fireflies after dark
It's been a while, kittens, and much has happened! Last weekend was my friend's bachelorette celebrations, which took me to St. Louis (where she lives) and then to Chicago (where I'd never been before) and included much sight-seeing and drinks and dancing and horrible terrible blisters on the bottoms of my feet from shoes that had never failed me before, all bookended by hours upon hours in the car. It's about 4 1/2 hours from home to her place in St. Louis, then that again to Chicago; on Sunday, I rode from Chicago to St. Louis then drove myself home and was then TIRED OF SITTING IN THE FUCKING CAR. But, all in all, it was so much fun and I love her face, so worth it.
This weekend was my mom's birthday, so my parents are camping (in their fancy motorhome) at the lake, and I drove down there Sunday and yesterday to spend some time in the water and on the boat. They'll be at the lake for two more days, but I think I'm done; I'm going to take advantage of a few days away from work to do some things just for me. An hours-long bath, writing some words, reading a book or two....
Now, onto the rest!
Watch
I'm not particularly fannish about anything I've been watching recently, though there is a lot. I miss Orphan Black. But there are a few shows that I watch each summer, Covert Affairs and So You Think You Can Dance being the most important. I just never get tired of SYTYCD. The Fosters is back, and I'm liking this season (is it still a season when they do them twice a year? is it a half-season? I do not know how to refer to each block of episodes) more than the last. Moving past the Callie/Brandon romance while not pretending that it never happened is a good choice, I think.
Finding Carter has a really interesting premise, and while I'm not sure that they've done that premise justice, I'm still watching. The same red-headed kid is on this show and The Fosters and I find him oddly endearing.
Graceland is probably the thing I'm watching that I'm enjoying the most. Mike and Paige! I'm really happy to see Paige have her own stuff to do this season, and Johnny, too, and I am very invested in what is happening with both of them.
Read
Writing more means reading less, at least for me. While I was reading three or four books a week a couple of months ago, I've slowed down majorly. First, I've been doing a very, very slow reread of A Game of Thrones and catching all sorts of things that I glossed over the first time. But I also keep picking it up at oh, two in the morning when I'm lying on the couch, so I read a chapter or so and then fall asleep with my fingers between the pages.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han was disappointing, if I'm being completely honest. Lara Jean was the sixteen-year-old protagonist, but read like she was twelve or younger. And I'm not saying that there aren't girls that age who have a voice that is that immature - because they are that immature, which is not necessarily a problem - but that isn't a voice that I'm personally invested in. And that put a major damper on my enjoyment of one of my favorite tropes: pretend dating! I think this fits on the YA shelf in the space reserved for a young, strong reader: a less mature story written for someone with a higher reading level. (That is, the sixth-grader reading at a high school level.)
Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour was much more enjoyable. Emi is a new high school graduate working as a set designer who finds a letter from an old Hollywood star to his long-lost daughter when she buys a record from an estate sale. She decides to track down the daughter, finds the granddaughter instead, and falls in love with her. This book is about girls in love and never makes a big deal about it, which is super fantastic. It's quiet and charming and it feels like a perfect summer book not because it's "light" and "breezy" (ugh, buzzwords), but because it takes place in the summer and has that sort of unstructured, untethered feel to it.
Gayle Forman's Just One Year was fine, though I enjoyed it less than Just One Day. It's not that I didn't like Willem, the protagonist, but I was far more invested in Allyson's life in the first novel than I was in his in this one. Generally, I am far less invested in stories about boys - young men, whatever - than in stories about young women lately, and I'm not apologizing for that.
Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson was a fun, slightly unrealistic summer road trip story that, while enjoyable (it included tracklists to various "road mixes" and little scrapbook-type details that added to the story, I think), it mostly just made me want to read and write road trip fic in various fandoms. (I wrote one once. Why not write another?)
Write
I'm still working on the matriarchy fic! I'm about two-thirds of the way through my outline, and I have 60k+ words of ASoIaF matriarchal AU to show for it. A few weeks back, I made a literally impossible deadline for myself of this weekend, but since there is (and was) no way that I'm going to make it, I'm giving myself another...let's say three weeks to finish this first draft before I get into the editing. And then, posting! \o/
I'm actually really ready to start posting this because I've been working on it for a while and I'm dying to start actually talking about it.
Make
Generally speaking, I like to cook and bake a lot, but I go in spells. Sometimes, I subsist entirely on things like frozen burritos and chips for weeks at a time before going on a jag where I make everything from scratch. Lately, I've been on a from-scratch kick.
First, I found this recipe for raspberry buttermilk cake, which I have made with all the berries except for raspberries and with peaches with A+ results. It's really easy and I definitely recommend it.
Then, I broke in my new ice cream maker with strawberry lemonade frozen yogurt, which is one of the tastiest, easiest things I've ever made (and I've made a lot of tasty, easy things). I will make more of this, oh yes.
For my mom's birthday this weekend, I made pineapple upside-down cupcakes because yum, and in the process of browsing recipes, found one for pineapple upside-down jelly shots, which I also made and are pretty and delicious. I blame my friend's bachelorette festivities last week for the jelly shot idea; we started taking them at 7:30 am when we departed St. Louis for Chicago and spent the whole drive having more drinks. But they're so tasty!
Hearts
(This list is longer because it's been a while since I've made one. There are worse things.)
♥ long days at the lake ♥ blueberry green tea with lemonade ♥ long catching-up chats ♥ small favors ♥ endlessly rearranging my books ♥ winged eyeliner ♥ choosing not to do things ♥ descaling the Keurig ♥ Watercolors on my phone - I'm crazily addicted to this game, literally the only one I've ever downloaded ♥ saving bits and pieces of inspiration for later, and finally creating a tag for all of those images that have been languishing in my Tumblr likes ♥ planning things - the bachelorette's bridal shower is in a couple of weeks and I'm still coming up with food ideas ♥ Tablespoon - they have some of the best recipe categories I've seen yet ♥ finding sparkly "diamond" rings to decorate a Cracker Jacks-themed cupcake for the aforementioned bridal shower ♥ healthy, happy Marilyn (and Puck, of course) ♥ unexpected, blessedly cool days in the middle of summer ♥ my new Avengers tank (I'm using it as a cover-up since the back of it is all lace) ♥ air conditioning that works really, really well ♥ blueberry green tea lemonade ♥ explaining to someone that I am sex positive (and what that means) and having her tell me the "kinky" thing that she and her husband do; it's just funny to me, because it shows that as soon as you remove a taboo from something, people will want to talk about it ♥ introducing someone to the world of fanfiction (the same person, incidentally) when she mentioned that she thought she wanted to read Fifty Shades of Grey ♥ kittens and basically everything about them ♥ the way holographic glitter in nail polish looks underwater ♥ doing way too much research into crowns and tiaras ♥ choosing wedding gifts ♥ collecting names for fictional places ♥ pink lemonade slushes ♥ Harry Potter - I've been having a moment lately, finding graphics and art and reading articles and such ♥ Post-Its ♥ cute, cheap dresses ♥ puppy love ♥ driving the boat ♥ iced coffee ♥ fairytale tropes ♥ "Seven Virgins"
This weekend was my mom's birthday, so my parents are camping (in their fancy motorhome) at the lake, and I drove down there Sunday and yesterday to spend some time in the water and on the boat. They'll be at the lake for two more days, but I think I'm done; I'm going to take advantage of a few days away from work to do some things just for me. An hours-long bath, writing some words, reading a book or two....
Now, onto the rest!
Watch
I'm not particularly fannish about anything I've been watching recently, though there is a lot. I miss Orphan Black. But there are a few shows that I watch each summer, Covert Affairs and So You Think You Can Dance being the most important. I just never get tired of SYTYCD. The Fosters is back, and I'm liking this season (is it still a season when they do them twice a year? is it a half-season? I do not know how to refer to each block of episodes) more than the last. Moving past the Callie/Brandon romance while not pretending that it never happened is a good choice, I think.
Finding Carter has a really interesting premise, and while I'm not sure that they've done that premise justice, I'm still watching. The same red-headed kid is on this show and The Fosters and I find him oddly endearing.
Graceland is probably the thing I'm watching that I'm enjoying the most. Mike and Paige! I'm really happy to see Paige have her own stuff to do this season, and Johnny, too, and I am very invested in what is happening with both of them.
Read
Writing more means reading less, at least for me. While I was reading three or four books a week a couple of months ago, I've slowed down majorly. First, I've been doing a very, very slow reread of A Game of Thrones and catching all sorts of things that I glossed over the first time. But I also keep picking it up at oh, two in the morning when I'm lying on the couch, so I read a chapter or so and then fall asleep with my fingers between the pages.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han was disappointing, if I'm being completely honest. Lara Jean was the sixteen-year-old protagonist, but read like she was twelve or younger. And I'm not saying that there aren't girls that age who have a voice that is that immature - because they are that immature, which is not necessarily a problem - but that isn't a voice that I'm personally invested in. And that put a major damper on my enjoyment of one of my favorite tropes: pretend dating! I think this fits on the YA shelf in the space reserved for a young, strong reader: a less mature story written for someone with a higher reading level. (That is, the sixth-grader reading at a high school level.)
Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour was much more enjoyable. Emi is a new high school graduate working as a set designer who finds a letter from an old Hollywood star to his long-lost daughter when she buys a record from an estate sale. She decides to track down the daughter, finds the granddaughter instead, and falls in love with her. This book is about girls in love and never makes a big deal about it, which is super fantastic. It's quiet and charming and it feels like a perfect summer book not because it's "light" and "breezy" (ugh, buzzwords), but because it takes place in the summer and has that sort of unstructured, untethered feel to it.
Gayle Forman's Just One Year was fine, though I enjoyed it less than Just One Day. It's not that I didn't like Willem, the protagonist, but I was far more invested in Allyson's life in the first novel than I was in his in this one. Generally, I am far less invested in stories about boys - young men, whatever - than in stories about young women lately, and I'm not apologizing for that.
Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson was a fun, slightly unrealistic summer road trip story that, while enjoyable (it included tracklists to various "road mixes" and little scrapbook-type details that added to the story, I think), it mostly just made me want to read and write road trip fic in various fandoms. (I wrote one once. Why not write another?)
Write
I'm still working on the matriarchy fic! I'm about two-thirds of the way through my outline, and I have 60k+ words of ASoIaF matriarchal AU to show for it. A few weeks back, I made a literally impossible deadline for myself of this weekend, but since there is (and was) no way that I'm going to make it, I'm giving myself another...let's say three weeks to finish this first draft before I get into the editing. And then, posting! \o/
I'm actually really ready to start posting this because I've been working on it for a while and I'm dying to start actually talking about it.
Make
Generally speaking, I like to cook and bake a lot, but I go in spells. Sometimes, I subsist entirely on things like frozen burritos and chips for weeks at a time before going on a jag where I make everything from scratch. Lately, I've been on a from-scratch kick.
First, I found this recipe for raspberry buttermilk cake, which I have made with all the berries except for raspberries and with peaches with A+ results. It's really easy and I definitely recommend it.
Then, I broke in my new ice cream maker with strawberry lemonade frozen yogurt, which is one of the tastiest, easiest things I've ever made (and I've made a lot of tasty, easy things). I will make more of this, oh yes.
For my mom's birthday this weekend, I made pineapple upside-down cupcakes because yum, and in the process of browsing recipes, found one for pineapple upside-down jelly shots, which I also made and are pretty and delicious. I blame my friend's bachelorette festivities last week for the jelly shot idea; we started taking them at 7:30 am when we departed St. Louis for Chicago and spent the whole drive having more drinks. But they're so tasty!
Hearts
(This list is longer because it's been a while since I've made one. There are worse things.)
♥ long days at the lake ♥ blueberry green tea with lemonade ♥ long catching-up chats ♥ small favors ♥ endlessly rearranging my books ♥ winged eyeliner ♥ choosing not to do things ♥ descaling the Keurig ♥ Watercolors on my phone - I'm crazily addicted to this game, literally the only one I've ever downloaded ♥ saving bits and pieces of inspiration for later, and finally creating a tag for all of those images that have been languishing in my Tumblr likes ♥ planning things - the bachelorette's bridal shower is in a couple of weeks and I'm still coming up with food ideas ♥ Tablespoon - they have some of the best recipe categories I've seen yet ♥ finding sparkly "diamond" rings to decorate a Cracker Jacks-themed cupcake for the aforementioned bridal shower ♥ healthy, happy Marilyn (and Puck, of course) ♥ unexpected, blessedly cool days in the middle of summer ♥ my new Avengers tank (I'm using it as a cover-up since the back of it is all lace) ♥ air conditioning that works really, really well ♥ blueberry green tea lemonade ♥ explaining to someone that I am sex positive (and what that means) and having her tell me the "kinky" thing that she and her husband do; it's just funny to me, because it shows that as soon as you remove a taboo from something, people will want to talk about it ♥ introducing someone to the world of fanfiction (the same person, incidentally) when she mentioned that she thought she wanted to read Fifty Shades of Grey ♥ kittens and basically everything about them ♥ the way holographic glitter in nail polish looks underwater ♥ doing way too much research into crowns and tiaras ♥ choosing wedding gifts ♥ collecting names for fictional places ♥ pink lemonade slushes ♥ Harry Potter - I've been having a moment lately, finding graphics and art and reading articles and such ♥ Post-Its ♥ cute, cheap dresses ♥ puppy love ♥ driving the boat ♥ iced coffee ♥ fairytale tropes ♥ "Seven Virgins"