Batten down the hatches! Brace for impact! 

Today is going to be a trying day for my family. I'm not directly involved, of course, but depending on how things go, it could have a huge effect on all our lives.

*sitting around the other night with the parents*
Me: I think I'm gonna go back to my room and write a little bit.
Dad: But it's not time for your writing thing to start yet.
Me: No, not yet. That's not what I'm doing.

My parents do pay attention to me! I've been doing Nanowrimo for four years now, so they should expect it, but it's nice to know they remember things like this.

Mom: "I can't believe it! You're worse than a woman! You talk on the phone more! You gossip more! It's terrible!" 
Dad: "But I had to tell her!" 

*snerk* 

Text messaging with my momma

Mom: Hey if you think about it and you can can you bring me home a couple of dime wrappers for me I need them for work and I forgot to get them at the bank today
Me: K
Mom: Disreguard that last transmission I have located the prey
Me: Did you bring it down? Those things can be awful tricky.
Mom I have it under control. Autobots unite! 
Me: lol Transform and roll out! 
Mom: Can you tell I'm bored today? 

Fall is here. Yuck. I don't like it at all. I want it to be warm again. But fall does mean October, which is one month closer to November, which is both my birthday and Nanowrimo. I'm getting a little idea starting to get together. It has nothing to do with either of the ideas I had before, but that's the way of Nano. Me and Niki are trying to get some write-ins together again. So far the response in Carroll County has been quiet. Guess people are busy busy.

In other news, Ashley and I are not fighting anymore and things are back to being cool between us. I don't normally handle conflict at all. I either ignore it and go on like nothing happened or I never speak to that person again. But we talked a bit and aired out what we were both thinking and moved on. Like mature adults! Weird.

Also, Ashley is pregnant again. She's due early June, apparently. Hooray babies! 

There's been stuff going on with my family, but I'm ignoring it as best I can. I'm tired of dealing with it. *shrugs* 

I got the urge today to role play Lockdown. Vortex has been poking at my brain recently too, but I'm holding him back for now. My main writing muse has been having fun taking ideas from Vortex, so that keeps him at bay. Lockdown, though, just grabbed my attention something fierce. He better not do that in November. *sighs* Maybe I'll write some Lockdown/Prowl drabble or something.

I have internet back!! Whee!! 

I'll have a bigger entry later. Just catching up on stuff now.

RIP Patrick Swayze. My mother and I spent quite a few good afternoons watching you and agreeing on how gorgeous you are.

--

Anyway, I'm home from Kelly's. Back in MY house with MY things in MY room. I missed MY space, if I wasn't being clear enough there.

I have the most monstrous headache right now, but I'm not going to give in and take Advil. I need to sleep, but I have laundry to do. I gotta start getting my room cleaned up so I can look for my pirate clothes for Renn Faire with daftpyratelolzthis weekend. We're going Saturday and dressing as pirates even though it's Irish weekend. I'm taking my woodbaby with me too. Daemien loves Renn Faire. I'm definitely be going to poke my head into The Midsummer Knight's Dream, but hopefully no one will beg me to come home. I've got my hands full with one.

All my favorite fall programming is about to start up again. Unfortunately most of it is happening on the same night.

Monday:
House 8-9
How I Met Your Moter 8-8:30
Lie to Me 9-10
Big Bang Theory 9-9:30 (I just discovered this show with Kelly, but holy crap, I love it!)
Castle 10-11

Thursday
Bones 8-9
Vampire Diaries 8-9 (Don't judge! I watch it for the lulz!) 

Friday
Dollhouse 8-9

I think that's everything I'm wanting to watch. I have it all on my planner at work. I don't have DVR, but my TV in my bedroom records spledidly.
Ugh, dryer's done. Back to laundry duty.

So, I dont' think anyone else I know is particularly excited, but I am. Ellen Degeneres is a judge on American Idol this year. She can't possibly be any worse than Paula, she's pretty damn funny, and all kinds of adorable. I don't see where this is bad.

I might actually watch this year.

I got to see 9 today! 

( cut for mild spoilers, I guess )

Totally random, but there was a metaquotes talking about the California fires. I was reading the comments and someone observed that Vermont could be dropped in the middle of California and no one would notice because it was so small in comparison.

I've lived in Maryland my whole life. It is small and compact, and God help me, I like it that way. I might have to drive an hour to get to a decent mall, but that's just because I live in a relative hick town area. (Though Westminster is the best city in Carroll County. Sorry to Manchester, my temporary living space.) 

It boggled me the amount of SPACE there was out west. GOOD GOD what do you people DO with all of that?

It's kinda cool in a way, but I never really thought about being more than a half hour away from a Wal Mart. Or hell, a freakin gas station. (Here's lookin' at you, Texas.)

So, I'm staying with Kelly for two weeks. I've been here since Monday. Her mom had surgery on her leg and can't drive for two weeks, so I'm helping out with that since Kelly can't drive. Getting Kelly to work and the store and whatnot, and it just makes life easier to stay here while I'm doing it.

It actually makes it sort of nice right now. See, Ashley and I have gotten into a bit of a tiff. Probably more than a bit, but we're not yelling. We're not really doing anything. She said something that hurt my feelings. I felt it was uncalled for, and, to be honest, I was on my first day of my period, so I was a little horomonal. I didn't e-mail her back right away because I knew I was hurting and I wasn't going to say anything nice while I was. Ashley, when I did not respond immediately, said she thought we could both be adults and because we are supposed to be such good friends she thought we could talk about this. Unfortunately, this forced me to respond somehow. So I had to tell her my feelings were hurt. I didn't expand any farther than that, except to tell her that I wasn't talking because I didn't want to regret what I was saying. If I had just been left alone, I probably never would have mentioned the hurt feelings. Because by now, I'm mostly over it. Except the fact that I was hurt is just SITTING there in the middle of things. I did explain to her why I was hurt and why I was not necessarily sorry. She said that she never meant to hurt me, but she wasn't necessarily sorry either.

So now I don't really know what to do. It's out there and it can't be taken back and I'm just not that good at moving around my feelings. I prefer to wait a couple days, let the feelings settle, and then hash out the facts of the matter. The feelings aren't as important as the facts. The fact was, while I don't see what I did wrong, I respect Ashley's stand on it and will try to change my behavior. I can make that concession no problem. If I'd had the couple days of no talking, I would have said that without the feelings and everything would have been fine. Now it's not and I don't know how to fix this. I can't take full responsibility for it, but I take responsibility for my part, but I don't see how to move around what's been said.

All in all, this has got me all set in a restless sort of mood again. This always happens when I have any sort of conflict in my life. I'm not necessarily a flight over fight person, but I deal with things better from a distance. But I've used up all my vacation for the year, and I have no money with which to travel to begin with. Plus there's the whole being responsible for driving Kelly thing. I'm making plans to go to the Renn Faire with daftpyratelolz so that Saturday trip will help, but that's, like, two weeks from now.

Really, I just don't know what to do about this thing with Ashley, and it's freaking me out. It's majorly kicking in my abandon ship reflex, but I don't want to do that. Ashley is my dearest friend. I love JJ with all my heart. I just don't know what to fragging do! 

I'm so impatient for Nanowrimo to get started again. I've been itching to write these past couple days, but I haven't done anything. I want to work on the ideas I have, but I have to wait to comply with Nano rules. I know I could break them with no consequences, but it's the principle of the thing! And it's just more fun for me.

But the two, well, three, ideas I have are:

1. This one's sort of...I guess cliche is the word I'm looking for. A demon was trapped and sealed away in an ordinary looking stone slab. Something falls on the slab many years later and puts a crack in it. It's not nearly enough for the demon to escape, but he does wake up. He nearly drives himself mad waiting as the years pass and weather and time gradually widen the crack. He doesn't realize it, but the ones who captured him put a stipulation on their spell. If he ever broke free, he'd be bound to the nearest of their descendents, unable to do anything without their permission. His powers would be sealed unless this descendent released him. This descendent is totally terrified of him. She doesn't know anything about her heritage, and the demon isn't forthcoming with what details he does know. He tries to bully and scare her into freeing him. And that's about all I've got on that so far. I do know that it's not really going to be a redemption story. The demon is an asshole, and he's going to stay that way.

2. This one came from something Malunis said on Twitter this morning: working for a Time god. I don't know what all that entails yet, but the idea seems interesting.

The third one is my fall back every year. Last year it was the story I could procrastinate on to work on Eyes Like a Wolf. It's an idea my friends and I came up with a long time ago, and I always poke on it in a nostalgic sort of way.

I can't wait for the Nano forums to start being really active again, and all the interesting threads start anew. I plan on heavily raiding the Adopt a Line/Plot/what have you threads this year.

My laziness knows hardly any bounds. I haven't done anything with my Texas pictures yet. I dunno...It just wasn't as good a vacation as I was hoping for, so I've been ignoring that it happened. Seeing Weston was great and all, but we spent more time with his family than we did actually doing stuff. I don't know his family, and while they were very nice people, I didn't go out there to see them. I went out there to see Weston and his friends. The only person not related to him he introduced me to was his girlfriend. *rolls eyes* 

But whatever. We went to Sea World and that was amazing. I got to see whales!! Someday I will go on a whale watching tour thingy and see really big ones. Even if it does mean suffering through all that cold.

I think I'm going to start taking horseback riding lessons. I've always wanted to, and I loved when I used to go riding with my friend Nicki. There's a place called Talbot Run that I'm going to look into. They offer a free introductory lesson by appointment so I can check them out and see if I like it. Horsies! 

I've been sort of poking at my writing recently. I haven't had too much inspiration over the past couple weeks, so most of it has turned out to be crap. I really can't wait for the Nanowrimo boards to reset. The fresh influx of ideas will be welcome. I have a sort of idea of what I want to write about this year. Hopefully I'll win again. (And maybe edit the thing into something decent.) I'm normally better at writing short things than long ones, but I hardly ever get ideas for short things. I think I might grab some writing prompts from somewhere and just fool around with that. No one's gonna see it anyway. *sits on notebook* 

Renn Faire starts this coming Saturday. I'm not going to be able to go this weekend, but I'm definitely going sometime this year. Daemien wants to get out and about! I'd like to even go twice, since I have two outfits to wear. Pirate and maiden. Woo! I've seriously considered wearing the pirate costume just...out and about, but pirating is more fun with fellow brigands, and I don't think anyone is really going to oblidge me and dress up too. *sadface* 

On a Transformers note, I finally bought ROTF Sideswipe the other day. I haven't pulled him out of the box yet, but he's pretty in there at least. I haven't bought many of the ROTF toys, but then, I didn't buy many of the 2007 movie toys either. I hate to sound all...fangirl retarded, but I just didn't like the way most of them looked. Especially the Decepticons. They so pretty in the other verses. Whenever I get some money saved up again (LIKE THAT'S EVER GONNA HAPPEN) I intend on perusing Ebay for anything of interest. I'm not really picky. I just want more! Maybe a boat friend for Banzai-tron. (I don't think he wants a boat friend, but who asked him anyway!) 

Nyeeeeh....I should sleep. Work early tomorrow. Hooray. Going to the gym to take either the step class or the cardio kickboxing class. Double hooray.

I went to the 4H fair tonight at the AG Center with Kelly and some of her family. It was nice. Had a lot of fun. ^_^ The horse pull was tonight, and her relatives wanted to watch. I did too, but Kelly and I ended up walking around and checking out all the vendor booths and the animals. We spent quite a bit of time in the rabbits, because those are Kelly's favorite. I forgot to bring my camara, but we saw some awesome lookin' chickens. They had like, long feathers on their heads that made them look like hippies! It was hilarious.

And some girl had her hen on a leash. Weird, but cool.

Carroll County is such a hick county. *laughs* 

Work was better today. They left me aloooone, which I love. Don't bother me with all these things that I don't really need to be doing. Just let my do my job as I know it needs to be done. If I'm doing something wrong, by all meas, correct me. But if I ain't, leave me alone, Primus fraggit.

Cold almost gone too, so that's good. I got knocked on my ass but this thing Sunday and Monday. Even had to call out of work. That was actually half menal health as well as physical health. I took a couple naps and played some video games. One of the few bonuses of living at home is I get practically waited on when I'm sick. Got to nap with my head in Mommy's lap too, which was nice. ^_^ All I've got left is a slight cough. Don't sound like I'm hacking up a lung anymore. I don't have air conditioning at home, so sitting in it at work messes with me more than it does anyone else. I still wear freakin sweaters to work, and it's July. *shrugs* It never bothered me at the other places I worked because the buildings were big enough to disperse the AC without having it blow on me for 8 or so hours.

I really liked the trending topic today on Twitter #iamblessed. (This is where I wax religious again, if that bothers anyone. I just like to give fair warning.) I decided I was going to cover the day in prayer, so I spent my 10 minute drive to work praying and praising God. Got to work and discovered the #iamblessed, so I posted a couple things throughout the day to remind myself of a few things I'm thankful for and blessed with. I'm trying to get myself back to where I was and hopefully pressing on from that. It's a slow climb, but God is faithful even when I am not, and He guides me to where I need to be, even when I'm being too stubborn to see it. I have different help than I did in 2004, but I am not alone, and that's more than I deserve. I would like to find a church again, but I'm still really wary of church at the moment. I'll work myself back up to it eventually, because I know I need the support of a church. It's just going to take awhile. But, like I said, God is faithful and will not leave me, and He's blessed me with a best friend and spiritual sister who will stand by my side in whatever decision I make. And her family has sort of adopted me, so I have that. Even Kelly is supportive, and she's...partly wiccan and partly atheistic. (*laughs* We have odd religious talks, let me tell you)

There's probably going to be a lot of posts like that paragraph here in the near future. My family is going to be facing some tough times, and I have to continually remind myself of the things I'm blessed with and what God has done for me and delivered me from in order to be able to deal with these things myself. I'm a big believer in speaking my testimony as a sort of recharge and focusing point. I don't know if I've put the biggest piece of my testimony on here. I'll go back and look, because I'm fairly sure there's going to be a point in time where I'll need to hash all that out again. Even if I have, I suppose if I need to put it out, I'll put it out. I'll just put it behind a cut or something.

Anyway. Rambling post is rambling.

Okay, so I'm not really over that whiny patch that I was on a couple days ago. I was going to wait until I could not be a whiner to post again, but it just ain't gonna happen any time soon I don't think. I get like this twice a year at least, so I know to expect it. And there's nothing I can really do to fix it except for go places. Normally Otakon is my go places in the summer, but this year it wasn't so much. I'm going to Texas in a few weeks and that should cure this restlessness. Hopefully

In any case, I'm going to try to keep myself occupied by working on crafty things. I won't be able to do much right now, because I'm short on funds, but after Texas, I'll be able to get some money saved up again and start doing better projects. I'll be posting about them here, of course, but I'm going to start up a blog on blogger.com specifically for these things. I might start selling some things I make in the future, so  want to keep things separate. Keep my personal mess out of my crafty mess wherever possible. *laughs*

Otakon was last weekend, and it was fun. Not the most fun I've ever had at a con, but it was good. I bought the last DVD of Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and the newest Ouran manga. Bought two Konami Busou Shinkis Howling and Arnval, and bought a Figma Haruhi Suzumiya. I bought some stuff in the artist alley too. Nothing fantastically interesting. Just a couple bits of jewelry.

( Some pics from Otakon )

I was going to post another whiny bit about my job and my hatred of it and all the things that are displeasing me at the moment, but I'm not going to.

Instead, I'm going to log off for the evening and watch Coraline. Sounds like a much better alternative.

Had another productive day! I worked for pretty much 8 hours all told on my null rays. I had some of the parts done already, but I lot of the smaller finicky pieces still needed to be done. Some measurements changed from one to the other, so I had to remeasure some bits.


( Which, really, is such a pain.  )