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

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.

Happy Valentine's Day!

<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

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.

In which things get done

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!

Life, and more importantly, SNOW

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.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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

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

...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.

The non-Nanowrimo post

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!)

The inherent fantabulousness that is John Green

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

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!