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My Body Hates Me!
I expected some soreness in my arms and shoulders from kayaking. To my surprise, it's the upper front of my thighs that are screaming in pain.

The teacher gave me a stretch that'll target that muscle, but in the short term -- owwie!

Current Mood: sore

School Stuff, continued
Creative writing looks like it's going to be challenging, but fun. I already know the teacher; we took a ceramics class together a few years ago.

We did free-writing on Tuesday, and used what we'd written to do a get-to-know-you exercise yesterday. Then we did a close reading of Sharon Olds's The Glass (warning: not for the faint-of-stomach).

I wrote a poem of my own. Well, kind of. We were free-writing about what makes something a poem and I came up with:

A poem
is whatever
someone says
it should
be. Shorter
lines help.

Which is entirely silly.

Speaking of glasses, The British government recently unveiled a shatterproof pint glass. According to the article, "There are about 87,000 alcohol-related glass attacks each year."

Now I've got the image of some British dude with a bandaged head, saying "I knew drinking was bad for you, but this is bloody ridiculous!" (And yes, I know it's a serious problem, with numbers like that.)

So they've got gun control nailed down, and now they've got to work on ... pint glass control!

I had guitar class this morning, which was just orientation. I've got tomorrow off so I'm going to Staples to fax off my request for the paperwork that will prove that I'm a vet for my census application, and then I'm going to Write! My! Ass! Off! for eight hours. And do homework.

Current Mood: giggly

The logical part of me says that there's no point in worrying about Hobbes. The cancer will kill her sooner rather than later, and there's nothing I can do.

Most of me, of course, isn't listening.

My advanced sculpture class was interesting; after the beginning students left, the four of us sat down and had a chat with the teacher. We're going to start by working on body casting.

I didn't get into the art history class I was hoping for; there were enough people petitioning to have a whole nother class, and the people who needed it to graduate got priority.

Me profesora de espanol is muy simpatica.

My brain is toast. I'm going to veg in front of the tv for an hour or so and then go to bed.

Current Mood: tired

In which I do no actual Kayaking, and channel my inner Kaylee Frye
I went to kayaking class this morning, ready for a swim test and/or a safety demonstration. Instead, it was the introduction-and-syllabus song-and-dance. And I'm like, c'mon, it's only an 8 week class!

Afterward I went to the local Auto Zone (which I love because they treat me like a competent human being) and got a new air filter for my car. Which is an easy fix, but didn't solve the problem of the lagging power. So I went back and looked at the manual. The next thing to check was the spark plugs.

I've helped Jen change my spark plugs on my truck, but I've never done it by myself and I've never done it on the car. But I decided to give it a shot. (I do have AAA, so worst-case scenario I could have had it towed to a mechanic, so I'm not completely crazy.)

So with much fear and trembling, and an invocation to Kaylee, I changed the plugs. Turned the key, and it started!

It's a great feeling. Right up there with crossing the finish line on the triathlon.

I am awesome.

Current Mood: accomplished

Can it be school, plz?
(And if you'd told me I was a kid I'd be eager for school to start, I would have laughed at you.)

My first class is Sunday morning. Kayaking! Woohoo!

Also, I was talking on the phone with Ceece today. In one conversation we quoted the movies Clue, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Princess Bride, The Hebrew Hammer, and Star Wars. Cuz that's just how we roll! (Or role? I dunno.)

I Love the Internetz
Without them, my poor, unemployed self would have nothing to distract me from the stuff I badly need distracting from.

There's truth in them thar hills:

see more Funny Graphs

And there's always something to make me scratch my head. Like how over in

cf_hardcore, there are 59 comments and counting about the appropriateness or lack thereof of wearing jammies to the market. (Of course I threw my 2 cents in.)

The internet. Because you can't spend all night watching your cat sleep.

It's that time of year again ...
President Obama gave his first State of the Union address tonight.

It started with the usual, about his duty, and how even in our darkest times, America had risen to the challenges that faced it. His message was a hopeful one, that the coming year would be better than this one had been.

(Somehow, I doubt it could have been much worse.)

When he spoke about the fallen heroes of the Zombie War, I don't think there was a dry eye in the House -- or the Senate. (Old one, I know.) He spoke about the need for bipartisanship; the shambling hordes don't know Democrat from Republican, and how even though they seem to have been beaten back, the need for vigilance continues.

As I Margy and I hurried back to the bunker (being careful to use the buddy system) I felt more hopeful than I had since the first attack.

Happy

rabbitholeday, everybody!

History: I Was a Feral Fan
I Was a Feral Fan

I'm 35 years old, and have only had consistent internet access since late 99/early '00. For the previous several years, I'd had it sporadically -- a local bbs my father had access to, logging on to the system at my mother's work, stuff like that. But I'd been a fan, and engaged in fannish behavior, long before that.

I don't think, in retrospect, that there was ever a time I wasn't fannish.

Of course, when a kid dresses up as their favorite character, they don't call it Cosplay, and every kid makes up stories continuing the adventures of their favorite characters. But I didn't stop at an age when authority figures thought it would be appropriate.

Unfortunately, my internet access was still years away.

I was still in elementary school when Robotech came on the air and I loved it. I wrote stories about it, quite a few of them starring none other than (someone with different hair and eyes and name but who was very definitely) me. In junior high, I met Tiffany who was also obsessed, and we had fun being out alternate-selves together and it was great.

We were Mary-Sues, but we'd never heard the term and we wouldn't have cared if we did. And everybody thought we were a couple of weirdoes, but we were okay with that.

And all the while, I kept writing. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I couldn't sell my stories about Robotech and Star Wars and Star Trek, so I started taking the characters I'd made for those stories and putting them into universes of my own devising. At first, the serial numbers showed bigtime, but as I wrote, I learned to disguise those. I learned, also, what made a character realistic.

I kept writing strong female characters, despite everybody who told me that nobody wanted to read that. Despite Lisa, my best friend in high school, telling me that if anybody figured out that I was a feminist, they'd stop reading my books.

I'd had contacts with fandom in the past -- a convention here and there. In one dealer's room, I discovered a couple of fanzines and learned that other people also wrote stories about the characters in their favorite shows, only they called it fanfic and it had sex in it. During a few months of semi-regular internet access, I discovered that fanfic was online, too; I wrote what was both my first slash story and my first publicly available fanfic, but then I moved away from the internet and fandom.

I continued to write strong female characters. Some of them I thought of as lesbians, and tried to imply their queerness. (The only books I know of where lesbian women could be regularly found were the lesbian romances and coming-out stories put out by Naiad press and similar publishers.) Some of my stories also had coded secondary gay characters, but I figured I'd have even less luck placing them if they were open.

During this time, I sometimes went to conventions and fan clubs, but I really wasn't a part of online fandom until The Fellowship of the Ring came out. That was when I discovered that it wasn't just a few people writing fanfic, it was a lot of people, and they were having tons of fun, and I wanted to get in on it!

I plunged headfirst into the heady waters of Aragorn/Boromir, and discovered that a lot of what I'd thought was true was wrong all along. There were a lot of women who like two guys, or two guys and a girl.

I also learned, pretty quickly, that my beloved "me characters" were called Mary-Sues, and that they were very bad. Looking at the stories that other young women had written, I could understand why. They were horribly characterized, barely plotted -- why would anyone want to put those up where anybody could see them? (Though I had the suspicion that, had I had internet access, I wouldn't have known any better.)

I quickly discovered GAFF, the GodAwful FanFic board. It was a the equivalent of a secret clubhouse, where people could go and point and laugh at the badfic without the authors seeing it. It felt like mocking stupid books with my friends, but on a much larger scale.

I was careful never to say it where someone could get hurt, but I know a lot of people were either too careless or to cruel to give a damn.

And I have to wonder -- would I have been able to stand up under that onslaught? Would I have been able to keep writing my female characters, refining them and honing them until they were willing to step out into their own canon? Or would I have given up, buckled under, that part of myself out in disgust?

I'm glad I never had to find out.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Not sure what's wrong with me.
I feel both on-edge and out-of-focus. I took half a Xanax so maybe that'll help?

Current Mood: weird

I Haz A Dreamwidth!
I'm kit_r_writing over there. Not that there's much "there" there, yet; just one "oh hai i haz a dw now" mini-post. :p

I Didn't Have A Checklist
But I seem to have filled in the GLBT checklist anyway.

Gay: Seroi and Thenic

Lesbian: Cap'n Bez

Bisexual: Jecine

Transgender: Kamala

with bonus Asexual: Lord Spedro

and Eliande is very straight-but-not-narrow and at least Poly-ish, going into a marriage where her husband-to-be is in a relationship with another man, but doing it openly and they're all friends.

Current Mood: amused

Ceece found The Adventures of Lil' Cthulhu -- hilarious!

How To Speak Grandmommie
She Says: Oh, no, you cut your hair again! You should let it grow. You need more hair!

She Means: You look like a big dyke! That's not okay. I know you say you're bisexual, but a lot of people are bisexual for a while, and then they get married. But they don't look like dykes. People will think I let my granddaughter go around looking like a big dyke, and what will they think of me, oh noes!

She Says: Have you heard from your family? I've tried calling them three times and they haven't answered!

She Means: OMG, what if they've died in the storms? What if they've forgotten about me? What if they've realized they don't love me after all and don't want to tell me? What if they've moved to Alaska without me? What if ...

My friend Bruce (of Ceece and Bruce fame) told me that someone was interested in buying my truck. Which could be helpful in a lot of ways, but then I realized the catch.

(There's always a catch.)

In California (as I learned from the whole car debacle) a vehicle has to pass smog to be sold. Since the truck can't start without outside assistance (as it needs a new alternator) it can't even be smogged.

Bruce thinks there may be an as-is sale option. So I'm off to check the DMV website.

Okay, her appetite's back. Whew.

Current Mood: relieved

I made myself my breakfast and opened a can of gooshyfoods for Hobbes and brought her in but she barely ate any.

I am not going to panic. Not yet. She had four cans yesterday, so she may still be full. I am not going to panic.

If she still hasn't eaten anything by noon, then I'll panic.

Current Mood: worried

I Give Up.
It's after 6 in the morning and I'm still awake. At this point, I might as well just make some coffee and get on with my day.

See My Icon?
That is what I'm supposed to be dong right now. But no. My brain laughs at my attempts. I am still wide. The fuck. Awake.

Holy cats, I think I've just started shipping Corlath/Paul.

Yeah, def. time to go. To. BED!