I saw this through lindahoyland and cairistiona7, and just had to give it a try. And apparently... I am weirder than both of them combined. XD 

So, imbecamiel, your LiveJournal reveals…

You are… 3% unique (blame, for example, your interest in write sisters), 13% peculiar, 33% interesting, 35% normal and 15% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy writing). When it comes to friends you are normal. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is conventional.

Your overall weirdness is: 22

(The average level of weirdness is: 28.
You are weirder than 50% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

LOL. Interesting. Though, I admit, much as it's likely a common interest here on LJ, I find it rather funny that enjoying writing makes one "herdlike". *g*

I almost got driven from my room by a moth last night. I don't mean in the "Ew, there's an insect in my general vicinity! *shrieks and flees*" sense. Nope, I'm not one to freak out over bugs. I find them fascinating, often pretty, I've had pet crickets, pet snakes-who-eat-crickets (erm... not at the same time), and I'm pretty much the go-to person when bugs, frogs, and other such creepy-crawlies somehow make their way inside. 

Bugs outside are great and interesting. Bugs inside, generally not so much. I draw the line at them being in my bed. Not cool. Especially when it's dark, and I don't have my glasses and am therefore feeling a bit vulnerable and off-balance as it is.

But all that's just set up for what happened last night.

( The Epic Battle. )

*happy sigh* Okay, I know that I've been pretty "meh" about Spring's approach, but... I'd forgotten how much I love the smell of it. Mmm. Even with no flowers yet - virtually nothing in the way of returning greener - it's so nice. Also, sunlight. Apparently it can do a lot to help with those feelings of general dragging around and "meh." My allergies and asthma are not quite so happy about it all, but ah well... It was actually nice enough that we ate out on the back porch last night. Yeah, the lake is still frozen solid, there are still patches of snow on the ground, but this is Minnesota, people. It was nice, And it was fun watching the birds while we ate. A pair of cranes even flew right over our deck. <3

Squirrels have also been going crazy, of course. Haven't seen the black ones yet this year, but the red and gray ones are plenty active, and I saw the one with the nearly-missing tail the other day (just has a little tuft like a rabbit tail - awfully cute, but I feel bad for the thing, hard as it must be to balance). The flying squirrels have also been raiding our suet, though we haven't caught sight of them recently. Apparently we've got a new squirrel hanging around, too. I've never seen anything quite like it before... pretty sure it must be some kind of crossbreed between the red and gray ones. It looked, essentially, like a gray squirrel - only it had a mohawk-like stripe of almost fluorescent orange running down the top of its head, down its back, and into the tail, which was almost entirely orange as well. Odd-looking, but really cute.  

Best of all... we heard from our breeder today. I didn't really talk about it here, because frankly I was just too upset and depressed at the time, but - the litter we were supposed to be getting a puppy from? Turned out to be a false pregnancy, so... no puppies. Considering how rare litters for this breed are, that meant we were extremely unlikely to have even another chance at getting on a waiting list for any of the breeders until sometime this fall. But. As it turns out, one of our breeder's dogs just came into heat two months early, so they're planning to breed her now. Which means there could be a puppy available for us in early August, if all goes well, since she's going to give us some priority for getting one from this litter. And yes, I am totally getting my hopes up already. I can't help it. I want so badly to have a dog again. 

And I've gotten a lot of writing done today. Maybe not a super-high word count, but I'd say more done progress-wise than in the whole last week. \o/

Also, my dad bought my jellybeans while he was out. I've been wanting jellybeans. 

Been a good day so far. ^^

Oh. Oh. 

That was beautiful. Sweet and lovely and all the gorgeous clockwork, and the whole atmosphere of it, just... so much love.

And I adore the way that it took the analogy of the world as a giant machine, and each of us just a part in it, and through the whole feel of the movie successfully turned it from something cold and impersonal and presenting individuals as insignificant into something beautiful and creative and meaningful. 

This movie is my happy place. I am going to be watching it so many times.

Now I wish that I'd seen it in theaters. We'd talked about it... but never got to it. ;_;

I enjoy writing non-fiction. I really do. But you know what tends to really get me? My inability to narrow my focus. 

I'll start out with a great idea, and lots of enthusiasm. I know my subject, I love talking about it, I'm confident that I have something helpful to share. Just lay out the basic organization of the topics I'm gonna cover, choose a starting point, and get going! 

Only... the moment I actually start delving in, I wonder if I really need to start at an earlier point. Cover more of the subject. Explain things more broadly to give people background. How much can I actually leave out without confusing people? What is essential, and what is interesting but ultimately unnecessary? Am I starting out with too many assumptions?

And before long what was once a clearly defined idea gets lost in a swamp of uncertainty, as I attempt to write The Ultimate Guide To Everything Ever Remotely Related To This Subject. 

And this is why I tend to have trouble actually finishing these projects. *sigh* Largely... I think I have trouble figuring out what knowledge base most people are likely to be starting out with. Sometimes I think it may be partly because I was homeschooled: Obviously, no one's education is "complete" so to speak - however well-rounded it is, there will always be gaps in knowledge or experience. But because my education was organized very differently from that of the vast majority of the country, I feel like sometimes the placement of those gaps is out of step with other people's experience. That some things other people consider so obvious they can't even remember learning it are... not so obvious to me, and vice-versa. If that makes sense?

Eh. Or maybe I'm just over-thinking and over-complicating things. Again. Because I tend to do that. >.<

I don't really know what my point in this is, other than - *flails* I may never finish a book, ever. XP

On a happier note than my last post... D'you know what these are?



A pair of the new dragons just released on the Dragcave site, that's what. And while new releases there always tend to cheer me up a bit, this one's different. Why? 'Cause these are ones that I did all the pixel art for. :D

So yeah. I'm an official site artist now! Yay!

Except now I'm all nervous, waiting to see what people over on the forums think once they're grown up. XD

Okay, yes, I am officially killed by teh adorableness. *ded*

And speaking of cute... the litter from which we are (if all goes well!) supposed to get a puppy is due in a little less than a week now! *bounces* I can not wait to actually meet the little ones. \o/ 

Of course, this means that The Naming Crisis is rapidly coming to a head. You see, around here, naming a pet is a major undertaking, necessitating multiple earnest family discussions, sometimes lasting till midnight or so, in addition to the day-to-day tossing back and forth of ideas. This is A Big Deal.

And we still have no idea what we're going to go with.

Ideally, really, we'd love to come up with another Lord of the Rings-themed name. Trouble is, we're not really particularly fond of most hobbity or dwarvish names for a dog, but the more dignified human and elvish ones tend to be rather a mouthful, and not have any good nicknames. We we've hit a dead end there for the time being. 

We've discussed Griffin (or, probably, Gryphon), which I quite like. The guys are kind of "meh" about it, though. They are bound and determined to have a dog named Cooper (they actually wanted to name Strider that). Which Nef and I have declared is Not gonna happen. I'm actually terribly fond of Sherlock as a dog's name, but it, unfortunately, has some rather negative past connotations - some years ago, after our neighbor's kids spent most of a summer listening to our dad read nearly the entire collection of Sherlock Holmes tales aloud to us, they named their new dog Sherlock. Which would've been cool, except he turned out to be a rather nasty, ugly, mean, not especially brilliant little thing that only really liked their (honestly, terrifying) mother, barked incessantly at the most inconvenient times, and was unpredictably nippy. So... hmm, not out of the question, but yeah. Tiro is also a good possibility. (Okay, yes, so maybe Neffie and I are just a teeny little bit obsessed with Roman history. *g*) I honestly thought, given some of the general breed characteristics, Neal would be an awesome possibility, but that one was firmly shot down by certain male members of our household. ;D

There've been other possibilities tossed around with varying degrees of seriousness, but really we don't even have any clear frontrunners at the moment. And yeah, you might say that maybe when we actually see the puppy inspiration will strike... but I kind of doubt that's gonna be a miraculous solution to our dilemma. I foresee much, much more discussion in the upcoming weeks. Um... outside opinions/suggestions are definitely welcome. XD

And speaking of dogs... We're in the midst of minor adventure with one at the moment.

( Puppy! Puppy, puppy, puppy! I am so dog-deprived right now it's not even funny, )

Soyeah. I'm sick. :/ Not great timing in the middle of holiday baking and all, but then... there's rarely a really good time to get sick. Ah well...

I have also discovered that, much as I love Mozzie as a character, I hate writing from his POV. Even if it is the best one for this story. It intimidates me, and it's been slowing the pace of my writing down to even more of a crawl than usual, because I can not figure out if I'm getting it right. *sigh* But y'know what? I have discovered an awesome writing exercise for those times when I just can't seem to get past that tendency to over-think and second-guess and just sit down and write. Brainstorm with a couple of six-year-olds. Seriously. If that doesn't loosen you up and get the creativity flowing... XD

Yeah, had a great time with the kids Nef and I watch every Thursday. The younger girl had a friend over, and they wanted to write. A retelling of the Nativity story, to be precise. As it turned out, a truly unique version, in which the angel, after announcing Jesus' birth, then conspires with the innkeeper to kidnap him. Fortunately, Superchicken and his sidekick the sheepdog were there to save the day! And there was great rejoicing. Yes, I nearly died of the giggles. It was hysterical. 

Anyhow, being sick sometimes has a tendency to inspire odd fits of creativity in me, even when I'm all but brain-dead (eh, dulling of inhibitions, probably, 'cause I'm too tired to overthink?), so I'm actually feeling rather hopeful now for the possibility of pushing through and finishing this thing in the near future. (The White Collar story, that is, not the girls' Nativity retelling. XD I want to fiiinish this so I can actually focus on the long one Neffie and I are coauthoring!) 

And on that note... a few random fun mostly-vaguely-WC-related things that I've been saving up, meaning to share but never quite getting around to it.

( News articles and... other stuff. )

Continued from part one.

( Part two! )

At last, another White Collar story! This one was written for alone_dreaming, for the collarcorner ficathon. Many thanks to swanpride, who helped me track down a plot bunny when they were being elusive. I hope that the end result is enjoyable!  ^.^

(Set somewhere loosely in late season 1/early season 2. Because I haven't seen any S3 yet. /is behind)

( To the story! )