i'll paint the stars

Well, I have to admit that I like Starbucks' new policy of free unlimited internet. Not only do I not have to worry about a two-hour time limit (not that I usually stayed more than an hour), but I also don't have to keep up my gold card status next year to get free internet privileges. (Though at this rate, I probably will buy 30 drinks in a year, who knows. It's really nice to sit here and work on stuff, though I swear all the baristas are going to know who I am if I keep coming here so often. And then they will catch on that I always order the same thing and then I will feel silly.)

Of course, it is now pouring outside and I do not wish to trek out to my car until it stops. Though looking at the radar, it might not stop anytime soon. Hrm. And I have a bunch of stuff to bring in from my car, since I went to Target to get a couple more storage things for the sewing room, because I'm hoping that throwing more storage at all that clutter will help make some of it go away. I still need to look into steam cleaning my carpet in the next month, too.

In generic news, I really, really want to do some more writing. The problem is, I'm feeling uninspired. So then I just feel inadequate. I know I'm not (well, I hope I'm not), but I occasionally go through this thing where I hate my style and wish it was cooler or something. I think the answer is just writing more, getting in some practice and trying to change the things about it I don't like, but then I end up back at the uninspired part of the whole thing and we start all over again. Ah well; I've been working on the next chapter of my PJO fic, because I really need to finish it even if no one is reading it anymore, and I really do want to work on some original stuff. Preferably some original stuff that could get me some extra money, if I'm not getting funded in the spring. Hrm. I suppose that means I should be doing some writing of the scientific kind too, if I want to have more time to do other things in the spring for money.

In slightly more specific news, ( we saw The Last Airbender last night. )

And then I had a dream that I was roadtripping with Peter Petrelli and notevil!Sylar. That was interesting.

Okay, that's really about it. Time to check the radar again and maybe think about heading home for dinner. (No, I haven't eaten yet, this is what happens when you eat "lunch" at five. My schedule is so messed up.)

Whiling away the last few minutes of lunch~ Dad's doing my tax return today, yay! Now I can pay for my $640 contacts... if they ever get here. I was told they shipped the 16th, that was a while ago. :x I need to see! I wish my glasses weren't so darn expensive too or I'd get new ones because that prescription is so far behind that faces on the TV are fuzzy if I sit on the couch. XD Mom actually suggested Lasik as a real option, which it is, though... as scientific as I am, I am still not sure about letting them laser-ify my eyes. Is that weird? Like... I don't know. I can't explain it. It might really just be that it's unfathomable to me to be able to see without glasses or contacts. XD Maybe I'll give it a few more years - I think it's only recently they can fix astigmatism, anyway? Plus, I can't be a nerd without glasses! Which I would wear more if they were up to date because I look waaaay better with them, anyway.

Sunday was the comic book shop and D&D - this new comic shop has real back issues, so I have to go back with my list of The Dreaming and complete my set! Bought the first TPB for The Walking Dead, because while I can torrent it I think I'd rather read it as a book (I'm old-fashioned like that, and comics are really hard to read on a computer for me). It's issues 1-6, so I'll give that a go and see how I like it, but I'm already biased since I think Rick is the most adorable thing ever. Also, I made it to third level! I HAVE 24 WHOLE HIT POINTS WHEE~ Which is good, and needed, because we all totally ALMOST DIED. Our dog had to save us. XD Thank you, 100 XP per undead thing that I turn!

Anyway, more True Blood last night... still pretty good, really, though Bill seems to have issues dealing with things rationally and there is Something up with Sam. I knew this from episode one, really, way before he started acting actually weird for real, but I have been informed my theory is incorrect so now I have to come up with a new one. XD

... Actually, Jason Stackhouse was totally in my dream last night. Being a druggie, because that is apparently what he does and he needs to either die or get better because I can't stand him being so stupid and dragging the rest of the world down with him. D<

Hrm. Looks like the Food & Wine Festival Half-Marathon is starting to fill up (if I'm to believe the Disney Running Newsletter I get...). Should I do it? I'd love to do another half, and this one's at night~ It's October 1-2, I think I shouldn't have any conflicts... that's the only thing I guess I'd be worried about right now, is I have no idea where I'll be in October. Hm. On the other hand, I could just go ahead and sign myself up for the regular Half next year. XD;

And this concludes your random Ali-chan entry for the day.

Wow, so. Desire to do work has disappeared somewhere this morning afternoon, but I think it might actually be okay because I'm almost done with the table I was making for Vicki and there's a meeting at 3 I have to go to. I have to leave early and I got up late, though, partly due to the fact that I was up 'till three and partly due to the fact that I was having a really interesting dream and didn't want to get up. >>;

( No, seriously, it was weird. I swear it made sense at the time! )

Anyway, I was up 'till three due to the fact that I was over at Nathan's late because we started up DS9 nights (with Dimitri!) and that required much nerding (mostly about trivia, Dimitri's favorite subject~) afterwards. It's been long enough since I saw DS9 that I can watch stuff without remembering too many specifics about the plot. Or, conversely, I may just be losing my memory, bit by bit. I would not rule this out. Seriously, I forget everything. D: I don't want to lose my mind! I'm not even 30 yet!

In any case, it's time to bust out some DS9 icons; I also have some Prep & Landing ones I ought to use until Christmas, which is in TWO WEEKS WHERE HAS MY DECEMBER GONE? Though I have to admit, I really do like this time of year best - not only because of the Christmas aspect, but because of the academic aspect of the end of the year as well. Now, I admit that my take on this has probably changed significantly since I stopped taking classes, but I like seeing everyone studying and finishing things up and I like the way the Union is open 24/7 for finals week (and so is Starbucks!) and the way I can get into the mindset of "Just one more week of really hard work and then I get to take a break!"

Yeah. I'm insane. I know. XD;

Okay, time to poke around the internets for another twenty minutes or so while I finish my lunch, then it's back to finishing that table before 2!

Mmm, it is a lovely 54 degrees outside today, yess~ (Well, the computer claims 54. My thermometer claimed 59, but either way, it was less than sixty when I left this morning.) I hope this continues! Pleeeease~ (Of course, it's supposed to be back in the 70s/80s by the weekend... I hope the forecast lies. D:)

I totally feel like it's Monday all over again. o.o; Probably because yesterday was the weekend I'm not going to get this weekend. XD; I totally meant to get up and do stuff, but alas, I got up just before Diana called at 3pm. (For the record, my dream appeared to include both Chad Dylan Cooper - WTF XD - and Ny Vollen. And Hannah Montana. Clearly I need help.) I did get some laundry done, though? And I went running! Buuut that's really about it for productive things yesterday; I don't know where it all went. D: I did go to bed before 2, as well, and I even managed to get up at 9 this morning! (Well, 9:10, but that's close enough!) Sashi actually seemed miffed and wanted me to stay in bed and stop getting up to turn off the alarm. XD;

Anyway... I should get back to finishing my cluster stuff so I can make sure I have enough labs printed and email people about getting stands for the lab on Saturday. I should also go take a tour of campus later to make sure I know where we're going for this scavenger hunt. XD;; Also, must talk to Vicki this afternoon - I found a postdoc that I might actually be good at, but the application is due in... nine days! Eep. o.o (Also must remember to register for AAS and get plane tickets to D.C.! And get a hotel at Disney. AND FIND A CATSITTER OMG. D:)

EDIT: Also! JAYNE HATS FOR TURKEYS! You know you want one!

Oh man, I have so many wavelengths to work on I don't know where to start this morning. I may have to come in this weekend, this week has been so unproductive (again, not for lack of trying!). I never feel like I have anything reasonable to show for myself at weekly meetings. :x I did start IR photometry (just playing around with some parameters in PHOT and re-making some mosaics at different pixel scales) and I am going to play with X-ray stuff probably today, and I need to get those photometric redshift estimates moving. Eek. ;_; Somebody stop the world, I think I want to get off for a while and be a writer.

... Actually, I think I may have dreamed about work. I think I might have been working on IR stuff. Except I was in Japan. Percy was possibly running around. (Damn, why can't I remember? If Percy Jackson is running around my dreams, I want to remember it!) I place any blame for the non work-related parts of that dream squarely on the shoulders of antistar_e, whose totally freaking awesome Percy/Nico fic I finished reading last night and now I am depressed I have no more to read. D: (Also, you have no idea how much better it makes me feel that I'm not the only person to have written over 60,000 words of Percy/Nico in one story. XD And by the way, pergamond, the instant you finish the last Percy Jackson book, provided you like them, I am sending you to read this fic. It made me miss Japan!)

Right. Okay, back to work. In the disgusting weather, because it is disgusting and only 78 degrees outside but I think the humidity is possibly a google percent. Yes, that's possible here in Florida. I wish it weren't.

Also, my power went out today three times in as many minutes. D: Talk about weird.

Right. Work!

Huh. This is really interesting - self-publishing hooking up with Barnes & Noble? I've always kind of envisioned myself going down the traditional path to publishing, but maybe it's time to reconsider that assessment. (Of course, I'd have to actually finish something decently long and original, first. XD; That's what NaNo is for, right?)

Also, I had this dream last night that I was going to visit link621 in Japan... which doesn't quite make sense. XD; I think I also visited februaryfour in said dream, which makes a good deal more sense. There was also something about astronomy and crew in there. Wow - two things that should never be mixed. One brand of crazy is enough!

I think that's about it for now; back to working on my talk, which I have to give tomorrow. D: (Well, it's mostly done really, I just want to make sure it flows and that there aren't too many words, which tends to happen and then I read slides and that's just no good.) I would complain about having to be on campus by 9am, but... yeah. I think I have no grounds. ^^;

So! it has been a long, slightly-eventful week, whereby "slighty-eventful" I really mean "work-filled". I have a rough draft of my poster that I'm working on (which I am sure I will eventually be sending to valeriebean so she can tell me it sucks and has too many words, because where would I be without her to tell me that? XD <3) I've also discovered that two epochs is really crappy for figuring out variability (well, we knew this) and that I have no clue how to get X-ray luminosity from X-ray flux, provided I can even figure out the right task in CIAO to give me the proper X-ray flux. Buh. I know it involves a power-law... seriously, people. Why is there no online tutorial? (Well, probably because that would be ridiculous, but still...)

... Hm. And maybe I'm not as smart as I thought I was. Every time I open a new terminal, it tells me I have an undefined variable in my IDL_PATH. Oops. :x

[/astrobabble]

On the upside, I found fabric for my Star Trek uniform! I hit up the Jo-Anns that I don't usually go to yesterday, and there, right as I walked in the door, was the best fabric I've found so far so I decided to go for it. Plus it's their crazy coupon week so I had a billion coupons I could use. XD Anyway, that excited me greatly, as I was sure I'd never find anything even remotely close. It's not perfect, but it does have a slightly-raised diamond pattern on it that I think will work from far away. And now I shall proceed to share pictures for no good reason:

With a flash, so you can see the texture.

Without, so you can see the color.

In other news (as though it were actually important or something XD), I randomly go nominated for a number of Gen categories in excalibur_award, which is really kind of exciting! (Well, to me, anyway. :D;) Especially when one considers it's for a short little fic about Gwen and Arthur in episode 13. Eee, I feel all fuzzy. :D (Not warm, though. It's too cold in here for that. Thankfully I have a hoodie.)

I also finished From the Earth to the Moon last night, which as a whole was absolutely fabulous and everyone should watch it. And then Deke Slayton showed up in my dream, gee, I wonder why. XD Except I think my brain thought he had diabetes instead of a heart murmur, because in my dream some doctor was testing his blood and apparently had been every day and that was the reason he couldn't go into space? XD Who knows. At least Joe Jonas didn't show up. Although, Joe Jonas in a snoopy cap...

And finally: link621, I just got an email telling me to adopt kittens from the Humane Society of Boulder. (This actually isn't a new occurrence... long story, it's all your fault. <3) But then I started clicking and I think you should adopt him. LOOK HOW CUTE HE IS. :O You could name him... I don't know. Sanada or something. :D;

Firstly, a very happy birthday to lavenderlilly! :D

I kept having dreams about astronauts last night. XD All I can really remember every time I woke up was all the radio chitchat and guys wearing spacesuits on the moon and I think this is entirely due to a certain HBO miniseries that I'm over halfway through with by now. (Aw, but last night was Apollo 11 and 12! All I could think was, "Man, Apollo 12 was a party! Al Bean is adorable!") Eesh, I remember learning all this stuff from books in junior high, but this is so much better than books. Sometimes I think I must be living my life backwards, fangirling astronauts in junior high and the Jonas Brothers in grad school...

Costume-wise, Gwen is almost done! Hoping to finish her tonight so I can start working on Ahsoka in earnest (Wonderflex ordered, $50 later...), and I still need to find fabric for the Trek!Reboot uniform. Plus I need to see if I really will be able to convince people to do Venture Bros cosplay or if this will just be a bust, because I can't walk around by myself as Dean Venture. That will not work. XD (Maybe I could be Triana? With a Dean plushie? XD) And someone needs to tell me that making Penny for AFO is probably a bad idea... even though I think I might do it. >>; NTS: take a look at her stuff tonight to see if this is even possible.

Okay, back to alternately watching MOPEX chug along and trying to get these flux maps made. Cutting the images down to just the area viewed by the ACS makes it much faster!

Welcome to Monday! (Or something. D:)

( My busy but awesomely fun weekend~ )

I headed out around maybe two or three on Sunday, and called a bunch of people on the way home (except valeriebean, I still owe you a call sometime this week because I haven't talked to you in forever!) and then spent the rest of the evening doing nothing very constructive, which included watching some Secret Saturdays, reading Star Wars fanfic, and generally trying to catch up on LJ and stuff. I'm still a bit behind in RP, but I'm really hoping to get back on the ball by mid-week with that. Thankfully I will actually be around until August, which then involves AFO, the Demi Lovato concert (yay, I'm going!), Brazil, and then the Jonas Brothers concert. (Speaking of, I totally had another Jonas Brothers dream last night. THEY ARE STALKING ME. D: Or maybe I'm stalking them. I'm not sure.)

I also need to catch up on writing, because I need to get another PJO chapter out (ahaha, I still need to read the last book!), I know I still owe those drabbles to people from the meme I put up what feels like a million years ago, and I've also actually started my dark!Ahsoka fic (well, all of a page or two of it). The problem with Star Wars fic is that I feel like I want to get all the details right, which means I either have to rewatch or Wikipedia a bunch of stuff, including Revenge of the Sith. (I think a rewatching might be in order for that, but maybe I can just Wiki it first to get myself going.) In any case, I think I have the beginnings of a plot, so that's all I can ever ask for! Now to just figure out the murky parts of it...

Okay, off to read the paper I'm presenting on Wednesday and maybe even get some work done on identifying galaxies with redshifts. Redshifts, yay! (Gee, I wish I had my own...) Tonight is more NextGen and Wednesday is Star Trek movies! (And I still need to see UP before I completely forget it's out.)

Whew, so! Busy weekend~ (Well, except for the part where I accidentally slept through my alarm today until 1pm. I swear I barely remember it going off. D: I had this weird dream I that was hanging out with the Pevensies and trying to rescue random animals...) But! I finished Bad Girl for reals~ (And the Lara top, not that it took long. :D) Pictures here! (Because I am too lazy to cut them or something.) I managed to find some window lining stuff at Lowe's yesterday that works well for the skirt... now to figure out how to mail it to Jennie. XD Need to get that out within a day or two~

I also finished the sleeves on Drew. (Yeah, it looks awful on the hanger. XD) But then I realized I need more black for the boots, so it's off to JoAnn's tomorrow, I guess? I went to Center Stage today to look for a sword, but even though their website (and their door!) said they were open, they were not. D: Maybe they're not open Sundays during the non-Halloween season? That's weird, though. I guess I could try that again tomorrow, too, if I can get there before 7.

Finished my flashfic for the Merlin comm (and found out that I really like writing Merlin and Lancelot, which is kind of scary and may mean I might have to do it again in the future XD). I really should be working on that contest entry fic, but while I have most of the thing planned out and I know what's going to happen and I'm interested in the story and all, I don't really want to write it. >>; We'll see if it actually gets done in time. Even if it doesn't, I can always finish it later and enter it somewhere else, I guess?

( And! I went to go see Dragonball Evolution with Scott, Tiffany, Diana, and Kevin yesterday. )

Maaaaan, where'd all my GT music go? D: This song has been stuck in my head all day; I love Yamcha, but still. XD (And it keeps coming on my Winamp, WTF? XD) I need to re-download Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku.

Also, in non-DBZ-related news, I SEEM TO HAVE GROWN A RYOGA WTF. XD A Ryoga who wants to date Gakuto, to boot. I think Ryoma may try to throw himself off a building if this goes much farther. ::dies::