chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, darling

This is a personal journal!  I post often, and usually about the mundane, stupid things that go on in my life.  Also: fangirlish squee.  If you think we have something in common, leave me a comment here or send a PM.

If you're looking for my fic, it's over at AO3.

Internet, I am pleased to say that I made it through yet another family Thanksgiving without punching any of my siblings. It was a close call at some points, but I restrained myself by choosing to pour myself another glass of wine rather than engaging. Hooray! I'm growing as a person! Among other things.

It was nice getting to see my nieces and nephews, too (Dad, Cathy, and I Skyped with Sarah and Kathi on Thursday afternoon - UGH THEY'RE SO CUTE). Bella and Gavin are both getting taller, and it's TERRIBLE. Bella's only 9 and already at my shoulder height. :( Look, I really enjoy not being the shortest person in the family with them around, and I'm just not prepared for them to be bigger than me quite yet. Luckily this dapper little gentleman still has some growing to do:

( Monsieur Evan )

(Best thing: he likes to play hockey - my brother is a hockey coach - with spatulas, oven mitts, and bottle caps, so he spent most of Thursday doing that in my parents' kitchen. I may have died from cute a couple times.)

Anyway, in non-family news, the Teen Wolf Holidays 2013 fic collection went live today! Check it out here. There are 60 stories all told, which is AWESOME. :D

So, I made a thing on Friday night.

( Pic! )

My shoulder is still radiating pain down my right arm from cranking the forge blower (as seen here) and swinging a hammer down on an anvil for a couple hours, but GUYS, blacksmithing is fun! I mean, frustrating as hell until you figure out what the fuck you're doing (and even then you spend an inordinate amount of time going OH GOD WHY IS THE IRON NOT HEATING UP WHY IS THIS IMPOSSIBLE), but that's pretty much how all crafty-type things are for me. The dudes at the forge were really nice and hilarious, neither sky_was_green nor I came away with any serious burns or anything, and I kind of want to go back and make more stuff. Maybe in the spring? We'll see.

Anyway, I got to hang out with Tina and Decklin's cats for a few hours on Saturday afternoon, and then there was the Project Runway finale and Iron Man 3 to watch. Yesterday I played a lot of WoW, caught up on The Voice, and did laundry. So...I was a little productive, at least.

Also yesterday morning: Bella facetimed me for help on a school project. :D :D :D Am the most ridiculous of ridiculous aunts, I realize, but I can't help but be pleased that she wanted to consult with me. She had to paint a pumpkin to look like a character from a book and answer some questions about personality traits that the author explicitly shows the character having with examples. Luckily for all involved, she's reading the first Harry Potter book and I have scary recall abilities? So we settled on honor and curiosity as the traits to focus on, and I gave her specific sections of the book to reference.

Yes, my $100,000 degree in English literature finally gets some use. \o?

Oh, and Yuletide assignments went out! I'd be a lot more excited if I could make myself write anything at all. BUT. I matched on two fandoms this year, so if I can kick my ass into gear, maybe I'll write my recipient two stories. :D? Still need to figure out how my TWHols fic is going to work, too, but I think I know the main plot. I'm also still interested in doing NaNo next month, but I need to sit down and work out more character details and do some world-building before I fully commit. Maybe I'll do that this coming weekend.

Okay. Let's do this, Monday.

Finally talked to Doug about how stressed out and overwhelmed I've been since June, and though this hasn't magically made everything better like I'd hoped it would, it IS nice to know that he's aware of it all. Anyway, I'm trying not to think about this shit too much because it makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry when I do, so here is a list of things in my life that are good these days.

+This weekend I'm going apple-picking with paper_tzipporah and Kyleigh! Kyleigh has NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE, so I am maybe a little too thrilled about introducing her to the experience. :D

+In related news, I am going to make all the applesauce.

+Also this weekend: sky_was_green and I are going to have fancy s'mores at Max Brenner!

+Have fallen deep into the abyss known as One Direction and it is ruining my life.

+Television! The Sleepy Hollow pilot was decent (have yet to watch the second episode), and I thoroughly enjoy everything Abbie Mills chooses to be. Elementary is back tonight (YAY). The last few weeks of Project Runway have been intense, but it's cool because most of my favorites are still in the competition. The Voice blind auditions started this week and I may have gotten paper_tzipporah hooked on it COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT.

I think that's all I'm watching right now. I have to finish Orphan Black and Hell on Wheels and catch up with Almighty Johnsons, but it's hard to make myself do that when I just want to watch Big Fat Quiz Show episodes and 1D vids all the time.

+TWHols assignments went out! Yuletide nominations happened! NaNo is nearly upon us! Maybe one of these days I'll stop feeling like I should never write again and work on something. Anything. Whatever.

+I finally know what my family's holiday plans are. Have literally been asking since May. This shit is usually set in stone at Christmas dinner for the following year.

Alright, back to work with me. Happy Thursday, all. <3

Hello, person who's been assigned to my tw_holidays request! I hope you're as excited for this exchange as I am! :D

( Cut for people who don't care. )

The bad news is, my vacation is over and I'm back at work. The good news is, I've gotten myself addicted to Castle and ship Beckett/Castle like burning, and now I need fic recs. :D?

It was really nice to be home (mostly) for the last week. I slept and watched TV a lot and read a little, and while I didn't get as much writing done as I'd hoped, I feel as though I've recharged my batteries enough to get me through the next couple of weeks. paper_tzipporah and I hung out on the 4th; Cathy came up Friday afternoon and stayed through Sunday morning, and we went down to Connecticut to visit John, Jen, and Evan for a few hours on Saturday. Other than that I was on my own. I meant to go down to Cape Cod with sky_was_green on Monday, but I started feeling gross and peopled-out over the weekend, so we'll have to go some other time.

Currently slogging my way through 1Q84. I'm enjoying it, it's just...really dense. Like, ridiculously so. I've taken to playing it out in my head as an anime series, which is helping me get into the rhythm of the dialogue and the characters' thoughts (sometimes I have trouble reading novels in translation. See: every Russian novel and play I have ever attempted to get through. Manga and foreign comic books are easier because there are pictures to go along with the dialogue). Still, I'm probably not going to be able to finish it before it's due on Friday, so I'll just take a break before requesting it again.

Joni and I went to see The Heat on Thursday, and it was AMAZING. I highly recommend it, guys. I basically want to cross-stitch samplers of everything Melissa McCarthy said in the movie. There need to be a million more female-led buddy cop movies.

( Teen Wolf )

( The Almighty Johnsons )

More on Welcome to Night Vale: pocky_slash linked to where you can find the episodes (they're all available for free!) here, so I'll just reiterate - they're really great! If podcasts aren't your thing, some lovely person is in the process of transcribing the episodes here! There's an emerging fandom that's produced some wonderful fanart and excellent fic already, too. I have some fic recs, if anyone's interested. Knowledge of events from episodes 19a, 19b, and 25 is kind of important, so. Get on that. :D!

*The Rat and the Ruby Slippers (Carlos/Cecil) [Carlos is having the strangest dreams, and the strangest headaches, like there's something he's supposed to be remembering. Not to mention the intern's wedding coming up, and that new chemical StrexCorp wants him to develop. It's going to be a busy week.]

*The Knowable Universe (Carlos/Cecil) [“Let us approach a much more modest question: not whether we can know the universe or the Milky Way Galaxy or a star or a world. Can we know, ultimately and in detail, a grain of salt?” – Carl Sagan // or, Immediately following the events of Episode 25, Carlos realizes he’s been asking the wrong questions.]

*Somewhere a Band is Playing (Carlos/Cecil) [Cecil and Carlos deal with life, sex, pancakes, and possibly being anthropomorphic personifications. Also, Night Vale history as told by Night Vale, and a step-by-step guide to defying Death. Today's weather is by Ray Bradbury.]

*The Voice of Night Vale (Carlos/Cecil) [Cecil is, at worst, not much longer for this world. (And at best, a bit high-maintenance.)]

There's a decent amount of good stories for WTNV on AO3; these are just a few of my favorites.

Alright, I have work to catch up on. Later.

Let it be known throughout the land that sky_was_green and I continue to use Groupon for awesome.

Today's adventure: sailing. Twice we've gone whale-watching out from Cape Ann, but this excursion a) was a lot closer to home, b) also BYOB :D, and c) involved a lot fewer people (12 passengers and 2 crew in total). Also, the boat we went out on is called a ~*friendship sloop*~. It was definitely the best possible use of our Sunday afternoon.

( At some point in the future, we're going to take sailing lessons. )

EDIT: I should mention that Karen and I did NOT coordinate our outfits beforehand, so it was happenstance that we were both wearing blue tops and jean bottoms (pants for her, skirt for me). Oops.

I've been watching Hannibal, and it's really fucking good. If you're into that sort of thing, you should check it out. The first couple episodes were good, and then around, like, episode six it got FANTASTIC and stayed there. Last week's episode was particularly good, and I've re-watched it a bunch of times already.

( Spoilers ahoy. )

And now I've made myself sad. :(

I had so many plans for this weekend. I was going to be productive! Really! But mostly I played WoW and avoided looking at the giant management guide Tamara and Doug want me to read in preparation for when they try to talk the AVP into paying for my PMP course and exam.

Gaming > career. Because that's a healthy way to live.

( Cut because I highly doubt most of you care about my in-game life. )

This weekend some friends and various internet acquaintances were at Wiscon, and the panels they live-tweeted sounded really interesting and made me jealous that I wasn't there basking in other people's intelligence. Cons aren't my thing usually (I've been to exactly two), and I get overwhelmed by masses of people pretty easily these days, but pocky_slash tells me Wiscon sets up quiet rooms and the like? So I'm seriously considering going next year. I'm not 100% committed to it yet, but it's at least a possibility at this point.

Last night I went through my memory box and cleaned out some things that I have no particular attachment to anymore. I didn't mean to do this - I only opened it to put my recent movie ticket stubs in, but there were some things on the top that immediately made me unhappy, so I sorted through the rest. One of the things I threw out was a letter an ex-friend wrote to me during class (from the contents, I surmised that I was away in Arizona at the time). I was confused as to why I still had it, because I stopped being friends with this guy halfway through sophomore year, but reading through it made me wonder why we were ever friends with him to begin with. I had to text Ashley about it, naturally, and we shared a what the actual fuck, younger selves? moment.

I also found my high school yearbook photo. Good golly, my hair was long when I was 18. Oh, and I guess I still had some other things left over from high school in there? Which found their way into the trash, too. Ain't nobody got time for that shit.

Going to try to make some progress on at least one writing project tonight. I'm still avoiding the big bang for now, so I'm not entirely sure what else I want to work on. Quick, someone decide for me!

Back to work, I guess. :(

<3!

Man, summer blockbusters are 2 for 0 right now.

But Star Trek, guys. IT WAS PRETTY GREAT.

( Massive spoilers for Star Trek 2 under the cut. )

...I have a lot more thoughts about this movie than I anticipated.

My plan for tomorrow was to sleep in a bit before I have to host word wars for GYWO in the afternoon, buuuuuuut I might go see this again instead. Fenway DOES have a 9:30am matinee and all. I can go see the movie and be back in time for words. Right? Right.