Halloween Lostfic challenge

Just promoting this in my journal 'cause you guys are wonderful and still write Lostfic and some might not know about a_lost_art:

Hey y'all! Happy almost-Halloween! We thought it would be a dreary holiday without some Lost ghost stories. I mean, they just write themselves! (Ghost-writers, hee!) Hurley sees ghosts and Miles hears them; Smokey can only manifest as human in a dead body, making him a ghost or a (shhhhh, someone around here is scared of them) zombie; even the people in the church were ghosts while they were there.

The challenge is to write a Lost ghost story before October 31 and post it here. We won't haunt you or anything if you're a little late, but WE WANT TO BE SCARED SILLY!!! And it doesn't have to be just what I mentioned, it can be anything Lost-like that seems spooky to you (the cabin, for instance). Be creative...monsters, visions, creepy settings, even Halloween crack, all count. But most important, have lots of good scary fun.

Blessed Are the Icon Makers

Remember when I said I wanted to attempt making icon posts in comms? And then I didn't? Well, I was being Allie and keeping it in my brain but not getting on with it. Sigh. Anyhow, I think what's holding me up are some questions about what's an original icon that you can take credit for and what's not. I can't draw or do much of anything from scratch: I have to use "bases" I find "out there," wherever, on the internet. For instance these:






I feel like I can take credit for these because I got the pics from an uncopyrighted sight and I personalized them with words and effects. So I can claim them as my own work, right?

But what about this:



Also from an open site, but all I did was crop it. I have no idea who made it. Does cropping count as making it mine?

What is the etiquette? What are the rules? Is there a site where everything is laid out about what is MY work and what belongs to someone else, about where the line is drawn? Because I don't want to step on anyone's toes by claiming their work as mine in a comm, even if I did make changes and it wasn't a protected image. Help please?

Oh no...

...here we go.

HOW does one do it? High school basketball season starts today, tho football season still isn't over. So I have to go to the football games on Friday nights to watch my girl cheer (not that it's a chore, it's just a pain getting ready and spending 2 hours there), and her first basketball game is today, and I watch her play (senior starter, this is finally HER year, whoo!) then watch her cheer for the boys' team at least 'til after the cheerleaders' halftime dance. They play bball 2 or 3 times a week, so there goes another 9 hours.

Then there's Thanksgiving. I don't have it at my house, we go to my mom's 6 hours away, but I have to bring a cooler full of food and certain ingredients she won't have and ZOMG I'll be NaNo-ing. And THAT's what's freaking me out!

How does one NaNo and do football and basketball seasons and Thanksgiving and also remember their mother's birthday and remember to feed the cats and bathe and get out of bed in the morning? It's too much! And yet I've won NaNo 3 times, once even with a book I'm proud of. (The other two are still WIPs.) I can do this. I CAN. I'm the Little Engine That Could. It's gonna kill me tho. *thunk* <--that was the sound of me dying.