I found a children's book of Norse legends. From what I can tell, the pictures show the end of the world - not in a sudden firestorm of damnation as the Bible teaches us, but in a slow covering blanket of snow. First the moon and the stars will be lost in a dense white fog, then the rivers and the lakes and the sea will freeze over. And finally a wolf named Skoll will open his jaws and eat the sun, sending the world into an everlasting night. I think I hear the wolf at the door.

Internet, New England has been hit by what I can only describe as a metric shitton of snow lately, with more on the way. There's currently more than two feet of snow on the ground, and we're in for another foot and a half on Tuesday/Wednesday, and then a good couple inches, give or take, on Saturday. I'm torn between making gleeful faces because this is awesome and being kind of scared because I keep looking outside and thinking about Scully saying that.

There's multiple levels of ice that you need to break through, in order to get to the ground. I went out to measure the snow at my parents' the other day, and was utterly shocked that it was barely 14 inches. I mean, this shit was up to my mid-thigh, there was no way it wasn't way deeper. Then I realized I needed to stab it down to get to the actual ground, and the number doubled.

I have brought you pictures from me and the dog's adventure, cataloguing this mess. I'll be honest. They're mostly of the dog, because the snow is taller than him in the few places where he sinks all the way to the ground, and still above his chest everywhere else. He has to jump to break a path through it, and looks like a demented dolphin swimming an ocean of white.

( ONWARD )

Hello, internet! How are you today?

Have I mentioned lately my rifuckingdiculous anxiety? Yes? Well I am going to mention it again, anyway! Because oh my god, let me tell you internet, that is some fucking paralyzing anxiety right there.

My current course of action for everything I do is "Oh man, I need to do $THING right now. I should be working on $THING right now. But instead I think I'm going to obsess about how I can't do it and stare at my computer/book/etc. and maybe shake a little. Because oh my god I can't do this what the fuck was I even thinking jesus christ. But fuck I need to be doing $THING right now. Oh christ I am never going to do $THING and then I am going to die fuck fuck fuck. Okay, I'm gonna start $THING now, or maybe throw up, or maybe both. ...oh, hey, this isn't actually that hard."

EVERY

SINGLE

TIME.

shadowkitty and everysecondtuesday are fucking saints for putting up with me getting my crazy all over them at least once a day.

So I'm counting down the days until my next doctor appointment so I can go "HEY REMEMBER WHEN I TOLD YOU MY ANXIETY WAS FINE? TOTALLY A LIE. :(" and hopefully get idefk because this is fucking ridiculous, and it is every day. And sometimes I spend all having a... idk, low-grade panic attack. I want to punch myself in the face all the time because calm down you are overreacting and making shit up what the fuck none of this has any basis in reality oh my god take a chill pill.

In other news, the dog is flipping out at the window because there's a cat outside and he is not out there to try to make friends with it.

HELLO, THE INTERNET!

So I took the dog to the vet the other day for his shots and it was like a million dollars (for various reasons) and they were all :| MAN HIS LYME DISEASE LEVELS ARE KIND OF HIGH (that is not what they actually said, it was much more technical and official sounding) and took some more blood and they called me today with the results and yes! He does have lyme disease!

So that's unfortunate, and he has to be on antibiotics for a month.

IN OTHER, WAY MORE IMPORTANT NEWS. CHECK THIS SHIT OUT: coconutcurrytapenade It is a BA/Murdock comm and it is going to be the most lovely place on the internet once it A) gets all customized and shit, and B) gets content. AND I AM NOT JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE I AM ONE OF THE MODS. IT IS A BONE HARD MEDICAL FACT.

Now, excuse me, I have to go figure out how to cut these pills in half, and shove one and a half down my dog's throat. Sometimes, having a smart-but-non-food-oriented dog is a pain the ass.

FIRST OFF, A MEME:

THE RULES:
• Post this meme and your current wallpaper on your Dreamwidth
• Explain in five sentences or less why you chose it
• Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!

( I am kind of predictable, tbh. )

SECOND OFF, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY. You guys, it's like. A thousand degrees here. (No, seriously. The actual temp topped out at around 91F, and the RealFeel topped out around 100F. I seriously thought that I was going to die.

So I did the smart thing, and spent a large portion of the day cleaning while mona watched Legend of the Seeker on my couch. And then she went home and I made bagels.

Because clearly, the thing to do when it's sweltering hot, is heat up the house even more by boiling water and running the oven. :| And then because the oven was already on, I took out the pizza dough that's been sitting in the fridge for... twoiish weeks? Maybe three? And made pizza to see if it was still good. (Yes, yes it was.) AND THEN. THEN I ATE DINNER. AT MY KITCHEN TABLE. FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE I MOVED HERE.

I WAS LIKE A REAL ADULT.

Now I'm, you know. Eating cornbread in bed while I watch TV and try to decide if that rattly noise is just a rattly noise, or if it's a fly stuck in my window that needs killing. But whatever.

I still need to clean my bedroom and the bathroom, and do one more surface clean of the kitchen, so that I can be all ":D? :D? LOOK AT HOW CLEAN MY APARTMENT IS :D? :D?" at soleta and kate. But I am hoping I can get that done tomorrow while mona is here (apparently I get shit done better when there's someone around temporarily for me to ignore, because I am a terrible person I AM FAIRLY SURE SHE DOES NOT MIND THOUGH SO I AM NOT A TERRIBLE TERRIBLE PERSON) so the only thing I have to do on Thursday morning is take the animals to the dog and the cat to the vet because Robin needs shots and Lacey's eyes are acting up again.

wtf my left arm is covered in bruises how did this happen

Hey, let's do this meme again instead of thinking up real content!

Post pictures - no more than one or two - of interesting places, landmarks or buildings in their town. Either the town where you live, or where you grew up - somewhere that you maybe still associate with the idea of home.

Tell us a bit about the picture and why it's interesting. We all get to see the tourist pictures of the world, but not so much about the smaller special places that mean something to us.

Internet, there are 351 towns/cities in Massachusetts, and 159 CDPs. What are the odds that I would move from one CDP to another?

Well. Not as slim as I thought before I went and looked up how many there were.

So, after leaving Cowtown, I tried the Boston thing for a while, and the Somerville thing, and the Brighton thing, and the Somerville thing again, and then I threw my hands in the air and said "FUCK THIS SHIT" and moved way out of the city. And, you know what, internet? This is the first time in five years that I've lived in one place for over a year, and have no intentions of moving for as long as I have money to pay rent and am still in school.

And yet, I still haven't given this place a nickname. I mean, Cowtown was easy. There are fucking cows. Everywhere. This place? Not so much. It's richer than Cowtown and has more people in a smaller space than Cowtown and I've been basically assuming that I'm going to have to move at the drop of a hat so I haven't been exactly super excited about exploring the town.

( Two photos under here, one stolen from some poor schmuck on Flickr, one a cap of GoogleMaps StreetView. Shut up, that's a valid photo, okay. )

( Life is Beautiful, by Dorianne Laux )

Nicked a meme from sally_maria because, lord knows, I love talking about myself.

Post pictures - no more than one or two - of interesting places, landmarks or buildings in their town. Either the town where you live, or where you grew up - somewhere that you maybe still associate with the idea of home.

Tell us a bit about the picture and why it's interesting. We all get to see the tourist pictures of the world, but not so much about the smaller special places that mean something to us.

( I like to do things like ignore numbers. So! Four photos under here! )

( From New Hampshire, by Rosanna Warren )

It always kind of amazes me how much my unreasonable* paranoia lessens when I'm properly medicated. Last summer, I obsessively tried to get home before full dark hit, because walking across the yard to the front door wasn't "Fuck yeah, grass on my feet, about to eat dinner, life is good!" so much as "Okay, turn off the headlights at the last possible second and hurry up and lock the car and get to the front door and inside before Some Thing comes rasping out of the cemetery next door** to eat you but don't run because then it will know you're afraid and attack sooner and close the door behind you and stand back against it until you get your key out*** so if it tries to get in you can hold the door shut and walk-don't-run down the stairs to your apartment and unlock it and get inside and lock it behind you." When I had to let the dog out after dark, when I called him in, it wasn't ":D Hello dog! Get inside!" so much as me making ":|" faces and trying to figure out if he was actually my dog or just a dog that looked like my dog and had my dog's collar or not even a dog at all just a thing that looked like my dog.

...That all sounded a whole hell of a lot less crazy in my head.

IN OTHER NEWS. YOU GUYS I AM SO PROUD OF ME YOU HAVE NO IDEA. FIRST OF ALL, not only did I finish fic, but I posted fic. To my own journal! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HUGE OF AN ACCOMPLISHMENT THAT IS FOR ME. I totally forgot that when you don't post your fic to a sock, people who aren't your close friends actually comment. :DDDDDD

AND THEN RIGHT. AND THEN!!!! I got this delightful message in my email:



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <-- MY THOUGHTS AT THAT POINT

Oh my god my proposal got accepted for GSoC and I am working with Dreamwidth and I got six months paid time from denise (WHICH OH MY GOD THANK YOU :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD ) and BASICALLY WHAT I AM TRYING TO SAY IS HOLY SHIT BEST. DAY. EVER.

Also, while I was out fucking around with the dog at my parents' yesterday, I realized that it's my favorite time of year again! If I ever get married, I want to be married in the mini orchard while all the apple trees are in bloom. In a couple months, that part of the yard will be full of free snacks and free pie filling. :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

( Our apple trees in bloom. )

( Dusting, by Marilyn Nelson )

* For a definition of unreasonable where the two examples I am about to tell are unreasonable, but things like paranoia about people lying to me all the time is totes reasonable.
** Next door as in four or five yards away.
*** The front door doesn't have a lock.

Last night, internet, it was so hot and muggy I almost died. It was so hot that I couldn't fall asleep. And, well. I considered getting out of bed to set up my fan, but decided it would be much more effective to moan at the internet about it. (It was not.) BUT EVENTUALLY I FELL ASLEEP.

The pretty great thing about the weather being so awful, though, is that instead of being FULL OF RAGE when there's no hot water (ie, five days a week), I am just like "AWESOME, A NICE COOL SHOWER :D :D :D" So, you know. There's that.

Also, I am slowly getting the dog used to going outside and, you know, sticking near me instead of fucking off to wherever the fuck he wants. Mostly through the clever mechanism of always carrying a tennis ball around so that he's mostly going ":D! :D! THROW THE BALL!! :D! :D! COME ON!! :D!!!!!!" instead of "FUCK YEAH BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE DAY: In doing the crossword, I only needed the RQ to figure out that "Equestrian nobleman?" was MARQUIS DE SADDLE. I am pretty awesome, internet. And also, I lol'd for like five minutes. Because puns are hilarious. :(

THOUGHTS ON DOCTOR WHO (PROBABLY NONSPOILERY UNLESS YOU ARE A FREAK IN WHICH CASE I AM SORRY BUT I DO NOT CARE): Amy is fucking awesome and her manhandling Eleven around sort of made up for the whole "Hello, my name is Matt Smith and my face looks like a foot" thing. ONLY SORT OF, THOUGH. BECAUSE REALLY, I WOULD PREFER IT IF AMY WERE BEING AWESOME WITH, well. Anyone else, really.

( The Hermit Goes Up Attic, by Maxine Kumin )

I had many strange and marvelous things to tell you, internet, but I have forgotten them by now. Alas.

I did learn some great things today, though! Observe: -The dog comes when I call. Or at least, he did when he got loose this morning.
-I only need to be putting in half the effort I do on my english papers to get As
-Pecorino romano: not the best addition to stuffed shells

apocabigbang has inspired me to pull out an apocalypse fic I've been poking at for, well. A while. Unfortunately, I realized that it's going to require me to rewatch all the episodes of Burn Notice where Chuck Finley is mentioned and take a lot of notes. I've already eliminated most of season one and 3/4 of the first four episodes of season 2 because I found transcripts for them. But, hey, that means I only have to watch around 32 episodes instead of 44. SHUSH IT IS TOTALLY A VICTORY.

I could just download subs and ctrl+f for Finley, but that's more a pain int he ass than spending nearly a day and a half straight watching episodes.

But, let me tell you internet, I am kind of pissed that there's not site that lists information like that. After I go through, I'm going to make one. And then I'm not going to post it anywhere, because it will make me feel good to be all "IT'S MINE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAALL MINE!! I HAD TO DO THE WORK TO FIND THESE EPISODES, THEREFORE YOU DO TOO!"

(I like how I refuse to do research for fic ~on principle~, unless that research is rewatching the show. Nice, self. Nice.)

IN OTHER NEWS, IT IS ALMOST (it is already? ihni when it comes on) RICHARD O'CLOCK!! Too bad I will be watching tomorrow instead of tonight. :( I CAN'T FUCKING WAIT, THOUGH. THIS SHIT IS GONNA BE EPIC.

OH GOD LAST ONE FOR REAL.

( From hearts_blood, in which I talk about if my pets could talk, how I'd do as the Doctor's companion, going back in time, SPN, and rural MA. )

Now I need to go find people to ask me more.

so have some happy!post to make up for that!

When I woke up this morning, it was SNOWING. IN OCTOBER. BEFORE HALLOWEEN. :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD That's what I fucking love about living in central Massachusetts. I drove 40ish minutes East to work, and they've just got yucky rain.

Me? I GOT SNOW.

Here, have some blurry photographic evidence:

( Robin in the snow )

This is the best fall ever. It totally makes up for the fact that my iPod won't hold a charge anymore.

(On a sidenote, meme has really weird ideas of what constitutes trolling. I'm sorry not everyone does things the same way as you, you bunch of freaks. :( )