The Insane Post-Series Avatar Fanfest

I stole this from galuxkitty.

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\o/ Except none of that was actually written today. Yep, I totally slacked off and watched Paranormal Activity instead. Go, me! Oh well. I'm off tomorrow so I guess I can just play catch up with my word count then.

This post originally made at Dreamwidth.

I was all set to spend today cleaning, except then I developed the headache from Hades after going to the grocery store -- the same one that kept me in on Halloween. It's gone now, but it was enough that all I got done was spending the afternoon passed out on my bed asleep*.

Well, and a drabble. Added a new fandom to 'stuff I have written' -- yay for drabbles about book fandoms. (Suddenly you see why I took to Yuletide like a duck to water -- writing for odd fandoms is one of my favorite things to do.)

I am not adapting to the early darkness at all. For an astronomer, I sure hate the dark. No, that's not quite true. I like the dark when it comes on after I eat dinner and can sip my decaffeinated tea and watch the sunset, then go out and look at the stars. Not so much when I come home from work in the dark, or have to wake up before the sun.

* My normal response to pain is OTC painkillers and sleep until they take effect.

Tomorrow work should be busy -- I got a lunch seminar and a meeting with my advisor on 'where I am going with research**', and a lot of paper-writing and stuff.

** Basically, I'm done with one major project, unsure if I should pursue the other one further or just finish and publish, and suspect that I might need a third project to get enough dissertation writing material, but I'm going to ask my advisor. Also mention something someone mentioned to me at DPS about something I brushed over in my talk, and maybe calculating a lower limit on something. (Except I don't know -- or am not sure -- how. Maybe that, plus the F-ring feature thing that I'm helping Matt with, but is low on his priority list, would be enough stuff -- 'cept the F-ring stuff is Matt's project, and I'm just giving him the data from my data set to add to the data he has.)

As in, it thinks doing a Kino's Journey/Slayers fusion fic would be a good idea. Or even a crossover type dealie taking Kino, Hermes and the feeling of Kino's Journey* and bringing it into other settings. Just as kind of a series of one-shot crossovers to play with settings/characters of various series and to write Kino and Hermes.

* If you like thoughtful anime, I recommend this series highly. Basically, the premise is that Kino is a traveler who only stays a few days in each town she visits and Hermes is her motorrad (think motorcycle with AI). A lot of the episodes are stand alones or two-part arcs, and they're very concept oriented. For example, the first episode, Kino visits a town where the inhabitants developed an ability to read each other's minds. As time passed, they discovered that knowing the innermost thoughts of even loved ones was making it impossible to live with them, so they all isolated themselves and used robots to do everything. The one person Kino meets tells her this, then invites her to stay, since she's the first person he's talked to in a while and he wants to live with people who he can't read. It's a very matter-of-fact anime, showing great beauty and kindness, but also great suffering, irrationality, and brutality. (Oh, the ending...) "The world is not beautiful, therefore it is."

I really liked it, because it was... I guess because it wasn't depressing for the sake of angst, but because it was matter of fact, showing the world which was. It's on my list with Haibane Renmei and Mushishi for cerebral anime that I liked from club and want on my shelf.

In English, a queen can be a Queen Regnant (a monarch), a Queen Consort (the wife of a monarch) or a Queen Mother (the mother to the monarch). But a king is always a King Regnant -- the husband of a monarch is a Prince Consort. I don't think the father to the monarch has a title. Then again, reading Wikipedia indicates a lot of it is because Britain -- who tend to be what sets usage of noble titles in the English language, since most English speaking countries either look to Britain for their nobility needs or don't have nobility -- has only had two reigning queens in the current era. Victoria outlived her husband and Elizabeth II is still alive, so that means that 'widower of previous monarch/father to current monarch' has never needed a word, and apparently Victoria couldn't get Parliament to call her husband king since he wasn't British. (Elizabeth II made her husband, Philip, a prince, but not Prince/King Consort.)

Now, the reason I think about this is for fantasy writing -- or non-English-language fanfic*. I mean, if I have a country that didn't have the tradition of men inheriting first, then the courtesy titles for spouses and parents should be consistent with that. So, either one has to go with Queen/King as only meaning a monarch, and Prince(ss) being a term for 'member of monarch's immediate family or direct descendants, who is not the monarch him/herself' -- so you end up with this being the Prince(ss) Consort, former Prince(ss) Consorts/now Prince(ss) Father/Mother, and the 'normal' children, grandchildren, and siblings to the monarch. Or you could have King/Queen be the term for a spouse/widow(er) of a monarch as well as the monarch him/herself. (This would also extend downward -- so a Duke or Duchess could be ruling a Duchy or the spouse of the ruler of the Duchy.)

Or you can just use the male terms as unisex terms, and use the Consort as a title for a spouse. I know for my tweaks to Green Ronin's Blue Rose setting, I'm changing it to drop King/Queen as the title of Aldis, and just go with Sovereign (the name of the office), with the Consort (or Consorts) being any spouses.

* I specify the language since a lot of politeness and titles and stuff translate better figuratively than literally.

So my boss got bitched out today by our DM on my behalf. Because even though I'm suppose to be spending 35 hours a week in my department, I've only been getting 32-33 hours a week and two-three days are spent on register, which means that my back room is not in the shape it should be.

And we got a truck today and I had four buggies of stuff outside my apparel room and DM shows up and says "What's all this?! D: D: D:" Dude, we just had a massive truck, you stupid fucktard, this is my freight. You know. The shit that I've got to get out, even though you want me to get all of the fall/winter shit clearance that's packed up?

I am displeased, guys. VERY DISPLEASED. I've got 40 hours next week (because this is how it goes: payroll is cut back again. And again, and again. We get behind. DM shows up and is unhappy. Gives us better payroll for a couple of weeks. Then payroll is cut again. I think you get it). Unfortunately, on Saturday (HALLOWEEEEEN~) I have to work 8-5. I was going to dress up but, uh, guess not. My costume is too hot to wear and work for that long. :(

However, NaNoWriMo starts in a couple of days and I'm feeling ALRIGHT.

This post originally made at Dreamwidth.

Today is a rainy and gray day. But that's not what I'm here to complain about.

So, last night, I finished my first read-through of papers and went to the fabric store and out to dinner. I get home around 6, and go to my computer.

( Rebecca Versus the Computer )

TLDR: Desktop at home is borked. Considering I tried at least a half a dozen time to either restore from backups or reinstall the operating system, with no helpful results, I think my only recourse is to send it to Apple and let them deal with it. (It's two years old, so no longer under warranty, and I don't live near a place that is certified to repair Macs. I could ask at Best Buy, or somewhere, since it's not like I can void the warranty by taking it elsewhere.)

I have the laptop, so I can head home tonight and do something (and get my files off the external drive), but expect me to be slow about everything computer-related in the next couple of days.

* Seriously, the computer is set to backup the disk every hour when I'm at the computer. I even have a program (Time Machine) that remembers the changes I make between backups, and keeps track of it, so I can essentially browse my hard drive as it looked in the past. Reminds me that I should get an external drive for work.

90% confident I won't do NaNo this year. I'm just too drained these last couple of weeks. I might sent a NaNo-esque goal, but something less like a sprint in that I won't need December to recover. Maybe to write every one of the 31_days prompts for a different fandom, or to take a month where I draw every day. In the state I'm in, I'm just not in the condition to do something intensive like NaNo.

In other news, my officemate can't find someone to open the observatory for her lab students. Normally one grad student handles these things, but he's not answering the phone. If he doesn't show up by the time I head to group therapy, I said I'd come by and help. Which will probably mean taking the late bus home and just passing out. I already didn't sleep well, since I feel bad about not doing much for Ben's birthday this weekend, and I'm still trying to work out what to do about the whole holiday thing*, besides to buy my tickets for Boston. (I found out that Shortline offers a special bus from Cornell to Newton over the break, and I can get the T from there to a couple of blocks from my aunt's house.)

* By 'the holiday thing' I mean that Dad wants me to visit Florida with him and Marjorie**, Mom wants me to visit Nebraska with her, my siblings and my friends. Both of them have said it's ultimately my decision. Dad had assumed I'd be in Nebraska for Thanksgiving -- I don't know why, since I don't go home over that break, though I did visit him in Florida once.

** I don't know if the invitation applies to Ben, but Dad is asking Jenn and Matt next year, since he can't put up all four of us in his condo.