Throw the Mango

Hmmm. I seem to be made of win.

2009-04-30T19:14:00.001-07:00

It's 10:14 on the last day of April and I just finished my NaNoWriAp! Still cutting it majorly close, but I technically finished more than an hour earlier than I finished last month, so I'm calling it an improvement.

Final word count: 52,996

I was listening to my Bon Jovi playlist for the last part of the story, so it ended up that "Always" (which is, incidentally, my favorite love song of all time) was playing when I crossed 50k and "Have A Nice Day" was playing when I finished.

Phew.

I'm going to go sleep for like a week now. Except that actually I have six huge exams coming up. So actually I'm going to go study.

*Sob*. Life.

Hmm. I seem to be made of fail.

2009-04-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

Number of days left in April: 13

Number of words left in NaNoWriAp: 37,589

Number of AP Tests in less than one month: 5

Well, don't I just fail?

And now for the failure cherry on the top of our sundae of suck: so, last night I was going to get my little sister, and I was running barefoot across the lawn. It was really dark, and I smashed through what I think was probably this huge pile of sticks we have in our yard.

And it hurt.

Anyway I got back inside and my foot was bleeding like craaazy and it appears that I have managed to stab multiple holes in the bottom of my left foot. I can't walk on it, which means that I couldn't go to the mall today to get my shoes for prom... which is next Saturday. Joy.

On a happier note, I'm 17 now! Wooooo! It was my birthday on the 10th. For some reason I didn't blog. I also didn't blog the next Sunday (Easter! yay!), although I intended to because I wanted to upload the pictures of the awesome Star Wars Easter eggs that I made (I had this whole awesome Darth Vader/Yoda egg fight). I'd put those up now, except I can't find the cord for my camera. Coming Soon?

Oh yeah and I got a Twitter. http://www.twitter.com/StaciCooper

Phew. Could I cut it any closer?

2009-03-31T20:22:00.001-07:00

Forty four minutes left in March, and I am FINISHED!!!!

Total word count: 51,577.

Phew. That was crazy. The song playing? "Loved Ones and Leaving", HP 5 soundtrack. Weirdly appropriate (as was the Hall of Prophecies for when I hit 50k.)

It is... goodish. As I said, I wrote most of it the first six days of the month, and did the last twelve thousand words or so between yesterday and today, which means that I had over twenty days in the middle to forget every single plot point I had going from the beginning of the month. So I'm pretty sure that it's a bit disjointed and... blegh, but it's not poorly written. I mean, the end was rushed. Poo.

Doesn't matter. I am DONE with the first three nanos of the year - only nine to go!

Whoa, what are the odds

2009-03-31T19:32:00.001-07:00

I just checked my word count and it is EXACTLY 50,000 words. "The Hall of Prophecies" from the HP5 soundtrack was playing.

Gah I still have a lot more story to get through, though. Must keep writing! Must keep writing! Although technically I have officially won already.

With an hour and a half to go before the time is up, but hey. Winning is winning.

DOWN TO THE WIRE

2009-03-31T17:19:00.000-07:00

It's a little after 8 o'clock PM on the last day of March and my MarNoWriMo is not complete. As in, 4,000 words shy of complete.

It's really coming down to the wire with this one. Basically what happened is that I wrote ridiculous amounts of words for the first six days of the month, and then didn't do anything again until... yesterday. Niiiice time management, Stace.

Anyway just thought I'd let you know that I'm mildly panicking. Now it's time to go WRITE LIKE CRAZY!!!!

Agony Agony DIE DIE DIE

2009-03-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

Three months into NaNoWriYe, my entire lower right arm is about to FALL OFF. It's killing me. My wrist hurts the most, but it goes right down to my fingertips. AUGH!

At first I thought it had something to do with my burn - about a week ago I was making this pineapple upside down cake and I dropped it while I was taking it out of the oven and smashed my arm against the top of the oven trying to catch it. Second degree burns from pineapple upside down cake - I know. Anyway the burn has been bothering me, and it was hurting yesterday, so when my arm, like, exploded today I thought the burn had something to do with it.

Anyway now I think it has something to do with the insane amounts of typing that I've been doing. Sigh. Spectacular.

The man-whore is back

2009-03-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

So remember how I wrote that essay a while back about Hedda Gabler? The one where I couldn't think of another word for "philanderer" and was seriously considering writing "man-whore"?

Yeah, that essay's back.

So for English class we have to do this literary criticism paper, and rather than writing a whole new essay just so we can insert litcrit, my teacher's letting us revise an old paper. And I was like... um, I don't remember any essays I've written. Like, all year. They were not exactly memorable pieces of work.

But I do remember the whole man-whore thing, even though I didn't really remember the rest of the essay. So I picked that one on a whim and I have spent the last HOUR sticking bits of literary criticism in and trying to smooth it all out so that they don't look tacked on (which they are). And yes, an hour is nothing when it comes to essay writing, but this is boring as poo. And I really want to just stop and go read some more of Corrupting Dr. Nice, and I can't, because this is due tomorrow and I WANT TO KILL HEDDA GABLER EXCEPT I CAN'T BECAUSE a) SHE'S FICTIONAL AND b) SHE ALREADY COMMITTED SUICIDE.

And I still can't think of another term for philanderer. 'Womanizer' is the best I've got, but now I've got the Britney Spears song stuck in my head, and that is not helping my mood.

Find a happy place.

I - drank - so - much - coffee!!!! Twitch

2009-03-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

I really love espresso. Unfortunately, I am unable to channel the energy into, you know, productive things.

But not this time! I have just crossed the finish line of the world's greatest Calculus Marathon. Sixteen pages of freaking calculus study problems, holy crap I rule the world of mathematics! Oh man. I sat there with assorted episodes of House, Psych, Flight of the Conchords and Firefly playing while evaluating more integrals than have ever been evaluated by a single person in a twenty four hour period. That's the good thing about math, though - it's the only kind of homework I can do while watching tv.

I'm also 30k into my NaNoWriMar. My protagonist superhero is attempting to escape from the sewers of the enemy lair. I wrote all 30,000 words in the first six days of March and haven't gone back to it in ages because my workload at school has become so heavy that it is CRUSHING MY SOUL. Anyway I'm going to pick back up with it today, and let my MC out of the sewers.

AND I've officially passed the big Three-Oh in the MAD Book Challenge. Thirty freaking two books down in the year of 2009. Highlights? The Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton (thankyouthankyouthankyou Marshall for recommending them to me), the collected works of John Green, Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, and my favorite book in the world - Terry Pratchett's The Truth. Oh, and The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. I've been meaning to read that for ages, and I finally borrowed it from Sarah... Oh man it's fantastic. If you can read it without crying, you HAVE NO SOUL.

Ah, in looking back at my list of books, I see that I have written "The Harvey Boys" instead of "Hardy Boys". Hmm. Oh, and I haven't written down the other two Anita Blake books I've read. And I just finished Jumper by Steven Gould (holy crap, Marshall has recommended like everything I've read.) Never mind, I've read thirty five books this year.

WORD

2009-03-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

Or, more appropriately, WORDS. Three thousand and twenty five of them, to be exact.

I just started writing my MarNoWriMo* about an hour or so ago, and I'm trucking right along. It's a fantabulous superhero novel and I'm writing it in the POV of an unidentified first person narrator, which I'm really enjoying, to my surprise. I'm actually really liking this one, too. Things are going well.

*Technically that stands for March Novel Writing Month, which is a little redundant, but that's how most of the people on nanowrimo.org refer to nanos that they write outside of November. Personally, I favor NaNoWriMar, or National Novel Writing March. I think I'll stick with that from now on. Yeah, it totally sounds better.

But anyway, I expect I'll be done with this one earlier in the month, this time. The February one was good, but it was very... plotty. Whereas an X-Men inspired story pretty much never comes in contact with the word 'plot'. At least, not in the same sentence as the word 'good'*.

*Not that I'm saying anything bad about X-Men. James Marsden in sunglasses? Hugh Jackman? I mean, even with the uglyugly hair, he's still all Hugh Jackmany. And... did I mention James Marsden?

Two down, ten to go

2009-02-27T18:24:00.000-08:00

Oh, wow, when you put it that way it sounds dreadful.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have finished my FebNoWriMo. NaNoWriYe is going well so far - two nanos under my belt and still not particularly stressed, so things are looking up! This NaNo was about a magical carnival. It was inspired by Deborah - when I frantically confronted her, panicking about my complete lack of plots for FebNoWriMo, the first thing she suggested was "karate-chopping sandwich-making elephants", and I know how to take an idea and run with it.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" was playing when I finished the whole nano - coming in at a grand total of 53,019 words. "Lights" by Journey was playing when I hit 50,000. Oddly enough, if you switched the two around they would have been appropriate for the scenes I was writing at those moments.

So, this nano started out all, like, pure comedy, and ended up weirdly sentimental and... I don't know, emotional? I got kind of dark for a while there. Then again, it also has a pretty big reveal at the end, and I didn't screw up the surprise either (which I normally do). It's actually reasonably hard to see it coming, I think.

And I did write over 10,000 words of it between when I got home from school and now, so.... Yeah. I swear I've written this nano in like six marathon writing sessions and the rest of the time I've just been lazing around trying not to feel guilty about not writing.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2009-02-15T14:02:00.000-08:00

<3s for all!

Seriously though, this has been a good Valentine's Day. My NaNoWriMo t-shirt, No Plot? No Problem! book, and NaNoLand Chronicles book were all officially Valentine's Day presents. I also managed to snag the last box of Indiana Jones Valentines at Target on the half-off sale, thus acquiring many fabulous Shia LaBeouf Valentine's Day cards and temporary tattoos.

Plus I finished reading THREE very Valentine-appropriate romance novels recently. In order of how much I liked them, they were: "Having the Boss's Babies" by Barbara Hannay (which was so sucktacular that the best that can be said of it is that it was short), "Fulk the Reluctant" by Elaine Knighton (which was also sucktacular, but had the benefit of being unintentionally hilarious), and "Let It Snow" (which was actually sort of awesome. It's got three stories in it; Maureen Johnson's was good, John Green's was predictably MADE OF WIN, and Lauren Myracle's was okayish).

AND, in the spirit of Valentine's Day, I decided to give the MC of my current NaNoWriMo a love interest. Her name is Red and she knits, and she's totally perfect for him. J is being adorably awkward around her at the moment (aw). Plus, I'm officially over halfway done with my second nano and not remotely stressed out (yaaaay).

This is in no way related to anything (but since when do I care?), but I am currently dancing around in agony over the fact that I do NOT have the sequel to Terry Goodkind's "Wizard's First Rule", which I loved. I must must must have it. Now. But Sarah is bringing me "The Book Thief" to read tomorrow, and I... gah, I have to read that too. So, poo. But at least this way I have a couple guaranteed-to-be-great books lined up, especially after reading all those sucky romance ones.

The tables have been turned

2009-02-04T16:30:00.001-08:00

You know how you can be having a really crappy day, and then suddenly something happens that just makes everything better?

I've been feeling a bit stressed out recently, due to the fact that I have a MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR SUPER FREAKING MAJOR project due in school on Friday, and a poo load of tests and stuff, AND an essay due soon which if I do not pass, I will literally not graduate (not that I've ever failed an essay in my life, but I still manage to freak out).

And so when I got home from school I was ready to hit someone. But then we went to the library.

I am a HUGE supporter of libraries. Libraries are, I believe, the source of justice and light and kittens and rainbows. I LOVE libraries. I've worked in them for four years, and librarians are some of the coolest people I've ever met. But I haven't been to a library in almost a year, on account of having the most fantastically epic library dues in the universe (because my family all uses my card, and my sisters both lost books. That made it worse, the fact that I couldn't go even though it wasn't my fault.)

And anyway, today I HAD to go to the library to get a school book, so my parents paid off my card. And I checked out books! Books! From the library! AHHH! I hadn't realized how much I missed it until I went back.

Oh, I also should mention: know that plan I had to write a NaNoWriMo every other month this year? I'm taking that back. I'm doing one EVERY month, in what (if it's not the first) is at least one of the first NaNoWriYe s ever. Bring on National Novel Writing Year, 2009!

My FebNoWriMo is a humorous novel about a magical carnival and it is currently pwntastic.

I am tired, but also victorious

2009-01-30T21:28:00.000-08:00

I just won my first NaNoWriMo of 2009.

At 50,655 words it is not particularly lengthy, but--and I hesitate to say this--it is actually... decent work. Like, reasonably well-written. I find this surprising.

"Elevation" by U2 was playing when I hit the 50k mark, and "Beautiful Day" (also by U2) was playing when I finished the novel.

It is now one o'clock in the morning and I got like four hours of sleep last night, so I am very, very tired. I shall celebrate more in the morning.

For now, I'm going to bed.

Chris Baty is the man

2009-01-29T19:27:00.000-08:00

The Man, I tell you.

So I was just filling out the NaNoWriMo 2008 survey and it mentioned something about "The NaNoLand Chronicles". I didn't know what they were, so I nipped on down to the Office of Letters and Light to take a look.

For only ten dollars, you can buy a book of nanowrimo fables written by Chris Baty, which are -- and I quote -- "designed to warm the heart, embolden the noveling soul, and radically transform the general public's understanding of muskrats, sprout farmers, and the dangers of tea-oversteeping."

It is difficult to explain how much I MUST HAVE THIS BOOK.

And then, of course, there is "No Plot, No Problem," which is the best book in the world and which I for some reason do not own a copy of. While I was at the OLL, I glanced at the description for NPNP (we nanoers know how to abbreviate!) and I read the following statement:

"All copies autographed by the author."

Let me explain something to you. What I have for Chris Baty is a form of hero-worship. He is, quite simply, The Man. He is hillarious and witty and came up with the NaNoWriMo program, and let's face it, NaNoWriMo is sort of the best thing to have ever happened. Ever.

I must have a book autographed by Chris Baty.

This is a simple statement of fact. The NaNoLand Chronicles costs $10 and NPNP costs $15. I need $25.... I think I have enough money (poor person that I am). Oh, and also they're having a sale on NaNoWriMo t-shirts, $10 for a shirt, so more like $35.

Gah. I do not have money.

On the other hand, this money will be going to the OLL, and I want so badly to support NaNoWriMo! It means so much to me, and I'd love to be able to give back.

Okay, Chris Baty. I give in. I think I'm going to buy them all.

In which things get done

2009-01-28T15:52:00.000-08:00

So, in the past few days, I have been extraordinarily productive.

First off, I FINALLY finished knitting the Man Scarf, seen below as modeled by my stuffed monkey, Stanley:

It was long and boring and generally blegh to knit (34 stitches a row! In size eight needles! On a SCARF! I hate knitting scarves with small needles!) but I really like the scarf. And it's so worth it to be able to own a pink "Man Scarf".

I also successfully learned how to crochet (thank you, Marshall) and am now attempting to crochet this adorable little owl. Unfortunately I am having MASSIVE PROBLEMS trying to crochet a circle, and this does not bode well for the project. Currently all I have managed of the pattern is "chain two". However, I shall prevail.

I finished my eighth book for the book challenge! It was Love Over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith, and it took me almost as long to read as it took me to read all of the other seven books combined. It was interesting and well written and all--but although it held my attention while I was reading it, the second I put it down it was hard to pick back up. It was also freakishly long - you wouldn't think so to look at it, but I swear that that book took AGES to read. That being said, it was enjoyable.

(By the way, I am just now starting on book number 9: The Truth by Terry Pratchett. It's the first re-read I've done all year, but I couldn't help it--Terry Pratchett is amazing, and The Truth is my favorite book of his.)

I also just hit the 40,000 word mark in my January nanowrimo yesterday. I haven't written any yet today, but I plan on doing that once I finish this post... It's looking pretty good (suprisingly). I haven't had the urge to start massacaring characters yet, at any rate.

Aaand I also just finished watching the audio commentary of "Ghostbusters" (best - movie - ever), which does not SOUND like an accomplishment, except that I've been trying to finish it for ages and was never able to get around to it. It's a good commentary. Watch it.

Well, I'm off to nano then--I just hit a major turning point in the story, it's fantastic. I still have lots of stuff planned, which is great, because it means I don't have to streeeetch out the ending. In fact, it looks like it's going to be a bit of a squeeze--I'll have to start writing scenes more briefly from here on out.

Ciao!

NOOOOOOOO

2009-01-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

The Oscar nominations came out.

CLINT EASTWOOD WAS NOT NOMINATED. WHY WAS CLINT EASTWOOD NOT NOMINATED? CLINT EASTWOOD IS THE FREAKING MAN!!!!

WHY - WAS - CLINT - EASTWOOD - NOT - NOMINATED?

Okay. Sorry. I had to get that off my chest. But seriously - I mean, seriously. In defiance Danielle and I watched "Fistful of Dollars". Ah. I really love Clint Eastwood. Everything he does is like, epic.

Life, and more importantly, SNOW

2009-01-20T14:57:00.000-08:00

Holy crap, I am so HAPPY right now!

Reasons that Staci is happy:

Today it SNOWED. Six inches of snow, which (for somebody living in North Carolina) might as well be a blizzard. I haven't seen this much snow in what seems like forever.
Because it snowed, school was cancelled today.
I just found out that school is being cancelled tomorrow, too.
I have almost 32,000 words in my January nanowrimo, which I'm pretty sure isn't technically on schedule - but now that I don't have school tomorrow, I'll be able to write like crazy.
And did I mention that my current nanowrimo pwns the world?
I finished the first seven books for the book challenge and am almost done with numero ocho. Go me!
Today Danielle and I filmed a movie entitled "The Abominable Snow Dog Strikes - AGAIN!" in which I star as a really, really stupid hiker who almost gets eaten by a villainous snow dog (but escapes to a hiking lodge just in time). This is a very, very awesome movie.
Speaking of Ceilidh, this is the first time she's ever seen the snow and she freaking LOVES it. There are very few things in the world cuter than puppies seeing snow for the first time.
I sort of crocheted a square. Almost. I still think I need to get Marshall to show me what I'm doing wrong (because there is no way I am doing this right), but it was better than all of my other attempts.
I went to Michaels and I bought a huge bag of BUTTONS! For some reason, I really like buttons.
I started working on the Man Scarf (long story) again, and it's getting pretty long (although Ceilidh did tangle up the skein of yarn, and it took me six hours to untangle it, causing a mental breakdown so big that I missed Owen's (that's Marshall's brother) play and suffered a massive "Staci you are so stupid" guilt trip. However, I am DEFINITELY going this weekend).
Because there was no school today, I got to stay home and watch the presidential inauguration, which was awesome. And then we made an Obama cake. And it was a really, really good cake.
IT - IS - SNOWING!

Ah! Happiness!

(However, I did just realize that there are more posts labeled "Nanowrimo" than there are posts labeled "life" on this blog. This is both entertaining and in some, sad way, a little bit pathetic.)

Freedom is fleeting

2009-01-04T19:03:00.000-08:00

Things that happened today:

It ocurred to me that Ghostbusters is totally my favorite movie. I marathon-watched both.
I realized that I watched an entire season of House in two days, and that makes me both awesome and exceedingly pathetic.
I finished my second book for the Book Challenge, proving my total nerdom.
I hit the 9,000 word mark in my NaNoWriMo.
I decided that I really, really do not want to go to school tomorrow.

Seriously. Do not want.

DO NOT WANT!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2008-12-31T21:59:00.000-08:00

Oh my gosh, it's 2009!

MY New Year's Resolution this year is to do a NaNoWriMo every other month, because I'm awesome. Well, actually it's more because I'm not awesome--it seems like lately, I only seriously write in November. For the rest of the year I write short stories and poetry and attempt to work on my long term project, but I don't really get very far.

So this year is going to be a crazy, kick-butt jump start to my writing. That means about an hour ago, January nanowrimo started for me. My word count is currently 0.

But that's okay, because just a couple months ago I wrote a whole nano in 12 days, and I've got 31 to do it this time. All is well in 2009!

Plus the Book Challenge is starting today. I was reading this book called "A Drop of Scarlet" by Jemiah Jefferson, and I needed to finish it before the New Year or else it would cut into Book Challenge time, so I spent a lot of time yesterday finishing. It was sort of dreadful--it's written in first person, but like every single chapter it changes POV and it's confusing as crap. Once the POV was a schizophrenic guy (THAT was crazy). Anyway, this is what I got from the book:

Vampires are promiscuous. Oh my, they are. They also swear a lot. Then this one vampire, who was also a scientist, created a drug that works on vampires, and then all the vampires got high. This made the vampires MORE promiscuous, and also way more violent. Then I think some of the vampires committed suicide, but it was really weird and I'm not sure what was going on. And then they got high again. And were promiscuous and violent.

It was one of those books that consists of lots and lots of tense conversations and almost-fights, and a few scrabbles here and there, but nothing really satisfying. At least, not up until the very end. The last, like, two chapters were really good. But for a couple hundred pages I was wading through immensely complicated backstory--and with the story being narrated from a million different POVS, that was really hard. I think this might have been a sequel to something, because authors just don't make backstory that confusing otherwise.

Oh well. Out with 2008 and in with 2009--I'm putting "A Drop of Scarlet" back on the shelf and exchanging it for "Looking for Alaska" by John Green, which promises brilliance and pure, unfiltered awesome. I can practically see the awesome oozing out of the pages while it sits on my bookshelf.

Happy New Year, everybody!

I am a bad, bad person

2008-12-29T10:43:00.001-08:00

So, I have no excuse for not posting in ages, because a lot of stuff has been happening.

First, my cousin Lee came to visit. I haven't seen him in almost a decade, and now he's married with a baby on the way--the last time I saw him, he was a teenager and I was, like, seven. It was totally weird. But anyway, he's hilarious. The whole family watched The Village--it was his first time seeing it and he talked through the whole thing, so he got all confused (it's one of those movies you have to watch carefully). He latched onto the first twist and just started making wild theories about old people the whole time. We haven't let him live it down.

And then, omg, CHRISTMAS! It was epic! My sisters and I have this tradition where we all sleep in my room on Christmas Eve, and, more importantly, we steal some kind of kitchen appliance (weird as that sounds). Last year we stole the toaster and made toast on Christmas morning, but this year we decided to step it up a notch. We initiated Operation Hungry Squirrel (as named by my sister Danielle), in which, over the course of three days, we stole everything we needed to make homemade waffles and hot chocolate on Christmas morning. Seriously.

We even fed my mom a fake story about stealing the tea kettle, so she wouldn't know what we were up to. Then we stole an ancient coffee maker and used it to boil water for the hot chocolate. We stole a waffle baker. We stole all the ingredients. We even took mugs and real plates (we were going to use paper plates, but then we figured that if we were going to do this, we had better do it RIGHT). For some reason I got put in charge of most of the thievery, and the only thing I didn't steal was the waffle baker, which my little sister Kelsey smuggled upstairs in a pillow. We even stole a lunchbox full of ice and stuck a water bottle full of milk in it for the hot chocolate.

So at 2:00 on Christmas morning we made waffles and hot chocolate on my bedroom floor. We had stolen some bananas to go with it, and some candy canes and a bar of chocolate. My parents think we're crazy, but it was epic.

And then for Christmas I got a grand total of fifty six books--so many that I got a bookshelf as one of my other presents. Now I have like my own personal library in my room (I already had a lot of books to start with)--with two full bookshelves. I had to rearrange the furniture to fit everything in. And I got a camera, which I'll be using for the MAD podcast's up-and-coming vlogs (starting January 5th), and a new headset (which actually works) for recording. Oh, and in another podcast reference, I got the Prince Caspian movie (our first episode was about Prince Caspian).

Annnd we got a Wii. Omg, we got a Wii.

Hooooly crap that thing is fun. I can't tell you how long I've played the James Bond game. It is fantastic.

And Wii baseball is suprisingly fun. I went on the Mii creator thing and created, like, the coolest baseball team ever. I'm there, of course (my Mii looks disturbingly like me--it's freaky), but then I made the coolest dream team ever. I've got Harry Potter, Cher, Ghengis Khan, Oprah, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and (my personal favorite) Mick Jagger. It is absolutely bizarre how spot on the Mick Jagger Mii is.

So anyway I played Wii baseball for hours, and I have no muscle tone whatsoever in my arms, so I am in horrifying pain right now, which kind of sucks. However, I have like a bajillion books to read, so that makes things a LOT better. I actually just put down "Harry, A History" by Melissa Anelli (which is really, really good by the way). And I already finished "Intensity" be Dean Koontz (oh Dean Koontz, why art thou so made of win?) and "Legwork" by Katy Munger (a well written mystery, but I guessed the ending waaay early).

Problem is, I have so many books I want to read, but I'm trying to make myself wait until the New Year to read some of them, so that I can count them for the Book Challenge. But with the entire collected works of John Green sitting there on my bookshelf, and a new Terry Pratchett book, and Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia, which is about a crime-fighting velociraptor (not even kidding), it's REALLY FREAKING HARD.

Gaaaah. Must wait. Must wait.

Holy crap, things just happened

2008-12-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

...In my otherwise currently boring life.

I made my account on Ravelry! Woohoo! If you happen to be on Ravelry, I'm "StaciMCL". I wrote a very non-interesting About Me section. Ick. But I haven't had time to really check out the site yet because I'm suuuper busy.

Sarita lent me her USB drive so I could put my audio from the last episode of the MAD Podcast on it. Holy crap, it's been taking me WAY too long to get this audio to her (and it is an extraordinarily fantastical episode, and I want to LISTEN to it for heaven's sake) so I am excited to finally be done with it.

Speaking of the Podcast, our episode about the Series of Unfortunate Events books v. movie discussion is coming up, and I haven't read the books in ages. So I'm borrowing them from Marshall--currently I have the first three. I finished reading the first one a while ago--I started reading on the bus, and it takes like, an hour and a half to read one of them, which is amazing. It goes very quickly. I still think the movie is better, though, but I'll save that discussion for the podcast.

Annnnd... Okay, so actually like nothing happened, but I'm grabbing at straws here. For whatever reason my life has been incredibly boring lately. Gah.

Ravelry lies

2008-12-09T15:46:00.000-08:00

Like a week ago it told me my invitation would come in four days.

Liars.

Today is awesome

2008-11-30T11:39:00.000-08:00

...for several reasons.

Undeniably number one:

OMG I JUST WON NANOWRIMO!

I mean, technically I won it like fifteen days ago when I finished my first fifty thousand words, so I should qualify that statement by saying that I just EPIC WON NaNoWriMo. That's right - the final word count comes out to 101,041 words, and I finished two complete novels, all within thirty days.

ONE HUNDRED AND ONE THOUSAND WORDS.

Pwn!

Other reasons why today is awesome:

It's St. Andrew's Day! Woohoo! Let us party!

It's the first Sunday of Advent, which is my favorite time in the Church year. Yaay!

December starts TOMORROW! Which means that Christmas is coming! Which means that Christmas Break is coming! Which means that the NEW YEAR is coming - and I am so excited about 2009 that it's just ridiculous. More on that later.

And I will just never get tired of saying that I wrote ONE HUNDRED AND ONE THOUSAND AND FORTY ONE WORDS in thirty days. And it wasn't even that bad - I took plenty of days off and, frankly, I've had a harder time doing my fifty thousand word ones in past years.

I'm printing off my nano as I speak... It's going to take forever, it's over two hundred pages. The first one, I mean - the second one is over two hundred pages too, and together they're more like five hundred, but the second nano is sucktacular and I'm not even going to bother printing it. The first one pwns, though.

Oh, and Marshall and I were going to get together to bake cookies if I managed to write all one hundred thousand words (my goal). So, Marshall, it looks like it's cookie-baking time.

Hooray!

Proof that I love my family

2008-11-29T19:11:00.000-08:00

So it's Thanksgiving break, and every year on Thanksgiving my dad's side of the family meets for Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparent's house in Florida. This is cool - it's fun, it's great to see everyone, and of course the food is fantastic.

But here's the thing - this year we couldn't afford to stay in a hotel for more than one night, but there isn't enough room in my grandparent's house to room us. So the plan became this: Thanksgiving morning, starting at about 5 AM, we would get in the car and drive the many many miles to Florida. We would stay for dinner, spend the night in the hotel, and then drive back on Friday morning.

Now, I love my family. My grandparents are some of the coolest people in the world, and my cousin had recently had a baby, so of course we wanted to see her (her name is Genevieve, which I happen to think is insanely cute). But driving all the way to Florida for dinner is a pretty daunting idea. Which is why the fact that we DID go proves the extent of our love. And of course, I actually tend to enjoy long car rides, so I guess it wasn't too bad - my sisters and I got along pretty well, all things considered.

Several other things, however, went wrong with this trip.

On the way there, our back right tire, like, exploded. I don't mean "flat tire", I mean "EXPLODED TIRE". And we had just bought this tire like a month ago! We were driving along the road when all of a sudden we started hearing this weird sound from the back of the car. We might have thought it was the tire, but we had just bought it, so we were like "It can't be the tire". And then all of a sudden we heard like this ear splitting metallic screeching noise and SMOKE started billowing out to the side of the car.

So we pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car - keep in mind that it was like, freezing outside - and we see that the tire had... erupted. It was horrifying. I wish I had pictures. And there were all these black marks over the side of the car, and smoke going everywhere.

So then we couldn't find the spare tire on the stupid van (apparently it's actually under the van, which is weird) and it was freezing cold and we were somewhere in the middle of South Carolina and we still had miles to go before we reached Florida. Everyone was taking this surprisingly well, probably out of shock. Finally a cop pulled over to help, and he and my dad put on the spare tire (once we found it).

But then we couldn't find a place to get a new tire anywhere, because they were all closed because it was Thanksgiving. And you aren't supposed to drive that far on a spare tire, but we didn't know what else to do so we ended up driving the entire rest of the way on it, and we just went really slow. So of course we showed up kind of late.

The actual Thanksgiving dinner was good and everything, and things were looking up because my grandma gave me like ten books she found when she was clearing out her bookshelves and we actually managed to find a place to get new tires.

But the next morning I woke up feeling awful. I mean, really, really sick. And we were in the car for hours and hours driving home and it was all bumpy and I felt really hot, even though apparently the temperature was normal, and it was just generally horrendous because I was STUCK in the car.

Plus, remember that root canal I got a while ago? Well, the day before Thanksgiving I got sort of phase two of the root canal, where they like fill it up or something, and it hurt like poo. But I took dangerous amounts of Advil and so I was feeling fine on the way there, but, bizarrely, on Friday my jaw was in pain again.

And then I figured out that the stupid root canal was to blame for everything (except the tire), because it was because I had taken so much Advil that I got sick, because Advil upsets my stomach. And my jaw hurt after Thanksgiving because - and I cannot believe how uncool this is - because of how much I was smiling during Thanksgiving! I was fine as long as I was resting my jaw (my tooth never hurt much, but I have jaw problems and whenever I go to the dentist it screws with my jaw, doubly so after something like a root canal where your mouth has to be open for hours) but I was smiling so much the day before that it hurt a whole lot.

And then I got really mad, because it is just ridiculously unfair that I should be in pain for having smiled too much.

So it was like... gah. The actual dinner, and seeing all my family, was great. But the whole freezing-cold-South-Carolina-tire-explosion, sickness-while-on-the-road, and terrible jaw pain thing kind of sucked the fun out of it.

Poo.

In which Staci Just Says No

2008-11-20T16:27:00.000-08:00

Curse you, nanowrimo word count demons. I refuse to be bossed around. I don't WANT to write right now. I WILL NOT DO IT.

NO.

Ahhh. I feel free.

Not that I'm condoning taking a break from your nano. It can be a BAD idea, if you're behind schedule (I'm not right now, but I will be if I don't write today). I am, however, enitrely, one hundred per cent behind taking a break when you can afford it, just to show the Evil Word Count Demons of Death who's boss.

Oh, fail

2008-11-19T17:29:00.000-08:00

So I'm about 15,000 words into my second NaNoWriMo - ahead of schedule and almost homicidal with stress. (I cruised right through suicidal and am looking for more). But yesterday I made a discovery that kind of eased the stress.

See, my second nano is being written on a seperate word document, because it would take forever to open the document if I put both nanos on the same one, and because I don't believe in putting all your eggs in one basket (I have an amazing ability to lose word documents). This is fine, except when I have to find out my total wordcount in order to update my account on nanowrimo.org. Then I have to add the word counts of both nanos.

So yesterday I had 12,008 words of my second nano written, plus the roughly 51000 of my first nano. That should come out to around 63000, right? Well, I was using the little calculator from the accessories folder on the computer, and I must have clicked a wrong button, because somehow I ended up calculating my word count as 69,992 as opposed to the (correct) value of 62,992.

So, essentially, I've been walking around since then under the rosy impression that I had SEVEN THOUSAND MORE WORDS than I had in actuality.

LAME.

This means that even after writing today's required 4,000 words, I still won't have the word count that I thought I had yesterday. How freaking uncool is that? I don't want to update my word count on nanowrimo.org, either, until I pass 69,992, because if I update it now with today's wordcount, it'll look like I wrote negative 1000 words today.

*Sigh*. On top of that, I'm working on an enviro lab, and apparently every single teacher I have decided this is the *perfect* week to give tests.

Gah.

Because I WIN!

2008-11-15T16:34:00.000-08:00

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A few moments ago, I wrote the final words of "Seventy Three Escapatoria: Or, How Rob and Larry Saved the World". At 50,948 words, my NaNoWriMo is complete. The song "Wheel in the Sky" by Journey was playing on my iTunes playlist when I finished. It is done.

I am currently eating a celebratory cupcake and trying to happy dance and type at the same time. This is my... fifth novel? Something like that. At only 50,948 words and 245 pages it's my shortest one, but what can I say? I didn't rush this one, nor did I try to stretch it out. It just naturally finished at right around the 50,000 word mark.

I WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YEEESSSSSSSSS!!!! FESTIVITY! PARTIES! CELEBRATORY CUPCAKES!

And here's the thing - it's only November 15th! I finished my NaNoWriMo in exactly half the time that I needed to. And it wasn't a rush at all - I barely ever wrote more than a hundred words on any given week day, and I didn't even get a chance to write every weekend. Technically, I've written this whole thing in only a couple of days.

And that's why I've decided that I am officially going to write another one. Yup, starting tomorrow NaNoWriMo numero dos is going to be in the works. I've had an idea this was going to happen ever since the beginning - NaNoWriMo has been getting easier and easier for me, and I was pretty sure that this year it wasn't going to be much of a challenge. Hence, Novel Due.

If I manage to finish a second 50,000 word novel, it will be the most awesome thing EVER. (I mean, besides the stuff that the Supernatural Word Count Robots with 400,000+ are doing). I am suuuuper excited!

Onward! Here comes NaNo number two!

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Concerning my awesome

2008-11-14T17:04:00.000-08:00

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So, you may be wondering: what's going on in Staci's NaNoWriMo? She hasn't updated in a while. Has something gone wrong? Has it taken such a turn for the worse that she is hiding in some dark corner and crying?

While this does indeed describe several of my past NaNoWriMos, it does NOT describe this year's. This year, I haven't been updating my word count on nanowrimo.org daily BECAUSE I'VE BEEN TOO BUSY PWNING.

I have 43,642 words right now and my characters are currently literally surfing on crocodiles. They are on their way to a Madonna concert and have already cross-dressed on three different ocassions, made an appearance on The Price is Right, and journeyed through the Grand Canyon. I fully expect to finish the whole darn thing by tomorrow.

PWN.

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Nano cameos

2008-11-10T19:39:00.000-08:00

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OPRAH just made a cameo in my NaNo.

(Rob and Larry go to an Oprah's Favorite Things show and escape in one of the cars. It's pretty fantastic.)

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The non-Nanowrimo post

2008-11-08T19:37:00.001-08:00

Generally speaking, I'm very hard to shop for. Birthdays, Christmas, whatever the situation--I can never think of anything I want. That is to say, I can never think of anything I want besides books.

Today my dad took me to the bookstore and essentially unleashed me upon Barnes & Noble with the mission to "get whatever I wanted for Christmas."

Oh - my - gosh. Love.

I loved Paper Towns so unfathomably much that I got everything else John Green wrote--Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Let It Snow ("co-written" I guess is the word by Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle--it's three short stories, one by each of them). I also bought Jingo by Terry Pratchett--I haven't read that one, and Terry Pratchett is a genius, so no risks I won't like it. That makes my grand total of Terry Pratchett books on my bookshelf add up to eleven, but for some odd reason I don't have my favorite one, The Truth, so I got that one as well.

Five - freaking - books. Four of them I haven't read. I own them. I have held them in my hands. And I can't read them until Christmas.

Actually, for reasons I won't disclose here (but which I will divulge in about another month or so) I can't really start reading them until New Year's. The point remains--I am in agony. I need to read those books. I as good as own the entire collected works of John Green (and most of that of Terry Pratchett) and I cannot read them.

Oh, cruel, cruel world.

(Nerdfighters!)

Glare

2008-11-07T19:56:00.000-08:00

You win, accursed nanowrimo-induced writer's guilt. Despite the Crusoe emotional rollercoaster, despite the Evil Evil Soap, despite the fact that I really want to go to bed, I went and wrote the last couple hundred words anyway.

I now have 25,373 words in my nanowrimo.

I am over halfway done.

When I wake up I'm sure I'll be more excited. For now, I'm going to bed.

*Oh, and I've been forgetting to post out-of-context quotes. This post's quote is:

"There was only one direction left open, and the Mafia guys had spotted them, too, as they sailed past on their happy little elephant."

The internal battle

2008-11-07T19:32:00.000-08:00

Reasons why I should forget the Nanowrimo and go to bed now:

I have over twice as many words as I need for today.
Despite the fact that it was only a three-day week at school, a lot of stuff happened and I am exhausted.
I wrote a couple hundred words today, so technically I haven't lost momentum.
I have the whole weekend ahead of me for writing, and no school on the Tuesday following.
I just watched Crusoe and it was like, an emotional roller coaster (no spoilers, though). I am in no condition to write.
I just got out of the shower, but I think I'm having some kind of weird allergic reaction to our new soap because my hands are red and my clothes feel like they're made of sandpaper.
I'm at a boring part in the story.

Reasons why I should suck it up and write some more:

I've been flirting with the halfway mark, 25,000 words, for three days now. If I write four hundred more words I'll be there.

Why is it that there's so many good, logical reasons on List Number One, and yet I'm hung up on List Number Two's stupid single point?

Curse you, writing guilt.

I've forgotten my gebruikersnaam

2008-11-06T13:46:00.001-08:00

Today when I got home from school, I turned on my computer and got onto the internet. My homepage came up as nanowrimo.org, naturally. I clicked "sign in" at the top of the screen, but before I could enter my name and password to sign in I was momentarily distracted (my dog was barking).

I turned back to the computer screen and very nearly had a heart attack.

It was asking me for my "Gebruikersnaam" and my "Watchwoord". I wasn't on the sign-in page, I was on the "inloggen" page. Whaaaat?

I was convinced for about .5 seconds that Nanowrimo.org had gone through some, I don't know, SERIOUS break down or something and everything had been scrambled up. It took me a second to realize that somewhere during the time Ceilidh was distracting me, I had accidently clicked "Nederlands" in the language button on the top of the screen.

HOLY CRAP THAT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A LANGUAGE. That does not look like words.

"Geef het wachtwoord dat bij uw gebruikersnaam hoort." Whaaat?

I about died. I thought I was going to be deprived of my nanowrimo.org. I cannot survive without my nanowrimo.org. But it's okay now - everything has been resolved. I switched the language back to English and logged into my gebruikersaccount.

Not my best idea

2008-11-05T17:42:00.000-08:00

In my last post I talked about how, during NaNoWriMo, I tend to write a lot of crazy and hillarious sentences. This is fine, since NaNo is about quantity over quality - and I'm writing so fast that it makes sense that my work should be a bit shoddy. But ever since that post, I've impulsively started trying to outdo myself.

Have you ever heard of that online competition to write the worst opening line for a novel ever? I think I could win it.

Here is the last sentence I wrote: [The context of this sentence is that my two MCs, Rob and Larry, are swinging, Tarzan-like, on some chandeliers in order to escape some Italian mobsters]

Then disaster struck; Rob and Larry grabbed the same chandelier by accident, and their combined weight was far too much for the fragile chandelier to handle (by an even greater misfortune, the chandelier in question happened to be one of those rather spindly silver ones which are meant for nothing other than ornament, certainly not for adventurous swinging-upon in flight from the Mafia, and which are in fact not even very good at normal chandelier functions, such as lighting things up).

Is it obvious now how I get my word count?

New idea: fav sentences

2008-11-05T16:29:00.000-08:00

I was writing my Nano (like two seconds after I finished my last post here, incidentally) when it occurred to me that I had written what was, out of context, THE BEST SENTENCE EVER.

It occurred to me, also, that this happens rather a lot. So I think that for every post I do during the month of November (at least, as long as I remember) I'm going to attach one of my favorite out-of-context sentences from my nano. Just so you can see how it is getting progressively more and more ridiculous.

Now, keep in mind for comparison's sake that the definite Number One out-of-context sentence from my summer nanowrimo this year was:

"He was holding a flamethrower, and looked annoyed."

Today's sentence is:

"There were no screams of pain, or any of the various other sounds that Rob imagined an Italian mobster might make when shot in the dark by a nail gun."

Staci's musical evolution (while nanoing)

2008-11-05T16:11:00.000-08:00

It used to be that I needed COMPLETE AND UTTER SILENCE in order to write. Then, after a while, I progressed to the point where I could listen to instrumental music - no lyrics whatsoever, as I'm easily distracted while writing.

Then, for whatever reason, I suddenly gained the ability to listen to U2 while writing. Only U2, mind you - otherwise it still had to be instrumental. For some reason, however, Bono's voice and no other was conducive to writing.

In stage four of my musical evolution I was able to listen to both U2 and a wizard rock band called Ministry of Magic, which is a sort of electronica band about Harry Potter (and exactly as amazing as that sounds). I'm not sure why this happened; I am aware that it is incredibly random.

Recently I've been finding that my Noveling Soundtrack has been expanding (naturally, in ways just as weird and random as before). Depending on my mood and the scene that I'm writing, I can now listen to Queen, Emiliana Torrini and Frank Sinatra. Even I am a little weirded out by this, but I swear it's true - I cannot concentrate when listening to music by anyone other than those five artists, unless it doesn't have lyrics. I also go through phases where I literally HAVE to have U2 playing in order to write. Bono's voice has some kind of weird magical power which endows me with creativity.

And finally, just to cap off the randomness, just today I discovered the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - I was looking through the NaNo forum about noveling soundtracks and someone mentioned them. I headed over to Project Playlist and I've been listening to them for an hour now. I think they may have been added to my list of Novel-Conducive Music.

...I find this very strange. But hey, what works, works.

*And by the way, the word count is still through the roof. I am an amazing amazing Nanoer. Bow down to me and my fantabulousness. For those of you who are behind or just on schedule, I suggest listening to Bono.

Pwn. Pwnpwnpwn.

2008-11-03T11:27:00.001-08:00

I just checked the NaNoWriMo website and Chris freaking Baty only has 4,012 words.

TELL THAT TO MY 19,323 WORDS, BABY!!

Okay, fine, so Chris Baty is trying to run nanowrimo.org, while it is crashing every few seconds because of all the bajillions and bajillions of people logging in at once, and I haven't been doing anything except writing all weekend. And technically Chris Baty is still ahead of the required word count, and I'm just being a bit of a masochist and going crazy. Doesn't matter - I've still written almost five times as much as, I mean, The Man.

I feel like I have made some great accomplishment. Go me!

Awesomeness in all its wonderful forms

2008-11-03T11:20:00.001-08:00

It is day three of NaNoWriMo. My current word count is 19,323 and I'm still going strong - I expect another three or four thousand before the day is out. My story pwns in ways that stories rarely pwn.

I am the master of all that is NaNoWriMo.

On another awesome note, today is my mom's birthday! Yaaaay! And I am currently home alone (because Mom and Danielle are going to pick Kelsey up from school) and I'm sitting on the couch with my laptop and Ceilidh is leaning against me, asleep. It is unbearably cute.

Things are going well.

Oh no. So it begins.

2008-11-02T18:46:00.000-08:00

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15,506 words in. Martin Scorsese and Antonio Banderas both just made cameos in my NaNoWriMo.

Stuff like this always happens.

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This bat needs a calendar

2008-11-02T13:15:00.001-08:00

Before I get to the NaNoWriMo update:

So, my mom and I were driving home from Target yesterday, and a BAT slammed into our windshield. I mean, dead-center, literally flew into the windshield and scared the living daylights out of us. My mom stayed on the road, but I screamed like an idiot - I mean, BAT. Thing was, this would have been insane if it had happened on Halloween, rather than the day after it.

Okay, back to NaNoWriMo.

So yesterday was the first day of NaNoWriMo, and I wrote a grand total of 6,875 words (go me!) Trouble was, a good portion of that was really sucky because I shifted into another character's point of view and it was waaay awkward, and even granted NaNoWriMo standards of bad writing I was feeling bad.

Fortunately, today I LOOOOVE my story and I'm having a ridiculously fun time writing it. I currently have 11,013 words and am going strong... So we'll see how this goes. I only need 3,334 words by the end of today, so I'm WAY ahead of schedule.

And as for an update on what my characters are currently up to, right now they are being attacked by some mobsters in a car wash.

I love NaNoWriMo.

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T16:47:00.000-07:00

Today is awesome for several reasons:

It's Halloween! Candy! CANDY!
It's Friday, which means Crusoe is on tv! Pirates!
We've got a four day weekend! No school!
AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT TONIGHT, NANOWRIMO BEGINS!!!

I am SO EXCITED about Nanowrimo it's not even funny. This is my... sixth? Fifth or sixth year doing Nanowrimo, and I'm totally and completely obsessed. This year I'm writing a sort of James Bond/Godfather parody called 73 Escapatoria, Or How Rob and Larry Saved the World. It shall be epic.

Between handing candy out to trick-or-treaters, I'm preparing for nano. That means setting my homepage to nanowrimo.org, filling up the water cooler (yes, I have a mini-water cooler) in my room, making my word count calendar (with columns for Word Count Required, Word Count Desired (2000 a day), and the empty Word Count Achieved), sorting through all my outlines and planning, and setting up the word document for my Nano.

I've never tried to blog during November before, so I'm not sure how this is going to work. I'll try to update you as much as possible on where I am in the story and everything, but I'm generally so insane during nano month that I don't know if I'll have time. Well, I know I won't have time, but I might end up blogging when I'm trying to procrastinate...

If not, you can follow my progress on nanowrimo.org. My username is eSCi. Go ahead and friend me, if you want!

Call me Rembrandt

2008-10-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

I don't think I would be able to make it through English class if it weren't for doodling.

I doodle constantly in that class. I'm a terrible artist, don't get me wrong, but it's fun and I have decided to share it with the world. Let us critique my art.

Let's get the ball rolling with a picture of bears having a party.

First, I should mention that about 90% of my doodles are done in my homework planner, as was this one. You can see, crossed out above the drawing, part of my AP Enviro homework.

Now onto the art itself. I don't know where the inspiration for partying bears came from. This one was drawn during Spanish class, surprisingly, rather than English. I'm always slightly insane during that class, so it might account for this idea.

I should also mention that, no matter WHAT I draw, or when, I ALWAYS label it. The theory is that, after a few weeks, even I may no longer be able to tell what the drawing is of.

Do you notice the really warped arm of the bear holding a drink? What's up with that? And party-blower bear's legs are mind-boggling. I don't even know what's up with balloon-bear.

Ah, art.

The philanderer

2008-10-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

So I was writing this English essay about "Hedda Gabler" when I realized that I had used the word "philanderer" about eight times. But I couldn't think of a synonym. I sat there for like ten minutes agonizing over it, but really I just wanted to type "man-whore" and see if the teacher said anything.

Finally I just tried to look up a synonym, but Microsoft Works has like a freaking PG Thesaurus and it doesn't have an entry for anything vaguely dirty. So I sat there for ANOTHER ten minutes looking up every word for "whore" that I could think of.

And then I realized, this is totally the weirdest essay I've ever written.

(As a matter of interest, I finally settled on the word "womanizer").

Cuteness overload

2008-10-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

EDIT: I'm going to warn you in advance that this post is formatted like poo, but I really don't feel like fixing it, so... deal.

I GOT A FREAKIN PUPPY!!!!!

Look! Look at the puppy!

This Saturday my parents went out to take my older sister to the bank... and came home with a puppy.

We've been looking for a dog for ages, so it wasn't a TOTAL surprise, but I did NOT expect my parents to bring one home that day. THIS IS SORT OF THE MOST AMAZING THING THAT EVER HAPPENED, EVER.

She's a collie/labrador mix and almost eight weeks old. We got her from a "foster parent" at an Animal Rescue center, where she was with a bunch of other animals, so she's used to cats (as you can see in the picture).

My mom, as I've said, is Scottish, and she wanted to name the dog after something Scottish... She left my sisters and I to think of something--which was, of course, a bad idea. The dog went about two hours with the name "Skittles MacKilt" and another hour or so as "Bagpipe Dog". Finally my mom gave up on our creative ability and offered the name "Ceilidh", which is a Scottish dance. It's also Gaelic in origin, which means nobody can spell it--it's pronounced "Kaylee".

I know what you're thinking, though--how could I get a puppy and not post about it RIGHT AWAY? Believe me, I would have, but after we got Ceilidh I called all the MADers up to tell them, but I couldn't get hold of Sarah (curse you, marching band). I wasn't able to tell her until during Calculus this morning, and I didn't want to post on the blog until she knew... I wanted to tell everybody in person.

I mean, come on. PUPPY!

The inherent fantabulousness that is John Green

2008-10-22T13:27:00.000-07:00

At 6:16 this morning I finished reading Paper Towns, and promptly burst into tears.

Now, it is a weird quirk of mine that I never cry at movies, but I cry reading books all the time. Maybe it's because I'm a writer, too, but the written word has always affected me more. I cried when Dumbledore died. Heck, when I was reading Deathly Hallows I cried when Dobby died and then didn't stop until about thirty minutes after I finished the entire book. I mean, I've come close to tears reading Terry Pratchett books.

But this was a different kind of crying. This was crying because I just had no idea what to do with myself. I finished reading the book, and for a moment I just sat there, while an internal battle of entirely conflicting emotions went on in my head. That's the way this book is. It's one of the most hillarious books I've ever read (I can honestly say that I've never laughed harder at a book in my life), and it has a sort of... jovial air about it. The word I want to use here is "romp".

But at the same time it's deep and moving and surpisingly powerful. You read it and find yourself thinking about human nature. It's almost philosophical in a way, and at times deeply symbolic.

And then of course it's a mystery, and an adventure, and one of those books where you're sitting there wide-eyed going "DON'T DO IT, QUENTIN! NOOOO!" With the humor and the tension and the drama and the sadness all in one, finishing the book leaves you with your emotions totally out of whack. And of course there's just the general awesomeness of it all. When I finally closed it, I wasn't sure if I should sing, cry, or do a happy dance.

I don't leave to go to school until 6:30 and I had finished the book before then, but I brought it to school anyway, so I could prop it on my desk and look at it's awesome* (by the way, I bought the yellow Happy-Margo cover). I went back and re-read the drunken beer-sword scene again. I laughed a lot the second time, too.
*"Awesome" is one of those words that can be used at any time, even when not generally condoned by normal grammatical rules. This is especially true when it is being used to talk about John Green.

I haven't read many good books lately (the last one being Nation by Terry Pratchett), but Paper Towns was freaking awesome. It may just be on my Top Ten list, now. And on a side note, I'm officially getting Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Let It Snow for Christmas. I mean, I knew John Green was awesome, but holy crap can the guy write.

WIN

2008-10-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

I got a root canal today.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, wow, Staci, that really sucks. You wouldn't be entirely incorrect for thinking that (I just took another two Advil. Owowowow), but not only was the procedure itself not that bad, there's several factors associated with this root canal that are MADE OF EPIC WIN.

First off I have to say that for something that people make such a big fuss about, a root canal is a freaking snap. I feel a bit ripped off that there weren't at the very least dramatic flashing lights and weird beeping machinery. I mean, they make you wear glasses to keep water from splashing in your eyes and there's this crazy rubber shield thing in your mouth, but aside from looking unfashionable it's not really bad. You don't feel anything. This almost annoyed me (it's like when you get a cut that bleeds a WHOLE LOT, but is in itself really shallow. It's not that you want a huge gash or anything, but for all that trouble you feel like you freaking deserve one) until I realized that the pain comes after the procedure. Only four more hours until I can take more Advil.

Now back to the EPIC WIN.

The first is that I got to leave school early (about halfway through fourth period), and it took so long that school was finished by the time I got out. As luck would have it I didn't miss anything catastrophically huge, so I get all the benefits of NOT being in school without having to worry about making up a bunch of stuff.

The second, however, is what I really want to talk about. My mom, being as awesome and fantabulous as she is, felt sorry for me for having to get a root canal (I'm kind of numb--pardon the pun--to the dentist, but my mom hates them) and so after I got out I went to Barnes and Noble and BOUGHT PAPER TOWNS BY JOHN GREEN!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH I'M SO EXCITED!!!!

I was going to get the book for Christmas, but after hearing John read the prologue on Youtube I FREAKED OUT and decided I needed it now, but I didn't have the money to buy it.... And now, thanks to my root canal, I own it today! I'm refusing to let myself start reading until I'm done with my homework because otherwise I'll never get my work done, but it's really - freaking - hard. I have it downstairs right now, because I need to physically distance myself from it.

I'm almost done with my homework (I just have to finish up Calculus) and then I can read it! YAY!!

*Happy dance*

DFTBA!

Happy Birthday, Marshall!

2008-10-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

O - m - g, I wrote this whole post saying Happy Birthday to Marshall because she's turning 17 today, and talking about my awesome Ghostbuster costume that I wore to her party the other day, and I totally FAIL and accidentally deleted it.

FAIL.

So Happy Birthday, Marshall! It's taking me forever to write this stupid post, but happy birthday!

I'm eating strawberry ice cream

2008-10-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

I don't even like strawberry ice cream*.

*Note: When I was trying to write the title for this post, I kept accidentally typing "I'm earing strawberry ice cream". Like three times in a row.

I'm extremely obsessive in my running habits--I physically can't stand to skip a day running; it makes me feel lazy and unhealthy and then it takes me forever to get back into the swing of things. The problem is that running has WEIRD effects on me. About half the time when I come home from running the thought of food makes me feel sick to the stomach, and the other half of the time I just get really weird cravings.

Today it was strawberry ice cream. Keeping in mind that the only ice cream flavors I like are mint chocolate chip and cookies n' cream. (I say that tentatively. I am willing to be introduced to new flavors. Leave me your recommendations).

So now I'm in this weird situation where I really don't like the stupid ice cream, but I also feel oddly compelled to keep eating.

Ugh, this sucks.

Gumbo of stuff

2008-10-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, so... I haven't posted in a while. I'm sorry. I've been BUSY, by which I don't mean "busy" or even "busy" in italics, but BUSY in all capital freaking letters.

Allow me to explain. (No, I take it back. Allow me to explicate. That is the coolest word ever.)

SCHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!

Now that I've explained, let me catch you up on what I've been doing lately.

So recently I volunteered at my school's blood drive, right? (I'm not old enough to donate blood, which sucks.) Anyway I volunteer at my church's blood drives and stuff so I know how to work the canteen and everything, but they chose to put me on sticker duty. Sticker duty is where you walk down the line of people who are waiting to donate and give them certain stickers...one with their number on it, one for first time donors... And there's also one for people who are giving twice the amount of blood. This is cool, but in order to do it you have to be a certain weight. Now, since I'm Sticker Person, I have to ask people if they're going to give twice the amount of blood. I swear, NONE of them know about the weight limit. Which means I have to tell them. Which means I have to be all super awkward: "hey, do you weigh a hundred and fifty pounds?"

I can't guage a person's weight by looking at them! Do you know how awkward that is? The guys didn't care, but every single girl looked at me like I was some kind of axe murderer for even suggesting it. I just stood there with my stickers, cringing and going, "I'm SORRY, okay!! They're MAKING me!"

And I recorded another episode of the MAD Podcast--this time it was just me and Deborah. It's a pretty good episode, though. And, in keeping with the media analysis and discussion, I have three recommendations for you... A book, a movie, and some music.

First the book: I finished "Nation" by Terry Pratchett. It was spectacular. It's not like his Discworld series... it's a sort of parallel universe rather than an entirely fantasy one. But it still has the sort of trademark Pratchett humor and, like his other books, it's oddly thought provoking... It's an interesting book. I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say there are tree-climbing octopi that fall on people's heads, and the book contains the line: "This was foolish, he knew, but if you couldn't put your trust in gods, then trousers might do." I recommend it. READ IT.

Speaking of interesting, I watched the movie "Eagle Eye" this weekend. Hoollly crap that movie is the most implausible thing to have ever come from Hollywood. Okay, I take that back (have you seen the movie "Road Warrior"?) but it's still pretty darn unlikely. There's this computer which has the ability to take over military operations and everything, but in order to kill somebody (I'm trying not to spoil it for you) it creates this elaborate plan involving crystals and trumpets. And I'm sitting here like, ummm you just shanghai-ed a freaking military drone to go after some other guy, why couldn't you just do that again? Seriously? Trumpets?

But Shia LaBeouf was actually really good in it, and it had a few interesting twists. The action was good, the acting was largely good, and there was some humor thrown in for good measure. I'd recommend you go see it--it's the best of what's out right now, and it's worth it if only to laugh at its credibility. If you're not too concerned with believability, it's a very enjoyable movie.

And finally, I'd like to talk about wizard rock. Now as you know this blog was restarted from an old blog, which, in my infinite wisdom, I deleted by accident. On that old blog, I talked a great deal about wizard rock. But since those posts are gone, I'll refresh it for you.

Oh my gosh I LOVE it.

I might go into my reasons why some other time (or maybe on the podcast... I want REALLY badly to do an episode about wrock) but suffice it to say that wizard rock = <3. Anyway, one of my favorite bands is Ministry of Magic. I'd heard a few of their songs in the past and loved them all... just the other day, however, I really started listening and holy crap they ROCK. If you like wrock, and even if you don't, you must check out the songs "My Obsession" and "We Belong Together" (both of which they sing with the girls from the Parselmouths, another good band) and "The Bravest Man I Ever Knew" (which gets in my head all the time).

There! Now you have a book to read, a movie to watch, and a whole lot of music to wrock out to. I have officially written a freaking long post, so I better get off and do homework now. As I said, SCHOOOLLLLL!!!!

Fantastical!

2008-10-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

My mom came home today!

She's been in Scotland the past couple of weeks and it's been mayhem without her. Seriously, nothing has been getting done. Danielle broke the dryer somehow so we haven't done laundry in ages, and I don't know how many days I've forgotten to feed the fish. And we don't have food. We've been living off cereal, pasta salad and cookies for two weeks now. Once I ate three bananas for dinner. I'm really glad Mom's home.

Anyway the fantasticality (definitely a word) doesn't end there. She brought stuff back! I now own a ridiculously cute sweater, unfathomable amounts of Scottish candy (which is waaaaaay better than American candy, by the way) and three new books: the British version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (so now I have all seven books in the American and British versions), the adult version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and - prepare yourself - TERRY PRATCHETT'S BRAND NEW BOOK, "NATION"!!!

I am so excited about this. Terry Pratchett is the freaking man. He's my favorite author and I have been Coveting (with a capital 'C') this book since it came out. I cannot wait to read it!!

-- Should probably explain - I'm half-Scottish. My mom met my dad when he was in the Navy and moved to America with him. She was in Scotland the past couple weeks for a wedding in the family and I am insanely jealous that I didn't get to go. I've been to Scotland loads of times but not very recently. It is easily the coolest place on Earth and I refuse to hear anyone say any different.

Ohhh poo

2008-09-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

I missed two days of school last week. Generally, I don't approve of missing school days. It's a whole lot of unnecessary makeup work and in the end it's just a lot more trouble than it's worth. But Thursday and Friday of last week, circumstances conspired against me.

See, my mom is in Scotland right now visiting family. That's cool. But my little sister, Kelsey, goes to year-round school and she's tracked out right now, which means someone needs to stay home and watch her. Ordinarily this would be okay - my dad is going to stay home and watch her for most of my mom's trip - but my dad had to go to work Thursday and Friday last week because he was teaching those days (he's an instructor, he works with MRIs). So Kelsey was left at home alone. She's nine.

My older sister is in college and she can't miss any school, apparently. So it fell to Staci to babysit.

It's not the babysitting itself, mind you, that bothers me. Kelsey's pretty cool, most of the time. But I DESPISE missing school, and Thursday and Friday were the two worst days I could miss - I was supposed to take about a bajillion tests/quizzes and turn in a major lab assignment.

What that means is that now I am up to my eyes in makeup work and it's not looking good. I have to make up three tests, two quizzes, a freaking bajillion-question long webquest, and read the entire Scarlet Letter by Friday. That's in addition to all my normal work, and what with two huge anatomy labs and a couple assorted quizzes/assignments, this week has a pretty heavy workload already.

So naturally, rather than actually doing all that work, I decided to blog about it. Sigh. I suppose I had better go get started.

Fall! Fall! Fall!

2008-09-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

Yeesssss it's the first day of fall!

I am ridiculously excited about this! Autumn is easily my favorite season - it's so... I don't know. Awesome. I love everything about it. The weather is great - cool but not COLD - there's just a general ATMOSPHERE about it that's frankly awesome. A sort of hot-chocolatedyness. You know?

I love the sort of Halloween, Thanksgiving holidays the best, too. I don't even go trick-or-treating anymore and I still love Halloween to death. Marshall's birthday is around Halloween and she's having a costume party again this year, (YES! My one and only chance to dress up!) and I'm going as Wasp Woman. OH YEAH. She's thinking about not having it be a costume party now, (the dates were changed and now it's a couple weeks before Halloween) but I don't care, I'm going as Wasp Woman either way. (Nerd power!)

...And I mean, come on, what self-respecting American can't love freaking TURKEY DAY?

I can't wait for the leaves to start falling! I'm obsessive when it comes to stepping on them. Once Autumn starts it takes me forever to cross parking lots.

There's something incredibly satisfying about that crunching sound. Yay Fall!

Major pwnage by Clint Eastwood

2008-09-21T11:16:00.001-07:00

Ohhhhh my gosh I just watched "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".

Formerly Clint Eastwood was just an old guy to me.

Now I realize that he is in fact THE MAN.

HOLY crap that's a good movie. I was never really against Westerns, but I can't claim to have been a very big fan. I never considered them particularly intelligent or anything. I was apathetic when it came to them.

Only now do I realize what an idiot I have been. I mean, I'm sure they're not all as good as that, but this at least acertains that they have potential. Whoah that was epic. Clint Eastwood's all like, "There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that have guns, and those that dig."

Also, I will get a poncho like his if it's the last thing I do.

Ohhh man that was awesome. And that music is GENIUS. You can just play the same song over and over throughout the movie and it NEVER GETS OLD.

*Adding to list of favorite movies*

Erm, not cool

2008-09-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

So, you might be wondering where I've been the last couple days. Ah, what a good question.

I've been busy being violently ill.

There's this horrible stomach virus going around my school right now, and this weekend both me and my little sister caught it... and - it - sucked. So now I'm sort of drained and vaguely out of it - you know, that weird, post-illness feeling? I haven't been sleeping well, either. Naturally my teachers decide to bombard me with all manner of horrible assignments right about now.

For this reason, this is going to be a super-short blog post. Because I have to go now. I have to go do homework. Veritable mountains of cruel, unforgiving homework.

What have I done to deserve this?!

Overheated

2008-09-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

Hooollllllly crap, it's hot outside.

So today in my AP Environmental Science class we were doing this lab - measuring turbidity in the creek outside my school. But because of the DROVES of mosquitos out right now (thank you, hurricane) we were advised to wear long sleeves/long pants.

So I'm standing in the middle of this creek, trying to balance on a couple of rocks because my feet are completely submerged in water at this point and I'd rather not be up to my knees in it. And I'm pouring buckets of water into a nepholometer and it's HOT outside.

I did get a bit wet, but the lab itself was okay. The problems came later, when I went back inside.

My high school has three buildings (East, West, and what's technically the North building, though we don't call it that... I will for the benefit of the blog). Again because of the hurricane, the air conditioner was out in the North Building.

Like I said, I was wearing long pants and a long sleeved shirt.

Holy crap it sucked.

We actually had Spanish class in the stairwell because the air conditioner was working in there. But it was still awful. And then we don't have an air conditioner on my bus, either... and my bus ride home is an hour and a half long. By the time I got home, I felt sick from the heat.

Iiiiiiiiiiiick.

Super big, value-size post

2008-09-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

Soooo, I have loooots of stuff to talk about and none of it really relates, so I'm going to pull a Deborah and just talk about a bunch of stuff in segments.

First off, my parents and my older sister went to a concert last night, leaving me to babysit my little sister. Now, don't get me wrong, we fight all the time (in the inevitable manner of siblings), but in the end Kelsey's pretty cool, and whenever I have to babysit her we have waaay too much fun for our own good. We set up a picnic in her bedroom and had a Disney movie marathon. I should point out that - I don't care how old you are - it is healthy to have Disney movie marathons. In fact, it is necessary to remain sane while in your junior year at high school. Also, it doesn't count if it isn't a sing-along.

So anyway, Kelsey and I were watching "Quest for Camelot" (which, come to think of it, isn't actually a Disney movie - but you know what I mean, one of those animated musicals) and having Oreo-eating competitions (I am ashamed to say that Kelsey, despite only being nine, totally kicked my butt). She's a green belt and was teaching me how to karate chop the straw off a juice box... Which is ridiculously fun, by the way. And then we watched like eight Mickey Mouse cartoons. I'm not kidding, I actually love it when my parents leave me behind with Kelsey when they go out.

On a completely unrelated but equally awesome note, we recently bought some snails! We have two goldfish and we're lazy and we don't like cleaning the tank, so we just keep buying snails and letting them do it. Anyway, our goldfish are HUGE and we found out that they were eating the snails, which was why they kept dying off so quickly, so we went to PetSmart and bought these huge blue snails that they can't eat... Kelsey named her's Willie and I named mine Icky Steve III (Yes I have had two other snails named Icky Steve in the past.)

On a third and even MORE awesome note, guess what I knitted?

Super Funky Fingerless Gloves! (At any rate I think that's what Marshall called them, but I don't feel like going back to the original post to check).

That's right, they're the gloves that Marshall put the pattern up for on her blog (The Knit Gangsta, over on the sidebar). Well, they're sort of those gloves, only I'm super lazy and super cheap and so I modified them to make them... lazier and less awesome?

I didn't have the right needles, but I was like, SCREW THAT. So I just knitted with realllly thick yarn and took out like a bunch of rows, but I did something weird and ended up knitting them sort of upside down... But they turned out okay, I think. Also there was no way on EARTH I was going to stripe them - I hate weaving in ends - so I just picked a really colorful yarn and went for it. Also, I swear they look better in person than they do in that photo. And also my hands don't look that fat in real life, either.

As I was telling Marshall, I knit these specifically for Nanowrimo this November. There's something about fingerless gloves that sets... I don't know, an atmosphere. A writer-y atmosphere. And there's something about the cheapness and odd coffee-colored bits of that yarn that is very Nanowrimo-y. They're perfect!

Who needs standards?

2008-09-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

I was talking with my friend Marshall today at school, and somehow we got on the topic of writing. I'm of the opinion that there's two kinds of writers - the Writer and the Author.

The Author is a bit full of himself, a bit uptight, a bit of a snob. The Author sits in quaint little coffee shops and writes while looking down his nose at people. The Author writes about things like moral ambiguity and the perils of mankind. Nobody likes Authors.

Writers, on the other hand, are a certifiably insane class. These are the kind of people who spend every November frantically typing thousands of words a day, who write their best at four o'clock in the morning, who find inspiration in things like towels and kitchen appliances. They write about things like hovercraft car chases and Pop-Tart heists.

Authors are way too serious and dull. They are the sort of people who can make a book about vampires dreadfully boring. Not so with me.

This year for NaNoWriMo I have decided to approach it from the Writer angle rather than the Author route (which I have taken an unfortunate number of times in the past). It's going to be set in modern times, and it's going to start out with a guy who decides he wants to be a pirate. I honestly don't care where it goes from there. It's Nanowrimo. It's supposed to be ridiculous.

Realism is what editing is for. If you spend all your time during the drafting process worrying about minor details, you lose the spirit of the project. That's how you end up creating these weird, dead, limp sort of stories that just kind of flop over and don't do anything. The best things I've written were created when I was in one of those screw-the-plot-outline moods and just wrote random stuff. Reign it in later. For now, just do it for fun.

Not that the philosophy comes to me with difficulty. Yes, I have written both a hovercraft car-chase and a Pop-Tart heist in the past.

I can't wait for November!

I live

2008-09-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

Really, I swear I haven't died.

I'm a writer, and I've lost a lot of my writing over the years to malfunctioning floppy disks/flash drives, computer crashes, etc. I've found that accidentally deleting your blog is a lot like accidentally deleting a story, except slightly more pathetic.

See, in both instances the writer faces what I lovingly refer to as SOS - the Start Over Syndrome. Probably the largest piece of writing I've ever accidentally deleted was a 12,000 word story that was the beginning of a Nanowrimo of mine, and it crushed - my - soul. I swear. At the time I was writing on a really crappy, ancient laptop - as in, laptop from the Mesozoic Era, so it didn't have a USB (I'm not kidding. Seriously.) So I had to use a floppy disk. The floppy disk decided it hated me and erased my story 12,000 words in.

Suffering from SOS, I was unable to start writing that story again. Despite the fact that it was a really fun project and one of my best pieces of work, I couldn't bring myself to rewrite - and I still haven't.

It's the same way with the blog.

The only difference is that I don't deserve any sympathy in this situation, for two reasons:

I accidentally deleted my blog. I mean, seriously, I am an idiot. Point at me and laugh.
It's a BLOG, for heaven's sake! It's not 'starting over'. You just keep doing what you were already doing. POSTING.

Despite the fact that I am well aware of both of these things, I haven't been able to start posting again. So you haven't heard about various things that have been going on in my life lately. The most important of these is that I recently started my Junior year of high school.

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!!!

That about sums it up. Excellent. You are now caught up with events in my life.

Poo.

2008-08-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is my blog. My blog currently has one post.

My blog used to have almost seventy posts.

I accidentally deleted my blog. I have to start over.

This = poo.