Extra, Extra!!

LNB has been brutally mutilated and slashed. My poor baby, it was for your own good…

Chapters 1 and 3 have been combined, as well as Chapter 2 and 4. Jess’s conversation was slashed and revised all over. It sounds so better to my ears at least. But I hated doing it too… That means, it looks like I’ve spent over a year just writing 7 chapters. Oh, yeah.

It’ll probably cause problems when people try to review the next couple of chapters, since ff.net still records it as nine chapters, but, I guess that’s the price I have to pay. 🙂

But now, I can devote all of my attention to the next two chapters. Whee!

This is probably silly of me…

I was just thinking about my journal and the online friends that I have and it struck me… Most of you, I have no idea what you look like! It is strange, how the internet works, how we make close relationships, where we can talk about our interests in common and life in general, and yet we have no face to put to this other person on the other end. What does it do to our relationships? Are we more open with the faceless? With no fear of recognizing this other person in the real world, I can see how that might be true. Are we afraid that we will have to change our labels of people once we have a face? That they might not be the image of who we imagined them to be? I don’t know.

And then I wondered if you wondered what I looked like too.. So, silly me, I posted a few pics on the web for your viewing pleasure. I’m making this a friends’ only entry, hopefully to keep out the weirdo stalkers… Both of the pics are now a few years old. I have a bad habit of never finishing a roll of film. I wear contacts more now and less makeup…

Julia
— My best friend was getting married, and I was feeling left out (yeah, the whole thing was hard on me) so the two of us went out and took “pseudo-engagement” photos of the two of us. to celebrate the event and our friendship. Blame the fuzzy pic on her fiancé.. he took them

Jules
— Um, yeah. Not the most flattering pic of me, but it’s not like this is a dating thing or anything. It makes me laugh.

And if any of you are brave or willing, I’d love to see what you look like too… You can send pics directly to me at jcd1013@dsdf.org. I promise I won’t use them as blackmail. 🙂

Rereading your own stories is sometimes a risky endeavor.

After being nominated at the Literati Fanfiction Awards, (waves gratefully to very sweet person), I decided to reread my “What A Wonderful World.” I am truly vainly proud of that story, mostly because I swear someone else wrote it–I must have been channeling a spirit or something. I just remember that I was especially giddy because a particular crush seemed to be going right at that time (of course, it fizzled not long afterwards), but seriously, I don’t recognize that brand of Romantic!Me.

Anyway, I decided to go through the rest of my stories, especially LNB, just to make sure that I didn’t have any glaring errors or major inconsistencies. Yeah, bad idea. My early Jess is laughable in his conversation… sometimes I get him, and then other times, who was I writing, an English professor? kimlockt told me that he needed some work–and I agreed at the time and changed a few things, but I just hadn’t seen until now how much!

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized… the first four chapters are really just an introduction to the story. Compared to my later chapters, they’re short, only about 4 pages each and not that much important stuff happens.

So I’ve been editing all afternoon. I combined chapter 1 and 3, and will be doing the same for 2 and 4. And Jess is getting a trim. All of the “really” and “so” that I use are going bye-bye, as well as most of the first words of every sentence.

But now, I’m concerned that I’m going to have to repost the whole thing at ff.net. Combining like that will make my story two chapters shorter and it’ll mess up my reviews (I hit 50! Woohoo!!) and I remember reading something that if you try to delete the last chapter, it wipes away your whole story.

But it needs the changes so badly. I can’t even think about continuing it until I get this fixed. Grrr.

Any advice?

So glad it’s Friday.

Yesterday was so unbelievably awful that I didn’t think today would ever come. Had finals yesterday, for the Nephrology block… So glad it’s over. I think I did really poorly.

Chris and I got in a fight right before the test–we were arguing about how to do an equation (I know, stupid), and I couldn’t see where he was coming from and we had already studied for three hours that morning… Nerves were frayed by that point, and after arguing whether milliliters or deciliters were bigger (yes, I know, stupid–and I was the one who was wrong, lol!) he finally just got up and, well, stomped off. I hate, hate, hate, hate fighting. I do just about anything to avoid confrontations, and I was so afraid that I had lost yet another friend that it made me sick. Needless to say, it took me a while before I was even able to read the questions clearly.

The test was brutal, too… I know I failed the physiology portion, there were questions that I had never even heard of the concepts. We’ll see about the organ system itself… And joy, I get to look forward to restudying this all in two months for the boards. Bliss!

Afterwards, I waited for Chris and, just with a look, everything was okay again, no apologies necessary. Neither of us are the kind who keep grudges. And, the way he acted, was exactly how I react too, so there weren’t any hard feelings.

One good thing: went swing dancing last night. I used to dance all the time, when I was a freshman/sophomore. I haven’t been for at least two years now… man, I’ve forgotten so much! I remembered the basic and not much else… I tried to do the basic for the Lindyhop or West Coast Swing (my favorite) and I couldn’t. I’ve completely forgotten how to follow a lead and I actually tripped on my own feet. I never was very good, not one of those that you looked at with envy at their gracefulness and poise, but I wasn’t that bad either.

There was a guy there who reminded me of my old dancing partner/friend/crush, Oliver. The way he moved was Oliver incarnate–the way he held his head, closed his eyes, moved his partner. It was rather eery. But why did I get a surge of something unpleasant, when my roommate Liz noted it and explained to the girl we went with that “James (the dancing boy) reminded me of an ex-boyfriend.” Vengeful!Me responded in my head: One kiss, one date does not boyfriend make.

Gah! Four years later, after I’ve completely exorcized all romantic attachments/thoughts/feelings to Oliver, — after I decided that he was just a friend and I was happy with that and then he completely abandoned our friendship — and I still feel like I’m in competition with her. I thought those demons were long dead.

I actually met a few guys, one or two with potential. Most conversations:

Guy: So, have you been here before?
Me: Yeah, I used to come all the time, but it’s been about four years.
Guy: Four years. That’s a long time.
(Silence as he ponders how old that makes me to be. Conversation is dead.)

Guy #2: So, are you going to school?
Me: Um, yeah, I’m in med school.
Guy #2: Med school, that’s really hard.
(Silence as he ponders how old that makes me and how brilliant I must be. Conversation dies.)

🙂 🙂 🙂 At least guy #2 didn’t say, “you must be so smart.” Or I would have stomped on his foot.

Ah, but I do so love to dance! I learned how to shag last night… Er… yes, name of a dance move…you hop on one foot, then the other… I swear!

Oh! And happy news! I’ve a semi-blind date this weekend to look forward to… Melissa (Chris’s girlfriend, who I absolutely adore and a first year) is setting me up with another first year. I’m excited. I won’t mention how long it’s been since my last date, but it’ll be a refreshing change. I know who he is by sight, but should I be concerned that Melissa describes him as a “jolly, like the Jolly Green Giant”? Jolly just isn’t a good descriptor for anyone.

I wonder how she described me to him….

Laughed my socks off!

Return of the King–by Finger Puppets!

See the pretty icon shirerain made for me? I’m so excited!! Loreena McKennitt… how much I love her songs and this one is my favorite (iTunes tells me that I’ve listened to it 70 times (and that’s just since I ripped it back in September.)) I never know how to describe how I feel listening to it… It’s almost this feeling like a fairy tale has come true–something magical and mystical and beautiful revealed in my soul. There are times when I almost can believe in elves and fairies…

Lyrics to ‘Dante’s Prayer’

Congratulations! You’re Merry!

Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Sounds like me. (gives evil little chuckle)

The bloodlust is unquenchable tonight!

So many of my thoughts and ideas are just fragments, little wisps of ideas that float into my brain. Invariably, I’ll think up some idea of a story, some part of a relationship that I want to explore. So I sit down and write–and lose it completely after the first paragraph. Writing Like Never Before has been one of the most grueling processes for that very reason, because while I have an outline of my ideas and what I’d like to occur, I still have to fill in… And the fill-in, the fleshing out of the ideas into sentences and paragraphs can take me months, many of them sitting in front of my computer in completely frustration because I can’t get out the words that are there. So often, I feel like an amateur sculptor, staring at a blob of clay, seeing what it could look like, but never knowing how to get it out.

Perhaps that’s why I like drabbles so much. I read other people’s and I’m inspired… They’re short, just 100 words wrapped around one moment, where I strive to express as much as possible. I can put down my fragmented thoughts and somehow get it to say what I want it to–like my drabble about Jess’s leaving and how Luke was dealing–there wasn’t enough in me to make that a complete story, but in a drabble form, I think I got down pretty much what I wanted.

I’m not a person who thinks poetically–there’s too much of the scientist in me, but with drabbles, I can come close. Lately, I think I’ve been thinking in drabbles… cutting out words, rearranging phrases, finding words that get just the right meaning. I think I verge on the sentimental a little more than I would like, but I think the form forgives that.

And I try to experiment more with drabbles than with any other form. Besides my experimentations with LOTR, right now I’m attempting to write two about Kirk–one a sonnet to LuLu and the other in the viewpoint of Cat Kirk… And it’s so hard!! I have a hard time writing humor, but I hope that playing around with this will give me some practice. I’ve tried writing different couples than I normally do (hence the Kirk and LuLu)… but as hard as I try, I cannot write Tristan–I wanted a Tristan/Paris one and considered exploring one about Rory from Tristan’s viewpoint, but it’s no use. I just can’t get inside of that character, he’s so foreign to me.

So here’s a couple more that I’ve been playing with. Same theme: lost cause, first one is slightly AU.

More GG Drabbles

Still working on compiling all of these, but I thought I’d post a couple.

Theme: Lost causes

Lost Causes Drabbles

Cross posted on lotr100

Title: Deliverance
Word count: 100
Adult content/slash: no
Notes: For the Honesty challenge and the apparent Dying!Boromir theme going on…

Deliverance

I think the bad mood that’s been going around is contagious. I’m avoiding all of my sad emotional songs right now, because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep from howling.

I’m tired. I’m weary, sick of school already. I’ve pretty much decided that I don’t like nephrology–it’s boring and all of their pictures of kidney biopsies look exactly the same. Nope, urology is not for me.

I once again slept very little last night–it has been so cold in my apartment that my feet are icicles and I can’t fall asleep until they’ve warmed up. And the lack of sleep really caught up today. I arrived to class and within about ten minutes, I was sick to my stomach. I fell asleep, using my friend Steve as a pillow, barely listening to lecture. I left after that hour, went to the quiet lounge and crawled onto the very soft and comfortable leather couches and slept for the next two hours. Some kind soul turned off the light–bad idea. Every time somebody would come in, they’d turn on the light, see me, gasp and turn it hurriedly off. On, off, flickering beneath my eyelids… Finally, I just told someone to leave it on, and I fell asleep.

I sleep hard on that sofa, deeply. It is incredibly conducive to sleep–I know; I have spent many hours on that sofa, pretending to study, but never give much of a fight when it claims me in its siren song.

I woke up in time to catch my last class… A waste of time, really. I’m so far behind and it’s only three days into the block. I haven’t done an ounce of study, and I’ve already missed around 7 hours of lecture, which I now have to read the notes for. (sigh). I haven’t wanted to study; part of me still wants it to be Christmas. I have so many projects that I want to at least make a good dent in, before I get swamped down with tests again.

And besides, Chris gets back on Sunday, and will want to hit the books hard then, to catch up on all that he missed, so what’s the point of doing it twice? He’s in Thailand right now, rock-climbing with his girlfriend and some other first years… Who goes on a vacation to go rock-climbing?? But, he tells me that he rode an elephant, so I guess they’re doing other things and, yeah, I’m kinda envious. I want to be gone on vacation right now…

I miss Chris. I miss seeing him in class and at least having some kind of buffer to get through the school days. We were grating on each other’s nerves by the end of the block, we had spent so much time in each other’s company, but that’s passed. Right now, I think I just miss everybody. My roommate is visiting family, the other one, my sister is working. And it’s lonely in my house since Sam left, there’s not any laughter and silliness… I want her to move back and just quit the stupid Army (hint, hint, if you’ve reading this again 🙂 ). I want everybody to move back: Sam, Brooke, Susan. I miss my friends.

I don’t understand why everybody has to grow up and leave.

Back to the code. Now that I’ve got the menu figured out, I have to design the billion other pages.

And I’m going to bed tonight by midnight!

Look what I did today:

Like Never Before has been updated with chapter 9. You can read it here: Like Never Before And you can always review it here… (okay, shameless plug over).

I really enjoyed writing this chapter. It was immensely satisfying and I really hope that it worked as well as it felt to me.

AND…. Big project number two:

Sneak peak for those who had endure my shrieks of frustration–I got it figured out!!!

LOTR Inklings

Of course, none of the links work and I still have problems with some of my style sheets (at the bottom of the page does it look like random numbers and symbols or Elvish script gibberish… it ought to look like the later, but there’s a buggy someplace). Can you see the menu on the left side–if you can’t please comment and let me know… that’s what I’ve spent the last week figuring out.

But I have a home page!

Whoa, it’s really late. I gotta get to bed–car ride is coming in about 6 hours now… Gah!

Found on just about everybody’s journal. I’m late, but eh…

Fanfic evaluation

Christmas break was lovely. It was a nice vacation. Besides the episode of the mouse (shudders–I had this waking dream this morning that our tub drain was blocked by a mouse that had gotten caught and freaked myself out… Yeah, I still have issues), it was nice to be home, just me and the ‘rents and not to think about school at all and work on things that I wanted to do. calm, verging on boring (except for the issue of aforementioned mouse and navigation bar adventure that I still haven’t figured out), not much happened. Just the way I like it.

Of course, all good things must end, they say… And it did. School started again today, nephrology (kidneys), so I had to listen to three lectures about their physiology and four more tomorrow (gee, I can’t wait!).

And I got my rotation schedule for next year. Here’s what my life is going to be like:

7/06-08/15 OB/Gyn
08/16-09/26 Internal Medicine
09/27-11/07 Surgery
11/08-11/21 Surgery Subspeciality (I’m hoping to do Neurosurgery)
11/22-12/19 Family Practice
12/20-01/02 Christmas break (for some reason there was a glitch and I was signed up for Financial Accounting here)
01/03-02/04 Break
02/14-03/27 Pediatrics
03/28-05/08 Psychiatry
05/09-06/19 Internal Medicine
06/20-07/03 Break

Exciting huh? I did pretty much get the schedule that I wanted, although right now, I’m really wondering what I was smoking. I really front-heavied the load–Ob/Gyn, Surgery and Internal Med are the hardest rotations, or so I’m told (and which I firmly believe…I’ve had nightmares about them and looking like a fool and breaking down because I’ve had no sleep. And I’m doing all three right after the other.

It pretty much guarantees that you’ll see very little of me from July to December. Actually make that May to December, since I have to study for the boards… And actually pass because I won’t have any other time to study. I guess that means I have about four months to finish LNB and my website, eh?

I only have two rotations with Chris, the first and the last. I was hoping for more. At least with him, I’d be able to laugh and have someone cover my back when I mess up, but it looks like I’m on my own. And now, I’ll rarely see him. How weird is that going to be?

But my spending three hours figuring out how to beat the lottery system must have worked, because both Chris and I got the schedules that we wanted, pretty much.. Of course, now I choose to doubt what I want…

Why am I doing this again? I seriously must be crazy.

Cross posted on lotr100

Title: By His Side
Word Count: 100
Team: Hobbits
Characters: Sam, Frodo
Adult Content/Slash: Only if you read it that way… No.
Author notes: For the Fear Challenge, although maybe a little more subtle definition of fear. More movieverse than book.

By His Side

Okay, I admit it. This sucks.

I’m frustrated and angry and about to throw this helpless (but not harmless, oh no!) computer out the window.

I feel old and it’s not a nice feeling. Mind you, I’m (only?) 25, but technology-wise, it looks like I’m ancient. Withering. Decrepit. Stoop. Frail. I’ve never felt so ignorant in my entire life. It’s like, no matter how hard I try, how much stuff I read, this will remain a black hole, a taunting enigma that just stands there and laughs at me.

I was going to lj-cut this, but I’m too tired to even remember that code, so here ya go:

“The Rant on the Evilness of Webpages”

I’ve been working for the past five days on the website that I (foolish mortal) am trying to design for my group, Lord of the RIngs Inklings (see my info for link, I’m too tired to type in the address). I’ve worked on it, off and on for the past six months, and saw Christmas break as the perfect time to get it all coded and ready to go for our two year anniversary on the 5th.

I started out formatting the compiled messages from our book discussions. Two days later (and we’re talking working 12-13 hours straight), I’ve finished 6 chapters. Out of around 60. I’m faster, it’s true, the major of the time was spent on the first chapter, but still.

Got bored. Decided that I probably ought to update the links on my templates, so do that. Realize that I’ve designed the templates wrong, so changes don’t work. Try to fix template and ruin every file that used that template, yep you guessed it–all of my work of the last two days. Manage to recover most of it, but now fully aware that I have to build new templates and copy, by hand, all of my hard work over.

Frustrated. Decide that I ought to put in the buttons and drop down menus and the “ooooo” of the page–a vertical, rollover menu navigation bar. Download the file for that one… And I can’t make out a single word of what it says, what I’m supposed to change, etc. I’ve cobbled my way to a basic understanding of HTML, but apparently, JavaScript is completely different.

Spend last two days, browsing the web, learning JavaScript, or at least patching my way to a workable code for the buttons and the drop down menus (yeh!). Found a place that will give me the code for my guestbook, so I don’t have to worry about that (I’ll believe it when I see it).

But I wanted my beautiful vertical rollover menu navigation menu, gosh darn it. Went back to the site, found their (poorly written) references, and basically looked up every single code and what it meant and how to change it. Followed instructions. Painstakingly typed in every single link. Put it where they told me and….

Nothing.

Not a thing. I can’t see anything. I’m not getting an error message, except from Safari, who thinks that there’s some file that doesn’t exist. Now, even the template that came with the package doesn’t work.

Five solid days of hard work and absolutely nothing to show for it. And I’ve just made you read through all of this programing crap that you probably don’t care one iota about. But if you’ve made it this far….

I need help.

If there’s anybody out there, who stumbles across this and understands JS/HTML and Dreamweaver and could look over my code and figure out where I’ve gone wrong, wow, I’d go and register a star under your name. Or write you a really sappy poem. Or whatever. We’re talking “give up the first-born” desperate. Just email me, post a comment, and I’d send you the files all wrapped in eternal gratitude.

On the plus side, I’ve finished my next chapter of LNB. I have to let my sister read it and tell me what she thinks, but it should be posted by the end of this weekend. It’s short, only 12 pages instead of 18. 🙂