To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Today was a very red day. My old tan, warm, fuzzy-fleecy-cottony-lined raincoat, which I owned for almost ten years and wore literally every. single. day. of the nine months I was in Europe (okay, well, there might have been a day or two in Paris when it was warm enough not to wear it) finally gave up the ghost. The waterproofing on the outside was apparently, like, sprayed on, and has been flaking off around the neck for about a year now, leaving ugly white speckles. This week two big spots peeled off on the back, making it look like I'd had an unfortunate accident with some bleach.

So now I have a beautiful dark red, warm, flannel-lined raincoat. I've always wanted a red coat (leftover Paddington Bear fetish from childhood? IDK), and now I have one. I also discovered when I got home that in fact the flannel lining zips out, and thus I actually bought two coats for the price of one! Now I'm prepared for all phases of winter/spring at home, and I also have the perfect coat system for Seattle in April.

(Speaking of Seattle: Much planning. Much excitement. rowdycamels and I going to do a lot of museums and even more hiking. Plus I will get to see Roslyn, where I will absolutely stand in front of the Roslyn's cafe mural and pretend for a while that I'm in Cicely, Alaska. Also awesome: getting to see rivendellrose!)

I also got a red dress 'cause it was cheap and pretty. It looks kind of like an updated version of a dress that might've come out of Mad Men. Different from anything I usually wear, but cool. I look 28 instead of the 16 I usually appear.

Last weekend I started barreling through Fringe S4 on DVD, which I received as a Christmas present primarily because I wanted to make vids with it. As with some events of S3, this season works much better at DVD rather than broadcast speed. Also with a fast forward button. I'm gleefully speeding through most things having to do with the new shapeshifters, and definitely through Peter And September In The Room of Bad CGI And Awful Exposition. Knowing that they do eventually get on the stick and salvage at least some of this terrible season helps weather the meandering road they took, too.

This weekend, in addition to marathoning Fringe and shopping, I rearranged some events YET AGAIN in my novel. Now I think everything's just about back to how I had it originally. *facepalm* I desperately want to finish this draft by the end of April, because it's dragged on since October and I don't actually have much to show for those three months. (Admittedly, some of that is because Yuletide interrupted for a month.) I feel like I've lost the throughline I had in the last version, and that's why I'm having so much trouble placing these four new events. I need to tie more logical emotional development to them, because right now things are meandering...rather a lot like S4 of Fringe, which is not a good thing! Rick is doing a lot of vacillating, and while he's the kind of character who would totally do that, it's getting annoying to write and probably will be annoying to read if I don't do something to tone that down.

"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come."

I donated to the National Wildlife Federation last year, and in return they sent me a 16-month calendar I keep in my cube at work. It has a nature-related quote for each month, and that was the one for December. They attribute it as "an old Chinese proverb." Whatever it is, I like it. Reminds me of Millay's Sonnet XLIII, which is never a bad thing.

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I'm attempting to leaven my low carb diet of vegetables, meat, and beans with new and interesting complex carbs,* so today I made buckweat groats, aka kasha, and added butter, salt, and garlic. It's very good! Reminiscent of quinoa, but with even more character.

* The pun is entirely intentional

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I think it's time to admit I have failed utterly on fandom_stocking this year. I only wrote one thing, and I don't think I'll be able to pull off anything else. :( I wish there were a way to see a list of who wants things like music or poetry recs, so I could at least fill some stockings with that.

On the other hand, this weekend I made about 500 words of progress on a Northern Exposure fic I've been working on...well, really for about a decade, if you count all the failed variations I've started over the years or the little fragments I've played over and over in my mind's eye, but the current version has a file-created date of August 2011, so. At this rate, I might finish it by 2030!

In contrast to the rest of my week, where thing after thing seemed to go wrong, yesterday was a lovely day. I got new glasses I like (I went rimless this time, although other than that they look almost exactly like my current half-rims, which was my goal), bought a card I needed for work, and was done with these errands by 10:30. The mail brought lab results from my appointment a few days ago, and I fall well within normal ranges for everything.

...And then I wound up reading fanfic all afternoon and evening instead of working on Fandom Stocking fills, but no one's perfect. And today is another day.

I did watch Fringe on Friday. Walter on acid is never not fun, and I especially enjoyed the ( spoiler. )

Yuletide update: I finished my assignment and a treat! This is awesome! I had a plan for another treat, but it went down in flames. On the other hand, this morning I woke up with an idea for yet another treat, which should be fun. And I may yet find another way to write for the fandom of the Doomed Treat.

In the meantime, in space pilots news, I've plotted out all the new stuff I want to happen to them on their journey, which is still going to make a very short novel, but nevertheless, the pacing should work better once I write all of this and insert it. To get myself back in the mood, I'm reading Atlantic Fever, which is mostly about the publicity surrounding Lindbergh and his competitors as they prepared and made attempts to cross from New York to Paris. Highly relevant to my interests!

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I finished all ten episodes of Bunheads last week. It definitely has flaws--you rest the entire emotional payoff of your midseason finale on a reference to someone else's movie, really?--but I've somehow fallen in love with all the characters, annoying as they can be in their own ways. This show got me to care--nay, to angst--about a teenage romance! (It was Boo and Carl, like that's any surprise when they were basically playing out an iteration of every Astaire/Rogers movie ever made while also doing ballroom dance--although I question whether anyone behind the scenes actually watched the movies, if their "Fred and Ginger Dance" is a waltz. Everyone knows their stuff was mostly foxtrot-based! Um, for subsets of "everyone" that exclude "people who are not dance geeks.")

Anyway, cuteness! I look forward to its return in January, especially since Fringe will be ending around the same time.

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Since I haven't taken/posted many pictures lately, have one of my cute food:

( Teeny tiny turkey sandwiches )

Also have a photo I'm calling "Post-Apocalyptic Patio with Scarf."

( Here. )

ARGH! This morning, my pretty rose-embroidered coat ripped along the seam under one of the arms. There's a pretty big area area of fabric under that arm that's frayed and rotted (perils of owning it for six years, I guess?), so the current plan is to take it to a tailor and see what they can make of it. Perhaps they can patch it with some velvet I'll bring them, because...

Tonight, as I was reaching up to get a spice jar from above the stove, I dangled my black velvet jacket/wrappy thing--which is lovely and which I wear about three or four days a week at work because it's vaguely business casual while also being comfy and goes with practically everything I own--against a burner. There is now a large, very obvious hole along the hem and a crispy piece of once-was-fabric burnt into the glasstop stove. DAMMIT.

...On the plus side, I did not set myself on fire. Always a good thing.

Current thinking is to hem the wrap above the burnt part and use the fabric cut off as the patch for the rose coat. Please, oh please let this work.

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At least this week's Castle was A-MA-ZING.

( These spoilers are waiting to beam you up. )

This weekend has been really nice. The weather turned cold and blustery, so I moved my summer clothes under the bed and my winter clothes to the closet and dresser, then hunkered down in my not-worn-since-February corduroys in my bed, with its flannel sheets that I just put on yesterday morning, and read what is basically a Gothic novel, for all that it takes place in the 1950s and 60s. (Well, okay, it's a Gothic novel until ( spoilers ))

We also hit one of my favorite episodes this weekend at nx_rewatch, which was a pleasant way to while away an hour this morning.

The weather also means that I got to unearth my embroidered velvet coat. It's built a little bit like a riding coat, mostly in that it flares somewhat at the bottom, and I always feel like a combination of a Cossack and, I dunno, a carnival fortune teller when I wear it. Here, have pictures:

( Rose coat )

The only thing I didn't manage to make time for is getting any further on novel rewrites, but I did clip Bringing Up Baby for the screwball comedy vid, and now I have lots of potential ideas for incorporating madcap antics into the flight.

Mwahaha, it is only two months till Christmas, and that means lebkuchen! I've been doing reasonably well at avoiding sugary things, but I will make an exception for these soft, gingerbreadesque, chocolate-dipped bits of deliciousness. I'm sure they're even better fresh, but I am very deliberately not learning how to make them, because then I would very possibly eat nothing else.

Today I also succeeded at finding some black ankle boots that are waterproof, flat, and have a decently thick sole, so now my wardrobe is thoroughly winterized...only for next week to feature 80-degree highs. This means one more week of lunch outside, though, so I can't complain.

Our biggest event of the year at work took place yesterday, so thankfully a very busy week has ended and I will actually have some time on my hands again. Last week I finally gave in and outlined what exists of my space pilots novella NOVEL OMG, so I think I will spend that time filling in the "[stuff happens here]," "[more stuff happens here]," and "[GODDAMN SPACE CROCODILES!]" placeholders in said outline.

For those of you wondering, I assure you that "space crocodiles" is not a euphemism. If Bringing Up Baby can have a leopard, my wannabe Space Age screwball comedy can have space crocodiles.

Finally, I'm thinking seriously about a Kindle of some sort. My recent laptop purchase means I garnered enough Amazon reward points to make it basically free, so I'm very tempted. I would like to carry may books around one device, and also I like that they've come down enough in price that I wouldn't be like, "OMG I WOULD BE OUT SO MUCH MONEY IF I LOST THIS," as opposed to the $7 for a paperback.

Unfortunately, the library system seems to have 2/3 of its ebooks in non-Kindle format, and the selection of ebooks isn't that great in the first place. Well, if you're into romances I get the impression it's awesome, but I'm definitely not, so things look a bit sparse. And since the library is where I get 98% of my dead tree reading material (with the other 2% coming from used bookstores--seriously, I haven't bought a new book since early 2010), this is a serious problem. I guess there's always Project Gutenberg freebies, but...that doesn't thrill me overmuch. The university I work at has plenty of electronic goodies which may or may not be transferable to various formats, but even the best lit-crit loses its charm after a while.

Maybe I'll just hoard the points until something I really want comes along.

Number of doctors visited when I couldn't take the pain anymore and also started running a fever: 1

Number of sinus infections diagnosed: 1

Number of times it feels like my face has been punched by a very angry boxer: ELEVENTY

Amount better I feel after 30 hours of antibiotics: Not very, hope this changes soon

Number of vids completed: About .5 (I went with the "wacky Fringe" one due to overwhelming popular support. Heh.)

Amount better at ripping source and optimizing clips in iMovie my new laptop is compared to my old: INDESCRIBABLY*

Weird things the OS 10.8 version of iMovie '11 does compared to the older version of iMovie '11: Several, but most strange is that now you can choose a framerate for your projects (maybe you always could I just never knew), but when I chose 24 fps, like most--but not all, which is another bafflement--of my clips from Fringe episodes are, it looked like hell, but 30 fps looks beautiful. WTF?


* Example: In Handbrake, my old computer could rip footage at around 20-25 frames per second if I was using it, and maybe 30 fps if I quit out of every other program and just left it alone. Now the average is anywhere from 145 to 170 fps, depending on what else I have open. I'm almost afraid to try it with every other program shut down. Basically, it used to take me more than hour to rip a standard US TV episode; it now takes less than ten minutes.

Tonight's entry comes at you live from MY NEW LAPTOP! My old one was almost five years old, and starting to get all, "You want me to play a YouTube file? Oh, if I must... *chug chug chug*" so I have retired it to the green pastures of my closet, where it will serve as backup when the hard drive on this one hits the three-year mark and dies. (Seriously, every internal hard drive I've ever had has died after three years. It's like a curse. Perhaps this one will be different, though!)

And holy crap, this is fast. Soooooo fast. Photoshop launches in under five seconds. I love it.

Since I now work at an educational institution again and can purchase software at deep, deep discounts, I also treated myself to the Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium Edition, which means I get a version of Photoshop that's light-years beyond what I had before (I can do 3D! Apparently, anyway, as I haven't figured it out yet, but it's there!), Dreamweaver to replace my old web editor that they stopped updating almost ten years ago, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, and Fireworks. I don't even know what Fireworks does, but I can do things with it when I find out! I really only needed the first two, but since getting them individually would be the same price as getting the set, I figured why not? Plus it would be good to get my desktop publishing skills back up to speed with InDesign.

(I won't deny that I would've traded all the extra programs for Premiere if they offered a package with that combination, though. iMovie works well enough for my purposes, but I lust after more interesting effects and being able to vid non-linearly without awkward workarounds.)

Anyway. Fun times! Off to play some more. :D

Amusing things seen in the parking garage at work yesterday:

1. A Denison decal. Denison is just up the road from my own undergrad institution. I've never heard anyone outside of Ohio mention it.

2. A license plate reading "FRAK." On the same, car, a license plate holder reading "My other car is a TARDIS." (I need to meet this person. I'm almost tempted to leave a note under the windshield wipers, but I fear that would be too creepy.)

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Fiona strikes again. This one lasted almost a month, which is pretty good for her. Mom got her something very similar to this today, and in literally under a minute, she had one of the eyes off. Sigh. At least it was cheap and she had fun?

We like these toys, especially the Orka ones, but they didn't have any in stock at Target and no one felt like driving all the way to the pet store. Fiona has the mini bone with the streamers, and while she has managed to get one of the streamers off, the bone itself is intact, and she loves it. It's just hard to actually play with her with it, because it's not really made for tugging and she's not all that into fetching.

On the positive side, she only unleashes destruction on her toys, and not on our stuff, so GOOD DOGGIE.

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I also got a pretty dress today! As well, I've lost a decent amount of weight in the past two months thanks to diet changes, so a lot of my old clothes from grad school and just after fit again! This is, like, the best possible motivation to avoid sugar, because I am a.) a packrat, so I still have all my old business casual clothes from my first job out of college, as well as nice dresses from college ballroom days; b.) a cheapskate, so FREE CLOTHES are great; and c.) a hater of shopping, so I'm getting FREE CLOTHES without having to GO TO STORES AND TRY ON A MILLION THINGS! It's like winning the lottery!