granting you a dreamlike life

So my friend E and I went to see The Hobbit together (second viewing for each of us) after I was done, as she put it, "Making like a wood-elf" (and leaving Thorin and dwarf co to die in a dragon-y fire?), which was brilliant. Just as fantastic the second time through - and yes, I am now joining the elf on an elk bandwagon. Thranduil (the fancy bastard) is riding an elk, not a moose. The facial structure just isn't right, and the antlers, while massive, aren't the same flat broad sort of antler meese have. So yes. Elf on an Elk.

Martin Freeman is a BAMF and hardly needs mentioning, because, yeah, he WAS Bilbo. There were maybe two moments that I wasn't really convinced, but from the moment he first was on screen, he just was Bilbo. Not Martin, Bilbo.

The dwarves were all phenomenal, even if I still can't quite get all the names to faces just yet. (Still shaky on Dori, Ori, Nori, Oin and Gloin. Got the others down now.) Of course, this just makes knowing how the story ends even harder! Much as I want them to stay true to the story... oh come on, PJ! Can't you just... not be like Joss? Be a reverse-Joss and save everyone's favourite characters? Please?

Curses.

Which brings me back to my subject line, which is in reference to Mr Richard Armitage. I'd known of him well in advance of hearing he would be Thorin and loved everything I'd seen of his work - which, to be fair, isn't that much. Strike Back (brill!) was the main one, along with bits of Spooks/MI-5, and Robin Hood. (I think I've only seen his episodes of Robin Hood, actually; the other parts just aren't that interesting. Doh.) Anyway. The ridiculously tall dwarf has got one of those interesting faces that I just kind of want to study and stare at. That's all. (Okay, fine, I could go with him reading the telephone book as well, shush.) 's just... how do all those muscles work? So much of his acting revolves around his eyes, it's kind of amazing. Also, he plays[ed?] cello and flute, so I kind of have to love him. It's a musicians' fraternity sort of thing, lol.

Anyway. Other news: still no bow (sad face), but I do have lovely re-fletched arrows. Now, instead of having orange and white feathers with orange nocks, I've got blue and which feathers with purple nocks. The blue fletching goes so nicely with the blue shafts - the whole effect is quite lovely, although they're now much harder to see in the targets. My poor arrows also took quite a beating today - a free-standing target that we'd set up as the new 10-metre line decided it didn't want to do so much standing as falling, and crashed down on my arrows and two other little kids' arrows. Ouch. Mine were the longest by far, and probably took the brunt of the blow - they were the only ones that ended up pushed the whole way through the target (approximately 8 inches thick?). Fortunately, they didn't bend much, if at all. *whew* That would've been a nightmare, having just gotten them refletched and then have to chuck 'em all and buy new ones? I would've cried.

But, other than that, archery went quite well today. My groupings were much better on the 5, which I think I'll attribute to having fletchings again, so I asked Coach Dave if we could set up the 10. Happily, he did so, and I spent the rest of the morning hanging out on the big kids' side, learning more stuff than I would've done over at the 5. Of course, it also meant I didn't get any proper coaching, but hey. I was actually getting groupings at the 10, so I was happy. Not quite as tight as I would like, nor were they going exactly where I wanted them, but it was still pretty freakin' awesome after two or three weeks of feeling like nothing was going right. I'm getting accustomed to my finger sling, although it's still a pain to put on and off. My back muscles are working more, my release and follow-through is getting praised; the one thing that keeps being brought up is my dropping elbow - which would be somethign to work on, if I could even feel what it was doing. Coach Ryan video'd it today, and yes, it's definitely dropping just before release, but I really don't feel it. Not sure how to fix something I can't feel!

Oh well. Most of the coaches are giving me a bad time about not signing up for the club yet, but I'll probably do that in January - I should be getting paid (finally) for the bookcase fiasco whenever I manage to make it to the bank, so that's good.

There's talk about potentially going to the HUGE gem shows in Tucson this February; it would just be a long weekend, but it could be awesome. I've got two free passes to one of the shows - I'm not really sure how it works when they have like... 4 big different shows all at the same time. In any case, I was at Gem Faire this past week, and not only picked up some larimar (only found in the Domincan Republic), but also was given an opal for free from my opal guy! I think he likes that I keep bringing back my work and showing him what I've been doing with it. He gave me a lot of good advice and taught me some stuff about opals. (F'r instance - did you know that red is the rarest colour of fire in an opal? Has to to do with the size and the placement of the silica bubbles. Cool, neh?) They'll also be at the Ventura gem show in March, which I'm now uber-excited about.

And then there's the possibility of doing another convention or two - one is in Burbank, in February, and is mostly a Star Trek con with some other random sci-fi fantasy thrown in. I'm seriously considering that one because it's relatively close and Sir Patrick Stewart is scheduled to be there, as is James Marsters. >.< The other one is the Vegas SPN con, but since it's out of state, I'm really not sure I want to deal with the hassle. But then they'll be having another BurCon in November, which is a long ways off, but could be an excellent kickstarter to the next holiday season.

Oh god, I'm turning into one of THOSE people. This holiday season isn't over yet, and I'm already contemplating the next one. It's a business thing, I swear! Aiiiiiiiiii.

For Martin Freeman.

"Dear fans, all the gratitude. All of it. Very sincerely yours, Martin Freeman."
(via hils [as usual], originally from Amanda Abbington [Martin's partner] on facebook)

So I guess there's also mass amounts of love for Amanda Abbington as well.

I love how goshdarned hobbity he is. I mean, look at that sweater! At that kitchen! He's just so fucking adorable.

And says fuck a lot. But when he's in the fucking Hobbit. Playing the fucking hobbit, I think it's allowed.

I should probably stop blathering on and on about him, yeah? And blather on and on about other crap, like how I have only 4 weeks to get a whole shit-ton of inventory made but unfortunately gold and silver prices have skyrocketed. And how I'm still trying to research and write three stupid essays for mum, with multiple topics that overlap between the essays. (Yeah. I'm writing essays from multiple sources, in order to create multiple sources for her kids to write essays with multiple topics from multiple sources. Got it?) At least I've *finally* read the book that they'll be reading and writing reports on, so I have a better idea of what kinds of topics I ought to look at. I think I may do an essay on the three head honchos of the time period (early 1900s in China) - Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Tse-tung - which could be fun, and then probably something to do with the various wars leading up to the events in the book (Opium Wars 1 & 2, Boxer Rebellion), and finally... I don't know. I was thinking about geography, since the book (Homesick, by Jean Fritz) has a few major location changes, but I'm not sure how to hook that in and have cross referencing topics with the other essays. At least with the Boxer Rebellion I can also talk about CKS and SYS and so on. Blah. This would be so much easier if I were just writing one freaking essay.

Oh. Maybe one essay specifically on the Boxer Rebellion, wherein I have topics on CKS and other leaders? Then one on all three of the major wars previously listed? (Creating a cross reference between Boxer Rebellion essay and the wars essay.) And then one on the three leaders, creating the link between, well, all three essays, sort of.

I still think geography would be fun though. But perhaps not so well suited for writing essays.

You know what else sucks, other than trying to write essays well after you'd given up on writting essays ever again? Trying to read through 187 pages of "How to Fill Out Your Self-Employment Tax Forms" instructions in a pdf. And then another god knows how many pages online in the "Tax Guide for Small Businesses." So far there have been a lot of things that I've just skimmed, but it's hard to know when some of this information might actually be necessary in the future (and god knows I don't want to have to re-read this fucker).

Oh! And apparently, because I make shit and have inventory, I *have* to use a different method of accounting. Something other than, oh, subtract here when I buy shit and add there when someone buys shit from me. No. Fuck me, why can't I just add and subtract numbers! No, I have to keep track of exactly when something happened and it all fucking sucks. I have a hard enough time just dealing with the basic cash methods of accounting, why do I have to deal with accrual methods, especially when I've only just learned about them because I've started reading about how to fill out the goddamn tax forms?

Yeah, now I'm getting all frustrated and cranky again, so I'm just gonna scroll up and stare at Martin Freeman being adorable for a little while and deal with all this boring stuff later.