ileliberte's drawn a truly lovely SGA piece:

Go to her journal to see the full-size version and leave her feedback.

Well i've had to pull out of the Secret Santa Challenge on Sheppard H/C. I feel like a bit of a failure to be honest - two challenges and i haven't been able to fulfill either one.

I'm getting better each day. My panic and anxiety have lessened, my throat feels better and i can eat again without thinking i'm going to choke all the time, but i don't have the focus or the discipline right now to write anything.

I'm going to concentrate on me and hopefully, when i'm feeling 100%, i can finish the challenges that i started and post them for my orginal recipients here on my LJ.

I want to thank all the kind words, links and support that has been provided. Knowing that there are people out there who care enough to comment and make me feel better really does make me feel better. So thank you.

* Tehran is burning:

At least eight anti-government protesters, including a nephew of Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iran’s opposition leader, were shot dead yesterday as the smouldering confrontation between the regime and the so-called Green Movement finally erupted.

...Analysts heralded the start of what could be a bloody endgame as hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters poured on to the streets of Tehran and other cities and fought running battles with the security forces. Opposition websites claimed that some policemen had refused to fire on demonstrators.

That number has been bumped up to at least ten, btw.

* Aides to Iran’s Opposition Leaders Said to Be Arrested

The Iranian authorities arrested a number of opposition figures on Monday in the wake of violent protests a day earlier, Web sites reported, including three top aides to the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi and Ibrahim Yazdi, leader of the banned Iran Freedom Movement....

Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said.

Foreign journalists have been banned from covering the protests, and the reports could not be independently verified.

This started as something, changed into something else, and ended up looking familiar and dead-endish. If I were to go anywhere with this, I'd need to change narrators. So, with everyone distracted by Yuletide and Christmas booty, let me get this off my plate and I can go back to QH17.

( Pegasus has an infinite supply of ways to ruin your day. )

I really am sick of feeling so incredibly anxious....and detached from everything. I feel like i can't breathe half the time, my throat feels tight and contricted and i often thing i'm choking and eating food has become problematic because i'm just so scared of choking. I feel stressed, years older and really...i don't know how much longer i can take this. And it's christmas and i feel...not really here and guilty because of it at the same time.

I just want to feel normal again :(

Please - does anyone else suffer with this and have any tips, words of wisdom, experience something similar....

Zen, because-all-you-goyim-will-be-busy-tomorrow edition.

Christmas
* Some lucky guys get to come home for the holidays and are met with good cheer.
* A lot of guys are not so lucky and this is what they have to look forward to, so keep them in your thoughts.
* Santa makes an early delivery to the USS Cleveland, deployed to the Middle East.
* Naval Base San Diego is a subdued and tasteful vista this time of year.
* Santa's elves sign their work before a gift drop over Guam.
* The 12th Annual Randy Oler Operation Toy Drop, where paratroopers donate a toy in exchange for the privilege of getting punted out of the rear of a perfectly good aircraft over Fort Bragg's Sicily drop zone.
* USAF Master Sgt. Cary Loeffler and his wife pull extra duty with underprivileged children in South Dakota.
* Charleston AFB gets help marshaling from Santa, his elves, and the odd reindeer.
* Santa's back-up sleigh.
* As usual, NORAD is tracking Santa's progress.

Vehicle Pr0n
* The French mooching fuel. (The Canadians mooch fuel, too, but they're less elegant about it.)
* Sunset view.
* Lunch on the run.
* Words mean different things in the Navy than in the civilian world. For instance, this is a Wasp.

Hanging with the Undertall
* Philippines: The happiest pre-op patient you'll ever see.
* USA: Welcome home.
* Germany: Someone seems pleased with the Cuzzie Cares Deployment Kit. The kits, designed for the children of deployed servicemen, contain post cards, playing cards, dog tags, a countdown calendar, journals, photo albums and other items. And, of course, a Cuzzie the Bear.
* Iraq. Sour Swinger, a recently returned milblogger, posted another flikr set of photos from his tour.

Miscellany
* Wire-guided missile launch.
* Yeah, firing the .50 cal is fun, but that's an awful lot of brass to police afterward.
* We're from the government and we're here to help.
* The aircraft carrier version of a zamboni.

Title: Freefalling
Author: sgteam14283
Characters: Lorne, Cadman
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Language (a certain Marine has quite a mouth)
Summary: Sometimes it's the little things that get you through the hardest times.
A/N: Few things; Written for the Secret Santa exchange over at major_explosion for mackenziesmomma (Hope she likes it! :D), the hotel mentioned is real (I looked it up on the interwebs so it has to be true right?) and there'll be cookies for anyone who can guess the other show that I slightly mention :)

( I'm freefalling, who will be the one who saves me now? )

* Naughty! Okay boys and girls, name the partisan crank spouting this in the newspaper:

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.

Christmas is a Christian holiday - if you're not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don't mess with the Messiah.

Glenn Beck? Rush Limbaugh? Mike Huckabee? Wrong side of the aisle. Try Garrison Keillor...

Here's a list of Jew-written Christmas songs, for the record. I'll be over in the corner pondering taking down all of my Christmas fic because, heaven forfend someone be offended by this filthy, elitist, Ivy-educated Yid sullying their holiday... (no, not really).

* Nice! If you are feeling more ecumenical than a certain cranky old man turned crank, please consider hitting up Xerox's cards to the troops site. You fill it out online, they print it out. They do this every year (and I try to pimp it every year) and it's a quick way to brighten someone's day without having to wait on line at the post office.

* Nice! It's mostly too late to send things in time for Christmas, but it's good for the rest of the year, too: if you have extra cards or extra time, here's a list of addresses to send cards or packages to wounded soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center (the big burn unit), Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (the first stop for all wounded), National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, and Walter Reed AMC, where almost everyone winds up once they're stateside. I'm sure nobody will mind a belated card or a non-denominational hello any time of the year. The Department of Defense doesn't allow for 'any soldier' mail to go directly to the wounded, so arrangements have been made to set up intermediaries. Mostly through the Red Cross, so, you know, if you have a few extra bucks for a donation...

I am never ever eating miniature sweets again.

I was eating one in the car on Friday and it got stuck in my throat....not just stuck and i coughed it up a second later, but it properly wedged and i honestly thought i was going to die. I know that sounds lame, but i have never been so frightened in my life. My boyf was driving the car so couldn't stop so he was hammering me on the back with his fist and it just seemed to go on forever.....

It's really really shaken me and i've been having panic attacks ever since (Something that took me years to get over before)...really.....i thought that was it, the end and so much flashed through my mind as it was happening. I have never been so happy to be alive. I just hope i can stop panicking about this soon.....

I feel like i'm being silly....really....but i'm a bit scared to eat at the moment and i don't want it to turn into a thing... you know?

Zen, what-do-you-mean-blizzard-watch!?!?! edition.

Hanging with the Undertall
* Iraq: Army lieutenant raises money so that a baby girl can see.
* Afghanistan: woodland camo earmuffs totally complete the look | bearly getting by.
* Italy: Toys for Tots delivery at an orphanage.
* Philippines: who wants toys?

Shooting Things
* Delta II launch: that's really awesome.
* Sea Sparrow launch.

Vehicle Pr0n
* Let us have refueling shots: chasing the boom | Danes mooching fuel | mountain high.
* The USS Hawaii shows how to bling out a sub for Christmas.
* Harrier at dawn.

Miscellany
* This picture was taken in the north Arabian Sea, which means that yes, Virginia, the US Navy deploys carriers to warzones with a complement of giant tricycles.
* Corpsman, I'm afraid to tell you that you've got a growth on your head. So does your friend.
* "I'll be in my bunk" is a lot like "I'll be in the overhead storage compartment" when you're a submariner.
* Brooms at dawn.
* Oh, the meta. USAF training at Nevatim Air Force Base, Israel because the Germans have wacky air restrictions. Parking practice | Navigation practice over the Dead Sea | Air controller practice (the IAF likes 'em small).
* History, Part One: the Battle of the Bulge, 65 years later.
* History, Part Two: General MacArthur observes the shelling of Inchon.
* Every year, various individuals and groups get together to lay wreaths at the graves of Christian soldiers in the nation's military cemeteries.

Uh... a few people requested wacky marines, John and Lorne failing to cope with wacky marines, and, well, something lighter after the last one. So to all of you, here is the 2009 Christmas fic.

2007 Christmas fic
2008 Christmas fic

( Give them points for creativity, at least. )

hjpatience asked for "5 things that happened to everyone else (i.e. the rest of the SGC) in the Qui Habitat 'verse," but she gets only three because, well, I've sort of covered a lot of people already.

Qui Habitat: overview | series cover page

( Lt. Col. Samantha Carter, USAF; MIA )

( Dr. Daniel Jackson; Captured )

( Dr. Carolyn Lam; KIA )

Another pair of short ones, since work and after-work have been exceptionally busy this week. A couple of NCIS crossovers, after a fashion.

1) Several people asked for Criminal Minds' Penelope Garcia, but auburnnothenna asked for Penelope and NCIS's Abby Sciuto: ( hooray for writing characters for the first time. )

2) mischief5 asked for Gibbs post-Prodigal: ( Aftermath )