Maggie’s Blog

So the week has been pretty quiet, hence no new posts. Kaku got back from Europe last weekend, so we’ve all been hanging out, haloing it, and catching up on Dexter. I must say, Dexter is a bizarrely fun show. It’s got just enough creep, from the main character himself!, to keep me highly entertained. At any rate, I’ve been having a blast with it. The sister is annoying, but that’s probably my only complaint at this point. It’s highly addictive.

We’ve also been cruising through Desperate Housewives Season 2, which I *love*! I must say, the plotting, characters–it’s all like heroin to me. Rarely does a TV show make me so crazy to watch more. Which is why Netflix is wonderful! No commercials, no waiting at season finales (if you’ve ordered the next season in advance)–it’s lovely. We’re also making our way through Home Improvement Season 2, which is just light and fun. ^_^

On Saturday, for pizza night, we watched I Am Legend. It was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. Sure the ending struck me as a little weak, and I definitely think some of the issues (such as the humanity status of the monsters) could have been more developed, but overall it was a pleasurable watch. Perfect? No. Fun? Yes, actually, which somewhat surprised me. I’d like to read the novella and see how the original story went. All in all, though, I’m glad we watched it. Solid three stars, maybe even three and a half.

Watched the debates, but I’m so sick of politics by this point, I won’t even comment. It didn’t change my vote so far, let’s just say that. After the debates, we got our political frustrations out with a game of political halo, which resulted in a wild battle between Hillary, McCain, and Barak. It was *crazy*! Then we watched Futurama. ^_^

Did some cleaning this week so far. Yesterday, we cleaned up the kitchen which had gotten pretty messy and then tidied up the dining room. Swiffer’d the floors (yay!) which was much needed. Today, I washed the towels and washcloths in the bathtub; now it’s just a matter of them drying.

Other than that, the weekend was quiet–Apex was at a con, so radio contact was limited. Took the time to catch up on my Zelda playing (2x through Windwaker, which is hands-down the best Zelda). Finished the interview with the amazing Brandy Schwan today, which was the first productive thing I’ve done this weekend! Hooray! Thank you for helping me out Brandy! ^_^

So that’s about it for here. Oh! Got our driver’s licenses in the mail at last, so now we can get rid of our temporary ones. ^_^ Yesterday, with our “New Moon” money, we were at the local Walmart getting a few things (the Swiffer included), and we decided to pick up some Full Sail (local Portland beer–very nice). But we didn’t have our licenses! I happened to have a laminated, certified copy of my birth certificate with me at the time, so that worked, but it was funny. Just nuts! It’s nice to have the ID back.

Feeling a cold coming on. Scratchy throat off and on/nose clogged in the back/all that good stuff. Still have most of my energy, but I suspect that when Andy goes back to school on Thursday, the cold’s going to hit home. Bah. I hope it holds off until after my birthday (also Thursday). :-\

Writing Stuff:

Got the rejection back on “Mechanical Difficulties.” I’m not really that surprised, but ah well. At least the story is old enough that it doesn’t quite feel like a punch in the stomach anymore. I just don’t have anywhere else to send this story. *le sigh*

Edited “Mimicry” to make the third draft. Should be going out to my next cold reader soon (heads up Tim!).

Sketched a map for the current new “short” fiction project, which is probably shaping up to be a novelette in length. Man, I need to work on creating shorter stories. I just love novelette-length fiction so much! XD! Ah well, to be worked on, I suppose.

SOOOOOOOO-! I’ve been doing some drawing lately. Not realistic drawing, mind, but cartooning. It’s been quite a while since I sat down and sketched/lined/colored something, and it’s hugely relaxing for me. Kicks me right into that right-brained timelessness, and my focus can be unbelievable (multi-hour drawing sessions, for example). I love doing this stuff! Good grief, I need to do it more often.

And I need to look into oil painting. That’s my next area of interest, besides trying to improve my real-life drawing. I’d love someday to be able to do my own coverart (provided there’s a cover to art–lol).

Writing Stuff:

Should be hearing back from my second reader on “Mimicry” soon, and then I’ll be punching away at the next draft.

Outbox:

“Mechanical Difficulties”

“Earthbound”

Been a pretty easy day today. Did some Apex work, checked the job listings, and finally went grocery shopping. Yeah- eating is good. Also signed up for Netflix yesterday (hooray!), so hopefully we’ll be getting our first batch tomorrow.

Writing Stuff

I finished editing draft 2 of “Mimicry” yesterday, and Andy gave it his first read. Then I shipped it off to my mother for the next bout of intense editing.

I also got some plotting work done on the infamous Marha story. The first part is tentatively called “Sins of the Father” which pretty much sums up the section. Trying to hammer out the action, solidify the negative forces, and rehash the old storyline to work with the new plot. I haven’t even started looking too much at the second part (tentatively, “Like Mother, Like Daughter”), or the third part (as yet, even tentatively untitled).

For those who are familiar with this ongoing blackhole of doom story, the Ring stuff will now be in part two, not in part one. It fits better in the second part, actually, and part one is busy enough without it.

Andy and I went to Cannon Beach yesterday! Hooray for being outside and getting some relative sun! We headed out about 2:00 (we wanted to be there for the sunset, but have time to walk around/eat/etc.), and arrived at the beach around 4:00. Not too bad! And the drive was very pretty. It reminded me in spots of New England, only bigger.

It was a lovely day spent strolling along the beach, marveling at the iciness of the Pacific (which Andy has never seen before), and admiring the giant rocks sticking up out of the sand. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before, and it was very cool. I was very glad that Andy brought his camera. While we were down by the giant rock, some nice ladies asked if we could take their picture–which of course we did–and then in exchange they took a picture of us together! YAY! Rare footage of the two of us in the same picture! ^_^ Then we poked around the tide pools and looked at nifty little fishies and crabs and such things.

We strolled along for an hour and a half or so, until past five when most of the shops closed. Then we headed back up to the town of Cannon Beach and strolled around looking for a place to grab a relatively inexpensive dinner. After examining the display menus of a few pricey places, we settled on The Local Grill and Scoop. It’s a very cute little place, and the prices were pretty reasonable. Andy had the clam chowder (which he said was excellent), and I had a BLT (a little small, but we were going to have desert anyway, so it wasn’t a problem). Then we ordered a Black and White sundae for desert. It was huuuuuge! O_O Needless to say, we couldn’t finish it, but the waitress said that was common.

It was only about six-thirty then, so we headed back to the beach (which was getting significantly colder, air-wise) and walked along down the other direction toward the other rocks. The tide was out pretty far, so the seagulls were having a blast picking crabs and other assorted sea critters to death for dinner. We also saw jellyfish, which we carefully avoided stepping on.

I think the ice cream went to our heads, because we were being particularly silly, but that was exceptionally fun. Did think I almost died when I stepped into a fast-flowing outflow and felt the sand quickly start to sink beneath me. Needless to say, I jumped right back out again! ^_^ I did manage to knock Andy’s glasses off at one point by accident, but luckily they landed in the sand not six feet away and were fine. Lol.

By the time we got to the other rocks, the sun was getting lower. The moon was coming up, too. We waited down there until the sun really went down and Andy snapped off some amazing shots. Then we started to head back to shore, only to find that we were on something of a sand bar, and the tide was already coming in pretty strong. Uh-oh! Another couple was out there with us, watching the sunset, so we all joined forces to wade through the knee-deep, freezing water to get back to shore. For a moment there, I really thought we might have to swim!

By the time the sun went down, it was very chilly, so we headed back. It’s amazing how beaches always truncate distances. We had to walk for probably about half an hour or more just to get back to where we’d gotten onto the sand.

Then we drove home, and got to see all of Portland lit up at night, with a full moon too! It was absolutely breathtaking. (Didn’t take any pictures of that. Andy’s camera was in the back seat. Sorry. ;_;) We were beat when we got back, so we just washed off our feet and went to bed.

But here are lots of pictures! (They’re not in order, but I haven’t figured out how to stop WordPress from being stupid about galleries yet):

So Andy and I finally got a chance to see Sweeney Todd, which we intended to see in the theater, but never got around to. Don’t worry, folks, it didn’t make our WORST MOVIES EVER list by a long shot. But I must say the song lyrics, and the fact that the actors are always singing over each other, got really distracting/annoying/lame after a while. I liked it much better when they stopped singing so much. Let’s just say, it’s no Phantom of the Opera. The characters could have been developed a little more, also, but overall, I think it worked. Stylistically, of course, Tim Burton is a master. No argument there. The costumes, the makeup, the filmography, graphics, etc. were all beautiful. Plot-wise, it had a much better ending than Corpse Bride, so I was pleased with that. I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it.

Overall, I think the only thing that actually bothered me was the singing. All the actors have very nice voices, but the songs didn’t do them any justice, and the songs didn’t improve the feel/emotion/set-up of any given scene. If anything, they detracted from the experience. Musicals are tricky things. You can either do them perfectly where the music seems to fit in so well you hardly notice they’re just randomly breaking into song, but if you do, you hardly care because the songs are just so fantastic (I’d put PotO and My Fair Lady into this category), or the music can be obnoxious (ST).

For that reason, I’m probably going to rate this a three and a half out of five stars, for Pretty Good, Glad I Saw It, Probably Won’t Buy It On DVD.

It’s been a pretty quiet day today. Other than finishing up some Apex stuff, and finally getting around to eating some of that birthday cake, Andy and I decided to make tonight our weekly pizza/movie day because we’ll probably be out later tomorrow evening (and Saturday is our usual day to do said pizza/movie set up).

HERE IS A PICTURE OF THE PIZZA I JUST MADE:

So while I’ve been prepping the pizza (Jamison family recipe, of course), I also managed to do a lot of:

Writing Stuff

I finally got cracking on “Mimicry”! It’s been a long and exhausting week in writing terms, but at long last my Critters gauntlet is over. Now I can get back to building up my self esteem so I can actually write something without my inner editor yelling “It’s CRAP!” the whole time.

Figured editing was a good place to start, since my idea well has been a little dry for the time being. It’s probably simply because I haven’t been reading as much, because of the move, and because we don’t have a couch or anywhere suitable for reading besides the bed, which is fine for the most part, but still not where I tend to read. I am in the process of remedying this lack of literary fuel. Afterall, it is one of the Five Golden Rules of Writing (Read, Write, Edit, Submit, Repeat).

Anyway, started on editing. I’ve been retyping the whole story into a new document for this draft, because it helps me to evaluate the flow of the text and helps me to make even fairly large edits without feeling like I’m trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. So far, I’ve got about 6,000+ words edited into draft 2, and about the same amount to go. It’s huge, I know, especially for a short story, but I figure I’ll shoot it off to the WotF contest first, and then see what my options are from there. Until then, I’m just worrying about making it the best story I can.

Gotta say, though, I’m really loving this project. It’s been a while since I felt really proud of a piece of writing, but this one is definitely making its way into my heart. This probably means it will never be published, but ah well. At least I’ll have a fun, unpublished story to look at every now and then when I pull it out of my files. If nothing less, I’m having a blast working on it.^_^

So yesterday was Andy’s birthday, and my interview day, so it was insanely busy. Probably the busiest day we’ve had since we moved out here.

First half of the day was devoted up updating some new images for the Apex T-shirts, researching DA contest set-up, while simultaneously getting cake stuff from Safeway and baking said cake. I also ironed my interview clothes and Andy’s khaki pants so we could both look nice for dinner out. Printed off a copy of my resume, got directions, got ID stuff together. Oh, and forgot to eat lunch. Lol.

Second half of the day, starting at 2:00, we headed downtown for the interview. We got there about forty-five minutes early, so we hung out until 2:30 before I headed in. The interview itself went really well. It was a group interview for the placement agency (not for a specific job), but it was very comfortable, and I’m glad I didn’t underdress. The CampusPoint staff seems really friendly and helpful, so I’m looking forward to working with them.

After the interview, I met up with Andy (who had been wandering around downtown Portland during the interview), and we strolled around trying to locate the three Indian food places that he’d picked out as possible birthday dinner spots. It was still pretty early, and a lot of the places didn’t serve dinner until 5:30, so we hit up Pinocchio’s happy hour for some drinks and appetizers. I love going there; it always makes me feel so rich and chic. Probably helped that we were both in formal-wear (I was in a femme powersuit lol), so we actually fit in with the business crowd there.

After that, we strolled (a little dizzily because we’re lightweights) over to India House at the corner of Morrison and 11th. That place is fantastic! The vegetable pakoras and the chicken tikka masala were unbelieveable. So delicious! We both ate a ton.

Full, happy, and no longer dizzy, we headed back to our car and went home. Watched two episodes of The Office in the hopes of making room for the cake (which I frosted when we got back), but we were still way too full to eat it. So that’s a task for today! ^_^

It was a lovely night out on the town, and since my parents had footed most of the bill, it was money-stress free! I am definitely starting to see why people love Portland so much. The downtown is just beautiful, with so many trees and parks, etc., and walking around is just fun.

This weekend we’re heading out to the coast to check out some of the small towns around those parts and to watch the sun set over the Pacific, which Andy has never seen before. Should be fun! ^_^ Maybe I can even get a little sun, because I’m so insanely pale right now. And when I notice that I’m pale… you know it’s REALLY pale. Blinding, probably. ^_^

Pictures!

So today was a little smoother than others in the long run. This morning I started out in a bummed mood, but that picked up pretty fast when I saw that one of the placement places I submitted a resume to actually got back to me! Yay! It’s amazing how even that much takes a huge load off my shoulders. I’ve got an interview with them this coming Thursday, so hopefully they’ll like me enough to push me on employers. ^_^

Got some more t-shirt work done for Apex today, too! Check them out here: Zazzle.com

Or for a sneak peek, here are some of the T-shirts I designed for them:

Le sigh. Feeling relaxed is so nice. I’m going to go continue feeling that way.

Yup, still looking for that job I was talking about! ^_^ Ah well. I’m still not used to the process yet. Hopefully over time, I’ll be less bummed about it. On the plus side, did get a bunch of stuff worked on for Apex, so that was good.

I realized yesterday that I didn’t mention our hangout with Kaku on Friday night! Let me remedy that. We all got together about 4:30 and headed into downtown Portland to hit up a happy-hour at a place he was familiar with. It was the neatest place! It’s called Pinocchio’s and it has an old Italian puppet theme, which is really charming. Plus, the mixed drinks are just unbelievably good. I had the Lime Tree, which was amazing. After that, we toodled over to a Mexican food place (highly recommended), which I’ve unfortunately forgotten the name of. :-\ I had the Chimichanga, which was probably as big and as heavy as my head, but darn if it didn’t taste marvelous! I only managed about half of it, so we took the rest home (and I continued the Jamison family tradition of ruining leftovers by forgetting to put it in the fridge). After dinner, we headed over to a few other locales that Kaku wanted to show us–one place was super busy because they were hosting a music thing there, and the other was a little shop next door which had tons of amazing art things and figurines and nifty stuff. ^_^ I had much fun looking around.

Then we decided to head back to our place to finish off the pomegranate drink mix we’d bought for the LAST time we hung out but didn’t drink, and to watch the first disk of Dexter (serial killer hunting serial killers–much fun!). Surprisingly didn’t get too shnockered, despite the shot of vodka (hey-I’m a lightweight, okay?), but we figured it’d be better if Kaku slept over, just to be on the safe side. Poor guy had to put up with our air-mattress, a pillow, and two fleece blankets, which is all we had in terms of guest bedding.

In the morning, he headed out and now he’s in Europe (lucky guy!).

So that was our Friday night! How do you like that? ^_^ Now it’s been recapped, so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

Last night, we watched the next two episodes of Dexter (still disk one), and I think it’s probably more relaxing to watch it when slightly tipsy. Then the blood and body-parts don’t seem so… well… gruesome. We have to wait until Kaku gets back from his European tour before watching the next disk, though, which is going to be tough, since it left us on a cliff-hanger! Ah well, we’ll make due. Besides, The Office comes back in a week or two! YAY! ^_^

Writing Stuff

Still getting those bipolar reviews of “Alien Spawn.” Still no idea what I’m going to do with that story.

Did get a little writing done today, which mostly led me to the realization that my first, super-tight scene might be a little too tight and a little too early, which detracts from the main focus of the story. So I went back and rewrote the first scene again, or part of it, with a completely different feel to see if it works better. Still not sure that it does. The voice is eluding me on this one.

I don’t think today started out as a blah day, but I’ve got a headache now and I’ve applied to more jobs, so- yeah, it’s a blah day now.

At least I got to try out my nifty time schedule (which is supposed to help me stay on track, at least until I get a full-time job). This includes time for Apex work, talkin’ to me mum, writing, language study, job-finding, and dinner/Andy Time. Andy actually gets time all throughout the day, but this later block is reserved for hanging out with him, watching TV, eating, and just relaxing after a hard day’s work. ^_^

Did get a bunch of Apex work done, which was good! Played around with *gasp* more gear design. I’m having a blast with it. That, and I caught up on submissions, which was also good. Didn’t get to language study, because I couldn’t find my Chinese stuff. Grr. Very frustrating. But that did mean I got to move straight on to writing (more on that below). After a nice hour and a half (of actual writing!) I moved on to the job search. Found one very much in my line of interest, so I sent out my resume. Here’s hoping!

Writing Stuff

Critters week (two, actually) has been a bit brutal. It’s mostly bipolar, actually, because some people love it and some hate it. But I guess that’s the way it goes for the the story I have up. It was somewhat of a bizarre experiment, so for those who like my other stuff (particularly fantasy), it’s way out of left field. It’s definitely a very different kind of story for me–mostly, I wrote it because I couldn’t get it out of my head. Now it’s out, so I can move on now. ^_^

But today’s writing session-! Now that was beautiful. I haven’t had words pour out like that in ages. Granted, it’s still a very rough draft, so it’s far from perfect, but for a zero-draft, it’s not horrible. I got all the information in that I wanted, and only went 200 words over my estimate for the section. Hooray! ^_^ So looking forward to working on that tomorrow.

And that’s about it. Dinner’s ready, so I’m going to go eat. Maybe the blah will fade once I’ve got food in my stomach. ^_^