It's not really a proper short story, more an extended snippet relating the events in page four and five of Etchings (see previous posts) in more detail.

For those on my flist who are not familiar with Inuyasha: Jaken is Sesshoumaru's servant. He is a small, irascible, wrinkled toad demon.

Anyway, on with the story. It's unbetaed and possibly a little rushed. I can't really tell at the moment.


( In truth, Sesshoumaru was doubtful whether stomping down the halls with a lit lantern and an accelerated heartbeat could be rightfully called sneaking, but the intent was plain, even though the execution was abysmal. )

The pic at DeviantArt.

*ETA ...And of course I forgot that because of mature content, this won't be visible to non-DA members. Here's the LJ image (under the cut):


( In which there is snogging, and Kagome's jammies die a swift and honorable death. )

Etchings page 3, page 4 and a preview of page 5 respectively:


      

... and here's page 2:
Had a lot of fun doing this one. ♥

PIcked up drawing again yesterday. Don't ask me why -- it just came over me. I found an old Sesshoumaru/Kagome story I'd started but never posted and decided to color it. Here's the result:




The first page is as always boring. It gets better though. I haven't been so excited about anything in ages. Knowing me, I'm not sure how long it'll last, but at least I took the time to do something fun again, just for myself. I haven't done that in too long.

Home sick today. I'm having to run to the bathroom every hour or so. Ugh. I particularly dislike the dry heaving.

And yet, I am still hoping to get some work done later today. We'll see how that goes.

The whole RaceFail discussion pisses me the fuck off. It's turned into a witch hunt, as evidenced here and here, and I'm sick of it. People are arguing about a book quite a few of them haven't read, for fuck's sake (Patricia Wrede's new book, The Thirteenth Child). In the beginning, people are still civil. But as usual on the internets, after a while the argument degenerates:

I've come to the conclusion that based on the shadow cast by white supremacist colonization and the ongoing genocide of the original inhabitants of the Americas, I can't-- in good conscience-- read the Thirteenth Child. It's not so much recoiling from a shadow cast by a distortion in my head but disgust with a trope that holds that even when they're strangers in a strange land, all white people need in order to prosper is whiteness.

Yeah. That's a lot to read into a YA book, especially one you haven't read. And then, there's this fellow:

When dealing with the hallmarks of fantasy no apologia can go too far or justify too much in the case of historical and fantastical genocide.

Overdramatic much? Get off your high horse, won't you? I'm sure any story can be viewed from several perspectives, and I'm sick of people jumping on one aspect because it's the one that hits closest to home. The whole discussion is the Inquisition all over again, no matter how well-intentioned it started out.

I'm totally in love with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

That's all.

I've been away from this journal for a long time, partly because I wanted to reduce my internet time, and partly because real life didn't stop being busy. It's been busy in a good way though, so who am I to complain?

Over the last few months, L. and I have been busy looking for a new place since the barely 50 qm of our old flat were getting a little cramped. It's been okay while we were still students, but we both work now, and we wanted something a bit more spacious. In October we got lucky and found an apartment close to the university at a bargain price. The negotiations (and talks with the bank plus getting the paperwork ready and making sure the flat wasn't being inhabited by goblins after all) went on for ages, but I am happy to report that since March 1st, we can call ourselves home-owners. Well, once we've paid off the mortgage that is.


With all this and work and dancing I haven't had a lot of time for other stuff. I haven't done any drawing in months (except for a bit of involuntary doodling here and there) and it's already two months ago that I've written anything. I've been too tired to miss it, but I expect I will eventually. And I also expect I'll do something about it once we've moved and settled in.

Been ill for a while -- the monthly blessing of all non-pregnant females decided that a week of torture was not enough, so it stuck around for two months.  In the end it took me ages to get my circulation up and running enough so I could leave the bed in the morning. Not fun. The doctor had no idea where it came from, so I'm glad it decided to get back to normal on its own.

It's okay now though. I'm taking everything a little slower, including work. I've also started exercising again -- really carefully. I tend to get lightheaded pretty quick. I should probably be outside in the fresh air more often, but it's very cold outside. Right now I prefer sitting with a cup of tea in front of the computer to freezing my ass off.

A recap of my work week in terms of fitness/exercise:

Mo	1 hour of non-stop dancing, 20 mins strength training
Tue	3 hours dance training
Wed	-- break --
Thu	40 mins dancing (with a lot of boxing and lunges mixed in), 20 mins strength training
Fr	50 mins dancing, jumping and boxing, 20 mins strength training -- mainly abs, butt and back

Today I'm taking a break again. I'm still pretty sore from yesterday's exercise session, which was my most intense yet. Tomorrow I'm planning to do at least another hour of dancing. If everything goes well I'll be able to extend the exercise to six days a week.  It would have been too much to start with, though. I'm pretty exhausted as it is.

As far as weight/body shape goes I lost two pounds this week and 1.6 waistline inches over the last two weeks.

As you might know from my previous rant, I have decided to get back in shape. This includes daily workouts of at least thirty minutes, plus another twenty minutes or more of strength training. Sadly, I'm one of those people who, once they've formed a resolution, spend so much time preparing for it that when the time comes to actually keep it they're totally exhausted. Which is why I made another resolution to keep the preparations to a minimum this time.



The DVDs arrived two days ago. I haven't yet tested all of them out, but the yoga/bellydance one is very good (Contemporary Bellydance and Yoga Conditioning with Ariellah). Her isolations are extremely precise, and she's excellent at explaining which muscle groups are employed at any given moment and describing the feel of the movement. Just the isolation part is 75 minutes and hellishly exhausting. It definitely works as a cardio workout because there are virtually no breaks in the flow: it's 75 minutes of near-constant motion.

Yesterday, I've mixed it up with the one good hip hop DVD I got (Jamie King - Rock Your Body). King is an excellent dancer, so I might actually learn proper hip hop from watching him. He goes through the choreography very quickly though and I've never done hip hop before, so it's an adjustment. Yesterday I was able to stumble through the choreography but I wasn't yet able to dance it, which pissed me off. I expect to be reasonably proficient by the end of the week though. Also, hip hop isolations are just like bellydance isolations, only harder and more accented as a rule, so I'm killing two birds with one stone.

  *ETA: Got in a proper workout today: 1 hour and 15 minutes: around 50 mins of cardio and the rest strength training. Britney Spears music videos are amazingly good for the cardio bit. Same goes for the Black Eyed Peas. 

Well, sort of.

If I haven't posted here in a while it's because my interests and my life are undergoing a shift, and have been for a while. Two weeks away from the computer helped cement my realization that a change is necessary if I don't want to end up like some of my older colleagues.

The rest is under a cut in order to protect the uninterested or easily bored on my flist. :)


Right. So this is why I've been inactive for so long. :)

I'm keeping track of my progress in a special diary. I might post some of it here so you can all point and laugh. Only the boring PG-rated bits, though.

Starting tomorrow I'll be away from the internet for two weeks. I hope I'll manage. Last time I got a headache after four days of computer withdrawal and returned home a week early. This time, I'm taking two laptops with me and a cartload of books.

Wish me luck.

Done with TDH.

I picked up my copy in a bookstore instead of ordering it from Amazon, since I was pretty sure it was going to be quicker than getting it delivered. Turns out I was right -- several friends of mine who ordered it were still waiting for their copy at four in the afternoon.

Took me a little less than six hours to get through it, and that's because I had to force myself not to skip anything. But I'm done now, and I have to say, I really admire JKR. It's a wonderful, tightly plotted book; there are so many insignificant details from previous books that are suddenly vital to the plot. I'm awed.

I'll have to reread it in a few days. I wonder how it's going to feel when I'm no longer quite so eager to find out how it all ends, who lives and who dies.

I liked the Doctor Who finale very much. Looking back, I liked most of this season quite a bit -- certainly a lot more than the second one, even though Ten was very much a prick for most of it. We got Martha, which was a good thing all around, Shakespeare, the wonderful Blink and Gridlock and even a most entertaining visit by Captain Jack, who was wonderful in season one but used to bore me silly in that mediocre piece of junk called Torchwood.

I still dislike RTD. I thinks he's not too bad at creating characters but once they're there he loses control of them pretty quickly, and then keeps trying to push them back into the original mold, with pretty bad results. Martha's 'unrequited crush' on the Doctor throughout the season was the kind of idée fixe that might have started out logical, but became increasingly hard to sustain the more the season progressed.

( Read more... )

Oh, and the face of Boe thing? Genius, even though I was sure it was a throwaway line before watching the Confidential. Still, it was fun. It even fits in a weird sort of way.

Today is shaping up to be another of those 8 AM to midnight days at work for me. Had a lot of those lately. Surprisingly, I am feeling content and happy despite the lack of sleep.

A good friend of mine has made professor recently, and my boss has 'lent me out' to her for this semester. I work nearly exclusively with her. I had nearly forgotten how it feels to be encouraged, to have someone I an go to with both research and personal problems. It's wonderful. I haven't been this productive and confident in ages.

Which is good -- I have so much work that being anything but productive and confident would lead straight to a nervous breakdown.

Last weekend was the first in ages that I only worked one day, leaving Sunday free for relaxation and reading. I am currently halfway through two books: The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage and The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama.

The Victorian Internet is a lot of fun. Since I knew next to nothing about the evolution of the telegraph before I started reading it I am learning a lot as well.

The Audacity of Hope is a very personal book. Obama makes it very clear from the beginning that he is sharing his personal view on things, and that his treatment of issues must remain superficial  in places. I guess that's what makes it such an easy read for me. My grasp of American politics is tenuous at best and what I know I don't like, so this book has surprised me on many levels. I understood a little better how some of the things I don't like or understand (the death penalty, gun use, the exorbitant tuition fees, the very odd welfare system, etc.) have developed, and why it's so hard to fix them.

Obama's prose radiates empathy and kindness. He's a religious man -- something I am deeply suspicious of, usually. But he's no missionary; he is wonderfully accepting of other people's right to believe in what they want, including nothing at all, and I found his own reasons for embracing faith believable.

He is a clear-headed thinker, outlining problems like health care and education without trivializing them. Most of the problems he talks about are universal rather than American, otherwise the book would have probably bored me despite the lovely prose.

He appears very genuine. If he really is the way he comes across in the book, I do hope he becomes president -- if not now, then one day.

Currently in the process of reorganizing my life. My current job is running out, and I'm going through the process of securing a three-year extension. In fact, the extension is already approved. However, the personnel guy responsible for setting up the contracts (meaning he fills in one's name and the duration of the contract on a preexisting form) is notorious for misplacing people's forms, forgetting about contracts altogether, and generally hating paperwork. Which means I'm not as calm about all this as I'd like to be.

In the next three years I want to get my Ph.D. So far, I haven't been as disciplined about writing that thesis as I should have been, but that's changed this year and I'm hoping it's going to get even better before the year runs out. I really wish I had students to do the programming work for me, though. And the grading. I love teaching, but I really dislike grading.

Haven't posted in ages because real life pwns me. That's not because real life is particularly trying, but rather because I'm an undisciplined moron.

In order to compensate for this I usually order books from Amazon, which I then proceed to 'read' in less than two hours per volume, regardless of the length. That's because I like to skip paragraphs and occasionally pages which contain one of the following: (a) flashbacks (b) description (c) foreshadowing (d) no smut (e) badly written smut.

For some odd reason, I am left unsatisfied by this. Considering the books I buy are by authors I usually (a) don't know or (b) know, but don't quite dislike enough not to buy their stuff, I probably shouldn't be surprised. Still, it's only this year that I started skimming over books like this. I wish I knew why.

Inbetween book orders I read both good and awful fanfiction (mostly awful, though). In the process, I came across a really good Stargate SG-1/Doctor Who crossover the other day, featuring Vala and Jack Harkness. So lovely. Vala is one of my favourite fictional characters ever, and I liked Captain Jack a lot before Russell T. Davies turned him into an annoying, angsty mess in Torchwood.