I have the best boyfriend ever

So I am a little bit sick and pretty stressed out about a test tomorrow and I just woke up from a nap (odd time for a nap: I woke up at 1am which is usually when I go to bed) because I had passed out after really not feeling well. When I woke up, I was spazzing the fuck out because my brain was running at a million miles an hour and I felt like the DoctorDonna.

Anyway, I spazzed out at my boyfriend and got him to talk to me, and I was rambling really quickly about how I felt like River and/or the TARDIS consciousness and I was like “WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?” and instead ofbeing like “You’re stressed over something and you’re convinced a TV show is real life” he said “You’re in the TARDIS and it’s been damaged by Daleks.”

halkejrlakjerlaj I love him.

Also he knows nothing about RPing. So it’s not even like he did it on purpose.

Hawelrkjaldkfjasdfjalsklakwlekrjlawkjlaksfjdlakwejrlkwjiljuhg.

:):):):):)

College is not actually about school.

(Note: this is a somewhat satirical/critical/glib/sarcastic/cynical post.)

I've decided that college has absolutely nothing to do with school.

It's actually about addicting you to the internet. And gaming. And finding new fandoms. And continuing to be obsessed with old ones.

And ugh, I just want to go home and sleep and then play skyrim all day and then sleep and then have enough creativity left to write.

(Where did all my creativity go?)

College

Yes, I am that old. And if you want to know how much of a nerd I am, I'm majoring in Computer Science with double minors in Mathematics and Writing.

Although honestly if my school offered a writing/creative wring major, I probably would have double majored in that.

Anyway, back to the "daily grind" of school means that I am doing a lot (and I mean a lot) of reading. Seriously. When you go to college, everyone will be like "yeah, join a lot of clubs!" or "take classes you think you even might be interested in!" or "make friends with everyone!" or something like that. My advice: don't spend the summer forgetting how to read academically. Seriously. I did that, and I keep hitting walls in this first week of class because I forget how to read critically/mark up text/etc.

Oh, more advice: write all over everything, as much as you possibly can. And remember, you own your books (if you're like me and went to a public school, this is new and different). That means you won't get in trouble for writing on your books. (I mean, don't do it on the ones you take out of the library.) Seriously. I've never been a huge history person and even though I've only so far done one reading for history, I wrote all over my book (which I got for six dollars*) and it's already helped me remember stuff from it.

*More advice: I'm going to guess that when you find the books you need for a class, you'll be provided with an ISBN. (If not, google should give you one.) I would definitely search by ISBN when looking for your book online, because the ISBN of different editions of the same book is different. And if you're lucky like me, you'll find somewhere that is selling a lightly used textbook for $6 including shipping. Of course, you need luck. But hey, I don't think I normally have any :)

So that was just a bunch of random side notes. Basically I just wanted to say I'm reading interesting stuff. (But you know me, I ramble.) So, you might see some interesting new ideas floating around, say, my figment account.

Livejournal + fanfiction

http://thecolouryes.livejournal.com/

Go. Read shit. Enjoy yourself. I don't have anything new there really except one ramble of an intro post that might be amusing if anyone enjoys reading my rambles.

Also, I'll probably be scouring the lj depths for fanfiction since ff.net is sadly lacking in my new favourite ship.

Photoshop CS5

So after years of freeware and low-end graphics programs, I've finally started using Photoshop.

I think I may need to be resuscitated a few times. CS5 is amazing. I'm so upset I haven't had a computer strong enough to handle it for these last few years. Everything just reeks of ease of use for photo editors -- why haven't I seriously investigated this before?

Oh well. I have CS5 now, and through online tutorials I am teaching myself how to use it. And every tutorial I see, I am more and more amazed by the power of this program. I think, by far, my favourite feature is the magnetic lasso tool -- a blender's dream. Intelligent auto-selection, how easy you make my life. I haven't experimented much with the ability to handle 3D objects on 2D space, but I think has to be wonderful too. I quite enjoy the long history map that makes figuring out whether an edit was actually helpful very simple, and I'm teaching myself to use RAW images for my own stock because of how easily they are edited with Adobe software.

Dear Photoshop, I think you may change my life.

Those occasional nights when you just can't bring yourself to go to sleep

So, admittedly, I don't do this often. And I rarely pull proper all-nighters. Normally I have to sleep for a little bit, even just an hour or two, or I explode.

And I'm so frickin close to exploding right now! I mean ohmygodChimera. I mean, oh my god, Chimera was probably the best episode of Sanctuary I have ever seen.


I say "probably" because I'm holding out hope, especially with that last scene, for the two of them getting together in this season. I mean, what with whatever government agency it is with a stupid acronym messing up the relationship from Tesla's side, it's not like it'll be drama-free. I mean, it's Teslen, it's not like it would ever be drama-free.


I'm shaking right now from having watched that episode just now. And that was catching up on two really amazing episodes of Fringe. I was worried that Chimera wouldn't be able to compete with their messing with time and reality. So much for that!


Okay. Now, to channel this wonderful spastic energy into something productive. Or just reading Teslen fics. Which is productive..... in terms of my sanity!

Haha! Yay!

If you haven't figured it out by now, go watch Chimera this instant. And if you want to especially appreciate it, watch it in the middle of the night so you get extra jitters.

Sequels

Normally, I try to stay away from sequels. Mostly because real sequels are just cop-outs. They're generally just throwing new drama into a plot that's already been tied up with an elaborate bow. So the sequel becomes like confetti on top of the bow, which just makes it look excessive, or a second bow on top of the bow, which just makes the whole thing look stupid.

But if you're tired of metaphors, I'll stop talking about bows. The point I'm trying to make is that good sequels shouldn't really be called 'sequels' at all. They're the kind where the original story isn't entirely tied up, and you need more story to resolve the conflict. Those are the kinds of sequels I like, and there are often multiples of that kind of sequel. Those kinds of sequels make up trilogies and quartets.

Why am I talking about sequels all of a sudden? I'm working on a sequel to The End... as I use this to procrastinate from actually writing it. (Ironic, really. I started this blog to talk about writing, and it's ended up as somewhere I can procrastinate from writing by talking about it. I never think to post here when I'm not writing....) And some of the time, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. Actually, all of the time, so far, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. But if/when I finish it, it will resolve that ambiguous ending for you.

I mean, if you want the ending resolved for you at all. I wouldn't.

The wonders of 250 gigs...

That's how much memory I have on my hard drive. Since the most of what I do is word processing and internet browsing (not that this poorly tricked-out netbook can handle much more), I still have like 90 gigs of free space, even though I don't think I've deleted a single thing since I got this computer two years ago.


(Useless Update: I have 199 files in my recycle bin. I'm pretty sure 175 of them are music files which somehow imported into iTunes twice.)

Returning to the point, however, requires me to explain a few things. For the first four years of writing fanfiction, all my work lived on a 1 gig flash drive. This meant: 1) I actually took the time to properly back up my things 2) When I was done with a story, I would toss it away on the backup drive and promptly forget about it 3) I started freaking out whenever my flash drive got close to full, because that meant I would have to not carry around one of the stories that my life depended on, and 4) I thought 1 gig was a lot of memory. Granted, technology changes so quickly that this was back when external backup drives were 80 gigs and the size of a small novel.

However, my point here is that because of that kind of disturbing practice of getting rid of all my stories in some obscure place where it wasn't easy for me to find them again on a whim, I never really went back to old stories, at least not unless I was willing to devote a bunch of time into digging them out. Now, however, because I never delete anything, I spent a bunch of time re-reading my semi-recent stuff.


Another advantage -- almost entirely for you readers -- is that re-reading my semi-recent stuff inspires me to finish it, or to realise that I had a fanfic sitting on my computer finished but not entirely good enough for publishing, that on re-reading I decide, screw it, this is going on the internet. Because if I was brave enough to post the awfulness that was Letters to No-One back when I was twelve, I can bloody well publish some of my lesser works now.

In conclusion, I have posted a new fanfic. No, it's not my best. Yes, I am stupid for leaving it on my computer for so long without publishing it. I'm sorry. It's okay; I'll make it up to you by returning to fanfiction for a while. Fanfiction is far more comforting than original stuff, because at least fandoms come with pre-made characters.

The Worst Month in the Best Possible Way: November

Goddess, I hate November. Especially since I've jumped on the crazy NaNoWriMo bandwagon, it's probably the busiest month of all twelve. Also, probably because it's already the busiest time of my year, I come up with tons of inspiration for stories and interest in keeping up with my TV shows and the desire to catch up on tons of great shippy fanfiction that I follow inconsistently at other times of the year. Actually, all of that is probably just my procrastination talking. Still, why couldn't November, like, be a bunch of months? Why couldn't the play happen in November, and NaNoWriMo in December? And all this inspiration for stories that aren't my NaNoNovel come to me in that awkward time after the play, but before the musical? WHY MUST EVERYTHING HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE?

Anyway, enough of this rant. I have to get back to procrastinating, after all. Heaven knows I wouldn't want to procrastinate my procrastinating by talking about it. So, instead, I'll avoid getting to a reasonable wordcount for NaNoWriMo for tonight and instead go read some of my Teslen fiction. Because everyone loves Teslen.

November is fast approaching

Wow. I can't believe it, but November is almost here. That is more than a little bit terrifying. For me, November is going to be a particularly huge month this year. First of all, I have to get all of my application to Carleton by November 15th. Secondly, it's November, which means NaNoWriMo, of course! This year, I'm going to shoot for 75k, even though, yes, that is in fact fairly ridiculous. Last year, I got to 60k without too much overt effort. I scraped most of it, but I knew where I was going -- so it made it worth it, of course!

In preparation for November, I am going to read over Strange book 1, mostly (though of course I would never admit this :P) so that I can remember what my characters are like, and what plots I've already figured out. Anyway, I'll probably be posting here sporadically again while I'm procrastinating from writing in November!

I found my college!

So, here's to hoping that in five years, I can look back at this post and say I knew where I was going all along. Of course, I'd actually need to get in for that to happen, but I can certainly assure you I know where I want to go as of right now.

The school I'm looking at is Carleton College. It's out in Minnesota, and I just visited it. It was the most beautiful campus I have ever seen, and it had such a wonderful vibe. As I described to my interviewer, I felt like I already fit in because the mannerisms of the people coming up and teasing our tour guide while she was leading us around were just like the ones my friends used. It has a trimester system rather than a semester system, which is good for me because it would allow me to focus on my classes so much more. Right now, for example, I'm taking so many, different classes that I get confused sometimes as to different things which are all going on in my brain at once. It's confusing to try to do so much at once. Trimesters would let me focus on a few things, and also possibly take more because on average students take 9 courses a year.

Plus, the weather was absolutely perfect when we visited. What better sign could there be? (And they certainly get snow!)

The perfect sentence

Well, perhaps not the perfect sentence, but I certainly wrote a perfect sentence the other day. And, since here I am unable to go to sleep before I'm exhausted (ahh, the perils of being a writer), I decided that I would share it with you all.

In the hour before dawn, the luminescent sky tickles colour into the field of flowers.

 In my humble opinion, this is perhaps one of the better sentences I've ever written. I can use it as a prime example of the maxim "show, don't tell" that my English teachers, at least, have shoved down our throats for as long as I can remember. And, grudgingly, I would hap-hazarded my way with words into something more showy than literal, but never before have I been quite so proud of a single sentence.


Oh, you want to know why I suddenly decided to write this perfect sentence? Well, truth to be told, I stole it. But then, does anyone come up with a truly original idea? We'd spent the three days of class before I wrote that sentence discussing a few hundred words in English class, written as an intro to an astronomy book, as a way to show us the proper way to write our college application essays. (Yes, I know. My English teacher IS bloody awesome. Although it's my Euro teacher who's English.) So, yes, blame any future philosophical questions on that mindset, combined with the fact that I'm tired but not enough so to go to sleep, which usually just results in me not caring whether the random string of words I throw together and out at the world actually make any sense.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Anyone who knows their literature should recognise the title as being on of Shakespeare's most confusing plays. Seriously, the more of it you leave out of an explanation, the more sense it makes. Simple version: Girl likes guy who is in a relationship with someone else. Lovers run away and things go a bit pear-shaped when a fairy trickster intervenes.

And even extremely dumbed down, it's not straightforward. Gotta love Shakespeare's comedies.

Anyway, the reason I'm making a post about it is because my school is performing it in November, and I'm... well, I suppose you could call my title "Assistant Director" or "Student Director" or something like that. So it's been eating up a whole bunch of my time, but in a way that's totally rewardingly worth it. So yes, it is an excuse. But with a plot as confusing as its is, comprehending it is a perfectly valid excuse.

Flooding = no school!

Apparently, this is how the minds of my school administrators work. Truth to be told, we have been experiencing rain to rival London here (remarkable because this is the Philadelphia area), and it's certainly nice to be out of school after only one day of classes, but that doesn't make the idea in and of itself and less ridiculous. Let's just cancel school because it's been raining for a million days and it's gonna keep raining here through Sunday.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up, other than because it's nice and ridiculous, is that I had time to write more of "The End...", but I ended up sleeping for 15 hours. No joke. I got 12 hours of sleep last night, and took a 3 hour nap this afternoon. So, I started writing more of "The End...", but I still have a lot more to go until it's anything any of you lovely readers would be willing to read.

Also, I'm getting back into the beta-reading business because applying to college and stage managing (assistant directing?) the play isn't enough stress to add to school work, so if you have anything to read, I'm up to the challenge :P