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. 🙂

Followed this link from kimlockt

Fanfiction Rant

Apparently I’m a criminal! Whee!

I’ve never been on that side of the law before… I wonder what crime I’ll commit next… Hmmm.

The guy really needs to get off his moral highhorse. Or, I, petty criminal that I am, will be forced to take him down. (or not–wimpy side kicking in there.)

Once More With Hobbits: A Lord of the Rings and Buffy: the Vampire Slayer Musical Adventure.

My personal favorite: “I’ll Never Tell” with Legolas and Gimli for the laughs and “Standing” with Sam for the tears.

It snowed here. A lot. Outside my house, there’s about 14 inches. 14!! And it’s still falling.

It’s beautiful. I am such a winter personality. I love the magic of a snow storm. That line that Lorelai says in GG, during the first snow storm, yeah, she was channelling me.

So the trip to AZ is in limbo because my parents aren’t sure if they want to battle the elements all the way done and then on the way back, ’cause it’s supposed to snow again on Tuesday. Kinda disappointed, but since it took us about 6 hours to get to my apartment in SLC (my parents live about three hours away normally), I really can’t complain too much. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

So what am I doing right now? I remembered last night, when I should have been sleeping, that I had forgotten to do an assignment. And if I don’ turn it in, in the next day or so, I’ll fail. Yeah. Oh, and I also remembered that I forgot the shoes that I had tramped all over the valley trying to exchange them because they were too big. Weird thoughts come to you late at night, I tell ya.

And am I a really bad GG fan if I admit that I don’t like a particular fanfic that has almost become canon, it’s talked about so much. Shivery was updated today (or yesterday) and I tried yet again to read it. I really did. This is at least the third attempts. And (I hate to say this), I can’t stand it. The story starts out so circular that I lose the story line and I’m so confused. And then, that’s when it gets dark, and I end up feeling awful about the world. Her writing is remarkable, filled with images that live, I’ll give her that, she certainly makes me feel, but… eh. It’s just not me, I guess. And I do read quite a few of the darker fics and enjoy them, I just don’t know. But it’s such the standard for GG fic, that I fear I’ll be stoned for my dissent.

(Sigh). Back to describing the layout of my doctor’s office. And this is what I’m paying thousands of dollars for…

Merry Christmas every one!

I’ve had a pretty good Christmas so far. Came home with my sisters (there are 3 of us). Since we graduated and moved out, Christmas has become more and more lax. We haven’t had a Christmas tree in three years. And while I still get presents from my parents, they haven’t been wrapped in years. This year, the sole decoration was a needlepointed pillow of a snow scene that my mom picked up at Walmart. Yeah. I think my parents are waiting for grandkids to get excited about the holidays again–they’ve got a wait yet, I think.

My sister gave me the Evanesence CD (finally), so I wonder what I’m listening to now?? 🙂 A lot of their songs start sounding the same, but wow, their lyrics are amazing. And I still get emotional listening to “My Immortal.” At least now, I don’t have to flip through radio stations in the hopes of catching it–I was getting really tired of all the cheesy Christmas songs. The worst of the all: “The Christmas Shoes.” Maybe it only plays here in Utah (if so, count your lucky stars), but I’ve never heard such a sacchrine, “manipulate your heart-strings” song. I told my sister that and made her change the station driving home, and now, I’ve been labeled Scrooge. It’s a badge I’ll proudly wear if it means that I never have to hear that song again.

Passed all of my classes, don’t know how. Sometimes I swear, I’m receiving the grades for the guy ahead of me in the alphabet. We start again on the 5th, not as much time off as I want, but I’ll have more off in March. When I get back, I’ll find out my rotation schedule for next year. Chris (my study partner and best friend) spent two days figuring out how the lottery system works and how to get the schedule that we want. I front-heavied everything, putting my hardest rotations, like surgery and ob-gyn at the front of the year, and then psych and peds later. I don’t know if that was wise, but I freak myself out just thinking about how hard next year is going to be, so I thought that maybe making it hard at the beginning, when I’m more motivated and they’ll be more lenant if you don’t know as much. I’m going to be such a little ignoramious… Only seven months more….

I’m heading to Arizona for the rest of Christmas break. Visiting family, spend a little time in the sun. It should be fun. I’m bringing along my writing notebook and hopefully, I’ll have a chapter to post on Like Never Before when I get back. I’ve got a whole collection of drabbles that I’ll be adding soon for GG, I’m excited. I did them around themes this time, and I’m experimenting with writing humorous ones–probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

It’s nice having absolutely nothing to do, and getting to do what I want… I wish it could be Christmas all the time.

Cross-posted on lotr100

Title: Ringbearer’s Choice
Word Count: 100
Team: Hobbits
Characters: Frodo, Fellowship
Slash/Adult Content: No
Notes: Movieverse of FOTR

Ringbearer’s Choice

Wow.

I am so blown away by the positive response that my latest chapter got. You know that scene in Moulin Rouge, where Christian is first singing to Satine, and she gets this stunned look on her face and then they’re off dancing in the stars and clouds above Paris–yeah, that’s me. I was positively giddy today–I skipped down the hall, much to the chagrin and bafflement of my more mature classmates (maybe I should go into peds, I’d fit right in there with the kids). I was checking my email every few minutes just to see if there were more nice things in my inbox. It felt like Christmas and my birthday and every other magical day there is.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I honestly wasn’t expecting anything like that. I really expected a rather lukewarm reaction, “damned with faint praise” at best. It’s probably not wise to trust my own judgments, especially since I had been staring at the same scene every day for about three months.

But it’s nice to be proven wrong too.

And I tell you, flattery is the best medicine for a ill muse–she perked right up and I had about a dozen brain whirl-winds this afternoon about the next couple of chapters. I’m sketching the ideas, working them in and I’m really excited.

Response to AvidTVFan’s fabulous review

Like Never Before chapter 8 has now been posted on ff.net. I finished it Friday night, had my sister read it (she’s my unofficial beta), who told me that it wasn’t as good as my other chapters but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Eh. According to her, my Paris was out of character, which really worries me because I spent so much time making her believable. All I had was one episode to go off in showing this side of Paris. One episode–“The Big One” from last season, where Paris has her breakdown. Yeah, not a lot of inspiration.

Ugh.

So, I went back and edited. Big time. I think it’s better now, but… I’m really nervous about posting it. Meeting the groom on the day of the arranged marriage kind of nervous. I don’t want to be tarred and feathered here! I tend to lean on the freak-out side, so hopefully things aren’t as bad as I fear.

Chapter 7 was rewritten too, to attempt to get more of Jess’s voice. My biggest fault, I think is that my characters tend to become as verbose as I do and I struggle to rein them in. But it’s so difficult to convey conversations in monosyllables as Jess demands.

Chapter 9 was done and I was going to post it in a couple of days–I had that one written a year ago, when the idea first came to me–it honestly was the reason that I wrote this story. But it was only 4 pages long and after this last chapters’ record of 8958 words on 17 pages, it was way too short. So, I’m rearranging, combining some chapters and other housework before it’s read to be displayed. I am aiming for Christmas/New Year’s. We’ll see how well I succeed. At least I like the chapter more!

The weather forecasters promised me snow and I got . . . gray clouds and no snow. Am quite bummed.

On the other hand, my parents promised me a washer and dryer and I got . . . a washer and dryer!!!

Most people probably won’t understand why this would cause such glee, but until you have to go to a laundry mat that is four blocks from your house and is apparently the hangout for the mentally unstable (buses and laundry mats… Those are the two places that I get hit on. Bleh.) and charges you $2.50 per load and your clothes still aren’t dry. Yeah. It really was the bimonthly entertainment. And that was the good place that closed down for no apparently reason a month ago.

So my parents brought the unit and spent most of the day installing it into my little apartment. I was in a bit of a mood, as in cranky for lots of little reasons. Chauffeuring my sister to work four blocks away (which with the badly timed lights means a seven minute journey in each direction) because she refuses to try to carpool, trying to clean my house so that we could move things around and having my roommate just sit there and read, even though she promised to help, my study partner NOT calling to say when/if we were studying today. Not that I had time or interest today–big believer in procrastination and the test is two weeks away–but it still would have been nice to get a phone call to say that he had decided to go skiing instead.

But my parents thought that I was in a mood because they were taking me away from my studies, so I got out of it soon. Relationship with parental units is so strange as an adult. It’s much better now than when I was in high school, although I never really had any major problems with them. But they still treat me like a kid one minute, and the next I’m supposed to have all of the problems figured out because I’m independent now.