taste_buds
Holidays provide a built-in excuse for indulgent entertaining. This all-purpose foodie community covers everything from homemade hangover cures to dinner party menus. Need quick advice? Get five-minute snack suggestions, low-fat ingredient substitutes, and even measurement conversions. Delicious recipes garnished with humorous advice. Yum.

Tags: taste_buds

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

Tags: naturesbeauty

backpacking
Want to embrace your wanderlust on the cheap? If you're tall on adventurous spirit, but short on funds, this community can help you plan a trip to anywhere. Offering plentiful tips on how to travel light, you can post about bargain hotels and hostels if you're into urban exploration or discuss camping gear and mosquito netting for the great outdoors. Hitch your backpack, pitch your tent, and carpe diem!

Tags: backpacking

I haven't written in a few weeks, and for this I feel badly. The time elapsed since my last post has seen a relationship end, and another begin. Heather, my on-again, off-again lover for the past two years, entered into a serious relationship, and we have gone back to just being friends. However, a new complication came on the horizon around the same time, and her name is Melissa.

Melissa and I have known each other for a little over a year, and not long after meeting her, I told her one night - drunkenly - how beautiful she is. She demurred, not wanting to complicate her life with a fuckbuddy, but the sexual attraction between us was to great for us to stay apart for long. She came over one night when the girlfriend was at work, and after a couple of drinks, sparks flew.

We had made out before - no big deal, right - but this time, I was bold enough to venture to the neck - and a lovely neck it is. Melissa is a type I've long lusted after but never had - tall and curvaceous. I have had mediumish height, I have had curvaceous - but she is a full 6'1", but not lanky at all. Her legs are long, elegant, her torso a work of art, her breasts huge, firm, with textured areolas.

Melissa is a fun, goofy girl - and after we got naked, she giggled uncontrollably for minutes. We stood in the bedroom, looking at each other, giggling. She tried to stop laughing, and we kissed some more - tentative kisses, still shocked and delighted by the nakedness of one another. It wasn't too many deep kisses, though, before her hands were all over me, and mine all over her: exploring each little part of her body. She wasn't too shy too move her hands down my chest, to my stomach. Soon, my cock was in her left hand, being gently stroked, and her right hand played with my chest, rubbing it and moving from one nipple to other. The look in her eyes was total desire; the smile was gone, but the look was nothing short of invigorating. My cock was pulsing as she dropped to her knees and took my dick in her mouth.

She expertly licked and sucked me, stroking the length of me while my balls were in her mouth. I was on the verge of losing my load, right in her mouth, when I guided her to the bed. For an hour or so we thrashed in the sheets, reveling in the feeling of our bodies next to, on top of, rubbing against one another. I was entranced by putting her breasts in my mouth and listening to her moans, testing the wetness of her pussy with a finger or two, hearing her slight moans. Everything about this girl breathes sexuality; it makes me so aroused to even recall it. I almost came just from her begging me to go down on her.

I was glad to oblige, and I found her to be an eager proponent of the 69 position, without my even suggesting. She confessed she had been with a few girls, but when I asked her what she liked best, she grabbed my cock and put it in her mouth again, and said: "Your dick is all I want."

We fucked. And fucked. And fucked.

First she let me fuck her from behind, her arms against the wall. I was afraid of losing it quickly, and I did. She did the sweetest thing; turning around, she kissed me lovingly and said, "it's alright, baby," then licked my dick clean. She then teased me, on top, straddling me, until I got hard again - and then, she put me back inside her, and rode me hard for several minutes. We fucked missionary style, still my favorite for just letting go and falling into one another's spiritual essence. Her passion, endurance, and willingness to let go and enter into a new, scary, exciting, and mututally satisfying place with her lover is what I prize in all my partners.

We have enjoyed each other over the last few weeks and I look forward to writing more about the places that we go. I am somewhat unadventurous, having not met the right person that I trust to take me to unexplored territory, but I may just have found her in Melissa.

To be continued...

**FINAL EDIT Thu Dec 10 02:15:47 UTC 2009**

So there is the final update... Over the past day we have processed around 11 million jobs out of the 12 million that were in queue at that time. Please bear in mind that over this past day, more jobs for notifications are also created. So while the queue has been dropping, we are still not fully caught up at this point, due to backlog and new jobs. We have roughly 3 million jobs still pending that involve the notification system in some manner. We had hoped we could have fully cleared the queue in a day, but unfortunately we can't clear it too quickly, since we need the rest of the site to operate normally. From our current perspective on the amount of jobs that are left in queue, and how many it has processed thus far, we believe it will take around another 8 - 12 hours to process everything.

And finally some answers to some questions:

( Read More and Get Some Answers... )

Tags: notification system
Current Location: Under a Rock
Current Mood: grumpy

freeskiers
While some of us long to escape the cold, dark stretch of winter for hot tropical beaches, for others, there's nothing quite like whoooooshing down those shimmering sugar alps. If you're fond of freestyle skiing, get ready to slide down the slippery slopes in good company. This passionate, international community shares travel/gear tips, anecdotes, photos, and videos for those who can't get enough of the sweet stuff.

Tags: freeskiers, skiing, snow, travel, winter sports

seasonal_icons
Need some extra twinkle to decorate your place? Check out these dazzling holiday-themed icons. If you're an artist, you can post your own creations, provided you abide by the simple rules (which is to say, all cheer and no politicking). Be sure to comment and give credit if you wish to borrow a little spirit (no direct links, please). If you're feeling a touch of humbug this season, this is an instant shot of festivity.

Tags: design, holiday icons, season_icons, userpics

handmade_gifts
High on creativity, but low on cash? You'll find tons of brilliant suggestions for do-it-yourself crafts sure to please everyone on your holiday gift list. Offering detailed instructions, photos, budgets, timelines, and active support, you'll soon turn spare remnants of fabric and time into cherished keepsakes. Be sure to search entries and read user guidelines before you post for help!

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

Tags: mogilefs, upgrade, userpics
Current Location: Jumping out of a perfectly good plane
Current Mood: dirty
Current Music: Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction

For anyone in or around Phoenix, AZ

http://community.livejournal.com/cheatingphoenix/profile