For the first time in years, I'm not doing Yuletide. It's weird. But I don't feel as stressed as I did a couple of months ago when I planned to do it. I'm concentrating on NaNo, doing the last of my research and outlining before Friday right now. Who knew that trying to untangle Frankish family alliances would be so fun? (Lots of people did, probably.) It's kind of a pain in the ass trying to figure out who was alive and dead and in Paris and Provence and Toulouse or where-the-hell-ever, but trying to get my last minute bashing out has fixed a few loose ends that were bugging me.

I've also been trying to teach myself to sew. I made a skirt for my Halloween/RenFair costume and I picked up a couple of easy patterns on sale but haven't had a chance to work on them. I've been having a massive flare-up of my joint stuff lately, so it's been slow going. I haven't even been able to knit since last week, which is a blow to my productivity and ego.

Also I've been trying to teach myself sign language via Youtube. I've known the ASL alphabet since I was little, but I need to learn new ways to keep my hands busy. My thing this past year has been using saying the alphabet backwards in Spanish and ASL to keep myself focused (in English requires no thought on my part, as I memorized it backwards when I was six) when I have freakouts, and ASL has been more effective in keeping me distracted. So now I'm adding numbers and suchlike to my calming-down repertoire.

I'm gearing myself up to do NaNoWriMo. It's still a month and a half away, but I've fallen out of the habit of writing every single day and I'm trying to get myself in that mindset again. And getting excited about it, for me, means talking about it.

( Under a cut, for anyone who doesn't want to read babbling about 6th century Franks and fairy tales.Collapse )

Meet Bofur the Warham.

I've always sworn that I'd never have hamsters again. I had them for a while when I was a kid, and my hamster Goldie was awesome. His sister and the hamster my aunt gave me after Goldie died were not. I still have scars on my fingers from them.

Last weekend, Scott and I went to buy cat litter and I saw a hamster cage up front marked "aggressive." He'd been up there for at least two weeks, and it turns out that he was removed for being aggressive to other hamsters. I felt really bad for him and couldn't stop thinking about him, so the next day I went back and bought him.

He's actually rather sweet. Except for the time he screamed at Scott. Also he keeps trying to charge at the cats. But really, he's sweet.

For anyone curious, this year I wrote:

Games of Attrition for eva_roisin.

Rating: General Audiences
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: Gen
Fandom: New X-Men: Academy X
Characters: Cessily Kincaid, Santo Vacarro, Julian Keller, Sooraya Qadir, Brian Cruz, Kevin Ford, Emma Frost
Summary: Things may be overwhelming (exhaustive, breathtaking, monumental), and they may be dysfunctional (impaired, damaged, maladjusted), but they will always be awesome (amazing, remarkable, majestic).

Some spoilers for Childhood's End, Young X-men, Necrosha, Second Coming, To Serve and Protect, and Wolverine and the X-men.

I hope everyone reading this has a great day, or at the bare minimum a non-sucky one.

I know I said I'm planning to use my Dreamwidth for fandom stuff, but because this is where I have my Yuletide sign-up info shared, I wanted to publicly thank my author and recommend the story here:

And The Greatest of These, Mira Grant's Newsflesh Trilogy.

Maggie and Buffy, before the Ryman campaign. Contains a lot of sex, a couple of blog post snippets, and not quite enough communication.

It's wonderful. I got into this series in a big way after Aggiecon this year, and while I don't ship often, I shipped Maggie and Buffy hard. This is so happy and wonderful and so much what I was hoping for. The series itself, for anyone who hasn't read it (and if you haven't the fic itself is pre-series and not terribly spoilery, though it gains a lot of depth if you have) is heavy on putting you through the emotional wringer--seriously, Mark Reads is on the second book in the trilogy right now and I alternate between glee from his reactions and choking up from remembering what happens--so this relative lightness is much appreciated.

Now back to finishing up a couple of Christmas projects of my own before I drag Scott out to watch Les Miserables. (Django Unchained is our anniversary movie, we've decided.)

LJ, why you gotta be changing on me?

I have a Dreamwidth, though I haven't done much with it. I think I've decided to use it for fandom things, keep this for personal things, and I briefly flirted with the idea of making a Tumblr but then remembered that Tumblr frightens me.

So right now all that's on my DW are a really old "Hey, reading a thing!" post and an essay about why I'm disgruntled about death in comics in general and Avengers Arena in specific. Yep.

Also still on Twitter, though I've been quiet there lately. Why is it December already? Also, why is it about halfway through the month already?

Politics politics read my twitter if you want politics. Here is something else kind of sort of presidential related!

I remember being home sick when I was younger and playing some games on my mom's Apple IIe. Some of them are familiar, like Pitfall (which may have actually been Pitfall 2) and Oregon Trail. And some of them I've never heard anyone else talk about ever, like the game where you play the president when dolphins and robots can vote.

I've been describing this for years: there were three main problems to solve in the game. Robots wanted to have a concert but their music killed people, dolphins wanted the right to vote (I think?), and aliens landed. There was this political party that formed called the NIMBY party that wanted them to leave, and this was where I first learned the term NIMBY. Also, the dolphins had these little hovervest thingies and possibly thumbs? Or long sticks that they would use to vote with? I remember their little hovervests, because I couldn't have been older than eight at the time I played it and I desperately wanted a dolphin friend with a hovervest. Now I know that dolphins are jerks, and I'd be a little more wary.

Anyway, I could always solve the first two problems--maybe the long sticks to vote with was how I solved the dolphin one, I don't know, and headphones solved the deadly robot concert problem--but I could never solve the alien one. I kept suggesting that people watch movies with friendly aliens as an example of how the aliens might not want to kill us all, but it never worked and I always got voted out of office.

Nobody I've ever described this game to has ever heard of it, and I've been searching for years and couldn't find a single mention. UNTIL TODAY.

Behold: "2088: An Oval Office Odyssey"!

( Dear Yuletide author.Collapse )

( Cut for pictures. I am not a spinning prodigy.Collapse )

Auuuugh fuck Houston forever have I mentioned I goddamn hate roaches and Houston is crawling with them in the summer?

Which is especially unfortunate since I've developed a phobia at some point in the past few years. I see them and I start screaming and crying and having panic attacks and feeling itchy. I'm very proud of myself for not screaming and crying just now when I saw one just chilling in a corner while I cleaned the cats' litter boxes. I even thought, "Maybe I can do battle with it, just this once."

( Spoiler: I did not kill the roach.Collapse )

The moral of the story is, I'm pretty much the first person to die in a horror movie.

Also, Scott just came home and (presumably) killed the roach. He gave me a pitying look when I told him what led to me texting him.

Okay, he's been hitting something in the corner for several minutes, how is it not dead yet, fuck roaches forever.

A friend of mine sent me an extra drop spindle, so: I am going to learn to spin my own yarn! Etsy is full of people selling wool, and my first order of inexpensive undyed wool is on its way. Watch as I try to make it not lumpy and then figure out the dyeing process. I think I'll try to document it here and on Twitter.

I spent two hours this weekend knitting myself a soap sack! It could have been done in less time, but I kept having to look things up and I'm a slow knitter to begin with. See: atalantapendrag's Who scarf that I've been working on since January. (Picture! I'm determined to have it done by the end of September. Somebody hold me to this.) The soap sack is lumpy but functional. Actually, I think that can be said of all my yarn-type projects so far. Considering that I taught myself off of youtube videos, I don't think I'm completely terrible.

Also slowing me down is my shoulder. It's been bad since high school, was bugging me more than usual all year, hurt worse after the accident, and I think I tore something last week. While I can move the damn thing again, it's in constant, though mostly low-level pain. This summer pretty much blows. But I have a doctor's appointment later this week, so hopefully that'll get taken care of.

I think I may knit things for people over the holidays. By which I mean if you want something small-ish and amateur, let me know now so I can start it and in theory be done by January :-P

Because I'm not sure if that last part sounded like I was complaining, I WANT TO MAKE YOU THINGS! I'm just slow.

I BEAT DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS.

And it only took me like three years! And at least one exploded computer. And several months of EA refusing to sign me in to my account so I could play with Shale, who was tanking at the time. And burnout after last year's Extra Life.

I'm so happy I could dance. I'll wait until tomorrow or the day after to start on the DLC and then Awakenings.

I never finish games, this is actually a huge deal for me.

Bad: Janson-rat died a week ago. Trying to love up on Hobbie-rat as much as I can since he's now a lone rat and since my joint and fatigue issues are making it harder to keep up with cage maintenance I don't think I'll be getting more, but I'm also having respiratory issues that I don't want to pass on to him if it's not allergies.

Good: I'm still coughing but can no longer feel each of my bronchi individually! Small victories. Also people like things I am doing, which cheers me through respiratory distress.

And I'm reading a book about time traveling Navy SEAL vikings, which is so weird that I kind of have to like it, and is a nice change from my recent binge on reading about Everest and the resulting panic.

Just shy of 23k words.

Eight days, three of which were spent trying to write through a migraine.

Now to work on editing this damn thing.

BEST EPISODE.

ALSO THIS EXISTS AND IS ON THE S2 SOUNDTRACK.

I'M SO HAPPY ABOUT EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW.

eta: "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" next, please.

Text I just got from her: I am currently taking a game of fuck marry kill GoT edition way too seriously. Join me!

We're currently discussing whether to marry or kill Stannis. VALAR MORGHULIS, KING NOBODY LOVES ME EVER.

ps I do not need to defend my crush on show!Jorah ever.

First migraine since early January yesterday and today. It's an improvement. Now that I can stand to be around light and noise, I'm cheering up with Game of Thrones episode commentary, which I can't recommend enough. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss do the first episode and are full of both interesting facts and hilarity. Mark Addy, Lena Heady, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau do the second and are all gigantic trolls. Also, it's really weird to hear Cersei Lannister's voice fawning over Jon Snow and hoping Arya and Nymeria meet up again later.

I may play Mass Effect when this disc is over, though. Watching Scott play through got me wanting to get back to my own Shepard. (I'm one of those people who like the ME3 ending. We seem to be rare, like finding white ravens.)

What else has been up... playing in an Exalted game with theantitexan and smiko. Doing a podcast every week or so. Going to Dallas this weekend for the GWC meetup and College Station for Aggiecon the weekend after. Still constantly on Twitter. If something was to happen to me, I'm starting to think my personality could be reconstructed from Twitter and be nothing but fan references and political snark.

Oh. Also, finally got my hair cut. I'll get a picture when I figure out a way to make it look not so much like Justin Bieber.

I ended up spending two hours making a massive post on Quantumtavern.com about my problems with the Millennium Trilogy (aka "The Girl Who..." books), how it compares to a lot of problems people have with ASoIaF, and my thoughts on both and the realizations I had while thinking about it.

I think my brain fried about halfway through. And yet I kept typing.

Now I can't move my left hand. Stupid hand.

ETA: Would anyone familiar with the X-men TV shows (any combination of X-men: The Animated Series, X-men Evolution, Wolverine and the X-men, Wolverine Anime, X-men Anime, Generation X tv movie) be available on Friday 8 cst, have Skype, and want to be on a podcast?

I suppose a good thing to come out of the Stephen Gammell thing is that it's got me writing again. First a rambly blog post on Quantum Tavern and now a project: I'm writing short stories inspired by surrealist artworks that I like. I'm on a Zdzislaw Beksinski kick at the moment.

This is the most productive I've been in ages.

We all know Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, right? Creepy folktales and urban legends, some creepy, some funny, geared towards kids and with the most awesome, horrifying illustrations ever.

About those illustrations...

What I'm gathering, and about twenty minutes of googling and looking at various book sellers online seems to back up this claim, is that for the 30th anniversary edition, Harper Collins swapped out the Gammell illustrations for Brett Helquist, who did the Series of Unfortunate Events books, and is taking the Schwartz editions out of print. Except that much as I love Alvin Schwartz, who also did some amusing books on folktales and one in particular called Kickle Sniffers and Other Fearsome Critters that got me really interested in cryptids... the stories were kind of forgettable. They were every urban legend I'd ever heard. The illustrations made them worth remembering, and they were what creeped me out, and why I had to leave the books in the car when I checked them out from the library. (I had this thing when I was younger where I loved scary books but had an irrational fear of actually bringing them inside the house. I think I thought they'd kill me in my sleep or something. But I still loved them.) And after Scott and I picked up the treasury edition of Scary Stories, I still have to have it hidden in a safe place where I can't accidentally stumble over it and have it kill me in my sleep.

Anyway, it's irritating.