Thanks, y'all. I gotta play nice crippled girl for a while, but soon I'll be the misanthropic perv you know and love.(how long does lj save stuff, anyway?)

Erikja, well, ok, but don't forget, I am waiting here.....

She may even be Ethan Rayne's arm candy.

Bloody right genius, you are.

t /spike

Yay, me! Except Ethan may find her too evil and homophobic.

*blink.*

Apparently, I got a nomination for The Funnies for my Anya/Faith story. Which is kinda stunning, given how little I write, and given that I wrote the thing in about 15 minutes.

Still, I'm pretty psyched.

Good for you,LJ more starting at [link] will be back to post the pundette part.

This is weird.

Livejournal isn't letting me in....

That link didn't work for me, but I can get to Livejournal in general just fine.

Yup, just got in, whimpered hysterically, and commented.

Who wants to read the opening for the first story of the sequel to "Career Change?" Series title is "Career Advancement," story title is "Reorganization."

Hector Nunoz Ramierez had worked hard all his life, starting in his uncle's Los Angeles landscaping business before he was quite legal to work, sweating in rich people's backyards during the day and attending school in the evening. By the time he was thirty, he was running the business, and by the time he was fifty, all his children were attending very good colleges-- only occasionally helping out with the business, just to remind them that all success is built on dirt.

At fifty-seven, when his wife died, his family convinced him that taking an interest in life again was not a betrayal of her memory. He had as much money as any one man really needed and then some, and he decided that all working twelve hours a day got you was sitting at funerals saying "I should have spent more time with my family." He cut back to a decadent six hours a dayand began exploring the brave new world of hobbies.

Cars. As a young man, he'd looked at the cars in the garages of the rich folk, and he could never decide which one he would buy when he was rich. Now that he was really rich, he decided to buy them all. Some of his grandchildren enthusiastically helped, and within a few years the Ramierez Collection was being talked about in the same breath as the Harrah Collection and others.

Hector hardly slept anymore. Nighttime was a good time to catch up on his car magazines and to surf the Internet for possible new acquisitions and prices. At two a.m. on the late summer night, he was the only one up when he looked out his office window and saw lights on in the garage.

The alarms hadn't gone off, so he wasn't too concerned. He probably had forgotten to turn the lights off himself when he left--or one of the grandkids had come over to drool over the new California Shelby. Ricky was still trying to negotiate his way out of being banned from the garage for sneaking several buddies in to look at his grandpa's cool cars.

The garage was the reason he'd bought the house in Glendale, bigger than he was really comfortable with. The previous owner had been a dot-com millionaire who had spent his money just as quickly as he earned it. The collection of Porsches and motorcycles had been one of the first liquidations when the bottom fell out, but the house hadn't been far behind. As Hector approached the garage, he saw a red BMW convertible parked in the shadows to one side of the big front doors. Who did he know who drove a Beemer convertible, he wondered as he stepped through the open doors.

"All right, who's here?" he called.

The place seemed empty, except for the twenty-two cars parked down both sides of the long space. Must be one of the grandkids, then, hoping not to be caught.

"I know you're here, I saw your car outside. Who's here?"

"Evenin', mate."

He seemed to have popped up out of nowhere, the slender blond Englishman in the long black leather coat.

"Who are you?" Hector asked. He looked around again. "Who let you in here?"

Another man appeared, down by the '68 Corvette. "I'm sorry, we let ourselves in. We heard about your collection and thought we'd nip on over and have a look."

This man was English, too, and possibly a bit older than the first one. He was dressed in black as well, but more respectably than his friend.

Hector blinked at them, baffled by their casualness. "It's very late."

"We know," the second one said apologetically. "We just got in, though, and thought we could peek in without bothering anyone." The look he gave his friend was oddly challenging.

Hector looked at the garage doors. "You're lucky I apparently forgot to set the alarm, though."

The blond scratched his ear casually. "Yes, lucky, that. I must say," he added quickly, "you've got some nice cars here."

"Oh, yes, I'm quite pleased with them." Hector smiled happily at having new fellow enthusiasts to chat with. "But I swore that I'd keep the collection under two dozen, and I just spotted a 1969 Detomaso Mangusta on the Internet. I may have to sell something to make room." He looked down the line of cars. "But I'd hate to part with any of them."

The second man scanned the collection with a wistful eye. "I'd make an offer for that '62 E-Type over there, if I could."

The blond shook his head. "No, no, no, Ripper, you're the T-Bird type. The '56, over there, that's a nice set of wheels."

Hector nodded. "My late wife's favorite car." He sighed briefly at the pang of memory. "Which car is your favorite?" he asked the blond.

The man reached up and fiddled with a small gemstone that pierced the top of his right ear. "They're all some very sweet cars, mate, I'll grant you that. The Coupe Deville is very nice." He began strolling down the line. "But I have to confess that, if forced to make a choice, I'd go for this one." He stopped and rested his hand on the black hood of one of Hector's more recent acquisitions.

"Oh, the 1959 DeSoto. That's actually a very rare car."