So, due to circumstances entirely beyond my control, I have become SERIOUSLY addicted to not just one TV show, but SEVERAL.

It's a good thing Project Runway ended just as Heroes began, otherwise there might have been trouble. And if 24 decides to show at the same time as Heroes -- well, I don't even want to think about it.

Things I love about Heroes:
*Plot-driven, but with well-rounded, interesting characters
*Just enough mysteries to keep us hooked while still giving us enough answers to keep us satisfied. (I'm talking to you, Lost!)
*So many hot actors I don't know what to do with myself. (Seriously. Is anyone on this show NOT hot?)
*Hiro Nakamura! Need I say more?
*Graphic novels after each episode
*Hiro's in-character blog
*AND SO MUCH MORE.

So, this addiction needs an outlet. And I need an excuse to delay doing homework. So. I am now going to recap Hiro's storyline from the last show, with screencaps to show just how adorable this guy is.

( I had a sword! )

OK, so I haven't updated forever and now I'm updating SOLELY to whine, but I feel I'm justified.

Sunday mornings I go to my grandpa's at 6:00 AM to help him get ready for church and make breakfast for him and so on.

Saturday nights my friends like to hang out and do friends-things, frequently until 1 in the morning.

So, typically on Sunday nights I get about 4-5 hours of sleep.

First of all, we saw The Prestige last night. AWESOME movie! Amazing actors! Thoughtful! Thrilling! But it is also apparently the type of movie that gives me nightmares, and that I cannot sleep for thinking about it and everything that happened. (I am a wuss, but we already knew that.)

So these dreams woke me up a couple of times during the night -- in one particular instance, I thought maybe I'd missed work (I just had that sick I-overslept feeling) and checked my cellphone, which now doubles as my clock. Nope, it was only 3:00.

At 3:15, just as I was starting to slip into another bad dream, I was awakened by all our fire alarms FREAKING OUT, giving me a heart attack. I lept from my bed and shuffled out into the hall. Immediately, the smoke detectors were silent again. I was the only one who had awoken. There was no smell of smoke, no sound, nothing suspicious, just me in the darkness of the hallway having a heart attack.

Getting to sleep after that was fun. Combatting the twin terrors of having been awoken by a fire alarm with thinking scary thoughts about the movie meant that my heart was throwing itself against the bars of my ribcage, trying to escape.

So, finally, at 5:30, I dragged myself reluctantly from bed, threw on my shoes, and went to work.

The nighttime caregiver was there, as usual, and she look at my blankly. "Didn't you change your clock?"

"It's six, isn't it? Am I late?"

"No, it's five. Daylight savings."

I felt so sad. Sad deep, deep inside. I went downstairs and just crashed on the bed there for an hour, but I'm still just seething about it. I hate daylight savings!

It was at one in the morning, and I don't like the voice, and the ending is clunky, but hey! I blew the dust off my keyboard and wrote SOMETHING! To answer three challenges, no less. :)

So I'm going to start trying to answer the weekly challenges in a slightly more weekly fashion. Whee.

( Expectations, Broken, Duck )

I've just gotten really bad at updating! I think it's because every time I do I remember that I PROMISED Desert Dryad updates and I don't want to do them anymore. Well, I DO want to write one scene, the initial short story, and I'm still fascinated by the childhood of the terrible triplets. They may continue to exist in strictly childhood drabble form. :) I'm still going to write a Gideon short about his broken duck!


Life's been a little crazy on this end, but survivable. Apparently my university is actually going to let me graduate! This is lovely news.

Of course, after graduation, I have No Idea what's going on. I'm seriously just thinking about working for T-Mobile (A US cell phone company, for you furriners) as a sales rep. Not exactly something I got a college education for, and it's DEFINITELY not in my field, but it's a good company with good benefits and lots of possibility for advancing in your career. I think I'd kind of like to end up doing Human Resources kind of stuff in the end. I don't know! We'll see.

It's strange because my Number One career choice is almost entirely out of my hands. Either I start teaching part-time in January or ... I don't. So we'll see.

In other news, I totally sprained my toes today. I tripped over my laptop cord and sacrificed my feet instead of my lovely computer friend. It hurts like a MOTHER.

So, got my school all figured out and have been working a lot, but life has been pretty good with me. Except my laptop is on the fritz, so I will be purchasing a new one shortly. As soon as I decide which one to purchase.

I'm mostly just posting to rant, because I needed to.

My roommates are currently doing the uncoolest thing EVER. So, I was talking with roommate and best friend Kim about her schedule for this week, and she was all, "Well, I've saved Friday night for a date night with my boyfriend, but we'll hang out Saturday night." And so I figured she'd be up in Sandy (a town about 20 minutes away) with him. But I am a grown-up girl, and have handled Friday nights on my own before. That's fine.

So my roommate Laurel is also dating somebody pretty seriously. (Kim AND Laurel both got boyfriends basically RIGHT as I moved in. And Mejken, my third roommate, has had a boyfriend forever. THANKS, universe!) And she told me that she and HER boyfriend were going out tonight. Again, fine.

She also mentioned to me a week ago that her boyfriend has a roommate that she'd like to set me up with. And I said that I'd enjoy that, because I generally like dating. It is a thing I enjoy. And as she explained him to me, he seemed like a nice guy.

So right now, Kim, Laurel, their boyfriends, the Roommate I was supposed to be set up with, and Kim's little sister (who apparently Laurel decided to set him up with instead?) are downstairs and NOT in Sandy, making dinner for each other and then going to watch a movie.

I was invited to be a seventh-wheel tonight by Kacy, who came upstairs to say hello just as the event was starting. I drove Kim to school today, and I said, "Well, since you have school and then work and then date, I guess I'll see you tomorrow! Have a good day!" and she didn't contradict me. So when Kacy said, "Hey, me and two other couples are having a movie night tonight, want to come?" I said no thanks, thinking the event would be in Sandy and not thrilled about seventh-wheeling anyway.

I wasn't even aware Kim was home until I went downstairs to get something to eat. I was not aware they were cooking for each other. (And when I got down there, Laurel was just helping herself to the last of the chicken, but said I could have it if I really wanted. Gee, thanks, but no thanks, Laurel.)

So, I'm just pretty upset about that. It's just really high up there on the NOT COOL scale, and Kim is my BEST FRIEND. I'm pretty sure that she's not INTENDING to slight me like that, but that's pretty intense thoughtlessness. Makes me feel like a grade-A loser.

GRAH.

Anyway. I PROMISE I'm going to g e writing done, and just today I was struck by a Gideon story that answers THREE recent challenges. It will be called, "The Expectations of a Broken Duck."

Somehow writing that sentance down makes it seem SO MUCH less good than it sounded in my head. Well, we'll see. :)

It's true! It is so true, in fact, that now, after 2 days of working 10 hour shifts and then coming right home and moving/unpacking for eight hours each night, it is noon and I am still wearing my pajamas and I DON'T FEEL BAD.

That was the longest sentence ever.

In any case, the move was long and arduous, but I am not set up in my own new room! With my best friend in the room next to me! The biggest problem is that the room is blindingly (BLINDINGLY, I say) pink and girly. I had to go buy a pirate flag to toughen it up a little.

Of course, because I'm me, I bought the pirate flag that surrounded the skull and crossbones in a pink circle. It reads "The Pirate Republic: No Quarter Given" and there's a heart. It tickles me to no end. But there's still a skull and crossbones, so that's tough, right? Right?

I will post pictures later.

So, I'm all settled in and would very much like to go back to my habits of wasting time upon the interweb, when I discover that the wireless network here is out! I just CAME from an apartment with crappy wireless! I was excited that this place would have LESS crappy wireless! I am very annoyed. So I'm hoping that the girl in charge will be able to fix that soon, otherwise I may be a bit dead to the world for a while.

I'm also taking advantage of the fact that my favorite time waster (the internet) is out of commission to do a badly-needed fresh install on my laptop. It was behaving very badly and there was spyware that my spyware program couldn't get rid of, and it'd flip out and not work when I tried to use youTube or iTunes or anything like that. Not to mention trying to play games!

So, that's going on right now (I'm on a friend's computer) and hopefully that will all be fine. I get intensely nervous whenever I do anything to my computer. I fear that it will never work again. But hopefully it will and I'll be back and updating regularly in september. That's the plan, anyway.

Miss you all! Keep on truckin'!

So, finally, AGES after joining talechasing, I have finally answered a challenge!

I'm not particularly happy with it, but it's gotten me writing again, which seems to be the whole point. Yay for writing!

( Deluge )

Oh, also:

Your Bit Part in the \'Soulfire\' Series LiveJournal Username Who'd win a shouting contest - you, or Isaille? Me.Isaille.Pardon? How many of your beers has Nuan swiped so far? You wish Alkior would stop talking about ... When Lorannon tells a stupid joke, you ... cringe.try to ignore it.hit him.cackle. Schiri is ... a Dark Elf.a pain in the behind.not a cat person.. Whose side are you on, exactly? Why, the side of Light.The side of Darkness, of course.Mine! You shall sally forth boldly, joined by the brave extd_grb_injoke to defeat the plot hatched by Kharais and quirkybird Unfortunately, Nuan starts to belch your national anthem and you suffer a horrid array of Paladin jokes ... 1,023 Although you are betrayed by shanra you survive long enough to be beaten to death by Immovan for teaching Binni bad words. This Fun Quiz created by Alyssa at BlogQuiz.Net

Leo Horoscope at DailyHoroscopes.Biz

OK, so the game Dance Dance Revolution? The one for the nintendo? Everybody know it, right?

I AM SO ADDICTED IT IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM.

My feet hurt. My calves ache. But dangit, I'm GOING to beat that game on Hard before my brother comes back! (he can do it on super hard, but I'm like 50 billion times less coordinated than he is.)

So, I'm staying at my Brother's/Grandpa's place to do the night monitoring for grandpa while my brother is on vacation, and covering some of his shifts. So I am pretty busy, and then when I am not busy there is his DDR game just staring at me. Daring me to get a new high score! It is deadly.

But I SWEAR upon everything that is holy that tomorrow I'm finally going to write one of the challenges for talechasing, as I have not contributed to that community since I joined it. I am a horrible person.

But I am a horrible person who can take on Bowser in a dance competition! Bwahahahahaha ... ahem.

And it's been fun. She would've made a good college roommate -- it was fun to have her in the bed across the room, chatting while we fell asleep. Fun to jockey for room at the mirror. It's cool to be in this grown-up place where I can hang out with my mom and be friends. She's staying for the weekend, in which I will get very little studying done for my geology final. Oh well. :) It should turn out OK regardless.

Also, I went to a Turbo Kickboxing class with my SIL this morning, and I am ALREADY sore. This is not a good sign. But it meant I didn't feel guilty about the Krispy Kreme donuts I had for breakfast. Because Krispy Kreme is some good stuff.

Also, Em! (and anybody else interested) The entire archives of Bite Me! are up for free at girlamatic.com! It is most awesome.

I'm the biggest slacker EVER. And I swear I will repent!

Not much has been going on with me, really. Geology's been a super-fun class, wherein we have gone to glacial lakes, inside a cave built on a fault line, dinosaur museums, the largest open-pit mine in the world, and into mineral springs. It has been AWESOME.

Read The Mermaid Chair recently, by Sue Monk Kidd, who also wrote The Secret Life of Bees. Both are really excellent books, I recommend them to all.

Also been hanging out with Kim, Kacy, and Amanda lots. Went car shopping with Kim, managed to reluctantly talk her down from getting a minicooper. They're the CUTEST cars, but so expensive! I think she's going for the Mazda 3 or the Toyota Yaris. We also went to an amusement park this weekend -- it wasn't as good as the parks back east, but it was still pretty fun.

In any case, I am very sorry for my absence, and will get cracking on more desert dryad. Though I think it's getting an overhaul. We'll see. ;)

Well, it's been a loco two days around here, and yesterday involved so many embarrassing mishaps that I am not EVEN GOING TO POST THEM. But they were mishaps, and oh, they were embarrassing. And expensive. I believe that I am now poor, due to having to pay for embarrassing mishaps.

Today I managed to avoid such horrible mishaps, but the day was interesting in its own way. My grandpa kind of goes in phases with his Alzheimers, sometimes really good, sometimes really bad. Well, this last week has been rough for him -- he's been getting more withdrawn, more out of it, more cranky. Today he started grousing about how my Aunt Nancy borrows his car, and how she shouldn't do that.

And so I asked, "Well, who's gonna drive it, if she doesn't? She takes you to all your appointments and things."

And then he said. "Ida-Rose has a license, and she drives me places." And kinda kept ranting about how Nancy shouldn't use the car.

Ida-Rose is my grandma, his wife. She died almost a year and a half ago.

I just didn't know what to say. How could I remind him that his wife, his best friend and confidante for 60 years, had passed on? My heart sunk. I tried to change the topic, but I felt guilty for doing so. It's not like it wasn't going to dawn on him sooner or later.

Finally Nancy came over and explained things. It was just ... sad. Poignant, in a way, but sad. Life is short.

I just found out that Eddie From Ohio, my current favorite band of awesomeness, is touring this fall! And they are going to Denver, which is not far at all from here. Well, OK, it's far, but my friend Amanda is from Denver and takes trips home all the time.

But the icing on the cake is that they are in Denver ON MY BIRTHDAY. So. She and I will have to find a way to make a trip down that weekend. And it will be awesome.

Besides, what is there not to love about a Band that sings about Tommy the Canexican, a vancouver-dwelling mexican who's living with his next-o-kin? (Selena is gone but Celine needs a stalker -- hahahahailovethisband)

Seriously. They are full of GENIUS, including a toe-tapping song about the theory of relativity (Albert Einstein was never good at math. But he found time down a curving path. The faster you go, the slower you grow, the less that you have to fall...) and a bittersweet but funny song about happy couples.

The universe loves me right now.

So, yeah, this was done in two hours (in honor of Emily, of course). It has had no editing done to it yet, but I like it TONS better than the previous talky and pointless version of chapter five. This isn't the chapter in entirety, of course, it's just the beginning, but I think it works better. We can see more the difference between Jericho and Bethany's viewpoints, and Jericho actually DOES something other than whine. Huzzah!

(Fish, I'm not sure you got chapter 4 before going all school-y on us. You can check my fictionpress site for that one.)

( Manipulative? Jericho? Naaaaah. )

Happy Birthday to the unparalleled skycornerless! She is 20 today, and though she thinks that's old (speaking from the vantage point of being 23 and 3/4ths) she is still a very young thing who cannot leave her mother.

That's what my mom always says, anyway. (From the song "Billy Boy" in case I've confused anybody)

I am in the midst of a drawing, but it is taking forever and my summertime classes are taking up more time than I anticipated, so it will be at least a week until it's done. However, in honor of Emily, I am going to spend at least 2 hours today working on Desert Dryad (not that it's much of a present, as I need to do that anyway. But Chapter 5 will hereby be dedicated to her!)

So. Huzzah for Emily! And Happy Birthday!

As I prepare to do this, I realize that it's actually really sad how much time I spend on the internet. But the time is not wasted! I feel edified, entertained, educated, and amused! These are great sites, and therefore I want to share them with the world. Or at least the world that decides to read my LJ.

A lot of what I list are my webcomics, so I apologize to Alyssa and any others with crappy dialup connections. My heart bleeds for you! But someday, you will have broadband, and I will be able to point you to this list.

Sites I check daily:

http://www.narbonic.com - Possibly the awesomest mad science comic EVER made. It's coming to an end this year, which makes me sad deep inside. For a while it was on moderntales.com, which is a pay-for-archives site, but now the archives are free (if a bit out-of-order, they're in the process of being fixed) on http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic so you can go there and figure out who the hamsters are and why Artie is in a floating think tank in the sky. I am HORRIBLY wary of what will happen when this comic ends. I have a bad notion that Helen's going to be a brain-in-a-tank, Mel's going to be President, and Artie's going to be dead. Aiee!

http://get-medieval.livejournal.com/ - conveniently in livejournal form, so you can just add to your friends list. Another webcomic (I'm a sucker for them, really) about aliens that land on earth in medieval times. Funny and clever and reliably entertaining.

http://shoeblogs.com/ - Manolo's Shoe Blog! I don't know how I got hooked on this, as I am not a high couture person. My shoes come from payless. But Manolo's freakin' hilarious, and he's certainly right about many things -- and everybody has the right to be superfantastic!

http://nationstates.net/ - Make your own nation and govern it! It's kinda fun. I have 2 nations -- Tohono, which is the one I govern by how I really think about the issues presented, has turned out to be an inoffensive centrist democracy, which is kinda what I was going for. I'm trying to turn my second nation, Baby Bandicoots, into a psychotic dictatorship, because let's face it, that'd be awesome. However, it's harder than you think! I think it's currently a compulsory consumerist state.

http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/ - Another one of those things that I don't understand why I'm so fascinated. The Sarorialist lives in New York (though he's currently in Milan, being employed by men.style.com to cover the fashion shows there) and he just wanders around the city and takes pictures of people that he sees. Sometimes it's because they just look great overall, sometimes it's because he likes their smile, their hair, or a particular piece of their clothing. They're fascinating, beautiful, regular people (for the most part -- New York is full of models) and I can't help but look.

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html - The whole lileks.com site is fascinating -- James Lileks is a newspaper columnist with a bizarre urge to document strange details of the past, and frequently to make fun of them. Sometimes he veers into politics (and is a center/right leaning libertarian) just to warn folks who don't like that stuff, but he's always insightful and frequently funny. Go to the gallery of regrettable food or interior desecrations and prepare to giggle until your head hurts.

Sites I check on Mondays:

http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/ - Not very reliable about updating, so the story's a little slow-moving, but it's just fascinating.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ - OK, OK, I love comics! And Mad Science! And Blonde, Bespectacled Girl Geniuses! The coloring in the first part is poorly done, I think, and the art style takes some getting used to, but they switch colorists sometime in the later chapter, and the story is excellent.

http://www.seraph-inn.com/ - Sarah Ellerton is a fabulous Aussie (like so many others) who draws gorgeous Manga and is telling a beautiful story here in Inverloch. But mostly, I just go to ooh and aah at the art. It's awesome.

http://www.earthsongsaga.com/ - What's that? More Manga? Yes. Shut up. It's good. And this one's actually more manga-inspired than actually manga.

http://www.catandgirl.com/ - Bizarre political and social commentary. The source of my die delicious icon.

Sites I check on Tuesday:
None of my comics update on Tuesdays. Sadness!

Sites I check on Wednesday:
Girl Genius
Earth Song
http://www.girlamatic.com/series.php?name=mell&view=current - Little Mel and Sergio, written by Shaenon Garrity and drawn by rotating artists, is hilarious and cute. Unfortunately, girlamatic is a pay-for-the-archives site, but the current update is always free.

Sites I check on Thursday:
Inverloch (The Seraph-Inn site)
Cat and Girl

http://directionsofdestiny.com/ - Much more manga-ish than my other mangas, school uniforms, crazy hair, and all. But still cool! It's a big fascinating mystery.

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/smithson/series.php - Another one written by the esteemed Miss Garrity, Smithson is about a superhero with no super powers, a powerful conspiracy that runs as an all-female a capella group, a non-conformist chair movement, a child prodigy who lost his genius in a brain operation, and more! Absolutely fascinating.

Sites I check on Friday:
Girl Genius
Earth Song

Sites I check on Saturday:
Really, what I need to do is find a really good website that updates on Tuesdays and Saturday.

Sites I check on Sunday:

http://forthewicked.net - No rest for the wicked, a mixed-up-turned around fairy tale. And yes, if you check that site this week, the current update has Little Red Riding Hood beheading the witch who lives in the gingerbread house (from Hansel and Gretel) and the witch KEEPS TALKING. Seriously creepy. But awesome!

So. Now I have my links all in order, and I apologize if I super-spammed your friends list. Go forth and enjoy that intarweb, ducks!

Drabble for Alyssa. :) Her challenge was "Young Jericho and an awkward birthday moment," which is so full of good potential I had to pick between like, five scenarios. I have a feeling EVERY birthday was full of awkward moments. Some a lot more horribly awkward than this was, but I couldn't fit Jericho explaining to his siblings what sex was within 100 words. :)



Jericho sat on the floor, leaning against his mother and pushing the toy train across the floor. "My present is the best because you love me more," he announced, and then went back to making train noises.

Bethany threw her handmade rag doll down, which she hadn't liked anyway, and started bawling. Gideon's bag of colorful marbles lay untouched in a corner. He was out in the barn, as usual, playing with the new calf.

"Jericho, that's not nice," said Lydia in dismay.

"But it's true," he replied smugly. "Gideon likes cows and Bethany likes trees, but I like you."

The Mood: giggly

It read like this:

Dear Sarah,

I hate you.

Most sincerely,

Your body.

Seriously. What compelled me to think that I could get 3 hours of sleep, wake up and inhale bleach fumes for four hours getting ready for cleaning checks, eat jell-o and graham crackers for breakfast (don't ask), skip lunch, and then go to a carnival during the hot middle of the day and ride THREE dizzy-making, death defying rides.

I think the "Zipper" is the most terrifying thing in the world.

Also, tilt-a-whirling at over 2g's? Not good when your stomach's already queasy.

Amanda told me that once she went on the really super-fast (I mean SUPER fast, this is not your lazy on the ground tilt-a-whirl. This is intense.) spinning ride 4 times in a row, until her friend who was with her puked. Ick! I went on it just once and didn't stop being dizzy for over 10 minutes. I'm still not sure WHEN I would have stopped, because I still wasn't done being dizzy when we got onto the upside-down dizzy thing. And then the zipper.

So my body sent this letter to me with such signals as intense nausea, dizziness, and bizarrely flickering vision. I was not really better until I took a nap.

Next time, I'm going on the easy rides, dangit!

Well, after three years of growing my hair out (it had just barely passed my shoulderblades) I was sick of it. It was shapeless, styleless, flat, and mundane. I felt like I had just this brown mop on top of my head.

So! I got a cut and highlights. I had a trusted friend from my ward do it, and she did a great job. I'm actually HAPPY with the highlights, which is unusual. Usually applying dye to my hair is a horrible mistake, as my hair has this tendancy to turn really orange whenever any chemical agent is applied.

These pictures are crappy, taken in the too-bright light of the bathroom mirror, with the wierd cell-phone-color-adjusting-ness going on. I'll take some better ones later.