There is an upside to not actually going to any Halloween parties, and that is that I can dress up as however many people I like! In this case, three.

The theme for the evening is "clothing I own and love but rarely have any use for."

( Photos under the cut )

I should probably stop procrastinating and start writing things now.

IMPORTANT ETA: when Geocities went down it took my Peter/Harriet mood theme with it, so they have now been replaced with the Farnon brothers. Best mood theme ever, y/y/mfy?

I have no particular opinion one way or another on the existence of Disney's A Christmas Carol, but I wish it wasn't coming out now. I was very carefully brought up to believe that the Christmas season doesn't come until after Thanksgiving, and I firmly believe it should stay there. Christmas movies have no business coming out at the beginning of November.

Also, the commercials are making me homesick, which is equally premature and Generally Not On.

As a general rule, though, I am quite fond of November and December, despite encroaching schoolwork and costuming work and miserable weather. December means a train trip and Bethlehem and the Moravian Bookshop and Hannukah and Christmas; and November means just enough snow to be pretty, and buying a hot drink and curling up in an armchair somewhere and writing a lot. Because, yup, November is Get Your Shit Written Month.

I hesitate to call it National Novel Writing Month, because I'm not writing a novel this year; I was going to, and then I was going to finish last year's (which could take up another 40K easily). And then it got to be mid-October and I have three fics in progress that could easily be 30K+ each, and . . . yeah, I'd like to get these done someday. So my actual goal for November is a thousand words of either Zac/Vanessa/Ashley or Hilary/St. George a day, plus a second draft of the Link/Violet by the end of the month. I think this is doable; a mess, and probably not ~in the spirit of NaNo~, but hopefully productive.

And newredshoes, or any other Chicago folks, if you would like to have writing parties again this year I am all for it. :D?

So it turns out that drafting body blocks is the most relaxing thing ever. It involves exactly enough math not to be boring, but not enough to require actual effort, and I want to do it all the time.

In not-precisely-related news: I'm fond of Newsies and Hairspray and all, and Singin' in the Rain and Jekyll and Hyde are pretty great, but Funny Girl is the best of all possible musicals, and if you disagree something is clearly fundamentally wrong inside you and I should probably come find you and put you out of your misery.

How are all your days going! :D

Today I discovered that my NYR recipient loved my fic! And then I went to "class," which was actually sitting by myself drawing a hallway in a Victorian office building for three hours while I listened to musicals and strangers sometimes wandered by and told me I was doing a good job. (And when my professor came to check on me, I mentioned this and he said "I can see why! :D") And when I got home I discovered that someone had recced The Fraser Record (Excerpts) and there is HSM superhero fic.

It's like yesterday got two days' worth of suck and today got two days' worth of awesome. I am confused.

So we seem to have skipped autumn entirely this year-- we've gone from 80-degree weather to 40-degree weather in about two weeks. Half the population of Chicago, including me, was in H&M today frantically buying up gloves and scarves and hats. In other news: I broke out my long wool coat today, I've switched from iced coffee to hot, and I'm on the Amtrak website checking the train schedule so I can go back to Bethlehem for Christmas. Next up: emailing the Moravian Bookshop, the only pleasant retail workplace in the world, to see if they can give me hours for a couple of weeks. Winter is coming whether I like it or not :/ I could swear I saw a snowflake today, but I choose to believe I imagined that.

Piano-relearning is going smoothly, so far! The library conveniently had a lesson book called I Used to Play Piano, which claims I probably remember more than I thought and is turning out to be right. I had a few scary minutes when I discovered that, despite playing one instrument or another for sixteen years, I couldn't quite remember which rest was which; but I got over that okay and am having lots of fun.

Now if only I could learn to dance >:(

I went to the Coming Out Ball last night! It was fun-- not a life-changing experience or anything, which I was vaguely afraid it would be, but there was music and I danced to it and it was fun.

Also, and most importantly, ( I got dressed up, and took photos of myself. )

So I was going to stay home on the computer all day today, like a good little shut-in, and then for some reason I have forgotten manasseh started telling me all about what a moron her elementary school (or middle school, or something) music teacher was. And I found myself getting really really butthurt about this, because if there's any topic that sets me off for no good reason it's talking about how shitty art and music education often is.

The solution to this, obviously, was to go to the public library, borrow a book called I Used To Play Piano, and go poke at a piano in one of the practice rooms for an hour and a half. I thought it went well, considering I haven't touched a piano in twelve years-- well being an extremely relative term in this case, but still. When my life went completely to shit at the beginning of 2008, one of the things that went with it was music; I hadn't touched an instrument in like a year and a half until today. I hadn't noticed either, so it's not really a huge deal, but it was nice and maybe I should get into the habit of it.

I've never rly thought of myself primarily as a ~creative~ person, for whatever reason. Except that I have spent this week sewing things, writing things, drawing things, playing piano, reading things, and watching movies. So possibly I should rethink that point of view.

Man, you know, sometimes you have a hugely long week-- awesome, but long-- full of awesome but long days. And you wake up Wednesday morning, and on the one hand you get to sew things in school today! But on the other hand, it's six-thirty AM and you feel gross and it looks like the week is never ever going to end.

And then you go online and discover that someone has written AU fic where Zac Efron is a superhero and things just look a whole lot better.

Ahahaha so, my day. Incoherence forthcoming.

( Breaking news: Cyndi is neurotic! Who knew! )

Yeah, so you know how some days Alfred Borden loves his wife best and some days he loves magic best? Well, I am not actually [spoiler] but it feels like it sometimes; some days I'm a useless waste of self-pitying carbon and some days I'm a superhero. (There are very few days in between.)

I spent the weekend being a sobbing waste of carbon over having to drop out of polybigbang, but then I watched a Phineas and Ferb marathon and felt a little better. And as of yesterday, thanks to blue_monarch and deconcentrate and my boss, I am a superhero again! I am a superhero who can sew a seam, and shoop things so well the photographer I work for is going to recommend me to more photographers, and write awesome fic even if I can't meet a deadline with it! And I am also a superhero who is going to be assistant costume designer on Batboy: The Musical. I'm not entirely sure what an assistant costume designer does, but I intend to be awesome at it.

Today I learned to use a sewing machine, spent seventy dollars on drawing supplies, and went to a department meeting where the new department head made a big excited speech about how the world needs more female playwrights writing about women and actors of color playing traditionally-white roles.

I go to the coolest school on the planet. :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

> First day of school! More importantly: first coffee of the school year. Mmmmmm.
> Two days till I have a functioning computer again thank you God.
> Still the only prospective Illustration major in the world who can't draw. Cannot wait to see the advisor's face when I tell him that.
> New roommate coming tomorrow aaaaaaaaahh
> The Red Eye, a virtual paragon of hardassed investigative journalism, tells me that public support for having the Olympics here is falling off. THANK YOU, CHICAGO. KEEP THAT UP.
> polybigbang is five thousand words in. If I can hit 20K by the 20th, I'm sending a draft in; otherwise I'm dropping out. I think that's fair.
> The links at the top of my LJ layout have suddenly vanished, though I haven't changed anything in the CSS or display settings. Anyone know anything about this?

Hello, Internet! I am still wigging out, because my computer is still being crappy, but I am sort of settling into a constant lowlevel wigout until Tuesday when I can get into the school library and start using reliable computers. This still really sucks.

Tomorrow I think I will clean my room, do laundry, and have a nice Labor Day party at home by myself; I bought hot dogs and buns and relish and everything. And attempt to work on fic longhand. I really don't hold out much hope for polybigbang at this point, but I might as well try.

I have seen Taking Woodstock, Gamer, and Julie and Julia in the last week or two, and have thoughts on them! Those will appear Tuesday, if I remember to post them.

In the meantime, a movie-related poll: folks, who are some actors (male) from the 60s or earlier who were actual good guys? Like not sexist, not racist, etc. So far my mom and I have come up with Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Yul Brynner, and DeForrest Kelley.

Yeah, so this really really sucks. My computer is barely useable and getting gradually worse; basically I can only do one thing at a time, and right now that thing is almost always backing up my files to box.net. I can't find my Vista install CD, so I can't send the computer to a professional place to get fixed, because if they wipe my hard drive I've paid at least a hundred dollars to make my computer completely unusable. There are things I need to be doing-- signing up for Internet service, finding a job, signing my lease, not to mention writing fic-- that I simply can't do right now, and while I'm shockingly functional 80% of the time it is amazing how hard it is to make myself eat when I haven't got anything else productive to do while doing it. And I have to get this all sorted out before the 16th, when my free box.net trial will run out.

newredshoes, berserkide, do either of you know anyone with a computer running Vista? I could really, really use an install CD to borrow.

Ahahaha so I start classes in one week, so of course my computer contracted a virus yesterday. At least, I think it's a virus; that's the only useful suggestion tech support's made so far. In any case I can only log in in safe mode, and even then it freezes really easily, which means I've had to restart all the virus scans I'm trying to run like five times. I tried to outsmart it by starting them and going to bed, and woke up to find the computer locked and not letting me log back in.

POINT BEING. My Internet use will be minimal for the next while. Hopefully not too long a while, because I have little to no life outside the Internet, but I'm trying to use the computer just barely enough to stop it going to sleep.

Ugh.

Yesterday I woke up in the morning, ate a nutritious breakfast, applied to jobs, ate a nutritious lunch, ran household errands, and . . . then fell asleep at 8PM before I could cook and eat a nutritious dinner, but I had every intention of doing so, okay.

Today I woke up in the morning again, had grilled cheese for breakfast, watched cartoons all day, and then decided I didn't feel like cooking and went to Walgreen's for a liter of soda and a box of mac'n'cheese. And halfway there I discovered I was wearing one black and one white Converse sneaker.

The moral of this story: you win some, you lose some.

I don't know what to say, but I feel like I should be posting. Nothing terribly exciting is going on in my life right now.

Crossover fic is chugging along. polybigbang is chugging along. I'm not sure why, because I still have no idea what the fuck I'm doing and am thinking up things to happen as I go along, but once I know what scene I'm writing it's surprisingly easy and fun to write.

After a lot of calling around, my CTA pass finally showed up; my drafting table hasn't, though, and I've been calling the company so often that I'm on friendly first-name terms with the shipping manager but he can't get hold of the warehouse for tracking information. So in the meantime my CTA pass is no good, because I can't leave the apartment for fear that Fed-Ex will show up with my table.

School starts in a few weeks; I'm taking Drawing I and Costume Construction I, which are both useful life skills in any case.

I seem to have fallen off the baseball-following wagon, as I do every year. I have the vague impression that the Mets are being complete crap and the entire Cubs roster is injured, so I suppose my attempt at support wasn't much help to them in any case. I have been watching Ken Burns' Baseball for the first time since I was tiny, so I'm still loving the whole baseball history thing.

I still don't have a job! Surprise surprise.

Like I said: not very exciting. Being stuck at home does that.

Okay, this bit of complaining is kind of complicated. Hang in there.

--> Almost three weeks ago now, I ordered two fairly expensive things: a new desk and a 30-day CTA pass, which cost about two hundred dollars combined.
--> By last Monday my credit card still hadn't been charged for the desk, so I called up the company and they went "Whups, sorry, getting on that, you should get tracking info in another day or two." And I never heard from them again.
--> The transit pass never showed up either; when I checked my confirmation email I discovered I had accidentally had it shipped to my billing address instead, which is a place I haven't lived since last June and have never bothered to change since I get all my bank alerts, etc. by email. This, at least, was my own error.
--> I called the furniture place again today, and discovered that it had been both shipped and delivered last week, and signed for by someone whose name I didn't recognize.
--> So, being irritated and needing a walk, I went down to campus to see if I could track down the envelope with my transit pass in it, and the lady in the mailroom said "Oh right, I remember your mail! It was an enormous box, we returned it to sender." And apparently the envelope from the CTA, too, but . . . what.
--> The furniture company apologizes profusely, and claims they're going to send me another desk. The Online Orders department at the CTA . . . went to voicemail.
--> Conclusion: I really need to change my billing address and start buying my transit passes in person at Jewel or somewhere; Chicago Drafting Furniture's shipping department is made of fail.

HERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME.

1. You know that ridiculous crossover fic I've been nattering about since January 16? It just went off to beta, all nearly-29000-words-and-gonna-get-longer of it, so HA. FIC WILL APPEAR RELATIVELY SOONISH.

Of course, this now means that I no longer have an excuse not to actually reread the Series of Unfortunate Events books, or watch Star Trek, or-- most importantly-- stop looking at pictures of motorcycles and buckle down to write my polybigbang. Oops.

2. So naturally I spent the rest of my evening torrenting Ken Burns' Baseball and watching the first inning. I haven't watched it since I was little and renting the videos with my dad! And I've failed at my New Years' resolution of keeping track of how the Cubs and the Mets are doing, same as I do every year, but oh my god baseball history is still so cool and I love it.

3. The Sisters Grimm series, by Michael Buckley. ( Block quotes under the cut. )

So yeah, these . . . may or may not have beat out Snow White: A Tale of Terror for my favorite fractured fairy tale, because I love that movie an awful lot, but they're coming awfully close. :DDDDDDDDDDDD

4. In celebration of the possibility of me finally actually posting fic: a WIP excerpt meme. This thing is always going around somewhere.

( Three Link/Violet, one Doctor Who/Hot Fuzz, and the beginning of my polybigbang under the cut. )



5. I cleaned my laptop screen! The world looks so much brighter now :O