Moastly I am only posting this because I am too lazy to convert it into an acceptable format for IM to tell shadowkitty but creating a filter just for her is a pain in the ass. SO, THIS CAN BE MY POST FOR THE DAY. And it's an actual story! WHICH DID I EVER MENTION THAT I MEANT TO POST A FIC/STORY EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR three_weeks_for_dw? Yeah, you can all see how well that went.

SO. Have a nonfiction story about growing up in the middle of nowhere!

( ON TO THE THRILLING TALE )

Oh my fucking god, internet, I just saw The Losers and oh my fucking god HOW AMAZING IS THAT MOVIE??? I AM SERIOUSLY JUST SITTING HERE STUNNED. IT WAS SO AMAZING THAT I AM ACTUALFAX UPSET THAT IT IS OVER. Oh my god I will defend to the death that that is the best movie I have ever seen. OH MY GOD. AMAZING. OH MY GOD.

This weekend has been sort of great! On Saturday, me and mona went to see the Boston Ballet's Ultimate Balanchine performance, and it was fucking awesome. We didn't get home until 2am, though, because lol. TY FOR BEING MADE OF FUCKERY, T. TY. (For reference, the ballet ended around 10.)

SUNDAY: CUPCAKE DAY. I think you all know about that. I just finished off the last of the cupcakes in the fridge, and I'm thinking of making a small batch of buttercream frosting and doing the ones in the freezer ALL FOR ME OM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

Monday (WHICH IS TOTALLY PART OF THE WEEKEND SHUT UP): mona came back over and we watched an epic amount of Legend of the Seeker. I also tried out my NEW GRILL OH MAN and made hamburgers for us, which were not stellar, but whatever. We also went for ice cream at the place down the road, although it took forfuckingever to get.

TODAY (lol the entire concept of a weekend as ceased to have meaning for me): I finished off the last of my Whole Foods gift cards! I am SUPER PROUD OF MYSELF that I made $200 in giftcards last ALMOST FOUR MONTHS. :D :D :D GO ME!!!! The most expensive food item that I bought this time was bread flour, because I did the math and realized it would be mounds cheaper to just spend a day making bagels once a week than buying them at the rate that I do ($0.30/bagel compared to $0.70, and it's only that expensive because all they had for bread flour was organic and I buy brand name sugar & salt; with those three things switched out, it's around $0.20). And, at this point in my life, I have plenty of time and usually enough energy to spend a couple hours on the weekend making bagels and pizza dough for the week.

WHAT I AM SAYING IS, FUCK YEAH MAKING FOOD!

HELLO INTERNET. DID I TELL YOU THAT I MADE CUPCAKES? BECAUSE I TOTALLY DID. I used this recipe for the cake itself, and the filling recipe here for the frosting. Allow me to show you!!

( Cupcakes [3 images] )

SPEAKING OF CATS: I was uploading all the photos of origami from the past week from my phone, now that I am in a place where there is enough service to do so. And as I was doing so, I just kept going when I hit the end of the origami photos, and I found all these hilarious photos of my cat from two years ago. SUCH AS:

( Two photos of Murphy looking like an idiot. )

I hope you all are having a totally awesome Mother's Day!

OH. MY GOD, INTERNET. OH MY GOD. THAT WAS THE BEST EPISODE OF COMMUNITY EVER. THAT WAS THE BEST EPISODE OF TELEVISION EVER. I CAN'T EVEN. OH MY GOD. Like, it filled me with so much joy, I actually teared up. Holy fucking shit.

In origami news, today I decided to make a stegosaurus, and it took me all fucking day because I forgot how much making a stegosaurus fucking sucks and by the end (ie, ten minutes ago) I was so sick of the whole thing that I skipped a couple steps and declared it done. But it is the last pattern in the book! Now all I have left to do are the ones that I skipped because I got too frustrated with them. THIS HAPPENS MORE OFTEN THAN YOU THINK. No pictures because I can't get enough service in my apartment to send them from my phone to my email, and I keep forgetting to do it when I'm out and about.

Also, the frosting on the cupcakes in the fridge seems to be holding up well.

FINALLY, for today's fannish5, we have your five favorite spaceships.

( In which I go on about spaceships )

That empty space for May 4 is making me make >:( faces (I will honestly defriend the first person to suggest that I backdate an entry). And now I'm sitting here going "WELL, THERE'S NO POINT IN POSTING NOW BECAUSE YOU'VE MISSED A DAY >:(" I have the same problem with 750words, because I forgot on Wednesday, because I was working on my sister's graduation present. I was making a bunch of these out of 47/64" (not quite ¾") squares so I could make this as a substitute for a baseball.

What I am saying is, I have a real fucking problen with ~all-or-nothing thinking~. HOORAY FOR MENTAL ILLNESS.

Anyway, today I made cupcakes, and man. Four years ago, sifting flour was the Worst Thing Ever. But apparently now, I find it kind of fun. They're for my mum for Mother's Day, so most of them are sitting in the freezer, waiting for Sunday morning so I can frost them.

I saved a couple to practice frosting with, and made some whipped cream frosting (AS ONE DOES) and made some piping bags and learned two things! 1) Leaves are only slightly harder than they look to make. 2) Holy shit I can not make roses at all. IDEFK WHAT THOSE THINGS I MADE WERE, BUT THEY WERE NOT ROSES.

Now most of those are sitting in the fridge, so I can figure out if the whipped cream frosting will hold up well enough so that I can frost them at home on Sunday morning and bring them to my parents', or if I have to pack up my shit and frost them over there. So far, they are still looking good!

THINGS I HAVE NOT DONE YET: Watched Lost, watched In Plain Sight. It appears I'm at that time of year where the idea of watching a show that I really love makes me incredibly anxious. It's such a pain in the ass.

Oh my god I did not realize that I did not post this entry when I finished it. D: D: D: OOPS.

I meant to make a post yesterday, but I started working on a powerpoint for a presentation I had to do today, and four hours later I was like ":D I should install this torrent of fonts that I got!" and five and a half hours later (I did other stuff in there too, but I don't really remember it) I had fallen in love with find and realized I had nearly 7000 fonts in my system. It makes searching through in GIMP to find the font I want a pain in the ass. BUT WHATEVER I LIKE TO COLLECT THINGS, INTERNET, AND I LIKE LARGE NUMBERS. SO, THERE YOU GO.

Anyway, my presentation was on the movie Sneakers, so all the titles on the pages were in a font that matched the movie poster (and the color, and the same drop shadow). I learned how to make drop shadows! HOW GREAT IS THAT (shut up, I know that's a basic thing wtfever). And then for the final page I found a font that looks sort of like the font used in the "That's all Folks" at the end of old Looney Tunes cartoons, and learned how to make a path! And align text with the path! THIS IS ALL VERY EXCITING, OKAY.

( SERIOUSLY, CHECK OUT HOW GREAT THIS IS I AM AMAAAAAAAZING. )

IDEGAF that it's not that exact or that someone who actually does this shit often could do it way better than me IT IS CLOSE ENOUGH AND I ROCK.

Suffice to say, by 5:30AM, when I realized I had to leave in seven and a half hours to class to give this presentation, I just went the fuck to bed. And today I remembered why I hate giving presentations with other people, because they do it wrong. I am, apparently, too much of a control freak to let other people do the talking when they're not phrasing things right without, you know, gritting my teeth and looking pissy. YOU GUYS THERE WAS A JOKE THAT WHISTLER WAS LIKE DAREDEVIL, AND SHE WAS LIKE "blah blah Whistler's a daredevil blah blah" AND I WAS JUST LIKE WHAT. Basically, I fail at communication.

ANYWAY. HERE, HAVE MORE ORIGAMI:

( I am slightly more than halfway through this book! [9 images] )

FINALLY. My bb sister is graduating college in two weekends. I have no money. I can't get her anything. And I just have no fucking clue what I can make her in two weeks. I also hate giving her things because she's hugely judgmental and every time someone gives her a present, when that person is gone she complains about it (like the rest of my family), and idk if you guys know this, but I fucking suck at giving presents, and I fucking hate doing it because I know that whatever I'm giving is stupid and they're not going to like it and they're going to complain about it and seriously when I give someone a present, I can't even be there when they open it without wanting to throw up or take it back and go NEVER MIND HA HA JUST KIDDING HERE TAKE A WAD OF CASH INSTEAD EVERYONE LOVES CASH RIGHT :D? :D? DDDDDDDDDDDD:

(And now there are a handful of you going "Ohhhhhhh she makes so much more sense now.")

I barely ever talk to her (for various reasons that are pretty much summed up in that text message conversation the other week) and I don't really know what she's into beyond the shit she was into when I still lived at home and we were in high school and I don't even know if she still likes that stuff anymore and I'd just make her a boquet of origami flowers like I made for my mum last Mother's Day but I am pretty sure that will be met with "are you fucking kidding"s and implicit "this is what you got me"s.

So, uh. I know that none of you know her so you can't really help me, but help :(

[OH MY GOD GOOGLE CHANGED THEIR SEARCH RESULTS LAYOUT I AM NOT HAPPY WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT D: D: D: D: DON'T THEY KNOW THAT CHANGE IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL????)

Not much to say today. I need to write a paper, work on a presentation (that involves watching a movie and clipping bits of it) and instead I just spent two hours trying to find a pattern for an origami and pelican that did not suck and did make sense, and then making it. There are three rejects sitting in the trash, from three different patterns that were not awesome at all. And then there's this one, which has a fish that is half the size of a dime.

God damn I am proud of making a fish that tiny.

I stayed up until 4am writing last night, as one does, and now I am fucking tired. Also, did you know that they don't sell cheapshit grills anymore? That I can find? Seriously, where the hell is the mini ten dollar grill that I know exists somewhere. >:(

Does anyone remember those Tales for the Midnight Hour books? I think they were the books that I read about Tailypo in, when I was little, which I am still totally fucking terrified of. I must have been seven or so when I first got my hands on a copy of the first book. Possibly not the brightest idea I've ever had.

Anyway, in Still More Tales for the Midnight Hour, there was this one story at the end. It was about campers, and a snipe hunt, and I always get it confused with the one that's about campers on a boat trip who get attacked by a giant bird. Anyway. The point is, I always had this really specific picture in my head of what a snipe looked like.

In case you do not remember the story, or have not read the books, I have thoughtfully included the full text here. In case you actually care.

( The Snipe Hunt, from Still More Tales for the Midnight Hour )

So, I've had this very specific image in my head of what a snipe would look like for going on sixteen years. Imagine my complete and utter horror when I was looking at a slideshow of Lazarus species, and saw a motherfucking snipe.

It's called a Cuban solenodon, and this particular photo is pretty much exactly what I picture. I may never leave my house again.

(It does not help that I would not exactly say that this Laotian rock rat looks entirely dissimilar to Tailypo.)

Instead of doing anything constructive today, like clean the apartment, I lay in bed and moaned about how hot and muggy it was for a while, and then spent a while doing origami. As one does.

(I also watched an ep of In Plain Sight with guminudli and an ep of Doctor Who with shadowkitty, but those a hardly better than origami.)

Anyway, I have a long tradition of fucking around with origami when I'm too... idek what the feeling is, but it's very specific. Like, when I need something to do with my hands, but I'm can't do something that takes a more than minimal concentration. Back when I worked at $SEARCHENGINE, there would be long swathes of time where I couldn't do anything because I had to pay attention to the screen, but I needed something to do. By the end of my time there, well. This is what my cube looked like:

( Jesus I miss this job. [10 images] )

So there's that. Today, I have spent the day making prehistoric creatures (and a swallow and a couple cranes), because it was too fucking hot to do much else. Obvserve my lack of photography skills:

( Five images. )

Now I have to go figure out how to write out this demonstrative speech because I am pretty sure

Purpose: To teach the class how to make an origami crane

Body: Make a crane.

Conclusion: Now you know how to make a crane.

is not actually going to cut it as an outline. jfc I don't know how to make a crane, you just do it. I forsee a lot of crankily trying to decipher muscle memory in my future, like when I'm trying to remember what my password is and I can't just let my fingers type it.

So, what with all the new additions to my flist, I keep meaning to write an about me post. And then not doing it because what do I even say? I am kind of wicked bad at talking about myself (STOP LAUGHING) when I don't have some sort of guidance (SERIOUSLY STOP IT). So! Here is one of those bazillion questions memes! Which I have filled out! But also, I am combining this with the ask-me-anything meme. So if there's anything y'all want to know about me, leave a comment, and later on I will compile a post with all those answers.

( 100 Questions About Me )

It feels fucking weird not to be ending this post with a poem, after a month of doing so. And oh my fucking god how is it already almost 2PM? Jesus I have so much laundry and cleaning to do. D:

I just got back from taking my first final of the semester, and I think I did fairly okay. Which goes a long way to counteract the leftover anger from staying up until 2:30 to finish the paper that was also due in that class today. (Now I'm just left with the grumpiness of staying up another two hours because I didn't feel like sleeping and then I had to organize my GoogleDocs.)

Not only did I reward myself with pizza on the way home, I also figured out the bit of the fic that I'm sticking on, no thanks to the billions of people I've gone "Guys I am stuck" to who couldn't understand what I was stuck on. GUYS. SERIOUSLY. STOP OVERTHINKING HOW DUMB I AM. I REALLY AM THAT DUMB. JESUS.

Here, have a meme about regional dialects:

( How do we say things in Massachusetts? )

SPEAKING OF MASSACHUSETTS, idk if y'all picked up on this, but this year's theme for Poetry Month was "lady poets of New England." You should maybe, when you choose a theme, make sure that there are plenty of poets out there who match it. Just a word of advice. SO HERE, HAVE THE LAST ONE:

( Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, by Anne Sexton )

REMEMBER THAT TIME I ACCIDENTALLY POSTED THIS ENTRY BEFORE I WAS ACTUALLY FINISHED? :(

I don't know if you've gathered this yet, internet, but I fucking love In Plain Sight. Look, I even made an icon that sums up just why I love it. (It is a shitty icon, because I have not yet learned how to make non-shitty icons out of short clips, but whatever.)



( Here, have the entire scene that comes from as a .gif. )

Also, internet, this week's episode was a thing of beauty. I actually made high pitched squeaking noises at one point. It was fucking great. I've hit that point that I rarely hit with fandoms where the two main character are just so fucking adorable that I want to make dolls of them and mash them together making kissy noises like I'm three. WHAT. IT IS A VALID RESPONSE TO ADORABLENESS, OKAY. >:(

I really fucking wish that this fic that I am writing would just finish its god damn self already. :( It is not even going to be that long! I just... don't want to put forth the effort required to make what is in my head and in my chatlogs turn into actual fic. Two whole scenes are done! Only... a bajillion more to go. :(

I wish I could decide whether I want to make a post in the In Plain Sight comm linking back to That Fic I Wrote That One Time now, or wait until 3W4DW is over. I mean, the end result is the same, but if I wait, then I have more time to decide whether or not I want to lock everything that talks about how much I despise the fandom OR put the fic in my writing journal and just hope no one trots over here for a look-see.

(Really, what is going to happen, is that assuming I even remember in three weeks, I'm going to remember that I don't give a fuck and just link it. But, you know, I can at least pretend that I care what people think of me.)

Now I am off to write a paper on smart growth and think about studying for tomorrow's final (no actual studying will occur) and fuck around with origami some more (I keep hitting points where I can't figure out what the hell the diagram wants me to do and it is distressing because I thought this was just like riding a bike :( :( :(  ).

( Aunt Peter, by Jody Gladding )

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.

Title: For the Exploding Birds (format=light, style=mine, AO3)
Author: the_wanlorn
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Fandom: In Plain Sight
Pairings: Mary/Marshall
Word Count: 1,007
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: In which birds explode (or don't) and promises are made (or aren't).
Notes: Established relationship fic. I'm sorry. Thanks to inkdot for being awesome and betaing for me.

( For the Exploding Birds )

Three things about both Mary and Marshall that I didn't put in this fic can be found here.

Today I had my first seafood dinner of the season because it is my sister's birthday and she always goes to the little shack for lunch on her birthday and I ate all the fried shrimp and fried clam strips and clam fritters in the world. I feel kinda sick now, but I'm not sorry.

Reminder: I am going radio silent on LJ for three weeks starting tomorrow! I will still be updating the_wanlorn on a daily(ish?) basis. If you want to follow the RSS feed of my Dreamwidth, that's here. If you want a code to sign up for Dreamwidth, I've got a bazillion, just comment of email. If you want to ignore me for three weeks, that is cool too! I will miss you and see you when I get back. ♥

There is at least one fic gonna be posted. MAYBE MORE. Speaking of fic, give me some ideas for snippets!

Never Will I Ever Meme: Name a fic you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I will attempt to write a snippet of that fic.

I reserve the right to reject anything involving Cap or DC characters at my discretion. And, really, whatever else I don't feel like doing.

( Mockingbirds, by Mary Oliver )

WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND JUST SUBMITTED HER GSOC PROPOSAL TO WORK WITH DREAMWIDTH?

THIS GIRL!

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDD kate looked over it for me last night, and I made all the changes today and she looked over it again because she is the best friend ever and I fixed the little stuff and submitted it! I DO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT WORKING ON IT ANY MORE. And I can concentrate on making content for Three Weeks of Dreamwidth!

MAN NOT ONLY DID I WATCH LOST THIS MORNING, BUT I SUBMITTED MY PROPOSAL, AND NOW I AM GOING TO WATCH DOCTOR WHO AGAIN. INTERNET, THIS IS THE BEST DAY. I am also going to make pizza for dinner now! And the sunburn on my arm that I got this morning in the 35-minute drive to school (because my car has no AC so I keep the windows open and hang my arm out of the car because I am cool like that) doesn't even hurt that bad! DEFINITELY THE BEST DAY.

(Still flaily over Lost. To the point where I tried to explain what happened to shoiryu because I wanted to flail at someone who was not SK, and I am pretty sure everything I said was incomprehensible. BUT SHE WAS SUPPORTIVE OF MY FLAILING, SO, YOU KNOW. GOOD FRIEND THERE.)

INTERNET INTERNET GUESS WHO JUST FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF HER GSOC PROPOSAL AND SENT IT OFF TO kate TO BETA?

(HINT: ME!!!!)

Oh my god I am so awesome right now. ETA: Disregard this, I forgot that I have to write an abstract. :( otoh I have to be up in five and a half hours, so that is sort of not too great.

Also I've decided to write 21 short fics for three_weeks_for_dw. I will probably put up a prompt post at some point, if I go through various prompt comms and my "needs writing" tag in gmail and still come up short. If I do, shadowkitty is not allowed to participate. Just FYI.

>:(

(oh my god I am so awesome :DDDDDDD )

GOOD NIGHT, INTERNET, I LOVE YOU ALL.