gotham_bound, posts by tag: friends - LiveJournal

I guess I've been extremely busy because it's been a while since I've gotten anything done.

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So, all in all, I'm very tired. And given all my debt and how I'm spinning my wheels because I don't have the money to proceed in a few avenues, I feel like I have less than nothing to show for my exhaustion. My temper comes and goes, but it is getting hard to be patient with things. I have to wait for money to show up before I can proceed to try to make more money. Which I need because I'm broke. FUCK. And I'm not just broke with money, I'm broke with time. How has all of it gone away? I still have so much more I wanted to do by now. Books & videos that are collecting dust on the shelf, personal projects I wanted to get to, investigations to do do, (non-fiction) writing I want to get done.... I'm hopping from thing to thing and hardly getting one little thing done because every task I do requires me to carry the guilt of all the other tasks I'm not doing.

Though I still somehow find the time for the news, much as I try to avoid it. Ok...I don't try very hard. But believe me, I could be reading/following a hell of a lot more. And so that leaves me tired too, but a different kind of tired. Screamed "Shut the fuck up, you shithead!!" at two different people on the radio yesterday (Rep. Spencer Bachus & columnist PJ O'Rourke). Yeah. Wound a little tight these days.

I really want to focus on the class I had at Kalmenson & Kalmenson on Saturday but I keep getting derailed by how intense and crazy the entire weekend was. It took this long to get to a point where I didn't feel overwhelmed contemplating it all. And I still get a kick out of describing it by noting I lost count of how many opportunities I had to die, sustain permanent injury, break something very valuable, lose a friendship, get arrested, insult someone very important or otherwise look back in horror. Trying to explain it that way it sounds like it was bad but narrowly missed being disastrous. Actually it was wonderful, played to the hilt and somehow we all seemed to walk away unscathed. Of course, it's taken days to get the smell of smoke out of my hair and clothes and I may have picked up a mild bug because I keep having sneezing fits.

I loved the class, by the way. Halfway through and I could barely hide the grin that kept showing up when I thought again and again that it was exactly the class I had been looking for. The teacher is a crazy woman (that's how she introduced herself and it's apt) named Melique Berger. She's what you might call a brassy dame, with a personality large and powerful enough to knock down an elephant. To cut to the chase, as a teacher I have every confidence she won't waste any time giving me critique that I need and won't sugarcoat or otherwise fail to make sure I address issues I have on the mic. Furthermore, she spoke to a few worries I've had but haven't known how to voice that regard the industry and put me/us at my ease, and she quickly sussed out that I have to get out of my own head in order to deliver as well as I can. (Well, granted, that second one isn't that hard to figure out. Me? over think things? Nah!!) I can definitely work with this.

Tangent: I really do need a mic at home. The money for install and lessons on Audacity just isn't going to fall out of the sky and it doesn't look like waiting for it would be wise. So I'll have to burn my amazon gift certs on it and play with Audacity on my own. Wah, me. Oh well. /Tangent

So I'm definitely extremely glad to be in this class. The teacher seemed very promising. And the other students seem to be around my range or better. They can act some, they've got good sounds between them (some of the guys have just *yummy* voices) - but none are so polished I wonder why the heck they're taking the class. Even the ones who've acted professionally on TV or done other kinds of vocal work may be good - ok, really good - but they're not perfect. It may be my tendency to assume the worst of my abilities, but I would assess my work at the bottom of the class, but not in a bad way! Or perhaps I should say, there's a great variety of ticks and tricks that I'm going to be stealing. Though I have to admit it'll be hard not just look on this one 22-year old chick with no acting, singing or creative writing experience, who's there on a whim and has the most marvelous timing and instincts I have EVER seen.

Again, it's scary to see just how far I have to go. But such - SUCH! - a relief to know that I've found the resources that will make the distance possible to cover. Course...it's going to take a ton of work. And that will require a ton of discipline, which I haven't exactly cultivated.


So... after the class it was sort of snowing, but it was what was called a "wintery mix" in New York. But odder, actually. the sky directly overhead was clear and though it was a sunny walk to my truck, I had to have my umbrella up to keep from being pelted with little clumps of ice. It wasn't even terribly cold - though colder than I like. I learned to hate "wintery mix" in NYC because the temps would be freezing and the ice was cruel when it the skin. This was a little different, though still a mix of soft ice clumps and cold rain. At any rate, I never once thought the first time I drove in snow and ice would be in Burbank.

The road conditions were *highly* unusual as you might imagine, so I didn't try to press my luck by stepping on the gas. Visibility was a real problem and that alone made me shiver hard and cold. Luckily it's not a long drive from Burbank to Highland Park, where it wasn't "snowing."


Piquarious was madness. Delirious, unpredictable, madness. I was worried here and there for people hurting themselves and all the while partying on with little concern for how to deal if my own actions caused me lasting damage. The night was bitter cold with temperature forecast in the mid30s. Hence huddling 'round the bonfire. Indoors it got stuffy pretty quickly, so I was outside and on my feet - which were quickly numb - most of the night. Even now my left big toe feels a little odd. I guess if it's nerve damage I ought to take back the claim of no lasting damage. but it's nothing bad. Friends were wild and crazy as they ever are, and in the interest of protecting the guilty I'll leave it at that.

I recovered a bit on Sunday with the stragglers and then headed home for dinner with the family to celebrate my sister's coming birthday. I was really feeling the high of such a wonderful time and had trouble watching both my language and sense of discretion, relating what I'd been through. That sort of set off my sis and her fiance. But mom pretended not to hear us. I needed most of Monday to fully recover and now i'm almost all the way back. Heh.

Yesterday was get stuff done + see friends day. Juggled lots of quirky little things that annoyed and perhaps amused me a little because obstacles make the journey notable. Or they were easy enough to live with, anyway.

I have very few plans today but the obstacles and surprise problems have only mounted which is quite annoying, even if none of them individually make for particularly interesting recounting. Still and again, I'm happy to live in a house that doesn't leak. That hasn't always been the case so it's quite a relief. Hope it stays that way. *knocks on wood*


Hung out with doctor_ray in the afternoon. He kicked my butt plenty at chess and then we talked and talked all kinds of stuff - people with serious entitlement issues, languages, saving the world - you know, chitchat. Always a good time.

Afterward a small party at essentialsaltes's house. There was a bit of bouncing off the walls and drinking, lots of laughing and insulting each other. And... possibly the best Christmas randomness miracle I've encountered! Which needs a little backstory to explain. ( Collapse )

On the off chance that he still checks this: mabon_grey Happy birthday!!


I miss you, my dear old friend. I hope things are going wonderfully and that you had a spectacular birthday. Be well. }:>

I'm moving very slowly through the things I've set before myself to get done. However, other friends push on with their goals. It's cool & inspiring.

Here is a pitch from Autumn MacKenzie to get onto a Progressive commercial with "Flo." She needs hits! Please help by watching - it's less than a minute long!

Yeah, embedding would be better for the sake of viral interest but I think she's stuck with this page, not entirely sure. Anyway, please click!

When you can't run, you crawl.
And when you can't crawl, [...]
you find someone to carry you.
--"The Message," Firefly


It's been a week. I feel harried and tired. I think I can add up all that's transpired and see exactly why. But I still feel...extra down, I guess, thanks to mental wiring that makes it hard to enjoy good things and accentuates negatives. And that gets exacerbated when I get annoyed with myself for not being able to better enjoy the things I know are good.

But thank heavens I have good friends. ( Collapse )

/Got in lunch and long, looong rambling conversation with richardabecker yesterday that was cool. Haven't done that in a while and it was neat to hang out and talk with a friend without excuse or accident being the cause.


We talked about everything that occured to us from LARPing (naturally) to geopolitics, cultures of corruption, alcohol, TV programs & movies, introverts & extroverts, and the play necessary between ideal models borne of absolutist views and the exigencies of the now that give rise to relativist views.

Fed the body, fed the mind.



But I'm still totally weirded out that we couldn't begin to fathom any major Russian industry we know of that might be above board. We kept coming back to large parts of the their GDP seems to come from crime, corruption & vice, and they have a strong military.... But somebody's gotta make stuff, right? Other than vodka, what do they export that's not illegal/immoral? It's a little weird to think a former superpower is only known in this day and age as a source of organized crime.

And what do you call that? Rule by The Mob?

Yay! The Senate has confirmed Sonia Sotomayor! WOOO!!! Yes it was altogether likely, she's a profoundly qualified candidate. But I do keep hoping one of her Supreme court superpowerz will be to slap Pat Buchanan and shout "affirmative action this, bitch!" Not that she would (I would, but this is why lifetime appointments are unlikely for me), but that she could.
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Last night had dinner with timcrall while scarlet_storm had her writer's meeting. Hadn't hung out for them in ages - since before the puppies, who are very excitable and sweet and (everyone is hoping) full grown. Tim told me about touring Europe. Talk about Romania got me into talking about my vampire goofiness and his questions helped me give some better shape to the story. I kept thinking about it well into the night, after getting home and turning everything off and crawling into bed I hit upon some ideas. If the computer hadn't been chewing on updates I would have tossed out a few ideas here to get back to today.

Tim poked around on the laptop and saw what I was talking about regarding its issues with wifi and recommended a Windows update. It was late so I said I do it once I was home. Which of course took a couple of hours to get started because once I got home the bloody thing refused to connect to the Intarwubz for a while. Finally I got online, responded to a couple of things and set the update in motion. Read a little bit, turned out the lights and hit the hay. And then the creativity storm hit and I kept dozing off and then waking up thinking "hey that's a great idea!" and then dozing off again and then waking up again... It wasn't a very restful night. But I remember the idea of other vampires and well... duh it's a great idea! Excellent source for tension and personal plot.

Probably would have been a more productive night, and possibly more restful if I had just gotten back up, turned on a light and started handwriting notes. But that would involve being organized and disciplined. Pfft.
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This week has been a waste and kind of horrible. I drank too much on Sunday (like I really need to stick to wine for a little while, and even take that down a notch for the foreseeable future) and paid for it most of Monday. The soreness is still kind of going, though it's hard to tell it apart from general bad sleep, stress and insane heat. No matter when I do lay down it takes a long time to fall asleep and then I seem to wake up every hour. I'm absently grinding my teeth and gritting my jaws and I know I do it when I'm asleep because yawning hurts. Also my neck muscles are super sore and I've had a mild headache for something like the last three days. It goes away with pills, but tellingly, I also don't notice any pain when I'm somewhere cool, able to interact with people and/or just drank some coffee. So I'm chalking that up to the heat.

In any case I've done more or less nothing for the job hunt save to feel really guilty, I haven't made it to the gym... *sigh* I can't bank on self-pity can I? Fiinnee. Hmph. I'm finally in a reasonably good mood and everywhere I look there's a lot to be done.

Alrighty then, coffee, an email and then it's off to the gym.

Every thing is waiting, everything in its time. But I know I can't recognize the proper times for a lot of things. I can't even figure out the right place to be half the time. But I want to pick up THIS but I'm holding back for some reason. I don't know why, it's not like I'll really wait for anything good. Just the knee jerk feeling that I shouldn't spend money that I get right before I go and spend a lot of it on crap I don't need. But this isn't crap. It's UK stamps designed by Dave McKean with little stories to go with them written by none other than Neil Gaiman (Dave McKean + Neil Gaiman = two great tastes that will ALWAYS taste great together). Of course, I still haven't order the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book, Bite Me! or double checked on my brown coat.

Well, I tell myself, I’m saving for both a car (cause I don't know when that's going to settle and the hold up regularly makes me want to build a brick wall for slamming my head into) and will want to pick up some NIN swag at the concert. And oh, GOD, if something goes wrong in terms of the concert someone is going to pay. Terminally. I'm fucking DONE with shit going wrong. Then again, Tori Amos' new album comes out this week. At least I can listen to it (if I have the time and feel like listening to something that isn't NIN) for free online on Tuesday.

Socially, I've been swinging around a little bit wildly just because I'm not sure what my headspace is calling for (probably a long dip in a hot tub...ah the list of stuff I would love at my disposal but simply can’t have is depressingly long) so it's hard to figure out the appropriate company. ( Collapse )

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Not related. Amanda fucking Palmer pointed this out: Wolfram|Alpha It's sort of a search engine for factoids...ack and now that I'm poking at it, it seems to have hit a maximum load. Bother. Well they are trying to make knowledge based computing a reality, bridging squishy, dynamic facts like market figures and geographic locations with hard number crunching. I want to play with it more to figure out the use in it - or rather, the advantage over say an encyclopedia and the daily paper and maybe an almanac. But it's broken for now.

Seems like it could be insanely cool. Certainly has interesting implications for search.

Once I work out what size I am in men's dusters I'm picking this up:

(The brown one is closest to the color of the coat Zoe wore in the show. Tempted to go darker just because it'll work with my clothes better. But bown is...you know, brown.)
Soonish will have to make an effort to dig up good places for toy guns. (While I can't really justify the duster it has some actual use as opposed to $200 for a replica Mare's Leg & holster.)

Zoe will just have to be more gothy than ever. Though the different blacks under that duster will likely look odd. *sigh* There's fandom and then there's my actual personal style. Thank goodness she never wore a hat.

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Unrelated, Bat's Day yesterday was a blast and you ALL missed out (except for Richard).

Before that was brunch at Angelo & Vinci's and a five minute tour of Harbor Bl in Fullerton (and a couple side streets). If I haven't forced this on you it's either only a matter of time or maybe we aren't actually that close, eh? Who wants to come see my childhood playground?

Before that was dressing up gothy for Bat's Day and running to mass and nary a word from my parents. Maybe they're very tired. Maybe they don't want to make me angry so I run away like my sis. Dunno. But they've let me get away with a lot that they never let pass without comment before. Weird but I'll take it before they change their minds!

Before that, on Saturday, was a lot fuss with the insurance. It wasn't difficult at all, AAA was very good about it all and I am extremely happy with their service (so far), just a bit of calling back and forth and giving statements and whatnot. In the evening the Glitterfaery gave me a ride to the Burbank airport, the closest Enterprise outlet with Saturday hours. Picked up a rental - Chevy Cobalt. Why are Cobalt's every color but blue? Rides super nice and quiet. I've actually missed just how much I accelerated and realized I really ought to slow down.

In between all that continued to enjoy the great kindness and generosity of the HP Haus. Watched bits and pieces of episodes of Lost, petted Ahab and took it easy with some excellent friends. Incidentally, it was Miss Brazelton's boyfriend who picked us up from the garage at 4am and took us home.

Don't know quite how Miss Brazelton is doing now. Some the physical complaints she had on Saturday I couldn't begin to figure it out. But I hope she doesn't fight off any pull to go see a doctor if anything weird happens or other strange pains show up. I haven't noticed anything particularly weird in my back. Far as I can tell it's the same tightness that's always there when I'm stressed. My left wrist, though, has a terrific bruise and it feels weird when I roll my hand and it hurts part of the way 'round. So i may end up seeing someone about it.

Before the accident richardabecker ran quite an amazing little Firefly game. For being low key and light on immediate plot, the uber plot was grinding away and so were our personalities propelling things. Even though the game didn't really have much in the way of daring heroics it was quite possibly the most momentous game yet. Both anxious and very eager to see what the LARP brings. Mal and Zoe have reupped with the Independents and everyone else but Inara will be on the Serenity as irregulars on the side of the Browncoats. Good times. }:>

Before that, picked up Miss Brazelton and we kicked back for a little bit a Marie Calendars to hang out over a drink. Picked up a pie, some wine and other sundries.

I think that's all that count as weekend. Except for one glaring problem it was really good. That glaring problem is really, really problematic though. *sigh*
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Oh and, have finished La casa de los espiritus by Isabel Allende. For the most part the book is very enchanting and lovely. I really like her dreamy use of the language to invoke such a hazy, malleable reality. Of course the last two chapters are pretty depressing, chock full of random, sadistic violence. Coups de etat are like that. *sigh*


Now to call Medicaid. What fun.