Still reading 'Two Towers'.
The word gangrel was used by Faramir (who is far more noble and courteous in the book than the movie) to describe Gollum. Interesting word, I'd come across it before in the White Wolf role-playing system where Gangrel is the name of one of the Vampire clans. Had the game designers nicked it from Tolkien, I wondered? Anyway I looked it up and apparently it's a Scots word meaning 'vagabond or drifter', possibly derived from a middle English word - gangen - which means 'to go'. See? It all makes sense now…
Heh, and I don't just mis-hear things, I mis-read stuff all the time as well.

Faramir to Frodo: "Do not approach their citadel. You will be espied. It is a place of sheepless malice..."

... Pardon?
It was of course, "sleepless malice...", but it made me giggle.

There's an art to browning onions. First of all you have to use plenty of oil or butter (a teaspoon? I don't think so) and then the heat has to be high enough to cook them without being so hot they turn to charcoal. If in doubt use a lower heat, and be patient. Good browned onions, like a good sauce, take time.

Which fandom has the worst fanfic? Mary-Sues, OOC's, just plain nonsense?
So far, in my hardly extensive reading, I have to say the Harry Potter-verse has turned out a goodly amount of tripe, with LotR coming a close second. True, not all of it is crap, and they're not the only fandoms to be afflicted by bad writing. (Professionals - 'The best Cowboys have Chinese eyes.'. Farking… what? That was the first truly awful fanfic I'd read. I don't think I've recovered yet. And don't get me started on Jane's efforts…)
Admittedly I'm more likely to give a bad fic a go if I'm interested in the fandom but I don't think I've ever managed to finish a HP story.
It's possible, I suppose, that the bigger fandoms will have a higher proportion of rubbish because there's just so many more people active in it. And supporting that theory is the fact that within the smaller fandoms I tend to find more care is taken over the stories. Go figure.

Finally caught up with Sublunary. Phew! It's a very attractive comic but I have problems with 14 year-old geniuses, and this story is stuffed with 'em! Still, it has pretty boyz rabbiting away so I can't complain too loudly - except to say it could do with more rabbiting, thanks. : )

Hee. A friend of the cubs' father has just come back from travelling and in exchange for a naginata bag he asked her to bring back some snow domes for me! <g> Now I'm the proud owner of a particularly tasteful clear acrylic pyramid that has drifts of golden sparklies swirling around miniature sphinxes and pyramids, and a glass dome containing a black swan, from Perth, similar to the one OkapiPrincess got me a little while back.
I need to get Soulsis back here with her digital camera (and the cable, this time) so I can take some photos of my treasures. Then I can upload them and share the joy.

Awww, one of my cubs made me a V-day card... It's decorated with hand-drawn pictures of Spongebob Squarepants characters. You know, I still think they haven't quite got the idea of giving someone what they'll be interested in. : )

It's overcast and drizzly today - cool, but not cold. Perfect. This was the sort of day where I used to love taking photos of raindrops on leaves and flowers, trying to capture that luminosity plants have when it's overcast. Man-made objects tend to go flat and dull under a cloudy sky, but plants really glow - it's beautiful...

Tch. Scared myself earlier - checked my blog only to find the latest post (this one) wasn't there!
No of course it wasn't, cos I'd only drafted it, hadn't uploaded yet. <shakes head> Honestly, I wonder at myself sometimes...