I'm late. I just caught up on this thread now - I hadn't looked at it since July.
On January 1, I watched "Serenity" with my Whedon-themed improv team. I thought of ita. I thought of how meeting her was the highlight of the red carpet premiere for me, not just in hindsight, but it's documented right in my LJ posts about it.
On Sunday night, that same team had a practice. We're doing a Firefly-themed show at a con this weekend and I was insistent that we get canon stuff right. (It turns out some people just watch shows, they don't obsess over them. Who knew?) The question came up, "Can we make references to current pop culture?" I argued that yes, the Cortex has all that stuff if what we see in Mr. Universe's complex is any indication, and our director said it would be funny if we referred to it as classical music. Bits began: "I want to share this Classical music with you; it's called Dark Side of the Moon." "The moon doesn't have a dark side!" "What kind of planet only has one moon?" "Which moon?"
And then, softly, I said, "ita Moon." It wasn't a thing, the bits went on around me and we got back to practicing, but I thought of ita in that moment. I wondered how I would pronounce the name of the moon if I referenced it in a show.
I didn't know that yesterday was ita's birthday until I started seeing the Buffistas' posts on Facebook and P-C's tweet thread.
I drank chocolate mint tea yesterday morning. I spent two hours writing up notes about that Firefly improv practice.
I thought about how one time, ita and I talked about why Zoe is with Wash. ita couldn't understand how such a strong woman ended up with such a goof of a man. I told her that I thought it was because she didn't have to be a fighter all the time with him. That to Mal, to everyone else, Zoe always had to be the one holding it together, fighting and composed. But with Wash, she could just be for a minute. And ita said something about how that made sense and sounded nice.