Christmas

Dec. 20th, 2015 10:10 pm
mythalive: (Default)
 Not that I've kept in touch terribly well, but also I've moved, and apparently so have half the people I know.  So the point being I'm sending out my Christmas cards way too late (meaning not done yet), and I'm happy to send one to anyone who sends me an updated address.  Or any address because my address book is still in a box somewhere.

I'll probably start working on them tomorrow.  After I sleep for a week.
mythalive: (Default)
Not sure when the last time I posted was.  Probably ought to accept that I'll never be consistant with any online thing any more - except, apparenty, Facebook.  Anyway.  Unimportant.

I did it!  Just over 50K, even though until Thanksgiving afternoon I was still at 11K (or was it 9K?  not sure).

I have never had the problem of the story not being long enough before, but I wrote "The End" at just over 40K, then did two orphan beginnings that I dropped because I had no plot idea and they weren't going anywhere, and instead wrote a short story (somewhere between 5-10K) that is a modern version of Beauty and the Beast, complete with a hacker and an MMORPG.  I don't think it's very good, but it sure entertained me for the last few hours.
mythalive: (Default)
Had to buy definitely non-religious cards because the religious ones were all way expensive, but they are (mostly) finally in the mail.  What is going to be done of my Christmas candies is mostly done, though it won't be nearly as much as usual.  And I'm finally on Christmas break!  Which is why I have time to post rather than think about it and neglect it.
mythalive: (Default)
Internet is out again until at least Saturday night, because I can't be home during their 4-hour windows until then.  By Saturday it will have been a week and a half.

This is getting increasingly annoying.
mythalive: (Default)
Paying Starbucks $5 so I don't feel guilty about borrowing their internet.  AT&T dropped my order somehow.  They've given me a new date of January 18th, unless they manage to expedite it for me, about which I am not at all confident.  The man I spoke with this time was very helpful until he failed to give me the right extension # at his particular office so I can't call them back.
mythalive: (Default)
I'd be enjoying my new apartment a lot more if I didn't have to go to someone else's house to borrow their internet to post here.

I'm not specifically borrowing it just to post here.  But I miss my internet.  AT&T has failed, again, to set things up correctly and on time, and working six days a week is not helpful to allowing a four hour window for their technician to show up and fix things inside the apartment.  If they could have done it on time over break when I was actually home it would have been so much easier.
mythalive: (emily)
I have an interesting project taking up my time today.

I need something I can make as a dessert or snack for my gaming group (finger foods, and not too girl-y).  One of us is now on a grain-free diet.  To make it more complicated (I could work that first one out easily enough), I am trying to avoid eggs or milk - if I buy those for it, I have to use ALL of them, or else use the remaining eggs/milk in something that can be frozen for 1+ months.  Because otherwise the remaining eggs and milk will go bad while I don't eat them.  The only milk-substitute I've found that I can tolerate the taste of (meaning the only one of which the remainder would be useable to me) is Silk pure coconut stuff, which will give whatever I make a decidedly coconut flavor.

I DO have access to almond flour, tapica flour, potato flour...not sure what else.

I've created recipes before using normal ingredients (very successfully I might add...two cakes, a couple other desserts), so I guess I'm about to see what that experience is really worth!

(If anyone has any ideas, I'd be glad to hear them).

Singing!

Nov. 27th, 2010 11:26 am
mythalive: (Default)

I was totally on the news this morning:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtBTBscB6tA

It could have been better, and I needed to sing louder (darn microphones), but overall not bad.
mythalive: (emily)

I find extreme satisfaction in discovering that I still know my past characters well enough to know how they would react in a given situation, without having to spend a long time thinking about it.  I find equal satisfaction over being creative enough to have characters that don't act the same way when in similar situations.

If only I could reliably create characters this in-depth for my novels as well (but then, that's only one of many, many problems with my writing).  Here's hoping I prove I've fixed at least some of those problems in NaNo '10!

I currently have 3 ideas bouncing around; I'm hoping I'll have an outline for at least two of them come Nov 1st.  Perhaps I'll also get something finished, or at least a bit less rambly and with a stronger plot.  And I think I've got a better grasp on dialogue, if my d&d stories are anything to judge by.  At this rate, I may be publishable sometime before I die!
mythalive: (NaNoWriMo2009)
Apparently I missed the big news in Austin today until waaaay later when I got home and checked facebook.  Amazing how teaching shuts you off from absolutely everything.  Of course, it kept me from needlessly worrying, as of my two friends who go to UT, one didn't have class today and wasn't even in Austin, and the other was all the way on the other side of campus from the gunman, who didn't hit anyone anyway.


I've been inadvertently experimenting with fasting, by not actually eating anything except a few pieces of candy and a couple crackers for two and a half days.  I do actually still have food in the freezer.  I just didn't have the energy to cook on Saturday, and fell asleep before I could get around to it on Sunday.  Strangely, I wasn't hungry anyway.  Order was restored Monday night when I finally cooked some ham...but I still was un-hungry enough that I could have put the small meal down and walked away from it at any time.  I no longer wonder how people manage to fast for an entire month.  Apparently, it's easy.


Today was a good day; I like being in the same classroom multiple days, even if it is only two.  Wild student sitting and working quietly for almost the entire afternoon with a few well-placed breaks?  Check!  Struggling students helped to the best of my two-day ability, level and type of help based on need, despite only meeting them yesterday?  Check!  Class all sitting quietly and working when the principal walked in this morning?  Check!  If only the school weren't 40 minutes away on the other side of a town I don't even live in.


It's almost October, it's fall, and it's been cool here.  Score!  If only my laundry room wasn't off my balcony, and I had somewhere other than on top of the washer to dry non-dryer clothes.  Soon the clothes will turn to ice instead of dry, and I'll freeze walking out to get clean clothes in the morning.  (Aww, who am I kidding.  This is Texas.  If that happens at all, it'll be for two days in February, and again on Holy Saturday night.)


I keep wondering whether the apartment would be more likely to get annoyed or get me a new dishwasher if I walk in and describe just how much is wrong with it in beautiful poetic detail.  I detest hand-washing dishes.  The dishwasher make me almost consider hand-washing them anyway.


I love my cat.  It might be a good thing I'm considering single life, because I'd totally obsess over a kid.  They'd grow up with smothered and overprotected issues.  Sometimes I think even my cat already has those, but I don't have the money for a pysch for her....
mythalive: (emily)

Not sure whether I actually plan on keeping this as part of her story, because I don't know how long they would wait before icing her over this - but it felt right tonight (and maybe I needed something angsty), so I wrote it.

Emily's Trial )

Byebye

Sep. 1st, 2010 05:38 pm
mythalive: (Default)
I wouldn't have missed it for the world
Wouldn't have missed loving you girl
You've made my whole life worth while, with your smile
I wouldn't trade one memory
Cause you mean too much to me
Even though I lost you girl
I wouldn't have missed it for the world


--Ronnie Milsap's "I wouldn't have missed it for the world"



(Not that I'm claiming my whole life was worthwhile for this.... I haven't made that claim since highschool.)

Goodbye Siana Lorraine Jackson, and introducing... Emily Patience Reed.  Who does not in any way resemble her name.
mythalive: (Default)

I'm pretty sure this was triggered by my recent move and the new location I live in.  I dreamed the other night that the USA was giving, not selling, but giving the land occupied by the state of Texas and all the things and people within it to the country of Mexico, and renaming Alaska to Texas.  Despite how vehemently I argued noone around me could see why this was a bad idea.

I do often feel like I've moved to a different country, without the benefit of being on vacation and having amazing architecture or amazing sites or historical things or whatever to go around and enjoy visiting.  Every time I've gone into the grocery store, instead of friendly looks or even just plain being ignored, I have people glaring at me like I don't belong.  The announcements are all in Spanish, the people talking around me are all speaking in Spanish, and the other day they even had what could have been a Spanish radio station there... but between the speed at which the speaker was talking and the static of using a microphone (and my generally insufficient grasp of the language anyway), I really couldn't understand enough to be sure.  Instead of the cake and things I'm used to on display, there were Mexican breads and pastries on all the tables and other things that I'm even less familiar with on display elsewhere.

I don't recall having a problem in Austria with not knowing the language; in fact, if I recall that entire semester I loved being able to hear people talking around me without having to try not to listen in, and hated coming back to the USA where all of a sudden there was so much extra noise and I could understand everyone everywhere and all their conversations and all the ads and felt like I was completed overloaded in my failure to relearn how to ignore it all.  However, the mixture of familiar/foreign here is driving me crazy.  It's familiar enough (and of course, I haven't moved out of the country) that I expect to know what's going on around me, both in language and in just the things I see around... but just foreign enough that I don't understand and there are unfamiliar things all over the place.

Of course, if I get really desperate for something familiar, I can walk a few blocks north... to China Town.
mythalive: (Default)

Don't mind me, just trying to remember something.  This is copied from an old blog of mine that I was re-reading, because I don't know when/if I'll re-read it again and want to have a copy of this.  It was initially posted on Good Friday, in which context it makes a bit more sense.

-----------------------------------------

Dayenu

If the Lord had merely rescued us, but had not punished the Egyptians, it would have been enough.
If He had only destroyed their gods, but had not parted the Red Sea, it would have been enough.
If He had only destroyed our enemies, but had not fed us His food in the desert, it would have been enough.
If He had only led us through the desert, but had not given us his holy day of rest, it would have been enough.
If He had only given us His Words and Commandments, but not a Promised Land forever, it would have been enough.



It would have been enough - these words are probably my favorite part of the Seder meal. Those words hold the memory of all God has done for us and the promise of all that He will do. God owes us nothing; had He done no more than create us, it would have been more than we could ask, and certainly enough. This recitation begins with the reason for the meal, the night when the Isrealites were rescued from Egypt. God did not need to do more than that, yet on their journey He continued to give to them so many other blessings. Today we remember how He suffered and died for our sins; let us also remember how often He has blessed each of us since.

It would have been enough. For each of the blessings we have received in our own lives, we should be able to be grateful, to be content with what we have. Any one of them would have been enough; even the first was more than God was required to give, and each blessing, whatever it may be, is such a huge and amazing gift. Each one would have been enough; how much more wonderful, then, that God has blessed us not just once but a multitude of times.

It would have been enough. As we recognize how many times God has gone beyond "enough," these words remind us that God will not abandon us. His blessings will not stop. Each time we proclaim that it would have been enough, we are reminded that His love for us did not end, and will not end now. We can look forward to each future blessing we will recieve and trust that He will not abandon us, for just as He did not stop after the first gift, so He will not stop now, though everything we have recieved so far would have been enough.

The Donkey

Mar. 28th, 2010 06:23 pm
mythalive: (Default)
When fishes flew and forests walked 
And figs grew upon thorn, 
Some moment when the moon was blood 
Then surely I was born; 

With monstrous head and sickening cry 
And ears like errant wings, 
The devil's walking parody 
On all four-footed things. 

The tattered outlaw of the earth, 
Of
ancient crooked will; 
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am
dumb, 
I keep my secret still. 

Fools! For I also had my hour; 
One far fierce hour and sweet: 
There was a shout about my ears, 
And palms before my feet. 
 

- G. K. Chesterton
 

 
mythalive: (Default)
We get to do all the readings at the Easter Vigil this year!!

Fun!

Jan. 16th, 2010 12:43 am
mythalive: (Default)


This was pretty much my evening:


[MOO] * Siana got to be a dragon lady with anger issues tonight.
[MOO] Siana> Someone was teleporting us to a banquet in our honor, and one in a
  million chance we wound up switching bodies with another group in the same
  building, of.. somewhat different alignment.
[MOO] Siana> So we didn't know who we all were, and the leader of the bandit
  group hadn't switched, and there was a geis on.. the new bodies.. to finish
  their task, or we/they would be cursed somehow.  And meanwhile our bodies
  were three stories up running around somewhere without us knowing.
[MOO] Siana> It was all very exciting.  And my new body was a draconic
  bloodline sorceress, so when they tried to force me to wade through a sewer,
  I attacked one of our party with my new claws.
[MOO] Siana> However, I'm disappointed I never got to use my breath weapon.  I
  had to give up the dragon body when I finally found myself.  :P
[MOO] Siana> I was going to use it at the end, just because I
  /could/.. but it was a good mage we were fighting, so I didn't /really/ want
  to hurt him.


I almost got to do this awesome move at the end where I would take a flying leap at my body, pour healing potion in the general area of her mouth and hope some of it went down her throat, and switch bodies (something that caused unconsciousness) in time for the healing potion to take effect and wake me back up again, but the DM would only let me do it with a natural 20, and I rolled 15.

Still, a very good and exciting night!

mythalive: (Default)

...just to say merry Christmas!

Also, it snowed :-) !!!!!

(And yes, I have been up ALL night wrapping presents and making chocolates and cookies.. after I got home around 2am after singing at Mass).

mythalive: (Default)
100,088!  At the beginning of the day today, I was almost 20,000 short, after a very lazy weekend where I told myself I didn't really care about my new goal.  Then I saw that someone (two people, actually) had sponsored my challenge for a total of $15 dollars (going to the Office of Letters and Light, not to me!), and I did not find a job for today, so... I went for it.  I did the final 10,000 in about 3.5 hours.  Which is absolutely insane.  But I DID IT!

(Actually, word count doesn't work out to that much per minute.  But my brain, my arms, and my fingers are tired.)

Story is STILL far from finished, but during the day I finally wrote a semi-detailed outline rather than just a collection in my head of "well I know they need to do this, this, and this" although somehow all the main "this"'s have yet to be accomplished.  Instead they've had a number of unplanned adventures.  This is going to need SO much editing.  And needs to be finished.

BUT I DID IT!
mythalive: (Default)

To Do Today:
  • Sleep in!  (done)
  • Visit roommate at coffee shop for yummy free coffee   (done)
  • Snuggle kitty  (done)
  • post stuff to sell on craigslist (done)
  • clean bedroom, find advent candles
  • Write 5,000 words
  • begin Christmas candies by making/freezing truffle filling
  • Order FREE collage print from Walgreens.com to cut apart and send to family
  • Eat Thanksgiving leftovers
  • Build fire and watch movie?
I love long relaxing weekends!
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