after one long season of waiting

Merry Christmas/Happy Saturday, everyone! (Happy Birthday, look_alive!)

Things are still bustling around here, so this will be brief: Yuletide! My amazing anon actually filled my alternate-universe NPR prompt and it's wonderful. A Terribly Ghastly Silence is what it's called, and it's... it's This American Hitchhiker's Excellent Adventure is what it is but really why are you reading my silly attempt at summarization when you could be reading the story itself? Go!

I still need to delve into the archive itself and poke around, but that can wait until after turkey and all its friends. And until after everyone else has stopped beating the server to death. So much fic... so, so much fic.

I had so many grand plans for tonight, involving (in this order) Working Late and Catching up on Service Transferred Files, followed by things involving Word Counts, and probably some Grocery Shopping. I made it fifteen minutes into Working Late when I noticed that it was dark and I'd just spent the last fifteen minutes with my head in my hands wondering why one of our clients was asking me to confirm that their system was correct in listing the property in question as being located in the city of "3 Chicago" and another was shouting at me in CAPS LOCK about how my careless mistake due to not being trained on the software and not being able to get answers from any of the reps was something that just CANNOT BE THIS WAY. Then I got home and the rest of the plans rapidly devolved into Eating Rocky Road Ice Cream for Dinner and Reading the Yuletide Fandom List (Anthropomorphic Academic Institutions? Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)? Entire Andrew Bird albums?). This cheered me a bit, and pretty much cemented my desire to participate this year. Also: next year, I am going to find a way to nominate NPR as a fandom, because... because let's not get into that but it should happen.) But now it's after 9:30 and I've done utterly nothing with the only free evening I've had this week. (I think this means the mental downtime was probably necessary, and so I'm doing my best not to feel useless about it.)

So, putting all that behind me now... I am stealing a meme from bluerose16 because it is awesome funtimes and you guys can make fun of how Chicago is creeping into my otherwise-innocent midwestern accent, or make me try to read my awkward prose aloud. Or both. Or, you know, the crux of the thing:

Ask me questions. Something you're curious about, just feeling silly, whatever. I will answer in a voice post in a couple of days, when I can answer them all in one go.

Edit: Oh wait, NPR is a fandom. I love the internet. But there is a sad, sad lack of Lake Wobegon and Garrison Keillor, which is, in fact, what I would write about.