Sidhe's Window

2003-01-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

I wonder if websites get lonely, like pets.

2003-01-16T16:11:00.000-08:00

Not really any reason to continue with this, I suppose. It's served me well. I'm rather depressed at the moment, really. I may update periodically, just ... to prove I can. No reason to let the thing moulder, I did sign up for it after all. And hey, Pippin and Faramir are over here.

Amusingly enough, I think I can now use this as a more-or-less private journal, since I have serious doubts about whether or not anyone would think to check it now that I'm over at LJ with pretty blue kitten icons.

2003-01-15T17:02:00.000-08:00

I've moved to LiveJournal! W00t!

The addy is at:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/rushlight

or

http://www.livejournal.com/~rushlight

Cheers!

2003-01-14T23:51:00.000-08:00

Ademarr -- evil, evil bastard with lovely, lovely eyes.

Jocelyn -- whore/prostitute/woman of otherwise negotiable affection.

William Thatcher -- suffers from protagonist's disease but still has good moments.

Chaucer -- just awesome.

Wat & Roland & Kate -- likewise just awesome.

Prince Edward/Thomas Colville - Oh my fucking GOD that man is hot.

I rented A Knight's Tale again, because I have no self-control.

2003-01-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

Basil's a harper now. Hurrah!

And ShoutOut won't work. Brrgh.

2003-01-14T14:04:00.000-08:00

All right. I should do laundry but I'm not going to. To make up for my quintessential laziness in not doing laundry, I shall be unlazy in other ways. I shall take out the garbage. Then I'll come back up here and wallow in misery while staring at math problem I probably will not end up doing. If I do do the math problem, I'll get on the MOO's when I'm done. If I don't, I'll probably get on the MOO's anyway ...

I was going to work on P&D this afternoon, continue the high from finally having finished "Mage and Mercenary" by starting on either "Little Bard" or "The Princess's Knight" or "Cherchez the Dragon" or whatever the hell I decide to call the next up.

The Princess's Knight is shades of Seifer, Cherchez la Dragon is a bit too French and stupid, and Little Bard is making Peregrine jump up and down on my spine, so I don't think it'll be any of the above, but we'll see. It'd probably help if I remembered the titles of the first two eps off the top of my head, too.

Stupid titleness. All right, taking the garbage out now.

2003-01-14T13:57:00.000-08:00

I think it's the height of unfair to have a math assignment assigned to be turned in the day of a test, to do the test, and to have a math assignment due the day after the test as well. My brain feels like it's been run through a dishwasher or possibly a meat-grinder; the last thing I need is *more* math to do today.

The temptation is to put it off until tomorrow but I'm leery of that as well. Today's not-having-to-do-anything-between-classes was a very relished feeling.

I think I'll at least put it off until later in the afternoon. It's weighing heavy on my spirits, but I don't think I can face another math problem, I've just taken a test.

2003-01-14T09:59:00.000-08:00

The down arrow on my keyboard has ceased functioning, but the sound is back. Frankly I think I've got the better end of the deal, even if it does make surfing the web rather irritating.

Off to go and see what breakfast is like in stupid burned-down Fairhaven semi-dining-hall.

And then, to Canada!

Or, to Canadian Studies, but whatever.

2003-01-13T00:52:00.000-08:00

I love turning my brain into mush. Chick flicks are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me to indulge in, but I do love turning my brain into mush, and that's a fact.

Wedding Singerness, yep. Steve Buscemi is *awesome*. His part in that movie is practically nonexistent, but that's okay, because he's awesome. Also, Billy Idol rocks. I mean, literally I know, but also in the way I mean it.

One of the few (if not only) films in which Adam Sandler does not deserve to be shot.

Now, why the smeg didn't I bring Ever After up ... ?

2003-01-12T19:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not even *depressed*, that's the stupid thing. The nothingness has pervaded to that point. Depression implies negativity, whereas I'm just feeling *blahness*.

2003-01-12T15:25:00.000-08:00

So I'm hanging around, just wasting time. It's a real waste, too, because although I desperately don't want the week to begin and all the class that that entails (still haven't found a "natural" place for English, although I've got the "urban" bit tied down pretty well. I'm going to use the Mall food court. I don't know how I'll get to the Mall food court, excepting with other people or I suppose I could take the bus, but ... it's a place, anyway, that I can write about and I can use the word 'susurration' in, so life is good). And you know, the whole math thing, although now that I've gone through it the whole math thing is basically stupid anyway, and Canada is interesting so I don't know what my problem is, really.

But it's like, even though I desperately want the weekend to continue, I'm not actually doing anything with the weekend that I have. Supposedly there is Buffy-ness happening elsewhere with Rhiannon and Renfield but I, like, don't feel like Buffy-ness and probably wasn't invited in the first place. I'm rather hungry. Three hours 'til dinner. Dinner's almost like a *chore*, what with the whole eating in Fairhaven and lack of selection thing. Eating should not be a chore, although if it's going to be a chore it's probably rather good that it is because then I might be able to lose weight (although not if I continue having midnight excursions to Red Robin like I did last night).

I'm sort of depressed in that lethargic "fuck, I'm not doing *anything*" way. I don't really want to be but I don't seem to have a life at the moment. Other people are doing work right now. I could be, but I don't feel like it, and that's pretty lame-ass but what can you do.

Joe, if you're reading this, toss me a link to your blog sometime so I can stick you in my link pile.

There should indeed be an update on the Thing shortly, we've got a letter made up and everything, so it's only a matter of time now. Actually I think it was being sent today, no reason not to really as we all seem to have approved of it (all of us! responding!) and so, you know, very shortly. ;-)

I don't understand Laura. First she is annoyed at me for being an obsessive and now she is talking to me about one of my obsessions.

2003-01-10T14:48:00.000-08:00

Well, I survived until the weekend -- yay! I'm not really sure if I actually have anything to say, but that's not news. Alter Ego will Devour Your Soul. Avoid it if you haven't already been captured by its foul net. This is all Andronis's fault, it really is. Grr.

I RP'd with Basil yesterday. Got cut off in the near-middle but the kid's shaping up fairly well. He reminds me a lot of me in certain ways, and not of me in others. He's pretty like Dom. I hope other people think so too.

On the reread of Reaper Man again, no particular reason other than doing the whole Pratchetty thing. Then I'll do the Piers thing, and then the DWJ thing because I like DWJ. If I still have a brain left after all of that fantasy fiction, it's onward to Victor Hugo.

I'm hungry. It seems almost like I'm always hungry, except when there is food to be eaten. I wonder why that is ...? (Although I also have an abnormal appetite for raspberry jam bars, evidently. Whee!)

La la. Nothing to say, nothing to think, nothing to do. Won't play Alter Ego again. Won't, won't, won't!

2003-01-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

Yargh. Whose idea was this education thing, anyway?

2003-01-07T12:27:00.000-08:00

Smeg. Smeg smeggity smeg smeg. That's *all* I've got to say about that.

Killing time before I go to math ...

Sigh.

2003-01-05T01:32:00.000-08:00

Red Dwarf cast commentaaaaaaaaaary .........

GOD it sucks to be an American sometimes!

I want I want I want!

2003-01-05T01:09:00.000-08:00

Yep, they lost again.

Okay, so it's one in the morning and I'm sitting here writing in my blog and listening to the second half of my Rent soundtrack. The reason that I'm listening to the second half is that I've just finished listening to the first half. There's nothing sinister about this.

I can't find my copy of Men at Arms still. It's most off-putting. I'm tempted to go to sleep to the audiobook tonight. The trouble is, I've read the book enough times that my brain balks at the abridgement I'm hearing, but not enough times that it fills in the rest of the words; and the vague sensation of *something* missing is quite horrible.

I've been trying to hook up N'tran and B'son and it's quite difficult. They're both so used to being straight boys that the idea of suddenly being bisexual after all this time is appealing to neither of them ... and yet, once I've leapt them over this hurdle I just *know* it's going to work.

Grandma's packed my bag. I don't know why; I find it quite ridiculous of her, because she did it without my being here and she has no way of knowing what stuff *I* want in there. Sure enough, God only knows where my FOTR calendar is; I think it's probably been moved to my bedroom, since for whatever reason it's not in here ... I couldn't find it in my ruddy suitcase, that's for certain. It's just like a ... continuation of this thing she has about moving my stuff around without asking me.

Yay ... dying in America, at the end of the millenium ...

I like Billy Boyd. You did know that, didn't you? And Dominic Monaghan, I like him too. I don't think I can emphasize this enough. God, I'm a geek.

And Grima is very cool, but, not in the same way.

2003-01-04T16:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, so we're leaving in twenty or so to go to dinner at Clink's. I'm not actually hungry but darned if that'll stop us from going to dinner. The game's afterwards. They'll lose again, I'm almost sure of it. It's so depressing, I wish we could just stay home and watch some Red Dwarf. I have to get up early tomorrow, too. No, not to fly; the flight's in the afternoon. Yep, you guessed it, I'm taking the dumbfuck to Sunday School. I don't see why he can't just skip it. Sunday School was a joke when I was doing it and I'd be willing to bet that it's still a joke now that I'm not. Hebrew School's the important bit, if indeed any bit of the religious training can be classified as the "important" bit.

So yeah. I haven't packed yet. I think that'll probably come tomorrow morning, which is fine. I hope Grandma helps me, because not only am I lazy, I'm bringing a whole hell of a lot of shit up with me and I don't want to have to leave stuff behind because I'm not as good at cramming things into suitcases as she is.

On the one hand, I do want to go back up. I want to go to my classes, improve my GPA, hang with my friends up there, go to Star Trek, not have to run stupid errands, that sort of thing. I like college. On the other hand, I really don't want to go back up. I don't want to have to hang around in airports, I hate hanging around in fucking airports. I don't want to have to take the airport shuttle. I never managed to call Katie and tell her when I'm getting in, because I still don't *know* when I'm getting in. I'll call her from SeaTac tomorrow and hope for the best. It's wonderful of her to offer to pick me up, and I'm really glad she did - because, among other things, I've lost Marc's phone number and would be incapable of asking him to do similarly. The two hours tomorrow I'll have to spend dinking around SeaTac in between picking up my shit at the baggage claim and waiting for the airport shuttle to arrive are *not* a two hours I relish. I don't care about the half hour flight, really, or about the hour and a half fucking around at the Spokane Int'l Airport. I don't know *why* that two hours at SeaTac bothers me. I mean, the two hours at SeaTac that I had to spend fucking around on the way *here* weren't that bad. I ate a sandwich that was too expensive, drank some overpriced grapefruit juice, and sat around reading my book. I can't even remember what book I was reading, either. One of my books. Something reasonably good, probably, because I was able to distract myself from the inanity of fucking around an airport for two hours with it.

I'm going to try and cram *all* of the Discworlds in my backpack. The only ones I'm missing are Wyrd Sisters, because the dogs ate that one while I was home, and Men at Arms, because that one appears to have disappeared from my collection entirely (although the mists of memory parting suggest to me that I lent it out, quite possibly to Sarah Daza, but you never know with my memory).

Lots of stupid inane shit that I shouldn't be worried about that I'm worrying about. I'm tired and I don't want to go to dinner. Why the fuck can't we just stay home and finish Season 8? Season 8 is *not* worth drawing out and finishing over Spring Break, we should get it *over* with, for pity's sake.

Oh, well.

2003-01-01T23:45:00.000-08:00

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I feel totally worthless and unconstructive and it's hit really fast. But at the same time I'm not actually in a bad mood. I'm still all bouncy and "woo! Dom and Billy!" right now. (Although Dom and Billy don't exist, you know. They're lies. They said so themselves.)

But I'm certainly not as Mustrumish as I was an hour or so ago when I started playing, and that's irritating because I was the initiatior this time. Losing the edge of your playing mood when you're the one who's started matters strikes me as a rather rude and unfair way to behave.

So much slash, so much of it crap. A large part of me wants to write some for a bunch of different pairings just to show the world that it can be done in a way that isn't stupid. Argh.

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not just for food ... frequently there must be a beverage. < -- Woody Allen, yep.

2003-01-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

All right, so it's the New Year. I feel sort of sad this time, actually, because this is the only year in my entire lifetime that's going to be a palindrome unless I manage to live all the way up until 2112, which doesn't at the moment seem likely. Of course, that *is* kinda trivial and stupid, but you know how it is after a sleepover party with a lot of people. Jon didn't come, I'm not really terribly surprised although I would've liked some kind of an announcement of his not-comingness. I guess I got to watch him lose an insane amount of money at the blackjack tables and that's all I deserve, hey?

Ben and Liz and Nick and Lindsey were all here the whole time; Sarah D. came by for a little bit and I was glad to see her although she didn't really get to be around for long because she went home to go hot-tubbing. She did say she was only going to be by for a bit so that's all right, would've liked to interact with her a bit more but you know how it is.

Liz is actually really cool. I'm on the one hand a little annoyed that she is, but on the other hand it made it neat that we could hang about and play Mario and have a Billy Boyd fest. We watched the commentary track again (ye gods, dorks!) and giggled and squealed a lot. "Billy Boyd! Wooo!"

Anyway, yeah. Blogger still won't let me publish Musty's letters, which is irritating. And Grandma's calling me to eat lunch, so that's my exit cue for this entry.

2002-12-31T15:45:00.000-08:00

I hate this smegging thing.

2002-12-29T13:08:00.000-08:00

Well, so I've changed my layout. I had to muck with templates but at least the lack of word wrap thing has gone away because that was really annoying. The thing is, I don't want to have to bother going back to my other layout now, even though the text on this one is smegging huge, because of the mild effort I put in to updating the link pile (hallo Renfield, Rhiannon and Keri!). We shall see how long this lasts before I go berserk and change it again.

Bloody hell, blogger's malfunctioning.

2002-12-27T23:39:00.000-08:00

This thing with my layout having gone all wonky is annoying, but I can't think how to fix it without mucking with the templates, and that'll kill my links. Sigh.

2002-12-26T01:56:00.000-08:00

No. Won't. There's so much badly characterized stuff out there ... and I don't want to add to it.

2002-12-26T01:54:00.000-08:00

Dear gods. Here's me ... being tempted to write LOTR slash. Why? Because all of it out there is so bad that I want to do it the *right* way. That's almost exactly the same attitude I had before I wrote that L/R piece.

Eek.

2002-12-26T01:52:00.000-08:00

I've Taken as a Sex Slave:

Sexy Son of Gondor
from
Legolas Greenleaf Love

Yeah, I kidnapped and shagged Pippin but took Faramir as a sex slave. There's no real reason behind this, but see, if I take Faramir as a sex slave then I can fix him from what PJ did to him and then put him back when I'm done. I've got confidence in my ability to do that.

2002-12-26T01:20:00.000-08:00

Aw, the graphic doesn't work.

2002-12-26T01:17:00.000-08:00

I'm Pippin! Who are you?
by eikocarolchan

And again. I wonder ...

2002-12-26T01:02:00.000-08:00

No ... no, I can't really say I'm surprised, although I'm not sure I entirely *agree*. (I think that R'wen and D'rian are my favorite couple, really, but they're not LOTR, and if they're close to anybody in LOTR, they're probably close to Merry and Pippin.)

Also, I really like the smirk on Merry's face in that shot, so I shall suffer it to be put up on my webpage.

Merry, or is it Pippin??! It is is so hard to tell those too mischevious hobbits apart! Of the two, Merry claim to be the smarter (only claims to be, mind you). Merry is, as his name suggests, is very jovial and a good friend to Frodo, Sam, and Pippin.

Take the "Which Hobbit are you?" quiz created by Cora Black!

Now ... much as I *like* Merry ... I'm not Merry. I'm Pippin. I've always been Pippin. This one's just wrong. Nope, nope, nope.

And, Pip is NOT dumb. He's not, not, not. He just ... acts before he thinks. A lot. *cries* LEAVE ME ALONE!

Pippin's my fancy!
What's your fancy? Click here and tell the world!

Don't read this entry wrong and think that I *only* like Pippin, however, because that would be a truly erroneous thing. I wants an Aragorn, a Pippin, a Merry, a Sam, a Legolas, a Haldir, a Boromir, a Faramir, an Eomer, and an Elladan and Elrohir set.

In fact, I'll just take all the characters and keep them in my house. Saruman and Gandalf can live on top of the dresser, there's space on the rocking chair for Gollum, Grima and Gimli (the three G's, right? I can't imagine how they'd get along). Theoden and Denethor can sit on the vent ... and the bookshelves and the baskets beside the bed for everyone else. I can put Eowyn and Arwen on the light fixture and Eowyn can lay the smack down on Arwen's ass.

2002-12-25T19:49:00.000-08:00

Yeah, Pip was a tough choice. There are so many to be tempted by. But I've been on a bit of a Pippin kick lately, so. When I get bored with him I'll go back and kidnap somebody else.

2002-12-25T19:48:00.000-08:00

I've Kidnapped and Shagged:

Fuckable Little Troublemaker
from
Legolas Greenleaf Love

Because I *CAN*.

Oh, in other news, Dad's back from the hospital. He's okay now. I know a lot of you never knew that he was sick because I wasn't in the mood to write about it in here, but he's okay now.

2002-12-22T22:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, this fic is the most beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful thing you will ever read. It's brilliant, it's witty, and it's full of Severus Snape being deliciously sarcastic: http://www.riddikulus.org/authorLinks/A_L_Milton/Answer_to_the_Authors/

Read, read, enjoy. :-D

2002-12-20T02:35:00.000-08:00

I wrote a lot last night. Tonight was not anywhere near as productive ... what I really wish I could do was have both the copy of P&D that's on my laptop and the copy of P&D that's on my PC on the same computer, but that's going to have to wait until I can get Thor hooked up to the Internet again ... so probably when I'm back at school ...

I must remember to ask Lindsey if superhero stories count as fantasy for Eye-Tongue; Skywolf and the Eye seem very cool to me, and I'd like to be able to use them (hoorah for Hero Builder). I also made Kiaril and Ledewick, and a pair I've never before encountered: a girl called Briony of Baldwhaelle, and a fellow named Idharran who looks absolutely fascinating. I really must come up with a story behind these two.

I've got the strangest feeling that I'm running out of books. There's only the three Tennyson lent me and then I'm back on rereads again. That's the trouble with being so voracious when it comes to books ...

2002-12-17T02:39:00.000-08:00

Blah blah blah de blah.

I finished On a Pale Horse, and Dad has Barnes and Noble gift certificates and that in conjunction with free shipping means that it's going to be time for a Piers Anthony binge, which is annoying, as it's not like I don't have books to read; I picked up The Princess Bride, I've got those two DWJ's to read (Er ... Howl's Moving Castle and Castle in the Air, in case you're interested) and those three from Guy Gavriel Kay that Tennyson lent me ... I've also been feeling signs of an impending Discworld zoom-through, which will only be partially hampered by the fact that Lords and Ladies and The Truth are in my dorm room and The Last Continent is currently making its home in Marc's apartment ...

Spat out an in-transit dialogue sequence for The Princess and the Dragon tonight. It's very philosophic, I should probably stop that at two o'clock in the morning; basically Clip's explained to Kiaril her brother's theory that manages to make a smooth marriage of free will and predestination ... in her own spectacular Clip-like way, so that her example involves Ledewick and Pedvignallon on a tropical island somewhere eating slices of mango off of each other's bare naked chests. Clip's really a lot like me in a lot of ways.

I really love the first Buttercup/Westley interaction in The Princess Bride. I think I can appreciate Buttercup as a female lead because Goldman (or Morganstern, I'll play along) makes no attempts to hide the fact that she's a very silly person. Since the author is making fun of her, she somehow becomes less annoying and a good deal more funny. I think the comedic side of Buttercup fails to come out enough in the film, and turns her more annoying and less funny, but that's the kind of dynamic that it's almost impossible to translate to film, so we'll leave it.

I played the Sims for an inordinate amount of time today. At first I was building up Laney's stats and then I hopped over to get Arthur and Ford sleeping together. On Lauri's advice, I had Arthur move in with Ford rather than the other way around; Arthur Prefect, while not quite right, is nowhere near as atrociously bizarre as Ford Dent.

As productive as this was, I still feel guilty for a number of reasons. Firstly, my final grades except for English were posted and I looked at them and this completely destroyed me for Laura's Starshine meeting (not to mention the RPing I was doing on HT and the smegging *adorable* interaction between Mustrum and Keelan in the catacombs on Hogwarts). Secondly, I still owe Rhiannon an intro post and there's really no reason for my continuing to let what I've got started sit there mouldering ... sigh. Oh, well, will hack it into shape soon enough, it's just annoying because normally I'm so much faster in collaborative work ...

(Not that Laura and Lindsey can vouch for that, oh dear me no. God. Peregrine's starting to grow *mould*.)

There was evidently a young author came and talked to the Saint George's crowd, and Ben read his book. Some of what he says has got me thinking about The Princess and the Dragon. He was talking about ... what was it ... about how, for the main quest/journey/whatever thingie, the passage of time, the sense of time passing and distance being traversed, just wasn't there. I've been trying to capture that exact thing in Princess for ages now; I mean, with all the little sidenotes and scenelets around the campfire and in the cart, and the misadventure with the truly stupid vampire creatures, and the scene with Kialden and the Lady, and the other scene with Kialden and the Lady that I haven't yet written ... but am I overdoing it? Or have I not managed enough? I don't know. There's plenty of room for character development, at least.

2002-12-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

I've been reading On A Pale Horse, which is the first in Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, and I am ... amazed. I mean, I knew he could write good books, books that aren't absurd like the Xanth novels are, but I had no idea how very intelligent his writing could be. I mean, the writing is still identifiably his; there are the little stylistic things, some of which entertain and some of which irk, that make it solidly, obviously his writing, but ... good grief. My respect for him has grown mightily. He may be a pundit, but he *does* have a good head on his shoulders, something I suspected while I was reading the Apprentice Adept series, and something which has been completely proven to me now.

I like being pleasantly surprised. Marc was right; I should get my paws on the rest of these.

2002-12-15T23:30:00.000-08:00

I haven't really posted anything much for awhile ... there's not really a good reason behind this, other than that I'm somewhat depressed and that my worries are stupid and one or two of them are unprintable. You know, there's the usual smeg, like grades and that, and there's the social concerns that I'm not going to go into, and then there's Fandom, and scheduling, and all sorts of other such that's continuing to get me down. I've got this astounding ability to hurt people's feelings without meaning to at all, you know?

Just ... sort of depressed and neurotic in irritating ways. I've been keeping myself too busy, doing all sorts of nonsense - errands and that, and hanging with Kyle ... hung out with Travis for a bit, which was weird. Met a few of the freshmen at Saint George's - Lucas and Seamus, significantly - hung about, sat in the light booth, did nonsense things. I do a lot of nonsense things. Am eating too much food ... I don't know how much longer I'll be in the "have lost weight" category.

I feel like everyone's relying on me, in all aspects of my Fandom and writing life, and that I'm letting them down ... falling back into the same sort of irritating general malaise that was haunting me a lot back in October. I mean, all that Laura's asking of me with this weyrling graduation thing is for me to show up, and I haven't even been able to manage that. And then there's this hatching. I need to have it sometime. It needs to happen. I've put too much into it for it not to happen at all. And I feel like I'm letting Ava down, too; Liu is giving me trouble at Northlight, possibly because he's been having the same conversation for the last week and a half or so. And on HT, I'm letting the whole gang down; my activity is down, it's pathetic, it's disgusting. Just connecting has got to be a chore again, for a completely different set of reasons than last time. Last time it was because I was depressed. Now it's because there are *so* many demands on my time I can hardly see straight.

And writing? Ha!

I thought about writing more RD fanfic. There was an idea for it, too, involving the eighth season. But I'll have to sit down and watch "Stoke Me a Clipper", "Blue", and the entire eighth season (well, *most* of the eighth season, anyway) in order to do it ... and it seems like such a cop-out leaping from "Terrorform" to "Stoke Me a Clipper".

I thought about writing The Rothanwen Chronicles. Idea shelved for lack of time. Anyway, Fandom writing palls after awhile when you realize that you can never, ever do anything with it. It's just like any other fanfiction, except with your own original characters ... but why waste your own original characters in a fanfic piece that you can't even post on a fanfic site? No one will ever enjoy it besides fellow-Starshiners and at the moment, the number of fellow-Starshiners to enjoy it is depressingly low.

I don't know. I may just be tired. I'll go play the Sims. This won't wake me up, but my brain certainly won't be functioning enough to dwell on Questions of Identity and Purpose. Also, I'm amused by the fact that I've got a dog called Trip and a cat called Malcolm.

2002-12-13T02:29:00.000-08:00

Found an old log tonight. Roran talking to Kanastra. *Very strange*.

I'll show you:

"If you were worried about your son," Roran inquired logically, "why in the world did you drop him with that particular biological father?"
"The only biological father he's got, after all," Kanastra said cheerfully. "And Evril's a sweetheart, if you discount his complete and total incompetence and a misplaced conscience that almost got him killed."
"Nothing the matter with him that a good woman couldn't take care of," Roran said. "Unfortunately, you got away, and the one he's got now is as crazy as he is."
Kanastra arched an eyebrow, then fluttered her lashes at him. "I don't get many compliments, Weyrharper," she said. "That's mighty kind of you."
Roran leered at her. "Careful," he said. "I've got an awful reputation for hitting on married women."
Kanastra chuckled softly. "Oh my," she murmured. "I'm quaking in my boots. I'm trembling in fear."
Roran nodded. "Good," he said. "See that you do. No, actually, I'm a harmless, toothless old bear." He grinned, showing his teeth.
Kanastra laughed, relaxing deeper into her chair. "Somehow, that theory seems more in line with what I've seen."
"Yes, well," Roran said. "What did you really want?"
Kanastra blinked at him owlishly. "Didn't I just tell you?"
"I figured you might have something a little more interesting in mind than just that," Roran said. "From your reputation, at least." He stroked the brown fire-lizard curled up on his forearm.
Kanastra's lips curved into a wry smile. "Going to hit me where it hurts, hmmm?" she inquired.
"Well," Roran said after a pause, "I'm going to leave Ivan here." It was one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions you make and then eventually come to regret, he was sure, but ...
Kanastra blinked at him in surprise, lips parting in a small "o." "Do I get to ask why, or is this one of the rights I waived when I went around knifing people?"
"Because I think it would be a good idea if you had some access to the more friendly outside world," Roran said matter-of-factly. "If Oryst turns up, which he probably will, and tries to rescue you and gets himself killed because he had no escape route, I'd feel terribly bad about that."
Kanastra laughed somewhat sourly, shaking her head. "Somehow, I don't quite buy that," she said. "I don't think ... this time, I don't expect Oryst to bail me out," she continued quite frankly.
Roran raised a bushy eyebrow. "How many knights in shining armor are tripping over their own feet for you, my lady?"
Kanastra snorted. "None. I don't think myself as a desirable maidenly prize," she said with unusual candor. "There are other ... but I shouldn't be telling you of all people anything." With that, she waved it off.
Roran blinked at her. "Why not? I'm perfectly harmless."
Kanastra kicked back. "No, you're perfectly Starshinian," she replied.
He laughed. "How insulting."
Kanastra smiled sweetly. "Exactly my opinion."
He shook his head at her. "Well, fine. Sneeze at a friend. But Ivan's sticking around anyway."
Kanastra smiled wryly. "Understand that, with all I've done and with all your Weyr has been involved in, I have a little trouble believing you have intentions as kindly as that."
Roran grinned at her. "Well, I'm about as tricky as your average brick ... but ... "
Kanastra cocked an eyebrow. "I don't know. I've known some pretty crafty bricks in my time."
Roran peered quizzically at her. "Right," he said. "You married one of them."
Kanastra blinked at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. "Now, be careful what you say. He may have his faults, but he's still *my* brick."
Roran inclined his head to her. "I wouldn't want it any other way."
She shook her head. "I wouldn't think *you'd* be interested in Oryst."
Roran glowered. "Nah, he's not my type. I like 'em with bigger breasts."
Kanastra sniffed. "There's nothing wrong with Oryst's breasts."
Roran stared at her for a moment, and then started to laugh. "It isn't my place to discuss another man's breasts with a strange woman."

Also, from the same log:

Bethdrgyn [7:47 PM]: ((Sorry, a little distraction ... formulating the Rainbow River pillowcrafthall ...))
Lindsey CD [7:49 PM]: ((::dies;[])
Bethdrgyn [7:49 PM]: ((You think it's a joke?))
Lindsey CD [7:49 PM]: ((No. That's why I died?))
Bethdrgyn [7:51 PM]: ((There'll be classes like Dress for Success, and Leather is Your Friend, and How to Fake an Orgasm.))
Lindsey CD [7:51 PM]: ((YOU are scary.))
Bethdrgyn [7:52 PM]: ((Yes.))

Ahhh, the good old days.

2002-12-13T01:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't really been in a posting mood lately, possibly because I've come to the realization that I don't in actuality have all that much to say. I mean, okay yeah, I saw everyone, and Nick's been quoting Ace Rimmer at me - which is disturbing in itself, but never mind - and Travis sang the Rimmer song at the lunch table, and I just about choked on my cheeseburger.

I was talking to Katie on MSN messenger just now and something happened that was truly strange and odd - it randomly switched me to my dad's account. No warning, no reason, no identification even. Just ... switched me over there. Very strange and odd.

Invented a disease tonight. Yeah.

2002-12-07T02:13:00.000-08:00

“Kialden is my name,” said the woman. “Mercenary. Bounty hunter. I shot that vampire full of love powder for you. The dust was in a packet attached to a sharpened stake. I see you’re a bright lass and figured out what to do with it. Good on you.”
Clip stared at her. “Love powder?” she said.
Kialden nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Vampires is tough hunting, without a powder mage along. And even then, the subtle stuff is the only stuff that’ll work. Kiaril says that he’s tried death powder on them but it doesn’t work, maybe because they’re already dead … so we gambled on your intelligence. Looks like we won. There was no way we could have got here in time to stake him ourselves, lass, so …” She shrugged, carelessly. “We did what we could. Anyway, the vampires up north won’t have nothing to do with the sort of riff-raff we get down here. They say them’s barbarians. I’m inclined to agree. I mean, not charming at all, are they? Waste of bloody time, them. And they blow away at nothing. No point hunting them really. And the stupid gits, taking a little girl like that? What’s the point, honest, I ask you? Do small children taste better? It's not like they'd even tasted her. Now tell me, what is the bleeding point of taking a little girl like that and keeping her around for awhile, trying in some misguided bizarre way to lure some older meat into your lair or something? Ridiculous! There’s no sense to your basic southern undead. Your northerners, now, your northern vampires, those are undead with class ...”

I don't know. With an introduction like that, I'm beginning to feel guilty about killing her. Kialden's not so bad. Is it really her fault that I wrote in UST that I didn't mean to be there? Of course, I may be thinking "she's not really so bad" because I wiped out the entire scene in which she was the most irritating ... I mean, anyone that can talk more than Clip ... how can I kill off someone who can talk more than Clip?

Although of course here's Clip being caught off-guard ... which doesn't happen often; she's blinking and asking questions in a similar stupid tone to the one usually reserved for Ledewick ... although of course, meeting Kialden for the first time is an extremely unbalancing experience ...

“A powder mage?” Clip blinked. There were levels and levels of magicians: hand magicians and incantation sorcerers were the most common types, hand magicians being slightly more powerful. But there were only two kinds of them that were more powerful than powder mages: the song wizards, who were few and far between, and the element wielders, the rarest and most powerful of all.
“Oh, yes,” said Kialden briskly. “We’ve been hunting vampires all over for the past few weeks. There’s a shortage of actual escaped felons around here, so we thought we’d expand to the supernatural. There’s more money in bounty hunting but I think Kiaril’s conscience was itching for us to do something for the greater good. You know. Kill some vampires. Bludgeon some ghouls, which takes some work, I can tell you. And, of course, assist in rescuing any princesses that might need rescuing. Kiaril and I quite enjoy rescuing damsels in distress.” She grinned raffishly. “Anyway, like I said, the vampires down here are pathetic pieces of work. I don’t know how that one survived long enough to get proper menacing henchmen to tell you the truth, real bloody moron, turning his back to an open cliff like that? And then not just biting your soppy friend there,” a vague gesture at Ledewick, “and turning him against you? Or trying to interrogate the obviously stupid one first. Honest, I ask you. Just because he saw you were female and wanted to have a bit of fun? Good grief. Did he need to feel reassured of his masculinity before he had lunch? That's the kind of bloody stupid mentality ... well, never mind.” She shook her head.

And it's nice to have someone around to say outrageous things:

Clip sat up, then, and glanced down at Ledewick. “Will your powder mage be along, do you think?” she said. “I’d like to wake him up.”
Kialden grinned roguishly. “What,” she said, “you wouldn’t wake Sleeping Beauty with a kiss?” She slapped the unconscious Ledewick cheerfully on the rump again. “Or something lower down, maybe? I bet he’d appreciate it.”

I think I may develop Kialden's vampire ... thing ... further. I originally started it just sort of to excuse the ridiculous seeming-stupidity of the critter Clip staked, but ... it's rather funny ... and if I write in a northern vampire at any point, Kialden can show us what she means. But with all of the slapping of Ledewick's buttocks that's been happening while he's unconscious in this scene, I seriously doubt she's going to be a homosexual for much longer. Darnit, getting a mind of her own, but should I really impale her for that?

“Kialden,” said the powder mage, inclining his head to the squatting archer-woman. His voice was soft and warm, like sunlight. “Cliorinarion.”
The name was spoken simply, easily, in an offhanded manner; it had been so long since Clip had heard anyone say it she’d almost forgotten it applied to her. “Clip,” she said. “Call me Clip.”
“Clip, then,” said the powder mage. He knelt on the grass beside the unconscious knight, gray eyes intent on Ledewick’s face. “I congratulate you on your expert dispatch of the vampire,” he said quietly. “We would have helped you more directly, had we reached you in time.”
“You call that a vampire?” Kialden said acerbically. “Give me a break. Didn’t know his arse from his elbows, that one. Now your northern vampires, those are some sophisticated, intelligent ... just beautiful vampires, those. Just beautiful. Real intellectual types, you know? They’d never do anything as stupid as these southern idiots ... I think the blood’s watered down down here or something.”

On that note, I should probably think about bed.

2002-12-06T15:11:00.000-08:00

Ahhh, the weekend.

I don't actually have a lot to say about that, other than THANK GOD.

I've got to get in touch with everyone to tell them about how my English final doesn't end until 5:30 in the evening, so there may be some shuffling required for the Dwarf-a-Thon Tuesday evening.

Need to figure out how to get to the shuttle, too, must remember to actually look at the bus schedule.

Changed my name on MSN. Now I'm People Covered in Fish. I decided to be weird and random because I deserve a treat, it's the weekend.

I hope my geology final is in the lecture hall that I take geology in, or else I may end up confused ...

2002-12-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

Worries turned out to be totally unfounded -- the piece of smeg computer I was on in the lab just couldn't read the website for some reason. Good grief.

2002-12-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

More worries -- it's a half an hour until Library 125 begins and Rob still hasn't put in an appearance. Worse still, there's not a single working link or graphic on the webpage for our final project. I'm not sure how we're going to deal with this or what we're going to tell Sylvia. We've all put in the work, with the possible exception of Rob - who's been dogged by similar problems to the rest of us, I assume - but how can you pass the final project if when class starts it's not actually completed? The thing about a group project of any sort is that it relies, basically, upon teamwork. We all did our parts, with admittedly varying stages of punctuality - especially in my case - but he doesn't seem to have done his at all, other than the vague introductory bare bones of a website, and I find that worrisome. We should have set up some kind of backup and it probably should have been me ... I do so hate having my grade be entirely out of my hands the way it is now, I feel so helpless, useless, absurd. I don't know what Sylvia is going to do or say, I mean; we've done our contributions but the website hasn't got made so there's no way to know it. Where's the logic? Honest, I ask you.

I hate that there's nothing left for me to do but worry. I hate that there probably wasn't anything I could have done about this unless I could have foreseen this morning three weeks ago or however long ago it was when we were assigning the tasks at the very first.

Aargh.

This group's communication has been so utterly lousy I'm not sure I'd recognize Rob if he were to walk in the lab door right now, either. I hope he comes early, though. I think we're going first today, unless things have gone somewhat awry. I think I'm going to need to throw up. Good God.

2002-12-05T00:21:00.000-08:00

T'shun was talking to me during English class today, being very mopey. It was something along these lines:

"I've lived my life in the shadows of lovers, but like Nick Bottom the closest I get is a dream; I dream of being Sebastian or Orsino, but I always wake as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; I wanted to live as Romeo, but I'm doomed to die a Mercutio."

R'in's right. We need to get that boy laid.

I'd love to pull Peregrine out of the hat again for Laura and Linds, but I can't deal with werewolf angst right now, especially from a character who was supposed to be comic relief. Yeah.

I want to be writing, but I've got too much schoolwork to do; I could write, but I'd feel so guilty about not doing schoolwork if I were actually wasting time by doing something productive. Ya know?

2002-12-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

What, I ask you, is the point of a strip poker game in which *everyone* is losing rather badly? How is it possible for everyone playing the game to be losing that badly? Surely someone has to have won at some point. It's not like a casino. You're not playing against the house. I mean, really.

It's amazing how much I can blither once I get started. If James still isn't terrified, I'm amazed -- although he insists that he's not, and I suppose what with living in Mathes with all the normal people one can get pretty desperate for fellow-dorks. Red Dwarf fans. Huzzah!

It's cold in here, Crystal's not home, I'm rather tired but not sleepy and I would kill not to have to do my library project tomorrow. Ahhh, life.

But after tomorrow, the worst will be over, I feel, and the finals will be just begun! :-)

2002-12-03T14:27:00.000-08:00

Yeah. I've written another chapter to that fanfic. I'm weak.

2002-12-03T14:25:00.000-08:00

Ah good, the publishing function is back up and working now.

2002-12-03T01:27:00.000-08:00

The impulse is to write and write and write. The impulse is to spin words until dawn and collapse a-wearied into my bed. But I've got a whole smegging hell of a lot of work to accomplish on the morrow. I can't do any writing; I have to do some sleeping, so that I'll be in top form for my Library work tomorrow morning after geography - I owe it to my group to get it finished for them before class starts - and for my last-minute panic in the afternoon, going over the geology stuff for my lab final that I didn't know about until tonight at about ten o'clock.

Surfed slash with Katie; I won't be able to look at Malcom Reed or Jonathan Archer without laughing ever again; that author turned them gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Further, there have been three more reviews added to my Lister/Rimmer story and that makes me want to add more to it. I can't imagine what more I can add. More bodyless Rimmer being sexually frustrated, perhaps? Lister wishing there was a woman on board? I was thinking of doing a story after "Legion" with Lister out of his skull for whatever reason deciding to stick his tongue down Rimmer's ear - out of a vague recollection that the most romantic thing ever having been down Rimmer's ear being a Johnson's baby bud - and I think that Lister would have to be extremely drunk for this to happen ... although y'never know, he did kiss Petersen, didn't he?

2002-11-30T23:51:00.000-08:00

I'd blather on at everyone about my Thanksgiving and what sucked and what didn't, but really, no one cares and I don't need to get it off of my chest because even though there was a whole smegging HELL of a lot of stupidity I also feel like there was resolution and nobody's eyes need to be stabbed out with a pen (except possibly my own, but I'll get to that later, some other time or not at all).

a.) I need a copy of Night Watch. I can't believe I haven't bought one yet. I've been so distracted procuring copies of Backwards and The Last Human for myself that I forgot to buy Night Watch. I can't even imagine that. I forgot about Pratchett. Although I suspect that Pterry, being a Red Dwarf fan himself, would certainly forgive me for this egregious error.

On the subject of Red Dwarf (yeah I know, I know, so new!), according to the Red Dwarf website, "Red Dwarf has a rabid fan base in the States and what we like to refer to as a 'cult' following. It frequently pops up on top-ten lists of shows which fans want released on DVD, and, in fact, last season a character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer complained on the show that Red Dwarf was not available on DVD!"

Who did that? Who in the Buffyverse is a Red Dwarf fan? Lindsey doesn't know either so I don't feel particularly absurd not having a clue.

Also -- Series 1 DVD set -- cast commentary track and deleted scenes -- fuck. If I buy it, Dad will kill me. If I don't buy it, I won't get to watch it.

Sigh. Oh, well. There was amusing Foxyness in the comic.

And I've got to get up at 7 AM, so why am I still here doing this?

Oh, remind me to brutally murder Joe. I don't get to bring Short Circuit 2 back up to school, because the stupid weaselly little bugger has lost it. That was my tape. I mean, yeah, this is not a masterpiece or a cinematic delight, but it was mine. Now God only knows what's happened to it. Why must he constantly do horrible things to my stuff?

2002-11-29T01:27:00.000-08:00

And in the same vein, the Comtesse Tahay and her servant Guinard:

Guinard: "Good morning, Comtesse. I trust you slept well."
La Comtesse: "Ah, good morning, my dear Guinard. How runs the manor?"
Guinard: "Most excellently, madam, although I've had some trouble locating female eunuchs with which to fan the occupants of your all-male harem."
La Comtesse: "Such a pity. Did you overhear?"
Guinard: "Madam, a servant never overhears anything his mistress does not wish him to hear."
La Comtesse: "It's amazing how many things I wish you to hear without realizing it, Guinard."
Guinard: "I have often remarked on it myself, madam."
La Comtesse: "Is that bard *still* locked in the second least best guest room, Guinard?"
Guinard: "Yes, madam. I have already served her her soft-boiled egg."
La Comtesse: "It's good to see you taking care of the guests first, Guinard. I always knew you were a gentleman at heart, a man of tact and poise and excellent courtesy, to go with your elegant good looks and sophisticated manner of dress."
Guinard: "You are too kind, madam. May I remind you that you yourself selected my uniform?"
La Comtesse: "Did she make an attempt to escape at all?"
Guinard: "No, madam, although she did hurl the egg-cup at my head when I came in to ask her if she was through."
La Comtesse: "Oh, *really*. How uncivilized."
Guinard: "Rather uncalled for, I thought."
La Comtesse: "Not even trying to rally my servants to her cause?"
Guinard: "I'm afraid not, madam."
La Comtesse: "She didn't attempt to use any feminine wiles on you to subvert you to her will?"
Guinard: "I feel sure I would have noticed."
La Comtesse: "The child is hopeless! Did she *even* try to keep the spoon?"
Guinard: "No, madam, although she did make a rather uncouth suggestion about where it might be kept."
La Comtesse: "I believe my work is cut out for me, Guinard."
Guinard: "I would suggest you try a different approach, madam."
La Comtesse: "Why, what would you have in mind?"
Guinard: "A noose would be favorite, madam."
La Comtesse: "A noose! I suppose it is cleaner than an axe, but if I *kill* the girl, things will hardly be improved."
Guinard: "No, madam?"
La Comtesse: "No indeed. Then I would have this silly young man hanging about in the third least best guest room and nothing at all to do with him!"
Guinard: "You could always find a few more gentlemen for your harem, madam."
La Comtesse: "You yourself have remarked on the difficulty in finding female eunuchs to fan and oil the boys."
Guinard: "Unfortunate, I suppose. But the girl is quite hopeless; I shouldn't think she's the proper material at all, if you don't mind my being presumptuous."
La Comtesse: "You know I encourage arrogant presumption in all my servants, Guinard?"
Guinard: "Yes, madam."
La Comtesse: "We'll just have to see about the girl. The entire situation is *most* disheartening."

2002-11-29T01:14:00.000-08:00

The Comtesse Tahay and the bard Shailyn:

Shailyn: "But why Keimor? Why him?"
La Comtesse: "My word, girl. You don't believe that I was so taken with his looks that I simply had to have him?"
Shailyn: "Surely with your power you can have men even more beautiful at the drop of a ... of a ..."
La Comtesse: "A hand-stitched handkerchief, my dear girl, in finest silk."
Shailyn: "Yes. That."
La Comtesse: "Goodness. The young are hardly as gullible as they once were, I must say. No, it's simply that I'm an evil witch. I'm bent on destroying your happiness. I'm a villain of the old school."
Shailyn: "I find myself at a loss for words."
La Comtesse: "Oh, such a pity. I do so hate to infuriate bards to the point of wordlessness. I feel as though I've broken some kind of code."
Shailyn: "If you're a villain, breaking codes should hardly be a concern to you."
La Comtesse: "Au contraire, my dear girl! The very best villains always keep directly to the rules as much as we possibly can. It gives us a legitimacy that you heroes don't tend to bother with. Oh, dear, no. You can always tell the hero of a good tale by the fact that he plunges willy-nilly into any given situation and never, ever follows rules."
Shailyn: "You're mocking me."
La Comtesse: "My word, am I? I'm glad to see that they *do* still teach you bards about wit. You obviously have very little of your own. The best bards can flabberghast even the most sophisticated of villains! You are quite obviously only a twopenny bard, not even worth the breath I've already wasted on you. I suggest you give up now. You'll never get your lover back. I own him. Isn't that lovely?"
Shailyn: "But why do you want him? Why did you take him from me?"
La Comtesse: "Oh, you still expect me to explain my reasons to you? Really. I've already told you. I'm bad to the bone. Rotten to the core. Evil to the very depths of my black heart. This conversation becomes extremely dull. I believe I'll be going now. Do remember to ring if you need anything. I shall watch whatever pitiful attempts at escape you concoct. You see, I don't mind if you get away. You aren't a threat to me. Keimor is mine. He'll spend eternity in a harem I've designed for all the pretty playthings I've stolen on a whim from people who've passed through my lands."
Shailyn: "You ... fiend."
La Comtesse: "So glad you've decided to play by the script, my dear, although I do wish you hadn't degenerated into such an obvious cliche. Oh, dear. Your former lover is a much better bard than you are."
Shailyn: "I don't do lyrics."
La Comtesse: "Obviously not. Anyway, I really *shall* be leaving now, my dear. Toodleloo!"

I do believe I'm enjoying myself a bit too much.

2002-11-26T09:50:00.000-08:00

Ah, the disorganization demons. I have to turn in an assignment. I have the assignment finished - it's sitting here on my lap - but I don't have the cover sheet the instructor handed out on Thursday. I'll ask her for a new one when she comes in ... it's just kind of funny. I looked for it on my desk this morning but considering the state of my desk it's a small wonder I didn't find it. The mess is piling up on my side of the room again ... poor Crystal, having to put up with someone as slobby as me for a roommate ...

Bryan wants me to turn up in his office at one o'clock. He wants me to wear something that rolls up around the legs. I think that means that when I get back to the room it's time for a really hot shower and a shave.

I really hope I didn't do as bad on the last geology test as I'm beginning to suspect I did. Or at least, I hope he curves it again.

2002-11-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

I'm back down to a B in geography again after that last exam. I actually felt better about that exam than I did on the first one, which I did better on -- strange, and it makes me really worry about that last geology exam ... still the final, though, in both classes. We shall see what we shall see.

2002-11-26T01:00:00.000-08:00

That's right -- it's not a decontamination chamber, it's an unresolved sexual tension box!

A Day In the Life:

Bethdrgyn: I wonder, am I manic depressive?
Lindseykey: Because you miss your printer? I don't think so.

2002-11-26T00:55:00.000-08:00

I don't know what she expects me to say; what she wants from me, really. I don't know what I can say, what I can do. There's nothing I can give to her that I haven't given her already, and what I have to give grows more and more meagre as time passes. I'm more selfish and less giving than I've been in the past, possibly as a by-product of being on my own or possibly because I've given away so much and never gotten anything back that my logic cycles are beginning to kick in. "Hey, waitaminute, I think they're trying to put something over on me here ..."

I don't know what she expects me to do. And really, what right does she have to expect anything of me, anyting more than everything that I've already done? I don't have the patience anymore. I really don't. I don't know what to do. I'm lost and frustrated and I'm sick of "dealing with" people. I really am. I don't think I should have to "deal with" people. People should be associated with, not dealt with. I don't know. I'm tired of feeling this way. I feel like I'm trapped, like I've been stuck in the same boat for ages upon ages. I won't say it's only now starting to get to me. But the frustration of it. I don't seem to be accomplishing anything. After all that I do, after all that I've done, after everything I've thought and hoped and wished and said and prayed, I don't seem to have got anywhere. I'm not helping. I'm not accomplishing anything. And because I've got sick of that constant feeling of not accomplishing anything, of being useless, of not being able to change anything, of running constantly up against a brick wall, I've started to lash out. Against her, of course. So in addition to not actually being of any help, I'm actively making things worse.

And I'm not in control of myself. I used to be, but now I'm not, and it worries me. The useless side is taking over more and more and making me more and more frustrated and miserable and I've started to be angry a lot. Angry! Me! I don't get angry. At least ... if I do, I stop being angry rather quickly. It's not in my nature. I'm not an angry person.

But these days ... I'm beginning to feel like going down to the armory, getting a nuclear warhead and strapping it to my head might not be such a bad idea after all. Good thing my fear's intact.

I'm glad I'm going home. I need to go home. I need to be with people who can love me unconditionally, even if they're dogs; I need to be with people to whom I can hug and cry and not feel as though I'm imposing on them, even if I am (not actually referring to the dogs here); I need to be with people who have been friends with me long enough that they know me well enough to know that I give as good as I get, to know that I'm not always this bad, to know that I can be helpful. Or to pretend that they know that, to make me feel better; sometimes I wonder, or usually in the middle of the night.

I'm happy dammit! I'm a happy person! I'm supposed to be HAPPY. I've been happy since I talked to my reflection that time when I was sixteen! And I still am happy! It's just hard being a happy person when nature's designed you to be neurotic. And I am neurotic. There's really no getting around that. I still double-check every time I enter a public lavatory to make sure it's the women's. I always eat bananas the same way (although admittedly it's because I moosh them if I don't). I'm a worrier. There's no point in even admitting this. Dogs know I'm a worrier. People who have talked to me for five minutes know that I'm a worrier. And they all think I'm an intellectual, too. Am I an intellectual? I mean, just because I watch British comedy and know all kinds of obscure facts about Ancient Greece and the German Unification in the 1800's?

And it's hard being a happy person when you find yourself pissing people off a lot. I don't know, it just knocks the wind out of your sails a little. I mean ... I know that I probably owe her some badness after all of it that's come this way over the years, but it worries me that it's happening and I'm not doing it on purpose. That's a worrisome thing. If I'm going to be a bitch to someone I want to be in control of how I'm doing it so that I'll be able to stop on command. You know?

Registering for classes tomorrow afternoon. Well, today afternoon I suppose, but since I'll be going to bed and waking up between now and then, it's functionally tomorrow.

So ready for break. So ready. I want to see Lindsey and Ben and Nick and Kate and Jon and everyone again. I'm sure I'm missing some people here that I'll be seeing but I can't remember them at present, so of course they can't be that important. ;-)

It's amazing how much those inspirational sappy messages that you get from watching Star Trek hit you when you watch in the middle of the night and you're tired. I watched "Fight or Flight" just now -- I'm catching up with the first season of Enterprise -- and it really hit me. Hee hee, they had to find stuff for Malcom to blow up ... and good character stuff with Hoshi ... and cheese! Cheese! And poor Trip, never gets to go anywhere ...

That decontamination chamber was BUILT for UST. That's what it's for. It serves no functional purpose other than to provide for situations in which the crew very nearly fondles each other while applying lubricant. They're not actually contaminated with anything. Doctor Phlox just wants to get those sexual juices flowing. That's all that that's about. Good grief, who do they even think they're fooling? Crystal and I were cracking up when I showed her the bit from "Broken Bow".

Seeing Porthos made me miss my puppies, though. Puppies! *sniff*

I've got that ridiculous theme song stuck in my head. Heh heh heh. I learned the words to that really fast. Enterprise with a big group of Trekkies ... damn, that's good stuff.

2002-11-24T03:33:00.001-08:00

I wonder if anyone who knows the joke will read this? Oh, well.

Here it is anyway:

Will you marry me if I give you a pomegranate? ^.^

2002-11-24T03:33:00.000-08:00

I want to write something truly sappy. But I've got dragons to work on, should I choose to work, which I don't. I choose to put on my pajamas, lie in bed, and try to sleep for a bit. If I want to work on dragons, I'll work. If I don't want to work on dragons, I won't work.

I'm hungry. Isn't that always the way? But not hungry enough to order a pizza at 4 AM. And I don't think pizza delivers this late on a Saturday night; I think that 3 is the breakoff for most of the places around here. Anyway, I don't need to spend more money on food.

I ate a pomegranate tonight. :-D Katie and I went to Haggan on Friday night to get fruit because we were going to eat fruit and watch British comedy while everyone else got drunk.

Tonight, it's Saturday night. I ate fruit and watched British comedy. Now I'm typing in my blog and watching French romantic comedy (Amelie) with my roommate.

Yep. It's an international weekend. Tomorrow night I may do anime, you know, top off the international weekend with some Japanese cartoons. It'd be a change. I don't think I've ever really done that. Princess Mononoke doesn't count, nor do The Adventures of Unico. Suitemate wants me to, and most of the people in the groups I hang out with enjoy it, so maybe I'll like it if I give it a go ... ? We'll see.

2002-11-24T03:27:00.000-08:00

I've evidently decided to make up for all of the short posts I've been doing lately by rambling about stuff that no one else is even remotely interested in for the better part of an hour and a half. Eesh.

But still ... six bloody years!!

2002-11-24T03:26:00.000-08:00

Six years I've been doing this. Blimey. Six years of Fandom. Six years of Pern. That's funny, I don't even really like the books at all, not anymore. I mean, there are worse books out there but if I were to pick them up now instead of ten years ago I don't think they'd hold my interest at all. Well ... people grow, people change, I suppose. Wow, though. Six years.

I've just talked to Jess about this and it's given me some thinking to do. I mean, what do you give six years of your life to? What do you do for six years? Well ... other than college, obviously. That's its own entity entirely. For six years I've been playing Pern. I started at Belior and branched out from there ... started at Starshine only a few months after I'd been inducted into Belior. I remember when Belior was in danger of being closed down. I remember being terrified of that. I remember the conversation I had - although not with whom it was - that spawned the introduction of R'in and Chia at Starshine, because I was already playing the second J'lton and the first PC Mainalla. Royn and Chia. Royn was based vaguely on a current crush of mine at the time. He was originally going to be 5'7" until it was pointed out to me by the persona approvers that this wasn't elfishly short ... and being twelve years old, I opted to hack off an entire foot rather than doing anything sensible. 4'7" ... the midget candidate was born. He picked up his harper training later. I named his girlfriend Chia before I'd ever heard of Chia-pets ... or at least, before I'd ever consciously heard of Chia-pets. I'd been teasing Lindsey about her T'rek at Belior for weeks before I'd done this. He became orphaned during his childhood after I'd been playing him for almost a year. I deleted his children from ever having existed after I'd been playing him for about two. Chia ran naked across the Bowl in the second live RP I ever attended. They changed from being married to being engaged when I was told that dragonriders don't marry. R'in and Chia broke up in an email RP six weeks after weyrling training started. I'd decided that writing an interpersona relationship - as I called it then - was crimping my style. I didn't like them together. I was tired of Chia in general. I had no idea at the time the kind of emotional havoc this would eventually wreak on R'in, when his second relationship fell apart. The details get a little confused as the years went by. The focus wasn't really on R'in for awhile. He was a background character, one of the ones I always had and never forgot but didn't really focus on until later when I realized how interesting he could be. Phoebe and her character Daks are partially responsible for that. R'in and Daks had something pretty good, for awhile; it was a little unstable, and R'in - being somewhat unstable himself - probably ought to have gotten someone more stable at that stage during his life, but it worked out while it was happening, and although it wasn't a searing relationship or a particularly romantic one, it worked. It was amusing. They got on well, except for his annoying lack of observational skills. But then she left him, and he lost all the confidence he'd regained during their relationship, became even more oversensitive than usual about his height, and became convinced that he was doomed to a life terminally single, as he obviously wasn't cut out for relationships; two down the tube, and a 4'7" bluerider doesn't find it easy to meet girls who're willing to overlook the height difference ... his relationship with Kilandra started with sex and it continued with sex. I'm not sure of the chemistry there, but R'in is definitely devoted; devoted, determined to be a good weyrmate. We'll see. He's convinced that it's going to shatter eventually no matter what he does, a fear he's learned to keep to himself, and he's had a few occasions where he's thought the end had already come ... but we'll see.

Gosh.

Roran turned up vaguely around the same time that Vecaria was kidnapped - a little before, I think. I thought of him as a tamer version of Ivan Koliath, although I never in my life thought I would be able to truly recreate an Ivan Koliath. Extremely tall, at six foot ten a similar extreme to R'in's four foot seven, and so I got the idea to have them be related. I've never worked out the family tree. I've relied on the vague, nebulous "cousins" and left it at that. He began with an extremely ferocious temper, a tendency towards overprotectiveness, and a feline who probably should have gotten her own PC sheet: the infamous Isis, the only cat in the history of Pern to Impress a fire-lizard. But there were elements to him that haven't changed; the wry humor, the intuitive wisdom, the tendency to ham it up at every possible opportunity, the respect for propriety so rare in members of my cast. He's grown more patient over time; now his temper, once fearsome and almost out of control, the thing stated in his sheet as what was holding him back from his master's knot, has been mostly mastered; he still remains extremely protective of those close to him - Vecaria, R'in, Arizhel lately, and his pets of course - and yet he still remains true to his original self a surprising amount. A brown fire-lizard, Ivan, a bronze watch-wher, Rumpleteaser (from my Cats period), a black cat, Isis, and Isis's blue fire-lizard, Dolphin: Roran's menagerie, an infamous collection of animals that litter his office at any given time of the day or night.

Chia wasn't the only girl of mine that gave R'in a little attention at the beginning. Hansala had a mild affection for him, back at the beginning, back when she first started; my first healer character, a NPC that changed vaguely over the years from a giggly blonde to a brisk and yet absent-minded motherly woman with an extremely angsty history and a peppy, peppery bedside manner that I'd no idea of when she was first conceived ... J'lton's cousin the healer, the one who in the Beliorian universe failed to save Mainalla from the jealous claws of her sister Suranala ... the one who in the Starshine universe took up an almost permanent residence in the herb-rooms of the Infirmary, eventually Impressed a watchwher who she called Fellis and became vitally twined up in the relationship between D'ver and Xerin to the point where she was falling for X. and they asked her to carry their child for her ... A shapely, rather cute strawberry blonde with a history of falling for men who are entirely no good for her ... For the longest time she only came out for births and Threadfalls. But she's just not interesting enough. I couldn't deal with writing her anymore. Marven the family man came into the scene instead, to fill the healerish niche in my cast.

B'son and Sarahlie: the beginnings of the Tenold Caravan phenomenon. These were based loosely on a couple of people in the grade above me at the time of their creation. Very loosely, though. Physically, I'd say, and not much else. Brycie was the absent-minded poetic type ... he's always been that way and he always will be. He and Nallanth are very much stolid plodders. I don't think they'll ever change. B'son fell desperately in love with Tila, and remains so even to this day, even though he managed to botch things by being completely inept several times; he still writes soppy poetry to her in his dogeared notebooks ... it's been six years he's been at this now. Six years of obsessive poetry from the brownriding trader misfit ... I wonder if it's not time he grew up? Took action? Learned to be a man instead of a pathetic slithery thing? I don't know. Now that Molly's going, I don't have a clue what's going to happen to him. Pity, really ... he'll probably have to go on hold for awhile while I figure out what I'm going to do with him. It makes me sad. It's not like I'd done anything with him really in the past two years or so anyway, except for a few vague moments of blunt-brained moronism and some amusing exchanges involving usually Nallanth and Issanth, Nallanth and Inieth or Nallanth and Tyrralith ... but now not only am I not doing anything with him and I don't know what I'd do with him even if I did. Ah ... but Sarahlie.

She started out as a NPC. She was the NPC that acted like a PC. She was the NPC that reigned supreme in my brain for what seems like a century. Cute and spunky were Rahli's bywords - a nickname she picked up while explaining to her weyrmate why it was silly for him to have a nickname - and she never wanted to stop being either. She's got a good sense of humor (and a rather dirty one at that; she delights in turning her weyrmate shades of red). She's got the attitude. She's got a sheath for a dagger sewn into all of her favorite brassieres. She's expert with saber. She killed a man by accident while he was trying to rape her and ran away from her home caravan with her younger brother, B'son, to the Weyr, pursued by the wacked-out father of the would-be rapist ... the guy who'd trained her to fight, in fact ... a guy with one amazingly wonky history of his own: Oryst. Oh, my, Oryst. Sarahlie eventually bullied me into PCing her, and I'm not surprised; a NPC who was that much in charge pretty much got whatever she wanted. She lurked in the printer. There was a running gag about that ... there's a long .wav file of my yelling at her in the printer that Jess still has and actually sent to me earlier this evening. She does whatever she can to get what she wants. She'll fight dirty, as I'm sure Ev well knows. But the thing is, when she finally did get what she wanted - a beautiful baby girl - she just started to fade out of the spotlight, into obscurity. She'll make an appearance now and then but her old prominence is completely gone.

Oryst -- oh, my word. The wackiest swords-master ever to touch a weapon, his favorites are the saber and the rapier, both of which he kicks serious ass with - he's got a strong tie-in to Jean-Gavroche/Oryst in the Itrise novel, the Witch of Swords, who commands all such weapons by virtue of his symbiotic relationship with the magic ... more interesting than Giselle's, really, which just talks to her - and he's got the probably wonkiest personal history of anyone I write, although I'm sure there are some that come close. He fell madly in love with his best friend during his armscraft training, a girl called Tania - one whose personality bears a striking resemblance to Sarahlie's, although more sarcastic - who was the only one who could best him with saber in their apprentice bloc. He and Tania got married - although she refused to tie the knot until he could beat her at chess - and lived in an idyll for a little while, both journeyman, foolishly, madly, desperately in love with each other ... before Tania died giving birth to their son, Rystan. Oryst threw himself into raising Rystan as well as into training up as a swordsman, and eventually joined up with the Tenold caravan as their chief guard, a senior journeyman with a son in tow. He trained those Tenolds who wanted to know how to fight, especially Sarahlie - an apt pupil who really loved the weaponry - for several years until his son was killed by the escaping Rahli and Oryst went a little bonkers and swore revenge ... well, it's a long story, but Oryst eventually caught up to Rahli, tried to kill her, got away, lived in a cave for awhile, kidnapped Seshanna and Cellani for awhile, gave them back in exchange for someone to kill Sarahlie - which didn't work out the way he'd planned, went back to the Weyr and gave himself up and lived in an upper weyr for awhile driving his guards (usually J'ri or T'relin) bloody nuts by whistling a lot and twiddling his thumbs and introducing himself incessantly, forgave Sarahlie, escaped, married the woman who assassinated his brother Akliren, Lord of Sunwinds, assassinated his sister-in-law, and had triplets (although really it was Kanastra who had the triplets). Then Kanastra Impressed while she was disguised as a candidate, to an extremely authoritative and protective green dragon by the name of Aurigath, so Oryst enlisted the help of his old bunkmate from the armscrafthall to help with the kids and went to Starshine again, this time as her Captain of the Guard - Captain Tsyro. There are those who know his identity, and those who are suspicious of him even if they don't, but there you go. A long and eventful life, eh?

Agiya and Nisikoe. They both used to see a lot of play. Agiya basically existed as a foil for Nisikoe, my one attempt at a HAF - hearing all firelizards - character. They're sisters, although you wouldn't know it to look at them - I hadn't tired of that cliche yet, either. Nisi's dark, with dark eyes, and Agi's a redhead. Nisi's slim but shapely, Agiya's rather cute in a plump way. Nisikoe's also a mute. She communicates through the fire-lizards or through Aranyath or through sign language, or she doesn't communicate at all. Another attempt at being interesting that sort of went completely flat ... I hadn't yet learned that the personality quirks, not the bizarreness of history or physical form, are what make a character interesting.

Speaking of ... N'tran. Ohhh, N'tran. The reImpression. The one-armed man. The watchrider with twin daughters. A pretty boy. He was a greenrider first and now a bluerider; he and Kaytie were together. He was one of the principal Pondscum - he, Kaytie, Daks. He was around right when the female brownrider law hit and we had to change brown Ameliath into a blue, which was what eventually led to his death. He and Kaytie were rather cute, although Net had his moments of being just bloody stupid, like all of my other male characters - they're getting better! They've gotten so much better.

C'doc, the juggler, with his knives. His physicality was based on a boy I met at camp that year - actually, a pair of twins I met at camp that year, if I remember correctly. I wish I could remember what year it was. And his brown's Opalenth. He has a sort of semi-quasi-relationship thing with Cydhaile. Except to juggle things, I don't really bring him out much ... pity, he's interesting enough, in his bumbling intellectual kind of way. He's one of the only ones I've got who wears glasses.

Natalya and Nadahli: another PC/NPC reversal, just like with B'son and Sarahlie. Natalya is, believe it or not, the original PC, and her sister Nadahli the NPC ... but Dahli and Laluth became the interesting ones. She, Terrania and St'bel became a terrible trio - a threesome, if you will, although for all the talk about orgies they never actually did that. They were all great friends for the longest time. There were some hilarious moments. Dahli and Terrania were both attracted to St'bel eventually - hmm, perhaps they were closet lesbians who liked a man who could look good in a dress? Sorry, taking potshots at St'bel is sort of par for the course by now - although they made an agreement that neither one of them was going to pursue them. Much to Nadahli's chagrin, Terrania and St'bel ended up getting together anyway. It sent her off to the deep end for awhile; she decided to do pointlessly self-destructive things, and lost her virginity, on a whim, to a random man she met at a Gather. She slept with all manner of people, just because she could. She took up alcohol, although eventually abandoned it except in moderation because it only made her feel worse. She thought about leaving a lot. Terrania left St'bel around the time that Phoebe left the club - at the same time, as a matter of fact - but it was a really long time before Nadahli and St'bel eventually got together - and what they have now is God know's what. I like them, though, because they're always good for a laugh.

C'ler -- Cal Chameleon. The original Cal Chameleon, not any of those cheap imitations. He came at the same time as P'rel. I don't remember why I made P'rel, other than a vague realization of, "Oh, I've got not enough full riders." There'd been some talk about Keri joining Starshine and making a wingleader, and I wanted to have a couple in her wing ... although that never actually panned out. I tried to improve P'rel by giving him an AWLM position for awhile, but mostly he just turned out to be a drunkard, and the only loss when I finally killed him off was that I no longer had the endlessly optimistic brown Caernarfonth to fool around with. But Cal, although his original personality was just as unworkable as P'rel's original personality, overcame this obstacle by abandoning it completely and taking on a life of his own. He's grown since his first personality change, though: I'll say matured, although he still acts far too young for his age. His past was somewhat nebulous, since his background was not fully fleshed-out on the persona sheet, but eventually I decided that the real reason he'd gone to Starshine was to recover from a broken heart. The novelty was that Cal Chameleon was my very first attempt at a homosexual character. He's weyrmated to S'robyn at the moment, the Weyr's bicycle, but he doesn't mind that; it made it easier for things to get started, after all. Cal's matured in that he's no longer just an extremely silly man. Now, in addition to being an extremely silly man, he's also the makeover king, a good dancer (as he's been taking classes), a philosopher - a surprisingly insightful one - and a psychiatrist - a surprisingly good one; he's a giver, the sort of bloke who takes extremely good care of his friends and seeks out for his friends the most hopeless cases: I'm not implicating I'lior here, as a matter of fact, but referring to Wynona and Suranala. His next project from amongst my cast may well be T'shun. God knows that boy could use a friend like Cal ... the boy has serious issues.

Suranala ... I don't remember why I decided to bring her here, unless it was that I liked her at Belior and wanted another one; unless it was that I wanted to have one somewhere because I was leaving Belior; unless it was a random whim that occurred to me when I was at a meeting, wanted to do something, and remembered an old dusty NPC that already had a concept and was attached to an approved persona. Suranala, ex-prostitute turned charity operation, smart as a whip - smarter than you'd expect, considering some of the dumbass things she's done since she left home. Disowned by her family because she, in a fit of jealousy, tried to kill her own sister - Mainalla - Suranala left home and made some decisions. A.) She would never, ever be jealous of anyone ever, ever again. B.) People would pay her for sex, so she might as well oblige them, as it was the only way she'd ever be able to give anything to the world. Self-esteem was an issue for her. She has also grown a lot since her first introduction ... she's changed from a nymphomaniac, for example, to a girl of misplaced compassion who desperately wants to be loved but won't admit it to herself and takes sex as a poor alternative and is terrified of commitment because she's terrified of jealousy. Wonky, huh? Cal's been helping her along with some of this but there's only so much he can do. She's probably the only active character right now whose issues are worse than Wynnie's.

Th'dren, B'kel and Desira: three characters who never really got off the ground through no fault of their own. Th'dren's actually been improving. He lost his virginity to Vimra and has been somewhat obsessed with getting more sex since, but he's a lonely man with unmet needs and this is forgiveable; his bronze Gandalth is a delightful sardonic presence who I rarely bring out because I don't have the exact hang of him yet. B'kel is an interesting little bugger; bisexual, rather crazy, hero-worships his older cousin C'ler; his dragon, Thiordanth, is a neurotic mess. Desira and Isthiliath are bloody useless. I think I'm going to kill them off. They never really had much; Desi was around to be attractive and addicted to sex, but there's so much of that that there's no need for it anymore. And I still have problems remembering whether Isthiliath was blue or green.

Arizhel and Kisha: two candidates for the same clutch, both with extremely well-thought-out characters. Two queen candidates for the same clutch, actually: Rish representing the extreme of angst and Kish the ... other way. Kisha was the winner, and I'm extremely glad ... Kisha and Elath work much better than Arizhel on a gold ever would have. Rish alone of all my characters behaves as she was intended to behave from the beginning - although she's got a better sense of humor than she had at the beginning and T'ndifel has mellowed her a lot in ways that I like. Also, hacking off her father's head has made her ultimately more relaxed and less nerve-twangy than she was, although some of that will never change. As for Kisha .... well. I already knew her like the back of my hand; I'd already had her at Veridia.

After Arizhel and Kisha, I pass from the Old Days to the Newer, I think. That's when I start forgetting characters and names start running together in my head: Al'cef, J'kar, Nikki, for example. Jonquil and Feirukth are the only ones I remember from that clutch, and I know for a fact there were more. Well, besides Kuveloth, but he's ... special. Yeah ... I think that that's about where the line is. Adoptable candidates started. I think that that's actually hindererd a lot more than it's helped. I mean, adoptable candidates are fun, and they're all well and good, but the days of putting a lot of thought into PC candidates seem to have ... passed, into the mists of antiquity. I mean, yes, there are exceptions, but the existence of adoptable candidates makes it so easy to go the easy route. They were designed as convenience and convenience they are ... I wonder if it wasn't as good of an idea as we all seem to think of it as, though.

If we ever do a gold clutch at Starshine, I think there won't be adoptables for it. Well, unless it's Vilirieth's, then I don't have any control over it at all.

Anyway ... no more nostalgia for tonight. I'll go to bed. I'm not actually all that tired, but this isn't accomplishing anything and it's long and rambly and stupid and suchlike.

2002-11-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

We're having a fun fruit fly murdering session. Fruit flies are useless creatures who serve no real purpose. They are born, they eat sugar, they fuck, and then they die. (Although there are some humans that accomplish less, this is all that all fruit flies do in their entire lifetimes, which last for three days.) I mean ... why do these things exist? More importantly, what the fuck are they doing in our dorm room?

Ah well, Katie and Crystal and I get some meager entertainment out of smashing them all to bits.

2002-11-22T19:28:00.000-08:00

Ahahahahaha! BUG SLAYING!

2002-11-22T17:41:00.000-08:00

I have more trouble with the clams ...

2002-11-22T17:40:00.001-08:00

Although I expect a clam would not be particularly slobby and repulsive. o.O

2002-11-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

On the plus side, I've got some dragons done. On the minus side, I've turned this ant into Rimmer.

Hmm. I wonder if I can turn this clam into Lister ...?

2002-11-22T16:49:00.001-08:00

And I see Red Dwarf references everywhere ...

.... although not as badly as I was doing before.

2002-11-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

I can't read Penny Arcade without thinking of Ben and laughing.

2002-11-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

I feel like I owe you all some sort of explanation, since the last you heard from me was blind panic and then abruptly we were on silent running for awhile. Between geology exam this morning and other sorts of whatnot I just haven't been in the mood to write ... and I don't feel like explaining everything that happened today, so just suffice it to say that for English, I'm in the clear.

Watched The Jungle Book today. Not really sure why ... and it's not really worth commenting on, except that I think I got my imitation of that elephant exactly right when I was being Mackenzie in Ten Little Indians.

I feel like I owe the world explanations, but I'm not sure what on. I haven't really done anything interesting lately. I was actually irritated with myself for not crushing on anyone a little earlier (which is an odd, odd turnaround). I need to get work done on the hatching because the Serpent is really the only one I've finished. I think I started working on the Tortoise, but really. It's very depressing, seeing the work piling up. It's just that after all of those adoptables I wrote, I sort of feel ... drained ... wasted ... and then everything else is knocking my socks off, too. There's the secret plot that I've been absolutely nonentitious for - not a word; it means "to be a nonentity," though - and then there's the SearchCo thing on Dusk that I've completely ignored since egg-descing time - poor Lindsey! - and there's the Hatching to work on, all of my writing to get caught up with, and ... well ... real life things, like school, which are taking up most of my time these days. And sleeping, or things related to sleeping such as laying in bed trying to sleep. I spend more and more time doing the real life things - school and sleeping - and the leisure activities don't really ... happen. I even missed Highlander this week to revise for that blasted geology exam this morning (although if I *hadn't* done that I would have been royally fucked).

The more work I realize that I need to get done, the more lethargic I get. Thank goodness it's the weekend and I can, in good conscience, succumb to those late night productive urges ... I might actually get something done. Shock.

I'm really feeling for Skids right now.

Insight For This Post: The cruelest logic travels in vicious circles. What good has ever come from circular logic?

2002-11-21T01:20:00.000-08:00

I'll be really glad when this whole crisis is over and I'll be over the hump and behaving normally again. This is too much bullshit for me to expect my friends to put up with. It's not fair to them, and it's not really fair to me either. I did it to myself, yes, but ... really. It's not that terrible a mistake. I slept too much. I had drugs, and wonky sleep patterns, and I got what sleep I could when I could, and occasionally my attendance suffered. I've got the prescription. I don't know how I can prove insomnia, but ... I wasn't healthy. They're supposed to excuse your absences when you're not healthy and you're able to prove your lack of health. And the prescription should be proof of lack of health, right?

I mean ... right?

2002-11-21T01:17:00.000-08:00

I should apologize to Laura, because what I said was uncalled for. But I'm not ready yet. A good part of me still feels that if she's willing to put that much more of a focus on an imaginary person than on me while I'm having a ruddy nervous breakdown, well ... what's the point, really?

I'm glad she's trying to take control, that she's recognized that she needs to. I hope Dan's helping her out, since I think I've sentenced myself to communications blackout in that arena for awhile. Although I don't know; there was a cordial email from her in my box when I got home tonight. Feh. I'm just confused.

I should be sleeping but I need to get my brain unhinged after the end of that book. Not nice. :-P So I'm going to read Slaves of the Volcano God some more and hope for a definite lack of nasty surprises (although Josh warned me and told me it was going to happen so it's really unfair of me to consider it a nasty surprise).

2002-11-21T01:15:00.000-08:00

I've got to get my mind off this stuff. I've got to get away from it. I've got to stop thinking about it. The uncertainty is ruining me, changing me, turning me into somebody who I'm not. I don't like it. It's not good. I was a complete waste at IHOP tonight. And although Josh did warn me, the end of Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers has left me completely shaken. I know, I know, I was warned. But ... yeah. It still left me with that "oh no!" feeling. Thank God I'll have Better Than Life over Thanksgiving. I don't think I could stand it otherwise.

2002-11-20T17:25:00.000-08:00

Smegging hell. I think I've just initiated a conversation that's going to burn. It's going to hurt. And it's not something I am in any condition to deal with. Why am I so fucking stupid? Just because something's in my head doesn't mean it needs to come out.

2002-11-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

All right ... I'm calming down now ... trying to think about things other than English.

Argh.

2002-11-20T16:43:00.001-08:00

Bryan is my lab TA. He's proved nice. I just have to pray that Geisler will prove similarly nice. I've been on pins and needles waiting for his answer since I sent the email two hours ago.

As long as we're referring to each other in the third person, I wonder if Laura is aware of how condescending her last post seemed.

2002-11-20T16:43:00.000-08:00

Edgy as smegging hell.

2002-11-19T22:52:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm involved in the revitalization of Northlight now ... very cool. Between Liu II, Tomen II, and E'lad I - with bronze Urruahath! - perhaps I'll be able to respark my interest in Fandom ... it bodes well thus far, I think. It's been awhile since I looked forward to RP mail this much. Maybe I really just needed a change of pace ... ? I also worked on the dragons for Starshine tonight, although it's an effort of will not to work on the ones that I've delegated to other people ... heh. There's something funny about that. I mean, I go out of my way to get other people to help me, and then I have to fight back the urge to do their work for them ...?

The descs are much shorter than usual, thus far, but they still seem to get the basic idea across. Hmm. Well, it'll be less spammy. Maybe Laura will appreciate it. After all, she's always kvetching that my descs are too spammy ... although I suspect that the length of descriptions will be very erratic and it might only be the ones I've already written that are going to be so short. I'm falling back into old patterns, back when dragons were *one* color, back before MOOdom, and it will probably change as I move on. But the Serpent is not a long desc, and neither is the Tortoise.

I watched some of the Rankin Bass Return of the King tonight, because I'm giving it back to Marc tomorrow. It's pretty much the same as I remember it (shock!). I still rather like it. It feels like home to me, possibly because I've watched it and The Hobbit so many times. But nothing will ever make me like the Bakshi piece of crap.

Crystal says: "A watched RP never replies ..." and a truer word was never said. Sheesh.

Even David's not online. What an unusual evening.

I've started reading Slaves of the Volcano God ... Interesting stuff. The main character seems thus far to be rather a dork, but then again, ...

I wrote to Bryan. Yep. I don't know if it's going to work out, but even if it doesn't, at least I've made the attempt, ya know?

I've got a lot of geology studying to do in between now and Friday, but hopefully tomorrow's review session will help a lot. I should also probably try and get in touch with Geisler about the English thing ... hoping that he doesn't notice would probably be an exercise in advanced folly. Uh-huh, yeah.

And ... hey ... what's the worst thing that's going to happen? Umm, yeah, it'll be me failing the class.

2002-11-18T15:19:00.000-08:00

Of course, none of the angst discussions really matter if I don't *write*. Argh. I think I'm going to avoid the homoeroticism between Radek and Elerey. As much as I like homoeroticism, I just don't want to think about Elerey put into that situation. For one thing, the uncertainty that would be necessary with Radek coming onto him would be as unlike Elerey as it's possible to get, as he's the puppeteer, not one of the puppeted ... and it's not like him to ever express his feelings in a way that could result in him being damaged, feelings are for weaklings, only when he can find some way to work things out to his advantage does he express anything at all - that was why his relationship with Sable worked so well in "Hero's Rewards", he turned it all into a political game and got exactly what he wanted - both Cities under his rule, the woman of his choice - the one he saw such potential in so very long ago - and connections to the throne of Lerbus, because even though Sable and Radek didn't keep track of little Sarah when her adopted parents moved back north, you bet your ass Elerey did.

And what AM I worried about Radek for? He's not important after "College", is he? IS he? Am I going to have to write *him* again? Good grief.

2002-11-18T15:01:00.000-08:00

What goeth around cometh around ... and around ... and around ...

But then again, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will make the whole world blind and toothless.

Geisler has sent me off on a Kenneth Branagh moment, which I hope will subside soon, since I don't really have anything I can watch with him in it and I really do need to get my English assignment done (no idea what to do for it, either, except in vague terms about rhetoric ... hopefully some other people will have some stuff out that I can read and spark the old noggin with ...).

I'm being bitchy. I don't know why I keep doing that, because it's really not very rewarding.

I want to be writing. I want to do something with Corwin, so that he can be deliciously snarky for me, or with Elerey, so he can just be all cool. Subtle. Patient. I think that no matter how many horrible things happen to Elerey, he will never, ever angst. That's important to me. I can write all kinds of angsty *type* things and yet he will never angst.

Sable will angst, obviously, as she spent a good deal of CoP doing exactly that, but at least she doesn't do it in the whiny way that drives me bonkers. She does it in the same way I do - both angsting and annoyed with herself for doing so and trying to get out of it. Rish-style angst is worrisome. Ledewick angst is *irritating*. I'm very glad we won't have to take much of it.

It's just a general malaise, really, and it goes away whenever I'm involved in a good conversation ... and actually, going to all of my classes today helped a bit. I felt energized on the walk back from English, anyway. Some of the conversations I've had since getting back to my room have brought me down a few notches, and I don't know *why*. It's the not knowing why that's the truly irritating thing.

For those of you who asked where the insights have gone, heh, that's pretty funny. They'll be back when I have something insightful to add. ;-)

2002-11-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

I just don't feel like doing *anything*. Argh. It's annoying. Although I'm actually looking forward to the vitalized feeling I hope I'll get when I finish going to all of my classes tomorrow ... I don't feel it yet ... and you never know, something might happen. Depressed, lethargic, apathetic ... not even Red Dwarf has the power to pull me out of this one, because I'm finally coming down from my addiction to it (although I enjoyed watching the infamous boxers scene this afternoon). Sigh.

Maybe someone will come by and I'll have someone to talk to. That might help. I like people.

Or maybe I'll get off my ass and go talk to someone ...

... or maybe I'll sit here moping for a half an hour and then go put my laundry in the dryer.

2002-11-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

So I'm home from Vancouver. It took us a really long time to get across the border, not because of any particular trouble with customs, but because we got lost in Canada. Why? Because Grandma insisted on asking for directions. Did we need directions? No. If we'd've followed the original route we were on, we would have hooked up with Route 99 South roughly forty-five minutes early than we actually did. Irritating, but that's not the most of my worries.

Geology lab is first and foremost -- I think I'm going to write Brian an email asking if there's any conceivable way I can make up for that class I missed last week. I can't psychologically deal with having missed it if I don't at least try to make things right. It's just too depressing to me to take my solid A in geology lab and turn it into a B just because I was under the weather for *one* class.

I'm also depressed just on general principles, because I'm hungry, it's the middle of the night, and I didn't get the adrenaline rush that would have come if the Rangers had won that game ... although I *am* glad I got to see Blackburn play an NHL game, even if it was one that they lost.

Kyle can't take me home for Christmas because his mom won't let him drive over the passes. I'll have to do the Greyhound thing ... or the train. I've got to figure out train fares, too, since I think I may end up doing that for Thanksgiving, if not the Greyhound. I'd rather not do either, I'd *rather* have a ride, but since I seem to have some kind of mental block about just asking people, that's probably what's going to happen.

I'm going to go muck with amtrak.com and greyhound.com now.

2002-11-14T17:55:00.000-08:00

Darn revising.

And other assorted sanitized swear words.

Insight For This Post: Smegging geography.

2002-11-14T06:56:00.000-08:00

I'm glad I can still be randomly happy. I was beginning to think this funk was unending, but it seems like the sun can shine in. :-D I've got to glee at Lindsey about this when I see her online later.

2002-11-14T06:52:00.000-08:00

I had typed a big long post about how I was happy and why I was happy and how good it is to be happy and listening to happy music really loud in your ears really early in the morning when you've got time to kill before class, but then Explorer crashed for no apparent reason (Thor's got ME, remember?) and it went away. So all I'm going to say is that I'm listening to my happy music really loud and I'm really quite happy for a variety of reasons despite a variety of reasons, even more numerous, that I have for being unhappy, frustrated, depressed or otherwise irritating. Although I suppose some people find happiness irritating ... but I can't be bothered with them; I'm in too good of a mood, you see.

My good mood lives on in spite of the fact of crashing Internet, which suggests this one may last awhile ... and that's always worthwhile. Anyway, another thing I talked about that went away is how deliciously fun illegal things can be. I've downloaded the entire audiobook of Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers on DirectConnect, which is absolutely delightful, and I think I've found all of Better Than Life on KaZaA Lite, which is also delightful. I'm completely unselfconscious about this because I have every intention of buying both of these things on my own nickel as soon as I find a way to do so that does not involve converting from British pounds to American dollars in my head, a mathematical equation that gives me rather a lot of grief, especially when it comes to international shipping. This probably means EBay, but it'll be something that I'll have legitimately bought just the same.

(No, I've just found one of BtL. That's irritating. I mean, I'm aware that I'm not supposed to do this and they have a right to my money, but really, if one of them is going to be out there, why not all four ... ?)

Oh, well. I'm still happy ... :-D

Insight For This Post: "We're so happy you're so happy ... just as long as you stay happy, we'll stay happy ..." "Not one row," "Pots of pence," "With my cow," "Little gurgles ..."

2002-11-14T01:11:00.000-08:00

It's late again and I'm up. I know, I know. I did try to go to bed right after the Star Trek meeting broke up, but then there was Star Trek in Brandon's room, so I hung around there for a bit, and then Katie and Josh came home and Katie had candy. So I ate candy and hung around there for a little bit until I convinced myself to go to bed. I lay in the dark for awhile, and then turned on the light and started reading To Visit the Queen. Then, Crystal came in and she had Diet Vanilla Coke. I drank some and became wide awake. I signed on, checked Boy Meets Boy -- we get to meet Harley's dad! -- and then started doing my usual dinking around stuff.

Tom Riddle is currently shattering Harry Potter's world, telling him all about the horrid things he's made poor Ginny do. Absolutely delightful ... I'm looking forward to seeing this film.

I want to get some writing done. I welcome the constructive mood, but not the timing; I'm trying to suppress it, of all things, because it's mostly just an accomplishment-hungry mood and hopefully I can bring it back. I'll get some chores done tomorrow - pay my bills, post my notice, eat a hot breakfast (boy am I ever hungry), go to both my classes, finish up my prelab before I head to geology, and then ... well, we'll see what we'll see, won't we? I may even clean up some of the horrendous mess that currently occupies our floor and read aloud to myself all evening until dinner - read aloud my geography text, even, since that's the kind of sit-down all-out revising that I need to do for the exam on Friday morning.

... revising?

Good grief. I'm turning British again. But then again, how can I really be surprised? Between Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Red Dwarf, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, To Visit to Queen, my current novel and the Brits in there (you know, like Queen Victoria?), heck, even Star Trek (Malcom. Malcom, Malcom, Malcom!) ... I can't think of any of my current interests that aren't in some part British.

London is one of those central places that I really want to visit before I die. London ... Dublin ... Kiev ... Munich ... Glasgow ... Venice ... Tel Aviv ... Tokyo ... Hong Kong ... hmm. Calcutta and Cairo would both be extremely interesting, but I might just give them a miss ...

New York would be high on this list, too, of central places that I want to see before I die, if I hadn't already been there. It's a wonderful place to visit (but I wouldn't want to live there, oh dear me, no).

All right. I'm going to try and force myself back to bed now. Maybe I'll be able to get a few hours in before my alarm goes off and it's time for some breakfast. I would really love some breakfast right about now.

Insight For This Post: Why am I always hungry in the middle of the night?

2002-11-13T02:25:00.000-08:00

Going to bed now. NOW dammit, NOW NOW NOW.

(I mean, .... sheesh.)

2002-11-13T02:24:00.000-08:00

For some reason, several of my posts don't come through unless I hit reload. I type in the page's address, and it defaults to three or four entries ago. Possibly this will go away as time passes.

2002-11-13T02:22:00.000-08:00

And now that I'm ranting who knows if I'll *ever* stop ... ?

Insight For This Post: Hey, can you name that tune?

2002-11-13T02:20:00.000-08:00

All of my descing skills have gone out the window, though. Seriously -- I can't figure out how to start. I've had two words written for the past four hours now: "Slim and sinuous," just like that. What do I do with that? Obviously I'm attempting to start with a description of the dragon's physical body rather than his actual coloring - and if I use the word "silvern", which isn't actually a WORD for smeg's sake, I should probably be taken out and shot - and this is probably because the coloring-descriptions get so old, but who the smeg am I *kidding*? What kind of animal is "slim and sinuous" at birth? Or hatching? I mean, really, I know that this description isn't just for the dragon at birth, it's for the dragon for life, unless people decide to change it - which, of course, they are welcome to do - but it runs right along to the minor pet peeve of these dragons who are hatched with monstrous libidos, filled with the urge to have rampaging sex with any oppositely gendered thing they see. BABIES.

Not only that, Pernese dragons have specific mating cycles, don't they? Males chase females when they are in heat, and when females are in heat is when they are interested in sex. We have no indication from the books that dragons pay any attention to sex at all when they aren't in heat, so why in the world are so many of these dragon BABIES focused on it?

And ANOTHER thing.

I *know* I do this all myself, but that doesn't mean it's not annoying to me in the middle of the night.

And another thing.

Rider-dragon relationships are both simpler and more complicated than Fandom portrays them. According to canon, the rider's personality and the dragon's are a lot alike. According to *Fandom* canon, the rider's personality and the dragon's complement each other: so we can have really opposite rider-dragon relationships, and even that is cool. But the necessary thing here is to understand that the rider and the dragon love each other. The rider and the dragon *never*, *ever* just do not get along. They are lifemates and their souls are twined together and there is no way to avoid any of that, okay? This is unstinting, unqualified devotion that will go on until the end of time and if one dies the other one's going to die, too, just from the pain of it. There are exceptions where the human has stayed alive, but the dragon never does, and *really* they're relatively rare, no matter how many dragonless you see running around in Fandom. The reImpression thing is just mind-boggling. No. Just ... no. (And yes, I *KNOW* I've done it. I don't need reminding that most of what I'm bitching about here is stuff that I have, in fact, done.) What I am saying here is that the rider does not get sick of the dragon and the dragon does not get pissed at the rider. Sparring is fine. It's *cute*. Hurt feelings are okay, because even in these relationships of ultimate understanding one or the other can go too far. But it's important to understand that in this relationship, the kiss and make-up part comes RIGHT AWAY. Immediately, immediately, immediately! You can't keep things from your dragon. Remember how hard a time Jaxom had hiding things from Ruth? Remember how difficult that was? Impossible, even? You are joined at the mind, you are joined at the soul, you are joined at the heart. You are two separates that literally make up one whole. Okay? And misunderstandings are extremely difficult when you are inside the other's brain. You're in there! You know exactly what they think and feel and want and need and fear and loathe! You know *exactly* what both sides of the equation are! You know *exactly* what's going on! And, in that situation, HOW can you possibly be angry? Where do the misunderstandings come from? You *can't* stop speaking to each other, because you can hear each other's thoughts! That's the beautiful thing about the dragon-rider relationship, the thing that makes it so wanted, so worthwhile, it's that you've got this presence sharing your mind and your soul that understands everything implicitly and loves you for who you are, not in spite of your faults but because of them, as much as because of your strengths, who understands you perfectly, who tolerates anything you do or say, who will be with you to the end no matter what, who will love you and treasure you and be devoted to you and they'll do anything for you and you for them. This is the GOOD stuff, okay? This is real, honest-to-goodness, heart-thumping, unphysical, unsexual, completely emotional and spiritual love of the kind that most people never, ever get to feel. That's what your character has with his or her dragon. What the FUCK are you doing taking that away?

And YES, I AM talking to myself! I'm talking to myself more than to anybody else, because I'm even more stupid than most people are about it. That's not the point. This is a rant that's going to be out there for me to read, too, to remind myself that I'm an idiot. Okay? Good.

Crystal came in hungry so I gave her candy. I feel as though this has validated my existence in some small, paltry, insignificant way.

Insight For This Post: Self-centered, self-important, self-righteous, absurdist, irrational hypocrite. That's me.

2002-11-13T02:01:00.000-08:00

Maybe if I leave the dragon file open all the time I can shame myself into working on it ... ?

And I've begged assistance from the Starshiners, although no results yet, possibly because all of them except for me SLEEP at night.

2002-11-13T02:00:00.000-08:00

I really need to be in bed, although on the plus side my sleep problem has moved from not being able to get to sleep to not being able to go to bed at night. I set the alarm clock for buzzer and if I sleep through that I'm *sick*. Also, if I miss class tomorrow it won't be as egregious as what happened today, so of course I'll be able to wake up and go to class tomorrow. I should write an email to Sylvia and ask what's going on with the groups, but I think I can find out Thursday morning just as well, and maybe I'll have that backwork assignment finished and ready to be turned in so I don't feel guilty talking to her about what I missed yesterday ...

I've been reading essays on writing fanfiction tonight, which is funny, as I've written one fanfic in the course of my entire life and the urge hasn't really come to me to write any more ... I think that if I do become a ficwriter, it will probably be in a very, ah, sporadic way.

The laundry machine is broken. This is not a good thing. I'm going to have to explain the state of my laundry basket to my family when they come up to see me on Friday.

Tonight, and then tomorrow night, and then ... Friday! I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone, I really am. I hope that the EBay guy doesn't turn out to be a dick, though, I REALLY want that Red Dwarf stuff.

I've got so much work that I should be doing. I should be getting caught up on my geography reading - although doing that in the middle of the night is probably a recipe for disaster - or on geology, which is ... terrible. Or writing that piece for English, but I sort of want to get that done tomorrow, if not when I'm more coherent, at least when I've had a chance to go over the sorts of things that other people are saying, just to get the hang of what I'm supposed to do. You know, that kind of thing. Evidently, we don't get comments on our collaborative writing assignment this time, but honestly I don't care about that. The B+ is good enough for me (A-/B+ seems to be what my average is going to be in this class ... it's almost irritating, even though that's not a grade I would usually have a problem with. It's this SMEGGING library class that's making the good grade seem worse, because God only knows what I'm going to come out of that with ...). Wow, that was one long refreshing parenthetical aside.

I'm not going to think about parenthetical asides because it's going to remind me of King James's lover the Duke of Buckingham and the homoerotic parenthetical aside in that letter we read in lecture. Darn English class.

I've got email again, but any email that I get in the middle of the night is going to be utter smeg.

As I suspected. Pharmacy prices. Good grief, what would I need with pharmacy prices?

I think I want to write. But all of this hatching stuff that I have to do is seriously taking the edge off my creative impulses ... and it's two o'clock in the morning! Good grief!

Insight For This Post: Two o'clock in the smegging morning!

"But I'm getting up in a minute!"

2002-11-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

I should probably go around and get people's addies for hotmail so that I can add them to my MSN Messenger contact list (it's ladyrushlight@hotmail.com if anyone would like to contact me ;-)). I'm staying up much later than I intended. I tried to go to bed really early - like a quarter to nine early - because I was tired and because I have an early class tomorrow. I ducked out of a pretty good RP-session with Barbara. She accused me of being good. I'm sort of glad but on the other hand sort of not, because I didn't really feel like I was on top of my Liu game. Ruadrihan is furious that his personality double wasn't able to seduce R'wen ... I really wish he'd understand that even someone as sex-god incarnate as himself is going to run up against a brick wall where True Love is involved. And he recognized that D'rian was protecting his territory in the end, which made me happy, since R'wen is totally clueless and D'rian is slowly coming out of denial ... :-D Joy! UST!

Laura wants to throw 'drana at him. I worry about that, though, since he's already had one damaging rejection - although D'rian may snog him later if he promises not to try and take off his underpants - and I don't want him to break! I'm not actually very good at this, no matter what Barbara says.

I need to get in practice writing sexual competency if I'm going to be exquisite with Liu. But that's so awkward to do with other people, and at the same time it's so masturbatory when you're doing it by yourself (wonder why that could be?). We'll see. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see.

I hate junk mail, I really do. Because I get all excited - "hey! I've got mail! I wonder what it could be!" - and then it's just bullshit - "increase your penis size!" "see horny barnyard sluts!" "does your insurance take care of this?" "quick diet -- it Really Works!!!" - and I go "aw, fuck".

Mmm. Encore cookies. :-) That box was a nice thing to get in the mail, even all that junk food is going to wreak havoc on my waistline ...

Nooooo. Don't wanna work on hatching script. Don't wanna don't wanna. Can't you people just use your imaginations? "This is a dragon. It is reminiscent of a snake." Can't I do that? Pleeeeeeeeeeease?

Sigh.

I feel really bad about missing class today. Smegging library ...

Insight For This Post: I think I'm going to ask Starshine at large for help descing.

2002-11-12T17:23:00.000-08:00

I just made a list of things that make me happy for the BmB forum and I've discovered that no matter how much I'm sort of an asocial grump at times, I'm a really friend-orientated and usually-happy person. That ... made me happy. :-D The realization that I'm a happy person even though I get depressed sometimes for no apparent reason is a happy realization.

2002-11-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

Sigh.

The request I put out on the MOO has done nothing but prove to me that I have to do the work myself: there's nothing wrong with the descs I got in response to the request, but I still found my brain doing the "we didn't write this and it's not exactly what we have in mind" thing. I'm sure I can use them for something at some point but they're not serpenty enough. Possibly I'm taking the theme a little too seriously but since most of the candidates are animal-themed as well, I find that cool rather than icky.

Okay, dePernning ...

I don't understand where this whole lazy apathetic thing came from today. I mean, sure, I've had this mood before but usually there's been something to trigger it. This one seems to have come at literal random, which means that I'm not at all sure how to fight it ...

Insight For This Post: Bah.

2002-11-11T03:25:00.000-08:00

Eh, I can't make it work on any of my blogs but this one -- go figure -- even though the ones on which comments might actually be useful (Fiction, perhaps?!) would probably be a more viable investment. Okay, so yeah. Katie just went home, and I also just went home. We sat on Josh's bed and watched Red Dwarf on Thor's screen, because the boys' VCR and DVD player are currently borrowed for the movie night downstairs in the Stack One lounge. This is noteworthy only because this is the first time that Thor has been out of his friendly little spot on my desk since he first came to Bellingham. I wonder if he gets bored, sitting in the same place all the time? After all, he's a laptop computer: a notebook, a portable creature, does that mean that he has an adventurer's spirit and that I'm denying him freedom by leaving him sitting on my desk all the time?

No, probably not.

I've got a lot of dragons to write and I'd really rather not. It's come to my attention that there are people who read this blog who actually have no clue what I'm talking about when I go off on all these hatching-related tangents, but just think of it as sheer drudgery that I do out of the goodness of my heart and the enormity of my ego and you'll probably be spot on. And to those of you who are irritated by my constant bellyaching about it, remember that just because I complain about something doesn't mean that I don't want to do it, and be grateful that my bitching is for the moment confined to the blog: I do want to do it. Or rather, I want it to be done, because I think it's a neat idea this time round. I just don't want to actually have to do the work. I want it to magically be done just because I've come up with the idea for it, you see. Descing is really a bitch. If it were just the personalities, which is functionally what I had to do for all those adoptables, since Linds rolled 'em for me (all I had to do was edit the physical descriptions into some semblance of logic and uniqueness), I think I wouldn't have so much trouble with it. I mean ... twenty-four? Breeze, right? But the physical descing on top of the personalities and the notes and everything is really a bitch.

Kialden's death scene has been weighing on my mind. As a matter of fact, P&D has been weighing on my mind a lot of late. The more I think about it, the more stock it seems to me -- I don't know, just an immature concept I guess; why would the dragon country be politically involved with the human country? Aren't humans basically xenophobic, especially when it comes to other intelligent species, especially when it comes to other intelligent species that happen to look large and rather frightening? What's to stop dragons from being basically xenophobic and isolationist as well? Where, when you get right down to it, is the point?

Then again, possibly the kidnappers represent an isolationist movement within the draconic government that would like to break off all peaceful relations with human kind and scorch them from the face of the Earth because they're just a slimy little bipedal virus anyhow, hardly better than sheep on two legs with less hair ... hmmmm.

There's nothing wrong with being an obsessive. It's actually kind of fun, especially when you're dealing with other obsessives.

Barbara wants me to adopt Liudragaan. I sort of want to, but at the same time, isn't one Ruadrihan more than enough for one brain? How many angel-demons can one psyche support?

I hope Caryn does Magan justice. Magan is sexy. Well ... as sexy as a figment can be.

Speaking of sexy figments ... I adore Elerey and Corwin. Not together, though. That's one relationship that just isn't slashy. Possibly because Elerey and Corwin don't really interact ... mm, but I like both of them a lot. "College of Prophets" is, therefore, doubly a lovely story, because it has both Elerey and Corwin in it ... although Elerey takes a very subtle, background role, Radek and Sable and Corwin and Tzara being the primary players. Oh, and Arathwea, I suppose. Arathwea's all right. She's not interesting enough to get a story of her own, but then, neither is Radek, so I don't need to worry about that.

At least now Sarah's brilliance and good looks make a little more sense. Some of that's genetic, although the swearing she gets from her adopted Father and goodness knows where she gets that *temper*. Upbringing?

Insight For This Post: I ramble a lot, and no one cares. Lovely, isn't it?

(Foxy Colliny goodness again! Although nowhere near as lovely as yesterday's.)

2002-11-10T03:24:00.000-08:00

And, to Laura: of course it is. Of *course*.

She doesn't have a comment thingie on her website and I'm already here and too lazy to email, so I'll just say that.

2002-11-10T03:18:00.001-08:00

Everything clean and pretty now?

No?

Well, it's as close as it's going to get, by God.

2002-11-10T03:18:00.000-08:00

Okay. I've deleted the offending post. Here's the gist.

Fox and Collin! Foxy Colliny goodness! Hold me, somebody!

I'm riding high, I'm hyperactive, I've got a lot, a lot, a lot of dragons to write. Twenty-four. Okay, so it's potatoes next to the forty-five people I turned out, but ... this is going to be tough. I've gotta desc. Personalities, physicalities, notes, explanations, the works. The hatching script's the hardest part, and that's taking the edge of my stupid pathetic fangirl hyperactivity ...

I'm going to start with the Serpent and work my way down. It'll take awhile. But I'll get there. God, I hope I'll get there.

I've been reading The Book of Night With Moon and I think that it's partially responsible for the limited breakage I've made of the Writer's Block. There's just something refreshing about Diane Duane's style. Something crisp. I don't know. However, I've got to finish these dragons ... and by the time I've slogged my way through them, the Block will probably be back in place, so I'll just have to keep Kialden's death scene on a backburner. Not to mention the Hero's Rewards rewrite, which is beginning to feel like it really needs to get done. And then, I've got to do something with Sarah, Widow-Queen. King Scott's going to have to die, but it's for a good cause.

I watched some Red Dwarf tonight with Katie and Josh. Good times. "Blue" ... heh heh heh ...

So no one wants to tell me whether or not Rimmer would punch Lister in the face?

Insight For This Post: I really am a silly git ... Lindsey's right. Oh, well, it's fun. ;-)

So now my blog is out of order but at LEAST the word wrap functions.

Oh ... yeah, Renfield's probably right. Rimmer doesn't punch people in the face, he crumbles. Like crumb cake. It was just a thought. I'll figure out what to do eventually, but it's not as though I don't have dozens upon dozens of other projects to work on at the moment.

2002-11-10T03:13:00.000-08:00

For reference, I don't really need for him to do that, it would just make things a little easier dramatically. You know how it is.

Shit. Well, I'm not sure what I did, other than holding down the 'e' key a lot, but now I am completely incapable of editing that one post. I can edit all other posts. But not that one. I go into edit it, and there's no "post" button. What the hell?

2002-11-10T03:10:00.000-08:00

Oh, and Renfield answered me, too, and I just didn't notice. Sheesh. I guess this just isn't my night.

2002-11-10T03:06:00.000-08:00

Um. Word wrap would be good. Is anyone but me having a problem with that?

For whatever reason, although I've edited the previous post to delete the extremity of 'e's -- they're not really necessary to get the point across - Blogger won't let me publish the changes. Bloody hell.

2002-11-07T11:51:00.000-08:00

Oh, good. The Window is working again. Now, if only I knew why it had gone down in the first place ...

Yes, my laptop's name is Thor. I seem to think that this is Ben's fault, although I don't remember why. Anyone who was around when I got him remember why he's called Thor? Because I can't remember. He's just as firmly Thor as the car is George. There was awhile when I had named pens, too, but they were Harry Potter pens with pictures of the characters on them and they're all dead now. Nick called my purse Izzy at one point but that never caught on, thank God.

Insight For This Post: I think I said something insightful about electronics and our dependency on them at some point, but I can't remember what it was.

2002-11-07T10:35:00.000-08:00

Ah. Evidently this page doesn't exist. Isn't that lovely? All this time I've been updating something that doesn't actually exist. Yeah, I know, I didn't manage to avoid referencing Red Dwarf in the last update but I feel it was a question that needed to be asked ...

Insight For This Post: Is anybody there?

Does anybody care?

Does anybody see what I see?

2002-11-07T10:32:00.000-08:00

This is extremely irritating. I know enough basic HTML to get by, thank you so much. I don't need to take a class in it. Especially not one full of people who actually don't already know the information: it's extremely exasperating to sit here ten steps ahead of everyone else. They've all just opened the FTP program on their computers, right, and I've already updated the site to include today's information and am sitting here diddling around on my blog just to pass the time without going completely insane.

Flash was amusing in BmB today. Poor Fox, though. His apprentice has abandoned the Path.

I'm sort of hungry ... I'm kind of regretting the breakfast-abolishing extra hour that I gave myself this morning. It didn't really help much. But then again, I probably would have gotten sick if I'd've eaten in any event ... you know me and early mornings (or perhaps you don't).

Hey ... do you think that Rimmer would punch Lister in the face? If, just suppose, Lister put his tongue in Rimmer's ear?

Just asking.

Insight For This Post: There are times when I hate being a slacker. Or rather, I wish I either was a slacker or I wasn't one: being one and feeling guilty about it all the time is the smegging pits.