What is this, Horseville? 'Cause I'm surrounded by naysayers. Wordplay!

I did a project this weekend! It involved a miter box!


that's a non-slip rug pad to keep the miter box from moving while we saw

( Be impressed... )

I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty proud of myself for keeping up with NaNo for a whole week. I missed a few evenings due to work/play/laziness but made up for it and was back on track last night.

The key is to just not do anything else. Even when I really do not want to write, I sit down and make myself do it. The idea that I'll just have to make the word count up later is a great motivator. I truly wish I'd taken the time to sketch out an outline before I started, because I only have a very vague idea of what my plot actually is. I know I could go ahead and do that now, but then that's writing without any of it counting towards my total words and I can't have that.

My main issue at this point in the main character. Her characterization is all over the place and it's is practically killing me to not go back and edit. I have an idea of what I want her to be in my head: easily annoyed but also quite flighty. And on paper she's just coming off as a snob, not simply disinterested. I want her to be funny, but with an edge and it's totally not working. I'm frustrated and as a result getting more invested in secondary characters... which isn't helpful.

It's not helping that I'm also reading Catching Fire which, while it's not as good as The Hunger Games I still love it. It's making me very anxious about my own writing.

ETA: Forgot to mention my knitting debacle! So, I'm not a knitter. I prefer crocheting (not that I do that much of it), but recently I picked up a pattern for a knit hat. It's a very loose beret and I thought it was adorable. It was marked as "easy" so I thought: SCORE. I'd only attempted knitting once before, but the double needle thing was tricky for me. So, I had to reacquaint myself with casting off and the stitches (thanks youtube!) and was on my way.

The first issue came when my cats got into the yarn. I woke up Saturday morning to the entire ball of yarn unwound and knotted throughout my entire living and dining room area. We're talking around multiple table legs on multiple tables. They couldn't have done this with the cheap yarn I picked up for practice, no, it had to be the fancy stuff. UGH. CATS.

Then I totally failed on stockinette stitch. I read that it was one row of knit and one row of purl. Okay, I thought, simple enough. So I was doing that and... it did not look right. I thought maybe I got my stitches turned around or something, so I kept going, but it didn't look anything like the picture. Then I realized that you're supposed to turn the piece when you do the purl side, only I was working on circular needles, so how the hell was I supposed to do that? Then I searched youtube and realized when you're working in the round you just keep using the knit stitch. You don't have to worry about purl stitching at all. Awesome. I'd just wasted hours and had to rip everything out.

This hat better be AMAZING when I'm done.

ETA THE SECOND: Who out there has an ebook reader? I'm starting to think I'd... really really like one. I've poopoo-ed (NO idea how to spell that) reading on the computer for so long, because I love actually holding a book in my hands. But the idea of carrying around a whole library also really appeals to me. I've browsed around a bit, but I'm wondering if anyone on my flist has a preference. I'm leaning towards the Nook over the Kindle because I'd be able to put library books on the Nook. You have to strip the DRM off of them in order to put them on the Kindle, which sounds like kind of an (illegal) hassle. THOUGHTS, PLEASE.

The time has come for me to get a new bedroom rug. The one that is currently in there is pretty old and worn out. Besides, the lavender flowers don't really match the look I'm going for now. So that means rug shopping! Too bad everything is ugly and expensive!

I'm pretty much in love with all the rugs at Anthropologie, though a lot of them have too bold of color schemes for my bedroom. Plus, unless I want a tiny little 2'x3' rug I'm out of luck there. But look how pretty!

• Coqo Floral Rug


• festival rug


• Vernal Cusp Rug


• Whorled Trapunto Rug


• Paper Flowers Rug

This one is currently at the top of my list of rugs I might actually be able to swing - Chrysanthemum Rug (westelm). Birthday monies will go into a rug slush fund.

I'd also like to get a smaller rug for in between the two beds. There are two cute ones pretty cheap at Urban Outfitters

• Chenille Rug


• Leaf Stripe Printed Rug

That first one would probably fall apart pretty quickly, since chenille isn't exactly known for it's resilience. I like the second one better anyhow.

My uncle called me Friday night to ask if I'd watch my little cousins on Saturday so he and my aunt could go to the oldest's little league playoff game. At 8:30 am.

Ah ha ha XD. Yeah, I passed on that opportunity.

Instead, I slept. Then I woke up (around 8:30 actually) and cleaned (I'm not completely lazy, but 4 cousins under the age of 9 on Saturday morning was just too much).

I also decided I wanted to put a few more coats of stain on the coffee table I refinished about two years ago. I always meant to do it, but never got around to it. Of course, we had a giant thunderstorm on Sunday, so I had to bring it inside. My cats were immediately interested in it and got their dirty little paws all over it. Now it needs ANOTHER coat. But it does look nicer. The color is richer and I'm very happy.

The tomato plants I started from seeds and transplanted out into my yard a couple weeks ago are still alive! (A majority of them!) The brussel sprouts and lettuce bit the dust, but I kind of figured that. They were WEAK. I'm glad it's been raining pretty steadily since I planted the tomatoes. Not having a hose makes it really time consuming to water plants.

I'm pretty excited about my tv line-up tonight: Doctor Who and True Blood. I've managed to stay away from spoilers for the finale, but the mummerings seem to be pretty positive. Overall I've been pretty disappointed with this season. Granted, I like the Doctor and I like Amy, but the episodes have been less than spectacular. I expected more from Moffat, since he was responsible for my favorite DW episodes ever: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.

Only two episodes of True Blood have aired, and it's driving me crazy because I wish I had a new episode every night. It's just been so completely on, I don't even know how to describe it. Bill has been fantastic (I agree with a lot of people that both him and Sookie are far more interesting when they are separated). Same with Jason and Jessica (and Pam! :D). However, I'm not completely sold on Eric/Sookie. Maybe I've just been underwhelmed by him? The fans of the books are so crazy for him, I think it may have put me off. He's interesting to a degree, but I still don't completely understand the hype.

Also, more nekkid werewolf please. DAMN.

This weekend I also finally got around to watching Alice in Wonderland. What a complete disappointment. I'm glad I never shelled out the money to see it in IMAX like I originally planned. Tim Burton has made some wonderful movies (Edward Scissorhands and Big Fish are some favorites), but this just seemed so entirely devoid of the imagination and darker whimsy that I had expected. I mean, it's Alice in Wonderland, how can you make it BORING?

It's hardly a matter of it being a reimagining of the source material. There are plenty of adaptations and remakes that are wonderful (Clueless, anyone? Even Burton's own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was fun and interesting. To me, at least, I know a lot of people didn't care for it. Oh! I forgot about SyFy's recent "Alice" which was far from excellent but was at least engaging.).

But, Alice in Wonderland? I had to force myself to finish it. I just didn't care what happened to anyone. Alice hardly seemed a real person, she was just an entity that moved from one scene to another. I think Anne Hathaway's quirky White Queen was the only character I found remotely interesting.

I think the overwhelming presence of the CG world didn't help matters. Nothing seemed real, or tangible. It didn't even look like a dream. It just looked fake and I didn't care.

Also, did it seem like everyone was mumbling the entire time? I seriously couldn't understand half of what was being said and it drove me insane.

I haven't seen the Disney cartoon since I was very, very young, but I feel like I should watch it now. I also should find a copy of the 1985 TV version because I love it in all its campiness. I should also probably read the actual book one of these days (I don't think the play version I was in counts). :DV

I didn't like it when Yahoo announced that they were going to delete all of the Geocities pages last year. It felt like burning down a library: a library full of obnoxious tiled backgrounds, midis, and animated gifs, but a library none the less. Every page that sat on those servers represented the birth of the internet into the mainstream. It's not like we lost the tool with which to use the pages, everyone could still visit those pages using today's internet browsers. It's not like finding a 5 1/2 inch floppy and not having the Apple II on which to read it.

I thought it was terribly cold-hearted that they decided to erase all that history, even if it was abandoned. It made me sad.

But, it didn't make me annoyed until I randomly tried to find an old Fushigi Yuugi fanfic this weekend. It seemed to have vanished from the internet, it's disappearance no doubt assisted by the Geocities massacre. That is what people used back in '98 after all.

It made me very upset that I couldn't find it. I used to read fanfiction quite a bit, but nothing ever stuck with me the way this story did (besides random snippets of X-Files fanfiction my friend and I would read to each other when we were younger), which is kind of awful to say because it's totally a Mary Sue story written for one of the FY Big Name Fans. But, nevertheless, I had to find it.

I get obsessive about the oddest things. For whatever reason it became VITAL that I find it. I don't know why it was so important, maybe just the fact that I couldn't accept that the internet would fail me. But, it seemed like every link I came across was dead. This was before fanfiction.net really took off so it wasn't there. And even the old FY fic yahoo group had disappeared. I was beginning to lose hope and started grasping at straws by sending emails to what I knew were defunct emails (who uses juno anymore?). Until there was a breakthrough. I was just searching for the authors name and saw it mentioned in reference to another one of her fics. Mind you, I hadn't found any working links for ANYTHING by her so I didn't have much hope.

But, it was a link to an archived webpage. If you went to the site itself, it was gone, but there was still an archived version. It was an entire library of Fushigi Yuugi fics AND IT WAS THERE. I immediately saved it to my computer so I wouldn't have to go through that nonsense again.

Back to real life

I'm going to be painting my (tiny) kitchen and bedroom. I'm fairly certain I will be painting the (ridiculous small) kitchen the same apple green as the dining room. I love that color and I think it will look great against the dark wood and white cabinets in the (you won't believe how miniscule it is) kitchen. The question that remains is whether I'll paint all of the wall or just above or below the chair rail.

My bedroom is what I am really excited about. Recently I refinished a small dresser I found on craigslist and painted it canary yellow. It's so adorable. I kept meaning to do a post about it, but the pictures are just sitting on my camera at the moment. Having made that color choice, the rest of the room would have to work around it. I think I've decided on the color scheme of yellow, gray, and green. Have a look at some pictures (trolling design websites is my new hobby) to see just how pretty it is:


( More photos... )

I want to paint my walls gray and find a new duvet cover for my comforter. Currently it is sage green, which is pretty, but I want a more vibrant green. What I really would like is a white fabric with a bright green print. But that is proving difficult to find. And besides, duvet covers are CRAZY expensive for what amount to two sheet sewn together and some buttonholes. So, I think I'm going to make my own. But that means I still have to find sheets. The closest I've come across are there, but they aren't quite right.

Sometimes I read:

I recently finished Eon: Dragoneye Reborn and really enjoyed it. I kind of adored Eon because she seemed like such a real girl, full of doubts, pride, and amazing inner strength. She may not be the nicest person, but her life never allowed for it. And the Asian-influenced world was pretty awesome. My only quibble is that the entire book was kind of a slow burn when it came to conflict. No highs or lows to speak of, but I am anticipating the second book. I can't wait to see what happens.

I also started Graceling which gives us another excellent heroine in Katsa. Only, where Eon was forced to be withdrawn by her circumstances Katsa is up to her eyeballs in hands-on everything. Plus, Po is a cutie.

I finished A Sleeping Forest last night. If anyone is looking for a suspenseful murder-mystery jdrama with some crazy-ass twists, I really suggest it. Use the torrent off of d-addicts though, the version on jdramas is awful and doesn't do Kimura's hair justice.

That's all I'm going to say about it for fear of spoiling something.

Now I just need to decide if I'm going to continue with Love Revolution or Long Vacation. I also have Painter of the Wind sitting on my hard drive. We'll see.

Finally got to see last week's Leverage. It was pretty adorable. It's a show I really can't take too seriously though. They gloss over a LOT of things that if you think about don't really make a lot of sense. The plot is really thin, so just hang on for the ride and enjoy the characters and their lines. It's harmless fun.

When I was at my parent's last weekend painting, we picked up said paint from Sherwin-Williams. The guy behind the counter was perfectly nice, my only problem was he had a rotten tooth. Seriously, it was BLACK. SO GROSS.

This reminded me that I need to set up a dentist appointment as I'm already way past due. I also picked up some whitening strips, because I've been thinking about doing it for a while, but didn't want to bite the $30 bullet. I couldn't help myself this time around. It's a little difficult for me though, because for whatever reason I have a LOT of saliva. It's always been an issue.

I played trumpet in 4th grade and got really good use out of the spit valve. I don't think I was meant to play any instruments besides percussion and strings. It was gross. And when I had my braces put on (the first time) they gave me a pill to take beforehand to decrease my saliva flow.

So now I have these whitening trays sitting in my mouth and I can't swallow so I feel like a rabid dog. Beauty isn't pain, beauty is REALLY GROSS.

HAHA. Hope that wasn't TMI!

I took a week long vacation last week and given my lack of monetary funds, that meant keeping it simple and going home to visit family. I was also SUPER productive. I refinished the armoire that's been sitting in my parents garage for several months now. It's still sitting there, but it's ready to come back to my place whenever they come over (my car is too small to take it all in one trip).

But first, a video of our cat, Jack, and his love affair with my shoes.

( Now on to the Armoire Project Picspam! )

I finished Atashinchi no Danshi this weekend, it was all pretty adorable. Not an outstanding series by any stretch, but definitely enjoyable. I'll probably finish Who Are You? next... especially since there was no new True Blood this week! FROWNY FACE.

I am SO SORE right now. Crouching and bending and reaching and painting all weekend left me bone-tired. I slept the sleep of the dead last night, which was fantastic until my freaking alarm went off.

It was all worth it though, because my front two rooms look amazing. There is still a little cleanup to do, so not final photos today. ( I do have some progress shots for everyone )

My other (unplanned) weekend project was ( shaving my cat )

HA HA XDDDD I'm the worst mother in the world!

I also finally started Avatar and LOVE IT. Plus, I can watch the first season free on Netflix so I don't have to download it. My computer HD is hurting. I really need a DVD burner.

I know I'm completely late on this, but NEWS' new pv for Koi no ABO may be one of the most awkward things I've ever seen. There is a reason the JE backup dancers are usually little boys and not those of the female variety. The only thing that salvages it is the silly disco dance and costume/hairstyles in the second half. I don't think JE really knows what to do with NEWS. I get the feeling that as long as they have Yamapi not much effort is going to get put into that group since they don't really need it.

The song is blah but the only NEWS singles I've actually really liked were weeeek and Summertime, so no real surprise there. I had higher expectations when I heard it was disco-esque because I love me some disco. At least Pi ditched the perm, though I don't like this new hair thing much either. But then, Shige and Massu are suffering from ill-advised hair moves as well. OH NEWS - Why don't you have a personality?

I've been staring at excel spreadsheets all week so I am SUPER excited for my three day weekend. I'm heading up to the Chicagoland area to pick up a FREE armoire for myself. I have yet to see it in person but I am super excited about it. It's big and solid wood and FREE. I know it needs to be stripped and restained because it is currently a kind of baby poop brown and that won't do. But it will look so much better than my current tv console situation.

Easter egg dying is also in my future which is fun. Plus it means deviled eggs, WHICH ARE DELICIOUS.

Besides that I need to pack up some crafting stuff to do over the weekend. I'm experiencing a major time crunch due to my laziness. I've used up all my resin, so the casting portion is done. Now I need to paint Yoko skulls and wingalings and glue barrettes. TICK TOCK.

ETA: And Ashes to Ashes is back on the 20th!