Currents of Time

Oookay. Let's see how long I make it this time! I've gone through the worst of the weirdness (we're now in the overcompensation mode where I am aggressively cheerful but also exceptionally exhausted because faking having energy is dead tiring) so hopefully soon I'll start seeing some real, positive results. Also, I've started taking vitamin D, which is supposed to help? Cautious optimism.


(FFXIV alpha trials are underway here in North America! I am not invited, alas. Maybe next phase!)


Next week! At this time! I will be in CHICAGO. So excited. The "25th Anniverary of Final Fantasy" Distant Worlds concert is on Friday, and I am absolutely going to be there. X3 My trips to and from are a bit convoluted, but they are cheap, so that is okay. I know someone who lives relatively close to the airport there in NYC and she is letting me crash on her couch on Wednesday and Saturday night. yay! I should bring or obtain a gift to express my gratitude. Saving money is awesome. Holidays are coming up, after all, gotta be able to buy... anything.


Actually, I am hoping to make a little extra by selling off more of my Transformers collection (as well as a few Final Fantasy figures). A fair bit of movie and BotCon stuff, as well as other random offerings. More-reasonable-than-eBay prices! Watch this space, if you've any interest.


Also hey speaking of holidays, who wants a card? Please leave a comment here (screened) or PM it to me or something? :3 I do not have energy or inclination to do much in the way of making them myself this year, but I still like to send them out. I have a bunch of pretty designs and nifty stamps.

Uncharted 2, chapters 1-5

( and some bad mood-ing )

In closing, I've filled my phone with Final Fantasy (predominately XI, since it was a FFXI site I got them off) ringtones. Yay, me.

Had a low day.

And yet, it was strangely devoid of me thinking everyone I've ever been within fifty meters of hates me and thinks I'm an idiot and only tolerates my presence so they can laugh at me as soon as I'm out of earshot.


what is this even



(I also spent, what, four whole days being social without once having to go off into a corner and collapse into a black hole of anxiety and self-loathing and exhaustion or turn into an angry, snarling beast. I guess I should be assuming that, even if the pills, themselves, are not directly working, I am experiencing a pretty decent placebo effect.)



To make this entry halfway interesting, Thursday afternoon, right as I had to leave to start walking to work, the clouds suddenly opened up and started pouring. The rain came down so hard and so fast that, within seconds, there was quite literally a solid inch of water raging along all of the streets and sidewalks. KIND OF TERRIFYING. Ten minutes later, there was one final clap of thunder aaand... nothing. Not to be horridly cliché, but it was exactly as if someone had suddenly turned the faucet back to "off"...

And then my shoes were wet and squeaky all afternoon! At least I didn't have to run around in the freezer.

(The "big cherries" bit does not really fit, to my somewhat-Latin-trained ear, but it's still kind of funny, maybe?)


ANYWAY: Squeenix makes FFXIV free to play indefinitely. Be right back, rolling on floor laughing.

... Really, I was standing up (we'd moved the chair over by the window to stand on for hanging lights) when my brother IM'd me that and I sank to the floor in giggles. (READ IT.)



Meanwhile, the FFXI update has been exactly as awesome as promised. I've unlocked all the job emotes I'm currently capable of obtaining (only THF, DRG, DRK, WAR, BLM, and NIN - my only jobs level 30+), and NOW I MUST COLLECT MORE, except that takes time and energy that I don't have, instead of just performing a simple fetch quest.



I don't really have much to say that anyone would have an interest in (FFXI and XIV fit there, too, but those are too good to pass up). Feeling depressed and unappreciated and annoying. Don't know why (other than the obvious "my brain is stupid"). Too early for SAD to be setting in. Putting a cramp in card-production, but one's in the mail and most of the others are at least in progress. Unrelated, there's no hot water in the apartment, we don't know why. At house today baking Christmas cookies with my Mom. Deliciousss.


Blah, blah, blah, boring, boring girl. Sorry.

There was a massive trapdoor spider on the kitchen floor earlier tonight. It was watching meeee. Creepy thing. I threw it outside. Spiders go away, please. Never thought I'd miss the cellar/vibrating spiders.


Sorry about the ridiculous amount of angst lately. I was all set to be in a good mood again, my reserves were recharged, and then the news about my great-grandmother came and kind of killed it. I know that's not very interesting, compared to everything everyone else has going on these days.


... On the positive side, my dog is reacting well to the steroids (ie, he can breathe again. For now), so ...maybe he'll make it another year or two?

I was thinking about writing and characters and fanfiction versus original fiction and all that sort of stuff this evening while waiting for the dishes to dry so I could cook dinner! And. I was going to go into some wordy back story here, but really it was only ever one person, wasn't it? I don't know. I know other people's original characters/universes are generally not that exciting! TOO BAD I'M TALKING ABOUT IT ANYWAY. Anyway. One or two people have, on occasion, asked something about Okame-verse (which still needs a better name) and the timeline and overall storyline and I... generally don't have an answer for it! And I (finally?) put the why behind that into words. A lot of the time when you've got characters that you write about, you write, you know, a story. And, the thing is, with those two, there isn't really one. There's no big, overreaching ... thing. I mean, when I write about them, it's just an incident in their lives. That's all.

I do have a universe or two with, you know, actual plots (I've pretty much never posted about them, though), but this isn't one of them.

And sometimes I feel kind of bad, or weird about that? I dunno. Like, how does Okame freaking out this time relate to wherever you're eventually going with this? And I'm not eventually going anywhere with any of it. I mean, yeah, sure, depending on when in their lives I write them, they act different, or stuff has changed, but they're (probably) never going to do anything special or, uh. Interesting, even, haha. I just like them. Even if they won't ever solve the world crisis of doom or save the whales or anything.

I was going to make an allcaps-y sentence about how they're both weird and dysfunctional and totally not girlfriends shut up Jade will kill you, but I feel like I've been seeing a lot of internet drama lately and don't want anyone to jump on me for accusing [x] group of people of being completely mad. Or socially inept. Or dysfunctional. Or ... whatever. So, uh, I guess I won't.


Good sign you've been spending too much time pounding away at a word doc (EVEN IF YOU AREN'T GETTING ANYWHERE ARGH RAGE): you keep reflexively hitting ctrl-s every paragraph or so. I've attempted to save the update page five or six times now. Good job, self!

( And now boring real life whining )

For your daily dose of is she really still talking about that?, San d'Oria took Sarutabaruta in conquest this week, which is pretty awesome! We've claimed Gustaberg quite a few times, but we've only rarely taken Saru[tab] and, to my unending frustration, those times have always been during weeks I haven't logged on for whatever reason. (Oh, yes, this is FFXI-talk now, if you didn't know what any of this was about.) BUT THIS WEEK - haha! So now I've run supplies to the outpost by Windurst and so now I have finally done the supplies quest for every outpost (on Hisime, and that I have access to, anyway. No Sky yet, but that's the only one, now). I took Aya and Ki out, too, since, you know, Windurst? FAR AWAY. And Ki can't airship it, so, uh, yeah. Long trip for her no matter how you go about it. (EXCEPT NOT ANYMORE i love op warp)

Also, it's been over a year and a half since my brother started trying for the m.kris and all it's got him so far is a couple hundred thousand gil down the drain. He's considering giving up and, since that would mean he can't go anywhere (or going to gt a Joyeuse, which he doesn't have time for), quitting. So right now he's trying to come up with a way to make 3.5 million, because the thought of fishing for more marlin (only for, again, absolutely none of them to give a chart, and even if they did, for the fight to them only give us another fuscina or piece of oxblood and a dwarf pugil) is too unbearable. Dear SE: it would not kill you to be just a little nicer to your playerbase on occasion!


To end on a random note, here's an amusing article on why the US Life on Mars was STUPID. Or at least not as good as the original. Reading that has had the perhaps unfortunate side effect of making me want to rewatch the original again.

For reasons completely unknown to me, the people in charge of my internship decided to contact my instructor and tell him, no, it's not working, we don't want her here anymore. Not tell me at all, just tell him. They told him they were going to contact me, but I just got a message from him asking me to call because he wanted to ask me about that and, no, I hadn't heard a word, and by the way they made this decision last Thursday. I was there last Thursday!


So apparently I suck unbelievably at the thing I'm supposed to be graduating for in month's time, though I don't know how or what I was doing wrong. I thought it was going well...


They could have at least told me instead of waiting until I turned up tomorrow morning. Or told me what I was doing wrong or ANYTHING other than just waiting!


I'm trying really hard not to think of this as me having personally failed because I know - I know - that isn't necessarily the case and god, we spent how much money trying to fix me of this? But it's really hard not to right now. Maybe I did mess something up horribly, I don't know!




Oh, and I'm still eighty hours short of my required field experience time.


God, I just... fuck.




Also, you know, completely unrelated but also full of fail and woe, Douglas is still a shithead, if we're going to use Jon Stewart's words for it. Stupid me had kind of hoped Iowa's decision might've made him pause and use his brain for half a minute, but I guess not.

CITY LIVING, MAN. Um. It’s going well so far.

In the last week, which is apparently about how long it’s been since I made a real update of any sorts, I have:

( - made a list-form LJ post )

Now I must go into the kitchen and stare in bafflement at all of the unprepared food until I decide on what I am going to eat.

(EDIT: By the way, I am looking for delicious but easy and preferably healthy recipes, if anyone has any!)

And finish the laundry. I guess that's important, too.

Self-sabotage of a new and exciting variety.

( Nothing to do with schoolwork for once! )

Then I went with my parents to see WALL-E after I got off work and omg it was the cutest movie ever. Bwee! Little robots! Little robots on Earth! Little robots in space! Little robots (and a few bigger robots) being adorable! Also, a little cochroach that was... also, somehow, adorable. They had... very, very little dialogue (outside of use of names), but that only made it cuter.

I don't really know what to say about it - other than ADORABLE! ♥ - I'm very poor at actually reviewing things, aren't I? - but I highly recommend it!

Edit:
Joy! I just received a message from Hasbro telling me my stuff (including, yes, the SDCC Transformers) has shipped!

I no longer remember a time before the thunderstorms.


I'm not sure I've mentioned this, but I've changed my tag settings so anyone can add preexisting tags, and anyone on my friends list can create and add or remove preexisting tags. Just in case you feel like mucking up my tagging system. I only ask that you leave the completed stories entries alone.


And I'm banning myself from posting until this latest installment in my appallingly stupid emo-depressiveness has passed because all I do is embarrass myself, and, seriously, who wants to read about Jecca whining about her abandonment issues and lack of faith in humanity, and how she feels ignored, and how awful and worthless a person she is?

See, I can't even write that without wanting to maim myself. I can't imagine how awful it is for those of you who are normal, functioning beings who do not inflict your woe and drama upon the rest of us. And I'm fully aware of how wrong that mindset is, because I know I have friends, even if they're long-distance, and I know there are at least a few people who care about me, but I cannot seem to shut up the malfunctioning glitch that is my brain.

... and, okay, I'm hoping that putting that out there will help me snap back out of it.

So, uh. If I disappear for the next week or more, that's why. I'm not sure anyone would notice, but, you know, whatever.


DAYS LIKE THESE ARE WHY I AM GOING INTO THERAPY. AGAIN.