Maledicte

• Today it's cold and lazily snowing here in Santa Fe. That's right. It's May 13th, and it's snowing. This place has the weirdest weather.

• This Saturday I'm going to put on a cap and gown and do the whole walking/shaking hands/accepting my "diploma" thing. (The school already mailed me my diploma since I actually finished my course work and all that in Dec. I think it's sort of hilarious that I'm doing this all now, but it is what it is.) Various family is coming, and there will be some juggling of time, but I think it will be a nice time all around. Certainly I'm looking forward to being done with everything concerned with this college.

• I had a job interview today, for a position I'm not entirely sure I applied for but that I'm probably qualified for and which seems like it might be more interesting (and in some ways less anxiety-inducing for me) than the position I think I actually did apply for. I'm pretty sure the people liked me, and I'm pretty sure the interview went well. Think good thoughts for me, internet peoples. I really need something that's going to bring in some money.

• This is the week of season finales on TV. Once Upon A Time ended on Sunday, and had about three minutes of everyone being happy and me crying because it was so beautiful and amazing before all that happiness got stabbed in the face and everything was terrible again. I mean, it was wonderful, but I'm pretty sure my cat is concerned for my well-being now, since I actually screeched in horror. The current seasons of Castle and The Blacklist both ended last night, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will end tonight. Elementary will end this Thursday.

• On the other hand, Game of Thrones is currently in the middle of it's current season, and Da Vinci's Demon's just passed the halfway mark. Plus, Penny Dreadful just started, and Crossbones will begin at the end of the month, so it's not like I won't have anything to watch.

• I'm currently rereading various of the Tortall books by Tamora Pierce. I really love these books. If I ever write YA stuff, I want it to be like these amazing stories, and not have some of the weird tropes that show up in YA these days.

Well, that might be it for now. I need to do some cleaning around my apartment, and I should maybe do that while there's daylight.

Argh, more than a month has gone by since I last posted. I was going to be better than this! So, lessee, what's new this month?

• School still goes. So that's not exactly new. I was feeling like I was drowning in homework and work in general last week (and possibly the week before), but I seem to have gotten my head above the water again. I am so incredibly thankful that this is my last semester.

• Myth, Archetype, & Fairy Tale is still by far the best and most awesome class. We all have to do a final project, and since the class is mostly filled with Writing Majors most of us are writing. I'm going to be writing a small collection of retold tales. Red Riding Hood the Werewolf Slayer, Maleficent's Curse, the Love Story of Hades & Persephone, Cassandra of Troy: Modern Day Prophetess are all the things that I've sort of got a handle on so far. I want to do something with Captain Hook but I'm not sure what yet. So we'll see. I'm pretty excited.

• J and I moved furniture around the house last week, putting the TV, Wii and cable box in the bedroom and making space for a small desk/work nook in the corner of the living room for me. Both of these changes have made life much easier and more enjoyable in this teensy apartment we call home. Plus, watching movies (like The Lone Ranger, LOL) in our bedroom on the big TV is much nicer.

• I have a doctor's appointment a week from tomorrow! This will be the first time I've seen a doctor (other than the dentist or my optometrist) in much too long. I'm definitely not looking forward to having bloodwork done—tattoos have not exactly made me fond of needles, but I think I might be past the post of spontaneously bursting into tears at even the sight of a syringe—but I am looking forward to having a reliable someone to prescribe birth control (rather than my school nurse) and possible someone to prescribe sleeping pills. This sleeping-poorly bullshit has got to stop.

• Plus, also, I need a doctor's note in order to go to Israel this February. Free trip to Israel because I'm Jewish, woo! I've gotten them everything they need except the doctor's note (because I don't currently have a doctor, whoops) and I really, really hope that the Culinary trip hasn't been filled by the time I get it to them because it seems like that might be one of the only trips I would really enjoy. So, fingers crossed and all that.

• This fall's TV is so far awesome. I'm watching Sleepy Hollow (and hiding from all the scary parts behind my hands), Downton Abbey (how much do I love Mary? a lot!), Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which I am really loving to bits and pieces), Once Upon A Time (which continues to be full of awesomeness and their Peter Pan is my new favorite), Castle (because I can't give up on it now), Masters of Sex (which I am watching entirely because of Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan) and Elementary (because, Sherlock Holmes. duh.)

• On a totally different note: I really dislike how DW's tagging works, in that I really like it when LJ will show you all the tags you have that start with L if you type that in. DW only shows you one option, and since I don't remember all my tags, it's less useful to me. I always have to cross check my tags with LJ when I post here.

ETA: Oh oh oh! One more thing!

• J and I are going to the east coast for the weekend after Thanksgiving! (Which is when my mother's family gets together to celebrate Thanksgiving, since there are six of them, and they all have significant others so they go their separate ways on the actual holiday.) This is exciting because it's going to give us Friday evening and some of Sunday in NYC together. He's going to bring his camera and I'm going to take him to some touristy places and feed him real bagels and real (fake) Chinese food and real pizza. And maybe a falafel sandwich from a cart. And he'll get to meet Aaron on Sunday, and maybe Mira and Em depending on what those two are up to around then. So that's exciting too!

It's a shame y'all over at LJ can't see my awesome Mary/Downton Abbey icon. :p

• Current tally of fics I am actively working on:
1) Prince Caspian AU (currently 200 words)
2) Enchanted romance/smut (currently 500 words)
3) Hawaii Five-0 "Mary McGarrett is a BAMF" (currently 700 words)
4) Star Trek XI Kirk/Spock smut (currently 500 words)
5) HP Founders-fic, Before They Were Legends (currently 700 words, none of which have been posted)
6) Covert Affairs Joan/Arthur romance/smut (currently 400 words)
7) Merlin Arthur/Merlin (with actual plot, zomg) (currently 100 words)

• Current tally of RP things I'm (not quite as actively) working on:
1) eraofhogwarts
2) Letter thing with dragon_gypsy
3) Vampire/Demon thing with dragon_gypsy
4) Abban/Dmitri thing with dragon_gypsy

• Current tally of papers I need to write by the end of the week:
1) Math paper (due tomorrow)
2) Language paper (due Friday)

• Current tally of TV shows I am watching to avoid writing of papers, fics or RPs:
1) Eureka (which I am out of and am trying to download)
2) Angel (started at S1 :D)
3) Hawaii Five-0 (which I am caught up on and so much from my Tumblr now makes sense)

• Current tally of movies I watched/am watching/will watch to avoid writing of papers, fic or RPs:
1) Burlesque
2) King Arthur (even though it stands there and laughs at the myths/legends like a bully on a playground)
3) Blade: Trinity (because Parker Posey and Ryan Reynolds are hot)
4) Black Swan (because I need to watch it before the Oscars this Sunday)

• I bought a DKNY watch today to replace my broken one. It has removable links in the band, but: if I make it tight enough that it doesn't move I have to struggle with the clasp for five minutes every time I need to take it off because it's also tight enough that it doesn't give me a lot of space to work with or I can make it so loose that it flops around. This is the difference of one single link. :/ I think I will also try to get a new battery for my HP watch. Because I loff it and I've never worn it.

• I was feeling a little blue, so I painted my nails blue. I'm feeling a little better about life now. :)

• I trimmed my bangs the other day and I cut them a few millimeters too short. Oh well, at least they'll grow out quick.

• My life, guys. My life.

• Dentist again today. Cavities filled. Happy gas was happy. But... I would like to stop hearing the sound of the drill in my teeth and feeling the drill vibrating my cheekbone. I'm not actually in that much pain—which, you know, considering that they did something with my gums that apparently "will heal over", not much pain is a bonus—but... You know when someone says, "like nails on a chalkboard" and if you've ever heard that sound, you hear it again in your head and it's like it really happened? That's what's going on in my mouth and my "ears" right now. And I seriously want it to stop. :(

• My Halloween Endless group is falling apart! D: We lost our Delirium and our Dream. I think it's sort of important to have at least a Delirium. I mean, she's totally recognizable. We'll have to see what we can do about that. This is my frowny face, though.

• Kay, so, Hawaii Five-0 is awesome. The first episode is like some awesome crossover with Boondock Saints—Is that Norman Reedus talking with a fake accent of some sort about his brother? Why yes, I do believe that it is!—and also Buffy—because holy crap, it turns out Norman Reedus's brother in this is Spike. It's awesome. Also, so much slash in this show, I don't know how it doesn't spontaneously burst into flames with all the gay. Just sayin'.

• MOTHERFUCK, MOUTH. STOP IT.

• Paper to write tonight, and then a paper to write before this weekend starts. D: I wish I had worked on the second one more before now. I wanted to have it done before NaNoWriMo started. So, clearly, my best option is to watch this week's Castle. Tehehe.

• Going now. TV, then papers, then sleep. Dinner in there somewhere. Admire my pretty new H5-0 icon while I'm gone. :>

• For the first time in four years, I'm living "at home" with my parents. (Just a small clarification, for me home always seems to be where my laptop is.) It's weird. After I went to college the first time, my father emptied out my room and used it for his office. But since my parents' separation (about which I will not be answering any questions or talking about at all) my room has been mine again. And since I refuse to live on campus and pay for shitty food that will make me ill, I am living at home. And making my room mine again. I finally took my father's books out today. There were 15 boxes of them. My journals are on a real shelf again, and not in a box. I put my "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster up over my bed. Tomorrow my mother and I are going to look for a desk, and some curtains to put in front of the shelf I've put my clothes on. I feel sort of like a kid who just got her first room to herself—even though I never had siblings. It's weird. But fun.

• Because I was putting things onto newly cleared shelves and unpacking boxes that I've had in my room ALL SUMMER, I didn't actually get anything done today that I had planned on. Including seminar reading. I definitely need to do some of that before I go to sleep tonight since I only got half of it done yesterday and the reading for tomorrow is the entirety of Exodus. Then for Thursday I will be reading the entirety of Leviticus. It's like they don't know that some people don't read as fast as I do.

• I might have gotten a certain tricksy aspect of my life under control. (Also, my computer knows that "tricksy" is a word. Awesome.) I feel pretty comfortable about it, even though I know it's going to make my super uncomfortable all the time. But as long as I don't do anything stupid—which is the reason I've come to this conclusion really, as I think it will help protect me from doing anything stupid—I will be less uncomfortable in the long run. I hope. (Whoo, cryptic post is cryptic.)

• I've started taking diphenhydramine hydrochloride (tl;dr = Bendryl) to help me sleep. It's kind of awesome. It doesn't make me drowsy at all, but once I fall asleep, it keeps me asleep. I started taking it right about the same time I started school—so that I would be rested for classes—but before that I was having trouble sleeping through the night. I'd wake up every couple of hours and then drift off again, but I would never get enough sleep to be rested. Now, I wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for the day. It's nice. Next time I have a break, I'll go off it and see if I can sleep again, but since it's non-addictive (except in the sense that I don't really want to stop taking it in case I don't sleep well when I don't) I don't feel too bad about taking it to help. Sleep is awesome.

• I'm going to start thinking about and plotting my NaNoWriMo pretty soon. Since I'd like to keep up with it even though I'll be in school, I need to prepare as much as I can before hand. And I need to not tell my parents I'm doing it. They want me to focus more on school this year than last—and I totally am—but I think I can do both with enough planning and preparation. If it starts looking like I can't do both, I will absolutely drop NaNoWriMo without any hesitation, and I feel pretty good that I know that and am prepared for it if I have to. Yeah, no idea what I'm going to write. (At the writing of this part of this entry, Fleetwood Mac's "Running Through The Garden" came on and it made me think about the story that I wrote based on it, and how bad it was, and how it might make a good novel, so there's something. We'll see.)

• Nyx is getting bigger and playing with everything—including my hair while I try to cuddle her!—and is just overall adorable. We're going to have to take her to the vet, something we knew we had to do after adopting her, but one of her eyes is kind of oozy, and I don't want Hank to catch an eye infection if that's what Nyx has. I've been cleaning her eye out periodically throughout the day and kind of keeping watch, and yeah, it's definitely a vet issue. Poor kitten. Vet will probably be a whole new traumatic event, and she was just getting bolder and friendly. After going to the vet, she'll probably not let us touch her for a few days. (Which she will just have to get over if she has to have drops put into her eyes for a little while. Poor kitten!)

• Long post is long!

• I'm all caught up on Covert Affairs, White Collar, and Burn Notice. (What? USA's shows are awesome, ok? I haven't finished watching the first season of Royal Pains or I'd be all caught up on that too.) I have to download the last few eps of The Pillars of the Earth and catch up on that. I need me some medieval England.

• I helped teach blues dance last week, and then did a private lesson during the free dance, and totally got told that I'm an awesome teacher. If I didn't get horrible stage fright, I would totally do more dance teaching. I kind of have no idea who's going to be helping out the real teacher when he gets back into town, but... I kind of hope it's me. I could use some practice if it gets left to me to teach next year. (WHO KNOWS.) Still, I'm looking forward to another year of awesome blues dancing.

• And once I get a car I will be able to go to all the events I want! Car is totally in the works. If calling strangers wasn't one of the things that scares me the most, I would have called some of them today. But... yeah. Phones are bad enough, add in strangers, and possibly leaving strangers a message... yeah, this is me shaking in my proverbial boots. Plus, I have no idea what to ask about when I call someone about the car they're selling on Craigslist. My dad wants to me to call them, and if we just ignore the fact that that would scare me witless, I'm not going to know if the problem with their car is minor or major. My dad's like, call them and ask them the questions, to which I just sort of go, "About what? The fuck do I know about this?" Anyway, there's this cute little Saturn that I like, which doesn't have power windows (or, I suspect, locks) which makes me crack up a little. But as long as the windows roll up and down and the heat and the AC work, I'm ok with that. There are a bunch of other cars that I have my eye on, but this little Saturn is adorable. (And, since that's totally how I judge cars, my dad should know better than to make me try and evaluate the cars!)

• And... I think it's time for me to finish clearing off my bed and then get into it with my Torah. I need to read at least 70 pages before I go to sleep tonight.

• P.S. MY ICON TOTALLY MAKES MY NIGHT.

• I got stuck in Denver. Ok, somewhere between Colorado Springs and Denver. About 20 miles from our destination on Friday, my the front left wheel of my dad's car started making CLUNK-CLUNK-GRIND noises, and just when we thought it couldn't get worse, it started sounding like things were falling off the car. I was riding in fear for my life for a little while there. Anyway, it turned out all right, I'm alive, car's being fixed, and we're only here two days longer than expected.

• I'm reading Nora Robert's book Black Hills and I'm having trouble getting into it. Normally, this is not so much of a problem. Actually, the beginning was good. But now that the actual plot is getting underway, I'm like, "Why is this so hard to read?" And then I hit on it. The reason. The main female character is annoying as fuck. Holy crap, I loathe her interactions with the main male character, because she's ungrateful and annoying and bitchy, when he's being concerned for her life. Lesson one, ladies: it might be annoying when your old flame tries to keep you from being killed, but shut up and let the man do it. Geez.

• I should write something instead of distracting myself from the Nora Roberts with Arthur/Merlin fanfiction. You know, I should be productive instead of being a lazy bum.

• Our hosts here in Colorado had like.... 25 avocados here, and most of them are ripe and I've been eating them constantly with their blessing. It's delicious. Avocados are some of my favorite food, and we almost never have them. But apparently our hosts got a good deal on avocados, and are pleased to let me eat away at them. There was guacamole the first night, and avocado on toast for almost every other meal since. DELICIOUS.

• There are TV shows that will be starting soon that I am seriously looking forward to. White Collar will be starting in like... a day. And the series premier Covert Affairs is either right before that or right after that. Which looks seriously awesome. Haven I guess has started, as I found it on Hulu last night and watched the first episode. It was good enough to continue watching it. I don't know what else there is, but if there's more I'm probably looking forward to it.

• Still pretty much walking on air. Being in Denver for the whole weekend has put a slight dampener on it all, but it's still there. Things are still delightful.