I Feel Icky....
I feel icky. I have some persistent and annoying cold that decided to manifest in a rather non-dramatic fashion yesterday and has gradually gotten worse. At least it did wait until the holidays were past, though my overtaxing weekend might have something to do with me catching it now.
But no mind! I will survive it. This weekend should be fairly slow, allowing for a lot of time for recovery. Bobby is in aquarist assistant training this weekend, so Alex and I will have mornings to ourselves. On Saturday evening, we are attending a volunteer party at the Aquarium, so that should be fun, if only to walk around without having to bother about the public. Sunday is still free, though Bobby has a hockey game at night.
Yesterday, Bobby and I bought a new bed. When we moved out on our own, we inherited my late Uncle Wodie's full-sized bed, and it has served us well. The mattress has fallen to the floor on one or two inopportune occasions, and it is rather small, but one cannot argue with FREE, especially when one is young and poor. But I am not a tiny gal, and Bobby certainly is not a tiny fella, so squeezing our lanky bodies into a full-sized bed is always interesting.
So we are now the proud owners of a queen-sized bed with a pillowtop mattress. We spent yesterday evening flopping around on beds in the showroom with our parents in tow. It is being delivered on Saturday; I think that Bobby is counting the minutes. The parents are coming over that night to set it up in our absence, which sounds kind of odd now that I'm typing it. Trust that in our family, it's not. Besides, their building it around going out to eat together, per usual. I'm just pleased that our respective families can stand the sight of each other; that they wish to eat cheap Chinese food in the other's company on a regular basis is even better.
The old bed is being passed along in true House of Felagund tradition. My parents have a friend whose daughter is in need of furniture. My parents gave her their old living room set; we are giving her our old bed. As long as it goes to a good home--and not the dump--I am happy.
Speaking of swapping items, my family is also about to switch cars again. I am trading cars with my mom. She currently drives a small SUV, but she wants a little pickup truck to haul around her gardening stuff. I currently drive a sedan, a Suzuki Esteem. I am going to take my mom's SUV, since it has fewer miles on it and also is four-wheel drive--not that it looks like we'll have to worry about snow this year in subtropical Maryland. My mom is going to take my car and use it for trade towards her pickup truck. Yes, I realize that I make out like the proverbial bandit on this one. I still owe money on the Esteem that will be paid off...bye-bye car payment. And I get a better vehicle that will be good for hauling around Alex, scuba gear, and backpacking/photography equipment. Wrangling Alex's crate into the back of the Esteem is not fun. Wrangling four tanks and scuba gear for two people into the back of any smallish car is never fun.
Speaking of cars and driving and local driving anomalies (so my tangents grow tangents!), one of the traffic circles here in ol' Howard County recently installed a light. This makes no sense to me. Why have a traffic circle if you're going to have a light on it? Granted, Howard County is the Land of Traffic Circles: if they can put in a traffic circle, they will. I like the things except when they grow into multi-lane monsters that are prefaced with a confusing symbolic representation of which lane goes where posted about 100 feet before entering the circle...my eyes take longer than that to uncross from decoding their heiroglyphics! Usually, my entrance into such traffic circles is contingent on lucky guesswork and blind hope. But a light on a traffic circle seems to defeat the purpose of installing traffic control that allows all lanes to keep moving. Or maybe I just think about traffic control too much.
On a completely unrelated note, Bobby and I have become mildly obsessed with the 1982 animated movie The Last Unicorn. I adored this movie as a kid and watched it nearly every day until the videotape broke. I haven't seen it for years, but it was recently released on DVD, and Bobby got it for me for Christmas. We've been watching some of the scenes nightly, namely the pirate-cat "riddle scene" (*points to icon*) and the "memories of wine scene" with the laughing skeleton. The movie is campy at times and often downright ridiculous--like when Prince Lear informs the old magician that he will "write him a reference"--but it's still such a delightful little movie. The more I look back at the things I used to love in childhood, the more I realize that I was doomed to be a fantasy nerd.
I should mention, speaking of fantasy nerdiness, my writing plans for the year. This was more or less buried in that incoherent blob of introspective gobbledegook that I posted the other day, but since so many around my flist have been so helpful and supportive of me as an author, I wanted to post it more forthrightly. I have decided to write what my heart tells me to write this year. At the moment, my heart tells me to write mostly original fiction; so far, the only fanfic I've been inspired to write has been a whirlwind two days and going-on-three chapters of the AMC prequel.
So I probably won't be posting much fanfic this year. I will post my o-fic as it is finished (the story that I wrote for Bobby will be posted as soon as the muses settle down on the AMC prequel) and fanfic as the mood strikes me, but I probably won't be as entertaining as last year. Assuming that you like my fanfic and find it entertaining, that is. But I'm not leaving fan fiction, just choosing to spend my fannish energies on finishing the silwritersguild website and my creative energies on the original stuff that is driving me nuts. I'll also be attempting to publish some of my short work, and that takes an unfortunate amount of energy. Geek that I am, I've already created an MS Access database to keep track of my original stories.
But I thought that I owed those who have been so supportive--who are largely the reason that I am making this post at all--the explanation that I am not leaving fanfic, just expending energy in some new directions.
But no mind! I will survive it. This weekend should be fairly slow, allowing for a lot of time for recovery. Bobby is in aquarist assistant training this weekend, so Alex and I will have mornings to ourselves. On Saturday evening, we are attending a volunteer party at the Aquarium, so that should be fun, if only to walk around without having to bother about the public. Sunday is still free, though Bobby has a hockey game at night.
Yesterday, Bobby and I bought a new bed. When we moved out on our own, we inherited my late Uncle Wodie's full-sized bed, and it has served us well. The mattress has fallen to the floor on one or two inopportune occasions, and it is rather small, but one cannot argue with FREE, especially when one is young and poor. But I am not a tiny gal, and Bobby certainly is not a tiny fella, so squeezing our lanky bodies into a full-sized bed is always interesting.
So we are now the proud owners of a queen-sized bed with a pillowtop mattress. We spent yesterday evening flopping around on beds in the showroom with our parents in tow. It is being delivered on Saturday; I think that Bobby is counting the minutes. The parents are coming over that night to set it up in our absence, which sounds kind of odd now that I'm typing it. Trust that in our family, it's not. Besides, their building it around going out to eat together, per usual. I'm just pleased that our respective families can stand the sight of each other; that they wish to eat cheap Chinese food in the other's company on a regular basis is even better.
The old bed is being passed along in true House of Felagund tradition. My parents have a friend whose daughter is in need of furniture. My parents gave her their old living room set; we are giving her our old bed. As long as it goes to a good home--and not the dump--I am happy.
Speaking of swapping items, my family is also about to switch cars again. I am trading cars with my mom. She currently drives a small SUV, but she wants a little pickup truck to haul around her gardening stuff. I currently drive a sedan, a Suzuki Esteem. I am going to take my mom's SUV, since it has fewer miles on it and also is four-wheel drive--not that it looks like we'll have to worry about snow this year in subtropical Maryland. My mom is going to take my car and use it for trade towards her pickup truck. Yes, I realize that I make out like the proverbial bandit on this one. I still owe money on the Esteem that will be paid off...bye-bye car payment. And I get a better vehicle that will be good for hauling around Alex, scuba gear, and backpacking/photography equipment. Wrangling Alex's crate into the back of the Esteem is not fun. Wrangling four tanks and scuba gear for two people into the back of any smallish car is never fun.
Speaking of cars and driving and local driving anomalies (so my tangents grow tangents!), one of the traffic circles here in ol' Howard County recently installed a light. This makes no sense to me. Why have a traffic circle if you're going to have a light on it? Granted, Howard County is the Land of Traffic Circles: if they can put in a traffic circle, they will. I like the things except when they grow into multi-lane monsters that are prefaced with a confusing symbolic representation of which lane goes where posted about 100 feet before entering the circle...my eyes take longer than that to uncross from decoding their heiroglyphics! Usually, my entrance into such traffic circles is contingent on lucky guesswork and blind hope. But a light on a traffic circle seems to defeat the purpose of installing traffic control that allows all lanes to keep moving. Or maybe I just think about traffic control too much.
On a completely unrelated note, Bobby and I have become mildly obsessed with the 1982 animated movie The Last Unicorn. I adored this movie as a kid and watched it nearly every day until the videotape broke. I haven't seen it for years, but it was recently released on DVD, and Bobby got it for me for Christmas. We've been watching some of the scenes nightly, namely the pirate-cat "riddle scene" (*points to icon*) and the "memories of wine scene" with the laughing skeleton. The movie is campy at times and often downright ridiculous--like when Prince Lear informs the old magician that he will "write him a reference"--but it's still such a delightful little movie. The more I look back at the things I used to love in childhood, the more I realize that I was doomed to be a fantasy nerd.
I should mention, speaking of fantasy nerdiness, my writing plans for the year. This was more or less buried in that incoherent blob of introspective gobbledegook that I posted the other day, but since so many around my flist have been so helpful and supportive of me as an author, I wanted to post it more forthrightly. I have decided to write what my heart tells me to write this year. At the moment, my heart tells me to write mostly original fiction; so far, the only fanfic I've been inspired to write has been a whirlwind two days and going-on-three chapters of the AMC prequel.
So I probably won't be posting much fanfic this year. I will post my o-fic as it is finished (the story that I wrote for Bobby will be posted as soon as the muses settle down on the AMC prequel) and fanfic as the mood strikes me, but I probably won't be as entertaining as last year. Assuming that you like my fanfic and find it entertaining, that is. But I'm not leaving fan fiction, just choosing to spend my fannish energies on finishing the silwritersguild website and my creative energies on the original stuff that is driving me nuts. I'll also be attempting to publish some of my short work, and that takes an unfortunate amount of energy. Geek that I am, I've already created an MS Access database to keep track of my original stories.
But I thought that I owed those who have been so supportive--who are largely the reason that I am making this post at all--the explanation that I am not leaving fanfic, just expending energy in some new directions.