Author: etoiline

headache

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Alrighty then. Etoiline is now hosted at Site5.com. Seems like a great deal, and everything seems to be working on their end. On MY end, however…this is mainly a test post to see if MT is acting up, because the other big database hog on my site is my gallery, which is most vociferously protesting working. Unfortunately before I changed DNS settings, I didn’t look at the gallery installation and turn something off I should have before I ported it over. And I can’t change it without changing the DNS settings back, but when I tried to do that earlier, the domain didn’t resolve, when putting it at the new site took rather little time…maybe I’m just too impatient.
I just want to do a clean install of the whole thing, but I really don’t want to have to relabel everything…

stop this train

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because there’s a lot of things going on right now. and I’m procrastinating as usual. seemed appropriate to quote a little John Mayer.
No, I’m not colorblind
I know the world is black and white
I try to keep an open mind
But I just can’t sleep on this tonight
Stop this train
I want to get off
And go home again
I can’t take the speed it’s moving in
I know I can’t
But honestly, won’t someone stop this train?
Don’t know how else to say it
I don’t want to see my parents go
One generation’s length away
From finding life out on my own

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strange to think (five years)

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Strange to think that five years ago today I saw my first Lord of the Rings movie. It was so long ago I have to link you to my first blog. Life has never been the same, eh?
What did I do before Orlando Bloom, elvish, Tolkien? I bet you can trace the upward movement of my lifetime word count in all my stories from December 2001 on…there were a few years there, in high school, I think, when I didn’t write at all, unless required…yet now I have 150,000 words in three years, and probably equal to that with other writing projects.
And think of all the money I’ve spent on the franchise, eek 😉

addicted

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Today is the last biochem class before the final (which isn’t cumulative, thank God), but since we didn’t have class last week due to really inclement weather (that’s the first time, excepting 9-11, that I have ever had a class cancelled at WU), there isn’t a way to make up the lost class without adding time to tonight’s lecture. So I will have freaking 4 and a half hours of biochem tonight, including the study session beforehand. And if he gives us more than one break during the hour-extended lecture, I’ll eat my hat. Well, not really, since I like my hat and it’s managed to stay with me, so far, with only a few moments of loss…
needless to say, that’s a really long night. And of course, with the final only a week away, I’ve got to be serious about studying. Glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, sugars, dear Lord how am I going to remember it all? And then I see something in the text that I’ve been working with at work and I never knew anything else about it other than how to process it, and I feel ashamed.
Anyway, the title of the entry refers to the sad, wrenching feeling I had this morning as I laid aside my new copy of Cursor’s Fury and did not put it in my bag to bring with me. I can’t bring books to work when I’m supposed to be studying. I’ve learned that much, at least. But it’s so pathetic that I’m so addicted to reading that I want that book, right now. It’s so hard to study when that book (well, not specifically this book. Any good book will do) is sitting there, waiting to be read. I have to tell myself that I own the book, it will be there for me when I get back and done with this crazy class, but damn if I don’t still want it.
I guess it’s better to be addicted to books than, say, smoking. Good thing I don’t do both. I’d be in the poorhouse. You know that Borders Rewards thing? It’s embarrassing to think of the amount of Holiday Saving Rewards that I amassed this year, because that means I spent an atrocious amount of money at Borders. I probably pay the salary of one of their workers with all I spend there.
I need to find a job that lets me write fantasy and read other people’s fantasy. I would be set.

Dareon

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Dareon
Dareon is the main character in my 2006 NaNo novel. I realized when I picked up my sketchbook I hadn’t done anything since June and those were just sketches. This one was quick, but I’m happy with it. Though he does remind me of Cate Blanchett for some reason. I feel like I’ve seen that expression before on her face…
and yay for old-school colored pencil.

Fifty Thousand and Change

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nano_2006_winner_large.gif

There’s a whole story that goes along with it, but I’d be late for the NaNo TGIO (Thank Goodness It’s Over) party if I did. So for now, bask in the glorious that is me and my (perhaps quarter-of-the-way finished) novel.

piano girl

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“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne

Not quite where I should be, but that’s not unusual, is it?
Anyway, I actually got off my duff and played a bit on that keyboard I bought months ago, inspired by Josh Groban’s new cd and an uptick in the number of times that Five For Fighting’s The Riddle has been playing on the radio again. It’s a beautiful thing when it works.
Do you ever have the feeling that you have to put the things that you want to do off so you can do the things you should do? Why is it that I’m so much more interested in writing and reading fantasy the the science that I trained in? Why do I want to play music and read and write and draw and hike and whatever else so much that its hard to focus on the things I have to to make money?
I muse, then I write. See you at 20k.

writing furiously

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…but I still have time to take quizzes. I’m approximately 3000 words behind on NaNo and I still have to write out the biochem paper. But I will get there, I promise.
Raise your hand if you’re not surprised at the rating I got on this quiz. Wish I could do so well on Biochem.

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