"and the eye of the little bird / glittered more impatiently than gems"

Me [strumming air guitar]: "I'm tired of makin' out on the telephone... and you're so far away from me... "

Aaron: "Well, I'll tell you one thing: pirates don't make out on the telephone. They arrrrrrrr-gue."

Welcome to the Martin household.

(title part of "Unstrung" by Eleanor Wilner)

Today, 1,500 words was like pulling teeth. Mostly, I think, because I have run out of ideas for how the plot goes. Conclusions, as I'm sure Liz will tell you, are terrible and take forever. Yes, although at the end of today I will have around 22,000 words, I'm a week or so away from a conclusion. Pretty much I'm going to have to flesh things out when I go back and rewrite - or something. I'm pretty determined that this will be a full-sized novel.

Yesterday I spilled superglue on my finger, and now it's all shiny and feels weird. It's kind of like fingernail polish, except that it doesn't come off at all.

My mom, brother, and I are coming up to Messiah to visit on January 19 (Aaron's doing the whole honors-program interview thing), so if anyone is around and wants to hang out, that would be cool (although I know J-term can be very intense, so I'm not insulted if I don't see everyone).

Happy new semester. I feel like they should have "happy new semester" mugs that are black as the prospect of more homework. In a very doleful font.

"for they most dreadfully have dogged my dreams"

- Eleanor Wilner

And now, an excerpt from Terry Pratchett:

"Life in this world," Didactylos said, "is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, 'Go on, do Deformed Rabbit. . . it's my favorite.' "

This excerpt has been brought to you courtesty of writing 1,500 words a day (and the attendent procrastination).

"any time anyone talks to me about vision, i check to see where my wallet is."

- some beurocrat on NPR this morning.

I love how halfway through the weekend I realize why none of my webcomics are updating. Duh! It's the weekend! Even webcomic artists take a few days off here and there.

The alternate title for this post? "You don't want to insult baristas. They're like urban ninjas."

Today I wrote 1500 words. I thought it would take longer than it did. I might actually be able to do this. I think I might take weekends off, though. We'll see, I guess.

Don't you Messiah people start school tomorrow? I hope it goes well. Unless I'm high and you've started school already, in which case I wish for rehab. = )

a glimpse of your back-side glory and this soaked altar, going ablaze

http://www.art-critic.com/

Highly recommended. For people that don't mind a little cussing, anyway. I think my favorite page may be the testimonials. Are those serious responses...?

Tomorrow I'm going to start writing. We'll see how that goes. I'm currently debating whether I should up my word-limit on weekdays so that I can take the weekends off, or whether I should try and write every day. Input? From people that write a lot?

supercallafragelistic-EXP-alladocious

What do you think, emblazoned on the front of a black-as-the-human-soul t-shirt? And on the back it would say, "Dungeons and Bunnies since 2004." Unless, of course, Dungeons and Bunnies really started in 2005. I already have a font picked out: univers. Eh?

Today I went to the coffee shop. Pretty cool new building, I have to say. It makes me wish I was making a steady income in between now and leaving for Italy, so that I could justify wasting money on expensive coffee. But that would leave drastically less money for wasting on fun things in Europe, so I'm trying to have self-control. Apprently J personalities are the best at keeping their checkbooks balanced and sticking to budgets and that kind of thing.

Do people know their meyer's briggs personality indicators? We (most of my family) found out over Christmas break, and it was very interesting. I'm a pretty strong INFP, which is what Jean Corey (she taught Composition Theory and Pedagogy) thought. I think it's probably my English-major bit that's so fascinated by all the new words for classifying people's personalities. I mean, that's a large part of what we do as English majors, right? We list things, we describe things, we seek to define things (Helen Walker is always saying how powerful a good list is. She gave out an 'award' for it in my Advanced Writing class.). And the Meyer's-Brigg's test is a whole new handy little confetti-cupcake-mix of words to use in describing and listing, which in turn point out to us new patterns and ways of listing and describing. So. Meyer's-Brigg's. Whole lotta fun.

Dungeons and Bunnies t-shirts: Funny, but probably not practical.

make awkward sexual advances, not war

I actually did some things recently. You know, accomplished some tasks. Checked things off my hypothetical list. And I've lined up some things to make. Mostly I'll just be tying off loose ends, working on all those little things I thought of this semester but didn't get the chance to make. So really, the next couple of weeks should be pretty busy - and here's the good part - with things that I am choosing to do. My own reading. My own writing. My own projects. And probably none of them will keep me up until 4 a.m., unless (of course) I feel like they're just so much funner than sleeping. Which is hardly a hardship.

You know what book is great? The Wee Free Men. Pretty much AMAZING. Also, I found a copy of Good Omens at a friendly local library. Woot! = D

Love to all,
Kenzie

outside in the starshine you can see beyond the wall

I have lost track of the days. I'm pretty sure this is 2007 because we just had a New Year's dinner a few days ago, and I'm pretty sure it's still January. That's all. Is this normal? I wonder if people who go into retirement feel like they're losing their minds. Seriously, I'm forgetting names and words and excerpts from the Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms right and left. Pretty sure I need to do something with my brain in the very near future or I'm going to turn into a quivering mass of jelly.

And you know, even though I didn't have much time to be social last semester at school, I'm missing what social time I did have. I think I said maybe ten sentences today. Also I keep thinking of so many of you all back at Messiah and eating dinner together, and I'm jealous. = )

But maybe I should just start writing, eh? And that will keep me occupied, and drain me of any lazy words that might be lying around? I hope all of you are ready for the semester to start again. Doesn't it start soon? I don't remember when school starts. I don't remember what day it is. But I hope you're ready, because school rarely waits for things like non-scheduled brains.