everything will be alright

So, it's been awhile since I wrote in here. Nothing too exciting to report, but I'll put it behind a cut because I have a feeling I may get ramble-y just the same.

( Stuff! )

Also, Happy Thanksgiving to my American family and friends, hope you have a great holiday! :)

It was a great long weekend, very relaxing and informal, which was just what I needed after a chaotic couple of weeks of work.

Thursday afternoon my sister came home for the weekend and we got to hang out, with me picking up supper for the family after work and then watching some tv. She fell asleep while Community was on but it was alright, as the episode was hilaaaarious as usual. :D I got to spend a little time in LOTRO too, getting some new gear for my character, then made an earlyish night of it.

Friday was Remembrance Day and was appropriately peaceful and quiet. After lunch my sister, my mother, and I went to our house in Salmon Cove and retrieved our 50" plasma tv and the table on which it stands to take back to my folks' house in Carbonear. Their rear projection tv has been nonfunctional for over a month now and I kept saying we should just move our tv up here, get some use from it since it's just been sitting in the house, but until Friday no one wanted to hear it. What was the difference then, you might ask? Well, Friday morning Mom asked about taking the Wii down to our house in Salmon Cove since my Aunt Wendy and cousin Melissa were coming out, so they could play some games down there on Saturday. That's when I said we should just bring the tv up, since it made much more sense to have that kind of thing in our house instead of the near empty house in Salmon Cove, so we did just that. Our tv kicks ass too, especially since the HD receiver Mom & Dad had for their tv actually shows HD channels in 1080p on my tv, hehe. Their tv doesn't have an HDMI input, I don't think, but ours does and it looks very nice! The Wii is great too on the big screen, so I hooked that up for them too. Friday night saw more raiding in LOTRO, taking down the dragon raid once again, which is pretty much on farm mode already I guess which, mreh. It was an earlyish night again for me after that.

On Saturday I was originally planning on going to the city with my cousin, who'd called me earlier in the week to suggest that we do something on Saturday, then wasn't around when I called to confirm on Friday like we'd also discussed. However, he did call me after lunch, while I was dogsitting for my sister, and we managed to meet up for awhile in the afternoon. We went to Wal-Mart where I picked up another Wii controller (I only had the one before) and this cheap game Mom had played with Aunt Wendy at her place last weekend that she wanted to have for that night, and I also picked up a copy of Skyrim for the PC, heh. >.> Then my cousin was having bad heartburn so I dropped him off at his place, where he has medication for it, and he came back around 5pm to pick me up for supper. We went to Quiznos which omg, so yummy, and then came back to the house where we played some Xbox 360 for a few hours before he had to go to his fiancée's house for the night. After that I put on some hockey and played a bit more LOTRO, then when nothing was going on I tried a little Skyrim. So so so very pretty, need to get a strategy guide though because holy crap it's a large world. x.x

Yesterday was very low key, with a lot of reading - I'm on the White Night book in the Dresden Files series right now - and I volunteered to bring my sister up to meet my folks after their accordion practice, rather than having her go with them first and have to sit through that. XD After that Mom went to the city with Jen, while Dad and I came back home. Dad's getting the winter tires put on my sister's car this morning, you see, then driving it back to her after lunch, bringing Mom back out with him. I then spent the evening writing for the most part, mainly on NaNo but also working on the weekly summary for XP and making nominations for Yuletide. I messed up the latter, haha, by not looking at the list of banned fandoms; instead I just checked AO3 and Fanfiction.net to see if there was a lot of Dresden Files fic and there didn't seem to be so I nominated that but it got shot down. Which I would've known if I'd had bothered to doublecheck the list, so my bad! I did get one nomination in though, for How I Met Your Mother, hee, something I've thought about writing myself but never did, maybe this would be a chance. And I couldn't think of a third (most of my fandoms are huuuuuge, it seems) so I added Ghostbusters as a favour to a friend. :)

But yes, the highlight of the weekend was the NaNo writing last night, in which I managed to bang out 10,074 words in one sitting, haha. XD It was definitely an anomaly but a very awesome one at that. Last week I wrote almost 7k words in one night and vowed not to fall behind again, and didn't touch it again until last night, but this time I definitely am not going to fall behind that much again! XD It was awesome, though, things just seemed to flow well last night and I actually liked what I wrote, which makes it so much easier to do. In previous years I've had to slog through scenes that I didn't really enjoy writing, which always makes it more difficult, but last night I enjoyed all of it. I'm still making it up as I go for the most part, though I do have an overall plan for where things are heading. I think I have just enough of a plot so that things aren't too rigid or inflexible, but not too little like I have no clue at all where to go or what to write next. It's nice.

I hope everyone else had a nice weekend and that everyone has a good week ahead of them! :)

So, so busy with work lately, omg. And when that's not happening I'm now working on NaNo and RP, or away in the city for work the next day. It's been about as hectic as I can ever recall, and I'm hoping it'll calm down soonish. Not tomorrow or Friday for certain, but after next week things kind of lighten up a little. I hope.

Other than that, not too much else to talk about, I suppose. Saw a few movies lately, In Time and The Three Musketeers, mayhap I'll do a review of them later (under cuts to avoid spoilers!) but they were ok. Have fallen behind in tv watching again, which was to be expected each fall, but will try to catch up on that as time allows. Again, NaNo is going to be the main occupier of my time now, along with RP. RP makes me so happy, omg. Layla/Sarah logs especially have a special place in my ♥. XP in general is awesome and I'm happy that Sam is fitting in better than I worried he might, I was worried with all his previous history I'd mess him up but I think it's going pretty well. Need to look into logging more stuff with him though, I think. Which reminds me, crap, need to tag something before sleeping!

Lots of new music that I want to write about too, including Foster the People, who I'm loving at the moment, and some new cds I got yesterday that I've yet to properly absorb yet - Lights, Lou Reed & Metallica, and Maroon 5 albums. Will listen to them when writing - I always seem to get more music during November to help with the writing, it seems - and post more later.

So yeah, will try to write a better update in the near future, but the bottom line is busy busy busy, omg, hurry up weekend. XD

I spent a lot of time last night before bed re-reading my 2006 NaNo entry, the one featuring rp characters, and laughing aloud a lot. It made me wonder, though; they say only a fool laughs at his own jokes (I do sometimes), does that apply to a writer and their own writing? I don't know, and don't really care, because I thoroughly enjoyed it and am going to read the rest of it after work today. :D It's a horrible story, I know, but I just love the characters so much and it's nice to revisit how I used to write them back then.

I've also been thinking about re-reading the other NaNo entries, the original ones that I got to 50k and just dumped, but I dunno. That may be more of a headache than it's worth, since I have no idea where I was going with them, but maybe that's a good thing? Who knows, I might be able to salvage something from them, and it can't hurt to look, right? We'll see, I suppose.

I haven't updated here in awhile, it's true, and it's lateish and I'm tired and don't really feel like adding too much now, but I will add this. NaNo 2010 is now successfully done for me, w00t! Haven't completed one since 2006, back before believeitup and I were even dating, omg. I'm now 3/7 lifetime, and it's good to get the even year streak back on track - I won in '04 and '06, but didn't in '08, but now '10 is fitting the old pattern once more. :)

I will post more later on but yes, just wanted to share that. :D

So, had a number of weird, weird dreams last night. Well, by number I mean two, I suppose, that were kinda connected. You might even call them nightmares and they're still on my mind even now, when I'm fixing to go to bed for the night. They were... I won't go into detail for fear of talking about triggers or upsetting people, I suppose, but they were pretty nasty. Just in an overarching sense, apocalyptic kinda, just ugh. Here's hoping tonight's sleep goes better.

Had a very nice weekend, laid low and relaxed for most of it. Friday night was kind of a bust in that my kin didn't raid like we were going to, and I ended up just watching some of The Promise videos while doing some random stuff with people. It was relaxing, though, and got to bed at an ok hour for a weekend. Saturday was very laid back, read a lot and took it easy. I caught up on NaNo too, which was nice. Then we actually did raid on my other kin, albeit with a late start time, and that went on until almost 5am my time, I was pretty dead tired by then. x.x

Today was very relaxing too, slept in later than I liked but that's because I was up so late, but it was ok. I finished the Dresden book I was on - Proven Guilty - and started White Knight, and did more NaNoing - I'm over a day ahead now which is awesome. :D And then as a reward I played some more LOTRO, just working on a low level hunter though, nothing too exciting. We need more in our kin, which still surprises me, and I miss the class too so it works out ok.

My cough has almost disappeared, I just took another shot of Buckley's and am hopping into bed as soon as I finish this up. It got worse again in the latter part of last week and was still bugging me last night even, but today it's been great, hardly there, and here's hoping it's on its way out finally. Been sick for weeks it seems, and am sick and tired of it.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend, and that your week goes well too. So hard to believe this is the last full week of November coming up, it's kinda crazy.

I kinda want to change my LJ layout, I've had this for a nice while now (though not as long as the one before it, I'd wager) and am getting bored with it. However, I am also lazy and don't want to mess with it that much, and also don't really have another theme in mind. Decisions, decisions.

NaNo continues to go well, today is the halfway point and am right on par so far. Been thinking about some other things but can't seem to focus my attention on anything for more than a few minutes lately, haha, other than NaNo of course, and even that's been pretty sporadic. More later if I ever calm back down and can focus enough to do so. :)

It's been an ok weekend, pretty relaxing overall. Much like the last few weekends, there was lots of LOTRO, though I haven't so much as logged in today and don't plan to either. Tomorrow's an early rise for my long-awaited CAT scan, and I need to get blood work done before the scan itself, mreh. Not a big fan of that, but what can you do? I'm hoping where it's supposed to be a lower body scan they won't need to inject any dye into me or whatnot like they did last time but we'll see.

I've been working on my plot for NaNo and while I have a general idea of what I want to do I don't have anything specific really planned out yet. I'm working on my laptop to get it done, with the hopes of traveling to Saskatchewan in early November if I can get my stupid Aeroplan points situation figured out, anyway. I'm liking the idea, though it could change at any time, really; already decided to change who the protagonist is going to be - it was originally going to be me rewriting an old rp character for the role but decided today to make a whole new one - so who knows what'll happen. I'm looking forward to the challenge at any rate; I've failed the last few times I've tried, breaking my pattern of being successful in even years (won in '04 and '06 but failed in '08) and getting back on track in '10.

Not much else to say, really. Been grooving to the newest Jimmy Eat World album, Invented, which took a few listens to grow on me but grow on me it has. No other new music, and still digging the Gaslight Anthem catalog and some Broken Social Scene as well. I could've sworn I'd read somewhere that there was a new Modest Mouse album coming down the pipes, which would be awesome, but haven't heard anything about it lately. The next big things I'm looking forward to are the reissued, remastered, deluxe editions of Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town and weezer's Pinkerton, the latter of which I only recently heard about (and the former which I've had pre-ordered for over a month now, haha).

So, I have fallen off of the NaNo wagon, oops. I was on pace the first few days, fell behind a little, then caught up again, and now have fallen behind about 8-9k words, d'oh. I do have Wednesday off so maybe I can catch up there, however I finally installed some long awaited software tonight that I can't talk about and that might take up my time. Also, we have a raid scheduled in LOTRO for Tuesday and Wednesday night, so it'll depend on how those go. I'm hoping we can blow through it all on Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday open for either NaNo or other goodness. We'll see!

That's about all to report now, which is kind of sad, yes? New Blue Rodeo tomorrow, though, and I got tickets for their January concert today, so that's good. Perhaps I'll do a little music review in the next few days, as I've gotten a ton of new music lately that I want to share with y'all. :)

So glad for the weekend, holy crap. Work was pretty crazy this week, involving a fair bit of court and, more annoying, a ton of appointments, some that I just didn't want to have, heh. But I survived it, and while I still have some unpleasantness ahead of me next week and further down the line, that's pretty much always going to be the case, so just going to try and enjoy my weekend now. :)

I made a decision today to attempt NaNo 2009, if only because I've tried it for the past five years in a row. I succeed on my first attempt in 2004 and my third in 2006, but failed the last few times out. I have absolutely no idea what to write this time, either, but maybe that'll be a refreshing change from plotting / trying to write sequels to previous NaNo winners, hmm. We shall see!