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Man, that was a tiring pair of weeks.
Also, kind of weird and whiplashy.
The short of it is that I've decided to stop working at Cedar Circle. I wish I hadn't had to, because I loved doing the work itself - planting and weeding and thinning and hoeing, getting my hands dirty and feeling like I'd really gotten something done by the end of the day. But I have SO MUCH to do this summer: thesis research, and an online class, plus extra-curricular studying (both thesis-related and not). After a week, it became pretty obvious that I just plain can't afford to be working forty-hour weeks at a job that leaves me wrung out and unwilling to get off the couch at the end of the day. :P
So. I've found myself another job - similar, in certain ways, but I get to choose my own hours, and also it should be a little bit less physically demanding. It's weeding; weeding an enormous slope that used to be a garden, and possibly still has some garden-y plants hiding in it somewhere, for a lovely older lady who is wheelchair-bound. She can still manage a little in the lower garden, but the slope is too much - very steep, and mostly shale, so it can also be pretty slippery. I'm looking forward to it, I think it should suit much better than the other.
I've had a lot of spare time, in between the last job ending and this job starting - watched a lot of NCIS, which I am coming to deeply adore, and a fair amount of House, too. USA is rapidly becoming one of my favorite channels - and not just because BURN NOTICE IS TOTALLY COMING BACK THURSDAY OMFGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. I'm also thinking I may try out Royal Pains, which is apparently premiering right after Burn Notice, if I remember the commercials rightly; the previews look rife with potential brothercest, and also the assistant woman looks totally awesome. ("... Don't objectify me, sidekick.")
I've also written more; I added some to the official HP AU document, and also the Irrelevant Shipfic is up to twenty-five pages. **facepalm** I also keep getting hit with mildly random stuff - a bit of Cain/Glitch, and a conversation between Myers and Hellboy over dishwashing. ... Yeah. I'm still working on finishing and shining up my NaNo, but I keep getting distracted by world-building stuff; at the moment, at least, it's a lot more fun to work out the alternate history of the setting than it is to actually write in the missing bits of the actual story.
The basic premise - well, okay, the basic premise of the story revolves around a female dwarf pirate from not!Ethiopia who's the captain of an airship, her nerdy first mate, a shapeshifting djinn, and a broken clockwork girl. But the basic premise of the world is essentially ridiculous self-indulgence. I'm fascinated by certain parts of the history of various regions - pre-Islamic Arabia, pre-Islamic India, pre-Roman Europe, the pre-European Americas, pre-European Africa (especially pharaohic Egypt in the northeast, and the Ghana/Wagadou Empire in the northwest). So I've basically picked and chosen, and come up with somewhat flimsy explanation for why my favorite periods have managed to all last until the same time period. :D
And, man, do I love filling in cultural details. I don't have the resources to do real, in-depth research - not here, anyway - and as long as this stuff is just for me, it doesn't bug me too much that I'm being shoddy and Wikipedish about it. Mostly I read the Wikipedia article about the relevant history, let it percolate, and then write up an altered version; some of them have really sucked me in. I got more detailed than I was expecting about my not!Germany and its clan system, and now I'm a little tempted to write something about the process of the Princess Odilie becoming queen regnant - and then there's also the story of Izdihar, the current favorite to be appointed the next amirah of not!Arabia by the seventeen great families, and how she saved the current amir from a demon. I'm also kind of in love with Ilhuamina and Tzinacal, the ruler of the most prominent city-state in not!Guatemala and his wife; they are super awesome.
In short, as always, the background is running away with me. :D It's good experience, though - and good to know that when I really want to, I actually can be moved to bother with this kind of stuff. I'm betting this NaNo won't be the last one I write in this particular universe; because of the way the world is put together, it lends itself to both steampunk and swords-and-sorcery, which, what more could you want?
Hopefully, having more time and not spending as much of it being exhausted will lend itself to an improvement in my posting record; my streak has been decimated. :D
The short of it is that I've decided to stop working at Cedar Circle. I wish I hadn't had to, because I loved doing the work itself - planting and weeding and thinning and hoeing, getting my hands dirty and feeling like I'd really gotten something done by the end of the day. But I have SO MUCH to do this summer: thesis research, and an online class, plus extra-curricular studying (both thesis-related and not). After a week, it became pretty obvious that I just plain can't afford to be working forty-hour weeks at a job that leaves me wrung out and unwilling to get off the couch at the end of the day. :P
So. I've found myself another job - similar, in certain ways, but I get to choose my own hours, and also it should be a little bit less physically demanding. It's weeding; weeding an enormous slope that used to be a garden, and possibly still has some garden-y plants hiding in it somewhere, for a lovely older lady who is wheelchair-bound. She can still manage a little in the lower garden, but the slope is too much - very steep, and mostly shale, so it can also be pretty slippery. I'm looking forward to it, I think it should suit much better than the other.
I've had a lot of spare time, in between the last job ending and this job starting - watched a lot of NCIS, which I am coming to deeply adore, and a fair amount of House, too. USA is rapidly becoming one of my favorite channels - and not just because BURN NOTICE IS TOTALLY COMING BACK THURSDAY OMFGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. I'm also thinking I may try out Royal Pains, which is apparently premiering right after Burn Notice, if I remember the commercials rightly; the previews look rife with potential brothercest, and also the assistant woman looks totally awesome. ("... Don't objectify me, sidekick.")
I've also written more; I added some to the official HP AU document, and also the Irrelevant Shipfic is up to twenty-five pages. **facepalm** I also keep getting hit with mildly random stuff - a bit of Cain/Glitch, and a conversation between Myers and Hellboy over dishwashing. ... Yeah. I'm still working on finishing and shining up my NaNo, but I keep getting distracted by world-building stuff; at the moment, at least, it's a lot more fun to work out the alternate history of the setting than it is to actually write in the missing bits of the actual story.
The basic premise - well, okay, the basic premise of the story revolves around a female dwarf pirate from not!Ethiopia who's the captain of an airship, her nerdy first mate, a shapeshifting djinn, and a broken clockwork girl. But the basic premise of the world is essentially ridiculous self-indulgence. I'm fascinated by certain parts of the history of various regions - pre-Islamic Arabia, pre-Islamic India, pre-Roman Europe, the pre-European Americas, pre-European Africa (especially pharaohic Egypt in the northeast, and the Ghana/Wagadou Empire in the northwest). So I've basically picked and chosen, and come up with somewhat flimsy explanation for why my favorite periods have managed to all last until the same time period. :D
And, man, do I love filling in cultural details. I don't have the resources to do real, in-depth research - not here, anyway - and as long as this stuff is just for me, it doesn't bug me too much that I'm being shoddy and Wikipedish about it. Mostly I read the Wikipedia article about the relevant history, let it percolate, and then write up an altered version; some of them have really sucked me in. I got more detailed than I was expecting about my not!Germany and its clan system, and now I'm a little tempted to write something about the process of the Princess Odilie becoming queen regnant - and then there's also the story of Izdihar, the current favorite to be appointed the next amirah of not!Arabia by the seventeen great families, and how she saved the current amir from a demon. I'm also kind of in love with Ilhuamina and Tzinacal, the ruler of the most prominent city-state in not!Guatemala and his wife; they are super awesome.
In short, as always, the background is running away with me. :D It's good experience, though - and good to know that when I really want to, I actually can be moved to bother with this kind of stuff. I'm betting this NaNo won't be the last one I write in this particular universe; because of the way the world is put together, it lends itself to both steampunk and swords-and-sorcery, which, what more could you want?
Hopefully, having more time and not spending as much of it being exhausted will lend itself to an improvement in my posting record; my streak has been decimated. :D