I've been stumped and unmotivated and distracted all night and couldn't get my novel characters to do a thing. I brought a new one into the scene and he was grumpy and refused to talk. They're all moody now and dull and won't do anything.

I told Tom this.

In something less than two minutes, he suggested:

- have them have sex
- have them have sex with an animal - they were thrown out of Heaven for seeking new experiences, right? so this is a new experience.
- have them do drugs
- have them do something you don't agree with
- have them torture somebody, as an experiment, to study pain, not their own pain but someone else's

Twisted as he is, I freaking love this boy.

And cookies fresh from Grandma's house. Ginger and raisins! omg.

 
Yay family visits make me happy. :) Mom and Mel came down for the afternoon, Mel had a tour of Buffalo State earlier today (her first choice for college). Tom's on the 11-8 shift again today so he's been gone the whole day, which I think was probably just as well, it gave the three of us time to talk and hang out, without him feeling awkward being the only boy (as well as the only non-family member). But it was a very nice afternoon. The hamsters actually woke up and let me and Mel play with them a little.

Mel's hair is short again for the first time in ages and it looks verycute. :)

...and now I am nosing around the internet, looking for..apparently a good girly-comic. No idea why. But after several failed googles I found As If! again, which I ADORE, and I'm downloading the archives since it apparently ended awhile ago. But the girl who drew it has done tons more (she's actually worked for Disney and is ridiculously talented, I love her work), so I'm nosing around all her sites and SHE HAS DRAWN SUCH CUTE VERSIONS OF JEM!!! *loves all over*

And I should be noveling goddamnit.

 
So this had me laughing like mad. Oh the Batman slash. <33

NaNo is off to a fantastic start for me! 1911 words yesterday, and I churned out 1100 in my morning Tim Horton's visit today, another few hundred on my lunch break, and I left off in the middle of a scene (which has spun itself out far longer than I'd planned) so I'll probably easily tack on a few hundred more, and go a bit over the daily requisite of 1667 words again. (I reeeaaally want to build up a bit of a buffer, because I know I'll hit dry spells in the next two weeks.)

I proudly wore my new NaNo shirt to work yesterday (they look fantastic this year, and omg SO comfy!), so everyone knows what I'm tackling, about half of them have already been subjected to random questions to give me ideas. But a coworker asked me this morning if I could tell her what my story was about, or wasn't that allowed? "I will! As soon as I figure it out myself!" I really WAS planning on doing a series of short stories, buuut, I have yet to decide what random objects from someone who died tragically the Phistos would have, let alone their meaning or what they look like. So I have no idea if that's even going to happen or not. I started off with a scene that I actually dreamt a few nights ago, the imagery was so lovely that I couldn't help but work it into something, and I figured that would be a good place to start. So I did. And now a girl who I'd intended to be a mere passing character keeps talking and is gaining a personality and I hadn't planned on her at all! I'm even considering keeping her around, I don't know, she presents some interesting ideas.

But I'm writing from Meres' point of view, at least for now, which has me very very happy. He's the Phisto I'm currently happiest with, and I think I'm a little in love. He's quite pretty, I should post my sketches sometime.. though it's really only him and Mackie I really know what they look like. Veri I have mostly worked out, Luce I have a fair idea only I haven't quite decided whether he's going to look a little Asian or not, Nila I have a good idea only I haven't been able to get it on paper quite right...

And I drew the prettiest little sketch of the dress this girl is wearing in my margins. <3

Anyway, daily post will be up on the NaNo blog shortly, and I put a poem I've (for the moment) finished up on AnJ last night. I do have another that's largely done that I'll probably post soon as well, I'm just lacking a synonym or two. I really hadn't written a poem in ages, but I had a few lines and some images that weren't enough to center a story around, they were impressions and emotions more than anything, so, poems it was.

 
The annual NaNo blog. (Template not my own, credit-links are on it - need to focus on the writing not the coding right now. But isn't it lovely?? <333) No idea if that's really my title yet but it might work nicely. Amaranth and Phistos suit each other.

Cheer me on! Goodness knows I'll need it. ^^; I don't even know how I'll sleep tonight, Halloween tomorrow (and such costume plans!) and NaNo the day after ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!1!!1! Madness.

omg I can't even wait.

New post on AnJ, hopefully another tomorrow as well - I have.. lessee, two, and then another two, stories done to get out of my system. And there are a couple of poems kicking around but I haven't decided if they're done or not yet. Oh but I should finish one, I need to throw it onto a desktop I'm making, which will be my NaNo desktop because it works quite nicely with my subject matter. :)

 
New story up on AnJ - the one I've hinted at a thousand times, that I spent forever tweaking. I'm too close to it now, of course, to know how good it is, but it's the nearest I've done to an actual *story* in awhile. (Not, of course, that that's saying much, but y'know.)

Should have new posts up on there every day until NaNo starts - I just need to get the rest typed up, and subject like two to some editing, and hopefully I can get those all out of the way and get a fresh start November 1st!

...God I'm terrified lmao. Excited and terrified. I know generally what I want to do but the specifics, I haven't the faintest. I've just been drinking things in and making notes and piling up inspirations, and hoping I can just run once I start.

 
Every once and awhile, it's a good thing to splurge on some more expensive make-up. I've been nosing around, picking up some things here and there, mainly to use for Hallowe'en - but also because I really don't own much, and I'd like to try new and pretty things. So I got some new colors of eyeshadow, some of the three-color sets from Max Factor, which I like quite well, I was long-overdue for owning some actual black eyeshadow. I've been keeping an eye out for lipstick; I have a nice iced pink that I sometimes wear normally, and a ridiculously bold bright red I picked up.. was it at the dollar store? NYC brand, anyway, which is nothing spectacular but I've had surprisingly good luck with given the price.

But I was over at Eckerd's, picking up a second videotape.. yeah, uhm, there's no little button or switch or anything on our vcr to adjust sp-lp-slp, and I don't even know if we ever had the remote (we inherited the vcr from Haruna). And it goes to sp by default. And a football game is like three hours. Sooo, second trip to Eckerd's, which was fine really, since I needed some stockings for Halloween, as well as a bag of candy in case we get any trick-or-treaters (which I doubt, but if we don't, wooo for a bag of mini Take 5s!). So I nosed around and nosed around, and found some lipgloss from Max that looked nice and glimmery, but it was around $10 for a stick so I decided to look at everything else first. And then I found a display of really fantastic looking products by Revlon - and I know advertising, ESPECIALLY fashion, photography is obviously over-done and retouched, these still looked fantastic. And the Midnight Swirl lip luster? Looked to create exaaactly the look I wanted - dark and glimmering and wet-looking.

$11.

But y'know what?

Sooooo totally worth it. I think this is the first non-cheap lip product I've ever owned, and it just feels so nice. Actually a bit sticky, but that goes away after awhile. And it really is gorgeously shiny. Not as much bold color as I'd hoped, but I put on a basecoat of my red stuff and it worked *fantastically*.

So then I played with the camera and things and took a few shots, most of which were crap because the lighting was poor and I'm miserable at taking pictures of myself, but, I did in fact get a decent Phisto shot.



And then of course, what could I do but bring it into photoshop? :D I was thinking of Mackie, that one shot in particular.. uhm, which google image search wasn't turning up a decent quality copy of, but, you know the one I mean. This one, only not cropped. (Though I have to say I adore what they did with it in this desktop! Verynice.)



Before Tom came home, I played up my eyes a bit more than I had already - I thought about picking up some of the eyeshadow designed for the smoky-eye look, but figured that could wait awhile.

But uhm.. his reaction was FAR beyond what I'd hoped for. omg. It was so cute! He was slaughtered! He saw my eyes and my lips, and I'm wearing a new burgandy little sweater-hoodie that fits beautifully and looks quite nice, and he looked back at my eyes and my lips and he got all weak and it was adorable. I gave him the littlest kiss and he turned to UTTER goop. It was GREAT. ^_________^

And then for dinner I tried making meatballs with spaghetti, and the meatballs kind of failed because while halving the recipe (in my good ol' red'n'white checked BHG cookbook), I forgot to half the number of eggs, so the meatball mixture was a liiiittle more goopy than it should have been, and they didn't really stay in a ball-shape, and half fell apart altogether. But it made the sauce basically a meat sauce, which was nice anyway, and holy crap Tom LOVED!!! When he'd eaten two big plates worth he told me that, no joke, that surpassed lasagna as his favorite meal. *bounces all over* I win!!! I so win.

...now if only I can remember how I made this. ^^;; Actually thankfully that'll be an easier task than it usually is - I really mostly followed the recipe this time, since I've never made meatballs from scratch before, and I figured I should err on the safe side. I did throw in some garlic salt and a bit of onion and some paprika and basil, but really how was basil not in the recipe in the first place?? So that'll be easy to remember. The sauce, I just threw in the usual, Italian spices and brown sugar and a bit of red pepper.

So even though I didn't do half the things I'd meant to on my day off (as usual), I still feel pretty darn content. I gave Tom a good day - which means a lot to me, especially after we'd had an odd week or so, just a bit.. oh I don't know, we were both exhausted from work and feeling bored and unchallenged and blah, and I've been a spazz and it was a lot of things. But we talked it through and are both working to fix things - again, just little things, but we want to work at them while they're still little. :)

Plus I got a lot of research done today, following wikipedia all over the place, and reading a bunch of chunks on fallen angels and all sorts of goodness, to give me background on my novel in a few days! I'm so excited, I reallyreally am. And I'm also gratified to know that it doesn't look like anyone's taken the direction I am with this - gazillions of things reference fallen angels, a handful the Nephilim, and a few even the Grigori, but they throw it around in much different ways than I'm going to.

I found a pdf of the Book of Enoch, which I'm going to throw on Tom's ebook and read through. :) Such, such good stuff. A summary from wiki:

God asked the "Watchers" (Grigori), a select group of angels, to assist the Archangels in the creation of Eden. Those Grigori who descended to Earth saw the daughters of men and became enchanted with them. Consequently, the Grigori began to reveal to man some of the secrets of Heaven, such as astrology and the vanity of enhancing the face and body with perfumes and cosmetics. The Grigori then fell in love with human women. According to the text, some of the Grigori even took wives and created offspring, giants known as the Nephilim. This made God so angry that he cursed those Grigori who had betrayed Him, threw them out of Heaven, made them mortal and transformed them into demons. God sent the Great Flood to cleanse the Earth of the wanton killing and destruction perpetrated by the Nephilim. Notable angels who fell in this account are Semyazza, Samael, and Azazel.


...is this not the perfect backstory for my Phistos? <33 Of course, some texts show it as humans having wanted sex with angels, not the other way around, and there are countless different theories about the Nephilim (who have a brief mention in Exodus), but I love that the Grigori taught mankind the art of cosmetics. Absofreakinglutely perfect.

And, oddly, unintentionally, that brings my post full-circle.

 
Well this is the most bizarre thing ever. On the tv, being taped (OHGODIHOPE!!!) is a football game, Giants and the Dolphins, going on at Wembley Stadium. Y'know, in London. They just performed The Star Spangled Banner, followed by God Save the Queen. They showed shots of the crowd, and it was random boys in football jerseys. (Only not as many slobby people as we have in our crowds, at least not that they showed. Mostly Brit boys in their 20s, all fresh-faced and adorable.)

Tom's at work, so it's my task to make sure this thing gets taped so he can watch it later. Usually he haaaaates watching things pre-recorded, but, he's really curious to see what happens when football is played overseas. (Apparently this is an attempt at stirring up interest in the sport abroad.)

...thankfully, it only took like five minutes of poking to get this thing to apparently tape off of tv. It was weird, Tom came home for lunch and told me I needed to tape the game, and I looked around for a videotape and realised I didn't have a spare. So I took a shower and made a run over to Eckerd's. To buy a videotape. Because we didn't have an extra one in the house.

All of this technology around us! Especially with Tom and I. And I had to run to the drug store to buy a blank videotape!!! It felt very, very odd.

I should probably try to ignore this game as best I can - Tom will slaughter me if I give any hint of the outcome. Also he's going to watch it the second he gets home so I'll be watching it twice. Once it goes to commercial break I'll see if it still tapes happily if I have the tv off, that'd be the best route (especially if the game runs long and is still going when Tom gets home, he doesn't want to see just the ending before he's seen the beginning). Unfortunately running the cable through the vcr makes the picture shit quality...though really it makes no difference because the game's on Fox, which is shit quality for us anyway. ALL THIS TECHNOLOGY! And we still have an insanely staticy picture for a freaking network station. Luckily it's not so bad if you're sitting at a distance, but.. hell I'm used to watching/listening to things of ANY quality, when it's something I want, but, like, Tom's dad has a huuuuge HD tv to watch the games on, and I know how much it drives Tom nuts that we have this little normal-sized tv, and a few channels don't come in well at all..