Warhead On Legs

( Gaeilge )

Well, my physical went well, everything within normal parameters except the bloodwork hasn't come back yet. Prescription filed for a three-month patch, so, fuckit, we'll try this whole three months on one week off or something, thing. Considering I had massively light cycles on the regular monthly patch anyway and this makes everything much much cheaper, unless it has horrible side effects I should be okay. (Also it's been out for, what, five years now? I feel that's long enough to dip a toe in the water.)

Anyway. And then this morning was a whole thing with Russian and pronouncing and everyone involved got a headache. But then I remembered we had Pronunciator and all was well again. At that rate we might even work on Arabic, although god knows what kind of fluency we'll get in which dialects. That ought to be fun.

Speaking of fun, the fuck is this net neutrality shit. Because of course people have a choice in their ISP with the anti-monopoly laws hamstrung and lots of counties, let alone states, with only one real ISP in the area oh wait they don't.

Um. What else. I re-read All That Glitters and now I want to write more for it. Despite not having seen Once Upon A Time since before the first season finale. All I know is that the Charmings are trying to give the Summerses a run for their money for who has the most fucked up family tree. And there's also the problem of if/when Belle gets out, and Rumple/Gold is still in love with her. And then the problem of, well, I have twenty other things to do that aren't that.

Sigh. I suppose I'd better get doing some of those things. Starting with Russian.

( Русский язык )

Doing somewhat better than this morning, at least. Hopefully the internet won't keep crapping out on me tonight while I'm trying to get some writing done. Which isn't so much the writing itself, I can do that out of the cloud, it's tabbing through research sites along with it. And, you know, I'd like to be able to procrastinate my writing with tumblr and pick up my pixel pets at midnight. What. Whaaaaat.

I was going to try to get this week's Gods and Monsters finished early. That didn't so much happen on account of tripping up on some emotional issues my protagonist had not informed me about ahead of time. I swear, you live with a character for years, you think you know everything about her, and then she goes and surprises you. Rude! Still, it should go out on time (and hopefully my Editrix won't kill me) and I should even have Person of Interest out on time and still not have too much to do that isn't chewing on Grimm for the next several days. Because fucking Grimm and its fucking historically linked metaplots and argh. Did I mention argh? Because argh. Complexities.

Which, okay, tonight's schedule, get home, weed front walk a bit. Get in, cook chicken maybe halfway, bake potatoes, cover chicken, let dinner sit till the boy wakes up, do Person of Interest between now and then. After Person of Interest, finish Gods and Monsters. Freak right out till Grimm. Once Grimm airs, freak right out till energy is exhausted and then sleep. And then spend all tomorrow editing G&M until I get home at which point it's all the chewing on Grimm all the time. Because season finales of shows with myth arcs are always full of myth arc.

I've retooled my exercise routine and got four new plants for my garden, which means tomorrow is seriously check-in time. Fortunately I don't think anything major is happening this weekend, which might make this weekend attempt to get ahead on some writing time. Also gardening. Because GARDEN. I now have gone from only picking six plants and freaking out that I would kill everything I touched to having well-growing: oregano of two? varieties, rosemary, basil, bell peppers of three colors (well, one color may have gotten killed by cats, but we'll see), onions all over the place, amaryllises, jade, strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, alumroot, lambsear, echinacea, and four o'clocks. ... is that everything? I think that's everything. And parsley. No, that really is everything. And this weekend there will be uprooting all the shit from the raised beds out in the back by the patio, because most of the things that were going to bloom have bloomed, I have no idea what the shit half of that stuff is, I don't care anymore, I want it all out so I can plant MY things. And. And and. GARDEN. AUGH. I need a garden icon. Till then, Rutger Hauer has a pigeon on his head.

Also, someone tell me that just because High Valyrian (I think) has eight cases and four numbers and god knows what the fuck all else (four genders, I think?) that does not mean I need to go around creating a conlang. It is not inspirational, it is headache inducing. Stoppit, Jag. Stop that this instant.

( Gaeilge )

No, yeah, still giddy over the fact that I made a web page in freaking Russian. And German. But mostly the Russian. It was hard, it was a pain in the ass, but it was a fun pain in the ass and I did it. Especially since some of the hard was finding equivalents for specfic terms in Russian. I forgot about that and what a pain in the ass it's likely to be. I mean, I'm very familiar with English (obviously) and even Spanish, and I can probably play around with words to get them to mean other things, but Russian? Fucking forget it. At least for now. But yeah, my website has a Russian and German language mirror index page. I did that. And soon, it will have at least several pages mirrored in other languages.

... which, crap, reminds me that if I'm going to translate my short stories, I should make spaces to put those in links on the stories themselves. ... This is gonna get really complicated.

The Haven Herald blog post turned out to be way meatier than I ever expected; if I'd realized it was going to be that detailed I would have started on it way way sooner. But, it's up. It exists. Now all I have to do is Person of Interest tonight and tomorrow and I think from here on out it's pretty much, PoI and Grimm per week until Grimm goes off, and then Haven and PoI per week. Holy damn, I didn't realize we were down that far. I think I like this much better than endless essays on top of recaplyses! And I suppose if we ever find ourselves lacking for material, we can do cancelled shows.

Right. Ahem, anyway, statement of intent for today: Line edits, at least one scene in, and mirror index pages in Spanish and French as well as picking things to translate for Russian and German practice, and pulling quotes for a Behind the Scenes at Murderboarding. Tonight, Person of Interest, however deep towards the end of it I/we get and then finishing that tomorrow morning. Fortunately it's not really a metaplot heavy episode so it shouldn't take too long. Christ, how the hell did it get to be Friday again? Not that I'm complaining, really. I could use a weekend.

( Deutsch )

I will soon be done with Chapter 11 in my German book, which is Kapitel Elf. My current Tolkien re-obsession will be sad, because that was terribly funny.

But, there. Redid yesterday's exercises once more with feeling, did an exercise for today. That's my act of virtue for the day, that must mean I don't have to put away the laundry or clean up the office or anything else for the rest of today, right? Right? No? Okay, no. At least there remains the possibility that the office will be easy to pick up and then I can spend the rest of the day doing laundry to the dulcet tones of either Jekyll or Person of Interest. Picking up that show for Murderboarding was one of the best decisions ever. And while I'm thinking of things I should do, actually, tossing a bunch of the trash into the garage to wait for the appointed massive trash pickup time should go in on that list. So, getting home, cleaning trash out of living room, doing Japanese, then cleaning office. Dinner is leftovers, so no worries there. And after the office maybe tackle the ginormous piles of clean and dirty laundry and get my clothes the fuck upstairs and into my dresser which is actually in my bedroom. Because we actually have all our damn furniture which means the house needs to stop looking like a disaster area any time now.

Also I think a broom and dustpan needs to permanently be stationed in the upstairs hallway because good christ it's a freaking ladybug invasion up there. I turn my back for five freaking minutes and fifty ladybugs are scattered all over the floor again. I mind those a lot less than the ants which attempted to take over my kitchen, but goddamn. This is not an insect sanctuary. Get the fuck out of my house. Go live in my garden, I hear that's good for everyone.

(Not that I have a garden yet, but MINOR DETAILS.)

Somehow this morning I managed to get into a brief discussion of how why the fuck is English the only language anyone in the discussion spoke where "to like" is a thing? Because all the other languages we speak either prefer the "X pleases Person" construction or have an entirely other construction. Like Irish. Which apparently goes "X is good with Person," except Irish is a verb-first language (which is WTF all on its own) so that it's more like "Is good with Person X." And then Japanese is "Person (which I am talking about) X (which is the thing in question) good/favored is." As best as I can translate. Japanese is weird because of particles and the way sentences are constructed anyway, and I'm not actually sure of the language family history there, but I'm sure it makes sense in greater linguistic context! And, okay, yes, Irish also has the phrase "X pleases Person" but why is English the odd language out? Freaking languages how do they work. Come to that, I wonder which is more commonly used in Russian, which has both, Person likes X or X pleases Person. I'm just so curious!

Yes, these are the things that occupy my brain while I'm packing boxes/stocking shelves/labeling things. Subject-Verb-Predicate/Subject-Predicate-Verb/Verb-Subject-Predicate ... what IS Irish, anyway? Wiki says it's Verb Subject Object (close enough) language, and apparently that's different from most of the Indo-European languages. It's certainly different from all the ones I know! So, what the hell, Gaelige? Anyway, yes, these are things I think about. I have geeky tastes. Shaddup.

And, you know, this is why I shouldn't be allowed to go through every Tolkien book I can find to cobble together a working knowledge of Khuzdul, Quenya, Sindarin, or any of the other damn conlangs. Seriously. I have other shit to do. Like clean house. And watch Person of Interest. And write. And blog. And soon, edit.

I just want to know what freaking battle cry that was Thorin was shouting at Azanulbizar. Dammit.

( Deutsch )

Yep! Subjunctive still sucks hate. I suspect I will have this argument every damn time I come across it in any language. Prepositions suck hate too but at least I can practice them with relative ease. La souris est sous la table. Le chat est sur la chaise. El ratón es (de)bajo de la mesa. El gato es encima de la silla. Der Maus ist unter den Tisch. I could do this all day in many languages but I should actually do the damn German exercises.

This is possibly my favorite and, in my opinion, the badassest response to Mourdock's dumbshit quote of the week. Basically saying that you do not know God's will and saying that you do in order to interfere with a decision that is none of your business is arrogant at best and sacreligious at possible worst. If you don't know about Mourdock's dumbshit quote I can give you a precis in comments, but I'm pretty sure everyone's sick of that one by now, too. I will say, reading some of that article and some of other people's responses to it gave me a perspective on the quote that I hadn't considered before. Which did not lead me to think he's any less of a jackass, but some things I hadn't considered.

I've come to the conclusion that when I say 'things and stuff' what I really mean is the stuff needs to stop happening so I can do my things. Spent the better part of this morning trying to be at least two people at once and get both people's task lists done. You can guess how well that worked. Still, it's quieted down some, and it wasn't as busy as it could have been so I managed maybe to be one and a half people at once? Maybe. Took care of contacting everyone about house and inspections and things, so that's done. I got my conclusion up on the latest Haven essay, so that can go up. Preferably early enough for people not to confuse it with the episode analysis/recap. And then this evening there will be errands and TV shows and I actually feel like I have some modicum of control over my life! That never happens! Or at least it hasn't happened lately, with everything that I have to do. And, you know, I still have a pile of unfinished stories, but once I'm home I can tackle that, in between packing. Work's been ludicrous enough that I don't actually expect to be able to get any writing done here. The second I turn my back something will come up, I swear.

( Gaeilge )

Well that was a little more exciting than I wanted. Last night the skies opened up and we didn't get just rain that time, we got d20 sized hail. And a power outage while I was trying to do my check-in post. So, that was fun! Then I got a couple episodes of Caprica where I wanted to punch a whole lot of people in the face for being stupid.

But, you know, then I got Sasha Roiz being tall and suave and dark and dangerous, and I got a tweet from Jackie Earle Haley, and I got the last major chunk of a story I've been beating my head against for the past week finished, so that was more literal fun instead of sarcastic fun.

Caprica is pissing me off now. Mostly in the sense that it's making me want to learn Ancient Greek. I already have enough goddamn languages floating around in here! I do not need to add Ancient Fucking Greek! Hell, I already have been kind of brushing up on the Latin I used to know just out of watching Grimm, I really, really do not need to learn Ancient Greek. I mean, thinking about it... okay, how many languages am I up to? English, Spanish, French. German, Japanese, Russian. Irish. Arabic. Latin, if I decide to start refreshing. I've already lost count, that's ... seven speaking, eight reading. We're not counting Arabic yet because that is going to go very, very slowly, but still. And now there's Latin and Ancient Greek on the list and my head is going to explode.

(On the entertaining side, I'm getting much much better at being able to toggle through languages that I'm more fluent in, more cleanly and quickly. Memrise is really helping with that.)

Work work work. I have all the incoming today, so there's going to be no writing of meaty stuff at work, but at least I can knock some of the miscellaneous stuff off while I'm at it. Plus a couple of things I meant to do yesterday and couldn't because the power went out. And there's always these short (for me) New Year's Resolution fics in Caprica and Sucker Punch I could finish that have been languishing in process for about a week and a month, respectively. Should be a fun, if busy, day. And most of the Maryland packing that can be done has been done, yay! And I finished weaving! And I almost finished another afghan square! These are going way faster than I thought. Soon I will be INVINCIBLE! Or at least have a blanket. Which is like invincibility.

( Русский язык )

Fuck it, I'm starting the Watch books. I didn't get a chance to do Russian on Tuesday because of fuckmuppetry, I'm doing the Watch books to make up for it.

... And now that I've done the first sentence holy shit it is so much easier. Oh my god you guys, the only thing I needed was a damn dictionary. And the rest of it just happened. Holy shit I can read Russian. Give me some writing practice and I can write Russian and you guys I am so excited about this I can't even tell you. This is fucking awesome.

Ahem. So, yeah, I'm a language dork, what of it?

I think at this point I really, really need to make some time (HAH) in my schedule, maybe an hour or two on weekend evenings, to write rosetta drabbles. Maybe not 100 words in every language particularly since translating the spirit of the thing to 100 words would take a whole lot more than an hour, but translating 100 word drabbles into other languages. Or short stories. I could slowly translate some of my short stories, come to think of it. Yeah, I can make that a project. Into French, Spanish, and Russian, and that way I maintain all of those and don't completely fuck myself over by just replacing one language with another. Although it'd be harder to lose my Spanish now that I'm actually using it regularly. Fluent in four languages. What the fuck. Conversant in, um. Three others. Yeah, fear my linguistic might.

And at this point I really, really... need to get organized, partly, because I can't remember what I was going to say. There's probably a lot of things I could do but until Old Hotness becomes a more definite thing, probably best just to concentrate on knitting and writing. I need to finish the stupid armwarmers and get those off needles, and I need to do the red earflaps and then that'll be entirely finished. And then I can start filling my hope chest. Because for all that I'm woman who embodies all kinds of non-traditionally-womanly virtues like suitably timed aggressiveness, strength of purpose, sense of self and independence and saying 'fuck' a lot, I am filling a fucking hope chest. Because it's a hilariawesome idea. And useful.

And tomorrow there will be bank stuff, and all the house stuff is collected in one binder so I have that already done and don't have to worry about it. And I think that's it for outside-my-routine obligations for the rest of the week. Apart from, you know, work stuff. Which happens.

Right. A day and a half off languages and the internet and I feel somewhat better. Or at least, less inclined to tear into everyone.

Did the first two hours of Arabic today. It's starting to look like actual words and sounds with meaning rather than squiggles! It's also definitely something to do in two, maybe three at most, hour chunks over the weekend rather than the way I do the rest of my languages, in hour long chunks every day over the week. There is so much history and so much attached to it, plus the differences between Modern Standard Arabic and dialects. Which means eventually when I've figured out the alphabet and writing system (yes, I'm starting slow, this sounds incredibly slow when you look at the face of it but if you have context you'll understand why) I may need to pick a dialect to work on as well as the grammar of MSA. We'll see. It'll probably depend on what I have to work with.

Today, for recording and accountability, I wrote out baa', taa', and thaa'. First by themselves and with vowels, then as a few words that I had in a book. And they looked like words and I was very chuffed. And then I went looking around for more learning resources online and that's when I got incredibly intimidated and my brain got overstuffed. (For those who want to see my crappy tiny handwriting my practice is here, here, and here.)

I guess the rest of the day will be spent alternating between knitting and writing. Possibly with bits of language study in between, I could use some reviewing of the Irish I just learned at the very least, and my Japanese handwriting can always use practice, and copying over my lessons will reinforce them. Plus there are corrections yet to be made, I think.

Cold and tired. I'm not sure why I still feel so tired only that it's been a hell of a week, and I just got through jamming two hours of Arabic into my already fairly full head. Maybe no more intensive language study today, just repetition and copying. Maybe if I really feel a need to be a rampant polyglot I'll do it tomorrow. We were supposed to go look at houses tomorrow but our realty lady can't, so it'll be next weekend when the boy has some consecutive days off. And still so very tired.

I think for the immediate future it'll just be pick one thing up and do it and put it down, as I think of it. Right now it feels like I don't have the strength to do much more than crawl along this path I've made for myself. Too many damn things in my way. And I know I can do them, it's just. Ugh. No energy. One thing at a time.

( Gaeilge )

Learning Irish would be so much easier if half the pronunciation sites with whole words weren't either blocked to my country of origin or didn't have people who needed to have marbles shoved in their mouth. Just saying. Enunciation is not a bad word, folks, even if it's just enunciation of the syllables/letters you actually say. Neither is clarity of audio. Thank god, apparently, for Clannad. And Solas. And all the other people who sing clearly, have clear audio, and lyrics so I can match up the sounds to the words.

I am incredibly hyper today. I do not know why. I've been spamming people with this, which is kind of terrifying when you're just waking up and still sleepy. Maybe I just got terrified into being incredibly hyper and awake. Or annoyed into it with the whole Irish finding mp3 files dilemma. Or. Something. I had a brief tangent into wanting to learn Scots Gaelic, which tangented into a discussion of learning Cornish and Manx and Welsh and all the languages of the Isles, but then there's the problem of a) source material, b) pronunciation, c) similiarity, and d) I don't think my brain's that stretchy. Plus there's also Czech, Arabic Standard, Hindi, and ... lots of others. Mandarin, if I can ever find a teacher.

I can definitely tell it's winter, Murdock will not leave my lap. Mikey will not leave my feet when I'm in bed. THe cats have hit full on but Mommy it's COLD outside mode and with all the purring it's incredibly hard to get anything done. Ah well. Here goes nothing, I guess? Oh, and for the curious (all, what, two, three of you?) I passed my Music Theory final with an 82, mostly due to taking it at 11pm. Now if I retain and understand any of that it'll be a fucking miracle, but next up, applying it to the guitar. Also, I can has gig bag. Now I just need a strap that won't cut into my shoulders.

( Gaelige )

HAH. TAKE THAT MONGOLIAN DEATH PLAGUE. I KILL YOU WITH BOOZE AND VITAMINS AND MEDICINE AND MORE BOOZE-FILLED MEDICINE. FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR VIRUS MOTHER AND YOUR LITTLE PARAMECIUM TOO.

(Hey, look who remembered vocabulary from 9th grade biology.)

Hey, flist, speaking of Irish and my increasing need to review pronunciation when I hit the three chapter review (which will be soon at least), is there an Irish dub of The Boondock Saints? Because I feel like there really should be. Or would that be blasphemy and/or stupid Americanitis? And either which way, I feel a need to at least attempt to translate the movie into Irish now. Or, not now, but once I'm done going through this book and whatever other grammar books I can lay my hands on. Oh look the BBC has Irish language TV programs. Om nom nom.

No, seriously, I am a total dork who studies languages for fun and squees over finding TV programs in oh god is there Irish language Sesame Street? Because there should be.

Ahem. Right. Oof, okay, Big Bang people emailed, now I just actually need to finish up HBB and my outline for Nanonovel and survive a day at work. Install Dropbox and Spotify at work, which should be easy and will give me access to all the music ever. And, no, surprisingly I think that's it. I guess I'll give it until tomorrow and then start shredding Pretender Sidhe, which reminds me, I should separate that into a second draft for shredding. Delete all the outline crap, and then everyone can mark it all up and edit it and I'll have the first draft copy in case I want to go back and put something in. Um. Things and stuff.

Still a bit tired but actually feeling much, much better than I did on Friday. It's really impressive how fragile and snappy I was on Friday. Now I feel pretty much better, I've had a good weekend of rest, the apartment is cleaner, the food is decanted, the dishes are largely done. The boy's doing better. I haven't gotten sick yet. I got a pile of writing done yesterday and a pile of cleaning and fucked off entirely on Saturday. Slow steps. I wouldn't say I'm better even though I feel worlds better, it still won't take much of a hit to knock me down again. But I'm going to keep going. Shoulder to the boulder and pithy sayings like that, because I like who I am a lot better when I'm being an apprentice courtesan and a superhero in training than when I'm just sort of meandering along. Even if part of being an apprentice courtesan and a well-trained superhero is knowing when to rest. Rest break's coming to a finish.