I made soup out of random things in the fridge and it was actually good~! YAY ME.

I keep turning the back part of my brain over like a rock and hoping to find a story underneath like a thing you find under a rock. Then I realized I already had a perfectly good original story masquerading as a fanfic, and it wasn’t going to happen as a fanfic anyway because I wrote a few thousand words and then realized I started in the wrong place and had to rewrite it all, so now I need to leave it alone a bit and do research. If I overthink it, it’ll go away. Trust me on this. I have lost more great stories that way… I keep leaning towards writing epics, but I don’t have enough attention to keep writing the same thing for ages and ages. My writing is blitzkreig, ja. Except when it’s not. I have this one story now, feels like I started it last week, but the timestamp says two months ago. I just keep adding bits, after the first rush of two or three thousand words; I think maybe another thousand and it’s done, nothing big, but I gotta get past this one part. I always write action incredibly slowly. Everything else zooms by, but action takes AGES to write. Hell, the climactic scene of The Beauty Inherent took a month to percolate, and then it just went WHAM and appeared on my screen all at once. Weird, right? Right. I don’t pretend to understand, I just write it.

I am not emo today! It’s amazing! …Although I did get a letter in the mail saying that, yet again, someone stole my credit card info. But… it’s for a card ending in 0000, which I do not have. I think. Maybe their account ends in 0000. It is vague. This makes the second time; JCPennys was the first, about a year ago, and this one is for an unnamed video game-selling company. Sigh. And yet today is nice! But hot. But nice!

I finally cooked a chicken without undercooking it, and there are many leftovers. I stuck the carcass in the fridge to make chicken stock when I am less exhausted, like tomorrow, and maybe I can make chicken and dumplings, and I have no idea what to make with chicken stock but I have the ingredients for it~!

Shan’s been sleeping half the day and I don’t wanna wake him up because if I do he’ll be up all night and keep me awake. D: The bad part of getting used to sharing a bed is that you need a person there to sleep next to. Can’t sleep if he’s up. Can’t sleep if he’s not there, either. D: So, quick cool shower (ugh, summer and hot machine oil do not mix) and then quiet TV and then sleepies. Lots of sleepies! I dunno what to bring to read before work tomorrow, though. I read all my books. D: Have given up on His Dark Materials after the first two books, which is peculiar for me; if I start a story, I must finish it, and being able to put it down with the intention of never coming back is kinda… yeah. I really don’t like the series. Very plastic writing, and some good ideas gone horribly wrong. I’m just not intrigued at all. Especially when it got into the Bible stuff, ugh. Whatever, guys. I am so not into that. LOOK LOOK EVERYONE IT’S JESUS oh no wait it’s a bear.

I was headed for the bus station and this guy I used to work with in the front end gave me a ride instead. Oooookay. Plan A has been thwarted! XD TIME FOR PLAN B. I need a Plan B.

A graphics-making person opened up requests a little while back, and I snuck one in, and now I have a pretty header~! IT HAS MY NAME ON IT. My online name. The other one. I, uh, have this huge ego, you see, so Internet things that are given to me that have my name on… yeah. I ADORE THEM. THEY HAVE MY NAME ON. I wish I could do more image-editing things. I don’t really know why I can’t, except that I am baffled by these “layers” things. They don’t move! Except when you don’t want them to, then they move all over. And like - how do you take two seperate image files and like, stick them together side-to-side and do some fancy erasing and fuzzing to make it look right? Because that is mostly what I want to do and it BAFFLES ME. Stupid Gimp.

What the hell is keeping me at this job? They’re not going to hire me. I don’t care if they hire me. I’m looking at bus rides for transport anyway, getting rid of the “get rides from Shan” reason, and I hate it so there goes the “I kinda like this job actually” reason, and they’re not going to hire me so there goes the “oh hay health care” reason, which leaves… “hay some nice moneys” reason. Which is a good reason, damnit. Buuuuuut. I should talk to the temp guys some more, see what office jobs are paying. I need to get some experience doing office-y things.

I have decided on zoology, God save us all. Now I need to do the math to see when I need to transfer, and if I can finish my associate’s in Psych first. The math will be very vague, since I can probably transfer a bunch of the core credits, but I guess I’ll do a couple of scenarios.

And, just so that this entry has every tag my journal uses, I feel I should mention that I swept up yesterday. And Shan finally got one of his birthday presents! And he likes it and was not expecting it! Go me! It’s a hat. <3

Proof of the shittiness of “Savage Girls and Wild Boys” and the author’s crush on Genie’s linguist (and yes, this is a direct quote, I can find the page if you want):

“There was, as has been mentioned, James Kent, the kind, balding staff psychologist; Jean Butler, an ambitious special education teacher; David Rigler, the Chief of Psychology; Howard Hansen, the head of psychiatry; Jay Shurley, the expert on social isolation; and Susan Curtiss, the glamorous, dark-haired post-graduate student in linguistics.”

Finally got a bus schedule, and it looks like I can get almost a straight ride home and be on my doorstep about an hour after work lets out. No more begging helplessly for rides! I despise begging, and the last week has been utterly miserable for me. Hopefully this will get me feeling a little better; I’ve never really disliked the bus, although it was never entirely safe. Ah, school. Besides, I like crazy people, so I should get along fine with the passengers. :D I’ll bring a book, too. I need one for the mornings, when I wait an hour outside work, anyway.

It was wonderful. I’ll say nothing more; it needs no elaboration. I am content.

Pictures from the party! I did go, and talked to Steph on the phone the whole time. I got home about 2am, and slept all morning. I haven’t even looked at the book yet, which is kinda weird. I’ve just been killing time, puttering around. I guess I like the anticipation? I should at least start it. I feel kinda obligated, since I got it at the midnight release and everything.

And just so you know, Bellatrix is a wonderful woman. Hee! (I mean the nice young woman I took a picture of - we ended up in line together, and she was so bubbly I could barely look at her, because she did Bella so well!)

TONIGHT. I am still debating whether I want to go to a midnight party. I don’t want to wake Shan, since he works tomorrow, but I really really want to go. And possibly call Steph and make dolphin noises at her. And pretend that I’ve read the book to freak her out. Rocks fall! Everyone dies!

But honestly, along with my excitement there is some sorrow and a lot of trepidation. Each book has been more and more disappointing, not because they have gotten worse but because my expectations have been higher. To tell the truth, I don’t remember much of Half-Blood Prince; it was like reading a fanfic. That is not an insult: fanfic, as I see it, is an exploration of all possibilities. In various stories I had read, all the possibilities addressed in HBP had already existed. That is why I dread Deathly Hollows. I worry that I will have already predicted every outcome, that there will be no surprises, that it will be like I read the end even if I begin at the beginning. That would be a horrible disappointment on top of the sorrow of The End.

I first got into Harry Potter in CTY. One of my roommates sent me the first book as a gift, and the next session I signed up for a group reading. Either the second or third book was out then; I think the second. Here I am, what seems like a lifetime away, still fawning over the Boy Who Lived. It’s a wonderful feeling, a long story; and a story that lasts a lifetime is even better. But you know what’s said about all good things, and this is a very good thing indeed. It will end, and the ending will be glorious, and most of the world will be in mourning tomorrow, and we’ll be brought together by it for a little while.

Welcome to the end, Harry Potter. It’s not such a bad place to be.

Someone on my LJ friends list has the book. I know, I know, no one has the book, but - someone made a digital copy of the whole damn thing, and this person on my list is the one person I would trust to verify that it’s real and he read it and I could have it RIGHT NOW but I won’t, oh I won’t, because I am so afraid it’s going to suck and I want to share that misery with everyone else. Plus, why rush the end? It only comes once, and it always comes, even when we don’t want it to.

There are now two professional writers in my f-list! I own Astolat’s published work, and soon Synedochic will work as a full-time author, leaving her job at Six Apart and Livejournal. Good for her - she got a lot of shit during Slashthrough ‘07 that she didn’t deserve, although I am still a little bitter over how she posted about how nothing was going on - either keep your work out of your fun or tell the truth, man. But I can’t wait to read her stuff~ They’re my two favorite authors to read, fanfiction-wise, and I’m sure the published works will be the same. Congrats to Synedochic~!

OKAY PAPER DONE except for the bibliography, which is the hard part, but I was good and kept track of my sources. It is a dirty ugly paper, not nearly my usual standards, but I blame it on the shit resources. You know it’s bad when Wiki is one of your best and most impersonal sources. The book I (sadly) purchased is shit; the author does not understand the concept of journalistic integrity or whatever morals might tell you to, you know, report the facts. According to him, Victor was seduced by a gay nobleman, Genie’s smokin’ hot linguist was, well, smokin’ hot, and no one cares about that Ivan guy, and Memmie was totally a hot chick except for when she got old. THE BOOKS SUCKS. Don’t buy “Savage Girls and Wild Boys” by Michael Newton. Even more sadly, it’s the best published work on feral children out there, which pretty much means don’t buy ANY book about feral children, it will suck rocks. FeralChildren.com was useless, giving only sketchy semi-facts; NOVA was better, with a transcript of the movie I bought, and various online news resources helped but their inevitable inability to do a follow-up made me want to scream. I ended up with six sources after the seventh decided I had to sign up to look at the article any more.

In conclusion, the people involved with feral children are all invariably selfish fucks with savior complexes who want fame and end up with infamy. Just let the kid be a kid, teach them what they can learn, and take care of them. Christ. I would be better with these kids than most of these people, and that’s saying a lot.

Dad, have you seen the HP movie yet? The thestrals are gorgeous! I want one! But I have to say, they reversed the importance of two key scenes late in the movie. The Veil and the posession thing; the latter was quite moving and the former utterly NOT. I think that is vague enough; I’m trying to be cautious of any spoilers whatsoever for anything HP, which is probably a little silly of me, since this movie is what, book four out of seven? But some people just watch the movies (LOSERS) so I won’t ruin it for them. Good movie. I really, really liked the thestrals and the posession scene. Daniel Radcliffe has gotten pretty good.

Things entertaining me right now: uno dos tres quatro cinco cinco seis!