This is cool. You can adopt an animal at the Alaska Zoo and help care for it. Maybe I'll try to save up some dollars and adopt a porcupine or a raven. I like porcupines and ravens. Or a goshawk. One attacked me one time, you know. *solemn look*
(I like Siberian tigers, too, but I don't think I'll be saving up a thousand dollars to adopt one. :))
Blah. I think I came down with a cold in the middle of last night. I will be taking a lot of vitamin c, I guess. So I'm sort of tired and out of sorts today. As opposed to every other day the last two weeks, or something.
Ted and I watched Maid in Manhattan last night, and it was much cuter than I expected.
NNWM starts tomorrow. Gah.
miles to Rivendell: 305
Got my PFD! Also, found the checkbook! It spent a couple of days living under a cushion in a chair at Title Wave. Oops. Also cashed my ILL-GOTTEN GAINS, er, rather, my money order contest prize. I have *almost* enough money to buy a guitar now! *counts money* Actually, I have enough, but then I would have No Money At All to spend this week, so it'll have to wait another week or two. :)
Oh my God. There's another Alaskan NaNoWriMoer out there who is not just from Kenai, but who also is sporting striped hair. Check her out! Oh my God!
[edit:] I *KNOW* her! We went to high school together! Good *Lord*!
I managed to talk myself into doing the rest of my walking today before I talked myself out of it, so I haff walked. Yay me. Sweats, I discovered, are warmer than jeans for walking in. I mean, okay, yeah, duh, but I wasn't sure how much difference it would *really* make at 30 degrees. Quite a lot, it turns out.
I broke 300 miles! Only 157 to go!
miles to Rivendell: 301
Finally a new Kithair picture, as promised sometime this weekend:
Also, Chanti thinks she's a lap dog:
More pictures of silly Ted and Chantico here. :)
This is the time of year where it gets a lot harder to convince myself to go outside and walk, what with it being not quite thirty degrees out and the prospects of greater warmth being very slim.
I'm back on the XP box, only without the scanner plugged in. It appears to be working perfectly now. *sigh*
Um. If I have anything else to say, I can't think of it.
Very tired. Running 98 now, which is, well, better than crashing XP. Ted thinks it's my scanner that was making XP crash, and he's probably right, since it seems to be working now that it's not hooked up to the scanner. He's been a very kind and patient Ted today and has helped me a lot. I have a very good husband.
I read Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter, by Barbara Robinette Moss, this evening between other stuff. It's a memoir of a woman who grew up very poor in Alabama in the 60s and who was very badly disfigured, facially, from malnutrition. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother was deeply beloved but sort of weirdly remote, and the family was in general a mess. There are some cringe-worthy bits; it wasn't a particularly nice life in most ways, but it's really quite a good read. If you've got any sort of interest in memoir things, I'd recommend it.
Ted and I went to dinner at Bear Tooth because I desperately, desperately needed to get out of the house. My tummy does not at all appreciate the pizza or the nummy garlic treats. I should really just stop eating pizza.
I also went to the Livejournal Meetup--saw Dad at Title Wave!--and met several of the local LJers, which was actually pretty cool. I was wearing an ElfQuest t-shirt and one of them (Heidi, maybe) asked if I gamed, and so maybe I made a couple of contacts for gaming! That'd be cool! Speaking of which, I need to email Amy tomorrow, and go bug Christopher at the comic shop to get Bret's phone number, or at least his last name.
One of Ted's professors asked him today if he'd be interested in being a TA for one of the courses she teaches! I don't know if the current TA is going away, but that's really cool for Ted! Ted is wonderful! *beam*
miles to Rivendell: 297.5
Ted has spent most of the day reformatting his Win98 box and in a few minutes I'm going to begin installing my software and personal stuff on it. I will be glad to go back to 98. 98 isn't nearly as fucked up as ME or XP.
Stressbunny.
I need a vacation.
We are not, though, going to Mexico next week. We decided it would be better for Ted not to miss seven days of school, so we're trading our plane tickets in for somewhere else at a different time. We don't know when or where yet. We have to use them by August 15 next year and, well, we'll need to go at some time when we have money to pay for a hotel, since by cancelling the Mexico trip we lose out on the paid hotel. Oh well.
I'm going to take the 6th and 7th of November off, anyway, and the Wednesday and Friday around Thanksgiving, and then whatever days I have left around Christmas. I don't particularly want to do *anything* during those days off. I just want to sit and huddle and read and write and not be at work or a computer.
And speaking of computers, mine is still completely fucked up. I spent five hours yesterday trying to make it work better. Nothing's working. I turned off my scanner, which apparently I'm going to need new software for, because it's got compatibility issues with XP, except they don't make software for this scanner that doesn't. :P Doing that freed up a lot of CPU time. I've run two different spyware removal things and I suppose there's a third I can go run. I've downloaded but not yet installed Norton, but Symantec's site says my computer's not infected. I can't actually manage to install the updates that Microsoft has for XP because the stupid fucking computer just hangs. Browsing to websites is slow. Opening Homesite -- you know, the program I use to DO MY JOB -- is excrutiating. Running updates, as I said, is veritibly impossible. I should not have to spend five hours a day or even a week to make my god damned new computer work properly. I'm incredibly frustrated and at the end of my rope.
I need a goddamned vacation.
*laugh*! Via my very silly brother-in-law: The Carol of the Old Ones. It does start playing right away, so if you're listening at work or something, put your headphones on. Not that it's !work_safe. Just sort of noisy. :)
Trying to work while trying to get my stupid computer to stop running so damned slowly is very frustrating. Stupid, stupid Windows.
Nice day today. I got up at 7:30, which seems sillyily early, but I did anyway, and made bread, and when Ted got up he made french toast, although not from the bread I was making, and we went shwopping and got, excitingly, socks and underwear. Do we know how to have fun, or what? Okay, or what. Bblblblt.
At 11:20 I left the house to walk to the Title Wave mall where I met Jai and Tori for coffee (or in my case, hot chocolate with a shot of mint, which made Jai turn and stare at me and say, "I didn' t know that was your drink!" which made me feel surprisingly guilty *laugh*!) and we hung out for an hour and a half and chatted, which was very nice.
Then I went and had about 4 inches chopped off my hair and now I hate it less. :) I left the streak long, so it's, well, like 4 inches longer than the rest of it, which is just bottom-of-the-ear length. I'll take a picture tomorrow. If I decide the long bits are just too silly, I'll cut 'em off. But my shadow is fun to look at, now! :)
I'm considering dying the streak back to brown.
Let's see, then what. I walked home again and we watched half an hour of a cute-looking Freddie Prinze Jr movie (the one with all the models) and then went to my parents for dinner. In the car, Ted finally looked at me and discovered I'd cut four inches off my hair. *amused snort*
Dinner was very nice! Dad's doing NaNoWriMo and Mom's considering it. I think that'd be lots of fun. :) And that's about all I know!
miles to Rivendell: 290
I regret to report that despite my noble efforts in going to the gym three times this week, I am still not thin.
I feel like Aragorn. Still not king.
workout:
» 10 minutes stationary bike (1 mileish)
» 75 crunches
» 36 reverse push-ups
» butterfly press, 16x12x3
» lat pull-downs, 40x12x3
» shoulder press, 25x12x3
» chest press, 20x12x3
» leg extensions, 40x12x3
» leg curls, 40x12x3
» hip ab/adductions, 65x12x3
» leg press, 120x12x3
» back extensions, 35x30x1
» tricep extensions, 20x12x3
» bicep curls, 20x12x3
» chicken-wing things, 20x12x3
miles to Rivendell: 285.5
So Stella commented in the comments that she was going to pick up a WIP for her NNWM attempt, and I know BangBang is doing the same, and so I thought I'd post here something I posted on the NNWM forums.
I fully intend to finish a novel I'm already working on, for NNWM. Last year I 'cheated', which is to say I woke up in the middle of the night on October 1st with the first paragraph of my NNWM novel in my head. I got up and wrote it, and then the next 1800 words, because what I've learned as a writer is if I don't get it down right now, I'll lose it. I suspect this would make many people want to take my head.
To make up for it, more or less, I didn't begin writing until the 2nd of November. I did write more than 50,000 words in the month of November, but didn't finish the novel itself until the 7th of December. I was not about to stop my story at the point I was at, or wrap it up in some fashion, just for the glory of 'finishing' the novel in 30 days.
Now. Apparently by all accounts this makes me a cheater and not a winner, and, er, well, I can live with that. But part of my perspective on what NNWM is for is to get people who have always wanted to write off their butts and to encourage them to write. I think for to that end, the prospect of beginning, middling, and ending an entire novel in the month of November is fantastic. I think anything that encourages people to write should itself be encouraged.
I'm not, though, somebody who has always wanted to write, without actually doing it. My last year's NNWM novel was my 5th novel; the one that I've got in progress right now is my 7th. I don't actually need the impetus of NNWM to push me through the hurrah of writing a book, but I do very much like the community of it. With my WiP, I've been farting around on it for a few months and to me, the basic object of NNWM -- write 50K in 30 days, surrounded by people who are suffering similarly -- is just the inspiration I'd like at the moment. I'd finish the book anyway; I have to. But if I can pound those 50,000 words out as part of a community, well, that's cool.
So why don't I start a new book for November? Because I've *got* this one in progress. If I'd finished it before now, I might've moved on to a new one, but at this juncture it's much more important for me as a writer to finish what I'm working on. And to me, while it's not strictly following the NNWM rules, it honors the spirit of the thing.
So that's my two cents on the whole thing. :)
"A familiar set of tropes, done perfectly."
I just got my contest package back from the RMFW contest. Would you believe I'd /forgotten/ there was actually a cash prize involved in it? Pretty cool, hee hee hee.
TNH wrote All Over my manuscript. In red pencil. I have never been so happy to see so much red pencil on my writing in my life. *cackles of laughter* Well, except where it's green pencil. She even made notes on the synposis, including, at the last paragraph, "Don't!" Which... I understand, although I'm going to be cryptic because I don't want to spoil the end of the story. :) Anyway, the way the story is wrapped up, from the synopsis, it looks sort of... plot devicey. I don't think it is, in the actual book, and I'm *really* curious to see what she thinks of the end now that she's got the complete ms. There's also a note in the synopsis about something she brought up when we had lunch, how she was worried that separating the kids from one another would be plot devicey, and when I explained in brief how it worked, she seemed satisfied with the answer, so possibly the way it comes out in the end will be all right, too. :)
(notes! all! over! desire! to rewrite! strong!)
The RMFW contest scoresheets have scores 1-7, where 1 & 2 are 'needs significant work'; 3 & 4 are 'average for a writing contest', 5 & 6 are 'above average for a writing contest' and '7' is 'of publishable standard'. My lowest scores from TNH are 5's -- one on character development, where she put a note that says, "Five kids, twenty pages, only so much you can do with that," *laughs out loud* and also on "genre elements" and "synopsis: plot development" (which only go up to 6, actually). Everything else is a 6, except for "storytelling craft" which she gave me a 7 on.
Which, y'know, basically adds up to a lot of numbers, but it's really, really cool to read feedback from her (*and* from the other judges, who also had some very useful commentary, and one of them had a question which I should've thought to answer in the synopsis, so I gotta email Jessie and have her tell the judge what the answer is *laugh*), especially lookign at her edits on the manuscript, because I can see almost entirely that yes, yes, she's right, okay, good point, okay, worth considering, okay, yes...
Amusingly, she re-wrote my first sentence so that it was nearly exactly what it had been in the rough draft. *laugh*
(Now, please, let her enthusiasm sail all the way through to buying the book!)
Chipper, chipper me!
Who amongst my readers here is doing NaNoWriMo, I asked curiously?
miles to Rivendell: 284
*Augh*. My cell phone just rang. My cell phone *never* rings. So I had this moment of sheer panic/hope, because TNH has my cell phone number and it's not inconceivable that if she were going to call and offer me a book deal she'd use that number.
It was a wrong number.
I think I will go die in a pit now.
My brain's going "do this *Monday*," but if I do it Monday I won't be breaking any eating rules over the weekend, and the point is to not allow myself Far Too Many Sweets over the weekend in particular, so, The Rules:
1. 1 sugar-sweet dessert a day
2. no sugar desserts after 7pm
3. caveat to #2: exceptions are permitted when dining with family
Trip and I had a little conversation about writing tonight:
Trip whispers "You are a very encouraging Kit!"
Trip senses "Kit snorts. Yah, well, I like encouraging people I think are better writers than me. :)"
You sense Trip waves his tentacles. Maybe he puts together a word and another word pretty well, but you are better at whole stories!
Trip senses "Kit wibbles a hand. I'm more prolific, yeah. But I don't think my writing's as elegant as yours. :)"
You whisper "But we can agree to both think the other is swell. :)" to Trip.
You sense Trip means you're better at story structure. His stories kind of wooble all over the place.
You sense Trip and Kit, swell together!
Trip senses "Kit has had several people tell her she's very good at plotting. I have no idea *why*, since /I/ think I'm just going splah all over everything, but."
Trip whispers "Yah, but your splahs all line up!"
You sense Trip guesses that's like having your ducks in a row, only messier.
Trip senses "Kit grins. In the end, they usually seem to. It doesn't usually seem like while I'm trying to get there, though."
Trip senses "Kit laughs!"
You sense Trip looks for the quote about seeing as far as your headlights.
Trip whispers "But see, you apparently look at the road signs that show up in your headlights, so you don't end up in Peoria!"
Trip senses "Kit laughs."
Trip senses "Kit likes that headlights quote, yeah."
You whisper "I think my headlights are sort of like I'm driving on a high road and I go around a corner and I get a flash of the lower road way far ahead. :)" to Trip.
You whisper "Or, y'know. Roadsigns. :)" to Trip.
You sense Trip grins.
Reasons today has been better than yesterday:
- exercise
- no IRS bullshit
- accomplished a lot at work*
- more exercise
- lunch with ted
Of course, frankly, being kicked in the head with a frozen mukluk would've been better than yesterday. Yesterday *sucked*.
*I may have accomplished a lot at work, but not enough to prevent me from having to work tonight. :P
miles to Rivendell: 279.5
Gymmed this morning. Sleepy now. Lots of work to do today. Whee.
workout:
» 10 minutes biking (approx. 1 mile)
» 75 crunches
» 24 reverse push-ups
» bench press, 40x12x3
» butterfly press, 18x12x3
» lat pull-downs, 40x12x3
» shoulder press, 16x12x3
» leg extensions, 40x12x3
» leg curls, 40x12x3
» hip ab/adductions, 65x12x3
» back extensions, 50x30x1
» tricep extensions, 20x12x3
» bicep curls, 16x12x3
Mom helped me with the taxes, and I wrote a letter to the IRS and told them I thought they were wrong, and put it in the mail. So I guess we'll now see what happens next.
That's all I know. I'm very tired, I didn't walk today, and I have a swollen tastebud on the tip of my tongue that hurts a lot. :P
Hair... driving... me... MAD!
I have spent nearly three years growing my hair out into this style. The difficult part of it all is the damned bangs, which are now well past my chin in length, and driving me ABSOLUTELY INSANE. In order for them to not be a pain in the ass, I have to barrett them or put them in a ponytail, and this, my friends, is the point at which I always give up on having hair. What, I figure, is the point in having long/ish hair if all I'm going to do with it is put it in a ponytail? And tucking it behind my ears makes my ears feel cold (ponytailing it doesn't seem to have quite the same cold sensation, possibly because there's no bundle of warmth behind my ears from all the hair tucked there).
I'm planning to get my hair trimmed this weekend. Maybe that'll help. If not, well.... I'm cute with bangs.
Ted's cooking class yesterday made *insanely* good soft bread rolls, which he brought a bunch of home. I could eat nothing *but* these all day. SO YUMMY!
Hm. Need water now, though.
I'm awake! I'm awake! Don't eat me!
ahem.
Overslept a bit. Was *very* tired.
So yesterday I was walking and I had this thought. I was thinking about trying to lose weight and all that sort of thing, and how I didn't remember having any problems at all with weight in high school, and how I ate pretty much anything I wanted, and then it hit me:
I exercised at least 1.5 hours a day in high school. Often more. I swam every day and I took dance classes for half of high school and I periodically joined stupid, stupid sports like track or cross country, and I thought, well, shit, no wonder I didn't have weight problems.
And, yeah, okay, argument: life as an adult is busier. Eh. I donno. 8 or 9 hours a day at school, 2 hours of swim practice, very frequently theatre rehearsals in the evening, homework (not that I did a lot of it), and I still had hours and hours and hours to talk on the phone with my friends (my parents will attest to this). I don't think I'm any busier as an adult than I was in school. I'm just not doing the same things, and that includes not exercising 90 minutes a day.
Except lately I've been walking 3-4 miles a day, which at my pace takes about 80 minutes, and really, it's *really* not hard to make the time to do that. Now, walking hasn't got anything like the calorie-burning oomph that swimming does, so as a weight-loss program it's only so-so, but the *point* is that it's *really* not that hard for me to spare an hour or two for exercise. And I'm really enjoying my walks. One might go so far as to extrapolate that I am indeed enjoying... *exercise*!
Actually, I like exercising. It's just so easy to convince myself I don't have time or energy, which is stupid. Especially as I'm proving imperically that it's untrue. Emperically? I should look that word up.
I had a point when I started writing this two hours ago, but I've lost it now.
miles to Rivendell: 275.5
God *damn* it.
I got a tax bill a couple of weeks ago to the tune of $860 still owed on my 2001 taxes because I hadn't reported a $2400 payment from APCS, the company that bought CHI in October 2001. I never *received* a W-2 for that $2400. I /did/ receive 3, count 'em, 3, copies of my W-2 from CHI, the first two of which were wrong.
Of course I can't /prove/ that I didn't get the W-2 because you can't prove a negative. I can't imagine that I'm not going to have to pay it, but god damn it. And get this: the company that did CHI's taxes in 2001 isn't the company we're using for taxes anymore. In order to get the fucked-up W-2s from them -- because I didn't KEEP the ones that were wrong -- it would cost more than I have to pay in taxes. And the way HR phrased it they'd expect me to pay for it. I will go talk to the IRS tomorrow, but I cannot imagine that they're going to tell me anything except I have to pay it, because I can't PROVE I didn't get the damned W-2.
As if I actually have an extra $900 to pay them with. Even if I *had* it, I wouldn't have it, because gosh, I have five zillion OTHER bills. God *damn* it.
I'm starting to count the months until I can quit. Of course, that's assuming I start selling books. :P
My eyes feel a bit like burned holes in my head, which is not so good, since it's only 9am.
Got up and went to the gym this morning. Woke up, in fact, at 5 to 5, when I'd been intending to wake up at 5:30. There was no sleep after that, though, so I lay there until the alarm went off and got up. Much as it sucks to wake up 35 minutes early, I think I'd rather that, and get up and gym, than wimp out. Soon I'll need food. And I need water...
workout:
» 75 crunches
» 36 reverse push-ups
» bench press, 40x12x3
» butterfly press, 20x12x3
» lat pull-downs, 35?x12x3
» shoulder press, 20x12x3
» chest press, 20x12x3
» leg extensions, 40x12x3
» leg curls, 40x12x3
» hip ab/adductions, 65x12x3
» back extensions, 35x30x1
» tricep extensions, 20x12x3
» bicep curls, 20x12x3
» chicken-wing things, 20x12x3
» floor swimming, 18x2
The remaining wedding photos have been uploaded. They start on this page.
Whew.
Some of my favorites, overall:
a very cute picture of Mary Anne
aaah, college friends are like no others
Not that I'm actually close to finishing my walk to Rivendell (268 miles, determined to get the next 190 done by Dec. 17th!), but I was wondering if anybody had any ideas on where to walk to *after* Rivendell. :) There's always Mordor, but what with RotK being the last installment, I thought maybe if there were other maps/distances available for other fantasy settings that it might be fun to walk in another world.
Ideas?
Tooooo eeaaaarrrrly.
Had a 7am meeting with our Irish clients (it was 4pm their time) and so I got up at 6:15, which wouldn't have been particularly horrible, except I took a 2 hour nap yesterday afternoon and consequently slept really poorly last night. So now I'm like Zombie Lass.
We watched Daredevil on DVD last night. No cut scenes, but there was some cool commentary from many (maybe all) of the artists and writers who'd worked on the comic book. I hadn't known, but there are at least several lines from the movie which are direct quotes or very nearly direct quotes from the Frank Miller run ("You're good, baby... but me, I'm magic," being my favorite--the original line was 'toots', not baby) in the 80s. I thought I should go to bed after that, so we didn't watch any more. 'course, my time'd've been better spent watching more special features than flopping around trying to go to sleep, probably, but oh well.
I feel like I should want breakfast, but man, not hungry yet.
It has been a very laid-back weekend. It just occured to me that I've been forgetting to update my miles to Rivendell, so here I go.
miles to Rivendell: 268
Ted and I went and saw TOMB RAIDER: CRADLE OF LIFE at Bear Tooth tonight. Ted kept insisting it was a 90 minute movie, and I couldn't believe it could be, because it felt much longer. The longest 90 minutes I'd ever spent, anyway. Turns out it was 117 minutes. Now, ok, it might've been a 90 minute movie crammed into 117 minutes, and that might be why it felt long, but it wasn't /actually/ 90 minutes. Whew. :)
Actually, I generally liked it. Not that I had high expectations, but I liked the first one and I thought this one was probably a better /movie/, at least in terms of story and all. It's not nearly as video-gamey as the first, and there are no computer-enhanced breasts, for which I'm grateful. (I mean, did you /see/ the first movie? *Ow*!) I hope they do a third. I like Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. :)
I've decided (not that this is of any interest to anybody but myself) to stop hosting a couple-three of the domain names that I'm not using right now. They're taking up space and more to the point, taking up little precious dollars that I'd rather spend elsewhere at the moment. So OYL and LAS are safely backed-up and now going away for a while. I'm transfering the mizkitproductions site, which I bought in a fit of energetic enthusiasm for design, to an add-on to the mizkit site, and I'm still eyeing cemurphy thoughtfully. I really can't decide what to do with it. I bloody love the design (which only works flawlessly in IE) and I think it's a good idea to have a professional site. OTOH, maintaining blogs in two different places, especially when one is just a copy of the other (I post writing stuff on cemurphy, but not daily stuff), seems silly. OTOOH, I really, *really* like the cemurphy design...
(Which probably leads to the question 'why not use it on mizkit?' Well, because mizkit's a personal site and there's specific stuff I want to use it for. My own laundry lists, basically. Things that don't seem appropriate for a professional site. It all leads me around once again to, "Guess I'll just keep it, then," and makes me think I should talk to Garrett once more and see if he can figure out a way for me to just automagically push the writing entries over that way. And I should continue to consider switching it (cemurphy) to an add-on for mizkit. But today, I will do no more than consider it.)
I've put 1000 drawings back on the projects list 'cause I seem to be drawing again, took LYFA off because nobody's using it anymore, and, um. *Boy* I wish I could get ahold of the woman whom I'm hosting Rogue To Ruin for. Not because I object to it being there, but because I haven't heard from her in almost a year and I'm concerned. I emailed her at all the addresses I had for her and at least one bounced, and another one sent to a friend of hers was never answered. *fuss*
Oops, I've left the yeast to start for too long now, must go work on the bread.
*cackle* I've just gone through a smorgasboard of review of THE BOY FROM OZ, which opened officially last night, and I'm extremely pleased to announce that all the reviewers hit the nail on the head in their reviews, which is to say they agreed with me. Smug! :)
Noooo braaaaaaaaaain.
I have uploaded about 75 Ben-and-Laura-wedding photos to their new album. I have probably as many again to go through, but my brain has turned to jello and I am full of hate and loathing for the photo editing process from doing too much of it, so all you bloodsuckers will just have to wait a while for the rest of the photos.
*staggers off to drool*
Chanti just went nuts barking, and when I went to see what the deal was, this is what I saw:
More pictures here!
I really shouldn't be up. However, I am, and these are the fruits of my labor:
My nephew, Breic Hugh, looking extremely like his grandpa. :) Also more pictures of him; I expect that directory will get updated a lot in the next few weeks.
Also Writer's Weekend photos, get 'em while they're hot. :)
And Eklutna Lake, August 2003.
Ben&Laura wedding pictures next. I promise.
Ow. The dog elbowed my toes. :P
I was in a good mood, but now I'm just tired and bleah. But Ted is making mongolian beast, and that'll be nice. I have a good husband. :)
Ok, I feel like a marginally useful human being. I've managed to upgrade my Gallery software, which means in comparatively short order I'll be able to put Laura&Ben wedding pictures up, and Writer's Weekend pictures up, and roughly a quadzillion Breic pictures up, and that I'll be able to start putting things into my 1000 drawings gallery again, and ... yeah.
But now I'm going to bed.
Hooray! I'm getting my PFD! I'll have to call them tomorrow and ask if they're mailing it or direct depositing, because I asked for it to be direct deposited, but since they had to dink around and decide if I was going to get it, I got a notification that said it wouldn't be direct deposited, but the online thingy says 'yes' next to direct deposit, so, well, I have to call and ask.
I have made Sarah stare very hard at me with the latest chapters of THUNDERBIRD FALLS that I posted. Eheheheh.
Walked 4.5 miles. Go me! Less than 200 miles to go! And um 62 days. I better get booking.
miles to Rivendell: 260.5
Aaaaaand for my 1500th MT entry, a rejection letter from Luna on HEART OF STONE. Too romancey. Not surprised; that's what I thought they'd say, but as Angie said, fie on them!
It's a personalized rejection letter, though, and that counts for something. :) "I did think there was a nice sense of energy and feel to the story, but the tone and the scope was too intimate for it to work for us." So, y'know. :)
Fie! Fie! Fie on them!
Still in a very good mood, though. *laugh* I was looking at the stamp on the envelope, thinking 'ok, what kinds of stamps was I using last month? no, this stamp is too old to be a rejection letter on US'. *laugh*
I'm in a surprisingly good mood for some reason, which is strange because I have a headache and I had to spend the morning cleaning spyware cruft off my stupid computer. Hate XP. Hate. Haaaaate.
I only walked 1 mile yesterday. I shall have to walk MANY MANY MILES INDEED today. But it's beautiful (if cold) out, and I feel prepared for the venture.
Plus, homemade spaghetti with homemade bread for lunch. Can't go wrong with that. :)
Thank you all for the invigorating discussions that've been going on around yesterday's post. I've been having lots of fun. :)
In today's episode, I talk about how I hate Warren Ellis, which emotion is brought to you by this post: Love Will Kill Us All. It's a short story; this week Mr. Ellis is doing internet busking, and when I'm done writing this, I'm going to go pay him for his wares, because God *damn* that's good. It is not pleasant, but nothing he writes is. It *is* beautiful.
Actually, I don't hate Warren Ellis at all. I admire, envy, loathe, despise and worship him by turns. Three quarters of the time when I pick up something of his and read it, I want to /be/ him, because his writing is just that powerful. In general, he writes comics; Bryant turned me on to his work with Transmetropolitan, a brilliant, funny, sick, twisted story about journalist Spider Jerusalem in a futuristic City that reflects all too clearly on our world.
Issue #8 is the single best comic book I've ever read.
Since then I've picked up pretty much everything I've seen with Ellis' name on it. He wrote a delicious Authority, about the sorts of superheroes who save the world without really being particularly good guys themselves. Planetary, Stormwatch; those are the Ellis titles I can handle. I didn't finish Strange Kiss because the horror -- the sheer ickiness -- is beyond my ability to read. I don't like horror.
The frustrating thing about Ellis is that he is so damned good that even when I can't read what he's presenting, I *want* to be able to, because he's just that good. He uses horror because you can't look away -- that's my take, anyway -- and then when he's got you good and hooked, he blindsides you with social commentary or an understanding of human nature or a sudden facet of beauty that takes your breath away, because it's completely unexpected and very often, so full of raw truth.
Right now he's writing LISTENER: A book for the internet in sixty entries. The whys and wherefores are here, and it begins here. It's not nice. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Ellis as a writer, in his entirely different way, is like Guy Gavriel Kay, to me. I want desperately to be able to do what they do. I want to be that good. I don't know that even on my very best day indeed that I could emulate Ellis; he comes from somewhere I'm not sure I know much about. It's bleak and scary and funny and bright in his worlds, and people spit acid and it rains blood every day. I want to get there. I don't know that I want to stay there, but I want to get there. Looking around through what Ellis presents isn't quite enough for me. Sometimes it's more than I can handle, but it's not quite enough.
I have one book, one story, that might be in that place. I re-read the first few chapters (all I've got written) a couple of weeks ago, just to see if it was any good, and it was. It's very good, actually, and when it's done, it might prove to be my trip into the world that Warren Ellis inhabits, or at least writes from, all the time.
I wonder if he'd mind if I dedicated it to him.
Work's slowed down for the afternoon, so I'm going to sit here and babble about writing and stuff for a while.
Talked to my artist about artwork for Chance; she's going to try to finish up the last 2 pages (of the first 5). I'm going to submit to Image -- well. That'll depend on whether she's up for doing a piece of cover art, probably, and I'm going to pitch it to Terry Moore because it can't /hurt/. :) If I had time/money/resources/a brain? I might try to go a self-publishing route. Actually, I'm virtually certain what I'd want to do would be to try to collect maybe five titles (heh, and artists for the same) and make a move into trying to actually produce a small line of comics myself. I'm not sure it'd be financially worth it to do less, if that makes any sense. But I don't have the resources or the time, which is kind of too bad. And I don't know where you start with self-publishing /anyway/....
Which kinda ties into this discussion we were having today about writing fan fic vs. writing original stuff and the venues of publication. I have a disconnect somewhere in my brain about the idea of writing in somebody else's universe. Writing a hundred thousand word novel (say, Harry Potter fan fiction) that you know can't get published. I don't get it.
(This is the point at which everybody looks askance at me and says, "Uh, hello, IMMORTAL BELOVED?" Yes, it's a book I wrote in somebody else's universe, but when I wrote it, they were still publishing Highlander novels. I submitted it. They discontinued the Highlander novel line, but I did, in fact, write that novel for publication, not for the sheer joy of writing the Methos character, no matter how much I love him. I have two more Methos novels I'd really like to write, and, you know, someday when I've got a backlog of about fifteen books waiting for the publishers to catch up, MAYBE I'll go ahead and sit down and write those just for the sheer fun of it, but I can't imagine doing so otherwise.)
I mean, I understand the appeal of playing in somebody else's universe. I understand that it's fun to take characters and bring them down new paths. I've done it myself lots of times, primarily through on-line role-playing on MUSHes set, in fact, in somebody else's universe. It's fun, and I'm not trying to harsh on the idea. I just ... it boggles my mind that people are willing to write, sometimes write entire novels, without any publication intent. I can't imagine why they'd do that! Writing that much is a lot of *work*! Why on earth would you do it without wanting to be able to publish it?
And, okay, yes, they do publish, on the web. It's not traditional publication, but it's publication and there's the delightful instant-feedback aspect of web publication that you don't get with traditional publication because for one thing it takes months and months to hear from publishers, much less get a book actually published once it's bought. With traditional publication, by the time a book hits the shelves, you've moved on.
So I listen to myself say that, and I think, well, it's not that I think e-publication is an invalid method of publication. I'm not, however, convinced that I think fanfiction.net is a particularly valid method of publication. Valid publication requires quality control of /some/ degree; this is why vanity presses aren't valid publications. You're paying for your material to be published. Well, great, you're published, but you're *paying* for it. You can *pay* for anybody to say anything nice, or do what you want, with the right amount of money.
And /that/ sounds like I think it's all about the money. Well, no. It's partly about the money. I want to grow up to be an author who lives on what she makes writing. If, however, my options were to have absolutely no chance of paid publication or to stop writing, well, hell, I'd write for non-paid forums, because I like to write. But this brings us back to the Highlander novels: I like to write, yes, but apparently my intent is to write for money, and while I don't quite agree with Heinlein's "anybody who writes for any other reason than money is a fool", I once more can't imagine putting the effort into a 100K word novel that you knew you could never publish. I mean, even *bad* original 100K novels get published all the time, so why write one set at Hogwart's that you're never going to be able to publish?
Some of these writers are very young. Under twenty. Okay, everybody needs to get a million bad words written (and I'm not actually suggesting they're bad, because they're not all bad, but bear with me). Practice words, as it were. There are almost certainly worse ways to write practice words than by writing novel-length fan fiction. But...
I wrote my first novel when I was under 20. It never would've occured to me to write it in somebody else's universe. Not, at least, in a universe in which I couldn't be *published*. Star Trek? Okay, sure, I can see that. Buffy? Okay, yes (although there was no Buffy when I was 19. Work with me.). TV or movie spin-off, basically: yes. I can see that. Because you have a slender chance of publication, if you go that route. But... Harry Potter? I just think it's so very, very *strange*.
And obviously it comes down to a matter of... personal expectations. Personal ambitions. Self-identity, perhaps. Lots of things. It's fairly clear to me that I've *never* had anything but publication as my end goal -- I started writing my first novel when I was about 8, and it was a mystery novel that was going to be an ongoing series, like the Bobbsey Twins or Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden. I had 5 main characters and they may or may not have been a family, I don't remember, but the whole idea of writing that kind of book was I had an idea and I knew people *published* that kind of book. (I think I wrote about 20 pages. I wish I had it now!)
Somebody said during the discussion, well, isn't NaNoWriMo basically just an exercise in people writing 50 thousand words for fun?
Buh.
I mean, yes, I suppose in fact that's possible. But... why would you do that?! Writing is work! *Fun* work, perhaps, but 50K is a whole lot of writing, and... wouldn't you want to *do* something with it, when it's done?
Evidently in my world 'do' equates with 'publish' which ultimately equates to 'I want to hold this book in my hands, and have a cover blurb, and a cover artist, and my name in print, and a publisher stamp on the spine', and it appears many people do not share this ambition.
Which I think is just really, really weird. :) And, see, if people want to write these stories (I keep using HPFF because Ted reads a lot of it, and I specifically refer to novel-length work because I think short stories are another topic) and want to share them with the world, well, then they *do* have *some* kind of publication ambition, right? So why on earth wouldn't they want to write something original, and try to share it with a larger audience via traditional publication?
Marith said the answer to this is, "Maybe I do, but not right now," and all *I* can say to that is, "But why *NOT*!?!" :) It's not that I'm trying to diss the attitude; I just don't *comprehend* it. I'm not even trying to say, "You must see this my way!" I'm just going on about being utterly boggled by the whole thing. :)
Now, to bring this all back around to self-publishing and comics and web comics, which I do gracelessly and with no closing arguments for the many paragraphs of rant that precede this: web publishing is becoming a more and more respected way for comic-book writers and artists to tell their stories (I think the same is true for novels as well, but I think comics being a graphics-driven storytelling format has made the transition a little easier for comics. Possibly the actual truth is I'm not connected enough to the comic book industry in any way to really know. Certainly there's as much absolute crap being published as web comics as there is absolute crap being published as web fiction. It becomes a question of standards again; quality control.
Truth be told, my standards for quality control don't get as far as the actual content on 95% of the sites out there -- it's the web design that makes it or breaks it for me. If it's bad web design, I assume the material inside is going to be crap, too. Pretty much like a book cover, and I realize they say don't judge a book by its cover, but really, who doesn't?), and, interestingly, while I wouldn't be willing to start out by publishing my novels online, I'd be willing to start Chance out as a web comic, if I had, y'know, the artistic talent (or the money to pay an artist with).
I'm sure there was a point to all this somewhere. I think the point may have been, "Gosh, not everybody is like me!" Which will probably come as a shock to everybody. :)
Um. Yes. Well. That's all, then, I think. :)
oh, that's right bastardly of Marvel. Instead of putting up a page on their Epic information page that says 'We've stopped taking submissions' they pulled the page entirely. No information at all, just a 404. That's right bastardly.
Good news: most of the stupid work site stuff has been resolved. Bad news: I haven't written anything today. Good news: I walked four miles. Bad news: I haven't written anything today.
I should at least go change the kitty litter, which isn't a difficult task and is on my list of thinks to do today.
Of course, so is writing.
miles to Rivendell: 255
I feel as though I should have some things to say. However, I don't really seem to. OTOH, Trent has a wonderful picture of what ANGLES reminded him of. And goodness gracious but I'm hungry.
Off to the salt mines to try to make broken stuff work.
I'm feeling accomplished, perhaps because I had nothing on my list of things to do this weekend. :) Chanti and I went on a 2.5 mile walk today, and she was VERY GOOD, which made me happy. I've read 3 books this weekend, which means I'm... let's see. There were actually 97 books on the shelves including the one I'd already taken off to read on Friday, so 97 minus the fifteen that are Ted's is 82 minus three is 79 so hey, look, I've read almost 20 books! That means I can go buy new ones soon!
Um. Okay, maybe not.
Let's see. Um. Nope, that's about everything. I'm going to sit here and think about what the *heck* to do for the Cancer and Leo drawings. Oh, wait, I'd thought of something for Leo. I'll do it, and then think about Cancer. :)
Am also considering doing new Aries (Ted gave me a very good idea), Pisces (I had a different idea originally but wasn't good enough to pull the drawing off), and Scorpio (although I have no idea what) and then sort of taking polls to see what people like best, or something.
Doodling now.
miles to Rivendell: 251
Cake made. 4.5 miles walked (woo! go me!). Tin whistle practiced. Contemplating sending A COMPENDIUM OF KITLINGS or something to Marvel for their 'normal' submissions instead of just to Epic. Going to go read until Mom and Dad get here for dinner, now.
miles to Rivendell: 248.5
So Marvel's Epic line has stopped taking submissions due to overwhelming response. I'm glad I decided to send Chance and write the Jubilee script when I did. I'll post more information if I hear it, but that's what's happened, in a nutshell.
Chanti has been very bad. She chewed up a throw pillow, and when we came home from the store this morning, she was on the couch, where she's not allowed to be. Bad puppy.
Jeez. It seemed like I had a bunch of stuff to write about, but it's all gone out of my head now. Um. I'm taking the weekend off, darn it. I'm not worrying about writing or walking or anything except catching up on some reading and baking a cake for after dinner tonight. I was going to bake a pie but I don't feel like it. o.o I decided I had to read at least 20 of the books on my to-be-read shelf before I could buy any more. I read one (NIGHT WATCH) last night. 19 to go. :)
(I just counted. There are in fact 96 books on the to-be-read shelves, 10-15 of which are probably Ted's. And there are at least a couple stuck somewhere that I can't find them that are also to-be-reads. So, yes. I must read before I can buy any more.)
Actually, it's nice out, and I think I /will/ go for a walk... but I don't *have* to. Nanner nanner!
Off to make a cake right now. Bai!
Marith sent me some Myers-Briggs prayers. Mine is:
ENFP: God, help me to keep my mind on one th--Look! A bird!--ing at a time.
*giggle*
Nice day today, generally. Spent part of the afternoon trying to help my QA guy troubleshoot a stupid bug, did a couple more zodiac sketches (10 down, 2 to go, although I don't know that I'll keep all the ones I've got), had lunch at the Cutty Center at the University, which is where Ted is going to his culinary arts classes, with Ted and Mom and Dad, so that was very nice, even if I didn't like the food. I've spent the evening getting a trojan off my dumb computer, and now I'm going to run a scandisk and a defrag for good measure, and read. G'night, then.
Feeling unreasonably positive this morning. No idea why. Woke up at 3am with a definite cold in my nose. Took some drugs, which apparently were mood-altering as well as nose-draining, and I'm feeling that all is well with the world this morning.
*looks around* I guess that's all I've got to say at the moment. :)
So I have this art project in mind. I don't know how it struck me, it just did. To do a 'women of the zodiac' series of drawings. I asked my friend Ellen who runs Ellen Million Graphics if the idea might be something that would appeal to her for EMG, and asked her to jump up and down on my head and demand drawings on a monthly basis. She agreed to. :)
I'm not--ok, see, here's the problem with me and art: I'm good enough, skilled enough, to occasionally turn out things that are really nice. I'm good enough for other people to call me a good artist, but I haven't got anything like the consistency that would make /me/ comfortable with being called a good artist. Nor do I have enough drive, as an artist, to pursue it and become that good. I /want/ to be that good, but what I'd really like is to wake up that good, rather than practice and practice. It's not even that I really object to practicing. It's just that I find other things to do. So I set goals for myself which I then don't actually fulfill, and that's annoying. Therefore, having someone else expecting a stage of the project is good, because that way I have a deadline. I'm much more likely to accomplish things on a deadline. :) It's possible that I won't turn out to be able to produce 12 drawings of sufficient consistency that they'll be okay for EMG, but y'know, even if I'm not good enough to do that, it'd be pretty cool to at least get the project done.
There are half a dozen very, very, very rough drafts at zodiac. I think my first step will be to complete the very, very, very rough drafts for the other half dozen, so I at least have a vague idea of where I'm working from. My thought right now is to create very stylized wimmins, and do bold inking on them, but ... I have no idea what'll end up happening. :) I have a framework in mind, and an idea *maybe* for backgrounds for the women... well. We'll see. Anyway, so that's one of my things that I want to make time to work on over the next, er, year. (I have to finish the whole set for Ellen, see, before she'll contract them, which is v. wise on her part.)
But hey, I should be pretty good at the tin whistle by the time I'm done with the Zodiac series! :)
Another laundry list kind of day. Walked 4 miles, didn't write, Ted raked (yay Ted!), I did crunches and practiced the tin whistle, which is fun :) and oh, I did manage to clean the kitty litter. Gooooood Kit.
miles to Rivendell: 244
Well, I got most of my to-do list done today, anyway. I didn't gym because I felt awful when I woke up at 5:30 this morning, and I didn't make jam because the peaches had gone all soft and ooky already (wah!), but I did everything else. I even walked *four* miles! And I wrote 2100 words. *V*. tired now.
miles to Rivendell: 240
ytd wordcount: 213,300
That was quick! The Jubilee submission for Marvel arrived there today (I sent it Friday). Yay!
Third iteration of page design in as many days. I think, however, that I am satisfied with this one. It balances the post-it-note aspect I want from my webpage with a reasonably accessible content area and all the navigation stuff is available at the top without being this Massive Chunk Of Stuff.
In other news, I did not get up and swim this morning. Bad Kit. It's hard to get out of bed at 5:30 on Mondays, particularly.
Mom and Dad are back safely from their travels! Apparently my nephew is insanely adorable. :) And that's about all I know. :)
Not a bad day, today. Got some more of the house cleaned, bought lots of peaches to make more peach jam, and will freeze some of them while I find the best Trip_ok recipes so I can make Trip_ok jam soon, too. Spent 40 minutes playing my tin whistle, which was fun, even if I'm not very good at it. :) Walked my 3.5 miles (it wasn't RAINING, wonders of wonders, miracles of miracles!) and am thinking of walking 4 miles a day for the rest of the week. Well, for the weekdays, anyway. And wrote 2150 words, yay! There are moments when I feel like this book is coming together, and other moments where I feel YAAAARGH about it. Hrnf.
The cupcakes are gone. :)
miles to Rivendell: 232.5
ytd wordcount: 211,150
Apparently, my All Wuss All The Time workout was /enough/ of a workout. Ow.
Yes, it says 'thinks' on purpose. :)
It was a domestic sort of day. Ted and I re-arranged the crap on the bookshelves in our bedroom and reduced 4 bookshelves worth of stuff to two bookshelves worth of stuff, and put the extra two bookshelves downstairs. One is for Ted's schoolbooks; the other is now the to-be-read shelf. Shelves. I haven't counted, but there must be 75 or so books on it. Gleenk.
The bedroom looks amazingly nicer, and we now have a tremendous amount of wall space available and so I want to put up more art. 'course, we've /got/ all our art up already. Well, most of it, at least.
I made cupcakes. :)
Ok, folks. I don't know how it's hanging for you out there, but this variation on the theme suits me better. I discovered very quickly that the dropdown menu annoyed me more than the space-saving pleased me. It might've been happier all around if the dropdowns had worked perfectly, but they didn't, so they've been dumped.
I've checked this on Opera and Mozilla. Mozilla's still got the weird-ass scrollbar at the bottom and I don't know what's up with that, but it seems to work fine on Opera. Lemme know if other browsers have issues.
I went to the gym today for the first time in, like, living memory. I also walked, but only a mile, and dammit, I don't feel like doing more, so I'm not going to. -.- I'll write down my gym workout later, maybe, so I can remember what I did. Basically, though, it was All Wussy All The Time. Boy am I in bad shape.
I'm gonna go watch some tv now, I think.
miles to Rivendell: 229
Despite the unceasing rain, I got my 3.5 miles walked today. I figure if I walk 3.5 miles every day, every 8th day I'll earn a rest day. Stupid rain.
I also sent the Jubilee script out this morning. Yay! Now there are *five* items on my submission list. *laugh* A couple days ago Random asked me what was preferable about Sonar to a spreadsheet. I was like, 'er, nothing, I just never thought of a spreadsheet...' :)
I think that's about all I've got to say right now.
miles to Rivendell: 228
Hopefully this design is going to work for people. I'm already discovering Interesting Nav Bar Issues; apparently the nav code doesn't want to drop down over the MT code, which is v. annoying. I'll have to see if I can force it to.
Ah. Angie says it doesn't work for Mozilla. Well, that's not a good start. I haven't even made this posting yet. :P
So the drawing over there is sort of an idealized me. I'm going to make it into a better drawing over the next few months, or at least, that's my plan, and possibly the daily reminder of the drawing will help me stay inspired to go to the gym.
The dropdown menus are an attempt at space saving. Apparently we're not off to a good start with that, between them placing wrong on IE and evidently failing to work at all in Mozilla.
The thinks to do list is just that. So I can remember things I need to do. Yeah, so welcome to the redesign...maybe. :P
Here it is, barely 8am, and I've been up for hours already. I didn't swim, though, 'cause I've got a canker sore and I just couldn't bring myself to stick my head in chlorine. Ow. Instead, I wrote.
Finished up the Jubilee beatsheets, and I think I actually managed to pull a story out of it, despite the fact that when I started at 6am I had no story and a lot of flailing going on. For 800 words worth of writing, getting a story out of it all seems pretty good, to me. Yay! So now I'll put together a cover letter and print out the paperwork they want and put it all together and send it. I think I started this last Saturday. Maybe Friday. That's cool. (Saturday, I just checked. Cool.)
It's *pouring* rain. When I got up and went to put Chanti out, she stood several feet away from the door and looked outside very mournfully. Eventually she went out, and went and stuck her head under the lilac bush, which shed water on her. She turned right around and went right back inside. :) I probably ought to put her out again, since she hasn't /done/ anything yet...
Ted's downstairs studying for a test, and occasionally saying, "Frell!" I wonder what's going on.
Oh! Writerly news! I got email from the 3 Seas Literary Agency verifying that the Angles ms had in fact made it there and she's been out of the office and she'll try to read it in the next week or so. So that's that.
Walked 3.5 miles last night in the VERY WET. Oh, and then came home to an *insanely* good beef roast that Ted made. And *insanely* good roasted potatoes. Yum!
miles to Rivendell: 224.5
ytd wordcount: 209,000
I have never actually seen the word 'dastardly' used in any sort of serious context until now.
A couple three weeks ago I wrote a letter to Senator Ted Stevens (where 'wrote' is equal to 'clicked the button provided for me by the ACLU', but anyway) encouraging him to help stomp the Patriot Act into the dust.
I just got a letter back. The letter says:
After the dastardly attacks of September 11, 2001....
I've never seen anybody use that word seriously before! That's so cool! And so silly! DASTARDLY! *DASTARDLY*!
Stevens, incidentally, supports reviewing the bill at this point in time, and notes that "many of the bill's sections" (I don't know how many) expire by 2005. I hadn't known that. It's good to know, actually.
He also signed it himself, or at least, someone actually signed it, with a real pen, instead of a stamp. That's more than the other Congressmen do.
Hey, I was right. There /was/ a rejection letter in yesterday's mail (from St. Martin's, on Heart of Stone). It's just that the mail got there very late, so I didn't find it until this morning when I went out to put some bills in the mail.
Total form letter. Dear Sir/Madam. You know, if wanna-be authors sent Dear Sir/Madam letters to publishing houses, they'd get docked points for it.
OTOH, wanna-be authors don't have to deal with five thousand unsolicited submissions a year.
Onward!