Here is where I write stuff

Guys!

Guys guys guys!

Guuuyyyyyssssssss!!!

Athlete has a youtube channel all their own!

And it turns out there is a video for El Salvador!

And it is wonderful!

WATCH IT NOW:


Pardon me while I go flail about fangirlishly in a corner.

OH! And speaking of flailing about fangirlishly, did you know that Steve Burns has a video for his cover of TMBG's Dead? Because he does! I did not even know he did a cover of the song, so when I found it I almost died from the amazingness. Or possibly from hyperventilating. Yanno, same difference.

The upside to PaperBackSwap.com is that I get lots of books.

The downside is that I want to read them ALL. Right NOW.

I now have FOURTEEN George MacDonald books, plus one lulu.com copy of his "Unspoken sermons". I rearranged my bookshelf so that they could all be together in one big happy book family, and it makes me happy to see them all lined up. Now if only someone would post a copy of The Princess and Curdie my heart would be truly happy.

In other news, Hawking is being unbearably whiny. As in, constant meowing for long stretches of time. It's like she is begging for attention but when I go to actually pet her or something, she runs away. Her favorite places to whine are in the bathroom or in my bedroom. This morning I was about ready to tape her mouth shut because she decided to start it up around 7:30am and it took two full hours before she decided that she wanted to sleep under the blankets with me. Then she curled up and zonked right out like it was nothing. She's like a toddler who is tired, but doesn't WANT to be tired, so she gets whiny and crabby instead. And it makes me want to stuff her in a box and ship her to Siberia. I don't know why she is doing this all of a sudden. She used to do it occasionally, but it's been nightly all this week. And then this morning. And then now. And she needs to cut it out.

In other other news, today's high was 40. Yesterday's high was 80. People are, of course, freaking out. I am enjoying this brief taste of winter, and tactfully NOT pointing out that it's not "FREEEEEEZING" because it is still above 32 degrees.

Okay, off to more reading. Mmmmmmmmm books.

So today was pretty cool.

It kind of wigs my brain out that it's not "President Bush" anymore. It's been "President Bush" for 1/3 of my life, and before that I didn't pay much attention. Now, suddenly, it's "President Obama" and whoaaaaa. It's kind of the same thing that wigs me about about the new year every year. You just get so used to it being 2008, and then suddenly BAM. 2009. It's jarring to my brain.

So there's that.

Also, it's pretty neat that 50-60 years ago a black person couldn't pick their own seat on a bus, and today we have a (half) black President. That says good things about our country, I think. Yeah, things used to be pretty bad, but look at this progress, and look at what could still be coming in the future! Perhaps someday we will truly get to a point where a person's race is just a meaningless statistic. Watching all this British TV has really got me wishing for what they have, at least on their TV. It's not "a black character", it's "a character who happens to be played by someone with dark brown skin", and that is awesome. We're getting there, slowly but surely. Or maybe I'm just hopelessly optimistic.

Also of interest: Obama mentioned SCIENCE. Like, that supporting science is a good thing. Oh, my heart was happy about that. Education! And research! I could go on and on about how awesome this is, but I will spare you all.

Oh, and a question. At the end of the benediction, when Rev. Lowery referenced that old racist rhyme*, did everyone catch that as a reference to the rhyme? I recognized it and it made me smile that he was taking that old racist thing and turning it into a good rhyme. The rhyme I remember was basically setting up like a heirarchy of races, and he took it and made it into a "hey, everyone's okay!" thing. But it seems that people are all up in arms about it because at the end he said "when white will embrace what is right" and they think he is implying that white people have not been embracing what is right... and I can see how, if you take it out of context, you could get that meaning, but in context you can see that this is not what he is saying at all. SO. My question to you is this: Did you get the reference? Did that last bit seem hateful against white people? I'm really curious about this, because I got it right off and usually I'm one to miss references to, well, anything.

As for me, I watched it at work. I tried to get the streaming video to work on a few different websites, but apparently they were all choked. Or perhaps our network was choked from everyone trying to watch it secretly at their desks. Either way, just before eleven I got fed up, clocked out, and went to our workout room to watch it on the TV in there. A couple other people had the same idea and showed up a few minutes later. I'm really glad I did watch it. I really liked his speech a LOT, thought the "poem" was, well, poem-ey, and liked everything else. The song played by the quartet was beautiful. It made me secretly wish I'd kept up with my clarinet.

What else do I want to remember? Well, I'm still wrapping my brain around the concept of the President changing. Barack Obama, the dude I supported, is totally the President now. My brain hasn't grasped that yet.

I also want to remember how hard the universe tried to make me have a bad day. I hit my head a total of FOUR times, twice within the same second when my car door knocked my head into the door frame, and then I got halfway to work before remembering that I forgot my chapstick. The internet wouldn't let me watch the Inauguration. My elbow hurts like I banged it against something and bruised it, even though there is no bruise. I tried to return my broken rice cooker to a different Ross store only to be stymied AGAIN*. Hawking is going completely insane tonight, with the nonstop meowing and climbing of the blinds. BUT. Despite all of this, I had an excellent day. TAKE THAT, UNIVERSE.

And on that note, I'm going to crawl into bed and read some George MacDonald <3

*I ended up giving up on a straight exchange and just got a stacking cookie cooling rack thingy instead, because I've wanted one of those, too.

I need an icon that says "I AM MADE OF AWESOME", for when I win.



I finished the hat! Some bragging points:
1) I made the chart myself based on this book cover. I kept trying to do fancy things with photoshop and such, but ended up doing it in Excel.
2) I knit this hat TWICE. For someone who hates knitting the same thing twice, this is awesome.
3) This was my first time doing intarsia. I think I pretty much aced it, too.
4) You're not supposed to be able to do intarsia in the round, but I found a funny little trick to make it work, because I was determined to make it a proper round hat, with a proper intarsia logo. None of this "knitting flat and seaming" business, and no duplicate stitching the whole thing!
5) The funny little trick made an ugly sort of seam in the back, so I took the idea and improved it, because I wanted this hat to be awesome. There is no ugly seam on the back of this hat.

Basically, I'm an awesome knitting genius. And I win. Forever. I'm going to give it to Scott Sigler on Friday when he's in Dallas on his book tour (Oh wow a podcast author doing a publisher-sponsored BOOK TOUR, that is really seriously awesome) and it will be Fun Times.

Also, meet CephaloPod:


CephaloPod is my new iPod that I picked up with my crazy overtime monies. I knew there was a reason I kept showing up to work every day. And, for the record, you CAN plug in two iPods at the same time. Here is proof. iTunes just sort of went "Oh, okay then" and showed both of them and was updating both at the same time like it was nothing. And I felt incredibly dorky for having two iPods plugged in at once.

So I love love love PaperbackSwap.com very much right now. I've already received one George MacDonald book, I have four more on the way, and I just requested another two. Seven new George MacDonald books for my collection, in just over a week. Wonderful! I'll have the ten required for my Mission 101 list in no time. Then it's just to read them. Oh darn, I have to read George MacDonald.

Also, I have half an inch of Rogue. Tonight is a productive night indeed. Tomorrow I'm stopping by Hobby Lobby for Size 8 DPNs and black acrylic for my Secret Project of Doom, then Best Buy for my Digital TV Converter Box Thingy Do-Bob, then [SUPER SECRET SURPRISE PURCHASE HERE], then groceries. Including cat food. I've told my cats to ration what's in their bowl, because that's all there is until I bring home more tomorrow. They just gave me looks that indicated they would be rolling their eyes at me if they knew how.

Finally, because I am lazy, click here and pretend I posted my Project 365 pictures here in this post, behind a lovely cut. Some of the pictures are better than others, but I try to give each one a short paragraph telling the story behind the picture. And yanno, that would be *work* to reproduce here, and we can't have any of that nonsense.

We have the day off! No, we have the WEEKEND off! This was completely unexpected. BossLady said she was trying to get us a weekend off yesterday, and we were hoping, but we didn't really know for sure until she didn't call us in this morning. Woo!

I have Big Plans for this weekend. Cooking, cleaning, knitting, reading, Animal Crossing, and lots of SLEEP. Oh, and lots of cuddling my cats. They aren't quite sure what to do with me home all day. I think they missed me. Hawking slept on/with me all night, which she usually doesn't do, and now Tesla refuses to leave my lap for anything.

Let's make a list!
- Open windows!
- Clean kitchen & run dishwasher
- Clean catbox
- Clean bedroom
- Clean closet
- Go through all the junk that's accumulated and trash it.
- Hopefully find coupon for the converter box so my TV will work after they switch to digital
- Take out trash
- Make nontraditional feijoada in my crockpot with venison
- Make rice in my new rice maker (that Brandy gave me last night) (*glee*)
- Consume delicious feijoada & rice
- Watch Indiana Jones movies lent to me by coworker
- Knit swatches!
- Begin knitting Rogue with awesome colored cables
- Read new George MacDonald book I got from paperbackswap.com
- Play Animal Crossing
- Upload last two days' pictures for Project 365

This list makes me happy. I will probably do most of it today, and spend tomorrow being wonderfully lazy. I am going to revel in this weekend off.

PS: I LOVE PAPERBACKSWAP.COM SO MUCH. I'm mailing off books that are just collecting dust on my shelf, and getting GEORGE MACDONALD in return! I got my first book last night, and I have another already winging it's way to me. My fangirly heart is very pleased by this.

PPS: Tesla is laying on my left arm, from elbow to wrist. I think she's trying to tell me something.

I got my Dr Horrible DVD in the mail today.

It is wonderful.

"Commentary! The Musical!" is so much love. Oh geez.

Ninja Ropes is also very much yes.

Pardon me while I go hug the DVD. Best $10 ever spent. Ever. In the history of money.

(And that's a long time)

((Seriously, all of you need to buy this, like, NOW.))

I HAVE DEFEATED NANOWRIMO.

AGAIN.



I AM A WINNER.

Further proof of my winningness:

	1337
30
lab.drwicked.com

See that? 1337 words? In exactly 30 minutes? I'm so full of awesome.

And man, I feel like a total viking. I DEFEATED IT. It was hard this year, guys. Some days it was like pulling teeth. The last couple thousand words I had to force out. Heck, I did the last 1800 in Write-or-Die, just to get it over with. Plotting it all out definitely has it's downsides. It made it easier to know where I was going, but it also made it a lot less fun, and I felt like I had a lot less room for just going nuts. BUT I DID IT.

I DEFEATED MY CHALLENGE.

BECAUSE I WIN.

EVERYTHING.

EVER.

There seriously is nothing more delicious than defeating a challenge. Especially when my nemesis did not defeat her challenge. It, like, doubles my victory. Mmmmmmmmm, victory.

Ooh! I have a leftover slice of cheesecake from Thanksgiving! I declare it to be my VICTORY CHEESECAKE.

edit: I ran it through spell check, and my word count went up by 68 words thanks to my Alphasmart's tired space bar. 50,200 words! Rock and roll.

I love a good deal. I'm not as bad as my mom (who once bought like 20-30 pounds of butter in Michigan and brought it home in a cooler, because it was on sale) and I don't obsess over getting the BEST DEAL EVAR, but when a really good deal comes my way, I'm a sucker.

Like today!

I got the first three seasons of House for $20 each, Memoirs of a Geisha on DVD for $4.99, and Waitress on DVD for $9.99. If I had paid full price, I would have spent... $220 dollars. Instead I got out of there for less than $90. Oh, and I bought a book to donate to Mission Arlington, because books for kids = YES.

So I finally own House! I'm very excited. I've wanted House forever, but $60 for a season is painful. Hooray for Borders and their insane pre-Black-Friday deals!

Oh, what's that you say? It was supposed to be for Christmas shopping? Pffft, that is pure madness. Christmas shopping doesn't happen until the week before Christmas, everyone knows that.

Started at 5,007 words
Finished at 11,022 words
Total written today: 6,015 words

( NUMBERS ARE FUN )

My novel is a lot of fun so far. This planning thing is going a lot better than I expected! I'm trucking along pretty well, and it's coming pretty easily. It's kind of even helping, to know where I'm going, though I am having trouble makes scenes long enough. It's averaging out nicely, though. I'm 22% through on word count, and 22% through the scenes I've got planned, so that works out really well.

Of course, it helps that I've pretty much done nothing but write this weekend- I'm not happy to have to go back to work and school tomorrow. I'm going to keep up the pace as best I can, though, because I want to see how early I can finish. Because why not, right?

But now I need to do homework, and blah blah blah.