This is a meme! Leave a comment describing your favorite part of Thanksgiving (or an applicable winter-y holiday), and I will give you five words I associate with you. Then post about what they mean to you, along with this blurb, at your own journal. Step three: Profit!

These words come from citizenjess!

1. Butcher: The Butcher is my cat. I got him in 2007. He is all grey with a subtle stripe on his sides and tail, and he has green eyes. I believe (but have not had confirmed) that he is part Siamese, part Russian Blue. The first animal he ever caught was a mouse in my apartment on Miller Street. He has since graduated to all kinds of birds, including chickadees, blue jays, doves, sparrows, and seagulls. He also occasionally catches rabbits and squirrels. He is probably the smartest cat I have ever met, and I'm not just saying that because he's mine. He is not terribly affectionate, but he puts up with me cuddling him with enough grace. In the winter occasionally he will sleep in my room with me. I love him more than just about everything else on earth. My family all hate him except for my mother.

2. Podfics/Audiofics: This is the major way I participate in fandom now, and has been for over a year now. When I stopped writing fanfiction of my own (because I'm not smart enough to write for my current fandom), I started focusing on recording the stories I really loved reading. I had to stop doing them for a couple of months while I had a roommate, but now that I have my own room I've begun recording them again, and I'm really happy that I can do it again because it really brings me a lot of joy to put voice to stories I genuinely enjoy. My most successful podfics have been of irisbleufic's Sherlock fanfiction (almost 300 downloads! that's practically BNF status!), and the fact that people on friending memes identify me as "that podfic girl" makes me inexplicably happy. I've done a lot of podfic for charity auctions, so it's not just something I like doing, it's something I can make a difference by doing. Right now I am working on my Podbang podfics, and I am really pleased with how the first hour and a half of recording has turned out. I have just about an hour left to do, and it's a really tense, emotionally laden part that I am completely psyched to tackle at some point in the next few days. I am thrilled that so many people trust me to do a good job with their stories, and I really do my best to make every one I record something special and meaningful. The day I start to sound bored is the day I step back from the microphone.

3. Sherlock Holmes: So on Christmas 2009 my siblings and I went to see this movie because I'm a Robert Downey Jr. fangirl, and it was the most exciting thing I'd seen in ages. I'd only been aware of Sherlock Holmes peripherally before that point. I quickly acquired and read the canon, and I fell in love with Holmes and Watson, not for the actors playing them, but as fully realized characters in their own rights. I started watching the Granada series in... February, I think, and then I fell in love with Jeremy Brett, who is, in my opinion, the ultimate Holmes. Then I watched the Russian series, and I fell in love with Vasily Livanov. (is anyone seeing a pattern arising here?) Then in August Sherlock aired, and I fell in love with Martin Freeman (ha! c-c-combo breaker!). Everybody in the world knows that intelligence turns me on, and Holmes gets me right in the sapiosexuality. I adore Watson for different but no less important reasons: his compassion, his loyalty, and yes, his intelligence too. I love Lestrade (Colin Jeavons and Rupert Graves, not the Russian one) and I really love Mycroft (especially as Mark Gatiss but also as Charles Gray) and I have a soft spot for every Mrs. Hudson ever. (And I love Moriarty, but only as Andrew Scott.) I love Victorian-era Holmes and I love modern-day Holmes, because I am also a sucker for AUs and really Sherlock was just so brilliantly done. This has been my primary fandom for almost a full year now and my love is only growing, because the canon is incredible and the people in the fandom are really just so marvelously nice and it really, genuinely makes me happy.

4. Glasses: I have worn glasses since third grade. My nose has a bump on the bridge that is really just perfect for holding my glasses up, so I have to conclude that that's why it's there, because I've certainly never broken it to give it that strange shape. I came up with the screen name "speccygeekgrrl" when I was 13, so I have defined myself by my glasses on the internet for almost half of my life now. I have tried contact lenses and I can't stand them. My parents have broached the idea of laser eye surgery and I want nothing to do with it. I am bespectacled and I am proud of that fact. I have a glasses fetish, I absolutely do find myself more attracted to people who wear glasses, and an average looking person who puts on a pair automatically becomes better looking in my eyes. My first boyfriend wore them, the person with whom I had my longest relationship wore them, I'm pretty sure the person I lost my virginity to wore them (don't quote me on that one), my best friends have all worn them, out of my current social circle all my closest friends wear them. I don't consciously select people because they wear glasses, but I seem to gravitate towards them anyhow.

5. POT!: Ah, marijuana. Out of all the drugs I've ever tried, including alcohol and tobacco, marijuana is my favorite. I love the smell of it, I love the taste of it, I love the effects of it. I first smoked weed when I was 17, in a minivan outside of the bowling alley, with a few boys from my high school who were all wildly amused at the thought of getting the school geek stoned, and I bowled the second-best game of my life that night. I have smoked weed with members of my family, including my brother, my favorite sister, and my favorite aunts. I have gotten a cat, a rat, and a dog stoned, and I maintain that that fish was baked, even if the people I was with didn't think so. I have owned several glass pieces, a small bong, a stone pipe, and a corncob pipe. I have smoked joints, blunts, bongs, pipes, hookahs, vaporizers, I smoked out of an apple once, and I have made pot butter and cooked baked goods with it. For the year I lived on Miller Street and the months I lived on Military Turnpike, I was getting high at least every other day, if not every day. When I smoke weed, I don't need to take sleeping pills, I sleep better and deeper, and it absolutely has a lifting and stabilizing effect on my bipolar disorder. I fucking love weed. My favorite way to smoke is in a blunt, because a blunt automatically assumes company, and I really hate smoking alone. It's a social thing for me. I don't do stupid things when I get high, I don't take stupid risks, I don't get belligerent or upset. I relax. I enjoy things more. I spend time with people I like, when I'm lucky, I do fun things or creative things. Being stoned doesn't hinder my creative process. I don't get high before class, I don't get high when I have things I need to do, I don't get high unless I legitimately don't have anything important to do. I honestly believe that marijuana should be legalized, because it is so much less bad for you than alcohol and tobacco are, and those things are legitimized by society when they're both so clearly destructive. Weed isn't really destructive. It has medical uses, and I know I shouldn't self-medicate, but when you consider the counseling I was getting in 2007, self-medicating was my best option and it honestly kept me from killing myself on more than one occasion. Now I get high maybe a couple of times a month. It's not something I indulge in all the time, but I like being able to get stoned with a good friend and just talk about random shit for a couple of hours.

TL;DR: Dani + marijuana = ♥