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27 July 2010

July is coming to a close. Thank you, July, you've been wonderful. A little hot, maybe, but it always happens that way, and out here in Utah, August cools down a bit. So that's alright.
In the past week and a half or so, I've started watching Avatar the Last Airbender again, I've continued work on a short story that I absolutely must present to my writing group in a week and a half if I want to retain my membership privileges, and I started playing Age of Empires, found my long-lost AoE2 disk (and managed to retrieve it from my non-functional laptop) and then discovered that it was really the Conqueror's Expansion that I remembered, and I have begun to read New Moon (I think it's worse than Twilight, and I think it's because we start with the whole Edward-is-so-perfect-I-just-want-to-barf stuff right off ... at least in the first one it took a little while ... ).
Also, yesterday while waiting for the bus in the drizzle for half an hour, I read the cover story of In This Week, and decided that what I want to do is to become a burlesque dancer. And in the slight mania I've been feeling lately, I came with a way to do everything I want to do, going slowly and adding in new things one at a time. We'll see how it works.

Anyway, I should eat lunch, and run an errand to ask for Sunday off and get an August bus pass ... love you all!!

21 July 2010

Teen Romance + Selkies

This seems to be the start of an irregularly updated podcast. Listen and enjoy.



Some things mentioned in the podcast:
The Wikipedia article about Selkies
The Mabinogion Tetralogy by Evangeline Walton
The named characters of the Celtic myth: Blodeuwedd, Lugh (really it's Lleu Llaw Gyffes, but I figured this alternate would work)

Thank you for listening. I really do have plans for a novel about selkies, though how much teen romance will be in it I can't yet say for sure. However, I have one or two other little projects demanding my attention first. Stay tuned for the next podcast update: the Twilight Review!

18 July 2010

twenty-seven years

I'm sitting in the kitchen (pulled a chair in from the front room), keeping DP company while he washes some dishes and cleans out the teapot that I overboiled (a lot) the other night. We'll have breakfast at some point.
After that? I don't really have plans for today, which is okay in some ways. DP and I talked about going to Discovery Gateway, which I think is the plan with the best chance, considering I saw Sorcerer's Apprentice last night and The Last Airbender last weekend.
I am going to do fireworks tonight; it's been a birthday tradition for a couple of years now.
I had my family birthday last night, and it was good. We played Killer Bunnies just like I wanted (though we didn't get to finish the game), and we ate chicken and corn and mashed potatoes (with gluten-free gravy) and watermelon and gluten-free cake with homemade frosting, yay! Then we saw Sorcerer's Apprentice, which, except for the "Morgana le Fay is the most evil sorcerer in the entire world, and she's the Big Bad" part, it was pretty good for a full-length movie inspired by an animated short.

Anyway, have a lovely day, all. I'll chat with you more later.

07 July 2010

If I Fall (chorus)

This is (probably) the chorus of the song I'm working on. Give it a listen, let me know what you think ...



P.S. MAJOR thanks to this video tutorial for being the only person I could find who knew how to do this. Woot.

06 July 2010

If I Fall

I started writing some music yesterday ... and by writing music, I definitely don't mean actually writing anything down (though I did jot down some proto-lyrics just hoping the little note would help me actually remember the tune of what is probably the chorus long enough to sing it all the way through).
I was at work, and I started humming, and I started recording the bits of tune into my phone, just so I'd remember it. When I got home, I downloaded Audacity onto my computer, and started recording on my computer. I've come up with some words along the way, and I have a full chorus, and maybe even a real verse ... though no more than one.
I would love to post the chorus as a .WAV file here, but I'm not sure how yet. (Help?)
I also have no idea how to do anything but come up with the vox. I don't really play any instruments (sorta know how to play the piano, right hand only; I'm trying to teach myself the violin but I've been neglecting it--though not for long, I have a friend who will at least help me tune it; etc.), really I'm just a vocalist.
I was thinking the song might go on my CD of poetry that I've been working on for a couple years now (off and on--and now it's on, baby, since I have a way to record myself again). The idea for that was to record some of my poetry and give the CD to my friends and family. We'll see.
Anyway, as soon as I figure out how to share the music, I'll do that. Love you all.

02 July 2010

Summer Solstice

And since I mentioned it in an earlier blog, I'd like to note:
Summer Solstice was wonderful. I went camping with a whole bunch of heathens (that's Celtic/Germanic pagans) and my boyfriend, and it was a good time. There was some form of ritual/worship every day, there was singing (DP and I sang a couple songs ... note to self, find the lyrics to the entirety of 'Blue Boat Home' for next time), and there was general enjoyment of each other's company.
DP and I roasted marshmallows, which fed my soul, because the last time we camped (in March), I failed to remember marshmallows. (Note to self, look for gluten-free graham crackers for s'mores.)
I even wrote a tiny bit--I brought my little computer with me because it has about 7 hours' worth of battery, and I figured it would be useful if I found myself really wanting to write. And I did, a little bit.

Also, since we got back, Steven has given me how-tos for medieval-ish Celtic women's dress, and I'm pretty excited about it. At some point in time, I will go to a fabric store and get some fabric for it, and hopefully have most of an outfit by early August, which is the next Holy Day (Lughnasadh), and the next camping-with-heathens opportunity. (I'll need penannular brooches to hold the thing together, though ... hmmm .... must work on that ... on the other hand, my birthday's in July ... )

01 July 2010

Age

It's July! I'll be 27 in a couple weeks ... Not sure how I feel about that yet. 26 didn't seem that much different from 25, which was firmly in the mid-twenties, but 27 seems a step over into the territory of the late twenties, which is dangerously close to 30.
And though I resist as much as possible the age prejudices that our society expects of us (I generally feel insulted when people ask me if I'm 18, because I really think I'm more mature than that; and I guess it has something to do with the fact that I'm not so good at telling people's ages from how they look, and thus I generally go by how they act, and I expect other people to operate the same, which I recognize is folly), I am still somewhat daunted by 30.
Thirty seems to be some kind of magical age for women; the age when everything starts to slip from you. If you're not married by thirty, you never will be. If you're still single at thirty, god forbid, the dating pool thins out drastically, so we hear, and your prospects for happiness drop sharply. And, the worst crime of all, if you haven't had a child by age thirty, people will come out of the woodworks to remind you that you are in serious danger of passing your prime, and even at 26, I've heard of all the "dangers" of trying to bear children after, say, 35.
And though I am not yet convinced that having children is what I need to do with my life, I am a woman and a Cancer, and thus have both my biological clock and the stars nudging at me to have children, in addition to my society telling me that that is my role in life. And while I am currently in a relationship, I am not married (and not even certain that's what I need to do with my life right now), and thus I approach my late twenties with some amount of trepidation.

Back to age prejudice for a moment, because I want to relate something that happened to me at work. It was sometime in June, and one of my coworkers asked if "ya'll" had had your graduation yet (and I'm not entirely sure where she's from, nor am I too familiar with the various dialects that use the word 'ya'll', so I can't be sure if this was a usage of singular or plural 2nd person pronoun). I still have friends in college, so if she had asked me that a month earlier, I might not have been so confused, because I would have been thinking about college graduations. As it was, I was very confused, and didn't say anything, merely gave her a puzzled look. She said, "Oh, are you a junior?" I continued to look at her puzzledly, still completely blank, I guess because I didn't understand why she was asking about graduation in June. She said, "High school?"
Finally, I got it. And felt insulted, that she could think I had anything in the world in common with 17-year-olds. No offense to the 17-year-olds of the world (my little sister recently joined their ranks), but the difference between a basically adult maturity level and attitude and that of a teenager is huge, and no matter how young someone looks, you really ought to go with how they act.
I said, "I'm twenty-six."
And she didn't really apologize, but she did exclaim, Well, gosh, you look so young!, and I tried to get her to see my point of view, and she agreed that I was more mature than a 17-year-old. And she told me that her son/daughter (I don't remember which) felt the same way I did, but then dismissed both of our points of view to tell me (like I'd never heard it before), Oh you'll be grateful when you're older.
I can look at it now and say, Well, maybe at her age the maturity difference between a teenager and someone in their mid-twenties isn't really that great; maybe she looks at me the same way I look at the teenager, both of us saying, Really? That's what you're worrying about? Just you wait ...
And though I feel like my worries about health and money and insurance and jobs and housing are basically adult worries, maybe there is some difference that I will only know on the other side of, say, age thirty.
But I still think it's rude to completely dismiss someone's point of view and say, Oh, you'll feel differently later, as though that invalidates what you're feeling now.

Anyway, writing group is meeting tonight, which means I still have a couple little things I need to finish, so off I go. Love you all! Wish me happy birthday in a couple weeks! (It's July 18)