Friday, March 30, 2007

ACADIANA MEDIEVAL FAIRE MARCH 31 - APRIL 3

And April 4 - 8 is reserved for breakdown of said Faire and boyfriend time. Provided there is no implosions of any sort.

Not that I'm expecting implosions or explosions of any kind, but I find it best to be prepared.

So I'll more offline than on during this time period. *headdesk* And I forgot to pack the camera. Damnnation.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

P.N. Elrod has done it again

Barbara B is suing people. P.N. Elrod has illustrated how the case may go once it gets to court (we can only hope).

The Trial of Agent B

And yes, Miss Snark is listed as a defendent.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Turtles in a half shell...

You know this Friday night movie thisng is a really good idea. There's a Rave theater I must pass on the way home. They usually put a show I want to see at 5pm or 5:30. I swing in after work, see the movie, eat supper, and go home at a not too unreasonable time. This was also how I saw "Pan's Labyrinth" and probably how I'll get to see "Bridge to Terabitha" and "The Last Mimsy" pretty soon before they go away.

So last night was "TMNT," all CGI and not fighting the Shredder. The funniest part was running into two pals I hadn't seen in months at the same showing so we got to see it together and eat dinner afterwards.

Thoughts on the show. I'm ready to see it AGAIN! But I did have four issues.

1). You so totally didn't need the narration at the beginning. Yeah it was Laurence Fishburn, and I'm sure some studio head asked for it, but that time could have been better used focusing on character stuff.

2). Leo and Raph have been sparring partners and training their ENTIRE LIVES. Sorry, I can't buy that when the fight between Leo and Nightwatcher went to fists and feet, that Leo didn't recognize Raph's fighting style until the helmet came off. And CASEY recognized Raph but none of his family did? Though my friends and I came to the conclusion that Splinter knew but was waiting for Raph to admit to it.

Though the above in no way takes away from the awesomeness of that fight.

3). The Mayans didn't have metal for armor. That just annoyed the historian in me in the beginning sequences. I like the design of the 5 Generals and could have excepted that maybe they had figured out this thing called metal armor, but even the guys they fought looked like medieval knights on foot. Meh.

4). TOO SHORT! More Mike and Donnie would have been nice and some what's her face and Leo interaction would have been good too.

There's was oodles I liked.

A). Mike's skateboarding sequence. That scene alone proved why this had to be a CGI movie. There's no way--even if it was Tony Hawkes in the suit--that could have been done live-action with a stuntman. The fight scenes were just even more added bonus finally getting to move like they should.

B). Patrick Stewart and Sarah Michelle Geller's performance were stellar. Course I cracked up the first time Winters opened his mouth, cause all I could think of was this was the only way to give Patrick Stewart hair. I bought Sarah Michelle Geller as April.

C). The 13 monsters are cryptos. The little red one Raph fought is supposed to be the Jersey Devil, and we're guessing the first one they fought is supposed to be Bigfoot. Want to see it again, so I can figure out the rest.

D). Splinter is a fan of "Gilmore Girls." I can't wait to tell my sister who is a fan of that show. LOL

E). April's yellow catsuit was a nice homage. Poor girl will never get away from that color will she?

F). I want the soundtrack.

It's a good movie, even for those just wanting an action film. Chad's willing to wait for DVD *eye roll,* but I'm going to see it again.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Annoyed with school and writing

Annoyed with school because they apparantly lost my withdrawal paperwork last month and I'm giving them one more day to get that class off my record. In other words, I'll call them tomorrow at some point. Annoyed with writing as you can see with the rest of the whine below.

For ENGL-646

I don't blame anyone if they don't read the following. I had to vent.

My writing process, maybe I should give it some deeper thought. Constantly daydreaming plots and characters hasn’t changed, but I remember sitting down no matter where and writing. Now it is too easy to be distracted from the page, to get out of the chair to do anything else, can’t write until the deadline pressure explodes. Why did it change? How do I get it back?

If I’m writing constantly in my head, which is what I feel the daydreams are, and I hear the words in my head before typing them, why do I have such a disconnect with putting it on paper? Once I get going, it’s smooth. It’s not like I’m gnawing on a pen or keyboard because the words won’t come. I do stop and reread when I don’t hear anything else in my head. I just noticed that with writing this. I’m playing with objects on my desk because I don’t know where to take this response next.

Maybe I like stressing myself out over my writing? In a weird way, that almost makes sense. Could I have addicted myself to stress? Is that even possible? I don’t want to think it is possible, but maybe it is a variation of the busy drug, the procrastination buzz. Maybe it’s time to start a new schedule. (A little voice in my brain just went ugh, that never works.) And it’s right, I’m notorious for making and then break schedules. But I want the writing practice Natalie Gold… (Had to stop to look up her name) Goldberg. I want less ego-centric head trips. So why does the doing step always break apart? I don’t think I’m a flighty mess, so why do I keep acting like one?

And why does this examination of how I write become a moan session about my lack of discipline? I’m afraid the answer to that is because my work habits affect how I write, and I don’t feel I have been writing. It’s not true: I just finished eight cooking show scripts (that I should have had done last month), the lesson plan and the mini-lesson plan assignments, and revised the old Dante paper (but apparently not enough) within the past two weeks. I have been ignoring the fiction, and that makes me feel like a horrible, non-committed writer.

I’m not a horrible person and I can do the practice everyday at lunch until it becomes a habit. Free writing for five minutes starting today.


Good news, I did get the five minutes in and feel pretty good about it. Now to more structured writing.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Why I picked this department again?

I'm just a little disgusted right now. I think I ate too much at lunch and now it's disagreeing with me. And I opened up my email to find that the struggle to the post office that ended up making me late for work was all for not. The professor doesn't believe the Dante paper is ready for publication. Yes, the same Dante paper that nearly killed me last year.

SLU puts out the Pick, a publication of student school work. Well, a couple of the people who work on it are in my Wednesday night class and said they needed more graduate student submissions. So I said what the hey, I'll turn that one in. Maybe somebody will see it and do the idea the justice I don't seem capable of.

So then it was a struggle to get the damn thing together before the deadline. And then I find out I have to have the instructor's approval. And because I have to work when Southeastern wants to conduct business, I had to mail it to him the same morning I had to stop and get more glucose monitoring supplies. Yes, thirty minutes late to work. All that insanity to find out it's not up to academic snuff.

I feel like Adam Sandler's character from the Wedding Singer: "That information would have been more helpful YESTERDAY!" Only in my case, the end of Spring 2006 semester, so when I pulled it out I would have MADE the edits that it apparantly needs.

It briefly sent me into the "I'm no academic, why do I even try" spiral. Luckily, that didn't last long. I'll take the damn paper to class (which is what I had decided to do before I found out the deadline was yesterday) and let a group see it. I feel sorry for my group. They don't know what to make of Zy's novel, and I'm getting really tired of saying "yeap, I did that to fix it in the second draft." They probably need a finished academic paper to polish.

In good news, I realized that I haven't put up February's totals.

Zy's Novel

Progress Bar from Writertopia

MONTHLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

I finished the cooking scripts in March and I need to finish a couple of homework assignments, so March's numbers already look better.

In case anyone is interested in seeing the cooking show: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4 (which is having uploading problems).

Enough bitching and moaning from me. I have a lot of homework left to do as well as get some other things finished so tomorrow is free to build stages.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Taking a break

Mostly because I've hit a receipe that is defying personal restrictions on the cooking show. How do I get around handling raw chicken for a roast? Right now it's just making my brain hurt. I have a new respect for cooking shows, these scripts are hard than they look and I expect to be improving my way through them.

Got the glucose monitor yesterday and started monitoring the blood levels today.

This might work: the chicken is already roasting on the spit, and the volunteers just get to make mortreaux. Okay, I'm going to try that. I'd like to get the scripts done for day 2 today. That'll leave 3 and 4 for tomorrow, and can start on the shopping lists. The kitchen supplies keeps getting longer.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Yo Mez!

Apparantly, your blog doesn't like Firefox any more. It used to like it; I don't know why it won't let me comment now.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Monday, March 12, 2007

Crazy weekend

I will post pics showing the progress on the faire site one day in April or May. Crunch time is here, and Goddess grant me strength not to act like a jealous idiot, and give into the desire to nag.

I don't like to nag; I really don't! But I have to wonder if it's some twisted destiny thing that you inherit the things you hate worse in the environment you were raised in? Or that the trait you do admire most about someone is the same trait that makes you want to strangle them?

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Friday, March 09, 2007

Hopefully with a couple of Aleve's it'll all be better

I feel like crap, paying job is setting my teeth on edge, and even the London Symphony orchestra playing classic British rock songs isn't helping.

After I switched Strix soundtrack CD for BMFM soundtrack CD, I finally dug out music to inspire Zy's novel. Nothing has really sunk in yet. However, I did get a beginning to the cooking show scripts started yesterday. I think a fair bit of it is going to have to be improv, and oddly enough I'm more at ease with that than actually following a memorizied script.

Also I have a couple of editing projects that need to be done. One a homework assignment, and the second is a paper I'm going to submit to the Pick (a journal for student papers Southeastern puts together) that I will take to class next Wednesday to give them something to revise. I don't think they're getting Zy's novel and it's really too rough to benefit from any revision at this point. Anything they point out is a "I did that because I have to go back and figure out mannerism/language/pysiology/planet after I get the first draft done" response. I'm tired of saying it even.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Nope, turning thirty didn't kill me

It just got really ugly at work for a while. Ugly as in mail pouring out of our ears. And since I do most of my blogging at work *shrug.*

Healthwise: hormones seems to be under control so far. Not loosing any weight, but I'm not trying to either. Finally got my sleep back under control, though that was a simple fix--I was drinking too much caffine and it was keeping me up. Haven't felt the need to rip anyone's head off when I got upset (and last weekend was bad with that).

Writing: Breaking Bejamin's CD "Phobia" is part of the soundtrack for the Strix universe. Listening i the car and things started falling into place--especially on the backstory I had gien up on. Ferris is a nerd from the 1950s, and I'm picturing a guy like Stuart from the Frighteners.

But I'm not working on that until I get some work on Zy's novel done. I'm in Chapter 10 now, practically to the part that has never been written before. But the paying job swarmed and I haven't accomplished anything. I just went through my CDs and I don't have anything for Zy's Novel. *headdesk* My plan is to do some longhand composing today and get me into the mood. If I get through the first point on my outline, I'm going to reward myself with some Strix stuff.

Things to remember to do:
  1. Check trunk for Mary's dishes
  2. Check costume closet for Merlin outfit for Scarlett

I keep forgetting when I go home. Price for actually getting up on time.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/