barbed_whispers

i wanted to do a post about things i am thankful for, but then i came home and got distracted by the tv. fuck. this is a large large part of why i never want to have cable again. (owning a tv isn't the problem- cable tv is the problem. i have spent too much of this vacation parked on the couch with my laptop and a blanket. in all fairness though, i was kind of sick yesterday, due to the insanity of my parents and the temperature of this house.)

anyway. last year at this time, life was not exactly great. i was on the verge of making what would have been a terrible decision (moving back to new jersey) even though i knew it was a terrible decision (if i come back here, i will never be able to leave again), but i made it through and ended up having an amazing year and making some amazing new friends. and now life is as close to perfect as it ever has been.

i am so thankful for all of you, but em, jess, and kl especially. and i am thankful for all stupid boys in stupid bands, but pete wentz more than any others. and i am thankful for all the crazy people on twitter, but maureen johnson and misha collins the most. i am thankful for the job i don't like, because it is a job, and it gives me health insurance and enough money to live my life the way i want to live it. i am thankful for my new apartment, because it has a chalkboard wall and it felt like home from the day i moved in. i am thankful for orlando, because it is the perfect amount of city for me right now, and it has a little bit of everything if you know where to look. i am thankful for all of the bands who have toured there this year, and a couple of the ones who haven't. i am thankful for generous bartenders at the social. i am thankful for my family, who do not pressure me about moving back to new jersey or going back to college or getting married or getting a real job nearly as much as i expect them to. i am thankful for all of the books i have read this year, and everything they have taught me. i am thankful for the internet, and everything it has given me. i am thankful for taco tuesdays and friday nights at starbucks and wizard rock shows and moving parties and dinosaurs and write-ins and every time i have laughed this year. i am thankful for being able to live the life i have always dreamed of.

Poll #1488463 eight fucking weeks?!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

if it was your last night on earth, which would you choose?

i didn't meet my nano goal while we were at barnies tonight, so i did not get my delicious reward :(

but i met my goal (AND THEN SOME!) after coming home, so i am doing this meme, which i stole from everyone, instead! ( MEME. )

( tl;dr about my mix cds. )

HOKAY, SO. holiday card + a mix cd. i do not care if we are friends. (srsly- complete strangers who are willing to give me an address can have a cd. tell your friends!) i do not want you to send me something in return. (i would not say no to a mix cd, but you are not obligated at all.) it does not matter where you live. if you cannot fill out the poll, you can leave a comment (they are screened) or fill out my formspring. please just take these damn cds off my hands.

Poll #1486050 holiday card + a mix cd!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 11

what's your address?

anything else?

this week has been so effing crazy, you guys. i am finally all moved in to the new apartment (HUZZAH) and i am going to spend this weekend unpacking and getting settled in. and writing. i am so far behind on nanowrimo. SUCK. there will be chinese food tomorrow though. i have been dreaming about it all week but i have been cruelly denied lo mein time and time again. I SHALL PREVAIL!

anyway. the say anything show on wednesday? was so fucking good. one of the best this year, definitely. i enjoyed the miniature tigers, and i was not crazy about the second band, and i would have liked eisley more had the lead singer not been the lead singer (she was pretty boring. i really liked the songs where sherri sang though), but say anything were just outstanding. outstanding boys, outstanding setlist, outstanding crowd... "ahhhhh... men" is going to stick with me for a long time, is the thing. it was so good that i seriously considered trying to get a ticket to the thursday night show even though i obviously had to finish cleaning and packing thursday night. SO GOOD.

and it was national unicorn appreciation day! i usually do a lot more, but i was obviously way busy and unable to bake or cut up the children's unicorn halloween costume i bought or do anything else exciting. i need to start putting together a plan for 2011 though, for serious.

(oh man. epic discussion on twitter right now because a lot of us listen to "crappy" pop music and bunny is pained by this. weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.)

i took tonight off to watch castle and eat too much pasta and now argue about music, but i am going to unpack everything this weekend, write at least 12,000 words, and set up the holiday card thing. and if i have time left over, i am going to paint 400 pete wentzes in momebie's room while she's away. :D

UGHHHHH why can't i be a normal member of my generation and prefer digital music to cds? i have too many cds. i can't really enjoy an album if i don't get the physical cd, because i play all my music on shuffle because it's mostly background noise. but actual cds get played and played and played and i fall head over heels in love. (for instance: i downloaded the bell horses album the day it dropped on amie street, listened to it once, really liked it, and didn't listen to it again until i bought the actual cd, which has not left my car's cd player since i got it.) (that album is really fucking good, check it out. it sounds like music that would have played at the bronze ♥)

while packing, i put all of the random cds that were floating around my apartment into the gigantic cd case i have and it was full. completely full, with a lot of mix cds double and triple stacked. and some cds in my car. and some cds hanging out elsewhere. and i said "SELF! you cannot buy ANY MORE CDS until you fix this problem!" except then i went to park ave last week and bought, uh, four new cds. (new albums from pearl jam, olp, say anything, and mike doughty, with a bonus free say anything lp and free mike doughty album that i already have and therefore gave to momebie.) fuck. fuck fuck fuck.

i feel bad throwing out cds (although i threw out a stack of cds yesterday- trust me, they were crap), and i could just get rid of all the old mixes i made in college, but...so wasteful. does anybody want some old mix cds? i never did tracklistings, just dates or sometimes themes. so surprise mix cds! maybe i should do a holiday card + a mix cd. hmmm. let's figure this out WITH SCIENCE!

Poll #1482722 yet another thing i can procrastinate nanowrimo with!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

would you be interested in getting some sort of holiday card from me?

i had several awesome plan offers for friday night, but then my boss came in and gave me free tickets to halloween horror nights so...i cancelled other plans and did that. i had never been to universal, you guys! i will see damion suomi again eventually, i promise. anyway, lots of fun was had that night with kl and john.

yesterday i slept forever and then started the epic painting of the wall. (kl and i made one of the walls in our living room into a giant chalkboard, with lots of help from tall people.) after that, we went to em's for movies & soup. i have truly terrible taste in movies, so i was really enjoying redneck vampires from space (or whatever it's called) until we turned it off. i have finally seen nightmare before christmas though! and also my friends are WAY CREEPY, what with the watching children in california trick or treat via the internet thing.

today i slept a lot more and got really confused about what time it was. then i went to target for discounted halloween stuff (it was a bust) and ended up with some stalkers. i think i shall move in with one of them next week. anyway, we finished painting the wall after some outrageous issues taping up the border. i have it on good authority that it looks fab though, so hooray!

oh also i wrote over 2000 words for nano. !!!! that is more than i have written in the last five attempts. combined. WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT? oh btw, my story involves a long roadtrip across the country, so if you know of anything stupid my characters should do or see, let me know! i will probably start making up attractions soon since i have never been further west than pa.

i feel like i should put a disclaimer on my lj about how wretched i am at responding to comments. or posting comments in general. if i don't respond as soon as i read the email notification, i tend to forget all about it until the next time i clean out my inbox. and my inbox has been very uncharacteristically (are there too many letters in that word?) messy lately, so...even worse than usual at responding. *sucks* I AM JUST A NATURAL LURKER, OK?

in news that is less about how useless i am: OLP! TWICE! DECEMBER! EEEEE! tickets have been purchased! and possibly third eye blind again, cos they are coming back the day between those two shows. and i keep stealing momebie's awesome friends, so it will be an even MORE exciting weekend!

hm, what else? kl and i got the sexiest effing calendar for the living room tonight. no, not the rpattz one. or the high school musical one. it's old pulp art. hotttt. and the second volume of the umbrella academy got released early, so i picked that up! no sign of rachelcaine's new one, sadly. it officially comes out next week though, so i'll survive.

oh, and the TAI show last night was aweeesome. except for the part where the opening bands were 100% horrible. but then we had bill and bill's suspenders and bill's adorable need to act out each song as he sings it. and the rest of the band! woo! heh. such fun. i have to cut down on the all ages shows though, because i really cannot handle these kids who wear cardigans as dresses. BUY SOME PANTS. (i can't stop talking about this either.)

( tl;dr blah blah about why i don't hang out on lj much anymore. )

unrelatedly, there is no way i am going to complete my book goal for the year. 100 books was way too ambitious (although, to be fair, work was so slow that i hardly had any reading time this summer) and i feel like crap knowing i won't get there. i really dislike not meeting my goals, urgh. i read a decent amount of stuff that was both time-consuming and outside my comfort zone (several non-fiction books, for starters), and i should be able to hit at least 75, but still. unhappy. need to decide if i want to set a smaller goal next year or work harder.

i blew my shows goal (15) out of the water though. 22 so far, not including all the random sets i've caught at the community market. and i'm going to at least 4 more this year. (TAI, say anything, olp, the olp/patd/say anything/every other band ever show, and then maybe the mountain goats, maybe joshua radin, almost definitely damion suomi next week, and i might check out the anti*pop festival even though there aren't really any bands listed that i care that much about. and i'm still considering the cobras show haha. AND there's still a lot of unclaimed dates on the calendar. so at least i can feel good about this one.)

so, i think i am doing nano. i mean, i am signed up. but i've signed up before. november is just historically a bad month for me to do something like nano! but i've signed up and bought a new moleskin and have a tentative plot and plan and if i succeed, there shall be prizes. for me. the prize for the rest of you will be 50,000 cracktastic words from my brain to your internet, which is not really a good prize, unless you are a fan of my brain's special brand of crack. (which, let's face it- if you are reading this, you probably are.)

in less stupid plans news, supernatural is on fire and i love it a whole lot. i have been thinking about it almost as much as i have been thinking about pete wentz & co. (which is a sickening amount, to be honest.)

in music news, i just bought a hard copy of the bell horses album! YAY. i still haven't bought mike doughty's album because i'm still annoyed at how terribly it was marketed and also the fact that he is not touring down here. and also that there are tracks i cannot buy because of my raging hate for itunes. and i mean, i have so many cds here that i haven't listened to yet, so whatever mike doughty. i am on your mailing list and i read your blog and your twitter and your new album still took me by surprise. THAT IS NOT OKAY.

in conclusion, i think the orlando and boston fangirl brigades should rumble. or be penpals. like when you were in elementary school and you became penpals with kids at a school far away? actually, i need to send a care package up that way. it will happen while i pack next weekend, aren. (MOVING IN LIKE, 3 WEEKS OMG WHAT.)

it's been a crazy effing week, so i haven't watched all of my tv. enjoyed castle, REALLY enjoyed spn, and like project runway. might watch the rest (dollhouse, models of the runway, maybe vampire diaries) tomorrow night, depending on when i get home.

it was such a crazy week for mostly awesome reasons though! i mean, yeah, work fucking sucked above and beyond what it needed to suck. but i got a lot of reading done! and then there was an AWESOME wizard rock show, and prepping for the wrock show, and dancing at the wrock show, and having a blast in general before and during and after the wrock show. and scifigirl is down so it was like an EXTRA DOSE OF AWESOME. and then there was more work, and more work, and lots of cranky workness. but tonight i went to epcot for the first time! we went on this amazing life-changing ride in mexico, and learned portugese in the golf ball thing, and sang about being on a boat in norway, and saw sister hazel, and ate too much, and i got married to sara! it was so much fun and i managed not to buy any tiny waving cats. \o/

and now i need to go sleep because work is probably going to suck tomorrow. but i get to go down and tell my apt complex i am moving out next month! weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

in honor of angel's ten year anniversary, i am reading some old fic that we wrote on the buffy board. specifically, a fic written by getaway_machine in which the boardies must band together to climb the mountain and fight queen riley. or something. idek, you guys. anyway, i am tormenting ashley with snippets, and we had this conversation:

lisa: don't you kill me in this fic?
ashley: I think so
lisa: what a bitch
ashley: I think I also cry about it.
ashley: oh, fiction

can you believe i have been best friends with this bitch for nine years or whatever?!

(you can find all sorts of delightful fic here, if you can navigate the hilariously bad website. i'm reading the fighters if you are lazy though!

( on the tv: spn, castle, project runway, dollhouse. )

oops. did i give up on fringe already? someone let me know if i should bother with it anymore. or if i should watch the episodes of the vampire diaries that i have downloaded.

it makes me sad that i watch so much tv (for me. but srsly, i'm up to 5 shows!) and you people never post about my shows anymore. i only started watching most of these shows so i could read my flist! :(

so, i have been loaning my coworkers books. first i gave t. the anita blake series (loved it, and is now annoyed that she has to go to the library for the rest because i stopped buying when they stopped being good), then i gave her night world (thought the first few were kinda dorky but otherwise liked 'em), and now she's reading vampire diaries (had trouble getting into them at first, but can't put them down now). i think i am going to give her weather warden next. is this a good plan? she originally asked for violent/gory vamp books, but then i just started shoving this other stuff in her face, and now i'm afraid that morganville won't be dark enough for her :/

(speaking of vampire diaries: i've read the books more times than i should admit in public, so it's making me kind of sad that we're two eps in and i have no clue what is going on. i am especially unhappy with damon's characterization, although i suppose he seems like this big of a douche in the books early on too. urghhhhhhhh. i don't think i can watch a whole season of this show. it is not lulzy enough.)

OH BTW. i read the hunger games by suzanne collins today. i feel like i am way late on this, but WHOA AWESOME.

you guyssssssssssssss. dragon*con was awesome and i am once again sad to be back in the real world.

( ya lit, steampunk, and that time i fell in love. also knows as WELCOME TO TL;DR CITY! )

on the plus side: ONE MONTH TIL THE WHOMPING WILLOWS AND JFF AND FRED LIVES, ZOMG!

Poll #1450660 because momebie does not believe us.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

while at dragon*con, if i ask a group of stormtroopers to poke my friend kl, will they do it?

SO! who's coming to dragon*con? who's doing the thriller dance with momebie and me? what twitter users do i need to follow on my phone? is there a standard d*c twitter tag? (i don't think the * will work?) is there anything you would like me to look for for you? how many stormtroopers should i make out with? (if you need my digits, they can be found here. if you want me to have yours, either leave a comment and then delete it or txt me with who you are.)

YAY!

not that this has anything to do with anything (*shifty eyes*), but what bandom people besides pete and gabe dropped out of college? the ones who never went at all are, unfortunately, a whole other issue. (actually, we can name some of those too if there aren't enough dropouts in the crowd.)

i think life might be moving too fast. or maybe i'm just living it 100% and that's making it seem faster. idk. anyway, this week marks the anniversary of, well, this whole thing. i still think about it more than i should, but i didn't even realize the date until i started craving death cab and getting sad for no apparent reason and searching for certain people on twitter even though we all know that i am not allowed to speak to them under any circumstances, ever. anyway, i went back and reread my journal from that year before i could get sentimental about some things, and i realized a couple of things:

1. i am heartstoppingly grateful for you people.
   
2. i can't even begin to imagine what my life would be like if all of that had not happened.
   
3. and most importantly, whatever that imaginary life is, it could not possibly be better than the one i've got now.

i still feel the way i felt in that entry, but it's a duller ache and i can imagine the day when it won't there anymore. for a really long time, i thought it would never go away. i thought i would never feel that good again, like i would never truly be myself around other people ever again.

(jesus fuck. i am listening to pearl jam's self-titled album, which (a) was a huge feature in my life at the tail-end of this shit, and (b) can make me cry like nobody's business. and now i'm sending people soppy emails. i'm sorry.)

anyway, it turns out i was wrong. i still miss some of my old friends, it's true. i wish i could have pushed through that bullshit with just one more person. but the people i have now are amazing and brilliant and kind and hilarious and just, in general, the best, and i am so lucky to have them in my life. ♥♥♥

as an aside, the main reason i never talk about any of this more than vaguely in this journal is because i keep thinking, "oh, that was dumb. i can't possibly still be this hurt about it all. i'm sure i will be over it very soon and then i will feel silly for posting about it." except it's been years and it still hurts. i do not approve of these "feelings" and i wish you humans would keep them to yourselves. hmph.