Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons...

(By the way, I'm typing this on my phone and I can only see two lines at a time, so I apologize in advance for any errors. XD)

Okay, so I put this on tumblr already, so some of you already know this- I have no internet at home until further notice. As it's January, it's too damn cold to be walking to the library all the time, and my bus pass for school apparently doesn't work during winter break, so I have to pay for the bus to go somewhere with Wi-Fi. That won't be happening very much, for obvious reasons. I technically have my phone, but I can only ask it to do so much on a 3g network. So. The basic gist of this is that I will only be around sporadically for a while. The December meme is on hold until further notice, though I may poke at it whenever I do go somewhere for internet, but I won't promise anything. If anybody needs me, I'm still poking at tumblr, Facebook, and my email regularly through phone apps. Additionally, I'll sometimes be around on my alternate aim name, which I mainly use for mobile aim because reasons. The name for that one is letsgofive. If that name is on, I'm definitely around.

On the upside, this is a perfect excuse to work on some reading/writing/gaming/watching things I've been meaning to do? :P

22. The best thing to happen this year
First place for a story I wrote at the last freaking minute. I still don't actually believe that one.

( More random... )

6. Your 5 senses right now
Uh, the same five I always have? This is a dumb question.

As far as non-meme stuff, here we go:
☁ My certificate of residence for school has been acquired. I had to spend more time dealing with my mother than I would've liked in order to accomplish this, but whatever, it's done. Now I can pay my bill for school. The plan is to deal with that tomorrow.

☁ Saw an apartment Saturday. Good location, big room, roommates are not super neat freaks, gay friendly, super cute kitten (who spent most of the time pretending that I was a good climbing tree. Good thing I wore jeans. XD The guy was like, "wow, she really likes you already.") It's at the top of my "I can afford this" range, but I'm not sure I'm going to get much better because rent is freaking ridiculous here. He's still showing the apartment, so we'll see what happens. I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm going to text him tomorrow and see what's going on. In the meantime... I should probably make some more phone calls tomorrow too. Ungh. I want to do that about as much as I want a hole in my head. I fucking hate calling people, and of course most of these are like "phone calls only!" YOU GUYS SUCK.

☁ Need to go to old work and talk to Dave about saving boxes for me. Even if I wasn't planning on moving, I would probably still do this, because I'm at a point where I just feel like I'm moving things back and forth to and from the same places in my room, and getting stuff put away in boxes would at least let me put things away neatly in an orderly way instead of haphazardly thrown everywhere.

☁ ( TL;DR- Family bullshit )

☁ Oh yeah, and did I mention that classes start again on the 26th and I'm both freaked the hell out about it and can't wait to go back? Need to get sleep back in order. It was better and then it wasn't, sooooo. <_< It's not nowhere near as bad as it was at one point, but still not terribly good.

☁ So basically, long story short, I'm super stressed/anxious about EVERYTHING and trying to keep up with my daily cleaning sessions and mostly failing, so. On the upside, it does look considerably better just from what I did today?

☁ I've also been working on a random fic bit I found in my bunny folder. I... don't even know how this happened. But yay writing?

Okay seriously, what the HELL is going on lately?

-Apparently it's totally cool to stalk and kill an unarmed child as long as his skin is a darker color than yours. If you live in Florida, the law will support you if you're scared of brown people and start shooting them. Just make up a flimsy story that the evil dark child attacked you first, you'll be fine. Even if you keep changing it. (Link)
-And yet, also in Florida, last year a black woman got 20 years prison time for firing warning shots- didn't hurt anyone- against her abusive husband. (Link) So I guess you're only allowed to defend yourself if you're not black (I would say "if you're white", but Zimmerman is Latino XD). And just think, the Supreme Court just recently chopped off the Voting Rights Act at the knees because racism is totally not an issue anymore. *snort*
-Texas state senate passed their anti-abortion bill (which okay, that's not a surprise, but still.) (Link)
-And finally, to top it off this morning, I wake up and discover that they found Cory Monteith (Finn on Glee) dead in his hotel room. He was only 31 years old. (Link)

I repeat. WHAT THE HELL.

(And no, I'm not going to continue to post about this. It's more for posterity than anything. That being said... god, I know making a post on facebook about it wasn't the most mature thing to do ever, but I just got a long comment basically saying that Zimmerman was the victim and he's been a scapegoat for the "false appearance of nobly fighting against racism." Really? REALLY? She also says that she trusts the decision that was made. I'm trying to not respond angrily, so what I'm working on is this. "Alright, I was upset when I made the post (clearly the most mature thing to do) and I normally wouldn't have said anything. In any event, I'm glad you have more trust in the system than I do. After seeing so many messed up decisions over the years that were clearly aimed at protecting perpetrators instead of victims- decisions that were based not in justice but in racism or sexism or homophobia or some other prejudiced agenda- I don't have that trust. However, the bottom line through all of this is that it's done. I just hope his family can find some kind of peace now that it's over.")

- Final call: Holiday card post here (DW) and here (LJ). I am sending these out this afternoon at some point, so they will go out TOMORROW. (Hopefully they'll get where they need to be in time- apologies if they don't. Meant to do it yesterday and didn't manage to leave the house.)

( Long, you guys know the drill. )

Okay, first things first- I did post something yesterday. It wasn't for NaBloPoMo like I've been doing, I forgot to do that, but I did post something privately, and that's what counts to me. I'm not doing it for a prize or anything, just for me, so basically you're just going to have to trust me. ^_~ Actually, for the curious, it was fic. I've been doing that lately- when I'm too lazy to go get my flash drive, I'll put stuff on livejournal so I can access it from a different computer later, edit it as I please, come back home and have the latest version right there for me. It's usually fic, but sometimes school stuff- I have notes on William Faulkner for short story, for example. Which I need to stop doing, really, because my LJ is getting ridiculous with all this extra stuff. Anyway. So what's up there for yesterday is actually the fic I ended up finishing off and posting today. Yes, I finished fic! Amazing, right? It's not the best thing I've ever written, that's for damn sure, but it's something. It even works for cottoncandy_bingo , which I've been neglecting and just realized that it's due at the end of December. Whoops. ^_^;;;

Not a whole lot happened today, just art history, short story, and pride alliance. Only one person showed up to pride alliance that wasn't in the executive committee. Which makes me nervous because we have the information table for Transgender Day of Remembrance next week. Sigh. Oh, and Treasurer and Co-Chair fought for half of it. They butt heads, because they're both attention whores that can't shut up. It was a long meeting. -_- At least Secretary wasn't there. He's a nice enough kid, don't get me wrong- he has Asperger's, and I think he has a mild mental retardation on top of that. So he just talks A LOT, and very loudly, and takes ages making any sort of point (if there even is one), and I just... does it make me a terrible person to admit that I don't have the patience for that? I think it does. XD I could never be a special ed teacher. I have all the respect in the world for that, but I just can't deal. Ungh. Oh, and have I mentioned that we keep getting kicked out of our club room by another club? The other advisor is SUPER RUDE and is always like, "We've been in this room for 20 years! blahblahblah." Yeah, well, they didn't reserve the room, so it's ours this year. Go away. Only problem is that OUR advisor is never there when this goes down, so we always end up folding, because what else are we supposed to do when this woman is being a complete bitch to us? It's going to be a looooooooong year, you guys.

I'm so tired. Definitely have to go to bed earlier than I did last night- I did laundry yesterday and my clothes just didn't want to dry, so I ended up going to bed around 1am. Waaaaaay too late for me. I'm a zombie. x_x

I really should write up a real update, but first, I want to talk about something else- my day from Tuesday. I had my placement test for school, and the day was... well, to put it kindly, a series of unfortunate events. There were a couple of points where it didn't suck, but those were few and far in between, and overall, it was just a truly terrible day. It's actually almost comical how things just kept happening. XD In list form:

( Ver and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day )

---

Meanwhile, yesterday? Aside from the fact that I was still running short on sleep (I did get about 5-5 1/2 hours though, so even that was an improvement), it couldn't have been any more different. THANK GOD. I approached the day simply hoping I wouldn't get lost, raped, or killed, so I'll grant you that the bar was set pretty damn low, but still. XD Also in list form!

( Ver and the Not Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day )

Okay, I really have to go. Work and all. Hopefully I'll get my shit together enough to post about something that isn't school in the next few days. :D

☁ Has anyone else been having issues with Google? I can't search, I can't watch Youtube videos, Gmail won't load, none of it. But the rest of the internet seems to be fine, and I can't find anything about it being down? ARGH. This has been going on for a few days now and I'm getting really frustrated with it. I even tried switching browsers and it was still a no-go- FF had been timing out, but IE flat out told me that Google didn't exist. O_o. So: I'm generally really bad at checking my gmail, but I do know that I have at least one conversation there that I need to deal with, but I can't get into it at all to make a response. I'm really sorry. XD My hotmail username is the same as my gmail? ^_^;;;

☁ FAFSA- done. I was going to do it last week, but procrastinated Tuesday and felt too crappy Wednesday to deal with it. Whoops. Was not as bad as I had been imagining- I could even import my tax returns right into it, which was a neat little trick. The two school applications are also submitted. Am currently trying to figure out if I can get my high school to send my transcript without having to call them. XD Edit: Sweet, I can zip them an e-mail. They ask for a name and address of the person they're sending them to, though, so does that mean I should have them send the transcripts to me and then mail them back out? That seems stupid. I'm confused.

☁
 
Just sayin'. We have been flirting with Death Note since last night for the number 11 animanga spot on AO3, and next is YiGiOh. Weee~ (Though I think DN might've cottoned on to what we're doing, looks like they're fighting us a little. GO GO HIKAGO!) Qem asked me to make a banner and very helpfully proved the YuGiOh pic. Didn't turn out half bad. Lish asked me to make an icon for her the other day, too. She does that on occasion and the request this time was super simple, just a crop and cleanup, but it's just kind of weird to get graphics requests all of a sudden. XD

☁ It's supposed to be GORGEOUS tomorrow- 55 and mostly sunny! Perfect day to walk to the library. :D I've been feeling kind of shut-in, so that will probably be helpful. Maybe I can even get through the rest of the first season of Doctor Who finally, since I seem to have a block about watching it at home for some reason. XD

☁ I am now about an episode and a half through Sherlock. It's an interesting take- Sherlock actually admits to being a sociopath (in the most condescending way possible, which is pretty damn amusing), so that's definitely a different spin on the character than I've seen previously. I'm still not understanding how everyone thinks that Benedict Cumberbatch is so hot- he's rather unfortunate looking, to put it nicely. I really don't get it. I can't even blame it on the lesbian thing, really- I can recognize and appreciate when a man is good looking. It doesn't make me want to have sex with him, but I see it. This guy? Nope. Not seeing it. Fandom baffles me sometimes.

☁ After talking with Ai, I finally decided I need to get my butt back in gear and at the very least keeping track of my food intake again. I've been maintaining (within a few pound range, of course) for long enough. On the upside- apparently I've been averaging around 1700 calories a day  without even TRYING- that's maintenance for where I was when I checked. So not NEARLY as bad as the 2500-3000 I was imagining, eh? :D Sooooooo I've been working on food  again and am really happy with the results. 5.4 pounds since the 20th, and 2.8 pounds just in the last week. I'm not trying to brag or anything, just... happy to get the ball rolling again. ^_^;;;

☁( Long windedness about Rush Limbaugh, Birth Control, and Republicans in General )

☁ I've been pretty MIA lately- sorry about that. With my sister visiting and family stuff and being sick and all of this crap, it's been kind of difficult to really sit down and get anything done. My already limited attention span has been pretty much zero lately. (I haven't even bothered attempting to read that last Eragon book, if that tells you anything. XD) I'm still sick, but it seems to be getting better, so. Things should be winding down back to normal. Hopefully. As normal as December gets, anyway.

☁ WANT. ;_; Money is a major concern, but hopefully they'll come up with a payment plan that I can live with. WHO IS GOING WITH ME, DAMMIT?

☁ Anyone have any experience with Zoya nail polish? I've been staring at the website for several days now and I can't decide whether it would be worth trying or not. They're expensive. :/ On the other hand, I did just spend $6 on a super glittery blue polish that I'm totally in love with (and actually kept on for about two days, which is a miracle), so really... it's not THAT much more, in the big scheme of things.

☁ I can has an AO3 account! I will probably not keep up with it, because I have a hard time posting crap to my freaking main writing journal much less anything else, BUT... it's another backup and maybe I will? ^_^;;; That and it will give my stuff some more exposure, since I'm uncomfortable pimping myself out in the comms when I post something. So... you know. I only have a few things up there so far though. I'm trying to not piss people off by flooding everything at once. XD

☁ Ended up making peanut butter frosting (don't ask)... ASDJKALDJSLA that shit is DELICIOUS. Now, I wouldn't use the frosting all the time, for the simple fact that I still hate making frosting. BUT. It is definitely easier than regular frosting, at least. No food coloring is needed, so that headache and mess is eliminated. Two- It came out perfectly mixed and fluffy with just a spoon and some stubbornness on my part. Read: no mixer required. Which is awesome, because while I'll use a mixer when I have to, I'd rather not. It tends to be messy. It probably could've been fluffier with the mixer, but I didn't really see the need. The only problem? Now I have all this freaking frosting in the fridge. UGH.

☁ Speaking of food, I purchased three new things to try: sweet potato fries, pesto sauce, and garlic hummus. So far, I've tried the pesto and the fries. The pesto is good- I wouldn't want a ton of it in a dish or anything, but it's yummy. The fries though? Weeeeeeeeird. :/ I haven't decided whether I like them or not. I ended up putting a crapton of salt and Old Bay on them and it was an improvement, but I don't know. The sweetness bothers me more than I thought it would.

( Rant brought to you by South Africa and condoms with teeth. Needless to say with South Africa lately, this could be triggery for rape. )

☁ I should probably do my school applications soon. *sob* SCARY! ........... Dear Self: You are being utterly ridiculous. You are applying to community colleges, not Yale. You'll be fine. No love, Ver.

☁ Lane Bryant had a sale plus a decent coupon, so... bras. Much needed bras. And COLORS. YAY. Green and purple, even. :D And pretty much 50% off before tax and shipping. Seriously, I can deal with $20 bras. :D :D :D :D

☁ Started watching No. 6 thanks to a bad rec. Seriously, probably the best way to get me to watch something (particularly if it's a short movie or short series or whatever) is to tell me how terrible it is. Then I'll be like, "No, it really can't be that bad, can it?" and so I'll be all eager to find out. Go figure how that works. I'm about halfway through and it's not all bad, though I wish they'd do some more world building, and they skip around a bunch and that's confusing. Mostly I'm reserving judgement. Also the opening song is TERRIBLE. I think it's the voice, it just irritates the living crap out of me. Interestingly, I like the ending song. Pretty. ^_^

☁ Does anybody else use the video player Mpcstar? I generally have zero problems with it, but lately I'm finding that if I leave it paused overnight- which I do often, when I'm just too tired and can't focus on finishing whatever I'm watching anymore- it crashes. Well, I assume it crashes, because when I wake up, there's nothing there. Which has never been a problem before. Just curious if this is just me or if it's a thing with the newest update or something.

☁ ...wow. Just. Wow. There are no words for how fucked up and wrong this is. PETA, have you ever even PLAYED a Mario game? The Tanooki suit is exactly that- a freaking COSTUME, not a real animal skin. Not only that but Mario gets it from a TREASURE/ ? BOX, not skinning animals. YOU GUYS are the ones depicting violence and animal cruelty. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Disgusting.

☁ Inheritance came in the mail today. It's... freaking HUGE. 849 pages, obviously not including the non-story stuff. Also apparently there is an overview of the first three before the story actually starts. Which is good because I never ended up doing the re-read I meant to and it's been a few years, so ah. I have no idea what's going on at this point in the story. I haven't started it, but I will probably tomorrow! *excited*

☁ ( Ver goes off on a rant! )

Okay, so probably most people on my flist will have seen this already, but I'm sharing it anyway, because it needs to be shared. And read. And shared more. Obviously, the article may be triggering to people, so be warned.

Rape Culture - There's Nothing Funny About Rape

If you aren't triggered by such material, go read it. NOW.

☁ I've gone through the BG pieces. (Yay for Opera Mini at work? ^_^;;; ). As far as guessing, I have a chart, and have marked off 4 people with varying levels of certainty. There's one I'm half expecting to change before I submit my guesses. And no Ai, I haven't found you yet- though I'm going to think about it some more. I still have a little time before I have to put in guesses.

☁ The mosquitoes have been out with a vengeance. They're normally not around this late, but it's been unseasonably warm for late September, plus there's been all this water between Irene and the massive amount of rain we had this summer... yeah. The fucking things are EVERYWHERE. One bit me on the forehead today. ;~; She got me good, too. It bit me, and a little later Stef was like, "uh, your forehead is REALLY red." I went to go look- there's a huge swollen bump on my freaking head, not even kidding. UGH. I hate being a bug magnet. STOP LOVING MY BLOOD, DAMN YOU!

☁ Apparently both Lane Bryant and Capital One have decided to increase my credit limit. LB is now $200 ($100 before, though $200 will be more convenient on the rare occasions that I do use it, because LB is expensive) and CO is $500 when it was $200 before, even though I think the most I've ever had on a bill was around $100. I know they're trying to trick me into spending more money (which is not going to work), but kind of nice anyway. It's good to know that it's there if something happens and I need it. ^_^

☁ I saw a guy from high school the other day... which happens every once in a while, it's an unfortunate side effect of working where I do. I never got along with this particular guy, and he's apparently just as much of a dick as ever. He acted like I was some kind of traitor because I don't live in my hometown anymore. Like seriously? Anybody who ever knew me even a little bit would've known I was never going to stay there. I'm from Smalltown, USA- very quiet, closed off community. It was like being in a little cocoon protected from the world outside. (Additionally, my parents kept us in an additional "bubble", which Stef and I joke about now. That's neither here nor there, but it does explain a lot about my personality, I think. Sheltered x2.) Even now, sometimes I'll get blindsided by something that is apparently normal everywhere else, but is totally alien to me. My hometown is too restrictive, too far away from everything. It was a nice place to grow up as a young kid, and I visit for a couple of days now and then, but it's not someplace I want to live again. When I hit my teens it really started to be more suffocating than protective, and it hasn't changed that much. (Though the one small general store does actually make really good subs. I make a point to get one when I visit. :3) But seriously, judging me because I'm not up there anymore? As if it actually matters to me what he thinks of me? Pfffffffffft. He doesn't even know me. It just irritates me that he was being such a asshole, it was totally uncalled for, you know?

☁ Also, I'm watching Doctor Who, and there's this woman in this episode, her name is apparently Sophia Myles... I'm not normally into blondes that much, but HOLY FUCK:



(The picture is not from Doctor Who, but whatever.) Just. Wow. I could look at her all day. And I mean that in a totally not creepy, non-stalkerish way. <_<

☁ Via Lish: A very well written article that explains why throwing out religious platitudes to an Atheist while they're grieving can be offensive to them. Before I get into any of this, I should possibly clarify for some of you, since I don't generally talk about religion- I'm an Atheist. Well. More accurately, I'm an odd Atheist/Agnostic mix, meaning that while I absolutely don't believe in God or Heaven or Hell or any of that, I'm also willing to admit that there's really no way of knowing for sure, one way or another. I'm cool with other religions as long as someone's not trying to convert me or it's not being shoved down my throat. It's not something I make a big deal of because it's not something that affects my life on a daily basis. Anyway. This was so not the point. Onward!

I had a conversation with Lish about this, which I'm not going to totally rehash, but to me it basically boils down to respecting other people's beliefs. A lot of people don't understand Atheism, and for many of these, it's just not on their radar at all. It's a thoughtlessness. They assume, well, it would be comforting to ME, so it must be to THEM. Nevermind that "I'm sorry for your loss" is just as easy to say, and offering whatever assistance you can will mean more. Personally, I'm in the "it doesn't bother me that much" camp, in general, unless they go on about it forever or I hear it a thousand times in ten minutes. I get the meaning behind it, and I appreciate it, even though it doesn't help. Though the whole "god's will" thing is an exception- that IS hurtful and offensive, and I seem to remember walking away from people who have said that to me. The bottom line here: be considerate and respectful of the person grieving. That's all. And isn't that true regardless of who they pray to (or don't pray to)? (*cough* I just totally wrote "prey" instead of "pray". Nice Freudian slip there, Ver. XD)

☁ This is too cute. I don't even like kids, and this made me want to hug him. The parents, too. He's a lucky kid to have such accepting and open-minded parents. That being said, assuming it's not something he ends up growing out of later- knowing you're gay at six? Just. Wow. O_o

☁ I read this book yesterday that is, for some reason I have yet to figure out, bringing a couple of original muses back to the foreground of my mind. I haven't thought about them, or their story, in ages. The book isn't even related to the story in any way, except one character's tendency to overthink things. WTF brain?

I don't know, maybe I should look at it again. I stopped due to a nasty case of writer's block- I got two characters in a particular situation and couldn't figure out how to get them out of it- but maybe if I approach it from a different angle? The other problem was that I found that the more I wrote, the more I -despised- my main character. The different angle I'm thinking of would solve that as well, because it would shift the main focus from the annoying little brat to someone I actually like. The only problem is that originally, the POV shifted between four different main-ish characters, with the one I call the main as the hub basically. Changing this causes a whole bunch of other issues as far as things being shown. I guess I'll have to try and figure it out at some point.

☁ I read a lot of m/m fiction. (I know that comes as a shock to you all.) It's a genre that's very hit or miss, from my experience. I've read some wonderful things. I've also read things that never should've seen the light of day. Quality of writing is all over the place- not just with things like characters, but with basics like GRAMMAR and PUNCTUATION. I swear to god, some of these editors need to be fired. Anyway. While, obviously, mistakes happen regardless of genre (nobody's perfect), I've NEVER seen this kind of lack of editing or grasp of the basics in ANY other genre.

This does have a point, I swear. I wrote a review on Goodreads of a book recently- the novel was fabulous, by the way, and I said as much- where I mentioned that my expectations had not been terribly high, due to previous experience. Another reader asked me why, and after I explained, she pretty much jumped all over me. Uh... OBVIOUSLY the quality of the book is going to depend on the quality of editing and the ability of the author, regardless of genre. I know that, I'm not a moron. It just seems that there are lesser quality editors at m/m publishers. Or, also possible, is that certain m/m publishers put quantity over quality. I AM ALLOWED TO HAVE MY OPINION, LEAVE ME ALONE, WOMAN! The best part? She hasn't even read the book in question. So now, according to her, she's going to have to read it because I held up up as an example of good writing. Great. Now if she doesn't like it (And there's a good chance she won't. Looking at the handful of books we have in common, we have VERY different tastes.), then she's going to be up my ass about how I don't know what I'm talking about or whatever. Wonderful. Why do people have to pick fights over stupid shit?

☁ Another soapbox moment- this one may or may not make me sound completely heartless. Fair warning.

I have had it up to here with this whole Caylee Anthony case. Not really the thing itself- it's a tragedy that a little girl is dead, and even though I know very little about the case, I know that there are things that are suspect. However. I wasn't in the jury. I didn't hear all of the details like they did. Hell, most people didn't. What makes everyone assume that they know better than the people that heard the whole thing and determined that the mother wasn't guilty? Furthermore, what the hell do they think whining about the verdict on Facebook is going to do? IT'S DONE. There's nothing anybody can do about it now. No amount of bitching to everyone in a 100 mile radius is going to change it. If I see yet another status change, picture change, link, or poll related to this shit I'm going to flip out. SHUT THE FUCK UP.

...yes, my body decided to do the girl thing today. How did you know? <_<

☁ So today was very much Not Fun. Woke up with cramps and it just went downhill from there. Cramps weren't the worst I've ever had, but they weren't the milder (for me) ones either. So I was in pain all day, even with medication and a heating pad. Had to work with the Thursday person I hate. Found out someone complained about me, which I knew was going to happen (Long story- basically, I can get yelled at for no reason by a customer for only so long without getting a little irritable. I wasn't all out rude, but I was a bit short with her.), but that didn't make it any easier to get lectured about it. A different customer flipped out on me because a co-worker did something incredibly stupid yesterday, which she's done before and been talked to about doing before. Plus a couple of other gems I discovered during the day. I ended up leaving a clearly PISSED OFF note for her. Usually I reign the anger in when I write notes like that, but this time I didn't really (still no swearing though, I'm proud of myself. :P) So we'll see what happens with that, if anything.

Basically I came home and just completely zoned out for about ten minutes. I feel like it helped, but at the same time it scared me a little too because it wasn't planned. Just all of a sudden, woo, brain not there, and I'm just staring at my laptop screen and not really seeing it for ten minutes. I wonder if that's something I should worry about. :/

☁ Also, weirdly, Kelly made the comment of "well, last I knew you're still a virgin, so..." (it -was- related to the conversation and not totally random, but still.) I kind of gave her a look like O_o and went, "Last I knew I didn't tell you everything about my personal life." Seriously, it's not like I would've been all "GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO ME TODAY! :D" I mean, really. (To a degree she's right, though I've never really been able to puzzle that one out. It's a matter of technicalities all around. Still, that's not the point here.)

All in all, it was a very long and sometimes strange day. Is it Tuesday yet? D:

☁ In other news: This looks like it's going to be really good. Completely heartbreaking, but amazing. I love a good mind fuck. Though Jason Isaacs with an American accent is freaking WEIRD.

☁ Fair warning- I'm probably going to be pretty scarce the next couple of weeks. ( CLEAN ALL THE THINGS- Cut for FLAIL! )

☁ I totally didn't keep up with the online writing class I'd signed up for, but I saved everything for later and took the final exam (multiple choice on the material- I've always rocked at those :D), since that's due Friday. Got 100% and therefore earned my certificate for it since that's the only thing that counts. Yay. And now I know that online doesn't work for me. ^_^;;; Sad, but at least now there's not a question.

☁ New bras~ I'm actually clearly a little bit over a DDD, but not enough to move up to an F. It's nothing that a little maneuvering can't fix, so I'm not going to worry about it. Buy one get one half, so I got a bluish grey one and a brown one. So at least I have a couple of basic bras that fit. (It's so nice to consider something besides nude and black "basic"!) It's funny, changing back into one of the old ones after trying on the new size really hammered home for me exactly how much it really doesn't fit. It was just all of a sudden "Holy crap, how have I been wearing these all this time?" Also, I actually look more proportional now. I mean, I still have large breasts- obviously- but at least now they match the rest of me better instead of the boobs being pretty much everything you see. If I end up being in this size for a while, I might think about getting one or two more nice ones. We'll see what happens. I'm not spending a ton of money just to change sizes again, you know?

☁ Randomly I'm missing Kingdom Hearts and wanting to play it again. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I can't decide which), my copy is still out on loan. Urgh. I'm also randomly wanting to watch Junjou Romantica again- this is actually doable, since I have it and it's only 24 episodes I think. Probably shouldn't though, I have enough new stuff to watch as it is.

☁ Sadly? This is typical of New York politics- a fucking circus. It's almost as if politicians here aren't happy unless they're making a god damn spectacle of themselves. And people wonder why NY is such a mess? JFC. That being said: yes, he's a jackass, but as long as it doesn't affect his work, I don't see a problem. His personal life is absolutely none of my business. Any indiscretions are between him and his wife, bottom line. (Though seriously, you would think he would've learned from Bill Clinton that it's better to just fess up. Just saying.)

☁ Okay, I need to try to get some sleep- I have a long day of work and then cleaning ahead of me. Oh yeah, and there's going to be some nasty storms too when I'm going into work. Yaaay. Something tells me that the next couple of weeks are going to SUCK.

(I was going to cut this, but DW only wants to cut the first paragraph no matter what I do, so pffft. This is your cut: This entry is mostly rambling and some depressed shit. Consider yourself warned.)

☁ It's been GORGEOUS, so it was out and about to do stuff over my days off. I went and got my hair cut yesterday. It's super short, totally love it. Predictably, my family doesn't. Oh well. Then I went downtown today- I wanted to see exactly how long it takes to get from the bus stop to the lakehouse in the park where the 5k registration is supposed to be. Those things are kind of nice to know ahead of time. It was about as long as I'd thought- 20 minutes, give or take a little depending on traffic and whatnot. It was a nice day to hang out in the park. I brought my camera and took a bunch of tulipy pictures. :D

Alright. Going to try to go to sleep, I think. Hopefully I can, being so overtired. It's quite a bit later now than when I started this, so I don't feel totally ridiculous going to bed now. Night all~

Today sucked. Like REALLY sucked.

1. Ate breakfast and not even five minutes later I was running to the bathroom. :/ I didn't actually throw up, I just really, really thought I was going to. It never completely went away, either- I've been sick to my stomach all freaking day.
2. Got to work and found out that Mike called out (in other words, maybe the stomach thing is a bug that's going around and not a 'my body hates me' related thing like I'd assumed it was, yaaaaaaaaaaaay. -_-), so it was just me and Jeremy. On a truck night. Oh, and it was busy and people were being FUCKING insane. Okay, perfect example: I had a woman that wanted a price adjustment from a few days ago (for a coupon we can't even take, but whatever). She didn't seem to understand anything I said to her and I had to repeat everything I said three times- and even then, some things still didn't seem to sink in. (It was not a language barrier, she spoke perfect English. It was a stupidity barrier.) I did the price adjustment for the two waters on her receipt, having to explain to her what I was doing about four times, she bought her other stuff, and when we were done I put the bottle of water I used for the adjustment to the side so I can take the next customer. Finally. Then she goes, "Can't I take that?" Um, no? We're not going to let you just walk off with shit you haven't paid for. "You already have them at home, right?" "Well yeah, but I wanted another one." "..................you never said that." "Oh. Well, I want another one." GAH! You couldn't have said that, oh I don't know, BEFORE I rang all your other shit up? So yeah. It was that kind of crap all day today.
3. At some point I apparently did something to myself- I went "Ow, my chin kind of hurts," put my finger on it, and... oh look, I'm bleeding. >_< I put a band aid on my chin to deal with it and therefore looked like a total tool for the rest of the day, but I can't be bothered to care.
4. We've had this woman coming in every day for a few days now that drops off ten bazillion things for us to do for photo and totally backs everything up. I ended up staying an hour late dealing with that whole mess. Remember, still don't feel well.
5. I went home and discovered that I left my keys at work. Luckily I've learned from previous airheadedness in regards to that and keep an extra set of keys in my workbag. I grabbed some garbage to go out and went to the grocery store for a few things. I'd finished getting my stuff and was on the way to go pay when I realized I DIDN'T HAVE ANY FUCKING MONEY. My bank card was in my god damned work bag that I dropped off at the house. >_< SO I put the stuff back, walked back home, got money, went back to the store, and got my fucking groceries. I was seriously considering alcohol at that point, but quickly realized that it would probably just make me sicker anyway. Oh, and the cashier that was there is a chatty one, so he yapped at me for fucking ever when I just wanted to get the hell home... but I haven't seen him in a while, so I didn't want to be a total asshole and take off.

The only good thing about today? Osama Bin Laden is finally dead. Yes, I realize that there are going to be people to take his place... but at least he can't hurt anybody anymore. I'm sitting here watching Obama's speech in tears, no lie, and I'm not one that cries easily. It's easy to forget how wonderful a speaker he is until you're confronted with it- this is twice in a few days now, the other one being after they released his birth certificate- again, because apparently the short form wasn't good enough *eyeroll*. The second isn't in the same league, I don't think, and he was CLEARLY angry (I don't blame him one bit for that!), but still, he kept his cool and it was a good speech. Now maybe we can put this incredibly racist birther crap aside (I'm looking at you, Donald Trump, you piece of shit) and move on to other things. As Obama said, "We've got better things to do."

In other news, I wrote some for bg. Not even 100 words of epic terrible, mind, but it's something. (I'm totally going to do day 2 of the meme, just. Not right now. Need sleep. Maybe when I wake up, the day will be not full of epic suck.)

☁ I was asked to post these, so to my absolute mortification, here you go. These icons are totally Lish's fault. Just... don't even ask. Seriously. Though I need to mess around more with the first one because I still don't like it.

       

☁ Been re-reading some old Harry/Draco fic. Hell, I missed these two. <3 It's totally not helping me write blind_go , though. Pffft. I've also been DL-ing a lot of PoT doujin lately. XDDD

☁ Also fandom related: people have been posting to the kink meme, which is hysterical since it's three years old. I generally still get posts on it every once in a while, but the sudden interest is amusing. :P

☁ And speaking of Harry Potter, couple of annoyances about the new release of Deathly Hallows Part 1. The first is that Walmart had an exclusive on the special edition DVD. Really, WB? I know the studios are trying to push the Bluray, but honestly. I don't have a Bluray player. I have no intention of purchasing one- if I'm going to spend the money, I might as well save a bit more and buy a PS3 so I can play games on the damn thing. STOP TRYING TO SHOVE THE FUCKING BLURAY DOWN MY THROAT.

*ahem*

The other thing that pissed me off was actually in the deleted scenes. Now... when I saw DH1 in the theater, I was incredibly disappointed that it didn't have the scene with Harry and Dudley when the Dursley's were leaving. It was a big moment for the both of them. But guess what? It was in the special features. What the ever loving hell. I think it's WORSE, knowing that they filmed it and decided that it WASN'T IMPORTANT, as opposed to not shooting it (there could've been a number of reasons why they didn't end up shooting it, after all). Seriously. What the fuck, WB.

☁ WHAT THE HELL IS IT WITH RANDOM PEOPLE INSTANT MESSAGING ME LATELY? It's getting ridiculous.

☁ Dear Mother Nature: We had about 50 thousand feet of snow this winter- I promise you, the ground doesn't need anymore water for a while. Possibly the entire summer. You don't need to rain all freaking week. No love, Ver

☁ Class started today. So as part of my first assignment, I'm supposed to be reading at least one book about writing and/or creativity. I have a bunch on my laptop that I have yet to read (in addition to one or two physical ones whose whereabouts are currently unknown), so I decided to look through. Just on the lappy, I have enough that I could read two books a week for almost the entire length of the course. O_o And only three of the 20 are grammar centered. *headdesk* Although on the other hand, it's as good of an excuse as any to get some of those under my belt?

The other part of the assignment is to get a "writer's journal", which isn't a problem because I have a zillion empty notebooks. Unofficial assignments through the course include writing for 10 minutes a day NO MATTER WHAT and to spend at least an hour a week doing something creative besides writing (I'm thinking scrapbooking/playing in photoshop. :D)

( Possibly triggery/TMI, who knows. Cut just in case. )

☁ I signed up for that class- which is both exciting and terrifying all at the same time. I was an idiot and hit the wrong button on the payment, though, so I'll have to send them a check. Annoying, but not a huge deal, thankfully.

☁ Asked for a couple of extra days off near the end of the month- a little four day mini-vacation. I desperately need it. Maybe it'll let me decompress a bit. I'm hoping to get some cleaning done somewhere in there, too.

☁ OH, speaking of work, I have to share this. The uniform shirts for work are smaller than standard shirts- you have to go up at least one size. So I've been wearing a 3x ever since they rolled these things out, right? It finally occurred to me the other day that I should probably get at least one smaller shirt, because the old ones? Are halfway to my knees now. It's a little ridiculous. I got Kerry to give me a new shirt, which turned out to be an XL. Which fucking FIT. It's tighter around the middle than I'm entirely comfortable with, but that's how the 3x used to be too (and I had refused to go up to a 4, heh.) And also I got told "It looks fine, stop it." XDDD

☁ In other news, my father called Kelly on Sunday. She'd written him a letter back in August, which I'd honestly forgotten about, so he called and left a voicemail. Weird. The whole thing is just... very weird to me. I'm happy for her- she's nervous, but if it's a relationship she wants to pursue, she should. As long as no one tries to get me involved, if this is what she wants, then good for her. I feel kind of... strangely detached from it, I guess? Though I suppose it's not so strange because it wasn't me he called. So I don't really get to have feelings about that. I just... don't even think about him that much anymore. He hasn't been a part of my life for a very long time- he barely registers as a blip on my radar now. I won't say that I don't care about anything relating to him at all- if I didn't care, then I would be able to forgive him for everything, because why would it matter? But I can't. I understand why he left. God, do I understand why he left. But I can't forgive the way he just disappeared the way he did. How he left Kelly and I with our mother KNOWING what she was like and just leaving us to fend for ourselves. He was a COWARD and abandoned us in hell... so no, I can't forgive that. While I wouldn't wish anything like death on him, I hope it's something that he thinks about every day. I hope he regrets it every. Single. Day.

☁ Put in a reserve for Hikaru at an RP that will be opening in a few days called Camp Candy. (Just the name is perfect for him, at any rate! :3) He'd probably be the easiest to start with, so I'm going to do that and go from there. The best part is that they allow AU versions of characters, so I think I can bring SW!Al there if I choose to. Later. After I figure out whether the RP is working for me or not. I've never joined an LJ RP all by myself without knowing anybody there before. I'm kind of nervous. XD

☁ Go shoeless today: One Day Without Shoes

☁ blind_go  round 11 is up- go sign up! The theme this time is "Childhood", which is going to be really interesting. It sounds like fun. :3 Also the support thread is up too, even if you're not planning on signing up. Readers are totally awesome too. :D

☁ What makes people think they have the right to make nasty commentary about your attempts to lose weight/eat healthier? I was getting some cereal, and since I have a tendency to put WAY too much milk in cereal, I measure it first. It works for me. Kelly saw me doing this and sneered "You're measuring your milk now? Isn't that going too far?" .....seriously? We proceeded to get into a fight because apparently me telling her that it was none of her business was me being a bitch when she was "just kidding." Right. Because you totally use that disgusted tone of voice when you're joking around with someone.

☁ EEEEEEEEEEE GLEE! Favorite. Episode. EVER. Kelly and I were squeeing through half the episode. I thought my heart would explode from squee. I've watched specific parts a bazillion times now. I've also taken a few screencaps. ^_^;;; And... Rachel's last song ended up good, as much as I hate to admit it. :/ And even though I was afraid at first, Puck's was surprisingly sweet. <3 And the Blaine and Kurt duet! <333!

☁ Edit: Totally forgot to mention this, because I was pissed off at the time... Kelly's boyfriend asked her if she was sure she wasn't faking being straight, when she mentioned watching Glee (Which I don't get, by the way- I know of a guy that was harrassed for being gay because he watches it, but if you're a girl, you're gay if you watch it? What? How does that make any sense in homophobe-logic? It doesn't follow their rules. Does not compute.) Anyway, Kelly turned to me and was like, "How do you fake being straight?" In all seriousness. I almost laughed at her, thinking "I don't know, I've never been any good at it." I mean really, how do you even answer something like that? XD

What is it with all the posting lately? O_o

1. People who post to craigslist and don't e-mail you back suck. Just saying.

2. Have now seen the first six episodes of Fairy Tail and I already love it. <3 The good news is that RL has up through episode 68, so that'll keep me going a while. Plus it turns out that it's SIX eps of Hourou Musuko subbed already (!), so I have those to watch as well. I watched the first, and apparently they're starting in the middle somewhere, and it's kind of depressing. I can't help but think that it would be confusing for someone who hadn't read the manga already. The art/coloring is different, though, kind of... watercolory? I like it. ^_^ Also they use some Debussy for background music! <3 <3 <3 Also downloaded Pandora Hearts, since I've been meaning to watch that too and it's a shorter series.

3. That being said, I didn't do anything on my days off except for watch anime, play the Urbz, bake some more brownies for work tomorrow, and chat with Lish and Pye. Definitely a lazy couple of days. It was nice, but I probably should've done some actual work, heh.

4. Totally forgot to mention that I had another sort of "Do I have a rainbow on my forehead?" moment the other day. XD One of my coworkers, Mike, likes to point out girls he would like to fuck (subtly, mind, he doesn't announce it or anything), though he generally likes women younger and thinner than I do. I usually call him a pig and sometimes a pedo and it's all in good fun. ^_^ So anyway, he'd pointed a woman out. She was WAY too thin for my taste- seriously, she was in the "I want to take her home just to FEED her" category- but I'll admit she had a nice ass. Which, yes, I'll also admit that I might've... automatically looked at as she passed us, and this was after I'd given a thumbs down for too skinny. Once she was out of sight, Mike was like "I TOTALLY SAW THAT!" Um. Whoops? ^_^;;;;;;;;;; This is so why I'm not a ninja.

I really, really hope that today wasn't an indicator of how the whole year will go, because seriously? I'll have to curl up in a corner somewhere and cry.

1. One of the many reasons I almost never drink: even if I have one, I feel like utter shit the next day. So I had a couple of godiva-and-milks around midnight (much more milk than godiva, I assure you XD), and sure enough, felt like shit.
2. On top of the previous, my body decided that it hates me. Pamprin wasn't touching the cramps, either. UGH.
3. Didn't have a thermacare patch for said cramps. Work was out of them, so tried a store brand, which turned out to be freaking useless. So basically, I was in a lot of pain all day.
4. Because the day wasn't shitty enough: I found out while I was at work that a friend got gaybashed last night. He's okay, but... ugh. :/ I later discovered it was a fucking bouncer at a straight bar, who apparently followed Paul out of the place and attacked him. The other bouncers had to actually pull the guy off of him. God. I'm actually kind of glad I wasn't there, because I would've flipped out and wouldn't that have been ridiculous? 4'11" me shouting at a big bouncer type guy. XDDD Still, it's scary, you know? It's not like he was in the boondocks somewhere, this is Albany. I'll grant you that Albany's certainly not a gay mecca or anything close to that, but people are pretty low-key about the gay thing here, from my experience. At least overall. You always get some assholes, but meh. The important thing is that he's okay, and he did report it. He's more upset about the fact that he has "JOE" imprinted on his face (asshole must've had one of those knuckle ring things that leaves markings) than the actual attack. Go figure.

1. Haven't posted in a while, but work is killing me. Seriously. I haven't gotten out anywhere close to on time the last three days, and yesterday I didn't leave until 12:30. That's TWO AND A HALF HOURS late. Yeeeeeah. Oh, and then I had the Assistant Manager (who is a complete moron) lecturing me IN FRONT OF A CUSTOMER yesterday about how I needed to be ringing while I was helping people with their picture stuff. It's like... you seriously want me to just walk away from people constantly to ring? It's less than a fucking week before Christmas. As it was, I had a woman bitch at me for a good five minutes today because we're out of the 5x7 greeting card envelopes, so she got the 6x8 ones. I'm not even kidding. Look, it's two inches, and you get the damn envelopes for free anyway. Take them and run. God. And this idiot assistant thinks I have nothing better to do than to sit at the register and ring all day? Fuck.

IS CHRISTMAS OVER YET?

2. Holiday cards went out Wednesday, so those should be to people soon if they're not already. Except Fei, because I sent them super duper late this year and she may or may not get it on time. Sadness. Also I got Ai's and Shan's cards, thanks you guys! <3

3. I've decided that I'm going to try to watch as many movies off of the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" list. I know I'll get bored with it quickly, but maybe I can at least knock off some of those movies that people always gape at me for when they discover I've never seen them *cough*GoneWiththeWind*cough*. So we'll see. I actually watched two yesterday- there are some in Youtube's movie section, and the first two on the list are about ten minutes each.

A Trip to the Moon- Cracky and kind of amusing because of that. It actually has effects too, even if they're cheesy as hell. A little bit too long, though, I was definitely getting bored by the end.
The Great Train Robbery- Most random music EVER. It seriously made no sense with what was going on. Also I thought that there were two robbers instead of four for the longest time because they're all dressed the same and you can't see anyone's faces. Boo.

Overall, nothing particularly memorable. I think the coolest thing is that they're from 1902 and 1903, respectively, and they're on YOUTUBE. Movies that are over 100 years old, and I can sit on my laptop and watch them on the INTERNET. Just. Wow. I spent a good portion of The Great Train Robbery trying to wrap my brain around that. XD

At the moment, though, I'm mostly trying to finally finish off The L Word. I saw the first two seasons originally and that was it, so...yeah. I started all over because it's been too long, and I'm in the middle of season two. Not bad for starting this a few days ago. ^_^

4. Just something interesting: I took a little quiz called "What tattoo describes your personality". I got "Koi fish- You have a lot of courage, the ability to attain high goals, and overcoming life's difficulties. So don't let anyone hold you back."

...huh.