this machine will not communicate

Well, I have caught up on my flist through November 1st.  I didn't comment on everything because that would take me all day, but I have read it.  Oof.  I was just talking to a coworker about social media, and I'm like, I don't feel that I'm measurably more busy this year than I was last year or the year before, but for some reason I just never have time these days.  But I'm going to start making time, by God.

I am too lazy to get a 2013 NaNo icon, but yes, I am doing NaNo this year.  I'm actually just adding 50k to The Orphan Queen, which I started back in the summer of 2011.  I finished Part One just before November started; now, Part One is almost 130,000 words, so it's actually a whole book?  But I'm just going to write the whole thing before I worry about books vs. parts and the idea of a series and all that jazz.  Right now, I'm stunningly in love with the whole thing, and it's going exactly as I want it to go, and I love all my characters and think I'm brilliant, &c.  This is often what happens when I'm in the groove on writing, and it's kind of funny to me, because I think it's just my brain psyching itself up to spend all this mental energy on this one thing.  Like I justify it to myself.  "Yep, spending a couple hours again today writing, doing it on my break and at lunch and secretly in the back, but it's okay, because I am a genius!"  IDK.

Really, though, I'm very excited about it.  I feel like maybe after Part One gets a spit and a polish after November, I'd like to have some beta readers take a look at it, but I'm afraid if I get negative feedback it would throw a wrench in the works as far as bustling ahead on the rest goes.  We'll see, I don't know!

We replaced the light in in our bathroom with a light-slash-fan, which is quite nice as we didn't have a bathroom fan before and showers were steamy.  We also replaced the light sconce thing above the sink.  (The old one got all rusty because of aforementioned lack of fan.)  It was a two-day project, and I use the pronoun "we" a bit freely, as I don't know anything about wiring, and there's only so much room in the bathroom, so I wasn't very hands-on myself.  Dad spent a lot of time in the attic replacing wiring and getting everything set up, and we bought him a cake to thank him.  :)  So improvements continue, slowly.  My sister did tear down the remaining nasty half-rotten, moldy walls in the basement, so that was fun!  Baby steps, baby steps.

It's been a couple of action-packed days.  Thursday night we left straight from work to go see The Cornetto Trilogy.  Such fun!  It had been years since I'd actually sat and watched either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz from beginning to end, and of course doing so on the big screen with a theater full of fans is the best way to rewatch something.  I went with my sisters and some friends, and we had a ton of fun.  And we ate a ton of food!  Because of course we went to the Drafthouse.  For Movie #1 I had a coupon for free popcorn, which I had smothered in real melted butter.  For Movie #2 I had fish and chips, and my sisters split a chips and queso and an amazing grilled cheese sandwich we plan to recreate ASAP: sourdough bread, white cheddar, caramelized onions, bacon, and apple slices.  For Movie #3 we all got milkshakes (Mexican vanilla, chocolate peanut butter, and chocolate espresso), and then one of my sisters and I splurged and got fresh-baked cookies, too.

This was of course a huge mistake.

OMG, we were all SO SICK Thursday night.  I was afraid my little sister was going to throw up first in the parking garage, then out the window as we drove home.  I was afraid I was going to have to make myself throw up.  (I hate vomiting more than just about anything.  I told my other sister in the morning that I didn't because I didn't want to wake them up, and she was like, thanks, because your dejected sobbing definitely would have woke us up.)  I was just so uncomfortable, and like, how could I be so full when I didn't feel terrible while I was still eating?  Ugh.

Anyway, The World's End was GREAT.  Really, really funny, from beginning to end.  Eddie Marsan was incredible; I don't remember seeing him before in such a broadly-comic role, but he did it so well.  We're probably going to see it again this weekend with my dad.  During the first intermission, we had a trivia contest; during the second, there was a drinking contest.  For The World's End, they brought us all twisty straws (you'll understand when you see it), and then coasters and these weird mouthpieces.  My little sister immediately stuck hers in her mouth, and we were, I'm not even joking, like hysterical laughing for the next five minutes.  The Alamo guy came over and took a picture of her.



Then yesterday, we moved little sister into her freshman dorm.  Kansas City has been having a really mild summer, so of course yesterday it was up in the 90s with no breeze to speak of.  Thankfully it wasn't too busy and we got up there early.  She's got a single, lots of room, pretty nice all things considered.  After we got everything unpacked and mostly put away, we walked to campus and had lunch at the student union.  Then my sisters went to scout out where all her classes were going to be, while I stayed in the union and read.  We met back up and returned to her dorm, hanging some posters and stealing cans of pop from the outdoor break station.  (Her mini-fridge is FULL of pop.)  Then it was to my parents to visit, then to my grandpa to visit, then we came home and promptly went to bed at about 9pm.  I slept HARD, for like 10 hours.  It was intense.

So today I'm proofing an audio book, cleaning house, working on my het bigbang (2k words finished, 8k words to go!), and generally relaxing.  A boring weekend.

Ugh, this week.  For almost two months, I've been fighting off an ear infection.  My ear would start to close up, or it would start to get sore, and I would up my Vit C and take some decongestant, and things would go back to normal for 3-5 days, then the cycle would begin again.  Last week, it became clear that the battle was over.  It was like there was some sentient ear infection imp living in my ear, determined that I would get an ear infection, damn it!  Tuesday the ear was completely closed, and really started to hurt, so I called and made a doctor's appointment.  By the time I saw my doctor the next day, the swelling had begun.

For those of you who are lucky enough to have never had a severe ear infection, the swelling is the best part, really.  My neck, where the Eustachian tube starts; the ear canal; behind the ear itself.  By Wednesday night, the side of my head was so swollen that I couldn't chew, I could hardly open my mouth, and it hurt to smile and even swallow.

And then the pain, oh, the pain.  I'm not even exaggerating when I say that Wednesday and Thursday was in the top three worst pain I've ever had in my life.  Thank GOD, my doctor gave me ~*~hyrdocodone.  But even that was really only effective for about two hours.  I was supposed to take one every 6-8 hours, but those two days, if I made it 4 hours, I was very proud of myself.  (It was so bad Wednesday night that at one point I was actually hoping that my eardrum would rupture just so the pressure would relent.)

By Saturday afternoon, the swelling and most of the pain was finally gone, but as of today, the stupid thing is STILL closed up, and it's achy and tender.  I have this horrible premonition that I'm going to finish out this round of antibiotics, and then it's going to go nuclear again.  Siiiiiigh.

It was kind of embarrassing, when I googled home remedies, that everything I read was like "your baby probably has an ear infection if she's tugging on her ear and crying!"  It's just sort of undignified to get an ear infection as an adult, let alone one that's bad enough that I ended up calling in sick to work three days in a row.  Blergh.

Ugh, I've been so bad about posting and reading my flist in the past few months, which is to say, I basically have been doing neither.  I haven't been posting because I pretty much have nothing to post about - I work, and then I work, and then I write, and sometimes I do laundry and clean house.  I occasionally eat.  And it's not like I had been slacking off all year to find myself with my back against the wall come screenplay submission season; I have been writing steadily and consistently since September on the two scripts I'm submitting this year.  But this always happens anyway, and it's a particularly bad one this year.

I am really, really happy with the script I wrote this year, though.  Definitely the most polished first draft I've ever put together.  One of those where once I got the idea, the main plot was just there, ready to go.  There was some work on details and the nuts and bolts of scene building, but I didn't have to futz about with "oh how should this end" and "all right, I have a story, now what's the character arc and theme?"  So that was exciting.

I'm trying to get a revision done on a script I wrote last year; I didn't finish it in time for the first two competitions, and I'm very doubtful I'll get it done for Nicholl on May 1 (considering I'm on page 21, ahahaha).  But I should definitely have it done for AFF on June 1, and considering that's always been the competition I've done best at, that's what I'm primarily worried about.

So I'm going to start trying as best I can to catch up on like a three month backlog of flist; if you find a cascade of comments from me, that's why.  (And if you don't, that doesn't necessarily mean I didn't read, but just that I may have become overwhelmed in trying to comment on everything.)  I missssssss you guys, though.  I've felt very isolated lately, because obviously I haven't been really able to go out and do stuff with IRL friends, either.  Once a week I've been going out to eat with some friends from my writer's group, and that's kinda been my social lifeline.

(Sadly, one thing I've really, really missed is having the time to write fanfic.  I have all these stories in my head, but no time to write them down.  As soon as I'm past June 1, I'm definitely going to set aside a certain amount of time a week to write just for myself, just for fun, because whhaaaa.)

To add something of substance to this post: the first clip from the new season of Arrested Development!  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

I was baking last night, I had nothing else for my brain to do, so I had some epic imaginary fights in my head.  To quote the sages at ONTD, I was spilling tea and throwing shade, and it was marvelous.  Sometimes in imaginary fights, the other person bests you at every turn and nothing goes right; last night did not go like that.  I was brilliant and perfect, my stingers perfectly timed, everything escalating into the absolute perfect hissy-fit you never manage to actually have.

Both imaginary fights involved the same person, which I'm assuming is a hint from my subconscious.  Whom in this instance I must picture as James Callis from Bridget Jones's Diary, standing at the side of a boxing match, holding onto the ropes, screaming, "Fight! Fight! Fight!"

I wish.  I really do wish.

I need everyone to keep their fingers crossed today!  Actually, I don't want that to read as some ambiguous "think good thoughts" thing, so at some point during the day, for me, just, like, literally and actually cross your fingers.  Anytime.  At lunch, after you've brushed your teeth, as you're letting the dog out, whatever, just...cross your fingers.

I'm not saying why!  Just do it!

Also, sonneta, you still have a prompt/request to give me, should you choose, from your amazing comments on my screenwriting thingy.  Drop something here!

Last night I was futzing around in Photoshop, trying to do something with the brig reunion images from War Without End - which are just so dark - for a wallpaper.  And wonder of wonders, I actually ended up making something pretty!  Usually I have a real struggle with wallpapers because the palette is so much larger than an icon, and I find it tough to know how to arrange multiple images.  But this actually worked; I was very pleased.  Now I just want to make one more so that I'll have five for my babylon5_love graphics post next week.  So far, I have an S1 wallpaper, one with all the major characters, and two John/Delenn.  Any ideas?

From rivendellrose :

Ask me my Top Five Whatevers. Fannish or literary or otherwise. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! Fandoms, books I might get around to writing one day, women in my fandoms, ideal holiday destinations, goals for the future, celebrity crushes, books I wish would be made into movies, love songs. And I will answer them all in a new post (or in comments).

So, I'm trying this out on a provisional basis. I'll obviously just simulcast for a while, because I don't actually have enough going on to post different things in different places.

No, seriously, I got really, really pissed at Blogger today. Heh.