All my bug photos are gone. :(
1. The bad news: I managed to overdraw my checking account yesterday. Only by a few dollars, and I was able to quickly transfer some money from my savings and avoid fees and things, but it was still an unwelcome moment of panic, and now I have very little money left in either checking or savings. :( Which is all on me, since I've not been very responsible with my money, but it doesn't help that I haven't earned any since last summer. Fortunately my parents were kind enough to front me parking fare until I start getting my paychecks from Fair Trade Shop, but even so. I am used to having some stuff saved up! Being broke is not good.
The good: Fortunately, there is more of this!
a. My laptop lives! She also runs a bit faster now that all the stuff's been cleared off, and now I can leave all my school documents and things on my external drive. The only major losses: about 500 words total of fic (everything else that hasn't been saved is posted up here; thank goodness for my attention-whoring) and all my bug photos. Which is what I'm most sad about, but most of those are on my Dad's camera so hopefully I should be able to retrieve them, and if nothing else they're all posted on DA so I can go get them there.
Oh, and all my bookmarks are gone. That's going to be the hardest thing.
b. I have done my first paid week at The Shop! Not gotten paid yet, though, but it's nice just to have a job, and I think I am doing it reasonably well. I give the Fair Trade Schpiel. I convince people to buy things. The whole deal.
Interesting people who have been in the shop this past week:
i. A couple of Korean ladies who neither spoke nor understood English, thus our transaction was completed almost completely in gesture.
ii. An elderly man missing some of his front teeth, and who smelled very strongly of alcohol; when he came into the store, he told me "Things don't make sense, and that's why I drink. I like everything in a room to be the same." And from there he just went around and looked at things, and asked what they were made of, and seemed surprised that everything was handcrafted. When we got to the section with the chessboards he moved the pieces into a position that he told me was the most difficult position in chess, hwere even seasoned pros couldn't tell how the game was going to go from there. And then, after a while, he left.
I think he might have been homeless, but either way, I just felt like I should talk to him.
iii. An adorable young Japanese couple, who also didn't speak a whole lot of English, but who kept laughing and teasing each other - the boy kept trying on huge straw hats and asking his girlfriend if he looked cool. Also notable for being the only time I've heard an actual Japanese person use the word "kawaii".
iv. A lady who used to be a buyer for kisii soapstone statues in Kenya (which is one of the things we sell), as well as a gemologist before that, so she was really knowledgable about our stuff and told me a lot of details I didn't know about how the jewlery was made. I told her (in the course of making conversation) that I'd wanted to be a gemologist when I was little; her resopnse was "You should do it! You just need to take a couple of courses to get certified!" Maybe if I don't get hired for anything long term, that's what I'll do, hah.
v. The librarian from my elementary school! And she remembered me! She asked me how I was doing, and was surprised to hear that I had graduated from college already. She's apparently retired from the library, though.
One thing hat I thought was funny was that she told me the reason she remembered me was that when I was in first grade I decided to rewrite the ending of a fairy tale into something I liked better, and she'd always thought that was funny. Which I thought was funny too, but at the same time does make me despair a bit that I will ever be able to write anything other than fanfiction. Because you know how most people who grow up to be writers make up stories when they're little? Yeah, no, I've pretty much been writing fanfic forever and it's all I'm good at, writing-wise. :( Though at least maybe this means I'll grow up to be good at theoretical or academic work because I'm good at looking at stories and their parts and how they work.
(Fun fact: I "wrote" my first ever fanfiction before I knew how to write. When I was four I would make up continued adventures for the characters of The Rescuers Down Under and make my parents act them out with me.)
c. I went to see MegaMind a couple of days ago before work (I had a gift card for the movies) and quite enjoyed it! It was cute, and fun, and the title character was adorable and dorky and generally lovely. But the really sad thing is that I think this movie might actually be what jump-starts me into writing fic again after my long funk.
So while I enjoyed the movie, I was disappointed by just how closely it hewed to heroic gender roles, i.e. it's all about "getting the girl" and the female character doesn't get to do shit. So, I wanted to rectify that!
The very first thing I thought, when I was walking out of the theater, was that I wanted to write fic where, instead of going to try to talk down Hal, Roxie went and took some of the superhero serum herself - there was another dose or something - and fought him herself. And then the machine to de-power her broke.
I just think it'd be nifty, is all. She'd have to deal with having superpowers, and then there'd be the whole deal with whether or not this actually makes her a superhero (and whether she wants to be one or not), and whether MM would have to go back to being a villain in order to balance her out or what they were going to do about that.
...promise you all won't judge me if I do write, okay? PROMISE.
...also I may have come out of the movie shipping MegaMind/Minion a little bit. WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT JUDGING, OKAY. Besides, I'm half-convinced we were supposed to.
d. Speaking of movies (but on a completely tonally different note) Black Swan comes out on December 1 and the most complete cut of Metropolis yet is being released on Blu-Ray. Can I tell you how excited I am? I'm a lot excited. And maybe I can ask for Metropolis for Christmas and that'll be incentive to finish up my half-assed Disability Studies thesis on the artificial body and how Metropolis engages with it in relation to mechanization of labor.
e. In front of MegaMind there was a real honest-to-goodness trailer for Transformers: Prime and it's gonna be here in just over a week! NEW CANON SO EXCITE.
---
I finally don't have work tomorrow! Not that I don't like my job, not at all, but I am also rather fond of the idea of having a day off, especially since I'm working Black Friday. Sleeping in tomorrow, woo.
The good: Fortunately, there is more of this!
a. My laptop lives! She also runs a bit faster now that all the stuff's been cleared off, and now I can leave all my school documents and things on my external drive. The only major losses: about 500 words total of fic (everything else that hasn't been saved is posted up here; thank goodness for my attention-whoring) and all my bug photos. Which is what I'm most sad about, but most of those are on my Dad's camera so hopefully I should be able to retrieve them, and if nothing else they're all posted on DA so I can go get them there.
Oh, and all my bookmarks are gone. That's going to be the hardest thing.
b. I have done my first paid week at The Shop! Not gotten paid yet, though, but it's nice just to have a job, and I think I am doing it reasonably well. I give the Fair Trade Schpiel. I convince people to buy things. The whole deal.
Interesting people who have been in the shop this past week:
i. A couple of Korean ladies who neither spoke nor understood English, thus our transaction was completed almost completely in gesture.
ii. An elderly man missing some of his front teeth, and who smelled very strongly of alcohol; when he came into the store, he told me "Things don't make sense, and that's why I drink. I like everything in a room to be the same." And from there he just went around and looked at things, and asked what they were made of, and seemed surprised that everything was handcrafted. When we got to the section with the chessboards he moved the pieces into a position that he told me was the most difficult position in chess, hwere even seasoned pros couldn't tell how the game was going to go from there. And then, after a while, he left.
I think he might have been homeless, but either way, I just felt like I should talk to him.
iii. An adorable young Japanese couple, who also didn't speak a whole lot of English, but who kept laughing and teasing each other - the boy kept trying on huge straw hats and asking his girlfriend if he looked cool. Also notable for being the only time I've heard an actual Japanese person use the word "kawaii".
iv. A lady who used to be a buyer for kisii soapstone statues in Kenya (which is one of the things we sell), as well as a gemologist before that, so she was really knowledgable about our stuff and told me a lot of details I didn't know about how the jewlery was made. I told her (in the course of making conversation) that I'd wanted to be a gemologist when I was little; her resopnse was "You should do it! You just need to take a couple of courses to get certified!" Maybe if I don't get hired for anything long term, that's what I'll do, hah.
v. The librarian from my elementary school! And she remembered me! She asked me how I was doing, and was surprised to hear that I had graduated from college already. She's apparently retired from the library, though.
One thing hat I thought was funny was that she told me the reason she remembered me was that when I was in first grade I decided to rewrite the ending of a fairy tale into something I liked better, and she'd always thought that was funny. Which I thought was funny too, but at the same time does make me despair a bit that I will ever be able to write anything other than fanfiction. Because you know how most people who grow up to be writers make up stories when they're little? Yeah, no, I've pretty much been writing fanfic forever and it's all I'm good at, writing-wise. :( Though at least maybe this means I'll grow up to be good at theoretical or academic work because I'm good at looking at stories and their parts and how they work.
(Fun fact: I "wrote" my first ever fanfiction before I knew how to write. When I was four I would make up continued adventures for the characters of The Rescuers Down Under and make my parents act them out with me.)
c. I went to see MegaMind a couple of days ago before work (I had a gift card for the movies) and quite enjoyed it! It was cute, and fun, and the title character was adorable and dorky and generally lovely. But the really sad thing is that I think this movie might actually be what jump-starts me into writing fic again after my long funk.
So while I enjoyed the movie, I was disappointed by just how closely it hewed to heroic gender roles, i.e. it's all about "getting the girl" and the female character doesn't get to do shit. So, I wanted to rectify that!
The very first thing I thought, when I was walking out of the theater, was that I wanted to write fic where, instead of going to try to talk down Hal, Roxie went and took some of the superhero serum herself - there was another dose or something - and fought him herself. And then the machine to de-power her broke.
I just think it'd be nifty, is all. She'd have to deal with having superpowers, and then there'd be the whole deal with whether or not this actually makes her a superhero (and whether she wants to be one or not), and whether MM would have to go back to being a villain in order to balance her out or what they were going to do about that.
...promise you all won't judge me if I do write, okay? PROMISE.
...also I may have come out of the movie shipping MegaMind/Minion a little bit. WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT JUDGING, OKAY. Besides, I'm half-convinced we were supposed to.
d. Speaking of movies (but on a completely tonally different note) Black Swan comes out on December 1 and the most complete cut of Metropolis yet is being released on Blu-Ray. Can I tell you how excited I am? I'm a lot excited. And maybe I can ask for Metropolis for Christmas and that'll be incentive to finish up my half-assed Disability Studies thesis on the artificial body and how Metropolis engages with it in relation to mechanization of labor.
e. In front of MegaMind there was a real honest-to-goodness trailer for Transformers: Prime and it's gonna be here in just over a week! NEW CANON SO EXCITE.
---
I finally don't have work tomorrow! Not that I don't like my job, not at all, but I am also rather fond of the idea of having a day off, especially since I'm working Black Friday. Sleeping in tomorrow, woo.