1) Holy crap it's 10:30 already and I've only written 400 words today.

2) The Waters of Mars? Actually good. I mean, not great, and I could still argue with it for hours on end, but as far as RTD swan-songs go, at least it looks like it'll actually be in the context of the rest of the show. And the stupid conceit I'd normally argue with is actually valid if he's doing what I think he's doing with this arc. I think I have a fair inkling of where this is going to end, but since I actually like where I think RTD is going with this, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong. But I'm actually looking forward to finding out.

3) I wholeheartedly endorse cornish game hen for dinner. My apartment smells awesome like Thanksgiving, I had an excuse to make chestnut stuffing, I have lunch for tomorrow, and tomorrow after work I'm going to boil the remains into stock and make soup. One tiny hen and I am set for the rest of the week. It's kind of awesome. The only drawback is that number 1 is a direct result of this venture (I even made gravy).

I tried to write at work today during my lunch break. I'd had Hrunting, Netbook of Rassilon out all weekend, so it was a bit tired, battery-wise. I made it about 200 words before the battery died on me. Tonight when I booted everything back up, this was the last paragraph in my novel:

"We are a moving patrol out upon the bayou. I remember why the Bethesda was lost to us. I fought for her, but she was lost, sunk into the mud and kept from me and my ass"

I believe the last word was supposed to be "assailants," but I'm going to take this as proof that Hrunting has a sense of humor. I could've sworn I got the last of that word in before everything shut down, but I guess not.

Also, yeah, guys I broke down and bought a netbook and I don't regret it at all. It's so nice to have something that I use only for writing. I sit down at my big laptop and it's distraction city, but since all I've done with Hrunting is take out the useless programs that came with it, there's little to no chance for distraction. Also the battery generally lasts me about five hours, which is awesome. (And there's a part of me that's quite happy that I named him Hrunting, because what's cooler than having a writing tool that's a sword? Mighty pen? Psh. I have a sword with a keyboard. I just have to be careful not to get into any fights with Grendel's mother.)

So, after a weekend of not really writing (and a week of only ever getting writing done while outside of my apartment), I've decided I'm never going to finish NaNo unless I get a netbook.

THIS IS A REALLY DUMB REASON TO GET A NETBOOK.

I also have a lot of other reasons to get a netbook, mostly 1) I want one to play with, 2) I'm pretty sure if I have something small that doesn't weigh like, 20 pounds, I'll actually use it to write under other circumstances, and 3) My current laptop is nearing the end of its reliable lifespan and I plan on building a desktop soon.

However, adding a netbook to my Build a Desktop Plan is kind of... cost-prohibitive, because I'm really not that rich, and knocking more than $300 off of what I was going to spend on a desktop will make a big difference in quality and... also I'm not entirely convinced I won't just kind of forget about it. Plus my current laptop isn't all that dead, so I feel bad semi-replacing it when it's really not even three years old yet. (In fact, I think my laptop sensed that I was thinking of cheating on it with a netbook so it hasn't shut off randomly even once in the last few days. If it can behave for another year or so and I save it the trouble of being lugged around and banged into walls and people, maybe it'd be happier and I won't have to build a desktop until next year.)

So... I guess the question is, is this a terrible idea? And do I really have the self-control and motivation to say to myself "Okay, if I buy this I am going to promise myself that I will produce x number of words per month to make it worth it, even after the cuteness of a laptop small enough to cuddle wears off."

Also, while I'm being questionably sane, the Chicago Tribune is running some ads lately that have made me, once again, want to go back to school for journalism. But I mean, seriously, this is just my strong desire to be like, a comic book/mystery novel type of journalist, where I actually get to run around and investigate and uncover things and generally be awesome. If I worked for the Trib, I suspect I'd be stuck on, like, investigating how they plan to keep the ice from melting at the city ice rinks when the weather randomly decides to be 70 degrees, and my articles would be something like "Yeah guys, they use freon, which is awful if you release it into the atmosphere but it's also what makes your refrigerators run and keeps your cars cool, so you're so not going to care." I wish I could shake the feeling that I've already made my share of irrational decisions that have not served me well (majoring in English with no exit strategy, going to an expensive private university with no exit-strategy). But maybe at this point, the only way out of this rut is by making yet another ill-advised an irrational decision. I certainly don't seem to be making any progress on rational ones. And if I was a journalist I'd also have a great excuse to own a netbook. What I really want, though, is basically a tablet netbook that I could just write in freehand, but I don't think those exist yet.

Once upon a time, some of you may remember, I started a war with my old RA. This war began with an airplane and some limes, and ended with a photoshop war and a near-fatal beeping annoyance device. Guys, my old RA is getting married tomorrow. I thought long and hard about exacting my revenge on him at his wedding, figuring that it would be really hard to outdo that kind of revenge, since I'm not likely to have the same kind of large, friendly and familial gathering at all anytime in the near future. However, after toying with the idea of a beeping bouquet and exploding gifts and replacing the cake topper with something hearkening back to this masterpiece and even attempting to write a speech to be given at the reception that would embarrass him entirely to death, I realized that though a wedding is a perfect venue for revenge, it's also a fairly unforgivable one and I really didn't want to ruin the wedding for his soon-to-be-wife.

But still, I hope when I leave this on their gift table tomorrow, he at least checks it for traps. (The inside of the card doesn't even have Hasselhoff in it, and I mean, guys, that took effort on my part. I must like these people or something.)

I attended my first and second write-ins today. I have done a lot of weird things, mostly because of the internet, but as far as antisocial activity goes meeting people in a coffee shop to ignore each other and type on laptops is definitely up there. Possibly at the very top. That said, the Hyde Park people were a lot friendlier and we actually did talk for a little while. In the loop's defense, though, that write-in was during business hours and we were all on our lunch breaks (I think)... it just seemed like the twin write-in at the Sears "Willis" Tower had a bit more fun than we did. So I'm jealous.

On the plus side, this enforced antisocial activity actually led to me doubling my word-count today, so yay. Except I'm still almost an entire day behind, and I'm not sure what my characters plan to do from here. I guess I'll find out tomorrow, when I figure out if Charlotte really cut all her hair off and is now hiding out in the brothel pretending to be a eunuch named Charlie, and if Jack built and is piloting the Statue of Liberty with heroic intent.

Why? Why why why can't I live in a place that has a working carbon monoxide detector? Why can't any of them run out of batteries at a time OTHER than three in the freaking morning? I almost tore the wires out of this one I was so tired. The back pops off but there's nothing there, and you actually have to open it up like Pac-Man to get to the batteries. Pac-Man is very low on the list of ideas for opening something at nearly-four in the morning. I'm sure you can picture this scene. At least I figured it out, because I'm pretty sure the e-mail to my landlord trying to explain why I destroyed his carbon monoxide detector would be pretty incomprehensible at this point.

I hate you, carbon monoxide detectors.

I wish I could call in sick today. This week and I are not even on speaking terms anymore as of yesterday, this is just... unnecessary.

I was going to go to bed on time, even early tonight... until I discovered that it wasn't just a myth that libraries are letting you check audiobooks and movies out over the internet and goodness help me, guys, because my library has parts of the Hitchhiker's Guide radio plays that I haven't heard yet. And also I think this might get me through the classics I've never really sat down to read.

Between this and my resurgent interest in podcasts, my music collection is going to be hibernating for a while. Either that, or I'm going to stop ever taking my headphones off at work. (Judging by today, it's likely to be the latter. Oh well!)

( I got home this afternoon and it still had a cake setting. )

True story!

Considering how fussy cheesecake can be, and how much I just completely winged it with the recipe (cream cheese? I'm using brie! I don't have cream, but I have some left-over half and half! Vanilla extract? How about vanilla and coconut! Wooden spoon? Rice paddle!) it's pretty delicious. And it's a perfect size for one person.

I'm pretty certain at this point that I'm basically just living out my mad scientist fantasies in my kitchen. And now I have a robot rice-cooking assistant that can also make cakes. (Did I mention that my rice cooker has fuzzy logic? I am so doomed when the robot uprising comes.) I should also point out that my robot assistant made me brown rice and woke me up this morning, just in case anyone has the impression that I've used it only for cake.

I broke down and bought myself a rice cooker.

It also has a setting for cake.

From now on, I want all of my appliances to have a setting for cake.

I keep half-drafting letters to NPR and Google and Oprah and all the Chicago museums in my head. Mostly because there hasn't been an even vaguely relevant job posting anywhere recently and I'm sick of working 11-hour days just so people can lose their houses more quickly.

I wish I could actually get myself to finish letters, so I could at least test my irrational belief that well-written letters might eventually get me somewhere interesting someday.

I settled down today and (pretty much) finished moving in. And you know what that means!

( Pictures! )

Last night was surreal for about fifty reasons. Other than the jerks in the front of the line, who wouldn't even tell me if we were allowed to take pictures and just rolled their eyes and told me to get in line, the hipsters were nice. I haven't been in a chill hipster crowd since I saw the Decemberists back in like, 2006? Cleveland is far less hardcore than Chicago; no one even jostled us during the show. (And, largely for this reason, operation Bring My Mother to a Hipster Show was a success.)

And guys, guys, Sufjan Stevens is as awesome live as you'd think. He looked kind of... stoic and slightly unhappy when he first came out, and I really wanted to apologize for wanting him to go on tour again, because it looked like he was just going to grit his teeth and get through it (what did we do to this man to make him hide for so many years and hate touring?) but THEN, after the first (10-minute) song or so, he settled down and actually even bantered with us a bit and it was beautiful. The show was a good mix of old and new (and his new is pretty electronic-sounding: you can tell that he's gotten back into the old Enjoy Your Rabbit thing). I'd heard that he wasn't playing anything from Illinois, but that's a lie. He played Casimir Pulaski Day and Jacksonville and even Chicago, and then apologized at the end for how rusty he was on the old stuff (I think he missed one note in Holland. But, as a corollary: He played Holland!). They had lyric sheets, and the trumpet player had a notebook full of sheet music, but it's early in the tour, and I'm getting the feeling they're just trying to play everything they're capable of playing (which is a lot, because man, his band is good. The trumpet player especially. I couldn't believe his chops.)

I think most of the surreality of the show (other than being randomly in Cleveland, with my mom, after spending the day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which is, quite literally, kind of like the basement of someone who's been obsessed with music since forever and kind of just threw everything together with some placards))... The surreality was mostly that I kind of didn't expect Sufjan to tour ever again, and I definitely didn't expect to be standing about five feet away from him when I finally got to see him. (I didn't mention that my mom was going on and on the entire time about how we were going to be late and we'd be standing against the wall in the back and there'd be nowhere to park and we'd never get out of Cleveland, so we left downtown at about 5:30 and got there at a quarter-til, despite the rush hour traffic, and had to wait until nearly 7:00 for doors to open. She also wouldn't stand in line until there were other "old people," which wasn't until about 6:15.) So we had a good spot a couple people back from the stage, right in the middle.

In conclusion: The only thing missing was a hug, and considering I wanted to apologize for even making him come out on stage in front of people again, I couldn't possibly have done more than tipped my hat to him and thanked him for playing.

So, when presented with a way to obtain something you desire, perhaps even covet--let's say a set of fairly rare vintage speakers, supposedly in great condition, for a rather reasonable (but not so low it's nonsense) price--but the seller can't string together a coherent sentence... do you still buy it? Because I'm finding that I... can't. I really want these speakers. I'm probably not going to find a good set elsewhere. I can't even find them on eBay. And yet... the man selling them is so utterly incomprehensible that I just cannot bring myself to do business with him. It's like back when I was looking for apartments exclusively on craigslist, and I'd get responses from landlords that were all in caps and lacking punctuation, and I couldn't bring myself to go see their apartments just because I didn't want to have a landlord who didn't know how to turn caps lock off, or spell. Why am I such an elitist snob? Why??

Another conundrum I have recently faced is as follows:

It's 8:30 and your load of laundry just finished in the washer. The pair of dryers are both through with their cycle. The laundry room rules say "If you leave your items unattended past the end of the cycle, expect to find them removed." Do you remove the laundry? Do you then fold it? Because apparently when I finally bring myself to remove someone else's laundry from the dryer, I fold it. I barely even fold my own clothes. Would this weird you out, to find your laundry on the counter in the laundry room, all folded? Regardless, the clothes were all like, size 0.5, so if she fights me over it I'll probably win.

Freaking crap, brain. It's nearly 10:30. That's bedtime. Not "Okay, let's pick up a pen and paper!" time. Siiiiigh. I suppose I should just shut up and be grateful.

I was on the train this morning, and... and... I realized there's something I want to write.

And then, at work today, I realized there's something else I want to write (though this something is unlikely to leave the internet. And requires an artist willing to draw an absurdly cute rendition of Ruth Bader Ginsburg).

But guys the idea I had on the train this morning... I actually still want to write it. And it's been almost 12 hours, most of which was spent in disaster mode at work, because (dundundunnnn) the Client is visiting tomorrow. This is good! This is very good! (Not the client thing, of course. The client thing is really annoying, and one of the attorneys hid his ENTIRE mess at my desk so he wouldn't have to clean) ... I should probably go work on it, rather than talking about it.

1) Attempt to call ISP
2) Attempt to call ISP again
3) Finally reach ISP after a week, once tech support finally provides the correct hours of operation (incidentally, exactly your work hours)
4) Set up new account, since apparently for some reason the old one won't carry over to the new address
5) Wait
6) Wait some more
7) Give ISP the (very unearned) benefit of the doubt, and give them an extra day to set up the connection
8) Attempt to call ISP
9) Attempt to call ISP
10) Finally get a hold of ISP. After fifteen minutes of explaining that ISP is unreachable during times you are at home while someone tries to walk you through tech support on your modem, "be advised" that a technician will be in contact shortly regarding the issue.
11) Wait several hours.
12) Attempt to contact a technician yourself.
13) Explain to fourth or fifth person you are bounced to that you just want to know why the internet isn't on yet. They explain that the tech needs access to the apartment. You explain that they gave absolutely no hint that they had been there, or that they needed in.
14) Schedule a time with for your janitor to let the tech in, since, as you so patiently explained, you have a job.
15) Realize that the four or so odd calls to your phone from a Chicago number were probably your ISP. Wonder why the heck they never left a message.
16) Receive a call at work asking if you're in your apartment to let the technician in. With great patience, ask the technician if he received the instructions to contact the janitor. He did not, and it is apparently blind luck that he showed up when he was supposed to. Repeat the instructions to the technician, give him the janitor's number, hope for the best.
17) Receive several more calls from AT&T letting you know that a technician is at your apartment working on the problem.
18) Arrive home. Fiddle with internet. Log in to find a screen declaring that that ISP has found something "wrong with your account."
19) Spend several hours on the phone with ISP.
20) Finally have internet.
Bonus! I can now freely change the name of my wireless network, which, for some reason, I couldn't do before.

Argh! But at least I have internet again now? Hi? My next request is going to be that it stay connected for more than a few minutes at a time. And maybe for my wireless to work correctly, rather than deciding that what it really wants is not to be wireless at all. (And I'm not even going to start on work. Omg.)

So, I was thinking going to culinary school would be like, I don't know, attending a state school or something, price-wise. $22,000??? For 24 weeks? That's... I mean... freaking crap. A year at the UofC was like, $30,000 when I stared (it's almost $40k now, but whatever). And the application fee is... unmentionable. Freaking crap, man, who the heck has that kind of money if they're going to go work in a bakery? Crap. Do all associates degrees cost this much? What the heck?

Why is every irrational dream I have completely unattainable in the dumbest ways possible?

Man, I am going back to wanting to be an astronaut. At least it was a lack of science aptitude that was keeping me from that, rather than CRAZY TUITION or NO ONE IS HIRING YOU HAHA UNLESS YOU WORK FOR FREE or, I don't know, SCREW VALID CULTURAL EXCHANGE, YOU'RE NOT CORPORATE ENOUGH TO TEACH OUR CHILDREN YOU HIPPIE.

Though being able to hide concert contraband in the lining of my messenger bag is nice, the novelty has kind of worn off. And the strap is about to tear loose. So, it's time to replace the poor old thing.

I've found myself particularly drawn to this bag (warning: it's Etsy). I worry, though, that it's a little loud for my financial-district doldrums. Normally this isn't an issue, but as I'm a one-bag sort of girl this is also going to have to get me through potential future things like interviews. (Also, the $10 shipping is insane, but it's coming from Australia, so I suppose for once the charge might be sort of justified.)

Once upon a time I was eating my salad in the lunch room at work, chatting with a few of my work-mates. One of them looked at her phone and went "Oh! Wow, there was a shooting at State and Randolph!"

"Well, that explains all the sirens," I said.

"Yeah. Huh." Things became less clear as she read the report. "So, two people were shot, and one of them was a police officer. Four shots were fired."

"Man, that must've been some serious business," someone else said, approximately.

"No kidding."

A few minutes later, after accusing each other in turn, we finally settled our wild hypotheses on the idea that obviously what must've happened was that a police officer had missed his target, shot his partner, then someone else.

Lo and behold... That's exactly what happened. He shot his partner in the chest.

Where do I line up for the "Let's not fire guns on State Street" club? Because, um... especially in front of Channel 7? Kind of a lot of people there. I figure it's lucky the only two people shot were a police officer in a bullet-proof vest and the actual mugger. Yeesh.

Writing up e-mails about the physics of not falling into the middle of my couch, and taking arty pictures of said couch, should really not be this satisfying. But it is.

If only there was such positive reinforcement for packing.