Apparently, I’ve written something like four thousand words today. I am impressed by myself. That sounds like a big number. I have no idea what the usual is for writing, but hey, four thousand.

The massive cyberpunk story I started sometimes before April (I think maybe in February?) is hesitantly dubbed finished, at 9123 words. I kept dropping it for a few months at a time, and then the end totally caught me off guard, but today I wrote the huge fight scene and made up a whole lot of stuff about structural integrity and slapped down a cliche ending and it was good. The fight scene was actually kinda fun - the big bad was a shapeshifter, no limitations, so there was the idea of true chaos and creepy impossible limbs everywhere and it was just really fun to write.

Ah shit, I just realized there were all these loose ends I was gonna tie up. Crap. I need to rewrite the end. *pout*

Ages ago I picked up a “City of Heroes” disc demo thing. I have since used it as a coaster. I think I’ve had it for several months now, and it’s only just started to warp from moisture.

It is very good at what it does.

There was just a sunshower. I took pictures, but I’m not sure how they’ll come out.

Oh cooooool. I am emerging from my shell. It feels so nice. The itching was starting to get unbearable. My forearms are visibly getting rid of the dead burned skin - they’ve gotten kinda whitely lumpy where it’s pulling away from the healthy skin, just needs a good rub to get it started and then - but anyhow.

I think it may be possible that I might actually tan from this. That is remarkable in so many ways. I do not tan. All the discomfort and god, the damn itching and immobility will truly be worth it if I tan, because really, how novel. Of course, any hint of brown will turn olive shortly, because my skin is like the redheaded stepchild and I apparently do not share actual genetics with any of my blood relatives (seriously, my hair color may be recessive but it totally last appeared in my family like four generations ago) and I forget where this sentence was going. I think I may need to work on stretching my arm out to get the skin used to actual movement again. It really does not love me anymore.

Ew, my face is peeling. D: I’ve pretty much ignored it because hey, no movement-limiting pain there. But whee, peeling! I’m always slightly fascinated with peeling skin. It looks really cool. Of course, I like shed snakeskins.

In non-burn-related news, I keep writing really stupid, horrible stories that I know are totally unrealistic, but I write them anyway and like them anyway. Like, someone turning into a bug (stay with me here, this is sci-fi, it can totally do that) is not going to do a lizardy tongue-flick. Hive mind is far more likely, and sensitivity to vibration, but not that cool gland on the roof of the mouth that’s a whole extra sense. I like that gland. It’s just so cool. Anyway, so I’m writing this crap, but it’s so fun I just can’t stop. Kinda depressing, in a vague “I should feel guilty for making this public but I don’t” kind of way.

I should work up something I can actually post to a Stargate community without wanting to die of shame, maybe attract some new readers. Ohoho. There’s only two people that read my Stargate stuff right now, and neither of them have actually seen the show.

The skin in the fold of my elbow is really creepy. I don’t think it belongs to me anymore. It’s really gross. At least I can move my arm somewhat! I had to fight work to actually get my break today, and it wouldn’t have been such an issue (4 hour shift, please, that’s hardly working) but I was really hurting by the time we hit the three-hour mark on express. I also found out that I was wrong about the store cards and I do have to give in to the asswipes who think they’re entitled to everything. Shucks. I still chased off a couple who started yelling about how this was prejudice, to give certain people savings and not others, and all I could think was Oh my god, I want to remove you from the gene pool so badly.

I snuck out of work early (okay, I came in because I had opening shift which is impossible to cover and then checked out the schedule and decided 9:00 would be the earliest convenient time I could leave, and we were pretty overstaffed for the say anyway, and the supervisor totally agreed) because of my damn arm. Plus feeling generally miserable, and oh god it started itching. I think the swelling is slowly going down, thank god - when I stretched my arm out and actually looked at it I realized why it hurt so badly to do that. The pressure inside my skin was strong enough to turn the burn a lovely yellow-white. And actually, last night the swelling in my upper arm was making it go pale just by existing. It seems the arm is getting better, although the elbow is still troublesome.

Shan’s classes keep accidentally exposing me to really horrible, awkward writing and it makes me want to cry. This last one, one of his classmates, she has something wonderful to say, something that hurts deep down in private ways, but she doesn’t know how to say it. Shan made noises about having me do a peer-edit for her, but god, I have no idea how to soften it. I always hit peer edits as hard as I hit my own writing, and it’s brutal and painful and not quick at all, and I’ve never learned how to say I’m hurting you for your own good, and I really hated this because you can do better not because it sucks without sounding like a heartless asshole. In CTY, there was this one kid who did not get the point of the class at all, kept writing horrible, uninspired science fiction and talking squirrels, and I actually took a permanent marker and just drew giant X’s on all the pages. And then I wrote three pages on how to fix it. He probably still hates me, but I think that was the best thing I could have done. Soft “oh my, perhaps you should try”s did nothing with him, and my drastic intervention actually made him try to understand the class. I think it scared some of the other kids, though. There may have been yelling involved when I gave my edit to him. I forget.

Status on trying to be McKay: Hypochondria, check. Nice warm pudge (insulation, man, have you ever lived in the North?), check. Sarcastic destruction of stupidity in my field of choice, check. Genius, not sure. Reminder to self: take a damn IQ test, you’ve been meaning to since you were seven. Living on a really awesomely dangerous alien planet: sadly, no.

My shoulders are blistering today. Sorrow. Work was slightly unpleasant, what with the rubbing and the ow and the burning. But I learned a lot of home remedies for sunburn! Apparently cider vinegar helps, or strong brewed tea, and Noxema apparently makes you peel. Like I care. LACK OF PAIN, HELLO.

I think my skin is swollen. Well, yes, burn, hello, but seriously. It’s kinda freaky. Sunburns scare me when I think about them too much - gradual invisible transfer of energy, cooking you from the outside in quite literally. A burn on like a hot stove I can deal with - heat source, yes, this equals a burn. But ambient sunlight, the very stuff we rely on to survive… It’s creepy. Sometimes my brain scares me.

I bet you didn’t know that Noxema makes sunburns feel oh so much better. Mmmm, menthol. Numbing goodness.

I should take pictures of the awesomely crazy red lines on my shoulders.

Holy shit, do I hurt. D: Sunburned to the point of broiling. And from only four hours in the sun! My exposure time is getting worse!

Basically, the whole family got together yesterday to split wood. We had to get it done by 2:30 to return the splitter by 3, so there was a certain amount of rushing at the end - we estimate that we split about three cords, altogether. I mostly did jack shit. Manned the hydraulics, meaning I made a lever go left and right. XD I had to keep an eye on everyone’s hands, though, and decide exactly when to pull the splitter back. Not really hard work. Towards the end of the day I stacked wood, though, so I don’t feel entirely useless. (Also, the entire thing led to a discussion of Kim, Shan’s ex, and how she would have dragged him off to the mall for the day instead of helping. This always makes me feel good, just a nice little affirmation that I’m better than someone. That should probably make me feel bad, but whatever. I AM VALIDATED.) The result has been that every one of us got killer sunburns - Shan’s sister gave me some sunscreen at some point, but I had already burned so it didn’t really help that much. Shan’s burn only showed up after he came inside. It was kinda funny. His bellybutton is white. XD Like I’m one to talk - my bracelet is a strip of pale in a sea of lobster. The tension in my skin is really not fun. D: I may have evened out my tan on my upper arms, though! I rolled up my sleeves to give my upper arms some sun. I hope they do tan, that’ll totally make this worth the pain. XD I never tan. I just go back to being Casper after I’ve peeled.

So yeah. Ow.

I also finally realized that for the first time in my entire life I have a non-Internet nickname (my name does not lend itself to nicknames at all - the only variation is longer, and I consider it an aberration when addressed by it)! I am Red. For my hair color, mind you, but I expect that when I get to work tomorrow the name will have slightly more meaning. Ah well.

…Hmm. I thought I had something to say, but it seems I was mistaken.

Today has been a remarkably long day, for reasons inexplicable. Work has finally given in to my subliminal messages about the store discount cards - the new policy is that if a customer doesn’t have their own, SCREW THAT SHIT. No more getting the manager’s card, no more using other customers’ cards. If you don’t bring in your fucking card, you don’t want the discount that bad.

For a while now, whenever the customer is like “oh well I don’t have mine, can’t I use yours?” I’ve been like “I don’t have one. Here is your total. Pay now.” And now it’s store policy! Yay! I can be slightly rude to customers and be perfectly justified! There are so many bastards (almost always male, curiously) that simply can’t be bothered to get their card ever. They’ll hold up the line for ten minutes while the cashier hunts down a supervisor to get the store card. Well, NO LONGER. If you actually lost your card, it is not that big a deal to get a replacement, and we CAN use the driver’s liscence number to look it up. I am so tired of the damn cards, though. All the time, jesus, “I don’t have my card, can I use yours?”

NO YOU MAY NOT.

In other news, I have absolutely nothing to talk about.

I am, right this moment, applying to college. There’ll be more later, a test to figure out my skills and such, but hey. THE FIRST STEP. I need to find out how to order a transcript from my high school long-distance, or possibly bribe someone in that state to do it for me. If school hasn’t closed for the summer. Fuck. ANYWAY NOT THINKING ABOUT THAT OR I WILL LOSE MY NERVE.

I don’t know why this is still such a huge deal for me. It’s a community college, and judging from Shan’s classes, it’s about as good as the “high school” back home which was muchly ridiculed for being pathetic. (Let me put it this way: Shan’s computer teacher thinks that viruses will get into her turned-off computer, and thus unplugs it from her dial-up when it’s not in use.) I can do stupid classes. I learned how to deal with parroting things back at the teacher at a very young age, although I fortunately later learned how to think for myself and prefer the latter. I thinkt he math classes will be perfect for me - quite honestly, I need to relearn everything about math that has ever been taught me, because I cannot add. Division is a nightmare, although I am quite fond of geometry proofs. But as for anything more mentally stimulating than long division… I doubt it. But it’s something. The first step.

I will apply, and then I will take their tests and figure out any financial aid and bully my uncle for money, and I will figure out if I qualify for in-state tuition, and then I will tell work to cut my hours, and then I will go to school, and then later I will go to another school with stuff that’s actually interesting, and then I will not think about what comes after that because I really don’t like dealing with that kind of uncertainty.

I have decided on psychology. I may change my mind once I start going through classes, but I want psychology, and I am so taking archaeology zomg. Archaeology is romantic.

P.S. Oh my god, I just had a thought. Instead of sitting through the horror and trauma that is English Comp (required class for every single student ahhhhh) I wonder if I could test out. I mean, fuck, I almost got a perfect score on my Verbal SAT. I can deal with Math 101, but English 101 is just… God, it hurts me in physical ways. Write a personal narrative. The last time I did that, I won a medal for whining. (And I mean that literally - a physical medal, and the essay was crap and got me a personal chat with the principal, all serious and oh god it’s so embarrassing.) MY POINT BEING that when given a lovely prompt such as that, I freeze. I could wax rhapsodic about toes for four pages, but a personal narrative? Good god. I still can’t think of a potential topic.