anticipation

I have one week left in this semester. That's all. One week. It feels like I have an eternity left, but I know that's only because I actually have something to look forward to. Being here has felt like a weird time warp. In a way, I can't believe the semester's already over, mostly because I feel like I should have made more friends by now, and I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of things I still have to learn. I know I'm only a quarter of the way done, but I have no patience. I want to know everything right now! At the same time, this semester seemed exceptionally long compared to my semesters at UD. Again, this probably has to do with a lack of a social life. I haven't even filled up one album with pictures on Facebook. I don't know the last time that I wasn't able to take 200 pictures in 4 months. I'm a shutterbug, but you can only take so many pictures of your hamsters.

I was reading an article earlier today on The Frisky on how to beat the winter blues, and one of the things mentioned was to have more time with friends. Right now, that's not an issue. I hang out with friends from UD at least once a week, and usually more than that. But I'll be perfectly honest, I'm really worried about what's going to happen once the snow gets bad. It's something I've had in the back of my mind all semester, but I haven't paid much attention to it because I assumed I'd have some sort of revelation and figure it out. Well, I haven't had any moment of clarity. I know it's been two years since my car accident, but I'm still really nervous about driving in winter weather. I have problems with Cleveland drivers when the ground is dry! It's times like these I wish I could apparate.

I like a good challenge. I've decided this week to start cooking more of my meals, instead of being a slave to Lean Cuisine/Smart Ones/Stouffer's meals. Granted, I'm not doing anything fancy or really complicated. I don't have the space to be complicated. As it is, I had to bake my ham and cheese biscuits that I had for dinner tonight in two shifts because my oven and cookie sheet are too small. So far things are going well. It also helps that I've started having one beer with dinner every night. I think that's going to have to stop though. Beer is tasty, but it's also calories that yummy water doesn't have. So thanks, beer. It was fun while it lasted.

You've probably figured this out by now, but I'm fairly time-obsessed. I always have to know what time it is, and I'm very concerned with times in the future. It makes countdowns for things like the Disney Trip so much more exciting, but it also drags me down sometimes. For instance, if I've been looking forward to something and it doesn't happen, it just makes me so much more depressed than if I hadn't thought so much about it. I don't stay in the present very well. I'm constantly looking forward because it seems like the things that are going to happen are much better than what's actually happening. Unless, I'm in the middle of something that I've been looking forward to. Like this past summer when I was on the Western Trip, I rarely thought about my family vacation to California, unless I was explaining to someone how busy that month of my summer was. As far as the past few months go, I haven't had anything really big to look forward to, so I think that's why I'm especially excited for this year's Disney Trip. Once the Disney Trip ends, I'll probably start looking forward to the Eastern Trip. I'm not sure how I feel about Christmas yet this year, but if I decide to be excited for it, then I'll have a week to be excited for it too. After the Eastern Trip is over, I really don't know what to be excited about, but hopefully something (like an internship) will come along before I have to face that. My mom always jokes that I suffer from Post Party Letdown. Luckily, I haven't been disappointed by many things that I've looked forward to in the last year or so. It drives me crazy when people are just content with their current situation. You can see these people on Facebook all over the place. They're the ones who post things like "work, sleep, repeat. eff my life." I want to kick these people in the shins. You want to talk about a mundane daily life? I sit here and sing Disney songs to my hamsters! But I'm okay with that because I have something to look forward to. So if you are one of those "eff my life" types, I suggest you make your own excitement and give yourself something to look forward to. Chances are, you deserve it.

~ Christine

NaNo used to be an off-brand Tamagotchi

I decided about a week ago or so that for the first time ever, I’m going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. In case you haven’t heard of it, November is National Novel Writing Month, and every year, there’s a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel from midnight on November 1st and have it completed by 11:59:59 PM November 30th. I haven’t written fiction since I wrote my last fanfic last December, so this is definitely going to be a challenge for me. Even my longest fanfic was only 5 chapters and 5,431 words (I just checked). Writing something ten times longer is going to be interesting simply because I have commitment issues when it comes to my writing. I blame Power of the Pen for this. I kick ass at short stories, but if you want me to write for more than 40 minutes at a time, forget it! At least with NaNo, I don’t have to share my novel if I don’t want to. The contest is simply about length, not necessarily quality. Although, this is me we’re talking about, so anything less than perfect doesn’t satisfy me, but I have a feeling that once I get into this, I’ll be singing a different tune. When I wrote fanfiction last fall, I always felt pressured to write well because I had so many people listing me as a favorite author. And if I was going to put something I wrote out for the world to read, I wanted it to be something I could be proud of, at least in technique. Even if you mock fanfiction, I think you’d agree that my stories were good. The only difference between good fanfiction and a novel is that fanfiction reuses characters created by someone else. It’s like a sequel to a movie. Anyway, even though you can write fanfiction for NaNo, I’m not going to do that. For one thing, I love NCIS, but I just don’t think I can write 50,000 words on it. Plus, I want to try something completely different.

To help me prepare, I have some ideas of what I want to write about floating in my head, and hopefully this weekend I can draft an outline before NaNo starts Monday morning. I’ve also downloaded a new word processor called Focus Writer. Actually, it’s what I’m writing this entry on, just so I have practice on using this thing before I attempt something serious. It’s fantastic. It’s an incredibly simple interface, and you can use your own pictures as a background image. I’ve selected a calming beach scene. You can also change the size of your writing space and the opacity of it. I want to be able to see the ocean behind my words, and since this isn’t a distracting type of picture, I can get away with it. The best part is that it’s full screen! No temptations of little buttons at the bottom of my screen on the toolbar. If I need the toolbar, I can get to it, but it’s not in my face. Ooh! I know! I’ll take a screen shot of what I’ve written so you all can see what I’m talking about. It’ll be one of those pictures in a picture thing, like the intro to Modern Family.

Spiffylicious. (ooh, that’s a new one!)

I also need to update my writing playlist. Right now, it’s a lot of super sad songs, and while I think part of what I’ll be writing will be sad, it’s not going to be nearly as depressing as what I wrote a year ago. Probably because I’m not nearly as depressed now. Go figure!

Oh, and before anyone asks, I’m not going to share the details of my writing. Maybe after the novel is done, but I make no promises. It’s a very scary thing to pour your heart and soul into something artistic and then have it insulted, kicked around, and spat on. I should know, I had quite possibly one of the strictest flute teachers known to man. Anyway, I’m taking the stress of “being perfect” out of the equation. If I do share my novel when it’s done, it’s only going to be after I edit it. I may throw you all little nuggets here and there, but don’t expect a daily (or weekly!) update on what’s going on in the details of my book. I feel comfortable saying how many words I’ve written, or vague things such as how I’m feeling about what I’m writing. I will tell you this much: what I plan on writing about is loosely based on personal experiences, which is why I’m so guarded about it. We all know what happens when things based on real life (even if it’s real life fictionalized) get published. Go watch the movie Music and Lyrics and you’ll see what I mean.

One final thought before I drift into dreamland (yup, totally not posting this before I go to sleep. If you’re reading this, I wrote last night to help me relax and get to sleep. It’s working). I know I’ve been a smidge sporadic with a posting schedule as far as blogging goes. I honestly don’t know how much I’ll want to blog for the next month, or even if I’ll have time. Of course November is a super busy month for me with school things, plus Thanksgiving is thrown in there, and, you know, LIFE. So don’t be worried if I don’t blog at all. But please be pleasantly surprised if I fit an entry in here or there.

Peace, love, and fiberbeds!

~ Christine

P.S. So when I was saving this, I noticed that Focus Writer has a daily goal feature that tells you how close you are to completing your daily goal of writing, in either time or word count. I’m at 88% with this entry, but right now the daily goal is only set at 30 minutes.

sweet dreams of rhythm and Nyquil

It was bound to happen... after traveling for almost an entire month, I managed to get sick. I started having a stuffy nose halfway through the Western Trip, during my week at home, and during the entire length of my family vacation. Yesterday I was home for literally half an hour when *BLAMMO* I started to have a sore throat, an earache, and general ickiness. I think the cross country traveling has confused my body so much that it's been focusing on figuring out what the fuck is going on instead of warding off disease. Meh. I hopped on cough syrup and a lovely mixture of DayQuil and NyQuil, and now I'm clumsier than ever, and quite entertaining, according to my family. I shared this lovely gem at dinner tonight:

"Know what I just realized? The seagull from The Little Mermaid was named Scuttle and he liked to gossip! Like scuttlebutt!"

I've also decided that "fuck" needs to be made a larger part of my vocabulary on a daily basis. I say it quite a bit, but I'm tired of bottling feelings in, and "fuck" seems to cover the gamut nicely.

Did you know that if someone blocks you on Facebook they can't see your page OR what you've written on a mutual friend's page? I discovered this recently from blocking a certain colorguard instructor from high school, and I couldn't see what he had written on my friend's wall, but I knew he had written something based on the comments from her father that specifically addressed him. Now that I know this, I'm not going to hide as much anymore!

Did you also know that I've made an addition to FoHB? I'll give you a hint. It's proven to be very useful to see where my readers are coming from. So far I've had Columbus, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Vandalia (hmmm... wonder who that is!), and Chicago (this one stumps me a little because I have lots of people who I know in the city). I like it, but I'm still searching for a better version. This has some features I'm not too happy about.

Army Wives tonight really got to me. Wait, I almost forgot! **SPOILER ALERT** (Brenda, I'm looking at you!)











I can't imagine going through the process of someone deploying. One of my previous exes is currently in Afganistan, and I know that his family (at least his brother, who is a Facebook friend of mine) misses him so much. At the same time, if I really loved someone in the military, it would just have to become something that I dealt with. It's not like I've never done a long distance relationship, but usually those haven't been to someplace dangerous. It's weird because part of me is completely against the idea, but part of me knows that I wouldn't be alone in my loneliness, and that I've been through losses already in my life, so what's the worst that could happen? It's their job. There's really no sense in stressing over it. My mom always gets asked if she worries about my dad being shot at, and her philosophy is that if she was going to worry about that, she would waste her entire life. It's a very healthy attitude if you ask me. The simple truth is that people are killed everyday, whether they're soldiers, cops, or civilians.

In any case, I feel like the shit has really started to hit the fan for the ladies of Army Wives. Denise is preggo (yay!), but Frank got deployed before the baby is born, so he's missing out on that AGAIN. Pamela got divorced from Chase, which really makes me so sad, especially since I'm suspicious of him hooking up with his neighbor woman. Technically, he's not in the wrong, but it's still painful for Pamela (boy do I know how she feels). Claudia Joy's life is generally shitty if you ask me. She's lost her oldest daughter, now she has diabetes, her husband's being deployed for the first time since her daughter's death, and her youngest is about to leave for college. Joan's life since the show began has also been lousy. Her husband cheated on her while she was deployed, they worked it out, had a baby, then she got deployed again just a few months after Sara Elizabeth was born. Then she nearly got blown up by an RPG, had tons of shrapnel in her face and almost lost her vision. And now she has TBI as a result of that injury, can't deploy with her unit, and has to spend her time relearning basic things, like sorting out which things you would read and which things you can't. And then there's Roxy. She's always been my least favorite character, but I'm starting to feel bad for her. All she wants is a baby with her husband, and after she miscarried, she's been struggling to conceive, and just when they found a solution, her husband's orders were changed and he found out that he was deploying.

And thanks to warnings on Twitter, I knew that tonight would be a tearjerker. Foolishly, I told myself that it couldn't be that bad, but who am I kidding? I've cried many other times over TV shows, Army Wives included, and I knew that everyone (minus Joan) was deploying. So I held myself together until the absolute very end of the show and as the 23rd is boarding the planes, "Lux Arumque" by Eric Whitacre begins to play in the background as you see all of the families bidding their last farewells. This piece has always held a special place in my heart, simply because it made me love choral music. If you haven't heard it, shame on you, and here's a video:



Apparently the song is actually about the birth of Jesus, but it fits very well in this situation too. Lux means 'light' and in a weird way, it's almost as if the song gives hope to the families and the soldiers. Maybe it's the NyQuil talking, but I think that it wasn't just the beauty of the song that gave the producers the idea to put the song in the show.

Speaking of NyQuil, I'm getting tired, and now I'm listening to "Sleep" which is just making me more relaxed. You write some amazing things, Mr. Whitacre.

~ Christine

there's no such thing as a shameless plug

Hi! I bet you all thought I wasn't gonna make my daily post for today. Or you don't give a damn. In that case, I say *pounds fist together, Gellar style*!

Anywhoodles, today I have discovered amazingness and less-than-amazingness. We'll start with the latter.

Back when I was a wee lass of 22, I made a voyage to the maiden land: Disney World. On this trip, one BFF of mine by the name of Jackie, had a snack treat with her that I had been intrigued by once before, but never actually consumed. Yes, I am talking about Snyder's Hot Buffalo Wing flavored pretzel bites. These pretzels make me do things and go places that I have only experienced while eating Chipotle and taking a really long nap. In the words of Ashlee Simpson, "You (it) make(s) me wanna la-la in the kitchen, on the floor." That's how amazing these pretzels are.

You know how some people have a weird uncle? Well, I have eaten the weird uncle of the buffalo wing pretzel, and I didn't enjoy it. Meet Snyder's Buttermilk Ranch flavored pretzel bites! I LOVE dipping regular pretzels into ranch dressing, so I bought these with the high hopes of finding yet another delectable treat, but I was sorely mistaken. To put it bluntly, they taste like the soap that would be shat out of an evil and sinister man on the Hidden Valley Ranch. So I am very saddened, and I recommend that if you are given the choice, ALWAYS PICK THE BUFFALO.

Onto my second discovery! This evening, I was shopping at Polaris with the same BFF by the name of Jackie, and now buffalo fame, and we stumbled upon a brand new store! It's called Charming Charlie, and charming doesn't even begin to cover it, but I don't think that naming a store "Fucking Awesome Store of Accessories and Pretty Colors" is a good marketing plan. The store is HUGE and everything is organized by color! Right now, the only location in Ohio is at Polaris, but their website lists lots of stores that are opening in the next 3 months, so I wouldn't be surprised if another location opened up in Ohio soon. So here is their website (again): http://www.charmingcharlie.com/ and if you're in Columbus, go to the store ASAP! And if you're not in Columbus, come sleep on my parent's couch and we'll go there together! We have color days at work (our scoring room has a lot of former teachers in it) and Monday's color is yellow. I don't own a single yellow thing in my wardrobe, aside from my high school graduation gown, so finding Charming Charlie was like an oasis in a sea of... nothing yellow to wear. So for my color day, here is what I bought:

Super cute, and cheap too! When we got to the store, the girl who greeted us said that nothing was more than $150, but we didn't see anything more than $40. These little beauties were $7.97! AND I found the type of eyeglass holder that I was looking for before the Eastern Trip, but I'm running out of time so I don't want to take a picture of it. But you should just know that this store is beautiful. If I knew ahead of time that their website doesn't have pictures of inside of their stores, I would have taken a picture, just so you could see the awesomeness!

Okay, I need to publish this before midnight...

Get on up, get on up, dance on the ceiling!

~Christine