The internet is butthurt!!!111!!eleven

I got my ass in gear and actually went to the gym today. Let's not mention that I almost died because of how long it's been since I was there, ugh. /out of shape

My unemployment has expired (boo) so now we are going to play the game of "how long before Katy ends up sleeping in her car?". You may place bets at the bookies.

I don't know why I quit being a graphic designer sometimes, when shit turns out AWESOME.

Jamie and I are writing.

That is all. Carry on.

It's kind of sad that I am sitting in my living room with a bottle of beer crying because Nobuta is so amazing, guys.

And by kind of, I mean really, obvs.

Have you thought about picking up The Lost Symbol for its inevitable badness, only to balk at the prospect of reading 500 pages of Dan Brown? Not to worry! Maureen Johnson has slogged through the badness, and her summary is the funniest thing I've read in months. This, my friends, is how sporking should be done.

The babykeets are getting fuzzy and their tails and wing feathers are coming in. They're still deep in the nest and I can't get any pictures without disturbing them, but they look something like this.

Since I probably won't be working for a while (more on that later), and will have lots of free, at-home time, I may decide to hand-feed the chicks. It makes them more friendly toward people, and helps them bond with you (or makes them worth more money if you decide to sell them). I'll need a cage and some things like that, but I think Daniel and I could swing it.

Car still wouldn't start today; had to walk to work for my call-in. Was supposed to get off at 7, got off at 8:15. *shakes fist at sky* Liiiiiiife, it's too cold to be walking to work! Please let my car turn on tomorrow.

Just a quick, belated shout-out to tonycoyote, fredericks, and devoosha for the holiday cards. They were lovely. Thank you.

Found funny from one of my mailing lists:

It's all going to be okay anyway, just ask Santa Claus for a new Mayan calendar in 2011. Sorted.

It's back! My game is back!

The Nethernet is a FireFox add-on that turns the Internet into a game: leave mines, stash goodies, create portals to interesting sites. Surfing the Internet turns into a social affair, as players leave traces for each other to find. And the community is full of really great people. It's not at all time-consuming, unless you want it to be. It's just fun to see that other people have been to the same sites you have.



I'm not recruiting people for the in-game rewards. I really do love this game and I'd like to play it with my friends. HOWEVER, if you do decide to join AND want to help me earn some rewards, please use this button:

Yaaaaa~~~y, it's 2010!

I'm happy, because 2009 was sucky, and I have a feeling that 2010 is going to make up for it. I should start hearing back from grad schools soon (which is kind of terrifying in and of itself, but I'd like to at least hear back since I've been in limbo with life for SO VERY LONG) and now that my holiday hours at BBDubs are slowing way down, I actually have some downtime again!

This means what I really need to do is start working on Japanese again, because I have to kick butt these next few months to really get my study on.

Since it's a new year, I obviously got hit with the cleaning bug. Okay, so actually it's SO COLD that neither Angie nor I's cars will start, which basically means neither of us is GOING anywhere today. So I cleaned instead. Livy's room is all clean and empty and ready for her to move in, and now my room has my desk and office stuff in it and my laundry is all put away and everything is cleaned out (we even cleaned out the closet out here!). I feel lighter already. :Db

New Year's was such a great success! Everyone else has already posted about it, really, me included, but thanks to abecker17, astrangerenters, foxymulder42, lyricalidol, bubbly, and basil_ovelby for coming and making it such an awesome start to 2010! ♥ ♥ I love you all so much. :)

PS- the pairing name for Kame/Nino is now "Kamekazu" spread it like wildfire

Having heard some people sing the praises of Charles De Lint and his Newford novels, I did some research, took the author's advice about where to start, and checked out The Dreaming Place from the library. It was kind of remarkable: I haven't been this angry about a book in a while.

It started around page thirty, where one of our plucky teenage heroines is having a spiritual crisis, and runs into her friend, a black fortune-teller with a bad Caribbean accent and a tendency to refer to any and all magic as "juju". Hey, a Magical Caribbean Black Person! That's original! At this point, a combination of optimism and train-wreck syndrome spurred me on: I was hoping it would get better, and wondering how bad it would get. Friends, it got bad. Magical Caribbean lady takes our heroine to see a man who is better at magic than she, to help with heroine's haunting problem. Magic Man is Native American: you can tell, because he's got a tipi made of sticks in the middle of the abandoned room he squats in. Oh, and we're told he belongs to some tribe "in the Angonquian language family". The police come to oust the squatters, and Magic Man gets them out by transporting them to the Spirit World - by putting magical herbs in his magical Indian pipe. His pipe, people! A ritual object used by Plains Indians is being used by this man who, the author made sure to tell us, is not a Plains Indian.

It was at this point that I threw the book down. I'd have thrown it across the room, but I wouldn't do that to a library book. In short: Charles De Lint writes ignorant, racist crap. The end.

Yup.

Uh oh.

New Year's Resolutions:

-Laugh at the little things
-Start grad school
-Continue to not take fandom seriously
-Get through Genki book one of self-study
-Draw more
-Get ass to gym more often
-Continue being scrappy enough to get through anything life throws ♥

Yeeeeeeah bois, it's finally 2010!!

48) Greywalker, Kat Richardson
49) Down To The Bone, Mayra Lazara Doyle
50) The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven, Sherman Alexie
51) Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown
52) Ash, Malinda Lo (Cinderella adaptations can be boring, but Lo puts a different spin on it. The "fairy godmother" is a quiet, Edward-Cullen-esque fairy man who captivates Ash and gives her gifts in exchange for her life. Ash, meanwhile, does the masquerade and the coach and the ball, not to win over the prince, but because of her growing love for the king's master huntress. A short book, but I enjoyed it)
53) A Great And Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray
Graphic Novels:
Ex Machina vol. 5-7

So that's 53/50 for the year. I did pretty poorly on my subject goals, as always, but I don't really care. I'm calling it a win, anyway.

Continue to eliminate oppressive language from my vocabulary. I've had good luck with woman-centered insults like "bitch" and "whore", and I was able to remove "lame" pretty easily. This year, I'd like to work on removing all gendered/sexed insults: "dick," "prick," etc. I'd also like to eliminate trans*-exclusive language. In discussions of sexism, it's tempting to take a shortcut, to highlight the absurdity of sexism by saying things like, "yeah, these tits really inhibit my ability to drive" or something - but that kind of phrasing equates "woman" with "female." Similarly, it's tempting to talk about, say, "female characters" or "male authors" - but while "woman characters" and "authors who are men" look awkward, they're more inclusive, which is more important. I've gotten to a point where I say "female authors" and then correct myself; by the end of the year, I'd like the more inclusive phrasings to be second nature.

Own my classism. I've been in denial for the longest time, figuring that since I grew up on food stamps, I couldn't possibly be classist. I even resent the rich, like a good wage-slave! But I've internalized the belief that if I could get a higher education and "better myself," then so can anyone else. 2010 will be the year of educating myself on class privilege.

Stop picking fights with Daniel. I do this all the time. It'll probably involve therapy, working on my insecurities so I don't attack him every time he doesn't coddle them the way I want.

Join some kind of club or MeetUp group, and attend regularly. So I'll have no excuse to whine that I don't have any friends.

Stay sober. 2 years, 5 months so far, and almost half a year without AA. I will try to find a therapist who deals in substance abuse, or maybe a non-AA support group.

Speak Spanish more often.

Spend less money. I may take radioobscene's suggestion and start a spending diary. I'm hemmorhaging a lot of money on meals, coffee and snacks, books I could get from the library, stuff like that.

Apply to Simmons

Get a new job

Learn to drive. Get my permit by the end of January. Log all the necessary road time by June, provided the pain in my shoulder goes away on schedule (by the end of February). Have license before it starts to snow.

My biggest problem is remembering that I made resolutions. So I'll post every month with a status update, if only for my own benefit.

We are currently doing dramatic readings of bad!fic out loud. Kimmy is drinking beer at 11 AM. Last night we watched a terrible Mexican soap opera. I broke the Wal-Mart door by running my cart into it and it was stuck open cause it fell off its track. Our quest for grenadine came up fruitless. Gasper is wearing a snuggie. There was Barry Gibb talk show singing at Steak n Shake.

This has already been the greatest New Year's ever, and this shit hasn't even started yet.

Final Fantasy art meme from th3newblack

( Art meme! I haven't used my tablet since I got my new laptop in May, so.... you can see how shitty my drawing skills really are. )

Stolen from honooko

FANDOMS I'VE WRITTEN SINCE 1998:
Sailor Moon
Ronin Warriors
Magic Knight Rayearth
Reboot
Gundam Wing (first big fandom!)
Breath of Fire
Chrono Trigger
Harvest Moon
Fruits Basket
Harry Potter
Final Fantasy IV (hello, twincest!)
Final Fantasy VIII
Secret of Mana
Legend of Zelda
Super Mario RPG
Chrono Cross
Skies of Arcadia
His Dark Materials
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Kingdom Hearts (hello, first slash pairing!)
Final Fantasy XII
High School Musical
Heroes
Red vs Blue
Animorphs
Final Fantasy VII
Persona 3
Star Wars
Veronica Mars
The World Ends With You
Hana Kimi
Hanadan
Majo Saiban
Arashi (hello, RPS!!)
Gossip Girl
Supernatural
J-Ent (because I am no longer restricted to Arashi but damn if I am listing all of those)

Yes, you read that right. 1998. The year I taught myself HTML and made my own webpage- yes, I was 14. Old balls over here has been on the internet for over 10 years (and the internet weeps from this, no doubt). Happy almost New Years, folks! I might be kind of not here because I have AWESOME PEOPLE COMING TO MY APARTMENT and we will be engaging in fun and frivolity from here until the 2nd. ♥♥