Standing On Boxes

I’m not sure how many people read the fics as posted here anymore but they are a bit out of date. I’m still working on them but haven’t kept the WiP’s current for at least the last year.

Current plan is to spend March updating them but for now anything updated/completed can still be found on TtH, AO3, and ff.net.

I also plan to redesign the fic pages though that might take longer.

I started using Scrivener during NaNoWriMo and hopefully can use it to output stories for the archive here instead of the old manual process I’ve been using for years.

We’ll see what happens.

Not much to say.

I’ve been burning off some vacation time, that I would lose otherwise. Nothing exciting to end the year. Had some dental/gum work done (by a dentist with a laser) right before Christmas and have been living on pain killers for the last 2 weeks while it (slowly) heals. Been eating mostly bland food. Bleah.
Done a little bit of post-NaNoWroMo writing but certainly not the amount I’d originally planned.

It’s a wrap. 50,034 words of story. 15,000 in the last 3 days (Yikes! )

Unfortunately, the story itself, a sequel to last years story, needs a bit of work to really be complete. Going to take a month to fix it up before posting anywhere.

I’ve watched more ‘network’ TV in the past week than I have in years. Too many commercials. Blech!

Agents of Shield episode 2 – Not bad. More action than the first episode. (One reviewer complained that there was less action this episode. Not sure which show he watched but it wasn’t this one. Also, in a 40 minute show there isn’t a lot of time for much to happen anyway, especially super hero antics. Not sure I like the obvious character being a mole. Hopefully it’s some double agent stuff. Fury showing up was a nice touch.

Crazy Ones episode 1 – okay for a pilot. Hopefully the next episode will have a calmer Robin Williams. It was like watching two different shows crammed into one. I prefer the SMG side. RW can be funny but he wasn’t leaving much room for actual plot. Or what little plot there is in a comedy.

Elementary episode 1 – recorded but didn’t watch. Summary didn’t sound too exciting. A trip to London? Still a couple episodes to catch up on from last year. I’ll probably just buy the season off of iTunes and catch up later.

Just finished watching the pilot for ‘Marvel’s Agents of Shield’, a new show from Joss Whedon and the gang at Mutant Enemy. Basically an ‘Origin’ story. I will be watching the next episode.

Next up – Thursday – the new Robin Williams comedy w/SMG. And Glee (which I’ll DVR but probably not watch). And Elementary.

Nothing else in the Fall lineup that I really want to watch.

I’ve been collecting Lego mini figures for a while. (Which means buying some Lego building sets of course). Over 200 unique figures so far.

There are other companies that also sell mini-sized figures. Usually, licensed characters that are more ‘realistic’ (looks more like the actual character/person than a Lego mini figure would.). So far, I have KISS (from K’NEX), some Mario Kart/Wii figures (also by K’NEX), and now some Scooby characters (Scooby, Shaggy, Velma, and some monsters, so far. ) The figures are, in theory, Lego compatible. This means they are approximately the same height (the Mario figures are approx. 10% larger but the rest are much closer to Lego mini height.) and they have holes in their feet that are Lego brick hole size. And they have some sets of bricks to go with the figures.

There are other Lego ‘clones’ but my impression so far:

K’NEX – I have KISS and Mario Kart Wii figures. They have others. And seem to own Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys now.

Bricks – cheap, flimsy imitation of the real thing (aka Lego). Mini figures – okay. They have a complete, older, line of non-Lego cloned building toys.

COBI (Polish company. They do a log of military themed sets. And Scooby-Doo. The ones I’ve been buying at Toys-R-Us are actually re-packaged by some British company – Character Building. Same characters and building sets but different packaging. It’s possible Toys-R-Us has a special deal with them/COBI – like they do with Lego for some sets. The set I bought from Toys-R-Us combined 2 COBI sets. The British company also does things like Doctor Who but I haven’t seen those locally yet. )

Much better clone of Lego than K’NEX. From the Scooby sets I’ve assembled, most of the pieces are actually identical. A couple are slightly different. And the sets are much simpler than current Lego. Closer to what you’d buy from Lego a couple decades ago. But cheaper/harder plastic.

Watching some music festival on TV (on Paladium) – Five hours of highlights from the 2013 Glastonbury Festival. And some older.

Mostly music I don’t normally listen to so it’s really been background.

Randomness…

Who is/are HAIM? 3 sisters and a drummer. Not sure I like them but they seem to be having fun – this looks like it was written by a fan - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haim_(band)

Kenny Rogers was there. He looks old (And he is). So much for memories. Wasn’t a huge fan but I remember him from some TV movies in the 80′s. He sang his signature song, and all I could think was ‘Someone get that man an oxygen mask!’ He didn’t have enough breath to really sing. Very sad.

That roaring sound? That was August as it flew by overhead. Not sure what quite happened to it when I wasn’t looking.

For those who’ve noticed… my Fic Update page is seriously out of date. My goal for September is to update things. Update the stories I’ve been working on or posted elsewhere so everything is in sync. Until then… please go to my Fanfiction.net and Twisting the Hellmouth pages to see fic updates. The links are to your right here. (the only thing NOT at TtH is actually my NaNoWriMo 2013 story. That’s posted here, AO3, and at ff.net only. )

Can’t believe July is over for the year. It feels like it was just the 4th the other day. But no matter. August starts tomorrow and I’m sure it will be just spiffy all round.

The 6th Annual International Day of Femslash is Saturday, July 20th.

And the part of the main story I’ve been working on is only a 1/3 done. Not sure I’m going to get it done. But I’ll have something. I hope. Haven’t missed posting something for IDF yet.

Used a vacation day to turn the 4th into a 4 day weekend. Didn’t do much, just hung out, read, cooked, wrote a little, and other stuff.

How, if you tried to make sense of that ‘Ancient Aliens’ show that they tend to contain conflicting information? It would be impossible for all of the info in the episodes to be true at the same time.

And ever notice how the narrator and some of the so called ‘ancient alien experts’ always pause after a couple words. They almost never say more than three words before pausing for several seconds for emphasis?

And how they preface the most unlikely of statements, the things that are most likely unprovable, with the phrase ‘some ancient alien experts believe‘ or ‘according to ancient astronaut theorists’ or some variation there-of? If you hear that you know that what they are about to say is a serious whopper, and I don’t mean some kind of burger.

Everyone and their grandmother appears to be using the internet right now. They must be watching a boatload of streaming media. Why don’t they just watch TV like the rest of us?

The Tonys are tonight. Tried to watch them (research for a story mostly), but I’m not really an ‘awards watching’ kind of person. I frankly find televised awards shows to be boring and tedious. I turned off the sound after 30 minutes. And turned the TV off after 2 hours.

Sure, Neil Patrick Harris (NPH) can be amusing but that only goes so far. It felt like it was 60% commercials from the network ‘hosting’ the show and related enterprises, and 20% awards being given, and the remaining 20% being chunks of music/dance from the shows up for the awards to keep the audience entertained.

Sure, it’s a chance for the people “of” Broadway to celebrate the best of their art of the previous year (We all remember that the Tony’s are awards given only for plays/musicals/whatever actually on Broadway. Right? However Broadway is defined. Off-Broadway, and Off-off-Broadway, and other live theater collectives have their own awards – though I’m not sure how many of those get the full bore broadcast of network TV.), but I can’t get that excited about them myself.

Very brief sexist moment. The Maxim 100 is out. Those celebraters of female objectification over at Maxim magazine have come out with their annual list of the “Hottest” female celebrities (as defined by them).

In a brief moment of SOMETHING, Couldn’t resist taking a look at the list. This being the Internet, it had tiny thumbnail pictures.

Hmm…

Recognized 44 of the names on the list. Recognized less than that of the faces, going by those thumbnails.

The other 56? No clue.

Surprised at how many aren’t “Pop Tarts of the Moment” (aka This year’s contenders for Britney Spears/Lindsay Lohan’s tarnished crown as paparazzi target.)

Not sure which is worst. Recognizing that many (mainly actresses who’ve been in the news or movies/TV shows I’ve seen over the last 5 years or so) or not recognizing so many.

Am I no longer hooked into the pop culture zeitgeist? Am I turning into a pop culture dinosaur?

Is there anyone out there?!