charles_beckett

Giuliana bares her fangs, clenching her jaw as she enters the suite and smells vitae. Every muscle in her body tenses, on alert and ready. As she rounds the corner, vitae flows into coiled muscle and with inhuman speed, she’s suddenly across the room and kneeling next to Sergei… Ichtaca…. her childe.

Fingers brush lightly over his face, slackened with torpor and dirtied with remnants and traces of the fight he’d barely survived. The back of his skull is a gaping wound where three sniper bullets did their work, parts of his face damaged almost beyond recognition, tendons and shredded muscle exposed. Giuliana’s eyes shift up to the young Gangrel crouched next to him and watching the Mekhet with a careful eye, “Neca, thank you for bringing him.” ( She forces herself to remain calm... )

Taking shameless advantage of NetFlix and the free trial. Considering the list of movies I "need to see what do you mean you have never heard of it?!" this is good. I currently have over 60 in queue. First one Himself wants me to see is City of Angels. I've heard people rave about it, say how much they cried, etc.

I was unmoved. Seriously, the first time I felt anything other than boredom and a strong desire to break my promise to watch the whole thing was 1:45:34 into the move. The "one moment" speech.

Somehow, I can't drop the feeling that this makes me a bad person.

"I love you."
Three words, that can mean so much. So many different things.
"I love you."
They can mean, "I see eternity in your eyes."
They can mean, "I can't bear to see you suffer."
They can mean, "Have a nice day; I'll miss you."
They can mean, "You're all I think about."
And they can mean, "There is something one of us needs that we can never have with the other, and can't live without. We've gone as far as we can go together, but you'll always be in my heart."

When a relationship breaks up - any relationship, but particularly a long one with a record of several years - everyone takes an interest. Breakups are exciting, dramatic. Sometimes they split with an, "I hate you."
But sometimes it's an, "I love you," instead.
There are some people who feed on, "I hate you." "I love you," sucks in a breakup, from this outsider's point of view. It means there probably won't be any screaming, hatemail, flinging of objects, blame laid, division of 'teams'.
It means there won't be any hero or villain, no abuser and no victim, just two sad people, each resigned to a wistful reconstuction of a life without the other in it.

I have received violent bile spewed from some ignorant fool with no understanding of the relationship Ben and I had, accusing me of everything from happily bludging off him to being a "cancer" in his life. I have also received considerably gentler-worded, kinder-intended counsel that there are some people who may not like the way I "treated" Ben.
Both astonish me, because neither Ben nor I ever treated the other with anything but love, as complete and tender as each of us were able. There was no abuse, no poisonous treatment, no cruelty, no misuse. Just a problem that was present in our life together since it began that ultimately wasn't going to be fixed. We parted with an, "I love you."
To have uninformed people speak without reflection about blame while scrutinising our love and its ending for a villain hurts, because it cheapens that.
There is no bad guy, here; just two good people for whom love, ultimately, wasn't enough to solve a rift as old as that love itself.
I have no vehemence to speak of Ben, nor he of me. We loved every moment of being together; yes, even the pain. We interact, now, with great respect for the enormous part that the other has played in our life. When the grief subsides, I expect we will be friends, again.
And for those whispering poison, whether hidden behind their hands or an anonymous post, you are going to have to find your scandal and hatred somewhere else, because there is none here.

Now go, and make this year count.
Learn.
Grow.
Love.
I love you.

The light click of stilettos on marble punctuates every step the Mekhet takes as she advances towards the study where Victor awaits. A ghoul slips past unobtrusively with her luggage as she opens the door, "I have come to say goodbye before I leave."

He looks up from his desk, frowning slightly, "Are you sure you want to go?"

"Si," she nods, crossing the expansive room and stopping in front of the Ventrue, "I need to meet with people, and make sure this doesn't become a bigger mess than it alread--" She cuts herself off as a small vibration alerts her to a phone call. Pulling it out, she looks at the screen, then back up at Victor, "Pardon, Necahuatl is calling me."

She taps the key to answer, and ( places the phone to her ear.... )

 I had ice on my windshield when I got out of work at 2:20am.  WTF.  And it's supposed to get into the upper 20's this weekend and they're predicting rain.  Which means we may get snow.  In Sarasota, FL.  WTF.

I am not a happy camper.

With Bennet gone, that leaves Thibedeaux to lead the House.  But with the mess he's currently in, if someone does manage to get him in a corner, the House is left without.  Monica, Mikhail, myself, Alim, and only a handful of others are left.  Alex has disappeared.  Allison is still missing.  I need to contact Tony, I haven't heard from him in a while....

Xavier, Lucien, and now Bennet.  Gone.  Who else, before this ends?  Are Bennet's death and Lucien's disappearance connected somehow?  Is Victor being targeted?  Would Godaric have been targeted too, if he hadn't been out of town?  

Giuliana pulls a deck of tarot cards from beneath the cushion of the chaise lounge, sliding the cards smoothly between her fingertips.  It's been months since she's used them, and now seems like a good time.  Her vision sharpens in the darkness as she flips a card out in front of her, pausing as she hears footsteps stop outside her suite door, ( and a quiet knock... )

The sounds of merriment drift into the library and a small Shadow slips through the door, closing it behind her as she finds a quiet place for a few moments alone.  Celebration has been plentiful in Le Nouveau Dessin the past week, and information awaits her.  She sits gracefully, setting her glass of lacrima down on the edge of a nearby table and pulling her laptop from its hard surface.

A series of taps allows her access, and she immediately begins to scan email, her eyes fixing on one to the Egregoroi, titled ( "Loss".... )

My Invictus died last night at our GotM.

I'm not upset - I showed up to kill a character, and my character got killed. My PVP flag was totally up. It's what happens when you come to game, y'know?

- Z

 Yeah. I haven't been on LJ for a while, and my email is so backlogged it makes me cringe.  Apparently all the servers at World of Beer decided that the week between Christmas and New Years would be an AWESOME time to go out of town to visit family, and leave me and one other server to cover the busiest week of the year.  Yeah.  So I'm working a lot.

Saturday I worked 11am to 1am.  Sunday I worked 6pm to 330am.  

( Why Monday is now named Failday... )

The part of me that's still a kid sat up at 5am and internally screamed "Gift Day! Get up!" The adult part that didn't need to get up til 6:30 or so to shower for work firmly took the child and threw her in a corner. I rolled back over. A few minutes later, I was being woken with the urgent tone from Himself that alerts me to the fact that what he's saying is important and possibly life-altering.

Turns out that he was having trouble breathing. His CPAP was off. That's because the power was off for our whole neighborhood. I was not a happy camper. Today was one of the show up or get fired days. I was anticipating another REM cycle of good hard snore time. Instead it was iffy dozing for both of us, until he got up and showered. Then I got up, and our day began.

Power came back, approximately 10 minutes after we left for work. There's nothing on the news about it. Bastards.

My family celebrated Christmas Eve on Wednesday night because 3 of us (myself included) had to work Thursday.  I think this is the best Christmas yet, and not because of any epic gifts I got(though I did, which I'll get into) but more because of other things.  

I managed to get Carl a new laptop on Black Friday for a *killer* price, which meant he got a much better laptop than the ones he'd been looking at getting.  Also, I think the one thing that really *made* Christmas this year was seeing my one year old neice, Alexia, opening and playing with her toys.  The sheer joy and amusement kills me.  Seriously, I gotta quit hanging out with her or I'm going to want one of my own a lot sooner.  I'm planning to set up to have one of my photographers do an "Anne Geddes" style shoot with her, too, because she's so freaking cute, and I know my sister and my mom will *love* the photos.

My family also has the tradition of having mexican food for Christmas.  No idea why, it's just something we all like.  We always make Taco Soup(recipe at the bottom).  I had a *horrible* day on Wednesday, and this really made it better.

I don't know why, but for once, my sisters and I got along.  We don't like, openly fight or anything, but there's always this tension and they have palpable animosity towards me at times.  They feel like they have to compete for some reason, and I try to minimize it as much as possible, but it's there.  Oddly, and thankfully, this seemed to be nonexistant on Wednesday night.  Part of me thinks it might have something to do with the older of my two younger sisters having had her tonsils out just days before, and not being able to talk at all(not kidding!  She typed all her communication on her cell phone or tried to sign language it) and I went out of my way to be helpful to her.  Maybe this is the start of us finally acting like sisters again.  Either way, I'm hopeful.

Now for that recipe I promised.  

( Taco Soup )