One week down, sixteen to go. It already feels like I've been back in school forever, I'm so tired and brain-fried. Gluh.

I did have a burst of energy and ambition when I got home today, though. I found some pretty cool material for a buck a yard at Wal-Mart, and came home and upholstered my window seat bench lid thingies. It took me about an hour with a staple gun, using a cut up one of those foam egg crate liner dealies for padding. Looks pretty nice, if I do say so myself, and I think it's taken care of my decorating jones for a while. It also completely drained me. Thank God there's decent TV on tonight ("Harsh Light of Day" on FX! Mmm, Spike's sexy bed crawl! Also? Farscape! Yeah, baby, yeah!) because I don't have it in me to do anything but sit around and veg.

I ran into my brother-in-law in Wal-Mart, and he said they're doing their nursery in John Lennon. When I looked at him funny he explained that they make a line of John Lennon baby products. All righty then. At least he's not still wanting to paint hobbits on the wall. Which could actually be cool, but kinda creepy for a baby. If I ever have a baby (shut up! Stop laughing, damn it!) I'm gonna base the nursery on The Chronicles of Narnia, I think.

My friend Chad, whom right now I love even more than usual, sent me some prezzies today. A couple of books (A Confederacy of Dunces and The Devil's Dictionary), some DMB tapes (concert bootlegs, I'm assuming -- I haven't had a chance to listen yet), and the thing that made me jump up and down in my kitchen for a full minute giggling like a ... something that giggles a lot: The Evil Dead Special Edition DVD. You know, the one with the case that looks like the book of the dead? Hee! And WHEE! That might be what I watch between sydi-Buffy and Farscape tonight.

Anyway. Tomorrow, I'll write. If you're waiting on PW7, I'm going to try to finish it tomorrow. Of course, it will still have to go through betas after that, so it'll still be a few days. But I'm on it. Really.

So Pete posted a while ago over in the TWoP Buffy Fic forum and called my attention to a very depressing fact: Since I started writing fanfic a year ago? I've written two good-sized novel's worth of BtVS fic. TWO NOVELS! Do you know how long it took me to write my first (never to be published) novel? Two years, working on nothing else. Do you know how much I've written on my new novel, which was to be my sole summer project? One paragraph.

The good news? I'm now apparently able to write fast enough to produce two novels a year while still writing well. The bad news? There is something so completely wrong with me for having put so much of that energy into frigging fan fiction!

Eh. I can't deny that it really was good practice, and my writing has improved a lot over the last year. But I swear, on all that is holy, Perfect World is going to be my last fanfic (save for the chapters of DL that I'm still committed to write), until I've written at least a good chunk of Modern Brides. I know now that I should never say I'm giving up fanfic for good, because all that ever does is make me start having more fic ideas, and I don't want to jinx myself. But I have got to get my priorities straight, y'all. Nobody ever made a career out of writing fanfic. Except Mere Smith.

Just got back from my first class of the day -- Perspectives on Human Behavior. This is the class that I dropped last semester, and I'm glad I did, because even though the workload will be heavy, it's still only about half of what it was last semester (3 short papers and a group project, as compared to ELEVEN(!) papers last semester). Nothing I can't handle. Plus I like this prof much better (same prof as Adolescent Psych), so it's all good.

Hee. We formed our groups and one of the other group members also dropped that class last semester, so we talked the rest of the group into covering poverty, the topic that the class covered last semester, as we'd both already written several papers on the subject. So our work from last semester won't be a total waste.

I wasn't going to come home between classes, but I forgot to take my daily handful of herbal supplements that tries to compensate for not having any Ritalin, so I had to come home to load up. Just as well, I can also eat here and save some money. Alas, I'd planned to spend this time in the library working on PW, but I'll have another huge chunk of time to kill between my PM classes, so hopefully I can make some headway then. I think I'm starting to get a handle on the Adam situation. Once that's out of the way the rest of the chapter should be a sinch.

One class down -- Psychology of Adolescence, which looks like it's going to be eeeeeeasy as far as the workload goes, so yay for that. It's all quizzes and tests, no papers to research and write. Yay, yay, yay! Also, since it wasn't really designated as a senior level course I was worried it wouldn't count towards my degree, but the prof announced that they decided that it would. So it's not going to be a waste of time and money, which is all kinds of good.

On a completely unrelated note, there's a bronze Jaguar for sale in somebody's yard along the highway. It's probably a good thing I don't have a steady income right now, 'cause I'd sooo be looking for a way to buy that car. I hear Jags don't always run so well, so I guess it's good that there's no way for me to afford it. But it's just so pretty! And I would look so pretty in it! Hi, I'm a girl.

Hello, insomnia! I guess physical exhaustion wasn't enough to override first-day jitters and allow me a good night's sleep. I had trouble falling asleep in the first place, and then around 5 AM I woke up for no good reason. But I rebelled, and stayed in bed, because getting up that early when you don't have to is just so very wrong. By the time my alarm went off I'd managed to drift into that weird sleep-wake limbo where you're not quite fully either. Oh! And to top it off? My back hurts again! [kermit]Yaaaaaay![/kermit]

Feh. Suddenly it matters that it's Monday, and I remember that Mondays suck ass.

But it was nice to wake up to a clean, unstinky abode. Though I just noticed all these water spots on my sofa where I used the steam cleaner to take care of the cat pee (and that sentence alone should make you understand why making Niblet an outside kitty has been considered on more than one occasion), so, drat. But better water stains than pee stains. The sofa's cordouroy, maybe I just need to run a brush over it or something to fluff it back up. We'll see.

Being that I was not really asleep when my alarm went off, I actually got up with the first alarm (instead of an hour later, which is usually how many snooze button hits it takes me to realize that the noise coming from this little screaming contraption means that I'm supposed to get up now), and so I find myself with time to write before class. So that's good. Because (and if you're keeping up with Perfect World, you'll care) I have no idea how everybody's gonna get past Adam, so extra time to work on that problem is good to have.

My God. I haven't been this tired in a long time, Boys & Girls. I spent all weekend cleaning my ass off. That actually might be somewhat literal, considering how many times I went up and down the stairs hauling laundry or garbage or what-have-you. My mom, bless her, helped me, and we got the whole thing knocked out, the carpet and the couch steam cleaned ... everything. I don't think the place has been this clean since I moved in. It smells so lovely right now. Hopefully my furry little loved ones will refrain from pissing on the rug or any of the furniture and stinking it up again. I still have a lot of stuff to put away and move around, all in the name of organization, but I can work on that throughout the week. The important thing is it's CLEAN! Yay!

I, on the other hand, am grimy and stinky and I think I still have to scrub out the tub (it started out clean but we kept dumping the intake reservoir from the carpet cleaner in there so it's kinda nasty again) before I can take a nice, long bath. The best part, I think, is that I'm exhausted, so I really shouldn't have any trouble sleeping tonight, which is good, since I have to get up and go to class tomorrow. I'm a little nervous about that, but just a little. It's stupid, but I guess back-to-school jitters are always to be expected. But I need to bathe and give myself a manicure/pedicure, then I can go to bed. But first I have to finish up all the CDs I'm hawking as a "free gift" to raise funds for DL. So, yeah. I might be up for a while yet after all.

I'm going to be an auntie again. Little Sis is pregnant. Here's wishing her and her husband both good luck in giving up their vices. Especially the smoking.

I hope, hope, hope they have a girl. Nephews are all kinds of fun, but I've already got three of those. Since my older sibs are done having kids, I'm counting on her to give me a niece. And between our older sibs' kids and her brother-in-law's kids, she's got five nephews and not a niece in the bunch, so I'm sure she understands.

Bad timing for me (because it's all about me, you know), because the baby will be born just a couple of months before I go away to grad school. Assuming I go to grad school, as I've still got to apply to some, and I still have to take that stupid GRAT exam, which terrifies me, and there's that whole "I really don't want to go to grad school" thing to consider. But if I do, having a new baby in the family will make it doubly hard to move away.

Though I'm actually considering taking a year off before starting on my MS anyway. I'd have to get an actual (*gasp!*) job so I can make loan payments during that time, but a nice, long break from studying would do me good (especially if I spend it writing. And if I happen to finish Modern Brides and find a publisher for it and make a decent amount of money, well, then the whole "To advance my degree or not" question will be settled). Also, my current total loan amount is small enough that if I crack down, I could get it all paid off in a year. Anyway. That's a decision I need to hurry up and make, because it's getting to be crunch time with the application deadlines and such, and I haven't even begun to prepare for those exams.

Le sigh. I should be able to charge my books now (they said to wait two days after turning in the award letter), so maybe I'll go do that this afternoon. Before I do anything else, though, hopefully I can finish PW6 and get it all sent out to my betas. I'm hoping to post that by Friday. Don't want to go more than a week without updating. I think finishing the whole story before school starts is out of the question, though. Here's hoping I can get it done before I have to turn my focus to academic writing.

I got my FA award letter turned in. In two days, I can go to the bookstore and charge my books and school supplies. I haven't been shopping in so long that I'm really looking forward to it. That's terribly sad, isn't it?

I just remembered that Labor Day weekend I'm driving down to Oklahoma City to see The Phantom of the Opera. I'm excited, but I'm not spastic about it or anything. My Phantom obsession has cooled considerably in the last few years. Once upon a time I could tell you the leads in any cast in any production in the world at any given time. Now I don't even know who's in the touring cast that I'm going to see. Still, I'm looking forward to it, and hopefully the trip down and back will be enough to satisfy my travel jones for a while.

Lately I've been jonesing to go back to London. I've always wanted to go back someday (come what may), but I think between reading the fic at London Calling and watching too much BBC-America and going through the photos of my last trip, combined with just a general wanting to go somewhere, it's getting bad. I'm sitting here drinking coffee out of my London Underground mug ("You can't beat the system!"), which is really not helping.

Actually, at this point? I'd be happy with a quickie road trip to somewhere fairly local. I hate being broke. Plus, only a week left till classes start and I've still tons and tons of stuff to get done before that happens, so now's really not a good time to think about taking a vacation. Tess keeps talking about charging a trip to New York for our 30th birthdays (hers is the day after mine) in April, but as cool as that would be I'll still be in school and gearing up for finals and working on end-of-term projects, so I don't know how realistic that is. Maybe if we plan to go during Spring Break (although I'm hoping to spend that at SXSW with the band) or right after the term is over (and I'm hopefully all graduated and stuff). I've also seen that James Marsters is scheduled to be at two different cons next year that it might not be impossible for me to get to. And I've got friends all over the place that are always bugging me to come and visit. The closest and easiest to get to of those would be eep and Whofleck.

I shouldn't even be talking about this, as broke as I am and as busy as I'm about to become. But, damn, people. I don't know if I can hold out a whole 'nother year without taking a vacation of some sort. Meanwhile, my craving for all things London is turning me into an Anglophile, which is kinda scary.

The show is over, and it was good. I think I'm a fan of the Sound and the Fury. The lead singer sounds a little like the guy from System of a Down, although that's about the only thing those two bands have in common. Anyway, I liked them. Shamrock was good too. Their a pretty popular local band, but that was the first time I'd heard them. If I had the money, I'd spend it on both bands' CDs. But tonight's take was pretty meager. Still, fun was had, so it's all good.

The boys did great tonight, I thought. Everybody I talked to seemed impressed with them, and the club owner told me to keep in touch because he definitely wants to have them back. They're their own worst critics, but I thought this was their best show yet. Stacie's vocals were clear, you could understand most of his lyrics, and Ted rocked the house with his guitar solos. Poor guys were thrown for a loop when they found out they were the opening act after being told they would go second, and James got so nervous when we went for dinner after the soundcheck that he yakked all over my car. Fortunately he got his head out the window first, so he didn't get any of it inside. Still, my car is covered in vomit. Guess who's going to the car wash tomorrow!

I did not have a beer. However, I tasted two. My sister let me sample her Bud Light and Terrence let me try his Guinness. Neither was as bad as I remember beer tasting in my youth, but I just don't think I'm a beer drinker. And I'm really okay with that.

All in all, it was a fun night, and we made some quick cash, so, yay. I'm exhausted, and I think all the caffiene I imbibed to counter the Rum & Cokes before I drove home is wearing off and I'm crashing. Time for bed. Tomorrow I need to open up the band's merchandise shop on Cafepress.com and finally get their CDs put together to sell on MP3.com. So next time hopefully we can sell some shit at the show and come away with more than ten bucks apiece.

The big show is tonight at Curly's. I'm a little nervous, though there's really no reason for me to be. Not like I'll be up on stage. Though I do need to pin down the club owner at some point and confirm whether the band's still on for the 29th. Hey, it's cheap beer night, folks. I might actually try my first beer tonight since I was a kid. I seem to remember that beer is all kinds of nasty but people keep arguing with me on that point. It depends on whether Terrence and/or my sister show up so I won't be drinking alone.

I got my revised Financial Aid Award letter today. Loans! Yay! I still have to accept it and turn it back in, but by the end of the week I can go by my books. School supplies! Whee!

I redid DL again. I had to so I could quit obsessing with it. I'm not sure I like the new design better, but everybody else seems to, so, there ya go. That pretty much took up all of my alotted web design time for this quarter, so this particular page won't be getting redone any time soon.

Also, I posted PW chapter 5 last night. I'm past the half-way mark on that one. Yay! I'm taking paper and writing implements tonight so hopefully I can work on it during the show. Hey, I'm old, people. I can't spend the whole night banging my head out on the dance floor with the youngsters.

I spent a pretty significant amount of time yesterday redesigning DL. The concept is something I've had my heart set on for a very long time now, and someone who's a much better artist than me (I am perfectly aware that I can't draw for crap, thanks) had promised to draw it up for me. For possible t-shirts, actually, but I wanted to use it on the site as well. So I gave up waiting and drew the thing myself. It's cartoony and a bit dorky, but I kind of like that about it, thought it was charming. At least it's original, and a hell of a lot more thought and time and effort went into it than if I'd tossed up some stock photos of the characters like I did with the last three designs.

I've actually gotten more feedback in favor of it than against it, but those who are against it really, REALLY hate it and are not at all shy about saying so. So now I'm all, should I redo it again? Because I'm not that attached to the concept as it stands (or the picture, even though I poured my non-artistically-inclined little heart into it), and it's really not worth the grief. But then again it's not like they're complaining about usability, they just don't like the way it looks. I suppose I could point them to the FAQ where it says that the site is about the writing and not about pretty pictures and then tell them all to suck it up and deal. Which I may just have to do for the time being, because it's not like I have loads of time on my hands, especially not to spend trying to satisfy people who seem to have missed the point of the site.

Guh. Can you believe I actually lost sleep over this? And now I'm sitting here too worried about the lameness of the site's new look to be able to focus on writing. But at least all of the usability issues with the old layout seem to have been solved, and that's the important thing. I really need to stop thinking about this. I'm obsessing, and there are soooo many other things that I need to be spending my energies on.

Heh. It always amuses me a little how much harder I take it when people criticize my web layouts than when they criticize my writing. I have no idea why that is.

5 days until the band's concert at Curly's. 14 days until classes start up again. Both countdowns are stressing me. Especially that second one. I really can't do anything more than I've already done to help the band get ready for their gig. Although I'm also stressed on that count because there's a hink in procuring them a PA system. For some reason my credit card, which has a pretty good size limit and is completely paid off, was declined, so I've got to get that straightened out before the music store will ship their package. Bah.

But I'm far more stressed about the back-to-school deadline. SO much to do, and I'm sure you're all tired of reading about it, but tough. Actually, I'm kind of looking forward to having some structure to my days again. I think I do better with structure, and I'm clearly incapable of providing it for myself. I just really hope that my classes don't require heaps of papers to be written. I'll seriously get depressed about halfway through the year if all of my writing time is taken up with academic papers. Hence why I'm scrambling to get my fic finished before classes start, so at least I won't have to worry about that anymore.

Still on my To Do list: CLEAN! I've made some headway there, got the floor clear for a serious, heavy-duty carpet cleaning in half of my place. Also, catching up on e-mail, which I've been promising to do all summer and I SUCK because I've got e-mail going back to March and a lot of it is feedback about stories I've written and I don't know if the people expected replies and I'm incredibly rude for not having replied or if they didn't expect or even really desire to hear back and I'm stressing over nothing ... but then there are e-mails from folks like Erich and Pete and Caro, and I REALLY suck for not having answered those yet, and the only reason I haven't is because I put them off until I had time to compose thoughtful responses but then by the time I had time to do so, so much time had gone by that I had major guilt ... GAH! So, yeah. There's still that to do.

And I have to go buy my books and get my hair cut and give myself a manicure and a pedicure and pay my bills and figure out my budget for the fall and figure out if I can afford to get my cat spayed because she's driving me up the fricking wall and I have to contact my sister and see if interning in her class is even a viable option and if it's not then I have to line up some more internship possibilities and I have to finish Harry Potter lest I don't pick it up again until Christmas break and I still have to prep my story for marketing and write up a decent cover letter (I really hate/suck at cover letters) and finish Perfect World and get my scenes for my upcoming chapters of DL written (thank God I'm only a co-writer from here on out) in case academic writing really does take up all my time this semester and I have to at least finishe the damn prologue to my novel and begin writing that in earnest, and I have 5 things in my mailbox that I need to beta read for other people because I promised that I would ...

Pause for breath.

So, I'm freaking a little. Feeling so far overwhelmed that whelmed is a tiny little dot to me, and seriously missing my medication.

So my goals for today are to beta everything in my box, get my story all prepped for marketing (minus the cover letter, I'll worry about that tomorrow), and try to finish PW5. And to go outside at some point, because that's just healthy. Unless it aggravates my allergies.

This is me, chilling.

Damn. Sixteen days until classes start up again, people. Sixteen days!!!. I got a lot accomplished fic-wise, but that's about it. How sad is that? I've managed a whole paragraph of actual novel all summer long. I suck. I know I've said this before, but when Perfect World is done I have seriously got to rethink my writing priorities. The bugger is that I've already got another fic floating around in my head. But it's a small fic.

For those who've been wondering (since Blogger decided it would be funny to leave my last whine-fest up for weeks), I got my financial aid situation straightened out. I'm getting loans. Now if I can just get all of the approval I need on both ends to intern in my sister's ED class, I'll be set.

I'm feeling very heartened by my Tuesday/Thursday schedule, which leaves huge gaps between my classes on those days. I should be able to head over to the library and parlay that into some writing time. So, yay on that count.

Oh! I also found that short story that I'd thought lost forever! So tomorrow I'll be all about getting that ready for submission.

Tonight, if Tess is up to it, I think I'll go see "Signs." I really need to sit down and do my bills and figure out my budget and make sure I'll still have enough to go see "Triple X" next weekend, because, Vin Diesel, y'all. Mmm-mmm! Not as pretty as James, but still. Damn.

I played hooky today. I figure major cramps + headache + all around pissiness = reason enough to lie around and watch TV all day. Well, not TV. I found out we have a copy of Sense and Sensibility, so I watched that. Alan Rickman: Rrowr! And then I watched TV. The Dead Zone (eh), a couple episodes of Manchild (Giles in leather pants! Hee!), and Farscape (Mmm, Chricton!). At any rate, no writing, nor beta reading, nor answering of e-mail was achieved today. And as I still have major cramps, I refuse to feel guilty about any of it. So nyah.