the trick is to keep breathing

...Why am I suddenly thinking I want to do a triathlon next year?

But it's cool. SIGN UP HERE to play in the summer Claim-a-thon. Next two weeks! Short and sweet! No fucks, just fic!

COME PLAY COME PLAY COME PLAY

edit: If you can't come play, please at least take a second and give us a shout-out -- with ff_press still down, the only way we have to advertise is word-of-mouth (or journal, in this case). There's easy code - with ~banners!~ in so many colors! - you can just copy-paste here. Even if you can't participate, helping to spread the word over the next week or so would be awesome.

SERIOUSLY.

When your Sev was a young girl, she was a crafter. A very serious crafter.

I crocheted. I knitted. And not just crap: I made washcloths and blankets and hats and clothes for dolls. I sewed: my mother sewed a lot of our clothes when we were younger, and she taught me how to sew, and I made a good deal of stuff for myself.

Probably the most exciting crafty thing I did when I was young was beadwork. And I am not just talking about stringing pretty beads together on a hook. I did intricate beadwork: loom weaving, hand weaving, flower necklaces, embroidery, 3D sculpture type beading. (For some reason loom beading was big where I grew up - I'm not sure if it was because Buffalo was close to Native American reservations and they had a presence, or if us little white girls were just appropriating it for our friendship bracelets. All I know is I got started at the Erie County Fair and adored it.) I won prizes for my beadwork, once upon a time. Blah blah.

Anyway. I was good at crafting, I grew up, I ran out of time, the end.

Recently I had a craving to start knitting again.

Now, I think a lot of this can be blamed to my exposure to cosplay. I look at my friends and their work and I think, if only I had the time! I could wake up these old weaving and beading and sewing skills and have a good time. I was seriously very strongly wanting to knit. To freaking knit. Because I need another thing to do.

Anyway, on a recent errand-running trip, I stopped in Jo-Ann's and purchased two new pairs of needles (one circular, one regular) and some very basic yarn, with which to remind my fingers how to do this.

It actually makes a good break from writing the lab reports, since when I get too frustrated I can just knit-purl-knit-one-below-etc a couple rows to distract myself. I predict I will be the proud owner of one too many brown scarves, cowls, and earwarmers in a month or so. (Of course the yarn is brown. It's me. Is a color ugly? I love it.)

I've also, uh, ordered some pattern books from Amazon. I hear this is how it starts.

Right now it's just something for my fingers to do when I need a mental break, and for that it's pretty relaxing. If I am still enjoying it once life calms down, I may be making a plethora of hats for people, just so you know.

Who else knits? Anyone? Wanna get all geektastic with me (and further encourage my doom)?

This semester I'm taking my last class - a 3-credit Polymer Science lab, that runs for 6 hours on Friday, 9-3. *CUE GROANING*

At the very first class - a safety and syllabus overview - the professor introduced us to the class by saying: "This is the worst class you're going to take in your entire PhD." Which I am sure is a great way to start off the semester with high morale!

Basically, we run experiments on lab days, and reports - big honking 10-20 page reports with error analysis (and not the good HONKing either) - are due two weeks after the lab, rolling. So on Week 1 I will do Lab 1. On Week 2 I will be writing Report 1 and doing Lab 2. On Week 3 I will be finishing and turning in Report 1, writing Report 2, and doing Lab 3. This continues until the end of the semester, or until I die, whichever comes first.

Have I mentioned that they make grad students take this class by itself because it's so much work? FULL TIME grad students, that is. So this semester? I'm carrying a FULL TIME workload. With just this one class. Remember: I have a job! A hard one! It's already full time!*

On top of this GREAT AND EFFICIENT schedule come the following two awesome points:

1. They are trying to redo the lab experiments, to improve them. However, this means that the new ones last year? NONE OF THEM WORKED. Students got to choose between (a) working extra in the lab to get good data or (b) attempting to write a 10-20 page lab report and answering all assignment questions with bad data. That's a lose-lose situation to me, but do they care? Apparently not, because the prof doesn't seem to think many of the labs this year will be much better. Great. Glad we care about quality.


2. They've apparently run out of second-(or-greater-)year students on assistantships supported by the department, so. My TAs and teachers and lab assistants? Are the students in the class.
   Just think about this one for a long second here. The students taking the class right now... will be teaching the class. And taking it. As they teach it.
   These are first-year students. They've only been through the first half of the core - our first 5 courses**. That's it.
   So these first-year students will be coming on Monday, learning about the lab and setting it up, and then teaching it to us. While they also do it.
   I don't pity them and I won't blame them for doing a shit job; that's a shit situation to be in. But I am also Not Very Excited for the amount of help (read: zero) I'll have on these labs.

I just. University of Akron, you may consider this an official public notice: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG, GUYS.

I'm not looking forward to this.

It's my last class, and with that in mind, I'm going to just shoulder on through until May. I'm basically making myself harshly limit the amount of time I spend socializing or traveling or doing other stuff, and I'm looking at my schedule to trim out things. I can survive this, and it'll be worth it when it's done.

My plan is: I am going to save Thursday and Friday nights all for homeworking and lab reporting. This means no more weekend-long trips, not until May (except for a very few rare exceptions, like Ohayocon and a birthday or two). Only one night per weekend for socializing or hanging out. If I get behind on things, I will take a half day of vacation to work on them, rather than stay up all night. I can't afford to get sick this semester because there aren't any lab makeups I can attend (seeing as I work). I'm going to have to be pre-emptively careful, not just careful. Or else this is going to suck, a lot.

So: yay. And, uh, sorry to those of you who I hang out with in real life, but I really do need to make myself do this. It isn't that I don't love you! I promise. Really. in my pants.

On the plus side, this is the last semester you'll hear me whining about class.


* If we factor in travel time - JUST travel time, not errands or the gym or anything else I will be doing during the week - I'll be pulling 55 hour weeks. If I count nothing but work and school and driving there and back. :/ That also doesn't include homework time or, you know, anything like eating or chores (adulthood is its own part-time job (ADULTHOOD SUCKS)).
** Yes, the UAkron PolySci core is frigging ridic. The first semester is 5 courses. Who does that. No wonder this damn degree has taken me 4 years.

Look, guys, this week has already been a veritable shitbasket of awful presents from Mother Life, but there's one thing I am totes looking forward to more than sleep, yes that is a true statement (as this thing will stand in the way of my sleep for like a month or two) and that thing is:

DOINK 2010: a brand-new round of Final Fantasy Exchange ♥ ♥

Seriously! I am watching these prompts roll in and plotting as to which diabolical pairing I'm going to adopt as my own and write 20,000 words for this time. This year: there are really good prompts, guys! I DO NOT LIE.

Also: SWEET NEW FORM. I do not think I could praise this form more if it were giving me a neck massage at this very moment. This form is as sexy as Shemar Moore. This form is as awesome as espresso. You know you want to sign up just for the form.

We have ff_exchange and ff_exchange for your pleasure this year; introductory post for signups is here.

If you want to help/participate but don't want to play, there are two really awesome ways you can sign up to be part of these shenanigans! The first is to sign up to be one of our non-participant pinch hitters - there's no commitment; you're just adding your name to an email list of people we will appeal to in cases of emergency: you decide what you do/don't do. The second is to sign up to be an on-call beta volunteer; there will be more about that coming soon, but let me know if you're interested so I can specifically point you that way. :)

GUYS. When we decided to do a 2010 round I was like "ohgod" and "what the shit were we thinking" but now that is it here I am bouncing around like the world's most hyperactive kitten. This only proves that I am not all there in the head (I IMMEDIATELY REGRET THIS DECISION) but I kind of don't care because yay! FFEX!

In celebration, I'm going to go back to last round and read a bunch of things I didn't get to read (seriously: I don't think I read anything except my own gift; sorry to everyone I love who wanted comments, lol) and post some recs to show just how awesome we are. YOU are; it's fandom that makes this thing so fantastic *single emo tear* I AM A GIGANTIC LOSER, AND DON'T CARE.


More on Awesome Weekend of WineCon and recs tomorrow, but I wanted to get this out tonight.

FF KISS BATTLE

A FUCKING CHALLENGER APPEARED

Rules are a bit different this year! Hopefully more organized! ♥


...I'm already excited fuck I love the Kiss Battle >.>

There probably won't be a ton of posts like this - I'm hoping to do email updates as I have some friends reading who aren't on DW/LJ, but I'm still getting that set up - so for anyone who wants to read, here you go...

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NEW:
[Part One] Prologue: http://sevenbeacons.dreamwidth.org/583.html

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Project Information (How to Follow): http://sevenbeacons.dreamwidth.org/506.html
Project Wiki: http://sevenbeacons.wikispaces.com

So I've been thinking about something I read about on delylah's LJ a bit ago, and how I can turn this really awesome idea to something for FF fandom. Basically, the idea was a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure ficathon, where people write fic in response to other people's choices.

I've thought on it a bit on and off this week, and here's what I'm thinking: I'd post a situation to start everything off, describing a character and a particular setting and a situation in which the character has to make choices. Then people reply to that entry, 'choosing' what to make the character in question do. Other people could then reply to that (like a roleplay, almost), presenting their own scenes or choices, or I could reply and set up another 'choice' for the writer(s). Obviously more than one person could reply to the same situation completely differently -- different choices would lead to different scenes. Eventually we'd have multiple stories being told in comment threads, and we could wrap them up at the end of the [week?] and move on to a new 'scene'.

Responses would be brief -- maybe only about 500 words each, plus or minus a bit. You wouldn't have to write a novel -- just the next step. The only thing I'd ask was for people to try and avoid responding immediately to someone who responded to them: I'd rather see A - B - C - A - D than A - B - A - B - A - B just because I think it would be way more fun to mix it up a little.

( For example! )

Anyway. What do you guys think? Would you be interested? I'm more than willing to start a trial run if you are.

Intro
Last January, I tried something I cunningly called "JanNoWriMo" -- since I often fail at NaNoWriMo in November -- during which I intended to "write a lot". It didn't work, partially because I lack organizational skill and partially because I lack motivation. This year, I'm trying to fix both.

The Idea
I want to write something, every day, for the entire month of January. More specifically, my goal is to write at least 500 words every day in January of 2009, which gives me a month-long target over 15,000 words. While I'd like to hit 500 per day, I will be satisfied with a 100-word drabble or even a few sentences on a currently-existing project, if that's all I get. So, for me personally, my goals are the following, ranked by priority!:

1. Write something, every day, in January.


2. Write over 15,000 words total in January.


3. Write at least 500 words a day.

If I can get to #3, that's great. But I'll be satisfied if I only hit #1. These three goals are, in a nutshell, the concept behind JanNoWriMo 2009.

Participation
To my surprise, people expressed interest in doing this crazy thing with me. Hooray for people! Yay! JanNoWriMo = PARTY TIME.

Some people prefer structure when working towards a deadline; I know I do, because it helps me to be specific rather than general. So, I've provided some structure, in the form of steps, because I like lists. PLUS A CALENDAR! Because I am clearly in charge awesome.

Keep in mind, however, that what I've included under the cut isn't a "set of rules": there are no rules. I'm not "in charge" of anything. You can do with your JanNoWriMo whatever you want to, and I'll still be happy that you played along!

( JanNoWriMo 2009 Participation Happy Fun Time )
As a final note on participation, this is open to everyone -- fanfiction, original work, poetry, whatever you'd like, as long as it's "writing" in some form! And feel free to invite others; all of my JanNoWriMo posts will be totally public. Again: not in charge of anything; I'm just the organizer.

Celebration
I haven't yet decided what to promise for February, but there will at least be a wrap-up post of everyone who participated and how many days/words we each actually wrote! Ideally I'd like to have a big spammo link day where I post links to everyone's January work and we all go around and review each other in a big self-insert circle-jerk um just like my fantasies!!!1 and stuff, but some people may not be ready to post WIP stuff, so I'm undecided on that. However, I'll definitely be spreading some recognition and congratulations for everybody. And you know that's what you all want: my undying pantsless love.

Apology...
...to the non-writers on my F-List. There's going to be a lot of flailing and posting about this in January. However, the writing itself will all be over at brokenprism, so at least you won't be exposed to my terrible House/Wilson/Me/Wilson Again fantasies. I mean uh. what? that's a joke. Then again, if you've ever thought about writing, even just as a hobby... why not try it? You're invited, too!

Conclusion
It's already December 29th. Those of us who consider ourselves writers -- don't we all have "write more" as a New Year's Resolution? This is an easy way to keep it. Easy AND fun. Easy and fun, and awesome! Easy, fun, awesome, and totally doable.

Interested?
To keep this semi-official, just drop me a comment if you're planning on doing anything for JanNoWriMo (no matter how small), so I know whose journals I need to stalk! Otherwise, get planning, because January 1st is only a few days away!

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( Sev's Personal Rules For JanNoWriMo 2009, plus Things I Plan To Write )

YES, THIS IS THE OFFICIAL JANNOWRIMO ICON. SHADDUP.

(edit) yeah, now with glitter text >.> BECAUSE WHAT'S A SEV CHALLENGE WITHOUT FUCKING GLITTER TEXT