One Step Closer

Phew.

I have now a) turned in all the necessary paperwork for IRB review for my study; and b) turned in all the necessary paperwork to get my thesis off the ground.

Yay.

Now it's time to start begging teachers for letters of recommendation (10 letters needed total. Geez).

Annoyance factor for the day: I thought I had finished all of the necessary work for my second class tomorrow night, only to get an e-mail from the teacher 30 minutes ago adding two more reading assignments to the pile. That's intensely unfair.

Off to see the wizard.

More later.

Prezzies!

Here's all the cool stuff I got for my birthday:



Starting from left to right, here they are. A brand-new Lost Boys t-shirt (one of the awesomest movies of all time).

The back of the t-shirt:

Stuffed dragon! Isn't he adorable?!

This is my Glock. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

It's a Glock 26 9mm. I know it looks like a big black gun-shaped lump in this picture (my camera sucks), but I promise it's pretty nifty.

And then a cute Eeyore t-shirt.

I also got the 2-disc special collector's edition of Serenity (yay!). Can't wait to watch all the special features.

More later.

Birthday

So far today I:
1. Turned 27. Yay.
2. Had some kid get snippy with me on the Buffy Boards. (I don't think s/he liked me applying physics to his/her precious little pretend world.)
3. Got a rejection letter from AlienSkin.

Let's hope it gets better from here on in.

Sleep?

I think this semester is going to kill me. Seriously. Besides the stuff I have to do for my thesis--right now, putting together a packet for the IRB so I can run my study--and the Lit Studies paper I've been bitching about, I now also have a TON of work for my Linguistics class. I'm already up to my ass in homework, and I haven't even HAD one of my classes yet (tomorrow night).

On top of that, I haven't been sleeping well. For some reason, my body has decided that I don't NEED to sleep on school nights, and I'm half awake most of the night. On weekends, of course, this isn't a problem. Last night, I took some NyQuil--and DREAMED that I couldn't sleep! It's really pissing me off.

On top of THAT, I'm already sick--sore throat, sniffles, all that fun. I think it's mostly stress induced, but I can't do anything about it--I'm stuck with the stress. So I have cough drops. That's about it.

I hope getting my Glock today will make all of this feel better. But right now I have to go write an essay for Linguistics (due TOMORROW!) and work on researching my Lit Studies paper. The joys of being a Grad student.

More later.

Snark

My topic for Intro to Literary Studies has been changed YET AGAIN. I had just settled into the idea of doing something on Fantasy, pedagogy, and theory for my Master's thesis and writing a piece of that for Lit Studies when the teacher decided that no, I need to take ONE work by ONE author and analyze it. Which means that NONE of the work I've done for my thesis so far, and a lot of the stuff I did over the summer, is COMPLETELY WORTHLESS. All of it is worthless for this class, and some of it for my thesis. It's very frustrating.

So now I'm planning a Historical-Feminist approach to Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country. Should be easy, considering it's a FEMINIST BOOK! I figured I'd compare the two different cultures in the book and discuss how they may have developed from a historical context.

That's the PLAN, anyway. My plans have been apt to change without notice--or my input--lately.

But tomorrow we get to go buy our Glocks. I'll post pictures.

More later.

Counting Down

5 hours til W.E.'s department party to welcome the new 1st-year students. We have to bring beer (eye roll). It was that or a fruit tray, and we figured beer would be a) easier, and b) cheaper.

1 day til school starts again. Yay!

5-7 days til my Rosetta Stone German software should be here and I can start learning to curse . . . um, speak German.

1 1/2 months til the GRE Literature in English test. Yikes! I've got a study guide I've been using to cram, and I'm hoping to get someone to quiz me VERY soon.

ANY TIME NOW I should be getting responses from Jennifer Jackson, Jane Chelius, AlienSkin Mag, Blood, Blade and Thruster Mag, or Abyss & Apex e-zine. Sheesh!

3 months til applications for M.F.A. and Ph.D. programs start being due.

9 months til I graduate. Then real life starts (sort of--I'll still be in school; W.E. will be doing the real-life working thing).

More later.

Yadda Yadda

Not much going on here lately. I took a GRE practice test and scored a 550. Go me. Still working on it; I'm aiming for the upper 600s. We had a Graduate orientation the other day. It was kind of weird because even though I'm starting my first fall semester as a Graduate student, I'm in my last year of Graduate study. I'm kind of ahead of everyone else who was at that orientation, but I still have to do all the first-year stuff.

I've dropped my German class and will instead be learning from the Rosetta Stone software--which had damn well better be as good as they say for the price I paid for it. It turns out that instead of 2 semesters of German to fulfill my foreign language I'd need 3. I don't have 3 semesters left, and I can't stick around until next December; our lease is up in June, W.E. needs a bigger city to get a job in, and I'm pretty much sick of this college and ready to move on.

Ah, well. Back to my studying. Blah.

More later.

Bang! Bang!

W.E. and some friends and I went shooting on Saturday. It was fun, except that between the Russian ammo and the cheap Remington ammo, the guns got really dirty really fast then started jamming. That's okay; we got rid of all our crappy ammo, so all we have left now is the good stuff. After a couple of magazines, W.E. noticed that I was using "Kentucky windage," so he adjusted my sights, which allowed me to do this:

Which is really good shooting for me. Now I have to clean the darn rifle at some point (sigh--gross).

As if I didn't have enough to worry about, I've been fretting about moving next May. We'll be done with our Master's degrees and W.E. will be working while I work on my M.F.A. or Ph.D. (depending on which program I get accepted to). We have a choice between two cities right now, Richmond VA or Greensboro NC. After running some numbers, I've discovered that, yes, if we're careful we will have enough money to move and pay rent for at least two months after moving--if we move to Greensboro. You would not BELIEVE what a tiny one-bedroom apartment costs in Richmond. For those prices, we could get a two-bedroom, two-bath with a balcony in Greensboro. Sheesh.

And just as I'd finally managed to almost forget all the crap that went on in high school, finally managed to quit shuddering every time a memory of me being a spaz came up, I get a notice that they're planning our 10-year reunion. GREAT. I probably won't be able to go, anyway, but thanks for reminding me, guys.

More later.

Stardust

Was AMAZING. Best movie I've seen in a VERY long time. Everyone should go see this movie, if just for Robert DeNiro in drag. But there are many other reasons to see it, of course. Claire Danes was great (and I'll admit I was a bit worried, considering her "performance" in Terminator 3), the special effects were wonderful, and even Michelle Pfeiffer pulled off a great scary, kind of sexy (when she wasn't old and yucky) witch (which is saying something, because I was totally unconvinced during Up Close and Personal and One Fine Day).

If you haven't seen Stardust yet, well . . . why? Go! It's totally worth it.

Ooh! And Beowulf is coming out fairly soon, too, and that looks like it's going to kick ass. Neil Gaiman has been a busy, busy man. Good. All the better for us.

More later.

Writing Again

Today I began serious work on my new novel, a paranormal murder mystery. I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately to get a handle on how they work, and Kay Hooper's Sleeping with Fear has been a great resource. Between that, Kelley Armstrong's Exit Strategy and everything Kim Harrison's written, I think I have a grasp on the basic requirements for a murder mystery, and I'm putting them together. This one includes several of the characters from Stars Without Name, which helps because I already have them mapped out in my head and don't have to take this plunge with brand new characters.

In case you're wondering about the gryphon, the main character is a Spirit mage, and the Elemental of Spirit is the Gryphon.

So far this book is untitled, but I'm hoping to play with the Gryphon theme as well as the murder theme. I'm thinking about it. Ideas are welcome.

So here we go with the word counts. So far today: 1,637. Only 78,363 to go.

More later.

Waiting=Suck

Still no word from Jennifer Jackson (I know she's alive and reading submissions, though, cause I read her blog), AlienSkin, Blood, Blade and Thruster, or Jane Chelius.

Sigh.

HOWEVER!

W.E. and I are going to go see Stardust tonight, then tomorrow we get our books for school and head out to the range to blow up boxes with our BOOMSTICKS! Heh. Thank you, very exciting.

And today I had cheesecake, which just makes everything happy.

More later.

Rats.

The great thing about e-mail queries: quick turnaround time.
The bad thing about my query to Rachel Vater yesterday: it got rejected.
Rats.
I'm going to try Jane Chelius next. Wish me luck.

More later.

Query, Query, Query

I've begun staggering queries to agents instead of just waiting on one to send a rejection before moving on to the next one. I'm not sending out huge batches of queries, still just one at a time, but spacing them about a week apart. Today I sent an e-mail query to Rachel Vater of Folio Literary Management. Fingers are, again, crossed.

I can't wait until the 2008 Writer's Market comes out. That will make the search fresh again. I have found a website that helps the agent search, and as long as they keep that website updated, I won't have to worry about my info being old.

I'm beginning to think I don't have the patience for hardcore, deep down research. I'm working my way through a book on American Fantasy, and getting restless and bored while reading it. I guess I'll have to work on that; if I'm going to be a college professor, I'll have to do tons of research on tons of stuff in order to (eventually) get tenure. That's assuming they haven't done away with tenure by then; I'm hearing rumors that might happen.

I also haven't done as much studying for the GRE as I'd like, but I'm going to force myself to do that later this afternoon. Sparknotes are my friend.

More later.

Buffy Madness

Last night was one of those nights that had the potential to be just freaking awesome, if it wasn't for all the stupid people in the world.

W.E., My Favorite RedHead, one of MFRH's friends and I went to a Buffy Sing-Along. The orchestrators (calling themselves "Minions") appeared to be trying to make it a Rocky-Horror-esque thing; they had goodie bags with a kazoo, bubbles, a little finger-monster, and a Band-Aid. We still haven't figured out the Band-Aid, but the rest of it was for specific actions during specific sections of the musical.

The night started out pretty good. MFRH was so excited she could barely walk and I kept expecting her to pee her pants. Here's us getting ready to leave:
(Much as I try to avoid picture-taking, at least until I've lost a lot of weight, this event seemed to call for pictures. So yes, I'm fat; deal with it.)

We went to Wendy's for dinner, then wandered around a not-so-nice section of the city while we waited for midnight.

Once the actual event started, there weren't many picture-taking opportunities. I did, however, manage to win this:

for knowing that Mayor Wilkins' last words before the school blows up ("Graduation Day, Part II", Season 2) were "Well, gosh!" Actually, I knew all the answers to all the trivia questions, but that was the one they actually let me answer.

So then with the singing, which was fun (I like to sing). Then they did some raffle stuff with prizes like a commemorative stake, a piece of the Buffy lot, and signed comic books. Then they showed "Dopplegangland" (Season 3). A lot of people left after the raffle, but quite a few stayed, as well.

The night should have been just freaking awesome. Me, a Buffy geek, surrounded by other Buffy geeks, all getting together to just have an awesome time and share the giddy geekiness. Right? Wrong.

The lady sitting next to me was angry that they picked me to answer the Mayor Wilkins question, and made pointed comments about how she had every action figure except that one, like I was just going to give it to her. I think she expected me to; I got a definite expectant vibe off of her. Then when I didn't, she got grumpy. At some point during the first song, she moved to another row entirely. W.E. said she'd been shooting me dirty looks while I was singing, and that I was probably overpowering her. Well, pardon me for being a former Music major and having vocal training. I know how to project, and I can't not sing my best. I did, however, keep one hand (or at least an elbow) on my Cordy figure for the rest of the night, cause I got the distinct impression that this lady wouldn't think twice about stealing it.

Then there were the two girls sitting in front and slightly to the right of me. They weren't singing, and they appeared grouchy with those of us who were really getting into the whole thing. Which makes me wonder; why come to something like this and pay $10 knowing that it's going to be a big geek fest, then get annoyed when it's a big geek fest?

This always happens when I go out (which isn't often). There are always those people who have to ruin it for everyone else, like at the Lacuna Coil concert. And somehow I always end up sitting/standing right near them. And I'm sensitive enough to the moods of others that these people do manage to ruin it for me. Hence, last night was not the giddy fun fest it really should have been.

But hey, I got a toy surprise. And a kazoo.

More later.

Tragedy

My thoughts and prayers with those caught in the Minneapolis bridge collapse and their families.