I'm feeling slightly burned out/tired of my course at the moment...

Then a break is definitely in order, I say! I'll be off to read your latest fic later.

I think LJ's problems stem from how it's been letting spates of spam get through to e-mails from posts to communities. Yahoo and the others probably got complaints, particularly since, on LJ, only the community moderator can complain to LJ about spam; I'm not even sure the moderators would see the spam if it gets sent in reply to a community post by someone else.