First, the physical: I went to a town called Bridgeport (or something like that) today. The drive was horrible; I have motion-sickness issues, and the winding, up-and-down country roads don't agree with my stomach. Even though I took Gravol, I still felt a little queasy.

In Bridgeport, I found a neat shop called The Knight Store (or something like that). It had a really cool collection of toy swords/daggers. Since I'm too physically weak to wield a sword, I chose a dagger as my souvenir from the trip.

My mother thinks I'm strange.

( As for the metaphorical stab... )

Better than the opposite, right?

My presentation to my supervisors went down really well today; one even used the word "amazing" :) Which is amazing in itself, given that I procrastinated my butt off all summer and did a month's work in less than a week.

On the fanfic side, I can't post the next chapter of Anomie! FF.net won't let me! Every time I upload the document, I get a blank screen, and when I go to the edit screen, the chapter's not there :(

So yeah, sorry...I really wanted to post it tonight. I'll try again tomorrow.

EDIT: I've posted Anomie 14 on FictionAlley, so it should appear there whenever FA's servers update (10 AM, apparently). In my experience, this is the first time FA has worked and FF.net hasn't.

EDIT #2: Hey, FF.net is working again now! :)

It suddenly occurred to me this week just how much I have to do before my presentation to my supervisors on Monday for my thesis. I'm in total panic!!!

Just got Anomie back from my beta reader, and I'd love to post it, but I literally have zero free time until Monday evening, so we'll see...:(

My mother and I took two of our three cats to the vet today for their booster shots. The two cats in question are Pandora, age 11, and Mr Yowlee (name self-explanatory), age 10. The vet we have is really, really nice - and hot too, which is a bonus :)

( Vet visit #1 )

On the fanfic front, I finished chapter 31 of Simulacrum Seal. I'll give it one last read-through tomorrow and then post it. Clara Minutes, my beta reader, says she'll get the next chapter of Anomie back to me around Wednesday, so look for chapter fourteen, and the first scene with Harry meeting Voldemort, to be posted this week!

About two minutes after I woke up, I got a call from a professor I do some work for. He's in New Zealand right now, and he called to catch me up on all the stuff he wants me to do by the end of the month (i.e. before he gets back). Well, that was great, except when the call was over, I was left with twenty minutes to get ready for the movie. I am extremely slow in the shower; usually that alone takes me half an hour.

Somehow I managed it, though, and off we went.

( My impressions: )

I later spent some time researching the diphthongs in various Indo-European languages; linguistics (I think that's what it's called) is becoming a hobby of mine. Got a little writing done for SS, but not so much as I would have liked. Still, I'll probably finish the chapter tomorrow. Anomie's still being beta read, but I'll post it as soon as that's done.

...But on the plus side, I'm about 60% finished chapter thirty-one of SS.

I thought that Simulacrum Seal had lost the ability to surprise me, but it seems not. I ended up doing something very different from what I intended in this chapter. I was planning for Lily to make another appearance, but something else occurred to me that makes far more sense and has far more emotional impact, and it's turning out to be my favorite scene for the past several chapters.

The entire scene with Harry behind the veil, spanning two chapters now, seems never-ending! I enjoy writing it, but basically it has ended up about...four times longer than I thought it would be. That is the worst estimation error I've made in a long time - actually, it's the worst I can ever remember making. I insanely anticipated that it would take 2,000 words, but it's closer to 8,000 now, so yeah, not even close. I suspect my anticipated thirty-three chapters may end up as thirty-five or even thirty-six.

Also, the change I've made leaves me with some remaining Ginny-related issues. Lily could have conceivably cleared them up, but her "replacement" cannot, so I'll have to leave them until the next chapter, probably.

As for me being cranky, I was fine until dinner, and then my family got so seriously on my nerves in the space of five minutes that I walked out on dinner, slammed the door behind me, and took an hour-long run/walk. Rarely have I so badly wanted to hit or throw something before. Actually, I did end up throwing the bread and the margarine container, but both items were too light for the act to be satisfying, and I ended up putting them back before anyone noticed...

Title: Anomie
Pairings: Harry/Voldemort, Harry/Ginny (established relationship), Ron/Hermione (established relationship)
Summary: Nearly a decade post-Hogwarts, Harry's Quidditch career is failing, his marriage to Ginny is on the rocks, and even his friendship with Ron is strained. Lord Voldemort, having lost all his magical powers, has been imprisoned by a Ministry too fearful to kill him and is slowly whiling his years away in bored ignominy. Meanwhile, the magical world itself is losing the ability to perform magic...
Spoilers: Up to HBP
Genre: Mystery/Angst/Drama/Romance (a little of this, a little of that)
Rating: Currently R; will be NC-17 (at which point it will be F-locked)
Warnings: Character death(s), murder(s), suicide(s)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and co. are the property of J.K. Rowling. I am not making money from the distribution of this fic.

Previous chapters:
Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6

Title: Anomie
Pairings: Harry/Voldemort, Harry/Ginny (established relationship), Ron/Hermione (established relationship)
Summary: Nearly a decade post-Hogwarts, Harry's Quidditch career is failing, his marriage to Ginny is on the rocks, and even his friendship with Ron is strained. Lord Voldemort, having lost all his magical powers, has been imprisoned by a Ministry too fearful to kill him and is slowly whiling his years away in bored ignominy. Meanwhile, the magical world itself is losing the ability to perform magic...
Spoilers: Up to HBP
Genre: Mystery/Angst/Drama/Romance (a little of this, a little of that)
Rating: Currently R; will be NC-17 (at which point it will be F-locked)
Warnings: Character death(s), murder(s), suicide(s)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and co. are the property of J.K. Rowling. I am not making money from the distribution of this fic.

Previous chapters:
Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

( Anomie Chapter 6 )

Yesterday I discovered a fic I need to beta read, four days old, in my junk email folder. What the HELL are Hotmail's junk standards anyway?! I get a half-dozen junk emails every week that aren't caught by the filter, and then stuff I actually WANT to read (including FA Owls, apparently, since I found one of those too) is classified as junk. I really should just move my fandom stuff over to Gmail like everything else... *grumbles*

My date the other day was really, really boring. The guy sent me an email afterwards that I haven't opened yet for fear that he wants a second date; I really feel awful about rejecting people, but I'm simply not interested. There's zero chemistry between us.

I wrote some SS yesterday; the chapter is about 30% complete now. I really hope to do more on it today, but I'll need to get through my workload first. I also really want to get back into the swing of things with Anomie, but alas, that will have to wait a while longer...

Title: Anomie
Pairings: Harry/Voldemort, Harry/Ginny (established relationship), Ron/Hermione (established relationship)
Summary: Nearly a decade post-Hogwarts, Harry's Quidditch career is failing, his marriage to Ginny is on the rocks, and even his friendship with Ron is strained. Lord Voldemort, having lost all his magical powers, has been imprisoned by a Ministry too fearful to kill him and is slowly whiling his years away in bored ignominy. Meanwhile, the magical world itself is losing the ability to perform magic...
Spoilers: Up to HBP
Genre: Mystery/Angst/Drama/Romance (a little of this, a little of that)
Rating: Currently R; will be NC-17 (at which point it will be F-locked)
Warnings: Character death(s), murder(s), suicide(s)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and co. are the property of J.K. Rowling. I am not making money from the distribution of this fic.

Previous chapters:
Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4

( Anomie Chapter 5 )

Title: Anomie
Pairings: Harry/Voldemort, Harry/Ginny (established relationship), Ron/Hermione (established relationship)
Summary: Nearly a decade post-Hogwarts, Harry's Quidditch career is failing, his marriage to Ginny is on the rocks, and even his friendship with Ron is strained. Lord Voldemort, having lost all his magical powers, has been imprisoned by a Ministry too fearful to kill him and is slowly whiling his years away in bored ignominy. Meanwhile, the magical world itself is losing the ability to perform magic...
Spoilers: Up to HBP
Genre: Mystery/Angst/Drama/Romance (a little of this, a little of that)
Rating: Currently R; will be NC-17 (at which point it will be F-locked)
Warnings: Character death(s), murder(s), suicide(s)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and co. are the property of J.K. Rowling. I am not making money from the distribution of this fic.

Previous chapters:
Chapters 1-2
Chapter 3

( Chapter 4 )

I got TONS of work done yesterday (more than in the two weeks prior), including all those chapters of Simulacrum Seal I got posted.

Today was stranger, though. It didn't even start out right. I deliberately slept through my alarm clock just because I didn't want to let go of the dream I was having, and then I hardly had time to eat before I had to get to the university to interview someone for my research, and everything from that point on was equally late until I buckled down fanfic-wise tonight and sent chapter fourteen of Anomie to my beta reader after really extensive revision.

I'm really happy with the chapter, and I hope everyone else will like it too. It's not really slashy (Voldemort's not up for anything at the moment) but hey, at least Harry and Voldemort make eye contact! Hooray?

Golly gee, maybe I'll actually be able to write something tomorrow! *sigh*

Also, I shall post again tomorrow and bore you with information about my date!

Title: Anomie
Pairings: Harry/Voldemort, Harry/Ginny (established relationship), Ron/Hermione (established relationship)
Summary: Nearly a decade post-Hogwarts, Harry's Quidditch career is failing, his marriage to Ginny is on the rocks, and even his friendship with Ron is strained. Lord Voldemort, having lost all his magical powers, has been imprisoned by a Ministry too fearful to kill him and is slowly whiling his years away in bored ignominy. Meanwhile, the magical world itself is losing the ability to perform magic...
Spoilers: Up to HBP
Genre: Mystery/Angst/Drama/Romance (a little of this, a little of that)
Rating: Currently R; will be NC-17 (at which point it will be F-locked)
Warnings: Character death(s), murder(s), suicide(s)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and co. are the property of J.K. Rowling. I am not making money from the distribution of this fic.
A/N: Pretty much anyone who's viewing this has probably read Anomie over on fanfiction.net already. This is merely a (far prettier, grammatically as good as it's gonna get) posting of it here on LJ/IJ. Why am I doing this? Because Anomie will eventually be NC-17, at which point I will have to herd readers away from ff.net for the juicy stuff. Sycophant Hex is irritating to post to, so I'd rather keep a master copy of the story, naughty bits and all, here.

Previous chapters:
Chapters 1-2

( Anomie Chapter 3 )

Title: Anomie
Pairings: Harry/Voldemort, Harry/Ginny (established relationship), Ron/Hermione (established relationship)
Summary: Nearly a decade post-Hogwarts, Harry's Quidditch career is failing, his marriage to Ginny is on the rocks, and even his friendship with Ron is strained. Lord Voldemort, having lost all his magical powers, has been imprisoned by a Ministry too fearful to kill him and is slowly whiling his years away in bored ignominy. Meanwhile, the magical world itself is losing the ability to perform magic...
Spoilers: Up to HBP
Genre: Mystery/Angst/Drama/Romance (a little of this, a little of that)
Rating: Currently R; will be NC-17 (at which point it will be F-locked)
Warnings: Character death(s), murder(s), suicide(s)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and co. are the property of J.K. Rowling. I am not making money from the distribution of this fic.
A/N: Pretty much anyone who's viewing this has probably read Anomie over on fanfiction.net already. This is merely a (far prettier, grammatically as good as it's gonna get) posting of it here on LJ/IJ. Why am I doing this? Because Anomie will eventually be NC-17, at which point I will have to herd readers away from ff.net for the juicy stuff. Sycophant Hex is irritating to post to, so I'd rather keep a master copy of the story, naughty bits and all, here.

( Anomie Chapters 1-2 )

I feel like I'm tired all the time lately. I only got up around 10 AM, but I'm toast now. I got a TON of real work done today, and I finished beta reading two pieces of fanfic. I got FOUR beta reading preliminaries in the same day recently (woah) so I responded to those, too.

As for fanfic, though...nothing :( I was just too far behind on other things to work on that today. Tomorrow should be a lighter day work-wise. Maybe I'll manage to finally get chapter thirty of Simulacrum Seal posted. I probably won't get any work done on Anomie, though, because I have a ton of SS chapters to post to FictionAlley - I got WAY behind when the site was down, and it'll take me hours to post it all.

Not enough hours, not enough energy :(

Oh yeah, and I'm setting up an IJ account due to all the crazy stuff going on here, none of which I understand whatsoever. I'm still keeping up my LJ, but I'll double it over on IJ just in case the fandom encounters the apocalypse here, which is looking likelier by the day...

I visited the Canadian war museum in Ottawa today, purely because my family roped me into it. I really don't have much interest in war history, let alone Canadian war history (yawn).

We were there for about three hours, and it was okay. It didn't have many cool hardware exhibits, though; mostly it was just maps and pictures and words, but I can get that off the internet. They should have a tank you can climb into or something. Oh, and the descriptions of the wars were so obviously written by pacifists; one of the sections was called "The Savage Modern Wars" or something like that (I'm sure that the word savage was in there).

The most entertainment I got out of it was reading all the weasel words that Wikipedia would choke on. Apparently "all Canadians" are proud of their contribution of their brave and wonderful soldiers (because not even pacifists get to contradict pwning Hitler), but I don't recall being polled. Not that I disagree, but still.

The coolest exhibit was the car Hitler used to ride around in when he was rallying the crowds, which is ironic, since it wasn't a Canadian exhibit.

Anyway, needless to say, no fic work done today, unless daydreaming plotlines during the roadtrip counts :( Tomorrow I'll make some headway, hopefully, since my first aid class gets off at 2:30.

Oh, AND the guy I ended up talking to for about forty-five minutes while waiting for his lab buddy to show up to do the experiment on Tuesday emailed me and wants to have lunch. I'm not enthusiastic about having a guy in my life at the moment, but what the hell, it's just lunch.

I took the St. John's Ambulance first aid course today, and it really knocked the wind out of me. I didn't get much of anything done because I was so tired afterwards, and now my family's spontaneously decided to go to Ottawa tomorrow to see the war museum, so I probably won't get anything done tomorrow, either :(

Sleep...

So I went to the university today to participate (voluntarily, without pay) in an experiment. The problem: the experimenter in question didn't show. Not too bright of him to stand up a volunteer he desperately needs, IMO. I interviewed over a dozen volunteers for my research, so I thought I'd "give back" by volunteering to help someone else. However, I never missed an interview, so I can't be too forgiving about him wasting my time. Very bad form.

After I got home I finished chapter thirty of Simulacrum Seal, read a few dozen more pages of The World is Flat, and started proofreading SS 30 (haven't finished yet; will probably post it tomorrow).

Ugh. I have to get up early :(

...Not in a fanfic way, though. I actually did work for my RA for the first time in days! Yay!

Fanfic-wise, at least ff.net's finally sending out alerts again :) The only fanfic writing I got done was a spur-of-the-moment thing I wrote in the last two hours. I've now got about 1,000 words written of a fanfic I started at about 3 AM a couple of weeks ago.

At least once a month, drunk on sleep deprivation, I start a bizarre fic in the wee hours of the morn that never sees the light of day. Sometimes it involves a strange pairing I'm too ashamed to admit to, and sometimes it works its way into another fic in some abstract way, but most of the time it's just plain shitty.

This time, however, I genuinely like it, and I think others would enjoy reading it without possessing deeply disturbed minds. (Well, I'm not going square, it's still disturbed enough to include my One True Pairing.) I've resolved to write it in a serious way after I finish Anomie. However, I will never ever EVER post another WIP, so it will be some time before any other set of eyes falls upon it. I'm only bringing it up because I'm excited about my progress with it at the moment - but I'll get back to writing my "real" fics tomorrow.

The guys left today and gave me a band shirt that is awesome enough to make me feel guilty about being so annoyed with them. I hardly got anything fiction-related done today - except I posted chapter thirteen of Anomie! For some reason ff.net hasn't sent out alerts for it yet (I know because it always sends me a "new chapter" notice whenever I post a chapter, yet I haven't received one all day). I'm pretty sure it's a technical issue on their end; hopefully it'll resolve itself.

The Transformers movie is pretty decent; I saw it today in the theater, because the thought of waiting to see such an effects-driven movie on a small screen is disheartening. I am of the generation who vaguely recollects seeing the Transformers cartoon show as a wee one (not too old, though; I remember Beast Wars better), so this, like TMNT, was a necessary view for me.

Oh, the human storylines are ridiculous, every single woman is insultingly attractive (as if female characters couldn't hold anyone's interest unless they were gorgeous, but I guess these ones were so flat that they really did need their looks), and naturally the fate of the world rests on teenagers and twenty-somethings. Apparently every human over the age of twenty-five has undergone a lobotomy in the Transformersverse.

But come on, who goes to the Transformers movie for the story? It's all about giant robots kicking the metallic asses of other giant robots. They don't need to present detailed backstories of the poorly-drawn human characters for a bloody hour - WE DO NOT CARE. GIVE US AUTOBOTS AND DECEPTICONS. And when the movie did that, it showed glimpses of awesomeness. The effects were ridiculously great. Why do we even bother with real actors anymore?

( To answer my own question... )