coming in tomorrow. I also emailed my co-teachers at church and told them I could not teach RE this Sunday. (Whether I am physically able to be there is irrelevant; I should not be exposing children to whatever I have caught.)

I then attempted to eat breakfast. I made it through half a Nutri-Grain bar before I had to run off to the bathroom and spend ten minutes leaning over the sink vomiting a thin, colorless bile/mucous/water mixture, lightly peppered with bits of granola bar. Yuck.

But now that my stomach is empty again, I feel... well, still pulled down with iron weights on my joints, half-frozen inside, and cramped and clogged in my chest (this is a lung congestion, not a head congestion, which is unusual for me), but functional enough to sit up and write this.

*sigh*

I wish I had ginger ale or fruit juice in my apartment right now, but today was meant to be my grocery shopping day (on account of being my day off from work), so my refrigerator is pathetically empty. I guess that's not as bad as it could be, seeing as I can't eat anything anyway.

*deeper sigh*

I am going back to bed now. In the evening, I will venture some chicken noodle soup. And maybe tomorrow I will get to the store to buy Saltines, ginger ale, and juice.