This and that, bits and pieces, thens and nows...
Haven't done a 'State of the Ysabet' post in a while, so I figured hey, it's as good a way of delaying cleaning the ferret-room as anything else, sooooo....
Hmm. Been lots of things going on with me, I guess--
Family stuff: I got the shipment in of my mom's tea-set, and much to my relief it was twelve settings TOTAL between myself and my little sister. So I now own a lovely teapot, cups, saucers, plates, bread-plates, creamer and sugar-bowl (no regular bowls, for some reason; might fix that) in the Royal Albert Brigadoon pattern. It's... fancy; very pretty and delicate. I'm terrified to use it in any way, but I will (I think) have a tea on or around Mama's birthday once a year for a few friends, using it. Why not? Thanks, Mama. Other family stuff... we got the inheritance settled, the townhouse sold and so forth; so now I can plan for a few things I wasn't able to before, especially that trip to Japan next year sometime. Was gonna travel with a coworker, but it looks like I'm going alone. That's kind of strange and scary, but at the same time I *like* traveling alone in a way-- I can go where I want to, do what I want, and there're no witnesses I'll see later on if I screw up monumentally and, say, walk into the men's side of an onsen or something. It'd be more fun with a fellow traveler, yeah, but I can deal.
And speaking of traveling stuff: I'm heading up to visit nightengale in a couple weeks, and OMG am I looking forward to it. Pittsburgh, here I come! AND then 4 days in NYC, staying in her absent cousin's apartment in West Greenwich Village scott-free; can't beat that with a stick. We're gonna meet up with my younger sister Denise, my niece Shelly and great-niece Brittany and cousin-I've-never-met Alexandra-- they'll all be staying just off Time Square in a timeshare of my sister's, and though I'll only see them for a day and a half, it'll be good. There's a free Mary Blige concert in Central Park while we're all there-- we're gonna see that. But you know, mostly I'm just looking forward to seeing my best friend/adopted sister and staying with her in PBG and NYC and meeting her friends and just... hanging out. Very, very much looking forward to that-- I need the break, I need the company, I just freaking can't WAIT.
Workstuff: The pure fact that I haven't quit over the past month is, most probably, due to my dislike of job-hunting and the terror of being jobless in the current economy. Otherwise? Oh man, out the damn DOOR. Stress, too many death reports (11 in one day), moving to a new building-- I'm having bad dreams about my work. I dreamed a plane went down in the ocean near Mexico and everybody on board was a CPSA client, and I just stood by the fax machine and watched 50-odd death reports coming in, one at a time... I woke up from that one feeling like I'd been wrapped in lead, all muffled away from the world; it was very, very odd and gut-wrenching. I got over it, but... yeah. Things are a bit better now-- we moved on Friday, and tomorrow we unpack (eeeeeeegh, goat-rope time!) but it's not been a good month, workwise.
Writing: Been writing on ThreeThieves like a FIEND, me and Em. Not getting quite as many reviews as before, which is kind of saddening, but... well, they DO tend to slack off when you post frequently and on a schedule; and also, we're doing chapters that are, frankly, quite R-rated right now, and people tend not to review onscreen for those as much. Why? dunno, but I've noticed it with other fics before. We do post an 'abridged' version of each, plus an omake to make up for lost wordage in the abridged versions and just for fun. They've been well received in general, though we did have to deal with our first Troll in the last couple of days. Man, what an asshole that one was... Oh well, done with, gone, banned. I don't really mind flames so much; if somebody doesn't like our writing style or has a complaint about continuity or whatever, that's valid and needs reflecting on. But for somebody to post a deliberately crude comment because they don't like the content of the story, and to continue to read and post a worse one (much cruder, very oblique) at the next chapter... that's classic Trollism. Why are they reading? To troll. Hell, they posted their little nastygram within the first hour after posting! And then, in a private message, complained about our crossposting and how we 'spammed' their Friends page. So: bye-bye, Troll, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Meh. We write what we like; we ask for critiques and we get them. We answer the large majority of our comments, and right now we're asking for omake ideas. We do research, we care deeply about our writing and our characters, and we very much love what we're doing. A troll is a flyspeck on a window against that.
Other stuff:
a) Got new glasses! New ones! See? Not a great pic of me but you can see the new glasses fairly well. They're copper with tortishell/copper arms, semi-rimless instead of entirely so like my last ones, and they're SOLID. Feels SO good to get new specs. Also, my fears about glaucoma were apparently groundless-- yes, I *do* need to watch for symptoms, but they tested me to bits and I'm currently okay. My mom and other family had it, I've got some signs that it's a possibility in the future, but for the moment it's a no. \o/!!! Glad to get that cleared away, even if it did cost me going to an SCA event I wanted very much to go to.
b) Spent lunch with lil_1337 yesterday, eating Japanese and talking fandom and tons of stuff. We talked about the current state of Doppler Effect, which... **sigh** ...I don't really want to get into right now, except to say that nothing ever stays the same. All things change, and we change with them. And that no-one should've been afraid to talk to me about it; they should've known better. **hugs to all and sundry**
c) I spent the afternoon and evening over at taranos and avilina's place, petting their gigantic cat Mister Hawkins and watching eps of Leverage and Big Bang Theory. Of the two, I definitely prefer Leverage; that show rocked as much as they said it did, and oh my gods I love Parker to DEATH. She's like a skinny blonde two-legged ferret! In return, I've promised them eps of Being Human and maybe a few other shows. It was a good day.
d) And my car is now fixed! I can haz A/C, and the overheating problem turned out to be a bad radiator-cap, of all things. So next I need some body-work and a new paint-job. I'm keeping my little Honda, though; I absolutely love not having to make car-payments.
So today's a cleaning/knitting/bathing-the-weasles day. I need to go jeans-shopping at Savers and TwiceAsNice-- I'm kind of having Spontaneous Jeans Failure, when you have more than one pair go bad on you (center-seam rippage, two pairs are noticeably too large now and the zipper broke on one of the overlarge ones-- I haven't lost all that much weight, but enough that I can tell it in the waist) so I might do that later on. It's really nice out today, only supposed to get up to 90 instead of topping the 100-degree mark; good day to go shopping. I'm knitting away like a fiend on my Looking Glass charity auction thing (it's a knitted Beholder from the Balor's Gate game, went for $30) and generally kicking back except for the cleaning stuff. Mostly, it's just nice to be able to rest and not be stressed-out or depressed; feels good.
So... that's the State of the Ysabet at the moment if anybody's interested. I hope everybody has a great Sunday and a wonderful week. ^__^
Hmm. Been lots of things going on with me, I guess--
Family stuff: I got the shipment in of my mom's tea-set, and much to my relief it was twelve settings TOTAL between myself and my little sister. So I now own a lovely teapot, cups, saucers, plates, bread-plates, creamer and sugar-bowl (no regular bowls, for some reason; might fix that) in the Royal Albert Brigadoon pattern. It's... fancy; very pretty and delicate. I'm terrified to use it in any way, but I will (I think) have a tea on or around Mama's birthday once a year for a few friends, using it. Why not? Thanks, Mama. Other family stuff... we got the inheritance settled, the townhouse sold and so forth; so now I can plan for a few things I wasn't able to before, especially that trip to Japan next year sometime. Was gonna travel with a coworker, but it looks like I'm going alone. That's kind of strange and scary, but at the same time I *like* traveling alone in a way-- I can go where I want to, do what I want, and there're no witnesses I'll see later on if I screw up monumentally and, say, walk into the men's side of an onsen or something. It'd be more fun with a fellow traveler, yeah, but I can deal.
And speaking of traveling stuff: I'm heading up to visit nightengale in a couple weeks, and OMG am I looking forward to it. Pittsburgh, here I come! AND then 4 days in NYC, staying in her absent cousin's apartment in West Greenwich Village scott-free; can't beat that with a stick. We're gonna meet up with my younger sister Denise, my niece Shelly and great-niece Brittany and cousin-I've-never-met Alexandra-- they'll all be staying just off Time Square in a timeshare of my sister's, and though I'll only see them for a day and a half, it'll be good. There's a free Mary Blige concert in Central Park while we're all there-- we're gonna see that. But you know, mostly I'm just looking forward to seeing my best friend/adopted sister and staying with her in PBG and NYC and meeting her friends and just... hanging out. Very, very much looking forward to that-- I need the break, I need the company, I just freaking can't WAIT.
Workstuff: The pure fact that I haven't quit over the past month is, most probably, due to my dislike of job-hunting and the terror of being jobless in the current economy. Otherwise? Oh man, out the damn DOOR. Stress, too many death reports (11 in one day), moving to a new building-- I'm having bad dreams about my work. I dreamed a plane went down in the ocean near Mexico and everybody on board was a CPSA client, and I just stood by the fax machine and watched 50-odd death reports coming in, one at a time... I woke up from that one feeling like I'd been wrapped in lead, all muffled away from the world; it was very, very odd and gut-wrenching. I got over it, but... yeah. Things are a bit better now-- we moved on Friday, and tomorrow we unpack (eeeeeeegh, goat-rope time!) but it's not been a good month, workwise.
Writing: Been writing on ThreeThieves like a FIEND, me and Em. Not getting quite as many reviews as before, which is kind of saddening, but... well, they DO tend to slack off when you post frequently and on a schedule; and also, we're doing chapters that are, frankly, quite R-rated right now, and people tend not to review onscreen for those as much. Why? dunno, but I've noticed it with other fics before. We do post an 'abridged' version of each, plus an omake to make up for lost wordage in the abridged versions and just for fun. They've been well received in general, though we did have to deal with our first Troll in the last couple of days. Man, what an asshole that one was... Oh well, done with, gone, banned. I don't really mind flames so much; if somebody doesn't like our writing style or has a complaint about continuity or whatever, that's valid and needs reflecting on. But for somebody to post a deliberately crude comment because they don't like the content of the story, and to continue to read and post a worse one (much cruder, very oblique) at the next chapter... that's classic Trollism. Why are they reading? To troll. Hell, they posted their little nastygram within the first hour after posting! And then, in a private message, complained about our crossposting and how we 'spammed' their Friends page. So: bye-bye, Troll, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Meh. We write what we like; we ask for critiques and we get them. We answer the large majority of our comments, and right now we're asking for omake ideas. We do research, we care deeply about our writing and our characters, and we very much love what we're doing. A troll is a flyspeck on a window against that.
Other stuff:
a) Got new glasses! New ones! See? Not a great pic of me but you can see the new glasses fairly well. They're copper with tortishell/copper arms, semi-rimless instead of entirely so like my last ones, and they're SOLID. Feels SO good to get new specs. Also, my fears about glaucoma were apparently groundless-- yes, I *do* need to watch for symptoms, but they tested me to bits and I'm currently okay. My mom and other family had it, I've got some signs that it's a possibility in the future, but for the moment it's a no. \o/!!! Glad to get that cleared away, even if it did cost me going to an SCA event I wanted very much to go to.
b) Spent lunch with lil_1337 yesterday, eating Japanese and talking fandom and tons of stuff. We talked about the current state of Doppler Effect, which... **sigh** ...I don't really want to get into right now, except to say that nothing ever stays the same. All things change, and we change with them. And that no-one should've been afraid to talk to me about it; they should've known better. **hugs to all and sundry**
c) I spent the afternoon and evening over at taranos and avilina's place, petting their gigantic cat Mister Hawkins and watching eps of Leverage and Big Bang Theory. Of the two, I definitely prefer Leverage; that show rocked as much as they said it did, and oh my gods I love Parker to DEATH. She's like a skinny blonde two-legged ferret! In return, I've promised them eps of Being Human and maybe a few other shows. It was a good day.
d) And my car is now fixed! I can haz A/C, and the overheating problem turned out to be a bad radiator-cap, of all things. So next I need some body-work and a new paint-job. I'm keeping my little Honda, though; I absolutely love not having to make car-payments.
So today's a cleaning/knitting/bathing-the-weasles day. I need to go jeans-shopping at Savers and TwiceAsNice-- I'm kind of having Spontaneous Jeans Failure, when you have more than one pair go bad on you (center-seam rippage, two pairs are noticeably too large now and the zipper broke on one of the overlarge ones-- I haven't lost all that much weight, but enough that I can tell it in the waist) so I might do that later on. It's really nice out today, only supposed to get up to 90 instead of topping the 100-degree mark; good day to go shopping. I'm knitting away like a fiend on my Looking Glass charity auction thing (it's a knitted Beholder from the Balor's Gate game, went for $30) and generally kicking back except for the cleaning stuff. Mostly, it's just nice to be able to rest and not be stressed-out or depressed; feels good.
So... that's the State of the Ysabet at the moment if anybody's interested. I hope everybody has a great Sunday and a wonderful week. ^__^