An Open Love Letter to Podfic
Alternate titles of this post include:
Sooo...backstory. I moved this past week! Not that far, just a few miles. However, my old apartment? Was kind of a mess.
The last time I moved, it was out of my parents' house (the house I grew up in), and because of my parents' divorce, we were all moving on the same day--all four of us to three separate places (Mom's new house, Dad's new house, my apartment). It got pretty crazy, and I ran out of time to finish packing my childhood bedroom. To avoid the wrath of my Dad's cleansing fury (translation: IT IS MOVING DAY AND IF IT WAS IMPORTANT YOU WOULD HAVE ALREADY PACKED IT, SO LOGICALLY I SHALL THROW ALL YOUR REMAINING SHIT IN THE DUMPSTER!!! Yeah, thanks Dad), I ended up throwing tons of shit into boxes without going through any of it, and just hauling it over to the new place. This stuff got thrown into the back of my kitchen, on my desk, and in my storage unit at my new place. Which was fine...except that, HI ADHD! In the two years I lived there, I never went through any of it, despite the best intentions. Whooops. (To see some of the ridiculousness this resulted in me finding, see this post.)
So, back to last week! I know I am moving on the 1st. I know I have tons of shit to go through. Cleverly, I plan ahead for this, by taking the 29th through the 2nd off of work. Smart, right? So, of course, I spend Saturday the 29th sleeping, going to my sister's J-term production with moonlingmaid, and hanging out with moonlingmaid afterwards. (We drank tea and watched OOOLLLLLD school Doctor Who--First Doctor, black & white! Hardcore, man. I must admit, it was kind of awesome.) And then Sunday the 30th was spent halfheartedly moving boxes around my kitchen (I had packed most of my dishes several days before when my mom was over helping), and then hanging out more with moonlingmaid (dinner at her house and "The Five Doctors" this time!)
Okay. It's Monday, the 31st. At this point, I am moving TOMORROW. I wake up at 11 AM, and go, "okay, self. Ben's coming with the Uhaul at noon tomorrow. You have until then to get your car fixed, get ALL OF THIS SHIT PACKED, and be ready to be TOTALLY OUT OF HERE. *deep breath* You can DO IT!"
And here's where the podfic comes in.
You guys, I honestly do not think I would have made it out the other end of this thing SANE without podfic. Seriously. For the record, unless otherwise noted, I had not listened to any of the podfic listed in this post prior to this week. It was pretty much all new material to me.
So, to start my day off on Monday, I fire up Katabasis, and head out to drop my car off to get fixed. Now, at this point, it's just past noon, and I'm thinking, "hey, I've got all night! I'll be fine," so like an IDIOT I spend an hour and a half just sitting in the coffee shop down the street from the auto shop, eating pastries and a sandwich and drinking tea. Finally, Katabasis ends, so I figure I should probably head home and start packing in earnest. I'm in Due South kinda mood now, so I que up Kowalski is Bleeding, walk home, and FINALLY begin really packing.
Fast-forward several hours. Kowalski is Bleeding has ended, I've put on Practically Perfect in Every Way, and I've remembered that, "hey, I have actual medication which helps me focus, huh! *pops pills*", when I get a call that my car's ready and I can come pick it up. However, I'm all hopped up on cleaning and meds now, so I can't tear my self away from packing until after it's gotten dark and the auto shop is going to close in like an hour. Awesome. So I hurry down to Lloyd's (going "Oh BOYS!" at Jared and Jensen the whole way), pick up my car and head back to the apartment. Practically Perfect finishes up, and I switch over to Love Story & Timestamp. There...may or may not be some rocking out to the Taylor Swift song conveniently included in the podfic. I DENY EVERYTHING! *shifty eyes* Damn you reena_jenkins.
At this point, I take a break to make this post, then get back to sorting and packing. Over the next few hours, I continue to pack and get on an SGA kick, blowing through Reality, John Sheppard's Guide to Surviving Project Runway, and Rodney McKay's Diary. At some point in there I also listen to Yin & Yang. Then, I look at all the shit I still have to do, look back at my iPod, and go, "Fuck it. I need something EPIC." So I go to my computer and go into my audiobooks and sort by time, and notice that, conveniently, the longest thing I've got (aside from The Student Prince, when counting all three parts together, which will appear later in this post) is The Illogical (√π233/hy7) Series, which I have not yet listened to. I shrug, go, "yeah, that sounds good", and switch it on.
I think I should note here that I continued packing and listening to this podfic, and got straight through it barely even pausing it. And that podfic? Is eleven HOURS, forty-seven minutes, and fifty-one seconds. Yeah, ELEVEN HOURS. So, that gets me through the night, where I pretty much pack non-stop, only taking breaks to open new cans of Coke and grab more stimulants (never have I been so grateful in my life for my prescription!) I continue to pack my apartment up, listening to Spock kick Jim Kirk's butt into fulfilling his potential and Winona Kirk being badass. I may still be a little hazy on the exact details of the wee hours of that morning.
The Illogical Series finally ends, I look up at the clock, and realize holy shit it is the morning and I have to move my fucking car for the fucking snow emergency. (Insert obligatory "fuck you Minnesota" here.) At this point, you guys, I am looking at my half-packed apartment and finally really realizes "oh fuck I am NOT GOING TO MAKE IT. FUCK." And I proceed to freak the fuck out just a little bit. There may have been hyperventilating.
So I turn to a guaranteed comfort-fic: Chapter 33 of The Student Prince (Part 3) (aka Arthur's Christmas Day Speech; for those uber-curious, it's timestamp 3:21:33-4:04:55). Seriously you guys, picture this: I am walking to my car over all the snow, freaking out, trying to let pandarus's dulcet tones soothe my fraying nerves. At this point, I've been up for close to 24 hours, am running on caffeine and stimulants, and don't know how the fuck I'm going to be totally moved in 36 hours. And then, of fucking COURSE, because this is my life, I slip on the snow and go down hard on my leg.
And I just sit there for a minute or two, thinking "why is LIFE" and "FML", and then I listen to pandarus-as-Arthur come out on national television, and I go, "self, you can DO THIS. Be strong like Arthur! YOU CAN DO IT! *mental fistpump*" So I get up, and I limp over to my car, and I drive over my dad's house to unload the boxes to go in storage that I had loaded several hours ago (but what seems like DAYS ago).
After that, I get back to my apartment and start The Whore Of Babylon Was A Perfectly Nice Girl, but I don't get very far before my new roommate shows up with the Uhaul and we have to pick up our new keys and then it's a blur of friends (moonlingmaid, smashfantastic and a coworker) coming over and, instead of helping me MOVE boxes, helping me throw the remaining shit INTO boxes and bags, and getting the furniture and everything we can into the van. I don't think I can even express how stressful that afternoon was. All I can say is thank the moving gods for Ben (my new roommate) and his dad--seriously, NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED without them. Also thankful to Sara, my coworker, who totally took charge of getting shit into boxes while I pathetically flailed around XD
Finally, we get everything moved out of the van and into the new place. I collapse onto my mattress in the living room with only a fitted sheet, leggings under sweatpants, a long sleeved tee under an over-sized tee, slipper socks, and two tiny couch pillows. I fall asleep listening to one of my new podfics, which I will post soon, I promise!
DAY TWO OF THE MOVE! ...is not all that interesting or podfic relevant. It mostly consisted of me and my mother frantically finishing getting everything out of my old apartment and into my new one. And me freaking out a LOT when I realized we only had ONE HOUR to clean the WHOLE APARTMENT once we got all my stuff out. (We'll see how much of my security deposit I'll get back...) Somewhere in there, I finished The Whore of Babylon Was A Perfectly Nice Girl.
Seriously, purple-eyed creatures, most stressful day of my life. Well, at least in recent memory.
Okay, so I'm finally moved in...and now the unpacking begins. Over the next four days (Thursday-Sunday), I start off with some comfort podfics to calm myself down--Ordinary Life and Chash's SPN/Bones Crossover Series. Then I move on to new stuff, and get through (in order): The Group-W Bench, Reciprocation, Arguing on the Internet Is Like..., The Incestuous Courtship of the Antichrist's Bride, and the Reasonable Doubt 'Verse.
On Sunday night, I finally get my media center set up, so the podfic listening trails off back to normal.
Now, you guys, keep in mind that my computer? Got unplugged on Tuesday morning, and I don't have a laptop right now. Me without internet for more than 24 hours? Is not a pretty thing. To paraphrase my dad, "Yeah, I've seen you without internet after a couple of days. It ain't pretty. You act like a crack addict searching for her next hit." Which is...unfortunately kind of accurate. (My mom actually, seriously, wanted to put me in an internet addiction 12-step group when I was in high school. No lie, swear to god.) So, me without internet access for five days? Had the potential to make this move even more stressful than it already was.
But podfic? Seemed to waylay my withdrawal symptoms. That connection of, "oh, I can still have access to fic, even if I can't check my email" kept me sane until I could unpack enough to get my media center set up. So that was awesome :)
So, because I am the sort of nerd who adds up the times of all the podfics she listened to to figure out how much time she spent listening to podfic...I did just that XD
Purple-eyed creatures. In ONE WEEK--SEVEN DAYS I listened to ONE AND THREE QUARTERS of a DAY of podfic. Or, to be exact, 1 day, 18 hours, 47 minutes and 15 seconds of podfic. This means that I spent almost exactly a quarter of my week (~25.47%) listening to podfic. That includes sleeping time. !!!
This...kind of boggles my mind.
So. The lessons that can be learned from this? (AKA the DEAR FUTURE SELF...part!)
- How Podfic Kept Me Sane
- Why Bess Should Never Be Allowed to Manage Her Own Packing
- Dear Future Self: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NEXT TIME YOU ARE MOVING AND THINK "OH, I CAN PACK LATER", READ THIS POST!!! ...no, self, I am SERIOUS. *glares*
- Really, it's all moonlingmaid's fault.
Sooo...backstory. I moved this past week! Not that far, just a few miles. However, my old apartment? Was kind of a mess.
The last time I moved, it was out of my parents' house (the house I grew up in), and because of my parents' divorce, we were all moving on the same day--all four of us to three separate places (Mom's new house, Dad's new house, my apartment). It got pretty crazy, and I ran out of time to finish packing my childhood bedroom. To avoid the wrath of my Dad's cleansing fury (translation: IT IS MOVING DAY AND IF IT WAS IMPORTANT YOU WOULD HAVE ALREADY PACKED IT, SO LOGICALLY I SHALL THROW ALL YOUR REMAINING SHIT IN THE DUMPSTER!!! Yeah, thanks Dad), I ended up throwing tons of shit into boxes without going through any of it, and just hauling it over to the new place. This stuff got thrown into the back of my kitchen, on my desk, and in my storage unit at my new place. Which was fine...except that, HI ADHD! In the two years I lived there, I never went through any of it, despite the best intentions. Whooops. (To see some of the ridiculousness this resulted in me finding, see this post.)
So, back to last week! I know I am moving on the 1st. I know I have tons of shit to go through. Cleverly, I plan ahead for this, by taking the 29th through the 2nd off of work. Smart, right? So, of course, I spend Saturday the 29th sleeping, going to my sister's J-term production with moonlingmaid, and hanging out with moonlingmaid afterwards. (We drank tea and watched OOOLLLLLD school Doctor Who--First Doctor, black & white! Hardcore, man. I must admit, it was kind of awesome.) And then Sunday the 30th was spent halfheartedly moving boxes around my kitchen (I had packed most of my dishes several days before when my mom was over helping), and then hanging out more with moonlingmaid (dinner at her house and "The Five Doctors" this time!)
Okay. It's Monday, the 31st. At this point, I am moving TOMORROW. I wake up at 11 AM, and go, "okay, self. Ben's coming with the Uhaul at noon tomorrow. You have until then to get your car fixed, get ALL OF THIS SHIT PACKED, and be ready to be TOTALLY OUT OF HERE. *deep breath* You can DO IT!"
And here's where the podfic comes in.
You guys, I honestly do not think I would have made it out the other end of this thing SANE without podfic. Seriously. For the record, unless otherwise noted, I had not listened to any of the podfic listed in this post prior to this week. It was pretty much all new material to me.
So, to start my day off on Monday, I fire up Katabasis, and head out to drop my car off to get fixed. Now, at this point, it's just past noon, and I'm thinking, "hey, I've got all night! I'll be fine," so like an IDIOT I spend an hour and a half just sitting in the coffee shop down the street from the auto shop, eating pastries and a sandwich and drinking tea. Finally, Katabasis ends, so I figure I should probably head home and start packing in earnest. I'm in Due South kinda mood now, so I que up Kowalski is Bleeding, walk home, and FINALLY begin really packing.
Fast-forward several hours. Kowalski is Bleeding has ended, I've put on Practically Perfect in Every Way, and I've remembered that, "hey, I have actual medication which helps me focus, huh! *pops pills*", when I get a call that my car's ready and I can come pick it up. However, I'm all hopped up on cleaning and meds now, so I can't tear my self away from packing until after it's gotten dark and the auto shop is going to close in like an hour. Awesome. So I hurry down to Lloyd's (going "Oh BOYS!" at Jared and Jensen the whole way), pick up my car and head back to the apartment. Practically Perfect finishes up, and I switch over to Love Story & Timestamp. There...may or may not be some rocking out to the Taylor Swift song conveniently included in the podfic. I DENY EVERYTHING! *shifty eyes* Damn you reena_jenkins.
At this point, I take a break to make this post, then get back to sorting and packing. Over the next few hours, I continue to pack and get on an SGA kick, blowing through Reality, John Sheppard's Guide to Surviving Project Runway, and Rodney McKay's Diary. At some point in there I also listen to Yin & Yang. Then, I look at all the shit I still have to do, look back at my iPod, and go, "Fuck it. I need something EPIC." So I go to my computer and go into my audiobooks and sort by time, and notice that, conveniently, the longest thing I've got (aside from The Student Prince, when counting all three parts together, which will appear later in this post) is The Illogical (√π233/hy7) Series, which I have not yet listened to. I shrug, go, "yeah, that sounds good", and switch it on.
I think I should note here that I continued packing and listening to this podfic, and got straight through it barely even pausing it. And that podfic? Is eleven HOURS, forty-seven minutes, and fifty-one seconds. Yeah, ELEVEN HOURS. So, that gets me through the night, where I pretty much pack non-stop, only taking breaks to open new cans of Coke and grab more stimulants (never have I been so grateful in my life for my prescription!) I continue to pack my apartment up, listening to Spock kick Jim Kirk's butt into fulfilling his potential and Winona Kirk being badass. I may still be a little hazy on the exact details of the wee hours of that morning.
The Illogical Series finally ends, I look up at the clock, and realize holy shit it is the morning and I have to move my fucking car for the fucking snow emergency. (Insert obligatory "fuck you Minnesota" here.) At this point, you guys, I am looking at my half-packed apartment and finally really realizes "oh fuck I am NOT GOING TO MAKE IT. FUCK." And I proceed to freak the fuck out just a little bit. There may have been hyperventilating.
So I turn to a guaranteed comfort-fic: Chapter 33 of The Student Prince (Part 3) (aka Arthur's Christmas Day Speech; for those uber-curious, it's timestamp 3:21:33-4:04:55). Seriously you guys, picture this: I am walking to my car over all the snow, freaking out, trying to let pandarus's dulcet tones soothe my fraying nerves. At this point, I've been up for close to 24 hours, am running on caffeine and stimulants, and don't know how the fuck I'm going to be totally moved in 36 hours. And then, of fucking COURSE, because this is my life, I slip on the snow and go down hard on my leg.
And I just sit there for a minute or two, thinking "why is LIFE" and "FML", and then I listen to pandarus-as-Arthur come out on national television, and I go, "self, you can DO THIS. Be strong like Arthur! YOU CAN DO IT! *mental fistpump*" So I get up, and I limp over to my car, and I drive over my dad's house to unload the boxes to go in storage that I had loaded several hours ago (but what seems like DAYS ago).
After that, I get back to my apartment and start The Whore Of Babylon Was A Perfectly Nice Girl, but I don't get very far before my new roommate shows up with the Uhaul and we have to pick up our new keys and then it's a blur of friends (moonlingmaid, smashfantastic and a coworker) coming over and, instead of helping me MOVE boxes, helping me throw the remaining shit INTO boxes and bags, and getting the furniture and everything we can into the van. I don't think I can even express how stressful that afternoon was. All I can say is thank the moving gods for Ben (my new roommate) and his dad--seriously, NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED without them. Also thankful to Sara, my coworker, who totally took charge of getting shit into boxes while I pathetically flailed around XD
Finally, we get everything moved out of the van and into the new place. I collapse onto my mattress in the living room with only a fitted sheet, leggings under sweatpants, a long sleeved tee under an over-sized tee, slipper socks, and two tiny couch pillows. I fall asleep listening to one of my new podfics, which I will post soon, I promise!
DAY TWO OF THE MOVE! ...is not all that interesting or podfic relevant. It mostly consisted of me and my mother frantically finishing getting everything out of my old apartment and into my new one. And me freaking out a LOT when I realized we only had ONE HOUR to clean the WHOLE APARTMENT once we got all my stuff out. (We'll see how much of my security deposit I'll get back...) Somewhere in there, I finished The Whore of Babylon Was A Perfectly Nice Girl.
Seriously, purple-eyed creatures, most stressful day of my life. Well, at least in recent memory.
Okay, so I'm finally moved in...and now the unpacking begins. Over the next four days (Thursday-Sunday), I start off with some comfort podfics to calm myself down--Ordinary Life and Chash's SPN/Bones Crossover Series. Then I move on to new stuff, and get through (in order): The Group-W Bench, Reciprocation, Arguing on the Internet Is Like..., The Incestuous Courtship of the Antichrist's Bride, and the Reasonable Doubt 'Verse.
On Sunday night, I finally get my media center set up, so the podfic listening trails off back to normal.
Now, you guys, keep in mind that my computer? Got unplugged on Tuesday morning, and I don't have a laptop right now. Me without internet for more than 24 hours? Is not a pretty thing. To paraphrase my dad, "Yeah, I've seen you without internet after a couple of days. It ain't pretty. You act like a crack addict searching for her next hit." Which is...unfortunately kind of accurate. (My mom actually, seriously, wanted to put me in an internet addiction 12-step group when I was in high school. No lie, swear to god.) So, me without internet access for five days? Had the potential to make this move even more stressful than it already was.
But podfic? Seemed to waylay my withdrawal symptoms. That connection of, "oh, I can still have access to fic, even if I can't check my email" kept me sane until I could unpack enough to get my media center set up. So that was awesome :)
So, because I am the sort of nerd who adds up the times of all the podfics she listened to to figure out how much time she spent listening to podfic...I did just that XD
Purple-eyed creatures. In ONE WEEK--SEVEN DAYS I listened to ONE AND THREE QUARTERS of a DAY of podfic. Or, to be exact, 1 day, 18 hours, 47 minutes and 15 seconds of podfic. This means that I spent almost exactly a quarter of my week (~25.47%) listening to podfic. That includes sleeping time. !!!
This...kind of boggles my mind.
So. The lessons that can be learned from this? (AKA the DEAR FUTURE SELF...part!)
- You should start taking your medication to help you pack on the day you MEANT to start packing, not the day before the move.
- When moonlingmaid asks to hang out and you really should be packing, even if you don't want to? SAY NO.
- Take a whole week off of work to pack. Seriously, you won't regret it.
- Have lots of new podfic to listen to--the one thing I did right this time!
- And finally?
PODFIC = ♥