Warhead On Legs

( Deutsch )

So, due to reasons beyond my understanding, especially since I was actually planning on doing a wardrobe overhaul in January after we'd moved, now I'm getting some new long-sleeved shirts and, stick with me here, no-sleeved cowlneck type shirts that I can wear long armwarmers with. The really long kind that go up to your shoulder. I promise it makes sense. Apparently this is so I stop dressing in t-shirts and jeans and look like a grown-up, or at least like someone with the level of gravitas to which I would like to become accustomed. We'll see how well this works. So far it looks like I'm getting a couple of these to replace the long-sleeved shirts I have but am not wearing, and possibly one of these two options. Haven't figured that out yet.

Meanwhile my brain is screaming at me in a panic going "you're too fat and shapeless and ugly to wear pretty things." Fuck you, brain. I have my hourglass back, I'm toning the rest, and I'm fighting to keep cardio in my exercise routine, I am fine. Plus, anyone should wear pretty things if they want to. So fuck you, brain. Fuck. You.

I even managed to do most of my line edits, smooth some things out, and get shipping done pretty much on time today. Which is kind of a miracle. Not quite as scatterbrained as I thought! There's a few other things I wanted to try to get done today, but it looks like I might be getting knitting done at the front of the store instead. Which is cool, too. Nothing much that needs keeping to a deadline. I feel more awake than I did! Let's see if I can keep it that way.

( German )

Wharrgble. Well, I did at least manage to get everything out today that could go out. It's just that everything else has kind of exploded. Oh look, that order that gave me such a headache is back to haunt me. Goddammit, stop calling and emailing five different times before you actually place your order. It makes your poor shipper confused and then she gets headaches right above her right eye.

I am not watching the debates tonight. I am ignoring the debates as hard as possible. Right now politics and nastiness on both sides is also making my eye twitch, I know who I'm going to vote for, and it would take one hell of a good argument to convince me to vote otherwise. I do think the two-party system fucking sucks, I would like there to be other viable options, but no. So I know which one of the two options I've picked, and I wish I could put up spam filters in my life so that all the politicking and the bullshit just faded out until the election was over. I do need to check into my local elections, though, come to that. But all this political mail crap, most of it from the Republicans, makes me want to stake it out on my front lawn. FUCK OFF ALL OF YOU.

Maybe spending time with the plants will help some. Ugh, and I need to email the contractor back and figure out what day I'm meeting him to do a check-in. Not that I don't want to, I just keep forgetting. Tonight, hopefully. Plants and writing and editing and watching Copper and knitting and going to fucking bed on time. Not that I didn't last night but this headache is trying to kill me.

I love how a list of 'some people like this' 'some people like that' almost invariably, at least in the circles I run in these days, leads to "some people juggle geese."

Right. Sitting my dumb ass down and doing line edits. I was doing good at this for a while there and then I'm not sure what happened. Back to good habits. Line edits, works in progress, things like that. After I get in from planting and things I don't think we have anything else we're really doing, so there's that. And it occurs to me I should also probably get some grow-lights for the plants when it gets more towards winter. But not just yet. After we finish moving in. I think I should be able to finish up a couple of stories tonight, and make some headway on some other works in progress. I hope. And some blogwork. Actually now that I think about that, if I finish all that crap it'll be a miracle, but maybe I can advance some things towards a finish, and finish a bunch of those this week. Oi, head reeling.

But on the plus side, we've been getting a lot packed up (the boy took a couple days off work to pack and clean, dear boy that he is) and shuffled over to the house. And apparently this weekend he's taken a wild hair to pulling down some of the water damaged drywall in the garage that no one at the bank has pointed out yet, so it's not on the list of the contractor's stuff to do. And I am not going to put it on there myself. We're going to pull it down, put up new, and probably put up some sheet plastic or something up in the garage loft where the water's coming from until we can move in and then replace the rotted beam then. That's clearly where the water's coming from that's dripping down on everything else, but I'm not sure where it's getting to that beam, so maybe attacking the gutters to clean them will help. Or maybe it was just that beam. Anyway, replacing that should help a fair bit, and I remain a bit boggled that it's not actually coming down from the skylight, because the history of houses in my family out here says it's the skylight that will leak, if anything. It's always the goddamn skylights, and the house has two of them.

A boy out at the front of the store pointed at a pack of wool for spinning or felting that we dye in house, that has our dragon logo on it and said "Mommy, it's made of DRAGONS." Maybe that's what I'll say the next time I'm at the wheel spinning something funky and colorful. "It's dragon fur. From luck dragons."

Peace.

( Deutsch )

At some point I'll write here about how big business is trying to take over my downtown, where I work and some of my family lives, but right now I'm too pissed off and sad and tired about it to do so.

Tracy Chapman songs on repeat probably aren't helping. (Not that Asheville is subcity. Far from it. But goddamn if that isn't the attitude that's killing us.)

I feel like I might actually start watching Once Upon A Time again. After giving up in disgust 3/4 of the way through last season because of shoddy writing (my opinon, I'm not asking anyone to share it, I just hated the writing) But between oldandnewfirm reblogging some tempting Rumplestiltskin things and the possibility of a rousing game of Trope Bingo, possibly with booze if I do something I probably WON'T get alcohol poisoning from, it's tempting. On the other hand, if I do, you'll all get to hear me bitch about how awful it is. It's put me off ever trying Lost, that's for damn sure. And no, I can't cite examples from the text anymore. I could last year! And finally, pigeons can't fucking fly in the rain, goddammit. Though the only reason I know this is because of Blade Runner.

I'm having one of those weird moments where I feel like I should be upping my language study intensity in case of needing to find a translation job in the next five years or so. Except then I read my German questions and I find I can actually construct sentences pretty readily to answer the questions, and maybe I don't need to up the intensity on any but two languages that much. Something. It's a weird thing, and what I probably just need is to talk to people in the proper language. Or just write. But I don't. And now I'm going back and forth on it. It's been a long day, okay?

At any rate, this is clearly not the proper mood to make that kind of decision in. And it's not like I'm not doing language studies at all. Slowly but surely. I mean, give me eight to twelve weeks and I probably damn well could test pretty high in French, Spanish, and even German. Give me a year and I will knock Russian out of the park. Just. Right now I have Yuletide and Nano and personal writing and Shit To Do. So. And in a couple of hours I'll have a garden to weed. So there's that, too.

( Deutsch )

And if you speak enough German to read that, all of that was fucking hilarious. Or at least if you're familiar with that really old reborn gods game I used to play. Okay, maybe that was just hilarious to me and, like, two other people.

I have been reassured by a couple of different people that Jade grows on the same timescale as glaciers, relative to size. Or maybe compressing poo into diamonds. It grows like a very slow thing, 2" per year, so, okay then! I will tie the stems together so that they don't fall all over the place every time they're jostled, stick them in a pot with more dirt and maybe a few pebbles to hold them gently in place, and water them every ten days and let them be decorative small things and not play with them too much. And I will get SOME OTHER PLANT to stare at and pretend I'm growing it.

I seriously need to cut my bangs. I need to practice cutting my bangs in such a way that it does not look like I took a weed whacker to my forelocks, any suggestions? (One thing I think I have learned is that I need to reduce the bundles of hair I'm chopping at a go by at least half. Small and steady.) Maybe I'll try doing that tonight, assuming I remember. Which is looking more and more likely the more I have to push my hair out of my face.

Caught up on Copper last night! Now that just leaves Warehouse 13, Fringe (I missed, like, half of last season), and Sons of Anarchy. I think I'm caught up on Castle, I know I'm caught up on Grimm and Haven, and Leverage is off for a bit. But Copper was entertaining, even as I want to go OH BOYS and smack people's heads together. And there was a thing involving a fruitcake version of Russian Roulette and my god, people, if you're not watching this yet and historical pieces a la Deadwood or Carnivale are your thing, WHY AREN'T YOU. At least give it a shot. Oh my lord, Russian Roulette with fruitcake. That was awesome. And I got some knitting done, which might be the thing for the forseeable future. Catch up on a couple episodes of a show, knitting up my hope chest. Because I really need to get some of these things done, the house should be move-in ready in 6 weeks. (SIX. WEEKS. FUCK WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING AUGH.)

And this afternoon, getting my shopping list for Home Depot ready and then going over and weeding things. Hopefully without the bees this time.

( Deutsch )

Someone explain to me why is eyelash yarn. Apart from as a torture device. If I'm ever punished for my varying-depending-on-the-beholder sins, it's going to involve handing me a pair of knitting needles and a ball of eyelash yarn. This shit is, as my grandmother said, a pain where no pill can reach.

Apart from that, at least my day's going rather well! Main day-job work is relatively quiet so one of my other tasks for today is knitting a sample of our new eyelash yarn, which I have now done a piss-poor job of selling. Really, it looks and feels perfectly lovely, but eyelash yarn is so not my thing to knit apparently. Slowly getting the hang of it. Still don't like it. I should also pick up around my workspace and such, I'll probably alternate frustrating knitting with cleaning and writing.

... I'm sorry, guys, I don't have more for you today. Give me a little while, I'll have more house stuff to bounce at you about. Right now it's just raaarr eyelash yarn and omg houses are expensive.

ETA: Oh, hey, two more things. In the category of house shit I did NOT want to deal with, the city wants our proof of ownership before they issue the permit. Whine whine why can't they just pull it up from the fucking register of deeds? Bitch! Moan complain! Efficiency of government! Argh! But as far as that goes, that's much less annoying than it could be. And I'll scan that in and send it tonight and blah. At least having to scan and send documents will no longer impede progress on the house!

The second thing ... is not that big alligator I just saw a picture of, fucking hell. The second thing is YAY SOMEONE FINALLY NOMINATED BLOOD TIES FOR YULETIDE. Book series, not that I care much since I love both the TV show and the books equally. Better yet they nominated the Blood AND Smoke series. And that cuts me down to at least one fandom likely to show up, possibly two, but that cuts my Must Nominates down to a manageable number! Yay! I'll still give it another couple of days, but thanks be to the muses someone did that.

( Deutsch )

I sat down to eat lunch and started to fuck around on the internet, and a little voice inside my head said "Isn't there something you should be doing?" No. Go away. "Isn't there something else you're supposed to be doing?" FINE. And then I dragged out my German book. That little voice sounded suspiciously like Eric Renard. Fucking smarmy bastard. Can I trade him in for his brother?

There, Eric. I did my German. Now shut up.

It's Monday. It's Monday and I'm still tired from housework over the weekend. It's Monday, I'm still tired from housework over the weekend, and I have the usual weekend backlog of shipping to do. This is the whiny paragraph of DO NOT WANT.

Yuletide Nominations are open! and will be open until October 3rd, for those of you who, like me, had too many to pare down and wanted to see if someone else would be kind enough to nominate some of yours. Everyone remembers what happens to me during Yuletide yes? Yes. That will happen again. And since I've discovered ways of being MOREBETTER efficient with things like cooking and such, and by the time crunch time comes I should be all moved in, FEAR MY PINCH-HITTING CAPABILITIES. FEAR THEM. Or just point and laugh at me because I'm a masochist.

Today, god, there will be early bedtime please let me manage it. Or there may be a 20 minute nap after UPS goes. After work there will be going home, collecting the boy, and then going over to the house to pull nails out and do a few other things before coming back home and heating up dinner. Yay batch cooking. Without which I would not survive this, I think. I'm going to be batch cooking on the weekends until at least January. Which means I need more recipes that batch and freeze well. Gimme, folks! (Although, heh, once we get moved in I can dig up a George Foreman from somewhere and do hamburgers some nights.) I will say, all this running around and doing crap... well, come to think of it, will probably hit a pause when the contractors start really fucking around on the house, because there will be only so much we can do with their stuff in the way. And then, once we're living in one place instead of two it should tone down some more. And everything that's making me run the Red Queen's race is stuff I like and want to be doing, rather than oh god do I have to call another bank please no. I can live with this.

Right. Back to the grind, there's a shitpile of orders and they need to get gone. Shipping kitty to the rescue! Here I come to save the day!

( Deutsch )

See, Jag? You are perfectly capable of calling up a plethora of government offices, none of which were complicated to deal with, and getting information and services turned on. And the worst you had to do was endure the home music from travel commercial hell. Seriously, what was up with that.

So, okay. That's taken care of, I need to check and make sure those are our recycling/trash bins and not the neighbors. Because they've certainly been storing their car in our driveway, they might be storing their trash bins too. They might not! Hard to say. And that one bill covers a plethora of services, so that's good too. One might, if one didn't know me well, mistake me for a responsible adult. Surely not. Next up, too, hitting up the library to find out the history of my new home! Pre-Civil War house. Best thing this crappy economy has done ever. And, come to think of it, I need to get copies of keys. And paint chips. Paint chips would be good, and then the boy and I can argue over paint colors. Whereby argue I seem to mean I go "well, what about this combination" and he goes "I dunno" a lot. I don't even have strong opinions about colors and things! He just seems to have even less strong ones.

Oh, there's the home ownership glee I was missing. So good to see you again, home ownership glee! First cleaning and looking at paint colors, I guess. And maybe some of going up and down the living room walls and peeling the damn wallpaper off of it. Why the hell would you wallpaper perfectly good hardwood wall paneling? Bleh. And renovation while that's going on, and eventually curtains. Because reasons. Um. I was braining something else and I can't remember what it was.

And while I'm still braining house stuff, does anyone want a change of address postcard with pretty Asheville picture scenes? Or just a postcard with pretty Asheville picture scenes. PM me!

I guess the only other thing I've been braining lately is writing and episode analysis. We've decided to throw in Haven over at Murderboarding, for those of you who are interested in that, and the murderboard dotplot is up with the characters and their factions. Eventually we'll get to churning out the backlog, but because we're probably going to do a pretty in-depth job on every episode, it'll take some time. But on the plus side we're almost done with our Grimm backlog! Two more full-ep things to go, and then the in-between episodes will probably get several paragraphs on their own, bundled into one post. Because we're making no secret about being interested primarily in Renard, and he's not in THAT much of a lot of the eps.

... And in abrupt news I had not expected to share, not being an American football person (or any kind of football person) myself? Chris Kluwe continues to be awesome. This time without the swearing. And particularly the last four paragraphs or so.

( Deutsch )

Okay, I have now found a couple storage tumblrs (though if anyone else can rec me one I'd appreciate it) and gotten some good ideas for some DIY projects for Old Hotness, which still needs a name. Most of this along the lines of storage organization, but some of it is also just cool repurposing shit. If anyone has an idea for a thing or a DIY project to store both hook and stud earrings, too, I'd love to hear it. So far all I can think of is an earring tree, but I can't find a really nice DIY pattern and all the storebought ones are kind of bleh. Well, most of them. I also need to figure out how the fuck I'm going to refinish my crafts table. Isn't there some kind of spray-laminate you can use that people use to cover their penny floors/desks/things?

Packing is definitely going to happen this weekend. Packing and getting rid of shit. I need to put my foot down, or at least have a serious talk with the boy, about things like the Hoyle games CD for Win 3.1 or whatever it is that we've had for years that we really, really don't need anymore. Along with a few other things that just need to be tossed. Actually, mostly, we just need to go through that.

This has all resulted, of course, in me bouncing with energy and needing to CRAFT ALL THE THINGS. Which goes right along with yesterday's WRITE ALL THE THINGS in an utterly unproductive way. I actually also suspect that if I'm not careful I'm going to hit mania, possibly upswing bipolar type mania, and hypergraphia all at once from lack of focus and excess of energy and the culmination of months of upheaval and never knowing when it's going to end. So, self, this means you have to be careful. Got it? Good. No new craft projects yet, and if a brilliant idea strikes, write it down. There'll be time. There are no impending crafts deadlines, only writing ones. And those aren't all that impending either. I need to take a breath and just remember to keep notes in a couple places for great consolidation, and then slowly work on projects one at a time. Come on, self. Also, stop trying to schedule shit in the future, you know what's coming up. Nanowrimo. Yuletide. Be reasonable.

(This rarely, if ever, works. But I can at least try to put the brakes on.)

At any rate. I've done German and shipping, and now it's time to get back to filing and other more immediate do it or it'll rise up and drown you type tasks. Because... well. Sometimes I really do need to put the brakes on my brain and stop trying to do everything at once, and breathe. This is definitely one of those times. I also kind of wish my guitar weren't packed, that's awfully settling. But maybe knitting will help, too.

( Deutsch )

Well, that's just going to be a pain in the ass because I think there's no help for it but to memorize every damn one of those. UGH. On the plus side, I'm still doing the damn German, and another week of fucking around with the preterit tense shouldn't do me any harm if I have to do that while I dig around for where the hell I left the stupid book.

Um. Things and stuff. I'm learning how to do things on GoogleTasks! It's useful like a useful thing! And did I mention I am way too obsessive about Grimm lately? I spent a good twenty minutes or so last night running an episode from last season at quarter speed and eighth speed to try and figure out if a thing was what I thought it was (it was, continuity glitch, appearing/disappearing gun, bad editor) and describing the minute details of a fight sequence that lasted all of three seconds. Yeah. Three seconds, I know, because I timed it. And it's all going on Murderboarding! Along with actual analysis, I promise this isn't just me drooling all evening over Sasha Roiz.

For all the fiddly bits, I have surprisingly little to actually talk about. I do have a question for those who care to weigh in: the dining room is likely to be warm-tone woods and white, with sun coming in at least one if not two sides. What color placemats should I knit? Still working on fussing at my hope chest, I think the end verdict is to leave the afghan squares at work because those are very easy to pick up, figure out where I was, and put down again, and then do placemats and other more complicated things at home. Placemats first, because I don't know how long our dining table is going to be. But that means I need to pick the colors of the placemats. Out of these colors, guys. Swatch at the top is not all the colors we have, just a good representative sampling.

Anna has Howl in her head, I have Small Town Witch, and I know exactly who to fucking blame. On the plus side, I feel lighter than I have in a while, and like I can actually move on with planning and life and things. Hallelujah. Sing praise to the Goddess.

( Gaeilge )

( Deutsch )

Oh god too tired to translate the rest of this tonight. I can't believe it's almost fucking Dragon*Con. There will be so much prepping of costumes and things this weekend. And the mail order sale was last week and I'm still dealing with the aftermath of it, because all the damn backorders and. Ugh. Just want a goddamn vacation. Which Dragon*Con kind of is, but still. After that I'm going to want a vacation from my vacation.

Peace out, y'all.