Well, I am off to Guatemala in about three hours. I’ll be gone for three weeks, can you believe it? I’m so excited and so nervous at the same time–my dad filled me with stories about how I, as a red-head, was more susceptible to be mugged or pick-pocketed, so now I’m freaking out a bit. Not to mention going to a country where I don’t even speak the language. hopefully I’ll come home and be able to say more than just “How’s your pain?”

I should have internet access there, so I’ll try to update on my travels periodically.

Talk to you all soon!

Written for the tv100 Addictions Challenge (I don’t know if I’ll post it there… They didn’t seem to receptive to GG fic.)

Title: Cravings
Words: 100
Characters: Rory/Jess
Adult content: From me?? Well, it’s probably the most sensual that I’ve ever written, but there’s absolutely nothing in it. It’s still on a low PG rating. I blush easy, I guess…

Inspired by Marissa’s (avidtvfan) incredibly lovely drabble… Don’t listen to all of her doubts, I absolutely love it.

Cravings

Current favorite fics:

GG: Over Time by Elise _starsinhereyes. She just updated it, after I had been so worried that she would never touch it again. LOVE this story. And this chapter is probably one of her best yet.

LOTR: If Wishes Were Elves, Even Fangirls Would Dance by Teanna. This is probably the best “Mary Sue and Elves in Modern Times” stories around. Teanna’s got a thing for The Elf (Legolas) which is evident in her conversations between Legolas and Gimli (my favorite parts). And her original characters are so well written–and I see too much of myself in them. Then add in Nightcrawler from X-Men and you have a story unlike any other!

BtVS: Black and White by Kinkor the Knight. Massive novel-length story that he’s still working on. It’s a sequel to his phenomenal Harsh Legacy Series that he wrote as an alternative Season 6 (and it was so much better than Joss and co should have been getting ideas from him. His stories are sadly overlooked, but they are the best written. He’s got the characters down!

Question for GG fans: How do you think Jess would answer the phone? I’m missing one line for a scene where he responses to a “hello?” I can’t come up with anything! Any suggestions?

claidheamhmor posted this ages ago, but I really liked it. And I’m in an introspective mood (which is not a mood you’ll find on a LJ list.)

Beliefs

I figured I’d better post this before Dean’s return tomorrow and I get so pissed at him that I never want to see him content…

This is part of my “write something besides Rory and Jess” collection.

A Second Chance

It’s been a while since I updated this journal for real. Every time, I start to post a message, something comes up and I’m swept away. I wish that it meant that I was being productive, you know, finish formatting my website, writing on my next chapter, studying for the next upcoming test. No, usually not, just little things that waste my time. Grrr.

I hope everybody had a nice Valentine’s Day, regardless of their attachment status. Becka, I was thinking of you and hoping that your day went better than you thought it would. How was your cake?

I went out to dinner with a bunch of first years women that I’ve studied with. The restaurant was so crowded, full of simpering couples–we had to wait an hour to get a table. Now, to be completely honest, I’ve never had a “relationship” go beyond a second date, so I’ve never celebrated VD with anybody special. So it may just be my singleness talking, but to me, it seems like such a cheap, over-sentimental holiday that there’s not a part of me that is dying to have a significant other to celebrate with… I don’t know, maybe it’s the flowers that wins them over, but I just don’t see the point. Although, I have a soft spot for the conversation hearts, they make me laugh.

Dinner was good for the most part… Good Italian food (Shrimp, spinach, mushrooms and pine nuts in lemon butter over pasta…Could you create a better dish?), good conversation, good people. Only one moment dulled the evening. One woman brought her friend, a fellow nurse whose name I’ve completely spaced, and apparently they’re trying to set her up with some of the (few) single guys in their class. And one of those guys they are considering is Matt. When I heard his name, my stomach lurched, my heart started beating twofold, and I know I was blushing bright enough to light a fire.

Who is Matt, you are asking? A long story and one that I haven’t talked about in a long time, but last night really disturbed me and I need to get it off my chest, so you, my poor readers, will get to hear about Matt, more than you probably wanted to know.

I met him around two years ago, when I was working in a lab before I started medical school. I didn’t even notice him for probably the first two months that I was there… He only worked a couple of days a week for a few hours, I barely saw him and I don’t think we said more than hi for ages. He’s pretty quiet and shy if you don’t know him. But we finally started talking and it suddenly dawned on me that he was cute (and he is, horribly good-looking. And I didn’t even realize it for the first six months that I knew him, I’m that dumb sometimes) and we had such a good time talking that before you knew it I was hooked.

I started medical school right when he started applying, so I kept in contact with him after I quit working. Rarely saw him, but we had a lot of fun email conversations, which added fuels to the flame.

Anyway, shortening this really boring story (I have such a hard time talking about my flings and crushes, that it all comes out forced and trite), he started going to my school, I saw him a little more, and it finally started to sink in that he wasn’t interested and he wasn’t going to be interested, so I did the whole “purge and move on” thing that I’ve almost perfected, I’ve done it so much. Unrequited love… Yeah, I’m writing a user guide on it.

Or at least I thought I had perfected that talent. The thought of him dating someone else made me positively green, and I so hated that girl. She’s too old for him anyway.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. I mean, it’s been almost two years… Two freaking years. Granted, I’ve set the record for the longest crush–Erik, eight years–but that was mostly in high school and I can cut that some slack because it was the first crush and he was the only nice guy in my entire school. But I thought I had matured some since then.

And so now, I’m obsessing, I can’t get him out of my mind, which shows even greater maturity. And he was in my dreams last night… another bad sign.

On a good note, I noted a guy who looked strikingly like Jess… Believe me, I did a double take and was disappointed in reality. But… thick, wavy hair that stood up, short and lean. Yeah, his date probably didn’t understand why I was shooting daggers at her either!

Going for the medical humor again!

From the lovely fileg

Your spleen is pure, your pancreas is clear and you are devout. Add a fortune to your website or blog, click here.

I probably would change the ending to be something like “you are devoid of gout.” Unless I’m missing a pun or something. 🙂

I found these highly amusing, but I’m probably the only one

Hillbilly Medical Terms

Benign ……………. What you be after you be eight.
Bacteria …………… Back door to cafeteria.
Barium …………….. What you do with dead folks.
Cesarean Section ……. A neighborhood in Rome.
Catscan ……………. Searching for the cat.
Cauterize ………. Made eye contact with her.
Colic …………… A sheep dog.
Coma …………… A punctuation mark.
D&C ……………. Where Washington is.
Dilate …………. To live longer than your kids do.
Enema …………. Not a friend.
Fester ………… Quicker than someone else.
Fibula ………… A small lie.
G.I.Series ……… World Series of military baseball.
Hangnail ……….. What you hang your coat on.
Impotent ……….. Distinguished, well known.
Labor Pain ………. Getting hurt at work.
Morbid ………….. A higher offer than I bid.
Nitrates ………… Cheaper than day rates.
Medical Staff ……. A Doctor’s cane, sometimes shown with a snake.
Node ……………….. I knew it.
Outpatient ………….. A person who has fainted.
Pap Smear ……………. A fatherhood test.
Pelvis ………………. Second cousin to Elvis.
Post Operative ……….. A letter carrier.
Recovery Room …. Place to do upholstery.
Secretion ……. Hiding something.
Tablet ………. A small table to change babies on.
Seizure ………. Roman emperor who lived in the Ceasarean Section.
Terminal Illness …. Getting sick at the train station.
Tumor …………… More than one.
Urine …………… Opposite of mine.
Varicose ………… Near by.
Hospital ………… The biggest building in town, other than Ed’s feed warehouse.

I’ve been so busy that I’ve only just had time to catch up on some of the challenges. So there’s a few here.

Title: Afternoon Tea
Word Count: 100
Characters: Hopefully you can figure that out…
Notes: Started out for the introduction challenge, but since nobody really got introduced, don’t know if it fits.

Afternoon Tea

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!