Have returned from seeing Half Blood Prince with the family, and at the moment I have very little to say. Ok, not true. But I remembered very little in the few years it's been since I read the book, so all but the main events were pretty much surprises. I read HPB the night it came out, and haven't touched it since. I'll probably go back

Movie spoilers are pretty much negligible, book spoilers rampant.

( Long(er) form response under here. )

Short form response: fun times, pretty, want Snape fics and Draco fics. Rec me?

So that was Torchwood.

LOTS of spoilers beneath, so no peaking if you haven't watched. starryeyedfaery, I'm looking at you.

( Spoilers, duh. )
Um. I had other things to say, but I am hungry and there is a dog who may well start gnawing on me if I don't feed her dinner already, so I'll just go do that, shall I?

Mostly for naturelf, but also for the horror edification of everyone else.

That Apoctopus Can Hear You!

This post is coming to you from my delightfully new and delightfully shiny computer! I am now the proud owner of an HP Pavilion dv6, and oh how I love it! We're still getting to know each other, but I've stripped the stupid things off (Decrapifier, you are my hero) and am working on d/ling everything I need to make this machine workable. OpenOffice is plugging away at the moment.

In less materialistic news, my Twitter feed is thoroughly surreal right now. It's split pretty evenly between people chattering about life as normal and people providing live reports of the election chaos in Iran. Neil Gaiman said it best earlier today: "If you go to the @persiankiwi page and read it through it's like an apocalyptic novel played out in tweets."

And now, to bed. Attempting to make sense of the information trickle coming out of Iran and the information EXPLOSION it has created is making my head hurt. Sleep.

One of the rather pleasing side effects to being done** is an unexpected bit of time to do things I want. I know, crazy, right? I've picked up a couple new knitting projects, one of which is a birthday gift so I won't say much about but involves Coraline, and I'd forgotten how delightful it is to have my hands full of yarn. I have, like most knitters, a stash that seems to multiply exponentially, so one of my summer goals is to find projects for all that yarn. I've a few in mind, all of which are geeky and therefore good.

I'm also learning to cross stitch, because at heart, I am an 80 year old woman. Let's be honest here. It's unbelievably slow going and while I'm sure some of that is because I'm new, it's not a hobby that will be churning out results particularly often.



**No, I won't be getting over this any time soon. I still haven't entirely figured out what this whole "graduate" thing means, and anyone who has all the answers is welcome to share.

Aaand this is also a test. Don't mind me!

Let's talk about bulk shipping!

If you are interested in acquiring a copy of Sam's (copperbadge) Nameless, and live in Canada (or other places for that matter), THIS IS THE PLACE TO BE!

Ok, mostly I'm just happy to be a hub for Canada orders. See, the postage to Canada is ungodly expensive (no really; it's $19 shipping for a $10 book), and it's vastly less absurd for me to order books then send them out individually. Also, it means I can encourage other people to read Nameless!

Also, we get a 10% discount on order of 5 or more, so more clearly = better.

Drop me a line here, and we can work the details out from there. If you'd prefer, shoot me an email at sixbyeight at gmail dot com.

Now that Urinetwon has closed, I finds myself staring down a pile of work and frighteningly few days in which to complete it. Grades for Seniors are due at noon on May 5th, so everything has to be turned in by May 4th.*

Of course, we all have papers and projects and tests coming out of our noses. Comes with the academia territory. At the moment, I'm supposed to be writing some sort of something about Midsummer and metatheatre. I have some leeway with the assignment, so it doesn't have to be a simple research paper. I'm thinking some sort of production analysis with a focus on Puck and Bottom as traditional Elizabethan clowns. No idea how I'm going to structure it or really what I'm doing, but it should be interesting.

Current paper soundtrack is Ben Folds, with an emphasis on Songs for Silverman and the Live album. WOOO!

*Star Wars Day!**

**May the Fourth be with you!

Tiny Tom: I'm frightened!
Bobby: As well you should be. Freedom is scary. It's a blast of cool wind that burns your face to wake you up.
Tiny Tom: Literally?
Bobby: Yes.

Urinetown opens on Wednesday, so of course I have all the songs playing in my head AT THE SAME TIME. I'm generally pretty pleased with where thing stand costume-wise, as all my notes are obsessive-designer things. Yay! A good place to be.

I seem to pick up the odd jobs in the costume shop (make a 3 foot doll with a photo of my face on it! Take a wig with a 1950's updo and make it look like half the head has been shaved! Sew a dress with nearly 100 feet of ruffles!) but this show pretty much wins at crazy. In the last month or so, I have:
- made bloody body parts compete with gnaw marks
- made a recreation of a costume dress, then bloodied and shredded it
- beat costumes with rocks
- added blood stains on a shirt to mimic the look of someone who fell 30 feet into a gravel pit
- attacked costumes with straight razors, scissors, steak knives, and a litany of other sharp things
- dyed a whole bunch of fabric to get it juuuuust the right colour
- splashed bleach on lots of costumes
- kicked a rock wall while wearing costume shoes to distress them
- rolled down a hill in a costume, again to distress
- cut the toe off a shoe

Sometimes, I really love my life.

Look at me with my bad posting self! Three whole posts in as many days? Crazytalk!

I'm headed out of town for large chunks of the next month, so bear with me and my lack of communication. Today I leave for the Southeaster Theatre Conference (SETC) to beg shamelessly for present myself as a viable candidate for employment. We're headed to Atlanta first, then on to Birmingham (where the conference is) tomorrow. Saturday means a return to Atlanta, then Sunday will hopefully see me driving towards Chapel Hill-ish area, where I'll spend the next week. Woo spring break! Lots of reading and show watching and food eating to be done.

The following Sunday I'm back in Asheville, but only for 24 hours. Monday at noon we leave for the Unitesd States Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT), and will be gone for the better part of the week.

Then I come back and WHAM! It's April.

SO! I won't have internet access until I get to Hillsborough, then likely won't have it again until I return to Asheville. Doesn't mean I don't love you, just means it's taking me a bit longer (I know, even longer than my normal FOREVER LATE sort of response).

Also, WHEEEE! Conference seasons! I'm super excited about EVERYTHING.

ETA: I apparently cannot handle tags that late at night.

My battle with my computer is nothing new. It's been active and public since August 2006. At least, that's when I started writing about it. Eleven posts over two and a half years.

And here's a shock: my computer is at it again. It's been deciding that random bits don't exist. First it's my CD drive, then my wireless card, then (for a fun little panic) my screen. I've tightened screws and attached the thing with canned air after cleaning and clearing out files. Here's hoping this will at least last me though the semester.

Yikes. I know I'm one of millions of people graduating this year, and one of zillions who have graduated with a Bachelors. Still, it's absolutely terrifying. I'm in a luxury industry and this economy does not really support extravagances like theatre. Unfortunately. That means I'm applying for jobs with a very real possibility of being unemployed for the next few years. And that's terrifying.

But I'm not done yet, which means I still have work to do and papers to write. At the moment, I'm writing a pair of ethical dialogues. They're supposed to be a conversation between two ethical standpoints focused on a certain topic, but I've exactly no experience with ethical or philosophical writing so I've no idea if I'm going about this properly.

I do know my Kantian voice is very bitter at being less than applicable to today's politics and my Utilitarian voice has a case of the snarks.

Hey, the prof did say she wanted us to bring elements of our own majors to the class. I've got both literature and theatre covered with this assignment. It's just the ethics I'm not sure about.

Icon of extreme appropriateness!

Watching John Green on BlogTV right now, asking questions and getting to hear his thoughts on everything from Mountain Goats to what books every teen should read.

Oh bless. He just read "The Second Coming."

In other, equally as unimportant news, my computer has decided that my CD drive doesn't actually exist. Will I ever win?

No, probably not. Stupid question.

It's cold. Not a little cold, A LOT COLD.

Current temp, according to Weather Underground (which seems to be the most accurate around here) is 6.6 degrees Fahrenheit. We've got a decent windchill that brings things down to a balmy -14 Fahrenheit.

BRRRR.

And yet, I'm sitting here eating ice cream and watching Bones. This is a poor choice for 2 reasons:
1- Did I mention the part where it's cold? Ice cream is perhaps not the best snack choice in this weather.
2- I don't do well with corpses (like the nightmares for days on end brand of "don't to well") yet I'm watching Bones, a show fundamentally about corpses, just before I go to bed. They're all so cuddly and geeky and adorable; I just can't help myself!

I may very well regret this decision tomorrow. Possibly even tonight.

Off to my ice cream!

Body has apparently decided to begin 2009 with a mild case of The Death. My brain is swimming in snot, I sneeze just as often as I breath, my sinuses feel like Mt. St. Helens an hour before eruption, my eyes are watering so much that my aunt actually asked if I was crying at my book, my joints protest all movement, and I cannot hear for shit.

This has gotten me thinking about the proper care and feeding of colds and fevers.

Not that I have a fever, touch wood, but my brain has turned its soggy self in that direction. There's the adage about starving a cold and feeding a fever (or is it the other way around?) but what about fevers themselves. Sometimes people say to sweat them out other time we hear about actively lowering the body temperature.

So which is it?

I know there isn't a single answer here, but my ability to accurately search for and process information is pretty damned low right now, so I think I'm going to go sleep.

*breezes past New Years resolutions and such*

I've been on a crime/heist kick recently, so I've been watching a bunch of TV along those lines. Burn Notice, Life, and Leverage are all in my roundup now. Recently saw the latest ep of Leverage and I can now say with complete assurance that I LOVE this show.

Has nothing to do with the show itself, though I find it fun. Nothing about the writing, though it's generally pretty crafty. Nothing about the characters or plots or concept, though all are amusing and enjoyable to watch. Oh, no.

We open with the gang out in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowheresville, and a discussion of just how miserable 107 degree weather is. Artisan's main complaint, aside from the heat, is that his wireless connection was so slow that it took the newest episode of Doctor Who an hour to download.

*loves*

Christmas has been survived! We've still 2 nights of Channukah Hannukah Hanukkah That Other Holiday We Celebrate to go, but I expect those will also be livable.

As per naturelf suggested last year, I've started listening to Alan Maitland reading The Shepherd each Christmas, thanks to the CBC posting it online. Makes for delicious Christmas listening.

Now we're off to visit family just outside of Atlanta for a few days, where I expect to accomplish lots of reading and a bit of knitting. Maybe I'll finish this black and grey scarf that I've been working on for a few months.

And when we return, it'll be time for Doctor Who with starryeyedfaery! I've resisted until we can watch together.

Resisting is hard. *pouts*

Aaaand as we're supposed to be leaving in *checks clock* 29 minutes, I should probably go pack.

*is made of preparedness*

I'm pulling pictures of wormhole graphics (why do they all look like water?) and writing about sonic weapons.

Can every paper be this cool?

I'm having lots of fun with this, and would be enjoying it even more if it wasn't due on Monday. I know, I know, it's my own fault. But by this point in the semester, everything gets done last minute. I just have too much going on!

Music at the moment is the Doctor Who Cardiff Concert. It seemed appropriate. It's on a loop with the SG:A and Firefly soundtracks. Especially fitting that the Dalek music played while I was making notes about robots and lasers.

Now, if only I could come up with a reason to write about Brotherhood 2.0 and nerdfighting, I think my paper fantasies would be complete.

Hi. I'm an academic at heart. Can you tell?

ETA: There's a perfect SF sky happening outside my window. Loverly dark lavender sky with fast moving, BRIGHT orange clouds. Love it!

ETA 2: Braindrool is a loverly, loverly thing. I've been pulling ideas, connections, and quotes from my braindrool all afternoon long. And it helped me find 2 obscure episode bits I wanted, where various episode summaries and google searches had failed. *cuddles braindrool*

Enough about my stupid moronic death wish having technology.

How about a video?



Snagged from naturelf because Funny or Die is MADE OF WIN.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA NO.

Really, computer? I thought we'd come to an understanding of sorts. You are gonna hold out until I graduate. That's juuuuust over a semester. You can totally do it, right?

RIGHT?!

See, after your antics today, I'm beginning to doubt that.

I brought you a new AC/DC power pack last weekend. Yup, this is the FOURTH you've gone through. Truly, I'm impressed with your ability to kill power packs. The first one died because the pin in your power jack was loose, so the poor power pack was painfully shorted. The second pack met the same fate because it took me too long to figure out which bit exactly needed fixing. The third was killed by means I'm still not sure I understand. Somehow the connector pin on the male jack broke. The metal casing in which it was housed didn't break, just the tiny, tuning fork shaped piece. But it broke.

So I bought you a new one. And now you should be happily munching on that nummy direct current converted for you by the new pack.

SO WHY AREN'T YOU?!

You'll pardon my yelling. It just that I'm getting a bit tired of all this. The power pack is clicking, just like the old, shorted packs used to. So far as I can tell, your jack is still in place. So what are you doing to the power pack? How are you shorting it out?

Ya know what? Nevermind. I don't need to know how you're doing your best to kill yet another power source. Just cool it for now! You've only got to last through the end of May. That's not so long; just 6 months. You can do it!

And if you don't? Then I take no responsibility for what happens to you. If you happen to be sitting by an open window or on the top of a large stack I'm carrying down the stairs or mysteriously placed just behind my car's tires? I don't know a thing.

The good news: My power jack seems to be intact!

The bad news: Instead, it's the power pack that's broken. Specifically the Inspiron-shaped plug that fits my computer (it's a one size fits all with added attachments power cord, the 3rd I've purchased for this computer).

The ugly news: Half the power jack is stuck IN my computer.

Seriously. How do these things happen to me?

See, the power jack itself, the male bit that plugs into my computer, broke. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW. It's not like it snapped at a high stress point. Ooooooh, no. A little metal prong snapped off INSIDE the plug bit.

My life with technology. It is clearly a farce.

If you don't hear from me for a good long while, it's because I CAN'T GET THE BITS OF PLUG OUT OF MY COMPUTER IN ORDER TO PURCHASE A NEW ONE AND CHARGE THE DAMNED THING.

*headdesk*