Maledicte

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

Weighing in at 132 pages, 40,504 words: the (extremely rough) finished first draft of my novel.

Yep, looks like it's time for my monthly update.

• Writing continues apace! Not quite as much as I'd like, but I got stuck at one point and I thought I could skip ahead, but I realized that I'd gotten to the point of the story where the thing I skipped that I wasn't sure about was highly relevant to the rest of the story. So I sat on my butt and thought about it for a long time, and then forged ahead. So. Now I am trying to figure out how the climax of the story is going to work.

• On the other hand, I've been called up for jury duty and I have to report bright and early tomorrow morning, so I foresee plenty of time sitting around waiting for whatever to happen where I can be writing (since my first draft is entirely handwritten in a notebook). On the other other hand, I'm leaving for Phoenix at stupid o'clock Weds. morning and that's one of the days that I'm supposed to report, so... I mean, I'm not just going to not go to Phoenix and not see Neil Gaiman. I'll tell them I can come in some other time if they really, really want me to be screened as a juror. (LOL, I hate people, I would be the worst juror ever.)

• I've been trying to keep up with my knitting too. The things that I'm working on right now is a giant blanket in sock yarn (see: tiny) and a sweater for autumn/winter. But I can only seem to do a row at a time before I have to put it down and do something less complicated. Which is ridiculous, since nothing I'm doing on either (at the moment) is all that complicated. (The sweater will get more complicated soon, but I am not worried.) It's sort of annoying, actually.

•And speaking of knitting: I usually listen to audiobooks when I knit because it's enough like reading that it sort of feels like I'm managing to read and knit at the same time. And I'm one chapter away from the end of Fellowship of the Ring which is amazing! But... there are other things to do while knitting right now. Like... watch The Vampire Diaries (more on that in a moment). This would be so much easier if there were a dozen of me with like... a hivemind. I could read and knit and write and watch movies and surf the internet all at the same time. (Not to mention the fact that I could write a dozen books at the same time. I could be stupid prolific.)

• And according to the security at the court house, I can't even bring my knitting because the needles will probably be seen as a potential weapon! (I mean, my plan is to write, but I could have used that time in other ways, too.)

• Anyway, hah, yeah, The Vampire Diaries. I like it slightly better than Teen Wolf since the only saving grace of the latter is Dylan O'Brien. At some point I will make myself watch it, but right now I'm all about the vampires and their dumbass shenanigans.

• Speaking of werewolves and vampires and writing, though... Ever notice how, when you have a deadline on a particular thing (i.e.: my novel), a zillion other things you could be doing instead suddenly fill your mind? I have actually had three dreams (so far) this summer that I've thought, "I need to use this in a book." But I can't actually take the time to fiddle with them right now, because I really need to focus on the one thing. It's frustrating. I say this in relation to werewolves because two of those ideas have been wolf-related (though not necessarily werewolf related). Apparently my dreaming mind loves wolves. Not that I'm complaining.

That's basically what's been going on. Ugh, getting up early tomorrow.

• Well, I heard back from Clarion West, and alas I was not accepted. I don't think I had any real expectations either way, but it was still a disappointment.

• Though, that makes my summer plans sort of neat. I'll be working with one of my teachers and finishing my novel (for school credit even!). Mostly because she wants to read the rest of it. Which is really encouraging.

• J bought me a yoga DVD the other day, and I did a 20 minute yoga session on it yesterday. Which left me so sore, holy crap. It was just the intro stuff! My sides, my lower abs, and the back of my thighs protest just about every movement I take. I mean, I guess that means it worked, but still. Ow. I will absolutely be doing more just as soon as I am a little let ouchie.

• I get to register for fall classes pretty soon. One of my teachers (the same one I'll be working with this summer) is teaching a lit class called (something like) "Myth, Archetype, and Fairytales" which I will absolutely be taking. Jung and Campbell! And a little bit of writing, to make it super interesting.

• I might also be working with a different teacher on another novel as an independent study next semester. Because I'd like to have a few finished things by the time I graduate in Dec. so that means I actually need to write. And why not get credit for it (especially when there aren't any other interesting classes and I need a certain number of credits)? Not yet sure what I'll work on. I suppose whether or not I want to write my current novel's sequel will depend a lot on how I feel after I've finished it this summer.

• I am planning on pounding out some words for the April session of Camp NaNoWriMo. Not a whole novel's worth, but probably the beginning of something. I have a thing I'm excited about, so I'll be working on that.

• I discovered that books that I find too boring to actually read can be listened to while I knit. So I am exactly half way through listening to The Fellowship of the Ring on audiobook. (Or at least, I'm about to start "Book Two" of it, which is right after the ringwraiths get their butts handed to them by the river.) I have the other two Lord of the Rings books for after that, and also Frank Herbert's Dune and The Mists of Avalon for when those are done. Because I need to have these things in my general knowledge, but I haven't ever been able to get through them. Audiobooks are a happy solution to this problem! I'm planning on getting some Jane Austen, too.

• J also got me the extended edition Lord of the Rings collection on blu ray, too. So my present to myself for having finished "reading" The Fellowship of the Ring will probably be to watch it in beautiful HD.

Yeah, that's it. I love this icon.

Oh my god, has it really been a month and a half since I last updated my online journals? What even, self? (Good thing that wasn't really one of my Resolutions for 2013. I would have been failing it pretty hard already.) So, lessee, what's been going on in my life lately...

• School started, and is going pretty well. Writing is happening for it, which is good in general. I'm taking Advanced Fiction, Intermediate Screenwriting, and a required class called Senior Reading which is my favorite thing ever, as it turns out.

• My screenwriting teacher wants me to write the pilot for a sitcom rather than attempt writing a feature length film script, which is ridiculous because, how do I funny? No seriously. Humor is strange to me. However, I'm shamelessly ripping off of the year that inthebookfort and I lived together, so I have some recorded quotes from there that I can use. But alas, I am not Aaron Sorkin, so who knows.

• I turned in my second story for workshop in Advanced Fiction this past Monday, and I have one more due later in the semester. And I'll have to revise one of the three for the end. The story that I turned in Monday wasn't complete, and I'm not sure I captured the tone I was going for, but at least I got out most of the story's skeleton. That might be the thing I choose to revise, depending on what the parameters of the next story are. So.

• Senior Reading is interesting because there are five of us, the seniors that are getting ready to graduate (three this May and two of us in December) and we're compiling a manuscript of our work to be published into a book by Lulu.com. We also have to do a reading in the middle of the semester (hence the name of the course) but the book is the bulk of the work right now. We have to work with a graphic designer (a student at the school who's getting credit for this just like us) on the covers and all the typesetting and all of that. It's supposed to be a crash course on how publishing (sort of) works. So that's actually pretty interesting.

Hm, other than that? What else is going on...

• Still writing. The bulk of my book for Senior Reading will be an excerpt of my current novel, which is still chugging right along. I'm actually learning things about how I like to write as I write this thing, so that's kind of cool.

• Oh, also for Senior Reading: we're supposed to do this... essay thing... where we meditate on writing? The teacher wasn't all that clear on what it was supposed to be, since we are allowed to pick the type of format it ends up in. She said that it could be a traditional essay if that's what we wanted, or it could be more like a lyric essay, or it could focus on an aspect of writing, or a specific author, or things that inspire us... Yeah, it wasn't all that clear. But since it was supposed to be (sort of) about how our inspiration works, and a lot of what inspires me is music (or otherwise not just language) I suggested that maybe I could do something on Tumblr. My teacher loved the idea, so I'm now keeping a sort of curated multimedia museum of things that inspire me and how over on Tumblr: This Commonplace Book. I think it's sort of turning out to be an Author's Blog type of thing, which is kind of an interesting thought, since I've been wondering how I was going to do that in the future. Whatever I end up doing when I am An Author might be sort of like this, I think. Anyway, feel free to check that out. I think that it's best viewed when you use the links at the bottom left, filtering it by week.

• Also, I'm applying to Clarion West this year. Neil Gaiman and Ellen Datlow will be teaching there this year, so it's sort of too good of an opportunity to pass up. Wish me luck.

And that's all there is for now!

• Happy Valentine's Day, all! I hope you are all having a good day, regardless of your relationship status.

• I am a hell of a lot more chipper this year than I was last year (or the year before), the cause of which should be obvious. Though, really, today was just a normal Tuesday for me. The Boyfriend and I celebrated our Valentine's Day this past Saturday with a nice romantic dinner date and then coming home to pomegranate wine and chocolate covered strawberries made by yours truly. :) It was lovely.

• Having just gotten my butt in gear, the sign ups for fantasybigbang will go live tomorrow. This year there's also a DW mirrow comm: fantasybigbang. We're going to see how it works, mostly. lady_mab thinks it will work (and might get us more participants), so we'll see. Fingers crossed.

• Speaking of getting my ass in gear, I'm finally doing things. I'm going to try to get my car fixed before my Spring Break (second week of March), I'm going to be applying for internships soon so I sent an email to the head of my program asking for a meeting to Talk About Things, and I emailed my advisor for my Independent Study (finally) about actually starting. Halle-fucking-luja.

• This last one means that I will also (finally) be finishing a goddamned story. The first one I'm working on is a story based on a song by the Oysterband called "No Reason to Cry" (which is also what I'm currently calling the story, because it doesn't have a proper title). I ought to be finally writing a bunch of short stories that I've had sort of sitting around—some of them are fully outlined!—but haven't actually written. I'm sort of excited for that aspect of this experiment.

• Other than that, school is still school. I'm close enough to being done that I'm just putting my head down and ignoring things that drive me crazy. (Or at least, I am just ranting about them to the Boyfriend and my mom and my paper journal so that I can get it off my chest.) Anyway. School is happening. That's about all there is to it.

That's also all there is to this entry. Time to finish my sammich (and beer) and finish my work for tomorrow.

• First week of classes down, 15 more to go.

• This semester, I am taking two lit classes, a religion class and one writing class. I am also doing a writing intensive Independent Study, the paperwork for which I handed in on Thursday, so it's official! All these things put me at 18 credits, which is the most I can take without paying extra for the extra credits (which I did last semester). And I still feel like I am going to have more free time on my hands than I know what to do with. St. John's ruined me for normal school. What even.

• Lit Class #1: Milton and Paradise Lost. Technically a religion class, but I convinced them to let me take it as a lit class. Because I wanted to, and nothing else that wouldn't make me miserable would fit into my schedule. Actually, this should be an interesting class. There were only 6 people in it the first class, but then two more people showed up for the second class. Which was actually a little disappointing. I felt like the teacher felt like he had to lecture more, and we didn't really get to talk as much. I actually knitted the whole of the second class, and still managed to participate more than anyone else. I hope it gets better, because I really want to like this class.

• Lit Class #2: Gothic Literature. This class is definitely going to be fun, no matter that there are 25 people in it, which is huge for this school. Actually, it's huge for any of the schools I've been to for a class that's not a lecture class. I think the teacher ended up talking a lot the first couple of days because we hadn't really read anything yet and thus didn't really have anything to talk about. He sort of got us talking about what Gothic is, though, and that was interesting.

• Religion Class: Religion & Image. This class may actually make me want to kill people. I don't think people realize how hard it is to define something like "art" and my teacher has spent the last two classes trying to get them to understand, but every time they take a stand on something, I just want to be like, "If that works for you. But what if it doesn't work for me? What then?" And I just got blank looks the first few times, so I stopped. I want this class to get better (we're reading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Camus's The Fall which is totally interesting given the subject for which they were selected) so I have my fingers crossed.

• Writing Class: Techniques of Poetry. Um. This class. Is amazing. Which has everything to do with the teacher. It's the head of my department, who apparently doesn't teach that often, so I am totally lucky to have gotten her. She's really passionate about poetry, and her passion is so obvious and she wants to make us all passionate about it too. Even those of us who are prose writers. She even made a point at the beginning of the class to talk about how learning poetry is likely to make a writer's prose better in several ways. Which I totally agree with. Also, she swears a lot and is totally adorable and I think wants to like... feed us all. I am in love with the class, even if poetry isn't really my thing.

• Independent Study: apparently now titled "Short Story Writing" because my new advisor kept harping on it having a title and how it needed one that would be approved by the faculty and she wouldn't let me title it so she called up the department head. It... was the weirdest thing. But whatever. I'm going to finish a goddamn story this weekend and email it to my advisor on Monday and hopefully meet with her two Fridays after that—which is approximately two weeks, during which I will write another story. Which I will pass to her when we meet for her to read during the next two weeks. And so on and so forth for the rest of the semester. I just want to produce some things. I need to write.

So yeah. That was my week and will be my semester.

• My time in NYC draws to a close. I leave tomorrow morning (not too terribly early, thank heavens) having spent a fantastic couple of weeks here in the city I still long to call home. It's still my intention to come back here as soon as I can. I miss the bustle and the anonymity, the subways and the streets, my friends, the shopping, the culture. I've always felt like NYC got into my bloodstream quickly when I moved here before high school, and I get myself through my time in Santa Fe by reminding myself that every day there is another day closer to being back here. I miss it I miss it I miss it.

• That being said, I enjoyed my time. While here I:

♥ saw inthebookfort, exrpan, oduinn, lskull86 and his girlfriend, a friend from SJC also on vacation and my ex boyfriend;
♥ went to a burlesque circus show for New Year's Eve Eve;
♥ saw Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Shame, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and A Dangerous Method;
♥ went to the Metropolitan Museum on an evening when they're open late;
♥ walked more than I have in months in Santa Fe;
♥ did a couple hours of research on summer internships here in the city in my field and noted application deadlines and phone numbers for those I will need to call;
♥ started the research for claiming my Birthright trip to Israel.

• I'm hoping to be back for Spring Break, if only because I might need to be here so that I can do some interviews for internships. I think I have a good chance of getting some of the more minor internships, but of course I want the bigger ones. I want the one at Penguin Group. Or Scholastic. Fingers crossed!

• I really need to write my first story for my Independent Study tomorrow or the next day. Airplane writing!

• NaNoWriMo has started (obviously) and I am writing. Slowly, but surely. I am several thousand words behind (at 3026 currently, when today's goal is 6666) so I don't know if I can catch up. I think if there were a couple nights when I wrote 2k words I would be able to, but I haven't yet managed that. We'll see.

• Unfortunately, I don't have an antagonist for my novel yet and, as girasola pointed out, having one might come in handy. I have a small conflict that I am going to use, and I shoehorned a character in to do so, but it's not going to be enough for the thing as a whole. It really is only going to affect the two of the main characters. So I am pondering this.

• I am also pondering how my main main character meets two of the other four main characters. Two I have down (or have planned in my head) but the other two are a little more nebulous. To be fair, so are those characters, so maybe if I had a firmer grasp of who they were, I would be able to figure out how to have everyone get to know each other properly.

• Wow, trying to talk about this without revealing anything about the story is hard.

• I am worried about other writing during NaNoWriMo. As a student getting a degree in Creative Writing, I have to actually do some writing for my classes. I have 2 papers to write during the month of November, not to mention the Peter Pan story I am working on which I still want to use for my workshop day in one of my classes. And I have to write a creative non-fiction piece (which will likely have some of my thoughts on Fantasy in it, so it won't be entirely disconnected from the things I love). That's a lot of words that don't go towards my novel. And it would obviously be cheating to count them as such. So. I feel like there's only so much writing I can do, and that writing things not for NaNoWriMo will distract me and make my wordcount drop. :/ Maybe I will just have to buck up and do them both. Like a reasonable and normal person would.

• I don't really read when I am writing. It's weird. Not out of any design, but because I am putting all my energy into either writing or thinking about my writing and thus don't even consider picking up a book (or reading fic). I really ought to see about changing that somewhat for this NaNoWriMo as there are no movies that I own (except maybe A Midsummer Night's Dream or the Lord of the Rings movies) that are inspiring for the particular thing I'm writing. I ought to read bit and pieces of things that are related to my topic. girasola once pointed out that my research methods were kind of meta, and yeah, that might be true. But they're also entertaining.

• Unrelated to NaNoWriMo: I'm going to see In Time with a friend tonight. It has lots of awesome people in it, so hopefully it will be at least entertaining.

That's all.

• Oh jeez, it's been be a really long time since I wrote here. Mostly that's due to midterm papers. When I have pressing things to do for school, I tend to not let myself do things. (I mean, I still read fic online, but I don't write mine. And I don't get online to talk to people, but I do check email constantly.) I do still see/talk to friends who reach out to me, but I tend not to reach out because I'm technically "not supposed to." Or whatever. Anyway, I sort of became a hermit for a bit. (And I didn't manage to get one paper done, and my teacher told me not to turn it in anymore, since we're past the grading deadline. Which means that my grade for that class got dragged way the hell down, so I'm freaking out about how to pick it up again and maintaining my GPA for my scholarship and oh crap I made myself nauseated again.)

• Other than that last one, I got all A's in my midterm grades. Because I am awesome.

• Speaking of papers, I wrote a paper on Montaigne's essay "On the Cannibals" for my ethics class. I actually thought this one wasn't as good as the really-terribly-awful Machiavelli paper—certainly less organized, as I had less of an idea what I was talking about while I was writing it—but... I got another 25 out of 25 points on it. I should get my first paper for my Bible class (same teacher as Ethics) on Thursday, so we'll see what I get on that. Apparently this teacher really likes me.

• That last bit I actually know for a fact because, through a series of strange events, I ran into the Chair of the Creative Writing department at one of my other teachers' book launch, and she knew who I was because apparently my Ethics and Bible teacher was "raving" about me. Her word, not mine. I was assured that they were all good things, though.

• This encounter also led her to telling me that we should meet so that she could see about getting me out of taking some of the beginning writing classes. I gather she'd read my file, since I didn't actually tell her all that much about my writing experiences before she said that it sounded like I had sort of gone backwards. It would be nice if she could actually get me out of being stuck in the future with some of the people I'm stuck with now, but if not I will have at least cultivated a sort of relationship with her. I'm hoping she can also pull some strings to get me into her Poetry class next semester. (Apparently we have to take a Techniques class for the three main specializations, regardless of what we decide to specialize in.) She's not only smart, but really fun about being smart (if that makes sense) so fingers crossed for at least getting her as a teacher.

• I have a meeting with her and my academic advisor tomorrow.

• Moving right along from school things... The weekend of the 15th I was in a minor collision in my car. By which I mean, I had pulled in behind a guy in a truck at the gate for my dad's community, and instead of opening the gate he started backing up. I didn't realize he couldn't see me, so I thought, "Oh, I'll just get out of your way, dude," but he came straight back into me. I wasn't injured or anything, and only the passenger side rear door of my car was damaged. And, because it was clearly the guy's fault, his insurance is paying to replace my door. I'm taking it in tomorrow, they'll give me a rental for a few days, and then my car will have a door (and a window) that functions properly. Thank god, because we're supposed to get snow tomorrow night, and the window in that door no longer closes all the way, which makes my car awfully cold in the morning even without the possibility of snow.

• This does not solve the issue of my car's engine. But that will have to come a little later when I have the money.

• Speaking of, though, I worked a bunch this past weekend and make some money, all of which will likely be held in reserve for taking my car to the mechanic. I haven't done it yet because I don't want to take it and then not have the money to pay him when he's done. Hopefully I will be able to get this done in the next week or so. Fingers crossed.

• So, now that I'm actually in school for writing, I'm actually writing again. Not a whole lot, but some. I've actually started writing a story I've had notes for (and the first few sentences) since high school. It's a gender-swapped Peter Pan story, sort of. (All the credit for reminding me that I had it in my wip folder goes to olukemi and she knows why. :>) I'm really enjoying it so far, and I'm trying to finish it for when my turn to be workshopped rolls around in my Fiction class. (I can't remember when that is, now, but I have it written down somewhere.) I'd also like to finish it before NaNoWriMo, since I will be putting all my writing during the month of November towards that.

• So yeah, NaNoWriMo. I will be once again attempting to beat my odds. (Those odds being that I am 0 for 4 at this point.) I... don't yet know what I'm going to write. I'm thinking I might try this thing that girasola and I have been planning for years but never really get around to writing. Of all the things in my WIP folder, it has had the most plotting and planning done on it. On the other hand, as it's not entirely mine, I'm not sure I want to just go ahead and write it. Part of the fun of it would likely be writing it with her. My other options are entirely unplanned and unplotted as of yet, but I could change that. I don't know right now. But, in case anyone cares, you can follow my progress on my NaNoWriMo profile. (And until they fix the writing buddies option, that's all you can do.)

• I have been feeling lonely lately, even before I shut myself in my house and pretended to write papers for two weeks. I miss girasola and exrpan, who are not only my missing best friends, but have fabulous lives in NYC (no matter how much they complain). Not the least because I haven't been online in weeks. But also because I am just sort of feeling like I will never be able to get back to NYC, like I had my chance and I blew it. This is partially because looking at the prices for apartments in NYC is super depressing and also because there are things I am considering once I graduate (fingers crossed fingers crossed fingers crossed) that aren't in NYC. It makes my stomach go all noodly when I think about it. Ugh. Anyway, I miss you guys. ♥

• I am currently eating pasta with pesto that I not only made, but made with basil I grew. It's super delicious. (Even though it's throwing off my allowed meals for the day and not helping me lose the weight I gained while my Gram was here.)

• Oh yeah! My Gram came to visit. The same weekend that I got into the accident, actually. It was really nice. My dad and I cooked for her. Things that we got the recipes for from her years ago and used to make more often but haven't in years. Like the family spaghetti sauce. And blintzes. And baked macaroni and cheese. And frito pies with avocado. It was ridiculous how much amazing food we had, that was all cooked by me and my dad. Gram also took my dad and I out for a minorly expensive dinner at a fancy place that he and I like a lot. (It's where I took him for Father's Day this year.) Anyway, I swear I gained at least five pounds. Which means fitting in my jeans is getting problematic again. Whoops. Still, it was really nice to see Gram. We watched The Princess Bride one day, which she hadn't seen and I didn't know that my dad had. (He is a big squooshy softie, apparently. No, actually, it probably has more to do with Mandy Patinkin than anything else.) It was really nice.

• For those interested, the Big Session Festival is back. It went away for a little bit, but with the release of the Oysterband's new album with June Tabor (I suspect), it's back for this coming summer. I was looking at how much money I would need to save to be able to go, and holy crap. The tickets for the festival are actually reasonably priced, but airfares to England (as always) are frighteningly high. I think the chances of me being able to make it out there next summer are slim. Maybe I'll see if my mom will match whatever I can save... Chances are still slim, but at least she'll be proud that I'm making an effort, so it's not a terrible idea to ask, I suppose. Anyway, for those who are thinking about next summer's vacation and who happen to like the Oysterband (or celtic folk music in general) should definitely consider going.

• Wrote another X-Men: First Class fic last week. Or, I finished writing it last week. As it's been revealed, I'll likely post it here soon. Though, I want to change the ending a bit. So you can expect that soonish, I think. There may be some other fics coming before the end of the year, too. I'd like to actually finish some of the things I've started. Since I think I actually have a dozen fics in progress at the moment.

Oh jeez. This entry is really freaking long. I need to stop writing it now, regardless of whether I have more things to say. And I have to go write some poems for class tomorrow, so.