Christmas Wish List

[kerravonsen]

The Christmas wishlist meme has come around again!

Step One

• Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related ("I'd love a Snape/Hermione icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.
• If you wish for real life things (not fics or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.
• Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ so that the holiday joy will spread.

Step Two

• Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:
• If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use--or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free--do it.
  • You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf--to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not--it's your call.
  • There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just...wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you'll have the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special.

My wishes:

1) Art: cover art/title banners for my fic.

2) Vid: (Doctor Who) something celebrating the awesomtasticness of Donna, Martha and Sarah-Jane.

3) Art: A lovely Snape/Anya icon. Since I seem to have invented that pairing, and jedibuttercup keeps on encouraging me to write more in that universe, it would be nice to have an icon to celebrate this fact.

4) Art: A dynamic Tenth Doctor & Buffy icon. My one-off fic seems to be turning into a series.

5) Fic: Stories based on my orphan plot bunnies from a while back; see here (1), here (2), here (3) and here (4). Consider them to be challenges.

6) Fic: (Doctor Who) Post-"Last of the Time Lords"; the Master is not dead, but has amnesia as a side-effect of successfully stopping the Drums. A former companion (any canon companion) of the Doctor finds him and thinks that he's the Doctor with amnesia, and convinces the Master of this too. When the Master gets his memory back, he wishes he hadn't. He *liked* being the Doctor. (yes, I know, reforming the Master is very unlikely, but I can dream, can't I?)

7) Fic: A story written Just For Me. See this post.

8) Recommendations for "classical music" (symphonic music and the like). It is a wilderness out there, I have no guide. All I can say is what I've liked: Beethoven's symphonies, Camille Saint-Saens, Greig, Tschaikovsky, Handel; some Bach but not all - I find Bach a bit too sterile, I like music that paints pictures in my mind.

9) Good vegetable recipes, with certain limitations: I'm not allowed to use oil, and I'm not allowed to eat starchy vegetables such as potato, sweet potato, beans, legumes and the like. And I dislike hot spices such as chilli and curry. You can see why I need recipes! Most especially would be good things using cabbage, carrots and onions, since they seem to be the ones I have left over at the end of the week.

10) Phone calls from people on my flist, especially those who have not called before.

Comments

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

10) Phone calls from people on my flist, especially those who have not called before.

Hmmmm. I need to check phone rates between here and there, but hmmm... :)

[kerravonsen]

Oooh, that would be lovely. Email me or look up my number at http://www.whitepages.com.au/

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Do you live in England? If so, I can tell you a very cheap way of calling Australia, as long as you have a land-line.

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

I do not, alas--I live in California. Thank you for the offer, though!

[azarsuerte.livejournal.com]

How do you feel about Vivaldi?

[kerravonsen]

He's the "Four Seasons" guy, isn't he?

[azarsuerte.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's him. Not the piece I was thinking of, though. :-) My high school choir did his "Gloria" at Christmas one year and I've been partial to it ever since.

My beloved Vaughan Williams...

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

On the RVW Society website, you can hear soundclips from a wonderful selection of his works, including his symphonies, here. My own favourites are the orchestral works On a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Dives and Lazarus, and the romance To a Lark Ascending (I think it the most beautiful piece of music ever); his music is always filled with colour and light and shade.

I have a lot of classical, though as usual the mix is eclectic - I fall less for composers as for individual pieces (listening to Classics FM breakfast show is dangerous, especially the swoon segment :) But for 'painterly' music - that which conjures up pictures - Dvorak, Prokoviev, Elgar, Rachmaninov... Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (esp the orchestration by Ravel), anything by Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich...

I listen to Classics FM on the way to work and all too often find new pieces or versions I want that way :)

I noticed Saint-Saens there: have you heard Danse Macabre? It's wonderful.

Re: My beloved Vaughan Williams...

[kerravonsen]

Oh yes, I've loved Danse Macabre since we had to play dancing skeletons to it in our primary school musical of Aladdin.

Re: My beloved Vaughan Williams...

[temeres.livejournal.com]

Dammit, was going to recommend RVW's Tallis fantasia but She Beat Me To It. If you like the symphonic stuff by the likes of Beethoven/Tchaikovsky, then you might like Mahler's 1st symphony (the only one I'm at all familiar with). And if you somehow don't know it, you must at least try Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade.

Re: My beloved Vaughan Williams...

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

The Tallis is one of my favourite pieces for when I want soothing music... and I never get tired of RVW.

And I'll second Scheherezade :)

Re: My beloved Vaughan Williams...

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

I must second the rec of Vaughn Williams. I believe he's the composer that said discovering English folk music was like coming home? That's how I feel about his music.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Do you (and/or friends) have Skype? Thinking of taking the pain out of paying for international phone calls.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

Skype is also spiffy in that you can make conference calls cheaply.

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

Skype is spiffy if one's computer has a working sound card.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. You and your aphonic laptop. *glares at it*

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Do you mean classical classical or something more modern?
My favourite "classical" pieces are
Anything done for the new Dr Who series by the Welsh Philly
Lord Of The Rings Soundtrack
Van Helsing Soundtrack
Pirates Of The Caribbean

Older pieces
Holst "Planets"
Mussorgsky "Night On Bare Mountain"

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Music recs: Debussy, particularly Clair de Lune and La Mer; Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites.

[kerravonsen]

I tried a few of Debussy's piano concertos and they didn't impress me much.
But, yes, I love Grieg's Peer Gynt (I did mention Grieg above, didn't I?)

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

You did mention Grieg. Don't know how I missed that after reading the list four times. Eep!

I do think you should try Clair de Lune, though. A really good rendition is quite moving.

Hm. Have you heard Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance? And I suppose you know Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, by Benjamin Britten.

I shall look through my CDs, but I think I'm not going to be much help here, as my taste runs towards Baroque chamber music, solo cello, and Japanese music. Alas.

Recipe

[feliciakw.livejournal.com]

Here's one of my favorite quick and easy recipes. I'm afraid I was unable to find any without any oil at all, but perhaps thing can be done substituting water for moisture. At any rate, I can't see that this would suffer without the oil. I imagine it's more to make the herbs stick to the squash than anything else.

"Squash Duo"

2 medium zucchini, sliced diagonal
2 medium yellow squash, sliced diagonal
1 small red onion, sliced thin
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. chopped fresh dill or 1/2 tsp. dried dillweed (I don't usually measure this; I just add however much dill flavor I want)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper

In microwavable casserole dish, place squash and onion. Toss with oil and dill. Cook in microwave on High 6 - 9 minutes, until squash is tender crisp.

Re: Recipe

[kerravonsen]

Thanks!
I think if cooking in the microwave, no oil is needed.