urbandruid

I've been done with school for a week now, and have finally decompressed enough to start figuring out what I'm going to do over the summer. For the last week, mostly what I've been doing is reading crap books and watching season 1 of Battlestar Galactica. I've seen it, but it's been so long I figured I'd better just start over.

Thanks to the internet, I know more spoilers than I'd really have liked, but I'm trying to be philosophical about it. Like when I picked up on Babylon 5, I was so far behind the wave, and it was such a MAJOR show, it's hard to avoid hearing about the stuff "everybody" knows. I bought the catalogs for the two Propworx auctions of costumes and props from the show, knowing that's probably the closest I'll ever get to owning a real piece of the show (though there are these eBay auctions I'm watching...) Anyway I'm flipping through the catalogs with one eye closed (actually I do pretty much everything with one eye closed, or at least not really seeing); trying to appreciate the cool stuff.

Like so: "Ooh, Starbuck's dog tags. Those'd be awesome to own- Oh frak, WHOSE funeral clothes? Dammit!" Mostly I've stopped reading the descriptions.

I'd forgotten how much I love this show. I just fell too far behind when it was airing to even think about trying to watch.

So I know there's an LJ comm for Babylon 5 'virgins', anyone know anything about one for BSG? Also an icon comm where spoilers are usually pretty well marked?

I have half a thought of trying to write one of the characters in a prompt comm, licenseartistic by preference, but it'd be weird with so much canon that I don't know yet. I always feel like this when I'm catching up on a series- like I can't write fic until I have the whole picture. Ongoing shows that I'm up to date with, no problem.

I'm an odd person. I know this.

...On the other hand, catching up would give me a ongoing source of new material, so it'd be like I was watching the show when it was current. Hmm. Hmm. This bears thinking about, although I should probably get off my lazy ass and catch up poor Moody first. And then there's Jack and Irina still clamoring for attention in the back of my head (mostly Irina) and gods know who else will pop up out of the woodwork given half a chance.

Truth is, I haven't really written much of anything this past semester at all, unless you count drips and drabs bitching about classes and medical stuff here and in my notebooks, or the haphazard way I've been tossing together bits of Honor Harrington fic for my au100 claims.

I'm trying to remember if I even know how. :) And it's not helping that it's starting to get hot. Well, starting- yeah, it's been hot for a while, and I know I shouldn't bitch, because it's not even over 100 yet, but damn. For some reason the heat seems to be really dragging at me this summer. Or maybe that's the anemia, depression, stress, and sleep deprivation. Plus heat.

Speaking of which, it's too damn hot in here to keep this up. More later, maybe.

Too much about computers and their issues lately, not enough about me.

I'm pretty tired- school has been running me a little ragged lately, but doesnt it always? Im losing more keys, randomly now, seems like- the far end of the numbers, obviously the apostrophe is on the fritz again, and earlier today, the shift keys took a powder. Pretend the previous bit was in parentheses, those are screwed up too.

I have my first Abnormal Psych exam tomorrow, so I need to study a bit tonight. I'm not really too worried about it, though- I know this stuff. At least most of it. I think my first Geology exam may be next week. That one could be tricky- there's a hell of a lot of info in the first couple chapters.

Speaking of Geo, it amazes me how things can be so interesting in lecture- fascinating, actually... and then I go to do the reading. And I immediately feel like nodding off. Or like I'm about to nod off. For those insomniacs on my flist, I highly recommend this one: Earth, by Edward Tarbuck and Frederick Lutgens. No, I am not making up those names. I swear. This book is stupefyingly boring. I think when we get there, these two will have somehow managed to make even volcanoes boring. And I love volcanoes. In the sense of neat really destructive stuff I wouldnt really want to live near... Yeah. You know what I mean.

My book for Abnormal Psych is only a little bit less dull, but I expect it to get better with the next chapters; tomorrow's exam covers the boring chapter on the history of psychology, the chapter on the medical & psychodynamic models of psychology, and the one that's been putting me to sleep most recently- diagnostic tools & research methods. More specifically, the research crap. Maybe if they had examples of real studies that were a little less lame... Oh well.

Mentally, I'm hanging in there. Not doing too badly at all, actually. School is stressing me a bit, but I think its more in the range of normal stress than... well, than what happens when I'm not coping so well. The thing with Anna and her keyboard has really been throwing me lately, especally as it's so sporadic, and now the problem seems to be spreading. I can never count on everything working when I boot her up- I can't count on anything working. That's frustrating, and annoying, and on days when I'm coping less than brilliantly, it can be enough to have me bursting into tears. Stupid depression.

I'm not writing as much as I usually do, because of Anna's issues, and I think thats a big part of my stress and general feeling of crappiness. I do the bulk of my writing at the keyboard, for a number of reasons. One is convenience- most of it gets posted somewhere online, so already having it on the computer is a good idea.

Also, my handwriting is awful- no, I mean really really bad. It's a hand/eye coordination thing, and for some reason I'm not so fabulous at those. Every time I see the handwriting analysis guys on CSI, I chuckle, because I'm pretty sure they'd read mine wrong. I don't think it's changed much since, oh, junior high... Half the time I end up not capitalizing things, not because I'm going the e.e. cummings route, but because of the way I learned to write so that I could see it. Probably started in grade school, when they had us dropping the tails of letters down from the line... well, I wanted the space they were taking up for the next line. I drove my teachers crazy.

And this is my printing. My cursive- do they still even call it that? is atrociously bad. Like the printing, I can make it neater if I try, but that takes a lot of time, and mostly I don't bother. When I have to sign receipts and stuff, well... you can probably make out the C at the start. Other than that...

I guess the other thing is kind of related to the handwriting, which is that even when I'm not taking the time to make it really neat, it still takes me longer than most people to write stuff down. This is only mildly annoying for things like lecture notes- I usually just let those get really sloppy, and if need be will copy them out again later. But for stuff like writing, a keyboard has always been the only thing that could ever keep up with the speed of the thoughts in my head, exactly as I want to put them down. By the time I finish writing a sentance longhand, I'm five lines beyond it in my head, and struggling to catch up.

All of which makes writing a more frustrating experience than an- You know, its weird. It really isnt a leisure activity- I don't write like I read, or watch TV or movies- not just because I enjoy it. I write because I have to. Even if it's just a couple lines every day, maybe even every couple days if I'm really busy, even if it's just a couple lines scribbled in a notebook bitching about stupid crap like the vending machines at school- evil, money eating things that they are, and apparently some of their soda is really old and nasty, according to my honor society buddies.

Whatever, however little it is, I have to write stuff down. And lately the mediums for doing this have turned into a whole mess of frustration on their own. But I need to write. When I can't, when I haven't at all for ages, weeks, months, I can turn into a pretty horrid person. Not as bad as I am when Im in pain and without drugs, but just all tense and stressed and... I don't know. Its kind of hard to explain. Sometimes it'll feel like there are too many words stuck in my head, like I need to open a valve and let some of them out.

I suspect I'm going to end up using a lot more paper before the computer thing resolves. I'll just have to get used to going slower.

In other news, Sam is still being Sam, cute and occasionally very annoying. Last month she got into Moms closet- which, okay, no problem, though Mom would rather she didn't stay there forever. But we have one of those big plastic things you put rolls of wrapping paper in, right? And it has a lid, with a compartment where you can put your ribbons and your gift tags and whatnot. And Sam, clever little thing that she is, knocked over the container, and the ribbon thing must've fallen open, because the next time Mom went into her closet, she found... ribbon.

Ribbon everywhere, those spools of it that come like yarn, just wrapped around themselves. Well, they weren't wrapped around much except each other when we found them, and I discovered that however they put those together at the ribbon factory, it can't easily be duplicated by humans. I think the cat had a blast, though.

She's grown tons since the last pictures I posted of her. I have newer ones, and sometime (hahaha, right, in my *cough* spare time) I'll post them. She's gotten bigger, really just filling in. And that disgusting kitty-tuna canned food the vet suggested we put her on, has made her fur all sleek and shiny and OMGSoSoft!

She sheds like mad. White fur for all your dark clothing shedding needs, grey fur for all your light colors. :)

Back in August I took over aurors100, mostly because I'm crazy. Now I'm kind of toying with the idea of what to do with it. I could, probably should, continue it as a drabble comm, but I also had the probably insane idea to redo it as some kind of HP-based 100 fics challenge.

Don't ask me where I get this stuff from, because I really don't know. I suppose I ought to come up with some kind of challenge for this month, since it went on a monthly, not weekly, basis.

For, you know, the like twelve people who are still members, not counting the deleted journal I just got rid of, because deleted journals as members of things really bug me.

So, is there an etiquette when you take over a comm from someone, that they say is all yours? Do you get to change whatever you want? Layout, default icon, and stuff? Should I remove the other person as a mod, since they said they wanted to get rid of the comm? I have no idea how this works.

Ugh, gods, so tired, so buried... the workload for this fucking class is killing me. I don't have time for much of anything outside of it, and I think not being able to write much, if at all, is starting to make me a little nuts. Not that I needed help in that department. I have got to get my shit together on a bunch of stuff- IF I can find the time to even do that. Otherwise I've got to figure out what I'm dropping, because this ain't working. (And even though I'm the slowest poster in the history of ever, That Other Place, as irreparable calls it, is not even potentially on the chopping block. I may suck, but I'm keeping my stuff. I've got an idea for that one post I really ought to have done two or three weeks ago... now to get the time to write that sucker.)

I miss everybody, and I'm going to try to be on tonight if I'm not too tired.

Is it Thanksgiving yet? I need another break...

I think I've just found the coolest LJ comm since licenseartistic. That comm is libraryofwinds, and I'm trying very hard not to think about all the muses I could bring in there to write. Nope. Not going there. Not doing it...

Oh hell, I just might bring the whole TM alumnus club over there. The really nifty thing is that they allow multiple versions of a character, and you can join as yourself and just write whatever the hell you want for whoever. Too. Or make icons.

I'll probably be making lists in my head of who I want to bring in there... while I'm at the dentist.

Yeah, my anual checkup is today, and I'm almost glad it is. One of my caps has really been bothering me lately, now the gum's all swollen in one spot and it HURTS... but I don't want to meet Mr. Root Canal, even if my dentist and his people are really nice, and they give nitrous... Love my nitrous. Oh, and I think I chipped a filling. Too.

Which reminds me, I should probably go and eat something now, while I can. I think I may just want to curl up, take drugs, and cry when I get home. (Well, take more drugs- I think I'll pre-medicate with some Advil so I don't, you know, bite the poor man out of reflex when he pokes at Hell's Own Dental Crown.)

In other news, my uncle helped us put up a ceiling fan in the living room this week. That was fun. I think Mom and I could've done it, if the ceiling wasn't quite so high and the fan so freaking heavy. We've got a smaller fan for my room, which we figure we can handle ourselves. My uncle offered to come back, but Mom and I are looking at each other going, "Nah, we can totally do this..." We even know which of the circut breakers cuts off the power to which end of the house now- though some of that's kind of odd. Somehow when we cut the power to the front room, it also took out the kitchen lights- but not the outlet that powers the night light we keep by the coffee maker, or the outlet the phone is plugged into, which is all the way across the room... and my bathroom lights, but again, not the night light...

Hmm. I almost wonder if the breakers cut power to the lights, but not the outlets. May have to find out at some point..

Anyway, it is much cooler in the front of the house now. The cat likes it too, although she keeps looking up at the fan trying to figure out what it is.

...And I'd rather be hooking up my fan than going to the dentist, even if I do need to have this stupid cap checked out. Bah.

It never rains, but it pours. Though I guess really I shouldn't complain- it could be so, so much worse.

I have the beginnings of a sinus infection. Mom came home from work yesterday, took one look at me, and dragged me to the urgent care clinic. I called my doctor's office earlier in the day, but the soonest they could see me was in a week. Which didn't seem like such a good idea. So Mom dragged me to the clinic, and even with the hour and a half wait to get seen, I'm sort of glad I went.

I have a prescription for antibiotics, and a few things the doc wants me to try for a couple days before I fill the script. I do feel a little better today, so we'll see.

What I'd really like to do is crawl back to bed and sleep some more, but that's just not in the cards. I told my history prof I'd be in today to take the makeup test from the week before last, so I'd better be there. Plus, she's lecturing on Elizabeth I today. There's no way I can miss the lecture on my favorite monarch of all time. No way.

So even though the doc said no antihistamines, I'm propping myself up on an Advil Cold & Sinus and dragging myself to class. I haven't quite decided if I'm coming straight home after that or hanging around till Mom gets off work as usual. It depends a lot, obviously, on how I feel by the time I make it though the exam and an hour and 45 minutes of lectures.

...Yeah, I'm taking an extra bus token with me when I go today.

The really crazy thing is that even though I need sleep, and lots of it, I keep getting inspired at crazy moments to write bits of things for my au100 claims. (Yes, I have two, for I am nuts.) They're coming along really well, but my muses and I need to sit down for a little chat. I'll be typing away at one thing, when a little voice seems to say, "You know, this is great, but here's this other idea I had to use the same characters..." And before you know it I have three things going at once, all involving most of the same people. It's just a tad bit confusing, and of course none of these things have titles yet. So I make notes and try to lable them with the somewhat random filenames the Word documents start out with- which sometimes have less to do with the plot as it develops than it did when I started it.

But, you see, if I change the filenames now? I'll never be able to remember the new ones.

I am so, so tired. Here's hoping the Sudafed in the Advil C&S kicks in soon.

Last day of class before Thanksgiving break. Which is really a couple days I have off anyway, because of my schedule, but whatever. Should be really entertaining. About half my Psych class wasn't there on Monday; today I expect only the other die-hards. Which is fine, because if only a few people show up, the prof hands out extra credit points to everyone who's there. Not that I need 'em, but still.

We started the chapter on Abnormal Psych last class, and we should finish it today. I am so, so annoyed that Abnormal Psych, the class, didn't work with what's laughably refered to as my schedule for next semester, because damn, that would've been cool.

'Course, it is a junior college, and we're limited in our upper-division classes, but still. They suck.

I still have just the one class for next semester, and it's driving me insane. What really pisses me off is that it's not even my fault. Stupid school... Why does this crap keep happening to me?

In other news, we've finally figured out what we're doing for Thanksgiving (thank you, Grandma, for finally getting it together there.) Mom and I are cooking the turkey in our brand spanking new oven, then wrapping it up and taking it over the freeway to Grandma's.

...And I just checked the listings for English classes for Spring again. No joy there. The Bible as Literature is open, so are both sections of the Fiction Writing class I dropped after one class meeting because the teacher was a hack. He's still teaching it, so that's a no. He's also teaching Intro to English Lit, damnit. I really, really hated that guy. "The only genre you may write in my class is Popular, none of this sci-fi or mystery or romance or whatnot, because everyone knows these are not genres anyway." And his examples of 'popular'? John Grisham and Stephen King.

*headdesk*

So anyway, not going there again.

Oh, that's cheerful. There's a Psych class called Youth Suicide I can fit into my schedule. Uh, no thanks...

Also, a note to the people who put the catalog online? Uh, guys, if you're going to change the class headings, (Computer classes went from Information Systems to Computer Info Systems, and are now Computer Info Tech) could you please take the old ones off the search page? Because I keep pulling up the old ones, and getting "no sections match search criteria" and I'm like, no one's teaching Computer Literacy? Get real...

Argh! Beginning Javascript, same time as my Finite Math. Bastards.

Bleh. Yeah, I definately need to swap my school stress for family stress for a few days. It'll make me feel so much better about everything. Really.

Okay, this is not helping. Let's think about something else. Like how I'm crazy enough to still be looking at the claims list for au100 about every other day going, "hmm, no one's claimed those ships I wanted yet..." I keep expecting one to turn up, but the other... well, I only know one other person who writes Moody/Penny, and she, unlike me, is nowhere near insane enough to even attempt this. I've kinda sorta promised myself that if I can get caught up on all my other writing crap, I can do it. I mean, I was good and didn't even sign up for NaNo, which turned out to be a good idea since I've been so busy and stressed this month anyway...

So if I can finish all the other stuff I should be writing (yes, this is your cue to laugh) I'll sign up. Once. Still having the great debate about that other pairing; one at a time is best, I think. Even I'm a little daunted by the idea of 200 fics, even if 100 words is the minimum...

I need to get a life. Seriously.

*smacks spam filter* Silly thing, you're not supposed to eat things from Livejournal.

azhure bought me two months of paid LJ time! What a nice surprise to wake up to today (she did it yesterday, but my spam filter decided to be silly and snag the email from LJ). Thank you thank you thank you thank you! This is so cool, I missed my icons! :)

The garbage truck in the alley out back woke me up (7:10 on my day off, thanks SO much!) so I decided to go ahead and get up. I can take a nap later, but I will not miss that. I have an ever-growing list of things I will not miss about the apartment. Like the stairs. We've started packing, finally, and we keep having to rethink how we're packing heavy stuff, like Mom's glassware, because someone has to not only be able to carry it, but carry it downstairs without hurting themselves. That someone won't be me- I'm not going to be much good during this part of the move, unfortunatly. I haven't been able to navigate the stairs without a free hand for the railing since my eye surgery. The depth preception- or lack thereof- is just too wonky. I've always had that, or not had it, I suppose I should say, but since the surgery it's been more difficult on the stairs, somehow. Keep meaning to ask my eye doc about that, but there were always more pressing issues, or more important questions. And then it was such a relief to not have to go back to the doctor's every couple weeks, or every other month, to have them check things out again... I didn't want to think about asking any questions I didn't have to ask.

Anyway, the glassware is ending up in a couple smaller boxes, of which we have not very many right now. Mom keeps snagging them from the stockroom at work, but some of her coworkers are moving too, or have relatives who are moving, and they work closer to the stockroom than Mom does. So... she can't always get the good boxes.

I've been going through old papers and notebooks I found in my desk, and let me tell you, there is some scary stuff in there, that I was quite happy to feed to the paper shredder. I should not have been allowed to attempt poetry or fanfic in my first two years of high school, because I was just dreadful. I did find some stuff I'm keeping for amusement or sentimental value, though- I turned up some really old stuff, including the first short story I wrote that was coherent (ie didn't include illustrations; that would be first grade) which is from 6th grade. Unfortunatly they made us write in cursive in 6th grade, and mine is... not tops, let's say, so one of these years I'll have to see if I can translate it. My handwriting's gotten a lot better since then, thankfully. I'm sure it's dreadful, but that's something I just have to keep.

I also found my 9th grade English journal. My teacher must have thought I was nuts. Well, alright, maybe it's not that bad, but I did talk about writing an episode of Star Trek with one of my friends, and how we wanted to send the script in if we ever finished it. (Voyager, and they did accept submissions back then, even used them once in a while, if they didn't suck. Ours... would have sucked, I'm sure.) I believe his note on that page was something like, "Hmm. Good luck." Yeah, I think that's about all I'd be able to say to me right then, too.

*facepalms*

It just dawned on me I should have packed said English journal with my other journals, and it's sitting on my floor with the other notebooks instead. Duh... Oh well. It's not like I'll need it right away, and I'll pack it with the notebooks, which is the other logical place it'd be. I'm trying really hard not to do what we ended up doing with the last move- We ended up moving in a month with almost no notice, so a lot of our stuff ended up just tossed into whatever box was closest to hand, no matter what else was in it. I started to hate the boxes labelled "Miscellanious". At one point we had about twenty in the dining room, and they got pretty scary. "Hmm... three cookbooks, some canned goods, Tupperware... Would it have killed us to write 'Miscellanious, Kitchen'?"

I don't want to do that again. I want to be able to find stuff. And for Mom to be able to find her stuff. Instead of me finding her stuff, and her finding mine. Ah, good times... well, you know, not really.

I will be so, so glad when this is over.

I have four days now to finish the novel. Yeah, right. But I'll have fun trying. (And just to put this into perspective, kittybot, this is way more complicated than that gigantic RP plotline I've been writing almost singlehandedly for about two years now, and you know how many large groups of words have been involved in that so far.)

Last day of class before my 4-day weekend for Thanksgiving, and wouldn't you know it's my longest day? Math quiz, an hour of boredom in poli sci, and almost two hours in the computer lab. Plus the two and a half hours after all that where I get to hang out in the library, be bored, and hope I have homework to do. Which I might not, with the math quiz and all.

Why couldn't it be a Friday on a Friday, so I only had two classes and then I could go home? *sigh*

60,212 is the current word count for the novel; I'm way too lazy to update the spedometer thing.

I really feel like this day is only a bad dream. Can someone wake me up now, please?

I see the moon through the leaning pine trees and bits of cloud, walking to the apartment from the garage (having just come home from seeing Matrix Revoloutions), and for a moment it looks the way that it used to, the way that I'm used to seeing it. For a moment I can forget that there are differences now, that everything is different now. For a moment I can forget the eyes and the pain and just be comforted by the famillar.

I see spectral highlights in the dark now, little streaks of light going off of everything- streetlights, stoplights, bright signs and car head and tail lights. I'm not sure if it's fading or if I'm just getting used to it. I hope like hell it's going away. I would like to be able to look at the moon without having to be reminded every single second of what was done to me with the damned lasers, what had to be done to stop the glaucoma. Oh, sure, I could have stayed on the drops the rest of my life, but there was no gaurentee they would work forever, adn then we'd be back where we started from.

I hope it fades. I just hope it fades. I'm a pagan for gods' sakes- lapsing the way I seem to be lapsing on everything lately, but I am. And it would be nice to see the moon...and the moon. You know?

Movie was strange; will review it later, maybe. Tired now.

NaNoWri is going well, or at least better. Latest word count is 12026. Progress. I had some plotting problems, having to get from A to C with no clear ideas on B, but I talked a bunch of stuff out with Mom, emailed a bit to Lindsay, and between the two of them I think I've found my way clear of things again.

I'm almost starting to think, oddly enough, that I can do this. Write a novel, have it done or close by the end of the month... I'm starting to think maybe I really can.