i'm in no hurry, you go run and tell your friends

my sister recently put up a facebook status congratulating me on getting darcy. only she worded it in a way that, well... had people congratulating me on being pregnant. except for most of my cousins who, as i just found out this morning, were just telling anyone with ears that i was expecting. (yay gossipy family?) anyway, i know that everyone wants me to have a baby (because it is obviously their business), but it's getting a little ridiculous how quickly they will jump to that conclusion. besides calling me pregnant (as if stating that i am will make it true), any time my sisters mention anything about me on facebook i start getting people congratulating me. even when the wording does not imply that i am. (for example, congratulating me on getting into the phd program was obviously code for having a baby. i mean, duh.)

and, i just have to say, that i am not the kind of person that will announce huge, life-changing events like that through my sisters' facebook statuses. and i can't really decide if the fact that they think i am is more insulting to me or them. on the one hand, i would like to think that i could find a classier way to announce things, maybe including lace and chocolate pearls, and i would like for them to think that, too. but on the other hand, do they really think that i care that little about them that i wouldn't tell them if i had news, and instead would let them find out through facebook? i mean, really.

in other news, i finished this year's nanovel the night before last. yes, once i crossed the fifty word mark i just rushed an ending along the lines of: ginny gets taken. ron erases lockhart's memory. harry fights a big snake and voldemort's memory. they are all okay, and gryffindor wins. the end. (not my plot, but you get the point.) and yes, that seems really weird after ninety some pages filled with word-padding sentences like "she said to him out loud, with her voice spoken loudly, as she looked over to her right because that's where he was standing and not on her left because there was no one on her left, there was just empty space, because he was standing to her right." but i figure if i ever want to go back to this one then i'll have the bare bones of the story and i can fatten it up with real sentences and plot points that don't consist of pages deciding whether the visiting uncle should sleep on the couch or take the brother's room. yeah, it's pretty bad, but at least i can say i wrote fifty thousand words in a month again.

*Losing Touch - The Killers

every new beginning comes from another beginning's end

it's an exciting time to be living in our household, let me tell you. we are all about new beginnings and rekindling dreams and giving things a shot. (don't worry, though, there is still plenty of time being wasted sitting on the couch watching stupid tv shows and eating brownies.)

first of all, my fourth grade dream of owning a bunny was realized last night when my husband got me this guy:

(ignore the mess in the background and the fact that the lighting isn't great because it was dark (as it tends to get when the sun goes down) and our lights kind of suck in this apartment.) his name is fitzsarah darcy, or just darcy for short, and he is adorable and has a ridiculously sweet temperament.

second of all, my sister recently read my 2011 nanovel and said it had promise. i never opened the story after i finished nano last year, but remember really liking the idea of it before i started. so now i am re-excited about it and once i get my fifty thousand words for this nano finished, i will go back and take a second look at it. remember three years ago when i said that i was going to edit sincerely, mr. nobody and start sending it out to agents, but never did? yeah, well, this time i am planning to actually get further into the editing than the first three chapters and do this for real. i'm kind of stupidly excited about it, though i still haven't read the story myself so i don't know how discouraged i will get after that. (i painted my nails to look like pages in a book, though, and i think that that shows writerly promise, don't you?)

third, my husband also brought home a new tv last night, which he is super excited about. (though to be honest i kind of miss the way that the picture would stay printed on the screen for a few seconds every time a scene ended with our old one. enough people have told me i'm being stupid for that, though.)

finally, my husband is finishing his master's this semester (in like, two weeks) and i will be maybe dropping out of school next semester (but even if i don't it will be the last semester i take classes. like ever.) and the end of being married students is both liberating and terrifying and a slew of other emotions, but it is also a new beginning so it deserves to be listed here.

long story short, change is in the air, and though i am the biggest advocate of anti-change, exciting things may be happening.

*Closing Time - Green Day

and if i never see your face again, i don't mind

one of the biggest pieces of news recently (and in light of everything that's going on everywhere i find this a little sad, in the way that makes me feel that someone should be punched in the face) is that hostess is declaring bankruptcy and closing down. it is the end of the twinkie (at least until some other company decides to buy them and start reselling all of hostess's products). for maybe half a second, i was caught up in the overwhelming sadness and panic that the rest of the world seemed to be swept up in: no more twinkies?! how will we ever survive?! but then i remembered that i don't even like twinkies and moved on with my life.

in fact, i've never actually met anyone in real life that liked twinkies. pop culture likes to boast about how they're the greatest thing since putting cheese on a burger, and it seems like every other celebrity is claiming that its their favorite food, but real live people that i could reach my hand out and touch (despite the fact that that sounds a little creepy) have never once told me that the thing they love most in the world is a twinkie. 

every once and a while, my sister and i would get caught up in the hype of the twinkie. we'd be bombarded with references to its awesomeness and think, 'you know, maybe we're just remembering them wrong. maybe we got one that they forgot to inject with awesomeness. maybe we should try another twinkie.' and so we run out to 7-11 and pick up a couple. of course, after tearing open the wrapper in anticipation, taking a bite and chewing in slow motion to give it maximum dramatic effect, we are hit with the same thing we are always hit with: disappointment. i'm not saying twinkies are bad or anything, but i never seem to remember what they taste like besides disappointment. i would never choose a twinkie over a hoho is all i know.  

(i refer to this as the KISS phenomenon. i have never once met a KISS fan and yet on every movie and tv show i see they are toted as the greatest band ever. granted, the fact that they did a concert semi-recently must mean that someone has to like them, but i dunno. twinkies and KISS are mixed up in the worst conspiracy ever.)

so if the world really doesn't see another twinkie ever again, well, i think i might be okay with that. and deep down, i think every one else will be too, because if you stop to think about it, no one likes twinkies. 

just in case you were wondering, i'm more of a little debbie girl anyway. 

*If I Never See Your Face Again - Maroon 5

losing time in the in between

the great idea i had for my thesis that no one wanted to work with me on but that my forensics guy and i thought was absolutely fantastic has just been done by some company out in california. i can't bring myself to read the entire article because, well, i don't really know why. i mean, i was thinking of dropping out anyway. the only reason i was going to stay was because i thought this idea was something worth my time and effort. and now it's been taken by someone else - like my exact thing - and i think that i should feel a little relieved but instead i feel panic. a flood of 'oh god what am i supposed to do now?' and of course the obvious answer is to stop cowering from the real world behind a shield of academia and just get a move on with my life, but i have never really been one for obvious answers. so there's that.

and time has been disappearing on me just like my papaya nail polish and the best friend ring from my cousin did. i remember coming home from class on friday night, then waking up saturday morning, then eating pizza with my family sunday evening, and going out last night, but everything in between is just nothing. maybe i'm being possessed by voldemort. i have to admit i really wouldn't mind that too much of he could do me a favor and avada kedavra my group members that i just don't seem able to stand. at all. even though i've tried. 

i am so ready for this semester to be over. 

oh, and just in case you were wondering, nano is going very weirdly this year. it'll only get done because i refuse to even think that i could possibly lose. i keep forgetting key parts in the story that tie the two narratives together so i'll just throw a scene in the middle of nowhere that addresses the point and then continue on with my apparent inability to describe anything or give any sort of story line. it seems like a lot of dialogue with no story in between. for all the reader knows, i have characters floating around in a black void saying things emotionlessly. i used to write like that a lot, and then some wonderful person on the internet called me out on it, and i got better. i guess i'm regressing. 

*Lose Some Time - Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

i know that it might sound more than a little crazy but i believe

so there's this thing where you google "died on" and then your birthday and the wikipedia article that comes up is who or what you were in your previous life. now, i don't believe in previous lives or anything, but a friend who did it is studying art and her guy was an art critic. her sister, a writer, did it and her guy was an author. that was coincidental enough for me to try it.

apparently, in my past life i was pierre desproges, a french humorist "famous for his elaborate, eloquent and above all, virulent diatribes criticizing anything and everything." and i couldn't help but notice that one of my favorite things to write on this blog was wannabe eloquent diatribes criticizing anything and everything. in fact, one of my favorite thing to do in general is find all the people and things on the internet that make me angry and then spend hours criticizing them to anyone who will listen. he also wrote in various formats, which is totally my dream. so yeah.

now, like i said, i don't believe in past lives or anything, but this is just weird. i could chalk it up to random coincidence, but what fun is that? instead, i'm going to propose my own solution. you remember in grade school when we were told time and time again that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it just gets transferred from one form to another? well, what if interests and talents and hobbies and whatnot follow the same rule? what if there are always the same number of writers on this earth? (or maybe the same amount of writerly talent and that can be hogged by one really talented person or distributed among a thousand semi-talented people.) what if there were only so many people interested in art, and whenever one died another one had to be born to take his/her place? it's kind of cool to think about.

*I Knew I Loved You - Savage Garden

i like to say that i hate school now, and while i really am sick of it and in desperate need of a break, i'm still the same nerdy third grader that i've always been. i still get that ridiculous smiley feeling inside when I get a paper back with comments pointing out my best points or when a professor ends an email saying that he was impressed with my midterm score. the "good work"s and the "great job"s from teachers whose opinions i care about never seem to get old, no matter how many times i say they do. getting an A+ from a professor that did not believe in pluses or minuses still makes me smile. and when i confront this slightly shameful part of me, it's hard to think that i could drop out of school altogether. that i could possibly give up these fleeting moments of inner yays seems impossible. but then i think of the professors that do not want to be on my committee and the ones who think i should drop out and the work that i can't and don't want to do but still have to, and i have to wonder if a "good job" is really worth the effort. the two sides are still battling it out. and every time i seem to come to a conclusion i change my mind.

my novel writing had been going a bit slow, and by that i mean i didn't even open the file for a few days. but after writing like crazy yesterday and six thousand words and a sore wrist later, i am only four thousand words behind schedule instead of ten. i think in the editing i'll have to move a few things up in the story so that it doesn't seem like its floundering so much at the beginning, but at least it's getting down on paper. yesterday i went to look at my nanovel from last year which i haven't touched since i typed the last word, and i couldn't find it. there was a copy with the first fifteen thousand words saved, but the whole novel? nowhere. i am holding off on the crying until i search all my hard drives and thumb drives and other computers, but it doesn't look good. i have no idea what could have happened to it.

anyway, i am off to write another four thousand words before class (hopefully) so that i can resume the knitting i've been putting off as well tonight. to all of you who are participating in nano and also those of you who aren't, i encourage you all to write. something. anything. it's fun, i swear. 

your future's so unclear now, what's left of your career now?

this post is going to be all over the place because i should be doing ten other things and my mind refuses to stop planning for/thinking about them while i write this.

anyway. i've been becoming more and more serious about dropping out of the PhD program, or at least taking a break from it until they get people that are both eligible to head my committee and interested in what i want to do. apparently my subconscious is not as cool with this decision as i thought it was, because last night i had a grease inspired dream. you know when frenchie drops out of beauty school and that serenading angel guy or whatever sings "beauty school dropout?" yeah, well, he came to me in my dream last night. only he was singing, "computer school drop out/ no graduation day for you/ computer school drop out/ you say there's nothing you can do/ well at least you could have taken time to go and learn to program/ but now you'll just prove them right, your education was a big sham." yeah, it was weird.

the other day i was reading these "did you know" lists about things around your house and it was amazingly amazing and i kept interrupting my husband doing his homework to say, "oh my god! did you know that...? That so cool!" i thought i'd share the amazement. here is part one, part two, and part three.

also, yesterday i read a quote by ellie kemper that said, "write like your parents are already dead." and i thought that was great because i do find myself thinking twice about some things i want to write because i wonder what my parents will think of it or if they'll interpret something the wrong way or think a character is inspired a little too much by them. so yeah, good advice.

and finally, i think this is a genius chair. it's like, bookshelf and seat combined into one but not in one of those super cool but super weird shapes that you couldn't really put in your house. and it can supposedly hold three hundred books which is pretty awesome.

*Beauty School Dropout - Grease

rape me, my friend

the other day i was watching an episode of melissa and joey, and joe was teaching one of mel's boyfriends how to be confident or whatever so he could get a job so mel could dump him without feeling bad about it. anyway, he stops by mel's house and asks her to go out with him that night and mel says no. joe then tells the boyfriend (i can't remember his name) to never take no for an answer. i've heard that saying a million and three times before in my life. we've always been told that the people who get ahead in life, the ones that are destined for success, never take no for an answer. and maybe it's because i heard it so much that i never really listened to it, but it wasn't until that moment that i thought, wait a minute... that's totally rape mentality.

and that got me to thinking.

you know how when you're younger you were always told that the girl/boy that is mean to you really likes you? that you should give them a chance because, yeah they do stupid things, but it's only because they can't tell you how they feel about you. i'll be at the playground and see a boy chasing a screaming little girl around and no one will tell the boy to stop because, "the girl really wants him to chase her, she's just pretending not to." that's also rape mentality.

so basically we're raising our children to think like rapists their whole lives - from the playground to the workforce. it's no wonder that almost every society blames the victim. they're the ones creating the rapists so of course they won't see them in the wrong.

*Rape Me - Nirvana

time, where did you go?

this morning i had the [increasingly rare] urge to blog about something specific. do you know how long it's been since i've come on here with an actual point to make? way too long. but today was different. so i sign into blogger with a purpose and click on the little create a new blog post pencil. but before i could start writing my post, i realized that today was the first of november which also means that it's the first day of nanowrimo (which i somehow both totally knew and totally forgot about). anyway, once that realization hit i also realized that i had yet to put my word count tracker up on my blog. and what is nanowrimo if i don't post my writing progress (or lack thereof) for all of you to see? the thought of that little red bar not moving for too long always motivates me to write... or to come on here and complain about how i am not writing which somehow allows me to push through my writer's block.

the thing is, i apparently did not bookmark the page i got the code from to put up the counter. i could not remember where i had gotten it from. and i did not feel like using my brain to remember how to write basic html. i just wanted the word count tracker up there so i could start writing. a while later (it took a lot longer than it should have because of constant interruptions) i had the word count tracker up. but now i needed to actually start my novel so that the 0% done wasn't mocking me. this started off great until i received multiple phone calls and kept getting distracted by mythbusters. so i moved into the bedroom, got my daily word count goal accomplished, and posted it on here. (i was actually on a roll and would have written more, but junior decided that it was a perfect time to need to be recharged.)

finished enough with nano for the day, i decided to finally write my blog post. but then i got an email from my friday class's professor (my second favorite class of the semester) saying that we would not be meeting tomorrow. my head took this to mean that today's class should be cancelled and i spent the rest of the day waiting for the cancellation email that never came. i decided to make a quick comment about how the class i wanted cancelled the most was the only class i was having this week before starting my real post when i noticed my chipping nail polish and remembered that i needed to take it off. so i did that and then took a shower. by that time it was two something and i had to get dressed and print out my homework (and make sure it was answered correctly) and triple check that class was really happening tonight. i can be a huge lollygagger (i can't think of a word that doesn't make me sound sixty for this) at times and by the time i was ready to sit down and write, it was time to head to school.

when i got back home, i decided to write the blog post while i ate gross, reheated pizza and looked through the mail. then i saw a comment talking about how i had no new post today and for some reason it led to this pointless thing instead of the original one which will be shoved to tomorrow apparently. because, really, the last thing i want to do when i finish three hours of calculating alpha, beta, and lambda is to actually write something that is not mindless drivel.

i also think i used this lyric as a title before. (maybe more than once?)

the end.

*Time - Chantal Kreviazuk