1. Girls with Facial Piercings.
Okay, I guess I can deal with nose studs. Fine. They look better on some girls than others, but whatever. The ones that really bugs me are the ones in the cheeks, or the area above or below the lips. I'm actually a fan eyebrow piercings and suchlike, but anything else is just overdone. You look dumb.
2. Stupid People in Lines at Fast Food Restaurants.
Seriously, guys. If I am the first in line and you are the fourth, do not crowd the counter as if you think your food is going to come out ahead of mine, especially if I am standing back a respectful distance. And if they give everyone a number and they call that number when your order is ready, be paying attention, retard.
3. People Who Spell Words with Numbers
l337 is fine. I am all about l337. The following is a list of "words" and phrases that are unacceptable.
Are you ready 4 this weekend?
See you l8r!
I want 2 eat chocolate.
sk8r
Seriously. That's just freaking lazy. It's not even cute. Also, it is hard to read.
4. People Who Like Twilight.
I mean, come on guys. Really?
5. People Who TyPe LiKe ThIs.
It makes me want to kill myself, and it makes you look stupid. That's too much work. Like the exact opposite of People Type #4.
6. People Who Choose 'Need' and then Disenchant.
This really only makes sense to people who play WoW. Let's just say I've been cheated out of some good gear and couple of epics because of a complete douchebag who didn't want to drop a couple extra gold for his mats.
7. People Who Think That The Only People Who Like Pink Floyd are Stoners.
Seriously, I love Pink Floyd. Mainly, The Wall. You do not need to be high to appreciate it, either the album or the movie, and I think being high while watching/listening to it just cheapens it. Roger Waters is a musical genius. So STFU.
Well, my first week of the Spring '10 semester is over, and it really wasn't half bad.
There was an RPGuild meeting today, we got a couple of new members, both of whom irritate me to the point where I almost snapped at them, but I'm going to chalk that up to be tired and try to let it slide. I'm trying to be a more tolerant person, despite the stress that has been going on. So far it really isn't working.
I'm finding that taking better care of myself is actually kind of fun. There's a weird satisfaction that I get out of sticking to my regimen that I've created, even if it's just making sure that I follow through on every step I've
mapped out for my morning and evening routines. Having all of my things organized under my bed, and being able to see them, is great; making sure I make my bed in the mornings... I love routine. While spontaneity is great, these are the things that I need to be consistent in.
So, had another night at the gym! I almost didn't go, because it was so late in the day (6:00pm), but I knew that if I started sliding now, I was never going to get back to where I wanted to be, so I finally went.
I spent about 25mins on the cross-trainer and did about 2.25 miles, which really isn't bad for me; that averages out to about 5.5mph, which is something I really never managed in high school (although in my defense, I had a gimp leg my junior year). I went a little easier with my weight-lifting, since I did a bunch of that on Wednesday.
Deltoids, biceps, lats: 3sets/10reps/15lbs
Pecs, tricepts, deltoids: 3sets/12reps/10lbs
Hamstrings, glutes, quads: 4sets/10reps/35lbs
I didn't do abs today because some jackass was sitting on the machine and texting, and I wanted to get to the commons and get a sandwich for supper before they closed. I spent some time chatting with the other people from the Guild while I ate (I ended up getting a quesadilla instead of a sandwich, because of the difference in lines... I hate waiting). Kevin said that he wanted to see if a group of us from the Guild could form a work-out support group, because obviously, since we're RP-ers, we are stupidly out of shape. I welcomed the idea, although I tend to prefer working out on my own so that I can go at my own pace and do what I want to do. We'll see how well it all works out.
I actually managed to find a scale and figured out how much I weigh. It's a little - okay, a lot - more than I thought it was, but that's what I get for not taking care of myself. Currently I weigh in at 166.5lbs. Usually that would depress me, but since I'm working hard at trying to lose weight and not willing to give up, I'm just going to stick to my plan and be positive.
At any rate, there's not a whole lot going on this weekend. Tomorrow morning I'm going to yoga, and my mom might be coming over to bring the pictures that Adam and I had taken a week or so ago. I have a short story to write for Wednesday, and some crochet to catch up on - if I don't finish Alek's scarf soon, I won't get it to him before it gets warm again!
[23:04] Kayla Rose: although I guess I shouldn't bitch about Disney too much, since they own Marvel and all now
[23:05] Alek: hahahhahaha
[23:05] Alek: i forgot about that
[23:05] Alek: i meant to give you so much shit and i forgot
[23:05] Kayla Rose: lol god you are hysterical
[23:06] Alek: oh man i had joke written in my head and i forgot
[23:06] Alek: "Can't wait to see spiderman dumping mary jane for hannah montana"
[23:06] Kayla Rose: you should have enough room in your head for an arsenal of jokes
[23:06] Kayla Rose: although really you should probably let them ferment for a bit, probably only age would make them worth anything.
[23:06] Kayla Rose: consider your cranium a wine cellar for lame jokes.
[23:07] Kayla Rose: also btw i'm pretty sure spiderman doesn't know who mary jane is anymore, remember?
[23:07] Kayla Rose: One More Day?
[23:07] Alek: whatever
[23:07] Kayla Rose: although yeah actually One More Day was fucking retarded
[23:07] Alek: DISNEY OWN PUNISHER! THINK ABOUT THAT!
[23:08] Kayla Rose: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAi think i might kill myself
So it really wasn't an earth-shattering decision for me to start working out or anything. I mean, I've been failing at it on-and-off again for the past couple of years. Over the past six months, two people have been convinced that I was pregnant because of my physical appearance, and Alek discovered (to our dismay) that he can no longer pick me up and swing me about in greeting anymore.
I'm not sure exactly how much I weigh anymore, although I'm willing to bet it's somewhere in the ballpark of 160lbs. People tend not to believe me, mainly because I dress in a way that more or less hides the weight, but the fact of the matter is that I am five-foot-two and I am about twenty, maybe thirty pounds, overweight.
It's not really a New Year's resolution or anything, this has been something that I've been struggling with for some time now. However, since it's a new semester, and I've always had the tools to get rid of this excess weight, I decided that I would go at it while my resolve was still fresh. (Come to think of it, maybe that's why people always come up with these resolutions around New Years?)
So, my goal is to get my weight down to 135lbs. Tomorrow, when I make my trip to the gym, I'll check and see how much I weigh. I really don't want to know - part of me is afraid that it's going to be more than 160lbs, but I know I really can't be that overweight. Can I? Oh well, I'm going to try and stop worry about it, because I'm finally starting to do something. I managed to lose ten pounds in high school just by changing my eating habits, surely by exercising daily and watching what I eat again, I can get back to where I was at - sort of - when I graduated high school.
I also plan on attending the 10am yoga class on Saturdays, to try and get some activity into those days. Every Saturday I will post my weight and how much exercise I got that week.
Aside from my body-image stuff, I've been continuing to scribble in my writer's notebook, trying to figure out where I'm going with Otaku. I did finally torrent a copy of Welcome to the N.H.K., which is a little weirder than I thought it was going to be, but then again, that goes for most manga/anime things that I encounter, with the exception of Fruits Basket (don't even ask me what I though FLCL was going to be like...). I had a chat with Yuko, who lives in my dorm and is here on a student visa from Japan, and she was explaining to me what the Japanese otaku are like and how they are viewed in Japanese society. It was a very good chat, and just convinced me even more that Yuko is probably the sweetest girl I have ever met in my life who wasn't about to join a convent.
I'm hoping to get my hands on a decent MP3 player that I can take to the gym with me, it's kind of lame having to listen to the radio station that everyone on campus thinks is "awesome", because let's be honest, my playlist consists of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Offspring, MIKA, Cake, and UVERworld, with a sprinkling of Sting in there, along with some Backstreet Boys, Tonic, and one song by Jet. Obviously this really doesn't pertain to most of the demographic to which I belong. I think my cousin has an MP3 player that she doesn't want anymore, I may ask if it's still up for grabs.
Speaking of The Offspring, I've been listening to their most recent album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace, and it's not nearly as bad as Adam made it out to seem. Yeah, obviously it's not the same as the music they've been making for the last, what, twenty-five years? But Dexter Holland has been wreaking havoc on his vocal chords for a long time and he just can't do anymore what he did on Smash or Americana. To be honest, I think I actually prefer this to their earlier stuff, although of course you gotta do the classics, I would be pissed if I went to a concert and they didn't play "Come Out and Play".
At any rate, time to work some more on the scarf that I'm crocheting for Alek (I swear, at some point I will post pictures!) and watch some cartoons. Did you know that crocheting for an hour will burn 100 calories? For me, at least.
Well, not even a week into the semester, and I've already dropped my only two theater classes and pretty much said "screw you" to the entire theater department. Honestly, studying it in college has completely ruined theater for me - it's not even fun anymore - and I decided to ditch both my directing class and my theater theory class for a "how to teach grammar to kids" class.
I'm still trying to find a copy of Japanamerica, by Roland Kelts, although I have finally gotten my hands on a copy of Welcome to the N.H.K. (the light novel). I'm still trying to collect "research" materials (e.g., books that have the same tone that I'm going for... I'll have to ask my fiction prof if he has any suggestions) and trying to come up with a plotline (I'm not even sure how it's going to end yet at this point, it depends on what my characters end up doing). So far I've had only response on the otaku website that I requested, and I know it would be the worst idea ever to go waltzing into 4chan and ask them if they would please let me interview them. They would absolutely rip me apart.
It's surprising, how difficult it is to find material to help me write this book. I thought there would definitely be a lot for me to work with, and a lot of people willing to help me out right off the bat, but I guess not. My buddy Zac, from Some Sort of Loli Breakfast Machine, has been pointing me to articles and giving me insight into the world, but he's more wota than anything else, and he assures me that although wota and otaku look like the same thing, the details are surprisingly different.
Well, I have my Multicultural American Lit class here in half an hour, so I should probably get ready for that and then take off. Probably I will post again later tonight.
Okay, so that part where I said that I was gonna go to bed? I lied.
Instead, I tried to make my speakers work on my computer, which they won't, so instead I started making a Writer's Notebook, a place where I can jot down ideas like character names, novel titles, things I want/need to read, novel ideas, etc.
And I came up with an idea for a new novel. Something to keep me from getting burnt out on deAngelis, which is awesome, because I really just need to step away from it for a while. There are a couple of people who will be pissed that I'm deciding to put it on hiatus, but the fact of the matter is that I care about deAngelis too much to let myself get sick of it. I want to finish it, and get it published, and if I work on it so much I want to puke, that's not going to happen.
So, I'm starting something new, something fun, something that I haven't been stressing out over since I started college.
Instead, I'm going to try my hand at literary fiction. I take a fiction writing workshop class that is all based around short literary fiction, and my prof says that I'm ready to be published. Also, I need something that isn't so depressing and dark. Let's face it, that's what all of my fantasy/sci-fi is.
This new novel currently has a working title of Otaku: A Love Story, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Mainly I'm just going to be writing a story about two people trying to forge some sort of relationship. One of them, the chick, is relatively mainstream about her fandoms. The other guy, though, is an "otaku". Maybe I'm using the word wrong, but essentially he's a huge anime and mangafanboy. Alek told me the other day that his obsession with certain anime characters probably caused him to spend more time in his room watching anime and reading manga and going to cons than learning how to relate and deal with real-life girls, and that's apparently why he doesn't have a girlfriend. I decided I wanted to write a book about it.
I've already put a couple of posts up on message boards asking anime and manga fans (preferably men, but women are okay, too!) to volunteer to fill out a questionnaire that I'm going to construct, or to (preferably) agree to a Skype interview. We'll see how that goes.
I'm pretty excited about all of this! I can't wait to get started!
GEEZE. Hollywood is fully of borderline crazy people, let me tell you. While I'm sure that goes without saying, let me tell you of the two things that struck me as particularly nuts today.
1. Breaking Dawn. They already made the third movie, and they're already talking about the forth, which is funny, because the two actors playing the main characters aren't even signed on for that many films. (I can't confirm it, but someone told me that the actors actually didn't want to return even to do New Moon, because they can't stand the characters... but I'm reporting that on hearsay, so don't take me that seriously.) The baffling part about this fourth movie (SPOILER ALERT... like I care) is that, in order to portray Bella and Edward's baby girl, they are using A CGI BABY.
Just let that sit for a moment. Then re-read that sentence. I'm pretty sure that's all that really needs to be said.
(I will make it clear, though, that I absolutely abhor the Twilight series, and that anyone who thinks (1) that Stephenie Meyer is anywhere near a decent writer and/or (2) that the Bella/Edward 'ship is any synonym of "healthy" or "pleasant" or "desirable" is a complete idiot and should have their brain rewired and their reproductive organs removed.)
2. Spiderman 4. Literally, three hours ago I tweet'd about finding out that The Vulture was confirmed to be played by John Malkovich. Then, two hours after that, I found out that the movie had been scrapped, and Sam Raimi had walked away from the entire franchise. WHOA. Literally six days after confirming Malkovich, they CANCELLED THE MOVIE.
Don't get me wrong - I think Sam Raimi was the worst thing to happen to Spiderman. I mean, just look at this scene from Spiderman 3, where they gave him more control than he'd had in the previous two movies. I think everyone would agree with me that, in 3, our beloved Peter Parker just had way too much eyeliner and estrogen. The entire movie was a joke.
They're talking reboots now, which look like they're going to be handled by Marvel - and if that's the case, then it's pretty definite that they're going to do it the right way. Spiderman was actually pretty good, and 2 was decent, even though it definitely fell short of the pure awesome that was its predecessor. But as we saw with The Hulk, Marvel knows how to handle its own shit. Here's hoping that they manage to get their hands on Spidey, and hopefully one day clean up the mess that Fox created with its three X-Men films and the travesty that was Wolverine.
(NOTE: The first X-Men film was pretty good, but the next two were horrendous, and don't even get me started on Wolverine. ALL of them were about Wolverine, really, and I didn't appreciate that... although I adore Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier. Sigh.)
So, yeah, there's your two major Hollywood "WTF?"s for the day.
In other news, today was the first day of classes. I lived. My directing class may make me want to kill myself, but I just have to grit my teeth and get through it, I guess. Part of me wants to drop my theater major entirely and just say the Hell with it, but I know that means I would have wasted a BUNCH of time here, and I want to get something out of it. I am thinking about picking up a creative writing major, though, which would enable me to teach it when I get my license (and a job).
For the rest of the evening, I plan on possibly getting out another chapter or two of deAngelis, making a cup of tea (possibly green, not in the mood for black tonight...), and curling up with my Sherlock Holmes anthology. Ahhh.
After staying up until 3am to watch a ridiculous amount of Fruits Basket, which is, embarrassingly, my guilty pleasure among anime, I managed to drag myself out of bed six hours later, since I knew I needed to get a jump on packing and asking my stepmom if she would pleeeease write out a check for 300 bucks or something so that I could buy my textbooks for school. After getting an answer of "of course!" from her, I promptly made a cup of tea (earl grey), and plopped down in front of my computer to read my feeds and to blog.
Anyone who has read any of my fiction would be more than a little confused if they found out that I've spent a ridiculous amount of time watching Fruits Basket and d'awwwing over the characters. Let's be honest - it's very shojo. Very. And my choice of anime to-date has generally been things like Deathnote, Full Metal Panic!, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and FLCL. I did watch Blood +for a while, but there were a lot of "everything is my fault" and people not expressing their feelings (which I guess is the thing in Japan, but still, half the conflict could have been avoided if people would just fucking TALK to each other), and three episodes away from the end I finally gave up and just started watching Law & Order: SVU. About as shojo as I really get is Kino's Journey, which really isn't that shojo at all. Okay, yes, part of me is something of a hopeless romantic - or something - but I think really what appeals to me most about Fruits Basket is the whole concept of all of these guys being protective of her, and not just because half of them are in love with her.
From the time I was six years old, I desperately wanted an older brother. I'm the oldest of three girls, and while I've always been kind of a take-charge-and-get-it-done sort of girl, even from that age, I wanted someone strong to care about me, too. Or something. At any rate, if ever I form a relationship with a male, it tends to be on the level of family. My best friend Alek and I are... special. As time goes by and I relate stories of our gallivantings, I'm sure you'll come to see that our relationship is a bit past "just friends" but quite below "lovers" and hanging out somewhere in between, which I've decided to dub "family." Luckily (I guess?) I don't really have that many close relationships with anybody, so really the only people I actually give more than two damns about are Adam, Alek, and Colt. Everyone else has pissed me off at some point. (Not that Adam hasn't pissed me off, but I'm actually, you know, engaged to him, so he gets a little more tolerance than other people.)
So really, Fruits Basket has me more or less hooked for that reason. Also, I like cats.
But enough about anime! I have other things to talk about this morning besides anime!
Cool Thing: apparently some divers found some computer thing on a shipwreck from 150 B.C. I know that completely fails to explain it, or even convey how awesome it is, so just go read the freaking article.
Next order of business...
I like movies. A lot. I also like my fandoms... a lot. And there are some pretty awesome movies coming out in the next couple of years that I'm probably going to pee my pants over at least once.
From Paris With Love looks pretty awesome, even though I am definitely not a fan of John Travolta ever since he went L. Ron Hubbard-style batshit crazy, and the last movie of his that I enjoyed was Michael. However this movie just looks ridiculously fun. Of course, I could be suffering from action-withdrawal, given that I've been more or less drowning in shojo for the last week. At any rate, the NOT WORK SAFE trailer looks awesome, and I have a lot of faith in the director... I really liked Taken. Also, John Travolta with his shaved head, goatee, and big earring looks a lot like my cousin Jon, whom I'm particularly close to. Also, so far the characters seem relatively similar.
NOTE: Imagine my uncontrollable giggling when Adam saw the poster for this in the theater and thought it was a James Bond movie. I, who have only seen the new Casino Royale, had to explain to him, who has watched every single one multiple times with his father as quality time, that the movie he was thinking of was From Russia with Love.
NOTE 2: I really can't mention James Bond without mention Prince Philip, either. This man makes me laugh, but aside from that, I actually admire his ability to say whatever is on his mind. He isn't malicious about it, and really there's nothing wrong with what he says... it's just kind of shocking that the husband of, you know, Queen Elizabeth would say the things he says, in public.
Moving on...
Kick-Ass just looks cute, is really all I have to say about that. I love superhero films - I'm a Marvel girl at heart - and one of my first loves was Mystery Men(although that may have possibly been helped by the fact that I had a crush on Kel Mitchell... also people say I remind them a lot of Janeane Garofalo in her stand-up...). Nicolas Cage is generally pretty good, and Mark Strong is still on that aforementioned Top Ten List of mine. See the also NOT WORK SAFE trailer here.
Clash of the Titanslooks epic, which may be its downfall. As long as they get rid of that stupid owl from the original movie, I'll be happy, but I'd be ever so pleased if Sam Worthington turns out to be a better actor than he proved to be in Avatar. At any rate, Liam Neeson rocks my freaking world. Also, supplemental music by Massive Attack? That's gonna be pretty cool, too.
Daybreakers looked vaguely interesting, although I'm pretty sick of the vampire genre right now. Most I just have a huge crush on Willem Defoe, and Ethan Hawke was amazing in Gattacaway back when.
I can't say I'm nearly as excited about Iron Man 2 as I was about the first one, but then again, that could just be because the trailer wasn't put together nearly as well as the first movie. I would still totally do Robert Downey Jr., let alone Anthony Stark. Robin Hood looks vaguely stupid, but I'll wait for a new trailer before I make any decisions, and even though I am very afraid of Disney and Jerry Bruchkeimer butchering it, I am still pretty stoked for the Prince of Persiamovie that's coming out in May. Last summer I picked up Rival Swords (or whatever it's called) for the PSP and still haven't gotten past the second-to-last boss. Let's face it, my PSP is, in my hands, an MP3 player that also happens to play games, and the last time I beat a game, it was Blazing Dragonson the Sega Saturn. Hell, it took me two and a half years to get my main toon on WoW to level 60. My guild bestie, Boom, says that I'm possibly the most casual gamer he has ever met, and by casual he means "almost dead."
Speaking of Blazing Dragons, I really wish I had the cash to see this movie...
Enough of that, I guess I should get a shower and then actually start packing. Writing this has taken a good hour out of my day and, let's face it, I actually would like to get to school. :-)
Well, I finally put up another article over at Steam-Vents, which I haven't done for months. Our writing staff kind of wandered off, so we have to get some new people, but Adam's plenty enthusiastic enough to get new people who will be willing to pitch in and participate. As the chief Editor, I just hope the new batch spells, punctuates, and conjugates English verbs better than the last one.
Aside from writing a pretty lengthy an in-depth review on both Guy Ritchie's film Sherlock Holmes and James Cameron's Avatar, I managed to get another chapter finished for deAngelis, which is nothing to sneer at. I'm into chapter twelve or so, barely halfway into the story I believe, and the story is already rocking out at 45,000 words. The bad news is that I'm coming up on some plot points that I'm going to have to write completely from scratch, and I'm afraid that I'll fall behind again, especially with the work load that this semester's classes promise to shove upon me.
Here's the classes that I'll be taking this spring semester:
US History to 1877. The professor who teaches this is actually the sponsor for the Role Players Guild on campus, of which I'm the secretary and the house officer (the combination of the two offices results in the title of "PR Bitch"). He's a pretty cool guy, with a dry sense of humor that I definitely appreciate, and I know he's enthusiastic about the class, so this really shouldn't be any trouble, especially because it's a 200-level class.
Directing. This is one of those classes that I'm dreading. I have to take it if I want to finish out my theater minor, but I really wish I didn't. It's taught by the former head of the theater department. He's strict and thinks that theater, and his class, are the most important things on the entire earth. Obviously I don't agree, but what can you do?
Modern American Lit. And by "modern", I mean every from WWII to the present day. The reading list isn't too bad, but the responses that we'll have to prepare for every class may just wipe me out.
Multicultural American Lit. How this is different from the above, I have no clue, but it says I have to take it, so I guess I'm gonna.
Theater Theory. My advisor told me I shouldn't take this class until I'm a senior, but since I'm (hopefully) transferring to IUPUI next fall, I decided that it really doesn't matter. Also I just don't like my advisor.
Advanced Creative Writing Workshop. This is essentially what I took this past semester. It's three hours long and one night a week, but I don't mind, because it's actually a fun class. Let's just hope that a massive bout of writer's block doesn't hit me mid-semester.
Women's Choir. This actually is a zero-credit class, and I joined it because I miss singing. I don't think it's anything more than just singing (no final, no classwork, no homework, etc.), so hopefully it will just feel like an extracurricular.
Shyeah... I have a full workload this semester. And that's if I didn't have a novel I was trying to finish at record speed.
On top of this I have my Dungeons & Dragons 4th ed game that I'm running (kind of), and preparations to try and transfer the hell out of Terrible Terre Haute. Also, at some point, I probably ought to take my PRAXIS I, ya think?
Time to do a little crochet and watch some more anime. Going to be a long day tomorrow... sigh.
The last month or so has been pretty cool for me, in a lot of unrelated ways. Although I spent the majority of the first part of Christmas break being ill, I was able to poke around on the internet a lot (after I recovered my faithful Dell Latitude D505 from storage) and find some pretty cool things (and finish reading an excellent book).
First of all, I've started using Google Chrome, which so far is the greatest thing I've put on my computer since Trillian and Mozilla Firefox. I've decided already, within the last twenty-four hours, that I'm going to be leaving Firefox for Chrome, because let's face it - it is faster, cleaner, and less glitchy (for the most part). After downloading the beta version, so that I can use extensions (the equivalent of Firefox add-ons), I have widgets that tell me what the weather is outside (anywhere I choose), a quick Wikipedia look-up tab that doesn't take me from the page I'm on, icons that tell me when I have new
stuff in my gmail inbox or my facebook account, Xmarks (which is WONDERFUL considering I have more than one computer), and a page that suggests webpages similar to the one I'm looking at if I click it.
Also I'm using Zemanta, which is suggesting a lot of link-candy and possibly later some picture and "related articles" candy for me to put in this article... it shows up right next to the text box while I type! Fantastic stuff! My fiance, Adam, will be so proud when he finds out that I've literally changed my opinion about Chrome overnight.
(Also I discovered Google Reader, which is an excellent way for me to waste time when I ought to be continuing to de-Christmas the house).
That being said, I started doing a couple of articles over at Associate Content, but since we've already discussed the nature of my work ethic when it comes to writing, you can guess how well that's going. So far I've written an article on Just How Much I Hate Twilight, the best TV Detectives of the decade, and the best Action Films of the decade. Really I ought to be working on something for Steam-Vents, but the truth is that I haven't been reading much, and what I have been reading I don't really feel like writing about.
I did, however, finish reading First Lord's Fury, by Jim Butcher (who is definitely on my top ten list of Top Ten One True Loves Evar), and let's just say that it pretty much blew my mind. I'm all excited now for the next Dresden Filesnovel to come out, which will be sometime in April. I hate waiting that long, but the
blessing here is that I'm taking eighteen credit hours this semester and I really won't have time for reading a whole lot for pleasure. I really need to do well this semester, so that I can finish my theater minor requirements and happily transfer to IUPUI next semester. I'm at ISU now, which is fine, I'm just tired of being away from home - specifically, Adam - and I'm just... tired of Terre Haute in general. It was fine when I was doing theater, but I don't want to do theater any more, so it seems silly to be out there. When I'm at IUPUI, I'll be able to see Adam more, and get my comic drawn, and work, and see Jaime, and not be in a town that smells like rotting wood pulp (oh, Terre Haute, you and your paper mill...)
So, I'm leaving for school tomorrow afternoon and hopefully I'll have the cash to be able to buy all $250 worth of my textbooks. Blegh. Mostly I hate college just because (1) I don't have the craft space that I want, and (2) it generally leaves me broke. Also, I guess, there's (3) which is that it is not conducive to healthy eating AT ALL. This irritates me.
So, aside from those things, I've also learned, finally, how to crochet celtic cables (I'll post pictures of the scarf I'm making for my bestest friend Alek, once I'm done with it), and I managed to make a pretty decent meal for myself twice in a row.
By the way, does anyone know how to make the images from Zemanta not be stupid?
At some point I need to start getting back in the swing of things so that I can run my D&D 4e game this semester. Adam won't be able to come anymore, and Brandon is leaving in March for Japan, so that just leaves Colt and Skylar, and to be honest, that's just not going to work. I'm still not sure how it's going to work without Adam, although I suppose I could always try to draft Brian or Shadow. As far as Dungeons & Dragons goes, I'm starting to see how short 4th ed. falls behind 3.5 (I started playing an online 3.5 game with some buddies over OpenRPG), although that's not really why I'm so slack-y in the DM department. I'm just burnt out, to be honest. Adam says it's probably because I haven't been involved in a game as a PC for a long time, which is probably right. To be completely frank, I've only played in a total of three sessions of a Dungeons & Dragons game; then I started mine. The OpenRPG game is fine and all, although the DM really needs to work on his story, his grammar, and his spelling, but it's not the same... for a D&D game to really work, you need to have the human interaction, and you just can't GET that with OpenRPG. Plus, it gives me the ability to check my email, Facebook, and work on deAngelis while the DM is trying to figure out how to thwart the program's glitches and get the maps and monsters to load.
Well, this post is long enough. I should probably go and make some tea and then set about finishing up the de-Christmasing of the house. Until next time! (which will probably be tonight...)
My plan, at the end of November, was to have my NaNoWriMo novel finished by the end of December. In January, I would write a rush draft of the second book in the series, and on the first day of February, I would send out query letters pertaining to the first novel, entitled deAngelis: Genesis.
It seems my body, and my work ethic, conspired against me. I got the first ten chapters of the novel edited within a week, but within two days of coming home for Christmas break, I came down with my fifth case of the twenty-four-hour stomach flu, which kept me in bed for a total of four days, the longest yet, with no appetite and only strength enough to crochet my sisters' Christmas presents and watch thirty episodes of Bleach on Hulu.
When I finally did sit down to get through chapter eleven, I realized that I had skipped the entire first half of the chapter when originally writing, because let's face it, I hate writing fight scenes. I just don't feel like I do them well. To write a good fight scene, you have to give enough information so that the reader knows what the hell is going on... but little enough that the reader doesn't skip the one or two or three pages of action. Also, you don't want him to figure out that you're making shit up and have no idea what you're talking about to begin with.
So, not even halfway through my novel, I procrastinated myself right past my deadline of December 31st, and only just today decided to grit my teeth and get through it. The alternative was my continuing mission to de-Christmasing the house. I shoveled the driveway and took down the tree yesterday, all of which took me about six hours total. What do you think I wanted to do today?
Once more, I'm going to try to start doing two or three chapters a day, like I did that first week. Hopefully, the time that I spent away from the novel will pay off. They say that you want to step back from a first draft for a while, so that you can distance yourself a little bit and be able to approach it more objectively when you sit down to start the writing process. I actually agree with this viewpoint, and I'd probably do that, except for the part where I would like to have something published before I graduate from college. Also, I'm just too freaking excited that the story is actually working.
deAngelis: Genesis follows a main character by the name of Jenna Palmer, a female half-angel who was orphaned at the age of four and apprenticed to a middle-aged man by the name of Leonard, who later adopted her. When she was seventeen, she made a horrible mistake that ended up killing Leonard and alienating her from her guardian angel. Although she had been trained to be the steward of the district, essentially a supernatural cop, she abandons the life she had out of grief and self-loathing. Genesis is about how she comes to take up the mantle of steward and start to get her life (a little bit) back on track.
It's going to be a three, maybe four-book series, with possibly a spin-off series later (we'll see how this one goes, first). I've found it fairly impossible to write stand-alone novels; my ideas are just too large (dare I say epic?) and I honestly just can't cram it all into one novel.
A friend of mine, Charlie, the son of blues artist Dave Morgan, is going to be drawing the comic version of the novel for me, starting this fall. I really want to reach out to as many fandoms as possible, although its no secret that I would love to get into film. All I gotta say is, David Tennant as Michael the Archangel? Now you're talkin'.
So, probably I should stop procrastinating and get on that chapter twelve, hmm?
I've never even been very good at keeping a journal, evern. I got my first journal when I was nine years old, for Christmas in the year 1997, and I was ecstatic. I had read Little Womenthat year and figured it was probably the best book ever written. Santa, also known as my father, had possessed the foresight to gift me with a hardcover Little Women-themed journal. The front cover displayed a colored-pencil drawing off Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and in the lower right hand corner of every other page was a pencil sketch of Jo, lounging on a couch with her pen and paper, considering which words she would choose to put her fiction to paper.
I started writing when I was in first grade. Admittedly, my first work was maybe eighty typed pages long, and was essentially a major crossover fanfiction, and by crossover I mean Bible/Lion King/Pocahontas/Ocean
Girl/Balto crossover. That whole fiasco was written over the course of three months and finished sometime in the spring of 1995, when I was still living in Alabama with my sisters, dad, and paternal grandmother. I'm sure a copy of it is still floating around somewhere. Sometimes I consider hunting it down and posting it on fanfiction.net just to see what happens. Trust me, it's horrible. My main character is named after myself and is the little sister of Jesus, is raised by Rafiki, becomes best friends Simba, gets chased off by Nala, rescued by Pocahontas, trained by the chick from Ocean Girl... and so on and so forth. At some point she goes back and saves everybody's ass the way Simba does. And also she's best friends with all the hyenas, too, who really aren't Such Bad Guys After All.
But I digress. My point is that it took me two years to get through that journal, even in my atrociously huge and slightly-sloppy cursive handwriting. I've been gifted with several journals over the years, none of which I've finished, even the beautiful leather-bound journal I bought from Barnes & Noble my senior year of
high school, back in 2007. I try to write in that one, but it always seems that every time I actually start committing to journaling or blogging, some crisis occurs in my life that I don't want to even think about, let alone write about. Back then it was my boyfriend's (now fiance's) deployment, and my disintegrating relationships with my father, which resulted in me being kicked out of my family's home for a few months. However, things seem to be getting on the right track again lately, so we'll see how this all works out.
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