Warhead On Legs

( Русский язык )

( Gaeilge )

One of these days I'm going to get back into the habit of posting here. Really.

So, I did a costume check last night, all my costume pieces with the exception of the ones I'm working on/tidying up are there, and as it stands I still have three complete costumes (old, but complete) to go to Dragon*Con with, so I'm happy. If I can finish the other portions of my costumes this weekend that'll give me five costumes, and if I can do at least a little bit of fixing up a new part for one of the costumes, that will be phenomenal.

To that end! My to-do list for the next several days, none vital all hopeful:
1. Raid Goodwill for a Faye Valentine-esque white top Tomorrow morning
2. Dye shorts and top yellow
3. Hit up Joanne Fabrics for a headband to paint yellow and some suspender/bracer clips
4. Apply bias tape maker to spare black fabric, make the bracer/suspender/garter tie thing.

5. Cut out leotard based on ripped up other leotard pattern Tonight
6. Sew leotard (five or six seams and lots of hems, not too hard) Tonight

7. Sew lightwire onto coat for Tron
8. Assemble pieces of Tron outfit.
9. Double check fit of corset for under Tron coat.

And then I need to pull together everything for Dragon*Con in terms of other stuff. Medicines need to go in the medikit, and actually that needs to be its own to do list as well. Netbook and cords need to be packed ... I'm going to go do that now.

There. Netbook and kindle cords are packed, along with Netbook. I need to email my contact information to at least one person I'm meeting and, there, done that. I need to pull together the medikit, figure out my knitting for the trip/downtime, probably confirm the hotel reservations which will require an email search because I have no idea where under all the damn house emails it went to. What I'd really like is some way to holster a water bottle to the bag I use for my medikit. That bag was really useful last year, I think I can fit everything into it again this year, but damned if I can figure out how to put a water bottle onto it. I've got my walking around money, my kindle is staying in my bag of holding until such time as we actually leave, and things. Stuff. I know I'm forgetting something. I'll dig out the giant to-do list of con prep when I get to work.

We finally, finally finished the fucking writeup of the last ep of Grimm. SPOILERS ABOUND. But it's here if you want to see it, the whole analysis and speculation and pictures and explanation and everything about how Eric gives no fucks unless you're a hot model and Renard is tired and cranky.

Right. And now work, finishing shit at work, um. Stuff and things. So scattered. Still not quite on the full schedule, although at least now it's just banging languages back into efficient shape.

( Русский язык )

( Gaeilge )

Hey, look what I forgot to post the other day oops. Actually I've been falling down on languages a lot this week. Stupid mail order sale. Stupid exhaustion.

New plan: Thursday nights are me time, and I'm not going to game. The last two games we've supposedly had we spent the entire night shooting the shit and not actually getting any gaming done. Hell with that. I mean, I understand that there's going to be some social time, but I am neither impressed nor amused by planning to do one thing and then fucking off and not doing it two evenings in a row.

Still exhausted. Really really exhausted, in half of yesterday I ran around about as much as I had the day previous. Today's not going to be much better unless I get everything done at the start of the day and then nothing much shows up to do. Which, given that it's Friday, there's normally a 50/50 chance of it being hectic to the point of exhaustion. Given the sale I'd up that to about 80/20 in favor of exhaustion. On the plus side, it is Friday, which means I can come home and fall over till I feel like getting up and doing something.

And in today's Grimm appreciation post, we have rings for everyone! I love that the show pays enough attention to detail that every member of the family we see has the ring. We can't see what the signet or symbol or whatever is, so we don't know if it's the same, but they have one. It makes me squee a little. Okay, more than a little.

I should learn not to post these things until after I get to work and the aunt has a chance to babble at me. So, this morning's fun story about my family was a road trip the grandparents (I think, or friends of theirs) took from France to Spain through the Pyrenees. And they were driving along and came across a circus that was slowly making its way through the back roads. And since they were back roads and this was back before everyone and their cousin with a chin had the car everyone was a bit startled and there was some brouhaha, and in the course of all this an elephant sat on the hood of the car. Not damaging it significantly, but putting a sizable dent in the hood. Well, they got that straightened out and everyone went along and a little later down the road they came across a motorist who'd had an accident, who was by the side of the road with a wrecked bike. So they gave him a lift to the next town, small Spanish town, and they took him to the police station to report it and the police gave the guy a lift to the hospital and then the police started to interrogate the grandparents/family friends (I think it was my grandparents but now I've forgotten the proper antecedent). Because they had this damaged motorist and a big dent in the front of their car. And sure they'd picked up the motorist but he was at the hospital by this point and couldn't back that up. And when asked about the dent all they could say, truthfully, was "An elephant sat on the car."

So, that happened to my family. My family has some truly wacky adventures.

( Русский язык )

I'm going to strangle my boyfriend, don't mind me.

But, yes. We've again reached a point where I'm pretty much sitting and waiting for things to come back, which I think is the final point of sitting and waiting for things to come back. And then when things come back we'll have a final close date and we can be done with this goddamn enterprise. I won't know what to do with myself when the house is finally bought. Well, no. I know what I'll have to do. Pack. But after we've moved in. I won't know what to do with myself.

Well, no, I know what I should be doing with myself. Getting back into routines. And, you know, it's funny. Now that it's finally getting to the point where this all might come out all right, I'm actually feeling a bit terrified of moving. And getting into the house. And not having something or not being able to do something or, well. Anything. I'm half expecting to start having those nightmares where I'm back in college but I don't have my class schedule or my ID card to get into the dorms or something. Logic, brain, the only things we don't have that we'll need to buy are the fridge, stove, washer, dryer. And that's easily enough taken care of. Everything else is manageable.

Except my brainspace, possibly. I need an aspirin and to sit my butt down and write. Especially since today seems to be a relatively quiet day. Oh. And at some point I need to refocus and come up with maybe a lesson plan that will gear me towards sufficient fluency to be able to test for translator positions in a couple years. Maybe just involving more stuff like I'm doing with Russian, but also constructing sentences... I don't know, and my brain is in too many pieces right now to figure it out.

( Русский язык )

So, my computer spontaneously shut itself down last night. The keyboard went haywire and non-responsive, and everything started trying to shut down. It stopped when I hit "cancel" when the "these programs are impeding shut down" window popped up, but that was the only way I could stop it. I couldn't even make the keyboard work to boot up in or out of safe mode, which really freaked me out. And then again this morning, although this time I cancelled the shutdown and installed updates in case one was really being persnickity. And I ran AVG virus scan, which came up empty, and other than that I've got nothing.

This is a bad time for you to be freaking out on me, computer. I'm just saying. Of all the times you could have picked, this is definitely one of the worst. I already nearly had a breakdown over money this morning while on my walk. This after my aunt offered to float us a loan and knowing that my grandfather would probably just flat out give us money if I really asked. Which reminds me that I need to write to him again and let him know it's almost done. Also that I need to scan in some docs today.

Of course, then it crapped out AGAIN. In the middle of trying to scan the documents. Then I went to work nearly in tears. Then the boy came home with a new keyboard, plugged it in, scanned his chunk of documents, everything seems to work, so it was one or some combination or all of updating, rolling back to a restore point, replacing the keyboard, and cleaning out the hardware.

I'm just going to go ahead and post this now while everything still works, while I still remember it's here, and hopefully someone will remind me to go back and parse the Russian later today.

( Русский язык )

I should actually slow down on the whole vocabulary adding and preposition review some. I know enough words by now that making sentences of them and reviewing and so on wouldn't go amiss, rather than trying to cram everything in my head at once and learn at a great rate of knots. I i guess, too, if today's slow, I can do a lot of that.

I am tired today. I had a screaming nightmare where, when I woke up, the only reason I knew I hadn't actually screamed in my sleep was because my throat didn't feel raw. Bad dreams about family, about my grandfather (I called home this morning, he's fine. Stupid brain), waking up to all the rain and gray, and now I am just tired. And if I have to hear one more goddamn word out of anyone's mouth saying that Daniel Tosh's comment in response to the heckler (not reprinted here for triggers) was an appropriate response or funny, I am going to throatpunch someone. I had a whole series of thoughts on that yesterday, today it's too tired, fuck you, throatpunch.

House progress continues slowly but hopefully. I have game tonight and I don't want to go unless I get some more energy reserves from some-goddamn-where. Time's doing that slippy thing again where it can't possibly be as late in the month as I think it is. I'm in a goddamn Steve Miller Band song.

Oh well. Checked in with home, I have some stuff to do, stuff to keep me busy writing wise, language wise, work wise. None of it very complicated. If I can manage to keep doing one thing at a time, I should be able to get through today.

( Русский язык )

Can I have my nap yet? Failing that, can I go shoot the entire Texas GOP? They're damaging my calm.

No, I wouldn't want to, because blah blah precedent blah blah democracy blah blah politics. Blah blah blah bitchcakes. I know all the reasons why I don't actually want to, but goddamn do I want to. Given both my family history and my education, I know damn well why I don't want to go on a spree of eliminating people who are inconvenient to my politics and yet in times like these it is really easy to understand why people do. But then, this is why we have impulse control. And why we're better people.

(I should add, I don't even necessarily mean liberals or Democrats in that 'we.' I mean every person with political beliefs who believes in democracy strongly enough to have a reasoned debate rather than try and do an end run around electoral process and equal rights to make things turn out their way. It's just that the Republicans are doing a fuck of a lot more of that right now. Or maybe just more blatantly. I used to believe I could have a reasonable dialogue with Republicans. I even did, with several! We were friends, they had their ideas, I had mine, we debated them and then went out for donuts. What the fuck happened to this country.)

Okay, enough ranting about politics. The bank is still fucking crazy, or at least flat out illogical and obstructive, but the contractor agrees with me on this and is still willing to work with me and hopefully doesn't think it's my fault. And I still don't have numbers to crunch, but Renovations Lady swears she's making my paperwork top priority today. I don't really care what priority she makes it so long as I get it freaking soonest. And probably a lot of this wouldn't have been necessary if she'd answered my goddamn questions in the first place. ARGH.

This post is rapidly turning into Jag swears at all the people who she feels are less competent than her. So, let's instead get ready to go to the dentist! Because that's fun.

I want to go back to bed now.

( Русский язык )

I'm not even going to get into house stuff in detail, but I got an email from the bank listing the paperwork they still needed. Among them, a clean copy of the contract. To go with the three I've already sent.

Fuckit, at this point I'm copying it for my own benefit and mailing them my own goddamn copy because CHRIST IN A TEN GALLON COWBOY HAT, PEOPLE. I have emailed it to you, faxed it to you, had my agent fax it to you, WHY DO YOU NOT HAVE THIS YET. And why did you not tell me before?

... I swear I need to declare a moratorium on news. There was a capital punishment headline and a headline about the Norway trial that didn't actually have anything to do with the Norway trial, just something that happened in proximity to it. I'm being vague because people can look it up for themselves if they want, but, guys, my head exploded. Do not make your heads explode too.

My brain is trying to drag me in a million different directions at once, most of them involving fanfiction. This is not at all like helping, brain. One fanfic piece at a time, plus all the other shit I have to do. I suppose the upside to all of this is that the BBMs are almost done nicely ahead of posting dates, and I just have to keep my head above water long enough to remember to post them. And all the frillion other things I've been working on but haven't posted.

All right, anyway. Along those lines. Back to work. Enough screwing around. ... Heheheh. Screwing around.

( Deutsch (contains Holocaust) )

( Русский язык )

Someone explain to me why I'm now writing the Litany Against Fear in a frillion different languages.

Okay! So, that went well. The plumber came, said they'd start probably today (Tuesday, that is), and offered some good suggestions how we could hide some piping they'd lay externally so we didn't have to tear up too much of the wood. We all drooled over the original wood paneling and hardwood floors and everything, and he explained that by the end of it all most of the maze of twisty pipes all alike would probably be gone, so that's all right. Hopefully that means this will get cleared soon, because now all that's needed for the loan and the closing is the final inspection post-plumbing. Cross fingers!

Someone was taking their turn at sporking the Republican/conservative notion of bootstrapping, rich people are rich because they worked hard for it dammit, their hard-earned monies for them. Because obviously no one else works hard for their money. Oh, wait. Effort does not directly translate to riches and success. That's an ideal model, not an actual one. If it were an actual model, I'd've been published already or I'd've gotten a damn good paying translation job somewhere based on several years of studying other languages. If it were an actual model, there'd be a lot more successful people. If it were an actual model, all this crap I've put into getting this house? I'd already have it. Jackasses.

.... Well, there went my morning. I'm gonna miss you, Mr. Sendak

( Русский язык )

Oh look! Still nothing decisive on the house. We're stuck at the appraisal stage, for those of you playing at home. Everything else is set and ready to go but until the water problem is fixed the bank appraisers can't/won't finish and the bank won't approve and we're stuck. So now we're waiting for the selling bank to figure out what they're doing. It's not that expensive, so I'm guessing if they don't want to pay for it we can reimburse them. But annoying. Much annoying. And a bit nerve-wracking considering what happened last time.

But keeping up with other things seems to be going pretty well! Keeping up with languages, keeping up with writing and coding projects. And knitting and weaving and all those other good things.

I feel like I should maybe have something more to say here, but I really don't. Grimm, Miss Fisher, hope chest knitting ... I'm currently on afghan squares, and that's going well. House stuff. Writing. It's all very repetitive and I don't feel like repeating it now.

Someone give me something interesting to talk about! Yarrr.

( Русский язык )

Slowly, slowly getting the hang of this. Very slowly.

I still want to know what the hell is with house stuff progressing at a crawl and being piled with frustrations, and then all of a sudden everything happens right the hell now. I mean, I'm fairly glad I'm prepared for all of this and can handle it fairly efficiently, but christ in a toolshed with a bucket and a rake. Now we have the inspection this Thursday, hopefully third time lucky, and I need to figure out who I'm using as our real estate attorney preferably by the end of the day. Which also shouldn't be that hard but AUGH. Or, well, no. I'll mess around with looking into real estate attorney reviews and let Mortgage Lady know the inspection is on Thursday, the selling bank is being a great big pile of dicks, and gimme a couple days to figure this out.

Chugging along, getting back into a groove. Watched the new Once Upon A Time last night and laughed my ass off when I realized I actually had, yes, written a story in which Granny quoted the Wolfman at Ruby. That bit about "Even a man who's pure of heart and says his prayers by night may still become a wolf when the autumn moon is bright." Laughed so hard I cannot even begin to tell you. Slowly getting stuff finished and coded and all that good stuff.

AND. And, oh Once Upon A Time, and some pictures of future episodes with Gold and the Mysterious Stranger whose name probably is not August W Booth showed up. And it made me chew on and cling to my theory all the harder. Just saying.

Um. Hmm. Not much incoming today, one shipment from a supplier who's not always the timeliest about shipments, we'll say, so this ought to be good. And then outgoing and we'll see what else I can get done.