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 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.

Today I returned a pair of shoes I'd bought and then decided were hideously ugly, bought two more pairs (for the same price) that are not hideously ugly, picked up Lemony Snicket's Unauthorized Autobiography and some actual useful domestic items, and came home. Successful shopping trips! They're a wonderful thing.

And then I actually opened the book I'd bought. DDDDDDD:

( cut for a couple of scans and some flail )

Even the book I'm actually reading right now is talking about metamathematics and how some mathematical propositions have been proven unproveable, so we can't ever know whether they're true or not. So between that and all the fourth-wall warping going around, I'm not feeling too well right now. I think I might go lie down and quietly read something nice and soothing, like say a Stephen King novel.

Yesterday it was lovely and sunny and I went and had a picnic lunch in the park; today it was drizzly and cold and I got a hot chocolate and went used-book shopping at the book festival downtown. Both very pleasant afternoons! But ftlog, weather, it is June and you should make up your mind.

I got four books for myself and one for my mom, though! So not a bad haul for seven dollars. And I ran into my ex-boss three times, but that wasn't terribly surprising given the venue. Honestly, the Powell's tent traumatized me much worse with . . . whatever the hell new editions of the Series of Unfortunate Events they had, which were garish and hideous and made me weep into my cocoa. Helquist's cover art for the later books makes me do that anyway (what the fuck is with Sunny's hair DDDDDDDDD:) but at least the cover design used to be good :(

In slightly more important news, I'm moving next week! Down the hall into a bigger bedroom, anyway, which means I get all the fun of moving with none of the annoyance of actually having to pack. This is going to be fantastic.

Oh and, um, I've been coughing for two weeks now and I'm getting pretty sick of it. Otherwise life is fun and good but not really all that interesting. I'm way behind on movie posts and should probably do something about that.

I don't know if nai_is_not was here for this, but I suddenly remembered today that time in-- spring of 2005, I guess, when a friend of ours who was a ~*big shot*~ in the school drama program showed up to lunch one day. And she was all excited and enthusiastic because it was the time of year when they were figuring out what shows to do next year, and she had just seen the book for some new show called High School Musical and was seriously over the moon about it, it was amazing, we absolutely had to get it and do it next year.

So I had a good nostalgic laugh about that a while, because oh man, what a close shave we had with . . . I don't even know what. I'm not sure why this didn't link up in my head until just now.

In more recent news! I got a musical birthday biscuit tin today, so that's sitting on my desk looking pretty now. And I spent all day curled up on the couch with the cat watching Dead Like Me, and now I have doughnuts and I'm reading the baseball headlines on Yahoo.

So all-in-all it's been a lovely lazy Monster Day, despite the lack of candy or monsters. :D

Okay, Nike has a Mets t-shirt I really like on sale and obviously I had to get a Cubs shirt to go with it. So there (including shipping) goes a chunk of the money right thar, leaving seventy bucks to play with.

But hey, it's not even my birthday for two more weeks. I have plenty of time to figure out what I'm doing, and narrate it all to the Internet whether you want to hear about it or not. Hmmmmm.

EDIT: newredshoes is Satan. But an awesome kind of Satan with perfect timing and A++++ taste in shoes :(

As a sort of intellectual exercise lately, I've been figuring out what my ideal computer setup would be-- you know, if I happened to have a few thousand dollars lying around, which I don't expect to any time soon. My conclusion was: a desktop PC with a giant monitor for video files and DVDs and music when I'm at home, a tablet PC for portability and because I really want a tablet with Windows 7, and a home server to store all the video and music and keep it accessible from either.

My question is this! Can I approximate this arrangement for a lot cheaper with just the notebook, the monitor, and an external HD? Or is there some crucial element of the server arrangement I'd lose doing that? Because I'm really not sure I need to blow $600 on a server for a home inhabited only by me.

The bad of today:
* My haircut came out horrible. Which is partly my fault, I guess, for not paying attention to what the stylist was doing, but . . . dude. I left the salon before my hair was dry, had it tied up for the rest of the day, and came home to discover I was secretly hideous. So now I have to go back tomorrow and make them fix it. :/
* I haven't heard from my telecommute job in two weeks-- no emails, no paycheck, certainly no work to do. So I went to investigate in person today and the building had never heard of the company. Another thing to have to fix when I'm downtown tomorrow.

The good of today:
everything else!
* I got new sneakers! They are adorable and plaid, and I'm wandering around my apartment wearing them with my pajamas.
* Frost/Nixon was a seriously badass movie.
* Roosevelt and Columbia think I'm doing okay academically for transfer purposes! \o/

Random aimless picspam tomorrow, when I've got a decent haircut to throw into it.

I'm having a pretty good day! I just thought you all should know :D

I have actual money! I sent out job applications this morning, and joined meetup.com so I can have more than three friends and stop stalking newredshoes and izzyryu-- I mean hi sorry did I say that out loud? I know what I'm getting almost everyone for the holidays! I've poked around online and gotten software that will string little blinky lights around the edge of my screen, and found some pretty Christmas wallpapers to go with it. And I'm behind on my NaNo but I'm going to catch up, dammit, and kick this novel's ass.

In the meantime, I'm off to the record store and the DRL to obtain cash! And buy the LOTR trilogy on DVD, because I promised that to myself for hitting 30K on NaNo and I've at least managed that. \o/

There may yet be a post for people who want late Christmas or Hannukah cards. WE SHALL SEE.

Also, disturbingly relevantly: newredshoes, are you still up for hanging out tomorrow evening, and if so where?

Angel and I've been shopping for my prom dress for the past hour and a half or so. Got a dozen or so possibilites, with these at the top of the list:

Dark red under floral black lace
Purple and red with paisley beading on bodice
Black with turqouise insert and rhinestones

(I'm asking for input here, in case you hadn't noticed.)

Emerald Blades is still stuck on Halloween. That's incredibly sad.

I was gonna go to bed at a relatively normal time tonight. In fact, I did. But I couldn't sleep . . . so here I am.

Ran into Sammi at the library today-- she's not going to First Night after all. Oh well.

I got my French essay written the other day, but I don't know how.

In the next two weeks, I have to complete four essays and two pieces of fiction. Minimum. Plus revise two old papers, and then there are two more stories I'm doing on my own time: one fanfic and one original, although my writing sample for Governor's School is gonna be part of the latter. Most of this writing is due either Monday or Tuesday, and I have done none of it. All I seem to be capable of is reading library books, bitching on my LJ, visiting the school weight room, and sleeping.

I actually lost an hour yesterday. I was reading Cold Allies by Patricia Anthony, which I'm sure is a very good book that I would've greatly enjoyed had I possessed the mental capacities to remember which character was which. I glanced at the clock-- it was 2:15. I read for about half an hour more, looked at the clock again. It said 3:50. I don't wanna know how the hell that happened.

On the up side, I had some fun with post-holiday sales today and got m'self three pairs of pants and a cute shirt for 47 bucks total. (Cords and sweats, seventeen dollars total; jeans and top, fifteen each.)

Have also produced this. It scanned really badly but still looks better here than on the actual page.

( crappy excuse for kinda, sorta, maybe the beginning of a drawing )

I don't draw that often, so it's REALLY slow. Even slower than writing, which for me is saying something. Took me two hours just to get that far. (A good hour of that was because decline benches are surprisingly difficult to draw. Especially for someone who can't remember the rules of perspective to save her life.)

On the even upper side (I know, that sounded wrong), there's been a sudden gush (even wronger!) of NC-17 fic on McShepSlash. So I'm feeling better.

Although--between that and the decline bench-- I probably won't be getting to sleep any time soon. *giggles evilly*

This can't be helping my sanity any.

I had a sort of accident with the computer last night and lost my list of people to send ecards to. So if I didn't get to you, I'm incredibly sorry, and please please please don't think I don't love you, 'cause I do.

*massive group huggle*

Watched mass quantities of TV today: Frequency, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and an old Buffy ep.

Got a bunch of cool shit, but nothing terribly noteworthy. Nothing I couldn't do without for the most part, except the money and possibly the DVD player.

To clarify: I have $75 in bills, &22.25 in quarters (my dad's parents do this to me every year), and $20 on a Borders/Waldenbooks gift cards. So if anyone wants to go shopping in the next week . . . *looks around hopefully*

I've been trying all bloody day to remember the name of one character in Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (a too-little-known sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea). He's a military engineer, character-wise an ancestor of McGyver, and he's really cool. But all I could remember was his first name, Cyrus, and that kept making me think of McCormick, who can't be right because Cyrus McCormick was an actual historical figure. I just got it, though. His name was Cyrus Harding.

He was also a massive whumpage/HC victim. Maybe it's genetic?

What the hell is wrong with me?

More TV: Final Fantasy is on in ten minutes. Gonna go watch that. Yay.

***NOTE: This is actually several separate entries that kinda got consolidated, k?***

Drew Balshi just cracked the 1000-point mark for his high school career, and Windows Media Player is refusing to play any songs in English again. *beats WMP with a spoon*

Well, it's playing the theme music from Star Trek: Generations now, which has no real words, just breaking glass and applause at the end.

Now it's playing Robert again.

Ha! Smashing Pumpkins! I gagne yo.

ANYWAY.

Wandered around downtown for like two hours today. There's just something about walking down Main Street in the snow with hot chocolate in one hand and shopping bags in the other. It was tres festive, even though I ran into no one from school. At all. That surprised me. (Unless you count my dad . . .) But I got my shopping done. Cards and everything. Just gotta finish wrapping stuff. And do my Gov. School application. Which is mostly a story I haven't even started yet.

*slaps self* I can't even remember the last time I wrote original fic. I think it was last spring sometime. This is kinda bad.

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I don't GET this. I don't like it. Right now, it doesn't even make sense to me.

Yeah, he's nice to look at. More than nice. But I have yearbook pictures and that one picture I took. I don't need him around for that. I don't know why I want him around, really. He's nothing special, really, just a bloodthirsty porn-addicted jock with long eyelashes and a taste for Nietzsche. Or else just for wasting school resources.

But I do miss him, very much, and I can't figure out why.

And yet the entire world, all the music ever played and books ever written and movies ever filmed, seem to be telling me still: Go after him. It's worth the risk. Everything seems to be telling me to do something. And I can't figure out what. I don't think there is anything. But the world won't leave me alone.

What exactly is this hole in my life that apparently needs to be caulked by the graphite-dust intestines of stick figures?

wow... cyndi, YOU are 'in desparate need of fingering'... and more... you oddling.
Thanks, Phee. Love you too. *grins*

I'm exaggerating, of course-- at least, I hope so. Because I'm always melodramatic. I'm really writing a fanfic here, because I don't see my own life any more, just a fandom. No wonder I'm so screwed up.

WMP just played (gasp, English!) "Do You Realize," immediately followed by "The Scientist" and then "Take On Me." Now that's a misguided omen if ever I saw one. All I need now's "Stairway to Heaven."

(Hey Molly, remember the time he accidentally(?) dropped directions to his house in my Japanese binder? You said that was an omen. And look what happened.)

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This is the greatest vid I've ever seen. It's hilarious.

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Unrequited love is even sadder in Gaelic.


Gurtric mi ort a smaointeach'
As t'aogais tha mi truagh
'Is mara dean mi d'fhaotainn
Cha bhi mo shaoghal buan

Often do I think of you
As your image leaves me sad
And if I cannot have you
My world will not last
-- Capercaillie, "Mo Chailin Dileas Donn"

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survey from Brit:

( Just a tad bitter-sounding here . . . )

I've been wanting a grilled cheese sandwich for about an hour. I've just been just too lazy to actually go make one.

Think I'll go do that and just take it to bed with me.

--------

Say after me: better to be safe than sorry.

Hmph.

Just ignore the subject line. I've been reading Caution Man again. And please don't yell at me about the current after-effect line. If anything's wrong with it, it's Kent's fault :P

Before anyone asks *glares at Leah* No, I did NOT ask Phil out today. And I actually have a good reason. (Well, a reason, anyway.) We only had a half-day today, so in order to cram as much in as possible The Moravian Academy Powers That Be skipped two periods and made the rest really short. Which was great, and lovely, and fun, except that the two periods we skipped were the two when I'd've had class with Phil.

Thank God for TMAPTB. Always looking out for my dignity, eh?

I couldn't grab him after school, either, because Gavin decided to drive everyone down to the labs (it's, like, a two minute walk) for Scholastic Scrimmage practice as penance for the fact that he himself couldn't go. So I got as far as "Hi," and then I had Gavin and Ranjan and Ben bearing down on me and telling me to get to the car right now. And by the time I'd shut them up, Phil had walked away.

Well, I can always call him. Now *that* would really be great. Almost makes me hope there are FBI agents tapping our phone lines. God knows those guys could probably use a good laugh.

ANYWAY.

Went to practice for an hour and a half, which was a pretty nice time.

Then went Snowball shopping with my mom. Got a butterfly-shaped rhinestone barrette, something like five inches across, and some battery-powered electric candles. (Which are not something I'm wearing for Snowball.) Then we went to about five different stores, all of which one would expect to carry formal gloves but none of which did. So I finally convinced my parents (yes, my dad was along too-- I have no idea why) to go to the actual mall, whree I found not only black opera gloves *punches air* but two nice eyeshadows as well.

And my mom paid for all of this, which makes it even better.

Note to self: Self, no matter how much you love your Mary Janes with the three-and-a-half-inch heels, never, ever again wear them when going shopping.

I have gone shopping. Yay. JHU is now forty-one dollars richer thanks to me.

Deus Vitae, volume one. Immortal Rain, volume one. A 2001: A Space Oddyssey poster featuring a giant eyeball. An inspirational greeting card. And the TMBG album Mink Car. I wanted Winter's Tale-- special-ordered it a few days ago, in fact-- but it hasn't arrived yet. I'll go check again tomorrow, since it's seventeen dollars (in PAPERBACK, fer cryin' out loud) and I only have nine dollars left of my allowance.

I wanna see if I get get Mark Helprin to autograph it at the end of the session when he comes to pick up Liv. That'd be so freakin' amazing.