i don't know why there's a hole in the sky

celebros @ 2009-11-10T10:51:00

2009-11-10T16:51:57Z

Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

-- "Letters to a Young Poet", Rilke

celebros @ 2009-11-08T13:23:00

2009-11-08T19:36:24Z

This weekend is unendingly, one-of-the-best-ever-ish-ly spectacular. I have essentially no responsibilities (some workshopping which is like, pfft, my future profession, and a group meeting for Comp class in half an hour), LOTS of social time with Megan and Jake and John and Eric and Aleks and Matthew and OHMYGODLOOK, I HAVE FRIENDS, lots of poetry-time (my poetry collection has been compiled and I'm submitting it to an assload of contests this week!), and fun of a sleepingoverwithmygentleman variety. The weather is amazingly beautiful. I'm better than I have been in ages, health-wise. The only thing that could have gone better has been my eating habits (really Teresa there is more to life than potatoes). But the fact that the only negative thing about my weekend is AN OVERABUNDANCE OF POTATOES should say a lot.

I think I'm going to buy House of Leaves tonight and start reading. Everyone else is doing it. And I appear to be making a habit of jumping on some pretty badass bandwagons... ;)

LOOOOOOOOOVE

A wealth of positivity, despite the constant rainfall in Chicagoland.

2009-10-25T04:25:22Z

Life right now is pretty great. Midterms are over, weekends more productive, my friendships with my English department people going strong. And then there's also this whole thing about the gentleman in the elevator. I start my martial arts class with the kickass (possibly literally) professor (about whom I ranted a year ago as he was making educational reforms of the 1840s the most fascinating topic ever) on Tuesday. I go clothes shopping with one of the newer amigas tomorrow.

I'm finding more and more foods edible again the past few days, after a month-long drought of not wanting to eat anything ever and fainting all over the place (that is, more than I usually do). Today at Jewel I found potato skins with cheese and bacon; fatty and starchy and delicious. These are a new culinary discovery for me; I ate BBQ chicken potato skins in St. Louis and soon I'm going to make some of my own with turkey bacon and diced tomatoes, which is the closest I'm going to get to a BLT, at least in the next ten years.

I'm increasingly excited:
about J-Term, although I'm torn between three courses,
about the gigantic strides I'm making in therapy towards understanding my bizarre unconscious mental processes,
about poetry and cuddling and jackets, for the sake of goodness what a walking cliche I am and how pleasant it is,
about talking to Matt and Megan about their wedding this spring,
about the fact that despite my usual poor health karma I have thus far not gotten H1N1 KNOCK ON WOOD I'm not superstitious but I do sort of hate to jinx myself.

I'm coming up on the three-year anniversary of penning the first words of Prentice Boys. I'm expecting I'll finish the final book over winter break. It's so strange thinking of saying goodbye to these characters. Of course, I'll probably spend most of 2010 doing edits and rewrites, some of which will include inserting entirely new sequences - there's a two- to three-chapter bit at the end of Prentice that I'm really looking forward to writing - but it's still weird to be dealing with the conclusion.

I haven't been writing to Izzy lately. In a way I think I'm afraid to capture this corner of happiness I've secured. I don't feel like pinning it down and naming it. I don't want to immortalize it as a standard I won't be able to fulfill again. That sounds a little sad when I say it, but it's immensely positive in my head: I'm living now and I'm living FOR now, and if it's helping me become the person she needs, Izzy doesn't have room to complain.

celebros @ 2009-10-16T04:53:00

2009-10-16T09:54:43Z

I feel absolutely incredible.

This weekend I:

2009-10-13T18:03:30Z

-- Opted not to go up in the Arch
--->> partially cuz I'm a cheapskate
--->> partially cuz I didn't want to celebrate the means used during the Westward Expansion

-- Fell in love with Mirah's lovely haunting song "Bones and Skin"

-- Fell in love with BBQ chicken potato skins
--->> which I wasn't allergic to YAYA

-- Fell back in love with light rails
--->> was studiously NOT a fare-dodger, OH NO

-- WROTE 42 PAGES
--->> okay 6p fanfiction, but
--->> 36 PAGES OF KEEPER, MOTHERF*CKERS, THAT'S PAGE 348 FOR YOU
--->> have remaining 2 chapters of Final Battle, and then the epilogue

-- Really liked (my mom's cousin) Margaret and (her husband) Dan and (their daughter) Hannah
--->> Continue to really like them
--->> Like their neighborhood, esp. the coffeeshop

National Coming Out Day

2009-10-10T05:58:11Z

Let's Clarify, #2:

Tomorrow (Sunday) will be National Coming Out Day. I will be writing my novel and not using the internet, so I guess I just get to come out a little early.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am going to be very open and honest in this post. I want to educate people about all of the queer-spectrum labels with which I identify, which is going to include frank conversation about sexuality and relationships.

I have gone through an immensely complex "journey of discovery" blah blah blah, taking on a lot of identities along the way.

For those of you who don't know the story: I came out as bi when I was 14, discovered after a few relationships with men that I wasn't sexually attracted to them. I made the assumption that this meant I was a dyke, so I identified as a dyke / woman-loving-woman / FUCK I hate the word lesbian, idk why. However, I kept finding myself romantically (but not sexually) attracted to men, so I flipped between that and a pansexual identity for a while. But then I realized I wasn't sexually attracted to women either. And THEN I realized that the most fulfilling relationship I'd ever had been a four-month courting, during which we went on a lot of fun dates, held hands, did a bit of cuddling (I wouldn't have minded some more of that), and kissed twice. And during that relationship, I had never really wanted to have sex with her.

I identify as asexual and panromantic, and possibly also as polyamorous.

What this means:

I do not experience sexual attraction towards other people. I would never initiate sex with anyone (except fictional characters). I don't have the urge to have sex with anyone. This is asexuality.

I do experience romantic attraction towards people. I have experienced romantic attraction towards men, women, and people who identify somewhere on a genderqueer spectrum. I have been in relationships (some asexual, some less so from before I recognized my feelings/identity) with both cismales and cisfemales, and with people of both male and female gender identities. This is panromanticism.

While I have never been in an open or polyamorous relationship, I do not feel that I would be uncomfortable with having a non-exclusive relationship with a romantic partner. As I said in my (Facebook) post yesterday, I would love to live in a commune of my friends and raise babies together.

What this does NOT mean:

Asexuality doesn't mean that I don't have a sex drive. I do, it just isn't aimed towards people. I read and write some serious smut, and I enjoy it. I very occasionally have sexual fantasies. But if I were in a circumstance to act on one of these fantasies, I wouldn't actually want to go through with it.

Asexuality does not mean that I am "broken" or in some way traumatized. I have never experienced sexual abuse. I like being asexual. I don't believe that my asexuality is caused by a medical problem, and I don't want to find help. I don't think I'm "missing out", either. Sexualism is just not something I'm interested in. I personally find it boring. (And that's not a complaint about past partners, nor is it a challenge.)

This is the one that gets me most, I think: asexuality does not mean that I think sex is disgusting, that I hate people who have sex, or that I'm in any way uncomfortable talking or thinking about it. I am, in fact, more publicly open about sex than a lot of the sexual people I know. (Thus the writing smut.)

Asexuality does not mean (for me) that I can't date sexual people.

Asexuality does NOT mean that I don't like physical contact, as constantly referenced in yesterday's (Facebook) note.

Panromanticism does not mean that I require or desire multiple partners. (That's polyamory, folks.) It does not mean that I am attracted to everyone, either, although I do experience attraction to a wide range of people.

Polyamory does not mean that I expect my partner to be okay with me carrying on multiple relationships or that I expect my partner to do so - just that, with all parties fully aware of and consenting to the circumstance, the right people, and the right reasons, I don't think I would be uncomfortable with such a circumstance.

Furthermore - and this is important - I believe in the fluidity of sexuality. While I like being asexual now in my life, it isn't completely inconceivable to me that one day I may not be. I think the panromanticism is here to stay, to be honest, but the ace and the poly I might feel very differently about down the road.

Let's Clarify

2009-10-09T23:30:16Z

Topic: Matthew Shepard Act / Hate Crime Laws

The House has passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which (when Obama signs it) will add sexual orientation, gender / gender identity, and disability to federal hate crime laws. Now let's clarify something.

Q: If the victim is a middle aged white male, is it a hate crime? Or are we once again getting shafted?

A: The issue with hate crimes is that people are being attacked just because they fit into a category of people, meaning the perpetrators are a danger to any and all persons of that orientation or identity. If a hetero Christian white male is attacked *just for being* hetero, Christian, white or male, it's as much a hate crime as someone being attacked for being black or female or Muslim or gay. The law recognizes that.

"Under current federal law, hate crimes that fall under federal jurisdiction are defined as those motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion or national origin. The new measure would broaden the definition to include those committed because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability." - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/us/politics/09hate.html

It doesn't specify that these identifiers have to be minority groups. Motivated by ANY race, color, sexual orientation, gender. So yes, middle-aged white males are as protected by this law as anyone else.

Also note that not all attacks on GLBT people are hate crimes. Some are interpersonally motivated.

The law isn't saying crimes against minorities are worse than other crimes - it's saying criminals who commit crimes due primarily or solely to prejudice are more dangerous to society in the long term than those who had external motives.

WRITINGGGG

2009-10-07T04:58:31Z

This past weekend I followed through on a behavioral psychology experiment suggested by my counselor. I withheld Internet from myself, earning it back only a little at a time by doing homework and writing newspaper articles and such things. I believe it to have been a success - I didn't get everything finished I'd wanted to, but I was quite behind with my work due to having been sickish, and now I'm pretty much caught up.

This is particularly exciting because I'm going to St. Louis this weekend as a "writing retreat". My goal: to finish Keeper. Likely? No. Possible? Entirely. (I miss writing Heirs of the King. I used to be able to pound out 30+ pages (single-spaced, font size 11.5) every free weekend. Not to mention my NaNo rate, I suppose. I wonder what changed?)

I've realized that my Star Trek fandom addiction is just not going to go: I've been trying to fight it, or at least pretend to fight it, tooth and nail since the school year restarted. I've been not allowing myself to finish the fics I've started (sorry the_arc!), but that's been making me unhappy, because I WANT TO. So I've decided I'm succumbing to it for a while, which is easier said than done considering the amount of free time I have. (None. Or okay, very little.) So when I have time, I'll succumb to fandom and hopefully get it out of my system a little. But that's still too negative a way of looking at it, I think: no matter how ridiculous I may feel, right now in my life, fandom is something that makes me happy. Immensely, giddily, off-the-wall endorphin rushes of glee. I don't know why, and I don't want it to do that: in a the-me-I-want-to-be way, I'd much rather be cooking, doing yoga, sleeping, getting to work on time on Wednesdays, playing WiiBowling.

But I do need to end the obsessive site-checking, which has been a problem ever since I got evening internet access (e.g. Perpich). I almost feel like I should set myself up a system for internet-checking. An internet-checking schedule. And use the rest of my time to WRITE.

:)

I never know what to -say- anymore.

2009-09-28T17:33:48Z

This weekend was very good and VERY Chicago-y and social.

Friday Laura and Aislin and I went to Yorktown Target which was YAY.

Saturday I went into Chi early and went to the Museum of Science and Industry and bought myself a membership at last. I got a ticket to the Harry Potter exhibit, only this was at about 11a and the earliest one they had was at 9:15pm. I saw the Mysteries of the Great Lakes Omnimax show (and fell asleep during it for a couple minutes... it was about STURGEON, okay?), went and did some "short story research" by hanging out with the baby chicks, visited the Fast Forward exhibit (for the fourth time), and then took the Metra back to Millennium Station.

I hung out at Starbucks and wrote for a while, then moved up to Noodles and Co, and then texted Ali Scott (one of the '08 dormer lit kids from Perpich!) and she was FOUR BLOCKS AWAY, whereupon I visited her and we talked about the necessity of hugs and the unnecessariness of drugs and such and so. THEN she took me into the ceramics studio and showed me how to throw on a pottery wheel.

THEN I went back to MSI to the HP exhibit, which was... pretty freaking awesome, although not entirely honest in its portrayal of itself. (All the signs by the pieces were like "this was the ______ worn/used by ______ played by ________ in movie #__!!" Including a Hagrid-sized suit that they claimed was worn by Robbie Coltrane in movie #4, at which point I was just like. Um. No. Robbie Coltrane didn't wear that suit. He is not nine feet tall. Liars. And other such instances of lies.)

Got back home about 130am. By 915 Sunday morning I was back on the train and into Chicago. Spent a while trying to remember where the hell Barnes&Noble was, and then hung out and read/wrote in the children's section for an hour before going back to the tables and meeting up with Jonah again. We played the dot game where you try to make boxes but not let your opponent make boxes (you know what I mean) and then went to Harold Washington, read each other a few children's books, and went to a reading by actors from a local lit-theatre company, who read excerpts from each of the 10 most challenged books of 2008.

These are amazing books - Perks of Being a Wallflower, Kite Runner, And Tango Makes Three, His Dark Materials, amongst others in which I have zero interest but object to the censorship thereof - Gossip Girls, TTYL. When the performance was over, I was just so overwhelmingly happy that there were such good, honest works in the world. And then it struck me, suddenly and violently, that these books about which I was so happy were books that were being banned in schools and libraries across America. That the truths held in these stories were being deemed inappropriate. That there are people who burn these books for their messages. That feel passionately about making sure these stories never reach the hands of young people. And suddenly the joy had evaporated. I was left, just for a moment, with the sense of being airless, almost strangled. With the realization that if my stories ever did get widely published, it is entirely conceivable - almost certain - that they will be received thus by a percentage of the readers. That there are people for whom my queerness and my queer characters are inherently, automatically, and violently objectionable. I can't begin to tell you how wrong I feel this is.

Then Jonah went home (get well soon! hope you're having a good Yom Kippur!) and I spent some time in the teen section of the Harold Washington (Library) until my train. Got home, we have INTERNET NOW YAY, was up til 3.

And back to the grindstone.

weekends

2009-09-21T02:03:00Z

highlight: friday night on the college mall they had inflatable bouncy things, and they showed star trek on a big screen. oyestheydid.

highlight: yesterday afternoon, aislin and caleb and laura and john (her bf) and i painted our living room / dining room a beautiful cornflowery-oceanic blue (with a waist-high horizontal stripe of cream in the dining room). 95% of the time I did not feel fifth-wheely - and I feel nth-wheely the majority of my life, so that's a good thing, not a "HOMG SAD 5%" thing.

highlight: miriam, megan, kathryn, marilyn and I (OMG LOOK THE LACK OF OXFORD COMMA, NEWSPAPER HAS SPOILED ME, IT NO LONGER FEELS RIGHT TO USE OXFORD COMMAS. DOOM) went to a hookah bar last night at midnight and spent a lovely two hours smoking orange-lemon hookah and drinking smoothies/hot chocolate and talking about all sorts of things i can't even remember right now. hookah is the only substance known to give me a quick buzz, so.

highlight: my life today = the leader office. "the leader is like my own personal brand of heroin." yusssss.

highlight: texting convo with juan about the hotnesses of the heroes characters and how they can get unclothed and make out with each other all they want. also make us accordingly gay and/or straight and/or sexual. oh quinto. *hearts icon*

tl;dr : star trek outdoors, apartment-painting and non-wallflowering, hookah smoke, newspaper, zqmfs.

Weekend + discovery

2009-09-13T08:11:16Z

I went on the Honors Program new member retreat this weekend. Horseback riding !!!!, low ropes, crackerless s'mores, singing oldies (and Potter Puppet Pals) at the top of my lungs with Sarah and Theresa and one other chick. Having discussions about ethics of cultural sensitivity and health care in volatile case studies. Yes.

The discovery part:
We've already established this in part, but apparently it's not just authority figures from whom I can't handle condescension. Holy SHIT did I get inwardly pissy today. You do not know more about my own situations and decisions than I do. You do not get to jump to conclusions about what I'm saying, or to assume you know my reasoning. You do not get to tell me I'm being unreasonable when my choices have no bearing on you or ANYONE but myself. Just STOP IT. (This isn't a person on LJ, btw, so don't go trying to analyze whether this is about you. It's not, I promise.)

I wrote a bit of Rico's MegaSpeech2009 - enough that I might be able to do it in full. Which is worrisome now, considering the amount of non-novelly writing I have to do in any case. I also took some notes on how to make Celia more badass, which is necessary since she's pretty definitively established in the past year and a half that she's no fucking refrigerator woman. Good lord I have SO much editing to do when I finish book three. *facepalm*

My greatest frustration this week has been food. I need to find something that needs no refrigeration that I can bring to campus with me for meals, because this week the choices were in general, (a) pay $7-8 a meal for lunch or dinner, or (b) don't eat. Neither of which is even remotely satisfying. Food allergies + being poor + having busy days when I can't come home between classes = made of lose and failsauce. Eurgh, I'm not sure I can handle any more freaking corn tortillas.

Now to clamber over the sleeping masses of living room that compose Caleb and Aislin, and to bed.

SIDE NOTE: This icon is appropriate for EVERYTHING.

The Week.

2009-09-04T18:02:05Z

1. I am so excited to have friends; friends who invite me to things, friends who want to spend time with me, friends who save me a seat. Mostly this is my Cadenza / newspaper / English major/classes friends, but then also Juan and Laura. Friends in 3 of my 4 classes, too!

2. Dr. Ron (News Writing) intimidates me more than I would have thought. I love Dr. Lively (Fiction Writing) even more than I had remembered. Rev. Clancy (Intro to Biblical Studies) is the same person as Ms. Clancy, e.g. I work with her kids at Rec station, and Dr. Kazan is cool, although that class (Comp III, about rhetoric) may be the death of me. Martial Arts doesn't start til late October, but that's Dr. Harman, who was my favorite Ed professor last year - my only dread (besides kicking myself in the face) is telling him I'm no longer an ed major.

3. Besides homework, I am going to be consumed by: SSA, SAGE, COP, Niebuhr Center, Honors Department (retreat next weekend!), Writing Center (work), Rec Station (work), Courts Plus (work), The Leader (meetings, writing, copyediting my life away every other weekend), and Unofficial Lit-Geek Club (Harry Potter + Scrabble + writing sessions; this might turn into my clever scheme to drag my friends to my apartment once a week). I hope I'll get into a play the second half of the semester, too.

4. I really, really want an internship at a publishing house in Chicago. It won't happen this semester, but it will happen in the future.

5. I think I'm going on a weekend writing retreat to Cleveland next month?? Found $2 roundtrip Megabus tickets, so it'd just be the price of a B&B or something. Anyone wanna come...?

6. First counseling session today went really well, I think. I've already got some ideas about countering bits and pieces of my phone anxiety. I think what makes me nervous about the phone / knocking on someone's door is the unpredictability. So for people I have trouble calling, like Shannon or Grandma Betty, I just need to email / write them and let them know, "I'm going to call you at 7:00 on Friday," or whatever. That doesn't help for business calls and spontaneous calls, but whatevs.

Writer's Block: What Makes You Feel Sexy?

2009-08-26T18:14:07Z

What makes you feel sexy?

Sponsored by Body by Victoria® from Victoria's Secret.

View 524 Answers

The last week I've felt a lot sexier* when I see my reflection - less so when I'm checking my outfit than when I just happen to glance as I'm washing my hands. I think part of it is the short hair. For those of you with whom I am not in close physical proximity, I recently buzzed off my shoulder-length hair in favor of a half-inch of beautiful fuzz. I didn't do this for charity. I didn't do this to proclaim that I'm a dyke (we can get into the label-stuff later), although one of the fringe benefits of short hair is that the universe doesn't automatically assume I'm straight, 'heteronormative', whatever. It's all of a sudden a touchy subject, because put under pressure to explain my non-standard appearance, I let a large number of people believe that I chopped it off for Locks of Love. Admittedly I did put off the haircut with the intention of donating, but it wasn't long enough to donate and that wasn't my reason for doing it.

I cut my hair because I love the way it looks and the way it feels. Not having to do much to take care of it is also a fringe benefit. I never know quite how to explain this to people. I like me with short hair. When I look in the mirror and see my short-haired self, I feel more like myself than with any other 'do, and this is incredibly sexy* to me. A lot of people prefer long-haired Teresa, and sure, I like the way I look with long hair, but in a very abstract way. I like running my hands through and over my hair - I have a really sensitive scalp, so it's an almost-erotic* fixation.

So #1 on Teresa's sexy* list is Short Short Hair.

2. Comfortable jeans.
3. Self-confidence at night when it's warm outside.
4. Anything that makes me feel simultaneously creative and intelligent, and then with some element of power worked in there. Either feeling powerful, or feeling like a conduit for foreign energy. This combination usually (but not always ;D) comes into play when I'm doing seriousface writing/worldbuilding.

* When I'm using sex-implied words for myself - e.g. "sexy", "erotic", whatever - I mean them without the sexual context they sometimes (always?? not for me, so hard to tell) imply. For me, "sexy" and "erotic" are electric, full, lush, body-comfort, body-confidence, bright colors, close contact, immediate romance words - but have nothing to do with sexual organs, acts, or orgasms. I don't actually have any idea whether those of you who are sexual immediately associate "sexy" and "erotic" with sex.

celebros @ 2009-08-13T17:34:00

2009-08-13T22:38:44Z

BENTIME

Writer's Block: Birthday Shout-out

2009-07-31T16:28:13Z

Happy birthday, J.K. Rowling! Which of her seven Harry Potter novels do you think is the most satisfying read?

View 508 Answers

Prisoner of Azkaban, of course.

...

Need I say more?

Campus Pride

2009-07-28T02:00:30Z

uhhhhhh.
Is it possible that I had a life before last week?

I'm no longer in Towson, Maryland with my fifty-plus new lovers. This is definitely a problem.

Writer's Block: 5//7//5

2009-07-18T22:49:54Z

Sum up your day in the form of a haiku.

Submitted By cpnspuff

View 505 Answers

I've been a taxi.
It's unfortunate really:
I could be writing.

Theatre lockout
Didn't want my money late
I got indignant

Summer should not be
This catastrophic waiting
For school to begin

What a waste of gas
Day in day out James T Kirk
Consumes my dumb life

I hike at the lake
Sing loudly, mess up the words
Check Facebook again

Nudge my black kitten
Lie awake when I shouldn't
Scoop out some ice cream

I don't break the rhythm.

I LIKED HPHBP.

2009-07-15T18:49:15Z

This is stream-of-consciousness, just so you know.

I loved the opening sequence - like, the ten-second Harry+Dumbledore moment with the flashing cameras and Dumbledore cuddling poor Harry. Fucking gorgeous.

No, I liked the Burrow sequence. Really. I love Remus and Tonks and I recognize the reasoning behind not having the Battle of Hogwarts and therefore another climax was necessary and I ship UST Remus/Tonks/Harry/Ginny now :DDDDD. Luke hit the book he was holding against his forehead when Tonks called Remus "sweetheart", but my fangirl heart exploded from love.

I liked Ginny still being take-charge and kickass, but I wasn't wild about all of her moments. The writing in the Room of Requirement scene was not great. I liked Draco and Snape better than I expected to; neither of them has ever fit my images of the characters at all, but I thought they did them justice.

"and his wand / snapped in two / which was sad" HEART BURSTS FROM LOVE AGAIN I was SO not expecting the Odo song to be there. Slughorn was all right.

No, you know what I loved?? Arthur Weasley being not bumbling. What a BAMF GOOD PERSON.

And, uh. Dumbledore. Dumbledore+Harry so much awesome. I appreciated Michael Gambon much more here, although the whole LOOK DUMBLEDORE'S FACE. HIS FACE HIS FACE HIS FACE LOOK HE IS DEAD LOOK HIS FACE. Got annoying. In that post-death scene. Which was sort of cheesy and unnecessary. But I was surprised by how they didn't TOTALLY destroy potion-influenced-Dumbledore. I also loved the moments that they left open for Harry to have flashbacks of next book. ("You never know what you'll find here.")

Draco and the apple. And the bird. Beautiful. Things like this - the little pieces of art - I really loved. I have the ability to appreciate the fact that this film is basically a fanfiction. And as fanfiction goes, it's REALLY GOOD. Not all in-character, leaves out important things, misses the point a couple times, but then also has these independent GORGEOUS things -

Okay, I felt like a lot of what was understated in the books was brought out wonderfully in this film. I liked that a lot. Like Harry+Hermione, especially that, and the parallels between Harry and Snape (which, okay, were pretty explicit in the book, retrospectively, but I liked the way they did it, k?).

I really liked the moment with Snape hushing Harry in the Lightning-Struck Tower belowroom, too. I appreciate the way in which that adds to Harry's dramatic tension afterwards. Although Snape going "MWAHAHA I ARE HBP" I was not wild about. But the Unbreakable Vow leaving little burn-scars was nice too, although sort of a little obvious.

I'm gonna look at my notes a second. Yes, I took notes. No, okay, they're mostly about all the fanfiction I want to write. I love Luna, but I love Tonks more and I wish they hadn't taken out all the little LOOK HARRY IS BEING FOLLOWED BY THE ORDER moments, which is one of my favorite vibes in the book - the Order/Harry dynamic. Or Order/Itself +Harry, maybe. I REALLY missed Remus and Tonks getting to mourn Dumbledore and their hospital wing moment, although I recognize that (especially seeing how not-wild I am about David Thewlis) it wouldn't have translated to film. I'd rather it not be there than be there and be spoiled.

Oh, and I hated Lavendar. She was just too much made of comedic relief, with absolutely no seriousness. She was a parody, and I would have been okay with that if they hadn't shown her so obviously being a parody all through the film. Once or twice plus the relationship itself would've been enough.

Mmmmmkay, I recommend this film as long as you go into it not expecting it to follow the book rigidly. There are some pretty big departures. I really liked these departures. Actually, they might have been my favorite scenes. But you know. It's a free agent.

Aw, fuck.

2009-07-11T20:02:32Z

I was SO excited about the whole having-enough-money-to-not-need-loans-this-year thing, and then I go online and OH LOOK, I guess it makes sense that I got extra financial aid, because Elmhurst's tuition just went up by $1270/year. I'd completely forgotten that there was a possibility of that happening. And I was going to be just barely scraping by before, so *sigh* I'm taking out the loan for first semester. Hopefully that means I can squirrel the refund money away and use it to go to Italy and Greece in the spring. And also hopefully I'll make enough this fall to not have to take out loans in the spring??

*uses the devastation icon*

Dear Readers,

2009-07-07T16:16:02Z

I'm writing half of my Dear Readers snail-mail, but the nearest excitement on my To-Live list is Campus Pride, a queer leadership camp I'm attending at Towson University in Maryland from July 21-26. The most ongoing excitement is my novel, ofcourseofcourse. The most ongoing torture is Star Trek, to which I appear to be addicted. WTF?

Writer's Block: Everybody's Working for the Weekend

2009-07-02T19:01:22Z

Describe your ideal weekend.

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Barring a free whirlwind tour of Europe or a road trip - that is, assuming that my ideal weekend doesn't automatically give me a get-everything-free pass - I would have to say I've very nearly just lived it. This weekend I house/dogsat for Shannon. Daddy and Luke came up, and we went grocery shopping and (mostly Luke and I) cooked a wonderful (GF!) stir-fry chicken meal, and played a few rounds of Hearts (with real cards). I took Mike (the dog) out for several lovely walks - the weather was great - and played some Wii Sports, mostly bowling. I sat on the porch and worked on my novel, and got like 10 pages done, which is not bad considering my recent track record. I got to see my wonderful Magnet Girl, who spent the last year in England and who I had missed very dearly and who brought English tea and bagels.

And then I was clued in to the existence of a GF bakery like a mile away, with BREAD THAT TASTES LIKE BREAD. (I am currently in possession of a very fudgy GF brownie and a wonderful-smelling looks-like-good-textured loaf of GF rosemary foccacia and most of a loaf of GF cinna-raisin bread, for use in French Toast WHICH I HAVE MISSED SO VERRAH MUCH.

Cooking, writing, outdoors, a combination of friends and family and animals and solitary time, not getting sick. (And what's really ridiculous is I got PAID for this wonderful vacation, which was, by the way, SO not the factor that made it the best ever.)

'Nuff said. *uses empowering icon*

Character rant.

2009-06-25T16:30:39Z

Last night, I re-read the Celebros/Earil piece that I wrote this spring. For those of you who don't know, between the ages of 11 and 16 I wrote a couple thousand pages of 'Lord of the Rings fanfiction' with pretty much all original characters, original original languages, and mostly original places.

Well, I'd forgotten something in the four years following, even while I was writing the piece, I think. Um. I love them. I love them a lot. Like, this is a piece that I wrote, and reading it made me cry (so yay me for writing skillz? idk).

Sometimes I feel like I'm never going to get there with the Prentice Boys characters. I'm obsessed with them, I love them, I dream about them sometimes, I think about them for long periods of time every day - but I don't have the same emotional attachment to them that I have to Celebros and Earil, and that leaves them just not quite as whole as they should be.

...still, I'm a fucking good writer. Probably only 2 or 3 of you have read enough Heirs of the King that you could ever have appreciation for the magic I worked in that piece, but holy shit.

Mmmmm-hm.

2009-06-09T20:04:26Z

So, as those of you who are deserving of my love know, Stephen Colbert is in Iraq this week. He was instructed by the military not to announce when or where he was going, for his own safety, so for about a month he's been running a special called, "Where in the World and When In Time is Stephen Colbert Gonna Be In the Persian Gulf?" with trivia about the hypothetical things he might see on his trip.

It's not like me to dream / nightmare semi-realistic world events, but last night I dreamt vividly of learning that our beloved Stephen had been shot and killed that morning in Iraq. I dreamt of crying, trying to get in touch with Aislin (we watch the show together), calling people to find out if it was true, and there was a lot of confusion over whether he had in fact been killed. Then there was a clip of Stephen-the-person (as opposed to the over-the-top character he plays), apparently something he'd recorded before leaving for Iraq in case he was killed, encouraging us to be vigilant citizens and saying goodbye to his Nation and lots of inspirational tearjerking shit. There were visions interspersed, I think that I was watching on the news maybe, of Obama lamenting the loss of Stephen, and also of the assassination actually happening - Stephen waving and grinning in a courtyard and all of a sudden flat on his back surrounded by bodyguards in suits, not dead, dropping the character, trying to talk, and shit it was a realistic dream. I woke up really slowly and was just completely devastated, and it took me a while to make sure that I hadn't, like, heard a real news clip from the radio in the other room in my sleep and incorporated it into my dream.

Nope. Stephen Colbert is alive, and I appreciate him more than ever. Thank Goodness.

In other news, on Monday I start my part-time job at WACOSA, a job training program for people with developmental disabilities, and I'm hoping to get either a crappy other part-time job on top of that (e.g. Subway, Cashwise, Cub Foods), or an unpaid copyediting internship with one of the local newspapers, or some regular volunteer position somewhere. I want to be doing something useful, but this job pays decently enough that just having the one wouldn't kill me. Unfortunately the delay means I'll probably be staying in St Joe a couple weeks longer than I'd planned at first, because I would be a total shit to only work for the company for like five weeks. We'll see how that goes.

I'm enjoying myself so far - I visited Matt and Megan and gang this weekend, and am continually spending time with Emmett, who just graduated, and my younger cousins Erin, Maeve, and Brendan, and my grandmother and aunts and uncles of course. I've gotten to go hiking, sit out on Lake Sagatagan, and I might get a chance to get a horseback lesson or two this summer with my mom's cousin (also named Teresa).

I just booked my tickets to Campus Pride in Maryland, which is July 21-26 (a Tuesday-Sunday). I decided to fly, since I have a job now, and if I took the bus I'd lose more than $100 in wages missing two Mondays worth of work, so it's worth it to pay the extra.

Speaking of Campus Pride,

View Poll: Campus Pride

My final goal, of course, is writing. I got an important section done, but now I'm stuck again. I've realized that the scene I had planned as the next point of action consists of a character performing a totally crucial action, but I have no idea WHY he would take this quite drastic and out-of-the-blue action. I think I had a reason once, but I'm not sure it's pertinent any longer. I've redesigned this character once already, and one of the things I did to figure him out was write a list of things that motivate him to behave the way he does - he was a very bitter character. The problem is, now that I know why he's bitter, I can't just make him run around doing inexplicable rash things anymore.

On the plus-side of writing, I think Emmett and I are teaming up for an open mic night tonight. Hoorah!

Eghhhhh.

2009-06-06T07:49:46Z

Oh, three in the morning. How soon you come, and how very unbeautiful you are.

I. Want. Tobewriting. (Keeper!) Rightnow. (Or, preferably, hours ago so that I could be sleeping now.) Instead I've been hopping from news to blogs to Facebook to my comics and daily-update sites (waiting for the Saturday updates, since it IS Saturday) to something like thirty different Trek fics. Cuz that's how I roll yo. And usually the Trek fics help me sleep (not that they're boring, just the act of reading, you know) but noooo, not today. Probably the whole sleeping on a couch thing, and maybe still feeling the all-day anxiety rush that comes from job interviews. Oh, and waking up to find emergency monitors going off and my grandmother fallen on the bathroom floor unable to get up by herself and bleeding some and having hit her head and all that. (She's fine, but it was scary at the time.) (And the interview went well, I think.)

It's difficult.

2009-06-02T01:33:20Z

I won't pretend it's not.

...Apparently too difficult to even talk about. The bottom line is I feel vulnerable in all sorts of ways, and I want to change it, and I can't. Sometimes because I'm not in charge, and sometimes because there's too much at stake. And sometimes because I can't be entirely sure that I want to.

Today I had anxiety attacks and perception changes, repeatedly, for no discernible reason, and in public places. No one could tell. I'm sure of that much, and grateful for it, since most of these public places were possibly future locations of employment.

I have applied for fifty to sixty positions now. A few have shot me down, but not many have responded at all. Of those 40+ remaining, I have genuine interest in three. It's so very depressing. Like, does someone with a gluten allergy REALLY want to be working in any of a dozen restaurants who pride themselves on bread? (e.g. Panera, Subway, FUCKING BAKERIES?)

I'm not unhappy here. I'm not sorry this was the decision I made. (I had a spectacular weekend! And the weekends to follow will also be great!) I know I'll get a job offer (or eight) eventually. I'm just really worried about the timelines on these. I would HATE to accept a job at Kay's Kitchen and then get offered one at Barnes&Noble two days later, you know? But I would also hate to hold out for Barnes&Noble (or SCSD, or Country Manor) and lose all possibility of making money this summer. How do full-time working adults DO this?