Does it count if I just draw a picture?

Hi. So, I'm back. Sort of.

Truth be told, I'm not sure if I'll ever start blogging in the long form again. I might, though. I might at that...

But regardless of the future of this particular blog, I thought I'd direct you all to a brand new enterprise (of sorts) I'm starting up. It's a chronicle of the many adventures of Chobee and his friend Harry (the horse).

Here's the url: http://chobeeandharry.blogspot.com/

For now (until I figure out how to do all of this better), you'll need to click on the picture itself to get a larger (and readable) version.

This is something I'm doing occasionally in the evening when I have some spare time, and am sitting in front of the TV with nothing else to do. In short, I don't have any kind of an update schedule right now. This may change if I get more dedicated and all that.

Which, given the sorry state of this blog, would be somewhat...uncharacteristic of me.

Cheers!

Sometimes a lack of posting means I will give birth to a novel in a month.

After perusing my blog stats, I've realized that my readership has dropped down to virtually zero. For the one reader who still checks this blog, (or possibly two? Are you a reader out there, person from Romania?), I wish to send out this apology:

I'm sorry.

You see, I've been a little occupied this month. I was in Colorado for some of it, during which time I accessed the internet only once and realized my unread emails had accrued enough mass to collapse into a supermassive black hole that is even now sucking in the entire internet, and from which I only just managed to escape with my life.

Also, there was that whole Thanksgiving thing, which involved a massive amount of time and energy. Energy which was expended on corralling and entertaining a tornado of children (I believe that's the official phrase for 'a group of children,' isn't it?), consuming vast quantities of turkey and pie (not together, just so you know), and playing fiercely competitive domino games with the adult family members (and one niece, who is even more competitive than the grownups).

In short, it has been a wholly awesome month.

However, there has been one more thing that has kept me from blogging, namely NaNoWriMo, which required all of the writing juice I could squeeze out of myself. (Writing juice is a lovely deep caramel color, with sweetness like honey and just a faint hint of lemon zest. And sometimes garlic.) So, you see, I had pretty much nothing left at the end of the day to squirt into the blogosphere. (That...that actually sounds pretty disgusting. Eugh.)

But now, behold, I have returned. And what's more, I have returned...

A WINNER!

Behold the mighty winner's trophy for those who vanquish the terrible NaNoWriMo beast and...

*Ahem.*

Sorry. Got a little carried away, there.

Naturally, my novel is nowhere close to being actually finished, although I crossed the NaNo finish line at rather an exciting point in the story, so I'm pretty confident I'll see this thing through to the end. (Unlike my last NaNo novel, which has been gathering virtual dust in a corner of my computer for the past three years.)

So, my blogging should be back on schedule, now. (That is, I'll blog when I darn well feel like it, and not before.)

And also, HUZZAH! For I have won! And maybe, maybe someday, I may actually be able to hold the novel in my hands, coo at it a little, and read it aloud as a punishment to misbehaving children.

Nothin' to see...

It's nearly 2 o'clock in the morning. And I'm sitting here at my desk ("my" being a metaphorical term standing in for the phrase "my parents'") catching up on my Google Reader feed and ruminating on the latest episode of Lost I've gotten to (post-popularity-ly).

And peeps, I'm staring down the barrel of a gun that has a terrible message written on it. "You're, well, you're kind of dull," it says, etched in its metal sides. Which is a kind of difficult thing to read, since I'm staring down the barrel and all, and the sides are at an oblique angle to my field of vision.

Also, that is a really awful metaphor.

I wish there were things I could write about. But right now, my life consists mainly of filling in the same information into numerous application forms for jobs I will never receive replies from, watching Lost online, catching up on all the years of video gaming I never got as a child, and (when life demands it) doing laundry.

I think the blogging spirit consists of two main parts. First, one needs a topic. Second, one must have a desire to share said topic. And I haven't had much of either lately.

But, ne'er fear. I'm sure something will come along sometime (in its vague sort of way) and I'll be somewhat more inclined to spout somesuch stuffs.

In the meantime, I'll try to think of stuff to share.

Like crazy dreams of flying around a crowded shopping mall. Or my adventures in cookie-making. Or my belief that my mother and I may be recovering from swine flu.

See? Even the dull (and yikes--really whiny) occasionally have things to talk about. Sort of.

Hi.

So, I'm not here to be clever.

You may be disappointed, as some of you have come to expect from me (quite erroneously, I must insist) some pithy, witty writings based upon my life's times. (Not 'lifetimes.' That would be silly. I don't believe in reincarnation.)

However, peeps have been bugging me for ages (i.e. about the past hour) for a blog post.

Very well. I will provide sustenance for the masses, despite my writing deficiencies. I will pour sweet words upon your aching brows (sorry--just got an image of a medieval herbalist dumping alphabet soup over someone's forehead) and anoint the Balm of Blogging(TM) in your wounds.

You luckies, you.

So. Here I am, in Utah, hanging with my folks and my 18-year-old brother, who is soon to leave the nest (the same nest to which I have just returned) for a brighter, better life as a starving college student. (O, good luck, my bro.)

This will mean, of course, that I will be the only child left living at home. This will have been, I believe the third time (possibly the fourth? My memory of college is getting a little hazy--good GAS, I'm old) I have done so, and I have to imagine that my parents (in the privacy of their own room, of course) have started to realize and discuss just why Heathcliff Huxtable got so fed up with his own offspring.

Yes, I am in my parents' basement. Yes, I have no job. Yes, I do play video games. Yes, I am over 30.

Oh. My. Heavens. What have I become?!?

I must retire and weep.

But fear not, hope lieth on the horizon. Yea, it verily risetheth muchly bright morningish. Ly.

In short, I have a phone interview with a local library system on Tuesday. So, kindly keep your fingers crossed for me (but not if it means cutting off your circulation--seriously people, use some common sense!) so that at least I won't babble like a rabid monkey during said interview. Avoiding that would, I believe, raise my chances of getting hired. Slightly.

Righto. Now, I will leave you with a picture of a pig rooting in the mud. And that is all I will show you of my vacation to the Carolinas. Because I don't want to bore you. And pigs are kind of cute. In an ugly sort of way. Also, you cannot tell from the picture just how stinky this pigpen was.


Tata!

So, two weeks, eh?

I'm finally in a contemplative mood, whilst at the same time laden with my laptop 'cross my legs, and thus am currently experiencing the perfect blogging atmosphere. (Well, perhaps 'perfect' would also include a swarthy man dropping blueberries between my slightly parted lips while he somehow simultaneously strums his acoustic guitar while crooning a ballad he wrote just for me, but, that also might prove too mightily distracting for blogging purposes, and...I digress.)

So, hey. 'Sup.

I'm leaving Boston two weeks from today.

I'm taking a quick jaunt down to DC to go on a wee little road trip to the Carolinas with a marvelously wonderful friend of mine, and also to visit interesting places in our nation's capital. Like, um, the Holocaust Museum. Feeling a little weird about that now, but I'd still like to go...

And then I'm leaving the East. I'm vamoosing, sayonara-ing, signing off, shipping out, returning home from distant lands. I'm headed back to Utah, where the grass is (not as) green and the air is (thank HEAVEN) much drier, and the ground rises in these wonderful, tall, pointy things we like to call mountains.

Now that I have my diploma firmly in hand (seriously--I carry it around with me everywhere--I have a pocket sewed into my pant-leg for easy storage, although I'm thinking about comissioning someone to create a nice, round leather sheath that I can strap across my back like one of those sword-weilding-folk, enabling me to whip out that fancily-lettered piece of paper at the slightest provocation, like someone asking, "Can you tell me where--" "HAH!" I will reply, whipping my diploma from my back, "I am a LIBRARIAN. I can help you find ANYTHING.")

Er. Yes. Now that I have my diploma, and now that I also do NOT have more student loan money rolling into my bank account periodically, and now that my rent and grocery bills must rely on the meager earnings I am able to glean from my part-timing work, I have found it prudent to relocate myself to where the rent and my grocery bills will be non-existent. Namely: my parents' basement.

So, I will be thirty, with an advanced degree, and living across from my folks' laundry room.

And I've gotta say, I'm pretty much okay with that. Ask me again in four months or so, when I still don't have a job, and the student loan folks are getting that red-eyed, pointy-teeth look, but right now, I'm kind of happy about snuggling myself back into the nest. For a few months at least.

Resurgence

Shall I post about why I haven't blogged in over a month?

Shall I write about this past semester and its joys, worries, hardships and my unaccountable desire to reread Asimov's entire Foundation series?

Shall I spend time profusely apologizing for being ineffably boring and neglectful by not providing my faithful readership with new and fascinating, periodically updated reading material?

I probably will. Soonish. But, having turned in my last assignment this morning, I believe I'm scheduled for a recovery period. Which means sleeping. Lots.

Um, hey. So...it's been awhile.

Oh, you know. I've just been keeping myself busy with this and that and the other thing (although, if I'm going to be honest, I have to admit that the other thing is really what's been taking up the bulk of my time).

Yeah, I know you've been wondering why I haven't called lately, why all those texts stay unanswered in my inbox, why all those posts you've made to my Facebook wall have gotten no response, why I never even acknowledged that time you threw the brick through my window. (You know--the one with the ultimatum wrapped around it, secured with a piece of fraying twine?)

And believe me--I kind of feel like a jerk about it all. I sit in my room or on the couch and just think of all the great times we used to have and how bad I feel about the way I never seem to keep in touch with people and how I wish I had the time and energy to call people and chat it up or send an awesome lengthy email or, say, post to my blog for instance. Maybe.

And then I sigh and get back to working on assignments I've procrastinated until the day before that end up taking about 10 hours more than what I expected and I cut felt for a flannelboard story until my hands ache and I curse the dull scissors that I need to replace but I haven't really got the money and why the heck would I want to buy another pair of scissors when I'm most likely going to be moving sometime in the next seven or eight months and that'd be just one more thing to pack and I really kind of hope I pass all my classes this semester so I can graduate and get a real job so I don't turn into one of those over-30 folks who live in their parents' basements and make my family ashamed to be seen with me in public.

So, I'm sorry. I'm sorry because I know how it looks to you, and I just wanted to let you know that there are good reasons why I'm turning into an unresponsive hulk of Lizardbreath.

Thanks for being there, though. Thanks for understanding. Thanks for still liking me despite it all.

--Your loving Lizardbreath McGee

P.S. Oh, yeah. And you owe me 300 bucks for that shattered window.

P.P.S. Realistic (i.e. factual and uninflated) depiction of my sleeping schedule over the past few days:

Awake: Thursday morning at 6am until Friday morning at 3:30am
Asleep: Friday morning at 3:30am until Friday morning at 7:00am
Awake: Friday morning at 7:00am until Friday afternoon at 3:30pm
Asleep: Friday afternoon at 3:30pm until early Saturday morning at 12:30am
Awake: Early Saturday morning at 12:30am until slightly later Saturday morning at 4:00am
Asleep: Slightly later Saturday morning at 4:00am until Saturday morning at 6:10am
Awake: Saturday morning at 6:10am until BLOGPOSTTIME. Whenever that is. (i.e. NOW.)

I am trying to resist taking a nap. Please, please send good wakey-wakey vibes my way.

All Wet

The streets are rivers, the dips in the sidewalk are lakes, and even moving through the air is like trying to breathe while standing under Niagra Falls.

Ah, autumn. Be less beautiful, or be less brief. Or something.

P.S. Sorry I haven't been posting much. I've been both busy and a little...distant. Even while feeling like I'm missing people more than ever. I have no promises or anything (like posting more, for instance), but I just wanted to let you know. I'll post when I can.

Candy for the masses

"It has come to my attention," she wrote, each finger tap punching briskly into the keyboard, "that there are some among my readers who wish for a more regular update of the events of my life."

She paused, hands poised over her computer, ready to pounce on them like so many warrior-like worms (she wondered for a moment--could worms be warrior like? She imagined earthworms clad in helmets and shaking spears with their back ends and smiled to herself) while she cocked her head and ruminated on the events of the day. Was there anything worthy to report?

Let's see, she thought to herself, hot oatmeal for dinner, a long nap this afternoon which I decidedly should not have taken, conversation with Mom prior to nap, class this morning...beautiful fall-ish day?

"It was a beautiful day today," she continued, allowing her warrior-worms to jump into the fray. "It was just on the chilly side of cool, which made my walk home that much more pleasant. But the weather is boring to talk about, and I suppose all of you are looking for something more...meaty."

I suppose I could finish my account of the marmot affair. She shuddered. No. Perhaps not yet. More recovery was necessary, she supposed, before she could bring herself to conclude the terrible tale.

"Alas; that's pretty much all I have to tell," she continued. "School's fine, work's fine, all systems normal. Even my toenails are doing pretty well, I guess. At least they're growing like crazy. Maybe a trim is in order."

She blushed a little and decided to erase the bit about the toenails. No one needed to hear about that.

Meaning to hit the backspace button, she accidentally (and unaccountably, because the two actions are pretty much completely dissimilar) hit the 'Publish Post' button instead. So the bit with the toenails was up there for all the internet to see. Chagrined, she decided to simply call it a post and withdraw.

For the time being.

I don't want to be bitter.

I realize that the last post is kind of bitter. Perhaps rather more bitter than I intended while writing it.

And I don't want to be bitter. I really don't. I want to be happy and have other people be happy to be around me and I don't want to get fed up with people. Really and truly.

Merhm.

Oh, well. I guess I'm just trying to figure out things by writing about them. And sometimes the writing is coherent and clear, and sometimes it's full of bitter ramblings. But maybe eventually I'll come to a better understanding. In the end.

Bippity Boppity Blog

So, I'm sitting at the gate in the Las Vegas airport, waiting for my flight to start boarding... (I have a layover here in between my departure from Salt Lake and my arrival at Boston Logan Airport tomorrow morning.)

And, naturally, (as young people's minds turn to love in the spring), my mind turned to blogging.

Also, I am terrible at using similies late at night. You may have noticed.

Anyway--I just wanted to report something I never knew: you cannot walk 10 feet in the Vegas airport without bumping into a slot machine. Seriously. You walk off the airplane, into the gate area, and whammo! Lights! Sounds! The scent of money running furiously into the pockets of casino owners! (It smells like fruitcake, liberally laced with doggy doo, in case you were wondering.)

Also, I saw a disposal container for used needles in the women's bathroom.

Ah, Las Vegas. How unique you are. It almost makes me feel affectionate about it.

Almost.

I'll add a picture (of the slot machines, of course) to the post when I get home tomorrow.

Edit: Here ya go!


Until then, happy...whatever. Happy living. And here's hoping I have a happy and sleep-filled flight.

Now, before you languish and die...

In case any of you have been wondering why I have been so woefully neglectful of you all, please know that I am now in the second-to-last week of the semester, the week when everything is due.

So, I'm busy, you see.

Really, truly.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm trying to avoid you.

It's just that I have to assign classification numbers to a whole buncha stuff. Also, prepare a booktalk set. And.

Huh. I think pretty much everything else is done. But I will refrain from celebrating until after next Tuesday, when my last assignment is due.

But OH, be prepared for a fab blog post after that. You won't be disappointed. Because I will make a bunch of stuff up to make my life sound really, really exciting. Hurrah for fiction!

And now I must retreat back into my hole.

What's lacking in my writing:

OH my goodness.

So, I found out today that someone has searched my blog for the term 'nephew.' (Have I ever mentioned how much I love reviewing my sitemeter stats? (Which, incidentally, has led to the discovery that most people who come across my blog randomly find it by searching for pictures of Olympus Mons and gallbladders. Which. Okay. I feel a little weird about. But whatever.))

Anyway.

But the 'nephew' search made me think of all the things you might find or not find by searching my blog for certain terms.

Terms like 'cow.' Which shows that I write "Holy Cow" a heck of a lot.

Or 'monkey.'

Or 'poop.'

But it made me realize that there are some glaring omissions in my use of words.

I, for instance, have never written about gnomes. Or grease. Or gravity.

Er.

Maybe I have a thing against words starting with 'g.'

In any case, at least it's given me some topics to ponder, perchance to write. Perchance.

I wonder what would come up if I searched for 'perchance.'

Let's see, shall we?

It never does feel different.

It's 2008.

And, like every year, we get together as a family and drink sparkling cider and watch about the last 60 seconds or so of the countdown to the new year and then we all shout, "Happy New Year!" and then my parents go to bed while the rest of us play video games for another few hours. (And blog.)

And I don't know why, but every time that final countdown rolls around and we spring over into the new year, I always expect to feel just a little bit different, and always inevitably feel pretty much the same as I felt at 11:55. Or 8:42. It's like waking up on your birthday morning, knowing you've just put a +1 onto your age, and finding yourself astonished to still be indisputably you, only older by the night of sleep you just had.

I wonder why I keep thinking I should feel different, why I keep expecting these tiny moments to seem significant. My experience over the past (nearly) thirty years has made me realize time and again that moments, while you're in them, rarely feel significant at all. It's usually only in looking forward to moments or looking back on them that things seem to gain weight.

I'm not sure why that is. Is it wishful thinking that makes us think moments ahead will feel important? Is it hindsight that allows us to perceive our pasts as significant? And why do we not feel it at all in the present?

I don't know any of it. And my Boston clock says it's 4:41am, and my Utah clock says it's 2:41am, and my biological clock simply says it's DARN late/early/aTimeIShouldBeInBed, so I probably won't meander any longer tonight. Er, this morning.

But...well... Happy New Year anyway.

And happy 400th post, while I'm at it.

Oh. Well, goodbye, again.

I'm flying out tomorrow, you know. Probably leaving tonight on the T with my luggage, coat slung over one arm and an umbrella held over it all.

I'll be at the airport for a long time. Without internet access, is what I'm trying to say.

So I won't be able to blog or email you.

I'll just be...

Cut off.

But you'll be alright. Separation is most painful right at the beginning. And by the time you start to feel the pain of my being gone, I'll be right back in the seat of my computer chair, ready to tell you about my trip.

And about how good it is to be home.

Generating somethingorothers

So, I'm sitting here in my room and I want to write something for my blog because I haven't been exactly garrulous lately and it's been mainly due to vague feelings of almost-apathy hanging around like some sort of malignant-ish miasma and also not really having much to report, seeing as how I've been spending the majority of my days not working on the major projects that are due at the end of the semester and seriously catching up on my reading and

And.

Stuff.

Also, I buy this whole wheat bread that's really delicious and also it's interesting because it has these kind of broken up grains sprinkled all over the tops of the slices and so after I get finished eating my sandwiches or toast or whatever-something-that-involves-bread the plate has all these white bits of grain all over and if I moisten my finger (by plopping it in my mouth) and then use it to pick up all those bits of grain and them eat them they have a (not surprisingly) grain-type flavor but the texture's kind of interesting and also I think I'm weird.

Also, I like learning about libraries?

And also, I think I'm even stranger after midnight than usual.

From the trenches

I am in class right now. And I am surreptitiously blogging.

This is not perhaps as daring as it might sound; the professor is currently not in the room, and there are multiple conversations going on around me, so the level of guilt I feel at the moment is nice & low.

Of course, the prof could walk in at any time, which makes the anxiety level highish...

AND, here she is. So, I must be off to learn stuff and otherwise do all this wonderful library science stuff and goo.

Wish me luck!

And suddenly I feel smarter.

And also, I just took a test of my blog's reading level:



Yeah. I'm just that super-cool/intelligewonderful.

Because I'm all about appearances.

So. You maybe just got to this page and noticed that--hey--your (it's true!) favorite blog has up and got a makeover! And actually you just barely noticed while you were reading that last sentence that--hey--your (don't even deny it) favorite blog now looks even more fantastically schnazzy than ever. And wait; what's that? While pondering on the ephemerality of electronic forms of communication and how the changing of one's blog template reflects and relates to the internal changes that take place daily in our own lives you realized that--hey--your (not even kidding) favorite blog has become this wonderful place where you just want to comment and comment and also never leave.

Because it just looks so good.

And is also your favorite.

I keep not talking like I think as is.

When I talking at yous sometimes I have not explaining what I thinkings pretty good.

So then when readings you're doing becomes a thinks that I'm thinkings things that thinkings not really, try is remembering my ownings of stupidity.

Because explainings and talkings doing well are something I know not of.

Understand?