NANOWRIMO

So, I had a short conversation with Dazzle this weekend, she reminded me of a fan fic that I had read back in college. Then I was scrolling though my feed on facebook and realized that I'm still friends with the author of that fan fic. So I went on a hunt. And to my horror The Shoebox Project was indeed hacked, and I believe that I already had it saved from college on my external (I'll have to check when I go home). I also found Kim's (the awesome writer I was talking about) old blog. Which is equally as amazing! And then I realized that I actually used my LJ at one point in time. So here is the link, http://andraus-fires.livejournal.com/ this is a tiny look into my life from 2005-2006. I haven't even read over it yet, I'm a completely different person that I was back then, so this should be interesting.

Also yesterday was day one of NANOWRIMO! I think I might do it again, which means that I need to write my little butt off today! Add my as a buddy! Search: TheAtheneNoctua

Now I'm off to WRITE, WRITE, WRITE

"The very PINK of perfection" - Oliver Goldsmith

Sarah bought a PINK wig on thursday for Ruth's Color Photo shoot on  Saturday. I had fun taking a few pictures with it on. Especially after we spent an hour attempting to curl it without melting it. Also, I very much miss my long CURLY hair. It was sooo nice to not have to do my hair every day. All I had to do is wake up, get out of bed and go, go, go!!! She also bought a very nice quality one the other day! I hope it turns out well!


Speaking of Ruth's shoot! There are some pictures that have popped up!  So here's a sneak peek of what went on in that shoot!  Ruth is uploading her pics little by little but everything looks AMAZING thus far! I'm very excited about the final results. The top one ^ is from Ruth the one with Renee is from her camera phone :)  I'm loving my crazy wild-child look. It was exactly what I was going for. A kind of wild, crazed juvenile look. I mean we were, after all, taking photos on a play ground :)
I seem to keep on getting busier and busier!  It's like my free time has started to dwindle completely! Either that or I'm not managing it very effectively. That's probably more like it. I really do need to get my apartment FINALLY cleaned up. Especially since the one month mark is heading my way!   

After the photo shoot I accompanied  Marc to Auburn for his Enforcer Halloween Party, one which I made a pretty epic costume for BTW! In case you are unsure of who I am, I happen to be Crimson Viper from Street Fighter IV! Also, Marc was Ryu, which is even more awesome :) 


So the plan for the rest of the month: Halloween party with Sarah (and Marc if he decides to join us, not sure yet)! I'm pretty sure it's going to be amazing, because the last one of their parties that I went to was pretty epic. I mean they made wizarding staffs!


Now, on an entirely unrelated note:
I'm still tweeting what I'm eating, I think it's going pretty well. The shame involved in tweeting what I really want to eat is a very good deterrent to me. After all I am fairly caught up in what people think of me, always have been. *shrug* I don't really see a huge problem with it. I'm comfortable with myself, but I think that caring what ppl think some of the time helps you become a better person. 


Oh, I'm buying a fisheye lens, that is all. Back to work!

Problem


I really think that I go out of my way to hurt myself on purpose sometimes, I have a weird sense of curiosity. I wonder if I do it so I don't feel anymore. I suppose that makes sense right? I mean right now I'm going through pictures and my heart is beating a little bit faster at the words I see, but I keep doing it. I wonder if I'm steeling myself against getting hurt. That makes more sense. I mean my mom taught me years of how I should never let close someone I care about, because THAT just blows up in your face. Oh well. Doesn't really bother me anymore. So I guess I've learned to accept it, and have successfully hardened myself. Maybe I am an "Ice Queen"...

But no matter. (Which is weird because I don't feel at all depressed or annoyed or anger or anything - weird calm). Maybe I'm turning into Corley. That would be weird. But she does have so many  qualities that I would love to have. She has this crazy confidence in herself where she doesn't give a shit what anyone (actually) thinks and if you want to leave you can, doesn't bother her at all. To me, I hold on to people. I think that if I'm terrible to people that they'll leave me. Another product of my joyous upbringing. I think I've finally understood that I can leave Marc be and even get pissed off at him and he will still be my friend. Which is very comforting.

Photography!

Photography is just plain FUN! Sarah Y and I have been positively brimming with ideas for new photo shoots. So because, and a crap ton of upcoming photo shoots, I thought that I would brush up on my photography skillz (or lack thereof). I'm not a professional photographer, or even really an amateur photographer, but it's fun. And like anything fun the better you are the more fun it is! So here I am "working" at, you know, work and looking up  ways to make me awesome. And (methinks) a more professional re-haul of this blog is coming up! And by coming up I mean... I'm going to stop writing and work on it now :)

Plants VS Zombies Photo shoot

Self explanatory? We would be in a park, or someone's back yard, and map out a grid and then have fun!

What we need!

A flat piece of land/yard/whatever
At least 12 people
2 -3 Lawnmowers
A cool red flag
A cardboard house/real house

Plants!
at least 2 Pea Shooters (complete with rolled up pieces of green paper to throw)
at least 2 Sun Flowers (complete with paper 'sun' cutouts)
at least 2 "Specialty Plants" (with whatever they throw/fling)

Zombies!
at least 2 Zombies (one can wear a flotation device)
at least 2 Cone or Bucket head Zombies
at least 1 Zombie with a Screen
at least 1 "Specialty Zombies"

I'm thinking the only person with a big yard and a cool house we could protect is Bergman... I need to do some more investigating. But, what do you all think of my idea in its infancy?

Yuppie (short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional")

Yuppie n. Informal A young city or suburban resident with a well-paid professional job and an affluent lifestyle.


"Of course, that term, yuppie, has fallen so out of favor that we’re not even supposed to use it anymore. We’re expected to come up with a neologism—a clever 21st-century inversion of the word. But we’re not going to do that, because we don’t need to: The yuppie of 1986 and the yuppie of 2006 are so similar as to be indistinguishable. A used copy of The Yuppie Handbook recently fell into my hands. The book was published in 1984 as a jokey piece of social anthropology, and it made a slew of observations about this new American species. The yuppie’s bizarre lifestyle preferences were intended to elicit populist guffaws. Here are some of the things, according to The Yuppie Handbook, that the budding yupster could not live without: gourmet coffee, a Burberry trench coat, expensive running shoes, a Cuisinart, a renovated kitchen with a double sink, smoked mozzarella from Dean & DeLuca, a housekeeper, a mortgage, a Coach bag, a Gucci briefcase, and a Rolex. Oh, har har har, that crazy yup! [...] All of which means that the archetypal yuppie of the eighties sounds precisely like, um, everyone you know. Trust me: There is not a single sentence in The Yuppie Handbook that could make you chuckle. By now, the entire manuscript comes across as nothing more than a rote annotation of urbane American life. “When people were denouncing yuppies, they had considerably lower incomes than yuppies, so the things yuppies spent their money on seemed frivolous and unnecessary from their vantage point,” says Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank, author of Luxury Fever. “What most people fail to anticipate is that your sense of what you need and want is very elastic. When your income rises, your consumption standard gradually adapts.”
(http://www.details.com/culture-trends/critical-eye/200611/the-return-of-the-yuppie)


Of course this all comes about yesterday while I'm wearing my Prada sunglasses, contemplating my Juicy Couture eyeglasses (and if only they came in white), but they don't, so I need to buy this pair of Dolce and Gabbana ones instead. And I realized, between that, my old Coach purse, my Dooney and Burke purse and keyring, my DKNY/Bulgari/Burberry (among many others) perfumes that I had become a yuppie. It doesn't help that I carry around my Starbucks tumbler everywhere. 


And it's not even that I make that much money. Sure I make more money then almost everyone down here, but not by much. And it certainly helps that my rent is DIRT CHEAP. 





Corrugated Lore

Finally finished my first attempt at the Corrugated Lore logo! Here it is in all it's ratty goodness. So the Zine will be called Corrugated Lore, the press is Wireless Rodent.

So are your submissions ready? Because they soon better be, I'll be mailing out our call for submissions by the end of the month, then a month later I will release our FIRST ISSUE!!!! I hope you guys are all excited, because I am. The Zine's blog will be:

corrugatedlore.blogspot.com/


I hope you all enjoy the journey! Please either post your email address or your residential address in the comments section to receive your CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS at the end of the month. I will be sending out only USPS Post after so if you want it do make sure I have your address!

My Dearest Anne,

Last year I was told that if I got to my goal weight I would have any sexual fantasy I had fulfilled, and I failed. THIS year I was just, not two seconds ago, offered a deal where if I lost 30lbs by the end of the year that I would be taken on a trip (not too expensive). So here we go! I've already lost a good 30lbs from High School/College so this next 30 should be eaaaassy right? lol, probably not. So I've cut myself down to 1250-1500 calories a day. Either three 350cal meals with two 100cal snakes OR three 500 calorie meals. I'm thinking three 500 calorie meals. But I'll try and be good this time. Not like earlier this year when I was all about losing weight, lost ten pounds, went to Boston, then gained it right back. No, definitely not like that. I'll keep you posted.


So I just finished Persuasion, I had previously not read it and only watched the movies, and I've decided that my life is SO much like Anne's. Basically, I'm Anne, Marc is Wentworth, My friends are Lady Russell, the ppl Marc have been seeing are Louisa and Henrietta, and Alex is Mr. William Elliot. It totally all fits. And Alex is totally William Elliot, wanting to date me and him putting up all the cute, loving, sweet boy persona. And now when I talk to him I realize that he is back "dating" Zoey, but since she isn't putting out as much as he wants her to he's totally willing to cheat on her (saying to himself -and me- that she would understand). Which is totally what sleezy William Elliot would do. Since he told me that I've been very, very disinterested in him. "All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone." ????? Oh yeah, that's me. 


Lunch time now! 

You know you haven't posted in forever when...

You have nothing to post about. Well I'm not exactly sure what my intention of starting this blog is, because quite honestly I could be writing my article right now and making myself some hard earned money! But I'm not. Which is terribly unfortunate, maybe I'll try to fit it in after this post.

Which brings me to... I'm finally doing something with my major! It's wildly exciting, I'm a freelance writer now. I am an actual bonafide writer.Which of course means extra money! I'm going to try and bust out three articles a week. (being $7.50 to $15 each - which means I could potentially be bringing in $90 to $180 a month)! Sounds very exciting doesn't it?

Other than that, I've been stressing out a bit that I still haven't sold my camera yet, but I've finally decided upon a solution. If it doesn't sell on eBay tomorrow, I'm going to just return it back to BeachCamera and take the 10% restocking fee and the shipping... which takes it down about a hundred bucks. But hey, I'd rather have $800 dollars in the bank than $900 of camera that isn't doing me any good. And it's taught me quite the lesson. Also, now that I have this freelance writing position I feel a lot more secure in my money situation. It means that I can very easily start replacing all the money that I've been spending and bring my account back to a decent level of savings.

But I'm really digressing. The reason I got rid of my old blog is because it was filled with terribly personal stuff about my "relationships" and about people in my life. It was basically a blog that I used to vent about everything because I was wearing Marc out by telling him everything that was going on wrong with my life at that moment. And I have to admit I was a bit petrified about someone, somehow reading it that wasn't supposed to. It was one of those things where you want everyone to know, but you don't want to deal with the consequences of everyone knowing, ya know?

So then I decided to start everything fresh again, which meant a new blog and everything else that comes with it. And kind of a new look out on life in general. I wanted to stop being so negative and actually live life to it's fullest and actually allow myself to be happy.

So here I am trying to be happy. I'll post more later, hmm?

Life lessons come with buckets of stress

July 27th - After a week of researching cameras and companies I settled upon Provantage.com and their "special order" version of the Canon EOS Rebel T2i (which said it'd take an average of 3-6 business days to ship). It's $840 plus $16 odd dollars in shipping. So for decent $866 and some change I got an awesome camera...

days pass, order is still "processing" and I'm reading review after review about how it took a month for ppl to get their "special order" products.

July 30th - Called Provantage it's 4pm p.s.t. and they're already closed.

August 2nd - Called Provantage and asked when they're going to ship, was told that the estimated ship date was Aug 12th. I asked if it would, for sure, be shipped on that date I was told no, that it might be later. So I cancelled that order.

Later that day I decided to get the same camera from Buy.com for $30 ish more.

August 3rd - Buy.com shipped my camera

August 4th - Provantage shipped my camera... WTF!?!?!?!?

Called Provantage and was like... ummm I cancelled my order... they told me too late! and that if I wanted my money back I needed to refuse the package, which will have it returned back to the warehouse which would then email Provantage and tell them to give me a refund. k....

Called Fedex - refused package, send it back! Done, Done, Done!

Called WECU - can you stop this charge from hitting my account?! Nope, sorry

Called Provantage - sooo... just confirming I'll get my money back right? Yes Will you take anything out? Yeah, you probably won't get your $16 some dollars in shipping back... fuck.

So now I'm stressed out that something will happen that makes my package not get recognized by the warehouse, that Provantage won't give two shits and I won't get my money back. Not to mention the $50ish dollars that I've lost in trying to find a "good deal."  FML

Hopefully this will all work itself out by next week...

GamerGirls

copyrighted from somewhere on the internet
Ok, the more and more I think about this idea the more I like it and REALLY want to do it. I think we could make some really good ad money on this endeavor, and on top of that, it'd be super fun! We would set up a blog / twitter / facebook for GamerGirls, every three months or so we would have a photo shoot. And specific blogs (Mine, Sarah, Victoria, Dazzle, Mikey, Riley's) would get some lower dpi "teaser" photos a week or so prior to our "release date." We wouldn't do any nude photos, so nothing that we would be ashamed to see floating around the interwebs. Then on our "release" we would post the high quality, highly photoshoped, and tweaked to amazingness, photos.

Or even have the blogs have a "preview" our the collection then release a photo a day so we can get the most use out of each shoot!

So I'm thinking artsy, classy, sexy photos where we would be using props (like the one pictured) or even nerdy things painted on ourselves, basically whatever we come up with.

We can have monthly meetings where we pool all of our ideas and come up with a "theme" for the next few months and do a shoot based off of that. Maybe even have a tiny Zine that gets passed around, thus creating more web traffic and more ad money rolling in.

So all I know right now, is that this is going to be truly fantastic. I hope you all can join me in this.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

My other blog/reader/gmail/hotmail/docs/picasa/calendar/youtube/talk was getting really bogged down by lots of crap that I had found vaguely interesting at one point in time, and now no longer do. I figure since I've had it up and running for so long, since almost the beginning of these programs, that it would take absolutely forever to get everything cleared out and to where I wanted it to be. I also have been striving, for a very long time, to have just one "identity" online. So now, for the most part, I do. Aside from my deviantART which will not left me change my account name, and considering how I've been on that site for 6 years now (so I actually have some seniority somewhere) I really didn't feel like creating a new one. 


So basically I'm doing a massive overhaul, and it's actually turning out to be a lot more work that I had originally anticipated. It's amazing how many different websites that one tends to get signed up for that we don't really remember or keep track of. 


But I digress... so    TheAtheneNoctua@gmail.com    is going to be my new primary email address, I will keep the others up and running for now while - which probably means I'll check my hotmail maybe once every few months and will just skim the emails, and my other gmail probably get checked around once a week or so. 


In case you're still confused: this is Nancy Swope :)