Streets are filled with --

I did a whole bunch of cleaning this weekend, but other than that laid low because I feel a little bit laid low by the intensity of, ah, 2018 as it has begun. I certainly hope it doesn't mean to carry on in the same fashion...

Things:

* I flailed my way through my Chocolate Box signup and letter. Too out of it to be more verbose this weekend, but I'm going to get some edits in before assignments go out. FFVII in a fic challenge? What!
* I'm reading the Bedlam Stacks and quite enjoying it. Possibly because I enjoy anything related to ruthless bastards and the East India Company a bit too much for someone who comes from an ex-British colony. Someone, EIC history RPF with me!
* I'm trying to get more in practice with Japanese again this year. yhlee, if you're still interested, I think I'm going to start pumping out Japanese lessons or at least meta again. Including a post on translating classics, I hope.
* I need to get my ass back to the gym, stat.

Snowflake 7: In your own space, create a love meme for yourself. Let people tell you how amazing and awesome and loveable you really are.

Er, go ahead! Or just take this as an opportunity to come say hi. Or tell me if there are things you'd like me to write or blather on about in our shared fandoms/interests. Or just talk!

It's kind of bonkers how busy I can get doing absolutely nothing but keeping my house and everyday life in order. @___@ This week was a lot of reading (I owe you stuff, yhlee!) and a lot of cleaning and a lot of cursing my body's idiosyncratic reaction to any chemical I ever put into it.

But, excitingly, I may be acquiring a cat. Possibly. Probably. The little guy has another 8 weeks before he can come home, and so I have another 8 weeks to panic about that and to tell the breeder that letting me have a feline is the worst possible thing they could ever do. We shall see...

How's everyone doing?

Updating from work because I forgot my phone, somehow. I don't know how that happens.

Things:

• Seriously thinking about coding a DW/Tumblr crossover with non-rebloggable posts that can go in and out of threaded comments/chat, with activity (posts + comments) being the lifeblood of a stream. Like, seriously thinking about it. ? ??? ? I am just so frustrated with this no-inbetween-land and tumblr in general


• Going through Visions of Infinity. Maths writing, even when doing okayish, is... a bad read. Going to keep chugging. Might end up writing maths into yuletide this year (?!)


• Because pendency, I now need to write drow fic. Like. Zak/Jarlaxle drowfic. Badwrong drowfic. It's like I'm 14 again, except equipped with more cynicism.

Whaddup with you guys?

Just wrapped up Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem and that was a bloody fine read. Some really good, thought-provoking bits and baubles of physics – theoretical and applied! – and some of the finest damned description of multi-dimensional thinking I've ever read packed into delicious historical context with lots of sideways look at the progression of science as a social phenomenon. In a sci-fi book! In a sci-fi book! I haven't enjoyed myself this much in ages.

Going to pick up the second book now, and just unwind. It's been a long-ass 2016 already, but... Not bad. Busy, but not bad. Not doing too good on my original/fic writing resolutions, but work is going – well. I can't really internet anymore because I'm so tired coming back from the job, but I think it'll start to... burn in.

I still want to get more social goals fulfilled, but for now? This is... all right. It's been a while since life was... all right.

• get changed to a different project at work that requires me to pick up a new front-end framework;
• crash car, badly. No one is injured but the car is crashed, I have to go to court for insurance reasons, and have I mentioned crashed car?;
• learn car is beyond saving;
• fly home literally across the world for three days worth of new year's celebrations;
• get new car because insurance is wonderful;
• return back from literally across the world, completing 40+ hours of flight time only to get power tripped on by border control officials whose sole job at this point seems to be making people who legally enter the US fear for their livelihoods;

so. yes. um. my wordcount is not doing too hot. i'm okay! just sort of... shellshocked. and in spite of all of that, 2016 still seems to be doing better than 2015.

this month's resolutions

• lose .8kg
• accomplish work goal #1 and #2 at least
• write one piece of porn for AO3
• arrange to have 1 personal trainer session in march

SO IF I HAVEN'T BEEN AROUND THAT'S WHY

[EDIT] Also I tried to get my hair dyed black-blue but I literally ended up with black. Salon's so expensive that I'm not sure they'll refund me if I go back being like, so... That didn't... work out at all....

[EDIT2] Also started garden for the new year. This time around: every salad green mix known to mankind; butterhead; romaine; trout leaf; some wonderful roma looking tomato; arugula; spinach; two ambitious beans; two even more ambitious chillis

Now that work has ended, life is getting pretty peachy -- I've written one thing, drafted a whole bunch of others, am pretty sure that I'll be meeting my fic/draft-a-day personal helldeadline and the sun has come out for the first time in weeks to roast my holidaying skin!

At the back of my head is the silent, screaming terror that says I'm going back to school in less than a fortnight. I'm ignoring it in favour of my spiffy new room and state of new-found doing-things-dom. 8D 8D

Happily, I've managed to read more than one book this break, which puts the list at:

Jean Rhys	Wide Sargasso Sea
Gustav Flaubert	Madame Bovary
Kawabata Yusunari	Palm of the Hand Stories
Milan Kundera	The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Philip Pullman	The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
William Golding	Lord of the Flies

Which is really not bad, all things considered! I feel like I've under-read (things still on the list: Steinbeck's East of Eden (wailvoice); Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (MEGAWAIL); all of my philosophy reading?!), but at the same time it's the most fiction-for-leisure I've read in a long number of years. ♥ ♥ *burbles hearts*

Wide Sargasso Sea I'd always been meaning to read; one of those things where the title was attractive in and of itself. Didn't know how out of the loop I'd be for not having read Jane Eyre, but uh, shame on me! The opening line = /o/ \o\.

Philip Pullman was interesting for how much it echoes, reverses, builds up on existing translations of the Bible. Proof that some lines just stick?

Golding was the hardest to read of the lot. Not because it's The Lord of the Flies, but because his lyricism would throw me off like a suddenly spooked horse.

In other news, getting more design-y by the day; looking forward to some coding and drafting in the near 72 hours!

p.s: apologies for the <abbr> overkill. 8D

Today, for the first time in a long while, I made a long-forgotten noise of primal fear combined with articulated nausea as I watched my screen go blank after the power tripped. Good times, good times.

It's a perfect day for low lights, some coffee, and reading. ♥

In other news, a funny little thing yesterday while I browsed the mall:

( Oh, branding. )

Sometimes I feel like the whole of the commercial world is one giant fic prompt.

So, a couple of things have taken over my life recently, and all of them seem to somehow involve me completely ghosting over my DW. It's magic! :D "Must go grab a matcha latte - whoops, no time to cross-post to DW!" "How about I watch Crows Zero a third time instead of opening a new browser window, yeah!"

\o SO I SHALL SUMMARISE THUSLY THE EVENTS OF THE PAST FORTNIGHT:

1. My job, I have quit it! Celebration and glee!
   
2. My visa, I has it! University, here I come!
   
3. Crows Zero, the movie! I love it!
   
4. Gundam Wing, I am rewatching it! Treize and Zechs, how much do I love you? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS.

And because I am now free from the blighted octopi-hands of work, I can crosspost my posts in bits and pieces too!

I hereby request humbly that any Gundam Wing fans stab the comments with AU scenarios.

I need about 10 - that's a happy number! - for an Insane 13-6 Marathon^TM. 8D Suggestions: teacher!AU; pirates; diplomats; mud-wrestlers! \o THIS FANDOM REQUIRES OLD-SCHOOL CHEESINESS.

\o/! Off to go do some productive things now!

Heya guys. This is K, reporting in from Supremely Burnt Out Tired Land. Work is really taking it out of me - the last month has just been this mad rush of getting things done for the office, or being zoned out in the office. UNHAPPY FACE. Friends have also been kinda \o /o as we flail towards university; everyone's jittery, and we try to go out and support each other as much as possible, but that's taken most of my days off and turned them into huge social exercises that, while really cool!, have left me feeling sort of like a Swiss roll that's been run over by an 18-wheeler. So I'm really sorry if I haven't been keeping up with fic - especially the original stuff that people are posting! - or entries down here on DW; even keeping my brain in order on LJ has been bleaaaaaaargh. I hope everyone's been doing good! ♥

In other, more important news:












For more information:
PICTURES:
here and here
NEW INFORMATION:
Here - near constant updates
Here - ONTD_political live post
ON TWITTER:
@StopAhmadi, @IranElection09, @persiankiwi, @NextRevolution, @Change_for_Iran

Concrit on the writing meme, watching Trek for the second time, three day "weekend" that involves a lot of public speaking, darkrooms, Photoshop and code: my favourite brew.

>:D Writing is so happening tonight, even though (especially because) I have to be up at 7 tomorrow morning.

Live long and prosper.

*GLEEFUL*

[edit] Also, hilariously enough, I don't know how I get the dancer to change directions, but once I do I can't change her back, and now I am FIXATED.

[edit] To get her to swing counter I get her to swing out her leg; to get her to swing clockwise I get her to squeeze down on her crotch. OR IS THAT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. HELP.

[edit] AUGH and I can only do it with my laptop tilted 90 degrees clockwise!

[edit] Am now getting her to do some sort of retarded on-the-stop forward facing can-can competition with herself, though I usually default to clockwise. Must... stop... looking... It's all in the back of the calves!

[edit] LAST EDIT I SWEAR. It is sad, but thinking of porn makes her swing clockwise, and thinking of square roots swings her anti. I'm sure that if I was told that clockwise = left brain instead of clockwise = right brain, the opposite would be true. DONE NOW. Tomorrow, Evil Spock/Tseng in action flick style fic... somehow with plot!